Ep. 1 - Data Mine - (Closed) - Finis

[Deleted]

Set during 'Castled', at roughly the same time Rook discovers Roulette!

--------


The lights were off.

That hadn't been part of his plan - but it wasn't an unwelcome distraction.

And he did not need light to find his destination. MECH had foolishly invited him into this base in exchange for information. It now was time to make them regret it.

Roughly ten minutes ago the corridor he stalked down had plunged into darkness. The cries of alarm had been immediate and angry as MECH forces responded to the outage. Already jury-rigged flood lights were being erected to illuminate patchy areas of darkness across the base. Soldiers ran with rifles and flashlights. No confusion, no disorder, no shouting of blame. Just simple reaction translated into decisive action. He had to admire the human vermin for their swift response time and their organization, if nothing else.

A distant explosion rumbled through the base. The walls shook. Overhead the lights flickered on, then off again. Starscream glanced up at them. He had a fairly good idea who was responsible for the blast. Breakdown had owed him, after all.

The sound of jogging footsteps caught his ear. Starscream turned. A MECH security unit had caught up to him, rushing in the direction of Breakdown's noisy distraction. A red light burst in the darkness as the Seeker's arm split apart, and his mouth curled into a cruel smile.

The walls glowed red. A spark, a flash. The stench of char and smoke.

Starscream primly stepped over the smouldering bodies and strolled onward, leaving nothing but the chuckling echoes of his laughter behind him.

It was only at a black door at the end of a single narrow corridor that he finally stopped.

A red light indicated that its powered locks were still engaged. The Tier 4 data centre's security system was not simply redundant, but operated on a backup power supply. Already he could feel the cold draught of filtered and air conditioned air that seeped beneath it. A thin line of blue light glowed against the floor.

Inside were MECH's main servers: cooled, network linked, compartmentalized and controlled by biometric access. Fault-tolerant, dual-powered, chilled.

Exposed.

Starscream optics narrowed. He glanced back at the shadow that prowled at his heels.

"How you gain access to this room I leave to your discretion," he said. "We need to strip every scrap of data they have on our kind before Breakdown is finished with his... rampage. As for what you do after that, well... be thorough. And be certain that they won't ever be able to access this database ever again."

[Ravage]

The odor of charred flesh swirled in Ravage's sensors as he silently padded after Starscream. The cat was watching everything, red optics touching on the walls, the doors, taking every step and analyzing it against the next. Crude as far as things went, this place, crude with human technology from their transports to their protective gear.

You didn't have to have a pretty weapon to die from it, though. A sharpened bit of debris could be as deadly as a sharpshooter's rifle.

That was the pattern he was weaving into his processor right now. Ravage could follow it. They were dissecting them. How do you tick, how can we use your technology for ourselves. They'd already managed to take some from Breakdown, and now... all of what was in this place.

His fellows perhaps did not think how Ravage did. Humans were fragile. They lived a short life, a blink, like many organics he'd crossed paths with over the years. They were not accorded the long life of his own species.

That made them unpredictable as they scrambled to survive, to prosper, to learn everything in a very short period of time and gather as much power for themselves in the blink of an eye. A power shift that could change their standing not just in the rank and file, but in the entire world around them.

It wasn't about fighting the Decepticons or Autobots. It wasn't about saving their world from the alien invaders. No, it was about weaponry and money. That was the trail Ravage was sorting through at the moment, which one he'd narrowed down and chose to follow.

Silently, the mech picked his way through the dead men on the floor, not even bothering to extend his nose to give sniff at their corpses. The burned hand curled against the floor, fingers under itself like a spider, still giving a spasmotic twitch. The cat's dark plating stippled in the shadows, leaving a broken image of himself. Was it darkness, or was it the lift of a paw, the twitch of an ear, a sliver of red optic in the corridor.

When Starscream stopped, Ravage smoothly moved forward and paced past him.

His nose lowered to the crack under the dark door; he drew in a sniff. Were there humans inside this room, or was it merely to house the data and more the humans had collected.

"Of course," he murmured. "I shall not leave anything behind when I am done. Anything."

"As for the access, I would rather be discreet for as long as I am able. As much chaos as there is time to cause in the base itself will benefit us all."

Ravage eyed the access panel. A cable slithered out from behind his shoulder. Instead of reaching for the port or the cable connected into it, Ravage sent it across the floor towards that thin blue line of light. If there was light, there was space, and if he could examine the room that way...

