Fic
Title: Borealis 77/93: New Dawn - Part 1
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): ensemble
Warnings: OCs.
Summary: Wherein Optimus could use a distraction; Starscream plots; Bluestreak could use a distraction; the Homomdans offer help with the radiation; Longhaul takes Beachcomber on a special tour; and Galvatron takes a long bath.
Notes: Aheh, long time no post... So the last part of "Neighbors" is now its own chapter! Which will also be multi-part! Ah well. We'll get there. ^_^;
~8500 words.
BOREALIS: New Dawn - pt i
2084 - March
The hilltop, for now, rose above the new city, affording long views, between the sails and vanes of solar collectors, to the edges of the plateau, sunset polishing everything gold and russet and misty purple. Optimus did not ask Vector Prime how long he could stay. The answer could change in an astrosecond. It was difficult to stand next to him and not touch him. Vector was understanding about this, and unfurled a solar sail across Optimus’ aft and thighs.
On Earth, humanity was jostling to know the city’s name. The Cybertronians were in no hurry. “New Iacon” was briefly offered, but Iacon was firmly rooted in the north polar region, and the name carried as much cultural and emotional weight as Kaon, that was gone. Given their location, some suggested “New Hydrax” and others said “Hydrax In Memoriam”, and Oratorio said they could shorten that to “Hymm”. The cloud mind was mulling that over. There was no rush. City names might emerge naturally out of use, like memes, for cities that weren’t alive and thus couldn’t name themselves.
Vector lifted a hand, projected a small holo from his palm. “The name on the bow of the new ship is ‘Harbinger’.”
“A new design,” Optimus said. Not a reassuring name. New design, new fleet, most likely.
“I slipped Safeguard aboard. He reports it is commanded by Starscream, crewed entirely by Seekers.”
“That must please him.” If only giving Starscream the power - the lordship - he craved was enough to stop the war. Optimus supposed a good military commander would ask Vector if Safeguard had gotten specs on the new warship; engine configuration, structural weaknesses, shielding modulations.
“Safeguard gave a full report to Prowl,” Vector said.
“Ah. Thank you. Prowl, Jazz, and Elita will make best use of it.” At his pinged inquiry, he learned they were already fashioning primary plans and branching trees of contingency plans for sabotage or destruction.
Optimus didn’t like this. Reacting instead of acting. That had always presaged the most desperate times, when, exhausted, they tried most frantically to jump whatever rut they’d worn. The pendulum of the war had swung in wide ellipses; from aggressive to defensive to stalemate to regrouping and back to aggressive, over and over and over. But pre-emptive strikes were dangerous, and - counting the half-deads - the Decepticons once again had them very much outnumbered.
Had he been a good military commander? For three million years - a third of his lifetime - Optimus had struggled both with and against his core programming to lead the Autobots, to be the commander they needed. Or had he, despite following as best he could the advice of experienced generals like Ultra Magnus and Deepforge and Ironhide, simply dragged everyone through one near-catastrophic engagement after another? He couldn’t even claim that he had kept most of his people alive.
He’s wallowing, isn’t he, Jazz tight-beamed to Vector.
Only a little. Vector was about to gather Optimus in, but an equally suitable distraction appeared. One of the youngsters is coming up. That should cheer him. Rutile was 58 and fancied himself quite the elder sibling. Vector could hardly think about the miniscule span of sixty years without laughing.
And if that don’t do the trick I’m sure you’ll think of something. Down in what was shaping up to be a large plaza, Jazz peeked around Elita’s leg to see Rutile bounding up the hill.
Optimus knelt and held out his hands, wriggling his fingers at Rutile. Ru hurtled into his arms and Optimus cuddled him close, nibbling affectionately on his shoulder armor, kissing his forehelm. The firstborn Waterbaby, so very like both his parents, odd as that still seemed. Vector thrummed at them, pleased.
“Bravespark,” Optimus hummed, as Rutile pressed his face into his neck. Everyone was calling Ru that, though it had the feeling of a nickname, not a Change of Designation. Rutile sighed.
“I know you’re not angry that I blabbed about the space bridge, and I’m immensely relieved things’ve worked out the way they have so far,” Rutile said. He had thought of asking Prowl what he should have done, but he was too frightened of learning what Prowl thought would have happened if he hadn’t done what he did. “But I’m worried, Prime. What will Cyclonus and the others do? What’s Galvatron going to do to them? To us?”
“There was a time,” Optimus said, “when I thought I could have predicted Megatron’s responses to nearly anything. That time is long gone, and Galvatron…”
Galvatron’s got a mind like a box of rabid weasels, Borealis provided helpfully from orbit. Rutile nearly threw a cog. Vector decided that a hundred-thousand-year-long flight with Optimus and Ratchet’s progeny would never be boring.
“Be that as it may,” said Optimus, having honed his ability to keep a straight face through a lifetime lived with Jazz and Ratchet in proximity, “Turmoil, Cyclonus and Strika are resourceful and intelligent. I am sure they would not have withdrawn as they did if they had not already formulated a way to explain their actions to Galvatron.”
Rutile nodded, pressing his helm to Prime’s chest, shutting his optics and feeling for the thrum of that great spark. He was going to fret more about this later, he knew. Moving the planet had been a game changer, how could it not have been? Had he expected the war to end entirely? No. But the shifting possibilities in what the Decepticons would now do were disquieting. He would fret about them, even though he was technically a civilian. He couldn’t help it. The Beachcomber in him wasn’t strong enough, perhaps. But until that nebulous “later” he had two Primes wrapping arms and fields around him.
Sunset deepened, swallowing shadows on the ground, turning the sky crimson and damson, the air waning cold. Silverbolt climbed two-thirds of the hill’s height, then laid himself along the last third, resting his chin on his folded hands, gazing at Rutile.
“Bravespark,” he murmured. Delicately he rubbed his cheek spars against first Optimus’ left shoulder, then Vector’s right, effectively nuzzling them closer together.
The buzz and giggle in the cloud mind grew louder. Silverbolt felt Skyfire approach, transform, land, crouch over him, nudging his legs wider so Skyfire could get his hands down into Bolt’s hip gimbals; vast strength behind tender stroking, and Silverbolt shivered, arching his back, splaying his wings as their powerful fields meshed and swept outward to engulf the others like gas giants sweeping up clear orbits to protect the life-bearing planets nearer a sun.
At the same moment, Rutile kissed the line of Allspark-stuff running up Optimus’ throat, shivering at the electric bloom of recognition and welcome and joy; connection/belonging/unity sang through him, and through Optimus. He felt Prime shudder deep, and he’d slipped in a line, and through the cable he felt Prime’s swift assessment, comparison: not like Miles. Rutile was about to pursue that, but Skyfire climbed over Silverbolt, mouth open, wanting a taste of Vector’s ions, and the space between Primes and deltas burned with bodylights and ardent fields and hot vents from cores grown molten; and Optimus drew their energies up and up, the galaxy-scale passion of the two deltas, arching and flaring into each other, magnified, refracted by two immortal Prime sparks; he gathered the emotions of his tribe, his hive - Vector intoxicated by inclusion, Rutile caught amid them, half surrendered, half observing - weaving a vast skein not of matter this time, but bright powers, a storehouse of immensity from which they could all draw, awestruck. The pattern did not explode, freeing them each to their singular overloads, but spread and redoubled, stabilizing in ways even Vector found astonishing, Optimus’ spark the keystone.
He opened and Rutile, fearless, opened, and the brushing of their coronae touched off at last a supernova that rippled through the Allspark itself, leaving living mechs strutless and steaming under an ultramarine blue night sky.
“Oomph,” Silverbolt said, optics off and a silly little grin on his face. Skyfire’s weight felt good, even with all four of his brothers on top of that. When had they showed up?
While you were busy snogging Rutile, Skydive informed him. Which I know feels nice, but it looks hilarious from the outside.
Don’t some fish keep their babies in their mouths? Fireflight asked.
Cichlids, among others, Beachcomber said, laughing.
He wouldn’t actually fit, Hot Spot and First Aid assured Groove. Rutile was in the neighborhood of twelve feet tall - about the same height as Silverbolt’s entire head, if one didn’t count fancy antennae and things.
Fancy antennae that Optimus was idly petting. Silverbolt rather wanted to wriggle into this attention, but his body informed him that he was quite thoroughly pinned, so he’d just have to enjoy the little EM shivers that were running down to his shoulders by themselves.
Shall we, Optimus offered, very content and very amused, once the Greenhouse is done, have a Dance? Their last Dance had not been so long ago, but it had been on Earth. This would be the first on Cybertron in a very long time indeed, and the first under their new sun.
Yes! Yes! the cloud mind cheered, those not fallen into recharge. The sentiment would be unanimous by dawn.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
An incoming long-distance message bleeped in his queue. Starscream glared at it. What good was the requirement to ask for orders before engaging if it took so long to get an answer back? He was given a ship! Was that not an implied gesture of autonomy? Had he not proven through long eons his ability? Did Galvatron truly think Starscream would do something rash with the Homomdans still in the area?
What game was Galvatron playing now?
I am already aware of Cybertron’s relocation, the message played. Galvatron’s glyphs languid and amused. Subharmonics skittered away at the edges, too fleeting to catch entirely. A game indeed. Turmoil informed me some time ago. I should like to know why my supposed second in command has been so slow to inform me of current strategically important events. Do try to keep up, Starscream.
Starscream wanted to know why Galvatron, if he’d known about it some time ago, hadn’t bothered to tell his supposed second in command about such a strategically important event. But it would not do to say so.
Skywarp poked his head into the room. Hastily retreated. Starscream seethed as he composed his next message. Asking permission for each step, when he was the one who could best assess the tactical situation! When would Galvatron get off his landing pads and quit slouching around Chaar? Kill the humans. Subdue the Autobots. Reclaim their homeworld. That’s what the troops wanted! Starscream regarded one rocky planet as easily manipulated as another, but he understood the pull tradition and history had on the pride of others.
He must be patient. Let Galvatron’s minions bide their time. Let Shockwave’s manufactories continue to build. The defeat of Optimus Prime and his pitiful remnant band would be all the more crushing. And final. Very well.
Request permission to establish a base at Vos…
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The wind blew. High, thin clouds flickered across the sun, etching faint shadows over the metal world. Bluestreak stood on the parapet wall, one hand outstretched. Frozen. His optics aimed at his hand, the sequential, fitted segments of his fingers, but he saw other things. Heard something other than the hum of the wind. Felt the ghosts of long-collapsed fields. A different structure supported his feet.
The gravity was the same as in memory, the angle of the light, the composition of the air through his filters; small things, but enough.
Maggie, appropriately helmeted and suited, leaned on the railing of a human-scale balcony on the first aboveground building completed so far, a level above Bluestreak. She watched Prowl and Ironhide approach him from opposite directions, step by step. Her filters were up so she could see the way they extended their fields, gently brushing against the edges of Blue’s.
They were all like this. So gentle. So torn apart inside. Even Thundercracker and Ironhide and Chromia, the old veterans; they moved despite the pain, old scars they’d gotten used to.
The physical embrace had only closed for a few seconds when Blue stiffened, crackles of St. Elmo’s fire dancing over his armor, snapping off the edges of his door-wings. Then he sagged, caught by the other two even as they shuddered and threw sparks of their own, optics guttering.
