Tales of the Intermezzo - Reject Moonbase A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2007 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary [Personal datalog entry AH76Y33M-01] "Good news, Crankcase!" Ruckus seemed unusually pleased. He was holding a data chit reader, and occasionally glancing down at the screen. "Oh, really? Did you finally find someone willing to keep repairing you? Because I'm not." "Who says I need repairs?" Ruckus smiled. As if the universe wanted to practice at being a comedian, a piece of his leg armor obligingly fell off at that moment. I'd finally gotten a squad to command, and I got idiots like this. "No, the new command chart's out, and looks like you're moving up in the world." "Oh really." I considered grabbing the reader from him, but he'd probably just hold on too tight and break it. Or himself. Or both. "Do tell." "Well, you know Megatron took a bunch of high-and-mighty upper echelon people with him to chase the Ark, right? Well, he put Shockwave in charge until he got back, and Shockwave being who he is, well, he couldn't leave all those holes in the command structure." I groaned. Of course Shockwave would feel compelled to "neaten things up". I'd hoped that maybe his lack of imagination would mean benign neglect, but the universe hates me too much for that. "Anyway," Ruckus continued, "Shockwave's own duties were open, so he plugged that first, moving Thunderwing into that slot. This, of course, left open Thunderwing's job, so Straxus got moved up." Ruckus paused, grinning. "Are you trying to imply that I'm being given Straxus's position in the org chart?" My cerebral circuits started to flare with pain at the mere thought of the hassle that would bring. Straxus was a petty dictator who kept his underlings in line with brute force, which meant I'd be fighting off constant attempts on my temporary command. "Oh...no, that would have gone to Starscream, but he's gone with Megatron, so...well, not you, anyway." Ruckus scrolled down through the list, occasionally chuckling or wincing. "Oh, here it is. Blot's being moved over to take Nautilator's job, purely temporarily of course, and that leaves an opening at Moonbase One for you to fill. An independent command, ain't that great?" "Never heard of it. I didn't even know Cybertron HAD moons." Ruckus tapped the reader to bring up more information. "Oh, it's more like a rogue asteroid we captured a few thousand vorn back. Outfitted as an orbital surveillance platform." "Well, at least I suppose there's some prestige in commanding the number one moonbase," I tried to see the bright side. I always *try* to, of course. It's not my fault that reality refuses to comply. Ruckus shook his head. Now I understood why he was so happy, as he unloaded more bad news. "It's not so much the best as it is the oldest. And it kinda drifted back out to a pretty high orbit lately, so it's more of a deep space warning platform anymore...too far to see much on Cybertron. But, hey, it's a solo command. Do well and when Megatron gets back you might get promoted up from there instead of back down here!" "I suppose...wait, solo? You won't be accompanying me?" Perhaps there *was* a bright side after all. "Nope. Windsweeper's being breveted into your job for the duration, I'm gonna go tell him next. Moonbase One is a SOLO solo command. Although it says here you'll be accompanied by a servodroid with full decon suite," Ruckus read the fine print. "Why would I need a decon suite?" "Um, you've never met Blot, have you?" * * * * [Personal datalog entry AH76Y33Z-02] It took me and the servobot nearly ten kilobreem, but Moonbase One is finally...well, I don't know if it will ever be truly clean again after Blot's stay, but at least it's habitable. What a complete slagpit this place is...I doubt it could have won any awards for appearance or utility even before Blot took over, in fact. And there's fifty crates of something called SPACOM on the far side in storage that I'm afraid to open. I'm nearly a decibreem out from Cybertron by lightspeed communication, which makes any attempt at realtime conversation more maddeningly frustrating then it usually is. Not that anyone's keen to chat with me, but that's just fine. There's a constant automated datastream between here and Cybertron, mostly just deep space observation data being routed to astrogators and the more paranoid of our security people, but at least it gives me something to do. I *am* a data collection specialist, after all, even if the data is generally unvarying and unimportant. By the Pit, I hate it here. But at least no more Ruckus. * * * * [Personal datalog entry AH76Y34A-01] It appeared so suddenly that even if I hadn't been busy fixing a problem with the attitude thrusters on the outside of the "moon", I wouldn't have been able to send out a warning in time to be of any use. The giant black alien craft just *appeared* over Cybertron moments ago. I'm not sure which will be worse...Cybertron being wiped out by the strange black ship, or the trouble I'll get in for not warning about the first deep space threat to actually come our way since I took over the Moonbase. I'd be lucky to end up working *for* Ruckus at this point, I think. * * * * [Personal datalog entry AH76Y34A-46] Cybertron survived the invasion, although no one seems to be exactly sure how it happened. Rumor has it some Autobot found a weakness in the black ship and exploited it. So, not only did I screw up, I have to thank an Autobot for pulling Cybertron's collective skidplates out of the autopress. Maybe I can get a job cleaning the fusion manifolds when Megatron gets back. * * * * [Personal datalog entry AY342XA-01] It's been an awful long time since Megatron left Cybertron. There's word he's never coming back. On the other hand, Optimus Prime isn't back either, although there was that impostor who was making the rounds for a while (reference entries ARD992Q-24 through 37). Have I been forgotten? The data still flows both directions, so the command structure still knows about Moonbase One. But they probably don't care. Or, even worse, they don't REALLY know anymore. I'm just talking to automated systems no smarter than my servodroid, and the people getting the data just assume that this end is fully automated too. Oh slag. What if the place was supposed to be fully automated? If the servodroid was the only one actually assigned to replace Blot, and Ruckus decided it would be funny to ship me off to a desolate rock? He'd do that, too. He hates me. They all hate me. I should insert a request for official status clarification into the