If there was one thing to be grateful for it was the early darkness falling over the country of Iceland at this time of the year. Where the sun would have been out twenty-four hours a day by mid-May to late July, it now turned dark quite early. At six in the evening dusk had not even stood a chance. Darkness had simply fallen over the land.
The C-17 transport landing at the small international airport of Keflavik would have aroused suspicion with the casual tourist or traveler. Now it was the last plane coming in for the day, its lights flickering over the dark tarmac. It rolled to a stop at the other end of the airfield, away from the terminals, and opened its massive rear cargo doors. The interior had been kept in semi-darkness and even if there had been watchers, they wouldn't have seen more than four large shapes drive out, then the doors closed again.
The four vehicles disappeared into the night, headlights off. Only when they were on the official road leading from the airport did lights come on.
Nothing about them looked suspicious. Not even their license plates which were of an Icelandic origin.
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Since Iceland had no standing Army or Airforce it had been a bit more complicated for Project to use the right channels to smooth the way for the reconnaissance team. Banachek had talked to the President, who had in turn, with the Department of Defense, had had long talks with the Icelandic prime minister. It had taken almost too long to clear their arrival and until then police had apprehended the science team that had been up on the glacier to discover something that might prove to be extraordinary.
That the discovery had even made it as far as Banachek's desk was thanks to Gene Whitman. The former hacker and now employee of the DoD and Project had turned out to be the chief asset in a hunt for possible clues to new-arrivals on Earth, hidden Decepticons and other strange events that could be attributed to a Cybertronian on Earth. He surfed the net in a way no one else did. Together with Maggie Madsen he had developed a program he called Seeker. The Seeker was going through uncountable files all around the world each hour, looking for keywords, images, clues, and stored it all in a place where Maggie, Gene and their team of twenty individuals could go through it, always searching for the one thing: Cybertronian presence.
A third of the team was assigned the task to obscure or ridicule what appeared real. They were the Cleaners. They cleaned up messes. They found out names and server IDs, and relayed them to the DoD teams. The rest was hunting. One of the hunts had come up with red flags. Screaming red flags and images that were too detailed, too fresh, to be a hoax.
Whitman had alerted Maggie. Maggie in turn had given the go-ahead to inform Banchek, and twelve hours later a massive machinery had begun to move.
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Ironhide drove down the dark ring road number 1, headlights piercing the night around them. Now and then a car came toward them, driving past without knowing who they were. All four vehicles were easily breaking the speed limit of 90 km/h, but none of them cared. It was a few hours after their arrival that Ironhide skillfully maneuvered onto the unpaved road that led them into the unpopulated highlands. The roads got rougher, but his shocks easily handled the blows. He grumbled a little about the abuse, just for the show of it, and it earned him a brief smile from the man in his cab. Otherwise his passenger didn't protest.
Followed by two black Ford F-350 Explorers and Ratchet bringing up the rear, the small convoy drove fast and didn't stop until they had reached the end of the highland road. The F-902 ended abruptly, petering out into nothing but rocks. Surrounded by the massive glacial tongues of the Dyngjujökull to the right and the smaller Kverkjökull to the left the men and women of Epps' unit piled out of the their cars and the two mechs transformed.
Ratchet's lights brightened the area, though they did nothing to make the surroundings more hospitable. Ironhide added his own source of light.
Ex-Army Major Will Lennox gazed around. It looked like a different planet here. All mountains and rocks and glacial ice. He had been to many places, foreign and at home, but this was something that could very well fit into a science fiction movie. Behind him Epps ordered the camp to be prepared and the fifteen soldiers quickly did so. Tents were set up and communication with the base at home established.
"Thirty miles from here," Lennox said softly, eyes on the massive wall of whiteness.
Heavy steps shook the earth and he looked up at his partner. Ironhide, if not for the lights, would have disappeared completely in the night. Only the lit-up headlights and his blue optics gave reference to his size and where he was at the moment.
"It'll be morning soon," he rumbled. "There will be no non-military fly-overs tomorrow. Forecast looks in our favor."
Lennox nodded. It would be cloudy for most of the day, which meant no non-commercial flights would try and shuttle the odd tourist that had caught a cheapo flight off-season over Iceland's biggest glacier. Commercial flights starting from Keflavik were no bother at all. They followed the coast line and would be above the Atlantic by the time they passed the south-east.
