Archive of Our Own

Title: Sontay 2
Recipient: miltennious
Continuity: IDW
Pairing/Characters: Wreckers
Rating/Category: PG
Word Count/Format: 3102

“Redwine One. Watch your six.” Kup’s voice was gruff, but strangely soothing over comm. He’d been talked—all right, argued—into staying behind only on the condition that he be in the MCC, overseeing everything.

 

It had been a compromise, but one even Kup admitted was probably for the best.

For now.

“Thought that was your job,” Springer retorted, but Kup noted that took the hint, cutting his rotors to drop altitude, getting under and behind his pursuer.

“Do more than watch it,” Kup said, smirking. “If you bring it back in one piece.”

“You and your tailrotor obsession.” Springer opened up with his front guns, pink lines of tracers stitching through the air in pursuit of the Decepticon flyer who was scissoring hard in front of him in the darkness. The green telltale on Kup’s monitor forged ahead, aggressive. Springer never backed down. “How’s Blueboy?”

In the command center, Kup’s optics flicked to another screen. “Inbound. On time.” A snort. “And before you ask, Greenleaf’s almost in position.”

A grunt. “Hey. I like to keep on top of my mechs.”

Kup snickered. “So I’ve heard.”

[***]

The glideshuttle kicked up, grazing the top of the compound’s fence before Topspin wrestled it in to a landing, the nose biting into the ground. Red lights lit up the interior, painting Drift and Blurr crimson and strange, as they unhooked their crash harnesses.

“Thank you for flying Air Wrecker,” Topspin said, revolving in the pilot’s chair. Not his finest work, but, well, whatever.

“Way to stick the landing, Topspin,” Blurr said, dropping to one knee to rub at one ankle.

“Eh, you know what they say,” Topspin said, placidly. “Any landing you don’t lose a limb to is nothing to scream about.” He caught the quizzical look from Drift, and added, “Or something.”

Drift gave a shrug, a grin flirting with the corners of his mouth, before he moved behind Blurr, heading to the exit door.

Blurr gave a quick nod, before hooking his elbow under the release latch, heaving and throwing the door open. He winced, favoring the right foot, but it held as he shoved.

The red lights spilled in a small circle into the darkness. A moment of silence, three pairs of optics scouring, three pairs of audios straining for any sign of alarm. It was hard to hear anything: the wind hissed through the short blades of dark grass.

“Springer,” Topspin whispered, reaching up to kill the red lights. “And Sandstorm are out there.” Darkness plunged over them.

“As long as they keep the attention over there,” Blurr said, “I’m okay with that.” He dropped down off the lip, cursing as his ankle crumpled. He pushed upright, shoving Drift’s hands away.

Drift stepped back, palms up, yielding. If anyone respected another mech not wanting another mech’s help, Topspin figured, it was Drift.

“We’re going to get into it,” Drift murmured. “Decepticon watch protocols. Any attack in the area, they step up perimeter patrols. Just a matter of time.”

“Well then,” Blurr said, hefting one of his pistols, pushing forward with a sharp limp. “Let’s move.”

[***]

“Got a problem,” Sandstorm muttered.

“I’m not seein’ anything,” Kup said, bending over the scanner more intently. “Intel wrong on OpFor?”

“Not an OpFor issue,” Sandstorm said. “Met.”

Kup muttered. Big sonic storm blowing in from the west, but the Met techs had cleared the mission for tonight, saying the storm wouldn’t hit until tomorrow. “Blowing in early.”

A grunt of assent. “Vis dropping fast. Updrafts really starting to kick up. We got it, but there’s gonna be trouble on the lift.”

“Cross that bridge when we get there,” Kup said. If there’s still a bridge left to cross.

[***]

“Redwine’s giving good cover,” Twin Twist observed, “but Primus. Ultra Magnus, try to take us in a little easier than Topspin did?” Twin Twist rubbed the back of his neck, which felt jarred from the impact of the landing that transferred through their branched sparks.

