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Bumblebee cycled his vents when the coded message pulsed across the frequency that Black Ops used in the field, a pair of musical scales that said ”charges set, ten groons”, and meant that Mirage had been successful in his part of the mission. That was something of a relief, because Bee himself had had no luck in locating anything that Starscream or Shockwave had been working on.
He would be glad to get out of Darkmount and go home.
“You, Autobot!” Bumblebee kept his composure enough not to make a sound when the voice hissed at him from the vent, but startled hard enough that he pulled a cable out of alignment. He turned to the vent and stared when he realized that bright red optics, uncannily similar to Ravage’s, were peering out at him. Just how long had he been being watched? “You’re here for the rust gun schematics?”
That did sound like the kind of weapon their defector had been talking about when he was being interrogated a few days ago. He replied softly, “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Good.” The optics vanished for a moment and then a pair of data crystals tumbled out of the vent. Then they reappeared, and he could see a dark blue felinoid face to go with the optics. The comparisons to Ravage got more uncomfortable by the klik. “Those are the schematics and the only backup I could find. He’s probably got another one, but we don’t have time to locate it. Take those and tell your superior that the gun is in production and that this will only slow Shockwave down. The deployment estimate is three days.”
“Three days? Frag.” Bumblebee cycled his vents again and decided to trust this unknown Decepticon. For the moment, anyway.
“Four if we’re lucky, but we’re never lucky.” The Decepticon blinked. “Frag. You gotta get out, now. I’ll cover you as much as I can. If he asks how you got it, tell him… tell him it was Highbrow’s favorite cat.”
At that statement, Bee’s optics widened in surprise. He remembered Highbrow placing a feline recordicon as a deep cover agent vorns ago, but they had all thought he’d died after losing contact. “Do you need an extraction?”
The Autobot in the vents chuckled softly. “I’m a cat. I’ll get home on my own. Now get lost, I can’t hide you from anyone in here.”
The optics vanished before he could say anything else, so Bumblebee put his worry for the agent in the back of his processor and piked up the data crystals. He tucked them into his subspace, sent the ”Mission Accomplished” scales out on the Black Ops band and headed to his exit point.
He had about five groons left, before Mirage set off one Pit of a fireworks show. They could worry about getting Nightstalker out of Decepticon hands after that.