Difference between revisions of "Jet Jaguar and the Kentucky Cat - Day Three - Part One"
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'''Near Frenchburg, Kentucky''' | '''Near Frenchburg, Kentucky''' | ||
| − | Ruth arrived at the Inn carrying a large folder, she headed for Jet’s door | + | |
| + | Ruth arrived at the Inn carrying a large folder, she headed for Jet’s door. Ruth knocked. | ||
“Yeah, I’m awake,” | “Yeah, I’m awake,” | ||
| − | In fact, she hadn’t slept. Most of the night had been spent | + | In fact, she hadn’t slept. Most of the night had been spent on the interwave trading emails. And watching motorball highlights. She opened the door, still looking strangely fresh. |
“Morning,” she said. | “Morning,” she said. | ||
| − | “Mornin’” answered Ruth, looking half asleep. “I was looking over some police reports | + | “Mornin’” answered Ruth, looking half asleep. “I was looking over some police reports of some fen launched...and found something interesting.” She held up the folder, “ While we get a trickle of people going up, they always get treated as a missing persons case until they or someone else reports them safe.” Ruth sighed, “However there’re ones that never get cleared, but handwavium was found on site, so it’s still treated as a Fen launch.” |
| + | |||
| + | Jet looked at her, a little dubious. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “Plenty of people go up and decide not to contact their families again, for whatever reason. It’s not uncommon as such. The thing is, the area around the robberies and those sightings has a unusually large amount of such cases.” | ||
“Wow... you think there’s a connection?” | “Wow... you think there’s a connection?” | ||
| − | “Maybe, | + | “Maybe, there’s also been a unusually high number of crooks who have just fallen off the map in this area as well.” |
“Well... Can we mark them on the map here?”... the map still laid out on the table beside Jet’s pad. “Maybe there’s one near Mountain Valley,” | “Well... Can we mark them on the map here?”... the map still laid out on the table beside Jet’s pad. “Maybe there’s one near Mountain Valley,” | ||
| − | Reading from her folder Ruth | + | “That’s what caught my attention... there’s three down there.” |
| + | |||
| + | Reading from her folder Ruth marked them out on the map in red pen, each and every suspected launch from the last 6 months. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “That’s a lot of missing people,” commented Jet. At least twenty at a glance including the three. | ||
| − | + | “All of these are ones assumed to be Fen. Here’s how many have been in contact,” | |
Ruth then marked all the points for those who’d been located in a blue pen. Just one, centred on Little Watch inn. | Ruth then marked all the points for those who’d been located in a blue pen. Just one, centred on Little Watch inn. | ||
| − | + | “It’s our fault for not noticing them sooner, but state policy is not to follow up disappearances if handwavium’s involved.” | |
Jet looked sour, | Jet looked sour, | ||
| − | “Well yeah... but the Governor thought we were wasting too many resources chasing up fen who turned up in orbit a few weeks later. Resources which at the time, | + | “Well yeah... but the Governor thought we were wasting too many resources chasing up fen who turned up in orbit a few weeks later. Resources which at the time, were best allocated to real missing persons.” |
“Which makes sense,” Jet was ashamed to admit. | “Which makes sense,” Jet was ashamed to admit. | ||
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“I think this whole thing is beyond just robberies now.” | “I think this whole thing is beyond just robberies now.” | ||
| − | “I’ve got to report this in. If they’re kidnapping this many people on the ground.” she put her hand to her face, a dread chill running through her body. “At least twenty innocent people kidnapped, | + | “I’ve got to report this in. If they’re kidnapping this many people on the ground.” she put her hand to her face, a dread chill running through her body. “At least twenty innocent people kidnapped, .. that’s not going to stay quiet.” |
“Maybe we can nail down these guys first before bring down the US gov on them.” | “Maybe we can nail down these guys first before bring down the US gov on them.” | ||
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“Just damned full stop.” a beat. “I’m going to have to call this in. Twenty potentially dead people.. We’re still going to have to stop them but.... this is going to be a media nightmare. And what’s the US government going to do?” | “Just damned full stop.” a beat. “I’m going to have to call this in. Twenty potentially dead people.. We’re still going to have to stop them but.... this is going to be a media nightmare. And what’s the US government going to do?” | ||
