The door cycled. Hastily rewired to open and shut correctly where the controls had previously been pirated away, it finally released when the pressure had equalized. The ‘bot inside didn’t walk out.
He fell.
Ingrained suspicion and caution vanished in an instant, and Depth Charge caught him. Protoform X he may be, but at this moment there was nothing to fear in the shivering wreck of a robot. Fingers disintegrated down to basic structures clutched at his arms as the raybot carried his load toward a stasis pod, and he had to stop and retrieve a softened crab claw when it dropped off. Frosted green optics, obviously too corroded to see anything, stared blindly in his general direction; ugly gurgles came from the dissolving voice box visible in the slagged throat, and he was relieved when his burden slipped offline. Gas hissed out of joints and melted holes in metal barely discernable as red or purple, and even as it dissipated into the ship’s air, it scoured the Maximal. He grunted in pain as his beast mode succumbed first, bubbling on contact, and when he laid Rampage out in the pod, stains of liquefied silver and blue from his arms dripped brightly against the crab’s body.
“Primus,” he whispered, awed and sickened as he took in the sight of a ‘bot who shouldn’t be alive. Patches of new, shiny metal were growing across the decayed form, freezing the melted metal and reversing the corrosion. He knew that the immortal spark in Rampage’s chest healed him incredibly fast, but this was frightening. He had the feeling that if not for the split spark core and lack of energon, the crab would still be awake. In a way, then, it was something of a mercy that Rampage wasn’t awake to feel the damage.
But it reminded him of the danger. “Sleep well,” Depth Charge muttered, bending down to cuff his enemy-ally’s hands securely behind his back to the base of the stasis pod. The pod should keep the crab offline, but that immortal spark might cause problems, and he knew what might happen if this ‘bot woke first. Just because he’d worked with him didn’t mean he trusted Rampage. He closed the lid, making sure the seals worked before striding toward the bridge. He passed another pod further down the hall, waiting for him. It had been meant for a member of the Cutting Edge’s crew in case of emergency, which was what this was. It was supposed to keep a ‘bot safe if he had to abandon ship, but it would conserve energy by putting him stasis lock until the alarm he’d set up earlier alerted him to the ship’s approach to the planet they’d selected.
Teartorn was a fairly unimportant planet, but it fulfilled two requirements: it was close, and it had a major spaceport in orbit. It was also one of the few planets Rampage was absolutely certain of the coordinates, which was important considering that they’d be relying on the computer to guide the starship while they lay in stasis. He’d already checked and double-checked the guidance system, locking in the course and hoping desperately that nothing malfunctioned. Now he used the central computer to key into the engine. The mechanism was different than the stats on the screen showed, a few things rearranged and as fixed as his meager engineering skills could repair, and he prayed to any and all the gods who’d ignored his fellow Maximals’ pleas that this would WORK. For all the pain and grief to produce a result…
The ship shuddered. The raybot stared at the screen, willing the jets to ignite. He couldn’t endure another let-down. He couldn’t do it. Something ground shrilly, deep in the ship’s hull. He sat rigid, brittle in a way he’d never admit. Metal buckled, screamed, clanked…caught, and gradually smoothed into the steady, vibrating thrum of a starship. The engine light went from stand-by to ready on the screen. Beside it, the coordinates of the planet flicked through the system, and a computer query typed across the screen: ‘Initiate jets?’
Alone on the bridge, his head bowed with the barest whisper. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say who he was grateful to. Not out loud, and maybe not even to himself.
“…the lack of evidence suggests that the two Maximals are lying low, perhaps waiting for the common bounty hunter to forget about the reward. Acting on this idea, I have had my agents concentrate their efforts on reminding those that frequent the primary subject’s ideal hang-outs of the wanted notice. While this has no produced results as of yet, the primary subject’s profile shows no previous tendency toward long periods of isolation. Eventually, the rat will surface, and his hiding places should be infiltrated by his own kind greedy to betray him. The possibility of the ex-security officer influencing him will be taken into consideration if the subjects do not surface soon, however, their profiles do not…”
Admiral Jirex read the latest report from his field operatives and frowned. It made no sense, no sense at all. After nearly four weeks of silence, the three escapees from the A.L.H. Research Center should have been retrieved, or at least spotted. Instead, they had disappeared without a trace. While it was possible to trace a Transwarp drive, the general confusion of ships and equipment at the moment of escape had created an effective shield preventing anyone from tracking the starship. It had been a well-planned maneuver. He could almost admire it.
Unfortunately, there was the matter of his neck being on the line…
The frown pulled his face into a terrible snarl. The Maximal High Council wanted the Protoform Project accelerated, but the only reliable method would be to recapture X. Dr. Kilju’s progress was slow. Threats of replacement were beginning to be dropped, subtle and not, and he knew that ‘replacement’ was a pseudonym for termination when the Tripedicus Council was involved. There were members of the Predacon Secret Police on his staff, no matter how carefully he’d screened his personnel. While Kilju wasn’t concerned, he wasn’t so apathetic. This position was his prize, and he wouldn’t give it or his life up because of a temporary delay.
