Sweet Dreams, Chapter 4.1: Interlude I, Part I: From the Ashes
Title: Sweet Dreams
Chapter: 4.1
Rated: M
Genre: Romance/General
Published: 04-09-09
Weeks of monitor duty as punishment for his latest prank have left Skywarp recharge deprived and with limited control over his warping abilities. Unfortunately, every time he attempts to recharge he ends up warping where he wishes to be most, TC's berth.
Interlude I: Part I - From the Ashes
"Hey Boomer, give me a hand with this slag?"
The young seeker glanced up from his datapad, optics widening in surprise as he noted his mentor's current predicament.
"What in Primus' name is all this… stuff?" The charcoal and black seeker was straining under a jumbled mountain of unidentifiable circuitry and scrap metal.
"Pit if I know, the engineers on sub-level four called for it," the overburdened mech gave the staring youngling a long-suffering look. "Now Skyboom, I know this is an impressive pile of scrap, but will you please stop staring and take some of it?"
"Uh, yeah…" Skyboom finally moved to help the other flyer, looking rather sheepish. "Sorry, Thunderstrike."
"Come on, we need to get this down to the nerdybots." Thunderstrike set off down the corridor at a brisk walk, thruster heels tapping purposefully along the long corridor to the lift as Skyboom trailed in his wake.
"So why are we doing this?" Skyboom asked as Thunderstrike keyed in the access code to take the lift to the restricted experimental floor, "we're seekers, not groundpounding hauling vehicles."
"Most of the construction and hauling bots are stationed at Darkmount, building the new headquarters. Until then, it looks like we'll be doing some heavy lifting." Thunderstrike had a sour expression on his face, clearly not happy with his temporary reassignment to manual labor, but he did not complain.
The lift started to descend with a jolt, knocking Skyboom off-balance. Circuit boards and wires rained down upon the metal floor in an audio-piercing cacophony.
"This sucks slag," Skyboom growled, as he bent to pick up his load.
"Hm, your stance is weak," Thunderstrike remarked.
"This isn't a battlefield. It's a lift." Skyboom glared at his mentor, "I wasn't prepared. My stance is just fine."
"You should always be prepared for a possible attack. We'll run some drills after evening rations." Thunderstrike's tone, though soft, brooked no room for argument.
'That's if we have evening rations,' Skyboom thought miserably. Their energon supply was the lowest he could ever remember. Megatron's underground movement against Autobot oppression had gained a small foothold in Kaon, but they were still much too weak to launch a full-scale offensive in order to gain control of vital resources. Their small stockpile of energon was quickly drying up. Skyboom had long since shut off his critical energy warnings; the constant blaring red in his visual feed was irritating when there was nothing he could do about it.
Skyboom took a long cycle of air, as the lift doors opened with an obnoxious buzz to a flurry of activity. Engineers and scientists scurried around the labyrinthine corridors of sub-level four, disappearing into and reappearing from dozens of labs. They carried raw materials like those in Skyboom's own hands, as well as complicated-looking devices he couldn't even begin to guess the functions of.
"Where do you want this scrap?" Thunderstrike asked a harried looking scientist as he rushed past. The small, weak mech seemed cowed by the presence of the two seekers.
"Uh, over there, on the table." He pointed to a sturdy looking work bench set out in the corridor, before hurrying along. He disappeared into a corner lab, in his haste not bothering to key the door closed behind him.
Skyboom's hydraulics hissed in relief as he deposited his pile on the designated table. What project could these mechs possibly be working on that required so much raw material? Their supplies were meager, so it must be important.
Curiosity getting the better of him, he edged quietly towards the open door. Thunderstrike gave him a questioning look, but ignored him in favor of discussing the contents of a datapad that had just been thrust into his hands by a surly looking red mech.
Voices filtered through the door into the hallway. Skyboom leaned closer, increasing the sensitivity of his audio receptors to maximum.
"We need to calibrate the harvester to hone in on spark energy," said one mech. His aristocratic accent designated him as an Iaconian educated mech.
"And how do you propose we do that? We have only been able to test it on field-generated impulses. They are a very poor approximation of spark energy."
"Simple, we gather subjects to test it on," the Iaconian replied, laconic.
"Shockwave, you cannot possibly be suggesting that we harvest the spark energy of our comrades?"
"Of course not. We cannot spare any of our number as it is." Shockwave replied, clearly unbothered by the startling accusation. "We will use the Empties. They are the intended target for the Spark Harvester, so we should test it on them."
Skyboom backed away from the door, schooling his horrified expression into a neutral mask as two scientists passed, carrying a huge sheet of alloy between them. They both greeted him with a nod of acknowledgement, which he returned with a haughty glare. He quickly found Thunderstrike, now thoroughly engrossed in an argument with the red mech.
"If you expect me to carry," Thunderstrike gave the datapad in his hands a cursory glance, "'20 kiloton cybertronium alloy beams' down here, you clearly need your processors checked, dirt kisser."
"Megatron wants the harvesters up and running within the next half-vorn, before we all starve, fly boy." The mech met his mentor's glare, his unattractive face contorted in annoyance.
"Harvesters?" The mech opened his mouth for what Skyboom was certain would be a long-winded, monumentally dry explanation abounding with complicated technical jargon. Clearly Thunderstrike was thinking along the same lines, because he quickly added, "never mind. It is irrelevant. Just find someone more suited to manual labor to do your dirty work."
He tossed the datapad carelessly on the table, motioning to Skyboom to follow him to the lift. As the doors closed, he turned to the youngling. "Okay Boomer, what is bothering you?"
Skyboom gave his mentor a surprised look.
"Oh, please. You are as easy to read an unencrypted datafile." Thunderstrike laughed at the youngling's offended glare. "You may be skilled at masking your feelings from others, but you're not fooling me."
"I'll be in my quarters," Skyboom said quietly, "I want to be alone."
"Does that mean I won't get any recharge tonight?" Thunderstrike chuckled. They shared quarters due to the limited space available in the temporary base. Skyboom didn't answer, striding off in the direction of the living quarters as soon as the lift doors opened, leaving his confused mentor to watch his stiffly held wings retreat down the corridor.
The telltale beeps of the familiar sounding key code gave him precious little time to compose himself before the door hissed open, light pouring in from the corridor to fill the dim room.
Skyboom reset his optics, glaring at his mentor's silhouette in the doorway.
"What is it, Boomer?" Thunderstrike began, his unease almost tangible as he perched on the corner of Skyboom's berth, awkwardly reaching out to run a soothing hand down his helm. His touch was feather light against the black grooves of quietly stuttering vents.
Skyboom jerked away from the hesitantly offered comfort as though burnt. Bristling with hurt pride, he fixed Thunderstrike with his most caustic glare.
"Do not touch me," he growled. "I am a seeker warrior, not some pathetic sparkling for you to coddle."
His mentor gazed at him levelly, withdrawn hand sitting passively in his lap, but otherwise making no more to leave.
"You are avoiding my question," the dim claret of weary optics met bright vermilion, burning with youthful ardor.
"I asked to be left alone." Those intense red optics thinned to slits, threatening.
"So you expect me to recharge out in the corridor, still?" Thunderstrike laughed. "I really do not relish the idea of one of those brutish combiner teams you fragged off last orbital cycle deciding to get creative while I am inactive."
Skyboom's vents hiccuped in a brief chuckle. "Ah, but it was so much fun watching you slag those useless groundling scrap piles. Surely you can do it again?"
"Of course, but you really shouldn't antagonize them needlessly," air sighed from his vents. "I am not always going to be around to save your aft."
"I had it all under control, I just tripped. I would have recovered."
"Though we are strong, their plating is over three times as dense and twice as thick," Thunderstrike smirked. "In fact, it is almost as thick as your head."
A nearby polishing cloth promptly connected with Thunderstrike's face. As he removed the material he was met with the face of a smiling youngling.
"Slagger," Skyboom tried to sound annoyed, but failed as his vents hiccuped and he dissolved into laughter.
