Pain and Servitude

Chapter 21

The heady smell of stale energon was suffocating him. Blurr crept carefully along the vent, thinking about each movement before making it, being as silent as possible. He knew he was passing over the prison rooms now. He could tell by the faint sounds of metal against metal as someone collapsed heavily to the floor, the faint groans of pain and hiccuped sobs that made his spark clench in its casing with sympathy. These were civilians, innocent mechs who's only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or demanding justice for the captive decepticons. His tanks roiled with disgust and he shut down his audio receivers to the pitiful sounds of encompassing anguish, focusing instead on the mission ahead of him. He had to get to the archive section. Before they could plan any further, they needed all the information they could get on the condition of the Nemesis. Knowing that it was still operational wasn't enough. Making their way to the closest space bridge would take a lot of maneuvering, not to mention fuel. Would the Nemesis be able to get there? What about the weapons systems? They were probably offline, Blurr supposed. The matter was how difficult it would be to break the encryptions and get them into working order. The blue racer was no stranger to hacking, after serving as a spy for a few million years he became quite adept. But there was still the possibility that the encryptions would be far too complex for his abilities to be sufficient. There was always Soundwave, of course. But he'd seen just how unstable the mech was, how hurt, desperate, afraid. Right before he'd been snatched, the spy had managed to deploy Lazerbeak, releasing her to the stars, supposedly with instructions to warn what was left of Megatron's army scattered across the galaxy. That was for the best, Blurr realized that. There was no telling just how they'd have used the remaining minicon against Soundwave if she'd stayed. Maybe they would've tortured her, most likely she would've ended up dead. And the decepticon Third would not have been able to recover from that blow. But Primus, he was so vulnerable. Without his visor, his strength, his minicon, Soundwave was currently defenseless and all too aware of it.

Shaking his helm, Blurr finally came to a stop, cautiously feeling around the smooth surface of the vent for the latch and scanning for any life signals below. There were two guards outside the door of the room he was trying to get in, but thankfully no one inside. Just how the intelligence he'd managed to gather had said. Around this time the room was supposed to be vacant and would remain that way at least for a few cycles. Not that it was a good idea to hang around for too long though. After all, unexpected things happened often. The last thing he wanted was to be caught. Unlatching the small hatch, he dropped to the floor below, landing expertly and soundlessly on the elaborately designed surface. He grimaced at it for a second as he rose to his pedes. Pointless and arrogant decorations, being a practical mech, the blue racer found it difficult to appreciate such things.

Glancing minutely towards the doors, Blurr moved towards the terminal, plugging in and beginning his search, the pale blue light of the screen illuminating his form in the dark room. His cloaking device back from the war would hopefully mask his E.M field long enough for him to get in and out. The search was difficult, forcing him to bypass multiple encryptions to get to the information he needed and he grit his dentae in frustration. It would seem the council was even more paranoid than they'd thought. Well, for a good reason, they did have two cons and a few traitors on the loose after all. Huh, traitors. Blurr never would've thought that that term would someday be used to describe him. But the Autobot cause was not the same it used to be. The racer had always fought against tyranny, for the freedom of all. The caste system had disgusted him and he still remembered the many friends he'd lost because the higher castes were doing whatever the pit they wanted. He never wanted anyone to suffer like that again. And then the war began. Truth be told, he'd been reluctant to join the autobots at first, preferring to stay neutral in all that mess. But then Blurr had seen what the decepticons were doing and rage set itself aflame inside him anew. Megatron was a hypocrite. Saying that he was fighting against the council to establish equal rights for every cybertronian, regardless of build when in fact he was fighting to establish his tyranny. But then again, it was difficult to try and sort things out in war. Decepticons, autobots.. Both of these factions killed, tortured, crippled, destroyed. Either way you looked at it, the only thing that separated them were their goals. Except the autobots lied about their's. Or somewhere along the way became just as corrupted as the people they were fighting. Blurr believed it to be the latter. He liked to think that Optimus Prime started out good, genuinely battling for what was right. But they all forgot to see him as a mech, hadn't they? They all learned to see him as 'The Matrix Bearer' and not 'Orion Pax, the archivist' that he once was. For a long time Optimus played the role of the proverbial god that they all forced upon them. And surprisingly he'd held on to his sanity longer than most. But in the end he cracked just like any one of them would have.