aaaaaaaagh_sky | National Guard Depot

The door that opens is not, strictly speaking, a door. Ellen wasn't able to find a working one near enough the National Guard building to use, so she had to fall back on the mouth of the drainage pipe that led out of Rock Creek Caverns. "Sorry about the smell," Ellen murmurs, "and the wet feet. This was the best access point I could get us."

Crossposts: http://aaaaaaaagh-sky.livejournal.com/58901.html

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From:

luvs_yogurt

Better that corpse than his. Michael groans loudly and rolls toward it, wincing when his weight catches the shrapnel in his back and digs it deeper in the cut. Not his best luck today.

"Tell me what to do, boss," he forces a smile; "my first time being radioactive and all..."

From:

ihavemyflaws

All those people on all those planets: if they didn't die in an explosion and weren't killed by Cylon patrols after the fact, that is how they'd die: withering from the effects of radiation, the slower killer.

She makes the effort not to think about that.

By this point it's no surprise that Ellen's prepared for something like this, so as advised -- no anti-rads in her system right now -- she keeps a reasonable distance.

"Frak me." The corpse on the floor wouldn't have looked good even before Wolfwood and Michael got to it. "How was that thing alive?"

From:

cbucsrule

Frak her, frak him, frak that thing, whatever it is -- Glowing One, Ellen called it -- and frak this whole frakking place. Half of him wants to admit that Kara was right, this was a really bad idea, and next time he listens to her when she says that but the other half? It's godsdamn stubborn, man, and he knows -- he frakking knows -- the only way he stands a chance back home is to toughen the frak up and do as much of this kind of shit as he can while he has the chance. Still, he moves to Kara's side, relaxes his weapon just for a moment, and tries to keep the... the disbelief and horror off his face. This place, man, it's a lot worse than he imagined. Is this what Caprica's gonna be like in a couple hundred years? He won't be around to see it, but someone might. For a moment, just one, he gives himself the luxury of touching Kara's arm. She's real. She's here. She's unharmed. She makes sense to him, at least, even if nothing else does.

Looks like their little moment of too quiet to be good was too quiet to be good, but not for their team. For this one, but now the five of them are together again and five is a number he's used to working with. It's comfortable, it's familiar, it's easy. It works.

"You good?" he asks Wolfwood. The guy looks okay, but everyone's full of surprises and he wouldn't put it past anyone to be, do, or say anything.

From:

fullofmercy

"I'm fine."

He is. He always is, regardless of the way his shoulder aches, and it's not him, or his suit, or the Punisher he's concerned about. He's watching Ellen take care of Michael, and only after she sets to work does he look up at the other two, a tiny, unamused smile curving his mouth in a thin line.

"Everybody still in one piece? That's not too bad, considering. Surely statistics were against us."

Aren't they always?

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"It's a ghoul," Ellen says absently as she digs out the IV bag of straw-orange fluid. "It's what happens when a human is exposed to enough radiation to kill them and isn't lucky enough to die. The really irradiated ones develop a capacity for releasing some of that energy in pulses- I don't know how it works. I've never heard of a Glowing One being lucid enough to explain it, and once they're dead dissecting them's a problem because of the radiation. This one must have been trapped in here some time ago and couldn't get out..."

She's got a small bottle of pure alcohol in her storage deck along with everything else; it'll do for an antiseptic at the site. "Okay, Michael. Hold still. This is going to be painful going in, and then it won't hurt any more until after the drip is done. You're going to have a very, very bad time in the men's room the next two or three days, though. I'm sorry, it's a side effect of the medicine."

"I'll get you a stimpak as well. That's going to have to go in the other arm. It'll accelerate the body's healing processes and close up your wounds in a matter of minutes. Bones knitting will take a little longer, but if there are any broken ones now, they won't be by the time I'm done."

She glances up at the rest of the room and notes, "At least you found the storage rooms. I haven't seen this many suits of combat armor since we drove Talon Company out, let alone this many guns."

From:

luvs_yogurt

"Beats the alternative," he groans softly, focusing on anything but the people that are seeing him flat on his back and holding back the pain and sickness; "hold off on the stimpack a minute."

No stranger to an IV and more used to field medicine than actual doctors, Michael shifts his arm to maintain the blood flow without knocking the site as he rolls onto his injured side.

"Took some shrapnel outside," he mutters, reaching back to tear away the dark, bloody fabric. Before anyone else jumps in, he removes the square shard of metal and throws it on the floor and then flops back down.

His hand shaking and bloody, he gives Ellen a bitter grin and mutters; "Now I'll have the drugs, please."

From:

ihavemyflaws

"Helps that everything we found in here was pretty mindless," she comments to Wolfwood, watching as Michael digs the shrapnel out. "Even the robot with the brain attached."