Maggie had only the vaguest notion of what overload was really like. “Orgasms” that knocked most mechs unconscious! Someday a mech with her memories would.
Prowl began to withdraw, slowly reshaping himself out of the cuddle, but he was caught. Ironhide curled a hand around the side of Prowl’s helm, thumb drawing a slow arc across one angular cheek guard. Optics met optics, unblinking. Maggie held her breath.
Slow approach, Prowl bending, Ironhide lifting his face. A silver hand, not clawed but graceful, smoothing up Ironhide’s arm to press that blunter hand, turning it so Prowl could kiss the palm.
Ironhide huffed hot vapor through his vents, and yanked Prowl into a down and dirty kiss that probably had teeth in it, and left them both about 40 degrees hotter than they’d been. Prowl managed at last to disengage, leaving Blue with a forehelm nuzzle and Ironhide with a considering look. Ironhide swore in Cybertronian - Maggie’s software just about ate itself failing to translate - and sauntered off, hips rolling.
“Hnngh,” Blue said. Maggie agreed.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The Neutral Territories had, over the course of the war, become a sea of fiercely radioactive slag, though they did not glow as bright a blue as the glassy bowl of Uraya. The Tagan Heights were now a canyon, slowly sloughing into an ever-widening fissure. Iacon had fared little better than heavily-bombed Polyhex and Praxus, and had the additional hazard of the most extensive undercities on the planet, whose stability would take a great deal of time to establish. The city body of Kalis had suffered greater damage in the moving without its guardian AI. Where Kaon had been was now a vast, flattened plain as the planet reasserted its spherical shape, flexing in the new gravitational environment of the Alpha Centauri system.
Surface mapping was already complete, thanks to satellites, and Wheeljack had released flocks of Libbies to do more detailed scouting for accesses to whatever lower levels were still intact.
Homomdan scientists aboard their vessel had immense loads of new data to play in. Not only was planet-moving rather a novel phenomenon, but Cybertron itself was an odd planet, and they’d never before had such free license to study it. Ar Be-Ka spent most of nir time down on the surface, near Optimus, though concerns for nir waning health meant ne had quite a retinue and a number of medical machines had been moved into a hollowed out suite deep in the hillside.
To the east of what would be the central plaza, Hoist was making a mosaic; floor for a small courtyard. Circles and circles in circles. The pieces were scrap from the surrounding landscape. Ratchet had assured Sam that none of them so far were pieces of people. Not dead ones at least, though Hoist was apparently contemplating asking the home-come refugees to donate bits of plating for the central hub.
Sam, Ar Be-Ka and Optimus stood - or in Ar Be-Ka’s case floated - off to one side, watching as Hoist shaped and placed each part, welding it to the metal ground and the surrounding pieces. Fast. Precise. Methodical. Hoist was already a quarter done and this was no simple design.
“Optimusa, my dear,” said Ar Be-Ka quietly. “We realize that immense tasks of this kind are well suited to machine-life like yourselves, but we could aid you - at the least - in radiation mitigation.”
“We are more grateful for your kind offer than I can say.” Optimus knelt beside his friend. “But this is a calamity of our own making. We must rectify it ourselves. We must earn anew our place among the galactic community.” Not all the intelligences observing relocated Cybertron were benign.
“Optimusa, no one who can read your fields would think you and your people were anything but truly remorseful for what you have done. You need not punish yourselves unnecessarily by refusing simple aid.”
“We will remain under close scrutiny for some time,” Optimus said. “We must therefore allow our actions to convince those who remain concerned regarding our peaceful intentions.”
“Correct,” said Serr Innsis, who had joined them, the Ishlorsinami ambassador to Cybertron. Or watchdog. “Vessel 1139 will remain in geosynchronous orbit around Cybertron until such time as a final judgment is reached.”
Optimus nodded. “As you say.”
Sam could tell that Optimus had bristled very slightly at that, but the fact was, the Bots couldn’t actually do anything about it. The Ishlorsinami’s defenses and weaponry did come under challenge from time to time, from civilizations that decided they weren’t happy with an Ishlorsinami ruling. They were quite capable, if the Cons showed up, of defending themselves. Though they would not help the Autobots, either. Not against the Cons anyway. Sam wasn’t sure whether they’d step in if the Atraxi got trigger-happy.
The Homomdans would, though, and Jazz was confident the Atraxi wouldn’t try anything while the Homomdans were around. It didn’t look like Starscream wanted to go, either; just lurking around out there in his fancy new battleship, waiting for easy pickings.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2084 - May
The Constructicons had years ago stopped hiding their affection and love for Grapple or Beachcomber. Most of them had found the dropping of the pretense relaxing, though the layers of façade seemed to suit Scrapper, who drew them around himself like an old comfortable blanket. (He was, however, nonplussed by that particular metaphor when Beachcomber presented it to him. Beachcomber had laughed and patted his knee.)
Comber?
Mmm? Hey, Longhaul.
You're going back to Earth?
Yeah, tomorrow morning. After dawn. Borealis would be taking the rest of the humans and a couple of the Waterbabies back. Most of the human visitors had gone back to Earth three weeks ago, but those who intended to spend a longer time on Cybertron would return once the Greenhouse was completed. The Homomdans and their various passengers diplomatic and otherwise were not on a set schedule and would probably hang around for another month or three. Or a year. However long Ar Be-Ka wanted to stay, basically.
Can I...come with you?
Sure, Long. Just meet us at the landing pad. Beachcomber wasn't sure the added mass would be welcome, but it wasn't a long flight, Longhaul could just hang on to Lissi’s dorsal hull if there wasn't enough room in the hold. He chirped a tight-beam query to make sure she didn’t mind. Her reply was wry, but she didn’t. (She extracted a promise for him to play footsie with her later, though. Beachcomber’s seismic radar + delta feet = bliss.)
I wanna show you something. You like rocks, right?
Yes, I like rocks. He leaned in and hugged Longhaul’s knee. You want to take a copy of the Archive down there too, right?
Oh. Um. Right. Longhaul crouched down and put an arm around the geologist. Why’re you leaving so soon? I’da thought you’d be…well…not glad exactly, but…survey? Yeah?
I do want to help. I do. But Miles…can’t really stay, y’know? Not yet. And there’s a lot of Earth we haven’t seen.
“You really like that squishy, huh? Is it…is it smart, though? Forming emotional bonds with squishies?”
Beachcomber grinned. “I note you didn’t deny that they’re sophisticated enough to form emotional bonds with us.”
“Scrapper says they just imprint.”
“Like ducklings!” Beachcomber laughed.
“Scrap said turbofoxes, but yeah.”
...
After discharging the rest of her passengers, Borealis dropped Longhaul and Beachcomber off at the Tromsø airport in Norway. Miles she took to Seattle so he could visit nieces and nephews; grand and great-grand; and then she settled in with Metroplex and Ultra Magnus for a large-scale exchange of news and thoughts and a little bit of nookie.
Longhaul and Beachcomber drove south on E8, then took a left on the 91, catching the Svensby-Breivikeidet ferry because that was better than crossing the chilly Ullsfjord underwater. At night they slipped off the road north of the little town of Lyngseidet, transforming to root mode and being careful about leaving tracks. No one was sure where Lockdown or the Predacons were. Up inland and into the mountains they went, glad of snow and storm to hide them.
Urkjerringa. The Constructicons hadn’t known their mountain was called that when they’d built their hidden city. Longhaul and Beachcomber both scanned their surroundings thoroughly, and Beachcomber pinged Metroplex with a satellite-scan request. Once they were as sure as they could be, Longhaul zeroed in on the camouflaged door. It had been tampered with.
“Can you open it? Is it safe?”
Longhaul scuffed a little more snow off the seams and out from around the lock. “Yeah. It’s mostly just a lot of claw-marks, and someone wired a trip-mine over here, but I disarmed that already. I don’t think they actually got the lock panel open.”
Beachcomber smiled. People - including their fellow Decepticons - tended to underestimate the Structies. Especially Longhaul. Well, Tread and Trample were a little thick, but only by comparison, and that was kind of unfair, given how brilliant Scrapper and Hook and Mixmaster were. A moment later, Longhaul had the door open.
The tunnel sloped down sharply, high-ceilinged enough to accommodate Scrapper or Hook, who were tallest in bipedal mode, wide enough for Mixmaster or Longhaul. Longhaul had Beachcomber climb onto his back. The next set of alarms and defensive systems were ground-based. The set after that was keyed to the Constructicon team’s energy signatures. Longhaul transmitted the three bundles of codes that ought to defuse everything, but to be safe, Beachcomber stayed where he was until they reached the central cavern. The Predacons had left a scatter of spy motes during their incursion, and although Scrapper and Hook were 90 percent sure their own hunter motes had swept them all up, there was no sense taking chances.
“Lights,” Longhaul said, and the grand plaza hall was illuminated. Golden lamps shone above, and blue lit from below. The mercury fountains were still and silent. Beachcomber climbed down, giving Longhaul’s aft a friendly swat on his way.
“He reinforced the attachments, right?” Beachcomber said, looking up and giggling at the bigger-than-life statue of Scrapper, in a flying pose, arms extended, fists clenched.
“Probably,” Longhaul sighed. “Scavenger told him there were fracture planes in a couple of places. Just had to open his mouth…”
“At least it’s up out of most people’s eye-line,” Beachcomber laughed. “The fountains are really nice, though. Do they still flow, do you think?”
“I just pinged that system and something’s not working. We kind of had a fight with the Preds in here and…” Longhaul wandered over to the largest of the fountains and examined the base. “Yeah.” He yanked a sliver of metal free. “Shrapnel. Not Shrapnel, just shrapnel.” He grinned over at Beachcomber, who was sauntering in a big circle, peering all around, sending sonic and radar pulses down through the floor and into the radiating spoke passages.
Something churned and gurgled, and then the heavy quicksilver in the fountains began to circulate, spilling and sliding, the golden light from the above-lanterns shimmered and rippled, throwing bright reflections on the cavern walls and across the metal bodies of the two mechs. The mercury made a gentle thunk-shussh-grrgle as it poured from one basin to another; like water but heavier, deeper.
Beachcomber put a hand to his mouth. “That sound,” he said.
“Yeah,” Longhaul whispered. It had hit him, too, the first time Mix turned the fountains on. A sound they hadn’t heard for almost three million years. A simple sound. A common sound. But the fountains of Cybertron had long been silent.
Longhaul led Beachcomber down a tunnel next to the one he eventually wanted. They’d come back around. Most of their delving did. Lights came on as they went, staying on behind them, the lamps fashioned like those of Crystal City that had been smashed long ago; white or blue or gold crystal in wire-caged dodecahedra or icosahedra or octohedra.
“Who did the mosaics?” Beachcomber asked, sliding his feet along them, feeling them, tasting all their metals and minerals. The designs were abstract, mostly geometric, but some seemed to echo the curves of river or cloud or the arch of a leaf, the coil of a shell, though all of those shapes were mathematical, too. Beachcomber could hear Perceptor’s voice, reciting the formulae.
“Scavenger,” Longhaul said. “We each picked projects, we just wanted to build stuff uninterrupted again, y’know? But all he did was build the tunnels to connect everything. Nice work, for what it’s worth.”
“‘Nice.’ All right.”
