The first Decepticon brought in to the med bay was Blackout. He had been literally shot to shreds. The damage from missile impacts, S.A.B.O.T. rounds, (Special Armor Burning Ordinance Tactical) and plasma cannons was nearly catastrophic. The only undamaged part appeared to be the cranial structure. This meant that the internal circuitry would be salvageable for use in Barricade's repairs. There were dozens of scorch marks, and blast points on Blackout's frame. Indeed very little of the outer armor was intact. Daniel moved in for a closer inspection of the dead mech, as did Ratchet and the other humans. Several of the articulation servos in the left armature were functional, as were the knee joints. Surprisingly enough, there was very little energon leakage. It turned out that the fatal shot had been a direct hit to the Spark casing delivered from a very low angle, and passing beneath the upper torso armor.
"It doesn't look as if he's lost much of his energon." Ratchet observed.
"Then we may not need energon donors after all. Cool!" Daniel replied.
"SHULTZ! HOPKINS!" Daniel bellowed at an ear shattering volume that was truly impressive. With the acoustic amplifying qualities of the improvised med bay, his voice seemed to vibrate the very walls of the chamber.
"What?" Both men jumped in surprise as they answered the yell.
"Oh. There you are." Daniel said turning around. "You got those barrels and other things I need?"
"Yes Sir. They are being loaded onto a fork lift right now." Shultz replied.
"Good! If we need anything else, Sam here will come tell you what it is." Daniel said dismissing the two agents that didn't seem to know how to keep their eyes on proper targets.
"Thanks for getting rid of them. They've got a bad staring problem." Mikeala said after the two agents left.
"I've noticed." Daniel said in what sounded more like an animalistic growl than actual speech.
"Wait! What did they do?" Sam asked.
Before Mikeala could respond, Daniel answered Sam quickly. "Don't worry about it sport. That's twice! If it happens again, I'm gonna recruit Ol' Tackleberry over there and we can BOTH have a talk with 'em about the finer points of etiquette around teenage women!"
"I'd like to know just how you were able to discern their elevated pheromone levels with your level of olfactory sensitivity." Ratchet asked unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
"HUH? Oh, that. WAIT! You can SMELL their pheromones?" Daniel asked in amazement.
"Yes. You obviously have some method of detecting them as well, considering how rapidly you have acted in each case." Ratchet observed.
Daniel chuckled a bit before making his reply. "No, I can't smell their pheromones, BUT I can tell EXACTLY where their eyes are locked! As I said, if it happens again, Tackleberry and me are gonna teach 'em some much needed manners! Painfully!"
There was a series of whirs and clicks as Ironhide readied his massive plasma cannons. "I'm under strict instructions not to use these against humans." Ironhide said brandishing the weapons in question.
"Well, if you're shooting at a wall, and they get a little singed by the blast, then that isn't your fault, now is it?" Daniel asked with a malicious grin. "Besides the world is better off without folks sorry enough to leer at kids, even if they are almost eighteen."
"I will not allow Ironhide to participate in the injuring of humans." Optimus told Daniel sternly.
"No problem, I'll just get Barricade to help after we get him fixed up." Daniel said smugly.
"I will not allow that to happen either! What is wrong with you?" Optimus demanded getting angry.
"Hey! There's nothing wrong with him!" Mikeala said, jumping to the man's defense.
"There's something wrong with THEM!" Maigan said backing the other girl in her uncles defense.
"Uh, Optimus, I'm not sure exactly what they were doing, but I think they were staring at things they weren't supposed to. That would make them perverts to most people." Sam put in.
"Hey! Let's forget about the fact that BOTH these girls are underage! Gawking at ADULT women like that is illegal! Now either I get one of you people to scare some sense in to 'em or I let my crowbars do the talking!" Daniel said getting more irate as he thought about it.
The other Autobots were obviously in full agreement with Daniel's sentiment, as they were nodding their heads in approval.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's going on in here?" Agent Simmons demanded as he walked in catching Daniel's last statement of rage.
"We're discussing the fate of certain people that can't keep from leering at teenage girls!" Daniel said vehemently.
"HEY! That was strictly an intimidation tactic for interrogation purposes only, and she got me back by handcuffing me to a light pole in my underwear!" Simmons said holding his hands up in self-defense.
Both Sam and Mikeala snickered at memory that statement produced.
"Yeah, I got more than even!" Mikeala said picturing the S7 emblazoned underwear.
"You call that even?" Daniel asked derisively.
"If you'd seen those underwear, you'd call it even too!" Sam said as he burst out laughing. "Besides Bumblebee peed on him too!"
Daniel was making some very strange faces, as he thought about the prospect of being chained to a light pole, while getting pissed on by a giant robot.
"OK, that's. That's more than even." Daniel admitted.
