Xeno

1. Silence

Jennifer was starting to hope her face would fall off. It hurt from smiling so much—that fake, insincere, perky smile she was supposed to display for parents suddenly realizing the magnitude of leaving their little son or daughter in a dorm full of other reckless adolescents. She was tired of saying the same things, over and over, too. “Hi, welcome to Crane!” “The refrigerator rental company is in the east parking lot,” “Can I help you with that?” “No, we’ve had no violent assaults in the last five years at all.” Her heart wasn’t in it. Then again, she couldn’t imagine anyone whose heart really was in being an RA. If she were a robot, she could probably do this job better. At least have a running tape of the same comforting things she was supposed to say.

She collapsed on her bed at the end of the day, peeling her feet out of her sneakers and socks with relief. Tomorrow, more of the same. She groaned. Not as bad, she told herself. Today was freshman move in. Tomorrow, the other students, who knew what they were doing. Who would maybe nod at the RA, try to curry a little favor so she’d turn the other cheek about violating regulations, but that’s about it. Much easier day tomorrow. Only problem being she was still stuck in the damn dorm all day. Oh well, she’d deal with that tomorrow.

She stripped off her purple (really? Purple? Who made that fashion choice?) Crane Staff t-shirt, and threw on an old t-shirt. Not an upgrade in fashion, but it was her shirt, it was comfortable, and it was a signal that this RA, at least, was off-freakin’-duty.

Jennifer dug the comm node out of the bag where she hid it during the day. They’d been told that as RAs they should have their rooms open for inspection by new parents. ‘To give them ideas of a proper study space’ was the party line, but…whatever. She just hadn’t felt like explaining what it was. And also, it was private—her one connection she could see and feel and hear—to Starscream. No one’s business.

She tapped it on. She wasn’t going to contact him. Not tonight. That would sound too clingy. Plus, didn’t all those ‘how to date’ manuals insist you didn’t call for three days? She’d push it. She’d contact him tomorrow night. He was an alien—what the hell did he know about how it was supposed to be done? And why was she even thinking like this?

Get a hold of yourself, girl, she said. He’s not your boyfriend. He’s just a…giant…alien…robot. That you’ve had sex with. Three times.

Oh god, what was she even doing? Shut up, she said, listening to the comm.

Silence.

It went on for hours like this. A whole hour of nothing. This was unusual—normally his comm was filled with chatter—something that, judging by the tones of voices, might have been jokes or off hand comments or crisp short statements that sounded like pure business.

She heard, finally, someone call his name. In Cybertronian. Wait for a response. Repeat. Still nothing. An hour later, a bit more, the performance was repeated. His name, and something else—a command? The voice sounded angry this time. Irritated. Still no response. Several more times, the voice came on, asking, demanding a response. Jennifer’s guts clutched. Why wasn’t he answering? Anxiety ate at her. If she contacted him and he didn’t answer, she’d just presume he was busy. Or blowing her off. But this voice—he sounded important. And like he wasn’t used to getting no response.

By dawn, the voice was almost frantic. Maybe she was projecting, but there was definitely something like concern. “Starscream,” it said, and something else. Then a long string of syllables that sounded like a plea. She caught the word ‘worry.’ She knew that one.

She hit the comm, hesitantly. Great, now what, genius? “Uh, hello?” Oh, that was brilliant.

The voice stopped, midstream. Switched to English. “Who is this?” it demanded.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I?” The voice was incensed. “Who the hell are you, and why are you on this freq?”

“None of your business, and, well, none of your business.” Okay, cross ‘negotiator’ off the ever-dwindling list of possible careers.

A pause. “I know: you must be Starscream’s xeno.”

She wasn’t sure how he’d worked that out from what she’d said. “So what if I am?”

“Where the hell is he? Megatron’s about ready to rip his main power core out of his body if he doesn’t respond.”

“I—I don’t know where he is. Is he okay?”

An impatient sigh. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. When did you see him last—you have seen him recently, I suppose?”

“Umm, last night.” She blushed, grateful the comm didn’t have video.

“Last night. Of course. Well, that narrows it down a bit. You know his flight path?”

“I thought he was heading straight back to you guys. Uh, wherever you are.”

