A Year in the Life of Optimus Prime: Six

by BuckeyeBelle

Old friends arrive from afar, and Optimus' crew has to deal with old, and new, enemies too.

21. Chapter 21

Sidhe Chronicles 8 – A Year in the Life of Optimus Prime: Six

Part Twenty

(Disclaimers in Part One)

-Sidhe Chronicles-

(Portland, Oregon)

Frank Hastings turned the pages of the Oregonian until he found the proper article. "Man found dead in car. Police suspect no foul play in the death of a man found in his car in a parking lot in southeast Portland last Tuesday evening. A shopper returning to her car discovered the body of Lowell Zain, 45, formerly of Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to the medical examiner, Zain was the victim of an apparent heart attack. A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, Zain was a security consultant for Hastings Corp. Fellow employees expressed shock at the news of his death, since Zain had appeared to be in perfect health." A link to an article on the paper's web site on the causes of sudden death among middle-aged men ended the article.

Hastings looked up at Zain's young "nephew" and said dryly, "My condolences on the passing of your uncle."

Lowell Zain said, straight-faced, "I'll attempt to fill his shoes."

He looked like his "uncle." Not much, not in the face, more in passing expressions or the way he moved his head. And he dressed in a more relaxed manner than his "uncle" had: no suit and tie. Instead, a grey polo shirt and jeans over leather sneakers.

Or that's what it looked like, anyway. Perhaps he could extrude something that looked like a suit at will. Hastings did not even know how to ask that question.

"I'm sure you will," he snorted instead. "How are you doing? Any problems?"

"No, sir, I've got the hang of my new senses, and I've been cleared to start training with the team this afternoon."

"New senses?" Hastings said, and folded the paper neatly, putting it to one side.

"Yes, sir, I still have the same ones, and that's what I recognized when I first woke up—came online—" Lowell Zain Mark II stopped, shrugged, said, "whatever. But there's a lot more data. I can expand the range of my vision to see infrared or ultraviolet. Sure beats packing around night-vision goggles! I can hear beyond the human range, and that took a little getting used to. I hear things that never made a noise before, so I don't know what they are at first. And then there's the electrical fields. That's a major sense for us now, but we don't have a frame of reference for it. We have to learn how to use it, and we'll have to learn a common basis for describing what we sense."

"I never thought about that."

"There are a lot of things none of us have thought about. Would you like to come out to the training facility with me, sir? You might find it interesting."

"As a matter of fact, I would. You don't need a coat?"

"Not yet. If I were to go out tonight, when it's below freezing, and stand sentry duty, where I couldn't move around a lot? I'd need one for that. We're just not big enough to keep ourselves warm below about 25 Fahrenheit."

"Even DeWayne?"

"Haven't asked him. You want to?"

For answer, Hastings smiled, and they moved off toward the elevators. "The Cybertronians got here through space, though, so how did they do that? Some of them came on the Xantium, but as far as anyone knows, the first group got here under their own power. How did they do that without freezing?" He turned to face the younger man as the elevator doors slid shut.

"They have a special mode for that. When they're in it, they roll up into a ball and devote most of their mass and energon to insulation and propulsion. They also incorporate other materials to serve as an ablative heat shield during re-entry. We can't do that, since we don't have enough mass. We'd have to have a space ship, or I guess travel with someone like that big bruiser who just landed in Mission City."

The doors opened. "I see what you mean."

"Most of us have two humanoid modes, this one, and our root mode, the spiky metal form with the tail."

"Yeah, what's it like having a tail?"

"You saw Avatar, didn't you, sir? Kinda like that until I learned to control the damn thing. But it comes in handy now that I have it convinced it's supposed to do what I tell it. That's why most of my clothes are part of my alt mode. A coat is about the same from one form to the other, but anything else wouldn't work if I had to transform in a hurry. And I'd rather fight in root mode," Zane explained. He held the outer door for his employer.

"You know what, if we had an unlimited supply of protoforms, I'd be really tempted," Frank Hastings said thoughtfully. The car beeped and popped its trunk, from which he removed the light jacket with a hood usable through most of the year in Portland.

"No regrets here, sir, but it's an adjustment. I can see where a lot of people might not be that happy with it."

They left the parking lot for a path through the trees. Hastings asked, "Why not?"

"Well, girls, sir. There aren't any. Human women are a different species than we are now, if you get my drift."

"Yeah? What's wrong with 'em?"

"Nothing's wrong with them; we're the ones who changed. I kinda—got one of the nurses to try a little experiment," Zain finished, in a rush. "In the interest of science, you understand. Let's just say the results were, umm, satisfactory from her point of view but we weren't exactly, uhh, compatible from mine." He moved right along. "I don't think that's quite dawned on the rest of the guys yet, but when it does...let's just say I anticipate a morale issue."

