Fic, New Kid On The Block, S3 Team, 15
Oct. 23rd, 2017 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : New Kid On The Block
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker, Lester, Nick, Jenny, Abby, Connor, Sarah
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : Episode 3.01
Summary : Becker’s first anomaly call out isn’t quite what he’d expected.
A/N : 1) Written for Series 3 Week as part of 52 Weeks of Primeval on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial. 2) This sat around for a while awaiting a title and I appear to have forgotten about it. Better late than never, I hope.
The building was certainly impressive, Becker would give them that. But from what he’d been told, their security needed a fucking great big kick up the pants. With a size ten. Steel toecaps preferred. Polish optional.
The guard on the gate was awake, so he got two out of ten for trying. He got a further one point for actually checking the photograph on Becker’s pass against his face, but a deduction of all points for not making him get out and open the car boot. Becker made a mental note of the man’s name as he was waved through.
His pass was checked again at reception, but it was obvious he was expected, so everyone was on their best behaviour. He would have preferred to arrive unannounced but, having been told when to arrive, unannounced wasn’t exactly an option. He was given directions to James Lester’s office and waved through into a long corridor, but he’d taken no more than half a dozen steps away from the entry desk when a man appeared from through a doorway. Medium height, swept back hair, smart suit. No, scrub that, very smart suit.
“Captain Becker, I presume?”
Sir James Lester, I presume, Becker thought.
The man continued down the corridor, obviously expecting Becker to follow him like a dog being trained to walk to heel. So that was the way it was going to be…
“I assume you've been fully briefed?” The question was curt. Lester clearly didn’t waste time on social niceties.
“Yes, sir.” Two could play at that game. Becker could do brevity.
“Your job's to tighten up security in every area of the ARC. As you may know, we've had a number of unfortunate lapses recently.”
Lester had a talent for understatement, too.
“I'm aware of that.” Yep, he’d read the reports. Anyone could have told the idiots that scraping the bottom of the security contractor barrel wasn’t going to end well. Although to be fair, that hadn’t been Lester’s decision. It had been foisted on him by a cheapskate and venal Home Secretary whose husband just happened to have a large stake in the company providing the manpower.
“You're also aware of the work we do here?”
“You detect anomalies and fight dinosaurs. When necessary.” He was pleased with how deadpan he managed to make that line. What he really wanted to say was, ‘Dinosaurs? Fucking hell!’
“Correct. You don't sound surprised.” Lester’s trick of looking down on him while being over 15 centimetres shorter was impressive.
“I have extensive experience in dinosaur handling, sir. I assumed that was why I was picked for the job.”
The temperature in the corridor dropped by a few degrees. “I take it that's some sort of joke?”
Don’t push your luck, Becks, he told himself. Not on the first morning. Correction, not in the first ten minutes. “Yes, sir.”
“A lot of people are sceptical when they join us, Becker. They don't stay that way for long. And, in future, I'll do the jokes.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Becker kept his tone impassive.
“You'll be with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. Your job's to stop them getting themselves killed. No matter what they say, what excuses they use, you and your men will stick to them like glue. We can't afford another Stephen Hart. Clear?”
“Crystal clear, sir.” Hart was fucking lucky to be alive. Luckily for him, the security team had managed to cut their tea-break short and blow the ammunition budget wide open along with the door to a prehistoric petting zoo. Hart had been unceremoniously extricated from the jaws of something that Becker couldn’t even spell, let alone pronounce, and was still laid up in hospital. But at least critical had finally been downgraded to stable.
“Good luck. Oh, by the way. Professor Cutter won't like you and he'll go out of his way to make your job impossible. Try not to take it personally.”
Becker fought back a grin. He’d been very adequately briefed about Professor Nick Cutter, so there’d be no surprises there.
****
A loud noise rang around the building before Becker had even managed to acquire his first mug of coffee.
Luckily, he’d memorised the building layout the previous night and was able to sprint to the armoury and tool up. No time to be fussy, he just grabbed as much kit as he could and legged it to the car park, jumping into one of the available vehicles and hoping the guys at the wheel knew the destination.
Cutter’s Hilux was already heading out onto the road, but Becker’s driver put his foot down and they soon caught up. From what Becker could see, Jenny Lewis, the ARC’s stylish head of PR and Comms had managed to ride along with Cutter.
