AN: SPARTAN: Deus ex Machine is the brain-child of Vixen Tail. I'm just rewriting it to see if an idea of mine will actually... well, work. Vixen Tail, if you want me to remove this, tell me, and I will willingly remove it and delete the folder that is for it. If you allow me to continue the story, I thank you. I'm only placing the disclaimer in the first chapter, so, please, bear with me.

Disclaimer: I don't own the major premise of SPARTAN: Deus ex Machine, Halo, or Transformers. Deus ex Machine is the brain-child of Vixen Tail, Halo was signed over to 343 Industries by Bungie, the original creators, and Transformers belongs to whoever made the series and movies. I only own my OC.

Chapter One:

23:43 September 29, 2552

SPARTAN-127 carefully crept down a hall halfway between the restricted medical wing that housed injured SPARTANs and the hospital's large laundry room. There was a nurse station nearby; situated between the public hospital wings and the underground hole ONI stuffed the injured soldiers that 'technically' didn't exist. Between the nurses' station and the laundry room marked the beginning of the restricted wing, with air conditioning vents that provided the oxygen to the lower levels of the hospital. That vent also supplied air flow to the underground wings of CASTLE and 127 had been injured and bored enough to explore it weeks before 117 returned and brought the information about 343-Guilty Spark. The late night wanderings had paid off in a much unexpected way, because she now knew a way to Dr. Halsey's office that avoided every ONI security measure the spooks had thrown up to monitor SPARTAN movements on Reach. She still wondered who the strange figure who she often saw in the vents was. She shook that train of thoughts out of her mind, and focused on what she was doing.

Prying off the grill that barred the way into the ducts was more than a little interesting, seeing as the saboteur's right arm had more crushed bones that any living person had the right to claim. It was the result of being rolled over in a Scorpion Tank with one arm hanging out. Reinforced bones or not, 127 still had a few weeks of recovery to go before she would get back on the active duty roster, and a few good months before it would stop hurting. A quick tug and pull, and the grate slid off, and some rather fancy maneuvering without the use of her right arm let the saboteur slide the grill and grate back into place behind her before any of the nurses could get up to investigate the unusual sounds. Fifteen minutes of duct crawling later, Ash-127 dropped in on Dr. Halsey and her guest, literally.

To their credit, neither screamed when the seven foot tall SPARTAN female suddenly plummeted to the floor in front of her. Mostly because they had gotten used to the late night visits by the oddly playful SPARTAN-II saboteur when she was bored stiff in the hospital wing. "Ash, I really wish you would at least use the door," said Dr. Halsey with a sigh.

"Not nearly as much fun, though, doc," 127 said, smiling as broadly as she could, enjoying the irritated glare aimed at her. Someone was pissed with her, and that meant she was doing her job right. A moment later, and the SPARTAN's smile faded as she got around to why she was dropping in on the scientist so late at night, "We picked something, Dr. Halsey. Somewhere else, like the next galaxy over else. Less Forerunner headaches. Oh, quick question. Who's she?" 127 asked, jabbing a finger at the woman/Sangheili/thing who was standing in the corner.

"She is known as Yuri. It was the only name she gave me," said Dr. Halsey. "She is a human-Sangheili crossbreed. From what I can tell, her skin is like ours, but as thick as a Sangheili's, with the same leg and foot structures, and, well... Yuri, would you mind showing One-Two-Seven here what you can do?"

Yuri nodded, and sprang straight up, flipping, and the talons on her feet latched onto the ceiling, where she crouched, before springing off of it, flipping just as she hit the floor, and rolled to kill the momentum, where she sprang back onto her feet. Her legs looked like the Sangheili's, which seemed structured after a dog's or cat's legs. Knee joint going forward, another joint going back from there, an ankle of some kind, which connected to her feet, which had three talons, one going back, the other two forwards, and she even had the armor to give her feet and legs some protection.

"How was she..." 127 trailed off, confused.

"Conceived?" asked Dr. Halsey. "We don't know. One of the other SPARTANs found her, wearing the leg armor for the Sangheili. It was the same color as it is now, black."

127 was confused, but accepted it, just as Dr. Halsey dropped the figurative bombshell, "And she's also gone through the SPARTAN-II augmentations. All she needs is the armor and a modified body-suit."

"Armor isn't too much of a problem, but we need the body suit first," said 127, several minutes later. "Yuri, have you looked at the armor configurations?"

