shadow_vector | The Voice

PG
Bayverse
Barricade, nameless Decepticons, nameless Freedom Fighter
character death

A/N, yeah, another of those 'Barricade as Combat Controller' stories. For

tf_speedwriting prompt 'a collapsed building'. I wrote it this morning. It sucks, but it's something.

“Yeah, already on it.” A sharpness in the voice. Great. Three was one of those. Three turned his massive cannon and blasted through the window at the sniper fire.

“Good to hear,” Barricade said, blandly. “You're drifting out wide to the left.” Three was, but not dangerously so. But Barricade had learned how much that type hated to be anything but Perfect Soldier material. And that was the problem—so many of them viewed the Combat Control program as some sort of insult to their abilities, that they weren't any good without some droneling with a deck of processors doing the thinking for them.

Yeah, a lot of them weren't. But that wasn't the point. And Barricade really didn't care how they felt as long as they didn't frag up his stats. You lived by stats in CC. And you could die by them, too. After all, they were merely 'jacked up dronelings.'

Three gave a tight grunt, rolling in from the left verge as the team proceeded down the ruined street. Buildings gaped, slack-jawed, doors hanging open, windows splintered like shattered optics, looking like hollow frozen screams. Metal and plasglass popped and crunched as they moved. Barricade's monitoring systems caught a spike in physical pre-response—typical anger flare, he knew. Probably fantasizing about how much he'd like to frag up Barricade.

Because, yeah, that would be a nifty trick, right? Beating up an unarmored little drone frame? Yeah, some supersoldier there, Three, Barricade thought.

“My scan's foxed,” One said, quietly. He was punching a steady rate of fire through his secondary guns, saving his big weapon for pitched battle. Conservative, calm. “CC, you getting any read on that comm?”

One, Barricade liked. Cool, competent, doing what he could, uncomplaining, and asking for Barricade's help. One was Barricade's top priority. It was a symbiotic relationship—make me look good, and I'll make you look good. And move ground and sky to keep you functional.

“Boosting satellite,” Barricade said. The whole mission objective was to find this comm boost. Someone was making illegal broadcasts, propaganda, hopeful, starry-opticked drivel about freedom and peace and all that drivel.

Yeah, Barrricade had heard 'em. He'd looked them up when he'd gotten this mission. Because he might be everything they said he was—freakish, ugly, with his four optics, spread out to take in most of a room, tiny, mouthy, but he did his fraggin' research, and got his stats.

He hadn't been much impressed. Big words sailed over him. Freedom? For a droneling? Peace? There'd be no more use for him, then, would there? And what did mechs do with dronelings with no purpose? Repurposed them. Barricade didn't know much of life and didn't have much memory beyond the CC harness, but even those memories were precious—the tight rush of accomplishing a mission, doing a good job, the buzzing anticipation of another mission, the sharp ache of each loss, the whirring of his processors, taking up an entire level above him, running statistical scenarios. In every real sense, he was alive only by and through Combat Control. Peace?

Frag that.

His commands linked the satellites overflying the area. He cut through visual into radio spectrum. “Yeah. Got 'im. Up ahead, on the left.”

Four chimed in. “Up left is a blown building.”

“Yeah.” Barricade swallowed his comment. Some mechs never quite got the hang that he saw more of the battlefield than they did—sky-eye and through their own scans. “Looks like we're going to have to go in.”

“Mean we're going to have to go in,” Three corrected. Drawing the line between the ground team and Barricade.

“Maybe just you,” Barricade corrected, smoothly, on Three's comm. He did a quick check. Yeah, Three had dropped to his secondary firewalls. If necessary, Barricade could lock him down. A protocol they'd built in early on in case a mech went uncontrollable. Of course, Bombshock's definition of 'uncontrollable' meant someone who was thrashing in a seizure, rejecting the CC control, or flailing with fear his first time in combat. But, well, it wouldn't be the first time Barricade and Bombshock hadn't seen optic-to-optic.

