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Iacon's telescope/satellite communication nexus is a bundle of enormous antennas, parabolic, like cupped hands raised in supplication to the Primes. They're welded to the sheer cliffs forming the northern border of the city. Soundwave has swung the wide, energon-veined dishes to stare down the anomaly: a streak of gold that appeared in Cybertron's atmosphere a month ago.
The anomaly moves like a feral thing, twisting and spinning above the surface of the planet. It does not respond to hails. It is blurry to the optics and shows up in all videos/photographs as a gold smudge. It neither avoids ballistic volleys nor takes damage from them. Though it ostensibly has made no threats, the Primes sent Soundwave to the communication nexus to evaluate it.
The nexus command center is Soundwave's favorite place. It should be: he designed it. The stark architecture invites no distraction. The data crunching rooms have no extraneous detailing. His living space is clean and functional. The antennas spool data–great reams of data–and he sorts and interprets it for Blaster's team on the ground. No one else can handle the load. Especially not Blaster.
Soundwave likes the command center for one more reason- a reason he's never told anyone. From the cliffs, he can enjoy the headlight-streaked beauty of Iacon without suffering the millions of minds in it.
The last ream of data is coming in now. He collates it and checks his fuel levels. Low. Soundwave glances at his supply corner: three large cubes of energon. The bowl nailed to the wall, next to a perch, is half full. The bowl on the floor is empty. He'll have to go down to Iacon soon for a restock.
“X-ray evaluation: complete,” says Soundwave. He has a headache from processing so much data. “Uniform x-ray radiation from anomaly.” Little bird feet shift on his shoulder. He reaches up to pat Laserbeak's side. “Your choice for next electromagnetic evaluation: gamma or microwave?”
Laserbeak beats her wings once and squawks, “The votes are pouring in! The winner of this week's immunity challenge will be revealed right after a live performance of 'La La Come Back To Me, Lover'!”
Soundwave shakes his head. Laserbeak has been malfunctioning. She plays lines from medical dramas and reality shows and all kinds of nonsense, filtered through the squawking presets of her vocalizer. Soundwave has run rudimentary diagnostics but couldn't find the problem. When he goes down to Iacon for supplies, he'll bring her to see a specialist.
Ravage appears at the door with a hushed venting sound. He must be agitated, because even Soundwave usually can't hear him. He pads over and nudges Soundwave's leg. Soundwave pets him between the ears, the location of maximum purr production. “Did you hear that?” asks Ravage. “At the entrance?”
Soundwave queues up his memory banks and rewinds the past few minutes. His processor noted an aberrant sound but did not alert him. Probably because of the headache. He plays the sound aloud, a faint, Clonk! Clickclickclick.
“Yes, that,” says Ravage. “Outside the main entrance. I've never heard that before.”
Soundwave hasn't either. He's grateful for Laserbeak and Ravage's company as he heads for the main entrance. He can't remember exactly when they joined him. It feels like they've always been with him.
With a touch to the keypad, the door pulls aside. Out on the narrow bit of flat ground before the sheer drop of the cliff, there's nothing to be found. The high rises of Iacon sparkle below. One of the parabolic antennas creaks.
Soundwave tilts out the door, looking back and forth along the bare, wind-swept path. Ravage darts between his legs and hunches next to something. A small rock or piece of metal, glistening in the sunlight. Ravage sniffs it. “Bismuth.” He bats at it. “Not dangerous.”
Soundwave picks it up. “Bismuth: confirmed. Hopper crystal form.” He turns it. Sunlight plays along its iridescent oxide. Dozens of perfect, concentric squares are nested within each other, like a handful of staircases devouring their neighbors, each step a different color. There's something circuit-like about the bismuth. Something primal, like Soundwave is looking at the molecular, metallobiological origin of his species.
Ravage juts his chin towards Iacon. There is no access from the city to the command center other than catching a ride on the designated flier. “How did it get here? What does it mean?”
Both excellent questions. Before Soundwave can respond, Laserbeak shrieks, “It's a sign! It's a promise!”
Soundwave startles and almost drops the bismuth.
It's the first thing Laserbeak has said in her true voice in weeks.
They just managed to avoid war.
The population's myriad factions (the Senate loyalists, the monoformers, the splintered Autobot forces, the religious movements, the counter movements, the young Decepticon movement) allied together under a two-branched government: a slightly less corrupt Senate, and the Primes. Optimus's claim to leadership shines from his chest. Megatron's claim was authenticated by the popular vote. Cybertronians are willing to put up with it as long as their representatives in the Senate are fairly heard.
Soundwave doesn't care for this system, especially the Primes, but he prefers this stability to the previous mounting clawing screaming fear and tension. His special talent was known to Megatron during that tumultuous time, so he has a very special role in the new government. Usually he works in the nexus command center, but political sensitivities occasionally require him in the Senate in person.
Soundwave sits in his place of honor, between the Senator of Iacon and Megatron Prime. His counterpart, Blaster, sits between Optimus Prime and the Senator of Praxis.
Blaster's helm hisses with the sad, confused thoughts of an irreparably damaged processor. Blaster was the key to deflecting the war: his offensive, psychic attack was at a scale Soundwave cannot imagine and begrudgingly respects. But it cost Blaster dearly. His eyes are distant and flat and no medic on the planet can bring him back. Blaster is no longer useful to Optimus the way Soundwave is useful to Megatron. But Optimus Prime's spark is bigger than his priorities.
