Flashback- Shuttles. Suck. (Closed)
Mar 10, 2014 22:53:06 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2014 22:53:06 GMT -5
<Aka how Zoom-Zoom wound up taking a giant nose-dive into the face of the Earth. The friendly fire thread will kick off directly after this. I juuust need to figure out where that goes in the timeline>
Things had not been going right since Centra Vita Eight and that had been quite a long time ago.
Zoom-Zoom eyed the Scrapheap's computer display and cursed his decision to steal the Decepticon shuttle all those vorns ago. Never mind it had been his only option at the time. It was long overdue for repair and seen more than its fair share of battles even before Zoom-Zoom had stolen it. He should have gone searching for a new ship and ditched this one a long time ago but he hadn't. It was stupid of him really, but sentiment and hope had gotten in the way of good common sense.
The ship's previous owner had given him his latest lead. When he'd gutted the seeker running the energon mine on Centra Vita Eight, Zoom-Zoom had idly hacked the dead mech's processor for any useful information just before he scavenged the frame for any useful parts. Zoom-Zoom had wound up on the dust planet following a rumour that Autobot prisoners were being used as slave labour. The rumours had been old, out of date but if there had even been the smallest possibility that any of the Bots there were his...well, he had to take it. But by the time he'd got there, if there had been Autobot prisoners, they had long since been replaced by an Eradicon work force. When Zoom-Zoom had eventually finished a thorough scouting of the mines, the transport had already left and the minibot was stuck on Vita Eight with no way off the rocky planet.
Energon production in the mines was slow and transports were only sent out when there was enough energon to make a shipment. Especially since only heavy transports could make their way through the ceaseless storms. Zoom-Zoom had spent vorns keeping out of sight in the tunnels, stealing freshly mined energon as he waited for another ship to arrive. Occasionally, he'd traverse up to the surface for a short amount of time and allowed himself to be buffeted by the relentless winds before returning to the darkness below. And while he remained unnoticed in the shadows, he spent his time watching the Decepticons. What he had uncovered...unsettled him.
The Eradicons were diligent workers, Zoom-Zoom could not fault them for that. They completed their tasks well ahead of scheduled, tunneling through rock with the focused determination of a drone workforce. And yet, no matter how hard they worked, it was never enough for the base commander, a seeker by the designation of Swift.
The mech had clearly been assigned out there as some form of punishment. Stuck underground with a never ending storm overhead that would tear his sleek frame apart should he be insane enough to take to the air and surrounded by hundreds of Eradicons. The mech had spiralled quickly to insanity, he tore apart drones on a whim or tortured them for extended periods of time before releasing them back to return to their duties with barely functional frames.
It had been a long time since Decepticon cruelty had bothered Zoom-Zoom. It was not something that happened quickly and he was initially unphased at this destructive behaviour by the seeker to his own troops. But eventually, the repetitiveness and pointlessness got to him while he waited. The Eradicons were just drones and they were carrying out their function to the best of their ability. Swift's rampant destruction accomplished nothing.
And so, idly, Zoom-Zoom began to plot. There was nothing else to keep him occupied, he'd memorized the patterns and routines to Decepticon life at Centra Vita Eight. He could not hack or sabotage the energon mines as he risked revealing his presence here. He plotted out several billion ways to end the seeker's life to keep him entertained as his processor slowly numbed over from the monotony.
Then...then the next transport arrived. And when it left, Swift and Zoom-Zoom were aboard it and neither were supposed to be there. Swift was still assigned to the base but he'd clearly been planning his escape from the dust planet for quite some time. An explosion had taken out a section of the mine he was supposedly inspecting shortly after the transport's arrival. His signal vanished from the base's tacnet, something Zoom-Zoom had long ago hacked his way into and the seeker had been officially declared dead.
The minibot had been quite surprised to stumble upon the mech as he scouted out the transport ship. Zoom-Zoom had shadowed Swift as he'd quietly made his way to a hidden compartment where a deep space shuttle had been stashed. It wasn't in perfect condition but it was still functional. Swift must have had some friends somewhere in the galaxy still willing to help him despite the exile he was in. Lucky mech.
