Chapter 4: Transmission

Disclaimer: All Transformer characters and Characters of the 2007 movie are copyrighted to their respective owners, not me.

A piece of serrated steel fashioned in the image of a blade swung gracefully through the air and neatly cut a particularly large creeper hanging from a mangrove tree. Taking care to remove the creeper from the trail that he was standing on, Optimus Prime climbed carefully through the newly created gap. The Autobot leader had been wandering this new planet for over a year and a half and his extensive travels had brought to the jungles surrounding the Amazon river. Once their home world had been a land of beautiful metallic structures, immaculately constructed sky scrapers reaching almost through the atmosphere, and instead of seas, a rippling mass of cogs, spinning and rotating around each other to give the illusion of water. Paper thin sheets of metallic alloys were grafted to pillars of steel to create almost perfect metallic representations of trees. A long time ago, some of the very first Transformers had left the planet on a search for new worlds. They had found a planet filled with nature and brought back many pictures, taken from orbit. So overwhelmed by the beauty that was not dissimilar to the elegance crafted by Transformers were these forefathers, that the population of Cybertron had created multitudes of homages in metal on their own planet. But all of that beauty had been destroyed in the civil war. Trees and lakes destroyed so that their parts could be harvested for use in the war effort. All of the demolition had been all but completed when Optimus' spark was forged. But his predecessor Rodimus Prime had shared with Optimus the images of Cybertron as it had once been and the then young Autobot had been implanted with a fervent wish to see Cybertron restored to its former glory.

But now, Optimus was standing on the surface of what must have once been the original planet, seen by Transformers of old. Optimus' home would be on Cybertron in his spark. But, being here now, on the planet that had been the inspiration for Cybertron's golden age, made the pain of his separation from his home world that little bit more bearable.

Optimus was so absorbed in his internal thoughts, that he almost missed the transmission that flashed through the air. Digitally, Optimus performed the equivalent of reaching out a hand and grabbing the transmission. Evidently one of his comrades had found something of some importance. Optimus casually opened the file. It wasn't from any of his team mates. The message was encrypted, and more than that. It was encrypted with a Decepticon cipher. Optimus began to worry. Optimus had a wide range of decoding software installed within his mainframe, but this encryption was resisting all of his best hacking efforts. What was a Decepticon transmission doing being broadcast on an emergency frequency? The Decepticons had all been destroyed hadn't they? Optimus continued to hack while simultaneously broadcasting the message to the other three Autobots.

Ratchet was currently trudging through the edges of Sahara desert as Optimus' transmission came through. Ratchet had always contained more deciphering software than any of his cohorts. He was a medical officer, not a fighter and had tried to fill those areas of his processor that weren't filled with combat protocols. Ratchet immediately broke into the file and set about decoding it. He managed to delete the inbuilt viruses as soon as they appeared and continued chipping away at the layers of code. But, a problem had arisen. The message was evidently set on a self destruct program, any attempt to hack the code would trip the program and cause all of the data within the transmission to be lost, and in his haste, Ratchet had set off the trap. Working against the clock, Ratchet delved deeper, his superior technology blasting away at the firewalls, a red digital timer filled his inner vision, counting down the time until his failure. With only 3 seconds left, Ratchet managed to salvage the origin co-ordinates. Then the self destruct kicked in and the message deleted itself. Sighing at his lack of ability to find out more information, Ratchet sent the co-ordinates back to Optimus. Optimus opened the file containing the co-ordinates and matched them to his internal GPS displaying the locations of the other three Autobots. Fate smiled on him. Ironhide was located within twenty miles of the origin. Optimus opened his communication line.

"Ironhide?" Ironhide was currently coasting along a freeway on the east coast when the message came through. The Lennox family had just gone to the Bahamas for a holiday, leaving Ironhide behind to his own devices.

"Optimus, what is it? You manage to crack that code?" Ironhide had filled all of his spare processing space with combat data, in fact, he had spent the last week augmenting his fighting style with fighting styles he had studied on the internet. He hadn't even been able to break the first line of encryption.

"Partially. Ratchet managed to obtain the origination co-ordinates from the transmission. I'm beaming them to you. I want you to check it out. Be careful, Decepticon ciphers were used." Ironhide laughed in response and turned off the freeway, towards the beach where the signal had originated.

"Relax Optimus, we dealt with all the Decepticons two years ago. And with the Allspark destroyed ain't no way they're coming back." The road was deserted so Ironhide stepped on the gas. Optimus reluctantly agreed and signed off.

