Bludgeon knelt in a dark chamber off the main corridor of the ancient facility, an area he had declared his sanctum when his team's assault on the International Police presence in this place became a siege. If asked, the master of Metallikato would probably have claimed to be meditating, but what he was really doing was more akin to brooding.

This is what we Decepticons have sunk to, he mused. Fighting over the scraps of an ancient past with beings so insignificant we shouldn't even have to acknowledge them. Bah. And what happens if, when we breach that door, we find nothing of value beyond it? This will all have been for nothing.

Bludgeon had been nonplussed when, two days previously, Iguanus and Skullgrin had finally penetrated the blast door through which the IPO team had retreated, only to discover beyond it an abandoned antechamber and another, even larger door - though at least it was, if his calculations were right, the last door possible.

Although he was a patient robot, Bludgeon realized that the amount of time he had to work with in this case was not infinite. The IPO people couldn't call out for help, but someone would presumably miss them and come to investigate at some point - and with an Autobot and three Autobot-aligned Minicons among the missing, that investigation would probably involve a substantial Autobot force, maybe substantial enough to challenge Bludgeon's relatively small band. If that happened before he could gain access to the final chamber, he would be forced to withdraw, tail between legs, and there would be another chance at a Decepticon resurgence lost.

If we had a truly great commander to lead us, things would be different, thought Bludgeon darkly. But though I am a great warrior, I fear I am not the leader we need. Perhaps no such figure even exists among the Decepticons any longer. Megatron was lost to us centuries before Optimus Prime finally relieved us of Galvatron the Mad. Starscream is dead. Shockwave is paralyzed by logic, Onslaught by misguided loyalty, Razorclaw by laziness, Motormaster by stupidity. So it falls to me to do what I can.

But if this place is what the rumors say it is... if I can penetrate it... if I can seize it... and if I can unlock its secrets...

Bludgeon rose to his feet, turned, and went down the main corridor, through the mangled blast door, into the anteroom.

"Report, Carnivac," he ordered.

Carnivac snarled. "Progress is slow, but steady," he said, though the disgust in his voice let Bludgeon know how little compensation he thought the latter fact was for the former. "We will be through in perhaps four hours."

Bludgeon nodded. "Proceed." Then, turning, he walked to the corner of the room, surveying the unmistakable signs on the floor for perhaps the twentieth time since his forces had gained access.

"What troubles you, Commander?" asked Skullgrin, who was preparing some explosive charges for another go at the door while Iguanus continued applying his more percussive method.

Bludgeon crouched and followed the scuff marks on the metal floor with a fingertip, then rubbed the traces of lubricant left there against his thumb.

"The identity of their Autobot guard," he said. "Could that truly have been Ironhide?"

"There have been rumors of a good many Autobots of old returning from the dead somehow," Skullgrin replied. "He might have been among them. If so, though... "

Bludgeon nodded, picking up a small fragment of red-painted armor that had fallen from the wrecked Autobot when his compatriots dragged him into the innermost chamber. "If so, he's but a shadow of his former self." Bludgeon snapped the armor fragment in two with his fingers, something he could certainly never have done to a piece of Ironhide's fabled trithyllium armor. Standing, he brushed off his hands and said, "If it is Ironhide, releasing his spark from such a feeble shell will be a mercy." He looked toward the door. "You and Iguanus will double your efforts," he added with cruel irony. "We wouldn't want to keep him waiting."


On the other side, Pacer applied his highly advanced sensors - normally used for search and rescue functions - to the door, and he did not like what they told him. Transforming to vehicle mode, he raced across the vast innermost chamber to the area in the far corner that the team had restored to something like working order.

When they'd first entered this chamber, he, like all the others, had been awestruck by what they found. The rumors were true. This asteroid had been a factory where the ancient Mandalorians built Omega Sentinels for the defense of old Cybertron. There were colossal crucibles, gigantic conveyor belts, cranes hanging from the enormously high ceiling, huge machine tools that still bore tooling for making recognizable Omega Sentinel parts. There were even a few partially completed Sentinels - none complete enough for the team to finish them, but Kohran and Makeshift had managed to strip them of a number of usable parts. The place was like a window into a past so ancient Pacer had only heard of it third-hand.

