Ep. 1.5 Hangers On [Open]

[Deleted]

Atmospheric re-entry is a horrible ordeal in a damaged shuttle.

Especially if one has never re-entered an atmosphere before.


Tailgate honestly had no clue as to what to expect as the rotund vessel slammed into the planet's oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. He had pictured this differently. A nice, smooth descent that would be gentle on his contused body. Physics, however would have other ideas. The small bot was currently smacking back and forth inside in the crammed vessel, bumping into controls and other contraptions as he had lost the strength to get a firm grip on anything. This constant smashing of the controls had lead to the vessel performing all kinds of inopportune maneuvers and activation of other features. One second, the emergency brakes were deployed, the sudden halt catapulting Tailgate into the cockpit windshield. Then suddenly the boosters would be activated, once more rocketing Tailgate to the opposite side of the ship. Emergency flares were shooting off left and right. Tailgate could have sworn he heard a klaxon alarm through all the banging and smashing. And to top it all off the stabilizer had been damaged, so the ship now tumbled nonstop on its descent. Tailgate had given up hope. This is how the forgettable Tailgate would perish: in a damaged, flip-flopping escape pod on some distant planet.

And then, a miracle.

Either by dumb or blind luck he had managed to hit the parachute button in his flailing. Though he was once again heaved upwards, Tailgate could feel the descent of the ship slowing significantly.

"Oh sweet, merciful Primus." the battered bot whimpered as he peeled himself off the floor. Yet the bot barely had a chance to get to his wobbly feet before the pod suddenly made violent impact with the ground. The sudden jarring was the final straw for the bot's taxed chassis. Tailgate felt his head make contact with a hard, solid object and then the world went black.








Tailgate was infused with abrupt sensation. His dreamless oblivion was shattered as his systems came back online. The bot peeled one optic open after another. The pod was in shambles. Himself, less so, though still obviously damaged. His chassis looked like an action figure whose limbs had bent in all the wrong directions.

"Okay, okay, okay, stay calm, Tailgate, just stay calm," he said to himself in a pseudo confident tone. Tailgate slowly began to move his limbs back into position, the metal screeching and resisting the whole time.

"Find your happy place, go to your happy place and stay calm." He asserted with a strain as his stubborn arm returned to the correct position. After a moment's pause to let the pain ease down, the bot managed to heave himself up. His whole body ached. His joints were wobbly. But...he was alive. A large gash had been torn into the side of pod. Sunlight streamed in. Tailgate could feel a breeze. He was a small enough bot, and was able to slip through the rip with somewhat ease. Yet even that effort took its toll. A few steps in the churned dirt surrounding the crash, and the bot fell faceplate first.

"Ow." Came the response, muffled by dirt. A grunt of frustration and a twisting of the torso, the bot had righted himself faceplate up. A small blip sounded.

"Well, there's the preliminary damage report. Can't hurt to look." Tailgate raised his right arm up to reveal a small blue screen.

PRELIMINARY DAMAGE REPORT:

YOU'RE AN IDIOT

Tailgate had to look twice.

"What? I'm a what?!" He cried out in disbelief. "What kind of an error report is that?"

"Someone back on Cybertron has a cruel sense of humor! And when I get back there, oh boy, am I going to give him an auditory sensor-full! Why, I-" The bot paused and sighed with realization. No one would search for a missing sanitary worker.

No one.

A sudden idea popped into his head. Vain and pointless. However Tailgate was already invested in it. If someone was going to find his corpse millions of years from now, he did not want them to know of his sad, unimportant life. No, he wanted to be found, and for people to be inspired by what they saw. A crashed ship...a lifeless body...yes, he had an idea. Activating the paint nanobots in his arm to swarm a damaged portion of his left arm, he changed his past.

Were the word "WASTE" had been blown off now stood bold letters. "BOMB DISPOSAL".

That outta make a good story He thought wistfully.

[Deleted]

"We're getting rather good at this, aren't we?"

Without lowering his hand from his optics, Fortress Maximus made an absent-minded noise of acknowledgement.

"What do you mean?" he said. "At crashing shuttles, or intercepting them?"

"Ha! The latter. Have you got it in sight?"

