The Ark
Bumblebee had always hated hospitals ever since he could remember setting foot in one.
It was one of his earliest memories - he'd been a youngling, a tiny, rotund creature even shorter than the humans he'd transported earlier that day, sitting in a waiting room chair that was far too big for him and waiting for his parents to return from the emergency room.
He remembered watching his little feet kick the air as he anxiously awaited any kind of news. Though only a youngling, scarcely acclimated to his more complex second bodyframe, Bumblebee had always been an astute person with a sense of situational awareness keener than most peoples' sense of sight.
He'd known something had gone wrong the moment when his parents had sparked his youngest brother's first form. The bright blue flash of light that heralded a new soul's entry into the world had instead turned out to be little more than a cool purple fizzle. The fragile sparkling's body lying exposed, vulnerable on his mother's usually cluttered workbench failed to open its eyes, yawn and look at the beaming faces of its parents like it should have - it merely flopped over on its side and started making awful static-filled gurgles.
Bumblebee still heard them, some nights. Terrible noises.
Even though the faces of his family were already fading from his memory, he remembered the well of grief that had opened up inside him when the kindly surgeon had finally come out to break the news to the little yellow youngling in the chair. Bumblebee's father had accompanied her. His careworn face was a mask barely concealing a towering storm of despair, regret, and shame.
"Hello there, little one. I am Doctor Odessa. You have been very patient this evening. Thank you for that - it must have been so difficult for you. Would you like something to eat before we begin? An Energon goodie perhaps? Oilcake?"
Bumblebee just shook his head. Somehow, he already knew what was coming and wanted to get it over with. The doctor seemed to understand.
"Your father tells me that you're a very good student. Scoring first in the class in all your preliminary tests? Very impressive. A highly intelligent young mech - and so well behaved, too."
"I do 'kay," Bumblebee had replied. "I try."
He tried to ignore the way his father nearly bluescreened right there behind Dr. Odessa, so many conflicting emotions of pride and loss filling him.
"That's good. That's good. Sometimes, it's all we can do to just try our best. Tell me, child. Have you ever wanted to do something very, very important to you . . . but failed?"
Bumblebee nodded. More jerkily this time.
"Everyone has. Most of us make dozens of mistakes a day. Once in a while, we can't avoid it due to factors outside of our control." Now the healer was blinking back tears, one in each of her six eyes, each glowing a soothing blue. "Not even - not even us doctors are immune. We are imperfect beings, after all. And tonight . . . tonight, we . . . We did our best to save a very sick, very young sparkling. Primus help me, we did our best. But there was nothing further we could do."
He'd learned later that his brother's premature death was because of the substandard wiring that had been used by his father to knit together the first - and last - body that would ever be occupied by such a spark. It was a truly blameless crime. Parts were hard to come by in the grimy undercity of the Third Ring of Iacon and both of Bumblebee's parents were expected to provide for their families in the workforce while the Senate's telescreen educated the sparklings and kept them entertained each day. His older siblings had been all but forced to drop out of work to help contain the younger sparklings that did their best to turn their family's modest apartment overhanging the Trannis Fork River into a natural disaster zone. When the parents finally arrived home again late at night, they were utterly spent and nearly unable to spend more of the scant three recreation hours allotted to them to travel to the First Ring, look for premium sparkling parts at a premium price.
His father had ultimately been forced to purchase the newest member of the household's parts from a black market dealer from the Undertown. There were no other options. There was nothing he could have done.
There was nothing we could do.
Bumblebee hated that excuse. He almost hated poor old Dr. Odessa for saying it, especially back then. He hated the system of governance that had forced his father to do the unthinkable and purchase the bad goods that would end his youngest's life before it ever began. And he really hated the hospital that had failed to save even the barest whisper of his younger brother's spark.
Another hospital memory bobbed to the surface like a bloated corpse - the day an Ascenticon rocket attack went awry, causing a shell to hit the dangletown he and his family lived in. Bumblebee himself had been out driving for the Army at the time. Trying to scrape together enough credits to move them all out of there, or at least make their lives just the tiniest bit more comfortable.
He shoved the memory back down. Yes, he hated hospitals. He'd already established that, thank you very much, subconscious. That had been, by far, the worst day of his life. Shut up.
Granted, the Ark's makeshift medbay wasn't quite a hospital in the way he once knew them. He didn't know if that were a good or bad thing.
For one thing, it completely lacked the sterile, chemical scent of potent chemical death that seemed to be more or less the same in every official place of healing. Instead, the cramped room was filled with the scent of sulfur and obsidian and the quiet humming of the reactivated stasis pods that Ratchet had worked on all week long. They just kept coming in, and the Surgeon General of the Autobot Army's scowl deepened with each one that the inappropriately jovial Omnibot leader, Overdrive, kept bringing in.
The stalactites that no one on the Ark was able to explain dripped down from the ceiling like congealed tears. They reminded him of his family's old home, which was only one of the reasons why he felt so uneasy when he looked their way. And of course, the entire place was littered with detritus and debris.
Not the ideal level of contaminants I'd want in my ER.
Only some of the refuse was the result of Lieutenant Jazz's duel with the hulking Decepticon Crusader that was currently locked up downstairs with her fellow raiders.
And Mirage.
Pit, he'd actually liked the patrician for the few months they'd gotten acquainted with one another. Sure, he was a massive snob and way too concerned about his work to have much of a personality. Yeah, he occasionally slipped up and looked at the likes of Bumblebee and even Optimus Prime himself, two fellow dirt-diggers from the Undercity of Iacon, as if they were sentient earthworms that had just pushed up from the soil to ask him about his insurance policy.