The tunnel curved without rising or falling, the floor slightly but not uncomfortably concave. At the end was a plain door that opened in three sections. Very typical of architecture during the last era before the war. Beyond was a spherical cavern even larger than the central one with the fountains. Beachcomber had been studying the mosaics and looked up only just in time to avoid running off the balcony. Longhaul steered him to the left and over a slender bridge as Beachcomber gaped.
Bubbling through the center of the cavern and taking up nearly all that space was an intricate three-dimensional fractal construction. Seven large spheres with clusters of smaller and smaller spheres looping and branching away into improbable spindly quills brushing the cavern walls. All metallic, etched with swirling patterns of matte on glassy polish, all grading in color from a warm amber, through violet, to vivid burgundy. Veins of light in the cavern walls glowed pale gold, illumining every fine detail of structure and pattern.
“Who…?” Beachcomber murmured, as Longhaul drew him the rest of the way across the bridge and into the nearest of the large spheres. There were oval windows and doors, placed in accordance to the necessary math. The interiors of the large spheres were sparse, but rimmed with a spiral ledge, suitable as seating for mechs of various sizes. In the center the floor rose into a small pool or large vase, though there was nothing inside, and five doorways led to slightly smaller spheres.
“Hook,” Longhaul said. “Made it all by shaping.” By hand, the humans would say, though Longhaul thought that was a little odd. By tools, didn’t they mean? But by “shaping” Longhaul meant that the Mandelbulb structures had not been “grown” in the way many buildings had been on Cybertron, where you programmed your assemblers, set them in the base shape you wanted and fed them raw materials until they got to the top. Or “grown” like crystals in enormous vats, Longhaul supposed, but that had been obsolete a billion years ago. Modular preassembly and onsite fitting were actually more efficient and faster, but people liked doing things in the traditional ways. “We made some small manufactories, but mostly we had to build stuff down here by shaping.”
Beachcomber stared at him, stared around at the apartments inside the spheres.
“It’s…kinda soothing, actually,” Longhaul said, scratching an imaginary itch on the back of his shoulder cowling. “Building things the long way. Gives you time to think about what you’re doing.” Beachcomber wandered farther in, finding a set of spheres that each rose slightly from the last, like room-size stairs, though the thresholds were all smooth. Off to the left were Tread and Trample’s rooms. Their stuff - datapads and mineral samples and empty energon cylinders - was all over the floors just the way they’d left it. “Gives you time to think about a lot of things.”
“Did you all …live here?”
“Nah. Well. Yeah. Kinda. We recharged here. We’d talk about stuff here sometimes. I mean, we were usually all busy with our own projects, y’know?”
“This is amazing, Long. Beautiful!” Beachcomber turned in a circle as they came back down to the first large room, the meeting room. “I remember you guys built such wonderful things, before. I remember Crystal City, and Pellucivane, and the Fardawn Station.” He caught Longhaul’s hand and held it. “I’m so glad to…to see that you still can.”
Me too, Longhaul thought, leading Beachcomber through a side connecting tunnel to Mixmaster’s caves. Twenty years ago he would have said aloud, of course we can, we never stopped, just you Autobots kept blowing our stuff up! But both sides had blown stuff up, and it hadn’t mattered who built it.
They heard the streams and falls before they rounded the curve. Mix had left the door open. Not like him to be that sloppy. On the other hand, the entire complex was so deep, and sealed off, what or who else would have come in here? There wasn’t even dust on the floor or anything. Just darkness and undisturbed air and memories of a brief, happy time when it was just them, together and alive and no one giving them orders except Scrapper.
“Ohhhh,” Beachcomber said, in that deep, thrummy tone of voice Longhaul had hoped he would. “Arnanra IV? The Ii caves!”
“Yep! Mix always liked the sound, the echoes.” Water wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as mercury, but it had its uses, and was in plentiful supply.
The entire Ii cave system had been reproduced in 1/1000th scale; the natural stone around it shaped to fit. All the light came from beneath the transparent or translucent formations, colored by whichever types of corundum Mixmaster had used. Each section tended to be in three harmonious colors, built up in centimeter-thin layers. Yellow, blue, violet. Red, orange, blue. Green, violet, pale grey.
“Humans call red corundum ruby, and all other colors sapphire,” Beachcomber said, walking through, not touching - hands firmly clasped behind his back because ooh water! and eeee rocks! - admiring how perfectly the various formations had been reproduced. Mix must have had the hi-def scans that Orthoclase had made during the reign of Zeta Prime and Lord Protector Empyrion.
“Why single out the red?” Humans were so weird.
“I…don’t know. There’s a pinkish orange corundum called padparadscha.” Maybe because red was the color of their blood. And the word “sapphire” had referred to different kinds of stone, through history. Glyph would know more about that. Beachcomber resolved to ask her next time they were both in the cloud mind.
“What do they call the far-violet ones?”
“They lump them in with black sapphires. They can’t see that color.”
“Oh.”
The un-augmented ones couldn’t, anyway. Augment humans called far-violet “bee-violet” which Beachcomber thought was adorable (and near-infrared was “viper-red”). If Longhaul hadn’t been paying attention to how humans had been modifying themselves lately, perhaps it would be more fun for him to discover that on his own. Beachcomber grinned.
At the far end of the wandering path, past stalactites and ripplestone curtains, past stalagmites and interconnected pools, was a natural parabolic half-dome. A sort of amphitheater tilted on one side, so that the stone arched above those in the center - and in the original caves it had been used as a gathering place and stage. Beachcomber stood with his back to the curve and hummed, experimenting with volume and pitch, adjusting his harmonics and subharmonics. Longhaul scurried to the other end of the cavern and knelt, putting his audials in the best spot.
Humming turned to singing. Beachcomber’s singing programming and vocoder weren’t set for anything operatic, and he was no Gene Autry, but he had a nice baritone for singing around the camp heater out in the middle of nowhere on survey. He and Hound tended to know the same kinds of songs.
Longhaul was silent, listening; the Ii caves did odd things to voices. More than simple echoes, the physical topography and the water forms changed voices and harmonics in pitch and tone, creating multiple harmonies sometimes, or quieting a burr to pure notes. The topography was precise, but scale mattered, and Beachcomber’s voice echoed and gained resonance, but was otherwise unaltered. Longhaul huffed, though, when the simple, brief song was over.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Beachcomber said, joining Longhaul back at the entrance and following him down yet another corridor. “Mixmaster always has been a music fan, hasn’t he?”
“Ironic, though,” said Longhaul. “He sings worse than Prime.” They both snickered as they emerged again, closer to the main plaza this time, into Ruckus’ untidy experiment with gear-driven, steam-powered architecture. Over-elaborate and massive, and somewhat precarious in places, the movable towers and rearrangeable rooms were more artistic than practical.
“Any particular lever I shouldn’t pull?” Beachcomber asked, standing on tiptoe at the master control panel.
“Oh. I…dunno. Could get exciting.”
“Oh boy.” Power on was marked with the usual glyph. There was a dull, gurgling roar as geothermal vents far below were opened, and steam rushed through convoluted pipeworks. Choosing more or less at random, Beachcomber pushed a button. Walls, windows, doors, vents, roofs, entire rooms shuffled about, some spinning, some lifting, others lowering, or rolling, accompanied by a chorus of wheezes and moans, clanks and groaning, creaking and whistling as excess steam was diverted once the assemblage settled like an ancient mech into its new shape. The copper and bronze surfaces had been worked into multifarious textures, and embellished with bright enamel designs that appeared to be abstract at first glance. Beachcomber pushed another button, and Longhaul reached around him to pull a lever at the same time.
The whirling and shuffling and clanking was more frenzied, but after a moment everything settled again, in a completely different arrangement. Longhaul placed both hands on the controls, his arms to either side of Beachcomber, the inner surfaces brushing the geologist’s shoulders now and then as they experimented, trying various permutations, playing the console like an organ one minute, switching to simpler variations the next. Trying to work out what each lever and button and knob did because surely there must be some kind of mechanical order to it. But the workings were even more complex than they seemed at first glance, and no obvious pattern was emerging.
“Wait a minute,” said Beachcomber, after their latest combination had thoroughly disproved their latest theory. “Is that an optic? Look at the enameling. Is this a puzzle?”
“Huh.” It was part of an optic, obvious now that Longhaul saw it, though it had seemed just another half-circle of red a moment ago. They resumed their combination-seeking with a will. At one point they got a configuration that looked - if they tilted their heads a little - like a mech making a very rude gesture. Beachcomber giggled. Longhaul cackled. Ruckus had definitely done that on purpose.
“Have we…been underestimating Ruckus all this time?” Beachcomber asked, fingers still working the controls, letting his head tilt back, against Longhaul’s ventral plates. The low purrs of their engines transmitted back and forth through their metal.
“Yeah and no,” Longhaul said. “When you get him riled, he’s a violent slagbrain.”
Beachcomber gave him a look.
“Okay, we’re all violent slagbrains. Whatever. But, if you leave him alone, Ruckus has this…this quiet sorta…well, it’s a focused kinda mentality, right? Intelligence. He likes puzzles. Especially big physical ones like this.”
“Has he ever played the MYST games?” Beachcomber chirped a file. All the games bundled weren’t a very big file, to them, and the code was human-awkward, but Longhaul didn’t even unfold it before his optics lit.
“How’d you know?”
“Glen played them. They were like this; environmental puzzles. And beautiful.” Glen had been shy and embarrassed, telling Hound about them, but then Hound was one of the easiest people to tell embarrassing things to. They weren’t badass, shooter games. They were quiet games, sometimes eerie and unsettling, full of layers of stories. Miles hadn’t ever played them, being more “in the world” than on a computer.
“We could be voors…uh, years, figuring this out, you know,” Longhaul said, gesturing at the enameled bronze of Ruckus’ creation. Beachcomber looked like he might be considering it, and Longhaul tried not to jounce from foot to foot. But then the little geologist smiled, and held out a hand, and Longhaul took it in his much bigger one and led him back into the great plaza, and then out again, down another long corridor.
“So. Over here we have Tread and Trample’s park.” Longhaul was personally surprised they’d actually more or less finished the thing, the way the twins argued over every detail. Well. When they did finally agree, the thing they’d agreed to do was usually more fantastic than the things they’d wanted to do individually.
“Oh,” said Beachcomber. His feet caressed the cobbled floor, and moved him inexorably toward the coppery disk in the center, but he, friend to Perceptor through all the megavorns of their lives, saw at once that the whole park was a representation of Cybertron’s native system. The copper-gold disk in the center of the floor their long-exploded sun, Hadeen; the magnetically-suspended spheres for thirteen planets, surrounded by crystalline trees instead of moons; the orbital pathways graven with gravimetric poetry.
“Kinda funny, innit,” Longhaul said, following leisurely until he came upon one of the half-loops of metal scattered about that could serve as benches. He sat down, content to watch Beachcomber. “A park’s for people to gather in. Lotsa people. Relaxing, playing games or music. But here this is, a kilometer down, nobody knows it’s here but us.”
“840 meters of that is mountain,” Beachcomber laughed. It was barely 97 degrees Fahrenheit at the main level of the complex; 37 degrees Celsius. The heart of the mountain itself was cold, only a few degrees above the freezing of water, but 160 meters below that the heat of the planet’s heart rose steadily. He set a pede-tip on the central disk, testing. Grinning with delight, he placed one foot full on, then, balanced carefully, skated out in a lazy curve, arms out, visor bright. “You could rebuild this place, if you wanted, on Cybertron,” he said. He missed skating. It was one of the few purely frivolous things he’d been able to get Perceptor to do on the regular.
