Canterra – Operation Winter Haven Dead Men Walking Pt II

Posted on 29 Sep 2019 @ 2:07am by Lieutenant Harry Stevens & Lieutenant Amiri Aldana 365, D.V.M., M.D. & Lieutenant Commander T'Lara & Lieutenant Perrin Arc & Captain Edward Bolingbroke (Dec-Jan 2389 - TRNSFR After Gorn War) & Lieutenant Junior Grade Artemis Ward, M.D. (Jan 2389 - TRSNFR After Gorn War) & Hospital Apprentice Quinn McCoy (Jan 2389 - KIA Gorn War)

Mission: Hahai i na pilikua nui - Hunting Monsters
Location: Fire Mine - Various
Tags: Sombra, 3CW4YMF696F

[ON]

[Mine Operations]

Bjornsdotter gave her orders. =/\=I want everyone who is not guarding the Gorn prisoners to get to the holding level now! Weapons on Stun! I say again, Weapons on Stun!=/\=

With her communications NCO in tow she rushed for the elevator. It stopped twice on the way down; more Marines squeezing on in response to the call.

Three minutes later they disembarked on the holding level. Dozens of Marines were there already, and the second elevator disgorged more.

Bjornsdotter looked around, with luck they could muster nearly a full company, but from what she knew there were over six hundred Implanted Colonists, she worried if she had enough to deal with that many…

[Holding Level]

From the dormitory area Harry had seen McCoy dash forward, he’d watched wondering where she was going, it seemed crazy to be running towards the Implanted Colonists, but then he saw Aldana and realized the Nurse was trying to reach the Doctor.

“Aww hell!” He shook his head, not wanting to, but knowing he would have to follow. It was his duty. He turned to the Marine Corpsman “C’mon! Follow me!”

“Where we going?” The Corpsman was raking a stumbling line of Implants who were closing on them

“There!” Harry pointed into the mass of Implants

“You’re nuts! That’s suicide!”

“There are people from my ship there, they need help!” Harry started running “C’mon!”

The Corpsman shook his head but jabbed aside a couple of Implants and pushed after Stevens

They dodged and weaved through the Implants, pushing away grasping hands, dodging swinging fists, steadily closing on McCoy and Aldana. Harry fired his phaser clearing a path before them and pushed on, clambering over stunned colonists.

His foot caught on something and he staggered forward, the phaser went spinning from his hand. He could not save himself and as he went down, he saw McCoy fall also. The Nurse disappeared under a rain of blows from Implanted Colonists.

Suddenly they were on him, hands grabbed at him, feet kicked and stomped. He tried to cover his head and look for his phaser at the same time but there was no sign of it. A kick caught him in the side, and he rolled away from it. Something hard dug him in the back, he grunted aloud, trying to get away from whatever was trying to bust in his kidneys.

He reached around and came up with the phaser. Quickly turning it in his hand it aimed at the colonists looming over him and fired. Four of them collapsed, right on top of him!

Harry now found himself pinned down by the bodies, he twisted and squirmed but could not get free. Other feet kicked down at him, he began to panic wondering if he would die here.

Just then some of the weight lifted off him and a hand grabbed his shoulder. He twisted away thinking it was an Implant Colonist, but it was the Corpsman.

“Get up! This was your stupid idea; you’re not dying on me now!” The Marine shouted shoving colonists away as he helped Harry clamber up. “You ok?”

“I think so. This way!” Harry fired off another burst of stun shots and opened a path to McCoy and Aldana. Then pushed his way over to them.

McCoy was face down, not moving, there were footprints on her back, arms bruised and broken, and legs, her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Harry fired again giving them a breathing space in the mass of Implants and the Corpsman bent to check on the Nurse.

He rolled her on her side, her head flopped over, her eyes stared unblinking and there was blood at the corner of her mouth. He checked her pulse and looked to Harry “She’s gone”.

Despite the circumstances, there was a peaceful, almost faraway look on McCoy’s face, as if she had drifted off, carried by a melody nobody else could hear.

There was no time to grieve, Harry searched for Aldana, he heard a yelp and saw the Doctor’s canine, and then Aldana, wrapped up in the arms of an Implanted Colonist, others were trying to batter at the them with their fists.

Harry fired his phaser, knocking away those closest to the Doctor. The Marine Corpsman slammed the one holding the Doctor with his rifle butt.

“Hit me again!” The man pleaded his arms locked around Aldana “l can’t control myself! Hit me!”

The Corpsman obliged, jabbed the butt into the man’s jaw and managed to break Aldana free.

Harry turned back, fired a long burst, opening a way through the massive Implants, but it drained the last energy from the battery of the phaser and the beam fizzled out.

“Run!” He yelled and set off, the Corpsman following on.

