praying won't change anything
what will change the present is
how ready you are to fight
...
LIKE THE WATER FINDS THE SEA
The Altihexian command room was harshly lit and half-empty, late-night shadows creeping in from the corners. For security reasons it occupied the very center of the base. There were no windows and few ventilation shafts, and as the doors flicked shut behind Ironhide, Optimus caught a glimpse of steel blast reinforcing.
Of the twenty-three places at the conference table, only five were filled. Blaster, currently on loan from the Tagan Heights frontlines, balanced his chair back on four legs and murmured a tired greeting. Cuirasse, chief of the Altihexian medical staff, gave a respectful, if distracted, nod. Beside her, First Aid hummed through his dente as he scrolled through a tablet, optics shadowed under drawn browplates. At the back of the room the lean frame of Altihex' resident SpecOps director threatened to merge into the shadows despite his expensive Towers finish. Mirage's yellow optics followed Optimus as he made his way to the head of the table and sat. He felt as though he'd been awake for a million years.
Across the table, Prowl looked up from his mountain of data the moment Optimus sat. His field was taut and frayed, as though he'd been working ten shifts straight. With no Jazz around to haul him bodily out of his office, he probably had.
Holoscreens above the table flickered into life with a wave of the CTO's servo. Ordinarily there would be five, one for each member of the command corps missing. Tonight, there were only three. Elita-One, one of Optimus' oldest remaining friends, smiled down at him from the middle of the group. Her callsign and time zone – Kalis, Western Grid 34.4 – blinked from the bottom of her screen, her assistant's bright red and goldenrod helm hovering behind her shoulders. Accompanying her were two mecha Optimus only knew by their personnel records: Red Alert, newly-promoted General Security Chief, and Kup, whose full title was near-unpronounceable and reflected a military career of nearly a million vorn.
Along with Ratchet, the missing mecha were Jazz – who was leading the rescue effort – and Ultra Magnus, who was busy running the war effort in the Western Hemisphere. Optimus counted both his close friends. Today, he felt their absence keenly.
He vented as unobtrusively as he could, put his servos palms-down on the tabletop and focused on the physical reality of the dead metal beneath his fingertips. Nine pairs of optics settled upon him.
"I believe Prowl has sent each one of you a breakdown of the current situation, but for clarity's sake I will repeat it here," he began. "Earlier today the Darkmount retrieval squad was attacked en route from Polyhex. Details are awaiting confirmation, but it appears that the squad was scattered by a force possibly superior in number, whereupon Ratchet was separated from the main group and subjugated by the enemy."
He paused for a millisecond, wondering how to phrase the rest. Not long – but long enough for Elita to take note, her optics narrowing. "He was tortured for close to a joor, and is currently offline or in stasis. The status of the other squad members is currently unknown."
Ratchet's rank was both a blessing and a curse. As CMO, he was officially considered part of the Autobot command corps. This meant that while he seldom took part in the day-to-day maneuvering and management of the army, for Decepticons – any Decepticons – to target him could never be taken as anything but an active, calculated tactical strike against the Autobots as a whole. Had his security clearance been lower it might have simply been exceedingly bad luck – a symptom of the emotionally-charged violence between the factions. Yet to capture a member of the command corps would give the Decepticons a huge advantage, no matter how they played it. Ratchet, despite his disinterest in military command, held a huge amount of sensitive information within his processors.
And, as Jazz kept reminding everyone, the Decepticons had all the best hackers.
The silver lining in this blackest of thunderclouds was that it gave Optimus all the resources the Torus States branches of the Autobot forces had to throw at Ratchet's recovery. Unlike many other unfortunate mecha in this war, he would not have to fight his own faction to be allowed to go after his mate.
"Recent reports state that the corpse of the squad captain, one Cutlass, has been found alongside several Decepticon frames, all either dead or approaching it." Prowl cut in smoothly. A databurst pinged politely in Optimus' inbox. He opened it, scrolling through the document as the tactician continued. "Trackers have reached the squad's last known location and are following several trails."