“Could.” Longhaul shifted his weight. He glanced at the fourth planet, Cybertron-that-was, hovering in its place, shaped of steel, with its two crystal trees, one twice the size of the other. “Probably won’t. We’ll build new stuff, once the first city’s secure.” He watched Beachcomber tip forward, arms out, one leg extended behind, leaning into a spin. Faster and faster, drawing his limbs in. Simple physics, Longhaul thought, smiling, but Beachcomber was good at it. Graceful somehow, despite his stocky frame.
“Sooooo, you’re just gonna leave all this here? And not tell anybody?” Beachcomber flung out his arms, slowing, turning the spin into gentle loops.
“Humans’d cook down here,” Longhaul said.
“No, though it wouldn’t be comfortable.” Humans had survived at almost twice this depth for short periods. He’d taken Miles down to the re-flooded Crystal Cave in Mexico once. The conditions didn’t bother Beachcomber at all, and Miles had coped quite well for about half an hour, enchanted by the giant selenite crystals. Dani would be fine, and there were a few hundred other humans with sophisticated enough systems to find the climate balmy. They’d have to ventilate better, but it was doable. Build a little funicular or tram from the entrance down to the main chamber. “You could charge admission.”
“Charge? What?” Longhaul got up, moved to the edge of the skating disk. “Oh. Money. Bah. The slag we do that for?”
“I’m kidding.” Beachcomber swooped by and Longhaul caught his hand, leaning out to let him slow, then reeling him in.
“They’d just breathe all over everything. And shed dead skin cells. So gross!”
“Aww, dust motes are pretty in the sunlight.”
“Ugh. Gets in your vents and slag.”
“Burns right off the filters, easy!”
“Gah. Come on, one last thing to show ya.” He let Beachcomber go, trundling off back once again to the main plaza, and the last unexplored tunnel.
They transformed, Beachcomber following closely as the convoluted ramps branched and rejoined, but ever spiraled downward. At last, about another three-quarters of a kilometer deeper, the tunnel opened up into a dark, rough staging area. Crystals glittered on the walls, seeming to be natural formations at first, but Beachcomber soon identified them as minerals that shouldn’t - couldn’t - have formed in this environment. On this planet.
“Nara crystals? Where did you get…well, yeah, sure from Velantia, but…did you make them? They’re so pure…this is amazing…”
“Thought you’d figure it out,” Longhaul said, clasping his hands behind his back, pleased. “They’re from places we’ve been, the Constructicons. Places we built stuff or just visited. Not that we took a lot of vacations, y’know. Knew you’d look a little closer.”
Beachcomber grinned. He stepped back from the walls, looking around. “Ahh! It’s a map, too!” If one took the center of the chamber as Cybertron, the crystals were a flat projection representing the relative positions of the planets they came from. Longhaul bounced on his pedes, optics flaring bright.
“Yep!” He held out a hand and Beachcomber took it. “C’mon. One more place to show ya.”
Massive granite doors split into three triangular sections and withdrew into floor and walls. Another ramp led down for a last quarter kilometer, and the temperature rose to 62 C, 143 F. Un-augmented humans really would cook down here. There was another set of doors, opening by Longhaul’s command as they approached. Lights came on in the rooms beyond.
“Oh my.” Beachcomber hadn’t seen anything like it since the Towers fell.
The layout was simple enough. Oval foyer, cubic central chamber, round doors to either side leading to other rooms. But every wall and ceiling was plated in gold and copper, coffered, with bas relief panels in each wall, and constellation lights in the ceiling. Lamps hung in clusters, every one different, blues and purples and golds, casting vivid reflections over the metal walls. Gold was valued for its color, for its transmissive properties, for its acoustics. Beachcomber laughed the moment he realized what the depression in the center of the main room was.
“Is that a ball pit?”
Longhaul strode past him and rolled into the circular depression, which was filled with small granite spheres. Each sphere was a different variety of granite. Beachcomber wondered how exactly he’d collected them.
“It’s my bed,” Longhaul huffed. The spheres made it comfortable even when his joints ached.
“It’s a ball pit!” Beachcomber whooped and dove after him.
“Ugh, gerroff!” Longhaul pried Beachcomber off his midsection and rolled over. “Go look at the other stuff. I’m taking a nap.”
Beachcomber patted his shoulder. “Oh sure. You brought me down here to show off and you’re taking a nap. Go right ahead, hum hmmm…” He wriggled his way out of the ball pit, though he would rather have stayed, and ambled into the lefthand room. An oil bath, similar in style to the bed ball pit room. The bath was sloped like a human swimming pool, large enough for Longhaul to stretch out in and fully immerse. Or share, if the other mech didn’t mind cozy, or was smaller. Mmmhmm. Picks and steel pads and abrasives and special oils were arranged neatly to one side. He noted that Longhaul was still using that peculiar kind of joint lubricant. Hadn’t he ever gotten that fixed? Or self-repair should have taken care of it, but if there was a glitch in his nanocells…
Not his style to pry. And Longhaul was - used to be - a Decepticon. Pointing out a weakness wouldn’t go over well. Longhaul knew what he was doing. Hook would have taken care of it, if it was something fixable. Maybe the affected joints weren’t weight-bearing when they combined? But wasn’t Longhaul a leg? That didn’t mean his robot-mode joints weren’t compressed and locked during gestalt.
Still none of his business. He dipped the obligatory pede-tip in the oil - plenty toasty, though that could be said of the air and the stone itself at this depth - and wandered back into the main room. Longhaul gave every appearance of recharge, including sedate, barely ruffling fields. Huh.
Across and through the other door.
Oh, thought Beachcomber. Oh, this was the treasure trove.
One the rest of the Structies might well tease Long about for vorns, if they had ever seen it. (Longhaul’s subharmonics had hinted that they had not. Why?) He had smelled the clay the moment they’d come through the door, and wondered about it, but there had been so much to take in today…oh. They’d been down there two days actually, playing and exploring. No sun to remind them of the passage of time, and Beachcomber was past master of ignoring his chronometer.
The clay. Special clay, he knew. Kaolin, with other minerals. He’d smelled it before, in its raw, unfired state. Porcelain. High quality, too. Mined or made? There was enough of it here, in big, carefully wrapped blocks, to suggest Long had bought it somewhere. The blocks sat in refrigerated cabinets with clear doors. Transparent aluminum or plex, probably. Behind the Constructicon-scaled pottery wheel. Beachcomber resisted the urge to climb up on the thing and turn it on; it would be balanced just right and he didn’t want to mess that up.
All around the room were floor-to-ceiling shelves, displaying Longhaul’s finished works, unfinished works, and a few epic failures. (There was a blob, with distinctive finger-indentations, that looked like it had been thrown against a wall while still wet.) The pieces seemed to be arranged chronologically, as symmetry and detail increased from right to left, bespeaking increasing skill at this very human art. Vases and bowls, things Cybertronians might find uses for. Then figures; sea creatures, dragons, sinuous smooth shapes, until those had become familiar enough to inspire a moving on. Simple but precise geometric shapes gave way to blocky Cybertronian figures, both robot and alt mode. Vague, basic frame types, then specific portraits.
“Oh,” Beachcomber murmured, grinning. “It’s me!” And Perceptor, in scale with each other, glazed and finely detailed. The Perceptor figure was about two meters tall. A reasonable size for Longhaul’s big hands, though Longhaul had fine-manips like a lot of people did who worked with their hands. The Perceptor and Beachcomber figures were set facing each other, Perceptor looking down and Beachcomber looking up; at each other, their expressions soft. It was a stunning pair of likenesses.
Some of the shelves were underlit, as Longhaul experimented with translucency and relief, creating silhouettes or panoramas, then etching-like scenes on backlit panels - lithophanes. These were also mostly vases, and Cybertronian-scale chalices, but there were tiles and partially-abstracted figures, whose chest-panels bore scenes or symbols from the past. A few had decorative motifs from Earth.
One corner of the vast workroom was devoted to glass, including an alarmingly sized blowtorch. Looked like Long had stuck mostly to lampworking. Beads and sculptures - flowers, waves, Devastator in full gestalt, planets and suns, Cybertronian construction forms, a miniature of Crystal City’s coronet of towers.
It was astonishing, beautiful work. Delicate, a display of art and finesse Beachcomber wondered if anyone other than his brothers had ever seen.
He wandered back to the figures of himself and Perceptor, wondering why just they two were here. Why not Wheeljack? Why not Prime? Or Megatron, as he had been, their beloved and respected Lord Protector. But this work had been done here, on Earth. And before the Structies had formally joined the space bridge effort. Beachcomber gazed at Perceptor’s face in porcelain, glazed to a very close approximation of the original’s pale silver.
“How do you get along with him?” Longhaul asked, coming up behind him, genuinely curious. “You two are just about the strongest spark-friends outside of a gestalt we’ve met, and yet he’s so…so…” Longhaul made bitey motions with his hands.
Beachcomber laughed. “He can be, can’t he.” He turned and wrapped his arms around Longhaul’s leg. “He’s not so hard, really. He knows he can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, but it’s not a matter of opposing him. Deflecting, more like. Heh. Bend with the wind.”
“You both have strong personalities,” Long said, reaching down to touch his helm.
“And we clash, sometimes. Our academic specialties are quite different, but they do kinda overlap. Chemistry and metallurgy. Stars exploding from iron poisoning, creating heavy elements for use in rocky planets.”
“Rocky planets your favorites, huh?”
“Maybe. Cybertron is sort of rocky. In places.” He tugged at Longhaul’s hand, leading him back into the bed chamber…aka the ball pit.
“Sort of.” Eager enough, willing enough, Longhaul settled into the granite spheres, curling on his side, leaving room. He wasn’t used to clanging such small mechs, but as he was formulating a way to be careful, Beachcomber had climbed over his waist and was at his lower back, doing things with his hands and feet and mouth and fields, and Longhaul lay beneath him shivering with unexpected ecstasy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Oh, full deep he lay, sinking to the vent; the plasmic bath no hotter, after all, than his own spark. Quiet, but for the stirrings of the mantle far beneath, when the generals did not pester him with their trivial concerns. In the peace and quiet at the bottom of the pool he lay, sending wires of himself down, down; mass and energy entwined, all of it his for the taking. Slow and careful, learning the taste of the planet. Nothing abrupt that would alert Optimus through the Allspark.
He was aware of footsteps on the banks of his pool. They watched him sometimes, his Decepticons, as he slowly writhed. Watched his body bathed in plasma, desirous. They would go away to interface, rushed and secretive, but he knew.
The generals thought him mad. They found him unpredictable of late, and that was useful. Dangerous, but useful. Galvatron was good at this game. He could logic rings around Shockwave, though it was a tactic best played subtle and seldom. Shockwave and his closed-loop lab. Runabout and Runamok, the fools, had gone in, and were alive, but had not come out. Nothing came out. Little went in. The systems recycled, reused. Very efficient. Very difficult to get any idea what went on inside. He left one thought thread open to that calculation.
My Lord Galvatron, said Dreadwing. There is only a single Ishlorsinami ship in orbit around the human planet. You asked to be notified.
Galvatron considered shooting Dreadwing where he stood. He had, however, given that order. Very well. Perhaps it was time to again test the metal of humankind.
