Location: Epsilon Quadrant, centre.
As the chronometers slid into the early hours of the morning, silence spread through the block like a gas, slowly suffocating all of the inhabitants and removing them from their stressful daily routines. For many, this would be a permanent condition. For one, the event would mark a new beginning. However, all such things start with sacrifice…
With a sigh, the mech produced his data card from a subspace pocket and swiped it across the reader beside his door, granting him access to his apartment and, hopefully, some well-needed recharge. His day had followed the usual routine of making one serious improvement on his current project, then having to take one step backwards because some idiot tech guy forgot to scribble a diagram on a piece of sanitary waste disposal cloth. If it hadn't been for the lack of other, non-military careers available, he'd have quit long before now. Trudging indoors, he blearily waved a hand at the 'lock' control before dropping his diskettes and shambling to the bathroom.
Flipping on a light above the mirror, the mech stared at his reflection for what seemed to be a long time. He really didn't like the way the red visor that protected his optical circuits clashed with the rest of his comparatively detailed face, which was a picture of nobility. His beloved had assured him that there was nothing wrong with his appearance and that she loved him regardless, but that didn't stop him from cursing himself on a daily basis for this, which he viewed as his only true flaw.
After letting the sink fill itself, the mech cupped his hands in the cool liquid and splashed it over his uneven face, breathing deeply as his overworked motors were cooled down; however small the difference was, he welcomed it. Drying himself off with a nearby cloth, he took one last look at his reflection before turning off the light, forever cancelling the image that had been so despised, yet so familiar, for the rest of his life.
Upon entering his private rooms, he heard the quiet whirring of his beloved asleep on their bed; normal mechs were denied the privilege of such calming audio emissions, but he was different in several ways…whether helpful or not.
As he lay himself down on the bed, she stirred, light-green optics glowing warmly at him in the darkness. "Pulled the late shift again, I see?"
He sighed. "Well, who else could it be? Wheeljack? He's good, granted, but he's never there anymore, and when he does show up, he's always tired and covered in scars. I'm really quite surprised that he'd get into that sort of thing."
The girl – his beloved, his wife – frowned. "What sort of thing?"
"Military work."
"How do you – oh, no…"
He looked away, sheepish. He promised he'd stop using his abilities of telepathy without informing the being whose minds he was invading, but it didn't help; the thoughts of those nearby bombarded him constantly, and he found it hard not to pay attention to them.
"You haven't told anyone about that little trick of yours, have you?"
He shook his head. "Of course not. You know how the guys around here view…our kind. I'd be kicked out of my job, minus any trace of dignity I once had."
"Aww, how sad. With that sense of humour, you've got nothing to lose, darling!"
He smiled as she put her arms around him. "Ah, Celene…what would I do without you?"
"Luckily for you, Soundwave," she whispered into his left audio receptor, "I don't intend to let you find out."
"Target in sight."
"Looks like everyone's sleepin' like protoforms in an oil bath, too."
"Sir, if I may say something…?"
Sentinel Prime shifted his enormous body around, away from his view of the Epsilon Quadrant, and fixed the new recruit with a blank stare. This was generally understood as a sign to continue, because with Sentinel, the average 'shut up' response was a large energy cannon pointing at the speaker's face. He liked to get to the point quickly.
The recruit looked visibly shaken by the rush of his first field operation, yet seemed determined to make his voice heard. "I know this seems out of place, and you may have already considered it, but…well…a slower pace of attack would lessen civilian casualties considerably, while still keeping our chances of survival quite high."
Sentinel waited for the recruit to finish, before shaking his gigantic head. "Loss of strategic advantage presented by element of surprise. Enemies will be given time to react. Chance not worth taking." His voice was loud enough to echo noticeably, yet not so loud that anyone in Epsilon could possibly have heard him.
"Right you are, sir." The defeated mech silently returned to his post. Inside, he continued to doubt the commander's actions…were they truly in the best interest of the Autobot cause? And if not, what could he, recently promoted from an archivist's position, do about it?
Soundwave was asleep by the time the first shells hit.
Springing from the bed at the sound of heavy-duty explosions, he ran to the nearest viewport and took in the sight before him in silence. Numerous surface-penetrating incendiary bombs had struck a nearby hospital; patients stumbled onto the street, screaming, their hides scorched and burning from the artificial napalm. Random limbs and shards of armour littered the streets, their owners nowhere to be seen. In the distance, a group of military-design mechanoids were entering the city, while a titanic form, enveloped in shadow, laid down covering fire from an enormous arm-cannon; Sentinel Prime and his Autobot brethren, but what were they doing here?
