Disclaimers in Part 1
Chip found a couple of types of contact pads that might have produced the marks on the Premium Software victims, and sent the information to the team in Oregon. Then he asked Jazz, "What would you have to do to attach to my chair?"
"Oh, that's easy, as long as the batteries have a charge."
"Hop on," Chip offered.
"I don't know—Chip, I don't care what Diarwen said, I'm not convinced it would be harmless if I started drainin' energy from ya. I'm not sure I know how to stop, other than by movin' away from ya, and there won't be another electrical source to jump to. I'd have ta, well, free-fall is a pretty good approximation."
"Nothin' to stop me from ditchin' if I have to," Chip pointed out. "And we won't be too far from people who could help. You been bucked off the horse, big time—but you still gotta climb back on."
There was an infinitesimal pause as Jazz looked up the reference. "All right, but if Ratchet starts raisin' Pit about it, this was your idea."
"What Ratchet don't know won't hurt him," Chip said blithely.
Jazz had to agree with that; they'd never get anything at all done if they paid too much attention to what might set Ratchet off. Generally, as long as nobot was losing energon, it was all good.
"Here goes." Jazz got a feel for the chair's simple electrical field, then released his mainframe and hopped to the chair's battery. It was easier than attaching to Diarwen's phone had been.
Once they got away from the base, Chip took his hand off the controls and said, "Give it a try."
In his previous life, Jazz would never have considered twenty miles an hour "fast." But flying along three feet above the sand, it was, satisfyingly so.
They got to the rock before Diarwen and Optimus. Jazz released the chair and drifted over the sand nearby.
Chip heard someone moving around above them, and looked up to see a couple of men rock-climbing. "Hi there!" he called. Better to let them know there were people below, than have them drop a carabiner on someone's head—or be startled by a sudden noise and fall.
They rappelled down the rock face and pulled off their helmets, revealing Darlington and Pritchart from S5. Chip held out his hand. "I'm Chase. That's Jazz."
They shook hands politely enough, but as soon as they saw Jazz they went on alert—Chip recognized it immediately, but Jazz really hadn't been around humans enough to learn to read their body language. And the saboteur was gregarious; he wouldn't often encounter a human who was … was 'suspicious' the word he wanted, Chip wondered? At any rate, these two put up a perfect front of affability toward the Cybertronian, with only one flaw: it failed to fool Chip Chase.
Darlington asked, "You know anything about the rocks around here? Where's a good climb?"
"I'm new here myself, joined the team on Diego. But any of the NEST team who've been stationed here for a while would know. Give me a second, and I'll call the OD and ask."
The OD, or officer of the day, was the person at the desk in charge of base security at bases like Mission City which were too small to have a provost marshal's office. All the commissioned officers below command rank, as well as the Autobots, took turns at this duty. It was boring enough that no one minded being interrupted by questions from the base's civilians and visitors. Arcee was working that shift, and repeated Chip's question to the nearest NEST soldier. He directed the S5 agents up a canyon not too far from Buzzard Rock, advising that the canyon walls offered some challenging climbs at a somewhat higher skill level than that required by the Rock itself.
Chip wasn't sure why—the two agents hadn't done anything wrong—but he was relieved when they left, and even more relieved when Optimus and Diarwen arrived a few minutes later.
Diarwen asked immediately, "Chip, what's wrong?"
"Nothin', I hope. Probably nothin'." Chip turned to Optimus. "Sir, what do we know about those S5 guys? Their background, I mean."
"You would have to ask Colonel Lennox about that, Sergeant. Is there a reason for your query?"
Chip shook his head. "I—I'm trained in how to deal with being at a disadvantage. What to look for. Those guys, when they saw Jazz—they hit Defcon 2. Oh, they did a good job of handling it. They didn't do a damn thing wrong—I'm not saying they did! Matter of fact they went way out of their way not to cause a confrontation. But they moved right into positions where they could cover each other. They were just waiting for us...for Jazz...to go on the offense."
Optimus said, "I am speculating here. But their duties seem to include dealing with hostile supernatural entities of varying types. It may be that their experience has led them to expect all such to be hostile. If that is the case, their restraint speaks well of them."
Jazz said, "Yeah, if Ah'm the first ghost they met who didn't try to do 'em in, Ah appreciate bein' given the benefit o' the doubt."
