Chapter 27
-0-Diego Garcia, Med Bay
He leaned on the cart staring at the array of tools on the tray before him. The lights were muted but for the ones directly over Ironhide. He lay on the med berth silently, his wounds mocking Ratchet. The medico was gearing up going over the procedure in his processor as he would perform it in a breem. It just needed his steady servos and uninterrupted attention.
The triage had been done while numerous pieces of dermal armor were removed and taken to Wheeljack's lab to be placed in a special solution in preparation for being smelted and reformed. The materials that formed Ironhide's armor were rare and specific, incredibly expensive to say the least and not found on Earth for the most part. It harder than just about any material used by Cybertronians and therefore recycling was necessary to bring the front liner back to peak form. He would have to go to an armorer on Cybertron who specialized in highly rare and costly armor to get new replacements.
The patches that covered the lesser wounds were medical plating, temporary grafts for now. Ironhide's armor was so strong it was nearly impervious to weapon's fire. It would take a strafing by a Seeker, heavy weapons fire landing at point blank to do to him what this had done. The shock that Ironhide had been this wounded in the chassis, his most impermeable point had shattered Ratchet and nearly everyone else for a moment.
Now he needed to shake that off, gather his wits and skill to begin to piece the big oaf back together. He glanced at Ironhide as an expression of almost terrible fondness formed on his face. He leaned over to kiss him gently, tracing with a digit his own name and the words of love engraved on Ironhide's helm. "Hang on," he whispered in their language. "You will be mine again."
Then he began.
The spark wound would take time so he began to place better grafts than the field patches on the wounds that had been made when the plasma charge hit Ironhide's armor. It had landed against its nearly impenetrable surface and splattering under impact caused burns over a wide area. He formed, cut, bent and shaped silver high density dermal medical plating that would promote in a highly charged manner the protoform underneath, then welded it onto the missing places where black armor had once been.
Replacements would be smelted and reformed, further surgery for their replacement minor. Nothing he was doing now was life threatening. When that was finished he turned to face the silent figure of Prowl.
He stood behind Ratchet watching silently as he held an energon cube in his hand. He held it out to Ratchet silently imploring him to take it.
Ratchet wavered, then took it, downing it like a cube of high grade. "Thank you, Prowl."
"You're welcome," Prowl said, his worried optics saying what his mouth couldn't. "Optimus is at a follow up meeting in the N.E.S.T. Headquarters. He asked if there was anything you needed. He asked how it was going. We're all worried for Ironhide. And you," he added taking the empty cube from Ratchet.
"Tell him that the little stuff went well. I'm going to repair the spark chamber now," Ratchet said rubbing his face tiredly. "When that's done, then we just have to monitor him as his internal repair assemblies take over. I'll be keeping him on a spark monitor until he reaches 98% or better on his own. His baseline for all his systems runs at 98%. I won't let him out of here at less."
"I'll tell Optimus," Prowl said quietly, his optics moving from Ratchet to Ironhide and back again.
"I'm happy for you, Prowl," Ratchet said glancing at Ironhide. "You and Prime are a good match and it took you both long enough."
Prowl smiled slightly. "Well, we had friends."
Ratchet nodded. He looked at Prowl as coolant pooled in his optics. "That's all we have don't we … friends. What else matters?"
Prowl nodded, then turned to go. Halting, he looked back at Ratchet. He walked back, reached out and hugged the medic, relief filling him as Ratchet hugged him back. They stood together holding each other, then Prowl stepped back, his reticent and hard boiled self control hindering as usual what he wanted to say. "I will tell Optimus."
Ratchet nodded.
"You'll please tell us what you need, Ratchet. We're with you," Prowl said nodding helplessly.
Ratchet nodded back as he rubbed his eyes. "I know, Prowl. Thank you."
