Flashback – “Scorched Earth” – Closed

[Deleted]

It’s amazing, Barricade thought as he watched the Autobot retch transfluid into the ash and carbon-seared earth, that he’s alive actually.

The Decepticon fighter pilot was carrying an energon rifle, munitions-class, heavy-grade plate-piercing – thumbing the safety thoughtfully. The Autobot was an aerialist. Obviously, one of Yellow Squad. Barricade clicked the safety off while he tried to place the mech’s armor color and configuration – thick plating and turbines built into the bottom-heavy pedes, mangled wings turned down at his back, long arms. It wasn’t until the Bot half-blind, dizzy, dragged himself to his knees and looked up through the targeting HUD of the rifle interface that Barricade placed him.

Shattered or not, the quad-optics were a custom job.

Barricade subspaced the gun and looked over his shoulder, past his wheel mounts to the landing ship.

The rest of the Decepticon chalk was, of course, busy two-hundred meters out. They were in the process of setting up the mining equipment in what was now the semi-radioactive crater of Outpost BR7. Barricade was, of course, just the pilot and sometime field LT so he wasn’t needed with the body of the Con miner technicians who were well schooled in their jobs. They were complaining, of course, that if the base had been captured and not destroyed then the subterranean energon could have been mined in comfort, but their comfort was not Barricade’s concern after the Decepticons had dedicated literally eight futile mega-cycles to the capturing this position. In less than three cycles he’d made a crater out this place and he’d never fired a shot.

So.

In the spirit of not wasting resources Barricade moved down the smoking hillside to the pockmark of indented earth where Yellow Squad’s prize jet had crashed and burned. The other mech didn’t seem to be terribly clear on what he was looking at so Barricade kept his tone, his voice, the pitch of his EMF very, very gentle.

“Aquila.” The infiltrator took a knee just outside of arms reach. The deep red of his optics flickered. “It’s Aquila isn’t it?”

[aquila]

"Slag, do you think the commander's offline?" said a familiar voice.

Aquila said nothing. He couldn't say anything. Every attempt at mustering a few choice words was met with a disagreeing voicebox. He saw nothing as his optics had yet to come back online. But it didn't take long for them to flicker back on. Instead of the vibrant blue, they lacked the shine and appeared dulled. His HUD came back online as well, but flickered and became distorted along with his vision. His secondary pair of optics were shattered and were essentially useless currently. Upon closing them, the distortion and the flickering ceased. But his vision wasn't back to normal. No, everything was a blurred, dull gray. He could barely even make out the vague shapes that stood around him. He counted four. The smallest knelt down in front of him and placed an amorphous hand on his shoulder guard.

Live on!

Live on!

Live on!

The familiar words from the familiar voice echoed. The first iteration, and the loudest, snapped the downed 'Bot back to reality...more or less, while subsequent iterations reverberated in the back of his mind, those last words from a fallen lover hung for mere moments before disappearing into the recesses of his memory core. The shadowed shapes thinned out until they were mere wisps, rising away like the ash and carbon dust that remained in the area. The supposedly female shadow vanished as well, replaced by the all-too-familiar sight of a gun barrel.

Aquila quickly ran a quick diagnostic scan of his systems. The results were far less than ideal. Thrusters and boosters, offline. Weapons systems, offline. Battle computer, offline. Fabricators, offline. His body had suffered critical damage and one arm was currently useless. The other, however, was at 28% power. Luckily for him, the owner of the gun cast it away in a subspace pocket and looked away. There was no doubt about it. Even in his currently dazed and disoriented state, he recognized him as a Decepticon. Had his fabricators remained online, the 'Con would have found himself missing a lower half. But that was not the case.

And then he spoke to him. He knew his name and gave off a very gentle EMF. Despite this, Aquila knew not to trust him. Certain Cybertronians were experts at faking EMFs. "The frag wants to know?" Aquila spat, his speech slurred from just coming out of stasis and from his confusion. Despite his vision and sense being almost back to normal. Everything was still slightly blurred, and the 'Bot felt like he was going to fall over and pass out again. It was more than obvious that he had seen better days.

Much better.

[Deleted]

Barricade got chatter from Frenzy. “No, it’s a survivor.” Surprise. A laugh chittering through his carrier link. “Yeah, I know.”