"We're gonna have to recruit some women."

"Sir, there's no way I can justify asking a female to do this just because she is female. Any female who qualifies for this program is going to be just as good as any of the males. She would break your neck when she realized that's why you brought her in."

The training grounds were a separate property, adjacent to but not part of the hospital/hospice/geriatric residence grounds. It was set far enough away to muffle any noises, and the encircling thickets of blackberry that sprawled all through Portland kept it safe from prying eyes. The two men walked down a long, narrow trail that wound between tall trees, well-kept but hedged in on either side by head-high mounds of thorny bushes.

"That's not what I mean," Hastings said, hands in pockets. "We just bring them in, integrate them into the program, women who are completely qualified. Nobody but the two of us ever knows that we had anything else in mind, other than their qualifications, when we recruited them. And, well, if people do what people do when they're off duty, that solves that problem."

"That could work, sir, as long as we're careful not to create chain of command issues."

"We'll have to organize things in a way that makes it possible to work around that."

"Yes, sir, that'll be easier once we have more people. We'll have two-thirds of a full platoon once once the second group transitions."

"What's your readiness now?"

"Right now, we've got three fire teams, and I'm willing to say we could take on most of the cons and make a good showing for ourselves. They don't have our discipline, sir. The Autobots seem to be even better than we are at it, but if you watch the video of their engagements you can see them incorporating Ranger tactics as time goes on, from Mission City to Egypt to Chicago. That's how a small unit was able to be so effective against a much larger force in Chicago, sir. Megatron had a gang of vicious criminals. Optimus Prime has soldiers." Zain Mark II walked straight through an encroaching pillow of blackberry vines, complete with thorns, and the vines lost.

He wasn't wearing clothes, Hastings realized, but had extruded them."Since you now have senses more like theirs than ours, have you heard anything over the air from either side?"

"Some. We have our transmissions locked down—all we'd need would be for one person to squawk something in the clear and we'd have both sides searching the area. But we can hear 'em just fine. Can't triangulate on the signals, we tried. I'm not sure how they're doing that yet but our best accuracy is about a fifty-mile radius. With the Autobots, you hear what you'd expect to with a normal military unit. When they use a clear channel, it's disciplined, and it's normal for radio chatter around a military base. Without understanding the language, I'd say it's standard stuff, sir."

"And the 'Cons?" Zain had preceded Hastings down a muddy, steep part of the trail, and turned back to offer a hand. Hastings considered, and took it. He wasn't a Pretender yet.

"They're locked down too, mostly. Occasionally I pick up a click, or at most what can't be more than a word or two. And they're always on the move when they do get on the radio. They've gone off the grid, sir. That's how a small group on the run survives."

"So the 'Cons are using the same kinds of tactics you'd expect from a terrorist cell or a criminal gang?"

"That's probably accurate, sir. It doesn't mean they're disorganized or incompetent. It means our military background gives us some advantages, but what they do has other advantages."

The gate to the training area loomed out the bushes past the next turn in the path.

"Something to think about."

"Yes, sir. Of course, their main advantage is the sheer size of those two huge 'Cons, the ones called Blitzwing and Lugnut. We're going to need more firepower than we have at our disposal now to have a chance to take either of them down without assistance."

The distant sound of men calling cadence floated through the chill air. It took Hastings back thirty years to Parris Island; he had served his hitch without seeing combat, and he realized now how lucky he had been. He could have been one of these guys, and he was old enough now to understand the price that they had paid for being the right age at the right time and place.

All Hastings said, though, was "You'll have your firepower before you go operational." He would make sure they had all they needed to do their jobs.

Through the trees, they approached the tall chain link fence that surrounded the training facility. On paper, it was a private paintball club and shooting range, and from the air, that was exactly what it looked like: a large structure which had once been a barn overlooked a field full of hay bales, tire stacks and makeshift sheds and barricades, all of which were liberally splattered with paint. An obstacle course surrounded the paintball field. On the other side of the barn was a gun range which looked no different from any other.

"Where's the best place to observe?"

Zain told Hastings, "If you go inside the barn, sir, you can watch from the loft. There's a radio headset up there that's on the same frequency as our comms."

Hastings went inside. The bottom floor of the structure was used for storage—boxes of paper targets, paintballs, an area to charge and clean paintball guns.

Two small energon cubes sat on a windowsill, Hastings wondered how many Pretenders that would supply but there was a stack of small juice glasses next to them. Hastings guessed that they didn't need a lot, compared to the big mecha. He wondered where those cubes had come from, and if they could be traced—that went on his list of questions to ask Zain after the PT session ended.

