I know, I'm as thrilled as you are. This is the first part (as you will see) of a slightly longer story. It refers to events from my very first fanfic ever, which sucks abominably and is being kept from the public eye for the safety of the public interest. I believe it causes Swine Flu. You can figure out what's going on. It's the Bayverse, so already, yay, let the hate begin. Bourzey castle is a real place. I'm a hopeless geek like that.
Anyway, don't let me stand in the way of your mockery any longer. I present, for your mockitude, Part One of My Second Fanfic Ever. I suck at titles, can you tell?
Pars Prima
Bourzey Castle, Southern SyriaRatchet ducked, instinctively, at the buzz-thump of the EMP burst. Yellow dust shook down from the large stone walls of the gateway he crouched in. Something deep in his chassis gave a sickening dropping feeling as he heard the distinctive clattering crash one of his fellow Autobots falling over. He cursed, softly.
“Ironhide,” Flareup said, her voice sick. “He’d gone ahead.”
“As usual,” Lennox added.
Prime gave a worried scowl. He wasn’t angry at Ironhide, Ratchet knew; but he’d been fighting these challenges to his authority for cycles now. It didn’t make them any easier that they were familiar. “We’ll need to disarm the EMP before we can retrieve him,” he said, calmly, changing the mission objectives instantaneously, without any outward sign of the inner distress he was feeling.
“On it,” MacCallum, one of the NEST soldiers, said, shucking his electronic equipment and grabbing a tool kit and running into the darkness of the Syrian night. The stars above gave a cold and lightless light , just enough for the humans to be able to pick out the contours of the old castle which the Decepticons had picked for their first base on Earth. Ratchet and the other bots had no choice but to wait. One EMP casualty was enough, especially on a mission with one approach route up a steep grade of shifting gravel and very little chance of a Chinook pickup. Chromia and Flareup rolled up to Prime.
“We can go on with the humans,” Chromia said.
Prime shook his head.
“We’re faster than Ironhide. We can dodge an EMP. You know that: that’s why you brought us along.”
“You might be able to dodge one, but they might have daisy chained them.” Lennox, cutting in. He was strangely protective of the cycle bots.
“So what do we do?” Flareup rolled back and forth on her wheel, anxious, peering into the night into which MacCallum had run.
“You know we’re safe,” Lennox said. “Let MacCallum do his job. We’ll go in with a sweeper, and let you know if it’s all clear.”
Even Prime chafed at Lennnox’s plan, though it was the only thing that made sense. The humans were entirely unharmed by the EMP bursts. One or two, sure, had claimed to experience nausea or a bit of lightheadedness, but nothing like the entire systems collapse a bot felt. But the humans were so…small and easily damaged. It felt wrong to expose them to danger.
“I’m wondering,” Epps cut in, thumbing the switch on his radio, “Why they haven’t already opened up on us. We’re in a nice bottleneck right here.”
“Lulling us into a false sense of security,” Lennox cracked.
“Yeah? It ain’t working.”
Ratchet spoke. “Is it possible the base is abandoned?” The words felt unpleasant to him, as if they had a bad taste. They’d done so much intelligence work, were so sure they had the element of surprise. A Decepticon base was a treasure chest of potential information; megagigs of sensitive files, revealing everything from access codes to chain of command to the nature of their mission. As in, why, after years of just spot appearances here and there, had they suddenly set up a planetside base? And why here?
They’d been so excited over this lead that they’d left their prisoner as a fallback. It was a neat solution; one of Prime’s of course. Interrogations were messy and morally dubious to begin with. And Starscream could spin a lie so pretty it could blind a bot. So they’d let him sit there, as plan B, as plans went ahead to attack target A.
“Abandoned?” Prime considered. “All of the defenses we have seen have been passive. We’ve heard no sound, not even a comm squeak.”
“We had no FLIR hits either,” Epps added, “But walls this thick could block anything short of an inferno.” True: the cons had chosen their base pretty wisely. An ancient, abandoned castle high up in the mountains. It commanded the view of valleys falling away on three sides. Its only neighbors were local goats. And these ancient humans knew how to build to last—each stone of the castle was a large block of hard, heavy stone.