He'd always caught himself a brief moment later, however, and displayed all the other things that caused Bumblebee's opinion of him to improve - his mountains of charm, his quick wit, his refined Tarnite sense of deadpan humor that was about as congruent as diesel fuel in a high-end racecar but still somehow worked. His taste in fine arts, finer battle tactics, and the sort of rare willingness to get his hands dirty that some of the more highborn officers Bumblebee had met in the capacity of a courier utterly lacked. He could get along with Mirage, maybe learn a thing or two from him about recon exercises or fencing. In peacetime, he'd be a great guy to have a drink with.
But now the erstwhile Viscount Monacus was a traitor. Not only that, but a murderer too - one who'd killed Sergeant Hound, someone Bumblebee admired much, much more than he had Mirage even in the best of times. Someone who'd vouched for Bumblebee in bad times. His benevolent boss. The guy who taught him much of what he knew about wartime reconnaissance and survival tactics.
Mirage could rot, for all Bumblebee cared.
He just hoped the mech lying insensate before him would pull through.
"How's he doing, doc?" he asked the other mech in the medbay, who was standing at a wrecked computer desk attempting to organize his own thoughts.
Ratchet slammed his hand into the side of the corroded console before him, spitting halfhearted curses under his breath. "How are any of us doing, kid? It ain't good, I'll tell you that much. Ever taken an EMP to the faceplate? Unlike a laser burn to the shoulder, it's not the kind of thing you can just walk off."
"Jeez. Doc Ratchet, everyone, here demonstrating his famed bedside manner. You really know how to put a mech at ease, you know that?"
The Surgeon General of the Autobot Army scoffed. "It ain't my fatherly approach and sensitive attitude that led to me being the director of Polyhex Med. I'm a little busy at the moment, dealing with this infernal computer here . . . There! Finally."
The click-clacking of analog computer keys filled the medbay, only adding to its cold, professional air. When Ratchet was finished with whatever he was doing, he dusted off his hands and seamlessly transitioned to fiddling with the equipment set up around Ironhide.
It was quite the sight - the decrepit external monitors and various hydraulic cranes standing vigil over Ironhide's body contrasted with the pristine, cutting-edge lines of Ratchet's personal mobile clinic, which he'd dragged out of subspace to help stabilize the Artillery Commander.
"If you're not gonna tell me anything useful," Bumblebee asked with a little more heat in his voice than he'd intended, "is there anything, anything at all, I can do to give you a hand? I'm tired of sitting around or screwing things up. I want to help. So, either let me help, or give me some useful information on Commander Ironhide's condition!"
Ratchet stopped what he was doing. He could only look at the Scout with a strange expression on his face that was on a scalpel's edge between anger and bemusement. "Youngling. Did you just talk to me with that tone of voice . . . in my own medbay?"
"Argh . . . sorry. I just want to do something useful for once." He sighed. "Look, either way, you won't have to deal with me just standing around like a crippled Dreadlifter, taking up valuable space in your medbay. So what do you say? I've got some field medic training and I'm a fast learner. Just this once?"
Ratchet's eyes narrowed to cerulean slits as he took the Scout's stock, weighing his options. Finally, he spoke.
"Heh. I like your moxie, kid. I can see why Optimus trusts you. Fine. Get over here. See this readout? Red means damage. Critical polarization in the cerebral cortex. Bad. Green means everything's working more or less like it should. Good. Ideally, we want more green than we do red. I'll try to paint it all in, but my success is contingent on you doing EXACTLY what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. Got me?"
A nod told Ratchet that the younger mech understood.
"Good. Now, man the secondary control unit and prepare the lead sulfide. We've got a Commander to save."
Wheeljack of Galaxxon was in a very bad mood.
Since waking up, he'd finally had some time to think about his death as he moved from deck to deck, inspecting gas lines and evaluating the damage incurred by the Ark as it embarked on its final flight. He hated doing it, but his naturally curious mind just couldn't reconcile . . . that event with his current situation. It only got worse the deeper he got into the Ark, with reminders of ruin all around him.
"None of this is addin' up," he'd growled to himself countless times since beginning his rounds. Every time he almost tripped over the rusty remains of what was once a corpse. Every time he came across another misplaced stasis pod, still glowing faintly despite the swathes of wreckage littering the floor around it. Every time he saw a stalactite or a stalagmite, of all things, dripping down from the decks above or reaching up from the ground like the hands of the dead.
Like this one.
He was in the brig, a feature which all Autobot starships, civilian or military, once had before the original armada had been literally decimated by centuries of War. It was a simple, rough-hewn corridor with only eight cells, a small armory, and a custodian's office that doubled as a warden's. The Ark had not always been a flagship, the final, desperate hope of the free Cybertronian race - it had been extensively retrofitted from a simple interplanetary cargo shuttle with four guns meant only for dissuading pirates and cutting through asteroid fields. It had been originally designed for durability and speed, which was why it had been pulled out of a backwater dock in Stanix as one of the first actions of the final days of the War. A civilian vessel, crammed with weaponry until it bristled with artillery pieces it was never specced to use. It was similar in that way to many combatants in the Autobot Army, Wheeljack included.
The brig had never been expanded upon - no space and no time. When Jazz and Sunstreaker had returned from their squad's ill-fated recon mission, Photonicons in tow, Wheeljack had to be shaken from recharge once more to inspect the six cells for functionality. He'd found that only half of them were free of debris and damage, and of those scant four, only two of the forcefields separating captives from captors worked as required. As such, the unexpected prisoners had to be unceremoniously shoved into two very small cells before most of the Ark's crew rolled out for Uruk-One. For Mirage and Landmine, this hadn't been too much of a problem. Both of them willingly went to their cell to sit quietly and await judgement. The Photonicons, however, all six of them, had to share a single tiny cell - and some of them, like the hulking Marauder known as Spectro, were harder to fit than others. But they fit all the same and watched Wheeljack with malicious red optics as he entered the brig to do his tests.
"Well, well, well. Would you look at that? It's Optimus Prime's fumble-fingered IT guy," one of them had taunted Wheeljack as he entered the room. "Nice coat, dork. Steal it from a starving Empty back home on the streets of your softspark city-state?"