The Primes and Senators, flanked by their staff members, sit in a ring around the periphery of a large, round room, so that they are all perceived as equal. Guests, when present, stand in the middle.
Senatorial thoughts rush through Soundwave: there are so many, it's hard to identify individual words. Scattered private comms flit by. The Senate chamber, with its unique brass and steel swirled walls, is brimming with wariness. But the Senators are not his focus today.
Dozens of silhouettes crowd the center of the room, foreign with feathers and scales and fangs. They are Cybertronian, but not Cybertronian. They are envoys from the golden Titan Chela, recently landed on the barren plains south of Iacon. The envoys' processors are bright with squawking and hissing and roaring, all in languages Soundwave cannot understand.
The envoys stand in little clusters. Soundwave studies them. They are grouped together by alt mode. Some have long spindly legs and horrible tiny hairs and too many eyes. Some have slick, wet-looking frames and rounded ailerons, all in the wrong places for fliers. Some have short, patterned fur and eyes-cheeks-fangs on their chests: they wear their alt mode heads as the Praxians wear their hoods. None have wheels or treads or wings as he knows them.
The thoughtscape of the room changes. It is as if the constant drone of buzzing processors has sprung a leak. Every thought is about to drain away. Soundwave shakes his head to clear the interference. Megatron Prime notices. Megatron Prime notices everything. He raises an optical arch: Soundwave will have to explain himself after the meeting. Soundwave nods.
Megatron Prime silences the room with the clash of his ceremonial staff against the floor. He welcomes the envoys and assures them that Iacon's finest medical staff will attend to Chela; that their beleaguered population is welcome to rehome here, so long as they pledge loyalty to Iacon; that the-
Flicking ears and hairy, flailing arms make it apparent that the envoys do not speak Neocybex. Translation mods and coders are sent for.
Soundwave listens. He picks through the Chelans' thoughts and constructs a simple database of the words they use for themselves. Few of these words will turn out to have Neocybex equivalents. As Soundwave contemplates spiders, the thoughtscape of the room changes again. He vents carefully, unwilling to catch Megatron Prime's attention. He sequesters the change and runs it through his formidable processor.
The changing is a gap. An anomaly. A place where the thoughts disappear.
One of the spiders looks directly at him and he realizes he can't read her mind. As bright green eyes peek open along her forehead, he knows she is realizing the same thing about him.
In the meeting afterwards, he does not tell Megatron Prime.
Her name is Blackarachnia.
Like all the other Titan refugees, her language mod only functions in the present tense. The mods can translate Chelan to Neocybex, but not the other way around. The medics and the scientists on both sides get together and explain that Chelans are an evolutionary branch from Cybertronians: they adapted to their former homeworld via organic modification. Their languages use body parts Cybertronians don't have. Like many things about the Chelan resettling, the linguistic burden is one-sided.
Though they work in proximity, it takes a few weeks before they can properly meet. During the busy governmental meetings, Blackarachnia is always in Soundwave's periphery. She's always glancing at him. Once or twice she brushes against him as they exit. He feels her like liquid calm, like cooling bliss. The place where the noise goes silent, leaving him floating and slowly blooming.
He wonders how he feels to her.
Finally, on a day of surprising efficiency, the Senate is dismissed early. Soundwave heads to her. His spark thunders in his chest. Blackarachnia's biolights are very different from Cybertronian biolights: instead of glowing from glass-lined vessels around her body, they bunch in pods, like little groups of blinking eyes. As Soundwave nears, her silence drowns out the room. His spark is so loud he fears everyone will turn and glare at him, appalled that he would bare his chest. She smiles as he nears. Soundwave bows slightly to her, unsure what her station is in relation to his. It is a non-specific, but polite, gesture.
“Soundwave: communications specialist under Megatron Prime.”
Her smile has fangs. She returns the bow with a deeper one of her own. The long beast mode legs arching around her back flutter in a complicated wave. “Blackarachnia, Fateweaver tribe.” Her accent is heavy. “Servant of Airachnid. Keeper of lies and little lives.”
Soundwave hesitates. Keeper of lies? Even politicians know not to admit to that. The language mod is obviously having some difficulty. He graciously ignores her last statement. “Communication inquiry: anomaly found.”
Blackarachnia extends her hand. It's a fluid and sultry motion, only slightly spoiled by the quivering of the many fine hairs on her limbs. “Anomaly, yes. You bring me to dinner. We converse.” Her eyelids are soft plates, perhaps not even metal. They move slowly up and down. Though Soundwave cannot know her thoughts, her field thrums: she is just as eager as he is to discuss the silent thing between them.
Soundwave takes her to Iacon's finest restaurant. He orders the most exquisite dishes. Blackarachnia's eyes flash when he removes his face mask. She stares at his lips as he bites and chews. She says polite words about the fancy dishes, but her many legs twitch and she shudders when she swallows. In the cool blank of her presence, Soundwave takes a guess, and orders the plainest cubes. She perks up at their arrival.