| − | “Commentators will turn red and have a screaming fit like they do with anything handwavium related. The government’ll be little better. It depends on what they | + | “Commentators will turn red and have a screaming fit like they do with anything handwavium related. The government’ll be little better. It depends on what they understand. ” |
| − | “It’s your government. I don’t know.” A deep breath. “If this comes out before we find them, then we’re going to lose them for good. They’ll run for orbit. We lose any leads on where the victims are. We lose any leads on who they’re working for. | + | “It’s your government. I don’t know.” A deep breath. “If this comes out before we find them, then we’re going to lose them for good. They’ll run for orbit. We lose any leads on where the victims are. We lose any leads on who they’re working for.. ” |
| − | Ruth nodded, | + | Ruth nodded, “Keeping the media out of it shouldn’t be a problem”. |
“I’m going to need a few minutes to send this back. Then, I’ll check out a few of these sites,” she put her finger on the map, “Do you want help from Fenspace, or do you think you could handle the meat element of this, while I take on the Cat?” | “I’m going to need a few minutes to send this back. Then, I’ll check out a few of these sites,” she put her finger on the map, “Do you want help from Fenspace, or do you think you could handle the meat element of this, while I take on the Cat?” | ||
| − | “I’ll | + | “I’ll have to pass the word on to the Governor. It was his decision to go to you guys for help first before having to go up his own chain. We’ve got our own Special Response Team, like SWAT.” |
| − | + | The cyborg gave her a suspicious look, born of a certain political cynicism, “We can’t keep this from him. There’s a difference between armed robbery with handwavium, and twenty five missing people.” This is above my grade, she added mentally. | |
| − | + | Jet paused to get a hold of her thoughts. How did this work in RP when the GM threw in the big surprise? Just keep going, don’t sit around twiddling thumbs waiting for orders. It’s a big revelation, but it doesn’t change what she has to do right now. Priority is still to find the cat. | |
| − | + | ||
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| − | Jet paused to get a hold of her thoughts. How did this work in RP? Just keep going, don’t sit around twiddling thumbs waiting for orders. | + | |
“Alright... um... I want to be able to take them down as soon as I get a package from Fenspace... something to disable the zoid. It should arrive maybe tonight, or sometime tomorrow. Try and get something ready by then, can you? I want to take these bastards down.” | “Alright... um... I want to be able to take them down as soon as I get a package from Fenspace... something to disable the zoid. It should arrive maybe tonight, or sometime tomorrow. Try and get something ready by then, can you? I want to take these bastards down.” | ||
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| − | >>From: Juliette2@grunthal.fen<br /> | + | >>From: Juliette2@grunthal.fen<br/> |
| − | >>To: alitagally@grunthal.fen<br /> | + | >>To: alitagally@grunthal.fen<br/> |
| − | >>CC:<br /> | + | >>CC:<br/> |
| − | >>Subject: Kentucky Cat [Development] | + | >>Subject: Kentucky Cat [Development]<br/> |
| − | >>Right, we have a bigger problem here than just a mecha Cat being used to commit robbery.<br /> | + | >>Right, we have a bigger problem here than just a mecha Cat being used to commit robbery.<br/> |
| − | >>trooper Ruth just brought to my attention a number of missing-persons cases around here. At<br /> | + | >>trooper Ruth just brought to my attention a number of missing-persons cases around here. At<br/> |
| − | >>least twenty | + | >>least twenty. As there was handwavium involved, the police department assumed they<br/> |
| − | >>were fen who’d launched and not thought to check in, so assigned them a low priority. | + | >>were fen who’d launched and not thought to check in, so assigned them a low priority.<br/> |
| − | >>These cases are all gathered in the general area of these three banks. If there’s a correlation<br /> | + | >>These cases are all gathered in the general area of these three banks. If there’s a correlation<br/> |
| − | >>between this, and the robberies... then that’s far more disturbing. At best, they’re being held<br /> | + | >>between this, and the robberies... then that’s far more disturbing. At best, they’re being held<br/> |
| − | >>hostage but somehow I doubt this. | + | >>hostage but somehow I doubt this.<br/> |
| − | + | ||
| − | >>Dead Americans on American soil. I don’t want to overreact on this, but as far as people<br /> | + | >>Dead Americans on American soil. I don’t want to overreact on this, but as far as people<br/> |
| − | >>down here are concerned, that’ll be 20 people killed by fen. This could lead to a Cam Ranh<br /> | + | >>down here are concerned, that’ll be 20 people killed by fen. This could lead to a Cam Ranh<br/> |