"Eh, blow it out your tailpipe, dipstick. I'm busy," he'd replied nonchalantly. He was a former Wrecker. Verbal taunts did about as much damage to him as a stiff breeze would have done.
He wasn't the only free Autobot in the brig. The Omnibots, despite being fierce warriors to a man, had each volunteered to stay back at the Ark to keep an eye on the prisoners. Overdrive, their heavily-armored commander, moved forward. He didn't even look back or break his long-legged stride as he grabbed the Photonicon who'd spoken by the chest armor and slammed her into the ethereal bars, hard enough to crack the unfortunate raider's visor. Wheeljack spared Overdrive a disapproving glare over his shoulder, then returned to his inspection of the stalactite.
"Well, friend, what do you make of these strange spires of stone and ash?" the Nyonese asked. His bombastic tone and outrageous accent were completely at odds with the dour, Gothic, midnight-black City Commander's armor he habitually wore.
"Ya know, y'shouldn't treat prisoners like that. It ain't right."
A small, noncommittal shrug, made grandiose by the armor's massive pauldron proportions. "They would do the same and worse to us were they in our position. As a Wrecker, you would know this better than I."
Wheeljack's engine coughed and sputtered irritably. "We can do better than that. We can be better. What use is a counterrevolution if we're just gonna turn around an' repeat all the mistakes that landed us in the scrapheap? It's a cycle, mech. The Quints, the Senate, the Ascenticons, us. So on an' so forth. An' we're the only ones who can break it."
"Whatever you say, Iaconian. Whatever you say."
"You kiddin', Overdrive? I ain't Iaconian. It's in the name. Wheeljack Galaxias. Of Galaxxon. How'd you miss that?"
"Heh. You Westlanders are all the same to a son of Nyon. It comes from a place of love, I assure you. Now, what sights 'ave you seen in the bowels of our Ark?"
Wheeljack shook his head, his earfins flickering. "Nothin' much good. Lotsa death. Lotsa destruction. Lotsa crap in the halls. An' then there's these things. Can't make heads nor tails of them. There's no way this much concretion oughta have built up so fast, 'less'n we're on some planet where that kinda thing tends ta happen."
Overdrive thought for a moment, pondering the rock formation before him. He snapped his fingers. "Perhaps this is a - 'ow do you say - a living planet. Like Prysmos. Remember that world? Mon dieu, did I love visiting the 'eadquarters of the Astral Knights back when we still could. Wearing this armor, living this life, I felt like it was a place where I belonged."
"Yeah, maybe. That's wishful thinkin', though. One thing's for sure - the Ark's never gonna fly again. There's too much damage. Too much wear an' tear. We ain't even got a full crew."
"It served its purpose," Overdrive nodded solemnly.
"Did it? Did it serve its purpose? Overdrive, look around you! We're stranded here on Terra without friends or resources to fort up. The Decepticons are up an' running as we speak. Pit, we ain't even got a full brig to our names . . . an' all this fraggin' rock coming from the ceiling . . ."
A large, gauntlet-clad hand rested gently and solidly on Wheeljack's shoulder. "But we are alive, no? Surely, that must count for something."
"We are. But the others . . . The civilians we left behind, in Iacon, our brothers-in-arms . . . what's happened to them?"
The two mechs' eyes lingered on the spire of rock before them. "Remind me again. 'Ow long does it take for a stalactite to reach such a size?"
Wheeljack's earfins flashed a somber navy blue shade. "Hard to say. Could be ten, twenty thousand stellar cycles. Could be a lot more. I'd have to have someone run tests."
Perceptor would know for sure, he thought to himself. But he died on the Engine Deck.
We've been here a long time. Too long.
He died like I did.
Slag, what happened to the folks back home after we left? Did Magnus . . . no, 'course not.
How'd I get to the bridge?
"SHUT IT!" a voice barked, jarring Wheeljack from the thoughts he'd been trying so hard to avoid. He whirled around to see the flash of Camshaft's katars striking the forcefield between them and the Photonicons. Thick clouds of sparks flew, landing mostly on the overcrowded cell's occupants. A small clamor ensued.
"Hey, all I asked for was a sip of Energon-"
"You don't deserve the air whistling through your vents, scrapheap! And now you ask me for fuel?" The minivan's single, unnerving optic was filled with loathing as he glared down at his wards. "Why don't you starve in there instead? Or - better yet - use some of Unicron's blood to sustain yourself! Primus Below knows you've killed enough people with it over the past few lunars."
"C'mon, mech, I don't know what you're talking about - I'm not even part of the Dark Energon program! I'm a Private, for Primus' sake! They wouldn't even let us near the stuff unless we were cleared for it by a superior officer!"
The Photonicon sounded very young. She also sounded genuine.
"Mercy, Autobot, please . . . I'm so thirsty . . . Megatron, he rides us so hard, without rest, without repast . . . I haven't had any fuel, real fuel, since before the wormhole . . ."
Camshaft snarled. "I'll tell you what you can do with your 'wormhole,' you vile-"
"Soldier. That's enough," the other Omnibot guard in the room interrupted. A Scout-class with kibble that suggested a classic muscle car alt-form, she was of a height with Camshaft, but her black armor contrasted with his blindingly white paint. Where Camshaft only had the one sullen, dark, expressionless optic, she wore a facemask below piercing, intelligent blue eyes. "I'm sure it wouldn't detract from our supplies too much if you gave the mechs a few drops of Energon."
"They're up to no good, Downshift," the white Omnibot spat. "Their kind always is. Two-faced predators. They spout their slogans, their platitudes about equality and justice, they play the victim just like this pile of scrap is doing. And then, once you show them weakness, they - fragging - eat you."
Downshift returned his accusatory gaze. "You can show mercy without showing weakness. They're Cybertronians, same as us."
