EP 0 - "Do Good Men Go To War?" [open]

“What is it Blaster?”

Optimus, who had been looking over a few perimeter scans with Bumblebee, broke away from the console to leave his scout to the readings. Bumblebee, unlike League, Bulkhead, Shadowrunner, and Ironhide had not sustained major damage and was now running triple duty to make up for it. Luckily, Velocity and Arcee were in more or less perfect working order having encountered no worse than Vehicons troopers at Station Theta. But as it turns out their efforts at the powerstations – all the innocent human life lost, Fower’s men and civilians alike – had been for nothing. Megatron accomplished his goal. His warship was readying and the last hope they had was hung up on Ironhide and Shadowrunner’s intell, the failsafe pulling from Barricade’s dying mind.

Looking back now, it seemed that his failure to kill Barricade now was a stroke of luck… or rather, if he had simply ordered Blaster to take the data from the infiltrator in a safe and controlled environment rather than allowing the Saleen to escape, Barricade, Ray, and so many human lives would have been saved. But he could not afford to think of that now - there was no time for it and too much relied upon Blaster's expertise.

“Have you made progress on the encryption?”

Prime leaned closer to the screen, bracing one hand against the edge of the console. Bright optics swept the data arrays running down the screen in front of him, quickly deciphering the broken down information. It appeared, for all intents and purposes to be a kill switch to shut down the weapon but incomplete as their knowledge was of Fallen tech and their time crunch it was unlikely they would be able to utilize the non-lethal shut-down function it was intended to be. Rather, Blaster would have to use the incomplete deactivation procedures and jerry-rig a self-destruct, turning the ship’s drive core against itself and detonating the warship.

“How will you deploy the failsafe?” From the parameters of the script he was reading, it appeared to be a remote detonation but the idea that it could be so clean, so easy, seemed almost impossible with their luck. That it might be as simple as Blaster pinging its comms with the right deadly frequency… the Autobot commander was no longer gears to accept good fortune without suspicion. “How near do we need to get you for it to work?”

Optimus didn’t say anything for a long moment, watching the rolling fall of incomplete data as it scrolled down the monitor in front of him. What they knew, what any of them knew, about Fallen technology was limited. There was no telling what any of his troops would be coming into if, on some gambit, they managed to see the warship, pinpoint its coordinates and groundbridge them aboard. It was impossible to say that Fallen technology could even be penetrated by a ground bridge vortex as there were, indeed, measures that could be taken against the warp physics that allowed a stable ground bridge.

“Mmmm, even if we could be certain of the timing of the detonation, the data we possess is too incomplete to take such a risk,” said Optimus, shaking his head slowly and standing straight again. “There is no safe way to sent Bumblebee or Arcee aboard the warship. Furthermore, without more knowledge of the ship and its size, its arrangement, this crew capacity and even its basic hardware interfaces… I cannot to in good conscious command them to take the risk. We must rely on the remote detonation as our course of action.” He looked to at the comm. specialist, EMF heavy. “Blaster, I am… we are all relying on you in this. Finish the decryption, give me the range and the parameters for the fail-safe’s use and from there we will plan our strategy. Is that clear?”