"Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no."
— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, act 5, scene 1
Smokescreen onlined to a battery of data: error messages and threat assessments painting his HUD red, diagnostics returning weapons offline and energon reserves low, and nociceptors simply screaming OW until they abruptly, blessedly, disengaged. He shuttered his optics, sending the command to clear his visual field, but when he opened them again he still saw red — red optics in a smirking white face, and a dark hand reaching down to tap him on the forehelm. "Wakey-wakey!" caroled Knockout.
Smokescreen took a clumsy swing at him that the Decepticon evaded easily; then his limbs were nothing but dead weights, motor functions killed by a medical override. Panic revved Smokescreen's engine into high gear, but Knockout only pursed his lip-plates disdainfully and throttled that back, too. No, no, no, no, no — "Get out of my head!" Smokescreen shouted.
"Not until I'm sure it's still screwed on straight," replied Knockout. "Name?" And when Smokescreen, confused and belligerent, spat back an obscenity, Knockout rolled his optics and repeated the question at half speed, broadcasting the accompanying glyphs stroke by stroke. "What ... is ... your ... name?"
The ground beneath Smokescreen's dorsal plating quivered and a brief gust of wind peppered his helm with grit. Wait, where's that coming from? When the dust cleared he took in the wide gray sky behind Knockout's (fastidiously shuddering) shoulder-guards, his overclocked processors finally cycling down as he recognized where he wasn't and what hadn't happened to him. "Smokescreen," he muttered, abashed. He'd thought he was long over flinching every time the medic pointed a sensor at him. "What — ?"
"And who's in charge of dear old Cybertron these days?" Knockout interrupted him as the formicative current of a scan washed over Smokescreen's helm and pectoral armor.
Smokescreen repressed the urge to wriggle everything not paralyzed by the motor blocks, having learned that twitching during an exam merely prolonged the experience (when it didn't score you a wrench to the helm). "Bumblebee's chairing the Council," he replied tentatively, because with the planet on a war footing, Ultra Magnus and the command staff were directing most day-to-day affairs, a situation many bots found disturbing. Smokescreen wasn't one of them; he'd seen firsthand what the Quintessons were capable of ("Blue? Hey, Bluestreak, that's not funny ...") and it was a lot worse than a touch of stratocracy. "What does that — ?"
"And where are we now?" Knockout drawled, lifting his left forearm to consult the readouts projected there.
Smokescreen had to think about that. His entire comm suite, including his GPS, was glitchy, but according to his last recorded positional data ... "Uh, the Toraxxis Plains," he said, "about thirty kliks east of Thunderhead Pass — "
— and all at once he remembered: his transport clearing the mountains, the unexpected presence of Quintessan artillery, the strike — "My ship!" he gasped. "We were hit! We were going to crash — " He struggled uselessly against the medic's hold, desperate to grab him by the shoulder-guards and shake an update out of him. "Knockout, where's the rest of my team?"
But Knockout didn't answer, just grinned a manic grin as the ground shuddered again and a rock dug into Smokescreen's chassis like a joking elbow. "Alert and oriented times four, excellent!" he exclaimed, his voice no longer drowning out the distant rumble of battle. "Now, let's just get you prepped for medevac — "
"Frag you!" Smokescreen shouted. He activated his comm, grimacing at the influx of static his muddled cortex tried to interpret as data. /Moonracer, what's your stat— ?/
The channel closed and Knockout waved a disapproving digit in front of Smokescreen's optics. "Ah-ah-ah. No talking — doctor's orders."
"You — you slag-helmed glitch!" Smokescreen's spark swelled as if it were trying to sear through its casing. Moonracer, Downshift — he'd been joking with them about the rust storm the pilots were using for cover, waving off the apologies from the cockpit for the rough ride and describing that weird Terran custom of "kissing the ground" after a flight: Just let me get all four wheels on a road again and I'll be a happy mech — no lip-plate contact required —
And then had come the hit that slammed them sideways, engines screaming and the ship's frame groaning as Windrider and DH-135 fought for control and a touchdown rather than a corkscrewing plunge to their deaths. Crash webbing swaddling his frame, for all the good that would do if the ship's core breached on impact. Corona's optics whirling as she broke radio silence to calmly broadcast a mayday with their coordinates and projected heading ...
And then, nothing — or, rather, the peculiar jittery nothing of corrupted memory files, like the illusory whispers of white noise down an empty comm channel. Smokescreen's anger burned out as quickly as it had ignited, leaving behind a bitter calx of fear. "Please, Knockout," he begged, swallowing his pride, "what happened? Where's — where's everybody else?"
