ERRORS IN JUDGEMENT OF THE PERSONAL KIND

Part Eight

Another sighting of fliers from Iacon City was reported by a different long patrol, which only confirmed the High Guard's need to relocate. Nobody wanted anything to do with the Cybertronians they'd left behind. All of them already felt a certain antipathy towards them, just because of what they represented, and Megatron, of course, had his own personal reasons for outright hating them. They all moved faster to complete their preparations and hasten the eve of their departure for the geothermal plant site.

Few bots were as relieved about their move the next day than the two bigger civilians, Fester and Darkwing. They'd been working hard almost non-stop during the transitional period of the past several days ferrying loads of equipment and supplies up to the new base. Somewhat unfortunately for them both, they really were the best suited for such tasks. Fester was the only bot whose aerial configuration was truly made for carrying anything, whether goods or an incapacitated fellow bot or two, and Darkwing could speedily carry a huge amount of weight even when in robot mode and just using his heel thrusters. It was, somewhat sadly, also Darkwing's only real saving grace, his capacity for hard labour, and the main reason he was still alive. Megatron had come very close to just outright killing him upon their first meeting, far closer than Darkwing would ever know, and it was only a smidgeon of pragmatism which had stopped the silver leader from committing what he would have considered justifiable murder.

It was also thanks to Megatron's discovery that his former mining supervisor made for a dandy personal aerial transport that Darkwing's current standing had bumped up a few more notches, for which he should have been grateful. Naturally, Darkwing didn't see it that way at all. He still felt mortified by what had been asked of him and resented having been disciplined by Megatron's intimidating first lieutenant, whom he now feared almost as much as Megatron himself. Thus it was that when finally released from his duties late in the evening of their last day in the old ship that he went straight to his berth and lay down and turned his back to the whole horrible world which comprised his new existence.

Fester, who'd just finished up with his own work and the only other civvie present in their corner at the moment, stared at Darkwing in disbelief. The bigger bot had just barged right past him as if he didn't even exist. It really pissed Fester off. The medic had been looking forward to an hour's worth or so of relaxing before turning in and maybe getting Darkwing to actually have a chat with him. It wasn't like he had many options for company either, given that the other three civilians, Gyro, Cutter and Fletcher, were already up at the new base with Soundwave and staying there overnight. He thought about going over towards the bay's common rooms and maybe approaching some of the fliers, but was a touch leery given their aggressive natures. The High Guard warriors all had their own codes and ideas of what constituted appropriate behaviour, even when socializing, and Fester hadn't quite worked out the subtleties yet. All he was sure of was that most of them were high-strung and very easy to provoke into violence.

The blue and grey medic looked again at Darkwing's unmoving form. He'd heard all about Megatron's ride by now and Shockwave's smacking Darkwing upside the head afterwards for daring to express his displeasure. It had made him laugh, of course, but right now, with the subject of his amusement lying right there and so obviously distraught again over who knew what, he began reconsidering.

Fester all at once jumped up and went to the stack of boxed items piled against the wall near his own berth. One last load of stuff he meant to carry up to the new base tomorrow… He rummaged through the pile until he found the boxful he wanted and brought it over to their table, then went over to Darkwing's berth.

"Hey, Darkwing! C'mon, get up." Gingerly, he stretched out a leg and poked the broad back with his foot. "There's something we need to do."

The other bot rolled over, thankfully without taking a swing at him, and stared back with irritation.

"What?"

"You heard me. Get up and go sit at the table. Doctor's orders."

He knew it sounded ridiculous, yet Darkwing complied without further protest. Then he sat there just as requested, tense and upright, and regarded Fester warily when the medic started pulling items out of his box.

"Okay. So you know what this is about, right?" Fester asked, trying to sound chipper and upbeat.

"No."

"No? Well, you're carrying Megatron up to the new base tomorrow, aren't you? So you need to look good. Clean, at least, if nothing else, but I'll try to get a decent shine on your aerial exteriors."

