Chapter 8: Dancing in the Dark

There had been a time when the Autobots and the Decepticons had existed in an uneasy stalemate. The Autobots had as their advantage a certain ruthlessness and a complete disregard for any morals or ethics that they deemed inconvenient. The Decepticons had flight.

Oh yes, the Autobots certainly took potshots at the Decepticon jets and occasionally might bring down one of the Citizens, but in general the skies provided safety. That was before the Autobots started arming themselves with a barrage of anti-aircraft weapons, long-range scanners, jammers—everything and anything that could accurately target or disable a flier. Suddenly the biggest advantage of flight was that it could facilitate a hasty retreat from an Autobot menace.

That was why Decepticons patrolled at such high altitudes. That was why Starscream and Soundwave did not immediately spot the Autobot.

"It's not that I object to your hobby," Starscream was saying in her haughtiest, sniffiest voice, "but surely you could create some . . . pets . . . that require less exercise." She glanced at her system display as Soundwave sent her a file—the Decepticons' patrol schedule. "Yes, I know we'd be flying in any case, but I could do without having to wrangle your menagerie . . . Speaking of which, where'd the gold one go?"

Soundwave slowed, scanning for Buzzsaw, the twin to bird-like Laserbeak. Laserbeak, at least, was gliding sedately alongside the two jets. Soundwave angled his flight to point out Buzzsaw's location with his wing.

"Well, get her back up here, it's dangerous to—oh REALLY NOW." Starscream stared in disapproval as Laserbeak took this as a cue to mischievously divebomb Buzzsaw. They swooped around each other, tumbling and play-fighting in mid-air.

Silent though he usually was, Soundwave had his own mysterious way of communicating with his creations. He sent some unheard message and robotic birds rose quickly to rejoin the jets.

"Hmph, that's more like it," Starscream said, yawing to the left. "Let's get back on our flight path before we hit a Human airplane or— what's that down there? Energon." Starscream's already clipped accents became sharper still. "Soundwave. Send Laserbeak."

The bird-like mini-con dropped towards the ground while less experienced Buzzsaw continued to circle with the jets. Moments later Soundwave was relaying information from Laserbeak, insistent pings about the chemical composition of the energon along with video footage—though in the dark this last proved hard to decipher.

Suddenly, two swaths of light cut across the darkness below. They were not at car-level.

"Continue monitoring Laserbeak and hold your flight pattern," Starscream said shortly. She peeled off to investigate. The spy-bird's video feed continued to broadcast, the color values changing as it tried to adjust for the darkness. It showed a mech with hands and legs stained with energon, two lit headlights built into his chest—

"Starscream."

Soundwave's voice was calm, but Starscream still felt startled to hear him vocalize. A rarity these days.

"Yes?" the F-16 asked tensely.

"Yellowjacket."

The Air Commander was speechless for a moment. "You aren't seriously suggesting . . . Soundwave, you must be confused. You know it could not possibly be him."

Soundwave's answer came in the form of a screenshot from Laserbeak's feed. The glare from the grounder's headlights cut across the picture, revealing the bot's colors to be black and yellow with an elaborate, mouthless facemask. An Autobot insignia was worked into the metal of his waist.

Starscream dumped the picture off her display as sudden flares of blue fire blossomed from the ground. Enemy fire . . . though woefully ill-aimed. Banking in a wide circle, she searched for movement and found her target. Two missiles streaked towards the ground.

The mech below heard them coming and broke into a run; the shockwave of the blast caught him, knocking him off his feet with such force that his body left a furrow in the rocky soil as he rolled. He struggled back to his feet, swayed for a moment, and then, with a resounding clang, fell over and lay still. A wave of surprise rolled over Starscream. With all their hijacked tech, Autobots were usually better defended and harder to take down than that. She frowned, taking a moment to answer the questioning pings raining down from Soundwave.

"Enemy down, but it may be a trap," the Air Commander commed tersely. Should she order him to keep circling? No, he'd be safer with her. "Land, but proceed with caution." She followed her own advice, transforming in mid-air and activating her thrusters just before she hit the ground. Carefully, cautiously, she glided towards the downed bot—easily located since Laserbeak was circling around and around above him, like a mechanical buzzard. The Autobot's optics and headlights had both gone dark. Nevertheless, Starscream kept both null rays fixed on him, not looking away even when she heard Soundwave landing beside her.

"It defies logic, Soundwave, but it would seem you were correct . . . It is, in fact, Yellowjacket." Starscream frowned, circling around the body so that she and Soundwave would be on opposite sides of their enemy. he leaned to study the Autobot as she spoke. "I think we need to look for another source for this . . ." Her mouth pursed in disgust as she glanced around the cyan-streaked landscape. " . . . disturbing abundance of energon. Perhaps this wretched Autobot decided to torment a Vehicon for his amusement, or—"

Soundwave held up one thin, midnight blue finger in forestallment, then pointed off to the side. Half-hidden in the shadows of a narrow channel of rocks, the still form of a mech was half-sitting, half-lying in a shallow pool of energon.

