Duty and Deceit
Chapter 32
Stuff
/Please, prettypleasewithcoppersauce, getouttamyhelm!/ Blurr whined at high speed into her helm as she shattered his scatterbrained firewalls. /GoodCon, beautifulCon, prettyprettynicemercifulCon!/
She really didn't like this part of her job... The femme growled, her frustration spiking outwards through the blue hovercraft's processors forcing a pained whimper from the mech.
/Ow! Okayokay, flattery'snotworkingnotworkingatall! Getoutgetoutgetout!/ He threw his mind at her, pounding on her presence with all that he had. The effort was primarily pointless, reminding her of a youngling throwing a fit, but nonetheless the mental pressure was less than pleasant.
The spy grunted, a scowl touching her face as a killer helmache began to set in. Finally she punched him hard in the mental and physical faceplates, effectively silencing his mental and verbal ramblings.
The mental barrage ended and she had to stifle a sigh. Silence. Beautiful, uninterrupted-
/Owwyowwyowwyowww! Whatwasthatfor? IthoughtyouhackyConslikeachallenge!/
/Shut up!/ The spy roared, her patience with the mech running out incredibly fast. /I do not want to hurt you, in fact, if you would just be quiet and stop struggling; I'll do this as gently as possible! But so help me, you will be quiet one way or the other!/
The fast forwarded mech took hardly an astrosecond to process this before the barrage started all over again with more vigor. /I'llstopstrugglingwhenI'mintheWell! YouevilmindhackingDecepti-creep! I'dratherdiethanbetrayOptimusandmyteam! Iwonteverletyou-you-oo.../
She sighed deeply, savoring the peaceful quiet at last. She always offered her prisoners the easy way or the hard way. Most chose the hard way. But once the firewalls were down, it was a – usually – simple matter of disabling the higher cognitive functions and voila! Her job was all but over. Gathering the desired files was youngling's play from then on.
The Prussian blue and black two-wheeler frowned in concentration, trying to keep her thoughts focused. She'd always hated hacking the prisoners. She justified her actions by the cause. It was for the furthering and betterment of the Cybertronian people. A far more merciful method than physical interrogation techniques.
/I told you.../ She thought quietly to the inert Autobot mech. /I do not want to hurt you... I'm doing this for your own good. For all of us. For Cybertron./
Previously on Duty and Deceit...
"Soundwave. Took her to the Nemesis." Cliffjumper croaked. "Couldn't stop him."
"What happened?" The spy asked blearily. The last thing she remembered, she had been on a deep cover mission in Autobot ranks...
She gasped, her armor shrinking slightly towards her frame. Making sure her audials hadn't malfunctioned, she whispered, "You wish for me to slay my commanding officer, second in command of the entire Decepticon army, my lord?"
"It is nothing personal, Starscream. But I have a duty to fulfil." She said plainly... Avenge the fallen, she thought, icy fury burning through her... She pulled the trigger.
A blaze of agony coursed through her left arm, knocking her aim off target. The rock beside Starscream smoked, the sharp scent of discharged energy and singed metal filling the air around them. Terabyte whirled around, catching sight of the source of the blast. Momentarily caressing her burnt cannon-arm, the spy glared at Cliffjumper, red optics blazing. Her bio-lights brightened until she was almost haloed in the color of fire.
"You would interrupt, Autobot?" She sneered, "It's a pity... I was hoping for the scout."
Behind her, she heard the scream of the air commander's engines as he attempted to retreat. Weapons fire from the other side of the cavern echoed, drowning out Megatron's bellows. Dust clouded the air, but Terabyte was too focused on the red Autobot in front of her. She walked leisurely towards him, planning the kill.
"Arcee, stop shooting! You'll bring the whole mine down!" Cliffjumper yelled towards the commotion on the other side of the chamber.
The spy's midnight navy armor looked nearly black in the dim light. She growled lowly, extending her red dagger with a light flick of her wrist. "Is your life so unimportant to you that you won't even pay attention to your final battle?" Terabyte laughed coldly. "I expected at least a little challenge... wouldn't want it to end too quickly now would we?"
So intent on her target, the two-wheeler hardly noticed the roof beginning to crumble and collapse around her. She was just feet away from him...
He looked directly into her optics, his own blue ones widening. "TB, Look out!"
She glanced around, just now realizing the danger. Her optics widened and she simply stood there, like a deer in the headlights, as a huge boulder fell towards her. Under normal circumstances, this might have bothered her a bit more than did. But Skyquake's death weighed heavy on her spark.
"Sky..." She whispered, offlining her optics calmly, at peace. Perhaps she would see him, and her parents in a few astroseconds... Maybe Smokey'd be there too.
A hand slightly larger than her own slapped her hard across the battle mask. Rubbing the stinging metal, Terabyte onlined her optics, her faceplates instantly sliding into a scowl.
