| The High Road's Closed For Repairs |
| Summary: | The airbus repair team hits a bump in the road. EVENT (ST: Evandreus) |
| Date: | 9 Jun 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Kythera logs; eventually followed by Before the Cock Crows |
| Players: |
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| Junkyards in Kythera - Leonis |
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| Everything one would expect of a post-Apocalyptic junkyard. Well, other than radioactive Rottweilers and/or Fred Sanford. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #102 |
It's hard for any particular portion of a town that's been half-blown-to-shit by cylons to look much shadier than any other portion of town, but this place sure seems to be trying. As the bullet-riddled red truck Bunny appropriated rollputters along through the Piazza Pandora and around into an alley to head north, the mountains become more prominent on the horizon, and the near landscape becomes all ghostly brick buildings and yards surrounded by chain-link and, in some cases, barbed wire fences, whose ill-repair obviously predates the attacks, rust eating eagerly away at metals. The great wide shipyards in the once-better-maintained flatlots have been summarily rendered into so many craters, out in the distance. But here the small industry of junk-trading had once thrived, and the little lots have been left for the most part alone, to allow time and weather to carry on breaking down the little junkyards that line the broad streets.
Bunny, for his part, seems a great deal more lively than he had been. Which isn't saying much. But he's alive and awake and behind the wheel, bustling them along up north and finally pulling off of the road into an unpaved drive, the truck bounding this way and that over the uneven earth heading up to a long, narrow brick and corrugated tin shed.
"You pick the real classy parts of town to wander in, Doe," Haeleah comments from where she rides in the truck. "I think you're lucky the planet was bombed before you logged any time here. I bet it actually improved the safety of these here streets." She idly twirls a dark curl around one finger as they ride. If she was a decade and change younger, she'd probably be asking 'Are we there yet?' ad nauseam. She definitely gives the impression of having been one of those Those Kids. "How many boats you figure are left here for us, anyway?"
Gentleman that he is — hey, it happens — Trask has relinquished the shotgun spot to the snipe. This suits him fine, really, as that means he's riding in the flatbed with the rest of the repair crew. The rear window is cracked open, so he can converse with those in the cabin. "Are we there yet?" Leave it to him to give an adult voice to that timeless question, with all the cheeky aplomb of little boy intentionally being annoying.
"There were three that looked like they could probably get in the air with less than a months' repairs. There was one I tried my best to patch together the last time we came through — it looked like the best bet, to me, but I'll let you guys pick your pony," Evan murmurs to the woman in the blood-stained passenger seat. Not like the driver's seat isn't blood-stained. And the bed's not without its share of red, either. "Keep your boots tied, Saturday," Evan then lifts his voice to reply to Kal, trying to josh around with him after his usual fashion, but it just comes out sounding tired, instead.
He eases off the gas over one last stomach-hiccuping hillock, and the truck drifts to a stop up alongside the long shed, in a spot where many a set of four wheels has found respite, from the divots in the packed soil. "This is it." And, indeed, from up in the bed of the truck comes enough of a vantage point to see six large sets of hinged steel doors recessed into the earth, one after another down the field of yellow, dead scrub. The docks themselves below ground. Evan shoves open his door and crawls out, heading for the door to the shed and lifting the heavy duty codelock sealing it shut, beginning to work it with his fingers.
Haeleah gets a chuckle out of Trask's comments from the bed. Hey, she's happy someone's obliging with the typical car-trip-drone. But she stops chattering, and playing with her hair, as they pull into Evan's found-garage. Door open, out she hops, hauling her engineering kit with her with a grunt. She's also brought her rifle and pistol along. On Leonis, she doesn't travel far without them. "How many folks you figure your number-one best bet can carry?" she asks. "There're a lot of civilians still left on this rock, and I figure a few of them might want a change of scenery."
The ride over was uneventful, which is to say there was neither sight nor sound of Centurions or Raiders. Even so, the moment they arrive at the facility, Bootstrap and several others are conducting a security sweep of the perimeter. Some time later, he rejoins the pilot and the engineer. "All's clear on the western, eastern, northern, and southern fronts, an' all those in-between." That relayed, he readies his rifle, just in case more than those ships are behind Door Number One.
