2014.05.05 - Ghosts from the Past: Too Quiet

Quinjets: the way SHIELD prefers to fly.
Maria Hill is not her usual pleasant self. And by usual and pleasant... Okay, scratch that. She's angry, annoyed, and somewhere between concerned and worried. Not that she's going to admit that. Ever. She's barely managing to hide the anger in her voice as she speaks over the comms.
“So I'm going to be frank, here. Maps of this facility don't exist. I checked with the nearest three cities, and none of them have it on record. Not even the Australian government seems to know it's out here – officially. My gut says someone got paid off to keep the place off official documentation, and someone else is getting paid to keep people away.
I've been using Wayne's Panoptes drones to get a good look at things. It has enough vents and crawlspaces that you could all manage to slip through from the outside. Doesn't look like they have many guards on the outside, but they're remote enough that they don't expect visitors. Looks like they have a laser trip alarm that jumps through all the connected posts surrounding the facility though.” So at least something is there to warn them about visitors. SHIELD's pulling the power, temporarily, to the nearest city, which is what they feed off for energy supplies.”
The facility is a lot less impressive than the building of concrete and glass in Europe. It looks much more like a factory, one or two floors tops, spread out over a wide area. As Maria mentioned, a handful of obvious vents stick out from the building, easily big enough to allow a full grown human inside. The 'factory' is ringed by several tall towers which would almost qualify for snipers' nests, if it wasn't for the fact that they only seem to have a huge searchlight on the very top of each tower.
“Just in case there's any question, let me spell it out for you: we're here to destroy whatever machinery they use to teleport people across the globe. We can't risk that technology landing in anyone else's hands, and frankly it's only a matter of time before they get bold enough to teleport right onto the Argus. Find the machines, blow it, and get the hell out of there. Understood?”
Sam Guthrie puts his hands on his hips, as fists. "Sounds like the sort of mission I'll enjoy." Goggles in place, his hair flops eagerly with the head tilt. Do we need to worry about actually tripping those alarms if we're going to blow things up? And who is in charge of the ground team?" Just so he knows who he's taking orders from on the ground.
One guess who is in the pilot seat. Who has two thumbs and used to have superpowers? Carol points thumbs at self. Just not while flying, that's dangerous. She flew the craft and then geared up after landing. "I wonder if they ship in entertainment for the men at times, or if they give the guys leave to go play elsewhere." she mutters, pondering ways to infiltrate that don't involve choke holds and such. But, she's good with sneaky too. Either way and all. "Do we have demolition charges for the destruction?" she inquires.
Tony Stark: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is along, once again, as a version of Rick Castle. Here to consult, hack, and handle the technological curveballs that no one else can handle. He's dressed in SHIELD tactical gear once again, this time having added a tactile neck and a skully to the ensemble. "I take it I'm here to scramble tech that's too sensitive?" he asks, pretty sure what the response will be.
The response for Sam is a little... snarky. “I am,” answers Hill. One of the Panoptes drones, round and gunmetal grey, floats up within Sam's line of view. “Not that I don't trust anyone, but after last time, I want an eye or three on the battlefield.” Two more drones lift up.
“Stark has the explosives.” Yes, Hill gave Tony the explosives. Possibly because he'd know where to put them to inflict the most damage. Because a system like this certainly has to have backups, extra protection, and the like. Right?
When the group steps out and heads towards the facility, they'll see that laser grid Maria mentioned. Akin to a fence, it comprises of three lasers shooting across from tower to tower, occasionally flickering into sight. The drones zip forward. “When the power is cut, run across to the low vent on the west wall. That's out access point. Ready?”
3...
2...
1...
Power is cut and an audible depowering noise sounds across the facility. Everything goes desperately dark. Small lights flicker into existence on each of the drones and immediately shoot forward. “This way. Follow me!”
Sam Guthrie bursts into a run, charmed rather than pissy, that Maria is coming with them. The only firearm he has is strapped to one leg, and it does not appear to be the usual sort of deadly weapon. An Icer. He has plenty of powers, true, but they are all pretty /bright/. So he's just depending on ridiculous physical training to keep pace with the highly trained agent.
