Plan

<snip>
"No, No, NO!" Artie stamped his feet in the mud, splooshing it up his legs in a tantrum. Cass looked over and sighed.
"Sorry. I gotta seperate the kids." Cass grumbled, stalking towards the pair
</snip>
“Listen!” White Wolf snarled at Artemis as Cass approached “I am billions of years old. I am the progenitor of the Roo. I know their technology and how their minds work. What is it that‘s so difficult for you to grasp about this?”
“Because you are wrong!” Artemis bellowed, veins bulging on his neck as stray flecks of spittle flew from his mouth “I am right!”
Cass loosened one of her pistols in its holster as she walked over towards the two arguing Dwarfers, flicking the safety off as she approached
“What now?” she snapped coldly
“We should stick to the plan” White Wolf rumbled angrily
“Good enough for me” Cass acceded and turned to leave
“No!” Artemis yelled “Can’t you see, you ignorant sow?”
Closing her eyes, Cass briefly massaged her forehead with the thumb and forefinger of one hand before letting the arm fall to her side and, with a sigh, opened her eyes and turned to stare coldly at Artemis
“Doctor Pritchard” she said firmly “We have formulated the strategy for this incursion with White Wolf, the one entity who not only knows what we’re about to face, but who has also lived through these events before” she paused to make sure her words were sinking in before she continued “Now, Jay Chrysler is the man I love, Katrina there is his wife. We both agree on this plan”
“No...” Artemis began but Cass cut sharply across him
“Button it. Your opinion doesn’t count for shit. We stick with our plan and if it fails, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. If we do things your way and your plan fails...” she paused to glare at him “You get blamed forever”
Electing not to antagonise the man any further by letting him know that she’d have no compunction in exacting her bloody revenge for this, Cass lapsed into silence
“Well, I think that makes out position clear” Katrina grated, approaching the three of them from across the other side of the clearing where she had been readying herself for the mission. She turned and raised her voice “Okay everyone; we’ve wasted enough time pissing around here. Time to listen up!”
Artemis glowered angrily at Cassandra and, as the rest of the crew came over to join them, muttered something under his breath, but she ignored him and turned to address the others
“This is probably going to be our last and best chance of saving Jay’s life” she began before pausing to look from face to face, finding herself still unable to bring herself to meet Jamie’s eye “Thank you all for agreeing to help”
“After some discussion with White Wolf” she continued “the plan we’ve settled on is to get in and out as fast as we possibly can; so we’re going to split out into groups – White Wolf, Katrina and I will head for the med centre to try and capture an Autodoc, while the rest of you cause as much chaos and collateral damage around the outpost as you possibly can”
Candice stepped forward, hefting a large backpack which she placed down on the floor and tugged open to pull a series of oblong packages out, each about the size of a cig packet, which she proceeded to pass around everyone
Jade frowned
“What are these?”
“Demolition charges” Jamie said, recognising them at once
“There are five each” White Wolf nodded “Probably way too many, but it’s always best not to find yourself wishing you’d bought more. We have weapons too”
“The arming mechanism is very simple” Cass continued, holding one of the charges up to demonstrate “Just pull this red tab completely out of the block and you’ve got five minutes. If you need more or less time, you’ve fifteen seconds to enter a new duration on this keypad here” she turned the device to indicate where she meant “Now White Wolf tells me that the Roo will likely have some kind of trans-dimensional blast defence system in place, but this takes time and a lot of energy to utilise; so if you keep moving the chances are that you can keep inflicting damage”
“What other defences are they going to have?” Jackie piped up, his lip curling in incredulity at what they were about to attempt
“I was just coming to that” Cass looked at White Wolf “Wanna let us know what we’re in for?”
“This is a monitoring outpost” the massive hamster rumbled “An interdimensional surveillance station that keeps watch for incursions through from other realities. This means that the defences should be fairly minimal” he continued “And rather than the more usual, and lethal, automated defence platforms, we shouldn’t have much more than the Roo themselves to deal with; although make no mistake, they will make formidable opponents!”
“Question?” Jade raised her hand “Who or what are the Roo?”
“Rodents” White Wolf said simply “Just like the ones we have on the Dwarf’s Promenade; gerbils are the most common, followed by kangaroo mice and hamsters. There are others, but they’re rare and I wouldn’t expect to see them on an observation outpost”
“What kind of technology will they have?” Artemis asked, trying hard to feign nonchalant indifference at the prospect of looting a sack load of high-tech kit
“Very little that non atemporals will be able interact with, let alone even touch” White Wolf replied, before pausing to dig into a side pocket of the backpack Candice had bought along and pull out a handheld computer “Try this...”
He held the handheld out towards Artemis who reached to accept it, only to have his fingers pass straight through the thing
“What?” he frowned “Some sort of dimensional trick?”
“Exactly” White Wolf nodded “It checks for atemporality, so you’ll struggle to utilise much, if any, of the Roo’s technology - Which is why you need me at the Med-centre!”
“We’re anticipating that this raid should take a maximum of thirty minutes” Katrina spoke up “Where you go and what you do once you’re in the base is entirely up to you, but there are a number of possible targets to consider: the power plants, the communications suite, security, the command centre and anything else you can find to blow the shit out of. We’ll stay in touch with our communicators, and if on the off-chance they start jamming these, we’ll meet back out here in thirty minutes. Does anyone have any questions?”
She looked around the assembled Dwarfers as Candice finished silently passing weapons out to those who needed them
“Okay” Kat shrugged when nobody spoke “Be safe everyone. White Wolf: Hit it”

The giant hamster tapped his claws in mid-air, activating the hidden dimensional controls and opening the portal through to the Roo base
“Done” he said, nodding towards the faintly shimmering patch of air in front of him “Let’s go”

White Wolf was the first through the portal, the huge rodent seemingly stretching and blurring as he moved through the door before disappeared completely and leaving the humans looking nervously at each other, unsure as to who should follow him or what they’d find on the other side
Shrugging, Cass pulled one of her pistols out of its holster and, glancing at the others, hesitantly walked through after White Wolf, the transit seemingly providing her with a wince inducing headache but little else in the way of any other after effects
Blinking while her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Cass looked around the wide, low chamber she found herself in, noting the gently undulating, oval shaped and warren like tunnels that stretched off, out of the room, in many different directions around her
While it was apparent, from the lack of any natural light, that they were probably very deep underground, Cass was surprised to find that the air still smelt faintly of... What was that?
Wood shavings ?
Sniffing a suddenly runny nose and shaking her throbbing head, Cass turned to look at White Wolf, who frowned quizzically at her as several of the other crewmembers nervously stepped through the portal to join them in the chamber
Jade, catching sight of Cassandra as she entered, frowned as well
“Are you okay?” she asked
“Bit of a headache” Cass grimaced “I’m alright; you got it too?”
“No, that’s not what I meant” Jade murmured with an almost imperceptible shake of the head “Your nose is bleeding...”
“Shit” Cass bought her fingers up under her nose and pulled them away, the tips smeared with blood “Crap” she shook her head and shrugged, sniffing slightly “Just a nose bleed nothing much”
Katrina was the last through the portal
“Okay” said in a low voice “Let’s move it everyone...”

<tag>
Okay everyone go find something to blow up and / or shoot
The Roo on the outpost are gerbils, kangs and hamsters who will in the first instance try to capture the human invaders – does anyone get captured?
Who are the outpost commanders?
Most of the roo technology is unusable by humans, but what else might you find on the base?
Have fun
</tag>