A Seeker and a Bot Walk into a Bar... [OPEN]

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Clear skies, an uncharted planet, and clearance to leave.

Being in altmode had brought a small thrill compared to his inertia on the Nemesis… but in no time at all it started to feel cramped and uncomfortable. Jetfire’s stabilizers creaked tiredly and every atom of his frame seemed frozen with dull exhaustion. There was an incessant clicking noise in his left thruster, and errors clouded the peripherals in his optic HUD.

He was barely cruising for a breem before he felt ready to land and power down. Losing my touch… Supplies on the Nemesis were low. He’d initially been denied a full repair due to a… disagreement with the Chief Medical Officer… but it turned out he wouldn’t have been able to receive a clean bill of health anyway. The Nemesis was in the subdued chaos of post-battle. The Autobots had done their damage… and had taken rations to boot. There was nothing left.

There was a sort of haughtiness that came from his reassignment to active duty. Suddenly, he and the other few surveyors on board were amongst the most important of the crew- find resources. Find energon. Getting his long awaited rations and sanctioned repairs had been long awaited… but the haughtiness was washed away by concern as he saw the meager rations he was being given. A bot of his class was meant to survive on very little, but his last expedition had left him less than optimal… things were dire indeed.

So he maintained his cruising speed, balancing his scanners and self-status reports in his HUD in an effort to appreciate the work he’d once loved.

Half-cycles were broken only by reports to and from the Nemesis. The fascination he’d held with the planet was blunted by his weariness. After three cycles he sent yet another request for landing, and it was finally granted. He was given the coordinates for an energon mine (practially barren) to set down as the sun was setting into a hazy orange.

The exhaust he set off upon shifting to altmode made the eradicons step back and shield their optics. He would probably be hot to the touch for several breems. The Seeker’s overheating components set off a foul smell. He grunted, giving a halfhearted salute to the guards. Were these the only ones?

Standing outside the mineshaft, he preformed a deep scan of the tunnels. There was very little energon left here. There were a couple of small spikes, but he assumed they were merely miners or guards.

He shook his head, the heat distorting the air. “Any rations to share with an old mech?” he asked no one in particular.


OOC: So he’s in bad shape, but better than before. He can put up a fight if needed- and if all goes well I’d like to see a skirmish. Still, friendly encounters are also welcome. Open to anyone!

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There was precisely one second of delay... then a small warrior-class Eradicon emerged from the interior of the mine shaft, powering down their on-board blaster and looking at the old scrapheap of a Seeker like he didn't have the right to exist just then. They opened a comm, chattered something briefly and complexly shorthand Rad-speak to the rest of the unit and three other tech-class troopers peered out of the caver behind their guard.

The guard was not nearly so shy.

They crossed the dirt between themselves and the Seeker in five long strides and stared at him. "Is it true?" she said, tonal-inflection and EM field marking the femme as anxious, but calm. "The Nemesis is shot down?" A mutter of radio-chatter and EM-pulses from the other troopers flickered in the airwaves - tight and worried. "Last we heard was the warship was under attack before we lost radio comms. Are we to hold positions or scatter?"

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Jetfire turned his head slightly, the look of concern etched on his weary face. He had assumed the Nemesis had commed his arrival to them. Apparently they had not even had the time for that formality.

Perhaps it was this lapse in military organization or maybe it was his weariness, but his irritability led him to speak a little too loud for the skittish warriors. “Of course not!!” He vented firecely, an irritated sigh. “You think a couple of Autobot interlopers can take down our finest ship?” He narrowed his optics, throwing a patriotic glare at the femme. His EMF vibrated with nationalistic pride and avenging anger. “Hold your positions until your superiors tell you otherwise! Cron’s Cogs! You don’t need me to tell you that!”

