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ajremixUgh, a whole month, I'm sorry >< I've been having problems getting any sort of creative flow going for more than a few minutes at a time. Special thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meallanmouse for beta-ing my half-coherent writing and double-checking my voodoo technobabble *hugs*
Just a little half-note: the code Omega-13 is kind of an inside joke I had with some buddies a while back. We said the code would be used only in the most dire of circumstances.
Title: It Takes a Family 06
Fandom: Transformers IDW
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2821
Characters: Wreckers
In Response to:kirin_saga’s plot bunny (number 10)
Summary: Just when the Wreckers thought they could handle anything… Springer gets turned into a sparkling. In which the trap is sprung
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The entirety of the Wreckers stood on the bridge, quietly watching the forms slowly glinting in their viewscreen. Sandstorm and Whirl sat at their stations, Roadbuster in the command chair and the rest fanned out behind him.
“Report.”
“We’re passing by five of Asclepius’s shuttles,” Sandstorm alerted, “scanners show no signs of life and all have been disabled.”
“Taking away their means of escape,” Twin Twist muttered, probably not even aware that he did.
“Trajectory coincides with projections of Asclepius’s last known coordinates.”
Whirl flicked at the panels of his own station. “Taking drift angles and calculating new coordinates. We should be getting something on our long-range scanners shortly.”
Xantium smoothly switched her direction and within kliks Sandstorm announced, “We have two ships on long-range scanners. Pings have confirmed one vessel as Asclepius, the second a heavily modified and armed Decepticon scout ship.”
Roadbuster lifted his head, trying to search out any visual indication of the ships on the screen. “Status?”
“The raider is still attached by a boarding tube and Asclepius is disabled and drifting.”
“Raiding a medical vessel,” Topspin seethed, “just the most rudimentary of weapons and defenses. There’s no challenge or glory they can get from that.”
“No,” Broadside agreed, “but they could use the medical supplies.”
“And whatever they don’t need can be sold on the black market for a high price.” Sandstorm added.
The stars shifted slowly as Xantium pushed onward and slowly the light began to gleam on the slow rotation of angles. With no emotion, little tension and only the need to do resonating between them the Wreckers watched as the angles became planes, planes became forms and forms became ships.
Xantium countered her forward propulsion until she halted just outside the boundaries of mid-range scans. They waited to hear the report.
“Status confirmed,” Sandstorm announced, “all functions but auxiliary life support has been disabled. Invasive scans are reading a cluster of Autobots on the bridge of the Asclepius along with a small number of Decepticons. The majority of the attackers remain onboard the Decepticon ship.”
Scoop leaned forward, resting a hand against the back of the command chair. “Why would there be more on their own ship?”
“Either we caught them just about to leave,” Roadbuster responded.
“Or?”
“They were expecting someone to come and took hostages.” The combat vehicle stood, optic band flickering with calculations. The others watched him in patient silence.
“Xantium,” he announced, “you’ll stay back. If they’re expecting us, I’m not going to put you or the sparkling in danger. Keep a weapons lock on the Decepticon ship just in case. We’ll take a shuttle out and create an incision on their boarding tube. Twin Twist, rig a remote detonator on it in case we need to cut the two parties off from each other. We’ll split into two teams- Topspin, Whirl and I will go aboard the Asclepius, the rest of you deal with the ‘cons. First act is to disable their engines and power generators. Broadside, you’re in charge.”
The giant nodded slowly. “Understood.”
“Everyone grab a signal baffler. We’re going in covert.”
~*~*~
They moved through the halls with far more silence than mechs their size would’ve been thought to possess, communicating via hand signals, body language and long-time familiarity. They searched the halls carefully, slowly, ensuring no one else was around and they locked down seals and security points behind them.
The three reached the bridge without incident and that alone screamed ‘trap’ to them. Roadbuster waved a hand in a few distinct signals, getting his teammates into position as he prepared to slice access to the door. Their timing was synchronized down to the harmonics of their engines, of the pulsing of their sparks. The flash grenade was out of Topspin’s hand an instant before the doors slid open. It exploded in brilliance, drawing out startled yelps as the Wreckers, weapons raised and ready, streamed in.
~*~*~*~
Broadside had the schematics for this type of vessel already slotted amongst countless others in his central cortex and directed the rest of the team to their specific targets. While he and Twin Twist went to the engine room, Sandstorm and Scoop were tasked to knock the power generator off line. As they made their way Scoop’s internals were running more and more strained, something Sandstorm couldn’t help but pick up on even if he didn’t want to.