| − | >>situation between Fenspace and the US Government. | + | >>situation between Fenspace and the US Government.<br/> |
| − | >> | + | >>Ruth is going to inform the Governor, and see what can be done on this end. What happens<br/> |
| − | + | >>now is his decision.<br/> | |
| − | >> | + | |
| − | + | ||
| − | >>I’m not sure what to do. I understand that Black Rider is delivering | + | >>I’m not sure what to do. I understand that Black Rider is delivering the package later tonight or<br/> |
| − | >>sometime tomorrow. At that point, we should be in position to bring them down. I would like to<br /> | + | >>sometime tomorrow. At that point, we should be in position to bring them down. I would like to<br/> |
| − | >>do this as soon as possible, either with local police or Fen forces, but if you think I should wait<br /> | + | >>do this as soon as possible, either with local police or Fen forces, but if you think I should wait<br/> |
| − | >>for help then I will. | + | >>for help then I will.<br/> |
| − | >>Taking down the Cat would be no problem... but now there’s the possibility that there’ve been<br /> | + | >>Taking down the Cat would be no problem... but now there’s the possibility that there’ve been<br/> |
| − | >>casualties, that’s going to change the politics of this and I don’t know politics. | + | >>casualties, that’s going to change the politics of this and I don’t know politics.<br/> |
| − | >>-JJ | + | >>-JJ<br/> |
| − | Jet boosted high, accelerating up to near five hundred | + | ---- |
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| + | Jet boosted high, accelerating up to near five hundred kilometres an hour. She skimmed the bottoms of the clouds, still lingering after last night’s storm. About six hundred meters or so, according to her own altimeter. | ||
High and fast enough to not be seen easily. | High and fast enough to not be seen easily. | ||
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That’d be fun to search. This place was huge... a search area nearly as big as the midlands back home, and much more sparsely populated. Three small towns, in three small counties, each as big as a county back home. | That’d be fun to search. This place was huge... a search area nearly as big as the midlands back home, and much more sparsely populated. Three small towns, in three small counties, each as big as a county back home. | ||
| − | Flying under VFR rules, and far enough away from any airport, she was alone in the sky. Her radar could see a few bigger aircraft landing at Lexington, about sixty | + | Flying under VFR rules, and far enough away from any airport, she was alone in the sky. Her radar could see a few bigger aircraft landing at Lexington, about sixty kilometres the the West. A light aircraft of some sort chugged up out of Stanton and a few big jets were flying a couple of kilometres above |
| − | It was thirty | + | It was thirty kilometres down to Campton as the cyborg flew. Jet could see where the bank had been. Work crews clustered around the wreckage. It was a bigger town, the seat of County Wolfe, if she recalled correctly. All the town’s hit were county-towns... did that make a difference in the US? |
Jet circled at a safe distance, looking down into the pit where the vault had been. Just like the other two, only a little bit cleaner. There was more of the building standing... to the point where you could recognise that it might once have been a bank. Jet circled a few more times, swinging out wider and wider, before following the tracks the Cat left as it escaped. She could see the spot where it’d been picked up.. in what had been a horse paddock. | Jet circled at a safe distance, looking down into the pit where the vault had been. Just like the other two, only a little bit cleaner. There was more of the building standing... to the point where you could recognise that it might once have been a bank. Jet circled a few more times, swinging out wider and wider, before following the tracks the Cat left as it escaped. She could see the spot where it’d been picked up.. in what had been a horse paddock. | ||
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Jet leaned into a turn to the Southeast, angling herself towards a point marked on her GPS... just to the east of her search line. She grimaced as she saw the tree-cover thicken. That was one thing the map didn’t show. | Jet leaned into a turn to the Southeast, angling herself towards a point marked on her GPS... just to the east of her search line. She grimaced as she saw the tree-cover thicken. That was one thing the map didn’t show. | ||
| − | State Route 378 ran roughly East-Northeast, winding | + | State Route 378 ran roughly East-Northeast, winding alongside a narrow stream through a steep valley. In her mind, she plotted out a circular area to search, centring on Joe-Ward Fork road. She throttled back on the engines in her boots, running slower on one thruster. Slower, but much quieter too. Even with it at full throttle, her back shielded the ground from the noise. And 400kph was still faster than just about any car in existence. |
