Fic
Title: Borealis 76/92: Neighbors - Part 3
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): ensemble
Warnings: OCs, PnP, sparks, m/m, polyamory, angst
Summary: Wherein humans meet more aliens; there is a good deal of snuggling; and a planet is moved.
Notes: Suggested listening: “Welcome to Oa” and “We’re Going to Fly Now” by James Newton Howard from the Green Lantern ST for the actual planet-moving.
Homomdans and Ishlorsinami I borrowed from the Culture books by Iain M. Banks, the rest are made up or cribbed with alterations from Doctor Who or one of the old Star Trek novels, but re the latter I don’t remember which one. Might have been a Diane Duane one, as she always had great aliens. ;D
Also, please forgive me for writing two pages of what everyone was wearing. XD
~23K words.
Part I
Part II
BOREALIS: Neighbors - pt iii
2083 - September
Earth.
In June, Prime had warned his command staff, human and mech, that Galvatron would know whom he had rekindled. Decepticon attacks were indeed on the rise. Vegas was safe under its Aegis towers, but Nellis had been hit hard, one of their Aegis towers melting, the desert scorched, the Embassy’s defenses sorely tested.
Wheeljack’s tower remained untouched.
“You should keep all your most important stuff in there,” the commander of the EDF said wryly.
“We do,” Optimus said with a wink. “As long as it is resistant to explosions.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Contact.
Not First Contact - decades too late for that, but important contact nonetheless. Humanity’s old question, Are we alone in the universe? had long been answered. Now came the part where they figured out where they stood in the pattern of the greater dance. Lots of comm traffic. Information sent and received, starting with math like the scientists all said it would; the universal language. The Val’Nainnamoinnen and the Essee hailed Earth first, from well outside the Sol system, aware of Cybertronian interpreters ready to hand. Optimus had been communicating with both civilizations remotely for decades. Negotiating the continuance of his own species.
Sam Witwicky, at 92, was no longer directly involved, except occasionally in an advisory capacity. He tried not to be resentful of this, and mostly succeeded. Passing the torch and all that. He was supposed to be enjoying his retirement, as his father had. But he had his mother’s restive nature, and it made him fidgety to watch others take up his former mantle. At least Bee stayed with him, rather than being posted guardian for the next ambassador, and the next.
Dani was no diplomat and had immersed herself - in rather a physical way - in science. His daughter the cyborg. How had that become a thing? Nate had fled the family high-profile and pursued a quiet career in programming. Melissa, Dani’s daughter and Sam’s eldest grandchild, was heading for an ambassadorial post, if she could learn to control her temper. Legacy, Sam thought, of her maternal grandmother. As it was, Melissa was determined to make her own way either in the EDF or the diplomatic corps, and she didn’t want her grandfather putting his thumb on the scale. Nope. Sam was well out of it.
He still got to go to most of the coolest parties.
The Homomdans, acting as intermediaries between the M100 and Milky Way civilizations, landed in the center of the Atlantic, at the Equator - the aliens humankind had invited - and settled their enormous ship down on the surface. Vast stabilizing pontoons were extruded from the ventral hull to minimize any rocking, though the sea was calm. Ten kilometers long, three wide; the outer hull a silky indigo, covered in flowing white script or knotted designs (Sam wasn’t sure which). The entire top surface of the vessel had been converted into a kind of park, including deep, serpentine pools for aquatic life forms (they’d be fishing Seaspray out of those, later), and about a dozen large, columned pavilions, roofed with stretched metal or fabric of some kind. (It rained the next day and the sound was more like rain hitting fabric than metal.)
The ultimate patio boat.
Champagne in hand, Sam cruised various groups of humans and… Okay, they had to stop calling everyone aliens. Once humans in numbers got Out There, they would be the aliens, for one thing. And, well, it was just rude. Anyway, Sam and his tux (the vintage kind, with tails; Mikaela had licked her lips at him, so Sam endured the stiff collar without complaint) worked the crowd, at ease in his element. Everyone knew who he was so he was in position to make introductions, which he enjoyed.
The Cybertronians hadn’t arrived yet. They’d come in later that evening, giving the human contingent time on their own to speak with the gathered ambassadors from Esse, Lorsin, Hom, and Moinne; and the aquatic Kuuukinye, who were mostly along for the ride.
All those present had volunteered and had been cleared by the Galactic Council; pleased to meet with such a young species, and also able to cope with Earth’s environment with a minimum of bother. The Ishlorsinami took drugs to prevent allergic reactions, and the slightly higher oxygen content was making the Kuuukinye slightly giddy, though the Essee said one could hardly tell the difference.
Prowl had been right, all those years ago, Sam thought, grinning. He schooled his expression as the Essee and Ishlorsinami ambassadors passed him, speaking earnestly with the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador. The tall, grey, somber Ishlorsinami, with their long, grey, somber cloaks, when confronted with human contrariness, had had frequent bouts of their second-mind CPUs crashing, until they had worked out a sneaky bit of programming that allowed them to ignore the most illogical behaviors. Poptart blowtorch, baby.
The Essee, on the other hand, seemed to think humans were very cute. Sam thought the Essee were cute and cuddly, despite the complete lack of anything even resembling pelage. Mostly, he admitted, because they were a pastel shade of pink and had soft, rounded bodies and boneless-looking extensible limbs that curled up when at rest; a bit like octopi, though he hadn’t seen any evidence of suckers. Big green eyes with their lash-like attendant constellations of darker pink spots also helped.
The Val’Nainnamoinnen were the opposite of cuddly. Three to four meters tall, if you counted their “hair” - Sam was in no way convinced it was anything other than leaves - lean, with rough green or brown skin, and a series of bright eyes arranged up and down the top fifth of their bendable trunks. Typically four-armed, they were renowned as musicians. Like the Homomdans and Cybertronians, they were from the M100 galaxy, here to vouch for the Autobots in general and Optimus in particular. Optimus and his team had met a Val’Nainnamoinnen ship in distress about 5000 years ago and had rendered assistance. Bee, Jazz and Ratchet were excited to see them again.
Trees in Space! Sam tight-beamed to Miles, who was somewhere on the other side of the deck. Who had gotten Miles into a tux anyway? Whoever it was hadn’t insisted on shoes.
I think I know where the Entwives went, Miles shot back, and Sam snorted into his champagne.
I am Groot! Borealis contributed from orbit. Miles almost spat his water all over the deck.
Rather than construct an entirely new entity to represent the whole of Earth, over the years the UN had been revamped extensively. As such, it had the authority, granted by an overwhelming majority of nations, to appoint human ambassadors to each of the visiting civilizations. These were plummy positions, in the sense that the ambassadorial teams and their families could expect, once they left Earth, to be accommodated in high technological style, with all their physical and intellectual needs attended to. And they were leaving any risk of Decepticon attack behind. However, this wasn’t like being the Australian Ambassador to Japan, where the people you were living and dealing with shared a physiology if not a language. These ambassadors had been chosen and trained very carefully. Politics were involved of course, but actual qualifications and aptitudes took precedence. Most of the candidates had spent time as interns at the Cybertronian Embassy in Nevada, or in Metroplex in Morocco.
Sam watched the ambassador to Hom introduce her family to the Homomdan Ambassador to Earth. Hadiza Azikiwe was from Nigeria; her wife, Nazli Bucherer, from Switzerland; and their children were the frighteningly bright tyros typical of their generation, raised with the latest in augmentation and the always-there connections to the Nets and the public levels of the cloud mind. The Homomdan ambassador, Ar Val-Ser iFferschlar, tucked all three legs under nemself in an approximate bow. Their three-meter-tall, pyramidal bodies were not amenable to flexion. Nir skin was a deep black so glossy the human family could no doubt see themselves in it.
Homomdans are sometimes mistaken for furniture if they sit still too long, Bee tight-beamed from wherever it was the Autobots were getting ready, waiting to make their appearance. Sam decided to give up trying to sip his champagne since everyone was determined to send alcoholic bubbles deep into his sinus cavities.
A splash near his feet distracted him. Hydrodynamics dictated a high degree of convergent evolution among larger aquatic species on Earth. Sharks, marlin, dolphins, eels, plesiosaurs, and seals all displayed some degree of streamlining for moving through water efficiently. And then you had the craziness of the invertebrate world. That was where the Kuuukinye came in.
Oh god, Sam thought, looking down at the being who had flipped a chitinous palp to catch his attention. Party Lobsters.
They only vaguely resembled lobsters, but as far as Sam was concerned there were a lot of legs, a lot of brightly-colored, armored segments, a powerful swimming tail, and two enormous, wildly waving sensory antennae. Lobsters. The Cybertronians liked the Kuuukinye on what Sam felt was an instinctive level, and the feeling was mutual. Exoskeletal beings unite, or something.
“Mr. Witwicky, how’s the champagne?” the Kuuukinya asked. They were semi-cybernetic, embracing their inorganic technological advances the way humans were beginning to, and had picked up human languages with the same facility as the Autobots.
“Ptem Sl’ketekk.” Sam held up his half-full flute, examining the pale gold color and the sparkling bubbles. “Veuve Clicquot Chardonnay, vintage 2004. Good stuff.” He crouched - his back was a little stiff these days but his knees were still okay - at the edge of the channel. Sl’ketekk had a sort of watery smell, up close, but it wasn’t what Sam would call fishy. Too weird to be readily identifiable, it was simply the way the Kuuukinye smelled. Not unpleasant. “How’s the salad?” The floating arrangements of mixed Earth and Kuuukinye vegetable matter were so elaborate and colorful that Sam - avowed carnivore - was jealous. He wanted pretty floaty salads too.
(He had seen Mikaela filch one of those carved radish roses earlier. He loved those as much as she did, but she would spend the rest of the evening fending off armfuls of them from the enthusiastic Kuuukinye.)
“A great sufficiency,” Sl’ketekk said. “And delicious. As your wife, I think, agrees.”
“You saw that, huh?”
“I do have six eyes.”
