The Cave

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

G
IDW/G1
Jetfire, Nosecone
no warnings
for tf_speedwriting  prompt, this version edited a bit better, I think
Note: In IDW canon, Jetfire commanded the Technobots on the survey ship Calabi-Yau.  They were the first to head back to Cybertron, which they'd believed was a dead world, to find traces of life.  This purports to be one of their missions before re-discovering signs of life on Cybertron.

“Ah,” Jetfire said, shining a light into the small crevice in the grey schist. It reflected dimly, bending and refracting as if through glass. Crystal. Yes.   “A cavern.  That would explain the readings.”  He grinned to himself, logging the coordinates, and calling for Nosecone. 

The brightly colored Technobot rose to his feet from where he’d perched on an outcrop of stone.  He’d learned better than to distract Jetfire when Jetfire got that certain high hitch to his wings, studying his scanning equipment.  Not that Jetfire would get mad--he never got mad, always perfectly in control, Nosecone thought.  Just...he didn't want to interrupt something important. 

“Can you, slowly, drill through this wall?”  Jetfire tapped near the crevice. 

Nosecone studied the surface, tilting his head, and then smoothing his hands over it.  He nodded.  He’d been designed to drill through far harder stuff than this.  “Breakthrough will be tricky,” he said. “Crystalline structure often has piezoelectric  performance.” 

“You are adequately grounded?”  Jetfire looked dubiously at the thin rubber and metal treads of Nosecone’s alt.

“I’ll be fine.  Just going to send a pit of a charge through the place.”  Nosecone folded himself down to his drill mode. This was his chance, and he wasn't going to let Jetfire down.  “You should stand clear, though.”

Jetfire backed off, watching nervously as Nosecone rolled forward.  The Technobot spun up his drill, hesitating, elevating and lowering the bit angle, as if considering the approach from a new set of input.  He edged forward, the bit biting into the grey sediment stone.  The sound was deafening, to Jetfire, whose audio was attuned to the fine frequencies of spaceflight, a high, shrieking whine that seemed to vibrate straight through the back of Jetfire’s helm.  He gritted his jaw. Nosecone seemed entirely unaffected, rolling steadily into the hillside, his treads digging into the ground. 

Jetfire heard little pings, bright flashes of spark as the bit skittered over metal inclusions. And then a huge white flash, that seemed to crack the air like lightning, and the ground seemed shaken by sound under Jetfire's feet.   Nosecone went still, the bit juddering to an abrupt—a too abrupt—halt.  

Jetfire jumped forward, alarmed.  He hauled the Technobot back by a fender, for once glad of his greater strength, but wincing as the fender's metal seemed to want to give.  He looked over the mech with anxious optics, fingers tingling from residual charge that had traveled through his touch.  But…Nosecone had said he could handle it!  No. No time to worry, no time to panic.  He found the emergency access panel on the left side, popping it open, bending low to study the readouts.  Everything looked all right.  No red lights flashing: one or two yellows that from a circuit diagram appeared to be transformation systems. 

“Nosecone?” he asked, hesitantly.

“Yeah.” The voice was thready and thin, but there, responsive. “Sorry.  Bigger blowback than I expected.” 

A dull throb of anger, like a hot, hard knot turning inside Jetfire's cortex.  Nosecone should know better than to overestimate his abilities.  No,  Jetfire should have double-checked, run the resistivity numbers himself.   Jetfire’s brow furrowed under his helm. Later.  Later.  Nosecone's condition mattered more now. “Yes.  Your systems appear functional, save for transformation systems, which may need repair.” 

Stupid, Jetfire, repeating to him what his own diagnostics were probably telling him.  Still, Nosecone made a sound of acknowledgment, followed by a soft apology that melted Jetfire’s uncomfortable knot of anger. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help.”

“Yes. It is no matter,” Jetfire said. “And no lasting damage was done to you.”  He held the last word, like a question.

Nosecone ran a diagnostic. “Yes.  Just shorted out the capacitors on the transformation circuits. Simple repair.”