A grunt. “Never made it.”

“Oh my god, what’s happened to him? He could be dead, somewhere!” She heard panic in her voice.

“Calm down,” the voice said, impatiently.

“Don’t you tell me to calm down, you idiot,” she snapped, not really taking on board that she was talking to another giant alien robot who could easily kill her. And not have a bit of regret. Starscream would at least feel bad. “Don’t you know that that’s the worst thing you can ever say to someone who is upset?”

“Is it? I’ll remember that one.” He seemed…amused. “I take it this is his secondary comm node?”

“I think so.”

“And he gave it to you?”

“Duh.” She stopped. She really ought to know better than to use non-standard speech with aliens. Starscream would be flummoxed.

Instead, she heard the weird grating sound that passed for their laughter. “Was a dumb question, wasn’t it?”

“Can’t you do something to find him or do you want to do discourse analysis all day with me?”

“Actually, the last bit sounds like fun. Another time, though. First, we need to find him. Then, we can decide which one of us kicks his aft first. Sound fair?”

“Find him? We?”

“Be there in,” (slight pause), “twenty three minutes. I’ll buzz again when I arrive.”


2. Rescue?

By the time twenty of the twenty three minutes had passed, Jennifer was in a full on panic. She couldn’t just bail on this job—she needed it! Maybe robots didn’t care about money, or rent, or food, or future employability. What was she going to do?

The comm buzzed. She tapped it on. “I can’t go,” she blurted.

“Gonna have to rescue you, too?” the voice was still amused. Whoever this guy was, she hated his calmness.

“Look, I need this job. I can’t just walk away all day, no excuses.”

“Is that all? Oh, honey,” he drawled, “have I got the solution for you. Come to the east parking lot. Carry the comm with you.”

She did not have a good feeling about this, but she slipped on some sandals and headed to the door. She grabbed her purse, hesistated, then kept it with her. Place to put the comm node, if nothing else.

She ran down the steps from her third floor to the eastern lot, just in time to see a police car crest the hill leading down to the dormitory valley, lights and sirens ablaze. Her not-good feeling went solidly into a downright bad feeling.

The police car skidded to a halt in the parking lot, Early arriving students, already unloading their cars with this year’s dorm necessities, turned to look. The driver’s side door opened. She felt relief when she saw an actual person—an actual police officer in an actual uniform, step out. Until she noticed the knee high glossy motorcycle boots. That wasn’t right.

“Miss Silver,” the cop called, loudly enough to cut over the chatter of the moving-in. “We require your assistance in our investigation.”

Her heart sank. That was…the voice. Still, what choice did she have. The cop looked blankly over the crowd—oh, he had no idea what she looked like. For an instant she thought about tearing into the dorm, but then one of the freshmen from yesterday leaned over the balcony and pointed. “Jennifer!” he called. “That cop wants your help! So cool!”

“I thought she said there were no assaults on campus, like ever,” said another student, coming out of her room.

“Another jurisdiction,” the cop said, smoothly. “We require Miss Silver’s immediate assistance. Police matter.”

Crap. She had no choice after that. She stomped over to the car. “Fine, here I am. Now what?”

“Get in, please,” The cop resettled himself into the seat next to her, and the car rolled forward, sirens firing again. The cop turned and grinned at her. “Pretty smooth, huh?”

“Uh, not so smooth. Those are motorcycle boots. Patrol officers don’t wear them.”

The cop looked down at his legs. “Really? Too bad. I like ‘em. Oh well. Fuck it.” And the cop disappeared.

Jennifer jumped. “What the hell--?”

“Hologram,” the car said. “Useful sometimes.”

“How did you know my name?”

An impatient sigh. “Really? I read Starscream’s report, for one. Cross check with the names revealed there was one match in this GPS area. Need to be any more explicit?”

“Fine. But who are you? And why the hell don’t people seem to notice you have no driver?”

The car rocketed along the highway easily. “Second question first: because they’re so busy suddenly trying to look law-abiding they don’t bother to look. First question: I’m Barricade.”

Barricade? Where had she heard that name before….? “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Has my reputation preceded me?”

“Uh, you could say that.” Didn’t Starscream say he didn’t want her to ever meet this Barricade? “Are you like…friends or something?”