…
As the band of pink along the western horizon faded into blue twilight, the giant alien robots arrived, Sky Lynx and all six deltas alighting just long enough to allow their passengers to debark, then all but Borealis lifting off again. (Borealis had drawn the short straw, Bee told Sam, but of the deltas she was most tolerant of big parties anyway, as long as they didn’t last more than a few hours.) Fashionably late to the party. More than politics, it was flagrant theatrics. Sam smiled. The fading sky made their optics and biolights more striking, and as they came nearer Sam resolved the full effect of their formal ornamentation. At some unvoiced signal, they stopped, with Optimus in the center of a long ellipse. Not a military phalanx, though they moved with a habitual unity that had as much to do with the cloud mind as with armed maneuvers. They stood close together, arranged by height, minicons foremost naturally enough, so that everyone could see and be seen. Even on so large a ship, fifty Cybertronians together took up a lot of room.
Mikaela was the first to approach them, in her iris-blue Fortuny silk dress, her wrap a gauzy banner flying behind her, one end tugged loose by the warm breeze. Optimus took a knee, caught the errant wisp of fabric and refastened it. (A magnetic clasp. One does not pin a Fortuny dress, Mikaela had informed Sam. She knew how much Bee had paid for it.)
Sam’s smile widened. Oh, Optimus would have done the same without an audience. That’s what made the move so smooth. Such a display of manual dexterity and gentleness, however, was not without a point, here and now. Sam couldn’t see Mikaela’s face, but he could well imagine the fond, amused, half-cynical smirk she tossed up at Prime. There, yep, Prime winked back. Those two.
Optimus stood. He had the air of someone who was trying very hard not to tug on a too-tight collar. Sam empathized. Formalwear. Everyone looked great, no-one was comfortable.
“Wow!” Sam made a production number of blinking sun filters over his corneas. “What, we humans never rated the full bling treatment from you guys? How much is all that worth?” Bee had yellow diamonds and citrines lined down his forearms and across his cheek-guards, amidst complex gold wire inlays. Even Hound had emeralds and turquoise and jade pasted all over him, though Sam searched for and quickly found Smokescreen’s betting pool on how long that would last.
“It was Jazz’s idea,” Optimus muttered.
Mikaela looked Prime up and down, twice, with no remorse whatsoever. As though she wanted to trace every exoskeletal curve and softly glowing biolight with her fingertips. Or her tongue. Sam adjusted the collar of his tux.
“Nice,” she said. Moving on, she beamed at a very shiny Ironhide and Ranger, (someone had held them down to stick star enstatites and black tourmalines on their helms; one suspected Chromia, who was rocking denim-blue sapphire chevrons, which served to make her look even more badass,) then stopped dead in front of Ratchet. He had actually made peridots to match. “That color. Still.” She’d seen pre-war vid. He’d always been that color. That upon landing he’d found an Earth vehicle so nearly matching his habitual shade had been pure chance. Horrible, horrible chance. Ratchet squarked something rude at her.
Jazz and Rio had covered their plating in silver, intaglioed with branching fractal designs. Mikaela had been afraid they might have chromed themselves, but no, that was Sideswipe. (And with his stylish lines…well, damn if it didn’t look good.) Sunstreaker had showed more restraint, at least in terms of decoration. He’d had Tracks and Mirage working him over, together inlaying gold wire in deceptively simple but aesthetically precise lines. He’d enjoyed the process a great deal and hadn’t been shy about showing his appreciation.
Beachcomber had covered himself in thin, continuous sheets of opal that somehow contrived to look like tie-dye. Sam wanted to blame Miles, but Beachcomber was perfectly capable of perpetrating that on his own. Especially with Perceptor gone for an extended period. It had been Beachcomber, no doubt, who had supplied the others with the requisite mineralogical data, storing the molecular structures of minerals not only of Earth, but from Cybertron and many other planets besides. His internal nanoassembly capabilities were fine for his own needs, but he was too small to support manufacture for everyone else. There must have been quite a lot of cabled cuddling - given the happy state of Beachcomber’s fields.
Prowl had removed another layer of armor. He looked de, his actual gender, now, instead of he. Wide-chested, narrow-hipped, long, long legs, deft hands. Gemmed with moonstones and titanium wire. Maggie was staring at him and making sounds Sam was trying very hard to ignore. Maggie was almost a hundred years old. She shouldn’t be making noises like that. It was disturbing.
(Maggie and Glen were only seven years older than Sam and Mikaela. Back when they’d first met the Autobots, those seven years had seemed significant - the difference between teenagers and full adults. Once they were all adults, though, seven years hadn’t mattered so much. Now they were important again. Maggie and Glen would be centenarian geezers later this year, while Sam was a sprightly young ninety-something. Didn’t feel a day over 62!)
Standing behind Prime, due to their height - an arrangement Ironhide reflexively did not like but tolerated fairly well - Thundercracker and Strake had declined to weigh themselves down with gems and unnecessary wire, but had honed their colors and set their mesh to subtle patterns, their armor glassy with polish. Elita stood between the alphas, equal in height and elegance, her colors shifted toward bright copper and silver , away from the matte carbon and steel she’d worn dominant for three million years.
The minicons, ranged in front, had adopted brilliant coloration in lieu of jewelry. Their iridescent plating shifted spectra according to viewing angle, putting amethysts and sapphires and diamonds to shame. They looked like gemmed scarabs or dragonflies. Spiral stood beside Arcee and Moonracer, just behind the minicons, each wearing wire and gem stripes of the others’ colors.
By twos and fours and larger clumps, humans joined Autobots on their end of the deck (no small amount of teasing and admiration being lobbed about regarding both human and Cybertronian ideas of finery). Where Mikaela led, others followed, and once sufficient numbers were in a place, the rest couldn’t stand to be left out. After a while, once everyone had realized what had happened, conversations quieted and the merged group of humans and Cybertronians faced the visiting species from across a dozen meters of empty space.
Autobots didn’t wibble in exactly the same way humans did. Optics glowed brighter. Optimus did something magnificent with his fields, the others joining him, unfolding coronae as though expanding their sparks without opening their chests. And without irradiating everything within twelve miles.
“Eloquent as always, Optimus Prime,” Ar Val-Ser said, moving to stand at the forefront, between the two groups. Homomdans, Sam recalled, could sense EM fields without augmentation.
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Optimus said. He greeted each of the chief ambassadors by name, in their native languages. “We have come, upon your sufferance and by the good will of our human friends, to request the official resumption of diplomatic relations between the Autobots and the Involved Civilizations of this galaxy and those of M100.”
There was a great deal more speechifying after that. Sam didn’t doze off against Bee’s leg, no. He was just resting his eyes.
…
Moonlight glimmered on the dark waves to the west. The afterparty had settled down to a low hum, the population on the top deck of the Homomdan ship thinning then burgeoning again as human dignitaries from different time zones returned to their own vessels or joined the assemblage. Most of the Cybertronians were sitting or lounging, even Ratchet and Thundercracker politely declining the Homomdans’ offer of having the ship extrude appropriately sized chairs. Sitting directly on the deck at least put their heads closer to a level with the Homomdans and Val’Nainnamoinnen, and kept them from looming quite so much over everyone else.
Sam wondered if Optimus knew he was posing like a Playgirl centerfold or if that was just the way limbs proportioned like his tended to comfortably bend. He was taking up a lot of floor space, with one leg extended like that, but given how many people were leaning on that leg (and the rest of him) probably no one minded very much.
A number of the Homomdans stood about, looking - dammit, shut up, Bee - like scattered bits of architecture. Talking with trees. With the decorative lanterns and pavilions, the ship’s deck looked like a sculpture park. Sans lawn. The Ishlorsinami were determinedly diurnal and had all gone to bed, but the Essee were still rolling about, and a few of the Kuuukinye strapped on exo suits and clambered about on dryside, sampling hors d’oeuvres. The rest seemed to have crashed from their oxygen high and were bubbling away at the bottom of their pools.
The circulating trees at last circulated around to Prime. Patterns of respect in their cultures suggesting that the lowest in status be greeted and attended to first, and the highest, most respected individuals were to be greeted last. Sam had gathered that most of the Val’Nainnamoinnen were in fact captain and crew of the ship Prime and his team had helped.
“Optimus Prime, it is a pleasure to see with you again,” said the tallest, and therefore eldest, Sam’s lenses informed him, gesturing gracefully with a single arm. Val’Nainnamoinnen never stopped growing; their old-folks homes must be enormous.
“Elder Galallalanellia, the pleasure is mine as well.” Optimus nodded and made a gesture similar in arc. Ratchet, Ironhide, Jazz and Bumblebee clustered around them, Bee bouncing a little, wanting to know how Gala’s latest batch of great-great-great-grandseedlings were doing. The rest of Gala’s crew gathered in, and for a while, Sam couldn’t see the forest for the Autobots. Or the Autobots for the trees. Something like that.
Friends caught up, wider introductions were made, though everyone involved had some form of augmentation. This was a diplomatic function, at base. One of Gala’s crew, Bilafulajila, a particular friend of Bee’s, shuffled from the copse to settle beside Sam and Mikaela.
“Greetings, Mr. Witwicky, Ms. Banes-Witwicky,” Bilafulajila said, waving three of its arms, Sam making notes regarding whether there was a correlation between number of arms moving and depth of emotion. “Bumblebee, I am joyful to see, has made steady friends on this world as well.”
“Greetings, Bilafulajila,” Mikaela said. Ratchet had only needed to coach her through the names once. Listening to Cybertronian had given her a good ear. “Much to our own joy. It’s a talent he has.”
From the other side of the extended clump, Bee’s antennae went up, wiggling at them and he squeezed his optical shutters.
“How long did your ships journey together?” Sam asked.
“Two…oh, let me see, yes, two hundred and thirty-four of your years,” Bilafulajila said. “We were in a hazardous volume of what you call the Perseus Arm, between Decepticon bases and Ferenx expansionists and several rather unstable supergiant stars. Heavy radiation load. We would not have been there ourselves if not for the Gestrel Library. Heavily shielded, of course, which is why it’s so difficult to find. Optimus joined our search after our ship was repaired, hoping to find mention of the Allspark’s passage.”
