SG: WCD 45 Desperado Kick Part Four, Yeah. Right.

Wed Nov 8 12:12:53 PST 2006

PUBLISHERS NOTE:  THERE ARE FIVE POSTING SO FAR.  THIS IS THE FIFTH.

EVEN THOUGH IT'S THE FOURTH.   OR SOMETHING.  WE SACKED THE 

EDITORS AND THEY LEFT A MESS.   SORRY.

Silence reigned on the bridge. Even though the room was sound-proofed, 

no one could shake the feeling that they wouldn't be noticed if they 

just kept perfectly still. Perhaps it was the bridge crews' inner 

door-mice coming to the fore while being stalked by snakes. Whatever 

makeshift barricades could be set up had been, and crew-members crouched 

behind chairs and consoles, guns pointed towards the doorway. All save 

one brave crew-member, who stayed at his console to relay messages and 

keep on top of the situation as best he could.

"There's fighting going on all over the ship," Sparks whispered to the 

rest of the bridge crew. "It's spreading out fast... faster than it should."

"Mrf?" asked Tonk.

"Ma'am, if you keep sucking on the rags, then they won't have enough 

alcohol in them and the cocktails won't work right."

"Wrf... ptah," said Tonk, spitting the rag out of her mouth. "Well if I 

don't keep sucking on the rags, then _I_ won't have enough alcohol in me 

and _I_ won't work right."

Sparks sighed, changing the subject. There would be no profit in 

pursuing this line of reasoning "It's weird. Except for certain 

assaults, like on the engine room, it looks like the Nintan are doing 

their best to get everywhere at once. That's opening up some tactical 

holes that I'm trying to exploit. Though why the Hell(tm) they're doing 

this in the first place is beyond me."

"Maybe they're searching for something," suggested one of the bridge 

crew's junior members.

"Like what?" Tonk asked, dryly. "Maybe it'll turn out that Trap-Door 

Spider Man is actually the princess of a dinosaur version of our Earth 

that got split into two years ago when a giant meteor hit the planet,

and they're trying to whisk him back to their world so they can prepare 

an invasion of ours using head-shrunk dissidents as their shock troops?"

"...well, maybe not that exact scenario, ma'am..."

"You're a mean sober, captain," said Sparks, rerouting a clutch of 

troopers that had just managed to free themselves from a fire-fight. 

"Looks like we may have inbound to the bridge. ETA twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes? That seems a little long."

"They're slitherers, captain. They could really use a rocket-propelled 

skateboard or something to get around faster."

"Right. You heard the man," called out Tonk. "Arm up, and take your 

positions. Get yourselves ready to eat some snake!"

***

Rebecca Kendricks shook her head to try and clear it. Her hair yanked 

with a dull pain against her skull, and she realized the blood was 

sticking her head in place. She moved her arms and legs, and found that 

while she could feel everything, only her left arm was free to move. 

Everything else was pinned by the debris that had her forced against the 

wall. Switching to broadcast frequency, Kendrics winced at the sudden 

noise and static. And the low murmur of someone mumbling to themselves. 

"Yep, you gotta make sure to keep the frying pan very hot, so use peanut 

oil because it doesn't scorch..."

She keyed her commlink as she identified that voice. "Tommy can you hear 

me?"

Tommy paused in mid-mutter. "Peanut oil, man... Kendricks is that you, 

man? Ow oh wow dude, major bummer. At least you finally woke up to join 

the party. If you are making stir-fry for a party man you need two pans 

to make sure you have enough to feed the guests."

"Tommy! Where's Dave?"

"Dave?"

"Yes, Dave. Our wing-man. We'd just sealed off that doorway and then the 

ship landed on us. On my head it feels like."

"Dave? Dave's not here man."

"What?"

"Insta-pinata-porridge-meat-pudding, man. He saw the scene coming down 

and shoved us both clear. Or at least sorta clear. I'm still buried, but 

like I aint dead yet. There is a girder jammed through my leg though, so 

I'll have to pass on our hacky-sack session this afternoon. Oh man. 

Dude, so why doesn't it hurt?"

Rebecca called up her system stats and accessed her teammates 

medi-stats, gasping from the throbbing in her head. "Damn it, Dave why'd 

you have to be a hero? You're right Tommy. He's gone. You don't look 

much better. Can you see anything?"

"Nah. Too much blood and debris. Been talking to Command though. I 

figured I might as well pass the time swapping recipes. Helps keep me 

awake, which is what the doc sez is important. But he won't tell me 

about the leg."

"Either my comms damaged or something, but I can't get through. The 

reason you can't feel your leg is probably shock from the blood loss. 

You need to keep talking Tommy. How long was I out?"

