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Post by Hollie Clarke on Dec 21, 2010 4:05:43 GMT -5
"No, no, I am," she quickly confirmed, "ever since R4 put us in that dream and let me see, I've wanted it more than ever. It's just... what if something goes wrong? They are playing with my brain, what if they damage something, or I...," she gulped, "die? It would be stupid to take the risk of something like that when I've been doing perfectly fine without my eyesight all these years."
It was probably an irrational fear, the odds were probably stacked in her favour, rather than against, but it was a thought that she couldn't get out of her mind. She wasn't prepared to leave behind Ollie and her new found family any time soon, and if there was the risk of that happening - well, it was enough to make her hesitate.
"I'm probably being stupid," she waved a hand in the air, "I just don't want to go anywhere, not yet."
((-snorts- I read that out and cackled at 9am, pretty sure my family didn't appreciate it. xDDD ))
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Post by Michael Clarke on Dec 22, 2010 23:05:34 GMT -5
"You're not being stupid honey. You want to take your time. Pilots, contrary to popular belief, have to take their time when plotting trajectories. Don't want to jump drive into the middle of a moon, right? Same thing. What happens if you take part of an operation that goes wrong? You'd pay for it and I would be hurt." Michael truly sympathized with his daughter; sure, it was an EASY solution to SAY, but actually going through with something as life changing as restoration of sight was...well, as Hollie said herself, frightning. Michael's comm buzzed again, this time indicating that Gordon had arrived at the bar. Good.
"Hollie, I need to take care of something in town. Do you need anything while I'm gone?" He hoped to make this as quick as possible, but somehow he had a feeling that he would be getting into some trouble tonight.
Wonderful.
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Post by Hollie Clarke on Dec 23, 2010 4:38:00 GMT -5
Hollie was glad he understood, that her concerns weren't totally unfounded. She sort it out when she was ready, ready to take the leap - but if she didn't do it soon, then she probably never would.
"Uh, no, nothing I can think of," she said, a little puzzled by his sudden announcement. It was probably something to do with his comm buzzing. "Nah, I'll stay here and check my messages. Sam's still on the Venia, so he's probably been bombarding me with Irish jokes between cooking stints, and maybe Ollie's got back to me."
She offered a smile in his direction, then before he left the room said, "be safe."
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Post by Michael Clarke on Dec 24, 2010 16:32:15 GMT -5
"Always."
"You really know how to stir up trouble, don't you kid?" Michael looked over at Gordon with a mix of mild amusement and disbelief. It hadn't been more than half an hour and Gordon had already gotten into it with a few of the locals. The Captain had to separate Gordon from the rest of the men, Michael almost getting assaulted himself had it not been for the bartender shooing the men out with a threat that he would brandish the energy rifle behind the counter.
"They pushed me, Cap. I pushed back."
"Get yourself in check, son. I don't need a loose cannon on this mission." Gordon appeared to take the rebuke seriously, sliding into the booth he had been seated at before his skirmish.
"What is it you need me to do?"
"This shouldn't be too hard, considering your talents." Michael reached into his back-pocket and slid a small holo across the table, continuing:
"This has coordinates to the planet, along with directions to a few other things."
"You gonna keep on being vague or give me the details, Cap?" Michael leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table in front of him as he spoke:
"Alliance brass put out a few notices concerning drones that had gone rogue."
"Drones?"
"Robotic units that collected information from other planets and sent back to Alliance space. Most units have a lot of information stored on them, and the ones that went rogue were battle drones."
"Wait wait wait, hold on Cap: you expect me to think that a bunch of robots suddenly decided to turn on their makers? What is this, a bad movie?"
"The robots were programmed with a special artificial intelligence program. There apparently was a glitch in the system and now they're being controlled by a separate entity."
"So what do I do?
"Find the drones and eliminate them."
"That simple?"
"I wouldn't send you anything too simple. Once you eliminate the drones, I need you to recover any data you find and bring it back to me."
"Why not the Alliance?"