He did. A moment ago the falling shuttle had streaked across the western sky, a white-hot flash that had needled through a layer of cloud before burning out again. Only a trail of smoke marked its passage before it had flickered and vanished. Now it lay somewhere beneath a distant dusty crater.

Maximus stood on a Blue Mountain ridge and critically surveyed the open desert below. At least this shuttle had crashed relatively closely to the Omega Base. Somewhere on the same continent, anyway. The same coast, even. The last shuttle had come down in Russia, straight into a mountain range blanketed in snow. Primus.

"Affirmative," he said. "I've got the wreckage in site. It's about twenty kliks south of my position. Moving in now to investigate."

"I'll let Agent Fowler know. He'll keep people away from it. Be careful out there, Max."

Ratchet's voice went silent over his comm line. Maximus grunted, and after checking that his rifle was fixed to the small of his back he readied himself for the long vault down from the ridge.

When wasn't he.

----

Well, he was wrong.

The blue and grey tank slowed as it pulled up to the crash site, it's engine rumbling. Dust from the drive across the desert coated its flanks. Even as he transformed Maximus was frowning, his hand already on the rifle at his back.

He studied the vessel that lay half-buried in dirt brush. Not a shuttle at all. Looked more like an escape pod. It was the shape that gave it away: like a capsule, ejected from some stricken ship. What metal he could see through the smoke and dust was scorched. Atmospheric reentry had seared it black.

Huh.

Maximus glanced around himself. At least it had come down in an isolated place. With luck no ranchers had spotted its decent. Agent Fowler could only talk so fast about weather balloons and experimental aircraft.

Warily, the big mech circled the wreckage. On the other side of it he saw what he had been expecting to find: a pale figure prone in the dirt. Damaged, perhaps. Just don't be a Decepticon, he thought darkly, his optics narrowed. Anything but a Decepticon. For your sake.

With his rifle held low Maximus came to a halt a short distance away.

"You there," he said. "I'm Fortress Maximus, Autobot Security. Spotted your crash and came to investigate. Please identify yourself."

[Deleted]

Tailgate had started to hum a tune and tap his fingers against his chest to keep a beat in the effort to fight off boredom. He had discovered that his chronometer had been damaged. He could no longer tell time accurately. On this planet, however, that would not be an issue as the he could count the days through the motion of the sun. Yet it made him wonder. The chronometer (according to his error reports) had broken when the exploratory vessel Prescient Dawn was thrust into the strange void following the space bridge malfunction. Telling time in space is difficult without the aid of mechanical time keeping. For all Tailgate knew, he could have been adrift in that escape pod for months and missed the rescue mission. Just his luck, he supposed.

Tailgate had started up a nice melody when it was interrupted by the low hum of an engine. He stopped humming immediately. By all accounts, this planet appeared to be organic in nature. Since when did fleshy organic creatures develop mechanical engines? The bot propped himself up in an effort to see the source of the sound, using his elbows to support his body. A great big cloud of dust was charging at him.

Oh Primus, it's some sort of horrific, dust monster that's coming to finish me off Tailgate thought with a start. He had never encountered an organic before. Nor had he learned much about their biology. All he knew is that they were squishy and not as sturdy as mechanical life. Tailgate hoped the squishy part to be true, maybe he could sit on it or something. His answer would come soon as the dust cloud arrived.

And it promptly revealed a tank. Not a Cybertronian tank, that was for sure. It was oddly geometric and somehow more primitive and clunky in appearance. But it was a tank. And then...it transformed. Into a Cybertronian! Tailgate's tension evaporated at once. A fellow inorganic lifeform. He was not so unlucky after all!

Then it opened it's mouth.

"You there. I'm Fortress Maximus, Autobot Security. Spotted your crash and came to investigate. Please identify yourself."

Was he hostile? Tailgate had never fought before. Well, professionally. A scuffle or two between fellow waste disposal units surely did not count against this titan of a bot. In his nervousness, Tailgate began to speak at breakneck speeds.

"Oh my Primus, another Cybertronian! Thank PRIMUS I was scared I was gonna get left behind! Are you the rescue mission? Oh! Are we on a colony world? I thought the Senate frowned upon organic planets as colonies 'cos Nova Prime thinks organics are gross and inferior or whatever. Uh, no offense! I'm sure you have a lovely, dirty, er, homely little planet here. Fortress Maximus, huh? That's a funny name, but um, it fits you, I guess? You look like a walking fort. My name's Tailgate. You're an Auto-what? Is that a cult or something?"

