29 – THAT IS NOT TOTALLY DISGUSTING

The Greens piled into the Falcon and took off. Kenny had called the pilot seat, and so naturally he was the one flying it. It soon became apparent, however, that he was an even worse driver then Nome. He constantly swerved for no apparent reason, throwing the Falcon almost up on its side, to the point where he flipped it completely over, and whooped at the top of his lungs in excitement every couple seconds. There was even one point when it turned out that he was flying in the opposite direction from the coordinates, and had to turn the transport aircraft completely around. Because of this setback, the trip to their destination took them significantly longer than it otherwise would have, and by the time they began to near the coordinates it was already one in the afternoon. The sun stared at them menacingly from its temporary perch almost directly overhead.

Skope looked out above the turret he was holding to see nothing but the expanse of water and a rather tall island in the direction where the coordinates were supposed to be. "Um, Nome, are you sure you entered the right coordinates?" He called out. "I'm not getting any visual on a base yet."

From the other side of the compartment, Nome sighed. "Yes, I indeed entered the proper coordinates. Now, tell me what you see from your view."

"I see... nothing but more water. Oh, and a small island. Nothing on it, though."

"Hmmmmmmm," Nome thought to himself. "Ah, I know what to do! Ynnek, set us down upon the island. I feel confident that Avalanche's new location is hidden somewhere there."

"You got it!" Kenny called out.

After swerving a few more times, Kenny "landed" (more like almost crashed, in Skope's opinion) the Falcon onto the island's surface. He forgot to lower the landing gear, so the VTOL craft hit the ground belly-first. The instant friction, combined with the fact that the Falcon still had nearly all of its momentum from the flight, meant that as soon as the Falcon touched the ground everyone (except Nome, who had his crash belt on) in the passenger compartment was tossed towards the front wall. Jess was thrown far enough to fly out of the compartment completely and roll a couple of times on the ground outside.

"I'm driving next time!" Skope growled as he picked himself up from the floor, quickly checking himself over. "Jess, you alright?"

"Yeah…I think…" she groaned from outside. "Nothing's broken, that's for sure."

"That was a most unenjoyable landing," Nome commented harshly as he unbuckled himself.

Kenny let out a nervous laugh as he pulled himself out of the cockpit. "Sorry, I'm a little new at flying these things. I never really took a course in piloting-"

"I figured as much!" Jess interrupted angrily as she stood up, then stumbled. She looked around for a few seconds until she spotted her media player on the ground, lying where it had flown free of her armor, and picked it up. Anxiously, she checked to make sure it hadn't been damaged, and apparently it hadn't, because she put it away a moment later and rejoined the group.

The other three Greens quickly left the Falcon and joined Jess to explore the island they were standing on. As Skope looked around, he decided that a far more accurate name for the structure of land was "pinnacle", because the rock itself was in the shape of a tall cylinder, with the flat part they were standing on being the upper circular surface. Observing his surroundings more carefully, he noticed what looked like a manmade structure at the approximate center of the island, which consisted of a ramp leading up to a large platform with an empty teleporter frame sitting at its center.

Jess had noticed this as well, and she remarked: "Huh. This seems like a little less than a full base. Nome, are you absolutely sure that this is the right location? This is the third place we've been to, and they still aren't here!"

Nome laughed politely. "Do not become fumed so quickly, my determined fellow," he said, patting Jess on the shoulder. "The first two coordinates are correct, but the variable determining elevation remains to be reached. At Magenta 3, that would put Avalanche team at a height of only three meters above sea level."

Skope looked over the edge of the island again. "The way down is a lot more than three meters. It's more like a hundred." To test his theory, he kicked a small pebble next to him off the cliff. It took several, long seconds for it to hit the water. "Yep, that's at least a hundred meters there."

"There must be a secret way in, as there was with the lab complex," Nome responded matter-of-factly. He approached the platform. As he did, something filled the air; the sound of aircraft rotors. At first, he thought that Kenny's attention span had been exhausted and he'd decided to take a joy ride in the Falcon, but then he realized that the sound was different; the engines were obviously in better shape, the drives undamaged...something he doubted that could be said about the Falcon they had arrived in. He wasn't hearing Kenny; he was hearing another VTOL. He looked towards the afternoon sun to find it blocked by, sure enough, another Falcon. It was what made him go "Hmmmm," however, that was of particular interest. The Yellow Commander he had encountered a day and a half earlier, Patton, was piloting the craft. His three other team members were riding inside the airborne transport vehicle. A blue soldier was in it as well, sticking his head out the side like a dog poking its head out of a car window.

The other Greens noticed the Falcon shortly after Nome (the increasing sound of its rotors made it difficult not to hear), and surrounded the place where it would land, weapons at the ready.

