A "redshirt," of course, is the low-level Star Trek character, often nameless, who is killed before we learn any part of his, rarely her, own story.

FOUR JOOR LATER

Prowl woke to the sound of the sparkling crying, and the warm presence of another body along his spinal struts, not quite in contact with his injury.

"Hey, little one," he said softly. "Hey, what's the matter?"

"Prob'ly hungry," said Ironhide, who had also roused at the sound. "Lemme check to see if Mama carried supplies."

The one named Jazz continued to sleep. Nice face, Prowl thought. But he had other things on his mind, and did not pursue that thought.

Ironhide returned with a bag he was careful not to allow the child to see: it was soaked in his carrier's energon. It proved to contain two bottles and a cloth, which the child seized eagerly, once he had dispensed with half the contents of a bottle. He held it next to his face, and settled back into Prowl's encircling arm, chirring contentedly.

Once the little one was once again asleep, Prowl said, "I have two cubes in my subspace. If I open it, will you get them out?"

"Yuh. We've each got two, as well, so we got six total, an' th' little guy's got another bottle. Wonder if he can tolerate low-grade yet."

"Mix it with what he's got left. Your comrade's hurt pretty bad, isn't he."

"Yeah, he is."

"He's top priority, then. Him and the sparkling."

Ironhide stirred, and Prowl, still lying down, felt the blue eyes fix on him. "You been a 'con long?"

"Two days. My first battle. Don't I remember your designation from the 'shoot on sight' list?"

"Yeah, you do. I was a 'con for a little bit."

"Why'd you leave?"

"You know what they'll do to Jazz an' me, they'll do to the kid, too. When Megatron instituted that policy, I left."

A long silence ensued. It was so quiet that they could both hear the rubble around them settling down, losing volume as the dust it had freed compacted, allowing larger pieces to move.

That quiet was broken when Prowl said, "No. I didn't know that." He sighed. "When I took my sparring-proficiency tests, the last one was to deactivate a drone, and I don't mean by shutting it down. The drone had been a close friend of mine, a fellow Enforcer in Praxus."

Ironhide rumbled. Then he said, in a normal tone, "You do it?"

"As fast and as clean as possible. At that point, I didn't think they'd let me walk away. And whatever they'd done to him, it ... couldn't be fixed."

"Yuh," said Ironhide, both acquiescing to Prowl's assessment of the situation and agreeing with him - Ironhide knew, beyond doubt, that he'd have done the same thing. He said, "Why'd you become a 'con?"

"My battle computer gives the Autobots very long odds of winning. It's already almost impossible."

"You have a battle computer? Pit, mech, come and work for us. You'll turn it around."

Prowl's battle computer whispered that this would be so, be so, be so ...

The neural pathways had by now grown through all of the ethical component, linking it forever to the battle computer, and the rest of Prowl's processor as well. The component had accepted these links, and bound itself to him. He had been upright and honorable before, but Prowl was now an ethical mech down to his core programming.

Therefore he said, "I can't pretend that what they did to Escalade was all right. They probably killed my sparker and my carrier as well."

"Your sparker, he an Enforcer too?"

"Yes."

"He might be a drone then. Means he ain't your sparker no more, any more'n yer friend was still yer friend."

Prowl put his head back against a handy piece of rubble, and sighed.

"What'll you do if they're the first ones to find us, Prowl?"

"If you let me have my rifle back, I'll go down fighting them."

Ironhide rumbled, but said only, "Look. I gotta get some recharge. If I leave Jazz' pain meds with you, can you give them to him?"

"If I can get his wrist port open, yes."

Ironhide shrugged, and popped Jazz' wrist port before he lay down, handing Prowl the meds.

NEXT ORN

Jazz woke while Ironhide was in recharge. Prowl, one-handed, got him the meds, and a quarter of the remaining energon.

Jazz said suddenly, "Yer awful pretty. Always did like them Praxian door-wing models."

Prowl's audial fins got red. "I think those meds might have hit."

Jazz giggled. "Sure they did. Doesn't mean I'm wrong though. Ain't you th' mech who helped me pull survivors outta that 'con killing field, back in Iacon? An Enforcer?"

Despite himself, Prowl was impressed. Usually nobot saw beyond the armband. "That was me, yes. Designation Prowl."

"Designation Jazz. But you knew that. Thought you was pretty then." The Autobot was becoming heavy-lidded. "How'd you escape the 'cons' Enforcer trap there, Prowl?"