[Deleted]

Maximus stared.

That had not been the reply he had been expecting.

For a moment he went silent as he tried to process what the little bot had said. Rescue mission, colony planet – Nova Prime. Nova Prime? The Expansion era was far before his forging, but even now that particular name was rarely spoken, unless in some sort of a historical context. Had this Tailgate just made a direct connection between the Senate and the infamous Prime?

Frowning, Maximus shouldered his rifle and studied the strange bot a little more closely. He was small and unassuming, with worn white armour that looked battered from the crash. No sign of a serious head injury that might explain his odd behaviour. ’BOMB DISPOSAL’ on one arm. Well, those bots were known to be a little on the rattled side to begin with. It came arm in arm when your job was to negotiate with explosives.

And then there was the Autobot thing.

“Hold on,” said Maximus. He held up one hand to halt the friendly chatter. His frown deepened. “A cult?. Are you unfamiliar with the Autobot faction? Autonomous robots? The First Face? Optimus Prime? Any of this ring a bell? Wait.”

Nonplussed, the big mech eyed him. “Are you a Neutral by any chance?”

[Deleted]

"Neutral? Neutral what? Like, neutral color? I mean, I guess white is pretty neutral but blue is considered a cooler color....aaaand I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant, did you?"

Tailgate was certain that those frown lines in Fortress Maximus where so deep and permanent that if he frowned any harder he would rip the space-time continuum. It was obvious this was a no-nonsense kind of bot.

"Uhm, I'm not aware of any factions, per se. And what's this about a first face? Does that mean in the distant past Cybertronians didn't have faces? Weird!"

Fortress Maximus was quite an imposing character. Unnerved, calculated, and strangely calm. Tailgate was unsure how to handle this situation. The constant throbbing of pain did not help him concentrate either. He was unsure what this Maximus wanted to hear in a response. How was Tailgate to know if his next reply meant a pounding into the dirt? He idly began to draw circles in the dirt with a finger while lowering his gaze.

"Optimus Prime? Can't say I've heard of him before. Unless...did Nova Prime die? Is that his replacement or something? How is the Senate taking this? Will-" Tailgate was interrupted as his angry ventilation system protested this light speed speech by inducing a cough.

"Eh, nevermind. It probably doesn't affect me anyway...I'm just a-" Tailgate hesitated "normal guy."

[Deleted]

The little bot didn't seem hostile. But the more he said, the more bewildered Maximus grew.

Tailgate was not aware of any factions? Did Nova Prime die?

Maximus watched his finger trace an aimless pattern in the sand. The gesture seemed meek, almost melancholic. Slowly, he swung his rifle off his shoulder and returned it to the clip at the small of his back. Somehow he got the sense that he would not be needing it.

He was beginning to think that what he needed was an archivist.

This called for a different tack. With effort, Maximus let a little of the bluntness seep from his tone and tried to shift from a combat ready stance into something less imposing. Wasn't easy.

"Have you been in stasis recently?" he said. "Because... Nova Prime died a long time ago. I'm no historian, I can't give you an exact date, but it had to have been around six million years ago. Optimus Prime is the current leader of the Autobots. Wait. You don't know Optimus? What about Orion Pax?"

[Deleted]

The finger stopped mid stroke.

"Wow, that landing must have bumped me up good," Tailgate tittered nervously. "Auditory sensors must be damaged. Thought you said six million years, there. What a laugh."

Tailgate hoped, dear Primus, he hoped that this bot with the emotional range of a teaspoon had suddenly and inexplicably developed a sense of humor. To be honest it would not have been the weirdest thing to occur in Tailgate's life.

"I don't know any Optimuses or Orions. Or what an Autobot is." He said blankly. Tailgate was gripped with a sudden fear. What if Maximus wasn't joking? He could feel his spark tighten in anxiety. The bot's field, before in healthy bloom, now shrunk to a quivering, tightly wound cloak around him.

