Author's Notes: Co-Written by Darthneko and White_Aster
This is an AU fusion of Transformers G1, the 2007 movie, and Inception. Internal story canon says that Cobb did not wake up at the end of Inception. It also says that Jazz is still alive because Ratchet is a miracle worker with a pair of clamps and really, if Frenzy could survive Mikaela beheading him, then Jazz could survive losing his legs from the waist down. Also, Frenzy? Survived beheading once. There's really no reason he couldn't do it again. There is no Fallen, there are no minor twins, but there might be the Matrix of Leadership. And nobody minds more G1 bots making landfall, right? ^_^
John Keller swallowed a sigh, unconsciously sitting up one notch straighter as though a different angle of curve through his backbone might alleviate some of the leaden feeling in his stomach. There were few who would contest that being the United States Secretary of Defense was an exhausting job at the best of times, but he had started adding 'nerve wracking' to the description on a routine basis ever since his duties had been expanded to include 'giant alien robots' and oh, yes, their imported galaxy spanning civil war. It made Keller think back fondly on the days when the only thing he had routinely worried about had been anything in the Middle East and keeping an eye on North Korea. By comparison, the constant, nagging, gut churning worry about the entire world had made those worries a cake walk.
He wondered, sometimes, if he was the first Secretary of Defense to routinely place 'the world' first and foremost in his own thoughts, with 'the United States' taking a decided back seat to possibly - literally - Earth shattering classified secrets.
He kept his hands pressed to the table in front of him, rather than reaching up to rub at the growing ache that was taking up residence behind his eyes. "They took the bait."
One of the best kept secrets of the modern age nodded solemnly on the video display. Keller also sometimes wondered how many of the mannerisms he had grown used to - all of the little gestures and intonations that seemed so damndably human - were just that, human mannerisms adopted to smooth communications between wildly different cultures, or whether their species shared more in common than a general similarity of roughly congruent appendages on a bipedal form. "It would appear so," Optimus Prime said, and even through a video conference line the Autobot leader's sonorous voice rolled out, deep and smooth and impossibly arresting. If the Cybertronians campaigned for office - which Keller was rather certain they didn't, but it amused him to think of it anyways - then he would have had no doubt how the large being came to hold the premier leadership of his people; that voice, on a passionate campaign trail of speeches, would sweep away the opposition like a tidal wave. "Regretfully, Secretary Keller, this puts us in a difficult position."
"You think?" It came out sharper than he intended, his hands pressing harder to the table to keep them still. "If they're not hacking the system then, God help us, we've got a mole."
Optimus only sighed, a sound executed by the simultaneous expulsion of air from vents anywhere but in the Autobot's actual mouth; another probably adopted mannerism, but one that suited the large bot so perfectly that Keller was hard put to imagine him without it. "Perhaps not. I was assured that all of the members of the mission were unquestionably reliable..."
"Apparently not," Keller snapped, and that time there was no helping it, hands rising to fall, fisted, with a hard thump against the tabletop. The sting helped him to focus beyond the heavy, sick feeling in his stomach. "You said yourself - the information never hit any digital form, not email, not texting, not phone lines, nothing. It was passed by hard copy and face to face word of mouth only. And somehow - somehow - the Decepticons knew right where the shipment was and when to strike at its least defensible position. That, to me, says one thing - we have a rat."
"Possibly," Optimus agreed, but there was something on the mechanical face that Keller couldn't read.
"I don't see a lot of 'possibly' about it," Keller said heavily. "If it's not any of yours-" and it wasn't, the raids had been heavily aimed at supplies being shipped into the NBE program, which hurt the Autobots more than anyone, and besides which Keller had a 389 page report on his desk from the Autobot CMO detailing, in some terrifying hybrid of tech geek and medical jargon complete with diagrams, the results of intensive scans on all friendly NBEs. Results which were entirely negative and which Keller had been assured equaled the best lie-detecting test human science could bring to bear, and then some. "-Then, ergo, it has to be ours." He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face and up through his thinning hair. "I would have said I trusted all of them, but the hard truth is that every man has his price. If not in money, then in collateral. Someone's leaking intel."
"Someone may well be," Optimus replied. His eyes - optics, they called them - were a bright, halogen blue, eerie and disturbingly intense, even through video feed. Normally he 'blinked', metal shutters sliding across the lights of his eyes at regular intervals, but ithat/i, Keller knew, was an adopted social behavior. When the Autobot was intent on something he had a tendency to forgot to maintain the illusion and the overly bright glowing orbs of his eyes remained staring, unwavering, in a way that made Keller's own eyes want to twitch. "However, it may not be either willingly or knowingly, and that possibility is the one which concerns me. We need to talk, Secretary. Soon."