Feeling the need to move around, explore, Will did just that. His eyes were pretty well adjusted to the meager light. He had no optics, he had no human optical nerves, he was a hybrid. He had a mixture of both.
Ironhide remained at the camp, showing how much he trusted in his partner not to do anything foolish. Will only walked for about a mile and then settled with his back against a rough stone. He breathed in deeply, feeling the crisp clear air in his lungs.
Lennox had come along on this operation because this was exactly the mission he could do such a thing: come along. No hiding, no chance of discovery. Iceland was so sparsely populated, with the mass of people living in Reykjavik, that he had a measure of freedom like never before. He needed this, needed to get out, and Canada had shown he could. Canada had been under heavy guard and only at night or in enclosed spaces; Iceland meant a new freedom.
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When Ironhide joined him, his lights switched off, finding his way with sure steps, the camp had already settled down to catch a few hours of sleep. Will didn't feel sleepy. He had caught what he needed on their flight here and he rarely slept every night. He didn't need to.
Ironhide settled down beside him.
"First time I'm really somewhere I can move about freely," Lennox said after a while.
Canada had meant hiding, too. Wherever people were, he couldn't be. In this place, in this country actually, running into crowds was… not happening. Aside from busses full of tourists or going to a party in town, it was a very lonely place. Up here, in the highlands, even more so. They could be here for months and no one would notice.
He looked up into the dark face of his partner and bonded. "Perfect for retirement," he quipped.
Ironhide chuckled. "Right."
Lennox leaned against the armored foot, abandoning the rock for the closeness of another kind, and Ironhide let him. Nothing more was spoken between them until the sun rose through the thick cloud cover.
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With dawn came meager sunlight and the camp broke up into different groups. Three soldiers would remain behind to monitor communications, keep in touch with the base back home and everyone who now went onto the glacier. A Chinook helicopter had arrived and lifted everyone, including the two Autobots, to the target area thirty miles from the camp. The military helicopter would stay in touch and hide in the highlands. A second one was close by, on call, should it be needed.
Walking on the cold, hard and slippery surface wasn't easy for anyone. The soldiers had attached spikes to their boots and the two mechs had adjusted the soles of their feet accordingly.
When they finally closed in on the marked site of the strange discovery Gene had picked up, Ratchet made a surprised noise that was echoed by Ironhide. Of course the images taken by the group of explorers had been sharp. They had shown a metallic object, but the distortion from the ice had made it difficult to actually identify it.
Now they saw it for themselves.
It was a protoform. There was no doubt about. Locked in its transition mode, a roughly spherical construction with a large protrusion on one end. Anyone who might have seen it come down all that time ago would have believed it to be a meteor. The space debris and dust that usually covered such modes was still visible. Covered by a layer of crystal clear ice it was now lit up by powerful lights and surrounded by two of its kind and a team of Epps' men, as well as Lennox.
Ratchet scanned the enclosed sphere and made a humming noise. "Taking into account the age of this glacial field, as well as the past sightings of meteorites – none even remotely in this area – I think the protoform has been here for a while now."
"How long?" Epps asked.
"At least three thousand years, maybe more."
The captain whistled. "Damn. Any way to tell if it's one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?"
"No. Transition modes as well as protoforms don't bear sigils. There are ways to identify the individual though. First we have to remove the protoform."
Epps nodded. "Okay. You guys tell us where to dig, we dig."
Ratchet smiled a little, then set up a new scan, this one to determine how best to remove the sphere from the ice surrounding it.
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Will stood in the averse weather, gaze locked on the unearthed – or was that un-iced? – transition mode of a protoform that they still hadn't been able to identify. It had taken them a week to get it safely out of the ice, mainly due to two factors: the ice and the weather. A storm had laid them off for two days and made their work harder afterwards. Even with small explosive charges set at a safe distance to their precious discovery and both Ratchet and Ironhide helping, it had been difficult to remove the protective mantle of ice.
Wind blew around him, bitingly cold. The clouds hung low enough to be fog and visibility was close to nil. Lennox should be in a warm tent, sitting with the others, eating, talking about who the mech they had found could be, but he wasn't. He watched Ratchet and Ironhide work.
