Maelstrom 4
Tunnels: Part 1
Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original Maelstrom Comics and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http// illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the addy here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.
Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored!
Optimus Prime met Ultra Magnus at the first rendezvous. He would not meet the City Commander's optics however, or answer the questions in them. Instead he led Magnus on an intricate "long cut" to the next meeting place.
Jazz was waiting for them as ordered. He'd been given an equally circuitous route to follow to get there. It was plain to Magnus from the intent look on Jazz's face that the specialist wasn't worried, just intrigued. Magnus envied him a bit, especially when Optimus curtly ordered them to be silent. It was like the senior Prime to worry - it wasn't like him to show it by being so brusque.
Again Optimus led them in seeming circles, yet Magnus realized they were in fact going cautiously deeper into the older tunnels beneath Iacon. He was wondering where they were headed when a soft voice floated out of one of the tunnels they'd just passed.
"I'm here, Optimus."
All three of them whirled on the sound; Optimus included a tense yelp.
"Geez, man! Who's side are you on?" Jazz asked sharply.
Magnus contented himself with glaring balefully at the speaker.
"I wish you'd quit doing that," Optimus said sourly as Rodimus emerged from the darkness behind them. For once the junior Prime didn't smile or joke about startling them. Magnus really started to worry then. He knew that most of Rodi's childish behavior was smoke and mirrors but he also knew Rodimus kept up that diversion almost religiously. Whatever this was, it was taking too much of Rodi's energy to let him play the fool. Jazz met Magnus' optics, and he knew the specialist was having similar thoughts.
"Are...are you sure you really want to go through with this?" Optimus said. He actually sounded nervous!
"Have you come up with a better idea," Rodimus asked testily, "because if not, we have to get moving." Optimus just sighed and shook his head. Magnus and Jazz exchanged glances again - obviously this wasn't a new argument, or one Optimus felt very good about losing.
Op turned his back on his partner to address them. "You two are here because I insisted Rodimus needs help," Optimus continued in spite of Rodi's annoyed snort. "You two were the only Autobots we could agree on. I don't think there has ever been a more crucial mission. Rodimus will fill you in on the details. What I have to stress is that whatever occurs must remain ABSOLUTELY secret from everybody. I'm sure you'll understand why soon enough but I need you to swear to it now."
"If you aren't sure about it don't come," said Rodimus flatly. His voice was unusually cold - normally you could at least sense some undercurrent of emotion. He scrutinized at them and frowned, as if weighing their resolve and finding it lacking.
Jazz resented that a little. After all the running around he'd been doing day and night, helping Rodimus obtain what he needed to assassinate slavers without raising suspicions, Jazz at least expected Rodimus to trust him. "Hey, Rod-man, lighten up! We know how to keep our traps shut!"
Rodimus' optics narrowed. His tone lost every particle of warmth. "If you think you have any basis to compare this to, think again. If it were solely up to me you wouldn't even be here. I'm telling you - if you go you will probably wish you hadn't. You are going to be frightened. You are going to be angry - more than you've ever been in your life. I chose you two because I thought you stood the best chance of handling it. That doesn't mean I want that judgment put to the test. If you have any doubts don't come."
Magnus felt a surge and suddenly realized that even if his ability to keep quiet had ever been in doubt he had to go. He'd seen Optimus fret before. He'd seen Rodi's temper flare and ebb. Whatever was driving the Primes now exceeded anything he'd ever sensed from them, and whatever it was Magnus wouldn't be able to rest until he knew it was over.
Jazz only knew he couldn't resist a challenge - especially with Rodimus' grim stare still boring into him. They both vowed silence.
Rodimus sighed and smiled faintly. "Thanks guys. I'm sorry to be so blunt. This is sort of hard for me."
"I'd hate to see something that's really hard on you then, " Optimus said to him with a hint of reproach, "Are you sure you are going to be alright?"
"Do I have a choice?" Rodimus snapped sarcastically.
Optimus just sighed and addressed the other two, "Keep your optics on him. His own welfare is STILL the last thing that ever enters his considerations." Rodimus snorted again, but Optimus ignored the bait. He left.
"Come on," Rodimus said with a sigh, taking the nearest tunnel to the right.
"You really don't want us along, do you?" Magnus observed. It wasn't a really question.
"You remember how I felt about bringing Marissa into the counsel?"
"Painfully."
"This is worse."
"Ah. Why?"