"Technically? Airbus sits forty-four, plus two pilots up front and four vertical seats for waitstaff. If people don't mind getting to know each other a little better, though, we could probably squeeze in another fifteen to twenty. Won't be very safe, but at that point," Evan grunts as he pulls the lock open and opens the door. Nothing but dark, in there, but the sun helps, some, illuminating a mostly-empty corridor down to a sturdier hatch. "At that point people be so packed I doubt they'd feel a jostle for all the wall-to-wall people. Besides which, it'd be safer than staying here."
He gets down before the hatch and squints at it in the dim light as he levers in the code, four pumps on this handle, seven on the next, three on the third, one more on the first, two more on the second, one more on the— SCREEE! The sound of metal hinges turning barely dawns on the Bunny as the hatch suddenly and violently opens — from the inside — as he's trying to finish entering the code, tossing him back onto the dusty floor of the corridor.
"YOU BEEN TOUCHIN' MY SHIT!?" comes the needlessly thuggish cry of a pale, decently muscled fellow, whose bleached-blonde hair's grown out to show mousy brown roots, and shorn back close to his head again, ridges of the pale blonde still visible. He wields a monster of a one-handed weapon his right hand, wears a stained white wifebeater and jeans in which another weapon's been tucked in a fashion that looks more intimidating than safe. Drawn gun veers toward the bunny on the ground, and then the other one's drawn and is waving in the general direction of the others. "WHO BEEN TOUCHIN' MY SHIT!? I'MMA FUCK YOUR BITCH ASS!"
Bunny, for his part, unarmed since Rutger Tower, just holds up his repair kit over his head and tries to look non-threatening.
"That many? Frak, if it's safer than Irradiated Genocidal Robot Planet, I'd take it," Haeleah says, a little grin coming to her face. She looks almost hopeful. She reaches into her kit and plucks out a flashlight. She's been trying to conserve the battery, but she still gives it a shake to jog its juices. So it's not actually /on/ when Wifebeater Man stirs. "Whoa!" She brandishes it, remembering a moment too late that flashlight does not equal gun. Off, right hand reaches for her pistol. Though she does holler rather than shoot first. "We are Colonial Military personnel of the Battlestar Cerberus. We're here to… help. I don't want to touch you."
"Yeah…" Trask begins in that 'so sorry, you lose, thank you for playing' tone he tends to adopt when things are not going to go the recipient's way. "That's not gonna happen. See, you'll be ruined for all others when Sir Rodney, here," that would be the automatic rifle full of AP rounds that is currently aimed at the aggressive man's face at near point-blank range the moment a weapon is drawn on Evan, "finishes skullfrakking your brains out. Seeing that he /really/ likes it rough, you might wanna lower your weapons before he gets so excited that he blows his load."
"I'm down for makin' it an orgy, man," cracks Croke, who also has his weapon drawn.
It's certainly got the guy's attention, this reception, and his second gunhand wanders in aim from person to person until he's counted up the number of guns drawn at him. "Frakking Curlies," he finally deliberates, spitting on the ground with at least enough foresight in the face of all that weaponry to keep it off of the guy on the ground, even as he pulls out that less-than-pleasant epithet for Colonial military sorts. "All up in my shit." Guns stay out, but lower to less threatening angles, slowly. "The frak you're gonna help me. I got the shit. You're gonna take it."
"We're not here to steal anything," Haelaeh says. Which… may not be exactly true in a literal sense. But she manages to at least *try* to sound reassuring. Her pistol's out now but not actually aimed at the squatter. "Look, this place is pretty frakked up, right? If you want to get out of here, we can maybe help you out." She even tries to sound magnanimous.
The ECO's aim does not waver, but neither does the somewhat conversational nature of his tone. "If by 'the shit' you mean one of those broke-down transports we're aimin' to fix: that we are. However, according to the Articles of Colonization, it's not considered stealing when being commandeered for military use to get civilians to a rendez-vous point for planetary extraction. Be a good boy an' we'll take you, too. /Or/ you can pick what's behind Door Number Two, but only if you're an utter moron and/or have a fetish for sucking the nozzle of an automatic assault rifle like you were auditioning for Cock Slurping Sluts VII."
