Flashback - Central Logistics - Closed

[Deleted]

[[Polyhex. Office of Central Logistics. Early war]]

High Councilor Ratbat was unofficially dead and that was the way he liked it.

The transition to Decepticon rule in Polyhex had not been orderly, despite his best designs. The notice he had been given was scarce, the targets of underclass wrath, many. The assault had been in enough force to make the collapse of Polyhex's defense force realistic. It had also done a significant amount of damage.

Somebody had blown up most of his local corporate headquarters. His estate had been dislodged from its perch and dropped into the smelting pool along with most of the highest-caste residential areas, although that had happened many orns before the final assault. The groundbridge complex had been barely saved from the undisciplined mob despite direct orders not to destroy it. The minicon colony had fled to the moons. The High Council promised order would be restored, but the old order had been so utterly wiped away it seemed impossible.

The parts of RatCorp the Decepticons could reach in Polyhex and Kaon had been dismembered into dozens of workers collectives, left suddenly adrift. One of the major wheels in the vast machine that was the Cybertronian economy simply stopped turning, uncoordinated and beheaded. Everybody knew that there would be nothing left after the Decepticons had passed through.

Everyone was wrong.

Fuel my army, Ratbat had been ordered. And he had smiled and slid Decepticon Central Logistics into place as if it had always been there. It was amazing what cooperation Megatron's glyph could unlock. How easy it was to stitch an economic empire back together.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Though Ratbat was not at all keen about word of his survival getting out past a select few.

He doubted the remainder of the High Council had any idea what was going on in the underplazas of Polyhex yet. The groundbridges and warehouses were working, shipping arms from Kaon around the planet and supplying what was swiftly becoming the greatest army on the planet. The gears of war were turning.

And Kaon idiots were throwing wrenches in the works again.

This was not a new problem, though now the idiots were at least nominally on his side. It was, however, something that could no longer be ignored. A particular network in Kaon was siphoning off arms shipments for its own ends. Arms disappeared in Kaon and showed up in the black markets of Simfur. They had been offered to his procurement officers, in a move so brazen it made Ratbat's optics blaze. As if he didn't keep track.

This was not something he could deal with himself, of course. He needed a dedicated agent in Kaon, desperately. In the fragmentary personnel and surveillance files he was still organizing, he had found a mech who looked promising.

Whether he was all his file promised would need to be judged face to face. Kaon mechs were never predictable, and every interaction bore its own slight risk. If the mech had made his groundbridge appointment and followed the directions to the rather non-public office of Central Logistics, he'd be here shortly.

Ratbat glanced down towards the closed door from his high ceiling perch and then returned his attention to his work. He certainly expected Jazz to be on time. He had no use for mechs who could not follow directions.

[Deleted]

Well, Jazz thought as he sprinted up the stairs of the Central Logistics office, that was an adventure.

Jazz had been a bit surprised when he received a message ordering him to Polyhex. It was pretty far out of his usual stomping grounds. Far enough that he'd been given coordinates and passcodes for a groundbridge terminus.

Getting to the groundbridge had not been the trouble. As Jazz had expected from Logistics, his passcodes had been in order and the guards had let him through without a hitch.

The groundbridge equipment itself, on the other hand, had not been so cooperative. It had blown something in a shower of sparks and collapsing space-time a 'klik before Jazz would have stepped into it, and it had taken the engineer a good quarter-breem and a lot of swearing about substandard parts to fix it. Which meant that when Jazz popped out the other side into Polyhex, he was running perilously close to late.

Logistics mechs, Jazz knew from experience, HATED things running late.

Thus, Jazz had annoyed quite a few mechs (and one femme shuttle that he hoped he never had to work with because he was fairly sure another apology wasn't going to cut it) in his mad dash for the correct building. Luckily, the directions had been pixel-precise, and he stood before the required room with a whole thirty nanokliks to spare.

Adventure. Right. Ah well, all's well that ends well.

Jazz vented hard to cool down, stilled his fans, and pinged his ID burst for entry.

[Deleted]

Ratbat admitted to himself that one purpose of the stairs was to make things more difficult for visitors.

This was - had always been - his private office. Inaccessibility was a mild plus. Few knew where it was, and even those few had to make the climb. The progress of the person climbing was shown as a subtle glow traveling around the upper reaches of the room.