"Luck. I was on duty, and wasn't free to respond."

"You would have?"

"I don't think so."

Whatever else Jazz might have been going to say, all he got out was, "You was awful brave helpin' us out there, gorgeous. Thaaaa ..."

The meds took him, and he fell silent.

TWO ORN LATER

Prowl said to Ironhide, "Look. You need the energon to feed the kid. I'm going to go into stasis lock, unless you have a better idea."

Ironhide, who didn't, and had set aside four rounds to prevent all of them from falling into the hands of the 'cons, said, "I've already shut Jazz down. Give me a couple more joor, willya, so that th' little one will accept me? He still ain't quite sure I'm trustworthy."

"All right." Prowl put his head back; the pain, a backdrop to this part of his life, rearranged itself a bit, but didn't go away. "It's too bad he isn't old enough to tell us his name."

"About that," said Ironhide, and unsubspaced a set of documents. "This's his birth certificate."

The flow of her life's energon had blotted out the child's carrier's name, and washed through the sparker's as well. The area containing his own was free of it, however: he had been called after the small flying drones which serviced public crystal gardens. "Name's 'Bumblebee.'"

"You start using it, then. Here, you have the blankie." The sodden and distasteful object was passed across to Ironhide from the sleeping child's grip. "Wonder if he'd let you hold him when he wakes up."

"I'll offer him the bottle, see where it gets us. You in any pain?"

"Nothing major. And Jazz needs whatever painkillers you – oh, you said you stasis-locked him." He really was in a lot of pain, Prowl realized, to have forgotten that.

"Yuh. Want a pain chip?" Ironhide didn't read minds, but he'd been around injured mecha often enough, and long enough, to read the signs.

"Please."

Ironhide supported the damaged arm, moving it very carefully to achieve this, and inserted the pain chip into the wrist port. Every single thing that was wrong inside Prowl's armor went away. "Oh, that's nice," the Praxian said, relaxing.

Ironhide grinned. Been there a time or six himself. "Yuh. Look, I set aside four rounds, one for each of us, in case the 'cons get here first. That what you want, or should I take it down to three?"

Prowl set the battle computer on it. Finally he said, "I have some options neither of you do, since they don't know I've defected yet. I might be able to get away before the next battle, or take out a bunch of them from inside. Take it down to three."

Bumblebee woke.

"Hey, 'Bee," Ironhide said. He got a bottle from the bag, and said, "Here ya go. This what you want?"

Bee accepted his bottle from Ironhide, although he kept a wary eye on the mech while ingesting it. That done, the sparkling toddled to Prowl, and leaned up against his injured arm, which popped the fractured shoulder strut out.

Prowl's extremities grayed with the shock, and he curled his other arm around the little one. "Come on over here, Bee," he said, but Bee wanted his comfort to come from the left and not the right, and resisted. Ironhide gently detached him, and began to play upsa-daisy with the tiny mechling, who was startled at first but then fell under the spell of anti-gravity. He began to laugh and smile, and on being held close to Ironhide's face, patted both his cheeks and chirred enthusiastically.

"Do you have sparklings of your own?" Prowl said, once the white-hot haze of pain had cooled a bit.

"No, not my own. I'm th' eldest of seven. Way it worked was my carrier raised me and my twin sisters, and we raised th' rest of 'em after she died." Ironhide chuckled at Bee, who squealed and giggled back. "I like sparklin's, anyway, always have. Wait until you meet Ratchet, little Bee, he's going to adore you."

"Ratchet. He's your medic."

"Yeah." Ironhide placed Bumblebee on his knee, and began to play peekaboo with the sparkling, using his blankie. "He on the shoot-on-sight list too?"

"Yes. –You seem to be getting along with him all right, so I think I'll put myself into stasis lock. Wake me up when they come?"

"You bet. Soon's I know the balloon's goin' up," said Ironhide.

Bee tired himself, and went to sleep on Ironhide's shoulder. Ironhide laid him down gently; next, he reduced the contents of his suicide stash to three rounds.

He hoped the kid's future wouldn't end here. But if that was the best he could do for Bumblebee, he would do it. It wasn't like he'd have a long time afterward to regret it.