That all said, Trask then actually acts like he probably should. "Are you or anyone else on these premises in need of medical attention? Toad here's a corpsman, which means he can pump someone full of bullet holes /and/ also stitch them up."
"I'm really good at my job," Croke beams, still aiming.
Evandreus is still not doing much, though, as the imminent threat seems to have passed, he rolls to his side and shoves up with his elbow, turning his back toward the fight as he reaches up for a railing and pulls himself to his feet, sedately enough dusting himself down as the others continue negotiations.
"Like SHIT." Yup. Zeager doesn't seem in the least bit convinced of that. "You all been down here while I was out makin' a run to the Ward," he accuses them. "I'm not givin' you shit ass fraks nothin' you can't just bust your ass in here and take." He's becoming agitated, again. If he could ever have been said to be less agitated to begin with. "The frak you guys get in here? I left the place locked and the lock weren't bust when I got back."
"It's just me. An' I don't need shit a you, frakhole," Zeager wheels on Trask, masculinity suitably affronted by the ECO's insinuations, gun coming up again in a thoroughly phallic display, his eyes wide and dilated in the dark. "Get the frak outta my face, slothorse!"
Zeager's finger draws back on the trigger too early, sending a spray of bullets rummaging into the brick wall of the little hutch, the force of the gun going off shrugging his shoulder back and twisting his torso, making Trask's attempted blow with the butt of his rifle whiff at the air even as the agitated fellow jerks back at the display, losing his balance and tangling with the ECO as he falls, bringing him down with him in a less-than-dignified heap. Now— NOW Bunny's alarmed, and he turns back around, cringing down at the spray of bullets, "Boots!" he calls, trying to sort out what's going on, knees bracing feet against the floor in readiness to go get him.
Oh, for frak's sake. That's what goes through Kal's mind the moment he realizes that Zeager is gonna be a colossal dumbass. It's been some seven years since the Taurian last physically assaulted someone — and that someone was his father, and that incident resulted in beating said man into bloody unconsciousness and the ICU — but a long-standing victim of domestic violence develops a sixth sense about such threats. Life in the military rubbed off some of the rough edges, but his instincts remain sharp. Unfortunately, instincts alone are not enough to avert what happens. They do, however, enable the ECO to react quickly enough that he takes full advantage of his better positioning atop his would-be target and assailant.
Maneuvering to pin the other man's arms with his knees, Trask then lays his rifle across the guy's neck, making it evident that he could very easily crush the windpipe. "El-tee," he calls out to Haeleah, "confiscate his weapons," which he should no longer be holding thanks to the spill and subsequent increasing lack of oxygen. "Croke, break out the zip ties." Then, to Zeager, he adds, "Since you can't play nicely, you're gonna have a Time Out."
Haeleah instinctively ducks when the rifle fire splatters off. "Doe, careful. Stay down!" she calls, as she herself is moving forward admittedly. She steps as quick as she can, eyes squinting to get a bead on where Zeager's firearms have landed. She'll snag them if she can.
Being careful and keeping his head down are some of the Bunny's very best talents. He does look a little alarmed at finding Trask so capably crushing the man's throat with a rifle — it's not anything he's seen him do, before. But he sneaks closer, crouching down to edge one of the guns away from the guy's flailing hands, finally getting a good look at the fellow's face, and vice versa, before scooting away again, nodding to Haeleah. "I've got, uh- this one," he murmurs, as she goes to collect the other. Zeager's eyes roll back and to the side, and all he makes are choking noises, for the time being.
"Dude!" Croke exclaims, coming over to detain the 'prisoner'. "That was awesome!" The corpsman did, after all, enlist because he wanted to see action. It's something that several people find a bit unnerving. "Seriously, you more than made-up for missing him with the gun."
