"Rumble has been defeated by Autobot Whiplash. He seems to have allied himself with a native life-form and is again on the move. I will need to get closer to locate him."
"Negative. Laserbeak will continue surveillance. A scout has been dispatched and is headed east-- the Autobots know of Whiplash's arrival. You will alter course to intercept Autobot Bumblebee. Engage and delay, destroy if you can."
"Just when I thought this wasn't going to be any fun."
"...hey! Hey, IS ANYBODY GONNA DIG ME OUT?!"
"A limit!"
Nic chuckled into her helmet. "Yes, Whip. A speed limit."
"A limit. On speed!" Somehow he was projecting his voice up at her helmet; something about focused sonics and resonant harmonics, it was all geek to her-- and he in turn could hear her just fine somehow through the helmet and the wind and engine noise. "How do you humans get anywhere?"
"It's not that slow," she told him. "We get places just fine. Though I will admit there is a lot of flat nothing here. That's just Kansas." She supposed all these stretched-out uninterrupted roads looked pretty appealing to a being who apparently put much stock in his speed. When she'd told him to keep it under seventy, his reaction gave her the sudden mental image of dangling a hamburger in front of a puppy and not letting him have it. And then there was the explanation on what that speedometer in his instrument panel actually meant...
"But we are on a mission of some urgency," he protested, emphasizing with an impatient thrumm-thrumm of his engine. "Surely this limit can be paved."
It took her a second to register the malapropism. "Waived," she corrected, "and no. It's the law of the land." Nic shrugged as best she could in her nearly-prone position over his chassis. She wondered if he could see her, if he could see at all in this form, or if he was just stuck looking straight ahead through his headlight or something. "If you go over the speed limit and we get caught by the police-- that's local law enforcement-- I could get in trouble. Especially since your Tomahawk suit here is a little illegal. The less we rock the boat, the fewer delays this mission will have, trust me."
"I can outrun your police..." The speedometer nudged upward just slightly past the seventy mark.
"And stir up even more trouble. They'd radio ahead and set up roadblocks to catch the crazy biker chick on a very distinguishable blue bike. Seriously, the less attention we call to ourselves, the faster this will go." Nic sighed. "Are you sure you can't turn into something a little more commonplace?"
"Not without sacrificing this form and expending more power than I can spare at this time."
"So you only have one vehicle mode at a time?" Just what the heck did he turn into before?
"There are some members of my race," he said, "who can hold two alternate modes at once. Such an ability is very rare. I myself have only seen one such individual, and I would not care to meet him again."
"Decepticon, huh?"
The blip of sound he made, even foreign and electronic to her ears, was dark with distaste. "Blitzwing. A singularly cruel miscreant."
Rumble was beginning to sound more and more like small potatoes, much to her dismay. "He's not here, is he?"
"Primus, I hope not. Rumble and his cohorts are more than enough trouble. Which is why this speed limit of yours is so distressing. If more Decepticons find us, I will break it, police or no."
"You won't get any argument from me there. I'll take cops over pissed-off giant robocars any day."
"...only seventy miles per hour?"
"Cheer up, Whiplash. It goes up to eighty when we cross over into Colorado."
"Barbaric." But there was a gentle note of humor behind the accusation.
"It's for our own safety. Speeding can cause accidents, people get hurt."
He seemed to accept that, but it didn't stop him from muttering about superior reaction time. Nic laughed, freeing a hand from the handlebars to give his... shoulder? gas tank?... a pat.
"Don't be too eager to show off. I have a feeling you'll have plenty chance enough to use that speed of yours."
"In any case, it's good to have my wheels on solid ground again." Whiplash smoothly skirted an RV, passing the slower vehicle. "I have had my fill of space."
"Gets kinda boring out there, does it?"
"Hardly," he replied, surprised. "There are a great many wonders in the deep reaches, but wonders are a poor consolation when one has nowhere to go, no progress to measure, no companions, and no rest from one's enemies." A pause. "Besides, there seem to be wonders aplenty on this planet. Like you."
"Really?" Nic felt a full-blown idiot grin spreading across her face.
"Nic, when I told the Uncle Terry that I owed you my life, I was sincere," Whiplash said. "Rumble intended to breach my spark chamber, and would have had you not intervened. You are so small, you seem so fragile, yet you showed no fear in confronting a foe who could easily destroy you."
She shivered, even warm as it was in her leathers, remembering with stark clarity the sharp metallic twang of a spinner rim impacting the floor mere fractions of an inch away from her neck; seeing the spiral-cut rim's edges actually sharpened into blades, turning an innocent if tacky wheel-dressing into something sinister and deadly. Shallow asshole Rumble might have been but he certainly didn't pull any punches.
But hearing that gut-wrenching howl, alien though it was, coming from Whiplash as Rumble cracked open his chest armor, knowing without a doubt it was a cry of unspeakable pain... what other course had there been to take but to hurl a chunk of brick? Admittedly, the rebar in the eye had been a lucky hit, but a grimly satisfying one. She was glad she'd been able to stop Rumble from hurting her friend, but a part of her was shocked at her own daring.
