I'm not reposting all the warnings. If you didn't read them in Pt. 1, then on your head be it.
[* * * * *]
Pt. 20
[* * * * *]
"What am I watching?" Intrigued, Jazz reached out and tilted the screen more to the left, then brought his hand back so he could put his chin on it.
Ratchet promptly took his elbow out from under him and rolled him half on his side to get at the access hatch under his bumper. "You tell me," the medic scoffed. "Aren't you supposed to be the info-specialist?" A jack was linked in here, a cable uncoiled there, and the complacent smaller 'bot was rolled back onto his front before the footage progressed more than half a klik. Jazz's fascinated blue visor never left the screen.
A frown crossed Ratchet's face as data buzzed through the cables. He looked between the screen and - yes, Jazz had scooted closer yet again. For the third time, the larger Autobot grabbed one shoulder tire and used it to heave his patient backward on the repair berth. The inbuilt conformity slots had been programmed to allow for Jazz's prominent hood, but only if the small mech actually laid in the slots. Due to wriggling closer to the screen at the head of the berth, he'd worked himself out of the slot. Ratchet muttered imprecations to himself as he forcibly rearranged the problematic spy back into position.
Jazz went limp and let it happen. One thing SpecOps learned early on in the war was to cooperate with medics. Medics were Primus' gift to those who would go out unto the Decepticons and get themselves half-slagged in the name of gathering vital information. One didn't question such gifts. Even if the gifts insisted on handling a mech like he was a sack of spare parts instead of a living mech.
He was used to it. Being bossed around the medbay had a kind of comforting routine to it. The Autobot Chief Medical Officer had every lead available wired into the monitors surrounding the berth, and any processor power left to spare was running his onboard sensor suites over the saboteur like a multi-spectrum bath of energy. It tickled. Jazz's circuitry sparkled playfully under the deluge. His thoughts were keyed up from the night's activities, and his body still resonated strongly of old metal and weaponry. Ironhide's sweep had left the saboteur hyperactive, or maybe that was the feeling getting checked over by the Weapons Specialist left him with. It was the familiar feeling of passing security measures with flying colors and a rude hand gesture at the Decepticons' best efforts. He was back to base, safe and sound. Nyah!
Now there were so many things to do that he had a hard time keeping still.
The hands on his shoulder left, but he stayed still to make sure Ratchet's attention went back to watching internal messages. The mech had so many separate operations screens up on his HUD that Jazz just had to wait a moment for him to get reabsorbed by the influx of information. Then he could stealthily wriggle further up toward the screen again, balancing on his bumper and his elbows.
Rocking back and forth between elbows and bumper kept him harmlessly occupied. The fidgeting was confined to a small space, letting him stay still without staying still. He did want a better look at the screen, but the restlessness had a more serious cause. Ratchet was in his personal bubble, here. The automatic reaction was to resist, and he had to sit on that urge.
Keeping his firewalls down and shutting off every one of the under-armor shunts in place to prevent enemy scans required a tricky bit of concentration on his part. The rhythmic rocking on his bumper helped him focus. Master spies were not meant to go under a medic's hands easily, even if the medic was a friendly. Keeping himself on the berth for the physical check-up and cooperating with the medical bypasses currently combing his programming for illicit code changes required more effort than some forms of combat, and definitely more trust.
It also got the smaller Autobot that much closer to being passed through security. Ironhide had put the safeties back on him, but a physical by a real medic was S.O.P. for returning operatives. Only once Ratchet's hands-on cleared him would Red Alert allow him to attend the officer meeting that'd apparently been in progress since the Aerialbots had returned. Resisting in any way was counterproductive.
Besides, it served Jazz's purposes in more than one way. Not only was this exam going to clear him for duty, but it was just plain clearing his head. One of the things Ratchet's medical partitions allowed for was parallel processing capabilities that even spies envied. Medics with those could be formidable hidden agents. Lacking any inclination toward multiple personalities, however, Ratchet was using it to run defragmentation. It wasn't a substitute for a deep defrag done during recharge, but the Autobots needed Jazz back on his feet now. There wasn't time for the processor downtime he needed.
In the short-term, the running defrag made Jazz feel twitchy as his lock-away processor spun up repeatedly, responding to the noticeable lag from his main central processor units. His thoughts ricocheted oddly, pinged belatedly by defensive protocols as Ratchet manually logged in, got his clearance, and ran the defrag cycle unit by unit. He felt scrambled, as well he should. Having most of his head working didn't mean the missing pieces weren't, well, missing.
In the long-term, however, it'd resettle his info-blitzed mind. He was already packaging relevant information as the sorted processors plugged fragmented data neatly into place and started running smoother. It made cross-referencing much easier. His information assessment subprocessors had begun consolidating incomplete files, assigning consistent key terms for faster searches, and compiling an index of relevant concepts by group terminology. Observational protocols were opened, and the updated assessment programs ran comparisons side-by-side with the previous versions. All changes with a timestamp past the point of arrival in downtown Tarn and the arena were pulled up for review.
Ticking slightly as his processors were taken offline to defrag one by one, Jazz assembled a briefing info-packet for the other officers. It kept bulking up as connecting concepts joined the information he tagged as vital. The fundamental assumption of consent in Decepticon society fed back into the widespread misconception of rape. The ability to love among Decepticons, along with the political and military reasons it never appeared on the surface, circled around to the underlying decision by the Autobots that Decepticons were somehow incapable of a full range of emotions. The odd ways interpersonal relations could, possibly, maybe have been hidden in plain sight among the Decepticons all along split off from the courtship proposals. The many and varied forms of tactile interfacing held up against the hidden but full-blown intimacy of hardline connections, and Jazz had to then include the illogical social protocols that alienated an outsider studying either style.
He turned the briefing packet over in his mind and added a personal thought. Not a fact, but an observation: hope in both factions had been nearly beaten to nothing by war and wariness. What he had seen tonight was that Starscream believed that there could be no trust between Decepticons and Autobots - but there could be faith.
After browsing through the packet's index, the black-and-white mech sent a directional ping to the gently probing presence melded to the borders of his mind. Ratchet acknowledged the direction and added Jazz's archival databank to the defragment schedule. It seemed wise to make sure they were organized enough to pull on short notice, since unpacking the files would take enough time as it was. There seemed to be a lot of history getting thrown about lately. He wanted everything available on demand.
At the very least, he wanted every scrap of information available on Vos. He was going to have do a lot of inquiries and hit the Special Operations' secure database. If Starscream had wholesale transferred the culture of his precious city-state to the disordered ranks of the newly-assembled Decepticons, there had to be records of what Vos had been like. Someone had to have done a social study of Cybertron's city-states. The Autobots needed to brush up on their history lessons.
The next few hours were going to be nothing but processor aches, serious talks, and possibly a lot of shouting. That didn't even take into consideration how the rest of the Autobots would take this. The officers were going to have to figure out how to brief the troops. There were a lot of misconceptions happening, and it'd only get worse if the Autobots put off talking about this.
That was the near future, however. In the meantime, Jazz kicked his heels up and watched TV.
Well, not really. The screen hung on the wall at the head of the berth had the same general rectangular shape, but the humans had never broadcast this kind of show. It was educational, yes, but not something from the Discovery Channel. Most people wouldn't watch this sort of thing for fun. Jazz was enjoying it, but that was because he liked being handed puzzles. He watched and tried to figure it out.
It resembled a cross between PacMan and a radar scan, but it seemed to be a wide-angle view of Cybertron's crowded orbit as seen by scanners. The little blips indicating solid matter had all been tagged with I.D. numbers for referencing; most of the identifiable bigger chunks were dead satellites and trash leftover from the Golden Age. Nothing useful, but nobody had ever gotten around to recycling or getting rid of the scrap. The clutter had been left alone at first because it hadn't been worth the effort, and then because it'd become too dangerous.
