ERRORS IN JUDGEMENT OF THE PERSONAL KIND
Part Three
A brutal kick interrupted Starscream's painful reminiscing and brought him back to reality. The prison room seemed suddenly full of guards. One deactivated the bindings on Starscream's legs though not his arms and yanked him up on his feet. He forced him forward, pushing him into line with several other captive High Guard fliers, and Starscream glanced around, noticing for the first time that many of his fellow prisoners already appeared to be missing. A cold dread seized him then. Perhaps they were being marched out in smaller, more manageable lots for ease of execution.
The reason had more to do with presentation. They were marched off all right, up and down numerous corridors and crammed into elevator cabs for several rides, for one last journey which ended at the top of Sentinel's tower. The missing prisoners were already there, already separated into groups and lined up, everyone posed and kneeling and looking miserable. Starscream and the others were dragged straight to the head of the bigger group; they were evidently the high-value captives. It was a concession which Starscream could have done without.
He then saw D-16 again, and the little yellow bot he'd deemed annoying a lifetime ago. They too were kneeling in the front row of their group right across from Starscream and he wondered if it was because they'd also been selected for special attention. He started to shift around on his knees, still distressed yet growing steadily angrier. He didn't want to go out like this. Not as a plaything of Sentinel's again, to display and then crush at his whim. And he would do it, Starscream knew, would kill him and take pleasure in snuffing him out. He'd given him all the cause to want to do it the first time he'd been captured and fallen into the false Prime's hands.
It had happened years ago, after Sentinel Prime had relocated all the surviving Cybertronians under his charge to their current new home underground, away from the increasingly dangerous surface. Only the High Guard members who'd renounced their allegiance and remained behind knew what was really driving the relocation. They knew all about Sentinel's deals with their enemies and his repulsive solution to keep the energon coming.
Starscream had been spared having to witness the carnage firsthand on that terrible day when all the Primes were ambushed. He'd led the attacks on the Quintessons outside the cavern. But other fliers under his command had gotten inside during the fighting and had documented everything. Much, much later, once the remnants of the High Guard had gathered together to lick their wounds and try and make sense of the bewildering attack, they all watched the footage gathered by some of their own and learned the truth.
When Starscream saw Sentinel kill Megatronus, he died inside along with the Prime.
He almost abandoned everything then to stew in his misery alone and let his grief overwhelm him. It was fortunate for Starscream that two of his best warriors, bots he'd been fast-tracking and eyeing as potential lieutenants, saw what was happening with him and managed to convince him to delegate some of his responsibilities instead, at least for a little while. Starscream soon came back, still suspicious and seething and hot-tempered. The slightest provocation or questioning of his orders, he now dealt with using his fists. The others resigned themselves to their captain's new style of discipline and tolerated his abuse more than they should have. They all knew that Starscream and Sentinel had once been an item.
Yet in most ways, Starscream was still the best leader. The surface of Cybertron was well familiar to him and he'd scouted vast portions of its terrain over the years. He knew where all the good shipwrecks were, the literal fallout of their long war with the Quintessons, and which wrecks offered the best salvage opportunities and which were best to hide in. He was also very clever at organizing successful raids on Sentinel's energon trains, the ones that were supposed to be ferrying toxic waste to the surface but which were secretly carrying the false Prime's payments to the enemy. The High Guard always took especial pleasure in robbing Sentinel of his ill-gotten shipments and enjoying the fuel themselves. The energon they stole was always of excellent grade and highly refined, a much better option than what they could get laboriously chipping away at the raw frozen energon remaining on the surface, and it tasted a lot better too.
The High Guard's mission now was to sabotage all of Sentinel's holdings and disrupt his operations as much as possible. They all became hard and hyper-vigilant, almost feral. And to a bot, they all dreamt of the day they'd take down the great betrayer and destroy him.
