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”You call that transforming? I’ve seen protoforms transform better than that!”
“Protoforms can’t transform. Their T-cogs aren’t fully developed.” Sentinel glared down at the youngest, smallest member of his current batch of recruits. He should have known that would happen. Glitch never missed an opportunity to correct him – or anyone else, for that matter – and there was no point in telling her to stop. The concept just didn’t seem to fit in her malfunctioning processor. When he’d named her after the administrative error that had given him a sixth, female cadet to train, he hadn’t known how right he was. There were more bugs in her programming than there was good code, it sometimes seemed. To be fair to the kid, she was smart in some ways, brave (a bit too brave at times), dedicated, a would-be peacemaker in a particularly quarrelsome squad, and an Autobot to her CPU. And she couldn’t help how she was made. All the same, she had never quite meshed with the cogs around her – even her accent made her stand out, with its rounded vowels and every consonant neatly in place – and the sooner she was out from under his stabilising servos and training to become a field-tech, the better all round.
(She didn’t remind him of Elita. She did not.)
Moving on from the incorrigible girl, Sentinel decided to make it clear that Bulkhead and Bumblebee were to blame for that round of transform-ups. Hopefully, that would motivate the young glitches to quit messing around and shape up for the squad’s sake. Wasp and Ironhide weren’t too happy with the bumbler and the mudflap, but as Longarm tried to shut them up, Sentinel was sure he heard Glitch thanking Bumblebee. The sparkling must have had a screw loose.
“You should ease up on Sarge,” Bulkhead said to Glitch as the squad headed for the mess and their next rations at the end of the workout and verbal sparring session. “It’s not kind to him and it’s dangerous for you.”
“I’ll ease up on him when and if he eases up on you and Bee,” Glitch shot back, too tired and too wound up by Sentinel Minor’s attitude to the young ‘bots in his care to think before she spoke. The moment her processor caught up with her audials, she tried to reverse. “And why do you think I was doing that deliberately?”
“I donno. You took a bit too long to correct him, maybe. You’d had to think about it.” That was one of the reasons Glitch liked Bulkhead. He was cleverer than almost anyone, including he himself, realised, but not arrogant like Wasp or even Bee; open-sparked and genuinely friendly, unlike austere Longarm, who unsettled Glitch for reasons even she couldn’t compute, but not as easily led as Ironhide. And he’d had the courage to admit that he wanted to be a space-bridge technician on that first day, when everyone else was falling over themselves to declare their ambitions to join the Elite Guard. The Guard wouldn’t be half as effective without a working space-bridge network, and the whole of Cybertron would grind to a halt without Energon farms like the one where Bulk had grown up, but for some reason both his origins and his dreams were routinely derided. Try as she might, Glitch couldn’t calculate why, nor how to change that state of affairs. “But it’s not always easy to figure out what’s a glitch and what’s, well, Glitch. If you follow me.”
“I do.” Bulk’s phrasing was awkward, but his point was clear. “I’m not sure there is a difference. I am who I am, so-called malfunctions and all. And I want to be who I’m meant to be, not who Sarge or anyone else wants me to be.” That had been even more awkwardly phrased, but Bulk seemed to understand. Thank the Allspark.
“Hey, Glitchy! Think fast!” Glitch looked towards Wasp, about to ask, “About what?,” and saw an empty can speeding towards her head. Before she could try to evade the flying missile, it was intercepted by Longarm, who had been talking to Bee. (Usually, Bulkhead would be attempting yet again to befriend the smaller ‘bot, but Bee had already rebuffed him once that day and Bulk knew when not to push his luck.) “For future reference, Glitch, when someone says, “think fast,” they’re about to throw something and expect you to catch it.”
“Thanks. I’ll add that to the lookup table.” Glitch smiled at Longarm – who didn’t quite smile back, not properly, but then he never showed much emotion of any kind; was he like her, but better at fitting in? – and turned her attention to refuelling.
“Nobody’s had their rations docked,” Bulkhead said quietly, “so you’re going to have your fair share for once.”
