Shattered Glass: The ones left behind

In the two weeks following Starscream's untimely rise to power, the Decepticons had done little else but lay low and keep the Nemesis constantly cloaked and on the move. The only times anyone left the ship were to form guerrilla raiding parties with MECH and COBRA, rushing Autobot and government facilities in hit-and-run attacks, never staying long enough for prolonged hand-to-hand combat. June was not at all pleased that Starscream had allowed her son to join many of the raids. In fact, she was horrified. But she didn't question the new leader of the Decepticons, hoping that Starscream had a reason besides desperation to send the boy out.

The truth was that Starscream feared what might happen if Pax Minor were made to stay behind. Right now, Pax was a loose cannon, a little organic mass of rage and pain, and if that fury was not properly channeled, it could turn upon itself. Starscream recognized that self-recriminating anger: he had walked that road too many times and he prayed that the boy would not turn to reckless behavior and risky stunts to drown out the guilty whispers of you could have saved him that surely flickered through his mind. They were in the middle of a war, with humanity caught in the crosshairs, and they could not afford to lose even a single member more - especially to carelessness brought on by some kind of misplaced guilt.

Starscream crouched behind the ruined wall and covered his audial receptors as the grenade detonated, and he smirked to himself. Physician, heal thyself, he thought dryly. He wouldn't take Jack to task about his behavior yet: not when his own still too-closely matched it.

"Starscream: acknowledge." a voice crackled over his comm system and he shifted slightly to answer it, taking care that none of his limbs or wings were visible over the wall.

"Starscream here: go ahead, Silas," he said tersely.

"Blackout, Munitia, and Firefly have rigged the depot to blow in ten minutes. I'm pulling my men back."

The Seeker craned his neck to peer over the wall into the supply depot. He could just make out the green form of the COBRA saboteur waving to him with an "all clear" sign. Which, of course, usually meant "time to run".

"How long do my 'Cons have to evacuate?" Starscream demanded. He ducked a spray of bullets from Unit E forces and fired in the general direction of their tanks.

"We're already halfway out, Starscream," a new voice interjected into the open channel. "Payload secure. Pax is covering our exit."

Starscream shuttered his optics for a moment as pain flickered across his features. When he'd brought Sierra onto the Nemesis a year ago, it had been to protect her, to keep her as far from the Autobots and their allies as possible. But the death of Megatron had seen everyone taking up new roles, and now here she was at sixteen years old, learning to wield a handgun with the same ease with which most girls her age brandished cell phones. Her size and speed were her advantages on the field. Her disadvantage: she was a sixteen year old girl - a child - who was experiencing war as a combatant for the first time, and Starscream rarely had the time necessary to comfort her after her nightmares anymore.

"Understood," Starscream spoke up quickly after realizing he'd been silent too long. "Stay close to Flamewar and ST3V3 and get those assault rifles back to the Frederick Douglass. No risks, Sierra. And that goes double for Pax."

"Don't worry, Commander," it was Silas again. "Ramsey's running point on the extraction team. If he has to drag Darby back to the sub kicking and screaming, he'll do it."

Starscream nodded sharply and quickly calculated how much time was left until Firefly's bombs detonated. "Thank you, Silas. Get the rest of your soldiers out."

Then he leapt quickly to the roof of the depot and projected his voice as far as it would go. "Decepticons! I believe we've worn out our welcome!"

That was the signal. Flamewar scooped up Sierra under one arm and Pax under the other and ST3V3 secured the crates of weapons, running for the Warp Gate that MECH was providing. The remaining COBRA and MECH operatives detonated remote miniature combat drones around the lot, giving the impression of more Decepticons in hiding. Then Starscream launched into the air and transformed, rocketing away as the first charge pack blew.

Silas watched from the blind he'd set up at the perimeter, and nodded decisively. "Pack it in, folks," he murmured to Jenner and Reza. "The last of us should be through the Warp Gate by now."

The two agents didn't even stop to nod or acknowledge his words. Time was of the essence, after all. Within five minutes, the blind, soldiers, and weapons had vanished into a MECH Warp Gate, leaving hardly a trace that they had been watching.