datastream. I doubt anyone would read it, though. And they might think I'm being ungrateful, a whiny little wheezer. Maybe it's safer to just wait to hear from them. * * * * [Personal datalog entry BHK633S2-01] I can't believe I'm thinking this, but I miss Ruckus. * * * * [Personal datalog entry XY832R4B-04] I have been stuck on Moonbase One for forty-eight thousand vorn, give or take. I think Cybertron actually shut down to conserve power for about thirty thousand of those, but the cosmic ray collectors built into Moonbase One have always managed to feed me enough to stay active, just in case. As the first line of defense for a sleeping world. It's been like imprisonment, and I committed no crime. The servodroid...I call him Servo...and I have been amusing ourselves by scanning all communications frequencies, going through banks of entertainment files from Cybertron and even from some worlds beyond, ancient radio-wave civilizations sending their words into the void. It took some time to learn their languages, and I don't have the cultural reference points to make sense of much of what passes for entertainment among these aliens, but it's slightly better than slowly going mad from boredom. The SPACOM is finally all used up. I don't know why Blot hoarded so much of the strange semi-organic material, but I've had plenty of time to find uses for it. It's frighteningly versatile. Of course, now that I finally think it's a good thing, it's all gone. Maybe I can requisition some more now that Cybertron is active again. Not that anyone would answer my requests if I sent any. Something strange has been going on lately. It's called the "Space Bridge" according to the news streams I've tapped into. Word is, Megatron's been found after all these kilovorn, but he's on a distant alien world. From what little has made its way into the accessible streams, I think it's the same world that started sending out radio signals half a vorn ago or so. Servo particularly likes their programs, although I can't make any sense of them. Servo's had an odd sense of humor for some time, now. Reminds me of dear old Ruckus in some ways. Alarms are going off now. "Movie sign, Servo?" I ask. He's been retasking a lot of our systems for use during entertainment cycles. The little droid shakes its head. Ah, a real alert. They won't find me napping this time! Crankcase will redeem himself! Myself. Curses. I'd hoped I'd stopped referring to myself in the third person a hundred vorn ago. "Attention, Cybertron control," I open up the comm frequencies for the first time in...a long time. "This is Moonbase One, I'm picking up a strange spatial distortion on low Cybertron orbit." I dutifully wait the now full breem of transmission lag (Moonbase One has drifted a bit more since I took over), watching as a giant purplish diamond opens up over the sky of Cybertron. I hope my warning was some help, at least. "Moonbase One? There's still someone up there?" comes the replying voice. I KNEW it! They DID forget about me! "That's just the Space Bridge, we're taking Cybertron to Megatron! If you have transport, get your reactor linkage over here before the Bridge collapses...the Moonbases aren't coming through with us!" Crankcase is not having a very good day today, and would like to just shut down for a while now. * * * * [Personal datalog entry QQQQQQQQQQQQ???vootle] No datastream makes Crankcase a dull bot. No datastream makes Crankcase a dull bot. No datastream makes Crankcase a dull bot. iter(100) * * * * [Personal datalog entry unknown] I seem to have lost a great deal of data after my recent...episode. I still have external backups here, and the next order of business is to sort through them and re-upload to cover any holes. But what shocked me out of my negative reaction to Cybertron's departure was an alarm on the deep space sensors. Something planet-sized is headed this way. I hold out a slim hope that it's Cybertron, returning after having retrieved Megatron, but I know by now that the universe just doesn't work that way. The best I can hope for is a slightly larger rogue asteroid that I can send Servo to mine for resources. Visuals are coming in now. It doesn't seem to be Cybertron, but there are similarities. This planet is definitely covered in worked metal, although more of a golden or orange hue. It has rings as well, or at least one ring, hard to say yet. But there's a strange formation on the side facing me that looks uncomfortably like a mouth. Yes, it's heading my way. I've sent standard greeting protocols in every language I've managed to learn in my time up here, hopefully this titanic self-propelled planet understands one of them. * * * * [Personal datalog final entry, most likely] At least I was able to pick up and decode some of the world's internal transmissions as it *ate* Moonbase One. Just my luck, I finally meet another intelligent being after 48,000 vorn, a figure out of Cybertronian legend no less, and it has to be UNICRON. I bet death will be long, slow and painful, too. ============================================================================= Author's Notes: This is yet another AllSpark Fic Challenge piece, with the idea being to look at one of the people who took on leadership roles "temporarily" in the wake of the Ark leaving Cybertron. But rather than go for the obvious high muckety mucks, I looked way down the org chart and picked someone who would have been disliked enough to have been "promoted" to a desolate rock and then forgotten. "Let him be promoted and thereby removed" is an old Roman adage, just as applicable to giant robots as to humans. Crankcase is one of the Triggercons, along with Ruckus and Windsweeper. His techspec describes him as a whiny wheezer who always complains about things no matter how well they're going, a sort of Decepticon counterpart to Gears. I decided he deserved something to complain about. I've borrowed once more from the timeline of The Lost Years MUSH, at least in small ways (the black alien ship mentioned also in "Plot Device"), although I didn't worry about getting details exactly right. And yes, the slew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 references are intentional. I figure that Moonbase One and Two of the movie had to have been recent captures, given that Cybertron came through the Space Bridge solo in Season 1 of the G1 cartoon, but that doesn't mean Cybertron never had any previous Moonbases. Just that they weren't important enough to try to bring through during "Ultimate Doom". Finally, I should note that the weird shifting of verb tense later on in the story is intentional. :)