Doctor Aldana had been protecting the non-implant colonist who’d been stricken along with Sombra. Somehow s/he’d managed to fend off all the others with just hir bare hands, a hypo set to a tranquilizer and just a Type-I personal phaser. (Not to mention maybe a good nip or two from a certain fuzzball.) S/he was somehow still conscious, if barely, and managed to hobble to hir feet with the new clearing. “I couldn’t just stand there while people were being hurt; I had to help, that’s what we’re trained for.” S/he scooped up the downed non-implant and made sure Sombra could walk – if a bit painfully – before stumbling after their escort.

As Harry started to run, he knew this had gone slightly pear-shaped to say the least, as he also knew that he had to protect those around him as he tried to change the battery whilst running. He thought oO must find somewhere to do this, Oo as the weapon was needed and so was the power unit. As Harry fumbled the latch that housed the dead battery to replace it with the fully charged unit, just then the old unit fell out from under them, as Harry found the replacement unit and fitted it in place, Harry said,” I’ll cover you,” and began once more firing his weapon.

[Holding Level – Medical area]

The ragtag semicircle of defenders had managed to keep the mob of Implants away from the medical area, but one by one phaser batteries were drained, and their line shrank as one by one they had to fall back.

The half circle grew smaller and tighter as they were pushed back. For twenty feet around there lay a jumble of stunned colonists but beyond that the rest stumbled and lurched towards them, coming onwards relentlessly.

Perrin had walked close enough to the rest of the medical staff to hear them now. He was still facing the threat and waving his phaser with a wide beam. The battery gauge told him he was at 70%. “I saw a downed uniform,” he called, “who is it? Who did we lose?”

One Nurse called to Ward “Doctor, isn’t there something else we can do, anything?”

“Maybe…” Dr. Ward mused, looking at the implanted colonists with a drawn, worried expression. “I have a very poorly thought out idea.”
He plunged his hands into his medical kit and the emerged with something shiny clutched tightly in each pale fist.

“STUN GAS GOING OUT!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “If you’ve got an environment suit, seal it, any respirators or breathing masks too!”

He wound up and lofted the first of his jury-rigged gas grenades as far into the back if the implanted colonists as he could, a ridiculous image of him standing on a dirt mound and dressed in an archaic Red Sox uniform sprung into his mind. He shook the absurd mental image away and hurled the second modified hypospray.

“Everyone else, I’m sorry for the headache you’re going to wake up with!” With the fight seemingly still undecided, he had concluded that knocking everyone out was preferable to letting his crewmates die.

Next, he reached for the nurse’s medical kit and fished for her supply of anesthetic.

The knock-out grenade was crude but effective, the cloud of gas took down a group of the Implants but when it drifted back towards the defenders nobody had any way to block the gas except for holding their breath and they could not do that for long…

Two Nurses staggered and fell, phasers dropping from their hands.

Instantly the Implants began to lunge towards that break in the line. Two reached one of the prone Nurses and began viciously kicking her in the head, they managed to get several strikes in before the residual gas brought them down.

Other Nurses dragged the fallen ones back, the head of the one who had been beaten flopped lifelessly on her shoulders.

Perrin shook his head. Quinn, he thought, Oh God. He had done a session with her. Sweet kid. He drew his second phaser and changed the spread of its beam and stun setting. Then he started waving it as well. Bodies dropped, but not enough. “Who the hell thought pulling the troops while this many were still implanted was such a good-fracking idea? Where the hell is our back up?”

“Hold the line!” T'Lara called moving around the ever-decreasing semi-circle, adding her own phaser shots where needed. She found herself by the Operations Officer “We need help down here, more phaser batteries at least!”

“Already on it Doc!” The Woman replied “There’s a Security Team coming any second”

T'Lara nodded, there was nothing more to be done, they had to stay in place, to try and hold out. There were too many injured colonists to transport and as soon as they tried the Implanted ones would overwhelm whoever was left.

A moment late there was a transport shimmer and six Security Officers arrived, they all brought rifles and two had armfuls of phaser batteries. The Operations Officer rushed over, grabbed handfuls of batteries and began distributing them to those holding the line.

The Security detail moved swiftly to plug gaps and with their support the horde of Implants were kept at bay. But beyond the besieged medical staff the rest of the colonists were still being attacked and beaten.

Some colonists had organized themselves and were defending small areas of the cavern as best they could, using bunks and furniture as barricades and makeshift weapons, but many of the rest were still being relentlessly pursued by the Implants.

[Holding Level – Entrance Tunnel]

Once Bjornsdotter had mustered her Marines and briefed them they began to move down the tunnel towards the cavern but soon ran into an obstacle, the tunnel was clogged with terrified colonists trying to flee the Implants. She and her troops had to push and barge their way through the crush of bodies up to the entrance gate.

