TITLE: Bogey, part 1
SERIES: Imperfection Deviation
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money :)
Author's Voice of Warning (aka Author's Note):
English is not my first language; it's German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are...
FEEDBACK: Loved
BETA: okamimyrrhibis
Bogey (bogy, bogie): Military. an unidentified aircraft or missile, esp. one detected as a blip on a radar screen
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
When he was born on the first of January, 1970, his father had already been declared dead. Lost in space. Of course, none of the officials ever lost a word about it to anyone of the family members. The official statement given to the family of Samuel Walker, commander of the Ghost-1, top secret space vessel, was that he had been killed in a test flight, along with four other crew members. Those other four families had been lied to as well.
Kyle Samuel Walker had never known his father, had only seen pictures. He had been told by others what a great man he had been. He had believed him to be nothing but a normal astronaut who had never made it into space on an Apollo mission. Apollo 11 had been launched the year his father had died; the first men on the moon. Kyle had watched Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to the moon, and he had watched avidly every time something about space flight had come on the news. He had dreamed about space, about seeing and going where his father had never made it. He had had space ship model kits, had been an avid fan of Star Trek in every incarnation, and he had wanted to be on the shuttle missions.
His mother had never remarried. His brother, three at the time their father had died, had gone into aeronautics himself. Today Thomas was working for a private company and bringing in the big bucks. Married, two children, a dog, and his house near the border of Canada. Kyle only saw him at family festivities. The last time had been his aunt's birthday.
Kyle himself had wanted to become an astronaut. Space had fascinated him; his father's career had been his guide. His bachelor's degree in engineering was a first step, his graduate degree the next. He joined NASA and trained hard. He wanted to be in space; he wanted to be where he believed his father had never made it. Kyle had seen the commemorative plaque of the astronauts who had died that day in 1969. He would honor his father by making it into space.
He received the silver lapel pin when he completed astronaut candidate training. Once he had flown in space, he had received a gold pin. His active-duty military status got him a special qualification badge after participation on a spaceflight.
He had reached it all. He had been away from Earth.
Kyle had never married. He had had a steady girl-friend for ten years, but it had broken up over his refusal to marry Trisha. He had liked the more open way of living together. She had wanted his name, a ring and children. Their ways had parted just before their tenth anniversary.
The day he was called to meet a man named Tom Banachek, Kyle Walker's life changed forever.
It was early spring and Kyle had just completed a round of refreshment training on the shuttle simulator. He had been selected as a possible commander for a new mission, transporting two satellites into space. The call from Banachek had surprised him, but he had been interested.
Banachek came to meet him just twenty-four hours later, in his home outside Broken Springs, a small town with an even smaller airport, but a place Kyle loved a lot. Tom Banachek was a tall man, with a receding hairline, a mustache, and dressed in a smart looking gray suit. He had carried a briefcase, nothing else. Had Kyle met him on the street, he would have said middle-aged business man.
Today he knew Banachek was anything but.
That day in spring was the day he heard the truth about his father, about the mission in 1969, about the cover-up of something incredible, and about the Ghost-2 mission to retrieve an alien vessel.
Kyle knew he had to fly this ship, the sister ship to his father's. Thirty-eight years had passed since that day and a million things had changed. He would be on that flight, be it as commander or simply as a communications officer; he didn't care.
He said 'yes' to it all, to the top secrecy, to keeping his mouth shut, to the danger of ending up lost in space, to the possibility of death.
This was it for him.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The Ghost-2 mission had been under Banachek's command from the get-go. The moment things had come together he had been in charge. The ship hadn't even been built yet.
Now, two years later, two months after bringing in Kyle Walker as the commander, it was getting close to the point where the launch was just a matter of the right time.
Banachek leaned back in his chair and looked out over the rugged landscape outside his window. Choosing the high Arctic hadn't been a matter of personal preferences or good weather conditions. It had been more pragmatic. The first Ghost had been built and sent into space here over forty years ago. The operations center was still here and it had only taken some refurbishment, dusting off the shelves and installing a whole new set of a lot more advanced computer systems.
Well, more or less.
