By SCSPIEKER - Dec. 31, 1969 Sato sits quietly as the APC begins moving, listening and catching pieces from the conversation in the cockpit from his seat. He can't help but be a little relieved that the group is using the APC rather than walking. All the metal between himself and the xenos provided him some mental comfort. "Mr. Schabowski, just pull up to the cargo door we need to go through.", he yells in the direction of the cockpit. "If we can't open it through the network, there may be some kind of manual controls at the door itself." His search of the Korea's computer network for the cargo door controls was abandoned, since in the later posts in the thread he was concentrating on getting ship schematics, and he can really only do one thing at a time. Unfortunately, he's going to fail at both. Schabowski gets the APC turned around. He pushes it aftward, cutting a straight path through the empty room, directly toward the dropship. Moments after getting up to speed, a sort of electronic rebellion begins to take place at Fenix's command station. The screens that had been displaying datafeeds through the Gaines suddenly break down into lines of static. An audio pickup squawks and whistles. Everything from the Gaines, including everything from the Korea, is cut off. Fenix holds his hands away from the keyboards, in an I didn't touch a thing gesture. The tenuous connection with the Gaines is gone: the APC's shift of position must have thrown it out. It might self-align after a couple of minutes. A qualified command controller would be able to patch it up in no time, maybe even keep it steady through the APC's journey. But Fenix hadn't expected the breakup, and doesn't know where to start, or even where it might have gone wrong. If it's a problem with the Gaines, then that entails an entirely different set of challenges. If it's just the usual interference from the ships' hulls, cargo, and other hard obstacles, then it might be remedied with a simple antenna re- alignment from this end. "Did you break it?" Healy says, her tinge of accusation grating hard on everyone's nerves. "Just what we need now, computer trouble." She lights a cigarette and blows out the smoke noisily. Her features suddenly tense as the APC slows, the brakes squeaking and grinding. Finally Schabowski gets the thing completely still. Patwardhan leans over him, looking through the forward glass. The dropship had been a tiny, distant dragonfly. Now it is a curved wicked masterpiece of a weapon standing just a few meters away from the APC. It's parked on a massive elevator, 30 meters square. Huge pillars of hydraulics at the elevator's four corners provide lift and guiding rails up to a secure airlock on A deck, and from there, into space. The lift doesn't go down to C deck at all. It's only meant to get the Korea's cargo shuttles into this staging area, and from there the crew would would redirect the cargo using flatbed trucks, powerloaders, and presumably, smaller elevators that do go down to C and up to A. Like the smaller, more perfectly octagonal area where they had found the APC parked, this larger area is walled in by huge cargo doors. Next to each is a lighted manual control panel. But it's the dropship that Patwardhan has come for, and she's concerned about the open ramp. Its belly is wide open. Anything could be in there now. She tells Schabowski to stay put and heads into the rear compartment. "Boots, Gonzo," she says, hauling her flamethrower over her shoulder. "Come with me." Healy stands up, the pulse rifle in her hands only one among many weapons hanging off of her. "We'll be right behind you," she says. "Fenix, Stewart, Mnumbu, Beaudreaux, up and at 'em. The rest of you stay here. Somebody open that door." [Fenix] Diving back into the system, I work on fixing it, assuming it to be just a problem from this end. When I'm ordered up and out, I respond without a break in my work. "Levinson, you can just sit down and start helping out here. I'm not certain what is wrong, so your help would be greatly appreciated. Ladies, have fun, we're going to sit right here and work on getting the information to save our tails. Close the door behind yourselves, please." [Gonzales] Alex stands up immediately, glad to do something with his nervous energy. He pauses for just a moment as inspiration hits him square between the eyes. It would be very nice to have more light outside than just this little helmet light. Gonzales, by virtue of being near the door, is able to be the first one to lay hand to the lever to pull it open. He waits one for Booths and Patty to get into place, then nods once and heaves, opening the APC up to the cold of the cargo bay. [Levenson] Levenson takes a moment to stare at the banks of scrambled monitors, then starts