14.Sept.07

Nanowars

By: Razor One

Prologue

Maximal and Predacon scientists shuffle about a rather large laboratory, each tending to their own experiments and minding their own business, lost in their own personal ivory tower of thought.

In a quiet corner, a small group of Maximal security guards play a friendly game of poker. For the moment all is as it should be; business as usual.

The sound of a ship’s propulsion system cycling downwards rumbles through the structure of the base. The scientists, lost in thought as they are, pay it no heed whatsoever. One of the guards huffs in mild annoyance, before showing his hand to the rest in the poker match, much to their detriment. With a smug look on his face, he walks to a nearby airlock cycling through as the others in the poker match lament the loss of their hands, return their cards and begin reshuffling the deck.

The smug guard impatiently waits for the airlock to cycle through and equalize pressures. He knows it can only be the re-supply vessel dispatched from Cybertron. The inner door to the airlock finally slides upwards in a smooth ballet of technology.

And just as smoothly he felt himself being pushed up. Just as suddenly he felt an immense crushing weight on his neck, and saw the towering hulk that did so, glowering hate and murder burning in his optics. The world reeled by surreally as dark shapes slid by behind the behemoth of hate and death. The sound of explosions and screams seemed to dull by the second as the guard felt himself declining into stasis lock.

One final thought crossed the guard’s mind before he crossed the great dark abyss.

Why?

Chapter One

Nanowars Part One

Aurora stirred upon her recharge bed in her quarters aboard her ship, the Pacifica. Her optics brightened until they shone with an optimistic azure glow. Her face was long and silvery, perhaps a bit too long to have ever been attractive. As she arose, her bluish torso and silvery arms and legs gave fits of protest which soon silenced as mech fluid gushed quickly to where it was needed.

As she sat on the recharge bed, feet on the floor, she allowed for a moment her face to bear the look of worry and concern. The crew was agitated, their energon supplies were running low and to top it off nobody really knew exactly why they were out here, not even her, to an extent.

She sighed as she quashed the look of concern and replaced it with the mask of determined pride that she wore whenever the crew had to see her. She deftly polished off the scuffed parts of her armour and did a quick systems check for damage. Mostly unnecessary work, she could easily have simply walked out.

But she was captain of the Pacifica, and she had to set an example to the crew, who were already becoming lax in their duties. Corner cutting and low morale were the simplest things in deep space that could get you killed or stranded. The majority of Cybertron, “Ground Pounders” as most spacers had labelled them over the years, thought of space as a place where aliens and strange phenomena would leap out and try to kill you at any moment.

It was of course part of the fear mongering that had in part driven her from Cybertron in the first place. Ever since the Pax had been signed and the great upgrade had taken place Maximals and Predacons had both taken towards a campaign of fear to keep the populace firmly ground bound. The Maximals claimed that the rebuilding of Cybertron and reconciliation with their Predacon brethren took place over gallivanting about in space having pointless adventures and so forth. The Predacons… well, it was clear what they were planning from the start. Even the most naïve of Maximals knew that.

The Metal Shortage, however, changed things. It was almost laughable that a planet composed almost entirely of metal would encounter a metal shortage, but centuries of war and unwise mining practices had made it impractical to draw further metals from Cybertron’s Crust.

That was ultimately the original reason she and her crew were out here. To seek out and salvage derelict wreckage left over from the Great War, to strip mine errant asteroids for their precious metals and to scout out mineral rich worlds to establish mining bases on. It was only a few weeks ago that they’d hit the mother lode. Her crew had discovered the wreckage of a Decepticon War Cruiser and an Autobot Destroyer. The two ships had been fused, as though one ship had rammed the other in desperation, ultimately killing all those aboard.

And yet…Despite the wealth of pure refined metals that wreckage could have brought to Cybertron, she’d been forced to walk away from it. She’d lain in claim markers, of course, but competition for scrap and salvage was almost cutthroat. Now she and her ship were headed to a place codenamed “Theta” to investigate the loss of contact with one of Cybertron’s bases there. It irked her to no end that her authority had been circumvented from standing directives from above. She was captain of her ship, master of her domain, as it were. She had launched herself into the Great Dark Beyond that most feared, to get away from constriction, to be free.

But protocols were protocols. Cybertron said it was a state of emergency and she had had no choice but to follow it. She had no idea why Theta was important to the Maximal High Council, but she had a feeling she was about to find out.

With a sigh of resignation, she polished away the last scuff mark, turned and walked through the door.

Time to face another day.