Which meant not over even the best encrypted video link or phone line, and 'yesterday' rather than 'next week'. Keller sighed again and nodded. "I'll make arrangements. Keller out."
The abandoned base that had been temporarily turned over to the Autobots to use - little more than a collection of hangars and warehouses around a single runway, huddled in a nest of fences in the middle of the desert - was about what one could expect from Nevada in the summer: too hot and too dry. Keller had already dispensed with tie and suit jacket, swearing that his pinned shirt cuffs were going to go next, and he had only been on the ground all of fifteen minutes. The uniformed lieutenant who showed him into one warehouse had also pressed a chilled bottle of water into Keller's hands before saluting sharply and retreating. The air conditioning, what there was of it, was in overdrive and that, combined with the chairs and table that were situated atop a raised platform, had him feeling a little more inclined to wait without comment.
Not that Optimus kept him waiting long. The main hangar door rolled back, metal gears rattling, to admit the incongruous form of the Autobot's Peterbilt semi only minutes after Keller had sat down, followed by the much smaller silver Solstice of his second in command. Both bots began transforming before the door reversed course to close and as many times as he had seen it, Keller could privately admit that watching countless thousands of tiny metal pieces whirl and slide and rearrange themselves from wheeled vehicle to upright mechanical being was something that would never grow old.
The reasoning behind the arrangement was obvious enough as both Autobots took their places - Jazz, seated on the edge of the raised platform, was at eye level with Optimus who lowered himself to sit on the ground. It left both of them over Keller's level, but there was enough room between them that neither was looming too far overhead. "Please forgive the accommodations, Secretary," the Prime rumbled as he settled on the floor, and in person his voice was not only audibly captivating but an almost physical force that Keller could feel in his bones. "While this space lacks in comfort, it has none of the risks of the main conference hangar."
"Not a microchip or a wire or a battery anywhere," his Second put in, and if the Autobot leader sounded like Moses on the mountaintop then Jazz, in contrast, sounded more than a little like he'd stepped off the curb of a street in New Orleans. Keller wasn't sure how or why the NBEs had chosen their assorted accents, but if it was an identifier of individual personality then the Secretary of Defense didn't know what the laid back sort of twang that the 2IC had adopted was supposed to say. "Clean as factory wrapped, and I swept it this morning. No bugs here."
Keller felt something he wasn't even aware of relax just a little. "That's good enough for me. Well, gentlemen? You said we needed to talk."
"Indeed." Optimus seemed to settle a little heavier, shoulders rounding as he pressed his palms together, fingers curved to set tip against tip. It was a mannerism that Keller hadn't often had a chance to see on video conference - which usually captured the Autobot leader from the collar struts up, at best - but had seen enough in their face to face dealings to recognize as the equivalent of a human folding their hands together. "My apologies, Secretary Keller, but we have not been entirely forthcoming about the scope of the mission testing."
Keller felt his lips thin, teeth locked tight in his jaw. The 'mission' - and there wasn't another name for it, not even in the depth of bureaucratic red tape - was the hell spawned mess consuming half his time and resources to try to pin down the intel leak that had been plaguing them for the better part of half a year. As badly as he had ever had nightmares about a rival country uncovering more info about NEST and the NBEs than anyone was comfortable with, the reality was worse - the leak, wherever it was, went straight not to a reassuringly human factor, but to the Decepticons themselves. Equipment and troop deployment, supply shipments, security codes and secure channels, everything down to Air Force One's travel itinerary, might as well have been faxed directly to Decepticon hands for all they could keep them from cherrypicking through the info for the choicest bits. Prime had assured him, on more than one occasion, that the only thing keeping it from turning into a truly epic disaster was the limited number of Decepticons on Earth and their fractured disorganization after Megatron's destruction, which was forcing them to stage hit and run attacks primarily for supplies rather than structured assaults.
And now - after months of screening, and tightened security, and more screening, until they had finally tested a sacrificial shipment which the Decepticons had seemingly plucked the information of out of ithin air/i and which all pointed to the security nightmare of an all too human spy - now his supposed allies, the Cybertronian ambassadors to Earth, were piping up with missing intel into the puzzle?
Keller was so far from amused he couldn't have found it on a map with a protractor and both hands. "WHAT?"
