Disclaimers in Chapter 1
-Sidhe Chronicles-
(The Underhill)
Jason Brierly awakened slowly, feeling like the time he had when he and his best friend Tony had swiped a twelve-pack of beer and drank it in the garage their dads shared as workspace. The hangover would have been punishment enough without their parents all going ballistic.
He didn't know where he was. He wasn't in his bed, and a bleary look around told him he wasn't in his room or even his house.
The last thing he remembered was walking home from the bus stop. There had been a noise in an alley. He'd started to run—he thought—but after that everything had gone black.
Sheer terror sobered Jason up in about two seconds flat. Every kid grew up on horror stories of child molesters and serial killers. He couldn't think of any other reason why someone would kidnap him; his dad and Tony's uncle made a pretty good living with their garage but they weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination.
The fact that he'd been stripped to the skin didn't reassure him a bit.
Jason had grown up knowing he was "allergic" to everything, but he wasn't the only kid in his school who had to eat an all-natural diet. He was the only one who couldn't touch anything made of iron or steel for more than a minute or so without getting a huge welt, and later even a sore like a burn—and it hurt like hell. Anyway, he had grown up one of "those kids" who got special treatment for "allergies." He'd started learning tae kwan do to shut up the other boys who called him a sissy for it.
That would be a big surprise to whatever perv had kidnapped him. And when his dad found out, someone was going to get his ass kicked!
They'd stolen his clothes, even his favorite sneakers, which meant they also had his phone, his keys, his money, and everything else in his wallet including stuff that had his address on it. He was scared stiff they'd go after his parents next. He had to find a phone and call the cops!
The furniture was funny looking, heavy carved wood stuff, and two of the walls were carved out of rock.
There was no phone—there weren't even any electric lights, and nowhere to plug any in, for that matter.
Jason had heard news stories of people being kidnapped and kept locked up in basements for years.
He was scared out of his mind, but he knew he couldn't curl up in the corner and cry. He had to think, find a way out.
Lying on a chair, he found some weird clothes, a funny pair of black pants with a drawstring like pajamas, a green shirt that pulled over his head and hung halfway down his thighs like a girl's mini-dress, and a long strip of cotton that was clearly intended for underwear.
Fortunately, he'd seen enough Japanese anime to have an idea what to do with that—though he had never actually tied a fundoshi before, and it came out a little lumpy. But at least he had clothes.
He had no shoes and socks, but he guessed whoever had put him in here didn't think he'd need them.
He tried the door and found it locked.
The place looked more like a set from a Harry Potter movie than someplace a crazy person would build in his basement to lock up a kidnap victim.
Jason thought about the time those bullies had threatened to throw him under a bus unless he gave them his lunch money. He remembered how the wind had come up suddenly, blowing dirt in their eyes, and given him the chance to run for his life. Was Harry Potter real? Had that been accidental magic?
He tried to remember if he'd seen any owls anytime near his eleventh birthday.
That was stupid, he couldn't go imagining stuff if he was going to get out of here, wherever "here" was.
He tried to bust the door down, but the lock was too strong for a smallish teenage kid to do that. He sat down on the chair where he'd found his clothes. There was nothing he could do until they came to feed him.
He refused to think about the possibility that whoever had grabbed him might let him starve in here, and he viciously wiped away a few tears.
Whoever opened that door was going to be sorry they'd messed with him!
-Sidhe Chronicles-
His determination had given way to apprehension several times when, finally, he heard a key in the lock.
Jason readied himself to attack whoever came through the door, but it was an old lady dressed like an actress from Lord of the Rings. He wasn't going to hit an old lady.
"Who are you? What do you want with me? You'd better let me go! You people are going to be in all kinds of trouble when the cops find me!"
The old lady just looked at him and said something in a foreign language. Jason shook his head. The old lady grabbed his arm to drag him out of the room. Instinctively he jerked out of her grip, but he followed along, since wherever she was taking him, he was getting out of there.