"Stasis? No I was on....there was a...my chronometer! And then...It feels like it was yesterday!" Tailgate had begun to sound a little hysterical with his incoherent babbling.

"Prescient Dawn?! Space bridge boom!? NO ONE NOTICED WE WERE GONE!?" Tailgate's frenzied panic hit a fever pitch. He had not even realized he had stood up. His wobbly joints were not okay with that, and so in confusion the bot grabbed onto Maximus to brace himself.

He looked Maximus straight into the optics.

"Please tell me you're joking, right? A funny prank? Is someone recording this? There's no way...no way....six million years."

[Deleted]

Maximus stiffened. His tolerance for being touched was at rock bottom these days.

But the little bot clinging to his leg had clearly been rattled by the crash and was having difficulty standing. And he was babbling nonsense too – prescient dawn? Space bridge explosion? Neither meant anything to Maximus.

But both his field and his manner were awash in hysteria. If this was all an act to lower his defences, then Tailgate was doing a very good job of it.

Maximus steeled himself, and resisted the urge to pick up the bot by the scruff of his neck.

“The Prescient Dawn?” he said. “Never heard of it. Is that – was that a ship? Was it the ship your escape pod originated from?”

Maximus glanced at it. The pod continued to smoulder beneath a layer of dirt.

“And yes, six million years has passed since Nova’s time. This is not a prank. I don’t prank.”

[Deleted]

Such a blatant, uncaring tone that Fortress Maximus was using was upsetting Tailgate. The fact that he was hysteric was not helping.

"Yes, yes it's a ship you ninny, it was a great fraggin' big one, too!" The stress was causing Tailgate's vocal processors to crack. He began backing up away from the Autobot as his frustration rose

"Explorer class, almost 5 miles long!" Tailgate spread his arms apart to emphasize his point. The bot vaguely remembered he had heard about some Rungian theory dealing with the stages of grief or something like that. One of them had been anger. Tailgate was not handling this stage very well. It was unfortunate he did not remember the next few stages for it would have prepared him for what was coming.

"I..I don't need this attitude from you right now, Maxie," Tailgate barely managed to squeeze those words out.

"If only I'd been on the other end of the ship, I'd be...y'know I don't need this! I'm gonna go find someone competent and then we'll sort this out!" Tailgate said in a huff. With a pivot he turned away from Fortress Maximus.

“And yes, six million years has passed since Nova’s time. This is not a prank. I don’t prank.”

There it was. Tailgate did not want to hear it, but it had already sunk in.

"Six...million...years..." He whispered. "Six....million...urp." Tailgate stuttered as he had tried to walk away with dignity but he failed to remember he could barely walk. The shock of the time jump had taken its mental toll as well. The bot took one step and fainted. He crumpled into a pile with his face plate buried in the dirt and back end in the air.

[Deleted]

Maximus was honest enough to admit when he was out of his depth.

If he had investigated the crash site and encountered a hostile force, he would have engaged it. If he had run across a strange Autobot he would have greeted them and asked for their ID code, and then breathed down their neck until they provided it. Hell, even if he had found nothing but a wrecked corpse he would have removed the body and called in a salvage team.

But this...

Maximus had no idea what this was.

Nonplussed, the big mech stared down at Tailgate as the poor bot finally collapsed, overwhelmed by the situation. Well. Damn.

With effort, he lowered himself down to one knee at Tailgate's side. He reached out and awkwardly shook the unconscious bot by one shoulder.

"Hey," he said gruffly. "Hey. Hey! Are you functional? Wake up."

He had been called iron-hearted before. Maximus knew it wasn't an inaccurate description. But even he could recognise that this mech was in some kind of distress. But it was bizarre. Tailgate's shock at the news of Nova had been as severe as if he had just learned about the death of a friend. Even greater was his shock at the passage of time that had occurred between then and now. Which almost suggested that -

Maximus felt his spark run cold.

He touched the side of his helm. "Ratchet? This is Fortress. Uh. I think I'm going to need your assistance here..."

[Deleted]

Tailgate was vaguely aware that Fortress Maximus was shaking him. Fortress Maximus's words came to Tailgate muffled and out of focus. It was enough to slowly bring Tailgate back to his senses. As his consciousness drifted back, his body stretched out and flattened, his metal grinding stubbornly against the hard desert dirt.

