Windy stretched on his tip-toes, watering can in hand, to reach the ferns hanging from pots next to his berth. He was feeding them growth hormones with their water, encouraging them to grow prior to sending some samples to earth botanists. Botany was not his area of expertise, that was Flora's interest, but he liked the plants. He had also discovered that both the ferns and the orchids were long extinct in this world, genetic drift and a few extinction events having rendered them lost to time.
Out of curiosity, he had posted pictures of the orchids on an internet bulletin board devoted to plant propagation. The response had been electric, including sizable offers of money to buy some specimens from him. He had been vastly amused by this. If they reacted in such a fashion to orchids what were they going to do when word got out about the rest of the collection, including Shiny and her kin?
An unexpected ping from Teletraan made Windy jump. Teletraan usually just spoke up when he had something to say, often without warning. Even the rest of the crew sometimes forgot that he was always listening, and his processors were enormous enough that he could track and participate in dozens of conversations simultaneously. However, for him to ping Windy meant he was asking for an encrypted conversation. That was unusual, and likely meant Teletraan didn't want to risk being overheard.
:Yeah, big guy?: :Windy, do you like Bee?: :Are you interested in pursuing anything with him?: :Maybe,: :Good answer, Manywinds. I've been watching him and I believe you would suit each other. Many of the crew, including some of the other Primes, have been commenting on the matter, and most of them see the pairing favorably. They think you are compatible with him, and they wish to see him find a partner. And, in that vein, you should see this video.:
Manywinds laughed, pleased beyond words. :Oh, so that's how it is, huh? He does like me.: :I thought you would appreciate confirmation.: :I can drop a few words to the other Primes and ensure that you are :Of course.: :I do not 'throw' myself at anyone.: :I believe the human term is 'have a crush,' and you are as predictable as a pulsar when it comes to your attraction to mechs who are youthful officers.: :Why?: :Because Ratchet will draft you into his med bay sooner or later if you're on his team, and you would prefer to pursue your own research. Am I correct in that analysis?: :Yeah, probably.: :Rodimus has shown zero interest in you beyond professional. Bee smiles every time your name is mentioned. I would suggest pursuing Bumblebee. I calculate the odds of success are much greater.: :'Jurassic Park', yes, I heard. It was very amusing.:
:Thanks for the tip. I think I'm feeling an affinity with Ratchet, all at once.:
"You're welcome."
Sam scowled at the e-mails stacking up in his laptop. He had been put to work almost immediately by Elita as a point-of-contact for people seeking tickets to the reception. The requests for tickets numbered in the thousands, after the bots had purged the vast majority of the e-mails and had sent him only those belonging to 'influential' people. It seemed the Autobots had a perfectly pragmatic desire to meet the rich and famous, because the rich and famous could sway public opinion in their favor. One would almost forget that Optimus was a politician long before he was a warrior, until he comes up with schemes like this. He plays towin , Sam thought, with both amusement and frustration.
The volume of communications astounded him. When word had leaked out yesterday about the plans for a party after the speech, Bee had set up an e-mail box for requests that night. The demand for tickets had surpassed anything Sam ever would have expected. Everyone from a well known astronomer to multiple famous rock stars thought they should be in attendance, and he'd only viewed a fraction of the e-mails.
And yet, despite that response, public opinion polls indicated that a significant chunk of the general public was at best skeptical and at worst terrified of the Autobots. People were either wildly curious and fascinated, or frightened. There seemed to be no mid point; 'Autobot' was a polarizing word these days.
Mikaela appeared first, a plastic bag in one hand, stepping through the open blast doors onto the Ark's observation deck. It was late afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows across the base and shining warmly through the deck's railing. Sam sat cross-legged on the metal deck plating in the shade cast by a communications array. It had been hot today, and was still a little too toasty for comfort, he was glad to be outside. He also agreed with his father that the view of the planes taking off and landing was enjoyable, particularly when the plane in question was Silverbolt.
Silverbolt was practicing a maneuver that involved a controlled stall, a mid-air transformation, and a bipedal landing. He had fallen a few times, but not recently. The enormous mech had been practicing for hours, and he had the whole south runway to himself. Sam wished he had more time to watch Silver, but the work he had been assigned was both tedious and important.
"Who'd you get a lift into town with?" he asked, curiously, as Mikaela approached with food. He had been kept busy on various errands but Mikaela had finally managed to escape the clutches of the Autobots and fetch dinner.
"Bluestreak," Mikaela said, with a rather fond smile. "He's such a sweetie, isn't he?"
