NB: This story follows directly on from my previous story Set a Thief. It can stand alone, but some references will make more sense if you read Set a Thief first.
Dirge was going to die, and he wasn't even going to be fun about it.
Rumble wished he would just get it done already, but the one thing Soundwave and the Constructicons could agree on was that they didn't want to lose their only jet, so guess who was stuck checking on him every morning?
Life on Chaar sucked.
It was mostly Scrapper's fault. Rumble had used to like Scrapper, back when he was making cool stuff for Megatron, but he'd stopped being fun since the Big Boss had started working for an even Bigger Boss. Or maybe since before that, back when the Constructicons had sided with Starscream as the new Decepticon leader over Soundwave. Dummies. Look how that had turned out for them.
At any rate, Chaar had definitely been Scrapper's idea. One minute their shuttle had been taking off to fight Unicron; the next minute, Dirge was shoving inside, wailing about Unicron eating Decepticons alive. That was when Scrapper had announced that they would wait out the End of the World on a whole other planet.
The Constructions had said they had a ready-made base out here, an old hideout from Omega Supreme—except that was, like, four million years ago. These days, what was left of the place was a dump. There were rocks everywhere. Any self-respecting planet would be properly cyberformed—even Earth had urban zones.
Rumble's feet found an old grate with a satisfying clang! The drains were in the best shape out of anything from the Constructicons' old base—that was how bad Chaar was. Pettiness won out, and Rumble converted his arms to piledrivers and pounded the ground.
Frenzy's voice rose from below. "Rumble! I'm gonna piledrive your head through your own spools!"
Everybody was dealing with the end of the Decepticon Empire in their own way. In Frenzy's case, it meant sulking below ground in a secret lair that everybody knew about. Rumble took care to interrupt Frenzy's 'brooding' from time to time, just to remind him he wasn't that cool.
A warning shriek came from above. While Frenzy had burrowed, Laserbeak had gone to the other extreme, claiming the peak of a rocky crag and spying on everybody below. His fellow birdicon, Buzzsaw, had been killed at Autobot City, and Laserbeak had been taking jabs at everybody ever since. A defensive reaction or something, Soundwave had said. Rumble didn't get what Laserbeak had to be scared about. Buzzsaw was the one resting in pieces—probably in even more pieces now that Decepticon HQ had been trashed.
He shuddered away from that thought and glared at Laserbeak who had his wings half-spread, ready to report to Soundwave.
"I'm goin'! I'm goin'!" he yelled. Fragging snitch.
Sulking, Rumble stomped past the small stockpile of energon cubes where the Constructicons were gathered for their morning refuel. Scrapper's talk of geothermal energy had been more false advertising. As well as the surface going to rack and ruin, Chaar's core had cooled substantially since the Constructicons were last here. The generator they had assembled was barely producing enough to cover what they were consuming in rebuilding. Rumble wasn't a numbers guy, but he didn't see how they planned to run a full HQ.
Then again, the Constructicons seemed more interested in using their energon for exploitation.
Scrapper raised a cube to Rumble. "Tell Soundwave he can open negotiations anytime," he called, before noisily draining it.
"Get slagged," Rumble retorted.
There had been one small, jaguar-shaped problem with abandoning Cybertron: Ravage had still been on it.
When Scrapper had refused to turn the shuttle back for the missing cassette, Soundwave had attempted to mutiny. It had taken three Constructicons to knock him out—and Rumble had been relieved. He had thought he was used to big transformers—it wasn't like he was scared of Devastator—but Unicron… Unicron had been something else. Unicron ate planets for breakfast, and all Rumble had wanted to do was get as far away from him as possible.
Of course, once they got to Chaar, the Constructicons remembered they needed a communications guy if they wanted to find out what was going on in the rest of the Galaxy. Shortly after, they discovered Soundwave wasn't playing ball.
Ravage had always been the boss's favourite.
Rumble didn't even know if Cybertron was still there. There had been some weird kind of flare as they had hightailed it out of the system, which looked like it had been from an explosion—hopefully that had taken out Unicron, but last time they saw him, he had been standing on Cybertron.
Soundwave kept insisting that they return to Cybertron, so maybe he had swiped an update on the planet, either from other Decepticons or the Autobots. The boss might not be sharing his information, but he had not shut down since their arrival on Chaar, constantly checking different communications bands—and probably spending ninety percent of his time going through the ones Ravage might use.
Scrapper didn't think Ravage was worth the risk and said he wouldn't feed anybody who wasn't doing their job. So, the Constructicons hogged the energon, and Soundwave refused to talk. Rumble was squarely on the Boss-bot's side for this one. Ravage was family.
Besides one of the few pleasures he had on Chaar was strutting past the Constructicons every morning, still running on a full charge.
"They must be getting Energon from somewhere," Hook muttered. "There's no way they'd still be functional otherwise."
"It ain't from getting past us!" Bonecrusher insisted. "We're tallying every day. We get the same number of cubes out as we put in."
While the others scowled, a malicious smile spread across Hook's face "I suggest we build a security and surveillance system," he said, silkily. "An intricate network of agonising deterrents…"
Scrapper interrupted him peevishly: "We've got enough to do without wasting time on—"
"On what, Scrapper?" Hook snapped. "On regressing our skills by a few million years in rebuilding an outdated—"
Rumble left the argument behind as he continued to Dirge's little waste of space: the rusted remains of some outpost and a feebly bubbling pool among lifeless rock. Dirge's murky paintwork blended right in as he slumped at the water's edge.