And at the far end, taking shape under the careful hands of Professor Li, Maia, Flint, and the Emergency Team, just might be the only chance any of them had of having a future.

"We're almost out of time," Pacer reported as he pulled up next to Firebot and returned to robot mode. "The door's starting to go, it's only a matter of an hour or so now."

To Pacer's slight surprise, the Emergency Team leader just smiled.

"That's okay," he said, "'cause we're done."

"Or close enough to it," Makeshift allowed, detaching a fueling hose from the side of Kohran's new creation. "If we had time, I'd see about setting up another energon converter on that second plasma line we were able to get working, but even without it, we should be all right."

"If all of the connections work," Flint observed. "That was my first job of Transformer-wiring. Hopefully I did a good job."

"From what I've seen of your record, you have a habit of getting things right the first time," Maia noted.

Flint grinned. "When we get back, I want you to tell that to my wife."

"Well, here goes nothing," Kohran remarked. "Makeshift... wake him."

Makeshift flipped open an access panel, plugged a special connector into Ironhide's diagnostic computer, linked it up with his own onboard medical control system, and issued a cybernetic command.

STASIS LOCK DISENGAGED
STATUS: SYSTEMS NOMINAL
MOTIVE SYSTEMS >ONLINE<
    Drivetrain READY
    Bipedal Locomotion STANDBY
WEAPONS SYSTEMS >ONLINE<
    6pdr 57mm Gun 1.. 2.. READY
    8mm Pulse Blaster 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. STANDBY
    Chemical Projector 1... 2... READY
        Cartridge Type 1: 0%
        Cartridge Type 2: 5%
        Cartridge Type 3: 25%
        Cartridge Type 4: 20%
    Melee Weapon STANDBY
SENSOR SYSTEMS >ONLINE<
ARMOR INTEGRITY: 100.0%
ENERGY RESERVE: 77.4%
STATUS: ONLINE

"He's hot," Makeshift reported, his head cocked as if listening to something inaudible to the rest. "Datatracks spinning up now. All systems nominal." He retracted the probe and shut the access panel. "He'll be conscious in five."

A moment later, Ironhide's massive new form stirred, then twitched, and his familiar raspy voice said, "Unnngh. What th' flamin'... this ain't Valhalla."

"Nope," Maia replied. "Sorry to disappoint you, but you're still needed in the mortal world."

"What? Wait a minute, what in - how the slaggin' - "

Suddenly, Maia's voice was like the crack of a whip, the full command voice of a Zentraedi officer. It was a tone she had to use very rarely with the Mars Division, but it never failed to get their attention.

"Save it, soldier!" she snapped. "I know you've got a lot of questions and you probably want to bitch for at least half an hour, but the situation is critical and we've got about this much time," she added, holding up thumb and forefinger a half-inch or so apart. "On the other side of that door are the four Decepticons who nearly scrapped you Monday afternoon. Within the hour, they'll breach the door, come in here, and slaughter us all - unless you get with the program right God damned now. Am I making myself clear?"

Ironhide was silent for a moment. Then, with an unmistakable grin in his voice, he replied, "Ma'am."


"Stand back, Iguanus. The last charge is ready," commanded Skullgrin.

"That's what you said last time," Iguanus sneered.

"Well, this time I'm certain of it," Skullgrin replied in the voice of one who is being patient. "Now step aside so that I can - ... do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Iguanus demanded -

- and then, with a sound like two freight trains colliding head-on at full speed, the door Iguanus had been so diligently bashing in for the last three days suddenly bent, twisted, and burst outward, a jagged-edged hole appearing in it as if it had been struck by the fist of a god. Through the opening came the slanted prow of something, a shape so unfamiliar and so deep in shadow that none of the four Decepticons in the anteroom could identify it. With a deafening roar, black smoke billowing in its wake, it rode up onto the mound of debris that had accumulated at the base of the now-breached door, rising at a 45-degree angle, before its great weight overcame its forward momentum and it began to tip down.

