Christmas Shift. -- Starbase Rugby: Docking Bay

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Date Posted: 13:59:32 12/25/01 Tue
Author: Waldo Jones and Fox
Subject: Christmas Shift.

"Christmas shift at the Docks," grumbled Waldohead Jones. He and Fox had drawn the short straws from his Shift. Whilst they enjoyed their Staff Christmas Party they had the thankless job of running basic maintenance procedures. Fox was up head, ticking off a datapad of seemingly endless tasks.

"Item three-five-niner: secondary beacons need replacing on runway nine," drawled Fox, tapping the datapad with his fingernail. Iyatem three-fahve-nahnah.

Jones nodded, reached for the grips of his powered exosuit and toggled 'Safety', locking the joints into place as he jacked the drone-remote cable into his I/F neural plug.

The visors of three retrofitted Vehicon tankdrones lit as their engines fired up. After the Vehicon War many of the drones had been retrofitted for non-military purposes. Many were sold to help kick start the Cybertron economy, whilst others were put to use rebuilding the infrastructure of the Transformer home planet.

Those that found their way as far out as Rugby tended to be rejects or units exchanged as currency by visiting traders. The Docking Bay tankdrones had been refitted with multitool arms to replace the laser cannons and resprayed silver with black and yellow maintenance decals. The SBR logo had been stamped on their upper arms over the old Vehicon symbol, though the cutting saws had been deemed useful enough to leave intact.

There had been stories that some unmodified drones had been sold to mercenary groups, but as with most rumours no first hand proof had been discovered. Some drones had been reprogrammed with sophisticated AI routines giving a semblance of personality, but such rogue products were few and far between.

The Waldohead shivered as he interfaced with his 'team' of drones. His vision was split into four segments - a camera on his own lumbering exosuit that responded to his head movements, and the three perspectives of the ex-tank drones. It was always a strange sensation when his optive nerve was superceded by drone-remoting. Jones mentally issued orders to his three units and watched the three drone-perspectives begin to seperate.

DB.9.1 trundled over to the junction box for runway nine, tapped a release code and opened cover. The mechanical claw loomed into 1's view as it counted along to the secondary beacon switch and wretched it down.

DB.9.2 twitched, then rumbled over to the port back-up beacon. DB.9.3 transformed into 'tank' mode and towed over a component bin roughly twice it's size. 2's tool arm reached for the transmitter board to be replaced, detatch it and dropped it into the 'recycle' hopper in 3's trailer. It then selected the replacement and swiftly slotted and locked the board into place.

"Damn, man, you just keep getting better." Fox's voice sounded tiny in Jone's head, picked up by his exo's microphone. DB.9.1 turned from the junction box and executed a clunky bow in response.

Jones un-jacked from the waldo-link and piloted his bulky suit towards where Fox was standing whilst DB.9.2 and 3 moved their tag team repair job onto runway nine's starboard backup beacon.

Fox offered up a silver hipflask to Jones, who shook his head.

"Can't drink whilst waldoing."
"Regs? Come on, man, it's Christmas."
"The link goes... funky." Jones frowned. Something did not feel right, like an itch between the shoulder blades.

DB.9.2 finished replacing the starboard relay and rotated on its tracks to face the two human dock workers.

"Something..." breathed Jones, looking around. "I can hear something." A bead of sweat ran down his left temple. Fox looked up, his dark skin paling and his eyes widening.

"Lookout!" As Fox howled and ran for cover Jones looked up and saw a silently falling gantry descending towards him. He closed his eyes, for there was no way that his lumbering suit could move out of the way in time, nor would he be able to unstrap himself from his complex harness. He would have to rely on the frame of the exo-suit to protect him.

DB.9.2's visor flickered as it tilted up and scanned the falling pile of metal debris. It then revved up to first gear and tore across the Docking Bay floor towards the Waldohead and shoulder barged the armoured human aside, falling over and raising it's arm above it's face...

* * * *

Jones regained conciousness as a paramedic and dock workers cut him from his twisted exo-suit. Fox was babbling as an MD offered him a cup of hot chocolate mixed with sedative. Two Autobots were clearing the fallen gantry. Later it would be discovered that a botched welding job not long after the Wr@ invasion was responsible for the accident.

"What should we do with the drone?" asked one of the Autobots. The other glanced down at the smashed chassis of DB.9.2.

"It's a write-off."

Jones pulled himself out of the last harness and angrily strode over to the towering pair.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, prodding the nearest Autobot in the ankle.

"It's just a drone, human," said the second Autobot patiently. "It doesn't have a spark. The parts and time to repair it arn't justifiable."

"Your team mate told us how you used it to move yourself out of the way," said the other Autobot. "Kudos."

"Let me ask you something, tin butt. How could I have used it to move myself when I wasn't even plugged into the remote-link?" Fox looked up, mouth open.

"Th-That's right," said Fox. "He unplugged when I offered- when he came over to talk." The first Autobot looked at the paramedic and raised a chrome eyebrow.

"It's true - his neural interface was not active when my team cut him from the work-assist unit," confirmed the paramedic.

"You take that 'write-off' and you fix him!" shouted Jones, his eyes narrowing. The two Autobots actually backed off a step or two.

"Okay, it's done. Come on Axel, let's get it... ah, him down to Medlabs."

The two Autobots unfolded up a hover-stretcher loaded the chassis of DB.9.2 and took it down to the Medlabs.

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It drifted in, keeping to the shadows. -- Errant Metroid, 19:46:52 12/29/01 Sat