Part 49
Operation Deceptively Yours, now under the auspices of Operation Fuck fer Peace, called it quits halfway through shift. Rewind had collapsed in Mirage's hand a joor ago, Hound was dragging from an earlier mission with Groove, and FirstAid had two more stints in medbay before he could even hope to reach a berth. Even Soundwave sat with his helm propped in his hands, optics shut, drowsing in a light defrag as he waited for an escort back to berth.
"Well, don't y'all look tuckered out."
Blaster scooted to one side so FirstAid could slip by, then came up to the table and gently took Rewind in his hands. Neatly tucking him into his cassette mode, Blaster set him into his case to recharge.
"Really long day, huh?"
"The longest," Mirage vented, already rousing Hound up out of his chair and leading him toward the door. "Can you stay here for a few? Soundwave's escort is on their way, but they're running late."
"Uh—bot, I didn't—"
"Thanks a bunch, Blaster, I owe you one, ta!"
Blaster watched him vanish out the door, resetting his optics once. His back was turned to the one mech he'd never thought to face off the battlefield, and his comrades had abandoned him here. With a handwave and jaunty salute, no less.
He gave a long vent meant to settle his twitching servos. And heard a similar vent behind him.
Blaster scowled.
This was ridiculous.
He was not going to stand here for the entire time, pretending Soundwave wasn't there.
He was the Autobot here. He was the base's resident communications officer and the best boombox this side of Cybertron—and no two bit defecticon was going to make him feel any weirder about this than he already did.
Blaster turned and took a seat at the table, not exactly opposite Soundwave, but close enough.
They were silent, regarding each other over the memories of their previous fights. There had been duels, little wars between their cassettes, raging sonic blasts that destroyed buildings and threatened to rupture their spark had been quieter fights, maneuvering signals in the sky, disrupting satellites and scrambling signals. And always in the small moment after one of them claimed victory, jubilant cheers or hollow laughter needled the loser.
"Jazz says you traded him Steel Lunaire," Blaster said. "The whole discography."
Soundwave narrowed his optics. Was this a trap? Should he remain quiet? Would silence be taken as antagonizing a ranking bot in a hostile base? Or was Blaster, as Jazz had implied, eager for files Soundwave might have?
86%, Blaster wanted music files. Which meant that there was an 86% chance that Soundwave had the upper hand.
"...Jazz assertion, correct."
"...did he trade you anything for it?"
"Affirmative," Soundwave said. "Selection of ambient sounds. No spare time for more."
"No spare time?" Blaster echoed. "For a download?"
"Steel Lunaire discography, complete. Recorded at highest quality, no compression." Soundwave sat a little straighter and deliberately baited the hook. "File, very large."
"Huh." Blaster tapped his fingers on the table, drumming out a faint beat.
Soundwave said nothing, his faceplate unreadable.
"Jazz said you also had Insilico Syndicate and F5te in there."
"Among others."
Blaster shifted in his seat, glanced at the door to make sure it was sealed, and leaned a little forward.
"Kaonitics?"
That provoked a reaction. Soundwave's optics widened, and he leaned back, bringing his hands in closer to his cassette casing. The protective gesture wasn't lost on Blaster.
"Chill, mech, I ain't looking to cause trouble," he said, lifting both his hands. "I only managed to save one of their albums, and from a pretty shabby pirate station, too."
"...'save', a good description," Soundwave said. "After Kaon's fall, little survived."
Blaster didn't respond. The unspoken curse of communications was that, when a city fell, he had to listen. He'd listened to Praxus the night it fell, with the shrieks of civilians and the rage of the jets. The night had been nothing but murder.
Kaon...
Kaon had been a death of inches.
Kaon had never been a hub of the arts like Iacon or the sciences like Vos. It hadn't been as rich as Praxus. But it housed and manufactured numerous warbuilds, and taking Kaon had given functionism its muscle.
As functionism became a political force, anything deemed outside of a mech's need was deemed unnecessary. Extraneous. Wasteful. All of Cybertron was a grand machine, and every mech was but a cog in that machine. No writing, no art, nothing that did not serve the needs of the whole could be allowed.