***

The ship juddered with a force that made the mind bend for a moment. In less than an instant it was over with, but any seasoned space veteran could tell they’d just crossed a puncture between realities, the border between Transwarp space where time and distance had little if any bearing and truespace, where all things warm and familiar dwelt.

Aurora felt a small surge of pride. Her vessel was amongst the first to be fitted with the transwarp drives and the cells to power them thanks to her corporate sponsors in scrap collection. Doing so had given them an edge over their slower rivals.

Efficiency however was always going to be a problem. That thing just guzzled energon, and the overheating problem could get so horrendous at times they’d need to drop out of transwarp to let the engines cool off every few days. She often wondered how Cryo could keep things so cool down there, though she knew his name had something to do with it.

Cryo was Aurora’s right hand man. If she did all the thinking, then Cryo was the heart that kept the blood flowing. He was no engineer, but he kept the crew motivated and at work, kept her appraised of the crew, and had somehow managed to keep their neurotic engineer from going utterly bonkers.

And with good reason of course. It took skill to manage nearly a hundred dedicated spacers. The Pacifica was completely dedicated to scrap salvage and smelting raw metals into usable form. When they were salvaging derelict spacecraft or performing strip mining operations the ship was invariably a hive of incessant activity as all six decks would buzz with crew members running to and fro from task to task.

As of now, the ship was mostly idle. Most crew members had opted for hibernation in crew quarters, some 84 of them simply lying back connected to energon feeders and operating on minimal power function. Aurora personally longed for the day a self contained stasis system would come into being as the drain on ships system was beginning to take a toll.

The rest, some 15 in all, were dedicated to keeping the ship in good working order, maintaining systems, repairing damage from wear, tear or corrosion, and of course ensuring that their hibernating comrades remained in good condition.

This juddering halt, thankfully, was not just another dropout for a cool-off pause. Interminable ages of travel had finally brought them to…

“Ah captain there you are!” said Cryo, narrowly avoiding smashing into Aurora on her hurry to get to the bridge

“Cryo!” She exclaimed with glee.

Though the large, barrel chested burly transformer would have intimidated lesser bots Aurora only knew of a kind and gentle spark that resided within. There had been talk of him being a title prize fighter in the Cybertronian underground, and with a physique like his one could easily assume so, were his nature not to belie it.

Still, if one listened to all the rumours, the crew would have any passerby believe that Aurora had sent a dozen crew members into the smelters for being lazy and inefficient. A rumour she didn’t discourage one little bit, since it seemed to keep newcomers on their toes, for a time at least.

“How are the grease monkeys handling the fires of the pit?” she asked with a lilt in her voice. Knowing they’d finally arrived had put her in good spirits.

“They’ll handle it for a day or two,” said Cryo, fully aware that Aurora was asking on the status of the ships engines and engineering staff, “but the crew is a little more worried about Cuergo’s folly as it is.”

Cuergo’s folly, Aurora had to smile at the mere mention of the wreckage they’d been forced to abandon some months earlier.

After barely a month of processing scrap they’d had to leave the derelict floating in the broad swathes of space, alone and unattended save for the claim drones they’d lain in. When all was said and done, the competition for scrap was fierce and becoming fiercer by the day.

“They’re just afraid that Sylan will jump our claim” finished Cryo

“Sylan wouldn’t have the gall,” she said, dismissing one of their more bitter rivals

“Still…” persisted Cryo, “I’ll be glad when we check in on this base. How long did they say they’ve been out of contact?”

And just like that Aurora was brought back to practical matters. Oh well.

“The last decacycle or so, still there were others nearer the base. It must have tremendous importance to get the council of elders nervous”

“You never did say which elder ordered us there…”

“Would it honestly make a difference if you did know?”

“It was Maximus, wasn’t it?”

Had Aurora been human, a bright crimson glow would have lit up her cheeks. Being a transformer, and thus anything but human physically speaking, she did nothing but throw Cryo a cross look.

“Could we NOT talk about that for once?” she said, desperately trying to sidestep any conversation about Maximus

“I won’t if you won’t,” said Cryo teasingly.

“Fine, Iceman,” she said icily before walking off.

Though she didn’t see it, Cryo’s face contorted with a mixture of worry and despair at the mere mention of Iceman. The look faded in less than an instant. Though Aurora was not to know, she’d struck a raw and sensitive nerve in her large and gentle friend.

A raw nerve indeed…

***

Electron huffed resignedly as he soldered yet more melted circuitry back into some semblance of working order. 4 months on the Pacifica had worn the rebellious youth into a grumbling resentful youth. Still, he mused, it beat prison any day. And it certainly beat working the smelters, even if they were inactive.