With an emotional expression on his face, Prowl walked out of the Med Bay. Sitting nearby waiting for his bond to come out of medically induced stasis, Trailbreaker watched silently, feeling as an intruder on a private moment. He turned in his seat to look down at Hound as he squeezed the big mech's servo. / what a terrible welcome home, Hound, this is .../
-0-At the Sickbay, N.E.S.T. HQ, Diego Garcia
Robert Epps sat on the edge of the bed, a corpsman holding a cup and a glass of water. He was being released and all he had to do was take pain medication for a few days. He'd been lucky. Hound had taken the blast and the blows. Epps had felt the interior of Hound's alt mode grip him, holding him as delicately as he could to cushion the blows that were coming.
It had saved his life. He owed his life to Hound.
As it was, he was determined to go to the Autobot Med Bay to find out what had happened to Hound. He'd heard scuttlebutt that Ironhide had taken a hit and he wanted to find out about that, too. Apparently, the Autobots were being very tight lipped about the injuries of their members, not telling anyone anything beyond that they were in Med Bay.
He took his medication, rising stiffly from the medical berth as he did. Thanking everyone who had cared for him, signing out at the desk, he limped out the door determined to make the long walk across base to the Autobot HQ. They might not tell anyone else what was what, but they would tell him. He was family.
-0-On the tarmac at the same time
A stretcher came down the ramp of Cosmos' loading bay borne carried by mechs and followed by Springer. Laying on the stretcher, his battered figure recognizable in spite of his injuries was Bumblebee. He'd been found hours earlier lying in a ditch wounded and dented, his energon levels low and his processor feeling the effects of it.
Springer was sent. 'One Riot, One Wrecker' … 'Wreck 'n Rule' was their motto. He had found Bumblebee and commed Cosmos who was waiting in orbit, scanning the countryside as he directing Springer to the dry wash gully where Bee was laying. A short ride to Garcia was had and all the prodigals were safely home.
He was carried to the hangar with people greeting him with relief and comedy. Bee gave it back in equal measure. He didn't know about Ironhide, he didn't know that the mechs he idolized more than any other, Prowl and Prime were together, he didn't know anything more than he'd failed his mission to get to Colorado and help Arcee do preliminary scouting for the criminals and the Cons who were seeking alliances.
He lay back in painful weariness feeling like chump change as they carried him down to Med Bay and help.
-0-Ratchet and Ironhide
The welding tool worked within and without protective med fields so Ratchet was able to carefully, slowly slice away parts of the spark chamber that had been irretrievably damaged in the attack. As he was doing so, Wheeljack was in his lab using the aid of Perceptor to make an exact match for the corner that could be introduced and attached to the chamber that was there already.
It was decided that replacing the entire chamber, removing Ironhide's spark as a consequence was too fraught with complicated possibilities on a planet with few of the raw materials they used to make the things they really needed, especially spark chambers.
Ratchet wanted the easiest best next solution so they'd studied it carefully. Perceptor would do the math, Wheeljack would craft the replacement part and Ratchet would install it. Between them, there was no one in the history of Cybertron that could match them for skill and creativity. Ironhide was in the best hands possible.
-0-On the tarmac
The big plane arrived and dropped its bay doors. Black SUVs rolled out, three of them and they were filled with men, big men wearing flack jackets and dark glasses. They rolled toward the soldier's HQ and stopped before the Administrative Building. A man exited dressed in suit and jacket with a briefcase in his hand. He walked into the building leaving the others outside.
Some got out to stand around the vehicles while others sat both inside and halfway out, staring around themselves to get a feel for the place. They looked like hired muscle wearing the 'uniform' of mercenaries everywhere. They would automatically not be welcome among the professional soldiers. No one liked mercs.
On two worlds ...
On the other side of the tarmac a flotilla of cars were parked in the sunlight absorbing energy and recharging their solar batteries and solar powered equipment. The newcomers looked at them, pointing to some as they talked together. The Autobots on the other hand gave them no attention at all.
