Ep 1.5 - Worst Cat - CLOSED
Dec 13, 2012 14:11:11 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2012 14:11:11 GMT -5
"Look for her," Jazz had told him, as though Steeljaw weren't already formulating a plan of attack for precisely that. "Whatever means necessary, whatever you have to get into - FIND HER. Just don't get caught hacking into slag Fowler can't cover us for, alright?"
Steeljaw had given the saboteur his very best lazily rolled optic "puh-leeeze" look and had then promptly had Jazz help him shift the duty roster. Blaster could take mid day and evening shifts, external monitor rotations could go on as normal, but Steeljaw needed a chunk of time from the dead of night to early morning, Jasper local time.
It was, in comparison, the height of the day, from dawn to dusk, around the Neutral base in Africa.
The satellites were sparkling play, data feeds hacked and search algorithms run with a minimum of fuss. US, Chinese, Russian - he didn't particularly care who they belonged to of the local organic governments, so long as they spent a portion of time sweeping across the African landscape and could feed him data from that landmass.
The human's had a saying about a needle in a haystack. Steeljaw thought he might have slightly better odds than that, as he was looking for a black classic Impala alt form in the middle of a landscape better known for jeeps and all terrain vehicles. Surely this wouldn't be that difficult.
He spent the first few days in the rush of hacking and writing search strings, making sure all alerts went directo to him, and in general crafting a finely tuned network of satellite surveillance borrowed from the organics. The next several days after that were full of anticipation and hope, just waiting for a report to come in.
Waiting.
Waiting.
By the second week hope of an easy find had given way to determination and Steeljaw started pulling longer shifts through the night hours, unknowing and uncaring of the local time so long as there was a scrap of solar light to search by in Africa. Trace energon readings, supplied by Cleaver's fly over sweeps, helped him narrow down quadrants to comb through. He hacked surveillance drones from the local military powers, even enlisting Blaster's help in covering his tracks. He spent the daylight hours pouring over data for any kind - a glimpse of an alt mode, a set of tracks, anything at all. He refueled when he had to, recharged with grudging necessity when his systems demanded it, and if he did so curled in the empty space of Shadowrunner's berth... well, no one needed to know.
The base was empty without her, the only 'bot he had spent any time with or enjoyed spending time with. Steeljaw found himself saving up soundbytes and tidbits of base gossip that she would have enjoyed, only to recall that she wasn't there to enjoy it, and the resultant sour sick feel in his tanks was poured right back into scraping over every bit of intel he could lay processor on. She had to be out there. She was spec ops trained, she had to be.
She was his friend and he would have done it for that lone, never mind the repeated requests of her cohort - Jazz had enough sense to leave him to it but Bluestreak stopped by once an evening with huge hopeful optics, begging for any news, and Ironhide... Steeljaw twitched. The frontliner commed him a minimum of three times a day for a status check, and invariably set all of Steeljaw's circuits on edge, first with barely restrained violent anger and now... well, he wasn't sure what to call what he heard in the large mech's voice over comms, but it wasn't good, whatever it was.
Week three rolled around with what was starting to feel like frustrated futility and then, in the middle of one night shift - there. A blurry glimpse of black from a satellite feet, something that was too long and blocky for a jeep, too small for most of the other vehicle types in the area. It was gone by the time he could hack and re-orient the satellite, but he marked the area and focused on it relentlessly. Wildlands. Local organic wildlife, grass fed quadrupeds and the carnivore quadrupeds who hunted them. And a chance glimpse of something distinctly more alt shaped than not.
"Tell us the minute you find anything," Jazz had said. But it was the deep middle of the night shift, eleven pm Jasper time, just coming up morning in Africa... He would just go find out if he was right, he told himself. No need getting all their hopes up over nothing. Might be a false alarm.
And if it wasn't... well, for someone who'd hidden as long as she had, it didn't seem to Steeljaw that what Shadow needed was for her entire cohort to pile on her immediately, no matter how well meant.
No one else around. Steeljaw took a few deep ventilations, rigged his very best trace block on the groundbridge controls, and set the coordinates to that one elusive sighting. He hated the organic surface with a passion, but his own sensors were infinitely more acute than grainy visuals from a satellite. Assuring himself unnecessarily that those were his primary reasons - and nothing at all to do with a desperate need to see her undamaged with his own optics - Steeljaw stepped through the bridge and triggered it to shut down and erase after him.