It’d be damned bloody hard for anyone to spot her, unless they were specifically looking for her. And then it’d just be ‘hard’. | It’d be damned bloody hard for anyone to spot her, unless they were specifically looking for her. And then it’d just be ‘hard’. | ||
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“Shit!” she spat, pulling herself up, gaining altitude to drop her overland speed. Up above the clouds, she wheeled over, aiming for the left fork of the valley. She’d run down that heading South... then carry on. Another line of broken trees snaked down into the valley below, aiming for a yard. | “Shit!” she spat, pulling herself up, gaining altitude to drop her overland speed. Up above the clouds, she wheeled over, aiming for the left fork of the valley. She’d run down that heading South... then carry on. Another line of broken trees snaked down into the valley below, aiming for a yard. | ||
| − | Jet flew along the ridge line, focusing in on the yard. She had less than a second to take it in. First, what looked like belching blue oil smoke. Next, an office block, the door open and someone being pushed outside. A catgirl... | + | Jet flew along the ridge line, focusing in on the yard. She had less than a second to take it in. First, what looked like belching blue oil smoke. Next, an office block, the door open and someone being pushed outside. A catgirl... the man behind her had a gun to her back. At the entrance was a trailer, surrounded on four sides by what looked to be old cars welded to some sort of framework, the exact same size as the crop markings. On it, was a quadruped, covered in in a tarpaulin sheet. |
Jet saw a flash of yellow paint. Arching her back, she pitched up vertically into the clouds, roaring out of sight of the ground. Jet swallowed bile. | Jet saw a flash of yellow paint. Arching her back, she pitched up vertically into the clouds, roaring out of sight of the ground. Jet swallowed bile. | ||
| − | + | “Not a catgirl machine too,” | |
| − | She felt sick for a moment. Twenty | + | She felt sick for a moment. Twenty missing people, how many of them had gone through it? |
| − | She | + | She checked her co-ordinates using her onboard GPS, before making a quick digital note of it so she wouldn’t forget. |
Catgirl machine. She felt a chills run through her body as she climbed above a thousand meters. One last high speed pass to confirm. She looped over in the air, lighting her boot thrusters once more. Like a bullet, she shot forward, the sound barrier shattering in front of her. It felt like punching through a sheet of paper. | Catgirl machine. She felt a chills run through her body as she climbed above a thousand meters. One last high speed pass to confirm. She looped over in the air, lighting her boot thrusters once more. Like a bullet, she shot forward, the sound barrier shattering in front of her. It felt like punching through a sheet of paper. | ||
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It was like flying through an oven full of reeds. | It was like flying through an oven full of reeds. | ||
| − | Sixty | + | Sixty kilometres back to Frenchburg. Her top speed was somewhere just shy of 1400. About three minutes flight time. |
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| − | + | “Mike, put that damn thing away!” Derek snarled. | |
| − | + | Mike Piccione, the dumbass, was happily showing his tiger-striped Desert Eagle pistol, to the tiger-striped catgirl. | |
| − | + | “You know what the say about big guns, and the men that show them in public.” purred the catgirl. | |
| − | + | “Hey yeah baby,” he smirked. | |
| − | + | “Jesus Christ you dumb shit stop dicking around,” Derek yelled, “I had enough crap covering for that couple in that RV. Do you know how much I had to pay Henderson to write them off as a Fen launch?” | |
| − | + | “Lighten up man,” Piccione grinned, “They were too close to our operation, they could’ve spotted us. I did you a favour,” he reassured. | |
| − | + | The clouds hung low in the sky, making the grey concrete and rusting metal in the yard seem strangely post apocalyptic. Derek looked up at the clouds.... maybe if he pulled this off as expected, he could still get his ship. | |
| − | + | Get the catgirl in the cat, set them loose on the state, then get the hell out of dodge before they figure out what Sara really is. By them public opinion will be tying the hands of the politicians. Micheal Moore might even make a movie about it. | |
| − | + | And then with his ship he could start making some real money for himself. No more scratching around in the dirt. | |
| − | + | “Something just flew overhead.” Sara said, calmly. “It was going fast,” | |