Table of Contents
AO3 link
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Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): ensemble
Warnings: OCs.
Summary: Wherein Optimus could use a distraction; Starscream plots; Bluestreak could use a distraction; the Homomdans offer help with the radiation; Longhaul takes Beachcomber on a special tour; and Galvatron takes a long bath.
Notes: Aheh, long time no post... So the last part of "Neighbors" is now its own chapter! Which will also be multi-part! Ah well. We'll get there. ^_^;
~8500 words.
BOREALIS: New Dawn - pt i
2084 - March
The hilltop, for now, rose above the new city, affording long views, between the sails and vanes of solar collectors, to the edges of the plateau, sunset polishing everything gold and russet and misty purple. Optimus did not ask Vector Prime how long he could stay. The answer could change in an astrosecond. It was difficult to stand next to him and not touch him. Vector was understanding about this, and unfurled a solar sail across Optimus’ aft and thighs.
On Earth, humanity was jostling to know the city’s name. The Cybertronians were in no hurry. “New Iacon” was briefly offered, but Iacon was firmly rooted in the north polar region, and the name carried as much cultural and emotional weight as Kaon, that was gone. Given their location, some suggested “New Hydrax” and others said “Hydrax In Memoriam”, and Oratorio said they could shorten that to “Hymm”. The cloud mind was mulling that over. There was no rush. City names might emerge naturally out of use, like memes, for cities that weren’t alive and thus couldn’t name themselves.
Vector lifted a hand, projected a small holo from his palm. “The name on the bow of the new ship is ‘Harbinger’.”
“A new design,” Optimus said. Not a reassuring name. New design, new fleet, most likely.
“I slipped Safeguard aboard. He reports it is commanded by Starscream, crewed entirely by Seekers.”
“That must please him.” If only giving Starscream the power - the lordship - he craved was enough to stop the war. Optimus supposed a good military commander would ask Vector if Safeguard had gotten specs on the new warship; engine configuration, structural weaknesses, shielding modulations.
“Safeguard gave a full report to Prowl,” Vector said.
“Ah. Thank you. Prowl, Jazz, and Elita will make best use of it.” At his pinged inquiry, he learned they were already fashioning primary plans and branching trees of contingency plans for sabotage or destruction.
Optimus didn’t like this. Reacting instead of acting. That had always presaged the most desperate times, when, exhausted, they tried most frantically to jump whatever rut they’d worn. The pendulum of the war had swung in wide ellipses; from aggressive to defensive to stalemate to regrouping and back to aggressive, over and over and over. But pre-emptive strikes were dangerous, and - counting the half-deads - the Decepticons once again had them very much outnumbered.
Had he been a good military commander? For three million years - a third of his lifetime - Optimus had struggled both with and against his core programming to lead the Autobots, to be the commander they needed. Or had he, despite following as best he could the advice of experienced generals like Ultra Magnus and Deepforge and Ironhide, simply dragged everyone through one near-catastrophic engagement after another? He couldn’t even claim that he had kept most of his people alive.
He’s wallowing, isn’t he, Jazz tight-beamed to Vector.
Only a little. Vector was about to gather Optimus in, but an equally suitable distraction appeared. One of the youngsters is coming up. That should cheer him. Rutile was 58 and fancied himself quite the elder sibling. Vector could hardly think about the miniscule span of sixty years without laughing.
And if that don’t do the trick I’m sure you’ll think of something. Down in what was shaping up to be a large plaza, Jazz peeked around Elita’s leg to see Rutile bounding up the hill.
Optimus knelt and held out his hands, wriggling his fingers at Rutile. Ru hurtled into his arms and Optimus cuddled him close, nibbling affectionately on his shoulder armor, kissing his forehelm. The firstborn Waterbaby, so very like both his parents, odd as that still seemed. Vector thrummed at them, pleased.
“Bravespark,” Optimus hummed, as Rutile pressed his face into his neck. Everyone was calling Ru that, though it had the feeling of a nickname, not a Change of Designation. Rutile sighed.
“I know you’re not angry that I blabbed about the space bridge, and I’m immensely relieved things’ve worked out the way they have so far,” Rutile said. He had thought of asking Prowl what he should have done, but he was too frightened of learning what Prowl thought would have happened if he hadn’t done what he did. “But I’m worried, Prime. What will Cyclonus and the others do? What’s Galvatron going to do to them? To us?”
“There was a time,” Optimus said, “when I thought I could have predicted Megatron’s responses to nearly anything. That time is long gone, and Galvatron…”
Galvatron’s got a mind like a box of rabid weasels, Borealis provided helpfully from orbit. Rutile nearly threw a cog. Vector decided that a hundred-thousand-year-long flight with Optimus and Ratchet’s progeny would never be boring.
“Be that as it may,” said Optimus, having honed his ability to keep a straight face through a lifetime lived with Jazz and Ratchet in proximity, “Turmoil, Cyclonus and Strika are resourceful and intelligent. I am sure they would not have withdrawn as they did if they had not already formulated a way to explain their actions to Galvatron.”
Rutile nodded, pressing his helm to Prime’s chest, shutting his optics and feeling for the thrum of that great spark. He was going to fret more about this later, he knew. Moving the planet had been a game changer, how could it not have been? Had he expected the war to end entirely? No. But the shifting possibilities in what the Decepticons would now do were disquieting. He would fret about them, even though he was technically a civilian. He couldn’t help it. The Beachcomber in him wasn’t strong enough, perhaps. But until that nebulous “later” he had two Primes wrapping arms and fields around him.
Sunset deepened, swallowing shadows on the ground, turning the sky crimson and damson, the air waning cold. Silverbolt climbed two-thirds of the hill’s height, then laid himself along the last third, resting his chin on his folded hands, gazing at Rutile.
“Bravespark,” he murmured. Delicately he rubbed his cheek spars against first Optimus’ left shoulder, then Vector’s right, effectively nuzzling them closer together.
The buzz and giggle in the cloud mind grew louder. Silverbolt felt Skyfire approach, transform, land, crouch over him, nudging his legs wider so Skyfire could get his hands down into Bolt’s hip gimbals; vast strength behind tender stroking, and Silverbolt shivered, arching his back, splaying his wings as their powerful fields meshed and swept outward to engulf the others like gas giants sweeping up clear orbits to protect the life-bearing planets nearer a sun.
At the same moment, Rutile kissed the line of Allspark-stuff running up Optimus’ throat, shivering at the electric bloom of recognition and welcome and joy; connection/belonging/unity sang through him, and through Optimus. He felt Prime shudder deep, and he’d slipped in a line, and through the cable he felt Prime’s swift assessment, comparison: not like Miles. Rutile was about to pursue that, but Skyfire climbed over Silverbolt, mouth open, wanting a taste of Vector’s ions, and the space between Primes and deltas burned with bodylights and ardent fields and hot vents from cores grown molten; and Optimus drew their energies up and up, the galaxy-scale passion of the two deltas, arching and flaring into each other, magnified, refracted by two immortal Prime sparks; he gathered the emotions of his tribe, his hive - Vector intoxicated by inclusion, Rutile caught amid them, half surrendered, half observing - weaving a vast skein not of matter this time, but bright powers, a storehouse of immensity from which they could all draw, awestruck. The pattern did not explode, freeing them each to their singular overloads, but spread and redoubled, stabilizing in ways even Vector found astonishing, Optimus’ spark the keystone.
He opened and Rutile, fearless, opened, and the brushing of their coronae touched off at last a supernova that rippled through the Allspark itself, leaving living mechs strutless and steaming under an ultramarine blue night sky.
“Oomph,” Silverbolt said, optics off and a silly little grin on his face. Skyfire’s weight felt good, even with all four of his brothers on top of that. When had they showed up?
While you were busy snogging Rutile, Skydive informed him. Which I know feels nice, but it looks hilarious from the outside.
Don’t some fish keep their babies in their mouths? Fireflight asked.
Cichlids, among others, Beachcomber said, laughing.
He wouldn’t actually fit, Hot Spot and First Aid assured Groove. Rutile was in the neighborhood of twelve feet tall - about the same height as Silverbolt’s entire head, if one didn’t count fancy antennae and things.
Fancy antennae that Optimus was idly petting. Silverbolt rather wanted to wriggle into this attention, but his body informed him that he was quite thoroughly pinned, so he’d just have to enjoy the little EM shivers that were running down to his shoulders by themselves.
Shall we, Optimus offered, very content and very amused, once the Greenhouse is done, have a Dance? Their last Dance had not been so long ago, but it had been on Earth. This would be the first on Cybertron in a very long time indeed, and the first under their new sun.
Yes! Yes! the cloud mind cheered, those not fallen into recharge. The sentiment would be unanimous by dawn.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
An incoming long-distance message bleeped in his queue. Starscream glared at it. What good was the requirement to ask for orders before engaging if it took so long to get an answer back? He was given a ship! Was that not an implied gesture of autonomy? Had he not proven through long eons his ability? Did Galvatron truly think Starscream would do something rash with the Homomdans still in the area?
What game was Galvatron playing now?
I am already aware of Cybertron’s relocation, the message played. Galvatron’s glyphs languid and amused. Subharmonics skittered away at the edges, too fleeting to catch entirely. A game indeed. Turmoil informed me some time ago. I should like to know why my supposed second in command has been so slow to inform me of current strategically important events. Do try to keep up, Starscream.
Starscream wanted to know why Galvatron, if he’d known about it some time ago, hadn’t bothered to tell his supposed second in command about such a strategically important event. But it would not do to say so.
Skywarp poked his head into the room. Hastily retreated. Starscream seethed as he composed his next message. Asking permission for each step, when he was the one who could best assess the tactical situation! When would Galvatron get off his landing pads and quit slouching around Chaar? Kill the humans. Subdue the Autobots. Reclaim their homeworld. That’s what the troops wanted! Starscream regarded one rocky planet as easily manipulated as another, but he understood the pull tradition and history had on the pride of others.
He must be patient. Let Galvatron’s minions bide their time. Let Shockwave’s manufactories continue to build. The defeat of Optimus Prime and his pitiful remnant band would be all the more crushing. And final. Very well.
Request permission to establish a base at Vos…
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The wind blew. High, thin clouds flickered across the sun, etching faint shadows over the metal world. Bluestreak stood on the parapet wall, one hand outstretched. Frozen. His optics aimed at his hand, the sequential, fitted segments of his fingers, but he saw other things. Heard something other than the hum of the wind. Felt the ghosts of long-collapsed fields. A different structure supported his feet.
The gravity was the same as in memory, the angle of the light, the composition of the air through his filters; small things, but enough.
Maggie, appropriately helmeted and suited, leaned on the railing of a human-scale balcony on the first aboveground building completed so far, a level above Bluestreak. She watched Prowl and Ironhide approach him from opposite directions, step by step. Her filters were up so she could see the way they extended their fields, gently brushing against the edges of Blue’s.
They were all like this. So gentle. So torn apart inside. Even Thundercracker and Ironhide and Chromia, the old veterans; they moved despite the pain, old scars they’d gotten used to.
The physical embrace had only closed for a few seconds when Blue stiffened, crackles of St. Elmo’s fire dancing over his armor, snapping off the edges of his door-wings. Then he sagged, caught by the other two even as they shuddered and threw sparks of their own, optics guttering.
