[IDW] All the Queen's Treasure 02
Jan. 13th, 2020 04:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22Title: All the Queen’s Treasure
Continuity: IDW, Alternate Canon
Characters: Sunstreaker, Ironhide, Bob the Insecticon, Hardshell, Sharpshot, Kickback, Original Insecticon Character(s)
Pairings: Hardshell/Sunstreaker, Insecticon(s)/Sunstreaker, Hardshell/Sunstreaker/Sharpshot
Rating: M
Enticements: Consensual Body Modification, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Non-Graphic Oviposition, Off-screen Egg Laying, Knotting
Description: After Sideswipe, Sunstreaker returns to Cybertron, lost and alone, until Bob leads him on a wild chase into the wildlands, to a nest beneath the surface of the planet, and a place Sunstreaker might call home.
Part Two
And we three, my Queen, are yours.
The words echoed in Sunstreaker’s mind. They made him hunger for more information, even as he filed away the observations they’d already offered.
The Insecticon with two stripes was Sharpshot. Hardshell had three stripes. Would this Kickback have one stripe? Was it a seniority thing?
“I’m not your queen,” Sunstreaker pointed out.
Not yet at any rate. He hadn’t come out here looking for Insecticons. He’d come out here chasing just one. His bug. He didn’t intend to stay.
But there was something in the way Hardshell looked at him, in the way they all looked at him, and it piqued Sunstreaker’s curiosity. They tempted him.
Hardshell had called him perfect.
What did he have to lose? What had he really left behind? Back in a city of people he didn’t recognize. What would it hurt to see their offer? If they ate him, well, maybe he owed them that much. He certainly owed someone.
“Tempt me.” Sunstreaker lifted his chin, displaying a false bravado he’d perfected over the years. “Maybe I can be convinced.” If history had proven anything, Sunstreaker was pretty easy to tempt.
Just ask Starscream.
“Come.” Hardshell held out a massive hand, talons catching the occasional stream of light and gleaming wickedly. “I will show you the gift which could be yours.”
Sunstreaker stepped toward the offered hand before he caught himself. He tilted his head. “Gift,” he repeated. “It sounds more like a prison.”
A low, raspy noise rattled out of Hardshell’s chassis. Maybe it was a laugh. “Once you accept this offer, there will be no bars that can hold you, my queen.”
“I’m not your queen,” Sunstreaker insisted.
Another maybe-laugh bubbled out of Hardshell’s intake. It sent chills up Sunstreaker’s spinal strut. “We’ll see. Come.”
Hardshell stared at Sunstreaker. Expectant. Confident. His hand still offered, fingers curled slightly inward as if to keep the sharpness of his talons away. There was a tremble in his hand, however slight.
Sunstreaker added another adjective to the list.
Desperate.
He knew that look all too well.
He didn’t take Hardshell’s hand, but he nodded his assent. “Lead. I’ll follow.”
“This time only, my queen, will I be the one to lead.” Hardshell swept forward in a shallow bow.
It was hard not to be swayed by the deference in Hardshell’s tone. It sounded sincere.
A sharp thrill ran through Sunstreaker’s processor.
He used to dream about mech’s bowing to him, praising him, singing his designation to the stars. He used to fantasize about being important, recognized, worshiped even. And here Hardshell was, offering it to him.
Temptation cluttered around him, chittering and rustling and peering down with multiple optics. It was almost enough to forget that he was in an Insecticon Hive.
Bob bumped the back of his knees, chirring up at him.
“I know, I know. I’m going,” Sunstreaker muttered. He forced his feet into motion, swaying briefly when his vision swam and a stab of pain licked behind his optics.
How hard had he hit his head?
Sharpshot didn’t follow. He stayed behind, watching, and Sunstreaker felt the weight of the two-striped Insecticon’s gaze on him. He, like Hardshell, carried that same desperate hope.
Hardshell led, and Sunstreaker followed, Bob at his heels. The gathered Insecticons parted to make a path, their focused stares making Sunstreaker’s armor prickle and his defensive protocols throw up confused signals. Sunstreaker’s fingers itched to hold a blaster, but he’d lost his when he fell, and his secondary was mysteriously gone from his thigh compartment.
He dreaded to think of which Insecticon had pawed him in order to find and dispose of it.
Hardshell headed for one of the off-shoot tunnels, the ceiling low in comparison to Hardshell, but too high for Sunstreaker to touch. The tunnel was wide enough Sunstreaker could transform if he wanted. But the uneven ground and the fact he had no idea where the tunnels led or if there was even escape here, kept him from doing so. His undercarriage had suffered enough damage already.
His head still ached.