JOOR LATER

::Ironhide.::

Ironhide woke with a snort. ::Who's that?::

::Is that Ironhide?::

::Identify yourself.::

There was more, but absent the password Ironhide stopped responding, and hoped like the Pit that he hadn't given them enough time to home in on him. He sent a message on the most heavily-encrypted comm frequency he was privy to: ::Agent 14X9672 here. The 'cons are tryin' to home in; I got a orphaned sparklin' an' a defector with me, an' Jazz, wounded bad enough he's in stasis lock. Anyone out there?::

There was no answer. He dismayed, and let himself feel that all the way through his spark, which is what the tough guys must do to remain tough.

He wanted to cry. For himself, for Jazz, for the sparkling. But that would be no help at all, so he put the three shots in his smallest revolver, subspaced it, and charged his cannons.

TWO BREEM LATER, AUTOBOT MAIN CAMP, COMMUNICATIONS

Monitor duty bored Sideswipe. He closed his eyes, put his pedes up, and prepared to play spark-bond redfletch with his twin.

But then, ::Agent 14X9672 here,:: the comm whispered, on a rarely-used frequency.

"Ironhide?" the red frontliner said, wonder in his optics and his tone. His pedes hit the floor, he slapped the switch to activate the console, and then hastily pulled the headset back into place. ::14X9672, we copy. Please use protocol Beta 4-7.::

RUINED BUILDING, IACON

Ironhide scrambled through his processor, found the protocol, obeyed it. It involved cycling through one hundred frequencies in sets of seven for periods just shy of long enough for triangulation, and it required all his attention.

AUTOBOT COMMUNICATIONS

Sideswipe worked up his nerve, and commed Optimus Prime in the middle of his recharge cycle. But with Ironhide gone, there was no 2iC.

RUINED BUILDING, IACON

::Agent 14X9672,:: said Optimus Prime's voice, ::hang on. We're on our way.::

::Can't be too soon. I hear someone nearby, and I don't think it's you.::

Ironhide considered things, and woke Prowl.

"You still ready to shoot?" he said, when sense had returned to the young 'con's eyes.

"If you're sure who's out there, I'm ready," Prowl said. Ironhide passed him his rifle, and several rounds of ammunition, then surprised him by tossing him a cube.

"Got th' 'bots on th' way, but th' 'cons're closer," Ironhide said over the noise of his cannons charging. "If it's our friends, all well'n good. If not, you might wanna keep a round back fer yerself."

Prowl smiled slightly, and the expression was swiftly gone. "I don't think I could explain this, no," he said, and prosaically removed one round from the rifle.

Ironhide grinned. "No, probably not," he said, and they fell to waiting.

A few breem later, the noises were louder. Ironhide went to the sparkling and, very gently, nudged the little one into stasis lock. "Don't want him wakin' up at th' last minute an' bein' scared," he said gruffly, and sat back down.

Prowl said, "No, nor being frightened by gunfire and crying when the cons're just outside."

"No," said Ironhide, who honestly hadn't thought of that. "'Course not."

They settled back into silence and waiting.

TWO DECI-TEK AWAY AND CLOSING

"Got a reading on who's there?" Optimus said to Ratchet.

Perceptor, who fought like the Pit when cornered, had relieved Sideswipe, so that the frontliner twins could lead the attack to rescue Ironhide and Jazz. No one doubted Percy's courage, but he was too small to be much help on the front lines. Wheeljack, Grapple, Hoist, and the twin warriors surrounded Optimus and his medic.

"Soundwave is about a tek away. A couple of low-level 'cons are ... oh slag, Skywarp's there too."

"Any of the other coneheads?"

"No other Seeker signatures, no."

"Then I say we let Skywarp do the work of shifting debris, then we come in and, ah, displace them."

"Permission to eavesdrop, sir?" said Mirage.

"Good idea. Sideswipe, do you have your slingshot with you?"

"Sir, yes sir," said the 'bot who wasn't allowed to play with it in the Ark any longer.

"At irregular intervals, begin shooting small objects off into the space on the other side of the 'cons, over the dome. That way they'll think Mirage's pedefalls are just more of the same."

"Yessir!" said Sideswipe happily, and Sunstreaker and Mirage exchanged covert grins with one another.

OUTSIDE THE DOME CONFINING FOUR MECHA

There was a grinding noise, and then another. Afterward came a crunching crash, as if someone had, say, teleported the largest heap of building debris they could a short distance, then dropped it.

These being Decepticons, one voice said, "Hey, you conehead! Will you watch where you're droppin' that!" and another snarled back, "Why don't you get out of the way, groundpounder!"