In the belly of the Frederick Douglass, operatives milled around in organized chaos, much like the interior of an anthill. The fuel stolen from the depot was quickly shuttled away to the engine rooms, as a craft the size of their huge submarine took quite a lot to keep moving. The weapons and ammunition was left in Ramsey's care, and he organized half their strike team to catalogue and stock it all. Those who had been injured were quickly received by waiting medics and moved to sick bay, and Silas stood in the midst of it all, counting heads and making sure no one had been left behind.

He felt a presence at his back and turned his head slightly, catching a glimpse of a slight figure in oversized fatigues. "Agent Woodlock," he said agreeably.

She'd hit a growth spurt in the last year, and by her fourteenth birthday her head reached the top of his shoulder - something she was entirely too proud of, in his opinion. When Silas turned to face the girl, however, she was not smiling.

"What is it?" he asked.

Violet held up a closed fist and opened it slowly. On her metallic palm sat a plain silvery locket, a simple oval with an iris etched into the front. The chain had been replaced twice, and the locket was a bit scratched and worn, but it had weathered the years well.

Silas's eyes widened. "You found it!" he exclaimed, "I've looked everywhere for that, where was it?"

Violet's expression hardened as Silas fastened the clasp and let his late wife's locket hang down under his shirt. Silas recognized the look, and a flash of pain seemed to cross his eyes.

"Rafael?" he almost croaked.

"Rafael." Violet answered grimly.

Silas sighed, long and loud, and drew a hand over his face. "Not again," he muttered. "Alright. I'll talk to him about it." He smoothed the concerned girl's hair and managed a smile. "Did you remember to take your medication?"

"Oui, Silas," Violet made a face. "Two more weeks until I can stop taking it."

"Only as on a trial basis," Silas warned, "At the first sign of another break with reality, we're going back."

Violet shrugged, but didn't argue. They both knew the medication had done wonders for the girl after the breakdown caused by repeated and unresolved trauma related to the Autobot Ratchet. She'd even agreed to start going to therapy with one of the onboard counsellors about the things she'd seen and experienced. Silas playfully shrugged off her demands that he go and get some sleep before confronting Rafael, and left in search of his younger charge.

The boy he'd met in the Professor's hideaway had seemed happy enough to join with MECH at first. He'd lived with them almost a year and a half now but as of a few months ago, he'd suddenly manifested a series of insecurities he either hadn't had before or hadn't told anyone about before. As a result, he was frequently testing his boundaries, picking fights, trying to see whether they were like every other adult he'd known. Granted, a constantly-moving resistance base wasn't the most child-friendly of environments, but Silas suspected Raf had been in worse places. No, what seemed to be concerning the boy was an idea that the kindness he was being shown was no more than an act, or a favor to the Professor, and that sooner or later it would come to an end.

Apparently he was attempting to hasten the "sooner" to avoid the pain of broken attachments.

Silas strode down the corridors of the lower decks, trying to come up with a good way to talk to the boy about it. He'd managed with Violet, and heaven knew that hadn't been easy for either of them at times, surely he could manage with Rafael. He hoped.

The small mutant favored high ledges, not enclosed by anything, when he wanted to be alone. Silas found him with his knees drawn to his chest, spikes protruding from his back and shoulders, on some scaffolding in the mess hall. The large man knocked on the piping once to let him know he was coming up, then easily climbed the rest of the way. Raf didn't look at him, he continued to fiddle with his thrice-taped glasses.

"You know we can get you better glasses," Silas began.

"I like these," the little boy growled. His shoulders were tense, as if anticipating a fight.

For a long time, Silas was quiet, just watching Raf, then he sighed and settled next to him. "Did you take my locket out of my room, Rafael?" he asked gently.

"No," Raf lied, curling further into his protective huddle.

"You couldn't open it, could you?" Silas tried a different tactic. "I can show you, if you want."

Raf glared at him suspiciously from behind his arms, but there was a hint of fear visible through the defensive facade. Silas should have been furious, screaming at him. Any moment now he would drop the "nice" act. Adults always pretended to be nice until they got tired of him. Maybe Silas had kept up the charade for a year so far, but the older Esquivels had had eight years, and decided it wasn't worth it when his spikes came in. If his own parents had tired of him, why should he think a relative stranger would feel any different?