Bilafulajila - Sam was having a hard time not thinking of them as Ents, thanks a lot, Miles - bent very slightly to murmur to him. “Their civil war is a great tragedy. They were once the most advanced civilization in the local cluster. Columns of peaceful coexistence. They mentored many a seedling species through the pangs of galactic social and physical navigation. And now. Well. Not all species develop in the same way. They discovered their aggressive potential much later than most. I have always likened it to a much delayed adolescence. Such a pity.”
“Your people have an adolescence?”
“No, but many animal species do. We are familiar with the concept.”
They were interrupted by a ripple of whispers through the crowd. At the far end of the deck, a floating platform had risen from within the ship and approached the Cybertronian enclave at the stern. Sam’s lenses displayed the name of the newcomer riding the conveyance. Ar Be-Ka iSchloear. So old now that nir skin had faded to dark brown, dull on the edges.
“Ar Be-Ka!” Optimus could not rise without dislodging dozens, but implied a deep bow with a movement of shoulder and chest armor and an inclination of his helm.
“Lady Optimusa! Time may have altered me, but not so the Prime of Cybertron.” Gender among Homomdans did not correlate at all to that of humans or Cybertronians. Someone’s translation software from Hom to English had gone hinky in a couple of - fortunately - forgivable particulars. Mikaela was grinning in a way Sam knew meant he’d best not comment.
“No indeed, old friend,” Optimus said, enfolding the ancient Homomdan in his fields, “time changes all.”
Ar Be-Ka settled nir platform at Optimus’ left elbow. “So it’s true then? You’ve done something irrevocable to yourself?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“After all this time you find the Allspark, but rather than return it to Cybertron you destroy it?”
“In…some respects.”
“As fond as we are of Cybertronians,” Ar Be-Ka said, tipping nir platform conspiratorially toward Mikaela, “they have always been vexingly coy about what exactly the Allspark is. No other species’ scientists have ever been allowed near the Simfur Temple, and let me tell you what a coup it was for us to even find out that that’s where it was kept! No-one is, to this day, certain what it was used for, besides demonstrably as a unique sort of power source.”
“Oh,” Mikaela said. “Um…”
“It was lodged in your planet here for some thousands of the local years, was it not?”
“Yes.” Mikaela folded her hands into her lap, carefully not looking at Optimus. “We studied it for decades, but didn’t make much headway. Then the Decepticons showed up, freed Megatron, and my husband pushed the Allspark into Megatron’s chest.”
“With, hm, semi-fatal results.”
“Semi-fatal.” Mikaela grinned. “Yes.”
“Instead of destroying your twin and yourself, the Allspark and the shard rendered you immortal.” Ar Be-Ka tipped nir platform toward Optimus, gazing at him rather pointedly. “Is that not a rather wide discrepancy between expectations and actual results?”
“It is, rather,” Optimus said placidly.
“Cybertronians,” said Bilafulajila, rustling its leafy hair.
“Indeed,” said Ar Be-Ka.
Optimus laughed softly. “I had very much hoped to see you again, old friend.”
“A small hope, no doubt,” Ar Be-Ka said, smiling. “This will be my final outing, I think. I had planned to spend my last days at home, but fate has yielded a different reward.”
Sam bit his lips. Optimus looked as though he had been punched in the chest. Put Optimus, then, on the growing list of mechs who loved ephemerals and had to learn how to cope with losing them. Be-Ka was in danger of being hugged.
…
Dawn opened over the sky, the world turning away from its own shadow, warm wind from the east blowing over the floating ship, humming softly in the pavilion canopies. Cybertronians watched over their sleeping humans, conversing in low voices with the Val’Nainnamoinnen, who hibernated for part of their solar cycles but did not sleep. A few Homomdans and Kuuukinye were awake, and the Ishlorsinami and Essee would be stirring soon. The handful of humans who hadn’t succumbed gazed blearily at the horizon with expressions varying from giddy to appalled.
Oh god, thought Miles, how long has it been since I pulled an all-nighter? Decades? He wasn’t sure he hadn’t drifted off at some point, but here he was now, draped over Beachcomber, coatless, tieless, and the sun was coming up. Murmurs. He’d lost track of the conversation for a moment.
“If we ask you to, will you make the Cybertronians leave?”
Wow, thought Miles. Ambassador Azikiwe was punchy. Not drunk at least; Ratchet had worked his usual voodoo with the alcohol. No, wait. No, it was a fair question. Miles was more than a little punchy himself.
Ar Val-Ser blinked all nir eyes. Miles was fascinated.
“We would leave if you asked us,” Optimus said.
Azikiwe waved her hand. “You Autobots would, everyone knows that. I mean the Decepticons.” She turned back to Ar Val-Ser. “If we asked you to, could you come down and eradicate the Decepticons for us? You probably have technology superior to theirs, since your development hasn’t been hampered by millions of years of a war of attrition.”
“But our technology is not geared so specifically to war,” Ar Val-Ser pointed out. “We might try, if we were so inclined to take so many lives, or any lives at all. But it has always been true that Cybertronians are very difficult to kill, and even more difficult to capture. Not without terrible collateral damage. One of the other Involved robot species might endeavor with somewhat better success, but that has been attempted, if I am not mistaken?”
“The Chime,” Optimus said, shuttering his optics for a moment. “That was…unfortunate.” Miles saw Prowl flinch, and Bee and Jazz touched his back. Prowl’s fields took on the sickly, uncoordinated pattern that meant he was looping. Wings restless, Thundercracker and Strake mantled around all three.
“For the Chime,” Ar Val-Ser said. “They only survived as a species because they were well distributed and therefore not all of them were on Aubera Secundus.” Ar Val-Ser made a gesture of negation - Homomdans were not built for head-shaking - “No, no, it would cause such a row, make such a mess of your nice little planet here. No, my dear Azikiwe, I think you are doing quite well on that front yourselves. In fact there are some on the Galactic Council who find your particular brand of martial resilience to be somewhat alarming. Not everyone has looked forward to your acquisition of space flight.”
“The Atraxi,” Jazz said. “Passive-aggressive bastards.”
Miles bared his teeth for half a second. He had read up on the Atraxi. Sanctimonious know-it-alls who thought they were all that and a bag of chips, and also thought they should dictate policy to everyone else for their own good. Rather like Americans. The Homomdans had taboos regarding implanting technological devices inside their bodies, but the Atraxi were outright robophobes who regarded Cybertronians as a plague. Ratchet had said that their point of view was understandable. The collateral damage in the Cybertronian civil war had often been messy, indiscriminate and widespread. They were not pleased at all by the endangered Cybertronians - whose extinction the Atraxi were itching to complete - allying with the numerous and robust humans. Who should probably be put down before they caused problems.
(And Ratchet, by the look he was giving the anxious little cuddle to his left, was about three seconds from grabbing Prowl and taking him back to Nevada if someone didn’t change the topic soon.)
The flying eyeball people? Sam surreptitiously tight-beamed Jazz.
Jazz not so surreptitiously snerked. Primus, Sam. Yes, the flying eyeball people.
They wanna go, huh?
In the worst way. With our population so small, and hard resources so thin, they reckon they have a chance.
Yeah, cuz that’s gone so well for everyone else who’s attacked you guys in the whole history of ever.
…Yeah.
Jazz’s tone dropped, and Sam felt like a schmuck, but it was true. Taking on the Cybertronians militarily had proved catastrophic for everyone who had tried it. Starting with the Quintessons, whose near-success had resulted in the institution of the Prime/Lord Protector ruling diad, and in the Quintessons’ own essential extinction. Sam was just as glad about the latter, though. Bee had shown him and Mikaela ancient vid taken in that era, and the Quints were creepy as hell, not to mention pathologically and congenitally cruel.
“Prime has been communicating diligently,” Elder Galallalanellia said, rustling its leaves, “attempting to convince the Atraxi, and some small number of others, that Cybertronians as a whole are not an invasive species. Not a hegemonizing swarm.”
A what? Miles thought. He’d heard Cybertronians called a lot of things, but not that.
Gray goo. Nanomachines run amok, Mikaela tight-beamed. The concept of self-replicating machines converting all local matter into more of themselves can also be applied to macro-scale machines.
That would be bad, Miles agreed. He couldn’t blame the Atraxi for their worry. Definitely wouldn’t help, then, to inform anyone that the Cybertronians had been making babies.
“This moving of their planet,” the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador continued, “has not settled anyone’s roots.”
“Indeed not,” said Ar Be-Ka. “Here they are, on the brink of extinction, and yet they manage this feat of astronomical landscaping? Alarming, Optimusa, quite, quite alarming. Exciting too!” Ne leaned nir platform at Prime. “May we watch?”
“You certainly may,” Optimus thrummed.
…
The Homomdan ship would remain floating on the Atlantic for another week, facilitating human and dolphin visitation, (and exchanging merry horn calls, light shows, and occasionally passengers with the scores of cruise ships - and a growing number of private craft, seaworthy and not so - gathered around it much closer than the military generals of their home countries were happy about) before breaking for orbit to await the Great Moving. Optimus and many of his officers would stay aboard for at least that week, aiding the human interactions and continuing their own negotiations. The ship was easily configured to provide spaces scaled to Cybertronian standards, even for the deltas if any of them had elected to go inside.
Borealis waffled for a good ten minutes, then contented herself with full-sensory feeds from Hound as he wandered around and talked with people.
I know they can do it, she said, and I know it’s a big ship, but I’m over 30 meters tall. That’s a lot of floor-to-ceiling space.
Not to mention getting your wings through doorways, Hound agreed, patting her foot before heading below.
As their second night aboard drew to a close amid more heavy diplomatic maneuvering disguised as a party, Optimus gestured furtively, staring at the decorative gems on his left forearm. Jazz hissed and swatted at him.
But-
It does not itch! Leave it alone.
I am going to make you take every one of these things off me, later. With your dentae.
Promises…
…
Home was his parents’ old house in Tranquility more than the Embassy, these last ten years or so. Renovated now and then as technology advanced and things like water heaters and microwaves wore out, plantings in the garden shifting to xeriscape or low-maintenance because Sam had a black thumb and Mikaela was too busy. But the bones of the house and yard were still recognizable. The garage kept mostly empty to give Bee room whether in car or robot mode.
