| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <Shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | River Rats I |
| Date: | Sat, 31 Oct 1998 10:29:09 +0000 |
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppinger, Director: Cpt L R W Lynch
CC: Archive
This happened on the ocean, while we were running down the coast, and
was when we started to realise we might have a problem...
+++++begin video
The view is beautiful. The Atlantic, here close to the coast, is just
lively enough to have whitecaps, and the sea glitters in the tropical
sunshine. A few miles to starboard, Amazonia is a green smear on the
horizon: out to sea, a huge white container ship struts proudly across
the horizon.
Ronin, at the _Forlorn Hope_'s bow, turns to look back to the altogether
less impressive sight of his ship. The wheelhouse is the least
dilapidated part, though its Lexan windows are cracked and one pane is
missing, replaced by a flapping sheet of polyethylene secured by duct
tape: the commercial Raytheon radar on the mast sits askew.
Ahead of that, a scatter of decaying wooden crates hide the twin 23mm
cannon from view, the gun tub currently occupied by a huge orange-and-
black striped cat luxuriating in the sunshine, exposing its soft
underbelly fur to the light as its huge clawed paws wave vaguely in the
air. As Ronin watches, the tiger yawns, exposing a cavernous maw lined
with enormous white teeth.
"Showoff." he mumbles amiably, leaning forward to rub its stomach: the
tiger stretches, paws quivering and claws extending with satisfaction,
making a deep rumbling noise that might be an intermittent purr.
Stephanie - even as a tiger, her eyes aren't matched - glowers
affectionately at Ronin, then licks his arm with a huge red tongue: the
samurai yelps and whips it back. If a cat's tongue is rough, a tiger's
must be like sandpaper...
Further aft, the two heavy machineguns - a KPV 14.5mm and a PKT 7.62mm -
on the aft gun mount are likewise out of sight under a rusting crowd of
fuel drums tangled in with tarpaulins and threaded with what looks like
garden hose: a suicidally unsafe "extended range fuel tank", and not
something anyone with a hint of marine engineering would want to
explore. Using the drums as a table, Griffyn and two of the Rebels are
playing poker.
The whole ship looks like a floating maritime disaster waiting to
happen, and sounds worse, running on one misfiring diesel and coughing
puffs of oily blue smoke. The crew fit the vessel, ragged harlequins in
an assortment of faded and patched clothing: some military, others not.
Yet Ronin doesn't seem too alarmed: instead he goes back to enjoying the
fine day. They look exactly like scores of other smugglers and traders
working the coast : out here in the ocean, the weapons are left behind
or hidden carefully, a nod to the Amazonian authorities and their
distinctly ruthless enforcement, and until they overtly break a law
they're being left alone.
+++++sequence edit
+++++begin video
"Patrol boat, dudes!" Harley calls from the wheelhouse.
"Uh-oh." Mayaguez suggests, reaching for his rifle. "Not good."
"We make nice to start with. You know the drill. Places, everyone."
Stephanie replies.
By the time the patrol boat is close enough for details, it sees a
battered and dirty River Commander, running on one smoky diesel. Harley
stands in the wheelhouse, Stephanie is rummaging in the rotting crates
around the bow, Mayaguez is trolling a line off the side with his feet
trailing in the water. He's got a rusty side-by-side shotgun propped
near him, the only weapon visible.
Ronin, sitting amidships, is sewing a patch on a threadbare combat
jacket (the jacket might once have been German, the patch is CAS
camouflage, but on these harlequins that's the usual). He's slowly and
awkwardly stitching, left-handed, though you know he's not a southpaw.
By contrast to the cluttered and dirty _Forlorn Hope_, the patrol boat
is a sleek, trim affair, with pintle-mounted Rheinmetall 20mm cannon
fore and aft and Vengeance miniguns on the bridge wings: all guns manned
and trained on the _Forlorn Hope_, and two linehandlers and a four-man
boarding party formed up midships. Its commander raises a loudhailer.
"Stop your engines!" he shouts. In English.
There's a moment of alarm, as Harley takes breath to reply, surely
fooled by the ruse. Someone expects a group of river rats to be more
than they really are...
"Eh?" the blonde rigger bellows back, hand cupped to one ear, with a
look of total bemusement.
"Stop your engines and heave to! We are making a routine inspection!"
Still in accented English.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish!" Harley calls back in Guarani. "I
will have to find my chip!"
Stephanie, with a sigh of relief, rises into view. "What you want?" she
calls in the pidgin English of these coasts. "Why not you speak proper?"
