Of course they would thought Inga Rangers are always ready. Not that she thinks this is the best course of action but she is not in charge and personal that is fine with her.

The W/O would have been the second choice after herself. But and Lt. Keenan had said she was not expendable wither. Actually none of them were iin such a small team but ther leader most of all.

Well there is always hopeing for the best and so she hoped for the best and was ready to do her best as well.

Still the nagging thought of what the soldiers in there had said keeps sliding though her mind. If this was not the real world she could think up an explaination for this, perhaps even two. One was that this there is a time anomoly in this area or two this was an alternate world that had shifted into their time and space. The factors she considered were the weird blue doom., the Yeti, and some robot far ahead of its time-[erhaps-trying to destroy them. Yep, weird stuff, more suitable for the boob tube and video games--or was it?

"Ready, Sir." Inga brushes the thoughts aside for now.

From his crouched position, Pearson could overhear Lee’s conversation with Kane.

Lee: “…I don’t like this position. We are too exposed here in this narrow hallway. May I suggest we pull back from this doorway down the hall. It might give those guys in there time to think things through more clearly. It will also give us more room incase these guys happen to have any grenades on them and think to chuck them through that door.”
Kane: “Good call, Sergeant. You’re right; We are in a bad spot tactically.” He paused for a moment. “Okay… take Pearson and Hatherford with you and cover the North and South doors leading to this hallway. First sign of trouble…”
Sergeant Lee turned to Pearson and Hatherford. “Come on,” he said, his voice only a whisper. Pearson followed as ordered.

As they backed into the next area again, Sergeant Lee gave out his orders, “Pearson, take the north door. Hatherford, the south door… and if anything attacks, take cover but do not return fire unless I give the ‘ok’.”
Pearson gave the smaller sergeant a quick nod, “Roger that, Sarge!”

The private quickly made his way to cover the north door. He’ll scan the room for any items of interest.

OOC:
1) Is there anything of interest in this room? i.e. Fire extinguishers, lighting, tables, chairs, bookcases, etc.
2) How does the door open to the next area? (the area between 15 and 19) Is it currently open?
3) How does the door open between the next area and area 19? (Pearson should know the answer to this question seeing as he went through the door earlier) Is it currently open?

Charlie held her position as Lee objected to their current deployment and Kane surprisingly agreed. More surprises followed when the men inside the observatory challenged them to lay down their weapons and the looey decided to go in unarmed to talk them down. Blake may disregard the regs, but she still had them stored away in that cursed eidetic memory of hers.

The rest of the team felt the same way, and suggested either Inga or herself as alternatives, but the looey was adamant, and his reasoning had solid logic behind it. She ran the alternatives through her mind and didn’t like the outcomes. A female medic made an excellent hostage, and a tattooed and pierced “soldier” may just be the trigger point the already freaked men needed to lose all restraint.

“You going in has the highest probability of success, sir,” Charlie stated in the team frequency,” but it’s still only about 33% that it will work. Better tell’em that if you’re harmed, we will respond with deadly force. That increases your chances to 40%.”

Monty heard Blake's statement and swallowed it like a load of rotten cabbage. He didn't need to hear that. Still, the Chief had a point--he needed some security.

"I'm coming out Corporal Fields," Monty called, the cold air burning his lungs and already nipping at his exposed face. "I don't have no weapons on me, so no shooting. My team's got a close eye on things, and should they see me being filled full of holes it can only end bad for all of us...'sides which, I don't look so good full of holes, so do me the favor of standing down so as we can chat a bit."

(OOC: provided they allow him into the room without killing him...)

As Lt. Kernan approached the pair he sought to gather their condition through appearance, stopping some five meters away, hands held at shoulder height.

"See? U.S. Army Ranger, true and true. Like I said, name's Lieutenant Kernan. Me and my team were sent here to help, so maybe you two could be sports and cooperate. What d'ya say?"

(OOC: should the two actually lower their weapons Kernan will try to hold easy, calming conversation with them, leading the conversation towards a detailed report of what happened, and trying to work his team into the room through the soldier's good graces. "I've got a medic with me, maybe you boys'd like t' have her take a look at ya?", "My intelligence officer would sure like to hear that straight from your mouths, if'n you don't mind.", Why don't we all break out the hot chocolate and share some stories...")

Blake noted the sour look on Kernan’s face when she spoke of the odds and shrugged. At least he listened to her...or had been thinking along the same lines, as he told the men inside that the others would open fire if he was harmed. “If this were a computer game, I’d be saving right about now,” Blake muttered quietly to herself.

With nothing to do but wait for a response inside the observatory, Blake eased her weight on the balls of her feet and thought back to the robot bits she’d salvaged. The metal was like nothing else she’d seen before, but she’d need a mass spectrometer to learn anything more about it. More puzzling was that she’d been unable to find anything resembling a CPU in the blasted ‘bot…what was running the thing? Unless it was being controlled remotely, with cameras used for observation…

With the end of that nanosecond, Blake snapped her attention back to the here and now. Checking the garage for surveillance equipment would have to wait. If things did not go well for the LT, Blake’s deadly marksmanship might be necessary.