Bee opened his doors to let Sam and Mikaela out. Slow, compared with the exuberance Bee remembered from so short a time ago, careful with aging joints, where the cartilage hadn’t held up quite as well as other things. In good shape for their age, sure; better than Ron and Judy had been, before Perceptor had gotten so good with the nanite cocktails and human medicine had started to accept those innovations. But the human aging process was more complicated than anyone had anticipated, problems cropping up because there had never been anywhere near so many humans worldwide living into their 90s or 100s - or 120s - before. Nothing worked perfectly. Not yet.
They tottered a little, on the steps up to the porch. It had been a long night, up atop the Homomdan ship, and though they’d slept several hours the next morning, there had been more meetings, and a flight back to Nevada with Silverbolt, and yet more meetings, with different people, talking about the party. Debriefing, basically, and then a big press conference. The world wanted to know everything.
“Aliens!” Sam said. “Real aliens! Starships!”
“What?” Bee squawked. “Chopped liver over here?”
“You don’t count,” Sam said, waving a hand. “70-something years, Bee! Come on! You’re hardly aliens any more.”
“Sam…” Mikaela said. Then she shook her head, patting Bee’s extended fingertip. She unlocked the front door. They were tired. Reminding Sam of the many important, but wonderful, differences between their species would be pointless. He needed a nap. She needed a nap. They needed to remember to pick the dogs up from the boarding kennel tomorrow.
Before they entered the house, into spaces he could not easily follow, Bee held Sam and Mikaela against his face and buzzed. A little hum, a reminder, not enough to get anyone wound up. They were going to Cybertron soon! He wanted to show them, craters and all. To see them walk on his homeworld, boots crunching on the rubble from which they'd build anew.
Bee? Mikaela touched his cheek spar.
Soon, he said, embroidered with glyphs, many of which she knew, though the subtler meanings in their placement, and how they overlapped in the three-dimensional ways even written Cybertronian tended to take up, were beyond her. “Months, not years,” he said aloud, clearer meaning. “And then you’ll have neighbors.” He had been resisting the urge to call upon the Pleiades to guard Sam and Mikaela full-time, especially when he had to recharge. He tried not to need to, basking outside the garage or wherever he’d driven them. He didn’t want anything to happen to them before they saw his homeworld. He didn’t want to miss a single moment of their lives - a sappy old song from 1997 played over his speakers.
Sam groaned and Mikaela snorted, and the two humans stepped together out of Bee’s grasp and over their threshold. He warbled softly. Sunrise.
You’d better not wake me up that early, Sam said.
…
On the top deck of the Homomdan ship, Hound and Mirage were a tight little knot against Prime's side. Hound had thought of suggesting that Mirage could stay with Ultra Magnus and Metroplex, but he knew that Mirage, for all his dread of seeing Cybertron’s mangled corpse, would never want to miss watching an entire planet plus two moons be space bridged. Prime curled a hand around them, pressing them closer.
Jazz had Prowl pinned to Prime’s other side - Thundercracker and Strake nested together behind them, against Prime’s back, watching with some interest but tranquil after their own overloads. Jazz had plucked out most of the gems burdening Optimus, indeed using his dentae in a most delicate manner. He had convinced Prime to keep a few of the nicer opals around his shoulders; they didn’t interfere with anything and looked fantastic. The wire inlay was being left alone for the time being, though Jazz knew Prime’s nanocells would begin devouring it soon.
Prowl and Red were finalizing moving plans - shifting of security, tallying who was going, who was staying, who would come back, when and to where. The Cybertronian Embassy to Earth would remain in Nevada, with only slightly decreased human staff. Maggie and Glen still lived there. Metroplex would remain their secondary embassy, but she needed to be mobile if necessary.
Optimus petted the friends around him contemplatively. He was heavily in communication with a large number of people, as was his wont, but the tenor of most of those conversations was somewhat more formal and cautious than his usually cordial relations with humanity had become over the past seventy-odd years. He extended cables to Jazz and Prowl, along with an inquiring ping. They accepted and replied via their smaller cables.
I’m fine, Prowl said. Jazz had door-wings these days and Prowl was having fun with them.
He’s hangin’ in, Jazz clarified at the same time, tilting his head to nibble and kiss Prowl’s neck struts, making sure Prowl could feel how much he was enjoying what he was doing to his door-wings. The Ishlorsinami were processing requests from the Chime, whose population had rebounded in the intervening millennia, the Atraxi, and a couple of other species, to try Sentinel, Prowl, the rest of Sentinel’s battalion, and a large number of other Cybertronians for war crimes. Jazz knew Prowl’s reflex would be to throw himself upon the mercy of the intergalactic court. Where he would probably be disassembled for the greater good, unless Optimus could make his prior sentence take precedent. Maybe you should extend his geas to match TC and Strake’s? Buy us some time?
I am considering it.The Chime at least were so far being reasonable, accepting Prowl’s meticulous report of the Auberan atrocity (the entire planet had been glassed) as permissible evidence in their deliberations. Disconcertingly, however, the Chime wished to forego further Ishlorsinami mediation. They wanted direct contact. They wanted a full memory-copy from Prowl via hardline core download. And they wanted permission to hunt and if necessary execute Sentinel. Prime was willing to establish direct contact, but the other two stipulations were alarming, even if allowing them to take a shot at Sentinel might solve one of his own thornier problems. It wasn’t a solution he liked at all.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
As the date for the great moving drew closer, the old debate flared up into lively and sometimes bitter contention again. If the Autobots deserted Earth, would the Decepticons rain down destruction upon the still technologically outmatched humans, or would they leave Earth in peace at last in pursuit of their ancient foes? It was a moot question in a sense, as Metroplex was not inclined to leave, nor did most in the African Union want her to.
“Don’t you want to join everyone else to see Cybertron installed in its new orbit?” people asked Metroplex.
“No,” she said, fluffing her solar panels contentedly. “I’m useful here.” Cityformers liked staying put.
Also, over the course of the last few decades, six teams of Rescue Bots had been created, to pursue much the same function as the Protectobots, who could not be everywhere at once. This way there was at least one combiner team for each heavily inhabited continent - and someone could always get down to Antarctica in a hurry if the scientists there were having a serious problem.
Like the Protectobots, the Rescue teams had no dedicated permanent base, and went where they were most needed, usually to aid the humans in natural disaster relief, whether this was local flooding or a major earthquake and tsunami. Landslides, hurricanes, volcanoes, wildfires, sinkholes; there was always something happening somewhere in the world. Trapped miners, gas pipe explosions, old nuclear fission plant meltdowns, city fires and even highway pile-ups could benefit from giant robotic assistance.
…
“Last pipe, set,” Heatwave said, signaling to the humans waiting on the shore. Cheers rose up; now they would be protected from the deadly mazuku. Lake Kivu, on the border between DR Congo and Rwanda, was a large freshwater lake that experienced occasional limnal eruptions - sudden releases of dissolved carbon dioxide that suffocated livestock, wildlife and humans. The violent releases could also cause lake tsunami, and Lake Kivu was surrounded by many towns and villages. The loss of life would be catastrophic.
As demonstrated in Lakes Nyos and Monoun, however, vent pipes driven deep into the water would release the carbon dioxide at a safe rate. Lake Kivu being much larger and deeper had presented economic and engineering difficulties in implementing a similar plan, until the Autobots got involved.
Better to prevent a disaster than have to come in afterward. A huge carbon dioxide release would be the kind of unpredictable thing they could never arrive in time to save everyone from. All they would be able to do was help with burial of the bodies.
Boulder, down on the lake bottom, shuddered. Then steeled his mind. The perforations in the pipe allowed the heavily saturated water down at the bottom to rise toward the top. The CO2 bubbled out, causing a fountain at the surface, like opening a shaken bottle of soda; but the diameter of the pipe limited the size of the fountain. The water down there was so acidic, a normal pipe would corrode quickly, but he and his team had helped forge an alloy that would last indefinitely. This was the last of seven such pipes. Boulder created a vacuum bubble in his chest and rose swiftly to the surface, almost 480 meters above.
Chase and Heatwave hauled him up onto the barge that had been their staging platform for the project. Pinion, a light helicopter, flew circles above and relayed their success to Metroplex up north.
“Party time!” Pinion called down, swooping low and doing a loop to the delight of the human spectators and the engineers on the barge, supervising the ebullient young Bots. They were going to spend the night in Goma, on the Congo side of the lake, and in the morning help out with road repair there after the last lava flow. After that they’d spend the next six months, between emergencies, planting trees to make up for the CO2 release. A company called KivuWatt was already doing large-scale extraction of the dissolved methane the lake also contained, generating so much power Rwanda could sell it to neighboring countries.
“Fireworks!” Boulder enthused, ignoring Heatwave’s grumbling about fire safety, and being in the middle of the dry season.
“No more sampling local cuisine,” Chase reminded them, as the barge headed for the Goma wharfs. “I’m not helping any of you clear your intakes this time.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Interstellar space.
The minute Skyfire had lifted from Earth’s gravity well, Scavenger had grabbed Perceptor and dragged him off into a corner of the hold for what he intended to be a long snuggle. They would have little to do on the six month journey out to Cybertron, though Perceptor had looked forward to spending much of that time in Skyfire’s cockpit, making astronomical observations and chatting with the delta.
Snuggles were also nice.
Recharge, however, was what they all needed even more. Scavenger and Perceptor fell offline in mid-kiss, their faces rather comically smooshed together. Wheeljack and Hook arranged them a little more comfortably, then settled in themselves.
Skyfire was their main transport, leading a small convoy of Azimuth and Blueshift. The two young deltas were carrying their share of the nova nets, the minicons, as well as the contingent of engineering-inclined Waterbabies who were less sturdy, canny, or well-armed than Rutile and Avalanche, who were riding with Skyfire and the Constructicons. Perceptor didn’t really want any of his progeny in close quarters for six months with the Structies as a group. Scavenger and Hook were all right by themselves, but their gestalt groupthink still had lethal edges that Perce didn’t trust.
…
And because the post limits are WEAK:
Second piece...