Anything that had launched too far from the planet's gravity had drifted off in a trail of refuse left behind as Cybertron had wandered the galaxy, but plenty had remained close enough to stay. The debris field had become unpredictably treacherous to navigate as Cybertron's magnetic poles aged and changed, gravity affected the ellipses, and debris bounced things into terminal orbits. Nuts and bolts, the planetary axis tilt had a tendency to just change by 90 degrees every million years or so. The world had yet to start rotating around another axis entirely, but Perceptor got twitchy when asked about the possibility of that happening.
Planets weren't meant to leave their solar systems, but Cybertron had been wandering a long time. Legend held that Cybertron's original sun had simply vanished overnight, but Kup and Ironhide told conflicting stories about what had really happened. Since both mechs had been forged in the era pre-dating the Senate's establishment, they were some of the few remaining living Cybertronians who might have spoken with witnesses. Rumor had it that Rung was older than even Kup, meaning that he might actually have been alive during the departure, but he firmly deflected questions when asked.
Once upon a time, the Planetary Guard's main focus - beyond defense, of course - had been to assist the Planetary Science Corps. in finding a potential new sun to orbit. Both organizations had aimed to prepare the planet for permanent solar system placement. There had been stars under investigation, but the science involved to somehow install Cybertron into a new orbit had still been in development.
The fact that Cybertron had survived leaving its former orbit had made it a scientific curiosity for the galactic science community. There'd never been scientific reason for Cybertron's continued stable rotation, resultant gravity and atmosphere, or the fact that they hadn't plunged into the thousands of minor and major gravity wells they'd sailed through in the course of Cybertron's eons-long wandering. Science in general seemed to have forgotten to include Cybertron in its usual antics. Most of the Planetary Science scientists Jazz had ever met were fervent believers in Primus because of that.
The Planetary Science Corps. and Guard had been intent on solving the inexplicable problem before science remembered their world. The idea had been to find somewhere to park before the improbable physics Cybertron existed by decided to stop working one orn.
That orn had eventually come, and nobody had been ready.
The ceasefire had originally been struck because the Decepticons and Autobots had a mutual desire to not watch their homeworld plunge into the star it was merrily sailing toward. Nobody had seen it coming. The planet had hung an improbable turn in space and started off toward the nearest star as if it were pure iron and the world had suddenly magnetized. Shockwave had started building a planetary space bridge before Megatron even contacted Optimus Prime, and Grapple had beaten the Constructicons to the build site. Everyone capable of breaking orbit had been sent off to look for building sites for the other side of the bridge, only to be called back when the abrupt, sucking attraction between star and planet made Shockwave's careful space bridge equations into scrambled gibberish.
The technology just hadn't been ready. The war had obliterated what progress the Planetary Science Corps. might have made. Here had been a perfect candidate star for the placement project, and under all the wrong circumstances.
Autobots and Decepticons alike had been flailing for solutions, throwing everything they had at the crisis, when it just…ceased to be a problem.
Jazz had been in the command center the orn Starscream stopped yelling - a nonstop screech about the angle of approach being wrong to escape the star's gravity well, planetary engines would never work in time, they didn't have enough power, someone put him out of his misery having to deal with all these half-clocked pretenses for scientists - and stared at the console he'd been monitoring. He'd stared in total silence while the rest of the room slowly quieted and took notice of the lack of screech. They'd all been keyed up. Shouting had been a normal mode of communication at the time, but Starscream's voice had a unique shrillness to it that they'd all grown to expect as background noise. Not hearing it had been disquieting even under the circumstances, or perhaps because of them.
After a good two breems of stunned silence, the Air Commander-reverted-to-scientist had staggered back from the console. He'd folded up and sat down right there at Skyfire's feet, his face a complete mask of shock. The Autobot shuttleformer had blinked down at him, severely alarmed. Frag, Megatron had been taken aback, and he'd been shouting at Optimus Prime at the time. Two Constructicons, Skyfire, and Shockwave had rushed the console. Starscream had continued to sit there on the floor, uncaringly undignified as he stared at nothing.
The four mechs at the console had looked at it. They'd watched the read-out, which had inexplicably just…stopped. Stopped, and a new scroll of results had begun listing down the screen. New, unbelievable results that'd been tracking the impossible.
Hook had outright squawked, tripped over his own feet, and fallen into his gestaltmate, whose balance didn't seem to be any better. They'd clung to each other and nearly blown their vocalizers laughing giddily. That was not a sound Jazz could say he'd ever heard before. Crazed, maniacal laughter was somewhat common from Decepticons, but not the sound of honest relief. Also, the sight of Hook clinging to anything had left the rest of the room speechless all over again. Seeing Shockwave, logical and ever-aloof Shockwave, collapse over the console like someone had knocked the struts out of him hadn't helped them find words.
Wheeljack had war-whooped from outside, rushed in still holding a handful of equipment, and tackle-glomped the first mech he'd seen. Thrust would have probably been offended and Red Alert might have started a potential traitor file on the engineer if Wheeljack hadn't also been screaming, "We're in orbit, praise Primus, we're in orbit!"
Jazz had never had much faith in higher powers, but rust him if an atheist wouldn't hadn't slagging well converted on the spot. Cybertron's path had skewed once more, spinning her through the star's gravity well in just the right way. The planet fell into orbit, and nobody but nobody had so much as a theory why. There wasn't a plausible explanation for cause, and that left the implausible ones. After having spent a dozen frantic orns listening to a cross-factional group of scientists panic about how all science pointed to doom and destruction, belief blossomed anew. Random chance wasn't any more or less believable than an old god most mechs merely mouthed faith in.
A total failure of science in their favor? It'd been entirely possible Primus existed at that point. There'd been a lot of mechs praying to Him that first miraculous sunrise.
Jazz had been among them. He'd stared at the star on the horizon - Cybertron's sun, they had a sun! Cybertron had a morning now! - and quietly searched inside himself for words to express gratitude to whatever or whomever had just saved his world. Primus? Sure, why not. He'd sent a few silent words of thanks out His way.
It'd been impossible, glorious, and felt even stranger because Jazz had been standing within arm's-reach of Megatron, who'd been side-by-side with Optimus Prime. Nobody had moved or spoken, much less shot at each other, for nearly a cycle. Sunlight had spread over Cybertron's surface, warm and amazing.
But also far more unforgiving in scope than artificial light. Cybertron's surface had been battered under lights. Under sunlight, the scale of disaster couldn't be concealed by darkness or smoothed over by distant starlight. The silence had started because of the sunrise. It continued because of what Cybertron looked like under it.
"How long will our Great War continue?" Optimus had asked at last, and his voice had been hushed less from awe than weary sadness.
Yet for once, Megatron hadn't reacted to the Prime's exhaustion by attacking. Instead, he'd looked out over their destroyed world and seemed to give the rhetorical question real thought.
Nobody had dared breathe. There'd been a mixed-faction crowd of scientists and high-ranking officers assembled around their leaders, and not a single mech had moved. For a klik, then a breem, the soft sound of ventilation systems straining against manual lockdown had been the only sound.
The whole crowd had frozen, waiting for the fight to restart as it always had, except it hadn't. This time, for the first time, it hadn't. Megatron had turned and simply strode away. There had been no shots fired, or promises made. There had just been sunlight and everything mercilessly illuminated by it.
Six millions years of civil war, and this was how it had ended: not in a grand speech or an epic battle, but in a question left unanswered.
From that first tentative morning of real peace, negotiations had progressed. That was almost as unbelievable as Cybertron's new sun.