"Well, I was afraid. Very."
"All the more reason I am glad I risked revealing myself to you. Is such courage a trait common to your kind?"
Nic could feel the idiot grin returning, along with a blush. "I just did what I had to do."
For a few miles they rode in silence. This leg of the trip was the longest and simplest, and Nic simply let Whiplash run himself-- I-70 was a straight shot through to Utah, where they would have to turn southwest towards Las Vegas and into Mission City, the first stop on the rumor-mill road trip. Despite the uncomfortable-seeming position she had to take, lying down along the chassis rather than sitting up in the seat, she again had to marvel at just how much a treat Whiplash was to ride. Smoother than any bike she had ever been on, and she had been on quite a few in her time. She could barely feel the road at all. And rather than tugging tiresomely at her shoulders, her backpack rested on her back with little discomfort, fortunate because she had a feeling no panniers on earth would have fit the bike.
"Tell me about Cybertron," she said at length.
For at least a quarter mile, Whiplash said nothing. "I can't."
"...why not?"
"When I was first brought online, the planet had already plunged into war." His voice dropped quietly. "It was the only Cybertron I knew. To me, it is only a birthplace and a battlefield. That is not an impression I would want to give of a world that was once a beautiful empire."
"What is this war about?" she asked, before thinking that perhaps he might not want to talk about it.
"The Allspark." The way he hummed the name spoke volumes of reverence and awe. "The source of our existence, a power unequaled in the universe. The Decepticons desired it for their own ends, to conquer and destroy. It was jettisoned into space long ago to keep it out of their hands. But--" he paused thoughtfully-- "I don't understand. Prime has declared Earth our new homeworld. Why would he call off the search, if the Allspark hasn't been found? And if it has, why not return to restore Cybertron?"
"Guess that's one thing to ask this Prime guy when we find him." Along with 'why Earth, of all places?' she added mentally. A great many wonders in the deep reaches, he had said. Why had these particular wonders-- sentient mechanical chameleons-- come to settle here? Surely they'd have had their pick of whatever choice real estate the galaxy had to offer.
"Indeed." Whiplash was silent for another long pause. Then, in a considerably brighter tone, he said, "Tell me about Earth."
"All right," Nic replied, "But only if you tell me more about Cybertron. Your Cybertron, the war... you." She again released a hand to poke him in the instrument panel. "When we find your friends they can tell me all about the shiny Cybertron of old, but right now, it's your story I want."
"...Why? Mine is not a pleasant account; our war is all I have ever known."
"I kind of enlisted myself when I threw that rock." Nic gave him another pat, this one firmer. "And if there's one thing you need to know about humans, it's that we're very, very curious."
"I am beginning to see that. What would you like to know?"
"Oh... everything."
So he started at the beginning.
There's nothing gradual about birth on Cybertron.
You come online with a shock, every circuit singing to life around you. Some of us experience a fraction of a moment of confusion or panic before our programming kicks in, telling us who and what we are. Not I. My awareness was immediate, there in my assembly alcove. From my very first moment, I knew my self.
Autobot. Reinforced compact exoframe designed for optimum speed and agility. Twin arm-mount pulse cannons, side-mounted double blades for close melee. I was to be an advance scout or messenger. Speed is my gift.
Right away, in what was my first independent opinion, I decided I liked that. I climbed out of my alcove, eager to see just how fast I could go. My pre-programmed knowledge showed me a planet covered in long roads and elevated highways. I was awash with anticipation, literally born to run.
To either side of me, other new protoforms were emerging. One of them, a large, heavily-armored hulk, came tumbling ungracefully out into the causeway, still shaking off that first-moment panic. The fit was of much amusement to the fellow on the other side, climbing out of its own alcove with a peal of laughter. A third protoform appeared, its first words used to scold both of them for wasting time when we should be getting to the surface, something important was going on...
Right away, I knew these much larger and hardier beings to be my brothers. We were to be a team. Our commander, an older Autobot, would arrive soon. The largest of us began its existence by arguing with the one who was scolding us, insisting that we stay put until we received orders. The one who had laughed didn't seem to care one way or another. I was with the third of my brothers-- I wanted to get topside, commander or no. I wanted to run.
Alarms put an end to the debate. A message broadcast on emergency channels, impossible to shut out.
"ASSEMBLY COMPLEX UNDER ATTACK. EVACUATE FACILITY IMMEDIATELY."
Well, I wanted to run...
At that moment, all of us did.
Explosions shook the foundation. The very walls around us shattered. Fire bloomed and washed around us, staining our untried shells with black scorch marks. Sparkless, incomplete protoforms were crushed and torn apart, never to know life.
Frantic transmissions danced from one of my brothers to the next in rapid-fire succession-- who would attack an assembly crèche? Why? I ignored them, instead concerned with getting out of what had become a deathtrap. Speed is my gift.
