FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"So," Jack said as the team crept through the Harbinger's dark corridors, "what do we call you?" He looked up at the Airachnid clone. He'd noticed over the last few minutes that she'd grown more nervous the deeper into the ship they explored. "I feel like it'd be rude to keep referring to you as 'the clone.'"

She paused her hand-wringing long enough to shrug, then resumed. Her lips quivered and she moved forward with slow, hesitant steps. "I...I don't know. I have no idea what would...well, fit me."

"That actually makes me wonder something," Jensen said. "Cybertronians have weird names. Is it something that happens when they're translated into English? I mean, Starscream, Megatron, Bumblebee? What's up with that?"

"Well, we're aliens." Starscream arched a brow plate at him. "What sorts of names would you expect us to have? John? Dave? Steve? Bill? Jethro?"

"Hmm." The male Vehicon shrugged. "Steve works for me. I mean, if we're allowed to have names. Vehicons aren't given individual names until we rise high enough in the ranks to get unique bodies."

"Sure," Arcee said. "You can have whatever name you want. None of us will try to stop you."

"Thank you." The Vehicon sounded genuinely surprised and grateful. "Steve, it is, then." He looked at his female companion. "How about you?"

"Hmm. Let me look up a few names and see if anything grabs my interest."

Chang looked up at the clone and said, "How about Tomoko? It's Japanese. I think it means 'friendly child.' Or something like that. Seems appropriate." She blushed. "I've always thought it was a pretty name."

The clone smiled. "I like it! Thank you!"

"Any time." Chang grinned.

"Hmm." The female Vehicon cocked her head. "How does 'Khalilah' sound? It's Arabic. Also means, 'friend.'" She looked down at the floor, as if embarrassed.

"That's pretty." Tomoko smiled and nodded. "I like it."

"Yeah, good choice." Jack gave her a thumbs-up. He glanced at Tomoko and smiled, relieved to see her relaxing a little.

It didn't last long, though. The team turned another corner and Tomoko stopped and wrung her hands again. "The room at the end of this corridor is where I...began. And almost died." She backed a few steps away.

"Take it easy," Arcee said softly. "We won't let her hurt you."

Ashanti glanced at Tomoko. "Might be a good idea to change your color scheme to something completely different from Airachnid's, at least temporarily. When the shooting starts, we don't want to risk getting you confused with her."

"Oh! Good idea. Thanks." Tomoko pondered it for a moment, then shrugged. Her entire body turned white. "That'll do for now."

Ashanti smiled, nodded, and continued forward. Optimus led the team to the door at the end of the corridor. He pointed at it and glanced at Tomoko. She nodded, somewhat twitchily, and wrung her hands again.

Optimus raised his rifle, stepped into the lab, and swept his optics from right to left. Something caught his attention and he stopped, winced, and looked back at Tomoko. "It's empty," he said softly. "Except..."

"No," she whispered.

"The clones?" Jack stared at him. "They're all...?"

He nodded slowly.

Tomoko sobbed and rushed through the door, her spider legs clinking rapidly on the metal floor. Jack turned to Arcee, sighed, and followed Tomoko.

The clones lay on four of the five slanted tables along the left-hand wall. Two of them had their torsos dismantled and the other two had blaster holes in their chests, clean through their spark chambers. All four were missing various parts of their bodies.

Tomoko shifted back into her bipedal mode and stumbled over to them. She reached out slowly and laid her hand on the nearest clone's forehead. She looked slowly over all of them and sobbed again.

"My sisters." Her voice was a hollow whisper. "We didn't get here soon enough. I'm so sorry."

"So am I." Arcee reached up to touch Tomoko's shoulder. Her optics opened wider and her lips parted slightly, as if her own actions surprised her.

"Airachnid sure did repair herself quickly," Jensen muttered.

"She probably turned her pain receptors off. That'd certainly speed up the process." Arcee raised a brow plate. "Or maybe she didn't bother. For all I know, she could be as much of a masochist as she is a sadist."

"So, what now?" Jack looked around at everyone. "Can any of you detect her?"

The 'Bots and the team's new additions shook their heads.

"She is out of range," Optimus replied.

