The Diego Diaries: Home (dd5 37)
-0-Ops Center, The Fortress, Autobot City, Primal Colony of Mars
Ratchet walked to the command table where the others sat waiting for the call just put in to Razorclaw. Optimus had finished a conversation with an emotionally distraught Raider. That youngling had stood with his brothers clinging to him on the airfield answering simple questions that were needed answered.
No, there were no other Seekers with Razorclaw.
No, there were none floating around nearby that needed rescue.
He was then taken with the others who were enveloped in the group that had formed around them, volunteering to be their guardians and mentors especially through the screening portion of their rescue. Prime watched them walk off then turned to Ratchet who had a team of Seeker and grounder doctors gathered around him along with those from Processor Health. They discussed the protocol for this kind of rescue victim, then Ratchet walked to Prime. "They have been assigned mentors and families who will take them in. Then we will begin a three orn screening that will begin in two orns. We want them to settle a little bit before that happens."
Prime nodded. "Thank you, Ratchet. This is the worst of the worst I think."
"I know. Some of them are hopeful that their families are here. Some of them don't know they have them and only think they have families because some others knew they did. Its all a fragging mess," Ratchet replied.
They chatted, then Ratchet turned to run for the Processor Hospital to check if there was a crisis reception process in place. Prime returned to the Ops Center with everyone else. Now, they waited for Razorclaw to return the call. All of the commanders were back on their stations, their soldiers, civilians and techs still settling in. They were hooked into the call through their operational centers.
"Razorclaw to Prime."
"Razorclaw, we have taken into care all of the Seekers who came here. We are not planning to give them back."
It was silent a moment. "If you say so, Prime. I didn't force them to stay. I hope you noticed that."
"I notice a lot of things. I noticed that the Seekers you had with you were part of an experiment by Shockwave that forced infant sparks into adult frames to mass produce soldiers."
Razorclaw stared at Prime for a moment. "I thought there was something different about them. They kept to themselves. They joined the others from the Benzuli, near the rift zone."
"You had no idea," Prime asked.
Razorclaw sat back in his chair. "No. I didn't."
"They are staying with us, all 2,500 of them. Any Seeker in future is ours. At no point will you ever have them. If you try and keep them you will pay for it," Prime replied.
"Tell me, Optimus Prime," Razorclaw said. "You have all these stations and all the rest. Do you really think I'm going to fly against you?"
Prime considered the calm facade of the mechanism before him. "We plan for all possibilities. If you do, I will make sure you limp back home if you survive it."
Razorclaw actually grinned. "Good to know. Anything else?"
"Stay away from our territory. You are on borrowed time in my zone of influence. More migrations are coming and we will be rescuing them. If you have any pretensions to Cybertron and the Empire I will hunt you down and kill you."
"Very well. I look forward to the orn when I cut your throat," he said. "Razorclaw out."
Prime stared at the screen, then turned to Paragon. "You are online now, Paragon. We remain at level 2 alert. I am going to be spending some time on Cybertron so if there is trouble call me and I will come."
Paragon nodded, then gathered his bag filled with work and other necessaries. He walked out to head for Typhoon and overall control of the operation.
Prowl watched him go, then glanced at Prime. "We have new information from Atlas on the migration. The two groups have been documented and the data sent ahead to us for planning. Both of them are large. The teams are from Cybertron placed there to work to help with the health and mechanical problems of the group. Knights from The Network have bridged from Cybertron to where they are and stayed on, working off arks with tankers for supply.
"Final figures indicate that the combined totals of the two migrations will be around 920,000 individuals. They were rounded up from all over the sectors around Cybertron and further out but not as far as the Rim or Benzuli. They're trying to sweep up and send ahead all of those who would be in harms way should anything come in from the Rim or the Benzuli. If they do then they might take everyone hostage to force your hand. They're trying to space out the arrival of groups so we don't have them all at once."
Optimus nodded. "When will they be ready to retrieve?"
"Give it at least four more orns," Prowl said picking up a datapad. He scanned it, then looked up at Optimus. "I've assigned Magnus to manage Memorial and New Years orn. I also had to reassign personnel to cover the Owen Harris operation with Springer on station. Tracks is taking his place for now."