Thunderstrike briefly smiled before he sobered, "so what is bothering you, Boomer?"
Skyboom's face fell.
"You aren't going to give up." It was a statement, not a question.
"No."
The youngling collapsed back onto his berth, gazing resolutely up at the ceiling, refusing to meet Thunderstrike's optics as the other made himself comfortable, drawing his legs up onto the surface. The only sound was the hum of their systems, as the solemn grey seeker settled, waiting for the other to begin. Skyboom cycled his vents.
"I overheard the scientists on sub-level 4 talking about their new project." He darted a quick glance to his mentor sitting cross-legged on the berth, optics fixed firmly on his face. He looked poised as ever. Skyboom shook his helm, he was such a disgrace. "You do not want to waste your time with my foolish slag."
"Actually young one, I do." Thunderstrike gave him a look that clearly said to continue, leaving Skyboom to again question what his mentor saw in him.
"They are building something they call a 'Spark Harvester.' They are going to use it to drain the spark energy from living mechs to create energon."
"From whom?"
"The Empties."
"Oh." Thunderstike's shocked expression melted into indifference. "Boomer, the Empties are insensate wretches, driven by impulse. They do not think or feel, only hunger."
"They are still Cybertronian," Skyboom turned his face away, utterly ashamed as his vents hitched. Though a quiet noise, it echoed around the quiet room as loudly as a blaster shot. "They still have sparks… sparks to take."
"You have taken many sparks yourself, what makes the Empties any different?" Thunderstrike smirked, "Are you going soft-sparked on me?" His face fell when his teasing barb failed to garner a reaction from Skyboom.
"They are noncombatants - not my enemy. Primus, they have suffered under the Autobots just as we have, perhaps more. Subjugated and starved until there is nothing left!" Vocalizer rising in pitch until it phased to angry static, Skyboom glared at his mentor, willing the mech to understand, hating that he did not. "There is no honor in their deaths."
"Youngling…" Thunderstrike reached a hesitant hand out to rest on a cobalt shoulder, pausing briefly when a threatening growl rumbled through the room. "Sometimes I forget how young you are." He gave a small, sad smile. "This is a war. Perhaps not officially, yet, but soon we will launch our offensive." The elder seeker's optics flared with a passion seldom seen outside of battle as he looked off into the distance, as if seeing the end of a long journey on the horizon. "Finally we will be rid of those accursed Autobots and their fragging corruption. We will be free."
Skyboom felt the hand on his shoulder move to his wing, absently running along the undersides.
"But, for that, we will need energon." Thunderstrike's optics dimmed as he looked to the youngling, watching him silently from his prone position on the berth. "I don't need to remind you of the dismal state of our reserves."
Gray hands left Skyboom's wing to briefly trail over his cockpit, right over his empty fuel tank, before returning to trace an aileron. His systems hummed contentedly at the soothing touch.
"Without the spark energy of the Empties, we will starve. Sacrifices have to be made… This is a war, mechs will die."
"I know," Skyboom's voice was quiet as he sat up to fully lock optics with his mentor, batting his hand away with a glare. "Don't touch me."
"Of course," Thunderstrike's voice lilted with amusement. It was with no small amount of embarrassment that Skyboom realized he had been purring; he, the deadly seeker warrior, had been purring like a sparkling. A deep rumbling growl filled the room for a second time as chagrined crimson met amused sanguine.
"Hey, calm down, like I'm going to say anything." Thunderstrike's optics danced as his mouth upturned into a teasing smirk, "though it was rather cute."
A loud clang rang throughout the room as a datapad found its mark on the side of Thunderstrike's helm.
BOOM!
Thundercracker was shaken from his thoughts by a deafening boom. Recalibrating his audios, he glared at the source of the noise. Rumble and Frenzy appeared to be playing some sort of game.
Rumble's arms were transformed into pile drivers, which he was using on the thick metal floors, with seemingly no other purpose than to deafen everyone within audio range. Frenzy retaliated with his signature sonic attack. A mere annoyance compared to the devastation that could be wrought by his own, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Clutching his helm in his hands, he wished for a moment that he could be more like his younger trinemate and just go over there and slag those little terrors. Experimentally, he stretched out his arm. His inbuilt canon came to life with a soft whirr, causing the second shift grunts at the next table to scatter. He sighed, lowering his arm. He was off duty and tired. He'd had enough mindless destruction and violence for one day.
He wondered, not for the first time, why he didn't just retreat to the quiet solitude of his quarters. It wasn't like the company in mess was particularly stimulating. He could think of much more preferable company.
He checked his chronometer. Skywarp should be starting his monitor duty in a half-megacycle. He hadn't seen him since that morning's teleportation fiasco.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"You better watch it twerps, or I'm gunna bust you up. Hahahaha." Wildrider, an insane gleam in his optics, rose from the table he was sharing with the rest of his gestalt.
"Oh, yeah?" Rumble puffed out his chest, showing his pile drivers. "I'd like to see you try…"
Boom. Boom. Boom. BOOM!
BOOM!
Skyboom tried not to flinch as the Harvester Units groaned in the distance, the sound of rending metal twisting in his fuel tanks as one of the machines crunched down on yet another hapless victim.
"Easy there, Boomer." Thunderstrike was at his side, panning his inbuilt cannon in a wide arc, keen optics searching for trouble. The narrow alleyways of Dead End sprawled around them, ramshackle buildings lining the streets. The dull optics of the Empties shone from every dark threshold, every corner. They watched the outsiders with a vague interest, diminished by hunger. The Harvesters would arrive to take them soon.
"Hey, pretty wings!" An Empty with a functioning vocalizer grabbed at Skyboom from a darkened threshold. "Spare some Energon?" Skyboom wrinkled his optical sensor; the mech reeked of lubricant. Rust spots littered his dented, weathered frame.
"Um, no…" He tried to pull away, but the mech had a vice grip on his forearm. Most Empties were weak, barely mobile. This mech was much too strong. He brought his other arm cannon up to the Empty's face, but didn't fire. This fragger's spark would provide much-needed energy for the resistance when the harvesters arrived. "Let me go."
"Mm, I don't think so." The mech grabbed his other arm, dragging them behind his wings with a power that an Empty simply should not possess. Caught off guard, Skyboom was easily disarmed. Thunderstrike raised his weapon to fire, but the mech was too quick, shielding himself with the captive Skyboom.
Skyboom looked back at the other seekers, embarrassed that he had been subdued so easily. He wasn't too concerned about his well-being; the others would soon find a way to get him out of this mess. How dangerous could one pathetic Empty be? Other than a bruised ego, he would be fine. He sighed. Thunderstrike was never going to let him live this one down.
He could see a few of the seekers stealthily working their way behind the mech while the rest stayed gathered in the alley, weapons raised and online, holding the mech's attention. The surrounding Empties seemed to be drawn to the action, encircling the seekers.
Wait.
He looked down at the waist of the Empty holding him captive, past his filthy, beaten exostructure. His inner gears were pristine.
"AMBUSH!" he screamed, his vocalizer cracking at the volume. The 'Empties' ran to entrap the seekers. Catching his captor by surprise, Skyboom managed to free his left arm. One shot and he was in the air with his wing, firing on the disguised Autobots below, before the mech's graying body had even hit the ground.
He could see other wings taking to the air in the distance. The Autobots were everywhere; he had never seen an attack of this magnitude. An explosion decimated a building not far to the north, his groundling comrades scattering for cover. He looked around for the source of the blast, sighting a small unit of tanks escorted by a squad of Autobot infantry. He quickly checked Thunderstrike's position before rocketing off after them, powering up his sonic weaponry.
He swooped low over the unit, the rumbling baritone of his engines dropping into a subsonic tremor that shook the Autobot ground troops down to their very bolts. They clutched their sparks, rattling in their chassis, confusion written on their faces, a moment before the thunderous wave of sound smashed into the unit, tossing the tanks into the air like they were made of the thinnest seeker alloy, shredding through the ground troops, leaving nothing but unidentifiable metal bits and sparking wires. Skyboom surged along his wave of devastation, spark pounding in his audios, feeling the powerful ripple of the sonic pulses under his wings.