Diarwen thought about it. "I concur, Chip. That seems the most likely explanation. I have been keeping my distance from them as well, for they had a similar reaction to me. A remark that I overheard gives me to believe that they have most likely confused me with my cousins, the Fae of the Unseelie Court."
Chip said, "Still—around here, that could make 'em loose cannons, if they misunderstand anythin' or take somethin' they see the wrong way."
Optimus said, "I will discuss the situation with Colonel Lennox in the morning. If misunderstandings exist, they should be corrected."
With that, they turned their attention to their purpose for being here. Diarwen asked, "Chip, might I ask you to move your chair over there in the shade, and keep a watch?"
"Sure will."
Once the electrical field of his chair was far enough away that it no longer affected them, Diarwen asked, "How long have you been away from Chip's wheelchair, Jazz?"
He found out immediately that he had no accurate way to tell time, without even the mainframe's internal clock. "Ah'd estimate, ten klicks. No more'n fifteen."
"That is close enough. You will learn to tell time by the position of the sun. At night, the moon and stars make it even easier. Now. How much energy have you used in that time?"
"Ah can't tell," he admitted. "It don't feel like any."
"Indeed, it should not. The amount of energy that you need to expend simply to stay in this reality and to manifest a form which others can see is not a great amount. You probably will not begin to feel weak or hungry—I have heard other ghosts describe it both ways—for several hours, in the absence of other exertion."
"How do Ah start?"
"With the understanding that we are safe here. It is like any other form of training—I am not concerned about the psychic equivalent of minor scratches and bruises, but I will not allow either of us to come to serious harm."
He nodded understanding. Vorns of training with Prowl had taught him that principle—until the student learned control, it was the master's responsibility to exercise that control for both of them.
"Now, approach me slowly. Be aware of my aura and yours. Watch the interaction. Do not attempt to draw energy from me, but do not attempt to stop it either. Simply observe what happens."
"Ya already know what's gonna happen, right?" Jazz asked her.
"Yes," the Sidhe said, and there was, Jazz realized later, that about her which inspired his trust. She did know, and he could relax into that.
Jazz approached her slowly, as she had instructed. At first, nothing happened. But as he drew closer, their energy fields began to interact, tendrils interlacing—and a very mild flow of energy began. It was as natural as water seeking its level, or wind blowing from an area of high pressure to low. And, as Diarwen had told him many times, it wasn't strong enough to be dangerous.
"You can feel that, correct?" she said.
"Yeah, I sure can. You can too, huh."
"Oh yes. It's very clear, when one knows what to look for. You would have to stay next to me for several days for this to do me any harm. Now, can you draw more energy, deliberately?"
He hesitated. "I'm not sure I wanna do that, Diarwen."
His instructor smiled. "That is why both Optimus and Chip are here, Jazz. If you have so much more power than I that you inadvertently do me harm, I have backup, and so do you, should it go the other way."
"Yeah. But."
She grinned. "I know. I knocked my own teacher unconscious once, but he told me that was his fault, and our priestess confirmed that. So, Jazz, can you do this? See the amount of energy you can draw as a dial, with the numbers one to ten written around it. Right now you are at one. Dial it up to two."
It took him a while, but just as the stars were coming out he managed to do what she asked. "Wow!" he said. "It's really there, innit?"
"Indeed it is. At this rate, I could be in your presence for as long as a day, perhaps, before I began to feel fatigued."
"What's it feel like?" he said curiously.
"A cool breeze. Not at all unwelcome!" she said, and grinned.
Optimus kicked up his fans a bit, and stirred the air around teacher and student. He angled a bit of a breeze toward Chip, as well. Diarwen's fields suffused with gratitude, and Optimus caught a startled reaction from Jazz.
He was about to ping the saboteur with the glyphs for "Get used to it," when he realized he had no way to do so. Or at least, no way to do so yet.
Down on the desert sands, Diarwen was saying, "Now I am going simply to perceive you, and then I shall attempt to draw energy from you."
"All right."
It was not an unpleasant experience, more like having a friend turn his or her warm regard to one than anything else, Jazz thought. Although for the first time the saboteur understood that his teacher was not, never had been, human. Her fields were totally different from Chip's, or Sam's, or for that matter Mikaela's. He wondered if he could touch bases with Parker about that; perhaps it was the chemistry of the body that generated electric fields.