Patton set the bird down with practiced grace and ease, slewing it to the side to give his team clear shots at the Greens with their weapons and the one turret facing them. He shut off the power, and as the rotors began to die down he turned to Nome and said to him: "Medic? What in the name of blowing shit up are you doin' here?"

Mentally, he smacked himself and wished that he'd come up with something better to say. But exhaustion was eating away at his thought processes, and that was what he'd gone with.

"Greetings to you, as well," Nome responded politely. "And as for your question: I could ask the same of you. We are here on business of our own that has nothing to do with the Yellow Army, so why it that you have come?"

Patton crossed his arms in thought while he decided on the best way of telling Nome to piss off, and had figured out that "You're here, and that makes it our business", but Ryan interrupted before the conversation between Nome and Patton could continue.

"Command was right, there are Greens here!" he shouted at no one in particular.

"You think?" Clair responded sarcastically, her calm pushed to the limit by the random crap she and her teammates had been dealing with for the last couple days. "Still, I thought Command said there'd be more. All I see is the group of Greens we encountered a day or so ago."

"If this is it, I'm gonna laugh." Amber noted.

"Yes. There should be more. A lot more," Patton elaborated quietly. "Where is the rest of your force, Medic?" he asked Nome, voice dropping. "We know they're here."

"As a matter of fact, we were just wondering that ourselves," Nome responded matter-of-factly, still amazingly calm.

"Wait, they followed Avalanche Team here too?" Kenny asked. "How did they know to come here?"

Skope put his hand over Kenny's helmet before he could say anything else, muffling his voice. "Dude, what are you doing? Shut up!" he hissed. "We don't want the Yellows to know anything they don't have to!"

"Ah, so 'Avalanche' is the name of the team hiding out here!" Patton said out loud to himself, clenching his fists. "That's a codename, I assume…"

"Dammit," Kenny cursed under his breath. Skope punched the top of his helmet.

"Idiot." He spat.

"You would do well to believe us," Nome continued, ignoring the altercation between his teammates. "We do not know where they are. We intercepted a transmission that told us they were here."

"Hey, that's the same for us, too!" exclaimed Brian. He was immediately interrupted by of chorus of "Shut the hell up!" (and similar sentiments) by everyone else, both Green and Yellow.

"We just need to figure out how to find this base," Patton continued as he talked with Nome.

"Another truce, perhaps?" Nome suggested helpfully. "I do believe our last one worked out most nicely." He glanced over at Brian, who he just seemed to notice. "I see you still have the Blue prisoner with you. So he was of some use after all."

"Yeah, I guarded a supply closet!" Brian said happily. Patton slammed his clenched fist down on the top of the Blue's helmet and he dropped to the ground with cartoon-like swiftness.

Patton chuckled, as if nothing had happened. "Oh, really. Another truce. Normally I'd laugh in your face-"

"-And then fill it full of buckshot-" Ryan added quickly, eliciting chortles from his two female allies.

"-But considering, as you said, how well we worked together during our last mix-'er-upper, I think it might work out fine. We find Avalanche Team, do whatever, and then kill each other."

"Sounds like a good plan," commented Jess. "Well, I might be a little iffy on the last part of it, but-"

"Deal," Nome agreed, reaching out his hand for Patton to shake. Patton did so, quickly, then pulled it back as if Nome had burned it. He shook his fingers for a moment, then wiped them off on his armor.

Skope sighed and slapped his hand over his visor. "Oh, here we go again!"

Ryan took his hands off of the turret he was holding so that he could lean back in the seat and cross his arms. "So now what, boss?"

Patton motioned for his team to exit their Falcon, as there was no longer any point in fortifying themselves in it now that they were in a another truce with the Greens. As soon as everyone was out and had joined the Greens in one crowd-like group around their two leaders, Patton turned to Nome so that he could rephrase Ryan's question: "Well, Medic, this truce was your idea. You damn well better have some idea for what to do next."

"We can only proceed by discovering a way into the base located here," Nome answered thoughtfully.

"I guess I was hoping you'd already figured that part out," Patton grumbled in response. "Guess I was wrong. Don't suppose you found any form of identification yet, did you? Anything that could open something up for us?"

Nome shook his head. "Not as of yet, no."

"What about a password?" Skope suggested.

"Why a password?" Jess asked.

Skope shrugged. "Avalanche Team seems geeky. Geeky people like passwords."

No one argued with his thought process.

"Well, supposing it is a password, what would it be?" Amber wondered.

"And what in the flipping heck would we say it into?" Patton put in. "Anyone see a microphone or something around? A keyboard?"

