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Impactor scanned the skies, his lowlight optics straining into the dusky vault overhead. The wind screamed in his audio, like a polar version of the Devastator Winds, as though the planet was furious and intent on driving him mad with its shrieks.
It’d have to try a lot fraggin’ harder than that.
“No sign, huh?” Springer, behind him, his voice strained with pain, words shredded by the gusting coldness.
Impactor scowled at the blank sky, the tumult of clouds giving nothing away. “They’ll show.” Eventually. And if they showed soon enough, Impactor might just be satisfied ripping one arm off. This was what happened using regular Autobot ships for pickup. He’d known it was a stupid idea.
He turned back, the wind slicing knives through his armor as he moved, to where Springer sat, propped uneasily against an icy boulder, the mangled wreck of his left leg spitting sparks defiantly into the wind. The smile was in place, at least, the half ironic, half amused smile that plucked even at Impactor’s hard to find feelings.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” Impactor said, “don’t fraggin’ say it.”
“Wasn’t thinking anything,” Springer said, scooting his good leg under him, to push to his one good leg. “Just that we need to find some cover since we’re going to be here a while.”
Impactor’s growl got torn away by the wind, even as he reached for Springer’s arm, ducking around to brace it over his shoulder, supporting the triple-changer’s weight. Springer was right, but he wasn’t about to tell him that. He pointed with his harpoon. “Ridgeline over there.” It was a question as much as a direction.
A weight shift as Springer bobbed his head. “I can make it.”
They moved, across the uneven landscape, the ice beneath them cleaved in chunks and masses that seemed to defy footsteps, the eerie white-blue of ancient ice that didn’t even remember a liquid state, Impactor taking more of Springer’s weight with each step, his own good hand clamped around the other’s chassis, trying not to feel the trembling armor underneath his fingers. Fraggin’ Springer, hurt worse than he let on. He shouldn’t be surprised. He shouldn’t fraggin’ care.
Fraggin’ idiot. That’s what he was. A fraggin’ idiot who let himself be talked into this whole stupid mission in the first place. He could outglower the best of them: even Ultra Magnus knew when to back down. But fraggin’ Springer. With his soft voice and his ‘reason’ and his ‘High Command will owe us for this’ and all that. And he fell for it.
Every.
Time.
“Gonna be the death of me,” he muttered, even as he sidled closer, hip bumping the other mech’s.
“This place?” Springer’s voice traveled through his frame, a vibration more powerful than the tremor they were both blatantly ignoring. “Nah. Take more than this to take you out.”
Impactor grunted, neither denial or assent, moving onward, now more than half-carrying Springer. “Get a proper medikit open when we get to some cover,” he said.
“I can handle it,” Springer said.
“Shut it. I’ll tell you what you can’t handle.” His mouth worked, crackling a thin veneer of ice that had begun building up, sending shards spinning away into the darkening air. It was almost a rote response between the two of them, Impactor’s usual reflexive contrarianism. It was something familiar, at least, some way of keeping the pretense of normalcy, something to push back against the cold and wind and desolation.
Springer managed a wan smile—it was something—in return, and they limped further on into the darkness. The ridgeline seemed to recede before them for a while, ice spinning endless hillocks under their feet, but finally, finally, they could begin to feel the wind slackening off, the howling dying to a groan as they moved in among the dark masses. Stone, actual stone, volcanic and weathered to a grey glassiness, the only thing that could defy the torturous winds.
Impactor propped Springer against a wall of it, his miner’s optics keen in the gathering night, sounding the depths of the stone’s breaks. There, a little wall and a pile of rubble. That would do: a break from the wind. It’d be tight, but, well...they could deal. Wouldn’t be the first time.
He crossed back to Springer, feeling the wind anew, like knives of ice, pushing against him, forcing him to lean into it with each stride. Springer had taken his absence to drop to the ground by the low wall, turning, just enough to let his body carve a slim windshadow out of the maddening storm, so his hands could fumble with the signal beacon. It flared to life, a magnesium-white brightness, washing out the color from his armor--chromium and green turned flat white and razor-shadowed.
Springer looked up, his optics the only spots of color in the whiteness till the beacon’s initial pulse faded. “Didn’t think I’d just sit here doing nothing, did you?” The ebbing light caught his smile, sharp enough to hurt Impactor’s optics as he held out his hand.
“Yeah, why’d I imagine you’d fraggin’ stay put and do what you’re supposed to do,” Impactor said, hauling Springer up by the proffered hand again.
Springer squeezed his hand. “Hope springs eternal.”
“Hope. Please.” Impactor hefted Springer toward the little windbreak. “Been doing this too long for that.” He eased Springer down onto the ground, kicking a small rock aside. “Now.” He reached for his medikit--the one he never touched, not for himself, using his harpoon to scrape off some of the energon that had frozen, crusted, around a wound. “Gonna let me look at this or this gonna be another fight?”
It was already better in here--the windshriek down to a ground-vibrating thrum, and Springer’s autorepair shedding heat that filled the small space. Impactor could still feel the wind at his back, gusting around his helm, but it was at bay, manageable: uncomfortable instead of dangerous.
“Think we should save the fight till later,” Springer said. “I know you’d hate to lose to an injured opponent.”
Their optics met, in the darkened cave, orange and blue glints of life in the barren darkness.
Impactor broke the glance first, with a snort, tearing his gaze down to the injured leg, his hand already on the armor locks. “Hnnf,” he muttered, dismissively. “Gonna be the death of me, one of these days.” And it would, he thought, stealing another glance up the triple changer’s battered frame, be worth it.