Exiles Hope, Sometimes, the only way out, is through! Options

[Fortune]

"Speed might well be life, but Ah reckon it can also be seen as careless at times. 'Sides, we still got a fair window left for the op." Danny pauses a moment, looking around at the various team members before turning his attention once more to the elf rigger, shrugging. "Your call though omae."

[grendel]

"How long will you need for your investigation?"

[Fortune]

"Ah wasn't meanin' to take too much time lookin' into it myself. Y'all had a good idea 'bout callin' Zoe 'n' seein' what all she can dig up. Maybe a couple of us should have a quick look 'round while the others get the rest of the gear a-loaded."

[grendel]

"I will pass the details along to Zoe. Proceed with the investigation. Thirty minutes, tops."

Grendel opens a call to Zoe through his headware.

"Zoe, it's Grendel. We were ambushed at the hangar. One rigger, with drones, and an elemental. Spider drone, AV rockets. We need to know soonest if it matches anyone's MO. Any info, especially if this is just a precursor for a heavier strike. Out."

[TinkerGnome]

Warpath continues his sweep of the perimeter. "Roger, base. Finishing recon. Rendevous at the following coordinates." A set of GPS coordinates comes over th comm and Warpath's sweep intersects with them eventually.

[Jr. Woodchuck]

The quiet elf stands up from behind the crates. His erie gaze pierces the darkness, as the cornea of his eyes fades away to a milky blue. Allowing the emotions of the world into his body the elf perceives.

[Grey]

Jessie nods. "I agree completely, Lone Star doesn't take kindly to rockets flying around an airport. We need to bail NOW. As for our attacker, I spotted a Salish borderpass on its bumper before it went up in flames, so there is at least one clue for now."

Jessie jumps up into the plane and takes a seat just behind the pilots chair, buckling herself in.

"Come on people, no time to waste."

With that she closes her eyes and concentrates, listening to the area around her, the sound filter in her ear picking out each sound as it goes through her.

[Jr. Woodchuck]

Delacroix follows Jessie's lead. Taking a place in the co-pilot chair.

[Fortune]

Danny cocks his eyebrow as he watches Jessie and Delacroix board the plane, both of them ignoring the pile of gear waiting to be loaded. Hefting one of the crates, he follows them aboard the aircraft and piles it with the others, before responding.

"Y'all might be right about that, bein' that Ah reckon y'know the situation 'round here better'n me. It seems t' me though, that if'n yer in that much of a hurry t' be gone, it might be a good idea t' get the rest of the gear loaded." He pauses and grins, "'specially if yer a-plannin' t'use any of it."

[Grey]

((OOC: I thought we had loaded the plane already? If not, take back my first action and just leave the dialog.))

Jessie does what she can to help move gear, but not being the strongest in the group, it isn't too much.

[Leowulf]

Blackjack says over the radio, "Let's get this gear loaded and get out of here guys! Come on!" Blackjack ignores the fact that some of the gear is quite heavy and carries as much as she can into the plane each trip without seriously fatiguing herself, grabbing pieces of gear with each of her four hands and piling it in. Somewhere during the loading, she says to the people standing around, "Start tying that down or wearing it. It wouldn't be good to have it bouncing around the plane. Hehe! Right, Grendel?"

Blackjack makes sure that she secures her portion of the gear somewhere that she can find it in the plane.

[Shadow]

The rest of the gear is loaded quickly, it doesn't take to much effort once more than one person get's to it. Within five minutes the distant sound of sirens can be heard, someone must have spotted the fireball of the Roadmaster. Even though the airport is not active, it is still used. Warpath returns from his scout, drenched with rain, but otherwise ok and with nothing to report.

The plane is loaded and ready to roll.

[grendel]

"Team, Base, clear behind the aircraft, APU is coming up and online."

In response to his silent command, the APU coughs and whines to life, a halo of jet exhaust rising towards the ceiling of the hangar. Electrical power comes on the aircraft as the APU generator comes on-line. Grendel runs through his prestart checks quickly, unfolding the wings when hydraulic power is available. The Bison and Westwind disappear out of the hangar, enroute home.

"Engines coming up."

First the left, then the right turbines spin to life, six bladed, constant speed propellors driving a relentless wash of air through the hangar.

"Rolling."

Grendel brings the brakes off and angles the rotor discs forward, generating enough power to overcome the tilt-wing's inertia. The sleek aircraft taxis out of the hangar, deftly avoiding the wreckage of the Roadmaster. Once clear, he applies takeoff power, lifting the aircraft into a five meter hover to cross check power, before nosing over and accelerating into the night.

