On the floor above them, back in medical bay, Ratchet clamped down Bumblebee's last new fuel line and began replacing the peripheral modules he removed to get at the minibot's power assembly. Bumblebee was going to pull through; the chief medical officer's expertise had saved him from a terminal shut down. But Bumblebee would have to remain unconscious for some time while Ratchet completed major reconstruction work.
Ratchet reconnected the last module and pressed it firmly into its mounting bracket until the holding clips clicked. Now all he needed to do was test Bumblebee's energy distributing systems before calling that part of the work complete. He paused for a moment to look upon Bumblebee's exposed facial mechanisms. Extensive work needed to be done to repair the framework around Bumblebee's neck and underneath his faceplate, along with more bodywork than Ratchet cared to think about at the moment.
Gears recovered on the next table. Ratchet had returned his multi-head power conduit and he gently exercised his legs as he slowly regained control of them. Beyond his feet, Brawn and Huffer stood guard on either side of the doorway, weapons ready if anything but an Autobot approached the locked door. Earlier, everyone was spooked when they heard several feet approaching medical bay, but were relieved to find that it was only Beachcomber and Powerglide looking to join them.
Without warning, the lights suddenly flickered and then dimmed. Ratchet looked up with concern at Powerglide and Beachcomber, who sat waiting on a bench facing him. No one said a thing as they regarded each other with worried optics. Quite some time had passed with no word from the others who ventured to the deck below.
Ratchet looked away. The medical bay had emergency energy stores to keep the lighting and equipment functional in the event of a power outage. If the generator had been shut down, the back-up power should have kicked in immediately without a disruption. The lights should not have done that.
Ratchet went to the back of the medical bay to check the back-up power system, thinking he might be able to fix it. He opened the control box and changed the inputs into a few of the terminals, looking up at the lights for a response as he did so, but was unable to make them any brighter. So if the circuitry was not the problem, he thought, it had to be the energy source.
With that decided Ratchet moved over and squatted down in front of a section of panel located near the floor. He paused and tightened his expression when he heard he machinery making an unhealthy noise. He promptly entered the code that unlocked the housing around the emergency power supply and the panel pulled back and slid away to one side.
A rhythmic crunching of metal resounded from the power converter behind the supply tank. He peered around the tank at the power converter and the crunching stopped. A yellow mechanical eye stared back at him.
Ratchet's optics snapped open wide. A yellow antenna near the eye twitched. A second later the tank and power converter flew out of the opening at Ratchet, knocking him onto his back and a clone of Kickback thrust itself out of the panel and into the medical bay. Being of solid design, the tank landed intact but inched further across the floor from the force of its sloshing contents.
Brawn and Huffer spun around.
"An Insecticon!" Huffer cried.
"Get it!" Brawn hollered.
In its hurry to remove itself from the machinery, the grasshopper clone still held the power converter tightly in its mandibles, a long length of wiring streaming back into the opening. Ratchet rolled away onto his side as Brawn and Huffer quickly ran to the back of the medical bay, firing at the black and purple Decepticon clone. The clone flinched at the approaching Autobot threat and bit down hard on the power converter. The lights cut out for a second.
"It's got the power unit! If you scare it -" Ratchet yelled at them, but his warning came a second too late. The lights cut out and the medical bay went pitch black, save for the short circuiting power converter which could be seen arcing through the air.
Ratchet immediately turned on the vehicle mode headlights on his torso and faced where the electrified power converter landed. The grasshopper looked back at him and twitched its antennae. Both minibots turned on their vehicle mode lights, which beamed above their heads and provided a glow for them to see by, and then aimed at the clone. Huffer let off a burst of laser fire, which glanced off one of the grasshopper's silver wings and blasted the wall next to one of Ratchet's tool cabinets.
"Don't fire those things in here!" Ratchet barked at them. "You'll damage something!"
"Okay…" Brawn replied and flexed his knuckle joints.
Huffer shook his head. "That's not a fair fight."
"Who said anything about fair?" Brawn replied with bravado.
The Insecticon anticipated Brawn's move as he hurled himself at the grasshopper. Gears sat up to see what was going on around him, but immediately ducked back down as the grasshopper clone took off again, leaping over Gears and landing by the door.
Ratchet stalked back across the medical bay toward the Insecticon. The clone nervously crunched the electronics in its jaws as the large Autobot approached, then scuttled underneath Gears's table.
"Gears, don't move," Brawn advised the red and blue minibot as he cautiously approached.
"What? Are you crazy? You expect me to go somewhere in a situation like this?" Gears retorted sarcastically.
Carefully, Brawn edged around one side of the table, ready to grab the clone if it tried to flee. Huffer leaned over and shone his vehicle cab lights into the shadows underneath the tables. Caught in Huffer's blinding headlights, the Insecticon froze long enough for Brawn to get up close behind it.
He pounced on its back end just as it brought its legs back in closer to its body and spooked it into jumping. Brawn hit his head on the underside of the table as he hurried to stand back up.
