[Transformers] Ghost Unit | Eidolon
Series: The Ghost Unit
Title: Eidolon (#36)
Setting: IDW Transformers, inspired by the "What's Wrong with a Little Destruction" 'verse by ajremix.
Note: Many thanks to all my beta-readers on this one. You guys rocks. =)
Summary: In which things go awry and the Ghosts race to avert a disastrous situation.
Eidolon
"Still thou knowest that in the ardor of pursuit men lose sight of the goal from which they start."
~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
The actual mission itself had been simple enough. Infiltrate a Decepticon factory on the edges of contested territory while circumventing the security system, set the charges, leave. Watch the pretty fireworks from afar and congratulate each other on a job well done.
In actual practice, things turned out to be a great deal more complicated.
~*~
#Longshot? Something's wrong.#
#Callsign, you stay out of sight. If the rest of that seeker's trine are here, they'll spot you the second they get in range. Move out now!#
#But... that weird dust that was blocking my scans at ground level, on the factory grounds? The one with all the magnetized metal in it? It's cleared up. And I think this is really, really bad now!#
#...how bad are we talking here, partner.#
#There's a lot of mechs down there, Longshot. A lot of them seem hurt somehow, my scanners keep bounding off them at weird angles. And... they're really low on energy, all of them.#
#Oh no...#
~*~
#Field team - abort operation, repeat, abort operation!#
#Negative. Discovery counter-measures active. Abort no longer feasible.#
#That seeker?#
#Yes. Nearly twice now he's led a security team to us. We need to get out, our extraction window's getting smaller with every passing-#
#Standby. Incoming data paquet.#
The pause was long, moments ticking away heavily.
#...oh sweet Primus. Refugees. There are refuges within the blast radius.#
~*~
#We can't let those explosives go off, what in the pit are those fraggers doing there?! Even con civilians are idiots! This is a factory!# Shortfall squirmed, desperately clicking away at the portable unit he'd hooked up to the factory mainframe secondary systems. Even as he swore and cursed, he found a private memo from the factory manager. It explained how he'd let some refugees use the grounds for the night before evacuating his own mechs, unable to turn away so many in such desperate need. He'd handed over all of the medical reserves left as well, in the hopes of giving them a bit more time to reach a safer location. To live a bit longer.
Fat lot of good it did them now, Shortfall thought.
#It's too late. When that seeker nearly led that security team to us, I locked them down.# Fallout paused for a moment, no doubt focusing on keeping ahead of her pursuers. #Counter-measures are active, they'd have to be disarmed manually and there's no way we can do that now. The countdown won't stop and if we ring the external evacuation alarm, we'll only make things worse - if they bother to listen to it at all.#
The factory employees had cleared out earlier, due to the simple use of the self-destruct system's countdown. But the seeker who had shown up with a security team in tow had been a nasty, unpleasant kink in the works. Fallout had managed to lead them on a merry chase, but they were getting closer and closer to catching her and she'd had to stray much further from Shortfall than she would have preferred in order to remain out of their grasp.
Shortfall swore as he pounded away at the console and begged the mainframe to offer an answer. Any answer.
And then it did.
#There! That, look!# Schematics were passed along through the Ghosts' dataflow, critical issues outlined in an instant.
#The old weapons' hold outside?#
Shortfall nodded to himself, feverishly adding in more data, pulling in information from the mainframe and sending it back to Fallout.
#Yeah, see? Look, here and here. It's one of those really old holds, the solid ones with shielding that could withstand having a small planet dropped on ‘em without a scratch.# He paused, voice growing heavy. #Ain't got no power source. We could have the extraction team fix up those relays that are reported as broken, but without a power source- slaggitall, I don't know what to do. We can't let those refugees get killed, not like this.#
Not by us, were the unspoken words.
