When next vision cleared, he was in the dark, on the floor, cycling dust and heat through his vents. Dazedly, he lay there, twitching now and again when the live ends of the tangle of wires covering him touched his armor – it appeared that what had actually struck him was most of the wall as it had come down. What the frag...?
Ratchet? Flashflare's icon flashed on his HUD, alarm writ brightly in red-lined glyphs as bursts of gunfire and cries sounded. Another explosion rocked the wards, triggering a new alert from ward five: MEDIC DOWN… MEDIC DOWN…
Ratchet, do you copy? What's your status? Flashflare commed him again, and this time, he managed to reply:
Blue, he posted, if somewhat uncertainly. I think.
'You think'!?
I'm fine. He was, if not fine, at least moving, which ought to prove the truth or lie of half-stunned claims quickly enough. Responding to report of medic down in ward five.
With a soft, pained whine of his engine, Ratchet managed to push himself up, half crawling, half shoving his way out from under the remains of the wall, and dragging his surgical kit with him. Lights flickered as he rose amid the huddled forms of shocked, wounded soldiers. Still rather dazed – Electrical overload, some part of his mind calmly informed him – he nevertheless found himself scrambling through the gap between wards, head ringing with the echoes of what sounded like an air raid passing through. He shuddered as a torn wire discharged, recoiling before the swirls of ionization, and then half tumbled over rubble and into the darkness next door.
Smoke and ozone assaulted his senses, and the air was all confusion, a dizzying, shifting field of unstable electrical charge and horribly disrupted energy signatures from injured 'bots, pierced by the staccato drum of weapons fire. Debris glowed with infrared brilliance, and the roof gaped open to the night sky...
"Doctor!" someone hissed.
Ratchet whirled, and amid the haze, a pair of blue optics glowed dimly – evidently the speaker was injured, or else simply trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, and he seemed somehow familiar... With a sharp shake of his head, Ratchet scrambled his way over on all fours, trying to stay below the small war that appeared to have erupted, as some 'bots fired back at whoever had put a missile through the wall and ceiling. Not that they appeared to be having any effect on the shooter.
What the slag model is that? he wondered, and then wondered how under the double moons someone had been stupid enough to pull the restraining bolt before whatever damage to memory or recognition programming had been repaired. Short of accidentally bringing a 'Con in or somebody going trigger-mad, there could be no other explanation for this kind of chaos. But explanation would have to be postponed – the faint, failing signature from the shattered 'bot the other was crouched over was so degraded and weak, he only picked it up in the last meter or so, and he almost didn't recognize it. It made the shock decidedly worse when he did.
Quickstart? he sent through the comm, but got nothing back. "Status," he snapped, forcibly setting disorientation aside as he scanned the damage, and he felt his insides go hollow and cold.
"I don't know – bad. Ratchet, I'm not a medic!" the 'bot protested, and Ratchet shook himself hard enough to rattle his armor as the voice finally let him put a name to the signature.
"Amtek?"
"Yeah – I'm on damage control this shift." Damage control. Of course, because no triage ward had had more than one medic on it, save ward six. But I'm all ward five has now, and I'm stuck using slagging hand-helds, Primus fraggit! he thought, feeling a moment of icy panic grip him before the habits of a lifetime slammed a steel mental barrier between it and thought.
"Converter breach, and multiple system burn-out," he reported in a low voice, already cataloguing the list of procedures they'd need to undertake just to get Quickstart somewhere within shouting distance of stable. Conscious of the silence across the way, he added: "Give me a run down on what's around us, DC."
"There's... not a lot left around us. We lost a row of life-racks. Some others are damaged, but I think they're holding on their individual back-ups. I don't teek anyone else nearby, I... I don't think they made it."
"What happened?"
"I don't know. One minute, everything was fine. The next I'm flat out, staring at the ceiling, and Quickstart was down, half crushed under some of this. I think he must've taken the hit directly, or else – w-what are you doing?" Amtek interrupted himself to ask, when Ratchet half lunged across Quickstart's body to grab an arm and pull the 'bot closer.
"There's damage to his spark chamber – I've got to get a line in for power, and you're an easy four on the triage listing," Ratchet informed him, even as he opened a panel and pulled a cable. Amtek hissed as power discharged into the air, eyes flickering, but Ratchet ignored him, hooking the line into the nearest emergency power port on Quickstart's spark-chamber.