"Ow!" Brawn winced as he rubbed his hand over the silvered surface of his head.
"Hey! Watch it!" Gears grouched at him as the table stabilized after being bumped.
In its flight, the Insecticon leapt straight at Huffer, taking the orange and grey minibot crashing to the floor underneath it.
"Get it, Huffer!" Ratchet yelled as he ran over to help.
Huffer struggled to hang onto the Insecticon. The clone's unintelligent mechanical eyes stared into his optics as he held onto two of the four small appendages and fought to grab the other two. He raised his knee and tried to kick it to distract it, but the grasshopper was more concerned with the other Autobots quickly approaching. It scrambled to get a foothold against Huffer as the minibot kicked his legs underneath it.
"I've got it!" Ratchet called out and threw himself on top of the back end of the Insecticon.
It panicked and clamped down hard on the power converter still stuck in its mouth. The piece of equipment flashed and sent a jolt of electricity through the clone's body, causing its hind legs to kick out reflexively. Ratchet flew back across the medical bay, knocking over a piece of equipment before crashing against a tool and equipment cabinet. The force of his collision broke the doors open and tools fell out on top of the chief medical officer.
Ratchet shook his head and looked down at the tools around him. He picked up large socket wrench and steadied himself as he got back up. Brawn was all over the Insecticon already, pounding it with both fists. The weight of both Brawn and the clone on top of him, Huffer could do little else but hang onto the clone's appendages while Brawn worked it over.
"Move over, Brawn!" Ratchet scowled. Brawn glanced back at the chief medical officer as he stalked up to the Insecticon with the socket wrench gripped tightly in his hand. There was a flash of anger in Ratchet's optics.
Brawn got off of the grasshopper's torso and presented the Decepticon to him with both hands. "It's all yours…"
Ratchet raised the socket wrench and brought the heavy tool down across the center of its torso. The crash of the first blow caused Huffer to jerk underneath the Insecticon as he felt the vibration pass through him. He clubbed it several more times, pounding it in critical locations in the head and torso. It squeaked after the first few blows, and then fell silent.
"That'll teach you!" Ratchet hollered at the clone as he repeatedly bashed it. "No one acts like that in my medical bay!" The chief medical officer's optics flashed bright blue. "No one!"
After several minutes of Ratchet's beating with the socket wrench, the clone's frame was disfigured and crumpled. The grasshopper's mechanical eyes went dark and its yellow antennae dropped limply at the sides of its head as its appendages went slack. Huffer let go of its legs. It no longer tried to get away. Ratchet did not take notice and continued to deliver blows to the clone.
Brawn could appreciate giving a Decepticon a good thrashing, but he realized when the job was done. "I think you got it," Brawn simply stated to Ratchet.
Ratchet stopped in mid-swing and noticed the Insecticon was no longer functional. He let his arm down and stood over the clone for a moment, still clutching the wrench. He hefted the wrench in his hand a few times, and then he changed his mind and delivered one more blow to the Insecticon's head, breaking off one of the antennae.
The force of the impact caused the clone's jaw mechanism to tighten on the power converter one last time. It sent a final surge of electricity through the Insecticon's body and the legs quivered then kicked out reflexively.
Ratchet narrowed his optics and scowled at the Decepticon grasshopper. "Piece of scrap, anyway," he muttered to himself and hung the socket wrench back up in the cabinet where it belonged.
Beachcomber and Powerglide sat stunned on the bench as Ratchet paced past them.
"Whoa! I always thought a doctor would show more compassion to one of God's creatures," Beachcomber said softly to Powerglide. Powerglide just looked back at him.
Ratchet heard the comment and turned around and glared at Beachcomber. "That," Ratchet fumed, "was not one of God's creatures."
Brawn lifted the Insecticon wreckage off of Huffer and helped the other minibot to his feet. The medical bay was quiet while Ratchet picked up the ruined power converter and looked into fixing the emergency power system. Ratchet huffed and tossed the power converter into his pile of equipment that needed to be rebuilt. He had a spare in the storage area and silently went about installing a new one and replacing the energy tank. No one dared to bother him.
After a short while, the lights came back on and Ratchet closed up the panel covering the emergency power supply. Everyone turned their lights back off. Ratchet then set about cleaning up the tools lying on the floor. He carefully arranged everything in its rightful place and then closed the damaged cabinet doors as best he could. Ratchet sighed through his vocalizer. More things to fix. He would have to deal with it later.
Slowly, the red and white medic turned around and rested for a moment with his back against the damaged cabinet. Brawn and Huffer had put the remains of the Insecticon clone next to the scrap receptacle. It took three Autobots a concerted effort to dispatch just one Insecticon clone, and there was no telling just how many of the Decepticon vermin were in the base. Ratchet knew that they needed more Autobots to help get rid of the Insecticons than the paltry number that went down to the deck below. But there was no way to communicate with anyone outside the base. Or was there?
