Part 3 of 3
Title: Falling stars
Setting: G1
Rating: PG/13 (For more than a little implied cursing both human and mech)
Characters: Cosmos, Skyfire, Ratchet, Spike, Sparkplug
Prompt: Cosmos/Skyfire: Warmth
Summary: Warmth can bring life but it can also kill, especially if you've got too much of it.
This took longer to get done than I'd anticipated, and grew much bigger. But here is part 3 of 3 for the tf_rare_pairing December challenge. Any one interested in just what kinda of mad orbital high-jinks Cosmos is trying should check this out
Space was so cold it burned, burnt its way along damaged lines and gnawed at circuits killing a mech slowly. Skyfire knew it, he was rapidly succumbing to the icy grip of death even as Cosmos worked and swore and worked some more at getting him lose of the rocks that held him.
I should hate the cold, Skyfire thought to himself I should fight to live but the promise of rest is so tempting… so very, very tempting.
Cosmos felt his own pump stutter as Skyfire’s systems began to power down suddenly; while the shuttle was badly damaged, it wasn’t bad enough to cause sudden deactivation.
{No you don’t!} Cosmos yelled over the comm. line {I’m not fragging well loosing you now, not here and not bloody well like this!}
The human curse caught Skyfire’s attention, it sounded so odd to hear such an organic phrase in the vocalizer of a mech. He struggled to focus on Comsos’ rant, it was fairly obvious that he'd been listening in to the world’s communications as curses in most of the major and quiet a few minor languages flowed into the silence of space. It was an intriguing mash up of languages and cultures and on most cycles it would have held Skyfire's attention but the beguiling cold of space had too firm a grip on him and he let the words slide over him.
Cosmos was sliding into outright panic now, he only had basic training in this sort of field repair and any space going mechs worst fear was being unable to save his comrade. Wiggling under Skyfire he found the last rock spire holding Skyfire fast and broke it as gently as he could wincing at the cloud of energon and coolant that crystallized about him. Cosmos activated his engines and gently pushed Skyfire up and off the rock that had tried very hard to kill him.
Skyfire only barely registered the burst of pain or the movement that followed it, in his fuddled state nothing mattered much except the faint voice that wheedled and coaxed over the comm. line, why the voice mattered so much he didn’t know but in the frozen darkness of his CPU it was a tiny spark of warmth that for some reason he was unwilling to let go out.
Engines straining at full power to push Skyfire’s mass towards earth Cosmos was just grateful that the comm. line was still working even if it was the one way ULF band. He fired off a rapid salvo of emergency packets towards earth on every other frequency he could manage, some humans where going to find their evening viewing and listening interrupted but right now he really didn’t care, so long as Ratchet was ready for them when he got Skyfire down to ground.
Of course that did rather bring the problem he’d been putting off thinking about right back into mid processor. Right now the biggest problem was the cold of space, but all too soon an excess of heat was going to prove just as fatal to Skyfire. The holes in his outer skin had rendered his heat shield useless in a conventional deep space re-entry path, and even a low earth orbit path would almost certainly tear him apart. Cosmos racked his CPU for a solution to the problem as he powered towards earth, and then there it was, an old idea tested only in suborbital craft but with a lot of work and fancy orbital mechanics he might just make if work.
{Hold on Skyfire, I’ll get you home and warm. Just gonna need to pull a few crazy stunts.} Cosmos reassured his silent cargo.
Well more than a few he thought as he computed the flight path they’d need to take, at least the torn and buckled plates dotted over Skyfire would help in this rather than hinder. Shifting his position he burned his engines to slow them down as much as he could and angled Skyfire up into a high drag attitude as they skimmed the top of earth’s atmosphere.
The sudden warmth on his underside jerked Skyfire out of his haze enough for some of the sensor readings to make sense. {What ... doing?} He broadcast weakly.
Cosmos had to exert all his control not to let their path wobble as he heard that, the first sign that Skyfire was still online. {Something crazy enough to get me grounded permanently, if any of those ground pounders understood the first thing about de-orbiting} He told Skyfire bluntly {Can you throw all your flaps? Need as much high drag as possible.}
Skyfire considered this, and decided he really didn’t want to know. The warmth had pulled him just far enough back to full function for him to want more of it. A few moments of struggle over semi frozen and burnt out systems and he’d managed to open about a third of his flaps and his air brakes.
