Title: Steel and Steel: Chapter 3
Author: AotA
Rating: T
Warning: Language
Characters: Colonel Sharp, Will, Prowl, Jazz, Fin
Summary: The Ark arrives at base under the muzzles of heavy suppression weaponry and the humans get their first glimpse of Autobots, cybertronians that would come in peace if not for the war. This necessitates visits to medical, debriefings, and the first overtures.
Notes: See below. A less coherent and a shorter chapter than the previous one.
The ship that appeared on the PSR was not any previously identified model, so the AI monitoring it sounded the alarm, making the monitoring station aware that there was an inbound craft.
The people on station raised the level of readiness up one. The bogey was out two hours at its current speed.
Garbled static came over the comms an hour later, soon after officers were arrayed in the OPs center and the readiness was raised another level. The communications officers worked to unscramble the message.
Just before they raised the level again, the comm lines cleared, and squawked. The CO growled, "Lennox..." He turned and barked orders, "Captured enemy ship incoming! Let's meet them on the ground, people!"
"Standard procedure!"
Standard prodedure was to greet them. With lots and lots of weaponry to facilitate a more "friendly" welcome home.
It was always an odd sight to see one of the alien ships coming in to land. It fell somewhere between nerve wracking and thrilling, because sometimes the enemy wasn't entirely neutralized, or there were prisoners, or the ship itself was not entirely sound and crashed rather than landed, or any number of things that could go wrong.
The easy, professional looking landing was odd simply in its perfection.
It was an odd ship. The pilots should've had more trouble bringing it in than that, even if the group that had captured it had the most experience piloting the enemy craft.
When the ramp lowered, after the engines wound down and stilled, they were greeted with the strange sight of a white robot of a type they had never seen before, stumbling along with both arms slung over the shoulders of a hunter-killer pair coming down the ramp, trailed by a pair of smaller robots colored cheerful yellow and shiny silver, in turn followed by the third hunter-killer who was unnervingly nonchalant about being in the presence of three of the enemy.
The odd procession came to a stop in front of an unimpressed base commander.
"Lennox?"
The name was infused with a wealth of information, from "What the hell do you think you're doing?" to just plain "What the hell, Lennox?"
"Enemies of our enemies, commander," Will replied jauntily with a devil may care grin and a off handed salute, "That ship we were sent to take? So much more than just another ship."
The hunter-killer pinged the commanding officer a file containing a basic sitrep that made him huff and glare at the shimmering golden hull of the decidedly different alien ship. It didn't have trailing tentacles. It didn't have a myriad of sharp points projecting off of it. It wasn't bristling with obvious weaponry. It was actually strangly rounded to optics used to looking at and pinpointing the best points to attack on the toaster's warships.
That was not a warship.
With that in mind, Sharp turned back to the supposed enemies of the toasters they'd been fighting for years now, seeing the small silver toaster creep closer to the injured one. The injured one's head did not rise and the thing's legs trembled to support its weight, even with the assistance it was being given.
"Fine. Get them inside and checked out," Sharp barked, "Disable their weapons and have the white one-"
"Prowl, sir," Will interrupted.
Sharp have the hunter-killer a narrow eyed glare, "Have Prowl looked at by medical. Unless there's something urgent you didn't mention? No? Then I'm not going to talk to supposed potential allies out here on the tarmac."
Speaking directly to the aliens for the first time, Sharp just laid it out bluntly, "Pull something and we will kill you."
The yellow one gave a chirp that Sharp couldn't decipher and the silver toaster's weird blue optics glared but the white one, Prowl Lennox had called it, raised its head and nodded slightly, similarly oddly colored optics steady. "Understood," it said, in English.
Surprised, Sharp managed to say with his habitual hard-ass manner, "Glad we understand each other."
The colonel stepped aside and motioned for the odd group to continue on out of the hangar, leaving everyone else to stand around and gawk.
Running a hand down his face, Sharp counted to five before started barking orders at all the people standing around and gawking, his roar rising over the hubbub, "What the hell do you maggots think you're doing? Get back to work! Gawk on your free time, not the government's time, and certainly not on mine! Secure that ship! Perimeter! Where's that optical camouflage? What do you think this is? A tea party? Move your butts!"
Sharp stared at the group of robots suspiciously from the real-time display on the wall, "Well?"
"The white one, Prowl, isn't injured. Not really," the military medtech said with a shrug, sending the relevant files that the colonel wasn't interested in parsing into relevant information when he had someone to do so for him.
"What's wrong with it then?" the colonel asked sharply.
"He's old as hell and the wear and tear of fighting an extended war without proper repairs have taken their toll. Acute arthritis in alien robots," the man said with another shrug, "The silver one, Jazz, was asking about our repair capabilities and was asking about how we did our full body replacements, said one of the hunter-killers had mentioned we were capable of it. I didn't really answer him but he said that their medic just didn't have the materials to do anything than upkeep and emergency repairs, much less the kind of fixing that, um, mech would require to get back into fighting shape."
"What about the other two then?"
