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Canon: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Summary: Keith's relationship with subtlety is rocky; he tends to have two modes, "off/quiet" and "300%". When he decides to do something, it doesn't happen by halves, and deciding to bail on the training program to go chase rumors, lies, and dreams in the desert was no exception - why leave quietly when you can "cover your tracks" in a blaze of glory and "what the fuck was that"?
He wasn’t great at programming, not enough to completely circumvent security of the tier that was on the records and servers. The best he’d managed was finding some tools that could be used for it, and even those would only last until some of the security and maintenance routines in the computers did their checks and found the traces.
Physically breaking in to the records room was the “easier” part.
He also wasn’t great at decoding, especially not on a deadline of fifteen minutes at most, which was why there were a few thin cards of hard drives wrapped up in material that would interfere with scanners and locators being shoved into his duffel bag; two might be relevant to what he was looking for, three had been chosen at random to make it harder to tell what he was after. Just about all of his worldly belongings worth keeping were split between it, his coat pockets, and a backpack. He’d pre-packed and prepared before he went on his breaking-and-entering hit-and-run mission.
He had five minutes left when he left the building, calmly walking over to where the wall was. He waited the two minutes for the EMP’s to start going off - one in the records room, one in the hangar, one in personnel, one in the morale and welfare office, and three small ones spaced around the wall that’d scramble parts of security just long enough for someone to climb and vault over the wall and run. The spots of things shorting out and going silent were punctuated by small explosions; none of those were anything majorly destructive, and they were placed in a way that’d read more as petty vindictiveness at workstations he hated and making things difficult for instructors and commanders he clashed with than any other pattern. (He'd be lying if he said there wasn't any petty vindictiveness.)
The sirens and shouting were hitting full-tilt as he made it out to some of the narrow canyon trails that’d put him out of view of the cameras as they came back on; there’d be anywhere from ten minutes to two hours with them searching the base trying to ID and corner the culprit, and scrambling perimeter patrols to spread out. He didn’t stop running and climbing until he was a mile and a half away, had dropped several small bursts of pepper spray on his trail with silent apologies to any tracking dogs they might have, and had made it up a straight bluff and onto a sheltered ledge that’d be hard to see from above or below but give some view of the landscape out a narrow window, base and all.
The sirens and alert lights were going, there were the lights of search vehicles spread out across the desert, and the entire base was a kicked hornet’s nest. They’d probably be looking for him for months, if not longer.
He checked his watch; the first aerial sweep would be passing overhead any time now, and it’d be about ten minutes for ground search to pass where he was. He had a few days’ worth of food and water in the duffel bag, along with field gear; all he really needed to do now was wait for the search to sweep past him, give them time to do a few more sweeps of that area of desert, then slip out when they started fanning out further trying to track likely avenues of escape down. There’d probably be angry people in uniform showing up at his family’s home by morning, and staying there for a few weeks looking for him...which was another small vindictive bonus.
Two more minutes. He didn’t usually drink much, but he’d smuggled one bottle of vaguely okay beer out wrapped in towels in the duffel bag, and he managed to get it out and have the lid off by the time the fireworks mortars he’d rigged in random places around the base started going off.
There were a lot of weird charges to family accounts over the last week that he hadn’t gone to an incredible amount of trouble to cover trail on; his relatives didn’t check their bookkeeping often enough to catch it in time, the military would probably notice it first and there’d be no question who was responsible - but it’d still be a dead end on the paper trail, since he had no intention of going near any of that ever again. He’d had a bright future with a lot of potential as a pilot. There’d been talk of fast-tracking him into an officer’s position, possibly command. He’d spent his entire life fixated on that goal, a sense of purpose and a mission he couldn’t have dreamed of deviating from. His entire past life and everything to do with that future was going up in smoke, sirens, and the engine-hum of aerial search drones.
He’d expected it to sting, more, but there was no feeling of loss; just an odd sense of freedom to it, even if all he had to go on was suspicions and strange dreams. The stone cranny was somehow more comfortable than his bed back in the dorms, and he raised the bottle to the bursts of fireworks going off over the base with a vicious smile.