"See! She admits that she got her revenge, so you've got no reason to go after me." Simmons said fearfully.
"Actually we've been talking about two of your fellow agents that like to stare at these two girls here, and I know for a fact that my niece has never done a DAMN thing to anyone!" Daniel said getting pissed all over again.
"Do we have another problem Simmons?" Agent Bannacheck asked from inside the doorway as he walked in.
"Yeah, those Shultz, and Hopkins guys can't keep their eyes and comments to them selves! I had to listen to their whispers about my rear all the way down the hall!" Maigan said hotly.
"SAY WHAT!" Daniel growled as he turned to go grab a crowbar from his toolbox.
Daniel had grabbed his four foot Gorilla bar and was heading for the doorway when Ratchet realized just what was about to happen and grabbed the highly pissed crowbar wielding maniac.
"Let me go DAMMIT! I'm gonna separate those fuckers from the parts of their anatomy they value most!" Daniel said trying to break free from Ratchets grasp.
"I have a better idea. Why don't you let me make sure that Megatron didn't leave anything lying around when he crashed in the arctic? They can spend the next ten years looking for anything that might have landed in the area. I think prolonged exposure to that type of cold may teach them some manners. Especially after they are told EXACTLY why they are being assigned to this search." Agent Bannacheck suggested.
That got Daniel's attention. He thought about it for a moment. "DAMN! Not bad, but send 'em to the Antarctic instead. Just incase he had someone with him and they split up to cover more ground." He said with some maliciousness as Ratchet let go of him.
"Good. I'll just have them pack their belongings now. Agent Simmons can replace them as an assistant until we can find someone more suitable." Agent Bannacheck said as he left.
"Good riddance to bad trash!" Daniel said as his boss left.
"Indeed. They are not suitable material for prospective mates to either of these ladies." Ironhide put in.
"That is NOT what's got everyone so ticked off." Agent Simmons told Ironhide. "Now I don't know this girl here." He indicated Maigan as he continued. "But I DO know that Mikeala is underage. We have laws against that kind of behavior for very good reasons! I will admit that I did cross a few of those laws, but she got even, and as far as I'm concerned, it's over and done."
"Yeah well, we got rid of those punks, so don't waste any more brain power on 'em. We've got more important things to worry about. ESPECIALY with the spare parts on hand now." Daniel said cutting off the conversation before it went into areas that might truly horrify their robotic friends.
The forklifts had come and gone after unloading their cargo, as had the truck pulling the second Decepticon. The third and final truck was now pulling in and was unhooking the trailer carrying Bonecrusher. As soon as the trailer was disconnected, the truck pulled out of the chamber to give everyone room to work.
Daniel and Ratchet both apparently had the idea of examining Bonecrusher at the same time, for both had gone over to the dead mech simultaneously.
"Hmmm. His spark is still active, but with the processor, and hard drive damage there is no way to revive him." Ratchet said after a cursory scan.
"Waitaminute! You tellin' me that you guys can get shot in the head like that and the spark just keeps ticking along with nothing controlling it?" Daniel asked.
"Not quite. We have basic life support function circuits in our chests near the spark chamber, only the control circuits and higher functions are housed in the cranial structures." Ratchet informed him.
HEY! If his spark is still active then we don't need to risk using Big Rig to power those fuel conversion systems! We can have dead man here do it!" Daniel said excitedly.
Unheard by almost everyone, except Maigan who had gone to the cooler to grab a few Irish Blend Java Monsters, Optimus let out a quiet sigh of relief. Hearing that Maigan stepped over and patted him reassuringly on the leg, while smiling up at him.
"He won't take any chances that he doesn't have to." She whispered to the huge mech by way of further reassurance. Optimus only nodded in reply. He had not looked forward to being out of commission while creating spare energon supplies.
Maigan then went and handed a cold drink to both Mikeala and Sam who looked at her with a little surprise while wondering where she'd gotten the energy drinks. Maigan smiled in silent response and simply pointed out the cooler as she continued on her way. She handed one to Simmons, before walking over to her uncle and putting one in his hand. She then opened hers.
"Huh? Oh THANKS, Maigan!" Daniel said as she handed him the ice cold drink. He then turned and saw that everyone had one. "Cool! The ice chest is right there, help yourself if you want another one. I've got a feeling that we're going to need all the energy we can get here after a while." Daniel said with a rueful chuckle.
"Well let's get these suckers stripped down." Daniel said grabbing up his crowbar.
Three and a half hours later, the unlikely companions had stripped the deceased Decepticons down to their bare frames. The energon had been completely drained from both Blackout and Devastator, and their fuel conversion units had also been removed. These were connected to Bonecrusher's spark, which was now sitting on the floor. Requiring only enough energon to power the three fuel conversion units, the rest of Bonecrusher's energon had gone into the donation barrels. The unlikely team had wasted no time in dismantling any of the Decepticons. Blackout's cranial components, along with those harvested from Devastator, were taken to the platform where Barricade was in stasis lock. Having decided that armor could wait, Ratchet and Maigan were concentrating their efforts on the damaged circuitry, while Mikeala was busy rebuilding the damaged joints in the torso section.