He banked once around the decimated tanks, laughing fiercely as he surveyed the damage, before flying off to find his unit. It was mere astroseconds before he felt the first shudder of his engines. His critical fuel warning was eerily silent, even as he felt the sickening pull on his fuel tanks. His sonic blast had consumed too much energon. He had no idea his fuel levels were so low; how foolish he had been to disable his warning system.
Skyboom dove behind the charred husk of a shanty school. He could feel his fuel pumps straining as the last of his reserve fuel was eaten up by his thrusters, which throttled in panic despite his best efforts to remain calm.
His training told him to call for assistance before shutting down all non-vital systems. His spark told him that assistance would never arrive. The fledgling resistance movement was poorly organized, the proper channel through which he should call for help unclear. Even if he did route his request correctly, his comrades had been numbed by vorns of Autobot repression. Loss was an old wound, calloused over.
"Skyboom to Thunderstrike." His comlink was open, the hail sent, before he realized how puerile he sounded. The silence that greeted his hail confirmed what he already knew - Thunderstrike would not be coming. A proper warrior did not go back for fallen weaklings.
As his world was taken from him by a narrowing radius of black, he found himself fighting stasis. He was a soldier; he would fight to the end.
He stumbled into the narrow, dark alleyway behind the school as blaster fire shook the surrounding buildings. He would not give an Autobot sniper the satisfaction of a cheap shot at an offlining seeker. He struggled to see through his failing vision, cursing when his pede impacted with a large chunk of metal debris. He narrowed his optics, trying to focus on the obstacle. He could barely make out the hazy outline of a mech.
Skyboom leaned down, touching cautious hands to bleeding wing nubs. The fallen mech was a seeker. He jerked back when the mech gave a pained wheeze, spluttering up energon onto the ground. Barely there embers flashed on behind the ruined face.
"Hey there, Boomer."
Skyboom dropped to his knees, indifferent to the firefight now raging around them. The seeker's plating was charred black. Without his characteristic colors, he was unidentifiable to all but his trinemates. But Skyboom would know that voice anywhere - Thunderstrike.
For a moment he could not speak. He gazed in horror at the mess of sparking wires, frayed and melted, at armored plates, rent and torn. His energon starved processor must be glitching, his hazy tunnel vision lying to him. The last hallucination before he died. The mech on the ground, burnt and twisted beyond recognition, was not Thunderstrike.
"I'm that bad, huh?" The mech chuckled. His spark gave a lurch at the familiar sound.
"Thunder…" He offlined his optics. He did not want to see his mentor like this, the powerful seeker reduced to ruin. "Thunderstrike… how?"
"Missile. Those Autobots have really upped their game," another laughing wheeze. Skyboom wished he'd stop. He felt sick. "Haven't seen one of those since Gale and Streak…"
Thunderstrike faded into silence. He did not mention his trinemates often. Skyboom had never met them. They had been deactivated vorns ago.
"They died in the CADF, spent their entire lives serving Autobots." A hand cupped his cheek, tipping his face down towards where his mentor lay. He wondered in shame if Thunderstrike realized that he had deactivated his optics. "You'll see the end of this war. Someday, you'll be free."
There was no blaring internal siren, no flashing red warnings; just a sickening lurch of internals as Skyboom's pumps heaved their death throes.
'No I won't,' he thought silently as he felt his systems grind to a halt.
He fought to hide his weakness. If he could last just a little longer, Thunderstrike would be gone and he could offline in peace, knowing his mentor still thought him to be a worthy protégé.
His processor spun, bright colors flashing across his vision, fading into a series of digits, then ones and zeros. He could no longer hold his own weight, collapsing on the mech beside him. In terror, he realized this was it. He was going to offline.
Tentative hands ran over cobalt wings, soothing anxious thoughts with slow, relaxing circles. He felt the paneling covering the linkages in his arm being slid aside, passively allowing a connection to be snapped into place as his awareness faded into nothing.
"... mechs are pouring in from the Dead End ambush. We're going to have to call in reinforcements from Kaon. We can't handle this load."
"Primus Scrapper, haven't you been listening to the updates?"
"No, I've been piecing these poor fraggers back together. Why?"
"Their medics have enough on their hands as it is. The attack on Kaon was worse than we thought. Casualties were already in the thousands when they finally got a transmission through the Autobot block. The city was crushed."
"Primus..."
"He's awake."
Static formed into sound. He slowly powered on his optics, only to be met with a blinding white light.
"Am I offline?" He asked.
"Damn well near it," the voice answered. Skyboom tried to sit up, to see who was speaking to him, only to be shoved back down. For the first time, he noticed he was on a berth.
"Who are you?" He asked, anger warring with fear of being restrained in this unknown blinding white place. "Where am I? What do you mean Kaon was crushed?"
"I am Hook, engineer and medic." His optics adjusted to the light a bit more and he saw a green and purple mech standing above him. "Kaon was attacked by the Autobots today, just around the same time you were ambushed. I guess you entered stasis mode before they sent the distress call. Poor slaggers." Skyboom tried to rise from the berth, only to be shoved down again. "You are at Darkmount. This is the medbay."
So he was damaged? He ran a scan over his systems, noting that there was no damage other than superficial scratches and dents.
"What am I doing here? No damage…"
"Critical system failure, " Hook cut him off. "Your system log notes that it was caused by insufficient energon."
"But I'm functional?" It did not make sense. Memory came back to him slowly. He had run out of energon. He should be offline. Thunderstrike…
"Where is Thunderstrike?"
"Thunderstrike?" The purple and green mech looked at him, "The seeker they found with you?"
More hazy memory. Thunderstrike had been with him. He had been injured. Horribly injured. Dread seized his spark.
"He is offline," Hook said, as one would comment on the weather. "A horrible mess, but you should know that, since you survived by leeching off his systems."
"I what?" Skyboom was confused. He did no such thing.
"They found you with your energon lines connected."
"No," he whispered. He had never felt so alone.
"Credit for your thoughts?"
A glowing pink cube slid across the table into his field of vision. Thundercracker tore himself from old memory files to meet the cheeky grin of his youngest trinemate.
"Oh, hey 'Warp. It's nothing important really." It would be cruel of him to burden Skywarp with his memories. The other seeker looked exhausted. His vents were cycling a little faster than they should, and a quick thermal scan confirmed that he was running hot.
So he still had not recharged. Thundercracker could not even begin to guess what had been keeping the other mech from recharge, but he had long ago stopped trying to make sense of Skywarp's actions. He probably decided to skip recharge in favor of a prank. He had seen Rumble and Frenzy in the medbay earlier, when he had gone to have his thrusters checked. One of his turbines had been making strange noises lately, and he did not want them acting up during tomorrow's energon raid.
Speaking of… 'Warp really needed to get some recharge. He was liable to make mistakes in his current condition. Fatal mistakes. He'd offline like Thunderstrike, the name sent a pang through his spark, never knowing a life outside of war.
"Do you ever think how we may die in this war, alone?" Thundercracker asked, the question rising unbidden to his lips. He had never known peace, either. He knew loneliness well. The life of a Decepticon soldier was defined by loneliness; personal attachments were a weakness to be exploited, or worse, a potential chink in the armor of one seeker soldier who wanted to lose nothing else to the war.
Skywarp looked at him, really looked at him, and Thundercracker wished he had said nothing at all. For once, his impulsive trinemate seemed to be thinking about his response, considering the blue seeker with a small, thoughtful frown. Finally, much to Thundercracker's relief, that familiar smirk worked its way back on to Skywarp's face.
"Thundercracker, stop worrying. You and I have survived vorns of this war. We aren't exactly easy to offline. Anyways, if we are terminated, I'll keep you company in the pit."