Electron was a wiry bot: slight and short, his teal highlights and optics accented his overall silvery frame. He carried the look of someone constantly exasperated with their lot in life and often spoke in a sarcastic tone.

Such behaviour had earned him few friends and fewer good graces aboard the Pacifica, which suited him just fine as he had no wish to make friends upon the Primus forsaken vessel he’d “volunteered” to work upon.

With a huff, he reached for another melted circuit from the pile to his left. Thank Primus they’d dropped out of transwarp. The engines, though fast, ran hot enough to melt lead, and in most cases tended to melt the control circuitry that surrounded them, hence his constant work trying to keep things patched up.

He knew nothing of course of transwarp technology nor how it worked, but seemed to have an innate knowledge of circuitry. It was his gift, he mused, a gift utterly bereft of what he truly desired to do when the war with the Predacons would come. Slaggin’ Preds. Oh how he hated the Predacons. The second that war broke out the happier he’d be. For all he knew war could be breaking out on Cybertron right now…

“…-ctron! Are you listening!” jolted electron out of his daydream

“Uh, Electron here,” he said rather hesitantly

“About time,” grumbled Aurora through his comms, “get up to the bridge, I need to have a word with you.”

“Be right there captain,” said Electron with a well practiced, though fake, enthused tone.

Aurora. How he hated her! It was, in part, her fault that he was here. Still, he was smart enough to realize that she was his ticket off the boat. So he cloaked his hatred with niceties, mock friendship and apparent hard work.

If he had to keep it up much longer he’d go insane and kill something.

He mulled over that thought as he put his soldering equipment and junked circuit board down and made his way to the bridge.

***

The bridge was quite a far cry from workspace in which Electron nursed circuit boards back to health. While he worked in a comparative grease pit the bridge was the picture of clinical clean command. Or, rather, was. Years of usage and different captains had seen the metal tarnish and dent. Still, it was in far better condition than most of the engineering bays, probably because so little dirty work occurred there.

Space hung beyond in stark ebon beauty, sprinkled with a delicate peppering of stars. At the centre of the vista sat a growing crescent of white, Theta, the mysterious base that had fallen silent so recently.

It was that mysterious silence that weighed upon Aurora’s mind right now. Theta hadn’t appeared on any of her charts. No entries had appeared on the outer territories charter. None of the official channels offered any information whatsoever; they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of a base called theta in these frigid outer regions of space. Even her unofficial channels knew nothing of the base.

She felt very much like she was standing between Cybertron and an unknown dark menace. The thought chilled her. What was a base so apparently secret that nobody knew about it doing out here, and more importantly, what had silenced it? What made Theta so important to the Maximal High Council? It was true that Maximus had charged her with investigating why the base had failed to contact Cybertron, but he had seemed highly strung even to her.

She had known Maximus long ago, when he had chosen to be her mentor, right up until his… ideals… had put her off politics and his guidance in general. The two hadn’t talked since. Though she had no love for Maximus and his… ways… he still obviously trusted her with something this important and discreet. Though he hadn’t said so overtly, he had essentially told her that she was one of the few people in the field he could trust.

A jolt shook the ship. Aurora gripped the handles on the captains’ chair. Deceleration at last. The sooner they could get this cloak and dagger business out of the way the better. The ship would soon decelerate and settle into and elliptical orbit around the pla-

An explosion rocked the ship. Aurora was thrown from her chair and Cryo was sent reeling into a bulkhead. Klaxons wailed blue murder as power conduits overloaded and blew.

Within seconds the comms went berserk with damage reports and cries for help. Her crew was dying! She could feel her ship listing badly, artificial gravity had been affected.

Aurora scrabbled to a flashing console with a schematic of her ship. An entire section of her vessel was lit in red, critical damage, unrecoverable, most likely blown completely clear of the ship. Surrounding areas were orange, fire hazard or decompression. She noted with a gulp that few, if any, areas had been unaffected. It was as if someone had come and bitten a massive chunk of her ship clean off.

She looked at the console again. The section that had been blown away...

“Dear primus...” she said, her voice thick with anguish.

The crew quarters had been utterly destroyed. 84 sparks were no more.

But Aurora had not time for pain.

“Captain, look…” trailed Cryo with apparent dread

Aurora followed Cryo’s gaze beyond the bridge, into the space beyond the window. The planet filled the view. Silhouetted against the white cloud deck were a large number of black dots. Ominous black dots. Moving black dots.

