Ep. 1 - In the House, In a Heartbeat - Closed - Finis

[Deleted]

Set during the evening of "Guns and Horses." Yeah, he's having a busy night.

---

Southeast of the Steens Mountains, the alkali flats shone pale beneath the light of a rising moon.

In the distance, the mountain range made a long ridge on the horizon. Its broad foot sloped downwards to the desert, where the mossy rock and grass of the plains gave way to the edge of the desert that lay in its rain shadow. Tens of thousands of years ago there had been a lake there, two hundred feet deep. Now there was nothing left but the ancient lakebed, dried and cracked like old paint.

And Starscream.

He transformed, and hit the flats a moment later. Dust fountained up beneath his feet. He looked around himself in distaste. It was a barren place, where the wind raced unhindered across the open desert, its bite sharp and cold. Somewhere to the east hot springs bubbled up through the crust. He didn't need enhanced receptors to pick up the trace of sulphur in the air.

Tufts of grass poked up through the cracks. Pits of rock marked the scattered places where campers had once coaxed to life small cooking fires. And that was it. There was nothing else to see. No pitched tents, no birds, no dry twigs burning into smoke and embers in the night. Nothing.

Good.

This was a suitable place.

To the west, the sky grew dark as the last trace of sunset faded from the clouds. Stars glittered overhead, milky bands of them. Starscream regarded them idly. None of them appeared to be moving. In this parched and desolate place, anything that travelled by wing or by foot would be visible for miles in all directions. No one would sneak up on him. No one would know he was here.

And no one would see him leave.

That part was important.

Not that he didn't have an excuse at his fingertips that would explain his interest in the abandoned rail tunnel. If caught, he could claim that he was merely following up on a messy skirmish in order to search for a trail back to their enemies. It was a good excuse. It was the truth. Mostly.

Much of his plan hinged on not being caught.

Satisfied that he was alone, Starscream opened his internal comm.

"Dart," he said curtly. "Whatever you're doing now, drop it. You'll meet me at the coordinates I am encoding with this transmission. Don't delay. And tell no one where you are going."

[Dart]

The stars were in the right place tonight.

It probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. In fact, Dart knew, she’d probably be laughed at if she said anything to another Cybertronian. Well, maybe not everyone, but... most everyone.

It wasn’t that they’d been in the wrong places in Australia, but Dart had never been quite able to look up during her stay down under and orient herself like she could on back in the States. The patterns and constellations overhead were familiar in their order, their placement. Cassiopeia in her chair. The Big Dipper, right there. Dart knew how she could draw the line off the bowl to find the North Star. The Southern Pole was just a dark hole in the sky, between two points.

North felt like a tangible thing here. The courier could point her nose to it and know she’d could always count on ending up north. Huh, that didn’t sound quite as impressive as she’d made it out to be in her head.

Dart rocked back on her heels and then she couldn’t help but laugh. Almost immediately she cut herself off and glanced around. It was an instinctive response even though Pyrotech had gone to ground hours ago and was tabulating his lists of supplies he’d need.

She brought up a hand and rubbed fitfully at a spot next to her shoulder, where deep marks had scraped and rubbed into her dull finish. Then she pricked the tips of her spoiler up at a stray thought that crossed her mind. You know, at least with the Vehicons here, she might escape wearing a harness and dragging a supply sled across all sorts of terrain. They could lift much heavier things than she could. Not to mention the whole flying thing-

Her comm-line snapped on with a sharp crackle. Even though she had been expecting Starscream’s call since this morning, it didn’t matter. The courier reacted with all the grace of someone who’d just had a live grenade canister thrown under their feet. Dart reared back and bounced straight into the air. Before she even hit the ground, she was in a flat out sprint.

Dart’s strides kicked away the miles beneath her. She bounded over dry washes, scrambled up ravines. Across her shoulders her spoiler tipped and twitched to counterbalance her turns.

The rugged Oregon landscape had begun to flatten into lower elevations when she suddenly realized that the comm-line was still open and waiting for a response. Oh. Oh geeze. Good going, Dart. Are you trying to get a Darwin award? You know, if you’re going to do that there’s better ways.

Sliding down mountains on chunks of metal came to mind. Sharp rocks at the bottom and all that. Bring it on.