The man in question took the locket off and pressed a secret clasp near the hinges. The oval popped open to reveal a small photo of a smiling, dark skinned woman with her arms around what must have been a younger Silas. Between them were two girls, probably fourteen and sixteen. Raf had never seen any of the women on board the submarine, and had an uncomfortable suspicion that something bad had happened to them. He tried to ignore the guilty feeling swirling around in his belly.

"Your...your family?" he mumbled. Silas nodded.

"Yeah. That's Bhavani, my wife, and our girls Cassie and Harmony."

"Didn't know you were married. I thought Violet was your daughter," Raf looked confused. The uncomfortable feeling in his gut grew colder and climbed towards his heart when he saw Silas's jaw muscles working, and he swallowed hard.

"I've looked after Violet since she was eleven, yeah," the man said softly, "But she didn't start out as part of my family."

"So...where are these three?"

The lines on Silas's face hardened and Raf braced himself for a show of temper.

"They're in an Ohio cemetery somewhere, under false names so Cemetery Wind can't desecrate their graves." Silas said flatly. He closed the locket with a soft click and smoothed his thumb over it.

Raf gulped again and ducked his head. His spikes, which had begun to slide back into his skin as he calmed, poked out defensively again. Silas was angry now, he could tell. Where that anger was directed was uncertain, but Raf guessed it wouldn't be long before it was directed at him. He had stolen a precious memento, and he probably deserved some screaming for that. Fine, he tried to convince himself, I'm tired of all the play-pretend anyway.

"Bet you're pretty mad," he said in as emotionless a voice as he could manage.

"Oh, I am, Raf. But not at you." Silas put the locket back on and closed his eyes.

"You're not? Then...then what-" Raf stammered.

"I'm angry at the people who took my family away, because I wouldn't swear allegiance to the Autobots," Silas said. "I'm angry at myself for not thinking to hide them. And I'm…" he paused, and looked down at the defensive nine year old, then decided to finish the sentence. "I'm angry at the people who made you feel like you could never trust any kindness, that it was only a matter of time before you'd be…" he gestured helplessly.

Raf hunched his shoulders and wrapped his skinny arms around himself, grasping the spikes along each arm. He wished he could trust this, trust him, but old wounds ran deep and he couldn't help hearing the whispers that warned him that it was all an act, and that sooner or later Silas's patience would run out.

"You're supposed to start yelling at me," he said in a barely audible rasp. "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

Silas took a deep breath, silently cursing whoever had taught the child to think this way, then placed his hands on Rafael's shoulders, disregarding the spikes.

"I don't know where you got the idea that we were going to send you away, Rafael," he said gravely, "But it's not going to happen. And if you think picking fights with older personnel and taking things that aren't yours is going to get you kicked off this vessel, you'd better think again."

Silas reached over and gently pushed Raf's glasses back into place. "Violet and I care a lot about you, kid. We don't want you to go anywhere."

He knew this probably wouldn't be the last incident. Raf felt very guilty, that much was obvious, but there was still a closed, defensive look about his face. He wasn't ready to trust Silas with the reason behind his sudden run of provoking behavior. Silas stood and stretched.

"Ok. I need to file the missions report. It's up to you, Raf: you can come with me and see how we do the logs, or you can stay up here a little longer and then report to Violet in the munitions cache."

"I'm not in trouble?" the boy asked suspiciously.

"Oh you are, you're definitely grounded," Silas answered, "I'm just not angry at you."

He climbed back down the pipes, leaving Raf alone to think awhile. Seeing his wife and daughters again, even just as an old photograph, was bringing back memories that - while not as crippling as they had once been - darkened his mood considerably. As he left the mess hall, he passed Howard Skeeter, their radarman, and Ramsey in the corridor.

"Hey, Chief, we've got some smaller contacts on...oh...maybe later then?" Skeeter faltered as Silas brushed past him without a word.

