PHD #143: The Cylon Sleeps Tonight
The Cylon Sleeps Tonight
Summary: An assassination attempt on Eleven fails. Utterly.
Date: 2041.07.19
Related Logs: Let Sleeping Pilots Lie.
Players:
Lunair Tisiphone Diesel Sholty NPC Polaris 

<Insert Officer's Brig @desc here.>


Kept under heavy guard, barricaded behind a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, the humanoid Cylon model known variously as Eleven, Lab Girl, and Godsforsaken Frakking Abomination looks surprisingly normal from behind the hatch. Indeed, if not for the Marine fireteam looming near the hatch — and the perpetually-scowling brig officer manning the check-in desk directly opposite — she might look like any other prisoner, dressed as she is in borrowed military-issue clothes issued to her for the sake of her modesty. Curled up in her cot and covered by a thin blanket, Eleven is fast and soundly asleep —

And from the looks of it, her Marine guards wish they could be doing the same thing. "Frak this shit," drawls PFC Van Sholty, his index finger caressing the safety on his Massive Assault Rifle. "Sure she was shooting at us back on that godsdamned station but at least she wasn't wearing shit and you could see everything just hanging out like — " His palms clap together in a tremendously obscene gesture.

"It's Tillman's fault," Private Chuck Diesel says, echoing the words of his partner-in-crime. "Major was the one who ordered us to give her clothes and shit. Treating that subfecal toaster nicer than he treats us." The youngster scoffs dismissively. "Semper Fi my ass."

"Your tits aren't as nice as hers." Sholty shrugs, scrawny shoulders rising as high as they can beneath his heavy body armor. "Maybe he just doesn't want that pilot he nailed to get jealous and think he was swapping her out for some Cylon sex toy."

So goes the banter at oh-dark-hundred hours, and it's only been an hour and a half since their patrol began.

Sigh. Lunair frowns at the talk. Her eyebrows lift at the tremendously obscene gesture. Fortunately, she's a loose hand, and doesn't comment for now. She's in charge for the moment and figures she'll pick her battles rather than come down on the enlisted. They were being shot and staring at her — no wonder. Cylon boobie distracting. She just shakes her head.

Oh-dark-hundred, when only the sleepless and the unlucky are still, very reluctantly, awake. Even on Condition Two, there are (relative) lulls in the storm, and this time of night tends to be one of them.

Curious, then, that Junior Lieutenant Apostolos slips in at a time like this. The Air Wing's on double CAPs, throwing things like sleep schedules and days off to the sacrificial pit, so perhaps she's filed under 'Unlucky'. Then again, a look at the tired, flat eyes and the wan face files her under 'Sleepless In Cerberus'.

"Hey," she greets, her voice scratchy-soft. She's in her fatigues and the olive drab jacket that she's always swam in — a broad-shouldered boy, she is most definitely NOT — with the sleeves rolled up. "Here to see the Cylon." She's wearing her sidearm, holstered, as is her officerly prerogative at Condition Two; as is required to get anywhere /near/ the bulletproof glass, she's also already unfastening the holster belt from around narrow hips, to toss it upon the table.

"It's asleep," says the sergeant at the desk, retrieving the firearm and ejecting the magazine. It's set aside while she fiddles with the barrel, removing the bullet already loaded into the chamber. "Unless you wanna stare at it for a few minutes, you ain't talking to her. Hey el-tee, gun's safed." Spoken to Lunair, while Sholty and Diesel nod their greetings to their fellow survivor from Leonis. Sup. Yo.

Lunair watches quietly. At least she's silently looming presence. Well, more the sort of upper class looming that once haunted the Officer's ranks. She just watches the Enlisted quietly and nods. "Thank you," She replies appreciatively. She offers a polite smile after. For her part, she seems to be waiting and peering out after something. She'll nod back, if nodded at. Otherwise, she looks thoughtful.

The bog-standard Picon Five-seveN, maintained far more lovingly than a mere pilot ought to care about their sidearm. Then again, Tisiphone is a far better shot than a mere pilot ought to be, too. She watches the sergeant move through the checking procedure just long enough to be assured she knows what she's doing, before pale eyes flick over to Lunair. "Hey," she greets her as well. One corner of her mouth twitches a single time before settling flat again. Eyes move across from there, to Sholty and Diesel. A mute up-nod is given. "Can't kick the glass until it looks at me?" she asks them. She snorts once, dismissive and dispassionate. "Fine. I'll just stare at it." A touch of two fingers to her temple before she pads onward, digging out a cigarette as she goes.

"Up to her," says the sergeant, jerking her head in Lunair's direction. Her hand toys idly with the magazine on her desk, spinning it counterclockwise with the tip of her pinky and pushing it forward every time it seems about to grind to a halt.

