A Race Through the Night

Chapter 4

Settlement


Hello, beloved readers! Thank you one and all for your continued feedback and support! I live off of your reviews, so keep them coming!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers.

For those of you amazing people currently reading my other story Duty and Deceit, I think you might find it interesting to know that this story is written in the same universe, about the same time as the flashbacks in Duty and Deceit. Then again, I might just be the overzealous author fangirling over Nightracer and Terabyte as I write their separate journeys.

Anywho, enough chatter: on with the chapter!


Her lips curled upwards in a moment of disgust as she ran her servos over the dusty counter, looking at the harsh contrast between shiny metal where she'd touched and the thick layer of accumulated filth. She smiled brightly soon after though as she noticed just how shiny the counter was beneath the dust.

All to herself. All of this was hers.

The sleek car-former ran excitedly to the little cupboard of cleaning supplies, flinging the door open with a flourish. Staring at the many tools, Nightracer at last darted in and pulled out the maintenance drone. After a klick's searching for the power button, she activated it with a flick of a switch; jumping back with a quiet giggle when it buzzed to life and seemed to have a minor conniption fit as its simple processors registered the amount of filth everywhere around it.

As the life-less drone began its frenzied vacuuming of the walls and floor, the teal and gray femme twirled back to kitchen-area and scooped up the stale Energon, grinning happily down at the long-dead glitch-mouse floating belly-up in the cube.

Not caring that she was talking to dead vermin, she said confidentially, "You know, this my room now. Which means my rules. And sorry, mech, but rule number one's gonna be no dead things allowed."

Dumping him unceremoniously down the waste chute in the wall between the desk and the kitchen door, Nightracer waved, childishly calling, "So, bye bye, glitchy-mouse!"

She paused for an astrosecond, glancing to her front door to make sure the Autobot had actually left like he'd said he would. She didn't necessarily need the mech to think she was glitched in the helm. Which she supposed was a distinct possibility. Shrugging when she saw no sign of company, the femme twirled around on the tips of her toes, patting the busy drone on the helm as she dodged it to grab a hand vacuum from the closet to begin working on the counters, throwing away high-grade bottles and empty cubes as she went.

Two Joors Later

Nightracer flung herself flat on her back in her berth, laughing triumphantly when the action failed to send a vent-choking cloud of filth into the air. Letting out a tired whoop, the femme tossed her somewhat still-clean polishing rag. Polishing rag number eleven.

"Done!"

She sighed deeply before leaping out of the berth and doing a happy little dance around the cleaning drone that was looking around with an oddly smug expression in its dull, lifeless optics. She smirked at the short drone, "I know. We should be proud of ourselves!"

Deactivating the drone, she shoved it back into the closet with an exaggerated grunt, dusting her hands off with a satisfied huff as she examined the cycle's work. She'd pulled out what few personal effects she'd had in her subspace, a surprising number considering the abrupt circumstances of her departure from Kaon. But having Flamewar for a roommate meant that she held most of her belongings were safely stowed in her subspace in the first place.

Above her berth, she had spread out like a curtain the shimmering woven alloy blanket that Shadowlight and Darkshine had made her a couple vorns ago. On one of the shelves she displayed an abstract twisting, looping glass vase filled with purple, blue, and pink lava swirling around in its intricate prison.

On a different shelf, she'd set up the only two datapads of music she owned: one holding the Kaonic Symphonies, the other holding the Orchestrations of Tarn. Personally, she didn't care much for either set of music, but it was what she had. The Kaonics were a bit too heavy and loud for her tastes, and the Orchestrations were just plain creepy.

Though now that she was being hunted by the mad mech himself, she understood a little better why his compositions were so disturbing.

Thus, she didn't listen to music very much anymore.

But she displayed the two datapads proudly as a part of her small collection of belongings. Over the broken holo-vid screen that she had straightened, the femme had set up a sort of holo-photo-board, depicting the best times she'd had while in Kaon. Pictures of her and the jet-femmes crashed on their sofa, armor gleaming as they laughed over sweet-En; Thunderblast screaming at them as she hung magnetized to the roof of the training arena dripping lime green paint; of the other four femmes dumping a whole bucket of liquid nitrogen over her on her sparking-day after she'd told them it was her favorite confectionary item - such a delicious mess; the group of them after they'd had a paint war in the femmes' wash rack...