"And our communications aren't being jammed." Arcee sighed again, and clamped her railgun to her back. She crouched in front of Jack and held her hand out. He placed his in her palm and smiled.

"While we're here," Steve said, "maybe we should keep looking around. Might find something that points us in her direction."

Arcee nodded and managed to smile. She rose back to her feet and walked over to the control panels on the far side of the lab. "Let's get to it."

#

"Nothing." Arcee thumped her fist on the console. "It's a total blank."

"Perhaps the memory core was damaged during the crash or the battle that preceded it. Or perhaps it was wiped deliberately." Optimus turned toward the door. "We may find something useful in another part of the ship."

Arcee nodded and turned away from the console. She found Tomoko sitting nearby with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, staring at the bodies of the other clones.

"Hey," Arcee said softly, and Tomoko twitched and looked up at her. "Do you want to step outside for a while? All this might be...well, a bit much, huh?"

Tomoko nodded. "I'm sorry. I just don't...feel right, in here."

Arcee glanced at Optimus and motioned at the door. He smiled and nodded.

"We will continue the search."

"Thanks." Arcee held her hand out to Tomoko and helped her up. "Let's find some better scenery."

Jack followed them through the corridors until they reached the hull breach through which they'd entered. Once outside, they walked a considerable distance from the_Harbinger_. Finally, Tomoko sat and pulled her knees up to her chest again.

Arcee sat across from her, leaned against a slanted slab of rock, and moved her legs apart enough for Jack to sit in front of her. He took his helmet off and leaned back against her. She rested her left hand across his lap and he put his hand on hers.

"Feeling better, Tomoko?" She smiled.

"I'm starting to." Tomoko glanced over at the ship, winced, and looked away quickly. "If only we'd gotten here sooner. Or if I hadn't run like a coward."

"No, if you hadn't run, Airachnid would've killed you. And she wouldn't have done it quickly."

"Why?" Tomoko's lips trembled as she looked at the Harbinger again. "I know you said she's insane, but...just...why? What made her like that?"

"I don't know. Maybe she's got some bad code in her brain. Or she had some kind of damage to her neural network far in the past. Or maybe she was just twisted right from the beginning." Arcee shrugged and tried to close the floodgates on all her memories of Airachnid torturing her and killing Tailgate right in front of her--and nearly killing Jack so many times, as well. "All I know is, she's about fifty tons of fucked-up in a ten-pound bag."

Tomoko shook her head slowly and stared at a random spot on the ground. Finally, she said, "Is it the same for the ones you've been fighting? What was it you called them?"

"Decepticons. The war started so long ago...before I even existed. You might say I was born in fire." Arcee struggled to suppress more memories before they could haunt her any more than they already had. "I'm told it started after Megatron began opposing the caste system that was imposed on everyone at the time. He was a gladiator back then. Called himself Megatronus, then sometime later he shortened his name for some reason. Anyway, back then, he seemed to be on the right side, fighting against the injustice of the caste system. But he changed as time passed. Became power-hungry. Eventually, everyone ended up either with him or against him, and the war raged on for hundreds of thousands of years, until our planet became uninhabitable."

"Your whole planet was destroyed?"

"Well, it's still there, but it's...'shut down,' for lack of a better term. Power sources depleted, the core severely damaged. The atmosphere's toxic now. Didn't have an atmosphere humans could've breathed, before, but it could've been altered if Cybertron were still alive." Arcee closed her optics for a moment and sighed. "At the core of Cybertron is...well, some of us believe it's our creator, Primus. And now he's...I don't know, dormant at best. Maybe even dead. There's a chance Cybertron can be revived, I suppose. Who knows, maybe someday, someone will find a way. I'm not getting my hopes up, though, just in case."

"You said _some_of you believe...?"

Arcee shrugged. "Many of our archives were destroyed during the war. We lost a lot of our history, including how Cybertron came to exist. It's metal--the whole planet, everything there is what you might call synthetic. So I don't see how it could've occurred naturally. Same with us. The war took us all over a significant part of the galaxy, and we never encountered any other machine life. It was all organic. And from what we've seen, machines have to be built by organic life forms. But many of us prefer to believe we were created by an all-powerful, all-knowing being. Primus."

