Clusterfrag

Between Max and Doc's explosive barrage, the walkway gives up the ghost and falls, smoking, into the coolant with a groan.

There's a violent hiss as the iron mess sinks below the surface.

The team touches down on what little remains of the walkway attached to the exit door.

Max runs to the door and peers under with his flexicam, saying,

"Make sure to keep them at bay for a moment! We don't want to run blindly into something even worse on the otherside!"

Max's flexi-cam reveals another hallway, with large plate-glass windows on either side. His angle with the camera makes it impossible to see through the windows. At the end of the hallway is an elevator of some sort.

Doc digs the second Dragonfly out of his pocket, and sends it ahead, before cautiously stepping into the hallway.

Max opens the door to the hallway, waits for the team to come through, and closes it behind him to make sure no drones follow. The elf inches his way along until he can get an idea of what is through the windows.

Now in the hallway, the runners can make out what lies behind the large windows on either side of the hallway.

Dozens of upright gurneys are visible through the frosted glass, each containing a restrained (and seemingly dormant) cyber-zombie. There are obvious cybernetic augmentations to their skulls, where it looks like large data-chips have been grafted into flesh.

Doc presses a finger to his lips, and slings the rifle over his back.

He ducks below the line of windows, and quietly crawls toward the end of the hallway.

Doc continues to creep forward, keeping an eye out for the panel.

Max follows suit and crawls along behind Doc.

Max's hawk-like eyes pick out the panel on the other side of one of the windows, situated on a wall in between gurneys.

Max indicates to the team,

"There's a panel in the room behind the glass. Doc, any guesses?"

Doc squints at the panel.

"That's probably what Milly is talking about. From the sound of it, we'll have to access it directly."

He glances at the dormant cyberzombies, and for a moment, his own augmentations snap into sharp relief, feeling like foreign invaders in his mind and body. He pushes down the sense of queasiness welling up inside him.

"I don't know what will wake those things up, but I'll head into the room to access the panel. The fewer of us trying to sneak by those things, the better. Hang tight in the doorway and be ready to back me up if they wake."

Max does as he's told.

Doc takes a deep breath and slips through a hatch situated underneath the window. The smell of cold metal and formaldehyde pierces his nostrils like a handful of nails, sending the nausea he had flirted with earlier into overdrive.
Unnoticed, Doc slinks his way over to the access panel. There are four large bolts affixing the panel to the wall.

Doc quietly opens his toolkit. He passes over all the ratcheting or motor-driven tools, and selects a simple stamped metal hand wrench that could have been made any time in the last two hundred years.

Bit by bit, he starts to loosen the bolts.

< Okay, Milly, I'm here. Walk me through it. What do you need me to do? >

Doc continues to remove the bolts holding the panel on, taking pains to muffle any sound.

Removing the panel, he delicately sets it down against the wall as if it were a priceless painting. He sets to work on finding the main data cable, so that he can hook it up to the necessary port.

A series of LEDs springs to life on the main-board behind the coupling. At the same time, a ceiling panel above the runners begins to withdraw, slowly revealing the barrels of an assault cannon.

<The data-vault seems to have activated some sort of defense subroutine. Take cover!>

Max moves for cover from the line of fire.

Doc rolls under one of the cyberzombie gurneys.

Tyros, confident in his invisible cloak, moves slowly around behind the assault cannon, ready to leap up and cut it in half should it open fire on his teammates (delay action).

Subvocally, <"Milly, any way you can take the turret over and use it against the zombies?">

Max comms to Tyros,

<Cut that fraggin' thing down, Tyros. I would shoot at it, but I don't want all the ghouls to wake up and come down on Doc. Maybe-- just maybe-- you can disable it quieter than a series of shotgun blasts and have them not wake up.>

Tyros bunches his legs under him and with a sharp thrust, lunches his eight foot frame up so that his shoulders are almost parallel with the ceiling turret. Moving his massive shoulders from right to left, he slashes his sword through the servos holding the gun module.

Tyros' claymore splits the barrel of the auto-cannon, which falls on to the troll's burly shoulders, muffling their fall before they hit the floor.

Max responds to Milly's mumblings urgently,

<What? What? For fragssake what??!>

Max understands,

<Anything you can do about it remotely? How do we kill Deus?>