An undertone of static bled through one of the communicators. Red Alert was muttering softly. He made no move to speak aloud, however. Prowl pinged the holoprojector, and the crackling quieted.
"What are our sources?" Kup prompted through the cygar hanging from the corner of his mouth. "First response?"
"We lost radio contact with the squad prior to their arrival in Polyhexi territory," Blaster put in. The Altihexi base was the closest communications hub to Darkmount; Blaster, a gifted broadcast tech, had been transferred to monitor Decepticon communications rather than keep track of their own operatives. He was a young mech, plainly out of his comfort zone in such high-level discussions. His field slunk closer to his plating as he continued. "We weren't going to be able to get away with it within Darkmount's zone. The plan was to check in with ground control when they crossed the border into Uraya afterwards. This would've been about half a joor ago. When they didn't check in, we sent SpecOps a warning and went to the extended time. "
Mirage shifted, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his helm back against the wall. "Special Operations then readied a second team, primarily composed of trackers and combat specialists, to render assistance if needed while the extended rendezvous window elapsed, after which point they were deployed. Jazz is commanding this team, hence my presence here."
"Mirage and I have direct, heavily encrypted comm lines open to Jazz," Prowl said, and another databurst made the rounds. "The majority of our information is being relayed through him; however," and here he glanced at Optimus for the barest moment, "Optimus has given us some information, the accuracy of which has yet to be proven."
Five curious glances came Optimus' way. "What d'ya mean, 'yet to be proven?'" Kup asked.
"It is not overly detailed, and I do not know whether the method of transmission may have affected its veracity," Optimus explained, his spark lead-weighted. He'd given Prowl everything he could, but the split-second glimpse he'd seen through Ratchet's optics had been blurry with pain. He hadn't even known it was possible to share a bondmate's senses.
"Oh?" Elita said, leaning closer to the screen. "Has the Matrix begun concerning itself with present matters?"
Cuirasse consulted her tablet. "According to the scans 'Aid took, there's none of the electrical activity here that had been present after your other visions. Admittedly Ratchet's the only one with the full record, but I've got a decent sample here."
Optimus shook his helm, forestalling the queries he could feel coming. "It was not the Matrix," he said, quickly and firmly. He could not afford to be tentative with this. "Six orns ago, Ratchet and I bonded. I felt a small measure of the assault through it."
There was a wordless outcry as several of the others tried to speak up at once. Optimus raised his hands, palms outward, pressed intent through his field and brought it down on Prowl and Cuirasse when it looked like they might argue. "I am not interested in listening to criticism at this juncture! You may critique our decision as much as you like when Ratchet has been brought back to safety."
"Ah take it that's how yeh know he's alive," Ironhide said. He was frowning, but not, if Optimus knew his bodyguard at all, in disapproval.
Optimus nodded shortly. "I don't believe he's immediately in danger of fading, either. His recovery must be our immediate priority."
"Doubly so, now." Elita tapped her claws against her desk – the tinny sound echoed through the link, sharp, staccato. "Optimus, my friend, I question your wisdom in bonding but I cannot deny that in this situation it may be to our advantage. I pray to the Star of Chaos that it continues to be so."
"Ratchet's security clearance is second-tier," Red Alert rasped. "He should have the appropriate firewalls, but if he is taken to Darkmount they will not hold forever."
"That is our worst-case scenario," Prowl agreed, his voice clipped. "Kimia reports that Darkmount is in lockdown. Ships have not been allowed to take off nor land since the dawn shift this morning, when our jailbreak was discovered. This would indicate that Ratchet has not yet been taken prisoner."
Blaster frowned. "Why wouldn't they, though? If I was a 'Con and I had a high-ranking Autobot at my mercy, the obvious thing to do would be to take them in to my superiors."
Optimus held his field as still as he could muster, counting slowly to six. Blaster met his optics for a moment, then winced, field furling in apology. It wasn't his fault – Optimus sent him an apologetic ping, though the wound in his spark was still raw and bleeding.