tapping experimentally at some of the more innocent- looking keys, not daring to try anything too drastic before he gets a point of reference. "Hey, wait a second," he calls to the departing police and marines." How do we get a hold of you if something happens?" [Booths] Booths follows orders with a minimum of fuss. If you hear good orders, you follow 'em. "Fenix, ever here of point ot point communications? As in shortwave radio?" He points to the side of the head array, where a mike was curving around his cheek. "As long as we're in range, you can talk to us, after that, you're f*cked for news." He smiled grimly. "And the range here is pretty short." "We good to go?" He throws at the rest of the combat group. [Fenix] "Yeah, I've heard of it. Two minor details, one I didn't ask how we keep in touch with you, and two I didn't know everyone had a radio even if I had asked. Now, go get your glow toys, while I try and get the info to save our a$$es" "Like a couple of f*ckin' kids, you two," Healy says irritably, stepping out onto the metal deck. "Okay, Fenix, you can stay, but these civilians are your responsibility. If you can get us linked back up with the Korea, fine. If you can't, don't go searching around out here for it. I mean it. Don't come out of the APC for any reason, you get me? We'll be back in a couple of minutes." She waits for the other cops, and the two battered marines, shooting nervous glances around the room. There is only a very short stretch between the armored transport and the dropship on the elevator, but she can't shake that feeling of exposure. She had seen, on the Gaines, how the aliens had crawled on the walls and ceiling. To Healy they seem to possess another dimension of ability entirely, and it's this fear of an ambush that's etched on her face. Patwardhan grunts as her boots hit the floor. She looks at the others gathered beneath the dropship, and without saying a word, she takes the lead. The priming-flame on her M240 incinerator unit is held at hip-level, for it seems she's lost strength and cannot hold it higher. Each step brings with it a new pained exclamation as she steps onto the corrugated steel ramp, and stares up into a black square of the dropship's interior. "Cover me," she strains to say. [Fenix] Shrugging silently at the 'order', as they leave I say "Someone shut the door behind them. I'm busy, and would really rather not have company join us unannounced." Still working on that thar connection thingy. [Sato] "One moment, Sergeant Healy.", says Sato as she heads for the door. "Take this." Sato presses the motion detector into Healy's free hand. "You'll need to know if anything is approaching you. Good luck, sergeant.". Once the marines and cops are out of the APC, Sato heads to the cockpit. If the topographical map that shows the immediate surroundings is still up, Sato periodically watches it to see how the group outside is doing. "Let me know if you two need any help.", he says to Levenson and Fenix. Sato then triggers the short wave radio. "Booths, Patwardian, I'm going to try to get your helmet cams online. If there's anything you need to set on your end, do so.". He then checks the static filled monitors for the two marines names and begins a thorough check of those systems to get their viewpoints visible from the APC. [Fenix] Ignoring Schabowski, Fenix continues working on trying to recreate the connection to Gaines. [Gonzales] Moving from the crowded interior of the APC to the black coldness of the Korea's cargo deck made the flesh on Alex's back and arms pimple up in goosebumps. He did manage to surpress the shiver, though, and once he had closed the APC door behind the three combat personnel, there wasn't anything to take away his concentration, only the hissing of the pilot flame on Patty's flamethrower. Keeping his gun sweeps short and turning his entire body, he scanned the right side of the APC and shined the light up to the big insectile form of the dropship. It looked like it wanted to eat them. "I'll take point," said the cargo-handler turned Marine. "If something gets me, I'll be sure to scream real loud," he said with a toothy grin that came too easily. Maybe hanging around with Booths was starting to rub off on him. [Booths] Booths looks over his shoulder at Gonzo. "Man, if they take you out, you can be sure that I'll be up to my *ss in shell casings, and doing my best to keep pilin' 'em up. I won't even hear you scream." Adjusting the tilt of the Smartgun, Booths begins to consider, idly mind you, how best to pass of that uppity cop's death as friendly fire. But the way things stood, he was fodder anyway. "I might alos like to suggest that each one here carries some kind of explosive, so that if they take you, at least thye won't do so alive."