He looked back to Aquila, who was looking at him – at least as best as one could after surviving what he had – with dim, animal malevolence.HE was clearly trying to gauge how damaged he was and whether or not he could, somehow, overcome the fact that a good 75% of his frame work had survived an Autobot orbital strike and attack the infiltrator. Barricade had no doubt that the massive, angry, direly wounded, Autobot would have gutted him for his subcutaneous neural-circuitry in an instant were he well – but Barricade had seen to his lack of health.

Specifically, three cycles ago Barricade had come in on the far side of the planet with a Decepticon supply and relief ship. He’d promptly vanished from the base and deployed his cassette partner, Frenzy, to the task of infiltrating the Autobot Outpost BR7. Barricade busied himself by hunting down and killing an Autobot courier, torturing from the unfortunate glitch his carrier signals. It was a simple plan really. Frenzy got in, hacked their comms, Barricade supplied the courier code and falsified voice recognition and faked a call to Autobot control. You see, Barricade happened to know that some Autobots were desperate, some were hardcases and some were desperate hard-cases.

Like the Autobot currently commanding the battle platform in orbit…

“Barricade,” said the infiltrator, to answer Aquila’s choking question. “I’m a Decepticon LT and you should really be dead.” He tilted his head. “You have any idea, Aquila, what it is that should have killed you?”

[aquila]

Although his vision itself was more or less back to normal, his HUD wasn't. Instead of its usual display mode, it was flickering a distorted red. The numerous system warning alerts would not shut off and it was only serving to fuel his growing dazed rage. In his current condition he couldn't even lift his body off of the ground. It was even noticeable that he had difficulty holding his head up to glare at Barricade. Come to think of it the currently useless arm of his was hanging by a few wires from the elbow down. Either it was sheer willpower, or perhaps the numbness of his other arm that allowed him to ignore the obvious power deficit to even keep his chest up off the scorched ground.

"Barricade, huh," he said. The massively damaged Autobot recalled several encounters with a Decepticon by that name. Something about several missions targeting groups in which he was present. In his mind, he growled. Even his memories were in a jumble. He had definitely taken more than his fair share of hits to the head within the past few rotational cycles. He could not recall the most recent events, but he could recall what happened a little while before that, albeit in a somewhat fragmented form.

"I should be dead, huh?" he growled at the Decepticon lieutenant. Fragmented memories of the events leading to the massive trauma he suffered played themselves in a most distorted form in his head. "Good question," he said when asked what it was that should have killed him. "Between the waves 'Cons attacking the base and having...the Pit opened right on top of us, I can't exactly recall what," he slurred. Something about an orbital bombardment. Was it the commander? Or was it a Decepticon ship that had taken out the battle platform that did it? He had no idea, and quite frankly it hurt his head even more trying to wrack his brains over the details. Feeling really uncomfortable in the position in which he was currently keeping himself in, he tried to force his arm to push him up and onto his aft.

Wrong move. He was now leaking more energon and had stasis'd himself. His large form went crashing face first into the scorched earth again.

[Deleted]

“Aaaaand you knocked yourself out.”

Barricade ex-vented and took a seat on the slope of the ditch, pulling a small energon ration from his subspace and cracking it open while he waited for his lone survivor to wake up. The Decepticon LT looked around a bit, lazily inspecting the still smoldering almost perfect mile-wide fallout zone that stretched out beyond him. The radiation wasn’t aproblem, though organic species might have argued a little bit, their health wasn’t exactly a priority on the Decepticon (or Autobot) agenda. Especially this far outside civilized space. He arched his neck back to look to the sky, the far distant spec that he knew to be the Autobot orbital ship, even now leaving this sector and notching it off as necessary collateral.

He smiled, lifted his energon ration in a toast and said, “Thank you, commander, you stupid paranoid self-annihilating spawn of a glitch. You reprehensibly stupid fragger.” Then took a swallow of fuel and pulled his rifle from his subspace again waited for the other mech to stir again. Ten kliks later he did. The infiltrator arched a brow ridge. “Hey, there. Welcome back.” He got up, moving slightly down the hill and kneeling near enough to show him the open energon ration. “You should probably drink some of this. It’s got medical nanites laced through it. Here.” He took a demonstrative drink and offered the ration again. “Not poisoned.”