“Or something. But it’s generally a good idea to protect each other from Megatron. And I owe him anyway. Besides,” the voice took on a teasing tone, “I always did want to meet his xeno.”

She flushed, and suddenly wished that her shorts were a bit longer. She felt every inch of her bare legs along the seat. “So, uh, you…know about that?”

“Know about it? I suspect I started it. So. How do you like it?”

“I, uh…what am I exactly doing to help here?”

“We’ll get to that,” he said, smoothly. “Got to get someplace. While we’re en route, nothing wrong with a little…conversation, is there?”

“Do we have to talk about…that?”

“No. I could, for example, tell you all about what a good fuck he is. Would you rather?”

“What?!”

Barricade laughed. “You didn’t think he was a virgin, did you? Sure, you were his first xeno. But not his first.”

“Were you?”

Another laugh. “No.” A pause, “Probably wouldn’t be as fucked up as he is if I had been, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, hotly. Was he here to rescue Starscream or talk bad about him?

“Oh, he’s got some problems. Surely you’ve noticed the insecurity, right? Kind of endearing, most of the time. Then there’s the arrogance. Not so endearing.”

She couldn’t argue with him there. “He’s very nice to me.”

“I should hope so. I try to be nice to my xeno as well.”

“You, too?”

“Me, one. I was the first. Anything he knows,” and the voice got cocky, “He learned from me.” He took an off ramp. “In a way, you should thank me. And I have a few ways you could start.”

Okay, the shorts were definitely too short. She clutched her purse to her chest, trying to minimize the area of her surface touching his.

The car laughed. “Don’t worry. Just teasing. June’d kill me. Or try to.” He rolled to a stop in a secluded parking lot behind a warehouse. “Here we are.”

“And where is, ummm, here, exactly?” As soon as he popped the locks on the doors, Jennifer jumped out.

“Privacy!” He transformed. He was…barely half of Starscream’s height. And he…and Starscream? She did not want to think about that. He held out one hand. “The comm node, please?”

She dug it out of her purse, but she didn’t want to let go of it. She clutched it. “Will I get it back?”

The bot’s face twitched into something like a grin. “Promise.”

She handed it over.

He turned the node over in his hands. “Now,” he said, distractedly, as if he were mostly talking to himself. “Comm nodes come in pairs. Meaning, he gives you one, he still has the other on the other side. Pairs are freq matched. Meaning, we get this to ping, we can track it down to its mate. Which means,…”

“We find Starscream?”

“If the node is still attached.”

Her heart sank. He peered down at her. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice different. No more mocking tone. “Merely a realist. I think in terms of worst-case scenarios. How I survive. But yeah, even if he’s injured or offlined, as long as the node is attached, we can find him.”

The apology didn’t have the jet’s level of earnestness and worry, but then again, why should it? He had the node. Theoretically, her usefulness to the bot had just expired. That gave his half-assed apology some weight.

“O-okay,” she said, softly. Stupidly. Feeling useless.

“Ha!” the car said. “Got a hit. Not that far.” He thrust the node back into her surprised hands, and dropped back into his car mode. “You coming?”

3.Desert

Starscream rebooted to pain. He forced himself to gather memories. Sunrise, with Jennifer. All of the cascading sensation of that night. Then, he’d picked up some radio chatter about him. Which had reminded him that he’d promised to handle those who were bothering her, but hadn’t had time. No time like the present, he had thought, and rocketed after them. The first wing of fighters had been an amusement, but the second wing…well. He dispatched them as well, but they'd somehow managed to nail him—hard—with a high explosive round to the head that had knocked him cold. He remembered a spinning plummet to the ground.

And then this. He tried to move. At first he felt a panic of paralysis when nothing seemed to move. Until he managed to lift his head and see that he was bound. He tried to fire his engines, heard the ignition click, but….. Nothing. Someone or something had disabled ignition. Not the fall. He tried comm—out. Even all-channels. The likelihood of that ‘accidentally’ getting damaged was infinitesimal. The sky was a bruised color—the sun rising again? Or setting? How long had he been out? He struggled against the cables binding his wrists over his head. His engines grated against sand, still warm from the day. Must be evening. Sunset. He’d been out the whole daycycle.