Third piece..........
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): ensemble
Warnings: OCs, PnP, sparks, m/m, polyamory, angst
Summary: Wherein humans meet more aliens; there is a good deal of snuggling; and a planet is moved.
Notes: Suggested listening: “Welcome to Oa” and “We’re Going to Fly Now” by James Newton Howard from the Green Lantern ST for the actual planet-moving.
Homomdans and Ishlorsinami I borrowed from the Culture books by Iain M. Banks, the rest are made up or cribbed with alterations from Doctor Who or one of the old Star Trek novels, but re the latter I don’t remember which one. Might have been a Diane Duane one, as she always had great aliens. ;D
Also, please forgive me for writing two pages of what everyone was wearing. XD
~23K words.
Part I
Part II
BOREALIS: Neighbors - pt iii
2083 - September
Earth.
In June, Prime had warned his command staff, human and mech, that Galvatron would know whom he had rekindled. Decepticon attacks were indeed on the rise. Vegas was safe under its Aegis towers, but Nellis had been hit hard, one of their Aegis towers melting, the desert scorched, the Embassy’s defenses sorely tested.
Wheeljack’s tower remained untouched.
“You should keep all your most important stuff in there,” the commander of the EDF said wryly.
“We do,” Optimus said with a wink. “As long as it is resistant to explosions.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Contact.
Not First Contact - decades too late for that, but important contact nonetheless. Humanity’s old question, Are we alone in the universe? had long been answered. Now came the part where they figured out where they stood in the pattern of the greater dance. Lots of comm traffic. Information sent and received, starting with math like the scientists all said it would; the universal language. The Val’Nainnamoinnen and the Essee hailed Earth first, from well outside the Sol system, aware of Cybertronian interpreters ready to hand. Optimus had been communicating with both civilizations remotely for decades. Negotiating the continuance of his own species.
Sam Witwicky, at 92, was no longer directly involved, except occasionally in an advisory capacity. He tried not to be resentful of this, and mostly succeeded. Passing the torch and all that. He was supposed to be enjoying his retirement, as his father had. But he had his mother’s restive nature, and it made him fidgety to watch others take up his former mantle. At least Bee stayed with him, rather than being posted guardian for the next ambassador, and the next.
Dani was no diplomat and had immersed herself - in rather a physical way - in science. His daughter the cyborg. How had that become a thing? Nate had fled the family high-profile and pursued a quiet career in programming. Melissa, Dani’s daughter and Sam’s eldest grandchild, was heading for an ambassadorial post, if she could learn to control her temper. Legacy, Sam thought, of her maternal grandmother. As it was, Melissa was determined to make her own way either in the EDF or the diplomatic corps, and she didn’t want her grandfather putting his thumb on the scale. Nope. Sam was well out of it.
He still got to go to most of the coolest parties.
The Homomdans, acting as intermediaries between the M100 and Milky Way civilizations, landed in the center of the Atlantic, at the Equator - the aliens humankind had invited - and settled their enormous ship down on the surface. Vast stabilizing pontoons were extruded from the ventral hull to minimize any rocking, though the sea was calm. Ten kilometers long, three wide; the outer hull a silky indigo, covered in flowing white script or knotted designs (Sam wasn’t sure which). The entire top surface of the vessel had been converted into a kind of park, including deep, serpentine pools for aquatic life forms (they’d be fishing Seaspray out of those, later), and about a dozen large, columned pavilions, roofed with stretched metal or fabric of some kind. (It rained the next day and the sound was more like rain hitting fabric than metal.)
The ultimate patio boat.
Champagne in hand, Sam cruised various groups of humans and… Okay, they had to stop calling everyone aliens. Once humans in numbers got Out There, they would be the aliens, for one thing. And, well, it was just rude. Anyway, Sam and his tux (the vintage kind, with tails; Mikaela had licked her lips at him, so Sam endured the stiff collar without complaint) worked the crowd, at ease in his element. Everyone knew who he was so he was in position to make introductions, which he enjoyed.
The Cybertronians hadn’t arrived yet. They’d come in later that evening, giving the human contingent time on their own to speak with the gathered ambassadors from Esse, Lorsin, Hom, and Moinne; and the aquatic Kuuukinye, who were mostly along for the ride.
All those present had volunteered and had been cleared by the Galactic Council; pleased to meet with such a young species, and also able to cope with Earth’s environment with a minimum of bother. The Ishlorsinami took drugs to prevent allergic reactions, and the slightly higher oxygen content was making the Kuuukinye slightly giddy, though the Essee said one could hardly tell the difference.
Prowl had been right, all those years ago, Sam thought, grinning. He schooled his expression as the Essee and Ishlorsinami ambassadors passed him, speaking earnestly with the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador. The tall, grey, somber Ishlorsinami, with their long, grey, somber cloaks, when confronted with human contrariness, had had frequent bouts of their second-mind CPUs crashing, until they had worked out a sneaky bit of programming that allowed them to ignore the most illogical behaviors. Poptart blowtorch, baby.
The Essee, on the other hand, seemed to think humans were very cute. Sam thought the Essee were cute and cuddly, despite the complete lack of anything even resembling pelage. Mostly, he admitted, because they were a pastel shade of pink and had soft, rounded bodies and boneless-looking extensible limbs that curled up when at rest; a bit like octopi, though he hadn’t seen any evidence of suckers. Big green eyes with their lash-like attendant constellations of darker pink spots also helped.
The Val’Nainnamoinnen were the opposite of cuddly. Three to four meters tall, if you counted their “hair” - Sam was in no way convinced it was anything other than leaves - lean, with rough green or brown skin, and a series of bright eyes arranged up and down the top fifth of their bendable trunks. Typically four-armed, they were renowned as musicians. Like the Homomdans and Cybertronians, they were from the M100 galaxy, here to vouch for the Autobots in general and Optimus in particular. Optimus and his team had met a Val’Nainnamoinnen ship in distress about 5000 years ago and had rendered assistance. Bee, Jazz and Ratchet were excited to see them again.
Trees in Space! Sam tight-beamed to Miles, who was somewhere on the other side of the deck. Who had gotten Miles into a tux anyway? Whoever it was hadn’t insisted on shoes.
I think I know where the Entwives went, Miles shot back, and Sam snorted into his champagne.
I am Groot! Borealis contributed from orbit. Miles almost spat his water all over the deck.
Rather than construct an entirely new entity to represent the whole of Earth, over the years the UN had been revamped extensively. As such, it had the authority, granted by an overwhelming majority of nations, to appoint human ambassadors to each of the visiting civilizations. These were plummy positions, in the sense that the ambassadorial teams and their families could expect, once they left Earth, to be accommodated in high technological style, with all their physical and intellectual needs attended to. And they were leaving any risk of Decepticon attack behind. However, this wasn’t like being the Australian Ambassador to Japan, where the people you were living and dealing with shared a physiology if not a language. These ambassadors had been chosen and trained very carefully. Politics were involved of course, but actual qualifications and aptitudes took precedence. Most of the candidates had spent time as interns at the Cybertronian Embassy in Nevada, or in Metroplex in Morocco.
Sam watched the ambassador to Hom introduce her family to the Homomdan Ambassador to Earth. Hadiza Azikiwe was from Nigeria; her wife, Nazli Bucherer, from Switzerland; and their children were the frighteningly bright tyros typical of their generation, raised with the latest in augmentation and the always-there connections to the Nets and the public levels of the cloud mind. The Homomdan ambassador, Ar Val-Ser iFferschlar, tucked all three legs under nemself in an approximate bow. Their three-meter-tall, pyramidal bodies were not amenable to flexion. Nir skin was a deep black so glossy the human family could no doubt see themselves in it.
Homomdans are sometimes mistaken for furniture if they sit still too long, Bee tight-beamed from wherever it was the Autobots were getting ready, waiting to make their appearance. Sam decided to give up trying to sip his champagne since everyone was determined to send alcoholic bubbles deep into his sinus cavities.
A splash near his feet distracted him. Hydrodynamics dictated a high degree of convergent evolution among larger aquatic species on Earth. Sharks, marlin, dolphins, eels, plesiosaurs, and seals all displayed some degree of streamlining for moving through water efficiently. And then you had the craziness of the invertebrate world. That was where the Kuuukinye came in.
Oh god, Sam thought, looking down at the being who had flipped a chitinous palp to catch his attention. Party Lobsters.
They only vaguely resembled lobsters, but as far as Sam was concerned there were a lot of legs, a lot of brightly-colored, armored segments, a powerful swimming tail, and two enormous, wildly waving sensory antennae. Lobsters. The Cybertronians liked the Kuuukinye on what Sam felt was an instinctive level, and the feeling was mutual. Exoskeletal beings unite, or something.
“Mr. Witwicky, how’s the champagne?” the Kuuukinya asked. They were semi-cybernetic, embracing their inorganic technological advances the way humans were beginning to, and had picked up human languages with the same facility as the Autobots.
“Ptem Sl’ketekk.” Sam held up his half-full flute, examining the pale gold color and the sparkling bubbles. “Veuve Clicquot Chardonnay, vintage 2004. Good stuff.” He crouched - his back was a little stiff these days but his knees were still okay - at the edge of the channel. Sl’ketekk had a sort of watery smell, up close, but it wasn’t what Sam would call fishy. Too weird to be readily identifiable, it was simply the way the Kuuukinye smelled. Not unpleasant. “How’s the salad?” The floating arrangements of mixed Earth and Kuuukinye vegetable matter were so elaborate and colorful that Sam - avowed carnivore - was jealous. He wanted pretty floaty salads too.
(He had seen Mikaela filch one of those carved radish roses earlier. He loved those as much as she did, but she would spend the rest of the evening fending off armfuls of them from the enthusiastic Kuuukinye.)
“A great sufficiency,” Sl’ketekk said. “And delicious. As your wife, I think, agrees.”
“You saw that, huh?”
“I do have six eyes.”
