"Xan, I hurt," Willow said a bit groggily, resting her head on Joyce's shoulder as Doyle drove the truck away from the Bridge in a hurry. When they'd gone into the ruins of San Francisco, the Ishites hadn't reported seeing any other tribes in several years, but there instead had been a group of gun users, and Willow had been grazed across her upper forehead near the hairline, and stung all along her right arm by fragments of brickwork from a ricochet.
"Keep going, Alan," Joyce urged the man driving, "We need to get her somewhere we can treat her.
"I'm going as fast as I can, Joyce, but the timers are with the other vehicle."
"All in one place!"
"Not the way it was planned."
Xander continued firing into the attackers, finally getting them to retreat. He turned to Dawn, who was patching up her arm as she gripped the timer counting down from ten minutes. Tara pulled up next to them and moved over so they could climb in.
"Let's go," he said, slamming the accelerator down, bullets strafing the large truck from up ahead in the distance, "Dawn get the timer ready, we still need to get ahead of the others, but with all the money and bullion we took out of the mint, we're moving slow."
'The timer reads nine minutes…mark," she said holding it. It was fortunate that the device held in her hand stopped a small round from striking Dawn in the face, and unfortunate in that the timer itself was wrecked.
"Damn!" he shouted in frustration, "Dawnie are you okay!"
Dawn and Tara checked her, the brunette pulling out the other timer that had elapsed, and had been reset for the SGC coordinates. Her hurt hand worked the settings as they caught up with and passed their companion vehicle as a car actually started to work its way behind them down the road, gunmen aboard.
"Dawn, I hate to do the F845& sliding thing all over, but we need it now!" the young man cried out, Tara radioing the others what had happened. Tara counted down form thirty as they lined up and headed toward the wharf in front of them.
The wormhole opened, blue as they all hoped, especially Dawn, that they'd get some answers in the next world…as the portal tinged with green.
The suspension bemoaned the punishment as it dropped four feet to the ground, Xander as he swerved to avoid what looked to be a military vehicle as he then plunged through the plastic walls of a hydroponics facility, then through an airlock into a darker building. Doyle managed to avoid the back end of Xander's truck, unfortunately swinging the back end of a truck overloaded with bullion was sufficient to ensure effective application of the truck rear side with the front end of the infantry carrier.
Bodies flew from the rear of the APC, rounds pouring forth from a few weapons that had been brought up in shock at the sudden presence of the two sliding vehicles. The two individuals in the front cab were less fortunate, and not strapped in were slammed around and rendered unconscious, but the fired rounds tore through their own personnel.
Alan and Joyce both recovered quicker than the scattered infantry squad, Doyle alighting from the vehicle and drawing his Colt and advancing on those uniformed liked those who'd shot Willow. Joyce, who'd barely managed to keep the redhead safe from the jolting slide, set Willow's head on the bench seat as (Cue Wonder Woman music) she herself then burst from the vehicle and vaulted with minimal contact up and over the front cab to jaw-punch one and crescent-kick another in the back of the enemy vehicle to prevent them from resisting.
Alan was forced to shoot two unwounded Kromaggs as they got to their knees, Joyce kicking unconscious two more as they overcame opposition. Both grabbed firearms from the enemy, Alan asking Joyce to check on Willow while he covered from here, then maybe 'do a recon.' She'd just gotten back when she heard four evenly spaced shots and threw up, holding the mirror of their truck in realization of what he'd done.
The truck front wedged in tightly but they were able to grab their weapons and make their way forward into a warehouse area. Two Kromagg techs were standing from where they'd had a small crate punted into them by the sudden arrival of the truck; Xander recognized Kromaggs and with two bursts ended immediate threat of revelation. Tara stood in shock, but Dawn placed a comforting hand on the blonde's shoulder, giving her a reassuring nod and whispered, "We do whatever we have to for the babies, Tare, 'kay? Alexander understands this."