As soon as the timing is appropriate, Carol is off. She has an Icer, sure.. it's in a holster along with a SHIELD Plasma weapon in her hand and a Needle rifle sling over her shoulder. The girl likes her toys it seems. Plus, the armored suit of the unit is moving along with her. She doesn't speak once stealth is called for, but moves ahead to a cover position before eyeing the ground ahead and gesturing for whether or not folks should move forward or hold position.
Tony Stark moves with the rest of the team, and manages to use his own tech to start attaching explosive first to backups - servers, UPS, systems, etc. Once he's done covering the back up systems he starts making his way through and doing that to the main server array and primary power supplies into the building. It's not enough to cut the power in the case of the tech, you have to eliminate it entirely.
Inside, through the ducting, is quiet. And conveniently a lot of computers. It's a work room of some kind, with nobody inside. The door on the eastern wall is unlocked, and the hallway beyond that is quiet and dark. A flickering light sheds some illumination a little ways down, in a cross section with halls branching off in other directions.
The Panoptes drones, when the door is opened, hover right up to the point before the halls branch off. If Maria was present everyone would be able to see her frown. The drones tilt upwards. “Computer cabling branches off too,” she notes, 'nodding' the drone upwards at the area of cables that split off as easily as the halls do.
Well crap. She certainly wasn't expecting that to happen.
“Stark? Ideas?”
Sam Guthrie turns to look at Tony, though he does offer quietly, "I don't need charges to wreck the machines, if we have to split up." again his hands find his hips.
Tony Stark hmms, and then hears Sam's idea. He nods, inclining his head towards Guthrie. "He's got a good idea. He can find the branch networks and level them, and we can move on towards our objectives."
Well, she is relegated to cover duties, so Carol does so. She's just watching over Stark as he sets charges and follows the cables. Every time someone speaks, she winces internally though. She's trained in the... hand gesture communications the special forces use, and figures... sneaky means shut the heck up. But not everyone has the same mindset.
She hates the idea of separating such a small group. “All right. Guthrie, left. Stark, Danvers. Right. Keep in contact.” The Panoptes drones divide up at Hill's command, one accompanying Stark and Danvers, another with Guthrie. The third remains in the hall, lifting itself up to the ceiling to avoid possible detection.
Eerily, the facility remains quiet regardless of the hall. There are more doors, more capables, more flickering lights. The power's obviously come back on at some point, but it's clear that whoever is stationed here, they don't keep good care of the hallway lights.
Guthrie's path is much like the one Stark and Danvers are walking down. Doors that lead to storage rooms, full of dusty work tables and even dustier, old computers. Commodore 64 old. Either the facility's been here a long time, or they just haven't got rid of their outdated junk. Eventually the hall leads to a room that is much more brightly lit: computers are everywhere, along with many chairs and more switches and knobs than one could shake a stick at. Mission control, maybe, would be the perfect comparison.
Likewise the path for the other two opens up into a similar room, though only one computer terminl sits here. The centrepiece of this room is instead a huge machine, looking somewhere like cross between a Star Trek transporter and the machine from The Fly – if the latter had six chambers apiece. Power is still very much active here, and judging by readouts given at the terminal, this room wasn't affected by the SHIELD-made blackout.
Yeah, this is too easy. Carol is... well she doesn't have her seventh sense right now, but she expects to be observed. She'll take time looking closely for concealed cameras watching the progress of the team. She is also ready to move... coiled on a hair trigger. She gestures for Tony to go in and do what needs to be done, and she hangs back, not wanting to be caught in the same room when armored doors slide down to trap folks, etc.
Sam Guthrie is /not/ going to be quiet any longer. "Found Control." Before he starts in with the destruction, he does wander the long lines of mission control, here, just to make sure there aren't any hidden compartments. In the absense of people is also the absense of restraint, and kinetic blasts are aimed to shred through hardware. For the larger components, those he will use his own body to wreck, encased in a field of protection and acting like a ricocheting bullet in a submarine.
Silent up until now, the facility's alarms turn on freakishly high once Sam begins his oh-so-casual (but ordered) destruction. It's triggered by damage to the first computer; a loud, blaring siren that screams 'trouble this way!'.
Funnily enough there are no hurried footsteps, no marching of guards being sent out to deal with the intruders. The alarm aside, it's still quiet. No slamming doors to keep the intruders in place. No soldiers firing guns. Nothing but the alarm.