The outburst had irritated some inner components and he relaxed his servos with an almighty release of vents. His torso hissed and the little guard was engulfed by a wave of hot air. When she had regained her senses, he had already detached his jackhammer and placed it on the ground, leaning heavily. He loomed darkly, his broken vocabulator humming with a grumbling static. “Now, about that energon. I’ve been surveying this planet for three cycles now and the rations on the Nemesis are meager as they were at the beginning of this Primusforsaken war.” Perhaps that wouldn’t have been the wisest choice of words, considering their concern… but he’s already made it clear that ignorant patriotism was the only attitude to hold in these dire situations anyway. “I’m collecting data on resources, and they’ve allowed me a brief leave here- I assumed because your rations are… plentiful enough for my frame class…” His scans had indicated otherwise but it was worth a try.

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All four Eradicons exchanged looks and shared a brief inter-comm convo that took less than four seconds and ended with all three of the non-combatants shrugging and looking alternatively confused and irritated. The combat-trooper turned back to Jetfire and jerked her head toward the mine. “If you need a ration, we’ve got some standard ration packs, but the rest of this stuff is pure raw energon crystal. We don’t have a cubing station at this outpost. So, unless you’ve got a fuel converter worth its metal, I don’t see how them sending you here for rations, leave or otherwise is anything but a way to get you off ship. You can camp out here if you need it, but if the Autobots show up…”

“…then I’d like to not get shot,” finished one of the mining operators at the back of the pack. The others looked askance at him. “What? We’re all thinking it. And if this broken down all crankcase is the expendable scout they’ve got out here relaying messages, then the Nemesis must be well and truly fragged.” His field pulsed aggressively as he moved toward the front of the group, but still kept the guard-femme between himself and Jetfire. “So no, we’re not talking about energon ration. We’re talking about what happened to the Nemesis. What is going on up there?”

“I had a data-feed going with Steve,” said the guard, placating, seemingly scowled at her fellow Con. “The Autobots blew the engines. Whole ship is probably limping for a stockpile and repairs. They’ll need this energon once they get the bridge-tech back up.”

“Oh is that all? Well then, my fears are totally put to berth. We’re stranded on top of a military asset with orders to sit on the fragging thing until the Autobots show up to shoot it out from under us.”

“Shut up,” said the guard and her tone, somehow, successfully shut the other Radcon up. She looked back at Jetfire. “Look, we’ve been holding this position for four days already. I’ve got trooper patrols out keeping an eye for Autobots, but you’re the first news we’ve had from the Nemesis. If everyone’s jumpy it’s because we’re waiting for the Prime to ride over the hill and blow us all up. You got a fuel converter or not? If so, you’re everyone’s best friend, mech.”

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"Of course I have a converter," Jetfire growled derisively, giving the mech behind her a stern look. At least it seemed he had a superior with a good grip on him-even if it had taken her a little too long to get him quiet. He continued, his optics flicking back to the femme. "I'm a deep space mech-" He straightened a bit, a flicker of pride in his EMF- but he scowled all the way. "I'd be doomed without one. Mind you, it's terribly inefficient. It's for emergencies, and just for one. It would take several breem to create rations even for the..." He paused, scanning his surroundings again to check for more mechs. "... five of us. Perhaps even a whole cycle if it didn't overheat.

"The Nemesis is indeed 'limping'. They're in need of energon, but I'm not here to transport.” There was the hiss of a vent from the spinestruts along his neck as he made an assenting motion with his head. “Mm, maybe a little transport, but not much. I'm a surveyor. I'm collecting data for potential mines, not collecting resources,” he threw a dirty look at the noisy eradicon. “I wasn’t sent here to tell you anything- just given permission to set my pedes on solid ground. If they haven't checked in... they're having trouble with their comms.” Jetfire had never been known for his way with words. He had a higher capacity for sympathy than most Decepticons- but that didn’t mean he was any good at projecting it. “Frankly, this isn’t my problem. Your outpost seems almost dry of resources anyway. I’m not surprised they’d neglect this outpost in times of emergency.” He shifted, glaring pointedly. “But that does not mean you should… desert.” Jetfire was appalled at the lack of patriotism in the ranks in this day and age. He’d experienced enough on the Nemesis itself, but here, so far from the eyes in the walls and superiors to call them out, it was a little shocking at how casually the subject was brought up.

“Is there any Autobot activity, anyway? We’re no where near the Nemesis. Hmph.” This wouldn’t matter much, with ground bridge technology. Still, Jetfire had never held much stock in the faction that tended to favor ground alts.


OOC: Not sure if him having a converter is too godmoddy. I kind of consider it like a portable coffee maker as far as level of power goes. I assume he’d need some sort of raw energy converter as an explorer.

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All four exchanged looks again. The ‘noisy’ one spoke up first.

“We don’t mean to desert, gearstick. But we’ve got no orders on whether we should be regrouping with other forces, trying to disappear into the population, or if we are all supposed to just sit here and hope the Autobots don’t show the hell up and execute us. And since you don’t know jack all, we’re just as pointlessly disconnected as before so great. And, no, there hasn’t been any Autobot activity, if there had been, you’d know because their pet Wrecker would have ripped our spark chambers out and the place would be sacked.”

“They wouldn’t ‘execute’ us,” said another femme, one of the miners. “They’d just gun us all down before it got complicated enough to bring POW status into it. Autobots don’t play as nice as they did in the start of the war.”

“We’re not all as old as you, Nellie Bly.” The guard-femme this time. “My lights came on during the Exodus. They’ve always be brutal spawns of glitches to me.”

The miner-femme, Nellie Bly, just shrugged. “It’s a different kind of brutal, Annie O. Look, old mech, if you’ve got a converter, we don’t much care what they told you. Jericho here can whine all he wants, but we’re the ones who volunteered to stay behind and guard. The rest of the technicians we told to go on patrol, like I said. They won’t be any good in a fight. Annie here and use four are the only combat-modded Eradicons here.”

“I’m not combat certified,” said Jericho bitterly. “I’m security. Barely.”

“Shut up, you could have left,” said Annie O. She gestured that Jetfire should follow her. “C’mon we’ll show you what we’ve got.”

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Jetfire had been under the impression that the Autobots had always been ‘brutal spawns of glitches’, and hadn’t considered before that things could have changed. The talk of combat readiness distracted him from the lessons he wanted to bestow upon ‘Jericho’ (at least temporarily). He wasn’t surprised this outpost would lack any sort of battalion strength… Maybe it was the jittery EMFs affecting his subconscious circuitry, but he started feeling somewhat anxious himself. The situation was somewhat dire on the Nemesis if he stopped to think about it- but he chose to let his patriotism blind him.

He nodded, following her into the shaft with a chorus of low creaking. “Obliged, thank you.” He gave a sideways glance to Noisy. “You call me ‘gearstick’ or ‘crankcase’ or whatever else your loose processor can come up with once more time, I’ll personally give you a lesson on how to mine energon.” The Seeker activated his jackhammer long enough for it to give two almighty wallops on the cavern floor. He switched it off with a cheeky smirk and a nod, ignoring the debris clattering onto their helms from the disturbed ceiling.

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“Look, old mech.” Jericho sounded tired all at once. The other Eradicons exchanged brief looks, the pitch of their EM fields syncing immediately to his. He sounded less tired when he continued. “I don’t care if they sent you out here to just get you out of the way or what not, but if you’ve got a converter, then I don’t really care.”

“What he means,” said Nellie Bly dryly, “is he’s sorry he’s a jerk.”

“No I’m not!”

“Shut up,” said Annie O, following Jetfire into the mine. “You lot get going. I’m keeping post near the entrance. Keep hoping for a Nemesis signal.” She vented a sigh. “At this rate, no offense Jetfire, I’m not holding out a lot of hope.”

---

“Damn.” Up on a ridge overlooking the cave Arcee pushed herself up from her crouch. “They’re going back inside.”

The two-wheeler reformatted her arm back to root-mode, powering down her blaster and turned to look back at the crew behind them… two NEST Humvees and Bluestreak. Captain William Lennox, the current ranking NEST officer, was still peering through a pair of binoculars down the ravine. While the human considered the layout, Arcee glanced at Bluestreak, who was handling the presence of humans during a military operation a bit more easily than she was. Or at least ou appeared to be taking it all in stride.

“So we don’t know how many of them are still in there,” said Lennox. She could hear the frown in his voice.

“No.” Lennox looked over his shoulder at Arcee. The motorcycle leveled a calm bright stare at him. “I could hear them. We rolled up in time for me to listen in. The Seeker and four Eradicon troopers are the only ones in the mine-shaft and of the four it sounds like only one of them is a combat-class trooper. All the support troops and techs have hit the surrounding area in their alt modes.”

“So only five Decepticons.” Lennox’ tone suggested that wasn’t necessarily evened odds to him. “Goody. We should just cave the whole thing on them.”

“You have that kind of ordinance?”

“No, just wishful thinking. I’d rather not follow them into a dark cave that we don’t know the layout for.”

“There we do agree.” She turned to look at Bluestreak. “Bait and shoot? It might not work, but I could try to draw them out where you can get a shot. Presuming they don’t just surrender.” Lennox looked askance at her. “They do surrender sometimes.”

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‘Old mech’ was a slight improvement, and he took what he could get.

Jetfire peered into the gloom. He could see an excavation machine that looked like it hadn’t been activated in some time- the structure quite unfamiliar compared to the ones he was used to, deca-cycles ago. There were small piles of unrefined crystals in bins. A dismal amount but enough for their purposes. The Seeker set to detaching his converter, pulling the spare parts of it out of his subspace. It was complex and inefficient- as he’d warned- and he took a careful amount of attention to its condition- he’d left it idle for a long time, subspace or no…

There was some chittering amongst the drones, but he ignored them… at least until he heard the urgency, the pinpricks of fear in the EMFs. He dropped one of the components he’d been inspecting, his eye ridges furrowing, “Say again?”

“There’s Autobots,” Annie O repeated. “Our aerial scout, he’s-“

The unmistakable sound of an attack. They all tensed, EMFs running haywire as tensions that had been gnawing on processors so long were set on edge.

Jetfire’s vocabulator thrummed, thoughtful and tense, “How many?”

They all flinched as the sound of an explosion loosened dust from the cavern walls. “How many?” he asked louder, shifting one servo to his blaster and the other to his laser cutter.


OOC: Feel free to have them peek out. Jets isn't a combat leader type so he'll probably follow Annie's instructions enough to be puppeted a bit. I'm pretty chill, remember.

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To be honest Bluestreak was less than happy with their human entourage. Past experience had taught hir nothing good comes from putting humans in the same general area as Decepticons. Still orders were orders and so the only thing really giving away hir anxiety is the twitching of hir door wings.
Said anxiety however was what had hir continuously scanning the air above them and hir Rifle already out and ready to go. Spotting the flier scout above them as it flew in lower, either they’d been spotted or would be soon.
“Good news, bad news Arcee.”
With an ease that only comes with an eternity of practice ou lifts hir rifle and took aim. For a moment ou felt sorry for the poor Vheicon. The sniper was used to shooting at seekers of Starscreams ilk after all but visions of a falling figure and red mist quickly overrode it and ou took hir shot. Hitting dead on through the spark chamber and watching as the vehicon fell careening into the ground.
“Good news is you won’t have to be bait, bad news is we've been spotted.”

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“Well, scrap,” said Arcee at the precise moment Lennox groaned, “Well, fuck me.”