He waved them forward, indicating a slow pace as Xander himself sprinted for the far door, drawing a big knife from a leg sheathe. A moment later a klaxon began to sound, Xander kicking through the door firing into targets on the other side. Disappearing inside, the girls catching up heard a couple more bursts, a scream not Xander's, then two longer bursts.
They entered the far area slowly, finding something of an airlock set of doors leading into a darker and higher-tech room on the other side. Perhaps the control room for the logistical aspects of whatever base into which they'd stumbled. Dawn counted eight total dead, five of them soldiers with weapons about them, but no visual of their companion. They followed the sounds of gunfire, now two different varieties, as more screams and shouts resulted. Through five more rooms and corridors they went, finding a greater and greater body count as it seemed Xander had passed through the officer's mess hall and gone all out. On the other side of the carnal scene, Doyle reloaded as Xander dashed through another door and continued firing.
"Doyle!" Dawn shouted, "What's going on!"
"We've crashed into a Kromagg Outpost pretty girl, and Xander's makin' sure our next few days are spent in freedom, not in a camp. Joyce is back the way I came, takin' care of Dawn. You might want to go fetch 'em and some weapons, then follow us slower to either stay protected or bail us out if these guys get it together soon." He dashed around the corridor after Alexander as they did as he suggested.
Xander meanwhile had tuned into his underlying instincts and just let himself go to town on the opposition threatening his family if he paused for longer than reloading. Grabbing weapons as his fallen opponents were still dying, he finished them off and continued quickly into the next room, four times avoiding death and wounds by sheerest luck over stunned opposition.
'Prison bloc, I'll bet,' he thought to himself as he entered a sealed zone of dark rooms. A young human woman of oriental descent stumbled away from him, vaguely familiar in appearance. He shot two guards coming out of a cell block, killing them as he remembered her name.
"Mary!" he called after her, causing her to stop, "We're Quinn's friends here to rescue you and get out of here!" He came up to her, "How many 'Maggs are left in this area?" She shot out a camera.
"Uh, two more," she replied, too stunned to lie and paralyzed with…hope? "They're straight ahead, they were going for the blind man." He nodded and surged by, finding himself faced by the three described. Letting go of the human captive gave Xander the time he needed fire two face-level bursts into the soldiers, causing the prisoner to scream and fall away.
"Bennish!" Xander Harris screamed louder than the crazed prisoner, "Bennish! Shut up! We'll try to get you home, we've already killed maybe half of them." The man surprisingly quieted as Doyle came up
"Mary, help and guide him. Doyle, status."
"Sent the girls to retrieve the others and follow in our rear, so now where do we go?"
"Mary, where's the command center from here?"
"Quite close actually, to the right four corridors and it's to the right. There's a slide platform there and overlooks the hangar for the manta ships."
"Great Mary, just a bit and we might just be able to get everyone out safely," Xander assured her, much of it to assure her loyalty through perceived victory rather than bullshitting, "Wait a minute, then follow me."
Quietly they scurried after Xander, quick bursts of gunfire erupting from the indicated area, then Alexander calling them an all clear. They found two highly ranked Kromagg officers sitting on the floor bleeding as they refused to answer questions.
"Mary, who else is there that wouldn't have been in the officer's mess or here, that could rally the 'Maggs?"
"There's a training exercise about two hours away, live fire, so the other general would be there." Xander smiled at her, shot the groin of the more difficult of the two captives, then the head.
"I hate doing this," he whispered to them as much as the remaining general he knelt down next to, "But I have my mates to consider, so unless you cooperate, I'll shoot you a few times, but make you live, then leave notes about how cooperative you were before I tired of keeping you alive." The Kromagg's eyes widened at the disgrace suggested, "But if you cooperate, you can be left alive, having tricked those humans into leaving before finding out anything useful. You can blow up the computer after we download. Your choice." The calculating eyes considered, then the general nodded reluctantly.
"Simple, now I want a copy or the physical core of your system, a manta ship, a pilot for it that you don't mind seeing executed by us when we leave. And whatever prisoners are still in the cell blocks or medical."