He didn't like to be surprised.

The office itself had survived intact, one of his few possessions to make it out without damage. Exquisite mosaics lined its polygonal walls. His titanium ceiling perch remained, and the various displays angled towards it. Set halfway up the wall was the ultimate status symbol - a personal groundbridge only slightly wider than his wingspan. Entirely functional as well as decorative, of course - this office was designed top to bottom to increase his personal efficiency.

He'd been informed of the Kaon transport issues... eventually. Kaon never answered to Polyhex more than grudgingly. Which would be less unacceptable if the disorganized logistics staff there maintained their groundbridge properly. It pleased him that his chosen mech had still made it in time.

The door slid open. He did not bother to come down from the ceiling, but answered the ping with an ID burst of his own. Not his name-glyph, of course, but his function. Central Logistics lived here, and this mech would be made to be of use.

"I'm certain you are wondering why I've asked you here this cycle," he said in a faintly amused tone. His accent was both archaic and unquestionably elite. "I have a task for you, Jazz."

[Deleted]

Jazz tilted his head back, searching for the source of the voice that his audials insisted was up...on the ceiling? He vectored in on it in a klik, spotting the minicon flightframe perched upside down on a ceiling perch.

Wow,/i] he thought, been forever since I've seen a frame like that.

Then the mech's dialect registered, and Jazz's optics zoomed in behind his visor. Not many mechs of that frametype with a archaic accent high-class enough to be frankly ARISTOCRATIC. It pinged his memory banks--so very far back that he had to unarchive the memory--but no, surely it couldn't be....

For no other reason than he was supposed to be DEAD, and if he weren't dead, why the frag would he be on the DECEPTICONS' side...?

But no, it was. Jazz remembered that frame, flitting along surrounded by his retinue when Jazz had been little but a newly-sparked servant-class on Silverlock's estate.

Well. Wasn't that interesting? Jazz wondered if...no, surely Megatron had to know that Senator Ratbat was running Decepticon Central Logistics. The question was...why?

Jazz studiously kept all of this out of his face and voice, letting them project only the attentive efficiency that Central Logistics was notorious for demanding. He nodded and was mildly annoyed that he had to consciously keep his original, most ancient of speech patterns from filtering into his Kaonese accent. "Yes, sir."

[Deleted]

Ratbat's optics ran down the frame of his guest, doing a customary (if subtle) once-over for caste cues. The images he had seen were surprisingly ambiguous, an ambiguity that was even more pronounced in person. Irritating. But Jazz was here precisely because he did not fit into a neat little box.

He was not giving much away, either. Which was a cue in itself... and Ratbat had the sense he'd been identified. It was expected, but not an absolute given - he didn't actually look particularly like the the caricature of him that was standard in Kaon graffiti.

"Lord Megatron has personally charged me with putting the finances and logistics of his army in order. This has required merging numerous petty supply caches and disorganized volunteer efforts into a single, professional, whole. It had not been an easy process, but it is nearly done."

A head tilt. "This task I have for you involves... hold-outs. Some individuals set up little fiefdoms in the earlier chaos. They resent that new efficiencies result in less profit for them. A statistically improbable amount of inventory from our repurposed factories in Kaon has been "lost in transit", and Decepticon-manufactured arms and munitions have turned up in large numbers in black markets elsewhere on the planet. Needless to say, I would like you to investigate this."

Ratbat's holoemitters charged, flicking through a number of still images Soundwave had acquired for him of the alleged culprits. Jazz had likely worked with several of them before, and he watched the mech carefully, trying to gauge his reaction.

"There is a particular group in Kaon that is very used to taking its cut and is still attempting to do so. Or so I believe."

[Deleted]

"Personally charged", huh? Well, well, that WAS interesting. Something Jazz might want to keep an optic on. There were certainly no few Decepticons that would not take kindly to one of the enemy in such a position of power. Jazz couldn't help but be curious how Ratbat had gotten that position. If it were any post less obvious, any responsibility that would NOT come under Megatron's personal purview, Jazz might have been worried about the integrity of the Decepticon hierarchy, but as it was he merely sensed a great story, somewhere in the upper ranks where he'd probably never hear it.

