Transformers: Steel Reign

[General Havoc]

Dutifully, Hornet crawled towards the front of the massive cargo bay, one wing clutched over his stomach from which energon and mech fluid was still leaking. Tears continued to drip down his face, and he took the time as he was moving forward to wonder if he should apologize to Overload for leaking everywhere. All thoughts of doing this however vanished when he finally reached the front of the bay, and found himself staring down at the planet below... from orbit.

Hornet's optics widened to the size of cartwheels, and he pressed his hands against the glass and stared, unblinkingly down, the pain in his stomach and that in his spark temporarily forgotten as he gazed down at the blue planet below. He had never been off-world before, and he himself could not attain orbital heights, bound by the same physical laws as earthly airplanes.

"... wow." he said in obvious astonishment, gazing down at the Earth. "Are... are we in... space?"

[SirNitram]

"Low orbit, anyway. Safest place, considering I was in Overshock too long. Plus, I can play target spotter from up here." Overload's voice said calmly, his sensors sweeping the battlefield far below. "How's the hole? Your self-repair able to stop the leak?"

[General Havoc]

Hornet glanced down at the hole that was drilled through his stomach, which was still leaking half a dozen different types of fluid, some of which were now smeared on the window, and dripping onto the floor. He felt a wave of guilt as he sat back down on the floor in a puddle of his own mech fluid.

"I..." he said nervously, "I don't... have a... self-repair system." Wheeljack had simply not been able to fit one into Hornet's tiny frame, not that one would have been of much use with a mechanism as delicate as Hornet's. "I'm still... still leaking." He lowered his head. "I'm sorry."

[SirNitram]

"That's probably not healthy. I think my self-repair routines might not be the best to use on you. See if you can find the storage compartment. I put duct tape in there. It's a human invention, most useful stuff in existance. Try and stop the leaking." Overload spoke, not raising his voice. "Don't want you suffering internal damage before it's safe to land."

[General Havoc]

Hornet had never heard of duct tape, but he rummaged around in the storage compartment, searching for whatever Overload was talking about. Eventually he narrowed it down to a dark gray roll of tough adhesive tape. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. Lacking a better idea, he unrolled the tape partway and taped over the hole in his stomach. He couldn't however reach around far enough to do the same to the other side of the hole in his lower back, and not even the tape could stop the energon/mech-fluid/hydraulic-fluid mess from oozing out and running down his leg onto the floor.

"S... sorry about... the mess..." he said hesitantly.

[LadyTevar]

"Little busy right now, Crim, but I'm ok. Few scorch marks, but ok." He replied, focusing on shooting down the few drones left.

"Remember... Hot Neon Pink Racing Stripes," Crimson teased, her engine roaring as she raced to catch up with the fight. "So try to stay together."

She tried to ignore the piles of drone bodies strewn across the battle field. So many of them, each one a human life. Was Deathstrike right? Were they volunteers? Her LaserCore was screaming otherwise; that once again the Decepticons were expanding by forced conscription, as they had on Cybertron.

So many drones... the Autobots and their allies had plowed through the attack with only minor injuries. Surely the Decepticons had known the drones couldn't.........

"DeathStrike? What are the chances this was only a distraction?"

[Charon]

Shellshock spoke up at this point, picking up the images given to him by Overload and computing them, he sent a private comm. to Prime. "Permission to begin bombardment of the enemy facility?"

Then Shellshock addressed Crimson. "It's two-fold. A distraction and a test. Shockwave no doubt has some much smaller force that is going to be striking somewhere else, but there isn't much we can do about that. This attack was mainly a test, to see how well the drones stand up to fire, how long it took us to kill them, and how eager the Autobots are to kill them after they realize what these drones are. If we give them time for a second attack, you can expect it to be a lot bigger than this one."

Shellshock turned his cannon towards a drone that was further out and fired, the underpowered plasma bolt melting cleanly through the under-armored drone.

[General Havoc]

Still trying to stop the leaks in his own frame, Hornet continued to try and use the Duct Tape to patch himself up. Unfortunately, in suggesting this thing, Overload had forgotten Hornet's propensity for getting himself into... awkward situations.

