The New World Interim Thread For When BG is Wonky

[mwbaaailey]

Sorry if I'm talking out of turn, as it were, but BG went off just as I posted this (at least it seemed that way), so I created this thread to get it "down" someplace. Maybe I'm just obsessed, I don't know . I guess everybody else can post here too if they want, 'til we get our regular BG back again.

Anyway, here's the next installment of Fergus and Company:

Fergus felt it again; He'd felt it on that riverbank in Africa when the blood stained both the mud and the water, just before he kicked and cursed his squad into charging the captured maxim gun and the three Impis (roughly a hundred Native rebel troops) clustered around it. A feeling that something had to be done, NOW, or everything would be up -- and he had to be the one to start it in motion. Charge, regroup or get everyone the hell out -- he chose the third option this time. Six of his people would never rise again, and that was a bolt of hell straight to his heart, but there was no time yet for that. Give it back a 'undredfold after ye git back, he roared in his own head.

He grabbed the new leftenant ('Bella Jiroux? was that her name?) by the shoulder and shook her awake, kicked the feet of his bo's'un and his Number One, and got them to rousing the others. The fried-ozone sensation was no longer in the air, but he could feel it, the heat of it, building again, like when Falco called the lightning. "People," he said urgently, hotly, "we gots tae get gone, nowe, we 'ave no ither choice. Back to th' Raptor, an' Miss Jiroux tae yer bike, an' get away before they zap us again! Get back 'ome and then shoot and kick bloody 'ell outter this crap-bucket 'til she falls!"

The others cheered raggedly. Then, they began the business of making their way back to the hole they'd boarded through. It turned out to be another bloody battle, as the crew of teh Demologos came out of their protected hidey-holes, and proceeded to try and harry them. The erstwhile boarders gave as good as they got, which saw them back to where they'd entered and 'Bella out the shot-hole and shinnying down the cable to her airbike. There was no hesitation, now; no sould searching for Fergus as he began loosing fireballs and bulkhead-piercing bolts of flame and heat. there came the moment when the Raptor hove close again and took them aboard by way of the hold-door; no grapnels to steady the portal, it hemmed and yawed like a monstrously-mobile mouth -- but they clambered, leapt, and struggled back through anyway, and remarkably lost no one else.

Still, no reprisals from Demologos' guns. "Get us away!" he yelled a the helm, "a thousand yards at least, and load the coilgun while ye're at it! We en't a-runnin, we're attackin' fer fightin' room!" His orders were followed, and he marveled at the feverish efficiency of his odds-and-ends crew, people who'd joined together for the nonce and formed into a force to be reckoned with, almost without any real teaching from him.

The Raptor turned just as someone aboard Demologos woke up and began marshalling the gatlings and port casemates into a firing sequence. "No standin' fight! No grapplin'!" Fergus roared, "Run right at 'er full tilt an' rake as ye go!"