The corner of her mouth briefly twitched into a smile.

“Dropped, sir,” she said hastily. “On my way, and no one’s told, promise, sir. Coordinates acknowledged. Almost there.”

She slid down an embankment and braced herself to keep upright at speed. Her toes dug long lines in the dry earth. The flats spread out beyond. Dart did not stop running until she skidded to a halt near Starscream. She pranced a sidestep or two before she settled.

“Sorry, sorry. I just- I started running and forgot to hit send, er - I mean, I thought I’d responded. I apologize. Er, sir. I apologize, sir. Won’t happen again, honest.”

[Deleted]

He had seen her racing across the flats when she had still been miles away, and had rather expected this sort of arrival. Starscream merely took one step to the side to avoid the dirt and rocks she kicked up upon her sliding halt, his hands folded together behind his back and his expression sour.

"Yes, yes," he said. "See that it doesn't, consider yourself warned, etcetera, etcetera. Follow me."

He turned and stalked into the desert, his hands clasped. The old lakebed the two Decepticons stood upon stretched ahead of them for miles. Its pale surface caught the light of the moon and reflected it, lending an eerie radiance to the scene. Something called softly in the night, and was answered by a croak from the hot springs.

Moonlight illuminated the thin scars on Starscream's wings and back as well - deep scratches in the grey finish that had not yet been worn away. Every step raised a faint haze of dust beneath his heels. He gave no explanation as to where they were going but walked in silence, as if lost in thought. Every now and then one of his talons would give a twitch. Luckily for both of them neither of the missiles locked into the rails upon his forearms were fired at the gesture.

After a little time had passed and their lonely trek had taken them deep into the flats, Starscream came to a halt.

He looked around himself critically. Let's see. He'd done a few calculations and marked the best location earlier. With- ah, there. Two rocks, set wide apart.

He glared into the sky. No sign of any patrols. Good.

"What do you know about the Kamchatka Peninsula?" he said.

[Dart]

Dart had silently followed along. It hadn’t taken far before she’d trotted a few steps and slipped into a position a few strides off his left flank. Her nose aligned itself into the push of wind that lifted the dust from their steps; she kept a wary lookout.

Caught in the angle of reflected moonlight, the scars were very apparent on his back and wings. He’d obviously tangled with something nasty. Fairly recently, too. Dart winced slightly and was surprised. Higher ups usually took the priority on repairs...

Once they stopped, Dart glanced around, trying to orientate herself off of the landmarks. There weren’t many. When Starscream turned his gaze up, the courier quietly echoed his gesture with one of her own and drew a soft huff of air in, reassuring herself that they were completely alone.

“Kamchatka Peninsula?” she echoed, a bit surprised both by the question and his conversational tone. “It sounds awfully familiar...”

Then again, the Pacific Coast had a whole lot of peninsulas. No, that wasn’t it. She dug through memories, of bridges, cities, places and struggled for a moment with them. Idly, Dart lifted a foot and pawed a few times at the dry dirt. Then she looked over at him. Her head cocked to one side with recognition.

“Russia,” she murmured. “It’s in Russia, isn’t it? Lots of volcanic activity, right? I’m afraid I don’t know much more than that, sir. Is it something we were supposed to be briefed about recently?"

[Deleted]

"An incident took place there not long before you arrived," said Starscream. He did not look back at the courier, but eyed the space between the two rocks. "I doubt that Pyrotech has had the opportunity to look up the reports yet. We're here to do a... follow up investigation into what occurred."

Starscream opened a private line back to the Nemesis. After the skirmish he had sent a unit of Vehicons to scour the rail tunnel and report back on their findings, of course. All through official channels, all information filed neatly into Soundwave's precious databanks.

They had found nothing, of course. No incriminating evidence, no trails left behind. Nothing but a cold, empty bunker and a lot of dead ends.

Starscream glanced back over his shoulder. One red optic narrowed at Dart.

He was willing to bet that he would find something this time.

A quick transmission over the line was all it took to activate the ground bridge. The green portal spiralled into existence between the rocks, exactly where he had calculated. Starscream sniffed and strolled into it without hesitation, his hands still behind his back.

