It had been a long, uncomfortable ride for Ratchet. The finer ships in the Autobot fleet were of course either in combat, or had been destroyed. And the ships running to Earth were smaller, innocuous things that might easily move unnoticed, or at least ignored. This particular ship was a cargo vessel, equipped by necessity with two of the finest pilots the Autobot army had. All the pilots for vessels carrying energon to off-world cache sites were expert. They had to be, flying ungainly tubs that were barely space worthy, and virtually unarmed. If there was trouble with the Decepticons, the pilot's skill was his only line of defense.

Personnel carriers had gone ahead, but Ratchet hadn't been on one of those for several reasons. He knew that one of those reasons was to add an extra layer of protection. Decepticons were more likely to go after personnel than cargo, knowing the Autobots were too smart to ferry anything of great value in their little dinghys. That established pattern was what made Ratchet safer on a cargo vessel now.

Ratchet wasn't just any medic, his name was well known to the Decepticons. He was one of the oldest, among the most skilled, and there had been many assassination attempts on him that had ended in spectacular failure. The Decepticons knew that the death of one skilled medic was worth uncountable numbers of soldiers in the field, because a medic could take any number of maimed or dying soldiers and set them back on their feet, ready to fight again. Ratchet was such a medic, and he was the only one to have survived the period of the war when medics were routinely sent into the field.

New medics had been trained since, but the practice of sending them out to the front-lines had been ended. There weren't enough medics, and they were too readily targeted. Ratchet had survived not only from luck and the protection Warriors were able to provide, but from his own abilities. He came from an age when medics were also Warriors. No one knew better than a medic where to strike and how. A medic knew the weak points better than anyone. In those days, medics had ended lives almost as often as they'd saved them. Many Decepticons carried grudges against medics, and Ratchet in particular.

Ratchet had not enjoyed his time in the field, not because of the danger involved, but because of the bot he'd become when he was out there. The first rule for a physician was to do no harm. Ratchet had been forced to break that rule. That was bad enough. But what he'd found in so doing was a part of himself he would have preferred never to see. Soldiers were matter of fact about killing, it was an ugly necessity they endured. But Ratchet had uncovered the fact that a part of him enjoyed it. He was not the only one like that, but he was one of the few who -on discovering this part of themselves- had recoiled from it. Many had turned to the Decepticons, who condoned and even exulted in killing, most particularly the slaying of the helpless. But more still had simply become Rogues.

There were a lot of ways a bot could snap and turn Rogue, but the end result with Rogues was always the same. Rogues were killers without discrimination, and the worst of them were the ones who had become that way not through fear or horror or pain, but through discovering and submitting to that darkest part of their nature that reveled in the powerful feeling that came with murder. The Rogues that let that part of themselves take over were the hardest to stop. All Rogues were beyond reason in Ratchet's experience, but these rabid ones were not just killers, not just willfully enjoying the taking of life, but they were also very, very good at it.

That was what had killed the majority of those front-line medics. Either they had been killed by Rogues, or had become Rogues themselves. Either way, they had become one of the most hated and feared of Autobots, distrusted by their own and wanted dead by the Decepticons.

Ratchet was still technically a field medic, but it had been a long time since he'd been on the front-lines. Patients came to him these days, not the other way around. He'd still had to defend himself against Decepticons sent to kill him, but not so often, and the part of him that was a pleasure killer had slept for a long time now. He could kill without awakening it, but it wasn't easy. Of course, to his way of thinking, killing should never be easy, no matter how necessary it was. Once it was easy, you'd lost your way, and stepped onto a dark path from which there could be no escape.

"Hey, Doc Bot," said one of the pilots, "We're gettin' some radio chatter you might want to listen to."

Ratchet, lost in thought for the last day or so, roused himself and came up front.

"-say again, Decepticons inbound to your position."

Ratchet dimly recognized the voice on the line, but real memory of them was lost in a battlefield haze. He'd patched them up before probably. It didn't matter now.

"That's the personnel carrier ahead of us," the pilot said, "Talking to the ground base."

"How far out are we?" Ratchet asked.

"About a hundred and sixty hours," the pilot replied, "Hundred and fifteen if we burn the engines."

"And the carrier?" Ratchet asked.

The pilot checked some information in the onboard computer, then some readings, "About two hours."

"How many soldiers on the ground?"

