The Diego Diaries: Gone 1 (342)
-0-On the ground
They crept through the darkness following a trail of broken earth until they reached a junction. The trail bifurcated, a number of footprints leading away in two directions. Dev paused with the two and considered the problem. :Kup, I'll go left, you two go right. No engagement. We could get them killed. We just need to know where they go:
Kup nodded and both glanced at Sunstreaker who nodded although his expression indicated other thoughts on the matter. Dev nodded, then marked the wall for anyone to follow, turning to head off into the darkness swiftly. Kup watched him go, then looked at Sunstreaker. "Prime will be sending back up. We need to do intell. Understand, youngling?"
Sunstreaker nodded, his servo convulsively gripping his weapon. They turned and entered their side of the tunnel disappearing right away.
-0-Above ground
A runabout landed and three mechs jumped out heavily armed and ready to go. Prime corralled them and explained the situation. Then all of them turned to watch the three run to the hole and jump inside immediately. Tremors of their landing greeted them, then they disappeared.
It was quiet a moment as Prime stood staring at the hole in the ground, his expression somewhere between homicide and regret. Ironhide whose own expression probably matched Prime if his face was more expressive vented a hostile sigh. "Fraggers. Scum. I'll tear them apart if they harm either one."
"I see them as hostages, Ironhide," Springer said quietly. "I see them as more value being hostages."
"I do too," Prime said. "I will hunt them down and tear them apart myself if anything happens to either."
The humans stared into the hole, then looked at the three bots. One was a father, another a father-in-law and the last a spouse. They stood suffused with controlled rage and disquiet. At no point for Lennox did he ever love them more than now.
-0-Underground
They ran as a pack, two of them carrying the prisoners over their shoulders. They were battered and unconscious, both of them fighting off their attackers until overpowered. They hung limply over the shoulders of their enemy helpless in the clutches of the Decepticons. The trail that led outward didn't have to be dug out. It was already there and ran for hundreds of miles in all directions. They had been carved out by those who waited in their boredom and need. Energon was near the surface here and they mined it as they waited, gathered together for the word to do what they had come here for.
Most had waited in stasis. Some had waited in sentience digging around the area until they had created their favorite structure, a convoluted honeycomb maze of great size. All of them were ready to do what they were asked to do by the one who led them. They hurried onward to the place where they nested, prisoners in arms. They disappeared into the maze and were gone.
-0-Around the city
Word got out. No one knew how. The Grapevine was almost alive and it had audials everywhere.
"This is Blaster. What's on your processor?" he asked as he did the question-caller portion of their show. Jazz had been called in for duty so Revet sat in for him.
"I heard that two of our guys got taken prisoner on a mission to Earth just now. What do you know about it, Blaster?" the caller asked.
Blaster paused a moment, this the first time he had heard about it. "Nothing to tell you the truth."
Revet sat beside him shock registering on his face. He looked at Blaster. "I don't know either."
Blaster sat a moment with a grim expression, one that went out to the city over channel 9 and over the intercoms of the radio channels that were broadcast citywide. "This is the first I heard about it. Jazz isn't here. He has duty but I'll ask him and let you know what's up. Thanks for calling. This is Blaster. What's on your processor?" he asked even as he buzzed Jazz.
-0-Jazz
He walked in and caught the word, a grim expression overcoming his handsome face. "Frag."
"Yeah," Whirlaway said as he sat at the sensors working his station. Jazz joined him and they began to track deeper into the earth employing newer technology to do so, some of which was still being made in the fabrication shops of Plant #9 in the Industrial Park.
-0-Underground
Drift ...
He came slowly to sentience, the pounding of his helm on the back of his abductor pulling him from his peaceful reverie in the Pit. He didn't move or allow them to know he was aware. He merely hung limply and took in what he could. He was bound by energon cuffs and his weapons were missing. Even though his body was a weapon, he was aware of a mass of bodies moving with him so he knew he was outmatched instinctively. He hung and waited hoping that Sideswipe would come to the same conclusion as him.
Sideswipe …
His helm hurt from the blow he sustained and bouncing it off someone's aft didn't help. He hung limply, feigning unconsciousness as he took in his predicament with his senses. He was captured, a thing that always fragged his aft. He was semi injured, something that was sort of normal for him in combat. He was moving somewhere with someone he didn't know, a prospect that had possibilities both good and bad. He was either alone or not. He couldn't tell. So he hung limply. It was the best course of action at the moment.
-0-Above ground
Prime stood waiting, the human soldiers sitting here and there waiting as well. Springer looked like a statue, his affect stoic but stern. Ironhide paced around the hole staring down into it as if it would draw the bad guys out for a fight on his terms. He was pissed.
"What do you suppose will happen, Major?" a newbie striker asked.
Lennox glanced at him. "We'll get them back. There's going to be a big fight when we do. You will do every damned thing you're told. Understood?"
The young man nodded. "Yes, sir." He stared at the hole and wondered about the mass of unknowns below. It was true. They were really here. They weren't in space posing an abstract threat ready to leave if the Autobots left. They were actually on the ground posing a real threat to all who lived here. Without the big bots, they would have to go underground and get them out themselves. He wondered how terrible that would be and came to the logical conclusion.
It would be fucking terrifying.
For the first time since he dedicated himself to M.E.C.H. and the goals of the Resistance, Corporal Trevor Smith came to the conclusion that having the Autobots around was a good thing.
