Ep. 1.5 - Raw Materials, Raw Skill - Closed

[Deleted]

SOMEWHERE IN THE BAHAMAS

Things dripped in the subterranean depths.

And that was only half his problem.

The pumps were working. He could hear them where he stood, primed and firing to life in a stubborn effort to hold back tens of thousands of oceanic pressure. They ran, rerouted and gouted another thousand pounds of bitterly cold seawater back into the upper reaches of the blue hole's shaft, then cut out again once the outer breach chamber had emptied.

The pumps worked. Of course they did. He had built them himself. He would be insulted if they did anything else.

So, he had not been flooded out of his lab yet. Primus have mercy. But oh, it dripped. Water lay in pools upon the limestone floor, green with muck and wiggly things that grew spines and fluoresced in the darkness outside of his lamps. It could not be helped. It could be aggravating, though.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. I. Am. A. Leak. That. You. Cannot. Fix. Pit - A - Pat - A - Pit - A - Pat. I. Am. The. Ocean. Waiting. To. Crush. You. Flat.

He grunted. Shook his head. This place. It got to him sometimes.

The rest of the background noise was the generators, two of them - big, ugly things, with dozens of cables coiled about them. Like octopus tentacles the cables snaked across the cavern floor, winding underfoot, around towering stalagmites. Electricity pulsed through them. It tingled against his sensors. The generators rumbled in their alcove, a quiet and steady sound. He liked quiet and steady. Quiet and steady was the sound of progress.

In the fluorescent-green light of the jury-rigged lamps he strode across the cavern, his feet splashing against the floor. He stopped in front of his most recent project and surveyed it critically. This new construct was not much. It was not even a skeleton yet - merely scaffolding draped in power cables, like curving metal ribs, bare and empty. One day it would be a circle, a giant one. A ring. A doorway of light.

Arclight.

Something flickered through him.

He stood back a moment and wondered at it. Was it anger? Guilt? He shot a glance at his laboratory table. He had built that too, cobbled it from metal and bolts. What a monstrosity. Cables twined beneath it, humming with power.

There it sat. On the table. A box. A plain black box, no bigger than his two hands. All scratched and scoured. It had been through a lot, that box. Such a simple thing - it had a few lights on it, a few dials. Ugly and clunky. Power cables plugged into it too, a tangled mess of them. Feeding it electricity. Feeding it- life.

That damned box.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat. Let. Me. Out. Let. Me. Out. I. Am. The. Voice. Of. The. One. That. You. Stabbed. In. The. Back.

He snorted and turned away.

Oh, to hell with this. He had better things he could be doing right now. Like jamming a laser scalpel into his optic. He needed materials. He needed an assistant with- all of this. There was too much the project demanded that he could not get himself.

He was going up for air.

He was going a long, long way up for air.

----

SOMEWHERE... ELSE

It was evening, in the outside world.

The Nighthawk flew swift and silent, a dark arrow in the twilight. The venture up above the ocean for air had turned into a twelve-hundred mile flight at fifty thousand feet. Negligible. This Earthen alternate mode could fly fast. It could fly far, powered as it was by his Cybertronian systems.

It searched.

He knew the ship was in this region. Somewhere. Hiding. From the Autobots, of course. Crippled, it would not stand up to another assault, either direct or in secret. He approached its last transmitted location in his internal logs under the cloak of his own stealth capabilities. Radar would not see him. Optical sensors would not spy him. It was dark out now, and so was he. He would not betray the Nemesis by blundering upon her and leading her enemies in his wake. That would be- intolerable.

Hm. There had to be a better way to do this.

He cycled to the private Decepticon frequency he held on stand-by and cleared his throat.

"This is Cryotope," he said over the comm in his curt, clipped manner. Even transmitted, his voice sounded rusty. He had not spoken in months. "A message, to Lord Megatron or Soundwave. Request audience. Standing by for instructions and vectors to land on upper deck."

[Deleted]

On the command deck, Soundwave turned his facial screen towards the profile of his master. Megatron was stood at parade rest, optics blank save for the fluctuation of light intensity across the static lenses. He'd been motionless for close to six hours now, running variables and correlating data. It was the first time since returning to the ship that he had had the chance, to.