"This way," he said. He did not turn around to see if the courier would follow.

Through the portal came the faint scent of moist dirt, of pine needles and birch trees and forests, and damp, foggy air.

[Dart]

Dart nodded thoughtfully. “Understood,” she replied.

She knew that even if if Pyrotech had looked over those reports, he likely would have kept them to himself. It wasn’t surprising that there was an incident of some sort that required follow-up. There were a lot of those sorts of situations; most of them were dealt with by Vehicons and whatever higher ranking Decepticons were available. Trepidation nudged her thoughts; Pyrotech hadn’t finished his earlier assignment...

Of course, it finally sunk in. Russia? That wasn’t somewhere they could run and fly to. It then sunk in as to how they were getting there.

Dart winced to herself as green light flared between the two standing stones. GroundBridge. Of course it would have to be one; Starscream wasn’t the sort to expend his energy with useless travel.

Not that the bridges weren’t a handy and wonderful piece of technology. Dart was the first to admit that they were a whole lot better than spending a month on a rusting cargo ship hiding in vehicle mode. It was more that no other mech she knew seemed bothered by any resonance within. She was. It didn’t happen every single time, but when it did; it manifested as a high-pitched warble that felt as if it resonated right into her framework. She really hoped this wouldn’t be one of those times.

A quick test of the scents wafting through the portal as Starscream strode forward. A wistful look crossed Dart’s face, oh, it was forest on the other side. It smelled strongly of pine and water, and Starscream was already headed through. She hesitated only a step before she trotted forward and ducked into the GroundBridge after him. "Right..."

[Deleted]

She would emerge on the edge of a forest.

The ground bridge whirled behind her, silent and glowing. A boreal thicket stretched to either side, the trees perched sparsely upon a bed of rock, lichen, and thin, acidic soil. Their roots were gnarled, their branches scrubby and twisted.

Starscream stood a little further ahead, his back to her. Past him the ground was bare and open. From it rose the ruins of an abandoned town. Five story apartment buildings stood in rows, vacant and streaked with filth, their windows broken. The wind trailed through empty balconies and rustled the weeds that grew up from the cracked and pitted streets.

Though it was daytime in the Kamchatka Peninsula the sky was dark and heavily overcast. A layer of thick fog blanketed the town. In the distance the peak of a great volcano broke through the fog. Mist clung to its slopes, drifting slowly.

Starscream hung back at the tree line and warily scanned the area.

"No sign they've since returned," he murmured. "Not that I was expecting them too. Still. Stay alert."

With his arm raised and his hidden blaster on stand-by he edged from the tree line. His grey plating vanished into the fog, leaving only eddies in his wake. Only the sound of his footsteps could be heard, crunching on the shaly earth.

A little rain fell in fitful gusts. The town remained silent, the fog undisturbed. But mingled with the scent of loam and pine was a thriving mix of odours now - rust, mould, and cement. The stench of stagnant water. Rotting vegetation. Oil. And the unmistakable smell of humans and their vehicles, sweat and exhaust. Neither were fresh, but in this still and quiet place they lingered like ghosts, manifest only to Dart.

The human scents were days old, perhaps. Hard to say.

Starscream picked a route through the fog, until it thinned enough to reveal a rocky hill at the edge of the ruins. There, the concrete opening to a rail tunnel bored into the steepest part of the slope, dark and echoing. Broken planks lay strewn at the entrance, as if the tunnel had once been boarded up and something immense had smashed through them.

"Here," said Starscream.

He stood at the entrance and peered inside. A rusted set of train tracks led into the tunnel, where they were quickly swallowed by the gloom.

Starscream shot a look back at Dart. "Well? What do you detect?"

It was here that the human smells were strongest. But now, there was something else. A weak thread of scent that trickled from the lip of the tunnel:

The scent of spilt fuel.

[Dart]

Dart stepped out of the glow after the grey mech. She hid a sigh of relief as she came to stand on solid ground once again. Feet on the ground; that was where she always felt safe and secure - even if she wasn’t. There was always that opportunity to dodge, to escape. On a bridge, not so much.

