Part 35

Prowl and Soundwave stared at each other across the long table.

Neither moved. Neither spoke. Occasionally there was an audible cough of an engine, a fan that whirred to life and faded again. Even the click of their optics resetting was audible in the empty room.

Of course their cortexes were not still. Prowl had over twenty missions to monitor, including teams in the field and espionage reports to match against the known forces of the Decepticons, let alone the activities of the relevant Earth governments, along with all the troop movements on the Ark. These could not wait. Fully thirty percent of his processing power remained absorbed with those tasks at all times.

He calculated another ten percent of his cortex contemplated Jazz—his missions, his status, his well-being, his moods, his maddening refusal to talk—and kept a receptor open to his communication frequency, similarly at all times.

That left over half of his processors to be increasingly annoyed with Soundwave.

A question struck him. Cortex partitioning was not something any other bot might ask about, but for Prowl, this was a daily fact of life, and he imagined that Soundwave would be no different. This presented a rare chance for comparison. After all, if Prowl were cut off from the Ark, what else would he use that processor power for?

"You are disconnected from the Decepticon mainframe," Prowl said. "What percentage of your cortex does that free from the war?"

Soundwave reset his optics, surprised that Prowl even cared.

"Precise percentage, difficult to calculate. Soundwave, all resources devoted to the war for millennia. Recent desire to defect, only current draw on processing power. Thus...rough estimate, eighty percent of processing power freed."

Would Soundwave think that Prowl didn't dedicate enough resources to his own faction? Prowl hid his frown, but he couldn't keep the disapproval out of his voice.

"The war demanded that much front end memory?" Prowl asked. "Does that include maneuvering through Starscream's machinations, Megatron's scheming or blackmailing your entire faction?"

"...yes." Soundwave heaved a long exhaust cycle, bowing his helm slightly. "Decepticons, live up to unironic reading of faction name. As energon grew scarce, mechs prone to betrayal. 'Stabbing each other in the back.'"

Prowl stiffened. He didn't have to guess where Soundwave had heard that turn of phrase. Long hours of talking with Jazz had altered Soundwave's vocal patterns, and the bot hadn't seemed to notice yet.

The same way that Jazz had not noticed a growing crush until that infatuation became impossible to ignore.

Prowl frowned harder.

Soundwave wondered if this was the day that the Autobots would finally kill him.

"And the other twenty percent?" Prowl asked.

"Safeguarding cassette resources. Telepathic readings for own protection."

"From mechs trying to rise up and take your place?" Prowl said.

Soundwave nodded. "High position, coveted. Megatron, sure of this mech's l-l-loyal...ty. Other mechs, could not understand it was lllllllllloyalllllllll service that assured my rank. "

Prowl didn't mention the verbal ticks in Soundwave's speech. They were far more preferable than the crashing he'd gone through before, and he seemed more and more capable of admitting that his loyalty had shifted.

"Your own faction plotted against you," Prowl said, "and you had to calculate for the deceit of your leaders. Why did you stay with the Decepticons for so long? You could have gone neutral."

Soundwave shook his helm very, very slowly. "Considered neutrality. For twenty nanoclicks. No cohesive structure or community. Only refugees. Percentage of survival, minimal."

Prowl didn't ask about why Soundwave hadn't joined the Autobots. Back then, even Prowl hadn't really served the Autobot Primes. He had rallied to Optimus Prime, practically a holy messiah. They'd needed time to spread his message of all becoming as one, and Optimus' guerilla force had always been comparably smaller than the other sides. Not just soldiers but true believers.

"In any case," Prowl said, returning to the subject. "Your processors have been nearly completely freed up, then. What are your current allocations?"

Soundwave shifted uncomfortably, looking askance. Nevermind that it was a rude question—he could feel his processors heating up with the other mech's judgment.

"Fifteen percent, base functions. Ten percent, cassettes—function, status. Twenty percent, calculating scenarios of Decepticon strike and odds of reprisal from Mmmegatron. Thirty percent, writing and posting new texts to the surnet. All remaining functions, devoted to Jazz's philosophy."

Prowl's fingertips tapped impatiently on the table.