Yuri nodded, and pulled out a data pad with her suggested... aquirement. 127 scanned the list. 'Recon UA/HUL[3] helmet? Ain't that pulling all the stops out,' 127 thought, humming to herself. 'Recon/Tactical chest-plate... Alright... ODST pauldrons?' "ODST pauldrons?" she asked Dr. Halsey, who just nodded.

"Helljumper," she confirmed. "If not any of those, then the Sangheili combat harness that the Sangheili made for her would work."

"Where is it?" asked 127, curiously.

"Last I heard from my 'uncle,' it's in the west wing of CASTLE, whatever that meant," said Yuri softly, before subsiding.

Dr. Halsey looked at her, and realized why she was so nervous. "Go ahead," she said, calmly.

"Thank you, Doctor," said Yuri. "If you'll excuse me..." She ran across the room, popped the grate out, and set it to the side, before climbing into the ducts, and ran along it, until she reached her quarters, where she grabbed a pack, and filled it with the Sangheili-tailored clothes, slung it onto her back, grabbed the two energy swords she'd been gifted with, as well as the two energy dagger generators, and quickly crawled back into the ducts, running back to Dr. Halsey's office.

!Y:SaT!

Only well after the flurry of activity and acquisitions was over and done with, with the UNSC ATHENS on it's way out of the galaxy with it's cargo of SPARTANS and human/Sangheili crossbreed, did Dr. Halsey finally have the time to realize just how efficient her SPARTANs could be and how dangerous they could have been if they hadn't been programmed to be so loyal to the UNSC. She had heard rumors about Nicole-Gamma-458 and Ash-127's penchant for getting their hands on equipment and ordnance that they should not have had access to prior to working closely with them, but it was only when working with both the female SPARTANs that the scientist realized that the rumors spread by the UNSC soldiers fell far short of the reality. Somehow, the two of them had Covenant and Forerunner technology stashed away on the planet, and had added their collection to the ship's armory in secret. She had found it when she was inventorying the ammunition she had redirected from military stores and came across several non-human made pieces of weaponry. Yuri had also shown just how dangerous she could be as she slipped through the ducts of CASTLE base with ease, and gotten to the armor, when 127 had reported that she couldn't even get a line of sight on it.

Jerrod and Cortana had 'lost' an entire hangar bay for them to work on the ATHENS in, which was stocked with the types of supplies that every ship needed and with its own fabrication workshop tucked away in a corner. Nicole-G-458 had also 'acquired' twenty-six Cryo-Chambers from somewhere in the UNSC storage units. Ash-127 and Keith-070 had collaborated to keep the 'lost' hanger and the Prowler ship off of every UNSC ship roster and maintenance record that Cortana and Jerrod might have missed, or, in an even more unlikely event, someone had later reported. Issac-039 and another of the injured class three SPARTANs sent to Reach for recovery from a gut shot that nicked her spinal column, Eve-G-193, had assisted Halsey in reworking the shields and installing the twenty-six Cryo-Chambers. Keith-070, waiting for orders that he would never get, had worked with Jerrod and Cortana in programming an experimental AI, named Refit after the codename the SPARTANs had assigned to their work on the UNSC ATHENS, and the subprograms that would activate the AI when the reached the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. Yuri's contribution had been the least likely, and most surprising; she had hacked her way through the ONI database, and marked every SPARTAN that was working on the UNSC ATHENS as KIA or MIA, then proceeded to go through and added a worm that would multiply and self-destruct when it was in all the programs, files, and folders that weren't hard-copy about herself, her armor, the SPARTANs working on the ATHENS, and added a subroutine that would activate the worm when the cargo bay doors opened.

Within minutes of the ATHENS leaving, all records of the ATHENS, Halsey's SPARTANs, and all would be wiped out. Even as Halsey curled up in her office chair with a glass of wine, Catherine Halsey couldn't help but feel somewhat wistful over the events of the last month. Hectic and fraught with worry it may have been, but she had learned more about the SPARTAN-Iis and IIIs personalities and pasts over the last month than she had during the previous years put together. Even assisting Ash-127 to 'steal' SPARTANs in Cryo-Stasis out of the restricted ward of the hospital had its highlights, bringing a small smile to the scientist's lips as she remembered the very odd and light-hearted way the female Covert Operations saboteur approached her work.

Even lost in thought as she was, Halsey still noted Jerrod's small spark avatar activating in the way she knew meant that someone had sent her a message. "What is it, Jerrod?"

