| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Wiltshire Finale |
| Date: | Tue, 16 Jun 1998 23:39:03 +0100 |
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppiger, Director
We're done, we gave back the borrowed firepower, we're all headed out of
Britain sharpish.
We won. _What_ we won, we're not quite sure....
+++++begin video
Quinn sits at the table in the White Hart, a small blonde pool of
misery.
She stares at the glass of Scotch in front of her, reaches out... and
pushes it to one side.
"Fuck that and fuck them. Lilith, you deserve better." she says softly,
and extracts a battered pocket secretary from inside her Barbour jacket.
Opening it carefully where the cover is held on with gaffer tape, she
starts sketching.
A few moments later, the Dark Stranger joins her. "Susan... I have no
words for this."
In the background, Skull mumbles, just loud enough so he knows he can be
heard, "To warrant an assassin's bullet indicates a true enemy who
considers you worthy of respect."
"I know. Life sucks. What the hell." The Coyote shaman offers a bright,
false smile. "I've got a job to do here before I let other stuff get to
me." She shrugs. "Now, Southwell's Farm. This is the layout. This is how
I suggest we go in." She shows the Stranger the pad: as Skull joins
them, he looks over and inspects the layout also.
"One of us could provide overwatch, if you prefer." Skull suggests.
"Yeah, but I'm no good at that, didn't want to presume on either of you
two. Also, where do you overwatch from? No terrain features that give
you an overall view, too many obstructions. I figure the best bet is to
go in as a trio and check it out the old-fashioned way."
"Agreed... yes, I see the problem. That ridge isn't high enough to be
useful. So, we go in. Two-by-one cover?" Skull suggests.
"Sounds great. Me and tDS, and you as the other element?"
"I would believe so. You are more oriented to physical means, he to the
magical, whereas I am perhaps more balanced between the two?"
"No, mostly because I've worked with him enough to be his skirmishing
buddy." Quinn manages a smile. "No offence, Skull, but we don't know
each other so well, so you're best off as the other element of the
pepperpot."
"Correct." The black man nods. "So, do we move tonight?"
"Full moon. Do we have a choice?"
+++++pause
+++++resume
Two black-clad figures face Quinn. All carry HK227K submachineguns,
faces camouflaged (Skull, as a longtime veteran, evidently knows that
bare skin - even skin as black as like his - has a distinctive sheen
that can be seen easily at night).
"We know the plan?" Nods from the other two. "We remember there are
small children living there? Good. Any questions?"
"If our suspicions are right. What then?" Skull asks.
"Kill anyone who appears to be an active participant in the ritual."
Quinn replies. "No chances taken. That's official."
"Very well. I am ready." Skull seems to disappear into the darkness
without even moving.
"Your Ladyship, with all due respect, I do _not_ relish this sort of
work." tDS says softly, and clicks the selector on his HK to full-auto.
"I didn't ask you to like it, I only asked you to be good at it.
Moving." Quinn advances, the tritium-inset frontsight of the HK227K
bright in her vision.
She and tDS move in silence, exchanging occasional hand signals with
each other and with Skull, as they advance along a neatly-trimmed hedge:
Skull, nearer the farm, using the drainage ditch as concealment, Quinn
and tDS have the hedge to hide them. Grasshoppers chirp in the stubble
where the wheat had been harvested, and a few fireflies glow: the whole
scene is lit by a clean, crisp light from the full moon overhead.
It's almost painfully beautiful, the night empty of the babble of
Mankind, lit only in shades of silver and black.
Southwell's Farm is dark and silent, from the edge of the field: fifty
yards of distance, as the trio rejoin.
"Too quiet. It's only a little past eleven, yet everything's buttoned up
tight." Quinn says softly. "England are playing Holland tonight in
Copenhagen, and Brian Southwell's a soccer - football, here - fanatic.
But he's not watching the game. Something's wrong."
"Agreed." Skull says. "I intend to assence. Cover me." He settles
himself on the ground, relaxes. Long moments later, he raises his head.
