| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | The Storm Hits III |
| Date: | Thu, 17 Apr 1997 02:01:05 +0100 |
>>>>>[My apologies for the delay in this next post. Lynch got a little
distracted and forgot to upload his video data: or he tried to do so
while inside the battleship and it never made it out.
Besides, I got a better view than he did for this part, so here's mine
instead.
As if you couldn't guess. Washington survived, as did Lynch and I.
We should even be able to cover this up.
Now some of the _real_ work begins.
+++++begin trideo
A different view: no symbology, less detail, and only low-light imaging.
Not Lynch, then. The viewer is in a dark space, dank steel walls, the
only light a battery lamp on the wall.
A man - bearded, grey-haired, wearing an old-style Navy overcoat - is
looking down at the eyes' owners. "Awake, David?"
"Yes. Who are you?"
This visibly angers the man. "You mean you don't know? After everything
you did to me and mine, you claim you don't know my face?"
"If I had caused you harm, you can be sure I'd know who you were."
"Caused me harm? Mr Coppinger, you caused *me* no harm. You sent your
men to rape and murder my family. Your thugs garotted my daughter with
razor wire! Laughed at her as she died! And you say don't know who I
am?"
"My people don't do that, and I don't employ thugs." Coppinger's voice
is level, resigned. There is a basso ringing noise, and a distant
popcorn crackle: the bearded man looks around, then back at Coppinger.
"It sounds like the cavalry arrived, if a little late. It won't matter,
we're well prepared. I knew exactly what to expect, your own people
helped to sell you out: your Agency is too dirty even for them. Why my
family? Why not me, Coppinger? I was the one you had a problem with. Me,
David! Commander Mercer of the UCAS Navy! You could have - should have -
killed me! Why did you have to hurt my _family_?" Mercer's voice rises
to a shout.
"I didn't. But someone wants you to think I did."
Mercer sighs deeply and draws a pistol, aims at Coppinger: the laser
sight is bright and dazzling as it settles on the Director's forehead.
"It's unseemly to make your last words be a lie, David. Tell the truth,
and shame the devil, and at least face the Lord's judgement an honest
and repentant sinner."
"Pull that trigger and you kill an innocent man, Mercer." you hear Lynch
say behind Mercer. You hear Coppinger sigh slightly with relief.
"Who are you?"
"Lieutenant Jason Lynch. UCAS Marines, SIGA field officer."
Mercer looks around tensely, then relaxes. "I thought you might be one
of them, one of those four. A pity you're not, really."
"For your family? The only SIGA agents assigned to Seattle when your
family were killed were my wife and I, and we were flying with the Air
Force in Alberta. We don't work that way. If we'd had a problem, we'd
have extradited you for trial. Or just killed you." Lynch keeps the
Tower trained on Mercer.
"We have names on the four men, but they've vanished. Probably whoever
hired them, killed them afterwards. The Agency exists to stamp on this
kind of thing. Whoever killed your family is using you to destroy SIGA,
so they can do the same thing to more people. And there's a bigger
problem."
"Bigger than me blowing your boss's brains over the deck?"
"Bigger than you shelling the White House."
"Actually, the first thirty rounds are for the Pentagon." Mercer smiles
humourlessly.
"Well, you bought your ammunition from Maxim, right? Two of those rounds
aren't ordinary HC, they're biowarfare shells, and if one of them is
fired you're going to kill everyone within a few miles of the impact
point."
"What?" The sailor looks shocked.
Lynch sighs. "That's how I got on the case. I'm looking for those
shells, and they're in A Turret's magazine. Unless you left any behind?
You bought them from Maxim Arms via Koh Suh Lee, didn't you?"
"Germ warfare?" Mercer looks shocked. "You have some proof?"
"Are you kidding? I'm only here because I was flying the SEAL team's
helicopter and your people shot it down. I brought flight gear, two
pistols, and a combat knife. Not even a toothbrush. I didn't exactly
have time to pack, or I'd be a damn sight better equipped than I am now.
Anyway, believe me or I'll kill you."
Mercer lowers the pistol, slowly, then bends and unfastens Coppinger's
bonds: Coppinger rises, and takes the Predator that Lynch hands him.
"Follow me." Mercer leads off through the dark corridors. "We can cut
forward through Broadway, it's clear. I moved most of my men topside to
keep any attackers away from A turret -" A burst of gunfire rings out
and Mercer spins and falls.
Coppinger dives for cover, as the corridor is brightly lit by the
strobing flare of Lynch's Tower rifle on full-automatic, the noise
shattering in the confined space.
Mercer, wounded, drags himself behind a stanchion as a mocking voice
calls down the corridor.
"Off to save the city, are we, Jason? I'm afraid not." Another bullet
ricochets off the wall near Lynch's hiding place, as he changes
magazines.
"Emma. Bitch." mutters Lynch.
"Emma?" calls Coppinger. "What's your stake in this?" He looses off a
few rounds into the darkness as the mercenary works the bolt on his
rifle.
"Ah, David Coppinger. We just want to win. Wiping out DC will weaken
you, and help us."
"Who's us?"
Three more bullets crack by Coppinger's head: Lynch fires back, raking
the darkness. As the echoes fade - Mercer is clutching his ears in agony
from the deafening noise in the confined corridor - Emma's voice still
jeers from the shadows.
"Who do you think, David? You're meant to be an intelligence official,
don't you know?."
"Say something useful or shut the fuck UP!" growls Lynch, firing another
short burst and getting several shots back in return: one ricochets
wildly, zipping about and buzzing like an angry hornet.
