Chapter 25

The Autobots were swift and efficient transportation. Hawthorne had once heard it speculated by the English that traveling upwards of 100 miles per hour would cause a person to suffocate. He now knew that to be untrue. In fact, it was rather exhilarating, unfortunately it wasn't a pace the Autobots could maintain.

The summer had abandoned them. It was only July but cold winds blew in storms as the icy arctic air suddenly shifted down across the country. A thick drizzle was steadily pelting the Autobots. In the middle of Nebraska the sky had turned a strange color like a septic wound- greenish yellow and milky. The hair on the back of Hawthorne's neck stood on end shortly before he saw the twister. Cybertron's weather had be closely monitored and controlled for as long as anyone could remember. But here on earth the weather did whatever it had a mind to and the fury was something to see. Prowl and Optimus had to pull Wheeljack, who wanted to get a closer look at the phenomenon, away from it's path.

The party passed on to Denver with agonizing slowness. The train yard was filled with boxcars from every corner of the country, each heading out with a different treasured cargo. Food, medicine, fabrics, gold, people and livestock were loaded into cars and bustled off to points unknown. Twice Hawthorne had to shoo the rail riding bums off the roofs of the Autobot cars. Only his admission of their destination, outside Colorado Springs, had seemed to warn off any others. The last one left, promising to spread the word to his fellow bums that this train intended to go into the mountains, "Strange summer we're having isn't it? Bound to be snow up there!'

Hawthorne was worried about the weather, his knowledge of the Rockies was not very thorough. Most of his experience was in the east where he had grown up and served in the army for the entire War Between the States. He took the advice of the locals and bought extra blankets, lamps, firewood, and other supplies. Prowl, on the other hand, didn't seem concerned.

"Even if it gets bad we'll be able to find our way. Our internal sensors will give us our bearings," he looked at Hawthorne, who had already donned a heavier coat They were well past Denver now and into the foot hills of the Rockies. This morning they were setting into the beginnings of baby mountains deserted by man-save for a single set of unused tracks.

"What if the snow gets too deep to ride through?"

"Then we walk." Right now the sky was clear. Even with the cold front it was still summer in this hemisphere of the planet. Prowl turned a bright blue eye on a sky nearly the same color, "I don't think we need to worry about it snowing anytime soon."

Eight hours later and Prowl was wishing he hadn't opened his mouth. The weather in the mountains seemed to change in an instant and deep clouds rolled in. It had been snowing hard for the last two hours forcing them to resort to walking in the near blizzard conditions. The altitude changed the temperature's effects, but it was piercing enough for Hawthorne to be firmly ensconced on Optimus's shoulders. He'd made a quasi-tent on the big bot's shoulders, the Autobot looked as if he were wearing an olive green wool scarf. The Autobots didn't need air for taking in oxygen like the humans did, but they did need it to help cool off their systems- the same reason they needed water. The air they took in was mostly flushed out of the shoulder vents rather than the mouth.

"I told that idiot this would happen," puffed the old man angrily. His joints were getting stiff in the cold. Walking through the snow was no hardship for Optimus's long legs. Without taxing his systems he didn't output as much warm air as they had hoped. There were long periods of no heat from the vents during which Hawthorne's bones protested mightily. Every time the wind howled, he shrank deeper into his blankets. He was running out of fabric to disappear into.

Ratchet was nearly invisible in front of Optimus, even in infrared all that could be seen were minor points of warmth. The red insignias on his armor seemed to blink in the blowing snow. Hawthorne frowned, "We're getting into true blizzard conditions. We should stop before we get lost."

Optimus passed the message on to Prowl who dismissed it, "This is no place to stop. We need to find a copse of trees or the melted snow in our joints will freeze in the wind. We're still following the tracks, we won't get lost."

"Just how many sets of tracks are there out here, Prowl?" asked Ironhide, stumbling.

Wheeljack managed to blunder into track switch sign with his leg, "OW! Son of a glitch!"

Ratchet turned the switch back to the correct position. The tracks they were following were an older set, partially decayed. The newer tracks overlapped them when a new route and bridge had been laid. Somewhere in the valley below them trains went back and forth every day, but it was impossible to see them in this weather. The wind moaned; it sounded vaguely like voices.

"Did you hear that?" asked Ironhide, straining his aural sensors.

The others paused and listened. Even Mirage seemed to strain to hear what was on the wind. Optimus set his sensors to output so that Hawthorne could hear the noise that was being made. The sound set his teeth on edge, "That sounds like voices..."

"What the heck would people be doing out in a storm like this!" Ratchet snapped.

