The wherren follow Davis' suggestion and start moving the Imperial weaponry away from the prisoners. They do this by simply taking the gear for themselves, and in a few moments the six wherren are draped with SCAR, Turai beamer, stinger, and a mix of their own spears and Turai swords. Arketta and Swims stalk out of the trees and join them. Swims explains that it's not looting time, and he and Arketta remove the fuel rods from the Imperial beamers and the ammo packs from the stingers. They let the wherren keep the swords.
"Captain, they're still running IFF on these," Arketta informs the team.
"So they can use them in trade," Swims explains. "The tribes can kill each other but not Imperials."
They then start patting down the prisoners who are currently outside. The Turai are stripped down to their undersuits, and after a minute of having no environmental controls, one of the Turai peels off that as well and just stands there naked. The fun surprise is the male Keeper - Arketta finds a stinger, two popguns, and a knife in his sweaty robes. "Coward," he spits at Hale as he's led to join his 'comrades'. "There's almost as many of us as there are of them, and you just stood there."
"That is what they expect," Hale whispers back. "That we fight and die. Oblige them if you like."
---
Back at the barracks, Cowboy edges up to the open hatchway. Zaef doesn't get all the hand signals the bearded commando is using, but he gets the general idea and stacks up on the opposite side. If there's a fight inside, it'll be close enough quarters that Zaef feels better with his blades than with the bulkier "Tenner" rifle. He nods to Cowboy, who calls inside.
"Listen up! Anybody in there, come out with yer hands above your heads! Do it now!" They wait and listen, but the only noise is the whirr of A/C leaking from the wide-open front hatch. Cowboy shakes his head. "Come out! If ya'll make me come in there, I'm gonna have ta shoot ya!"
They wait once again, and like before, there is no response. "Dumbshits," Cowboy curses. He bangs the room and spins around the doorway. Zaef is a step behind. In the clearing, the prisoners flinch at the flashbang and turn to look at the barracks.
In nightvision green, Cowboy surveys the empty barracks. A welcome cool breeze from the environmental systems runs through the center of the hab-building. There are six bunk beds and three more folding beds. The folding beds are arranged around a small portable holosystem, and from the arrangement it looks like they might have been used more for couches while watching the entertainment holos. Zaef takes a quick look at the data - looks like the bulk of it's just porn.
What's more worrisome is that there's armory space to outfit a full twelve-person Quad of Turai, and all the gear is gone.
"Maybe what some of us expect, Rav-Turai Hale," Davis says quietly, careful to make sure he's off vox. "I expect you to act like decent human beings, and know enough to prioritize the safety of those you command over needless loss of life. My first concern is the completion of the mission, but given a choice, I would greatly prefer to see you, your men, and the others in this camp safely off this planet. Any unnecessary death in a mission, on either side, is a failure on the part of the commander, is it not?"
Cowboy's not so quick to call the barracks secure, knowing if they're A/C running through the building, there's duct work too...though he's not openly stating that fact. The Texan gives the situation a quick search before exiting the barracks, checking the area for recent signs of activity; warm coffee cups, half-lit cigarettes...that sort of thing.
The barracks is clear; the vent systems aren't big enough for a person and they're just spraycrete over a metal skeleton. No basement, no secret hideaways. Cowboy does turn up signs that half the occupants have recently left. The disheveled beds are still warm and discarded sleeping clothes lie everywhere near the armor lockers. It's hard to tell which direction they might have took, because the grass at the entrance has been flattened by months of feet tramping in and out of the hab. A more thorough search out away from the buildings and Imperial patrol routes would take time, but might turn up clues.
---
Hale gives Davis the "why did he pick me to talk to" look. "Sure, but I'm hardly the Keeper's commander. Weren't you talking to the Samal?" Davis thinks about that for a second. Varna has been taking his sweet time "explaining things" to the dome inhabitants.
"Samal Varna, we need you to come out of the dome now, with the people inside if you can," Davis voxes. "We will come in there to bring you out, if you need assistance, but I need you to come outside now."
*Yes, I understand.* Then as if he's speaking to someone inside but not bothering to cut off the vox, *Do as they say. Open the door.* Varna cuts off the vox after that and the dome maintenance bay panel flickers to life. A moment later, the large door begins to crank open slowly, revealing a disheveled group of refugees. Blankets and makeshift cots are scattered over the bay floor, what little personal effects either lie where their owners were sleeping up until the gunfire and explosions or are clutched possessively, and eight refugees stand nervously waiting for their eyes to adjust to the moonlight. Two Keepers come down an access stairwell seconds later.
"Varna said he would be right down," one of the Keepers says. "He said he had to do somet-"
The single beamer shot from upstairs shocks the bay occupants. One puffy-eyed woman who looks like she's been crying since the Sheen attack curls up on the floor and starts these great heaving hopeless sobs.
