[rd][fic][Transformers Bayverse] Summer Job 7/?
Summer Job: Our People
by K. Stonham
released 28th May 2011
June 18th, 2010. Cybertron.
With a weary sigh, Ironhide dropped to the ground and absently stretched a few cables, cricking his neck one way and then the other. His spark ached mildly; not a surprise given the stress they'd all just subjected them to. And would need to subject them to again.
It had been such a fragging long time since they'd had to consider natives out of their depth. Looking at the humans, he was reminded of Annabelle capturing a tadpole in the creek that ran through the Lennox's property and not understanding why it died once out of water.
It hadn't been that long, objectively speaking, since that metallivorous worm infested planet where Cybertronians had encountered the ship called Ghost 1. It hadn't been more than a few decades, Earth time, since Starscream had destroyed humanity's first venture beyond the system of their birth. It hadn't been long at all since the Autobots' first contact with the species who were now their closest allies.
And that day it hadn't taken long to learn how easily humans died.
But they were a tenacious species. There were so many of them, and they grew and learned so fast. They were brave and bold, and if, yes, they were the violent and primitive species of Ironhide's initial assessment, they were also, many of them, the steadfast companions of whom a soldier could ask no better.
(And if Optimus had once or twice made pointed comments about their own species' violent tendencies given their war, well, Ironhide would never admit to taking the remarks to spark.)
"You okay, Ironhide?" Lennox asked.
He looked down at the man. Small and soft, but so bright, with a true warrior's spark. He would have been proud to command Lennox, had they been of the same species. As it was, he had no problems following the other's lead in battle, more confident in the human to know and strategize where their species best complemented each other's skills. "Just feeling old," Ironhide answered.
The human nodded, eyes glancing around the lab, automatically checking the status of his men, the Autobots, the chemical tanks at the walls. "Going home again like this sucks," he said, surprising Ironhide with his perceptiveness.
"...Yes."
Because Lennox, too, had seen his share of homes abandoned and destroyed by war.
***
The wall unit was antiquated, dilapidated, and scored by gouges and carbonization marks that spoke of a violent history. But it wasn't acid-slagged, so Arcee extended a hand, transforming her digits to plug in to the terminal. She was expecting to find old data files, scientific notes, maybe old downloads of news or holo messages if Ratchet's friend had been the type. The detritus of a dead world and a dying culture.
She was not expecting an encrypted message.
"Ratchet," she said, half turning as she processed the file. He raised an optic ridge at her. "There's a message on this terminal for you."
"Old news," he dismissed.
"No," she told him. "It's dated after you left the planet."
That got her a stare. The medic didn't quite hustle across the room, but it was close. Unplugging and wheeling back, Arcee watched Ratchet's face. He was too controlled for her to read him easily, but when he was through downloading and decrypting, there was definitely shock in his posture as he turned back to the Prime.
"Optimus," Ratchet said, and his voice was rough, "there are survivors in the catacombs."
***
"Catacombs," Agent Simmons. His voice, as was his wont, held skepticism and inquiry in equal measure.
The tone got him a snort from Ironhide as the black mech rolled back to his feet. "Our planet is riddled with them. Layers and layers."
"Cybertron is not like Earth," Optimus explained for the humans' benefit. "Your world is dense and rocky, with a molten core. Ours is... honeycombed," he said, finding a suitable analogy.
"Legends say all the way to the center," Ratchet supplemented, still plugged in to the terminal. Nearly subsonic static gave away the fact that he was continuing to download and process whatever information Wheeljack had left available to him. "However, no one has gone below certain levels and returned to tell the tale."
"Not in living memory," Jetstorm agreed.
"So the turtles go all the way down," Simmons said. This time his voice was both thoughtful and wondering. It was interesting, Optimus thought, how honesty and a little information worked miracles in changing the man's attitude.
"Oh," Sam said, very softly. Something about the way he said it caught Optimus' attention. As he watched, Sam's gaze flickered back and forth, focusing into the mid-distance as he accessed the knowledge of the Allspark.
Even as Optimus observed his human brother, though, Ratchet unplugged from the wall unit and turned to face them. "We can't leave them," he said. On the surface it sounded like a statement of fact, but Optimus had known Ratchet for a very long time--there was pleading in his words as well.
"Of course not," Optimus agreed. "They are our kinfolk, and we must rescue them if at all possible."
"How many mechs we talking, here?" Epps asked.
Optimus inclined his head at his Chief Medical Officer.
"Eighteen," Ratchet said.
A dozen humans mouthed the number. It took only seconds before their eyes lit up, and Optimus could understand their thought processes quite clearly: the rescues would triple the number of Autobots on Earth.
