[Location: Authorized access only warehouse [bypassed], Date: Not recorded, Time: Late Off-cycle, Status: 0 errors detected]
“You really are the least stealthy stealth plane I know, Sol.”
Caught in the act, I slide out from my hiding spot behind some crates from Kaon, raising my servos in surrender. When Streak only snorts out a puff from his vents, I relax.
Streak turns his backplates to me and steps out of the service window, hoisting himself up on to the crane boom. When I approach in turn and look up at him, the lights of Vos silhouette his frame, tossing the valleys of his plating into enticing, mysterious shadows. His optics and biolights are dimmed, but deeply amused.
For a second, I can pretend I’m here for a different reason.
“Your obsession with my aft is getting a bit out of servo.”
“I wasn’t...I’m not...” I bite my glossa. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Can I come?”
Maybe I spoke a bit hasty because Streak’s derma dip into a testy grimace and his vocalizer clicks.
“It would only encourage you, and personally do not feel like having my thrusters over-exerted and recalibrated again for at least a couple of astroweeks. Stay here and cover for me like a proper partner in crime.”
He looks away from me and starts to strut along the boom, out over the drop.
I hoist myself up after him.
“Come on. You’ve been sneaking out more than I have. I need a little freedom and fun too, you fragger.”
“It is not happening tonight. I got somewhere to be.”
“Please with all the cobalt chips on Cybertron on top. I don’t care where you are jetting off to, but let me come with you. I really need to get out of here and to talk with you; Squad-command’s been chewing up my landing gear while you’ve been dodging me as if we’re not friendlies.”
Streak peers over his wing at me with an assessing look.
“Is it about the Dreamware? I already told you the copy I have isn’t shareable, and I don’t know where the drop-mech went.”
“It’s not the Dreamware.”
My chronometer ticks up to the groon. Streak clicks his vocalizer again; his wings speak of agitation and restlessness as he stands half-turned toward me while looking straight down. I know that posing; he’s going to leave me behind, and that makes my plating both crawl and cinch.
“It’s important to me, Streak.”
His optics flash up to me. His wings still, jitter slightly with uncertainty; I detect a little suspiciousness as they casually angle for a quick drop, as if expecting me to attack him.
“You’re making me late.”
“I’m sorry?”
He shakes his helm, leaps, and transforms mid-drop, firing away with the grace only a seeker possesses in the air; I marvel at his shrinking frame, spark relieved and processor panicked.
:: Keep up or get left behind, Sol. ::
I drop from the boom, transform, and struggle to catch up. We are equals in rank, but Streak is my superior in the air. He ignores my attempts at starting a conversation, so eventually we fly in silence.
We twist through Vos past several entertainments, stop on several alcoves, and eventually veer away toward the outskirts of Vos, out to where the transport frames and low-rate couriers have their hangers.
It’s a short flight; Streak hurries us along.
We touch down in a messy clump of hangers with some silos that have seen better orns; the state of the place would have set the Squad Commander glitching.
Streak herds me toward one of the silos, nudges my wing with his, and gives me a genuine smile.
“Do not try to flirt with any of the bots here; here’s not the time or place.”