The Diego Diaries: Out There (dd8 37)
Just so I don't forget, go to you tube and search for Mars Cam. Not only will it show you the vision from the rover there in real time but it will have a listing below it of actual images or films from the same source. You can see the real views of Mars that everyone at Autobot City sees every time they look out a window. Its beautiful and oddly familiar. It reminds me of places in Nevada and Oregon.
=0=Out there
They stared out the windows with growing agitation. Glancing at each other with fury, they walked to the hatch nearby and let themselves out. Floating off, they lit up their pedal thrusters and with a burst of speed headed toward the conflagration going on in the distance.
=0=Standing on a ship hull getting the word from a Wrecker crew about to crack a ship open
He felt them go and glanced in the direction of his body floating nearby with its usual menace. Taking a moment to admire himself, Xantium Supreme in pretender gear turned back to the crew who watched him with curiosity. "Guess who's coming to the party?" he asked, then materialized a gun his size. Pointing it at the hull beneath his peds, he blew a huge hole in it. Grinning at the mechs who were watching, he jumped into it and disappeared.
They stared at the hole, then glanced at each other. "Who's coming?"
Everyone looked back toward Xantium and saw who it was. Then without hesitation all of them jumped into the hole. Whether they did to go to the fight or to hide was anyone's guess.
=0=Arrival on the hull with the great big hole seconds later
They landed, then stared down.
Grimlock glanced at the others. "Time to fight," he said, then dropped into the hole where he instantly transformed into beast mode with a blaze of fire.
One by one, his squad did the same.
It was on.
=0=Borderlands Ops Center
Prowl rose to walk stiffly to Prime. He paused in front of the big mech. :The Dinobots joined the show. They're not on any muster list:
Prime glanced up hiding the amusement he felt over Prowl's continued blind spot on chaotic mechanisms like the Dinobots. :Pity then the individuals who get in their way:
:If you say so: Prowl sniffed before walking back to the table to continue.
Optimus would laugh a long time inside his helm.
=0=On a shuttle parked near a cruiser
Ratchet sat on the cowling of the ship as it floated near a cruiser that was being entered to relieve the slaggers inside of any hope of having an unsupervised future. He lounged there as all around him flights of Seekers, ships and runabouts as well as the odd floating individual could be seen. Spying a big mech who was floating nearby pretending to be dead, he grinned, then pushed off. Reaching the slagger after a long drift himself, Ratchet spun him around. :You look like slag:
He stared at Ratchet with a frown, then lunged at him. He gripped Ratchet around the waist and they began to tumble.
Toward a large flaring and snapping electrical part of something that had been sheered off during a collision.
=0=Prowl
He watched, analyzed and handled a couple of hundred streams of data that poured into him and the center as the mission continued. A flash of video passed by, then he pulled it back. Two mechs were slagging it out in the darkness of space. One of them was a huge Decepticon and the other one was Loon. "Frag."
Everyone glanced at Prowl.
Prowl flickered a couple of toggles on a console nearby, then turned in his chair to see the forward screen. Ratchet and a big slagger were pounding on each other in space.
"Frag." -Everyone in the room
=0=Around the world
:Springer:
:WHAT!?:
:Can you rescue Loon?:
:WHO!?:
:Your mother:
"WHAT!? PROWL!?:
:I'll take that as a no. Prowl out:
The firefight continued unabated.
=0=Another try
:Sunstreaker:
:WHAT!?:
:Never mind. Prowl out:
SIGH.
FROWN.
Prowl sat at his seat fuming, then rose to check a gun he pulled from subspace.
"Where are you going, Prowl?" Optimus asked with amusement.
"No where. Donut run," he said as he subbed the gun, then walked to the door to leave for the bridge room below.
Everyone there watched him go, then a young mech Home Guardsman who was waiting for Prime to finish reading the datapads he brought glanced at his leader. "Sir … do you think he's going out there to help Commander Ratchet?"
"I do believe he is," Optimus said kindly.
"Um, sir … isn't he too … important to go out there and maybe get hurt? I mean … everyone's important but he's the S.I.C. and stuff," the kid asked with a worried expression.
Optimus quashed a grin. "He's very good at this. Shall we watch?" he asked the kid as on the screen a bridge bloomed into view near the pair slagging it out. Emerging out of it slipped a black and white winger with a big, big gun. Onward he flew toward the brawl from his momentum.
Nearly everyone who could look away from their screens did.
=0=Prowl at the scene of the crime
He floated out of the bridge into space and nearby tumbling as they landed blows that were less than effective given vacuum, he grinned as he watched Ratchet laughing. He couldn't hear him but he could see the knucklehead's guffaw. It was funny enough for him to consider putting the image on Bullhorn with the sound of raging elephants in place of the laughter he couldn't hear in vacuum.
Propelling himself, Prowl headed toward them and as he did the mech who had Ratchet in a head lock as they tumbled, the big medic's peds flying here and there, noted Prowl's presence, his gun and his name. Prowl had actually arrested him once when he was on loan to the department in Nova Cronum. Letting Ratchet go, he lit his thrusters and headed for a battleship nearby which was listing with hatches ripped off here and there.
Prowl reached Ratchet, gripped his neck and with his own thrusters began to fly after the big slagger as he fled. :Get yourself together, slagger. He's getting away:
Ratchet rolled, then fled with Prowl. :Someone else can get him:
:Not on your life. I put that oaf in jail myself once upon and time and I'm putting him back there again: Prowl stepped up speed as he spoke.
