Her first mission. Ever. The stealth fighter couldn't help but be a little nervous. Of course, she'd been talking Alpha's ear off for the entire ten-hour flight, but that didn't ease any of her worries. She'd been flying above dense jungle for the majority of her trip. Crashing would be bad. Probably why the enemy had set up their headquarters there.
"Vision 2-7-3-3 to base. Target is within range. Initiating radio silence for approximately two hours. Vision out."
"Rodger… be careful out there, Tera."
Milliseconds after the last transmission, Tera cut her radio and everything else that could even remotely be used to track her. It was instinct at this point. Same with her cloaking device and the extra cooling system in her engines. It didn't even matter that it was broad daylight - she was completely invisible regardless.
All she had to do was go in, drop the biologics, and get out.
After circling a few times to mentally prepare herself, she caught sight of what she was supposed to be bombing… a bunch of small structures. Full of unconverted humans, no doubt. But they also didn't have any weapons. Thank Chrysler. She re-angled her flight path, more than confident in her ability to take the place out.
She'd only be visible on radar for a couple seconds, when she opened her bomb bay. A little glitch. It wouldn't impact anything.
She was directly above the cluster. She let the panels underneath her slide open, dropping the weapon before quickly closing them again. A small cloud of white powder billowed up from the drop site. Mission accomplished. Now to get the heck out of there.
A loud rush of air greeted her. And then pain. Fiery pain. She couldn't feel her wing.
"MAYDAY! TRANSMITTING COORDINATES! I'M GOING DOWN!"
xXx
As soon as Arkanu had heard about the plane crash, she got to work. It wasn't often she got the chance to help or possibly pull parts from what she liked to call an 'outsider', especially not airfaring vehicles. Finding the coordinates of the craft's fall, she had grabbed her tool kit, beckoned her two droids to follow her, and trekked to the point of the crash.
"Bad idea, Ark," the strangest of beings walked after her, struggling to find good footholds in the thick Brazilian jungle. It was humanoid, but robotic, and towered over Arkanu threefold. "If this is a government plane they'll have bugs all over it."
"I should have told you to get supplies from town," the bird-like alien grumbled, helping one of the droids as it got stuck in the undergrowth.
"And waste energon on milk runs? No thank you."
"I didn't get to chose that my teammate runs on something with such limited supply. You'd do better surrendering."
The robot behind her tensed. "I'd be reduced to the scrap every other citizen on this blasted planet is."
"Viperflash," Arkanu pointed a talon to a charred line of wreckage cutting into the forest floor before her. This was no doubt the site where the plane went down. It was immediately apparent that the plane was not a civilian. Its angular lines and black paint all too clearly belonged to a stealth aircraft.
Taking one glance at the crash site, the bot following Arkanu slammed a huge hand down to block the avian and her droids. "That doesn't look good."
"Whether for parts or for a patient, it has to be investigated," the bird shrugged, climbing over Viperflash's fingers and into the scar of earth. Careful not to step on either of the two droids in front of her, Viperflash followed reluctantly.
"Still alive, as far as I can tell," Arkanu said, inspecting the craft with a keen eye. "What do you think?"
"Salvageable. We can't do much for it with our medical supplies. Just leave it for Them to figure out."
"Not happening. It's bad off… I'm bringing it to base. Let me check it over for trackers and bugs. You help H and Skid gather what bits and bobs broke off in the crash."
Viperflash was having none of it, but grabbed a nearby piece of wreckage anyways. "To base? You're going to get us all killed!"
"You're a mechanical medic, and I'm a medical mechanic. This is our job."
"At this point our job is to survive and avoid being captured. If we're going to accomplish that, we have to leave this thing be."
"You're no better than a Decepticon."
The argument was won. For now. Arkanu knew it by the disgruntled look her partner returned to her. The next few hours were spent picking up the pieces of the rubble, stripping the craft of anything and everything that looked suspicious, and dragging it back to a bunker-type structure. It was then and only then that the two droids, Viperflash, and Arkanu started repairing what they could on the plane with their limited supplies.