Another question on that list was what good PT did people in robotic bodies.

There was a tall ladder to the loft. Hastings didn't make a habit of climbing ladders these days, but he had come up the hard way through a construction company after his hitch in the Marines, and he certainly hadn't forgotten how.

The loft was set up as a briefing room, a ragged circle of folding chairs punctuated by a whiteboard and a table with a video projector and a laptop computer. The diagram looked like a football play chart, though instead of the usual gridiron, there was a rough map of the paintball field. On the walls were a couple of posters of paintball champions and an advertising calendar from a paintball company. Some well-read magazines devoted to the sport were also scattered around. Hastings had to grin. If anyone did decide to investigate, the only thing that would have to be hidden was the energon, and no one would take this for anything other than the clubhouse that it appeared to be.

He agreed it was best to keep the energon out here. Nearly everything else could be hidden in plain sight in Pierpoint's lab, but the cubes had to be in the sun to function, which made them difficult to conceal. There were occasionally people at the facility who weren't in on the whole story, and they would notice glowing pink cubes.

The loft had one of those doors that opened into thin air, to allow bales of hay to be winched inside. Hastings didn't know what it was called, but a folding table and a couple of chairs had been set up in front of it. This lookout perch had a good view of the whole area. He found the headset, turned it on and adjusted it.

Zain had caught up with his team, including Pierpoint, and they were running the obstacle course.

For the rest of them, it was apparently a workout. For Pierpoint, it was a huge challenge. He got tangled up in the tires and fell on his face. He climbed a pole and jumped for a rope hanging from a tall tree limb, but missed and fell in a mud pit. Crawling under barbed wire, he raised his ass too high and got the barbed wire stuck in a transformation seam. Thoroughly aggravated, he whipped his tail up to slice the wire—but when the pressure was let off it, the strands flew in all directions and tangled him up. Hastings laughed at the scientist's cursing, which he could hear perfectly well without the headset.

DeWayne leaned over from outside the obstacle and snapped a few strands of wire. "OK there, Derek?"

"Yeah."

"You need to get out?"

"No, I'm going to finish the damn thing this time!"

"OK, ya almost got it, keep going! Keep yo' ass down!"

The scientist crawled free of the barbed wire, then stopped to take a good long look at a climbing wall. When he moved, he climbed slowly but steadily to the top.

Hastings realized he had memorized the locations of hand and toe holds and planned his climb before starting.

Once he got to the top, however, there was no way down the other side except to jump to an air bag at the foot of the wall. In basic training there would be a cargo net to climb down; the jump came from airborne and other elite-unit training. It wasn't that high a jump for Pretenders, especially not for those who had come out of airborne units, or special forces units like the Rangers or SEALS—though those guys were a whole other level beyond jump units. But Pierpoint didn't have that training, hadn't even been through Basic.

He made a good try, but he didn't take into account that he was much stronger now. He pushed off too hard, missed the air bag, and landed badly.

Hastings left the headset and hurried down the ladder, then ran to the climbing wall. Pierpoint was down, curled up on his side gripping his left leg above the ankle.

Zain got there first and told him, "Run a diagnostic! Did you bust a strut?"

"It isn't broken, but it's bent out of alignment," Pierpoint replied. "That was so stupid!"

"No, it was gung ho. We've all had training accidents, and you learn from them. Do you think it will hold your weight?" Glasco asked.

"I don't know, I'm afraid if I put my weight on it, it will either snap a motivator cable, or it might break the strut if I put too much stress on it. I need to get back to my lab and see if I can straighten it out, before it self-repairs like that."

DeWayne said, "Hold on, don't try to get up yet." He transformed to his second alt, a small motorcycle. "Do you know how to ride a bike?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

Glasco said, "Let me help you up, Doc. Put your weight on your good leg."

"Hang onto my handlebars," DeWayne told him. "We're not gonna let ya fall. Somebody help him get his bad leg over the seat."

They maneuvered him carefully onto the cycleformer, who made sure his passenger was safely in position before carrying him back to the facility. Glasco made sure that they could handle it from there, then got the rest of his unit back to work. Hastings and Zain walked on either side, but even though Pierpoint was clearly in a lot of pain, if that was what it would be called, Hastings thought, he managed to balance himself well enough.

The back of the building had a loading dock, and DeWayne made use of its ramp to roll right through the door into a corridor only used by employees. He stayed in alt mode nearly all the way to Pierpoint's lab, which was also located in the basement but in a corridor that saw more traffic. Hastings got the doors while the other two Pretenders assisted their teammate.

