Almost... caught... up.... <pant pant wheeeeeze>
Elsa Bibat wrote on 11/8/2004, 10:19 PM:
> Set in the "Pulp Hellsing" timeline _not_ in the "Dances
> Set To The Music Of Time" timeline.
>
> *************************************************
>
> DANCES SET TO THE MUSIC OF TIME
> An Epic History of Humanity
> From The Age of Silver
> To The Age of Crystal
> And Beyond
Title block is wrong.
> **********************************************************************
>
> Chapter 8
> Investigations
>
> "_Very_ interesting."
>
> Patricia Dempsey was what Commander Makepeace would normally call an
> odd bird. 'Normally' because Makepeace was not that stupid.
>
> Thin and unprepossesing, Ms. Dempsey's silver hair topped a
> remarkably well-aged face for a woman of sixty. Sharp jade eyes set
> above a hawkish nose gave her the look of a human bird of prey. This was
> rather appropriate for her keen marksmanship skills were still
> considered top-notch.
Gunslinger Grandma? And I thought the *Italian* program was twisted!
> She was also a mistress of pencak silat, an art which made her still
> surprisingly deadly for her age with a pair of short knives she kept in
> her handbag. This was found out by several punks when they tried to mug
> her one evening while the Ms. Dempsey was coming home from work.
"while *the* Ms. Dempsey"? Her name isn't a title.
> Her work was what also made her quite different from the normal
> white-haired matron of her age. Since the 1950s, Patricia Dempsey had
> been an integral part of Military Intelligence Department Five.
> Secretary, field agent, control officer, assassin and, finally, data
> analyst supreme.
Good old Five. Counterintel. If you haven't read it, Peter Wright's
autobio "Spy Catcher" has some delightful anecdotes about real-world
work inside the department. Of course, it's also kinda scary -- makes
me wonder why the West won the Cold War.
> Code-named "Oracle", she was the ultimate clearinghouse for data
<splort> At least you didn't name her "Barbara Gordon."
>for
> MI-5 until a few months ago when Five, as the spooks called it, granted
> her as a 'loan' to the Knights of Hellsing. Now, she brought her
> considerable talent for analysis and data-gathering to bear on
> monitoring the nationwide reports looking for anomalous patterns that
> could be caused by vampiric activity, something that the organization
> had not done before. She was also training several Hellsing operatives
Yeah, before they just used dowsing rods.
> to become a core independent investigative unit for the Order. Makepeace
> had dropped by to pick up his boys for late-night PT and obstacle
> running, an important activity with all the nocturnal activity that
Repetition of "activity".
> Hellsing got up to, and ended up watching the IOU being run through
> their intellectual paces instead.
>
> The 'Debt Collectors', the unit's unofficial nickname since the
> grunts had heard the acronym for the Investigation Operatives Unit, was
Operatives, or Operations?
> composed of a field unit of three with a control officer coordinating
> them all from Headquarters. At least, that was the basic premise on
> paper. Agent Dempsey had the tendency go-on site with her 'kids' more
> often than not. Makepeace approved but was a bit worried about having a
> sixty year old, no matter how skilled, in the field against the things
> that Hellsing fought.
Just give her a wooden stake to do with the knives. Or maybe knives
with silver blades.
> The middle-aged commander gave his elderly superior a smile as he
> returned to the present.
>
> "What's interesting, Gran?"
Extra blank line here.
>
> Hearing the nickname that the troops had come to call her, Patricia
> hmmphed in the way that all offended womenhood did, no matter what the
> age.
>
> She turned to her three nominal 'students' and gave them a jaundiced
> eye as she noted the signs of a quick return to composure after a smirk.
> Aristarchus 'Starsky' Michealson's lips were a bit too tightly pulled at
> the mandibular maxima, noticeable in the dark-haired man's thin, gaunt
> face. Richard 'Hutch' Hutchins' eyelids were lower than normal and the
Starsky. And Hutch.
Elsa, you are a bad, baaaad woman.
> round faced man's entire posture was a projecting nonchalance a bit too
> much. Ignatius 'Ivy' Frost was the most difficult to gauge, with his
Well, that gives us S, H, and I. All we need now is a T.
