The Diego Diaries: Dreadnought (dd5 25)
-0-Inside the bowels of Clipper
Ratchet saw a big servo reach into the electronics conduit where he was laying on his back working out the placement of new circuits for regulation of energon flow. A breakfast sandwich in a see through container materialized over his head. He grinned, then slid out as the sandwich disappeared and a big servo gripped his leg. Sliding until he could look up and see Ironhide standing over him with a grin, he smirked. "Hey, good looking. My old mech would punch your face for your liberties."
"Get up, slagger, and eat something," Ironhide said as Ratchet stood.
He took the sandwich and kissed Ironhide. "Such a good mech you are, total stranger. Have you seen Ironhide?"
"OH HA-HA, Ratchet," Ironhide said with a grin as they walked down the corridor to a stairwell nearby. Sitting down, Ratchet began to eat the Cybertronian version of an Egg McMuffin. "This is good. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Ironhide said as he pulled Prowler from his carry hold. Ratchet leaned in to kiss him, then allowed him to have a bite. Ironhide set him down and he ran off chewing happily as he enjoyed the idea of endless room to run. "Little mech likes to run."
"They all do," Ratchet replied. "What's going on in the real world?"
"We have a lot of things to do. The humans are coming to see Typhoon shortly. You have to be there to explain things. We're standing out tonight. Who's signed off so far?" Ironhide asked as Prowl came screeching back for more muffin. He got his tiny bite, then ran off again.
Ratchet grinned as he watched the tiny bot, then glanced at Ironhide. "We have the three infants signed off and Dangerous too. Clipper is just about done but Typhoon needed more. He's going to be last. He took the most slagging and needed the most repair. We even have time to repaint things. Very little armor replacement but a lot of good stuff in the big format cache in the Metallurgy stores on Ceres. We can use it to remake or replace things."
"That's good. Hercy will command Quasar, Kup, Genesis and Fireball will have Elita and her team. Clipper will be commanded by Warlord, Dangerous by Hound and Typhoon will be HQ with Paragon who will have operational command. Red Wing gets field command while Warlord commands Seekers overall. We have to move Trypticon tonight and then focus on the other planets fast. Gliese is now super critical. They have enough forces that if they knew they would swarm us.
"There's two big migrations coming which is going to push this hard, not to mention the Seeker convocation, the last of the holidays and the bonding on the steps. That's tomorrow and should follow if things stay quiet."
Ratchet nodded. "Andrew and Lily are our own. We'll do them right," Ratchet said.
Ironhide nodded as they sat together watching Prowler explore as they caught up together.
-0-Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean, Earth
They were bridged in, leaders and/or representatives of the leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Italy, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan and the United States. A mass of security from each gathered around the door of the administration building as the bosses walked inside. Soldiers and sailors were spread around the area, military police with guns as well, while nearby the bots were lounging in the sun waiting for the run up to leave.
The various leaders were asked to wait at a specific place for the bridge to materialize. Some of them had never used one so Niall Graham, Bobby Epps, Will Lennox and John Fulton appeared when the bridges opened to walk them through from their various locations to Diego Garcia. Some of them were visibly frightened, others stoic and a few who had come before adventurous as they followed with their entourage and security from their current position to an island far away in the matter of seconds. Now they were in the administration building getting ready for a short briefing of the mission of the moment and the safety remarks about their gear. Will Lennox would take care of that. Glenn Morshower would do the rest. They gathered in a large room with chairs in rows and took them.
When they were seated Glenn Morshower took the front of the room where a big monitor fixed on the wall demonstrated the Department of Defense emblem. "Welcome, gentlemen and ladies. We are here to brief you on what you're going to see, the status of the situation which I will tell you is secret above secret and all the relevant safety information you require to operate in a zero g, zero atmosphere environment will be provided.
"The first thing you need to know is that this situation is fluid but in hand by the forces of Optimus Prime and his general staff. What has happened is simple. The Empire of Cybertron, a construct by the madman, Megatron is coming apart at the seams. Cybertron and a good 95% of the forces and population have surrendered to Prime and work under his command to rebuild their decimated planet and population and to protect everything and everyone.
"They have estimated that one billion of their people are refugees, about one half to one billion were killed in the war and are mostly located in the rubble on world while one billion lived in abject misery there under Decepticon command. The surrender of the planet and the forces that were once loyal to Megatron have fallen like dominoes. Now there is no opposition in the local group nor on Cybertron itself. More assets are coming in from the cold every day, assets that swear their loyalty to Prime."
He clicked on the teevee monitor and it showed a moving landscape of Cybertron being rebuilt, rubble being decimated and the surrender of Decepticons. He let them watch a moment, then began again. "We have a lot of Cybertronian assets that haven't surrendered and are listed as highly unlikely to do so. They have lots of equipment and lots of troops that may or not be loyal to their objectives. The first and most critical goal for them was to find a plentiful supply of fuel for both food and their weapons. They have that. There are billions of metric tons of energon floating in the sun's scatter field when the system came into being ranging from dust particles to planetary fragments. They are there and have been discovered by the 'Cons, something that would have been inevitable whether or not the Autobots were here.
"They can now fuel, eat and re-arm themselves. These people are master metallurgists who can make anything they need easily from toothpicks to battleships. They have gathered around a leader that is notable in the 'Cons for a number of things. The first and most unusual reason is that he's smart and tactical. He's also patient. That makes him dangerous because he will think before he acts.