The bedroom where Jason had awakened was part of a large, lavish apartment. The old woman led him into some kind of big living room, and once again Jason wondered if he had been dumped into Harry Potter World because it looked like somewhere a filthy rich family of pureblood wizards would have lived. He gulped. Anything in the room probably cost more than Jason's dad made in a year.
There were no windows anywhere. This whole ritzy apartment was in a basement? Exactly what was going on here?
The woman indicated that Jason should sit down on one of a pair of sofas in front of an ornate fireplace. When he hesitated, she gave him a gentle push and said something in that same foreign language.
He decided there was no point in contrariness for its own sake. Maybe it would be better to pretend to be easy-going and compliant, then they wouldn't expect it when he made his move. He sat down on the sofa.
The old woman bowed to him and backed away a few steps before she turned to leave by a small door that was nearly hidden by a huge floor-to-ceiling bookcase.
Once again, Jason waited, listening to the quiet crackle of the fireplace.
After a few moments the room's main door was opened by a man in a red uniform who bowed as another man, slender, regal, with long dark hair fastened back in a tail entered the room. The woman on his arm was pretty—movie star pretty—and she wore a long fancy dress decorated all over with sparkly little gems. The same kind of jewels glittered in her intricately braided hair.
They crossed to look at him, and he looked back.
Their ears were very slightly pointed, just like his. Their brows were upswept at the ends, just like his. And, their eyes? The same very dark blue, almost black.
The woman spoke to him, but once again, he didn't understand a word of it.
The man snapped something, annoyed with someone. Then, before Jason could react, he quickly stepped forward and grabbed Jason's head, forcing the boy to look into his eyes.
Energy crackled between them, and it felt like his head was on fire, and then he felt a presence in his mind. He panicked, fighting, trying to force the intruder out. The man slapped him hard, and while he was reeling from that, finished whatever he was doing. It hurt.
"OW! What the hell did you just do to me? Get off!"
The man slapped him again, knocking him to the ground. "It is not your fault that you act like an animal, you will learn differently very quickly. I am your father, Alsarith. This is your mother, Nianon. Your name is Evanon. You will forget the ways of the beasts that you have lived among, and learn to act like a proper young Sidhe nobleman. The first lesson that you will learn is duty and obedience to your house, for that is the beginning of a warrior's honor."
Evanon realized he had understood that. He wondered if the translation would go both ways, and drew upon his tae kwon do etiquette. "Forgive me, sir, I did not know."
Mollified, the man nodded, and pulled him to his feet. "There is no way you that you could have, if those imbeciles who retrieved you failed to imprint you with our language." Alsarith clapped his hands, and a young man entered, dressed in medieval-looking costume like everyone else he'd seen so far.
"How may I serve you, my lord?"
"This is my son, Evanon. Evanon, this is my retainer Arithor. He will teach you our ways."
"Yes, sir."
"Take him back to his chamber and begin."
Arithor bowed, then said, "Come with me, Lord Evanon."
The boy followed. His head ached fiercely, enough that he barely paid attention to the bruise forming on his cheek. He glanced at the woman who had been introduced as his mother, and felt a chill of fear at her cold appraisal.
He had to get out of here and get back home before these crazy people decided he wasn't good enough to be their kid after all and killed him. But to do that, he had to find out where "here" was, and how to get from here to New York City. The only way he would manage that was to do what was expected of him, convince them he was happy to take his rightful place, and learn everything he could about this whacked-out place as fast as he could.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
(Mission City Base)
Chip Chase finished his morning target practice. He was on his own this morning; Jack was stuck in medbay, having caught something from one of the kids who had been brought in with a high fever. Parker had told Chip to stay away from anyone showing symptoms, since the steroids he was on made it more likely that he would catch it too, and an illness could be more serious for him. One of the nurses had helped him with his morning routine, and then he'd gone about his business.
He had gained a new appreciation for all the help that Jack was to him over the course of a morning. A loud yell would bring someone to help with things he really couldn't do himself, but Chip didn't want to be a nuisance, and he sure didn't want to be the boy who cried wolf. So he dealt with the frustrations himself, and made a note to that same self to tell Jack how much his work was appreciated.
