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It was a difficult task. One had to poke, probe and study the patient without disturbing him. Downshift dared not even use his personal recording system for fear the sound of his voice would awaken the sleeper. In this case, unconsciousness was essential. The engineer knew, all too well, what Divebomb could do were he to rise from stasis lock.
He started compiling a mental list of the Terrorcon’s “renovations”. Divebomb had sections of flesh and feathers grafted onto his alt mode neck/robot mode forearms, alt mode wings/robot mode legs, alt mode tail/robot mode head, and mutual mode-share torso. The feathers were arranged in such a way as to be purely decorative – their placement would achieve nothing in terms of flight nor aerodynamics – while the flesh had been applied without a standard pattern. Divebomb resembled nothing so much as a patchwork quilt of metal and organic matter.
Leaning forward, quietly and carefully, Downshift activated the overhead scanner array. A series of coloured lights twinkled over the examination table, absorbing data from the comatose “bad guy” and transmitting it to a bank of wall screens. He peered at the displays and nodded. His hypothesis was sound – the Terrorcon had as many internal organic parts as he did external. Large sections of Divebomb’s Transformer biology had been removed and replaced. He had a heart instead of a fuel pump; several intake lines had been swapped for lungs, veins and arteries; sections of a digestive system were present in his Energon absorption facility. As with the surface organics, there was little rhyme or reason to the choices… the whole thing seemed haphazard. Careless. For show.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Downshift’s neck went rigid. His shoulder servos began to twitch. Intellectually, he knew Divebomb was in stasis lock – the injuries dealt by Armourhide too great for even his systems to brush aside. He also knew the Terrorcon was strapped down by steel bands, chains and even a few rivets – such was the danger he posed. None of that intellectual knowledge eased the fear. Jazz had seen the bird-bot heal fatal head injuries within seconds. Ultra Magnus had shot the Terrorcon point-blank and it had still stood up. Only Armourhide had managed to stop the boastful twerp, but the commando had no clear memory of how he’d achieved that feat.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
If Divebomb was waking up, right now, it would be a disaster. Downshift was ill-equipped to stop a rampaging engine of destruction, and the lab was small and claustrophobic. The Terrorcon had already demonstrated his aptitude for hand-to-hand combat by keeping Magnus himself at bay – the smaller, weaker engineer wouldn’t stand a chance. Were Divebomb to escape… heaven help the RIDs and the humans they secretly protected.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
There was but one thing to do. Downshift eased across to another bench. His hand slipped around the grip of one of his pulse blasters. He wouldn’t have time to mount it on his shoulder, gaining access to its full compliment of munitions, so its hand-held setting would have to be enough. It had better be enough.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Steeling himself, blinking his optics to clear the nervous static, Downshift spun around and drew bead on the sound. His finger hovered over the trigger… then relaxed. In front of him, dead centre of his sights, sat an unconcerned Rodimus. The cavalier was slumped in a chair, one leg crossed over the other, his ebony fingers drumming on his long-barrelled missile launcher. Tap. Tap. Tap. Drumming away without a care in the world, yet to even notice Downshift had nearly ventilated him.
“That’s just frelling marvellous,” the engineer spat. The words issued not from his synthesiser but through his internal communication system – the inter-Autobot radio. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Rodimus stayed where he was. “Like you were really going to shoot me,” he deadpanned, the transmitted words echoing inside Downshift’s head. “Forgot I was here, didn’t you? Totally and utterly blanked out to the fact you had a guard for this little project, eh?”
“More like I wished you’d just go away,” Downshift hissed. “I don’t need you here, Rodimus.”
The cavalier grinned wryly. “Here in the lab,” he asked innocently, “or here on Earth?”
The engineer choked down an insult and went back to work. Just to be safe, he fixed the pulse blaster to its mooring on his shoulder. No sense in being caught unawares a second… well, first… time. And, because of his superior design, the weapon was unlikely to interfere with scanning routines or even get in his way. Let Rodimus believe whatever he liked – irrespective of the recent past, there remained no Autobot more trustworthy than Downshift.