(Two weeks since all hell broke loose and she feels more used to people dying than getting injured.)

When she turns, her eyes linger on Sam's for a split second, eyebrows up as if to prove a stubborn point. Sounds like Michael'll be fine after a few days and she won't deny that she's shocked by what Ellen says she's able to do to help him, but she's still gonna bet these stimpak things couldn't raise the godsdamn dead.

With an unexpected ghoul tucked away in here she trusts downtime even less, especially with two of the party preoccupied. But that doesn't stop her from turning away and taking a look around, because Ellen's not kidding: there's a frakton of guns in here.

From:

cbucsrule

He gets it, he gets the message loud and clear. Coming here: bad idea. Stupid idea.

For her too, and when Kara turns to start gathering supplies, he figures he might as well do the same thing. Especially now that he knows Ellen's got a card-sized way of transporting everything back. He answers Wolfwood's question with a nod. They made it okay. Ellen took the brunt of things 'cause she's the one in the high-performance armor, but they all did okay.

One of these days, he might have the luxury of plenty of time to compare and contrast rifles and sub-machine guns, but that day isn't today; they all go in a pile together. He picks what looks like a little doll -- a kid's toy -- off a shelf and wonders for a moment what the frak it's doing in an armory. Something, so he adds it to their inventory. Ellen can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down: he's just following orders.

The injury to Michael is nothing he hasn't seen before. Radiation poisoning, shrapnel and other projectile injuries, the way blood blossoms over clothing, all that's familiar as frak to him and he wishes it wasn't, but that's life and it's better than the alternative. He takes just a moment to crouch down at the guy's side, tap him on the leg once gently. It's acknowledgment and solidarity, that's all. Any sympathy, that can come later. He knows well enough to know that in the moment, that's probably the last thing the guy wants.

"You're in good hands."

Then he's back to the mission at hand. Ellen's people need as much of this shit as they can gather.

From:

fullofmercy

Michael's all right, at least for the moment -- no last rites here, and not for a partner, of sorts, and that's a small favor.

A larger one is this room they've found: Ellen's right, the place is jampacked full of stuff, and while she's taking care of Michael, he joins the other two with ransacking the place. The guns are nothing he particularly recognizes, but then, how's that different from anything else in this Godforsaken hellhole?

He doesn't need to know what they are, anyway, just needs to load them up as efficiently as possible and get the hell out of here and back to the Bar. That's what she's paying him for, and it's what he'll do.

Even if he finds himself wondering just what the differences might actually be between this place and the one the settlers left so long ago.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

As the last of the Rad-Away drip finishes, Ellen slides the needle out of Michael's arm and says, "Just apply direct pressure there. The stimpak will close the injection site without a need for bandages. And if you have pain after that, let me know. I've got Med-X."

When she's done, and sure that Michael's healed, she comes to her feet and starts on a sweep of the room. Not that anything's likely to be hiding in here, it would've attacked by now, but... well, it doesn't hurt to try.

And sure enough, in the dimmer parts of the back, beyond the shelves of guns and armor, there's one last door. This one is steel, and heavy, and its lock is held not by tumblers but by a magnetic system of some kind- one controlled, it seems, by a computer terminal set into the nearby wall.

Oh, how Ellen wishes she could crack her knuckles in this armor. It seems the thing to do before settling in to have Words with the computer about how it really, really, really wants to turn off the current, open the door, and let them see what's on the other side.

From:

luvs_yogurt

The unfamiliar touch doesn't comfort him, but he gets it for what it is - a guy saying 'hey, we made it and we're still alive even though you were stupid and clearly wanted to die'. He manages to sit up easily enough and while his guts might still be a mess and the cut on his back has somehow faded to little more than the red slice of maybe a scratch, he feels a little twitchy - jumpy, ready to get up and move.

Thankfully, he's smart enough to know that right now sitting with his back against the wall and watching the others loot the place makes a lot more sense.

When he sees Ellen sit down at the terminal, his curiosity gets the better of him and hauls himself up to watch quietly over her shoulder at the interesting combination of keystrokes. The shell itself is unlike any network he's used before - not like any software he's seen in it's simplicity and single minded purpose.

From:

ihavemyflaws

The smoothness of Michael's recovery is one of the most surreal things about this trip. And these people living here -- people advanced enough to make what's practically miracle drugs after a nuclear holocaust -- are almost strangers to space travel? Not what she expected.

She trains her rifle on the door, waiting. She won't be surprised if Ellen can get them in, but she will be a little surprised if a door important enough to require hacking doesn't have some kind of fail-safe.

Maybe in the form of a robot on the other side.

From:

cbucsrule

If he hadn't seen the stimpak in action before, hadn't dosed Ellen himself, he'd be sitting and watching the thing work. Michael should be sitting and watching the thing work, but it's hard to sit still when there's shit going on. That's why he's here, and he's guessing that's why almost everyone's here.