| − | + | Piccione looked up. “I don’t see nothing,” | |
| − | + | “I heard it,” said the catgirl, “Also my hearing’s sharp enough to make out what you said under your breath, and if you weren’t pointing a gun at me like an idiot, it might be a lot of fun, actually,”. Her grin bared her predatory fangs. | |
| − | + | “You sure?” Derek asked her. | |
| − | + | The catgirl nodded with a smile and twitched her ears. A thunderclap bang from overhead made them all duck, Sara yelping in pain and clutching at her ears. | |
| − | + | Piccione opened his eyes “What the hell was that?” | |
| − | + | “Thunder, after the storm last night,” Derek concluded. “But that didn’t sound like any thunder I ever heard.” | |
| − | + | Every instinct in his body told him it was nothing worth worrying about. A hunter’s gunshot nearby. A dry crack of thunder. Any one of a hundred other things. It really was probably nothing. | |
| − | + | “Alright, Get the guys down from the other site. We’re moving the Cat tonight under darkness,” | |
| − | + | Still, Derek figured, better safe than sorry. | |
| − | |||
| − | + | ---- | |
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| − | + | A couple of kilometres outside Fenchburg, Jet cut her engines, letting gravity and drag take over. | |
| − | + | Friction pulled at her shoulders and forearms as she pitched up, increasing her surface area as she fell. Below 200kph, aiming for a point she used her own engines to brake down to a gentle landing in the car park. | |
| − | + | An easy landing. | |
| − | + | Alex watched her come down. | |
| − | + | “Wow,” the kid breathed. “I wanna be a flying person too! Do you have any handywave?” | |
| − | + | Jet blinked, “What? No!” she lied. “And your ma’d kill me,” | |
| − | + | “Aw please. I wanna be able to fly like you. That was so awesome what you did and...” | |
| − | + | Jet locked the kid outside, pulling her room door shut behind her. If ever there was a recipe for disaster, it’s a single-digit kid with access to handwavium. Jet found the vial she’d brought with her, and hid it carefully... somewhere far out of reach of even the most inquisitive eight year old. | |
| − | + | The kid knocked. Jet ignored. She took her helmet off and put it on the still unslept-in bed, checked the messages on her pad. BlackRider was arriving at 02:00am local time, or thereabouts. Nothing telling her to stop. | |
| − | + | Mentally, she selected the frequency of the comm she’d given Ruth and applied the correct encryptions. Snapping out her wings, she adjusted the two antennae on her back slightly. It’dve been best to do this outdoors...however Alex was still lurking and the signal attenuation inside a wood-framed building wouldn’t be too bad. | |
| − | + | ''“Trooper, Trooper, this is Jet. Do you read?”'' | |
| − | + | She waited for an answer. | |
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{{KCat}} | {{KCat}} | ||
Latest revision as of 10:12, 14 February 2011
Day 3
October 19th 2013
Little Watch Inn
Near Frenchburg, Kentucky
Ruth arrived at the Inn carrying a large folder, she headed for Jet’s door. Ruth knocked.
“Yeah, I’m awake,”
In fact, she hadn’t slept. Most of the night had been spent on the interwave trading emails. And watching motorball highlights. She opened the door, still looking strangely fresh.
“Morning,” she said.
“Mornin’” answered Ruth, looking half asleep. “I was looking over some police reports of some fen launched...and found something interesting.” She held up the folder, “ While we get a trickle of people going up, they always get treated as a missing persons case until they or someone else reports them safe.” Ruth sighed, “However there’re ones that never get cleared, but handwavium was found on site, so it’s still treated as a Fen launch.”
Jet looked at her, a little dubious.
“Plenty of people go up and decide not to contact their families again, for whatever reason. It’s not uncommon as such. The thing is, the area around the robberies and those sightings has a unusually large amount of such cases.”
“Wow... you think there’s a connection?”
“Maybe, there’s also been a unusually high number of crooks who have just fallen off the map in this area as well.”
“Well... Can we mark them on the map here?”... the map still laid out on the table beside Jet’s pad. “Maybe there’s one near Mountain Valley,”
“That’s what caught my attention... there’s three down there.”
Reading from her folder Ruth marked them out on the map in red pen, each and every suspected launch from the last 6 months.
“That’s a lot of missing people,” commented Jet. At least twenty at a glance including the three.
“All of these are ones assumed to be Fen. Here’s how many have been in contact,”
Ruth then marked all the points for those who’d been located in a blue pen. Just one, centred on Little Watch inn.
“It’s our fault for not noticing them sooner, but state policy is not to follow up disappearances if handwavium’s involved.”