It was always easiest simply to unlock the room from the inside whenever possible...

[Deleted]

Ravage's keen sensors would detect traces of human presence through the crack beneath the door, criss-crossing scent trails, mingled sweat and fabric and gun oil - they were perhaps ten, twenty minutes old. It smelled as if MECH had been in the room recently - and in a rush.

Meanwhile, his optic probe would reveal a big room on the other side of the door, lit with cold blue florescent lighting. Sliding racks of dedicated servers - computers - sat in surgically precise rows, each row nearly one hundred feet deep, all connected with neatly taped off wiring. Frosty white light glowed in the servers, and in the upright air conditioning units that were blasting out cool air like refrigerators. Red emergency lighting glowed on one wall.

A handful of the servers had been yanked out of their racks, pulled off of their metal sliding shelves. Clumps of unplugged cords lay on the floor in coils. The floor was dark and polished like a mirror. Ravage would clearly see the scuff marks left behind by dozens of booted feet.

Starscream did not turn. His attention was directed at the darkened hallway, his manner tense.

"Of course," he said tersely. "I leave it to you. Now, if you'll excuse me -"

The Seeker raised his blaster and charged it. Red light streamed down the barrel in jagged lines that raced all the way to his elbow.

"I believe a little unsettled business must take me elsewhere. Report to me when you are finished, and make your escape. We will part ways here and find our own separate ways out of the base. Do not wait for me."

Without a further word Starscream stalked off, his feet clicking against the floor.

[Ravage]

"Understood," the cat murmured. They each had their goals and missions. "Good hunting, Commander."

Even as the mech's feet clicked along the floor and the walls glowed with red, flickering light, Ravage merely turned one ear to keep part of his attention on the hall that the Seeker had vacated. The rest of him was sorting through the situation within. They had scrambled in here to unplug and carry out and gather up their information.

Along his dark shoulders, metallic hackles raised.

His optics narrowed, and behind him, his tail swished back and forth in agitation.

They had been in here, pulling some information in a panic. It appeared they'd taken one of the servers with them.

Absolutely not.

Whatever they had left behind information wise needed to be taken now, their systems destroyed from the inside... and after that...

With a hissing rasp of metal snaking along the floor, Ravage withdrew his camera, and then he turned to the dead corpses still smoking on that floor. A few long bounds, his outline flickering and shifting in the shadows... and he was by them, searching for one whose hand might still have a fingerwhorl perhaps unmelted into a crisp. As soon as he had found even a bit of a hand to his satisfaction, he bent his head.

Delicately, his jaws closed around that burned flesh. The melted clothing and scraps of fabric brushed along his teeth. The cloying, charred scent of bubbled flesh rolled up into his olfactory sensors.

Crunch.

Neatly, he severed through bone, through the man's dead wrist. With a flick of his head, he tossed the hand into the air to flip it end over end so he could resettle and catch it carefully between his teeth. One of the probes behind his shoulders slithered out to bend the fingers upwards.

With two strides, he turned and set the pad of the dead man's index finger onto the biometric scanner at exactly the same instant the probe behind his shoulders tapped into the system on the wall. His optics half shuttered as he flickered through the information, nosing his way through their layers of security on this place. One ear flicked back and forth, still listening to the hall around them. Shut down the cameras, the relays, the warnings... and then the lights within...

Before he would open the door and stalk on in.

[Deleted]

The biometric scanner quietly beeped. Within the door came audible hiss and clack of the heavy locks being disengaged.

Ravage had full access to the data centre. And to all of the security measures isolated to the room itself.

The servers were his to do with as he pleased.

----

The lights were off.

That wasn't entirely unexpected - but inconvenient nonetheless.

The shoulder-mounted flashlight fastened to the front of his body armour flickered through the gloom. The pale beam swept back and forth as Silas walked through the base with long, clipped strides, his attention fixed ahead. Now and then the light touched upon the MECH guards running past him in the other direction, towards the disturbance in the maintenance hangers, where the Decepticon brute they had taken prisoner months ago was on a rampage. The loss of one optic had apparently not diminished his aim, nor his ability to hurl an armoured vehicle through a two-foot thick cement wall.

Already the smoke from the attack was beginning to sift through the rest of the base. Fire control was on the defence, but Silas knew it was only a matter of time before the base would need to be evacuated. Abandoned. If the fire from the explosions did not gut it, then surely the unwanted invaders running loose in the corridors would.