"His 'philosophy'?"

Soundwave nodded, eager to move the—debriefing? interrogation?—to a different subject, one that he could speak more fluently on.

"Jazz, spoke at length. Discussion of earth human cultures, music, with comparison to ancient Cybertronian music. Soundwave, shared Steel Lunaire, Insilico Syndicate, F4te and other discographies. In return, received ambient soundtracks and background radiation tracks from Autobots, Cosmos and Blaster."

Prowl straightened slightly. "You hate Blaster."

For a moment, Soundwave pressed his denta tight, his mouth set in a firm line. He visibly warred with his own feelings, more visibly than he'd ever done so with his shifted loyalties to Megatron. Prowl found himself recording the change if only for reference later. Soundwave looked...offended.

"Blaster..." Soundwave paused. "Blaster..."

A long, deep vent. Then—

"Blaster, adequate." Soundwave's engines suddenly ran a cooling cycle as he grew overheated, and he continued too quickly. "Adequate judge of single musical genre. And in expression of genre to Jazz. In all other functions, Blaster remains inferior."

Prowl almost snorted. That single compliment sounded like it had been dragged out of Soundwave as reluctantly as a complete oil change.

"Ambient?" he echoed. "That is the low frequency, simple composition sounds, yes?"

Soundwave's optics narrowed. "Deceptively simple. Precision sounds."

Prowl let the comment slide. "I wouldn't have thought that a war build would prefer something so low key."

"Jazz, made excellent case," Soundwave said. "Prowl, never recommended?"

Shifting in his seat, Prowl took that as the challenge it was obviously intended as. "Jazz is not a topic for this conversation."

"Prowl asked first."

"Then I shall refocus this interrogation." Prowl placed his datapad down on the desk, giving Soundwave more of his precious processing power. "Who else on this base do you consider of a warbuild nature?"

The question should have thrown Soundwave for a loop, but he had already anticipated it, or something similar, and he shook his helm once.

"Negative. No other Autobots of warbuild nature. Surrender only possible to J—"

"Why?" Prowl cut him off testily. "What about our frontliners—Sideswipe, Sunstreak—"

"Probability of surviving surrender to frontline Autobots, two percent."

"Because of their unquestioning loyalty?" Prowl asked. "Straightforward tactics? What are your variables?"

"Prowl, questioning Jazz loyalty?" Soundwave reset his optics, sitting straight. "Jazz, superior. Most loyal Autobot."

"I thought I said—"

"Prowl, returned subject to Jazz if only tangentially."

Prowl took a long, long vent. A full cycle of coolant. Even shunted some of his processing on Red Alert, who grumbled but took the added base functions without hesitating.

"Describe," Prowl said through grit denta, "your variables for deciding war build functionality."

"Unswerving dedication to the mission," Soundwave said readily. "Treated Soundwave as worth more while functioning than destroyed."

"Marginally," Prowl muttered. "What else?"

"Practiced combat skill set," Soundwave said, but his optics turned and focused on the table as his faceplate warmed. "To counter...in retrospect, badly calculated surrender tactic."

"Didn't realize that kidnapping and sexual coercion doesn't do it for an Autobot?" Prowl jabbed.

Soundwave's faceplate heated further, although he refused to bow his helm.

"Superior skill, key variable. Autobot interface habits..." Soundwave's vocal unit choked a little. "Admittedly, still learning."

Learning well, if Prowl was honest with himself. Learned well enough that Jazz had fallen however slightly for an officer—ex-officer, he thought—of the enemy faction. While Prowl—Jazz's first, Jazz's trusted, Jazz's 'trying to make up for one bad decision' mech—was left in the cold, hoping for Jazz's continued attention. While Soundwave was privileged enough to hold conversations, share music, be ridiculously shiny for a Decepticon, to write porn that he was clearly forgiven for—

"And do the rest of your 'readers' find your learning superior?" Prowl demanded, already knowing the answer, having read the comments on Soundwave's latest civilian/warbuild fiction. "Or are you still five point nine out of tune?"

"Two point seven," Soundwave countered. "Mechs creating Deceptively Yours, understanding of all but most extreme warbuild fantasies."