Those were the good times. The best vorns of her life. The five of them - herself, Terabyte, Thunderblast, Shadowlight, and Darkshine - they had been a perfect team.

Then Thunderblast got reposted to the front lines by Vos. Shortly after that Darkshine got terminated in an Autobot ambush after a deep infiltration op. Which drove Shadowlight to insanity until Megatron had Bludgeon terminate her too.

As far as she knew, Terabyte still didn't have a clue about what the Decepticons really were, and Skyquake kept everyone away from her with dire threats. The rumors were that he had bonded with her, but Nightracer knew otherwise from the time she spent with the two-wheeler. Of course, since the rumors only served to further keep the tiny femme - far too young to have been pulled into the war - safe, she never felt moved to impart her knowledge.

And now Nightracer herself was on the run for treason and the murder of her CO.

The femme turned away from the happy images with a sorrowful sigh before pushing through her revolving door and making her way to the ship's mess hall. Upon arriving at the mess hall, the sniper found that it was oddly empty, like the rest of the ship. Perhaps Blurr had already had his evening Energon. Or perhaps he had left the ship for some reason or other.

Either way, it really was none of her business what the mech did with himself, she reasoned as she prepared herself a cube of plain Energon. Sitting down at the end of one of the many long tables, the femme quietly sipped at her fuel, afraid to make a sound lest she frighten herself with her own echoes like she had the last time she was alone.

Company would have been nice.

Two Rotations Later

The brush smoothly spread the cool teal paint over the femme's ankle, effectively covering the last of the acid damage and leaving her frame shiny and new again. Nightracer smiled with satisfaction and lazily tucked the contents of her paint kit back into their places and into her subspace.

She stretched with a low purr of her engine, pushing herself off her berth carefully, taking care not to mess up the fresh coat of paint. Her paint was quick dry, but it still took time to cure properly.

Waking up that morning had been heavenly. Her frame hadn't felt so rested and relaxed in vorns. Her struts didn't protest every movement, she didn't have a crazy roommate babbling in the corner about various methods of murder. And there wasn't a team of psychopathic embodiments of torture lurking at the edges of her sensors.

Nightracer smiled again and pushed through her door with a sluggish, contented vent. She'd hardly gotten through the door when a flash of blue greeted her vision, causing her to jump back and slam painfully into the wall in surprise and instinctive fear.

"Blurr!" Spark pounding and vents heaving, the femme leaned her helm back against the wall with a sigh, running her hand over her helm as she glared at the mech vibrating and grinning in front of her. "You have got to stop doing that..."

A secluded portion of her mind reminded her that she would be gone long before that would happen.

"I brought breakfast, since I figured you'd probably want some. The scans I did when fixing you showed signs of chronic Energon deprivation or whatever the medical term for that is... Anyway, you'll be able to self-repair a lot better if your body's not in power-saving mode all the time. Didn't you notice how run-down you are? I mean sure Cybertron's dying and Energon is scarce, but does Megs not even keep his soldiers fueled?"

"Good morning to you too." She mumbled, accepting the proffered Energon and taking a quick sip. She rolled her optics and started following the blue mech who, rather impatiently and incredibly twitchily, was walking at a brisk, but attainable pace. "Of course I noticed. Not much a bot can do when credits are useless and high grade's all that's served half the time. As far as the 'Lord Protector' is concerned, well... I've never felt very much 'protected' by him. Especially not now."

Blurr cocked his helm, glaring at nothing in particular, before suddenly snatching her by her wrist and pulling her around a corner and snapping his servos, pushing through another of the invisi-lock revolving doors. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, I wanna show you something."

She looked around warily at the huge room with odd black walls, cut with a grid of glowing gold lines. According to her mental map, this room hadn't been touched in their previous tour. A small drew her optic ridges together as she guessed at what the room could be for, not paying any heed to the actions of the vibrating Autobot zipping around in the corner of her optics.