"Look at what they did to me. Look at it. They mangled me. They scraped my face off and replaced it with a fragging camera lens. They turned me into a monster. I'm perfectly OK with being one to them in return."
"Mon dieu, you two, get a room!" Overdrive called from the front of the brig. "Downshift, stop antagonizing the mech, no? You know as well as I what terrors 'e 'as been through. Camshaft, just give the prisoner some fuel already and be done with it. We have reserves. I 'ave spoken."
The cyclopean Omnibot stood straight up, shaking with rage like he'd done not three days before. "Yes. Sir. Right away."
On his way out, he shouldered past Downshift. "Keep an optic on the prisoners while I'm away, will you?" he asked in a tone of false obsequiousness. "Oh, and watch your back - you turn it on them, and they'll stab you in it."
Camshaft left, leaving the brig emptier but much less tense in his absence. The Photonicons began whispering among themselves, as their spark-bond communications had been blunted by an impromptu latticework of copper and adamantium caging that Wheeljack had scavenged from somewhere and thrown up within the two functional cells.
"Your friend is filled with too much anger he does not know how to process," a quiet, feminine voice stated. Downshift's doorwings twigged in surprise, but she controlled her reaction beyond that. The prisoner behind her had switched her voice modulator off, something she hadn't even done for Jazz.
"He manages just fine," she responded. It was a lie, but not a particularly good one and not meant to be believed by either femme. It merely served to kill the conversation.
"If he does not learn to move on - if he cannot find it within himself to change - it will consume him," the Crusader continued as if she hadn't heard. "Downshift, was it?"
The onyx Omnibot didn't reply. Her previous actions and words had answered the question already and they both knew it.
Without the voice modulator, the Decepticon Landmine sounded almost normal, softspoken, particularly thoughtful and reflective. "I know what it's like to lose a comrade to their own unrestrained emotions. Breakneck, Rollcage, Flood, all undone, one by one as the War dragged on without end . . . I've nearly come close to losing myself to the same. This infernal War . . . it makes monsters out of mechanoids."
"You don't know the half of it," Mirage muttered under his breath. He sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, gazing down at them with sharp yellow eyes.
This was enough to crack Downshift's unflappable poise. She turned to face the storied spy, her doorwings pricking up into a fighting stance. "Oh, do tell, Your Grace. I'd imagine you've seen it all in your capacity. Please - what kind of horrors make a mech kill his own brothers-in-arms while their backs are turned?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. None of you would, not even Optimus himself."
"I want to believe you, Mirage. I want to hear your side of the story. To see an Espionage operative of your caliber languish in a dingy cell like this . . . it's harder than Pit to stomach. The others might have already written you off as a traitor, but I don't buy it for a handful of Credits. So tell me. Go on. My mind is open. Let me be your advocate before the Tribunal."
Mirage's eyes closed slowly, and he shook his head in despair.
"Do you know the punishment for betraying the Prime, Your Grace?" Downshift asked, a rhetorical question with a pleading edge to it. "You'll be executed if you don't fight for yourself, if you don't present any kind of evidence that proves what you did was the right thing to do."
"I did what I had to do. I saved Sergeant Hound. Ratchet can do the rest," he whispered, and said nothing more. "Ratchet can do the rest."
Downshift rolled her eyes in frustration, a gesture that was reflected in the tilt of her doorwings. "Then there's nothing I can do for you. I can't vouch in good conscience for a murderer who keeps his reasons, however noble or vile they may be, to himself."
Landmine nimbly rose to her feet. Without her hulking suit of powered armor, she was of a height with Downshift, about average for most Cybertronians. Her four green eyes shone earnestly as she said, "I will gladly share my entire story with you, should you accept it. I want to prove myself to the Prime, atone for the road I've traveled. I only ask that we avoid the subject of the Crusaders - my quarrel is with the Empire and the Warlords who run it, not Shellshock and his men." She sighed. "Then again . . ."
"That won't be necessary," Downshift replied, waving off Landmine's offer. "I think your change of spark is genuine."
The Crusader recoiled as if she'd been struck, rocking back a step. She blinked in surprise. As her captor turned back to face front, Landmine caught a glimpse of the sigil on the Omnibot's forearm. It began with a silver Autobot symbol like the rest, but as it traveled towards the wrist, it flared out with dramatic winglike forms, eventually tapering down to a point at the end of Downshift's gauntlet. Her insignia was there at the point, designating her as a Captain in the Air Defense Force, serving in a Homefront Support capacity. This, combined with the winged sigil, could only mean one thing.
"The Elite Guard," Landmine remarked in awe. "I see. It all makes sense now."
Downshift scoffed, a bitter, humorless sound. "That's right. It seems you and I are somewhat alike, Decepticon. I know what it's like to be betrayed by a once-noble organization that forgot its oaths to the people. To be betrayed by commanders who you trusted with your life."
"So you believe me, then . . ."
"What I believe is irrelevant in this case," the Omnibot said. She glanced back into the cell, using a rearview mirror on her shoulder to do so. Her clear blue eyes bored into Mirage and Landmine both, laying them both bare. "It is Lieutenant Prowl whom you need to convince. It's a very long road to travel after that."
"Hold it steady . . . Steady . . . quick, lad, hand me the number eighteen spanner . . . and there!"
Another field of green flared to life in the knotted crimson wasteland of Ironhide's damaged heuristics. Together with perhaps nine other critical maintenance nodes spread throughout his upper body, it formed a weak but stable cat's cradle of properly repaired zones within the famed artillery commander's neural net.
Ratchet stomped over to the primary terminal and drank in the results of his hard labor. It took him about two seconds, and when he was done reading a crooked smile flashed across his face, opening some crow's feet at the edges of his optics that Bumblebee couldn't believe were capable of surviving for very long in the hostile environment of the Surgeon General's face.
"Good to see. Very good. You see that, Bumblebee? That there is the color of victory. Well done."