Pierpoint opened his leg armor. Some of the plates had bent and twisted, and would not open normally. He winced as he removed them manually.

Hastings was surprised to see the younger man's optics fill with clear fluid. Their optics "watered" as a response to damage?

Zain saw the same thing. "Derek, do you know how to damp your pain sensors?"

"Yes, I have them turned down as much as I can, but I can't turn them off completely. I need the data to make sure I don't make it worse."

"What can we do to help?"

"I need my tool box, and DeWayne, if you could go ahead and reshape those plates, I'd appreciate it."

Hastings spotted the tool box and brought it over, while the big cycleformer took the graying plates over to a workbench and started the careful work of pounding out the dents with a rubber mallet. The detached plates continued to fade to a dull, ashen gray as he worked.

Hastings asked, "Are they supposed to change colors like that?"

"Not supposed to, but the chromatophores aren't getting energon so they shut off. That's why dead Cybertronians turn gray, sir. They'll color back up again as soon as Derek reattaches 'em."

Pierpoint, with Zain's assistance, sorted out the wires and cables that had been tangled by the mishap, and replaced a damaged energon line, clipping each out of the way as he finished. Then he said, "DeWayne, I'm going to need your help, too, for this part."

DeWayne brought the panels over and set them on the exam table beside Derek's tool box. "What do you need me to do?

"Bend the strut back into position. Lowell, I need you to hold my leg down."

The two Pretenders got into position. "OK, ya ready?"

Pierpoint made a clicking sound, then nodded. Hastings wasn't sure what had made that noise—until Dewayne for all intents and purposes set Pierpoint's leg.

Derek jerked against Zain's grip and clenched his hands on the edge of the table, but the only sound he made was a stream of modem noise. Hastings felt like he had been punched in the gut when he realized that Pierpoint had shut off his vocalizer to keep from screaming out loud.

DeWayne asked, "That got it, Derek?"

Another click, and Pierpoint replied, "Yeah—yeah, I think so."

Zain went to a cabinet and measured out a small quantity of energon from a beaker. "Here."

"I don't want to waste the medical high grade," Pierpoint objected.

"You need it to heal," Zain pointed out. "And having our medic hopping on one foot affects the whole unit. Drink it, and get some rest."

Pierpoint took it. "Thanks, Lowell."

"No problem. You did good out there, Derek. When you're feeling better, analyze what happened so you don't do the same thing twice. We'll make sure you've got the proper training before you try jumping off anything that high again."

Hastings asked, "How long will it take to recover from an injury like that?"

Pierpoint sipped his energon. The high-grade tasted like he would expect something distilled in a lab to taste. It wasn't the Cybertronian version of single-malt Scotch, but it kicked his self-repair into high gear and eased the pain. "Depends on how much microscopic damage I did to the strut, Mr. Hastings. I'll be able to give you a better estimate of the time frame after self-repair has progressed a little, but I'm going to guess a few days for my normal duties, probably closer to a week before I can train again."

"Beats a couple of months in a cast," Zain said.

"That's true!"

"Get some shuteye. DeWayne, get him some crutches so he can get around if he feels like it."

Pierpoint said, "I don't have any in here; you'll have to ask Rita for a pair."

DeWayne went to do that. Zain and Hastings left as well, because Pierpoint wouldn't recharge while they were in there.

Out in the hall, Hastings said, "That could have been a whole lot worse. I mean, it was just his leg he hit."

"Yeah, if Pierpoint damaged something vital, nobody else knows enough to help him. We don't even have a first aid manual. We're making this shit up as we go along."

"I'll tell you who does know, the Autobots."

"Does us fuck-all good," Zain griped.

"Yeah, I can just see what would go down if you walked up to Ratchet and said, 'Hey, teach me some Cybertronian medical techniques, willya?' He's big, and from what I've been able to gather, he's got a temper of a size to match."

"I'll bet they've got first aid manuals. Hell, I'd like to have a translation file for their language. You know how much data comes across my HUD that's wasted because I don't read Cybertronian?"

Hastings considered. "Maybe not Ratchet, but one of the others?"

"Yeah, you know what, that scientist of theirs, Wheeljack or Que or whatever his name actually is? He's not much of a fighter. If we could get him away from the others and talk to him, we might be able to get some useful information."

Hastings said, "We're going to have to do something. We need that information before the team can go out in the field."

Zain nodded. "I'll start working on a plan, but we're not going to be able to do anything until after the next group transitions. I need the manpower. Mechpower. Whatever."

"You know, Michael Sunderland picked up a lot of spoken Cybertronian just by watching them on TV. After he transitions, he might be able to decipher the written language too. At least, the stuff that pops up on your HUD all the time."