“British Museum, sir,” the man said as they made their way out onto the road at a speed that would have had any watching traffic cops frothing at the mouth.
Progress slowed as they hit central London, as even at that unearthly hour of the morning the place was still damn nearly at gridlock. His last visit to the BM had been on a school trip aged ten. Jogging up the steps dressed in black and carrying a big gun was rather cool. Better than a satchel with a lunch box, any day. They’d just entered Great Court when a mismatched pair of youngsters in their early 20s came running up. The girl had spiky blonde hair and was carrying a tranquilliser pistol. The dark-haired lad looked like he’d got dressed in the dark.
“Connor Temple, Abby Maitland...,” Cutter said by way of introduction. “This is Captain Becker. He's here to protect us, so do as he says. Unless I think he's wrong.” Cutter did a passable impersonation of Lester when he turned and walked off, adding, “This way.”
Temple and Maitland kept up a steady stream of banter as they made their way through the deserted galleries. Cutter had ordered the museum’s own security guards to stay outside and stop anyone following them in. The blokes had said something about some members of staff already being in the building. They’d left the men trying to contact them to tell them to stay in their offices and keep the doors shut.
Cutter led them straight to the Egyptian gallery. A woman’s bloodstained body was sprawled on the polished floor. The corpse wasn’t a pretty sight.
“It's an animal kill,” Abby Maitland declared, a cold mask of professionalism firmly in place. “It could be anywhere in the museum by now.”
“Which way now?” Becker asked. Before anyone could answer, a low-pithed roar echoed around the gallery, wholly in keeping with the gloomy statues of animal-headed gods.” Abby and Connor started to run towards the sound of the roar, not against it. Their clothes sense might be crap, but Becker couldn’t fault their courage. The security team hesitated, waiting for orders. Becker was happy to supply them. “Go, go, go!”
They hadn’t got far before a dark-haired, olive-skinned woman walked out of her office. At the sight of men with guns she backed off, looking horrified.
“Stay where you are!” Cutter ordered. “Stay where you are! It's all right. Now who are you?”
The woman looked scared. “Doc...Doctor Page. Who are you?”
“I'm Nick Cutter.” Not exactly the most illuminating answer, as the look on Dr Page’s face made plain.
“OK. Um... I'm... I'm guessing... you're some kind of... of thief.”
“No. Actually, I'm a professor.”
“I've never seen a professor with a gun before.”
Becker gave Dr Page points for style.
“Yeah. It's a pretty specialised field.”
“Marion!”
Becker winced. Dr Page had caught sight of the dead woman on the floor.
“Professor?” Connor’s voice came from another room. The tone was urgent.
Dr Page backed away, looking frightened. Becker didn’t blame her. It was a wholly reasonable reaction to a bunch of men with guns standing over a dead body. After a moment’s hesitation, the woman turned and promptly legged it. Becker ordered his men after her. An outbreak of screaming didn’t bode well. Becker just hoped the body count for his first shout wouldn’t rise too high. It wouldn’t look great on his report to Lester.
When they caught up with Page, she was practically incoherent, gibbering about having seem an ancient Egyptian goddess. Cutter did a surprisingly good job of trying to calm her down, but even so, she still wasn’t making much sense. Abby Maitland’s news that she’d found tracks – biped and quadruped – heading south, wasn’t exactly the best news of Becker’s morning. Jenny Lewis made the not unreasonable decision to get the hell out of Dodge on the pretext of briefing Lester, but Becker also imagined she was going to be monitoring the news and social media channels in the hope of squashing any news leaks. He didn’t envy her job at all.
Becker’s immediate job was to secure the area around the anomaly and make sure nothing else came through. He would have preferred to have sent some of his men with Cutter and Abby on the trail of the creature but Cutter was adamant he didn’t want men with guns running around the city just as it was waking up. Becker wasn’t happy, but Cutter was, as he’d been warned, a difficult man to argue with. Becker extracted a promise that they would do nothing more than follow the creature’s tracks and that they would call for back-up as soon as they’d located it.
When Cutter finally rang Connor to say they’d picked up the trail, Becker didn’t hang around to wait for Cutter to do the asking. As he legged it from the store room, he heard Connor’s refer to him as Action Man. Becker grinned. He’d been called worse.