#But there is a power source.# Fallout's voice was grim. #And it's walking through these hallways as we speak.#
~*~
The others had left as ordered without a second thought, leaving him alone to discover why the factory self-destruct had apparently activated all on its own. Sabotage had been easy to divine as the cause. But as he stalked the hallways, alone, he hadn't expected the little spy to drop from the sky into his hands. Literally. Except it had been a vent and not the sky, but still. He preferred to think of it as the sky. It was only normal he would.
"This place is about to go up. Blast radius will extend to the outer perimeter."
Her words were choked, likely by the fact that he'd set her against a wall and started leaning. She was small - he was not. One hand was all he needed to keep her there.
"Then stop them."
"Too late. Countermeasures are active. No time for a manual disarm."
He hadn't expected that answer. ‘Die, you filthy Decepticons' wouldn't have surprised him. This... did. She seemed almost frantic, he realized, small vibrations he could pick up from her due to the way he was keeping her from moving. The hum of her engine, rolling with increasing speed, as though it would somehow make something happen faster. He knew that feeling. Only too well.
"Why do you care? Why would you literally-"
"Refugees. Outside. We didn't know. Magnetized dust warped our sensors." She was choking out the words, systems straining from the pressure he was putting her shell under, he realized and with a sudden numb feeling of shock at himself he eased up, not saying a word as she shifted slightly against his hand. "We were here to destroy a factory," she murmured, looking at him directly, optics calm and steady. "Not refugees. Not that." Horror lurked underneath the calm, he realized as he studied her further, the emotion leaking through in the hum of engines still cycling faster than they should for an unmoving bot.
"You haven't flown out. You could outdistance the blast," she said. The look she was giving him now was razor sharp, unyielding. "You could save yourself."
"I can't just leave them here." He hadn't realized he'd spoken until the echo of his helpless words drifted away in the confines of the observation room. Hollow, useless words, for a hollow and useless mech. He hated how she nodded then, would have killed her then and there were it not for the flash of hope directed his way. The determination ringing through her next words.
"Get them into the secured weapons hold on the first level. It can withstand the blast if you power it from your own reactors."
Rearing back, nearly dropping her in the process, the seeker stared at her in stunned shock.
"That's impossible! How-"
"We intercepted your communication, earlier. I saw you looking outside the observation window when the dust cleared. You always believed in the cause, didn't you? Overthrowing the oppressors. Freeing the slaves, the downtrodden, the abused. And now you don't know why you're doing this anymore, because it's obvious Megatron's lost sight of that somewhere along the line, he changed somehow, long ago. Only you don't know how to get out of this anymore, because you still believe and leaving would mean throwing away everything you've done to this point." She was talking quickly, frantically, the pressure the seeker was still exerting to keep her pinned to the wall uncomfortable, but no longer punishing. "Those refugees don't need to die. If you power that weapons hold with your own reactors, the shielding it's equipped with will hold. It's been repaired," she overrode him before he could protest. "We just didn't know what to power it with. It was the only thing we could think of to do, so we started working on it and hoped a power source would... become available."
Silence reigned, save for the sound of her own systems cycling, adjusting to the pressure being used to kept her pinned to the wall, and the low whine of the seeker's engines. Rattled, confused, angry. So very angry. Seekers sang their emotions whenever their control slipped and Fallout wondered if they knew how very alluring, how beautiful the sound was. She waited a moment longer as anger and confusion bled through the hallway, and then closed in for the kill.
"You can keep them calm. You're a Seeker. One of Megatron's elite. You tell them he sent you here to save them and they will follow you to the gates of the Pit itself."
"That would be a lie."
"It will make them listen to you. With the time left, that's all that matters."
"You were going to try to take me out. To save them." The question was curiously calm. Almost numb.
"Yes. We were." The emphasis on the last word did not escape him.
~*~
The seeker's engines roared, energy drained at a pace he didn't even notice. He braced himself on the wall before him, plumes of molten fire and energy trailing behind him as he focused and drew more power from within himself, fed it all to the shields surrounding the weapons hold. He remembered arguing with Megatron - the first time he had done so in forever. But not the first time he'd wanted to.