"Goddamnit!" Davis shouts in Imperial, lets the vox hang on his vest and starts running towards the maintenance bay. He carefully weaves his way through the refugees, careful to not step on anyone or their possessions, and hauls ass up the steps to the door to what Davis assumes is the office or communications center. Halfway up the steps, he remembers where he is, and grabs his rifle from off his back.
Davis weaves his way through the refugees. He doesn't notice the man with the wild eyes. The man who's seen too much on the orbital, who's just heard the messy demise of the last vestige of Imperial authority on the planet, who sees the Homeworlder run right towards him and the small group of refugees, this man takes a step towards Davis as the spook passes through the crowd. The shiv's in his left hand. Another hand clamps down on his wrist. Davis passes, stomping up the access stairwell to the communications room on the second floor.
"Varna said," hisses the young orbital mechanic who grabbed the wild man's arm, "He said now is the wrong time. He said help is coming for us."
The exchange goes unseen, and the wild-eyed man hides the shiv once again.
Angel settles down in the jungle, keeping overwatch on the small camp while the rest of the team goes about clearing it. When the radio chatter starts up again, he frowns, and his gaze - and aim - shift ever-so-slightly to the jungle instead of the camp.
He keys the radio again, and his voice is quiet and intense.
"Not to call into question our immense tactical prowess, but didn't we leave the village because it was a great big bowl surrounded by jungle with no defensible positions?"
Cowboy and Zaef watch the treeline to the south of camp. Angel scans his own areas. Whether for good or ill, Angel doesn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary, as much as you could call Whiirr ordinary. Cowboy, however, spots what could be a trail outside the Turai's normal patrol routes. It leads into the jungle, and is carefully positioned so there's no line of sight to it from where the Deltas were firing during their ambush.
Davis weaves through the refugees, who all seem to be truly shocked at Varna's apparent demise. The stairwell is narrow and cramped, clearly an afterthought in some prefabricated shelter diagram, and it seems far too long given the current situation. The hatchway at the top is closed but not locked. Glyphs on the door name the room beyond as "COMMS".
Davis carefully keys the door panel and enters the room. The comm room is at or close to the top of the dome; the walls slope in to meet at a ceiling littered with cabling that feeds an array of consoles and communications gear, all of which appears to be powered on and active. A collapsible ladder leads to a roof hatch, presumably an access shaft for the vox antenna outside. The ceiling's spattered with blood and brains, and a haze of smoke hangs in the room. On the floor lies the mostly completely headless corpse of what Davis presumes to be Samal Varna. A recently-fired beamer rifle is next to him. Davis sweeps the room quickly, but he's the only living thing inside. There is a door on the far side, which Davis quickly crosses to and checks. This hatch opens onto a much more comfortably-sized stairwell. The only sounds from this direction are the hums of equipment from downstairs and the blessed air conditioning.
Davis gets on the radio. "Swims-the-Black, I need Hale up here to make an ID, and I need you to guard the bottom of the stairwell, give us some privacy up here."
*Okay,* Swims voxes. "Come with me," he says to Hale. Several refugees get out of the big alien's way, but three or four are clamoring at Hale.
"What happened!?"
"What do we do?!"
"What are they going to do to us?!"
Hale pushes a wild-eyed man away gently, saying "I'm going up there to find out, just stay calm." Arketta moves in closer to the refugees, covering them from the outside while Swims stands guard at the stairwell.
While he's waiting for them to come up, Davis recovers the dropped weapon and checks the corpse's ID tags - it's Varna, all right. He then rips a sheet of insulation from an access panel. It's the only thing big enough to cover the dead Samal. Davis makes less progress with the communications equipment; it's definitely broadcasting some sort of message, but the entire system has been locked down.
---
"Talk to me, people," Hugh radios, hurrying along with Swims and Hale. "What's our situation?"
"Talk to me, people," Hugh radios, hurrying along with Swims and Hale. "What's our situation?"
Cowboy's crouched at the beginning of the trail and keys his radio.
"DeFranco here. I've got what could be a trail leading into the jungle that's definitely outside the Turai's normal patrol routes. It would have also been out of line of sight during our ambush...I'd like to follow it while it's fresh. Over?"
Hugh catches up to Hale in the access stairwell and follows him up to the comms room. Davis watches the Rav-Turai's face intently, but the surprise, frustration, and disappointment all seem genuine. Davis doesn't think Hale was in on Varna's suicide.
"I'm sorry, Rav-Turai," Davis says. "He was dead when I got up here."
Hale nods, choosing to believe Davis. "He was dead as soon as he surrendered to you and he knew it. I'm just surprised he actually went through with it."
"What do you mean?" Davis asks.
"And how do we keep other people from doing the same? I'm not here for a fucking suicide watch," Hugh says. "We need to clear the rest of the base, make sure nobody's getting up to dumb ideas."
Davis nods. "Yeah, we don't want anyone else to...wind up like Varna. You go ahead and clear the base, Captain Verrill. Hale and I will be fine together, right, Rav-Turai Hale?"
"If I wanted to die, I'd have shot back instead of putting down my weapons," Hale replies. "And I meant, I didn't take Varna to be someone who held honor in that much regard. But maybe he just feared what they'd do to him when they find out he lost Whiirr to rebels."