"Um, sir? I'm no expert, but it looks like there's still a lotta red in that picture," the Scout objected. He was still greatly concerned for the Artillery Commander . . . but then again, Ironhide's breathing seemed a lot easier, and his lights weren't flickering as much. That was a good sign, right?
"Might be. Might be fine. You can't really put specific numbers on this kind of damage, kid," Ratchet shrugged. He placed a worn red hand on the viewscreen, which was attached to the scanning apparatus that surrounded the Commander in a blue-and-gold ring, and shoved it as hard as he could. "Sometimes, the best thing to do is just fix what you can and let the nanobots sort the rest of it out. Keep an optic on 'em so they don't get up to any trouble. So's long as you point them in the right direction, put all the delicate stuff away nice and neat so they don't get taken apart, and hope that you've done a good enough job, that's most of the job done."
The viewscreen went flying past Bumblebee's face, sliding on their tracks all the way down to Ironhide's feet. They were entirely undamaged other than faint wear and tear, bit of arthritis, which the computer summed up to exactly the kind of perfectly normal age, mileage, and battle fatigue that a Thetaconian of Ironhide's age naturally accrued in life.
"You ever have to put up with the Twins for an extended period of time? Sideswipe and Sunstreaker? It's kinda like that," Ratchet said. He snatched up a circuitboard and a soldering iron and started working away at it at a nearby desk.
"So Commander Ironhide is going to be OK? His . . . condition's not going to get worse, is it?"
The soldering iron sizzled as Ratchet flicked it back into its recharging stand and threw the circuitboard back down on the counter, clearly done with whatever he was doing with it. "Ha! Not if I have anything to say about it. I've worked with EMP shock before, probably hundreds of thousands of operations at this point. It's tough to remember."
He stood up and began hammering away at his computer once more, squinting through low-power lenses in order to see the screen better. "Mind picking up that 'board over yonder, kid? Go put it in pod QT-21, will you? I've got its motherboard all taken apart. You should be able to figure it out."
"Where is QT-21?" Bumblebee asked, though he was already on his way, weaving through the forest of weathered, bulky stasis pods that was almost too dense to navigate.
"Back of the medbay, second-to-last pod on the left. Got it?"
"Yeah, I see it," the Scout called. It took some struggling to get into position, and he had to fold his doorwings flush to his body, but he finally managed to insert the circuitboard where it was supposed to go.
"Hey, kid! When you get there, DON'T connect the 'board to the stasis pod! I'll do it myself when I get half a chance," Ratchet shouted. "I gotta run one last check on the pod's diagnostics before I'll even consider a revive of whoever's inside."
"OK, OK, doc, whatever you say," Bumblebee called back, dropping the twin lengths of wire he'd been holding near the circuitboard's connection hardpoints. He straightened up as much as he could and let his keen eyes run over the inert hulk of the stasis pod before him. Though it was covered with corrosion and discolored metal, its viewing glass was still pristine and undamaged - though a little yellowed on the edges. Inside, Bumblebee could just make out the faintest silhouette of an average-sized carformer floating in the preserved solution. A name flickered weakly on the pod's holographic information display. It read "STRATEGOS SKIDS HIPOKAMPUS OF NOVA CRONUM - ccMTO - GROUND LOGISTICS MAJOR."
"Oh, wow . . . I've heard of this guy before. He's some kind of crazy-skilled Outlier adventurer, a hero to all who meet him," Bumblebee breathed to himself. "How is it that he was on the Ark? I didn't even hear anything about him being in Iacon before we launched."
"Private Bumblebee! Get back here. Stop messing around with the cryo-coffins," Ratchet yelled again.
"Yes sir, right away sir!" On his way out, Bumblebee transformed to fit between the pods easier. There wasn't a lot of room to maneuver at all, but at least here he didn't have to worry about bumping into anything with his doorwings flying free. He darted under a rusty cot and accidentally hit a cylindrical object on his way out, which fell to the floor with a terrible clatter and began to roll away.
"Oh, slag!" Bumblebee cursed. Without even really thinking about it, he transformed part of the way and shot out a hand to catch the object as it careened away from him, threatening to knock over an even more important tool elsewhere in the cramped medbay. He bobbled it, accidentally batted it away from himself once or twice, but finally got just the tips of his fingers around it and continued on his way.
When he rose to his full height - which wasn't much - he found Ratchet looming over him, glaring down at the diminutive Scout even as he twiddled the knurl on the tiny spanner he'd asked for earlier.
"Give me that," Ratchet snarled, accentuating his command with an intimidating rev of his engine. He snatched the cylinder away and stowed it under his arm. "Pit's sake, youngling. Did no one ever teach you that you NEVER transform in an active medbay? A machine shop? Any given operating theater that's decisively NOT your own? What were you thinking?!"
Bumblebee cringed. "Sorry, Surgeon General Ratchet, sir, I was just trying to-"
"No. There's no excuse for what you just did, Private. Just accept it. Move on. Be better next time." He settled into the only chair in the room and began working on some esoteric panel on the side of the cylinder without another word.
After a while, Bumblebee felt brave enough to risk a clearing of his throat. "Sir, you were calling me over before I, ah . . . did the thing? What do you need from me?"
The Surgeon General glanced back at Bumblebee once more, only for a second, then returned his attention to the cylinder. When he spoke, his voice was slightly softer, like sandpaper rather than a barbecue brush. "I scrounged up a quarter cube of old Energon from the storehouse for you and I. It's not much, but it's important to stay hydrated and fueled. It's on the counter by the door. Feel free to take some, but do it OUTSIDE the medbay, please. And leave enough for me, too, if you'd be so kind."
"I . . . thank you, sir. Thank you, but I'll pass. I filtered some of the Terrans' fuel earlier - they call it "gasoline" - and I'm pretty fuel-efficient to begin with."
