A/N: How is it possible to get writer's block when the ending is all plotted out? It's a conspiracy, I swear.

NEST had never relied purely on weaponry as a way to keep enemy Seekers away from their C-17s. Starscream's trine was fast, vicious, and well-trained in hit-and-run tactics. To get a target lock on them was hard enough on a good day, never mind actually doing damage to the flying pests. Nobody with NEST would turn down the chance to shoot one of them out of the sky if opportunity showed itself but however much they hated the fact, they also accepted that human-built weapons were not the way to go against those things.

Instead the massive, vulnerable cargo planes were protected by the same kind of scrambling field that surrounded Diego Garcia that would fry any sort of technologically advanced weapon not identified as a friendly one and – more importantly – be a general pest to any unknown or hostile Cybertronian that might decide to try their luck. It wouldn't kill them but it would rattle their processors enough to put them at a disadvantage. Ironhide had tried it out on himself a few times and found himself singularly unimpressed with his ability to aim under that sort of influence. Experience had shown them that the 'Con Seekers had obviously agreed and that more than made up for the added weight of those defences and the room they took up in the cargo bay.

In retrospect, they had become lax. In retrospect, they had become complacent. Starscream wouldn't have survived as Air Commander if he didn't have skills and Megatron was not forgiving of failure.

In retrospect, they should have remembered and Ironhide realised that with cold clarity as Skywarp dropped out of thin air mere feet from the edge of the scambling field. There was no time to act, no time to do anything but watch on his scanners as Skywarp struck Will and sent them both spinning towards the ground below. He heard the scream of Will's engines more through the bond than anything else, saw two dots approach the edge of the scrambling field and felt the sickening lurch through the bond as well as the world warped and the dots jumped with it; blind panic and nothing but a wall of sand ahead-

- And then it was gone and there was only a dull echo of pain where their bond should have been.

Will couldn't shield worth slag on a good day, Ironhide knew, much less when there were high-strung emotions at play. Which meant that whatever had happened, it hadn't been Will's doing.

The whole thing had taken six seconds, from the first displaced bit of air from Skywarp's arrival and until the loss of that bond. Too fast for a target-lock. Too short a time spent inside that field to affect the fragger's systems in the least.

Six seconds and their comm-frequencies exploded in noise as too many voices spoke at once. Ironhide made himself ignore it all – anything important would be spoken by his Prime, anyway – and he instinctively avoided the raw point in his spark where Will's bond should have been as he reached out to his other bondmate.

Ratchet?

Suppressed, not broken, the medic responded to the question Ironhide didn't need to ask. Starscream at a guess. He can't break the bond but in close proximity he might be able to suppress it.

Alive, then, Ironhide acknowledged, but that was no guarantee around the flying pests and Ironhide had seen too many times what the Command Trine was capable of. At the most, 'alive' gave them time and Ironhide was enough of a realist to also acknowledge that it most likely would not be enough. He had seen enough to know that the Seeker would stand little chance against Starscream, and the human...

… The human, stubborn to a fault, would take the three-on-one odds if it came to that. Ironhide, admittedly, would have done the same, and he held no delusions that Will would have any better chance of surviving that than Ironhide himself would.

Guilt nagged at the edge of his processors, painful and insistent, but that was at least one thing Ironhide could deal with. Every part of his spark told him he should have done something to keep his spark-merged mate safe but Ironhide had dealt with that before, too. The guilt was irrational – stuck on a cargo plane with nothing in the way of weapons, there was very little he could have done – and the guilt would do nothing but get in the way. If they both got out alive, Ironhide would get the chance to give whatever guilt-fuelled protective processes he had free reign. Until then, their mission had priority.

Even ten minutes ago, he knew, it would have been much harder to simply push aside emotions like that. It was only now that the bond was blocked that he realised just how much the Seeker and its emotions influenced how he thought.

Information flickered through his mind, overlaid with busy comm-frequencies – location, distance, terrain, hostiles, airbornes; three enemy-marked dots that had briefly been three enemy and an ally, and only Will's location had remained as the 'Con fraggers had landed and disappeared from the scanners altogether. They were easy to spot in the air, Ironhide knew. Once on the ground, they had a Pit-spawned ability to vanish completely from anything that tried to track them, human or otherwise. All they had to go on now was the tracking implant in Will's frame and if they lost that signal as well, Ironhide knew they had bigger problems to worry about than a mere location.

