[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]Proposals (Avalanche, Closed)

[Prowl]

Week One, Day One...

Six Hours After Formation...

Prowl’s Personal Quarters/Office...

Prowl was not usually one for a pep talk, as he viewed them as a waste of time, especially when there were more important things to be done. But six hours ago Prime had laid down the law on a few things, something that Prowl had appreciated. He had only been on Earth for about twenty eight planetary rotations, and already the Autobot cause here had almost collapsed on what he estimated were at least four separate occasions due to individuals acting out of turn.

Ratchet should not have been allowed outside of the base without an escort. Sundance should have been more careful against Thundercracker. Windshield should have been watched closer. And in all honesty, Optimus should not have been out by himself either.

The irony of that last situation stuck in Prowl’s processor as he was reminded of their lack of a qualified chief medical officer as his own side screamed in pain. Knock Out's saw had sliced an energon line, meaning he wasn't going out into the field again any time soon. The patch job held under the circumstances, but only barely. He had been overconfident as well, arrogant in thinking that he could take care of himself. The truth was that it had been a few centuries since he had been in the field, even if his original programming was still there in the back of his processor. He had almost suffered a fate similar to that of Ratchet, if Knock Out had been just a half a meter higher with that cut. But he had him now, sitting in the brig.

But that would wait.

Avalanche was due any minute now with some proposals for increasing the security at Omega One. Usually Prowl would leave such measures to Red Alert, but the security chief was currently making sure that their prisoner couldn’t so much as scrub his grill without Prowl knowing about it. Plus, Prowl liked to know everything he could about the situation he was facing. Avalanche seemed to have a good processor in her cranial, and knew how things worked in a war despite her past as a laborer, something that Prowl wished extended to more of the rank and file here at Omega. So he was quite eager to listen to what she had to say.

[Avalanche]

Contrary to Prowl’s general-purpose disdain of pep talks, Avalanche considered them to have their place. Not some over-familiar, chummy, let’s-all-get-along nonsense – she’d served under officers like that early in her time with the Autobots, and it never worked. Besides, the sort of mecha who indulged in that scrap were mostly gone to the All-Spark by now. But sometimes, before a battle, what every mecha needed to be reminded of was the bot standing beside them, sharing their fate, sharing their purpose.

And sometimes, just sometimes, you needed to slap some sense into a platoon before they got more bots killed.

It had been one of those talks.

She remained frankly surprised by it. She shouldn’t have been; the Prime was a heavy, war-hardened veteran of more battles than she could name or remember, someone who’d been fighting long before she gave up her own neutrality and picked a side. But since entering the Omega garrison, she’d... forgotten wasn’t the right word. She’d come to think that the weight of his compassion, as hard as he must have fought to cling to it through the endless war, was crippling their ability to act with discipline.

She hadn’t dared say so. Not to the Prime. And it turned out, she hadn’t needed to. The more time passed, the more she appreciated the slap to the faceplate his words had been; not just to corral those who were acting out of line, but to remind those like her who they stood beside. It was a good feeling; like feeling rubber grip the road and finally getting some traction.

And that feeling had led her here, to Prowl’s door.

She rapped on the metal with her knuckles, the spiked dusters pulled back so as not to damage it, then stepped inside as he signalled for her entry. The white-painted bot was a cold mech, calculating, as distant as his icy blue optics painted him. Not ideal qualities for a leader. But very much ideal qualities for a strategist. She could and did respect him, and knew she didn’t have to beat around the bush to make her point.

The chair creaked under her colossal weight as she settled into it. “The ground bridge is going to get us killed,” she remarked, without preamble. Her optics glowed a hot orange beneath her black brow plates. “We rely too much on this place not being found. If it is, they’ll blow the control room. That blocks the ground exit, and the bridge. The only other way out is the mesa top, and that’s a shooting gallery. We need evacuation drills, we need a dedicated evac alert system, and most of all, we need a second ground exit dug out. Until we’ve got another way out, this place is a tomb waiting to happen.”

[Prowl]

So it seemed like Avalanche was not in the mood for small talk.

Excellent. Neither was Prowl.

The strategist listened respectfully as Avalanche went into her concerns, pulling out a datapad and scribbling a few notes on it as he listened to her speak.

“That may be true, but having the ground bridge is a better alternative than not having it.” he replied. “The Decepticons have operations around the world, and this planet has many land masses that are divided by water. There is no way that we would be able to effectively respond to every crisis if we had to drive there. Plus, leaving by the normal door at an extended rate would give the base away.”