“You’ve noticed?” Of course Bulkhead had spotted that when Sentinel withheld part of somebody’s Energon ration, Glitch was in the habit of replacing it with her own. “I don’t need a full ration. I’m built for agility, not strength like you or Ironhide, or pure speed like Bee or Wasp. And Longarm never gets punished.” She’d managed to avoid mentioning the size issue – that time. Bulkhead could be as sensitive about it as Bumblebee, though he hid it better.
“Maybe, but you’re getting a full ration. And it’s not the only thing I’ve noticed.” He was looking meaningfully – well, she thought it was meaningfully – at Bee. Another secret discovered. Glitch didn’t know why the proud, ambitious, talkative, accident-prone mech made her sparkbeat pick up and her fuel tank seem to turn somersaults whenever she saw him, but she didn’t have to be a trained medic to diagnose a crush. A curiously appropriate word for the phenomenon, given the feeling of constriction around her spark chamber on the rare occasions when Bumblebee actually looked at her.
“Don’t mention it to him, please. He’s on track for the Academy and the Elite Guard; I don’t want to distract him, even if he does feel anything for me, which I doubt.” A few nanokliks passed in silence. “You like him, too, don’t you? But not the same way I do. You want to be his friend, not – anything else.” She couldn’t bring herself to say conjunx. That was thinking far too far ahead.
“Yeah. The same way I want to be your friend. And don’t sell yourself short. You’re kind, you’re smart, and you don’t pretend to be anything you’re not. And you’re kinda pretty, too.” Glitch had never thought of herself in such terms. Her burnished bronze finish was usually more trouble than it was worth, and her old-fashioned frame wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Mercifully, Bulkhead kept talking, so she didn’t have to respond. “Any ‘bot would be lucky to have you, and I hope that ‘bot’s Bumblebee, one day. He’s got a good spark, under everything else.”
“Thank you – my friend.” Words had failed Glitch, again, but she put as much feeling as she could into her smile as she looked up at Bulkhead. Then her optic fell on a brewing argument between Bee and Wasp, and she couldn’t stop herself darting over to intervene. “Whatever this is about, stop it, both of you. We’re all on the same side here.” Her servo rested on the Autobrand on her chestplate, right over her spark chamber. “So let’s act like it.” She didn’t use Sarge’s cogs in a machine analogy, as she considered it a crate of rusty pig-iron – though saying so publicly might have had something to do with the “glitch” that had sent her to boot-camp too early. People had intrinsic value, even if they didn’t play an obviously useful role in society.
“If the pipsqueak here promises not to earn us all another lot of transform-ups.” Wasp was still glaring at Bee, who was giving as good as he got. The two mechs were almost the same height, so pipsqueak was rather hypocritical. “I don’t care if he gets himself punished, as long as he doesn’t drag the rest of us along with him.”
“Those are punishments?” That data point had been entered into Glitch’s processor, but she’d never managed to incorporate it into a computation. Yes, a long workout hurt, but it was good pain, pain that meant something other than damage. And the ache in her joints, pistons and T-cog was a useful focal point when her processor glitched out and filled her head with static. But she couldn’t explain all that to Wasp in a way that he would understand. “Never mind. Just – shake servos like gentlebots, and I won’t tell Sarge.”
They knew she would. She had once before. So Bumblebee offered a tentative servo to Wasp, who took it reluctantly for a brief gesture of temporary reconciliation, and the two rivals headed off in opposite directions, still looking occasional daggers at one another over their shoulders.
***
“Glitch, wake up!” Longarm’s voice, even though he was whispering, roused Glitch from stasis less than a megacycle after she’d nodded off over a datapad, constant exercise and too many late nights catching up with her at last. The other mech stood outside the area of the barracks that the squad’s only female member had staked out for herself, but his servo was still on her shoulder. Most unsettling. “Bumblebee needs your help.”
That woke her up all right. If Longarm had come to her, not Bulkhead, it was surely for her medical knowledge, however limited that was. Nightmare images crowded her processor – Bee in severe pain, crippled for life, dying. She knew they were unrealistic – if he were seriously hurt, Longarm would have fetched Sarge or Agent Cliffjumper and obtained proper medical attention – but she couldn’t reason with the fear that lived inside her. All she could do was ride out each surge and do her best to function normally in the meantime.
