A/N: Group#5, Genre: Alt-Universe, , Picture; #9, dude with camera and bat, soldier and female soldier in purple, Setting; subway station, Compulsory Item: Led Zeppelin LP, Song: Scarlet Begonias, Quote: I told you to kill her but you didn't. And now you gonna turn and you gonna tear away the flesh of her bones. In this life now you kill or you die. Or you die and you kill. - in bold
",...She had rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes ," he quietly sung under his breath as he pulled on his utility jacket. "And I knew without askin' she was into the blues. She wore scarlet begonias tucked into her curls, I knew right away she was not like other girls, other girls."
Hearing the low, scratchy voice carefully attempt the lyrical words, she smiled as she looked over at her partner. Any casual glance would see a thickly muscled, road-block of a man, dark hair cut military style. Sporting battered and well-used body armor over his olive drab and with his favorite bug-stomping percussion wand held sword-like in both gloved hands, he was a force to be reckoned with.
But for those that truly knew Jasper Kent, they would see a thoughtful, driven man sporting a genius level intellect and a love for old world music. As likely to hum lyrics to his favorite song, 'Scarlet Begonia' by an old world group called the Grateful Dead as spit out a complicated battle plan, to Kennedy Marshall, Jasper was one of the most amazing men she had ever met.
As if feeling Kennedy's eyes on him, Jasper looked up and grinned ruefully.
"I was singing out loud again, wasn't I," he rumbled in his low, basso profondo voice.
"Yeah. But at least you weren't mangling the words this time," Kennedy said with a grin, strapping down her double holsters to her legs. Unlike Jasper, who liked going old school in his fatigues and body armor, she sported the latest in combat sheaths. Its iridescent purple covered her in several millimetres of military-grade, EMF-shielded protection that resisted everything up to a full-on disruptor beam. Strap on a utility harness and her double holsters for her twin Helix percussion rams and she was ready for anything.
Which, as the ready light above the door to the locker room began to flash to indicate a developing situation somewhere out in the Continuum, was a good thing. Because it was time to rock.
The transit hub was throbbing with activity when Jasper and Kennedy stepped out of the lift and into the big, circular chamber.
"I knew right away she was not like other girls, other girls." Jasper quietly sang as they paused at the threshold to take a quick look around.
The transit hub was huge. Made initially to instantly sending entire companies of soldiers to the far-flung reaches of the Continuum, humanity's vast interstellar empire, using artificially created and controlled Einstein-Rosenburg bridges, it was now used for bug hunts.
A bug hunt was a two-step process used by the Continuum after one or more of their colonies identified a quasi-sapient invading species impacting the population in some negative fashion. Step one involved a small recon team, usually two or three assets with hard experience in dealing with such organisms that would be sent in to look around. If they could handle the situation, they had clearance to do so. If not, they went to step two and called in the cavalry.
Following that simple formula meant the transit hub was constantly the scene of opening wormholes and sword-tip teams like Jasper and Kennedy coming and going as they jumped out to recon one of hundreds of situations that were continuously developing.
" - Hold it, team 12. - " the hub's alert system abruptly spoke. " - Bio is detecting trace elements on your gear. You need to stay in arrival for decon. - "
"Fuck that," a hatchet-faced man hissed as he pushed past his team mates to head towards the lifts. His combat sheath shimmered with what looked like heavy mucus.
"I just spent seven hours dodging giant cockroaches out on the galactic rim. I ain't waiting any more. I'm washing this fuckin' bug spooge off me before it starts burning through my skin!"
Without warning a full squad of soldiers in bio-hazard armor appeared to surround the man before he could go more than a handful of steps. He had just enough time to squawk in protest before they were bundling him into an isolation bag and hauling him off to decontamination.
"Trent has always been a dick," Kennedy noted with a frown before she looked over at Jasper. "That pinhead got what was coming to him, eh, Jasper?" When he didn't respond, his chiseled features thoughtful as he studied something in the arrival area, she nudged him.
"You hear me, Jasper?" she asked and he glanced over at her.
"Of course, Kennedy. But I saw something spark on the arrival pad. Something on Trent's gear was interacting with the mechanism."
Before Kennedy could reply, the alert system was speaking once more.
" - Team 3, stand by. You are next in queue. Prep for ground runners, quasi-sapients infesting below ground infrastructure. - "
Kennedy groaned out loud.
"Damn it. Another crawl through a sewer, Control? You have got to be shitting me."
