Maelstrom Chapter 35
The Longest Night
Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original Maelstrom Comics and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http// illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there.
Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!
Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!
Maelstrom Chapter 35
The Longest Night
Part F
CONTINUED FROM PART E
"Too far! Up a little!" Edana cried. She was actually sounding a bit excited. Rodimus spun around fast, giving her a bit of a thrill, although that wasn't his intention. He de-cloaked just long enough to get his trailing friends out of the way. They flattened themselves against the walls and he re-cloaked as he passed them. Up two levels he stopped.
"Here?" he asked.
Edana nodded.
The hall looked like any other, quiet and deserted, but it wasn't a restricted zone and Rodimus could use heat vision to see through the thin walls.
"Paydirt," he said over private channels to his friends. He wavered, wanting nothing more than to transform and start cutting...but his daughter was with him.
"We've got it partner," Optimus told him.
Rodimus hesitated.
"Enough," Optimus said. "I am working on trusting you again, you need to do the same for me. We've got it...partner."
"We need to discredit them or we'll have riots on our hands!" Rodimus said.
"Trust me!" Optimus assured him. "We've got it. Now take that little girl back home before something...happens."
Rodimus hesitated again, but only for a second. "Go get 'em Orion," he said. Why he chose that name at this point he never knew.
"Just roll out," Optimus ordered.
Rodimus backed up, did another giggle-inducing doughnut turn and headed quietly back up a few levels. Then he gunned the engines, determined to get Edana as far away from the fight as he could. Rodi didn't know if distance would help protect her but it seemed worth a few skid marks to try.
He hoped they wouldn't need him.
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Elita went in first. Unseen, unheard she slipped into the dimly lit room and, like Rodi, had to school herself not to simply start mowing down bodies. Instead she slid in behind the camera-man, gripped his mouth, and inserted a drugged needle into the base of his neck. He went limp in her arms and she dragged him back out the door.
Fortunately the spotlight was literally and figuratively on Eclipse. Out in the hall she met the optics of her impatient mate and slipped the medical mask over her face. She went back in to take over the camera.
Optimus counted to thirty, drew his rifle, and kicked the door down.
"Cut the camera!" Eclipse yelled.
Elita nodded obediently and didn't do a damned thing.
"Optimus Prime! You're early! I'm almost surprised it's you and not your impetuous partner," Eclipse sneered. The hatred in his voice was grating.
"What have you done to my people?" Optimus asked. He heard Magnus talking to First Aid through their secured com lines but couldn't follow the conversation as Eclipse answered him.
"Just a bit of make-up for their close-ups," the former medic said smugly. He pointed to the chemicals on the table next to Arcee. Elita decided to give those a close up.
"Why are you doing this? She's carrying new life!" Optimus accused angrily.
"That new life is an abomination! She deserves to die for denying Vector Sigma its right to choose who lives and who dies! You are all slaves! By design! You have no capacity to decide what you do with your own lives, let alone begin new ones without permission!"
The muttering from the rest of the room was supposed to be supportive, but really merely sounded scared.
Optimus decided to ignore the others and focused on Eclipse.
"You know she's carrying a spark?" he said. There was no room for ambiguity.
"It will die with her! And the rest of Cybertron will be too afraid to try! They will turn on you for trying to free them Optimus Prime! You and your heretic partner are finished! They will fight you to remain slaves!" Eclipse's voice no longer even sounded like his own. Optimus recognized it. Vector Sigma.
"I won't let you kill her," Optimus said with finality.
"I am unarmed, Optimus Prime. You won't fire on me. You CAN'T fire on me," Eclipse sneered. He rushed for Arcee - intending to push his fingers through her softened casing and into her brain.
Optimus' rifle reported. Once. Twice. Three times.
Eclipse's smoking remains hit the far wall hard enough to dent it and slid down in a heap.
"Things change," Optimus said. The rest of the kidnappers ran for the door in panic only to find it blocked with one hell of a mean looking abomination named Ultra Magnus.
"Oh please give me an excuse," he said.
They threw their hands up.
Squealing tires sounded behind him in the hallway and Optimus was surprised to see Inferno racing into the room. Before he could even ask how Inferno had found them or what the fire-truck was doing there, Inferno sprayed the entire room with foam, starting with Arcee.
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Many hours later, the Autobot femme lit her optics drowsily. She smiled to herself and then gasped. She touched her face, her arm. She touched smooth, raw metal. The paint hadn't been replaced yet. So. It hadn't been a nightmare after all. Trying to sit up proved too tiring.
