Author's Note- Hi you all, I have a fluffy little piece for you this morning. I hope that you enjoy it.
G is for Geek Net
When Dynamite had started working at the Piston Peaks, she had made a whole lot of assumptions. Some of them, like the fact Blade kind of had a stick up his aft when it came to safety proved to be true. Others, like the idea that Maru didn't have a sense of humor, proved to be completely off base. One of the things of the initial impressions that proved to be wildly wrong was the assumption that their jump plane was lonely.
By the time Dynamite had become the team leader, it had finally dawned on her that Cabbie was monitoring at least 6 and sometimes as many as 14 radio channels…at the same time… When he was hooked up to his big radio system he was participating in 4 conversations, simultaneously. It was a skill that left Dynamite in awe because she usually became task saturated trying to keep track of three radio challenges (the general air attack, jumper, and Cabbie's private channels). Cabbie knew this, so he tended filter and summarize information for her, so it wasn't too surprising for her to get a message from him as her team headed home from the fire line.
"Dynamite, would you mind making a quick stop on your way back on the barn."
"Sure, what do you need?" The ATV barely managed to stifle a yawn. After a night in the woods, she was really going to enjoy a power wash and catching a nap on her own sleeping mat.
"A grounder perspective." The former warplane said with an implied shrug. "Let me know when you get to the Swinging Bridge Camp and Picnic site."
"Roger that. Dynamite out." Dynamite looked around and realized that her team was less than 500 yards away from the Swinging Bridge Campsite turn off. She glanced up and spotted a familiar set of twin tails circling above them. The ATV snickered, wondering just how long their jump plane had been shadowing them. He must have either used his ninja skills to sneak up on them, or her team had been a whole lot more exhausted than she had realized. Giving the red 51 in the wing one more glance, Dynamite gave her full attention to the rest of her team. "So, boys it looks like our Uncle has a couple of tasks for us to get done."
The detour was an easy one to make, and honestly, the whole group was due for a quick refueling break anyway. As they drove in Dynamite scanned her surroundings looking for whatever had captured Cabbies attention. There were a few more dead and dying trees than most of the other campsites, but it had been a warmer than normal year so the number of snags was within an acceptable range.
"Okay Cabbie, we are here. What are we looking…" Dynamite started her report as she parked herself on the edge of a clearing, but was interrupted by a dozer staring trunk of one of the dead trees.
"HM, THAT IS ODD?"
"Avalanche, what are you seeing?" The plane above them asked.
"AN INSECT THAT I DON'T RECOGNIZE."
"Can you describe it?"Cabbie pushed, a nervous energy creeping into his voice.
Avalanche opened his mouth, but Drip beat him to the punch. "For one thing is pretty darn big and it has really, really long antenna that are black and white stripes, and they have little white spots on its wings."
"I was what I was worried about." The old plane's tone made it pretty clear that he really wanted to swear. "Looks like I didn't call you out here Chief for nothing."
"What do we have?" The helicopter's blades thundered as he came in for the approach.
"Looks like we have an Asian Longhorn Beetle infestation."
"Good catch."
"I wouldn't have even been watching it if the Forest Service hadn't given me the heads up." Cabbie wiggled his wings above them. "Apparently the beetles have been hitchhiking into their campgrounds on contaminated firewood."
"What are our options?" Dynamite interjected herself back into the conversation, because as much as she loved her flying co-workers, this was probably this particular issue was probably land in front of her tires.
"The chemical treating the forest is going to be way out of our budget, and it is only partially effective anyway." Cabbie paused for a long moment before he voiced his true opinion. "I think our only option is to burn this part of the forest to prevent the insect from spreading, inspecting the other campgrounds to make sure that they haven't been infected, and then banning vehicles from bringing in their own firewood to prevent new outbreaks."
"IS BANNING OUTSIDE FIREWORK GOING TO BE FINE WITH THE HIGHER-UPS?" Avalanche didn't spell out who he meant by higher-ups, but he didn't need to. The only person in the park that would want to micromanage this particular scenario was the Superintendent.
"Naw, he will be fine with it." The aircraft chuckled. "After all, banning outside firewood means that he can charge people through the nose for it at concessions."
"True…" Blade practically spat. "Which just means that we have to convince him to allow us to light a piece of his precious forests on fire to prevent the pest from spreading."
"What the Super doesn't know won't hurt him." Cabbie shrugged. "And if we are really put in a pickle we can ask the Forest Service boys to start a controlled burn on their side of the fence and let it run a little wild."
"How about we ask Jammer first?" Dynamite cut in, imagining just how many miles of fire line her team would have to cut in order to make sure that the fire went 'wild' in the correct direction. "I am sure that he could arrange for this campsite to be closed for maintenance mid-week. We could do a controlled burn then."
"And Cad?" Blade asked, clearly considering the option.
"What about him? He hasn't paid attention to the causes for fires, as long as we get them knocked back before too many park visitors complain. Why would he change is MO now?
"True, true." Blade admitted thoughtfully, and then the helitanker launched into his orders. "Well Dynamite, hassle your team back to base. Once you have managed to make yourself presentable, we will get Jammer on the horn and see if we can come up with a plan to nip this infestation before it becomes too big of a problem."
"Wilco. Dynamite out." Dynamite cut the radio channel and turned her attention to her jumpers. "You heard the boss. Let's vamooses back to base. We need to go get cleaned up for company."
Term- Geek Net- There are a whole lot of groups that talk to each other using radios, but when you are working a fire things get particularly nerdy when Park Service and Forest Service personal start chatting. They tend to pass on a lot of technical information back and forth between them, such as giving each other a heads up about bark beetle infestation. From my experience both the Park Service and the Forest Service personal tend to be long-winded when they get on the horn so I suspected that Cabbie would be the only one on base who would have the patience to wade through shear about of information to get the nuggets of useful information. As a result, Blade is happy to leave him with that responsibility.