"Jazz appears to be in decent health for his conditions and having been stuck in some sort of statisis for an unknown amount of time. Knowing hunter-killers as I do however..." The medic shrugged, "I wouldn't be surprised if he was hiding some kind of injury or other. That kind of personality is always so stubborn. The last is called Bumblebee and he suffers for the same level of wear and tear as Jazz, plus an old injury to his vocal aparatus that makes him functionally mute. It shows repeated attempts at repair and reinjury."
"I see."
"Finally getting to see some of these... people, up close while their alive and not trying to take my head off is pretty cool," the medic said.
Sharp ignored the last bit, "Dismissed."
"Sir," the man rose to his feet and exited.
Sharp closed his eyes, "An 'old man,' a 'midget,' and a mute. This is what you bring me, Lennox?"
"An insanely capable tactician who knows exactly what the toasters are capable of, a high ranking, highly capable special forces officer, and a capable, level-headed young junior officer that wants to hope," Will corrected from the door, "There are also a bunch more of them on that ship, sleeping away. A diplomat cum soldier almost as big as the Big Ugly, a mech they described as a walking armory who stands as his bodyguard, a medic that's been keeping them inf fighting shape when they are running on fumes... Who knows what the others might be capable of."
"And if you're wrong?" Sharp asked, "What then?"
Will shrugged, "Can you tell me that anything they can do to us will be worse than the beating we're taking out there ever day when at least if they're here we can keep our eyes on them? Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that the fact that they are willingly sitting in that room and patiently waiting to talk to us instead of blowing everything up in sight is a good thing. I certainly never imagined that we'd be having aliens as guests considering the shitstorm the toasters caused."
Sharp glared and jabbed a finger toward the military-grade chair, recently vacated by the medtech, "Sit. We'll wait until the rest of your team arrives and then we are going to have a god damn debriefing."
"Yessir," Will said and sat, oddly pleased with himself for managing to get under his CO's plating and drag such a put-out reaction out of the usually solid man.
Over the stretch of the half hour that passed, Fig, then Epps came in while Sharp watched the video display like a hawk.
It was a long moment before Sharp turned around and seated himself. "Alright, let's take this from the top. Your team was dispatched to the Sea of the Edge in an attempt to capture or eliminate an enemy warship located there. Let's start with that."
Jazz sat next to the berth Prowl had been laid out on. The mech had gone into recharge to conserve his energy but up until then, Jazz had spent the time happily chattering away about what he was seeing, verbally helping the tactian build a working framework he could use to deal with their newest hosts. Not long after, Bumblebee had done the same, leaving Jazz to keep an optic out while the other two defragged and put their systems to rights after the abrupt offlining, equally abrupt onlining, and the following stressful first contact.
Jazz could just tell that this was going to be even more difficult than most first contacts. Partly that was because they were actually at a severe disadvantage this time, without the opportunity to first observe the civilization they had found themselves stranded in they were going to have to make it up as they went along.
The fact that they had been actively warring against the Decepticons who were of the same species as them made it much worse.
They couldn't exactly pass themselves off as potentially harmless.
The suspicions of a race that had managed to survive this long wouldn't let them disarm themselves so easily.
The only information that they had, besides what they had observed firsthand with the hunter-killer cadre, was the small seed of information given to them by the one called Fig. All the networks were locked down to prevent access from Decepticon hackers so Jazz couldn't even skim information off of them.
Jazz wondered how it was that he had never heard of this race of mechanoids before.
If they had been capable of managing to hold their own against the 'cons with absolutely no assistance for more than little over fifteen decaorns, then Jazz should have known about them. Most races attacked unawares by the 'cons tended to fold within two or three.
It made no sense, so Jazz carefully kept those thoughts to himself and instead occupied himself attempting to categorize the different beings.
Jazz had to wonder if all their people are militaristic or if what he was seeing was a military caste.
The basic frametypes they had seen on the way in were all very similar. There were the hunter-killers, who had been the same in type, with personalized faceplates and kibble and that odd colored filaments that Jazz could see sticking out from under their helms, and so far were the most heavily armed and armored frametype in the bunch.
There were the the similarly sized, but less durable looking soldiers that had been in the hangar where they had landed the Ark.
There had been that the ranking officer model named Sharp who was a "colonel" who though he had the same amount of armor as the rests of the meches not of the hunter-killer type, seemed to have forgone some weaponry for communications and sensory mods. Jazz had noticed that Sharp hadn't had any of the odd filaments like the others.
The newest type they had seen had to be the medical oriented ones who had looked them all over, who had been practically all armor, sacrificing weaponry and speed for greater survivability of attacks while stuck in one spot tending to a patient and medical tools.
All of them were fighters, Jazz could tell, even on down to the medics where the smoothness of their plating spoke of how little they actually fought.
The level of politeness on the other hand, as odd and alien a form of politeness as it was, was surprising for a military setting.
In Jazz's experience, no matter the species, politeness tended to take a back seat when important things, like, say, the survival of a species was on the line.
A joor passed before the door opened again, and Will came inside, talking to a positively tiny mech that followed a very different construction scheme than anything he'd seen from the humans yet. Besides, it was the smoothest design he had ever seen.
