[ti]Ep 2.5[/ti]Unjust Deserts (Open)

[Feldspar]

Sunshine beat down on Raf where he sat. Underneath his small organic frame, Bluestreak did not move; the silver body was still and inert. The mech's right hand was still wrapped around his gun, the left out-flung as if he was still struggling to push himself up on the red and buff Nevada soil. Even the normal sounds of a Cybertronian were silenced. No ticks, no clicks, no scrape of metal or soft vent. The noises that marked each individual to the boy's sharp ears were dull, and barely audible.

But they were there.

Once he'd plugged in, it was less than a few moments for Raf's powerful little laptop to pick up that No more than a breath or two after that his flying fingers and sharp concentration were hard at work. Move this here, change this, adjust this, type this, test this, open up that backdoor into a system that he could reach through. Use the root kit, gain root access...

As if he was comfortably sitting in his own desk chair back in the computer lab, not in the middle of a firefight between two species that were utterly alien to one another. There was the scream and shriek and hiss of weapons; behind him, the Decepticon had divulged into a burst of incredible firepower that arced across the desert floor. Overhead, a huge shadow raced over the Nevada ground. Skystone was on her way. 

It wasn't easy, what Raf was trying to do. The system was complicated, the coding right up there with what  he'd dealt with in the military base when he'd first met the Autobots. He could dig through it, though, understand it like he had since he was barely able to walk.

Encryptions, systems. There were sections on schematics for the RIM-8 Talos and the MQM-8G Vandal. They looked old though and at a brief glance, the only thing they appeared to have in common with the weapon sticking out of Bluestreak was that well, they were 

A file that contained a huge technical system notation on LOSBR and then a secondary on SACLOS - pages and pages of text. A manual? Or a quick programming training guide? One of them he would move and it disappeared almost instantly, as if he'd startled some tiny virtual fish into diving back into a hiding spot.

Yet as Raf worked his way through everything, he would suddenly find himself on a simple grey screen. A duo of technical orange panels separated the dull background color.

Two boxes.

Two names.

Project Caduceus.

Project Harpe.

Underneath each designation was another black strip indicating to enter a password code. He'd have to decide one to try and open first.

[Feldspar]

Next to Skystone, the tiny drones were having a difficult time pacing her. They fell back, caught in the draft of her wings. One of them actually flipped and was sent spiraling off course, and the as the big Autobot swept into the air, she would be free of the drones for the time being.

As Sparkplug's blast came to a ground searing stop, Skystone would be able to take in everything. The Decepticon's white-green beam had scorched a line in the ochre dirt and dry sand. Brush and tufts of dry grass had burst into flame, the rocks were smoking, and most of the SUV's had come to a rather quick halt using the safety of the terrain. A couple of them seemed to be already backing up though and restarting themselves. Obviously they would be not still for long. Two of the vehicles were still going after Rail.

One of the far cars appeared to have been well-damaged though, and the crew was hastily disembarking it. The front section was sending a swirling oily curl of smoke upwards. Several of them were carrying some gear. One of them was hastily attempting to shoulder one of the projectile launchers onto his shoulder as they headed towards cover.

Another of the still-speeding vehicles was chasing Odi's sprightly little dune buggy ripping around below. Skystone was closing even faster on Rail and Sparkplug's position, though. She would be able to get to them before MECH regrouped for the next volley.

[Feldspar]

Odessa's dune buggy was a quick little beast, actually spot-on built for this terrain.

As he pushed the petal to the floorboards, the vehicle surged forward. Another chatter of fire slapped out towards him; but this time the bullets missed the buggy and slapped uselessly into the dirt. Tiny puffs of dirt and chipped rock flew upwards.

The Jeep on his tail was a solid piece of equipment, but it lumbered like a bull across the landscape. Odi's buggy practically skipped along, nimble and light. The MECH driver swore as he attempted to forge past him, but the grit kicked back by the buggy peppered the other vehicle. A good sized rock flew back and smashed into the Jeep's windshield, causing the driver to automatically flinch and swerve.

