Ep. 1.5 - Nevada - Going Nuclear - Closed
May 4, 2013 17:06:49 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 4, 2013 17:06:49 GMT -5
<< OOC: Set a few days after "Let Go"! >>
Area 12 - Rainier Mesa - had not been rocked by a nuclear explosion in over twenty years. Even then, that blast had been safely contained beneath the mesa within secured test tunnels designed specifically for that purpose, thus preventing the release of deadly alpha radiation particles into the environment above.
That did not stop anyone who was not part of the United States Department of Energy from studiously avoiding it.
Fortress Maximus stood on a rocky slope that overlooked the basin and glared into that dusty bowl of dirt and brush. Saw a few jackrabbits.
No humans, though.
Good.
Some ten miles to the northwest was Area 51. The crazies went there instead, with cameras and tents and high-powered telescopes. Rainer Mesa lay empty, just miles of dry and scarred foothills and scrubby little trees. It was visited only by the lonely wind, and by the occasional fighter jet, who would wander into the valley to use its abandoned bunkers for low-level bombing practice.
Not today, he hoped. He really wanted to blast something.
Maximus glanced south. Down on the flats, secured behind tripled-wired fences and some rather ominous warning signs was a sprawling complex - mostly abandoned now, save for dust and tumbleweeds. Once it had been a camp for Mesa-region workers. He saw giant steel-topped warehouses and hangers. Big, dirty white generators. Dusty roads that wound off into the surrounding hills, where they mysteriously disappeared. Telephone poles and slack lines. Tense little dormitory houses in rows, like combat-ready suburban neighbourhoods. In barred and hardened tunnels carved deep into the earth beneath it were stored- actually, you know what. Maximus did not want to know. Some things were best not dug up.
As he understood it, nowadays this base camp mostly served as a training facility for military units and government agencies conducting counter-terrorism exercises in the northern ranges. He supposed that, in their own vague way, the Autobots fell under this description. Perhaps that was why they had been lent the use of this isolated place for their own exercises.
Ha.
He lifted one hand and flexed it. The fine servos in his fingers hummed without a trace of resistance, finely tuned. It was hard to believe they had been stressed within an inch of structural failure only days ago.
With luck, the rest of him would operate as smoothly.
Maximus closed the hand into a hard fist and set his jaw. Then he lowered it and looked around at the Autobot who stood on the cliff side with him. Tried not to meet his gaze. Still wasn't quite up to looking anyone in the optic yet. It had taken him a day just to lift his gaze off the floor.
"Sorry about this," he said gruffly. "Expect you've got better ways you could be spending the afternoon."
Area 12 - Rainier Mesa - had not been rocked by a nuclear explosion in over twenty years. Even then, that blast had been safely contained beneath the mesa within secured test tunnels designed specifically for that purpose, thus preventing the release of deadly alpha radiation particles into the environment above.
That did not stop anyone who was not part of the United States Department of Energy from studiously avoiding it.
Fortress Maximus stood on a rocky slope that overlooked the basin and glared into that dusty bowl of dirt and brush. Saw a few jackrabbits.
No humans, though.
Good.
Some ten miles to the northwest was Area 51. The crazies went there instead, with cameras and tents and high-powered telescopes. Rainer Mesa lay empty, just miles of dry and scarred foothills and scrubby little trees. It was visited only by the lonely wind, and by the occasional fighter jet, who would wander into the valley to use its abandoned bunkers for low-level bombing practice.
Not today, he hoped. He really wanted to blast something.
Maximus glanced south. Down on the flats, secured behind tripled-wired fences and some rather ominous warning signs was a sprawling complex - mostly abandoned now, save for dust and tumbleweeds. Once it had been a camp for Mesa-region workers. He saw giant steel-topped warehouses and hangers. Big, dirty white generators. Dusty roads that wound off into the surrounding hills, where they mysteriously disappeared. Telephone poles and slack lines. Tense little dormitory houses in rows, like combat-ready suburban neighbourhoods. In barred and hardened tunnels carved deep into the earth beneath it were stored- actually, you know what. Maximus did not want to know. Some things were best not dug up.
As he understood it, nowadays this base camp mostly served as a training facility for military units and government agencies conducting counter-terrorism exercises in the northern ranges. He supposed that, in their own vague way, the Autobots fell under this description. Perhaps that was why they had been lent the use of this isolated place for their own exercises.
Ha.
He lifted one hand and flexed it. The fine servos in his fingers hummed without a trace of resistance, finely tuned. It was hard to believe they had been stressed within an inch of structural failure only days ago.
With luck, the rest of him would operate as smoothly.
Maximus closed the hand into a hard fist and set his jaw. Then he lowered it and looked around at the Autobot who stood on the cliff side with him. Tried not to meet his gaze. Still wasn't quite up to looking anyone in the optic yet. It had taken him a day just to lift his gaze off the floor.
"Sorry about this," he said gruffly. "Expect you've got better ways you could be spending the afternoon."