"Maybe they're not the only ones that don't understand weather?" shrugged Wheeljack. Prowl gave him a poisonous look.

Optimus tried to focus on the sound but it was no use, none of them had powerful enough receptors to catch the noise clearly, "Too bad Blaster isn't here."

"Isn't it?" said Prowl, turning his glare on Ratchet.

"We need to find out for certain. If they're stuck or derailed people will need help," said Hawthorne.

Prowl refused to consider it, "If we split up and you follow those other tracks you'll get lost. I can't allow that. I need everyone here when we run into Decepticon activity."

Ratchet's voice changed to a pleading tone, "Prowl... We can't just leave those people there. They'll die."

The snow that had gathered on Prowl's doorwings slid off as he shrugged, "We don't know that there is anyone there. Our job is to chase Decepticons, get back our missing Autobots, and stay alive in the meantime. We don't have time to run all over the countryside trying to figure out if those are real humans or a trick of sound. With the acoustics in this place we could spend days following what we heard and never find anyone.."

Optimus leaned into the wind, hearing the sound again. His spark twitched with guilt. Pulled between his duty to a commanding officer and his duty to preserve life, he chose the option that would leave him with less scars on his conscience and headed down the hill.

"Optimus! What do you think you're doing?" Prowl slid to a halt in front of Optimus, blocking the much larger bot. "Get back up there with the others."

Optimus glowered, "No."

"I'm giving you an order, Autobot."

The big red and blue bot gently set Hawthorne down in the snow near Ironhide. He turned around and faced Prowl squarely, "If being an Autobot means leaving others to die, then you can consider me no longer an Autobot."

Prowl pulled himself up as tall as he could, still only coming as high as the other bot's shoulder. "I. Said. Get. Back. Up. There."

"I'm sorry, Prowl, but I can't let those people die," Optimus stood quietly for a moment, then pushed past the officer. The smaller Autobot threw himself forward, intending to slam his shoulder into Optimus's lower chest. Instead Optimus dodged with startling speed and grabbed the back of Prowl's armor. Using the white Autobot's momentum against him, Optimus tossed Prowl through the air and into a particularly deep snow bank about fifty feet away.

Optimus looked over at the others. Ratchet and Wheeljack stared at him with slack jawed expressions. Ironhide smiled wryly. "Ah been wanting to do that for days. We'll stay here and keep looking for Decepticons. Why don't ya take Mirage with ya for... uh... comp'ny."

Hawthorne climbed back up onto Optimus's shoulders, welcomed by a blast of warm air from the vents. He chuckled, "You got a set on you, son. You're a brave man."

No one could see the wry grin under Optimus's mask, "Let's find those people and get them out of the snow."

000000

The wreck turned out to be close to the other tracks. The caboose had somehow slipped off the tracks into the ravine as the train went around a tight bend. The train was mostly dry goods with people in an old rickety passenger car at the front. Streamers of useless steam wafted around the cracked engine, useless in the deepening snow. They had managed to uncouple the caboose before it fell, but the next car- filled with food and staples for the town- was slipping further into the ravine, threatening to take everything down with it. The cars' pins were all covered in ice, making them near impossible to uncouple.

Optimus looked back to see if he could signal to the others, but the snow had swallowed the path. The gloom of the blizzard slowly consumed what was left of the daylight. Mirage was just barely visible as he followed Optimus's careful footsteps. Hawthorne cautiously climbed down from his friend's shoulder's, "We need to approach carefully, we don't want you two scaring these people."

The old man crawled down farther towards where the caboose was hanging over the edge, "HALLOO!"

Voices could be heard murmuring around the bend. A nervous male voice yelled back, "HELLO? Who's there?"

"We're here to help you! Just... hang on. And don't be alarmed!"

A stout man in an engineer's uniform stood near the caboose, his arm bandaged. "Thank the Lord, we thought we was goners- oh my lord."

Over Hawthorne's shoulder in the swirling snow the man could make out two giant forms. Hawthorne coughed, "Uh, we're a special army unit. We got lost in the snow. What happened?"

After a moment the man nodded dully, "T-the train. We were having troubles enough what with the old engine and all, then the track started to crumble and down it went. Even if we got it back on the tracks the engine's no good. The boiler's cracked; we're goin' nowhere."

The man jumped as a deep voice rumbled from the larger of the snow-shrouded shapes, "I need for the two of you to get to the front of the train where the track is firm and wait for me there."

Hawthorne helped the shaken engineer towards the glow of the lanterns near the passenger car. Optimus inspected the scraped soil near the edge. There had been a mudslide at some point destabilizing the cliff's edge. It wouldn't hold his weight, especially not with the combined weight of the car laden with supplies. They needed more room. He looked at Mirage, "I need you to stay here while I go to the front. I'm going to pull the train forward so that there's solid track for you to lift and put the train back down on the track. Can you handle that?"

