| Crossing the Tracks |
| Summary: | Kai and Salazar sneak into Osprey, blow some shit up |
| Date: | PHD073 |
| Related Logs: | Along Came a Spider, Feisty. |
| Players: |
 .. .. |
Scorpia, Near Osprey, Dilapidated Cabin
IC Time: Post Holocaust Day #73
OOC Time: Wed Jul 01 21:00:31 2009
Kai's developed an odd sort of rhythm over the course of his 'exile' down here. Sleep during the day, scout at night, under cover of dark. Sometimes he passes out in the chair, sometimes on the floor. Today's a floor night, and he's still slumped there when he should be up and at 'em. His flight suit's been peeled off and draped nearby, and he's curled up in an uncomfortable-looking heap, with a blanket pulled up to his waist and that navy t-shirt — charmingly blood stained — clinging to his upper body. His sidearm rests within reach of his hand, and the rucksack with their supplies is bundled up beneath his head. Everything's ready to go for their evening's sojourn, except Mr. Sleepyhead over there.
Salazar seems content to keep the bed. She never offers it to Karim, he never asks. It's an agreement between them. Her bed, her cabin. He can stay so long as he shares the occasional tidbit of information, when she asks, which she rarely does. It works out. Two satellites orbiting the planet suck, sometimes crossing paths to unite anti-suck powers. She usually goes to bed fully clothed, and sometime in the day grunts, and painfully undresses to throw them in a heap on the floor. It's too hot inside the little cabin for jeans. Karim has probably gotten a look at many of the rest of the tattoos which are up and down her legs. She's like a map of intricate line. It would take many days to appreciate them completely. Good thing there's other shit to do.
Salazar usually awakens first, like tonight. She's up before the sun is fully down. And she reaches for her clothes to pull them on, hissing slightly under her breath. The gear is always ready to go. It's the people that slow it down. "Karim." Just that, just his name, very softly. It's the pronunciation of home, in this tiny little craphole cabin, somewhere north of a giant crater in the world.
On his ship, somewhere up in the stars, Karim probably wakes up at the crack of dawn. At least, he seems the sort of man to do so. Down here, where it should be easier to regulate his sleep schedule by the amount of light in the cabin? He's erratic. The sound of his name however, the sound of Salazar's voice, is something he's gradually growing accustomed to. It causes him to stir with a soft mumble in his throat, and a rustling of blankets as he shifts onto his back. He fumbles for his sidearm, finds it, and drags it closer before his eyes cut to the bed. "I sleep in again?" His bare feet are sticking out of the blanket.
"I won't hold it against you," Salazar replies, as she finishes lacing her boots tightly. It's a little difficult to do without moving her arm, but she manages. The pain has managed to dull off a bit, and the morpha supply definitely helps. She only takes it to sleep, however, and her arm is in full bitch mode today. The rest of her is sure to catch up momentarily. Her dark hair falls into her eye as she works, then stays there as she straightens, and reaches for her pack, her rifle, and a bottle of water. She may have been watching him stir, but she does not comment.
Kai reaches up to scrub his hands over his face, and lets out a startled little grunt when his own arm reminds him of the sliver of shrapnel still lodged in it somewhere. He uses his good elbow as support, in rolling into a seated position. He looks sore and exhausted; sleeping on the floor's probably not helping in either department. "Let me pop an anti-rad and get dressed, then I'll be good to go." The blanket's shuffled off, and he clambers to his feet before padding off to where his flight suit's been stowed. If he's self-conscious at wandering around in a t-shirt and undies, he doesn't give any indication of such. Not a spot of ink on him, though the left leg's a veritable patchwork of ugly scars that'd make a marine proud. "What kind of a walk are we looking at, tonight?"
"You never appreciate a good medic until you're bleeding in the field," Salazar smirks at that, and straightens a little. "If we approach directly through the woods, and skip the tracks, cutting in West of the facility we reconned the other night, we can shave off some time. It's about 9k to the area we're looking at. It seems to have the tallest buildings, and looks about right for the elevation we need." She always has an answer for Karim's questions. And she doesn't dick around.
Several pounds of heavy neoprene isn't precisely what Karim wants to pull over himself right now. But until a better option presents itself, it's all he's really got. Unless Salazar has something in her closet for a man several inches taller and a good fourty pounds heavier. "Not enough room in a viper to pack a medic along," he explains tersely, shoving one leg and then the other into his suit. "So remind me of the plan, again. Do we know what we're looking for?" He glances over at Salazar briefly, catching the tail end of her smirk.