Music that helped a mech work faster or focus had the Prime's blessing. Music too distracting or, worse, subversive, could land a mech in prison. Mechs who refused to be corrected by prison were then transferred to the re-education centers of Kaon. The city became the center of reprogramming, rewelding, and execution.
To Blaster, living in nearby Kalis, the music scene of Kaon sounded like a choir of voices slowly diminishing one by one. There were a couple of state-sanctioned radio stations airing their news, philosophy and bland drumbeats to keep the energon flowing. And there were dozens of small stations, little transponders a mech could run out of their apartment, airing what was really happening. Kidnappings, murders, what little information that could sneak out, sandwiched between the most screaming nightlife that Blaster had ever heard. As if Kaon itself was roaring in pain, mechs played music nonstop at hidden raves that didn't end. Blaster recorded, boosted signals, gave interviews to mechs...and listened as each station slowly died, one by one. Cut off on air, with a mech's fading screams under breaking cassettes, Kaon slowly went silent.
By the time Megatron and his forces had attacked the city, most of the musicians had been reprogrammed or smelted.
"How'd you even manage it?" Blaster asked. "I heard their rave get hit—I heard everyone inside die."
"...as did I."
The massacre hadn't taken long. In the time before the war, many mechs hadn't had armaments at all, and as the functionists grew, weaponry was simply unnecessary to most mech functions. There had been screams, the sound of laser fire, a few paltry return shots, and the final screech of a chrys-guitar on a single note.
"Assault on Kaon, launched a cycle later," Soundwave said. "Megatron, took functionist headquarters. Soundwave, attached to Armada forces taking smelters. Found functionist priests smelting all remaining prisoners. Many freed...many already dead. Kaonitics, all but one grayed and gone."
Blaster grimaced, but not for the dead mechs. They had died millenia ago—he had done his grieving and more. Part of him rebelled at hearing the Decepticons doing anything beneficial. Part of him rebelled at sympathy for Soundwave, who stared at a distant point past the table.
"One was still alive?" Blaster asked.
Soundwave shut his optics tight. The new protocols that Prowl had let him download allowed him to mask some of his feelings, but the memories were powerful. It was a time when Megatron had been at his most heroic, the cause had been the most pure, and Soundwave completely sure that he was doing the right thing. He was still certain that the Decepticon cause had been right. Just...not anymore.
"Kaonitic drummer Shells...helm slagged. Arms shot off. Pedes, dismembered. Shells' spark, trapped in a steel box."
Blaster turned his helm. "Yeah, sounds about right. Functionists carved up bots to make it easier to send 'em to the smelter. Primus...poor slag."
"Tried to read his cortex." Soundwave swallowed the oil hitting the back of his throat. "Shells...mech, incoherent. Spark, corrupted and damaged. Opportunity to save discography presented itself. When downloaded ended, spark faded."
Much of the story remained unsaid, but Blaster could read between the lines. A corrupted spark was a mad, glitched out thing, barely a pulse fueled by its last lingering emotions. Touching something like that was a nightmare, even just with crossed cables. He couldn't begin to understand what it was like to actually feel that madness in his own cortex.
Neither spoke. Blaster obviously wanted the songs. Soundwave had their file up and active. Trades were often done along such lines—what could Blaster offer for the music? But there was a difference between swapping files and swapping files over the dead.
"...I got a 1.58 Ghz signal that'd give 'em one hell of a comeback," Blaster offered.
Soundwave considered the offer for a long moment. In all the time he'd been part of the planetary communications grid, he hadn't played any of the music he'd recovered and salvaged. Their resistance had turned into a full-blown war with factions springing up overnight, and Megatron had relied on him to coordinate their global offenses. And then the Autobots had escaped and Megatron had followed…
"Blaster, query," Soundwave started slowly.
"...yeah?"
"Never played Kaonitics on your station. Blaster, boosted signals. Framed interviews as brief insets between songs." Soundwave's optics narrowed. "Blaster, did not play most anti-functionist songs or air full speeches. Blaster, safe. Did nothing."
Blaster's mouth parted slightly, and he took a vent that brought him straight.
"So that's what crawled up your exhaust pipe," he realized. "Is that why you hated me all this time?"
Real bitterness colored Soundwave's empty tone.
"Blaster, had voice. But all talk, no shock."