The green glow backlit the scrub woods. They bent in on themselves with poor soil and cold. A far cry from the tall spires of Douglas Fir and cedar of the west coast of the States. Her sensors picked up the smells of the abandoned town even before she focused on the buildings. Rotting fabric, peeling paint, crumbling concrete, layers of lime and gravel exposed by the turn of the seasons.

“Understood, sir,” she told Starscream as he edged from the trees, weapon at the ready. As he vanished into the fog she turned her head and wiped her forearm along her optics to scrub away some water. His body language was wary; shoulders sloped, head lowered. The mist flowed around him and for several strides it hid everything but the tips of his wings and the red glow of his eyes; a silver shark in a darkened cold ground-sea.

Expected who to return? Autobots. Not here, not so far; all she could pick up on was... human. Not fresh, no... but in this abandoned place..?

Dart ducked her helm against the rain and padded after him. Once again, she took up her silent position just off of his flank; equally wary. Her spoiler flattened down against her shoulders; there would be no rattle to give them away. Cautiously, they made their way across the landscape in silence and then they were in front of the empty tunnel. Dart’s blue gaze touched along the shattered mess and the flaking tracks.

The courier stepped up beside him at his query and peered nervously inside the dank hole.

“Blood,” she breathed suddenly, and slanted optics met his. “I smell blood.”

Abruptly, Dart crouched down next to Starscream’s heel, legs tucked beneath her. Her fingertips touched the earth to steady her light weight; she braced herself fully on one palm and leaned forward until her nose nearly touched one of the ruined planks. Dart’s head moved slowly from side to side, analyzing every drift of scurf and rust.

Her other forearm lifted slightly off the ground and her fingers curled as she held position. Across her shoulders, her spoiler hackled upwards with a soft series of small clicks. She shook her head and quickly corrected herself. “I mean, ah, I smell fuel. There is fuel here, sir. Someone was damaged in there - or went to ground in here."

“Many humans were here as well,” she told Starscream with concern. “Their scent was also around back where we bridged in. But it is far thicker here, much thicker. Days old as of now - er, they haven't been here since then. At least not out here..."

[Deleted]

Starscream resisted the urge to laugh out loud. Perfect. Already this was working.

'Disappeared without a trace,' the report from the Vehicon investigation unit had said. 'Area sanitized, no remaining sign of hostile forces.' Yes, they had been very clever in wiping out all trace of their presence here. No scrap of technology, no incriminating evidence was left behind that might give an indication where the rats had fled after the battle. He had to admire that level of skill and cunning.

And yet while they might elude the scanners of a Vehicon drone, he suspected they would have worse luck hiding from a set of enhanced olfactory sensors.

Starscream suppressed his glee and strode forward, into the tunnel.

"You don't say," he said. "Then let's find out exactly where they went, shall we?"

Inside, the tunnel was clammy and cold. A light mist hung in the air. It was as dark as a cave, and the Seeker swapped his hand for his blaster. He shone it like a torch against the walls, against the ceiling. Its red glow illuminated the railway tracks beneath their feet, as well as standing platforms to either side of them, much like those found in a subway station. The tunnel was both tall and broad enough to accommodate them both.

Their footsteps echoed down the rails.

"That fuel you're smelling - once, it belonged to Breakdown," said Starscream. He spoke in a low voice. "The fool allowed himself to be captured by the humans, who brought him here and held him prisoner. They did other things to him as well. Let's just say he paid dearly for his carelessness."

He glanced back at her and deliberately tapped one of his optics with a claw. Clink.

"He escaped, of course. Minus a few vital parts, which now reside in the hands of our enemies. MECH, who abandoned this bunker and vanished immediately afterwards. Where did they go, I wonder. Ah. Here."

Starscream drew to a halt.

Two hundred feet ahead of them the tunnel widened. Little could be seen in the darkness. The red glow from the blaster glinted against a few objects: a flat metal slab. A pair of broken shackles. A platform that extended over the tracks like a bridge, complete with railings and metal scaffolding that might have once supported an array of monitors. Now, only wiring was left behind.

The slab stank of fuel. The human scent milled over everything. A line of it continued deeper into the tunnel.

"Investigate it," said Starscream. He gestured to the platform. "Track them. Find out where they went."