The medic snorted as he drew a roll of flexsteel from his subspace. "What happened?" he asked. "You got yourselves shot down, that's what happened. And thanks to your comm officer's oh-so-vague directions, it took us twice as long to find you as it should have." He folded Smokescreen's right arm across his chassis and began binding it into place, and Smokescreen let out a startled gasp as something along his collar ridge shifted, poking into the housing of his voice box. "Posterior dislocation of the sternoclavicular joint," Knockout explained offhandedly. "Nothing to worry about — as long as you keep still."
Smokescreen's optics uncrossed and he tried to pretend that he hadn't been about to crane his neck for a look. "And then?" he prompted, as the medic tied off the sling.
"And then, while we were turning over every plate between here and Thunderhead Pass, you abandoned ship and made your way to this scenic resort, currently under renovation by the Quintessons." Knockout exchanged the flexsteel for his patch kit and began slapping adhesive dressings onto Smokescreen's torn and leaking mesh with a moue of distaste. "Three members of your team sustained disabling injuries protecting your sorry hide; the rest are helping to hold a perimeter so that we can all get the Pit out of here. Oh, and your transport's totaled," he added with a cavalier wave. "No great loss there — flying bricks, those things; no style at all."
Smokescreen searched his memory banks again as Knockout spoke, but he might as well have been hearing a report of someone else's botched mission. "I don't remember," he murmured, firmly tamping down his anxiety as Knockout's heightened attention to his vital signs leaked through the iatric link. He had no doubt the medic would slap him straight back into stasis given the least excuse, but Smokescreen had already lost too much of his life to that timeless oblivion. "I don't remember," he repeated more firmly, trying to let nothing but curiosity color his field.
Knockout arched a brow-plate at him. "A disruptor blast to the helm will do that," he said. "You can thank whichever Prime looks after fools and Council members that it was just a graze. Your escort was sure it had fried your chips." He sniffed, his field suffused with a combination of contempt for amateur diagnosticians and smug confidence in his own skill. "I suppose I should thank you for the opportunity to buff my reputation as a miracle worker."
Smokescreen was formulating a properly sarcastic comeback to that when the ground shook beneath him with another low-frequency rumble that quickly swelled to a near-deafening roar. Lightning speared from cloud to cloud and flying debris abruptly filled the air. With an alarmed yowl Knockout flung himself across Smokescreen's chassis while Smokescreen, unable to do anything else, shuttered his optics to endure the all-too-familiar pounding of an artillery barrage. Someone must have gotten him to cover from wherever he'd initially fallen; you didn't take a beating like this in the open and live to think about it. Knockout's frame jerked against his and the medic grunted, his claws digging into the lacerated slab under Smokescreen's shoulder-guards. You okay, doc? Smokescreen thought as loudly as he could, hoping Knockout would pick up the question through their medical link.
/Peachy,/ came the reply, sour and slightly distorted. Another strut-jarring impact rattled them both and a brief burst of anxiety transmitted itself before Knockout shut off his comms.
The attack continued for several more nanocycles before dying away into the uneasy not-quite-silence of hot wind and residual interference. Knockout rolled off Smokescreen's frame with a groan. "This is why I hate field assignments," he grumbled, brushing at his marred finish with servos that trembled slightly. "I refuse to hang around here while those Pit-spawned Quints learn to aim." He scanned Smokescreen once more, then released the overrides on his motive centers. "All right: you're stable and we're off. No, don't get up, moron." /Stretcher party!/ he added into his comm.
"I can walk!" Smokescreen objected. He was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with his legs, though from the churning of his tanks as he pushed himself up on his left elbow, he wasn't so sure that his gyros had come through unscathed.
"Oh, I highly doubt that," the medic replied with barely concealed schadenfreude as he nudged Smokescreen back to a prone position. "Someone has to make the rest of your idiots look lightly injured by comparison or we'll have them malingering for weeks."
"Malingering?" Smokescreen replied hotly. "You said they had disabling injuries!"
"Oh, didn't I specify? Downshift was knocked offline by the same shot that got you — classic blast concussion case, textbook, really. Corona lost an arm, or most of an arm, and somebody's idea of battlefield medicine ensured that she'll lose the rest of it — admittedly in lieu of bleeding out from her brachial energon line, but still." Knockout retrieved his battered patch kit from where he had cast it aside during the barrage and subspaced it with a grimace. "And DH-135 rolled his ankle and fractured his spinal assemblage, and I guarantee you he'll be whining about it for his entire recovery period if you don't put on a brave face and fail to reassure him that you'll live." He stared meaningfully at Smokescreen, laying a digit alongside the descending curve of his crest ridge in a remarkably human gesture of conspiracy.