"Celene, get downstairs and hide. I'm heading for the labs." Soundwave was already on his way to the doors when he barked out those orders. Celene was barely roused from her slumber; not possessing Soundwave's enhanced audio modules, she hadn't heard the initial impacts.
"Honey, don't be stupid. You'll be killed!"
"So will you if you stay here. Take Ravage and – eh?!" He looked down to see the mech in question brushing against his leg, looking up with a pleading expression. Not that it was necessary; Ravage's cerebral circuitry had been constructed in such a way that he shared an inseparable link with Soundwave, so both heard what each other were thinking.
"No, Ravage, I can't let you…" His admonitions were cut short by a sudden feeling of warmth in one of his hands. Looking around, he noticed Celene had moved up to him and was now holding one of his hands in both of hers. She wore much the same expression as Ravage.
"Just take him. He'll be fine as long as you're with him…and you know how clumsy I can be with children."
Sighing, Soundwave pressed the small switch near his left shoulder, letting his chest hatch hang open. In an instant, Ravage leapt into the air and shifted shape, folding in his limbs and head, before slotting into the hatch in a form very similar to certain archaic data storage devices. The hatch clamped shut again, and Soundwave turned to leave.
"Don't be too long…" Celene called from the open door, but Soundwave had already vanished around a corner…and from her life.
"Where the heck are those bandits, anyway?" The slack-jawed veteran Ironhide barked from the second floor of a semi-demolished apartment building to his left.
"Maybe they got advanced warning and high-tailed it outta here, energon, sparks and all!" Jazz, the laid-back prankster of the group, responded over the intercom.
"Negative." The booming voice of Sentinel Prime was deafening in the confined city area. "Latent energy signatures still present in this area. Patterns match those of several Seeker-model Decepticons. Proceed with extreme caution. And terminate with extreme prejudice."
Optimus swore under his breath. This assignment was not what he'd been expecting after reading the briefing. Innocent lives were being thrown away like empty fluid containers, and not one of his comrades seemed to notice. He didn't feel like blaming them, though; if anyone's, the fault was surely that of Sentinel. They would not find any enemies. If there were any to begin with, they would have, as Jazz put it, "high-tailed" away from here at the first sign of incoming hostiles.
Grimacing, Optimus rolled down another empty side-alley and fired another mortar shell into an apartment block…
"Jeez, they must really hate our guts, huh?"
Skywarp shook his head in silent amusement and turned away from his view of the battlefield that was once a city. The two other 'Cons sharing the same hiding place as he took very different attitudes to the unfolding events.
Thundercracker, sitting over in the far corner of the derelict living quarters, was hunched over, resting his chin on his knees and wrapping his arms around his legs. TC was always quiet when there was a fight nearby; he tried to hide it, but anybody could see that combat took a worrying psychological toll on him. Unlike many other 'Cons, he didn't join Megatron's legion to experience the thrill of warfare, or to satisfy an inner fuel-lust. He simply needed some motivation in life, and Megatron was a master of that. As it stood, TC did his job well, and was a sociable enough mech outside of duty, but nobody harboured any doubt that his stance may change.
Pacing the centre of the room was Starscream, the fledgling Lieutenant who had been placed in charge of TC and Skywarp for the foreseeable future. Megatron seemed to have high hopes for him, though no one else could figure out why; before joining the 'Cons, he was an innocent chemical scientist. However, his combat skills had dramatically improved as of late, and his knowledge of energon extraction methods had helped fund the 'Con war effort considerably. He kept his personal life a closely guarded secret, however, and seemed to be quite belligerent, which earned him the ire of many other fast-track C.O.s, such as that one-eyed weirdo Shockwave. Skywarp didn't mind him, though.
It was Starscream who came up with the plot this time. Using some high-tech fiddly stuff which Skywarp would never even dream of understanding, he used small devices to imitate and amplify the energy signatures of the Seekers, before spreading those devices throughout Epsilon. The ruse worked, and the Autobots attacked en masse. Later, the 'Cons would spin this event into some seriously bad press for the Autobots, strengthening their own ranks in the process. Quite darn clever.
Skywarp returned to watching the battle in silence, hypnotised by the glow of a thousand fires, etching the names of the fallen into the night sky…
Soundwave knocked down the malfunctioning door to the Labs after three solid kicks, and jogged inside. Being the basement of another building, the structure hadn't taken any serious hits yet, though that was probably only a matter of time. Looking around, Soundwave saw no one; not a single engineer or other member of staff. How did they all get out on time?