"I hope so. It sure would help."

-Sidhe Chronicles-

(New Darkmount)

Clouds, dense and thickening, hid Arvador 7's two moons and blocked most of the ultraviolet light that would ordinarily have allowed Borealis to see. Now, thunder echoed off the shadowed cliffs around the stronghold Strika had named New Darkmount, while the thin air tasted strongly of ozone from the lightning which battered the peaks. Soon a deluge would break, turning the stream that cut the valley far below from a quick-flowing freshet to a violent torrent.

The femme seeker laced her servos across her abdominal plating, just below her spark. Already her gestational chamber swelled with eggs. Two orn before they should, they were forcing her internals to reconfigure and make room. She could feel the strain against her plating. Unlatching her armor gave her some relief, but with her trine mates patrolling the system, she felt safe enough to do that only within the security of her own eyrie.

Lightning struck somewhere on the heights, throwing pyrotechnics throughout the surrounding energy field. Her new sparks fluttered inside their eggs. She calmed them and went back inside, pacing the ancient stone corridors of the stronghold.

Borealis' mercurial brood-temper, combined with her new status as Strika's consort, encouraged most passersby to give her plenty of room. The discomfort of carrying grated on her, and she had been somewhat astonished to find herself more than willing to take it out on any unfortunate who added to her misery. A slash of her claws or a buffet with a razor-sharp wingtip was likely to result from annoying her while within her reach.

All of Strika's faction, including Strika herself, came swiftly to understand that functioning in her presence was enough to annoy her. Even her trinemates treated her with newfound deference, and stayed out of her way as much as possible; that thought, though, brought the coolant perilously close to her optics.

They should have been back by now. The trine bond was muted and strained; all three had had to damp it to mate with Strika.

Borealis still felt like heading for the washracks whenever she thought about that. Not that Strika had done anything untoward—even she would not have dared such, not with Borealis' trinemates present.

At least, thank Primus, her brooding protocols had activated properly. That couldn't be relied on when an outsider was one of the sires. Then the poor carrier was left with eggs she did not want but was responsible for. That led to a short carrying cycle and small, sickly sparklings who had gotten only the minimum of support from a carrier whose frame treated them as parasites.

Borealis might be unhappy with the way her sparklings had come to be, but she would give them the best start in life that she could, she thought. They were, after all, only one-third Strika's, two-thirds her own and Skyquake's. She could live with that.

Oddly enough, the mating had brought her closer to Skyquake. She and Dreadwing were…trinemates, really, but nothing more. She still wondered if they would have chosen her for trine if any other untrined seeker had been available.

Best to avoid that thought. It was done now, and couldn't be undone; they were bonded.

She decided to climb up to the command center and find out from the duty officer where her trinemates were.

She told herself that she wasn't really worried about them, they were both excellent fliers, and even a storm such as this one promised to be would be within their abilities to fly through successfully. They would know whether conditions allowed them to land here, or if it would be necessary to land where they had more wingroom and walk up the canyon to base.

She could tell herself that all she wanted, but when another lightning bolt struck nearby, the crash of thunder following within a split second, she hurried her pace.

Voices within the command center alerted her that there were more mecha inside than simply whoever had drawn monitor duty that day.

Among Decepticons, the small and sneaky had a chance to advance by subterfuge equal to that of the large and strong, who used direct action. Borealis winched in her fields, stepped into a shadowed recess in the doorway, and listened to the discussion within.

Strika asked, "Well, report. Did you see anything?"

Dreadwing replied, "Nothing concrete. It definitely felt like a spacebridge had been opened, but it was gone when we got there. Also, the storm was much more intense there, and the temperature was significantly lower than the surrounding area. You see a lot of weird weather on these organic planets, but that seemed anomalous. We combed the area and scanned thoroughly, but discovered nothing to explain it."

"Hmm. Still." Strika turned from Borealis' trinemate to her OD, and Borealis, seeing her face again, felt a wave of revulsion so strong it nearly knocked her off her feet. "Double the patrols in that area, and if sensors detect another ground bridge, my standing order is to send a patrol to investigate immediately, then notify me."

"Yes, General Strika," the OD replied, and focused on his console, recording the order.

Skyquake said, "I wonder whose it could be. If the Autobots had a spacebridge, they'd be using it to supply themselves."

Strika said, "You're right; I'm sure it's not them, though I don't know who else it could be."

Dreadwing said, "There's the weather anomaly, too. Have you ever heard of anything like that associated with a spacebridge?"

"No, I have not," the triple-changer replied. "Some new technology, possibly, or some effect local to this planet. The important thing is to catch whoever it is."