"Well, I'm glad you filtered it, at least. Who knows what's in the petrochemicals in an organic world like this. Sergeant Hound trained you well," Ratchet snorted. "Come on now, soldier. At ease. Have a seat. You're not in trouble . . . I'm just very, very concerned about the well-being of all these mechs and femmes you see before you."
Bumblebee breathed a huge sigh of relief. He pulled over a crate to sit on and rest his legs. "Phew, that's good to hear, sir. Thank you. I'm already in enough hot water with Lieutenant Jazz. Couldn't stand having you mad at me too, if you don't mind me saying."
"Hrmph. Yeah, you'd certainly have your servos full in that case. Look, kid, you can't go and transform in a medbay for three main reasons, all right? For one thing, you might knock something over when an errant limb goes flying this way or that. I understand that's less of a problem for you, but it's basic policy regardless."
"The Ninth Directive has served me well, sir. But I understand."
"Good. Secondly, vehicle transportation and transforming and all that tends to kick up dust and other contaminants. For obvious reasons, we can't have that in an operating theater. And lastly, kid - look around you. All these pods. You hit something in a medbay as packed as this, you might be looking at the mutilation or death of a dozen innocent mechs and femmes who did nothing more than sit there in their pods, waiting for a chance to breathe fresh air again. I'm talking about dominos, stacked precariously all over the room. Ever played dominos? You're a bit young to have gambled way back when, but I'm sure you get the idea. That'd be a massacre, and that'd be on your hands."
Bumblebee blanched as he considered the consequences of his actions. "Yes, sir. I understand. It's standing-room-only here."
"No kidding."
"But, Ratchet, sir . . . why don't you start up just a few of the pods? Lessen your workload a little bit. Add to the Prime's available forces. Is it a question of Energon alone?"
At that, Ratchet sat up straighter in his chair and regarded Bumblebee over the tops of his surgical lenses. He propped up the cylindrical object on a nearby rolling tray, resting his hand heavily atop it. "I think you already know the answer to that, Bumblebee. You're a smart 'bot."
"I know we're running on fumes, sir . . . but when we have the chance to save more of our fellow Autobots from the brink of oblivion, surely they could help us out with the excavation? The salvaging? I mean, don't the pods have some kind of high-octane additive that keeps their occupants going for a couple vorns after a revive? Wouldn't that be enough to last them for long enough to acquire some more fuel, especially if they had some medical-grade Energon in them? I mean, the Bridge crew was up and running for long enough to excavate the entire mess hall."
Ratchet removed his lenses, letting them dangle on a chain, and began rubbing them with an oily rag that he produced from a pouch around his waist. "I appreciate your optimism. Reminds me of myself when I was a younger mech. But the truth is, 'Bee, we don't have enough Energon to go around. Not even my medical-grade stock. That stuff is all gone. Not a drop left."
"Not a drop?!" Bumblebee exclaimed, his jaw dropping open. "How?! I thought medical-grade didn't expire, that its half-life was millions of years long!"
Ratchet held up his hand to forestall the Scout's further questions. The rag dangled from his fingers. It looked like a flag of surrender. "I used all of it just now, right after the recon teams returned from their canvas of the area. I used it for one particular purpose."
"Ratchet . . . you don't mean . . ."
The Surgeon General nodded solemnly. The light from the nearby medical station bathed his faceplates in a sickly yellow light. "That's right. Please, Private Bumblebee. Don't be alarmed. That's an order."
With his right hand, the one with the oily rag, he reached over and polished a spot on the cylindrical item, which revealed itself to be a tiny control panel. He pressed a button on it, and the steely sheen of the cylinder's exterior faded like a frost during the spring thaw.
It immediately became evident that the cylinder was a pressurized, fluid-filled vacuole, much like the stasis pods around the room, except in miniature. It also became evident that, floating in a container of innermost Energon that was almost too small for it, was Sergeant Hound's head and laser core.
Bumblebee shot to his feet. His expressive blue eyes filled with bright pinpricks of light and his hands clamped over his open mouth. "Holy slag! That's - that's - oh, Primus, that's-"
"Easy, lad. Easy. Take a vent or two. That's it."
"Is he - is he still-"
"Yes, he's still alive, Bumblebee! But only just. He's in a stasis deeper than you or I will ever experience, if fate is kind. In this state, he's still venting. His spark is still humming away. Laboring to be saved. But it took all the medical-grade I had to get him into this condition. It's a treatment I hate to take part of. It's cruel, inhumane, and selfish. But - but! - if we can gather enough resources to do so - a blank protoform, a power source strong enough to run a city, and gallons and gallons of Energon, far more than we have available to us - this might not be the end of this old Hound's story."
Bumblebee's fuel tank threatened to revolt. The enormity of Ratchet's plan was too grandiose to fathom, especially during wartime. "But what about Skids? The other guys in the stasis pods?" He began marching around the room, sparing each massive pod only a passing glance. "Seaspray, Smokescreen, Powerglide, Perceptor? What about them, Ratchet?"
"All in good time, Bumblebee! This isn't an easy thing for me to do!" Ratchet roared, grabbing Bumblebee by the shoulders to make him understand. "That's the peril of being a Medic, lad! You can't save everyone! You have to triage! The ones in most need are the ones you tend to first, no matter how broken and pained the others are! You listen to their cries and pleas, their desperate prayers to an uncaring God, the horrible silence that follows as they slip into unconsciousness . . . maybe for the last time. And all the time, you labor away on your most important patient in what might be a lost cause, just to stave off the Necrobot a little longer. You do what you can with what you've got. And that's all you can do. Do you understand me?"
"I - I can't - yes, sir. I understand. Just barely."
"Good. That's good." Ratchet blew out a rough breath. "I'm sorry I grabbed you like that. Primus, kid . . . I wish I could save them all. I do. If I had my way, I'd reactivate every one of these soldiers right away and send them off in ship-shape. But these things are not in the purview of reality, get me? I had to choose. I had to write my Physician's Algorithm."
