2010-07-09 - Staplerfahrer
From Four Color Comics MUX
| Staplerfahrer | |||
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| Summary: Some robots break into an INTEL warehouse, trying to steal stuff--some of them are even mutinybots that work there! INTEL Agents respond! | |||
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INTEL Field HQ Vegas
It's a field HQ for spies, so it's a mess of tables and papers and coffee cups, and like stern agents in black suits and ties. Even the ladies. Ladies in ties are hot you know.
It's a building, an office building this time--Vegas is civilized enough that people don't need tents. There's always a flurrying of reports and goings-on. Supers never sleep after all, so neither should INTEL.
It's INTEL. It's busy. Seriously busy with serious business. Spy business. Superspy business. Even...super/powered/ spy business. Dinotroit lingers as a problem, but since agents are on station and research is continuing into cures, for now many of the field agents have been re-relocated back to more permanent field postings, such as Vegas or New York. Or Space. Lots of spies in space.
Really though, today there was a meeting, a general field briefing about the state of metahuman activity in the American southwest. The prognosis: No commies, mostly, but a lot of damn metahumans. It's no critical situation, and all those moleman refugees are kind of a pest--but they're mostly harmless and dig the radioactives out of the desert.
So, it is in the middle of this bureaucratic chaos that more chaos erups: Alarms go off that other alarms are going off. In the warehouse. The INTEL warehouse. The warehouse that every spy agency has near every major base, where they store all the stuff they steal from enemy spies and villains. You know, packed to the rafters with weapons and contraband.
Field agents, respond!
"Listen you damn prima donna, the New York office might take your shit, but this half-assed repo--" is all the chewing out Will thankfully receives before the alarms blare. An inolent grin crosses Will's lips before he plows through the Senior Agent's door and starts running for the warehouse. As he does, a power armor suit comes blasting down the hallway behind him, Will staggering slightly as it connects, opening to surround him in its comforting protection as his thudding footsteps turn into clank-clank-clank. By the time he's reached the warehouse, he has fully assumed his alter-ego Vertex even as he flies past the flashing red alarm lights and into the warehouse.
A silver Errant-class transport comes hurtling out of the desert and swings to one side as it screeches to a halt amidst a cloud of dust. The door pops open and out steps Agent Sally Bernhardt. Wavy blue forcefield flaring to life, she presses two fingers to the side of her head, closing her eyes.
A vision of a robot smash and grab in progress enters Sally's mind. "Hm." Her eyes fly open and she briskly approaches the warehouse, making a dismissive wave at the emergency exit which promptly bursts open. "Alright, you robots! Party's over!"
Allison was in the meeting, as a newly-minted sort of INTEL agent, suitable for infiltrating Dinotroit and really having to train and study to learn to infiltrate anything else. Of course, her ability to turn into a variety of dinosaurs makes her uniquely talented for...some missions outside dinotroit, like anytime someone needs something squished with powerful stomping, and even spies are vulnerable to dino-lust. She has been known to give rides--but only to people wearing proper safety equipment.
When the alarm goes off her eyes go wide and she rushes outside and changes into fast-racing duckbill dino, running down the several blocks towards the afflicted warehouse in question--there to stall and pause. How to approach this without destroying it? A conundrum for many a dino.
Wasn't really all that far off, out in the back, a little exercise in combined-arms training, augmented by the presence of the Command Unit, a one-off robot of no particularily discernable make and seen publically only once to boot. No access points were strictly necessary as it's only three-odd meters tall, or about a storey; if it crouches it can manage to use a a freight truck's access door without too much problem.
A dual pair of gouts of diesel smoke jet from the back-mounted engine, and it wheels and turns back for the warehouse.
"Forager One is online and active," sounds Sylvain over his comm channel, "this is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill. Contain and secure potential hostiles in the warehouse. Maximum firing discipline, you are not cleared to shoot until targets confirmed."
Robo-jogging to the nearest freight truck hatch, he stoops the robot, worms robotic fingers under a hatch door and lifts it open for his own entrance.