Starscream, as the one who'd suffered the worst repercussions of Sentinel's treachery, often felt compelled to do more than his share and still liked to nurse his bitterness and grievances alone. Solitary scouting missions suited him well when he was in a certain mood. But it also left him vulnerable when he went out alone, and it was perhaps inevitable that one day his stubborn diligence would backfire.
It happened shortly after he'd forced his way onto the bridge of a downed vessel he meant to plunder for its still largely intact communications components. Starscream never even realized that his discovery had been observed from afar. And he most certainly would not have agreed with those following him who thought that the easiest way to capture the valuable High Guard captain was to blow up and bring the whole bridge level down on top of him.
When Starscream came back online, his surroundings had changed so dramatically that the sheer dichotomy of it kept him frozen in place. He vaguely recalled an explosion and panels crashing down, remembered just enough to realize that he'd been found out and captured. Yet he was lying on a berth in a medical bay, not in a cell. And he was unfettered and, even more startling, had been allowed to retain all his ordnance. Not a prisoner then, yet where else could he be except in Iacon City?
He eyed the furnishings of his room more closely. It all looked exactly like the places where he'd been patched up umpteen times in the past whenever he'd been injured, a private medical bay for those of higher rank or status. He could even smell that someone had begun to work on him; all his seams and joints had been squirted full of healing lubricant and his surfaces had already been wiped down. Several bots were moving about nearby. He flexed himself all over, very slightly and surreptitiously, so as not to draw their attention yet, and discovered that he seemed fine, though sore. What on Cybertron was going on?
A towering, glossy. blue and gold bot of tremendous presence all at once entered the med bay, his sudden appearance instantly clarifying everything. "Get out," he said to the unseen medical staff, who scurried away in a flash. Then Sentinel Prime stepped over to Starscream's bedside and looked down at him.
Starscream stared back, terrified. A host of miserable possibilities rushed through his mind. Sentinel was even bigger than he remembered. In taking on his new title, he'd somehow acquired the stature of a true Prime, and Starscream knew that he was powerful enough now to do anything he liked to him, even something as degenerate as forcing an interface. The cowering flier had no idea of how to avoid what he feared was coming. He kept staring up at the one person he'd hoped never to see again, at least not under such circumstances, trying to hide his fright.
Sentinel touched him, putting a hand to his face. "You're hurt," he murmured.
Starscream trembled. He could feel…tenderness in those fingers, could hear it in his voice. Belatedly and with some astonishment, he realized that Sentinel still loved him.
"I'm so sorry," Starscream whispered.
"Sorry? Why sorry?"
Starscream licked over a slight bruise on his lower lip. He was going to have to be very, very careful with what he did next.
"I should have come back to you. I should never have left. Please forgive me," he uttered in a weak, tremulous voice, then put out one hand beseechingly.
The lie sounded so obvious to his ears. Starscream was certain that Sentinel's searching eyes would harden and blaze in response, that he'd throttle him before hauling his body out of bed and throwing it to the floor. Yet he did none of that. Instead, he knelt down and ducked his head and leaned in close so Starscream could slide the hand he'd reached out over his neck. Sentinel's warm breath played over his face, his lips brushed Starscream's own. Starscream tried hard to bring back every good memory he'd ever had of his former lover, worked even harder to suppress the awful image of the bot now embracing him with such mindful care using his sword to decapitate Megatronus, the Prime who'd introduced them.
"I'm sorry I'm so weak," Starscream whimpered. "I haven't been…refueling. It's been so hard."
"What about the High Guard?"
"I— They tried to kill me. After I said we should reconsider and follow you." He added a pathetic little cough and groan to his falsehoods. "I don't know where they are now. I think they fought each other after that and scattered."
Sentinel drew his head back up to better scrutinize Starscream's face. The flier managed to stroke his raised hand over the side of Sentinel's helm before letting it flop back down as if the gesture had cost him his last shred of strength. He saw nothing in Sentinel's beautiful blue eyes but grave concern. It sickened him to witness how easily the false Prime could project the trappings of normalcy.