Ratchet clearly understood this train of thought as well. "It may be some time," he said aloud, "before they're in any condition to move or fight. Wheeljack's notes indicate they all went into voluntary stasis... due to lack of energon."
That tempered human enthusiasm somewhat. Even not having seen it, NEST knew that energon was the lifeblood of Cybertronians. They could, and had, go for some time without it, but for their species to continue to survive, let alone thrive, a source for the precious plasma would need to be found within the next few centuries.
"Logistics," Captain Graham said, raising a point. "Assuming you're able to find all these Autobots, how are we transporting them back to the Space Bridge?"
//Got a flatbed in your subspace?// Ironhide teased in Cybertronian.
Optimus raised an optical ridge at him. //As a matter of fact, I do,// he replied. To the humans, he said, "Leave that to us."
***
"Ha!" Jetstorm told Optimus. "I will be staying here, thank you and please." He seated himself in a human-clear area of the lab with his arms crossed, a gesture of defiance. "You will not be getting me to go into those wretched catacombs." To himself, he kept the shivering thought of walls closing in on him, leaving him no room to maneuver, to fly, to win his way free to the sky and stars. It was best not to give such weaknesses away, not even to allies or Primes.
Perhaps, he admitted, he had been too long alone in the ice.
"Of course, my friend," Optimus replied, cutting off whatever protests or insults his Autobots had been preparing to make. "It would be a tight fit," he explained to the others, "and we need someone here to protect the humans if anything goes wrong."
"No environmental controls down there, huh?" Agent Simmons, a bright mammal if ever Jetstorm had seen one, asked.
Optimus nodded gravely. "And we will all need to be free to transform to free the others from their stasis pods."
Captain Graham checked his time-keeping unit. "Two hours, thirteen minutes to sunrise at Stonehenge," he reported to his commanding officer.
Major Lennox nodded. "Think we can make it, big guy?" he asked Optimus.
"It will be tight," the leader acknowledged, "but I think we can."
"Then godspeed," the Major wished him. Optimus nodded once more, then he and the others transformed and rolled for the inner door. Its airlock sealed behind them, and they were gone, leaving Jetstorm alone with the humans.
He regarded them for a moment. "You are knowing that wishing him 'godspeed' is redundant, yes?"
"What'dya mean?"
"Well," Jetfire said, settling into the mode of a storyteller, "organic lifebeings such as yourselves, you tend to worship your sun, yes? Even later in the development of your civilizations, your gods are 'up', yes?" he asked with a gesture at the ceiling.
"Yeah, God in Heaven," Lieutenant Casey agreed, nodding.
"For us, though, we always knew what created us."
"The Allspark Cube," Major Lennox said.
Jetstorm shook his head. "The Allspark, yes... but also Cybertron. We would not be the same beings if it were not for our world."
"Kind of like how, if your mom married someone different, would you still be the same you?" Mikaela Banes asked.
He considered the question for a moment. "Yes, like that, I think."
"So, what, your god is down?" Master Sergeant Epps asked, gesturing at the floor.
"Yes." Jetstorm nodded. "The Allspark... our father, perhaps, as you call such things? And Cybertron, who 'birthed' us, would be our mother. We worshipped our world as I think your kind maybe once did?"
"So just Cybertron, then?" Agent Simmons' eyes were sharp as he caught what Jetfire wasn't saying yet. "Just the planet, not as a separate god?"
"No, we had a name for it. Primus, the god within our world. The first source of life."
"Primus," Samuel Witwicky said quietly, but with the weight of a Prime. "Like Optimus Prime?"
"Like all the Primes," Jetstorm agreed. "The first among us, the best. The ones closest to our world, our god... our creators. The guardians and... stewards?" he asked, questioning his word choice. Deciding it was the right one, he nodded. "Yes, stewards of our people."
***
He came online, registering an anomalous change in one area of his demense. Different chemicals flowed within the lab now. Highly caustic ones, too, he noted. Had Wheeljack come out of stasis and decided to run another simulation? There was indeed a lifesign within the lab....
His consciousness fully booted up, optics at their maximum aperture as he realized the passive ping from the lifeform was no Autobot. Old old signal. Decepticon!
Worse, he saw as he reached out with his senses and accessed the laboratory's more involved monitoring devices, with the Decepticon were a number of undoubtedly dangerous and quite probably metallivorous organic life signatures.
His charge was to guard those sleeping below until the day they either all of them died in stasis, or the Allspark was returned to Cybertron and they could all wake and live again.
Silently, Red Alert moved for the first time in aeons, integrating himself into the defense systems of Wheeljack's lab, melting into the walls as he became part of them and passed through.
***
"Stewards, huh."
Jetstorm leaned closer down to Simmons. "Guides, yes. But also protectors. It is why," he said, and his glance lay heavily on Sam, "they were given powers others had not."