It occurred to him that he could be walking into a trap. Blindly following the predator deeper into his den. But Bob trundled happily alongside him, a skip in his steps, his optics bright in the way that meant he wasn’t worried at all. Sunstreaker had always trusted the bug’s instincts more than his own, recent and sudden flight into the wasteland notwithstanding.
Bob protected him. Always. If Bob wasn’t worried, why should he be?
Then again, Bob’s definition of ‘safe’ maybe didn’t coincide with Sunstreaker’s own, since Bob had brought him here in the first place. Though, Sunstreaker couldn’t be a queen if he was dead, so there was that.
One tunnel led to another, this one less oppressive and suffocating, less stuffed with Insecticons. They only clung to the ceiling here, and they were smaller in stature.Smaller even than Bob. They also seemed to be of a different type, less armored, with more limbs and thinner structures on their frames.
Sunstreaker had always assumed Bob was small because he was a runt, and that was why Sunstreaker had found him alone. There wasn’t a lot of information about Insecticons, and Perceptor had always agreed with Sunstreaker’s conclusions.
But if these Insecticons were smaller, maybe Sunstreaker was wrong. Or they were sparklings? Babies? Too soon to tell.
Maybe he could ask. Maybe Hardshell was chatty.
“You want me to be your queen,” Sunstreaker said, and kind of wished he were Prowl at the moment. That aft would know how to interrogate a Pit of a better than Sunstreaker did. He was a blunt force object to Prowl’s surgical precision. “Which means you don’t have one. Are you the leader then?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Hardshell’s vocals rumbled back to him. One hand made a vague gesture. “I guide. I am in a unique position. I am important in a way that is second only to our queen.”
Well, that wasn’t vague at all.
“So you’re what? A king? A prince?”
Hardshell paused and turned to look at Sunstreaker, his visor bleak and baleful in the dim of the tunnel. “Neither,” he said, mandibles twitching around his mouth. “The queen rules. The queen is primary. The queen has no equal.”
No equal.
Sunstreaker shivered, the words reverberating in his audials and through his processor. He didn’t desire power. That wasn’t his dream. But the worship, the adoration, the implied sovereignty...
It was so very tempting.
The tunnel widened into a mouth, which dumped them into a cavernous space, larger than any Sunstreaker had seen yet. The walls were honeycombed with deep depressions, optics and visors glowing from some but not all. The ceiling was webbed with some kind of substance that emitted a pale light. The floor was swept clean around raised projections that contained more of the honeycomb-like openings.
“Where are we?”
“Living quarters,” Hardshell said as he took the most central path. “Your warriors, your guardians, your foragers. All reside here. All are one.”
Sunstreaker frowned. “One what? One Hive?”
“One Hive. One Mind. One Purpose.” There was weight in Hardshell’s words. It sounded more like a chant. Like Rodimus’ propensity to throw ‘till all are one’ into every speech.
The hulk of Hardshell’s shoulders seemed to blot out all else in front of Sunstreaker. The rise of the lines of barracks dwarfed Sunstreaker as well. He felt small and insignificant, with even Bob no longer the smallest creature around.
They left one cavern of honeycombed holes and entered another, the hollowed out spaces less than half the size of the ones in the other cavern.
“More living spaces?” Sunstreaker asked.
“These are for the scouts, the feeders, the attendants, and the searchers.” Again, Hardshell paused, turning to face Sunstreaker. He gestured to Bob, who had planted his aft and tilted his head in that cute way he often did. “Like your companion.”
Sunstreaker’s orbital ridge drew downward. “Bob’s a runt.”
“He is the right size for his function. He seeks. He searches.” Hardshell lowered his hand, a low purr-rumble rolling out of his chassis. “And he has found.”
“Found what?”
Hardshell rattle-laughed. “You.”
Sunstreaker looked at his pet, his friend, and definitely not a runt. “He was looking for me?”
“Looking for someone like you,” Hardshell corrected as Bob popped back up and trundled toward Sunstreaker, patting his legs with his secondary, smaller hands.
He chirruped and his optics brightened in a grin, as they often did when he was trying to be cute and comfort Sunstreaker. His aft wiggled. He patted Sunstreaker’s knee again.
Sunstreaker crouched and ran a hand over Bob’s head, scratching between the Insecticon’s antennae as he did so. “You’ve always known, haven’t you?” he asked, not that he expected Bob to answer with words. “Is that why you stuck around?”
Bob’s head pushed into his hand and a rolling purr emerged from his chassis. His little hands rested on Sunstreaker’s knees, his ex-vents puffing against Sunstreaker’s frame. His field, as contained as it was, butted against Sunstreaker’s.