Ultra Magnus merely grunted, his huge hands wrapped around the larger shuttle’s controls. Unlike the glider the Blueboy team had taken, this ship had launch thrusters, and room for the prisoners they were sent to liberate. It was, like him, large, ungainly, but very, very sturdy. He pulled up on the controls, engaging the grav-bumpers with a solid thunk. The ship bumped on its own grav cushion, before settling down onto the ground. “Perceptor,” he said, turning his head. “Demo?”

“Ready to move,” the tall mech said, already up, already kneeling by the crate of charges, piling in some packets of detonation cord.

“Twin Twist?”

The smaller mech rolled his optics. “Ultra Magnus. I know this. You and Perceptor just get me near the wall.” He didn’t need—or want—Ultra Magnus checking up on him. Just because he dozed through mission briefings didn’t mean he didn’t know what his job was. Osmosis, or something. Most likely, he figured, he’d been in the Wreckers for too long. And as the resident demo expert, your job was ‘blow slag up’ with greater or lesser degrees of precision. It got pretty easy to narrow down what was around that could be blown up.

Ultra Magnus simply nodded, moving to the door. He stilled in the doorway. “Problem.”

“Problem?” Perceptor moved behind him.

Ultra Magnus frowned. “This isn’t the LZ.” There were supposed to be trees, between them and the camp. Concealment, a visible barrier. There were no trees, only open plain.

Perceptor’s mouth twitched, peering around the larger mech. “Magnetic flux from the storm,” he said, quietly.

“Off course?” Twin Twist pushed Perceptor aside, stepping out under Ultra Magnus’s arm. He shrugged. “More of a hump for them, but ship’s probably safer here.”

“I could move the ship,” Ultra Magnus hesitated.

“Might compromise our lift,” Perceptor said. “Fuel expenditure. We might need all the fuel for the extra weight.”

“Might frag the timetable,” Twin Twist said. “We need to move.”

Ultra Magnus gave one last worried look at the jump ship, before moving after the others. It would have to do.

[***]

“Here they come,” Drift said. There was no need to try to be quiet—the winds had kicked up to nearly howling, tearing words from vocalizers. He drew his twin blades, stepping in front of Blurr.

Red lights of optics blazed around them, rushing from one of the barracks. Someone, somewhere, had set off an alarm.

“I can get this,” Blurr said.

“More important that you get to the cells,” Drift said. “I can buy you more time.” And, Drift knew, give Blurr a better chance to get out of this alive.

“Drift.” The heat of wounded pride.

“Let’s move,” Topspin said. “Drift’s called it.” Wreckers respected that.

Blurr’s face twitched, but he moved off after Topspin, hitching each stride on his left leg. The last thing Drift saw before the Decepticons swarmed around him were Blurr’s optics, narrow lines of worry.

[***]

“Empty.” Topspin scanned the long space. It was lumped with shapes, furniture in dark, jagged piles that caught the sound of his voice, flinging it back at him, mocking him. The third barracks. The third building that should have been crowded with prisoners, empty. It was ominous and it tasted like failure.

Topspin turned to Blurr, who was covering the doorway, both pistols out, optics scanning from side to side. “Gonna ask Twin Twist.”

“That’ll break radio silence,” Blurr said. Ground teams weren't allowed to communicate. Only Redwine and Command had comm, because Redwine was mobile.

“Not…exactly.” Topspin cocked his head.

//Problem.// One benefit—one of the very few, as Topspin would describe it—was the communication. Sparkdeep and instant.

//Wanna swap? We missed the LZ.//

//Less of a problem: we can’t find the prisoners.//

//….what? There’s supposed to be 247 of them.// Topspin could feel Twin Twist’s awareness, like a bulge in the line, Twin Twist pushing through the connection, looking through their branched spark. He turned, letting his optics, for Twin Twist’s benefit, scan the debris-strewn room.

//Yeah.// What else could he say?

He felt Twin Twist withdraw. //Gimme a klik.//

Topspin waited, frowning.

“Drift’s out there,” Blurr said, moodily.

“He can handle himself,” Topspin said. The opposite of an insult: Drift was a little too damn good sometimes. “We know he’s still alive because they’re not coming after us.” And his tell light was still lit on their HUD.

“Point.”