They dance around the silence, defaulting to appropriate conversational subjects: the logistics of housing a million Chelans, the resources required, the labor that the Primes demand as payment for it all. Blackarachnia is passionate about the rights of her people, but it is a strange passion. In broken Neocybex she explains that on Eukaris, each tribe had its own way. Now the tribes are united–they are the same–in the eyes of the Cybertronians. Spiders and winged ones and four legs are all beasts now. Furry, hairy others. There is no recognition of their individual cultures. There is no understanding that the grammar of spider-Chelan is different from bird-Chelan. There is no deference for the Weaving of Silk Threads or the Festival of Eight Eyes.
Soundwave is grateful she cannot read his thoughts. “All Chelans: beasts,” he says. Her legs pull back sharply. “All Cybertronians: gearheads?” He's heard this word in rough Chelan throats and minds. A pejorative, he's pretty sure.
Her frown falls away, causing a trickle of energon to stream from the corner of her mouth. Bright pink against the dark plating of her face. Perhaps she does not often use her root mode mouth to eat. “I see your truth. But you are all metal. All are all-metal.” She taps the side of his hand in demonstration. A flicker of static passes between them.
“A spider is not a bird. A car is not a plane.”
“I see your truth. Spider and bird are not confusing. Car and plane. How can you tell?”
“Cars: have wheels. Planes: have wings.”
She leans forward. Bright green eyes go crescent. The hairs on her arms brush together as she crosses them, little whispers at the edges of Soundwave's perception. “I study you. You have not wheels and not wings.”
Soundwave's lines warm at the thought of her studying him. “Affirmative: stationary alt mode designed to identify and amplify sound.” He points to the buttons on his torso, the speakers at his shoulders. “No wheels, no wings.”
Blackarachnia makes a purring sound Soundwave interprets as a thoughtful, “Hmm.” She remains slouched forward, a departure from her disciplined posture in the Senate room. Her spindly spider legs bend and straighten lazily, like a flier's wings at ease. She brings a cube to her fangs and bites it. Energon dribbles down her chin. A jointed leg swings forward and wipes it clean. She blinks her biolights and Soundwave gets the impression that she is blinking her whole body.
Her perfect silence is an aura, a cliff-shaped sunrise. Soundwave relaxes into it like a heated oil bath. He has never felt so comfortable with another mech. Blackarachnia's soft eyelids hover half lidded. She slowly traces squares on the tabletop with her fingertips. Each square brings her hand closer to his.
A nearby couple interrupts the moment with rising voices. The tank tells the plane that he's made a mistake. He's sorry. They can work it out. The tank says specific words that run contrary to the phrases in his mind.
Blackarachnia leans forward conspiratorially and says, “He lies.”
“Affirmative.”
“He has many plane-lovers.”
She says many and not seven, the exact number rolling around the tank's thick helm. Soundwave asks, “Do you know how many?” Her legs bend in a wave, which Soundwave interprets as a negative. “You cannot read his mind?”
Above Blackarachnia's eyes, more eyes slit open. They are the prismatic green of the extinct crystal leaves kept safely in Iacon's largest museum. “I tell truths from lies. Some words. Not exact words. You hear exact words?”
“Yes. Seven lovers,” says Soundwave.
Blackarachnia's laugh is clear and melodic, like bells. The bell-laugh reverberates through Soundwave and echoes in his chest, behind the glass. Blackarachnia moves her fingers in a complicated pattern. “We say, 'Too many mates, too many webs, too many tangles.' Rhymes in Chelan.”
“Say it in Chelan.”
The words are half vocalized, half hiss, punctuated with clicks deep in her throat. Soundwave is reminded of tapestries: smooth polycloth fibers embedded with stars of metal. “I will learn this,” he vows.
Blackarachnia does her thoughtful purr. “Hmm, will you?” She watches his lips. She swipes a finger across her own.
The conversation moves on, away from their silence, back to the logistics of uniting Chelan tribes. The bill is paid. As they leave, they pass the bickering couple. Blackarachnia leans down to the plane and whispers something to him.
“Ugh,” says the plane, a classic Vosnian beauty. “Get away from me, you beast.”
Blackarachnia hisses something at the offending mech. He sneers at her. Soundwave wants to put a dent in the plane's cockpit. Blackarachnia slides her arm through his and swiftly moves them on. When they reach the exit, they hear the plane slapping the tank across the face.
Soundwave escorts Blackarachnia to the temporary housing for Chelans. She moves against him like engex sloshing in a fluted glass. Static springs up where her hairs brush his arms. To Soundwave's surprise, there's data in that static. He marvels. The hairs are hundreds of antennas all over her frame. Blackarachnia's ability relies more on the physical than his: proximity, body language, complex field readings. He wonders what she feels–or doesn't feel–in the warm, staticky places where their frames bump together.
Soundwave points out buildings of import, but Blackarachnia is most delighted by a pile of garbage outside a repair shop. She triumphantly pulls something broken from it. Soundwave has no idea what she means to do with it. She does not say.
The walk is all too short. Even though Blackarachnia is a high-ranking member of her tribe, her lodgings are the same as the other Chelans': an abandoned warehouse shoddily divided into living units. She sleeps in a small room with two tribal sisters and their little companions. Soundwave is embarrassed by this. Iacon is the greatest city on the planet. Their lodgings should be better. Soundwave wants to invite her to stay at his place. He doesn't have a guest room, but the ceilings are high. He's seen how the spiders sleep in the alleys: safe and suspended in their webbing, each delicate leg tip curling around an iridescent strand.