Jet looked sour,
“Well yeah... but the Governor thought we were wasting too many resources chasing up fen who turned up in orbit a few weeks later. Resources which at the time, were best allocated to real missing persons.”
“Which makes sense,” Jet was ashamed to admit.
“I think this whole thing is beyond just robberies now.”
“I’ve got to report this in. If they’re kidnapping this many people on the ground.” she put her hand to her face, a dread chill running through her body. “At least twenty innocent people kidnapped, .. that’s not going to stay quiet.”
“Maybe we can nail down these guys first before bring down the US gov on them.”
“That’s going to look like we’re covering it up if we try to handle this ourselves.. And if we get the US government involved, the whole of fenspace will get blamed for it. Fuck,”
Jet sat down, pensively staring at her pad. “Fuck” she swore again.
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Ruth sighed.
“Just damned full stop.” a beat. “I’m going to have to call this in. Twenty potentially dead people.. We’re still going to have to stop them but.... this is going to be a media nightmare. And what’s the US government going to do?”
“Commentators will turn red and have a screaming fit like they do with anything handwavium related. The government’ll be little better. It depends on what they understand. ”
“It’s your government. I don’t know.” A deep breath. “If this comes out before we find them, then we’re going to lose them for good. They’ll run for orbit. We lose any leads on where the victims are. We lose any leads on who they’re working for.. ”
Ruth nodded, “Keeping the media out of it shouldn’t be a problem”.
“I’m going to need a few minutes to send this back. Then, I’ll check out a few of these sites,” she put her finger on the map, “Do you want help from Fenspace, or do you think you could handle the meat element of this, while I take on the Cat?”
“I’ll have to pass the word on to the Governor. It was his decision to go to you guys for help first before having to go up his own chain. We’ve got our own Special Response Team, like SWAT.”
The cyborg gave her a suspicious look, born of a certain political cynicism, “We can’t keep this from him. There’s a difference between armed robbery with handwavium, and twenty five missing people.” This is above my grade, she added mentally.
Jet paused to get a hold of her thoughts. How did this work in RP when the GM threw in the big surprise? Just keep going, don’t sit around twiddling thumbs waiting for orders. It’s a big revelation, but it doesn’t change what she has to do right now. Priority is still to find the cat.
“Alright... um... I want to be able to take them down as soon as I get a package from Fenspace... something to disable the zoid. It should arrive maybe tonight, or sometime tomorrow. Try and get something ready by then, can you? I want to take these bastards down.”
“I’ll get onto him while you get on with your reconnaissance flight. I’ll feel better talking to him about this if I can tell him where these sonsabitches are,”
>>From: Juliette2@grunthal.fen
>>To: alitagally@grunthal.fen
>>CC:
>>Subject: Kentucky Cat [Development]
>>Right, we have a bigger problem here than just a mecha Cat being used to commit robbery.
>>trooper Ruth just brought to my attention a number of missing-persons cases around here. At
>>least twenty. As there was handwavium involved, the police department assumed they
>>were fen who’d launched and not thought to check in, so assigned them a low priority.
>>These cases are all gathered in the general area of these three banks. If there’s a correlation
>>between this, and the robberies... then that’s far more disturbing. At best, they’re being held
>>hostage but somehow I doubt this.
>>Dead Americans on American soil. I don’t want to overreact on this, but as far as people
>>down here are concerned, that’ll be 20 people killed by fen. This could lead to a Cam Ranh
>>situation between Fenspace and the US Government.
>>Ruth is going to inform the Governor, and see what can be done on this end. What happens
>>now is his decision.
>>I’m not sure what to do. I understand that Black Rider is delivering the package later tonight or
>>sometime tomorrow. At that point, we should be in position to bring them down. I would like to
>>do this as soon as possible, either with local police or Fen forces, but if you think I should wait
>>for help then I will.
>>Taking down the Cat would be no problem... but now there’s the possibility that there’ve been
>>casualties, that’s going to change the politics of this and I don’t know politics.
>>-JJ
Jet boosted high, accelerating up to near five hundred kilometres an hour. She skimmed the bottoms of the clouds, still lingering after last night’s storm. About six hundred meters or so, according to her own altimeter.
High and fast enough to not be seen easily.
It felt good to fly in an atmosphere again, the rush of a air tugging at her armour being something she missed out in the void between planets. Below, Daniel Boone National forest was a thick green carpet of trees rolling over hills and gullies.
