It was a quite night on Star Base Rugbee.

Rachel (Hacker) Freesia was currently typing up a document to send to her boss. It happened to be a computer report of the medical records of the newest recruits, be them bots or humans. Her fingers danced around the keyboard in a steady rhythm. Not quiet, but then it wasn’t loud either.

She did that on purpose so as not to wake her sleeping friend.

Her roommate and closest, longest friend, Depth Charge, was trying to catch up on his sleep for the week. They had had him on the graveyard shift for at least a month now. Just until the new ones had gotten adjusted to the new life of living on Star Base Rugbee.

She was human, he was Transformer.

Rachel was your average human, about 5’6, brown hair, with chocolate brown eyes. Her preferred clothing consisted of cargo jeans and a comfortable, warm sweaters.

Because face it, it’s just down right cod in space.

The two had been first introduced when the entire space project began at least fifteen years ago. This put Rachel at the nice age of twenty-four. She had decided at the early age of nine that she wanted to do “space stuff” as she had put it and since her parents worked for the new Star Base Mission, they were able to come and live on the base.

The Star Base Mission, was a mission to put up star bases all over the galaxy for refueling and exploration purposes.

Rachel would have time to finish school, learn her skills on the ship, and later she could work. In fact she started working at age fifteen, and she was by no means a “rookie”. Any who dared call her that were promptly shown otherwise.

Anyway, the odd pair meet in the halls not one day after Rachel’s family had arrived. Rachel was doing some most needed scouting of the ship and Depth Charge was just wondering around with nothing to do. Rachel was pretending she was a fighter pilot shooting all the bad guys then running from them. She had run down a corridor and as she neared the end, she turned to shoot behind her. When she turned the corner, she failed to notice Depth Charge and ended up smacking right into him. They both hit the floor with Rachel on top of Depth Charge...

A very annoyed Depth Charge. Around the age of fifteen, he did what most guys his age would do, “Hey watch where you’re going!”

Rachel rolled off of him and glared, “But I go to run from the bad guys!” She protested, “And besides, you should’ve dodged me!”

“Bad guys?” Depth Charge echoed, “Aren’t you a little old to be playing games like that?”

Rachel crossed her arms, “Well, what else is there to do?”

He thought for a moment, “Well, I guess you do have a point there, but don’t you think you’re a little young to be up here?”

“I am not!” She yelled back at him, “I’m going to be the greatest space computer person there ever was! What are you doing up here?”

“I’m going to be a fighter, but I’m training to be a fighter pilot right now,” He responded, there was a pause and he shook his head, “Name’s Depth Charge.”

He held out a hand to the small girl. She stared at it for a moment before taking it, “Rachel.”

He shook it once and released her hand, “Well Rachel, I think I might have found something else for us to do.”

Rachel looked at him like he was crazy, “How could you when we were just sitting here?”

Depth Charge grinned, “Every computer expert has to know a couple of tricks,” He said simply, standing up in the process before helping her, “Ever hear of a thing called “hacking”?”

It was the start of a beautiful friendship. Every day, Depth Charge would come by her quarters and taught her a thing or two about how to hack into different computer systems.

This lasted for about six months. At the end of her hacking training, Depth Charge had given her his own little training program disk. Her assignment: Hack into it completely.

Rachel did so in about five hours, then Depth Charge dubbed her expert hacker. Hence her nickname, Hacker.

She soon mastered it and just in time too.

Depth Charge’s duties soon took over and he had to stop seeing her everyday. Besides her own studies were very involved in her life too. Despite that they remained the closest of friends and were inseparable. They managed to set up time when they could just talk about nothing in particular.

Rachel felt like Depth Charge was the brother she never had.

Rachel had mastered her studies at a very unusual age, and at sixteen she was able to start working for real. She requested to room with Depth Charge and it was accepted.

So that leads us up the recent time. She was working, Depth Charge was sleeping.

A warning had been issued that they would be passing through a fairly small asteroid field shortly and to expect some turbulence. Rachel had finished her document and clicked on the send button to get the information to her boss.