"Now I shall draw energy from you, Jazz." The contact was still pleasant, while becoming suddenly…was "demanding" the word he wanted, Jazz wondered?
"Ah kin feel that," he said a few minutes later. "Ah really kin. It'd take you about a day to drain me, Ah think."
The sapping contact snapped. "Good! Now I want you to try to do the same to me."
He sent out the contact, but there was…something…in his way. He couldn't define it, or even perceive it, but it stopped him. "Ah can't. What did you do?"
"That is a shield. When you met Director Mearing, doubtless you encountered hers; they are very good."
"Yeah. She's like lookin' into a mirror, except it don't reflect anythin' back to ya."
"That is my experience too. Now, 'dial up' your power, and try it again."
He got to ten on the dial without result. "Ah hate ta tell ya this, Diarwen, but you're stronger than me. Ah can't get through."
"It does not surprise me," she said with a grin, tossing the silver braid over her shoulder. "I have slightly more than two hundred vorn of practice under my belt. Tell me, Jazz, when you were coming here, how did you keep from draining Sergeant Chase?"
He had to stop and think about it. "It wasn't–I wasn't really in contact with him, only with his chair. I'd hafta be in contact with him to do that."
"Sergeant Chase, did you feel Jazz' presence?"
Chip tilted his head to one side. "Maybe. It was a little cooler comin' out here than I expected it to be."
Diarwen shifted her focus back to Jazz. "So you see, Jazz, you have to make a deliberate effort to connect to someone to drain them. But now I am going to teach you how to shield, so that you can, for instance, ride with me back to the base, and you need have no concern for Sergeant Chase's safety if you are with him."
Chip said, "Um, excuse me, Diarwen. You an' me, we got off on the wrong foot, and that was my doin'. I'm sorry for it. Do you think you might call me 'Chip'? I ain't really a sergeant any more."
She bowed her head. "I should be happy to do so, Chip."
Optimus rumbled into speech. "As to having Jazz ride back to base with you, Diarwen, I fear I must forbid that until all of us are a little more conversant with the situation in which we find ourselves."
"Very well," she said. She would not argue with Optimus in front of those he supervised, whether human or Cybertronian (or ghost thereof). "But Jazz, to learn shielding, I was going to touch on visualization. Is that an unfamiliar skill to you?"
"Nah, used it a lot back on Cybertron."
Optimus said curiously, "Oh? How?"
The saboteur's fields washed with humor. "Whenever you give me an assignment, I pictured it comin' off perfectly, me handlin' everything that came my way and not lettin' any of it slow me down. Worked pretty well, even that time Soundwave caught me in his quarters."
Optimus grinned. Of course he remembered that report; what he had told no one was that he had copied it into a file whose title glyphs might have translated to, "Things Which Amuse Me Greatly." Though that particular section bore the subtitle, "Soundwave gets his comeuppance."
Diarwen, when she was sure they were through, said, "Very well. Jazz, you can remember Director Mearing's shields. What did they feel like to you?"
He frowned. "A mirror, sort of. Except it didn't reflect anythin' back, just kept you from seein' inside."
"Sort of like a sheet of Mylar," Chip said.
"Yeah. Yeah! That's it, exactly."
"Well then," said Diarwen, who would later pursue what "a sheet of Mylar" might be, "imagine a sheet of Mylar, and then make it into a circle around yourself. You can see and perceive perfectly through it, but no one else can get inside it, or penetrate it, without your permission."
"Okay," Jazz said, after a moment.
"Now, I am going to try to break it. I cannot tell you what that will feel like, but you must try to resist. Wherever the dial on your sheet of Mylar is," she said with a grin, "you will have to turn it up. Don't worry about how long you can hold out. There is no bad outcome to this exercise, Jazz, it simply shows us where we are."
When his resistance broke–it was, he thought, a lot like resisting Soundwave, before he'd found the music trick–he felt Diarwen in her entirety for a moment, and suddenly understood why Ratchet feared her. He was glad not to be her enemy; she was in her own way as ruthless and practical a warrior as Mirage, the only one of the Autobots he had feared when he was a Decepticon.
Well. Outside of Prime and Ironhide.