At least he knew exactly where to find one of the pests.

"Radio in the evac orders," he said to the woman following him. Despite his annoyance his voice was calm, mild. "Tell MECH One to supervise the evacuation of all non-military personnel to the secondary helipads. Inform him that the safe movement of the technicians to the fallback points are our top priority. Next is the data package, and then the rest of the civilians. In the meantime..."

Silas turned down a narrow corridor. In the weaving beam of his flashlight a red painted line could be made out on the concrete wall. DATA CENTRE read the white-stencilled letters upon it.

He laid his hand briefly upon the weapon holstered at his hip. It looked like a heavy pistol, blocky and snub-nosed, nearly as long as his forearm. The blunt muzzle was painted in the black and yellow diagonal stripes that marked it as being experimental.

"You and I are going to take care of a loose end I should have dealt with twelve hours ago."

[Deleted]

Thana marched behind Silas, nearly shoulder to shoulder with him. Nearly. She kept the distance professional and respectful. Under right conditions, she would have stayed an arm's length behind but the night was live and threatening to drown out his words. In her hand was a short wave radio into which she relayed orders from him. Her voice, while quiet in the flickering hall, was clear and direct, unshaken by the excitement of the attack.

The only telltale flicker of unease from the woman was the grinding of her back teeth and the bunch of her jaw muscles. Fear didn't begin to take shape in her mind. For a woman raised by die-hard Baptists, Thana had a clear and unwavering idea of what the afterlife held for her. She wasn't afraid to part those veils. But she was, at the moment, filled with extreme amounts of anger.

How dare they.

I told you not to trust them. Even to use them. They're not human, they have no concept of right or wrong.

All these thoughts she wanted to hiss at Silas but she kept her tongue. It wasn't her place to reprimand him and she suspected he knew damn well what mistakes he had made. Sometimes, when the situation dictated extreme measures, sacrifices were to be had. Unfortunately, it was at the cost of more human life and manpower.

"It'll expect retaliation from you. Lead and I'll initiate afterward, if you would, sir."

[Deleted]

"Very good," said Silas.

He said little after that, concentrating solely on leading a path through the darkened base. Red emergency lighting powered by backup generators illuminated several of the labs they passed and washed into the corridor, but little could be seen through it - just shapes, silhouettes of figures shouting and directing each other through the maze. Silas threaded past the bedlam and continued onwards, even when a distant eruption shook cement dust and silt down from the cracked ceiling.

Past two exploded doors and one smoking, burning security station they found their quarry.

Silas abruptly came to a halt and threw out one arm, motioning for her to stop. The floor shuddered. The flashlight on Silas' shoulder caught a giant foot in its wavering beam. Then, a metal leg. The hall rumbled with each step as the monster loomed out of the dark.

The robot strolled down the narrow corridor, looking for all the world as if he belonged there. Thick smoke curled around its tall and lanky frame, glowing red when it drifted past its upraised blaster. The hall behind it was scorched black. Several burnt bodies lay on the floor, still smouldering. The stench of char filled the air.

It was chuckling. When it caught sight of Silas it saluted him mockingly.

"There you are," the robot said. "You took your precious time. I was beginning to wonder if you had the nerve to show up, or if I was going to have to come looking for-"

It abruptly cut off when it spotted Thana.

Taken aback, it stared down at her. Its red optics narrowed shrewdly. Then it laughed and gestured at her grandly with its blaster.

"What is this?" it said. "Oh, look. Even MECH has its drones. I definitely see a resemblance."

[Deleted]

A...drone? It likens me to a drone.

Fury welled up thick in her body, like bile in her throat, and she trembled. It had no right! It had no right to think anything about her! Her hands reflexively curled into fists but she kept her face impassive but for the narrowing of her eyes. No, she wouldn't be baited so easily. It was playing a game with them, or at least trying to. Surely it would learn very soon that MECH didn't play so easily.

Instead she focused on looking it over from head to toe. She'd taken time to study it before, but always in passing. Frustratingly, her encounters with this creature had been through Silas or from afar. This close she could study the body, so thin and sharp, and really look for faults.

The legs were spindly but the plating was likely sound and strong. The joints in the feet were well protected and useless for her. But the knees were much more exposed when it moved. Unfortunately, the weight it carried wouldn't be enough to buckle the joints if they were injured. The upper torso was plated just as well as the legs as were the shoulders. Useless weak points unless she had a weapon strong enough to incapacitate in one hit. Its middle, however, was promising as were the wing plating she kept getting a glimpse of.