She sighed and got up to get something to eat as her stomach protested for food. She knew that the star base had a very strong shield against asteroids, so when she heard the first explosion, needless to say she was confused.

Still she ignored it and went on fixing her sandwich. It was when the second explosion that reached her ears did she know something was wrong. For the explosion came from inside the ship.

Alarmed, Rachel went over to where her friend was and shook him awake, “I didn’t do it.” He said groggily as he came to.

“Depth Charge! Something isn’t right!” She said urgently to him.

He sat up straight at the sound of her voice in that kind of tone, “What is it?” He asked rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I don’t know, but there were explosions that sounded like they came from the inside of the base!” She said as quickly as she could without losing him.

Depth Charge snorted as he hefted himself off of the bed, “Probably some idiot forgot to flip the safety switch on his gun.”

“But there were two explosions!” Rachel argued, a bad feeling setting into her gut.

Depth Charge stretched, “Two idiots then...”

BOOM!!!!!

That one was close.

Depth Charge was now fully awake, “We might be under attack or...oh slag.”

Rachel’s eye’s widened, “What do you mean “Oh Slag”!?! Am I in danger?” She exclaimed as he open the door and peered out.

If color could drain from a Transformer's face, Rachel swore she just saw it in his, “Depth Charge?”

He grabbed his guns from a table nearby and armed them. He tossed her one that she could carry, “Hacker.” His tone was deadly serious and he only used her nickname if he really wanted her to pay attention, “You need to get off of this star base now.”

Rachel, listened and grabbed her bag of emergency supplies, “What is it?”

“X,” Was all he said as he lead her out of the door.

Her blood ran cold and she knew what he meant, “X” had escaped.

Their footsteps were loud in the semi-dark metal hallway, but not loud enough to block the screams of fear and pain that echoed in the halls behind them.

The reached a small escape ship. Depth Charge helped her into it and she looked back at him, expecting him to follow, “Aren’t you coming?”

Depth Charge shook his head, “I’ve got to stop him.”

“Promise me you won’t go and do something stupid?” Rachel joked, trying to lighten the situation.

“I’ll really try,” He said, giving her one last hug and closed the hatch.

Rachel sighed, before turning around and jumping into the pilot’s seat to fire up the engine.

She was also an expert pilot.

A wave of relief washed over her as she heard the hum of the engine start up. She maneuvered it down in the exiting part and as the doors slowly opened up to the black void of space, she was able to hear the all too familiar computer voice of the star base sound, “Detonation sequence activated. Countdown one minute.

“Ok,” Rachel reasoned, “Now would be the time to PANIC!!!”

She took a deep breath calming her rushed nerves and went full throttle towards the only half-opened doors. Her new problem now was that she wouldn’t make it through the doors at the angle she was, “Thirty seconds till detonation.” The computer reminded her.

“Hang onto something, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride,” She said to no one as she turned the entire craft sideways and barely made it out with no scratches. That was until she noticed the gigantic asteroid that filled her view screen, “Small field my foot!” She screamed at whoever had made the announcement and swerved to avoid it and the others that were littering this part of space.

Luckily she cleared the asteroids in time to remember Star Base Rugbee. She whirled around in her seat just in time to see it explode, “SLAG!” She yelled and punched the ship into hyper-drive. The course she plotted was the only one that came to mind, her old home, Earth.

The aftershock of the explosion was coming at her fast, but fortunately her ship was faster and she barely missed total destruction by a few nano clicks.

With the danger passed, she slumped back into her chair, going over what had just happened, “Depth Charge was still in there too!” She slammed her fists down onto the chair, “Curse you X!”

Hot tears spilled down onto her face, they were all gone, every one of them. Gone, probably X too, “So much for revenge,” She muttered before curling up into a little ball and falling asleep in her chair.

Click here for chapter two

Note: This story belongs to the authoress as do her characters.  However, neither she nor I claim any rights to Beast Wars Transformers and their respective characters.  Beast Wars belongs to Hasbro, Mainframe and Alliance Entertainment.