Without questioning why, Zoom-Zoom had boarded the shuttle after the Seeker. He concealed himself within the cargo compartments then hacked into the shuttle's computer systems to keep Swift under surveillance. Zoom-Zoom watched as Swift transmitted a virus to the transport that covered his illegal launch and escape from the bigger ship.
Zoom-Zoom had watched it all as the mech had settled back, relaxed and certain that he was free.
For some odd reason, Zoom-Zoom found his memories returning to the many vorns spent watching the Eradicons underneath the surface of Centra Vita Eight. They were just drones. They had undoubtedly caused harm to Zoom-Zoom's long forgotten Autobot comrades, either directly or through their work supplying energon to Con troops. Zoom-Zoom had spent an even longer amount of time wandering the cosmos and ignoring the destruction left in the wake of the Decepticons. He had his way off Centra Vita and he could remain undetected until they reached some place where Zoom-Zoom could smuggle himself aboard another ship. He could pilot, if he wanted to but that could leave a trail and Zoom-Zoom preferred to remain as traceless as possible. It also required getting to know a ship. Learn how it handled, it's moods and its flaws. Becoming attached.
It was difficult to know something without developing some sort of relationship with it.
Zoom-Zoom had no intentions of becoming attached to anything again. The only thing that remained for him was to find the rest of his cohort.
...and yet, he'd watched the Eradicons for vorns as they lived under the endless dust storms. Without meaning to, he'd come to know them well. Enough that he felt something, the feeling he could not recognise but he could not deny that it was there, at the pain that they had suffered under Swift's tyranny.
In the end, Zoom-Zoom could not recall what prompted him to move. Maybe it had been the many vorns plotting the seeker's death that he acted, driven by sheer imagination alone. Quietly, with his dampening systems activated, Zoom-Zoom approached the seeker whilst he recharged. Without ceremony, he drove an energon dagger into Swift's spark chamber. The seeker had no time to react, his frame jolted once before offlining permanently under his servos.
Afterwards, Zoom-Zoom's optics had shuttered in confusion as he tried to understand just what he had done. It was insane to think that somewhere along the way, a bunch of drones had managed to worm their way into his misplaced spark. Clearly, the many vorns out in the cosmos by himself were getting to him and he quickly resolved to not let this situation happen again. It wasn't as if the Eradicons could even appreciate what he'd done for them, no one would know of Swift's final fate.
Annoyed with himself, Zoom-Zoom jacked into the dead frame while he evaluated the body for parts that he could use. His processor scanned though corrupted files, copying the random intact fragments into his own memory core.
Then, he'd stumbled upon it.
A name and a string of coordinates.
...Optimus Prime...
...Sol system...planet 3…
It had been a long time since Zoom-Zoom had felt the real deal. For too long, he'd sustained himself on the willful delusion that they must be out there, if only he searched hard enough.
Now, however he felt it, welling up in his spark, the most dangerous emotion of them all.
Hope.
*
Stupid fragging hope and the slagging stupid things it made a mech do.
With an angered grunt, Zoom-Zoom kicked the Scrapheap's console. He'd kept the Primus forsaken ship because it had provided this one last lead (and maybe, Zoom-Zoom didn't like to admit this, but he may have been pretty close to giving up and thought that if he'd changed the ship, then the Autobots wouldn't be there when he found his way to the co-ordinates). But the shuttle was on its way out. Zoom-Zoom had a few nasty encounters with some alien pirates on his way here and so, it had been a very wounded ship that had limped its way before dropping out of sub-light speed into the Sol system.