The Nemesis had recovered enough energon from the last mine to comfortably cover the remaining distance to the emergency reserve. In addition to keeping the ship aloft and its cloak running, there was now enough fuel to support rebuilding some of the Eradicons as well as cover the existing crew's rations. It had been a rapid balancing act between having enough hands to combat the effects of systems collapsing from the strain of compensating for damage and dividing fuel between the crew and said ailing systems.

It had been a long time since they'd had to resort to circuit-boosters on such a large scale.

Now that things were no longer critical (still bad, but the Nemesis wasn't pitching towards freefall at random intervals anymore), the Decepticon Commander had been scrutinizing the data from the fliers squawking out in the field. To distract from the limping warship, Starscream had sent every able flier across the continent. When they encountered resistance, their coordinates were logged against rest to continue the hunt for Omega Outpost. The Autobots had had a flush of energon at their expense and could afford to groundbridge anywhere on the planet, any time, but their human allies did not travel through subspace vortexes so easily.

The humans, and their pathetic alliance with the Autobot's, would be Optimus's downfall.

Megatron shifted out of the multi-tiered processing threads at the voice in the transmission. It was one he recognized, but did not hear often. Cryotrope was similar to Barricade in that he could disappear for vorns on a mission, with no reports or sightings to confirm him as alive or dead. There was a rumour that the marksman had once spent so long lying utterly static in a nest overlooking an Autobot military hospital, waiting for the target who had gone in on a stretcher, that he had become perfectly camouflaged by the local flora growing across his frame.

There was no telling how much truth there was in the rumour, but the impression of the mech's diligence, lethal focus and infinite patience was accurate enough. Cryotope had been put to the task of building a new spacebridge shortly after arriving at Earth, his skills as a physicist of greater use than his marksmanship.

"Verify." Megatron did not need to give the order as Soundwave had done so as soon as the hail had come in, but it warmed his vocaliser and settled his focus back into the room. At the spymaster's nod, Megatron stepped down and approached the console now highlighting Cryotrope's stats and location.

"Granted." The required vectors were transmitted across the same secure band. "Be advised that we are operating at high alert and that you will be escorted on board."

[Deleted]

"Check remarks, my Lord," replied the voice over the radio. It was a curt reply- born not out of disrespect, but out of the speaker's own laconic nature. "ETA in seven minutes.

Cryotope ended the transmission and plugged the incoming vectors for a precision landing aboard the Nemesis into his navigational systems. He began a gentle bank towards the first heading. Cloaked as it was, the great Decepticon warship could only be located by an inbound flier via a constantly computed instrument approach that altered on an hour basis as the ship traveled unseen high above the surface of the planet. Cryotope approved of this tactic. Its efficiency appealed to him.

Exactly seven minutes later, he found the warship.

The Nemesis drifted in and out of high altitude cloud, layers of wispy cirrus comprised of minuscule ice crystals. The trace ice swirled around Cryotope's frame and spun into the vortexes at the tips of his wings as he soared towards the upper flight deck. Against the twilight sky the warship was barely visible, a sleek black predator finned with nacelles. He found it hard to believe that the Autobots had ever once managed to injure her. The thought was- irksome.

The Nighthawk skimmed low over the flight deck and transformed. An instant later the angular black physicist thudded down upon the deck, his wings still shifting back into position as he landed.

Cryotope looked around. Two Vehicons awaited him nearby, silent and ready. Without a word he transmitted the proper identification codes and his request for an audience, and pressed his mouth into a satisfied line when they acknowledged it with a perfunctory salute.

"Please escort me to Lord Megatron, if he will see me," he said, and followed them off the flight deck when they motioned him forward.

Cryotope was not afraid of death. Or punishment. Not really. But still. It was gratifying to know he came bearing good news for the Decepticon warlord.