"Oh geez Becky, time and space are all, like, relative abstractions of 

our inability to perceive beyond three dimensions. Peanut oil. Time is 

viscous like peanut oil but can't be used in stir-fry."

"Those must be pretty good drugs you're on, Tommy."

"Painkillers from the suit. Kept injecting me until things started to 

mellow. Yah, bet I sound weird. I, what? Okay Command I'll like tell her 

but she'll think I'm high."

"What?"

"Like, this is too silly, man. Harvey is coming to save us."

"What?"

"You know, Jimmy Stewart and the big invisible rabbit?"

"Okay, you're high. Bridge, Tommy's high!"

"Thas wha I tole them... but they swear they are sending a giant bunny 

and a Chinese samurai to save us... bbbrumbsm. No. Okay. Sum-yung-guy 

with a sword and a big wabbit to save us. Rabbits are good diggers, but, 

like, keep 'em out of McGreggors garden..."

"Parker!" She gasped.

"Bingo! That's the guy. You think he'll bring some stir-fry?"

***

Anderson was down, and Weaving had a feeling that he was about to be 

next. Between them the pair had managed to bring down three of the 

Nintan, but a very unlucky blast had pierced the wall of suppression 

fire that they'd laid down, and that shot had taken out Weaving's 

partner. Without help, the lone trooper knew that his life expectancy 

was about that of a snowball taking an ill-advised vacation to Hell(tm). 

Four weapons trained on him...

...and the sound of gunfire -- honest-to-Elvis Aurorean -gunfire- and 

not the blat-batting of particle-beams -- sounded from behind the 

Nintan. Caught by surprise, the aliens could only shuffle around towards 

the new combatant as they were cut down like giant alien snakes before a 

person holding machine-gun, or some similar far-out simile.

"...what took you so long, sir?" asked Weaving, as he saw the trooper 

who had previously been hidden by the rank and file of aliens. "We 

missed you!"

"Sorry, got held up in traffic!" called out Clark, stepping over towards 

the two troopers. "Sparks said he'd lost contact with you and asked if 

I'd take a squad to your last known position. So here I am."

"No disrespect to my CO, sir, but since when has the definition of squad 

gotten so loose that it refers to an army of one?"

"Since I had to leave the others to shore up another firewall, that's 

when. They're just doing mop-up now, so I figured they could spare me 

for a bit." He glanced to the fallen trooper. "Damn, how's Anderson?"

"Not great," replied Weaving, kneeling down beside his partner to check 

his suit-vitals. "Really not great. Can we get a line through to medical?"

"No can do. The interlinks aren't happy and we're in a dead zone. I 

don't know if it's safe to move Anderson to get into contact, though." 

He paused. "There is one option, though."

"What?"

"Well, if I can believe what my schematics are saying... we can patch 

into the auxiliary medical bay's comm systems."

"We have an auxiliary medical bay? How come I didn't know about it?"

"It... well, it..."

"Yeah?"

"It got outsourced. We don't like to talk about it very much."

"How bad could it be?"

"Don't. Murphy's listening. But it's all we've got right now. Patching 

through.. got it."

Both troopers waited a moment as the communication link was established. 

Then a heavily accented Indian voice came through both suits' internal 

speakers. "Yes, this is the other medical bay. Okay, what can I do to 

help you today, sir?"

"Thank Elvis we got ahold of you! Our friend was gunned down and we need 

to know what to do."

"Okay, sir, I am going to give you instructions. Please to follow them 

exactly. Are you near to your friend?"

"Well... yes I am..."

"Okay, sir I'm going to have to ask you to get near to your friend. I 

cannot help you if you do not move to where you have access to your 

friend. I will have to hang up and ask you to call again once you are 

near to him, okay?"

"I said that I'm near to him!"

"Okay sir, please do not raise your voice to me. I am doing my best to 

help you. Now, have you moved near to your friend yet?"

"...sigh. Yes. I have."

"Okay sir. First, I want you to open your medical kit and to remove an 

aspirin, okay?"

"What?"

"Sir, please insert the aspirin into your friend's mouth and tell me if 

that solves the problem."

"He doesn't have an Elvis-damned headache, he's been shot!"

"Okay, sir, I am going to help you, but you must do as I instruct you. 

Have you given him the aspirin yet?"

"I want to talk to a manager."

"Okay sir, I can put you on the line with my manager but she will just 

tell you exactly what I already have. So please complete the treatment 

with me and we can diagnose your friend."

"I know exactly what's wrong! He's been shot!"

"Okay, sir, but if we bandage him up and it turns out that he's just got 

a headache, then we'll have to go through all the steps of this again. 

Please insert the aspirin into his mouth and then okay sir, we can move 

onto the next step. Is it in his mouth, sir?"