Sam swallowed. "So Primes protect their people?"
Jetstorm nodded. "It is their foremost drive and duty. It is why Optimus Prime fights himself in every battle he can... unlike your human leaders, who send others to fight for them. A Prime, it was said, inspires the best by being the best."
"Ha," Sam said faintly, caught up in the memory of sunlight and pine and earth. Echoes of a raging battle, three-on-one. The clang and crash and rip of metal. Choked death that sounded like nothing human could.
When, he wondered, had Optimus begun to count him as "his people"?
...Run, boy....
...He died for me....
...Thank you, for saving my life....
And when, Sam wondered, had he begun counting the Autobots as the same? Optimus had died protecting Sam, a human. Sam had died protecting Optimus, a mechanoid.
Essentially, he realized, forgetting to breathe for a moment, they'd each adopted one another's species. As far as the whole Dynasty of the Primes were concerned, all two of them, humans and Cybertronians were worth the same. So in some weird cosmic way, they were now effectively the same species, subject to the same protections.
Sam looked up at Jetstorm, opening his mouth to say something either stupid or profound, and had only an instant to register white plasma fire taking out the old ex-Decepticon.
***
Curious, Red Alert noted, half unfolding himself from the wall. No sooner had he fired and crippled the ancient Decepticon than the non-reactive tritanium metal of the floor had ripped itself up, curling as a shield over the organics. Were they telekinetic? There had never been a recorded incidence of that particular ability in an organic species. If they were, as this seemed to indicate, he would have to be more cautious in neutralizing their threat. Perceptor would, of course, chide him for not taking more scientific interest in the phenomena; Red Alert's priority, however, was seeing that the scientist survived to issue that mild scold.
***
"What the--"
"We're on your side!" Will shouted around the blast shield Sam had set up for them. He'd managed to glimpse the red Autobot symbol on the Cybertronian's chest in the bare instant he'd had. "We're with the Autobots!"
A considering silence met this, then a single shot fired, plasma heat warming the metal, washing around its edges. Testing their shelter's tolerances.
"I don't think he got the language pack," Bobby remarked drily.
"Fuck," Will swore. Mikaela's eyes were fast on Jetstorm, he noticed, her expression betraying her need to get to him, to fix him. But she was smart enough not to run out and make herself a target.
Mechanical steps weren't soft, but they shook the ground a lot less on Cybertron than they did on Earth. The mech was heading for them.
"I don't want to take down an ally," Will said, hating this position, "but if it's between us and him...."
"Got any bright ideas, kid?" Simmons asked Sam.
Their resident telekinetic and Prime looked around at all of them. "Maybe," he said, and the metal under his feet shifted, breaking apart into a small platform that rose, carrying him upward.
"Sam--" said Mikaela, but he only glanced briefly back at her, saying nothing.
***
This was not going to work. This was not going to work.
This HAD to work.
Because otherwise.... He remembered telling his parents to run and not to stop and hide because the Decepticons would find them if they did. And they were all on Cybertron now, where there was no place to run and hide, not if they wanted to breathe.
So this had to work.
Because Sam would not allow it not to.
He rose above the surface of his wave-shelter, assessing the silver-red Cybertronian before himself. A little taller than Ironhide or Ratchet, but spindly where they were heavy-built. One hand was already a light gun. The other transformed as Sam appeared, drawing a bead on him.
This had to work.
Sam opened his mouth.
***
Humans could not speak Cybertronian. Could not even understand it without mechanical intervention. This was a base physical law, irrefutable due to their biology.
Which was why Captain Alexander Graham, formerly of Her Majesty's Royal Forces and currently of NEST, stood gape-jawed, weapon slack at his side, looking up at the twenty-year-old college student who....
Well, his voice didn't sound quite like Optimus Prime's. Sam was of an entirely different register, a tenor in fact to Optimus' bass. But the sounds were right, as was the way he seemed to be saying more than just words, more than mere communication. His voice sounded through the fabric of the world, ringing through reality like a church bell through stone walls.
It was like those few words Optimus had said months ago to Jetstorm at the bottom of the world.
And then it stopped. Sam floated back down. He was white and Graham could see where he was barely repressing shudders. But he opened his mouth to speak, then caught himself, pain crossing his face. His girlfriend was at his side in a flash. But Sam caught Major Lennox's eyes and gestured once, waving them all free of the shelter.
As Sam and Mikaela went one way, in the direction of Jetstorm, Lennox and Graham and the rest went the other.
On the other side of their meager shelter the Autobot knelt, optics staring fast at the retreating human Prime. His hands were on the ground, and he made no struggle at all as, Lilliput-like, they bound their attacking Gulliver.