Part 9

Much later, after a session in the wash racks and finishing off the last bit of energon left in the cube, Jazz felt up to facing his fellow officers. A few chips in his head were still out of synch, running a little too fast or too slow, but they were only a nanoklik off and would even out by the time he made it to the brig.

Halfway there, he heard Bumblebee's familiar pedes clunking up behind him, and he slowed his steps for the smaller bot.

"Boss!" Bumblebee caught up, leaning forward to see his face. "Where you headed?"

"Down to visit our guest," Jazz told him. "Maybe swing by Red Alert's, see if Megatron's noticed we got his boombox."

Darting in front, Bumblebee walked backwards, ducking to one side when Jazz motioned and avoiding knocking into two mechs.

"Is it true Soundwave defected?" Bumblebee asked. "Ratchet's been down there for ages. He only came up for energon and he said that Soundwave's been glitching ever since he came in."

"He has?" Jazz frowned. That wasn't good. A glitch could a mech into full system crash, and sometimes mechs didn't come back. "Ratchet say anything else?"

"Just that he sounds crazy, like when Red Alert glitched."

Bumblebee looked over his shoulder when they came to the stairs, using the railing to guide himself down, still backwards. Inconvenient, but no Spec Ops bot took the elevators if there were stairs or ramps nearby.

"You don't think that's why he defected, do you?" Bumblebee asked. "'Cause he glitched and blew all his logic circuits?"

Jazz shook his head once. "No, I don't think so. I got to talk to him for a good long while. I won't argue he's all messed up, but I think that's 'cause he wanted to defect, not why."

"Huh?" Bumblebee tilted his head. "Then how come he wrote all those Spec Ops books?"

Jazz came to a halt, looking up and down the staircase to make sure they were alone. A stairwell could echo voices for several floors, and this was a conversation he did not want anyone to listen in on.

"All right," he said, leaning in and whispering. "You tell anyone I asked for this and I will have you on perimeter duty for the next hundred vorns, you got that?"

Optics widening, Bumblebee nodded once without a sound.

"I'm serious," Jazz said. "I'm about to ask you something, and if I ever hear anything about it from anyone else, I will send you down to Ratchet for spare parts. And don't think he won't use 'em."

"I promise," Bumblebee said, nodding vigorously.

"Good." Jazz took another look around the stairwell, then switched to their internal com for good measure.

I need you send Spec Ops Mission 98 to my personal datapad, he said.

Ohhh, Jazz's Interrogation at Soundwave's Pedes, Bumblebee nodded once.

And then his jaw dropped.

"Oh Primus, no way," Bumblebee gasped.

Jazz grabbed his shoulders and shook him once, looking around again in a panic. Still no one around.

"Not a sound!" he snapped. "And 'Bee, you are way too into this if you knew that off the top of your head."

Sorry, Bumblebee answered internally. It's just that after you came back, all the stuff with you and Soundwave turned red hot. It wasn't that much before—I mean, you and Prowl were always more popular—

Bumblebee squeaked and backed up straight into the wall. It didn't help. Jazz didn't loom over him, but his visor burned white hot into his cortex. Other bots wondered what Jazz looked like under the visor. The Spec Ops bots all prayed they never found out.

—but now it's like everyone's pulling up all the old stories with Soundwave and there's a bunch of them in the Spec Ops Mission series.

Jazz scowled. "And you have all of them?"

Bumblebee shook his head. "No way. None of us touched anything with you in it. Well, except the Decepticon brothel one and I didn't realize it kinda mentioned you—uh, but that's not really important," he said in a rush, scrunching down as Jazz came closer. "Blaster! Blaster has all of them!"

"...Blaster, huh?" Jazz said slowly.

"Prime and Prowl are already talking to him," Bumblebee said. "I think they're sorting out which ones Soundwave might've written."

"Huh." Jazz crossed his arms, thinking, then sighed and clapped one hand on Bumblebee's shoulder. "Relax. Listen, send me that story and then get Mirage and anyone else to help figure out which ones Soundwave probably wrote. Send those to me, too."