The long range scanners had died a long time ago. Zoom-Zoom tapped a command into the console to bring up the information the shuttle was picking up from the system. It wasn't much, but it was enough to plot a path to the third planet. And yet…
Zoom-Zoom scowled at the holo display. He could take a stealthy approach, skirting near the orbits of the planets to hide him (hopefully) from any long range scanners pointed his way. Or he could take the direct approach and risk being blown up. The corrupted information he had liberated from Swift's processor did not mention anything about a Decepticon presence but the faction had to have a presence here if they knew there were Autobots about. So. Stealthy approach it had been.
That had been a mistake.
Somewhere around the fifth planet, the Scrapheap's sensors had rather inconsiderately failed to detect that there was a dust ring around the planet. And hidden inside the dust had been debris, small moons and other irregular satellites. What had previously been smooth sailing had suddenly become a turbulent ride when the Scrapheap took a hard chunk of debris on the port propulsion wing.
Calculations had spun through Zoom-Zoom's processors as he recalled the data he had on this solar system. Within astroseconds, he had a new course plotted, one that would take the shuttle out of the reach of the planet's gravity, then leave the shuttle to slingshot through space towards the blue planet without any further propulsion. Because once the Scrapheap was free from the fifth planet's gravity, he wasn't certain how long before it just gave up on him and died for good. To fail, just when he was so close to finding answers...well, Zoom-Zoom wouldn't put it past Primus to get some kicks out of that.
The shuttle had shuddered horribly as the power core had kicked in to give it it's all to escape the powerful grip of gravity. Zoom-Zoom had watched with sick trepidation, helpless to do anything but crunch numbers and continuously adjust his calculations as the variables shifted. The option to engage the sub-light drive for an extra boost kept coming up but Zoom-Zoom suspected that would kill the shuttle entirely. There was also the disturbing fact that the shuttle had no life pods, they'd all be used up prior to Zoom-Zoom's acquisition of the Scrapheap. If the shuttle apart on him, Zoom-Zoom was fragged in just about every way. With one last ominous rattle, the Scrapheap was suddenly free and hurtling through space towards the third planet.
With a relieved exvent, Zoom-Zoom had called up a damage report.
There were a lot of things to fix.
And fix.
And fix.
And fix.
He hated this fragging ship.
The next time he looked up, it was at an alert tone notifying him they were beginning their ascent. Zoom-Zoom had a few joors to watch that blue planet get larger and larger. It was a pity the Scrapheap hadn't been able to pick up anything about their destination, Zoom-Zoom very much preferred to go into a situation with everything he needed to know at hand. But the journey was (hopefully) almost at an end.
Then they hit atmosphere.
The Scrapheap shuddered and twisted as Zoom-Zoom fought to control their descent. For a few blessed astroseconds, the Scrapheap responded to his commands, the boosters firing away to slow the shuttle down.
Then the port wing blew straight off and the shuttle spun wildly out of control.
It was a long way down.
Zoom-Zoom shrieked.
*
This is why you never do anything nice for people.
Especially drones.
Especially Decepticon drones.
Especially Decepticon drones that would never, ever know what you'd done for them.
The thought looped endlessly through Zoom-Zoom's processor as he watched the blue planet loom up in front of him. They were, luckily, heading straight for a large landmass. He was still shrieking, Zoom-Zoom was dimly aware and would probably continue to do so all the way down. As the shuttle gathered momentum, it began to crumple, the starboard wing was ripped off and Zoom-Zoom watched helplessly as the ceiling suddenly became a lot slagging closer than he was comfortable with. He glanced around the cockpit but there really wasn't much that he could do. There were no life pods and both propulsion wings were gone. The shuttle had no cargo other than the energon cubes that had been stocked for Swift's flight across the universe. There was, however, one decrepit Seeker frame that Zoom-Zoom had never got around to spacing.
Zoom-Zoom frowned but stumbled over as the shuttle pitched beneath his feet. Without hesitation, he dragged Swift's frame under the alcove meant for the pilot. It was terrible padding but it was better than nothing and Zoom-Zoom wrapped the larger frame around him as best as he could. He flinched as a console exploded near him, a fire was quick to break out after.
There was only one thing Zoom-Zoom was thinking at this point, his vocalizer still going at it at full volume.