Belief in Primus? Growing every orn on Cybertron. There were rumors of temples being founded, even.
For all their excitement, however, the fragile alliance hadn't gotten around to sending exploration parties out through their new solar system. There'd been a few solo missions checking out their new orbit for potential collisions. It'd been necessary in order to anticipate the affect Cybertron's arrival had had on any other satellites. The missions had been risky and short, but the limited data obtained during them had been pounced the moment the explorers returned. Jazz had never before thought of scientists as a starving pack of Empties, but then he'd witnessed Astrotrain land, take one look at the crowd waiting for him, and take off running across the landing pad with three Constructicons and Perceptor on his heels.
Turned out that scientists could intimidate anyone in sufficient numbers. With their minds.
There had been projections for the length of their new local, solar-based year, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief when it seemed the orbit was a solid one. There was some worry that Cybertron's rotation had begun to pick up. Increased speed would mean a shorter day and night, but it also meant an increase in gravity. That would mean a lot of things, including seismic activity as the core of the planet heated and all the complications therein. The Constructicons had been venting down Wheeljack's neck as the Autobot put together a satellite meant to track and measure Cybertron's spin. Megatron had made it clear that as long as that's all the satellite was meant to do, the Decepticons wouldn't touch it. They'd help position it, in fact. As long as it didn't explode, because they knew about Wheeljack and his inventions.
But a real joint, cooperative effort to get out and see their new solar system hadn't happened yet. It was cautiously in the works still, because it required a lot of planning. Like the joint launch of a necessary satellite, only more complicated because actual mechs from both factions would have to work together. The medical/engineering building back at the real Decepticon/Autobot headquarters kept figuratively leaning on the main building. All those finicky negotiations? Speed it up. Politicians only complicated things. If the peace treaty had been left in the hands of the other building, the Constructicons would have hammered it out in three days and Perceptor would have translated it into the fanciest of legal languages if that's what it'd take to make everyone leave them to their discoveries.
Not that Skyfire, Wheeljack, or Perceptor would come out and say, 'Hurry up and make a peace treaty; we've got science to do!' but Brainstorm certainly had. Luckily not in front of any Decepticons. Yet, anyway. There was a reason he wasn't included in the group of Autobots stationed in Vos. The mech had no concept of anything being more important than his own ego.
The rest of the Autobot scientists were being more patient with politics. Some of that was because, hello, six million years of civil war? Nobody wanted to screw the negotiations up. However, their patience also had to do with the amount of work that had to be done before an exploration mission - or even the satellite - could be launched. Finding the right crew was important, of course, and planning out what information had to be sought, but there were mechanical details that had to be ironed out. Not so much once they got off planet, but…getting off-planet in the first place. And returning.
The spacefarers who'd been sent out looking for a refuge for Cybertron hadn't all returned. A few of them hadn't even made it out of orbit.
The war had left its own mark on Cybertron's near-space, which explained why most spacefarers stayed in atmosphere these orns. Traveling at higher altitudes made a mech less of a target for those down below, but there weren't many Cybertronians who went orbital anymore. There were battle-torn bodies floating about up there, as well as the shattered remnants of at least one of the major orbital platforms. There were anti-spacecraft/satellite minefields intact up there as well. Their patterns had long since shifted from how they'd been originally sewn, and incomplete detonations had scattered the mine fields even more. Now there were dangerous weapons just drifting about loose through the debris. The sky occasionally still lit up with brief explosions as something bumped a mine and set it off.
Orbital maps could be trusted as far as the naked optic could see. The stretch between Cybertron and her three remaining moons was an ever-changing hazard zone. Maps through to clear space were as reliable as maps for ever-changing chaos could be. Anyone trying to leave or enter Cybertron without the aid of a space bridge was taking his life in his hands.
Cybertronian near-space was a mess, but it was less cluttered than it had been. Over-eager spacefarers had encountered a lot of the stealth satellites, often fatally. Time and collisions had cleared some of the debris. The Decepticons had concentrated on clearing paths several times, trying to create an open corridor to made access to the moons easier, but such corridors were never safe. They didn't last. Near-space was simply too full of dangerous objects, and what wasn't inherently dangerous by design became so because of constant movement. Junk collided constantly, setting off chains of irregular collisions elsewhere that knocked everything spinning.
Stable orbit was an intentional thing, and most of the junk up there wasn't there intentionally. It was all in some form of degrading orbit. Jazz could clearly recall the sky lit by blazing trails of fire as wreckage re-entered atmosphere, finally falling. Frag, he'd been on salvage crews trying to pull useable material from the melted meteors. He'd even lost friends to getting hit by them.
There was still a lot of stuff of there, surrounding the planet. Not as much, not since the major near-space battles had ceased, but a lot. Sometimes it still fell, but not nearly as often as before. There just wasn't as much going up to replace what fell, anymore. The Ark mission had been the last true attempt to leave Cybertron, and the Autobots' switch to guerilla tactics had given the Decepticons no clear targets for launching new weapons into orbit. The Moonbases were defensive fortresses, not launch-points for offensive attacks. Neither faction had forces able to manage that, anymore. Most of the space-worthy mechs had deactivated in high-altitude battles early on in the war, and building or upgrading frametypes for spaceflight had been expensive even during the Golden Age.
Astrotrain and Blitzwing didn't represent the Decepticons' remaining Space Division just because they were the highest ranking spacefarers. They were triple-changers, the heavy-weight heavy-hitters. It was a last-ditch defensive move for the remaining spaceflight-capable frametypes to rally behind those two. Proposed assault plans that would waste their lives needlessly had to get past the two Elite Decepticon powerhouses first. If such a plan did, well, the majority of the surviving high-altitude mechs were shuttleformers. They mostly flew atmospheric these orns. They shamelessly hid in the Armada's ranks as troop and supply transport if they still didn't like the look of what the higher-ups wanted them to do.
Seriously. Cybertron's orbit? Not a place anyone wanted to venture casually. Definitely not where anyone wanted to take combat to. It was like running an obstacle course full of explosives while getting shot at, knowing the whole time that the obstacle course would be just as dangerous on the return flight.
So, yes, what Jazz was watching looked like cluttered chaos as seen through a scanner, and that was an accurate account of what Cybertron's skies looked like. There was a method to the madness on the screen, however. Blaster must have been climbing the walls after Jazz's communication equipment went offline. There was stuff labeled on the graph that the saboteur couldn't ever recall seeing I. before. It'd give the Autobots the advantage in future battles - if they happened. If, that was, the Decepticons weren't using the ceasefire as an opportunity to map the debris field as well. And if this map could be relied upon if/when/by the time the peace negotiations failed. Any orbital charts made now would be disrupted by the first major conflict as things careened off in every direction. For that matter, the first mine to get set off would disrupt the debris field again and render every map useless.
Despite that, it was an interesting project for the moment. Jazz was fascinated. Blaster had put some real effort into making this a complete chart. There were altitude, mass, and velocity labels on every chunk of debris. Their paths were being mapped out as the planet turned, leaving dotted lines moving across the screen in a complicated weave. It looked like something Skyfire would drool over, or Perceptor made for fun.
The secondary curve at the top of the screen finally clued him into where the chart focused. "That's Moonbase Two," Jazz said slowly, studying the screen. The moon rotated, and an I.D. icon popped up as the very edge of the Autobot base came into sight at the top of the screen. Maybe Blaster hadn't been the one getting label-happy, after all. "We get this from Elita One?"
Luna 1 was supposedly part of the dense wreckage-field in orbit - there was some debate as to whether it had imploded or simply been displaced by a vast energy explosion early in Cybertron's wandering - but the other three moons of Cybertron were mostly intact. Although the vulnerable colonies were long destroyed, there were still Moonbases on each moon.