Banachek smiled as he remembered coming to a place where his predecessors had worked on the first manned space flight into the solar system. This had been the place where people who had known so many more secrets than other top secret holders could ever guess had pushed humanity forward. A lot of technology had been based on the alien creature kept eternally in ice. Backward engineering had been the top game back then.
The place had looked like an old and hollow sore underneath the deceivingly innocent surface of the Arctic. It had been and still was a difficult to reach spot, rugged and wild and even the Inuit hunters never set foot here. The wind howled on a good day and threatened to tear even the rocks from their foundations throughout the bad ones.
The base as such appeared like a large animal hunkered down to wait out the never-ending bad weather – bad compared to any place Banachek had ever been – and the old launching site had been partially reclaimed by the local fauna and flora.
Their priority had been the installation of the new systems and Banachek knew they couldn't have done it alone. The Autobots had been a tremendous help, working out systems that interfaced their technology with the humans'. Quarters had been restored, heat, electricity and water had been reconnected, and new systems now recycled water inside the plant. The launching site as such had only been redone after a year, when the launch had come closer. Cracks in the tarmac had been closed, a new and much more resilient tarmac applied, and deep space telemetry had been powered up.
Banachek flew back and forth between Washington and the secret outpost. Officially this was still a science station. The visible, above-ground structure didn't give much away. A squatting building, with a few extras left and right, a landing strip for transport planes to unload cargo, and nothing around them.
Underneath the innocent building was a massive cave, large enough to accommodate a Cybertronian the size of the Ice Man. Megatron, Banachek reminded himself. Even the Allspark cube would have room in here.
Their cover was kept by a group of diligently working agents who played the parts of the scientists. They went out, took readings, set up meters, studied the weather patterns, flocking birds, small mammals and whatnot. The rest was all done underground. For two years the Ghost-2 had been flown here in small parts and put together. Sometimes an Autobot accompanied the freight, usually Ratchet.
Banachek had started to live here after a while. He had his place, his stuff, his connections. He wanted to keep a close eye on things, delegating some of his work with the Autobots to other people. Sector Seven was dead, though not forgotten, and a nameless agency had taken its place. It had been called 'Project', nothing else, and by now, years later, it was official. Project had agents and operatives, it worked with the same efficiency of Sector Seven, but without the subtle threat the old department had represented. Project worked just as undercover, did just about the same things, protected a group of alien visitors – and a young engineer named Sam Witwicky who had been changed by the Allspark. Lately former Army Ranger Will Lennox had fallen under that protection act, too. Banachek had seen him a few times and was fascinated and shocked anew every time. You just didn't get used to a human being who looked like he had been spray-painted with alien runes, sigils and glyphs – which moved.
There was a soft ping and he turned to his computer where the e-mail icon had lit up. He had received yet another mail, probably a progress report.
To his surprise he found it was a brief message from Optimus Prime. The Autobot leader, a being he respected greatly and found immensely fascinating, was requesting permission to fly Sam Witwicky to the base to start working on the Ghost-2.
Banachek sent the confirmation and immediately called the base commander responsible for the cargo flight to inform him of their next delivery. Having Sam here at the base would be interesting. Seeing the technopath work was fascinating to say the least.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Thunder roared through the underground test chamber. It was deafening, even with the ear protection, and it could be felt in every bone of the body. Human engineers clustered around read-out monitors and control panels, all tense and hopeful.
"Adjust the fuel flow!" Sam ordered firmly, eyes on the test engine.
He didn't need a monitor to tell him the input or output ratio, the strain of metal and plastic and rubber, or the pressure on the fuel lines. He didn't need fine-tuned sensors to keep him informed of how fast the engine was burning the fuel, how molecules rushed through the combustion chambers and burned at an intense temperature.
His mind was scanning along every line of programming, getting a feel for it. Sam was the engine, could feel every little bolt and screw and tiny wire.
It looked good so far.
He watched the power conductor light up more. It hummed softly; channeling the raw energy kept in the storage tanks, and converted it smoothly into useable energon.
"Just a little more and now..."