"Tera! Are you alright?" Cliffjumper asked urgently, hanging over her protectively. His frame was radiating heat, having overheated when he dug her out. "C'mon, say something!"
"Call me that again and I'll rip your spark out with my bare hands, Autobot scum." She snarled.
The red mech however, didn't seem to have registered her words, only that she'd spoken. "Oh, thank the Allspark you're okay! Had me worried there."
She shoved the mech aside, rising to her pedes swiftly, examining the surrounding area quickly. They were trapped in a small pocket, approximately eight meters in diameter, and tall enough for Cliffjumper to stand without hitting his helm. The problem was that there was no visible way out. Terabyte shrugged. She'd kill the Autobot and then dig herself out.
"You don't seem to understand your position, Cliffjumper." The spy said flatly. "I never really joined the Autobot cause. Why would I have ever joined the mechs that killed my family, destroyed my home, slaughtered my friends, demolished my planet, and took Sky?"
He frowned, confusion written on his face. "Took your sky? You mean the big guy, Jetbrain?"
Charging her cannon and pressing it into his chest-plate so hard the metal bent, Terabyte hissed at him like a feral creature. "Yes. I mean Skyquake... 'the big guy', 'Jetbrain'. Glad to hear that you respect the dead."
Cliffjumper raised his hands and backed into the wall. "Whoa, slow down, Terabyte... Skyquake's back at base, alive and cheery, helping the doc clean the cargo bays. No dead jets on my watch."
"I was there." She spat angrily. Just like an Autobot to lie to her face to save his own sorry hide. She extended her dagger, which had retracted in the cave-in. "Your intricately twisted deceit won't fool me, Cliffjumper. Bumblebee tore out his processors and your beloved medic refused to save him. I watched him fade to gunmetal gray."
"B-but, he's back at base, I swear it!" Cliffjumper said, sounding so sincere. She smirked, rolling her deep red optics; so sincere. "We can get out of here together, I'll take you back to base so you can see for yourself. Just come back with us, Tera..."
Enraged, Terabyte plunged her blade through his shoulder joint, twisting it until the mech cried out in pain. The femme ground each word out, emphasizing each syllable with another jerk of her dagger. "I. Told. You. Not. To. Call. Me. That!"
A tiny voice in the back of her helm, shrouded in a mist of foreign programming, told her not to kill her brother. If it was possible, her scowl deepened and she ripped the blade from his mangled shoulder. His arm fell limp to his side. Shaking Cliffjumper's life-En off her dagger, Terabyte retracted the weapon.
"Playing along with your 'kindness' act has made me soft it would seem..." She said quietly, her finials flicked back at an annoyed angle. Now the little voice was telling her she should fix him.
Terabyte turned away from the gasping mech, glaring at the jagged cave wall, where Cliffjumper had stacked the rubble that had crushed her.
"Would you be quiet?" She yelled at the wall, "I'm kind of busy trying to kill this guy. He is not my brother!"
"Terabyte..." Cliffjumper said worriedly, his voice slightly strained, "There isn't anyone there..."
She whirled around to face him. "Obviously. What? Did you think I've lost it? Yelling at walls?"
He sounded taken aback, "Well... that is what it looked like."
The dark femme gave him a withering look, simmering inwardly. Not bothering to reply, the little spy started heaving boulders and throwing them over to Cliffjumper's pile. The red mech watched her for a few klicks before helping as much as he could with one hand.
Several breems later, both Cybertronians' frames were beginning to overheat, their ventilation systems practically useless since the air was just as hot as they were. It seemed as though they were making no progress, but neither dared to use energy weapons lest they cause their little air pocket to collapse on them.
Terabyte slumped down against the stone wall, across from Cliffjumper. Life-En spluttered from her arm and several places where her armor was so badly dented it had pierced her protoform. The red mech leaned against the wall on his side of the cave, life-En still streaming from his shoulder.
She laughed, a smug grin curving her lip-plates. She poked the shrouded corner of her mind, "See? I listened to you, Voice. I left Cliff alive... but I still win! If we are lucky, he'll leak out before we do."
"We?" Cliffjumper asked weakly. "Who's we?"
"Me, myself, and I." Terabyte replied calmly.
In all honesty, the shielded data in her helm bothered her. She always used all of her mind and body to its highest capacity, and not having that accessible was disturbing. Ever since the blocked corner had made itself known, she'd been trying to hack the multilayered encryptions. But they were incredibly advanced, changing every second and reacting to all of her attacks. It seemed that everything she did to destroy it was making it stronger.
She calculated that at her current rate, it would take a few quartex to hack.
"What have they done to you...?" The red Autobot whispered.
Terabyte jumped up, her finials swiveling rapidly. Someone was coming, fast. The ground beneath her vibrated, a loud rumbling noise filling her audials, along with the sound of shattering rock.