Three cursed. Oh yeah, that stung. Really. Never been called that before, Barricade thought. But names were nothing. Stats counted. And that meant not losing his own cool.

“Here,” Four said. Barricade pulled up Four's optical feed. The mech's hand gestured toward an opening, low in the ground, a rough, ragged triangle that hadn't been blown in the explosion that had taken down the building, but carved out.

“Good job, Four,” Barricade said, and sent a light push of sero-chem through Four's systems. Crude reward system, but it worked. And there seemed little enough happiness in the world as Barricade saw it. Why not push a little artificial bliss while you could?

“Small,” One said. He'd eased around the corner, taking up a covering position.

Yeah, bottleneck. Anyone sticking a face through that opening would be setting it up to get it shot the frag off. Oh Three.....!

No, Barricade loved his stats too much for that.

“Not seeing another ingress/egress,” Barricade said. “Anyone?” He pulled up their optic feeds, and then a larger bird's-eye. Sniper had been suppressed. The Autobots might be rallying an attack but right now, they had a bit of breathing room. Enough to look, at least.

“Nothing,” Two said, from the B side of the building's foundation. “Not even a turbo-rat could squeeze through.”

“Upper levels, maybe?” Three's vid field tilted up. “Once their in, if they can get up an access way.....”

“Good thought.” Barricade hated to say it, but Three had a point. His irritation at Three dropped a notch. “Looks like we flush them out.”

“Got it,” One said. “Four, you stay on this hole. Three and Five, ops and auds wide open for movement above.”

Not the plan Barricade would have gone with, but he could work with it. Fray tended to like the teams that just lay like marionettes until he told them what to do, but Barricade didn't mind a little initiative. Just not pushback. And One giving the orders meant that Three...shut the slag up and obeyed.

One zipped forward and lobbed, with a quick, expert throw, a flash incendiary into the small opening.

Barricade ran the timer down on all of their feeds, running a compensating filter for the moment of flash for them.

The boom rumbled under their feet and the mass of rubble that had once been a building gave a groaning sort of heave, grey chunks of plascrete shifting, tumbling.

“Still getting a comm ping on passive,” Barricade reported. Meaning, the mech was still in there, and alive.

“Acknowledged,” One said, grimly.

“Movement!” Four's vid feed tracked a flash through a burst-out window frame about a mech and a half's height up.

“Got it,” One barked and there was a roar and a flash as One fired his main cannon from the C side of the building. The corner collapsed, the window frame folding almost flat shut. Plascrete flew, chunks and dust obscuring vision.

“He's moving.” Barricade traced the comm signal. It was fuzzed through the debris throw by the explosion, but enough to sense movement.

Three pushed in, chunks of the building thumping off his heavy hull, treads tearing up the rough surface, almost mounting the pile. “Got it.” He flipped forward, reaching out one hand and grabbing a limb that was trying to dash down the narrow hole of a reinforced access hatch. He hauled up on the limb.

“Frag.”

For once, Barricade agreed. The spindly frame had nothing more than civilian dermal plating. This wasn't a warrior. At all.

“Mission's a mission,” Barricade said. “Terminate.”

“Frag yourself, droneling. I don't off femmes.” Three shook the figure in disgust.

One, sensing trouble, hit Barricade's comm chan. “Problem?”

“Three's getting squeamish,” Barricade said.

“Freedom,” the femme said, trying to pull her arm free. “Is the right of all. Not just mechs.”

One climbed up the debris mound. “Freedom? You talk about freedom when you live in a ratpile like this? Hiding?”

“It's the price I pay, and gladly.”

“Price you pay for what?” One retorted. “You realize how much destruction you've caused?”

“I've caused?” The femme tossed her head, haughtily. “I spread hope! Words of peace!”

“You spread a virus,” One replied. “You spread a plague of an impossible ideal.”