“Yes,” Jetfire nodded. Simple repair. Just…one they couldn’t do with a field repair kit.  He was stuck like this until they got back to the Calabi-Yau. “We can call up now.”  He tapped his comm.

“But the cave…,” Nosecone said.

Jetfire ran an anxious hand over his audio. Yes. He’d forgotten about the cave and the crystals.  Some leader he was: one of his mechs injured, and under his direct supervision; and losing the objective of the mission.  “I’ll check. If you are all right?”  

“I’ll be fine,” Nosecone said, sheepish.  “And...no sense not taking a peek, right?”   

Jetfire could hear the attempt at levity. He let it float between them, trying to buoy it with a wan smile.  “You have too much residual charge,” he said. Plus the likelihood of the drill bit bumping into crystal was extraordinarily high. “It would be dangerous to the crystals. And to you,” he added, hastily.

Nosecone’s drill dipped downward.  “Yeah, well…I hope they’re good.”

Jetfire heard something like embarrassment in the voice.  Oh, he thought. Yes.  Aborting a mission for an injury was one thing, carrying on through and possibly making a great discovery was quite another thing. "I hope so, too," he said.  Not just for Nosecone. Not just for the Calabi-Yau's mission, but for the future of Cybertron.  He believed it still lived.  Or could be repaired. No system was beyond repair...he hoped.

He cast one last look over his shoulder, around the white and red expanse of his wing, before ducking into the hole Nosecone had cut through the hillside.  His wings caught in the sediment above him as the tunnel narrowed, showering him with dirt and stone as he crouched down, shoveling the debris behind him with awkward hands. He was an airframe—there was something uncomfortable and more than a bit unsettling about crawling under the ground itself. Unnatural, he thought. That was the word.

But this was what he did.  This was what needed to be done. And if these crystals were as promising as the initial assays had given him to believe, they were worth any discomfort—his psychological compression, even Nosecone’s injury.  Mechs fought wars, trading their lives for some intangible ‘victory’—it was no less a price to be expected for discovery.  These crystals could help make Cybertron livable again, and that, to Jetfire, was worth as much as any soldier’s death. 

But war could not deliver…this.

Jetfire stopped, awkwardly, clumsily, on his hands and knees, dirt still sprinkling down into his neck servos, gritting in his hands, at the expanse of the cave that seemed to fall away from him like a giant bowl. Enormous crystals, like bridges of light made solid, spanned a huge hollowed chamber, six-faced, eight-faced, connected in an intricate web. Loose elestial clusters massed on the floor, young crystals, jutting sharp points into the warm air, clung from the ceiling.  The whole chamber was still, silent, but seemed somehow thick with life.

“Oh…,” he said.  It was beautiful, an entire world of geometric entropy that had its own rules and logic, that only looked like chaos because he could not see the whole, could not understand the logic of silicates and planar crystallography.

And the sound of his voice sang back at him from the crystal, magnified, split into intricate harmonics: one soft, surprised exclamation becoming a rising sound of joy that the cave seemed to sing back at him, that trembled through his systems, sound and electricity running as one through him in what he could only describe as a paroxysm of bliss. His insecurities, his doubts, the mission were forgotten, shaken out of him like precipitate, leaving him alive with a purity of focus and intent and the clean sure knowledge that these crystals were the salvation of Cybertron.

Oh, he thought, and even the sound in his cortex seemed to echo with rapture.  No. War could never bring this. 

 

Comments

[playswithworms.livejournal.com]

EEE!!! So awesome! I really really love this one - it has Nosecone! Doing drilling things!<3333333333 Poor Nosecone, trying so hard and the beautiful cave singing back to Jetfire (shaking out his doubts like precipitate - hee! *geekglee*) what a glorious image \o/

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Ooooh! Lovely! Love the techy aspects and hooray Nosecone! and ooooo pretty cave!!!! Reminds me of that cave in Mexico with all the huge selenite crystals. :D