Maggie had only the vaguest notion of what overload was really like. “Orgasms” that knocked most mechs unconscious! Someday a mech with her memories would.
Prowl began to withdraw, slowly reshaping himself out of the cuddle, but he was caught. Ironhide curled a hand around the side of Prowl’s helm, thumb drawing a slow arc across one angular cheek guard. Optics met optics, unblinking. Maggie held her breath.
Slow approach, Prowl bending, Ironhide lifting his face. A silver hand, not clawed but graceful, smoothing up Ironhide’s arm to press that blunter hand, turning it so Prowl could kiss the palm.
Ironhide huffed hot vapor through his vents, and yanked Prowl into a down and dirty kiss that probably had teeth in it, and left them both about 40 degrees hotter than they’d been. Prowl managed at last to disengage, leaving Blue with a forehelm nuzzle and Ironhide with a considering look. Ironhide swore in Cybertronian - Maggie’s software just about ate itself failing to translate - and sauntered off, hips rolling.
“Hnngh,” Blue said. Maggie agreed.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The Neutral Territories had, over the course of the war, become a sea of fiercely radioactive slag, though they did not glow as bright a blue as the glassy bowl of Uraya. The Tagan Heights were now a canyon, slowly sloughing into an ever-widening fissure. Iacon had fared little better than heavily-bombed Polyhex and Praxus, and had the additional hazard of the most extensive undercities on the planet, whose stability would take a great deal of time to establish. The city body of Kalis had suffered greater damage in the moving without its guardian AI. Where Kaon had been was now a vast, flattened plain as the planet reasserted its spherical shape, flexing in the new gravitational environment of the Alpha Centauri system.
Surface mapping was already complete, thanks to satellites, and Wheeljack had released flocks of Libbies to do more detailed scouting for accesses to whatever lower levels were still intact.
Homomdan scientists aboard their vessel had immense loads of new data to play in. Not only was planet-moving rather a novel phenomenon, but Cybertron itself was an odd planet, and they’d never before had such free license to study it. Ar Be-Ka spent most of nir time down on the surface, near Optimus, though concerns for nir waning health meant ne had quite a retinue and a number of medical machines had been moved into a hollowed out suite deep in the hillside.
To the east of what would be the central plaza, Hoist was making a mosaic; floor for a small courtyard. Circles and circles in circles. The pieces were scrap from the surrounding landscape. Ratchet had assured Sam that none of them so far were pieces of people. Not dead ones at least, though Hoist was apparently contemplating asking the home-come refugees to donate bits of plating for the central hub.
Sam, Ar Be-Ka and Optimus stood - or in Ar Be-Ka’s case floated - off to one side, watching as Hoist shaped and placed each part, welding it to the metal ground and the surrounding pieces. Fast. Precise. Methodical. Hoist was already a quarter done and this was no simple design.
“Optimusa, my dear,” said Ar Be-Ka quietly. “We realize that immense tasks of this kind are well suited to machine-life like yourselves, but we could aid you - at the least - in radiation mitigation.”
“We are more grateful for your kind offer than I can say.” Optimus knelt beside his friend. “But this is a calamity of our own making. We must rectify it ourselves. We must earn anew our place among the galactic community.” Not all the intelligences observing relocated Cybertron were benign.
“Optimusa, no one who can read your fields would think you and your people were anything but truly remorseful for what you have done. You need not punish yourselves unnecessarily by refusing simple aid.”
“We will remain under close scrutiny for some time,” Optimus said. “We must therefore allow our actions to convince those who remain concerned regarding our peaceful intentions.”
“Correct,” said Serr Innsis, who had joined them, the Ishlorsinami ambassador to Cybertron. Or watchdog. “Vessel 1139 will remain in geosynchronous orbit around Cybertron until such time as a final judgment is reached.”
Optimus nodded. “As you say.”
Sam could tell that Optimus had bristled very slightly at that, but the fact was, the Bots couldn’t actually do anything about it. The Ishlorsinami’s defenses and weaponry did come under challenge from time to time, from civilizations that decided they weren’t happy with an Ishlorsinami ruling. They were quite capable, if the Cons showed up, of defending themselves. Though they would not help the Autobots, either. Not against the Cons anyway. Sam wasn’t sure whether they’d step in if the Atraxi got trigger-happy.
The Homomdans would, though, and Jazz was confident the Atraxi wouldn’t try anything while the Homomdans were around. It didn’t look like Starscream wanted to go, either; just lurking around out there in his fancy new battleship, waiting for easy pickings.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2084 - May
The Constructicons had years ago stopped hiding their affection and love for Grapple or Beachcomber. Most of them had found the dropping of the pretense relaxing, though the layers of façade seemed to suit Scrapper, who drew them around himself like an old comfortable blanket. (He was, however, nonplussed by that particular metaphor when Beachcomber presented it to him. Beachcomber had laughed and patted his knee.)
Comber?
Mmm? Hey, Longhaul.
You're going back to Earth?
Yeah, tomorrow morning. After dawn. Borealis would be taking the rest of the humans and a couple of the Waterbabies back. Most of the human visitors had gone back to Earth three weeks ago, but those who intended to spend a longer time on Cybertron would return once the Greenhouse was completed. The Homomdans and their various passengers diplomatic and otherwise were not on a set schedule and would probably hang around for another month or three. Or a year. However long Ar Be-Ka wanted to stay, basically.
Can I...come with you?
Sure, Long. Just meet us at the landing pad. Beachcomber wasn't sure the added mass would be welcome, but it wasn't a long flight, Longhaul could just hang on to Lissi’s dorsal hull if there wasn't enough room in the hold. He chirped a tight-beam query to make sure she didn’t mind. Her reply was wry, but she didn’t. (She extracted a promise for him to play footsie with her later, though. Beachcomber’s seismic radar + delta feet = bliss.)
I wanna show you something. You like rocks, right?
Yes, I like rocks. He leaned in and hugged Longhaul’s knee. You want to take a copy of the Archive down there too, right?
Oh. Um. Right. Longhaul crouched down and put an arm around the geologist. Why’re you leaving so soon? I’da thought you’d be…well…not glad exactly, but…survey? Yeah?
I do want to help. I do. But Miles…can’t really stay, y’know? Not yet. And there’s a lot of Earth we haven’t seen.
“You really like that squishy, huh? Is it…is it smart, though? Forming emotional bonds with squishies?”
Beachcomber grinned. “I note you didn’t deny that they’re sophisticated enough to form emotional bonds with us.”
“Scrapper says they just imprint.”
“Like ducklings!” Beachcomber laughed.
“Scrap said turbofoxes, but yeah.”
...
After discharging the rest of her passengers, Borealis dropped Longhaul and Beachcomber off at the Tromsø airport in Norway. Miles she took to Seattle so he could visit nieces and nephews; grand and great-grand; and then she settled in with Metroplex and Ultra Magnus for a large-scale exchange of news and thoughts and a little bit of nookie.
Longhaul and Beachcomber drove south on E8, then took a left on the 91, catching the Svensby-Breivikeidet ferry because that was better than crossing the chilly Ullsfjord underwater. At night they slipped off the road north of the little town of Lyngseidet, transforming to root mode and being careful about leaving tracks. No one was sure where Lockdown or the Predacons were. Up inland and into the mountains they went, glad of snow and storm to hide them.
Urkjerringa. The Constructicons hadn’t known their mountain was called that when they’d built their hidden city. Longhaul and Beachcomber both scanned their surroundings thoroughly, and Beachcomber pinged Metroplex with a satellite-scan request. Once they were as sure as they could be, Longhaul zeroed in on the camouflaged door. It had been tampered with.
“Can you open it? Is it safe?”
Longhaul scuffed a little more snow off the seams and out from around the lock. “Yeah. It’s mostly just a lot of claw-marks, and someone wired a trip-mine over here, but I disarmed that already. I don’t think they actually got the lock panel open.”
Beachcomber smiled. People - including their fellow Decepticons - tended to underestimate the Structies. Especially Longhaul. Well, Tread and Trample were a little thick, but only by comparison, and that was kind of unfair, given how brilliant Scrapper and Hook and Mixmaster were. A moment later, Longhaul had the door open.
The tunnel sloped down sharply, high-ceilinged enough to accommodate Scrapper or Hook, who were tallest in bipedal mode, wide enough for Mixmaster or Longhaul. Longhaul had Beachcomber climb onto his back. The next set of alarms and defensive systems were ground-based. The set after that was keyed to the Constructicon team’s energy signatures. Longhaul transmitted the three bundles of codes that ought to defuse everything, but to be safe, Beachcomber stayed where he was until they reached the central cavern. The Predacons had left a scatter of spy motes during their incursion, and although Scrapper and Hook were 90 percent sure their own hunter motes had swept them all up, there was no sense taking chances.
“Lights,” Longhaul said, and the grand plaza hall was illuminated. Golden lamps shone above, and blue lit from below. The mercury fountains were still and silent. Beachcomber climbed down, giving Longhaul’s aft a friendly swat on his way.
“He reinforced the attachments, right?” Beachcomber said, looking up and giggling at the bigger-than-life statue of Scrapper, in a flying pose, arms extended, fists clenched.
“Probably,” Longhaul sighed. “Scavenger told him there were fracture planes in a couple of places. Just had to open his mouth…”
“At least it’s up out of most people’s eye-line,” Beachcomber laughed. “The fountains are really nice, though. Do they still flow, do you think?”
“I just pinged that system and something’s not working. We kind of had a fight with the Preds in here and…” Longhaul wandered over to the largest of the fountains and examined the base. “Yeah.” He yanked a sliver of metal free. “Shrapnel. Not Shrapnel, just shrapnel.” He grinned over at Beachcomber, who was sauntering in a big circle, peering all around, sending sonic and radar pulses down through the floor and into the radiating spoke passages.
Something churned and gurgled, and then the heavy quicksilver in the fountains began to circulate, spilling and sliding, the golden light from the above-lanterns shimmered and rippled, throwing bright reflections on the cavern walls and across the metal bodies of the two mechs. The mercury made a gentle thunk-shussh-grrgle as it poured from one basin to another; like water but heavier, deeper.
Beachcomber put a hand to his mouth. “That sound,” he said.
“Yeah,” Longhaul whispered. It had hit him, too, the first time Mix turned the fountains on. A sound they hadn’t heard for almost three million years. A simple sound. A common sound. But the fountains of Cybertron had long been silent.
Longhaul led Beachcomber down a tunnel next to the one he eventually wanted. They’d come back around. Most of their delving did. Lights came on as they went, staying on behind them, the lamps fashioned like those of Crystal City that had been smashed long ago; white or blue or gold crystal in wire-caged dodecahedra or icosahedra or octohedra.
“Who did the mosaics?” Beachcomber asked, sliding his feet along them, feeling them, tasting all their metals and minerals. The designs were abstract, mostly geometric, but some seemed to echo the curves of river or cloud or the arch of a leaf, the coil of a shell, though all of those shapes were mathematical, too. Beachcomber could hear Perceptor’s voice, reciting the formulae.
“Scavenger,” Longhaul said. “We each picked projects, we just wanted to build stuff uninterrupted again, y’know? But all he did was build the tunnels to connect everything. Nice work, for what it’s worth.”
“‘Nice.’ All right.”