"...yes."

"Has he recovered, sir?"

"Not even a little bit."

"Okay sir. We're going to move onto the next step. Do you see the wound, 

sir?"

"Yes. I see the wound."

"Okay. What color is the wound, sir?"

"...are you insane? It's red, because of all the blood!"

"Okay sir, I'm sorry but these are the questions that I have to ask. Now 

sir, I want you to try re-seating his heart."

"...you are out of your little mind. I'm not trained in surgery; I don't 

have the tools to perform it even if I was, these aren't sterile 

conditions, and who has ever heard of re-seating a HEART?"

"Okay sir, I understand, sir--"

"The Hell(tm) you do..."

"--but these are the steps that we have to follow. Now okay sir, have 

you re-seated the heart?"

"For the sake of argument, let's just say yes."

"Okay, good sir. Has this corrected the problem?"

"No. No it has not bloody well corrected the problem! Can I talk to a 

real doctor please?"

"Okay, I'm sorry sir, but a real doctor would just tell you the same 

things to that I'm telling you. What weapon caused this wound?"

"A particle-beam."

"Oh. Okay, I'm sorry sir, but I cannot continue this call. We do not 

support particle beam weapons."

"Wha... but I'm not asking you to support a weapon, I'm asking you to 

help me heal my friend!"

"Okay, I'm sorry sir. We do not support wounds caused by particle beam 

weapons. I'm going to have to discontinue this call now. If you would 

like to buy a recoilless rifle, visit our website and we offer quite a 

few that we do support. You can shoot your friend with it and then call 

us back and we'll be happy to support your friend, sir."

"I'm NOT CALLING ABOUT THE WEAPON, I'M CALLING ABOUT MY WOUNDED FRIEND!"

"Okay, I'm sorry sir. Have a nice day, sir."

The channel went dead. Clark took a long breath, and then turned to the 

other ambulatory trooper. "Bandaged him up while I was talking to 

that... individual?"

"Yup," replied Weaving. "Looks like the bloods stopped at least."

"Great," replied Clark, resisting the urge to find something to kick. 

"Reseat the heart... I really, -really- hate outsourcing!"

***

Sparks turned around. "Tally ho sir. It's your turn. We have some snakes 

heading to sector-12-c and we have some non-combatants barricaded there, 

and I can't pull anyone else there fast."

"If you want something bloody done..." British Airwave muttered. He 

keyed his commlink.

"TDSM meet me up by the galley asap. We have some pests to deal with."

British Airwave swapped glances with Dr. Sloan. "Sorry mate, looks like 

Sam and I are the gash-hands pinged for sorting this lot."

Randall trotted out the bridge entrance, nodded to the trooper on post 

with weapons ready, paused and then trotted down a side hallway towards 

the galley. Once out of sight he paused long enough to check his pulse. 

"Something to keep an old man alive, and off we go again." He swallowed 

a small pill. "Damn. You'd think I would remember to grab a sidearm... 

stupid doddering senile fool." Taking off in a quick job again, he 

wended his way to the galley, only to spot TDSM up ahead of him. "Hoi! 

TDSM!"

TDSM turned then grabbed his backside. "Randall! Flatten!"

British Airwave dove and rolled to the side, as TDSM threw a 

double-handful of webbing at where he'd stood a moment ago, effectively 

binding and tangling the lead snake that had approached from another 

hallway behind Randall. Completing the roll, he sighted down his cane to 

the end of the hallway far behind TDSM and fired a radio beeper.

As TDSM leapt in his direction, British Airwave disappeared and then 

reappeared near the transmitter. Randall looked back at his teammate and 

watched him shred the trio of snakes. Turning to the entangled one, he 

was blown backwards down the hallway by the force of the alien 

exploding. TDSM staggered to his feet then scuttled towards the galley.

He tossed Randall a small pistol. "Here, a sssouvenir!"

"Thanks Chuck." So what did you do to that scaly horror to make it explode?"

"Two thingsss. One, they aren't sssscaly. It's some sort of 

battlessssuit, I think. Ssssecond, I did nothing. I think it killed 

itssself."

"Go on now."

"Ssswear."

"That's odd Samuel. I could have sworn I 'heard' something. A odd 

sounding transmission, right before it went FUBAR on you."

"Call me TDSM."

"Very well. Sorry."

"Fine now letsss get inside the galley-" TDSM peered inside through the 

hatchway window and ducked quickly to one side as the window shattered 

from small-arms fire. "-okaaaaay, you get insssside and tell them I will 

not appreciate getting ssshot at." TDSM bit his arm to punctuate the 

sentence.

"Hold your fire! We're on your side dammit!"

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