-0-Wheeljack and Perceptor
They stood on the Midway Array that was in an anchored orbit between Earth and Mars studying the combination of satellites, sensors and boosters that had made it so powerful. Now they had to calibrate it to become even more so. Designing the placement of new equipment that was getting expedited orders in Fabrication-Electronics in Plant #9 was the easy part. Making all of it work together was harder. It would take time. But when it was done, they would be able to penetrate the Earth's crust down as far as 100 miles and find the hidden treasures below.
One fifty square mile grid plat at a time.
-0-Arachnid
She hurried along having hit the underground tunnels that her minions had made over the course of their deep cover. She saw crystals of energon here and there when the glint of light reflected from them as they passed. It was easy to see why they had not gone into stasis to conserve their energy. They were busy while she and the others were gone elsewhere on this benighted mud ball.
No one knew that she could command them and she made sure that it remained so for now. She was less than happy with the Decepticons. They had no respect for mechanisms like her. She was a bot who had taken her format from an organic organism she admired from a planet that no longer existed.
Organisms like her … nontraditional and unusual … didn't get respect among the 'Cons. That she was a femme was bad enough. Femmes were not given respect or the access to the pathways to power. That was about the only thing she allowed herself to understand that she had in common with humans. Femmes were not taken seriously here either. Being a nontraditional format had sunk her ship and scotched her ambitions.
But she had made her own path to power anyway. The Insecticons who had also formatted on the same extinct planet had been found by Megatron to be useful so they were allowed to remain a part of the Cause and even flourish. They were about 15% of the Decepticon Army and used as shock troops. They swore their loyalty to Megatron because he was the strongest and they with their hive minds needed a strong single leader to give them cohesion and purpose.
They felt something around Arachnid but she made sure it was a mild feeling of belonging and not the mindless obedience that she knew she could have merely by asking for it. That would come later. For now, she would be a team player and bide her time.
When they reached the main chamber it opened up into a dimly lit cavern of immense size. It teamed with Insecticons, all of them sent in the past with the protocol team to take out the planet so that its resources could be used to restore Cybertron. The humans at the time were primitive and it was felt the number of Insecticons present would be able to clear the planet of opposition in a matter of days. The three teams of 'Cons who had come with them would lead the decimation.
Then Megatron didn't come. Sentinel and his ship were missing and they had to wait. They waited 10,000 years. Now it was show time and Arachnid would make sure there would only be one star at the end. Entering the cavern, they paused by a wall. The prisoners were held against it and Arachnid made sure they would stay there, her strands of web pinioning them tightly. They sagged, seemingly unconscious as the mass of attackers and their leaders turned and continued onward into the cavern.
-0-At a fortress in space
Cyclonus stood at the sensor station in his fortress watching the screen as lights moved across it here and there. One of them he knew indicated flights from Paragon's fortress as they patrolled the sector. Another was a flight of alien traders on their way home after going to Junk.
He wondered as he stood there if Wreck-Garr was still alive, the oddball transformer a thorn in his side on more than one occasion. Lights moving from the vicinity of Cybertron to a location not that far away indicated that Soundwave was making regular voyages to his own fortress. He considered the situation as it stood. He had an alliance with Paragon that would stand as long as Paragon needed it. He had no rapport with Soundwave and any alliances with him would be tenuous at best.
Prime was the enemy but he had ethics, understanding loyalty and obligation. He himself was loyal to Megatron and had served Galvatron as his adjutant for a long time. That youngling mech was half mad and completely unpredictable. If there was a battle, he would run into it. If there was killing to do, he would do it with joy and gusto regardless of who was being killed, young, old or infirm. It was disquieting to Cyclonus but he endured it. Megatron and the Cause were all that mattered. He would serve it will all he had.
Right now, he waited biding his time. Migrations would pass by unmolested. They were of no consequence. When they defeated Prime, the masses would be workers for the restoring of Cybertron. He would see to it. Until then, he would learn, wait and listen.
-0-In the cavern
She walked down into the masses who gathered around touching her, sending with their shrill screams their approval at her triumph. She took their tribute, exulting in it with the sure knowledge that when the time came her comrades along with the Autobots would rue the orn.
The others stood back watching, their lack of comfort in the spectacle clear on their faces. Moving to their usual perch on a rock ledge near the prisoners, they sat and watched as the mass of insect mechs paid tribute to the only femme of their kind among them.
"I think she's going to kill us when she has the chance," Runamuck said with a nod. "We have to keep our helms up."
Seizor nodded and glanced at his brothers. They were nearby getting energon. Seizor glanced back at Runamuck. "We'll bring this place down on them if they try anything. Its what we do."
"Give me helms up will you? I would like a chance to run," Runamuck said with a grin.
"Count on it," he said nodding as he watched Arachnid get the love of the masses.
-0-Australia
They sat in their cavern underground, raw opals visible in the walls around them as they listened to the communications of military units around the Earth. They had been noticed in North America. A cell had flown there from Italy and their original placement near what the humans called Naples, Italy. A concentration of troops, insecticons had been lying in wait in the frozen tundra of what was now Alaska. Arachnid had led her team there to regroup with them and when they did they had drawn the attention of the Autobots.
It was clear to the Oz 'Cons that something had happened and some of the Autobots had come up missing. They didn't envy them in the custody of Arachnid and her kind. Insects were not respected in the Decepticons. Anyone who had stooped so low as to affect an organic format was considered low class. No one bothered to tell the Predacons but that was the thinking.
They needed the Insecticons and used them for their own ends but they didn't respect them. They never would. That they didn't know that Arachnid understood that and planned around it was going to be too bad for them. But we get ahead of the story.
-0-TBC June 23, 2013