"Gotcha, boss," Bumblebee said, watching him turn and head down the stairs. "Where are you going?"

"Brig," Jazz said. "I gotta stop a 'Con from glitching before I can ask him anything."

A nasty thought struck Jazz, a hypothetical title that would probably crop up on the hidden forum. Spec Ops Mission whatever: Soundwave, Prisoner of Jazz's Revenge. He grimaced and decided, Prime's order be damned, he was going to delete that whole forum.

The brig was not a pleasant place. The Ark had several cells, but the Autobots needed them so rarely that most of them had been converted into storage. Only three cells saw actual use. The first one was reserved for Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, usually only for overnight bouts so they could clear their hot heads. The second occasionally held various mechs who needed a firm scolding before being assigned punishment duty.

And the third one held the rare prisoner of war. Some of them defected. Most of them only left grayed out and dead.

Jazz hated shooting prisoners, but at the same time it was easier than shooting them on the battlefield where they could kill him in turn. After so long, better a quick bang and then he could overenergize with Blaster and his crew, and watch his bots dance, safe and sound.

"'Bout time you showed up," Ratchet said, not bothering to turn from his console as Jazz came in. "I'm this close to putting a round through his spark just to put him out of his misery."

Frowning, Jazz came up behind him and studied what he recognized as Soundwave's schematics on the screen. All of the Decepticon's processes lay bare, every weak spot and flawed system, the result of Ratchet's intense scan and analysis. From the warning lights around Soundwave's cortex, Jazz guessed at the problem.

"Can't stop glitching?" he asked, turning and leaning against the console, arms crossed.

"I can't figure it," Ratchet snapped, waving one hand uselessly at the screen. "I can bring him out of reboot just fine, but a couple breems into normal functioning, he just starts sparking and repeating himself and then he crashes."

"What's he repeating?"

"Carrier model, programming failure," Ratchet sighed. He leaned back in his chair, one hand over his optics. "I dunno, Jazz. I checked all his programming. Every damn line of code."

"Nothing?"

"Not a Primus damned thing," Ratchet said. He sighed and looked up at Jazz. "I'll be honest. I've seen this before. The war gets to be too much and mechs just start breaking. But I've never seen it in a war build."

"Well," Jazz said, pushing away from the console and heading for the cell. "Let's see if I can't work a little magic. Open 'er up, will ya?"

"You sure? Glitched or not, he's still dangerous."

Jazz leaned on the door and stood on the tips of his pedes, peering through the tiny window.

In the far corner of the cell, Soundwave sat slumped against the wall, legs curled against his chest, helm tipped forward and his optics empty. His chest armor had been peeled away completely, hopefully with his pain servos disengaged, and his inner circuits lay exposed for Ratchet's access. Jazz grimaced. They'd never come so close to holding such a high level prisoner, with all those juicy Decepticon secrets and protocols and plans in his cortex, but there was something pathetic in taking it out of a glitched mech.

The lock clicked, and Jazz went in and closed the door behind himself again. He knelt by Soundwave, spotting the stasis cuffs that had replaced the chains. With a rueful smile, he put his hand on Soundwave's shoulder, then reached for the exposed circuitry on his chest. Jazz wasn't a medical bot, but he'd restarted mechs on the battlefield under fire. He touched, and Soundwave responded.

Golden optics glowed, then blazed brightly. With his joints groaning in protest, Soundwave straightened out, putting his hand up to his eyes and fumbling for his visor before he realized he wasn't wearing it.

"Sorry," Jazz grinned, unrepentant. "Left it behind. Only one bot here's cool enough for a visor."

Soundwave stared at him for a moment, looking down at Jazz's red insignia, then at his own purple mark, or where it would have been if his panel hadn't been removed. The sight of his own inner workings seemed to stymie him so that he tried to cover himself with one hand.

"Soundwave...broken?"

That he was confused after coming out of reboot was not unusual. That the third ranking Decepticon looked at Jazz for some kind of confirmation startled both of them.

"You don't remember anything?" Jazz asked, looking at him askance. "About loyalty and defecting and that damn story of yours?"