[Dart]

As Starscream stepped forward, Dart hesitated, and then rose quickly to her feet. She watched him sidle into the dark. The courier moved restlessly, then sidestepped, a nervous jitter of her whole frame. She had not one iota of desire to step into there. You only had a few ways to run in a place like that. If you were lucky, there might be a few passages out to the surface... and only one if you weren’t.

Collapse in a place like that, and those behind you desperate for their own escape would not hesitate to claw and blast you apart to get by.

She balked. One hand slid onto a hip carrier and flicked nervously at the latch. Then she lowered her helm and looked at the ground. A flash in her optics- quiet determination; and she hurried to trot after Starscream.

In the cool, dark damp confines of the area, scent pooled everywhere. On open ground, the courier found that it was easily disturbed by wind or cars or dried out and destroyed by direct sunlight. Desert was a hard area to work; she’d lost many a trail in those places only after a few hours. Down here it lingered, and the whole tunnel stunk of someone’s fuel; worse, it reeked of mechanical fear and agony.

Dart’s expression of shock started a few seconds into the conversation. She lifted her nose and instinctively analyzed the air again; Breakdown? Instantly a memory snapped into place; blue plating, broad shoulders. Sharp yellow optics.

He was a fighter, and from what she knew of him, a vicious and tough one. At least what she remembered of him from a pass-by, they’d never spoken to one another. She glanced over at Starscream right as he brought a taloned finger up to his optic; the sharp sound of it made her flinch. She winced.

“They - MECH I mean, they took out his–“

Whatever she was about to say was lost as the scents of fuel turned into something that threatened to overpower her. Dart went instantly quiet at the scene now dimly lit by Starscream’s weapon, staring at the slab, the shackles, the platforms and places twisting off into the cavern. She blinked, and then a low, hydraulic whine curled out of her lean chest before she could stop herself.

Mechanical abattoir. It was gruesome. The slab was utterly terrifying, yes, but there were lashes of dried fuel and grease spurted up to nearly the ceiling. He’d fought his restraints and he’d fought his captivity. He was obviously aware of them chopping away at him. Metal shavings ground into the floor, glass bits glittered. In a way, she weirdly found the tables reversed; most Decepticons didn’t care for human life... well, organic life in general. They considered them vermin. Pests. A means to an end... and that was what Breakdown likely was to this group of humans. Vivisected on a table so that they could create--

Dart glanced over at Starscream. He gestured.

“Yes sir,” she agreed and moved cautiously towards the platform to set to task. So many human scents, muddled on one another. Here someone had brushed a hand along the platform and braced themselves. Bad aftershave- seriously, that was nasty stuff. What was that? Who thought to slap that on in the morning? Maybe a rutting deer, heh. Starbucks coffee. Actually, a salted caramel mocha, triple shot, with whip. Food crumbs. Rats. There were always rats, they were incredible opportunists.

Dart scrabbled, she ducked, she pressed her nose nearly to the floor- and it was obvious she attempted to avoid that stained table at all points. She paced back and forth, and finally she looked over her shoulder at Starscream. Her toe lifted slightly like a turbohound on point.

“Room is clear. No traps... well, so far. They’re seriously armed, though. Er, a lot of them were. There’s some I think may be scientists or grunt workers,” she murmured, and her spoiler twitched. The courier paused, then padded forward to take the lead. Traps were foremost on her mind. These humans were dangerous, and she could utterly respect that. “They went this way.”

“None of them left through the front. They’ve gone further down here, and... they had those parts of him with them. Along with their equipment."

[Deleted]

Starscream hung back as she went to work. For once, he throttled his impatience and allowed her to scent out the tunnel without interruption. He stood aside and watched her pace back and forth instead, his red optics intent.

It paid off.

Starscream smiled.

So, MECH had indeed taken a little part of Breakdown with them when they had left the scene. A memento of their time spent together. A souvenir, so to speak. While part of him chafed at the thought of the humans escaping so brazenly with a piece of captured Cybertronian technology in their hands, another part of him silently gloated at his luck. Breakdown's loss would be his gain.

And Dart could track them. Right now that was all that mattered.

"As I suspected," he said. He followed her down the tunnel, his blaster raised. "They packed up their operations and fled before our Vehicon scouts could determine where they had bolted to. As far as Megatron and the others are concerned, they disappeared entirely. Without a trace."