Thundercracker frowned. He did not want to think about termination, or the pit. Or Skywarp offline.
"Oh, come on TC, what's the worst that could happen?"
"Skywarp, this is a war, in case you've forgotten. Either of us could be offlined tomorrow. Sometimes skill isn't enough, like in the battle last week. So what if it was a lucky shot. What if Silverbolt had hit somewhere more critical, like your spark chamber? Lucky shot or not, you'd still be offline."
All it took was one lucky shot, one unexpected missile, to change everything.
For a few rare moments, silence reigned.
"Well, you are right. We can't control fate, but sitting around moping isn't exactly the best way to spend the time we do have to enjoy life, my little black rain cloud," Skywarp teased.
"Your what?" Thundercracker asked, looking puzzled. Skywarp said the oddest things sometimes.
"Never mind, squishy expression," he hurriedly replied. "Point is, cheer up TC... Slag, I start my shift in a breem. Gotta jet, I'll see you at morning rations."
Skywarp paused right before he passed over the threshold, half turning to face him. So quietly that Thundercracker doubted he had heard it at all, figured it was the product of wishful thinking, he said, "and by the way, you are not alone."
He had been dismissed from the Darkmount medbay with a firm warning that he should not attempt flight for at least ten orbital cycles or else risk damage to his already stressed spark. It had been a long, claustrophobic flight back from Polyhex on the crowded transport shuttle, but that horror had been nothing compared to what greeted him upon his return home.
Hook had been right; Kaon had been decimated. The Autobots had attempted to crush the fledgling resistance with one decisive blow, launching a coordinated attack against their strongholds in Polyhex and Kaon. They had nearly succeeded.
He had not even been able to enter the underground base. All the entrances lay buried under mountains of rubble. Clearing them had been deemed pointless by the engineers, who had declared the support beams critically unstable. Cybertron would soon collapse in on itself, entombing what remained of his past under tons of immovable metal.
Having nowhere else to go, he wandered the ancient streets of the city center. Dusk had settled on Kaon, the dim light obscuring some of the damage. It was a moment before he realized he had entered the entertainment district. It was almost possible to pretend that nothing had happened. The district had always been seedy and run-down. By this time, the lights of the Energon pubs should have been on, flooding the steets with their neon glow. There should have been a boisterous crowd of drunken mechs loitering outside, brawling and catcalling to the mechs displaying themselves on the street corner, their beautiful frames bathed in red light. But the streets were deserted, the buildings shuttered up and dark.
As he approached the central plaza, the city began to come to life again. It started as a quiet buzz, building into the deafening roar of a huge crowd as he entered the square.
A small group of mechs stood in the center on a raised platform. A solidly-built blue mech stood nearest to the edge, glancing stoically at the crowd. He wore both a visor and a face mask. Skyboom sneered, only cowards hid their faces. A bit further back, a sleek red and gray seeker stood proudly at attention. Now that was a mech, Skyboom decided.
The seeker wasn't looking at the crowd. His attention was directed to the center of the platform where the third mech stood. Skyboom's ventilation stilled. He'd never seen the mech before, but he knew instantly who he was. He was massive. His polished silver armor gleamed in the evening light, defying the dust that coated the ruined city like a shroud. An enormous black weapon was held ominously at his side, attached to one of his forearms. Skyboom had heard stories of what that weapon could do. Megatron.
"Kaonites," Megatron's voice cut through the angry roar of the crowd like an energon blade. "Long have we lived in the shadows, forced to toil away deep underground in the mines, never to reap the rewards of our hard labor."
That powerful voice resonated within Skyboom's very spark. He had been fighting in the resistance movement for as long as he could remember. His earliest memories were of him and Thunderstrike working through maneuvers high above the training pitch, before they were forced underground by the escalating war. Imprisoned far from their precious sky, they had begun to lose hope that they would ever live on the surface again. Then Megatron emerged from the mines to create a storm in the gladiatorial rings. They watched with the rest of Kaon as he rose through the ranks, reigniting the fierce hope in each of their sparks that they too could rise from their subservient existence to make something of their lives. When Megatron finally took command of the rebellion, they felt as though victory had already been assured.
Neither he nor Thunderstrike had ever met Megatron, but as Skyboom looked on at the mech, listened to him speak, he knew that the warrior exceeded his every expectation. He was magnificent. Thunderstrike should have been here to see this.
"Meanwhile the Autobots laze about in the sun, high in their opulent towers." Megatron sneered, his disgust towards their idle overlords apparent. He balled his fists, voice rising in righteous fury. "Towers that we built!"
A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd.
"That is why they have attacked us." Megatron's voice lowered to a deadly whisper. The crowd quieted, hanging on his every word. "Because they are afraid of our strength. Every time they gaze across the skyline of their beautiful Iacon, they are reminded of our power."
"It is time that we ousted the Autobots." Megatron's voice deepened to an ominous growl. "Together, we will usher in a new era. Bearing this symbol," He gestured proudly to the sigil on his chest, "we are more than mere Cybertronians. We are Decepticons, the new Cybertronian order."
The crowd began to stir, the energy building in the air almost tangible. Skyboom began to hear whispers of 'revolution' among the mechs, a thought he echoed in his spark.
"Decepticons. It is time to rise up and claim what is rightfully ours!"
Skyboom entered the small room. A formidable black mech sat behind a desk. The mech had no need to stand; even sitting he towered over the slight seeker.
"My designation is Barrage. Why are you here?"
"I'd like to enlist." Despite his uneasiness, his voice came out strong, purposeful.
"We are always happy to have a seeker," Barrage sneered. "Do you have experience?"
"Of course. I've been a part of the resistance movement for vorns," he scoffed, voice dripping with typical seeker arrogance. "This is just a formality."
"Damn seekers." Barrage shook his large, pointed helm in exasperation. "Of course you'll fit right in with the rest of the winged glitches." He pulled up a new personnel file on his terminal. "Your wing commander will be responsible for placing you. All I need is your designation."
"Sky..." Skyboom paused then. Something about his designation felt wrong, like the peculiar feeling in his armor after a growth cycle. Events had changed him. The mech he had become was no longer recognizable as Skyboom.
"Thunder... cracker," he decided. "My designation is Thundercracker."
Barrage took down his designation before shutting down the terminal with a cruel smile. He leaned over, fishing behind his desk for something.
"So where do I sign?" he asked, growing bored with the tedium.
"Oh, you don't sign." Barrage sat up from behind his desk, his smile had turned downright sadistic. "We require something a little more binding." He stood up. The mech was enormous, barely fitting in the room. He approached the uneasy seeker twirling a long rod in his hands. It had the emblem he had seen at the rally on one end, the Decepticon sigil.
He eyed the symbol, startling when it crackled to life, blue tendrils of electricity jumping across the pointed face. It was an electro-brand. The red seeker had born those very same symbols on his wings.
"Oh Primus..." He shrunk down, taking a defensive posture as the black mech approached him with the crackling brand.
"Scared? You aren't going to back out now, are you?" Barrage chuckled darkly. "We do not tolerate weaklings in the Decepticon Army. You will swear lifelong allegiance to Lord Megatron in the only way that is fitting."
His spark pulsed in his audios as he eyed the brand hovering over his right wing. He could already feel the heat across his plating.
Thunderstrike had been certain that his protégé possessed enough strength to make it to the end of the war, had enough faith in him that he sacrificed himself, certain the other would survive to see victory. Now all he had to do was believe it himself, that he could make it.
Megatron's faction would win the war. He had been certain from the moment he heard him speak in the square. He would fight alongside the Decepticons, and someday he would finally know what it was to be free.
He met Barrage's optics, nodding his assent. The brand bit into his wing, his pain sensors igniting as the scream of damage warnings filled his processor. The second brand was applied to his left wing, the pain bringing him to his knees. At some point he was able to master it, to see through his agony, becoming aware of Barrage standing over him. The brand, now dark and cold, was held loosely at his side. The black mech smirked.