Not that every base was still populated. The battle of Moonbase Four had left tiny Luna 4 uninhabitable except by mechanical scum. The tech-scavengers and parasites that occasionally swarmed down to the surface of Cybertron from it would have been cause for an extermination squad if not for the war. That, and its peppering of still-active defense satellites. Cautious remote surveillance of the barren surface had led to speculation that the ruins of Moonbase Four were abandoned, but another structure may have been constructed underneath. It might have been the work of Neutrals, but definitely not Decepticons. Not unless Megatron enjoyed ordering his own troops on suicide scouting runs. The Decepticons had tried exploring the wasteland surface only to fail spectacularly. Remote-piloted drones, solitary armored mechs, entire units; none of them came back. Anyone that landed fell out of contact when the tiny moon's rotation cut off planetside communication-reach, and they never came back into contact again.
After too many costly disappearances, the Decepticons had settled for claiming Luna 3. It was better placed for their purposes, and Megatron could cede Luna 4 as a loss so long as the Autobots couldn't claim it either. The Decepticons used Luna 3's location near the Kaonite pole to build a maximum security facility even Starscream couldn't have broken into. The Combaticons were lucky they hadn't been confined there.
The Autobots had stubbornly held onto Luna 2. Ultra Magnus had used its remote location to consolidate the resistance cells after the Ark had launched. He'd taken advantage of the superior technology and facilities left from before the war to hold onto it despite several assault forces and two pitched battles between the Autobots and Shockwave's troops. The Decepticon Guardian of Cybertron had not made himself a popular commander with the Space Division after a third assault was proposed. The Space Division had suffered a curious plague as shuttleformers disappeared into the Armada. The third assault hadn't happened.
Jazz personally doubted a third assault would have won the moon. The Autobot resistance cells had done their best to sabotage supply transfers up to Luna 3, and what made it past them had often gotten lost in transit when the clear paths through the debris field proved not so clear. Even launching the assaults from Luna 3 when Luna 2's orbit swung close had left the Decepticons in a weaker position during the attacks. Luna 2 had an orbital period of 55 orns. That was over three times what Luna 3's was, but the Decepticons didn't have Moonbase Two's high-powered, high-tech computer and communication equipment. Luna 2 was small, only briefly within range of attacks, and practically bristled with defensive power.
Elita One had taken over command of Moonbase Two upon Metroplex's departure for Earth. Ultra Magnus had gone with the cityformer, which took away the main Autobot stronghold on Cybertron and relocated the command staff to Luna 2. That sent the Prime back his right-hand commander and boosted the femme unit's already specialized abilities. Her unit wasn't always on the right side of the planet for when the Autobots needed an optic in the sky, but she could analyze Cybertron down to the nitty-gritty molecules when Luna 2 came around into place.
Oddly, sending the femmes off-world had only made them more fearsome for the Decepticons on-world. Given a sliver of information, and Elita One was a pink one-'bot army who could and had emptied out Shockwave's energon reserves and sabotaged the Decepticons' supplies. Give her whole unit an information haven to nest in, and they'd steadily fed the rest of the Autobots crippling data. The decivorn between the femmes' relocation to Luna 2 and the ceasefire had shown how much more damage the femmes could cause from further away. Optimus Prime's return to Cybertron had been possible because the Elite Decepticons had abandoned Earth to retake ground lost to devastating Autobot attacks coordinated from above.
Elita One was a scary, scary 'bot to get on the wrong side of. Shockwave had spent drones and Decepticons aplenty in chasing and cleaning up after her unit. He hadn't even gotten image-captures of the unit spear-heading the resistance cells on Cybertron, they were that good at their job. Shockwave, Jazz had noticed, seemed to hesitate before stepping out into the open these orns. It was almost like he was wary of the sky, now.
He might be justified in staying indoors. Chromia did, after all, have a thing for using over-powered weaponry. There was a ceasefire and peace negotiations in progress, but death from above would be just as permanent if it wasn't officially sanctioned by the Prime. Shockwave hadn't been aware of whom the guerilla warfare specialists tormenting him had been until nearly four million years had passed. His files on their personalities had to be just as spotty. For all the Decepticon knew, the femmes were loose cannons the Autobots only barely had leashed.
Ironhide spent as much time smiling up at the sky as Shockwave did avoiding it. That probably did nothing for the Guardian's nerves.
Nuts and bolts, but Jazz had missed his division's sub-units. Elita One's group was the equivalent of Special Operation's secret weapon, and they'd done their division proud by causing merry mayhem in his absence. Tales of exploding Decepticon supply depots warmed a professional saboteur's spark, they did.
"She's the one who drew it to our attention, yes," someone confirmed from the door. "What you're watching is a filtered scan collating the orbital map project and Blaster's latest from Sky Lynx's energon delivery flight to Luna 2." Prowl stepped into the not-a-medbay and frowned.
Because the joint-faction base in the center of Vos had the real medbay, the room that Ratchet had taken over at the Autobot not-a-base wasn't really a medbay. Most of the time, it was where either Ratchet or Hoist recharged, depending on the shift. The medics just happened to only feel comfortable recharging when surrounded by all the comforts of home: a full surgery tool set, a repair berth, and a half the closest actual Autobot base's medbay equipment. But it wasn't a medbay, because this wasn't a real base, just like the Decepticons didn't have a base on the other side of the city.
Such was the polite fiction in Vos.
In other words, it was a little crowded in here because this was a repurposed bunk-room, not a room for equipment storage and multiple mechs. Adding another two Autobots to the already crowded room took Ratchet's elbow room away.
Prowl ignored the ambulance's resultant muttering and flattened against the wall beside the door to keep his intrusion to a minimum. "What's your initial impression?"
"Haven't watched it all the way through yet, Prowl, my main mech." The Head of Special Operations smiled, visor narrow and intent on the dotted lines. He was beginning to make sense of the labeling system. Elita One's unit must have set to mapping their new location with a will. Oh, those lovely, dangerous Autobots. Be afraid, Shockwave, be very afraid. "Don't ya'll have a meeting to be in?"
"Don't 'ya'll' at us," Red Alert snapped, pressing himself to the wall on the other side of the door. There was more disgruntled medic muttering, which the Security Director ignored. "You always have an opinion."
"And you're always rushing it."
"I have reason."
"Enlighten me."
"Both of you, stop," Prowl cut in before it could get any tenser in the makeshift medbay. "Elita One sent us this footage, and she is the one who noticed events first. We would prefer your unbiased impression of what you see before passing along her comments."
Jazz glanced over one shoulder briefly. "Uh…huh. Gotcha." Meaning that there was something on the screen that he wasn't catching, yet. Something important enough for Elita One to have sent a direct transmission down into the political tangle that Vos had become, where the likelihood of Soundwave intercepting any information was almost unacceptably high. Whatever was on this screen was probably being watched by the Decepticons right now.
The femmes had relocated their resistance cell up to Luna 2 before the Ark crew had returned to Cybertron, but it was the change in focus for the Moonbase that'd caused the war's abrupt turn. Ultra Magnus had, until he accompanied Metroplex to Earth, been coordinating the resistance from the moon. Elita One had fed him information from groundside and been his agent on-planet.
Optimus Prime had made a strategic call in taking Ultra Magnus and Metroplex from Cybertron: the resistance on Cybertron had been meant to go back underground. It frequently had in the four million years since the Ark's departure. Cybertron hadn't always been close enough to a star to fuel war efforts. Unlike during those long periods of planetary statis, however, this time the war didn't go on haitus. This time, the Decepticons had been receiving energon manufactured by the Elite on Earth. The Prime had judged closing that particular pipeline more important than supporting current resistance efforts on Cybertron.