Darkwing's wariness altered into genuine surprise. He said nothing back, but did continue complying and offered no resistance when Fester pushed him forward a little to better expose his back structures. Fester started working on the smooth panels with his little hand grinder, using a curry pad for gentle surface cleaning. It always did the trick for him when there wasn't time or the opportunity to use proper cleansing fluids and solvents. As soon as he got one part grime-free, he'd switch to a proper hand polisher to bring out the lustre in his patient's inherent livery. Darkwing wasn't quite as monotoned as he'd first appeared. Once buffed up, his colours revealed a nice mutable sheen, with some areas gleaming more purplish than blue and the yellowish accents turning golden.

The distinctive, familiar sounds of all the grinding and polishing going on soon attracted the attention of numerous fliers, most of them from Thundercracker's and Turbo's squadrons; Darkwing had been working under those two particular squadron leaders' supervision the most ever since joining the High Guard. They gathered round and watched with especial interest when Fester switched to polishing rags to hand-shine up Darkwing's helmet. Given that he hadn't been built for combat, the helm encasing Darkwing's head was quite a bit more decorative and elegant than what they were used to seeing.

Fester smiled to himself as he continued working, unperturbed by his audience's avid staring. Looked like he wouldn't have to go searching for some decent conversationalists after all. They'd come to him, even if their primary purpose was to ogle the bot he was cleaning up. On a naughty whim and to get even more of a rise out of them, Fester ditched his polishing rag for a proper fresh cleaning cloth and a bit of precious salvaged solvent safe for use on amorphous alloy surfaces.

"Eyes closed," he said to Darkwing, who dutifully did as told so he could wipe over the big bot's entire face. Fester was sure he heard several of the fliers suck in their breaths when he carefully cleaned Darkwing's lips. Randy pervs, Fester thought, stifling a laugh.

Pervs or not, the lot of them proved more with it than Darkwing himself and understood exactly why it was that Fester was putting so much effort into polishing up his colleague. He overheard a couple commenting on how pleased their new leader would be when he saw how good everyone looked the next day, for the fliers too had been primping themselves off and on in anticipation. Then one of them finally addressed Darkwing directly.

"You're lucky. You get to lead the parade tomorrow," he said, and that remark, more than anything else, seemed to finally ease something within Darkwing. Fester could see and even feel him relaxing beneath his ministrating hands. Interesting…

All the fliers got a little more brazen after that and stuck around while Fester finished up with Darkwing's chest and arms, mostly cracking jokes at one another's expense. Like the two civvies, they were all done for the day and just killing time until they retired. Watching the medic handle Darkwing's body was also giving them a bit of a buzz and there was no way they were going to miss out on that, even if it ran late and they had to give up some sleep in the end.

"Hey, if you're offering free cleaning services," one of the fliers snarked at Fester, "I'm next up for a polish."

"What for?" Fester shot back. "It's not like Megatron would ever lower himself to ride aboard your sorry carcass."

That prompted a round of laughter before the snarky flier could reply.

"Ooo, listen to that! Doc's got a mouth on him. Hey, Doc, when are you going to start doing some, like, actual medical stuff? All I ever see you do is carry a bunch of crap around."

"There's a proper functional bay in the new base we're moving to," Fester explained without missing a beat as he stretched out Darkwing's other big arm on the table prior to restarting his grinder. "Or at least that's what I've been told. It's taking a while to get together the materials and tools I need. Why? You got an urgent problem?"

"Yeah. I've got a sticky digit. It's hard to straighten out."

"Let me guess. It's the middle one. In which case, I recommend amputation."

More laughter rippled around the little group. The only bot who didn't laugh was Darkwing, but he did smile. Two fliers out of the bunch who'd been surreptitiously eyeing his gorgeous mauve face all along, sighed, and another suppressed a very faint moan.

Fester grinned happily as he finished up with Darkwing while he continued to banter with the watching High Guard warriors. They were undeniably a rough crowd and potentially dangerous, yet he liked them and was looking forward to becoming more familiar with them as individuals once he began tending to their service needs. He also wondered how long it would take them to break through Darkwing's still oblivious exterior and convince him to start accommodating certain other needs of theirs. Darkwing had to be the most insensible mech Fester had ever seen when it came to personal matters.