So she followed Longarm to the locker room where he’d apparently found Bee in a cupboard, missing his stabilising servos. Both ‘bots were cagey about how that had happened, but Glitch didn’t need her computational ability to deduce who was responsible. Wasp, a bully from the first day of boot-camp, and Ironhide, his loyal cohort, had been getting more and more annoyed with Bee’s mishaps and the collective punishment Sentinel dished out after each one. They were going to have words the next time she saw them, if her processor cooperated long enough. But for the moment, she swallowed down her anger and focused on the reattachment job in front of her.
“There, how does that feel?,” she asked once Bee was in one piece again.
“Good as new.” He smiled at her for perhaps the first time, and her spark practically hummed in her chest. While she’d been working, her feelings had been neither here nor there, but they had just made their presence very obvious. “I think I’m still the fastest thing on wheels – thanks to you, Doc-‘Bot.”
Typical, she thought with a surprising amount of fondness. “I’m not a doctor, or a field-tech – yet. And you were lucky they took the time to disconnect your servos and didn’t just tear them off. That would have meant welding, and with this basic equipment,” Longarm had snaffled the camp repair kit on his way to fetch her, “and my lack of experience, that wouldn’t have ended anywhere near as well.”
“Bumblebee and I have things to discuss,” Longarm cut in. “And I’m sure you need to catch up on stasis. You’ve certainly earned it.” The dismissal stung like a bolt from one of Bee’s weapons, but Longarm had a point. She was tired.
As she left, Bumblebee rested a servo on her arm and whispered, “Thanks again, by the way.” She found herself unable to form a rational thought, let alone a coherent sentence, and made do with a smile before ducking out and heading back to barracks. Some field-tech she’d make. Ratchet would have handled that better.
***
This is no way to train, Glitch thought as she loped along just behind Bumblebee and Bulkhead on the squad’s first combat simulation. A fraction of a briefing, no designated leader, no designated anything. Well, she was clearly the field-tech, and even had the repair kit magnetised to her arm such that it would stay attached even when she transformed. But by rights at least one of the sprinters, Bee and Wasp, should have been scouting ahead, and it should have been Ironhide or Bulk bringing up the rear, not Longarm. She didn’t know who ought to be the commander; none of the cadets were exactly officer material, not yet, especially not her. She’d tried to point all that out, first to Sentinel, then to her comrades, but her soft, quiet voice had, once more, gone unheard.
“Hey, Bumbler-bee! Think fast!” Wasp, again. But it wasn’t a can flying through the air that time; it was a grenade, and it found its mark in Bee’s servos. Before Glitch could say or do anything, the panicking mech threw the missile as far as he could and dived for cover – in the same direction. The grenade bounced deceptively gently down towards him and detonated with a spray of pink paint. Only a simulation. But Glitch’s spark was still in her voicebox. If that had been live, Bee would be dead.
She pulled herself together in a sparkbeat. Someone had to take charge before anything else went wrong. “Bulk, go back for Bee. Do your best to calm him down, and send those two,” Wasp and Ironhide, who had turned back to tease their already fallen victim, “to join us. Bee’s a liability right now, as wound up as he is, but we can’t leave him behind. Once he’s thinking clearly, comm me and I’ll tell you where to meet us.”
“Got it.” Bulkhead headed off towards his downed teammate as the bullies were chased away from him by simulation cannons. Pink was not Ironhide’s colour, or Wasp’s.
“Are you sure that’s wise?,” Longarm queried. “In a real combat situation, you would be the one to attend to an injured soldier.”
“If this were real, more than one of us would know what the helium they were doing!” Glitch took a couple of deep vents. She was getting as wound up as Bee. It probably didn’t help that she’d finally conquered a particularly difficult and terrifying obstacle course the day before (beating Bee’s and Wasp’s best times in the process), and such victories over her fear often had a detrimental effect on her temper. “All right. With Bee down, Wasp, you’re our only sprinter, and our only shooter. If Ironhide and I draw the fire of those cannons, do you think you can get behind them and take them out?”