May 9th, 2025 - 0055
Observatory, Antarctic Research Facility 36, Antarctica

Weaponless, lieutenant Kernan moves into the observatory, careful to show that he is, indeed, unarmed. The two soliers keep their rifles trained on the officer until he is within about ten feet. "That's far enough, lieutenant," the soldier who spoke earlier states.

Monty makes his speech, but neither man seems intent to move into harm's way just yet. "Begging your pardon, sir," the man identified as Fields speaks, "but it has been a crazy few days, and we're tired as hell. Now here you come, claimin' to be a ranger, when we all know that the army got rid of the rangers years ago. So what are you? Some crackpot? Some holdover we don't know about? something else? No offsense, sir, but if you make a false move, we will drop you."

Despite the corporal's wariness, Monty's manner seems to ease his concerns somewhat. "I'll say this, sir, I'm glad to know we aren't alone. Ever since Colonel Giles' damned machine went haywire, this base has been a complete cluster. I guess you're here to turn it off... I dunno. Or are you here to get us the hell out?"

The last is spoken with a hopeful tone.

The Lieutenant knew that these two were addled as the continued with their belief that the Rangers had been disbanded, but he also knew that if he changed his story to try and make them feel better, he'd lose credibility, and trust (what little he had gained). So, he decided to gloss over the subject for now.

"Son, I don't lie. We're here to evacuate personnel, but also try and figure out what the he'll happened. A few days back communications with this station ceased. That about when this machine went heywire? And where might this machine be located--oh, not to pester you, but what exactly happened?"

May 9th, 2025 - 0057
Observatory, Antarctic Research Facility 36, Antarctica

Corporal Fields nods an affirmative. "Yessir, a couple days back, the Colonel turned the machine off, and all hell broke loose. 'course, we hadn't heard from the outside world in a good three weeks before that - as you apparently know, this is a classified op, and the colonel keeps commo to a minimum."

He shakes his head wryly. "When things started going strange, Giles tried to cut the machine off, but it wouldn't quit. Hell, Carter here," he gestures to the private beside him, "set off a satchel charge on the damned thing, no use. You wanna see it for yourself? Be my guest. It's in the main lab."

Monty racked his brains for the location of the main laboratory within his mental map. There was too much distance between their current location and the lab for his tastes to split into fire teams again, and besides that, there were some things that weren't adding up in the soldier's story. The other problem that presented itself was that the Looey was pretty sure if he questioned these boys' sanity out loud they'd like as think him playing at games and shoot him as not, and though he'd appeared fairly cavalier about strolling into the observatory unarmed and as helpless as a baby on birthing day, he was well aware of his own mortality--if he hadn't been before. All that blood in the hall had sealed the deal. True, he'd been party to some real nasty hot spots in the past. Seen dismembered people--friend and foe--as well as living through the thick of it, so it wasn't a debilitating recognition of one's own short existence, but more of a don't be a hero, Monty sort of thing. Psychology was not his cup of tea.

"Yeah, OK," Monty began, his tone accepting and as calm as he could manage. "My team and I will check it out. But look here, Corporal. There's got to be a level of trust between us if we're gonna get out of here in one piece. You agree? I mean, you boys look like you're about ready to fall over from fatigue, and I've still got to get a fix on that machine you're speakin' of--we might as well help each other out. The more we do that, the less time all of us got to spend here.

"What do you say? Huh? We've got some special Army issue coffee. And some MRE's. How long has it been since you've eaten proper--not that this prepack is proper, but it's a helluvah start."

Monty was seriously wanting a medical evaluation on these two as well as the ability to get as much information out of them as he could without staring down the barrel of a weapon. Usually the person holding the weapon was asking the questions, and the last thing the lieutenant wanted was for role-reversal to happen yet again. He needed his team in here, and they needed to get to the bottom of this quick. The whole operation was beginning to give him the creeps.

Was it possible that these two had been locked away in here out of fear, lost track of time, had no way to track the passage of the days, and mistook how long its been since the infamous machine went off? Was it possible they'd become so addled that they'd combined the names and ranks of two different people? Monty could recall a Twilight Zone he'd seen once where a squad had been experiencing the strangest deviations to the reality they'd known: people who had been important in their lives suddenly didn't know them, there was a different president at the White House, the war they'd been fighting in had never happened. Most of them are killed off leaving one man standing, forlorn, broken, sobbing and crying out that he couldn't take it anymore. Everything he had cared about had been false, and he couldn't live in the new reality. As it turned out, it had been the government putting this squad through that hell to test a know psychotropic chemical weapon.

A chill suddenly swept Monty's spine as he waited on the soldier's response. The same feeling one get's after psyching themselves out walking home in the dark after a slasher film.

Monty really hoped this wasn't an episode of the Twilight Zone.