Well played, Primus. Well played indeed.
The shuttle smacked into the ground hard.
Everything went dark after that.
Continued in Shoot & Smash
Things had not been going right since Centra Vita Eight and that had been quite a long time ago.
Zoom-Zoom eyed the Scrapheap's computer display and cursed his decision to steal the Decepticon shuttle all those vorns ago. Never mind it had been his only option at the time. It was long overdue for repair and seen more than its fair share of battles even before Zoom-Zoom had stolen it. He should have gone searching for a new ship and ditched this one a long time ago but he hadn't. It was stupid of him really, but sentiment and hope had gotten in the way of good common sense.
The ship's previous owner had given him his latest lead. When he'd gutted the seeker running the energon mine on Centra Vita Eight, Zoom-Zoom had idly hacked the dead mech's processor for any useful information just before he scavenged the frame for any useful parts. Zoom-Zoom had wound up on the dust planet following a rumour that Autobot prisoners were being used as slave labour. The rumours had been old, out of date but if there had even been the smallest possibility that any of the Bots there were his...well, he had to take it. But by the time he'd got there, if there had been Autobot prisoners, they had long since been replaced by an Eradicon work force. When Zoom-Zoom had eventually finished a thorough scouting of the mines, the transport had already left and the minibot was stuck on Vita Eight with no way off the rocky planet.
Energon production in the mines was slow and transports were only sent out when there was enough energon to make a shipment. Especially since only heavy transports could make their way through the ceaseless storms. Zoom-Zoom had spent vorns keeping out of sight in the tunnels, stealing freshly mined energon as he waited for another ship to arrive. Occasionally, he'd traverse up to the surface for a short amount of time and allowed himself to be buffeted by the relentless winds before returning to the darkness below. And while he remained unnoticed in the shadows, he spent his time watching the Decepticons. What he had uncovered...unsettled him.
The Eradicons were diligent workers, Zoom-Zoom could not fault them for that. They completed their tasks well ahead of scheduled, tunneling through rock with the focused determination of a drone workforce. And yet, no matter how hard they worked, it was never enough for the base commander, a seeker by the designation of Swift.
The mech had clearly been assigned out there as some form of punishment. Stuck underground with a never ending storm overhead that would tear his sleek frame apart should he be insane enough to take to the air and surrounded by hundreds of Eradicons. The mech had spiralled quickly to insanity, he tore apart drones on a whim or tortured them for extended periods of time before releasing them back to return to their duties with barely functional frames.
It had been a long time since Decepticon cruelty had bothered Zoom-Zoom. It was not something that happened quickly and he was initially unphased at this destructive behaviour by the seeker to his own troops. But eventually, the repetitiveness and pointlessness got to him while he waited. The Eradicons were just drones and they were carrying out their function to the best of their ability. Swift's rampant destruction accomplished nothing.
And so, idly, Zoom-Zoom began to plot. There was nothing else to keep him occupied, he'd memorized the patterns and routines to Decepticon life at Centra Vita Eight. He could not hack or sabotage the energon mines as he risked revealing his presence here. He plotted out several billion ways to end the seeker's life to keep him entertained as his processor slowly numbed over from the monotony.
Then...then the next transport arrived. And when it left, Swift and Zoom-Zoom were aboard it and neither were supposed to be there. Swift was still assigned to the base but he'd clearly been planning his escape from the dust planet for quite some time. An explosion had taken out a section of the mine he was supposedly inspecting shortly after the transport's arrival. His signal vanished from the base's tacnet, something Zoom-Zoom had long ago hacked his way into and the seeker had been officially declared dead.
The minibot had been quite surprised to stumble upon the mech as he scouted out the transport ship. Zoom-Zoom had shadowed Swift as he'd quietly made his way to a hidden compartment where a deep space shuttle had been stashed. It wasn't in perfect condition but it was still functional. Swift must have had some friends somewhere in the galaxy still willing to help him despite the exile he was in. Lucky mech.