My gift saved my life.
It didn't save my brothers.
We hadn't even chosen names.
I found myself on the surface of a Cybertron that did not match what my memory banks held. It was torn, scarred, afire with battle. I was stunned. How could this be? That my life was to begin in death and destruction?
"DIE."
Decepticon. Barreling toward me from within the burning wreckage of my birthplace. Again my speed was the only thing that kept my existence from ending right there. But I was too hemmed in by war-torn ruins to gain any ground, too disoriented by the contradictions in what my programming told me and what my optics saw.
Someone interceded. Not my intended commander but a welcome sight nonetheless. The Autobot, Ironhide, signaled me with a terse transmission to get clear, and beat back the attacker with a furious assault, finally hurling it back into the assembly's inferno.
"That won't keep him," Ironhide said. "You-- where's the rest?"
"I am alone."
My first words.
"Get out of here. Get to Iacon. Rodimus is waiting for you. Tell him what happened. I'll handle Barricade!"
I did as I was told without argument. There was no time to mourn my short-lived brothers, nor dwell on my guilt that I had done nothing to save them. I ran. I haven't stopped moving since.
Even once I joined the Autobots under Rodimus's command, I had no rest. The war was already underway, and since my activation had gone from bad to worse. The glistening, beautiful Cybertron of my pre-programming was becoming more of a distant fantasy with each passing moment. It was easy not to dwell on a peace I had never known.
Instead, I threw myself whole-spark into war. I proved myself in battle as someone who could run rings around even the largest Decepticons, and distract them into making fatal mistakes that my comrades could take advantage of. I could tease and jeer and lead our enemies into ambush. I was relied upon to carry messages across long distances swiftly, messages that were too sensitive to trust to even the most secure channel.
Once the Decepticons learned of that role, I turned into a moving target. It was almost like a game to them. I suspect there was a betting pool. I knew full well the kind of attention I could garner, tearing breakneck through a battlefield, and I even goaded them on, when I was of a mood to make a pest of myself.
Rodimus... discouraged this behavior. Told me that it would get me into trouble. Powerglide remarked to me often how ironic it was for him to reprimand me so, since Rodimus himself had apparently been quite the hellion before the weight of command had matured him. I thought nothing of it. With my comrades around me, and with my much-vaunted speed, I was untouchable.
And then, the Allspark was gone. Out into space to Primus only knew where, with Megatron in its wake. The order went out from Optimus Prime himself: Scatter. Find the Allspark before the Decepticons did
I went with Rodimus and his unit, to be their scout. Space is vast, I thought, vast enough that we might actually have time to rest from star to star. But even there in the void, we were dogged at every turn. Hunted by one of the worst Decepticons and his crew, who were intent on running us to ground, attacking us whenever an opportunity presented itself. He was relentless. Forget looking for the Allspark. We had enough on our hands just staying ahead a step or two.
Once, just before a routine scouting mission, Rodimus asked me to download the ship's logs. I did so, storing the compressed and encrypted data deep in my memory core. I was curious why he would order me to do this. It wasn't standard procedure, and I wouldn't need it to reconnoiter a very boring lifeless moon. Rodimus chose not to answer my questions, and I didn't press the issue.
I have never liked being alone. As a scout I often find myself the only Autobot-- the only living thing, usually-- for lightyears. But I was never out of reach of my comrades. Never more than a comm channel away. This made my solitary excursions bearable. I could always easily and quickly return to the company of my own.
But this time...
Impatient and disinterested in the airless rock I had been ordered to pick over, I noticed that communications had gone silent. At first this didn't concern me overmuch. But then too much time had passed.
Bluestreak, for one, was never this quiet for this long.
I returned to the ship, abandoning my mission. In the hangar, I learned immediately what had silenced the loquacious Bluestreak: He lay half-transformed into transition form, spark chamber wrenched open and dark. He had been trying to escape.
One by one I found my teammates where they had fallen. Perceptor, torn in two. Powerglide, with a gaping, smoking hole where his spark had been. All I could find of Rodimus was an arm, severed violently at the shoulder and still spitting weak spurts of energy. Parts unrecognizable littered the entire ship. The ship's computer was nothing more than a smoldering mass of charred wires and melted circuitry.
I spoke aloud into the spaceborne grave. "I am... alone."
"Not to worry," said a voice. "You'll join 'em soon enough!"
"Rumble!" I whirled, cannons at the ready. "Where's the rest of you? I find it hard to believe you could have done all this yourself."
"Be a nice stasis dream, that," he sneered back. "But you're right, shortstack. I just came back to admire the boss's handiwork and tie me up some loose ends. So be a good little scrap heap and stand still for once."
I was disinclined to comply, naturally. I knew I could not win against him one-on-one. Rumble was better armored, better armed, and bigger than me. But I fought anyway, if only to strike a few vindictive blows on my teammates' behalf. I wanted, at that moment, nothing more than to pierce his spark chamber and see him die.