"Yeah, he is. It's hard to believe he's their best sniper and assassin," Sam agreed, glad for a break from reading e-mails. He was dividing them into three groups. 'Hell no' and 'maybe' and 'hell yes.' 'Hell no' included a politician currently on trial for corruption. He put a couple senators and their wives in the 'hell yes' category, though most of the attending politicians already had Bee's contact information and were going through him. Bumblebee had sent him a list of about fifty names that would receive two tickets each. Since they were planning for about four hundred attendees, that left him three hundred tickets to parcel out.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought that 'getting in the car' a little over a year ago would lead to a situation like this now. How in the world did he chose between, say, the CEO of a major medical research firm, and an A-list rock star who'd promised to record and release a song about the 'bots if they would just let him attend? Optimus had been very clear to him that the point of the party was to introduce the 'bots to those with influence in the world.
Why me? He thought, a bit desperately. He had not even recognized half the names, and had needed to research the people in question on the internet. He had questioned Elita about why they were putting this enormous responsibility on his shoulders, and she had explained, simply, 'We trust you to make decisions in good faith on our behalf. Strangers might have an agenda that does not match our goals. And we do not know these people any more than you do.'
Mikaela sighed, and gave Sam a look in reaction to his words about Bluestreak. "It's war, Sam. I suspect all the mechs have done things we would find repugnant. I like Bluestreak."
"Didn't say I didn't like him. I'm just observing that he's not entirely the overgrown puppy, or sixteen foot tall little boy, that all of us humans seem to see when we talk to him." Sam shrugged, closed the laptop, and set it aside. He definitely needed a break.
Mikaela didn't precisely respond to that, just gave him another significant look, and then sat down cross-legged on the deck and pulled out two savory-smelling cardboard boxes from the plastic bag, then a third container of rice, two plates, chopsticks, and two bottled sodas. "Your moo goo gai pan," she said, handing him one container, "and my sweet and sour chicken."
"Gaaaaaaarlic," he breathed, exaggerating a breath in her direction.
She laughed. "Are you twelve?"
"Oh, can I be again?" He said, giving her puppy dog eyes. "Twelve was fun."
"Oh, God. I hated twelve. It was the year I got these things." She gestured at her chest with her chopsticks.
"I noticed them," he said, with an exaggerated chest-level leer, trying to make her laugh. "You were in my math class that year, two rows over."
She had spent more time than not in the same school as he had attended, because her family lived in the area and so had her foster parents. He had fond memories of her going back to first grade. On her part, she claimed she had never even noticed him. He'd chosen to find that funny, though it did sting a bit when he thought too much about it. She'd been so oblivious of his feelings for her. Bee would say that she was more focused on her own wounds, Sam realized, with sudden electric clarity. She didn't notice me, but I'm willing to bet she didn't notice most of us. She'd be enrolled for a month or two, then shuttled off somewhere else, then back again. No consistency, no stability, and no assurance she'd ever come back to see us. No wonder she didn't pay much attention to me. I just wasn't relevant.
She rolled her eyes at him, oblivious to his stunned epiphany. "Yeah, and the entire rest of the boys in the school suddenly started paying attention to me too."
"Oh, the perils of being popular." Teasing was required for that comment, and his words did make her smile. It was true that she had been popular. With her looks, and her ability to charm the boys (and the fact that she was known for putting out, unfortunately) the jocks had loved her. She was past that, he hoped. He stuck a fork in his garlic-heavy dinner and came up with a piece of pork and bit into it.
"Better the perils of being popular than the perils of being a complete dork," she grinned brightly at him as she said this.
"That's me," he said, after swallowing, "your very own complete dork. And you know you love me for it."
"Mmm, maybe." She smiled teasingly.
At that moment, the heavy tread of Autobot feet announced Bee's arrival. Both looked up as he approached the open blast doors. Sam had time to think, Damn, he looks tired, just as Bee walked through the exit and clipped one of his doorwings hard on the frame. He winced and made a sharp, startled, chirping noise of pain, and Mikaela jumped to her feet in instant reaction, with Sam scrambling up a second after she did.
Bee held up a hand and said, "I'm fine."
"And there's our other dork," Mikaela, hands on her hips, surveyed Bee critically. Sam, seeing that look, winced. She'd given him the exact same glare the time he'd tried to go out to dinner with her when he had the flu. In a sharp, no-nonsense tone of voice Mikaela said to Bumblebee, "You're shutting down some of your directional processors to save on RAM use, because you're experiencing coding errors due to lack of recharge, aren't you?"
Bee gave her an abashed look, "You've been talking to Ratchet. You even sound like him."
"I talk to him about Autobot medicine every chance I get. You guys are fascinating. And you, buddy, need to recharge, if you're so bad off you're walking into walls." She folded her arms and met his gaze with a direct stare, as if daring to deny her assessment.