:What,: he transmitted to the payloader as they worked shoulder to shoulder to rig a shipwide power outage, :is wrong with you?:
:Something isn’t right here.:
:You don’t say.:
Scoop elbowed Sandstorm in the side panel. :I’m serious. Something is definitely wrong and we’re just playing right into it.: And yet his fingers flew over the connecting wires as deftly as ever. :Why haven’t we seen any Decepticons yet? Why isn’t at least one of them in here monitoring the power output? Why have none of them moved from the fore the entire time we’ve been here?:
:Maybe we’re just lucky,: Sandstorm said as he clicked the last of the relays together, :and these are some of the more incompetent ‘cons we’ve met:
:And if this is really just an elaborate trap?:
Sandstorm flashed a hidden smirk. :It’ll be entertaining. Once this generator goes off, we’ll know if it’s a trap or idiocy.:
Scoop nodded but kept frowning. :We’ll see…:
Sandstorm gave the other team a quick ping to let them know they were ready and a few kliks later received the same ping back. The two Wreckers moved to the back of the generator room to avoid any unforeseen backblast, all the while feeling the countdown tick in the backs of their heads. The count hit zero at the same moment Scoop did the trigger.
~*~*~*~
The three Wreckers moved ruthlessly across the bridge, noting the position of each Autobot captive and searching for Decepticon movement. Topspin broke the silence first, growling in frustration and causing the disoriented Autobots to flinch.
“Where the slag are those Decepticons?”
“Here,” Whirl said in disdain, lowering his weapon as he approached one of the consoles. He tapped at the keys and suddenly all signs of Decepticons vanished from their sensors. “They set up a signal scrambler and modified it to give off Decepticon signals instead of dampening them.”
Roadbuster strode up to the Asclepius’s captain, jerking the mech to his feet and pulling off the restrains with quick, harsh movements. “What happened?”
“I… I’m not sure.” The captain winced and slowly flexed his arms as twisted cables wrenched back into alignment. “The ‘cons boarded us, shoved everyone up here, took out our propulsion, did a hash dig through our inventory and left. We’ve been sitting here drifting for the last several cycles.” He looked at Roadbuster as if the Wrecker would know better. “What were they after?”
The jumpstarter was at the security console, shaking his head. “They didn’t even touch most of the security locks, they probably didn’t take much when they left.”
“That’s because they weren’t after their inventory,” Roadbuster said with mounting horror, “they were after our ship!” He snapped open team communications, running off the bridge with his confused teammates at his heels. “Team Two, Xantium- reassemble at the Asclepius now!”
~*~*~*~
The lights in the Decepticon ship flickered out as the generator was forcibly disconnected. A nano-klik later the engines exploded in a contained detonation. A nano-klik after that everything exploded.
The explosion caused a ship-wide electrical discharge that not only knocked the Wrecker’s shuttle from its anchor on the boarding tube, it triggered Twin Twist’s explosive device. In the void of space it exploded silently, shredding the tube and expelling the ships in opposite, wildly spinning directions.
~*~*~*~
Xantium’s internals squealed in shocked pain, buffers rerouting data flow around severed cables and sensors. She struggled to compensate the depressurization of her breached hull, automated systems immediately lashing sealing cables outward. As they tried to seal, they hit into something smooth and malleable- a boarding tube –and automatically used it to seal the bulk of the breach.
Her scanners snapped to the ten intruders in her hall, invasive and furious. Xantium closed off access beyond the deck, section off the area with a complete lockdown and her lights and sirens blared, daring the Decepticons to try anything inside of her.
“Aw, lookit this! We got us an angry ship!”
“I hate sentient ships.”
“Can we shut her up?”
“Didn’t even know these things were still in service.”
“Streamline- do something ‘bout that damn noise!”
“Shh, shh, just everyone calm down,” a surprisingly small slip of a Decepticon said, approaching a double-barred door. “This can be easily taken care of.”
Xantium’s sensors nervously tracked that one closely. The Decepticon- femme, judging from the stats Xantium’s reports were giving –was small and relatively lightly armored, her immense processor capabilities and information storing capacity worried the ship. The femme knelt by a control panel and gave it a cursory tug before deciding the ship wasn’t going to willingly give her access. Calmly the femme reached into a compartment and brought out a tiny device that clamped on to the panel.