Darkwing was still wearing a relatively pleasant expression when Fester announced that his grooming session was over by rapping him on the head with his knuckles along with a brusque, "Okay, that's it. Better go get some rest. And if you get yourself dirty again before tomorrow morning, you can slagging well polish yourself up next time." The big dark blue bot got up and mumbled his thanks before retiring to his makeshift bed as suggested. Fester just nodded back. The last of their flier visitors likewise began to fade away. The blue and grey medic waited until they were all gone before he started boxing up his tools again, making sure everything was placed just so and secure for the trip tomorrow. Fester still wasn't exactly sure what had possessed him to insist on getting Darkwing to let him clean and polish him up for Megatron, but given the results, he was glad that he'd done it. Maybe he'd just gotten fed up with Darkwing's dragging himself around, looking either depressed or sour all the time. If it took some aggressive forced friendship to pull him out of it and turn him into better company, well, so be it.

Fester's half-assed show of kindness paid off again big-time the following day. Early the next morning, while the entire High Guard was still assembling on the ground, Shockwave made a point of seeking out Darkwing and pulling him aside to have him ready and waiting for their leader's use just as soon as Megatron decided that it was time to leave. He walked slowly around the big blue civvie and inspected him critically while Darkwing stood there, nervous and apprehensive and half-expecting to be smacked again, just because. But instead, he heard a satisfied, "Good!", after which Shockwave moved on to look over the fliers. Darkwing was so surprised that he could have been knocked over at that moment with the proverbial feather. He made a mental note to himself then and there to always subscribe to Fester's advice and wishes in the future, no matter how annoying the medic could be.

Everyone was soon in the air. Megatron, aboard Darkwing, took the lead, with Shockwave next to him in his own striking purple and silver compact jet alt. Turbo had merged all four squadrons of the High Guard warriors into a diamond formation and they followed, with their lone rotary-powered member, Fester, bringing up the rear. Fester's design was actually jet-augmented for the swifter transport of casualties out of precarious situations—he even had heel thrusters of limited power—and he had no trouble keeping up. The medic couldn't help noticing that the red and white jet directly in front of him, the very last member of Skywarp's squadron, was Starscream, and he felt a twinge of sympathy for him. It had to be rough on him to see all the other fliers he'd used to command being placed ahead of him.

In truth, Starscream wasn't as upset as Fester imagined he might be. He was still feeling too numb and empty to entertain any resentment or much of anything else. The emergence of his last repressed memories of Sentinel and subsequent meltdown several days ago had hit him hard and he was still sorting himself out and trying to come to terms with what he'd remembered. Flying along with nothing much to do except maintain his proper spacing suited him just fine. It gave him additional thinking time to try and understand what sort of person he'd been so passionately involved with for so long.

And that was always the sticking point, the passion. In his capacity as the leader of the High Guard, Starscream had always believed that criminals of the lowest moral character, the ones who murdered without remorse or who took pleasure in tormenting and killing their fellow Cybertronians, had to be incapable of caring for anyone but themselves. Yet Sentinel had loved him, of that he was certain. Starscream could even pinpoint to the day when Sentinel's feelings for him had first gone from physical attraction and liking to something deeper and he knew that Sentinel had likewise felt it when Starscream had begun loving him back. That was one of the great safeguards of interfacing, that guarantee that only bots with honest good intentions towards one another would be likely to engage in such vulnerable intimacies. It was also why Starscream had gotten the hell away from Sentinel as quickly as he could back when he'd been briefly held captive after his former lover had appointed himself a Prime. Starscream might have been able to dupe Sentinel into believing that he wanted to come back to him with his false words and actions. Actual interfacing would have instantly revealed the complete opposite, that Starscream feared and hated him and wanted him dead. Starscream still wasn't sure whether Sentinel had become depraved enough back then that he would have eventually forced him to submit in order to learn the truth. He did remember being terrified of the mere possibility of it.

Was there something about himself which had managed to draw out some part of Sentinel which had remained good and pure despite his traitorous descent into treachery, murder, and narcissistic deceit? That was the most flattering answer, flattering to himself, Starscream thought, but he didn't really know. The most depressing thing about the whole affair was that Sentinel really had been the only bot he'd ever truly loved. All his other relationships before he came along had been casual and usually fleeting.