"Uh," Smokescreen said, caught between relief at the content of Knockout's report and annoyance at his delivery of it. Seriously, what was it with medics? You'd think they'd have some sympathy for their patients; it wasn't as if Smokescreen, or any of the others, had asked to be shot. Just the opposite, in fact. But as he booted his vocalizer to complain, Knockout's gaze sharpened, brow-plates drawing down, and Smokescreen thought better of it. "Right," he agreed. "Brave face. No malingering."
Smiling sweetly, Knockout bent down and patted his helm. "There's hope for you yet, Councilor," he said, "as unlikely as that might seem." Then, before Smokescreen could object to either the gesture or the sentiment, the medic straightened to scold the approaching corpsmechs picking their way through the torn landscape in base mode. /You, there, keep your helms down if you want to keep them on! Hasn't anyone told you we're at war?/
The stretcher party obediently lowered its profile as it scrambled down the last scree-mantled slope to their position. After a brief consultation, the smaller 'bot transformed into an anti-grav litter onto which the larger one and Knockout loaded Smokescreen with cautious haste. Smokescreen covertly vented his relief once he was settled; broken ground made for a disagreeable berth, no matter how many of your pain receptors were disabled. He was immediately tempted to revise his opinion of the litter's comfort, however, as they began jolting back toward the air ambulance, the corpsmech in base mode guiding his transformed colleague along what was almost certainly the shortest rather than the easiest route. Smokescreen concentrated on keeping his voice box offline — putting on a brave-if-piteous face for his subordinates was one thing, but Knockout himself would never let Smokescreen hear the end of it if he whimpered now.
The medic, meanwhile, kept up a running, not-quite-subvocal commentary on his own discontents — Primus-damned field assignments, not an oil bath for kliks, grit in every gear, won't be properly clean again for cycles — interrupted only by equally irritated exchanges with the other stretcher parties: /Of course it hurts; it's injured. Just desensitize the nociceptors associated with L1 through L3 for now and get him onboard./ and /Tried to shoot you? Nothing wrong with his reflexes then — and this is why we deactivate a patient's weapons before rebooting his processors. Learn and live!/ and /Oh, for Quintus's sake, yes, bring the arm along! They don't grow on trees, you know. Yes, I said 'trees' — it's a Terran idiom; look it up. No, tree limbs are a botanical structure, not an anatomical one — does the word 'idiom' mean nothing to you people?/ Smokescreen wondered why Knockout wasn't bothering to narrow-band his comms; weren't doctors supposed to keep discussions about their patients private? He was pretty sure he'd seen signs to that effect in the elevators of the Iacon MedCenter and they certainly had a point: what if Downshift was as mortified as he was about having attacked a medic? What if DH-135 was trying and failing to put on his own brave face? What if Corona overheard Knockout using the loss of her arm to teach a lesson in Terran slang?
But when the corpsmech finally pushed Smokescreen up the ramp into the ambulance and his escort — battered and energon-stained but still functional, even the three strapped into medberths — raised a sparkfelt cheer ("Sir! You're online!" "Thank the Allspark!" "When you took that hit, my pump nearly gave out ..."), he realized what Knockout had been trying to do, in his twisty way, and was grateful. So Smokescreen assured his team in failing accents that he was fine, just fine — no, really, there was no need for concern; they were all in the best, the very best of servos. (And took Knockout's vengeful reenabling of his pain receptors like a mech, because it was worth it to watch the medic grit his denta and smile while everyone regarded him doubtfully. Smokescreen was only Cybertronian, after all — and perfectly capable of wheedling an algiatric chip out of one of the corpsmechs once Knockout's back was turned.)
But later, when the ship had returned to Autobot-controlled airspace and Knockout was making his rounds, Smokescreen gripped the medic's wrist to detain him and say, "Thank you, Knockout. Thank you."
He felt the other mech's startled flinch; then Knockout twisted free of his grasp and stared down at him, his face unreadable. "You're welcome," he said after a moment.
Smokescreen smiled and gave the medic's field a cheerful nudge. With an audible reboot of his vocalizer Knockout turned away, ostentatiously adjusting the rate of Smokescreen's energon drip before proceeding to the next berth, his own field a little less caustic, a little more bright.
Author's Note: The title of this story comes from the modern recension of the Hippocratic oath written by Louis Lasagna; the line from which it is drawn reads in full, "I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism." What Smokescreen has seen firsthand of Quintessan war-making is depicted in brief in chapter 24 of Excelsior: A Sequence.