That’d be fun to search. This place was huge... a search area nearly as big as the midlands back home, and much more sparsely populated. Three small towns, in three small counties, each as big as a county back home.
Flying under VFR rules, and far enough away from any airport, she was alone in the sky. Her radar could see a few bigger aircraft landing at Lexington, about sixty kilometres the the West. A light aircraft of some sort chugged up out of Stanton and a few big jets were flying a couple of kilometres above
It was thirty kilometres down to Campton as the cyborg flew. Jet could see where the bank had been. Work crews clustered around the wreckage. It was a bigger town, the seat of County Wolfe, if she recalled correctly. All the town’s hit were county-towns... did that make a difference in the US?
Jet circled at a safe distance, looking down into the pit where the vault had been. Just like the other two, only a little bit cleaner. There was more of the building standing... to the point where you could recognise that it might once have been a bank. Jet circled a few more times, swinging out wider and wider, before following the tracks the Cat left as it escaped. She could see the spot where it’d been picked up.. in what had been a horse paddock.
Just like the photographs... it looked like the cat’d been carried away in some sort of frame.
Jet leaned into a turn to the Southeast, angling herself towards a point marked on her GPS... just to the east of her search line. She grimaced as she saw the tree-cover thicken. That was one thing the map didn’t show.
State Route 378 ran roughly East-Northeast, winding alongside a narrow stream through a steep valley. In her mind, she plotted out a circular area to search, centring on Joe-Ward Fork road. She throttled back on the engines in her boots, running slower on one thruster. Slower, but much quieter too. Even with it at full throttle, her back shielded the ground from the noise. And 400kph was still faster than just about any car in existence.
It’d be damned bloody hard for anyone to spot her, unless they were specifically looking for her. And then it’d just be ‘hard’.
She turned herself into a search pattern, zig-zagging across the line between both sightings. She ran along each valley, banked around, then headed back along, dipping down out of the clouds only long enough to get a good look. Then she repeated, to make sure it was right.
It was tedious work... passing over a few homes nestled in the woods. Above the wind roar, Jet thought she could make out gunshots... coming from the south. Shooting at her?..... Right, America, she realised. Someone was just out hunting or something.
A gun-range flashed beneath, attached to the back of a shed with a few cars parked outside. Jet banked around again, rolling into a sharp turn over the top of a ridge to run down the neighbouring valley. As she turned, something caught her eye... almost like a shadow crossing the ridge.
No... it was a line of fallen trees... climbing up from the valley beneath her across the top of a sixty-metre ridge. She followed it with her eyes as she turned... it reached towards Joe Ward Fork, picking its route carefully.
There was only one thing she could think of that’d make that line. It was the hardest thing for her to do, to stick to her search pattern. Half her body wanted to just chase along it... but she had to stick to the pattern.
It was down here... that was the main thing. It was in the area.
Another track, this time more wandering. She could see it cross over itself, before chasing along a valley floor. It crossed a stony track. Jet smirked as she saw pawprints crossing the road. A thrill of excitement ran through her frame... it was practically within spitting distance.
Reaching the end of her run, she banked and turned North once more, angling for the Fork road. She chased it across the stream, following a dirt track that’d been churned up recently. The valley forked and she banked right, chasing the road.
At the end... a picnic area.
“Shit!” she spat, pulling herself up, gaining altitude to drop her overland speed. Up above the clouds, she wheeled over, aiming for the left fork of the valley. She’d run down that heading South... then carry on. Another line of broken trees snaked down into the valley below, aiming for a yard.
Jet flew along the ridge line, focusing in on the yard. She had less than a second to take it in. First, what looked like belching blue oil smoke. Next, an office block, the door open and someone being pushed outside. A catgirl... the man behind her had a gun to her back. At the entrance was a trailer, surrounded on four sides by what looked to be old cars welded to some sort of framework, the exact same size as the crop markings. On it, was a quadruped, covered in in a tarpaulin sheet.
Jet saw a flash of yellow paint. Arching her back, she pitched up vertically into the clouds, roaring out of sight of the ground. Jet swallowed bile.
“Not a catgirl machine too,”
She felt sick for a moment. Twenty missing people, how many of them had gone through it?
She checked her co-ordinates using her onboard GPS, before making a quick digital note of it so she wouldn’t forget.
