Bird snippet part 2

It was the next morning before Torg and Ralph could get the very tiny clue to the lab back at headquarters. Good old Roanoke, Indiana. The HQ was a converted First Savings and Loan of Roanoke Trust. An old bank with lots of office space and a vault built from slabs of steel that belonged to the former U.S.S. Indianapolis and U.S.S. West Virgina. Both battleships that fought in World War II. If you could manage to get through three feet of steel battleship armor, two feet of solid copper, another three feet of armor, then a foot thick lining of steel reinforced thermal concrete, you were badass. But so far the vault remained impregnable. According to legend it took some science and engineering to fit the pieces together and weld them solid. Some said strange alchemy was involved, but that was just a fairy tale. The smart boys used a form of induction and chemical welding to make the seams flow together. Simple mathematics, electricity, and chemical engineering.

Sarah Holt was at the front security station with her husband. Both were very polite but stringent with procedures. Though having her cats in the building as mousers and therapy cats did help morale. Still, she was terribly fond of middle age siege weapons and had several miniatures arranged around the security offices. Her favorite was a scale model of a Portuguese Trebuchet she swore would hoist a fish some thirty feet into the air. Neither Ralph nor Torg wanted to find out why.

Torg went up the three steps and through the portcullis turnstile as Ralph waited.. One person at a time. No exceptions. Torg slid his badge through the slot and typed in his passphrase on the screen. He slid his thumb over the scanner and looked through the eyepiece to have his retina scanned as well. All standard procedure. He was then given another badge that varied in color from day to day, even shift to shift if the security level was high. The door to Torg's left popped open and as he entered and closed the steel behind him Ralph followed the same routine. By the time Ralp made it through the third separation air lock Torg had grabbed two cups of coffee and was waiting at their desks.

“Gets longer every time we go through.” Torg said as he sat the coffees down on the planning table. The lights were bright as usual but far less harsh. New LED bulb technology. “Miss the old days when we ran everything out of that downtown, tall towering bank building. Man was that an old piece.”

“Tell me about it.” Ralph took the plastic packet out of the evidence kit and logged it on the flat terminal. “Time to get this...this...feather? Over to the Jonathan at the lab.” In which Ralph meant the adjacent reinforced room next to the giant vault.

“I don't trust that guy. He's too serious.” Torg, sitting in his leather computer chair, leaned his head back and sipped his java. “Damn, thats rubbed the spot.” His American cliche's always needed help. “Anyways, Johnny babies his toys like a minna bird minds 'er chicks. He's just so 'Abbeyfied' about it all.” The Aussie drawl was coming out a bit thicker now that the day was winding down and they could relax.

Ralph nodded. “Kids will do that.” As he finished the file and sent the request over by internal document and email. They were separate from the Internet here. For security reason. “I'm headed over.”

“Good luck and tell Cathe I said hello. Okay, mate?”

“Will do. And it's, 'Hit the spot.', you Jackaroo.” Ralph replied with both a correction and a tease.

“Roight, Yank. Got it.” Torg leaned forward, placed his coffee on the desk and started typing away on the reports. It was going to be yet another long day.