It didn't break the reinforced glass, but it did put even more graceful distance between Odi and the annoying guy with the gun as he raced across the distance between himself and Raf and Bluestreak.

Nevada terrain was totally in Odi's favor. He was kicking up an awful lot of sand and dust. His plan to obscure the vision of the men behind him was working and working well.

"Shoot out his tires!"

"Great on a movie, Aaron, not so good now!" the gunner snarled back. "Can't see his goddamn tires!"

"Then shoot him!"

"Trying my best!"

Another pop-pop-pop of semi-auto fire snapped across the distance.

It chewed up a line after Odi and was coming awfully darn close to the back of the dune buggy.

He would be easily able to close though on where Blue and Raf were if he decided to go that way, or he could spin left and go towards Sparkplug....

[Feldspar]

Rail's call went out, before he turned his attention to the drones and the vehicle headed for him.

They hadn't slowed down at Sparkplug's attack. In fact, they'd kept on point with him and the man bearing the shoulder mounted weapon didn't seem to have balked.

His attempt to isolate a pair of frequencies was what actually keyed him into something else. Background noise. Something he might not have expected to find.

It was a low, constant slight hiss-crackle. Sometimes it trailed up into a warbling whine and then returned immediately to that 

It was an odd sound. He had likely become tuned to it because he had both attempted to call, and then was searching along the frequencies. At any other time it might have been mistaken for interference from the sheer amount of energy weapons being discharged.

Something about it seemed... off.

As if someone else out there was flipping through frequencies right now, and just hadn't quite found the one the Autobots were communicating on.

The drones he hissed at didn't seem to be too responsive to his attempt. One of them sort of did break off to the left though, ever so slightly.

Leaning out the top of the Jeep barreling towards him, the man holding the weapon seemed to finally lock on fully. He fired, just as they attempted to swerve to the side. 

Rail's return shots landed square in the center of the vehicle's engine. 

Human construction met the brunt of a Cybertronian blast. The vehicle was armored heavily, but Rail's shot managed to burn through layers of alloy and slammed into the engine block.

Inside the front of the Jeep, things spanged, pinged, and exploded.

The Jeep fishtailed wildly across the ground, the driver spun it to the left and the right, pumping the brake to try and get it under control. The only reason the gunner wasn't thrown out was because he was safety-harnessed in. He did lose control of his weapon though; the firing mechanism popped off his shoulder mount and and swung down to smash against the side of the Jeep. 

One of the thin silver projectiles was now tearing across the landscape though,  rocketing towards Rail's mid-section.

[Sparkplug]

"You're in my firing line, you spectacularly misplaced stupid silicon sons of glitches!" cursed Sparkplug as her particle beam scored into the erratic rocks jutting from the landscape. The enemy vehicles seemed to have taken cover from the barrage of return fire they were enjoying, though much good that would do them from Skystone's angle of attack. All of a sudden, there wasn't a target in sight, other than the one she'd already hit. Her waist-guns spat a quick volley of light bolts at it on general principles, but that was no longer the most pressing problem.

Also, they knew exactly where she was, and if she was them, their threat assessment model probably said, 'Blow away the one with rubbish armour and all the guns'. Time to get moving.

Breaking from where she stood, she dashed across the sand, swearing foully as the loose material shifted under her pedes. How was anyone supposed to shoot accurately standing on this stuff? As she caught glimpses of vehicles through the rocks, she tossed off broadsides of gatling fire, throwing a few of her remaining short-range missiles after them, then ducked into a sheltered nook behind a couple of particularly large boulders.

"Indigestible energon vomit from Primus's vast, blank face," she muttered. Still, Rail's transmission was both a very solid idea, and even better, open permission to take all she could. Boosting her signal transmission, she broadcast on the primary Decepticon frequencies.