When the night was starting to fade, he heard an approaching engine. He had mixed emotions about this. Possibly a rescue. Possibly, though, not.

Footsteps approached. Large heavy. Not a human. He turned his head. “Ironhide?”

“Yeah. Ironhide.” The Autobot sneered down at him. “Like you like this, you know that?”

Starscream struggled against his bonds. “You are a warrior, as I am,” he bargained. “Let us settle this as warriors then. Surely you can see that this is…undignified.”

“I like you undignified,” the bot retorted. He squatted down by the jet’s head. “Not used to having others look down at you, are you?”

“It is,” he admitted, “a novel experience.”

“Oh, I’ve got bunches of ‘novel experiences’ planned for you,” the Autobot said. “Spent all day thinking of them.”

“Then I suppose that they are not particularly original,” the jet retorted, though he knew he didn’t have much besides bluster.

“You want to see? Okay.” Ironhide kicked him in the head, hard enough to blank his optics for a moment. Starscream felt his facial plates crack.

He spat. “Unoriginal.”

The bot threw himself on the jet straddling his broad torso. “How’s this?” He jammed his fingers into sensitive nodes under the jet’s tied-upraised arms. Starscream writhed in pain, his legs fighting against their own cables. “More original?”

“Yes!” Starscream gasped. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why? Because I’m an Autobot and you’re a filthy ‘con, for one thing. For another, you…” he punched the jet on the armor above his spark chamber, making the jet shriek in pain, “sicken…me.”

“How? What have I done?” He writhed desperately, trying to get the Autobot off his chassis. He heard the pleading in his voice. He begged too much, he realized. Too easily. He would not beg. Not this time.

“What have you done? You and your filthy fucking xeno ways? Bad enough, right? Then you gotta spread that sickness to Optimus?”

Starscream blinked. “Optimus has a xeno?”

Ironhide punched him again. “He’d better fucking NOT. But he wants one. Your fault.”

An acid retort boiled on Starscream’s lips, but he swallowed it. “The xeno does not suffer,” he said. “I am not hurting humans.”

“I. Don’t. Care!” Ironhide rose to his feet and kicked Starscream in his rib struts. “It is unnatural. It is filth.”

Barricade, Starscream thought. Barricade would know what to say. He could talk his way out of just about anything. Or into it. But the jet knew he wasn’t good at this. All he could do would be take Ironhide’s beating. And hope the damn bot got tired or sloppy and he could escape. He twisted the cables experimentally, trying to get them to stretch or fray.

“No one gets hurt,” he repeated, softly.

“I don’t care who does or doesn’t. It’s disgusting!” He tore open the jet’s interface hatch, snatching up his module. “This is disgusting. You’ve fucked a human with this, haven’t you?” He tightened his hand around it, hard enough to make the jet wince. “Haven’t you?!”

“I have.”

“You filthy, disgusting, FUCK,” Ironhide tore the module away ripping the connector cables.

Starscream screamed, as if the pain were a mass he could only expel through his mouth, that would never end. His whole sensor net flared red. Alarm signals pinged on two different systems. Ironhide turned and threw the module as far as he could. “And now,” he said, opening his own hatch.

4. Fallen
Barricade slammed on his brakes as the object fell in front of him.

“What was that?” Jennifer said, peering around as he carefully skirted it.

“Nothing,” he said, but his voice was troubled. “We’re almost there.”

She bolted upright in the seat. “Oh my god. I know that sound.” She remembered how the jet had screamed in pain when Max had reattached his leg. That same horrible combination of high and low sounds. “Go faster, dammit!”

“Tires don’t grip as well on sand,” Barricade snapped. Then he stopped. “Get out.” He had transformed to his robot mode before she could do more than hop out, and snatched her up under one arm, his feet sliding against the slippery sand, but making better time. She bounced in his grasp, finally managing to brace herself against what was the front of his hood and a door fairing. There.

Starscream was tied, stretched out, and another bot knelt by him. Even from here, Jennifer could recognize the shudder and then blankness of an overload. The jet howled.

“Might have to drop you hard,” Barricade said, readying a gun. He fired a warning shot. The bot whirled around, his eyes a hard blue glare.