“Of course.” She hoped that wasn’t pure arrogance, though she’d been counting on his pride to get him to cooperate. Is this how leaders always feel? How do they cope?
“Good. Once we’re past those, it looks like a clear run to the end of the course, but I’d rather not rely on my own optics. Longarm, I need you to be our aerial reconnaissance. Climb as high as you can and report back if you see anything not visible from here. Is everyone clear on the plan so far?”
“Sir, yes sir,” Wasp said, the sarcasm in his voice audible even to Glitch, though he was already moving into position. Longarm, too, had vanished up a rock spire; Ironhide and Glitch braced themselves for the most dangerous part of her improvised strategy.
“Use your armour,” the would-be field-tech advised her comrade. “It’ll draw attention as well as protecting you. And I’ll have to give you a few nanokliks’ head start, to learn the cannons’ capabilities, but I’ll be right behind you. Is that all right?”
“Yes, fine.” Ironhide was a ‘bot of few words, but plenty of courage, as he proved when he charged out from behind the squad’s cover and every cannon in range focused on him. Which gave Glitch the opportunity she needed to focus on the cannons. Unlike those of the rest of the team, her special ability was purely processor-based. She could absorb, store and analyse a great deal of data at an almost incredible rate. Watching Ironhide’s progress, even for a few sparkbeats, gave her all the information she needed to compute the safest way to traverse the canyon in front of her, and she wasted no time before putting theory into practice.
She might not have Bee’s or Wasp’s speed, or Longarm’s flexibility, but when a task called for both speed and agility, she was Magnus, or rather Magna. Running, jumping, ducking, rolling, switching back and forth between her normal biped form and her two-wheeled alt-mode (faster than any of the other cadets, thanks to all those transform-ups), she caught up with, then overtook, Ironhide before the cannons stopped firing, not even missing a beat when Longarm reported that he couldn’t see any other defences between them and their objective. All at the cost of only a few flecks of paint.
She and Ironhide had a clear run to the flag that marked the end of the exercise, but the whole squad ought to be there at the finish. “Good work, men. Head for the far side of the canyon, and we’ll celebrate together.” No response. “Are you there?... Wasp?... Longarm?... Bumblebee?...” Still no answer from any of them, but the sounds Glitch heard from Bee’s comm made her Energon run cold. She knew them from vids. All too well. Live fire. Bee was in trouble, and she couldn’t help him. But someone else might.
“Bulkhead, sitrep… Bulk, where are you?”
“Heading your way. Bumblebee didn’t want to be helped.”
“Well, he needs your help now. I think he’s in danger. The cannons around him have been switched to live fire.”
“On my way.” Glitch let herself relax a little. Bumblebee was in good servos if Bulkhead could catch up to him in time. Belatedly, she realised she had just sent one of her closest friends into a possibly deadly situation, a decision she had no right to take. But Bulkhead hadn’t objected, and he wasn’t a pushover by any means. He had chosen to comply, showing more courage than the rest of the squad put together.
All she could do for them was wait, so she did so – until a tower came toppling down near her errant teammates’ last known position. She and Ironhide exchanged a look, then transformed and raced back the way they had come, past the deactivated cannons, towards the disaster area. Hang the exercise; people might actually need their help.
As it happened, someone did. Sentinel Minor.
***
“But I’m innocent, I tell you! You’re making a big mistake, all of you!” As Wasp was literally wheeled away by Agent Cliffjumper, Glitch didn’t know what to think. On the face of it, the Decepticon transmitter found in the cadet’s locker seemed to be conclusive proof that Wasp was not just a bully but a traitor. But something didn’t add up, and Glitch knew what she was talking about in that respect. Wasp was smart, surely too smart to let himself be caught so easily. They all knew Sarge liked to conduct surprise locker inspections; why hadn’t he found a safer hiding place for the damning evidence? Ah well. The Elite Guard would find the truth – wouldn’t they?