The tunnel curved without rising or falling, the floor slightly but not uncomfortably concave. At the end was a plain door that opened in three sections. Very typical of architecture during the last era before the war. Beyond was a spherical cavern even larger than the central one with the fountains. Beachcomber had been studying the mosaics and looked up only just in time to avoid running off the balcony. Longhaul steered him to the left and over a slender bridge as Beachcomber gaped.
Bubbling through the center of the cavern and taking up nearly all that space was an intricate three-dimensional fractal construction. Seven large spheres with clusters of smaller and smaller spheres looping and branching away into improbable spindly quills brushing the cavern walls. All metallic, etched with swirling patterns of matte on glassy polish, all grading in color from a warm amber, through violet, to vivid burgundy. Veins of light in the cavern walls glowed pale gold, illumining every fine detail of structure and pattern.
“Who…?” Beachcomber murmured, as Longhaul drew him the rest of the way across the bridge and into the nearest of the large spheres. There were oval windows and doors, placed in accordance to the necessary math. The interiors of the large spheres were sparse, but rimmed with a spiral ledge, suitable as seating for mechs of various sizes. In the center the floor rose into a small pool or large vase, though there was nothing inside, and five doorways led to slightly smaller spheres.
“Hook,” Longhaul said. “Made it all by shaping.” By hand, the humans would say, though Longhaul thought that was a little odd. By tools, didn’t they mean? But by “shaping” Longhaul meant that the Mandelbulb structures had not been “grown” in the way many buildings had been on Cybertron, where you programmed your assemblers, set them in the base shape you wanted and fed them raw materials until they got to the top. Or “grown” like crystals in enormous vats, Longhaul supposed, but that had been obsolete a billion years ago. Modular preassembly and onsite fitting were actually more efficient and faster, but people liked doing things in the traditional ways. “We made some small manufactories, but mostly we had to build stuff down here by shaping.”
Beachcomber stared at him, stared around at the apartments inside the spheres.
“It’s…kinda soothing, actually,” Longhaul said, scratching an imaginary itch on the back of his shoulder cowling. “Building things the long way. Gives you time to think about what you’re doing.” Beachcomber wandered farther in, finding a set of spheres that each rose slightly from the last, like room-size stairs, though the thresholds were all smooth. Off to the left were Tread and Trample’s rooms. Their stuff - datapads and mineral samples and empty energon cylinders - was all over the floors just the way they’d left it. “Gives you time to think about a lot of things.”
“Did you all …live here?”
“Nah. Well. Yeah. Kinda. We recharged here. We’d talk about stuff here sometimes. I mean, we were usually all busy with our own projects, y’know?”
“This is amazing, Long. Beautiful!” Beachcomber turned in a circle as they came back down to the first large room, the meeting room. “I remember you guys built such wonderful things, before. I remember Crystal City, and Pellucivane, and the Fardawn Station.” He caught Longhaul’s hand and held it. “I’m so glad to…to see that you still can.”
Me too, Longhaul thought, leading Beachcomber through a side connecting tunnel to Mixmaster’s caves. Twenty years ago he would have said aloud, of course we can, we never stopped, just you Autobots kept blowing our stuff up! But both sides had blown stuff up, and it hadn’t mattered who built it.
They heard the streams and falls before they rounded the curve. Mix had left the door open. Not like him to be that sloppy. On the other hand, the entire complex was so deep, and sealed off, what or who else would have come in here? There wasn’t even dust on the floor or anything. Just darkness and undisturbed air and memories of a brief, happy time when it was just them, together and alive and no one giving them orders except Scrapper.
“Ohhhh,” Beachcomber said, in that deep, thrummy tone of voice Longhaul had hoped he would. “Arnanra IV? The Ii caves!”
“Yep! Mix always liked the sound, the echoes.” Water wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as mercury, but it had its uses, and was in plentiful supply.
The entire Ii cave system had been reproduced in 1/1000th scale; the natural stone around it shaped to fit. All the light came from beneath the transparent or translucent formations, colored by whichever types of corundum Mixmaster had used. Each section tended to be in three harmonious colors, built up in centimeter-thin layers. Yellow, blue, violet. Red, orange, blue. Green, violet, pale grey.
“Humans call red corundum ruby, and all other colors sapphire,” Beachcomber said, walking through, not touching - hands firmly clasped behind his back because ooh water! and eeee rocks! - admiring how perfectly the various formations had been reproduced. Mix must have had the hi-def scans that Orthoclase had made during the reign of Zeta Prime and Lord Protector Empyrion.
“Why single out the red?” Humans were so weird.
“I…don’t know. There’s a pinkish orange corundum called padparadscha.” Maybe because red was the color of their blood. And the word “sapphire” had referred to different kinds of stone, through history. Glyph would know more about that. Beachcomber resolved to ask her next time they were both in the cloud mind.
“What do they call the far-violet ones?”
“They lump them in with black sapphires. They can’t see that color.”
“Oh.”
The un-augmented ones couldn’t, anyway. Augment humans called far-violet “bee-violet” which Beachcomber thought was adorable (and near-infrared was “viper-red”). If Longhaul hadn’t been paying attention to how humans had been modifying themselves lately, perhaps it would be more fun for him to discover that on his own. Beachcomber grinned.
At the far end of the wandering path, past stalactites and ripplestone curtains, past stalagmites and interconnected pools, was a natural parabolic half-dome. A sort of amphitheater tilted on one side, so that the stone arched above those in the center - and in the original caves it had been used as a gathering place and stage. Beachcomber stood with his back to the curve and hummed, experimenting with volume and pitch, adjusting his harmonics and subharmonics. Longhaul scurried to the other end of the cavern and knelt, putting his audials in the best spot.
Humming turned to singing. Beachcomber’s singing programming and vocoder weren’t set for anything operatic, and he was no Gene Autry, but he had a nice baritone for singing around the camp heater out in the middle of nowhere on survey. He and Hound tended to know the same kinds of songs.
Longhaul was silent, listening; the Ii caves did odd things to voices. More than simple echoes, the physical topography and the water forms changed voices and harmonics in pitch and tone, creating multiple harmonies sometimes, or quieting a burr to pure notes. The topography was precise, but scale mattered, and Beachcomber’s voice echoed and gained resonance, but was otherwise unaltered. Longhaul huffed, though, when the simple, brief song was over.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Beachcomber said, joining Longhaul back at the entrance and following him down yet another corridor. “Mixmaster always has been a music fan, hasn’t he?”
“Ironic, though,” said Longhaul. “He sings worse than Prime.” They both snickered as they emerged again, closer to the main plaza this time, into Ruckus’ untidy experiment with gear-driven, steam-powered architecture. Over-elaborate and massive, and somewhat precarious in places, the movable towers and rearrangeable rooms were more artistic than practical.
“Any particular lever I shouldn’t pull?” Beachcomber asked, standing on tiptoe at the master control panel.
“Oh. I…dunno. Could get exciting.”
“Oh boy.” Power on was marked with the usual glyph. There was a dull, gurgling roar as geothermal vents far below were opened, and steam rushed through convoluted pipeworks. Choosing more or less at random, Beachcomber pushed a button. Walls, windows, doors, vents, roofs, entire rooms shuffled about, some spinning, some lifting, others lowering, or rolling, accompanied by a chorus of wheezes and moans, clanks and groaning, creaking and whistling as excess steam was diverted once the assemblage settled like an ancient mech into its new shape. The copper and bronze surfaces had been worked into multifarious textures, and embellished with bright enamel designs that appeared to be abstract at first glance. Beachcomber pushed another button, and Longhaul reached around him to pull a lever at the same time.
The whirling and shuffling and clanking was more frenzied, but after a moment everything settled again, in a completely different arrangement. Longhaul placed both hands on the controls, his arms to either side of Beachcomber, the inner surfaces brushing the geologist’s shoulders now and then as they experimented, trying various permutations, playing the console like an organ one minute, switching to simpler variations the next. Trying to work out what each lever and button and knob did because surely there must be some kind of mechanical order to it. But the workings were even more complex than they seemed at first glance, and no obvious pattern was emerging.
“Wait a minute,” said Beachcomber, after their latest combination had thoroughly disproved their latest theory. “Is that an optic? Look at the enameling. Is this a puzzle?”
“Huh.” It was part of an optic, obvious now that Longhaul saw it, though it had seemed just another half-circle of red a moment ago. They resumed their combination-seeking with a will. At one point they got a configuration that looked - if they tilted their heads a little - like a mech making a very rude gesture. Beachcomber giggled. Longhaul cackled. Ruckus had definitely done that on purpose.
“Have we…been underestimating Ruckus all this time?” Beachcomber asked, fingers still working the controls, letting his head tilt back, against Longhaul’s ventral plates. The low purrs of their engines transmitted back and forth through their metal.
“Yeah and no,” Longhaul said. “When you get him riled, he’s a violent slagbrain.”
Beachcomber gave him a look.
“Okay, we’re all violent slagbrains. Whatever. But, if you leave him alone, Ruckus has this…this quiet sorta…well, it’s a focused kinda mentality, right? Intelligence. He likes puzzles. Especially big physical ones like this.”
“Has he ever played the MYST games?” Beachcomber chirped a file. All the games bundled weren’t a very big file, to them, and the code was human-awkward, but Longhaul didn’t even unfold it before his optics lit.
“How’d you know?”
“Glen played them. They were like this; environmental puzzles. And beautiful.” Glen had been shy and embarrassed, telling Hound about them, but then Hound was one of the easiest people to tell embarrassing things to. They weren’t badass, shooter games. They were quiet games, sometimes eerie and unsettling, full of layers of stories. Miles hadn’t ever played them, being more “in the world” than on a computer.
“We could be voors…uh, years, figuring this out, you know,” Longhaul said, gesturing at the enameled bronze of Ruckus’ creation. Beachcomber looked like he might be considering it, and Longhaul tried not to jounce from foot to foot. But then the little geologist smiled, and held out a hand, and Longhaul took it in his much bigger one and led him back into the great plaza, and then out again, down another long corridor.
“So. Over here we have Tread and Trample’s park.” Longhaul was personally surprised they’d actually more or less finished the thing, the way the twins argued over every detail. Well. When they did finally agree, the thing they’d agreed to do was usually more fantastic than the things they’d wanted to do individually.
“Oh,” said Beachcomber. His feet caressed the cobbled floor, and moved him inexorably toward the coppery disk in the center, but he, friend to Perceptor through all the megavorns of their lives, saw at once that the whole park was a representation of Cybertron’s native system. The copper-gold disk in the center of the floor their long-exploded sun, Hadeen; the magnetically-suspended spheres for thirteen planets, surrounded by crystalline trees instead of moons; the orbital pathways graven with gravimetric poetry.
“Kinda funny, innit,” Longhaul said, following leisurely until he came upon one of the half-loops of metal scattered about that could serve as benches. He sat down, content to watch Beachcomber. “A park’s for people to gather in. Lotsa people. Relaxing, playing games or music. But here this is, a kilometer down, nobody knows it’s here but us.”
“840 meters of that is mountain,” Beachcomber laughed. It was barely 97 degrees Fahrenheit at the main level of the complex; 37 degrees Celsius. The heart of the mountain itself was cold, only a few degrees above the freezing of water, but 160 meters below that the heat of the planet’s heart rose steadily. He set a pede-tip on the central disk, testing. Grinning with delight, he placed one foot full on, then, balanced carefully, skated out in a lazy curve, arms out, visor bright. “You could rebuild this place, if you wanted, on Cybertron,” he said. He missed skating. It was one of the few purely frivolous things he’d been able to get Perceptor to do on the regular.
