Fic: Alienated, Chapter 8b
Stupid LJ. This one had to be split into two parts. Part B, for your reading pleasure.
Ironhide followed DiNozzo out of the Autobot hanger and assigned Skids and Mudflap extra patrols. Maybe that would keep their processors focused on the task at hand, rather than the NCIS squishy’s drinking game. Seeing Tony safely ensconced back to his quarters, Ironhide transformed and drove out to the shooting range. He found Ziva waiting impatiently for him.
“Ziva.”
“I thought you hand an internal chronometer, Ironhide. Surely you can be on time with one of those, yes?” she lightly teased.
“I do, femme. I had to take care of a discipline problem, perpetrated by your man DiNozzo,” Ironhide gruffly complained as he transformed out of his alt mode.
Ziva rolled her eyes. “Yes, Tony has a way of getting into trouble. What was he doing this time, if you would care to tell me.”
“Have you ever heard of Earth games called hall ball and beer pong?”
Ziva groaned loudly. “I am going to kill him. He might be my partner and my friend, but I swear I will kill him with a single paper clip! And will not even leave a mark!”
“Good. Maybe you can explain their purpose to me,” Ironhide answered.
Ziva threw her hands up and began pacing the safe zone of the target range. “There is no purpose! Hall ball and beer pong are two of the stupidest games on the face of this Earth! And I do not mean that in the figurative sense! Do you have any idea how violent of a game hall ball can be?”
“No. Like I said before: I don’t know what it is!” Ironhide “politely” reminded her.
Scoffing, Ziva stopped her pacing momentarily. “Hall ball is soccer meshed with American football and a hint of rugby, indoors, with a broomball. In a hallway. You do the math. I could punch him in the face right now.”
“Would you settle for just shooting the slag out of some target drones?” Ironhide asked, his cannons spinning and whirling to life.
“At this point, I would like to launch Tony at the target drones,” Ziva mumbled under her breath.
“That would be fun,” Ironhide laughed. “I think Prime might have my aft if we actually did. Be worth it, but self restraint is a bitch.”
Ziva nodded her hearty acquiescence. “Agreed!”
“Instead of getting our processors in a sling, let’s just shoot Barrett and Stinger instead,” Ironhide said, patting his cannons with the opposite hands.
It took a couple of seconds for Ziva’s brain to make the connection. She looked at the weapons specialist, incredulous. “Wait. You namedyour cannons?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with that?” Ironhide asked, sounding slightly hurt. “You humans name your pets, and other inanimate objects. Why shouldn’t I name the two things that have kept me online for so long?”
“There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that I would not expect something like that from someone like you. But, in any case, they are good choices in names. Appropriate. A high caliber vehicle mounted gun and an anti-aircraft missile system. I like it.”
“Thanks,” Ironhide mumbled. He quickly added, “Not that I needed your approval, femme. Now, shall we?”
Thunderous booms rained across the base as Ironhide showed Ziva how his systems worked. Ironhide, though not really a vain mech in the sense of looks (he did choose a black alt mode), did have a healthy dose of male pride. If he were pressed by Prime or Ratchet, he would admit he was showing off, too. Ziva seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, her only wish that she could be up with Ironhide as he fired, rolled and twisted. The Mossad officer marveled at how gracefully he moved, given his significant mass and obvious immense strength.
An hour later, Ironhide’s cannons were smoking and the target drones were reduced to small piles of rubbish. The Topkick scooped them all up and dumped the refuse unceremoniously in the recycle bin erected for range use. Folding himself down into his alt mode once again, he offered Ziva a ride back to base.
“I have some things I need to take care of. I’ll give you a lift back to the human hanger, though,” he said through his speakers.
“Thank you, Ironhide. I enjoyed the target practice. Perhaps tomorrow, we might be able to find some appropriately sized squishy weapons. I do not wish to get rusty,” Ziva responded.
Ironhide laughed. “You got it, femme.”