Then, mysteriously, faint thwa-bomp noises began to sound at irregular intervals.

"The slag's that?" said the "conehead" voice.

"Debris fallin' outta th' ceilin'. C'mon, 'Warp, I wanna get back inta my nice warm berth."

Grind, grind, crunch-crash.

"Pit, Seeker! Watch it!"

"Oh?" said the "groundpounder" voice. "You wanna be up all night shovelin' this stuff? Then why don't you shuddup."

Light did not begin to come from the direction of the voices so much as less intense darkness. Both mecha who were aware inside the dome checked their rifles, and waited.

Optimus, outside it, silently gestured one twin left and the other right. Ratchet was on his six.

Ratchet, while not frontline troops, was about as dangerous as anyone could wish when it came to defending his patients. He understood that he had three in there.

Fine. There were more than three 'cons out here. He'd get some fun out of it before he had to put the doctor hat back on.

Mirage relayed the 'cons' positions. Skywarp, of course, was nearest the dome, busily excavating chunks out of it. A Decepticon with a sergeant's armband was to his right, and two more, not known by paint job, were behind them.

Optimus' busy servo digits told them the story. He would fire on Skywarp, the frontliners were to take out the Transformer redshirts, and Mirage would nail the sergeant. Anyone who needed a second shot would take it. They were not to fire into the dome.

Skywarp teleported the last of the debris, and a large hole manifested itself in the dome. The sergeant stepped inside it, rifle raised, and snarled, "Got you now, traitor!" just as Ironhide fired at Skywarp, Prowl shot Braceweight right through the spark casing, the redshirts dropped, and Prowl, Optimus, and Mirage all nailed Skywarp as well.

Ratchet simply stasis-cuffed the Seeker and staunched the flow of energon, then ducked into the teepee of debris to get to his patients.

The entire building began to quiver. Ratchet leapt to get the sparkling, Ironhide scooped up Jazz, and Prowl made it as far as the opening, where Sideswipe said courteously, "Excuse me," plucked the Decepticon off the floor into his arms, and then all the Autobots ran like the Pit pursued them.

They turned once beyond reach of the destruction, and watched as the building swallowed itself, an ever-growing cloud of dust seeming to gulp down walkways and windows and walls and ceilings, and finally, the bared and accusatory fingers of stripped girders falling into the roiling dust.

"'Hide," Optimus said, when the thunder died down, "you and our guests, in my cab. Jazz and Ratchet, and anyone else you need, Ratchet, in my trailer. Everyone else, you'll transform and roll out. Sideswipe, lead; Sunny, on my six."

AN INDEFINITE PERIOD LATER

Prowl woke to the sounds of medical monitors all around him, and a happily chirring sparkling sitting beside him on a medical berth.

"Bumblebee?" he said, a bit muzzily. The sparkling made a noise like "Chirr-eek!" and threw himself into Prowl's collar struts. Before he recalled that he'd damaged one of them, his arms went around the little one: then he remembered, and braced for a pain which didn't come.

"Well, hello," said a rough voice on his other side.

Prowl turned his head to see Ironhide, and blinked. "Hello," he said. "We made it? Or did we get sent to the Pit together?"

The large black mech chuckled. "No, we made it," he said. "Don't you remember shootin' that sergeant? That was a plumb pretty piece o' marksmanship."

Prowl did remember, and didn't like it. Hard enough to shoot perfect strangers. "Braceweight. My CO."

"Was he? Well, mech, when you change sides, I gotta say you do it thorough. When Bee's ready to get unstuck, Ratchet, our medic, 's gonna talk to ya. Kid's been in ta see ya every day."

The sparkling proved limpet-like for a few minutes more. Prowl was tiring again by the time Bumblebee was ready to let go, and be set onto Ironhide's shoulders. Even then, he pointed at Prowl and made an imperious "Chirr-UP!" noise.

"Yes, yes, you'll see him again," Ratchet said, bustling in. "He'll be here."

"Yup. So we'll go home now, and have a blankie an' a bottle?"

Bumblebee chirred happily in agreement, and banged both of Ironhide's audials simultaneously.

"Ouch!" the big black one said, walking toward the exit. "Tol'ja, Bee, no audials!"

"I want video of you having your blankie and bottle with him!" Ratchet called.

"Slag you!" trailed back.

