Transformers: Vapour Trails
Author's Note: Okay, this update took a LOT longer than I thought. Don't you hate it when schoolwork gets in the way of real work? Anyway, I have a long list of people to thank. First, to my Writing Club again for giving me some great writing ideas and tips, as always. Second, thanks to my friends here, Lady Tecuma, Hearts of Eternity and Litahatchee for listening to me rant about Transformers for hours on end on MSN, for sharing some great ideas, and for just all around helping me keep this fic going! Thanks a lot, ladies! You've been great! Everyone, check out their fics, "Sparks and Plasma", "What Time We Have Left" and "Night Fire" if you want some excellent TF stories!
Chapter 4 – Part 1: Killing in the Name Of
"See anything yet?"
Waspinator answered his temporary master with the two-syllable buzz that Barricade had quickly learned meant "no". He had parked around the corner from where Waspinator was currently perched, in a tree on the unnaturally green grounds of Tranquility Secondary School. It had been simplicity itself to hack into the local school board's computer files, and even simpler to find the records of one Witwicky, Samuel James. Once again, the stupidity of humans amazed Barricade – no Cybertronians would ever be so lax about their sparklings' personal data and security.
Where is the fragger? In a few breems, the humans would be released from what passed as education for their species, but there was still no sign of a certain obsolete-model yellow Camaro. Given the pathetic Autobot tendency to "adopt" organics, even when they no longer served any useful purpose, Barricade had figured that if he tracked the pet, he would find the master.
He then heard the loud, annoying clanging of the school's bell; Waspinator was almost startled off his perch. Crowds of noisy human younglings started to swarm out of the building. Waspinator buzzed questioningly. Which one was Barricade looking for?
Barricade let his holoavatar stroke its mustache thoughtfully as he examined the students heading towards the school parking lot. Although most humans tended to blend into each other, little differentiating one from the next, he would recognize "Ladiesman217" anywhere. "That one," he indicated the brown-haired young male exiting the school just then, accompanied by a disheveled blond male he did not recognize and the same dark-haired female that had attacked Frenzy. Barricade half-listened to the three younglings jabber on to each other as they walked towards the school's parking lot, their conversation the usual pointless drabble that seemed to monopolize the time of humans at this stage in their life cycles. Currently the two males were arguing about which of two fictional characters called "Batman" and "Spiderman" could "kick" the other's "butt", the female looking nearly as bored as Barricade felt. He inwardly groaned. Where the Pit was Bumblebee?
The younglings approached a brand new yellow car, the engine starting up automatically. This was not unusual in itself; Barricade had observed that humans often had automatic starters for newer vehicles. However, the fact that this car was yellow; yellow with the same black racing stripes …
Barricade switched Waspinator's view to infrared mode. A small, cold smile crossed his holoavatar's face. To Waspinator's multi-wavelength vision, Bumblebee might as well be lit up like one of those coniferous trees humans decorated at the end of their solar cycles. The thermograph showed Bumblebee's Spark glowing like a miniature sun within his frame as the younglings, multi-coloured blobs representing the minimal heat human bodies gave off, climbed inside him.
Barricade shuddered at the thought. To let fleshlings sit inside him like that, like he was no more than one of their machines? Did Bumblebee have no sense of self-respect? No, of course he didn't. He was an Autobot, after all.
His holoavatar shook its head as Barricade tried to rid himself of such distractions. "Follow him," he ordered. Waspinator buzzed an affirmative and discretely flew out of the tree as Bumblebee drove out of the parking lot, zigzagging close to rooftops to stay out of sight of anyone who might be suspicious of a giant metal wasp. Barricade briefly wondered if Nightshade would consider making this trade permanent.
As he prepared to track his new favourite partner's progress, for some reason a term Barricade had once heard some anonymous (and now dead) Sector Seven agent use to describe Cybertronians entered his processors. He laughed at just how inappropriate the phrase was now.
Robots in disguise my aft.
"Easy girl, we're almost home." Captain Carol Summers often talked to her plane, a habit she tried not to publicize, but it was difficult not to believe that the F-117 Nighthawk had a personality, of sorts. The planes were notorious for their touchiness, the way pilots had to constantly fight to keep them with in the air with their unusual aerodynamics. "The Buckin' Batjet" one of her squadronmates, an F-15 veteran, had called it.
With the newer, faster, sleeker and just as stealthy F-22 Raptors gaining in prominence, apparently the Air Force top brass no longer considered the Nighthawks worth the effort to keep operating, despite their admirable combat records. The angular, almost alien-looking stealth fighters were due to be retired that coming spring. Carol sighed at the thought. "I'm going miss you," she told her jet, patting the side of her cockpit affectionately.