It seems that it's a code 37-J, Robots, medium-grade, hostile. Suspected non-future. There are several models, a few that look like automated forklifts but...a bit more hostile. Some others are more overtly battlebots, sporting vaguely humanlike frames and--was that a PPC? That was probably a warning shot that just passed close by Vertex's mechsuit.
<<Human intruders are to exit the building,>> The robots blare out. <<IMMEDIATELY or lethal countermeasures will be employed!>>
They say this in creepy robot unison even as several welderbots circle around, having finished making a hole in the roof.
When Cortex and Vertex and any other *exes enter, they enter a kind of frenzy, though they are careful not to damage any kind of merchandise.
They do, however, target the humans trying to interfere!
Lasers open fire upon the intruders--they do no harm, however. Shields are intact.
The Battlebots rise from within the warehouse on little chemical jets. They hover, for an extended time, eventually landing on the roof where they have a view of all intruders. <<INTERFERENCE will not be TOLERATED!>> they squawk. Lasers lash out; some miss Vertex, others lash harmlessly over Sylvain's forester, and others still scan the earth in search of new targets.
As the laser fire is deflected off his shielding, Vertex wastes no time making for the nearest battlebot. The ring of energy on his power armor's chestpiece glows as it boosts the force behind his punch. He fails to make contact with the battlebot, a muffled curse coming across the comm channel.
One of the battlebots is suddenly seized by telekinetic force as Sally extends her free hand outward. It wriggles around in midair, thrusters firing, but is instead flung at the other robot with startling force. The other robot manages to manuever out of the way, but his partner in robo-crime smashes into a large stack of metal crates and falls to the ground, now a pile of junk.
Apparently, Welders are like the most vengeful kind of robot! They totally get mad when Sally tosses one of their number (even if it was just a battlebot) and causes it harm! Their response is to turn their welding torches down upon the psychic agent! Gah!
Once again, forcefields manage to hold.
The Forklifts, meanwhile, load themselves up on choice goods--ands do a decent job of setting this goods in any line of fire placed upon them! Some of that might be vital evidence! Be careful! They race for the exits, chugging along at top speed!
Allison is left with sitting outside, turning into a t-rex and waiting for something to emerge that she can bite. Something! Anything! It is a dinosaur's talent, after all.
There's a fresh blatt from Sylvain's robotic engines, a fresh puff of black smoke from the exhaust, and it hunkers down into a lower, much more stable posture.
"Targets acquired. Standby," he calls over the comm, "engage hearing protection. Firing sequence plotted." An enormous cannon--about the size of a rifle to this thing, is unlimbered from a protective box on its back, held in both robotic hands, and then the warehouse is filled with cacophony as a barrage of autocannon rounds are fired.
For all of that sound and fury, one of the forklifts is reduced to metallic confetti. A few extra bursts are fired towards the second forklift, inflicting some motive damage but insufficient to stop it. A fresh magazine for the cannon is rummaged out of the gun box, slapped into the cannon.
"Scratch one. Focus fire on the other machine, it is damaged and taking parts from Project Nudelfaust."
<< Nice Shooting! >> Vertex calls out over his commlink to the mech-robot on the right side of this little encounter. There's the smell of ozone as Vertex takes off, a blast of energy from his boots sending him smashing into the remaining battlebot. This time he connects with a screech of metal that caves in the battlebot's armor, junking the rogue machine. Sally's been slacking on her robot-tossing practice, apparently. She sweeps her arm toward a welder that had just so rudely tried to incinerate her and grabs it with her mind. A quick, forceful motion and the welder-bot sails past its welder-bro and collides with a wall, chassis crumpling like tin foil.
The last welderbot, somewhat alone in its task what with the forklift gone rrant, assesses the situation. A little red eye swivels within a mount near its base, no proper place for an eye on an organic being--and then it sees its compatriot sail through the air past itself and smash into the wall.
It radiots out an equivalent to 'guys? guys?!' before deciding now is a good time to book it, brave little toaster style.