That could have meant Shockwave retaking the planet, except for the revitalizing affect the Prime's return had inspired among the Autobots on Cybertron. Elita One had relocated to Luna 2 without any intention of surrendering a sliver of ground to the Decepticon Guardian. Ultra Magnus' departure had replaced command staff with specialists. The femme unit settled in, and that's when Shockwave had learned to fear the sky. Luna 2 became an important stepping point for information gathering, not just a coordination center. Suddenly, the Autobots groundside had been handed the best weapon possible for effective guerilla warfare: information.
Seizing a spacebridge intact had been an unprecedented act of boldness and courage. The Autobots on Cybertron had not only seized it, but held it. Earth and her allies had immediately thrown in behind the Autobots, delivering off-world support in a way that hadn't been available since the colonies had slipped out of reach. Energy and supplies had poured through that spacebridge, and Elita One had grimly utilized everything she'd been given in a no-holds-barred push against Shockwave's forces.
She'd been so successful that Megatron had been forced to return to Cybertron to direct the war in person. Which, in turn, had allowed the Prime's return. That, more than anything else, had changed the tides of the war yet again.
Beyond the changing of the guard, however, the physical location of Luna 2 hadn't changed.
So…what was he looking for?
Jazz studied the display and tried to figure it out. Dotted lines continued to trace across the screen in thick swathes. Only the altitude measurements on each label showed how deep the field lay as well as how wide. Dotted lines intersected as pieces of space trash crossed orbital planes, sometimes missing collision by only seconds.
A personnel label popped up right before an icon nosed on screen, and he eyed the information askance. Nothing stood out. That was the right I.D. to see. Cosmos had been in short-period orbit since the ceasefire had gone into effect, running prograde to Cybertron's rotation. He ran a low-altitude orbit most of the time, skimming through Luna 3's gravity's envelope at the pole to keep an optic on the Decepticons and test goodwill. Moonbase 3 pinged him incessantly but didn't attack. Cosmos passed through the target-locks directed at him from Kaon and sling-shotted around the planet to take a spin over Vos. The Decepticons watched him warily but allowed him to pass unharmed.
That was a good sign for the peace progress. His route took him low enough to dip into atmosphere frequently, which was a glowing target for someone to take a shot any other time. Nobody took the shot. He swished around the planet in a constant test of good will and information gathering that was too obvious to be called spying.
His chosen route would have cost the Autobots too much in fuel if navigating through the wreckage further up weren't so dangerous. Lower orbits took more fuel to hold, but they were also safer.
He kept to an irregular schedule, so it wasn't surprising to see the Autobot orbital platform out surfing the debris out near Luna 2. It got lonely up in orbit, and unpredictable routes kept nasty 'accidents' from happening. Cosmos, like Jazz, trusted the Decepticons only up to a point, and that point was a very short distance away. Maybe he'd decided to follow Sky Lynx's delivery route out to exchange news with Moonbase Two.
Or…maybe he'd had enough company at the time.
Ratchet grabbed the smaller mech by the shoulder-tire again and dragged him backward as Jazz perked up, trying to put his face closer to the screen. The sudden move knocked the berth against the wall, and the screen skewed. Jazz twisted, trying to follow it, and the medic bodily heaved him back into place. "Settle down! I'm almost done!"
"Yeah, yeah," the smaller Autobot waved a hand as his bumper was unceremoniously dropped back in the berth's shape-slot. "What the frag..?"
Prowl's optics were blank as he read something off his HUD, but Red Alert watched their fellow officer squirm out from under Ratchet's exasperated hold. The wriggly saboteur was trying to get a better angle on the screen now tilted heavily to the side. His sudden intensity doubtlessly matched the way the rest of the officer cadre must have gone still and silent upon seeing this footage for the first time. It wasn't a live feed, but that didn't make it any less riveting.
Ratchet resorted to leaning heavily on top of the smaller Autobot, squashing him on the repair berth. The medic was going to finish running his scans, and no one was going to stop him. The saboteur wheezed slightly, flattened, and his doors waggled on either side of the ambulance now practically sitting on him.
"What do you think?" Red Alert asked the black-and-white mech.
"I think that's Blast Off tailing Cosmos," Jazz absently replied. Continued escape attempts were foiled by Ratchet's greater mass, so the side of his helm pressed into the berth as he tried to read the altitude on the Combaticon's icon label. Some quick math, and one side of his visor twitched. "Mighty closely. Gimme a time frame?"
Red Alert nodded grim agreement to the assessment. "This happened almost three joors ago."
Peripheral sensors picked up the nod, because Jazz's gaze was locked on the screen. The various I.D. labels were ever so much more interesting now that there was a chase happening in slow motion through the dotted lines. The two mechs were actually racing at a speed groundbound mechs couldn't hope to match, but the small screen didn't adequately display the sheer size of the debris field. The icons almost appeared to overlap, but the curve of Luna 2 and the I.D. labels gave away how tiny the mechs really were, and how fast they were going.
Yet for all their speed, the race seemed to be a tie. Blast Off's icon remained steady, the distance between Autobot and Decepticon spacefarers changing only by mechanometers. There were several hundred of those between the two mechs, but still? From what Jazz knew about orbital flight, keeping that distance steady was something of a feat, especially considering the debris field. Blast Off wasn't shaped the same as Cosmos. The Minibot seemed to be deliberately slipping through gaps that closed before the combiner mech could follow, but Blast Off managed to change his route vertically and side-to-side without actually changing the horizontal distance between them. He had to be burning an incredible amount of fuel to be changing course so often. Every time he had to light his thrusters to evade something in order to follow Cosmos, the larger spacefarer had to boost himself forward faster as well to keep the distance steady. Even with his smaller tanks, the Minibot clearly held the advantage so long as Blast Off kept following his lead.
"Right here," the Autobot Security Director said, sliding forward to squeeze between repair berth and wall when Ratchet began disconnecting leads, "is where things start to get interesting." Jazz gave him a disbelieving look, and Red Alert jerked his chin at the screen. "I sped things up, obviously," or they'd still be sitting here two joors from now watching events unfold in the slow vastness of space, "but right about now is when Elita One passed a situation briefing info-packet up to Cosmos. She challenged Blast Off's intrusion into Autobot space, requesting that he remain in his current course while Moonbase Two got verification of his identity and flight clearance from Decepticon Command."
The saboteur's helm tapped against the berth as Cosmos' icon registered a reversal. The Minibot flipped and took off on a completely different tangent, apparently burning fuel recklessly. The fast-forwarded footage showed Cosmos darting up and around the curve of Luna 2. Blast Off's icon complied with the Moonbase's request. He remained steady on his previous course.
According to the terms of the ceasefire both factions were almost fanatically abiding by, the mechs from one faction could traverse areas claimed by the other faction as long as they didn't cause or provoke trouble. Mooncase Three and Kaon called every time Cosmos went and tested that, and Autobot Command patiently fielded the calls confirming his I.D. and flight clearance. Chasing a Minibot around Moonbase Two really wasn't the best way Blast Off could have welcomed himself into Autobot territory, however. Elita One's request had probably been pointedly polite.
"Here's where he sent a declaration of non-aggression down to Moonbase Two," Red Alert narrated, optics as intent as Jazz's visor on the screen. "Elita One requested he repeat his broadcast, claiming interference on the line. He did so, and Decepticon Command sent verification. His flight path had been approved for reasons of, and I truly think you'll appreciate this," a quirk of the Security Director's mouth, "'recreational pursuit'."
Cosmos' icon vanished off the top of the screen. Blast Off remained steady a moment longer, then abruptly veered off-course to rocket to full power. His icon took off around Luna 2 like someone had lit his aft on fire.