He gestured with a shaking hand at the computer monitor set up near Ironhide's subdued form. Lines and lines of code wrote themselves, deleted whole paragraphs of text, and rewrote themselves more or less the same way. At the top of the screen was a list of dates and names. Many of them were very far away from each other, chronologically speaking. Too far away. And they kept rewriting themselves to boot.
"Triage, Bumblebee," Ratchet said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. "Triage."
"Sir . . . why Sergeant Hound? Why would you use your entire stock of med-grade on him - on the forlorn hope that used to be him?"
"Because, Bumblebee. We've had a hard time of things for solar cycles on end. This past decacyle alone . . . it's been the most difficult, taxing experience I've ever had to stomach in all my seven thousand years. And that's saying something. Hound . . . he and I go back a long way. He was with us from the very beginning, back when 'Megatron' was still just a rumor from the other side of the planet. We all rely on each other in the Autobot Army. All of us. That's the only way we work like we should. And Hound . . . he's always been the glue that held us all together."
"I know," Bumblebee said. "Good old Sergeant Rollbar."
Ratchet smiled again, a surprisingly warm expression. "We all need a little Hound in our lives. I think that's worth it. For all of us. And I'll work like the Pit to get him up and running again."
"But the resources we'll need, doc . . . I can't even begin to imagine all of them."
"Once you get down to it, it's all just time, materials, and energy. All resources that can usually be found in abundance. But right now, kid, they're resources that I just don't have available. And what am I to do in this situation, hm?"
"You do the best you can," Bumblebee said. "Because that's all you can do."
A few decks below, the hangar was silent as a tomb. It was lit only by a single faint, golden strip of light that ran throughout the ship, casting eerie shadows on the areas closest to the walls.
The hangar was the very picture of ruination. Though most of the dropships, Aerialbots, and fighter crafts had been sortied during the Ark's ill-fated flight, the few aircraft and heavy armor units left in its cavernous depths were sufficient to make mincemeat out of the Engineers and Support techs who'd been working in there as the last hope of the Autobot Army engaged in combat for the final time. Snapped cables, long forgotten by the people who'd lashed them, lay strewn over the few stretches of floor that were left. The totaled remains of dropships and Enforcer tanks jutted into the stale air like the bones and claws of dead dragons left to rot inside a musty cave. Here and there, one could find the desiccated remains of Autobot soldiers who'd been crushed, battered, thrown, beheaded, or otherwise mutilated by the semi-tethered heavy units flying around the enclosed hangar during the cataclysmic crash.
They hadn't had very much time to run search-and-rescue, but the Autobots had halfheartedly set aside and cleared out a little corner near the stern hangar door to act as a place to leave the bodies of the fallen for a time, until they could be positively identified and summarily buried with honors. Before they knew it, the corner was full to bursting with dead bodies and had to be expanded into the hangar proper, under the wings of Sideswipe's sturdy dropship, which was the only aerial vehicle that had been in sufficient flying condition despite the stagnant fuel in its tank and the heavy fuselage damage it had incurred. It was only through a miracle of Wheeljack's prowess as an Engineer that the thing was up and running at all, and even then it had consumed most of the aviation-grade fuel available to the Autobots just for the short flight over the mountains.
Sergeant Hound's decapitated, horribly abused corpse was lying with the rest of them, although he was given his own little place of honor, raised up above the others on a small mound of rubble and part of a fighter craft's wing. His colors had faded from a dark, verdant olive green to a pale, nearly grey chartreuse color unbecoming of the bot who'd spent so much of his life outdoors. His proud skirts, composed of the fabric soft-top of his vehicle form, were soaked black with spilled Energon and motor oil, and hung limply down the impromptu altar he'd been laid on instead of flying free in the crisp wind of the Equatorial highlands like they were supposed to do.
The eighteen wounds that had killed him speckled his bloodstained gut, reeking of spent fuel and burned circuitry - the smell of death. The festering mass of torn metal upon his shoulders, where his head once rested, was a cleaner wound but no less gruesome. The largest wound, however, was a cauterized incision running just below his pectoral armor plating, where Ratchet had cut the corpse open to remove its spark for potential salvation as soon as no one was watching. All of these wounds were poorly concealed by Hound's fasces, which someone had placed in his arms like the corpse was still a stalwart warrior who'd need his weapon to face his journey to the afterlife.
Hound's joints had locked up a few hours earlier - without a regular supply of oil to grease them, they failed quickly and soon became almost impossible to move into position without damage.
Hound's hands, in particular, had contorted themselves into grasping claws, peeling themselves away from the shaft of the fasces, as the oil within them dried out and turned into hard clots of petroleum. It was an unnatural-looking position. A painful one. No Cybertronian would ever allow themselves to be negligent enough to let this happen to them in life, least of all the gunnery sergeant of the Intelligence branch's Reconnaissance division.
And yet, if there had been anyone around to watch the corpse, they could have seen a finger or two begin to twitch.
"Here's your precious Energon, murderer," Camshaft growled as he shoved the nearly-empty cube through an armored hatch on the wall. "I hope to Primus that you choke to death on it."
"Oh thank you, sir, thank you, a thousand thanks, I was so hungry like you wouldn't believe . . ." the Photonicon Lensflare whined appreciatively, eagerly seizing the cube right away and drinking from it like a starving child. It was disgusting. Probably the worst cube of Energon Lensflare had ever supped from. Stale and sour, with metallic grit that had congealed at the bottom from a very long time out of proper storage. It must have been stored somewhere in the Ark's crew cabins, already open by the time of the crash, rather than in the cryogenically temperature-controlled nuclear-powered vault from which the Autobots were getting their own meager rations and supplies from.
She needn't have bothered with the charade. Camshaft already had his back turned to the cell and was steadfastly ignoring the Decepticons crammed into it. Lensflare lowered the cube, fighting back the repulsive tang in the back of her throat and the bright green toxicity warning that popped up on her HUD. She'd barely sipped any to begin with, but it was still awful.
