Next: Ten: Saturday, April 17, 1999 -- In Flight | Previous: Eight: Saturday, April 17, 1999, 3:35 PM -- Rockhouse
Report from New Xenaland
Nine: Saturday, April 17, 1999, 3:47PM -- Rockhouse
The choppers were arranged side-by-side on the lawn and head-to-tail. The tail of Bodiccea — the closer of the two to the house — was to the right of the transfer party. The formation was a double ring of exceedingly tall Trolls, their bodies angled to overlap and present additional barriers to gunfire, with the tiny actress in the middle, boldly scanning the tall trees, strutting as though she were the armed and deadly Agent Specialist and Dolly the protectee. The formation angled to the right to pass behind chopper Bodiccea. The leading elements had just passed under Bodiccea's tail boom when there came a flurry of sounds, like large hailstones hitting surfaces that ranged from a tin roof or a plastic garbage can to a big dinner bell. Somebody out on the lawn shouted something, and the Trolls pressed in even closer to Liv.
"Snipers!" came the yell from the yard. Shots hit the turf, sending up rows of brown spouts with their impact. Another flurry of hits on metal and plastic. Somewhere a window shattered. A car alarm went off.
"Holy shit!" Bobbo said. "Get onto the sensor section. How the fuck did somebody get into those trees without our seeing them?"
Standing next to Drummond, Stagge groaned. "I've gotta ..."
"STOP!" Drummond yelled, restraining the younger man physically. "You can't do anything. And if you rush out there, you'll almost certainly accomplish one thing ... and that's to get both of you killed. She's as safe as she can be out there. Let us handle this. Despite Bobbo's chewing out the sensor crew, this is not entirely unexpected."
Dolly was kneeling by the gear they had brought with them. She slung one of the big canvas bags full of ammo clips for the H&K machine pistols across her chest, from shoulder to the opposite hip. She picked up two of the guns and turned to face the yard.
Drummond stepped in front of her. "Dolly, stand down."
"Don't give me that shit, Chief. This is my job. I belong out there."
The rest of the argument ran through their minds, unspoken, as they stood nose-to-nose for a long moment, eyes locked on each other. Were it not for the gravity of the situation, it would have been hilarious to see the tall Team commander and the diminutive doll, who was, at that moment, showing every erg of the fierce fire that made her a key player on the Center's Action Teams, staring at each other at less than a hand's breadth's distance. He was stooped slightly, she drawn up to her full height and, impossibly, then some. The test of wills was decided. Drummond nodded — a sharp jerk of his head — and knelt to gather up his own weaponry. "Then I'm right behind you," he said.
"Fine," was her retort. "Just make sure you keep up with me."
"Should be plenty easy. I wasn't whacked on the skull three hours ago."
"Four."
"Whatever."
Suddenly the large sliding glass door on the patio shattered and a couple of slugs hit the patio surface to ricochet noisily through the house.
"Everybody OK?" Drummond yelled.
Dolly had been standing watching events unfold and observed, "This is covering fire! They're going for the snatch!"
"I beg your pardon!" Stagge objected.
"She means they're going to try to kidnap Ms. Wilson."
#
Dolly was going full-tilt and accelerating as she cleared the empty frame of the sliding patio door. She had her MP5's both set on burst and fired in three- and five-round bursts as quickly as she could locate targets.
"You motherless bastards!" She screamed as she ran, "You farked with the wrong doll today! The bitch is ba-a-a-a-ck!"
Like any great athlete at the top of her form, Dolly moved with a preternatural grace. She took a fierce joy and pride in her body's strength and agility. She knew her broken-field running and dodging was world class.
In a binary contrast, long fingers of obscene fire streaked from her weapons in response to autonomic contractions of her forefingers on triggers. For each burst of lead, one or more clones fell from blinds in the trees around Rockhouse. Her aim was unerring, her fire withering. While she was on the field, the enemy was without effect.
Or so it seemed for a few moments — before the shock of her attack wore off.
