Anyway, more story.
Yes. I did make them up. I know... it shows.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:Another hour went by.
The newbs on the list had started spamming in their excitement, threatening to give the game away begging her for the latest data now!. The old hands sat back and waited for her to do her best, whatever that may be. The sense of expectation hung over her like a shadow. This was her chance, and hers alone to do something. Data streamed back fromher sensors and she slurped it all, giggling to herself as a clear image emerged from the static mist on her screen. She could see the tail's touching at their tips, forming a delta that shielded the exhaust. She could see the hazy outline of the cockpit windows, almost eye-to-eye with the pilot himself sitting behind them. Engine intake grills shone up as a pale haze of grey flanking. Sparks shone up on the nose and along the leading edge of both wings. That wasn't even the start.
It sat there, teasing her, staring at her quietly. She could feel it out there, it's silent gaze hovering over her proverbial shoulder. Anika pushed her unease down to her feet, aware that loosing her cool could cost her dearly. Especially when she recalled what she was sitting on top of. Her skin began to crawl in a way that was disturbingly alien for an android. Anika played out a digital symphony on her keyboard, her fingers working as fast as any orchestral maestro as she teased more and more from the datastream, filtering more and more of the noise
It was just sitting, tantalisingly at the edge of her reach.
In a flash of inspiration, she proposed the codename 'Raven' for the Stealth on the list, before promising to have an update soon. Replies came back in acknowledgement, accepting that as the craft's name.
This was someone, here to see her. It wasn't Atalante they'd been interested in, but her and her new prototype. They were baiting her into revealing it's capabilities. Perhaps they reasoned that the reveal of their Stealth program was a small price to pay, to find what was a new technology, inside what might become an adversary's newest reconnaissance craft
It was nice to know that somebody took her seriously, even it was the erstwhile enemy.
A lucious lick of her lips split into a cat like smile as her disk-drives filled.
"Any luck, Anika?"
Mackie's voice dragged her out of hack mode.
"It's still just sitting there," she sighed, tapping at the image onscreen."I've got the hull, but nothing inside."
"Crazy Ivan?" Mackie suggested, sounded hopeful. It'd give him something to do beyond waiting
"Too obvious..."
"Ugh. I hate this!"
Something clattered as he took his frustration out on the cockpit.
"It's a battle of patience," Anika answered, keeping her voice calm.
"Well, mine ran out."
His fingers rapped against the panels in front of him. The sound was painflly loud in the confined space of the cockpit.
Anika's first warning that he was about to do something stupid was the sound of an open radio channel hissing in her earbuds.
"Hey! Gobshite following us. Yeah. You in the Stealth." There was a pause as the transmission propagated across open space. Stunned into silence, Anika watched its energy wave wash over the Stealth, reflecting right back at her."Your momma's so fat, Luke Skywalker mistook her for a moon."
"Mackie!" Anika shrieked, the connection between mind and brain finally being made.
"She's so hairy, Han Solo hired her as a Co-Pilot!"
"Stop it!" she yelled.
"Your mamma's so ugly, she cosplayed as a Slave Leia and won best Hutt instead."
"You're ruining everything you moron!"
"Your momma's so easy, even Biggs could stuff his torpedo in her thermal exhaust port."
And worse of all, he was loving every moment of it. He just didn't care.
"Your mammy's so scummy, the Sarlacc spat her out."
Mackie just ruined everything! Blowing the fact that they knew about the Raven following them with one big puerile joke. If she could've, Anika would've strangled him. Oh, but he was on a roll. With Star Wars now exhausted, he switched to the next thing on his mind.
"Your ma's so ugly, the AMP mistook her for a Lucifer Hawk."
The more momentum he built, the more he began to sound like his sister. Anika slumped over in her seat.
"Your ma's so stupid. When she picked up a Death Note, she wrote her own name on it first to try it out."
A frustrated growl rose out of her throat as she buried her face in her hands. Mackie was cackling merrily at his own jokes, too pleased with himself to care.
"Your ma's so fat, the Chinese guide assumed she'd fallen into the spring of drowned Hippopotamus."
Idiot.She kicked the back of his seat hard enough to send a shock up her own leg.
"She's so huge, NERV classified her as the eighteenth Angel."
Anika exhaled her irritation in one long breath, before glancing at her monitors.
"They're leaving, Mackie!" she snapped at him.
And that only encouraged him to keep going.
"Your ma's so desperate, she had to rape the tentacle monster to get some action."
It echoed out into the void, his mad laughter chasing after the receding signature until it'd vanished entirely from her scope.
"You can stop now," said Anika, her voice dripping with disappointment. "They're gone. Idiot."
He was proud of it. Like a puppy that'd just taken a shit all over her carpet. He'd ruined everything, and didn't feel one iota of guilt. He was still laughing to himself, even as he tried to smother it with his hands. There was nothing for Anika to do but sit and fume while she plotted revenge....
Lebia was already making a dash out to try and meet it. Chances were, she'd pick it up and reveal all the glorious details that Mackie had stolen from her. Nobody would know what she'd done, and he'd ruined it for her.
Anika sighed again, taking a moment to squashed the last dregs of her anger. "Thanks Mackie. You ruined it all on me,"
"Yeah well. If all you wanted was an autopilot, you should've bought one from Orion instead of asking me to fly."
That hung in the air for a moment, Anika's thoughts stopping dead. Her lips pursed into a sour pout as she set the last of her data to transfer. And Mackie's selfishness had ruined it for her, just because he was bored. Madboys were all the same - once they got caught in the zone or got bored, they just couldn't think of others.
Well, she thought, Another 32 hours to Ultima. Then 5 on to LBB. Still over a day and a half to go. This was going to be a long journey for the both of them.
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Yes. I did make them up. I know... it shows.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?