He wrapped his entire mid-section in duct tape several times before the leak finally stopped. With relief, he turned to move back towards the windows, but had forgotten to sever the duct tape around his stomach from the roll itself, and when he slipped in the puddle of his own mech fluid and fell forward onto the floor , the roll of tape slipped out of his hand and landed on his back, applying a strip of tape up his back to his shoulder. He sat up slowly and tugged at the tape, trying to pull it off of him, but succeeded only in accidentally wrapping the tape around his chest and wings several times. Further struggles only resulted in further chaos, coupled with fluctuations in the gravity field at the wrong moment, and within ten minutes, Hornet was thickly wrapped in several layers of criss-crossing duct tape, with both his wings and legs stuck, his chest and stomach swaddled in tape five or six pieces thick, and the tape roll, or what was left of it, had even managed to get stuck to part of the floor in Hornet's struggles, binding him down as though pinned.

After a minute or two of further struggle didn't succeed in anything save anchoring him more securely to the floor, Hornet finally spoke up.

"Um... Overload?" he asked hesitantly, certain that Overload was going to be angry with him. "I've... kinda got a problem here..."

[SirNitram]

Overload was mostly occupied, but risked a glance inward. "Okay, Hornet.. Just.. Hang.. Sit.." After a few more false starts, he tried a new tactic entirely. "The important thing is that you've stopped the leak and secured yourself." It was hard for the older bot not to be amused. "And with that much duct tape, I think nothing short of Shockwave could hurt you."

[General Havoc]

Hornet did as he was told. He didn't really have a choice. He could no more do anything BUT sit (or rather lay) on Overload's floor than he could fly without an engine. He supposed Overload was right, besides. At least he was safe in here.

Of course, had he known that all that duct tape HADN'T actually stopped the leaks, but instead forced the pressure to build inwards, and that the mech fluid was presently starting to pool inside his torso in the manner of internal bleeding on a human... he might not have been so certain. At the moment however, there was no immediate sign of that, save for one that could not be interpreted as such.

"I won't.... I can't... move..." he said as he lay there. After a minute or two he asked another question.

"My... my stomach hurts..." he said, wincing and trying to keep the pain out of his voice. "Are... are we gonna land... soon?"

[SirNitram]

"We need to stay up here until the landing strip is clear and safe. Can you power down? It's best to stay in Stasis Lock until you can enact repairs." Overload's senses were mostly oriented outside, but he was a little too aware it'd take more than tape.

[General Havoc]

The base fact was that Hornet couldn't power down, not without an override command. Most bots had the ability to shut themselves down at will, but Hornet did not, as that would have entailed giving him Master-level control of his own systems, which Wheeljack was unwilling to do. Instead, Hornet's master-controls were entrusted to a complex algorithmic series that closely mirrored the unconscious functions of the human brain, as well as to Wheeljack himself, Crimson, and Prime. As none of them were here, Hornet would shut down when his processor decided it was time to shut down based on damage or other factors, and not an astrosecond before.

Hornet himself of course understood none of this. Instead he was forced to admit meekly to Overload that he couldn't do it.

"I... I can't power myself down," he said, feeling almost embarrassed, as though admitting that he couldn't understand a simple concept or something. It wasn't his fault, he knew, but it made him feel stupid, as though it was something everyone SHOULD be able to do. "Wheeljack can... but... but I can't..."

The pain was starting to get worse, and Hornet winced and hissed slightly as he lay there, swaddled in duct tape.

"Could... could you maybe... tell me a story?" he asked Overload, having no idea whatsoever just HOW inappropriate a moment this was for that sort of thing. "Sometimes... Wheeljack does that... when he wants me to... to... fall asleep..."

It was, perhaps, the most ridiculous request he had ever made, but he gave no sign of realizing that, as his voice took on a pleading tone. "P.. please, Overload?"

[LadyTevar]

Then Shellshock addressed Crimson. "It's two-fold. A distraction and a test. Shockwave no doubt has some much smaller force that is going to be striking somewhere else, but there isn't much we can do about that. This attack was mainly a test, to see how well the drones stand up to fire, how long it took us to kill them, and how eager the Autobots are to kill them after they realize what these drones are. If we give them time for a second attack, you can expect it to be a lot bigger than this one."

Crimson hadn't realized her question to DeathStrike had gone out to the Convoy. Shellshock's answer did little to reassure her as she pulled up beside the larger 'Bot in his altmode. From that vantage point, she could see the last of the drones falling to Stryke, BreakOut, and the humans with them. She tried to put the sheer number of human lives wasted by the Decepticon's 'test' to storage memory. Now, it was a distraction, and far harder to put out of her mind than she liked. "So do we strike first, or wait for their next move?"