"Welcome to the Decepticon Army. Rise up, Thundercracker."
Chapter: 4.1
Rated: M
Genre: Romance/General
Published: 04-09-09
Weeks of monitor duty as punishment for his latest prank have left Skywarp recharge deprived and with limited control over his warping abilities. Unfortunately, every time he attempts to recharge he ends up warping where he wishes to be most, TC's berth.
Interlude I: Part I - From the Ashes
"Hey Boomer, give me a hand with this slag?"
The young seeker glanced up from his datapad, optics widening in surprise as he noted his mentor's current predicament.
"What in Primus' name is all this… stuff?" The charcoal and black seeker was straining under a jumbled mountain of unidentifiable circuitry and scrap metal.
"Pit if I know, the engineers on sub-level four called for it," the overburdened mech gave the staring youngling a long-suffering look. "Now Skyboom, I know this is an impressive pile of scrap, but will you please stop staring and take some of it?"
"Uh, yeah…" Skyboom finally moved to help the other flyer, looking rather sheepish. "Sorry, Thunderstrike."
"Come on, we need to get this down to the nerdybots." Thunderstrike set off down the corridor at a brisk walk, thruster heels tapping purposefully along the long corridor to the lift as Skyboom trailed in his wake.
"So why are we doing this?" Skyboom asked as Thunderstrike keyed in the access code to take the lift to the restricted experimental floor, "we're seekers, not groundpounding hauling vehicles."
"Most of the construction and hauling bots are stationed at Darkmount, building the new headquarters. Until then, it looks like we'll be doing some heavy lifting." Thunderstrike had a sour expression on his face, clearly not happy with his temporary reassignment to manual labor, but he did not complain.
The lift started to descend with a jolt, knocking Skyboom off-balance. Circuit boards and wires rained down upon the metal floor in an audio-piercing cacophony.
"This sucks slag," Skyboom growled, as he bent to pick up his load.
"Hm, your stance is weak," Thunderstrike remarked.
"This isn't a battlefield. It's a lift." Skyboom glared at his mentor, "I wasn't prepared. My stance is just fine."
"You should always be prepared for a possible attack. We'll run some drills after evening rations." Thunderstrike's tone, though soft, brooked no room for argument.
'That's if we have evening rations,' Skyboom thought miserably. Their energon supply was the lowest he could ever remember. Megatron's underground movement against Autobot oppression had gained a small foothold in Kaon, but they were still much too weak to launch a full-scale offensive in order to gain control of vital resources. Their small stockpile of energon was quickly drying up. Skyboom had long since shut off his critical energy warnings; the constant blaring red in his visual feed was irritating when there was nothing he could do about it.
Skyboom took a long cycle of air, as the lift doors opened with an obnoxious buzz to a flurry of activity. Engineers and scientists scurried around the labyrinthine corridors of sub-level four, disappearing into and reappearing from dozens of labs. They carried raw materials like those in Skyboom's own hands, as well as complicated-looking devices he couldn't even begin to guess the functions of.
"Where do you want this scrap?" Thunderstrike asked a harried looking scientist as he rushed past. The small, weak mech seemed cowed by the presence of the two seekers.
"Uh, over there, on the table." He pointed to a sturdy looking work bench set out in the corridor, before hurrying along. He disappeared into a corner lab, in his haste not bothering to key the door closed behind him.
Skyboom's hydraulics hissed in relief as he deposited his pile on the designated table. What project could these mechs possibly be working on that required so much raw material? Their supplies were meager, so it must be important.
Curiosity getting the better of him, he edged quietly towards the open door. Thunderstrike gave him a questioning look, but ignored him in favor of discussing the contents of a datapad that had just been thrust into his hands by a surly looking red mech.
Voices filtered through the door into the hallway. Skyboom leaned closer, increasing the sensitivity of his audio receptors to maximum.
"We need to calibrate the harvester to hone in on spark energy," said one mech. His aristocratic accent designated him as an Iaconian educated mech.
"And how do you propose we do that? We have only been able to test it on field-generated impulses. They are a very poor approximation of spark energy."
"Simple, we gather subjects to test it on," the Iaconian replied, laconic.
"Shockwave, you cannot possibly be suggesting that we harvest the spark energy of our comrades?"
"Of course not. We cannot spare any of our number as it is." Shockwave replied, clearly unbothered by the startling accusation. "We will use the Empties. They are the intended target for the Spark Harvester, so we should test it on them."
Skyboom backed away from the door, schooling his horrified expression into a neutral mask as two scientists passed, carrying a huge sheet of alloy between them. They both greeted him with a nod of acknowledgement, which he returned with a haughty glare. He quickly found Thunderstrike, now thoroughly engrossed in an argument with the red mech.
"If you expect me to carry," Thunderstrike gave the datapad in his hands a cursory glance, "'20 kiloton cybertronium alloy beams' down here, you clearly need your processors checked, dirt kisser."
"Megatron wants the harvesters up and running within the next half-vorn, before we all starve, fly boy." The mech met his mentor's glare, his unattractive face contorted in annoyance.
"Harvesters?" The mech opened his mouth for what Skyboom was certain would be a long-winded, monumentally dry explanation abounding with complicated technical jargon. Clearly Thunderstrike was thinking along the same lines, because he quickly added, "never mind. It is irrelevant. Just find someone more suited to manual labor to do your dirty work."
He tossed the datapad carelessly on the table, motioning to Skyboom to follow him to the lift. As the doors closed, he turned to the youngling. "Okay Boomer, what is bothering you?"
Skyboom gave his mentor a surprised look.
"Oh, please. You are as easy to read an unencrypted datafile." Thunderstrike laughed at the youngling's offended glare. "You may be skilled at masking your feelings from others, but you're not fooling me."
"I'll be in my quarters," Skyboom said quietly, "I want to be alone."
"Does that mean I won't get any recharge tonight?" Thunderstrike chuckled. They shared quarters due to the limited space available in the temporary base. Skyboom didn't answer, striding off in the direction of the living quarters as soon as the lift doors opened, leaving his confused mentor to watch his stiffly held wings retreat down the corridor.
The telltale beeps of the familiar sounding key code gave him precious little time to compose himself before the door hissed open, light pouring in from the corridor to fill the dim room.
Skyboom reset his optics, glaring at his mentor's silhouette in the doorway.
"What is it, Boomer?" Thunderstrike began, his unease almost tangible as he perched on the corner of Skyboom's berth, awkwardly reaching out to run a soothing hand down his helm. His touch was feather light against the black grooves of quietly stuttering vents.
Skyboom jerked away from the hesitantly offered comfort as though burnt. Bristling with hurt pride, he fixed Thunderstrike with his most caustic glare.
"Do not touch me," he growled. "I am a seeker warrior, not some pathetic sparkling for you to coddle."
His mentor gazed at him levelly, withdrawn hand sitting passively in his lap, but otherwise making no more to leave.
"You are avoiding my question," the dim claret of weary optics met bright vermilion, burning with youthful ardor.
"I asked to be left alone." Those intense red optics thinned to slits, threatening.
"So you expect me to recharge out in the corridor, still?" Thunderstrike laughed. "I really do not relish the idea of one of those brutish combiner teams you fragged off last orbital cycle deciding to get creative while I am inactive."
Skyboom's vents hiccuped in a brief chuckle. "Ah, but it was so much fun watching you slag those useless groundling scrap piles. Surely you can do it again?"
"Of course, but you really shouldn't antagonize them needlessly," air sighed from his vents. "I am not always going to be around to save your aft."
"I had it all under control, I just tripped. I would have recovered."
"Though we are strong, their plating is over three times as dense and twice as thick," Thunderstrike smirked. "In fact, it is almost as thick as your head."
A nearby polishing cloth promptly connected with Thunderstrike's face. As he removed the material he was met with the face of a smiling youngling.
"Slagger," Skyboom tried to sound annoyed, but failed as his vents hiccuped and he dissolved into laughter.