" - slag!" Iguanus cried before the massive shape swung down and smashed him flat.

"Iguanus!" cried Carnivac, transforming to robo-wolf mode even as he leaped to the attack. His claws skittered uselessly across the unknown attacker's armor, sparking and shrieking but doing no damage whatsoever. Lozenge-shaped, heavily armored, studded with what looked like rivet heads, it sported two formidable-looking tracks that completely ringed the sides, making it look almost as if it could be overturned and keep going. Driving one track and stopping the other, it pivoted, tracks squeaking against the floor and grinding the fragments of Iguanus to undifferentiated scrap. Carnivac rebounded from the wall and threw himself into another attack.

"Carnivac, look out!" Bludgeon cried, but it was too late. A cannon, mounted in a sponson on the strange machine's armored flank, pivoted and fired, tagging the charging Carnivac with a bolt of what looked like phased plasma. Smoking and trailing droplets of molten armor, Carnivac tumbled into the corner of the room and didn't get up.

"What the slag is it?!" Skullgrin demanded, opening fire. His Slagmaker's laser bolts bounced off the strange vehicle's scarlet-tinted armor without even smudging it. He might as well have been throwing rocks.

"I don't know!" Bludgeon replied, transforming to his own tank mode and opening fire with his main cannon. That had as little effect as Skullgrin's Slagmaker fire, except to earn him return fire from the red tank's heavy gun, which he barely avoided. Skullgrin went to tank mode as well, backed up, and tried a flanking attack to the enemy's port side, only to discover that there was a matching plasma cannon on that side. As if that weren't bad enough, coaxial pulse blasters opened up, pinging painful hot spots on both Decepticon tanks' armor as the red vehicle advanced further into the room. As it did so, it came fully into the light of the overhead arc lamps, and Bludgeon gasped.

Emblazoned on the tank's armored flank, near the forward point of the lozenge shape, was the Autobot brand.

"Great Primus!" he blurted. "Ironhide?!"

"What?! Impossible!" Skullgrin screamed. "We destroyed that relic! There's no way!"

"Skullgrin, stay calm! Stay calm!" Bludgeon implored his subordinate, but it was too late. Skullgrin was a cool and calculating warrior - most of the time; but he had a slight cerebral defect that occasionally caused him to go berserk in situations of great stress.

Like now.

His treads throwing up spall from the metal floor, Skullgrin backed all the way to the anteroom's shattered outer door, rapid-firing frag rounds from one of his main guns and Slagmaker blasts from the other. Neither had much effect, other than to fill the chamber with noise and smoke. Desperate, his ability to reason unraveling completely, the Decepticon switched to robot mode and charged, weapons blazing.

To Bludgeon's horror, the red tank transformed as well, becoming a tall robot with massive limbs still studded with segments of the tank mode's treads and one of the heavy cannon sponsons on each forearm. As soon as the robot's head popped up, Bludgeon's fears were confirmed. That sleek helmet and smirking, battle-scarred visage could only belong to one Transformer. It was Ironhide.

Facing the charging Skullgrin, Ironhide ignored his weapons fire as completely as he had in tank mode, but - to Bludgeon's slight surprise - he didn't return fire. Instead, he reached to his back and drew a curious object that Bludgeon had previously noticed bridging the crew handhold rails that ran along the sides of his tank mode's top deck. When attached to Ironhide's tank form, this device looked like a metal crossbeam, perhaps some kind of rollover guard.

Now, in his robot mode's hands, it grew a handle and became a brutally simple melee weapon.