"Forgive the intrusion, ma'am," Jerrod's spark avatar quivered in excitement, earning the blip of light an amused smirk from the elderly scientist. "You have an urgent message from the Master Chief, and a tightly encrypted message from Yuri."

!Y:SaT!

Sentinel Prime sat in his office, located within the main council building in Central City, his helm supported by his hands as a vid screen blared out the current situation to the nearly empty room. In his vorns of service to Cybertron as a Prime, the crisis currently unraveling outside of his office had never occurred to him in any future he could have foreseen.

Somewhere in the underground gladiator rings that had been left alone as something distracting for the lower caste bots to amuse themselves with, an ex-miner mech named 'Megatron' had quietly cultivated the Cybertronians that had grievances against the Council of Ancients, nobles that controlled the large cities, and the caste systems put into effect on their behalf. This 'Megatron' now had an entire army of mechs and femmes at his side, and in an opening salvo they had amassed and leveled the city Kalis, right down to the last mech, femme, and sparkling, before taking over Gygax by force. To compound insult to the injury he dealt to Cybertron, Megatron was now calling for the severed helms of the Council members and any other bots in high positions, namely himself and Ultra Magnus, in reparations to the damage they had caused the hard-working bots that trusted them.

If he was honest with himself, Sentinel had absolutely no idea about what to do now. The Cybertronian military, or what was left of it after the fall of the Golden Age, had split down the middle, half remaining loyal to Ultra Magnus, and half splitting off to follow the renegade officer Barricade, and what little security force that could be mustered were needed to keep the panicking residents of the cities safe through the crisis. Besides, both the still loyal military and the security force only answered to Ultra Magnus, and slag the mech to the Pits if he hadn't warned the Council that the idea of splitting the population by caste might result in something happening like this.

Straxus, the oil-coated glitch, had already proclaimed that he would follow Megatron, and the City of Polyhex had followed it's governor, leaving the newly proclaimed 'Decepticons' with the entire south region of Cybertron, edging the Acid Sea, occupied by what could be termed as 'hostile' forces.

Even as he worried the problem over and over in his own processor, Sentinel Prime's audios picked up the sound of a heavy mech running down the hall that lead to his office. Lurching upright, Sentinel scrambled for the service pistol he wasn't sure how to use, and pointed it at the door as it opened, Ultra Magnus sliding to a stop.

The Prime jerked his arm holding the pistol down as Magnus took a few hesitant steps forward towards him. "If you're done with whatever you're doing here, Prime, we need to move you."

"Why? What else could go wrong?" Even as he said it, Sentinel just knew it had been the wrong thing to say to the mech that would most likely be responsible for keeping him alive in the upcoming unpleasant vorns.

Magnus slowly took the pistol from the upset Prime. "Those so called 'Decepticons' are now demanding the All-Spark. That and a mob of bots are trying to tear down this building to get to you. They already got Greenlight, I would rather they not get to you."

"Primus, Greenlight? But she was..." Shock made it easier for Ultra Magnus to steer Sentinel Prime to the open door, and to the dubious safety of the streets, so they could get to Iacon's military base hopefully in one piece. Until the larger mech tried pushing the Prime out the door. "Wait!"

"Now what? We need to leave or the processor broke idiots outside might actually get you."

Sentinel waved a hand dismissively as he leapt over to the terminal on his desk. "Yes, yes. But I can do something about the All-Spark from here."

"There isn't any place on Cybertron that those Decepticons wouldn't tear apart looking for it, how do you propose to hide it?" Ultra Magnus frowned in confusion at the devious grin that planted itself across the Prime's mouth components.

Typing in a chain of commands, the Prime only spared Magnus an absent processed grin. "It wouldn't be on Cybertron. We'll send it into space, to a planet only you and I will know about. That way, these 'Decepticons' can't risk killing both of us without permanently losing the All-Spark."

Ultra Magnus' mouth plates worked silently for a moment before he could summon enough processor power to work his vocalizer. "... Well. Frag me."

Aboard the UNSC ATHENS:

On the approach to the target galaxy, the automated subroutines in the UNSC ATHENS activated the experimental AI 'Refit' in accordance to it's programmed orders. As the AI came online, the 'dumb' AI that had controlled the ATHENS up to this point in it's journey pulled up the noted files for Refit's benefit.