Blackarachnia watches his hesitation with many eyes. She gives a knowing bell-laugh. The fine antennas on her body quiver. It's cute, in a way. Very organic of her to do. “So soon, Soundwave.” He likes how she says his name. “Maybe future time.” She extends her hand. He takes it, unsure what to do. She waits expectantly.
Just as he's about to give her the polite, “I'm unfamiliar with this custom,” that the ambassadors drill into the Senators, Blackarachnia yanks him close. He stumbles into all those spindly legs. They wrap around him. He freezes, spark spinning, mind blank and clear in her presence. She kisses his face mask and speaks in Chelan. Her smile flutters his tanks with the promise of something wicked.
He's still standing there, graphing the cracks in the busted door of the warehouse, long after she saunters inside.
When he finally returns to his quarters, Soundwave stares up at the ceiling. He can hear his neighbors, and the nighttime traffic, and the newly introduced lizard creatures skittering across the roof. Sleep would come more quickly if he slept beneath a waterfall of cool, quiet calm. He wonders what Blackarachnia said after kissing him. He wonders if she sleeps well in her crowded room.
Soundwave abandons his berth for the desk. He tries to install the Chelan language mod, despite the warnings. His processor fills with hissing, compounding errors so quickly he almost crashes. He is forced to disable the mod, but he runs those hisses through the back of his mind. He's always evaluating and sorting them, trying to break through the evolutionary barrier, so he can speak to her in her own tongue.
Soundwave scrapes tiny lizards and flying things from the antenna dishes. They're attracted to the energon that runs through the beams. Ravage jumps from beam to beam, snarling, catching critters and whipping them back and forth. Laserbeak screams nonsense from Soundwave's shoulder. One of the moons is out today, hovering next to the anomaly like a pockmarked cloud. Soundwave doesn't bother to focus on the gold thing. It's bigger than the last time he looked at it, but still a blur.
“Won't you? Won't you come back to me?” sings Laserbeak. “Won't you? Won't you?”
Soundwave appreciates repetition in music. It's one of the basic building blocks for song construction. But he has much less appreciation for it when Laserbeak loops the same line all morning and he has a headache. He pets her gently. Sometimes gentle pets calm her down.
Not today. She switches to a medical drama. “He's crashing, doctor! Less than 25% processor activity!”
“Let him crash,” suggests Soundwave.
Laserbeak squawks at this injurious advice. “We're losing him!” Another voice jumps in with an agonized and extended, “Noooo!”
“He probably needs a rest,” says Soundwave. He touches his own beleaguered helm.
Laserbeak pecks his hand. She doesn't like being interrupted.
Ravage is immune to his compatriot's screeching. His movements are quick and sleek, as if among his nimble ancestry were beings of pure ferrofluid.
Soundwave is highly aware of his frame's bulky shapes when Iacon glitters far beneath his feet. Up here, the infamous cliff-scouring winds are stronger. When the chore is finally done, Soundwave descends, gripping the ladder with both hands. He checks his fuel levels. Low.
Back at the command center, Soundwave pours energon into the bowl nailed to the wall and the bowl on the floor. The mini beasts drink. Soundwave glances at his supply. Three large cubes of energon left. He'll have to go down to Iacon soon for a restock.
“-partitioned core consciousness is failing! We're losing him!”
“Get the patch!”
“A cortical psychic- what manner of barbaric medicine do you practice?!”
Soundwave must remember to take Laserbeak to a specialist.
Clonk-clonk! Clickclickclickclick.
Soundwave graphs the noise. Something has hit the front door and bounced off. Ravage's ears go back.
Out on the narrow flat ground, glinting like Iacon beyond, are two pieces of metal. Ravage sniffs them. “Bismuth.” He bats at them. “Not dangerous.”
Soundwave picks them up. They clink around his palm. Their nesting, rainbow crystals remind him of something...
his head hurts
...but he can't remember what.
“How did they get here?” asks Ravage. “No footprints, no flier's scent trail. Nothing can scale the cliff.”
They look up. The sky is vast, blue, and empty. Except for the moon and the gold anomaly smear. “Not dropped from above,” says Soundwave.
From inside the command center, Laserbeak shrieks, “They're a promise!”
Chelan culture spreads from the broken warehouse, catalyzing the rust-bitten back alleys of Iacon into color and shine. Even so, the tribes struggle to integrate. Their festivals are attuned to one moon, not two. Their hunting grounds are gone. Chela is locked down: they cannot return to him. The fastest beasts move to the barren plains south of Iacon. The fliers move to Vos.
Iaconians are not as welcoming as Soundwave would like. Though Optimus Prime speaks loudly and often of the sympathetic nature of the Chelan refugee, Megatron watches silently. The factions loyal to him outnumber those to Optimus, and his lack of action speaks louder than Optimus's words.
Violence sparks at the edges of Little Chela, where the monoformers preach against the great sin of not just an alt mode, but a beast mode.
Every evening, Soundwave takes Blackarachnia around the city. All the sights: the crystal garden, the parks, the planetarium. She's more interested in the scrap heaps on the sides of the roads and the big dumpsters behind the clinics. She collects things and takes them back to her warehouse room. The delicate tips of her spider legs brush against him when they walk.
