Long-range scanning was energy-intensive, and he avoided it when he could, but the terrain here was as broken as a battlefield. Cliffs rose and canyons gaped, and in places the coal rods were clustered so thick there was no good way through at all. Small organics fled him, or blasted off overhead - a feat which he found astonishing. Bumblebee had been stationed on eight planets populated by a variety of organics this size and larger, but never had he seen one capable of true flight. Most of these organics took to the air in eerie near-silence, and Bumblebee could not detect their engines. It was amazing they could fly at all, really, and he could not help feeling vaguely sorry for the little things. Their wings weren't even attached properly, and wobbled up and down erratically.
What a strange planet.
When he sensed at last a flat ribbon, winding its way among the foothills below, he turned and made for it hopefully. Progress was slow but at last he pushed his way through a stand of flexing coal rods and there it was, smooth and undulating, a little higher than the rest of the silicate soil. There was water here as well - small dirty heaps of the powdered form and puddles of the liquid on either side of the ribbon. No, not a ribbon... a pathway.
He studied the crude alien structure for a few moments, scanning carefully. Before he could step out onto it, a distant purr of moving metal alerted him, and he stepped back behind some of the coal rods. After a few moments, a transport-frame mech came into visual range, running fast and low to the ground. He bore no faction markings of any kind, and... he contained an organic. One of the smooth ones, similar to the creatures which featured heavily in the background transmissions which Bumblebee continued to monitor. A servant, perhaps? Worker, slave, pet?
The mech was running loud, as if he gave no thought to stealth, and yet his EM field was no more complex than the faint aura found around all purified but unworked metal. Was the mech shielding himself somehow? Cognizant of his mission, his own field dampened, Bumblebee extended his sensors, applying just the slightest pressure to the mech's stark, simple field.
The smooth organic caged inside the mech reacted. The creature jabbed in at the frequency receptor device in front of it, displeased by the interference static. The mech itself, however, showed no sign at all of even noticing Bumblebee. Nor did it generate a field torque - which was... impossible, because even small pieces of living metal formed a field when signaled. Even simple drones made more response. But this mech...
No, not a mech. Dead metal.
Bewildered, Bumblebee watched the unliving... transport thing speed away. What use was so much blank metal, outside of a factory or simplest machining shop? He might as well have opened a comline to a wall. Or a wrench. Though on second thought, any wrench of Ratchet's would have been considerably more responsive.
After a short period of observation, Bumblebee came to the uncomfortable conclusion that these deadmetal drones were probably commonplace on this planet. One or two of them, oblivious, passed his hiding spot every minute. They were, he was forced to admit, probably quite fuel efficient - certainly moreso than walking or taking on his old altmode. If he masked his own energy signatures well, he might even conceal himself as one of them, and travel upon the pathway as they did. Such a route had to lead somewhere, didn't it?
It would mean shedding the last mode he'd taken - a hover-skiff, meant for traversing the wasted terrain of a sprawling civilization in its death throes. Bumblebee considered his battered forearm for a moment, turning his gauntlet over, sharp optics picking out transformation seams and chinks, pitted lightweight plates, badly-scraped baffles, the faint roughness of nodes many times damaged.
It had been... a long time since he'd reformatted his shell.
The Cybertronians had many glyphs for their own species. Starcore-shifter, shell-warrior, living-wise-metal, sun-drinker, true-seeking-sojourner, and a hundred more, each with modifier sets and accents of their own.
But the oldest of these, and the simplest, was nothing but a single sweep, a dynamic line. And it alone carried no qualifiers.
Flux.
All metal could be made to live, of course, could be threaded through with capillaries and sensors, motivators and flexons. Once a part became integrated to him, it could be cut or soldered, could be added to or burned away. Nanites and medics could repair his components, programming could quicken them. Tensor cables could be dismantled and engines overhauled. With enough clever engineering, a weight-bearing strut could be positioned to support a strong back, or alternately be cogged into service as the hardened core of a blade; the exquisitely skilled could even employ that same component in a third form.
But not all metal flowed... adapted, evolved. Not all metal coiled and twisted and fanned infinitely to the call of will alone; not all metal could embrace a spark.
Fluxframe, protometal, the gestational origin of the shell, quantum entanglement of strangelets and superfluid starcore, the very essence of mutability. Every time a mech chose to create a new, permanent structure or incorporate a prebuilt one, the effort expended a measure of fluxmetal, however minute. And choosing an altmode - especially one at great variance to a mech's present form - consumed a great deal of it. A mech's fluxframe regenerated, to be sure, but so very slowly, and thus the decision to alter large parts of a shell was always made with deliberation.
Bumblebee had no such luxury of time.
Optics narrowed, gleaming greenish as Bumblebee queued up an intricately specialized assay program. It was used for one purpose alone.
Two more low-slung transports flashed along the cracked black pathway, each one containing its own smooth organic. The first of the dead metal drones was large, with a great deal of exterior plating. The second was much smaller, easier to copy. It crowded aggressively close to the lead transport, its internals thrumming a more insistent tone. After a moment it darted out and around the larger bot, obedient to some unseen command.
Bumblebee scanned it as it passed.
A flood of data swamped his cortex - schematics, internals, magnetic sequences; the transport was simple in many aspects, fantastically and bizarrely complex in others. As he'd suspected, the vehicle was rife with empty spaces, hollow compartments and niches where he could pack unused pieces. So far, he'd only observed deadmetal drones in association with the smooth organics, and so he left most of the central cabin design open like the original. There was a hinged cavity in the back, which seemed a suitable place for the mechabots. The rest, though - his CPU warmed as its banks of processors modeled a million configurations of internal components, testing theoretical assemblies, validating or discarding sequence after sequence. With every pass, the program improved its output, fine-tuning efficiency for this atmosphere and gravity.