Thunderstrike briefly smiled before he sobered, "so what is bothering you, Boomer?"
Skyboom's face fell.
"You aren't going to give up." It was a statement, not a question.
"No."
The youngling collapsed back onto his berth, gazing resolutely up at the ceiling, refusing to meet Thunderstrike's optics as the other made himself comfortable, drawing his legs up onto the surface. The only sound was the hum of their systems, as the solemn grey seeker settled, waiting for the other to begin. Skyboom cycled his vents.
"I overheard the scientists on sub-level 4 talking about their new project." He darted a quick glance to his mentor sitting cross-legged on the berth, optics fixed firmly on his face. He looked poised as ever. Skyboom shook his helm, he was such a disgrace. "You do not want to waste your time with my foolish slag."
"Actually young one, I do." Thunderstrike gave him a look that clearly said to continue, leaving Skyboom to again question what his mentor saw in him.
"They are building something they call a 'Spark Harvester.' They are going to use it to drain the spark energy from living mechs to create energon."
"From whom?"
"The Empties."
"Oh." Thunderstike's shocked expression melted into indifference. "Boomer, the Empties are insensate wretches, driven by impulse. They do not think or feel, only hunger."
"They are still Cybertronian," Skyboom turned his face away, utterly ashamed as his vents hitched. Though a quiet noise, it echoed around the quiet room as loudly as a blaster shot. "They still have sparks… sparks to take."
"You have taken many sparks yourself, what makes the Empties any different?" Thunderstrike smirked, "Are you going soft-sparked on me?" His face fell when his teasing barb failed to garner a reaction from Skyboom.
"They are noncombatants - not my enemy. Primus, they have suffered under the Autobots just as we have, perhaps more. Subjugated and starved until there is nothing left!" Vocalizer rising in pitch until it phased to angry static, Skyboom glared at his mentor, willing the mech to understand, hating that he did not. "There is no honor in their deaths."
"Youngling…" Thunderstrike reached a hesitant hand out to rest on a cobalt shoulder, pausing briefly when a threatening growl rumbled through the room. "Sometimes I forget how young you are." He gave a small, sad smile. "This is a war. Perhaps not officially, yet, but soon we will launch our offensive." The elder seeker's optics flared with a passion seldom seen outside of battle as he looked off into the distance, as if seeing the end of a long journey on the horizon. "Finally we will be rid of those accursed Autobots and their fragging corruption. We will be free."
Skyboom felt the hand on his shoulder move to his wing, absently running along the undersides.
"But, for that, we will need energon." Thunderstrike's optics dimmed as he looked to the youngling, watching him silently from his prone position on the berth. "I don't need to remind you of the dismal state of our reserves."
Gray hands left Skyboom's wing to briefly trail over his cockpit, right over his empty fuel tank, before returning to trace an aileron. His systems hummed contentedly at the soothing touch.
"Without the spark energy of the Empties, we will starve. Sacrifices have to be made… This is a war, mechs will die."
"I know," Skyboom's voice was quiet as he sat up to fully lock optics with his mentor, batting his hand away with a glare. "Don't touch me."
"Of course," Thunderstrike's voice lilted with amusement. It was with no small amount of embarrassment that Skyboom realized he had been purring; he, the deadly seeker warrior, had been purring like a sparkling. A deep rumbling growl filled the room for a second time as chagrined crimson met amused sanguine.
"Hey, calm down, like I'm going to say anything." Thunderstrike's optics danced as his mouth upturned into a teasing smirk, "though it was rather cute."
A loud clang rang throughout the room as a datapad found its mark on the side of Thunderstrike's helm.
BOOM!
Thundercracker was shaken from his thoughts by a deafening boom. Recalibrating his audios, he glared at the source of the noise. Rumble and Frenzy appeared to be playing some sort of game.
Rumble's arms were transformed into pile drivers, which he was using on the thick metal floors, with seemingly no other purpose than to deafen everyone within audio range. Frenzy retaliated with his signature sonic attack. A mere annoyance compared to the devastation that could be wrought by his own, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Clutching his helm in his hands, he wished for a moment that he could be more like his younger trinemate and just go over there and slag those little terrors. Experimentally, he stretched out his arm. His inbuilt canon came to life with a soft whirr, causing the second shift grunts at the next table to scatter. He sighed, lowering his arm. He was off duty and tired. He'd had enough mindless destruction and violence for one day.
He wondered, not for the first time, why he didn't just retreat to the quiet solitude of his quarters. It wasn't like the company in mess was particularly stimulating. He could think of much more preferable company.
He checked his chronometer. Skywarp should be starting his monitor duty in a half-megacycle. He hadn't seen him since that morning's teleportation fiasco.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"You better watch it twerps, or I'm gunna bust you up. Hahahaha." Wildrider, an insane gleam in his optics, rose from the table he was sharing with the rest of his gestalt.
"Oh, yeah?" Rumble puffed out his chest, showing his pile drivers. "I'd like to see you try…"
Boom. Boom. Boom. BOOM!
BOOM!
Skyboom tried not to flinch as the Harvester Units groaned in the distance, the sound of rending metal twisting in his fuel tanks as one of the machines crunched down on yet another hapless victim.
"Easy there, Boomer." Thunderstrike was at his side, panning his inbuilt cannon in a wide arc, keen optics searching for trouble. The narrow alleyways of Dead End sprawled around them, ramshackle buildings lining the streets. The dull optics of the Empties shone from every dark threshold, every corner. They watched the outsiders with a vague interest, diminished by hunger. The Harvesters would arrive to take them soon.
"Hey, pretty wings!" An Empty with a functioning vocalizer grabbed at Skyboom from a darkened threshold. "Spare some Energon?" Skyboom wrinkled his optical sensor; the mech reeked of lubricant. Rust spots littered his dented, weathered frame.
"Um, no…" He tried to pull away, but the mech had a vice grip on his forearm. Most Empties were weak, barely mobile. This mech was much too strong. He brought his other arm cannon up to the Empty's face, but didn't fire. This fragger's spark would provide much-needed energy for the resistance when the harvesters arrived. "Let me go."
"Mm, I don't think so." The mech grabbed his other arm, dragging them behind his wings with a power that an Empty simply should not possess. Caught off guard, Skyboom was easily disarmed. Thunderstrike raised his weapon to fire, but the mech was too quick, shielding himself with the captive Skyboom.
Skyboom looked back at the other seekers, embarrassed that he had been subdued so easily. He wasn't too concerned about his well-being; the others would soon find a way to get him out of this mess. How dangerous could one pathetic Empty be? Other than a bruised ego, he would be fine. He sighed. Thunderstrike was never going to let him live this one down.
He could see a few of the seekers stealthily working their way behind the mech while the rest stayed gathered in the alley, weapons raised and online, holding the mech's attention. The surrounding Empties seemed to be drawn to the action, encircling the seekers.
Wait.
He looked down at the waist of the Empty holding him captive, past his filthy, beaten exostructure. His inner gears were pristine.
"AMBUSH!" he screamed, his vocalizer cracking at the volume. The 'Empties' ran to entrap the seekers. Catching his captor by surprise, Skyboom managed to free his left arm. One shot and he was in the air with his wing, firing on the disguised Autobots below, before the mech's graying body had even hit the ground.
He could see other wings taking to the air in the distance. The Autobots were everywhere; he had never seen an attack of this magnitude. An explosion decimated a building not far to the north, his groundling comrades scattering for cover. He looked around for the source of the blast, sighting a small unit of tanks escorted by a squad of Autobot infantry. He quickly checked Thunderstrike's position before rocketing off after them, powering up his sonic weaponry.
He swooped low over the unit, the rumbling baritone of his engines dropping into a subsonic tremor that shook the Autobot ground troops down to their very bolts. They clutched their sparks, rattling in their chassis, confusion written on their faces, a moment before the thunderous wave of sound smashed into the unit, tossing the tanks into the air like they were made of the thinnest seeker alloy, shredding through the ground troops, leaving nothing but unidentifiable metal bits and sparking wires. Skyboom surged along his wave of devastation, spark pounding in his audios, feeling the powerful ripple of the sonic pulses under his wings.