Were there ways around it if needed? Definitely. The United States Air Force, out of all the human militaries, had arguably the largest cargo aircraft fleet on the planet capable of moving those Autobots that did not have aerial vehicle modes. Even someone like Avalanche or Optimus Prime would be able to fit into an aircraft and be airlifted. The problem with that though is that Prowl wanted to avoid dependence on the United States military as much as possible. Though Optimus allowed two of them into the base, Prowl was not fully sure that the United States government was as innocent as they claimed to be regarding MECH.

“I do understand your concerns though. The groundbridge and the current exits are not ideally placed.”

Ideally, Prowl would want the command center to be isolated deeper underground and away from any entrances into the base. He supposed that the Autobots under Prime had to make do with what they had, but the fact that the humans built it this way made Prowl wonder how they had survived this long.

“Where would you want to put the alternative exits? Also, do you think it would be feasible to move the command center and the groundbridge from their current spots?”

[Avalanche]

The towering femme nodded as Prowl spoke of the utility of the ground bridge in transporting their troops across the globe, simultaneously signalling her agreement and the setting aside of that fact with a flick of her hand. As a tool, it was strategically invaluable. It was the feeling of safety from discovery that it gave which was the problem.

“No,” she replied bluntly. “The medical centre needs to be next to the bridge, to take incoming casualties. Controls need to be next to it for monitoring. Move all that, we’d have the same problem we do now. What we need to do is assume there’s a deadline before the ‘cons arrive here, and act accordingly. Can you call up a base layout holo?”

Pausing until a diagram of their current layout could be produced, she indicated the far end of the accommodation quarters with a blunt finger. “Here. There’s multiple routes through the barracks to it, makes it less likely to be cut off. Far away as possible from the bridge. That’s the fallback exit. Don’t use it unless we’re in evacuation.”

Regular use of it would only guarantee it’d be detected and blocked in the case of a base attack. It needed to be known as the fallback point, but only used in emergency. “Best to attach an alarm to it,” she added. Bots would be bots. If some idiot triggered an evac alert by trying to slip out, it’d stop anyone else trying the same.

“So. Phase one. Fallback exit. Invasion drills. Evac drills. That’s the easy part.” Her hot orange gaze met his icy blue one. “We need a secondary location to fallback to. Omega Two. Getting out is no help unless we have somewhere to go. Energon stocks. Spare parts. We’re going to need to talk with the native government about this. That airfield is compromised, and it wouldn’t suit a full base anyway.”

[Prowl]

She made good points, but that isn’t what Prowl really meant.

“I mean move everything. The medical bay, the groundbridge itself, the command center, everything except the entrance and maybe the kids area. Uproot them and move them deeper into the facility where they can be protected better from an external breach.”

Basically place more distance between them and the main door.

Prowl did as Avalanche asked, noting sourly that she needed a bit of refresher in proper etiquette and protocol as he pulled up the map. He followed her finger through to the spot indicated and nodded, seeing it as the best option. Part of him wondered if it would be better if they instead put a coded lock on it and only gave the code to trusted individuals...but this would leave everyone trapped should said individuals be incapacitated. Plus...there was the issue of who to trust...

“Agreed. I can already see someone trying to use it to slip out without permission. We’ll have to put Red Alert on designing the alarm.”

Next, a fallback position. This was something that Prowl had considered for a while but had placed lower on the list of his priorities. He frowned for a moment as he arched his fingers together...his distrust of the humans and their government coming to the forefront of his processor after what had happened to Ratchet.

“Agreed, but we should also have a third rally point. One that we don’t inform the humans of,” he explained. “Just in case they decide to sell us out to the Decepticons.”

[Avalanche]

Avalanche nodded soberly, her brow plates drawing closer together in a small frown. They were working well with the local government – that was unquestionable. Governments changed, in character and nature – that was unquestionable too. Better to have somewhere that, if worst came to the worst, they could fall back to without having to sell themselves to the natives to do it.

“Bargaining power’s always better when you’ve got options.” The shutters closed over her optics as she thought. “You’d need somewhere underground, ideally. Best to search the native data net for a suitable location, from somewhere away from Jasper.” If she was providing data access to a powerful alien species, she’d want to know what they were researching, and she had to assume that the humans were sensibly worried about the same thing. Their data channels would be tapped. Sending someone through a bridge and having them search for pertinent information far, far from Omega was safer.

“As for restructuring-“ Avalanche shook her helm. “There are still benefits to keeping an outside access by the medbay. Still. If you want them separated, the way to do it is seal up the exit, and dig a new one elsewhere. As well as the evac exit.” Shifting the command centre, ground bridge and medbay would be an absolutely monumental task, requiring vast amounts of base restructuring, digging and rebuilding. Moving the entrance, on the other hand, was just a matter of walling and reinforcing the old opening, and breaking a new one elsewhere. They’d have to do the latter job for the secondary exit anyway, so doing it twice was within the realm of the possible.