He finished up, recorded his results and threw his targets away. One of the engineers from S9, Mark Emory, said admiringly, "Damn! Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"
"I was a Ranger. I was with NEST until, y'know, this."
"Thanks for your service, man."
Chip heard that a lot, and he was never sure how to respond, but Emory's steady gray gaze was open and honest. He wasn't just saying it because it happened to be in style right now. So he nodded, and replied, "I'm proud to have been part of this outfit. It was a real honor."
Emory nodded. "Anything I can do while I'm here?"
"Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, I need some gun oil and a couple of rags off the top shelf in the shed."
"Sure thing." Both men settled down to the well-practiced task of cleaning their weapons. Chip holstered his sidearm and packed everything else into a carrying case, which he twisted in his chair to hang over the headrest. Then he finished a bottle of water and threw the empty at a recycling box. It dropped right in.
Emory tried the same thing and missed, then ran over to get it and dropped it in. "Catch you later, man, I'm on my way out to the worksite."
Chip checked his watch. He had a couple of hours before he had to do anything. It would be a great day to test the contactless control system he and Wheeljack were designing. He could handle it very well. Parker, who had developed a little bit of skill with energy work, could do it with an effort. But most people were left scratching their heads.
Wheeljack had got the idea to incorporate a feedback system, so that new users could practice at first without actually being in the chair and risking getting hurt by sending the wrong command. They would feel a buzz if they were successful, its intensity in direct relation to the effort that they put into controlling the unit. That was equivalent to how far forward they'd push the joystick, and how fast the chair would go, if they were controlling it that way.
Chip was testing that the feedback was, in fact, proportional to the percentage of throttle he was using. He also wanted to make sure it didn't become annoying or even painful if he ran the chair full out for a while. With the amount of flat, level road they had on base, he usually only worried about two speeds—stop and full speed ahead—unless he cut cross-country.
He had the road to himself today, except for a distant running figure. He couldn't identify the person, but unless the runner set an exceptionally swift pace, his chair was faster.
Occasionally he heard a distant boom. The Cybertronian construction crew was blasting up at the site where the new housing for the bots was being built.
Such an explosion raised a plume of dust high into the air. Chip was looking at that, and not watching the road, when one of his rear wheels dropped into a small hole.
The chair stopped abruptly and tipped over. Chip leaned to the high side, letting the chair arm take the impact, then braced his arms hard to stop it from rolling over on him, callused hands tough enough not to be scraped up too badly by the sand and gravel. Once the chair was stable, he loosened his restraints and pulled out of it, checking himself for injury as best he could. He found none, and turned his attention to his transportation.
The controller was all right.
He pulled himself around to the other side of the chair to check the wheels. The drive wheels were all right, but when he checked the rear wheel that had got caught in the hole, he found that the tire had come off the rim. "Shit fire and save the matches!" he shouted.
The tires were little more than hard rubber O-rings, but getting one back on its rim was going to be a job and a half. He crawled on around to the back of the chair to get his tools, then took another five minutes positioning his lower half so that he could work on the tire.
Improvising tire irons with a couple of small wrenches, he started the laborious job of stretching and pushing the tire onto the rim. Twice one of the wrenches, not intended for that purpose, slipped and bruised his hand.
He drank a little water while he thought about a better way to accomplish that. The once-distant running figure approached him: Mikaela. He watched appreciatively.
She stopped perhaps five feet from him, and bent, hands on knees, long enough to catch her breath; this too was a sight for sore eyes, in Chip's opinion. Straightening, she said, "Need another pair of hands?"
Chip grinned. "What I need are some tire irons, but it might be easier with two people working on it."
Between the two of them, they got the tire back on the wheel. Chip gave it an experimental spin to be sure there was no other damage, then Mikaela tried to turn the chair upright and discovered how heavy it was.