That is to say on two little roller-feet that aren't like the best transportation. But still, it's running away.
Much with the wary sighing, Allison-as-T-rex moves after the fleeing Welder, and soon lifts it in her jaws while its cPU makes loud screeches of protest through the CPU speaker that was the only sound outlet its owner allowed it. Very quickly the T-Rex develops eyebrows of dismay at the noise.
And so, with an extra blast of diesel-burning action, Sylvain's robot has closed the distance with the stricken forklift in a half-dozen thudding footfalls and discarding the smoking autocannon in this sprint, made a quick snatch and hoisted the forklift and its cargo up to head level with a modest amount of robotic precision.
One big, monocular camera examines the forklift at close range, and then over loudspeakers Sylvain directs: "Power down. I do not know if your programming understands me but we will have you quiet in no time."
Vertex approaches the much larger GSE Forager even as he synchs up with the forklift easily detained by the mech-robot. "Hacking Game. Amateur. I have what we need to track him down and am uploading the info to the field office here." His face shielding loses its opacity as his voice is piped out through speakers on his helmet.
Agent Bernhardt approaches Sylvain's robot and Vertex, nodding to the both of them. "Good work. So what do we know about the perp?" She kind of wishes they were people and not robots, she feels a little left out of the information gathering with the lack of brains to mind probe.
Eventually, there will be people minds. But at least these robot minds were not very smart or versatile; Allison shakes her tyrannosaurus jaws around the welder she caught hold of, and causes it to cease functioning for the near term. Somebody could fix it, but it won't be her; she busily spits it out near the others, and thooms close to hear what is going on.
Carefully then, Sylvain-robot kneels, holding the forklift machine just high enough that the wheels are clear of the ground, but only just--and this for easier access for others.
"This is a news to me," he answers, the speakers modulating his voice a bit. "It is maybe a good thing I was training some others with this, I am thinking, but I do not understand their desire for these informations. The one box, it had only pieces of a ballistic rocket I think, if I am remembering at all."
"Hacking Game is a minor player in the robot mastermind field, as I'm sure you can determine from the quality of his thieves. The agents here should be able to track down his signal in a couple of hours." Vertex pauses, his eyes focusing on the forklift robot as he continues, "Seems they were after some artifacts related to Kibo's Unanimous Army control technology." He tsks then, "If you can even call technology designed for pre-cable signals 'technology'."
"Hm." Sally taps her jaw thoughtfully. "Well, that's no good. Minor player or no, we can't have Kibo's tech falling into anyone's hands."
A puddle of motor oil or something ripples on the warehouse floor, in time with the thooming footsteps. Sally looks down at it and walks over to the open door, sticking her head out and giving a wave to Allison. "You don't have to stand outside, you know. Turn into something smaller and get in here."
"Oh, right!" Allison remembers this abruptly, that she can. Agent Mesozoa enters shortly afterwards, as a small swarm of velociraptors. Yes, all of them are her. A moment or two of that will pass before she changes back into Allison proper, a mid-20s artist dressed a bit more formally than is her wont--but such are the clothes INTEL provided. "So like, they wanted Kibo stuff? That's freaky, man."
"Oh, that," proclaims Sylvain, suddenly, "I had the misfortune of encountering those in a casino not so long ago." Is that a sound of self-consciousness?
"That casino run by the one reasonably legal woman," he amends, a moment later. "Some machines turned into attackers, spat metal money pieces. Quarters. Could you maybe turn this lifting machine off so I could put it down safely? I would look at it more closely if I could get outside of this thing."
Vertex looks on with no minor fascination at the swarm of small velociraptors, choosing to remain within his power armor for the time being, despite the relatively less threatening form now assumed. "Just a moment," he says before the forklift powers down, wheels coming to a halt, "There you go." "Yes, considerably freaky." Sally raises an eyebrow at Sylvain. "How recently? Do you think it could be linked to this robbery?"