[Dark Silver]

Sixshot, though damaged as he was, was far from helpless.

As his systems warned him of the incoming missile, and the target lock of a land based artillery cannon, Sixshot dove. He was within Decepticon held territory, there were patrols of drones flying within easy call - yet he would not allow himself to submit to weakness.

He lost altitude quickly, using the drag of gravity to aide his increase of speed, the damage to his armored hull screamed out in his internal warning displays - internal temperatures rising rapidly, compression failure in several primary systems - yet he continued on. The shell's trajectory was already plotted out as he performed evasive maneuvers, twisting him well away and circling around the shell. He was skimming barely ten meters off the ground, a wrong maneuver would drag his wings into the ground, causing him to impact hard enough at these speeds that his allies may never locate all of his components.

The plasma shell descended quickly, the great plume of earth, gases, heatwave and compression waves buffeted Sixshot as he powered through, the missle hot on his tail. Utilizing the momentary sensor confusion caused by the chaos of the shell's explosion. Sixshot added to the mix his own hypersonic concussion cannon blasts - throwing up great plumes of permafrost and rock with each concussive impact on the ground below. His armor glowed cherry red, his sensors scrambled, only his internal gyro compasses keeping him in some semblance of a level flight.

His thrusters chose that moment to give out, and devoid of the great thrust they provided, Sixshot plummeted the ten meters to the ground, the nose of his jet form plowing into the permafrost. The missle arced down with him, striking not Decepticon, but a spot of permafrost seven meters ahead. The compression wave of Deathstrike's missile explosion impacted with Sixshot, sending the six-changer tumbling backward bow over stern, the permafrost ruined by the twin explosions.

In the end, Sixshot was grounded, the whine of his engines long silent, without even running lights aglow.

------ ------ ------ ------


Blitzwing tried to get a bead on Slipstream, but the slagging scrap pile was to fast. Most of his shots went wide, slicing through empty air. And the tell-tale whine and explosions of the shells.

He was lucky they had missed, well, lucky and slagging agile. Remembering his brief foray with the human coach back in the late 80's during his attempt at taking over the Decepticons....Blitzwing uttered a phrase he had not spoken in years, "Fuck this shit."

Blitzwing started running, his laser machine gun occassionally firing in the direction he thought he heard the whine of Slipstream's engines. When he picked up enough speed with his aching servos, he leapt into the air, transformed into his jet mode, and peeled away, using full afterburner. He stayed low to the ground, until he was well within the Decepticon air-defense network.


------ ------ ------ ------

The sound of Prime's laser rifle echoed down the comm channel, as he answered Shellshock, "Affirmative. Commence bombardment of Decepticon facility. Prime to all Autobots, rollcall and status report."

As it stood, 99% of the drones where all destroyed, or in the process of being such. The air was clean, not one human casualty the entire pitched fight, the ground forces where not so lucky, as several humans had been vaporized instantly by the comparatively weak powered laser blasts of the drones. Still, the combined human and Autobot forces where a mighty force to reckon with - the skirmish had only whetted their appetite to confront the Decepticons on their own terms.

[SirNitram]

"Overload online. No damage. Disengaged due to programming overload during combination." Overload reported quickly and professionally. "Hornet onboard, heavy damage. Leaking internal fluids. Request permission for landing and repairs for Hornet."

In the meantime, targetting data was grabbed and tossed downwards to Shellshock and the human artillery. "Target Alpha: Spacebridge. Target Beta: Petroleum Extraction Facility."

[frigidmagi]

"This is Breakout, I am leading a human tank company on mop up. I am combat capable." I report blasting one of the few remaining drones. I do not attempt to take prisoners. Nor do the humans with me. I hear snarls of traitor and quisling as they shot.

The war is getting more personal by the day for all of us.

[Charon]

Shellshock heard the call from Optimus. His turret shifted again, aiming up higher to get the right angle again.

Shellshock picked up his targetting information and sorted through it. The Spacebridge was down, which meant it was no longer a primary target, though it was always better to be safe than sorry. He fed targetting data down the line to the other artillery pieces. "I'll begin bombardment of the Spacebridge to make certain it is off-line. I would suggest you focus upon the Petroleum Extraction Facility, to which I have given you the coordinates of, as well as three of their larger defensive turrets." Shellshock chuckled almost darkly as he spoke the next few words.

"Gentlemen. Let's make a hole."