Daniel had been getting some assistance from Bumblebee in his attempt to get Jazz back together. The two of them had started by rerouting all of the energon lines into rubber hosing that was cut longer than needed to make sure they had room to spare in case one of the lines needed to be repositioned while rebuilding the torso joints, wiring, and Jazz's own energon lines. Then Daniel had used a cutting torch to carefully heat up the sockets of Jazz's primary Spinal supports, so that they could be hammered back into proper position by Bumblebee. Bumblebee was doing the hammering because with his scanners, he would be better able to calibrate the position and force needed to properly reform the damaged joints. The duo had gone a long way in putting Jazz's body back together, but still had a long way to go. Jazz still needed his wiring reattached, and all of his severed energon lines reconnected, before they could even attempt to jump-start his systems. Daniel still wasn't too sure about using another mech's spark as an improvised defibrillator, but he planned to use the one without a body to get the job done, after they were certain, they had a plentiful supply of energon on hand.
Optimus and Ironhide were doing their level best to salvage, scavenge, and reclaim any, and all usable parts out of the three downed mechs. The two of them had created several sizable stacks of parts. Hydraulic actuators over here, primary servo motors over there. Support structure in one pile, armor plating in another. Energon lines, and spare circuits, including functional optics were placed in still another stack.
Sam had been busy running different things to different teams, and he didn't feel left out or picked on because he knew that he was actually helping a lot. He was able to make sure that no one had to stop what they were doing to go get something that they needed. Everyone appreciated this, and even though they sometimes forgot to thank him for it, he knew he was making a difference.
Agent Simmons even went a long way towards making up for horrible first impressions by pitching in with everything he had. Even Optimus had to give him credit, when he was told to get something done; he went at it like a ravenous pit bull after a bone. He had been keeping cold drinks near each person that wanted them, including Sam. When the ice chest was empty, he had informed Daniel of that fact. Hearing Daniel lament that the others were still in the quarters that he shared with his niece. Simmons didn't hesitate or ask questions he just went and retrieved them without being asked to do so. This earned him the hearty and heartfelt thanks of the others.
Secretary Of Defense Robert Keller didn't have things anywhere near as easy. Interrogating Frenzy was proving difficult at best, but not because Frenzy wasn't cooperating. He was. That was the problem! Frenzy was spilling his guts at a pace that even he would consider frantic. No one was able to make heads or tails of the warp speed stuttering that issued forth from the spastic little mechs vocal processor! Then SOD Keller got a break. Three hours into the interrogation, Frenzy had broken free from his restraints in total frustration. Frenzy grabbed SOD Keller's laptop and before anyone could stop him had typed in his request to join the humans using MS Word. SOD Keller was stunned. This had been the absolute LAST thing he had expected to happen! Realizing that he would never be able to comprehend anything the spastic little mech said, SOD Keller continued to let Frenzy use his laptop to communicate. In this way, the interrogation proceeded much more smoothly, but was no less shocking in content. When it was all said and done, Frenzy had agreed to revamp the security protocols of the P.O.T.U.S. Mainframe and the firewalls of the entire national defense network. When queried as to how long it would take a Decepticon hacker to get through Frenzy's programming, the answer had been about seventeen minutes, with sixteen minutes of warning that someone was trying to do so. No one could believe, nor did they even THINK of commenting on Frenzy's reasons for wanting to join the human side of this mess, but they couldn't possibly doubt his sincerity.
Fully six hours after they had started working on him Ratchet's team was ready to bring Barricade back online. They had replaced both of his optics, three out of his sixteen primary processors, nine of his secondary processors, several components in his vocal processor, and nearly thirty percent of his neural circuitry pathways so that he could access his primary memory core. They had also needed to replace dozens of connections to his secondary memory core, his optical processor, and his equilibrium processor. Mikeala had done wonders in repairing and even replacing several of his joints. Now that he was once again functional, the team went to work on his armor plating. They began by taking armor stripped from Bonecrusher. Agent Simmons had ordered a sand blaster brought in, and Mikeala had used it to remove the color scheme from the armor panels that were going to be used for Barricade. Ratchet was cutting and shaping the armor panels to fit Barricade's chassis, while Mikeala was showing Maigan how to put them on.
By this time, Daniel was soldering the last of the severed energon lines on Jazz. Bumblebee had been busy reconnecting the severed wires. Now the two of them were almost ready to fill those lines with some fresh energon. They just needed to wait for the soldered lines to cool.