The effect was instantly noticeable in their speed and Cosmos had to fight to stabilise their path in the thickening air. Another few high drag orbits to lose speed and they began to descend into thicker air, and here the air did begin to heat as they passed, thin ephemeral fingers of fire snatching at them, warming armour chilled by space and thawing frozen fluids. Cosmos winced at the shimmering flame that trailed out behind them, that was burning coolant and he couldn’t tell which of them was leaking it, the rough friction of the air had widened a few of his own holes.
Skyfire rejoiced, fuzzily, at the warm fingers, they crept in through the gaping holes in his plating, chasing away the ice. He felt the warmth sliding along the struts of his wings from both sides the ice that had frozen his flight controls sublimating in the hot air. Some of that warmth began to reach core systems and his CPU began to load up his higher function causing several of the sensor reports that he’d been blithely ignoring to practically leap in front of his slowly cycling CPU demanding he do something - now!
{Uh, Cos?} Skyfire started, not the most brilliant opening but he could now see just how hard the small saucer was working.
Cosmos only just heard him and knew just what he was asking{Yeah, it’s not quite working.}
An understatement, they where too steep and too fast and the air was beginning to burn and roar as they tore through it. Skyfire dumped his pilot subroutines into memory, winced as he felt a few tiles get torn from the trail edge of his wings and fought to get any engine burning. Cosmos had shut down all his pain receptors and was near to burning out his engine trying to correct their attitude, shoving the mass of a mech as big as Skyfire around in the vacuum of space was one thing, doing it under earth’s gravity and the extra g’s involved in re-entry was quite another. Skyfire’s main engine coughed, misfired and billowed smoke, he cursed as colourfully as Cosmos had been earlier and tried again. It caught and flamed, only at a third of its power but that would do. In a continuous flow of numbers and vectors that only another flyer stood any hope of understanding they struggled to correct their path and save themselves from burning up.
Descent only partly under control they speed across the night sky like a falling star, the thicker air blazing with their passing. Heat resistant tiles and sections of armour were ripped away by the firestorm, struts began to weaken and buckle under the heat leaking energon ignited adding to the inferno. Firing all his working thrusters in one last, desperate bid to shallow the path Skyfire felt wiring begin to melt and sensors and systems die, Cosmos had lost his main engine and his thrusters where winking out one by one.
“Is that bad?” a young man asked in the silence looking up appalled at the shower of falling fireballs.
“Better than them burning all the way to ground.” His father replied, remembering many burning falling rockets.
Scanners at full stretch half the Ark was gathered outside trying to track the incoming pairs trajectory, there was a sound like an approaching train and then the forest began to sway violently and a mostly white lump of metal sped towards the Ark. It impacted, bounced and landed again setting light to the scrub around it, sliding along the ground for at least a mile it came to rest almost outside the main entrance.
Ratchet came skidding to his own stop beside what was now clearly the burnt and mangled remains of Skyfire, his attention was drawn to the scorched nosecone by a wobble of black and green.
Cosmos looked up at Ratchet, the remains of his armour pinging as it cooled and slurred out “Told you we were coming in hot” before surrendering to the welcome oblivion of stasis.
It was a long time later when they found themselves free from Ratchets care and outside perched on to of the Ark in the night gazing up at the glittering brilliance of the stars.
“An inhospitable place really” Skyfire mused “you either freeze or fry.”
“There’s an equal chance of getting blown to atoms by super nova or crushed to atoms by a black hole.” Cosmos added to the list of perils.
Skyfire nodded voice a bit wistful “But it is very beautiful all the same.”
Cosmos couldn’t deny that, how ever dangerous space was their place and it called them, “Get’s a bit cold and lonely that high up.”
Skyfire smiled gently at him “The warmth of our friendship will always travel there with you.”
Cosmos smiled back at him and gently lent against his friend, yes they would always have each other, down here or up there. And he was grateful for it.