May 9th, 2025 - 0101
Observatory, Antarctic Research Facility 36, Antarctica

Fields grins a bit at Kernan's commentary on Army cuisine. "All right, ell-tee - you're right, we could use some shut eye without worrying about taking every other watch. And neither me nor Carter is gonna comnplain if you can out us on the next bird headed anywhere but this Godforsaken place."

The corporal glances at his companion, who slowly lowers his weapon. The two frazzled soldiers follow the lieutenant on out into the hallway. At the doorway, they pause, and Fields addresses Hart. "Sorry about that," he states flatly, indicating the flesh wound the ranger sustained in the original encounter. "If you'd seen what we have, you'd understand."

Sgt Lee stood in the center of the connecting passage to the observatory area and he saw when the two men came out with the Lt and joined the others.

“Pearson, Hatherford,” he called out to them, NOT on the comm, “Fall back to this doorway and guard this hallway.” He directed them to the entrance to the passage to the observatory so they could see the entire connecting passage (#15).

Once they fall back to there he repeats his earlier orders, “Any thing attacks, take cover and return fire only if given permission.”

Once they acknowledge that, he will move back down the passage towards the observatory and the rest of the squad until he can see the Staff Sgt.

“Sgt,” he calls out softly so as not to frighten the two new guys, “Orders?”

Inga finished dressing Hart's wound, after thoroughly cleaning it. No telling what stuff might be floating around her or how Hart's Jacket that got dragged into his wound. Thankfully it was more of a graze than a complete penetration of the flesh.

Inga medic skills were well honed and her finger deft. So she had cleaned, dressed Hart’s wound with ointment, gauze and then wrapped well and fastening in place with paper tape so it won't slip. "Here are a couple of pain killers for now and two more for later. Keep hydrated. Any excessive pain or if you see bleeding through let me know."

Inga finishes off by patching up Hart's jacket with several layers of gauze, and a layer of Mylar tape to cover the holes. "You're fit to return to duty but nothing too stressful on that arm." Inga packs away everything neatly in its right place and all bios wastes go into a small bio trash bag for later disposal.

Inga looks around for W/O Blake and moves over towards her. Excuse me, ma'am. Permission to speak, Ma'am." Corp. Johannsen salutes Warrant Officer Blake.

If permission is granted, "I've been listening to the goings on and thinking that what is reality for these men is not our reality. I do hop the Lieutenant can talk them down, because I thinks we need to ask a few question that might lead us to a better understanding of what they think is real. You're our scientist, computer specialist and probably the best to ask these soldiers once we get a chance to talk to them without guns drawn between us. That blue field might be part of the problem here. They or we might not be where we are supposed to be. Anyway those are my thoughts so far."

(Waits for reply)

"Oh good, looks like the Lieutenant was successful. Got to see if he wants me to check them out. Inga is instantly the medic waiting for orders.

Pearson had stood firm, about ten feet away from the door he was charged to guard. His imposing figure seemed to cow the door into submission, daring it to open and reveal whatever enemy it might be hiding. But the door remained closed, and he watch was uninterrupted.

From behind, the private heard Sergeant Lee’s voice calling him back to fortify the hallway to the observatory. Pearson’s response was crisp, ‘Roger that, sarge!”

For a moment Pearson was tempted to open the door to make one quick look out, but he resisted the urge. Moving back to the entrance of the hallway, the private took up his position.

OOC: Pearson is standing in the entrance of the hallway connected to area 15. He is facing area 15, and has the left side of his body against the door/ wall. His focus is still on the doorway which leads towards area 19. He’s hoping that the wall/ door will provide him with some cover.

Charlie relaxed slightly when Kernan walked out with the two exhausted soldiers, but only slightly. The soldiers were punchy with all they’d been through, and she hadn’t been ordered to stand down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the medic approach and ask to speak, Charlie granting permission with a nod.

"I've been listening to the goings on and thinking that what is reality for these men is not our reality…, Inga began. As she continued, Charlie’s penciled brows rose toward her hair and she turned her ice blue gaze onto the medic. To hear her own suspicions voiced made them sound, well, all the more crazy.

“Easy there, Johanssen, I’m the flake in this unit,”Charlie responded uneasily.”I’m open to all possibilities, but I’ll eliminate the mundane ones first. As the great Sherlock Holmes has said, When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But, he has also advised that it is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.”

When quoting one of her heroes, Charlie affects a tony English accent, returning to her own to conclude, “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Charlie quivered with the need to find answers, but waited for orders from the looey.

Yes Ma'am," replies Inga with a smart salute. "We need facts." Inga was also quite sure from the Warrant Officer's response that she had thought about this possible explanation for something in the same vein as Inga. She also recognized her response for what it was. An officer's duty to allay the fears of her subordinates and keep forces focused on the matters at hand. Blake had handle Inga's verbalization of her thoughts well she thought to herself. "Thank you, ma'am."

Inga returned to being watchful and ready.