[Fortune]

As Grendel prepares the tilt-wing for take-off, Danny recalls the Watcher Spirit he had previously assigned to guard duty, along with one of the others that he'd summoned earlier. He then proceeds to instruct them to follow the aircraft from the Astral, keeping watch for any intruders or presences on that plane.

[Shadow]

@ Grendel, your call to Zoe alarms her, "ambushed? Drek, tell you, I don't know how they found you, unless they traced the aircraft. I'll do what I can from here. Have a good flight omae."

The wind buffets the twin engine aircraft as Grendel increases the power. The plane fly's strait and true heading west out over Puget Sound and then turning North toward Seattle. Grendels body is motionless as his mind sinks into the computer that controls the air craft. The visibility is nill but the Rigger uses senses far beyond eyes to navigate the airspace.

[Leowulf]

Blackjack sits back in one of the seats on the co-pilot side, with her gear next to her. She tries to rest and recover from any ill effects of the manual labor of loading the gear onto the plane. She also pulls out the gold crucifix from under her camo suit and begins playing with it thoughtfully, alternately flipping it in her fingers and staring at it by degrees. She appears lost in thought to the observer.

[Fortune]

Danny, sitting on the pilot's side close to the window, leans back and tries to shake off the side effects of his earlier spellcasting.

"Hey Grendel, what all's our ETA?"

[Chance359]

After the fight, Sedryk quickly dustes himself off and gathers his gear, making sure to wipe down the area he was preping in. Quietly he crosses himself before boarding the plane. For the first few minutes of the flight, he rocks back and forth, shakes his leg, and generally acts like a street sam ready for a fight.

[grendel]

Grendel stretches his senses, feeling the aircraft respond to his desire. The densely packed storm cells appeared in false color on his vision, the on-board AI painting a safe course through them. The windshear was extensive, bursts hammering the tilt-wing with side and downwards accelerations exceeding fifty knots. The twin Pratt and Whitney turboprops howled in protest, straining to respond to his power demands. The edge of the envelope was close, he could feel it like a knife edge against the back of his neck. Barely two hundred meters below them, the dark waters of Pudget Sound flashed past, surface whipped with angry whitecaps. Status displays scrolled across the edges of his vision, waypoints, speeds, and times responding immediately to his inquiry.

"Three, Base, ETA is fifty two minutes. Correction, fifty three minutes. The storm is limiting speed over ground. ETA might improve once we break free of the front."

[Fortune]

"Gotcha Base, thanks. If'n y'all can gimme a heads-up in about 20 minutes, Ah'll see 'bout callin' up a li'l extra assistance."

Danny leans his head back against the wall of the plane, closes his eyes and pulls the brim of his hat down to cover his face.

[TinkerGnome]

After sweeping the area for about five minutes, Warpath returned to the hangar and moved his Brumby to a more discreet location before coming back to board the plane. He buckled himself in to one of the jump seats in the back and proceeded to hold on for dear life.

[Grey]

Jessie takes her seat on the bench, just behind Grendel. Not feeling all that steady, she buckles herself into the four point harness. Shes then says to the team over her comm, "Great work back there team. Lets just hope we can deal with future problems with the same professionalism." After a glance around, Jessie turns her gaze out the front window to watch the storm rage around them.

[Grey]

Sending her thoughts over the comm, Jessie asks, "So whats the flight plan, Base? And how are you doing dealing with the storm?"

[grendel]

"Originally, Two, I was going to file VFR to an airfield north of the island, but this isn't VFR weather. Not only that, but as low as we are, they're going to have a difficult time of picking us out from the storm cells. We'll be fine as long as we don't run into any icing or downbursts that overstress the airframe. ETA 44 minutes."

[Grey]

Jessie nods, more to herself than anyone.

She then reaches into her bag and pulls out a small flat vid screen with some attached micro speakers. She plugs a optical cable into the screen and takes the other end and plugs it into her datajack. The screen flickers for a second and then a video feed of the entire combat scene starts to play across the screen, both audio and video. Its obvious to everyone that Jessie has a full spectrum of eye and ear modifications. She replays the scene over and over, trying to pick out anything that could give them a clue to who was attacking them. She pauses when her view goes to the Roadmaster, looking it over for anymore details, zooming in where she can to pick things out.

"Can anyone see anything that could help us figure out who attacked us?"