TF/Mech Exchange Feb '08
Sweepstakes

Rocky Mountain High

I shaded my optics and stared across the tarmac; it was a habit I'd picked up from the humans who worked side-by-side with my fellow Autobots. I could have easily made the change internally, but there was a fuel shortage these days, and every precious vial of Energon was being saved. Besides, the humans found the mimicry amusing, and I found it amusing in turn.

The last of my high-flying brethren left the City, off on one mission or the other. "Are you going with them?"

The voice issued from my right ankle and, carefully – as I'd learned some months ago – I turned to look down. A small human – a child, and male from what little I could gather – idled by my foot. "Are you going with them?" he repeated.

"Me?" I queried, my facial planes creeping upwards in a smile. "Naw, I'm no use for missions."

"But you're a plane," he insisted. "Planes fly."

He was going to hurt that thin neck of his, staring up at me. Remembering my orientation, I folded my legs up and sat on the tarmac, angling my wings so that they covered the worst of the sun's glare. "Well, I can certainly fly, but someone's got to keep the other planes in order. Y'see," I told him, leaning forward and looking at him green optic to brown orb, "I help them land."

The boy's little organic mouth popped open in an "O" expression, one I'd learned expressed awe. I nodded, wriggling my audio fans. That got a giggle out of him, so I did it again.

Static crackled in my commlink. "Hey! Sweepstakes! Quit playing with the natives … and get that boy off the tarmac! He'll get sucked into a turbine."

My vents whistled with a sigh. One leg after the other, I unfolded. I threw a glance at the flight tower, perched lower and built wider than the dominant communications tower. "Read ya loud and clear, Carbon," I radioed back, giving the flight director a wiggle of my audio fans. Luckily, Carbon's attention was elsewhere – then again, he didn't have spectacular vision. One optic had been lasered out by a Deception stellar cycles ago, and they couldn't fit the parts right again. "C'mon, kiddo," I told the boy, setting my tail fin to his buttocks, ushering him along with what I hoped were soft pats. Well, he laughed loud enough, so I didn't think I hurt him. Humans bruise so easily.

Passing him off to his harried female creator, I walked over to the boards and stood there, hands on hip plates, watching as one flight path or another crossed out of City space. Carbon would alert me when a cargo transport or one of the flyers needing assistance called. So ran my day: sending them off and guiding them back in. I'd been employed in such a manner stellar cycles ago, back before the days of war. And that's as much as I'd let out. My business has always been mine, and as long as my loyalty is firmly in hand, no one else need know otherwise.

Pretty femmes walked by, on their way to the training course. I waved at Tracer and she waved back, before ducking into the throng. Most were Paradron medics, using their course time to hone their skills; there were few combat femmes and those who were had infiltration duties, or worked in communication. The very few, like Arcee, were gone for days on end, coming back in dire need of repair. Ah, slag, how I liked combat femmes – those ladies knew how to get to a mech!

I stood around, idling for several cycles. Some of the time, I cleaned the tarmac with the repair crew, the rest of the time I played with the small vid screen in the hangar bay and watched The Amazing Race.

Shhhhhzzzzzkkk!

"Yo!" I called up at the tower, spinning in my chair and switching the vid off.

"Scramble, Sweepstakes!" Carbon thundered over the wide channel. "We've got a flyer down in the mountains and you're the only winger we've got on base."

I was on my thruster-feet instantly, Energon surging through my synthetic veins. "Who is it?" I asked, running towards the tarmac, calling out for the crew. Humans and a Minibot ran out of another hangar at the same time, hearing the short claxon. I threw myself forward, transforming. My tires hit the tarmac before the first hard-breathing human dashed up in a cart.

"Powerglide, the fool. Sending coordinates now."

I didn't know the red fighter that well, but his reputation, like everything else, preceded him. I also knew that he was going to be grumpy and irascible, so I pulled up a few jokes to use while I was extracting his hide from rock. "Is he online?" I asked as two crewmembers attached my grapple and rope to my undercarriage.

"And swearing like a dockhand. Patching you in."

"Now, now, 'glide," I heard Chief Comm Officer Blaster soothe, "we've got a cat prepping to extract ya."

A thin line of static, then: "You're sendin' Steeljaw?"