…
As the band of pink along the western horizon faded into blue twilight, the giant alien robots arrived, Sky Lynx and all six deltas alighting just long enough to allow their passengers to debark, then all but Borealis lifting off again. (Borealis had drawn the short straw, Bee told Sam, but of the deltas she was most tolerant of big parties anyway, as long as they didn’t last more than a few hours.) Fashionably late to the party. More than politics, it was flagrant theatrics. Sam smiled. The fading sky made their optics and biolights more striking, and as they came nearer Sam resolved the full effect of their formal ornamentation. At some unvoiced signal, they stopped, with Optimus in the center of a long ellipse. Not a military phalanx, though they moved with a habitual unity that had as much to do with the cloud mind as with armed maneuvers. They stood close together, arranged by height, minicons foremost naturally enough, so that everyone could see and be seen. Even on so large a ship, fifty Cybertronians together took up a lot of room.
Mikaela was the first to approach them, in her iris-blue Fortuny silk dress, her wrap a gauzy banner flying behind her, one end tugged loose by the warm breeze. Optimus took a knee, caught the errant wisp of fabric and refastened it. (A magnetic clasp. One does not pin a Fortuny dress, Mikaela had informed Sam. She knew how much Bee had paid for it.)
Sam’s smile widened. Oh, Optimus would have done the same without an audience. That’s what made the move so smooth. Such a display of manual dexterity and gentleness, however, was not without a point, here and now. Sam couldn’t see Mikaela’s face, but he could well imagine the fond, amused, half-cynical smirk she tossed up at Prime. There, yep, Prime winked back. Those two.
Optimus stood. He had the air of someone who was trying very hard not to tug on a too-tight collar. Sam empathized. Formalwear. Everyone looked great, no-one was comfortable.
“Wow!” Sam made a production number of blinking sun filters over his corneas. “What, we humans never rated the full bling treatment from you guys? How much is all that worth?” Bee had yellow diamonds and citrines lined down his forearms and across his cheek-guards, amidst complex gold wire inlays. Even Hound had emeralds and turquoise and jade pasted all over him, though Sam searched for and quickly found Smokescreen’s betting pool on how long that would last.
“It was Jazz’s idea,” Optimus muttered.
Mikaela looked Prime up and down, twice, with no remorse whatsoever. As though she wanted to trace every exoskeletal curve and softly glowing biolight with her fingertips. Or her tongue. Sam adjusted the collar of his tux.
“Nice,” she said. Moving on, she beamed at a very shiny Ironhide and Ranger, (someone had held them down to stick star enstatites and black tourmalines on their helms; one suspected Chromia, who was rocking denim-blue sapphire chevrons, which served to make her look even more badass,) then stopped dead in front of Ratchet. He had actually made peridots to match. “That color. Still.” She’d seen pre-war vid. He’d always been that color. That upon landing he’d found an Earth vehicle so nearly matching his habitual shade had been pure chance. Horrible, horrible chance. Ratchet squarked something rude at her.
Jazz and Rio had covered their plating in silver, intaglioed with branching fractal designs. Mikaela had been afraid they might have chromed themselves, but no, that was Sideswipe. (And with his stylish lines…well, damn if it didn’t look good.) Sunstreaker had showed more restraint, at least in terms of decoration. He’d had Tracks and Mirage working him over, together inlaying gold wire in deceptively simple but aesthetically precise lines. He’d enjoyed the process a great deal and hadn’t been shy about showing his appreciation.
Beachcomber had covered himself in thin, continuous sheets of opal that somehow contrived to look like tie-dye. Sam wanted to blame Miles, but Beachcomber was perfectly capable of perpetrating that on his own. Especially with Perceptor gone for an extended period. It had been Beachcomber, no doubt, who had supplied the others with the requisite mineralogical data, storing the molecular structures of minerals not only of Earth, but from Cybertron and many other planets besides. His internal nanoassembly capabilities were fine for his own needs, but he was too small to support manufacture for everyone else. There must have been quite a lot of cabled cuddling - given the happy state of Beachcomber’s fields.
Prowl had removed another layer of armor. He looked de, his actual gender, now, instead of he. Wide-chested, narrow-hipped, long, long legs, deft hands. Gemmed with moonstones and titanium wire. Maggie was staring at him and making sounds Sam was trying very hard to ignore. Maggie was almost a hundred years old. She shouldn’t be making noises like that. It was disturbing.
(Maggie and Glen were only seven years older than Sam and Mikaela. Back when they’d first met the Autobots, those seven years had seemed significant - the difference between teenagers and full adults. Once they were all adults, though, seven years hadn’t mattered so much. Now they were important again. Maggie and Glen would be centenarian geezers later this year, while Sam was a sprightly young ninety-something. Didn’t feel a day over 62!)
Standing behind Prime, due to their height - an arrangement Ironhide reflexively did not like but tolerated fairly well - Thundercracker and Strake had declined to weigh themselves down with gems and unnecessary wire, but had honed their colors and set their mesh to subtle patterns, their armor glassy with polish. Elita stood between the alphas, equal in height and elegance, her colors shifted toward bright copper and silver , away from the matte carbon and steel she’d worn dominant for three million years.
The minicons, ranged in front, had adopted brilliant coloration in lieu of jewelry. Their iridescent plating shifted spectra according to viewing angle, putting amethysts and sapphires and diamonds to shame. They looked like gemmed scarabs or dragonflies. Spiral stood beside Arcee and Moonracer, just behind the minicons, each wearing wire and gem stripes of the others’ colors.
By twos and fours and larger clumps, humans joined Autobots on their end of the deck (no small amount of teasing and admiration being lobbed about regarding both human and Cybertronian ideas of finery). Where Mikaela led, others followed, and once sufficient numbers were in a place, the rest couldn’t stand to be left out. After a while, once everyone had realized what had happened, conversations quieted and the merged group of humans and Cybertronians faced the visiting species from across a dozen meters of empty space.
Autobots didn’t wibble in exactly the same way humans did. Optics glowed brighter. Optimus did something magnificent with his fields, the others joining him, unfolding coronae as though expanding their sparks without opening their chests. And without irradiating everything within twelve miles.
“Eloquent as always, Optimus Prime,” Ar Val-Ser said, moving to stand at the forefront, between the two groups. Homomdans, Sam recalled, could sense EM fields without augmentation.
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Optimus said. He greeted each of the chief ambassadors by name, in their native languages. “We have come, upon your sufferance and by the good will of our human friends, to request the official resumption of diplomatic relations between the Autobots and the Involved Civilizations of this galaxy and those of M100.”
There was a great deal more speechifying after that. Sam didn’t doze off against Bee’s leg, no. He was just resting his eyes.
…
Moonlight glimmered on the dark waves to the west. The afterparty had settled down to a low hum, the population on the top deck of the Homomdan ship thinning then burgeoning again as human dignitaries from different time zones returned to their own vessels or joined the assemblage. Most of the Cybertronians were sitting or lounging, even Ratchet and Thundercracker politely declining the Homomdans’ offer of having the ship extrude appropriately sized chairs. Sitting directly on the deck at least put their heads closer to a level with the Homomdans and Val’Nainnamoinnen, and kept them from looming quite so much over everyone else.
Sam wondered if Optimus knew he was posing like a Playgirl centerfold or if that was just the way limbs proportioned like his tended to comfortably bend. He was taking up a lot of floor space, with one leg extended like that, but given how many people were leaning on that leg (and the rest of him) probably no one minded very much.
A number of the Homomdans stood about, looking - dammit, shut up, Bee - like scattered bits of architecture. Talking with trees. With the decorative lanterns and pavilions, the ship’s deck looked like a sculpture park. Sans lawn. The Ishlorsinami were determinedly diurnal and had all gone to bed, but the Essee were still rolling about, and a few of the Kuuukinye strapped on exo suits and clambered about on dryside, sampling hors d’oeuvres. The rest seemed to have crashed from their oxygen high and were bubbling away at the bottom of their pools.
The circulating trees at last circulated around to Prime. Patterns of respect in their cultures suggesting that the lowest in status be greeted and attended to first, and the highest, most respected individuals were to be greeted last. Sam had gathered that most of the Val’Nainnamoinnen were in fact captain and crew of the ship Prime and his team had helped.
“Optimus Prime, it is a pleasure to see with you again,” said the tallest, and therefore eldest, Sam’s lenses informed him, gesturing gracefully with a single arm. Val’Nainnamoinnen never stopped growing; their old-folks homes must be enormous.
“Elder Galallalanellia, the pleasure is mine as well.” Optimus nodded and made a gesture similar in arc. Ratchet, Ironhide, Jazz and Bumblebee clustered around them, Bee bouncing a little, wanting to know how Gala’s latest batch of great-great-great-grandseedlings were doing. The rest of Gala’s crew gathered in, and for a while, Sam couldn’t see the forest for the Autobots. Or the Autobots for the trees. Something like that.
Friends caught up, wider introductions were made, though everyone involved had some form of augmentation. This was a diplomatic function, at base. One of Gala’s crew, Bilafulajila, a particular friend of Bee’s, shuffled from the copse to settle beside Sam and Mikaela.
“Greetings, Mr. Witwicky, Ms. Banes-Witwicky,” Bilafulajila said, waving three of its arms, Sam making notes regarding whether there was a correlation between number of arms moving and depth of emotion. “Bumblebee, I am joyful to see, has made steady friends on this world as well.”
“Greetings, Bilafulajila,” Mikaela said. Ratchet had only needed to coach her through the names once. Listening to Cybertronian had given her a good ear. “Much to our own joy. It’s a talent he has.”
From the other side of the extended clump, Bee’s antennae went up, wiggling at them and he squeezed his optical shutters.
“How long did your ships journey together?” Sam asked.
“Two…oh, let me see, yes, two hundred and thirty-four of your years,” Bilafulajila said. “We were in a hazardous volume of what you call the Perseus Arm, between Decepticon bases and Ferenx expansionists and several rather unstable supergiant stars. Heavy radiation load. We would not have been there ourselves if not for the Gestrel Library. Heavily shielded, of course, which is why it’s so difficult to find. Optimus joined our search after our ship was repaired, hoping to find mention of the Allspark’s passage.”