“It is not the only reason,” Hardshell said as Bob’s optics dimmed and he pressed hard against Sunstreaker, as if trying to climb into his lap. Which, while Bob was a runt in Sunstreaker’s optics, he was still too big to fit comfortably there. “Even without the crown, he will always be yours.”
Sunstreaker blinked and looked up at Hardshell. “What’s that mean?”
Hardshell’s gaze was almost fond as he looked at Bob. “If you refuse our offer, if you leave us to our fate, the little one will leave with you. He is yours.”
Leave them to their fate? Why did that sound so ominous? And little one? Hardshell seemed to avoid using the name Sunstreaker had given Bob.
He rubbed over Bob’s antennae again. “Bob’s not his name, is it?”
“It is now.”
But it wasn’t always. Maybe, if Sunstreaker could talk to Bob later, like Hardshell implied he would be able to, Sunstreaker could ask what Bob’s name was before Sunstreaker changed it. He owed Bob that much.
Sunstreaker gave Bob a final pet and stood up again. “All right,” he said. “What else do you have to show me?”
Hardshell couldn’t smile, not without it coming across as some sort of mandibular horror show, but there was something in his expression that signaled pleasure nonetheless. He gestured to Sunstreaker, hand open but fingers curled inward, talons hidden again. He treated Sunstreaker like a skittish mech, a lost youngling, prey surrounded by predators.
Well.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Come,” Hardshell said. “There is much to see.”
Sunstreaker followed, with less apprehension this time, and he wondered how that had happened. When he’d gone from outright wariness to a mild concern.
They left the living spaces and entered another tunnel, which didn’t look any different than all the others. Sunstreaker imagined himself getting lost down here, unable to find his bearings, endlessly roaming one corridor and another, only managing to go deeper, until he was forgotten by the world above.
If there even was a world up there. Sunstreaker had no idea where he was. His GPS was giving him an error message, and he didn’t know if it was because the system was in need of an update, or because it honestly had no idea. Or if there was something in the tunnels that interfered with his sensors.
“Why do you need a queen anyway?” Sunstreaker asked, and only once he spoke did he realize how much his vocals echoed. It was quieter here. The noise of the skittering and chattering and buzzing grew more distant. “You seem to be doing all right without one.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” Hardshell said. He didn’t turn to look at Sunstreaker, but the plating around his shoulders hunched. “What did you notice?”
“Huh?”
“As we passed through the living quarters.”
Sunstreaker’s frown deepened. He thought back. To the empty spaces, the hollowed places, the multiple optics staring back at him, and the places where there should have been frames, but weren’t. He thought about the horde of Insecticons crowding the cavern where he’d first awoken. He did the math.
What if all of those Insecticons were the entirety of the Hive?
He looked up at Hardshell, suddenly aware. “You’re dying.”
“Everything dies, and we are not the least of them.” Hardshell tipped his head, the buzz of his energy field so alien to Sunstreaker, as though it had living weight. “The Hive perishes without a queen. We are mistaken. We are hunted. We are dying. Soon, we will cease.”
Hunted.
A pang of guilt rang through Sunstreaker before he could stop it. He remembered how many of the Swarm he’d killed. He knew how ruthlessly every Cybertronian – Autobot and Decepticon alike – slaughtered the Insecticons. They were considered a terrible threat, and an abomination to be exterminated.
“The Swarm is a danger to Cybertron,” Sunstreaker said in a vain attempt to assuage his guilt.
Hardshell’s visor flashed before it dimmed flat. “We are not Swarm,” he said, and turned away from Sunstreaker, walking forward with measured steps. “The Swarm is an abomination,” Hardshell continued, his vocals guttural and angry. “A corruption of what we are. It is the failure of a mad mech who once believed he could manufacture a queen.”
Sunstreaker chewed on his bottom lip. “So… you’re not Swarm?”
“No.”
For the first time, Hardshell’s deference faltered. Where he’d been almost cordial, it vanished to a chilly distance.
Okay then. The Insecticons here had nothing to do with Shockwave’s Swarm. Good to know. And also, apparently, never bring up again.
“Good to know,” Sunstreaker said, and opted to drop the topic until maybe, it was less of a heated one.
They entered another tunnel, leaving the nearly-empty living quarters behind them. This tunnel became narrower and sloped downward. Quiet descended, until Sunstreaker only heard their footsteps crunching over the uneven surface. It was darker here, the glow of biolights and multiple optics left behind.
Sunstreaker’s sensors prickled. His cooling fans kicked on, and only then did Sunstreaker realize his gauges were registering an uptick in the ambient temperature. The further they descended, the more it continued to climb, and with it, the humidity level. The walls fairly glistened. The ground kept sticking to the bottom of his feet.