At first, anyhow.
Because for both the rooms, a door in the back opens. A door that, otherwise perfectly blended into the wall in which it was set. Beyond the doorframe, inky blackness. And then the sound. The creaky sound of gears moving, the dull, loud, thudding footsteps of something big inside.
The Panoptes drones turn on lights each, aiming them towards the darkened doors presenting themselves to the intruders. And within? They might be robots. They might be armour designed to be controlled from the inside. Whatever they are, they are vaguely humanoid, big, and well armoured. They lack the fine lines of the Iron Man or Rescue armours. They're big and bulky. The move slowly. Prototypes, clearly.
"Ahhh, I got some unfriendlies here. Looks like...suits. Mechanical suits." Sam quips as he does a 180, landing on his feet. The computers themselves are pretty good and wrecked by the time he's noticed the slow suits, so he has the spare moment to test firing a blast field at one of them to see if they are shielded or not.
*FWASH!* There goes the plasma pistol in the hand of Carol. She fires through the doorway and says over her comms, "Contact." First words spoken since she left the quinjet of course, and she fired partially to catch them off guard, and partially to cover her own movement and potentially Tony's as she says, "Find cover!" while she slides into cover herself.... much like a baseball player might slide. "Recommend withdrawl. Repeat, recommend withdrawl." and with that, she pops up to take another shot, giving Tony cover.
Tony sighs. Of COURSE there's mechanized armor coming in hot. He looks over to Carol and says a single word.
"No."
He hands the remaining charges oveaxr to her. Oh well, his facial expression says, it was fun while it lasted.
"JARVIS -" he says seemingly to the air, as he peels off the bullet proof vest and tactileneck revealig a simple black tanktop through which his reactor glows, "Send me Heartbreaker, revised. Maximum loadout."
"Yes, sir. Mark Seventeen A, with maximum offensive loadout inbound to your location in approximately thirty eight seconds."
Over the comms Tony's voice can be heard, "Keep them off you for forty-five more seconds. I'll take them from there."
“We're not pulling out of this damned place until the teleporter is offline, Agent Danvers! Lure that thing into one of the explosives' detonating range!”
The Panoptes that serves as Maria's eyes and ears in the faciliy bobs up and down, the best the SHIELD Deputy Director can do to emulate a nod. For a moment Maria's comm cuts off, and the Argus bridge staff have the privilege of hearing Maria swear enough to make several senior members blush.
Yeah, this whole mess is really getting to her.
“Understood. Danvers, help me distracted that damned thing.” She can't do much, but what Maria-as-a-drone can do is float about and distract the damned thing's targeting sensors, which she manages to do quite handily. The Panoptes is too small for it to target properly, so more than one swing of its arm seems a little on the lazy side of things.
Still, the mech keeps pushing forward slowly. Creeeeeakthud. Creeeeakthud. One arm lifts and points at Carol, before the fist is launched off towards the blonde agent.
In Sam's room, Maria's Panoptes provides a similar distraction, zipping as close as she dares to keep it busy. “Guthrie, this is the time to tell me that yes, you can in fact slam through this damned thing at full speed!”
"Lets find out." Letting his body get prepped for what is going to be a fun impact, Sam holds a moment, watching the slow movements of the suit before he takes a few running steps. Then he summons the blast field into effect and puts one hand out in front, ina fist, to shrink the impact area to that, in the attempt to break the thing apart right in the middle. If the suit proves to be too tough to be split, then its going to get shoved into the wall at a high speed. Possibly /through/ the wall.
Forty five seconds. Might as well ask for an hour. This fight will be -over- in forty five seconds. At least that's Carol's thought process as she unleashes a fullisade downrange. She empties the magazine on her plasma weapon just as she spies the flying fist. "Seriously? Shogun warriors are -so- 70's!" She exclaims as she tries to duck down out of arc from the fist. It strikes her cover and breaks off part of it, leaving her exposed as she's unslinging her rifle, "Plasma weapon's empty. Switching to Hyper Velocity Needles."
