EP 0 - "Encounter In The Desert" - (Closed)

::Scatterdust:: The comm. came suddenly over open channel Con-frequencies. ::If you’re looking for your solider he’s in the gulley southwest of where you are.::

New coordinates were relayed through the open channel, significantly off the mark Hoff had supplied in his final transmission. The infiltrator growly vocal pitch was somewhat less snarly than it had been in the last 24 hours of pre-mission prep. Serotype blowing a large hole in the middle of the virology lab had put a stop to a lot of mission prep. They had Shockwave and another bio-weapon specialist working on clean up but a small section of the ship was quarantined for now and out of sheer restlessness Barricade had pulled Hoff’s last transmission from Soundwave’s incoming comm. chatter logs.

Figured he’d handle this himself... or at least handle Scatterdust.

::I’ve got Steve and Knockout getting him back on the Nemesis for a debrief and a system flush. Pulled his last optical record from his hardware. Switch to encrypted comm. I’ll drive out to meet you.:: A data pack was transmitted to the flyer. ::The attack is recorded there. Serotype dosed him with a viral bomb nasty enough to drop Breakdown. If he doesn’t suffer permanent system damage it will only be because Knockout or Acid Storm figure out how to neutralize and reverse the damage.:: There was a pause. ::Just to be clear, I’m looking for the femme so I can pull her spark out through her chassis. What, Captain, are your intentions?::

Barricade didn’t say anything for a moment, carefully examining the alarm in Scatterdust’s vocalizer, instinctive panicked emotional glyphs in the Captain’s voice. Great, the stupid twerp had a crush on the traitor. That felt so fragging typical that Barricade couldn’t even work up the ability to be irritated with the Vehicon CO. Instead he down shifted and poured speed into his engines, racing toward Scatterdust trajectory, because for all that the Con sounded dismayed there was a note of determination in the soldier’s voice that Barricade at least found worth looking into… it wasn’t like killing Serotype was just critical or anything so much as it might put Megatron in a slightly better mood.

And that was, you know, hardly guaranteed.

::Hey Dusty, if she's gone airborne you're likely to see her first. If you get to her first… you know, ‘take care of it’.::

Barricade changed direction, heading out toward another rocky outcropping some distance from the canyon behind them. Good enough place to start as any. The police cruiser entered the gultch between massive sand stone buttes, heading into the dusty valley at an exaggerated leisurely pace. He transformed with a kind of lazy lack of hurry, strolling down the long corridor between the cliffs. Let Dusty rush to do this. He clearly had more inventment in finding the femme than he did. Barricade was just wasting time until he could get back to important work... not chasing a rogue lab-bot.

::I"m not really in a rush, if you know what I mean.::

The Field Lieutenant's comments were acknowledged with a couple of silent glyphs of agreement. Scatterdust, unlike many of his fellow Decepticons, trusted Barricade too much to doubt him, even for a second, when the picked his pace and made a sharp dash towards the sky. The sand beneath him begun to fracture into orange hued canyons. His shadow would have passed the warm scenery, should he have been out of his stealth mode. And so his, search continued. The femme could have taken a flight, as Barricade had just suggested.

And Scatterdust was very determined in finding her.

“You know,” drawled Barricade, both aloud an through the comm. to Scatterdust, his tone full of false casual disinterest, “when she blew the lab it nearly killed three of your jets.” He waited for a moment to see if that got any kind of response but static, then added, “It could have been you just as easily as any other mech on the ship, so when you say ‘this isn’t like her’ I’d love to hear what in the fraggin’ All Spark gave you that impression?”

The Saleen leapt over a significant pile of rocks, hopping lazily down the other side into the sand again and continuing down the shady corridor of the glutch. There was no sun that could reach him down here, making his armor matte and dark. He stopped to boredly pick a rock out of the wall, where sand was slithering down from a crevice high overhead, wasting time while Dusty searched.

“I don’t know the femme real well, but I never liked her vibe from the get go, so tell me: What’s your honest impression of her?”

::Gaaaah! Never mind! I’ve decided she’s a fragging glitch! Scatterdust! Back to my position she’s here and unless you want me to take her fragging head off you better back here and dissuade me!::

Barricade’s reflexes were good, good enough to detect the trajectory of the both the bomb and its thrower as he threw himself out of range. The canyon behind him was engulfed instantly in smoke, filling the narrow passage with yellow gas. He switched to sensors, mapping movement through EMF rather that optical reception but like any good Cybertronian smoke bomb the ‘smoke’ was throwing up electro-static interference that keep either of them from seeing the other clearly. Nevertheless, smoke didn’t fool the audios and after the initial ‘bang’ Barricade could track her through sound, the hum of her internals, vents cycling too loudly within the cover of the smoke. Not an infiltrator by any means.

The Saleen’s own systems were silent, his vents snapped shut and sealed, his battle mask closed across his lower face. He’d gotten clear of the worst he was pretty sure but from the looks of it the gas wasn’t a chemical agent, just a regular smoke bomb. Cade’s right arm cycled up into a blaster, aimed vaguely into the cloud and he opened fire. Scatterdust would have to get here fast… lest he actually hit something in the smoke. As it was he was sort of hoping to just keep her pinned until Dusty got his twitchy aft over here for chat.

Scatterdust didn't have the time to answer the Field Lieutenant's transmission. It he would have, he would have entered a very familair world of stutter and embarssment. The Captain had his reasons, mainly of the romantic kind. But before he could get into all that, a startle raced trhough his circuits. She was there, after all! But judging by Barricade's tone that emerged from the static, Scatterdust would have hurry or she wouldn't be for much longer. And still, even after hearing about Serotype blowing up his subordinates, the only urge that throbbed in the Captain's processor, was to stop Barricade from harming her. There must have been something. A misunderstanding. Please let there be something.

The sealth camouflage switched off as the captain flew a big loop in the air, aiming a sharp landing into the very spot he had traced the Lieutenant's signal. Yes, Scatterdust had a visual now - of Serotype. Transforming whilst his rapid fall, the Captain's feet touched down with a thud. Sand sprayed around him as he stoof behind her, so close that all it would have taken to touch her would have been a reach.

That red visor of his dissected the scene rapidly. There was a subtle trace of smoke, and the Lieutenant's signal. And trhough a sealed frequency, Scatterdust sent a question to him, weather or not he was still OK. After all, Scatterdust knew of Serotype's capabilities. However, they weren't his topmost concern right now, but-

"Serotype?" he questioned with a somewhat tight, confused voice. "What-" Scatterust's visor flickered with a thousand questions. "What are you doing?"