"That reminds me of when we first met." Jack chuckled. "We asked who built you, and Ratchet got all pissed-off. Like we'd insulted him."

"Yeah, I think he believes it. Either that, or he was just being his normal grouchy self." She shrugged again. "I don't buy it, though. If Primus were all-powerful, he wouldn't be dead now. Or dormant, or whatever. Like I've mentioned before, so many records were lost over the millennia, and some of us tried to fill in the blanks as best they could."

Tomoko stared at her with wide optics and a slight smile, as if hanging on her every word.

Heh. I guess all this stuff must be incredibly fascinating for her. I've forgotten what that must be like, having lived with all this for so many thousands of years.

"Hmm." Jack stroked the back of her hand slowly. "What do you think it is? Cybertron's origin, I mean?"

"I only investigated it off and on. As you might guess, we didn't have much time for anything other than killing each other. What little solid information I could find suggested Primus was a space station that was gradually added on to and built up over thousands upon thousands of years, until it was the size of a planet. I figure whoever built that space station also built us and somehow created the 'sparks' that give us life." Arcee managed a slight smile. "If this goddamned war ever ends and we're all still alive when the dust settles, I'd love to go back there and try to find any archives that weren't already recovered. Try to find out which of our origin stories is true."

Jack smiled. "Arcee the archaeologist."

She laughed. "Yeah, something like that."

"As long as I can help you with your research." He grinned.

If the war ends in his lifetime. She kept smiling and hoped he hadn't noticed the slight hesitation. "I wouldn't have it any other way, honey. My Indiana Jones to your Marion Ravenwood."

"Hey, wait a minute!" He laughed and gave her hand a playful slap.

She grinned and brushed a fingertip through his hair.

"Arcee," Optimus called through her comlink.

"Here. Did you find something?"

"Yes, but not what we expected. Please return to the ship."

"We're on our way." She signed off and lifted her hand off Jack's lap. He stood, brushed dirt off the seat of his armor, and smiled up at her. She leaned over and they kissed before she rose to her feet.

"Think it's good news?" Jack hurried to keep up with her as she and Tomoko strode back to the ship.

"I hope so." Arcee scowled at the Harbinger. "But don't be surprised if it isn't."

#

"Damn." Arcee sighed as she, Jack, and Tomoko entered the cavernous engineering section. Strewn on the floor from one end of the chamber to the other were several dozen Autobot and Decepticon corpses, and an assortment of blown-off body parts, illuminated by the soft glow from a few consoles and several light panels that still functioned.

"Autobot boarding party, looks like." Ashanti swept her rifle-mounted flashlight over the walls. "Burn marks and melted holes everywhere. Must've been one hell of a fight."

"Yeah," Jack muttered. "Looks that way." He glanced up at Arcee and Tomoko. Oh, hell. The new girl is accumulating enough nightmare fuel to last a lifetime, all in the space of a few hours.

Bumblebee fired off a stream of beeps and honks.

"Some of them appear intact," Arcee translated, and hurried over to him and Optimus.

"Do you recognize this one?" Optimus pointed at an Autobot sitting slumped against the wall. His color scheme was a mixture of blue and white. "I have never met him before."

"Me, neither." She crouched beside the body and took a closer look. "I don't see any weapons damage. Some dents and scratches, probably from the crash." She looked up at Optimus. "You think he might just be in self-induced hibernation?"

"I hope so. Ratchet will be able to tell for certain." Optimus walked over to another body, one with a red and blue color scheme and a body type similar to his own. "This one, I do know. Ultra Magnus."

"Huh." Arcee glanced down at Jack before crossing the room. "Last I heard, he was in charge of Bulkhead's old unit, the Wreckers."

"He was Bulkhead's boss back in the day? Small galaxy, huh?" He and Tomoko hurried to catch up with her.

"He also looks intact." Optimus activated his comlink. "Ratchet, we have found the remains of an Autobot boarding party in the wreckage of the_Harbinger_. Two of them appear to have only non-fatal damage, but I need you to determine whether they can be revived." He waited for a reply and nodded. "We'll await your arrival."

"In the meantime," Khalilah said, "we can continue searching the ship. If we can find a console that contains a backup of the flight recorder's latest entries, it would put us a few steps closer to piecing together what happened here."