Thirty five seconds later, there is the sound of something smashing through the wall. Dust covered, the Mark Seventeen - affectionatelly called "Heartbreaker" by Tony appears through the building. Remotely controlled, the suit mimics Tony's signature landing precisely. Quickly though, it rises and sticks its hands out in a manner reminiscent of Da Vinci's Virtruvian Man and the front half of the suits opens and retracts showing the 'cockpit' of the armor. Tony makes the same gesture and simply takes a step bbackwards into the suit. It then closes around him and activates, eyes glowing blue as it comes online with Tony in it. Total time? Forty Seconds. Tony was sandbagging.
Incidentally, Iron Man is back.
Tony launches himself as if he had been in it yesterday. "Okay, Agent Danvers. Let's go to work." - he raises his hands and starts shooting blasts from his palms that are much more power than usual. If he connects with any of the enemy suits, it's gonna hurt.
The thing is... Sidewinder's power armour is dreadfully prototypical. Neither Tony, nor Carol or Sam, saw how easily Karla Sofen snapped through one. But then, she has super strength. That said... these things aren't Stark-made quality power armour, if that wasn't obvious from the beginning.
Sam will find, to his astonishment or not, that he's easily able to split the thing in half. The legs clunk and clank uselessly and topple off to one side, while the upper half is propelled backwards by Sam's blast field and smashes into the wall. The chest cavity opens, confirming that nobody was inside. Must have been operated remotely.
Next to something like the Heartbreaker, Sidewinder's tech is also rather primitive. These things can't fly. Sidewinder hasn't figured that part out. Maria pulls the Panoptes drone away, summoning it back to the entrance of the room. The big mech swings another fist at Tony. The first, having swung at Carol, damaged itself against the cabinets and chairs she hid behind, and is therefore useless. That's how poorly armoured these things are.
When Tony hits the thing, the big mech almost flies backwards. It does collide with part of the teleporter-system, destroying one of containers and in the end, tripping backwards over it. The armour falls awkwardly, stuck in a position that looks to be impossible for it to maneuver out of, given how the arms flail uselessly, like a turtle stuck on its back.
It might be shitty tech, but Sam's pretty sure that before this whole place is shredded, that SHIELD will want to take a look at one anyway. So, he grabs what remains, braces his foot against the torso, and rips the head off, tucking it under his arm. "Clear here." He does also look to make sure the suit isn't full of explosives or something else nasty, before running over to look at the door it came out of.
Okay, so by the time Heartbreaker arrived, Carol had been driven out of her cover position by one fist, fired half a dozen bursts from her needle rifle, moved to a new cover location and narrowly avoided a shot or two. "Any time now!" she yelled before she dove back from that cover location as the desk she was using for cover turned into splinters.
She had an idea though, and as she recoiled from the flying fist again, she jumped up and charged the robot that launched it. With the fist detatched, she shoved the barrel of her needler into the arm and held down the trigger. Hopefully... shredding robotic innards.
That's when she gets blindsided. Another fist strikes her and she is tossed aside, slamming into the wall. And that's right when Tony gets active. "Ow..." she mutters as she falls to the floor, feeling a couple cracked ribs.
Stark starts blasting, and shredding sub-standard robotics.
Really? They sent THESE piles of crap made by the lowest bidder to face him and SHIELD?
For shame.
Tony decides to get in the pit and try to love someone. Going hand to hand, although the way he uses the suit's armaments in concert, it looks like Tony has developed his own brand of high effective martial arts. He rips off a pair of arms and uses them by the wrist as a pair of Tonfa to take out two more, which is about how many it takes to make the arms useless even for that. He resumes his Stark-Fu fighting, incorporating hand to hand with his weapons fire.
“Guthrie, is everything destroyed in that room?” In the mess involving the mech Sam dealt with, Maria's Panoptes drone got destroyed. Whoops. Oh well. There are more where that one came from! The other Panopte drops down when Carol is smashed about, the sensors on the device quickly checking to make sure that a.) she's alive, and b.) awake, and then c.) she can move
“Danvers? Can you hear me, Danvers?” There's noise on the line. There's an assault going on at the other Sidewinder location. This was supposed to be the quiet facility. Quieter, at any rate.