Bob had no trouble walking, and neither did Hardshell, as they shifted their weight to the more pointed areas of their feet. Sunstreaker, however, had difficulties.
Condensation gathered on Sunstreaker’s armor, collecting in his transformation seams and pooling in his joints. He shifted out of discomfort, his plating flaring to try and encourage airflow over his substructure.
“Primus, what do you have down here?” Sunstreaker demanded as his HUD lit up with temperature warnings. “A smelter’s pit?”
Hardshell chuckled. “Quite the opposite as a matter of fact.”
All right, so cryptic answers were still going to be a thing. Sunstreaker sighed and looked down at Bob, who still seemed to be unconcerned. If anything, the bug looked happy, like he was delighted to finally be around his own kind again.
The air started to feel as thick as sludge, and Sunstreaker fought to pull it through his vents. The slope of the corridor evened out. His feet sank into a dense, spongy layer of something. He wrinkled his nose. Gross. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see what it was.
There was an opening ahead, though instead of widening like the others, this one narrowed. Something fluttered from the ceiling, like fabric maybe or…
Nope. That was definitely webbing. A scent floated to his nasal sensors then, one he couldn’t quite identify. It was somehow sweet and sour and vaguely organic, and it reminded Sunstreaker of Earth, when he’d gotten lost and stumbled into the gross muck of a swamp. It had taken him hours – long hours spent resorting to the cold spray of a local car-wash – to get all of the gunk and insects out of his gears.
The prevalent silence was all the more obvious by the odd squelching noise of Sunstreaker’s footsteps. He ducked to avoid the overhanging webs, shuddering at the thought of it clinging to his armor, and stepped into another cavern, though this one had a very low ceiling and what appeared to be several wide, but shallow pits in the ground.
The pits were empty, but Sunstreaker had the feeling they weren’t supposed to be. The walls were very slick and a viscous substance dribbled down them, collecting into little pools on the floor. More webbing covered the ceiling, like a gossamer carpet.
Sunstreaker crouched near one of the pits. It was filled with a spongy substance, and webbing rested on top of it in geometric patterns. Nest, he felt, was the best word to describe it.
“This was the breeding ground,” Hardshell said, and though he spoke softly, the emptiness made his words echo. “It’s been so long since we had a queen that the last of the young have since become juveniles.”
Sunstreaker retracted his hand, rubbing his fingers together. They felt oily, and when he sniffed them, he caught a whiff of the organic odor.
“You can’t reproduce without a queen,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. He’d known that already, but he hadn’t known it. Seeing the empty nests, which probably should have been filled with eggs, gave him an odd pang in his spark chamber.
“We cannot,” Hardshell confirmed, an ache in his vocals, his visor dim as he looked over the empty creches.
Sunstreaker was needed, he realized. The nests were empty, for a long time if he had a guess. Their queen was dead. They’d yet to find another. Was it because they’d had no good candidates? Or because their candidates had all declined what needed to be a freely offered surrender?
“Why?” Sunstreaker asked.
Hardshell’s mandibles twitched. “That is the way we were made.”
By who? Or what? Which of the Primes did they trust? Which of the Thirteen could have given life to their bestial forms? Not that Sunstreaker believed in such sparkling tales. About the only deity he offered credence was Primus, and that unworthy was either dead or he didn’t care anymore.
Sunstreaker looked up. There were round, gauzy spheres of something tangled up in the thread-like webs strewn over the ceiling. They looked like cocoons.
“Those are the caretakers,” Hardshell said, probably tracing Sunstreaker’s gaze. “Right now, they are dormant, until there is young to care for. They wait, Sunstreaker, to serve their queen.”
Sunstreaker worked his intake. His mouth felt oddly dry.
Hardshell turned away from him, making hardly any noise despite the silence. “Come. There is much to see.”
Sunstreaker moved to follow. His feet felt like they were weighted down. He moved through sludge, and his thoughts spun around in circles. His fans sputtered. The heat suffocated him. Static danced in his visual feed.
“Sunstreaker?”
He swayed. “I’m fine,” Sunstreaker replied, but it slurred. He tried to repeat himself, his glossa feeling overly large and thick for his mouth. He tried another step and stumbled, catching himself at the last minute.
Dots danced in his visual feed. He sucked in a vent, but his fans creaked and whined.
Hardshell had turned toward him, his visor dim with concern. His mouth opened, but all Sunstreaker could hear was a low-pitched whine.
“I’m fine,” Sunstreaker repeated, and he felt his vocalizer glitch. His vision became a smear of shadows. He took another step.
Or at least he thought he did.