Bilafulajila - Sam was having a hard time not thinking of them as Ents, thanks a lot, Miles - bent very slightly to murmur to him. “Their civil war is a great tragedy. They were once the most advanced civilization in the local cluster. Columns of peaceful coexistence. They mentored many a seedling species through the pangs of galactic social and physical navigation. And now. Well. Not all species develop in the same way. They discovered their aggressive potential much later than most. I have always likened it to a much delayed adolescence. Such a pity.”
“Your people have an adolescence?”
“No, but many animal species do. We are familiar with the concept.”
They were interrupted by a ripple of whispers through the crowd. At the far end of the deck, a floating platform had risen from within the ship and approached the Cybertronian enclave at the stern. Sam’s lenses displayed the name of the newcomer riding the conveyance. Ar Be-Ka iSchloear. So old now that nir skin had faded to dark brown, dull on the edges.
“Ar Be-Ka!” Optimus could not rise without dislodging dozens, but implied a deep bow with a movement of shoulder and chest armor and an inclination of his helm.
“Lady Optimusa! Time may have altered me, but not so the Prime of Cybertron.” Gender among Homomdans did not correlate at all to that of humans or Cybertronians. Someone’s translation software from Hom to English had gone hinky in a couple of - fortunately - forgivable particulars. Mikaela was grinning in a way Sam knew meant he’d best not comment.
“No indeed, old friend,” Optimus said, enfolding the ancient Homomdan in his fields, “time changes all.”
Ar Be-Ka settled nir platform at Optimus’ left elbow. “So it’s true then? You’ve done something irrevocable to yourself?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“After all this time you find the Allspark, but rather than return it to Cybertron you destroy it?”
“In…some respects.”
“As fond as we are of Cybertronians,” Ar Be-Ka said, tipping nir platform conspiratorially toward Mikaela, “they have always been vexingly coy about what exactly the Allspark is. No other species’ scientists have ever been allowed near the Simfur Temple, and let me tell you what a coup it was for us to even find out that that’s where it was kept! No-one is, to this day, certain what it was used for, besides demonstrably as a unique sort of power source.”
“Oh,” Mikaela said. “Um…”
“It was lodged in your planet here for some thousands of the local years, was it not?”
“Yes.” Mikaela folded her hands into her lap, carefully not looking at Optimus. “We studied it for decades, but didn’t make much headway. Then the Decepticons showed up, freed Megatron, and my husband pushed the Allspark into Megatron’s chest.”
“With, hm, semi-fatal results.”
“Semi-fatal.” Mikaela grinned. “Yes.”
“Instead of destroying your twin and yourself, the Allspark and the shard rendered you immortal.” Ar Be-Ka tipped nir platform toward Optimus, gazing at him rather pointedly. “Is that not a rather wide discrepancy between expectations and actual results?”
“It is, rather,” Optimus said placidly.
“Cybertronians,” said Bilafulajila, rustling its leafy hair.
“Indeed,” said Ar Be-Ka.
Optimus laughed softly. “I had very much hoped to see you again, old friend.”
“A small hope, no doubt,” Ar Be-Ka said, smiling. “This will be my final outing, I think. I had planned to spend my last days at home, but fate has yielded a different reward.”
Sam bit his lips. Optimus looked as though he had been punched in the chest. Put Optimus, then, on the growing list of mechs who loved ephemerals and had to learn how to cope with losing them. Be-Ka was in danger of being hugged.
…
Dawn opened over the sky, the world turning away from its own shadow, warm wind from the east blowing over the floating ship, humming softly in the pavilion canopies. Cybertronians watched over their sleeping humans, conversing in low voices with the Val’Nainnamoinnen, who hibernated for part of their solar cycles but did not sleep. A few Homomdans and Kuuukinye were awake, and the Ishlorsinami and Essee would be stirring soon. The handful of humans who hadn’t succumbed gazed blearily at the horizon with expressions varying from giddy to appalled.
Oh god, thought Miles, how long has it been since I pulled an all-nighter? Decades? He wasn’t sure he hadn’t drifted off at some point, but here he was now, draped over Beachcomber, coatless, tieless, and the sun was coming up. Murmurs. He’d lost track of the conversation for a moment.
“If we ask you to, will you make the Cybertronians leave?”
Wow, thought Miles. Ambassador Azikiwe was punchy. Not drunk at least; Ratchet had worked his usual voodoo with the alcohol. No, wait. No, it was a fair question. Miles was more than a little punchy himself.
Ar Val-Ser blinked all nir eyes. Miles was fascinated.
“We would leave if you asked us,” Optimus said.
Azikiwe waved her hand. “You Autobots would, everyone knows that. I mean the Decepticons.” She turned back to Ar Val-Ser. “If we asked you to, could you come down and eradicate the Decepticons for us? You probably have technology superior to theirs, since your development hasn’t been hampered by millions of years of a war of attrition.”
“But our technology is not geared so specifically to war,” Ar Val-Ser pointed out. “We might try, if we were so inclined to take so many lives, or any lives at all. But it has always been true that Cybertronians are very difficult to kill, and even more difficult to capture. Not without terrible collateral damage. One of the other Involved robot species might endeavor with somewhat better success, but that has been attempted, if I am not mistaken?”
“The Chime,” Optimus said, shuttering his optics for a moment. “That was…unfortunate.” Miles saw Prowl flinch, and Bee and Jazz touched his back. Prowl’s fields took on the sickly, uncoordinated pattern that meant he was looping. Wings restless, Thundercracker and Strake mantled around all three.
“For the Chime,” Ar Val-Ser said. “They only survived as a species because they were well distributed and therefore not all of them were on Aubera Secundus.” Ar Val-Ser made a gesture of negation - Homomdans were not built for head-shaking - “No, no, it would cause such a row, make such a mess of your nice little planet here. No, my dear Azikiwe, I think you are doing quite well on that front yourselves. In fact there are some on the Galactic Council who find your particular brand of martial resilience to be somewhat alarming. Not everyone has looked forward to your acquisition of space flight.”
“The Atraxi,” Jazz said. “Passive-aggressive bastards.”
Miles bared his teeth for half a second. He had read up on the Atraxi. Sanctimonious know-it-alls who thought they were all that and a bag of chips, and also thought they should dictate policy to everyone else for their own good. Rather like Americans. The Homomdans had taboos regarding implanting technological devices inside their bodies, but the Atraxi were outright robophobes who regarded Cybertronians as a plague. Ratchet had said that their point of view was understandable. The collateral damage in the Cybertronian civil war had often been messy, indiscriminate and widespread. They were not pleased at all by the endangered Cybertronians - whose extinction the Atraxi were itching to complete - allying with the numerous and robust humans. Who should probably be put down before they caused problems.
(And Ratchet, by the look he was giving the anxious little cuddle to his left, was about three seconds from grabbing Prowl and taking him back to Nevada if someone didn’t change the topic soon.)
The flying eyeball people? Sam surreptitiously tight-beamed Jazz.
Jazz not so surreptitiously snerked. Primus, Sam. Yes, the flying eyeball people.
They wanna go, huh?
In the worst way. With our population so small, and hard resources so thin, they reckon they have a chance.
Yeah, cuz that’s gone so well for everyone else who’s attacked you guys in the whole history of ever.
…Yeah.
Jazz’s tone dropped, and Sam felt like a schmuck, but it was true. Taking on the Cybertronians militarily had proved catastrophic for everyone who had tried it. Starting with the Quintessons, whose near-success had resulted in the institution of the Prime/Lord Protector ruling diad, and in the Quintessons’ own essential extinction. Sam was just as glad about the latter, though. Bee had shown him and Mikaela ancient vid taken in that era, and the Quints were creepy as hell, not to mention pathologically and congenitally cruel.
“Prime has been communicating diligently,” Elder Galallalanellia said, rustling its leaves, “attempting to convince the Atraxi, and some small number of others, that Cybertronians as a whole are not an invasive species. Not a hegemonizing swarm.”
A what? Miles thought. He’d heard Cybertronians called a lot of things, but not that.
Gray goo. Nanomachines run amok, Mikaela tight-beamed. The concept of self-replicating machines converting all local matter into more of themselves can also be applied to macro-scale machines.
That would be bad, Miles agreed. He couldn’t blame the Atraxi for their worry. Definitely wouldn’t help, then, to inform anyone that the Cybertronians had been making babies.
“This moving of their planet,” the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador continued, “has not settled anyone’s roots.”
“Indeed not,” said Ar Be-Ka. “Here they are, on the brink of extinction, and yet they manage this feat of astronomical landscaping? Alarming, Optimusa, quite, quite alarming. Exciting too!” Ne leaned nir platform at Prime. “May we watch?”
“You certainly may,” Optimus thrummed.
…
The Homomdan ship would remain floating on the Atlantic for another week, facilitating human and dolphin visitation, (and exchanging merry horn calls, light shows, and occasionally passengers with the scores of cruise ships - and a growing number of private craft, seaworthy and not so - gathered around it much closer than the military generals of their home countries were happy about) before breaking for orbit to await the Great Moving. Optimus and many of his officers would stay aboard for at least that week, aiding the human interactions and continuing their own negotiations. The ship was easily configured to provide spaces scaled to Cybertronian standards, even for the deltas if any of them had elected to go inside.
Borealis waffled for a good ten minutes, then contented herself with full-sensory feeds from Hound as he wandered around and talked with people.
I know they can do it, she said, and I know it’s a big ship, but I’m over 30 meters tall. That’s a lot of floor-to-ceiling space.
Not to mention getting your wings through doorways, Hound agreed, patting her foot before heading below.
As their second night aboard drew to a close amid more heavy diplomatic maneuvering disguised as a party, Optimus gestured furtively, staring at the decorative gems on his left forearm. Jazz hissed and swatted at him.
But-
It does not itch! Leave it alone.
I am going to make you take every one of these things off me, later. With your dentae.
Promises…
…
Home was his parents’ old house in Tranquility more than the Embassy, these last ten years or so. Renovated now and then as technology advanced and things like water heaters and microwaves wore out, plantings in the garden shifting to xeriscape or low-maintenance because Sam had a black thumb and Mikaela was too busy. But the bones of the house and yard were still recognizable. The garage kept mostly empty to give Bee room whether in car or robot mode.