He chuckled darkly. "But now it appears as if we know differently, doesn't it? Keep following the trail. And... let's keep this discovery between the two of us. It's nothing we need to trouble Lord Megatron with. I'm sure there are plenty of far more important matters already preying upon his concentration."

In fact, he was counting on it.

The scent led deeper into the mountain. The air grew clammy and stale, the weight of the rock above them a crushing presence. Though the old infrastructure of the railway remained, it had clearly been abandoned years ago; the concrete walls were pitting and stained with water, the exposed electrical wiring rotted down to bare cables. It was likely that power had been shut off decades ago. Beneath their feet the steel rails wound into the abyssal darkness.

Starscream remained silent as they walked. He seemed content to allow Dart to lead they way, in pursuit of the elusive thread of scent. His footsteps echoed behind her, while the red glow from his blaster illuminated the path ahead.

After nearly an hour had passed he finally spoke.

"Those marks on your chest," he said. His voice was low. "Those burn marks. Those are- new."

[Dart]

There was a soft huff as Dart drew a touch of the damp air into her intakes. “Understood,” she replied, voice drifting back to the mech. “Keep this quiet, between us. I’m good at that, but you know that...”

The courier trailed off, and there was a slight duck of her helm as she turned and concentrated on the path they were following. Dart was wary, she was cautious, and she tested the ground as much as she tested the air, just in case they’d buried a pressure plate or a tripwire.

Silence stretched between them as they slipped forward into the dark.

Condensation began to bead on her long flanks. The chill and moisture of the tunnel collected in the hollows of her throat guard. As they continued to explore down into the depths, the more apprehensive she became.

That- that was a lot of rock around. Over them. The thickness of it muffled senses and sensors. It amplified every little sound; the crunch of stone under his heel, the whirr and click of their systems. Even with him shining that light, the oppressive dark folded itself around them. Dart wanted out. She wanted back on open ground, with open sky and room to run. If something happened, they’d be buried and if Starscream had not told anyone where he was headed they could deactivate down here and they’d-

They hadn’t spoken in so long that it was his voice that caused her to startle. Dart’s toe clanked against the metal track; she stumbled over the rusting rail and caught herself on one of the rough walls as she turned to face him. Blue optics shuttered in a blink even as she instinctively brought up her hand as if to protect the nasty, deep gashes from any further injury. Even her own fleeting touch made her wince, the layer of metal between her hand and her internals was so thin.

"Yes, sir," she agreed. "Fairly new. Australia."

Then Dart quickly averted her gaze to the floor and tucked her hands behind her back, as if she was delivering a message.

“I failed my post,” she said, her tone touched with memory. The courier repeated someone else's words, his inflection. “I allowed a Autobot spy to get through my watch-station. Our mission was compromised and the objective destroyed."

“My commander was merciful,” she told Starscream quietly.

[Deleted]

Starscream narrowed his optics. Her dull tone, as if she were quoting verbatim, had not escaped his attention.

The words were not her own. That was plain enough. He wondered how long it had taken her commander to drill them into her head. It was part of her punishment he suspected, a confession to be spoken in low tones to anyone who asked about the scars. He wouldn't put it past Pyrotech to inflict that sort of humiliation on a subordinate. Like Megatron, the architect was not known to tolerate failure.

The scars looked painful. Raw.

For an instant something flickered through him, an uneasy feeling. He grasped it and saw a memory, a recent one. Battered plating and paint flayed straight from the metal. The next moment he pushed it away again in a hurry. Different circumstances. They were nothing the same.

Nothing.

Starscream scowled.

"It appears I need to watch Pyrotech a little more closely to determine just how he manages the resources I see fit to allocate to him," he growled. He felt irritable now, for reasons he couldn't quite put his finger on. "This isn't Cybertron. We can't afford gratuitous damage or Decepticons lost to imprudence. My Decepticons!"

Fuming, he fell silent. He had just turned over a unit of his own Vehicons to Pyrotech too. He was going to do a head-count when that unit was returned to him. And if any of them were missing…

Another thought struck him. He eyed the courier's back.