He never felt himself falling, just the darkness as it swallowed him whole.
***
Continuity: IDW, Alternate Canon
Characters: Sunstreaker, Ironhide, Bob the Insecticon, Hardshell, Sharpshot, Kickback, Original Insecticon Character(s)
Pairings: Hardshell/Sunstreaker, Insecticon(s)/Sunstreaker, Hardshell/Sunstreaker/Sharpshot
Rating: M
Enticements: Consensual Body Modification, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Non-Graphic Oviposition, Off-screen Egg Laying, Knotting
Description: After Sideswipe, Sunstreaker returns to Cybertron, lost and alone, until Bob leads him on a wild chase into the wildlands, to a nest beneath the surface of the planet, and a place Sunstreaker might call home.
And we three, my Queen, are yours.
The words echoed in Sunstreaker’s mind. They made him hunger for more information, even as he filed away the observations they’d already offered.
The Insecticon with two stripes was Sharpshot. Hardshell had three stripes. Would this Kickback have one stripe? Was it a seniority thing?
“I’m not your queen,” Sunstreaker pointed out.
Not yet at any rate. He hadn’t come out here looking for Insecticons. He’d come out here chasing just one. His bug. He didn’t intend to stay.
But there was something in the way Hardshell looked at him, in the way they all looked at him, and it piqued Sunstreaker’s curiosity. They tempted him.
Hardshell had called him perfect.
What did he have to lose? What had he really left behind? Back in a city of people he didn’t recognize. What would it hurt to see their offer? If they ate him, well, maybe he owed them that much. He certainly owed someone.
“Tempt me.” Sunstreaker lifted his chin, displaying a false bravado he’d perfected over the years. “Maybe I can be convinced.” If history had proven anything, Sunstreaker was pretty easy to tempt.
Just ask Starscream.
“Come.” Hardshell held out a massive hand, talons catching the occasional stream of light and gleaming wickedly. “I will show you the gift which could be yours.”
Sunstreaker stepped toward the offered hand before he caught himself. He tilted his head. “Gift,” he repeated. “It sounds more like a prison.”
A low, raspy noise rattled out of Hardshell’s chassis. Maybe it was a laugh. “Once you accept this offer, there will be no bars that can hold you, my queen.”
“I’m not your queen,” Sunstreaker insisted.
Another maybe-laugh bubbled out of Hardshell’s intake. It sent chills up Sunstreaker’s spinal strut. “We’ll see. Come.”
Hardshell stared at Sunstreaker. Expectant. Confident. His hand still offered, fingers curled slightly inward as if to keep the sharpness of his talons away. There was a tremble in his hand, however slight.
Sunstreaker added another adjective to the list.
Desperate.
He knew that look all too well.
He didn’t take Hardshell’s hand, but he nodded his assent. “Lead. I’ll follow.”
“This time only, my queen, will I be the one to lead.” Hardshell swept forward in a shallow bow.
It was hard not to be swayed by the deference in Hardshell’s tone. It sounded sincere.
A sharp thrill ran through Sunstreaker’s processor.
He used to dream about mech’s bowing to him, praising him, singing his designation to the stars. He used to fantasize about being important, recognized, worshiped even. And here Hardshell was, offering it to him.
Temptation cluttered around him, chittering and rustling and peering down with multiple optics. It was almost enough to forget that he was in an Insecticon Hive.
Bob bumped the back of his knees, chirring up at him.
“I know, I know. I’m going,” Sunstreaker muttered. He forced his feet into motion, swaying briefly when his vision swam and a stab of pain licked behind his optics.
How hard had he hit his head?
Sharpshot didn’t follow. He stayed behind, watching, and Sunstreaker felt the weight of the two-striped Insecticon’s gaze on him. He, like Hardshell, carried that same desperate hope.
Hardshell led, and Sunstreaker followed, Bob at his heels. The gathered Insecticons parted to make a path, their focused stares making Sunstreaker’s armor prickle and his defensive protocols throw up confused signals. Sunstreaker’s fingers itched to hold a blaster, but he’d lost his when he fell, and his secondary was mysteriously gone from his thigh compartment.
He dreaded to think of which Insecticon had pawed him in order to find and dispose of it.
Hardshell headed for one of the off-shoot tunnels, the ceiling low in comparison to Hardshell, but too high for Sunstreaker to touch. The tunnel was wide enough Sunstreaker could transform if he wanted. But the uneven ground and the fact he had no idea where the tunnels led or if there was even escape here, kept him from doing so. His undercarriage had suffered enough damage already.
His head still ached.