When they left Cybertron, Dirge had sat in a corner of the shuttle moaning about how he was the last of the Decepticon jets; by the time they reached Chaar, he had checked out completely. Rumble had seen this kind of crap before. Soldiers would do just for fine for millions of years of slaughter, then something would tip them over the edge and they'd wuss out of life.
Usually, Megatron dealt with it by sticking the PTSD cases in the front line and letting nature take its course. They didn't have that option anymore, but Hook thought Dirge might just stop rebooting himself and let his systems rot. So, every day, he got his own personal wake up call.
"Hey, Conehead! You alive?"
Dirge didn't respond, but his optics were glowing faintly. Just to be sure, Rumble gave him a hard kick, shifting the other Decepticon's weight. An injured look appeared on Dirge's face, and he resettled himself with much creaking.
"You sound terrible," Rumble remarked. "I'm gonna tell Mixmaster to pour lubricant all over you when they bring you your energon ration." Apparently, the Constructicons were OK feeding a jet who did literally nothing. Favouritism was what it was.
Dirge tried to stare him to death, but Rumble had done his official job now, and he wasn't sticking around. He made for the area he thought of as his pounding grounds: a cluster of ruins outside of the construction zone, and mostly out of sight of the Constructicons. Not that he was hiding—once he picked a spot, he started piledriving the ground, sending tremors all the way through their crappy base.
"Rumble, knock it off!" Bonecrusher yelled. "Before I bury you!"
Rumble kept going, ready to run just in case Bonecrusher was serious. A shadow swept over him, but it was Laserbeak rather than a Constructicon. That was Rumble's signal and after a couple more pounds for good measure, he stopped and sauntered off, smirking at the Constructicons' energon pile which had collapsed due to his seismic activity.
Long Haul glared back, but before he could swear at the cassette, Scavenger spoke up, his scoop arm twitching nervously behind him. "When did anybody last see Ratbat? What if he only comes out when we're offline? Maybe he's siphoning our energy and giving it to the others?"
That was a fun new theory. Rumble stopped and smiled cockily at them.
"We'd notice the bite marks," Scrapper pointed out wearily.
The others weren't listening to him, instead staring at Rumble with varying degrees of paranoia.
"I could mix up a little something to add to our systems," Mixmaster hummed. "Something that'll put a little cassette on the fritz should they sample it…."
Long Haul punched his arm. "Doesn't sound like much fun for us either. Let's just beat them up until they tell us."
Rumble's smirk contorted into a scowl. "I'd like to see you try, Dumpster-butt."
"We're not at war with each other!" Scrapper snapped.
Hook looked dourly across the planet. "Yet."
Rumble left it at that. He'd done his official job and his unofficial one. Time to go home to the boss.
All the intact buildings on Chaar were pretty much the same, except for the one the Constructicons had tricked out as their own personal HQ. Soundwave and the cassettes had occupied a plain unit with multiple small chambers inside. Rumble kind of liked having his own 'office'.
Soundwave maintained a position in the main atrium. These days, the boss didn't move or speak much more than Dirge, but his optic-band acknowledged Rumble's arrival with a gleam.
"He's still alive, I guess," Rumble reported.
He meant Dirge, but what they all really wanted to know was Ravage's status. Unless their missing cassette got access to an inter-planetary transmitter, they would have to get off this dump to find him.
Rumble shook off his daily fear that they might never know what had happened to Ravage, instead reminding himself that Soundwave was still looking out for them. He had figured out their refuelling system, after all. He also got each cassette to interface with him for a daily check-in, although for the first time in his life, Rumble did not look forward to connecting to his host. Soundwave's gloominess was oppressive.
Glad for an excuse to delay his own check-in, he headed to a side chamber that must have had some plumbing at some point for there was a drain in the floor. He and Frenzy had installed a pulley system there to drag things up from Frenzy's lower levels. Those stuck-up Constructicons weren't the only ones who could build stuff.
"Yo, Frenzy!" he yelled down the drain. "You ready with the goods?"
"Yeah, yeah… Haul at 'em."
"You can haul too, y'know!"
"I load; you haul."
Rumble cursed as he started pulling on the lift. If it wasn't for his pounding, none of these energon cubes would have fallen within Ratbat's reach in the first place.
The little robotic bat spent his time concealed in a crevice beneath the energon generator. Every time Rumble collapsed the Constructicons' energon pile, Ratbat dragged a couple of cubes into the drain that was there. Frenzy would collect them where they fell and take them to this lift… and now Rumble was hauling them up on his own. He didn't see how he got lumbered with the most tiring jobs.
He did like being the one to bring Soundwave the goods though. "Energon up!"
He had to duck as Laserbeak swooped in through the back entrance, stealing a beakful of energon before grabbing one of the empty cubes Soundwave had produced and heading back to his crag. He kept a stash of empties there and would drop them into the generator when the Constructicons weren't looking, effectively replacing what they'd stolen.
Cursing after Laserbeak, Rumble lobbed one of his cubes at Soundwave, only for it to clatter to the floor, uncaught. Surprised, Rumble checked the com-link where he detected the faint feedback of an incoming transmission. "Somebody callin'?"
Soundwave turned his head to look at him, optics glowing intensely. "Ravage lives."