"Soundwave! You might have said something sooner. All right, all right," she said impatiently as the silent Decepticon raised his hands in a gesture of protest. "You didn't see him before—I believe you. Watch Yellowjacket while I check on the other one. Do you have stasis cuffs? Good."

It was surprisingly difficult to get a look at the Cybertronian in the narrow canyon. The energon washing around him cast a glow up his legs, up the metal arch of his fingers on the hand that was half-submerged (but not the one that was curled against his stomach, held in place by the forward hunch of his body), but the light was dim and only made the rest of his body seem darker by comparison. His helm was so far forward that it was almost touching his knees. Starscream could tell, at the very least, that he was neither a Vehicon nor a Citizen. This Cybertronian had a name, though she had a feeling no one would ever hear it again. With pity in her eyes and a gentle touch, she cupped her hand under the white enamel of his faceplate and lifted his chin.

A very faint burst of static buzzed from the damaged mech's vocalizer. That was only one of the reasons that Starscream drew her hand back in surprise. She stood quickly, her body unfolding from her crouch.

"Soundwave, contact the Heretic and inform Lord Megatron of the situation. With his approval, we shall be transporting two prisoners onto the ship. And we also require the assistance . . ." Her gaze fell to the still form at her feet. ". . . of the good doctor."


After Soundwave hailed the ship, he and Starscream carried the incapacitated Cybertronian into the open, laying the dark red mech beside the black and yellow one, but with enough distance between them that the medics would be able to work effectively. As Starscream flicked stray droplets of energon off her claws, a ground bridge flared and three Cybertronians strode out, led by a cyan mech carrying a blaster in one hand and a med-box in the other. The jet-bots behind him were both pearly white, one trimmed in purple and one in neon green, carrying several clear bags of medical grade energon and a collapsible stand between them. Soundwave had been emphatic on that point; plenty of energon was required.

Starscream turned to greet the new arrivals, or rather to greet their leader. "Ah, Knockdown."

"Commander Starscream." The cyan mech nodded in greeting; he was easily a head shorter than her, with black highlights on his wings and chest. His tone was characteristically calm, but Starscream saw his brow lower a fraction as his blue eyes drifted over the energon drying on the ground. He cast a glance at the two white jets behind him, gestured sharply towards the injured red mech with two fingers, and watched his aides rush forward to start assessing the damage and stabilizing the patient.

"That is the severely damaged one you spoke of, yes?" Knockdown queried as he set down his toolbox and popped the clasps.

"Correct, Doctor. The other one is stable. Though you would do well to keep your guard up around both."

"So they're hostile."

"One is. The other, we do not know yet."

"Hmm." Knockdown's glance went from casual to piercing as he looked over to see his med-bots staring motionless at the injured patient, frozen in fascination or disbelief. "Ampule! Jumpstart!" he snapped, his calm evaporated. "What are you doing? Waiting for him to bleed out?"

"Sorry, sir!"

"Won't happen again, it's just that—It won't happen again!"

Knockdown shook his head as they began to set up a rough IV drip. "My apologies, Air Commander. If I'd known they'd lose focus at the sight of a little spilled energon . . ."

"A little, doctor?" Starscream asked drily.

"Well." Knockdown's circular blue irises flicked over the surrounding area again. "They've seen worse, at any rate."

"So say we all. But don't be too hard on them." She moved over to the injured red Cybertronian as the medic followed. "Take a good look at your patient and tell me if you've ever seen anything like that before."

It was a testament to Knockdown's unflappable nature that he merely stared down at the face that exactly mirrored his own, albeit under a red helm rather than a blue one. But it was a measure of his shock that his expressionless stare lasted a good five minutes.

"No," he said at last. "I can't say I have ever come across this exact . . . situation."

"I take it, from your reaction, that this is not merely a relation who dropped in for a visit? A brother? A cousin?"

"No. My molds are unique." The slightest touch of arrogance in that statement, but a simple fact too.

"Well. He's certainly very like you."

"He's a grounder," Knockdown noted, his wings twitching as he tapped one of the bot's headlights.

"Nevertheless."

Knockdown didn't answer, instead examining the unconscious bot, fingers pressing against the neck to catch the pulse before inspecting the injured arm. Jumpstart and Ampule had patched up the severed energon line with a field job—patchy, leaking a little around the ends, but serviceable—and the IV drip snaked fresh energon down to the bot's fuel conduits. The two white jets lingered, full of nervous tension, until Knockdown nodded his approval and shooed them towards the yellow and black mech with a gesture.

Starscream stopped them with a piercing look. "Wait."