-----
Once upon a time, Rodimus had greatly admired the brilliant, fun-loving engineer. He might not have been part of the inner circle but, to Rodimus’ young eye, he’d possessed aspects of all the great heroes. He was as compassionate as Optimus while being a furious fighter, like Grimlock. A crack shot – like Silverstreak – who was daring like Ultra Magnus. Best of all, he had Red Alert’s medical/scientific skills and passion – something the chief surgeon lacked.
Downshift could be your friend as well as your maintenance mech; you could down an oil with him as easily as you could ask him for anti-virus software. He was “one of the boys” irrespective of how old or young you were. Rodimus could remember Downshift holding court before a rapt audience ranging from Tow-Line to Blur. Such was Rodimus’ admiration for Downshift that, during the Planet Key crisis, he’d volunteered to serve under him. The engineer was commander on the Axalon and led the mission to Speedia. He’d been as daring as always, risking his own life to take down a group of oil-thirsty Decepticons.
He’d also revealed an horrific part of himself.
When all had seemed lost… when Wheeljack and his punks had infiltrated the race… when Override had been at her most recalcitrant… Downshift had suggested a plan. He wanted to create a distraction and steal the Planet Key, then get off-world as fast as possible. He didn’t care that would destabilise an already rancorous society. No, the ends were plenty of justification for such means, he’d argued, because the ends were saving Cybertron and the universe. One planet’s cultural oddities mattered little against that.
Rodimus had arced up. “ Blow a few holes in a few buildings, cause some property damage and steal the artefact around which their society is based,” he’d yelled. “You know who that sounds like, Downshift? That sounds like Megatron to me!”
Their relationship had never recovered. Rodimus knew that, had his brief stint as the Prime continued, Downshift would have joined the voices against his leadership. And the cavalier’s rapid acceptance of what Downshift called “voodoo mysticism” had only worsened their ability to speak with one another.
It wasn’t voodoo mysticism, but the benefit of experience. In his short life, Rodimus had been both front-line trooper and wielder of the Creation Matrix. He’d looked into the eyes of his god and spoken with the dead. He’d been touched by the power of Primus twice, altered physically and mentally. Rodimus had embraced the ancient ways of the Matrix Templars, honing his link to the sacred artifact and using it for the benefit of others.
Rodimus knew he, Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus were connected by invisible strands of the Matrix. He knew how to pull on those strings, how to twist them, to both borrow power from the older mechs and lend his own strength to them. He’d done that in the tunnels, just days earlier, to help Magnus shake the hypnotic thrall of Sky Shadow. Rodimus could also sense the Matrix tendrils that linked him with every other living Transformer – tendrils he could enhance or weaken to affect their systems and their function. He’d done that to help Armourhide survive his injuries.
There was nothing mystical about it, really – it was elementary physics. Energy could be neither created nor destroyed, only changed. Matrix energy underpinned all Transformer life. Someone who noticed its flow, someone adept to its pulsing, could manipulate it was easily as Downshift twisted a torque wrench.
“That’s just frelling marvellous,” said a voice in his ear. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Rodimus glanced out of the corner of his optic. Downshift was pointing a pulse blaster at him. He looked down and noticed his fingers – they were tapping on his gun. Aw, he thought. I must have unnerved the poor protoform.
“Like you were really going to shoot me,” he deadpanned over the inter-Autobot radio. “Forgot I was here, didn’t you? Totally and utterly blanked out to the fact you had a guard for this little project, eh?”
“More like I wished you’d just go away,” Downshift hissed. “I don’t need you here, Rodimus.”
Oh really? So you’ve figured out I’m here to keep you honest, then. The cavalier grinned wryly. “Here in the lab,” he asked innocently, “or here on Earth?”
With a disgruntled sigh, Downshift went back to working on the comatose Divebomb. He even clipped the gun to his shoulder – paranoia in overdrive. Of course, these days, every little thing Downshift did was likely to torque him off.
There’d been something of a détente between them for several years. Rodimus had returned to Speedia and helped install Blur on the throne. The engineer had been on Earth, breaking down the original Autobot base and fending off Nemesis Prime. Though both were part of the core Autobot team, they went months without seeing one another – save for Tow-Line’s funeral, of course. Downshift had focused on his inventions and become more hermit-like; Rodimus had buried himself in the esoteric texts of the Underbase and researched the Templar order.
When they’d met again, it had been explosive. Downshift had filed a memo to Optimus Prime. He’d wanted access to items from the second Speedia mission. The first was a device used by that planet’s medics – a Spark catcher. The tube-shaped, clawed device could lift a Transformer’s living soul from its chassis, keep it alive, and transfer it into a new body. It was something of an experimental technology, abandoned due to the success of the GTS “cloning” process, but it had been brought back for further study. His second request was for “any and all remaining fragments of the Force Chip once possessed by the Decepticon known as Dirt Boss”.
Alarms had sounded in Rodimus’ processor. That chip – a smaller, less-potent version of the Red Planet Key – had almost destroyed Speedia. Due to an earlier accident, it had fractured and begun to leak temporal energy. Time had, as a result, accelerated on the racing world – entire vorns had passed in the space of months – and civil war had erupted. Being somewhat responsible for the chip’s creation, and solely responsible for its destruction, Rodimus had a vested interest in any remnants being consigned to the deepest, darkest, most inaccessible reaches of the Autobot storage facilities for the rest of eternity. Even a single shard was highly dangerous.
Downshift, of course, had a reason to want it. He always had a reason. “Those crystals are pieces of time itself,” he’d told a special meeting of the inner circle. “There are infinite military applications – but, in my opinion, that would be wrong. I propose, instead, to use them to enhance our defensive capabilities.
“Can you imagine an Autobot base shifted one second out of phase with the rest of time? Such a base would be unassailable because it wouldn’t even be there! And a second shard, set to a different time-scale than the first, would allow Autobots to return to the normal flow of events and conduct research, infiltration and defensive duties.”
Rodimus had argued vehemently, pointing to the havoc wrought on Speedia and the lives lost. He’d talked about the potential for abuse, the dangers of the technology falling into the wrong hands… the ease with which it could be converted into a weapon to banish mechs and people outside the time stream. His pleas had fallen on deaf audio receptors – the inner circle had voted unanimously for the initiative.
And so, once again, Rodimus had volunteered for a mission because of Downshift. This time, he’d become an RID unit to keep an eye on the engineer. If the inner circle trusted Downshift to be responsible, well and good… that didn’t mean Rodimus had to.
He slipped out of his chair and joined Downshift at the bench. “Anything interesting?” he asked lightly.
“For someone like you, yeah,” Downshift snapped, still using the internal communication system. “It’d probably appeal to you. Bits of flesh glued-on wherever they fit; organs and entrails jury-rigged to high-performance, fine-tooled Transformer systems.” He snorted. “Maybe they think it gives them access to the animal spirits, or something.”
“The Red,” Rodimus answered.
“Excuse me?”
“The realm where animals can communicate on a spiritual level… it’s called The Red,” Rodimus explained. “There’s an offshoot for sea creatures called The Clear, and it’s speculated that the realm in which higher-dimensional beings come together is known as The Bleed.”
Downshift stated distastefully at him.
“What?”
“Next time I want a sermon, I’ll see if Koji’s interested in church,” Downshift growled.
“Ignorance is bliss,” Rodimus retorted.
“All right, that’s it!” Downshift snapped, grabbing the younger mech by the shoulder. “If you have a problem with the way I run my lab or conduct my experiments, Rodimus, then you’re welcome to leave right frelling now. I don’t much care if you did petition Magnus for guard duty; if you convinced both him and Scattorshot that I could do with some company. I don’t want you here, I don’t need you here and, to be quite honest, your careless nature is likely to cause a disaster by waking up bird-bot over here!”
The cavalier shrugged off the hand. “Oh, I’m so irresponsible that I’m going to wake up your precious patient?” he thundered. “You’re the one sitting there jabbing at a hornet’s nest with your silly probes! Enemy or no, Divebomb is a living being, Downshift, and you’re treating him like a lab rat! What happened to the articles of war, hmm? The duties toward of prisoners? Hell, what happened to basic Transformer rights? I don’t know what crap you pulled on Magnus, but the Big Bot’s gonna be less than impressed to hear you’re playing dissection lab with a living, functioning patient!”
“What exactly is your malfunction, Rodimus?”
“You,” the cavalier glowered. “My problem is you. All you’re concerned about right now is unlocking the secrets of the Transmetal process – finding out how the Terrorcons can heal any wound we inflict. It’s a scientific process to you, an end to be accomplished no matter the means. You’re shooting up buildings and stealing Planet Keys all over again, just like you have for the past 10 years! Slash-and-burn science, damn the consequences and damn whoever gets hurt along the way!”
“You ungrateful little freak,” Downshift roared, his voice deafening over the radio. “Everything I have done for the last decade has been to keep pinheads like you alive for one more day! I gave up on munitions, I gave up on weapons, so you and your battle-hungry friends could have the best possible defence systems!” He gestured at his emerald chassis. “I reformatted my entire body to test my theories, installed a Primus-damned Spark catcher in my chest so I could save anyone, any time, anywhere! There will be no more death because I failed to act, Rodimus… no more Tow-Lines!”
Rodimus’ jaw went slack.
“No one else is going to die because I picked up a tree and tried to fight,” Downshift continued. “I’m not going to screw up again and watch, helplessly, while some monster tears out an Autobot’s Spark! I tried to stop a beast from beyond the dawn of time with a frelling tree trunk and my friend died, Rodimus – anything, any risk, is worth preventing that from happening again!”
The engineer went to punch the wall, thought better of it and stopped. He muttered a few words, every now and again, but Rodimus couldn’t make them out. His own mind was racing, recalling events he’d not witnessed but of which he’d been told – a battle that had occurred during his second trip to Speedia.
Downshift, Tow-Line and some others had been attacked by a most vicious enemy. That foe, Nemesis Prime, bore within him the Dead Matrix: a prototype with the power to pull the Spark from a Transformer. The intention had been to spare the being unnecessary suffering in the event of fatal wounds. In the hands of Nemesis – a servant of Unicron – it became an irresistible “soul stealer”.
Tow-Line had proven that - Nemesis had ripped out his very essence. Injured and unarmed, Downshift had resorted to base tactics. According to the reports, he’d uprooted a tree and broken it over the demon’s head. To no effect, of course. Then he’d thrown the shattered pieces at Nemesis, which did even less. The beast had then departed, making no effort to attack the others in the group. “There is more than one way to own a Spark,” he’d been reported as saying. Now, looking at the mech who had been the Autobot’s most brilliant scientist, Rodimus knew what the dark entity had meant.
“Downshift,” he said gently, walking across to his colleague. “Is this what’s been driving you all these years? Why you’ve… you’ve armoured up, and obsessed over security, and installed that thing in your front grille?”
The engineer nodded.
“Oh man.” Rodimus draped one arm over him. “Downshift… there are some things in this universe that you have to accept on faith. Believe me, I know. I’ve glimpsed the other side of the Matrix, communed with the deepest parts of the Well of All Sparks. Death is a natural part of life, my friend, and more – it’s a right we all have. When Primus says our time’s up, we’ve got to just move on to the next world. I know it’s a place of peace and friendship. No more factions, no more symbols. You’ve got to accept that, buddy… life ends.”
“It doesn’t have to!” Downshift yelled. He heaved Rodimus to one side and stood up. “I can stop that, Rodimus – me! I can carry life in my chest better than any Matrix, and I can fix anyone. Screw you and your ‘right to die’ garbage… where there’s life, there’s hope, and you shouldn’t ever give up on life!”
Rodimus stayed where he was and shook his head sadly. “You sound like some of the humans on TV,” he muttered. “The sort that keep their relatives on life support for years, ‘just in case’ medical science can save them.”
“Good people,” Downshift said coolly. “Very good people. See, they’ve got the right idea. Many of those people are just as religious as you are, Rodimus, and they’re not about to let the people they love shuffle off ‘the mortal coil’. It’s not a question of science or faith, kid, it’s a question of ethics and valuing life.” He snorted again. “If we left things up to mechs like you, humans would still be dying of the common cold. It’s guys like me, people who think like me, that come up with the stuff that saves lives. I made myself into a being that can save lives. It’s no different than a human doctor taking on more study… no different to what Red Alert would do to his own chassis.”
“But you can take it too far,” Rodimus replied. He was glad they were still speaking through the radio – at the rate they were going, Divebomb would have woken up and filleted them minutes earlier. “Doesn’t someone who’s terminally ill have the choice of dying with dignity? Shouldn’t there be a point at which you let nature take its course?”
“If we were stuck with nature, we wouldn’t have star cruisers,” Downshift groused, turning his attention back to Divebomb. “If we were stuck with nature, Megatron would have wiped us all out a long, long time ago. Heck, the universe would have been destroyed 10 years back by that black hole, if we’d let nature take its course. But no, we packed our skid plates onto a mess of ships, found a cure and applied it! Are you seriously telling me one life is not as valuable as the entire universe?”
“Of course not.”
“Good – because that’d be one heck of a betrayal of the Autobot code.” Downshift clenched and unclenched his hands. “I’ve got work to do… we can talk about this another time.” He leaned forward, tinkering with something near Divebomb’s wrist. “Maybe.”
Rodimus re-opened the channel to ask another question, then thought better of it. He walked back to his chair and sat down heavily, wincing at the slight creaking sound. It wasn’t as if the two of them hadn’t had this argument before – it had gone back and forth, on and off, from the moment they’d arrived on Earth. This was, however, the first time Rodimus had learned the source of Downshift’s vehemence.
He felt like slapping himself across the head… he’d been so arrogant, so pious, that he’d missed the obvious. Way to go, Templar wannabe, he chided himself. You really brought the love and light of Primus to this situation, you chump.
“You chumps are so blind,” hissed an unfamiliar voice.
Rodimus whirled around, but it was too late – Divebomb had broken free from his bonds and had Downshift by the throat.
-----
Right now, talking was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d let Rodimus get under his armour… again… and wasted valuable time. This wasn’t about yet another ethical debate; one more “science versus religion” gab-fest. They had but a finite amount of time before Divebomb recovered from stasis lock – it wasn’t a permanent state but a healing cycle – and the research had to be complete well before then. The detention cells within Fortress Maximus would be more than ample to secure the freak – they’d held Tidal Wave, after all – provided he was in them before he woke. If Downshift was going to find anything, it had to be now.
He turned his attention back to Divebomb’s wrist. It was a really odd location at which to graft flesh – you’d think you’d want such an obvious fracture point to be as strong as possible. What good would sinew do against servo-motors? He resolved to examine it more carefully, and so slid the steel binder down a could of inches, toward the Terrorcon’s beak-like right hand.
Snap.
Cutting blades sprang from the beak and scissored through the bond. Downshift had just enough time to register the escape before those same razors dug into his throat. He gagged as his neural pathways filled with pain.
“You chumps are so blind,” Divebomb hissed.
Rodimus was glaring at them. The cavalier had his missile launcher aimed square at Divebomb’s torso, but he was unlikely to fire. Too much combustible material within the lab, Downshift reasoned. Not to mention a blast could kill me, too. Add to all of that the fact they were locked in – with all the different codes and countermeasures built into the door, it would be hours before anyone could break them loose. Hours in which Divebomb could kill them, leisurely, then spring out and attack an unsuspecting rescue party. Blind and screwed, Downshift thought.