"Output is almost at optimum level," Laura Maitland reported and stepped closer to the conductor, reading off the figures displayed on the control panel's screen. "Everything is holding."
"Hm, looks like we finally found a conductor that handles this raw energy," the lead engineer, a man called Finch Tomczyk, remarked and he sounded very satisfied.
He should be. He had had his part in discovering how to make the machine work without melting half of it into scrap because of the alien power source, and it had been a real challenge for the human.
Sam's mind was still on the engine that would catapult the Ghost-2 into space. The design of the Ghost-1 had been radically changed. With the input and knowledge from Ratchet and Ironhide, the human engineering team had come up with a way to get Ghost-2 space-born without relying on a carrier rocket. They just had to get the new engine tested and approved.
Suddenly the machine started to shake and rattle in its cage inside the test chamber. It crackled dangerously and smoke came out of several slits.
"What the...??" Laura stared at the machine which had started to bulge outward as if it was a balloon. "Get down!" she screamed as she realized what was going to happen, hitting the ground.
Sam didn't lose a second's thought about the why. He simply followed the order.
The converter gave a final screech and exploded. The explosion shook the ground. Sharp metal shrapnel cannoned through the room. Sam felt a violent pain in his thigh and he gave a yell, which was drowned in the chaos. Smoke billowed around them and when Sam looked up he saw nothing at all.
Silence descended abruptly, only interrupted by the soft pinging of overheated metal.
Coughing, he waited for the dust to settle down.
Alarms suddenly went off with a screech.
"Laura? Finch?"
Laura blinked dazedly and tried to focus on the voice. There was a cut on her cheek, but it didn't bleed much. Something must have just grazed her.
"Sam?" she asked.
"Yes, it's me. How are you?"
She rubbed her forehead. "My head... I think I need an aspirin. Otherwise I feel fine. What happened?"
"I think the conductor exploded."
How? Part of him demanded to know.
For the most part he was too rattled to think much else.
"Exploded? It shouldn't have done that!"
Suddenly the door was flung open and people ran inside. Paramedics, soldiers, Bumblebee…
:SAM!:
Sam winced as the link flared to life with such force, it almost floored him mentally. He felt Bumblebee's presence, felt him check him over, then gentle hands picked him up.
"You're hurt!"
Sam blinked stupidly at the blood on his pants. "Oh. Yeah. Something grazed me…"
More people swarmed everywhere. Someone was forcing the malformed door to the test chamber open.
"Man, what a force," Sam murmured in disbelief.
No one had foreseen this. Something had happened inside the engine, something really wrong…
:Sam?:
:I'm fine, Bee. Just rattled:
:You're injured:
:I'll live:
A paramedic was demanding that Bumblebee set down the young human and he did, though he didn't move away.
:See?: Sam sent when the woman was done treating his wound. :Just a cut:
:You still need to see the doctor. This was just first aid:
That got Bumblebee a sigh, but he was adamant. So Sam let his friend carry him to the medical area where Laura was already getting a complete check. She smiled at Sam, nodding once.
"I checked the conductor," Sam muttered as the doctor cut away his pants and stitched his leg. "The circuits were functioning perfectly."
"Maybe you overlooked something," Laura volunteered.
The look in the brown eyes made her wish she hadn't said that. "I did not overlook something, Laura."
Finch walked slowly over to them, holding his arm. There was no cast on it, but the wrist was bandaged.
"Sprained," he only said. "You guys okay?"
Both nodded.
"Banachek has ordered a full investigation into the matter. I heard Ratchet is coming in with the next flight. He thinks it might be the conversion rate of the raw energon. I know the engine programming was perfectly okay, as was the conductor, Sam," the lead engineer told their technopathic advisor. "It must be the stuff we put inside."
Sam nodded. "We spent hours checking the engine as such. It was perfect."
"Get some rest," Finch advised. "We won't be back at the engine until we know what happened."
Sam met the blue optics of his guardian and Bumblebee's thoughts were clear: get some rest. Good idea. Sam carefully slipped off the examination table and found himself caught by the Autobot again.
"I can walk," he muttered.
