capeandcowllogs | Here We Stand or Here we Fall, History Won't Care at All

Entry tags:

Here We Stand or Here we Fall, History Won't Care at All

WHO: The Dependables
WHERE: Iron Crown, North Pacific.
WHEN: Midnight August 1st [Dolvanian time].
WARNINGS: Absolute mayhem. Also violence.
SUMMARY: The raid on the terrorist gulag.
FORMAT: Paragraph to start, whatever works in the threads. Threads are posted for each objective, but the structure within them is completely open.

This year was the tenth anniversary of the terrible plague that had created Zero' Children in their hatred and anger. Within the Iron Crown fortress, it was another grim night. The prisoners moaned and wept within the dark, cold dungeon deep beneath the Earth. Above them, the day shift of their captors slept much more soundly. Outside, the soldiers currently on duty patrolled the ramparts with grim faces behind balaclavas. Searchlights swept the ground around the walls. To the north, below the castle, freezing men did the same on the decks of the big cargo ships that kept this place running.

The attack helicopter's rotors spun on its pad, warming up for night patrol. The armoured personnel carrier lurked in the vehicle depot like a guard dog waiting in a kennel. In the command centre at the top of the gulag's keep, the hardened older men who ran this base shuffled reports back and forth as they coordinated the group's global evildoing, counting narcotics trafficked, dissidents silenced, enemies crushed.

Whether hostage or terrorist, no one in the fortress suspected that they were in the crosshairs of the Dependables.

"We go loud when Seras drops the searchlights," Jack growled. He lowered his binoculars and stood up, machine gun slung across his shoulders. With his helmet, goggles, and black tactical gear, he looked downright sinister. "She'll engage the shooters on the wall while we get inside the base. Get past the wall any way you can, then split up and head for your objectives." It was a long, exposed run from the jumble of icy rocks that were the nearest concealment to the fortress. If they made it without getting shot, they would have to breach the gulag's outer defenses in their own ways: climbing over the wall, blasting a hole, or just old-fashioned trickery. After that, it would be into the maelstrom of the courtyard, the inevitable mayhem of crossfire and explosions.

Jack's own plan involved plastic explosives and the front gate. Once the alarms started to sound, the time for subtlety would be over. He could picture it now- all hell breaking loose with running guards, chattering machine guns, that helicopter lifting into the sky to rain death from above. No matter how much they could accomplish through stealth, he knew the team wouldn’t be getting through this without one hell of a fight.

"Hit your objectives, then push through the base to the far side. We rendezvous at the docks, then get us and the hostages out of there on a ship. Remember the lives of the people depending on you. Move fast, hit hard, stay focused, work together."

There was the click of his safety flipping off, and then there was nothing left to say. “Let’s do this.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jack ushered the last of the hostages below the ship’s deck, then slammed the thick hatch down behind them without ceremony. The boat was already moving, slowly, much too slowly, its engines still warming up. The propellers thrashed the water at a leisurely pace as the ship began sliding out of its berth, toward the open sea.

Far above them, the surviving guardians of the now-ruined Iron Crown stood at the cliff’s edge and fired down at their escaping attackers. Bullets cut through the icy water around the ship and pinged off its hull. Jack yelled at his team as he shot back.

“Is everyone aboard? We’re getting out of here!”

They’d achieved the impossible. Now they just had to make it out alive.

[Scathach didn't have to be a master tactician to know that they weren't going to make it out of this if she didn't do something.

Jade eyes were focused on the pursuing ships, how quickly they were moving compared to their own. She knew that in just minutes, they would be overtaken, even with the head start. She was right beside Jack, firing arrow after arrow, knowing in her heart that it wasn't going to help. Though she didn't stop the assault, she spoke quietly:]

It isn't enough, Jack.

Edited 2012-08-02 02:07 (UTC)

It has to be. We don't have another option. [Jack growls as he kneels and unslings a sniper rifle from his shoulder. His current weapon doesn't have the range he needs. But with this many people shooting at them, no firearm might be enough.]

Keep focusing on the pursuit boats. I'll suppress the shooters on the cliff. [Firing as he talks.]

[She whips out her dagger to deflect a bullet set on a course for his shooting arm. And then back to the bow.] We do have another option.

[She didn't say it yet. Jack was smart. He would figure it out.]

[Did Scatty just deflect a damn bullet? Did she? Jack knew she was good, but gets even him to gape for a moment. Then he realizes what she's saying, and he's gaping for a different reason.]

