[Fic] Story of a Lifetime, part 10.2
Part 10: Win some, lose some
Chapter 2 of 6
Warnings: general unpleasantness including references to Decepticon torture & rape
Prowl slipped into the briefing room, carefully keeping his reactions neutral.
After Jazz had left he had washed thoroughly and carefully touched up his paint to remove all physical traces of their quick and rather messy liaison. His body and spark were still thrumming with pleasure but he resisted the urge to self-stimulate; there would be time enough for that later if Jazz did have to disappear again, and if he did not then he would rather have the real thing than that poor substitute.
Once again immaculate and outwardly composed, he was nevertheless restless. Sideswipe was long since gone and he doubted he would have had the concentration for games in any case so he had returned early to his office and set about doing some simple filing. It was a soothingly mindless task, allowing his attention to wander and still being useful at the same time. Then, after several groons, a message had come through that he was to attend an urgent meeting with the Prime.
It did not surprise him that there was a meeting called; plans frequently needed to be revised as Curveball's operatives reported in. But those operatives were always kept secret and out of sight so it was something of a shock to find Jazz was there with his supervisor.
Not that he looked at all like the mech Prowl knew so intimately.
The mech sitting next to Curveball was a spindly bronze-coloured mech easily twice Jazz's height. He still had a visor rather than individual optics, but it was a much narrower band of blue and showed two spots of intensity where his 'real' optics were which made it clear this was purely an affectation.
How had they managed that, and so quickly? he wondered as he took his own seat. If it were not for the bond insisting Jazz was present he would never have guessed; as it was, he was having difficulty reconciling what he could see with what he could feel. He wanted desperately to touch and find out whether the plating was real or just a very clever hologram, but of course that would be rude.
Curveball introduced his agent as 'Nox', explaining that that was neither his real name nor his ops name, merely a cover for this meeting. Jazz watched the officers coolly as they were introduced and Prowl braced himself as that gaze passed disinterestedly over him, not wanting to give any hint of recognition away.
The briefing moved on to a short outline of Jazz's mission and now Prowl did pay closer attention, curious about where his lover had been all this time.
It turned out that he had been sent to get himself into one of the breeding facilities and determine if there was a way to stop the constant flood of vicious, poorly-programmed sparklets that kept being thrown onto the battlefield. He was also to investigate a rumour that the Decepticons were working on something more, something worse.
"Which it seems that they are." Prime interrupted heavily. "I have heard the summary of this report. Now I would like to hear the detail, and then for your assistance with my advisors to help determine our next course of action."
Curveball sat down, nodding to Jazz who leaned forward with clear reluctance and began speaking with a startlingly clear Altihexian accent. Well, startling to Prowl who had expected the familiar Kaonic street drawl.
"I certainly have detail if you truly want it, but I assure you that you will all recharge more soundly without it. The situation out there has been unpleasant for quite some time but it has gone well beyond that now. There is no possibility I can keep doing what I do, they're simply not taking in recruits anymore. Of course, they have no need to do so: they produce what they need and kill everyone else."
"You infiltrated a Decepticon unit." Broadcast mused. "As what? A warrior?"
"A regulatory technician. I know my way around those kinds of systems which is a rare and valued skill set these days. Rare enough that they were willing to give me a chance. It still took over fifty vorns to gain access to a factory and they continued to watch me carefully."
"Fifty vorns?" Tripwire queried.
Jazz turned to regard the SIC sitting to his immediate right, the delicate sensory array on his head shifting and clinking together too realistically to be just a hologram.
"That is how this kind of work gets done. You must be prepared to put in the time to get anywhere, and in this case the factories..." He paused unhappily. "They are unpleasant places." he finished with a sigh. "They are staffed mostly by drones who don't care about the conditions, so there is little opportunity to work within them. My mission parameters required me to be within the system, hence the gradual approach."
"And what was your mission?" Broadcast asked.
"To investigate the methods in use at the factories and determine any weaknesses in the security, and to identify any opportunities for us to close them down. Such will be difficult. The breeders themselves are prepared at off-site conversion facilities so that no..."
"Prepared?" Ratchet growled. "How?"
Jazz's visor dimmed noticeably.
"Limbs removed; programming overwritten; spark chamber exposed. The majority are little more than a torso and head with almost no frontal armour at all."
"Those slagging pit-sparked..."
"Rave in your own time, Hatchet." Curveball interrupted him. "We've all heard rumours of that before, this is just confirmation. He's got more to tell us than what we already suspected. Nox?"