The teal and charcoal sniper crouched down to trace a servo over one of the yellow lines that criss-crossed over the floor and ceiling as well as the walls. As she did so, the room around her dissolved in the bat of an optic and the shocked femme found herself standing in the middle of Iacon with swarms of Autobots all around her, pushing past her in a mad rush to their separate destinations, seeming completely unawed by the picture-perfect city around them.

Rainbow bridges with intricate, glowing patterns of circuitry hung aloft in the sky, twisting, turning, and looping over and around each other in a beautiful mess of countless opportunities and possibilities, roaring with the sounds of hundreds of mechs and femmes driving on to their daily routines. Towers of glass and lights stretched up beyond the thin cloud-line as fliers darted through the clear, sunny sky with flourishing sweeps and turns.

The hundreds of bots rushing by her were all grinning, laughing, and teasing with each other. Over there a little lavender femme sold diamond roses while her spark mate snuck copper rounds to the younglings running past. Across the bustling throngs was a modest diner, packed with happy people enjoying their morning fuel.

Nightracer stood frozen stiff, staring all around her at the city with wide optics, her armor pressed into herself as she tried to make herself small enough to be unnoticed. She glanced around wildly; searching for some sign of Blurr to tell her what was going on. The bots around her continued to jostle on by, most of whom were branded with the Autobot insignia; making her wonder how in the world she hadn't been fired on yet, given the purple brand adorning her shoulder-shields.

Just as panic was beginning to set in, her surroundings melted away and she found herself standing in the middle of a dark obsidian forest in the late night cycle.

She shivered at the sharp contrast, her optics scanning her surroundings for friend or foe. Pede-falls, muffled by the mulch of mercury and rust on the ground, pattered right beside her, yet when she whirled there was no one or thing to be seen. Her servos twitched towards her subspaced rifles, but she didn't grab them like instinct told her she should.

Instead, she braced herself to run for her spark as she called out cautiously, "Decepticon? Autobot? ... Blurr?"

"Boo!" A voice shouted cheerfully from directly behind her, a pair of hands landing on her shoulders.

Nightracer shrieked louder and higher pitched than she'd previously thought physically possible, jumping a good foot off the ground.

Life-En pumping loudly in her audials, the femme held a hand over her rapidly pulsing spark, glaring daggers at the blue Autobot laughing so hard that he was bent over double behind her. His hands on her shoulders were the only thing keeping him from falling over in a fit of uncontrolled giggling.

"Oh, that was awesome... Hate me forever, that expression was so worth it!" The mech snickered, "Aww, c'mon lighten up, pretty-Con, you jumped like three feet off the ground, screaming like a sparkling!"

She vented harshly, turning around to look the mech in the optics, her glare only lessening slightly. Her tone was completely flat, "For half a vorn, I have been hunted by psychotic maniacs who want to torture me to death for refusing to blow the Youngling Sectors to the Well."

Blurr's laughter came to an abrupt end and he visibly deflated, the obsidian forest around them melting back into the original black room cut into a grid by the golden lights with a flick of his wrist. "Good point... Sorry, I wasn't thinking about- actually I just wasn't thinking... Um, anyway, this is the simulator room; you probably already noticed, but it's hyper-realistic, which makes it really awesome!"

The femme forced herself to smile faintly, taking a deep vent. Eventually she would have to tell him just exactly who it was she was running from. Or she could just leave before he started asking questions again. But it had only been three rotations since he'd taken her in. Normally she could stay in a place for about an orn before her location was discovered and she had to keep running.

It really was a shame that she would have to leave here.

She had amazing quarters all to herself, enough fuel to keep both her and Blurr in top condition for a vorn, medical care, and training facilities in abundance. If she could only safely stay, this could become home.

Her ruby optics gleamed sadly. Fate never had been on her side.

Not that she blamed it. She was a fake -a fake who was being hunted by the most notorious group of Decepticons in history. Honestly, she woudn't be on her side either if she'd had a choice in the matter.