:: Sparkplug transmitting! Under attack from MECH at an Autobot landing site. Got some kind of stunning electro-missiles, taken down one Autobot so far. Two standing, and me. There's a heap of pod-wreckage at the following coordinates - I want a big sucker of a ground bridge to open there and take the lot! We don't want these filthy crawling planet-vermin getting their hands on it, and it might be useful! It's mixed in with sand and rocks, so dump it somewhere you don't mind getting utterly filthy, alright? ::

Of course, she could always sprint over there and get taken away with the debris herself, if she was that way inclined. The pod's wreckage was already post-explosion, so there was nothing left to detonate, and what remained would probably provide decent cover. All the same, something revolted deep down in her spark at the idea of running away from an active battlefield and leaving the other Cybertronians to it.

Switching frequencies, she broadcast on the local transmission band.

:: Took your advice, Rail! We'll see how quick they respond! Now let's frag these uppity vermin, show them who they're messing with! ::

[Raf Esquivel]

Perched on Bluestreak’s back, Raf’s fingers danced over the keyboard. He was only partially aware of the noise around him, so deeply was he into what he was doing.

The firewall had actually been somewhat easy to get past, all things considered, but then they probably hadn’t thought someone would try to hack a...whatever this thing was. The harder part was trying to find a backdoor to get into the guts. All programs had backdoors – it made it easier for programmers to jump right in and start changing things without having to go through oodles of security. But finding it and opening it was harder.

Unless you had specific software.

Setting it up to start looking had gained Raf a little time, but now he was facing a screen with two options. It honestly hadn’t been what he had been expecting. There were apparently two systems he would have to work through, and he assumed he just didn’t have time to go through both of them.

Caduceus.

Harpe.

They told him nothing about what he wanted, what he was looking for. Raf knew what a harp was – something to make music, but this was spelled Harpe with an e, and he doubted it was a spelling error.

Caduceus, however...

Something tickled in the back of his mind. It was there and yet not – an old memory, half buried. Something about Greek mythology? Roman? And an odd sense of it somehow being connected to Ratchet....and yet not.

Raf scowled at the screen. What was he trying to remember? He normally had a good memory for things, but this....whatever it had been...hadn’t been important at the time...so why was he thinking about Ratchet?

Shaking his head angrily, pushing up his oversized glasses, his eyes ticked from one to the other. Harpe. Caduceus.

Choose.

Biting the tip of his tongue between his teeth, Raf’s mouse moved over to the black square beneath Caduceus, and clicked. He then opened a second program that would start trying to search for a Hash, a secret file that would store the password.
He had no idea how long it would take, or if he would even be successful, but his feet were lightly tapping as he waited.

“Come on, come on....”

[Deleted]

::I can’t open one right now- someone already on the ground needs to see if they can get to it, and quick.::

Rail’s idea was smart, but it wasn’t something she could currently pull off. Skystone was doing her best to take out the missiles, but she’d never had a great aim and the projectiles were small, and fast.

She managed to shoot one down, and the other simply became swept up in her draft, and was knocked to the ground.

She glanced down for only a moment, to see where it landed, but what she saw was enough to nearl make her stall midair. Primus...did Sparkplug do that? What kind of weapon is that? The ground was charred, parts of it on fire. Skystone momentarily hoped that that had taken care of the humans, as horrible as it was, but she saw two vehicles headed towards Rail and Sparkplug and knew she could get there faster. She adjusted her course slightly, now headed downwards, ready to make a hard and fast landing.

Soon she was going from closing in on the vehicles to ahead of them, and then quickly transformed, her wings sliding to her back and her side panelings flaring out as she landing on the ground with a large thud, the ground around her giving in as her large pedes dug into the dirt. She was now facing MECH off squarely, trying to shoot for their tries. In her attempt not to land on either her comrades or the enemy, she’d ended up quite a distance from both groups, so her shots weren’t landing as well as they could have been. However, she wasn’t one to purposefully break rules, and so she was shooting more cautiously then she would have had these simply been Decepticons.