Blaster leaned back in his seat, his arm stretched out on the table in front of him. He stared at Soundwave, gauging how willing the other mech was to hear an explanation. Should he simply get up and storm out, his loyalties and devotion to the cause so insulted? He owed Soundwave nothing, and here Soundwave was anyway—so much for the glorious revolution.
"What's your uppermost range?" he demanded.
"8.288 μ∞," Soundwave said slowly, expecting a trick.
"Mine's around the same," Blaster said. "Now. After tons of military upgrades. But when I started, I only had 3.339 μ∞."
Soundwave tilted his helm back, looking at him skeptically.
"3.339 μ∞...impossible. Barely functional."
Blaster scoffed. "I'll have you know that was top of the line for civilians. With the most illegal modifications, true. But all'a that boosting and pirating? I did that on pure skill."
Now Soundwave narrowed his optics, recognizing that for the oblique shot across his box that it was. But he also recognized that Blaster had little to gain from lying and that everything he said could be verified later.
Dark thoughts filled Soundwave's helm. If his telepathy circuitry had been activated, he could have peered into Blaster's memories, into his emotions, and found the lies and half-truths, the dirty little secrets that the other mech held. Anything to wipe that smug, cocky grin off of his faceplate. But Soundwave couldn't, and they both knew it.
Recoiling from Soundwave's glare, Blaster vented softly and shook his helm once. "Mech...if looks could kill, I'd be one dead pile of slag."
Soundwave didn't bother to argue. In his spark, he knew that Blaster could have taken recordings from other sources rather than simply boosting from Kaon, knew that he could have spun more tracks from Decepticon stations in other cities. Soundwave knew that Megatron's speeches had been processed, put to music, cut to soundbites—he'd done it himself before officially joining the cause. And he knew that having pieces of accurate news and cries for help from Kaon had been powerful simply because they'd been aired on a hot Autobot station among popular songs. In his own way, Blaster had recruited for the Decepticons just as well as Soundwave had.
But Soundwave didn't have to like it.
A single moment couldn't erase millennia of hating Blaster, the frustration of failed assassination attempts, the endless maneuvering around each other's signals and satellites, the rage of a failed mission or the aggravation of ripping away a victory that should never have been in doubt. The impotence of sitting across from Blaster, stripped of his own authority, command, and function.
Soundwave clamped down on his emotions. If Laserbeak or Ravage had been there, he could have shunted the process over to them. But he was alone, and there was no point in indulging in useless sentiment.
"1.5 Ghz signal now?"
"S'what I can spare from the day to day grind," Blaster said. "But it's a good signal, and it'll give them a great comeback to mechs who haven't heard them in ages, if ever."
Blaster didn't mention that it'd be a fitting tribute, or a fine remembrance. He didn't say that it was what the band would have wanted. He certainly didn't beg.
And Soundwave didn't try to negotiate. When Soundwave's escort finally came, the mechs walked in on Blaster and Soundwave trading datapads in silence, exchanging mountains of audio files.
Jazz stood on the high plateau in front of the Ark, overlooking what Prowl had turned into a glorified training ground. He glanced sideways at Prowl, who stood at easy attention beside him. Jazz had been faintly worried about attending one of Prowl's training sessions, after his own elation at evading paperwork had worn off. Did Prowl still want to try for Jazz's affections? But it was impossible to tell. Prowl had a killer poker face.
At the foot of the plateau, anti-cross-faction Autobots who had been involved in the shipping fights now stood in neat rows, all at parade rest, waiting for orders. The sky looked like rain coming, providing a gray backdrop to the gloomy faceplates before him.
"Damn," Jazz said. "Gotta admit, I knew how many there were, but it's different to see 'em all in one place."
Prowl gave a small nod. "Hence why it was so critical to address this. Megatron has sunk his claws in deep and we didn't even realize it."
"...have you told 'em yet?" Jazz asked.
"No. Optimus said to wait and allow him to do so."
Jazz frowned.
"He's planning something."
Prowl nodded again.
Jazz's frown deepend. "You're planning something."
Prowl gave another nod. "These war games are part of a long-term plan."
"...gonna fill me in on it?"
"Soon," Prowl assured him. "After this demonstration. Are your bots ready?"
Jazz didn't look at the mechs behind him. "'Course they are—you think I'd bring us here half-cocked?"
