Maelstrom Chapter 37
Pilgrimage 1 Part A
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 37
Pilgrimage 1
Part I
Continued from Part H
Char:
Cyclonus barely remembered the long flight home. The longest leg of his trip, the last part between the second jump-gate and Char's isolated orbit, was a complete blank.
He remembered Blitzwing tailing him all the way to the surface. He remembered being forced to give back the insignia he was wearing.
Blitzwing asked who he got it from. Cyclonus told him where to find the body.
"You couldn't have just knocked him out?" Blitzwing snarled, showing real anger for the first time. "You idiots are so slagging WASTEFUL."
"Paradronians are wasteful. They waste space," Cyclonus sneered.
Blitzwing gestured around him. "Just because someone doesn't meet YOUR standards of warrior, doesn't mean they're useless, Cyclonus!" Blitzwing said, waving around him at Cybertron's renewal. "Wake up! You idiots think I've turned on you ...that I've changed. I didn't. Everything I did was in my best interest, and now I see that it is STILL in my best interest to make compromises. Not every problem can be solved with a blaster!"
Cyclonus didn't answer. He took off before the furious ex-Decepticon decided to change his mind about letting him go.
Running over these events, and the conversation down in the "shrine" , Cyclonus barely noticed his trip home. He supposed he was lucky he didn't run into an Autobot patrol.
Or maybe his fate was simply to die at the hands of his leader.
Striding into the base as if nothing whatsoever was out of the ordinary, Cyclonus knew he was in real trouble just by the smirks he was getting from Cons he passed.
Swindle looked him up and down as if already calculating how much Cyclonus' parts would fetch him on the black-market. Brawl and Vortex smiled and whispered to each other as he passed.
Then Brawl snickered, and Cyclonus snapped.
Whirling like the storm he was named for, Cyclonus grabbed Brawl's neck and slammed him bodily into the wall. He didn't say a word, he just squeezed slowly. Vortex took a step their direction and found Cyclonus' blaster under his chin.
"What was that Brawl?" Cyclonus asked.
Brawl, of course, was in no place to answer, but Cyclonus didn't let up until the Combaticon went limp in his grasp. He shoved Brawl at Vortex, and stomped off towards the Command Center.
This might be his last day of life, but if so Galvatron would have the honor of ending it. Cyclonus was not about to take slag from anyone else.
Still, as the doors opened, he found what he saw even more unnerving than the anticipated plasma bolt.
Nothing.
The dias was empty.
Most of the Command Center was empty too....except for Soundwave dutifully monitoring transmissions as always.
The communications specialist turned immediately to face the Decepticon Second, and with a rare show of emotional upheaval raised his vocalizer. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"
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Cybertron:
Jazz watched Soundwave filling Cyclonus in on Viper's new game, and grinned. Unflappable, inscrutable Soundwave was clearly in a state, and Mr. Always-in-Control had his mouth dangling.
"Serves you right for deserting your post, Cyclonus," Jazz muttered to himself. Any sympathy he might have felt for Cyc was overshadowed by the fact Jazz had to tell Optimus about the murdered Paradronian, Overlay. A simple maintenance worker, Overlay had specialized in road repair, and had been helping restore the tunnels Omega Supreme collapsed. Over-powering him was surely child's play for a warrior like Cyclonus, and his death was clearly, well, over-kill.
Optimus would not be happy.
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Earth:
Defensor fell to his knees and clutched erratically at his head. Even that motion was difficult and unfocused. His hand fell back to earth, because he couldn't maintain enough cohesion to control it. One thing was clear - he was useless. Despair tried to claim him and he tried, in his simple way, to say goodbye to his brothers. He was miserable and afraid and would rather never function again than go on like this.
Quite simply, he wanted to give up...and that made the part of him that was Blades simply furious. Defensor attempted to disengage, but Blades rebelled - forcing a tighter bond with Hotspot's mind and arguing with the resignation there. The two of them linked deeper in this moment than either ever had before, more than they even felt possible up to now. Blades was finally accepting First Aid's loss, but that made him even more determined to hold onto Defensor.
It made Defensor a little more inspired to hold on to himself, or to at least try.
Hotspot's persona gave up its resignation and asked the other two to try. Groove needed no real encouragement and threw his mind completely open.
Streetwise held out for a second...there was always some part of themselves they held back to avoid truly becoming one entity. It was a natural thing, to want to keep a part of yourself for yourself. Blades was abandoning it out of anger, Groove out of simple trust, and Hotspot out of a leader's compulsion to do what was best for his team. Streetwise was neither the most passionate nor the most trusting of his brothers, and his independence was important to him.
The others waited, respectful of his right to keep his own soul, even if it meant Defensor was down until First Aid came home. None of them would blame or begrudge him...and their respect and compassion tipped him over. He threw the last of himself into the link.