“You think talking through your silly radio system was going to keep you safe?” Divebomb snickered as he glared at Rodimus. “It still gives off a high-frequency pitch, you dope… and enough of that’ll give any ‘con a headache. At this close a range, the feedback was so damn painful it woke me up. My head’s pounding, but not as badly as your friend’s will be if you don’t free me right now.”
His grip tightened for emphasis, and Downshift choked again. He could feel delicate circuitry spluttering and fusing. It was a most horrible sensation – being deprived of air, having your systems overheat and idle painfully, feeling…
Wait a minute.
Downshift didn’t need air – at least, not through his mouth and throat. There was an air scoop on his hood, the one he used in vehicle mode after his face folded into his body during transformation. All he had to do was re-route his internal systems to take air from that source. It was an instant solution to cooling and engine wear problems. It was the benefit of being a non-organic life form. Air was a tool to the Transformers, a substance required for optimum function but not base function. He could operate in the void of space just as easily as in an oxygen tent, if not as quickly or long-term.
Yeah, but if I had a heart to look after… or lungs to fill… or skin, blood, a digestive system, bits like that… it’d be a different story, now, wouldn’t it?
Armourhide’s report flashed into his mind. The commando had jammed his seeping stump of an arm into Divebomb’s face. The bird-bot had choked on the oil and mess created by his own weapon. Choked. He’d gone unconscious because…
“Because you couldn’t breathe,” Downshift croaked.
Twisting in the Terrorcon’s grip, gritting against the pain, Downshift brought his left hand down in a savage chop across Divebomb’s throat. The metal caved under the force of the blow and the condor’s grip slackened. As he gasped and made gurgling sounds, Downshift chopped again and again at the Terrorcon’s one weak spot. Finally, he brought his right hand over and pressed down on Divebomb’s neck, pinning him until he stopped struggling and lapsed, once again, into unconsciousness.
Rodimus was by his side in a second. “You all right?” he asked, speaking out loud once again.
Downshift rubbed his throat. “Yeah,” he replied over the inter-Autobot radio. “My synthesiser’s trashed, though. Looks like I’ll be non-verbal for a little while yet.”
The cavalier looked down. “So how did…?”
“Air,” Downshift replied. “The jerks need to breathe, now that they’re technorganic. You and me, we need enough oxygen to run our engines and cool our systems. Means we can survive off alt-mode intakes for short periods. These guys need it to live, pure and simple – just like Kicker, or Misha, or Koji. When they're in robot mode, it's 'air by throat' or it's nothing. Armourhide managed to bring this sucker down because he choked him out, like some kinda human wrestling match or something.”
Rodimus grinned. “Submission holds, not pinfalls or count-outs,” he quipped.
“I don’t get the reference but yeah, sure,” Downshift replied. “What’s important is that we know what to do. For all their healing abilities, the Terrorcons still need to breathe in order to survive. We take away their air, we take away their advantage.” His processor raced. “First thing we do is create a vacuum inside the Global Space Bridge – suck out the air and drive off the ‘cons.”
“Then we’ll need some kind of new weapon,” Rodimus mused. “Like a, I don’t know, a vacuum gun or something. A way of making them gag on the battlefield.” He paused and looked around the lab. “I used to know someone who could build stuff like that,” he said dryly. “He was the finest mad scientist I knew, always ready with some kooky bomb or missile or gun of some description. I wonder where he is these days, and if he’d be up for that sort of challenge.” Rodimus grinned.
Downshift matched the smile. “I think I know the mech you’re talking about,” he said. “I happen to know he retired some time ago – became more concerned with preserving life rather than dishing out damage. Although…”
He looked down at Divebomb.
“Given the circumstances, I think I might be able to coax him out of his den for one last run at the missile racks.”