Sparkling Troubles

Chapter 7

As Arcee, Bulkhead, Wheeljack, Ultra Magnus, and Optimus Prime walked through the Ground Bridge, they loudly gasped. Ratchet was on the monitor, frantically typing away at something unknown. The control panel was torn open, several wires dangling loosely, almost like someone had tried to sabotage the mainframe database. But what really shocked them was the medic's face. Ratchet only used his extremely worried face at the worst of times, like when a bot was dying in his arms. This was one of those times.

"Ratchet? Are you alright, old friend?" Optimus asked gently. Ratchet half-turned around to answer, but was cut off by a certain blue and pink femme.

"Where's Soundwave? And where are Smokescreen and Bumblebee?!"

Ratchet's face only grew more worried, if that was even possible. "No, I'm not! Soundwave just took off with our entire database of information, and the sparklings!"

"Scrap." Wheeljack muttered angrily. Bulkhead quickly stepped forward.

"Well, I say we go look for 'em!"

"-Like, now." Arcee all but demanded. Ratchet sighed.

"I've tried everything to pick up their signals. I'll try to fix this control panel and see if that helps."

"While you are doing that, you may tell us what exactly happened." Optimus suggested.

"Good idea," Ultra Magnus agreed.

Ratchet had already shoved a few wires back into the panel when he started speaking, "I was studying Soundwave's form. I swear, that mech is either completely custom built, or not Cybertronian. His circuitry is so complex. And his primary processor is already full of information- imagine that! None of us are even halfway through ours! He even has a secondary processor, which is half filled! Can- can you imagine?! What it must be like to contain all that information within you? And now, he's gone and downloaded our entire database, a feat that would overload our processors about 20 times-"

"Okay, get on with it!" Arcee snapped.

"Well, I had taken off his visor, to look at his... face. The sparklings walked up and started asking me about him. Thought he was a good guy- puh-leeze! As if. His system repairs were interrupted when Bumblebee sneezed and hit his helm on the berthpost- look there, you can see the dent- and he... he looked at me. I remember him deploying his tentacles and reaching them towards my spark chamber, but that's all. I can assume he used electricity to shut down my systems. Ah, there we are. Now that it's fixed-"

His words were cut off as a small pinging noise sounded in his helm. The sound of a received comm. He hurriedly opened it. It was a short one.

: ratchet help me and bee on nemesis help :

It was from Smokescreen. Another ping interrupted his gasp- it was a set of coordinates from Bumblebee.

"Impossible..." Ratchet let his gasp out. The others were staring at him, thoroughly confused. Their faces clearly sought for an explanation. "I just got a message from Smokescreen and coordinates from Bumblebee. But... they're on the Nemesis."

"Whaaat?" Bulkhead asked.

"They shouldn't be able to know their coordinates, let alone communicate with us." Ultra Magnus observed.

"Okay, so let's go! Who knows what the 'Cons have done to them already?" Arcee demanded.

"We will immediately rendezvous at the coordinates. Ratchet, send them to us and be prepared to open the ground bridge in five separate locations. We cannot afford to attract attention by traveling in a group. Ratchet, you will be staying at the base. Comm. us if you see or need anything." Optimus's orders immediately took action.

As the last Autobot traveled through the last Ground Bridge, Ratchet commed both Bumblebee and Smokescreen.

: Hold on, little ones. Help is on the way. :