Personally, he's not all that interested in computers or in hacking into their systems. Hasn't missed them back home, except in the abstract, 'cause they've got more important things to do. Just like here. He finishes gathering up what he can and like before, separates it into discrete piles.

Until Kara goes on alert with her rifle. She knows what she's doing, and he... has to learn somehow, and this is way frakking better than trying out fancy tricks from movies on unsuspecting toasters. This is real-time training and if he doesn't pick up hints and tips from this, he's hopeless. So he stands, grenade at the ready in his throwing hand and rifle in the other. There'll be time to catch up with whatever the frak happened outside later.

From:

fullofmercy

It's pretty damn impressive. A radiation bath like that should have killed anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way, but Michael's sitting up, moving careful, yeah, but moving, and he's got to admit, it's a relief.

What can he say? Considering he's known the guy for all of a week or so, they've been through some hairy times, and Wolfwood sort of owes him.

Hard to pay back a favor to a dead man.

Tossing a gun onto a pile of...similar guns, he guesses...he catches sight of Ellen's task, and slips out a handgun from the crossarms, holding it easy but ready. A glance at Michael shows him the guy's still there, and if anything comes through the door, it'll hit them before him, which isn't much, but it's...

Well, yeah. Not much.

Nothing he can do about that.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

The terminal pings angrily once. Then twice, and Ellen either mutters under her breath or sucks a breath between her teeth. Hard to say, through the helmet's filters. At least there's no third ping; when she settles in to have at the terminal a third time, she finally trips the code correctly, and the magnetic locks disengage. She reaches over her shoulder for the Gauss rifle and waits for the door to slide open....

... and nothing comes out of the musty-smelling darkness on the other side but the smell of earth and damp.

Well, that's... something, at least. Although now she wants to know what in the dickens these people were thinking, to carve a tunnel into the underlying bedrock here without bothering to finish the walls or properly brace the ceiling. She turns to the left and then the right, spilling her helmet's light over-

"Huh. Looks like somebody thought they'd have their own private Vault here," she notes as the light plays over a heap of human bones at the foot of a cabinet full of military manuals. "Guess he was wrong.... at least he had reading material."

She'll include the skeleton in the last rites, once they've stripped all the books and all the energy cells and all the guns and absolutely everything else from the place, but for now it's just one more unfortunate thing in a very unfortunate place. It happens.

From:

luvs_yogurt

Seeking shelter, it's the human way - they probably should have made better considerations before holing up.

"Okay, guys..." he murmurs when his eyes find several small, bomb-shaped rounds. "Are those bombs?"

Not that it'd be the strangest part of his day to find undetonated bombs, but it would rank up there.

From:

ihavemyflaws

Her only real acknowledgment of how anticlimactic this seems is the skeptical arch of her eyebrows.

Michael's question gets her attention, though, and her eyes scan for what prompted it.

"Bringing your bombs into your bunker." She can't help a slight shake of her head. "Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it."

From:

cbucsrule

Gods, this place, this frakking place. Bombs or not -- he's pretty much numbed to all of it by now -- he can't take his eyes off the skeleton.

"Frak of a way to go." All alone, locked up in a small dark space, running out of air? Not his idea of a good time, man, reading material or not. Give him fresh air and green grass and sunshine. He's about ready for a dose of it now. They've been down here a while.

From:

fullofmercy

There are few things more sobering than finding the abandoned body of a fellow human. It happens, occasionally, in the desert: some poor soul lost and wandering and dead of dehydration or exposure, or who'd run into the wrong gang, and the question he always finds himself asking is...do they really find Paradise?

Or are they just dead?

Eternal salvation; how does that work, exactly?

He finds himself mulling over the old questions again, now, as he turns back to the much more present work of going through the guns and books and anything else he can find.

From:

aaaaaaaagh_sky

"Not bombs, exactly." Ellen clanks over to where the things are stacked. "Mini nukes. About the smallest known size you can build a nuclear warhead and get an atomic reaction instead of just a radioactive mess."

She picks up a complicated assembly of pipes and tubes, a little like a big metal cradle and a lot like a large rifle-grip firearm. As she seats it against her shoulder, it becomes obvious that any one of the oval things would fit in that cradle perfectly.

"This is a Fat Man launcher. Doesn't work with anything but mini-nukes. Never used one myself, but I've seen them in action. He must've expected to have to fight his way out."

After a moment's thought, she puts the launcher down again.

"I'll... probably break that down for parts. The Wasteland doesn't need any more of those things on the loose. Let's just gather up everything else and get back to the Bar- I think we're done here."

And nobody needs to stay in this wretched pit any longer than they've already done. She owes them a quick return, at the very least.