"Batter up, Decepticreep!" Ironhide snarled, striding into Skullgrin's headlong charge and swinging with all his might. There was a resounding metallic WHANG, followed by the rather more confused sounds of Skullgrin's body hitting the ground and his head rebounding off the far wall. Ironhide stood in the follow-through stance for a moment, letting the pieces of his foe come to rest, and then turned to Bludgeon, tapping the body of his bat against the palm of his left hand.

"Well," he said. "Looks like - "

Carnivac hauled himself to his feet and leaped, roaring. Looking only faintly bemused, Ironhide interrupted his remark, extended his right arm, and blasted the charging Decepticon again, smashing him back into the corner.

"As I was sayin'," he said, unruffled. "Looks like it's just you and me now, Bludgeon."

Bludgeon transformed to robot mode, drew his electrosword, and struck a ready stance.

"I thought finishing you would be a mercy," he remarked. "I see now I was wrong." The Decepticon Metallikato master smiled coldly. "It will be an honor."

Ironhide curled his lip. "Shut up an' fight, you pretentious chunk'a Deceptislag. It's go time."

Of the two, Bludgeon was still the swifter, by a considerable margin, but Ironhide was ready for his tricks. Though Ironhide claimed mastery of no martial art, he was one of the oldest, most experienced, most well-traveled warriors Cybertron had ever produced. He was a veteran of the ancient Quintesson Grand Arena. Millennia before Bludgeon's construction, Ironhide was the master gladiator who taught a pair of young conscripts, Iaconian brothers named Dion and Convoy, the skills that not only kept them alive in the scrapping pits, but eventually enabled them to lead a revolt that would liberate the planet from the Quints... and found the Autobots.

Ironhide had scrapped Metallikato masters before.

He blocked Bludgeon's first strike, catching it with the barrel of his bat and turning it away. The second he deflected with an upraised forearm, striking the flat of Bludgeon's blade with his heavily armored vambrace and knocking it away. Bludgeon ducked Ironhide's counter-swing, then kicked the Autobot squarely in the midsection . It was like kicking a duracast pylon. The blow sent a shock of pain straight up Bludgeon's leg. Cursing, he hopped back, narrowly avoiding taking the next swing of Ironhide's bat on the chin.

Don't underestimate him, the Decepticon berated himself. Not for nothing was this Autobot Optimus Prime's personal bodyguard for five million years!

"Fool," he declared, flowing away from a plasma blast and deflecting another blow from the bat. "You will wish you had never been reactivated."

Ironhide didn't look impressed.

"Think I'm pretty well finished with that phase o' my life," he remarked.

"We shall see!"

So saying, Bludgeon struck with all the speed and strength he could muster, sweeping in with a lightning-fast lateral cut that would cleave through the peak of Ironhide's right shoulder and then split his head just below his optics.

That was the theory, anyway.

In practice, all it did was spark violently against Ironhide's armor and rebound, nearly snapping Bludgeon's wrists and leaving him horribly off-balance, far out of any useful defensive position.

With an easy grin, Ironhide capitalized, laying his bat across Bludgeon's midsection, then elbowing him in the chest, spinning him around, and slamming him against the wall.

"Ungh! Mistake, Autobot!" Bludgeon spat, regaining his aplomb with surprising quickness. He shot out his own elbow, jarring Ironhide's grip loose, then twisted out of the Autobot's grasp, spun, and struck at his hand. The blow didn't damage Ironhide or his weapon, but it did separate them, sending the bat spiraling into the corner of the room. Bludgeon put all his strength into a shoulder block, sending the startled Ironhide skidding away a few paces, then swept his blade into a high ready position.

"Lost your weapon: Mistake number two," Bludgeon hissed.

Holding his blade in a high arch above his head, Bludgeon gathered his strength, sinking into deep concentration. Blue-white fire danced along the edge of his sword as he summoned the power of his own spark and turned it into a weapon. Zenlike, he looked simultaneously at and through the advancing Ironhide, seeking the patterns of force that surrounded his new body. For it was new, a complete replacement for the generic Autobot shell Bludgeon and his troops had so easily wrecked several days previous, and that, if anything, was Bludgeon's greatest edge right now. No Transformer could pick up a new body and perform at peak capacity with it right away. It took time, training, practice. Ironhide's coordination would not be at its best, nor would he have learned to unlock this formidable shell's full strength.