"That will hold him for a little while," he muttered. But it wouldn't hold him forever, even if the rest of the damage didn't kill him, and so he opened a line to Flashflare.
Please tell me you have a spark chamber patch kit left, he said, without preamble.
I'm down to two, and both are slated to be used just as soon as I can clear internal debris, Flashflare replied, as Ratchet manually triggered fail-safes on several energon injector points. What's your status over there?
I'm pinned down and I need a patch kit, Ratchet said grimly. How bad is ward six?
Half the bay's blown. Listen, I'm going to redirect traffic from five and six, and I'm going to get you some help. Flicksaw must have someone he can –
That he can send down here to play target for this glitch? Ratchet's vents cycled derisively, for all the other couldn't see them. Don't bother – I'll do for now. It's not as if we can get to anyone else anyway.
So saying, he closed the line, and the door, on any objections. Not that he couldn't answer them, but Quickstart needed his full attention. Even without his holoscreen up, he was teeking an absolute mess – heat damage, electrical damage, blown circuitry, a circulatory system that was trying to shut down, cracked structure and detritus everywhere...
"He doesn't need a patch kit, he needs slagging life support," he revised.
"We're full up," his squad mate protested past the noise of another outbreak of gunfire.
"I can see that!" Ratchet snapped, and flinched when a number of rounds buried themselves in the remains of the wall overhead. "Where are the slagging MPs, anyway?"
"I did call them – they should be coming."
"Not soon enough," Ratchet growled, racking his mind for ideas. He glanced around the ward again – was there any open berth he could see? – and then his gaze fell upon a set of cabinets at the end of the room.
"Amtek," Ratchet said, and nodded towards the cabinets illuminated by dim emergency lighting. "Think hard – did Quickstart ever open those cabinets? Did he ask you or anyone to get something from them?"
"I... don't know. I don't think so," he qualified hastily in the face of Ratchet's stare. "Why?"
"Because I helped prep this ward, and there should be a portable core support unit stored in them," he replied, feeling a tiny thrill of hope. That might work, he thought. At least until something opened up – or until they could move Quickstart safely to another ward that had a free berth.
Cautiously, Ratchet eased forward to peer around the debris that shielded them, looking down the long, rubble-strewn aisle between rows of life-racks, calculating the odds.
"What's his model?" he asked Amtek after a moment, checking the charge on his pulse-taser. At this distance, and with the other injured, if his armor weren't too heavy...
"I'm really not very familiar with the medical models – "
"Not Quickstart's, our shooter's," Ratchet interrupted, impatient. "What's his model?"
This time, there was no hesitation. "Heavy infantry Litix model, third generation."
Which made him a tank. Wonderful, Ratchet thought.
"Ratchet," Amtek said urgently, even as light spilled into the ward from a hallway, and the air rang with shouts of "MPs – hold your fire – "
"Down!"
Ratchet didn't know who said it, but no one questioned the warning. The blow-back from the missile launched at the MPs slammed into him, pelted him with fragments, rattled him to the core, and left him venting heat. Beside him, Amtek gave a skittery little whine of his engine, undertones skewed to minors.
"Fraggit!" he swore, sounding more than a little shaken – in fact, he sounded positively shaky.
Ratchet uncurled and scanned the other, quickly homing in on a good-sized piece of shrapnel that'd lodged in the gap in his ventral plating – the gap Ratchet had opened when he'd pulled that panel free to get a line into Quickstart. The 'bot himself, in the dim lighting, was staring down in shock at the shard and at the electrical discharge that illuminated the energon seeping out about it. Swearing to himself, Ratchet switched to a more targeted scan, growling at the readings that came back.
Damn the luck, he cursed. Just getting to that energon line was going to be a task, and a major line like that... fail-safes could only do so much, and it was a trunk injury, not a limb. He couldn't easily replace the damaged line. Systemic pressure was spiking erratically, and Amtek's power production was already plummeting as his body tried to seal off the breach at the injector site. So much for leaving Amtek hooked up to Quickstart, Ratchet thought. He couldn't handle the power drop. He briefly considered hooking up himself, but rejected the idea – he needed to be able to get to that core support unit, or all the power in the world wasn't going to save Quickstart.