"Leave him be, lad," Ramsey grunted, "It's been a bad couple of weeks for us all. Best take it to Jenner in seven-forward."

"R-right," the younger agent drooped a little. "I'll just go do that, shall I?"

Even if Silas was busy, someone was bound to be interested in the movement he was picking up close to the abyss.


The Nemesis

"That doesn't sound like Autobot tech," Sierra paced the worktable, towelling off her hair and listening to the MECH agent describing his finds over the ship-to-ship comm system. "Their stuff tends to resonate on a slightly higher frequency, doesn't it?"

"That's what I thought, too," Skeeter sounded a little excitable. "I almost wrote it off as a seismic anomaly. But it's not random! It's a repeating, steady sound and I don't think it's organic."

Sierra fought back a groan and rubbed her sleepless eyes. "Okay," she sighed, "Shoot me the coordinates and I'll mark it on the war table. We're stretched thin right now, so you might have to investigate yourself."

"Yeah," the older agent's voice softened. "I heard they had you on the field today. It doesn't get any easier, does it?"

"Um, can we...just focus on the Autobots right now?" Sierra really didn't want to discuss the implications of fighting in a resistance at her age - or the fact that she was now more used to copying down battle plans and running encryption programs than she had been to working her summer job just a year ago.

"Oh, right. Apologies. I'll, er, let you get back to it then. Sending coordinates now." with an embarrassed muttering, Skeeter signed off, leaving the lab in relative quiet. For a few minutes, anyway.

"Sierra, I need Flamewar's mission report, can you remind her to send it to me? And I can't find my tactical notes." Starscream moved distractedly through the room, looking without really looking for his missing datapads.

"I don't know where they are, Starscream, you don't keep your notes in the lab anymore," Sierra massaged her temples. Her guardian was rarely in the lab at all these days, having little time for scientific pursuits.

"Right, sorry," Starscream's optics flickered once: a sign that he was skipping refueling again to give himself more time to work out their next move. "What about the projected calculations for the next raid, have you finished those?"

"What?" Sierra shuffled through the papers strewn across the table. "No! That's going to take me at least another day, since you keep sending Pax to help elsewhere."

Starscream gritted his denta, wings high and tense. "We need those calculations, Sierra. Soundwave can't plot Cemetery Wind's course without them!"

"I know, I know," Sierra tried not to let frustration overwhelm her, but she could already feel it stinging at the corners of her eyes. "I'm working on it. But I also have new coordinates to mark on the war table, two mission reports to write up, I have to make sure Pax didn't do something stupid again, oh! and the synth-en exploded again, so I have to clean that up."

Starscream looked as though he were about to say something, then he cycled atmosphere through his intakes very slowly and deliberately. "The calculations take precedence right now," he said as patiently as he could.

Thwack! Sierra dropped the stack of papers with a little more force than necessary, on the verge of tears. "Scrap it, Starscream, I am doing the best I can here!" she cried. "Okay?! I'm not a Cybertronian, and it's not my fault that I can't compute as fast as you!"

Startled, Starscream took a moment to examine his charge - really examine her. Dark circles ringed her eyes, much like June and Jack's, and her stress levels had not faded any from the firefight at the depot earlier that day. Papers and files and datapads littered her work station and a charred, blackened mess covered the miniature work table that sat on the corner of the larger one she stood on. Starscream felt a twinge of guilt, though he knew everyone else was likely feeling as stretched as Sierra was, and let his wings drop. Megatron had tasked him with this human's well-being. It wouldn't have been respectful to his memory to let her work herself into this state.

"I'm sorry," he offered, and held out a hand for her. "I'm sorry, Sierra. I know you're trying." He looked around helplessly. "I'll...I'll speak to Knock Out about taking some of your load here."

Sierra curled up in his hand and sniffled. "No, I can do this. I just need time," she protested weakly. "Just give me another day, I'll finish, well not all of it, but most of it."

Starscream shook his helm. "I've placed too much on your shoulders as it is. Let Knock Out attend to the synthetic energon experiments. Just focus on the calculations for now. When that's done, see to those coordinates you mentioned. I'll badger Flamewar about the reports."