Closest to the forcefield that separated captors from captives, the gladiator Flashbulb stood, tall, proud, and handsome. He wore an easy smirk on his face as he took in the sight of the Autobot brig, looking none the worse for wear. No one knew how he did it, compartmentalized his emotions like that to put on such a cheerful, easygoing facade, but Lensflare knew it was all a lie. She'd seen the guy in combat more times than she could count, and was always stunned by the ferocity - and the imagination - with which the truckformer wielded his brutal trident.
Flashbulb met Lensflare's eyes and deliberately showed his pristine silver teeth - the signal that told the younger femme that the Autobots were distracted, or bored, or whatever, and it was time to move.
Without breaking eye contact or making any noise at all, Lensflare handed the cube of rotten Energon back and to her right. A few of Spyglass's thin, prehensile tentacles, usually meant for data collection, snaked past the other raiders in the overcrowded cell and took the cube from her hand. The Photonicon spy brought the cube deeper into the cell and deposited it in one of Spectro's massive mitts, who then merely reversed his grip and placed it on the seat where their leader, Viewfinder, was holding his cross-legged court.
Under his visor, Viewfinder's eyes lazily opened without any prompting whatsoever. They flicked around the cell, ensured all his men were in position, glanced past Spectro's enormous form at the Autobots beyond, then dropped to the dredges of fuel in the cube next to him. He knew the unpleasant taste that awaited him, was aware of the dangers inherent in consuming expired fuel, and he had read medical journals on what happened to engines if they were forced to process Energon of such . . . quality.
Calmly, dispassionately, he reached out, retracted his faceplate, and downed the putrid mixture in one gulp.
Fuel was fuel, after all. And Viewfinder just needed a little boost.
His body immediately erupted in tremors, but he controlled them. His back arched as the sulfurous mixture worked its way down his esophagus, acid-etching the story of its passing into his drainpipe the whole way. He fought back the cloud of sickly green advisories, embraced the acrid taste and the gritty shavings of metal in his mouth, and accepted the handshake protocols that the other Photonicons had sent him over their bonds prior to being shoved into their adamantium-and-copper cell.
When he next opened his eyes, they were a deep, dark violet.
"Arise, loyal Hound. Serve the Great Liberator."
In the silent brig, the corpse of Sergeant Rollbar of Lower Monoplex jerked to a horrible mockery of life, an unnatural movement that caused its joints to squeal in protest. The ceremonial fasces that it had held so proudly careened to the floor with a dull clatter. Its ruined torso shot upright, causing thick black globules of gelled fluid to speckle its morbid surroundings. There it sat for some time, twitching eerily as the final stages of its Dark Energon infection took hold.
Within its hollow chest, shards of crystallized Energon, corrupted by an unknown chemical, reached out to the center of the corpse's inner core as if they were living creatures seeking sustenance. They found nothing of the sort - no cold laser core to penetrate and pervert, no spark which they could pour into en masse and corrupt beyond repair. With a metallic shrieking noise that sounded like a tiny wail of frustration, the shards reversed course and sought out the dried Energon and oil lying stagnant in their host's circulatory system.
The purest of this innermost Energon burned the crystals, causing them to disintegrate into dry black carbon deposits, but these inert crumbs of anti-life absorbed it even as they died, leaving small deposits of nutrient-rich agar behind for all the healthy crystals to feed upon. The spotty patches of crystalline shards, flowing forth from the rotten gas tank that they'd already devoured whole, doubled and tripled in size until they caused the corpse to do the same. When Hound's dead metal muscles could stretch and swell no longer, gaining an eldritch strength he'd never known in life, the infernal crystals pushed themselves through his skin in the bristly forms of fine hairlike structures, then died.
As this uneven, uncanny transformation continued, the massive and numerous stab wounds in the corpse's lower body finally split wide open, stretched far beyond their breaking point by the masses of crystal forming within the hollow husk. A vertical gash tore Hound asunder, shoulder to waist, causing a subtle purple light to flow forth from his corpse's caramelized insides. Now, the sharpened, thickened masses of crystals within it had grown to the size of sofas, jutting wickedly out of the open wound like some maddened beast's teeth, wet with sticky saliva and itching for a good meal.
An airy sound, like the last moan of a dying man, came from the ragged hole that was once Hound's neck. This form was imperfect, compromised, and unsuitable for a long period of time - but it would do for now.
A stiff, dead limb, swollen with asymmetrical masses of metal muscle, swung over from one side of the grisly, bottomless maw that now made up most of Hound's body. It picked up the heavy, double-bladed fasces with one clawed hand, then used the weapon to brace itself as it rose to a hideous four-legged stance - the only one that would work with the horrific mutations that had torn up Hound's body.
The maw gaped open horizontally, ejecting a foul stream of fluid from what was once the fuel tank. It sizzled where it hit the Ark's hangar floor and dissolved the withered, rusty bodies around it, which melted away like butter left to sit for too long in a microwave. The crystals quivered in the stuffy air, rubbing against one another and emitting a sort of scratching noise that would have wormed its way into anyone's ears, had they been there to hear it.
The Empty creature was blind, deaf, and dumb. It couldn't see its surroundings, but had an imperfect idea of what was around it. What it could do was sense energy that resonated with the crystals that served as its senses, taste the microscopic traces of matter floating in the rare air currents that blew through the hangar.
It smelled Energon. Pure, untainted. Ripe to be fed upon until there was nothing left.
The Energon wasn't too far away. Neither was the unique energy signature of the person who had activated it, brought it back to a state resembling life.
The Empty felt nothing. Not pain, not rage, not gratefulness or loyalty for its creator.
It only felt hunger.
And it began shuffling towards the bow of the ship, step by step, becoming ever more comfortable in its stolen flesh as it went.