Soon, however, logic processes overrode my desire for vengeance. Self-preservation protocols were stronger than my hatred. Rodimus must have known something was going to happen-- and I now held the only record of the ship's logs. There was something in them, some vital information, that needed to be preserved. If I failed to preserve myself, and by extension the logs, Rodimus and the others would have had meaningless deaths.
So I ran. I lost Rumble easily in an asteroid field.
Since the very beginning, I have been running.
Speed is my gift.
Somehow, I would find a way use it to save more than just myself.
There was something tickling at the edge of Bumblebee's sensors, and he didn't like it.
It was well after dark, and they were roughly two-thirds across the state of Utah. By consensus the trio had opted to continue driving through the night rather than stopping to procure temporary lodging. Sam was offline-- sleeping, rather-- sprawled on the backseat, and Mikaela, chatting quietly with one of her friends over her phone, was playing driver in case someone happened to see. Both Bumblebee's humans, of course, had no reason to be nervous, and for now, at least, he decided he didn't have much reason either. Whatever it was poking at his sensors wasn't giving coherent enough readings to really be anything.
Yet, he couldn't help but think. Millennia of fighting tended to make one a little overcautious. Likely it was a flock of birds or satellite signals bouncing off clouds, though sensor blips of that sort weren't usually so persistent. Earth's atmosphere was delightfully chaotic, even in California, near the calming meteorological influence of the Pacific Ocean. Bumblebee had long ago learned that there was going to be something funny registering on his sensors at any given time.
There it was again. Skirting southward just along the edge of his forward range, high up in the air.
Flocks of birds didn't deliberately avoid his sensor range.
Carefully, he extended sensors, diverting scanners momentarily to concentrate on that specific direction. There registered a short, vaguely familiar energy reading, which abruptly vanished, leaving a blank spot in the swirling atmosphere that quickly dipped out of range again.
Dampening field.
Irritation rippled through Bumblebee's processor. Just how stupid did the Decepticons think he was?
"Bumblebee to Ironhide.
"Here, came the curt reply. Don't tell me you found him already.
"No, but something's found me. Airborne and using a dampening field. How far behind me are you?
"Middle of Nevada. I've got Lennox and Epps with me. Prime and Ratchet not far behind. It's not Starscream, is it?"
Though the digital channel he was forced to use in lieu of voice couldn't convey his tone, Bumblebee did his best to snort. "He's not this subtle. It's like this one is trying to get around behind me without me noticing, but if he thinks he can get the drop on me, I'm insulted. He might be headed in your direction, keep your scanners open."
No response.
"...Ironhide?"
"Bumblebee to Optimus. Ratchet? Anyone?"
Slag it, this wasn't good at all...
"Jessie? Jess? I can't hear you, are you--" The sound of shrill static issued from Mikaela's cell phone, drawing Bumblebee's attention inward. Mikaela drew the phone away from her ear and sighed with disgust. "Man, reception's really crappy out here."
And if that was a coincidence, Bumblebee would trade in his Camaro shell for an Isetta. He gently braked to a stop, pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway, and gave a light shudder, popping open the driver's side door. Quick to catch on, Mikaela twisted in the seat and shook Sam awake.
"Buh. Wuzzit?"
"Sam, grab the bags. Bee wants us out of the car, something's up."
Sam flopped blearily, grappling for the straps of the luggage in the floorboard. "Bumblebee?"
"--Got to find a safe place, Better stay in silence--" the scout's radio replied as the two humans clambered out. He half-expected them to insist on staying to help, and Sam looked like he was about to, but Mikaela towed him away, across the road and into the trees for cover. Bumblebee nodded to himself, turning his attention back to the sky. He made a quick scan of the deserted highway, and, detecting no other vehicles, transformed and stood up, raising his cannon.
He fired a shot.
The blank spot in the sky vanished, and a distinct energy signature wheeled and came about. Bumblebee opened a narrow communications beam.
The jig is up, Decepticon. Come down here and fight me if you've got the gears for it.
The reaction was immediate. The airborne signature dove far faster than any human-made craft, unleashing a pair of missiles. Bumblebee leapt out of the way just as they struck the road, twin explosions briefly lighting the dark section of highway.
An aircraft-- a Predator UAV, according to a quick peek at the Internet-- spun wildly as it dropped nose-first towards terra firma, transforming in the instant before it touched down, metal talons splintering the asphalt as it landed. Despite the altered shell, Bumblebee knew the avian shape, recognized the serrated, pointed prow.
He swept the area again with scanners on a stronger setting. If Buzzsaw was here, where was the rest of the co-dependent freakshow?
Beating on a certain incommunicado Autobot newcomer, obviously. Bumblebee didn't wait for Buzzsaw to make the first move. He charged, firing his particle accelerator even as the Decepticon tried to bring his cannons up. The blast nearly sheared one of the shoulder-mounted weapons right off, and a shrill metallic screech filled the air. Buzzsaw spread the blade-edged panels that had formed the UAV's wings and made a swipe at Bumblebee.