It occurred to him that he could be walking into a trap. Blindly following the predator deeper into his den. But Bob trundled happily alongside him, a skip in his steps, his optics bright in the way that meant he wasn’t worried at all. Sunstreaker had always trusted the bug’s instincts more than his own, recent and sudden flight into the wasteland notwithstanding.
Bob protected him. Always. If Bob wasn’t worried, why should he be?
Then again, Bob’s definition of ‘safe’ maybe didn’t coincide with Sunstreaker’s own, since Bob had brought him here in the first place. Though, Sunstreaker couldn’t be a queen if he was dead, so there was that.
One tunnel led to another, this one less oppressive and suffocating, less stuffed with Insecticons. They only clung to the ceiling here, and they were smaller in stature.Smaller even than Bob. They also seemed to be of a different type, less armored, with more limbs and thinner structures on their frames.
Sunstreaker had always assumed Bob was small because he was a runt, and that was why Sunstreaker had found him alone. There wasn’t a lot of information about Insecticons, and Perceptor had always agreed with Sunstreaker’s conclusions.
But if these Insecticons were smaller, maybe Sunstreaker was wrong. Or they were sparklings? Babies? Too soon to tell.
Maybe he could ask. Maybe Hardshell was chatty.
“You want me to be your queen,” Sunstreaker said, and kind of wished he were Prowl at the moment. That aft would know how to interrogate a Pit of a better than Sunstreaker did. He was a blunt force object to Prowl’s surgical precision. “Which means you don’t have one. Are you the leader then?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Hardshell’s vocals rumbled back to him. One hand made a vague gesture. “I guide. I am in a unique position. I am important in a way that is second only to our queen.”
Well, that wasn’t vague at all.
“So you’re what? A king? A prince?”
Hardshell paused and turned to look at Sunstreaker, his visor bleak and baleful in the dim of the tunnel. “Neither,” he said, mandibles twitching around his mouth. “The queen rules. The queen is primary. The queen has no equal.”
No equal.
Sunstreaker shivered, the words reverberating in his audials and through his processor. He didn’t desire power. That wasn’t his dream. But the worship, the adoration, the implied sovereignty...
It was so very tempting.
The tunnel widened into a mouth, which dumped them into a cavernous space, larger than any Sunstreaker had seen yet. The walls were honeycombed with deep depressions, optics and visors glowing from some but not all. The ceiling was webbed with some kind of substance that emitted a pale light. The floor was swept clean around raised projections that contained more of the honeycomb-like openings.
“Where are we?”
“Living quarters,” Hardshell said as he took the most central path. “Your warriors, your guardians, your foragers. All reside here. All are one.”
Sunstreaker frowned. “One what? One Hive?”
“One Hive. One Mind. One Purpose.” There was weight in Hardshell’s words. It sounded more like a chant. Like Rodimus’ propensity to throw ‘till all are one’ into every speech.
The hulk of Hardshell’s shoulders seemed to blot out all else in front of Sunstreaker. The rise of the lines of barracks dwarfed Sunstreaker as well. He felt small and insignificant, with even Bob no longer the smallest creature around.
They left one cavern of honeycombed holes and entered another, the hollowed out spaces less than half the size of the ones in the other cavern.
“More living spaces?” Sunstreaker asked.
“These are for the scouts, the feeders, the attendants, and the searchers.” Again, Hardshell paused, turning to face Sunstreaker. He gestured to Bob, who had planted his aft and tilted his head in that cute way he often did. “Like your companion.”
Sunstreaker’s orbital ridge drew downward. “Bob’s a runt.”
“He is the right size for his function. He seeks. He searches.” Hardshell lowered his hand, a low purr-rumble rolling out of his chassis. “And he has found.”
“Found what?”
Hardshell rattle-laughed. “You.”
Sunstreaker looked at his pet, his friend, and definitely not a runt. “He was looking for me?”
“Looking for someone like you,” Hardshell corrected as Bob popped back up and trundled toward Sunstreaker, patting his legs with his secondary, smaller hands.
He chirruped and his optics brightened in a grin, as they often did when he was trying to be cute and comfort Sunstreaker. His aft wiggled. He patted Sunstreaker’s knee again.
Sunstreaker crouched and ran a hand over Bob’s head, scratching between the Insecticon’s antennae as he did so. “You’ve always known, haven’t you?” he asked, not that he expected Bob to answer with words. “Is that why you stuck around?”
Bob’s head pushed into his hand and a rolling purr emerged from his chassis. His little hands rested on Sunstreaker’s knees, his ex-vents puffing against Sunstreaker’s frame. His field, as contained as it was, butted against Sunstreaker’s.
