#edit: pfff forgot the link :P

[libermachinae]

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part IV: Touch - Chapter 11: Ripple

Also on AO3 Summary: They’ve only just arrived at their destination when things start to go wrong. Word Count: 2193

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“Picking up some light readings,” Drift reported. “Limited tech, similar to Vitrious. You getting anything?”

“Just a massive, concentrated energy spike a few degrees northeast,” Rodimus said. “Recent exposure, Cybertronian markers.”

“When’s the last time you took that rig in for a tune-up?”

Ratchet hated having to repeat himself, but either Drift was incapable of recognizing the severity of his ship’s disrepair (unlikely) or he was being even more obstinate than normal. Exchanging their vessels’ specs had revealed the truly horrific condition the ship was in: fuel efficiency half of what it should have been, unreliable pressure seals, thrusters that should not have made it into the air, let alone off a planet. That he had survived transit was a—not a miracle, an insult to probability and reasonable calculation of—

Rodimus put a hand on his shoulder and tried to think calm thoughts. Drift had survived. It didn’t make sense, and maybe the luck would run out now that it had been acknowledged, but—

Ratchet halfheartedly swatted at his hand, more like a firm pat.

No wonder you liked him so much. Morale officer doesn’t suit you. He failed to dislodge Rodimus’ hand and didn’t bother trying again.

“Haven’t had the time.” The sound of flipping switches was followed by a hard smack from Drift’s end, rounded out by imprecise grumbling. Drift’s report had lacked any details on the state of his ship’s user interface, but the variety of language he had spoken to it with, impressive even by Ratchet’s standards, gave the sense that it was functioning at about the same level as everything else: barely.

“Still think it’s an outpost?” Rodimus asked.

“Lot of things it could be,” Drift said, voice accompanied by a few more mechanical noises. “We’d need more info to say for sure. Or a visual.”

Rodimus considered the readouts in front of him. There were more he hadn’t read out, but only because he didn’t know how. Ratchet translated what he could, but they were trying to keep his focus on piloting which meant Rodimus couldn’t spend too long wondering about the more mystifying aspects of his screen. Was that box in the top corner a map, or a graph? He didn’t know, and he had to look away before it overtook their other priorities.

“There are also stockpiles, energon plants, and decoys out there,” Drift went on. “Traps, if you’re really unlucky. Whole lot of empty shacks; lot of boltholes won’t have anyone living in them most of the time.”

“On the move a lot?” Rodimus asked.

“Sure. Only one in a dozen stellar systems will have a planet good for energon harvesting, and then there’s having to be vigilant about competition and enforcers. Sometimes needs will change or new opportunities will open up, and a crew will split up to deal with it.” He sounded annoyed at that, briefly breaking from his researcher-describing-mysterious-outgroup tone.

“Couple Decepticons on holiday accidentally give you the slip?” Rodimus asked, just to keep him there.

“More like an entire platoon,” Drift said, rising to it so quickly that they could only assume he’d been waiting for someone to complain about this to. “I tracked them to their covert thermal operation on a smelter of a planet, got all the way in, only to discover the one mech they’d left behind was their communications specialist—it was a mess. But, that’s the past now.” And just as quickly, the wall was back up. “If our intel’s good and Grit’s got a byte of sense, there should be someone here. Just no idea how many.”

“Sounds like there’s a good chance we’ll get this thing cleaned up quick,” Ratchet said. “So long as we stick together.”

Drift’s Hm’d agreement was more than either had expected. Maybe they were making progress.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Good to go,” Rodimus said, adjusting the items on his screen to focus on the ship’s status. “Defense and surveillance up, and we’re at about descent altitude. Just give us a head’s up when you start improvising, so we can get out of your way.”

He was not supposed to say that. He shot over a grin in response to Ratchet’s disapproval; what point was there in denying the inevitable?

Practicing being a good friend, remember? That means saying no to stupid ideas.

It also means being there to catch him instead of holding him back.

It was the kind of argument that couldn’t be solved with a few pointed thoughts or memories, the kind that they did not have time for now, as the visual feed showed Drift’s ship starting its descent. They set it aside in their own ways: Ratchet simply stopped thinking about it, while Rodimus let himself run through the myriad arguments he would have made simultaneously before reconnecting himself to the present. A moment later and they were ready, Ratchet punching in the commands to follow Drift down.

The planet’s cloudless atmosphere gave them a clear view of the terrain below, its massive, dramatic rock formations contoured by deep shadows. North of them, the average surface elevation increased and smoothed out into tall hills, but where they were going the difference between peaks and valleys created a network of shelves and tunnels that would be perfect to hide a secret base in. And stealth did seem to be one goal of whoever had set up shop down there: besides the sloppy energy output, there were no obvious signs of cyberforming on the planet’s surface. Rodimus was about to suggest that only those who came looking for Cybertronians would ever notice they were here, when a glint in one of the visual feeds caught his attention. He brought the feed to his station and zoomed in. Metal?

The word hit his vocoder as Ratchet shoved them into a dive.

“Turret!”

The energy beam was hot enough to ripple the air around it. Even though Ratchet got them turned away fast enough, the whole shuttle shuddered from the near-miss. Crates and containers rattled in their restraints, and Rodimus was too busy keeping up with Ratchet to think about the sounds of crashing down in the hold. They should have been at a safe distance to avoid detection; how had they been pinpointed so quickly?

“Pull up! Get out of here!” Drift shouted.

No time to wonder about it right now.