“Do it,” Jennifer said. The other bot’s facial expression terrified her. And Starscream was still writhing on the ground, even though his screams had died down to panting whimpers.

She felt Barricade’s arm loosen, and she landed on the sand, roughly. He did…something with his hand, and it was no longer a hand, but some sort of spinning blade, which he drove directly at the other bot’s face. The bot backhanded him, hard. Barricade sprawled. Jennifer ran over to the jet. “What can I do?” she begged.

“Jennifer?” The jet’s voice was weak, and his eyes seemed dimmer, as if he couldn’t see her clearly. “I do not want—do not see me like this.”

Okay, she thought. This is where you become either the pathetic bitch you hate in the movies who cries helplessly and waits for someone else to fix shit, or you do something. And be the obnoxious bitch who gets things done. “Stay right here,” she said, and felt impossibly stupid instantaneously. Of course he had to stay there. He had no choice. So much for the start along the ‘getting things done.’

Ironhide howled, as Barricade swung his blade weapon across his knees. The police car rolled to his feet. Retreating. Not retreating—trying to get Ironhide away from the jet. When the bot faltered, Barricade taunted him. “Heard you,” he said. “Don’t like xenos, huh? Kinda ugly isn’t it? Not the Autobot way. Thought you morons were all about peace and harmony and shit.”

“You!” Ironhide lunged at him. “I saw you and your filthy human. Saw you, you disgusting freaks.”

“Really? When? I do like an audience.” He ducked a vicious kick by the Autobot.

Jennifer ran to where Starscream’s arms were bound. Too tight. She ran to where they were attached to a power transmission tower. What was she thinking? Her stupid human hands were too weak to deal with steel cable. But…

“Barricade,” she called out, gesturing at the stretch of cable. He glanced over, getting a wallop on the back of his head for his distraction. But he got her hint. He bolted toward where she stood. She ran down the jet’s other side, and froze. She saw the torn connector cables, one leaking blue energon in a puddle in the sand. Her hands clapped over her mouth. What had he done? What had that horrible robot done?

Ironhide tackled Barricade as he ran, but it was enough. Barricade’s outstretched arms, ending with his blades, sliced through the cables binding the jet’s arms. Starscream felt the sudden slackness, and forced himself to sit up, turning to face Ironhide. Seated, he was almost as tall as the Autobot standing.

“Jennifer,” he said, warningly, his eyes locked on Ironhide. He cycled up his chain gun. “I do not wish you to see this.”

“No,” she said, her voice hard. “He deserves it.”

5.Bingo
They’d needed her after all—her hands were the only ones small enough to reattach the jet’s engine ignition. Barricade had retrieved the module, solemnly, for once without a joke (that had been the thing falling from the sky), and had clamped the leaking energon hose with a gentleness Jennifer wouldn’t have thought he was capable of. “Can be repaired,” he said, to Jennifer. “Honestly.”

“It can,” the jet said, anxious to soothe her. “Our repair bots have fixed worse.”

“But—I mean that’s the physical.” She didn't need to be soothed, other than hearing that he'd be okay.

“Oh, Jennifer human,” the jet said, tiredly. “I have been forced before. That is nothing you need to waste any concern with.”

Her belly filled with an icy shock. Not just from what he said, but the gulf between their experiences that his casual statement implied. That it was somehow a regular occurrence. She felt tears spill over her eyes.

“Your xeno is very sweet,” Barricade said, quietly, his smaller hands working at reconnecting the jet’s primary communications.

“Yes,” the jet said. “My xeno. Until I am repaired I would like you to remember that. And keep your hands off of her.”
“Have to give her a ride home,” Barricade pointed out. “Kind of have to touch her to do that.”

“That is…marginally allowable. But she shall contact me,” his eyes turned to her , sternly, “the instant she is at her base, and she will inform me if you have strayed from propriety.”

“Will she?”

“She will.” It seemed weird to think of the dorm as 'base', but then again, linguistically, what other word did he have? 'Home'? She'd never gotten that far in her research.

Jennifer couldn’t hold back the relief she felt at hearing his weird overemphasized diction again. She wiped her wet cheeks with her hands. “What about him?” She gestured to the unmoving bulk of the Autobot.