His optics brightened and he looked over across medical bay at the mainframe. There was still a ground line linking it with the old pod outside the base, Ratchet realized. The pod served as a temporary medical center when they first awoke, until the more secure medical bay inside ship could be put back into working order after the crash. A communication cable still ran over to the pod from the medical bay so that the mainframe could talk directly to the pod's medical equipment. The corner of Ratchet's mouth curled.
He pushed himself off of the cabinet he was leaning against and strode over to the mainframe, quickly pulled down a console concealed inside the medical computer's paneling and a nearby screen lit up. Ratchet accessed the equipment controller in the pod then issued a bypass through the supervisory control, rerouting the telemetry system to broadcast. He set the device to transmit on standard inter-Autobot frequencies then smiled at his success. Now all he needed was someone to pick up on his signal.
"This is Ratchet, calling from the medical bay," the chief medical officer announced loudly into the mainframe. "Someone, please pick up this signal." He paused and waited for a response, but the screen only buzzed loudly with static.
The minibots were surprised by the sudden communication transmitted by Ratchet and looked at one another.
His call unanswered, Ratchet tried again. "This is Ratchet, calling from Autobot Headquarters. We need help. I repeat, we need help." But the screen buzzed, still filled with grey static.
"How come he's calling for help now?" Huffer asked the other minibots in a dismayed tone. "Why didn't we call for help long ago, before we all split up?"
Ratchet turned and scowled at the orange and grey minibot.
Brawn interjected to defuse the tension between Ratchet and Huffer. "Ratchet had his hands full taking care of Bumblebee."
Ratchet seemed satisfied with Brawn's answer and turned away from them before adding to the explanation. "I didn't have a way to call for help all this time," he answered in a tone of controlled frustration. "I just made a way…right now."
Beachcomber smiled smugly.
Powerglide looked around and decided to help change the overall mood. "Way to go, Ratchet!" he commended the chief medical officer. He meant to punch above him to add emphasis, however the arm he instinctively tried to use was the damaged one, and it resisted his movement. He laughed self-consciously then nursed his arm.
Ratchet ignored the others and made another attempt to contact someone outside the base. At the very least he should be picked up by the Aerialbots, unless they were already inside the base somewhere. He clenched his fist, anticipating a voice at any moment. Several agonizing seconds passed as everyone anxiously waited, before the static broke and a grainy, faint voice could be heard.
The screen remained blank save for the signal noise. Ratchet hurriedly adjusted the frequency. "This is Ratchet. Come in!"
Again the faint voice responded, but was incomprehensible. Ratchet increased the gain through the pod's transmission circuitry, repeatedly asking whoever it was to stay with him until he managed to find an adjustment that slowly resolved the voice out of the static background noise.
"Ratchet – 's – verb-t," the voice said through the communication channel.
"Try again," Ratchet said, as he fiddled with the frequency adjustment. "Who is this?"
The channel erupted back into static as he moved the band in the wrong direction before quickly bringing it back and fine tuning it in the other direction.
"Ratchet, this is Silverbolt," the voice replied at last over the open line.
Everyone visibly relaxed.
Visual verification could not be made. The equipment was not set up to handle the complex visual data exchange, however audio was good enough. "Silverbolt" Ratchet sighed with relief. "Thank Primus! Where are you?"
"Outside," the Aerialbot leader answered. "The blast doors closed right after I lost contact with Jazz."
Ratchet knew Jazz would not have closed the blast doors. "Something's wrong with Teletraan. Can you get them open?"
"Negative," Silverbolt answered. "We tried, but couldn't get past the lock."
The blast doors being closed was not good news at all, Ratchet understood, because they were effectively sealed inside with the Insecticons.
"You have to get those doors open somehow," Ratchet ordered him with desperation creeping into his vocalizer. "We need back-up down here."
"I'll call for more help." Silverbolt's statement resounded through medical bay. Hesitant expressions of hope emerged on the minibots' faceplates.
"Call Prime! Call Prowl! Call anyone and everyone!" Ratchet ordered sternly. "Just get help here fast!"
"Will do!" Silverbolt affirmed firmly. "Now if I can close our channel so that I can get the word out…" '
"Yes, of course!" Ratchet replied and the channel cut out.
Outside the entrance to the base, Silverbolt quickly opened up links to Prime and Prowl, who were still together at the conference. The request for sudden help back at headquarters interrupted their business liaison with the humans, but was absolutely warranted. Prime resolved to call the Autobots who were away from the base and order them to head back as quickly as possible. That freed up Silverbolt and his Aerialbots and allowed them to take care of the situation however they could.
Air Raid, Fireflight and Slingshot had found where the Insecticons burrowed underneath the base. But they were too late as all the Insecticons had gone into the tunnels by that time. The only thing they could do was destroy as much of the tunnel system as possible. Silverbolt watched the explosions flash from across the landscape as the others detonated their charges. He hoped that the three Aerialbots had done enough work to discourage anything from using the tunnels, for he had Prime's orders now to carry out, and the rest would have to wait until later. With that, Silverbolt raised his forearm and opened his communicator link to the others. It was time to get into the base.