"Of course." Dreadwing seemed to draw into himself, becoming a neon-flashed cloud, apart from the conversation. Borealis had experienced his doing that to her many times; she had no idea that that was simply Dreadwing. She thought it was aimed toward herself. That knowledge might make it easier to be his trinemate in the future.

Her audials swiveled and focused at the sound of her name. "How is Borealis' gestation progressing?"

And wasn't that telling, she thought. Not "How is Borealis," but "How is the gestational chamber I'm using functioning?"

"She is very uncomfortable and that makes her difficult to live with. What else is new?" Skyquake replied. His tone was not accusatory, but then he'd always been…sweet, somehow, to Borealis.

"Did that worthless healer say how long before she clutches?" Strika moved to her command chair, which put her in profile to Borealis. That was easier, somehow, than seeing her face-to-face.

"He would only say sparklings develop at their own rate. He did say that the modifications he will have to make to her frame will require him to confine her to medbay soon."

Strika made a dismissive gesture. "What about the hatchlings?"

"Too big for her. We should have all carried," Skyquake said reprovingly.

Strika laughed, harshly. "Don't be a fool. Borealis is no loss to my armada. She will never be an effective warrior. All that she is good for is breeding. Let her concentrate on that, and modify herself accordingly."

Borealis felt as if she'd been slapped, and heard both her trinemates mantle their wings in disapproval.

"Oh, be quiet. She was happy enough to have a caste again. She won't be grounded long enough to be all that upset about it. And it isn't as if she wants the hatchlings after she separates. Once they hatch, we can put them right into adult frames and she can start on the next batch as soon as she's recovered. Do whatever it takes to keep her happy, and clutching sparklings."

"What do you mean, keep her happy?" Dreadwing said, at the same time Skyquake protested, "General, nothing makes her happy!"

"Do I have to spell everything out for you imbeciles? Spoil her! Bring her some high grade and make her feel safe enough to loosen her plating! She's your slagging trinemate. You know her needs."

Dreadwing said, "She is a responsibility, not a true trinemate. She has always been an annoying youngling."

Borealis felt the spark clutch within her. Of her two trinemates, Skyquake had always been the kinder to her ….but she had no idea …

Sometimes, the worst that could happen was hearing said what you had known all along. Gravid, she slipped away from the control center and the presence, tainted now forever, of the genitors of her sparklings.

She turned her back on their eyrie and sought out the lower levels. She had heard enough, and had enough.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

Sawbones finished cleaning up his medbay after repairing Swindle's latest collection of dents, courtesy of Payload. Sawbones no longer bothered asking what they had been fighting about. He looked up as the door slid open.

"Sawbones?"

"I'm here, just sweeping up. Come on in. Is something wrong?"

"I hurt. It feels like I'm going to split."

Sawbones put up his broom and said, "Hop up here and let me run a scan."

She did. He saw how shiny her optics were with coolant, but didn't say anything yet, just concentrated on the scan.

Then he sat back and sighed. Sometimes, "Don't get emotionally involved with your patients" just didn't work. He knew, everyone in Strika's crew knew, what had compelled Borealis to attempt this…unwise breeding. "Borealis, you have three healthy sparklings, but they're maturing faster than I thought they would. You're going to need to reconfigure soon, and after that happens you're going to have to remain grounded, and if we're not lucky stationary, until you're ready to separate your eggs."

"How long will I still be able to move around if that happens?"

"Another three orn, at the very most—probably less."

"What will you have to do to me?"

He forced himself to say calmly, "Remove your armor plating and enlarge your gestation chamber. More support bracing will be necessary in order to prevent your other systems from being damaged. You're also going to need energon supplements."

Coolant filled her optics again. "Enlarge my...oh, Primus! Have you ever done anything like that before?"

Sawbones shook his head. "I was just a small town healer in an isolated colony before Strika decided I was coming with you, Borealis. I've never created such a modification before. I've researched it, and the procedure seems fairly straightforward, but I'm inexperienced: that creates a risk to you and your sparklings outside the inherent risk of the carrying, which isn't negligible."

She put her helm into her servos, and Sawbones saw, to his great discomfort, coolant trickling over her digits. She sobbed, twice, then said, "What am I going to do? I was such an idiot ever to agree to this!"

Oh Primus, he'd hoped this conversation would go like this. "You have three options. First, attempt the procedure in spite of the risks. Second, terminate one of the sparklings to make room for the other two-"

"No! How could you suggest such a thing!"

"Borealis, listen. This is a very dangerous gestation for all four of you. If you had no access to medical care, at best only one of those hatchlings would survive, but it is most likely none of you would."