Ratchet who was following laughed loudly/soundlessly then stepped it up himself. Retrieving his big old gun, the two of them followed the slagger to the vessel, saw him go inside, then joined him when they reached it.
=0=Ops Center
Prime frowned (internally) as he watched the pair duck inside the vessel. :Prowl. What are you doing?:
:WHAT!?:
Prime rose, stretched, then glanced around. "General Hard Drive, you have the conn. I am going to stretch my limbs." With that, he walked toward the door and the bridge room below.
Hardie who quashed a grin, glanced around the room. :Ironhide. Where are you?:
:Out here:
:Ratchet and Prowl are chasing a slagger into a battleship and its rough going enough that Optimus is … taking a walk to 'stretch his legs':
:WHAT THE FRAG!? OLD MECH!?:
Hardie walked to Prime's seat, then reclined comfortably. Many were the command chairs that graced his aft over the eons. As he stared at the screen, a bridge appeared next to the ship and a big mech flew out gun in servo. Moments later, another did the same. He grinned. "Have fun, boys," he said before he alerted Sun and Jack.
=0=Inside the battleship
It was chaos and with everyone running everywhere no one noticed that two Autobots were amongst them. Standing by a wall with a gun or two apiece, Prowl and Ratchet watched in the darkness the demise of the fabled (not) Decepticon discipline (Ha!) and poise (BWAHAHA!). It was like someone dropped a firecracker into a chicken coop everywhere they looked.
:Where is he?: Ratchet asked.
:I'm looking. I'm looking: Prowl replied through the intensity of his gazing around. :He went that away: Prowl said as he headed across the corridor during a lull in crazed running Decepticons followed by Ratchet.
=0=Prime and Ironhide, dos amigos™
Prime was there first followed by a swift Ironhide. He glanced at Ironhide as he peered into the doorway, then held his big old gun upward. Slipping inside, Ironhide followed.
It was like old times.
It was dark inside given no one's electronics worked now. Even emergency lights were fragged. Everyone galloped around in night vision and such was the intensity of the Decepticons that no one noticed them for a moment.
Then they did.
BLAMMA-BLAMMA-BLAM! BLAM!
=0=Three corridors away
They both slammed on the brakes as they felt the emotions of Prime and Ironhide over the bond links. Ratchet nearly ran up Prowl's back as they both stopped dead on.
Glancing in the general direction of where they'd just come, Prowl glanced at Ratchet. :Optimus! Where are you?!:
:Prowl! Where are you!?:
:Oh frag: -Prowl and Ratchet
Without a word, the two abandoned their hot pursuit of the jail bird and began to run back the way they came. When they were one corridor and two hatches away from Optimus and Ironhide, they ran into a small squad of 'Cons heading up their corridor to the outside hatches nearby.
BLAMMA-BLAMMA-BLAM! BLAM!
=0=Sun and Jack
They swept up and slid to a stop, two vessels that were killing machines. The shuttles they rode in weren't slouches either.
:D
Glancing at their teams, they grinned. "Wait for our call to come. Everyone but the pilot." -Jack and Sun
With that, they jumped into space, pulled out their weapon(s) of choice and flew into the hole at speed. The fire fight that they met was for the ages.
=0=On a planet far away observing agricultural practices under a dome so big it was impossible to grasp
They walked through the furrows of earth turned to hill up strawberries. The berries were huge, growing larger and faster than they would in other places given the constant conditions in which they were raised. They picked some as they listened to the botanists and agricultural specialists discuss the way thing were done here. The strawberries would be juicy and delicious. They would also be thick on the bushes.
=0=The Hourly News: LATEST BREAKING NEWS!
"We just received a bulletin from the Office of Strategic Communications about the mission currently underway in the Bootes Region known on our space charts as the Chute. The base that belonged to the former Decepticon and privateer Polity has been overtaken and refitted to be our farthest outpost in this region and is located about 120,000 light years away.
"The Prime and the Alpha Fleet are there opposing the entry into our sovereign space of a number of former Decepticon turned privateer battle groups lead by the Decepticon criminal known as Nitrate. He'd attempted to enter the Prime's sovereignty and was in the process of linking up with three other groups when the Prime interdicted them in an ongoing confrontation near what is now called Fort Borderlands.
"The fleets are very large and diverse with large numbers of crew and ships. The three groups coming to parlay with Nitrate are led by known Decepticon soldiers. One group was led by a femme Decepticon by the name of Inana who's a bounty hunter and assassin favored by Megatron. The next group was led by a mech named Ninlil is a former Road Rage gangster from Cybertron who with his bond, Sole has broken free to become a privateer as well. The last of the new group is a mech called Corso, a noted killer who was a ship boarding specialist with a penchant for saving trophies of his kills."
=0=At a luncheon for visitors after eating strawberries in the fields, Unidad
They listened to the broadcast as they ate a brilliant meal of mostly habitat grown food. The news with Lim-Lee played on a big screen with closed captions. It was a subdued group that ate and read the news of the pirates who would be coming their way but for Prime and the Autobots. It wouldn't be a hard thought to hold that without the bots there'd be blood on the ground on Earth.
=0=On a battleship out there
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAMMA-BLAMMA-BLAM!
=0=TBC 12-10-2020 12-28-2020
Tip of the hat to Silverhornd for the inclusion of the boy band of the Autobots, the Dinobots. :D:D:D
ESL: Privateer: old fashioned word for pirate