Crossing her heavy arms across her chestplate, Avalanche said after a moment, “The biggest problem with eventually losing Omega is losing the ground bridge. After Ratchet-“ she didn’t need to go on from there, “-we need some mecha that understands it well enough to construct another if we have to. If we don’t have a mecha with that knowledge, we need to change that. Neon, maybe.”

[Prowl]

“Agreed.”

Avalanche made a good point about bargaining power, something that he wished Prime would have picked up on. While Optimus wasn’t a bad leader or incapable of making difficult decisions, Prowl noticed that he seemed to be a bit naive at times when it came to trusting others too much. In all honesty there should have been some sort of fallback base built long before Prowl and Avalanche had arrived on Earth.

“Do you have any rough ideas on where to begin looking?” Prowl asked, having a few ideas of his own. “Perhaps somewhere outside the geographical confines of this country? I’ve done some reading up on international human law...perhaps if things did turn south we could run to the north to the country they call Canada. That might buy us some time as the humans here wouldn’t be able to immediately rush an attack against us.”

So, it would be impossible to pick everything up and move it. It wasn’t the end of the world, the bots had to make do with what they had when they’d arrived at Omega. As tempting as it was to seal up the entrance, the command center and ground bridge were still in a bad position as they were above ground.

“We’ll just have to make do with an emergency exit then.”

Then there was the matter of Ratchet...talk about putting all the cubes in one carrier. Prowl liked Ratchet well enough...he was good at his job and understood the costs of war unlike some others, but there had been an overreliance on him lately for all things medical and scientific.

“Neon is a good choice. Pick two others that you think could handle setting up a ground bridge, just in case Neon is also incapacitated. Jetfire and one other?”

[Avalanche]

Avalanche gave a thoughtful rumble as she considered Prowl’s suggestion. Canada’s government was, more or less, aligned with the general philosophy of the country they currently sheltered in. Separate governing bodies, at least formally. She wasn’t sure how separate they really were; one the one hand, their closeness might make the northern neighbour vulnerable to pressure from the south, but on the other, that kind of closeness often fostered a prickly determination not to be seen as an appendage of the other nation.

In short, politically, it was less risky than picking another nation at random and rolling the dice. Though that wasn’t the most key consideration...

“Lots of isolated territory up there. Less risk of being noticed. Land border with this nation, lets stragglers join up.” The towering femme grunted. “Border checks. Might need to get some fake travel papers run up for the grounders. If Fowler’s government catches us at it, plenty of countries in the southern continent, easy to claim they’re for border movement down there.”

Naturally, the native government could issue them passports if it wanted, and they’d even be genuine, but they’d be worse than useless if the local nation turned hostile. They’d be flagged in every system.

She shook her helm, moving on. The urge to shift all their critical infrastructure deeper into the installation was a sensible one, but it wasn’t practical. Good that Prowl had taken that in stride. Both of them had to keep one optic on the long game, and ensure when it got here, they were ready for it.

“Jetfire’s a good pick,” she agreed after a moment. “I’ll try Petrichor for the other.” The femme was a geologist, first and foremost, but at root she was scientifically trained, and she seemed reliable enough. Hopefully between the three of them, they could document what Ratchet had done, and prepare to have to recreate it.

[Prowl]

When Avalanche suggested a possible southern line of retreat, Prowl let out what could only be described as an indifferent grunt. Sure, there was more land mass that way meaning there was a larger area to hide in, but looking at a map revealed the area involved got narrower and narrower until they met at the Panama Canal, meaning that there was the possibility they could be funneled into a killzone eventually. North it was much broader, and there was the possibility of getting up into other areas of the world through the polar region if the weather was decent.

Another reason why their location on this continent wasn’t the best. If they were over in the areas the humans called Europe, Africa, and Asia, there was a greater amount of landmass they could have hidden in. Of course...whatever government boundary they ended up in could complicate things...

“Who’s to say we need actual physical papers?” Prowl asked after a moment. “Do you think that if everyone knew what they looked like, perhaps our holomatter avatars could forge some out of holomatter. It might not hold up to extended observation, but it might be enough to get some through.”

Of course, that would only matter if they went through the border at the official checkpoints. If they needed to, Prowl knew they could probably slip through in the wilderness regions where there was minimal human presence. Add to that if they operated in the dead of night, there were good chances that they could get through and be miles away before anyone noticed signs of their passage. And if they encountered any humans...they could deal with them in appropriate measures and be gone before anyone noticed.

“Petrichor could be a good choice.” Prowl agreed. Ratchet hadn’t exactly been a master computer scientist before arriving on Earth but he still managed to put together the groundbridge. If a medical doctor could do it, perhaps a geologist could be capable enough as well.

“We should also consider locations accessible only by groundbridge for back up locations, in the event we still hold control of the groundbridge during an evacuation.”