That raised her helm; she made optic contact. He continued, "The other two shells would certainly be crushed before the sparklings developed enough to survive without them. You and the other hatchling would have only a slim chance of surviving separation, because once the other two died, that hatchling would utilize the resources all three previously required to grow very large. That's why seekers carry one hatchling each. And that doesn't begin to account for the the size difference involved in this case. It might come down to losing one, or losing all four of you, do you understand?"

Borealis wrung her servos. "You said there were three options. What's the third?"

He sighed. Oh, how he wished she could take him with her. "Before you get too big to fly, get yourself to a healer who has a lot more experience than I do with designing and installing mods: Ratchet, with the Autobots on Earth. I have a list here of the things you need to steal to take with you—word is the Autobots are short on supplies."

The little green femme cocked her head at him, but the coolant in her optics dried up. "It's a long way—would I make it in time?"

"There are a few space bridges still operating along the way; you should be fine if you use them. I think it's your best chance to separate all three safely: your best bet for the survival of all four of you. But whether you could persuade your trine mates to go with you is another thing."

She shook her head. "They don't want me anyway," she said, and he heard wounded pride but not emotional pain in her voice.

Sawbones shook his head, but offered no disclaimer: this, he thought, rather than her present predicament, was the real source of his empathy for the young green femme. Borealis had always been destined to get the short end of that stick—their trine bond would always be secondary to Dreadwing and Skyquake. Spark-split twins came first with one another, and trinemates had to get used to that. That Borealis couldn't, or had and no longer could, might save her from the pain of breaking the bond. He hoped that she could do that successfully and make a new life somewhere. For that matter, he hoped to survive his own enslavement to Borealis, but that hope was fading. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not so very sure that I am," she sighed. "Did you know that Strika plans to put the sparklings into adult frames as soon as they hatch?"

The little medic met her optics with his own, intense with his passion for his craft. "Yes. When she held the first of the planning meetings, before her scheme was broached to you, she told Skyquake and Dreadwing that was so, and that it had been done to her as well. I can't breach patient confidentiality, Borealis, but the discreditable things you know about Strika are a direct product of that process. If she still plans that, after all I've told her about the negative impact it has on a sparkling, then you must go. If not for yourself, for your sparklings."

For the first time since she had come into med bay, her dainty servos relaxed. "What do I need to know to get there in one piece?"

The healer began to explain."Your gestation chamber is designed to expand, of course, but with three sparklings, all of them with co-genitors larger than you are, the rate of that expansion is outside normal parameters. Ordinarily, there's more chance of an egg being damaged by moving around too much inside a too-large chamber, so there are safety protocols that prevent an over-rapid expansion. At least once a joor, you need to scan the eggs, and if they are becoming too crowded, then you need to use this override code—" he transmitted it to her "—to allow one unit of expansion at a time until there's no longer any excess pressure. Your armor may keep up with the increased rate of expansion, but if it doesn't you'll have to loosen or remove panels as necessary. If you have to do that, you won't be able to land on earth. You'll have to land somewhere in the system that doesn't have an atmosphere and contact the Autobots for assistance.

"Now, I've known Ratchet by reputation for a long time. If you tell him that you have a medical emergency and ask for safe passage, he'll make sure no one hurts you."

"I've heard alot about him, not all of it good."

"Big surprise there: Megatron lied a lot. I didn't hear any of that slag before I got drafted. The propaganda he spread about Ratchet would have been more accurate if he'd said it about Knockout and Shockwave!"

Borealis shuddered delicately; she didn't want to be anywhere near either of those two.

"There's something else, and if you get caught you didn't hear it from me. Remember when Acid Storm came through here on his way to Earth before Megatron's last stand?"

"Of course I remember."

"Well, when that mech got drunk he couldn't shut off his vocalizer. He told me the command trine clutched, and they hid their hatchlings with the Fallen's brood. The last he heard, Megatron was raising them. Now, if that's true, then what do you want to bet the Autobots have Starscream's heir?"

Her faceplates lit up with the first genuine smile he had seen since she had agreed to mate with Strika. "But that would mean there is a new Winglord, and it isn't Strika!"

"Yes. If that's true, you won't be abandoning the flock if you go there. Now, like I said, you didn't hear that from me."

"I heard nothing." The little femme smiled at him, and he helped her slide down from the table. "Thank you, Sawbones."

The medic nodded. "These glitches are fighting on a rusting bridge. They'll keep it up until they all fall through. Get your hatchlings somewhere safe. Live your life." That's more than I'll get to do.