“We shall be cautious,” Prime decided. MacCallum trotted back to the group, his footsteps echoing in the large enclosed yard inside the gate they all crouched in. “Done,” he said. “Ironhide’s down, about fifty in and fifty to the left. Apparently some blind area he was checking.”
“Is he okay?” Flareup rolled up to MacCallum. Mac kept his helmet on with one hand as he tilted his head up to look her in the eye.
“Not for me to say. But it looks like it was only the EMP.”
“That blind is cleared?”
“Absolutely. Nothing with so much as a clock radio’s EMF field.”
“We go to him, then.” Prime moved forward. The NEST soldiers surged around his feet, pushing ahead.
As soon as they reached Ironhide, Ratchet got to work. The burst didn’t look too bad at all. Ironhide only caught a glance or an echo. He’d be up and moving before the end of the mission. Just in time, Ratchet thought, to get himself hurt again.
In the end, Prime had no choice but to follow Lennox’s plan. The humans slipped on ahead through the courtyard, rolling on the outer edges of their bootsoles, in that eerie smooth way that their special operations taught. Behind them, Flareup and Chromia rolled, as backup, their tires crunching audibly in the sandy soil. The minutes stretched long. Working on Ironhide, Ratchet was only dimly aware of when they buzzed back to say they’d made it to the central building.
“We need to go. How’s Ironhide?”
Ratchet frowned. “I don’t like to leave him.”
“Is there anything more you can do for him right now?”
Ratchet shook his head. “He’ll be coming out of it on his own in another minute or so.”
“The NEST soldiers can stay with him. We need you at that building.”
There was nothing else to say. Prime led. You followed. Ratchet paced across the long yard with Prime, a bit apprehensive how conspicuous he was in his bright yellow armor. Maybe the base wasn’t abandoned. Maybe the Cons were just biding their time. What had Lennox said? ‘False sense of security’?
The central building, which actually took up the entire west side of the enclosed yard, had had some minor alterations done. Fewer than you might expect: these medieval humans built for height. Ratchet had to hunch only a little bit. Prime was uncomfortably crowded, but the Arcees fit into the place like it had been made for them.
Lennox took charge, as Prime got himself stuck between two large stone piers. “All right. Epps, MacCallum, Kennedy, with me to the right. Alexander, DeGuardia, and Opatowski to the left. Arcees, you want in?”
“What about me?”
“Ratchet? You wanna come?” Lennox tried to hide his surprise. He knew Ratchet was a competent fighter, but also, that Ratchet hated it.
“Prime will guard our exit, so I might as well do something.”
Lennox sent him off with Alexander’s team to the left, along with Chromia.
“I don’t like this at all,” Chromia confided. “Where are they?”
Ratchet shrugged. “I’m hoping we don’t find out.”
“But how could they have heard we were coming? The Colonel said everything he’d gathered had been on paper. Unmonitorable. We had no electronic communications for them to hack.”
“Maybe the Colonel was wrong.” Again. Ratchet didn’t have fond feelings for Colonel Axelrod. Pushy little warmonger on the best of days.
Alexander called them to a halt outside the first door. A Decepticon door—not banded wood, but solid metal. “Any idea what’s behind door number one?”
Ratchet considered. “Could be anything. This close to the entryway, maybe supplies?” He wasn’t an expert on Decepticon architecture. The only times he’d seen Con bases before he’d been under heavy fire and trying to keep the escape vector open. It didn’t leave a lot of time for appreciating the floorplan.
“Open your way or ours?” Their way involved high explosives. Each was equally likely to set off any booby traps. But their way could call unnecessary attention.
“Our way,” Ratchet said. If he did it, he’d be in the line of fire. He coded the door. It slid open to halfway, then ground to a mechanically complaining halt.
“Oh, ****,” DeGuardia said. “Here it comes.” He’d already switched on his targeting laser. Ratchet could see the dots of red lights from their lasers dancing around the shadowy slice of the open doorway. A long wait. Nothing. Just as they were starting to relax, a slight scuffling. The lasers snapped to attention again.
“Something’s in there,” Opatowski hissed. “I saw movement.”
