Revision as of 04:31, 26 November 2013

Participants

• Arano
• Cerris
• Cookies
• Dio
• Edel
• Maxwell

Date

25/11/2013

Log

"Alright Maxwell, spit out your concerns while we refuel, once we skirt around Barstow we hit the sand and tackle the solar farms and undertake a massive salvaging operation that will hopefully keep us from having to worry about new parts anytime soon."

Edel still remains asleep, trying to conserve her energy for when the real work begins. To that end, she doesn't have much to add to a conversation apart from soft murmurs and a few twitches as she rolls over and hugs her tail to herself.

As the convoy rings around to come to a stop, Max disembarks from his place, stepping back over toward the lead truck, and toward Lt Ripley. "My concern is we're walking into this without being as prepared as we could be.", he tells her as he closes into range, stepping right past, toward the truck itself, and the ladder onto the roof. "And I don't mean it in a 'we could go back and waste all this time grabbing some small benefit of people' way. I mean something that we could set up right now, with approval and some discussion."

Much like Edel, Arano was also fast asleep, opening his eyes only slightly as the convoy comes to a stop, but hearing no gunfire or anything to indicate that there is a problem he simply goes back to snoozing, clutching his safed rifle as the (well, presently herm) dragon relaxes in a corner.

Cooped up! Much too cooped up! Dio took a fine catnap just before, but being trapped within a convoy can sometimes be murder in the realm of mental fatigue. The lioness gets out of her seat and stretches for the sky, limbering those taut predatory muscles with any sort of movement she could muster. "My lady," she says, looking at Cookies. "Are you doing well?"

Cookies sort of slides over onto her side in Dio's seat since she was leaning on the lioness while she catnapped!! Still, she snoozes away loudly, poor catgirl obviously having been quite wiped out to begin with.

Lt. Ripley, for reasons that go unremarked happens to be standing on the back of Hicks as he does pushups. Maxwell's approach viewed with a sort of imperious consideration. "Plans don't last thirty seconds on the battle field, so while we have a moment to hear you out, nothing can be expected to come of it should things turn south on us. But for the sake of haste spit it out, I'm missing out on my turn to hear this."

It might be best not to consider what her turn was all things considered.

Edel

Dio looked at the sleepy little cat girl and smiled. She always looked so cute like that. Too bad there wasn't a big vibrating object she could use to jar her awake. Well, at least there's always the traditional and nice way to do it, even if it was considerably less fun. A hand gently caresses over Cookies' head, occasionally scratching behind her triangular ears. "It's time to get up, ma'am," she says rather softly. "We'll probably be heading out again quite soon."

As he gets a remark about the time that he's wasting to give his suggestion, the raccoon is already climbing up that ladder, crawling onto the roof to dislodge the spent disc that lay latched to the roof. "You were in this truck, so I'd have to ask, did you notice the pulse? I saw it from here, the one that blew the hooks clean from the truck before you ended up hauled against the trees? That was this." As he makes those final words, he raises the disc, revealing it to the people below.

Cookies shifts a little and slowly blinks her eyes open, ears flicking about briefly before resting in a perky position. She nuzzles up into the pettings and scritchings, smiling a bit and letting out one long, groggy yawn before she pushes herself up into sitting position. She adjusts her turtleneck and reaches up to rub at her sleepy eyes with both hands, ears flat against her head and tail swaying slowly behind her. "O-okay," she nyas quietly. She takes a few seconds to slowly stand up, then stumble into her usual position right at Dio's side as though she were trying to occupy the same space as the lioness.

Ripley speaks up as she steps off of Hicks and kicks him sharply onto his back, sitting upon his fur softened abs as he arches into a german bridge.

"What I felt was the soldier keeping up the field almost pass out and the soldier transporting us complain. Your toys are a great emergency measure, but I wont have them stranding us or burning out our safety net. So while you may keep them ready and deploy them in dire circumstances, attaching them to the other transports could get us all killed. The rest of you apes, piss, spit and kiss, five minutes until we get back underway!"