“It is not the only reason,” Hardshell said as Bob’s optics dimmed and he pressed hard against Sunstreaker, as if trying to climb into his lap. Which, while Bob was a runt in Sunstreaker’s optics, he was still too big to fit comfortably there. “Even without the crown, he will always be yours.”
Sunstreaker blinked and looked up at Hardshell. “What’s that mean?”
Hardshell’s gaze was almost fond as he looked at Bob. “If you refuse our offer, if you leave us to our fate, the little one will leave with you. He is yours.”
Leave them to their fate? Why did that sound so ominous? And little one? Hardshell seemed to avoid using the name Sunstreaker had given Bob.
He rubbed over Bob’s antennae again. “Bob’s not his name, is it?”
“It is now.”
But it wasn’t always. Maybe, if Sunstreaker could talk to Bob later, like Hardshell implied he would be able to, Sunstreaker could ask what Bob’s name was before Sunstreaker changed it. He owed Bob that much.
Sunstreaker gave Bob a final pet and stood up again. “All right,” he said. “What else do you have to show me?”
Hardshell couldn’t smile, not without it coming across as some sort of mandibular horror show, but there was something in his expression that signaled pleasure nonetheless. He gestured to Sunstreaker, hand open but fingers curled inward, talons hidden again. He treated Sunstreaker like a skittish mech, a lost youngling, prey surrounded by predators.
Well.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Come,” Hardshell said. “There is much to see.”
Sunstreaker followed, with less apprehension this time, and he wondered how that had happened. When he’d gone from outright wariness to a mild concern.
They left the living spaces and entered another tunnel, which didn’t look any different than all the others. Sunstreaker imagined himself getting lost down here, unable to find his bearings, endlessly roaming one corridor and another, only managing to go deeper, until he was forgotten by the world above.
If there even was a world up there. Sunstreaker had no idea where he was. His GPS was giving him an error message, and he didn’t know if it was because the system was in need of an update, or because it honestly had no idea. Or if there was something in the tunnels that interfered with his sensors.
“Why do you need a queen anyway?” Sunstreaker asked, and only once he spoke did he realize how much his vocals echoed. It was quieter here. The noise of the skittering and chattering and buzzing grew more distant. “You seem to be doing all right without one.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” Hardshell said. He didn’t turn to look at Sunstreaker, but the plating around his shoulders hunched. “What did you notice?”
“Huh?”
“As we passed through the living quarters.”
Sunstreaker’s frown deepened. He thought back. To the empty spaces, the hollowed places, the multiple optics staring back at him, and the places where there should have been frames, but weren’t. He thought about the horde of Insecticons crowding the cavern where he’d first awoken. He did the math.
What if all of those Insecticons were the entirety of the Hive?
He looked up at Hardshell, suddenly aware. “You’re dying.”
“Everything dies, and we are not the least of them.” Hardshell tipped his head, the buzz of his energy field so alien to Sunstreaker, as though it had living weight. “The Hive perishes without a queen. We are mistaken. We are hunted. We are dying. Soon, we will cease.”
Hunted.
A pang of guilt rang through Sunstreaker before he could stop it. He remembered how many of the Swarm he’d killed. He knew how ruthlessly every Cybertronian – Autobot and Decepticon alike – slaughtered the Insecticons. They were considered a terrible threat, and an abomination to be exterminated.
“The Swarm is a danger to Cybertron,” Sunstreaker said in a vain attempt to assuage his guilt.
Hardshell’s visor flashed before it dimmed flat. “We are not Swarm,” he said, and turned away from Sunstreaker, walking forward with measured steps. “The Swarm is an abomination,” Hardshell continued, his vocals guttural and angry. “A corruption of what we are. It is the failure of a mad mech who once believed he could manufacture a queen.”
Sunstreaker chewed on his bottom lip. “So… you’re not Swarm?”
“No.”
For the first time, Hardshell’s deference faltered. Where he’d been almost cordial, it vanished to a chilly distance.
Okay then. The Insecticons here had nothing to do with Shockwave’s Swarm. Good to know. And also, apparently, never bring up again.
“Good to know,” Sunstreaker said, and opted to drop the topic until maybe, it was less of a heated one.
They entered another tunnel, leaving the nearly-empty living quarters behind them. This tunnel became narrower and sloped downward. Quiet descended, until Sunstreaker only heard their footsteps crunching over the uneven surface. It was darker here, the glow of biolights and multiple optics left behind.
Sunstreaker’s sensors prickled. His cooling fans kicked on, and only then did Sunstreaker realize his gauges were registering an uptick in the ambient temperature. The further they descended, the more it continued to climb, and with it, the humidity level. The walls fairly glistened. The ground kept sticking to the bottom of his feet.
