-1Chapter Seven

Drone

Race Against Time

Five minutes later, Optimus turned up, towing a cargo container and blasting his horn. Mikaela waved madly at him and he came to an abrupt halt. There was an accompanying yell of "Get out of my way, dumbass!" bearing testimony to how fast he had braked. The car swerved around him, and Mikaela ran around to unlock the back of the container. Ratchet stepped over the trees and fence while Sam scaled the fence and dropped down beside Ratchet. As he helped her swing open the back of the container, Ratchet carried the inert scout's body into the back of the container, and Sam followed. Mikaela pushed the doors shut behind them and locked the bars, then went around to Optimus' cab. He swung a door open and she gratefully climbed in.

Optimus' holoform was a man of about fortyish by appearance, wearing a checked shirt and a hat, and with tattoos on his arms, and Mikaela thought he had chosen well, for he looked like a trucker. He turned towards her with a puzzled look on his face.

"That man in the car gave me a hand signal I didn't recognise as he went by." said Optimus, confused.

"Show me" said Mikaela, then realised a second before Optimus demonstrated, what it had probably been. She nodded when he demonstrated.

"It's not very polite, it's called "flipping the bird" and no, I don't know why they call it that." she said as Optimus executed a smooth U-turn as the road became empty enough to perform the manoeuvre. "He's obviously a rude man and a bad driver." She gripped the holoform's amazingly solid-feeling arm as Prime drove them back towards the base, only just staying within the speed limit.

In the container at the back, Ratchet and Sam watched Bumblebee worriedly. Ratchet had explained to Sam that he had no idea how long the effects of his EMP would last, and that he couldn't risk doing another one, not while in connection with Prime, and not without risk of damaging Bumblebee beyond repair. Sam crawled on top of Bumblebee's chest, spreading his arms and caressing his friend's smooth chest, not knowing or caring that Ratchet was a witness to the tears flowing unchecked down his face.

The little drone uncurled as its auto-repair mended it enough to get it back online again. It twitched and then began to finish the work in the hip area it had started while the auto-repair finished undoing the damage done. A few more nips later, it had destroyed the sensory and motor functions of Bumblebee's lower body. It scuttled up the spinal structure, settling itself atop the similar cluster at the top, where the various cables that controlled and connected to the upper limbs, head and torso came together. It attacked the bundled cables, severing arm locomotor cables, severing auditory and optical connections, and once again, slowly and painfully damaging the sensory connectors and cables.

Once it had done that, its programming told it, it would be time to attack the systems that surrounded and connected to Bumblebee's Spark chamber, and thus the Spark within.

Mikaela didn't even wait for Optimus to come to a stop, jumping out of his cab and running to unlock the container as he slowed and stopped outside the base. Ratchet set off at a run for the medbay, Sam lying on and clinging to Bumblebee's chest.

Optimus disconnected from the container and transformed back into his bipedal form, scooping up Mikaela gently in one hand, and taking off into the base after Ratchet.

They found Sam sitting on the ground outside the medbay, his head in his hands. Optimus put Mikaela down, and she knelt beside him, putting her arms around him.

"Ratchet doesn't want us in there." he said dully. "He said he has to be as fast as possible, and he can't be if we're there under his feet, risking being trodden on and asking questions. He said it's best for Bumblebee."

Optimus reactivated his holoform-not an easy task in robot mode-and walked it over to them. Crouching, he put the holoform's arms around the two distressed teens, holding them with his holoform as he would have held two distressed young 'bots in robot form.

The two humans and one holoform stayed like that for some time.

Ratchet put Bumblebee down on his operating table and re-onlined him, to explain what he was going to do, but as he saw the young mech jerk, saw an optic gutter and die, and a heard a horrible

whine of overstressed engines, he hurriedly offlined him again. Nothing could justify putting him through that, and if he was in that much pain the little Autobot wouldn't understand what Ratchet was trying to tell him anyway. The best thing he could do was try to find whatever was causing the damage and remove or deactivate it before it deactivated Bumblebee.

He found and opened Bumblebee's chest plates, and pushed aside the surface cables running across Bumblebee's solid abdominal area. Activating his saw blades, he opened up Bumblebee's upper chest and abdominal cavity as carefully as he could, but with no time for finesse. Swiftly, he activated his firewalls and anti-virus programmes, in case it had planted a virus in Bumblebee's processors, and ejected the appropriate jack from under his left arm plating, connecting it with practiced ease to Bumblebee's data port in the back of his neck.

He scanned and visually searched the area, and spotted it by both methods at the same time, crouched atop the bundle of cables it as engaged in destroying. Ratchet made a grab for it, flinching as it scuttled back while firing at his fingers with the micro laser mounted at the tip of its scorpion-like tail. It scuttled for the opening in Bumblebee's neck where cables fed into the cranial area. If it got in there, Ratchet would be forced to open Bumblebee's head, and that would risk damaging his processors, as he would have no time to take the care and attention he usually did when he had to deal with the heads of Autobots.

He made another grab for the drone, and this time the tail was its undoing as Ratchet's specialist anti-tremble middle finger and his thumb latched firmly onto the drone, and he pulled it out of Bumblebee as his other hand retrieved a jar with a greased lid. Sliding off the lid, he dropped the furiously slashing and firing mini-Scorponok inside, sliding the lid straight back on. Paying no heed to either it or the burns and cuts it had inflicted on the fingers and palms of that hand, he turned back to his priority task-saving the life of Bumblebee.