Without questioning why, Zoom-Zoom had boarded the shuttle after the Seeker. He concealed himself within the cargo compartments then hacked into the shuttle's computer systems to keep Swift under surveillance. Zoom-Zoom watched as Swift transmitted a virus to the transport that covered his illegal launch and escape from the bigger ship.
Zoom-Zoom had watched it all as the mech had settled back, relaxed and certain that he was free.
For some odd reason, Zoom-Zoom found his memories returning to the many vorns spent watching the Eradicons underneath the surface of Centra Vita Eight. They were just drones. They had undoubtedly caused harm to Zoom-Zoom's long forgotten Autobot comrades, either directly or through their work supplying energon to Con troops. Zoom-Zoom had spent an even longer amount of time wandering the cosmos and ignoring the destruction left in the wake of the Decepticons. He had his way off Centra Vita and he could remain undetected until they reached some place where Zoom-Zoom could smuggle himself aboard another ship. He could pilot, if he wanted to but that could leave a trail and Zoom-Zoom preferred to remain as traceless as possible. It also required getting to know a ship. Learn how it handled, it's moods and its flaws. Becoming attached.
It was difficult to know something without developing some sort of relationship with it.
Zoom-Zoom had no intentions of becoming attached to anything again. The only thing that remained for him was to find the rest of his cohort.
...and yet, he'd watched the Eradicons for vorns as they lived under the endless dust storms. Without meaning to, he'd come to know them well. Enough that he felt something, the feeling he could not recognise but he could not deny that it was there, at the pain that they had suffered under Swift's tyranny.
In the end, Zoom-Zoom could not recall what prompted him to move. Maybe it had been the many vorns plotting the seeker's death that he acted, driven by sheer imagination alone. Quietly, with his dampening systems activated, Zoom-Zoom approached the seeker whilst he recharged. Without ceremony, he drove an energon dagger into Swift's spark chamber. The seeker had no time to react, his frame jolted once before offlining permanently under his servos.
Afterwards, Zoom-Zoom's optics had shuttered in confusion as he tried to understand just what he had done. It was insane to think that somewhere along the way, a bunch of drones had managed to worm their way into his misplaced spark. Clearly, the many vorns out in the cosmos by himself were getting to him and he quickly resolved to not let this situation happen again. It wasn't as if the Eradicons could even appreciate what he'd done for them, no one would know of Swift's final fate.
Annoyed with himself, Zoom-Zoom jacked into the dead frame while he evaluated the body for parts that he could use. His processor scanned though corrupted files, copying the random intact fragments into his own memory core.
Then, he'd stumbled upon it.
A name and a string of coordinates.
...Optimus Prime...
...Sol system...planet 3…
It had been a long time since Zoom-Zoom had felt the real deal. For too long, he'd sustained himself on the willful delusion that they must be out there, if only he searched hard enough.
Now, however he felt it, welling up in his spark, the most dangerous emotion of them all.
Hope.
*
Stupid fragging hope and the slagging stupid things it made a mech do.
With an angered grunt, Zoom-Zoom kicked the Scrapheap's console. He'd kept the Primus forsaken ship because it had provided this one last lead (and maybe, Zoom-Zoom didn't like to admit this, but he may have been pretty close to giving up and thought that if he'd changed the ship, then the Autobots wouldn't be there when he found his way to the co-ordinates). But the shuttle was on its way out. Zoom-Zoom had a few nasty encounters with some alien pirates on his way here and so, it had been a very wounded ship that had limped its way before dropping out of sub-light speed into the Sol system.
The long range scanners had died a long time ago. Zoom-Zoom tapped a command into the console to bring up the information the shuttle was picking up from the system. It wasn't much, but it was enough to plot a path to the third planet. And yet…
Zoom-Zoom scowled at the holo display. He could take a stealthy approach, skirting near the orbits of the planets to hide him (hopefully) from any long range scanners pointed his way. Or he could take the direct approach and risk being blown up. The corrupted information he had liberated from Swift's processor did not mention anything about a Decepticon presence but the faction had to have a presence here if they knew there were Autobots about. So. Stealthy approach it had been.