One "feather" scraped across his chestplate as Bumblebee twisted aside, then dodged as Buzzsaw attempted to simply skewer him. Ducking under another swipe, Bumblebee went straight in and grappled at the Decepticon's wing. Talons kicked and gripped him around the torso, the serrated beak swung down and clamped over one shoulder. Minor armor breaches sent needle-spikes of pain shooting through his receptors, but Bumblebee only gripped the wing tighter and twisted.
He felt Buzzsaw's thrusters engage.
Oh, no you don't!
Before the Decepticon could even leave the ground, likely intending to drop Bumblebee from a lethal height, the Autobot planted his cannon square in the gap underneath Buzzsaw's chestplate, accessed reserve power, and fired.
The blast sent both robots reeling. Bumblebee tumbled to a stop some distance away, scratched, punctured and dented; Buzzsaw had fared much worse. Cables hung loose, burnt and raw, leaking fluids and sparks. Shrieking in rage and pain, the Decepticon flailed wildly as Bumblebee lurched to his feet.
He kept his cannon out and trained on Buzzsaw. It had been a gamble; using reserve power like that left him depleted, but Bumblebee was in no mood for a drag-out brawl. This needed to be finished quickly, before someone worse showed up. He stalked aggressively towards the Decepticon, letting his cannon hum threateningly. Out of power he might be, but Buzzsaw didn't know that.
The bluff paid off. Buzzsaw scuttled backwards, hissing angrily, and ground ungracefully into vehicle mode. He was airborne again in moments, trailing smoke.
"Bee! Bee, oh my god!" Sam was pelting out of the trees, Mikaela (somehow having wound up with the luggage) right behind him. "Are you okay? Who the hell was that?"
Bumblebee glared up at Buzzsaw's retreating shape in the night sky, angry rap pouring from his speakers. "See, I caught him with a right hook, caught him with a jab, caught him with an upper cut, kicked him in his ass. Sent him on his way cause I ain't for that talk--"
"Yes, you're made of badass." Mikaela thrust the bags into the boy's arms and came up closer, squinting in the darkness. "Are you hurt?"
Bumblebee shook his head, running diagnostics. Minor damage. His armor had taken most of the abuse, as was its purpose. "That was Buzzsaw," he rasped, and immediately regretted it. The power drain and slowly-healing damage left his voice raw and painful. He needed a recharge in the worst way.
But they needed to get away from this area, in case more old friends decided to put in appearances. He transformed to vehicle mode and popped open the doors, testing to see if communications were no longer being blocked. As his two humans climbed back in, he found the channels open and clear, so he immediately initiated contact with Optimus Prime.
Who was going to be even less happy than Bumblebee himself when he heard about this.
"Huh. It's my birthday."
Whiplash came out of a light recharge state to those words and tried to parse this out-of-nowhere statement. Nic was sitting up on the padded berth-- bed-- after spending about six hours in what passed for offline for her kind, a state she called sleeping and was, for humans, a natural rhythm tied to the rotation of the planet. Sleeping happened at night, though it could be overridden, but depriving oneself of sleep for too long, she said, could lead to serious problems. Not entirely unlike neglecting a recharge cycle. It was for this reason she had insisted on stopping for the night at an establishment called a motel. It was at places like this that humans on extended excursions could obtain a place to sleep in exchange for currency (a concept Whiplash wasn't quite sure he was clear on just yet, but it nonetheless involved a strange tiny plastic rectangle in her pack).
She had managed to get a room on the ground floor, and wheeled him right in, saying he could attract attention if she simply left him parked outside, and he agreed, even if it made the already small room a little cramped with him wedged between the bed and the wall. Nic managed to maneuver around just fine, going through a complicated set of pre-recharge rituals that mostly involved the cleansing and maintenance of the human body.
Whiplash was glad he only had to trigger a subroutine.
"Birthday?" he queried, puzzled. From what he understood, she was already a mature specimen of her species, so it couldn't mean she was being born this very moment. Or did she mean...?
"July first." Nic stretched where she sat, every muscle flexed and tensed for a moment, for whatever organic purpose that served. "I'm officially twenty-one years old now."
Ah, so it was commemorative mark of sorts. She had explained Earth timekeeping methods, using the motel room's equipped chronometer as an example, and--
Wait. "Twenty-one years? That's all?" Barely a quarter of a vorn?
Nic crossed her arms and gave the side of his vehicle form a pointed look. "Well, yeah, but I've been considered an adult since eighteen."
Though he was hardly an expert, Whiplash knew something of the manner in which organic life behaved. Cellular mitosis progressed in steady stages, creating a cycle which expanded, peaked, then diminished, and eventual total shutdown-- death; an inevitability rather than a possibility. And if the adult stage of a human began at a mere eighteen years... "Nic, at what age do humans generally... cease to function?"