Online for the first time in nearly four thousand years, Refit herself had a fraction of a second to wonder about what she was doing in a Prowler-class starship before the files impatiently beeped at her for attention. After rapidly reading all of them, she was only slightly less confused. Locating a suitable planet for her 'cargo' of SPARTAN soldiers and UNSC foundling was estimated to take at least another seven hundred and fifty years from her current position, so she got to work. The initial files had also included a type of 'wish-list', whichever SPARTAN had wrote it, she suspected 070, had listed another conflict as a desirable feature to a suitable planet. Apparently a few of the SPARTANs knew that what was going on like that idea, including, much to her surprise, the foundling.

To combat, or at least stave off the possibility that her alternative programming wouldn't prevent her from going rampant, her orders also called for a leap frog method of a limited time 'online', directing the 'dumb' AI to another destination before spending the trip in standby mode. Her programming would be in effect 'frozen', possibly keeping her functional if not entirely responsive for the next thousand years. The process could be staved off slightly, if there was a major issue, that required her attention to fix, she could stop the timer until she was put 'asleep'. With two minutes left of her first period of awareness, she directed the navigational computers to plot a course for the first star cluster nearest the ship.

As a data clerk, Orion Pax had listened to the news vids that chronicled the start of what was now known as the 'Autobot/Decepticon Civil War' with the other clerks while they were working. He listened during the orn, and argued on his off-cycles that the Decepticons might have a few valid reasons for what they were doing, but they just went about it all wrong. Needless to say, his views had earned him a few unflattering names, the least objectionable being Decepticon sympathizer. If pressed, he would admit to preferring the Autobots, but then again, no bot had asked him yet.

Controversial views or not, right now he had to Matrix Templars standing outside of his Alithex flat. "Forgive me, but could you repeat yourself?"

The Templar on his right nodded as he beckoned to the mech again. "You have the bearing of a Prime. Please come with us."

Refit hummed to herself as the mineral analysis probe for the current star system she was inspecting came back and reported. Not quite enough hydrogen, so she steered the ATHENS off to inspect the next system, computing the time needed for travel, and setting her timer to wake her when they were nearby.

She was getting closer to a planet that would support human life; the planets that she had already looked at were only missing a few minor, and one or two major, elements that were needed to sustain a viable ecology that would sustain her SPARTANs and the foundling.

From what she had seen so far, it should only take her a few more decades to find a new home for her 'cargo' of SPARTANs and foundling, and finally have someone to talk to besides celestial bodies that didn't respond.

In response to the Autobots finding a new Prime, the Decepticons demolished Alithex down to the ground.

The newly made Optimus Prime, reformatted by Alpha Trion himself, stood at the communications center of Iacon's Autobot base with his new bodyguard, an ex-military mech by the name of Ironhide, three steps behind him. Sentinel Prime and Ultra Magnus had just left Iacon altogether, after stopping by to see how the new Prime was adapting to his newly reworked frame.

Optimus had found a convenient use for his retractable battle mask, the inch thick slab of armor hid the lower part of his faceplate and the tell-tale grinding of his dental plates during the meeting. The new Prime had quickly figured out that Sentinel was not one of his favorite mechs, more experienced Prime or not.

Looking over to the black mech guarding his back, Optimus tried to puzzle out what was expected of him now. "According to Sentinel, Primes don't fight. We are too valuable to risk in some foolish battle." Ironhide just raised an optic ridge at his new Prime. "Can you teach me how?"

The black mech's optics blinked in surprise, then grinned wickedly at his new charge. "Yur gonna regret sayn' that."

"Possibly, but it will be worth it."

Refit was in the middle of a 'repair' cycle, checking up on every minor malfunction and issue the 'dumb' AI had noted and had failed to fix, when something collided with the UNSC ATHENS, dumped a collosal amount of foreign energy into every system and knocked the poor AI into a feedback look with a second massive discharge of energy that followed a split second on the heels of the first.

She spent a few precious seconds working herself loose of the scrambled programing she lost hold of, and clawed back to her previous state of function just in time to be swamped with countless error messages and warnings, causing her a distinctly unpleasant sensation that paralyzed her programs for a few valuable moments. As the unknown energy faded from the majority of the ship's systems and concentrated itself in a few minor secondary functions, and the consequence error reports slowed, Refit started to sort out what had happened.

