Order 26: Reload
By: SleepyNinja
Disclaimer: Don't own Hellsing and not making a dime. I'm not even making any pennies off of this whatsoever. The entire idea goes out to the creator of the show itself, not me.
A/N: Insert random whoring for review here.
It was faint at first. The engines of fighter planes could be heard in the distance. Even over the noise of Vladimir's rapid fire.
"What?" Seras stopped shelling for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"This place is empty! No one is here!" He sounded almost as surprised as she was.
It was faint at first. The engines of fighter planes could be heard in the distance, rapidly approaching. Even over the noise of Vladimir's rapid fire. "Jack," she said as she started shooting again, "cavalry is coming."
"Well make sure they don't blow me up." The radio crackled and drown out his voice. "-look around."
"Of course." She wasn't sure it went through, but it hardly mattered. She squeezed the trigger of the cannon, and it clicked. She pressed again. It surprised her how long it took. She threw the spent weapons on the ground and watched the red hot barrels ignite the leaves and other flammable debris around her.
"Ms. Victoria." Seras jumped. She thought Walter had left a while ago. "You still have two more shots, and please a new target. It would be a dreadful waste."
Seras looked back at the feeding mechanism and saw them. In seconds the massive rounds were strapped on the barrels as Seras took aim, fired, and watched in awe as an untouched zeppelin burst into flame.
The jets roared overhead. They headed straight for the targets, released a volley of missiles and banked to the left. The zeppelin took the volley and started to fall apart. Various pieces fell off, and it began a nosedive for the ground.
"-hit!" Seras heard over the crackling of the radio. Oh fuck. That was the one Jack was on. Seras could do nothing but watch as it fell, crumpled against the ground, and exploded into a fireball.
"Jack! Jack!" She was frantic. "Do you read me?" She listened to the buzzes and the crackles. Wait, what was that? "Jack, is that you? Repeat that!"
"I can't feel my legs."
Jumping out of a flaming zeppelin at several hundred feet, landing on very solid ground, and then being drenched in flame and shrapnel is a very painful process. Even for a vampire. There was a fairly good reason Jack mentioned that he couldn't feel his legs. They were crushed into a bloody pulp, leaving him with little more than stumps a few centimeters below the knee. His left arm was badly mangled, and there were at least a dozen pieces of baseball sized metal lodged in his torso, and what appeared to be a piece of a circuit board in his left eye. Along with the fire and burns, well, it wasn't pretty.
Fortunately one of the upsides of being the undead is that you can live through such a traumatic event. Unfortunately you also feel the agonizing pain of living through it. So Jack was retrieved later by airlift, and taken back to Hellsing HQ where he could recover. So, bandaged up like a mummy from an old horror film, Jack slept as fresh blood was pumped into him intravenously.
Seras shut the door from his room quietly and began to walk up towards Sir Integra's office. Jack had been awake for a little while, and she was instructed to get as much information out of him as she could. She made her way up towards the board room where the Round Table conference had been held. There was so much going on at such a period of time that Integra moved all the papers to the massive table to organize. Poor Walter was running around, always carrying folders containing God-knows-what, and trying to somehow attempt his regular duties at the same time.
Seras opened the door, and walked in. The place was a mess. Papers were strewn about, photos, documents, anything that contained relevant data. Walter was sorting through a stack of reports, and Integra was looking at satellite photographs.
"Sir."
"What did Owens say?"
"He wasn't that coherent from all the morphine, but apparently the entire place was abandoned. Like it was running on autopilot."
"That would explain the lack of bodies in the wreckage." She flipped through some more photos. "It appears to have been a simultaneous global strike."
"In America," Walter started, looking over a particular page. "The President, most of the cabinet, and roughly a third of the Presidential aids were slain. An aid appears to have been a vampire, and then proceeded to tear his way through top officials. Firefighters are working on containing the fire in the White House. Ms. Victoria would you assist us in sorting through all of this?"