"Yes, you can."
And he was lifted up. Laura waved at them as they left and Sam sighed to himself.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Kyle's first contact with the alien life forms called Autobots had been the silver colored one called Jazz. No preparation could have readied himself for first contact. He and the crew had spent a week at Nellis Airforce Base where Captain Michael Bowman had been their primary contact and something of a liaison.
Their private affairs had been put into order. Somber affairs, really, because it was nothing more than the possibility they might not return, like the first Ghost. Kyle had no family to speak of, only good friends. The others, Barbara Tanner, his second-in-command and pilot, Freddy Hamilton, communications, and Gabe Craig, the systems engineer, had family of various degrees. Two were married, two children each, one was engaged.
All the dark thoughts of failure were blown away when they were introduced to Jazz, the second-in-command and mission specialist, whatever that meant in Autobot terms. When Kyle's team had been told about aliens among them they had been as stunned as the next man, but meeting the Cybertronian had been amazing.
Jazz was an easy-going guy, if that could be said about a mechanical life form. He had adapted to Earth in a stunning way, seemed in love with any kind of music, and he was curious about the planet as such. Kyle found it easy to work with him and he was the perfect first contact mech. Maybe that was why he had been chosen.
It was the size of the aliens that astounded them all. The ability to transform, to look like a human-made car. They were a lot more than simply automatons, robots, machines. They were truly alive, had emotions, laughed, made jokes and in Jazz's case had a wicked sense of humor.
Ratchet, the chief medical officer, had been even more stunning in size. He noticeably dwarfed Jazz and he was a lot more massive. Their different personalities had surprised Walker. Jazz and Ratchet had gently and carefully paved the way for further contact with the others. Not that Banachek hadn't been thorough. They had gone through quite a program with every future crew member. They had been shown images of both vehicle and robot form of each Autobot, and they had been told about the Decepticons, more specifically: the Decepticon who was now allied with the Autobots.
When they had been flown to the former Airforce base in the Nevada desert, Kyle had steeled himself for meeting the Autobot leader. Despite all the briefings, seeing such a mechanoid in real life was impossible to prepare for. And Prime was even bigger than the rest.
The base alone was, despite its run-down and rickety look from the outside, an impressive sight to behold on the inside. The human military unit moved with such natural understanding between the much larger Autobots, it spoke of years of working together.
"Commander Walker?"
Kyle gazed up at the Autobot leader, who had knelt down to meet their eyes. Still, he was huge.
"Optimus Prime," he replied, sounding calm and collected.
"Welcome to our base, Commander. You and your crew have been awaited."
"Ah, thank you." Kyle tried not to fidget. He had been briefed, he had been shown film material, but it was nothing, nothing at all, to the real thing.
Prime smiled, apparently very much aware of the impact he had on the humans. "I'm looking forward to getting to you know you and your men. Your mission is very important to us, more than you might understand. Feel free to ask whatever you need to know. Captain Epps and his men are here to help you. Captain?"
A dark-skinned man stepped forward, all toothy grin and amused eyes. "I'm Captain Epps, the leader of the human contingent on the base. I'll show you where you'll be bunking for the next few days, as well as give you an intro into base essentials. Follow me. And don't get stepped on!"
Kyle laughed nervously, looking at his equally stunned and nervous crew. Then they followed Epps. Their first stop was a large office, no windows, filled with computer stations, printers and filing cabinets. There was a huge table in the middle.
"Our logistics nerve center," Epps announced. "Lieutenant DeMarco is the guy who keeps us running."
DeMarco was a tall, muscular blond guy who could have been the All-American football player if he hadn't worn an Army uniform. He had a ready smile and shook hands with everyone of the team.
"Nice to meet you," the lieutenant said, nodding at them.
"Likewise."
"Lieutenant DeMarco is also booking your seats to the Arctic station, so be nice," Epps joked. "Or you only get the aisles seats near the toilets."
Chuckling, they continued on their tour. The labs were next, then the bunk rooms, sanitary units, storage and so on. Epps told them which areas were off limits if not for emergencies, and most of those included the recharge units of the mechanoids and special storage.