The road grew narrower turning into a narrow one way street that skirted the beach higher up on a cliff. The azure waves splashed onto the sand below Ironhide and on his right, a gentle incline led up to the stretch of road going the other way. Ironhide grinned. It was a nice evening. He'd investigate the signal, probably some malfunctioning part of Decepticon that had washed up out of the trench, and spend a nice evening on the beach. Ironhide reached his turning and turned onto the road leading to the beach. A flash of movement caught his eye and he turned around.

A panda car smashed through the guard rail separating the two stretches of road and flew down the embankment. As it drove, it started to morph, transforming as it slid at high speed towards the Autobot. Ironhide was half transformed himself when Barricade slammed into him. The Decepticon was now fully transformed and grabbed the half transformed Autobot in a bear hug as the two fell the fifty feet towards the beach. Ironhide's head and arms were transformed into robot mode, but his legs were still folded up in car form. Ironhide revved his back tyres. The rapidly spinning wheels caught Barricade on the hip and began ripping his plating off. Screaming in pain and fury, Barricade let go. Ironhide finished transforming and landed in a crouch, warming up his cannons as Barricade landed heavily on his back in the sand. Ironhide wasted no time and fired three shots at the prone Decepticon as he advanced. Barricade rolled over, dodging the shot and clambering to his feet. With a growl, he swung and one of his flail arms caught Ironhide on the jaw, sending him flying backwards. Now on the offensive, Barricade fired a group of cluster missile, all of which split into more missiles. With a spray of plasma, Ironhide detonated all of them in mid air. Barricade fired more missiles as Ironhide rolled underneath them and came up firing. Three of his shots hit Barricade in the chest, knocking him back, but the Decepticon spun, using the momentum of his backwards stumble to whip out his flail arms again. Ironhide blocked one of the spiked pinwheels causing it to bend and buckle, but the other flail hit him in the side of the head knocking him onto his back. Barricade snarled and leapt aiming to crush Ironhide under his mass. Thinking quickly, Ironhide fired two charge shots at Barricade. The superheated balls of plasma caught Barricade in the stomach, reversing his momentum and sending him into a head over heels tumble. The Decepticon landed on his face groaning in agony.

Clutching his wounded face, Ironhide staggered to his feet. Barricade raised an arm and fired more shots, all of which hit Ironhide in the leg, forcing him to his knees. Barricade detached his remaining functioning flail arm and swung it towards the Autobot. With almost lightning fast reactions, Ironhide grabbed the flail on the chain and pulled it hard, dragging Barricade across the sand and into Ironhide's fist. The Autobot stood up shakily, holding the Decepticon by his chest. Growling, Ironhide pushed his cannon into the Decepticon's face.

"So," Ironhide said with mock cheerfulness "What's a nice little Decepticon doing all the way out here a place like this? It wouldn't have anything to do with a particular coded message would it?" The cannon started to hum as it warmed up.

"I could ask you the same question Autobyte." Barricade growled. It had always unnerved Ironhide as to how civilised Barricade sounded when he spoke.

"Listen Decepticreep. I ain't got time for your little guessing games. So either you tell me what the deal was with your little long-range Email, or you get a plasma bolt through that ugly face of yours." Ironhide snarled. Barricade smiled.

"Sadly, I don't think either of those will be happening." Barricade grinned. As he said that, a small compartment in his chest opened up and the barrel of a gun emerged. The grenade hit Ironhide point blank in the face. The Autobot fell backwards letting go of Barricade, who immediately transformed back into a police car and roared off leaving the prone mutilated figure of Ironhide on the beach.

The Exodus emerged from its hyperspace jumped on the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere. The Captain breathed out in reverence. The planet below was beautiful. No wonder Optimus and the other Autobots had come here. Pressing a button, the Captain transmitted a message to the crew.

"I want the recon crew on deck ASAP please." Then he sat back and waited. Within a minute, two protoform Autobots were standing in front of him.

"Ok, you two, you know the drill, get down to the surface, find alternate forms and scout for indigenous life forms. Also, your highest priority is to track down Optimus Prime. Watch out for Decepticons." One of the two Autobots waved a hand dismissively.

"Yeah, we know sir. We've done this before sir." The leader snorted.

"Need I remind you Hot Shot? The last time I sent you two planet side in advance, I had to come down personally and rescue you two from a volcano!" Hot Shot hung his head suitably abashed. The leader nodded. "Now, to the pods. I want a report in 24 cliks, if not earlier. Blurr, you're in charge o reporting in. Try and make sure Hot Shot doesn't do anything too stupid." The other protoform nodded and the two walked away towards the escape pods. The leader sighed.

"Why do I have a very bad feeling about this?"