Chapter Text
Seventeen connections across three boards, triple-checked, soldered, cleaned. Wheeljack retracted a solvent-coated swab and engaged his magnifier once more. Everything looked fine. No way it wouldn't work this time. His right hand reached for his handheld unit tester — reached farther … farther … He looked up. There was the usual pile of spare parts, wires, and stacked projector modules, but not the slate-colored geometric item he needed.
"Ratchet?" Wheeljack looked behind him at the cluttered workshop. The physician who was supposed to be consulting with him on this project was nowhere to be found. Wheeljack pinged him: [ Where are you? ]
An answer, almost immediately: [ Break room. ]
Wheeljack's internal chronometer told him it was about time for a break anyways. As he rose from his chair, the datapad with his research notes slid from his lap and clattered to the floor. Better bring that, too, so he could have Ratchet double check his math against actual spark contraction rates. Wouldn't want this attempt to work, only for the device to be over- or underpowered.
The halls of the Technoversity of Ultirex gleamed gold, showing off their handsome budget and their origins in the early days of Nova Prime's reign. When Wheeljack first arrived half a vorn ago, he'd thought it flashy and even a little garish. He'd loved it. He still did, after graduating with highest honors and getting hired as a researcher. Not least because they gave him his own lab — after stellar cycles of begging — and let him propose and conduct his own research projects. He didn't even have to teach every stellar cycle, since they had enough faculty to rotate.
Admittedly, this latest project wasn't exactly up his alley. Wheeljack preferred working with the mining outfits or peacekeeping bodies, where he could make finetuned explosive charges or fast-flying drones. No, this project was for surgical devices. Nothing he couldn't handle, of course, but not something he would've asked for. But what else did he expect after refusing three contracts from Leadfoot in a row? At least if he got a patent or two out of this, his supervisor would probably leave him alone for a while.
And anyways, Ratchet wasn't bad to work with. Terse, maybe, but pleasant enough. They'd only really talked shop so far. Wheeljack hoped to get to know him better, if only because he seemed like he had plenty of stories to tell.
In the break room, Wheeljack found Ratchet alone, standing with crossed arms and watching a telescreen. It showed a news report of a mining accident on Croteus 12, a cave-in at outpost C-2 that killed two and left one missing. Ratchet's faceplate was unreadable, but the room felt tense. Unsure of what to say, Wheeljack crossed to get some energon sticks from a cabinet along the adjacent wall.
"Ever been there?" Ratchet asked in a low rumble.
Wheeljack paused with a hand clutching the box of snacks, tipped his head toward Ratchet to see his unchanged expression. Somehow it didn't sound like the place to speak.
"I have. Not C-2, though. C-5," Ratchet continued. His optics didn't move from the news broadcast. "A foremech had malignant, infectious servo rust. I was on the containment team." He tapped a digit once, twice, against his arm. "You know what we found?"
Wheeljack turned around to see the physician's brow furrowed, his mildly displeased expression belying his bitter tone.
"It'd been spreading through the outpost for cycles already. They only called us in when the mech in his little office got sick." The physician's trithyllium-hard gaze snapped to Wheeljack. The air crackled like the inside of a charged blaster.
"What did you do?" As the words escaped him, Wheeljack cursed himself for not modulating the brightness of the receptors on either side of his head. They flashed as he spoke, bright, blue, and stupid.
Ratchet glared for another nano-klik. "We did our jobs." He deflated a little and finally broke optic contact. "Quarantine. Repairs. Most of the miners recovered. Somewhat."
Wheeljack vented some exhaust and took a tentative step toward the small table at the center of the room. Sat as quietly as he could. Pulled out a chair for Ratchet and gestured for him to sit down. He was suprised how relieved he was when the older mech took a seat. Even if Ratchet went back to scrutinizing the news, hunched forward with a hand on one knee joint.
"What happened to the foremech?" Wheeljack extended the box of energon sticks to Ratchet.