Abruptly, she found herself unable to consider the subject any further. Sentinel was praising Bumblebee’s courage and intelligence, and the cadet had never looked happier in all the time she had known him. Her own spark overflowed with joy as Longarm assured Bee he was set for the Elite Guard, filling her processor with static. But the drill sergeant’s next words brought her back down to Cybertron with a jolt. As nobody had claimed responsibility for the collapsing tower, he was going to expel Bulkhead. And before she could even calculate the implications of that, Bumblebee spoke up, telling Sentinel he was the guilty party.
He’s lying. Glitch had seen the wreckage of the tower as Bulk and Ironhide were lifting it off the officer. The damage had been done by a blunt instrument, such as Bulkhead’s wrecking ball, not Bee’s stingers. She hadn’t said anything before because she didn’t have proof. It might not be a cadet at all. But one look at Bulkhead’s face told her that her suspicions were correct.
Say something. Say something. She knew she should. Her silence could ruin the career of one of the ‘bots she cared about most. But if she did speak up, Sentinel would throw Bulkhead out anyway without giving him a chance to explain himself. She’d heard live fire over the comm, and Wasp had been out of her sight for long enough to have tampered with the cannons. Bulkhead had surely been protecting Bumblebee, and Sentinel had just happened to be in the way. Not that the Minor would accept that, or any other explanation.
While she was still paralysed by indecision, Sentinel made the choice for her, expelling both Bumblebee and Bulkhead on the spot. His pride wouldn’t let him go back on that, even if he knew the full facts. Glitch’s spark was barely a glimmer as Agent Cliffjumper, returning after securing his prisoner, mentioned that there were two openings on a space-bridge repair crew, perfect for the “miscreants”.
She could still hardly muster a smile as her erstwhile comrades bade her farewell the next solar-cycle. Bulkhead, in defiance of all propriety, her usual preferences (she was selective where physical contact was concerned) and her frame’s engineering tolerances, pulled her into an armour-denting hug, which she did her limited best to reciprocate. “Look after yourself, little buddy. Don’t let anyone push you around.”
“I never do. Besides, Ironhide won’t be as much a problem now that Wasp’s gone.” Wasp had always been the really nasty one, never missing an opportunity to needle the smaller mechs or the “mudflap” and practically fawning on Sentinel to compensate. She wondered why, and how she could have fixed whatever made him act that way. But it was too late. Ironhide, on the other hand, had merely fallen under Wasp’s influence early on. It wasn’t too late for him. “Look after yourself, as well, and Bee.”
“I will. And I’ll call you when I can. But I don’t know how long we’ll be away. Maybe next time I see you in the alloy, you’ll be a proper field-tech.”
“Unlikely. The training takes a long time, and few reach the end. But thank you for the vote of confidence – Technician Bulkhead.” He returned a full, proud smile for her weak one, perhaps fully realising for the first time that he was actually going to work on space-bridges, just as he had wanted to do, but moved aside to let her say goodbye to Bumblebee.
Still upset about the interruption to a momentarily promising career, Bee initially settled for a servo-shake, before changing his mind and giving her a brief, unexpected hug of his own. She wondered whether he could feel her spark humming behind her chestplate – and how she was able to think clearly at all with sensory inputs flooding her processor.
“Keep an optic on Longarm for me,” he said after a little while. “He’s been a good friend. And keep training. Cybertron needs ‘bots like you.” She saw that familiar, mischievous grin for the first time in megacycles. “Maybe don’t train too hard. I’ll beat you on an obstacle course one solar-cycle.”
“Wilco, and perhaps you will, but don’t count on it.” She managed to match his smile, somehow, as a shuttle arrived to take her friends away and they made their way towards it, turning to wave before boarding. She waved back as long as she could, then headed back towards the camp and her duties. There were still two cadets who needed a comrade, and she needed to keep training, as Bee had said. She had a long way to go before she reached her full potential. And while one harmful bug had just been removed from the system, she had every intention of introducing some useful ones. What better time to start than the present?