"The same reasons. Your presence triples the risks of complete exposure, and I think there are times when the aid a person can give just isn't worth the pain the knowledge is going to cause them."
"We can take it, Rod," Jazz insisted, still a little put off by what he saw as Rodi's lack of faith.
"I know you can Jazz. You just shouldn't have to. I never doubted either of your abilities to DEAL with this. If I did, I would have gone alone. Optimus would have gone ballistic, but there's nothing he could have done to stop me."
Magnus snorted. "He could put you in detention."
"I can break out of detention, Magnus," Rodimus said matter-of-factly. Magnus nearly scoffed and then stopped himself. The hallway only echoed with two pairs of Autobot footsteps. Hot Rod would have been bragging. Rodimus probably could do exactly what he claimed.
"Are you going to tell us why we are down here?" Magnus asked instead.
"Yeah, what's the scoop?" Jazz echoed curiously.
"We are going to talk to Vector Sigma," Rodimus said.
They waited for him to elaborate and exchanged disgusted looks when he didn't.
"About what? Come on, Rod! Fill us in!" Jazz was sounding a tiny bit fed-up.
"New Transformers?" Magnus asked.
"No. Old ones. There are some points of history I want cleared up."
They exchanged looks again.
"A history lesson? This is your All-Important Mission?" Jazz asked in disbelief.
Rodimus didn't answer but he threw them a green-optic glare. Then he just turned back the direction they were headed and kept going. His posture grew rigid with his head low between his shoulders and his fingers grinding into his palms. Yet, for all that he looked like he was stomping his feet, he remained silent. Further questions from both of them got no response.
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They traveled ever deeper for many hours when they started to encounter the first defensive traps. The tunnels were decayed, narrow, and chocked with unnameable debris. Ultra Magnus had to resort to stooping often to avoid low ceilings and hanging wires. He felt awkward and grumbled inwardly at the ease with which his companions made their way through. He supposed it made sense that the flaming assassin should move fluidly, but decided sourly that Jazz made it look easy just for spite.
Rodimus, in front, stopped so suddenly that Jazz and Ultra Magnus nearly bumped into him. Being none too pleased with Rodi in the first place, Magnus wasn't surprised to hear Jazz muttering some of his beloved Earth's more colorful phrases under his breath. The part about "stubborn little bastard" might not be technically accurate, but Magnus agreed with the sentiment.
"What is the problem?" Magnus asked when Rodimus knelt down to study the floor of an empty corridor.
"Shh," said Rodimus.
Magnus and Jazz exchanged disgusted glances. There wasn't much they agreed on, but the Rodi-annoyance factor was one thing they shared lately. Rodimus continued inspecting the floor for no apparent reason. Jazz leaned facetiously against the wall, and Magnus stood at attention with crossed arms while they waited. Rodimus inspected the ceiling from where he crouched on the floor and suddenly grinned. He pressed on the floor in front of him hard and drew his hand back quickly. Even Magnus yelped a little when an entire section of ceiling simply dropped with a flattening crash a few seconds later. The section was nearly ten-feet thick. If they'd been underneath that....
Rodimus chuckled to himself a little as he stepped up onto the downed section. "Not elegant, but effective," he said with amused admiration. Neither of the others thought it was too funny, and they paid careful attention the next time Rodi stopped for no reason, and said "Shh." The deeper they got, the denser the traps got. Most of them were old and easy to spring or avoid. They all kept their optics peeled for anything suspicious; Rodimus in particular seemed hyper-alert to the first sign of trouble.
His vigilance kept them out of the majority of pitfalls they encountered on the way, but some of them had triggers he didn't spot until after they were in the danger zone. Nevertheless, they dealt fairly easily with most of the deterrents. Cybertronian metals had advanced greatly in the last hundred million years, and their bodies were simply tougher than the alloys used in the pitfalls. The one where the spinning blades ate up the floor certainly did look nasty though, and the one where the gravity increased imperceptibly until they were straining to lift their legs cost them a lot in energon. They endured the expected fights with old style drones with a sort of amused forbearance, each of them dispatching the mindless annoyances in their own ways.
