Krystal had
caught up by this point. Venor suggested waiting her as this was a good
place to ambush any pursuing Jem'Hadar warriors. Clancy was adamant
that he should continue, at first suggesting just him while everyone
else sets up the ambush but eventually suggesting he and Beltana go on
alone, to which surprisingly everybody agreed to. At this point Donald
and Woo had commented on how angry Clancy was. I had also decided that
the alien emitted a bit of psychic interference, which Krystal picked
up as she neared the team and Beltana always felt. But they passed off
Clancy's behavior to the last couple of episodes and the interference
they attributed later to Jem'Hadar technology.
So Clancy and Beltana continued and the other three laid in wait. A
couple of hours later a rope came down the slope. It was dusk by then
so they waited at the bottom of the rope. Gonar has infra-vision so he
saw the first warrior, but Venor and Krystal didn't. ("Oh, I'd
forgotten they could turn invisible," commented Shannon.) Using the
rope as a guide, Venor and Krystal shot at the second warrior climbing
down while Gonar shot the first. A solid hit on both of them, but that
only made them react.
A third warrior decided to jump down the slope while the second slid
down the rest of the way and the first returned fire. Boy, these guys
are tough! And their weapons are high-powered! Krystal went down,
though the first two bad guys also went down. The third one held up,
shooting Venor twice and knocking him out before Gonar got him.
Afterwards it was the usual interrogation by Venor, which revealed
nothing, plus looking over the loot. Here's where I should have made it
harder to use their equipment. But Venor figured out one of the suits
and put it on. Not as good armor as the one he had, but it did have an
infra-red scope.
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Meanwhile,
Clancy and Beltana had hacked their way past a pool of quicksand and
arrived at a river. A bear-like creature saw them and started swimming
across the river at them. Clancy shot it at a high setting, though it
didn't stop it so Beltana dealt the killing blow. Then the two
continued, following the river to a lake. On the other side they could
see the base. They started to skirt the lake until Clancy found a
hidden entrance.
I was trying not to be too obvious, yet give people a clue. Clancy
finds the entrance with no skill test, easily detects the force field,
disarms it on his first try (I gave Beltana a perception test but she
missed that last one). I also told Krystal that the interference had
stopped. For some reason they decided that the interference was from
the cloaking device of the Jem'Hadar suits. The others quickly made up
ground as Clancy and Beltana "wandered" around the lower levels of the
base (Beltana not noticing how unerring Clancy moved).
The others tracked Beltana and Clancy to the grating and proceeded into
the base. Meanwhile, Clancy found the auxiliary control room and
stunned Beltana. ("I shoot Beltana", "WHAT!?!"). That caught everybody
by surprise. Too bad he only barely stunned Beltana, as she was up
quickly. Clancy was in the control room, the door locked, so Beltana
went and got a steel pipe to use as a weapon, meanwhile telling the
others that Clancy had gone nuts.
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