Muffled moaning began to emanate from the face down bot. If one had listened closely enough they could have made out what Tailgate was saying. Occasionally a clear word could be understood as Tailgate whined louder. Suddenly Tailgate whipped his head up from the dirt.

"I wanna go home, Maxie," Tailgate whimpered. "I'm too tired for this scraaaaap..." With a plunk his head hit the ground and the bot continued to burble into the dirt.

[Deleted]

As he lay in the dirt, Tailgate might sense that there was not one, but two mechs crouched beside him now.

Ratchet looked over at Maximus.

"Maxie?" he said. "Maxie? Did you hit this poor bot in the head?"

"I didn't hit anyone," said Maximus testily. He pointed at Tailgate's back. "I told you, he's talking nonsense. He's talking like he's... missed out on six million years of existence."

Ratchet frowned. He had arrived by ground bridge only minutes before. Maximus had been quick to bring him up to speed on the current predicament, and the curious puzzle of the distraught white robot at the heart of it.

He scratched his chin. "Hm. And you said he was talking about an explorer-class ship called the Prescient Dawn before he passed out?"

"Yeah, that's right. Sorry, but that name means nothing to me."

"It was long before your time. It was long before many of our times. Tailgate. Tailgate!"

This time it was Ratchet who laid a hand on the little bot's shoulder. He shook gently, but firmly. "Tailgate, are you listening? I'm Chief Medical Officer Ratchet of the local Autobot base. Are you damaged? Because if you aren't, I'm going to need you to sit up and answer a few questions for me. In return, I'll do what I can do tell you about what happened to your ship - at least, what we thought happened to it."

[Deleted]

The arrival of the second bot was largely ignored by the incoherent Tailgate until the stranger laid a hand on him. Just like Fortress Maximus, this newcomer wanted information. Though the new bot was just as blunt as Maximus at least he was somewhat gentler. Tailgate did not have a variety of options in this situation. And he did not wish to incite the wrath of these odd bots. His body just could not handle any more physical punishment.

Tailgate tried to get his body to get up but the effort took more energy than anticipated. The small bot's limbs were suddenly too heavy to lift. Error messages continued to blip up onto his HUD stating he was in dire need of recharging. Tailgate's optics were threatening to close on him in.

"Mmph," he whimpered, turning his head sideways so his mouthplate was free from the dirt and able to broadcast sound more clearly. "I'm listening."

[Deleted]

Ratchet patted his shoulder.

"Good mech," he said.

He glanced over at Maximus. "Fortress, could you do me a favour? Go to his escape pod, pull out the port side cowling beneath the front viewscreen, beneath the heat shields, and look for a box about this big, probably silver and yellow striped."

He gave a measurement with hands.

Maximus frowned. "The flight recorder."

"Yes, exactly. Scan it, download what you can, packet it, and send it to me. Include the serial number if you are able to find it."

"Got it." The big mech heaved to his feet and walked back to the buried escape pod.

Ratchet turned back to Tailgate.

"All right," he said. "I appreciate that you're likely exhausted and in shock. I will treat you as best I can. But before I can even consider taking you with us back to our base I need you to tell me about your ship. You were a crew member of the Prescient Dawn, correct? What happened to the ship that caused you to eject from it in an escape pod?"

[Deleted]

"I don't know, I wasn't on the bridge," Came the slow reply. "We were supposed to be going through the space bridge...but something went wrong."

All kinds of possibilities swirled through Tailgate's mind. He did not know much about how space bridges, or ground bridges for that matter, even worked. Something to do with creating temporary wormholes that allowed ships to bypass the speed of light by jumping from one sector of space to another. Or something like that. It made his brain hurt the last time he tried to comprehend that.

The Fortress Maximus character had wandered over to the smoldering wreckage at the instruction of the newcomer. Tailgate hoped he would stay conscious long enough to hear what was on that black box, for he was just as curious to know what exactly happened.

Tailgate realized he had been lost in thought and forgot to finish answering Ratchet. The bot fought to gather his thoughts back together.

"Ship ripped apart, inwards and outwards at the same time. Felt weird. Section of ship I was in had only one working escape pod...I was the only one there."