"How do you control the simulator?" She asked at last, shoving aside her thoughts to distract the blue Autobot's concerned gaze.

"Oh!" Blurr shot off to the wall beside the door to the room, touching that part of the grid to activate a control panel with a relatively simple menu and selection system. "Here, see over here we've got a couple dozen saved simulation programs to choose from, just hit 'em to take a look at each one."

As he spoke, the room shifted through several different scenes in rapid succession as he selected them just long enough to demonstrate.

"Then over here there's the dataport where you can plug yourself in and download something directly from your memories, or attach a datapad or whatever to add to the thingy's database." He poked at the mentioned port, plugging in his own cord with an excited twinkle in his optics.

The room turned dark, the air filling with the loud sounds of a full stadium: boisterous laughter, cheering, and jeering drowning out the rumble and roar of a chattering audience. She jumped back in fright as a group of alt-modes shot past them at high-speeds, bringing with them the fascinating realization of where he had taken her.

"This is the Ibex Course... On game night." Nightracer breathed, her optics brightening as she watched the race eagerly, sitting down in the front booth. "I wanted to come see this, last time they held it. I was going to go with the other femmes in my sector. We had it all planned out, the twins sponsored the trip by buying everyone front-seat tickets, Terabyte would con her mech-friend into organizing transport, Thunderblast and I would bring sweet-En and snacks..."

"So what happened? Cause I always hang out by the front seats after winning the races, and I was here for this race, and there was nothing but mechs in the front seats on that race night."

She winced, shaking away the reminiscing memories of planning that outing. They'd all been looking forward to it for quartex. She answered bluntly, "Darkshine died on a mission and her twin went glitchy from the spark-pain. Long story short, the rest of us didn't really feel much like going after that."

Her focus returned to the race just in time to watch one mech take a corner too late and skid across the track to crash into the barrier in a brilliant eruption of smoke and flames. "Ooh... Ouch. Too bad too, he was gaining on the first placer."

Beside her, Blurr made a little agreeing noise, seeming fully enthralled by the race where he sat back casually. She leaned forward eagerly, resting her chin on her hands, absently reaching over and grabbing a handful of copper rounds to nibble on. Intent on the game, she didn't question where the copper rounds had magically come from.

Five breems later, the racers were on the final lap and the leader looked like he had a free shot to the finish line. Nightracer was sitting quietly with her wide optics faceted on the racers as suddenly the fourth place racer shot forward with renewed energy, cutting across the finish line in first place at the last moment.

The crowd erupted in mad cheering and shrieks of shocked glee, Nightracer's voice joining in with the others with enthusiasm.

One Orn Later

She sighed boredly where she sat upside down on the rec-room couch, her pedes draped over the back of the sofa while her helm hung over the edge as she stared emptily at the black surface of the giant holovid screen. The remote dropped from her lazy grip as she flung her arms to either side of her limply.

"Ugh." Nightracer moaned, her helm buzzing from her having just watched holovids for seven joors straight.

An empty cube of Energon lay on the floor beside her, along with a stack of datapads she'd found in a box in the corner of the rec-room. Most of them had either been read or deemed too boring to be worth her while. She rolled her helm in circles until she got dizzy and fell ungracefully off the sofa with a reverberating clang.

Untangling herself from the jumbled pile of her own limbs, Nightracer shoved herself to her pedes and glanced briefly over herself to make sure she hadn't messed up the fresh paint job she'd finally given herself a few rotations previous.

Thirteen rotations. A whole orn.

She picked up her empty cube and tossed it clumsily in the general direction of a hibernating maintenance drone, not worrying over the shattered mess as she already could hear the machine whirring as it cleaned it up. Stretching her spinal struts with another bored groan, the sniper pulled out her rifles and twirled them in her hands as she headed off to the simulator room.

A whole orn had passed since she'd last seen Blurr. An orn! How in the galaxy was she supposed to live like this? Alone and left to her own devices on a strange ship with no one to talk to or to keep her occupied. No orders to fulfill, no reports to write, no femme team to hang out with, no mission to go on, no mechs to avoid, no Flamewar to appease, no blue Autobot rambling at light speed about everything he could think of while compulsively tidying everything in reach.