"Good. His mass covers both plane and vehicle?" Optimus asked as he sat down at the table to attend to eight thousand other things.
"He carries some mass in subspace like all the bots who fly so he can concoct flight mechanisms. For the vehicle mode, I have assigned Fury," Prowl replied. "Fury has a lot of covert ops experience with the Knights and Dai Atlas."
"Good. Manage it, Prowl. I hear that there are hearings and legal matters coming up on the docket," he replied.
"There are. We're due to have a short staff meeting tomorrow so we can go over all the problems and things on our list. That gives Ratchet and Starscream time to let us have a preliminary overview of the children we rescued," Prowl said.
"Good," Prime replied. "I'm going to go to Cybertron this afternoon unless something comes up. I do not trust Razorclaw. He might not make a direct attack now this way but nothing really protects Cybertron. We need to design a defensive system for the planet and surrounding sectors."
"I will get on it," Prowl said with a nod. "We can use the new ships turned over to do that."
Prime nodded, then arose. "I will be in the office until it is time to leave in three joors. Keep me informed, Prowl. How is the situation on Trypticon?"
"He is a basket case. Everything has to be rebuilt and upgraded. They basically let him burn down to the lowest possible level from energon deprivation. We will have to do a lot of work to get him together but Aviation has it. They are going to use Ratchet's suggestion to make it a teaching project getting him up to specs."
"Very well," Prime said, then walked to the doors that led to offices. Prowl turned back to his own business as he did.
-0-Earlier
"What is that, Mr. Lepsis?" Turbo asked as he paused by a window after coming inside from mid-morning recess.
Mr. Lepsis, a student teacher glanced out, then back at the kids who huddled by the glass to look out at the spectacle gathering steam beyond them.
"That is a congregation coming to the call of the Great Elder. Seekerkin is going to go out to greet newcomers," Lepsis replied.
"That's why Mr. Terradive isn't here," Comet said with a nod. "Why didn't you go, Sunspot?"
Sunspot stared at Comet, then looked up at Lepsis. "Why?"
"You're too young. Maybe next time when you're bigger and older," Mr. Lepsis said gently.
"What do they do in one of those?" Silverbow asked.
"They greet newcomers and make decisions," Lepsis said as he turned to the window to watch the gathering spectacle of amazing numbers of Seekers jetting upward toward space. "Mr. Terradive said he would tell you about it when he comes back. Being an adult sometimes means you have to go and do things together."
They stood huddled around the windows for about half a joor before the last group of Seekers faded from view. Then five shuttles left the Military Airfield heading to space also. When they did, the children turned back to the task of getting their creative writing tasks completed for the next orn's sharing.
The affairs of adults were forgotten quickly.
-0-New York City, United States of America
He sat in a parking garage waiting for the mark to need him again. He was luminously beautiful, a dark Bentley with all the bells, whistles and security that suited an immensely rich man. Fury had been a warrior in the company of the Knights for a very long time and his commitment to the Cause was unshakable. Right now, he was the vehicle of choice to Owen Harris, industrialist and all around fragger while he was in America.
Tracks had replaced the aircraft that Owen owned and was sitting in a hangar at a private airfield outside of the city ready to fly Harris wherever he needed to go. Holographic images of pilots specially boosted with new generating power packs devised in the witch hut known as Wheeljack's lab were incredibly helpful toward maintaining the ruse. In two orns Harris would return to London and Fury would take on the vehicle that Harris drove there.
It was cold outside, the cloudy sky betraying the possibility of more snow. Inside, he sat on his gear chatting with Fury who was as bored as he was. Harris had flown to New York from the Bahamas on his own plane with his own crew. The crew was removed allowing Tracks to substitute himself. His first trip with Harris was the jaunt to London.
Fury had been waiting at the airport when Harris arrived on the private jet of a friend heading north. His own plane aka Tracks was still in New York ostensibly going through routine maintenance. What was really happening was his pilots were running heroin into the Big Apple and they were caught. To ensure that the mark, Owen Harris, wouldn't know that, they did it surreptitiously. When Harris left America for his English house, the pilots would look the same, that's how good the tech was among the Autobots.
Until then, it was chat, sit and play two-player electronic games together.
-0-TBC 2-6-16 edited 2-11-16