Bob had no trouble walking, and neither did Hardshell, as they shifted their weight to the more pointed areas of their feet. Sunstreaker, however, had difficulties.
Condensation gathered on Sunstreaker’s armor, collecting in his transformation seams and pooling in his joints. He shifted out of discomfort, his plating flaring to try and encourage airflow over his substructure.
“Primus, what do you have down here?” Sunstreaker demanded as his HUD lit up with temperature warnings. “A smelter’s pit?”
Hardshell chuckled. “Quite the opposite as a matter of fact.”
All right, so cryptic answers were still going to be a thing. Sunstreaker sighed and looked down at Bob, who still seemed to be unconcerned. If anything, the bug looked happy, like he was delighted to finally be around his own kind again.
The air started to feel as thick as sludge, and Sunstreaker fought to pull it through his vents. The slope of the corridor evened out. His feet sank into a dense, spongy layer of something. He wrinkled his nose. Gross. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see what it was.
There was an opening ahead, though instead of widening like the others, this one narrowed. Something fluttered from the ceiling, like fabric maybe or…
Nope. That was definitely webbing. A scent floated to his nasal sensors then, one he couldn’t quite identify. It was somehow sweet and sour and vaguely organic, and it reminded Sunstreaker of Earth, when he’d gotten lost and stumbled into the gross muck of a swamp. It had taken him hours – long hours spent resorting to the cold spray of a local car-wash – to get all of the gunk and insects out of his gears.
The prevalent silence was all the more obvious by the odd squelching noise of Sunstreaker’s footsteps. He ducked to avoid the overhanging webs, shuddering at the thought of it clinging to his armor, and stepped into another cavern, though this one had a very low ceiling and what appeared to be several wide, but shallow pits in the ground.
The pits were empty, but Sunstreaker had the feeling they weren’t supposed to be. The walls were very slick and a viscous substance dribbled down them, collecting into little pools on the floor. More webbing covered the ceiling, like a gossamer carpet.
Sunstreaker crouched near one of the pits. It was filled with a spongy substance, and webbing rested on top of it in geometric patterns. Nest, he felt, was the best word to describe it.
“This was the breeding ground,” Hardshell said, and though he spoke softly, the emptiness made his words echo. “It’s been so long since we had a queen that the last of the young have since become juveniles.”
Sunstreaker retracted his hand, rubbing his fingers together. They felt oily, and when he sniffed them, he caught a whiff of the organic odor.
“You can’t reproduce without a queen,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. He’d known that already, but he hadn’t known it. Seeing the empty nests, which probably should have been filled with eggs, gave him an odd pang in his spark chamber.
“We cannot,” Hardshell confirmed, an ache in his vocals, his visor dim as he looked over the empty creches.
Sunstreaker was needed, he realized. The nests were empty, for a long time if he had a guess. Their queen was dead. They’d yet to find another. Was it because they’d had no good candidates? Or because their candidates had all declined what needed to be a freely offered surrender?
“Why?” Sunstreaker asked.
Hardshell’s mandibles twitched. “That is the way we were made.”
By who? Or what? Which of the Primes did they trust? Which of the Thirteen could have given life to their bestial forms? Not that Sunstreaker believed in such sparkling tales. About the only deity he offered credence was Primus, and that unworthy was either dead or he didn’t care anymore.
Sunstreaker looked up. There were round, gauzy spheres of something tangled up in the thread-like webs strewn over the ceiling. They looked like cocoons.
“Those are the caretakers,” Hardshell said, probably tracing Sunstreaker’s gaze. “Right now, they are dormant, until there is young to care for. They wait, Sunstreaker, to serve their queen.”
Sunstreaker worked his intake. His mouth felt oddly dry.
Hardshell turned away from him, making hardly any noise despite the silence. “Come. There is much to see.”
Sunstreaker moved to follow. His feet felt like they were weighted down. He moved through sludge, and his thoughts spun around in circles. His fans sputtered. The heat suffocated him. Static danced in his visual feed.
“Sunstreaker?”
He swayed. “I’m fine,” Sunstreaker replied, but it slurred. He tried to repeat himself, his glossa feeling overly large and thick for his mouth. He tried another step and stumbled, catching himself at the last minute.
Dots danced in his visual feed. He sucked in a vent, but his fans creaked and whined.
Hardshell had turned toward him, his visor dim with concern. His mouth opened, but all Sunstreaker could hear was a low-pitched whine.
“I’m fine,” Sunstreaker repeated, and he felt his vocalizer glitch. His vision became a smear of shadows. He took another step.
Or at least he thought he did.
He never felt himself falling, just the darkness as it swallowed him whole.