Steeljaw had given the saboteur his very best lazily rolled optic "puh-leeeze" look and had then promptly had Jazz help him shift the duty roster. Blaster could take mid day and evening shifts, external monitor rotations could go on as normal, but Steeljaw needed a chunk of time from the dead of night to early morning, Jasper local time.
It was, in comparison, the height of the day, from dawn to dusk, around the Neutral base in Africa.
The satellites were sparkling play, data feeds hacked and search algorithms run with a minimum of fuss. US, Chinese, Russian - he didn't particularly care who they belonged to of the local organic governments, so long as they spent a portion of time sweeping across the African landscape and could feed him data from that landmass.
The human's had a saying about a needle in a haystack. Steeljaw thought he might have slightly better odds than that, as he was looking for a black classic Impala alt form in the middle of a landscape better known for jeeps and all terrain vehicles. Surely this wouldn't be that difficult.
He spent the first few days in the rush of hacking and writing search strings, making sure all alerts went directo to him, and in general crafting a finely tuned network of satellite surveillance borrowed from the organics. The next several days after that were full of anticipation and hope, just waiting for a report to come in.
Waiting.
Waiting.
By the second week hope of an easy find had given way to determination and Steeljaw started pulling longer shifts through the night hours, unknowing and uncaring of the local time so long as there was a scrap of solar light to search by in Africa. Trace energon readings, supplied by Cleaver's fly over sweeps, helped him narrow down quadrants to comb through. He hacked surveillance drones from the local military powers, even enlisting Blaster's help in covering his tracks. He spent the daylight hours pouring over data for any kind - a glimpse of an alt mode, a set of tracks, anything at all. He refueled when he had to, recharged with grudging necessity when his systems demanded it, and if he did so curled in the empty space of Shadowrunner's berth... well, no one needed to know.
The base was empty without her, the only 'bot he had spent any time with or enjoyed spending time with. Steeljaw found himself saving up soundbytes and tidbits of base gossip that she would have enjoyed, only to recall that she wasn't there to enjoy it, and the resultant sour sick feel in his tanks was poured right back into scraping over every bit of intel he could lay processor on. She had to be out there. She was spec ops trained, she had to be.
She was his friend and he would have done it for that lone, never mind the repeated requests of her cohort - Jazz had enough sense to leave him to it but Bluestreak stopped by once an evening with huge hopeful optics, begging for any news, and Ironhide... Steeljaw twitched. The frontliner commed him a minimum of three times a day for a status check, and invariably set all of Steeljaw's circuits on edge, first with barely restrained violent anger and now... well, he wasn't sure what to call what he heard in the large mech's voice over comms, but it wasn't good, whatever it was.
Week three rolled around with what was starting to feel like frustrated futility and then, in the middle of one night shift - there. A blurry glimpse of black from a satellite feet, something that was too long and blocky for a jeep, too small for most of the other vehicle types in the area. It was gone by the time he could hack and re-orient the satellite, but he marked the area and focused on it relentlessly. Wildlands. Local organic wildlife, grass fed quadrupeds and the carnivore quadrupeds who hunted them. And a chance glimpse of something distinctly more alt shaped than not.
"Tell us the minute you find anything," Jazz had said. But it was the deep middle of the night shift, eleven pm Jasper time, just coming up morning in Africa... He would just go find out if he was right, he told himself. No need getting all their hopes up over nothing. Might be a false alarm.
And if it wasn't... well, for someone who'd hidden as long as she had, it didn't seem to Steeljaw that what Shadow needed was for her entire cohort to pile on her immediately, no matter how well meant.
No one else around. Steeljaw took a few deep ventilations, rigged his very best trace block on the groundbridge controls, and set the coordinates to that one elusive sighting. He hated the organic surface with a passion, but his own sensors were infinitely more acute than grainy visuals from a satellite. Assuring himself unnecessarily that those were his primary reasons - and nothing at all to do with a desperate need to see her undamaged with his own optics - Steeljaw stepped through the bridge and triggered it to shut down and erase after him.