//Right,// Twin Twist returned. Topspin let himself ooze over their spark connection. Moving, steady movement, unopposed. He could feel the same howling wind against their armor. //Second objective: see if you can find records. Give it five, then pull out.//

[***]

Springer cursed, fighting the winds, and the bad news. “No prisoners.”

“None.” Kup sounded less obscene, but equally unhappy. “Bad intel.” The encrypted burst from Ultra Magnus itself had been alarming enough: the ground teams were supposed to be on radio silence. Unless things went gaseous.

This was an unless.

“Bad intel.” Springer echoed, managing to make that sound like the vilest substance in the galaxy. “Who do we kill?”

“We’ll deal with that.” Kup scanned the monitors. “Later. First priority is a successful pullout.”

Springer grunted. “Something tells me that’s not all the happy you have to share.”
That something was a few millennia of experience. “Greenleaf undershot the LZ.”

A sigh. “Right. Good thing I have all this extra aggression, isn’t it?”

“When isn’t it?” Kup could feel Springer get a hold of himself. The copter didn't see his satisfied nod.

“When I get my hands on Prowl.”

[***]

Drift was, in a way, in his element. The twin blades moved, as though they were sentient, hungry, seeking out the weak points in the armor of the mechs that dared approach him. Rounds pinged off his armor, off the edges of his blades, as he swept, like his own storm, through the crowd.

The storm barely registered, above the battle around him. He stooped low, bringing the blades up like a scythe, letting momentum carry him in a half-circle.

It was almost a relief to be left alone: no one to protect, no one to be careful of. Anything he could hit, anything he could reach, was a target. He could let himself go.

It was a strange kind of nostalgia.

A short curse, as one blade got jammed in a mech’s knee joint—the leg folding down into the cut, pinning the sword in place.

Drift hesitated, a klik too long, before loosening his grip on the blade, stepping back.

Out of the howl of the storm, red optics seemed to form above him, like a demon born from the wind itself, bringing a rifle butt down on the back of Drift’s helm.

The world went white, wild, and black. Colors, it would seem, of mercy.

[***]

“Almost done,” Topspin said. He crouched in the dark, in front of the monitor, glaring at the upload icon, as though that would make the datatransfer happen faster. His rifle lay across a table, and on the floor, the crumpled body of a Decepticon trooper.

 

Behind him, Blurr rummaged in a wall mounted box, tossing things out, roughly, onto the floor.

They both twitched, suddenly, as the blue light of Drift’s tell blinked out.

A silent communication between the two of them, Topspin snatching the disk from the trackwriter, shoving to his feet, grabbing for his rifle.

Blurr dropped to his ankle. “Catch up with you in a klik,” he muttered, and Topspin caught a glimpse of a black rerouter in the former racer’s hands.

“I’ll wait.”

 

Twin blue optics met his. “Go on.” He stood up, rolling his ankle as the rerouter cut and the pain signals from his ankle. Dangerous thing to do, but Topspin wasn't one to nag: Blurr needed his speed right now. The hands flew over the armor of his greaves, cuisses, releasing the armor locks. The blue plates clattered to the floor, Blurr stepping forward, the naked pistons of his legs catching the dim light of the feeble light from the monitor.

“Stripping weight?”

Blurr nodded. “Better to ask forgiveness and permission, isn’t that what they say?”

Topspin shrugged, tossing a full magazine at Blurr. “Don’t know. Wreckers don’t ask.”

Blurr grinned, slamming the new magazine into one pistol. “Fair enough. Now let’s go rescue Drift. Wreckers never leave one of their own.”

[***]

“Inbound and hot,” Topspin said. “Blurr’ll probably beat me there.” Not probably. But hey, he liked the idea of surprise. And he also liked that he wouldn’t have to explain Blurr’s stripped down look. The racer had cut through the crowds like a laserscalpel, guns pumping a steady tempo, steady as the pace of his feet, quick and deadly. Topspin had followed behind, slower, heavier, in the racer’s wake, finishing off those Blurr had merely wounded or stunned.

Drift looked…like you’d expect, he thought—armor dented, prised off. But Topspin'd seen worse. And Drift was tough. Once he’d snagged Drift’s inert form, he’d transformed, lifting his blocky form above the heads of the crowds.