"You should really think about a remodel," Salazar notes, rising from her seat to check the fit of her gear. "We're looking for a transmitter. They need that to block the radio signals. They only have a certain radius. If we can find one and take it out, then hole up in the vicinity, anyone passing within a certain range will be able to contact us by wireless." She tightens the strap on her pack. "If they have one on, and if they get to us before the bulletheads find a new location. The easiest way would be to piggyback an existing setup, like a local broadcasting company. We look for the tallest building. It should have a small tower on top." She nods to him. "It will be guarded. I brought extra toys."
Kai tugs the suit up over his shoulders, and pulls his arms through it next. The injured one, he takes a bit more slowly. "Thanks for the lecture, Salazar." Rustle, rustle, ziiiiip. "You can stick to answering the question, next time. Transmitter. What does it look like?" The bottle of anti-rads is popped, and a pill tossed into his mouth. It's downed without water, perhaps in an effort to conserve it.
"Just thinking ahead, Captain Laconia." Maybe she does dick around a little. Salazar doesn't bother to hide a faint smirk. "Why don't you stick to not dropping vipers on my six hour wires." Ok, so maybe she's a tiny bit bitter about that still. It was a thing of beauty, as is evidenced by the radius of shrapnel from Kai's beloved Wolf-1 that will forever be embedded in the … everything. "Transmitters come in many sizes, what you're looking for is going to have a tower. The transmitter itself is just a case containing a power supply, oscillator, and modulator. Take out the modulator, and the carrier frequency doesn't even matter. I suggest we take out the whole thing, just for fun."
"If you think fun has anything to do with this.." He starts shoving his feet into boots, then settles down and bends forward with an audible wince, to start tying laces. "..then you're loopier than I thought." Silence for a few seconds. "Besides, my viper was worth a frak of a lot more than your jury rigged truck. If you hadn't strapped so much C-4 to that thing, I might've been able to salvage something out of my fighter."
Salazar shakes her head slightly. "If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong, Captain. There's no way I'm fighting my way through this mess to hate my life." This is her life, right now it sucks, but apparently there's a little bit of the optimist in the battle weary ex-marine. "My specialty is demolitions," she finally notes, heading for the door. That should tell him all he needs to know. "Get in, get out, wire it, blow it. Usually before any shots are fired." People who take demo as a career path have to be a little insane. "Don't wreck your toys and I'll try not to obliterate." We all do what we can. She pulls open the door, and steps outside, lighting up a smoke for the journey.
Kai rolls his eyes just a little at the speech he gets. He doesn't much seem to care whether Salazar spots it, either. Of all the places he could crashland, it had to be smack into a crazy bitch's truck. Boots on, he fetches his gloves before thumping over to grab the second pack, and swinging it over his shoulders. "Let's do this," he murmurs under his breath. His sidearm's clip is checked briefly before he follows her out.
That's Thanks For Saving My Life Crazy Bitch to you, Karim. The journey to the city, though uneventful in most places, does prove a little difficult once Osprey is hit. Not so much getting into town. Getting into town is easy. It's the roving gang that's difficult. Unbeknowst to most of the humans on the Colony, some of the gang was taken out by an unfortunate encounter with a couple of Centurions, and the arduous trek through the city, though much abbreviated compared to the woodland journey, is certainly more treacherous. Eyes out for two sorts of enemy, our heroes progress.
Nine kilometres later..
The rubble surrounding the station XMZ Broadcasting, and few structural weaknesses in it hint that the tallest building in Osprey is lucky it didn't come toppling down. No sane person would climb into a building that badly damaged. The surface is visibly cracked in several places, but a pristine tower stands atop it, pointed to the sky as if the world below it were not in ruin. No sentries stand visible guard. It's just another building, in another bombed out town, in another little continent, on another crappy nuked Colony like all the rest.
Salazar hugs the side of a squat nearby building, her rifle at the ready, and surveys the target. "Doesn't look like much," she comments, under her breath. They never do.
The journey's conducted in relative silence, at least from the viper pilot's end. He moves when Salazar tells him to move, cocks his sidearm when he hears a stray noise behind them in the underbrush, and only calls for a brief break once, probably to take a leak somewhere out of sight.
Once they hit the concrete jungle, it becomes a little more difficult to hide, and a lot more difficult to traverse. Oddly enough, the bodies littering streets and parked, smashed cars don't seem to disturb him like they ought. Then again, Sagittaron was notorious for its insurgency. Therein may lie a hint to his insouciance.