Daniel sat down heavily on the floor and lit a smoke. His back was killing him, and his stomach just wouldn't shut up. Surprisingly enough, it was Agent Simmons who handed him a tuna salad sandwich from one of the visitors vending machines. Simmons wasn't really a bad person; he just had a different perspective on things. He saw himself as standing on the front lines of something that would put many people in therapy for years. He had seen many creations of the All Spark, and every one of them had been incredibly vicious, possessing innate weaponry that was formidable to say the least. There was no way he wanted things like that running loose, terrorizing the members of John Q. Public! He would do anything and everything he could to prevent that from happening. He went without sleep, so that little Mary going to school for the first time tomorrow, would never have a nightmare about giant robots from another world. It didn't matter what his opinions of these particular NBE's were, his superiors vouched for them, and that was good enough for him. He was a soldier in a war that up until now really didn't have a front, and if he saw himself as some type of glorified MIB, then so be it. After all, he was standing against aliens, and even fighting beside others, wasn't he?
By the time, Jazz's energon lines had finished cooling down enough to fill them with fresh energon; Ratchet's team was attaching the last of the armor panels to Barricade's frame.
All of the humans involved were exhausted! Sam and Mikeala had just gotten out of their parents hair for the weekend, and Maigan had only just arrived after a four-hour flight from Houston. The only thing keeping them going; was the excitement of what they were doing, and the massive amounts of caffeine supplied by Maigan's uncle.
Ratchet was in hog heaven! Not only did he have a pair of first rate technicians to work with, but Maigan had such a neat hand with a soldering iron that even Ratchet's highly sophisticated medical scanners had some difficulty determining just where the repairs had been performed. Mikeala's mechanical skills were on par with a professional level as well. Thus, Barricade had received far better workmanship than Ratchet thought he deserved. It was Mikeala who asked if they could wait to reactivate Barricade until they found out if Jazz was going to be ok. Seeing that his new assistants really needed a break Ratchet readily agreed.
Bumblebee had pulled Bonecrusher's spark over to the platform that Jazz was lying on. Daniel was busy connecting an auxiliary energon pump to it when he noticed that everyone's attention was solely on him. Realizing he had an audience didn't appear to faze him too much, but it did make him nervous as hell. With no guarantees that this was going to work Daniel was sweating it. Finally that decisive moment had arrived, either this was going to work, or it wasn't. Daniel didn't know which, and neither did Ratchet. Everyone, Simmons included held their breath as Daniel attached the leads that would activated the external energon pump. When the pump started up almost everyone expected Jazz to awaken. Only Ratchet and Daniel knew better, now that there was freshly powered energon flowing through Jazz's system, they now had to try to jump-start Jazz's spark! The glow from Jazz's spark casing grew brighter, as fresh energon hit the core. This was a very good sign, and everyone heard the noise that was made when Ratchet released the air from his vents, which sounded like someone exhaling after holding their breath. Daniel now pulled on three pair of rubber kitchen gloves to avoid electrocution, energon contact, and a possible spark bonding. He now grabbed two thick cables that were positively glowing with the raw power that was contained in them; each one had a clamp on it that had been ripped from a set of jumper cables in Daniel's toolbox. Next Daniel stepped up onto Jazz's chest and reaching into the spark chamber attached one of the clamps to a partially stripped cable in Jazz's chest.
"Here's hoping." Daniel said as he tapped the opposing lead with the second cable.
Jazz jerked hard enough to throw Daniel to the floor where he might have been seriously injured had not Optimus caught him.
"Perhaps you should let Ratchet do this." Optimus suggested.
"I would be happy to Optimus, but our Cybertronian alloys conduct electricity just as well as their flesh, and there aren't any rubber gloves big enough for me." Ratchet said with more then a little regret.
Daniel climbed back on top of Jazz's chest to try again. "Hey Buzz! Check and make sure he's turned off, we don't want to fry any of his systems with a power surge while we're playing Frankenstein." Daniel told Bumblebee. Bumblebee checked to see that Jazz would be in stasis lock if he were reactivated, and gave Daniel a thumbs up sign.
Daniel reached out with his right hand and grabbed the top of the chest armor. After taking a few seconds to lock in his grip, Daniel tapped the opposing lead again. There was a noticeable pulse for his effort, but only one. Jazz's body again tried to hurl the human across the room, but Daniel had a grip that wouldn't let go. A second later Daniel hit it again. This time he was thrown free in spite of his impressive grip. Once again, Optimus was on the ball; catching flying humans was getting to be a habit with him.
Daniel said nothing as he stared at the pulsating glow originating from Jazz's spark chamber.
Ok maybe this will shut those plot demons up until I can get some more time on my hands. I promise chapter six will be along soon. Sorry that this one is so short in relation to the others, but it's not up to me, talk to those blasted plot demon!