Clang!
Soundwave's head jerked toward the source of the noise; a small steel wrench had fallen from a work surface over in the corner. Moving as quietly as possible, Soundwave sneaked over to the desk. As he approached, he heard some very quiet sobbing coming from the other side of the desk. Curious, he vaulted over the work surface to find…
"Wheeljack!"
The engineer was on the floor, his back propped up against the desk, with his head in his hands. The wrench lay a few feet away from him; he'd evidently thrown it. Looking up, he wiped several strings of dried lubricant from his optics.
"It-it's all our fault, man…" Wheeljack couldn't stop himself from stuttering.
"What is? What are you talking about? You…you know something about this…" Soundwave wasn't sure if he should be angry or sympathetic toward the mech.
Wheeljack looked away, staring at the plain steel of the wall. "It's the Autobots. I'm one of them now. Another of the group, some new guy, told me to get as many people out of the city as possible. That's why everyone here's g-gone. But I'm staying."
"Why?"
"I…need to be alone, for a little while. Gotta pray for them." Wheeljack was barely whispering.
"You'll die if you just sit there."
"Maybe that'll be a good thing."
Soundwave shook his head and turned away. The engineer had cracked, no doubt about it. He thought briefly about forcibly dragging him along, but decided against it. If he felt like it, Wheeljack could escape on his own. Whether or not he did was of no interest to Soundwave.
He found his way out through the front door, which was jammed open, and walked into the Inferno. Whatever modern beauty Epsilon once possessed had been torn, spit on and burnt. There didn't seem to be anyone alive in sight, except for the damned Autobots, continuing on their meaningless crusade. The ground itself trembled as the enormous footfalls of Sentinel Prime drew ever closer, but Soundwave heard something else; turning to his right, he was looking down the street at his own apartment block. Switching to thermal vision, he saw a thin figure running down the stairs inside. It had to be Celene, leaving it to the last minute as usual. He'd have laughed if the situation had been different.
At the other end of the street, Sentinel Prime stood at the ready. Turning, he saw a single being standing in the street, which his internal databank identified as a civilian engineer. The name was irrelevant. Looking up slightly, he saw – via thermal vision – another being running through the corridors and stairs of an apartment building, one of the few left standing. Identification was impossible at such range, and with so much matter between Sentinel and the target.
"Possible hostile detected. Commencing countermeasures." The ancient leviathan's vocal circuits briefly jumped to life, and he began shifting into a better-suited firing position…
Soundwave heard the all-too-familiar booming voice behind him, and turned to see Sentinel Prime, swivelling to face the apartments, raising his cannon arm. Realisation dawned on Soundwave in a fraction of a second, and he instantly began sprinting toward the building, desperation fuelling him better than any energon…
Cannon power levels set at 56%. Alter?
Switch to 89%.
Order acknowledged, complying.
…
Cannon power now at 89%. Further instructions?
Wait for target lock.
Soundwave didn't dare look back, for fear of wasting valuable time. Celene was only three floors from the ground, and he was only five hundred metres from the entrance/exit…
Target lock confirmed. Further instructions?
Fire.
Soundwave screamed his beloved's name as a beam of pure-white energy flew over his head, burning the very air itself. He saw, for a split second, the beam impaling Celene, then the reaction between energy and spark matter created an thundering explosion, blowing away the first five floors of the building and everything in them. The backwash sent Soundwave soaring through the air, before he landed in a sprawled heap, grinding along the concrete for a good ten metres before lying still.
The rest of the building, lacking a support of any kind, promptly toppled, crushing the remains further and reducing the walls to a fine powder. After a few seconds, a terrible silence fell.
Sentinel lowered his arm and shifted back into a normal stance.
"Threat eliminated. Continue sweep."
He began walking down the street toward the building's remains.
Soundwave stirred, his optics flickering slightly. The fall had scrambled his cerebro-circuits, and he'd forgotten…
Celene!
The thought brought him back to full functionality, but it took all his effort to not deactivate at the sight before him. The building where the two of them had once lived lay as a smoking ruin. No life signs were emerging from the rubble, and no sign of his sweetheart could be seen anywhere. All he could sense was silence, the sound of dreadful finality.
And the thumping of very heavy footsteps. Soundwave knew what it was, and he hated it. That was what took Celene from him. And he hated, despised, loathed it with every ounce of wiring in his mechanical frame. Action had to be taken. That was all that mattered…
Optimus shifted into his robot mode as he turned the corner, a familiar sight greeting him. Sentinel and a recently wrecked building. No prizes for guessing who did that. There was also another being in the vicinity, who was trembling with…fear? No, that wasn't it. Anger seemed more like it. Perhaps that was his home…Optimus quietly prayed that the other mech wouldn't do anything rash.
