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Crueljaws Cab

Once they were clear of the built up areas Psychout reverted back to his robot mode and size and began to evaluate of the data he had acquired. There was likely to be much more detail at the base itself but he currently had more than enough to go on.

He opened a general comms channel and brought everyone up to speed.
>>Listen up guys, I'm going to fill you in on the Facsimile details, and assign a couple each to monitor and relay orders through. Some will be here shortly after us but others will take a bit longer to arrive. They are being brought here to take control of this base and enable us to work more openly however caution is to be advised still as there isn't close to enough to replace the entire contingent stationed here.<<

He pulled the files up on a holographic monitor projection from the dashboard and sorted thorough them, he only needed the military base ones for now and wanted to match the facsimile's style with his teams personalities, but that was easy enough.

>>'Jaws, You have General Chase Meridian and his minion O'Connell. Miserable bastard from all accounts and is currently en-route via DCHQ to facilitate the stand-down of the bases high-priority status, so should be escorted here in a few hours. He is to assume control of the base and relieve the current commander who is being redeployed with his logistics unit to some sandpit outpost that we don't care about. Yet. Darkfire, I have a hand picked one for you... Former special-ops agent Kowalski, black ops trained, now a contract 'cleaner'. Not officially on the military books, but our new 'contract' should have been delivered by now. Currently finishing a senator job in Vancouver and will need to clear his affairs there but he'll be here in 24 hours. Be casreful with him, this one is very valuable. Headcase, Yours will already be in situ, a Commander known as 'Benchpress'. He's the current control coordinator and liaison with the upper echelons, so he doesn't need to change much other than to ensure that we are kept separate from the rank and file and he is responsible for making sure we are not seen. If he fails on that we feed him to Crueljaw...<<

He flicked through the rest of the the list, mostly media and political types, but there was one especially that caught his eye...

>>All others are on a need-to-know basis and I will inform you of them once they arrive. You have your orders, we meet at the base shortly, wait until dark and then its time to dig us up some rocks from home...<<

He checked the map briefly, they were there now and he could see Mount St. Helens looming in the near distance. He could see why it was chosen for a base, It was truly vast. This planet may be a putrid ball of rank organic matter, but it did have some interesting features in places, as well as it's limitless energy potential.

>>One last thing to note, there is a high presence of a organisation called Academi in the area, we are to stay off of their radar until more can be established about their intentions and affiliations. Until told otherwise they are to be considered the enemy and we are still under Phase 1 protocols. Vindicator, we are now on your position for the rendezvous. Your new toy is expecting us, and will clear us through the initial gates. Its up to you and Jaws to get us in without incident, understood? <<

Psychout guided Crueljaw over Vindicators position and checking they were all clear of fleshling interlopers, he jumped out of the cab and radioed Darkfire for a final time. >>Darkfire? We are in position, you may land when ready.<<

Gifford National Park – Up There…Somewhere…

Monitoring the chatter on the frequencies while setting up her approach to the airstrip, Darkfire sighed internally at the fact that she would have to land on the airstrip she had seen earlier. It was some distance away from her team, at least on foot. It would be an interesting venture to journey to their outpost. The assassin ignored Vindicator’s new term for her and focused on her altitude. She would have to circle around the airstrip if Psychout did not give her the all clear to land in time.

Fortunately, permission came along with some interesting information about the facsimile being assigned to her as well as a group named Academi. An assassin always changed the way a game was played. Whether by killing a key player or planting incriminating evidence, they always changed the rules of the game. It would indeed be interesting to work with another assassin even if it was a facsimile.

Darkfire set up the angle of approach and descended, opening up a comm to relay acknowledgement to the others.

>>Acknowledged. Proceeding to land. You three stay frosty. I don’t want to be the one to clean up your mutilated remnants if you get blown to bits.<<

With that, Darkfire cut off the communiqué, and set her attention on the runway before her. Her wheels folded out from her underside as she flew ever closer to the small airstrip. She touched down and rumbled across the airstrip, decelerating and finally rolling across the runway and toward the hanger itself.

The doors were open, but no humans were in visible range. Darkfire rolled into the hangar and slowed to a stop beside an old biplane. Rudimentary didn’t even begin to describe this hangar. It was slaggin’ prehistoric. The assassin knew this planet’s technology wasn’t that advanced, but she had expected better than this. Perhaps she had overestimated these fleshlings? Perhaps, perhaps not. Overestimation was more easily forgiven than underestimation in any case.

You can’t be taken by surprise that way.