The patrol boat commander - a young lieutenant - sighs and switches to
Spanish. "Stop your engines and heave to, we will board and inspect
you."
"Well, you could just have _said!_!" Stephanie snaps in the same
language. "All right, since you've got all the guns, we'll stop for you.
Harley! Ketsamo behoge! Jag tyekar om det!" The blonde rigger obligingly
shuts down the diesel.
"Doesn't she speak Spanish?" the commander asks as his boat closes.
Stephanie throws a line and one of the handlers catches it, face
wrinkling in disgust at the filthy condition of the nylon rope. "No,
she's a biker from Norway. Speaks any language you like as long as you
buy her a chip and she hasn't sold it for booze money or joyboys, and
she's a shit hot mechanic too. Well, when she's not wasted she's
good..." The commander nods understandingly, as the hulls touch. The
four men of the boarding party step across to the _Forlorn Hope_, moving
in pairs and careful not to obstruct the fire of their gunners. "What's
the problem?" Stephanie continues, leaning on one of the rotting crates
stacked around the bow.
"Looking for contraband. Got any?" The commander seems to find that
funny.
"Of course not, that would be illegal!" Stephanie seems to find the
reply equally amusing. "No, we don't carry much illegal stuff except on
the river, and _especially_ not when we're coming out of the yard after
an overhaul all nice and public ." Stephanie takes one last glance along
the Forlorn Hope, sees the other three visible, all three the picture of
sullen resentment at their cruise being interrupted. Two of the boarding
party are passing the wheelhouse, two are just approaching Ronin. She
leans forward into the crate, tenses -
The commander is distracted for a moment by the thought that the dirty,
bedraggled boat before him might have been in _worse_ condition, and in
that moment Stephanie fires through the rotting crates, shooting for the
gunner on the patrol boat's forward 20mm cannon: aiming low, hitting him
in the legs beneath the gunshield's protection. The linehandler on the
bow, caught by the same burst, is thrown into the water.
Ronin pulls the lanyard on the three-second fuse and throws the jacket
he was laboriously patching: like a quarterback making a long pass, and
with almost the same accuracy, as the fluttering bundle hits a
ventilator stack and vanishes into the patrol boat's guts. Almost in the
same move, he kicks the legs from under one soldier (sending him flying
over the side) and straightarms the other in the face.
Harley brings her MP-5 to her shoulder and opens fire, raking the bridge
wing and hitting the gunner there before the Vengeance has spun up to
firing speed, as Mayaguez kills the two men on the aft cannon mount, at
once shifting his fire to the young rating who's dropping the rope and
scrabbling for his submachinegun.
Stephanie brings the AK-98 out of its concealing crate and fires a
minigrenade into the pilothouse, the HE round blowing out windows and
knocking the mast askew, shrapnel tearing at the young commander, as
Griffyn comes up firing from the forward gun tub: he and Harley have the
two surviving boarders in a crossfire. Neither soldier has a chance.
Ronin finishes off his dazed opponent with a knifehand blow to the
throat and a precisely-aimed punch to the bridge of the nose: either
would be fatal, together they're certain.
Mayaguez empties the RPK-97's magazine into the pilothouse, as Stephanie
riddles it with rifle fire and another grenade. Smoke streams through
the shattered windows.
The patrol boat shudders, and smoke and flame belch from her ventilators
and uptakes, and she visibly settles in the water.
Mayaguez cries out and staggers back, as shots crack from nearby: the
soldier Ronin had knocked into the water has recovered - or totally lost
- his wits and is firing his pistol, though with his immediate foe
downed Ronin has time to snatch up his rifle and riddle the swimmer.
There is a moment of semi-silence, broken by the creaks and gurgles of
the sinking patrol boat and the whine of the minigun.
"Okay! Outstanding!" Stephanie sounds delighted. "Ronin, check on
Enrique. Harley, fire up the engines, we need to amscray pretty
sharpish. Emma! They get any warning out?"
Emma's head appears: below decks, she'd been operating the comms gear.
"No. They said they'd sighted a boat and were closing to check it,
didn't give a position. They didn't transmit during the fight."
"Good." The patrol boat's stern is already submerged: with her belly
blown out by Ronin's explosive she's settling fast and will be gone in
minutes at most. Changing magazines and walking aft, Stephanie checks on
Mayaguez (two bullets in his armour, one in his buttock: painful but not
fatal) as the _Forlorn _Hope's_ stern digs in and she accelerates away
from the scene of the crime.
+++++end video]<<<<<
-- Stephanie <10:28:42/10-31-59>