Forget it. We're making it out of this, all of us.

[Your human bullets mean nothing to her, especially because they aren't made of pure iron. If they were... well, then she'd have a problem. The redhead is already toeing off her combat boots as she keeps firing her bow. She's almost run out of arrows.]

One less body might make this damn boat go faster.

You're not that heavy.

[Jack shoots again, and one of the enemies on the cliff loses a leg, then his balance, then his life. He falls forward and screams all the way down. Jack's empathy is nil. He's worried about another life now.]

If you go, we can't come back for you. You know that.

[If only Scathach shared his same worry. She's barefoot, and has just one arrow left. She makes it count, shooting the driver of one of the speedboats following them. She tosses the bow behind her. It was a good weapon, but she wouldn't need it anymore.]

If you come back for me, everyone will die. So don't.

I won't.

[Jack should protest this more. He should try to stop her. He owes her that much, and she deserves so much better than to fight a hopeless battle alone on a desolate, frozen island, breathing the cold she hates.]

[But this is what the mission needs, and innocent lives are at stake, and if there's one thing Jack Bauer knows how to do, it's sacrificing things and people in situations like this. So he just nods and accepts it.]

Good luck, Scathach.

[She doesn't want to do this. Not really. She hated the cold, hated the water--and she was about to get up close and personal with both of those things. She grits her teeth, rolling her shoulders. They didn't have much time.

The question is sudden when she asks it, her voice almost serene:]

Would you call this place... exotic, Jack?

Edited 2012-08-02 03:28 (UTC)

[Jack pauses in shooting to take in his surroundings for a moment. The gray sky, the cold rock they're leaving, the icy waves the boat is ploughing through. He's been in cold places before, hostile places, but never one with this particular type of desolation.]

Yeah, you could call it that.

[No time for more than that- he raises his rifle back to his shoulder. There's never any time, not for him.]

You could.

[She looks sad. It's on the tip of her tongue, ready to be said. But the moment passes. One bloody tear leaks from each of her eyes, but she turns away so he can't see. Warriors did not cry.

I was once told I would die in an exotic place.

Scathach climbs up on to the rail and dives into the water, her breathing stopped, her eyes open even in the face of the salt. A Warrior did not feel pain, could not. She felt no anger, no love, no happiness. No regret. In a moment she's on one of the boats, letting out a war cry that would send any normal man shaking to his mother. And she tears into them, ignoring their bullets and their knives, fighting as hard and quickly as she can. Just to buy time.

Time seemed to be expensive, nowadays.]

[Jack stares after her with a face carved of stone and ice. Then he lowers his weapon and turns away. The shooters on the cliff have fallen back now, either intimidated by his shooting or just plain out of range. And Jack knows no one on the pursuit boats is going to survive the next few minutes. Not with Scathach tearing into them.]

[He finds a spot on the deck to sit, head bowed. Behind him the bombs on Iron Crown tick down their last minutes. Soon they'll mark the pyre of Zero's Children, and probably of Scathach as well. They've done it. The rag-tag team has pulled it off. But there's no triumph here, not now, not with Jack.]

The last hostages were the two children clinging to Geddoe's shoulders like he was the safety bar of a carnival ride, looking terrified despite the fact that they had come through unscathed. Not so much their rescuer; he was out of breath and limping, and a bright red piece of cloth tied around his left arm showed where he had been hit. One of the prisoners had, in all the chaos, dared to take the time to rip off a chunk of her uniform and tie it over the bullet wound for him.

Dropping to a knee to unload the kids, who ran down into the lower deck with the others, Geddoe remained there for a bit, catching his breath. His hair was coming untied from the ponytail and there were burnt holes in his sweater showing where bullets had imbedded in his protective vest beneath, but he was alive and had delivered his cargo. That was all that mattered.

"Geddoe!"

As soon as Jack could spare a moment and he was sure those kids were safely below, he ran to the Captain.

"Are you hit?" Of course he was hit, he could see the holes.

"It's nothing," Geddoe grunted. It didn't hit his dominant sword arm, that was more important to him. The vest Edna had made him before the Mexico mission had probably taken its final limit of lead, it was made well but there were only so many bullet holes it could sport before becoming useless. "I'll be fine," he assured Jack, raising his head. "What about us? Are we all accounted for? All objectives?"