As the first morning rays started to peek over the Spring Mountain Range of southwestern Nevada, she turned her plane back towards her current base, the Tonopah Test Range Airport. It was fitting, she thought absently, that the first home of the Stealth program would once again house the planes near the end of their service career. With the recent terrorist attacks on Mission City, the base was just close enough to the city that another attack could be repelled in minutes, but far enough away to avoid unwanted civilian attention. Nighthawks were rather recognizable in the daylight, after all - another reason why combat missions and live-weapon patrols like the one she was on now were flown only at night. The sun was rising. It was time to return to base.
That was the last coherent thought to go through her mind before she felt it. It was just a headache at first, an annoying tick of pain behind her eyes, but within seconds it grew much more intense. Carol reached for the radio controls, to break silence and ask for assistance in landing her plane, when she saw the angular shape of another Nighthawk silently float up beside her. This didn't make any sense. Nighthawks flew alone – that was one of the first things new pilots were taught when assigned to Wraith Squadron. To fly within visual range of another Nighthawk on anything but a training mission compromised their stealth. None of her squadronmates, all Iraq combat veterans, would ever forget that!
The pain suddenly intensified, drilling into her skull, as a ruby glow washed over her. It was some sort of beam from the other Nighthawk – an energy weapon? But nobody but the United States had Stealths, and the States had nothing like that!
Fighting to keep her plane in the air, with pain so intense she could not even see her controls, never mind aim her guns, Carol Summers could only stare defiantly at the enemy pilot …
There was no pilot, just an empty cockpit, but then, with a flicker like an old television turning on, she was suddenly staring back into her own eyes.
She saw nothing else.
Slag it! Why must organic brains be so delicate?
It's not like you weren't going to kill her anyway. Frenzy reasoned. Nightbird felt him shift slightly in her bomb bay. She was still getting used to having to carry her symbiotes inside of her, as was required to maintain the stealth effect of this form, and hearing Frenzy's voice coming from within her just added to the sensation's strangeness.
True, but now all of the human's memory files are scrambled. Their minds are disorganized enough at the best of times; it's going to take quite some time to defragment the data.
Frenzy scoffed at that. Squishy memories hardly count as "data". You probably won't need it anyway.
It never hurts to prepare for any circumstance. We might encounter somebody at the base who knows – well, knew, that human.
If we do, we'll just have to take care of them, won't we Scorponok? The symbiote's tail tip scratched lightly against the upper interior of Nightbird's bomb bay as he chirped his agreement.
Now now, you two. The mission comes first. We can have some "fun" afterwards.
Pppppromise? Frenzy's excitement was evident even in Cybertronian.
Of course, brightspark.
Compared to the frantic pace of commercial airports, or even the less frenzied, but still busy, major air force bases like Nellis, being an air traffic controller at a small test range such as Tonapah was relaxing. There was usually only one plane trying to land at a time, being landed by skilled pilots who only had themselves to think about, not two hundred-plus cranky, tired passengers. The controller, enjoying the relatively tranquil pace of his new job, did not even bother to watch as the Stealth landed. Captain Summers had given her clearance codes in her usual precise way, and besides, the Nighthawks were among the most heavily guarded planes in the Forces, obsolete technology or not. There was simply no way any terrorist could hijack one. The controller went back to his crossword puzzle without a second thought, not noticing when something crawled down the landing gear of the plane as it taxied towards the hangers and effortlessly dove into the sand at the edge the runway, with a small, silver passenger along for the ride.
"Get them off."
Will Lennox grinned and leaned back in his seat, his boots not moving from their comfortable position on the GMC Topkick's dashboard. "When are you going to learn to relax?"
He was answered by an icy glare from the grizzled old soldier "sitting" in the driver's seat beside him. "Get them off now, or I'll use you as a footrest."
"Alright, alright. Chill, "Sergeant Hide", or do I have to pull rank on you?"
Ironhide scoffed, his holoavatar frowning at the same time Lennox felt the pickup truck's engines rumble. "I was blasting Decepticons to atoms when your ancestors were still picking parasites off each other and eating them."
Lennox shook his head. "Heh, have I told you that you remind me of my old drill sergeant back in boot camp?"
"This will be the seventeenth time," Lennox felt the truck shift on his tires impatiently. "When will this friend of yours be landing again?"
"Carol's plane should be coming down soon." Just as he said it, Lennox noticed the Nighthawk taxiing to the end of the line of Stealths in front of the main hanger, waiting to be put away after the day shifts' F-15s were moved out. "That's her."
Ironhide's holoavatar narrowed its eyes at the jets and a low rumble growled forth from his engine. "Flyers …"
"Not everything in the air's a Decepticon, 'Hide. I've known Carol since boot camp; she introduced me to Sarah. There's no other officer in the whole military I trust more than her and she's one hell of a pilot. If you guys want air support, she's the woman for the job. Lennox exited the truck, and walked towards the line of Stealths. "You'll like her, trust me," he called back over his shoulders.
