Mission #35: Penny and Sky King
A mission with an unexpected outcome.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum were founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts taken from Penny and Sky King by Dr Spleenmeister. This mission was chronicled by IndeMaat.
-oOo-
"We're going back to Nam," Tasmin stated after glancing through the Intelligence Report.
"Another POW Sue? A Soldier!Sue? If all these Sues are so into equal treatment of men and women, would it kill them to find out when the Equal Rights Act was passed?"
"You have a point there: perhaps the ones that did research were killed."
"And we're going to kill the one that didn't."
The agents shared a conspiratorial chuckle, but stopped abruptly when each noticed the other was laughing too. Tasmin quickly turned to the console to open a portal.
-oOo-
The scenery was mostly non-descript. There was a clearing lined by some generic trees. The agents hid in the undergrowth and watched as the Sue managed to land a tattered helicopter. Murdock came rushing across the clearing to help her out. When she was out they both ran away.
It exploded in a blaze of light, heat and deafening screech of metal being blown apart and the two of them were blasted off their feet to slam hard into a stack of cargo containers nearby.
The scorching heat of the fire ball reached the agents too. Tasmin indicated they should move further away.
The Sue had sustained a few injuries: at least one broken rib, and a concussion. She managed to get up, but her swift movements caused her to fall down again. Murdock reproached her for stealing a defective chopper from their enemy. After she had coughed up some blood he helped her to her feet.
He winked down at her, his concern for the junior pilot shining in his eyes; he had all but raised Penny since she signed up for the US Air Force at the tender age of sixteen.
Allison glanced at her partner. "What would it take for you not to rant about a sixteen-year-old girl getting a position only eighteen-year-old boys are eligible for?"
"Murdock is US Army, not US Air Force. It's unlikely he would be her mentor, if he did any mentoring at all. Murdock's always been more of a fly-boy than an instructor. But he certainly wouldn't teach Air Force people while he's in the Army."
"Mixing up US military branches," Allison answered her own question.
Murdock continued his reverie.
She was too young to be out here really but she had proven to be so adept at flying that his superiors had overridden his concerns over her inexperience and sent her out into the field under his command.
"Inexperience was not a reason to not be sent into the fighting. Neither was being too young. Did this Sue never listen to songs like 19 or Eve of Destruction?"
"Is this a charge?" Allison asked. "Cause there's no reason to think Murdock would not think some soldiers are too young or too inexperienced."
Tasmin grumbled something that Allison took to mean 'no'.
Murdock had treated her as any of the other airmen under his command. Only last month he had made her clean his chopper with her toothbrush for disobeying an order.
"That must have been some order she disobeyed," Tasmin noted. "I've never thought much of that kind of punishment, and neither does the Army, at least not any more. Cleaning a chopper is extra duty, a form of nonjudicial punishment. Cleaning a chopper with a toothbrush is degrading. Extra duty can only be given to enlisted men. She should have been given a court martial if Murdock didn't think allowed forms of nonjudicial punishment were appropriate." Tasmin paused a moment before chuckling. "I guess we'll just have to give it to her."
Murdock and the Sue stumbled towards the one-man base where Murdock had parked his own jet.
Tasmin blinked. "Why did this Sue give him a fighter jet? Where did she get off thinking this was a good idea?"
Quickly gunning the engines to life Murdock thanked the Heavens that the General had given him this modified Harrier to fly the last couple of missions in, it meant that he had space to lay Penny out comfortably and still get up and out of the jungle canopy with the minimum of fuss.
"A Harrier Jump Jet? Where did he get one of those? Not from this general; the US Army did not own any Harriers."
"Perhaps Face scammed it for him," Allison suggested.
Tasmin glared at her.
"He managed to get a Cadillac in the Vietnam jungle."
"Not the same thing. He's even got a modified one so he can lay someone down in the back seat. Does she think the Army is made of money? I think rather than spend money on modifying a fighter jet to transport wounded, they'd buy a few more helicopters for medivac."
"That depends, if you think that occasionally you want to transport someone to hospital at Mach 3, like a general, it might be an idea to kit out a fighter jet for that purpose."
Tasmin glared again at her partner. "Harriers don't fly Mach 3. Plus it's very difficult to get an immobile person into the back seat of one, unless one of the modifications was a crane or a lifting device, and I very much doubt there is room to put a person down comfortably."
Murdock flew the jet to a field hospital 50 kilometres from the one-man base. He kept talking to the Sue to keep her conscious, but soon she stopped responding.
As the hospital finally came into range he slipped quickly out of his seat and ducked into the tiny area where Penny was laid out.
Tasmin raised her arms in the air and dropped them down beside her. "Why do I even bother any more? I don't know why I bother any more." She shook her head and hung it low. "How hard is it to do a little research? Surely, if you want to give Murdock a plane or a chopper or a jet, you find out the specifics of the thing? Cause you'd want to know where you're parking Murdock's ass. And then you'd find that in a fighter jet, with the canopy closed, Murdock's ass is doing just that: staying parked. Cause there ain't a whole lotta room to manoeuvre inside the cockpit of a fighter jet. It's a fighter jet, for Pete's sake. Not a freaking cargo plane. Not that a cargo plane has room to dance the hula, but at least there you can get up and walk into the back."
"Er, Murdock's about to get shot down. Perhaps we should go to the field hospital," Allison ventured to ask in what seemed to be a lull in Tasmin's rant.
"I guess you're right." Tasmin rolled her shoulders to loosen the muscles and dug through her duffel bag for the remote activator.
-oOo-
Tasmin and Allison arrived at the crash site just as Murdock was climbing into the back of the cockpit. In the crash the stretcher with the Sue on it had smashed into the bulkhead, leaving a dent in the wall and the Sue twisted and broken.