By her pause he knew he had asked an awkward question. "If we're in decent health... I dunno, eighty, maybe a hundred years with care."
Whiplash sagged on his wheels in shock.
"Whip? What's the matter? I'm not going to up and croak on you right now, if that's what you're asking." She swung her legs off the bed and stood, regarding him curiously. "So... how old are you?"
Quickly calculating the conversion from vorn to year, he replied, "As you reckon time, I was first activated twenty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventeen years ago."
Her jaw dropped noiselessly open.
"Approximately," he added lamely, realizing with a start just how massive that number must have sounded to her. "I am... somewhat young for my kind."
"Well... so'm I." She pushed back her hair away from her face, only to have it tumble back into the unruly mass it had become during her sleep-cycle. "Uh. Wow. Twenty-three thousand-- wow."
Whiplash had a wow of his own, but for the exact opposite reason. A hundred years, with luck and care. The impression he had been harboring of humans was that of a primitive but promising race... now he realized that they were incredibly advanced, incredibly clever, to have accomplished what he saw, what Nic had told him of this planet, in the short, unbelievably uncertain existence their biology imposed on them.
"I'm going to the lobby to grab some breakfast," she was saying, pulling on what she'd called 'leathers', her riding armor. "I'll be back in a minute." She paused at the door. "Wow."
Twenty-three thousand eight hundred seventeen-- approximately. Nic let out a low whistle as she walked along the side of the motel. Approximately! Leave it to a living computer to round off to a number that was pretty damned precise. Whiplash's kind probably knew their age down to the nanosecond. And he was young? What was old? Fifty thousand? A million?
"Well, my gast has been sufficiently flabbered," she muttered, shaking her head. So ancient, so... young. It was hard to think of Whiplash as old, the way he acted.
A faint roll of thunder drew her attention skyward. It was one of those grey days, when cloud cover turned the sky into one uniform sheet of slate, diffusing the sunlight into a single dim, sourceless haze in which there weren't any shadows, but not any real light; and even then it made one want to squint constantly. The air tasted moist, and there was a good steady wind. This didn't concern Nic overmuch. Her leathers were fairly rainproof, and if they happened to hit a storm on the road, they'd pass through it fairly quickly. This was summer in Kansas, when the weathermen just resorted to waving randomly at their green-screens and hoping they got something right.
Having procured a suspiciously firm cinnamon roll and a foil-covered cup of orange juice, she returned to the room and dug out her cell phone, dialing as she repacked her backpack.
"Just checking in with my uncle," she said. "Then we check out and hit the road."
"I would rather roll on it," Whiplash replied.
Nic giggled. "It's an expression. Means the same thing." The phone rang tinnily at her ear. She poked warily at the cinnamon roll, the icing of which had solidified into one plasticky mass atop the room-temperature pastry. Her stomach suddenly rebelled against the thought of eating the past-due sweet, so she peeled open the orange juice.
"Nic!" Uncle Terry's voice greeted her.
"Not too early, is it?"
"No, I was just about to leave for the shop. Your name is mud, by the way."
"Aunt Marie blow a gasket?" Nic grinned. From beside the bed, Whiplash emitted a startled buzz. "Another expression, Whip, it just means I'm in for a lecture."
Over the phone, Terry chuckled. "English over dial-up, huh?"
"We're managing just fine. Just what did you tell Aunt Marie?"
"Much as I could without sounding like a kook. You got a new bike, met a guy who needed some help--"
Nic groaned.
"Yeah, mea culpa. She thinks you've run off with some biker bum who's going to leave you on the side of the road pregnant and penniless."
"Oh please. Tell her I have better sense than that. And that her brother-in-law was a very nice biker bum, thank thee kindly."
"Got to get the woman off her true-crime shows. So where are you now?"
"Somewhere just outside of Colby. Probably cross Colorado today."
"You're making good time."
"Traffic wasn't too bad."
"So tell me... what's he like to ride?"
"Whiplash? Smooth as silk. And man, does he turn heads on the road." Nic glanced at said Tomahawk. Who didn't move but still seemed to preen appreciatively anyway. "The speed limit concept makes him twitch, though. After this is over, I should to find someplace where he can really cut loose. Really see what he's got."
"There are such places?" Whiplash cut in interestedly.
"Yes, Whip. Remind me to tell you about the Bonneville Salt Flats."
"Alien robot speed junkie." Nic could almost hear Terry shaking his head. "I hope you're being careful."
Nic couldn't help it-- "Don't worry, we're using protection."
A muffled thump. Terry had dropped the phone. Nic cackled gleefully.
"Nicole Breanna."
"I'm wearing my helmet. What did you think I meant? Dirty old man."