It sent a localized pulse shrieking in Xantium’s systems, the spasm causing the panel’s lock to pop open. The femme deftly rewired the doors to open as Xantium fought the overwhelming feedback clouding her control of the area.
“Quickly,” Streamline told the others though she moved and spoke with a zen-like grace, “or she’ll snap the doors on one of you.”
“Do you know where you’re going?” The ranked Decepticon asked.
“To the control room, of course. I can get in there and route all control away from the ship herself.”
The other Decepticons boggled and Xantium’s signals went cold. “You can do that?”
“There’s a reason why they stopped using sentient ships. Well, lots of reasons, but once we get there, you’ll be seeing a major one. An irreparable one.”
The Decepticon team moved slowly but methodically through her halls and everything Xantium tried to do to stop them was countered. Her armatures and cables were slashed or blasted apart and her blockades overcome by Streamline’s technical cunning. When Xantium continually cycled disarming commands, Steamline froze the data stream and hacked the code at her leisure. When Xantium locked out power access, Streamline found access tunnels to another deck and rerouted power from there. When Xantium overloaded and fused her locking mechanisms together, Streamline merely instructed one of the others in using a cutting torch at structural hot points, weakening the integrity and then blasting the doors apart.
Every action the Decepticons took in getting through one more passage sent pain ripping through Xantium’s sensors, but she refused to just let them pass. She was determined to find some way to stop them. She had to.
“What a stupid ship,” one of the Decepticons said as Streamline forced open yet another set of doors. “Why doesn’t she just give up? She has to know she can’t beat us.”
“Considering who crews this ship, any less resistance would be an insult.”
Optics turned to the ranking Decepticon in confusion. “What?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t figured out who’s been tailing us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This ship,” Streamline said with a smile to Xantium’s walls, “is a work of art. Technical retrogrades not withstanding, she’s the perfect example of what a sentient ship should be and she should be respected.”
“Says the femme that’s been taking her apart bit by bit,” came the scoffed reply.
“Done with great respect.” Streamline patted at a door. Xantium shuddered in revulsion. And she still couldn’t stop them from reaching her control room and she couldn’t stop them from wrestling control from her.
“The problem with sentient ships,” Streamline said as she worked as if merely lecturing and not stripping Xantium of all her powers, “is that they have a relay set-up very similar to ours. Just like any mech or femme, her CPUs- as grand and multi-faceted as they are –can be isolated from her chassis. With the right understanding, I can block off her CPU to one level of security in an auxiliary net and reroute full control on to a secondary. Subsequent versions of the Ark managed to render this impossible for them, but for a sentient ship this kind of setup is something that can never be bypassed.”
As the last of Xantium’s control slipped away, she roared in that confining void she’d been trapped in- silent and alone save for the most minor of sensory feedback. The Decepticons, now having full reign of the ship, strode back into the hall and unstopped as they made their way to the bridge. If Xantium still had access to them, her engines would’ve froze as she realized the direct path would take the Decepticons by the medbay where Springer was still recovering. She had focused so much on the intruders that she had lost all track of the sparkling and prayed that he was still resting, blindly reaching out with feeble scanners towards him.
The footsteps and voices, their very presence and the utter wrong-ness compared to the Wreckers drew Springer to the door of the medbay, silently and fearfully watching the Decepticons traipsing through the hall until one of them spotted him. “Hey!”
He ducked back into the medbay, but there was no other escape, no place for him to hide as three Decepticons gave chase. Xantium could only witness through her sensors as the three cornered the little sparkling. She could feel the curiosity and maliciousness spiking their electrical signatures and the outright fear they got in return.
One knelt down with a dark grin twisting across his faceplate, weapons rising from his armor like towers and almost teasingly cupping the sparkling in hands powerful enough to crush the trembling body without consideration. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
Scrounging what little power was left to her, Xantium sent out a distress signal to her team: level Omega-13.
~*~*~*~
“Team Two! Team Two- respond!”
As Roadbuster failed to raise the other Wreckers, Topspin and Whirl stood in a tense silence at an observation window, watching space and stars spinning around them and, with every revolution, the Decepticon raider spiraling further away. Roadbuster gave into the urge and slammed a fist against the wall, the sound making Topspin give a snarling, feral grin. “Tricky glitches.” He muttered into the window.