[Deleted]

Mustang was fleetingly envious of the unawakened drone that had been dispatched with her to meet the rarely-seen physicist. Zie didn't have the capacity to feel creeped out by Cryotope's very field. The other Eradicon strode ahead with silent purpose, assured in hir directive to lead him through the curving passageways of the ship, whilst it took a significant degree of self-control for Mustang not to look back. The glassy field of the mech made it feel like her backmesh was buzzing.

It was a similar feeling to being in Shockwave's presence, and to a lesser degree Soundwave's: deliberate and calculated Decepticons that seemingly lacked the nucleotide to passion that was present in every mecha's CNA. They would kill you without a field-flicker, like stepping on an ant. Though Mustang knew that Cryotope would do no such thing, the instinctive unease persisted. It made the journey through the mostly-repaired Nemesis seem particularly long.

Arriving at their destination, both Eradicons gave their lord's back a short bow before leaving Cryotope on the other side of the thick doors. Where the drone immediately returned to hir unit to resume work, Mustang stopped as soon as the doors sealed with a full-frame shiver that was violent enough to make her plates clacker. It was almost enough to shed the feeling of static creeping across her mesh, but she sensed that it would persist for some time.

On the other side of the door to the flustered Eradicon, Megatron turned from the screens to lay optics on the physicist. His single footstep towards the mech was loud against the deckplates, the deep metallic vibration announcing him.

"What have you to report that brings you aboard, Cryotope?" The angular brows framing optics of many an Autobot's nightmares were pitched in scrutiny.

[Deleted]

Against the glowing screens the warlord was little more than a silhouette, eclipsed in weird light. Cryotope stood tall and stiff beneath Megatron's gaze, his hands folded behind his back and his wings swept downwards like a pair of coattails. His expression was quietly neutral. He bowed, an archaic gesture of respect from an older time.

"Lord Megatron," he said.

Without further formality he launched into the report he had been meticulously crafting for the past twelve hours. His words were clipped and precise - he did not like to speak, and hated to see words idly wasted.

His voice droned over the low hum of the ship's computers.

"I have secured a remote location from which to begin operations," he said. "Observational scanning over a four week period has indicated no Autobot or significant human presence within four hundred seventy-seven nautical miles of its location. It is my opinion that any work I shall conduct there will remain unnoticed and uninterrupted. Construction of a basic laboratory is complete, and the preliminary design and construction of at least two projects is currently underway."

He frowned. "My analysis into existing data indicates that regaining spacebridge access from this planet is theoretically sound. I am initiating the construction of a prototype to test this hypothesis, with a projected date of completion estimated at one-point-seven years. Trial computer models have been successful and the mathematics are acceptable. However, I lack the raw materials to continue further assembly of the prototype. I have come with an appeal to enlist aid within your ranks to secure these resources - an Eradicon or two, if they might be spared."

The physicist gave a subtle pause. "And, if he is not required elsewhere, I wish to lodge an official request to obtain Ravage's services for short-term deployment. I estimate his skill set will allow him to procure assets of a more sensitive nature, which an Eradicon would be unable to obtain. Discreetly."

[Deleted]

The Nemesis was the flagship of the Decepticon army, and a warship through to its core. That it boasted two well maintained laboratories and a smaller third spoke clearly of the faction's commitment to research and development. The deadliest agents of biological warfare, swifter Eradicon repair methodologies and everything in between had been realised in these imposing spaces, and it was a requirement of all officers that they knew their way around a lab. It was one of their greatest weapons in the war: perpetual advancement.

Decepticon engineering was -and always would be- invested in.

Megatron approached Cryotope slowly, his path slightly to the left of the slim mech: towards Soundwave. "Though the strike and pillaging of this vessel has left us many casualties and a depleted energon stock, we can spare two Eradicons from repair work."

He met the 3iC's turned visor, watched it dip in shallow assent, and then regarded Cryotope once more. The warlord would have ordered Soundwave's cassette to assist the scientist regardless, but there was a social protocol when it came to carriers. Certainly Starscream, and even Soundwave, would not dare to order Fairwinds to perform duties outside of her usual span without his consultation.

"Ravage will be at your disposal until he is otherwise required. What is the lab's energon situation?"