"We're not going up there, are we?" is his follow-up, also sotto voce, as he puts his back to the wall beside her. He's got the stamina for all this walking, but pain's beating an insistent rhythm through him nonetheless.
That makes Salazar smile. Her eyes trail over the building critically. It doesn't look stable, safe, or in any way sane. So, of course, the ex-marine replies, "You bet your sweet ass we are." The bodies don't garner a comment from her. She's been out here a lot longer than he. Her line of work is likely as numbing as his formative years on Sag.
"Had a feeling you might say that." Tch-tchk. That's Karim ratching the slider on his gun, followed by a deep breath as his eyes travel up the tower's full height. "You realise, I'm sure, that any structural weakness in that thing could send several tons of death raining down on us." If it lacks the inflection of a question, it's because he doesn't much expect an answer. This is what they've got to do, so they're going to do it. He, obviously, is no stranger to shit jobs. "Come on." After briefly making eye contact with Salazar, he's off.
Whatever he meant, there's a chance Salazar took something different from it. Or nothing at all. Just a moment, between soldiers. She moves past him, moving in first while he maintains cover. She moves through, sliding carefully in. The gate isn't chained anymore. She takes up a post against the damaged structure, and covers Karim's approach. Once he's caught up, she reaches for the handle of the door, nods to him, and pulls it open.
It's pitch black inside, of course. And it smells. Badly. Someone, or probably someones died in here. Karim shoulders his way in first, gun pointed at the second set of doors that lead to the stairs up, and then swings it around to sight into the reception area to their right. A light fixture, dangling by a few wires, sways with the residual force of the door being hauled open, and there's dust and hunks of broken wall littering the floor. He covers his nose with the back of his right hand, and nods to Salazar. Let's go. The door to the stairwell is shoved open with his boot.
On the plus side, after 2 months it doesn't smell as bad as it probably did after three weeks. Than again, it's all a degree of stank. Salazar's progress doesn't even slow with the smell of the bodies. Her jaw clenches, but that's the only outward sign something is amiss in the closed space (to her senses). She makes her way to the stairs, slides past Karim, and leads the way up. No talking. Breathing in this scent leaves a taste. Up, up, and up.
Karim, of course, shifts to covering Salazar's ass. Because, as previously mentioned, this is what pilots do best. He'll just not point out to her that he's the CAG, and doesn't normally let anyone play section lead to him. It's not like she needs the boost to her ego.
Up they go. Not as quickly as they otherwise might, in consideration for not stomping about in a structurally volatile building. There's a few bodies in the stairwell, recognisable as such when they're nearly tripped over— this is what's fun about trying to navigate in the dark.
If she knew he were the CAG, there'd probably be a few choice words bandied his way. How often does a marine get a chance to frak with a department head? Salazar takes the stairs at a quick pace, eyes up. She slides around the flights, ignoring the pains in her body. She notes the metallic sheen of a sentry before moving into its line of fire. She pulls up quite abruptly, and drops into a crouch on the stairs.
Kai, on the other hand, is busy watching the rear. As in, their rear, the way back down, in case something should decide to tag along from downstairs. He doesn't realise Salazar's dropped into a crouch until he nearly backs into her. There's no startled shout, no sound at all save for the rustle of neoprene as he shifts around and drops down beside her. Shoulder to the wall, his gun is hoisted level with the entryway. Breathe. Breathe. Someone told him that, once.
Salazar lifts a hand and gestures to Kai. There's no damn way they can go up further. May as well start shooting. No way they can go down, and risk losing this post. There's only one way in, that's with prayer and bullets. It's probably going to hurt. She raises her rifle, and squeezes off a shot. Ie deflects right off the armor, and embeds in the wall. Frak.
Make that more of the former, than the latter; they're running on a limited supply, after all. The centurion's bullets rip through Karim's arm, spraying blood across the wall and resulting in a snarl seethed between his teeth as his resulting shot misses. They don't have the luxury of a medic, so he grits through the pain and keeps firing.
Salazar growls something under her breath, and flicks her weapon to burst mode. She opens up with a spray as the hulking bullethead moves out to try to get a better angle on the Colonials. His shots pepper the wall of the stairwell, bullets embedding into the cinderblock. Ping, ping, blam blam blam. All of the noise is amplified in the closed space, almost painful.
