The Diego Diaries: Zat (dd8 517)
=0=At the prison on Mars
He lay staring at the stars buzzing around him helm as the femme did the same nearby. He sat up groggily, then rose to grab her by the ankle assembly. Staggering toward the gate he managed to miss tripping over the slowly reviving crowd but she didn't. She bumped and banged her way over all of them as Ratchet weaved to the exit.
Stepping in, Springer directed Ratchet out and carried the femme by the ankle. He didn't even try to heft her, merely holding her far enough off the ground by her leg that she didn't bump her helm any further. The abuse he got for that from the others around them was epic.
Ratchet stepped out, adjusted his programming, then watched as Springer exited with the femme. He set her down on the ground, then stepped back. "What now?" he asked.
Ratchet scanned her, then gripped her by the neck. "Hold her up and I'll do this. I'll put her in stasis," he said as he sent the messaging to her programming.
She went limp in his servo but she was fully aware. If looks could kill he would be destroyed down to his sub atomic particles.
Ratchet handed her to Springer who held her up, her helm lolling until Ratchet began to remove the relevent plate with his transformed digits. With a howling mob all around him he transformed his digits to make long slim tweezers. He glanced at the others. "Stand back."
They did as Springer stared around. "What about me?"
"It was nice knowing ya," Ratchet said as he lit up her helm with a digit light, then gripped a long silver chip embedded inside. He pulled it out, Stepped back, set it on the ground, then dug for the other two. When they were out he put the plate back on and pushed Springer back.
He stepped back holding the femme as Ratchet turned to the chips. "I'm going to blow them," he said. He was still hooked in to the others who were watching silently. He glanced around the slaggers. "Some of you have all three. Most of you have one or two. Watch what happens."
He stepped back as did everyone else, then pulled a meter from subspace. Dialing it in, he pressed a button. A flash of light and three explosions, none of them insubstantial occurred. They were big enough to leave a divit in the ground where the soil exploded with the devices.
It was silent as a tomb.
=0=Morshower at Virginia
He got off the phone to the powers that be after telling them that the Prime would hold a hearing this same afternoon to give his ruling on the extradition of the two humans back to Earth. It was likely that barring events, Optimus Prime would allow it. This was a case of cleaning house now that the entire cell network that they belonged to was taken down silently by intelligence forces all over the earth.
It had only dented, not ended, the resistance to the Autobots but it was a good dent. A deep and soon-to-be public one. It would be a good reinforcement to the humans of Earth that there were those who didn't mind playing Russian roulette with their lives on the odd chance that their idea 'if the bots left, so would Megatron' was right.
It would be a good thing to put out the lingering fires that somehow the bots had something to do with the murder of the two men, Dobbs and Lombardi. That the humans held bot tech would be a shock to the system for them given the manner in which this occurred and its outcome. The blow to the Resistance and MECH would be harder than the one to their nemesises.
Global N.E.S.T. never slept.
The afternoon would pass slowly as the clock ticked down to the hearing.
=0=Prison
It was deeply silent as the echo of the explosions died swiftly in the thin atmosphere of the planet. The high castes all around them stared at the hole, then the femme who was restored to movement.
She stared at the ground, then Ratchet. "How did that happen?"
"Well, I have some experience with slaggers. The Functionist Council put two of them in your helm, likely when you were born. The other one comes from the Decepticons. It appears that you're a willing collaborator with Megatron to have one. The only way a courier-trap chip, that last big one, could be in your helm is if you did business with them," Ratchet concluded. "You are a conspirator of some kind, someone who worked with them and they needed that control to end you if necessary because that's what they did with civilian collaborators. Whether that was during the war or before it remains to be determined."
Prime stared at her noting her hardline returning. He glanced at the pen she came from. Everyone there had arisen and saw the devices go off. They looked shocked.
"I want everyone to hear me. We are taking these out. You can either cooperate or be tazed. Either way works for me." Prime glanced at the others. "Bring them out of her pen one at a time." He glanced at the femme. "As for you, you will be held pending investigation."
She stared at him, then jerked her arm as Winnie gripped her. She glared at him as she was dragged to another pen, then shoved inside. It was a highly secured holding pen for those who were acting up and needed to be isolated from their common holding.
Ratchet stared at the group she came with gauging their anger. "You had better get smart. See this device?" he said holding up the meter in his servo. "You saw it detonate the devices. I could save myself a lot of slag just pressing this button now," he said holding it up for them to see.
Some of them looked disturbed that he might. One of them stepped closer to the bars. "You'd love to do that wouldn't you."
Ratchet stared at him. "Actually …"
Several gasped and stepped back.
Ratchet tossed the tazer in his other servo to Springer. "I reset it and plotted them on the grid by their transponders. If they act up bug zap them. They won't wake up again for a while if you do. It won't target me. I left myself out." He glanced at the slaggers again. "The miracles of technology."