Soundwave blinked, silent as he called up the memories. Jazz waited, studying him for the first sign of-

"Carrier model, program failure," Soundwave whispered, sitting rigidly straight. One hand slid against the wall, trying to find something to hold onto as his logic circuits began to spark. "Carrier model, program failure."

"Nope," Jazz said, grabbing Soundwave's helm and forcing him to meet his look. "Carrier model, program normal."

"Carrier model exhibiting extreme disloyalty," Soundwave said, hissing static. "Carrier malfunctioning."

"Carrier model not malfunctioning," Jazz insisted.

"Fatal error. Fatal error. Carrier mode-"

"You stubborn mech," Jazz said over him. "You say you're disloyal? To what?"

"Megatron-"

"Did you swear loyalty to Megatron?" Jazz demanded, leaning so close that their faces were only inches apart. "Dashing, heroic Megatron swearing to save Cybertron?"

"Megatron, object of this carrier's loyalty-"

"Is he?" Jazz said. "Or did you swear loyalty to what he said he wanted?"

Soundwave didn't answer, beginning to arch backward, shrieking digital noise as the glitching began to cycle in a vicious loop through his cortex. Jazz raised his voice, afraid that Soundwave couldn't hear him over his own pain.

"'Cause I think this carrier model is functioning properly," Jazz said. "You swore loyalty when Megatron said he wanted to save Cybertron. When you couldn't believe that anymore, you looked for a way out. Because you're loyal!"

"Keep it up!" From outside, Ratchet yelled over Soundwave's shrieks and the medical alerts sounding at his console. "He's right at the edge, but he's holding steady! Just keep it up!"

"You got stuck between a rock and a hard place," Jazz pressed. "You wanted to save the planet from the Senate and the evil Primes. Megatron was doing that, so you swore loyalty."

Soundwave had stopped struggling, grasping at the wall, seizing up so tightly that his internal frame began to groan and crack under the pressure.

"But then Megatron turned into something as nasty as the Senate he got rid of," Jazz said. "And the new Prime seemed okay. And your programming knew something was wrong."

Soundwave's static went back to a low hiss, but if that was because he was listening or because he'd simply run out of energy, Jazz couldn't tell. He couldn't ask Ratchet for help-if he stopped talking, Soundwave might stop fighting his own cortex.

"Your programming is working fine," Jazz said. "You can't be disloyal 'cause you're loyal to saving Cybertron. You couldn't keep lying to yourself anymore."

Soundwave's optics were already flickering. With a heavy vent, Jazz looked down in defeat. He didn't need Ratchet to tell him the mech was on the edge. Jazz had held Prowl while he slipped into a crash, and he knew what it looked like.

"Programming...stable?"

Jazz's head snapped up. "Yes, your programming's stable! Damn, mech, do you ever use your linking verbs?"

Soundwave's static faded. His vents came in short, sharp bursts. He barely moved, staring at the ceiling, trembling with the effort to somehow hold himself up out of a system crash.

"Carrier model, systems operational?"

"Yes," Jazz said, sliding his hand to Soundwave's arm, leaning over him and grabbing his other hand. "You got your loyalty for Cybertron mixed up with Megatron, that's all, and your programming had to readjust."

Soundwave relaxed enough to slowly relax into the corner again. His arm slipped down and lay on his lap. He sucked in a long, shaky vent.

"Soundwave, loyalty to Megatron false."

Jazz bit his lip. Soundwave was still staring at the ceiling, processing what Jazz had said, what he remembered, and what he knew now. If Jazz pushed, he could lose the gains he'd made, but how nerve-wracking it was to hear Soundwave sounding out his loyalties.

"Soundwave, desire to restore Cybertron. Decepticons, no longer working to that goal. Therefore...Soundwave's goals no longer align with Decepticons."

Waiting for Soundwave to continue, Jazz hesitated for several long seconds. When nothing else came, he eased close enough to hear Soundwave's low vents and the tiny servos in his chest whining with activity.

"Who does Soundwave align with, then?"

A long pause followed as Soundwave considered that. With slow blinks, Soundwave shook his head and faced him.

"...not known yet."

TBC...