Borealis nodded, then went back to her eyrie. Her trinemates were not there, and she couldn't find it in her to care. She studied the list of supplies that she needed to take with her, and planned the quickest way to collect them all.

Time was pressing on her much harder than her overlarge brood.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

(Mission City Base)

Diarwen smiled as she opened the circle and grounded its energy back to Earth. More people had attended the Imbolc Sabbat celebration than had been present at Yule. Several of the civilian bots had come out of curiosity, they had waited outside the circle in respectful silence. Diarwen wondered how much they had understood, but they had certainly sensed the energy when she had cast the circle. There was no need to convince Cybertronians that magic was real!

"The circle is open but never broken. May the peace of the Goddess be ever in your heart. Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again." That blessing chant was new, drawn from modern Pagan traditions, but it was close enough to the ones used by the Sidhe for millennia that Diarwen felt comfortable with it, now that she conducted ritual in English.

The participants and spectators mingled, and began the trek down the path to Excellion, where Prowl and Jazz had arranged for the Sabbat feast indoors. While the days were warming up, the desert was still cold at night.

Diarwen knelt at the altar to put the lid over the cauldron and snuff the incense and the candles. Their stubs and the remains of the humans' cakes and ale, she gave back to Mother Earth with a soft thanks. Optimus collected the ritual energon cubes, as the few drops left in them would pollute rather than feed the desert.

She stood to take up her sword, and raised it in salute to the Goddess before she sheathed the blade. After that, the act of taking down the altar was a well-practiced meditation.

By then, nearly everyone had drawn ahead. Optimus extended his servo, offering her a ride, and Diarwen settled herself comfortably on his shoulder. He carried the hot cauldron, which was not a problem for him.

Buzzard Rock rose black and mysterious behind the circle of small candles half-buried in the sand, which would continue to celebrate the light of Imbolc for as long as they burned. She had carefully swept away anything that might catch their flame, in order to make it safe to leave them, just as she had done nearly every Imbolc for all of her adult life.

They passed east of the hangars, where it was still early enough for there to be a good deal of light and noise, and from there, followed the new road to the construction site and Excellion's landing pad.

As soon as they rounded the last curve and Excellion came in sight, Diarwen smiled and said, "Look at the perimeter. Those little walkway lights look like he has a circle of his own."

"Those are new, for the benefit of the NEST troops, so that they will know when they are walking on Excellion. If he should need to transform, and they are there, they will end up in one of his passenger compartments," Optimus replied, with a deep rumble of laughter.

Diarwen's clear laughter was a soprano descant. "Acushla, I hope that he would recall we cannot maglock to his plating! That could be quite a ride."

"Indeed it could."

Optimus continued up to Excellion's main entrance. The cityformer greeted him and opened the hatch, and the sound of feasting drifted joyfully from a nearby room.

Optimus left the still-hot cauldron safely off the walkway.

Buzzsaw and Rumble were just inside, along with Thoroughfare, a gray and green member of Excellion's civilian militia, who was guarding them. Thoroughfare snapped to attention, and offered the fist to chestplate salute of the Altihexian region where Tyger Pax had been located. Optimus returned it, greeting the bot by name, which clearly startled him. The civilians had yet to grow accustomed to Prime's first-among-equals attitude, but they appreciated it when they saw evidence of it.

Prime turned to their little POWs and sent glyphs asking if their needs were being met.

They both nodded short bows, still getting used to the idea of acting like civilized mecha around Autobots. Buzzsaw said, "Thoroughfare allowed me to stretch my wings a little. We are adjusting."

Diarwen thought that they probably were. Ratchet had installed monitors that allowed Prowl to keep track of them at all times and disabled their weapons and long-range comms, and they had been assigned quarters aboard Excellion, where they had a guard at all times. Buzzsaw may have been allowed to fly, but she wasn't going far while her sparkmate had to stay behind with Thoroughfare.

Their lives were no more restrictive than those of any other captured Cons had been before they decided to swear fealty to the Prime. That was not a step the two of them were yet ready to make, but they were not unhappy with their situation in the meantime. They were safe, they had enough energon, if none to spare, and no one mistreated them. The war was over, and they had been given the opportunity to repatriate.

Diarwen asked, "Have you had your rations yet?"

Buzzsaw shook her helm. "No, Prime Consort."

Diarwen accepted the title gracefully. She had lived most of her life in a royal court. Although she was still learning the specifics of what would be required of her here, she was familiar with the basics. "You are welcome to join us if you wish. Your guard as well," Diarwen said, nodding to Thoroughfare. "Everyone is welcome."

The three of them went inside. Optimus shared a silent conversation with Excellion for a moment, then he and his love joined the festivities.

(End)