“Can’t,” Rodimus said while Ratchet wrestled with the controls. “I’ve got visual; they’re charging up for the next shot. Reversing momentum would have us hovering like an auto-skeet.” If the console would stop bombarding him with warnings, he might have been able to make better estimates about their next move, but a ship this size wasn’t designed to be flown by just two bots with half a processor each. Ratchet was demanding so much of their attention that even reading the words on the screen demanded resources they didn’t have, so he scrubbed the whole thing until all that was left was the visual feed, the twinkle that shone just before the storm. “Diving. Keep on our tail.”

“No, that’s—fine. Aim for cover.”

Ratchet switched off the reverse thrusters and the ship plummeted out of its gentle descent. The entire world rocked nauseatingly as the discordant visual feeds broadcast the tilting horizon and rising ground, and they startled as the second blast singed the air behind them, the crackle of Drift’s failing comms suite not enough to prevent their sparks from clenching down in panic. The rear cameras recovered from the overexposure, and there was the speeder, intact and keeping pace.

“What now?” Drift demanded.

“Evasive maneuvers,” Rodimus said, following the ticker tape of Ratchet’s intentions. “Triple Thunderclash!”

Ratchet twisted hard on the controls and sent the ship spiraling. Rodimus would have been flung across the bridge had they not been secured, but even then struggled to maintain focus as they were thrashed around, over and over. He couldn’t see Drift anymore, or the distant turret: everything was swirls of color, broken up for only a split second as the third blast went wide and passed them by.

Ratchet drew back and pulled them out of the spiral, then hastily steered them aside as the recovered visual feeds revealed an oncoming peak. Landing thrusters were engaged; slightly dazed, Rodimus picked out a promising valley for Ratchet to maneuver them into. Drift reappeared in the rear feed, keeping his distance in case they had to dart again. Not that there would be much room for it, as the canyon walls rose up and enveloped them.

Ratchet brought the shuttle to rest on a wide shelf and sat back, optics dim. The constant, pounding beat of his focus dispersed, and he sunk into pillowy relief, buoyed by Rodimus’ burst of Wow we made its and What kind of gun was thats and I’m alive Ratchet’s alive Drift’s alives. It had been hard, keeping that iron grip on himself while Ratchet put in the work of keeping them alive, but—

“Wouldn’t have seen that shot coming without you,” Ratchet said. Rodimus looked away as he flushed, warm with appreciation and embarrassment; sincerity was an intimacy he was never quite prepared for. He was grateful when Drift’s speeder landed alongside them.

“Everybody intact in there?” Ratchet asked. He thought Rodimus’ embarrassment was amusing, frag him, but was willing to set it aside out of concern for their friend. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t find a way to exploit it later, but for now, Rodimus was safe.

“We made it,” Drift said. “That was more more like a Double Thunderclash.”

“Ratchet was between Thunderclashes and I had to make a best guess.” Rodimus tried to mime the path of the two ships with his hands, twisting his arms as far as his joints would allow. “It’s a Triple Thunderclash because it’s three times cooler than a thing Clash did in some fight,” he explained, since he felt Ratchet wondering.

“Battle of Ambustus Major?” Ratchet asked. Rodimus shrugged and tried not to pout when Ratchet immediately brought up an old vid file of the maneuver.

“Is the ship stable here?” Drift asked, reminding them they were here with a purpose. In the aftermath of such a close call, it was natural to want to ease back for a moment, but Rodimus couldn’t fault Drift for wanting to stay on track. The stakes weren’t any lower just because they’d made it to the surface intact.

“Should be,” Ratchet said, leaning over so he didn’t have to keep relying on Rodimus to funnel through the ship’s readings. “Holding steady for now. We’d probably need to conduct a physical survey to be sure, but I’m not seeing anything troubling from here.” Ratchet wasn’t sure of the composition of this planet, but the lack of dust in the atmosphere suggested it was made of a lot of hard, compact stone, hopefully strong enough to support a spacefaring vessel. They just had to hope that whatever geologic event had formed this shelf hadn’t terribly weakened the wall it was anchored to.

“Good,” Drift said. “The good news from all this is that the turret gives us an idea of where they have their main base; it’d be a waste of fuel to have to drive back and forth a long way. Once I’ve scouted it out and located Grit, you can come in.”

“Okay, and one more time with a plan we’ll actually follow?” Ratchet’s edge emboldened Rodimus. If it had been just him out here, he might have let Drift make all the decisions out of guilt, but the strong presence beside his mind pulsed with gentle encouragement.

Drift sighed.

“Right. Give me a minute.”

Ratchet gave Rodimus a thumbs up. Progress.

Rodimus got up from the captain’s seat and walked to the bow of the bridge, where the narrow viewshield gave him a closer peek onto the planet. The impression he got: rocks. Though the surface was painted mainly by dull shades of brown, down here they started taking on more color, hints of red and green only noticeable against the stark homogeny of everything else.

Why had the Decepticons chosen this planet? Were there fuel reservoirs buried too far below the surface to show up on orbital scanners? How would they have known to come looking for them? If not, if this was just a backwater hideaway, why the powerful defense system? Who was hiding here? And for how long? He itched to pop the hatch open and start exploring, but Ratchet’s presence kept him in place. This world, with its unknown Cybertronian population, confronted them with a new variety of complexity and danger. Though they could be rash in their decision to help Drift, they couldn’t risk being stupid about it.

Ratchet gently nudged him away from that kind of thinking. No one here was stupid. Everyone was trying to do the right thing for the people of Vitrious, the universe at large, and each other.

Rodimus cast a small, grateful smile over his shoulder.

“Okay.” The comms came back to life with Drift’s voice. “I still think this is a bad idea. But I’ve got something.”