Only Brian bothered to shake his head. The rest of the group knew it was a rhetorical question.

Nome's cleverest response was to stroke the chin of his helmet and go deep in thought. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…"

"Uh, Nome, dude, are you okay?" Kenny asked.

"Yeah, that's gotta be the longest 'hmmm' I've ever heard...even from him." Jess noted, taking enough time away from her media player to look at Nome.

"He's fine." Clair replied. "If he starts humming tunelessly, then we should be worried."

"I am indeed quite satisfactory." Nome said. "I am simply calculating. Give me one more moment," he responded at half attention. "Mmm- mmmmmmmmm- hum- mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm." He suddenly stopped and clapped his hands together excitedly. Or about as excitedly as he could act. He looked towards the platform, stood on it, and shouted: "That is not totally disgusting."

Instantaneously, a teleporter activated in the center of the platform in a brilliant flash of light. A voice recording then played out: "Password accepted. Access granted. Welcome to Avalanche Base Bravo."

Patton shook his head in disbelief and sighed. "That is not totally disgusting' was the password. What the fuck?"

"Solid copy, sir." Clair agreed, reaching under her helmet to wipe her eyes.

Most of the other soldiers gathered confirmed Clair's sentiment.

"How the hell did you figure that out?" Skope quietly asked Nome.

"Ah, it was simple," Nome laughed pleasantly, placing his hands behind his back and beginning to pace. "When we were in the control room of the lab complex, Ynnek said the words: 'At least we're in a room that is not totally disgusting,' at which point the control room revealed all of its secrets to us. I should have been aware of it then, but it was only just some moments ago that I suspected that Ynnek had unknowingly uttered the password to open up the control room. I then applied this information to our situation here, as it would stand to reason that Avalanche Team would use a common password for all of their bases, and realized that the password for entry could only be the phrase 'that is not totally disgusting."

"But, how did you know that the password didn't include the first few words of Kenny's sentence, like 'least,' or 'we're'?" Jess asked.

"I hate contractions," was Nome's only response.

"And I would guess that Avalanche hate's them too." Skope noted.

Patton cleared his throat and then said: "So your private accidentally said the password before, and you knew it just from that? Damn, maybe you really are smarter then you look, Medic!" He paused, then added, "But that's still not saying much."

"Why, thank you…I think," Nome said cautiously.

"That was a compliment." Amber translated. "Or, at least, the best your're gonna get from Patton."

"Then I shall take it." Nome said pleasantly.

Skope moved away from the group and began walking towards the teleporter. "Shall we?" Without further ado, he walked through, disappearing in a flash of light.

Everyone else followed him into the teleporter. They reappeared in a large round room with permacrete walls that looked to be underground, as there were no windows visible. The group spread out, weapons ready, but found nothing. Just empty space.

"Man, this place is deader than the Death Star." Ryan noted.

"Maybe not." Kenny said. Everyone turned to look at him. Kenny wasn't looking around; he was looking straight up. The rest of the group followed him line of sight.

In the center of the room, high above their heads, was a floating platform, and on it stood a crowd of about a dozen green armored soldiers. Their armor bore a grey secondary color, and on their shoulders was the stylized picture of a mountain with a wave of snow coming off it.

"It's Avalanche Team!" Jess exclaimed. "Has to be!"

"At last, my comrades, we meet again!" Nome said proudly to the people on the platform.

The soldiers on the platform each attempted to salute to Nome, but struggled in the attempt, as they all had to bring their arms up at once, and they were so cramped on the platform that they risked falling off if they moved too drastically. One of them almost fell off, but was saved at the last moment by one of his fellows grabbing the back of his armor.

"What're they doing?" Amber asked loudly, enough so that the clustered soldiers could hear her.

"What are we doing?" one of the soldiers on the platform, who was presumably their commander as he had additional coloring on his armor, asked in an annoyed tone. "What are we doing? I'll tell you what we are doing-"

"Sir, your line," another soldier immediately behind him whispered.

"What?" the commander asked, attempting to turn around but failing in the cramped conditions of the platform.

"Your line." Repeated the soldier.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly."

"Your line!"

"My line? My line. My line…" The commander then let out a loud breath. "Oh, right! My line! I mean-" He cleared his throat, turned back to the Greens and Yellows, and then continued in a voice so dramatic that it was almost silly: "I bid you great welcome my fellow Greens and…you other people. Wait, who are you other people? You're not Green! This is a Green base, didn't you know? Are you lost? There's a map nearby, I think…"

He waited some moments for the Yellows to respond, but they just glared at him.

Eventually he continued: "But moving on…Nome and company, your arrival is in fact of great importance. Come, for we have little time, and much to discuss."