[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Bird Dog Four (Closed – Skirmisher, Bluestreak)
May 27, 2018 23:30:55 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 27, 2018 23:30:55 GMT -5
Week 3, Day 1 – Time: 1315
Location: R-4809
NORAD ID: 43485
INT'L CODE: 2018-048G
PERIGREE: 613.7km
APOGEE: 725.8km
PERIOD: 98.0 minutes
SEMI MAJOR AXIS: 7020 km
RCS: Unknown
LAUNCH DATE: Unknown
SOURCE: United States (US)
LAUNCH SITE: AIR FORCE WESTERN TEST RANGE (AFWTR)
----
There was a yellow desert, and a vast blue sky.
And somewhere above that…
A star, racing swiftly. Ninety-eight minutes for one revolution. Pretty impressive. But Maximus wasn't supposed to know about that particular and recent military secret, so he kept his damn mouth shut and tried to look as impassive as people had come to expect from him. He marginally succeeded, he thought. Truth be told, a mixture of curiosity and wariness about this whole business was starting to eat at his neural net.
So.
They had driven out to the R-4809 site over an hour ago. He was vaguely familiar with this restricted site; Tonopah was maybe ehh, thirty miles to the northwest. A whole lot of parched and empty nothing. He had been assured that the usual fence-hugging bug-eyed telescope alien enthusiasts and resident crazies had been driven off by base security the night before. He hoped that was the case, because Primus, he was standing right here, quietly baking beneath the noontime sun. As big and bold as a dead tree on a salt flat.
Parked nearby were two vehicles. Their long tire tracks swerved off into the distance they had driven from. One was a silver sedan of some sort. The driver's side door was open, all but inviting in a patina of dust. The second vehicle was a large white van – very clean. Very spotless, save for the dusty wheel wells. No windows on it, save for the cab ones, which were tinted. No plates. It was the deadly serious sort of van that disappeared internet weirdos in the name of homeland security.
Its rear doors were thrown wide open. A handful of liquid nitrogen tanks were already gathered around the bumper. Inside the van, things hummed.
Maximus stood a safe distance away with folded arms, his feet square. The sun was trying its hardest to fade his paint and put a dent in his internal operating temps, but he ignored the heat and the glare and warily sized up the humans who were calling the shots on this particular Black Rock field test. First, there was the DoD man. Mr. Serious Business. He wore a white dress shirt and black vest, sleeves rolled, and a neat red tie with dark slacks, despite the fact that it was something shy of a hundred degrees out. Hm. His glasses shone white in the sun.
The DoD man was speaking amiably to the two base guards who had been assigned to the test. Nothing fancy, just two men in khakis. As far as Maximus knew they were mostly there to assist when needed, like when they had unloaded some heavy looking hardshell cases lined with mysteriously fitted foam interiors from the DoD man's silver car. Hmm.
That left the engineer.
She was nowhere sight. That made Maximus just a little nervous. Probably still inside the van. She'd been rummaging around inside it since they had arrived, preoccupied with her calibrations. He craned his head. Sure enough, a feminine leg was girlishly cocked out of the back of the van, foot comfortably clad in a simple black canvas running shoe. A jangling charm bracelet hung off the ankle. Her mumbly voice echoed from within. What had she concocted this time around, he wondered. Was it going to explode. Was it going to melt down. Was it bigger than a breadbox. Was it going to make Agent Fowler want to kill himself if it ended up on the evening news. Let the guessing game begin.
She had made a single request of him.
Since it didn't start with, oh Maaaaax, what kind of blast radius can your armour withstand, he'd taken it seriously. Also she'd given him the big blue eyes. Turns out he was a sucker for big liquid soulful eyes. God damn it.
But this had been a simple request, sort of. So he'd listened to it in earnest rather than pretend to be a tank. That never worked, by the way. One day it might.
Two Autobots. Nice ones. Professional ones! Who could maybe take a rocket or a drone to the back of the head like a trooper. Also this one, his name is Bluestreak? Do you know him? Could you reach him for me? Giant blue eyes?
Feeling played, Maximus opened his internal comm and keyed in some private frequencies.
"Good afternoon," he radioed. "I'm hoping I've got a hold of Bluestreak and-" Crap, Fowler had told him this name once, what was it, fellow security bot- "-Skirmisher. This is Maximus. Can you read me?"
