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Night Out, A
Operation Overlord 2, Part 5
by Marcus Taylor |
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Storage, Kavangh's Kommando Barracks, Outreach 13 April 3058, 2341h TST
Leutenant Steve Coleman rubbed his shaved crown, and tried to concentrate on the accounting ledgers he was scanning. It was not an easy task for him; Matt Kavanagh had been the accountant who drew them up, and for all his good points, legible hand writing wasn't one of them.
"Ugh; Debit cash for 500cb each three months with NO apparent credit?!? Hell, that could be here a DOZEN times and I wouldn't see it?
Damn you 'Mongoose', why couldn't you get this stuff printed?" the large man exclaimed to the dust around him.
"Oh well, at least Kym managed to get Olly to take a night off; he'd be handling this fool's errand worse than me, and he'd DEMAND that he take care of it, the poor kid - no concept of delegation in him at all," Coleman muttered as he walked over to more filing cabinets where older records were kept from before when the unit could afford a computer system that was sufficiently portable (in cases of emergency or expediency).
"Right; let's go all the way back to the start, when 'Robber' put up the front money to start the unit," the tall, brawny man flipped through file folder after file folder, from cabinet to cabinet. "Christ, I might've seen what I'm looking for already!" Steve exclaimed in frustration. He finished the files of the cabinet he was at, and looked around - nearly every available surface was covered with files and ledger books "Shit, how could twelve mech'jocks and a handful of techs create THIS much paperwork?!? Somebody's gonna have to clean all this up, but it AIN'T gonna be me!"
Coleman stood with a groan, and made his way to to the last cabinet. He grasped the handle of the top drawer, and failed to open it.
"Locked? Who would lock...and who would have the key?!?" Coleman wondered aloud. A moment of confusion, and led to a sinking feeling as he realized that the only person who would lock a file cabinet (and keep the key) was lying in a shallow grave on some uncharted rock out in the Periphery. "Shit. Oh, well I'm glad it's me trying to do this and not Olly; he just doesn't have the arms for it." The man hunched over next to the cabinet, feet spread, and his left hand gripping the drawer's handle firmly. "Uno, dos, tres, QUATROS!"
As the muscles on his shoulder stretched the fabric of his fatigues, the cabinet creaked slightly, and the drawer shot out of it with a small 'ping'. Coleman's arm continued to pull the drawer out, unable to stop itself. It spun on the axis of his shoulder and ended fully extended, the drawer held in his hand now upside down; the papers it contained slid across the room in a white wave, covering a narrow stretch of floor all the way to the door.
"Oh great, as if this place didn't look bad enough already," he sighed with frustration and defeat, and placed the drawer on top of its cabinet.
And stopped.
The drawer was short; too short. Even though it was sitting askew, it was obvious that the drawer was maybe three inches shorter than the length of the filing cabinet. Steve stared at the two objects for a few seconds, and then reached into the space vacated by the drawer. His hand felt rough, irregular metal - not at all like the inside top or sides of the cabinet. His fingers found a ring, extended it, and pulled.
A section of the 'back' came away with his hand. He removed from the cabinet what appeared to be a lock-box; the unpainted metal showing the blue gleam of galvanized steel - totally different from the cheap sheet metal of the piece of office equipment. Its edges and corners were reinforced, making the box look as if it was designed to take a LOT of punishment without damage to its contents. Placed behind the short drawer, the two objects covered the top of the cabinet precisely. "As if one was made to hold the other," Steve mumbled. He carelessly pushed the drawer off the cabinet, placed the lock-box flat, its lifting ring facing up. He fiddled with the catch at the front, and lifted the lid.
Coleman whistled softly at what he saw inside...
* * * *
"Rico's", Harlech, Outreach 14 April 3058, 0048h TST
Kym Nagashi stepped out of the women's washroom, and looked for her prospective companion. She sensed someone close from behind, but she quickly suppressed the instinct to maim this person, and was rewarded with a hand holding a single flower entering her vision.
"A yellow rose," she declared as she took it from Rolf.
"For wisdom," he whispered.
"It's beautiful."
"But it pales in comparison to you," her tall admirer breathed into her ear, as his arms encircled her. "You know I'm a sculptor, but I don't think I mentioned my current project; I'm making a composite statue of the perfect woman. Would you grant me the immeasurable favour of coming to my loft and sitting in a bucket of plaster?" he inquired of her, a gleam of humour softening the Steiner-grey of his eyes.
Kym turned in his arms, his hands shifting to the topic of conversation. Just as she nodded, she stiffened and listened to a sound coming from the communicator's earpiece. She grasped her neck and intoned "Roger, wilco." The small woman looked grim and gazed up at the man holding her. "Tell you what, loverboy; let's make it my place instead of yours, and forget the messy - if original - pretense."