Sentinel left then and, before long, several doctors returned to finish tending to Starscream's scuffed, bruised exterior and a nurse brought him a tray full of energon cubes. He wolfed the high-grade fuel as if starved to maintain his cover, which left him over-charged and woozy, and he lay there throughout the remainder of his treatment in a drunken semi-stupor, feeling temporarily ill for real.
Afterwards, he was moved out of the medical bay and transferred to a luxurious room equipped with a much bigger, more comfortable berth. His abused innards lurched again when he saw that Sentinel was already there waiting for him and he realized that the Prime must have ordered him brought to his own private residence.
"Feeling better?" Sentinel asked.
"Yes, thank you." Of course he couldn't let on how he really felt. "I think I could sleep now for a year," he added, affecting a dramatic yawn.
"Get all the rest you need. We'll soon have you fit and on your feet again and then we'll talk."
"I'd like that," Starscream murmured and closed his eyes.
To his surprise, instead of letting him be as he feigned slipping into a restless sleep, Sentinel stayed put and carefully seated himself on the bed and took one of his hands into his own. It was all Starscream could do not to snatch it away. He lay helpless, eyes still closed, spark hammering with alarm and fear as he tried to wait out Sentinel's show of unexpected compassion. When the false Prime lifted Starscream's hand to his face, to kiss it, he couldn't help jerking away a little. Mercifully, Sentinel mistook the slight movement as a weak squeeze, a sign that his ailing lover was responding to his reassurances even though offline.
For several long minutes Starscream had to endure the touch he'd once loved and now wanted to shrink away from as though it were pure acid caressing him. He heard Sentinel sigh, then, at last, felt his own hand being gently placed back down on the covers. The entire berth lifted slightly when Sentinel stood back up.
Starscream strained his audial receptors to their maximum, desperate for more. The next few seconds would decide his fate. To his immense relief, he first heard Sentinel order the room's lights to dim, then address what he presumed was at least one guard out in the hallway.
"Make sure he remains undisturbed, but respond should he need assistance. If he calls out for me, come and get me right away."
Calls out for me! As if! Starscream thought furiously, almost choking on his sudden rage. Had Sentinel really become so self-deluded that he believed that he could charm Starscream back into his arms and make him forget all about the monstrous crimes he'd committed? It seemed that he did!
Starscream pretended to sleep a while longer, marshalling all that he knew of Iacon City's layout in his mind. He was sure that he was in Sentinel's new residence, its exact design an unknown, but he'd been close enough to the Primes in the past to have become familiar with the sorts of buildings they favoured, both for work and to live in. Sentinel's quarters were certain to be high up in a grand tower set near the center of the city, so he could look down on the people he was using so shamelessly.
The biggest problem was that Starscream was unsure of what time it was, whether it was the middle of a workday or coming on night, when there'd be far less activity to hinder an escape attempt. He hoped profoundly that it was late, that the reason Sentinel had left him was to retire to his own berth.
Starscream lifted his head and opened his eyes. It wasn't just his room that was dark, he could see through the open doorway that the hallway beyond was dim too. Promising... Probably as promising as it would ever get.
He slipped out of bed. The floor underneath his feet was covered with soft, thick carpeting which absorbed the sound of his movements. Starscream crept to the doorway and paused, hoping that whoever was just outside would shift about, give him some clue as to how many bots were guarding his peace and quiet. However many there were, they were about to fail in spectacular fashion when it came to guarding the peace.
Starscream stepped forward, bent over as though possibly befuddled and lost. Two sets of helmeted heads snapped about. "Oh, are you—" one began, and that was as far as he got before Starscream blasted him in the face with his forearm cannons. The other tried to get his weapon up and Starscream got him too. He snatched up both of the big rifles they'd dropped before sprinting away down the hallway. A window, some opening…he had to find a window! Then the corridor opened up into a sudden much broader expanse. Couches and a table on one side, a transparent vista on the other. It was exactly what he needed!