"Everyone's here," Jack assured him, not knowing he'd be watching Scatty throw herself to certain doom in just a few minutes. "We did it. All the hostages are out, we got the data, and the place is set to blow."

Gunshots behind the boat provided everyone a reminder they weren't quite done yet. "Now we just have to get away with it," Jack growled, heading aft. "Get to cover, find yourself a medkit and someone to help you with the bandages."

Edited 2012-08-03 01:05 (UTC)

Geddoe grunted his agreement with the order and pushed himself back to his feet, keeping a wary eye over his shoulder at the gunshots coming from the cliffs behind them. He may not have known much about firearms but he guessed that it would be pretty hard to make an accurate shot at a moving target on a heaving sea in the utter darkness. It was the inaccurate ones he was concerned about. "Call me if any of the pursuers manage to board. I haven't slit enough throats in one night, yet."

He had intended to throw the katana into the sea after this was over, to keep it from being linked back to him. It looked like that would have to wait.

"They better be," Jason called back from where he was situated toward the back of the boat, shuffling with some of the freshly rescued hostages. "We've got about thirteen minutes and, optimistically, twenty seconds left before this thing blows sky high."

If he were being completely honest, it had been about a year since he'd rigged something on the scale of the bomb currently resting at the base of the compound less than two hundred yards behind them. As such, he'd gone big. As Jack had explained it, this wasn't the kind of thing where you wanted to leave footprints, and Jason trusted that well enough. If nothing else, no one would know they were there. It just might take them out in the process.

"This is probably a bad time to ask about the MPH on this tub."

Jack looked at the Hood, then at the island, then at the still-sluggish boat just now clearing the harbour entrance. It was indeed a bad time.

"We'll make it!" He yelled, because there wasn't a hell of a lot else he could say. "Just hang on and keep an eye on the time left." When that bomb reached the end of its countdown, everyone still on the deck would have to drop flat and hope to survive.

"Great, so I can count us off when we go." It was less of a shout which meant that there was a 50/50 shot of Jack hearing it over the combined roar of the engines, water, and other commotion around them. It didn't matter though, the comment lacked any real value, but there wasn't value to be had in the situation anyway. Jack was right. There was nothing any of them could do from here. Jason was just counting it lucky that it wasn't a chemical bomb, or anything likely to produce a ton of shrapnel. That meant that if the folks left behind could manage to survive the initial blast, they'd have a chance of running before the structure of the deck literally imploded. Unluckily, Jason took a particular pride in being able to spectacularly implode docks, harbors, and anything else related to illegally shipping goods, so they'd have to move incredibly quickly to pull it off.

Absently, he glanced back, surveying the horizon they were waiting to explode. "There a plan after this?"

Jack could barely make out the second thing Jason said, which was just as well since the first bit would have been less than fully valued.

"We're headed for the nearest Japanese port," he said. "At top speed we can make it in about a day. We offload the hostages, arrange for them to get the help they need, then signal Zatanna to come bring us home." The fact that the bomb Jason had planted was almost certainly going to kill every survivor of their attack had no bearing on the plan. After all they'd done, Jack gave zero shits about Zero's Children.

He looked at the Red Hood. Whatever he was feeling about leaving Scathach behind, it wasn't showing on his face right now. "We can get Zee to come do an early pickup, if any of us have to get back now."

There was a slight shrug, and Jason settled, waiting for the explosion. Less than ten minutes now. They'd gone over the plan before, of course, he just wanted to be sure they were still on track, and sure enough, they were. Off to Japan and then home via teleportation that, rumor had it, would probably make him puke up anything he'd eaten in the last 24 hours. Whatever, it beat trying to sneak back into the US with various firearms and a fiberglass mask full of C-4. The customs office at JFK could have a field day with that one.

"Oh, I don't think I'll be missed for another day or two. What's one less gangster-vigilante in a city full of them." Nine minutes, 13 seconds. 12 seconds. Vaguely, he thought about how it would suck to have miscalculated in one direction or the other. His nerves were shot and if there wasn't an explosion at the expected time, it'd be a let down. Alternately, of course, if it came early Jason was under the firm belief that he might suffer a heart attack. Wouldn't that be a great way to go. Again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Here We Stand or Here we Fall, History Won't Care at All

GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE

closed to jack bauer.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

open

Re: open

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

the latest reply ever, I'm sorry :(

no subject

no subject