However, it was not her turn to act just yet. She awaited the orders of Silas and could play the part of...drone.

((OOC: Gah, I hope that was useful. XD She's such a pillll))

[Deleted]

Beside her, Thana would be able to sense Silas tensing slightly at the remark. But when he spoke it was calmly, with a mild inflection.

"Starscream," he said simply. "While you have been a profitable asset in this interim period, don't think your treachery has gone unnoticed. Or will go unpunished. But I'm a busy man. I do not make it a habit to personally terminate the contracts of those in my employ. And that is a policy I don't intend to start now."

Without further word the big man reached for the weapon at his hip. He unsnapped the holster and withdrew it, hefting its weight. It was a bulky thing, blunt and nastily striped. Now that it was free the small circular disc fastened snugly to its muzzle was clear to be seen.

Starscream merely looked down in amusement as Silas thumbed off the safety. A small light in the centre of the disc glowed green.

"That, Silas?" he said. "You intend to threaten me with that, of all your insignificant toys?"

Silas merely rotated the heavy pistol until its grip faced forward. He did not take his eyes from the looming Seeker as he reached over and handed the gun to Thana.

"Don't hesitate to aim for the centre of its body mass," he said. "Research and development would like to know how well a full on chest strike will affect its nervous system. Simply point and fire."

Unperturbed, Starscream threw back his head and laughed.

The whine of his blaster powering up hummed through the corridor, vibrating the air. Nonchalantly, he adopted a firing stance and deliberately leveled the weapon at the two humans. Its red light burned like a furnace, searing through the smoke until Thana and Silas glowed red beneath its radiance.

Silas stood coolly, his gaze upon the Seeker as he folded his hands behind his back.

Starscream narrowed his optics.


----

OOC: PSSSH heck yes it was perfect XD <3

[Deleted]

The gall of this creature was mind boggling. It was so sure of it's own bravado that it didn't fear an assault coming right for it. Either the machine was completely insane or it was that idiotic. Perhaps both, Thana thought as she hefted the weapon and shifted her stance in the time it took for it to laugh. The rest of its words were lost to her as she aimed.

In truth she was curious to see how well the weapon did. Most prototypes in their hands were sorely under-tested. The heavy weight of the gun malfunctioning or failing them wasn't on her mind, even as the thing sighted the both of them with its own weapon. Silas had total faith in the prototypes design and so would Thana. And, if she was willing to admit it, she was very much looking forward to knocking that goddamn look off of its face.

Without drawing out the suspense, Thana fired at the very moment Starscream narrowed his optics. She would have fired sooner, but she wanted to heft the weight of the gun in her hands before she tried to operate the strange weapon. She had dutifully aimed directly at the center mass of his chest.

[Deleted]

With a soft 'phut' the pistol fired.

The disc needled out and smacked into the middle of Starscream's chest, where it stuck as if magnetized. The Seeker drew back a step with one hand raised, startled.

"Is that it?" he said. He let out a bark of laughter and tapped the disc a one talon. "Is this the culmination of your technical research? A pathetic-"

The tiny light on the disc lit up.

An instant later a blast of green light flashed across the Seeker's body, illuminating the hall as harshly as a flare. The next moment Starscream went rigid as the electromagnetic pulse seared through him, cracking up his neural net and knocking his brain module into immediate shut-down. His optics went dark he staggered, reeled back, and began to gracefully tilt over backwards, his blaster raised to the ceiling.

And then the disc exploded.

The concussive blast was enough to hurl the Seeker flat onto his back. He hit the floor with a noisy clatter and lay smoking from his chest, where the device had torn a blackened rent across his chassis.

Beside Thana, Silas cleared his throat.

"I think R&D will be pleased with those results," he said drily. "Good shot, Gillespie."

[Deleted]

Thana regarded the weapon for a moment, silently marveling over the design and creative genius behind it. It was, simply put, a hell of a weapon. She'd never dropped someone so effectively. Especially not one these heavily armored creatures. She could only hope Silas would have the initiative to give her one. Oh, the might she could wield with one of these.

"Impressive gun, sir." Buoyed by the damage she'd caused, Thana relaxed her stance and cracked a grin. This time the gesture seemed in place and especially cruel on her lips. "If I may say...I did enjoy that." She offered the gun back to him and glanced over at the smoking body.