Soundwave didn't care about his life anymore. All that mattered was revenge. And the object of his revenge was now standing in front of him, leering down at its work. Probably feeling very proud of itself. Then Soundwave took action.
Optimus' optics widened as he saw the unidentified mech jump – no, fly, he had leg thrusters – from the ground and straight at Sentinel's head.
"No -!" Optimus yelled, but it was too late…
Sentinel heard the other mech's thrusters activate, and spun with a graceful fluidity that belied his size, knocking the other mech back down to the ground with one of his enormous arms. He felt the other mech's armour shatter and snap under the pressure exerted by the blow. The mech hit the ground hard, and lay there, twitching. Raising one giant foot, Sentinel brought it down on the chest of the dazed mech, squeezing him into the ground, and raised his cannon once more…
Cannon power levels at 89%. Alter?
Set to 50%.
Order acknowledged, complying.
…
Cannon power now at 50%. Further instructions?
Agony like nothing felt before tore at Soundwave's mind, but he couldn't scream; his vocal circuits were shredded by the first blow, damaged beyond the capabilities of his internal repair systems. Looking upward, he saw, through the single optic that still functioned, Sentinel lowering his cannon, the barrel pointing straight at Soundwave's scarred face. Soundwave grit his teeth and offered a brief prayer to Primus as energy gathered within the widened barrel…
Further instructions?
Fire.
…
Optimus lowered his head and closed his optics. What he'd just seen was…wrong. That's all he could think to call it. Turning slowly, he trudged away from that awful sight and away from the Leader whom he detested.
~Much Later~
Three pyramid-like objects flew over the remains of the city, several hours after the Autobots had finally given up and left. Diving rapidly, their forms shifted in midair, changing to become mighty humanoid warriors of considerable power.
The black and purple model identified as Skywarp landed on his feet, scorching the shattered concrete with his engine emissions. Trudging over to the ruins of an apartment building, he saw something of interest.
"Hey, guys!" he called to his comrades, "look what I found!"
Crouching, he pulled at the white and blue arm of the downed mech, dragging it to its feet. Whatever this guy had once been, he'd taken one hell of a pounding. There was still a fair bit of him left, though, and replacement parts were always helpful.
"Be careful with that, Skywarp," warned the approaching Starscream, "how do you know if it's still dead?"
"Oh, come on! Look at 'im!" Skywarp gestured at the face of the broken mech. "Nobody could take that kind of punishment and still be functional…Hmm?"
A brief flicker of colour had appeared in the broken mech's eyes. Skywarp frowned and looked closer. Then recoiled as the head lunged forward and butted him straight on the olfactory sensor.
"Aaagh! What the hell?" Skywarp's yells were cut short as the blue mech lunged at him again, landing a solid right hook on his chin. Skywarp fell like a ton of bricks. A burst of pink energy suddenly hit the blue mech in the back, spreading through all his circuits and frying them one at a time. Soundwave fell back into stasis lock.
Thundercracker cautiously picked up the blocky blue mech and slung it over his shoulder, grunting with the strain. Satisfied, Starscream activated his intercom system and patched through to Megatron.
"Leader, we've found something in the ruins – a survivor of sorts."
A pause, then a crackling reply. "What's the condition?"
"Still capable of functioning…" Starscream smirked at the rising Skywarp, who now had a fairly obvious dent in one cheek.
"And pretty strong with it, I'd reckon."
~Much Later~
Soundwave splashed the cool liquid over his face, revelling in the small comfort this granted him. Staring deeply into the mirror, and at the new image that greeted him, he cursed himself again. The repairs to his face had been extensive, but without an experienced engineer on hand, he'd been left with a blank sheet of metal where his mouth had once been. At least, he supposed, his appearance was more even now.
A soft beep came from the wall-mounted intercom, accompanied by a small image of another mech's face; Shockwave, the military operations commander.
"Soundwave, Megatron demands your presence in the control room as soon as possible."
Soundwave took one last look at his reflection, before turning away and heading for the door.
"Order acknowledged."
Fini-------------------------------
Author's Note: Just a filler to keep you lot busy until I update one of my other fics again. The original basis for this fic, and some of the plot elements, come from Soundwave's lengthy Bio at plumed-serpent.com, which I suggest you check out; it's quite interesting. Anyway, this was Microwave Jockey, signing off.