"Don't move," he ordered, pressing the other back against a life-rack that leaned askew against the wall, and he glanced over his shoulder. The MPs were still clustered about the remains of the door, as their target edged further back into the depths of the ward. Ratchet scanned Quickstart, scanned Amtek, and then stared again towards that cabinet – the cabinet towards the end of the ward.
Bullets sang overhead, coming from both ends of the ward, but at least there were no more missiles. And while it was hard to judge with ordinance flying about indiscriminately, a tank made for war could surely have caused more damage if he'd a mind to, except that he'd taken a hit that'd scrambled his neural system. If he were on canned defense protocols, they'd likely been damaged, too...
"And fire control usually degrades with injury anyway," he said, more to convince himself than anything else.
"Ratchet?" Amtek asked, sounding vaguely alarmed.
"You'd better hope I'm right," Ratchet replied, forming his taser, and then added over his shoulder, "But if I'm not, save yourself – disconnect, but do not pull that shrapnel without a medic."
With that, ignoring Amtek's inarticulate protest, and without allowing himself a second thought, he lit his own medical call-sign off as bright as he could and made a dash for it. He heard curses from behind, felt somebody's targeting scan slide over his armor, and he threw himself to one side, struggling to hold his broadcast against the impulse to go as signal-silent as he could in a futile attempt to pass under the radar unnoticed. He rolled and came up scrabbling for traction as he dove for that cabinet, aware on some level of the ring and clatter of bullets.
Something hot slammed into his back and side, made him stagger. Fear gave him the wings then that his design never had – he launched himself forward, hit the deck and skidded 'til he collided with the cabinet, then lay there stunned for a minute by the impact, left arm heavy with numbness. Slaggit!
Something dark blocked the stars that shone down through the roof. The tank! Please let him be on canned protocols!
Ratchet lay absolutely still. The gun leveled at him was live, but the 'bot hadn't shot him yet – hopefully because he was a medic who wasn't moving and automatic protocols marked him a lower threat profile than the 'bots lobbing bullets at them. But perhaps not. Recognition hit Ratchet like the very wall itself, and with it, the sense of Amtek's cut off warnings.
"Barrage?"
The heating elements in the gun barrel glowed redly, so he saw that arm dip slightly – perhaps a shred of memory had broken through the damage. For his part, Ratchet stared a split second, then heat flooded through him like a sunstorm. The next instant, Barrage staggered back, sparking badly at the knee joint. Blistering heat streaked just over Ratchet's shoulder, as Ratchet swept Barrage's bad leg out from under him, then scrambled forward.
He fell on the sergeant, throwing himself over one arm, using his weight to hold it down. The other he pinned briefly with the muzzle of his own gun and fired, disabling weaponry in an instant, before going straight for interface ports. Barrage snarled, but he wasn't with special ops: but a moment later, he went limp all at once, leaving Ratchet lying half atop him, venting hard, confused by the very clarity of the one undeniable fact:
I shot him.
The sense of unreality opened like a vast distance. He registered the sound of concerned voices, of orders and commands, and a certain strange silence – the shooting, he realized, had stopped. But he couldn't seem to move.
It was the priority query from Damage Control Central that finally got his attention, and with a shake to rattle his vents, he sent in a medical emergency override of their inquiry and shut that channel down. The MPs were pinging his comm; he posted a brusque "Standby" broadcast. Then he carefully sat up, wincing at the line of fire that flared, then faded, along his back and shoulder, and scanned Barrage for damage – a lot of chipping and warping to armor and some internal damage from heat and gunfire, but the only truly damaging hits, other than the one that'd blown his memory, were the disabling shots to leg and arm.
Ratchet shuttered his optics a moment, then posted Barrage to the casualty list, and tagged him a three with a security risk warning. He levered himself off the floor then and hit the touch-panel on the cabinet door. There was, indeed, a portable core support unit within. Relief flooded through him, and he yanked it out, grunted and hissed through his vents when his left arm failed to respond and he nearly dropped the PCSU.
Footsteps rang all about him as a group of MPs hurriedly surrounded him. "What the frag were you think–" their leader began, but stopped rather comically when Ratchet, with a growl, shoved the equipment into his arms.