Unlike the energon ration Frenzy sabotaged on your base to trigger that bio-hazard alert. That was *extremely* poisoned.

“Here, sit up if you can, mech. What do you remember?”

[aquila]

It felt like an insanely short amount of time from when his vision went black to when he awoke again. All systems were still critical, and a low energon warning had added itself to the infernal din that was going on in his head. The Decepticon LT had not moved from his spot when he awoke, but had done so a few moments later, offering an energon ration. If his legs were working, he would have been kicking his aft with them, but like the situation with his arms, that was out of the question. He eyed the energon ration he was offering suspiciously, as though it had been tainted with a substance that would surely devour him from the inside out. But as a gesture of goodwill, Barricade had sampled some of the ration to make it clear that there was nothing vile inside.

His refusal to accept help from a Decepticon, held in place only by sheer force of will, eventually gave way to biomechanical needs. The near-dead Aerialbot swiped the ration from Barricade and greedily devoured it, as though he had just weathered an extremely long energon shortage. To his amazement, Barricade wasn't lying about the medical nanites. Slowly but surely, the nanites patched up the leaks in his system, and one-by-one, the more minor alerts disappeared, though the more obvious vital ones still remained. Aquila was more or less stabilized, despite still needing some serious repairs. Of course, that was when the questions started again. Well, it wasn't like Aquila was going anywhere anytime soon.

"Well let's see..." he began. "We were deployed as reinforcements on this primitive rock to keep you lot from capturing it."

---

"So why are we here again?" asked Cloudbreaker. "It's a damn primitive jungle rock. What sort of "strategic" asset would be out in the boondocks anyway?"

"Listen," Aquila answered. "I don't like being stuck out here any more than you do. But orders are orders, so just bear with it until we pull out of here, kay?"

"Oh alright, Commuhnder," he sighed dramatically.

Aquila playfully rapped his servos on Cloudbreaker's helm. "Come on. When this is over," he said as he looked at the rest of the Aquila squadron, "I'll buy us all a few rounds of High Grade, whaddya say?"

"Oh please," Wingstorm chimed in. "We all know you'd drink them dry. You'd just be buying practically all the rounds for yourself."

The other two, Skytalon and Freefall broke out into laughter, joined in y Wingstorm and Cloudbreaker. Aquila himself couldn't help but laugh as well. But their laughter was cut short when the base alarms sounded off. A Decepticon vessel had managed to slip through and offload it's contingent of 'Cons, who were now making way for the base. "Look alive. Looks like they're bringing the fight straight to us," Aquila said as he was examining the relayed visuals. "Yellow 3 and 5, you two will come in fast, break up their offensive with a few bombing runs."

"Understood sir," Wingstorm and Cloudbreaker confirmed in unison before stepping outside.

"Yellow 2, 4, and I will escort and then drop in once bombing is completed and proceed to mop up what's left," Aquila finished.

"Understood, sir," confirmed Freefall and Skytalon. Skytalon followed after the other two, with Aquila behind him. However, the Aerialbot was stopped temporarily by a femme who had decided hitch a ride on him, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek.

"Hey hey, Freefall," Aquila said in a somewhat stern voice. "What was that?"

"Oh come on," Freefall pouted and then winked. "Nothing wrong with a good luck kiss is there?"

"No, but please, remember what we're here for," he said.

"Don't worry, commander," she chuckled. "I know when to be professional."

"Atta girl," he chuckled as well. "Now let's go. We have a mission, after all."

The two of them met up with the rest of Yellow squadron. The bombers for the mission, Cloudbreaker and Wingstorm, backflipped into the air and transforming into their alt forms and rocketing straight up, followed by their escorts.

[Deleted]

Barricade, listening to this, would have said he was not having trouble reacting to Aquila’s slightly drunken, mildly staggered re-telling of his last hours before his own troops incinerated his whole unit … but Barricade was an accomplished liar, so it wasn’t that hard. Also, he was streaming his audio live to Frenzy who was chittering hysterically down his carrier link to the infiltrator. Cade didn’t need to ask why; he’d been in close contact with his partner throughout the entire time frame that Aquila was describing after all. The ‘Decepticon vessel’ which had prompted Aquila’s team to take off had been breaking rank, point of fact, after Barricade had given fairly rigid orders that there be no attacks on the Autobot’s turf.