Starscream snapped up both of his stolen weapons and fired them simultaneously at the tall bank of windows. Rather shockingly, the whole array exploded into instant shards and flying shrapnel. He'd expected far more resistance. As soon as the debris cloud thinned enough, he rushed to the ragged opening and peered outside. A long, long drop to city streets far below and the lighting appeared minimal. Starscream flung himself outside, transforming as he began to tumble, and shot off in jet mode.
He'd escaped so fast that he never even heard the blare of alarms while still inside. And he'd already gained enough distance that he could outfly any pursuit. He dodged in and out between a whole metropolis of buildings hanging from the ceiling of the great cavern which housed Iacon City. Some way to reach the surface, there had to be a way to get to the surface!
Then he spotted one of the very energon trains which he and his troops sometimes raided, off in the distance and rocketing upwards. What incredible luck! He shot off to follow in the train's wake, and only seconds later, burst through another debris cloud into the beautiful, colourful, night sky of Cybertron. Still no sign of pursuit, not yet. He'd gotten away too quickly for anyone to muster any sort of response.
Starscream executed a jubilant victory roll to celebrate his freedom, then raced on, his throttle wide open. He was almost sorry that he wouldn't see Sentinel's face when he first realized how duped he'd been. A bot who lied every day of his life wouldn't take kindly to being lied to himself.
Starscream was now more concerned with a different aspect of his capture, the fact that he'd been knocked out long enough to drag back to Iacon and set up in that medical bay. His injuries hadn't been severe enough to justify such a long spell offline. He had the sense that he'd been kept unconscious deliberately for some reason.
And so he sped on, off to a barren area near some new shipwrecks which his soldiers had been investigating as of late. There, he landed and activated his distress beacon, setting it to broadcast over only a limited distance. Sooner or later, providing that the others were indeed following orders and not just goofing off, one of them should find him.
Shortly after dawn, Starscream finally received an answering ping to his distress call, and before long, one of his warriors, Thrust, came zooming down. He gawked at his leader, wondering aloud why he hadn't just flown back to their headquarters.
"Never mind that," Starscream told him irritably. The elation of having escaped had already worn off and he'd been reliving his cringeworthy encounter with Sentinel in far greater detail than he wanted to. "I need you to go back to base and find Soundwave. Give him these exact coordinates and tell him to come see me and bring his kit."
"His kit?" Thrust echoed.
"He'll know what I mean. Now go on. Quick as you can."
The chunky flier finally left. Starscream sat down again to wait some more.
When Soundwave arrived later, he was not alone. Shockwave had insisted on coming with him. Starscream was initially annoyed—his big purple lieutenant should have remained behind to maintain order and lead the others in his stead—but relented when he saw the other bot's obvious concern.
"What happened to you? Why did you want us to come out here?" Shockwave cried.
"Take it easy. I got captured and taken to Iacon City." He addressed his next words to Soundwave. "I can't detect them myself, but I think they tagged me. I was offline for a while."
Soundwave nodded his understanding and produced an instrument pack and started scanning. Starscream's suspicions proved well-founded. His second lieutenant, who was just as fine a scientific analyst as he was a fighter, found two tracking devices inserted far in under the armour plating on Starscream's back.
"I'll have to do some cutting to get them out," Soundwave said, and his patient resigned himself and got back down on the ground where he could better brace himself without flinching. Shockwave stomped back and forth while his colleague worked, seemingly more upset by the pain being inflicted on his leader than Starscream was himself.
"How did you get away?" he asked. "Iacon's cells are said to be inescapable."
"I wasn't in a cell. I was held in a medical bay."
"Why?" Soundwave intoned. He'd just retrieved the first tracker and reset his cutting tool to go in after the other one. "You don't appear to have sustained significant damage."
"Uh, it was— Okay, it was because of Sentinel. He ordered it."
"Sentinel was there?" Shockwave, startled, exclaimed. "Did he try to interrogate you?"
"No."
"But you spoke to him."
"Yes."