She charged up her cannon and her Energon dagger. Terabyte braced herself, ignoring her wounds. The slight vibrating of her mini-cannon sent pain up her arm. Her aim was wobbly.
"Cliffjumper?" A nervous voice shouted as the rock crumbled, revealing one of the Decepticon mining drills. A second voice said, "Guys, careful. There could be more than just Starscream and Megatron." Another voice hollered, "Hellllooo?"
Hellllooo? Hellllooo? Lllooo?
The human female's voice echoed. Terabyte hissed at the first human male's voice. She knew it. "Rafael. Miko. Jack too, I assume?"
The spiky haired youngling laughed, leaping off the drill quickly, running over towards her. "Tera! You're okay!"
He hugged her pede tightly, smiling up at her. "Why'd you change colors?"
The urge to fling him across the room washed over and she swung her pede back to kick. Her helm twitched to the side and she merely jiggled her pede to knock him off.
"I thought these colors better suited me." She said flatly. Her optics narrowed, and her spark hardened. "After all, you and your metal friends took everything from me. Now that you've made an escape for me... I am going to finish what I started: you may watch or not, it matters little to me."
She charged her cannon and aimed it at Cliffjumper's spark chamber. "This is for my life, which you took."
She fired, her cannon arm wobbled - she passed it off on her injury - and blasted the same leg that Soundwave had destroyed when he rescued her. Terabyte ran through the opening Jack had dug, looking back only to see a pile of melted circuitry where his pede had been.
"I can't seem to keep a leg to stand on..." Cliffjumper muttered, his voice strained.
A Day Later. Outpost Omega One
The whole room seemed to explode with noise the minute his optics opened. Anger, disbelief, confusion... he couldn't tell the difference amidst the uproar.
He sat up slowly, his movements awkward. The Autobot frowned minutely. He couldn't feel his left pede. It moved when he wanted it to, with slight lag, but the limb was numb.
Cliffjumper looked down at the pede, to determine what the problem was. The thing that greeted his optics was not his leg.
It was substantially thinner than his pede at the thigh, though it was the right color. That wasn't what bothered him most though. What bothered him was the silver, angular, hollow calf with the wheel disfiguratively suspended in the back, jutting out as if it didn't belong. The foot on the end was triangular and layered, extending the same length backwards as forwards.
"What. In. The. Galaxy. Did you do to my leg?" He ground out slowly, trying not to panic.
The arguing Autobots gathered in the med-bay all instantly fell silent, none daring to look him in the optics. Finally Ratchet spoke up in a hoarse whisper, still staring at his own feet.
"It was the best I could do with limited resources. I used the last of our Cybertonium on your leg when Soundwave scrapped it... I had to make do with Terran alloys."
Cliffjumper took a few klicks in the stiff silence to absorb this. "So that's why I can't feel it?"
The medic sighed deeply. "Put simply, yes. I am sorry Cliffjumper."
Arcee, who was standing next to him, clenched her fists tightly. "I knew she couldn't be trusted. Once a Con, always a Con."
Across the room, the sound of crashing metal echoed. Bulkhead had slammed his wrecking ball into the table, crushing it and a couple tools of Ratchet's. "Stinking traitor had us all fooled."
"We trusted her! And this is how she repays us?" Bumblebee buzzed vehemently, gesturing to Cliffjumper's new, disfigured pede.
"Autobots!" Optimus said firmly, his flat hands raised in a placating gesture, silencing the increasingly loud murmurings. "We must not jump to conclusions. Cliffjumper, tell us what happened in the mine."
He shifted slightly on the berth, still trying to accept the new reality of his pede. All signs of his usual optimism were wiped from his face. Across the room, Skyquake was scowling at him. Like it was his fault the Cons had messed around in her helm.
"Her armor is almost completely black now. And her optics..." Recalling her blazing red optics, Cliffjumper shuddered, "Her optics are a deeper, angrier red than even Megatron's."
"Raf and I found her with her cannon to Starscream's helm, questioning Megs' reasoning behind offlining the Seeker." The red mech paused, a concerned look touching his faceplates. "Then she shot him. I managed to throw off her aim, then the whole mine started caving in..."
"Megatron." Arcee muttered sourly. "I shot his arm-"
"Multiple times." Jack put in helpfully.
"-and his cannon misfired at the roof-" His partner continued, glaring at Jack.
"Multiple times." The boy concluded, ignoring Arcee's look.
Smiling at the two of them, Cliffjumper went on soberly. "Anyway. We were trapped in the same pocket, and she had been buried in the cave in. I dug her out and soon as she onlined she tried to kill me."
"Naturally, I tried to convince her to come back with us..." His frown deepened. "She told me she never joined us-"
"I knew it!" Arcee hissed, "She was a spy."