Just when they were beginning to laugh about it all, one of the traps hit home. It was a simple trap - only too simple. There were no laser triggers or camouflaged but observable triggers to warn them. In fact, Rodimus walking in the lead with his light feet, actually stepped on the pressure plate. His assassin's walk was apparently too subtle to set off the mechanism. Jazz's wasn't. He put his foot down and felt the floor shift under his weight. It sank instantly, and a hidden blade underneath the floor sprang out from behind his ankle joint. The blade lashed horizontally from right to left - nearly severing his left foot before it lodged in the tough metal of his body. He couldn't pull his leg loose, and was in too much pain to even cry out at first. Rodimus more than made up for it with some interesting human curses. After a quick check to see if there was any more to the trap, they set about the painful work of freeing him. Ultra Magnus held Jazz's body stable, and Rodimus firmly grasped the blade. He could feel the heavy spring resisting his efforts.
"Magnus, you're going to have to pull him up the minute I get this thing clear."
"No problem," Magnus said. Jazz concentrated on not screaming.
Inch by careful inch, Rodimus moved the blade back the way it had swung from, fighting the tension and the awkward angle the whole way.
"NOW!" he shouted, and Magnus pulled Jazz clear. Rodimus let go of the blade and it swung home with a resounding "thwack". They inspected Jazz's leg. The blade had passed almost three feet into Jazz's ankle mechanism - severing wires, neural circuits, and some of the hydraulics. It hurt a bit too. Once they did a bit of field repair, Jazz could manage the pain enough to stand as long as he didn't put his full weight on it.
The worst part was he had to hobble instead of using his usual trademark strut and he found that very annoying.
"Sometimes," he said as a joke (to prove to them he was handling it alright) ,"I think Vector Sigma doesn't like visitors."
Rodimus looked at him sharply, "Really? Do ya think?" There was no need for him to sound quite so sarcastic in Jazz's mind.
They traveled on a bit more slowly. Rodimus made a point to test every floor panel with the butt of his gun before allowing them to step on it. Very soon they were all frustrated with their slow progress, but Jazz had to admit he couldn't go all that much faster now anyway. The next fight with the drones took a bit longer too, since Rodimus (annoyingly) told Jazz to stay out of it. The specialist shrugged, sat down on the floor, and contented himself to blasting the drones from there. Rodimus threw him a dark glare, but didn't protest. Once the fight was over, they went on unmolested for almost three hours, at least until the tunnels widened into a long, narrow chamber with ceilings about three times Magnus' height.
"I don't like this... it's too quiet," Magnus whispered. He didn't know why he felt the need to whisper, but something about this ancient chamber seemed to demand it. Its metal was greyish with age and long undisturbed dust.
"Hey, Mags, don't complain," Jazz said. "We don't need to go lookin' for any more trouble!" Magnus glanced down at Jazz's mangled ankle, noted the energon drizzling slowly to the floor, and understood Jazz's feelings. Rodimus said nothing. He stood still at the threshold, running his optics along the walls, floor, and ceiling.
"Do you see any traps?" Magnus murmered.
Rodimus shook his head and frowned. "That's what worries me. We are too close to the core for my paranoid mind to take this at face value." Magnus and Jazz looked at each other. They were starting to regret ever calling Rodimus paranoid - if only because they were starting to share his mind-set. "I don't like the shape of this room," the paranoid one continued. "It's different from any of the others, and I can't think of a reason why it should be."
His companions noted the contours of the chamber. He was right. It had a much higher ceiling than most of the others, with rounded corners and slightly curved walls. The overall shape was roughly hexagonal... not Rodi's favorite to be sure. He shuddered and refused to believe in bad omens. Determined not to let his nerves show, Rodimus inspected a wall and noticed that its very substance was different from any of the prevalent building materials elsewhere on Cybertron. He frowned at it, unsure that it was even metal.
"Do you two have any clue what this stuff is?" he asked.
They didn't. The three of them looked at each other and shared that sickening feeling of panic. They all made up their minds to beat it at the same time and turned to run. Jazz hobbled but managed to move very quickly. The doors at both ends slammed shut.
"FUCK IT!" Rodimus growled as they came up against the far door. This new habit of using human curses still shocked Magnus a bit, although Jazz was rapidly learning to ignore it. There was no obvious latch, and even Rodimus' frantic search couldn't unearth an opening mechanism.
"OK. Stand back," Magnus said. Something about this place gave him the surges and he wanted out...now. He launched both shoulder missiles at the door, and felt a moment of satisfaction when the resulting explosion rocked the room. His self-assurance quickly faded when they all realized the door was undamaged.
"Shitshitshitshit......" Rodimus was muttering. His optics were rapidly turning quite green which also gave his friends the surges. The light, which had remained so constant on their journey down, suddenly began to fluctuate.
Staring around them, Jazz suddenly shouted, "Hey! Do you see that?!" He pointed wildly at the flickering light.