Growling darkly Roadbuster marched swiftly back to the bridge where the Asclepius’s captain was still freeing his crew. “What else did the Decepticons do asides from disable your engines?”
Surprised at the sudden and sharpness of the question, the mech stuttered, “Uh, it’s- they took out our communications and scanner relays. They took all our engineers to the engine room and we… haven’t seen them since. We’re also running on our third auxiliary generator so we have limited power and system functions right now.”
Roadbuster’s optic band narrowed. If the Decepticons had any intelligence- which they seemed to have –they’d have forced the Autobots to safely disable the engines and then killed them to ensure no one would be able to get them running again.
“Whirl, how many tech maintenance and specs do you have in your cache right now?”
The helo cocked his head slightly. “Some, but none of them match up to a ship like Asclepius.”
“It’ll have to do. Bring up Asclepius’s specs and take a team of technicians to the engine room- see if you can’t get it even limping again. Topspin and the rest of the techs, try to regain access to peripherals.”
The Asclepius’s captain frowned, even as his crew scrambled at the Wrecker’s commands, a quarter falling in line behind Whirl as he half-jogged off the bridge. “Wait a moment- none of my technicians here knows anything about maintaining- let along fixing -something as complex as a ship’s engines!”
“Consider it cross-training. I don’t know how long you’ve been in this position, captain, and I can’t say I care because we don’t have time to discuss-“
The distress signal bloomed inside Roadbuster’s receiver and he could see Topspin similarly tense at the recognition. The medic turned towards the other, “RB-“
“Scanners!” He barked out. “Now!” Rounding back on the captain, Roadbuster’s panic was transformed into impatient frustration. “How many shuttles did you have?”
“F-Five.”
“Do you have any other means of transportation?”
“No, what-“
“Find a way to get me to Xantium.”
The captain faltered at the demand. “I… How? You’re not rated for deep space maneuvers, you don’t have the proper propulsion system or engineering and there isn’t a way to-“
Roadbuster grabbed the mech by the throat. He didn’t care if he was being unreasonable, he didn’t care that it wasn’t the captain’s fault, he didn’t care if it was impossible, he just hauled the captain off the ground and roared into his face, “GET ME OUT THERE NOW!”
meallanmouse for beta-ing my half-coherent writing and double-checking my voodoo technobabble *hugs*Just a little half-note: the code Omega-13 is kind of an inside joke I had with some buddies a while back. We said the code would be used only in the most dire of circumstances.
Title: It Takes a Family 06
Fandom: Transformers IDW
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2821
Characters: Wreckers
In Response to:
kirin_saga’s plot bunny (number 10)Summary: Just when the Wreckers thought they could handle anything… Springer gets turned into a sparkling. In which the trap is sprung
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The entirety of the Wreckers stood on the bridge, quietly watching the forms slowly glinting in their viewscreen. Sandstorm and Whirl sat at their stations, Roadbuster in the command chair and the rest fanned out behind him.
“Report.”
“We’re passing by five of Asclepius’s shuttles,” Sandstorm alerted, “scanners show no signs of life and all have been disabled.”
“Taking away their means of escape,” Twin Twist muttered, probably not even aware that he did.
“Trajectory coincides with projections of Asclepius’s last known coordinates.”
Whirl flicked at the panels of his own station. “Taking drift angles and calculating new coordinates. We should be getting something on our long-range scanners shortly.”
Xantium smoothly switched her direction and within kliks Sandstorm announced, “We have two ships on long-range scanners. Pings have confirmed one vessel as Asclepius, the second a heavily modified and armed Decepticon scout ship.”
Roadbuster lifted his head, trying to search out any visual indication of the ships on the screen. “Status?”
“The raider is still attached by a boarding tube and Asclepius is disabled and drifting.”
“Raiding a medical vessel,” Topspin seethed, “just the most rudimentary of weapons and defenses. There’s no challenge or glory they can get from that.”
“No,” Broadside agreed, “but they could use the medical supplies.”
“And whatever they don’t need can be sold on the black market for a high price.” Sandstorm added.
The stars shifted slowly as Xantium pushed onward and slowly the light began to gleam on the slow rotation of angles. With no emotion, little tension and only the need to do resonating between them the Wreckers watched as the angles became planes, planes became forms and forms became ships.