Darkfire settled in among the rest of the planes. She stood out of course, but since no one was around, it wouldn’t cause much trouble. The assassin was content to rest here until dark. She considered meditating in the meantime. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, now that she had some time to burn.

The assassin emptied her mind of all conscious thought and attuned herself to her surroundings. She first became aware of the objects most immediate to her. The planes, the tools, the parts scattered about the hangar. Their composition was logged as well as size and structure. Her awareness slowly extended out to the full range of her perception, noting small organic life forms all around her—birds, rodents, and others. She calculated air pressure and altitude as well as a number of other things without concentrating on a singular process. The assassin was completely aware.

Any cybertronian could be trained to do this, though most of them didn’t seem to bother or thought that meditation was focusing on nothing when focusing defeated the whole purpose of meditation. Meditation allowed Darkfire to fight more efficiently and managed to calm her as well. Clearing her mind at any instant would allow her to react instinctively to a dangerous situation. It had helped her in the past. She would be able to know if anyone approached the hangar, but focusing on them would provide a point for concentration. A wandering thought did pop into Darkfire’s mind once, however—it was inevitable; no one could be absolutely perfect at meditation. She briefly wondered about the status of Vindicator, Psychout, and Crueljaw before crushing the thought away and returning to her meditation.

(OOC: Posting includes actions for Phaze and Baneblade, by arrangement, as they are both lame indisposed)

A cave in Gifford National Park

Psychout took a metaphorical deep breath and considered the descent from the caves up in the National Park. This would be his first direct encounter with these meatsacks, and he had learned all about their narcissism and tribal tendencies from his brief but intense exposure to the world wide web a few hours ago. He marked the position of the caves Vindicator had found on his map, dismissed any possible ideas of failure and turned his mind back to the job in hand.

"You know what we have to do. Vindicator, you are the escort and I need your eyes on the security. Benchpress should be the fleshbag on the gate so once we are in, take control of him and get us cleared and positioned for easy access to the base itself." He waited a few seconds for the grumble of acknowledgement to arrive and Vindicator returned to his Tank altmode and revved his engines impatiently, hiding inside a tiny cavern wasn't the siege specialists idea of fun.

Psych climbed back into Crueljaws cab, moved over to the passenger seat and transformed again. That's twice in as many hours he thought, don't see that every day but this time he assumed a slightly larger altmode, one more in scale with a portable hard drive, tensing at the energy expenditure his size alteration circuits costed him. Were it not for his small robot mode size, he would already be dangerously low, but he knew he could last until they were ready to enter the old factions outpost at least. "It's now or never 'Jaws, lets go and see just how secure these humans are..."

Darkfires transmission came through and it sounded as though she would already be in situ when they arrived >>Received Darkfire, land and we will meet you for transfer into the old base.<< was his simple response. For a new addition to the team, she knew how to keep herself tidy, a valuable asset in this kind of mission. He just hoped the likes of Vindicator and Crueljaw weren't too bored as these two were clearly bred for combat, although he doubted it would stay this quiet for long.

The journey to the base was short and uneventful apart from Darkfire's descent and landing ahead of them, graceful as always. There were a few near misses on route whilst Crueljaw reacquainted himself with the concept of only driving on one side on the road and the various horns and expletives that only a Hummer/Tank convoy would bring in a area such as this, but in a few short moments they were at the gate where Psychout took over the vocalising of Crueljaws shaggy-haired Avatar, complete with his uniform showing a single star of rank. I hope that's not too much the cassette thought to himself, lets just hope the military here think this place is as important as I hope they do...

The gate guard looked taken a back, word of their arrival clearly hadn't filter down to the rank and file yet, but their arrival prompted a senior officer to stand down the trooper and deal with this himself. Through his ranged receptors, he could see the name of the front of the commanders uniform was "Benchpress" - looked like they had hit the jackpot. He allowed the Avatar to lean forwards to speak but, instead of mere words, Psychout transmitted a short burst of machine code which to any passers-by would have sounded like a garbled screeching, or the interference between radio stations, but it in fact transmitted an override code and took control of the facsimile who instantly stiffened up as if standing to attention whilst he processed his new orders. The Avatars usual voice took over quickly before any of his subordinates could query what was going on. "At ease soldier, routine upgrade to your installation's internal network. We have an uplink package that required immediate attention, so have your CO and Comms officer in the briefing room at 1900 hours" it said, and waved a hologramatic replication of ranked military ID for the benefit of the other soldiers listening in on the gate. The Facsimile retained its blank stare and waved them in with his weapon, "Right this way, Sir. We have an area being prepped for your arrival as we speak, Sir. Your aerial escort arrived a few moments ago and has taxied to Hangar 4, Sir. ...You are cleared to enter." Benchpress' responses were monotone and flat, but Psychout was impressed with the level of control on these fleshling servants, clearly Darkride had done a good job when programming these things.