Shellshock loaded a depleted uranium shell, taking a few extra seconds to line up his shot. Then the world around Shellshock went white for a few moments as he fired. The shell burst out of the cannon at ridiculous speed as it quickly crossed the 45 miles between it's launcher and it's target. The shell was zeroed in on it's target, the circle which had to close before the Spacebridge could be operated.

A few seconds after the first was fired, a second shell was fired, making the world white once again. This shell was also aimed at the vital component to the Spacebridge. With such a great distance to cross, Shellshock could have easily fired a third, but he waited to see what would become of the first two, as both were still in the air.

[LadyTevar]

"Crimson, online and " BOOOM went Shellshock, as Crimson started to report in. ".... and Deafened...." she finished, deciding to move away from Shellshock as the bot gleefully began dropping shells upon the Decepticon's unlucky heads.

Transforming, she wisely left the artillery to their work and rolled out to meet up with Stryke and BreakOut.

[Agent Fisher]

Stryke spoke on the comm channel. "Stryke, few scorch marks but I'm good." He said, shooting a burst of lethal energy at one of the last drones. The hologunner had a sad look on his face as he fired. It was one thing to kill your opponent when you were close to or equal, but this wasn't even hard.

[LadyTevar]

As his last target fell, Crimson pulled alongside Stryke. Her holorider's helmet was open, the expression upon her face sad as she looked up at Stryke's `driver`.

Yet the FemBot could think of no words to speak, no way to say how she felt. Thus she fell back to the simplist greeting.

"Hi." It lacked all of her usual enthusiasm.

[Agent Fisher]

Stryke's gunner looked down at her. "Hi." He replied, his tone flat. His gunner looks back out, spotting Breakout and the rest of the humans with them. Looking back at her, he speaks again. "You ok?" He asks simply.

[Marcao]

Sky Shadow seemed to glide more than fly.

He had avoided dealing directly in the skirmish that had bloomed around him for a myriad of reasons, chief among them being the element of surprise and his own internal load out. He had taken to the air well after the initial shots had been exchanged and climbed quietly to his current altitude. Once in his altitude of choice he had settled on a vector that took him out of harm’ way. It was not cowardice, it was simply good tactics. He was ill equipped to deal with decepticon interceptors and fighters and by staying out of the way; he allowed autobot and autobot forces not to worry about escorting him. He was a realist; in the middle of combat his presence would only be a distraction that would endanger lives.

As the skirmish progressed he was sorely tempted to intervene against the many drones that were present. He remained in the autobot channel, his sensor systems feeding him a clear view of the battle as it raged. In the end, it was the apparent weakness of the drones that held his hand. It did not seem that his ordnance would be needed to contend with them. Human casualties were lighter than projected and as such he was able to hold back. His decision to not intervene was questioned only once, when Hornet was damaged. He possessed a handful of air to air weapons. He was not purely defenseless in that regard. Had his inaction caused Hornet’s close call? The builder within him wanted to make his way towards Hornet and offer whatever assistance he could provide. It was the side of him that he suppressed ever since he had chosen the path now walked. In the end it was Optimus’ call that forced his hand.

“Prime to all Autobots, rollcall and status report."

The command spread through his circuits like fire and left behind them a dull glow at the edge of his perception. His thoughts about Hornet and his current situation were dispelled and pushed aside a lower priority established as other processes became more important. His response was almost immediate, exactly two astroseconds later.

“Sky Shadow present and on approach to delivery range.â€

[Cynical Cat]

Finally, though Deathstrike. Finally.

[LadyTevar]

Stryke's gunner looked down at her. "Hi." He replied, his tone flat. His gunner looks back out, spotting Breakout and the rest of the humans with them. Looking back at her, he speaks again. "You ok?" He asks simply.

"No," was the quiet, simple answer from the FemBot. To say more about how the fight affected her was pointless. "He dented my new shoulder, and scorched my paint. Guess I'll be the one with racing stripes," she added, weakly trying to hide her reaction by teasing Stryke.

[Written via Wii. Comp broke until further notice.]

[General Havoc]

Prime's announcement generated a great deal of excitement and activity among the various Autobots, but Hornet was not among them, for the simple fact that his radio had been vaporized by Sixshot's particle beam, and he could neither hear the announcement nor the reactions to it. What he could detect however, was Overload changing direction, though where he was going was anyone's guess.

Of course Hornet could have put together the realization that there were only a couple of likely places for Overload to BE going... but that was far beyond his reasoning power right now.

"Where're we going?" he asked.