Grinning, Ratchet turned to Prowl. "Welcome to the Autobots, the most mature forces contesting the Decepticons anywhere," the medic said. "I have some information and a cube of energon for you, if you're up for it."

Prowl grinned, took the energon, and since he felt marginally more awake after that, sat up on the edge of the berth.

The medic watched him, with those assessing eyes of medics everywhere. "That feel all right?" he said, when Prowl finally made it to vertical.

"Bit of a processor ache, and some swimminess. Arm aches, shoulder strut too, but it's that new-weld feel."

"If the processor ache and the swim don't fade, let me know. Can you remember what I'm going to tell you?"

"Yes."

"All right. First of all, your status is enemy prisoner of war. That'll change, but for right now you will either stay on that berth unless you have my explicit permission to get off it, or you'll have to be chained to it. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Next up: when I cleaned up your shoulder, I also had a look at your processor. How old's that battle computer?"

"Have I been out long?"

"Two orn."

"Six decaorn, then."

"Were you aware that it was installed without having the ethical component connected?"

Prowl felt the world slide out from under him, and the medic caught him as he swayed. Ratchet said, browplates down, "That the swimminess?"

Prowl straightened, said, "No. No, just - surprise. I thought it was a standard install; that's what the contract called for."

"Mmm. Paid for it yourself, did you? Who did the work?"

"It was done in a charity medic's clinic - Checkup's. I'd have to look at the records to see who did the actual surgery; that wasn't specified in the contract, as Checkup was a general practitioner, not a processor specialist."

"Oh, I can tell you that. That would have been a Decepticon engineer named Hook. Checkup taught him some medical skills; the 'cons can't attract competent medics. Hook deliberately omitted attaching the ethical component, as we know he's been instructed to do by Megatron whenever an Enforcer gets any kind of processor upgrade. But the interesting thing is, your own processor has linked to it, and made connections."

Prowl blinked. "So - you won't need to go in and re-connect it?"

"If I do that," Ratchet said, letting go of Prowl, who was wobblier than either would have liked, "the new-made connections, which are more extensive, will wither in favor of the hard-wired, which are faster. Both will serve, but the upshot is that you'll be more involved with the ethics of a course of action if we let the natural connections flourish. If we opt to make the mechanical connections, you gain some speed of decision."

Prowl's brows knit. "How long do I have to make that decision?" he said.

Ratchet shrugged. "Two deca-orn, I'd say. After that the new connections will be so extensive I'd advise against the surgery."

"For now, I'll stick with this. Have you any tests to help me see how much speed I'll lose?"

"Our Science Division may have," Ratchet said. "I'll ask them." He kindly did not inform his patient how often said Science Division's science went boom or fizzle, because Wheeljack and Perceptor did not always explode things. And really, there wasn't much chance of them causing this new recruit to boom or fizzle - was there?

It didn't occur to him that perhaps "boom or fizzle" might translate to "fritz," when you moved from the physical sciences to neurology.

The medic said briskly, reaching the end of his mental checklist, "And the last piece of information I have for you is that Optimus Prime will be by to talk to you in about two joor. I suggest you sleep, if you can. I know it's relatively noisy in here."

Prowl grinned. "Not compared to a Decepticon camp, it isn't."

"Good enough, then. Anything else I can do for you?"

Prowl rubbed at the new insignia on his chest. "Can I get this thing off?"

"When was it put on? And how?"

"Three - no, five - orn ago. It was punched through."

Ratchet ran his sensitive fingers over the emblem, let his hand drop, and, unnervingly enough, watched Prowl's medical monitors for a moment or two. "It seems to have settled in, and the injuries are about half-healed. I don't want to put you offline again just now, so soon after your other surgery, and it would hurt like the Pit to carve the thing out with only a local in place. Put up with it for a day or two, and we'll get rid of it before you're out of here."

"All right."

"Is there anything else you need right now?"

"No, I'm fine."

Ratchet helped him to lie back down.

"Thank you," Prowl said.

Ratchet looked unnerved (nobot said thank you!), then nodded, and moved off.

He hadn't told Prowl he had monitor drones all over himself; he usually didn't tell Optimus that when it was necessary, either. But the damage to Prowl's shoulder might have shunted necessary energon flow away from the new processor, causing damage that would have to be addressed very quickly if it occurred, and Ratchet didn't take unnecessary chances with his patients.

With himself, on the battlefield? He didn't think of those as "chances."