"Whoa man, more Kibo is like, bad news." Allison scratches at her scalp a bit, and prods a robot with her toe experimentally, as if it may cough up more secrets that way. Unfortunately, deactivated robots are much like dead tissue.
Looking to Allison with an expression that screams 'hippie' before he asks of the other agents, "Name and Codename? I'm William Sheer, Field Agent. Codename, Vertex. I wasn't involved with the Kibo incident, so anything pressing I should know that I can't find in the reports?"
First the forklift is set down, and then there's kind of a *clunk* from within the large Forager 'bot. Part of the upper torso and the head tilt back, exposing the innards; a tight, cramped cockpit, one Sylvain with helmet strapped into a tight seat. It looks like the machine was designed for somebody a little smaller than him. It takes him some moments to fuss with all the restraints, then unplug a cord extending from helmet to socket, and then finally he's free, leaving the helmet inside the machine.
"Oh, maybe two weeks now? You know how the reporting goes in this place, it is easy to lose unless there is much yelling or too much personal care put into it. I thought maybe it was only a vendetta of the personal nature; this Keisha woman does not make that many friends if I am recalling."
Allison makes a sort of hand-wavy gesture. "Yeah, I mean, time passes right? Your tuxedo got kinda messed up for that one, it was like, wow. I'm Agent Mesozoa, like, Allison normally and stuff." She offers to Vertex. "I guess I'm kind of a recent addition to this whole shebang."
"Sally Bernhardt, Psychic Operations, callsign Cortex," Sally rattles off. She folds her arms and observes the other agents for a second. "Right. So I guess we should look up those reports then, see if we can find anything that might link these two events." Vertex nods at each name and codename given, "It might be best to alert any other facilities with some of these Kibo devices in case it's not solely limited to what was on hand here. We'll also probably know more once we lockdown Hacking Game."
"Probably so, like--well I mean if he had any sense he'd move or something, but then, if he had much sense he wouldn't spend his Friday hacking robots to like assault a warehouse," Agent Mesozoa asserts. "Anyone for drinks or whatever until they nail that part?" Anything to evade going back to her meeting.
There's an expression of vast, vast, but professionally subdued humour on Sylvain's face. "Ah, well, the others here know me but this is the first you and I have met, I am thinking," he states, regarding Vertex for the time.
"And so, I am Sylvain St. Claire-Robichaux, and not usually in Las Vegas. There is no codename that I care to repeat, for the others who assign such things have a terrible sense of humour and we have had such sharp words about it, they and I. So we do not speak of such a thing."
With an idle glance at the forklift, he concludes, "This other attack, though, it was made with repurposed technology, so maybe not so unlike this one. There were some chips inside I did not take the time to look closely at." Issues of ruined tuxedos, naturally, smoothly passed over. Sally squints at Allison before turning toward Sylvain. "What happened to the chips? If INTEL came by and took them maybe we can make some comparisons."
Vertex' power armor opens up, sliding from his form and reassembling behind him before flying off in the direction of the Las Vegas INTEL branch office. "Yes, I don't recall meeting any of you, but I spent a lot of time in the Cyber Operations Division before moving into the field."
"Yeah, that sounds like a lonely trip man." Allison asserts to Vertex. "I mean if Kibo is like, making a move again, if those pieces fit together, it's like, totally a major deal." She shrugs to this possibility nontheless. Her specialty is dinosaurs and to a lesser degree the affairs of mammals. "You machine dudes should probably spend some time on that sometime, right, but like, right now, crisis over."
"As always, these things are lost in bureaucracy," answers Sylvain, finally. But he is amused at the notion.
"I must beg your pardon. The bureaucracy never ends as quickly as I expect and, perhaps, somebody is going to be telling me why this attack could even happen in the first place. There is a lack of the security which is, uhh... shocking, no?" He inclines his head slightly, and without much further ado, starts on his way out.
"I'll be able to check in on the progress in narrowing down Hacking Game's signal whenever, so there's probably no need to remain at the warehouse." With that, Will glances to the departing Sylvain and says, "Good work today."