"That rabble? Save them? Of what use are they to me? What purpose could they possibly serve?"
He could hear low murmurs from the refugees, the words passing through him in gentle waves.
Confusion.
"Pathetic, broken husks with no strength, no meaning."
Awe.
"Those wretches aren't Decepticons. They're worthless to me."
Gratitude.
"Let them all perish."
He trembled as the blast hit, the aftermath roiling around them in a pitiless inferno. The draw on his resources from the shielding keeping them all safe grew and grew, until he could almost no longer sense where he was, or what he was doing. Almost, he slid down - almost he fell.
It was only later, when the safe signal which had been promised to him by the Autobot spy finally pinged through his awareness that he let his hands slide away from the wall, his engines powering down with weary, painful jolts. He didn't return a confirmation, suspecting that merely being there to receive the safe signal would be enough for them to know their plan had worked. The realization that he'd even considered sending a return confirmation shook him, moments later, until the weariness sweeping through his systems stole away his ability to remain upright.
The hands which had been helping him remain steady gently moved then, some shifting to support him as he sat down, a fall made gentle and slow. He had forgotten how much it could hurt, to power his thrusters so much yet not fly. The same hands which had reached out to support him when he'd wavered during the worse of the explosion now patted him gently in silent, respectful thankfulness. Voices murmured in concern while tattered, ragged mechs looked him over carefully. With hesitant smiles and wondering expressions, some offered him the last of their rations in the hope he would be all right, would not suffer for saving them while others opened the doors and let the stink of engine fuel and the lingering smoke the bunker's ventilation system hadn't been able to handle slowly clear from the hold.
What purpose could they possibly serve indeed, he thought to himself, smiling faintly at them in return before bowing his head in a silent, contemplative apology.
What worth did they have, the downtrodden and the dispossessed, who were giving him all that kept them alive with such earnest, caring expressions.
Title: Eidolon (#36)
Setting: IDW Transformers, inspired by the "What's Wrong with a Little Destruction" 'verse by ajremix.
Note: Many thanks to all my beta-readers on this one. You guys rocks. =)
Summary: In which things go awry and the Ghosts race to avert a disastrous situation.
Eidolon
"Still thou knowest that in the ardor of pursuit men lose sight of the goal from which they start."
~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
The actual mission itself had been simple enough. Infiltrate a Decepticon factory on the edges of contested territory while circumventing the security system, set the charges, leave. Watch the pretty fireworks from afar and congratulate each other on a job well done.
In actual practice, things turned out to be a great deal more complicated.
~*~
#Longshot? Something's wrong.#
#Callsign, you stay out of sight. If the rest of that seeker's trine are here, they'll spot you the second they get in range. Move out now!#
#But... that weird dust that was blocking my scans at ground level, on the factory grounds? The one with all the magnetized metal in it? It's cleared up. And I think this is really, really bad now!#
#...how bad are we talking here, partner.#
#There's a lot of mechs down there, Longshot. A lot of them seem hurt somehow, my scanners keep bounding off them at weird angles. And... they're really low on energy, all of them.#
#Oh no...#
~*~
#Field team - abort operation, repeat, abort operation!#
#Negative. Discovery counter-measures active. Abort no longer feasible.#
#That seeker?#
#Yes. Nearly twice now he's led a security team to us. We need to get out, our extraction window's getting smaller with every passing-#
#Standby. Incoming data paquet.#
The pause was long, moments ticking away heavily.
#...oh sweet Primus. Refugees. There are refuges within the blast radius.#
~*~
#We can't let those explosives go off, what in the pit are those fraggers doing there?! Even con civilians are idiots! This is a factory!# Shortfall squirmed, desperately clicking away at the portable unit he'd hooked up to the factory mainframe secondary systems. Even as he swore and cursed, he found a private memo from the factory manager. It explained how he'd let some refugees use the grounds for the night before evacuating his own mechs, unable to turn away so many in such desperate need. He'd handed over all of the medical reserves left as well, in the hopes of giving them a bit more time to reach a safer location. To live a bit longer.