"What about Jack? I know he took some shrapnel to the leg on our way out." Sierra wiped her eyes, determined not to drop into a full-on cry.

"You let me handle Pax. Obviously, you need to rest," Starscream pulled his partner close to his chestplates and frowned. Pax had long since learned to catch sleep when he could and fight on low energy, but Sierra was new to this life. He knew they didn't have a lot of time to rest and recuperate, not with manhunts out for COBRA and MECH and the Autobots redoubling their efforts to find the Nemesis. He knew they couldn't place all their raids on Predaking's shoulders, as he was barely more experienced than Pax.

He also knew that he was driving himself to exhaustion, trying to organize raids, fly patrols, see to the needs of his entire crew, and archive Megatron's encrypted database in the span of fourteen days. He'd tried to delegate some of those responsibilities so that he wouldn't drop into stasis in the middle of the bridge, but evidently his partner had not been the right person to delegate to.

"Knock Out," he sent a private communication across the ship. "Status report."

"Eh, we've had worse," the medic replied. "Pax will have a limp for a week or two, but the nanites should repair everything well enough. Flamewar just needs a cycle of recharge to straighten out her strained winglet, and ST3V3 was only singed: no real damage."

"Then you are comparatively free?" Starscream asked pointedly.

"Why do I get the feeling I'll regret saying yes?" Knock Out asked sardonically.

"Sierra is under too much pressure," Starscream said curtly. He didn't have to add that he was the one who had put her under that pressure: they both knew. "It would seem that I have become so accustomed to the presence of Human Decepticons that their organic nature occasionally slips my mind. For the sake of her health and emotional state, anything you can do to reduce her workload would be greatly appreciated."

"Tell him something's off in the formula for synth-en," Sierra mumbled sleepily. Starscream shot her a startled look and she shrugged. "You're making a private call and your left hand is doing that restless movement thing. You only do that when you're calling Crossways or Knock Out, and Crossways is-" she stopped there, unwilling to follow the trail of thought leading to their list of casualties.

"Humans," Starscream snorted, "So observant." He repeated the information to the Decepticon medic and added a request for a cleaning drone to handle the exploded mess that covered Sierra's worktable.

"Starscream?" Sierra sounded pensive.

"Mm?"

The human shifted in his grip and ran a hand through her damp hair. "I don't think we're going to have enough energon to get us through the rest of the year. Not if the Autobots double their guard on their stockpiles. We need a backup plan if the synth-en doesn't work out."

Starscream knew she was right. There was a distinct possibility that the Decepticons would eventually have to choose between fighting and avoiding starvation. "What do you suggest?" he asked wearily.

Sierra glanced over at one of her notebooks, open at the end of the table. "If we can't perfect the formula, I think we're going to have to consider the possibility of using projectile weapons so we can conserve the energon for Trypticon and the other 'Cons. Bullets, sonic pulses, compressed air, non-equipped stuff. Nothing that uses up a lot of energon."

It would be a hard sell, but Starscream was willing to consider it for the sake of the Decepticon survivors. He couldn't help a flash of pride that his partner had been the one to work out the potential scenarios that would lead to this, even if it was a grim line of thought.

"You may be onto something there," he admitted. "If the synth-en doesn't work out, that may help us scrape by a little longer. I'll bring it up to Airachnid."

"Now," he set the girl down and crouched slightly to be at eye level with her. "Your stress levels are entirely too high to focus on your work right now. If you need to scream at something, cry, shoot something, you do whatever you need to do. Then you can see to those calculations." A thought occurred to him and he frowned. "You are using my projection program for the math, aren't you?"

Sierra shook her head. "You password-locked it the last time you were in here. Two weeks ago." she said tiredly. "Didn't have a chance to ask you what the new password was."

No wonder it had been slow going! Embarrassed, Starscream opened the screens related to the program and entered the password.

"It's Bucky," he told Sierra.

"Who the heck is Bucky?" she asked, bewildered.