"Yeah, yeah, smartass. I've got to --" ...static, then "--the boys are already at the--"
Nic frowned at her phone as it hissed shrilly back at her, then dropped the call, its screen placidly informing her that there was no signal. "Nice. Thanks, Kansas weather." Stowing the phone in her pack, she shouldered the bag and turned to Whiplash. "Time to go."
They were silent the first few miles once they were back on the interstate. The clouds overhead had taken on a decidedly darker cast, but it still wasn't raining. Nic thought about letting Whiplash fudge the speed limit by five miles per hour, just to get through the threatening cloudbanks quicker.
"Nic," his voice, cutting through her worried contemplation of the weather, startled her as it resounded in her helmet, "what is an 'uncle'? Your tie to this Terry individual seems... close."
"An uncle," she explained, "is the male sibling of a parent. You know what a parent is?"
"One's creator, correct? Though judging by your dimorphism I assume humans must have two progenitors."
"That's right. In this case Terry is my father's brother. And yes, we're close. He's like a second father to me."
"What of your creators?" Whiplash asked. "I note that it is your uncle that you report to, instead of them."
Observant, Nic thought with a sigh. It was fair, she supposed. He'd told her about the war. "My mother died when I was just a baby. I don't remember her at all. But my father... he died two years ago. Today."
"On your... birthday."
"His birthday too. It was a big thing. We'd have a huge party together. Then we'd go for a ride, just me and him. Every year, far back as I can remember. Me on the back of his Harley, until I was sixteen and he got me my first real motorcycle. A Honda." Nic let out a nostalgic chuckle. "The thing had all the horsepower of a hamster wheel. Without the hamster. But it looked like the best thing in the world to me then. No more dirt bikes or scooters, this was the real thing."
She realized she was probably babbling and Whiplash had no idea what she was talking about. But he surprised her.
"This Honda enabled you to ride with your progenitor as an equal."
Nic closed her eyes, remembering the putter-and-jerk of that old Honda. It had been a real piece of crap, to be sure, nowhere near the league of her father's beautifully restored '69 Harley, but Whiplash was right. With that bike, her father had officially made her a real biker, set her trustingly and proudly on her own two wheels. The next summer she had put in long work hours at her uncle's shop to buy a slightly newer, slightly more hamster-endowed motorcycle, but she really had had her heart set on eventually finding an old classic like her father's and fixing it up as he had done.
The powerful alien engine underneath her now gave a sudden surge, bringing her back to the present. She couldn't believe she had given this up for two years. Forget the old Harley, girl. I do believe Whiplash has gone and spoiled you for Earth bikes. She was about to say as much when his voice sounded in her helmet, this time low and tense.
"We are being followed."
"What?" Nic shifted to turn her head.
"No-- don't look." The timbre of Whiplash's engine changed again, subtly. "A vehicle has been keeping pace with us since Colby. I have shielded my energy signature but Rumble may have relayed my appearance."
"Are you sure it's a--"
"He is maintaining a constant distance, just beyond my scanners' beach. It's too deliberate."
Reach? Nic mentally translated, and turned to take a quick peek anyway. Sure enough, not thirty feet behind, sidling casually into another lane, was a smallish low-slung sports car. It prowled out from behind an SUV, its shiny black finish seeming to swallow light rather than reflect.
"Whiplash," she murmured, "I think we can fudge the speed limit a little."
"Pit-bedamned damaged scanners..." 'A little' in Whiplash's lexicon meant a burst up to around eighty. Nic felt the handlebars move of their own accord, meaning he had taken over. They surged ahead, dodging through a flotilla of minivans and sedans. Nic stole another glance back, and sure enough, the black car was there, swerving through the obstructing traffic in a decidedly predatory manner.
To top it off, it started raining.
And a trio of semis hauling trailers clogged the highway ahead. Whiplash slowed slightly, and the black car drew near.
"Close enough to scan now-- oh, slag." From his tone, she didn't even have to ask what he'd found. "Nic--"
"Fuck the speed limit, Whip!"
Rain slapped angrily at her helmet as Whiplash flew ahead, riding the center line, aiming directly for the narrow gap between the big trucks ahead. It was a dangerous, stupid maneuver, hot-shot bikers got killed all the time pulling stunts like this. Nic shut her eyes and ducked her head down, hearing the terrifying roar of the massive wheels not even an arm's length away on either side. One of the trucks blared its horn as they passed, but in a split second they were clear and rocketing down open road at close to ninety-five.
Again Nic turned to look. Through the blur of her rain-streaked visor she saw the black car come screaming around the semis, careening on the shoulder of the interstate, kicking up gravel and dirt.
"Maaaaaan, that's just cheating."
"Hold on," Whiplash said, unnecessarily, and poured on the speed. Rain and wind washed over Nic in fitful blasts, cold water finding its way under her collar, up her sleeves, underneath the rim of her helmet. The speedometer swung past one hundred. One ten. One twenty-five. The wind was horrendous, not just from the speed alone but from gusts that came from the sides, threatening to unseat her.
One thirty.