As for the other members of the fireteam? They're staring too, their faces reflected in the bulletproof glass — overlaid on the Cylon's slim body, which rises up and down beneath her scratchy wool blanket and pure white sheets. Her lips move ever so slightly as she dreams, if indeed machines can be said to dream — of electric sheep, perhaps, or —

"Mmmm," Diesel mutters softly, rapping his fingers against the base of his rifle. "That's it, baby. Open wide."

"Oh, that shit right there, that's wide enough for you." Sholty grins, an expression that strips the affected adult mannerisms from his face and reveals him for the young boy he is.

Lunair doesn't comment on much although, she smiles briefly at Tisiphone. "Hello there," She greets Tisiphone in turn and pauses. "No, let's not rile her up. Although…" She trails off. Fortunately, Lunair is a loose hand until the reins need to be pulled, so she doesn't /stifle/ the discussion. "I guess I can wake her up politely, if you like," She offers. The discussion makes her lift her eyebrows. Enlisted. She says nothing on it for now.

It's a clove cigarette that Tisiphone lights up, one of the very few remaining from one of her smash-and-grabs in Kythera. Brown-papered and smelling of spice — and maybe crumbled buildings and masonry dust, dead grass and dying trees. The creak of a rope swing set up in the Virgan Embassy's back yard to pass the time convincing yourself they were still coming for you, after all.

If you swing long and high enough, you can see the radiation-withered corpses over the wall.

Tisiphone walks up to the bulletproof glass, so close her cigarette cherry's only a few inches away. She runs her hands over her head, slowly — freshly-shaved, scalp paler than the slightly sunkissed skin of her brow and cheekbones — then rubs absently at both her forearms. The unnaturally-straight surgical scar across the right arm, the pale gap on her left arm where her wrist-cuff is normally clasped.

"No. That's fine. Stay there," she says, looking back to Lunair. "I won't wake her." She puts one palm flat against the bulletproof glass, the other snagging the cigarette from her lips, and cants her head at the Cylon within. For several minutes, it's all she does — stand there, smoke, and stare, and stare, and stare.

"Shit that reeks," is the only thing Sholty has to say. Perhaps the smell of smoke doesn't trigger the same flood of memories that it does for the woman smoking it. Perhaps he's just an asshole. He does, however, turn his back to the glass, leaning against it with his rifle slung across his chest, one hand resting easily in his pocket.

Diesel, for his part, is two or three steps behind and to the right of the pilot who's chosen this gods-awful hour to invade. "Whaddya figure she's thinking about?" he wonders at length. "Like, seriously. Do they dream? Maybe she just pretends to dream. Or maybe she just thinks she's dreaming when she wakes up and her brain's like 'Girl, you had a dream' and she doesn't know any better because her brain told her and, you know, since your brain's doing the dreaming — you know?"

"Maybe," Sholty concedes. "Or. I got a better question."

"Yeah?"

"You going to shut up now or do I have to shove a fist in your mouth?"

"Frak you."

Lunair's face flickers, bearing only briefly cracking at the memories the smoke stirs. She just lets it go after a moment, her hair still in the awkward adolescent stages of regrowth. Hopefully she can keep it growing. "Alright," A nod to Tisiphonee and then a glance to Sholy and Diesel. "I don't know. It's an interesting thou—" She cuts herself off and looks duly amused. Okay then. At least she's got a sense of humor. "None of that now. On your own time, please." Whether that's a slightly off-color joke or a genuine order, Lunair is deliberately vague. She too, peers at the sleeping Eleven. Hmm.

As the clove starts burning down, Tisiphone seems to rouse from her reverie. Her head straightens and she drags her eyes away from the Cylon, eyes doing a quick circuit of the others in the room. She pushes back, gently, from the bulletproof glass, ambling in reverse two or three steps, as she pulls a final, lung-achingly deep drag from her clove.

Frakdamn, but she always loved those things.

She blows out the lungful of smoke toward the floor, dropping the ciggie as she does. It bounces once in a spatter of sparks before she crushes it under her boot. Straightening, she rubs her bare forearms again, eyes staring back at the Eleven, and through it. She rubs the small of her back, under her olive drab jacket —

— and comes out with a handgun, the safety already clicking off. Ashwood's shooter, loaded with her last clip of armor-piercing rounds from Leonis. Smooth and swift, it's lined up at the Cylon within the cell, and she starts to fire, seeming utterly uncaring that there are others nearby.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Bulletproof glass is truly a marvel of modern engineering. It's made from thin layers of polycarbonate thermoplastic sandwiched between layers of real glass, all of which is coated on the outside by a strike plate built from aluminum oxynitride — ALOX, or so the engineers call it, a synthetic compound sufficiently strong as to repel even armor piercing rounds fired from heavy machine guns at point-blank range. And for once, the engineers weren't exaggerating to inflate their own reputation, as evinced by the fact that the three bullets from the reporter's stolen handgun are now flattened bits of lead embedded at the epicenter of the web of hairline fractures now spreading through the windowpane.

