Chapter 10: Whatever Remains, However Improbable
There is nothing more deceptive than a very obvious fact.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
The original idea behind the council table, as proposed by Dreadwing, was that it would be round, with chairs set equidistant apart to symbolize the equality between the officers. To no one's surprise, he had gotten the idea from a human book.
Starscream had pointed out that not all the officers were equal, that was the whole point of having a chain of command, wasn't it? Dreadwing explained that he meant intrinsic equality of a bot's inner worth.
Megatron mildly noted that he would like the table, if they did build one, to be large enough to include other interested bots, for example—the rankless crew members. Starscream mentally facepalmed, picturing the room filling up with the teeming masses at every meeting.
Shockwave, ever practical, had pointed out that placing everyone equidistant would be nearly impossible, given the wildly divergent size and mass of the various officers, and when you factored in height—he had gone on to rattle off figures and used the word "logic" five times in rapid succession.
Such was the power of Dreadwing's sad, puppy-dog eyes that Shockwave concluded by conceding that, well, the notion might have some merit. Logically.
So the idea was put aside for further discussion, and under normal circumstances would undoubtedly been quietly dropped, as many of Dreadwing's enthusiastic yet slightly naive plans tended to be.
And then . . . Optimus and Yellowjacket killed Dreadwing, less than a week later. The remaining Decepticons, grief-stricken and guilty, agreed that the table had been a wonderful notion, and wouldn't it be nice to memorialize Dreadwing by building it—?
Unfortunately, the table really had been a pretty terrible idea. The larger bots, like Megatron and Shockwave, practically had shavings scraped off their knees whenever they jammed their legs under the table, while Knockdown, one of the shortest 'Cons, dispensed with a chair altogether and just leaned against the tabletop. The Decepticon Security Director, Airachnid, was even shorter than Knockdown and distracted everyone by sitting on the table or perching in a little swing of webbing stuck to the ceiling, as the mood took her. It did not exactly make the Decepticons look like a well-disciplined force.
Shockwave had been correct, of course . . . placing the chairs equidistance had proven impossible. Lord Megatron took up almost an entire side of the table (if something round could be said to have sides) all by himself. As Starscream slid into the seat immediately to the right of Megatron, the humor of the contrast was not lost on her—the gladiator's almost ridiculous bulk side by side with her lanky, stick-like frame.
"Ah, Starscream." The leader of the Decepticons turned slightly, smiling. "Late as usual?"
Starscream, known for harrying her Armada on the importance of punctuality and lecturing Skyquake on his questionable time-management, gave a half-amused, half-irritated twitch of her lips in response.
Knockdown leaned over to look around Soundwave. "My fault, I'm afraid, sir."
Megatron waved away his apology with one massive, golden arm. "No need to apologize, doctor. I'm sure you had—"
"—important medical matters that his staff are handling with perfect competence," Starscream broke in. "Don't encourage him, Megatron."
Across the table, Skyquake gave a rumbling chuckle. "Doctor . . . do you remember that time you were repairing the med bay palette all by yourself—"
Starscream slid a hand over her face as Knockdown's optics half-shuttered.
"And then it collapsed—"
Airachnid inched slightly away from the F-35, as though to signify 'I'm not with him.'
"And you were stuck all night?" Skyquake persisted, chuckling.
"Yes." Knockdown's cool blue eyes regarded the hulking jet over his steepled fingers. "Yes, I remember that."
"It was the funniest fragging thing I've ever seen!" Skyquake gave a deep laugh, drew back his hand to give a friendly slap on the back to the bot adjacent to him, noticed that the bot in question was Airachnid, and put his hand down rather hastily.
Soundwave tapped on the table with his finger, gaining everyone's attention. He pointed at the empty chair on Megatron's left.
"Ah, yes," Megatron said, fiddling idly with the datapad in front of him. "Shockwave may be a little late. I asked him to check on something for me."
Starscream and Knockdown exchanged a perfectly synchronized glance.
"I do need to return to my patients at some point," the cyan medic said. "Staff or no."
"Then let's begin, by all means." Megatron set the datapad down, his tone serious. "Soundwave, Starscream, you made first contact with these . . . curious individuals."
"Indeed, Lord Megatron. If you would replay the footage from Laserbeak, Soundwave—thank you." A hologram flickered into view above the table, displaying the spy-bird's recording. "We spotted a rather significant amount of energon on the ground and upon investigating—"
Startled glances ricocheted around the table as the Decepticons caught their first concrete glimpse of a black and yellow mech. "Is that Yellowjacket? If it is, I'm looking forward to gutting him."
Skyquake pushed out of his chair, gripping the edge of the table so hard that it began to buckle under his trembling fingers. "That's the mech . . . that killed my brother." His voice, usually so loud, was an ominous whisper, like distant thunder.
"No." Everyone looked at Knockdown. "After Commander Starscream disabled him, I examined him thoroughly. He's nearly identical, yes, in appearance and components, but he is definitely not Yellowjacket."
"Maybe he's a relative," Airachnid suggested. She tapped her lips with a finger, as though she was still looking forward to gutting the bot. "A twin named, hmm, Hornet. Wasp. Waspinator. Something like that."
"Thank you, my dear, for that little bit of humor. Your sense of propriety truly knows no bounds," Starscream said drily.
"Anything to lighten the mood, Commander dear."
Skyquake was still unconsciously working his fingers into the unfortunate table. "Well, why not?" he demanded. "No reason bad guys can't have twins too. And lemme tell you, if MY twin had to die, then I say THIS JERK should join the Allspark ASAP!"
"Skyquake." Megatron reached a hand towards him, although he was too far away to reach the overwrought jet. The simple gesture was enough to make the jet frown down at the table, tracing the dents he'd left in it.
"Besides, that wouldn't exactly be equitable, two dead twins on their side and only one on our—" Airachnid caught Starscream's fixed, blazing stare and decided not to complete the sentence.
Soundwave once again tapped a single finger on the table, and because he was Soundwave, everyone immediately fell silent.
"Thank you." Knockdown gave him a nod of acknowledgement. "As I was saying. This mech isn't Yellowjacket, and in my medical opinion he's no spark-split relation either. Judging by certain other findings . . ." He shuffled a few datapads with the slightest of frowns, and Starscream realized with a shock that Knockdown—Knockdown!—was actually uncomfortable.
"Allow me to continue, Doctor." She turned towards the others, her blue eyes sweeping around the table. "After neutralizing—" She cast a withering glance at Airachnid. "—Waspinator, Soundwave and I discovered a second mech. Soundwave, if you would be so good as to share some stills of the bot."
There was a moment of stunned silence as the Decepticons viewed the pictures, each image framing an energon-stained mech whose face, under his red helm, was undeniably the same narrow, triangular face as their Chief Medical Officer's.
"Slag-sucking Primus on a stick." Despite the profanity, Skyquake sounded more stunned than upset. "This is for real? It's not Photoshopped?"
"No," said Starscream, correctly guessing the meaning of the human term "Photoshopped". "It—he—is real."
"Wow." Airachnid opened her mouth, searching for something bitingly humorous to say, then just shook her head. Then her eyes narrowed slightly. "And these two are on the ship, am I understanding this correctly? And no one thought to, oh, inform the Security Director?"
"They are under guard, Airachnid." Megatron, who had been studying the images with narrowed eyes, finally spoke.
"By a bunch of medics," she grumbled. "All right, I'm just going to say it—we've got an infestation of clones."
Soundwave held up a finger and waggled it.
"I am not jumping to conclusions, Soundwave. Look at the picture, then look at Doc Knock."
"Doctor." Megatron's gaze shifted from the slideshow of pictures to the cyan Seeker. "Have you had a chance to examine this . . ." He sought for the right word. "Anomaly?"