"There are sentries in the cattle barn and the tractor shed. Four young
people asleep in the house, otherwise empty. A ritual of power underway
inside the haystack."
"_Inside_ the haystack?" Quinn asks, politely.
"It is hollow. A facade." Skull replies. "A pit beneath it, where the
ritual is in progress. They have a hostage, a sacrifice I presume. I
would not recommend examining the contents astrally, this has not been
the first such ritual." The Macross Ranger sounds disturbed, and
whatever could dismay Skull is best avoided...
"Okay. Here's the plan. We kill the sentries and kill everyone doing
that ritual. Questions?" Quinn asks after a moment.
"Is that necessary?"
"Like you said, Stranger, you're a helpless puppet being controlled by
an evil dominatrix. Skull, you're sure those guys are up to no good?"
"They appear to be opening a metaplanar gate to the Place of Fire."
Skull replies. "This would have severe consequences, if any of the
entities dwelling there escaped into this world."
"That's what they _appear_ to be doing." Quinn stares at Skull. He's
still cruelly handsome despite the matt camouflage covering his face and
shaved scalp. "What are they _really_ doing?"
"I... prefer not to say. Not here and now. None of us would agree on how
to describe what we percieved, so let us concentrate on stopping them
before we squabble." the black man replies. Something in his voice is
unfamiliar and out of place: it takes a moment to recognise fear.
"Can we take the sentries from here?" the Stranger asks.
"Not easily. I would prefer to interrupt the ritual as soon as
possible." Skull tightens his grip on the HK227K. "Suggestions?"
"Skull, take the guy in the cattle shed, he's got less manoevre room.
Stranger, you and I go for the tractor shed, that's tougher, the twosome
handle it. We go for the ritual soon as we're sure our sentries are
down, first one there just spoils their concentration until the others
arrive and royally fuck up their day. Complaints? No? Good."
"Simplistic. Violent. Easy to follow. As good as it's going to get,
tonight." tDS says, checking his submachinegun one last time. "Let's
go."
Skull, again, melts into the night like a ghost. Quinn and the Dark
Stranger make their own flanking manoevre, closing quietly on the
tractor shed. Quinn exchanges hand signals with tDS, and begins to move
across the road, stomach flat to the tarmac - 'leopard-crawling' as the
British Army call it.
A shotgun booms and pellets whine off the tarmac. Quinn rolls and
returns the fire, the suppressed submachinegun making little more noise
than a man with a coughing fit and the loudest sound the smack and crack
of the .40cal bullets slamming into the tractor shed's timbers. The
shotgun defiantly fires again.
tDS fires again - he'd been shooting from the first shotgun blast, the
efficient suppressor hiding it well - covering Quinn as she rises and
sprints at the building, his bullets passing overhead and as she throws
a hand out at the wooden wall. "Reappa yawrood!" she shouts, and the
planks splinter and shatter inwards just before she hits them.
The tractor shed's upper floor is partial, and as Quinn rolls to get to
her feet she sees a boy of eleven or twelve up there, with a twelve-
gauge semi-automatic shotgun, turning to aim at her: but the glowing
bead of the HK227K's frontsight is settling on him already, and he jerks
and shudders like a spastic marionette as she fires. The shotgun booms,
wasting one last round on the roof, as the boy falls the ten or eleven
feet to the packed earth floor.
There is a harsh question to be asked next, as Quinn raises the HK.
Is the double-tap she fires into the boy's head the result of her
cybered instincts, her ruthless training, or merely an evil and
murderous nature?
In either case, she pauses only long enough to be sure both shots struck
home before changing magazines and moving back to the ragged hole in the
wooden wall, and keying her Scimitar TACCOM.
"Skull, sitrep when you can. Our sentry down."
"Mine down. Still covert. Three, four... six enemy emerging from the
haystack. You have their attention."
"Take them." Quinn leans out. The "haystack" spills a warm white light
of hurricane lamps, a robed and hooded figure silhouetted against that
light: as she raises the HK, a short burst stutters and the figure falls
as if kicked in the spine. The Dark Stranger isn't neglecting his duty.