Xantium countered her forward propulsion until she halted just outside the boundaries of mid-range scans. They waited to hear the report.
“Status confirmed,” Sandstorm announced, “all functions but auxiliary life support has been disabled. Invasive scans are reading a cluster of Autobots on the bridge of the Asclepius along with a small number of Decepticons. The majority of the attackers remain onboard the Decepticon ship.”
Scoop leaned forward, resting a hand against the back of the command chair. “Why would there be more on their own ship?”
“Either we caught them just about to leave,” Roadbuster responded.
“Or?”
“They were expecting someone to come and took hostages.” The combat vehicle stood, optic band flickering with calculations. The others watched him in patient silence.
“Xantium,” he announced, “you’ll stay back. If they’re expecting us, I’m not going to put you or the sparkling in danger. Keep a weapons lock on the Decepticon ship just in case. We’ll take a shuttle out and create an incision on their boarding tube. Twin Twist, rig a remote detonator on it in case we need to cut the two parties off from each other. We’ll split into two teams- Topspin, Whirl and I will go aboard the Asclepius, the rest of you deal with the ‘cons. First act is to disable their engines and power generators. Broadside, you’re in charge.”
The giant nodded slowly. “Understood.”
“Everyone grab a signal baffler. We’re going in covert.”
~*~*~
They moved through the halls with far more silence than mechs their size would’ve been thought to possess, communicating via hand signals, body language and long-time familiarity. They searched the halls carefully, slowly, ensuring no one else was around and they locked down seals and security points behind them.
The three reached the bridge without incident and that alone screamed ‘trap’ to them. Roadbuster waved a hand in a few distinct signals, getting his teammates into position as he prepared to slice access to the door. Their timing was synchronized down to the harmonics of their engines, of the pulsing of their sparks. The flash grenade was out of Topspin’s hand an instant before the doors slid open. It exploded in brilliance, drawing out startled yelps as the Wreckers, weapons raised and ready, streamed in.
~*~*~*~
Broadside had the schematics for this type of vessel already slotted amongst countless others in his central cortex and directed the rest of the team to their specific targets. While he and Twin Twist went to the engine room, Sandstorm and Scoop were tasked to knock the power generator off line. As they made their way Scoop’s internals were running more and more strained, something Sandstorm couldn’t help but pick up on even if he didn’t want to.
:What,: he transmitted to the payloader as they worked shoulder to shoulder to rig a shipwide power outage, :is wrong with you?:
:Something isn’t right here.:
:You don’t say.:
Scoop elbowed Sandstorm in the side panel. :I’m serious. Something is definitely wrong and we’re just playing right into it.: And yet his fingers flew over the connecting wires as deftly as ever. :Why haven’t we seen any Decepticons yet? Why isn’t at least one of them in here monitoring the power output? Why have none of them moved from the fore the entire time we’ve been here?:
:Maybe we’re just lucky,: Sandstorm said as he clicked the last of the relays together, :and these are some of the more incompetent ‘cons we’ve met:
:And if this is really just an elaborate trap?:
Sandstorm flashed a hidden smirk. :It’ll be entertaining. Once this generator goes off, we’ll know if it’s a trap or idiocy.:
Scoop nodded but kept frowning. :We’ll see…:
Sandstorm gave the other team a quick ping to let them know they were ready and a few kliks later received the same ping back. The two Wreckers moved to the back of the generator room to avoid any unforeseen backblast, all the while feeling the countdown tick in the backs of their heads. The count hit zero at the same moment Scoop did the trigger.
~*~*~*~
The three Wreckers moved ruthlessly across the bridge, noting the position of each Autobot captive and searching for Decepticon movement. Topspin broke the silence first, growling in frustration and causing the disoriented Autobots to flinch.
“Where the slag are those Decepticons?”
“Here,” Whirl said in disdain, lowering his weapon as he approached one of the consoles. He tapped at the keys and suddenly all signs of Decepticons vanished from their sensors. “They set up a signal scrambler and modified it to give off Decepticon signals instead of dampening them.”
Roadbuster strode up to the Asclepius’s captain, jerking the mech to his feet and pulling off the restrains with quick, harsh movements. “What happened?”
“I… I’m not sure.” The captain winced and slowly flexed his arms as twisted cables wrenched back into alignment. “The ‘cons boarded us, shoved everyone up here, took out our propulsion, did a hash dig through our inventory and left. We’ve been sitting here drifting for the last several cycles.” He looked at Roadbuster as if the Wrecker would know better. “What were they after?”