"Does Farmer know about this?" shouts Coppinger.
"Of course! Those Maxim gas rounds were an unexpected bonus. I made sure
one's in the ready use rack, it'll be the first shot fired."
The ship suddenly makes a ghastly groaning, screeching noise and you
hear metal tear somewhere. Lynch leans out and fires, emptying the
magazine in short, aimed bursts, probing the places Emma might be
hiding. Laughter drifts back in response.
"A sad remnant of the Sioux, whose only claim to fame is that they got
kicked so harder for longer by the white man than anyone else in the
North. You'll have to try harder than that, Lynch."
"So you and Farmer are in cahoots, huh?" calls Lynch.
"What is this, a James Bond film?" A flurry of shots smash into the
metal, everyone ducking back. "You think I'll tell you everything that's
going on? Show you the secret self-destruct mechanism? There's no 'off''
switch. There's no way out. In a few minutes, the death warrants of
everyone in central Washington will be signed and you can't stop it!"
More shots, and the echoing thunder of Lynch's return fire. "Then the
UCAS will find itself forced into fighting an AA megacorporation, and
the Court will smash you for it!"
"Nobody's going to buy that it was Maxim!" shouts Coppinger.
"The mercenaries all using Maxim weapons, the paper trail on the shells,
oh, they'll believe it all right!" mocks Emma. "They'll pin it Maxim!
The new Pearl Harbour! And when you start to fight Velli, we'll roll
over the Confederacy, drive on and take Washington! You can't stop us!
It's our historic destiny-"
Lynch has drawn his Python and thumbs back the hammer, aims into the
darkness - you notice his eyes are closed - and fires one shot. Emma
falls silent, and there is a clattering thump. Lynch disappears into the
darkness ahead.
"She's down." he calls back.
"How the hell..." says Mercer wonderingly, limping forward. Coppinger
moves up too, and you see a female body sprawled on the deck in a
spreading pool of blood.
"Spatial locator. Smart ears. The more she said, and the more she shot
at us, the better idea I had of where she was." Lynch opens the
cylinder, reloads the single fired chamber. "And anytime anyone says
'historic destiny' I come over all homicidal."
"Mercer, you okay?" asks Coppinger, handing the Predator back to Lynch
and taking Emma's chromed Thunderbolt.
"Don't ask me to dance, but I'll live. Keep moving forward." Mercer
takes the offered pressure bandage from Lynch, applies it to the wound
in his calf. The group forge ahead, Lynch on point searching the dank,
dark corridor as the rifle's muzzle tracks his eyes.
"How long do we have?" asks Coppinger.
"Five or six minutes, at least." Mercer is limping, but keeping up.
"There shouldn't be a problem. I clean forgot that with X turret gone
you could get down here so easily, even if it is a thirty-foot drop.
Into some sharp machinery. What do we do with the shells when we find
them?"
"Get them apart and get the bomblets over the side. Water kills the raw
agent, and triggers a self-destruct on the bomblets to be sure it's
exposed and destroyed." Lynch pauses by a hatch. "Which way?"
"Magazine's through there and down the ladder. Up takes you into the
turret. I'll make sure they check fire and clear the guns, you disable
any in the magazine. Don't hurt the loaders, they're unarmed and
scared." Mercer disappears from sight up the ladder as Lynch slings his
rifle and descends, Coppinger following.
"Where's Lilith?"
"Overhead in an Eagle. She helped shoot us aboard, cleared their ambush
with a salvo of Mighty Mice. You okay?"
"Still feel sick from whatever Emma doped me with, but yeah. Thanks,
Jason."
"Doing my job, boss, just doing my job." Four bulky men - two Orks, two
Trolls, probably shell handlers - regard them nervously, hefting
wrenches and crowbars but otherwise defenceless. As soon as they have a
path to the ladder, they hurry up it.
"Gotcha. There's the first". Lynch pockets his flashlight, grabs a
canvas bag that once held primers, and goes to work on the nose of one
of the shells.
"What do you have to do? Unscrew the fuse and just dismantle?"
"Yeah, there's no booby traps or anything. Inside is the parachute pack,
and the candy's in the payload canister beneath that. Get it out
carefully, it weighs about seventy pounds."
Lynch already has the radio-altimeter fuse off and is pulling out yards
of parachute fabric. In the space of three minutes, he has filled the
canvas bag with the 'candy', the lethal bomblets: less than twenty
pounds of agent per shell, yet you remember Admiral Bass's calm, dry
voice reciting mortality rates and contamination radii and know Lynch
carries the death of millions in the grey cloth sack.
"Come on, let's go check on Mercer." says Coppinger nervously. Lynch
nods and begins to climb. The batteship lurches, a great scraping and
squealing coming from underfoot, and Coppinger is thrown across the
shell room: Lynch barely clinging to the ladder.
"What the hell...?" The SIGA Director picks himself to his feet after a
few seconds.
"We must have run aground." Lynch carries on climbing. "We just made it,
looks like: Mercer must have planned to beach her, make her unsinkable,
and then fire until he ran out of ammunition."
The turret is crowded with men and equipment: Mercer nods at Lynch, as
the gun crew struggle to unload the charges and the one-ton shells from
the massive gun breeches.
"We're grounded, stuck fast. Not sure which barrel's got the bastard
loaded. And none of us are sure how you clear the bores of the damn
things, except by firing them. We'll manage, though. How about you?"
Lynch hefts the bag. "Got the other. Over the side it's going to go."
+++++end trideo]<<<<<
-- D J H Coppinger <07:43:34/04-17-58>
Director
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency
