"This is your room, by the way. You're lucky, you get your own. Most mecha have to share with three others—well, most mecha don't have to live here at all. Speaking of which, let me make one thing clear so we don't have any more mess-ups. You will stay in headquarters unless I give you express permission to leave. I don't care if you explore within the building, but if someone catches you where you aren't supposed to be, I won't step in to help you. And if you try to leave again, there isn't anything that will help you. Got it? Good."
Jazz heard footsteps, then a door closing, and Branchbinder was gone.
He lay on the ground for a while, waiting for the pain to recede and his systems to stop glitching out. He wished he could just turn off the pain. You could dull it by manipulating your pain grid, but the only way to really escape it without some kind of medical help was to shut yourself down.
After a few breems, he got to his hands and knees and then crawled over to the berth. The damage was primarily external, but it hurt a lot.
He lay on his berth for a while, then got shakily to his pedes. He was leaking a little, and he wasn't entirely sure where, but it didn't seem serious. He didn't want to just lie around until his self-repair systems fixed him though. He needed a medic or something.
There was Lilac.
Jazz remembered where her room was. He'd probably be able to get there from here. He took in a deep, shaky vent and made for the door. One of his legs twisted and groaned every time he came down on it, but he gritted his denta and kept going.
He found Lilac's office without much trouble, and knocked on the door.
"Just an astrosecond!"
Jazz leaned on the door, and nearly fell when it swooshed open.
"Oh," Lilac said.
Jazz stood up straight. "Sorry ta bother ya."
Lilac blinked, then shook her helm. "Sit," she pointed to a berth, and went over to close the door. Jazz limped over to the nearest berth and sat down. Lilac came over and studied him.
"Wow," she said. "On your first orn, huh? Who gave you that? Nope, don't tell me. I don't need to know." She pulled a chair over and sat in it. "Okay, sweetspark, I'm going to explain to you how this works. I don't help for free. You have to give me something in return."
"Like… credit?" Jazz asked.
"That works," Lilac said. "Of course, if you don't have any money, I sometimes trade in favors… only if I trust you, that is."
"I don't have any money… well, maybe thirty credit."
Lilac shook her helm. "Not enough. So let's see. Jazz, was it? What can you give me to fix you?"
Jazz shrugged, then winced. "Don't know."
"I'd say you need quite a bit of work. Probably seventy or eighty credit worth, since…" she scanned him. "…it's just on the surface. Huh." She frowned.
"What?" Jazz said.
Lilac looked into his optics. "You'd better be careful," she said. "This actually isn't so bad. Hurts like the inferno, I bet. Some mechs are good at this sort of thing."
Jazz met her gaze. "Like Branchbinder?"
Lilac huffed a sigh. "Branchbinder. Half the time I wish he'd do us all a favor and jump off a real tall building. The other half the time, I kind of like him." she shook her helm. "Know what, I'll do this one for a favor. You ever get a really good chance—a really good chance mind you—you put a knife in Branchbinder's spark chamber. Promise?"
"Uh…" Jazz said.
"What?"
"I've never killed anymech."
"Well, I'm sure by the time you ever get a good chance to off Branch, you will have." Lilac said. "He's got optics in the back of his helm, so don't go out of your way, but if a good opportunity shows up… can I count on you?"
Jazz looked down. "Okay… is this a normal sort of favor ya ask for?"
Lilac laughed. "No. Sorry. It's a real one, though. If Branch is taking any special interest in you, you must be something special, so maybe you will have an opportunity one of these orns. And I'd rather take any opportunity I can to get rid of that mech."
"Why?" Jazz asked.
Lilac smiled. "I think that's my business, don't you? So, is it a deal?"
"Sure," Jazz said. He didn't think he'd ever have to make good on that promise.
"Next time, you're paying me with money," Lilac said. "Ok? Let's see, I think I'll start with your leg. That looks pretty painful." She opened up the casing on the joint and got to work. Jazz shuttered his optics, but didn't make a sound, even though it hurt. After a few breems, she was finished with the joint.
"Okay," she said. "Jazz, I'm going to show you something. Not squeamish, are you?"
Jazz shook his helm.
"Look here," Lilac opened up his leg and showed the wires and machinery under his mesh. It wasn't comfortable. She ought to be using some kind of painkiller. "See this wire, right here?" She hooked a finger under a thin cable. Jazz choked on a gasp.
"Yeah, it's pretty sensitive, huh?" Lilac said. "You'll want to learn to recognize it, though. This is part of your sensory net. You can tell because of the thickness and material this cable's made from. If you follow it up, it goes all the way to your pain grid and motor relays." She transformed one hand into a slim blade. "And if you cut it—brace yourself…"
There was an instant of blinding pain that receded quickly.
"…okay?"
"Yeah," Jazz said.
"Now," she tapped on his dented and scraped leg. "Feel anything?"
"No," Jazz said.
"This cable is pretty easy to replace," Lilac said. "If you know you're in for something unpleasant, and you have a spare moment beforehand, you can find these and cut them. Of course, you'll still feel some things, but your arms and legs won't bother you. You might have a hard time doing much with these cables cut—you'll be really clumsy since you can't feel anything. Oh, and if you want to cut all sensory input, you can find the cable in your neck. I don't advise that, though, because you'll lose your optics and audios as well."
Jazz didn't want to think about why she might be telling him all of this. "Uh… thanks, I guess?"
"Don't mention it," Lilac said. "Just means you owe me. Here, you want a pain chip?"
"Yes, please."
"Okay. Don't leave it in too long, though, you know they stop working after a few joors."
Jazz shuttered his optics as she accessed a port in the back of his neck and slipped a pain chip in. He vented a sigh as relief washed over his entire frame.
Then he chatted idly with Lilac while she worked, until she was finished and sent him out of her office.
After that, he went back to his 'room' to continue to work on hacking into the security system. He nearly forgot to take the pain chip out, but remembered when his leg started to ache again.
By the time Branchbinder commed him the next orn and told him to meet in the hold, Jazz was ready. He took a shortcut he'd found on some schematics for headquarters, and was there before Branchbinder himself.
When Branchbinder came in, he seemed a little surprised to see Jazz there already, but didn't say anything about it. Instead he just walked over to a large crate and sat on it.
"Okay," he said. "I see you found your way to the medical ward."
"Medical ward? Ya have one of those?"
Branchbinder shook his helm. "Ah, maybe not then. Lilac's not the only medic we have. She is the best, though, if you're in her good graces."
"Are you?" Jazz asked.
"I'm her favorite," Branchbinder said with a smirk. "So. Any more excursions out into the city?"
"Nope," Jazz said. "Just this." He unsubspaced the datapad, and pulled up the entire security system on it, complete with cameras, pass codes for the doors, and detailed schematics that included secret passageways. He tossed the datapad to Branchbinder, who caught it and studied it thoughtfully.
"Not bad," he said.
"And you," Jazz said. "You didn't have two jobs."
"No?" Branchbinder said. "So you think I'm just a recruiter?"
"Nope," Jazz said. "Recruiter is one function. Another used ta be making sure everyone was loyal. Ya'd get them all ta trust ya and then if they ever planned ta desert, or ta sell Quantum out, ya'd let the boss know."
Branchbinder nodded.
"And I think there's gotta be something else too," Jazz said. "A third function. Something ta do with fighting, or ya wouldn't need ta be such a good fighter."
"Maybe I fight for fun."
"Then ya wouldn't be professional about it. I got a friend, name of Sunstreaker. He's the most brilliant artist I've ever known, but he's not goin' anywhere with it, cuz he's not gonna sell any of his paintings or go ta art school. If it's just for fun, ya don't ever reach a professional level of excellence. Ya don't fight just for fun, Branchbinder."
Branchbinder nodded. "Fair enough."
"Was I right?"
"You think I'm going to answer that?"
"Oh," Jazz said. "Another thing. Ya said I would be going into security. Ya want me ta replace you, don't ya? Making sure everymech's loyal."
"Smarter than you look," Branchbinder smirked. "Now, I've got to give you a tour of the rest of the place, and then I can teach you to spar for a while. After that, I'm busy. Your official assignment in Quantum will be on a team of specialists. According to everyone else, you're just another one of them. I'm not training you to do anything, and you're not a hacker." Branchbinder tossed his datapad back at him. "Got that?"
Jazz nodded.
"Good," Branchbinder said. "Now come on, I'll give you the basics about everything Quantum does. Since you know more than most mecha, you're going to be more closely watched, understood?"
Jazz nodded. No tricks. No treachery.
Branchbinder used the blueprints Jazz had found to give him a virtual tour instead of actually going places. Jazz was surprised at how easy it was to accept all the horrible things Quantum was a part of. It was probably just because he was sitting in a quiet room full of boxes, not really seeing any of it happen. When Branchbinder was done explaining the system, he started trying to train Jazz. Still feeling stiff and sore from the previous orn, Jazz found it difficult to concentrate. And Branchbinder was not the kind of teacher Yoketron had been.
Master Yoketron had been patient but firm and fair. Branchbinder was… brutal and harsh, bordering on cruel. After they were finished, Jazz was sent to meet with his team.
He wondered as he left the hold, what Yoketron would think if he could see Jazz now. He had been terribly disappointed in Jazz when Jazz had let Motormaster try to kill Soundwave. Now Jazz was working for a criminal organization, using skills Yoketron had taught him for illegal purposes.
Well, it wasn't as if Jazz had a choice at this point. He couldn't back out now, they would kill him. He hadn't exactly chosen this path. It had been Stonethrow who'd gotten them all wrapped up in this.
"Hey."
Jazz turned to see the leader of the team he'd had been ostensibly assigned to approaching him. She was large for a femme, painted black. Her designation was Midnight, and Jazz had been cautioned not to get on her bad side.
"Hello."
"So," she said, sitting down at his table. "You're with my team, like your crazy friend."
Jazz nodded.
"They took a while determining what you'd do," she said.
Jazz shrugged.
"I wouldn't care, but it matters what they might have wanted you for, because I need to know my team. Your friend was easy. They gave him to me because he'll do just about anything I ask, except sit still. You're different. What are you?"
Jazz shrugged again.
"Can you fight?"
"Yes."
"Hack?"
"Not really."
"Well, you're pretty small. You'll fit in little spaces. I can use you, no problem. Just want to make sure you don't want any particular position. What are you good at, mech?"
Jazz tilted his helm to the side, thinking.
"Don't take all orn," Midnight said.
"I'm good at finding things. And hiding things."
"How about breaking things? Not smashing, just breaking."
"What kinda things?"
"Machines. We do quite a bit of industrial sabotage. You know, glitch up some factory machinery so the Council has to pay for new stuff. Then we intercept some of the credit as it comes through the system."
Jazz nodded.
"You didn't sound surprised." Midnight said, "Which I take to mean someone else told you we do that sort of thing."
"Nah," Jazz said. "It's just hard to surprise me."
Midnight looked at him, as if trying to determine whether he was telling the truth. "All right then," she said. "We've got a mission in five joors."
"So…" Jazz said. "Industrial sabotage… is that what your team specializes in?"
"My team specializes in everything," Midnight said. "If they don't know who to send, they send us. Here are coordinates. I'll see you in four and a half joors."
She got up and left the table.
The off-cycle was lit by glowing cracks in the street. Jazz slipped around the corner. He'd made sure to send Branchbinder a message to let him know he was going to be gone this off-cycle. There were about twenty mecha at the place Midnight had told him to meet. Factories and energon refineries belched smoke into the atmosphere, even at this time of the off-cycle.
Stonethrow bounded over to him. "Hey."
Jazz nodded.
"They put you on this team too!"
"Yep," Jazz said.
"Excited?" the other mech bounced on his pedes. "I'm so excited."
Jazz just shrugged.
He was pretty sure they were about to do something illegal. Something much more illegal than he'd ever done before.
They waited for a few more breems and another couple of mecha showed up. Midnight stepped forward.
"Ok," she said. "We're on a supply run this orn. Most of you know the drill. Beta team take the south entrance. Wait for the gate to open. Alpha team's with me. If you don't know what team you're on, you're on Beta. Centrifuge."
A big mech standing to her left nodded and spoke. "Ok, Beta team, let's go." He turned and walked away and the majority of the mecha followed him.
Midnight caught Jazz's shoulder as he made to go with them. "You scared of small spaces?"
"No." Jazz said.
"Ok, let's try something. You're coming with us."
Jazz nodded, then followed the five other mecha with Midnight. He was surprised at how quiet they all were as they walked toward a nearby energon refinery. He tried to be silent as well, but it was hard to hide the sound of pedes on the ground. There was a high fence all the way around the building. A tall, slim mech jumped up and started scaling it, weaving back and forth instead of going straight up, as if he were trying to avoid some sort of invisible obstacle. He got to the top and dropped down on the inside. There was a small building there, like some sort of guard station. The Quantum mech crept around the building and then they waited in silence. Jazz took in a deep vent and let it out slowly, which earned him annoyed looks from some of the other mecha in the group. He had no doubt they were comming Midnight asking why she'd brought him along. He felt so loud and clumsy.
The tall mech came back around the building and tossed something over the fence.
A femme on the outside caught it, and Midnight gestured to the mech who'd climbed over the fence, who nodded and melted into the shadows.
The others started running along the fence. Jazz followed them, watching how they skillfully avoided cameras. He could hear his own pedes on the ground a lot louder than he could hear everyone else. He needed to ask them how they did that. He'd always thought of himself as sneaky, but he was nothing compared to these mecha.
They got to a gate where a mech stood guard. Everyone stopped running and stood in the shadows. Jazz was just about to ask what they were going to do when he got a comm. It was an open channel between the six of them.
"He's too far away from the building," someone said.
"Well, not all of us can get up that fence, and we can't wait to go in with Beta team."
"Is there another gate?"
"Come on, let's go." Midnight's voice said, and they followed her again, around the building until they got to another gate that wasn't guarded.
The femme who'd caught the data chip the mech had tossed over the fence approached the door and slipped it into a port in the back of her hand. She started messing with the lock, probably trying to hack it.
It took about half a breem, and then the little gate opened. Midnight waved everyone through. They headed around the building again, keeping to the shadows and staying out of the cameras' line of sight as much as possible. They got to the little guard building, and the mech who'd climbed the fence showed up again.
They hacked the door open and Midnight and one of the other mechs went in. Jazz heard a shout, and then there was silence again for a few astroseconds before Midnight stuck her helm out and waved the rest of them inside. Jazz hesitated in the doorway, but the mech behind him shoved him forward.
The two guards who'd been here were lying on the floor with spreading pools of energon underneath them. Jazz was suddenly brought back to the moment in secondary school when Motormaster had broken Soundwave's visor against the table.
He took a deep vent and looked away, feeling cold, almost numb. Those mechs were dead, not just unconscious. Dead. Permanently offline.
Midnight and the femme who'd hacked the doors open were talking quietly as they messed with the equipment.
"There," the other femme said. "Got it. The gate's open, and the south door too. And I'll have blueprints in half a breem.
"Good," Midnight said. "You and Murk stay here. The rest of us are going in."
Jazz stepped away as a stream of energon spread to where his pede was.
"Come on, mechling," Midnight said to him and he followed them out of the little guard station and toward the building. He hoped they didn't run into anyone else—he didn't want to see anyone die.
Primus, what had he gotten himself into? This had been kind of fun, until that…
He shoved his emotions down, trying to think clearly. He was with a group of mecha who didn't care about killing and if he made them mad or if he got them caught, it could be him on the ground leaking fluids all over the floor. He needed to keep his helm in the game and survive this and then maybe he could figure out a way to get himself out of this mess.
They approached the building and Midnight held an energon-stained piece of an arm plate to the scanner lock. It beeped and the door opened.
It was dark and silent in the energon refinery. Jazz got a message file through his comm. When he opened it, it was the blueprints of the building. He studied them as they moved. Cameras were marked, and there were some notes about guard patterns too. The group seemed to be headed to a yellow dot on the map.
These mecha really knew what they were doing.
"Ok, mechling," Midnight said. "Got a job for you. You said you're good at finding things. You and Talon are going to find us a piece of equipment. It'll be on the refinery machines. I'll send you schematics. Take it out and bring it to the yellow dot on the blueprints. Got that?"
"Ok," Jazz said over the comm. and opened the file. He and one of the other mechs broke off from the group. He followed, assuming the other mech knew where they were going.
They got to a room lit only by emergency lights on the floor.
"Ok," Talon said quietly. "The piece we need is highlighted on the schematics. It's back behind the refiners. Here…" He pulled a blowtorch out of subspace. "See if you can crawl in between the wall and those big drums and get to the part we need."
Jazz nodded and took the torch. He crouched, then crawled under the giant refinery machines, trying to squeeze his way to the back. It got a little tight, but he managed.
"First time you seen dead mecha?"
"Yup," Jazz said. He pulled up the schematics in his processor and stared at them for a few breems before setting them to display in the corner of his vision. He tried to visualize spatially where he was and where he could cut through this thing so he could reach the piece they wanted.
"I could tell. You looked pretty freaked out. Don't worry, you'll get used to it."
Jazz frowned, feeling suddenly sick.
"You got it? You think you can find it?"
"Yeah," Jazz said. "Give me a breem." He really couldn't fathom why they'd wanted it, but he wasn't going to argue. He turned the laser torch on and started cutting.
"Faster we do this, faster we can get out. You aren't doing too bad, though. Lotta new mechs purge their tanks when they see dead guards."
Jazz glared at the metal machinery around him. He needed to focus on something else—focus on what he was doing. He finished cutting and pulled the lumpy shape out of the machine, hissing as he burned his fingers on the melted edges.
Then he peered into the dark interior of the machine. He had to turn the brightness of his optics up almost all the way to see the mechanisms on the inside.
The piece they needed was right where he'd expected it to be.
"I found it." He checked the schematics, trying to see if there were any directions for disconnecting it. It seemed welded on. He didn't want to damage it, so he just started cutting around it with the laser torch.
"Don't break it."
Jazz pulled on it and it came free. He got rid of the schematics and subspaced it, then crawled back out from under the refiner. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic at all.
He managed to get out without scraping any paint off and pulled the thing out of subspace. Talon took it.
"You're pretty quick. But you're really noisy."
"I know," Jazz said. "Ya mechs are so quiet… maybe ya can teach me?"
"Sure," Talon said. "Maybe."
They followed the blueprints to the yellow dot which was only a few rooms away.
Everyone else was there, by a row of giant canisters. The Beta team was siphoning off large cubes of energon from the canisters and passing them to a large mech who subspaced them.
Talon gave the piece to the mech who'd stayed with Midnight, who looked it over, then knelt on the ground and got some tools out of subspace.
Everyone was still very quiet—even Stonethrow—as they watched.
So, they were stealing energon—that wasn't a surprise. But what was the piece for? He spoke to Talon over the comm channel they still had open. "So… what's going on?"
"We're going to take as much 'gon as we can, and then blow the place. But we have to use stuff from in here to make the bomb so they think it was an accident and can't trace it back to us. Just wait this part out, I don't think you have to do anything else."
Jazz nodded, and watched, feeling tense, hoping no guards showed up. None did. The mech who was taking the cubes seemed to have a lot of subspace. They'd probably taken four or five giant tanks' worth before they ran out of boxes.
"Ok, Beta team get out of here," Midnight said. "Jazz and I will go get Swallow and Murk. Friction, you know what to do."
The mech who'd been working with the tools nodded.
Midnight led Jazz in silence back through the building. She made practically no sound at all, as she crept through the dark hallways.
They got out and met the two who'd stayed behind in the guard building.
"The cameras won't show anything suspicious," the femme, Swallow, said. "We good to go?"
Midnight nodded and sent out a group comm. "Hey, Alpha team, meet three blocks to the west. Beta team, I want you to disperse. No speeding now, mechs, you're just going about your business. Ok, break."
Midnight, Jazz, and the others left the way they'd come and walked two blocks south. They could still see the building.
"So," Jazz said quietly. "Energon crystals are lots more volatile than processed energon."
Midnight nodded, looking at him like she wasn't sure why he was talking to her.
"I didn't see how much they had in there," Jazz said. "But on the blueprints, the room where they were keeping the crystals looked pretty big."
He heard engines and two alts came around the corner and transformed.
"All good?" Midnight asked
Before Friction could answer, there was a loud bang and a cloud of fire lit up the building down the street. They all watched as it filled the sky with boiling light. Heat washed over them and debris peppered them. Then it faded out.
"Nice," Talon said appreciatively.
"Ok," Midnight turned. "Let's go."
They all followed her out into the street and back toward headquarters at a leisurely pace, passing the rescue and emergency vehicles racing the other way.
There had been guards in that building. He'd seen them marked on the blueprints as moving red dots.
They were dead now.