"What are we going to do with it?" She nodded at the large frame. "And is it always that stupid or was that just for my benefit?"

[Deleted]

“Given my limited experience and interactions with the creature, I would surmise that that entire display was for your benefit,” said Silas. He eyed the smoking body with clinical amusement. “It does seem to have a weakness for the theatrics.”

He accepted the pistol back from her and cocked it. Given that it fired an attached projectile rather than bullets it did not eject a magazine. Silas reached into a pocket of his combat vest.

“As for what we are going to do with it now – nothing, regrettably,“ he said. ”Trying to salvage valuable biotech from its body while its neural systems are in a forced shut–down state would take time we do not have at the moment. We must prioritize the evacuation of personnel and mission–critical data from this base.”

He turned his back to the Seeker and began to walk back down the hall. As he did he pulled another disc from his pocket and clipped it to the muzzle of the pistol. After ensuring that it was properly secured he handed the pistol back to Thana, grip–first.

“Keep this for now,” he said. “This is one of the prototypes for this particular model. You can see for yourself what kind of high–level pulse it delivers. Better yet, that same pulse triggers its secondary explosives, which eliminates all trace of the fired projective on top of inflicting explosive penetrative damage after the target has been rendered inoperative.”

He smiled coldly. “This ensures that target will literally not know what hit them. And should one of its compatriots recover the body... they will never know either.”

[Ravage]

Meanwhile, Ravage was methodically finishing up his job. Data taken, sniffed and sifted, written into temporary storage for now. He didn't trust them in their own way not to have downloaded something dangerous onto this information, and he could go over it later when he had quiet and time. For now, nothing uploaded or downloaded to the base, nothing flashed through. It stopped with him and it stopped there for now.

Patterns to be found before he handed it over, information to sift through and put into place. There was always a pattern to be found, and sometimes in finding one you abruptly put all the cogs into their place. Perhaps the others would scoff and snort at the idea that humans could be dangerous to them in any way, shape, or form. Were they crude? Yes. In a way that was worse. You could have the most advanced weapon in the universe, but in the right situation... claws and teeth would kill you.

When Ravage was sure he'd cleared every last bit of the server, he turned and eyed the room. One final sweep, in case he'd missed anything slight; a dropped access card, a lanyard, a notebook, anything. Then he quietly noted the brand names of the servers and put that to memory if they had any - it gave him a place to start searching for a sales record, perhaps. Worth trying, anyway.

After that, he quickly shifted his weight and both small hip missiles emerged from his dark flanks. He did not shoot one - instead, he turned and plucked the first one lightly off in his teeth, nudging it underneath one side of the banks of servers. Then he moved across the room to plant the other; he knew exactly how far the explosions would go. It wasn't so much that he needed to destroy everything here. There was no time for that.

It was that it had cost them, and resources had to come from somewhere. No sense in letting them scavenge this back. A twitch of his ears; he set the internal timers.

Once he was done, he padded out the door and slid it shut behind him. The hand of the human lay near by, fingers stiffening as if in desperate beseechment. Ravage paid it no note; his frame vanished into the shadows, the hall was as still and silent as he'd left it.

A minute later, there was a soft whump-thud. The door bent outwards, a roil of oily smoke curling towards the ceiling.

Ravage loped down the hallways. He was grateful to the dark of the lighting as he headed for a way out. Backtracking his trail was---

A scent in the air currents caught his attention.

Starscream.

That didn't actually surprise him much, the Air Commander had said he'd had business to do. What paused the cat was that the way his odor had pooled. Holding in place for a long time and also concentrated in the low air currents. The bulk of the mech was in his chest, and to leave this sort of heavy scent on this level...

His neck arched forward, his ears flicking. Then he turned and bounded towards it. If his suspicions were incorrect, then he would simply be on his way. No harm, no need to bring attention to himself.

[Deleted]

"I'm touched," Thana drawled out, voice as dry as a hourglass of sand. She could care less what the creature thought it had been doing in regards to her. Intimidation didn't come easy and she didn't fear a mouthy idiot, no matter his size. If she were to die by their hands, she merely hoped she took down one with her so that her death wasn't a missed opportunity.

Hopefully all of them were this idiotic.

Nodding to Silas, Thana kept step along side him and accepted the weapon. She could grow used to these prototypes. The few she'd managed to see in practice hadn't impressed her overly much. This one was different. It was entirely effective even if it wasn't lethal on the onset. One didn't have to be lethal with the first strike.