> immobile handsome face and hard sapphire eyes but, as Patricia noticed
> earlier during earlier instances, his fingers had the habit of playing
> with themselves in moments of guilt as they were doing now.
>
> Quirking her lips, the elderly agent let it pass. Boys will be boys
> after all and dealing with the double O series for four decades had
> inured her to adult childishness. She continued, turning to the room's
What, she worked with Moneypenny?
> main centerpiece, a large computer screen where the daily data reports
> from various police stations and military bases were being collated.
>
> "Well, anyone other than me notice anything?"
>
> The three looked at the screen and Patricia could practically hear
> the rusty cogs of thought turning. Well, at least they were turning.
> Taking these police and military-trained officers and turning them into
> MI-6 class data analysts was a task worthy of Hercules. They had good
> grounding but they initially didn't have the wide view that a good
> intelligence officer had.
>
> Frost was the first one to pipe up with his stentorian voice.
>
> "The numbers. There's been a marginal increase from last week."
>
> Patricia nodded and gestured for him to continue.
>
> Frost pointed to the screen's lower left-hand corner.
> "Disappearances of people and pets are up. Missing people could be
> easily explained by increased glovecleaner activity but pets..." Frost
> trailed off to let the meaning of what he said said in.
"said said"? ITYM "said sink"
> The colonel glanced at Patricia, who was nodding, and asked.
> "Glovecleaners?"
>
> "Type A sociopathic personalities. Serial Killer Level 2, people
> like that Lecter fellow they have in the States, not totally serial
> killers either just very amoral people. No definable pattern except to
> themselves, highly skilled and intelligent, highly _violent_ when
> pushed, often homophagic in their psychosis. We call them glovecleaners
> because in one of the seminal cases the killer, instead of just washing
> their hands like normal serial killers, even washed the gloves he used."
Fastidious, those high-functional serials.
> "And they're running around all over Britain?"
>
> Patricia nodded. "MI-6 quantifies over ten to twenty glovecleaners
> in London alone. We've even managed to find and recruit one. Ripley's
> the current 009. But we're digressing. Starsky, thoughts?"
Oh, how lovely. The Era of Bond is obviously over.
> "Pets could easily be explained by zoops, ma'am."
>
> Makepeace just glanced at Patricia and the silver-haired woman just
> rolled her eyes and explained the term. "Zoops is short for zoophages.
Which, BTW, makes a handy explanation for "homophagic" w/o resorting to
infodump. Nicely handled.
> Vampiric activity is often accompanied by increased zoophagic activity
> because their retinue of consists of both homophagic and zoophagic
> servants. Hutch, how about you?"
>
> The heavy-set man nodded and went over to a keyboard and typed a few
> commands. The screen shifted into a map of London. A few moments later
> red and yellow dots began appearing all over the cartographic view of
> the city.
>
> "Pattern overlay program should have something...there. Can you see
> it, ma'am?"
>
> Patricia nodded and was impressed. The children had managed to work
> like a team on this particular logical process. They were obviously
> using their heads.
>
> "What? I don't see it." Unlike their superior officer. Patricia
> sighed and explained.
>
> "The Thames. See the pattern of red and yellow congregating on the
> banks of the Thames? Disappearances all down the waterline, spaced as if
> someone were actively trying to hide the pattern. Stupid in a way
> actually, a plan obviously executed by someone unaware of current
> technological standards or someone who has natural distrust for the new
> and is used to a particular manner of working things..." Patricia
> trailed off letting the clues sink into her superior's brain.
>
> "Or someone who's been alive a long time." The colonel finally got
> it.
And is rather set in their ways.
Of course, the other obvious potential answer is that someone with a
very detailed knowledge of MI-5 style datanalysis is setting an
extremely elaborate trap... but that's rather too baroque, even for a
pulp.
> "So we better hit the streets then, don't we?" Starsky had obviously
> lost his brains again. Colonel Makepeace first glanced at him, then to
> Frost then to Hutch then to Patricia herself, who had a long-suffering
> look on her face. Makepeace smirked at that, a sign that her superior
> officer agreed with her assessment. She was thankful for that.
>
> "No. N.O. IOU doesn't make a step outside out of Hellsing HQ without
> approval from Dame Integra and a full Field Team backup. Understood?"
