[X-COM] Five Rounds Rapid (Keith)

"Alright. Just stay there, stay calm." Keith risks a look behind him, and turning back, thumbs the mic.


"Dazed local. Looks like we want ambos, no sign of hostiles yet."
 
"Why... Why it come here?" He points to the craft. You almost think you hear something thump somewhere in the hull. "Why it come?" In the finer light of...whatever the hell dominates the corner of the ship...guy looks rough. Not wounded, but maybe sick. Goiter, perhaps. Throat swollen like a melon. Veined skin stretched over a balloon. "Why you come here?"
 
"Orders, mate," Keith replies, with a shrug a bitter smile between apology and embarassment. "I'm only here to keep the wreck from doing any more harm, getting you and your neighbours to safety."


Stil, he looks towards the hull, wary. Maybe it was just cooling metal, but...
 
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Ain't nothing on earth that glows white hot that long.


The heat is seemingly dying as the rain begins to fall anew. The sizzle of guttering flame. Guy looks pretty damned rough with each flash of lightning. Rougher, even. His throat looks like a snake's after swallowing an egg. Still, he stands there. Motionless. Watching.
 
"You O-K?" He asks, carefully. "Sick? Throat?"


This is rapidly getting to a point where Keith would tentatively consider himself out of his depth.


Almost unconsciously, he readies to fire from the hip.

Odds? @Cthulhu_Wakes
 
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Odds or evens, go ahead and write that in your post.


[dice]2803[/dice]
 
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He lurks forward, shoulders hitching, entire body shivering in extreme fits and spasms. Something thick and black dribbles from his lips and wilts the grass at his feet, smokes.


Sputum flies from his lips, gulping air and hawking a black wad of that poisonous gunk over your shoulder--God, the reek--as it smacks the craft's hull. You hear a sound like water on a skillet. He lunges forward, hissing.
 
"Jesus fuck! Hostiles in the wreckage!" Keith yells into his headset, unleashing a volley from his weapon and falling back.


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[dice]2805[/dice]
 
It's always strange, shooting a man. Movies forever make it this dramatic, squib-splattering thing when it isn't. Three puffs of dust leap from his chest, three little tears in that long, pastoral gown the shepherds wear, and a trickling of some dark not-quite-red. Slumping over, you'll hear him gasp and wheeze on the ground as a strange, light-colored fluid pools around him.


Reports of gunfire echo from the hilltop as the other engage hostiles. "Coming out of the woodwork! Chaucer, Keith, leave the civvies and withdraw. The fuck are they shooting?"


The man looks up at you, that strange yellowish blood and that caustic ichor running from his lips. "Time...to die..."

Herp derp! Initiative!


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Tell me it's an episode of Doctor Who, we've just stumbled into some frightful fuckin' excess of the BBC, Keith tells himself, putting one more bullet in the hostile and withdrawing to rejoin his squadmates.


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The corpse begins to bloat grotesquely and fart out a noxious looking cloud from all of its orifices. Chaucer is nowhere to be seen, but you spot Robinson and Clarke at the top of a nearby berm, taking careful, measured shots at hostiles peppered through the nearby rubble.


"Move your ass!" Clarke shouts into your ear.


Both men, hard men from Hereford, are losing their cool. "Fuck is Chaucer?" "Contact left!" "What the fuck are they shooting? Flares?" Green, speedy globs of brilliant light come hurtling over your head toward your comrades. Something different than the spitter you left dying in the dirt. You can feel the searing heat of them as they pass. Definitely some Doctor Who shit. The subtle crack and hiss of the air as the stuff hurtles overhead, splashing against the rocks Clarke hunkers down behind, sublimating the rock in to dust so quickly the excess heat cracks the boulder like an egg. Clarke cries out as the heated rock explodes like a grenade.


"Man down! Covering you as I can, Keith! We gotta move him!"


Robinson is firing straight over your shoulders now as you take the hill. He'll toss a satphone at you. "Call Stig, get evac in here now!"
 
Keith kneels by Clarke, quickly checking vitals and injuries before hauling him to half-standing.


"Sorry, Clarke - this'll hurt like a bastard but we can't leave you." He fingers the radio stub. "Stig, Stig; this is Bella. We need evac, now - we've got one man down and one MIA." He says, into the mic, trying to keep his voice loud enough to hear and calm enough to hear clearly.
 
A burst of calm replies sheathed in static. "Roger, Bella, roger. Relaying to Geronimo. Wait one."