"You're right," he admitted, honestly, with a candor that Sam had come to expect from Bumblebee, though when Bee had started being so damned honest with them, he couldn't actually say, "but I wanted to at least see you two before I do. I did say I'd meet you for dinner." Bee padded over to them, metal feet clicking on the deck.
"When's your next meeting?" Mikaela demanded. She sounded almost angry at him.
"Four hours," he replied, "at ten PM, a conference call with some Japanese businessmen who are flying in on Friday, and Doc. Optimus wants me on the call because he's going to be in the med bay then, and he wants an officer listening in."
"Down." She pointed peremptorily at the deck. "Right here."
"Mikaela ..." Bee tried to protest.
"Down. Or I'll call Ratchet right now and tell him what I just saw." Mikaela held her cell phone up threateningly. "Nap. Now."
He still looked like he wanted to argue. She flipped the phone open. He held up both hands and said, "Okay, okay."
Mikaela's expression softened from firm resolve to sympathy now that he'd caved in to her demands. She asked, "Have you been running nonstop since Tuesday?"
"All of us have," Bee sprawled out in protoform on the deck on his stomach, resting his head on his hands, faceplate turned towards them. "We are insane to try to pull this off with so little time to plan, but we do not wish to lose momentum. Have you seen anything on the 'Nobot' movement? They are getting quite a bit of press, and have some influential people involved. We wish to appeal to the public before the tide of public sentiment turns against us."
"You can worry about crazy anti-Autobot protestors later." Mikaela sat down next to him, ignoring his fretful concerns for now. "Bee, send a message out to the team that you're going to take a few hours of recharge. Then let your comlink go over to voicemail, or whatever it is you do -- I know they can override that if it's an emergency, right? We'll keep guard and make sure you do get four hours."
Sam thought, acidly, 'Nobot' has to be the second dumbest name for a protest movement I've ever heard in my life. 'Teabagger' is first, and I swear there's a demographic overlap between the two groups.
"I can spare time for three point seven five hours of recharge," Bumblebee said, with a sigh. He reached one of his hands out and touched her fingers with one of his own digits, a brief and fleeting contact. "Thank you, Mikaela."
"You're welcome," Mikaela wrapped her hand around Bee's finger for a moment with an affectionate squeeze.
Bumblebee's sheer lack of argument told Sam that Bee was every bit as exhausted as his accident with the door had indicated. He had never seen Bee run into anything, and particularly not with one of his doorwings. He thought back, and realized Bumblebee had probably not slept at all the night he'd discovered the ship, or the next night. And he hadn't had much chance for the two days after that, either; he'd had a rude and early awakening when Mikaela's shop had been bombed, and had only gotten a few hours at most last night.
"Thank you," Bee repeated. His eyes went dim, then dark, as he almost instantly shut down and slipped into the Autobot equivalent of sleep.
Mikaela exchanged a look with Sam. "Damn, but if I don't want to kidnap him for a few days just so he can get some rest."
"We tried that," Sam said, ruefully. "Didn't work. He just dug up a source of more work."
Mikaela sighed, then settled down to sit with her back against Bee's hip. Sam picked up his laptop and moved so he was leaning against Bee's chest plates. It felt safe there, and emotionally comfortable. It was not, however, physically comfortable and he shifted restlessly. There was some sort of access hatch cut into the armor that he was leaning against, and it was bumpy. After a moment, though, he found a position that seemed like it would not result in bruises, and he then picked up the laptop and idly opened yet another e-mail. This one was from an Oscar-award winning movie star's personal assistant, begging for twelve tickets for the star, his wife, and their entourage including bodyguards.
Mikaela just closed her eyes, leaned her head back against Bee's armor, and seemed to be drifting off to sleep herself.
The sheer tide of requests was just overwhelming. He rubbed his forehead for a moment, then sent a quick message to Optimus asking if Optimus would be comfortable with a lottery system. Optimus's reply came swiftly, "That is acceptable, Sam, provided you screen the applicants first. Please send Magnus a list of those who you feel are acceptable and he will do a random selection with two tickets per name drawn. I will be offline tonight."
Optimus, you're killing me, Sam thought, but started plowing through the e-mails in earnest. Three hours later it was long past dark, Mikaela was snoring, and he'd slapped together a list of around a thousand names. He sent that list to Magnus, who responded less than thirty seconds later with one hundred and fifty winners and one hundred alternates. Additionally, there was a note, "I have already sent a personal invitation to the guests. Your next task is to arrange for musical entertainment. Please consult with Mikaela and any other humans you feel might provide good input. I will leave the choice of bands to your discretion."