That had been a mistake.
Somewhere around the fifth planet, the Scrapheap's sensors had rather inconsiderately failed to detect that there was a dust ring around the planet. And hidden inside the dust had been debris, small moons and other irregular satellites. What had previously been smooth sailing had suddenly become a turbulent ride when the Scrapheap took a hard chunk of debris on the port propulsion wing.
Calculations had spun through Zoom-Zoom's processors as he recalled the data he had on this solar system. Within astroseconds, he had a new course plotted, one that would take the shuttle out of the reach of the planet's gravity, then leave the shuttle to slingshot through space towards the blue planet without any further propulsion. Because once the Scrapheap was free from the fifth planet's gravity, he wasn't certain how long before it just gave up on him and died for good. To fail, just when he was so close to finding answers...well, Zoom-Zoom wouldn't put it past Primus to get some kicks out of that.
The shuttle had shuddered horribly as the power core had kicked in to give it it's all to escape the powerful grip of gravity. Zoom-Zoom had watched with sick trepidation, helpless to do anything but crunch numbers and continuously adjust his calculations as the variables shifted. The option to engage the sub-light drive for an extra boost kept coming up but Zoom-Zoom suspected that would kill the shuttle entirely. There was also the disturbing fact that the shuttle had no life pods, they'd all be used up prior to Zoom-Zoom's acquisition of the Scrapheap. If the shuttle apart on him, Zoom-Zoom was fragged in just about every way. With one last ominous rattle, the Scrapheap was suddenly free and hurtling through space towards the third planet.
With a relieved exvent, Zoom-Zoom had called up a damage report.
There were a lot of things to fix.
And fix.
And fix.
And fix.
He hated this fragging ship.
The next time he looked up, it was at an alert tone notifying him they were beginning their ascent. Zoom-Zoom had a few joors to watch that blue planet get larger and larger. It was a pity the Scrapheap hadn't been able to pick up anything about their destination, Zoom-Zoom very much preferred to go into a situation with everything he needed to know at hand. But the journey was (hopefully) almost at an end.
Then they hit atmosphere.
The Scrapheap shuddered and twisted as Zoom-Zoom fought to control their descent. For a few blessed astroseconds, the Scrapheap responded to his commands, the boosters firing away to slow the shuttle down.
Then the port wing blew straight off and the shuttle spun wildly out of control.
It was a long way down.
Zoom-Zoom shrieked.
*
This is why you never do anything nice for people.
Especially drones.
Especially Decepticon drones.
Especially Decepticon drones that would never, ever know what you'd done for them.
The thought looped endlessly through Zoom-Zoom's processor as he watched the blue planet loom up in front of him. They were, luckily, heading straight for a large landmass. He was still shrieking, Zoom-Zoom was dimly aware and would probably continue to do so all the way down. As the shuttle gathered momentum, it began to crumple, the starboard wing was ripped off and Zoom-Zoom watched helplessly as the ceiling suddenly became a lot slagging closer than he was comfortable with. He glanced around the cockpit but there really wasn't much that he could do. There were no life pods and both propulsion wings were gone. The shuttle had no cargo other than the energon cubes that had been stocked for Swift's flight across the universe. There was, however, one decrepit Seeker frame that Zoom-Zoom had never got around to spacing.
Zoom-Zoom frowned but stumbled over as the shuttle pitched beneath his feet. Without hesitation, he dragged Swift's frame under the alcove meant for the pilot. It was terrible padding but it was better than nothing and Zoom-Zoom wrapped the larger frame around him as best as he could. He flinched as a console exploded near him, a fire was quick to break out after.
There was only one thing Zoom-Zoom was thinking at this point, his vocalizer still going at it at full volume.
Well played, Primus. Well played indeed.
The shuttle smacked into the ground hard.
Everything went dark after that.
Continued in Shoot & Smash