[Deleted]

PENG
PING
PYNG

“Goddammit!” Odessa recoiled at the metal klaxon. Pulling the steering wheel off to the side as he leaned away from sparks. The Buggy jerked off to the side with a new plume of dust. He recovered quickly to jerk the buggy back onto path. These shells were getting too close. The metal roll-cage showing scuff where the bullet struck. It was eye level. That was the identifier of only one bullet, but he couldn't make out the other two. Looking back over his shoulder, their jeep was still in his dust. Barely able to make them out in the cloud. Wonder how even those shots struck.

Odessa actually slowed his pace. Ripping back the E-brake, hammering the gas. He started skidding across the loose sand kicking up a wall of debris. Complete Obfuscation. When their jeep neared, he’d take off once more, out of the cloud at a hard right. The Buggy shot off to the help of Lil’ Potats and Yung Blu.

Hopefully he would put even greater distance between them, trying to slingshot them into the wrong direction.

Odessa pulled up by the fallen Bluestreak.

“Raf? RAF?!” Odessa called out over the lifeless Bot. ‘Raf, You alive? We gotta go!” Growing ever so impatient. “Blue? You alive big gai?!” Odessa’s eyes darted across the area. Looking for any new jeep (Or the same) that would converge to his position. We didn't have time for this. Odessa caught raf on top of Blue’s back, fiddling with some large javelin like device. “Raf, Get off the computer and lets go!” Odi yelled out. He seemed focused on something. Enough that he was ignoring him.

“Goddammit!” Odessa had half a mind to leave the boy, but he couldn’t. He hopped out of the buggy. Clambering up the side of Blue’s frame to try and rip up Raf by the collar. “What’re you doing?! We have to go now!” Odessa had quite literally tried to lift Raf by the collar. Smol weight not enough for Adrenal-man!

[Deleted]

Rail heard Sparkplug’s reply and was glad that they might be able to make a tactical retreat with their chassis’ intact. But with his focus simultaneously on trying to blast the natives back into dust, he missed the faint glint of silver of the approaching electric missile. The weapon streaked across the landscape like greased lightning and smoothly passed Rail right under his outstretched left arm, bare millimetres from his torso.

Surprise and fear had Rail instantly crouching back behind his favourite boulder, cursing in static, and again out of sight. He wanted options, he needed tactics. Rail really wanted to flee and knew he could not. And still that insistent background buzz. He’d no luck with the drone so he tuned into the source of the buzz, if there was anything there at all. It was better than nothing.

Please hurry and get that portal open and let us escape Rail thought in Sparkplug’s direction.

Oh Primus, was that missile homing? Is it turning back right now?

Rail did his best to damp down his rising panic. With the enemy approaching from multiple angles, he really did have insufficient cover.

[Feldspar]

Crackling hisses met Sparkplug's comm-relay. As they ebbed and rose, there was a slight, answering click, as if someone had attempted to pick up the line and been unable to patch the transmission  completely through.

Sparkplug's return fire had the MECH team sticking to behind the boulders to protect themselves as much as they could. Missiles slammed into the stone, cracking up black clouds of debris. There was the sound of swearing from behind the rocks, but it certainly wasn't on par with the Decepticon femme's incredible vocabulary.

Her sprint across the ground kicked up a scatter of sand and grit. Bullets whizzed and spanged into the ground behind her; a few of the MECH folks had leaned out from behind their sheltering stones long enough to return her fire. Once she was within the stones though, their ammunition would bounce off the sandstone she took shelter within.

Apparently rock wasn't so handy in the game of beating paper, but did a great job of protecting from bullet. As Sparkplug ran, though, the little drones were buzzing around like gnats. They chased after her heels and powered through the sand she kicked up, their tiny forms seemingly unaffected by it. Above the lens of the tiny camera, a thin red beam was barely visible for a second, scanning up and down the back of Sparkplug's knees as she ran.