A familiar signal appeared on the comm-frequencies and the flood of sound and information fell silent between one second and the next as their Prime spoke.

"Ratchet?"

It wasn't a medical situation but in this case, Ironhide suspected they all knew it was Ratchet's area more than anyone's. Their Prime had... experience, Ironhide had spark-merged, but Ratchet was the one who had lived with the fraggers and he was the one whose coding had adapted to them and Ironhide knew his own limitations. Seekers would never make sense to him. Even through Will's optics, anything he saw would still be filtered through a ground-bound mech's understanding.

"Starscream suppressed Will's bonds and his communications systems register as offline, although that part could just as well be Skywarp's doing. We have a location, Optimus... or a point of impact, to be blunt, but at the speed he was going, he should have no serious injuries. We lost track of Starscream and his trine but they will not be far from Will. Starscream wants the influence of a full trine behind him."

We have a location, Ironhide mentally translated the worlds, but no idea of what's happening.

He clearly wasn't the only one who understood that because Robert Epps frowned from his place near Ironhide.

"Time?" the human Commander asked and didn't need to clarify that question.

Ironhide trained an additional few sensors at the man – they had been trained at someone else not too long ago and even if Ironhide was never going to acknowledge it to another living being, some of those sensors still occasionally scanned for a being they would never find again.

"Assuming we changed our course now, fifteen minutes until we would be overhead," he responded.

"And then the air-drop as well," Robert Epps breathed, clearly doing the calculations in his own human processors and not coming up with a result he liked in the least. "Fuck."

Nothing Ironhide could argue with, either. Fifteen minutes until air-drop... if they changed their course now.

If.

"Prime?" he asked his own commander and didn't need to spell out the question. Their Prime knew and had probably already considered it and not for the first time Ironhide appreciated that he was a front-liner and weapons specialist and not the Prime. There was an attack to be stopped, Decepticons to be exterminated like the vermin they were, but to split up their forces was not an option with the Command Trine between them and Will. Starscream might be a pest like no other but he was a dangerous pest any way you looked at it.

Between protecting the human compound that was the original target or going after Will, Ironhide had no doubts about what his own personal choice would have been. The spark-merge had merely sealed that fact, and he was grateful it was not his decision to make.

Silence stretched for long seconds and then Optimus Prime made a soft, tired sound. "My brother was never a fool. Whatever his faults, blindness to the motives of his men was never among them."

Ironhide heard the familiar sounds of the C-17 around him change minutely as their course changed as well by some unspoken order. It wasn't a decision he was going to argue with but it did leave another problem.

"And the rest of the 'Cons?" Sideswipe asked before Ironhide had the chance – more out of some sense of obligation than any genuine concern, Ironhide suspected. Sideswipe always preferred the challenge of a winged quarry. Like any good front-liner, he wasn't going to turn down the chance to kill any kind of worthless 'Con but Seekers made for a far better chase than a plain old mech.

"Megatron is not naïve enough to trust in his Second's motivations. If this was merely a way to claim Will without casualties, he would have been there. Rarely has Starscream attempted mutiny as blatantly as this. That, if nothing else, would draw Megatron to his location. Without leadership, the ground-bound Decepticons will have little to gain by attacking. Do not forget that their target was never more than convenient bait."

Cut and run, then, as soon as the fraggers realised they'd been left on their own with no air cover. They might be worthless 'Cons but at least their cowardice and lack of loyalty worked in the Autobots' favour sometimes. They had enough of a pain to deal with in three Seekers and Megatron himself... and Will, Ironhide's processors supplied, but he crushed that thought ruthlessly. He would keep his promise if it came to that. Until then, he wasn't going to linger on it.

But something had obviously whispered through his bonds, anyway, because he felt Ratchet's presence through it a moment later.

You can't extinguish a spark you merged with.

Ironhide didn't dignify that with any of the many responses he could have - I'm not a medic; I don't care; I gave my word - and Ratchet didn't get the chance to speak again before the comm-frequency flared to life again with a human voice.

"Prime, sir?" Communications, Ironhide's processors supplied, and purposefully ignored Ratchet's silent, demanding insistence that he listen in favour of the human's words. "Megatron is airborne – he just took off from the 'Cons' point of ambush, heading in Starscream's direction. ETA is seventeen minutes."

That kind of timing had to be purposeful planning, because Ironhide did not believe in coincidences when it came to Decepticons.

"Counting the air-drop, that's the same as ours," Epps said, having obviously concluded somewhat of the same. "On purpose?"