Summary: Keith's relationship with subtlety is rocky; he tends to have two modes, "off/quiet" and "300%". When he decides to do something, it doesn't happen by halves, and deciding to bail on the training program to go chase rumors, lies, and dreams in the desert was no exception - why leave quietly when you can "cover your tracks" in a blaze of glory and "what the fuck was that"?
He wasn’t great at programming, not enough to completely circumvent security of the tier that was on the records and servers. The best he’d managed was finding some tools that could be used for it, and even those would only last until some of the security and maintenance routines in the computers did their checks and found the traces.
Physically breaking in to the records room was the “easier” part.
He also wasn’t great at decoding, especially not on a deadline of fifteen minutes at most, which was why there were a few thin cards of hard drives wrapped up in material that would interfere with scanners and locators being shoved into his duffel bag; two might be relevant to what he was looking for, three had been chosen at random to make it harder to tell what he was after. Just about all of his worldly belongings worth keeping were split between it, his coat pockets, and a backpack. He’d pre-packed and prepared before he went on his breaking-and-entering hit-and-run mission.
He had five minutes left when he left the building, calmly walking over to where the wall was. He waited the two minutes for the EMP’s to start going off - one in the records room, one in the hangar, one in personnel, one in the morale and welfare office, and three small ones spaced around the wall that’d scramble parts of security just long enough for someone to climb and vault over the wall and run. The spots of things shorting out and going silent were punctuated by small explosions; none of those were anything majorly destructive, and they were placed in a way that’d read more as petty vindictiveness at workstations he hated and making things difficult for instructors and commanders he clashed with than any other pattern. (He'd be lying if he said there wasn't any petty vindictiveness.)
The sirens and shouting were hitting full-tilt as he made it out to some of the narrow canyon trails that’d put him out of view of the cameras as they came back on; there’d be anywhere from ten minutes to two hours with them searching the base trying to ID and corner the culprit, and scrambling perimeter patrols to spread out. He didn’t stop running and climbing until he was a mile and a half away, had dropped several small bursts of pepper spray on his trail with silent apologies to any tracking dogs they might have, and had made it up a straight bluff and onto a sheltered ledge that’d be hard to see from above or below but give some view of the landscape out a narrow window, base and all.
The sirens and alert lights were going, there were the lights of search vehicles spread out across the desert, and the entire base was a kicked hornet’s nest. They’d probably be looking for him for months, if not longer.
He checked his watch; the first aerial sweep would be passing overhead any time now, and it’d be about ten minutes for ground search to pass where he was. He had a few days’ worth of food and water in the duffel bag, along with field gear; all he really needed to do now was wait for the search to sweep past him, give them time to do a few more sweeps of that area of desert, then slip out when they started fanning out further trying to track likely avenues of escape down. There’d probably be angry people in uniform showing up at his family’s home by morning, and staying there for a few weeks looking for him...which was another small vindictive bonus.
Two more minutes. He didn’t usually drink much, but he’d smuggled one bottle of vaguely okay beer out wrapped in towels in the duffel bag, and he managed to get it out and have the lid off by the time the fireworks mortars he’d rigged in random places around the base started going off.
There were a lot of weird charges to family accounts over the last week that he hadn’t gone to an incredible amount of trouble to cover trail on; his relatives didn’t check their bookkeeping often enough to catch it in time, the military would probably notice it first and there’d be no question who was responsible - but it’d still be a dead end on the paper trail, since he had no intention of going near any of that ever again. He’d had a bright future with a lot of potential as a pilot. There’d been talk of fast-tracking him into an officer’s position, possibly command. He’d spent his entire life fixated on that goal, a sense of purpose and a mission he couldn’t have dreamed of deviating from. His entire past life and everything to do with that future was going up in smoke, sirens, and the engine-hum of aerial search drones.
He’d expected it to sting, more, but there was no feeling of loss; just an odd sense of freedom to it, even if all he had to go on was suspicions and strange dreams. The stone cranny was somehow more comfortable than his bed back in the dorms, and he raised the bottle to the bursts of fireworks going off over the base with a vicious smile.