They quickly peeled upwards as she ducked into the protective curve of the stones. It took them a moment to reach a good height but once they did, the tiny drones simply remained there, circling on the updrafts at a slight distance.

The ruined car still smoked, but the men had escaped it and managed to get to a spot that was somewhat protected by the stones.

"Are those drones locked on that thing?" the thin man panted. He brought up a hand to mop at his forehead, but his expression was cold.

"Absolutely, Novo. Got a pretty clear target, actually."

Novo looked over and grunted.

"Good. Should be able to get those locked on to it and hit it from above. Get that loaded up, but use  the other system."

"Yes sir, on it!"

[Feldspar]

There was a flicker on Raf's screen. Almost as if there had been a tiny power surge, a weird little blip that shivered the orange boxes as he clicked on the bar.

The roar in the air from firepower was deafening. The ground shook; chunks of rock cracked into the air. Raf's backpack bounced a bit where he had set it down on Bluestreak's plating; luckily, one of the straps got caught on a raised part of the sharpshooter and that kept it from slipping off.

Seconds turned into a minute. The whirr of a drone passed overhead; it swooped close and then lifted back upwards, zooming towards the major point of the conflict. In the left hand side of Raf's screen,  the clock ticked over to the next minute. People were yelling in the background; barking orders, calling out. The rasp of semi-automatic fire snapped loudly back and forth, and someone screamed, but there was no metallic undertone to it.

Raf's program ran in the background; scampering through code, rifling through the systems. It was fast, and Raf would realize that no, the rainbow tables were no help in this case. Apparently MECH had folks that knew a password shouldn't be something as simple as password1234.

Unlike a lot of high level CEO's and government employees out there.

Time.  He needed time. Raf had excellent skills and abilities, but things around him were moving incredibly fast.

The bar below remained blank, even though it was obviously working.

Then all of a sudden, the field filled, and the system opened.

Into what a screen of many files. All of them had smaller icons, some of them appeared as if they might be related to the drones. Another was obviously the silhouette of the projectile buried into Bluestreak's back.

Others held what appeared to be several other projectiles, and the oddest one was two filled in circles with a line between them...

A shadow slid over the top of him right then, and someone reached down seemingly out of nowhere and made a grab for his collar.

[Feldspar]

As Skystone landed on the ground, the chattering return fire chasing after Sparkplug seemed to pause for a brief moment. Only for a heartbeat though, and then immediately the larger, on board guns were turned on the big Autobot.

There was a spin of bullets; and if she was unlucky enough to get hit by them, it would be very apparent that these had been designed in some way to actually penetrate some Cybertronian armor and do some damage. They might not blow apart a joint or cause massive holes on someone as big and solid as Sparkplug but they would certainly work through.

On a lucky hit, they certainly would tear apart some energon or coolant lines.

During her return fire, one of Skystone's shots caught one of the off-road vehicles and sent it spinning. It whirled across the sand and crashed into one of the stones with a hard boom.

Another bolt landed, and this second shot tore through the tire, and then up into the engine compartment. Human construction met the brunt of Skystone's blast. Unfortunately, it was difficult to get a delicate, tire-destroying attack at the distance, and a Cybertronian weapon aimed downwards across the terrain had a the advantage.

The ensuing explosion tore through the vehicle. It flipped into the air. When it crashed down, it smashed into a line of larger boulders and what was left of the entirely destroyed vehicle was torn into far-flung chunks. They rained down on the landscape; thudding into the soil.

A column of oily black smoke bubbled upwards.

There was a moment of utter silence, and then she would see the remaining vehicles gun it in an effort to protect themselves.

[Feldspar]

Odi's drift of the dune buggy worked. The vehicle spun up a cloud of grit and dirt off of the Nevada desert floor. His pursuers still fired at him but nothing hit either him or his buggy again, and his vehicle was likely grateful that it didn't have more holes punched in it. Also, he didn't have holes punched him either, so that was an incredibly helpful outcome. Blood liked staying in his body. It really did. That nice red substance didn't want to leave his heart and have to face the cold, cruel world out there on the ground.