Soundwave wants to ask her what he feels like to her. He doesn't want to ask on the broken sidewalk outside the warehouse. He doesn't want to ask in her room, crowded with spiders and mini beasts. He wants to ask her in private. This desire flickers across his plating and jumps to hers, and rolls through her body antennas like a windstorm across the cliffs. The question simmers, electrifying the silence between them.
Her vents go sharp. She snares him in her legs and kisses him.
And kisses him.
And kisses him.
Merely four months after Chela's appearance, Blackarachnia says goodbye to her tribal sisters and their little companions and joins Soundwave in his quarters. Her smiles are fangy and wide as she sets up her webbing and fills Soundwave's shelves with her garbage-treasures.
Blackarachnia spins iridescent fiber, so strong yet so thin. She jumps and skitters along her webs as naturally as Soundwave navigates the coding of the telescope/satellite communication nexus. Soundwave cannot divine her garbage-treasure classification method. Back on Eukaris, she was an inventor. She had to leave everything behind. Now she's always working on new versions of the same project: webbing woven between metal rope, capped on both ends by sharp-tipped facsimiles of the language mod hardware. When Soundwave asks what they are, she just winks many eyes.
That's only fair. When Blackarachnia asks about his work, which is encrypted in Megatron Prime's code, he's unable to answer, either. He does not know the details of Megatron Prime's plans, only that there are purchase orders for [REDACTED REDACTED]. Soundwave cannot be sure, but he thinks they are incendiaries or chemicals.
Soundwave has been very careful not to let Megatron Prime know of his relationship with Blackarachnia.
Blackarachnia makes herself a swing of spidersilk and hangs next to him. “I work better near you.”
“I do, too.”
“I see your truth.”
They concentrate on their projects in blissful proximity. Soundwave sends a second request for clearance to bring a guest to the command center. He has not yet heard back from Megatron Prime regarding the first request. He needs to return to the cliffs soon. He does not want to leave Blackarachnia alone in Iacon.
After a while, she is bored, and she flings her data pad upwards with a prickly sound of annoyance. The data pad sticks to the webbing, unharmed. Blackarachnia pulls herself up and flips around her swing. She has greater speed and flexibility than Iacon's greatest gymnasts. She moves fluidly from beast mode to root mode. Soundwave watches, his own work gladly forgotten.
Blackarachnia extends a chelicera. “Join me?”
“Ha.” Soundwave rarely laughs aloud. He usually shows it in his field or the flashes of his visor. “Soundwave: inflexible.”
Blackarachnia loosens her grip and slides down. Her lips are near his audials. The antennas of her legs brush against his back. He shivers. “Try? For me?”
Soundwave hesitates. He grabs the spider silk and pulls himself up. The edges and corners of his frame grate against the rope. It frays a bit. He looks at his hands and the rope, and his hands around the rope, and feels the rope fraying between his thighs, and says, “I don't know what to do from here.”
Blackarachnia laughs and springs upward. She runs along the straight lines of her webbing–so many lines, up and across and up and across, repeating patterns all the way to the ceiling–demonstrating how easy it is. Soundwave groans and pulls himself up. The spider silk shreds. Little white strands fluff down to the floor. Beneath the outer shell of scruffy silk is a stronger core. Soundwave hopes it can bear his weight.
It can, but Soundwave does not have an acrobatic circuit in his frame. He gives up and slides down the rope and lands in a heap on his berth.
Blackarachnia does an impressive backflip and joins him. She strokes the panels of his arms. “You are like dry water-beast skin. Smoother.” Her knobbly digits wander down the glass of his chest. She presses the symbols on his torso. “What do you call these?”
“Buttons,” says Soundwave. He's always been proud of them. His lines grow heavy as he reaches for her. She smiles with one mouth, then the other.
The anomaly fills the horizon with gold. Soundwave has a headache. He glances at his supply corner: three large cubes of energon. He has to go down to Iacon soon for a restock.
He must remember to bring Laserbeak to see a specialist. All day she told him to jump off the cliff.
In the low light of late night, Soundwave finally finds the courage to ask his burning question. He touches his helm to Blackarachnia's, gentle, so his crest does not poke her upper eyes. “Inquiry.”
“Yes?”
“What do I feel like to you?”
She smiles. The low light catches along her lips and her fangs and her body blinks. “What do I feel like to you?”
“Soundwave: inquired first.”
“Af-firm-a-tive,” says Blackarachnia, owner of the thickest Chelan accent on the planet, poking fun of his accent. “But my answer depends on the shape of yours.”
Hrmm.
Blackarachnia often deflects questions, citing the limitations of the language mod. In the arena of sounds and feelings and telepathy, where even the most complex language lacks the lexicon to describe it all, he can forgive her this.
“Cool pool of oil,” says Soundwave. “Every mind is frantic and loud. You are silence. Beautiful, restful silence.” He selects a quote from a Fateweaver tale: he's been studying them. He plays the recording in spider-Chelan, then in his own Neocybex says, “Once entwined in rotting web, now set free to glide in the wind.”
Blackarachnia closes all her eyes and vents heavily. Her chest moves up and down and the little antennas on her legs and the backs of her arms flutter. After a long time, she says, “You feel like truth to me. Truth, truth, truth. You are so good. You are all I want.” She appends the last sentence with modifiers so Soundwave knows the exact translation that her language mod cannot provide: You're all I've ever wanted.