"Because they would take weeks to process this. I give it to Hollie and she'll have it done in two hours."
"That cute blond girl?"
"Watch it, kid."
"Hey, I comment on the facts." Gordon paused for a moment before he asked:
"You done with me? I gotta get moving."
"That you do."
As Michael approached his parents home, he noticed something odd about the lighting...flicking lights on the ground floor? The Captain slowed his walk, cautiously examining from the outside. The door was also wide open. Michael walked up the porch steps and his blood went cold.
An energy pistol lay on the ground.
What happened here?
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Post by Hollie Clarke on Dec 26, 2010 11:26:44 GMT -5
It turned out that even with her hearing, and her training, Hollie didn't stand a chance in an unfair and uneven fight.
The sound of a pulse pistol going off downstairs was her first vivid sign that something was wrong, and she'd immediately ditched what she was doing (not before smacking the record button on her hand held device), feeling her way over to the wall by the door, flattening herself against it. There were several sets of footfalls moving around downstairs, but no noise from her Grandparents - they were both probably unconscious by now. One of the men - heavy by the sounds of the creaking - mounted the stairs, almost drowning out the approach of someone else down the corridor.
What was going on? Why were these people here and what did they want?
Reaching out with her arm, Hollie's hand settled itself securely round the back of a nearby chair, and once the first person got close enough that she could hear them breathing, she swung the chair at his legs, apparently managing to catch a more painful place at the same time.
"GRAB HER!" the man shrieked at a pitch only dog's could hear, and a pair of meaty fists grabbed Hollie before she could even get close to the stairs. "Not s-th-o fas-th, blondie," he lisped in a deep voice, practically crushing her bones in his grip.
Her mouth wide open in a silent cry of pain, she tried to lash out with her legs, but it was hard when she couldn't see a thing.
"Quit it, theeeesth."
The sound of a pulse pistol going off filled her ears, and she was out cold.
"The Captain's family has been captured, sir."
"Good," came a deep, husky voice over the lead soldier's comms, "return to base."
"Yes sir."
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Post by Michael Clarke on Dec 26, 2010 18:14:02 GMT -5
A thorough sweep of the house revealed that there had been a pretty intense struggle: there were a few energy burns on the wall, furniture had been knocked over, and scuff marks indicated that bodies had been dragged out of the house. Michael took a deep breathe, refusing to panic. He had been in crisis situations before and had handled them with a cool head; he would do so once more. Michael began to hunt around the outside of the property, searching for any kind of clu..
Mmmmhmm.
The Captain went down on one knee, looking at the small comm unit that lay in the snow. He picked it up and booted the unit on, scanning the transmission logs. Not many calls were made on the unit, but there were at least twenty received, all from one location marked JXUP, probably a planetary abbreviation judging from the transponder signal that was displayed on the screen(the bigger the signal, the more range it had. Pilots had to have comm units with transponder signals that could reach back to Earth from across the galaxy.) He scoured the area once more before he was satisfied he had gotten everything he could. Clarke proceeded into the home just as he remembered...Hollie's comm unit. It could still be on!
"Hollie? Talk to me baby." He hoped that she could hear him, wherever she was.
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Post by Hollie Clarke on Dec 26, 2010 19:26:45 GMT -5
Hollie clutched her head, refusing to open her eyes even though it would make no difference. It was silent, wherever she was, apart from the low hum of what sounded like an old electric generator. It also felt cold, so cold she was shivering, and, every now and again, the hum was punctured by the sound of water dripping from somewhere up above her head.
Rubbing her arms, she hoisted herself into a sitting position, trying to ignore the shooting pain in her brain. The after effects from that pulse pistol blast were awful.
A quiet, "Hollie? Talk to me baby." sounded in her ears and she frowned, was she hearing things?
No, no, wait, that was her Dad's voice. It must have been her comm.
"Dad?" she said, without thinking about it any more, "Dad is that you?"