He was also glad Prime was not her enemy: pretty much the opposite, in fact. But he said only, "Wow! That was somethin'. Glad you got the control, Teach. Ya coulda knocked me on my aft there."
"I resisted the impulse," she smiled. "Now it is your turn. Can you get through mine?"
Cybertronians cannot sweat as humans do, but Jazz would have sworn he felt his fans kick on from exertion. "No," he said, "Ah can't."
"It was an impressive try, though. The next thing I want you to do is visualize your energy coming to a point, and penetrating your target's defenses. I should like to find a scorpion for you to practice that on."
Ten minutes' hunt turned up one of the creatures; the sun had gone down, and they were becoming active. Jazz "pointed" his energy and loosed it at the scorpion, which levitated off the sand, did a one-eighty, and fell onto its back. It waved its claws and tried to flex its tail, but there was nothing to sting, and its movements slowed, then abruptly stopped.
Chip and Diarwen gaped at it, and then at him. "Good job," Diarwen said. "Can you do that again?"
"I spotted a tarantula a little ways from Chip's chair," Jazz said, to Chip's neck-wrenching consternation. "Let's see if I can find it."
The tarantula had investigated Chip's wheels but found them inedible and moved on, turning to face them from a tuft of desert sage. It froze into attack, back on its six hind legs, front two raised and its biting parts extended, when Jazz touched it, then died in that position—a clean kill this time, no need for a mercy strike to end the creature's suffering.
How some of Soundwave's attacks worked were now perfectly, horrifyingly, clear to the ghost. No wonder his hackers had been so afraid to meet Soundwave on the Net—and no wonder so many had died. They had not understood that such attacks even existed—much less how to defend against them.
Sometime after he'd been surprised in the mech's quarters, early in the war, Soundwave had happened onto this knowledge. The information Diarwen was giving him now was what he needed to know in order to fight the would-be warlord.
"Jazz," Optimus said, "please come to the clearing-out of the children's playground. We are going to get all of the spiders and scorpions out of the area, then put up an energy barrier around it. You would be of great help." He turned to Diarwen. "And you're coming too, I hope?"
"Of course." She faced Jazz again. "Since you know now that I have more power, at this point, than do you, I want you to try to knock me out."
Optimus, with an effort of will, kept "Noooo!" off his lip-plates. His beloved she might be, but she knew what she was doing, and he had to trust that, and trust her.
Jazz' first effort actually staggered Diarwen, and Optimus' hand went out to her. She clutched at it, saved herself from falling, and said, "Thank you," giving a small squeeze and suffusing his fields with gratitude. "Not bad at all," she said to Jazz. "I am wondering, though, how to give you practice, outside of hunting scorpions and biting spiders."
"Don't ya think that oughta be enough? I mean, I killed that first one, but it suffered. They're just bugs, but I'd like ta get good enough at it to knock 'em off with one shot at a distance."
"Yes, perhaps for now confining your target practice to insects may be best. Do try, though, to increase your power. Do you meditate? That is the single greatest aid to this work."
"Yeah, a little. I can put more time into it, see where it gets me."
Diarwen smiled. "Good. For right now, Jazz, I want you to come so close to me that you can access my energy, and then put up your shield, while you stay in contact with me. The goal here is to show you how to put up the shield and keep it in place between yourself and a person you contact."
It didn't take Jazz long to complete picking up that skill. Chip had yawned a time or two, and Diarwen, who had come here without eating – it kept her sharp to do so – was beginning to be very hungry.
"All right, Jazz. Here is yet another test. I want you to draw energy from me, not quickly at first."
Had he had a body, that effort would have kicked his fans into high. He didn't, though, and he completed the task, but could only hold the contact for a few minutes.
"That is good for a start," Diarwen said. "Now, if in a few days, I come to you and give you permission to draw some energy from me, do you think you will be able to?"
"Yeah, I think so. Tell you what, though, I'd like ta learn ta do that to a 'con. Specifically, Soundwave."
Diarwen laughed. "All in good time. We've made a very good start today, though. If you will come and practice the Sword Dance with me every morning, we will move on to Soundwave's comeuppance in a few days, not more than a week."
Jazz grinned. "I'll hold ya to that," he said.