Soundwave's spark catches in his chest. He tilts into her, holds her close. As she reaches for his face mask, an earthquake jostles their frames together. Blackarachnia winces as her antennas catch in Soundwave's plating. He scrambles to free them, but his apology dies in his throat. In the deep quiet of Blackarachnia, Soundwave hears the brass and steel of the Senate building shearing apart, right before it explodes.
The news feeds blame recent construction negligence. The less savory news feeds blame the Chelans. The city erupts.
Neither Prime condones reactionary violence. But neither Prime enacts strict punishments for such. Blackarachnia wraps herself in black webbing the day her tribal sister, Crystal Widow, is murdered. Soundwave attends the funeral. It is long and loud and even though he cannot fully understand spider-Chelan, his mind is sore with the cries of Blackarachnia's people.
Crystal Widow had two beloved companions. Ravage and Laserbeak cuddle into Blackarachnia's frame. Soundwave catches the spark of sentience in their minds, but they cannot speak Neocybex. No one has done any research on language mods for mini beasts. Even if they did, their vocalizers are unsuited for two-leg mouth-face language.
The mini beasts come to live with them. Soundwave learns Ravage's purrs and tail swishes the best he can. Laserbeak can replay short bursts of pre-recorded sound: she's very clear about her hunger when she plays local diner commercial jingles. They adapt quickly to Soundwave's quarters. They love reality shows. The only thing they love more than watching videos is Blackarachnia. At night she sleeps upside down in beast mode in her web, and they curl up on her belly.
Blackarachnia is close enough for Soundwave to still enjoy nocturnal silence, but he misses her sleeping beside him. He thinks of the first thing Blackarachnia ever told him. Keeper of lies and little lives.
“Inquiry,” he says over breakfast one morning.
Blackarachnia blinks blearily at him. She is not good at mornings.
“Keeper of little lives,” says Soundwave. He gestures to the mini beasts, drinking from their bowls. “Are they yours?”
“Yes,” says Blackarachnia. Her spider legs ruffle with approval. She is pleased Soundwave has figured this out. “They stay with Crystal Widow when I move in with you. We do not know if you would... like them.”
“I like them,” says Soundwave. “But I miss you. And... privacy.”
Blackarachnia nods. She hisses and growls at the mini beasts. They bob their heads.
From that day onwards there is a strict schedule. Soundwave gets Blackarachnia for two nights while they patrol outside, they cuddle with her in webbing for two nights, and for the last two nights of the cycle they all sleep together in the same berth. Soundwave orders a bigger berth.
Despite the bigger berth, Ravage manages to somehow take up 80% of the bed when they're in it. Neither Soundwave nor Blackarachnia has the spark to wake him up and move him, though.
Blackarachnia makes Soundwave a bed of webbing above his berth, extra reinforced for his unslender, unlithe body. Soundwave doesn't enjoy the slight sway of it. He grips it tightly. His own berth is not far, but he does not enjoy heights. Even little heights.
Blackarachnia teases him, prodding at his webbing with her leg tips. Then she transforms and snuggles up to him. The antennas on her body go flat and soft against his plating. She purrs into his frame. When they are comfortable and settled, Soundwave moves his fingers in a complex pattern. This is his facsimile of the movements of her legs. He requests permission to ask a personal question. She grants it by mirroring his movements.
“What happened to Eukaris?”
She tightens against him. Light plays along the gossamer threads of their bedding. “Volcano. The air is hot ash. No sun, all around Eukaris. Plants die. Little ones die. We die. We beg Chela to awaken. He is very old. He cannot awaken. The volcano quakes the earth. Lava touches his wings. He awakens. He is very old and very angry. We pack as many crystals and seeds as fills him. He only knows one place to go.”
“Cybertron.”
“Yes.”
South of Iacon, the barren plains are turning green. They sparkle in the sun like heaps of glass shards. Soundwave wonders what it means for the sky to turn gold and the ground to turn green. The antennas do not give him anything interesting to report to Blaster... until the day the electromagnetic evaluation turns to the living light spectrum and reports there are one million sparks inside the gold smudge.
There are people alive in there.
As soon as Soundwave grasps that thought, it pulls away from him. He stares at the data readout, head pounding, unseeing. The smudge. The lives.
The Senate already knows this. Did know this? Will have known this?
He's standing on the edge of the cliff, wavering in the wind. Iacon is far below. His spark spins tight and small in his chest.
“Jump!” screeches Laserbeak.
Soundwave startles awake. The command center is cool and dark, set to its nighttime lighting. He's standing, lips pressed against the wall, hands sore. He teeters back. He's holding the stump of a dull knife. Nesting square patterns are dug into the walls of the nexus command center. Deep. Soundwave's arms ache with the strength it took to carve them.
Clonk! Clickclickclick.
Something hits the front door.
Soundwave shakes.
Ravage lifts his head sleepily. “What was that? I've never heard that before.”
Soundwave doesn't respond. He knows he should run a diagnostic, or go check the door, or hit the emergency button that will sound an alarm in Blaster's shack at the base of the cliff. He does none of those things. He shakes all the way back to his berth. He lies down, still shaking, his frame clanging against the berth and his head aching.
