(Part 5) Bullets: A Last Stand of the Wreckers story.
Springer stood alone on the command deck of Debris, a crumbling Autobot space station in orbit around Klo, and stared at 12 names on a computer screen.
In his right hand he was holding an Autobot bullet (of sorts) that had been fired by a Decepticon (of sorts). The bullet was, in fact, a benign projectile: inside there was no vein of combustible energon, just a data chip containing the latest report from Agent 113, an Autobot working undercover at the Decepticon Justice Division. The name was misleading: it was the DJD's job to scour their own ranks for dissidents and turncoats, and then murder them. Information provided by Agent 113 often led the Autobots to Decepticons who, being dissidents and turncoats, were willing to betray their ex-comrades in exchange for protection against reprisals.
"Your friend has a funny way of making contact," First Aid had said when he'd got in touch three days earlier, and he was right. Terrified of being detected, the increasingly eccentric Agent 113 had developed a unique way of reporting his findings. Instead of, say, a midnight rendezvous on the steps of the Chomskian Embassy, he would wait until the DJD attacked some Autobots and then shoot the 'enemy' with a data-laced bullet. Springer had had to make sure that select medics at key facilities were always on the lookout for Agent 113's calling card: a single bullet hole in the right 'eye' of an Autobot symbol.
With his latest communiqué, Agent 113 had relayed concerns within the DJD that nothing had been heard of Garrus-9 since the Autobot prison had been overrun by Sky Quake's Predators during the early stages of the Surge. The DJD had despatched an exploratory force to investigate. They'd never come back.
Springer had shared this information with High Command, who- on the basis of an earlier report from Agent 113 - had originally concluded that G-9 had been utterly destroyed. They were now faced with the possibility that Fortress Maximus and Co had not only survived the Surge, but were repelling Decepticon invasion parties while waiting to be rescued. All of which had led Prowl to contact Springer to discuss plans for Operation: Retrieval.
Springer would have preferred a more inspiring name, but it was typical of Prowl to opt for something clinical and detached. Fort Max and his team didn't need 'retrieving', they needed rescuing. Drab name aside, Operation: Retrieval was why he was doing what Impactor and Crest and Hyperion before him had done: staring at names on a screen and deciding who he would ask to join the Wreckers.
Guzzle had never held the Matrix before.
The object in his hand was the perfect weight: heavy enough to matter, to tug on the wire sinews in his forearm, but easy to carry. A good size, too: portable, but big enough to stop Decepticons in their tracks. Best of all was the way it felt: the perfect union of holder and held, it sang in his grip.
Guzzle had never held the Matrix before and probably never would, but surely it could never feel as satisfying, as fundamentally right, as it felt when he picked up The Judge, his favorite handgun.
He'd lived an itinerant life of late, latching onto a succession of Autobot squads in the hope of recapturing the sense of belonging that he'd felt when serving in his old platoon. He'd decided to help with Dipstick's reconstruction project until he came across something better suited to his talents (those talents chiefly consisting of the ability to insert various deadly projectiles into various deadly Decepticons). And while the thrill of close combat hadn't entirely deserted him, this most unreflective of robots had recently identified a certain… hollowness inside him. His first reaction, of course, had been to seek medical help. Fixit had carried out a full body search and, finding no internal cavities, suggested that the hollow feeling was not an early indication of corrodia gravis but "an emotional response". Guzzle had pondered this at length, until a pang of acute discomfort had heralded the arrival of bona fide insight: he was in mourning. Most of his old platoon had died trying to rescue Kup, and he was still struggling to accept their deaths and the circumstances surrounding them.
His new life on Igue Moor - a fuel depot on the outskirts of Babu Yar- had settled into a reassuring rhythm. Every day, a few hours before dawn, he and The Judge would go outside and shoot statues. If he'd felt a flicker of guilt when he'd first started using the remains of Sacred Debating Chamber as a firing range, he hadn't recognized it as such.
He loaded a handful of tracer bullets into his gun and looked around for today's first target. On the statue of Babu Fost, the Great Pacifist, he found it: a forehead scar. He slid his green targeting visor over his optics and was beginning to squeeze the trigger when the unthinkable happened: he stopped. This frightened him; he'd always seen a gunshot through. He wondered whether his overworked trigger finger had seized up, but no, Fixit had only last week given him new digits. Which meant that this was something else entirely: another 'feeling'. Something, he sensed, to do with his own mortality. Thankfully, the moment passed quickly and he felt sufficiently at ease with himself to unload an entire magazine of tracers into the Great Pacifist's head.
For some reason the luminous green tracer trails did not fade away. Instead, they hovered over the floor of the Sacred Debating Chamber and began gathering themselves up. They started flickering. Then rippling. Then shimmering.
TFCon is over, which means it’s time to post all the Dominus commissions I got during the con!
In order from left to right, top to bottom, we have @markerguru001 and his amazing flat head Dominus. Then my wife, @zhashagi, did the next two. Dominus in his root mode as a turbofox spy and Agent Vos with a turbofox next to him. Then @endurae with a headshot of Agent Vos, man hand hook car door. Then a doodle I did with Agent Vos’ werewolf alt mode on his chest. And finally Andrew Bernys’ amazingly detailed Agent Vos trading card.
Thanks so much to everyone that I commissioned. See you all next year!