“Warming up the engines,” Twin Twist said. “Least we can do this right.”

The wind buffeted against Topspin, trying to push him off course. His engines roared, keeping him on course, steering solely by instrument and the sure awareness of Twin Twist’s spark like a homing beacon. “Not our fault,” he grunted. The ship seemed to pop out of the darkness, the red square of the interior light hoving up before him. He dropped, letting gravity do most of the work. “Anyone think to prep medical?”

“Yes.” Perceptor caught Drift’s form, draped over Topspin’s nosecone, with just a hint of sharpness in his tone. Of course, between Perceptor and Ultra Magnus, the OCD twins, they probably had every contingency covered.

Topspin stepped up the riser into the craft, ducking his head. Blurr was still moving, nervous energy keeping him going, stowing the weapons, running through the preflight checklist as Ultra Magnus rattled the points off. Twin Twist nodded to him, holding out his hand for the datadisk.

“At least we got this,” Twin Twist said.

“Yeah,” Topspin said, frowning. They were supposed to rescue prisoners, liberate Autobots. They were supposed to do good. Instead, Drift was out, and all they had to show for it was a slim file of data.

“Springer and Sandstorm have given us a flightpath,” Ultra Magnus said, calmly. Of course, nothing rattled him. Nothing in combat, anyway. Topspin wondered what went through the lawmech's mind as he'd broken the rules to send the burst. Must have been one hell of another kind of battle. Conscience: kind of a combat liability.

Topspin planted himself in one of the seats. One of the long rows of empty seats. Very empty. He felt the yawning emptiness like a rebuke. Two hundred forty seven empty seats. Two hundred forty seven silent failures.

And one CR pod, Perceptor fussing quietly, tethering himself to one of the standing harnesses to keep working on programming the pod as Ultra Magnus hit the launch.

[***]

“Gonna kill him.” Springer raged, glaring around the ready room, looking for something to throw. Since there was no one around he could punch. The air still seemed to crackle from the shut off comm to Prowl.

“No, you’re not,” Kup said, reasonably. “Killin’s for the enemy.”

“You know,” Springer said. “If it was just the fraggin’ bad intel, that’d be one thing.”

 

“Pretty big thing,” Topspin said, arms folded over his chassis.
“Waste,” Perceptor said.

“It’s a sop,” Kup said. “It’s not an insult.”

“Damn is an insult,” Twin Twist said, throwing his datapad down the table. It skittered, spinning around to teeter on the table’s edge. “Fraggin’ Commendation for Valor my left bit.”

“Over a hundred confirmed enemy kills,” Kup said. “That’s not nothing.”

“We didn’t do our job! The prisoners…!”

“Moved, about a week ago,” Kup said. “Confirmed with the data Topspin and Blurr got.”

“Yeah, sorry, but I ain’t intel,” Topspin muttered. “Not my job to do their scutwork for them.”

“A fraggin’ insult,” Twin Twist repeated. “One thing to risk our diodes for a good cause. This? Clusterbomb from start to finish.”

Sandstorm chimed in from the corner, his armor still pocked with flak. “Bad intel, bad met. You tell us all the time sloppy gets you dead, Springer.” A shrug. “Their sloppy this time.”

“So what do we do about it?” Kup, as usual, clipping the complaining short. He knew how quickly this stuff could escalate. Especially with Wreckers. Especially feeding their favorite grudge of Wreckers Vs REMFs.

“Do.” Springer’s optics glinted, one hand balling into a fist.

“NOT punch them,” Kup admonished.

“Maybe punch some smarts into them to feel a little of the slag they put us through,” Sandstorm muttered.

“Not accept it,” Blurr said, from the doorway. He stepped in. “Listen. You don’t accept a reward you didn’t win. It’s not right.” He looked around. “Not sure about you, but I earn my trophies. That?” He pointed at Twin Twist’s datapad, “We didn’t earn.”

“Not yet, at any rate,” Ultra Magnus said, his mouth tight with conviction. “We have the intel now. We can do this. The right way.”

Springer’s glower shifted into his more familiar smirk. “The Wrecker way.”