As she watched, two of the Trolls in the outer ring fell to the clones' fire. She located the sources of the fire and took them out, but the damage was done. There were gaps in the coverage provided to Liv. The Trolls shifted to close the gaps, but they were stretched thin.
"Dust off!" Drummond roared from behind her. As one, the Trolls responded.
The ring of behemoths marched in formation toward the nearest bird — the one farthest from the house. The engine sound changed in pitch as the pilot engaged the rotors and spun them up. Somewhere a door gunner opened up with a .30 cal.
Damn! Dolly thought. We should have had a bird in the air flying cover. Never mind that a third of their air power had been taken out that morning. Aren't we a prize pack of amateurs?
When she was about ten yards away from the nearer chopper, its rotors too began to spin in earnest. Apparently the crew had come to the same conclusion as Dolly. She swung wide in front of it, giving it a wide berth.
Her attention was directed outward toward the trees. The clones' fire was slacking off, but seemed to be more effective for all that.
The second chopper cleared the treetops and began an angry hunt for snipers, both drawing fire and suppressing it, fire from its door and nose guns stabbing down into the crown foliage, dealing death to their enemies.
#
Drummond ordered the spare chopper aloft. The charade broken, he determined to get both women off in the other bird, using the first for cover. He flung hand-signals to that effect to the team leaders as he ran, following Dolly toward the far chopper.
As Dolly approached the second chopper and the team around Liv, two more of the Trolls fell to snipers' bullets. She took a step, and another then...
"Get both of them aboard!" Drummond shouted. "Now!"
The Ten-leader of the cordon nodded and, taking great pains to avoid exposing Liv, bustled her aboard. That done, the cordon extended two of its members in a pseudopod, welcoming Dolly into the protective circle.
Drummond circled wide around them, facing outward, trying to make sure that nobody could get in a lucky shot. There was another member of the Team on the other side of the lawn. Drummond didn't know who it was and it didn't much matter. Whoever it was could handle things. It was a comfort. Right then, he needed comfort. His heart was in his throat, like a dry flour dumpling. He fought to keep his gun steady in his hands and he knew it wasn't just the action making his hands shake.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dolly stumble. His heartbeat marched in time with her irregular footsteps as she lost momentum and went down. There was a cry of pain and outrage in the whisky voice, the dismaying report from the Trolls ... "She's hit!" somebody shouted, then, "MEDIC!". Liv leaped from the chopper's still-open doorway and bounded to Dolly's side. She hit the turf so hard, her bare knees gouged muddy furrows in it.
The two women were down on the ground. More Trolls were arriving, feet pounding, breath ragged, as they responded to the ultimate emergency of their existence — danger to the goddess. They lay their bodies down to block the spaces between their comrades' legs. They knelt and squatted, spreading their arms and their coats to hide and shield what was happening in the middle of the crowd. Their squadmates made a hedgehog around them, bristling with gun barrels. They set up a sphere of fire that left nothing alive in its path. The chopper lifted off and joined its mate in harrying the clones among the trees.
Sometime in the long moment, Drummond had the time to wonder, Where the Hell did all those clones come from?
Suddenly he, too, was at the edge of the cordon, not giving a spit for the Troll's adrenaline-hyped protective conditioning, only needing to burrow through that double ring of flesh to...
#
Stumble free inside the cordon, knees weak, gun dropped from numb-tingling fingers. The two women were on the ground and covered with blood. Liv was kneeling, trembling like a paint shaker, eyes wide, a fist over her open mouth, her breathing labored. Dolly lay face down, turned a bit as though she were intending to roll onto her back, arms spread, legs crossed in a running pose. Blood covered her bare shoulders. Her eyes were open, but had a glazed, staring look in them.
Drummond feel to his knees with Dolly's body between them. "Ma'am..." No reaction. "Ms. Wilson..." louder, then: "Olivia! Are you hit?"
"No, I'm fine," she managed to get out in between gasps for breath. "She's the one who's been shot."