"It may be that they don't know what he looks like, though." Elita shifted to the side, allowing her assistant to speak up. Hot Rod squeezed into the holoscreen's frame, the flared tip of his spoiler sticking up behind Elita's shoulder.
Hot Rod was young, an orphan of the war in Kalis. Elita had adopted him shortly after her own mate's death in the fall of the Towers in Protihex. Roddy had been a sparkling, barely a couple of orns old at the time. Optimus had once asked why. He'd received as a reply a video-capture of a tiny red-and-gold mechlet crawling through the muddied streets of the bombed-out city, chuckling at the motes of golden dust that danced through the sunlit atmosphere and died as they settled on the damp silt drifts in front of him.
"He broke my spark, Optimus," Elita had said, cradling the dusty, gurgling child in her arms. "Anyone who can laugh in such a terrible place deserves the chance to survive."
In the here and now, Hot Rod continued. "I mean, I hear about people like Soundwave and Starscream all the time – but I only just found out what Starscream looks like in person last night. If these guys are scouts, say, they'll know the name Ratchet, but who knows whether they'll recognise the face that goes with it?"
"Plausible, but unlikely," Prowl judged, optics narrowing in thought. "It would be the best-case scenario."
"It may explain certain things," Optimus mused. He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his hands, staring down at the tabletop without really seeing it. His tanks roiled as he tried to recall the few small details he'd gathered in the midst of Ratchet's pain. "They stayed in the same place for rather a long time."
"Undoubtedly somewhere they felt safe. There are three major battlefields close to where the team was scattered." Prowl grabbed for another datapad and jabbed the stylus into the screen so hard Optimus half-expected it to crack. "Caulter Plateaux and Mollyn Stay – both were Decepticon victories. There is an outpost near Caulter Plateaux, so likely not there; they would have taken him to the outpost if they'd had a half a brain module between them. Mollyn Stay township was bombed… and there was a small church within the city limits."
Prowl's commlink interrupted him. His optics dimmed, stared into the middle distance. Optimus recognised the look of a mech paying every iota of his attention.
Mirage detached himself from the shadows. "It seems Prowl was right," he said. "They've just found Ratchet inside the Mollyn Stay transept. Jazz refuses to give me details, but he is as angry as I've ever heard him." He slipped out the door and vanished from sight.
"Prepare yourself, Optimus," Prowl put in, clicking off his tablet. "It's bad."
They brought Ratchet in unconscious, keeping him in stasis lock until his wounds could be treated. Optimus might have protested, but the moment he laid optics on his bondmate's ravaged frame he understood.
The Altihex base's medical wing had once been a teaching facility attached to the Altihex Academy of Medical Engineering. There was an observation bay set into the wall of the main operating theatre, where tutors had once watched their students operate on dummy frames. Optimus waited there, hands pressed to the glass, vents coming quick and shallow in anxiety.
Under the surgeons' skilled hands, Ratchet slowly became recognisable again.
There was so very much to repair. The nurses under First Aid's command had cleaned Ratchet up as best they could prior to the operation: his mouth no longer glistened with silver, the streaks of dried fluid that had painted his thighs and abdomen vanishing under solvent and cloth. The patina of dust and debris that had turned the white of his paintjob dirty brown washed away under a steady spray of low-pH cleanser.
Ratchet's entire left shoulder was a ruin of sparking wires and twisted, blackened metal. The edges of the surrounding plating drooped and bubbled, droplets of melted metal visible amongst the dead protomass and char inside the wound. Thermoelectric blades always left ugly scars. The joint had been completely obliterated. The ends of Ratchet's clavicular and upper biceptic struts had simply... liquefied under the heat of the blade. It was a dreadful injury. As Optimus watched, the surgeons stripped Ratchet's shoulder back almost as far as his processor core, removing both arm and shoulder mechanisms. The detached arm was set down on a separate operating surface, where another surgeon carefully sealed the open lines and deactivated all electrical systems, before placing the limb into a suspension bath. The container was then sealed, and placed into cold storage.