Edel rolls over and sprawls onto her back, limbs splaying out. She'd be awful to share sleepng space with, certainly. Thankfully, she isn't sleeping for much longer, stirring awake with a yawn. "Nn. Are we there yet?" She rubs at her eyes and sits up before scratching at her side.

As he gets his response, Max only nods, seating himself up on the top rung of the ladder. "That's exactly the point, Lieutenant. They do nothing before the effect, and do nothing afterward, and unless you want me firing them from the comms truck in our dire circumstances with the risk of missing outright, I need to get them in place now." Placing the used disc into another pouch on its own, the raccoon gglances around the top of the trucks. "I can place them down and leave them idle, as a single shot measure per disc. Since I'm in the comms truck, you can just order their use, but it'll be miles better having them attached and waiting than the order going out and having me popping up top to fire these things from a crossbow." However, even as he explains himself, something hits in his mind for a moment, catches. The solder transporting us? Did she mean the driver? Did the pulse rock the truck's inside too? "And when we get back I'll have to ask about the effects. The pulse order might be a bit too tailored to server bubble use, come to think..."

Arano crackes and eye open and lets out a big ol' yawn, maw stretching wide with the sudden intake of air as he steadily gets to his feet - really needing to shake off the fatigue, "I don't think so - at least I'd be surprised if we did make it without more shooting," he says as he slowly climbs out of the truck to stretch. Might not be long, but a little time to work out the stiffness would be good for him.

"Ah! Good, you're awake." Dio smiles and continues rubbing over the cat girl's head and soon joins her in taking a seat. "I do hope you're prepared? You've been acting quite docile on this mission. Perhaps you're not afraid of the mission itself, but rather... Bah, a topic for another time," she says, waving her hand and reaching down to pick-up her shotgun. "We have an opportunity to help a lot of people with these solar panels should everything work out. I suppose that's something to consider."

"I said we are leaving in five minutes!

Ripley gets up from her perch and heads back to her truck, tossing a towel onto Hicks as he rises. Other soldier stretching their legs, goofing around briefly or actually dipping to the side to seek one form of releif or another even if it were just of leg cramps.

"Yes Ma'am.", comes the reply, raccoon kicking off from the metal rungs to land back upon the ground. He'd tried, he reasoned to himself with a shrug, although it sounded like he'd caused rather more problems to their patchwork bubble than he'd thought... Pulling another disc, slowly turning it over in his finers as he returns to the comms truck. There was no way to really test the theory forming in his mind, the alterations he could make... But still, his mind ran the possibility through in silence.

Cookies purrrs quietly from the attentions, though she gives Dio a funny look. "Afraid? Why would I be afraid?" She squints a bit and then shakes her head, looking down at the floor and enjoying the rubbings. "I guess that's nice," she mewls out sleepily. "I forget. Are we gonna get paid?"

"I'm not quite sure," Dio comments, putting a finger to her chin. "But do you know what's really important?" The lioness turns her head to look Cookies' directly in the eyes with a rather serious expression. "A hard day's work, helping people out. There's no money required when your soul's fire is ignited by such a fuel." Silence, for almost an entire minute. And then, laughter. "Sorry, it was quite difficult to keep my expression so stern. Surely I must be commended."

Arano does some more stretches, working the kinks out, and just generally trying to keep himself limber. He walks around a bit outside, keeping close to the truck so when they leave he can just jump right int. He took in the fresh air as he did so, not really conversing, just keeping to himself for now.

Edel just stretches out in her spot, not really moving much, except to pull another snackbar from her bag. "Let's hope it won't take us too much longer to arrive. I'm ready to jump into the action and get my blood flowing."

