UN Special Forces Poland Research Base

[albatross]

The colonel winces as Khris mentions keeping people alive. He hesitates, then after Dante speaks he nods at Dante's suggestion.

"Once you see them in action.... And I'll introduce you to the mission planner just as soon as you finish." He adds, looking at Khris. "Acceptable?"

[dakota]

"That will be fine, provided we don't delay too long." Khris replied, " We have a fairly tight timeframe to stick to."

[albatross]

The colonel leads Khris, Dante and Bel into a walled off office in the command tent. The office is tiny, with no chairs, but there is a huge flat screen suspended along one wall. The colonel goes to this and immediately touches the screen and begins going into video files. Each of the files has a name and a date and a time, some names appearing several times. But the colonel goes to a set of videos with the name "Blockade" and opens one of them them up.

"As I suspect you know, the other two Division One bases have had no success. This is the only base with any stops. Unfortunately all of the stops here are the work of one person. Everyone else has failed to overcome the shield and the momentum of the demons. And everyone dies of course. Most of them we've been able to resuscitate using the power of your order, he nods at Bel."

"Blockade is the only successful Division One member. She has gone out eleven times. This video is a good record of her methods...."

to be continued...

[albatross]

The video starts with a woman in jeans and a fitted t-shirt getting out of a helicopter somewhere in the wilderness. She is gorgeous, with a perfect appearance untouched by time, perhaps Akane's equal in better circumstances.

She hops casually out of the copter and walks over to a jeep. With her cowboy boots on, she could be going to a barbeque in Texas and not to fit a demon.

In the jeep sits a robot, ready to drive. Blockade sits in the front passenger seat and casually pushes the robot out of the vehicle as if it were a toy she swept off the seat. After spending months around Rock, it is easy to recognize the application of amazing strength.

After a moment, a short, dusty soldier steps up to the jeep and gets into the driver's seat. The man looks to be in bad shape, like he has been flying and driving for days and just completed a long hike. His uniform is tattered Vietnamese issue, and his hair hangs over his eyes. The soldiers with the chopper pretend not to see him.

The soldier doesn't look at Blockade or say anything to her and simply spins the wheels on the jeep, drops it into gear and accelerates towards the demon, miles away. Drones circle in the distance, careful to stay well back.

The man drives the jeep at the highest possible speed over uneven ground, right into the range where people can die, too close to survive. When they get close, Blockage stands up in the jeep and ignores to dying man beside her. She raises a hand and the demon stops. No part of it moves. Blockade continues to hold up her hand and the demon stays exactly where it is. Minutes pass. The soldier next to her dies. Blockade is clearly in pain, but she dies in slow motion. The minutes drag on and on, long past the point where Rock died. Finally, her hand lowers, her concentration breaks and the demon moves again as she falls to the floor of the jeep dead.

After the demon is gone, an evac team takes her and the driver in a helicopter and races away. The next scene is Blockade and the driver getting out of an airplane to cheers from the refugees, alive again. The lightning has changed, and the time stamp on the video shows the next day.

The colonel stops.

[Dome]

"Interesting. Have you spoken with the driver or Blockade in between these confrontations? Have they met with a psychologist or any one who can evaluate the effect of these encounters on them," Dante asks, the entire time monitoring the thoughts of the Colonel.

[albatross]

The colonel nods. "Not good." His thoughts are filled with grief. "The soldier is the worst. He lost his whole family in Vietnam and he just appeared one day and started driving. People can get closer than robots. And Blockade lasts longer if she doesn't have to worry about driving. He is obsessed with the demons, with stopping them. He can be restrained, but he doesn't eat or drink when he is and his condition gets worse." The colonel shakes his head. He is thinking they could send someone else, but it isn't as if driving more people insane is a great plan.

"Blockade is different. Tougher. The doctors say she has serious mental trauma, but that she recovers. Her mind is, uh... young." The colonel is telling the truth, and he thinks her ability to avoid going insane is somehow related to her flawless youthful looks. He doesn't really understand it, just a theory. The colonel thinks she has some amount of post traumatic stress disorder, but also that it is mild and treatable, like almost any combat veteran really.

"I should tell you," he says carefully. and slowly "I don't agree with sending her out there. But I can't stop them. Have you met anyone in division one? They could take down a tank single handed." Dante can tell the colonel has tried to stop the division one missions, and failed.

"None of the other division one personnel really sortie much anymore. They either die too quickly or lack the power to stop the demons. And nobody asks her to go anymore either, or if they do we never pass along the requests. She just goes when she decides." The colonel looks at Khris and Dante, waiting for further instructions.

[dakota]

Khris studied the video? " Then it's time to change that. We need to buy Tiger four days and Division One is our best chance. And we need to do it with as few casualties as possible. I want to meet this Blockade too if possible. We need to throw everything we can to slow them down to get those four days. Understand?" He turned and looked at the Colonel. "As soon as possible."

[albatross]

The colonel nods. He brings Khris, Bel and Dante to another tent. As they approach the huge tent, Khris gets the same feeling as when he approaches one of the very powerful, like Vessel.

Inside the tent, there are a dozen empty offices, the rest of Division one are out and about in the camp. Blockade is sitting in her office. Spartan, consisting only of a map with some pins in it, Blockade merely stares at the map.

She turns and ignores the colonel, her eyes quickly sweeping over Khris, Bel and Dante. Blockade turns and uncrosses her legs and stands up. She wears a pair of form fitting blue jeans and a tight t-shirt, and she looks even more breathtaking in person than on video. Unlike everyone else in the camp, she must have recently had a bath or a shower.

Her eyes have a subdued, eerie glow in the dimly lit tent. She isn't smiling, her face relaxed and calm. "G'day," she says in a faint, sweet down under accent. She can guess why they are there, but she waits for them to say it anyway. She studies each of them casually.

[dakota]

If Khris didn't have such strong feelings for Tiger, he might have gotten himself in trouble with the very attractive Aussie under other circumstances. "Nice to meet you, Ma'am. We're here from the UN. I'm sure you can guess why we are here?"

[Dome]

Dante appraises the woman and says, "hello," when Khris introduces them. He raises an eyebrow and appraises the woman and then looks into her mind to see what they are dealing with.

[albatross]

"Because you want me to fight," She says softly.

She is hard for Dante to read. Sometimes her thoughts seem to stay on one subject for an unusually long time, at others they move so fast he has real trouble keeping up. She replays some of the battles in her head with a photographic memory, zipping through some at speeds Dante can't follow and lingering on a few key points. She is open minded, but skeptical.

"Why?" She asks simply, turning to face Khris. Her eyes lock onto his as she carefully considers his answer.

[dakota]

"We want your help, yes." Khris replied." We have a possible way to stop the demons once and for all, but we need to buy them a few days to finish their field training. Will you help us? "

[Dome]

"Your already fighting," Dante says stepping closer. "we want to see if we can help."

[albatross]

Blockade asks, "Tell me. How will you defeat them?" She is curious, thoughtful. Dante can tell that she is thinking she might not live to see the demons destroyed and wants to know.

[Dome]

"Like you can stand up to them, there are others that can as well. That team is preparing now for a final stand against the demons. Our hope is to have them face the demons one at a time, to focus their strength and finish them," Dante says.