Yeah, this isn't the firing range. No earmuffs, no eye protection. No rubber bullets. This is the real deal. There's a thump on the stairs as Karim ducks lower, trying to use the ledge created by the floor as a natural cover. He hunkers down, waits a few beats until a pause in the centurion's shooting, then throws himself forward and squeezes off another explosive round.
Salazar backs off, moving down the stairs as the Centurion moves forward, it's precarious weight navigating the narrow steps carefully. She keeps just out of direct fire, and touches Kai's arm to take a handful of flight suit and urge him to go with. Robots don't need cover. This isn't going to work for very long. The noise is deafening. With her injured arm, she reaches back into her pack, as she slides it off halfway to get a hand in. The searing pain in her shoulder with the over extension of battered muscles leaves an impression. Silently.
Kai hardly needs urging, truth be told. He's already starting to back down the stairs when his hand's nicked with a stray bullet, shredding off a good bit of his glove. Again, the pain's kept to himself. At least she can't see him sweating, in the dark. He stumbles as they descend deeper into the stairwell, left knee hitting a step, and there's a growled "shit" from somewhere in his direction. Once he's up again, he clatters down to the next landing, and throws his back to the railing. He's got a good guess what Salazar's going for in there.
Salazar takes up the rear position, backing down the steps after Karim. She swaps back to one shots for the move down, then opens up once clear of the pilot. A bullet digs into the flesh of her other arm. Son of a bitch! She needs that one. "The frak you will," she says, raising her rifle as she turns on the landing.
Bullets spray into the wall as well, inches from where Karim's turned around the corner, and flattened his back. When he hears Salazar being hit — how could he miss it? — he swivels back into view and raises his sidearm for another shot at the tincan. "You got something up your sleeve there, Salazar? You better not be holding out on me, darling." Maybe it'll make her mad. Mad is good, for people like them.
"What did I SAY?" Maybe she is mad. She drops to a knee as she's hit again, arm bleeding freely now. Some of her blood may have sprayed on Kai with the passage of the round. What's a little pink mist between friends. "I can't throw my charges. This building's unstable." She grunts this out between shifting back to burst rounds, and looking up into the face of shiny metal death.
It's okay. She probably got hit with a splatter of his, too. The pain's ridiculous. It always is, when they get you in the hand. Karim's fumbling with the grip of his weapon slightly, and ducks down again to try to vainly stauch the bleeding with his sleeve. No dice. He comes back up, lines up his shot, squeezes the trigger and hopes for the best. Die, toaster.
The light body armor sucks up a pretty hefty shot. Salazar sucks in a breath, and falls back against the wall of the stairwell, sliding a little. That's not a good sound. She stops breathing for a moment after that, and raises her rifle to shoot off a burst of rounds. The pack she was carrying slides to the floor, and she tips back to stumble on the landing, near the edge of the flight down.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Now Kai's pissed. And Kai.. doesn't often get pissed. Salazar, lucky or unlucky as she may be, has been privy to a rather uncharacteristic range of emotion in the otherwise closed-off man; as she stumbles, he's already reaching for her. One arm goes around her body, and unless she protests, he tries to pin her against the wall while reaching around to take a potshot with his pistol. Hopefully before she can go tumbling. "Piece of shit. You piece of shit, come here. Come here!" Meow, hiss.
Salazar's spray of suppression fire goes wide, spraying an upside down smiley on the wall, that's merely in need of some eyes. It could be a frown, but that's not how she rolls. The marine falls hard against the wall. She doesn't have time to breathe, just shoot. Her aim is adjusted, even as she bleeds, and she squeezes, even as Karim's body holds hers there. Pilot-cover.
The bugger just won't give up. Hunks of ceiling start to cave in on them as it clomps onto the top landing, and sprays the stairwell with bullets. Karim's doing his best to keep Salazar upright. They stop, they shoot, he tries to pull her down to the next set of stairs. Something's gotta drop here: the bullethead, or them, or the building.
Once the bugger is down, Salazar's rifle almost drops. She concentrates on trying to breathe, which is a bit of a task with a bullet and a pilot pressing in. The building seems to be standing, she's still mostly on her feet, so's Karim. Looks like the cylon tech gave out first. First. "Get my pack. We have to set the charges before reinforcements show." There's a pained wheeze in her voice, but it isn't a request. Still a soldier.
Salazar is released, moments after the centurion goes down. Just enough to ensure that she won't go keeling over, and Kai doesn't waste time countermanding 'orders'. They work as a team, there's no real rank between them. Even if there is. "I've got it.. I've got it." After some rifling about in there, and the occasional glance at the hunk of metal toppled onto the stairs above them, he slides the devices out. "You tell me what to do, and I'll do it." Never mind that he's coughing up blood, and fighting to stay on his feet right now.