Soon enough the trucks snarl to life, rumbling and snorting exhaust before the first truck swings out onto the road, skipping a direct trip into Barstow to aboid risking an alien bubble and mutants. Soon enough taking the roads into the hot winds of the desert...cept at the hour they enter the desert it has darkened and begun to chill quite severely. The lack of infrastructure is painfully obvious in the crystal clear beauty of the stars utterly unobstructed by city lights.

Which would likely be great for comping, but who knows what lurks in these chill sands, lit only by the light of the trucks?

Within the rear compartment of the vehicle, Arano sat with a look of utter boredom on his face, looking out at the long stretches of desert. Every so often he'd remind himself that this was technically hostile territory and he should be more focused, but then how long can one remain vigilant before monotony took over and one stops truly watching? In these moments when he realized he had lost focus he'd turn away for a bit. Looking towards Edel, he tries to break the silence, "So, how often do you go this far out? I have to admit that this is probably the furthest outside Fairhaven I've ever been since P-day,"

Edel peers at Arano for a moment. "I have no clue how far we're out, but not very often. I tend to stay within the Fairhaven bubble most of the time, but sometimes, if I'm feeling lucky and adventerous, I'll wander out." She polishes off her little snack and puts the wrapper back into her bag.

Arano nods and pays the outside world another glance, "Crazy as the world can be these days, sometimes easy to forget that there is an entire planet outside the city... wonder if I'd be able to make it to Europe..." he wonders idly as he starts scanning the horizon again, just for the hell of it - pays to be vigilant when one can!

Cooped up inside the trucks for another long excursion, Dio decided she might as well help with a bit of scouting to pass the time. Might as well do something productive, even if the night presented a challenge to her eyes. The lioness peeks out the side, scanning the enviornemnt, keeping her ears open, and nose filled with scents.

Cookies keeps herself nice and curled up in a seat, eyes closed, ears flat against her head and catgirl basically tuning out for a little while, lost in a world of her own thoughts.

From atop the comms truck Maxwell tries to make watch, binoculars back in hand as he surveys the surrounding zone. A part of him wanted to just be inside, working on his tech, trying to make adjustments... But it was too much of a risk in this environment. A misfire was trival in Fairhaven, but out here, it was deadly. And so he watched... Scanned. All one could do on the long trip in.

The desert is flat and clear save from nocturnal hunters of the shockingly normal sort. Sure there are some potholes and such but the only thing that could be marked as abnormal were some rather large holes in the here and there as if dug out by something large emerging. But for reasons unknown save luck there are no further incidents and the convoy soon breaches the exterior into the facility known as Solar 1, the trucks fanning out as soldiers form squads and prepare to sweep out and secure the section of the facility surrounding the massive solar reflecto array.

Ripley looks over the data they have on the facility and instructs "We need you extras to work the solar fields while the heavy techs and engineers try to take down as much of the reflector as possible."

As they stop, Arano slowly heads towards the back. On his way he looks to Edel with a smirk and says, "Wanna bet 5000 credits before this is done we end up fighting a sandworm of some kind?" He thinks back to the larger holes back there and makes his way out. On hearing the instructions from Ripley he responds with a simple, "Yes ma'am," as he starts making his way towards the other members of their little group.

Edel makes her way out of the truck and scratches her cheek. "My best is on sandworms. Or other sand denizen." She looks towards Ripley. "Do you want my help with the rest of the techs, or somewhere else?"

Maxwell needed not to think of his decision. As a scavenger, he was merely competent, but as a technician, he held far more power. Stepping in to join the team of engineers, he takes a moment to introduce himself, prepared to head out and assist with the dismantling of the farm's reflector array.

After checking over her shotgun, Dio gives Cookies another pat upon the head and makes her way out of the truck with a firm and quick stretch. "Very well, my lady. With the techniques I've learned from the Promethean's Flame Bearer training, I might be able to put some of it to work. Let's head off now and get this done before anything adverse manages to cross our path." With a nod, the lioness makes her way towards the solar farms as requested.