Nagashi didn't wait for assent, but slipped from his arms, grasped his wrist and dragged him along behind her.
* * * *
Olly grinned to himself. Heh, after Kym said I was the only person capable of helping that choking guy - the first woman I start to chat up turns out to be a medical student who's a few months away from getting her M.D.! he thought. "Yes, I do agree with that method for laryngeal excision, but when does one ever NEED to remove the entire voicebox, Jill?"
"Oh, yes; it's a very rare procedure, but it's also one that tests a surgeon's capabilities to the fullest," Jane, a outspoken redhead, replied. "And you have to keep your skills as sharp as your scalpel. Why just the other day I got to observe the Surgical Resident at Joshua Wolf Memorial do a simple heart-bypass and nearly botch the whole thing - and that procedure is TONS easier!"
Olly only half-listened as he examined his new companion more closely; she was slightly taller than he, her hair was coppery-red, wavy and shoulder length, her body more voluptuous than Ellie's, yet her features were a little more severe - a long face, and flat cheekbones - but those eyes! Those pools of creamy jade that seemed to shimmer every time she changed focus. She had a way of expressing whole volumes in just the way she arranged iris, eyeball, and eyelid. Right now she was wondering what he was thinking about ... OOPS!
"Ah-ha? Well, all these fancy methods, procedures, and protocols are fine when you've days and weeks to prepare for your patients - so named for their ability to wait," Olly joked, hoping he managed to keep up. "But field surgery is a TOTALLY different matter. You try stitching a ligament torn from a forced march; having to root around inches down into the muscle for the body's equivalent of a bungee cord, and do this in a water-filled ditch, ducking from stray gunfire!"
"Oh, NO; I agree - work in the field requires a MUCH different approach than to theatre surgery, but I'm sure you'll agree that it's not so much harder; just requiring a different frame of mind." Jill's expression and aura eased from concern and a trace of indignation - from assuming she was being ignored - to that of extreme interest; she obviously enjoyed this discussion.
"Heh, you may be partly right," Kavanagh admitted, thinking to himself about how much this woman was like his mother. WHOA! he yelled in his mind. Hello, Oedipus; where did YOU come from?
"But mostly left!" the woman countered immediately, radiating amusement.
"Uuurrrgh! That's older than Mad Max," Ollwyn groaned, inwardly enjoying this discussion as much as his more animated companion.
"Ah, but he's been dead for AGES, Ollwyn," Jill posed.
"Well, that's my point, that old fossil of a joke should've died WITH him!" Olly grinned at her expression, which told him she was groaning from that obvious morbid stab as much as he did over the socialist gag.
"Eee - fine; we're even!"
Olly grinned, and opened his mouth to speak, stopping as a beeping came from his earpiece. When the noise finished, he tapped his throat-mike twice and beheld his companion, trying to make a decision.
"Would you care to accompany me to my barracks? I assure you that my intentions are purely honourable;" Olly continued hurriedly, seeing and feeling the surprise in Jill's face and soul. "I have urgent business to attend to, but I'm enjoying this conversation too much to stop." His features quickly affected an air of desperation and sadness with Kavanagh trying to recall the "puppy-dog face" that Ellie had liked so much.
She hesitated only a moment. "I'd be delighted; let us away."
They rose from their booth, Olly placed a few bills on the table to cover Jill's tab, and they linked up with Kym and her tall, yet surprised, companion in the enclosed lobby of the bar. "You got that, too?" she asked of her superior.
"Yep, just 'RTB'; must be important."
"Any chance of a trap?" The two civilians with them shared a look of concern.
"Always, but that just means you must always prepare to be entrapped," Olly stated as he examined the street outside.
"Hauptmann Kavanagh, you're paranoid!" his subordinate exclaimed as she palmed her side-arm again.
"Thank you; I'd rather be unnecessarily paranoid than unnecessarily dead," he replied as he crouched down and arose with two Nashan Optics "Scalpel" holdout lasers.
Kavanagh glanced at the two non-combatants. "You two stay between her and I; oh, where are my manners - Lt. Kym Nagashi, meet 'almost-Dr.' Jill Samson." He glanced up to the other man. "I'm Hpt. Olly Kavanagh..."
The blond removed a metallic glove from his pocket and and slid his right hand into it, the glove emitting the buzz of a stunstick. "Rolf Steiner - illegitimate, actually and it's not something one wants to publicise nowadays - and you'll excuse me if we don't shake, sir!"
"Right then," Olly declared with a large amount of surprise, "let's go." |
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