"It's okay to lose to us, trust me," Hugh says. "You two have a good time now."
Hugh hurries out of the comm room. They've got buildings to clear, and the clock's ticking.
Hugh exits the dome bay sans incident. Although several of the prisoners give him stabbin' looks, none of them actually attempt to stab Hugh with anything. He meets up with Cowboy and Zaef near the southernmost camp hab; Luis joins them after picking his way around the smoldering manta wreckage.
---
Hale watches Hugh leave, then he looks around the comm room. "So why am I up here?" he finally asks, standing easy at something close to but not quite a parade rest.
"Well, if I'm not mistaken, you're now the ranking officer here, yes?" Davis asks. "If we're all going to get along here, the people down there are going to need someone to speak for them. I know what the people I came here with need, but what I don't know is what your people need. You and I need to work together to make sure that everyone is taken care of and is safe, and that's on both sides."
Hale crouches down and lifts up the red-stained insulation. "You old bastard," he says softly to Varna. He looks at Davis. "I'm only in command of a sept of Turai," he protests. "There are far more civilians here, wouldn't Keeper Shenest be a better person for this?"
"And would this be the Keeper with his own personal armory up his robes?" Davis asks.
"No," Hale replies. "That's Hoei."
---
Like the barracks, Hab 3 also has closed shutters and a front and rear hatch. For all their technowizardry, Imperial survival habs fall victim to simplicity when it comes to doors. There are no fancy sliding mechanized doohickeys, they just open on hinges. These doors, however, are shut. Hugh and Luis approach Hab 3 from the front door, while Cowboy and Zaef stack up on the back door.
Hugh's just about to call for anyone inside to come out when he hears the unintelligible but unmistakable sound of hushed voices from inside suddenly shushing. Luis is closest to the front door; Hugh grabs the strap on the back of the medic's vest and yanks Luis back just as a stinger on full auto screams from inside. The stream of hypervelocity slivers rips a jagged, uncontrolled gash through the front door and up into the spraycrete doorjam. Unable to immediately penetrate the thicker hab walls, the stinger salvo whirlwinds around inside the closed hab, prompting a pained yelp from someone inside. At the same time, someone lets off a few blind-fire shots from a lancer - these shots do manage to blast geysers of molten foamcrete out into the clearing, missing Hugh and Luis by a wide margin.
After yanking Luis back, Hugh ducks under the hole in the door and skedaddles to the other side. With Luis and him on opposite sides of the door, Hugh yanks a flashbang out of his gear and motions for Luis to do the same. He yanks the safety pin, and then shouts "Fire in the hole!" automatically. With the precision of a well-trained team, two flashbangs get dunked through the hole. Hugh keeps his eyes closed and his mouth open as he waits for the telltale shockwave. The force of the twin blasts slams the door open, and Hugh's the first in, rifle and voice raised.
"Everybody on the ground, now!"
Noncompliance? That's a rifle butt to the face for ya.
Zaef adds a third flashbang, and Hugh enters what can only be described as pure chaos. Luis is a step behind, and the four that rebels breach Hab Three see about a dozen - specific headcounts can wait until after zipcuffs - people in various states of befuddlement, pain, and clothing stumbling, sprawling, staying very still, or trying to blindly get out the back door.
The main problem is they're blind and deaf. They can't hear Hugh shouting at them to get down, and they can't see the rifle barrels pointed at them. Two Keepers and one refugee (wearing a tattered one-sleeved skinsuit) weave drunkenly towards Zaef and Cowboy. Zaef sweeps the first guy's legs and he stays down when he hits the floor. The second Keeper trips over the first and takes himself out. Cowboy lets his sling take his rifle and grabs the woman as she reaches the doorway. He takes her arm and puts her into the muddy, soft grass, then zipcuffs her quick before she can hurt herself or anyone else. Hugh and Luis are making sure anyone with a visible weapon is dropping them by means of rifle butts. After the first few seconds, most of the people who are not already on the floor can hear just well enough to realize what's going on.
You've got an even dozen as it turns out. Eight Keepers, four of which had to be taken down and are curled up in pain or unconscious. Then four refugees - one of these is flexcuffed in the doorway and another wounded himself into submission with the poorly-aimed stinger ricochets.
"Stanhill, get that guy to triage," Hugh orders, sweeping the rooms. "Zaef, search the building for surprises. Cowboy, help me search those guys."
Hugh breaks out his flexcuffs as a warning.
"Everybody stay on the ground and make no sudden moves! You will be searched and sent outside to your comrades. If you are hurt, you will receive medical attention. Anybody tries anything, we will restrain you if we can and shoot you if we can't. We don't want to kill anyone, so keep it together and you'll be out of this mess in a minute."
Zaef draws his blades and cautiously enters the building if he thinks it's safe. He hopes that the worst he finds is more porn, but he knows better than to expect so.
Admiral Duck Sauce