"He's also the leader of a combiner. I've asked Ratchet to explain what combiners are. He's currently on the dreadnought, Clipper and will speak to us in real time over the system comm relay." He punched a button and the scene showed Ratchet holding Prowler as he scanned a panel. He paused, then looked directly at the group from the monitor. "Ratchet, this is Glenn Morshower."
"Glenn! How the frag are you? Are your guests there?" Ratchet said shifting Prowler to someone with huge black colored arms. "Prowler came to see me for a moment."
Glenn grinned. "I see that. My guests are here and want to know a few things."
Ratchet nodded. "Razorclaw. Well, he's a very strange individual because for a Decepticon, he's smart, can think things through and he's psycho enough to inspire obedience in the lesser males. He's also a combiner. A combiner is war tech created by one of the worst criminals our people ever faced, a fragger named Jhiaxus. He decided to scratch an itch, to combine several mechs into one great big one for melee combat.
"The problem with that was Jhiaxus wasn't as smart as he thought he was. When he combined them they were filled with glitches, ones that were very hard on the mechs conscripted to do this. Only three or four combiners … gestalts as we call them ever were useful and functional beyond breaking everything they could reach. Sometimes that breakage included their own side, the fraggers.
"We have several … the Technobots and the Aerialbots among them. They combine and don't lose their personality or intellect when they do. No combiner made by the 'Cons except for the one Razorclaw leads can say the same. They're all insane. We've captured two of them and have them in cold storage under medical and Primal stasis lock protocols … Bruticus Maximus and the Stunticons." Ratchet looked at Glenn. "Do you have the image of Razorclaw's team I sent you from my personal files, Glenn?"
"I do, Ratchet. I'll put it up," Glenn said as he turned to a laptop nearby. The screen changed to an image of a gigantic mechanism with a huge sword in hand striding forward toward someone with incredible menace and sickening beauty. Everyone in the room gasped and it became tensely quiet.
"This is Predaking," Ratchet said in the background. "This is an image I took of him when we were in a battle together. Notice how incredibly huge he is. He can't be stopped by normal means. It takes a Supreme or Metro-form mechanism to handle a bot this nihilistic and even then its no guarantee. He battled Unicron, the worst of the worst and walked away. No one ever did to my knowledge but him. He's murder on the hoof. He's the Apocalypse made real. The worst part of it in spite of this is that he's also smart. He's one of the very few if only gestalts that keeps his intellect, his reason and his focus when combined. The other stuff is terrible. The worst part is that simple fact … this slagger stays smart when he combines."
They stared at the image, then the President of Italy spoke. "Who took that picture, Ambassador? Did you, you say? And what happened? Where is this image from? What place? How many of these kinds of machines are there out there and will they find us?"
The image changed back to Ratchet. "I took that picture, Mr. President. Please note the bot facing him as well. That is our Aerialbot gestalt, Superion. Notice how much bigger Predaking is than even our big gigantic Superion. This was taken on Cybertron in the city of Tyger Pax. He was sent to decimate everyone and everything and he succeeded. Superion and I barely got away.
"There are more gestalts among the 'Cons than among us. We didn't practice voodoo science. They could come and two have. We have them on ice as you say. The best part of this problem with Predaking is that one of their members, Rampage, lives here. He has to be with them to make the gestalt work. They can form up without him but the bonds are weak and won't hold unless the circuits are complete. Rampage will never go back to them. He's here with us and is raising his family. He's a businessman here and finally happy after all these years. Understand … Rampage was the most feared Decepticon I ever heard of. He was a raging psychotic but I fixed his glitches and he became himself. Razorclaw has already reached out for him to come but he won't."
"So if he doesn't go, then this Predaking is impotent? He can't form?" the Australian Prime Minister asked.
Ratchet nodded. "Correct. Razorclaw doesn't have that strategic and psychological advantage in his arsenal. Trust me, his arsenal is nothing to sneeze at but this is major for him. For him to have to forgo his gestalt is major."
"What kind of army does he field then?" the Prime Minister of Japan asked.
Ratchet paused to consult with Optimus who was listening in. Then he looked at them. "There are a lot of bots at loose ends who have amassed power to themselves. They have joined Razorclaw because he's the strong leader they require to function and the energon supply here is endless. Therefore, he has a large army that for now obeys him. We estimate it on the high end as around 240,000 individuals with about a thousand ships give or take a few."
It was incredibly silent in the room.
-0-TBC 1-24-16 edited 1-25-16
NOTE: Google Predaking and look for an image of him striding toward the 'camera' with Predaking under it and the slogan 'Sucks to be you." added. :D:D:D That is the image Ratchet references.
Fun Fact: Last night about 1:30 in the morning my bed slid and I woke up. We were having a 7.1 earthquake. I jumped up and slid around, then it stopped. Things were messed up all over the house, everything on wheels had slid and every flower container, doo-dad and picture was flat on its face. Then we had a 6.4 follow up. It was about 98 miles south of me which means the little fishing village of Homer got slammed. We have four active volcanoes within 25-86 miles from my house and they have been spouting off and on forever. This was probably Iliamna shifting magma. Or not. :D If this had happened in a city setting rather than the wilds of Alaska it would have been cataclysmic. It would have been The Big One for everyone. If you look you can actually see the San Andreas Fault line on the ground here. I wasn't hurt. Nothing more than maybe my feelings. :D:D:D Imagine riding a boat on a rough sea with rolling swells one after the other. Then add a roaring sound like a train. Then hear your house shake like a salt shaker. It lasted only seconds. The big one on Good Friday in 1964 which decimated Alaska lasted for nearly 6 MINUTES.
:D Have a good one out there. Stay safe. This is the usual stuff in Alaska. :D