Chip pulled himself around to the other side of the chair. "You pull, I'll push."
On a three-count, the two of them put their muscles in to it. The chair turned upright and stayed that way.
Kaela found the hole that had caused the wreck, and located several rocks to fill it with while Chip got back into his chair and strapped himself back in. He carefully tested the controls, finding that the contactless system was undamaged.
Kaela tightened his chair arm, which had loosened a little, then he paced himself to her running speed. He asked, "Are you going to the Halloween party?"
"Yeah, probably, if there aren't any emergencies in medbay. You?"
"I was thinkin' about it."
"Should be fun," Kaela said. "What are you going as?"
He laughed, "You'll see."
"No really, what?"
"A dalek," he said.
She giggled. "Ex-ter-min-ate!"
"I downloaded what's supposed to be actual plans for a prop they used in the show, may or may not be something they actually used but it's doable. I had to change it a little and scale it up some to fit it over my chair but I think it's going to look pretty convincing. I've kind of been going back and forth between that and Skimmer's costume in my spare time."
"Skimmer? What's he going as?"
"A steampunk bat. I think he's been on the Internet."
"That ain't good!" Kaela laughed.
"Took Jazz about two seconds to put up Net Nanny."
"Yeah, and it'll take them about two more seconds to crack it."
Chip snorted. "Never ending battle."
"What are the other two going to be?"
"Song is a ladybug, and Stormy wants to go as a World War One biplane. Those actually aren't too hard to build."
"Got to get pictures," she said.
"Absolutely. What are you going as?"
"I don't know. Probably whatever I can find the day before in the costume shop."
"You could go as the Doctor," Chip suggested.
"I guess, if we went together it wouldn't look too stupid," she said.
They looked at each other, neither wanted to take previous parts of the conversation back, and that was how their first date became the base Halloween party.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Ratchet tried hard not to grin at the three little seekers lined up on a medical berth. "What's going on with you today?"
They just giggled. Barricade explained, "Prime said something about wanting you to check Song out, but that was right before Ironhide got stuck in the water."
"OK, it's about time for their next checkup anyhow. We'll just do that now and get it out of the way. Song, did Prime say why he wanted me to see you?"
She just looked up at him, little ruby optics wide and curious. "Not 'zactly."
"Well, what's the matter?"
"My helm itches."
He looked, and sure enough, there were some fine talon-scratches. "H'mm. The nanites expand the plates from the edges, so it isn't that. Could be some kind of microscopic corrosion. Megs had them in a bunch of filthy drums, apparently—"
Barricade nodded, and confirmed, "That's what Starscream told me he did."
"There's no telling what they got into. Let me put a scraping under the scanner and see what we got."
Song flinched away from the scraper, until Ratchet told her, "It won't hurt. You don't want Jolt to think you're a scaredy-glitchmouse, do you?"
She scowled. "M'not scared!"
Ratchet quickly took the scraping and inserted it into the scanner, which showed nothing wrong. "Did you get your helm too hot and cool it quickly? Metal expanding and contracting can itch."
"No. It was cool. I like clouds. Do you like clouds, Racha?"
"Uh—I guess so. Does it itch right now?"
"Nope."
"Ok. Where exactly did it itch?"
She pointed one talon at a spot on her helm. "Right there!"
"Racha" shined a light on it and dialed his optics up to maximum magnification. There was nothing on the shiny metal that should be itching.
"Well, we'll do a full workup and see if we can find out what's doing it. Are you mecha itchy too?"
They shook their little helms in tandem.
Ratchet did all the tests he could think of to explain an itch, all of which came up negative. He was beginning to think she had made one little scratch, then the sensation of the scratch spoiling the airflow had led to more scratching and more itching. If that was it, then a good buffing to get rid of the scratches followed by a thorough polishing should help. There was a reason why seekers were fussy about their finish.
"Stop scratching, it only makes it worse," he told her.
"I know that. I can't scratch it anyhow, it's under my helm!"
"What—Oh! Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
"Wasn't what you asked me!" she protested.