They'd largely left his valve alone. Whether that was an indication that the damage was not as bad as he'd feared, or otherwise, Optimus could not begin to guess. Someone had found a cloth to spread across his pelvic span; they'd soaked that in a nanite solution and left it there while the surgeons worked on his shoulder. Small mercies, Optimus was grateful for them.
The rest of the damage was comparatively superficial. Optimus followed the medics intently as plating was welded and coaxed back into shape, stripped gears replaced and cabling patched. By the time the buzz of activity began to die down, Ratchet's frame was much diminished. A temporary patch covered the stump of his shoulder, and what remained of his plating was striped with welds and green smears of nanite paint.
There was a knock on the door of the observation booth. Optimus came very close to jumping out of his own plating.
"Enter," he called, venting in. He counted to six as the mech – Cuirasse – closed the door behind herself, then let it go. It didn't seem to help.
"Are you holding up all right?" she asked, in the silence left by the echoing click of the lock. Her field was held tight against her plating; it prickled to the touch, shot through with a bitter note something like helpless anger to the taste. Her optics blazed yellow out of a taut mask of neutrality.
No. "Yes, I am," Optimus said, the lie – for once – slipping smoothly onto his glossa. "Are you?"
Cuirasse's optics refocused, her mask slipping. "Yeah," she said, shifting a look down and to the side. "Just… tired. Tired, and Unicron-spittin' angry. I'm not here for me, though."
"I had thought so." Optimus replied. There was a chair in the corner of the room – not big enough to be comfortable for a mech his size, but perhaps enough to support a weary medic. He stepped back, caught it by the armrests and brought it forward, wordlessly offering. Caught off-guard for the second time in as many minutes, Cuirasse gaped at it. Her control shattered, reformed into a mirthless grin.
"Sure I can? I don't want to be rude." She waved a still-damp servo at him, the gesture taking in his entirety: It's not done to sit down in the presence of a Prime.
"You will not be rude," Optimus persisted. To the Pit with formality. "I owe you and everyone else who has assisted my immense gratitude."
"You don't owe me a thing," Cuirasse argued, even as her knees folded beneath her. She didn't so much sit down as collapse into the padded chair, the bearings in her tyres squeaking as her heels rubbed against the floor. "I'd have done the same for anyone. We all would have. The 'Cons chewed him up and put him through the Smelter, and the Pillars spat him back out."
Optimus shook his helm, glancing back out into the theater. Ratchet lay on the berth, supine, his optics shuttered and his one remaining arm crossed over his chest. There was a strangely peaceful expression on his face, utterly at odds with the injuries marring his frame.
I was afraid of that, he very nearly said aloud.
"You're down as Ratchet's next of kin in his documentation. This is the post-operation report." Cuirasse's scowl faded into an exhausted frown. "The damage looks a lot worse than it is, fortunately. Worst is his shoulder; the joint was completely destroyed and enough of the surrounding mechanisms went with it that it's more efficient to replace the entire shoulder. We're going to have to machine a new joint custom to his specifications, however, which will take longer than I'd like. The heat killed off a great deal of his protomass in that area, which has had to be excised. He will need to undergo several more surgeries at some point; we will fortunately be able to reattach his arm once the joint is fitted, but between then and now his protomass has to recover enough to firstly allow the new joint to integrate into his frame, and then to reintegrate the arm itself. Assuming all goes as planned, it might be as much as a full chord before he's fully functional again."
Optimus tasted half-processed energon in the back of his mouth. He swallowed it down, trying to keep the motion as inconspicuous as possible. "I see. The other damage will not pose as significant a setback?"
"The physical damage, I shouldn't think so." Cuirasse looked away, bitterness flooding her field. "There's… Prime, you have to understand that with this sort of attack, it's not the physical wounds that do the most damage. And there are as many ways that people react as there are mecha on this planet. We can look at the physical damage and make an educated guess, but that's as good as you're going to get. According to Jazz they had him pinned to the ground with a scrap-fragging thermoelectric sword through his shoulder. He was being electrocuted, burned and gang-raped at the same damn time. That sort of thing doesn't just leave a mark on your consciousness, it carves it in ten leagues deep with a rusty bandsaw."