Laserbeak jumps down and sits on his chest. She tilts her bird face into his and squawks, “Jump.”
To Megatron Prime's bitter consternation, Senator Shockwave is a steadfast supporter of the Chelans. He sends geologists and biologists to the plains and calls a special meeting to report their findings.
“The Chelans have introduced a wide variety of species to the land.” Senator Shockwave's affable voice fills the opera house serving as the temporary Senate chamber. It is the second largest round building in Iacon. “While the results are fascinating, you will all, no doubt, be most interested in hearing of the energon-producing crystalline plants. The plains have responded to these introduced species so well, I wonder if Chela took something with him when he departed for deep space. In its absence our land is barren, and with reintroduction, it flourishes. Protecting our Chelan brethren will only serve us. Let us invest in them now, that they will pay us back fairly in the future with the fruits of their labor and our land.”
Megatron frowns deeply. Optimus asks for the data pads. He looks over them, finials rising, as the Senators mutter and grumble.
“In light of this information, I hope you all will vote No on Megatron Prime's upcoming proposed legislation,” says Senator Shockwave. His voice is bright, but his countenance is grave. The legislation calls for removing the inalienable rights of Iaconian citizens currently being extended to the Chelans. Their habitation areas will be combined and concentrated. They must be escorted while in public. They will be required to use only Neocybex and conform to Iaconian traditions.
The opera house lights up with considering minds. Soundwave peers through them, hopeful. Megatron Prime's legislation appeals to many, but if Chelans can farm energon-producing plants, they will prove their worth and then some.
“Can these... crops... be grown in a lab?” asks Senator Starscream. The implication is loud and clear. An agreeable murmur goes around the room. Senator Shockwave deflates.
The tides of the minds flow inwards. Soundwave knows the Chelans have lost. He forces himself not to look at Blackarachnia.
They lie tangled in Soundwave's berth. Blackarachnia opens her eyes in waves. Soundwave cannot know her thoughts, of course, but her anxiety is clear in her field and her blinking biolights. She has been quiet since the Senate meeting. Instead of joining Soundwave for dinner, she poked and prodded at her inventions. She leans her face against his glass chest and says, “I ask a favor.”
“Yes?”
“The vote soon is dangerous. Megatron turns the tides. Iacon does not love Chelans. There are plans to remove us. You know this.”
Soundwave has seen the plans. He nods.
“Violence makes violence. Peace does nothing,” says Blackarachnia. She touches Soundwave's helm with the tips of her legs. “There is a gala the night before the vote. When all paths are impossible, Fateweavers weave their own fates.”
Soundwave knows she doesn't mean webbing.
The opera house swells with the prideful thoughts of celebrities and political greed. Guards stand at the exits, alert, guns primed. Crisp waiters in black paint expertly navigate the crowd, balancing triple refined energon cubes and fluted glasses of engex. The celebrities wear fashionable hardlight armor, falsely glittering, even in the deepest shadows. Senators and Chelan envoys wear ceremonial robes and jewelry. Blackarachnia and the other Fateweavers have iridescent spidersilk loops stuck to each leg, draped all over in sheeny gauze. The effect is of billowing clouds trailing behind them. Soundwave hears the silk swishing at Blackarachnia's feet and bunching in her elbows.
They do not enter together, of course, but casually-not-so-casually converge. Soundwave's processor relaxes as he steps into Blackarachnia's silence. Her eyes are lined with thick silver paint and tiny green gems. Matching gems dot the corners of her smile. Soundwave graphs the light in the gems and bows deeply. “You are stunning.”
Her legs flutter, sending the miles of silk rustling. She touches his offered hand, touches the rings of bismuth crystals he wears. Her eyes flit over his frame and settle on her own reflection in the polished glass of his chest. “I cannot look at you,” she says softly. She whispers something in spider-Chelan. Soundwave catches, “-so handsome that I could crawl beneath your clear carapace. I could drown in you.”
“I drawn in shew,” Soundwave repeats. His accent is horrible.
Blackarachnia takes a sharp breath. Her fingers flit against him once more. Static gathers in the corners of her eyes. She wipes it away. “It is brave to speak such,” she says. They both know she's not talking about his accent. “I go.” Her field clashes against his own with longing and fear. He nods. She slips away. The lovely silence is ripped apart by a thousand daggers of thought.
Soundwave catches Blaster in the corner, wavering on his feet. He's holding two empty glasses streaked with engex and reaching towards a waiter's tray. One antenna is up. One antenna is down. Their positions switch abruptly. Soundwave looks away.
The Primes arrive in gilded armor. They cross to their places of honor, parting their glittering attendees with handsome smiles and waves. The guards at the exits double. Every second of this night has been scheduled by Security. The guards' frame-mounted weapons click in their housings, ready to deploy at a moment's notice. Soundwave tallies these clicks with a sense of irony. There is no defense for what he is about to do.
Soundwave wanders to the center of the room. Two hundred minds buzz around him, snide and jealous and secretive. He feels the hurting words, the twisted glee, the anticipation for the vote tomorrow. Soundwave's tanks slosh. His lips have worried shallow indentations on the inside of his mask.
A waiter bumps into Soundwave. He ignores them. He is climbing into another place in his mind and turning his talent inside-out. His processor hums, then shakes, then thunders against his helm. He gasps and grabs the sides of his head. He rears back. Screams.