Barricade asked, "What's the matter with her?"
Ratchet explained, "Seeker growing pains. You know sparklings' processors naturally upgrade themselves as they grow and demand more processing power? Seekers' nanite lines have a little bit different coding than ours. They tend to upgrade in bursts—a lot of growth in one session. The itching is just a side-effect of that. It's perfectly normal." Song was giving him her head-tilted-sideways puzzled look. "It just means you're growing up and getting smarter, Bitlet."
"Oh! OK!"
"Does that mean we're dumb cause our helms don't itch?" Skimmer demanded, sounding insulted.
"No, not at all. It just means you didn't notice the itch when you upgraded. You probably will now, because you'll be looking for it." Ratchet consulted the protocols for standard tests to be run at this stage of seekerling development. Most were the usual things every sparkling was examined for, since most systems were the same.
The most important examination was checking the placeholder that was developing for the T-cog they would get with their youngling frames. This placeholder, while not functional, guided the development of vital subroutines which eventually would allow the new younglings to scan their first alts and transform. If anything went wrong at this stage, they might never be able to do so even if given a fully functional T-cog. That was a rare but much-dreaded malfunction, and Ratchet was relieved to find everything coming along as it should.
The other tests involved analysis of various fluids, and a CNA profile of each little bot's repair nanites to scan for a certain glitch common to many seeker lines that could be repaired if caught in time.
Song was smug that this time she wasn't the only one being poked and sampled, her brothers had to put up with it as well! But then Stormy started crying, and she and Skimmer comforted him, until Jolt distracted them all with a bribe of oil cakes.
Barricade snitched one as well on his way out the door with the little ones. Ratchet shook his helm, thinking that he had sparklings of every age on this base, and activated several pieces of equipment back in the medical lab to run the tests on the samples he'd taken.
Some were done quickly, but the CNA analysis and a few of the others would take a little while. He recorded results from the first tests (completely normal), then helped Jolt clean the medbay while he waited for the others to finish, so that they could get out of the Quonset hut and find somewhere to sit in the shade during the hottest part of the afternoon. In mid-October, the temperature hovered in the high 80s, making the building stuffy and uncomfortable, even if it not the hell of the triple digits of high summer.
How quickly the seasons on this planet passed.
Ratchet had finished restocking everything used during the Trine's examination when a ping alerted him to the tests' completion. He went in the lab to download the results.
He had forgotten that one of the things determined by the CNA test, in the case of hatchlings, was parentage. Hatchlings had two or three parents, a carrier and one or two other genitors. The carrier contributed most of the hatchling's repair nanite coding, though all of the genitors could be identified. The carrier also determined frame type when the parents' frames differed, since the hatchling's budding protoform and egg were constructed from materials borrowed from the carrier's frame.
Fortunately, nearly all the 'Cons had ended up in Ratchet's medbay at some point during the war, later to escape or to be returned to their side in a prisoner transfer. Ratchet had kept medical records on every single one he'd ever laid servos on; you never knew what would be useful, or needed later.
The Tiny Trine's genitors were Megatron's command trine.
Much to his surprise Ratchet found himself thinking fondly of Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp, simply for that reason.
All three of them had carried. Skysong was Skywarp and TC's creation, carried by Skywarp, while all three had contributed to Skimmer and Stormy. Skysong would undoubtedly develop her carrier's ability to warp as she matured. They would have to be very careful in teaching her to use her talent, since no Autobot had that ability.
TC had carried Stormy. The dark blue sparkling would undoubtedly grow to be a very large mech, even if he did not choose as an adult to be reformatted as a shipformer, as the largest seekers often had for at least part of their life-cycles during the Golden Age. Whether he would develop his carrier's sonic abilities, Ratchet did not know; they might have been either inborn or modifications.
Skimmer, though...Starscream had been Starskimmer's carrier. That tiny sunshine-yellow mechling was the hereditary Winglord of Vos, rightful leader of the entire Flock of seekers, however many of them were left alive out in the galaxy.