The traffic was already starting to build up, but Becker hadn’t come out of an offensive driving course with top marks for nothing. Ten minutes later, he was with Cutter and Abby, looking down at the mangled body of a traffic warden. Neither of them seemed clear about what they were up against, other than believing it was some sort of giant crocodile. A phone conflab with Connor came up with the name Pristichampus. Becker was going to have to crib the spelling of that for his report. Not a problem he’d encountered before.
The trail led down to the Thames opposite the London Eye. The huge wheel hadn’t yet started to revolve, so at least there weren’t hundreds of tourists looking down when the biggest crocodile Becker had ever seen walked steadily out of the water and started to make its way up onto the South Bank.
Becker turned and sprinted back to his vehicle, Cutter and Abby at his heels. He had a feeling this job was going to involve a lot of running. Becker took a unilateral decision to call for some back-up from the squad left behind in the BM. There was an enormous crocodile loose in London, he couldn’t just leave all available members of the security team standing around at the anomaly site. To his surprise, Cutter didn’t argue. A phone call from Jenny to Abby confirmed that their PR expert was on her way back as well.
It wasn’t hard to work out where to find the Pristi-whatever-the-fuck-it-was. The screaming from a café in the theatre was a bit of a clue.
Abby still carried her tranquiliser pistol, but Becker couldn’t see that any dart from that little pop gun even managing to pierce the creature’s hide. “If your first tranquiliser dart doesn't floor this thing, we have no option but to use live rounds.” He glanced at Cutter, expecting an argument. “OK, Professor?”
Before Cutter had chance to argue, people started running for their lives out of the theatre. Jenny promptly swung into action with some style, doing her best to calm the panic, and giving Becker and his men the chance to work on a more orderly evacuation.
The next ten minutes came close to giving Becker a coronary. Cutter ended up jumping out of an upper floor window tethered to nothing more than a fire hose, but by some miracle there were no casualties and even Cutter came out of the whole affair unscathed. Lester’s ‘rank amateurs’ comment came to mind, but Becker had to admit that neither Cutter nor Abby lacked courage, and Cutter certainly had a flair for improvisation. The crocodile had taken quite a few hits with live rounds from Becker and his men, as well as having fallen from the first floor, none of which had done it much good. Becker had to watch from the balcony as it limped back to the Thames and disappeared below the surface of the grey waters. According to Abby, it probably wanted to go home, which meant another hell for leather drive through over-crowded streets back to the British Museum.
He wondered idly how the theatre management was going to explain the damage to their insurers.
*****
Abandoning their cars at the front of the building, they made their way back to the storage area.
The creature was heading straight for Connor, who was between it and the anomaly. Nick’s shouted instruction to the young man to get out of the way led to Connor trying to use a rope to clamber up a pile of crates and boxes. Becker winced. This wasn’t going to end well.
Becker lifted his rifle and took aim.
“Don't... shoot it.” Nick pushed Becker’s rifle away.
He glared at Cutter. “It's my job to keep you alive.” Although if the professor pulled a stunt like that again, he might reconsider his job description and future employment prospects.
Dr Page’s voice cut through the backdrop of Temple’s increasingly desperate pleas for someone to do something. “Bow!”
“What?” Cutter sounded as baffled as Becker felt.
“Bow down.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This creature is... is used to being treated like a god.” Page’s voice was low and urgent. “They would have bowed as a sign of respect.”
“If it doesn't think we're a threat... it might not attack.” Abby Maitland clearly thought the woman was onto something, but Becker had his standards, and even Sandhurst hadn’t been able to knock them out of him.
“I'm not bowing.”
“Get down on the floor,” Cutter ordered.
Becker was extremely tempted to tell the man he didn’t put out on a first date, but the presence of a fucking huge crocodile that thought it was a god wasn’t exactly conducive to humour. He contented himself with gritting his teeth and saying, “What?”
“Do it.” Cutter’s voice had the edge of someone used to getting their own way. “Keep the gun handy.”
As if Becker was likely to do anything else. Reluctantly, he did as the others were doing, following Page’s lead, and went down on one knee.