"Naw, man, Sweepstakes. Ah, there you are, Sweeps. Ready to go?"

"Ready and –" I fired my boosters. "—burnin'," I replied. "I'll be there in less than a click."

"You better …"

I shut myself off from the red jet. Grey tarmac was all that lay before me – that and the sky. The initial burn always made me giddy; it was a rush, a thrill, an orgy of overload all wrapped up into one glorious moment. Concrete flew under my wheels as I accelerated – faster, faster, faster …

AIR!

Wind flowed past my nosecone, tickling my undercarriage. I was free, I was alive. Below, Autobot City dwindled to nothing in the matter of nanoclicks – and then there was pure forest, as wide as my sensors could take in. I banked, twisting a flap here, a flick of my rudder there. With one part of my cortex locked on the air ahead, the rest of my system focused on the coordinates. All things considered, it was a relatively short flight.

I circled the barefaced mountain twice, spotting Powerglide's distinctive red tail and fuselage poking out of an outcropping of brown boulders. "Sweepstakes here, how're you doing?"

"Just peachy," came the grumpy reply. "If you ever relay this to the rest of the base …"

"Hey, winger, I got your turbines. Look, I'm gonna pass once more, then I'll land and get you out."

"You do this often?" he asked as I banked right, trailing exhaust in the cooler air.

"On Earth? Oh, once or twice."

"Great."

"Awr, listen – I heard this great rhyme in the mess the other day: 'There once was a man from Nantucket / Who sat on a pin and said' – "

I went through a dozen anecdotes and rhymes before I judged the best spot to land. Now, here came the tricky part: I had to transform in midair and hit the ledge just right, and hope that my reactions were quick enough. Otherwise, I'd most likely take us both off the mountain. Transforming out was easier than transforming in, as things were.

I spun and threw myself into rootmode. Heat from my boosters licked up the sides of my legs, scorching metal that wasn't protected by the special paint we wingers used. Ah, well, I hadn't had a session in Raoul's body shop for some time, and the ladies liked a freshly-painted mech.

Thank Primus, I hit the ledge. As soon as my feet touched rock, I threw the rest of my body forward, hugging the mountain face with arms wide open.

"What the slag did you do!?" Powerglide shouted, his words muffled.

"Workin'." As much as I love to talk, there's a time and place for everything. I could spin the jet a thousand tales once I had myself secure. I made quick work of attaching myself to the mountain's face, passing the ropes through bullclips megnaclamped to either hip plate. With that done, I inched over to where Powerglide lay, up to his midsection in rubble. He'd made several efforts to transform and shift the rock that way, but there were two particularly heavy boulders seated right on top of him. Pulling out my energy rifle, I made a few quick adjustments to the power setting. "Now, don't move," I cautioned.

"What –?!"

Setting my wings against the rock and putting one foot against a boulder, I proceeded to blow up the rocks. Powerglide, having been on Earth for so long, had an amazing repertoire of human swear words … which he used in an amusing fashion. I filed them all away for future use.

"Getting up! Getting up!" The pile of rubble shifted and I stood back as chucks of boulder went flying. Powerglide vented a massive groan and stood up, trailing rock bits like pixy dust. "What the slag was that?" he demanded, turning to face me and almost sliding off of the ledge in his haste. I reached out with my longer limbs and snatched the battlemasked Minibot from the brink.

"Well, not exactly the prettiest extraction I've ever made, but I never had to work with such little space." I smiled, wings lifting along with my shoulder plates in a half-shrug. Powerglide's blue optics glared at me for the briefest of moments, then he nodded.

"Thanks, pal. I owe ya." And to my shocked optics, he threw himself off the ledge and into a summersault. I heard the roar of boosters and watched in awe as Powerglide streaked away, having completed a move I'd longed to do.

"Sweepstakes here," I radioed City Tower.

"Blaster here. I caught Powerglide on the comm. Nice piece 'a work, dude."

Judiciously, I rolled up the lines tethering me to the mountain face and eyed the ledge. "Thanks," I replied. "Heading home." If I could only get a clean leap, that is. My span was too big, my bulk far too large to attempt what Powerglide had done.

Ah, slag. Well, it was a nice day, and I looked forward to a good climb.