"Give me a hand," he ordered. Surprise showed in the flickering of lights and looks that went among them, but Ratchet merely flared his tones impatiently. "I said give me a hand, or we're losing a medic right now!"
That, at least, galvanized the commander into action. He followed Ratchet, who managed to hobble with some speed back down the aisle, face set against the spreading numbness and the flashes of worse, to where Quickstart lay. Amtek, slouching heavily beside him, gave a dull little whine of inquiry – What's happening?
"Just hold steady another minute," Ratchet told him. Pulling a transfer cable from his own ventral cache, Ratchet pointed to the floor and ordered his dragooned assistant: "Set it down there."
Without waiting to see whether his command was obeyed, he awkwardly lowered himself to the ground and quickly plugged into one of the emergency back-up power ports alongside Quickstart's spark chamber. Dizziness swept over him, as his own system struggled to adjust to the sudden increase in power demand. But:
"Pull Amtek's line, but not the shard, and get him clear of here – I've got Quickstart covered," he told the MP, and grimaced at the distortion in his voice. The MP, at least, didn't question him over that, just reached and disconnected Amtek, motioning for two of his squad to move him. Ratchet gave an approving hum, then continued: "I want you to have your squad check every 'bot in this ward. If anyone is tagged for memory or fire control damage, make sure he has a restraint in. If he doesn't or you can't tell, then manually sever weaponry control from firing mechanisms. We'll deal with the damage later."
The MP vented, but nodded at his remaining two 'bots, who hurried to obey. "What else?"
"Help the DC techs start clearing berths and aisles," Ratchet replied, swearing as he bent over Quickstart, wondering if he dared try to start disconnecting peripheral systems. "Clear the berths first, so we have some idea of our capacity here. Then clear DCC to send another unit down here, and see what you can do to convince Logistics we need more support. We've just become primary triage."
"And what about him?" He gestured to Quickstart.
"Not your work," Ratchet replied, even as he opened a comm line. Flashflare, I need some help here.
I've got three 'bots with blown heat regulators and an unstable power grid. Can it wait? Flashflare demanded.
Not if you want Quickstart to live, he replied. Leave the grid problem to DCC, and give your 'bots a shot of coolant straight into their energon lines to make them run slower and colder. They'll hold long enough. I can't treat him one-handed with hand-helds!
There was a pause, then: I'm on my way.
"You know, you could've ended up like this," the MP said just then, nodding curtly at Quickstart. "What the frag were you doing, Doctor?"
"Your job, apparently," was Ratchet's undiplomatic reply, even as something sparked and shorted unexpectedly. He felt it in the power flux on that life-line to Quickstart, in the electrical shock when he reached automatically to try and patch the core-side system. "Slaggit!"
Just then, Flashflare appeared. He scanned the area, found Ratchet, and hurried over, flicking on his floodlights. "Move," he snapped at the MP, who apparently took that as dismissal and made off without another word to oversee his techs. "Primus!" Flashflare muttered as he scanned the mess, then reached immediately for the core support unit.
Relieved of responsibility and helpless to assist further, Ratchet simply sat and watched, leaning against the wall, cycling heat through his vents and wincing whenever the power draw made damaged circuitry spark along his injured left side. He could feel numbness spreading outward as his body tried to isolate the damage and spare him the pain so long as he didn't move. But a hit to the core was harder to handle even if you were built to tolerate that sort of abuse – which he was not, and he revved softly, achingly.
At least those rounds hadn't been explosive frangibles, he thought, grateful for small mercies. Frangibles would've had enough force to punch straight through his support structure and puncture his own spark chamber, especially at such close range. Even if they hadn't, they would've mucked up his innards in any case – pulverized circuitry and perforated structural metal, weakening it. It was like inflicting a crush wound from the inside out, if you got enough of those into a 'bot.
Even without them, he'd suffered some ricochet damage – he could feel it in the gritty sensation when he tried shifting positions, and his self-scan confirmed it – but he was holding. He could hold – just leave the bullets in to act as partial support, run cabling around the damage so he could move his arm, and another patch-line from his core neural column to his leg, and he'd be serviceable.