"Arcee...?" The voice she most wanted to hear called her weakly from another part of the room. Which room? Med-lab.
"Springer?" she asked, breathless with relief.
"You're OK...you're awake?" he asked.
"You don't trust your own optics?" she asked with a small laugh. She couldn't see him yet, he was behind her.
"No. Not right now," he said.
Something in his voice gave her the strength to shift her body around enough to look at him...what was left of him.
"Springer!" she cried. He was riddled with holes, not the least of which were the two where his optics had been.
"Shh...it's just a pair of optics. I wouldn't let Opal replace them until we knew you and our little one were going to make it," Springer said. "You shut down almost everything to save her 'Cee. Almost too much. They had a hard time reviving you." There was a bit of reproach in his voice, but more there was relief, and love for her.
"How did they find us?" Arcee wanted to know.
There was a long pause. "Edana found us," Springer said quietly.
This left Arcee speechless.
Finally she said, "Rodimus...used his child...to help save us...and our child?"
"And stop a civil war," Rodimus voice answered her. She hadn't heard him walking up, but she was glad to see him. "You have no idea the amount of trouble you caused young lady," he teased her.
She found she had what it took to hit him.
Then his words hit home. "Civil war?"
"It's over before it began. Vector Sigma tried to use you to discredit us and incite a Paradronian revolt, but now that's he's failed it's making all the protesters look stupid. People are so embarrassed they are denying they took part - even if we have them on video."
"Vector Sigma....?" Arcee asked, confused.
"Eclipse. His real name was Welder, but Vector Sigma put a Trojan-horse virus into his mind sometime after I started using it for security. The news of your pregnancy triggered it. Sigma thought it would be dead already, but fortunately we kept it alive long enough to ask if it had any more nasty surprises for us."
"Did it?" Springer asked.
Rodimus sighed and looked grim. "One, but I don't want you two to worry about it. Sigma's gone. We blew it sky high so you don't need to be afraid of it anymore. Just get better pronto. That's an order, in case you missed it." He smiled at Arcee, gave Springer's arm a pat, and turned to leave.
Arcee caught his hand.
"Rodi...."
"What 'Cee?"
Arcee looked at up at him, with her head cocked to one side. "You know what they're calling our daughter? They're saying she's the first born, but she isn't the first born, Edana is."
Rodimus frowned, clearly a bit confused about this conversation. "It doesn't matter Arcee. All that matters is that you're all safe."
"Because of her...we are safe because you let her help. Rodi I know you! I know you'd be just as happy to put her on a deserted planet so she never has to face anything ugly....so she can keep the innocence you had to give away!"
Rodimus flinched hard enough that Springer heard it and knew his mate had touched a nerve.
Arcee went on, "I want you to know I know what that means to you. I'm not blind to the cost. You feel like you've killed part of your own daughter to save mine."
Rodimus hung his head and squeezed her hand. "What else could I do?"
"She's a hero, Rodi," Springer said.
"I never wanted her to be," Rodimus answered.
"We won't forget. Solstice won't either," Arcee promised.
"Solstice?" Rodimus asked.
"Yes. The day the light starts returning," Arcee explained. "This has been...a very long night."
Rodimus shook off a chill. There was more than one kind of solstice. "That's a pretty name," was all he told her.
He said goodbye to them and left med-bay with long strides, transforming and heading full tilt for his quarters where Pagan was waiting to 'port him to the Maelstrom. Lancer and the girls were already gone.
"Hey Pagan," he said as he skidded in and transformed on the fly.
"*TK*" she said. "I've been waiting."
"Sorry. I needed to see Arcee before we left," Rodimus explained. Pagan rattled her scales at him, un-mollified. He grabbed a few extra weapons out of his arms cabinet and sent them to subspace. Then he morphed and grabbed a few more out of his other arms cabinet and threw those rudely in a duffle bag. Oh right...clothes. Hmm...shoulda done some laundry. Oh well. Dirty works.
"Is Magnus up there already?" he asked, hoping for a few more seconds to think about what he needed.
Pagan's cranial fins flared. "Of course, and prompt he was too, male! As was the intelligent blue Female with the quiet steps."
"Elita's always organized," Rodimus grumbled, looking around for his scanner. Ah! On the table, under the coloring books. He grabbed it and said, "Ok! What are you waiting for?"
"*TK*! If you were not my dear friend's mate I would leave you between the lines Autobot!" Pagan said. "Robert is warming up the engines as we dally here! Char is a long way, even for the Maelstrom."
He smiled, wrapped his arms around her warm, scaly waist, and they teleported out.