>
> There was a grudging nod from the three young men and Patricia
> offered a thankful one to the commander. Patricia turned to her team and
> offered them something to soothe their egos.
>
> "Don't worry. We'll be on the field soon. Besides, there might be
> someone smart enough out there to see the pattern and do our
> investigation for us and what did I tell you is the first rule of field
> work?"
>
> Frost's lips twitched as he said the time-honored maxim of
> intelligence agents, his only compromise towards a smile.
>
> "Better them than us."
Which is a good way to get your allies hung out to dry, I might point out.
Extra blank line. Scene break?
> Somewhere in London, darkness ruled a room.
>
> An audible swish and the sound of rustling cloth preceded a click.
>
> Then, a screen flickered to life.
>
> White letters manifested on a black background.
>
> SHADOWNET SYSTEMS.......ONLINE
BOOTING SHADOWLINUX 2.6.3r7...... Loading Dependency Modules.
We've come a looong way from message tubes through pneumatic pipes, baby.
> SECURITY PROTOCOLS......ACTIVATED
UTILIZING MINDCLOUD GEN-2 ALGORITHM
> SATELLITE HOOKUP........ENABLED
>
> CONNECTION: AGENT BBNK-003......SEARCHING
Agent... Burbank?
>
> CONNECTION CONFIRMED............LOCATING
>
>
> AGENT BBNK-003 LOCATION: MCC-2A
>
> MMC-2A LOCATION: SECTO3 23
"SECTO3"? DYM "SECTOR"?
Also, you have MCC in one line, and MCC on the other.
> OPENING CONNECTION: MAIN TELEVIDEO LINK.......OPEN
>
>
> REPORT
>
>
> The black screen turned to white and an image was displayed on-
> screen.
>
> A young woman dressed in green tank top that did nothing to hide the
> liberal amount of tattooing on her body was leaning forward, in a pose
> almost low enough to peer down her shirt. Blonde hair with odd streaks
> of black was tied up into a seemingly incongruous matron's bun and onyx
> eyes glared from the screen. A pair of dogtags hung from a long-swanlike
> neck and they hung in the air like chimes.
Unnecessary -
I'll admit, I don't recognize this gel, assuming I'm supposed to.
> "Chief? You there?" The woman was obviously leaning down at the
> videolink camera as if it were in a cramped space.
>
> The only response was short, ugly chuckle. The woman winced.
>
> "You know, that really freaks me out. Could you ditch the 'Master of
> Darkness' schtick a few times, you know, like to give me a vacation from
> the fucking weirdness that my life has become?"
>
> The only response was a dry crisp voice tinged with a modicum of
> humor.
>
> "Burbank. Report."
Waddaya know? I was right.
> "Ooookay, no can do on the normal thing. I can understand. But-"
...she *sounds* like a weird cross between Willow and Buffy.
> "Report."
>
> Burbank just sighed.
>
> "Okay, okay. Chill. I just got the job a few months ago you know,
> you with that funky 'life of adventure' speech of yours. Anyway, I'm on
> the aerial command center. Just got out of wonderful sunny Belize, where
> insects lay eggs under your skin and the resulting larvae eat out.
....nice vacation spot. Central America, where Mexico ends, according
to my maps.
Also
> the location of one of those FREAK labs you were so hot on finding. Our
> team torched the research complex but we got a few casualties. Don't
> worry. Usual post-mort processing: heart out, decap and full cremation,
> then the river.
Pirahna?
> "Anyway, I've got some good news for you on the info front, both
> online and hardcop. We hit paydirt with the server at the Belize
> facility had information on the folks who first developed FREAK tech.
> And guess what? Prototype FREAK chips were first made way back in the
> stone age of the '40s. And the who is more interesting. The original
The '40s? What, they had vacuum tubes sticking out of people's skulls?
The first transistor wasn't built at Bell labs until '47.
Of course, this being pulp, they may have had access to Weird Tech, or
Alien stuff, some of those items locked up with the Ark and Grail at
Warehouse 23.
> file they have here is from a Projekt: Jahrtausend. Sound familiar?"
Google and the Fish come up empty.
> The darkness hissed. A sibilant whisper responded with two words.
>
> "The Three."