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Marissa roared.
"It's a boy!" Doc yelled, suctioning out the airways and giving the foamed covered lump a sound thump or two.
"We knew that already!" Magnus snapped. "Is he...Is he fully functional?"
"Oh my God," Marissa whispered, gasping. "Functional...you are asking if our baby is functional. We'll never pull this off..."
Doc chuckled and made a big show of counting, "Ten, ten, two, two, one, one.... All anatomy seems to be present and accounted for Ultra Magnus, and not a tire in sight!"
"That's a relief. Which one is it?" Magnus asked.
"Magnus we agreed the first one born would be Kyle!" Marissa grunted. As far as she was concerned, the relief was only half-way finished.
"Yes, but how do we know it's the right one...?" Magnus asked. He looked around. "Why does everyone keep laughing at me?"
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Rodimus scanned the concrete building for wiring and security systems. Finding a dead zone in the electrical grid, he flicked an acid pellet onto the concrete and waited. The target building was a concrete structure with no windows and two class-two telekenetic Convert Guards behind the rolling metal door on street level. More than strong enough to crush him like a soda can, and worthy of a high enough Conversion chip to act quite effectively on their own, even if their masters were dead. Therefore Rodimus was making his own back door to get in. His Jabez scanner read fifty nine human life-signs. The two by the door, forty-three huddled in the center of the main floor, ten holding weapons in a loose circle around those, two upstairs in the offices, and one upstairs in what was surely the surveillance center. Rodimus planned to go after that guy first.
He dangled, one handed, from a drain pipe off the roof. The other hand he used to press between his eyes while he waited for the acid to eat through.
Finally, he had a hole big enough for his body and he slipped through - grateful his black Maelstrom-issue body suit protected him from his own acid.
The room he entered was full of mildew-scented mops, which he could smell, but not see. He tried switching to infra-red.
....
Oh right...can't do that in human form. Glow stick, idiot.
He paused for a moment.
His head was still pounding and he was already making mistakes.
This slaving operation was professional and careful. They took only as many victims as they could handle. The main guards were self-willed. The Converted guards were high-end and well-maintained. The building had really good sensor nets built in and around it - it had taken him an hour to wend his way through the lasers which would alert those inside if anyone so much as walked past on the sidewalk.
In other words, one wrong move and he was in for a rough night...and it had already been a rough night.
Maybe Optimus was right. Maybe he should just go home and leave these captives to their fate. Maybe he should answer the worry and the resentment his mate was battling, and trying so hard to keep from him.
He smiled grimly to himself.
He was just going to walk out of here...yeah right.
Shaking his head, grinning bitterly at himself, he carefully turned the doorknob and peeked out into the well lit corridor. Hadn't these assholes ever heard of conserving electricity?
He debated. Knocking the light out would be easy enough, but if he just went around killing lights, someone would get suspicious. Checking his scanner again showed all three of the slavers upstairs still seated, but expecting them to remain that way was just stupid....
The layout was in his favor though....one long "L" shaped hallway that rimmed the edge of the open warehouse below. The offices were on the long side, the security room on the short. One light fixture.
Was there an outlet in here?
Nope. Not in a closet dummy, but...oh joy, there was one in the hall just outside. He took out a jack knife, found the saw blade without looking, and cut into the drywall.
Once the conduit was exposed he cut slowly into it and revealed the wiring. Then he got out a little gizmo of Talon's design, thinking that if Lancer had been with him he wouldn't have needed it.
He attached the miniature jumper cables to the wiring, checked on the bad guys, and poked his head out into the hall again. He took careful aim with a blow dart and activated his device. All the lights in the building flickered off, as if with a brownout. As he let the lights come back on he blew a pellet at the bulb in the hallway and it popped.
"Shit!" came a gruff voice from one of the offices. "Doug?! Are the cameras still up?"
"All clear!" a different voice called back. "Just another fine example of service from our power company."
Rodimus hastily shut the door, wishing they wouldn't yell so loud. Why did loud noises make human headaches worse? What did one thing have to do with the other? Just one of the many things Magnus always griped about and...crap he needed to concentrate.... What was he doing letting his mind wander like that?
He waited until he was sure no one was getting up to investigate the light any further. Then he slid into the hallway, crept silently into the security room, pushed Doug's head forward, and shoved a needle up into his skull through the foramen magnum.
"Now you know what it is to be converted you shit," Rodimus whispered to the slack body in the chair. He checked the security systems briefly, avoiding the spreading puddle of fluids Doug's body was releasing. The security grid was well made, but nothing alien in origin.
He went out and studied the rest of the hallway.
The office furthest from him was set way back in the corner. The one closest was right at the top of the stair and had a large window. No doubt you got a commanding view of the warehouse floor from there.