The crocodile stared at the them then limped past and clambered up the pile of crates and disappeared through the anomaly. A moment later the glittering ball of light abruptly closed in on itself and disappeared.
Connor Temple promptly let go of the rope and landed on his arse on the floor.
Becker fought hard to keep a grin off his face. If a bruised arse was the team’s worst casualty that day, he’d count himself lucky. The deaths of two civilians didn’t sit easily with him, but it could have been an awful lot worse.
“Nice call,” Cutter said admiringly.
Despite the kneeling, Becker had to agree. The woman had keep a clear head. Impressive in the face of an Egyptian god with an attitude problem.
*****
The report took longer to write than Becker was used to, not helped by having to track down Connor to find out how to spell Pristichampus. By the time he’d finished and emailed it to Lester, Becker was surprisingly tired, and desperate for a beer. But before he headed home for the night, he had one last thing to do.
He slid his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through his contacts list.
The person he was calling picked up on the third ring.
“How’d it go?” the voice on the other end of the call asked.
“They’re all still in one piece.” Becker sighed. “Christ on a bike, Tom, you were right. The whole fucking lot of them have a death wish.”
Tom Ryan laughed quietly. “Tell me about it, mate. Did you have to thump Cutter?”
“No, but I came fucking close to it when he shoved my gun away just as I was about to fire.”
“He does that.” Ryan sounded sympathetic, but still amused.
“How’s Stephen?”
“Getting fed up with hospital food. I had to bring him a load of raw vegetables and fresh fruit today. The doctor’s say he might be able to come home in a couple of weeks if he continues to improve.”
Becker smiled. “Fucking ace, Tom. Does Lester know?”
“Lester knows everything. You’ll find that out pretty soon if you haven’t already. Now go home, throw a couple of beers down your neck and try to relax.”
“Easier said than done after a day chasing around after an Egyptian god and then having to bow to the fucker.”
“Welcome to the madhouse, Becks.”
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Becker, Lester, Nick, Jenny, Abby, Connor, Sarah
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : Episode 3.01
Summary : Becker’s first anomaly call out isn’t quite what he’d expected.
A/N : 1) Written for Series 3 Week as part of 52 Weeks of Primeval on
primeval_denial. 2) This sat around for a while awaiting a title and I appear to have forgotten about it. Better late than never, I hope.The building was certainly impressive, Becker would give them that. But from what he’d been told, their security needed a fucking great big kick up the pants. With a size ten. Steel toecaps preferred. Polish optional.
The guard on the gate was awake, so he got two out of ten for trying. He got a further one point for actually checking the photograph on Becker’s pass against his face, but a deduction of all points for not making him get out and open the car boot. Becker made a mental note of the man’s name as he was waved through.
His pass was checked again at reception, but it was obvious he was expected, so everyone was on their best behaviour. He would have preferred to arrive unannounced but, having been told when to arrive, unannounced wasn’t exactly an option. He was given directions to James Lester’s office and waved through into a long corridor, but he’d taken no more than half a dozen steps away from the entry desk when a man appeared from through a doorway. Medium height, swept back hair, smart suit. No, scrub that, very smart suit.
“Captain Becker, I presume?”
Sir James Lester, I presume, Becker thought.
The man continued down the corridor, obviously expecting Becker to follow him like a dog being trained to walk to heel. So that was the way it was going to be…
“I assume you've been fully briefed?” The question was curt. Lester clearly didn’t waste time on social niceties.
“Yes, sir.” Two could play at that game. Becker could do brevity.
“Your job's to tighten up security in every area of the ARC. As you may know, we've had a number of unfortunate lapses recently.”
Lester had a talent for understatement, too.
“I'm aware of that.” Yep, he’d read the reports. Anyone could have told the idiots that scraping the bottom of the security contractor barrel wasn’t going to end well. Although to be fair, that hadn’t been Lester’s decision. It had been foisted on him by a cheapskate and venal Home Secretary whose husband just happened to have a large stake in the company providing the manpower.
“You're also aware of the work we do here?”
“You detect anomalies and fight dinosaurs. When necessary.” He was pleased with how deadpan he managed to make that line. What he really wanted to say was, ‘Dinosaurs? Fucking hell!’
“Correct. You don't sound surprised.” Lester’s trick of looking down on him while being over 15 centimetres shorter was impressive.