Fat lot of good it did them now, Shortfall thought.
#It's too late. When that seeker nearly led that security team to us, I locked them down.# Fallout paused for a moment, no doubt focusing on keeping ahead of her pursuers. #Counter-measures are active, they'd have to be disarmed manually and there's no way we can do that now. The countdown won't stop and if we ring the external evacuation alarm, we'll only make things worse - if they bother to listen to it at all.#
The factory employees had cleared out earlier, due to the simple use of the self-destruct system's countdown. But the seeker who had shown up with a security team in tow had been a nasty, unpleasant kink in the works. Fallout had managed to lead them on a merry chase, but they were getting closer and closer to catching her and she'd had to stray much further from Shortfall than she would have preferred in order to remain out of their grasp.
Shortfall swore as he pounded away at the console and begged the mainframe to offer an answer. Any answer.
And then it did.
#There! That, look!# Schematics were passed along through the Ghosts' dataflow, critical issues outlined in an instant.
#The old weapons' hold outside?#
Shortfall nodded to himself, feverishly adding in more data, pulling in information from the mainframe and sending it back to Fallout.
#Yeah, see? Look, here and here. It's one of those really old holds, the solid ones with shielding that could withstand having a small planet dropped on ‘em without a scratch.# He paused, voice growing heavy. #Ain't got no power source. We could have the extraction team fix up those relays that are reported as broken, but without a power source- slaggitall, I don't know what to do. We can't let those refugees get killed, not like this.#
Not by us, were the unspoken words.
#But there is a power source.# Fallout's voice was grim. #And it's walking through these hallways as we speak.#
~*~
The others had left as ordered without a second thought, leaving him alone to discover why the factory self-destruct had apparently activated all on its own. Sabotage had been easy to divine as the cause. But as he stalked the hallways, alone, he hadn't expected the little spy to drop from the sky into his hands. Literally. Except it had been a vent and not the sky, but still. He preferred to think of it as the sky. It was only normal he would.
"This place is about to go up. Blast radius will extend to the outer perimeter."
Her words were choked, likely by the fact that he'd set her against a wall and started leaning. She was small - he was not. One hand was all he needed to keep her there.
"Then stop them."
"Too late. Countermeasures are active. No time for a manual disarm."
He hadn't expected that answer. ‘Die, you filthy Decepticons' wouldn't have surprised him. This... did. She seemed almost frantic, he realized, small vibrations he could pick up from her due to the way he was keeping her from moving. The hum of her engine, rolling with increasing speed, as though it would somehow make something happen faster. He knew that feeling. Only too well.
"Why do you care? Why would you literally-"
"Refugees. Outside. We didn't know. Magnetized dust warped our sensors." She was choking out the words, systems straining from the pressure he was putting her shell under, he realized and with a sudden numb feeling of shock at himself he eased up, not saying a word as she shifted slightly against his hand. "We were here to destroy a factory," she murmured, looking at him directly, optics calm and steady. "Not refugees. Not that." Horror lurked underneath the calm, he realized as he studied her further, the emotion leaking through in the hum of engines still cycling faster than they should for an unmoving bot.
"You haven't flown out. You could outdistance the blast," she said. The look she was giving him now was razor sharp, unyielding. "You could save yourself."
"I can't just leave them here." He hadn't realized he'd spoken until the echo of his helpless words drifted away in the confines of the observation room. Hollow, useless words, for a hollow and useless mech. He hated how she nodded then, would have killed her then and there were it not for the flash of hope directed his way. The determination ringing through her next words.
"Get them into the secured weapons hold on the first level. It can withstand the blast if you power it from your own reactors."