"Most are prepared that way, and used to produce what the Decepticons call 'splitters'. They call them that, I understand, because none of them have full sparks. When a spark is extracted it is split six ways, significantly increasing the output of the factories. However, almost fifty percent of the split sparks fade within an orn of extraction, and of the survivors fifteen percent will fade within the first vorn, so the situation is not quite as dire for us as it first appears. The Decepticon response to this is not to study it nor understand it, simply to mitigate for the loss by reducing frame production costs and limiting the programming for splitters. Unfortunately for us, the splitters are not the only product to come out of these facilities."
He shifted in his chair, then pulled a datapad out of subspace and started keying in some commands.
"This new model has yet to go into combat, though they are ready for it. Unlike the splitters they have full programming and high specifications for their frames."
He pressed a final sequence and a holographic image appeared hovering above the table.
"They are known as 'seekers', though I heard no explanation as to why. They are all unpredictable, very violent, very vicious. They are also very loyal to their groupings, and eager for battle. When they come out, they will be devastating."
"So what's the hold up?" Tripwire demanded. "Why aren't they using them already?"
Jazz changed the view on the holograph. It now showed a seeker in what were predominantly Autobot colours - red and white with azure highlights - but with blazing red optics and the unmistakable shape of the Decepticon emblem on his wings.
"This is Starscream - self-proclaimed Decepticon Air Commander, which seems to mean simply that he is in command of the seekers. He is undoubtedly the one who invented them. He provided the design and the original specifications..."
"Invented them?" Prowl interrupted, confused. "But he appears to be one of them himself."
"He is." Jazz nodded, meeting his gaze politely before looking back to Tripwire. "Rumour would have it that that was not always so; that he had his spark transferred into that frame and gave himself a new name. I was unable to uncover any hint as to his original identity, but he has most certainly had formal training at Altihex."
"What makes you believe that?" Broadcast checked.
"This is a mech who found a way to produce fully functional adult sparks from the time of activation without going to Vector Sigma and to bind them together into tight-knit but still breakable groups. What he does is something akin to bonding except with three of them at a time, and when one dies they can simply pull another into the group. As far as I could ascertain his seeker trines don't function at all unless they're in threes, and they are difficult to control even then, but what makes them unique is that it makes no difference to them which other two of their kind they are connected to."
"How?" Prowl demanded, echoed by similar questions from Broadcast and Ratchet.
"I was unable to gather that data." Jazz shook his head. "I know the rudiments of how they are created, but there are details I could not access and I dared not get any closer without giving myself away. What is certain is that they are not from split sparks, only from made sparks.
"The selection process is conducted before the carriers arrive, and they are markedly different than the other arrivals in that they show no evidence of physical harm. They are placed in solitary confinement and they are permitted to eat and charge normally."
He paused momentarily, then continued with a drone-like tone and expression. Prowl noted distantly that his accent remained firmly Altihexian in spite of the flickers of distress that escaped through the bond.
Those caught him by surprise. They had not had much opportunity to test the way the block worked on the bond but thus far physical contact had been required to sense anything at all. How strong were those emotions to be overriding the blocks between them that he could feel something at this distance across the table? he wondered, then lost the thread of that thought as he started to take in what Jazz was saying.
"They are also raped in the traditional way when it's time for them to produce. The splitter breeders are given a dose of aphrodisiacs and are positioned together so they seed each other, but these ones get personal treatment."
Carefully, Prowl rearranged the settings in his processor so that his logic processor had precedence and he could focus on simply collecting the facts. He did not need to be flashing back to Nolan here; he would deal with that later.
"The seekers should not be confused with the splitters in any way." Jazz was continuing. "They are being trained to kill, and the more effective and loyal they are, the more they are rewarded. Starscream has a trine of his own, and his wingmates are two of the worst: Thundercracker and Skywarp. They have been rewarded with weapons that none of the others have."
Two more images joined the first, one with a predominantly black colouration, the other in blue.
"As to why they have not been used in combat thus far, it seems that that is due to continuing arguments between Starscream and Megatron. Megatron wishes to bolster his attacks with them, while Starscream is determined that they must be used in a surprise attack aimed at assassinating Optimus Prime."
"They have such a plan in place?" Prowl demanded, immediately beginning to review all the data he had on recent Decepticon movements.
"No. It was not finalised when I left."
"Then why didn't you stay until you had more information?" Tripwire demanded.