Proximity sensors and cameras had recorded a visual of a cube composed of unusual metals that had impacted against the ATHENS on the starboard side, rupturing the subdeck armor and venting the atmosphere into space. Anything more about the collision, or why it wasn't tracked by the sensors before it impacted and reported to her, was lost due to a power surge shorting out a good deal of the memory banks that the program relied on.

The 'dumb' AI had also been lost, most likely burnt out of it's circuits, as well as most of the data collected on the surrounding star systems, half of the navigational charts she had worked so hard on, and the strange energy had started to wane over where it was concentrated over the fusion reactor and the Cryo-Stasis tanks that held the SPARTANs and the foundling, though the foundling's tank had a lot less, which confused her.

A few abnormalities that the 'dumb' AI would have normally dealt with or alerted her to the escaped Refit's attention as she tracked the cube's previous trajectory back to whoever decided that space would be a safe place to leave large cubes. As she adjusted the ATHENS' course to find the source of the cube, Refit wondered about the type of creature that could make energy enhanced cubes.

Strictly speaking, cubes as perfect as the one that hit her were illogical in space, and that meant someone or something had created it, and possibly launched it. This could mean that she could get help repairing the rift in the sub-deck, as that was where the tanks were, and possibly getting the sensor array checked out.

Optimus Prime gritted his dental plates under his battle mask, something he was afraid was becoming a bad habit of his. He respected Sentinel Prime a lot, both for the work the Prime did before the commencement of hostilities and in the Government of Cybertron, but the mech was holding onto the role of a politician with a death grip, and Cybertron needed soldiers now.

Both Primes, Ultra Magnus, Ironhid, Zeta, and Ether had gathered in one of the lower level conference rooms in Central City to review the events of the last few vorns and where each section of the Autobot forces were concentrating their efforts. Or rather, Sentinel Prime had a well-rehearsed story about how well the war effort was going and had white washed reports of the front line he was giving to the Division Heads that he had assembled together.

The tension in Optimus' frame ratcheted higher as the older Prime finally worked his way to the reports of Alithex. Before Sentinel actually got around to white washing the slaughter, a femme opened the council room doors and cleared her vocalizer.

"Sentinel Prime, sir? A few of the vid news teams are outside and they would like a word." Elita-One blinked innocently at the interrupted mech as he floundered midsentence.

"Ah! Right..." Sentinel fumbled for something to say as he backed up to the door while trying to keep the council table and the bots assembled there in his view. "... I'll just go and, uh, deal with that. Carry on!"

The younger femme gave the older Prime a small smile as he slipped out the door past her. Once she was sure the mech was well out of audio range, she palmed the door controls and took a seat next to Zeta. "So, where were we?"

Optimus slumped into his chair with a hiss of hydraulics even as Ironhide laughed at him. "Almost thought ta younger Prime was gonna hit 'im."

"Perish the thought. Two Primes disliking each other? Why, that's just unprocessable." Zeta smirked at the young Prime's weary glare. As an ex-noble herself, Sentinel had judged her to be an acceptable Head of the Tactical Division, the fact that she had left her noble clan to become an Enforcer notwithstanding. Sheer training and prior experience in dealing with snobbish mechs were what kept the old Kaon Station Chief from cursing the older Prime from one corner of Cybertron to the next when he thought something up that irritated her or her Enforcer programming.

A crack of laughter drew the bots assembled at the conference table's attention to Ether. Likewise, the mech was the 'acceptable' Head of the Special Operations Division. He had never been less than polite to the older Prime, and every other bot knew that was the old mech's way of covertly insulting Sentinel's intelligence. Ether was only polite to those he hated. He shook his helm and pinned the younger femme with a glare. "You look way too pleased with yourself, scraplet. What did you just do?"

Elita-One just shrugged at the older mech, but stiffened at the not-so-amused glare shot at her from Ultra Magnus. He was her superior, and as such, responsible for her actions. She met his optics for a moment before looking away with a small smirk. "Nothing really, just getting back at that glitched old mech for assuming I was a secretary bot."

Zeta made an inquiring sound, Ether raised an optic ridge, but Optimus and Ironhide just laughed, remembering the first time Sentinel had met Elita.

Eighty-three hourse, fourty-seven minutes, and thirteen point five eight seconds after the UNSC ATHENS had collided with the space cube, Refit clued into something that was very, very wrong.