"One down." she says.
"Two." Skull is still calm.
"Three. I killed the second one out, too." tDS sounds tense. "I've lost
sight of one. Three others, still inside wondering what to do. Moving
closer."
"Okay." Quinn aims, fires the whole magazine into the hollow, false
haystack at waist height. An agonised scream shows she's found a result,
as she changes clips. "Find the missing one - two!" A robed figure,
indistinct in the moonlight, dashes for the exit. A coughing rattle of
SMG fire plucks at the billowing cloth but the fleeing man (woman?)
escapes, as Quinn chambers a round and raises her weapon. "Skull, watch
out for those two. Stranger, cover me."
Quinn takes a deep breath, sprints at the false haystack. One figure
emerges, holding a rifle of some sort, trying to aim at Quinn before
glittering black flowers blossom across his or her chest and the rifle
spins away. The Coyote shaman ignores the dying foe, letting her
comrades deal with that threat as she skids into the hollow stack like a
baseball player sliding for home plate.
Hurricane lamps, warm light, a man in a robe the colour of dried blood
holding a pistol whose face doesn't have time for fear as it goes from
hate to agony, Quinn's bullets tearing through him.
"ohFUCK!" There is a pit at the heart of the hollow haystack (supported
on scaffolding, you irreverently notice) and Quinn has fallen into it.
Four hurricane lamps surround a glowing slab of white stone, a naked and
bound man lying on it, unconscious. Quinn spares all this the quickest
of glances before sweeping the rim of the pit with her submachinegun's
muzzle.
"Two still loose." her radio tells her in tDS's voice. "Baroness?"
"Okay. Wait out." Quinn responds: that concise British Army shorthand
for 'I have quite a lot to say, and soon I will share it with you, but
for now I am alive and functional, though my foes press me too closely
for me to spend time in casual radio chit-chat with my friends and
allies.'. She leaps at the wall of the pit and rises to her feet: two
sprawled bodies in identical blood-red robes lie on the ground, and she
examines both.
"Two enemy down, going nowhere in here. One hostage, badly hurt. Anyone
see the missing two?" Quinn suddenly chokes and coughs, doubling over.
"I gotta move, now. Cover." She runs out of the fake haystack, so blind
that she crashes into the wall of the farmhouse. Somewhere, a big diesel
engine cranks up and starts.
"Fuck. Anyone driving?"
"No." Skull replies, followed a second later by tDS: as the tractor
shed's double doors are burst open from within, and a combine harvester
- blades whirling, ablaze with light - turns to pinpoint Quinn.
"FUCK!" she shouts and fires the SMG empty at the cab, to a musical
accompaniment of breaking glass and no result. Trying to scrabble to her
feet, she falls again, and she reaches for a new magazine instead of
evading the machine's charge-
The cab flares with a fiery light, and the harvester's body flickers
with an eldritch glimmer an instant before the engine dies. Quinn
finishes her reload, staring at the awful harvester blades stalled mere
feet from her.
"Okay. I don't care who did what, I owe both of you for that." she says,
rising to her feet. "One missing."
"No." tDS says, "not now. She ran and I dropped her with a spell, she's
out for hours. We got them all."
Quinn clicks the HK227K to 'safe'. "Hallelujah." she mutters.
++++++end trideo
The police arrived. The Lord Protector's Department brute squad almost
beat them to it. Then a Sabre Team from the Hereford Rifles landed by
helicopter to secure the area. It got quite frantic around there.
We were relieved of our weapons, taken back to the White Hart, plied
with assorted refreshments and thoroughly debriefed.
The official version is insane Satanist serial killers. Which is, of
course, mostly bullshit, but it covers the facts. Insane and serial
killers they were, Satanists they surely were not.
Maybe I can find out from Pendleton what was going on? I know the
Stranger, at least, wants to know.]<<<<<
-- The Mighty Quinn <23:37:53/06-16-59>
ATT 14 Intelligence Commando