“Something like a rat?”
“Nope, bigger.”
“A Con?”
“Not so big.”
“Thanks, ‘Ski,” Alexander said, sourly. “Super helpful.”
“Getting a FLIR hit,” DeGuardia said. “Maybe more.”
“Definitely in there. Not friendly.” Opatowski felt justified.
“Yeah?” Alexander said, “Neither are we.” He signalled them to side line the door. “We go in on three. Ski, you go right, DG, you left. I’m straight up the middle.”
“What about us?” Chromia said.
“He,” Alexander nodded his head at Ratchet, “can’t squeeze past the door. You can come with us, but keep your firefan over our head level.” Chromia nodded, rolling to the end of the short line. Ratchet stood by, feeling useless. Again.
Alexander signalled, and the four of them rushed into the narrow gap in the door. A wild burst of blinding lights, but no sound. At first Ratchet thought there had been an explosion so loud it had shut down his audio receptors. Then the strobing lights swung away again, and he heard, too clearly, the sounds of weapons—the high sharp crack of the human’s gunpowder weapons, and the thrum of Chromia’s main gun. And one very, very sickening human scream.
Ratchet couldn’t stand it: he heaved at the stuck door forcing the opening wider with a loud sound of protesting gears. He had to be able to do something. Even if it just meant pulling the injured human out of harm’s way.
By the time he forced his way in, it was all over: two gangly repairbots, barely larger than the humans themselves, lay in twitching heaps, their unarmored bodies peppered with NEST rounds. One of the humans was down, a puddle of dark liquid spreading from somewhere under his torso. Chromia held a third repair bot by two of its longer arms. Its bladed limbs swing wildly, but her reach was longer and the best the bot could do was score the paint on her arms.
“He must know something useful,” Chromia said, wincing as the repair bot scraped her arms again.
“Take him back to Prime,” Ratchet said. “I’ll take the human.” He scooped the injured NEST soldier—Alexander—into his hands as gently as he could manage. The soldier’s respiration was shallow and his pulse thready, but he seemed stable enough to move. Not that there was much choice.
“We’ll secure the area,” DeGuardia said. Chromia stopped. “Ratchet. I can’t leave them.”
“Right.” He reached out his other hand, closing it on one of the repairbot’s narrow arms. “I’ll take him. You stay here and help clean up. But don’t leave this room until we come back for you.” He looked around the still-dark room. “They had to be guarding something in here.”
Chromia released the repair bot’s other arm. The bot twisted in Ratchet’s grasp. At first Ratchet thought the bot was trying to scratch him the way he had Chromia. Too late he realized what the little bot was doing.
Too late being when the repair bot ripped open his own central processor.
*****
“Ratchet,” Prime said, sitting, hunched and miserable, in the room he’d gotten stuck in. The ceilings were too low for his height, the aisled between the stone support piers too narrow for him to do much but some sort of useless sidestroke. “What happened?”
“We need a medevac for the human.” Ratchet said, cradling Alexander to his chest. “I’ll have to notify the troops outside to call it in.”
“And your arm?”
Ratchet’s mouth tightened. “Repair bot suicided. Not as bad as it looks.” Really, just some scorch marks up his armor. But the very idea made him sick with fear. Chromia had wobbled on her wheel at the very sight. She was young, and her distress made sense on a simple level. Ratchet was upset for another reason: When had they become so fearsome to the Decepticons that one would rather kill himself than be taken prisoner?
“All right,” Prime said, though the concern in his eyes was palpable. Ratchet sensed how much Prime hated being stuck here, useless. Well, Ratchet could relate to that feeling. “They said Ironhide’s up and coming in.”
Great. Well, Ratchet thought, even an injured Ironhide was more useful than he was at this sort of thing. “Have we found anything yet?”
Prime shook his head. “Drives the first team found were wiped clean. They ran into a few…surprises as well, but they weren’t aimed at something as small as they are,” he added, hurriedly. “They’re all just fine.”
“I do not like this.” Ratchet said. In his arms, Alexander moaned.
“I don’t like it either,” Prime admitted. “Call it in and get him to safety.”
To be continued...whether you like it or not!