There was a rail running along beneath the window behind him. Optimus knelt, groping for it as the weight in his spark drove him to the floor. He felt his digits creak, their cabling threatening to snap with the pressure of his own grip. The pain broke through the howling in his mind, grounded him before it consumed him. I should have been there. I swore to protect him, to guard him, to keep him safe. I should have been there.
Cuirasse was watching him, her optics tired and knowing. Optimus picked up the frayed pieces of his composure, but they slipped through his mental fingers like water.
He gave up. Looked at his hands, curled them into fists and pressed hard against his thighs. "What can I do to help him?"
"You can talk to him, for starters. He'll be awake soon. It might help if you were there."
All the Decepticons in the world could not have stopped him. "I will."
There was a silence. Cuirasse broke it with an awkward cough of her vents. "Sorry if I stepped over the line a bit there, Prime. It's just something you've got to understand."
Optimus let out a vent he'd forgotten he'd been holding. "No, the advice is appreciated. I… will likely have need of it in the very near future."
"Definitely," the medic murmured. "Anyway, as I said, the shoulder's the worst. We've got some anomalies in his spark readings that we're about to get looked at in greater depth, but his output rate is stable and his pulse is fine and strong. His plating was severely damaged in places, which is to be expected with violent assault. The worst have been removed as repair would be exceedingly fiddly otherwise. He's sustained minor motor system damage to most joints; and the hydraulics in his back, hips and knees are severely overstressed and may require replacement rather than repair. He's low on energon and derivatives, so we've hooked him up to a direct drip-feed which will remain in place overnight. Longer, depending on how well he can take it orally tomorrow."
"How long do you expect him to remain in medbay?" Ratchet's own quarters weren't far from here. Optimus hoped that would count in his favour. He'd never liked to be kept in his own hospital.
"Perhaps three or four shifts, at the least. Long enough to integrate his initial repairs. Longer, likely." Cuirasse drummed her fingers against the arm of the chair, her optics focusing on a spot on the wall past Optimus' shoulder. "His internal damage is not worrying, by itself. The valve lining is severely abraded and has prolapsed somewhat, but we've pinned it back in place and applied nanite gel. Self-repair should have it fixed within a couple of orns. The sensory network came close to burning out – again, self-repair will do more for that than we could. Physically, he doesn't need a replacement. Psychologically, it could help. I'll leave that to Ratchet himself, however. Rung too."
Optimus shifted his weight off his heels, which were beginning to ache. "Who is Rung? I am unfamiliar with the name."
"Part of the local psych team. I've worked with him before and I'll vouch for his competency 'til the sun turns blue. Regulations require thirty joors counselling after trauma – torture, captivity for example – so I'm recommending they assign Ratchet to him."
She opened her mouth, as if to continue, but the chirp of a comm interrupted her. Her optics dimmed, the sharp yellow glare turning distant. An update, Optimus assumed. He glanced out the window again. The nurses were cleaning the theater, and Ratchet was gone.
Cuirasse spoke again, catching Optimus by surprise. "You and Ratchet are bonded – you were sexually active, I assume?"
Optimus blinked at the sudden change of topic. Cuirasse's field drew back in wordless submission, but she did not retract the question.
"Yes?" he said eventually, the question markers creeping through his mental censorship. "We were, yes."
The grimace deepened. "We have the preliminary results from Ratchet's spark scan back. We're taking him for a deeper systems scan now. I've been asked to bring you to the tech ward."
Worry gripped Optimus' processor with sharp-clawed fists. "Is there a problem with his spark?"
"Not as such. I don't want to make a diagnosis on preliminary results alone, hence the deep scan." She pushed herself to her pedes, her frame creaking alarmingly.
Optimus held the door open for her. She left, transforming as she went.