Catgirl machine. She felt a chills run through her body as she climbed above a thousand meters. One last high speed pass to confirm. She looped over in the air, lighting her boot thrusters once more. Like a bullet, she shot forward, the sound barrier shattering in front of her. It felt like punching through a sheet of paper.
For a brief instant she saw the yard again... at the end of an overgrown dirt track. The catgirl was looking up. The Zoid was still there, parked on its trailer. That had to be it.
Jet broke through the clouds again before anyone on the ground could hear her sonic boom. She banked North hard, kicking herself forward to her top speed, making a beeline for Fenchburg. She could feel the shockwaves spilling off her body. They tickled her fingertips, and started to heat her chest, shoulders and wingtips.
It was like flying through an oven full of reeds.
Sixty kilometres back to Frenchburg. Her top speed was somewhere just shy of 1400. About three minutes flight time.
“Mike, put that damn thing away!” Derek snarled.
Mike Piccione, the dumbass, was happily showing his tiger-striped Desert Eagle pistol, to the tiger-striped catgirl.
“You know what the say about big guns, and the men that show them in public.” purred the catgirl.
“Hey yeah baby,” he smirked.
“Jesus Christ you dumb shit stop dicking around,” Derek yelled, “I had enough crap covering for that couple in that RV. Do you know how much I had to pay Henderson to write them off as a Fen launch?”
“Lighten up man,” Piccione grinned, “They were too close to our operation, they could’ve spotted us. I did you a favour,” he reassured.
The clouds hung low in the sky, making the grey concrete and rusting metal in the yard seem strangely post apocalyptic. Derek looked up at the clouds.... maybe if he pulled this off as expected, he could still get his ship.
Get the catgirl in the cat, set them loose on the state, then get the hell out of dodge before they figure out what Sara really is. By them public opinion will be tying the hands of the politicians. Micheal Moore might even make a movie about it.
And then with his ship he could start making some real money for himself. No more scratching around in the dirt.
“Something just flew overhead.” Sara said, calmly. “It was going fast,”
Piccione looked up. “I don’t see nothing,”
“I heard it,” said the catgirl, “Also my hearing’s sharp enough to make out what you said under your breath, and if you weren’t pointing a gun at me like an idiot, it might be a lot of fun, actually,”. Her grin bared her predatory fangs.
“You sure?” Derek asked her.
The catgirl nodded with a smile and twitched her ears. A thunderclap bang from overhead made them all duck, Sara yelping in pain and clutching at her ears.
Piccione opened his eyes “What the hell was that?”
“Thunder, after the storm last night,” Derek concluded. “But that didn’t sound like any thunder I ever heard.”
Every instinct in his body told him it was nothing worth worrying about. A hunter’s gunshot nearby. A dry crack of thunder. Any one of a hundred other things. It really was probably nothing.
“Alright, Get the guys down from the other site. We’re moving the Cat tonight under darkness,”
Still, Derek figured, better safe than sorry.
A couple of kilometres outside Fenchburg, Jet cut her engines, letting gravity and drag take over.
Friction pulled at her shoulders and forearms as she pitched up, increasing her surface area as she fell. Below 200kph, aiming for a point she used her own engines to brake down to a gentle landing in the car park.
An easy landing.
Alex watched her come down.
“Wow,” the kid breathed. “I wanna be a flying person too! Do you have any handywave?”
Jet blinked, “What? No!” she lied. “And your ma’d kill me,”
“Aw please. I wanna be able to fly like you. That was so awesome what you did and...”
Jet locked the kid outside, pulling her room door shut behind her. If ever there was a recipe for disaster, it’s a single-digit kid with access to handwavium. Jet found the vial she’d brought with her, and hid it carefully... somewhere far out of reach of even the most inquisitive eight year old.
The kid knocked. Jet ignored. She took her helmet off and put it on the still unslept-in bed, checked the messages on her pad. BlackRider was arriving at 02:00am local time, or thereabouts. Nothing telling her to stop.
Mentally, she selected the frequency of the comm she’d given Ruth and applied the correct encryptions. Snapping out her wings, she adjusted the two antennae on her back slightly. It’dve been best to do this outdoors...however Alex was still lurking and the signal attenuation inside a wood-framed building wouldn’t be too bad.
“Trooper, Trooper, this is Jet. Do you read?”
She waited for an answer.
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