::Did that team ever get back?:: Barricade queried boredly. ::Because I want to kill them if they did. There were supposed to be NO survivors on their side, after all.::

Frenzy was still laughing though and being summarily unhelpful. Aquila was still talking Barricade would have complained if the stupid gear-slipped Auto-scrap wasn’t giving him literally everything right now. Clearly, he’d suffered some extreme head trauma… or perhaps he was just word-vomiting as a shock-mechanism. Understandable, considering he’d watched most of his squad burn alive, or heard them burn alive. Funnily enough, the Bots in the middle of the blast had been kill instantly and painlessly. Aquila’s unfortunate squad had been literally on the very edge of the blast radius and therefore probably had been ripped limb from limb rather an vaporized.

Sad, unlucky, spawn of a glitch.

“Go on,” said Barricade gently. “What happened after you and your squad left to deal with the Decepticon bomber?”

[aquila]

Aquila eyed Barricade suspiciously, as though something was seriously up, but he continued.

---

As they neared the target zone, Cloudbreaker and Wingstorm broke off to begin their bombing run while Aquila, Freefall, and Skytalon remained hidden above the clouds. Cloudbreaker and Wingstorm dove down below the clouds and towards the ‘Cons, releasing their payloads. Multiple explosions erupted within the bulk of the ‘Con forces. The amount of debris and parts flying around confirmed as much. From high up, Aquila, Freefall, and Skytalon could see the explosions, which soon ceased.

“That’s our cue,” Aquila said as they dove down through the clouds and into the fireworks at full afterburner, joining up with Cloudbreaker and Wingstorm. Upon reaching the charred ground they transformed and began their attacks. Aquila’s long blade and short blade flipped forward as he rocketed into the first Eradicon, running him through the spark chamber with his long blade. He twisted his arm, turning the long blade horizontal and tore outward. He then spun around and flew forward at another one, stabbing this one through the spark chamber as well and pulling out to bisect another one behind him. He held both of his arms out to the sides as his jets angled opposite and fired off in conjunction with his boosters. Aquila began to spin around as he moved to a larger concentration of the Eradicon forces, essentially becoming a bladed tornado. Parts of many an Eradicon flew about from his blades. The state of chaos and confusion caused by the bombings worked well to the Aquila Squadron’s advantage, enabling them to take out large numbers of the enemy forces.

While Aquila continued hacking and slashing at the hostiles, Freefall kept her distance high up, picking off whoever miraculously survived the others' close range onslaughts with her sniper rifle. A single round for a single straggler while dodging the occasional projectile. A rather large ‘Con managed to get the jump on Aquila, only to find his spark chamber penetrated by a single sniper round and fell lifeless to the ground. "Thanks for that," Aquila said with a quick glance at the squadron's sniper. Eventually the last of the Decepticon contingent had been eliminated. Aquila confirmed mission complete, and issued an order to return to base. They took off and started back to base. With under a mile left before their return to the base, thundercracks broke through the sky as something tore through the base, causing it to explode. The Aquila Squadron stopped where they were.

"What the...what on Cybertron is going on?" Freefall gasped. Several more thundercracks, and several more explosions.

"They're firing on the base!" shouted Cloudbreaker. "It's an orbital strike!"

"That frag are they doing?" Aquila yelled. "Everyone, this area isn't safe. Fall back at once! Fall-ba-"

A shell impacted the ground below them as another explosion blossomed. Already the Aquila Squadron was retreating, but to no avail. Wingstorm was the first to become caught in the blast, vaporized. Cloudbreaker and Skytalon ended up being half-vaporized, half-torn limb from limb. The remaining two, Aquila and Freefall, tried to escape the blast at full thruster output. Freefall must have realized the futility of their efforts, and instead made the ultimate sacrificed. As her lower half was consumed by the explosion, she tried to give Aquila the extra push until she too had been vaporized. Aquila ended up in the zone that would have seen any normal Cybertronian torn limb from limb. The thrashing he received from the blast should have done the same to him, as well as his crash into what was now a black carbon crater in the ground, but he managed to avoid dismemberment despite all of his systems going into critical as he was knocked unconscious by the impact, the last words he recalled were those of Freefall as she begged, no, commanded him to live on.