The question was directed at no one in particular and it was their Prime's voice that responded. "From Megatron's side? No. From Starscream's? Perhaps. He must know that he has crossed the line between dissent and mutiny with this. It is not in his nature to risk everything on a single course of action. We can only assume that he took Megatron's reaction into account."

Or maybe the pest of an Air Commander was just his usual megalomaniac self. They had called Starscream that before, along with every other name in the book, but it was only after being around Will for extended periods of time that Ironhide had understood those snarled words about Starscream hadn't been insults as much as the honest-to-Primus truth. Will was bad enough when the mood struck him. What Ironhide had seen of Starscream's issues left little doubt that the fragger had problems that made even an average Seeker look sane in comparison.

"Maybe the fragger is hoping we'll take out Megatron for him," Ironhide snorted, but he doubted that theory as soon as he voiced it. The 'Cons would be outnumbered and Starscream never got involved in those fights in the first place, much less invited them to visit. Maybe the worthless winged pests planned to take off the moment the battle turned – they sure as frag should know better than to expect any mercy from Ironhide or Sideswipe. There was always the risk that Optimus would have them spare the fraggers but that just meant they would need to kill off the pests before he could give that order. It wouldn't be the first time, either.

And something of that train of thought had obviously reached Ratchet, too, because he felt that familiar presence in his spark again a moment later.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. From anyone else, Ironhide would have taken it as a taunt or a challenge but Ratchet's voice and presence was wrong for it; worried and deeply unsettled about something that Ironhide had apparently yet to figure out.

Ratchet-

His question was cut off by Ratchet's voice over the comm-frequency, sounding only slightly less concerned than his mental voice had been and not reassuring Ironhide in the least.

"Ironhide may be right, Optimus. Starscream expects to claim Will. They may be outnumbered but that is not taking into account Will's bonds. Ironhide may be able to target Starscream himself but the question remains whether Will would permit him to. Starscream has never made a secret of his ambition. I believe this is more impulsive than anything he has attempted in the past but it may very well be that he plans to force a confrontation between you and Megatron and then deal with the winner in whatever way he can afterwards. He knows we will come for Will and he knows Megatron will be furious enough to target him without any care for backup. If Megatron won, he might very well be wounded enough that Starscream could offline him. If we won, he would have an edge in Will and his bonds with Ironhide and myself."

Ironhide was about to object before Ratchet had even finished speaking but the words died before he could voice them. He had already seen how Starscream could affect Ratchet and while Ironhide didn't have the same vulnerability, he did have the spark-merge. They were both compromised; the only question was to which degree they would be affected.

Robert Epps frowned at the edge of Ironhide's awareness and sensors focused on him a second before his words carried across Ironhide's personal comm-frequency.

"You know that's assuming Will doesn't tell the fucker to go screw himself."

"He is still alive," Ironhide responded and remained on the closed frequency. It was a matter between comrades-in-arms and team mates, and it was an argument that was unnecessary among the Autobots themselves. They already knew the arguments Ironhide presented to his human charge. "My bond with him is blocked, not destroyed. Starscream has little patience for anything. His response to William's refusal to submit would be immediate offlining. If that bond still exists when we approach, we have to assume he is at least compromised."

Anger took over from Robert Epps' frown and his body tensed under Ironhide's attention. "You don't know that. He could be unconscious. He could be stalling for time. You can't just assume he's guilty until proven otherwise! He's your fucking mate!"

And Ironhide, experienced with an endless lifetime of war, kept his voice low and even and let a whisper of regret show in his response.

"He is. He is also a Seeker. We have experience with them. You do not."

He turned the majority of his attention back to the main comm-frequency before Epps could argue but a brief check of his memory files revealed that he had missed nothing he did not already know. Starscream was a pest and in line for extermination as far as Ironhide was concerned, Megatron was little better, and Will...

There was an echo of something in the bond, there and gone again a moment later before Ironhide could offer anything but the annoyance-worry-anger that was his current state of being, but it had been there. Still online and still able to reach out, at least, and the small, hopeful part of Ironhide that had never quite been crushed completely liked to think that Will at Starscream's side wouldn't have cared enough to try and reach out in the first place.

He was online, at least. For now.

Part of his processors were still trained on the comm-frequencies and the world around them, but the rest shifted to focus on the darkness where the bond had been and wait silently for any sort of sign of Will's status... in whatever form it might come.

For now, that was all he could do.