"What other sorts of missions has your commander assigned to you since arriving here?" he said suspiciously.

[Dart]

Dart's gaze had not lifted from the dirty cave floor between her toes. She honestly did not want to accidentally look Starscream in the optic right now. It was hard enough to pull what she had told him out of her memory, and to try and push aside everything else that came with those words.

The courier had to knot her fingers together to keep from bringing her hand back up again to cover the marks from the scrutiny. Dart had developed a pattern amongst the Decepticons she’d been stationed with that had served her well. Take orders politely. Do your job. Most of all, don’t draw attention to yourself. That created questions that required answers...

It had not been a quick swipe, done with fury and frustration at the failure of the mission. It had not been because he was angry at the loss of his troops. Not because Thermal had deactivated out there on the sand, blown to bits. Not because of Siphon’s hole in his processor, shot through by the Autobot spy.

No, it had been later. One agonizing stripe at a time. Purposeful. You failed. Tell them why, Dart. Every single mech who asks about that mark. Carry that message, courier.

Her spoiler lowered down, clicking one notch, then another. Finally, it could go no lower, and still Starscream’s voice rasped out in the dark. The lean curve of her shoulders slumped slightly.

Red light washed over the walls, illuminating the imperfections in the concrete and the rusting threads of ruined wire. This place smelled of mildew, of human sweat and toil... but under it all, the spatters and soak of Breakdown’s parts ripped out of his body and carted off into the mine. Shadows on the wall moved with each twitch of the Air Commander’s sharp talons. Dart turned her chin slightly to avoid that sight, her optics half-shuttered in the dark.

"No, not Cybertron, sir," Dart agreed, even though the courier knew nothing of their home world except what she'd been told by others over the years. All she had was Earth; she knew rock and sky and the smell of pine, she knew the near-taste of the cold wind on the mountains. Salt-tang of the Pacific Ocean, the sharp ozone of a lightning strike on the dry desert.

A nod as he continued; she was listening, and another nod. She peeked up from under the edge of her helm when Starscream’s diatribe fell into silence. His body language was flat, his wings twitching. Dart gratefully took his lack of other questions about anything as a dismissal and turned around into the dark tunnel once more, picking her way over the rusting rails.

Oh. He wasn’t done asking his questions, but he didn’t tell her to stop, so she glanced over her shoulder before she continued carefully forward, following the scents of human once again.

“Er... since arriving...” she echoed, and her voice was soft and unsure. “Since arriving in the States, you mean, sir? Um. Long patrols. Scouting. Junkyard runs and hauling materials to build the base. Hunting down fuel supplies; we didn’t have much left. Guard duty. That’s all."

"I'm faster off of the road than he is, in the back country."

[Deleted]

Even walking a pace behind, it was simple enough to read what the courier was not saying simply from her spoiler and her lowered shoulders. Starscream grasped each unspoken word and quietly tucked them away for later.

"Yes, yes, I suppose that's true," he said. "As befits your design. Quite a bit of thought and decision went into that, you know."

Because it meant that he had at least one unit capable of navigating the rough terrain of Earth. The Vehicons were a bit useless at that, outside of human roads and flat, open spaces. Their vehicle modes were absurd and restrictive. Not by his choice. Even the fliers performed with limited effectiveness once they were grounded and out of combat.

But not Dart.

He felt a little smug about that.

However, it did bring up another concern. Starscream mulled it over while ahead of them the tunnel met a junction where the old rail lines hit a switch and parted in two directions. The main line continued straight, into darkness. The diverging spur turned smartly to the northwest and ran down another poorly lit tunnel. Age had fused the switches shut with rust and grime. The casing for the electric motor that powered them had cracked a long time ago, allowing dirt to seep in.

Tire tracks rutted the gravel bed. Lots of them. Human scents muddled the junction. The bulk of their forces had continued to travel straight down the western main line. But other vehicles had swung northwest down the spur. They carried the fading scent of a Cybertronian with them.

"Hrmpf," said Starscream. He stopped and pointed his blaster at the fork in the tracks. Of course. The report had mentioned this. Just one of the obstacles that had stymied them in their hunt for the MECH forces that had occupied this mountain.

"Well?" he said. "Which way?"