"I think I may ask Arag – I mean, Erik – of S13 to practice with you. He could channel energy to help Nathan when Sufri attacked, where I was not able to."
Jazz and Optimus both blinked. "He's more powerful than you are?" Jazz finally said, with a glance at his Prime.
Diarwen said, "A good thing, is it not, that he and I decided not to pursue our races' quarrel with one another?"
Chip said in a stunned voice, "So, right now, on base, we've got…four races?"
"Sidhe, Fomori, Cybertronian, human, and two ghosts, one human, one Cybertronian," Diarwen said. She cocked her head. "I do not know if that adds up to four, five, or six."
-Sidhe Chronicles-
As they went back to base, Jazz attached to Chip's chair, Diarwen mounted on Optimus' collar fairing, the former Tech Sergeant was silent, but puzzled. As he went through his nightly routine, he thought hard about what he had witnessed.
What had they been doing? From his point of view, Diarwen and a barely-visible disturbance in the hot desert air faced one another, spoke to one another (which he could also hear), and then, after Diarwen had given Jazz instructions, did nothing until she (usually) spoke again. Except that time when she almost fell down, which was…spooky.
He took those thoughts to bed with him, and the next morning, when he went to the firing range with Binns, to teach him how to shoot, he found the Sidhe there with Mikaela, on the same errand.
"Ma'am." he said, craning his neck upward, "yesterday, what precisely were y'all doin' out there?"
The Sidhe and the human watched their pupils shoot for a moment. Then Diarwen said, "Have you never had a girlfriend who was into New Age things, Chip?"
"No, ma'am. Not before I went in. Been no time since I came home, an' all the nurses weren't…well, they just weren't New Agers, ma'am."
Diarwen grinned, and squatted beside his chair, which brought her down to his level. "Medical personnel rarely are. What Jazz and I were doing was simple energy management. I could teach you the basics right now, if you wished."
He looked at her warily. "I don't haveta believe anythin' to make this work, do I?"
"Nothing at all. Oh, it might help to believe that I am not a figment of your imagination, but that is about it." He grinned, she returned it, and then stood up. "Excuse me for a moment. Mikaela is having trouble, and I need to point out something to her."
He watched her walk up to the other woman, taking her arm and explaining something, then checking the sight for her. He could see right away that Mikaela was a somewhat more advanced shooter than Jack, who had no experience beyond shooting BB guns at cans. Kaela was handling the weapon correctly, but tensing in anticipation of the recoil, throwing off her aim. And for all her old-fashioned ways, Diarwen knew her way around military rifles.
The sun came up, and turned one woman's hair to silver, the other's to gold.
Chip Chase realized that he had never seen anyone in his life as beautiful as Mikaela Banes in BDUs, standing in a shaft of sunshine, learning to shoot a rifle.
He tucked that thought away for later, rolled over to Binns. "You doin' okay?"
"Nah, lousy. But it gets better with practice. I'm missing by less."
"Good. Listen, I wanna talk to Diarwen a minute. You okay with some more shooting?"
"Yes, I am. Can we do this again?"
"I've gotta keep my eye in too. How about we tack a half-hour on the range onto the end of the morning routine?"
"Works for me," Binns said, and jacked up a round like he knew what he was doing.
Back at their shaded spot, Diarwen said to him. "Hold your hands out in front of yourself, and begin to move them together. See if you can feel resistance as they come closer. If you do not, move them apart, and try again."
Chip did as he was told. It took a few tries, but suddenly: "Hey yeah! I can feel it!"
Diarwen, again squatting beside him, said, "That is the basis of everything Jazz and I did, Chip. We perceived and moved energy, and that was all."
"Really. This's pretty cool," he said, playing Invisible Basketball with himself. "I'm going to have to ask Parker about this. There could be somethin' here I can work with."
"If you can find out how to negate the need for a physical interface, like those back pads you use to run your chair, it would be a great boon to many people," Diarwen said.
"Yeah! I know we generate a very weak EM field, and that bots can perceive each others' and our own fields. But nobody's ever thought to use them for controlling cybernetics. This'd be great." The handsome face under its freckles and shock of red hair (definitely no longer military length) smiled at her, but the eyes were clearly preoccupied. "Thanks, Diarwen."
She smiled and nodded, and rose to leave with Mikaela.
End Part 5