Ratchet sat down and studied the results again, as if hoping the glyphs would change. That little bot, as well as his brother and sister, had been chosen by destiny for something less than an easy life.
After a long, ex-vented sigh, Ratchet pinged Jazz. "Something's come up. I need to talk to you."
"Sure! Ah'm not doing anything really important right now. Your office?"
"Yes, I'd like to do a quick scan while you're here."
"Comin' right over," the saboteur replied.
Presently, he heard Jazz and Jolt exchange cheerful greetings out in the ward, then the ops team leader tapped at his office door and the CMO pinged it open. He stood still for a moment while Ratchet conducted the scan.
"What's the verdict?"
"Jazz, if I didn't know better, I'd mistake you for a drone at first glance. Congratulations," Ratchet pronounced wryly.
Jazz laughed heartily. "Essentially, that's what Ah am, in frame anyhow, ain't it?"
"With only a few differences. Close examination of your energy fields would reveal the difference. Drones have never had a spark, so their fields aren't configured to accept one. Your fields still show slight permutations. And, of course, drones don't have bonds. But it would take a medical scan to give any of that away."
Jazz filed that away under Potentially Useful Disguise Information.
"Other than that, as Dr. Parker says, you're as healthy as a horse. All your systems have onlined and integrated properly. But the fact is, you aren't tied to that frame. It's more like a remote that you're inhabiting. From here on out—we didn't cover this in medical school. Both of us will have to keep a close watch for any issues that might come up, and take it one joor at a time."
Jazz asked, "Just outta curiousity, Doc—how long do you think Ah have like this?"
"No idea," Ratchet replied. "You expend energy to stay here, but there are plenty of sources for the energy you need. That's no different from your frame's requirement for energon. Human ghosts apparently can remain for many times their normal lifespan, according to Nathan Stoughton, but I have no idea what that means for Cybertronians. My best advice on that? Leave it to Primus. None of us knows how long we have, beyond right now."
"Makes sense," Jazz replied. "What did you need to talk to me about?"
"Optimus should be here for this, but I'll tell him when I see him later. I ran the nanite scans on the Trine, and it revealed their ancestry. They're the command trine's, and Skimmer's carrier was Starscream."
"Aw, mech, here we go!"
"No kidding. If this gets out to the 'Cons—"
"Well, we gotta make sure it don't get out, if they don't know already, that is. We don't know what the circumstances were that persuaded Starscream, TC and Skywarp decided to have them. There were more sparklings; we don't know who their genitors were. They coulda been in stasis aboard the Nemesis for a long time. It's possible Screamer hid the Trine among those, if they didn't want anyone to know they had sparked."
"I doubt Megs gave them permission, but it would have gone against Starscream's coding to allow his line to die out."
"If the 'Con seekers knew about him, they'd see him as a threat to their ambitions. Strika has never made any secret about wanting to be Winglord."
Ratchet had to agree with that.
Jazz said, "Could also mean the next Winglord's an Autobot."
"You damn spy, leave off the political machinations till he's old enough to understand what Winglords and Autobots and Decepticons are, why don't you?"
"Ah would if Ah thought the 'Cons would, Ratch. It's somethin' we gotta take into account. Barricade's his Guardian, but the rest of the Seekers would never accept a grounder as regent. If they find out about Skimmer, he has to claim his right so we can fight in his name, and so he can draw the Flock to his banner. If it comes to a struggle for leadership of the Flock, he'll have to win or die. Any one of us would stand as champion for him, you know that. Ah hope fate leaves him be till he's older, but we can't guarantee that's going to happen. He needs to know, soon as he's old enough to start understandin'. It does mean his core-level imperatives won't force him to follow Strika, not if he sees her as a challenger rather than a superior."
Ratchet felt a processor ache developing. Nothing was ever simple. He got out the high-grade.
Jazz arched an optic ridge at him. "When you can't cope, celebrate," the medic said, and the spy didn't stop him from pouring out a second cube.
End Chapter 7