The two junior medics paused, exchanging glances with each other, then looking between their Air Commander and their Chief Medical Officer. Technically speaking, the medics should have had their own independent chain of command—and for the most part they did. But no one had objected when Starscream had swept them under her wing as part of her armada, on the grounds that they were all jets. Knockdown, unambitious in his own right, had not seemed to care, and Starscream was careful only to issue orders that the CMO would be willing to follow, or that he would have come up with on his own.

Most of the time.

He was looking silently at her now, politely but with his mouth thinned a little more than usual. Apparently he did not like being given direction in medical matters. Too bad for him.

"It might spare your assistants another shock," Starscream said—a subtle reminder that Knockdown's staff had room for improvement, "to know that the mech in question appears to be Yellowjacket."

Surprisingly, this got more of a reaction from Knockdown than the discovery of his double; his helm actually gave a little jerk. "But he's offline. Dead."

"So we thought. And yet . . . here we are." Starscream's claws hooked comfortably behind her back as she strolled over to the black and yellow mech. "No need to hesitate. He's in stasis cuffs."

Knockdown didn't wait for his juniors to conduct the preliminary examination this time; he dropped down on his heels to take a closer look.

Jumpstart dared to break into the conversation as he hovered. "Could he maybe be a zombie or—?" He broke off, quailing beneath the combined stares of the officers.

"You two. Contact Trauma, tell him to prepare for two incoming patients."

"We, ah, we already did, sir."

"Then check the perimeter." Knockdown waved a hand outward.

"For what, sir?" Ampule asked, her voice uncertain.

"Anything! Go." They went. Knockdown allowed himself a slight roll of his optics. "Young bots . . . spare me," he muttered, but his eyes were back on the injured patient in front of him. He lifted a scorched arm, turning it slightly to test the joint. Still functional.

He leaned back on his heels. "This is ridiculous. I examined his corpse myself." There was a thin edge of pique beneath the coolness. He touched the metal plate covering the unconscious bot's mouth as though to assure himself it was real, then pressed his fingers to the neck for a pulse. His voice dropped to a murmur. "And yet here he is . . . alive."

"Is he, doctor?"

The cyan medic looked up quickly, brow furrowed. Starscream continued pacing on her thin legs.

"Oh, he's alive, of course. But is it Yellowjacket in front of us? Or . . . merely a bot who looks a good deal like him?" She stopped, swung to face him, and now she was standing over the body of the little red mech.

Knockdown's optics flicked from his mysterious red doppelganger to the black and yellow mech. "I ran a field autopsy on him. On Yellowjacket. Once I get back to the ship and access them, I can compare—"

"As fortune would have it, I have a copy of your notes. Soundwave was able to retrieve them from the ship's dataweb." She made the file available, waiting for his system to claim it rather than sending it over. A little salve for their minor clash.

"Hmm."

Starscream watched as the medic's hands moved, skillfully separating the two halves of the yellow bot's chestplate and leaning close to study his hardware. His face was thoughtful when he at last pushed the panels closed, his hands remaining on them for a few seconds before he pushed off them to stand up.

"You were right, Commander." (Starscream smiled at the honorific.) "He's similar—almost identical—but only almost. This isn't the same bot." He dusted off his knees. "This isn't Yellowjacket."

"I assume you're referring to more than a change of paint."

He didn't answer, just looked slightly insulted.

"Forgive me." She waved away the previous question. "Any opinions, doctor?"

"If you ask me . . ." Knockdown didn't continue until his flicking optics had located Soundwave, waiting at the edge of the ground bridge. He still leaned closer and lowered his voice. "If you ask me, Shockwave's been hiding things from us."

Air Commander Starscream's eyes narrowed slightly. "So say we all."


A/N:

So I'm sure you're wondering "Why female Starscream?" Well, I was at work the other day idly thinking about two things—first, what Shattered Glass Starscream's personality should be like, second how seldom you see older female characters filling the "old wise warrior" archetype (like Kup, Ratchet, etc). At some point these two ideas merged and I thought, "You know, I think SG Starscream would be a lot like Professor McGonagall—loyal, but not crawling." (Although in a lot of ways I think she turned out more like Dowager Countess on "Downton Abbey".)

In my head, she looks pretty much the same as regular Starscream, only with better posture, more confidence, and a different paint scheme. Black body with maroon and gold highlights. Go Gryffindor!

Knock Out's counterpart is named Knockdown to minimize confusion and so I wouldn't have to type "red Knock Out / blue Knock Out" throughout the entire fic. As noted, he is a jet; this idea came solely from a DeviantArt picture by Kagekirite titled "Shattered Glass - Seeker Knock Out". Take a look, he's super cute! His personality was inspired by DA user HollowGirl44 from the picture "KnockOut and SG Knockout".