The medic wasn't happy about the state of the foundling. So low on energon there was barely a reading, he had concluded that when the protoform had crashed he had already been in stasis lock, deep enough not to rouse for any reason unless someone from outside repaired him, gave him energon.
Ironhide's expression was dark, darker than usual, and he had once or twice remarked that from the looks of it, the mech found had been in battle, maybe fled from Cybertron throughout the final stages of the war. That meant he had been in space for a long, long time, and crashed onto Earth thousands of years ago, as confirmed by the age of the ice surrounding it. Maybe the transition mode had followed an energy signature.
For now they had no explanation who he was and what had happened to him.
Will walked over to the sphere and reached out with bare hands, running his finger tips over the scarred looking exterior. Protoforms were supremely resistant to damage, capable of withstanding extreme heat or cold, and they were the core of every Cybertronian. This one had seen its share of battle and to scar it so badly, the fight must have gone way beyond the mech's limit.
The runes were docile on his hands as he touched the alien metal cocoon. He couldn't jolt anything to life, he couldn't give energon or do whatever the Allspark had been able to. He wasn't the Allpark.
Of course he had abilities, like withstanding heat and cold himself. He didn't need the protective gear the others were wearing. He could be up here, in the glacial cold of Iceland's nearing winter in jeans and a t-shirt and not feel the cold, but Will was maintaining his human habits. He had put on the same things as Epps' team. That he was now gloveless, that he had removed the hood of his jacket and the thermal head protection wear, was due to the fact that he was alone with the two mechs.
Ratchet muttered a soft curse. "We have to get him out of here fast. Whatever keeps him alive, it's fading. He's in such a deep coma, I fear feeding him energon could shock him into off-lining. This will be delicate work."
Ironhide flexed his fingers. "What if it's a Con?"
"We don't know that, Ironhide. If he is a Decepticon there is still stasis. A stasis we induce, not one that came about due to massive damage and system failures."
Another rumble.
Will walked around the sphere, joining his partner. He stuffed his hands into the jacket's pockets, letting the wind whip through his hair. Both silently watched Ratchet work until the sun came up, piercing the darkness with weak stabs of light. Epps had crawled out of his tent an hour earlier, muttering about cold weather.
"Airlift is coming in. ETA two hours," he now said as one of his men relayed the information.
Will nodded. They would get the sphere off the glacier and back to the base camp site where they had to wait until two Chinook helicopters could take the massive form back to Keflavik to the waiting C-17. The plane was currently on its way back from US territory and would arrive on time.
"Man, I hate cold," Epps grumbled.
Lennox, still without anything protecting his head and looking comfortable and warm despite the arctic temperatures, smiled. "Warm thoughts, Rob."
"Warm my ass. Speaking of which, it's freezing off," the captain growled. "And you're freakin' me out," he added, giving Lennox a glare.
The Ex-Army Ranger chuckled. He knew where his oldest friend came from and he also knew that Epps didn't mean it as an insult.
"Just be glad I'm not in my tee and undies."
"Oh, weird me out some more, will ya! That's really not normal, man."
"What can I say? Freaky alien accidents do that to a guy."
They shared a grin and Epps gave him a clap on the shoulder. He walked back to where his men were preparing for the brief cargo flight. Ironhide's blue optics glowed softly in the dawn light as he watched his partner. Will shot him a reassuring grin and went back to inspecting the sphere.
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Two hours later the Chinook blew up a storm of snow and ice as it hovered over the landing site of the protoform. Experienced soldiers attached the heavy lift gear and within twenty minutes the sphere was raised from the Vatnajökull and airlifted to the base site thirty miles away.
In the silence that followed their departure Will closed his eyes, feeling the snow on his face. He inhaled the frigid air and released it with a soft sigh.
There was a certain freedom in this vastness, this icy landscape. Behind him Ratchet had already transformed and drove across a surface that no normal car could ever manage to navigate. Epps and his men were gone with the Chinook. There were only two people left, one a hybrid human, one a mechanoid life form.
Ironhide joined his partner, silent, giving Will time. Finally Lennox opened his eyes and looked at the alien mechanoid. He smiled.
"Let's go," he said softly.
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The secret military unit disappeared as fast as they had come, flying into the night. Icelandic authorities were taking care of the four scientists. National security was understood even by the three men and one woman and nothing of their findings would leak to the public. Nothing at all.
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tbc...