Subroutines scavenged free clock cycles to catalogue Bumblebee's existing components, determining which could be retooled or adapted, which ones could be used as they were, and which must be kept inviolate. The list of parts which would need to be sculpted largely from fluxmetal was... distressingly long.
And he couldn't even reproduce all the components. The odd black wheels and many interior pieces of the deadmetal bot were made primarily of carbon, often compiled into rather complex arrangements. Bumblebee did carry some carbon, neatly assembled in nanotubules and buckyballs, but pulling those apart would be difficult. Putting them back together to make... that black stuff might be even harder. Even the most tractable nanite colonies could get really fussy about working with carbon, sometimes.
After a little thought, Bumblebee found a set of whipdisks from a close-combat weapon he rarely used, and designated them as replacements for the black wheels. The entire process took moments to complete. Bumblebee held the configuration quietly in his cortex for a few more, a meditative hesitation.
And then, with great deliberation, he let go - surrendering the data and his very form to his fluxframe, to his spark. It hurt - always did, the first time, as plates were sutured together, snapped apart. Air hissed uselessly through his vents as his frame compacted, folded, parts twisting, minute filaments breaking and regrowing with terrible speed. The long struts of his limbs folded under or arched over him, while silicate membranes annealed and stiffened. New cabling junctures crawled like snakes under his shifting armor, silver fluxmetal extrusions formed necessary new components.
Bumblebee onlined his optics, not sure when they'd blinked off. He felt... much shorter, and quite stiff. But also remarkably stable, and the new armor covered him completely - no need for vulnerable gaps around joints. The extra styling around his optics perhaps interfered a little with visual acuity, but not by much, and he could work on that. His sensors tingled faintly as chromatophore nanites set out on the long journey to colonize new parts of his surface armor, and the mechabots in his rear hatch space jostled for room. After a few unpleasant jabs from their miniature engineering tools, he reduced sensor detection in the chamber. Mechabots had slagging sharp little legs.
The transformation had gone well. Pleased with himself, Bumblebee rolled back and forth a few times, running self-diagnostics and testing his grip here on the side of the pathway - and nearly collided with his first upclose organic.
It was small, smaller than the smooth organics he'd already spotted. Its face was pointed as if it wore a battlemask; its optics were quite black. Though it was covered in a dense halo of keratin fibers and was trailed by a strange tuft of the same, it too seemed oddly reminiscent of a mining mech - with its a pair of small headcrests, two forefeet, two pedes, and sharp claws. It was as boldly striped as a racingbot.
Bumblebee froze. It had seen him transform, beyond a doubt. Its small optics gleamed as it sniffed at one of his wheels. First contact! And since he'd been discovered, sort of, perhaps he could enlist its aid. Jazz always took the ambassadorial role, was always out in front, and Bumblebee had envied him but never really imagined that he'd ever have a chance to - he had to - where the slag were the protocols...
There they were. In triumph, Bumblebee presented the first of the new species transmissions: a series of exceedingly simple glyphs, a kind of pidgin common to most interstellar traders. /Greetings. We. Come. In. Peace./ Along with that, he projected the faintly-glowing image of a cube of energon, universal symbol for hospitality and friendliness. Though, frankly, any intelligent life form might well take the small softlight hologram as a request, given how obviously low Bumblebee's power levels were.
The new alien organic nosed at one of his new, makeshift optics. Then another deadmetal drone flashed by on the nearby pathway. The drone's wheels made a fair amount of sound, and this appeared to startle Bumblebee's own organic. The creature huffed and began waddling away.
Which wasn't the way things were supposed to work at all - Bumblebee still had some six thousand eight hundred twelve peaceful greetings to try! He dispelled the hologram, and in an agony of indecision, approached his organic once more. His solid steel wheels crunched as they rolled from the asphalt and onto rocky, damp soil. Protocol number two was a quiet, soothing hum, offered across a broad range of electromagnetic and auditory frequencies.
The organic turned around and began to stamp its front two pedes, its tuft of keratin erect, tip flicking.
Much encouraged, Bumblebee initiated protocol number three - cycling his weapon coverings, in order to prove that his implements of war were offline and cold. Across his frame, hatches hissed open.
Bumblebee watched eagerly as the organic began its own transformation sequence: twisting around in a black and white blur, standing up onto its fore-pedes. It was a quick, smooth maneuver, clearly well-practiced. And then -
/ ARRRRGH! /
Metal wheels spun uselessly in the gravel as Bumblebee attempted to go in reverse from zero to sixty in a single astrosecond, flinging up a hailstorm of dust and debris. The- the weaponized liquid was everywhere, up inside his sensors, coating components in a film of reeking oil, blinding his primary set of optics, setting every single chemoreceptor on his entire frame to firing madly. It was worse than being eaten by a Telorian sandworm. Gears ground, slipped, and then Bumblebee rocketed forward, over a bump, found the pathway by the slightly spongy feel of it, left streaks of burning road tar and torn asphalt in a swath behind him as every self-preservation protocol urged escape. Mechabots dug their tiny claws into his hatch compartment, squeaking as they clung for their lives.
But the noxious mist clung to him, seemed to grow even stronger. The air wooshing through his vents spread the toxin - or acid, was it acid? - throughout his chassis. And his... there was... it was slippery and chunky and up inside and...
Oh.
Oh Primus, no.
He'd squished the organic ambassador.