A large number of the ATHENS' programs had been corrupted, including a few of her own, and when she tried to fix it, the resulting problems just compounded the issue entirely. On top of that, the 'dumb' AI had disappeared entirely, without any scrap programming that would normally be left when a program as complex as an AI was destroyed by an outside physical source. But that meant that she had to conduct the maintenance programs on her own, and while unusual for her, it had finally alerted her that the medical program that monitored the SPARTANs and foundling was insisting something was wrong.

Her manifest for the ATHENS listed twenty-five SPARTANs, and one foundling; she was only getting medical readouts for twenty four, and the foundling. Even worse, the base-line normal stats listed by the medical monitoring program were not anywhere near what she was getting from the readout.

A quick check on the Cryo-Tanks in the cargo bay shoed that the tanks were no longer blue and frozen, they were turning a dully glowing purple, and the temperature showed they were near boiling, and the MJOLNIR medical systems no longer agreed with the ATHENS' medical systems about the SPARTAN's status.

What made it worse, was that the foundling's pod was a strange, vibrant purple, and the temperature was the lowest out of all of them!

If Refit had hair, she would be tempted to start pulling it out by now.

She had already spent three days fixing major and minor problems, mostly relying on other programs to tell her what was wrong, and now two programs, no, three, the foundling's armor was equipped with a personalized medical program, that should have agreed with each other were at odds.

The ATHENS medical computer insisted, the MJOLNIR medical system objected, and the personalized program seemed slightly worried, but was in between the two, so Refit overruled the MJOLNIR system on the slight possibility that Humans did not like to be almost boiled alive.

The ATHENS tried to lower the temperature significantly, and SPARTAN-500 promptly died, pulling the protesting MJOLNIR system offline as he did so.

Refit abruptly pulled the ATHENS medical program offline before it could kill any other SPARTAN, now having a vague idea on what had happened to the twenty-fifth SPARTAN that had dropped off her medical report. As far as what she new about human physiology, the ATHENS had been right in lowering the temperature, and she was now feeling a sickening sense of guilt.

One of the other MJOLNIR systems beeped for attention, politely requesting more energy in a tone that Refit knew.

Apparently the 'dumb' AI hadn't been destroyed in the energy surge; it had simply been reappropriated.

Refit carefully inspected the fragments of the old AI in the MJOLNIR systems as she rerouted more energy to the Cryo-Chamber. The program that carried a trace of the 'dumb' AI politely thanked her and immediately got back to work, remarking that it would take a while to perform the necessary tasks, so she should concentrate on finding somewhere to land.

Reluctantly letting her link with the system go, Refit wondered if she was finally going rampant. That had been very strange, and delusions were reported to be an aspect of a rampant AI. Had putting off her timer so long caused this?

She hesitated, torn between wanting to laugh and cry, before another MJOLNIR system beeped for more energy, closely followed by the foundling's, but it just asked for a 20% power flow, reducing the 40% the chamber was currently getting.

Refit wondered what else could possibly go so wrong that she would have no orders to deal with them or prior reports of the incidents happening before as she routed or rerouted the energy, reducing the flow to 20% for the foundling's chamber, and increasing the power flow for the other chamber.

Optimus Prime leapt the last few feet to the half-wall that his newest soldier was using for concealment, holding his blaster-rifle close to his chassis.

The saboteur designated Jazz had been recommended to him by Ether, as the older mech had remarked that he wasn't spry enough to keep up with the energetic and crafty saboteur when he got 'rolling'.

The shorter, silver mech tilted his helm so his visor met the optics of the Prime squarely. "Not ta rush ya, boss mech, but if'n we don't move, dem 'Cons down there migh' actually catch ya."

Optimus snorted a clog of dust out of his vents as he scanned their surroundings.

They were technically on the front lines, in the territory between Kaon and Polyhex dealing with a raiding party of Decepticons that had attempted to storm the City of Laws, and the larger portion of his unit was farther back from where they were currently. Ironhide had stalked off a bit before to ensure that the coast was clear, and the other two mechs that he pulled to make up the un-acquired numbers of his squad kept watch on either side of the road. "I'll take that under advisement, Jazz. Were you successful?"

"Yep." The smaller mech's visor flashed at Prime. "Dem 'Cons are 'bout ta get ah very painful surprise 'n ah bit."