Setting: G1
Rating: PG/13 (For more than a little implied cursing both human and mech)
Characters: Cosmos, Skyfire, Ratchet, Spike, Sparkplug
Prompt: Cosmos/Skyfire: Warmth
Summary: Warmth can bring life but it can also kill, especially if you've got too much of it.
This took longer to get done than I'd anticipated, and grew much bigger. But here is part 3 of 3 for the tf_rare_pairing December challenge. Any one interested in just what kinda of mad orbital high-jinks Cosmos is trying should check this out
Space was so cold it burned, burnt its way along damaged lines and gnawed at circuits killing a mech slowly. Skyfire knew it, he was rapidly succumbing to the icy grip of death even as Cosmos worked and swore and worked some more at getting him lose of the rocks that held him.
I should hate the cold, Skyfire thought to himself I should fight to live but the promise of rest is so tempting… so very, very tempting.
Cosmos felt his own pump stutter as Skyfire’s systems began to power down suddenly; while the shuttle was badly damaged, it wasn’t bad enough to cause sudden deactivation.
{No you don’t!} Cosmos yelled over the comm. line {I’m not fragging well loosing you now, not here and not bloody well like this!}
The human curse caught Skyfire’s attention, it sounded so odd to hear such an organic phrase in the vocalizer of a mech. He struggled to focus on Comsos’ rant, it was fairly obvious that he'd been listening in to the world’s communications as curses in most of the major and quiet a few minor languages flowed into the silence of space. It was an intriguing mash up of languages and cultures and on most cycles it would have held Skyfire's attention but the beguiling cold of space had too firm a grip on him and he let the words slide over him.
Cosmos was sliding into outright panic now, he only had basic training in this sort of field repair and any space going mechs worst fear was being unable to save his comrade. Wiggling under Skyfire he found the last rock spire holding Skyfire fast and broke it as gently as he could wincing at the cloud of energon and coolant that crystallized about him. Cosmos activated his engines and gently pushed Skyfire up and off the rock that had tried very hard to kill him.
Skyfire only barely registered the burst of pain or the movement that followed it, in his fuddled state nothing mattered much except the faint voice that wheedled and coaxed over the comm. line, why the voice mattered so much he didn’t know but in the frozen darkness of his CPU it was a tiny spark of warmth that for some reason he was unwilling to let go out.
Engines straining at full power to push Skyfire’s mass towards earth Cosmos was just grateful that the comm. line was still working even if it was the one way ULF band. He fired off a rapid salvo of emergency packets towards earth on every other frequency he could manage, some humans where going to find their evening viewing and listening interrupted but right now he really didn’t care, so long as Ratchet was ready for them when he got Skyfire down to ground.
Of course that did rather bring the problem he’d been putting off thinking about right back into mid processor. Right now the biggest problem was the cold of space, but all too soon an excess of heat was going to prove just as fatal to Skyfire. The holes in his outer skin had rendered his heat shield useless in a conventional deep space re-entry path, and even a low earth orbit path would almost certainly tear him apart. Cosmos racked his CPU for a solution to the problem as he powered towards earth, and then there it was, an old idea tested only in suborbital craft but with a lot of work and fancy orbital mechanics he might just make if work.
{Hold on Skyfire, I’ll get you home and warm. Just gonna need to pull a few crazy stunts.} Cosmos reassured his silent cargo.
Well more than a few he thought as he computed the flight path they’d need to take, at least the torn and buckled plates dotted over Skyfire would help in this rather than hinder. Shifting his position he burned his engines to slow them down as much as he could and angled Skyfire up into a high drag attitude as they skimmed the top of earth’s atmosphere.
The sudden warmth on his underside jerked Skyfire out of his haze enough for some of the sensor readings to make sense. {What ... doing?} He broadcast weakly.
Cosmos had to exert all his control not to let their path wobble as he heard that, the first sign that Skyfire was still online. {Something crazy enough to get me grounded permanently, if any of those ground pounders understood the first thing about de-orbiting} He told Skyfire bluntly {Can you throw all your flaps? Need as much high drag as possible.}
Skyfire considered this, and decided he really didn’t want to know. The warmth had pulled him just far enough back to full function for him to want more of it. A few moments of struggle over semi frozen and burnt out systems and he’d managed to open about a third of his flaps and his air brakes.