Too bad he couldn't say the same for Barrage. The rounds he'd fired into him wouldn't need to be removed only because at point blank range, they would have torn straight through him and gone out the back. And while he hadn't damaged anything vital, Barrage probably would have to have that knee joint and associated transformation nodes entirely rebuilt. As for the arm, it was probably going to be faster to simply detach it at the shoulder and substitute a new one than rebuild the damaged one. Reconstructing weaponry systems so that they didn't jam when needed was always difficult, after all...
"Do I want to know how you wound up on the wrong end of a gun?"Flashflare chose that moment to ask.
Ratchet shuttered his optics. "Probably not," he answered tiredly. Flashflare grunted, scanning him quickly and ignoring his wincing. Then:
"I'm reading a need for bypass wiring to your arm and leg. What's your limit on the pain index?"
"Higher than what I'll be feeling." And when Flashflare only shot him a look, he insisted, "I can handle it."
His brother, after a moment, nodded, since there really wasn't any choice. "Standard Dag-series cabling?"
"That'll work," Ratchet murmured.
"Good, because that's all we've got."
The two of them fell silent, then, as Flashflare cut through primary structure to isolate core systems. He worked at a furious pace, for which Ratchet was grateful, because Quickstart's power draw wasn't getting any lighter, and he could feel his own core temperature rising as his body struggled to meet the power demands of two shells, neither of them healthy. His own model had good insulation and a very efficient system of heat exchange and reconversion, so he wasn't in imminent danger of blowing anything, but he was going to crash sooner, and especially since he would be bleeding power from damaged circuitry and a severed power line until repairs could be effected, whenever that might be...
"Before you called, Logistics and Damage Control Central were both screaming down my line about you," Flashflare informed him absently, though Ratchet could hear the stress in his undertones. "I have a feeling you're headed to another chat with Flicksaw about protocol."
Ratchet vented. "DCC has no reason to comm me unless they can't reach you." He eyed Flashflare, who simply shrugged, admitting nothing. Ratchet gave a knowing, sarcastic flare of bass tones at that. "Right. And if they can't reach me, they have six techs assigned to these wards, one of whom is down but not unconscious. They don't need my report. Logistics – "
" – wants to strip you down for spares," Flashflare interjected.
"Did we at least get the parts?" he demanded, refusing to waste his energy on a useless argument.
"No." Ratchet gave a frustrated whine of his engine. Flashflare, with a final twist, finished his work and glanced up at him. "Not all of them," he relented. "But some of them. Given the means, I hate to say it, but good work." He gestured towards Ratchet's line. "Disconnect – let's see if your latest gamble paid off."
With a grunt, Ratchet did so, and drew the cable back in. The support unit beeped softly, but its alert light remained steady – Quickstart might be borderline stable, but he was holding on support. Both of them vented in relief, Ratchet slouching wearily. Flashflare hummed softly, then he gestured for Ratchet to turn around. "Let's get those bypasses wired."
"Just anchor the cabling in my spinal column – I can finish the rest myself," Ratchet replied, as he straightened carefully so he could turn his back to Flashflare.
"As soon as you do," Flashflare replied, "I'm handing you ward six, and I'll take ward five. I've already posted the change to Flicksaw's board."
"He didn't contest it?"
"No time, and you're already down here – path of least resistance," Flashflare replied, then draped a cable over Ratchet's shoulder. Ratchet mechanically threaded it through armor and substructure, digging into his shoulder a bit to find the relevant neural node. His engine gave a little whine as he found it, and feeling came flooding back down his arm in an unpleasant rush of heat and tingle.
"Have you got that other line in yet?" he asked, as he reformed the taser into his left hand.
"Nearly. Here," Flashflare handed him the other end, then rose. "Can you manage?"
"Give me a minute or two," Ratchet replied. Then: "Flashflare," he called, when the other turned to go survey the damage to his new ward. His brother glanced back, lights flashing inquiringly. Ratchet hesitated just a moment, then said: "Barrage was the shooter."
"Barrage?" Flashflare gave an off-key whine. "I suppose we're lucky the place is still standing at all!"
"His memory may or may not be completely compromised, and he's going to need reconstruction on an arm and leg. Just make sure he's all right," Ratchet said, voice low and urgent. Flashflare gave him a queer look.
"We're running triage," he said fatalistically, but then promised: "I'll keep you posted."