Er... See if I'm still in one piece?
The light from outside has faded to a dull glow, so you activate your head lamps and sweep the beams around the dark hallway. You see your own leg over near the hole in the wall. Oh. You look down. Your right leg is completely gone, as is a large chunk of your lower body; only one leg is left and a ragged semi-circle has been torn out from about belly button height all the way down to where your other leg should be.
Curse all aliens and their alien children. Get unburied. Help Simus and anyone else in the way as much as I can. If Alvin says the thing is still sucking power, or if I can't contact Alvin, cut the power lines with Simus' laser or my monorazor. Unless there's something obvious telling me I shouldn't do that.
Edit: If the lab corridor door has been sealed by Alvin to prevent air loss, order him to seal the doors behind me and unseal the door infront of me.
Edit2: Since the lab door should be destroyed now, get in there and monorazor the thing after cutting the power lines.
((Fitting turn for page 1000. Lots of suspense.))
[str:6]
You throw the shelf off of you and crawl out of the freezer, closing the door behind you. It's completely pitch black in the room, not even the emergency lights are running. You turn on your lamps and look around. The kitchen is intact, so you head over toward the lab. The door to the lab umbilical is closed and sealed tight. You try the controls and it doesn't respond. You send a message to ALVIN to open the doors. He responds over your wristpad:
>SYSTEM POWER SEVERED. MANUAL RECONNECTION REQUIRED TO OPEN DOORAm I alive? Status check self, then go check the crystal.
You sit up, leaving an outline of black rock where you were laying. The stone glows a dull cherry red with heat and the shields even around back here have bowed forward somewhat, from the force and the heat. You check yourself over; but realize quickly that if you had been injured, the suit puncture would mean you'd be dead already. You stand up and walk around toward the corner of the base.
The entire structure has been rounded; it's corners partially molten and blown smooth. The entire building looks like it partially melted and then blew a foot or so before solidifying again; the metal is discolored by heat and strange formations, like sideways stalactites, mark the direction of the blast. Beyond the building, in the direction of the crater and the crystal, the ground is still visibly hot, more so the further east you go. Craters, some small, some quite large, potmark the terrain randomly.
The crystal is gone. Where to, you can't say. The Gravity well seems unchanged, but the area around it is a burnt, melted, potmarked wasteland.
"That sounds bad, horrible actually time to see what is upstairs if there even is one"
Find out what still exists upstairs
"This is Bishop. I'm ok, as well as the others down here in the core. It's a good thing that this is pretty deep down in here. I'm heading up to check out the damage. Everyone check in. ALVIN, send me a damage report and sensor readings outside the base."
Head upstairs and inspect the damage. Have ALVIN provide me with the stuff I requested.
Bishop and Michael climb back upstairs and begin digging about. It's dark, none of the lights are functioning, and few of the doors are actually open. Those that are open are only openable because the have manual overrides that can be cranked open, and because their blast doors either hadn't activated or had only raised part way. The barracks is a mess, but intact. The Kitchen is much the same way. They attempt to open the Infirmary hall door but slam it shut a moment later as it starts to suck the atmosphere out. The hall must be breached. The garage doors are closed, but bowed inward slightly, either from the blast wave or from something hitting them from the outside.
Bishop runs his hand over the blast door to the garage and asks ALVIN to send him any information he has.
>THE POWER SYSTEM HAS BEEN PHYSICALLY SEVERED FROM THE UPPER COMPOUND AREAS. ALL SENSORS OFFLINE. Bishop sighs and looks around. It seems like they're quite literally sealed inside the base, as things are; without being able to reach the labs, the infirmary, the garage or the armory.
"Very well."
Take MPV back to base.
You drive the MPV back towards the base, stopping just outside the home zone. The entire place is glowing red hot.
((Fitting turn for page 1000. Lots of suspense.))
((Yeah, I especially liked the first post on the page: "RUNNNNNN".
So nobody died? Even the guys in the garage and outside the base? Okay, we'll roll with it. But I wonder how the map now looks.
Also, Flint is really single-minded, isn't he?))
"Jack, I think it'd be better for you to take the MPV and head back to base. The storm seems to have passed, or will pass soon enough, and they may need an engineer and skillful hands. Plus, those shuttle parts wouldn't hurt the repair.
For the others, we can either head back, or explore the sector SouthWest of us. But unless they need any manual labor, there's not many reasons for us to head back, and it's been a while since anyone explored anything."
Base, status report? All we saw is a big flash.
Since nobody says anything, go explore that damned sector then. (by which I mean the three of us)
I assume you mean 32, right?
Well, you head that way and get to the edge but, well, two things. First thing: That entire zone appears to be covered in a grayish fog. Second thing: what little ground you can see seems to look different from the stone and you can just make out enormous, branching shapes, like tree limbs, hidden in the fog.