Releasing the facsimile from its machine code loop before Crueljaw pulled away, Psychout chuckled silently to himself. If only all all these fleshlings were that easy to control... and he watched from the inside as his bodyguard pulled into a secluded but secure area overlooking a group of hangars whilst Vindicator positioned himself tactically where he would see all surrounding access points.

"Well, we're in guys. New we just need to get me hooked up and for it to get dark so we can get inside the old base there. Big Vin? scan us up an entrance, you're our guide from now on..."

Gifford National Forest

After the others had begun the process of integrating themselves in to the area, Shockwave dispatched an additional operative from stasis to join those already in the area of the former Decepticon headquarters. Landgrab was a mechanoid of few words, if any at all, and that had not served him well in doing anything of political consequence within the Decepticon ranks, but it suited Shockwave's purposes. He did not need a mech of substantial charisma or power in this instance. He just needed a tool. And in that regard, Landgrab excelled.

He began looking for a suitable structure to connect with as soon as his feet touched the surface of this organic planet and began broadcasting a relay signal so that the other Decepticons in the area would know that he was present.

His function in most any circumstances had always just been as little more than a stationary support structure to anything that the Decepticons had already established in the area. He had scanned the structures that the native organics were using on this planet, particularly in this area, and had prepared an accommodating alternate mode configuration. Now it was just a matter of getting to where it would be of use.

Transforming, the nondescript platform rolled along in the darkness until Landgrab could find what he was looking for.
___

In the Skies

A pair of military surplus helicopters had entered the airspace around Skamania County with little fanfare. The pilots aboard both transmitted the various clearance codes that Epsilon Holdings had been granted to conduct some private contracting work in this area via the federal government. It was looking like it would shape up to be a hefty contract, possibly so big that it would put Epsilon in the black early this year. That warranted a visit from some of the big timers.

Abraham Dante looked out of the window, as some of the other members of his executive team did the same. Vehicles that were clearly military and others that were decidedly not so were all over the area.

"Washington sure don't know the meanin' of subtle, do they?" Dante said with a half-smile, looking over at the others. "We got teams workin' the media, yeah?"

"Deployed in to the populace about a half hour ago, Mr. Dante."

"Good deal," Dante said, before tapping the left ear of his headset. "We all clear to land? I'd hate to think I flew outta Dallas just to hafta go right back."

"Clearances received, sir."

"Well alright. Let's take these birds down and see how much money we're gonna make this year, eh?"

"Yessir."

Gifford National Park – The Hangar, Just Hanging Out

The approach of two fleshlings was immediately focused on when they entered the assassin’s range of awareness. They were still outside and a good deal off. Not in visual range yet, but definitely within audio range. Darkfire, knowing she still had a few seconds before she would have to display her holomatter avatar, garnered as much information about the pair as she could.

Their footsteps were fairly light—to a Cybertronian, any human footstep would be light—but rapid and loud. The assassin judged from the intervals that they were jogging toward her location. There was a variety of other noises that the humans made, but without proper experience, Darkfire couldn’t tell anything from it. She had never actually dealt with humans before. She would have to get the facsimile assigned to her do some exercises so that she could get an idea of the height, weight, and physical fitness from sound alone. It might also help if she could get Psychout to give her a few files on human composition and structure as well as functions of their various parts.

The assassin checked on the resonance of the human footsteps and judged that she had a few astroseconds left before they entered the hangar. It took one astrosecond for her to formulate a suitable alibi and several other back-ups in case the original was not accepted. It took another astrosecond for Darkfire to throw up a holomatter avatar. In the next astrosecond, the two humans jogged into the hangar.

The assassin’s holomatter avatar appeared to be in her late twenties. She had an obvious air of authority about her. She was wearing a flight suit and had the helmet tucked under one arm as she checked over the side of “her jet”. An ensign of an eagle was present on her shoulder, denoting her rank. The two soldiers came to attention in beside the avatar, waiting to be acknowledged.

As the avatar turned to them, they could see her cold almost golden-green eyes assessed them. She tossed a lock of midnight black hair over her shoulder and nodded to them. “At ease, soldiers.” The two humans took up a more relaxed stance, though they were still rather tense. One of them spoke up, “Colonel, what is the purpose of your visit?”