"No... What?" Rodimus asked.
"THAT!" Magnus said in shock - suddenly seeing what Jazz was seeing. The patterns of light intensified around them, suddenly resolving into images. They could make out ambiguous forms in the lights. There seemed to be darting figures all around them. The longer they stared, the clearer the images became. The vague forms clearly became running bodies, and as they tried to sort them out, Rodimus and his friends began to recognize not only the shapes, but individuals.
It was the Autobots, themselves included. Themselves - in battle.
The images got clearer and clearer, until they looked like full-fledged holograms. Rodimus tried to identify the battle. He recognized himself, Magnus, Jazz, and even Optimus. In fact most of the Autobots seemed to be present, fighting both Decepticons and Sharkticons. He didn't recognize the scenery or the sequence of events.
"Do either of you guys remember this fight?" he asked, confused.
"No, Rod-man. Can't say that I do," Jazz stated, trying to maintain his usual calm.
"Magnus? What about you? Magnus?" Rodimus looked over at his City Commander and felt shock. Magnus wasn't responding to him at all. There was a faint, gleaming aura all around him, as if he were a hologram too - although an incredibly solid hologram, and he suddenly began running around the chamber.
x
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Magnus found himself in the center of the battle. He cried out in denial as he saw Optimus cut down by a Quint cruiser. Prime's body fell just yards from him, and Magnus went to run to his friend's side. He tripped over something as he did, and noticed Rodimus' mutilated corpse at his feet. The damage was so extensive on both Primes Magnus didn't need to check.
Both....We lost them both...
He could see the Quints and the 'Cons regrouping for another assault, as the stricken Autobots gathered around him, waiting for orders.
He knew it fell to him to take over although his whole being quaked with denial. He opened his mouth to direct and encourage his remaining friends, but found he had to close it again. What to tell them? A plan formed, but unraveled just as fast. This shouldn't be his job! He didn't want the big chair - he'd seen enough of Prime's suffering to know that. Besides... he couldn't DECIDE on anything! Nebulous ideas continued to form and collapse. The best choice, ANY choice continued to elude him as the Autobots crowded closer and closer. Their voices became a desperate wailing when he couldn't answer.
LET ME THINK! LEAVE ME ALONE! his mind screamed, but his voice failed him. All he could utter was a lost sort of moan.
They crushed around him in their frenzy, clawing him apart for answers he didn't have. He saw Galvatron laugh from the unfettered air above them and aim that deadly cannon. One blast. One blast for all the Autobots in their concentrated mob around a voiceless commander. The cannon flared thousands of times more powerful than it should have been. Magnus stumbled when the Autobots' weight was suddenly gone, but that was only because they were flying away from him with the impact.
He screamed in anguish as the bodies of his friends fell like rain. His own body was slick with energon, none of it his. Their corpses crumbled into a blowing black powder that reached his knees and he was alone under the red sky.
In the desolation he wept. It was his fault...all of it. The sand at his feet stirred, and the colorless corpse of Rodimus Prime lurched up out of the sand as if jerked on an invisible rope. It reached out for him, its mangled limbs seeking his life. Magnus trembled, but didn't seek to run or stop it. It was his just punishment for failing a job even Hot Rod had managed.....
"Magnus..." it groaned as it came for him. "Magnus...." The hands made contact... and shook him firmly. Then one smacked him once across the face.
"Magnus?!" Rodimus was really sounding upset.
"Hey, snap out of it man. It's just a hologram," Jazz cried.
Magnus' cry of terror ended in a confused yelp.
"Wha... what's happening," Magnus asked desperately, still under the influence of the nightmare He noticed the chamber's lights shift again and felt his head suddenly clear. He shuddered. It had seemed so real.
"I don't know," Rodimus said gravely. "It never stopped looking like a hologram to us and I don't know when we lost you."
"I don't either... I truly believed I was there. The details aren't clear to me now but when I was in there, it all made sense. I knew what was happening and even remembered events leading up to the fight. I saw, heard, and felt EVERYTHING." Magnus shuddered, and noticed the worry and compassion on the faces of his friends. He felt a bit embarrassed for having "fallen for" the illusion.
"Are you sure you're OK?" Rodimus asked.
"Yes. Just don't die... and if you DO die, don't come after me."
Rodimus smiled faintly and let the matter rest. He didn't really feel like going back into the details of Conversion again right now. "No promises," he said. Let them think he was joking. "Now let's find a way out of here."