Ratchet took one absentmindedly, sticking it in his mouth but not chewing. "He was fine. Even got an orbital cycle's worth of meds to make sure it didn't come back." He leaned back, taking the energon stick out of his mouth with his thumb and foredigit and considering it. "He got transferred a while later and had another outbreak at his new posting. I wasn't called."
"What happened to him after that?"
"Last I read, he was promoted to a planetside operation."
Ratchet stuck the energon stick back into his mouth. He was still watching the broadcast, but he seemed less … intense than before. Wheeljack followed his gaze to the telescreen.
Video of emergency responders walking among the rubble of Mining Outpost C-2 played on the telescreen. Then an interview with a worker, who explained in glitches and starts about one of their explosive charges going off early. From the same angle, an interview with the foremech insisting it was user error, that there would be an investigation into the cause, that operations in other areas of the outpost were unaffected. An anchor at a desk reeled off facts about the outpost.
For a moment, Wheeljack wondered if it was one of his devices. It probably was, though the satellite mining ops usually got models a few iterations behind. Had this sort of malfunction — user error, whatever — happened before? He hadn't gotten any sort of notice. News wasn't really his thing. He wouldn't have known.
Wheeljack placed the box of snacks in the middle of the table and looked at Ratchet. "D'you ever wish you didn't save him?"
He'd half-expected Ratchet to be angry or offended for implying he'd break his oath. But Ratchet instead turned toward him with a tired sort of expression. "I'm a doctor, Wheeljack. For better or worse." He took the energon stick out of his mouth again. Wheeljack was starting to wish he'd just eat it already. "I can't choose what my patients do after treatment any more than you can choose where your inventions end up."
"I—"
Ratchet put a hand up. "You're a young bot. Sharp, but young. In your line of work, your research is going to offline someone, if it hasn't already." He glanced meaningfully at the telescreen. "If you're going to keep at it, you can't forget that. There's always a cost, no matter how many degrees removed you are."
Without thinking, Wheeljack fired back, "I could change specialties."
Ratchet arched an orbital ridge. "No, you couldn't. Two solar cycles ago, you were blinking at me about your position at that weapons lab in Rodion next stellar cycle. And what were you telling Flux? 'I can feel my own spark contracting just thinking about this monitor stuff'?" Wheeljack wilted under Ratchet's wry grin. "I'm not telling you to quit. You've got a gift." Ratchet punctuated himself by rapped his energon stick on the table. "I'm telling you to remember who you're doing it for."
Wheeljack vented again, contrite.
"Oh, don't go moping like that. You'll be fine." Ratchet put his snack in his mouth and bit it in half. Finally. "That's what I get for trying to be the wise old mech. Here" — he pushed the box of energon snacks toward Wheeljack — "eat one, you'll feel better. What'd you need me for, anyway? Unit tests? Is that thing actually going to work?"
Thank Primus, a change of topic. Wheeljack took an energon stick and spun it around on the digits of one hand while he produced the datapad with the other. "I, ah, was going to do them but I can't find my handheld. In the meantime, I wanted to run these numbers by you before I ran the test. In case it actually works this time."
Ratchet laughed, though it sounded more like he was clearing his vocal processor. He slid the datapad toward him with two digits and peered at it. "That little box you were fiddling with earlier?" He crossed out a line on the datapad and typed something next to it. "I thought you told me you were going to put it in that circuitry tray from now on."
Ah. On the left side of his desk. "You know, I checked that before," he lied, "but maybe it fell or something."
It had not fallen or something and was, in fact, exactly where Ratchet said it was.
Fortunately, Ratchet was a few paces behind and didn't see Wheeljack drop it in a drawer, just to fish it out nonchalantly just as the doctor walked in with a quiet "There it is!"
Unfortunately, despite double-checked math and triple-checked wires, Wheeljack neglected to reprogram the assembly with the correct figures and voltages. Board two overloaded.
"Hey, we're one step closer," he said to Ratchet as he desoldered one of the burnt-out wires. "At least we're fixing every possible problem here in the lab. We do this right, and this thing saves a lot of lives."
Ratchet looked to the floor, invoking Primus with a low utterance before grumbling, "It sure will."