“Oh, I’ve got something special planned for him,” Barricade said. He held up a small cube. “Datatrack. My visual cortex and Starscream’s. Shows the whole thing. Audio/video only, I’m afraid. But convincing enough.”

“And?”

“I thought we should do the universe a favor and weld his damn interface hatch. With this inside. When he goes to get it repaired, I think you humans say, bingo?”

“You okay with that?” she turned to Starscream. Since it had happened to him, maybe he should have some say? Wasn't rape all about power? Shouldn't he have some power in determining the penalty on his attacker?

“Bingo,” he said, his voice cold.

Epilogue Tale of the Tape

“I mean, seriously,” Ratched muttered, “What kind of sicko welds an interface hatch?” He lit his plasma cutter. “Not a big deal. Have to replace the hatch door itself, really.” He squinted to look up at Ironhide. “Any idea why they’d do this?”

“Sick fuckin’ ‘cons.” He’d had all of the other repairs fixed first, and was still a little numb from sensor block.

“Well, yes, but…they could have killed you. Instead they did this?”

“Sicker this way.”

“Well, that’s true.”

For a long moment no sound other than the hiss of the plasma cutter slicing through the weld. Then. “What the--? Any idea what this is?” Ratchet extracted a Decepticon datatrack.

“No idea.” Ironhide grabbed for it. “Remember, I was unconscious at the time? Don’t think I’d be awake and let them near me with welders, do you?”

“Huh,” Ratchet rocked back on his heels. And buzzed Optimus. “Ratchet here. You might want to come down here. I think they sent us a message.”

Optimus crossed to the hangar they were using for repairs as soon as he could. “A message?”

Ratchet held up the datatrack. “Welded inside the interface hatch.”

Optimus took it, gingerly. “That seems…excessive.”

“Maybe we should hear what they have to say?”

Ironhide growled. “Don’t give them the satisfaction. Throw it away.”

“Well, I doubt it's anything good,” Ratchet admitted. “Unlikely they’d submit a surrender this way. Unless,” he teased, “You’ve been instrumental in it.”

Ironhide glared pure hatred at Ratchet. His teasing grin faded.

Optimus sighed. “Probably not anything good. But the humans have a saying: Forewarned is forearmed.” He crossed to a console and input the datatrack.

At first the screen was blank. Then a voice. “This is not an act of war. You agree that we could have left your Ironhide for dead. We would have been well within our rights.” Video cut in, of hands applying a hoseclamp to a module’s energon connector hose. Ratchet paled.

“Barricade’s voice,” Optimus muttered. “That’s one of them.”

“His hands, too,” Ratchet added. The shot pulled back, and they could identify an access hatch, then the bronzy green plating. “Starscream.”

Barricade’s voice continued, nasty, ice cold. “Let’s rewind and see how this happened.” The video blanked again, then started a lowlight.

“Ironhide?” they heard a voice say faintly, the video rolling to take in the unmistakeable silhouette of the Autobot. The whole scene played out in front of them, red-screened as again and again, Ironhide caused the jet’s sensor net to fire alarms at him. Ratchet’s hand flew to his mouth when he saw Ironhide tear the module from Starscream’s body and throw it. The jet’s sensors blared alarms. The screen cut to an object falling from the sky, then a jumpy sequence over a low rise to see Ironhide bent over the jet, thrusting his module into the still-screeching jet’s access port.

Then, the blue puddle, clotting sand. And the damaged module. Barricade’s narration picked up again. “This, I repeat, was not an act of war. If we had killed him, you would have taken it as an escalation. Instead, this is a question. Two questions. Both beginning with ‘if’. “ The image flickered out, replayed, this time with full audio. Even Ironhide blanched at his ravings. Optimus stared stonily away.

“If,” Barricade cut in, “Ironhide is an Autobot, and Autobots believe in that honor and integrity you preach, he will not deny the truth. As we have shown it. And if.” Long pause. “And if you Autobots believe at all in any notion of justice, he shall be held to account for this brutality.” The video froze on the damaged hatch. “If. We are waiting.”

The datatrack stopped.

Optimus shivered with horror. “Ironhide,” he breathed. “What have you done?”