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McGee tossed a tennis ball against the wall. Several hours after finally cracking Mitchell’s encryption and the geeks were nowhere closer to solving the riddle of his code. Glen had gone in search of a doughnut, and Maggie was sitting with her forehead resting on her forearms.
“God, even that magic program of yours didn’t even help, McGee! This is ridiculous!” Maggie whined pitifully. Frustration was at an all time high.
“What are we missing? What are we not seeing?” McGee vented as he got up to pace, still bouncing the tennis ball off the ground. Playing with something in his hands when he was stuck was a habit he had picked up from DiNozzo during Tony’s short tenure as team leader. Apparently, it was the only habit that stuck.
Maggie groaned, her voice muffled by her arms. “Nothing! This guy was a crypto for the Navy for a reason. He’s just better than us!”
“Yeah, but no one’s this perfect. Look, there’s three of us, and we’re all relatively good at what we do. There was only one of Mitchell. So, either he’s an alien too…”
Maggie’s head shot up from its previous rested position. “Or he had help from one! McGee, you’re a genius! I see it now!”
“What? What do you see?” Glen came scurrying back into the room, a large plate of doughnuts in hand.
“Oh, good! Glen, remember when I brought you that SD card of info from the Pentagon?” Maggie asked excitedly.
“Yeah, the one you were convinced you’d go to prison for the rest of your life for showing me?” Glen asked, setting down his doughnuts. McGee quirked his left eyebrow in the Australian’s direction.
“Another time, McGee, but yeah, that one,” Maggie said. Turning back to Glen, she said, “Remember how those files were encrypted? You know, how you had to substitute different letters for each other?”
“Yeah, I do, but this doesn’t look like that,” Glen said, confusion marring his features.
“Well, it’s not specifically, but it’s like that. Look!” Maggie pulled up a random entry. “Look. 2p7;13L5-29a31m61-11x2-11m13a7;. It was all the letters throwing us off, but they’re actually part of the code!” Maggie’s excited expression was met by two confused looks. Shaking her head, she grabbed a laser pointer. “The first one. ‘2p7’ means ‘two plus seven’.”
“That’s nine,” Glen said.
“Right! And what’s the ninth letter of the alphabet?”
“’I’,” Glen answered.
“Okay, so we do the next one. ‘13L5. That means ‘thirteen less five’.”
“Eight. ‘H’,” McGee said, grabbing a piece of paper to scribble his findings on.
Looking closer, Glen said, “Hey. Those are all prime numbers up there.”
“Yeah, and what’s Optimus’ title?”
“Prime!” Glen and McGee said together.
“I don’t know if that has anything to do with this, but it’s definitely a coincidence,” Maggie said.
McGee rolled his eyes, his eyes shifting to the code from Mitchell’s hard drive to the paper where he was doing his work. “Don’t tell Gibbs that. He doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
“Maggie, this is fantastic! How did you manage to figure this out?” Glen asked.
The blonde smiled brightly. “I don’t know. McGee said something, and then my brain just went back to that night I invaded your house.”
“I’m amazed,” Glen said, giving Maggie a hug.
Meanwhile, McGee had finished his work the first sentence. “Uh, guys? Guys!”
“Yeah, McGee?”
“I translated out the first sentence,” he said, pen and paper held loosely in his hand.
“Great! What does it say?” Maggie asked, still bouncing with energy. McGee handed the paper wordlessly over to her.
Both she and Glen appeared at McGee’s side and the three computer nerds read as rapidly as their eyes would allow. The dread of what they were seeing immediately replaced the elation of beating some seriously good encryption. The only thing McGee, Glen and Maggie were able to correctly assume from what the last partition of Mitchell’s hard drive was telling them was that things were about to get a hell of a lot more complicated for all parties involved.
“Somebody better go get Gibbs,” Glen said, his mood going sour as rotten milk. “What? Don’t look at me! I am not going to die a virgin!”
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Next Up: The computer geeks lay out what they’ve found, and suffice to say it’s not good news. For anyone.