He sighed. That meant the far office was probably the book-keeper and the closer was the boss. Decisions, decisions.
Book-keepers often knew more about what was going on than the bosses did, but the boss was most likely to have command authority over the CV guards.
Rodimus frowned. Boss first. He wanted to chat with the book-keeper undisturbed.
Reaching the door, Rodimus cursed the man. He wasn't a dummy, and had his desk situated facing the door.
But...Rodimus couldn't believe it...the man was dozing off! Rodimus ran, silently, to get in behind him, just as the slaver lifted his head to look blearily back at his computer. Standing right behind him, Rodimus could see that Boss kept a blaster trained at the door, and was tabulating estimates for his "cargo" downstairs. A spread-sheet of costs and profits, just like the guy was selling oranges.
Rodimus curled his lip. He doubted orange sellers got drowsy from sating themselves on their merchandise. This creep hadn't even zipped his fly the whole way.
The assassin twirled his bloody needle and gripped the man's throat just under the larynx with the pin pressed across it like a garrote.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" he whispered in the man's ear. "I can hear... sobbing... downstairs. I've got daughters, see? I always worry someone like you will try to get a sound like that out of them, so hurting you really, really badly seems kinda cool to me right now. Put your hands on top of your head."
The terrified man complied...and urinated on himself. Rodimus barely noticed. He slipped out a length of wire and twisted the man's hands together. He didn't worry about the circulation either. This sleaze wouldn't be using his hands again.
"Can you contact those Converted guards silently?" Rodimus asked.
The man frantically shook his head.
"What's the code word then?"
"Candy..." Boss whispered.
Rodimus stared at him. The man shrugged, and looked a bit embarrassed.
The assassin took out a small memory crystal device and plugged it into Boss' computer. He downloaded everything on the system to his crystal and Robert's piggy-back virus to their network. He waited to see if he needed Boss to give him any more passwords but it took only seconds to get everything. Rodi smiled nastily at Boss' wide-eyed gaze. This done, Rodi took his crystal back, pocketed it, and twirled his needle around his fingers again. When he was sure Boss was looking, Rodimus shoved it through the man's left eye. Part of him regretted. Part of him was pleased with the efficient, quiet kill. Part of him wished he could linger...take his time...play a little....
Next came the book-keeper's office. Unlike his paranoid (well...maybe not paranoid) ex-boss this man had three desks scattered all over the room and a wide, smooth floor with a rolling chair he could use to scoot from one to the other. Currently he was sitting with his back to the door. Rodimus took out a blaster, and put it to the back of the man's head.
Books froze nicely, and didn't seem too surprised.
"Hands on your desk please," Rodimus said politely. "I want your shipping records, inventory, suppliers, clients, everything."
"It's all right here," Books told him.
"That's the stuff you keep out to look pretty for you boss," Rodimus snarled. "I want your REAL books, Asshole...including the stuff you keep for yourself on the side."
Now the man looked nervous.
"You from Ferino?"
Rodimus arched an eyebrow and said nothing.
"I TOLD him it would be a few days," Books whined.
Rodimus didn't answer, but he pressed the gun a bit harder to the back of the man's head.
Trembling, Books told him. "It's over there," he said, indicating the smallest, messiest desk.
"Any funny business and I'll kill you slow," Rodimus told him.
Shuddering, the man paled and nodded. He started to get up, but Rodimus pressed on him with the blaster.
"I'll escort you," he said, and used his other hand and the blaster to steer Books' chair across the room. "Here good?" he asked casually. Books nodded and reached into his desk. Rodimus let increased pressure speak for him as the man's hands moved around, feeling for something amidst paper-clips, empty granola wrappers, and scattered pens.
What he came out with looked like a broken memory card. It was dirty, scuffed and was clearly missing some of its connectors. Rodimus smiled, and nudged with the gun. Sighing, Books popped off the fake facing on the card, revealing an undamaged chip of much higher capacity.
"What's the code word for the Converts downstairs?" he asked.
"Overlord," Books said.
Rodimus glared.
"Candy! I mean candy!" Books corrected frantically.
"That is so stupid, by the way," Rodimus said, pocketing the chip.
"You'll let me go now?"
"Sure," Rodimus said. "Straight to hell." With that he broke the man's neck.
Then he crawled out on his belly and peered down below him.
The captives sat on the floor in various states of dress and shock. Several of the girls and one of the youngest boys were nude and bruised, with blood running down their legs. The guards looked bored and checked their watches. They must have been waiting for some kind of transport to arrive.
Rodimus fought down the urge to just morph and start stepping on things.
Downstairs the general crying got louder as one of the guards eyed another captive. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
"You ain't done that enough yet?" one of the others asked in a bored tone, while his co-worker grabbed her shirt and pulled down, ripping it painfully.