“Mines…” trailed Aurora

She had to think fast. She had to save her ship, her crew! Limpet mines. That’s what they had to be. One would collide with the ship and mark its location. More would then swarm the target until it was disabled or destroyed. Deadly technology. They had to abandon ship if anyone were to survive.

Cryo seemed to have reached the same conclusion as she had. Although the ship was their livelihood and their only ticket home, it would be suicide to remain. With the barest of nods, Aurora made the hardest decision of her life.

She and her crew would abandon the Pacifica.

***

Electron tore through the burning corridor, racing for the bulkhead that was slowly closing to isolate the rest of the ship from the fire. A crew member cried out in pain but Electron ignored him. There was nothing he could do. He leapt through the bulkhead just in the nick of time as it crunched shut.

Electron was smart enough to know when the slag had dropped into the smelting pool. They were under attack and he had to get out of here.

“Abandon ship! All hands! Abandon ship!” cried Aurora over the ship comms.

Electron suppressed a snort of indignation. She was stating the obvious, naturally. Still, he had to get out of here. He racked his memory as to where the nearest escape pod was. All he could think of though was the bridge escape pod.

Another explosion rocked the ship. Electron guessed it had to have hit the smelting bay. There had been at least six people there when he’d passed through that area.

He shivered as he suppressed thoughts that it could have been him being blown into space. He had to get out of here! He tore down corridor after corridor, racing to the bridge.

Electron swore that come what may, he wouldn’t die this day, no matter what.

***

Aurora was completely surprised when Electron burst onto the bridge, burnt, scored and more than likely scarred from what he’d seen on the way up from the very bowels of the ship.

“Have you seen anyone?” asked Aurora, desperation marinating her voice, “Is anyone left?!”

Electron shook his head as he panted. Another dull explosion rocked the ship. She knew now that the only intact point on the entire vessel was the bridge.

“Aurora,” said Cryo, “We have to go now. If we don’t then none of us will survive.”

Even in the thick of mayhem, Cryo maintained his cool, as he always did.

“Let’s go,” said Aurora.

She didn’t need to think about the decision. It had been sealed since the first mine had hit the ship. Still, she felt abject reluctance at having to leave her ship. Perhaps this was why Earth sea captains went “Down with the ship” when they were doomed.

The trio raced down one corridor and tore through another. The ship groaned loudly enough to give them all pause but managed to hold together.

“Just a little longer,” whispered Aurora, “Just a little longer Pacifica.”

Finally the escape hatch loomed. Cryo worked the controls and Electron dove in headfirst as soon as the hatch opened. Quietly Aurora thanked Primus for independent emergency subsystems. Cryo stood at the threshold.

“Come on Aurora!” he cried as the ship lurched and groaned worryingly.

Aurora came to the threshold of the hatchway herself. Cryo and Electron had already strapped themselves into the safety harnesses.

“What are you waiting for?!” cried Electron, “Let’s Go!”

Aurora took one last look at her ship. My Ship, she thought. Aurora tried to burn the image of the wrecked corridor into her mind. Sparks showered her as gouts of flame erupted from failing bulkheads.

“Thank you,” she whispered to her ship, “Thank you for carrying us this far.”

With that, she entered the escape pod and sealed the hatch. Strapping herself into a safety harness, she reached for the launch controls and punched it.

The escape pod fired out of the ship with massive force. Looking upon it through the windows of the escape pod, Aurora could see the terrible damage wreaked upon the Pacifica. Wreckage was littered everywhere and the ship rotated helplessly in space.

The ship passed from view almost immediately as the pod vectored to enter the atmosphere and soft land what remained of the crew to the surface of the planet. She hoped the others had made it.

As the pod hit the atmosphere, a mine became active overhead and began trailing the ship.

“We’ve got incoming!” shouted Cryo.

“Shoot it down!” cried Electron.

“With what?!” yelled Aurora.

“Brace-!” cried Cryo, but was interrupted by an ear splitting explosion.

Metal was torn asunder as the fragile pod was rent by the blast. Sparks flew everywhere, flames temporarily engulfed everything and for a moment Aurora was blinded by the light and pain of the flames. When her senses recovered, she was tumbling through the atmosphere in her half of the escape pod.

And she was in the part that didn’t have the parachute to slow her down to a more modest pace of descent. Aurora struggled with her straps, hoping to free herself and find a way to descend a little more softly. Yet as the foreboding ground grew ever closer ever faster, she knew she had little hope. She struggled until the remnants of her pod crashed to the barren ground with an ear-splitting sound. Then there was silence... and stillness.