Unlike the neutral matte colors of the spiky military mechs, this little being was as brightly colored as an Autobot, with a predominance of red and black, with scattered bits of white and gold. An odd, long, multi-stranded filament of some sort sprouted from the back of its helm, falling down most of the length of its small body. It reminded Jazz of the cranial sensory tendrils that one rather eccentric mech he could name had, though minus the glowing, lightning-struck, slightly see-through appearance.
When the being turned, the faceplates shown weren't so much plates as some odd sort of synthetic covering that flexed and shifted, mimicking the expressions on the military caste's faces as tiny hands gestured. A myriad of small, handheld weapons were holstered about his hips, and a quick scan turned up a small, but highly capable mini-cannon of some sort that the being's arms could transform into.
Will knelt down and said something to the being that had red horns nodding. The being jumped into Will's lowered hands.
Jazz watched curiously as Will approached, wondering at the differences between the two very different frame types. What kind of human was this?
After they were standing at a certain distance, (Jazz was carefully tracking what these people considered personal space and proper speaking distance, and posture, and, and, and...) Will smiled, that odd denta-baring not-threat. "Hello again, Jazz," he said, lowering his hand to the berth across from the mech, "I hope they've been treating you well?"
Jazz shrugged, "I'd think so. It's just... odd. You know a lot about cybertronians, and we know practically nothing about you guys."
"Really?" the black and red being said, growled maybe, subharmonics jarringly similar to typical Decepticon subvocals compared to anything else Jazz had experience with, made even more of an mismatch to his distinctly un-Decepticon appearance. He dropped from Will's hand onto the berth and crossed his arms, "You'll have to forgive me if I don't really believe that."
Will winced, "Jazz, this is Fin, an irregular-hunter."
"Nice to meetcha," Jazz said, wondering if he was supposed to do that odd "handshake" ritual with the small being, but decided to not, since none of the meetings he'd had so far had required them, "What does an irregular-hunter do?" It was curious that two obviously very different frame types had partially the same name.
Fin smirked, and then suddenly it wasn't so odd, when the expression had the same feral glint that he had seen in all the good soldiers he'd ever seen, mech or human.
Will chuckled. "These guys ride herd on us. You wouldn't think it to look at them," a large claw prodded playfully at red armor and was swatted away, "but a good hunter can take down even a hunter-killer that's completely lost it."
Jazz stared at the tiny being, not entirely disbelieving because he'd seen his fair share of just how deadly a small person could be. Pit, Jazz himself counted among the ranks of small but deadly, especially when going up against the hulking war frames the Decepticons favored. "What makes someone 'irregular' to be taken down?"
Fin's face went blank and his voice was cold, subharmonics hostile, "The current meaning is mostly a reference to the hijacking or viral infection of human cyberbrains, the core programming of a sophisticated AI, or corruption of lesser and primitive AI constructs by these Decepticons of yours that drive them to 'irregular' and highly undesirable behaviors, among them, suddenly going mad and attacking everyone in sight with murderous intent is one example, red optics and all. Often times, the only option we are left with is to kill the victim."
Jazz winced. Ouch. He had killed traitors, sure, even took some pleasure in breaking those sub-sentient things that would join the Decepticon "cause" before finally killing them, but it was always worse when you had to kill someone that didn't really deserve it. "Do you have a sample of the virus? Maybe I could get one of my people to take a look at it?" If he could make something that caused so much suffering like it sounded the "irregular" virus did, as per typical Decepticon MO, then he would personally feel as if they accomplished something, even if they weren't allowed to do anything else just yet.
Fin blinked at him with blank, black optics for a long moment before his head whipped around to stare at Will with an intent, burning look. Will merely nodded and Fin turned the ferocity back towards Prowl. "I'd have to ask, but my inclination is yes," the little being said fiercely, surprising Jazz with his willingness to remove the need for what he did. Most cybertronians wouldn't be so quick to just outmode the reason for their existance. "If we could stop the outbreaks..." There was so much desperate hope radiating off of him, an odd guilt faintly flavoring the field.
Ah... If they could stop the outbreaks, then Fin and his like would no longer have to kill their friends...
If there was ever a reason to wipe your own job from existance, that was a worthy one.
Because Jazz could tell that as gruff as Fin acted, he was friends with Will.
And that didn't touch on the trust the Autobots might gain with these beings if they could stop a human version of robosmasher from corrupting their programming.
"We'd do our best," Jazz promised. To stop the Decepticons, help the race being attacked by them, gain that race's trust, simply help, all of those things were upsides to doing so. It might be calculated, but that was Jazz's job at the moment, at least until Prowl was back up and acting as his check.
He couldn't, wouldn't, offer too , or ask too much, without Prowl's agreement. It was simply the way they had learned they worked best, pooling their mental resources.
Either way though, Jazz knew there was one thing that he would ask for, no matter what however. This planet and its people had enough resources. Enough to spare for something so small and delicate. For this one thing, Jazz would even go behind Prowl's back for.
Notes: "Fin" is a character I nabbed from another series and altered so I could drop him into SaS. Fin and a friend will be reoccurring characters. Net-cookies to people if they can guess who it is. ...Or just tell me if I'm being too obvious and should quit while I'm ahead.