Tales of the Intermezzo - Holes A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2002 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary Rattrap didn't really talk much about his past, but everyone who knew him at all knew that he'd spent a lot of it down holes. Down where no one else looks, where no one else GOES, where you can get anywhere and be seen nowhere. Useful things, holes. Sadly, not every planet was like Cybertron, with its plentiful supply of tunnels and ducts. And he'd known that signing up for an exploration mission on the Axalon would mean a lot of dirtball planets without nice clean conduits. So he'd made a point of learning as much as he could about other kinds of planets, so he'd know where the holes were. Cometary bodies were nice in their own way. Lots of places where gases vented out, holes he could scurry into but that kept out the big guys. But rockballs had their own holes. Take this mountain, for instance, where the Ark had crashed a few million years ago. Volcanic mountains often had old magma tubes that were empty and safe to travel in...although you had to watch it in this place, there was still plenty of hot lava around. Still, for all the danger of a warm reception, Rattrap had dedicated himself to exploring every last fingerlength of the tunnels here once the Maximals had set up housekeeping. After all, a certain insane Predacon liked tunnels too. "Dis ain't right," he shook his head as he entered a cavern. He ran a metallic paw over one of the dry columns of rock. "It's a stalagmite? What in the name of Xaaron's left bolt is a stalagmite doin' in a volcanic cave?" He popped out a sensor and placed it against the rock. Maybe it just LOOKED like a stalagmite, carved by flowing magma. "Limestone. It IS a stalagmite. I'll be dipped in chrome." * * * * Rattrap crept along yet another lava tube. It was reading as nice, sane igneous rock, the sort that forms from cooling lava. The sort you expect a volcano to be made of. But he'd found three chambers so far containing sedimentary rock, all of them partially collapsed, none of them "living" caves right now. Two of them had their stalagmites and stalactites slightly tilted, although that would be explained by the pressure of the magma dome under the volcano pushing everything up and away. It didn't explain why so many chunks of sedimentary cave rock were present in a volcano in the first place, as opposed to merely being below the level of the cone. Of course, it just added to the mysteries of this place. "The Ark is buried WAY too deep in dis place ta be revealed by one eruption a million or so years from now," he muttered to himself. "And dis is a young mountain range, the mountain should only get bigger in the next million years, not smaller. What's up wit' dat?" End of the road. The tube was sealed off by a bit of collapsed rock. But sonar pings showed the obstruction wasn't very thick, so he started digging.... * * * * "Okay, my geology datatrax never said anyting about SIDEWAYS stalagmites!" Most of them were broken off and littered the new "floor" of the cavern, but the stalagmites and stalactites of this bit of limestone cavern were indeed almost horizontal. "Someting's really wrong here...." * * * * Rattrap examined the sensor results. They weren't dedicated geosurvey instruments, so the results could be off by ten percent or so...not that it really mattered. This was the tenth piece of volcanic rock he'd tested in his trip through the tunnels. While the sedimentary bits had shown wildly different ages, all the igneous rock seemed to have hardened at the same time, rather than being made in gradual layers. This volcano was only about a year old. * * * * "...and dat's th' whole story," Rattrap gestured at the holographic map floating in the center of the cavernous Autobot control room. The others looked on in interest, although Blackarachnia's interest seemed to be mostly tactical in nature. Looking for escape routes, Rattrap was willing to bet. "Amazing," Rhinox muttered. "Huge blocks of rock from various locations, covered in a relatively fresh shell of volcanic rock. It's almost as if someone was trying to bury the Ark so we wouldn't find it." "I'd say it's exactly like that, old friend," Optimus looked down at the projection. "The aliens who had been using this planet as some sort of laboratory are clearly capable of moving a few boulders around, and they could have triggered a false volcano to cover the pile. And it's certainly fresh enough to have been made in response to the incident at the standing stones." "This would explain some things, Optimus. Much data about Earth was suppressed, but I do know that this volcano was supposed to be active when the Autobots and Decepticons awakened...in fact, an eruption jolted Teletran-1 into operation. But what little I know about vulcanism suggests that few volcanos naturally remain active for a million years. If the aliens artificially triggered this eruption," he gestured at the reddish glow coming from the entryway, "then Mount St. Hilary might have only become naturally volcanic much later." "Dat would explain why th' Ark was even where it could BE uncovered," Rattrap added, raising a finger. "I mean, ya gotta go through a lotta rock ta get t'the opening now. Erosion." "It would have to be a great deal of erosion," Rhinox muttered dubiously, "but I suppose it could be the explanation." Cheetor finally spoke up. "What's that flashing bit?" he pointed at one of the chunks of sedimentary rock that made up the mountain. "Oh, I found some bones there," Rattrap called up a new image, showing a sonar imprint of a skeleton. "The Preds sure got some use out of dinosaur skeletons for their transformations, I figure if we find any intact Protoforms out there we might let one play dino." Rhinox's jaw dropped. "Slag!" "Whoa, no need to get vulgar, big boy," Blackarachnia teased. Then her eyes widened as well. "Slag!" "Okay, what's going on?" Cheetor demanded petulantly. "Slag the DINOBOT," Rhinox clarified. "That's a triceratops skeleton, the inspiration for the Earthborn Autobot Slag. Rattrap! Did you find any other skeletons?" "No complete ones," he shook his head. "There were a couple other bones in that chunk, all little bitty things, though. None of the other chunks had bones." "We seem to have a hole in the fossil record," Blackarachnia noted, the surprise now hidden from her features once more, replaced with the usual sarcasm. "We're short a few dinosaurs." "I bet I know where we can find some replacements," Cheetor said with a mixture of excitement and caution. "The old Pred base must have been near a fossil bed, for so many of them to turn out as dinos." "Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" Rattrap stepped back from the display. "Even leaving aside th' possibility that the Preds might have left some traps in case we wanted ta check out what LITTLE was left, that whole area is a deathtrap now, thanks to skykitty!" he jerked a thumb in the direction of the silent Tigerhawk. "Then you'll just have to be extra careful," Optimus smiled beatifically. Then his expression shifted and became deadly serious. "There's a gap in history here, and we can't leave before it's filled. Without the right fossils available in this mountain for the Autobots to find, there will be no Grimlock. And we all know what our own history would be like if there were no Grimlock." * * * * Rattrap squirmed between two very hot boulders and set up the ground penetrating sonar again, looking for dinosaur bones that Rhinox could dig up. He was getting to hate holes in the ground.... ============================================================================= Author's Notes: This is a break from my usual practice of setting things between the actual series, taking place during late third season Beast Wars (the scenes take place between various episodes as Rattrap explores during his downtime, ending just after Tigerhawk's destruction of the Predacon base). In some respects, maybe it's not really an Intermezzo, but I'll stick with the imprint anyway. :) Helps me handwave away any minor continuity glitches that might have sneaked in, after all. Various talk on alt.toys.transformers got me thinking how unlikely it would be to find fossils in a volcanic mountain like Mount St. Hilary...it's just the wrong type of rock, and any pre-existing fossils would likely be destroyed by millions of years of vulcanism. Also, the whole "it crashed into a volcano and was embedded there" thing just has so many things going against it if you accept four million years between crash and revival. So this story tries to reconcile some of the problems. Of course, as the Maximals found in the final episodes of Beast Wars, it wasn't erosion that got rid of most of the rock covering the Ark....