"No pun intended, Dee?" Jasper said with a grin. "At least it isn't some jungle, going after tree-swingers like two jumps ago."
Kennedy laughed.
"Roger that," she said with a grin of her own as she recalled the debacle that particular bug hunt had been. "That was a fail on a whole new epic scale."
Then an audible alert was sounding, announcing their turn on the departure platform and the two team mates moved forward. Stepping onto the weathered metal plate, they did a quick check of their gear. Which included a subspace communications unit attached to Jasper's shoulder for making the call for retrieval. Or for the cavalry. Then:
" - Team 3, prep for departure. Iris opening, target locked. Space is folding,... - "
In the control booth overlooking the sprawling hub, the tech monitoring the formation of Team Three's wormhole abruptly leaned forward as something danced across his readouts.
"What the,...?" he growled under his breath, fingers moving over his control surfaces as he hunted for whatever made his readouts jump. And, as he couldn't find it, a hand lifted to move over the abort switch. If there was anything wrong with the massive wormhole generators deep under the hub, he'd rather kill the jump than see one of their best teams ripped apart by the tidal effect on the event horizon of a malfunctioning wormhole.
Finally, as a diagnostic sounded the all clear, he leaned back with a shake of his head and let the jump out continue.
" - Space is folding in three, two, one,... - " And the hub disappeared in a twisting of color and motion as the wormhole pulled them over its event horizon to rocket across space and time.
The sensation of going through a wormhole was unpleasant, to say the least. In one instant you felt like you were being crushed to a speck by tidal gravitational forces. And in the next you were expanding out to infinity as the exotic spatial distortion within the bridge took hold of you. It certainly wasn't for the faint of heart. And if you had a severe allergy to feeling like you were being squeezed molecule by molecule through the eye of a needle, it certainly shouldn't be your choice as a mode of transportation.
But it was the only way of getting from one point to another in the Continuum without temporal lag. And so the only mode of transit the bug hunters used.
Still, as Jasper dropped to a knee and vomited up a non-existent lunch, it wasn't something a person could get used to. Especially since that jump felt far more exotic than they normally did.
"What the hell?" Kennedy husked as she staggered away from the jump in point to where Jasper was still down on one knee. "Why can't it ever be easy like it was on that old school sci-fi show. What was it called again, Jasper? The one where they used wormholes to travel between galaxies and stuff."
"Stargate," Jasper supplied in a voice rough with pain before slowly standing, grimacing as agony continued to dance through his body. "You should know by now, Dee, that it's never as easy as it appears in science fiction."
Kennedy grunted before she slapped a med-pack against her leg. That triggered a hypo filled with short-duration nanites, sending in the nano-meds to repair whatever damage the jump had caused to her molecular structure. Only as she felt the nano-meds begin to settle the pain did she take a look around.
It was a tunnel, about ten metres high and ten across, with a set of metal rails running down the center. For underground transportation, perhaps.
"I think we're already underground," Jasper said, stretching the knots out of his muscles. As rough and tumble as his powerful exterior claimed, he didn't use the nano-meds to push the pain back. He preferred to walk any minor injuries off.
"If that's the case, then that's one helluva precise jump in," Kennedy commented, lifting her arm to look at her transpatial positioning system. And immediately she frowned.
"Uh oh. My TPS has no idea where we are," she reported, looking over at her team mate. "We're completely off grid."
"Off grid?" he repeated with a frown. Then both were looking down the tunnel as the sound of something mechanical approaching along the rails reached their ears. Waving Kennedy to him, Jasper took them both to the tunnel's artificially carved wall.
And none too soon; even as they pressed themselves against it, a large multi-car vehicle raced past with a hiss of displaced air, spitting sparks and rumbling wheels. The two were forced to stay put while car after car went by. Then finally the last one was rumbling by and down the tunnel with a final spurt of sparks.
"Okay, wherever we are, they've got transport tech," Kennedy noted as she stepped back out onto the tracks to watch the lights marking the vehicle's rear car dwindle into the distance.
"Unfortunately it's tech that hasn't been used in the Continuum for nearly four hundred years," Jasper grimly noted. "Something called a subway."
"We jump too far, you think?" Kennedy asked, looking over at her partner. "Somewhere outside of the Continuum where tech hasn't caught up yet?"
"Maybe," Jasper conceded. "Only one way to find out. Let's see where that train went!"