Starscream started at the sudden tearing sensation as the second tracker was plucked out. Soundwave irradiated the two devices before storing them for later study while Starscream got up and flexed his wings. The cuts hurt, but wouldn't interfere with his flying.
"And then you escaped from the medical bay?" Shockwave persisted.
Starscream started to flush. "No. I-I played weak and wounded and Sentinel fell for it. He had me transferred to a room near his quarters to finish recuperating and I managed to get away once there." He saw his two lieutenants glancing at one another. "Nothing happened!" he snapped. "D'you think I'd let Sentinel inside my mind now? Do you?"
"Your description of events implies caring," Soundwave said in his careful monotone. "On Sentinel's part."
"Yeah, well, I can't help that. But trust me, it's not mutual. I'll never let him near me again. Mostly because he'll likely take my head off if I do."
His obvious, escalating anger silenced the other two and they dropped it. When they flew home together, Soundwave and Shockwave only talked about other matters and updated him on the results of several scavenging hunts which his troops had undertaken during his absence, and for that he was grateful.
The entire incident with Sentinel left Starscream feeling exceptionally ill-tempered for days. To clear his head, he'd go on solitary patrols, a slightly stupid solution given what had just happened to him, but he reasoned that as long as he remained aloft that he'd be safe. On one such patrol, he detected a whole formation of unknown fliers coming his way and he looped about in an immediate one-eighty to avoid them. Then he noticed that one, unusually large contact was moving out far in advance of the others and he turned back to investigate. It wasn't long before he discovered that the flier who'd separated himself was Sentinel.
Starscream attacked the bigger jet instantly. Sentinel just tilted himself, almost lazily, to absorb the hits, and when Starscream hurtled past, he flipped himself to fire after him. One of his missiles came close enough to sizzle Starscream's entire tail assembly. He realized then that Sentinel's alt mode too was new and improved, and that the weapons he now carried could cripple Starscream or even half-tear him apart. He tried again to shoot down his opponent, but Sentinel was far more heavily armoured as well. All the damage Starscream inflicted was just surface damage.
He went into a circling pattern while Sentinel flew on with calm indifference, his very lack of concern a taunt. Starscream could still fly rings around the less agile jet and Sentinel couldn't be seriously harmed. It was a classic impasse.
Starscream edged gradually closer, maintaining the same elevation and heading as Sentinel, and was soon positioned next to him. They flew on like that for a time, side by side, the way they'd used to. The bigger, blue and gold jet was the first to speak.
"You tricked me, Starscream. I loved you and would have taken you back, but you deceived me."
The righteous hurt Sentinel tried to inject into his tone infuriated the other bot.
"Traitor! You murdered the Primes!" he screamed, "I know you've been stealing the miners' cogs and forcing them to mine energon for the Quintessons!"
A long pause followed during which both jets continued to fly on in tandem, peacefully, almost as if still friends. Then:
"Oh. So you know about all that, do you? Well, that's a shame. I'll have to order my troops to redouble their efforts and track down and kill every last one of you now."
"I'd like to see them try!" Starscream shouted back and threw on his burners and raced off. He had the sense that Sentinel had already contacted the fliers he'd kept back and that they'd enforce Sentinel's threat the instant they arrived. Starscream had no intention of hanging around to see if his hunch was right. He flew on at top speed until the very last vestige of any contact was gone from his screens and then sped on some more. He was a very tired bot when he finally deemed it safe and came back around in a great loop to the tangled pair of shipwrecks which the High Guard was using as their latest base.
Starscream never spoke with Sentinel again. Nor did he ever see him again in his aerial alt mode. A new commander began accompanying the vicious tracker teams sent to the surface to hunt the High Guard and Starscream assessed that it was because Sentinel had turned his attentions elsewhere and had his hands full appeasing the Quintessons. Starscream was glad that he wouldn't have to see his former lover anymore, even from afar. He hoped that whatever sick deals he was making with the ugly aliens would someday unravel and choke him.
to be continued...