The MECH car behind him slowed down as Skystone's broad shadow swept overhead. As the Autobot landed and returned fire on the other units the car that had been chasing Odi quickly moved to the right and went to take cover behind another outcropping of rock.

Yelling at Bluestreak didn't seem to do much, unfortunately. The Autobot was unresponsive, and as limp as a very large silver trout wrapped in wet newspaper.

The sharpshooter's optics were vacant and distant, and it was absolutely obvious he wasn't home. Wherever his brain was at the moment, it had apparently gone on a road trip. The kind of trip that followed Google maps blindly into some remote part of the wilderness and then promptly lost all GPS signal.

Odi would probably realize though that hey, at least Cybertronians were fairly easy to climb. There were nooks and crannies and foot and toeholds in the small joints and gaps of Blue's plating. It was like going to one of those yuppie outdoor and sporting goods shops with an indoor climbing wall.

Only in this case there was no instructor calling out encouraging, inspirational sayings and then offering you a very expensive bottle of organic tea once you'd reached the top. Not even close, but at least he wasn't getting shot at right now.

In fact, all of the MECH crew seemed to be focused on the big weaponized robots. Odi would absolutely have a few free seconds to get to Raf and make his grab for him...

[Feldspar]

The missile passed so close to Rail he would feel a strange, electrical feeling, as if he was being crawled on by a surge of Retrorats. Tiny feet, nasty little claws, all digging into his main relays and skittering upwards into the back of his head.

Yet, as nasty as the feeling was, it only lasted for a fraction of a second before the missile slammed into one of the rocks behind him. The projectile was utterly destroyed; the mangled remains had one moment where they crackled and popped, a feathery nimbus of pale pink surrounding some of the metal bits. Then it caught on fire and proceeded to smoke.

When he turned his sharp audio sensors to the buzz, he would be able to tell that there appeared to be some sort of communication between the off road vehicles and the tiny drones. However the background buzz was even more apparent now; he'd be able to trace it down to couple of the vehicles- and something else...

Both Skystone and Sparkplug's reply had a faint, crackling undertone to them. The sound was slight, and could have been easily overlooked, had not Rail been able to pick it out.

Something was trying to interfere with even their own comms back and forth to each other. A jamming system of some sort? It was very possible it had already caused issues with their emergency transmissions to their respective teams.

[Sparkplug]

Tapping the side of her helm, as it that would magically clear up the hissing static she was receiving, Sparkplug muttered, "Slag-choked vent valves. Think you're being clever, do you?" Switching back to the local broadcast band, she added,

::Jamming! Not getting any acknowledgement back. No space bridge coming. If you can tell where it's coming from, point me at it. Else we'll just have to trash all of this non-sentient junk until it gets broken::

Glancing up at the swirling, darting drones, Sparkplug scowled. "Bet you think you're pretty clever too, huh. Well, I've got news for you snaggle-geared screw heads: rocks won't hide you from me." Hurling herself out of the cover of the broken boulders, Sparkplug rolled and transformed in mid-air, body restructuring in a blur of white and silver. Six deep-treaded wheels slammed into the gritty sand, her lengthy cannon arm restructured into a turret jutting from the rear of her vehicular mode. Half-depleted missile racks jutting from where her headlights would usually be, twin gatling blasters extruded from sliding panels down the length of her front wings.

The deep bark of her engine boomed from the rocks as she surged forward, throwing up a rooster-tail of sand and debris. Dodging and jinking, slewing around boulders, her scanners sought for the merest glimpse of one of the human vehicles skulking amongst the debris field, her full weapons complement ready to let go.

::Skystone! Give me a steer to where these scraplet-loving cowards are skulking, and I'll blow them straight off the face of this lousy dirtball::