---

"And here I am, in this sorry slag state, talking to you," Aquila spat, glaring menacingly at the Decepticon LT. He clearly still had some fight in his spark, but his body had given up on him ever since the crash.

[Deleted]

Barricade didn’t say anything for a moment, just quietly observed the other mechanoid’s agitation, the flicker and spark of burnt circuitry in the scorched rifts blasted in the Autobot’s armor. Aquila’s EM field was a violent, poisonous twist of spoiled war-lust, this shapeless, directionless rage which he seemed entirely happy to aim at Barricade – regardless of the field LT’s consistent effort at not killing him in the crater he’d found him in. It was 50% a grave anyway and Barricade had never intended for there to be survivors... but there was something in the other mech. Barricade was familiar with it, the tang an flex of it – what grief looked like. What shock was even buried under whatever layers of bravado the aerialist might have.

Aquila had, after all, just described with no discernible emotional response what so ever, the violent and horrific demise of his partner, Freefall. If Barricade had been a less discerning mech, less inclined to see the arrangement of damage as it manifested in others… he might have assumed that the glitch-fragged slag-sucker had no emotional attachment to his team whatsoever. No words of grief, no inflection – only the words and that ugly pitch in his electromagnetics to whisper hint of how close this mech was to an edge…

And Barricade liked to push mecha off edges.

“The Autobot cruiser, the one that fired on your base, it’s already left orbit,” said Barricade very quietly still, the dim red of his stare, steady and unwavering. His EMF was a warm, long-wave ripple, calming and unobtrusive. “There was no Decepticon assault. Only a single ship within your enemy lines. And yet… your commanders opened fire on you and yours and scorched the earth of all of you.” The infiltrator waited. “Do you understand that Decepticons didn’t do this, Aquila? Do you have any idea why they would kill you and Cloudbreak and Skytalon and literally every other soul on that base?”

He held his gaze. “Do you know why Freefall died?”

[aquila]

Of course, given the relatively large amount of trauma suffered from the recent events, not all of Aquila was "there." As such, his EM field was all over the place, a veritable chaotic mixture of several emotions, but the single strongest one currently felt was that of anger and confusion. The disorientation of the sudden bombardment, the loss of his lover along with the rest of his team, and both the physical and mental damage from his injuries had all worked together to perpetuate this. It was obvious that the realization that his entire team, including his lover, had been killed had not fully hit him yet. He remembered joking around with them as he always had just a few hours ago. He remembered seeing them burn up within the explosion and his lover trying to push him out of the blast radius. But that realization had yet to take effect.

It was then that Barricade spoke some more, his unmoving, unwavering red optics digging into Aquila's own. "The cruiser? He couldn't mean..." he began to think. As quickly as he spoke those words, Aquila had gotten riled up. His mental state was clearly compromised. "Don't frag with me!" he shouted, clenching his only functional fist. "There's no way they'd fire on us, not while the base was secure!"

Barricade struck a nerve.

[Deleted]

“I’m not,” said Barricade, his tone absolutely flat. “Fragging with you I mean.” He moved to kneel a bit closer to the fallen Autobot, bracing one elbow against his knee and leaning down until he was on eye-level with the wrecked Autobot. He made no hostile move, no intrusive gesture, only continued to hold the mech’s unsteady gaze, seeking to make himself the center of the mech spinning attention. “After all …” He gestured toward the massive and smoking crater beyond the debris in which the jet had landed at the edge of the devastation zone. “It’s not as though I can fake the evidence, Aquila. And, frankly, you saw it in a lot closer detail than I did.”

Barricade let that hang a moment, reading the Autobot’s reaction. After a moment he exvented and continued, voice somewhat flat.

