-1Drone
Chapter Eight
How to Save a Life.
He scanned Bumblebee again, wanting to be certain that the creature he had caught was the only one in there. Once he was satisfied that that was the case, he gently put his hands into Bumblebee's chest cavity and began to assess the damage.
He began swearing inventively and virulently. His scan was telling him that Bumblebee's self repair, transformation matrix, vocal and communication network, and three quarters of all his locomotive and sensory cabling was totally unusable, completely destroyed. The drone had managed to sever about half of the cables at the top of the spinal structure before Ratchet had caught it.
Bumblebee's systems were running on such a small set of connections that they were in danger of overloading or blowing out. If that happened, there would be nothing further he could do to help Bumblebee. The little mech's life could be over before it had really begun.
"War stinks." said Ratchet as he began taking out and identifying all the dead circuitry and chips and wires-what was identifiable, that was. Most of it was, and he could guess at some of that that wasn't obvious.
He yelled for Cliffjumper and Mirage over the internal comm system, as he pulled out the damaged cabling, tubing and leads, sorted them out and made a mental list of the parts and spares he would need.
Cliffjumper and Mirage entered at a run-Optimus had heard the call, and got his protoform to pull the two young humans out of the way of the medbay doors, giving the running mechs free access.
Ratchet instructed Cliffjumper to fetch a vat of coolant and an emergency cooling unit, and then to bring him several hundred meters of new coolant cable. As Cliffjumper ran off to do just that, Ratchet rattled off a complicated list of parts identified with letters and numbers, a list that would have left a human's head reeling, but Mirage committed the list to memory, dashing off to the stores to get the required parts.
He unjacked from Bumblebee's head, satisfied that there was nothing nasty from the drone lurking in Bumblebee's processors. He connected up another jack that led from Bumblebee's head to a monitoring machine: fluctuating processor readings could be the first warning that something vital had failed. He was concerned about overheating in the remaining linkages, and as he thought that, Cliffjumper returned with the emergency cooling unit, a large vat of coolant, and festooned with a huge coil of piping.
He virtually pounced at him, eager to relieve him of his burden and put it to good use. As he wound the pipes of the emergency cooling unit around Bumblebee's remaining systems, plus around his arms, legs and head to keep the stressed areas there cool, he gave Cliffjumper a list of tools-mainly linking devices and lasers and welding tools-to assemble for him. Cliffjumper shot off to do as Ratchet asked.
Ratchet set the coolant unit going, sighing with relief. Overheating had been the greatest peril Bumblebee had faced, and Ratchet now felt that he had a very good chance of restoring Bumblebee back to the way he had been before the nasty little drone had got in, however that had been. He thought back.
"That Pitspawn Barricade!" he said out loud. "I thought rending wasn't his usual style, he prefers to intimidate and crush, psychologically and physically."
He pulled out more damaged circuitry, checking it, committing anything he hadn't originally asked Mirage for to memory, and then discarding it on the floor.
Mirage returned with a large tray of the required items, he'd just grabbed handfuls and put them in piles on the tray. Ratchet was glad that earlier he'd been bored enough to individually label each and every example of a spare part: now he knew straight away which one of three similar-looking but differently-functioning parts was which, without wasting valuable seconds identifying each one. He gave Mirage the smaller list of things he'd at first missed, and Mirage went off to get them.
Ratchet started connecting wires and circuits together, then inserted them into Bumblebee, linking them up as Mirage brought the other items and Cliffjumper brought him the requested tools.
Ratchet stared off by rebuilding and reconnecting first Bumblebee's locomotor and sensory cables, then getting his auto-repair back up and running - which in itself was a major help - getting his coolant system back to the levels needed to keep his body functional when online, and replacing some of the remaining linkages that had been damaged but not destroyed. Then he got down to installing a new vocal processor and rebuilding his radio, data and other communication sending and receiving technology. Three times Mirage or Cliffjumper went to get parts from stores or new tools that Ratchet found that he needed. Mirage and Cliffjumper also took it in turns to monitor Bumblebee's processor readings, and keep the two humans (who refused to go off and sleep) and the other mechs in the base informed of Bumblebee's progress.
Once he had finished with all of that, he put together the parts needed for Bumblebee's transformation circuitry, and reinstalled it.
More than twenty-four hours later, Ratchet double-checked his work, re-checked Bumblebee's processor readings for himself, and carefully welded his upper chest and abdominal cavity shut again, carefully closing the hinged chest plates, waving Cliffjumper over to deal with the fine work to hopefully reduce or remove the scarring his brutal surgery could otherwise leave Bumblebee with.
Cliffjumper, as a craftsmech, had been constructing bodies only a few years before the war had broken out, and he had been forced to learn combat skills. Now his crafting skills were mainly turned to reducing the scarring cased by conflict. Not that Cliffjumper ever complained about it, but Ratchet was willing to bet that he'd love to get back to crafting sparkling or adult femme bodies again.
Ratchet was just thankful that the drone's damage had been confined to the torso: if it had attacked systems in the limbs, or worse the head, Ratchet wasn't certain if he could have restored Bumblebee to full operational capacity without he and Cliffjumper having to build him a new body, assuming his Spark and processors would had stayed alive and online long enough to be transferred.
Ratchet had one final task to perform that day, and that was to assess and nullify the threat posed by the drone. He picked it up in its jar, taking it to a sealed section of the lab reserved for hazardous work.
Ratchet had seen the damage the tiny but lethal creature had been capable of. He was not going to underestimate the danger it could pose to him and to others.