Trask makes certain to not cause any serious damage, but he does wait until Zeager isn't about to put up a fight before he eases off and lets the medic handle the restraints. "Check 'im for the onset of radiation sickness. He could just be violent and paranoid because he's from such a shit place," and the ECO definitely knows what that's like, "but we need to know if it's something else." Swiss-cheese brains cannot be helped.
Haeleah holsters her pistol so she can heft Zeager's gun less awkwardly. "I thought this place was supposed to be deserted. You think he's got… friends anywhere back here?" She eyes Zeager. Using the term 'friends' as loosely as possible. "If he's not completely mentally wrecked, maybe we can get some useful info out of him." She can't quite make herself believe that, but she seems to feel obligated to say it. "He might be calmer once he's slept off this bout of crazy."
<OOC> Evandreus says, "He's been underground most of the time, here, and so he's more or less okay on the radiation front. But he's on a crapload of drugs. Seems like this place doubled as a center of distribution. There's a mad sack of just about anything, down in the docks."
<OOC> Haeleah says, "Sweet, we get a drug plane."
"Doubtful," is Trask's simple reply. "He'll wake up pissed off and wantin' to cut my balls off. That's just how it is with guys like him." Spoken from first-hand experience. "If his sense of self-preservation is stronger than his machismo, he can probably be persuaded to cooperate, provided he feels he's gettin' somethin' outta it. Odds are he's just gonna be a dick, though. Guys like that," he adds, a bit pointedly whilst shouldering his rifle, "they respect force. The catch-22 is that they despise the people who manage to wield it over them." Evidently, he's not really thinking that Zeager is suffering from radiation sickness. There is a distinct lack of skin lesions.
"I think he's high, yo." That's Croke's initial assessment.
The ECO smirks in a 'see?' sort of way. Surprised, he is not. "No way of doing a tox screen for that kind of shit, so we'll just have to deal with 'im as though he's on the rampaging elephant stuff. Maybe we'll luck out and he won't remember what happened. At the very least, we have a detoxing junkie for entertainment in lieu of music." Looking towards the entrance, Trask decides, "Right. We'll do a security sweep. Then, we'll get to the /real/ work."
Evandreus is still sort of trying to figure out what to do with the thing he'd picked up. It doesn't fit in his missing sidearm's holster. And so he just keeps it down, chin tipped down to watch it, only peeking up and to the side a few times as Zeager gets festooned up in the translucent ribbons. "I dunno," he tells Haeleah. "There wasn't anyone here when we got in, before," he reports. Zeager seems for a moment to be trying to cough out some sort of vocalization, eyes vaguely focusing in the direction of the group as it re-assembles itself near the hatch down into the grounddocks. It's not much, but it catches Evan's attention, at least, and he looks back in that direction with a curious and almost disdainfully mismatched quirking of eyebrows.
Haeleah makes an "Ugh" sound at the high pronouncement. "Kulko and Oberlin are going to love him," she mutters, with palpable sarcasm. Though she seems to have made the leap of assuming that they're taking him back. She also actually takes a good look at the weapon she grabbed for the first time. Checking if it's loaded with any more ammunition, foremost. "Real work sounds real good right about now, Trask. I came for an air bus. Maybe this guy just found his way here after you came and went, Doe. This is as good a squatting location as anything else left in this neighborhood."
"Dunno. Don't care." Truly, Trask doesn't. "If he wants to stay here so he can either starve to death or o.d., that's his call. If he wants to come with us, he's gonna have to behave. Considering that sobering up is part of behaving, I suspect he'll tell us to go frak ourselves." And that's that. The subject is now off the table and not simply because he preps his rifle and commences a security sweep of the building.
"Maybe so," Evan answers Haeleah, slowly, as if considering the prospect carefully. Of course, the locks weren't broken when they got here, but Evan, for his part, either misses the fact or doesn't seem interested in bringing it up. Especially not now that the man in question is sleeping. Cautious, now, he follows the team down into the docks, keeping to the back, just in case.
But there's nobody else here. Just the six airbuses in various states of disarray — and the drugs, of course. Mostly of the recreational variety. Though there are several crates of hot scrips lurking about if people with a medical background are interested in sorting through the collection: painkillers and anti-depressants, and other substances useful for more than just a high.