Jazz scoffed, "Non-aggression? Really." Oh, yeah, because barreling after the Minibot wasn't aggressive in the slightest. True, Blast Off hadn't been approaching him, but that last high-speed boost had definitely been a chase. The Combaticon had been almost stalking Cosmos prior to that. The Autobot Third shook his head, stretching his kinked neck linkages at the same time. "'Con Command's pushing it if they think we'll buy that. What does 'recreational pursuit' mean, anyway? Be vewy vewy quiet, he's hunting wabbits?"
To Jazz's surprise, all three of the other officers in the makeshift medbay snorted in amusement.
"Watch," Prowl directed him, even though his own optics continued reading through internal messages. "The transmitted briefing packet covered the very basics of the developing situation down here." Meaning the courtship situation, the gathering of Vosians in downtown Tarn, or both. Jazz wasn't clear on what exactly that meant, and Prowl didn't seem inclined to explain until all the footage had been viewed. "Cosmos immediately dropped into Moonbase Two's comm. network and logged a high-priority request for immediate updates on further developments," the Prime's Executive Officer added blandly.
"He also requested some specific things about the info-packet that Elita One had no further information on." Red Alert hedged around actually stating what the requests had been, but the quirk of his lip stayed.
Ratchet was outright smirking as he stood up straight at last. He pulled out half the cables that had been running separate diagnosis programs and started putting things away.
The sliding glass panes that made up Jazz's expressive visor held half a dozen secrets only he knew, but the ability to slot together into a narrow band of suspicious blue was not one such secret. He gave the three mechs the benefit of his glare for a moment before puffing air out his vents, pulling his bumper back out of the berth accommodation, and reaching out to right the display screen. Ratchet sourly allowed it since he'd already finished most of his scanning. The rest could run no matter what physically improbable position the saboteur decided to lay in. In the spirit of spite, Jazz chose to balance on his bumper, elbows, and knees, kicking his heels up at the medic.
Red Alert blinked down at the rump in front of him. It bobbed in time with the heel-kicking. "Ah…" He wisely chose to squeeze up closer to the screen. Who knew what kind of ideas or mood Jazz had returned from his mission with, after all. "We have Moonbase Two's scans for the orbit they chose going around Luna 2," he informed the saboteur. "It's more of the same, although I'd prefer if you reviewed them with me later. Blast Off went back to the exact same distance, choosing to expend fuel while Cosmos settled on a stable speed and orbit. Elita One made it quite clear to them that Moonbase Two was monitoring their positions. She sent a formal statement reminding Blast Off that causing one of our number distress could and would be construed as an attack. Cosmos continued to request clarification on the briefing."
Glass shifted and slid. The mind behind it moved facts and speculation around in much the same manner. "Sounds like Cosmos found something interesting in that info-packet."
What did he know of Cosmos? Good question.
The little spacefarer fell into the Minibot classification, although only for his frametype. That had confused the humans at first - he was taller and bulkier than the more conventional frametypes' Minibot classes - but his compact stature was similar enough to the other Minibots on the Ark that the similarities showed up under a second look. And, as any fighter in this war knew by now, frametype was no reason to overlook a mech. If nothing else, the Great War had proven to all Cybertronians that frametype was no measure of a mech, and power could come in extremely small packages.
Cosmos embodied that. He was a living example of kicking aft and taking names, and that Minibot frame concealed a disproportionately large altmode. He transformed from a Minibot rootmode into an A-Class DAM-Range observation platform. The huge amount of mass-shifting involved had led Red Alert to originally mark his file as a potential Iaconian noblemech refugee because of the expense such transformations involved.
Jazz's predecessor had removed that mark. Investigating the little space-goer had turned up evidence against Iaconian origin, apparently. He'd then put the Minibot up for promotion. There was, frustratingly enough, no explanation provided for either of the former SpecOps' Head's decisions.
Jazz dug into his archived files, pulling up what he could.
Cosmos didn't come up very often. He had one of the rarer abilities Cybertronians possessed: space flight capabilities. A fair percentage of shuttleformers could make orbit, but not many could break it, much less safely return to atmosphere. There were good reasons why the moons had proven so difficult to claim, no matter the faction or danger in Cybertron's cluttered near-space. An already small portion of Cybertron's population had been whittled down to practically nothing by war, and orbit-breakers were almost as expensive as nonliving shuttles to build, anyway.
True, the Minibot couldn't take off for other star systems like Skyfire could, but he'd been ranked as the Autobot Space Division's Reconnaissance Officer for hundreds of vorn before Skyfire's return to life. He wasn't the highest-ranked 'bot in the Space Division, but he didn't have the drive to be in charge. Sky Lynx had more combat ability and initiative. The Lieutenant Commander came off as a loud-mouthed, arrogant git of a mech, but he was a decent leader. His self-confidence belittled people at the same time it made them determined to do better. He'd beaten out Cosmos to lead the division, but perhaps that'd been because Cosmos wasn't the best when working with people.
He wasn't bad at it by any means. Jazz's personal experience with the mech painted the Minibot as an energetic bundle of positive emotions and a surprisingly cutting wit. Maybe not so surprising. Cosmos had reduced the Ark's common room to whooping laughter on more than one occasion by commenting on something or another, but being good with words was probably to be expected for a mech whose major source of socializing came from a commlink. That likely tied into why he did better by himself than when leading others. The Minibot's job often required him to be isolated for long periods of time. As much as he seemed to enjoy company, reconnaissance and orbital surveillance kind of required a personality that did better as an individual than as part of a team.
Come to think of it, that was a description that could be applied to a lot of the Space Division. Of either faction. Although the Autobots seemed to do more to integrate their divisions, trying to include individuals from different divisions into cohesive whole units meant to stick together. The Decepticons lumped their Space Division into the Armada, but the divisions were still separate. The only long-term assignments Decepticon spacefarers took outside of their own division were with the Armada, possibly because of the similarities between orbital and atmosphere flight frames. Sometimes the separation blurred; Starscream himself had limited space flight abilities but led the Armada. Yet, as had recently been made very clear to Jazz, the Decepticons relied on a more militant structure. The divisions were kept apart, operating independently, and the Space Division had its own rank hierarchy within itself.
The Decepticons liked structure in general, odd as Jazz would have thought it two joors ago. It kept popping up all over the place among the apparent chaos of the faction. It'd been there all along, but Jazz was still adjusting to its alien nature enough to analyze it as a working structure instead of a sliding powerhouse of backstabbing cards. He still couldn't fully wrap his head around it. Understanding how contracts worked within the strange brute strength and open hostility of the Decepticon ranks would take some doing.
Jazz's processors shook off the last defragment cycle lag and began whirring away at full power. Suddenly, archived reports were getting tagged left and right for significance. In retrospect, the contractual structure's presence explained a lot about the war. The military hierarchy had long since been picked over by SpecOps, but attempts to disrupt the straightforward ranking system with assassinations and powerplays had been a tricky business. No matter how carefully planned, the results had split evenly between predicted fallout and completely unexpected reactions within the Decepticons.
Maybe might explain that. Maybe could be the missing element for his threat assessment processor. Maybe emotional ties were sending his indexes into a flurry of re-sorting as potential contract ties were evaluated between Decepticon personnel. Noncombat interaction cues were getting revaluated by information and threat assessment subprocessors alike. Gossip in the ranks dealing with who liked to be fragged which way had been formerly tagged as inconsequential and vulgar. That was suddenly in urgent need of reassessment according to new assessment standards.
Oh, and wasn't that going to be fun? Red Alert was going to take one look at the saboteur's new parameters for self-modification program protocols and scream in frustration, Jazz could already tell. He skimmed the biggest clusters putting up flags for attention off the top of his processors and stuffed the attached files into his briefing info-packet for the other officers to get a look at. There would be a lot of screaming. Some of the shocked and horrified variety, but some just of sheer surprise for what Jazz had turned up this night.