Robinson hunches over, picking up Clarke's squad automatic. A continuous roar of fire replies to the strange, crackling hiss of enemy fire. "Gotta be fifteen or more down there." He says, barely letting up. Brass and links plink down the face of the rock.


Your radio lives again. "Bella, come in, this is Stig. Geronimo inbound,'--you vaguely become aware of Robinson stopping to reload--'repeat, inbound in ten, weapons free."
 
"Roger that," Keith replies, casts around for some kind of cover, somewhere to rest Clarke in order to lay down more fire. Besides, hauling him around like this is bloody bad for his injuries. The smell of the enemy fire, the the rock dust, the hissing green bolts is all too surreal. It becomes almost calming, dreamlike.
 
The odd susurrous of fire, blending of light, and the hiss of these strange bolts of energy--seriously, what is that?--makes it all too apparent that Robinson has utterly stopped firing. White smoke billows from his slumped body, the barrel of the SAW buried, half-melted, in the burnt-white grass. His torso a horror to look at. Worse than phosphorus, whatever hit him, whatever those bolts are.


"Bella Bella, this is Stig, report!"
 
"One wounded, and... fuck me, Robinson's dead," Keith replies through clenching teeth, trying to get Clarke behind cover and then firing a volley at the enemy. Almost impossible to see in all of this, but those projectiles give away a shooter's location like nobody's business.
 
There must be ten, twenty of them huddle around the wrecks of that strange craft.


"Inbound, Bella, inbound, they'll be there in eight, hold tight!" He pauses. "...Whoa..."


A dull roar becomes readily apparent as you trade rounds with the assailants. Like hearing jets lifting off from Heathrow, deep, throaty. Somewhere overhead...suddenly blinding white lights, searchlights, brushing the plain, you, then settling on the craft before the source cuts out. Lancets of green plasma climb up to meet it. You see it drop suddenly, engines flaring deep in the night. It looks like something out of Halo or one of Clarke's sci-fi films. Pivoting in the air like a chopper, a seam of light opens up on its rear hatch.


You see the outlines of two men, guns at the ready, shouting. Insignia-less uniforms of desert tan. Armor not like anything you've quite seen. "C'mon! There's an airstrike coming!"
 
Some fuckin' cavalry, Keith thinks, and makes for the ramp, hauling Clarke behind him. He's not being left behind, not like this, not this time.
 
Fire slackens as you disappear over the hill hauling Clarke's heavy ass. The unknown friendlies gather him up, cut off a bit of his gear to lighten him. "Head in and take a seat." One says, watching the berm with a squad automatic. Strange accent through his helmet's filter. "Get the crash harness on, liftoff will be rough!"
 
Keith straps himself in, watches to make sure Clarke is taken care of, watches further for anyone else making it out. Tries to pick out any identifiable insignia on his saviours.
 
There is no insignia, no flags, and no recognizable paint schemes--these people are ghosts. Fire kicks up as some of your attackers reach the crest of the hill, only to topple away under withering fire. Withdrawing into the bay, the ramp closes as enemy fire splashes against the hull. "Lift off!" one soldier shouts into his mike. They hurriedly get into their harnesses. One of the female soldiers, sitting across from you, gives a thumbs-up. "Hang on, mate, we're about to go hypersonic."


And after a stomach-lurching, g-pulling yank toward the horizon, the flight mellows out to something near normal. One of the men pulls their helmet off revealing salt-and-pepper stubble and clear eyes. "I'm sorry about your comrades. That entire site is about to become charbroiled. Your people are looking to bury it." Something Spanish or Portuguese in that accent.
 
"There are two A-10s and a pair of Typhoons airborne right now looking to slag the entire area. We came in to rescue survivors because it's what we do. Granted, you English take care of yourselves pretty well, we were asked as a favor." He shrugs, sits back in his harness. The entire aircraft hums with the speed of the winds whipping by. "I'm sorry we didn't make it in time for the others."
 
Keith shakes his head, hardly believing it.


"No one could be prepared enough to get there on time, to stop any of it." He says. "I owe you, Clarke too - we're grateful for the save. Hot zones are a nightmare without trying an extraction like that..."


He looks around again.


"So I'm not going to be vanished by your obviously clandestine unit, then?" He manages a bitter smile. "G'on, what's this outfit?"
 
They all have a good chuckle. "Nah, man. We'll see what the execs want to do with you, but we don't vanish any single person on this planet. We're here to prevent shit like what just happened...well, from happening. We fight against them."
 
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