Ratchet walked to the gate. "I want all of you to sit on the slagging ground ten feet apart. I'm coming in to do this. If you so much a sneeze my SON will taze you. Right?" Ratchet said as he glanced at Springer.
"Done deal, Ada," Springer said as he pointed the device at the crowd. "Do what he says."
The group stared at him, then moved apart. They sat down and waited tensely, watching as Ratchet walked into the pen.
Coming to scan the big mech who spoke, Ratchet glanced at Winnie who had pulled a data pad. "There's three here, too, Winnie." Ratchet unsubbed a small metallic box. He bent down to work on the mech extracting three slim mettalic wafers from his helm. Gently putting them in the box he nodded to Winnie who noted the name and number of devices for the mech.
He pulled them from three mechs and the last femme that were near him gathering two Functionalist chips and one courier-trap from each. By the time he finished the last one they had pegged this group for hearings. None of them had less than three. Given that they were all part of the elder faction of their parties, it wasn't too much of a surprise.
That entire pen would be held for hearings and investigations.
Ratchet walked out and as he did Raptor, Hardie and Micro arrived. They stared at the pen, then the box in Ratchet's servo that held a pile of glittering silver detonators.
"Well isn't that just charming," Ambler said as he grinned at Ratchet. "If you'll allow me." Ambler who was a demolitions expert just about as good as Steiner walked past the pens with the devices and into the clearing nearby. He lay them out, overlapping a couple, then stepped back to unsub a device. Tinkering with it, he grinned at the groups watching. "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he bellowed, then he pressed the button.
It was huge, the explosion of the chips together, most of them coming from a factory that had created them in Iacon. Those that came from there were extra loaded, those of the Functionalists. They'd distilled the micro-tech for this sized device long ago into a near work of art. It blew the processor but made scavenging the body still possible.
Prime turned slowly in a circle. "I will tell you to choose well. These devices were designed to kill you. A simple bump in the helm or a hard fall can set them off," he lied. "Either you cooperate or you die. That is your choice right now."
One could hear the sounds of automatic processes in the prison it was so quiet as the groups stared at him.
Then a big youngling mech stepped forward. "I don't have them. No one in here has them. We're not that old."
Ratchet stepped closer, then scanned the lot. "No, you aren't. But you and your families weren't smart enough not to collaborate with the 'Cons. All of you have them from the Decepticons. Consider it insurance against doublecrossing them. Our Megatron was no one's fool, though I can't say so for the lot of you."
He didn't lie.
=0=In the city
They settled in, the disgrunted members of the party that weren't imprisoned. They were settled in a dispersed pattern to disallow trouble and their behavior in the migration earned them a locator notation on the grid for the colony. It was maintained with the collaboration of the Watch and the Prison at the Emergency Command Center.
There were over 420,000,000 individuals living here now over a vast and highly urbanized landscape. The degree of threat that still existed from the outside made it necessary to peg troublemakers the same way the Watch noted possible problems at games. It was informal with the games and formal with the rest. It wouldn't take much to start a riot and with the number of victims of class warfare living everywhere the potential for mass carnage was always there.
The former high caste community was essentially that, former. It was a big group in the overall mass the colony, though highly outnumbered by those who had to live in the restrictions of The System of Exception, the low and mid caste groups.
Almost all of the former high castes had noted that their ship had sailed. They had assimilated as much, many of them, as they could, with many living highly and happily assimilated lives here in this urban paradise. Most had given up the ghost with the revelation that The Pantheon, Primus and The One had banned the system.
Yet …
There was an undercurrent of caste disquiet from them that was carefully hidden. One had to be an expert at this sort of thing to find it. Most of their interfacing was on the deep down low.
The current crop just landed hadn't gotten the memo. Coupled with the low down agitation of the Callos and Tempos among them, they were due for a flare up and the group in the prison was the match to the flame of near dormant dissent.
It would be hard as frag to find them and check them out around the colony though the effort had to be expended for their sake. Though they went through the Port to be repatriated, it would be a good idea to check them one-by-one. There were children among them and that alone would necessitate the extra probably unnecessary precaution.
=0=At the prison
They lay on the ground where they fell, that youngling group. Ratchet shook his helm. "Slaggers. I'm borrowing your signature expression, Magnus. They can do this 'my way … or the hard way'."
Magnus nodded. "Its yours," he said grimly.
=0=TBC 9-7-2022 edited 9-8-2022
Notes:
Any time a demolitions expert says 'fire in the hole' it means a detonation will occur. Its a warning of explosion. It comes from miners using the expression to alert others to a blasting. My dad was a demolition expert. For you, Papa. :D
ESL
insubstantial: (in-sub-stan-chul) something that is small is called insubstantial. Something that is big is called substantial.