The last mech fights Tony... poorly. It gets smacked around pretty easily, destroying another of the pods used in the teleportation machine. It's not on, thankfully, so not dramatically appropriate explosions of energy. But yes, it seems Sidewinder did indeed think these would be enough. Perhaps they noticed Tony without armour last time, and assumed it would remain as such. The makeshift tonfas are hard to counter; whoever's on the other end, controlling the machine, has absolutely no idea what to do, and their defense is pitiful enough so that Tony scores several hits, forcing the mech to topple another part of the machine.
“Stark, can you blow the explosives as they stand? Are they spread enough to destroy this damned thing?”
"I'm fine in here, and can assist." And for good measure, the mutant whose specialty is wrecking stuff like...a...you know...cannonball, kicks a few more piece of already sparking tech. He does look around for the drone, but its not easy to tell the wreckage bits apart, and he leaves without being anal about it. He runs down the hallway, headed for the sound of distress, aware that Carol must be down.
Were she still human, Carol would likely be dead or at the very best, in a coma. As it is, she coughs up a little blood and narrows her eyes. She's active. She's awake. She's pissed. She's half Kree, so denser and tougher than normal, which is how she is able to be alive, awake, and pissed. She shakes her head and mutters, "Not my best idea." She levers herself to her feet, bracing painfully with the broken ribs.
"I'm here director." she mutters into her comm. She kept ahold of her rifle, and she fires a burst or two now as she withdraws. "All I can say is.. I guess I distracted them a bit. But yeah, I say blow'em. I'm on my way out."
Tony finishes the last one, and looks around. "I'll take care of this, Hill. Get Danvers and Miley outta here, and the only thing they'll be able to salvage is dust." he says, a hint of swagger that hasn't been in his voice in quite sometime.
“Guthrie! Back to t he main corridor! I'm leading Danvers.” It's hard to tell, but Maria's voice has a bit of a tone of relief. Old!Tony is nice to hear. Even if she won't admit it.
“Make them feel like shit for daring to mess with us, Stark,” Hill says through the comm system. “I'm tired of them seeing SHIELD as something to toy with. Cut them off. We'll finish them off in due time.” Through the Panoptes, then, Maria leads Carol back to Sam.
“We're getting out of her. Stark will be right behind us.”
'He'd better be' goes unsaid.
Sam Guthrie waits by the site they went in through, for Carol, holding out an arm for the woman when she shows up. "Care for a ride?" he can sure get them out of the 'area of effect' of the explosion in ample time. He doesn't respond to the jab about Miley...because he may or may not have that song on his ipod on his 'workout' playlist.
"Nice pickup line." mutters Carol as she steps in close to Sam and wraps am arm about his waist. She inhales sharply, but doesn't grunt in pain from the ribs. Yup, she played the... don't act wounded.. game as well as most guys. "Ya mule. Ya." she remarks when she's ready and braced.
Tony looks around, and nods as everyone clears out. Tony straight goes to work, using the HUD in the suit to overlay the entire server array, power leads, and back up systems. Three racks of mini-missiles streak away from Iron Man's body and in seconds are taking everything out simultaneously. That leaves only the structure itself, which gets weakened with a pass through the building turning the structural steel into swiss cheese.
Tony launches himself into the air, and out of one of the windows left unbroken. Taking himself several stories above the building. Taking a few seconds to target, he raises his palms and releases two sustained repulsor blasts from his palms and another, longer more powerful blast from the center of the much larger than normal reactor. It takes seconds, but after that, the building sounds like it groans. It looks like it shudders. Then it collapses in on itself like a bad game of Jenga.
Since the outer towers and the laser grid were given power through the building first, the destruction of the facilities cuts power to those towers and the minimal security provided by the laser grid. “Move, move!” Hill's voice cuts through the comms. “Back to the Quinjet, now!”
She doesn't really mean to come off as harsh. But quite frankly, Sidewinder could have some unknown hidden surprises waiting for them, and though she trusts the three to do their jobs and to do them well, she does not think they're equipped to deal with more than what they managed to do just now.
“The other team has engaged the Sidewinder forces in the Urals,” she says, explaining the sounds of combat heard in the background. “I think they diverted most of their forces there, expecting an attack.” The two Panoptes follow Sam and Carol back to the Quinjet. “Everyone back inside. Back to the Argus.” And as an after thought, “They're doing fine. So no, Agent Danvers, I'm not sending you to see them and help out. Especially not with those ribs.”
“You're all coming home. Good job.” High praise from Hill.
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