Dark World

Chapter 13 - Pheonix

As the car pulled up next to Dipper and Pacifica Mabel put her hand on Dipper's shoulder as her face looked ahead fearfully. The headlights cut through dark night and pouring rain as the windows rolled down. To Dipper's supreme shock, he realized it was Stanford Pines at the wheel and Stanley Pines riding shotgun. "Get in now!" Ford shouted commandingly. Dipper knew better than to argue. They all piled in the back. Dipper hopped in on the far side, while Mabel took the middle and Pacifica, took the far side.

Grunkle Stan gasped. "Wha...What happened?!? My little snapdragon!" Stanley turned around to face Pacifica crossly. "What happened to my aircraft?!?" Pacifica was too busy pulling out her laptop and running a program to respond. Dipper answered for her. "She piloted bravely and capably. She got us out of there alive." Stanley took one last rueful glance at the craft as Ford peeled out on the street heading out of town for the barricade.

Pacifica pulled out a headset from the backpack and paired it quickly with her coms system on her phone. "Ghost to Pheonix, we need backup. We're heading for the western barricade." Her coms remained silent for a long suspenseful ten seconds. Then the headset crackled to life. "Phoenix answering Your call Please authenticate." Pacifica replied, "Whisky Delta November Foxtrot." "Authentication confirmed blondie," the voice said with amusement. It was now for the first time Dipper was close enough to realize the voice of 'Pheonix' belonged to a woman. Pacifica now pulled the funny-looking plant in the bell jar out of her backpack. Then to Dipper's utter surprise Pacifica pulled a USB cable out and hooked it up the base of the plant pot. She clacked away loudly on the keyboard. Pacifica responded on the headset. "Ok, I'm pushing Authenticated GO codes now. Can you boost the gain on the broadcast range?" There was silence for a moment before Pheonix responded. "Ok, the gain boost is at peak wattage. It should boost you're signal out to twenty miles now." Ford looked in the mirror. "Dang! That's impressive!" Dipper was not sure what the system was or its parameters so he had little frame of reference to compare. He knew enough to know that if great uncle Ford was impressed it was probably legit. Dipper guessed, "Does the plant somehow help boost your signal?" Pacifica grinned. "Close. The plant is the transmitter and receiver. It communicates with the organic micro nanobots from the green dropper I had earlier. My phone can pick them up when I'm close but this plant can pick them up from much farther. I am using it to push the codes to Pheonix. She can boost my broadcast range to pick up a drone with the go codes." Dipper nodded make sense of most of it. "Where on earth did you get this tech?!? It doesn't sound like it's from Earth." Pacifica smirked, not 'our' earth but from Pheonix's dimension."

Pacifica's eyes lit up. "I got one!! It's an MQ-9 Reaper Tag VRDZF854379Ø at 39.0519, -77.0152 at 6587 feet altitude bearing N.N.W. at 187 knots. Kband satellite signal strength is strong pushing at -63dBm." Pheonix responded on the headset while Dipper listened in next to Pacifica. "She's all yours. I'm naming it Little Morty." Pacifica snorted with amusement. "I'm sure your little brother will appreciate that." The radio crackled again, "That whiney vindictive little turd tries to steal my charging cable for my phone one more time and he will be in orbit." Pacifica laughed and smiled. Dipper smiled just seeing her smile. Then he turned to see Mabel smirking. His face went neutral. "What?" Dipper asked. "Oh, nothing?" said Mabel in a voice that was anything but convincing. Dipper shook his head.

Pacifica spoke up. "I have control of the Drone. It's circling above the city in range now at two thousand feet. We just need to give it a strike coordinate or a path to clear. I have uploaded our real-time coordinates that it can track and it will have marked the mechanized military units on IFF. Dipper asked, "Whats IFF?" Ford answered. "It's an identification system that uses a transponder. It's typically used in aircraft or vehicles as a way to identify non-hostiles. It stands for Identify Freind or Foe." Dipper nodded making sense of the information.