The flier in front of Starscream began slowing down and he came out of his funk just in time to throttle back himself. Great…he'd almost run into Nacelle's aft… Another black mark against him had Megatron noticed. He scanned the ground and recognized the topography and realized that they'd almost reached their destination. Starscream started paying more attention to his flying. He didn't want to mess up something as simple as a group landing.

Before they did land, their current captain, Turbo, had a surprise in store for them. He led them past a watching Megatron and Shockwave in a proper aerial parade review, something which none of them had participated in since before the death of all the Primes. It emphasized just how much safer the skies had become since Sentinel's fall, that the entire High Guard dared gather together all at once to even do such a thing without worrying about being attacked by Quintessons or Cybertronian Death Trackers, and it restored a touch of normalcy to their lives. Starscream found himself especially enthused; he'd always loved aerial parades and flypasts. Of course, he'd typically used to participate by leading the formations instead of being stuck at the very back, but it was still better than not taking part at all.

Coming in to a new base which was already prepared and waiting for them was another treat. The hangar bay of their latest shipwrek had again been turned into a common area with a refueling pitstop set up in its very center, another retrieved cache of stolen solidified energon plus several barrels of the raw liquid version which had been harvested from a nearby stream of it. They were actually in a good spot insofar as the energon situation went. There was plenty of it flowing nearby, yet not so much that it would ever attract the attention of the Quintessons should they start trying to raid it off the surface again. They'd go straight to the biggest available concentration of it, the aptly named Energon Sea, which luckily happened to be on the other side of the planet.

Their accommodations were a little better at the new location too. Even Turbo, the senior squadron leader, got his own cabin this time, although the three junior leaders still had to share. Starscream had also been assigned to communal housing, himself and five of his squadron mates, and that was fine with him. He didn't expect to spend much time in his quarters anyway.

No, what Starscream really wanted to see was what he, Skywarp, and the others hadn't dared to investigate the first time they'd been up looking over the geothermal plant site, the interior of the volcano which their ship had almost crashed into when it was shot out of the sky many decades ago. It had almost taken out the geothermal plant too as it skidded past—one could still see evidence of the long furrow the wreck had left behind. One could get inside the volcano by either flying down its very throat and putting up with the brief furnace blast of its rising heat or walking through a natural keyhole fissure in the side of its cone, which some of the visiting fliers had earlier cleared and opened up again after a partial wall collapse. The keyhole was only a short walk away from the ship and that path too had been cleaned up. Many of the High Guard were already thinking of the volcano as something of a potential social center, a place where they could relax in different surroundings…very different surroundings.

Getting fully organized inside their new headquarters and setting up duty schedules for the week to come kept everyone busy for the remainder of the day, and it wasn't until nightfall before Starscream finally got his chance to stroll over to check out their volcanic neighbour. A lot of other people did the same thing. Now that everyone had been reassured that there was no danger, even the most skittish of the fliers was happy to go underground where they'd be cozy-warm and safe from the elements and aerial attack and a host of other nasty things.

The interior did indeed prove quite spectacular. The volcano proper had once been typically explosive, the phase during which it had built up its steep-sided exterior. Then its very nature had changed, the magma inside becoming hotter and much more liquid while the reservoir supplying it began to subside. The extraordinary heat of it plus the changing levels carved out the very center of the cone, bored long new outlets that stretched away beneath the adjacent plains, and in time left behind a series of natural flat terraces, mostly empty tubes with sunken troughs and fissures where the hottest magma still fountained up and flowed, and a big lake of slowly boiling cooler lava set directly beneath the open crater now far overhead. Almost every hard surface was coated with smooth obsidian. Walking about on it was like walking on black glass that glittered and refracted the orange-red glow of the lava lake and the brighter fires of the contained fissure eruptions.