Watching Bludgeon focus his power, Ironhide slowly, deliberately cracked the knuckles of one hand, then the other, then interlaced his fingers and cracked them in the opposite direction, rolling his neck joint from one side to the other as he did so.

"Whenever you're ready," he said, sounding bored.

"Now! Die, Autobot!" Bludgeon bellowed. He leaped forward, his sword tracing an arc of brilliant light in the air, and brought the weapon down with all his strength in a perfect vertical cut. As Bludgeon leaped high and brought his blazing sword down for a strike that would cleave any normal Autobot clean in two, Ironhide made no attempt to dodge or block the blow. He just stood there, hands at his sides. Bludgeon's blade struck the crest ridging the center of Ironhide's scarlet "helmet"...

... and shattered, fragments trailing blue fire scattering in all directions like the sparks from a detonating holiday firework. The release of energy exploded outward instead of reinforcing the cut of the blade, smacking its own creator with a shockwave that send him hurtling back the way he had come. Bludgeon hit the wall hard enough to crater the stone, sending chunks of rock flying and cracks radiating outward.

Stunned, the Decepticon rebounded from the wall, landed on his feet, and then crumpled to hands and knees. Bludgeon tried to gather his wits, but before he could, a hand like a foundry tool clamped onto his shoulder and dragged him upright. Bludgeon raised his head, blinking to clear his optics, and saw Ironhide, completely undamaged, glaring back at him.

"... that's... impossible," Bludgeon rasped.

Ironhide's reply was a punch to the gut that fractured armor plating, a second that cratered it, and a third that burst it altogether, sending spall and fragments of inner workings flying from the exit wound in Bludgeon's back. The Decepticon spasmed, optics flaring, and then slumped.

Ironhide discarded Bludgeon's wreckage, dusted off his hands, and then walked across the room to collect his bat, grumbling all the way:

"'Lost your weapon.' Hmph." Picking up the bat, he returned it to its hardpoint on his back, adding, "Day I need a weapon to take out a punk like you... "

In the jagged hole he'd left in the inner door, his six teammates appeared, looking stunned as they surveyed the carnage.

"Well, what th' slag are you all gawpin' at? Makeshift, see if you can do anything for any'a these scrapheaps. Not that I'm doin' Cybertron's taxpayers any favors by lockin' these idiots up instead o' just lettin' 'em spark out, but what the hell," he added with mock resignation. "I am an Autobot, after all. The rest o' you, look alive. We got drive systems to reactivate if we're gonna get this chunk o' rock back to Zeta C before more Deceptitrash shows up."

The other two members of the Emergency Team glanced at each other, bemused, as Makeshift went to see what he could do. Next to them, the three humanoids mirrored the gesture among themselves, then smiled.

"Yes sir, Sergeant Ironhide, sir," Maia remarked, saluting.


Monday, March 31, 2397
Cybertron

Optimus Prime looked from the document display window on his office dataterminal to the comm display window, a faintly amused look on his face.

"Am I reading this right, Ironhide?" he asked. "You want to leave the IPO?"

"Well, it ain't that I don't like 'em. Just that I've done about everything I can for 'em," Ironhide explained. "Hot Shot can take it from here. He's still a young fool, o' course, but the others can keep him in line. Anyway, I've been away from Cybertron too long."

"And what duties do you think you might request if I reassign you back to Cybertron?" Prime asked knowingly.

"Well, I don't know exactly," Ironhide replied. "I thought you might be lookin' for a bodyguard."

Prime smiled.

"Old buddy," he said, "I can't think of anything I'd like better."

"Lost Technology" - Part 3 of a 3-part Future Imperfect Mini-Serial by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Plotting and setup assistance: Philip J. Moyer
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited