Part One
Author's Note: Hasbro owns the Beast Wars, I make no profit, yadda yad ya. Anyway, YES, I know that this fic is…um…ayearandahalfoverdue, but I can work past that! Really!…I just don't know when I'll be FINISHING this fic. Encouragement is always welcome, and death threats are even kind of flattering once I stop running long enough to think about it.
Prologue:
The robot sitting at the desk drummed his fingers on the desktop, looking out a viewscreen at the moonbase below. From this magnification the damage wasn't seen as easily; one would have to know what it had looked like before the disaster to locate the empty spots in the space defense grid, in the ground support systems. Even then the damage didn't seem that bad. A couple ships and autoguns were gone: so what? One or two buildings had been blown apart: big deal. They could always build more, right? A dozen or so experiments had gone wrong or had needed to be terminated, but that had happened before. The scientists in charge of the major projects had assured him that most of the lost experiments were replaceable or not really necessary at all. The Maximal High Council and its Predacon allies had understood. The final body count had helped drive the point home that there was nothing that could have been done differently.
It was understood that sacrifices had to be made. Because of the secrecy involved in the operation of the A.L.H. Research Center, his rear didn't have to be saved from the media, which would have blown some of the "inhumane" practices of the experimentation way out of proportion. Of course some of what was done wasn't legal in the most technical sense, but wasn't it legal if the law-making body of Cybertron and the Cybertronian Alliance approved of them? Secrecy made sure that none of the little irregularities in the scientific research leaked out, though, and that was the way everyone liked it, from the A.L.H Research Center to the Maximal High Council. Things had gone wrong, but nobody knew about it besides those involved. Things picked up where they had left off, minus some experiments and the people who had tragically gotten caught in the middle of the bad spots.
There was the issue of the escapees, however.
The fingers stopped in their monotonous tapping long enough to clench into a hard fist. The Cutting Edge had managed to make a Transwarp jump despite a direct hit by one of the defensive platforms in orbit around the moon. That meant that someone had survived on board. Several someones, in order to properly operate a starship that size. Someones who had apparently seen what the A.L.H Research Center was and were now loose in the galaxy, able to tell anyone who they came upon what the Center was. Therefore the Center, in cooperation with the demands of the Maximal High Council and its allies, had to find and exterminate those loose ends. The hunt had to start with a simple beginning, of course: who WERE the escapees?
The robot behind the desk looked away from the viewscreen on his wall and directed his gaze towards the computer screen on the desk. A list of names scrolled down it under his optics: Captain Venara, Optimus Primal, Guns, Cheetor, Blackarachnia...it went on and on, noting down every crew member and passenger on board the Cutting Edge when the starship had arrived in orbit of the moonbase. They were in no particular order and only had one thing in common:
Every one had the word 'DECEASED' behind it.
After a long moment of looking at the results of the Center, he touched a key on the computer and was rewarded with another list, this one much shorter than the first. There were only three names. They all had the word 'ACTIVE' behind them. They were the last surviving passengers from the Cutting Edge and were the top suspects for engineering the successful escape. Only three, though. The scientists and mechanics he had assigned to research the matter had confirmed his thoughts: running a starship the size of the Cutting Edge would be dangerous, if not impossible, with only those three on board. Especially with the predicted damage done on the starship by the blast from the defense grid.
His optics narrowed as he studied the names on his screen, one at a time.
The standard Maximal background file on Rattrap was sketchy at best, but the Maximal High Council's Predacon allies had handed over a file with more information. It went without saying that most of the information had been gained through illegal means. It also went without saying that most of the informants were probably dead, or soon would be. The Tripedicus Council's files were often put together that way, and with the way it and the Maximal High Council were working together on this project it hadn't minded giving out all the information it knew.
The robot touched a button again, highlighting Rattrap's name and pulling up the short brief on him. It told him that Rattrap was a Maximal, of the male gender, and had adopted an alternative mode of an organic rat and a vehicular mode besides that. His specialty for the Axalon mission was listed as 'Demolition and Computer Programming'. That was computer jargon code for 'He blows things up and hacks into files'.
The rat could be tough, or even downright nasty to track down if the information the Predacon allies had supplied was proof of his abilities. Nothing had ever been proven, even by the Predacons. Small incidents that could never REALLY be traced back to Rattrap made him familiar with the Cybertronian underworld, but he had never been drawn far enough into it to be brought down by it. Nothing life-threatening or big enough to draw major attention, but enough that the Predacons' informants had been able to piece together bits of his lifestyle and money-spending habits and trace them to sources of money that couldn't have been from his legitimate jobs. Nothing had ever been proven, though, and Rattrap had left Cybertron on yet another legal jaunt through space paid for by the Maximal exploration funds, blurring the credit trail even further. Rattrap, above all, knew how to take care of himself.
His finger moved on the computer keyboard and another, recently familiar file came up onto the screen. He had studied it carefully before deciding to trust Depth Charge and make him a Security Chief. Apparently that trust had been misplaced. The obsessive, fanatical hate of a common enemy hadn't been as all-consuming as he had been sure it was, and the manta ray had escaped. Somehow he and the rat had constructed an entire plan of attack on the A.L.H. Research Center and pulled it off. The technicians who tore apart the Center's computer core had found only traces of the original computer virus left, but it was enough to give them a starting point. They traced each tendril of the virus, tracking down what it hit and in what order. Security monitors that hadn't completely scrambled their recordings had been salvaged, showing only part of where and what Depth Charge had been doing but giving the technicians more things to check. The virus trail showed that much of the time the manta ray had been "cooperating" with the Center Security Teams he had actually been studying power relays and computer access consoles in preparation for the sabotage needed to get the maximum amount of chaos necessary to get the Cutting Edge out of orbit. The partially trashed files had shown something that struck everyone's interest, though. In a fit of conscience Depth Charge had dragged one special experiment along with him, too, and the evidence dug up so far showed that the rat and ray had needed to rework parts of their plan in order to make it work. They hadn't planned on having him along, but they had worked quickly and it HAD worked. They were loose.
Optics narrowed with hate, lighting up inside into red furnaces of fury.
X was loose.
A quiet knock on the door cut off the spiral into thoughtless anger he had gotten to know so well, and he keyed it open. It slid away to show another robot, who walked in with what seemed like placid calm. The robot behind the desk indicated a chair without trying to make a pretense of being glad to see his visitor. The calm robot sat, only his burning red optics betraying his share of the hatred they both felt.
"The reward being offered is high enough to catch the attention of most of the amateur and some of the professional bounty hunters," the calm robot told the other behind the desk without preamble. "Not really enough to catch much media attention. The criminal profiles are being doctored as we speak so that they justify the amount of credits being offered. The bounty notices will be posted with a group of similar cases so that if any media attention is called to the offers there will be an even chance of one of the others catching the spotlight."
Used to the terse but smooth flow of information, the robot behind the desk touched another key on the computer and called up the doctored criminal files and the offered rewards. "Caught while hacking into secured computer files? An interesting crime for Depth Charge, perhaps." He tapped a finger against the desk thoughtfully. "Have their psychological profiles been altered enough to make their reactions to being discovered believable? We don't want them being wanted on murder charges if no one believes that they would have killed a security team to avoid being caught."
The calm robot nodded. "It has been taken care of."
A frown creased his face slightly as he looked at the computer screen again. "The reward..." He thought for a moment, trying to fit the jigsaw puzzle of the Maximal High Council's reasoning together. "Why not set it higher?" he conceded finally, admitting that he couldn't find the logic.
"The bounty hunters will just be used to drive them out of hiding," the calm robot said, examining one of his blue arms as if it held the answers to his companion's questions. "Once they've made their presence known somewhere, the Alliance will send in retrieval groups. Things will stay out of the media better if the targets just disappear from their attention and back to here."
"Ah." Now he saw the reasons. But one thing still stood out. "X isn't mentioned at all in this. There's no bounty for him."
An almost gleeful, if hard, glint entered the optics of the seemingly calm robot. "The public doesn't need to know about him. He's the Center's secret, and the Council and its allies want to keep it that way."
"Yes, I can see that." Fingers tapped again. "It's not likely that Depth Charge will let him escape again, after all. In fact, the predictions coming from our search teams indicate that they plan on the ray pretty much staying in the background guarding that freak while Rattrap keeps them hidden. They're all studying up on the rodent's REAL psychological file and looking for his usual contacts and hiding spots."
"Rattrap does appear to be in charge. It was his virus in the computers." The calm robot didn't seem that dismayed by talking about the robot who had sabotaged his experiment.
The robot behind the desk watched him carefully, then smiled thinly. "So they've approved your plans, I see. You have all of the original plans and observations, I assume, and they want you to try the entire experiment again. Is it likely that it will work the second time?"
A slight shake of the calm robot's head answered him. "At least, not soon. The original spark was found only after going through many test subjects. Although the Council and its sources will soon be transporting subjects here to be used, it is doubtful that we will find one with the unique requirements we found in that one's spark. I will try, but bringing X back to the Center is the only sure way of getting results quickly." He sighed. "A pity many of the most recent observational files were destroyed by those two. I had hoped to see the end of the last experiment with energon deprivement."
"And so you shall." With those words the robot behind the desk waved Dr. Kilju a dismissal that the placid robot took no offense at and returned to drumming his fingers on the desk, gazing at the viewscreen's display. He touched a key, and it switched to a view of deep space from another part of the starship his office was in. He looked at the stars, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and let his anger and hatred simmer. His enemy was out there somewhere.
The Maximal High Council and its allies wanted X back and the two who had gotten him out silenced. He was perfectly willing to do that. Depth Charge had tricked him, Rattrap had sabotaged the base he was supposed to be protecting, and X...well, people like Depth Charge might insist that he was a sentient deserving of a name, even a name like Rampage, but he and Dr. Kilju knew better. X was an experiment, nothing more, except for the fact that the robot behind the desk had a rather large grudge against his continued existence. He would settle for returning him to what amounted to torture, however.
The bounties for the other two escapees didn't specify Dead or Alive. Dead was preferable, but it could always be done after they were captured. The way the analysts were studying Rattrap's profile, the robot behind the desk was confident the rodent would lead his companions straight into a retrieval team's arms. All they had to do was build a better mousetrap, after all, for such a smart mouse.
X was no mouse, though. And the People In Charge wanted him alive. VERY alive. He was important to them in ways that an experiment like him couldn't possibly understand. Having lived it his whole life so far, X had probably never even thought of it in terms of affecting others beside himself.
But the People In Charge had. Maximal High Council, the mysterious Tripedicus Council, select allies from the Cybertronian Alliance--they all knew why the A.L.H. Research Facility and Dr. Kilju were so important. They were the key to unlocking and then, later, sharing X's secret. It had been the original reason the Maximal High Council had approved the Protoform X project, and it still wanted that secret for its very own so desperately that it was willing to search the galaxy for the escaped experiment. The robot behind the desk didn't know if any thought had actually been given to applying the final results of the study to the general populace, but he doubted it. Only important players got the rewards of the game in the end. He himself was an important piece in this puzzle, and the pain the research needed to put it together caused was only an added benefit.
Admiral Jirex leaned back in his chair, a wide smile stretching across his face as he imagined the three robots fleeing from the moon his ships orbited. They would run, but they would be found. And then the precious secret would be discovered and unlocked.
The secret of IMMORTALITY.
Part One:
The robot on the metal platform that was currently serving as a bed didn't look dangerous at the moment. An energon cube was on a shelf above him with tubes of the liquid energy leading into his body at a steady drip that was used up almost as soon as it entered the robot. There was too much of a risk of frying delicate circuitry if a constant stream of energon was used or else that kind of setup would have been in use. He hadn't moved a limb since Depth Charge had dragged him here and set up the energy feed, and the manta ray was honestly starting to think that maybe that last experiment by the Center had knocked the robot's body offline for good. What was the use of an indestructible spark if the body it was in was practically dead from starvation?
Depth Charge turned away from Rampage's motionless form and stared at the computer components scattered across the bridge. He hadn't wanted to bring the crab to the control center of the ship, but he would have taken a chance of Rampage waking up unguarded if he had put him back in the cell several levels down in the starship. Not that he seriously thought that the crab could do much in his severely weakened condition, but it was also more convenient this way. He didn't have to keep running back and forth between checking on him and repairing the computers on the bridge. It saved time.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Alright, he'd admit it: he was afraid. He was afraid of being alone in here, only an arm's length from the exploded computer that had disintegrated most of Rattrap's upper body and head. He had placed the pitiful remains of his friend in a distant room and locked the door, awash with the pain of grief, and realized that he was in a starship adrift in deep space who-knows-where with a computer system that was basically scrap and needed at least two people working at once to run it. He was the last of many victims; the one responsible for getting the information about the A.L.H. Research Center to Rarmet, the media hub of the galaxy, which would then expose it and its backers. They would be ruined; the people who had died would be avenged. The responsibilities fell on his shoulders alone.
And all Depth Charge had left to fulfill his mission with was a starship drifting dead in space, some tapes and evidence that would never reach the planet if the starship couldn't get him there, and an unconscious homicidal psychopath who also happened to have fallen victim to the Center. There was no other person besides Rampage on board; in order to navigate the starship there had to be at least two people. That is, IF he could even get the computers back online. All the ship had now was basic life support.
Depth Charge sat down at the computer station that had killed Rattrap and twitched his fins back, straightening his shoulders. All right, so he was afraid. The fear of being alone was illogical, but he knew that it would pass as the reality of Rattrap's death sank in. The other fear was more logical. He wasn't afraid of death, but of failure. If he couldn't stop the A.L.H. Research Center now, the atrocities being committed there would go on unchecked. That fear, almost frustration more than fear really, stuck in his chest and constricted, making everything seem hopeless. He was one 'bot against many, and he was afraid he wouldn't be enough to make a difference. He couldn't share this responsibility with anyone. He was by himself.
A tiny sound made him snap around in his seat.
His world was pain. His joints ached, his arms and legs were leaden with agony, and his spark pulsed with constant, level pangs of HURT. For some reason he dimly remembered as energy deprivation, his optics were offline. He must be in his cell. What had the latest test done to him? He must have finally been allowed to go offline, so the spark-compression experiment must have ended. Or had he merely been allowed to rest for a little while to prolong the agony? No, there was something in his arm. He could feel it; a small but steady influx of energy. Was it tainted? The only way to find out was to look at it. He strained to slide his legs over the side of his sleeping platform but only managed to shift one of his feet with a soft clang.
Suddenly hands were pulling at the flow of energon into his arm, causing more pain and an immediate weakening in his entire body. He automatically tried to yell at the hands to stop, remembering too late that the gag Dr. Kilju had put on him prevented any noise from his voice box. To his vague shock his yell actually emerged from his mouth as a whimpered moan. Words said in a familiar voice were heard in his audios, but only the urgent tone made any sense to him. He couldn't understand what was being said in that tone.
Then something cool slid into his mouth and he sputtered in surprise as liquid energon flowed down the small tube and into his throat. Only for a nano-second though, as his drained mind and body registered that this was ENERGY.
"Slow down!" Depth Charge tugged the end of the tube away again, and Rampage made a sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper. It was obvious that the crab was in pain, but the demand for more energon was almost as fierce. "Your body can't handle too much energon too fast!" He waited for a long moment, then let the crab sip again, hoping that he wasn't doing this too quickly. Reading about what to do in with starvation victims wasn't the same as dealing with one, and seeing the pathetic, eager way Rampage reached for the energy source the best he could in his weakened state made it hard for him to deliberately withhold it.
According to the text he and Rattrap had been able to dig up just prior to their escape, the systems in a starved 'bot were mostly shut down. Giving them too much energon too fast caused them to snap back online, trying to do their full functions in a body that was too weak to handle that. Like a human eating food that was too rich, a robot's body would reject the energon.
"Slow down!" he said again. A weak movement of the crab's hands attracted his attention when he removed the tube again. So. Rampage's systems WERE recovering. Depth Charge checked the level of the energon remaining in the cube and pulled away from the crab. "That's enough for now."
A weak sound of protest came from Rampage, and that actually encouraged the manta ray. It was the first sign of understanding by the abused form lying on the make-shift bed.
"Give your systems time to adjust," he told the crab, hoping some of what he was saying was getting through. "I'll continue the intravenous feed while you're offline."
The pain wasn't as bad now, and he could vaguely understand what the familiar voice was telling him. His audios had a disturbing tendency to miss words, but he got the general idea. This voice meant him no harm. He wasn't at the A.L.H. Research Center anymore. This wasn't some cruel experiment!
Memories slid past his conscious mind as he strained to listen to what the voice was saying, and he started to relax. He couldn't QUITE remember, but what he could told him to trust the voice...for now.
He drifted wearily into a more natural resting state.
When he woke this time, he stayed still. Pain still beat at him relentlessly, but it had ebbed a long way from burning agony it had been the first time he awoke. The energy feed was back in his arm again, and he reveled in the strength it was giving him. The starvation was over. He winced at the hollow pain in his spark even as he let himself feel the restoration of his systems. Some things hadn't been restored to him, apparently.
"Blasted computer!"
The crash and accompanying curse came from nearby, and he slowly powered up his optics. His sight flickered alarmingly for a little bit, and his surroundings remained a bit blurred, but at least he could see the origin of the angry words.
A shielding panel for a computer was on the floor, with the upper part of someone growing from it. Rampage puzzled over what his optics were showing him, trying to figure out why the struggling figure had the lower body of a computer. Then things snapped into perspective; the shielding panel had fallen onto the floor, pinning the robot down underneath it. That was what the noise had been. Now the robot under the computer panel was cursing in what the crab slowly realized was a familiar voice.
"Depth Charge?"
His voice was weak enough that for a moment he wondered if he had said anything, but the ray stopped struggling in order to stare across the room at him. A strange mix of emotions crossed the face of his old enemy: hatred and relief, frustration and fear, anger and hope. His features finally settled into an expression of irritation, but Rampage remained confused as he sensed the dampened fear tainting the manta ray. Depth Charge had never been afraid around him before...
"Now you're awake? Great," Depth Charge said gruffly. "Just what I needed," he added with more than a hint of bitter sarcasm. "First this, now you come back online at the worst possible time..."
Rampage did his best to sneer as his optics flickered with the effort. "Well, I'm SO sorry to inconvenience you, Fish Face. I'll just get up and leave then--" But his arms gave out when he tried to brace them to heave himself upright, and he gasped as his entire body weakened. His optics unfocused again.
"Stay STILL!" the blurred silver and blue form on the floor yelled at him.
He wasn't sure he heard him right. His audios had missed part of what he said. "Wha...what?" His voice shook.
"Don't move! Your body can't take a lot of movement at the moment, so just stay still!" His own face must have shown doubt because there was a sigh of frustration. When Depth Charge's voice came again, it was low with reluctant persuasion, "Look, this is going to sound strange, but you have to trust me. Don't move."
Rampage felt himself shaking with energy withdrawal and deliberately tried to relax. It took what seemed like a long time, but gradually the shaking stopped and his optics slowly focused, although they were much dimmer than before. "What's going on?" he asked faintly.
"I'll explain later when I'm more sure you're hearing everything I say," Depth Charge said, looking at him critically.
The crab hesitated, extremely conscious of both his own and the ray's vulnerable situations. Did he dare put his life in his worst enemy's hands? A shock of realization hit him, though, as he thought it over; Depth Charge wasn't his worst enemy any longer. He wasn't sure what they were to each other now, but the ray had rescued him from the torture of experimentation. Did enemies do that? Before he had been to the A.L.H. Research Center, he would have thought Maximals in general did that sort of thing. But his chief tormentors had both been Maximals. Where did that leave him with Depth Charge, a Maximal who had gone against his government?
Reluctantly, Rampage nodded. He watched the manta ray go back to trying to get out from underneath the computer panel and privately admitted that he probably wouldn't have been able to do anything, anyway. Just moving his head and powering up his optics had left him limp with lack of energy.
But while his optics dimmed, his mind raced in confused circles. He didn't know what was going on! Depth Charge, of all people, had rescued...HIM? It didn't make any sense at all, and Rampage could only wonder uneasily what was going to happen to him now. The fatigue-fogged memories that he had of the escape provided no clues except that it seemed like the ray had actually come back for him instead of just breaking out on his own. But why had the ray been breaking out of the Research Center? Hadn't he had the position he had wanted, in control of the Protoform X Security?
He remembered the blind chaos that had surrounded them as they fled the Center. He had been forced to rely on Depth Charge to guide him when his optics had finally given out, so he had only been able to hear the sirens and panicked intercom messages requesting help in besieged areas. Had it only been an opportunity that the ray had leapt on, or had the confusion been planned? Either way, Depth Charge had led him, blind and helpless, out of torture and into...what?
Maybe the manta ray had only rescued him in order to kill him. In that case, Rampage would welcome death over returning to the endless tests and experiments that Dr. Kilju had organized for him. Starvation had only been part of what had been planned, and his breath caught strangely as he remembered the long, detailed descriptions Admiral Jirex had read aloud to him between each excruciating test on his spark, or his body, or how his spark affected his body, or whatever the scientists wanted to do to him. A list of questions Dr. Kilju and his new associates had thought up during the time when the crab had been free and were going to find answers for no matter the pain they caused. Rampage had listened to the mocking voice of the Admiral and had been sickened by the hopeless future presented to him. Anger had sustained him for a time, but the draining starvation had taken away even the energy needed to keep that alive. By then, if he could have managed it, he would have taken his own life to stop the pain, the humiliation. But he couldn't. Immortality had its setbacks, and there were times when he wished he didn't have it.