“I am part of a specialist unit investigating the cause of the volcano’s collapse,” the avatar said curtly. Colonel Phyre sent both men a stern stare after a long pause, wondering why they hadn’t left yet. It took her a moment to delineate the reason. She was not often in a position of leadership, preferring to work alone.

“You are dismissed. Both of you.”

The humans nodded before trotting off and away to report this to some superior of theirs. If she could have scowled in alternate form, Darkfire would have been doing it. She had hoped to remain undisturbed. Her avatar flickered out of existence after the two humans were gone. Suddenly, a Decepticon signal immediately caught her attention.

Another member for our team? Curious.

The assassin would leave the task of briefing their new teammate to Psychout partly because he was the designated team leader, but mostly because she preferred to keep her presence as discreet as possible. With the two fleshlings out of the way for now, she opened up a private comms link with Psychout.

>>Psychout, you’ve accessed this thing called the internet, correct? I need files on human composition, structure, organ functions, and anything else you can find.<<

Gifford National Park – Military Base

Crueljaw hated being this close to so many organics after Psychout’s binary conversation with the Facsimile Crueljaw rolled through the military base. Various versions of his own alternate mode just a lot more camouflaged some of the flying crates he’d seen in the woodland where sat idle to one side of the airstrip. As he moved He utilised his avatar to try and spy the communications and intelligence tent but as Crueljaw crawled forward an unfortunate human stepped out in front of the hummer a blast from his horn was enough to cause the human to leak. “These things are small scared all the time and deserving of being ruled” he muttered as he pulled into the secure area.

Crueljaw utilised his avatar in a more hands on approach as it picked Psychout’s portable hard drive form and headed off into the teeming throng of soldiers that where milling around. After a few subtle enquires Crueljaw guided his holo avatar into the communication and information centre and found his way to a bank of servers. Crueljaw knelt down pretending to sort his shoelace out but he placed Psychout in close proximity to the severs and hoped his tiny colleague could get himself jacked in as Crueljaw didn’t want to get discovered messing with the computer banks. “You’re on your own from here Runt I can’t stay here I’ll be found out” with that Crueljaw's holo avatar headed out of the tent and awaited a call to retrieve his friend.

Gifford National Forest

Landgrab increased the intensity of his locator signal. He knew from mission logs on the Thanatos that a group of Decepticons had been stationed within this area, but he hadn't encountered any of them directly. This was a pretty delicate intelligence mission, though, and Landgrab was hardly going to be the one to foul up any of Shockwave's plans.

These natives are so...squishy, Landgrab thought as he drove past a pair of them, engaged heavily in their own conversation. Even basic physiological analysis suggested that these creatures would come apart at the slightest application of pressure or tension. And Cybertronians had enough problems with leaking. These things? They were like water balloons. He wasn't going to enjoy it if one of them happened to get underfoot. Stardust would lose a circuit if he ever got assigned to this planet.

C'mon, 'cmon, someone's gotta see me and know where I'm supposed t'go.

Gifford National Park Military base

Crueljaw had found a vehicle compound where he could hold up and await Psychout’s retrieval signal. He took the opportunity to enter energon conservation mode to preserve himself for when he was really needed. However he never got the opportunity to do this as a decepticon locator signal burst into his audio receptors. I might very well strip the gears from the transformation cog of whoever this is Crueljaw shunted the thought of mutilating the new arrival to the back of his mind as he opened a secure comm frequency to broadcast to the new comer

>>This is Crueljaw who are ya and why are you here?<< Crueljaw didn’t see the point of being polite curt and to the point would provide him all the information he needed regarding the newcomer. His holo avatar sprung back into life as he prepared to move if needed stretching its holo limbs and pulling a holo paper from the glove box.

Gifford National Park Military Base

As Landgrab had received the incoming Decepticon transmission, he also homed in on it. It wasn't long before he found himself within the same vehicle compound and came to a halt, shutting off his engines.

"Landgrab. Uhhhhh...Decepticon operative activated at, uhhmmm...what time is it? A few breems before now. Function:...uhh, well, support and artillery I guess, on behalf of Shockwave for operative Psychout. You?"

Landgrab recognized the callsigns of some of the other Decepticons in the area but little else. It had been...well, slaggin' hell...it'd been an age since he'd since fieldwork. But here it was staring him in the face and he was determined to make the most of it. Otherwise it'd be off to the CR chamber again.

And who knows how long he'd be under next time.

(OOC:Apologies for my absence, its a long story, am also posting for Baneblade who's laptop appears to require an exorcism...)

Gifford National Park Military Base, 1 hour ago.