Mirage's yellow optics blinked, a look of concentration crossed his face. For a moment he seemed like his old self again. The blue bot made a movement that resembled a nod. Optimus put his hand on his friend's shoulder a moment, then carefully climbed down into the ravine.

About fifty feet below the main tracks was a second ledge, much smaller than the one the train sat on. Optimus felt his foot slip and he lost balance for a moment. He flailed then managed to claw his hand into the canyon wall and steady himself again. "Icier too," he muttered to himself. In the distance he could see the lights of engine and the passenger car. Optimus grimaced under his mask; could Mirage handle this complex of an order? If he was wrong he doomed the train and Mirage, but there was no way to know.

"That poor bastard will never make it, there's no way," said the Engineer gloomily. The sun was starting to set and the visibility was rapidly getting worse.

"He'll make it, you'll see." said Hawthorne, gritting his teeth against the cold.

Suddenly a big blue hand gripped the canyon wall in front of them. Carefully Optimus pulled himself up onto the ledge, snow falling in slippery melting sheets off his shoulders. Steam rose from the back of his vents in steady laboring puffs.

"Well I'll be damned," the engineer took off his hat and rubbed his bald head.

The towering bot nodded first to Hawthorne then collapsed in on himself in front of the train- dropping into a powerful looking engine sitting on the tracks, shouting instructions to the other unseen Autobot.

"Now Mirage! Push!" Slowly, Optimus pulled forward. Inch by inch he pulled the rest of the cars forward, hoping his trust in the drone that was once his friend was not misplaced.

After what seemed like most of the evening, he heard the last car drop onto the tracks and the cheers of the other folks on the train, "It's on! The car is back on the track!"

Optimus's powerful engine had no problem pulling the train through the snow and ice. Faint tremors told him that Mirage was still behind them, shambling after them as best he could. At this rate they would reach Colorado Springs long after full dark, but they would reach it safely.

00000

"Ah hate to say it Prowl... but Ah think you've gotten us lost," Ironhide didn't bother to hide the irritated burr in his voice. This was not the coldest planet he'd ever been to, but it was one of the wettest. Icy cold water was dripping into his neck guard and between his gauntlets, freezing and breaking every time he moved his elbows or knees.

"You were the one that suggested we go this way!" Prowl grumbled. He glanced around at the blanketed gloom. His internal compass couldn't find north, there were too many metal deposits in the region. The tracks had suddenly ended, covered by a huge rockslide sometime in the recent past. Now the sun was gone and it was cold enough the infrared wasn't giving him enough detail to keep them from going in circles. He sighed, "I'm sorry."

Wheeljack sighed, "Well, you did your best."

"At least you know when to admit defeat," Ratchet sat down on a rocky out-cropping. He strained his eyes looking around carefully. They wouldn't be lost forever and they obviously wouldn't die out here. The sun would have to come out and they could backtrack. However, all this cost time, something that was not in abundance.

Wheeljack strained his optics, trying to make out the shapes that seemed to be coming towards them. They were large and blurry, but definitely moving. "Am I going snowblind or are we being followed?"

"That's not the direction we came from... at least I don't think so," said Prowl, trying to make out the shapes."

After a few minutes the form solidified into that of a boxy, green, grinning Autobot and a smaller streamlined gold lion. "Ha! I found you! Optimus thought you guys may have gotten lost so Steeljaw and I volunteered to come find you!"

"Hound!" Wheeljack threw his arm around the Autobot tracker affectionately. "You're alive!"

"That's the rumor anyway," laughed the bot. "When Optimus told us the way you were coming I figured you'd need a guide to get you back to the lab. It's not far from here."

"At least we were close then," said Prowl, mollified.

Hound motioned them to follow him as a gold bullet shot past him and up the mountain side, "Your trail was pretty hard to follow. I had trouble figuring out which sets were the freshest; It overlapped itself in some places."

"That would have been us going in circles," said Ratchet flatly.

"I told you!" Wheeljack jabbed a finger at Ironhide trumphantly, fins blinking indignantly.

"Ah put a sock in it, 'Jack. Ah ain't the scout that Hound is," grumbled the big red bot.

"Less talking, more moving," said Prowl wearily. "So Hound... exactly where are we going?"

Hound shouted back over his shoulder, "It's just up over this mountain and down over the other side a bit. It's a real nice place. Plus... it's warm."

Ratchet smiled wistfully, "Warm... that sounds good to me."