"Arcee, would you just shut up with the 'I told you so's? Let me finish." The warrior barked in irritation. "She said she watched us kill Skyquake. And she kept yelling at the walls to be quiet... referring to herself in plural..."
Cliffjumper looked up at Optimus with worried optics, "Prime... Whoever did this," he gestured to his new pede, "Whoever did this was not Terabyte. They've done something to her; messed with her mind somehow."
Meanwhile: Nemesis
Setting one part of her processor to her assignment of scanning and organizing reports and Terran media, the dark femme checked the crew files.
She remembered having found a new Con during her infiltration mission. A powerful, mostly psychotic triple-changer. If she could find him, he would be an invaluable asset to the cause. Finding him would be a far more efficient use of her time.
Terabyte ran a routine self-diagnostic before syncing with the computer. Her HUD informed her that the tracker she'd placed on him was still active. Whether or not it was still attached to him was another matter entirely.
According to her readout the tracker was in central Russia. Hacking into the government's military radars and accessing all data for the region was youngling's play. She nodded curtly.
Most triple-changers were strange in the helm; the technology had been created by Decepticon scientists in the hopes of strengthening their forces without increasing troops. There was little doubt that the technology had not yet been perfected. Sixshot, Blitzwing, Astrotrain... None of them had their helms screwed on right.
So it was no surprise to the femme when she found multiple live stream broadcasts of panicked reporters as they caught Blitzwing on video. At the moment, he was crouched in the ruins of a museum, playing with statues of human rulers like they were dolls.
Whenever a human vehicle got too close, the mech would change faces momentarily and slap them aside like a pest. Taking a moment to repair and improve the government's security, Terabyte backed out and disconnected from the terminal.
She rose from her seat at her work station and took a moment to stretch her arms over her helm, cracking several strained spinal struts back into alignment. The hydraulics in her pedes hissed as she stepped away from the terminal, protesting their prolonged lack of use. Her optic ridges creased slightly and she checked her chronometer.
"Two joors..." Terabyte muttered quietly to herself.
"Sorry sir?" The Vehicon next to her, Symptom, asked anxiously, his wings twitching.
Glancing at the mech, the comms and intel SIC pursed her masked lip-plates together. "Symptom. Have you located and locked onto the coordinates of Cybertron as assigned?"
A whine came from his engine as he tentatively shook his spiked helm, stuttering, "N-not y-y-yet, Lieut-t-tenant C-commander..."
Her scowl deepened and she growled in frustration. Why did they fear her so much? What had she done? She had been known as the friend of Vehicons. Now they cowered in her presence. The time she'd been controlled by Megatron came to mind, but she had no recollection of his time in her mind. Besides that, Lord Megatron was respected by his troops: not feared.
'Are you sure about that?' The strange shrouded voice whispered, echoing through her mind. Terabyte lashed out at the air fiercely, shouting, "Silence!"
Venting heavily, she said to the trembling Vehicon, "It is a simple task, Symptom. Already you have struggled with it for a quarter orn. Perhaps you should consider posting a transfer request."
Impatient, she faced the other drones, staring at the scene. Forcing her voice into a softer tone, Terabyte tilted her helm to the side, "Shall we return to our duties?"
To her surprise, everyone in the room replied in perfect unison, saluting her smartly, "Yes Lieutenant Commander Terabyte, sir!"
An unidentifiable voice in the crowd broke the resounding silence that followed, muttering, "S'long as y'don't go on a psycho slaughterin' spree agin..."
Terabyte spun on her heel and made her exit, bewilderment pressed into her faceplates. Slaughtering spree... A memory flashed across her vision. The mess hall filled with gray frames, sparking limbs, decapitated helms, dead faces of mechs she knew. Life-En dripping from her blade.
Just as quick as it came, she felt a line of dormant code activate, and she frowned.
She felt like she'd just remembered something vitally important. But she couldn't remember what it was that she'd remembered.
The Vehicons were acting rather strange... Maybe she ought to tell Soundwave after she gave her report.
Three days later.
Skyquake glared at the little bolt in his hands. As if it would somehow be able to help him get her back. Three small boxes of the bolts lay in front of him, each holding a different size of bolt.
The medic - after ranting about having to hack the Russian government because they couldn't get through their own security - had assigned him cleanup. Tidying and organizing the cargo bays. His engine growled in frustration. This wasn't helping find Terabyte. This wasn't helping to figure out why she thought he was dead.
They needed to get her back. But the Autobots didn't seem to think her life was worth cold slag. He closed his fist around the bolt, grinding it into a fine powder. He owed the Autobots nothing.
Standing up, he let the metal dust float towards the floor. Skyquake stormed purposefully towards the bridge room. He didn't need their help.
He was going to get her back, no matter what it took.