Everything goes black.
Clonk! Clonk! Clonkclonkclonkclonk!
Soundwave and the mini beasts look up from their energon. Hundreds and hundreds of things are colliding with the command center roof.
“It's raining!” shouts Ravage. He can barely be heard above the din.
It's louder than any rain Soundwave has ever heard. He opens the main entrance from a distance. Bismuth is falling, clinking and clonking and pinging, piling up on the flat walkway in great big, cornery drifts. Soundwave can hear it pinging inside the giant satellite dishes, bouncing off the curves. There are curious kssht sounds in between all the other noises, all those square crystals fitting into each other like data slugs into slots. Behind the iridescent precipitation, Iacon is dull, scarcely visible. Beyond that, the entire sky is gold.
Clonkclonkclonkclonk!
Soundwave's processor reels.
Ravage hunches, covering his audials with his front legs. Laserbeak swoops down from her perch and lands by the entrance. She cocks her head, studying the bismuth. A few pieces bounce into the command center. She pecks them.
Soundwave is about to hit the emergency button connecting him to Iacon, when a deep, metal-shearing sound quakes his frame from feet to helm. His processor triangulates all the sounds and does a lot of math and a bit of guessing. He grabs Ravage, tucks him against his body, and rolls. A satellite dish crashes through the ceiling and hits the floor with a tremendous CLANG!
Bismuth pours from the satellite. Bismuth pours from the sky. The command center steadily fills with miniature, multicolored staircases.
It's already knee-high by the time Soundwave gets himself to his feet. He runs for the door. Laserbeak is hopping around, wings tucked close so they don't get damaged. Soundwave snatches her up too and finds himself on the narrow ledge.
The metal rain is even louder out here. Beneath the golden sky, every chunk of bismuth flashes gold-tinted rainbows. Soundwave wades out to the edge, shielding his visor with one arm. The impacts don't hurt too badly, but they leave dents and scratches. Laserbeak huddles on his shoulder, pressed up against his neck. Ravage is heavy in his arms. No, not Ravage- the bismuth builds up on every available surface, including Soundwave's cradling arms. Soundwave shakes the excess off. He pushes forward. At least the stuff isn't slippery, like water or oil. The bismuth beneath his feet crunches and puzzles into itself, and he sinks down with each step.
Satellite dishes creak and fall and thunder down, blocking the exit pathways. Soundwave swears, whirls around. There's nowhere to go. He peers down at the city, expecting smoke and sirens and flashing lights.
There's no bismuth down there.
Soundwave spares a second to reset his eyes and looks again. He creeps up to the edge of the pathway.
Iacon is untouched.
Impossibly, the bismuth rains onto the cliffs alone.
Tink!
A crystal connects with Soundwave's visor. A crack appears, splitting his visuals. The sky is so, so gold.
Laserbeak nuzzles his neck. “Jump.”
There's nowhere left to go. Soundwave jumps.
Ravage prowls around the bed, stepping over Blackarachnia and Soundwave's intertwined limbs. Laserbeak hangs from the webbing above them, upside down. She chirps at Ravage. They seem to have picked up the deadly seriousness flooding through Blackarachnia's field.
“I ask a favor,” says Blackarachnia. “Your talent, turned outwards. A mind bomb.”
“Mind bomb?” repeats Soundwave.
“Push your ability outwards. Change their minds. Vote yes instead of no. Push them away from their hate, for all votes in the future. Senators and Primes don't speak Chelan: Fateweavers cannot weave their minds. But you can.”
Soundwave thinks of Blaster. His lines run cold. “That would destroy my short term memory banks. And probably my talent.” Soundwave touches the soft metal of her cheek. “I don't want to forget you. I don't want to lose our silence.”
“No, no.” Blackarachnia bites her lip. She recently learned what that means and enjoys doing it in front of him. “Fateweavers do this. You go someplace else while it happens.” She points to her ropy inventions crowding the shelves. “Cortical psychic connection. I guide you back slowly. You remember after. You return whole.”
“Where will I go?”
“Your favorite place.” Blackarachnia gestures at the window. The cliffs rise in the distance beyond Iacon. “Hide up there in your mind until the investigation is over. I am there after. You do not forget me, I promise. You do not see me, but I am there with you. I tell you when it is safe to return.”
“How will I know? If I forget you- how will I know?”
Blackarachnia traces nesting squares on his chest. Her eyes burn like green flames. “I give signs. Hide up there until the signs, then jump down into life again.”
“What will the signs be?”
Laserbeak trills. Ravage presses his cheek against Soundwave's face and purrs. The vibration shakes the finest filaments of his audials. The mini beasts' fields are hopeful and strong. Blackarachnia presses something against his palm. “This is the symbol of Fateweavers.”
It's a chunk of bismuth in hopper crystal form. Soundwave is about to ask, “Why?” when he looks up. Layers of iridescent webbing stretch above him, all the way to the ceiling. They're square-sided, joining the four corners of the room, nestled into each other. It's like looking up an inverted staircase: dizzying, every step gleams a different color. “Understood,” Soundwave says. He thinks of Blaster's distant eyes. He thinks of the Chelans and the Senators and the greening plains. Soundwave clutches the bismuth tightly. “I'll do it.”