Starscream spotted quite a few of his fellow fliers already present and looking about with the same wonder and appreciation which he himself felt and thought that he might have even seen the distinctive gleam of Shockwave's single eye further along and up on one of the other terraces. Oh yes, a potential social center indeed. He could already imagine the names…the Lava Lounge…the Hotspot…

His peripheral vision caught an unexpected flash of flaming silver and he turned his head and saw Megatron himself marching towards him, his gleaming body reflecting the nearby fires. He hadn't thought about his leader wanting to see the volcanic sights too or walking over ahead of him. Guilt instantly stiffened the flier and he prepared himself for a possible confrontation by squaring himself up and lifting his head high and looking the other bot in the eye as he came closer. He didn't dare appear weak. He already knew what Megatron did to weaklings.

His leader wasn't looking for another fight or even to chastise him. He said, "Tell me about Shockwave's strengths and weaknesses."

Starscream, surprised, answered as best he could. Megatron asked him about several other High Guard members and listened carefully to what Starscream had to say in response every time. Then, apparently satisfied, he afforded Starscream a curt nod before striding off. The flier started breathing normally again. He hadn't expected that the mighty mech who'd defeated him so easily would be asking his advice reference personnel matters!

Their quiet one-on-one hadn't gone unnoticed. A number of the other fliers came up to him as soon as they dared, nosy and wanting to know more. "What was that about?" Skywarp asked.

"Yes," Thundercracker added. "It looked like he was questioning you."

"He was. He wanted to know what I thought of all you unruly scrapheaps. He's probably regretting taking you on right now."

The fact that Starscream was feeling light-hearted enough to joke around with them, relaxed and reassured the others in turn. "So does this mean you're back in charge of us?" one of them asked.

A reasonable assumption… Starscream considered his reply before making it. "He's thinking about it, perhaps. There's nothing official, though. Turbo's still our captain for now."

Unspoken was his relief that a slight shift in his standing appeared to have occurred. A fusion cannon pressed to his face had cost Starscream his leadership, and a single, civilized conversation with the bot who'd wielded that cannon, out in the open where everyone could see it, had already improved his status…amazing. He hoped that Megatron was still nearby and had noticed all the activity going on in his wake.

The lot of them fell to chattering away amongst themselves after that, much of it expressing their excitement over leaving Iacon City further and further behind and speculating about Megatron's plans, and they continued to stand in a loose group about Starscream while they did so. His confidence, already on the rise, continued to soar.

Eventually, the impromptu meeting broke up and the others began to drift away until only Starscream and one other flier were left on the natural terrace of stone facing the lava fountains. The other bot had more compact wings than most and an uncommon matte finish to much of his camo-coloured exterior, and he was already well familiar to Starscream. He was one of the High Guard members who'd offered him friendship in addition to his obedience and loyalty in the past, and for a time, before Sentinel, he'd been one of Starscream's occasional lovers as well.

Harrier was still fond of his former leader, and although he'd turned away from him along with all the rest to follow D-16 who became Megatron, he was happy to begin relating to Starscream again as more of a fellow colleague rather than the aloof, angry captain he'd been for so many years. Of course, much of that aloofness had been due to the disastrous turn taken by poor Starscream's involvement with the former false Prime, Harrier thought.

"Megatron wouldn't have asked you for your opinions unless he meant to keep you in a position of authority," Harrier pointed out now. "He knows he'll need a lot of help. Everyone in charge does."

Starscream glanced at the other bot. Harrier often came off as soft-spoken and thoughtful, something which would have earned him never-ending torment and ridicule from the others had he not also been such a ferocious, brutal fighter on the battlefield. Starscream had always liked that disparity in his personality and he liked the way his fierce crimson eyes contrasted with his gentle pale green face.

"You may be right," Starscream said. "I hope so."

He gazed off as if mesmerized by the dancing of the lava fountains and Harrier took the hint and walked away. Starscream swiveled his head to watch him leave. Then, Harrier turned his own head, to look back over his shoulder, and their eyes met.

Starscream felt no jolt, just the sudden surprising warmth of memories he'd thought long forgotten and beyond retrieval bubbling up. The other bot too was pleased to have caught Starscream staring after him. He flashed a grin before flipping his head back around and continued on with a springier step. Starscream sighed. The pretty camo-coloured flier had always been supportive and good to him and they'd been good together. He considered whether it mightn't be time to allow a little warmth back into his life.

to be continued...