Optimus turned to look at the two 'Bots.

"This ship has been sitting here for hundreds of years," Arcee said softly. "Maybe thousands. These two won't be going anywhere in the next few minutes."

He nodded. "Bumblebee, wait here for Ratchet. Direct him to your location when he bridges in. We will continue the search."

Bee nodded and stood near Ultra Magnus.

"Have you been able to access any records here?" Arcee glanced around at the active consoles and Optimus nodded.

"The few files we found were corrupted and would not load."

"Figures." Arcee sighed and headed for the door at the far end of the chamber. "Let's keep moving."

#

"Still no change, huh?"

Miko looked down and to the left, and found Rosalina and Lucas approaching. Behind them was a team of four airmen, hanging back but staying just close enough to be sure Rosalina hadn't forgotten them. She'd done a lot to earn everyone's trust over the last few months, but General Sanchez wasn't taking any chances.

Miko shook her head and faced forward again. She'd spent the past hour sitting on Bulkhead's chest, watching his face, waiting for the slightest movement. She wanted to be here when he woke up. Whenever that happened. If--

She forced that thought down, took a slow breath, and continued waiting.

"Want some coffee or tea?" Lucas pointed a thumb over his shoulder, toward the main hub, where a coffee pot and a few other necessities had been set up. It was only then Miko noticed the mugs he and Rosalina held in their hands.

"Maybe later. Thanks." Miko looked up at Ratchet as he finished packing the tools he needed.

"Let us know if you change your mind. We'll be happy to bring you some." Rosalina took a sip from her mug and smiled. "The stores are selling cinnamon gingerbread already. Seems like it starts earlier every year, but I'm not complaining. It's my favorite."

"I don't mind either." Lucas chuckled. "It's just kind of odd. Not even Halloween yet, and they're starting with the Christmas stuff."

Miko glanced at them again and managed a slight smile. Weird, seeing a robot eating and drinking. Kinda cute, though.

Ratchet's footsteps shook the floor as he picked up his tool kit and walked toward the tunnel leading to the main hub. He paused, turned to look at Miko, and twitched his head toward Rosalina. "Are you sure you'll be alright if I leave you alone?"

"Hey, you're talking to the girl who blew up five Insecticons." She winked at him. "And I'm not alone. I'll be fine."

He nodded, turned, and disappeared down the tunnel. Miko watched him leave, waited a few seconds, and the ground bridge activated. She looked back at Rosalina, Lucas, and the airmen.

Rosalina smiled up at her, leaned against the wall, and slipped her arm around Lucas's waist. "Say, if you think I'm out of line for asking personal questions, just say so and I'll drop it--but are you and Bulkhead, um...?"

"No. He's like a big brother." Miko let another brief smile show. "I didn't have any brothers or sisters. Never knew what it was like until I met Bulk."

Rosalina started to say something, but a beep came from the pocket of her lab coat. She pulled a tablet out of it and tapped the screen. She read whatever was on it and smiled.

"Got a message from Groom Lake. A squadron of Vehicons has just radioed for permission to land. It's the 'fifth column' you guys found on the Nemesis. Guess it took 'em a while to get here from the moon."

"I was hoping they survived."

"Yeah. You've been outnumbered for so long, but maybe now things are changing for the better."

"I hope so." Miko turned back to Bulkhead and sighed. Come on, buddy, wake up._She leaned forward to rest her palm on his chest. _If our chances really are improving, I want you to be around to see it.

#

Okay, will this one be paydirt or another strike-out? Jack followed Arcee into yet another cavernous chamber. The floor had been twisted in the crash, and began to slant to the right as they walked farther in. Arcee stopped at the nearest console and fiddled with the controls.

The panels and monitor lit up, and overhead lights came on gradually. Arcee smiled.

Optimus turned and gave the room a slow visual sweep. "This is an auxiliary control room."

"Looks a lot less damaged than everything we've seen before." Jack shrugged. "Well, aside from the floor being bent into the shape of a potato chip."

"If we don't find what we're looking for here, we probably won't find it at all." Steve walked over to the adjacent console, and Khalilah stepped up to the one on his left.