Bee opened his doors to let Sam and Mikaela out. Slow, compared with the exuberance Bee remembered from so short a time ago, careful with aging joints, where the cartilage hadn’t held up quite as well as other things. In good shape for their age, sure; better than Ron and Judy had been, before Perceptor had gotten so good with the nanite cocktails and human medicine had started to accept those innovations. But the human aging process was more complicated than anyone had anticipated, problems cropping up because there had never been anywhere near so many humans worldwide living into their 90s or 100s - or 120s - before. Nothing worked perfectly. Not yet.
They tottered a little, on the steps up to the porch. It had been a long night, up atop the Homomdan ship, and though they’d slept several hours the next morning, there had been more meetings, and a flight back to Nevada with Silverbolt, and yet more meetings, with different people, talking about the party. Debriefing, basically, and then a big press conference. The world wanted to know everything.
“Aliens!” Sam said. “Real aliens! Starships!”
“What?” Bee squawked. “Chopped liver over here?”
“You don’t count,” Sam said, waving a hand. “70-something years, Bee! Come on! You’re hardly aliens any more.”
“Sam…” Mikaela said. Then she shook her head, patting Bee’s extended fingertip. She unlocked the front door. They were tired. Reminding Sam of the many important, but wonderful, differences between their species would be pointless. He needed a nap. She needed a nap. They needed to remember to pick the dogs up from the boarding kennel tomorrow.
Before they entered the house, into spaces he could not easily follow, Bee held Sam and Mikaela against his face and buzzed. A little hum, a reminder, not enough to get anyone wound up. They were going to Cybertron soon! He wanted to show them, craters and all. To see them walk on his homeworld, boots crunching on the rubble from which they'd build anew.
Bee? Mikaela touched his cheek spar.
Soon, he said, embroidered with glyphs, many of which she knew, though the subtler meanings in their placement, and how they overlapped in the three-dimensional ways even written Cybertronian tended to take up, were beyond her. “Months, not years,” he said aloud, clearer meaning. “And then you’ll have neighbors.” He had been resisting the urge to call upon the Pleiades to guard Sam and Mikaela full-time, especially when he had to recharge. He tried not to need to, basking outside the garage or wherever he’d driven them. He didn’t want anything to happen to them before they saw his homeworld. He didn’t want to miss a single moment of their lives - a sappy old song from 1997 played over his speakers.
Sam groaned and Mikaela snorted, and the two humans stepped together out of Bee’s grasp and over their threshold. He warbled softly. Sunrise.
You’d better not wake me up that early, Sam said.
…
On the top deck of the Homomdan ship, Hound and Mirage were a tight little knot against Prime's side. Hound had thought of suggesting that Mirage could stay with Ultra Magnus and Metroplex, but he knew that Mirage, for all his dread of seeing Cybertron’s mangled corpse, would never want to miss watching an entire planet plus two moons be space bridged. Prime curled a hand around them, pressing them closer.
Jazz had Prowl pinned to Prime’s other side - Thundercracker and Strake nested together behind them, against Prime’s back, watching with some interest but tranquil after their own overloads. Jazz had plucked out most of the gems burdening Optimus, indeed using his dentae in a most delicate manner. He had convinced Prime to keep a few of the nicer opals around his shoulders; they didn’t interfere with anything and looked fantastic. The wire inlay was being left alone for the time being, though Jazz knew Prime’s nanocells would begin devouring it soon.
Prowl and Red were finalizing moving plans - shifting of security, tallying who was going, who was staying, who would come back, when and to where. The Cybertronian Embassy to Earth would remain in Nevada, with only slightly decreased human staff. Maggie and Glen still lived there. Metroplex would remain their secondary embassy, but she needed to be mobile if necessary.
Optimus petted the friends around him contemplatively. He was heavily in communication with a large number of people, as was his wont, but the tenor of most of those conversations was somewhat more formal and cautious than his usually cordial relations with humanity had become over the past seventy-odd years. He extended cables to Jazz and Prowl, along with an inquiring ping. They accepted and replied via their smaller cables.
I’m fine, Prowl said. Jazz had door-wings these days and Prowl was having fun with them.
He’s hangin’ in, Jazz clarified at the same time, tilting his head to nibble and kiss Prowl’s neck struts, making sure Prowl could feel how much he was enjoying what he was doing to his door-wings. The Ishlorsinami were processing requests from the Chime, whose population had rebounded in the intervening millennia, the Atraxi, and a couple of other species, to try Sentinel, Prowl, the rest of Sentinel’s battalion, and a large number of other Cybertronians for war crimes. Jazz knew Prowl’s reflex would be to throw himself upon the mercy of the intergalactic court. Where he would probably be disassembled for the greater good, unless Optimus could make his prior sentence take precedent. Maybe you should extend his geas to match TC and Strake’s? Buy us some time?
I am considering it.The Chime at least were so far being reasonable, accepting Prowl’s meticulous report of the Auberan atrocity (the entire planet had been glassed) as permissible evidence in their deliberations. Disconcertingly, however, the Chime wished to forego further Ishlorsinami mediation. They wanted direct contact. They wanted a full memory-copy from Prowl via hardline core download. And they wanted permission to hunt and if necessary execute Sentinel. Prime was willing to establish direct contact, but the other two stipulations were alarming, even if allowing them to take a shot at Sentinel might solve one of his own thornier problems. It wasn’t a solution he liked at all.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
As the date for the great moving drew closer, the old debate flared up into lively and sometimes bitter contention again. If the Autobots deserted Earth, would the Decepticons rain down destruction upon the still technologically outmatched humans, or would they leave Earth in peace at last in pursuit of their ancient foes? It was a moot question in a sense, as Metroplex was not inclined to leave, nor did most in the African Union want her to.
“Don’t you want to join everyone else to see Cybertron installed in its new orbit?” people asked Metroplex.
“No,” she said, fluffing her solar panels contentedly. “I’m useful here.” Cityformers liked staying put.
Also, over the course of the last few decades, six teams of Rescue Bots had been created, to pursue much the same function as the Protectobots, who could not be everywhere at once. This way there was at least one combiner team for each heavily inhabited continent - and someone could always get down to Antarctica in a hurry if the scientists there were having a serious problem.
Like the Protectobots, the Rescue teams had no dedicated permanent base, and went where they were most needed, usually to aid the humans in natural disaster relief, whether this was local flooding or a major earthquake and tsunami. Landslides, hurricanes, volcanoes, wildfires, sinkholes; there was always something happening somewhere in the world. Trapped miners, gas pipe explosions, old nuclear fission plant meltdowns, city fires and even highway pile-ups could benefit from giant robotic assistance.
…
“Last pipe, set,” Heatwave said, signaling to the humans waiting on the shore. Cheers rose up; now they would be protected from the deadly mazuku. Lake Kivu, on the border between DR Congo and Rwanda, was a large freshwater lake that experienced occasional limnal eruptions - sudden releases of dissolved carbon dioxide that suffocated livestock, wildlife and humans. The violent releases could also cause lake tsunami, and Lake Kivu was surrounded by many towns and villages. The loss of life would be catastrophic.
As demonstrated in Lakes Nyos and Monoun, however, vent pipes driven deep into the water would release the carbon dioxide at a safe rate. Lake Kivu being much larger and deeper had presented economic and engineering difficulties in implementing a similar plan, until the Autobots got involved.
Better to prevent a disaster than have to come in afterward. A huge carbon dioxide release would be the kind of unpredictable thing they could never arrive in time to save everyone from. All they would be able to do was help with burial of the bodies.
Boulder, down on the lake bottom, shuddered. Then steeled his mind. The perforations in the pipe allowed the heavily saturated water down at the bottom to rise toward the top. The CO2 bubbled out, causing a fountain at the surface, like opening a shaken bottle of soda; but the diameter of the pipe limited the size of the fountain. The water down there was so acidic, a normal pipe would corrode quickly, but he and his team had helped forge an alloy that would last indefinitely. This was the last of seven such pipes. Boulder created a vacuum bubble in his chest and rose swiftly to the surface, almost 480 meters above.
Chase and Heatwave hauled him up onto the barge that had been their staging platform for the project. Pinion, a light helicopter, flew circles above and relayed their success to Metroplex up north.
“Party time!” Pinion called down, swooping low and doing a loop to the delight of the human spectators and the engineers on the barge, supervising the ebullient young Bots. They were going to spend the night in Goma, on the Congo side of the lake, and in the morning help out with road repair there after the last lava flow. After that they’d spend the next six months, between emergencies, planting trees to make up for the CO2 release. A company called KivuWatt was already doing large-scale extraction of the dissolved methane the lake also contained, generating so much power Rwanda could sell it to neighboring countries.
“Fireworks!” Boulder enthused, ignoring Heatwave’s grumbling about fire safety, and being in the middle of the dry season.
“No more sampling local cuisine,” Chase reminded them, as the barge headed for the Goma wharfs. “I’m not helping any of you clear your intakes this time.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Interstellar space.
The minute Skyfire had lifted from Earth’s gravity well, Scavenger had grabbed Perceptor and dragged him off into a corner of the hold for what he intended to be a long snuggle. They would have little to do on the six month journey out to Cybertron, though Perceptor had looked forward to spending much of that time in Skyfire’s cockpit, making astronomical observations and chatting with the delta.
Snuggles were also nice.
Recharge, however, was what they all needed even more. Scavenger and Perceptor fell offline in mid-kiss, their faces rather comically smooshed together. Wheeljack and Hook arranged them a little more comfortably, then settled in themselves.
Skyfire was their main transport, leading a small convoy of Azimuth and Blueshift. The two young deltas were carrying their share of the nova nets, the minicons, as well as the contingent of engineering-inclined Waterbabies who were less sturdy, canny, or well-armed than Rutile and Avalanche, who were riding with Skyfire and the Constructicons. Perceptor didn’t really want any of his progeny in close quarters for six months with the Structies as a group. Scavenger and Hook were all right by themselves, but their gestalt groupthink still had lethal edges that Perce didn’t trust.
…
And because the post limits are WEAK:
Second piece...
Third piece..........