Attached was a neat spreadsheet of about twenty bands whose publicists had contacted the 'bots. Sam's eyebrows rose. Many of the bands were very well known. Hnnh. Country western or rock and roll? Easy choice, rock and roll, but which band? He didn't exactly have a problem with country, but he also had a hard time picturing a country band as the entertainment at a party featuring alien robots as the main draw. Rock fit the theme much better.
He sent a polite note declining the offers of all of the country western acts and six lesser known rock bands, which left him with the six really well known rock bands. He had no idea how to chose, so he sent an e-mail to both Bee and Elita and Magnus asking their opinion. Bumblebee could respond when he woke up.
Mikaela stirred fitfully. Sam further googled the six bands on the internet, then eliminated one of them because the lead singer had not shown up for two recent concerts, badly disappointing fans. He was famous, but apparently had become a bit flaky. He sent that update via e-mail, sighed, and leaned back against Bee's armor. The bumpy hatch embedded in the plate was digging into his back again, but he just didn't want to move. It felt so good just to sit and he didn't want to get up.
IMPACT.Something hit him so hard that all he registered was crushing force. Sam didn't even have time to yell, much less register what had happened.
Mikaela was screaming.
Shit, shit, what happened ...It hurt. One minute he'd been leaning against Bee. And now he was twenty feet away, up against the railing, and shocked, confused, and hurt.He tried to sit up, and his arm flopped uselessly. And with that flop came explosive pain. "My arm's broken," he informed them, stunned, looking around for the others. He saw Bumblebee first, and Bee's battle-mask was down and every weapon visible. Belatedly frightened he demanded, "What happened?!"
It was painful when he breathed, too, but mostly it was his arm, his elbow, that hurt so badly. He looked at it, and could see that it was very obviously broken. He had hit the wall elbow first, and shattered it. It hurt. It really hurt. A bomb? He wondered fuzzily.
Bumblebee's mask snapped back up and he looked wildly about.
Belatedly, he realized they might be under attack, and started to get up again. Running might be required. His legs seemed okay, and he made it halfway up to a standing position before Mikaela said, "STAY DOWN!" in a tone of absolute and incontrovertible command. He sat down, and the movement jarred his arm, and the pain brought tears to his eyes. He clutched it to his chest. His elbow was very definitely broken, no doubt about it. He could see the outline of a jagged bony edge under the skin, something that should have disgusted him but simply seemed fascinating. His arm wasn't supposed to look that way.
"Sam," Bee whispered, as his weapons abruptly disappeared, "I'm sorry."
Bee was creeping towards him, slowly, one hand extended towards him as if he was afraid Sam would flinch away. Why was Bee acting as if Sam would be afraid of him? That made no sense.
"What happened?" Mikaela asked.
"I don't know ..." Sam shook his head, trying to think. It had happened so fast. Bee had been asleep, and then, suddenly, he had hit the railing so hard he'd broken his arm.
"I'm sorry," Bee repeated, crouching. "Sam, I'm sorry."
"What happened?" Sam said, confused. "What hit me?"
Bee crouched, and said, "Can I pick you up?"
"Y-yeah." He didn't understand why Bumblebee was being so careful. Bee looked scared.
"I've already called Doc. He'll meet us at the med bay. Sam, I am so sorry."
"You ..." Sam felt no fear as Bee very gently lifted him up, and cradled him in his hands. "What hit me?"
"I did," Bee said, voice audibly shaken. "I hit you, Sam. I'm so sorry."
"Why?" He couldn't figure it out. Why would Bee hit him?
Bee hurried through the blast doors at what felt like a high rate of speed. "Sam, you were leaning against my dataport. I woke from recharge and mistook the situation. I'm sorry."
"Mistook the ..." he still couldn't figure it out. He was dizzy, and his heart seemed to be pounding in his chest.
"I'm sorry," Bee repeated.
"It's just my arm," he said, though he seemed to be getting a little fuzzy. "Typing's going to be a pain ..."
"Stay with me, Sam," Bee said, urgently.
Stay? Why was Bumblebee asking him to stay? Bee's voice seemed very far away, and his hands were rocking up and down. He could hear a mech running, or maybe it was Bee's feet, but why would Bumblebee be running? He wished Bee would stop shaking him; he felt nauseous and his arm hurt, and the bouncing wasn't helping.
"Sam, I'm sorry ..."
The world seemed to be spinning around him. Had the Ark launched? It hadn't spun like this the last time it launched. He mumbled, "Don't want to go to LA yet. Not ready. Too much to do ..."
"Sam!" Bee said, "Sam, no! Stay with me!"
But Bumblebee's voice seemed to be coming from very far away. Why had Bee left him? He felt safe in Bumblebee's hands.
It was so dark. "Hey, Teletraan, what's with the lights out ..." he tried to say, but the vague thought flittered away.