The jumpstarter was at the security console, shaking his head. “They didn’t even touch most of the security locks, they probably didn’t take much when they left.”
“That’s because they weren’t after their inventory,” Roadbuster said with mounting horror, “they were after our ship!” He snapped open team communications, running off the bridge with his confused teammates at his heels. “Team Two, Xantium- reassemble at the Asclepius now!”
~*~*~*~
The lights in the Decepticon ship flickered out as the generator was forcibly disconnected. A nano-klik later the engines exploded in a contained detonation. A nano-klik after that everything exploded.
The explosion caused a ship-wide electrical discharge that not only knocked the Wrecker’s shuttle from its anchor on the boarding tube, it triggered Twin Twist’s explosive device. In the void of space it exploded silently, shredding the tube and expelling the ships in opposite, wildly spinning directions.
~*~*~*~
Xantium’s internals squealed in shocked pain, buffers rerouting data flow around severed cables and sensors. She struggled to compensate the depressurization of her breached hull, automated systems immediately lashing sealing cables outward. As they tried to seal, they hit into something smooth and malleable- a boarding tube –and automatically used it to seal the bulk of the breach.
Her scanners snapped to the ten intruders in her hall, invasive and furious. Xantium closed off access beyond the deck, section off the area with a complete lockdown and her lights and sirens blared, daring the Decepticons to try anything inside of her.
“Aw, lookit this! We got us an angry ship!”
“I hate sentient ships.”
“Can we shut her up?”
“Didn’t even know these things were still in service.”
“Streamline- do something ‘bout that damn noise!”
“Shh, shh, just everyone calm down,” a surprisingly small slip of a Decepticon said, approaching a double-barred door. “This can be easily taken care of.”
Xantium’s sensors nervously tracked that one closely. The Decepticon- femme, judging from the stats Xantium’s reports were giving –was small and relatively lightly armored, her immense processor capabilities and information storing capacity worried the ship. The femme knelt by a control panel and gave it a cursory tug before deciding the ship wasn’t going to willingly give her access. Calmly the femme reached into a compartment and brought out a tiny device that clamped on to the panel.
It sent a localized pulse shrieking in Xantium’s systems, the spasm causing the panel’s lock to pop open. The femme deftly rewired the doors to open as Xantium fought the overwhelming feedback clouding her control of the area.
“Quickly,” Streamline told the others though she moved and spoke with a zen-like grace, “or she’ll snap the doors on one of you.”
“Do you know where you’re going?” The ranked Decepticon asked.
“To the control room, of course. I can get in there and route all control away from the ship herself.”
The other Decepticons boggled and Xantium’s signals went cold. “You can do that?”
“There’s a reason why they stopped using sentient ships. Well, lots of reasons, but once we get there, you’ll be seeing a major one. An irreparable one.”
The Decepticon team moved slowly but methodically through her halls and everything Xantium tried to do to stop them was countered. Her armatures and cables were slashed or blasted apart and her blockades overcome by Streamline’s technical cunning. When Xantium continually cycled disarming commands, Steamline froze the data stream and hacked the code at her leisure. When Xantium locked out power access, Streamline found access tunnels to another deck and rerouted power from there. When Xantium overloaded and fused her locking mechanisms together, Streamline merely instructed one of the others in using a cutting torch at structural hot points, weakening the integrity and then blasting the doors apart.
Every action the Decepticons took in getting through one more passage sent pain ripping through Xantium’s sensors, but she refused to just let them pass. She was determined to find some way to stop them. She had to.
“What a stupid ship,” one of the Decepticons said as Streamline forced open yet another set of doors. “Why doesn’t she just give up? She has to know she can’t beat us.”
“Considering who crews this ship, any less resistance would be an insult.”
Optics turned to the ranking Decepticon in confusion. “What?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t figured out who’s been tailing us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This ship,” Streamline said with a smile to Xantium’s walls, “is a work of art. Technical retrogrades not withstanding, she’s the perfect example of what a sentient ship should be and she should be respected.”
“Says the femme that’s been taking her apart bit by bit,” came the scoffed reply.
“Done with great respect.” Streamline patted at a door. Xantium shuddered in revulsion. And she still couldn’t stop them from reaching her control room and she couldn’t stop them from wrestling control from her.