Rearing back, nearly dropping her in the process, the seeker stared at her in stunned shock.
"That's impossible! How-"
"We intercepted your communication, earlier. I saw you looking outside the observation window when the dust cleared. You always believed in the cause, didn't you? Overthrowing the oppressors. Freeing the slaves, the downtrodden, the abused. And now you don't know why you're doing this anymore, because it's obvious Megatron's lost sight of that somewhere along the line, he changed somehow, long ago. Only you don't know how to get out of this anymore, because you still believe and leaving would mean throwing away everything you've done to this point." She was talking quickly, frantically, the pressure the seeker was still exerting to keep her pinned to the wall uncomfortable, but no longer punishing. "Those refugees don't need to die. If you power that weapons hold with your own reactors, the shielding it's equipped with will hold. It's been repaired," she overrode him before he could protest. "We just didn't know what to power it with. It was the only thing we could think of to do, so we started working on it and hoped a power source would... become available."
Silence reigned, save for the sound of her own systems cycling, adjusting to the pressure being used to kept her pinned to the wall, and the low whine of the seeker's engines. Rattled, confused, angry. So very angry. Seekers sang their emotions whenever their control slipped and Fallout wondered if they knew how very alluring, how beautiful the sound was. She waited a moment longer as anger and confusion bled through the hallway, and then closed in for the kill.
"You can keep them calm. You're a Seeker. One of Megatron's elite. You tell them he sent you here to save them and they will follow you to the gates of the Pit itself."
"That would be a lie."
"It will make them listen to you. With the time left, that's all that matters."
"You were going to try to take me out. To save them." The question was curiously calm. Almost numb.
"Yes. We were." The emphasis on the last word did not escape him.
~*~
The seeker's engines roared, energy drained at a pace he didn't even notice. He braced himself on the wall before him, plumes of molten fire and energy trailing behind him as he focused and drew more power from within himself, fed it all to the shields surrounding the weapons hold. He remembered arguing with Megatron - the first time he had done so in forever. But not the first time he'd wanted to.
"That rabble? Save them? Of what use are they to me? What purpose could they possibly serve?"
He could hear low murmurs from the refugees, the words passing through him in gentle waves.
Confusion.
"Pathetic, broken husks with no strength, no meaning."
Awe.
"Those wretches aren't Decepticons. They're worthless to me."
Gratitude.
"Let them all perish."
He trembled as the blast hit, the aftermath roiling around them in a pitiless inferno. The draw on his resources from the shielding keeping them all safe grew and grew, until he could almost no longer sense where he was, or what he was doing. Almost, he slid down - almost he fell.
It was only later, when the safe signal which had been promised to him by the Autobot spy finally pinged through his awareness that he let his hands slide away from the wall, his engines powering down with weary, painful jolts. He didn't return a confirmation, suspecting that merely being there to receive the safe signal would be enough for them to know their plan had worked. The realization that he'd even considered sending a return confirmation shook him, moments later, until the weariness sweeping through his systems stole away his ability to remain upright.
The hands which had been helping him remain steady gently moved then, some shifting to support him as he sat down, a fall made gentle and slow. He had forgotten how much it could hurt, to power his thrusters so much yet not fly. The same hands which had reached out to support him when he'd wavered during the worse of the explosion now patted him gently in silent, respectful thankfulness. Voices murmured in concern while tattered, ragged mechs looked him over carefully. With hesitant smiles and wondering expressions, some offered him the last of their rations in the hope he would be all right, would not suffer for saving them while others opened the doors and let the stink of engine fuel and the lingering smoke the bunker's ventilation system hadn't been able to handle slowly clear from the hold.
What purpose could they possibly serve indeed, he thought to himself, smiling faintly at them in return before bowing his head in a silent, contemplative apology.
What worth did they have, the downtrodden and the dispossessed, who were giving him all that kept them alive with such earnest, caring expressions.