Seras stared at the massive pile of information and her heart dropped. "Alright." She trudged to a seat and started going through whatever was in front of her, trying to get some sort of organization.
"And elsewhere?" Integra asked.
"Similar story. England seems to be the only exception. "What time did the aircraft first appear?"
"Earliest photograph is at 2:24 last night over Greenland. It stopped off the coast of Ireland during the day, then moved again at dusk."
"I have a report of an attempted mutiny on the H.M.S. Eagle at 1:57 last night. It appears to have been the work of Millennium."
"Attempted?"
"The uprising was stopped by an American Paranormal Bureau unit."
Integra stopped flipping through pictures. "Why," she said, the silent frustration becoming more overt in her speech. "Was there an APB unit on a British ship?"
"It went over our head. The Major's transmission was routed and rerouted across the globe. Apparently they intercepted it, and decided to get involved. They contacted the Prime Minister directly. It says in the report that "the threat presents a very clear and present danger to the United States, and the world.'"
"Bloody Hell. Now we have to deal with the Americans."
"Well it doesn't seem like we have to for very long. They claim to know where the transmission originated from. We're already looking into the legitimacy of these claims."
Seras threw down a stack of papers. "This doesn't make any bloody sense. If you're planning a worldwide coup, shouldn't they have at least been there!"
"It is odd." Walter rubbed his chin. "You don't stay quiet for half a century and come up with something this ineffective. Perhaps they are not as great in number as we were lead to believe?"
"It doesn't make sense. To send us a message and not carry it out." Integra lit a cigar and gave it a puff.
"Historically," Seras said, "these bastards have shown they at least know what they're doing militarily. This can't be a coincidence."
"They would only move if it gave them an advantage. If I know the Major like I think I do, we haven't heard the last of them."
"Alucard." Seras said. "This all relates to Alucard."
"How?" Integra asked.
"You know it's difficult for vampires to move across water, at least for the weaker ones. So it doesn't make any sense to capture an aircraft carrier. I bet that was a distraction. The only one who could have gone in would have been Alucard. Judging by the specifications, he's the only one who could have made it on and survived."
"So," Walter said, "by sending him out of England, to open water, we would have been severely weakened."
"I've seen what my Master is capable of doing. They're afraid of him. They should be."
"So it's a distraction."
"I think it's a distraction on top of a distraction. They needed to find a new plan, the easiest way to get some breathing room was for us to believe that they had already been defeated."
Integra grinned with approval. "So Seras," she puffed on her cigar, "what's our next move?"
"Search and destroy sir. Search and destroy."
So with a vague grasp of what had happened in the past twenty hours, Seras headed back down to her room. After a bath, changing into clean clothes, and a blood bag, she headed next door to check on Jack. She cracked open the door and looked in. Jack was in his coffin, and the lid was open. Probably so all the tubes from the IV stand next to it wouldn't be crushed.
She walked up to it and looked at him. It was a pitiful sight. What was left of his legs was wrapped around in bloody bandages. His left arm was completely wrapped and was close to his chest. Gauze had been taped down over where the shrapnel entered his torso and the centers were in varying degrees in the process of becoming saturated with blood. His right arm had all the tubes going into it. It's the only place that wasn't horribly damaged, probably because he landed on it, but in any case it was the only place that had a suitable vein. His left eye had a patch of gauze and a few bandages going around the left of his head.
Poor guy.
She ran her fingers through his hair and looked at him.
"Grrmmmmmm." His eyes started to open.
"Hey."
"Mmmm." He closed his eyes again.
"You okay?"
"Well," he said in a hushed tone, "I'm not so sure because of all the painkillers, but I think I'm pretty fuckin' far from okay."
Seras smiled. "You'll be good as new in no time."
"Doesn't feel like that."
"Poor baby."
"Oh be quiet."
PREVIEW!
Seras: If I find one of your severed legs, can I use it as a putter?
Jack: Go for it, but good luck finding a club that will allow severed limbs on the putting green.
Order 27: Amicable Relations
A/N: Come on people! Review! I'm disheartened!