Cosmos, however, might not be as surprised. Jazz got the feeling he needed to dig into the little Autobot's past as he watched the Minibot's icon bustle back onto the screen. He didn't even know what Cosmos pre-war job had been, much less where he actually originated from. That wasn't unusual, but it made him want to climb through the screen and interrogate the mech for information right now. He watched Blast Off follow Cosmos back toward Cybertron, and he wondered.
What did Cosmos know, that he'd asked Moonbase Two for information instead of assistance? This wasn't the first time Cosmos had faced off against a Decepticon in space. It was practically his specialty to take on the Decepticon Space Division's heavy-hitters by now, but he wasn't stupid. He called for backup when someone started chasing him.
Jazz had seen Cosmos pursued by Astrotrain more than once, especially once the Ark's crash confined the Minibot to Earth's solar system. They just hadn't had the energon to allow Cosmos to venture further very often, and the three spacefarers among the Decepticons had been even more limited. Astrotrain and Blitzwing had spent over half a vorn trying to kill the little Autobot whenever they ran across him, and they'd gone through great lengths to engineer those encounters. The chases were nasty, the crashes worse, but they hadn't succeeded. Which had, in turn, embarrassed the two triple-changers and made them that much more determined to off the smaller mech. They'd had no luck on that score, however.
It was kind of unfortunate that Cosmos' altmode was so badly suited for combat. He tried, adjusting astonishingly quickly to advanced weapon-mods, but an observational platform wasn't meant for the maneuverability an assault shuttle had in combat. Astrotrain had shot him down more than once - and that's when the triple-changer's luck ended. Cosmos topped the Minibots for combat abilities. He was small, but he was dense because of the mass shifting. He packed his altmode's weaponry, too, which most mechs didn't expect when facing off with someone whose rootmode compacted so small.
Cosmos had repeatedly pounded much, much larger Astrotrain into the dirt. Blitzwing wouldn't even engage him in close combat anymore.
So there was ill-will between the Elite Decepticons fresh from Earth and the bitty-'bot who might not out-fly them but could certainly out-fight them. The third spacefarer among the Elite on Earth, however…huh. Jazz couldn't recall much interaction between Cosmos and Blast Off, either before or during their stay on Earth. Blast Off had the team and bulk for close combat, but he was meant for observation and precision strikes from orbit. He'd been put into high security imprisonment well before the Ark, but he hadn't always been one of Onslaught's team.
Jazz didn't know what he'd been, and right now that information gap made his visor narrow. The same question went for Cosmos, too, and that had the SpecOps mech tense on the repair berth. Spacefarers in the both factions' ranks had spotty records from all their time spent off-world. Already sparse information had been lost when the orbital platforms and original moonbases had been destroyed.
It wasn't something to be automatically suspicious about. A lot of mechs had done their best to shed their pasts, signing up for their chosen faction with a clean slate. Some of them hadn't even been trying; the files had just plain been lost. There'd been mechs up on the platforms who hadn't been to Cybertron's surface since their emergence from the crèche-vessels, meaning that all their residential, financial, and job-related records had gone down in the wreckage. Kup had a dozen contacts among the Neutral groups - those that were left, anyway - who'd been stranded when Cybertron had left their colonies' star systems, and some of the colonists had returned to Cybertron before their homeworld left them behind. Jazz and Red Alert had shared more than a few cubes grousing in perfect harmony about how they didn't know scrap about those mechs.
Files from before the Great War were really only reliable if they were about mechs who'd been on the planet's surface the whole time. Even then, alterations or efforts to erase the records made mechs difficult to trace. Scrap iron and metal, just look at Starscream as an example for that. Second-in-Command of the Decepticon Empire, Air Commander of the Armada, and yet the Autobots didn't known anything about his past before he'd emerged as the Emirate of Vos. According to the best information Jazz's predecessor had been able to find, Starscream had just appeared one orn as the top graduate of the War Academy. Jazz's search efforts hadn't fared any better.
It'd taken reviving Skyfire to get any sort of background, and what a shocker that had been. Despite how they'd wanted to pump the peaceful scientist for that information, both he and Red Alert had been restrained from it by Ratchet's concern for the poor mech's mental health. All they knew were the dribbles of information Skyfire let slip. That had been enough to floor the whole Ark. If revealing Starscream's past as an exploration team scientist for the Planetary Science Corps. had been enough to stun the Autobots, there was information locked in the shuttle's head that would probably knock the tires off them.
Ratchet's concern was getting overridden. Skyfire was scheduled to return to Vos by noon tomorrow, and Jazz was going to grill him for information. He rather desperately hoped that somewhere in that interrogation, Skyfire handed over a handy guidebook for courtship he'd tucked away in his databanks. Or something. Anything. The saboteur would settle for vague hints, at this point. Someone with some experience still knew more than the rest of the Autobots right now.
From the look and sound of things, the Minibot getting chased around Luna 2 might know enough to be very useful at the moment.
"Tell me we've recalled Cosmos," he demanded of Prowl without turning from the display. Cosmos had settled on a steady course, but Blast Off had not. For all that his icon didn't move, his label was doing very interesting things if a mech knew how to translate the information into a flight pattern.
"We have," Prowl confirmed from behind him, and a new tension entered the makeshift medbay. Jazz's intense focus on the screen changed the other officers' muted entertainment to closely watching a Special Operations mech at work. "What is your reasoning, Jazz?"
There was just enough snap to the question to make it an order, not an opening for more banter. "It's speculation," he warned, visor reflecting the icons. Blast Off's flight pattern continued to spiral around Cosmos' straight line. The Minibot had stopped trying to evade by dodging around debris. He appeared to be ignoring the shuttle slowly making precise circles at a perfect 90 degree angle to his flight path. "I've gotta ask a few questions of my mechs before anything's confirmed, but what I think is that our favorite I.F.O. used to be part of either the Planetary Science crew, or maybe he was a Guard. He kinda doesn't fit the profile for somebody in the Guard, but frag, he had to pick up the ability to kick 'Cons around from somewhere, and it ain't like I've ever seen anybody take him to the training rink."
The Autobot Second-in-Command was no longer reading on his HUD. He watched his fellow officer bounce on the berth, hyperactive but focused, and frowned even as he nodded conditional agreement to the speculation. "That lines up with our conclusions based off our own viewing. Ironhide confirmed that training regimes have never included Cosmos as anything other than an instructor as far back as his archives reach." He hesitated, optics going a bit blank. "Ah…define 'I.F.O.' It is not an abbreviation I currently - "
"Identified Flying Object," Red Alert interrupted, too impatient to let the grinning saboteur explain. "Because we know who he is. What do you think of his reactions so far?"
The last was directed at the now-pouting officer on the berth. "Spoilsport," Jazz mumbled just quiet enough not to get called out for it. "Gotta buncha info to pass on, but you guys pick up my packets from earlier?" The transmissions had been under Blaster's interference and SpecOps' encryption, but transmitting so much data from downtown Tarn had probably resulted in at least a few interceptions by Soundwave. The peace negotiations likely meant that they'd gotten through to the Autobots anyway. There hadn't been anything incriminating, but the Decepticons would still pick over anything they got a copy of. The data packets had been urgent information about what Jazz had observed so far tonight that had needed to be sent to the officer cadre right away. "Ties into the way Vos pretty much cycled its whole slagging population through the Guard. I dunno how it used to be set up, but what I'm thinking is that," he tossed a hand up as if he was holding a ball, "if Cosmos's been in the Guard," his other hand picked up another invisible ball, "and Vosians were all over the place in the Guard," both pretend-balls were smashed into one large ball in front of the blue visor that then peered through it at the screen, "then Cosmos's been courted before. We need that information."
