[Fic] Echoes (The scientist, 1)
The scientist, chapter 1
Skyfire watched somewhat nervously as his lover looked over the proposal in detail.
Whitestar was brilliant at everything he cared to turn his hand to: a gifted flier, a celebrated researcher, a renowned scientist. Skyfire was fairly well regarded, himself, and he had read through the proposal three times without finding any obvious flaws before handing it over to his more cautious partner. If there was anything amiss, Whitestar would find it, but if there wasn't then the possibilities were incredible.
A breem later the datapad was tossed onto the low living room table with a dismissive gesture and Whitestar paced over to the sideboard to get himself some fresh energon.
"Well?" Skyfire asked impatiently, twisting around to watch him.
The answer was brusque.
"I don't like it."
"The premise seemed well thought out."
"It is." Whitestar frowned, pacing back around to the couch. "I still don't like it. Just who is this mech Asher? I've never heard of him. If he's this brilliant, where are the rest of his achievements? Why isn't he living here at Altihex in the science quarter? It smells like a scam to me."
Skyfire picked up the datapad and scrolled through it slowly.
"The science seems sound..." he began.
"Which just makes it a clever scam, that's all. Sky, it makes too much sense. If someone had really come up with a way to add a supplementary processor to active mechs that works half as well as he's claiming it will, we should have heard about it. The Science Council should be running trials, you wouldn't be hearing about this from some crackpot drunk who stopped you in the street when you got lost in the manufacturing quarter!"
Skyfire looked away, still embarrassed about that mistake. Whitestar had been frantic when he had finally arrived home in the middle of the night and not placated in the least by his story of a kind, elderly mech who had guided him back to their neighbourhood.
"You're right. I'm sorry. It was stupid. This can't be real, can it?"
Whitestar set down his cube and moved to straddle Skyfire's thighs, kissing him lightly. Then he tweaked his nose playfully.
"Not stupid, just naive. You want to believe the best of everyone. But I kinda like that in you."
There was more than a little truth in the cliché that the larger a mech got, the stupider he was: it had to do with processor design. But Skyfire was a product of an effort to remedy that, and the experiment had worked. He was as quick and capable as most standard-sized mechs. Which may not make him as quick as Whitestar, but then few were.
Whitestar was a tetrajet from Vos, one of dozens produced every vorn as part of the annual military quota. He was supposed to be content with his lot as a soldier, to be a bodyguard or convoy escort or asteroid patroller: that was what his specifications demanded.
But the spark Vector Sigma had granted him was brimming with curiosity. And on a whim one of the training supervisors had indulged him, permitting him to study science alongside weapons use so long as he maintained his progress in the normal military curriculum.
He did that and more. Upon his release from the training camp he had had several offers to move straight into senior positions, some of them quite prestigious. He turned them all down to apply to the Altihex Science Academy.
It could not have been an easy choice. The enrolment board at the academy were unconvinced that any tetrajet could cope with their curriculum and would only accept him if he would enter at the basic level alongside the newly activated mecha two and a half centuries his junior. He did not care, voracious for knowledge and eager to prove himself, building on what he already knew and gathering in anything more he could get his hands on.
Within a century he had completed the entire three-century curriculum and was ready for the fieldwork component. But fieldwork had to be done with a partner, and he had annoyed and embarrassed and surpassed too many of his peers: no-one would commit to working with him for a long period. So he found himself stuck at the Academy, tinkering with his experiments, bored with analysis, half-sparkedly teaching when required and grimly considering whether he should in fact simply transfer back to the military.
Skyfire had graduated centuries earlier and had done his fieldwork component then slipped into a comfortable position at the newly built satellite base called Ovacalix. The work was steady, if routine, and he had planned to hold the post for a millennium or two before looking elsewhere.
All of that changed when he made a brief trip back to the Academy for some supplies and met Whitestar.
Calling it love at first sight was not entirely accurate. More like lust, and not initially for the tetrajet himself, but for his work: an intriguing hypothesis written up in a prestigious journal. His physical relationship with the author had come quite some time later, something Whitestar still liked to tease him about since he had been quite vocal about his attraction the first time they met.
In any case, the fact remained that they were the oddball couple, the freaks, the ones who did not quite fit but who somehow fit together nicely. Very nicely, in fact. And perhaps it was that reasoning that had gotten them the grant to go exploring so far outside the usual sphere.
For centuries Skyfire had been toying with a theory about organic life - carbon-based, that was - and it turned out that Whitestar had been approaching a similar conclusion from a different angle, studying stellar conditions that might be required to sustain such life. Between them they had identified a dozen solar systems that appeared to meet these conditions and had put in a proposal, fully expecting it to be turned down for being too dangerous, too far to travel for a theory, and too unlikely a hypothesis.
Instead, the board had approved, and requested a detailed itinerary.
Whitestar claimed that the Council just wanted them out of the way, but he was excited. Heading out to places no Cybertronian had ever seen... even if they found nothing of interest, they would have been there first.
A knowing chuckle brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Whitestar grinning at him.
"You're thinking about the trip again. I can tell. You get all heated up."
"And you don't?" he countered.
Whitestar's grin turned wicked, wings twitching in anticipation.
"Why don't you find out?"