"My old lady's been holding out on me," the guard said, throwing the girl face down over a crate. He never let go of his gun as he exposed himself, tore down the girl's shorts, and penetrated her from the rear. Smooth. Obviously someone had practice. She screamed and he encouraged her between groans.
You can't save them all...you can't save them all.... Rodimus told himself. The practical assassin saw the other guards were getting distracted. That was good. Rodimus needed to get to those Converted telekinetics. You always went for the biggest threat when possible. He made a choice to let the abuse continue, but another side of him screamed with the girl.
He had faced this kind of choice many times before.
Usually, the assassin won.
Not today.
He broke.
Leaping to the banister with blaster drawn he slid, shouting "CANDY! STAND DOWN!" at the top of his lungs (and feeling strangely idiotic doing so). He shot the Converted telekinetics before anyone reactivated them and then blew the rapist's head off.
The girl's screams as her attacker's blood-spurting corpse fell out of her reminded Rodimus of Carly. He wasn't sure he'd done her any favors. He blew the lights and the heads off two more guards before reaching the bottom of the stairs, rolled, came up at the feet of a third, and hit him in the chest with such force it broke the man's sternum. The slaver fell to the floor and lay there until he smothered on the blood in his lungs.
Blaster fire followed Rodimus around the room - hitting some of the screaming, panicked captives. The headache was affecting his vision, and he was hit twice, but the armor took most of the shock. He flipped and struck and dodged. A powerful, two fingered jab at the nexus between the neck and the collar bone sent another slaver to the floor. The man dropped his gun, clutching his neck with one hand and waving Rodi off frantically with the other. A clear surrender. Rodimus grabbed the man's windpipe and twisted until it snapped. Two of the remaining guards tried to run, but he shot them in the back. The last three charged him desperately, all three blasting wildly in panic. He leapt up, over their fire, somersaulted, unwrapped himself, and exploded on top of them. Two went down with a shared split-kick to their heads. On his way to the floor, Rodimus landed in a hand stand and threw one last kick to the final slaver's face. Chunks of bone from the bastard's nose erupted through his sinus cavities and into his brain.
Then Rodimus stopped, gasping with exertion and pain. His head felt like it was ready to explode, as frightened victims looked around and tried to make sense of what happened. Normally he would be moving, checking on victims, making his escape, or even killing captives if he thought they'd seen too much.
The transport was surely coming. He couldn't afford to rest, but he went down on one knee and held his head.
One captive approached him fairly calmly.
"You're here to rescue us?" the man, in maybe his thirties asked Rodimus.
Rodimus forced himself to sneer.
"Nah...I"m from Ferino's gang. Just here to mess up the competition."
"Hmm...that's interesting," the mutant said, easily ripping off his inhibitor collar. "So am I."
Rodimus stiffened in anguish as he felt his mental shields being invaded. He managed to turn his blaster on the door so that it exploded outward and let the captives run free as he fought to keep the telepath from raiding his mind.
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Cybertron:
Elita's face was a perfect mask of calm, regal dignity. Behind that she was a seething whirl of annoyance and disgust...no small part of which was aimed at her mate. She fully agreed with his assessment that they were being dealt with unfairly by their trading partners. His evaluation of the new products they were peddling for the new sparks was dead on too. Useless, over-priced crap. Nevertheless, laying the fragile and hard fought agreements SHE had wrangled out of these people years ago to waste in one fell swoop was just too much.
Elita wasn't generally an impatient person. Isolation in the tunnels had certainly taught her to wait. The first, grossly unfair trade-deals they had wrought with such toil just a few years ago were only the first step in her mind. Neighboring systems had watched Cybertron warily for millions of years...as one era of peace after another fell to civil war. Convincing them THIS peace would last had been...difficult. Impossible really. The only reason most of them were even willing to discuss trade was because of the blatantly lop-sided terms the Autobots settled for. No doubt plenty of their so-called partners weren't really putting much stake in trade with Cybertron. They were getting in while the getting was good, and ready to cut their losses at the first sign of trouble. Like a person with bad credit, the Autobots were paying high interest for the privilege of doing business.
Optimus had every right to feel cheated. They WERE being cheated, but he hadn't done his planet any favors by SAYING so.
Nothing had really changed of course. There was still profit to be made here, and none of the trading partners was about to let their competition have at Cybertron's next generation unchallenged, but.... Now they were all "insulted" and would need extra dispensation to take back to their home governments to "win back public favor".
In other words...they were finding one more excuse to rob the Autobots blind, and Elita had to smile about it.
Elita knew her mate was...unstable right now.
She knew he was being forced to cope with a jumbled mind after the Sigma implants left chaos in their wake.
What she was angry about was that HE hadn't realized in time to take himself and his big mouth out of the picture before making this... this... mess!
Continued in Part J