Ironhide did not move from his "parking spot" on the tarmac. Instead, he activated his comm. link. Prime, this is a bad idea letting even more humans know about us, whether Will trusts this flying femme or not.
We are guests here on Earth, and as such, we need to learn to trust our hosts.
After what those Sector Seven slaggers did to Bumblebee?
We must have faith that they were the minority. Even you appreciate Captain William Lennox's prowess as a warrior, Ironhide. Respect his judgment here as well.
Ironhide shut off the link, the truck lumbering forward towards the jets. "I still don't like this."
Frenzy, report.
A small, silver head popped out of the sand at the edge of the tarmac, behind several parked jeeps. "Stustustupid sand! Don't know how ScorponScorponok stands it!" Frenzy pulled himself out of the sand and brushed grains from his antennae with one hand while giving the desert his favourite human hand signal with another. Scorponok stuck his head out of the hole Frenzy had just vacated and chattered, amused at his partner's irritation. Frenzy swore at him and sent one of his shuriken flying at the arachnoid. With a mocking chirp, Scorponok just dove back into the sand, safely out of reach.
Quit fooling around, you two. According to my initial scans, you should be able to find the data we need in the Base Commander's computer. Can you get inside without being seen?
"That'll bebebeeasy," Frenzy eyed the half-open window at the side of the base and giggled to himself maniacally. The smooth concrete wall posed no obstacle, his little claws finding invisible grips as he scurried up the wall and inside the base in astroseconds.
The base's hallways were mostly empty this early in the morning, though Frenzy did have to utilize his stereo alt mode once to avoid a private, barely out of younglinghood, carrying a tray of coffee cups. "What's thatthatthat? Smellsgood!" The intriguing odour of the liquid reaching his olfactory sensors made Frenzy consider the young human's whirling electric death. "Maybe on wayway out." He skittered to the end of the hallway, stopping in front of a door clearly labeled in the humans' primitive text: "Colonel R. Stark – Base Commander". "Heeheehee! Stupid squishies! Nnnnnnnightbird, I'm in!"
Excellent Frenzy. Contact me once you've accessed the network, and I'll help search for the files. Nightbird turned her holoavatar's head towards the base's main offices. She was used to doing this kind of intelligence gathering mission herself. However, the notable absence of Blackout and Brawl was proof enough that the humans, while still being primitive and stupid, could pose a legitimate danger to her kind. After Qatar the humans would be expecting another outright attack, so it was best to play it safe and remain in vehicle mode while Frenzy did the hacking. She let her holoavatar sigh, an ample human expression for the uselessness she felt, and started a visual examination of the base.
It was then she noticed one of the humans shouting and waving his arm, seemingly at her. She waved back, remembering from her cultural research that this motion was a human greeting, and began a quick image search through the memory files she had only partially begun to defragment. Lennox, Will. A few image files flashed through her CPU: a younger version of this human talking to "her" while travelling inside a large, multi-human vehicle known as a "bus", introducing a nervous Lennox to a blonde-haired human femme, accompanied by sensations of amusement and pride, and finally, the same couple, now dressed strangely with the blonde femme in an all-white, flowing garment, during a ceremony of some sort. The exact meanings of the images were unimportant. What did matter was that this "Lennox" had known the pilot she was now mimicking. A small smile crossed her holoavatar's lips. It had been a long time since Nightshade had put her enemy infiltration training to practical use. This could be fun.
Nightbird lifted her cockpit canopy and lifted her holoavatar partially out of her cockpit. "Will! What's a ground pounder like you doing in a place like this?"
Lennox grinned. "Waiting around for a flygirl like you. How've you been?"
Will's small talk could not hold "Carol's" attention however, as a very large black GMC Topkick pickup truck drove up beside him. The truck's driver, a gruff old soldier, paused for a second, seeming to think about something, before opening the door and stepping out to stand beside Will. He crossed his arms and glared up into her holoavatar's face, seeming to stare right through her.
Nightbird froze. It took a few astroseconds for her to remember to allow her holoavatar to blink. That truck looked awfully familiar … just like the one in Starscream's holovid of the Mission City battle, one that Transformed into the one Autobot no sane Decepticon ever wanted to deal with.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" she asked Will, once regaining her composure. Stay in character – if that is him, it's my only chance!
"Oh yeah! He's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Carol, meet Sergeant Ron Hide, Special Ops. Ron, this is Captain Carol Summers, US Air Force."
"A … pleasure to meet you, Sergeant," she managed to say, and revved her engines for an astrosecond, to mask her transmission. Frenzy! Autobot alert – it's Ironhide! I'll distract him as long as I can, but as for the research, you're on your own.
Note 2: Thanks again to Litahatchee for helping out with the military info in this chapter. Sorry to leave everyone on an evil cliffhanger, but the action in the next part will make up for it, promise! Don't kill me or I can't update!