Ep. 1.5 - NEST of the Dragon -open-

[Deleted]

The day dawned bright over Diego Garcia, the unfettered sun beaming down on the small island that was little more than a forested atol ringing an extinct island volcano. The white calcite beaches reflected the sun with blinding intensity as, with the sun, humans arose to greet the day. A great many moved in and out of a plaza of buildings that had been erected beside the island's small airstrip where numerous British and American military jets sat beneath light colored tarp-enclosures. Soldiers moved along the runways edge in formation, jogging through their morning regimen in true disciplined style. Non-soldier personnel moved here and there as well, emerging from small apartment-like flats. As the sun climbed higher, most took cover from its most potent rays and took cover inside; the lack of cloud cover meant the day was going to get into the high 80s to low 90s with a very oppressive humidity.

Hans hated such weather. It wasn't even an hour after sun-up and he was already sweating profusely as he closed the door of his flat behind him. In Germany the sun meant comfort, mild temperatures, and maybe even a bier after a hard days work. Here it meant sun screen, itchy linen clothes, tasteless local teas, and the impossibility of getting dry. Grumbling he adjusted his collar and hefted his laptop case over his shoulder, the weight and bulk far too great for a laptop alone. Over his breast was situated a pocket stretched by a small, black, leather bound notebook which he gave a pat to ensure it was in place before moving away from the building. He had a full day ahead of him and wanted to get a few things in place before the interns showed up.

As he walked Hans would give small smiles to some he passed, saying hello or stopping a moment for a word with others. The island had been his home for several months now and he really enjoyed the local culture as well as the respect afforded it by the soldiers and other non-natives who had taken up residence on their front stoop. Crossing into the compound proper, Hans' step became longer, his posture sharper, straighter. Movement on the base was largely unrestricted but he didn't want to spend more time out in the sun than he had to. Before long he came to a large hangar not flanked by a number of attack jets or recon planes and, taking a key card from his belt unlocked the door.

The difference in brightness was extreme as the researcher's eyes positively glowed with the remnants of the sun in them.

"Note to self, sunglasses. Ja."

Smirking he reached to his left, flipping up a battery of switches that instantly bathed the "hangar" in light. The contents, however, were anything but normal for what you'd expect in an aircraft hangar. Tools sat scattered everywhere, large benches, lathes, vices, saws dotted the room with flecks of their target material here and there. Shelves two stories high along the rim of the hangar itself, the upper levels accessible by a thin catwalk or rolling ladder. Materials of all kinds sat against he back wall from wood, to steel bars and sheets, to decidedly more exotic materials all of terran origins. As he stepped past the benches and shelves and around the materials he shook his head.

What Hans wouldn't give to get some of the alien metals to examine at a molecular and elemental level.

Soon he had passed out of the workshop proper and into a small office that sat back against a far wall, a pane of sound-proof glass separating him from the machine shop proper. Placing his laptop case on his desk he began to withdraw blue papers, notebooks, and drawing implements from his bag setting them aside before withdrawing his laptop, opening it and punching the power button before plugging in a single large cord. Before him the entire wall lit up, nine flat screen monitors flickering to life. Offering a smile he took a seat and stopped.

A moment of brightness cut the lab as the front door opened once more and someone entered, a thin wiry frame and a very long white coat accented the red haired man; William Rosen. Giving a mischievous grin, Hans reached down and hit a single switch. From his office the researcher saw the form jump as the engines for the hangar door shrieked and shuddered before lumbering upward, light flooding the machine shop. Leaning to his left he hit another button and, in the shop a speaker came online.

"Guten morgen, Willy. Put ze coffee on, will you?

[Deleted]

<<Elsewhere on the base....>>

Robert Epps set down his tray in the mess and stated, "Y'know, I almost miss the desert." He leveled a finger at Lennox. "Almost. 'Least there you're only sweating for a minute."

He sat down and squinted suspiciously at the Military Breakfast (tm) on his tray. He swore that the kitchen here was just making MRE's en masse. The Breakfast Scramble (tm) looked awfully familiar from Qatar...and Iraq...and Afghanistan...aaand basic training.... He picked up the biscuit and tapped it on the table. It made a solid thunk thunk. At least it wasn't moldy. The humidity got in everything.

Epps sighed and tucked in, thinking longingly of real eggs, sunny side up. Bacon...REAL biscuits...real COFFEE.... Hell, maybe some steak to go with those eggs, while he was dreaming....

He looked up at Lennox as he chewed. "How's it goin'? Any word from the top? I mean, not that it ain't lovely here, workin' on my tan, but there's only so many times I can shine by boots."

[Deleted]

"Nothing to walk on around here but tarred asphalt, dirt and sand," Lennox noted around his cup of coffee. "You can just keep on buffing that shine."