Ninety minutes later, after encountering only four cooks, four troopers and two pilots of the Kromaggs, but finding two intact Bennishes, a Logan St. Clair, an Arturo and a Maggie Beckett, all the worse for wear but intact, they managed to load up the truck caches, Kromagg weapons, several timing devices and what seemed to be a prototype manta ship of impressive size, about a hundred feet in diameter and three levels high. The power requirements alone caused half the ship to be devoted to sliding, movement and…cloaking.
Turning to the pilots as they were about to engage sliding, Xander turned to them both.
"You realize that unless you fire into the command compartment, he's going to blame the two of you. Show us how to work everything when we slide, and we hand you a timer to get back…you can push the wreckage off of you as the reinforcements clear the place. Your choice, you two are testers, not officers." Two hands flew out and pushed buttons, one firing and one sliding.
The manta vessel narrowly avoided hitting the Golden Gate Bridge as they transitioned, the pilots swerving left.
"Anybody have an idea why the wormhole went green again?" Xander asked, "Even jumping wild shouldn't do that."
"I don't know, Xander," Dawn said, but it's gotta be bad luck that I've been hurt both times we've ended up somewhere weird."
"It's probably not you, Dawnie," Xander assured her, then smiled, "But I think we'll let Tara hold the timer, eh?"
When it was clear they were no longer being chased, they slowed in an area Xander vaguely remembered passing a hospital. They pulled in, everything pretty much non-functional in the city, but the place looked like it had been at least ten years since whatever happened.
"Okay, Doyle, head into the ER and see if it's safe," Xander directed them, "Dawn and Wills both seem okay, but I want to check them over with what we know medicine-wise. And if it is okay start looking for a newspaper machine or something to let us know what's going on. Tara, it looks like Dawnie's fine for now, please get the med kit and look at Wills again, Joyce and I are going to learn these systems as fast as we can and get these guys home."
Two hours and forty minutes later, the group reunited just inside the doors of the ER, having come across the expectation of great comet-watching 'tonight' back in 1985, but nothing after that.
"I'm guessin' somethin' 'bout the comet wiped folks out," Doyle mused, "and since we're didn't set a third timer this run except for going back one slide, it looks like the last wrecked world, it looks like we're going to be winging it fer a while, but with a ship at least in a bit o comfort."
"Well, we can program the last comet-struck world as our temporary last resort, and the timer that got us here seems locked on three days no matter what," Xander offered, "Given time I might be able to extract the other coordinates from the broken timer. No promises, but…"
"That's okay, Xander," Joyce assured him, and the girls, "Dawn is much more important than the timer."
"You bet, Joyce," Doyle agreed, others nodding except a sleeping Willow, "We'll just have a little bit more of an adventure is all. So what do we do for three days?"
"Well first off, is Willow going to be okay?" Dawn asked, Xander nodding in agreed concern.
"Somehow she managed to avoid a real concussion, but I don't know how, but she seems to be sleeping regularly," Joyce assured them after double-checking the first-aid, "And Dawn's hand is cleaned and bandaged so it hopefully will heal properly."
"In that case…since we seem to have the basics down, we can send the Kromaggs off somewhere, then let's find the main library I see on this map you got from the hospital gift shop, and see what we can learn about this world," Xander suggested, "then we'll see about modernizing our supplies, ammo, greenbacks and such."
"Looting again, Xander?" Joyce asked with just a hint of reservation in her voice.
"Only to balance out what we need, and only if there doesn't seem to be an owner that might be around and concerned. Tell ya what, let's held over to The Presidio instead, rest up, and see if there's anything there that'll fill out our reserves without requiring a higher profile, though I'd really like to get as close to Sunnydale as possible before the next slide."
'That sounds better, at least safer, and we should try to get back to Southern California." The girls nodded in agreement.
"Okay, we've set the timer for seven day increments, and are sending you to a world we learned is uninhabited, so we'll be long gone by the time you get back," he told them, handing them a timer, "Here."
"Okay, let's open up the cabins and let our 'guests' out for a better round of introductions, shall we?"