The Diego Diaries: Avalone (dd8 270)
Last night, I sorta gave myself a good buzz taking a pain pill for my owies. I could have written something but it would probably have made as much sense as Jabberwocky: "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves,. And the mome raths outgrabe." So I lay down and grinned myself to sleep instead. Me and the dancing hippos.
HERE WE GO!
=0=A short but sweet battle
The movement toward the battle group was slow and steady as in the tractor beam of Xantium Supreme a battered ship was pinioned. It was smoking and trailing liquids which froze instantly upon exposure to vacuum as it was flown toward a gathering of shuttles and a vast astonishing titanic ship.
Prime sat on his command seat inside Tennyson staring at the sight as it came ever closer to his group. He glanced at Prowl. "When they are captured I want them right away. Bring them here, Prowl."
Prowl nodded, then rose to leave. He walked across the vast bridge with a couple of titans following, then disappeared into the elevator with both. It was silent on the bridge again until the commentary outside came filtering back in.
:Ship, this is Ironhide the Elder of Praxus. I am the Prime of Cybertron's representative and I demand that you surrender to us or we'll allow the ship holding you by tractor to crush you and kill all on board. Respond:
It was silent a moment, then a voice replied in flawless NeoCybex.
:We want guarantees first:
:You have no leverage and you're surrounded by titans. All of them want to play football with you because you're pillaging their brother. How about you surrender and we talk about it afterwards. I'm barely holding the titans back: Sun replied.
Prime glanced at a number of very tall mechs sitting and standing at the console range nearby. They were angry but composed as they always were. Xantium was an anomaly in his range of exhibited emotions and willingness to act on them first and talk later. "Are you being barely held back?"
They glanced at each other with casual nonchalance, then stared at Prime. All of them nodded at the same time.
Prime grinned slightly, then listened again.
:Where would you take us?:
:To Prime. He wants to talk to you: Sun replied.
:Sentinel Prime will execute us immediately:
:You're a bit behind the times. Sentinel is dead for all intents and purposes. The Matrix chose Optimus to be Prime. Where the frag have you been?: Sun asked with surprise.
:Its a long story. We want assurances or we're going to fight you to the floor. We may lose but so will you if you don't agree: the voice said.
:Sun to Prime:
"I am listening Sun. Allow me to try," Prime said. "Captured ship, this is Optimus Prime, the Prime of Cybertron, bearer of the Creation Matrix, the Autobot Matrix of Leadership and head of the reclaimed and rising Empire of the Autobots. I retook Cybertron without a shot fired and I am here to assist my fallen comrade, Avalone. You will surrender to me and I will let you live. Anything short of that will be wasted energy on your part. I may just destroy you to rid myself of a nuisance."
It was silent a moment. Then the voice was back. :You might want to rethink your position, Prime. You don't want to miss what we can tell you:
"Then surrender, come here and talk to me," Prime said. "I will not allow anything less. Check out my fleet. I mean business."
It was silent almost too long, then the voice was back. :We want to talk to you. Give us the assurance you won't execute us and we'll come:
"You have that assurance. Allow my mechs to take you off. Put your weapons away and be ready to be boarded. Any of you try to fight and my mechs will put you down because it will be considered a breach of our agreement. Prime out," he said, then sat back to wait.
=0=Out there
Sun considered the ship outside, then the mechs waiting with him. "Prime either is prepared to doom them or he's figured their limit. There's no backing down now."
The moments stretched onward as the ship listed in Xantium's tractor. Then the voice called to Sun. :We're ready to go. If Prime breaks his word you'll regret it. Not from us but from … well, we'll tell you if you keep your word. We've made a pact to erase the data from our processors if you break it:
Sun glanced at the mechs around him, then nodded. As mechs rose to go, Sun said, "I'm sending mechs across the bring you here. You'll bridge directly to the dreadnought, Tennyson of Praxus. Be ready to spill your guts. Prime is fair but he wants to know what happened here."
=0=Deck
They watched as mechs drifted over to an opening hatch. Inside were five Cybertronian mechs of an older detailing and finish. They were cuffed and pulled back to Sun's shuttle where he waited. There was a brief stare down, a scan for weapons and viruses, then they were walked to the back for the short jump to Tennyson. In seconds they were gone.
=0=Tennyson Hangar Deck, Main Bridge Station
Prowl waited, standing at an unconscious parade rest as he thought about the problem before them. Then the bridge lunged to life, settling to allow three soldiers herding five rather antique-looking mechs forward. They stepped down from the platform, then halted before Prowl. "Well, this is the crew?"
The soldiers nodded.
"Very well," Prowl said. "Follow me." He turned and began to walk to the elevators nearby for the short jump upward to Prime.
=0=Ratchet
He'd walked for miles through the downed ship marking areas where crews would come to repair conduit that would take too long for him to do alone. It was a hurried job and there were leaks that still remained but scans told them that they could bypass them for now to get the rest up and going.