The coffee was best drunk hot and quicky; William Lennox had perfected chugging instant coffee the way college students chugged soda and beer. Inhale, open up, and pour it back in gulps as soon as it was less than scalding. It had a delayed caffeine kick to it that slid into place a minute later, while he was tossing back food rendered tasteless by the overpowering aftertaste of burnt ash-and-battery-acid coffee.

Epps had that look in his eye - the one that said he was thinking about homemade cooking - and Lennox continued hastily before the subject of pancakes with real syrup could come up. "Rumor has it there might be new orders coming down, though if you ask me, one base is pretty much like any oth-" He broke off, eyes going wide where he was looking at the door of the mess, and Lennox had to cough sharply to clear the last bite he had taken.

"Spoke too soon," he hissed to Epps, and then, louder, deliberately cheerful - "Captain! Fancy seeing you out here in the ass end of nowhere."

<< can we get a Fowler, please? >>

[Deleted]

“Aint nothin’,” said Captain William Fowler, “fancy ‘bout nothin’, Junior. Walk with me. You too, Epps. Aint got all day for you lot to finish your morning crumpets; let’s move.”

It took a certain kind of man to wear a suit and tie on a longitude so near the equator, but Special Agent William Fowler was precisely that sort of man. He was also precisely the sort of man that might assign you to long range monitor duty in Alaska if he didn’t like your face, so that tended to afford him some of the respect he might have otherwise lost for looking like a suit on an army base. The thing was, Fowler suffered from having been shunted to ‘desk jockey’ as he put it, a position that seemed to personally and profoundly irk the man despite the fact he worked with five-story mechanical titans from outer space.

It took a particular kind of man to think liaison to alien race was a step down from Army Ranger, but, again, Fowler was that kind of man.

“I assume you heard about Germany?” he said, not once breaking his stride past the table, collecting both Epps and Lennox in his wake in the manner of a man used to collecting others in his own momenteum. He didn’t seem very pleased, putting off an air of contained violence that could remind people that Fowler had not always been a suit. “Goddamn disaster. The Tin Buddha is pissed off and the Pentagon has rented out a space so far up my ass it’s likely an HR issue.” Fowler scattered several men on their way to the mess hall, speaking over his shoulder. “Morshower and the Joint Chiefs are clearing us for inter-team cooperation, which is just dandy seeing how th’ Bots are side-eyeing me like a mole now, so there ya go. Where’s Hans?”

Fowler peered industriously around the hanger before spotting the sectioned off area that made up the man’s work space and marching toward it. He was thinking about how this was the first diplomacy goof between the Autobots and NEST and how, really, it could have been worse. At least it was just a scanner. Fowler personally didn’t even want to think what the Prime might have done if they’d been developing weapons, you know, like Sec Def was pushing for. Really, it was amazing how hard it was to explain that the Autobots might be reluctant to break intergalactic law just to play nice with the natives.

The Bots had already fudged the rules several times by ‘modifying’ existing tech, but stopped short of putting anything actually Cybertronian into anything Earth-tech. Now they knew, despite all the posturing to the opposite, that Cybertronian technology was exactly what humanity wanted… though Fowler supposed Optimus already knew that but was just too polite to say so out loud. No need to be polite now.

“Hans! With me! We have problems. Let’s go.”

[Deleted]

After a few moments Hans' computer band had booted and modelling programs were loading. The machinist knew that it would not take long for Will to complete the coffee so he ignored the news brief on his desk at least for another few moments as he pulled a large black coffee mug from his shelf.

Soon the office section of the machine shop was smelling of coffee as Will Rosen set the pot to brew a fantastically strong cup. Notebook in hand, Hans stepped out from his office, mug in hand. Stretching at the renewed blast of warm muggy air Hans stepped toward Will and the percolating coffee. The day was full already as the researcher slipped the black notebook into his pocket once more; his mind was filled with calculations that had to be applied to a number of his alpha builds and prototype contraptions.

His thoughts were largely self contained as he nodded to Will, pouring himself a cup of the hot black liquid. Adding a spoon of powdered creamer Hans stepped away from the machine wondering where he should start first, stirring the concoction. Deciding that the grapple design hadn't been worked on in a while he stepped toward the tables flanking the hangar entrance... and nearly ran into a relatively rotund man wearing a very fashionable suit and tie.

At that, Hans froze and blinked several times, almost not believing what he was seeing.

"Herr Fowler. What brings yo-"

"“Hans! With me! We have problems. Let’s go.”

"Vait, problem?!"

Quickly falling into the wake of the imposing man's passing, Hans nearly shouldered into the other two, one of which had been obscured by Fowler's form.