"Pornography is no adequate teacher," Prowl snapped.

"Prowl, offering?" Soundwave snapped just as tersely.

And with that comment landing between them like a wet mess they couldn't ignore, they both went rigid as their processors calculated—

"Enough," Prowl said, standing quickly. "Your input is no longer required on counter-Decepticon activities. Why Jazz felt you were necessary, I will not understand—"

Soundwave's mutter was out before he could stop himself, not that he would have tried too hard.

"Prowl, five point nine percent out of tune with Jazz."

Prowl's engine growled even as he drew himself up straight, choking off his fuel intake, quieting his systems, refusing to give Soundwave the satisfaction. He refused to run the numbers. Soundwave had been wrong about Jazz's interests in his wretched stories. Soundwave was wrong about this as well. That was all there was to it.

He wished he was taller than Soundwave as he moved to walk past him. For turning into a glorified boom box, the Decepticon was ridiculously large. Not as bad as a jet, but still larger than a mech who turned into a police prowler.

The door slid open. A green mech appeared, looking up at Prowl.

Prowl gazed back in surprise. He'd been told this would be a closed interrogation, with only two guards at the door. The twins, barely visible in the hall, didn't move, their guns slung at a relaxed ready. Whoever this was, he must have had clearance.

Which was his first indication that this was wrong. Red Alert would have notified him.

His second clue was that he didn't recognize the mech. Prowl knew every single Autobot on the base.

His third clue was that the door shut behind the mech and locked so hard that the mechanism visibly burned out.

And then the mech's optics turned upward in his helm as he drew a heavy gatling gun from subspace.

Prowl had enough time—whole nanoclicks—to notify Red Alert and yell "assassin" before the gun fired.

The expected pain did not come. The room suddenly seemed to turn blue and grey, and another nanoclick passed before he realized that Soundwave was in front of him, pushing the gun's barrels up at the ceiling. Then Soundwave reached both hands back, clenched in fists, and slammed the green mech with so much force that the mech's torso ruptured.

Prowl backed away, drawing his acid gun and aiming. He found that he was gulping in air. "Glorified calculator" was the usual slur on his subordinates' glossa, and he usually took solace in having been in his share of fights and killing his share of 'cons. But Prowl was no frontliner, no warbuild, and for years—decades—the Autobots had kept him as far from the actual fighting as possible. His cortex for strategy was simply too valuable to risk on a battlefield.

In the back of his processors, startled out of their calculations, he understood that Soundwave had applied five metric tons of pressure at twenty-five miles an hour, that the tensile strength of the mech's torso had sheared in the middle. That the second punch left the mech's legs dangling uselessly, their wiring snapped and pulled by the impact, and that only Soundwave's fist bracing the mech against the wall kept him upright.

But there was so much oil on the floor. So much energon splashed on the walls. Coolant dripping from the mech's face as its optics fell out of their sockets and its jaw hung loose from one hinge.

This was what warbuilds were for.

5.9% out of tune, he thought, just enough to forget that Soundwave was more than his armaments, his sonic weapons, his cassettes.

The Autobots had taken for granted that Soundwave was cuffed at all times when out of his cell. It almost went without saying. A cuffed mech was a subdued mech, wasn't he? And now Soundwave used the cuffs to his advantage to tear a mech in half.

Prowl stood straight, lowering his gun, taking a step back.

No—that didn't compute. Soundwave should not have been able to generate that kind of force. The other mech should not have been so easily torn.

"It's a corpse," Prowl said, stepping back. He tried to send a signal to Red Alert and found instead a dozen messages and more pouring in, blaring as loud as the security officer's name now that Prowl was paying attention.

Total base lockdown.

High alert.

Intruder alert.

Does not register.

NO SPARK

NO SPARK

"It's a bomb—" Prowl got out just before the blast sent him backwards against the wall. Everything seemed to float, the room erupted in sparkling green shrapnel, and as Prowl's cortex demanded to try to calculate the position of every sharp fragment, his processors froze, hovered on the delicate edge of consciousness, and then finally crashed.

Tbc...