Rampage strained against the heavy lethargy settling over him and heaved a sigh of bitter surrender. He had no choice but to trust Depth Charge for now. He couldn't return to the A.L.H. Research Center, and he was willing to pay any price to stay out of it. If he had to live without freedom again, in chains if that was what Depth Charge required to keep him under control, he would. Not that he wouldn't try to escape, but he didn't think that the ray had spontaneously broken him out of the torture just to let him go again, or even to kill him. Feeding him energy didn't go along with that idea at all. Really, though, nothing in the ordinary way of things was happening, and he was bewildered by his position in this situation: unknown and weak.
That very weakness swamped him, shutting down his body into a period of recharge as his mind subsided into subconscious unease.
His arms strained, pushing against the heavy metal panel on top of his legs, and Depth Charge continued muttering curses as it refused to relent to the pressure. Even as he struggled, though, he glanced at the silent form on the metal shelf, wondering if Rampage had really gone offline. He didn't seriously think that the crab could do anything if he WAS awake, but he hadn't thought he would react so strongly to him awakening in the first place. He wasn't sure he wanted the crab to reawaken until he had figured out his own emotions.
Had it been that long since he'd actually talked to someone, or did it just seem like it? As much as he had disliked being stranded on Earth, its way of measuring time had grown on him. He had set a schedule up for himself on the planet, hunting for Rampage for five sunrises and then deliberately taking a break. The sight of the sun breaking over the horizon tended to remind him more than his internal clock. Here on the ship there were obviously no sunrises, but he had gotten used to using the time measurements; he had been stranded here for four 'days' by Earth time. In all that time, he had spoken only a few last words for Rattrap and a couple brief conversations with a semi-conscious Rampage. Depth Charge was a solitary 'bot by nature, but the very lack of company made him wish there was some.
But Rampage was all there was.
He muttered a few more curses at that thought more than at the computer still pinning him down, but then he sighed and fell silent. The computer panel was heavy, emphasizing what he already knew: he couldn't repair this ship by himself. He couldn't FLY it by himself. He needed someone else to help him, and the only other person available was his most hated enemy. Or, at least, the person he HAD hated the most. Now he wasn't sure if that hatred should be pity or not. After what had been done to the crab, could he really blame Rampage for being how he was? Were the killings justified by what had been done to him?
He didn't know, but he couldn't think about his confusion right now. What he needed more than answers to his questions was a second person to help him fly this crippled ship. Depth Charge had tracked X across the galaxy, and even though he had called him a mass murderer and a psychopath, one thing he had never found evidence of was a lack of intelligence. The files he had accessed both from the original Protoform X compound and from the A.L.H Research Center confirmed that Rampage was considered, for all his faults, to be brilliant. For some reason Depth Charge couldn't understand, the scientists who had created the Protoform X project had specifically designed the protoform to be smarter than they were.
All of which meant that Rampage was intelligent enough to understand Depth Charge's reasons for getting to Rarmet. He hoped so, at least. There had to be SOME way to convince the crab to help him, but he couldn't-or wouldn't-offer freedom as a bribe. Rampage would only find another population to massacre, and Depth Charge had sworn that Omicron and Rugby wouldn't happen again. If it came down to it, the manta ray would choose to keep Rampage locked up rather than setting him loose, even if he had to find some way to repair the ship on his own.
Hopefully he wouldn't have to resort to that. He wasn't sure he could do it. He heaved once more at the computer, sighing in relief as it finally shifted enough for him to roll out from underneath its weight. Next time, however, he might not be able to move it. Perhaps, he thought wryly, he should work on something lighter for now. Like…wiring. He would have to scavenge through the already-rerouted consoles just to find enough intact wiring to use on the consoles Rattrap had set up to control the ship. The useless consoles would end up gutted, empty husks by the time he was through with them, and it made him feel slightly guilty. This ship had once been Captain Venara's pride and joy.
But Captain Venara was dead; murdered like she hadn't been a Maximal worthy of living. Depth Charge steeled himself with thoughts that were almost familiar. Now, too, he sought justice. His target was just bigger this time, that's all.
Meanwhile, though, the 'bot he had once hunted across the galaxy lay offline, dim optics staring at him sightlessly. Depth Charge would have to get used to being around him without trying to kill him. The hunt had ended, but now they were both the hunted.
Together, they had to outrun the hunters.