If Central Logistics was Ratbat and if Ratbat was a Decepticon, well...that was fine, then, Jazz supposed.

Jazz examined the images Ratbat showed, as well as the designations. "Have to say that I'm not surprised they're coming up on your radar. Blackround and Stepwise are just plain greedy, Halo's got a frame-mod addiction to pay for, and I think I reported Purelight for skimming myself, once." He gestured to the other two: a blue, spiky-helmed female and a gray-and-blue mech named Cyclex and Forerunner, respectively. "Don't know these two, but haven't been in Sector 12 for awhile."

Jazz turned to look back up at Ratbat. He resisted the urge to turn his head upside down. "Do have to say, though, that Section's pretty lawless by anyone's measure. Might be that they're playing sell and snatch games with us, could be that they've got a leak, could be something else, or a little of everything."

Jazz wasn't sure when his stance tightened up into the almost-military, at-attention stance that was as old as the high-caste servant glyphs he was having to forcibly keep out of his speech. It annoyed him, that even now, so many vorn later, so many vorn of being HIS OWN MECH later, all it took was the a few connections in his matrix to snap him back to pre-programmed habits he thought he'd overwritten.

He shifted, feet coming apart, backstruts loosening, hands releasing each other from their clasp in front of him. "Anything in particular I should look out for?" He dropped the 'sir' just because he could.

[Deleted]

He's certainly not from Kaon.

Ratbat was outright hated by most of the army he was now nominally a part of. That was one reason for his present reclusive state. It was either this or cling to Soundwave, and there were various reasons the Decepticon command wanted him entirely out of sight.

Jazz's reaction, in that context, was extremely unusual. Instead of forcing himself to be polite, Jazz was fighting opposite instincts. This mech had worked with Cybertron's elite. But he was not... certainly not... high caste himself.

Servitor, Ratbat concluded, and resolved to track down the details later. An excellent model type and codebase for his purposes. Good help was always so hard to find, and as such the elite of Cybertron had been required to design their own. There ought to be plenty of unconscious hooks he could exploit. Perfect.

"I would like you to approach this problem with an open mind. You will be my agent on the ground for the duration. While I have very strong suspicions as to what is going on, I do not have perfect information."

Ratbat deliberately forced himself to relax his field, releasing some of his tight control over it to let it normalize . The constant stress he'd been under the last few orns pervaded it, he was sure. This brought the conversation to a slightly less formal level, but that wasn't his true reason for doing it. If his theory was correct, Jazz's field might respond to his on an unconscious level. An easy test, and one that probably would go unnoticed.

" You have a local reputation for getting things done. Determine what is going on and resolve this issue, Jazz. Preferably without causing too much of a fuss. You will have a small expense account and a few emergency contacts, but my ability to provide reliable backup in Kaon will be limited."

Ratbat projected a sophisticated interactive infographic down to Jazz's level. "Here's a more detailed look at the situation. I've attempted to tailor the information to your background, but tell me if you need more or simpler information on a particular point. I'm aware that you've done some supply work."

[Deleted]

<<Oh god, Ratbat, you are so lucky that Jazz can't read minds. He won't notice it other than to see that Ratbat's relaxed, but his field will do the acrobatics that Ratbat's looking for. >>

Logistics had, in the lower Decepticon ranks, a reputation for being prickly. Exacting. Downright brutal at times. Jazz could see where that came from, now. He wasn't sure he trusted the way Ratbat's field eased, but he let himself take it at face value.

Jazz forced a smile that he knew didn't look at all forced. "I have. And an open mind I can do."

And how.

He tilted his helm at the projection, paging through the information. It really was a perfect job for him. He would be able to insert himself in with few problems, and his own contacts would be within reasonable reach should anything go treads-up. There was also a fair chance that "resolving" the situation would be as easy as manipulating the personalities involved. If there was money to be made, there was always tension, and flicking a servo at the right pressure point could sometimes get as much done as an energy round to the spark.

But then, Ratbat would no doubt know that. ...honestly, RATBAT. Jazz was going to have to see what he could dig up about that. It was just too juicy a tidbit to not turn over a bit.