The pilot shrugged, "Depends on how many ships made it all the way out here. We know of at least two that were intercepted before they made landing, both personnel. You know how ships go missing. You never know if they made it but couldn't get off the ground again, or if they got into trouble with asteroids or if 'Cons ambushed 'em."

Ratchet didn't need to ask how many Decepticons a cruiser, the most likely 'Con ship to be out this far, could carry. Decepticon cruisers were larger than Autobot vessels for the most part, and you could really pack vehicons in. Vehicons were somewhat new to the Decepticon ranks, but the advantage they lent because of their sheer numbers was a damning one for the Autobot army.

It would be nice to think the Autobots were simply too ethical for the equivalent of vehicons, but the reality was simply that they hadn't the resources.

"There's nothing we can do," Ratchet realized aloud.

They were too far out and, even if they'd been closer, the cargo ship couldn't put up much of a fight. It also wasn't as if they were just carrying cargo. They were carrying energon. The Autobots needed it not only to power their weapons, but to stay alive at all. Above all else, energon must not be allowed to fall into Decepticon hands. Even were that not the case, any battle would be over by the time they arrived.

"Correction," said the voice on the radio, "Decepticons are not inbound. Say again, not inbound. That ship that just landed is not an Autobot vessel. It has been commandeered by Decepticons. Say again, that is a Decepticon controlled vessel."

There had so far been no acknowledgment from the base, or else they were too far out to pick it up. Ratchet knew that the weather on Earth might be affecting the LDT. This ship wasn't just carrying him and cargo, but materials and plans for improved weatherproofing for bots and equipment. If the LDT was down, the bots on the ground would hear nothing from the ship trying to warn them, even if it was in orbit. Expecting more Autobots and energon to cache, the bots on the ground would be entirely unprepared for the ambush. Ratchet had seen the results of such ambushes before.

"By the Allspark," Ratchet whispered, "They'll be massacred."

"You said it yourself, Doc," the pilot said, "Nothin' we can do to help."

"The question now is," the co-pilot interjected, speaking for the first time, "what do we do?"

"What do you mean?" Ratchet asked.

Then he got it. If the Earth base was overrun or destroyed, there was not only no point in trying to land there, there was very good reason not to. They would be flying a ship load of energon right into Decepticon hands.

"How much fuel?" the pilot asked the co-pilot.

"Not enough to make it back to Cybertron, if that's what you're thinking."

"No point in that," Ratchet said shortly, "We have nothing to go back to."

"What about one of the outposts?" the pilot inquired.

The co-pilot checked some figures, then shook his head gravely, "It's either Earth or nothing."

"Well," the pilot said, "That answers that. Earth it is."

"Great Cybertron," Ratchet cursed.

"-Say again, that is a Decepticon controlled vessel."

A string of curses escaped Bumblebee as he started down from the LDT, heading for ground level. Even as he did so, he tried to raise Axle on the short-distance radio. Under an ideal setup, an LDT would relay signals to short-distance receivers on the planet that were set to that frequency, but this was not the ideal setup, and there was no relay system.

Bumblebee doubted he could overtake the Autobots, they had too great a head start on him. In fact, he didn't know what drove him to go. It wasn't instinct to run into a battle. Not when he was the only one left at base, the only one who would be able to report what had happened. He was a Scout, reporting was his job. But not today. Today, some other compulsion was in the driver's seat.

As he dropped to the ground, transforming and launching himself in the direction the other Autobots had taken, he could hear that his warning would come too late. Already the sound of blaster fire filled the air, echoing through the canyon walls and lighting the graying desert sky.

Axle's voice came over the radio, "Stay at base! There's nothing you can do here, Scout! Stay put!"

But Bumblebee did not heed him, switching the radio off. For the first time in his nearly blameless career, Bumblebee refused to run when he was told to. In his mind flashed all of the things he had lost or given up for this war. Friends, family, the right to choose, his voice, all of it. He'd given everything, and still Cybertron was dead. He couldn't bear to give up anything more. If the Autobots based on Earth were to die, Bumblebee would die with them.

Taking into account the distance and terrain, the number of Decepticons that could have stowed away on the Autobot ship, the number of Autobots stationed on Earth, and the nature of the ambush, Bumblebee calculated that it would probably be all over before he ever got there. A fight like that would last seconds, it would take minutes for him to arrive. But he didn't care. Not today.

He was through running away.