"Because it is simply not that straightforward. Starscream is unpredictable. He despises the Autobots - according to the rumours amongst the soldiers he blames our whole faction for an accident involving a friend of his crashing on some planet vorns ago - and he hates Prime in particular for something that happened back before the war, though I never heard any specific details of what or why. But he hates Megatron equally and makes no secret of the fact. The only mystery is why the warlord continues to keep him nearby at all. Starscream is just as likely to attack Megatron as he is to attack any of us and he has made several attempts that I've heard of. Likely there are others I did not hear of, also."
"You saw both Starscream and Megatron?" Prime asked thoughtfully. "They visit these facilities?"
Jazz looked to Curveball, seeking permission, and the CSO took over.
"Nox worked at several of the factories, but eventually gained access to the one at Darkmount, Megatron's stronghold."
Prowl's fingers tightened on his datapad at the thought of the danger Jazz must have been in. Another fact to set aside for later consideration. He double-checked that his logic centre had full control and consciously loosened his grip before he cracked the screen.
"If he was that close, why didn't you just kill him?" Ratchet was grumbling as he returned his attention to the discussion.
"I doubt it's that simple." Tripwire mused.
"It certainly is not." Jazz agreed. "His third, Soundwave, is a telepath. Megatron never goes anywhere without him, even within the base."
"I know Soundwave." Broadcast spat. "But he's his second, not his third."
"He was until Starscream came along but now he's been demoted. Officially Starscream is Megatron's chosen successor. I have made copies of some of his battle plans and they seem frighteningly effective to my untrained optic."
"There have been no changes in their tactics to date." Prowl pointed out, keeping his gaze locked on his datapad.
"That is because Megatron doesn't trust him. He acknowledges that the plans are good, but he is certain Starscream is plotting to take over from him and so he won't use them. Thus far everything has fallen into the same repetitive and predictable cycle. Starscream presents a viable plan, Megatron turns it down, Starscream publicly argues his case, Megatron loses his temper and punishes him, Starscream begs for forgiveness but isn't convincing, Starscream arrives in the repair bay. Then the whole cycle begins again."
"Repairs?" Ratchet asked.
Jazz nodded grimly.
"If it can be considered a game, it is a very violent one. He has had his wings torn right off more than once that I saw. A few vorns ago he even had his legs completely blown away with a fusion cannon blast. Megatron is very creative when it comes to handling prisoners, and he seems to try it all out on Starscream first."
"Then why does he stay with the Decepticons?" Ratchet asked.
"He despises the Autobots."
"He could go Neutral." Broadcast pointed out.
"Neutral is a poor option for anyone these days. The Decepticons are working on finding them all and killing every one that they find. Even potential carriers are no longer valuable now that their facilities are well organised."
"What did you do to help the ones where you were working?" Optimus asked him, shifting the focus of the discussion.
"There was very little I could do." Jazz replied simply. "To act in any way outside the strictures of my role would have drawn suspicion."
"You slagging coward." Ratchet snarled. "You call yourself an Autobot?"
"Yes. I do, sir." Jazz snapped back, his tone abruptly frosty. "If there was anything I could have done, I would have done it."
"You could've tried."
"Ratchet." Optimus quelled him.
The medic growled but subsided, and Jazz spoke quietly into the gap that followed.
"There was a mech I worked with for awhile: a nasty mech at spark, a loyal Decepticon, one who showed genuine enjoyment for his work. Not particularly bright, but a willing soldier. One orn he accidentally tripped the system out of sequence. It was nothing more than an accident, a lapse of concentration, the kind of mistake anyone could make. Half a dozen others saw it and knew he meant no harm, but none of them spoke up to save him.
"Soundwave's staff interrogated him on and off for half a vorn trying to get him to confess to being an infiltrator, but of course he had nothing to confess and being able to hack his memory core they would not accept placatory lies. Eventually they decided that perhaps it had indeed been a simple mistake and decided upon a punishment, mostly as a warning to the rest of us not to waste their time.
"They stripped him down and set him up as a breeder within the racks. He was not able to carry - his spark was not formed that way - but he suffered through the process twelve times before the supervisor decided he was wasting resources and space and shot him."
There was a brief shocked silence at the story, and Prowl wondered dimly which was worse: the story itself, or the coolly dispassionate way that Jazz was able to report on it.
"Nox's mission was to gather information and get it back to us." Curveball took over eventually. "None of the others we've sent have lasted more than a few vorns, and I've lost more than a dozen agents this way. Nox is the best. If there was something he could've done, he would've."
"Understood." Prime rumbled. "Nox, thank you for your valuable contribution to our cause. Without your work we would be far less prepared. Now if you will please excuse us, I need to speak with my team about our response to this news."
"Of course. Sir?" he asked Curveball, who waved him away.
"Mirage will find you some accommodation. Go and rest, you deserve it."