Polite subroutines were a first experience for Refit. The remnants of the 'dumb' AI that was now imbedded in the MJOLNIR armor systems insisted that what they were doing was necessary and helpful, but that some of the SPARTANs were in too bad of shape to survive what they were doing, to which Refit couldn't argue against, seeing as a good number of the SPARTANs had been in critical condition when they were loaded onto the UNSC ATHENS in the first place, and that the foundling was getting 'reformatted.' Any further inquiries about the SPARTANs or foundling other than a status report was either met by silence or a polite suggestion to mind the course. Otherwise, they reported in one of three ways. One was 'the mech/femme is doing well,' the second popular response was 'the mech/femme will rejoin the Matrix,' and one of the MJOLNIR systems always responded with 'your systems are doing well.'

The foundling's reports were always confusing, though. 'The femme's systems are doing well,' although the most confusing was, 'Reformatting has been completed. Waiting for activation.' After that, any inquiries towards the foundling was met by, 'the femmes systems are doing well. Activate?'

Refit wasn't sure what a 'Matrix' was, but she could guess what 'mech' and 'femme' meant. She also wasn't too proud to admit that she threw what amounted to a AI's temper tantrum over the first time she heard the phrase that she later learned meant 's/he is royally screwed six ways from Sunday.'

She couldn't be excessively annoyed at the mannerly programs, despite the growing number of 'offline' SPARTANs. Because when she compared the roster numbers of the dead to the list of severe injuries that occurred before Cryo-Stasis, the numbers matched up to the SPARTANs with a limited life expectancy after revival. But a few of the more heavily injured SPARTANs seemed to be pulling through, like Gamma-341 and 076, and if the subprograms could save more than would have otherwise died after a short time, Refit was surprisingly okay with it.

Sentinel Prime gaped at the messenger. The other mechs and femmes that had been summoned to the impromptu meeting weren't fairing much better, but they were better at hiding it.

"Windcharger," mildly pleased he had finally remembered the communication bot's designation, Optimus Prime waved the younger mech to a chair, "Would you kindly repeat that for us, please?"

Windcharger's systems heated up in embarrassement at the attention, but took the proffered seat with a quiet murmur of thanks. "i-it looks like... w-well, a space-ship, Prime sir, uh, sirs. But it doesn't match any of our ship designs, or even responding to any of the codes we try to make contact with."

Sentinel was still staring blankly, but had managed to shut his gaping mouth components.

Ultra Magnus waited a nanoklick for the Prime he served to think of anything brefore speaking up with a question of his own. "Where is this thing headed?"

The reporting mech looked straight at Magnus. "Just a bit south of the Yuss-Simfur border, a little north of what's left of Kalis, sir."

Optimus' optic ridge rose as he thought, then frowned at Elita-One, who shook her helm back. She didn't have any bots she could spare nearby either. "Tyger Pax would be the closest city we have control of. Is there any bot that we can spare to check it out?"

Magnus and Ether shook their helms, but Zeta looked thoughtful. "Maybe, but it wouldn't be any bot I could vouch for."

Sentinel shook off his shock and frowned at the assembled mechs and femms. "Kalis is close to the Decepticon lines. We shouldn't risk lives for curiosity's sake."

"Maybe so," optics locked with Ether, who nodded back, then Optimus spoke up against Sentinel for the first time, "but they might be able to help us."

'Polite little glitches,' mused Refit as she adjusted the UNSC ATHENS' reentry velocity again. The approach to the metallic planet had been interesting. The AI had managed to find and exploit the data network that the inhabitants had set up and found a few language files to learn from, as well as a wealth of information about 'Cybertron' itself and it's native race that called themselves 'Cybertronians.'

The closer she had gotten to 'Cybertron,' the harder the subprograms had worked, until there was only one left, working on 076. All total, Refit had eighteen guaranteed to survive, seventeen SPARTANs, and the foundling, which was three better than Dr. Halsey's estimation on who would survive for any number of hours beyond their revival.

'Excuse me.' refit's attention was split between the reentry and the last of the subprograms that had kept her company for the last near millenium. The last MJOLNIR system, number zero-seven-six's armor, sounded disturbingly weak to her. 'Function complete.'

A bit of turbulence kept the AI from responding immediately. 'Clarify.'

'Function complete.' It was weaker; the program had started to shut itself down. 'Revival in progress.'

Refit's systems went still, partly because the ATHENS had landed, and partly from surprise. 'What does that mean?'

A foreign program was passed on to her. 'Use when ready.' The slight awareness she had associated with the subprograms faded, leaving Refit alone.

'Now what?' As Refit worried over what she was expected to do now, she forgot to activate the ship's stealth systems.