"Any questions, ask one of us guys. We're a small unit here. Find me in case of problems."
"Will do. Thanks, Captain."
"Your training schedules are in my office, so that's our last stop. Then you're free to explore."
So they filed into Epps's office for the last order of the day.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Sam had spent a good two hours after the explosion trying to sleep, but then had given up. His rather hyper-active mind was going over and over the possible faults in their calculations, into what he had felt throughout the test, what might have triggered the overload. The dull throb in his leg wasn't enough to dampen that effect in any way; if anything, it was just a minor bother and Sam overlooked it as he lay in bed, thinking.
Finally he left his room and limped back into the lab. His head was okay and the small graze was nothing to worry about. The pain medication helped with both the headache and the leg, and the leg wasn't really a big deal. He had convinced Bumblebee of that, though the mech was rather overprotective. His never-ending supply of chocolate was everywhere he worked and it had helped him over the part of the headache not caused by being thrown clear across the room. By now his system was rather balanced again and he felt ready to tackle whatever came.
"I survived Mission City," Sam had told his partner. "That was more than just a graze, Bee!"
He had been thrown around, picked up, dumped, man-handled, cuffed, thrown around some more, run faster than he had ever thought possible, fallen off a building, shot at, and and and… Sam had been black and blue afterwards and the pain of bruises, scrapes and pulled muscles had settled in a lot later. But he had survived.
Still, back then their connection had been different. Sam understood the changes and he knew the mech worried more now, but this was his job; he was an engineer now and he was involved in the tests of the Ghost-2. Bumblebee was his guardian and would always feel that way, something Sam couldn't get him to drop.
He wasn't really all that much surprised to find Laura in the lab, frowning at what looked like the security tapes.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked casually as he joined her looking at the screen.
"Didn't even try it," she replied. "How's the head?"
"Still attached. Looking for the reason of it all?"
She nodded.
"Need help?"
"You know I'd never say no to you," she teased.
Sam chuckled and pushed a button, rewinding the feed, then plugged in the second one; this one being the sensor readings.
And they started their work.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
"How are you doing?" Laura asked several hours later as she looked over the dismantled proton accelerator main board.
"I can't say right now. I have to check the circuits and chips and all the connections. The cables, too. It'll take some time," Sam replied, stretching.
His back ached, his leg was throbbing more, and he wondered what time it was. A quick look at the lab clock told him that he and Laura had been here for the better part of twelve hours straight. He remembered Finch coming in, saying something about taking a break, but he had tuned that out again.
"Then you might take a little break before launching into this new challenge and eat."
Sam grimaced. "I don't have the time. We don't have the time, Laura."
"You do," she told him firmly. "You look like hell."
"So do you and I'm not rubbing your nose in it."
"At least I took a lunch break."
She had?
"You either go voluntarily and fill up on more than caffeine or I'll page Bumblebee."
Now there was a cheap shot if Sam had ever known one. It wasn't like he could keep Bumblebee out of his mind for very long without good reason. He had put up more than basic shields and only dropped them when he scanned a piece of circuitry, but so far his partner hadn't caught up on his overtaxed state-of-mind. The almost limitless amount of chocolate in the lab had helped, too.
"You wouldn't," he muttered.
"You know I would. Go. Shoo. I'll take care of what you started. And Finch said to take five. And he meant hours."
"You didn't sleep either," Sam argued.
"But I'm about to follow my boss' recommendation before he grounds me," Laura replied. "Now go!"
Sam glared at her, but he went. Just getting up from the chair told him she was right. It was as if a wave of exhaustion suddenly flooded him. The shields wavered and it was no great surprise that Bumblebee was at his quarters when he arrived there.
:Not a word: Sam muttered.
Blue optics reflected amused acceptance of the human's state.
Sam took a quick shower, which revived him enough to give him the coordination to get dressed in his pajamas, then he crawled into bed. Bumblebee watched him, still silent, but when he moved closer through the link, Sam didn't push him away.
Wrapped inside the mech's familiar mind, Sam dropped off to sleep almost immediately.
Tbc…