There is, there isn't. There is. It's confusing, and even if it weren't, they're all alone out here, save the toasters. Bleeding together takes some of the edge off of standing on ceremony. No need. She shoves off the wall, grabs the railing, and heads up. "Bring them." It's the shortest way she could say that. Breath is precious now. Up the final flight she goes, regaining that ground they lost. She slows when stepping past the collapsed centurion form, and makes for the door. Her breath is shallow and faster than normal. She pulls open the door to the roof access, and steps out into the breeze. Thank the Gods it's empty.
Kai has the charges under one arm, and his gun trained on the heap of scrap whose roving eye's gone dead. He nudges it with his boot as they climb over, and then limps after Salazar up to the roof. Yeah, a couple of bullets nicked him in the leg. His bad leg. Getting back to that cabin tonight? Isn't going to be an option.
"Mold it here." Salazar points, with her right arm, the lesser injured of the two. She winces anyway. And she points again, "And here." The box is large and nondescript, with a panel that opens. It humms lightly, clearly operational. The tower on the roof should be damaged in the blast. Her rifle remains over her shoulder. "I'll set the timers." She just needs a minute to lean against the low wall and breathe.
Kai drags the back of his sleeve across his face, ridding it of either blood or sweat. Both, probably. The pack he'd carried up is slung off, and he drops down to set the first charge and prod it into place. Then he crawls over to place the second. And remains there for a few moments on his hands and knees, head down. He's coughing again, maybe the tincan got a lung. "You ready?" he murmurs hoarsely.
Her dark eyes watch Karim's hands place the charges. The putty is easily moldable. G-4 is her favorite toy, mostly because it can be shaped into anything. She doesn't have the time, inclination, or energy to do anything too whimsical, though all of the shaped charges in her bag are shaped like stars. She carries it because it's insensitive to physical shock, but responds to heat and shockwave. Catching a bullet doesn't set it off. Luckily. She moves forward to stand beside the pilot, grunting as she leans to place the detonators carefully, sliding them into the soft material. She presses the detonator in, then keys in the timer. "Seven minutes." She glances over. "Ready." She nods, then initiates the count down. "Go."
Kai doesn't have delicate hands. They're good for stick jockeying, and they're good for manual labour. But he's probably never played the piano in his life. He also doesn't bother asking her whether she thinks they'll make it out in seven minutes. They either will, or they won't. There's another brief glance shared with those dark eyes, and then he's grabbing his own pack and forcing himself to his feet. Salazar, again, is allowed to take the lead. He'll bring up the rear.
In case he dies, Karim probably wants to have something nice to look at. Through the door she goes. Her steps are careful as she moves over the robot. On the way back down, she grabs her pack, grunts heavily, then continues past. Around and around. She hits the rail a little hard about three down, stumbles and almost slides over the rail. A heavy breath is sucked in, and her hands shake a little as she rights herself, and continues moving. She's a little unsteady. The kit in her pack has morpha. Just gotta get out of the building.
Seven minutes. Seven minutes. Six, by the time they reach that first landing. He grabs for the railing as he nearly trips over a body that'd crumpled by the wall, and careens after her with a heavy thud of boots on the stairs. If she starts to fall, he grabs her arm and jerks her forward. Pain be damned. Wasn't she the one who called it a great motivator?
There's a lot of cursing and grunting on the way down the stairs, each time she slips a little, or gets grabbed by the pilot. Salazar hauls it as much as she safely can in this state, which isn't so much a haul as a jog. Five minutes. Don't fall, don't fall, don't fall. Down they go, boots on the stairs. Four minutes. Almost to the bottom landing.
This would be easier if it wasn't in near pitch black, with hazards littering the stairwell and precipitous cracks spidering through the walls. Karim's got a fistfull of the woman's sleeve by the time they reach the home run; he'll drag her out if he has to. The door is shouldered through, and he sprints for it. Well, it's more of a gimpy jog, really.
It's a pretty gimpy jog. Salazar's got a handful of his flight suit by the time they reach the bottom. Three. The further away, the better, because when they blows, everything in a radius is going to come investigate, assuming they didn't note the gunfire. She stumbles, and almost falls once. Shit. "Frak." Just that, a single syllable spit out as she continues jogging, the two of them supporting each other till they find some place to collapse.