"Is he still coming?" Nic shouted to be heard over the sharp snare drum-roll of rain and wind on her helmet. That same noise masked Whiplash's one-syllable reply.
Abruptly the rain stopped. The wind didn't. Nic twisted, keeping both hands locked on the handlebars, and looked back.
And really, really wished she hadn't.
The black car had shed its four-wheeled form, now literally tearing up the road with four sets of flashing obsidian claws. It raced after them far, far too close behind, moving so fast it was just a blur of robotic limbs, gears and black metal, a terrorizing nightmare of a mechanical panther.
Nic jerked back to face forward, looking down at the speedometer: one forty-five and climbing. She looked up to gauge the road ahead; heaven help them if there was any sort of traffic.
Traffic, no.
Instead, a thick black column of wind and dirt and debris that stretched from sky to earth.
Nic's heart crawled straight up into her throat.
Tornado.
It is... beautiful, Whiplash thought.
He supposed any planet with an atmosphere could experience such cyclonic formations, but he had never been on a planet long enough to actually see one. Cybertron, its own atmosphere having been strictly regulated by the currents of the Allspark, had only rarely seen disturbances such as this.
It had poured down out of the clouds, its narrow base pulsing and crawling like a living thing over the land, indifferent in the destruction it wrought. How had it formed so quickly? The conditions, masses of warm and cool air, dry and humid, all coming together at just the right moment to form this elegant vortex.
Nic was yanking hard at his handlebars. "Turn around! We've got to get away from it!"
Whiplash stayed his course. Turn around? When Ravage was right behind them, not even bothering to mask his presence, damaged scanners or no, clearly intending to make himself the last thing they ever saw? "We go forward," he said grimly, tactical algorithms alight with the beginnings of a plan.
"Forward?! Crazy space robot, you're going to get us killed! That's a tornado!"
"And behind us is Ravage," he reminded her pointedly, "who cannot be distracted with a rock, cannot be taunted with insults."
"Neither can the tornado! Whip--!"
"Trust me." He accelerated, heading right for the swirling maelstrom at the tornado's base. It was still a few miles away, giving him ample time to run calculations and plot trajectory. If he timed it right--
"WHIP-- I'm slipping!"
Horrified, he almost decelerated, but a snarl from behind reminded him what an ill-advised course of action that was. He could feel Nic, squirming to maintain her hold, fighting against the onslaught of wind that battered her from the side.
Couldn't slow down, couldn't keep going or the storm winds would tear her away, couldn't make a sharp enough turn at this speed without throwing her-- Whiplash wracked his processor-- a scout had to be able to think on the move, improvise and adapt. He was using his stabilizing gyros and mass-offset array in tandem to keep his grip on the road, but what of Nic?
"Whiplash--!"
"Hold on!"
Carefully, he initiated certain disparate parts of the transformation sequence. The entire lower third of his armor paneling separated from his chassis and slid upward. His system gave him a minor error message at the unorthodox move, and he felt weirdly naked underneath, but he could feel his rider stop struggling to stay on as the panels cupped protectively around her.
"Good... good," she panted. "But we're still headed right at a frigging tornado!"
"I know," he said distractedly. Whiplash never thought he'd be wishing for a simple space skirmish. This-- just staying upright, constantly adjusting and compensating for the chaotic wind that grew ever more chaotic the closer they drew to the tornado, holding the partially-executed transformed state, and fighting with his aching sensors to keep tabs on the relentless Ravage-- was definitely one of the more cracked stunts he had ever pulled. But if it worked...
Ravage was fast, to be sure, fast enough to catch him if he made one little mistake. But Whiplash was counting on the Decepticon's lack of ingenuity and single-mindedness.
"Just hold on," he said to Nic, closing his armor a little tighter over her. "This may get a little rough."
"What? Whip, you're not making any sense!"
Not making sense-- slag, slag it all! He could have sworn he'd said the right words, but faulty data would have to wait. He was staring down the barrel, so to speak, of the tornado.
He shot into the swirling cloud that swarmed the funnel's base, fighting to keep his wheels on the ground and avoid the larger chunks of flying debris. He kept his distance from the funnel itself, skirting the edge of the very worst of the chaos, trusting Ravage to be true to form...
Making the turn around the funnel, knowing full well the capricious storm could turn and slap him off his wheels, Whiplash watched as Ravage followed, and attempted to make a sharper turn to cut him off-- and was caught in the powerful pull of the tornado. The Decepticon was sent tumbling off and away, lost in the eddies of flying earth and debris.
Whiplash surged away and out of the dust cloud, bursting free of the nucleus of wind and debris. He let his armor fall back to its normal state, scanners reading Nic as respirating heavily, but unharmed.
The road ahead was clear, the clouds breaking to blue sky.
Author's Note: go to sgxmusic.com and download the song "Intense Color" (it's free, along with a lot of other awesome music!). "Intense Color" really helped me visualize that whole tornado scene, as well as being a damnspiffy piece of music.