Starscream suppressed a snort, but a current of emotions buoyed his wings up and then dropped them even lower than before. "He was the class pet when I was a youngling. Ask Meg-" he cut himself off. No, she couldn't ask Megatron to tell her the story. Starscream offered a saddened smile, and Sierra guessed what he'd been about to say.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "I miss him too."

"I know. I know you do," Starscream sighed. "Go ahead and finish up here, then report back to your bunk and try to sleep. That's an order, Sierra."

"Only if you remember to rest too," she retorted.

"Of course," he lied smoothly, "Can't very well lead if I'm collapsing from exhaustion, right?"

Sierra looked a little suspicious of him, but didn't question him as he slipped out of the lab. He had no intentions of resting yet, not until the next course had been plotted and the next raid planned. It was just a little delay, wasn't it?


"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."
Shockwave would have scowled if he'd had a mouth. "Well if you'd stop moving, this wouldn't hurt nearly as much!" he scolded the much larger - and yet much younger - mech sitting in front of him. Predaking grumbled a little more, but hunched down again to let Shockwave reattach the torn bits of wing to their frame with a liquid mesh patch.

He'd been sent out with Wildrider on the Sky Claw to investigate one of the many locations of suspicious activity MECH and COBRA sent them. As it turned out, the Autobots were quite adept at leaving anti-aircraft gun turrets to guard their mining operations while they were away. The turrets had actually been built to shoot down any curious human vehicles, but they turned out to be just as effective against Predacons.

"Now they've seen you again," Shockwave grumbled, finishing up the patch.

"Yes," Predaking answered, giving the wing an experimental shake, "But they'll think we're in Madagascar."

"That doesn't change the fact that you weren't as careful as you could've been," Shockwave stood and shook out his limbs. "You got shot!"

"Yes," Predaking repeated impatiently, "But they didn't see Wildrider. And they don't know where we are now! If I hadn't gotten shot, they wouldn't even know we'd been there until we robbed the facility."

Shockwave vented heavily and crossed the hangar, skirting around the Sky Claw. "That isn't the point, son. You'll have to learn to act with at least some degree of stealth while we have the disadvantage, or we all may end up paying for it someday."

Predaking was silent for a moment, considering this. Then, as he hurried to catch up to the shorter mech, he muttered, "But if I hadn't gotten shot, they wouldn't even know we were there."

"But you can't guarantee that you won't get shot again, can you?" Shockwave asked pointedly. "You're still learning how function as a scout."

Surprisingly, this brightened the Predacon's mood rather than dampening it. "Yes!" he said quickly, "I was much too young to be a scout when we lived with the Swarm. Now I'm a warrior, just like the Decepticons."

Shockwave was beginning to despair of ever getting the point across to his enthusiastic charge. Then, a clawed hand fell over his shoulder guard and he turned his one, large optic upward to see a surprisingly earnest expression on Predaking's relatively unmarred faceplates.

"I don't want you to worry about me, Father," he said with a crooked smile, "But this is our home now, and I want to protect it. You have to let me try, at least."

There were few times when Shockwave did not hate the empurata head that had been forced onto him, but this one time he blessed its expressionless mien. This way, Predaking could not see the storm of emotions that might have otherwise passed across his features, clouding optics and causing lips to tremble.

"You," he said softly, "Are a good mech, Predaking. But permit your father to fret when and where he can. I am not a warrior as you are. And I can't go into battle with you."

Predaking's wings fluttered to a lower position, the way he had seen Insecticons express agreement with higher ranked individuals. "I...will be more careful on my next patrol," he said, a little uncomfortably.

Shockwave squeezed the younger mech's arm and nodded. "Thank you, Predaking. I know that you will only have to do more, fight more, as this war continues. But I do not think we could survive any more losses."

As they walked up through the lee side corridors towards the living quarters assigned to them, Shockwave heard Predaking mutter under his breath, "But if I hadn't been shot, they wouldn't even know we were there."

He would have smiled if he'd had a mouth.

Further discussion was interrupted by a warning siren, lighting the halls red. Breakdown and Wildrider sped past them, already shouldering rifles.

"Breakdown? What is it?" Shockwave asked.

"Autobots," the ex-Stunticon answered grimly. "Prime is on the move."