"Thank you. Be ready to move. As soon as I determine that she can be moved safely, we're all going to get on that helicopter and get the flock outta here."
"What if she can't be moved safely?" came the semi-hysterical reply.
"Then we go to Plan B," Drummond felt confidence flowing back into him. The situation demanded he take control; the demand centered him. He located the flesh wound in Dolly's shoulder and stanched the bleeding, saying fervent prayers of thanksgiving to whatever god might be listening that it had barely nipped the muscle and not hit the bone or any of the myriad blood vessels in the area. A Troll medic — a billilaalu, barely Dolly's size — shouldered him aside and set to bandaging Dolly's wound with brisk efficiency.
All the while, the Trolls' fire thundered around them, OSHA noise limits be damned. Somewhere in the back of his awareness, he registered the sounds of the Troll noncoms restoring the natural order of things — the Trolls kicking the clones' asses. It was a good thing they were there, because he had no attention to spare from the small, limp form on the ground before him. A sob forced its way out of his constricted throat, and he blinked back tears. Liv put out a hand and touched his shoulder briefly — a simple, human gesture of solidarity and concern. He looked at her and nodded his thanks.
"I think she's OK to move," the medic reported. "Just the one flesh wound as far as I can tell without turning her over."
And what will we find when we turn her over. Please, dear God, don't let her ... What? Die? Be hurt? She would eventually and she was already.
The medic rolled Dolly onto her back. Drummond started breathing again when he realized she was only hit the once. The medic rummaged in her kit for something. "Our stretcher is back at the house. It might be better to just pick her up. She doesn't appear to be hurt, other than the one wound."
Drummond nodded. "Sergeant!" he called.
"Sah!" came the crisp reply. The ten-leader was behind them, his attention directed outward — toward the threat.
"Call the chopper in, would you?"
"Sah!" the sergeant replied. He barked into his boom mike, relaying Drummond's order. In seconds, the chopper swooped in hot beside them, its skids barely kissing the turf.
"Okay. Ms. Wilson..." Drummond began.
"You know, under the circumstances, I think it would be alright if you were to call me 'Liv'."
"Thank you. Liv... I need you to stand up. Can you?"
"I think so." The actress took hold of the leathers of one of the Trolls around her and use the hold to pull herself to her feet. The lucky Troll got a goofy, beatific expression on his face which it was probably fortunate Liv did not see.
While she was doing that, Drummond squirmed around to get his feet under him and stooped over Dolly.
"Okay," Drummond repeated as he lifted Dolly up with his arms under her knees and back. "We're ready, Sergeant."
Like they were a single organism, the team turned to the chopper — keeping low in the rotor wash — and passed Drummond, Dolly, and Liv hand-to-hand into the chopper.
While they were being belted in, Dolly regained consciousness.
"Hey, Drummond," she murmured. "That's twice in one day you've saved my ass."
"Well, the Trolls did all the heavy lifting both times."
Her eyes moved expressively, taking in her position cradled in Drummond's arms. "And this is ..."
"A walk in the park."
"Whatever. You get credit for saving my ass."
"Well, it's a sweet ass, and I'd hate to see anything bad happen to it."
"Oh, you're plenty bad enough for me." She chuckled.
"Dolly, I do believe you're fishing for compliments."
"Why Chief! I'm shocked that you would think that of me!"
The Troll cordon split according to some unspoken parsing of their number, a couple clambering aboard the chopper, the rest backing away and turning to reform beyond the perimeter of the chopper's blade-sweep, ready to meet whatever threat might come.
A single figure, clad in black leather, darted through the cordon toward the chopper, leaping aboard just as the pilot goosed the engine and the bird lurched aloft.
"What?" Stagge exclaimed. "Didn't think y' were gonna leave me behind, didja?"
#
Next: Ten: Saturday, April 17, 1999 -- In Flight | Previous: Eight: Saturday, April 17, 1999, 3:35 PM -- Rockhouse