Hmmm... we just saw *a* Three last chapter.
> Burbank's face was grim in response. "Seems Hellsing's pet vampire
> and the Angel of Death didn't clean out their files when they smacked
> those bitches' asses up."
Walter left a mess? Oh, dear -- he'll be mortified.
> "How?"
>
> "The Russians. Seems they cleaned out the Berlin crypt after the
> dynamic duo got out and managed to snag a few choice pieces of 'very bad
> things'. They developed it into some really funky stuff. I even got a
> video here that, if I did already believe in the vampires and werewolves
> stuff, would make me a true believer.
ITYM "if I did not already"
> "When the Commies finally bit the dust, who else would show up but
> the other Commies. Red China inherited quite a bit of FREAK tech and
> they cooked up some nasty stuff before our boys from Brazil sniffed the
> wind and decided to get in on some of the action. They hijacked the
Brazil. Hm. But Schroedinger was coming from Argentina...
> operation via a bit of help from the Si Fan, who are still pissed at the
> Reds, and they're now jointly running it.
Great. Fu Manchu. Does this imply a Buckaroo Banzai connection as well?
> "Hong Kong's the current location of the main factory with
> satellites in Brazil, Argentina, Mainland China, Tibet, Indonesia and
> Vietnam. I'll upload it up to the Sanctum mainframe for agent
> redistribution."
Sanctum. Heh. Well, I guess ShadowCave isn't sufficiently euphonius.
> A pleased cackled responded from the stygian gloom then another low
> whisper.
cackled=cackle
> "Confirm. Other matter. Report."
>
> "Okay, I managed to snag a few comp sketches of your guys. I'm
> sending them now." Burbank pressed a button and a small subwindow opened
> in the side of the screen with three-dimensional models of two faces.
> One was a blonde, with close-cropped hair and blue eyes. The jutting
> chin complimented his patrician nose in a strange way that the effect
> was peculiarly attractive. The companion model had chestnut-hair and a
Unneeded -
> long narrow face, with thick expressive lips. Beady black eyes peered
> out of the screen, somehow radiating a sense of enmity even if it was
> just a computer model.
>
> "Oskar Habermann and Dieter Kreutz. Brazilian citizenship.
Lemme guess -- our two German-speaking pals from Ch2.
> Stereotypical of their class: crass, rich, stupid and very Aryan-
> inclined. Just harmless businessmen supposedly on a little selling trip.
> Of course, the stuff they got for sale is very illegal in most of parts
> of the planet but they're... living-impaired so what do they care?"
>
> A whisper interrupted Burbank's spiel. "Specifics?"
>
> The woman frowned and shook her head. "None on any data file I could
> find. But these two just got a babysitter with claws." Burbank pushed
> another button and a conventional picture of a bloned woman appeared.
> "OMNIVORE got a ping when the guys at Heathrow entered the name."
OMNIVORE. Ooooh, that's *painful.* Ow.
> "Schrodinger." The whisper had a wary respectful tone to it. Burbank
> could only nod.
Someone *Allard* is wary of? *Oy*... Poor Ceres.
> "Ayep. Kitty's come out to play. But still, one smart to two stupid
> doesn't tip the scales just yet. As can be seen by the follow-up report,
> I'm uploading to your portable. Increased disappearances all along the
> Thames, both animal _and_ human. Very strange and very ... vampirish, if
> you asked me."
>
> Burbank shook her head and covered her face with one hand as she
> stood up from her leaning position. Her voice was faint as she spoke to
> the microphone attached to the camera.
Whomever approved the ergonomic design of that vidlink needs to be
re-educated.
> "Anyway, report over. I'm gonna crash. Lou's gonna wake me when we
> reach Nevada. I'll send in an after-ac to the Sanctum then. Burbank
> out."
>
> A click and the view disappeared, leaving the three images on the
> screen.
>
> Moments later, they too disappeared from the screen as another click
> sounded and the computer was turned off leaving the room in total
> darkness.
>
> The dark room's invisible occupant was leaving.
>
> He needed information and his agent had given it to him.
>
> Now, the Shadow knew.
You know, Kent, thinking about yourself in the third person is *not* a
healthy sign.
> Sinister laughter filled the room.
Not this, either.
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