Optimus had the grace and the flexible mimicry of facial plates to look somewhat abashed. "We have worked with you on all counts to discover the source of the information leak. As your own reports show, we have isolated and disproved all technological lines. You expressed concern over the phone that the fault may rest with one of your men; while I can't discount that, Secretary, there is another option which we may have to consider."
Keller found himself wrapping his hands around the half empty water bottle he was holding, the thin plastic crumpling in his grip. "Spit it out, Prime."
Prime's optics flickered. Jazz, smoothly, twisted on one hip to pull his ankle up onto the edge of the platform, the motion of all that metal a little too close for comfort dragging Keller's attention forcibly to the smaller Autobot. "What the boss bot's trying to say," the 2IC interjected, "is that it's not us and it might not be you either. We got reason to think the 'Cons may have access to some better hacking tech than anybody figured."
The day just kept getting worse. Keller sighed, wiping a damp and thankfully cool palm across his face. "Wonderful. When were you planning on mentioning this?"
The rumble of Optimus' engine was a deep growl that cut off sharply after a few heartbeats as the large being noticeably swallowed the sound down and exhaled it in a deep sigh instead. "When we had anything more substantial than fanciful rumors to base it on," he admitted.
"Which would be now," Jazz supplied helpfully.
Keller narrowed his eyes, leaning back stiffly in his chair. "Well, gentlemen, I think you'd better catch me up to date."
The problem, it turned out, all began with the homicidal little terror of a spastic hacker that Keller remembered all too vividly from Hoover Dam.
"But we killed it," he found himself saying, as though that might somehow negate the problem. "Cut its head clean off."
Jazz snorted, the sound almost like an engine backfire. "So? That didn't kill Frenzy, trust me. Incapacitate him, sure. Probably kept him out of action for a good few months while the 'Cons put him back together. Didn't kill him, though. Believe me, I only wish it was that easy to kill the little Pit spawn."
"We've seen how he operates, though," Keller objected. "He was the one who hacked Air Force One. We haven't recorded anything even resembling those signatures again."
Jazz had, by that time, pulled both feet up onto the platform and was sitting curled into himself, elbows propped on his knees as he sunk down lower to better meet the human's eye level. "Yeah, well, that's Frenzy for you. We were hoping that's all it was - as an advance scout and intel gatherer he's fine, and nothing we can't take care of. Problem is the level of slag we're in now, and that isn't ol' Frenzy's solo work. That sounds more like he's got his whole team backing him."
Keller sighed, tipping his head back over the tight knot growing in his neck. "There's more of them?"
"Soundwave," Optimus supplied, voice heavy. "There is a Decepticon by the designation of Soundwave; he is their premier intelligence officer."
Jazz made a rude sound, hissed out sharply from his vents. "Spy, big boss," he suggested. "Call it what it is. 'Wave's the best hacker and spy they've got. Ain't hardly nothing that mech can't get his servos into."
The Autobot leader tipped his head slightly, acknowledging his 2IC's input. "Frenzy is a known operative on Soundwave's team. When we first arrived there was no real need for alarm; Frenzy's presence was unfortunate, but had all the hallmarks of being a solo scouting mission. Soundwave was not in system."
Keller rubbed at his eyes. "There haven't been any unidentified landfalls."
There was the scrape of metal on metal as Jazz shrugged. "No, but my guess is Soundwave wouldn't bother. Why would he? He's a comm build. They're made for hanging out just about anywhere, and he's got Frenzy already here on the ground." The 2IC tipped his head back, the blue glow at the edge of his visor flickering briefly. "Do the conversion… he might have enough range from Saturn. At least from the near side. Maybe. Depends on if he's boosted his mods since the last time I had specs on the glitch."
A satellite. An alien sentient satellite which was hovering somewhere overhead, tapping into who knew what from orbit, quite possibly around an entire other planet in their solar system. The water bottle in Keller's hands was empty but the only thing he wanted right then was much stronger than water. He made himself stop picking at the plastic label on it, setting it on the ground where it was out of the irritable fidgeting of his hands. "I still don't understand how this affects things that weren't put into a network. And I assume you have some sort of countermeasures we can implement against this type of hacking?"
That was when the universe proved it really was laughing at John Keller, because the answer was right there in Optimus' badly concealed wince and the ducking of Jazz's head. "Yeah, well," the silver Solstice offered, with a simulated cough, "that's kind of the problem, y'see."