The system was working with temporary repairs as the massive structure of Avalone's circulatory system was coaxed back to life. Crews worked feverishly hauling in conduit and hose to be shunted into the broken stuff and welded. Some was cut out and new replaced, making the system closed again. It was backbreaking and swift but the red flags were dropping several at a time all over the ship.
The sound of liquid sloshing in the tubes, conduits and hosing that made up the arterial structure of the massive ship let Ratchet know that the steady feed was actually reaching the farthest areas of its flow. It was light enough to splash due to the low level it was at the moment but soon it would be a sharply rising torrent that would eventually be held steady at maximum flow to circulate through the body of the titan.
Huge generators were placed to pump it forward in sections where that feature was broken down or shorted out. Slowly and steadily the energon moved on its way to bringing life back to the dormant ship. It would take a lot of it, perhaps several orns of it before they could begin to make the effort of assessing Avalone's mental and physical viability.
He climbed down from a ladder after checking a fixture, then ran down the hallway to another. Up and down, onward and onward, Ratchet hurried as he went over the protocols of realigning and restarting such a massive and hideously complex individual. It would take joors and joors before he reached the last one and found it sound to undertake the process without replacement.
=0=The Bridge of Tennyson of Praxus
The sound of ped falls across the vast expanse of Tennyson's bridge drew Prime from his reverie. He glanced at the forward screen, saw them coming and turned his command chair to face them. Five mechs were following Prowl, he could see, five mechs that looked from another era.
They arrived, then stood before Prime, their faces defiant. They were silent as they stared at him. Prowl walked past them to stand slightly behind and beside Prime. He stared at them like the police interrogator he was.
"I am Optimus Prime. I will have your names, what you are doing here and everything that you know about this matter. The mech below is the great titan, Avalone. You will give me what I need to know to help him retrieve his life again," Prime said with an ice cold tone.
They stared at him, then each other. Finally, one stepped slightly forward. "My name is Silvan. This is my crew, Sev, Conn, Repo and Min. We were traders at the edge of the Empire when a surge trapped us on the other side. We've been alone all this time."
"Continue," Prime said.
"We had to make a life on the other side of a floe that never subsided. That's when we came across another ship. This ship is like nothing I've ever seen. They can traverse dimensions. They come and go here, out here in this slag without seeming to be touched by it.
"We were captured and held, then given a choice. Help them acquire tech out here or die," Silvan said. "They were scavenging tech, stealing from those who live here, some of which are highly advanced aliens, then taking it back to their own dimension where they live.
"They found the wreck, not us. They made us take tech from it to give to them. They can't do it themselves for some reason. Somehow, the way for them to touch it themselves is when they go back to their own dimension. Here, they can't. Why? I don't know. It just is."
"Who are they? What are they? Describe them," Prowl said.
"They're bio-mechanical, like a species evolving from an overall biological status to mixed with the hope of becoming overall mechanical like us. They want our tech to help them do this," Silvan said. "They look humanoid but have mechanical parts in them like arms, legs and the like. They have a lot of tech I've never seen but they take it from all over the place in this fragged region. We aren't their only prisoners."
Prime considered that. "Tell me what you took?"
"Nothing that mattered," Silvan said. "We're Guiding Hand. The titans are worshiped in our religion. We would never do anything to harm the titan. We held them off as long as we could but they're really pressuring us to bring them important things, things the titan really needs. We can't do it. You coming is a big relief to us."
Prowl glanced at Prime who was listing with a thoughtful expression. :Do you believe them?:
:I feel no guile in their auras. I do believe they are telling a basic truth here: Prime replied. "I want you to go to those mechs," he said nodding to the titans standing nearby. "Tell them everything, especially what you gave these aliens. They are experts in time and dimensional transitions. They are titans in pretender gear that allows them to live among us."
The five turned to the big mechs who were staring at them with their inscrutable faces. Then Silvan dropped to his knees and began to cry. One by one, they fell to their knees, overcome with emotion.
Silvan looked up at them. "FORGIVE US! WE HAD NO CHOICE! THEY NEVER GOT ANYTHING FROM HIM THAT WOULD HARM THE TITAN OR HELP THEM! WE'RE SORRY!" he cried before breaking down in sobs.
=0=Ratchet
He walked to the main energon terminal in the big mech to check on the floe. Techs there were working on him using imported equipment and their intensity was feverish. "How is he?"
"We have fifteen percent levels in the system and we're sending teams to go to the leaks. We can't have leaks, Commander. We want all of it going to him," Lan-5, a senior transfusion specialist said as he worked at a console. "We're going to have him at thirty-five percent in a joor. Its going better than I ever hoped."
Ratchet felt himself sag with a small amount of relief. "That's good to know, Lan. Thank you," he said as he walked out to do battle with time and the elements.
=0=TBC 10-08-2021
ESL:
pinion, pinioned: (pin-yun, pin-yund) to hold something so fast, usually by arms and legs it can't be moved. (a pinion is the outer feathers of a bird's wings and sometimes are removed to prevent flight.
nonchalant: (non-shall-lont) relaxed and unaffected, cool.