The effect was instantly noticeable in their speed and Cosmos had to fight to stabilise their path in the thickening air. Another few high drag orbits to lose speed and they began to descend into thicker air, and here the air did begin to heat as they passed, thin ephemeral fingers of fire snatching at them, warming armour chilled by space and thawing frozen fluids. Cosmos winced at the shimmering flame that trailed out behind them, that was burning coolant and he couldn’t tell which of them was leaking it, the rough friction of the air had widened a few of his own holes.
Skyfire rejoiced, fuzzily, at the warm fingers, they crept in through the gaping holes in his plating, chasing away the ice. He felt the warmth sliding along the struts of his wings from both sides the ice that had frozen his flight controls sublimating in the hot air. Some of that warmth began to reach core systems and his CPU began to load up his higher function causing several of the sensor reports that he’d been blithely ignoring to practically leap in front of his slowly cycling CPU demanding he do something - now!
{Uh, Cos?} Skyfire started, not the most brilliant opening but he could now see just how hard the small saucer was working.
Cosmos only just heard him and knew just what he was asking{Yeah, it’s not quite working.}
An understatement, they where too steep and too fast and the air was beginning to burn and roar as they tore through it. Skyfire dumped his pilot subroutines into memory, winced as he felt a few tiles get torn from the trail edge of his wings and fought to get any engine burning. Cosmos had shut down all his pain receptors and was near to burning out his engine trying to correct their attitude, shoving the mass of a mech as big as Skyfire around in the vacuum of space was one thing, doing it under earth’s gravity and the extra g’s involved in re-entry was quite another. Skyfire’s main engine coughed, misfired and billowed smoke, he cursed as colourfully as Cosmos had been earlier and tried again. It caught and flamed, only at a third of its power but that would do. In a continuous flow of numbers and vectors that only another flyer stood any hope of understanding they struggled to correct their path and save themselves from burning up.
Descent only partly under control they speed across the night sky like a falling star, the thicker air blazing with their passing. Heat resistant tiles and sections of armour were ripped away by the firestorm, struts began to weaken and buckle under the heat leaking energon ignited adding to the inferno. Firing all his working thrusters in one last, desperate bid to shallow the path Skyfire felt wiring begin to melt and sensors and systems die, Cosmos had lost his main engine and his thrusters where winking out one by one.
“Is that bad?” a young man asked in the silence looking up appalled at the shower of falling fireballs.
“Better than them burning all the way to ground.” His father replied, remembering many burning falling rockets.
Scanners at full stretch half the Ark was gathered outside trying to track the incoming pairs trajectory, there was a sound like an approaching train and then the forest began to sway violently and a mostly white lump of metal sped towards the Ark. It impacted, bounced and landed again setting light to the scrub around it, sliding along the ground for at least a mile it came to rest almost outside the main entrance.
Ratchet came skidding to his own stop beside what was now clearly the burnt and mangled remains of Skyfire, his attention was drawn to the scorched nosecone by a wobble of black and green.
Cosmos looked up at Ratchet, the remains of his armour pinging as it cooled and slurred out “Told you we were coming in hot” before surrendering to the welcome oblivion of stasis.
It was a long time later when they found themselves free from Ratchets care and outside perched on to of the Ark in the night gazing up at the glittering brilliance of the stars.
“An inhospitable place really” Skyfire mused “you either freeze or fry.”
“There’s an equal chance of getting blown to atoms by super nova or crushed to atoms by a black hole.” Cosmos added to the list of perils.
Skyfire nodded voice a bit wistful “But it is very beautiful all the same.”
Cosmos couldn’t deny that, how ever dangerous space was their place and it called them, “Get’s a bit cold and lonely that high up.”
Skyfire smiled gently at him “The warmth of our friendship will always travel there with you.”
Cosmos smiled back at him and gently lent against his friend, yes they would always have each other, down here or up there. And he was grateful for it.