Blast Off continued to make careful, graceful circles. Even from Jazz's ground-pounder perspective, the way the numbers on his flight pattern never wavered was just plain showing off. Managing to keep his spiral in and out around Cosmos' flight path perfectly curved and on a 90 degree angle required control and concentration in excess of any standard. It brought to mind Terran male birds fluttering their plumage and dancing about in displays of physical prowess, trying to impress the females. Except that this particular 'bird' was navigating a potentially deadly debris field in pursuit of an Autobot.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Jazz snickered. Once imagined, that mental image wasn't leaving him alone. The other officers paused the discussion that'd started over his head to stare at him.
The saboteur glanced to either side of the repair berth just long enough to beam up at them before nodding at the screen. "Lookit me! Lookit! See what I can do?" he said in his best imitation of Blast Off. Which, admittedly, wasn't great, but it got the point across. Prowl's expression dropped into a cool mask. Red Alert slapped a hand across his face. Ratchet outright laughed. "Are you watching?" Jazz narrated, smiling as Blast Off gradually closed the distance toward Cosmos. "Are you? Huh? Huh?"
"No. I'm not interested," an exaggeratedly bored voice sighed from the doorway. Blaster could mimic Cosmos much better than Jazz could Blast Off. The Communications Officer lounged against the doorframe and smiled widely when Jazz and Ratchet laughed at his dialogue. "Go away. Shoo. Shoo."
The bored tone certainly seemed to fit how the Minibot on the screen ignored Blast Off's advance. If anything, he sped up. Jazz checked the numbers; yep, the orbital platform had boosted his speed to stay ahead of the Decepticon.
"Aw, come on," not-Blast Off whined, "gimme a chance!"
"No. You're not pretty enough." Ignore that shuttle harder, Cosmos. "Go away."
"But - but - !" The spirals were speeding up a little, progressively becoming more difficult. Blast Off spent more fuel and had to concentrate harder on plotting a safe course while remaining steady. The Minibot he was displaying for didn't seem impressed, but Jazz couldn't deny that he was. Mildly, anyway. He knew just enough about space flight to admire those capable of doing it well. "Lookit my wings! And my flying!"
"Shoo. Pesky 'Con."
"Lookit meeeeee. Come on, you know you want to."
Cosmos broke his flight path when Blast Off's acceleration pushed him too close, and Jazz sniggered as the two icons on the screen abruptly appeared to dance in place, turning about each other. "Are they…Primus, are they really playing 'Ring Around the Satellite'?" Cosmos' icon paused and went back the way it'd come, and the turning reversed as Blast Off chased him the other direction. "Come back here!"
Jazz's already lousy imitation was even worse while helplessly laughing, but Blaster just went with it. "Catch me if you can!"
"Fragging pipsqueak!"
"Slagging slow-aft shuttle!"
After a klik of circling the relatively small piece of debris in some sort of ridiculous chase, the Minibot's icon took off for the nearest larger piece. He hid behind its shelter. Blast Off lurked on the other side. When the Combaticon drifted up over the top, casually edging closer, his Autobot prey scooted under and away. Jazz, fascinated, kept track of the altitude and velocity measurements. Every time Blast Off came within visual range of Cosmos, however briefly before the Minibot zipped away, his label went into a frenzy of changes. The shuttle all but danced in place.
"It is just me," Jazz asked rhetorically after the fifth or so time that Blast Off's icon did its jigging display, "or is Cosmos playing coy?" He could measure the timing himself. Cosmos was lingering longer every time Blast Off caught up, letting the Combaticon show off more every time. Almost like a reluctant bird letting herself be persuaded by a flouncing suitor in full mating display.
The room was already too crowded to fit another mech in, but Blaster wasn't the Autobot Communication Officer for nothing. An alert lit up on the screen, flashing on and off with an arrow pointing to Cosmos' label stats. Those, if Jazz wasn't off his game, were showing some interesting changes. He did believe that they had begun showing their own variations. The reluctant birdie was beginning to preen under the attention.
The alert changed, still pointing at Cosmos' icon. Blaster's considered opinion: 'Totally Flirting.'
Jazz read the alert and grinned, half worried but unable to be anything but amused at the same time. The little spacefarer totally was. Cosmos wasn't letting the Decepticon catch up to him, but he was showing off some of his own moves while fleeing.
"Interested yet?" not-Blast Off asked hopefully.
Blaster's grin was audible even through his bored-Cosmos impression. "Hmm. Maaaaybe." Blast Off's icon danced. Cosmos sped out of sight again. "No." Blast off pursued and danced about some more. Smooth moves, spacefarer style. Jazz wondered if he should be taking notes on how to flirt in space, because those label stats showed one skillful, entirely unnecessary loop-de-loop before Cosmos ducked under the debris. Somebody was liking what he saw.
"Yeees?" not-Blast Off drew out.
Blaster's grin got louder under his Cosmos voice. "Yes." More fanciful little flight moves got shown off as the Autobot's apparent reciprocation injected enthusiasm into Blast Off's performance. Cosmos' icon lingered a moment, but when the Decepticon shuttle drifted in a casual attempt to close the distance between them, there was an immediate zoom away. "Nope, do not want!"
Jazz laughed, but he sobered quickly. "Y'know, if it wasn't for who I'm watching, this'd be cute?" He sounded wistful even to himself, but the saboteur really wished he could just sit here and be delighted. Two mechs flirting up in space sounded adorable, and he wished it could be that simple. "This would be much easier if you would stay still," he told the screen in his Blast Off voice.
"Make me," Blaster/Cosmos challenged back.
"If you would just stay there and watch me for a klik…"
"Pffft. Seen it before. Not impressed."
"No?"
"No." Cosmos scooted around the debris again, and Jazz grinned stupidly at the screen, imagining the frustration of the shuttle following after. "And stop staring at my aft," Blaster added just for good measure.
Jazz nearly doubled up on the berth laughing. "Then stop shaking it!"
"Fine." Scoot, scoot. Duck, weave, and Cosmos darted off to hide behind a new chunk of debris.
Blast Off hustled after him. "No! Nonono, get back here!"
"Hmmph."
"Fraggit!" The Decepticon's icon paused, holding course for a moment. Cosmos must have passed briefly into sight, because the shuttle's label bobbled with dancing stats.
There was just no help for it. He gave in. "Pretty bird, waaaark!" Jazz catcalled.
Combining a parrot's cry with Blast Off's voice was too much. Out in the hall, there was a deep chuff of heavy truck engines, and Prowl's mask fractured just enough for a tolerant smile.
"Remember bird baths?" Ratchet asked suddenly, and the engines out in the hall were overridden by familiar laughter.
"I was tryin' not to think of that, thank you!" Ironhide called from behind Blaster. Optimus Prime chuckled and then coughed to cover the sound. His engine continued to rumble, however, betraying the fact that Jazz wasn't the only one who found the situation cuter than it had any right to be. Ramifications and potential problems aside, it was nice to share laughter for a moment. A miniature shuttle flapping stubby wings while splashing around in a bird bath was just a good mental picture to share.
"Little wings," Red Alert murmured from beside the berth, and the saboteur looked up at the Security Director as black thumbs crossed and hands flapped. "Flit flutter flit." Solemn optics met his visor, allowing the moment of amusement but serving as a reminder that Jazz was now cleared for full duty. The Autobot officer cadre had gathered, and it was time for debriefing.
Flit flutter flit. All the wings of Vos, a-courting did they come.
[* * * * *]
End Pt. 20
[* * * * *]