“It's not impossible! The Autobots will--”

“The Autobots.” Three spat, twisting her upper arm until she winced. Huh. He might have some old-fashioned squeamishness against killing femmes, but hurting them was apparently A-ok. “There's your ideal,” he said. “On and on about peace, about restoring the world to what it was.” His hand tightened. “Maybe some of us didn't like what it was.”

Maybe some of us didn't exist at all, back then, Barricade thought.

“There are other ways to make change than war!” the femme protestee. “Like I do! Bringing supplies, spreading words of hope, and comfort. Letting others know they're not alone.”

“Yeah? Where were you when I was starving in Kaon,” Three snapped. “Where were you then?”

One circled around her. She bristled. “Huh,” One said, darkly. “One thing you weren't was a pleasure-femme.” He leaned over her shoulder, deliberately too close. Deliberately pushing. Barricade got no read of actual desire from his system feedback, just a cool steadiness. “Where's your hope now, femme?”

“And where are all your others?” Three said. “Or did we kill them all?”

“They're cowards,” One said, withdrawing. “They wouldn't come to help. That wouldn't be...peaceful.” One was right: the Autobots, if they came, would come after the fact, using her capture as a bait to try to trap the team. Probably what they were planning right now. One's vid field swung toThree. “Mission. Let's do it and go home.”

“I don't kill femmes.” The red optics were flat.

“In case you haven't noticed,” One said, wryly. “Sort of a war going on. No place for such outdated sentiment.” He looked out over the street. “And we're running out of time before they manage a little counter-harassment."

Three set his jaw. “Don't care. You kill her, then.”

One stiffened. “Direct order.”

Barricade hung, fascinated, unsure. Perhaps he let them have too much autonomy. Perhaps Fray was right, and total control was the way to go. But he knew how much he valued his own freedom—freedom. The word echoed from the femme's voice. A meaningless but pretty word, until Barricade boiled it down to himself, and the few, tiny freedoms he had and how desperately he'd fight to keep them.

The gender didn't bother him. Mech, femme, stupid distinction. Mission was a mission, and his stats had no gender markers. But...freedom? No, nonsense. And Three's defiance was just a symbol of how dangerous it was.

Wasn't it?

One and Three were at a stand-off, glaring at each other, neither wanting to take the next step, say the words that would break command.

“Freedom,” the femme said, softly. “You know you value it. You can feel it now, can't you? Even here, even now.”

A glint, and before the other two could think, Barricade's processors had taken over, locking down Three, and pulling One down as the femme's arm shifted into a needle-blaster. The silver flechettes snapped through the air where One's head had been, ripping into a fragment of wall behind him. Barricade pushed further into One, boosting a shot that tore through the femme's chassis, punching a hole that crackled and smoldered. Barricade never missed.

He returned control, and One stood up, shaking with backwash. Barricade pushed some sero at him, too, to calm him, ease his mood.

One moved over to her, where she'd fallen. “Freedom,” he spat.

“It's the only thing worth dying for,” she said, weakly, as the blue optics sparked, fading.

“Words, empty words,” One said, and for the first time Barricade felt a push of anger, overriding the sero he'd sent. “Words got you dead, femme. Not freedom. Empty, useless words.” One turned away.

“Done. Plan our extraction.”

“On it.” Barricade's processors sent out a formation to each of them, his sky-eye scanning for threats. But another part of his processor asked—if it was just words, if they were no threat...why had stopping her been the whole mission objective?

“CC?”

“Yeah?” Barricade's answer was a microklik slow, distracted.

One didn't seem to notice. “Know you're just doing your job and upping your stats, but...thanks.”

'Thanks'. The word seemed to resonate, new and rich and full, in Barricade's cortex. It sounded, it felt, he thought, as he hung in his harness, processors scanning, reading the vids and vitals of the five mechs he was going to get out of there alive, much better, somehow much more important, than 'freedom'.