He banked once around the decimated tanks, laughing fiercely as he surveyed the damage, before flying off to find his unit. It was mere astroseconds before he felt the first shudder of his engines. His critical fuel warning was eerily silent, even as he felt the sickening pull on his fuel tanks. His sonic blast had consumed too much energon. He had no idea his fuel levels were so low; how foolish he had been to disable his warning system.
Skyboom dove behind the charred husk of a shanty school. He could feel his fuel pumps straining as the last of his reserve fuel was eaten up by his thrusters, which throttled in panic despite his best efforts to remain calm.
His training told him to call for assistance before shutting down all non-vital systems. His spark told him that assistance would never arrive. The fledgling resistance movement was poorly organized, the proper channel through which he should call for help unclear. Even if he did route his request correctly, his comrades had been numbed by vorns of Autobot repression. Loss was an old wound, calloused over.
"Skyboom to Thunderstrike." His comlink was open, the hail sent, before he realized how puerile he sounded. The silence that greeted his hail confirmed what he already knew - Thunderstrike would not be coming. A proper warrior did not go back for fallen weaklings.
As his world was taken from him by a narrowing radius of black, he found himself fighting stasis. He was a soldier; he would fight to the end.
He stumbled into the narrow, dark alleyway behind the school as blaster fire shook the surrounding buildings. He would not give an Autobot sniper the satisfaction of a cheap shot at an offlining seeker. He struggled to see through his failing vision, cursing when his pede impacted with a large chunk of metal debris. He narrowed his optics, trying to focus on the obstacle. He could barely make out the hazy outline of a mech.
Skyboom leaned down, touching cautious hands to bleeding wing nubs. The fallen mech was a seeker. He jerked back when the mech gave a pained wheeze, spluttering up energon onto the ground. Barely there embers flashed on behind the ruined face.
"Hey there, Boomer."
Skyboom dropped to his knees, indifferent to the firefight now raging around them. The seeker's plating was charred black. Without his characteristic colors, he was unidentifiable to all but his trinemates. But Skyboom would know that voice anywhere - Thunderstrike.
For a moment he could not speak. He gazed in horror at the mess of sparking wires, frayed and melted, at armored plates, rent and torn. His energon starved processor must be glitching, his hazy tunnel vision lying to him. The last hallucination before he died. The mech on the ground, burnt and twisted beyond recognition, was not Thunderstrike.
"I'm that bad, huh?" The mech chuckled. His spark gave a lurch at the familiar sound.
"Thunder…" He offlined his optics. He did not want to see his mentor like this, the powerful seeker reduced to ruin. "Thunderstrike… how?"
"Missile. Those Autobots have really upped their game," another laughing wheeze. Skyboom wished he'd stop. He felt sick. "Haven't seen one of those since Gale and Streak…"
Thunderstrike faded into silence. He did not mention his trinemates often. Skyboom had never met them. They had been deactivated vorns ago.
"They died in the CADF, spent their entire lives serving Autobots." A hand cupped his cheek, tipping his face down towards where his mentor lay. He wondered in shame if Thunderstrike realized that he had deactivated his optics. "You'll see the end of this war. Someday, you'll be free."
There was no blaring internal siren, no flashing red warnings; just a sickening lurch of internals as Skyboom's pumps heaved their death throes.
'No I won't,' he thought silently as he felt his systems grind to a halt.
He fought to hide his weakness. If he could last just a little longer, Thunderstrike would be gone and he could offline in peace, knowing his mentor still thought him to be a worthy protégé.
His processor spun, bright colors flashing across his vision, fading into a series of digits, then ones and zeros. He could no longer hold his own weight, collapsing on the mech beside him. In terror, he realized this was it. He was going to offline.
Tentative hands ran over cobalt wings, soothing anxious thoughts with slow, relaxing circles. He felt the paneling covering the linkages in his arm being slid aside, passively allowing a connection to be snapped into place as his awareness faded into nothing.
"... mechs are pouring in from the Dead End ambush. We're going to have to call in reinforcements from Kaon. We can't handle this load."
"Primus Scrapper, haven't you been listening to the updates?"
"No, I've been piecing these poor fraggers back together. Why?"
"Their medics have enough on their hands as it is. The attack on Kaon was worse than we thought. Casualties were already in the thousands when they finally got a transmission through the Autobot block. The city was crushed."
"Primus..."
"He's awake."
Static formed into sound. He slowly powered on his optics, only to be met with a blinding white light.
"Am I offline?" He asked.
"Damn well near it," the voice answered. Skyboom tried to sit up, to see who was speaking to him, only to be shoved back down. For the first time, he noticed he was on a berth.
"Who are you?" He asked, anger warring with fear of being restrained in this unknown blinding white place. "Where am I? What do you mean Kaon was crushed?"
"I am Hook, engineer and medic." His optics adjusted to the light a bit more and he saw a green and purple mech standing above him. "Kaon was attacked by the Autobots today, just around the same time you were ambushed. I guess you entered stasis mode before they sent the distress call. Poor slaggers." Skyboom tried to rise from the berth, only to be shoved down again. "You are at Darkmount. This is the medbay."
So he was damaged? He ran a scan over his systems, noting that there was no damage other than superficial scratches and dents.
"What am I doing here? No damage…"
"Critical system failure, " Hook cut him off. "Your system log notes that it was caused by insufficient energon."
"But I'm functional?" It did not make sense. Memory came back to him slowly. He had run out of energon. He should be offline. Thunderstrike…
"Where is Thunderstrike?"
"Thunderstrike?" The purple and green mech looked at him, "The seeker they found with you?"
More hazy memory. Thunderstrike had been with him. He had been injured. Horribly injured. Dread seized his spark.
"He is offline," Hook said, as one would comment on the weather. "A horrible mess, but you should know that, since you survived by leeching off his systems."
"I what?" Skyboom was confused. He did no such thing.
"They found you with your energon lines connected."
"No," he whispered. He had never felt so alone.
"Credit for your thoughts?"
A glowing pink cube slid across the table into his field of vision. Thundercracker tore himself from old memory files to meet the cheeky grin of his youngest trinemate.
"Oh, hey 'Warp. It's nothing important really." It would be cruel of him to burden Skywarp with his memories. The other seeker looked exhausted. His vents were cycling a little faster than they should, and a quick thermal scan confirmed that he was running hot.
So he still had not recharged. Thundercracker could not even begin to guess what had been keeping the other mech from recharge, but he had long ago stopped trying to make sense of Skywarp's actions. He probably decided to skip recharge in favor of a prank. He had seen Rumble and Frenzy in the medbay earlier, when he had gone to have his thrusters checked. One of his turbines had been making strange noises lately, and he did not want them acting up during tomorrow's energon raid.
Speaking of… 'Warp really needed to get some recharge. He was liable to make mistakes in his current condition. Fatal mistakes. He'd offline like Thunderstrike, the name sent a pang through his spark, never knowing a life outside of war.
"Do you ever think how we may die in this war, alone?" Thundercracker asked, the question rising unbidden to his lips. He had never known peace, either. He knew loneliness well. The life of a Decepticon soldier was defined by loneliness; personal attachments were a weakness to be exploited, or worse, a potential chink in the armor of one seeker soldier who wanted to lose nothing else to the war.
Skywarp looked at him, really looked at him, and Thundercracker wished he had said nothing at all. For once, his impulsive trinemate seemed to be thinking about his response, considering the blue seeker with a small, thoughtful frown. Finally, much to Thundercracker's relief, that familiar smirk worked its way back on to Skywarp's face.
"Thundercracker, stop worrying. You and I have survived vorns of this war. We aren't exactly easy to offline. Anyways, if we are terminated, I'll keep you company in the pit."
Thundercracker frowned. He did not want to think about termination, or the pit. Or Skywarp offline.