"...SOLDIER, I SAID DO IT NOW!!" Vindicator's rapport with the gate guard was effective, the siege master was a mech of many words when it was needed and he had the most military experience and knew how to get guards active, but this wasnt the time for conversation. The spooked guard panicked at first, but relaxed when the blank-expression of the facsimile staff sergeant relieved the confused grunt from his post and took over the exchange. He waved the tank and prototype military humvee through and watched expressionless as Crueljaw and Vindicator rolled into the compound and pulled up. Psychout, hidden away in his altmode, was handed over to the staff sergeant for upload into the bases dataset to allow him full control of the facility and 'stage one' was officially complete.

He lost sight of his team mates as he was placed roughly into a pocket and passed from personnel to personnel. He made a mental note to make sure these meatsacks knew what it was like to be shoved inside a giant holdall, and eventually - after much persuasion - managed to get himself connected to the central computer system. He began to settle in exploring the data before him and the milliseconds felt like hours as he mined away at the encryption layers like peeling the layers off an over-armoured Autobot onion and set about his task. Most of this shouldn't take long, these fleshbags just aren't prepared for a robotic space alien cyber-attack, heh. Periodically he found files that even he didn't recognise, but as Cybertronians have been here on Sol-3 for a while now it wasn't a surprise, it would just take a while longer to decipher them, the rest was ridiculously easy.

The cassettes triumphant train of thought was disturbed briefly by Landgrabs beacon as the new mech arrived on earth. Odd, I wasn't expecting anyone else he mused, Contemptor and Mal Practice were due to join in time, but that wasn't for a while yet. Lets see who the boss has sent..? but before he could reply Crueljaw had established contact and given Landgrab their location. Excellent, he thought, saves me a job, and he plunged his conciousness back into the computer system, not wanting to waste any more time.

Gifford National Park Military Base. Now.
"Landgrab, this is Psychout, in command of this mission and facility. You will rendezvous with Vindicator who will brief you when you arrive. Ensure your hard-light avatar is active and in the correct military attire, and we commence stage 2 shortly, until then you can stand down, and Crueljaw will establish your security clearance for mission access once you present your orders."

So engrossed was he in he in his data mining, Psychout had barely registered Landgrab's arrival at the base and so his welcome speech to the new arrival was briefer than he would have liked. Psychout angled a security camera to take a good look at their new team mate. Nope, definitely don't recognise him, but as its time to report in I can double check. Information operatives liked to know all the facts and Psychout, especially, hated being in the dark. Needless to say, the Decepticon army was huge and without access to the Thanatos' personnel files this Landgrab could be anyone, and he didn't get where he was today by blindly trusting 'anyone'.

He carefully selected a frequency that was least used and as secure as was possible using this cup-and-string level of technology, confident that if Shockwave himself was unable to receive it Soundwave would be able to pick it up and (hopefully) pass it along. Damn he hated that monotone yes-droid.

>>Psychout to Commander Shockwave>>
>>Infiltration of Sol-3 has been achieved with 100% success, Sir. Location is secluded and sparsely populated and fit all criteria for a secure outpost. Insertion team are in position to begin reinforcement of infiltration protocols here and key facsimiles have been activated, ETA's at facility between 26 minutes and and 14 terran days. Will continue to monitor Sol-3 transmissions and broadcast networks for possible protocol breaches before securing facility for re-use and transport to Razorclaws location. Please advise should you require and alteration to the mission brief, and to confirm the ID and designation of the support unit that has just arrived, to enable access to security protocols.<<
>>Out<<

It was nearing nightfall. Darkfire was in position in a hangar. Vindicator and Crueljaw were in position adjacent to the breach in the old collapsed base entrance and Landgrab had just rumbled into place with a few hours to spare. He summoned the Staff Sergeant to come and collect him to return him to Crueljaws cab, but not before accessing the medical journals and sending the information packet over to Darkfire. "Darkfire, this should be what you need on the organics physiognomy, and your facsimile looks like it will be first one to arrive, just prior to nightfall. Upon its arrival, it should report to the gate and be sent directly to you. We move into the ruined base in approximately 85 minutes."

As the facsimile arrived to transport him back to Crueljaw, he established a remote link with the fileserver to allow him to manipulate the system from range. Links like this were never that effective and he know that any major changes would involve a full integration, but it will save time for the mundane tasks. Then removing all traces of his activity within the system, he duplicated a couple of the file blocks he didn't recognise for later decryption and allowed himself to be pocketed once again, only being brought back into the fading evening light as he was handed to Crueljaws avatar and set back down on his partners passenger seat.

"Well 'Jaws, that's the boring part over with, are you ready to see what's in Aladdin's cave?"