Nothing.

She could just leave. Right now. Her shoulder bolts fell suddenly. Actually, no she couldn't. She didn't know how to open the front door yet. Not that she wanted to leave, really. Not yet. Another couple of rotations wouldn't hurt, right?

"Blurr?" She hollered, not expecting any response. He had said to just run around calling his name if she ever needed anything. But she'd done this yesterday and the rotation before and the rotation before that. "Blluuurrrr! Heee-lllloooo?"

Heeelllooo? Heelloo? Hello?

She growled back at her echoes, only for her growl to be echoed also.

Suddenly an idea popped into her helm and she pitched her golden rifles into her subspace and turned around abruptly, striding with determination towards the security room instead of the training arena.

As she neared up on her destination, she called out, lazily taunting, "Blurr? ... If you've been in there laughing at me slowly dying of sheer boredom, you'll have a rather displeased and malicious Decepticon sniper to deal with!"

She swung into the monitor room, fully expecting to find the blue Autobot sitting there, grinning that bright, happy grin of his. What greeted her instead was an empty room. Just like every other room on this ship. She examined the monitors more closely, cocking her helm with a bored curiosity.

The Autobot had lied about having shown her all the rooms on the ship.

He had failed to mention that there was a massively over-stocked weapons armory, as well as an equally over-stocked cargo bay filled with spare parts, armor, and paints. Whoever had owned this ship previously had been preparing to embark on a very long journey, likely not planning on ever returning to Cybertron.

The final, most intriguing thing that Blurr had failed to mention was the existence of a second launch bay, filled with single-mech Zeta-class battle fighters. She could fly away with one of those whenever she felt like it and nothing would be able to stop her.

With one of those ships, she could make herself disappear. For good.

She could leave Cybertron long behind, leave her pursuers behind, and defend herself against any who stood in her way. Again, except for the minor issue of being unable to operate the ship's exits. Or the fighter, for that matter.

Nightracer smirked anyway, her excitement at the discovery not at all dampened by the knowledge that she couldn't actually leave. As she'd pointed out to herself earlier, she didn't really want to leave anyway. With nothing better to do, the femme started on her way to the launch bay.

Of course, it would be locked.

Meaning it had been a groon before she'd finally pinpointed the exact location of the door. Not that knowing where it was did her very much good. Because the servo snapping to unlock it had only made a glowing green keypad appear. Another half a groon was spent of Nightracer mashing in what felt like hundreds of codes.

Finally, she finished calculating out exactly how many possible glyph combinations there were.

She stared at the result flashing on her HUD, her expression and tone utterly blank, "You have got to be kidding."

43,297,528.

Repeating the calculations again to make sure she hadn't transposed a digit or something, the teal and gray sniper slammed her helm into the door with a defeated moan. The ship mockingly echoed the hollow clang.

"You okay, Race? What's the matter, are you sick again? Are you leaking out again? Or dizzy, or low on fuel, or contaminated with Cosmic Rust or-"

She waved a silencing hand, not moving from where she stood with her helm pressed into the cold, unforgiving door. "Forty-three million. Two hundred and ninety-seven thousand. Five hundred and twenty-eight."

The blue mech's utter confusion was so perfectly complete it was like a tangible weight in the air. Nightracer's lip quirked up in an unnoticeable little smirk. She could practically feel his befuddled blinking as his processors replayed her declaration in his mind.

"Where. Have you. Been?" She demanded at last, turning around to pierce him with her accusatory glare. "Thirteen rotations. A whole orn!"

Blurr glanced around shiftily, his shoulders rolling forward guiltily. He chose to skirt her question with a conciliatory, "I think I might've found someone who can replace your t-cog for you, but we don't have- Okay, so I found someone who can find someone who can fix you, but the mech's a slick'n'sleazy Con of a con artist."

His words most definitely had the desired effect of distracting her attention from his long-term expedition. Her large ruby optics widened as her processors instantly realized just who he was referring to.

"No! Absolutely not."