But he sent a quick ping to verify just in case.
Y'all ready to do me proud?
His mechs didn't snap to attention. He'd warned them beforehand that they were to stand in a line but to stay casual and project an air of easy confidence. "You're my bots, elite of the elite, so you're disciplined, but you're cool about it, capiche? Don't go egging 'em on, but don't look like new-sparked cadets out there, neither." All of them were following his instructions to the letter.
Hound and Smokescreen pinged back; FirstAid and Bumblebee followed a second after. Beachcomber, at the end of the line, gave a cautious reply.
You sure you really want me an' 'Aid out here? I'm not really Spec Ops material…
'Comber, you start that trash again and I'll put you through the crash course I gave Mirage, and trust me, you ain't want that. Only reason I haven't pulled you in on the team is you're too pure a soul. But I figure playing around in the dirt is right up your alley.
Beachcomber vented wearily at the view below him. That crowd makes having fun look like work.
Jazz gave him a positive ping as a pat on the back. Prowl was starting.
"—a preliminary round, and the top scores will go on to compete and represent us against Autobot Special Operations."
A murmur went through the bots beneath them. Jazz heard the subtle 'us' versus 'them' that Prowl was building—so this was the plan to build up the sense of camaraderie between the ranks again.
As Prowl put them to their paces, a brutal hill climb up the steeper part of the plateau, Jazz wondered if putting them against his bots wouldn't build resentment instead, especially if his own team won every event. And he voiced that worry quietly to Prowl.
I hope your bots put in a good showing , Prowl said. This is also to demonstrate the skills and prowess of the bots they don't normally associate with, rebuild some of that respect. But…
Here Prowl turned his helm to smile at him.
'Every event'? My mechs have been training for weeks. You might be surprised at the outcome.
Jazz wordlessly nodded once, accepting the answer.
He sent his message out to his own mechs.
If you lose, double trainings for a month .
Fortunately Prowl was not facing them, and so he didn't notice the collective wince that went through their otherwise casual look. Beachcomber and FirstAid looked at each other, not sure if that applied to them, and decided not to ask.
The first round went swiftly—a hillclimb up the sloped side of the plateau. The rest spaced themselves out to get a good view of the coming event. As volunteers from Prowl's bots held a quick runthrough on a smaller hill, sorting themselves into the fastest and most agile, Hound and Smokescreen nodded at each other and moved down to the bottom of the main ramp.
"What you think?" Hound asked, motioning at the route up the side of the plateau.
Before Smokescreen could answer, a rough laugh came from behind them. They both glanced back and found Brawn seated on a rocky outcropping, joined by several of the more compact bots, including Cliffjumper and Powerglide.
"I think you're the wrong bot for the job." Brawn nodded at Blurr and Tracks, who were already past the halfway point of the preliminary, well ahead of the rest of the pack. "Speed's what you need, and you aren't exactly the quickest bots."
"Tracks has good traction," Hound admitted. "And Blurr has the best accelerators this side of Iacon."
"That'll be tough to beat," Smokescreen said, "since we have to play fair."
Powerglide tilted his helm. "'Play fair'? How could you cheat on this?"
"A smokescreen to hide the route," Hound said, "and an illusion just a few inches offsides."
Cliffjumper almost came to his pedes, leaning forward aggressively and raising his voice. "You can't do that—it'd crash 'em!"
"Yup," Hound said. "And we swore we wouldn't cause any casualties. So we'll see what I can do so I don't drag down my speedy companion here."
Smokescreen gave a rueful laugh, crossing his arms as they waited. Soon enough, Blurr and Tracks had reached the top of the plateau.
"Just like Arizona?" Smokescreen asked.
Hound grimaced. "What, Tuscon?"
Smokescreen shook his helm. "Oh, Primus, don't remind me. No no. Gold Canyon."
"Huh. Yeah, that'll work." Hound started walking back several meters, moving into the crowd that parted to let him through. "Get a good headstart, okay?"
Smokescreen looked doubtfully at the cliff-face. "Mark a path?"
Nearby, Warpath laughed and motioned at the dusty patch of sand below the cliff. "Just make out where you're gonna splat, huh?"