Jazz nodded as he finished studying the infographic. "Good chance I can take care of this without shaking up the rest of the sector too much. You got anyone you want me to be setting up to take over, if needed?"

[Deleted]

"That will depend on how you resolve the situation." Most of Ratbat's remaining reliable mechs wouldn't work in Kaon. He wouldn't work in Kaon if he could possibly avoid it, that was why he'd fought so hard to stay in Polyhex. "Consider that outside the scope of this mission for now. I'll put things back together as necessary."

He felt Jazz's field subtly tune in to his own, confirming his theory, and bared his fangs slightly in pleased thought. He'd need to do research. Extensive research. And of course field testing as well...

"Compensation for your work will be as standard, plus reasonable expenses. Here are your mission resources and local contacts, as well as my own frequency." He reached a cable into his subspace to extract a small red communications and data cube, adjusted the settings, and dropped from his perch soundlessly, floating down to slightly below Jazz. The projection shimmered out as he moved. "As well as a temporary code that will get you Soundwave in a serious emergency. Do not use it trivially."

The cable snaked out with the cube, offering.

[Deleted]

Yeah, because I'll totally ping Soundwave because I stubbed my pede.

Jazz wasn't sure (all right, he WAS fairly sure) why he was annoyed at that comment. Ratbat didn't know him, so the slight to Jazz's own situational analysis abilities was probably unintended. The minicon was slightly condescending, but no more than anyone else in a position of authority had a right to be.

That was the issue. "Rights". Jazz had had quite enough of mechs like Ratbat having rights over mechs like him. And it rankled, knowing that even here, even now, even as a Decepticon, here he was and there was Ratbat.

Jazz recognized his annoyance-outrage-anger, examined it, and filed it firmly away, all beneath his calm "yes, sir" expression. He didn't know what Ratbat was doing here, but he knew what HE was doing here. And if he was going to have to watch Logistics a little more closely to make sure that everything was copacetic, well...that's what he would do.

He accepted the cube with respectful glyphs of acknowledgment-acceptance. "Of course. 'Serious emergency', I assume, means risk of further damage to the supply chain or risk to Decepticon assets or security?"

It was always illuminating to know what one's employers considered "serious emergency". Jazz knew the game enough to know that it did NOT mean "danger to Jazz's life and limb", but other than that, it varied.

[Deleted]

"It's not a tool that I expect you'll need to use, given your record. It is very much 'use at own risk'. I am giving it to you because I trust your discretion in this matter," Ratbat commented. His field was still highly tuned to Jazz's, and he tweaked it to soothe the hint of unrest he could barely sense. "But yes, security problems at a level that would merit his attention. Or perhaps if you urgently need heavy firepower and can make a case for it."

His tone turned slightly philosophical. "You never quite know what nest of scraplets you might find. Particularly in Kaon. It's an efficient precaution."

He circled up a little higher, then flipped upside-down to a rest position, his optics now level with Jazz's own. It was the same position he'd been in on the perch, but in midair without any support, hoverdrive silently keeping him in place. He could see Jazz better this way, as his optics were placed on the upper slope of his head in such a way as to leave a major blind spot.

"Is there anything else you require from me to perform this task?"

[Deleted]

Jazz was somewhat mollified by Ratbat's reassurance. Somewhat.

The midair hanging was weird, but then, Jazz had seen weirder, he supposed. It unnerved him for no reason he could put his servo on, but he kept his pleasant game-face on.

"Don't think so, sir." Dammit, where'd that 'sir' come from? He continued on without a hitch. He checked the datacube and found the usual encryptions and receivers for him to send his reports through. "I'll get in contact once I'm in place. Should be safe enough to send regular reports with the usual level of security."

[Deleted]

"Excellent. I shall follow your progress with great interest," Ratbat's words were punctuated with an uncharacteristic glyph of approval. Yes, this one was certainly worth cultivating. His head tilted, as he mentally filed away little details about the mech in front of him for future cross-reference. He could see that he had a very interesting research project ahead of him.

"Dismissed," he said smoothly.

{{fin?}}

[Deleted]

Jazz left, vaguely unsettled. He couldn't put his servo on it...but he did not like Ratbat. Not at all.

He shook himself as he reached the outside and transformed, heading back to the groundbridge terminal.

He had a job to do.

[fin!]