"Wanna give me a boost, babe?" Jack pointed at the console in front of Arcee. She smiled and lifted him up to the control panel.

"Thanks." He spared a few seconds to let his gaze caress her chest plate as he took a few steps away to avoid getting in the way of her hands.That's a sight I never get tired of. He grinned and turned to watch her search for intact files.

Less than a minute passed, then Arcee grinned. "Found the flight recorder. Looks like almost everything was backed up before the ship broke in half." She tapped another button and two rows of windows appeared on her screen. "Playing the last entry now."

The top row displayed feeds from cameras mounted on the hull, and the bottom row showed a variety of sensor data. The camera feeds showed several different views of the same metal surface, ranging from direct downshots to a view that looked almost like a planet's horizon.

Jack glanced up at her. "Is that Cybertron?"

"No. If I'm not mistaken, the Harbinger was in the vicinity of the star humans call Gliese 707." Arcee flicked her optics over the sensor data before returning her attention to the camera feeds. "The ship was fighting a battle in an intense gravity well--more than a gas giant is able to exert at the same distance."

On two of the screens, massive energy beams struck the hull and blew it wide open. The_Harbinger_ returned fire, but its weapons had little to no effect on the metal structure. Arcee glanced at the data scrolling past on the bottom row.

"The gravity's strong enough to put a huge strain on the engines." She pointed at the screens. "They've had the mains at full burn since the playback started, and they're barely moving. Their jump engines are damaged; trying to recharge, but taking longer than they should."

The ship was struck again and again, but continued plowing forward and returning fire.

"Okay, they're picking up some speed. Looks like they're finally breaking away." Arcee planted her hands on her hips and continued watching as the_Harbinger_ limped away from whatever the massive structure was.

"Shit!" Steve blurted, and everyone turned to stare at him. He pointed at his console. "I found some records that were transferred from other Decepticon ships, and others taken from Autobot ships. The _Harbinger_isn't the only one that encountered this...well...see for yourselves."

Arcee paused the playback, picked Jack up again and carried him to Steve's console. She lowered him to the control panel and scowled at the images on the screen. Jack faced the screen and raised an eyebrow. The image was of an enormous, spherical metal structure with a maw-like opening and a long, horn-like structure on either side of the opening.

Huh. I have no idea what that is.

Starscream whimpered and backed away until he bumped into the wall. Arcee fired an annoyed glance at him, and Jack almost burst into laughter. Her smile always lit up the whole room, but her Clint Squint could peel the paint right off the walls.

"Unicron," Starscream moaned. He didn't appear to notice Arcee's expression, keeping his wide optics on the screen.

"That's what I was afraid of," Steve said. "I thought I recognized him, but I wanted to be wrong."

"Unicron?" Arcee turned back to the console and scowled at the image. "That fucker is actually real?"

"So it would appear," Optimus said. "He is...much larger than I expected."

Steve nodded at his console. "According to the scans, that circular opening is large enough to swallow several planets at once."

"Jesus Christ," Jensen muttered. "That'd make him...how big, exactly?"

Steve tapped a few buttons and the image changed to a graphic of a star system, which then shrank rapidly. Beside it appeared a graphic representing Unicron.

_Oh, hell._Jack pointed at the image and arched an eyebrow at Steve. "Is that a size comparison?"

"Yes."

A cold sensation rose up in Jack's chest. He turned back to Jensen. "That'd make him about the size of a Dyson sphere."

"Roughly the circumference of Earth's orbit around the Sun, probably." Ashanti took a few steps closer. "Please tell me that thing isn't on course for Earth."

"Let me see if anyone was able to track him." Steve pushed more buttons and a new image appeared, showing a curving line running through a star chart. "It looks like he was headed away from here, though Gliese 707 is frighteningly close to Earth." He fiddled with the controls for a few more seconds and a dotted line sprouted from the end of the solid one. "Assuming he hasn't altered course since whenever this flight path was last updated, he would be headed straight for...oh, no."

Jack glanced at him, then turned and found Arcee's sneer replaced with wide optics and gaping mouth. After staring at the screen for several more seconds, she slowly turned her horrified expression toward him.

"Cybertron."