“The problem with sentient ships,” Streamline said as she worked as if merely lecturing and not stripping Xantium of all her powers, “is that they have a relay set-up very similar to ours. Just like any mech or femme, her CPUs- as grand and multi-faceted as they are –can be isolated from her chassis. With the right understanding, I can block off her CPU to one level of security in an auxiliary net and reroute full control on to a secondary. Subsequent versions of the Ark managed to render this impossible for them, but for a sentient ship this kind of setup is something that can never be bypassed.”
As the last of Xantium’s control slipped away, she roared in that confining void she’d been trapped in- silent and alone save for the most minor of sensory feedback. The Decepticons, now having full reign of the ship, strode back into the hall and unstopped as they made their way to the bridge. If Xantium still had access to them, her engines would’ve froze as she realized the direct path would take the Decepticons by the medbay where Springer was still recovering. She had focused so much on the intruders that she had lost all track of the sparkling and prayed that he was still resting, blindly reaching out with feeble scanners towards him.
The footsteps and voices, their very presence and the utter wrong-ness compared to the Wreckers drew Springer to the door of the medbay, silently and fearfully watching the Decepticons traipsing through the hall until one of them spotted him. “Hey!”
He ducked back into the medbay, but there was no other escape, no place for him to hide as three Decepticons gave chase. Xantium could only witness through her sensors as the three cornered the little sparkling. She could feel the curiosity and maliciousness spiking their electrical signatures and the outright fear they got in return.
One knelt down with a dark grin twisting across his faceplate, weapons rising from his armor like towers and almost teasingly cupping the sparkling in hands powerful enough to crush the trembling body without consideration. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
Scrounging what little power was left to her, Xantium sent out a distress signal to her team: level Omega-13.
~*~*~*~
“Team Two! Team Two- respond!”
As Roadbuster failed to raise the other Wreckers, Topspin and Whirl stood in a tense silence at an observation window, watching space and stars spinning around them and, with every revolution, the Decepticon raider spiraling further away. Roadbuster gave into the urge and slammed a fist against the wall, the sound making Topspin give a snarling, feral grin. “Tricky glitches.” He muttered into the window.
Growling darkly Roadbuster marched swiftly back to the bridge where the Asclepius’s captain was still freeing his crew. “What else did the Decepticons do asides from disable your engines?”
Surprised at the sudden and sharpness of the question, the mech stuttered, “Uh, it’s- they took out our communications and scanner relays. They took all our engineers to the engine room and we… haven’t seen them since. We’re also running on our third auxiliary generator so we have limited power and system functions right now.”
Roadbuster’s optic band narrowed. If the Decepticons had any intelligence- which they seemed to have –they’d have forced the Autobots to safely disable the engines and then killed them to ensure no one would be able to get them running again.
“Whirl, how many tech maintenance and specs do you have in your cache right now?”
The helo cocked his head slightly. “Some, but none of them match up to a ship like Asclepius.”
“It’ll have to do. Bring up Asclepius’s specs and take a team of technicians to the engine room- see if you can’t get it even limping again. Topspin and the rest of the techs, try to regain access to peripherals.”
The Asclepius’s captain frowned, even as his crew scrambled at the Wrecker’s commands, a quarter falling in line behind Whirl as he half-jogged off the bridge. “Wait a moment- none of my technicians here knows anything about maintaining- let along fixing -something as complex as a ship’s engines!”
“Consider it cross-training. I don’t know how long you’ve been in this position, captain, and I can’t say I care because we don’t have time to discuss-“
The distress signal bloomed inside Roadbuster’s receiver and he could see Topspin similarly tense at the recognition. The medic turned towards the other, “RB-“
“Scanners!” He barked out. “Now!” Rounding back on the captain, Roadbuster’s panic was transformed into impatient frustration. “How many shuttles did you have?”
“F-Five.”
“Do you have any other means of transportation?”
“No, what-“
“Find a way to get me to Xantium.”
The captain faltered at the demand. “I… How? You’re not rated for deep space maneuvers, you don’t have the proper propulsion system or engineering and there isn’t a way to-“
Roadbuster grabbed the mech by the throat. He didn’t care if he was being unreasonable, he didn’t care that it wasn’t the captain’s fault, he didn’t care if it was impossible, he just hauled the captain off the ground and roared into his face, “GET ME OUT THERE NOW!”