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Post by Michael Clarke on Dec 27, 2010 12:33:16 GMT -5
The Captain's heart rose when he heard Hollie's voice(he also laughed inwardly at the stupidity of her captors. Comm unis should have been the first thing they should have checked for on their hostages, otherwise a situation like this could arise. One man's incompetence is another man's saving grace), responding to his daughter:
"Yeah, yeah it's me honey. First things first: are you injured?" He could have cared less about any of the other details at that moment; he wanted to make sure she wasn't injured. Michael then noticed something on the porch: something small, about the size of a coat button. It was vibrating slightly, as if it was trying to indicate someth...
No. They couldn't be that bad. Could they?
"Hollie, did you overhear anything about your location? Anything from your captors, any kind of noise near you?" If Michael's guess was right, they weren't too far off, only a planet or so away.
Heh. A planet.
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Post by Hollie Clarke on Dec 29, 2010 14:49:23 GMT -5
Hollie heaved a deep sigh of relief; thank God these people were stupid enough not to take away or block her comms. It meant that she hadn't even had to try and think about how to get a message out to someone, she had a direct line to the person who could save her.
"Apart from a pounding headache, I think I'm fine," admittedly, she couldn't see if there was any other damage, but she should have been able to feel it if there was, "other than the big guy with the lisp grabbing me, and stunning me, they didn't do anything else." And she was slightly grateful that they hadn't. She didn't need any more hinderances if she was going to get out of here.
"Uhh," she scratched her head, "I can hear an old electric generator, so the building has got to be old, pre-2100's. The room also feels big, and the air is still, so it's got no air conditioning or anything like that." Being blind did have one advantage - her other senses were heightened, which almost made up for her blindness.
"Did they get Janine and Ernest?"
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Post by Michael Clarke on Jan 2, 2011 15:34:45 GMT -5
"That's my guess. Looks like Pop put up a pretty good fight." Michael had entered the home while he was talking with Hollie and noted a detail he had missed before: his father's plasma pistol was laying on the living room carpet, it's cartridge empty. The Captain then realized what Hollie had said about her location: an electrical generator? Who used electrical power anyway? What place could be so backward that...
Wait.
Judging from the time Michael left the house to his arrival, these guys couldn't have gone planetary in such a short time interval, especially if his parents had put up a struggle. Michael had only been gone for forty five minutes. The time didn't just add up. Either these guys were an elite squadron(a possibility) or they were just the pick-up crew for a larger organization. The latter option made more sense, seeing as the only place Michael knew there was ANY electrical power was the old storehouse about fifteen miles away. It was an empty space, mainly used for cavorting children who thought it would be fun to play tag in an empty warehouse that was falling apart. If Michael's theory was correct, then the crew who had kidnapped his family was waiting for pick-up.
There wasn't much time.
"Hollie, stay put. I'm comin to get you."
Michael had found his father's truck(still running on gas? Come on Dad, get with the times) and drove it to within about a thousand meters of the complex. He could see two guards on patrol around the building, making their rounds with little zeal. Oh they were amateurs alright. The Captain retrieved his father's plasma pistol, now loaded with a cartridge retrieved from the shed, and slowly made his way towards the building.
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Post by Hollie Clarke on Jan 2, 2011 15:50:38 GMT -5
Okay, so, her grandparents were somewhere in this building. "Will do," she told him, before climbing to her feet. It was time to investigate the room.
It was a fair size, it took her a good couple of minutes to do a lap of it, feeling her way around the walls. The door was on the far side of the room and bolted shut. There wasn't any sort of security or electricity powered mechanism that she could feel, so, had she been an elephant, she probably could have bashed the door down. She, however, was a small blonde woman with barely any weight on her. The best she could do was bruise herself.
"Ooookay." Tapping her fingers against the door, she took a couple of steps back into the room, and was glad she did when the door banged open, and someone seized her already purple arm.
"We gotta go, Blondie. Trouble ith here."
Ah, guy with lisp.
"What sort of trouble?"
"None of your bithiness."
"Just asking."
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