-0-Ratchet, Wheeljack and Perceptor
Together they reviewing the delicately designed microscopically exact device as it rotated on a monitor over the med berth that Ironhide lay upon. They talked about its configuration, its chemical content, its exacting specifications and how it would fit when inserted. For nearly a breem they discussed it then Ratchet nodded, satisfied with all its aspects. "He's such a slagger getting pounded on all the time. If this is micro-welded in place, I want the bond to be permanent, as if it had never happened."
"That's why it took a bit of time to make the chemical composition just so. This is going to bond and the bond will be even stronger than the rest of the chamber," Perceptor said. "We know he falls a lot."
Ratchet smiled considering the unintended comedy of that remark. Then he realized it was the first time he had smiled in a long while. "Thank you, Perceptor. Thank you, Wheeljack. I appreciate your talent and your effort."
They smiled back, then looked at the larger hole in Ironhide's chamber. Ratchet had carved off micro bits, some smaller than a filament in an optic disk, traditionally one of the smallest and hardest parts to replace or repair. They stepped back and watched as Ratchet roughed the edges of the hole and then with a delicacy that one would not attach to the gruff medico, he tested the fit by slowly lowering it into the hole. It was snug, as snug as the parts once were that he'd chipped out.
Grinning at Perceptor and Wheeljack who were silently ecstatic, he reached for his micro welder and began the terrifically slow, incredibly difficult task of making an impermeable seal around the soul of the only mech he would ever love in this or any other lifetime.
-0-Inside the Administrative Building
The new guy, newly arrived from some place he didn't elaborate on, with men and SUVs to command walked into the building, asking to see the CO as he briskly flipped open a State Department badge. The Officer of the Day rose to walk through corridors of orderly chaos and out the back door.
Crossing the tarmac where troops of soldiers jogged in formation, worked on vehicles or lounged here and there to watch the Embassy and the hot cars sitting here and there, they reached a big hangar. They entered its cooler, darker confines and walked past a mass of computers, screens, miles of cable and rows of personnel manning the information nexus of the N.E.S.T. Command hub on base.
As they passed the last row of monitors and sensors, he saw it at last. Or at least, that's the word that entered his mind.
It.
Looking up with his mouth hanging open, he stared at the back of Optimus Prime, Autobot Commander and leader of the weirdest aliens anyone ever believed possible. The alien was in conference with someone on a screen that was one of many mounted on a tall structure that was reached, he presumed, by the ladders that faced each end of the platform. On top, the platform was covered in screens and personnel who sat there working the gear that allowed conversation.
Soldiers were on the platform and as he reached the steps he saw the practicality of the structure. It made it possible to have a conversation with someone nearly thirty feet tall.
Climbing upward, he paused at the top aware that no one was paying any attention to him. Optimus had been aware of him when he drove off the plane with his flotilla of mechs and vehicles. No one else paid attention so he didn't bring it up. Right now he was interested in what General Morshower had to say about Denver.
"And it was clear that they were held up by the storm. We have traced the tunnel that Scorponok made and it would appear that it disappears about fifty miles south of Denver." The general was sitting in his command center at the Pentagon in Virginia back in the U.S.A.
"Scorponok has the capacity to go very, very deep and far," Optimus said.
"Excuse me."
Morshower and Prime paused their conversation to look at the figure standing at the end of the platform. The figure walked forward to pause by the speakers. He nodded to Morshower who was watching him from the monitor screen with half a dozen aides sitting around with him.
The stranger turned toward Prime, looking upward with a trace of awe at the impressive figure of the oldest living being he would ever see in his life. Of course, he didn't know that. He just knew that he was here to investigate and observe, chart, graph and otherwise probe the aliens in their midst for his boss. That he wouldn't tell them that or who he worked for was beside the point. He had his own orders and intended to follow them to a tee.
"I'm Jason Daniels," he said briskly. "I'm the civilian liaison for the United States government and the State Department."
Morshower sighed then sat back in his comfortable chair to trade looks with Prime. Once again, he had not gotten the memo. And from the look on Prime's face, neither did he.