Location: R-4809
NORAD ID: 43485
INT'L CODE: 2018-048G
PERIGREE: 613.7km
APOGEE: 725.8km
PERIOD: 98.0 minutes
SEMI MAJOR AXIS: 7020 km
RCS: Unknown
LAUNCH DATE: Unknown
SOURCE: United States (US)
LAUNCH SITE: AIR FORCE WESTERN TEST RANGE (AFWTR)
----
There was a yellow desert, and a vast blue sky.
And somewhere above that…
A star, racing swiftly. Ninety-eight minutes for one revolution. Pretty impressive. But Maximus wasn't supposed to know about that particular and recent military secret, so he kept his damn mouth shut and tried to look as impassive as people had come to expect from him. He marginally succeeded, he thought. Truth be told, a mixture of curiosity and wariness about this whole business was starting to eat at his neural net.
So.
They had driven out to the R-4809 site over an hour ago. He was vaguely familiar with this restricted site; Tonopah was maybe ehh, thirty miles to the northwest. A whole lot of parched and empty nothing. He had been assured that the usual fence-hugging bug-eyed telescope alien enthusiasts and resident crazies had been driven off by base security the night before. He hoped that was the case, because Primus, he was standing right here, quietly baking beneath the noontime sun. As big and bold as a dead tree on a salt flat.
Parked nearby were two vehicles. Their long tire tracks swerved off into the distance they had driven from. One was a silver sedan of some sort. The driver's side door was open, all but inviting in a patina of dust. The second vehicle was a large white van – very clean. Very spotless, save for the dusty wheel wells. No windows on it, save for the cab ones, which were tinted. No plates. It was the deadly serious sort of van that disappeared internet weirdos in the name of homeland security.
Its rear doors were thrown wide open. A handful of liquid nitrogen tanks were already gathered around the bumper. Inside the van, things hummed.
Maximus stood a safe distance away with folded arms, his feet square. The sun was trying its hardest to fade his paint and put a dent in his internal operating temps, but he ignored the heat and the glare and warily sized up the humans who were calling the shots on this particular Black Rock field test. First, there was the DoD man. Mr. Serious Business. He wore a white dress shirt and black vest, sleeves rolled, and a neat red tie with dark slacks, despite the fact that it was something shy of a hundred degrees out. Hm. His glasses shone white in the sun.
The DoD man was speaking amiably to the two base guards who had been assigned to the test. Nothing fancy, just two men in khakis. As far as Maximus knew they were mostly there to assist when needed, like when they had unloaded some heavy looking hardshell cases lined with mysteriously fitted foam interiors from the DoD man's silver car. Hmm.
That left the engineer.
She was nowhere sight. That made Maximus just a little nervous. Probably still inside the van. She'd been rummaging around inside it since they had arrived, preoccupied with her calibrations. He craned his head. Sure enough, a feminine leg was girlishly cocked out of the back of the van, foot comfortably clad in a simple black canvas running shoe. A jangling charm bracelet hung off the ankle. Her mumbly voice echoed from within. What had she concocted this time around, he wondered. Was it going to explode. Was it going to melt down. Was it bigger than a breadbox. Was it going to make Agent Fowler want to kill himself if it ended up on the evening news. Let the guessing game begin.
She had made a single request of him.
Since it didn't start with, oh Maaaaax, what kind of blast radius can your armour withstand, he'd taken it seriously. Also she'd given him the big blue eyes. Turns out he was a sucker for big liquid soulful eyes. God damn it.
But this had been a simple request, sort of. So he'd listened to it in earnest rather than pretend to be a tank. That never worked, by the way. One day it might.
Two Autobots. Nice ones. Professional ones! Who could maybe take a rocket or a drone to the back of the head like a trooper. Also this one, his name is Bluestreak? Do you know him? Could you reach him for me? Giant blue eyes?
Feeling played, Maximus opened his internal comm and keyed in some private frequencies.
"Good afternoon," he radioed. "I'm hoping I've got a hold of Bluestreak and-" Crap, Fowler had told him this name once, what was it, fellow security bot- "-Skirmisher. This is Maximus. Can you read me?"