“I have extensive experience in dinosaur handling, sir. I assumed that was why I was picked for the job.”
The temperature in the corridor dropped by a few degrees. “I take it that's some sort of joke?”
Don’t push your luck, Becks, he told himself. Not on the first morning. Correction, not in the first ten minutes. “Yes, sir.”
“A lot of people are sceptical when they join us, Becker. They don't stay that way for long. And, in future, I'll do the jokes.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Becker kept his tone impassive.
“You'll be with a highly strung and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. Your job's to stop them getting themselves killed. No matter what they say, what excuses they use, you and your men will stick to them like glue. We can't afford another Stephen Hart. Clear?”
“Crystal clear, sir.” Hart was fucking lucky to be alive. Luckily for him, the security team had managed to cut their tea-break short and blow the ammunition budget wide open along with the door to a prehistoric petting zoo. Hart had been unceremoniously extricated from the jaws of something that Becker couldn’t even spell, let alone pronounce, and was still laid up in hospital. But at least critical had finally been downgraded to stable.
“Good luck. Oh, by the way. Professor Cutter won't like you and he'll go out of his way to make your job impossible. Try not to take it personally.”
Becker fought back a grin. He’d been very adequately briefed about Professor Nick Cutter, so there’d be no surprises there.
****
A loud noise rang around the building before Becker had even managed to acquire his first mug of coffee.
Luckily, he’d memorised the building layout the previous night and was able to sprint to the armoury and tool up. No time to be fussy, he just grabbed as much kit as he could and legged it to the car park, jumping into one of the available vehicles and hoping the guys at the wheel knew the destination.
Cutter’s Hilux was already heading out onto the road, but Becker’s driver put his foot down and they soon caught up. From what Becker could see, Jenny Lewis, the ARC’s stylish head of PR and Comms had managed to ride along with Cutter.
“British Museum, sir,” the man said as they made their way out onto the road at a speed that would have had any watching traffic cops frothing at the mouth.
Progress slowed as they hit central London, as even at that unearthly hour of the morning the place was still damn nearly at gridlock. His last visit to the BM had been on a school trip aged ten. Jogging up the steps dressed in black and carrying a big gun was rather cool. Better than a satchel with a lunch box, any day. They’d just entered Great Court when a mismatched pair of youngsters in their early 20s came running up. The girl had spiky blonde hair and was carrying a tranquilliser pistol. The dark-haired lad looked like he’d got dressed in the dark.
“Connor Temple, Abby Maitland...,” Cutter said by way of introduction. “This is Captain Becker. He's here to protect us, so do as he says. Unless I think he's wrong.” Cutter did a passable impersonation of Lester when he turned and walked off, adding, “This way.”
Temple and Maitland kept up a steady stream of banter as they made their way through the deserted galleries. Cutter had ordered the museum’s own security guards to stay outside and stop anyone following them in. The blokes had said something about some members of staff already being in the building. They’d left the men trying to contact them to tell them to stay in their offices and keep the doors shut.
Cutter led them straight to the Egyptian gallery. A woman’s bloodstained body was sprawled on the polished floor. The corpse wasn’t a pretty sight.
“It's an animal kill,” Abby Maitland declared, a cold mask of professionalism firmly in place. “It could be anywhere in the museum by now.”
“Which way now?” Becker asked. Before anyone could answer, a low-pithed roar echoed around the gallery, wholly in keeping with the gloomy statues of animal-headed gods.” Abby and Connor started to run towards the sound of the roar, not against it. Their clothes sense might be crap, but Becker couldn’t fault their courage. The security team hesitated, waiting for orders. Becker was happy to supply them. “Go, go, go!”
They hadn’t got far before a dark-haired, olive-skinned woman walked out of her office. At the sight of men with guns she backed off, looking horrified.
“Stay where you are!” Cutter ordered. “Stay where you are! It's all right. Now who are you?”
The woman looked scared. “Doc...Doctor Page. Who are you?”
“I'm Nick Cutter.” Not exactly the most illuminating answer, as the look on Dr Page’s face made plain.
“OK. Um... I'm... I'm guessing... you're some kind of... of thief.”
“No. Actually, I'm a professor.”
“I've never seen a professor with a gun before.”