Six or seven colonists were holding off several dozen Implants, using mining tools to keep them at bay. The Marines lined up, took aim and began firing heavy stun beams into the attackers. Quickly they began falling and the Marines were able to work their way out of the tunnel into the cavern.

It was total chaos, hundreds of Implanted workers pursued hundreds of colonists. Slow and awkward, they were nevertheless brutally effective when they cornered some of the others.

Bjornsdotter tried to make some sense of the scene. In order to be effective she would need to keep her Marines in their squads and platoons, otherwise they would be overwhelmed. She called out orders and the Marines began moving out into the cavern. Stunning and dropping all Implants they came across.

=/\=Bjornsdotter to Doctor T'Lara! We are here and working our way towards you. Hold on! =/\=

T'Lara acknowledged and looked towards the far side of the cavern. Beyond the odd green helmet bobbing amongst the crowd of people it was impossible to tell what was going on.

[Elsewhere ]

Harry sat behind a boulder continuing to give cover fire, Harry said, “Doctor, I told you to keep moving,” he continued to fire his weapon at the crazed implanted colonists, as he knew the medical officer was needed elsewhere in the cavern.

Aldana hefted hir patient as best s/he could and sojourned on; “I didn’t brave this sea of people to leave my patient behind now. I’m right behind you.”

~You coming Pal?~

Sombra managed to continue to pull up the rear as he hobbled along as best he could.

“Alright we can hold up here for now Doctor so you can treat Sombra,” replied Harry as Sombra hobbled along as the Implanted colonists had slowed down after them, as he knew that with Sombra injured as he was, Harry was not going to leave the dog behind as he thought oO what if that was Sif, Oo as he looked over at Aldana.

Aldana set down hir non-implanted colonists which s/he’d been carrying all this time and set about attending to his various injuries the best s/he could while under sedge. After several minutes s/he was able to revive him. As he slowly came around, s/he smiled warmly down at him. “Can you walk, we’re still not out of the woods yet.”

“What happened?”

Aldana stood, reaching out a hand, “You were accosted by one of the Implanted Colonists. I attempted to come to your aid, but now we’ve been over run, we need to keep moving.” Aldana helped the man to his feet.

“Yeah, I’ve a headache, but I’ll do anything to keep away from those damned collaborators.”

Aldana checked on Sombra who’d been barely able to keep up due to his own injuries. ~You make it to safety on your…~

~Alpha, help, need Alpha…~

Now that Doctor Aldana was no longer over encumbered by the unimplanted colonist, s/he swooped up Sombra in a safety-lift and held him tight. ~I’m here, love, I’ve got ya.~

Aldana looked at Stevens, and looking him in the eye and uttered earnestly, “thank you.” S/he managed a weak smile. “Let’s get out of here.”

“OK, but let’s make thing clear,” replied Harry, He continued “When I say move, you move,” as he looked at the Medical Officer he finished “ and when I say take cover, you take cover, understood?” as he knew that he was the only one with a weapon and had to protect those around him.

The Kazarite-hybrid couldn’t believe they were having this conversation, nor how it was making hir feel. S/he decided s/he’d need to talk to Doctor Arc about it later. Outwardly s/he just nodded.

“Good, now we have that clear,” replied Harry looking at the doctor, he continued,” so how is Sombra?” as he wanted to know as he would have the same answer for any of the K9s including Sif, as he knew that it felt strange without her by his side and started to miss her.

Sombra whimpered and looked generally miserable, but he managed to wag his tail as he hung comfortable from Alpha’s arms, he knew better than to squirm too much. He didn’t want to be dropped.

“He needs medical attention, but he’ll pull through.” Aldana held Sombra’s left side to hir chest, with hir stronger dominant left arm supporting his chest, comfortably, and hir right arm supporting his hind end, comfortably. This, s/he knew was the safest way to carry him – s/he wanted to avoid carrying him with hir arm under his middle, that could cause squirm in discomfort, and potentially cause damage. Fortunately, s/he had hir hands free, and brought out a medical tricorder. “(If we can manage to determine the frequency the Implanted Colonists are being controlled by, we may be able to disrupt it when we get back.)” S/he said to hirself, as s/he waited for Stevens to lead the way.


“It seems to have quieted down,” replied Harry, as he looked up from where he was, He continued, “Come on, let’s head back the way we came,” as he knew that this might be a good time to try and get back to the Medical centre so that the wounded could get some treatment.

Aldana agreed, and sojourned on behind him, Sombra secure in hir embrace.

OFF

Lieutenant Harry Stevens
Security Officer/ Handler
K9 Division

Lieutenant T'Lara
Chief Medical Officer

Doctor Amiri Aldana 365, D.V.M., M.D.
Assistant Chief Medical Officer, SF

Sombra C.G.CA/U, C.PSA, C.ESA
Psychological Service Animal/Part-time S&R Dog

Arc, Perrin Lt., SF,
Chief Counselor