Falling to his knees he crawled to her head, undisciplined tears streaming unchecked down his face; there was no way she was surviving the crash.
"If she dies, we have a slight problem," Tasmin said.
"You'd think once the Sue's dead the problem is solved."
"If she dies in the story she leaves a lasting impression on the characters."
"Okay, that would be bad," Allison replied. She could barely contain herself from stepping in and pulling the sobbing Murdock away from the Sue. "Maybe we should get in and charge now?"
Tasmin put a hand on her partner's shoulder. "I just thought of a way we can charge her for the devastation her death causes and still catch her alive."
Allison looked at her partner. "How?"
"You'll see."
Murdock apologized for not having flown fast enough.
"Yes, nearly 900 kmh on a 50 kilometre trip is not fast enough." Tasmin noted. "It would have taken him nearly five minutes to get to the field hospital, including take off and landing."
"Surely, the crash has cost him a few more minutes."
The Sue replied he was great and that he was still the Sky King. Then she died.
The sounds of the oncoming rescue party were lost on him as he burned the image of her face onto his retinas and into his memory for eternity. Reaching out a shaking hand, he closed her eyelids and removed her dog tags before clambering out of his gasping hole in the plane's side.
"That said 'dog tags', didn't it? The plural?"
Allison nodded to confirm and Tasmin tsk-ed.
"He's supposed to take one to show she's dead and leave one so the corpse can still be identified at a later time. Taking them both kind of defeats the purpose of having dog tags."
The Team then appeared at the crash site and Murdock collapsed in BA's arms. The Team took him to the field hospital were Murdock was checked out. The medical team quickly determined he was physically fine, but mentally he wasn't.
"At this moment in time they could still diagnose him with shell shock, a temporary condition. It's too early to tell whether there will be long lasting effects."
The Doctor took a steadying breath, "Captain Murdock is mentally unstable."
"I thought I recognized him. What's he doing here?" Tasmin said.
"Who's here?"
"The Doctor. It's not entirely surprising. Sues, after all, can be considered an alien invasion that's trying to take over the world."
"Anyway, the Sue's dead; this mission was a waste of time. Let's go home."
"Not yet. We still have to charge the Sue." Tasmin pulled the remote activator from her duffel bag.
"We can only charge the live ones. And this is not the kind of fandom where we can resurrect the dead ones."
"We don't need to resurrect her. We'll just go back in time." Tasmin opened a portal.
Muttering "of course" Allison followed her through.
-oOo-
"Murdock's medivac jet is about the crash." Allison pointed up. "I think you should have taken us back a little further. The Sue dies of the injuries she sustains in the crash."
"It'll work." Tasmin fiddle with the buttons on the remote activator. "I've just opened a portal in the bulkhead of the Harrier. When the Sue's thrown against it in the crash she should land at our feet."
Allison frowned. She looked up and saw the jet get hit by a missile. The jet went down. It cut through some trees before impacting with the ground. Twenty yards from the agents a portal opened and ejected a stretcher. The stretcher had so much momentum it tumbled over a few times before coming to a stop at the feet of the agents. Allison jumped back. Tasmin bent down to turn the stretcher over and revealed the Sue that was tied to it.
The Sue tried to spit some sand from her mouth. "What happened?" she asked weakly.
"The jet crashed."
"Was I thrown out?"
"You could say that. " Tasmin smiled. "Penny Smith, a.k.a. Songbird, we're Protectors of the Plot Continuum. We're here to charge you with crimes against fanfiction in general and A-Team fandom in particular.
"We charge you with being a woman in the Air Force seemingly in a combat position. We charge you with Murdock being your direct superior though he's not even in the Air Force. We charge you with receiving nonjudicial punishment in the form of extra duty while you're an officer and can only receive nonjudicial punishment in the form of a reprimand or a restriction to limits for half a month. At least form Murdock, or rather, from someone with his rank.
"We charge you with Murdock flying a Harrier jet, while the US Army did not have any of these jets during the Vietnam War. We charge you with having the Harrier jet modified so it can function for medivac. I take it you didn't take economics in school."
"I'm in a lot of pain," the Sue managed to say. "I don't know any more what I took in school."
"I'm guessing English, 'cause your spelling is excellent. You could do with more commas and periods, though. And a few less adverbs and adjectives, but that's a matter of taste." Tasmin cocked her head. "We further charge you with having the A-Team suddenly show up at the field hospital, with the Doctor showing up there too, and with Murdock getting diagnosed with mental instability."
"Well, isn't he?"
"It's the suggestion that his breakdown was caused by a plane crash that we don't like," Allison explained.
"But BA said-"
"BA made a pun," Tasmin cut her off. "He's got quite the sense of humour. Anyway, you have been charged. Do you have anything to say."
"I guess I screwed up badly."
"You could say that."
"I'm sorry."
"Hmm, your punishment for these crimes is death."
"Oh..." The Sue took in a raspy breath and seemed to want to say something more, but the breath escaped her. Her head lolled down.
Allison bent down and checked the Sue for a pulse. She found none. She looked up at her partner. "She died on us."
Tasmin sighed. "That was to be expected. Her injuries were pretty bad."
Allison got up. "It feels like we did not finish our job."
"We did." Tasmin gave an encouraging smile. "We took her out of the story. We charged her."
"Seems more like she took herself out of the story."
"Sometimes that happens. That is not a bad thing." Tasmin opened up a portal. "C'mon, I'll buy you a hot cocoa."
-oOo-
A/N: Sometimes after you've reviewed them an author admits that their story had some bad mistakes and pulls their story for a rewrite. My compliments to those authors. Even if they rob me of a scalp to put on my belt ;-)