“To be brutally frank, Autobot, I have nothing to gain from lying to you. The planet is ours and the Autobots have left orbit and abandoned this sector on a vector bearing to the Siminazi systems. They, apparently, have better things to do than squabble over an energon supply and I have better things to do than explain their scorched earth policies to you.” Barricade turned slightly, pulling a medi-dose from his subspace, holding the cylinder up in front of the Autobot. “Pure dose repair nanites. Yours if you want. Bottom line: Your commanding officers ordered a strike and watched this anthill scorch from orbit. Then they left. Your friends are ash, if that, and it’s my opinion that I’ve never heard a better reason to fragging switch signia’s in my whole life.”

He set the medi-dose on the ground between them.

“Your choice.”

[aquila]

With ragged venting, Aquila remained more or less silent. If looks could kill, Aquila may have very well had daggers come out of his optics and stab out Barricade's. The Decepticon had a point. At the moment, there was no evidence that foul play was involved. But then again, considering Aquila's present state, he was absolutely in no position to play detective. Aquila still didn't trust the Decepticon right in front of him. Something about him reeked of suspicion and there was always the likelihood that he actually did have something to do with it all.

Aquila needed to survive. He was not about to offline on some primitive rock. He wanted answers, and he was going to get them one way or another, with or without help. The first stop after all of this was to be the command vessel that was in orbit around the planet. But first thing was first, Aquila grabbed the medi-dose that Barricade had laid down between them and greedily drank. The fallen Autobot had made his choice. He was going with him. The sparks of his comrades and his mate would not rest until he could find closure.

The now-former-Autobot coughed as the nanites began to take effect. He stretched his neck side to side as they patched up nearly every leak in his systems. It was an effective first-aid, but he would require extensive repairs onboard a Decepticon vessel equipped to deal with such. "Take me...with you," he rasped.

[Deleted]

Other mechanoids might have needed a little more persuading than that. But Barricade had been listening in on inter-Autobot radio for a few days before he and Frenzy got high command to nuke their own base; he had an idea what Aquila was like. Straight forward war-dog type, soldier and fighter, good leader, cared about his team, all the marks of an ace aerialist and 100% the type to whom ideological loyalty meant nothing. His friends were dead. Friends and cohort and comrades were words of value to a mech like Aqulia; cause, honor, Prime, victory, and duty were not words that factored in.

His friends were dead; his cause would be avenging them. The Autobots pulled the trigger.

In terms of ironic Autobot defeats, Barricade would have to rank ‘accidentally nuking our own base’ as a high light. In their defense, they had no way of knowing that the biological-weapon alert from the planet wasn’t real. They did see Decepticons mobilizing and all the security code necessary to alert them of a priority target had been supplied. Really. They’d followed protocol, considering every Autobot on base was supposedly dead of a viral outbreak and they had nothing to lose but precious supplies to the enemy.

But Aquilia didn’t know that, nor would he likely care. The bottomline was an Autobot CO somewhere in orbit, got a string of numbers and a comm-call, then followed protocol to the letter and fried a base full of healthy Autobots. Collateral. It had been a skeletal crew after all and the energon deposit near to two thirds depleted. Easy math. Never the less…

“Just to be clear,” said Cade, “are you swearing loyalty to Megatron? Or to the possibility of killing quite a lot of Autobots in the immediate future? Either would be fine, considering they’re synonymous.”

[aquila]

It wasn't so much persuasion as it was a matter of life and death. Aquila really only had two choices; stay on this primitive rock and wait for death 's embrace, or join the Decepticon cause and live to fight another day. His loyalties with the Autobots were strong, but the only anchors that held those loyalties in place were his squadmates, and Mobius. The death of his squad shattered the chains of on anchor, and Mobius' silence as a result of his absence, an error that neither one of them could either foresee nor control, weakened the other.

No one knew the plan set into motion by Barricade and Frenzy. It was a contingency plan carried out in error. That false biohazard warning was the crux of their plan, and it succeeded. The infiltrator wiped out the base, claimed what was left of the Energon reserves, and gained a new Seeker for the Decepticon cause. "Well...in that case...count me in," he rasped, voicing his new allegiance with the Decepticons as Eradicons closed in, lifting up the downed Seeker and moving to bring him on board their ship for extensive repairs.

It was a fiery end to a chapter in his life, yet the devastation lingered on. He was forever a changed bot. Anguish and confusion would be wrought in the next few cycles as he struggled to recover.