The countermeasure, it turned out, was not a 'what' but a 'who' - the Autobots fought fire with fire and Soundwave's counterpart on the side of the angels had been MIA for slightly longer than homo sapiens had been upright and walking on the Earth. Jazz had tapped fingers against his chin, head tilted back in thought as he called up hundreds of thousands of year old records as though it were a decade or so ago. "You remember, Prime? That squad Blaster was with flushed out those 'Cons in that one ring system, out in the Kvi Cluster, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Prime had rumbled. "That was Kup's squad - the Wreckers."
Jazz whistled a warbling descending note, ending with a click. "That old mech… daaaaamn. I forgot Blaster was with them."
"That was the reason Blaster was with them," the Autobot leader had replied. "Kup's military experience predates that of every other commander by thousands of vorns. He's carrying more tactical intel than any other mech online. Blaster was assigned to the Wreckers to upgrade Kup's firewalls."
Jazz clicked again, a small burst of Cybertronian. "Pit, yeah, I remember. And we ain't heard so much as a click out of any of them since - not Blaster, not his team, not the Wreckers, not any of the 'Cons from that sector. Just a whole lot of nothing. I got those reports; by the time reinforcements got there the whole place was just blown to the Pit and back, a total wasteland."
It was fascinating and there was a part of Keller that jealously hoarded every tidbit he heard, names and events and places that he had no reference for but which their Cybertronian allies bandied about just like any other war veterans swapping memories. A larger part of him, however, had tripped over the fact that they were discussing events older than his entire species with first hand knowledge and it made something inside of him feel very chilled and hollow all at once. "MIA?"
The 2IC shrugged. "Yeah, afraid so."
"When do you move them off the MIA list?" Keller asked, morbidly curious.
Another shrug. "When we find somebody who knows for sure what happened."
Never, in other words. Absent soldiers hung forever in the limbo of missing in action, presumed but never proven. Keller found he could imagine it, but didn't want to. "Alright. Lacking your man and his team, how the hell do we counter this Soundwave? And how, in the name of all that's holy, is he doing a goddamned thing to intel that isn't in a network?" He lifted his head from the back of his chair, grimly watching the flicker of the two Autobots optics. "…I'm not going to like this, am I?"
It was twenty-eight past midnight when the Secretary of Defense's transport plane finally lifted off from a worn down little base out in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. Keller was bone tired, with a fatigue he could all but taste and a headache that tylenol wasn't putting the slightest dent in, and he doubted he could have slept if they had tranquilized him.
The vibrations of the plane crawled up underneath his skin, making him want to twitch. Prime was nothing if not thorough once the giant being was set to a topic, and between that deep, implacable voice and Jazz's quicker patter the two Autobots had given him a crash course on alien tech that made the most classified Pentagon geek tank sessions sound like kindergarteners banging toy blocks together.
Except for the part where it had also sounded sickeningly familiar.
It was thirty past midnight, which made it half past three in the morning in DC. Keller started to reach for the phone, checked himself, and then snorted and picked it up anyways. The damage was already done and if the Autobots were right then they were, all of them, already compromised. One more secured phone call wasn't going to change that.
Half past three and it took seven rings before the receiver on the other end picked up, a sleep rough voice scratching on the other end. "…what?"
Keller allowed himself a small, humorless smile. "Rise and shine, Simmons. Wake your team up and get them into the archives. I need everything you can dig up on an old army research project, codename Somnus. I want every record we can find on dreamsharing on my desk by the time I land."
Jazz pressed his hands upwards, the stretch accompanied by the muted crackle of tightened metal cables. "They're gonna take forever sorting it through all their red tape, you know, Boss."
"I know, Jazz," Prime replied. The taller mech was standing with his head tipped back beneath the nighttime sky, optics tracking the brilliant lights of stars and late flying planes alike. "It's the way their government works. Dealing with it will be my job."
Jazz chirped a laugh. "And getting around the system is mine? Uh uh…" he added, skipping back a step when Prime's head tipped down to look at him, one hand raised up in warning. "You don't ask, I don't tell, ain't that how it works? You keep the politicians at bay, boss man. I'll let you know when we can hand 'em a done deal."
Optimus' amused snort was bit off just short of a laugh. "As you say. Good hunting, Jazz."
"Always, Prime," the smaller mech retorted, his vocalizer echoing with amused clicks. "You can count on me." Spinning away on one heel, he lunged at the ground, the scraping whirr of his transformation almost lost in the near simultaneous roar of his engine as the Solstice of his alt form zipped away.
Prime shook his head and directed his gaze upwards once more, but the steady paths of the countless satellites in orbit were too far away for even Cybertronian optics to make out details.