"Ah, Epps! In good health, I trust?" Taking a sip from his coffee as it jarred from his footsteps he glanced over at the other of the two. "Lennox."

While he didn't feel animosity toward the soldier, the wiry haired man had a very unfortunate habit of breaking his more expensive pieces in the lab.

Quickly realizing that he had been commandeered on a premise of a problem," Hans' attention quickly shifted back to Fowler and he tried to speak again; the form of Fowler seeming to tower over the relatively short Johannes even more than usual. Though the researcher knew little about his handler, he knew that the man was abnormally emotive and, though emergencies were nothing new on base, the weight of Fowler's steps that meant something much more dire than usual was going on.

"So, vhat is zhe problem? Zis wouldn't be somehow tied to zhe missing semi-conductors debacle some veeks ago?"

When Hans didn't get a direct answer, he shot the soldier's a glance and fell into a rapid pace to keep up with the others. From the airstrip, Fowler and company passed away from the hangars and over to the more administrative offices of the base. Despite the pressing issue, Hans at least was pleased about one thing; the briefing offices were air conditioned.

[Deleted]

Epps gave Hans a silent, mouthed "yo", a two-finger "s'up" gesture, and a shrug in reply. Classic "don't ask me, man, I only work here" response.

Epps and Lennox had shared a grim look at the mention of Germany. They'd heard about it, all right. One of the dead was an Army captain who'd helped bring them up to speed when they'd joined NEST. Nice guy. It'd be nice to pay the 'Cons back a bit for that.

And...inter-team cooperation? That kind of sounded like they might be getting off Diego Garcia. That sounded kind of like they might have a shot at that payback.

Sweet.

[Deleted]

Lennox gave the scientist a distracted nod - enough repetitions of having had his hands slapped, metaphorically and literally, around the eggheads for having picked up, touched, looked at, breathed on, or been anywhere near their projects made him shove said hands into his pockets as though to say it wasn't me, I didn't do anything.

What Fowler was saying was ten times more riveting than whatever about conductors of some sort, though. Lennox waited until they'd reached the grace of air conditioning and a shut door between them and the rest of the base before letting loose the question begging to be asked. "Inter-team, sir? With the... Autobots?"

They knew, of course. All of NEST knew. Good guys vs. bad guys, and some of the giant alien robots were on the side of the angels, but Lennox had never seen one and outside of Fowler didn't know anyone who had. It made his heart beat a little faster, combat reflex where giant mechanical beings meant 'payback' or 'oh shit', not... the 'Big Tin Buddha', as Fowler irreverently put it. Trying to wrap his head around whether or not alien robots even knew what Buddha was, or whether 'tin' was an insult or a pet name or a (probable) food substance to them, whatever the fuck alien robots even ate, was going to give him a headache. "Is that advisable, sir?"

[Deleted]

“Advisable? No, it is not advisable it’s gonna be a goddamn nightmare so congratulations you pulled the short straw. And no, Hans, this time it wasn't a semi-conductors. For once.” Fowler yanked open the door to the conference room, adjacent to the labs and waited until the other men were inside before shutting the door behind him, and not gently. Fowler flipped the blinds and circled to take the front of the room, looking nine kinds of grim and seven kinds of put upon. “Take a seat, gentlemen, I said we have problems and here they are: At nine PM in Munich Germany a NEST outpost was attacked by a known Decepticon infiltrator and two deployers. One unknown and one confirmed to be Ravage. Our energon detectors picked up the infiltrator, Barricade, outside the premise. Upon discovery, he attacked.”

Fowler leveled a look at the three in the room.

“The casualty list has already made the rounds,” he said, looking precisely like a man who’d made some phone calls and not too long ago, looking exactly like a man with a cenotaph somewhere in the backpocket of his brain. “You know who he killed. This is the first direct assault on a NEST base by the Decepticons so we can assume either they always knew about it and ignored us or they’ve found out about us, and this is just the first time we’ve caught them. Bottomline: they hacked us. If not for Blaster, the Autobot’s resident techie, they would have gotten everything. As it is… we’re doing damage control. For the record: This has nothing to do with you.”

He ignored the looks this garnered. “You’re not here to help with that, you’re here to help with what comes next.” Fowler folded his arms. “Team Prime is going to be taking on human operatives to train with and deploy with them on field missions. Similarly, there will likely be more Autobot visitation to Diego Garcia in an attempt at transparency. Try to keep a straight face.” He pointed at the two soldiers. “Junior, Epps, you’re on the shortlist for deploy to Outpost Omega One. Hans.” He pointed accordingly. “Your energon detection technology was reverse engineered and we shouldn’t have that tech but we do and Prime is giving us the side-eye. Congrats. You get to explain to him how we’re totally not making weapons of mass destruction.”