Empire
Soundwave:
Castaway
Day Two
It is the soft dripping of a lazy rain that finally awakes him. Though full consciousness does not arrive until much later. His mind, dreadfully slow after the prolonged stasis, idles along the lines of 'family comes always first' and 'the hacker is never wrong'. Primitive instinct, what some might call the baser part of intelligent life, can no more be avoided than a librarian's lust for knowledge.
No wonder then, that his shields are not up when he opens his eyes. What normally is nothing more than a far away whisper, runs through his senses with the undivided attention of a very proficient assassin. Knowledge that has no place in his memory fights for its right to admittance with full blades out and a plasma torpedo thrown in for artistic correctness. It burns itself into the bravely refusing but still too unprotected walls of his inner sanctum, makes him speak with more emotion than he is usually wont to do.
"There is another," he says with a bleeding croak in his voice. All fluidity seems to have fled from him like a horde of stampeding cattle.
The two sitting beside him exchange a look of startled wonderment. Ravage, as small and lithe as hackers tend to be, shrugs as if to say that such exclamations are normal for his commander. He is, after all, very much used to his creator's way of communication. Sunstreaker though, using the bulkier form of a part-flier born and having obviously never been near a hacker – let alone a hacker 1st class - for prolonged periods of time before, rolls his eyes in annoyance and kicks at the smaller but obviously older youth.
The sound of metal hitting metal scratches within the confines of his tired brain like a saw through wood. Soundwave is not amused.
"There. Is. Another." Repetition finally manages to hammer the message into the students' heads, which earns him their full though reluctant attention.
He points to the impact area, a desolate place that no longer resembles the wild order of organic life, but the molten look of a war zone. Space ships are just not made for planet landings. Especially the kind of ship that Thanatos has chosen to spend his last years as.
The wounded hacker cannot help but wonder how the ship can still be alive. Such destruction, he thinks, is nothing but awe-inspiring.
And, a nagging voice in his cortex reminds him, a child is somewhere in there. A small child not even through his first transformation.
Soundwave can hear the child's fear. Its saturating thickness clocks his thought processes.
The two students, well trained into the appropriate reactions, promptly move to search the still slightly smoldering rubble. He guides their search with short words of command.
A while later, too long for his taste, Ravage and Sunstreaker return with a tiny bundle of shivering energy clawed onto the taller one's back.
"Prowl," he calls out, the name taken from the little child's memory. "Come to me." And be safe in a father's arms, is implied but not spoken.
"How," he thinks when the baby is hiding in his lap and the other children are also bundled close to him. "How am I going to keep us all alive here?"