"Oh, come on TC, what's the worst that could happen?"
"Skywarp, this is a war, in case you've forgotten. Either of us could be offlined tomorrow. Sometimes skill isn't enough, like in the battle last week. So what if it was a lucky shot. What if Silverbolt had hit somewhere more critical, like your spark chamber? Lucky shot or not, you'd still be offline."
All it took was one lucky shot, one unexpected missile, to change everything.
For a few rare moments, silence reigned.
"Well, you are right. We can't control fate, but sitting around moping isn't exactly the best way to spend the time we do have to enjoy life, my little black rain cloud," Skywarp teased.
"Your what?" Thundercracker asked, looking puzzled. Skywarp said the oddest things sometimes.
"Never mind, squishy expression," he hurriedly replied. "Point is, cheer up TC... Slag, I start my shift in a breem. Gotta jet, I'll see you at morning rations."
Skywarp paused right before he passed over the threshold, half turning to face him. So quietly that Thundercracker doubted he had heard it at all, figured it was the product of wishful thinking, he said, "and by the way, you are not alone."
He had been dismissed from the Darkmount medbay with a firm warning that he should not attempt flight for at least ten orbital cycles or else risk damage to his already stressed spark. It had been a long, claustrophobic flight back from Polyhex on the crowded transport shuttle, but that horror had been nothing compared to what greeted him upon his return home.
Hook had been right; Kaon had been decimated. The Autobots had attempted to crush the fledgling resistance with one decisive blow, launching a coordinated attack against their strongholds in Polyhex and Kaon. They had nearly succeeded.
He had not even been able to enter the underground base. All the entrances lay buried under mountains of rubble. Clearing them had been deemed pointless by the engineers, who had declared the support beams critically unstable. Cybertron would soon collapse in on itself, entombing what remained of his past under tons of immovable metal.
Having nowhere else to go, he wandered the ancient streets of the city center. Dusk had settled on Kaon, the dim light obscuring some of the damage. It was a moment before he realized he had entered the entertainment district. It was almost possible to pretend that nothing had happened. The district had always been seedy and run-down. By this time, the lights of the Energon pubs should have been on, flooding the steets with their neon glow. There should have been a boisterous crowd of drunken mechs loitering outside, brawling and catcalling to the mechs displaying themselves on the street corner, their beautiful frames bathed in red light. But the streets were deserted, the buildings shuttered up and dark.
As he approached the central plaza, the city began to come to life again. It started as a quiet buzz, building into the deafening roar of a huge crowd as he entered the square.
A small group of mechs stood in the center on a raised platform. A solidly-built blue mech stood nearest to the edge, glancing stoically at the crowd. He wore both a visor and a face mask. Skyboom sneered, only cowards hid their faces. A bit further back, a sleek red and gray seeker stood proudly at attention. Now that was a mech, Skyboom decided.
The seeker wasn't looking at the crowd. His attention was directed to the center of the platform where the third mech stood. Skyboom's ventilation stilled. He'd never seen the mech before, but he knew instantly who he was. He was massive. His polished silver armor gleamed in the evening light, defying the dust that coated the ruined city like a shroud. An enormous black weapon was held ominously at his side, attached to one of his forearms. Skyboom had heard stories of what that weapon could do. Megatron.
"Kaonites," Megatron's voice cut through the angry roar of the crowd like an energon blade. "Long have we lived in the shadows, forced to toil away deep underground in the mines, never to reap the rewards of our hard labor."
That powerful voice resonated within Skyboom's very spark. He had been fighting in the resistance movement for as long as he could remember. His earliest memories were of him and Thunderstrike working through maneuvers high above the training pitch, before they were forced underground by the escalating war. Imprisoned far from their precious sky, they had begun to lose hope that they would ever live on the surface again. Then Megatron emerged from the mines to create a storm in the gladiatorial rings. They watched with the rest of Kaon as he rose through the ranks, reigniting the fierce hope in each of their sparks that they too could rise from their subservient existence to make something of their lives. When Megatron finally took command of the rebellion, they felt as though victory had already been assured.
Neither he nor Thunderstrike had ever met Megatron, but as Skyboom looked on at the mech, listened to him speak, he knew that the warrior exceeded his every expectation. He was magnificent. Thunderstrike should have been here to see this.
"Meanwhile the Autobots laze about in the sun, high in their opulent towers." Megatron sneered, his disgust towards their idle overlords apparent. He balled his fists, voice rising in righteous fury. "Towers that we built!"
A murmur of agreement passed through the crowd.
"That is why they have attacked us." Megatron's voice lowered to a deadly whisper. The crowd quieted, hanging on his every word. "Because they are afraid of our strength. Every time they gaze across the skyline of their beautiful Iacon, they are reminded of our power."
"It is time that we ousted the Autobots." Megatron's voice deepened to an ominous growl. "Together, we will usher in a new era. Bearing this symbol," He gestured proudly to the sigil on his chest, "we are more than mere Cybertronians. We are Decepticons, the new Cybertronian order."
The crowd began to stir, the energy building in the air almost tangible. Skyboom began to hear whispers of 'revolution' among the mechs, a thought he echoed in his spark.
"Decepticons. It is time to rise up and claim what is rightfully ours!"
Skyboom entered the small room. A formidable black mech sat behind a desk. The mech had no need to stand; even sitting he towered over the slight seeker.
"My designation is Barrage. Why are you here?"
"I'd like to enlist." Despite his uneasiness, his voice came out strong, purposeful.
"We are always happy to have a seeker," Barrage sneered. "Do you have experience?"
"Of course. I've been a part of the resistance movement for vorns," he scoffed, voice dripping with typical seeker arrogance. "This is just a formality."
"Damn seekers." Barrage shook his large, pointed helm in exasperation. "Of course you'll fit right in with the rest of the winged glitches." He pulled up a new personnel file on his terminal. "Your wing commander will be responsible for placing you. All I need is your designation."
"Sky..." Skyboom paused then. Something about his designation felt wrong, like the peculiar feeling in his armor after a growth cycle. Events had changed him. The mech he had become was no longer recognizable as Skyboom.
"Thunder... cracker," he decided. "My designation is Thundercracker."
Barrage took down his designation before shutting down the terminal with a cruel smile. He leaned over, fishing behind his desk for something.
"So where do I sign?" he asked, growing bored with the tedium.
"Oh, you don't sign." Barrage sat up from behind his desk, his smile had turned downright sadistic. "We require something a little more binding." He stood up. The mech was enormous, barely fitting in the room. He approached the uneasy seeker twirling a long rod in his hands. It had the emblem he had seen at the rally on one end, the Decepticon sigil.
He eyed the symbol, startling when it crackled to life, blue tendrils of electricity jumping across the pointed face. It was an electro-brand. The red seeker had born those very same symbols on his wings.
"Oh Primus..." He shrunk down, taking a defensive posture as the black mech approached him with the crackling brand.
"Scared? You aren't going to back out now, are you?" Barrage chuckled darkly. "We do not tolerate weaklings in the Decepticon Army. You will swear lifelong allegiance to Lord Megatron in the only way that is fitting."
His spark pulsed in his audios as he eyed the brand hovering over his right wing. He could already feel the heat across his plating.
Thunderstrike had been certain that his protégé possessed enough strength to make it to the end of the war, had enough faith in him that he sacrificed himself, certain the other would survive to see victory. Now all he had to do was believe it himself, that he could make it.
Megatron's faction would win the war. He had been certain from the moment he heard him speak in the square. He would fight alongside the Decepticons, and someday he would finally know what it was to be free.
He met Barrage's optics, nodding his assent. The brand bit into his wing, his pain sensors igniting as the scream of damage warnings filled his processor. The second brand was applied to his left wing, the pain bringing him to his knees. At some point he was able to master it, to see through his agony, becoming aware of Barrage standing over him. The brand, now dark and cold, was held loosely at his side. The black mech smirked.
"Welcome to the Decepticon Army. Rise up, Thundercracker."