Knockdown laced his fingers together. "Cloning does seem like the most reasonable hypothesis. I took a core scrape from . . . the red one . . . and the age of his frame registers as being the same age as my own."
"'The same age as my own' . . ." Soundwave played back Knockdown's words while tilting his head questioningly.
"I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the CNA of a clone will show the same age—the molecular age, you understand—as the original."
"In other words, for the both of you to have the same core age, while never having met or been aware of each other, is highly unlikely," Megatron summed up.
Knockdown nodded. "Basically."
"Sooo . . ." Airachnid hooked on of her legs around her little seat of webbing for better support and as she leaned forward over the table. "Why isn't Shockwave at this meeting again? He is the clone fanatic, isn't he?"
"Shockwave is researching something on that very subject for me," Megatron said gravely, raising an eyebrow as he ran a glance around the gathered mechs with understated but very present authority. "I am confident that he will have valuable contributions on this matter."
If he hasn't "valuably contributed" already, thought Starscream, looking at the picture.
"If they are clones, who made 'em?" Skyquake asked. "The Autobots?"
"The Yellowjacket lookalike has an Autobot insignia," Knockdown contributed, "although . . . that could simply be because he was cloned from an Autobot. The other has no markings of any kind."
Airachnid snorted. "Of course it's the Autobots! Who else?"
Soundwave leaned forward, replaying a clip of Starscream's voice from their patrol. "'What's that down there? . . . a disturbing abundance of energon.'"
Airachnid crossed her legs, clasping her hands around one knee. "Well, I think Tall, Dark, and Silent is right. We should be thinking about what happened as much as where these mechs came from. What's all the energon from? Were they fighting? What were they fighting? Each other? Did some Autobot decide to arrange some clone cage fighting?"
"The energon was mostly from a split line in the red bot, but they both had a significant damage from laserburns, and structural instability." The medic paused. "Interestingly, someone had patched them up a bit before we arrived."
"What?" Starscream looked at him sharply. This was the first she'd heard of that.
Knockdown nodded. "Very basic. Holo-foil and black tape on both of them. Even clamps on the severed energon lines, though that was a case of too little too late."
"Clamps. Put there by the Waspinator?" Airachnid mused.
"We are not using that name," Starscream snapped.
"Coulda been the medic." Everyone looked at Skyquake. He shrugged. "I mean, the red bot. Since he's a duplicate of Doc Knock."
Knockdown allowed himself the slightest roll of the optics. "Those skills are learned, not built in."
"They could've built him to BE a medic," Skyquake stubbornly persisted. "And then trained him."
"Then why not just train a normal bot to be a medic?"
"Well . . ." Skyquake frowned at the ceiling.
There was a silence as they all pondered.
"Test cases?" Airachnid suggested. "Two small mechs . . . easy to get rid of if something goes wrong."
"I think you're onto something!" Skyquake leaned forward enthusiastically, his weight tipping the table slightly. "They want to try out the equipment, right? But maybe something goes wrong, or maybe they just don't wanna deal with the end results. So they drag these two little grounders out in the desert and shoot them—"
"—which would explain the laserburns," Starscream admitted grudgingly.
"—and for good measure, they open up the fuel line on the red bot—"
"Ah, no." Knockdown raised his hand to stop him. "He did that himself."
"Oh." Skyquake looked disappointed. "Are you sure?"
"Positive. He had bits of wire and metal stuck in his fingers."
"Well . . . maybe he did it 'cause he was afraid to go back."
Airachnid raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you say the Autobots took them to the desert specifically to offline them? What, they just dumped them there and then changed their minds?"
"Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they weren't dumped. Maybe they escaped."
Another thoughtful silence.
Knockdown's comm fizzed to life in the midst of it. "Doc?" Trauma's voice buzzed. "Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you'd like to know—the prisoner's awake."
A/N: Meet the Decepticons! They are one big happy dysfunctional family.
They are also good at drawing conclusions, but maybe not the right conclusions. It's okay, Decepticons! YOU TRIED.