That’s all the escapees and lack of progress were: temporary. Kilju had assured him that he was close to a break-through. The escapees had to show up somewhere, and his operatives had the most likely areas staked out. Damage to the starship could account for the time lapse, but it was too much to hope for that they’d never made it out of the Transwarp jump. No, the unlikely trio would turn up: prisoner, guard, and guide. He didn’t know what they thought they could accomplish by fleeing from the moon, but Rattrap would run his traitorous raybot friend straight into a trap, and both would go to their deaths. X would be subdued and returned to the experiments. Kilju and Jirex would remain high in the regard of the Cybertronian Alliance.
Everyone would be where they belonged, in due time. He would simply have to make sure the Council understood that. Report set aside, he leaned back in his chair and contemplated the future. He could be patient. The rewards would be worth the threats, the political shuffling and attempts at intimidation. Power, recognition by the right people, the silent applause of an exemplary covert job--it would all be his. And best of all, or perhaps he savored the idea more because of the visible confirmation of his tight control, X would be under his thumb, humbled and broken for every misdeed and sneering word directed at the ‘bot who’d risen to Admiral. And this time, THIS TIME, X would not escape. He smiled, optics distant.
All in due time.
The restraints creaked, and something in his wrist snapped.
He relaxed immediately, deciding that it wasn’t worth testing further. Flexing his hand popped the cable back into place, and except for a brief spasm of pain, he didn’t spend time thinking about the injury. The cuffs were tight but tolerable. He hated being restrained, hated being confined into a stasis pod even more. There were bad memories associated with the thick, clear lid in front of his face, the cuffs on his wrists, and the lethargic response of his limbs. The last time he’d been forced into a pod, it had taken six Maximals with shackles and a gun held to his head. An echo of his helpless fury had woken him this time, but he was still himself, even trapped like this. He’d been changed, the previous time.
Before, there had been the long process devolving him into a silvery, formless pool of metal waiting for the onboard pod computer to reshape him against his will--if there was anything in the place he was supposed to be exiled in to reshape him into the image of. He’d been fully conscious for that. He hadn’t wanted to be, and he remembered the creeping horror of losing feeling in his extremities, the strange sludgy lose seeping up his body as he realized that he could see his own body liquefying around him. The odd nausea of watching his internal systems melt into a component soup returned to him now, and he leaned his face against the cool cover as he shook it off. It…hadn’t been pleasant. No matter how hard he’d struggled, he hadn’t been able to stop the slow dissolving of his own body, and it hadn’t been until the very end that his spark had finally allowed his mind to seek the refuge of sleep.
Because sleep it had been. He distinctly remembered waking several times, sloshing fitfully without any control whatsoever, no limbs, no sight, no hearing, and nothing familiar but the pulsing of his spark. He’d dreamed that it had all been one long experiment, supervised by scientists taking samples of his silvery essence while he was helpless. It wasn’t until the stasis pod had crash-landed on Earth that he could make sense of anything, but the shock of landing among unstable energon threw him back into dreams. It had taken an energon storm to wake him up completely.
Hmm. He’d have to ask the Maximal if that was how it was supposed to happen. Most protoforms didn’t remember their time in the pods, did they? Often they retained their basic superstructure, not pooling, ready for reshaping, but the minds stayed offline, didn’t they? He hadn’t bothered asking any, but it was…nice…that he could actually ask these questions of someone. Strange, though, that he’d kept his mind intact. None of the other pod-born ‘bots in the Beast Wars had remembered their pasts, but he couldn’t forget. Did that mean that someone had programmed his pod to preserve his mind? Or had his spark simply refused to allow him to disappear?
Maybe he wouldn’t ask Depth Charge, after all. This might be something he’d didn’t want the raybot thinking about.
Speaking of his old playmate…
If he turned his head slightly, he could see a dark form sealed in a stasis pod down the hall. So he’d woken early, had he? Oh-ho, what fun he could have if he freed himself--but, no. No, this Maximal had a part in his plan, and distasteful as it was, he should stay in this pod. In fact, it would be best if he could slip back offline. The gleeful rage always waiting under the surface was far too near to winning free, pain having drawn him close to a loss of control. The ache started in his joints warned of energon deprivation, his body having burned the meager ration he’d given it before going into the engine compartment. It reminded him of the Center’s experiment, and he wondered if he’d be sensitive to energy loss forever, now. Better to just let the tired lack lull him offline. The need to destroy would subside into violent dreams if he could just sleep again.
He took one last look at the offline raybot before he settled back, drawing his beast mode’s legs close about himself. The pod was smaller than he liked, but some obscure crab instinct found security in tight spaces. His fingers curled and played idly over the restraints on his wrists, and he began to laugh softly. Clever manta ray thought he was safe with the monster cuffed down, but he’d chosen a combination lock. Rampage had just spent weeks working through computer codes. What was a combination lock but a code in a specific pattern? It wasn’t like he didn’t have the time to crack the code.
Reflected in the concave clear lid, twin emeralds bright with private amusement dimmed once more into sleep, and red hands relaxed. It was enough to know that the restraints were there by his choice.
It was a far more pleasant memory to associate with stasis pods.