“Could.” Longhaul shifted his weight. He glanced at the fourth planet, Cybertron-that-was, hovering in its place, shaped of steel, with its two crystal trees, one twice the size of the other. “Probably won’t. We’ll build new stuff, once the first city’s secure.” He watched Beachcomber tip forward, arms out, one leg extended behind, leaning into a spin. Faster and faster, drawing his limbs in. Simple physics, Longhaul thought, smiling, but Beachcomber was good at it. Graceful somehow, despite his stocky frame.
“Sooooo, you’re just gonna leave all this here? And not tell anybody?” Beachcomber flung out his arms, slowing, turning the spin into gentle loops.
“Humans’d cook down here,” Longhaul said.
“No, though it wouldn’t be comfortable.” Humans had survived at almost twice this depth for short periods. He’d taken Miles down to the re-flooded Crystal Cave in Mexico once. The conditions didn’t bother Beachcomber at all, and Miles had coped quite well for about half an hour, enchanted by the giant selenite crystals. Dani would be fine, and there were a few hundred other humans with sophisticated enough systems to find the climate balmy. They’d have to ventilate better, but it was doable. Build a little funicular or tram from the entrance down to the main chamber. “You could charge admission.”
“Charge? What?” Longhaul got up, moved to the edge of the skating disk. “Oh. Money. Bah. The slag we do that for?”
“I’m kidding.” Beachcomber swooped by and Longhaul caught his hand, leaning out to let him slow, then reeling him in.
“They’d just breathe all over everything. And shed dead skin cells. So gross!”
“Aww, dust motes are pretty in the sunlight.”
“Ugh. Gets in your vents and slag.”
“Burns right off the filters, easy!”
“Gah. Come on, one last thing to show ya.” He let Beachcomber go, trundling off back once again to the main plaza, and the last unexplored tunnel.
They transformed, Beachcomber following closely as the convoluted ramps branched and rejoined, but ever spiraled downward. At last, about another three-quarters of a kilometer deeper, the tunnel opened up into a dark, rough staging area. Crystals glittered on the walls, seeming to be natural formations at first, but Beachcomber soon identified them as minerals that shouldn’t - couldn’t - have formed in this environment. On this planet.
“Nara crystals? Where did you get…well, yeah, sure from Velantia, but…did you make them? They’re so pure…this is amazing…”
“Thought you’d figure it out,” Longhaul said, clasping his hands behind his back, pleased. “They’re from places we’ve been, the Constructicons. Places we built stuff or just visited. Not that we took a lot of vacations, y’know. Knew you’d look a little closer.”
Beachcomber grinned. He stepped back from the walls, looking around. “Ahh! It’s a map, too!” If one took the center of the chamber as Cybertron, the crystals were a flat projection representing the relative positions of the planets they came from. Longhaul bounced on his pedes, optics flaring bright.
“Yep!” He held out a hand and Beachcomber took it. “C’mon. One more place to show ya.”
Massive granite doors split into three triangular sections and withdrew into floor and walls. Another ramp led down for a last quarter kilometer, and the temperature rose to 62 C, 143 F. Un-augmented humans really would cook down here. There was another set of doors, opening by Longhaul’s command as they approached. Lights came on in the rooms beyond.
“Oh my.” Beachcomber hadn’t seen anything like it since the Towers fell.
The layout was simple enough. Oval foyer, cubic central chamber, round doors to either side leading to other rooms. But every wall and ceiling was plated in gold and copper, coffered, with bas relief panels in each wall, and constellation lights in the ceiling. Lamps hung in clusters, every one different, blues and purples and golds, casting vivid reflections over the metal walls. Gold was valued for its color, for its transmissive properties, for its acoustics. Beachcomber laughed the moment he realized what the depression in the center of the main room was.
“Is that a ball pit?”
Longhaul strode past him and rolled into the circular depression, which was filled with small granite spheres. Each sphere was a different variety of granite. Beachcomber wondered how exactly he’d collected them.
“It’s my bed,” Longhaul huffed. The spheres made it comfortable even when his joints ached.
“It’s a ball pit!” Beachcomber whooped and dove after him.
“Ugh, gerroff!” Longhaul pried Beachcomber off his midsection and rolled over. “Go look at the other stuff. I’m taking a nap.”
Beachcomber patted his shoulder. “Oh sure. You brought me down here to show off and you’re taking a nap. Go right ahead, hum hmmm…” He wriggled his way out of the ball pit, though he would rather have stayed, and ambled into the lefthand room. An oil bath, similar in style to the bed ball pit room. The bath was sloped like a human swimming pool, large enough for Longhaul to stretch out in and fully immerse. Or share, if the other mech didn’t mind cozy, or was smaller. Mmmhmm. Picks and steel pads and abrasives and special oils were arranged neatly to one side. He noted that Longhaul was still using that peculiar kind of joint lubricant. Hadn’t he ever gotten that fixed? Or self-repair should have taken care of it, but if there was a glitch in his nanocells…
Not his style to pry. And Longhaul was - used to be - a Decepticon. Pointing out a weakness wouldn’t go over well. Longhaul knew what he was doing. Hook would have taken care of it, if it was something fixable. Maybe the affected joints weren’t weight-bearing when they combined? But wasn’t Longhaul a leg? That didn’t mean his robot-mode joints weren’t compressed and locked during gestalt.
Still none of his business. He dipped the obligatory pede-tip in the oil - plenty toasty, though that could be said of the air and the stone itself at this depth - and wandered back into the main room. Longhaul gave every appearance of recharge, including sedate, barely ruffling fields. Huh.
Across and through the other door.
Oh, thought Beachcomber. Oh, this was the treasure trove.
One the rest of the Structies might well tease Long about for vorns, if they had ever seen it. (Longhaul’s subharmonics had hinted that they had not. Why?) He had smelled the clay the moment they’d come through the door, and wondered about it, but there had been so much to take in today…oh. They’d been down there two days actually, playing and exploring. No sun to remind them of the passage of time, and Beachcomber was past master of ignoring his chronometer.
The clay. Special clay, he knew. Kaolin, with other minerals. He’d smelled it before, in its raw, unfired state. Porcelain. High quality, too. Mined or made? There was enough of it here, in big, carefully wrapped blocks, to suggest Long had bought it somewhere. The blocks sat in refrigerated cabinets with clear doors. Transparent aluminum or plex, probably. Behind the Constructicon-scaled pottery wheel. Beachcomber resisted the urge to climb up on the thing and turn it on; it would be balanced just right and he didn’t want to mess that up.
All around the room were floor-to-ceiling shelves, displaying Longhaul’s finished works, unfinished works, and a few epic failures. (There was a blob, with distinctive finger-indentations, that looked like it had been thrown against a wall while still wet.) The pieces seemed to be arranged chronologically, as symmetry and detail increased from right to left, bespeaking increasing skill at this very human art. Vases and bowls, things Cybertronians might find uses for. Then figures; sea creatures, dragons, sinuous smooth shapes, until those had become familiar enough to inspire a moving on. Simple but precise geometric shapes gave way to blocky Cybertronian figures, both robot and alt mode. Vague, basic frame types, then specific portraits.
“Oh,” Beachcomber murmured, grinning. “It’s me!” And Perceptor, in scale with each other, glazed and finely detailed. The Perceptor figure was about two meters tall. A reasonable size for Longhaul’s big hands, though Longhaul had fine-manips like a lot of people did who worked with their hands. The Perceptor and Beachcomber figures were set facing each other, Perceptor looking down and Beachcomber looking up; at each other, their expressions soft. It was a stunning pair of likenesses.
Some of the shelves were underlit, as Longhaul experimented with translucency and relief, creating silhouettes or panoramas, then etching-like scenes on backlit panels - lithophanes. These were also mostly vases, and Cybertronian-scale chalices, but there were tiles and partially-abstracted figures, whose chest-panels bore scenes or symbols from the past. A few had decorative motifs from Earth.
One corner of the vast workroom was devoted to glass, including an alarmingly sized blowtorch. Looked like Long had stuck mostly to lampworking. Beads and sculptures - flowers, waves, Devastator in full gestalt, planets and suns, Cybertronian construction forms, a miniature of Crystal City’s coronet of towers.
It was astonishing, beautiful work. Delicate, a display of art and finesse Beachcomber wondered if anyone other than his brothers had ever seen.
He wandered back to the figures of himself and Perceptor, wondering why just they two were here. Why not Wheeljack? Why not Prime? Or Megatron, as he had been, their beloved and respected Lord Protector. But this work had been done here, on Earth. And before the Structies had formally joined the space bridge effort. Beachcomber gazed at Perceptor’s face in porcelain, glazed to a very close approximation of the original’s pale silver.
“How do you get along with him?” Longhaul asked, coming up behind him, genuinely curious. “You two are just about the strongest spark-friends outside of a gestalt we’ve met, and yet he’s so…so…” Longhaul made bitey motions with his hands.
Beachcomber laughed. “He can be, can’t he.” He turned and wrapped his arms around Longhaul’s leg. “He’s not so hard, really. He knows he can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, but it’s not a matter of opposing him. Deflecting, more like. Heh. Bend with the wind.”
“You both have strong personalities,” Long said, reaching down to touch his helm.
“And we clash, sometimes. Our academic specialties are quite different, but they do kinda overlap. Chemistry and metallurgy. Stars exploding from iron poisoning, creating heavy elements for use in rocky planets.”
“Rocky planets your favorites, huh?”
“Maybe. Cybertron is sort of rocky. In places.” He tugged at Longhaul’s hand, leading him back into the bed chamber…aka the ball pit.
“Sort of.” Eager enough, willing enough, Longhaul settled into the granite spheres, curling on his side, leaving room. He wasn’t used to clanging such small mechs, but as he was formulating a way to be careful, Beachcomber had climbed over his waist and was at his lower back, doing things with his hands and feet and mouth and fields, and Longhaul lay beneath him shivering with unexpected ecstasy.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Oh, full deep he lay, sinking to the vent; the plasmic bath no hotter, after all, than his own spark. Quiet, but for the stirrings of the mantle far beneath, when the generals did not pester him with their trivial concerns. In the peace and quiet at the bottom of the pool he lay, sending wires of himself down, down; mass and energy entwined, all of it his for the taking. Slow and careful, learning the taste of the planet. Nothing abrupt that would alert Optimus through the Allspark.
He was aware of footsteps on the banks of his pool. They watched him sometimes, his Decepticons, as he slowly writhed. Watched his body bathed in plasma, desirous. They would go away to interface, rushed and secretive, but he knew.
The generals thought him mad. They found him unpredictable of late, and that was useful. Dangerous, but useful. Galvatron was good at this game. He could logic rings around Shockwave, though it was a tactic best played subtle and seldom. Shockwave and his closed-loop lab. Runabout and Runamok, the fools, had gone in, and were alive, but had not come out. Nothing came out. Little went in. The systems recycled, reused. Very efficient. Very difficult to get any idea what went on inside. He left one thought thread open to that calculation.
My Lord Galvatron, said Dreadwing. There is only a single Ishlorsinami ship in orbit around the human planet. You asked to be notified.
Galvatron considered shooting Dreadwing where he stood. He had, however, given that order. Very well. Perhaps it was time to again test the metal of humankind.
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