Becker gave Dr Page points for style.
“Yeah. It's a pretty specialised field.”
“Marion!”
Becker winced. Dr Page had caught sight of the dead woman on the floor.
“Professor?” Connor’s voice came from another room. The tone was urgent.
Dr Page backed away, looking frightened. Becker didn’t blame her. It was a wholly reasonable reaction to a bunch of men with guns standing over a dead body. After a moment’s hesitation, the woman turned and promptly legged it. Becker ordered his men after her. An outbreak of screaming didn’t bode well. Becker just hoped the body count for his first shout wouldn’t rise too high. It wouldn’t look great on his report to Lester.
When they caught up with Page, she was practically incoherent, gibbering about having seem an ancient Egyptian goddess. Cutter did a surprisingly good job of trying to calm her down, but even so, she still wasn’t making much sense. Abby Maitland’s news that she’d found tracks – biped and quadruped – heading south, wasn’t exactly the best news of Becker’s morning. Jenny Lewis made the not unreasonable decision to get the hell out of Dodge on the pretext of briefing Lester, but Becker also imagined she was going to be monitoring the news and social media channels in the hope of squashing any news leaks. He didn’t envy her job at all.
Becker’s immediate job was to secure the area around the anomaly and make sure nothing else came through. He would have preferred to have sent some of his men with Cutter and Abby on the trail of the creature but Cutter was adamant he didn’t want men with guns running around the city just as it was waking up. Becker wasn’t happy, but Cutter was, as he’d been warned, a difficult man to argue with. Becker extracted a promise that they would do nothing more than follow the creature’s tracks and that they would call for back-up as soon as they’d located it.
When Cutter finally rang Connor to say they’d picked up the trail, Becker didn’t hang around to wait for Cutter to do the asking. As he legged it from the store room, he heard Connor’s refer to him as Action Man. Becker grinned. He’d been called worse.
The traffic was already starting to build up, but Becker hadn’t come out of an offensive driving course with top marks for nothing. Ten minutes later, he was with Cutter and Abby, looking down at the mangled body of a traffic warden. Neither of them seemed clear about what they were up against, other than believing it was some sort of giant crocodile. A phone conflab with Connor came up with the name Pristichampus. Becker was going to have to crib the spelling of that for his report. Not a problem he’d encountered before.
The trail led down to the Thames opposite the London Eye. The huge wheel hadn’t yet started to revolve, so at least there weren’t hundreds of tourists looking down when the biggest crocodile Becker had ever seen walked steadily out of the water and started to make its way up onto the South Bank.
Becker turned and sprinted back to his vehicle, Cutter and Abby at his heels. He had a feeling this job was going to involve a lot of running. Becker took a unilateral decision to call for some back-up from the squad left behind in the BM. There was an enormous crocodile loose in London, he couldn’t just leave all available members of the security team standing around at the anomaly site. To his surprise, Cutter didn’t argue. A phone call from Jenny to Abby confirmed that their PR expert was on her way back as well.
It wasn’t hard to work out where to find the Pristi-whatever-the-fuck-it-was. The screaming from a café in the theatre was a bit of a clue.
Abby still carried her tranquiliser pistol, but Becker couldn’t see that any dart from that little pop gun even managing to pierce the creature’s hide. “If your first tranquiliser dart doesn't floor this thing, we have no option but to use live rounds.” He glanced at Cutter, expecting an argument. “OK, Professor?”
Before Cutter had chance to argue, people started running for their lives out of the theatre. Jenny promptly swung into action with some style, doing her best to calm the panic, and giving Becker and his men the chance to work on a more orderly evacuation.
The next ten minutes came close to giving Becker a coronary. Cutter ended up jumping out of an upper floor window tethered to nothing more than a fire hose, but by some miracle there were no casualties and even Cutter came out of the whole affair unscathed. Lester’s ‘rank amateurs’ comment came to mind, but Becker had to admit that neither Cutter nor Abby lacked courage, and Cutter certainly had a flair for improvisation. The crocodile had taken quite a few hits with live rounds from Becker and his men, as well as having fallen from the first floor, none of which had done it much good. Becker had to watch from the balcony as it limped back to the Thames and disappeared below the surface of the grey waters. According to Abby, it probably wanted to go home, which meant another hell for leather drive through over-crowded streets back to the British Museum.