They glanced at each other suspiciously for a split second before Arcee’s right forearm came apart and immediately reformatted into her primary blaster and she hopped down the slope of the ravine, stopping on a ledge about forty meters down to get a closer look at both the wreckage of the Decepticon flier and the mouth of cave. Lennox, meanwhile, pondered the viability of long range explosives against walking, talking, living tanks. Granted, okay, most of them didn’t actually have tanks for alt modes but that didn’t mean your average RPG irritated them even half as much as they should have.

The entire unit had been outfitted with arguably Cybertronian affective weaponry… primarily grenades, if he were being honest. There was a great deal of faith in conventional grenades and lots and lots of faith in EMPs that blew up like grenades after emitting a powerful localized electromagnetic pulse.

“Okay, so…” said Lennox, looking back and forth between Arcee and Bluestreak. “Which one of you can get me close enough to put an exploding EMP down the mouth of their hidey hole?” Arcee gave him a funny look. The informed might have said it was an approving look, but that was silly. “

“Bluestreak, you think you can keep them pinned down long enough for me to get Captain Lennox near enough for a shot?”

---

“Two and a crew of humans.” Annie O’s tone was as grim as the situation warranted. Her voice on the comm echoed back to the others, who’d fallen back into the mouth of the tunnel. Nellie Bly and Jerchico exchanged looks. Annie, from her position at the mouth of the cave, crouched back down behind a large chuck of stone at the cave mouth, contemplating. “We can bottleneck them if they try to come in through here, but we’re also trapped if we try to hold this position.”

“Knowing whether or not we should blow the mine and run would be nice,” said Jericho.

“Shut up, Jericho. They’re not going to let us run. Maybe the Autobots might, but the humans…”

“We tried to toxify their planet,” said Nellie Bly calmly. “Tell me what the appropriate military response is.”

“Hey, old mech.” Annie glanced back down the tunnel. “What are the chances of you being any kind of Seeker and giving us an aerial advantage and avoiding that sniper fire?”

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Jetfire did his best to look thoughtful but his EMF quavered with uneasiness. He was nowhere near peak condition, and achieving liftoff would be slow, not to mention that his maneuverability was poor even on good days. But… he still had an advantage- or he assumed he did. Most Autobots favored groundalts in his day, and it seemed to him this trend hadn’t changed at the very least. His altmode tended to be speedy enough to avoid any incoming fire.

He replaced the weapons to rootmode with a creak and a snap. “Is there a back entrance? I need moment to get airbourne.” He grunted. “Assuming this place isn’t surrounded, you might have a plan…” He bent to recover the energon converter he’d dropped, hardly taking a moment to glance at it before nonchalantly tossing it into subspace. “Are they groundalts?” He wasn’t sure what to ask about the humans. He knew of their weaponry, and some of their potential… but he had no idea what sort of protocols they had. For all he knew there was an army of fighter jets with nuclear missiles pointed directly at the tunnel… or the natives were bracing behind the ‘Bots with sticks and slingshots. Still, it was difficult to be too concerned- the only human he’d met was Soledad after all. The Googling he’d done felt distant- fantasylike.

“Tell me along the way- I don’t like this quiet,” he shuffled to the nearest tunnel opposite the entrance they’d come through.

OOC: Had to do a little research on his altmode for this. Apparently the strategy with that plane isn’t to dodge, but to move faster when shot at- and it was apparently an extremely effective strategy. Learn something new every day.

If we want to get this moving along(as combat likes to be speedy), next Autobot post can have Jets being seen lifting off or zooming over. He’ll probably circle them first. If not then he’ll just be following the Raddies over to a stealthy spot to run off.

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It took only moments for the little sniper to set up properly. Everything set up, hidden as best a bright silver autobot can be in the middle of bugger all no were, doorwings up and out to take in sensory information.

In time to see a big black jet take to the air. Too far away yet for a shot which was too bad it looked like he would move fast once he was in the air.

"I've got you Arcee. I can keep 'em pinned and hopefully distracted enough not to notice you."

And please don't let the humans get hurt because once was enough for hir thank you.