Hound glanced up at Prowl and Jazz, who were giving Blurr and Tracks time to rest and let the remaining mechs gather to watch the competition. As much as Hound didn't like the trash talking going on around them, he didn't defend himself or Smokescreen—not with Jazz's training triggered in his helm.
I ain't training ya in diplomacy—Decepticons ain't gonna like you neither. Too bad for them—they can make friends with your bullets. You know the worst person you'll ever piss off? You—when you fuck up 'cause you let yourself get mad.
Hound studied the route—the path up was steep, at least a 45 degree angle just to start, and it swiftly ramped up until it was less of a drive and more of a mountain climb. And the ground was treacherous, pitted with loose rock and sand.
Beachcomber, he asked, any advice?
You know as good as I do that it's all fine grained matrix material and grus sand down there, Beachcomber answered. My advice? Try not to spin out so hard your wheels melt.
You're a ray of sunshine, 'Comber, you really are.
Tell you what, Beachcomber said. What if I told you that there's some fine dust up here blowing around beside us?
Dust…? Hound wondered. So what that there was dust in the air when… No. He glanced around the desert and realized that wind was too moist for dust. The air was damp. The only dust kicked up came from other mechs' pedes.
Dust blowing around where there shouldn't be any? Mirage was up there on top of the plateau, hiding from Prowl, probably on the other side of Jazz, come to watch Hound compete.
He almost missed Smokescreen's prompting that they were waiting on him. With a rushed acknowledgment, he finished scanning and prepared his illusion, the last to transform to altmode.
Blurr and Tracks came down and took their places. Warpath stood at the base of the climb, serving as a marker between the two trails so they wouldn't collide. Then Prowl counted down and the alarm sounded.
Blurr and Tracks shot forward so fast that Hound almost startled away. He took a precious few seconds to project his illusion, lines and arrows that went up the side of the rockface and clearly marked the worst dangers, the most effective route. Smokescreen revved hard, committed the image to memory, and then sped toward the climb.
Smokescreen put on a burst as he came to the end of the sprint and let momentum carry him up, and he locked his tires so that he couldn't slip backward. Nevertheless, as he came a few feet below where Tracks and Blurr had also come to a halt, the sand crunched under his tires and he felt himself spinning against nothing, about to slide—
Hound came up behind him, bumper to bumper, pushing. And his rough jeep tires clung to the stone in ways that a sporty racecar couldn't, with aggressive military bar treads and steel cleats. The climb turned into more of a drag as Smokescreen gave up on his wheels and transformed, clinging to the side of the rockface and grabbing at the handholds Hound had pointed out to him.
Beside them, Blurr and Tracks both transformed, but without a jeep for their own support, they quickly slid back along the sandstone to the ground.
Scrabbling at the edge of the stone, Smokescreen managed to get one arm over the side, then the other, and he swung one leg up just as Hound's tires finally lost traction. As the jeep started to slide, taking chunks of rock under his treads, Smokescreen got the rest of his frame up. Smokescreen reached out and caught Hound, who transformed and grabbed his hand in midair.
As Smokescreen pulled him up, they were both surprised by the applause from below.
"It's only natural," Jazz said when they mentioned it. "Everyone loves a winner."
"More than that," Prowl said, not looking up as he marked the time. "The smaller powerhouses never think that they can match the sportier models at racing. Smokescreen maybe, but Hound beating Blurr and Tracks? Impossible. It's quite the morale boost for construction bots."
Prowl glanced up to see Hound's reaction to that, then realized Hound wasn't in sight. He looked again—
Don't bother, Jazz chuckled. Hound's getting his reward discretely. So what's next?
Knowing that Jazz was changing the subject—
83% Hound was gone with Mirage
—Prowl let it drop. He had the rest of the event to coordinate, and he didn't need the distraction. The final part would be tricky enough. Jazz was already eager to cut romantic ties with him and Soundwave. Prowl would have to be careful as he schemed on the fly, but his calculations were sound and he didn't think his plan would fail.
He glanced at Jazz. As long as the other mech cooperated and fell into his trap.
The only real question was if the weather would turn to rain. He hoped so. It was the one element out of his control, but he would need a light desert storm to alter the terrain just enough that Jazz would feel comfortable and relax, even just 1%.
1%.
Prowl would win if he had just one percent of luck. But he felt like he was praying for 1000%.