He wondered idly how the theatre management was going to explain the damage to their insurers.
*****
Abandoning their cars at the front of the building, they made their way back to the storage area.
The creature was heading straight for Connor, who was between it and the anomaly. Nick’s shouted instruction to the young man to get out of the way led to Connor trying to use a rope to clamber up a pile of crates and boxes. Becker winced. This wasn’t going to end well.
Becker lifted his rifle and took aim.
“Don't... shoot it.” Nick pushed Becker’s rifle away.
He glared at Cutter. “It's my job to keep you alive.” Although if the professor pulled a stunt like that again, he might reconsider his job description and future employment prospects.
Dr Page’s voice cut through the backdrop of Temple’s increasingly desperate pleas for someone to do something. “Bow!”
“What?” Cutter sounded as baffled as Becker felt.
“Bow down.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This creature is... is used to being treated like a god.” Page’s voice was low and urgent. “They would have bowed as a sign of respect.”
“If it doesn't think we're a threat... it might not attack.” Abby Maitland clearly thought the woman was onto something, but Becker had his standards, and even Sandhurst hadn’t been able to knock them out of him.
“I'm not bowing.”
“Get down on the floor,” Cutter ordered.
Becker was extremely tempted to tell the man he didn’t put out on a first date, but the presence of a fucking huge crocodile that thought it was a god wasn’t exactly conducive to humour. He contented himself with gritting his teeth and saying, “What?”
“Do it.” Cutter’s voice had the edge of someone used to getting their own way. “Keep the gun handy.”
As if Becker was likely to do anything else. Reluctantly, he did as the others were doing, following Page’s lead, and went down on one knee.
The crocodile stared at the them then limped past and clambered up the pile of crates and disappeared through the anomaly. A moment later the glittering ball of light abruptly closed in on itself and disappeared.
Connor Temple promptly let go of the rope and landed on his arse on the floor.
Becker fought hard to keep a grin off his face. If a bruised arse was the team’s worst casualty that day, he’d count himself lucky. The deaths of two civilians didn’t sit easily with him, but it could have been an awful lot worse.
“Nice call,” Cutter said admiringly.
Despite the kneeling, Becker had to agree. The woman had keep a clear head. Impressive in the face of an Egyptian god with an attitude problem.
*****
The report took longer to write than Becker was used to, not helped by having to track down Connor to find out how to spell Pristichampus. By the time he’d finished and emailed it to Lester, Becker was surprisingly tired, and desperate for a beer. But before he headed home for the night, he had one last thing to do.
He slid his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through his contacts list.
The person he was calling picked up on the third ring.
“How’d it go?” the voice on the other end of the call asked.
“They’re all still in one piece.” Becker sighed. “Christ on a bike, Tom, you were right. The whole fucking lot of them have a death wish.”
Tom Ryan laughed quietly. “Tell me about it, mate. Did you have to thump Cutter?”
“No, but I came fucking close to it when he shoved my gun away just as I was about to fire.”
“He does that.” Ryan sounded sympathetic, but still amused.
“How’s Stephen?”
“Getting fed up with hospital food. I had to bring him a load of raw vegetables and fresh fruit today. The doctor’s say he might be able to come home in a couple of weeks if he continues to improve.”
Becker smiled. “Fucking ace, Tom. Does Lester know?”
“Lester knows everything. You’ll find that out pretty soon if you haven’t already. Now go home, throw a couple of beers down your neck and try to relax.”
“Easier said than done after a day chasing around after an Egyptian god and then having to bow to the fucker.”
“Welcome to the madhouse, Becks.”
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Date: 2017-10-23 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-23 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-23 08:08 am (UTC)I was already bouncing over the first fix-it, then I almost started cheering at the end!
Becker's POV on the episode was stellar. I can just see the thoughts running through his mind as he tries to keep his military training working alongside the mad civilians.
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Date: 2017-10-23 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-23 09:05 am (UTC)And Becker's voice all through was fabulous.
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Date: 2017-10-23 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-23 03:45 pm (UTC)Fantastic take on Ep1. Made for a great read.
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Date: 2017-10-23 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-24 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-24 06:43 pm (UTC)