Olive drab jackets, on the other hand, aren't made of anything quite so fancy — for indeed, multilayered strips of polyethylene terephthalate, so good at repelling water, wind, and the elements, can withstand quite little punishment in the grand scheme of things. Which might be why the bullet from Diesel's gun finds itself at the epicenter of a sudden spray of blood that explodes from the pilot's taut stomach to wet the ground with red-hot rain —

"GUN!" screams Sholty, a half-second later, charging toward the pilot without waiting for orders to engage, heedless of the fact that she might well still be firing. He's moving to knock it away even as Diesel lines up another shot, muscle-memory taking over.

And inside, Eleven breathes deeply beneath her covers as her eyes flutter in the vivid dream-sleep of REM.

Holy crap! "Ensign!" Ack, no! Lunair bolts in, "Stop, don't shoot her again!" She's going to tackle Tisiphone, a little too late to stop her from getting shot in the gut at least. So much for nonlethal subduing. Lunair curses herself and her slowness. She spots Diesel about to make the kill shot though and moves to stop /him/ at least.

BANG. BANG.

Junior Lieutenant Apostolos doesn't seem to notice the sudden explosion of activity around her. There's not a flicker in the flat grey eyes; not a flinch to her stance. She stays there, in firing position, as if it was a paper cylon pinned up in front of her, less than ten yards away.

BANG. BANG.

The bullet, however — THAT she notices, and stumbles back, starting to crumple as Sholty rushes her. She fires again, high and wide — BANG — as she's tackled. There's an airless grunt as she hits the ground, leaving a skid of arterial red blood smeared across the floor.

And still she doesn't release the gun, trying to struggle free for another shot. The glass is cracking. If she fires long enough, she'll get one through.

No she won't — because shattered though the glass may look, the pilot is engaged in the far more deadly equivalent of battering one's head against a wall in the hopes that by some miraculous quantum alignment of molecules and atoms one's flesh and bone might punch through hopelessly solid brick. Still the glass fractures, though, each crackle and pop sounding impossibly loud in the sudden cacophony: spiteful, tantalizing mockery, as every sound hints that maybe, just maybe, she's managed to do what she came here to do —

Pop. Down goes Diesel, his bullet clanging onto the deck by Tisiphone's feet before pinging into the flesh of her thigh, his body thrown backwards by an onrushing Lunair. She's stronger than she looks.

Creak. Down goes Sholty, his wiry body thrown across hers, his gun pressed hard into her yielding chest — and blood colors his all-black armor with a sticky, sickly wetness before he catches the woman's wrist in his furious grip.

Crack. A new fracture appears in the glass, splitting Eleven's figure in two while the Cylon herself sleeps on and on and on.

And that's just the first second after the eighth bullet is fired.

Dang. Lunair wishes she could sleep like that. Either way, everything seems to goes a million miles a moment. But at the same time? It's so very slow. "Ensign, stop! That's an order!" Is her voice even her own? It's more of a thunderous bark than one suspects would come from her, and it's almost like Lunair is watching herself yell as she tackles poor Diesel. Wait, she's still on top of the guy. Her eyes widen a second. Um. Frak! She grits her teeth. "Need some back up in here," She barks. "And a medic!" Where is this noise coming from? She's so dizzy, it feels strange.

She's the best beast of finely-honed reflexes the Colonial Fleet can buy, for half a million cubits and change, and strong for her size — but Tisiphone's size is still /small/, no matter how hard she tries to convince the universe otherwise. The tendons in her wrist tighten like quivering piano wire as she strains, twists, kicks her booted feet to try to find some purchase.

Nothing. Useless. As useless as the bullets flattened against the glass the abomination continues to sleep behind. All she needed was one. All IT needed was one.

She tries to push up and her elbows slip against the floor — who was mopping, where's the SLIPPERY WHEN WET sign? — and she flops back, eyes rolling back in a rapidly-paling head.

Diesel's had the wind knocked out of him and really isn't in a condition to do much of anything, what with the lieutenant perched atop his fallen body; Sholty's still wrestling with the pilot for control of the gun, which now slips from Tisiphone's grasp before clattering — uselessly — to the deck. "Make safe the weapon," the young man wheezes, breathing heavily, rolling over so he can flop onto his back. The snaps on his rifle jingle merrily in the sudden silence.

As for the others? The sergeant has already retrieved the pistol, spinning its old-fashioned magazine to void it of bullets; the last man — having had his gun trained on the brawlers — makes a dash for the hatch, doubtlessly to inform those More Senior of the clusterfrak that just went down in Eleven's cell.

And the Cylon sleeps tonight.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License