Chapter One
- Extradition

Please note that this fanfiction contains spoilers for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

McGuire Air Force Base
New Jersey
15:45 HRS

Null target nomenclature: Optimus Prime -- revise location. Soundwave transmits to Megatron and Starscream. Recommend appropriate Decepticon action as all Autobots separate across the planet. Decepticons, mobilise!

----

“You’re being deported.”

Ironhide’s mechanical face was twisted into a disgusted grimace, cannons afire with a magma combustion. Ratchet knew that he couldn’t look much better, and there was plenty of reason for it. For once, he couldn’t even blame the younger ones for looking so angry and aggressive. All three of Arcee’s forms were poised for imminent battle; Sideswipe’s doppelganger blades gleamed under the afternoon sun; Jolt stood behind him with his weapons activated, electric whips sparking a dangerous, lightning-like cobalt.

All weapons activated. All weapons online.

All weapons turned on . . . humans.

Surrounded by a convoy of Air Force security vehicles, all of which had heavy machine guns elevated and fully equipped to fire, the Autobots had activated their own weaponry on primal instinct. In a war, a raised gun meant a potential attack, just as it did in peacetime. Self-defence was an art they had learned almost effortlessly after millions of years’ worth of warfare.

Their leader had been dumped in an unceremonious heap by two Chinook helicopters. They had been unable to take his enormous weight with the elegance or poise necessary for such a delicate operation: unexpected blasts of air and the last Prime’s enormous bulk had been too much for the pilots, and they had been forced to drop him as a massive, graceless heap of what could very easily have been vibrantly painted scrap metal. Even as they had watched in horror and moved to go to him, however, they had been set upon by the human military.

“Deported?” The aged warrior sounded sickened by what they had been told. “How dareyou raise your weapons against me? How dare you tell me where I will and will not go, you pompous little leech?”

National security advisor Theodore Galloway looked supremely unconcerned by the seven angry, hostile Autobots that stood before him. His wilting, light brown eyes held almost no emotion; it was the antithesis of the untamed rage in Ironhide’s optical sensors. Ratchet could feel the sneer curling his mouth plates. He had started to develop a disquieting hatred for this man.

“This NEST team is deactivated.” Galloway surveyed them with a small, complacent smirk. “From this moment on you are to cease all anti-Decepticon operations forthwith. Further orders are about to be issued.”

“You cannot banish us wherever you please!” Arcee argued from her blue form.

Sideswipe growled his accord. “We are not goin’ anywhere without Optimus.”

Galloway’s thin lips thinned even further, making him look virtually lipless -- and several times less aesthetically pleasing than he had been before -- but he seemed to resist the urge to order an outright nuclear attack on the audacious Autobot. “No need to be like that, Sidesweep. We’re still giving you asylum on this planet, and that’s more than I’d like to give you.”

“It’s Sideswipe, idiot.”

Major Will Lennox stood at Ironhide’s feet, one hand resting on the livid warrior’s gargantuan foot. “I really don’t think this is one of President Obama’s greatest plans, Director.”

“Well, congratulations on that little thought of yours, Major. Does your opinion count?”

“I’d like to think so,” Lennox retorted, “seeing as this is America.”

“Yeah . . . Land of the Free, my tight ass,” came the muttered addition from tech sergeant Epps, who had wedged himself between Jolt and Sideswipe’s feet in a way that seemed rather brotherly to Ratchet. His admiration for the man swelled. “This is bullshit, man. We’ve shed blood, sweat and precious oil together; taken bullets together; worked together to protect this planet from being taken over by bad guys . . . and you’re just gonna ship ‘em off to be used as your cute little paper boys. And girls,” he added swiftly, noticing how all three of Arcee’s heads turned towards him with identically testy glares. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

“Paper boys?” Jolt put in, looking perplexed.

The soldier gave Galloway a piercing look. “Gonna tell ‘em, Galloway?”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Galloway responded, ever pretentious.

“Then you had better hurry up and talk, human.” Ironhide looked ready to slaughter something, and his voice was a dangerous, low-pitched rumble from his chest cavity. It made heads vibrate and fillings rattle at all angles, but he appeared not to notice. “If you intend to extradite us, we would like to know where, exactly, you plan on sending us.”

“Not that we’ll go quietly,” Sideswipe warned.

“Or willingly,” Arcee’s electric-pink component interjected.

Ratchet noted with interest that all of his comrades were using the pronouns us and we rather than speaking for themselves, and a great relief descended upon his tightened spark. Today had been a shock for all of them -- being suddenly banished away from and scorned by the very government they had been working with -- but he took enormous comfort in the fact that their amity and camaraderie remained strong and unbreakable, even in the absence of basic justice. He looked down at Galloway, who caught his optic and glowered from behind his spectacles.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“I beg your pardon?” Ratchet demanded, outraged by his disrespectful tone. He was millions of years this human’s senior, yet was being spoken to like an insolent sparkling. “I sincerely hope that you are not ad --”

“Good. I’ll take that as a no.” Galloway’s smirk trailed up one side of his face in such a way that made a complex threading of lines crease his cheeks, and Ratchet had to marvel at how astoundingly unprepossessing he was. He might have been an interest to Cybertronian scientists. “Now, listen up, ladies. You’re all being sent to different places to carry out a number of classified missions for the US government. This is, of course, a united effort that will be of enormous help to the rest of NEST,” he added patronisingly, still smirking.

Jolt’s stingers crackled with indignation. “There is no NEST without us! It stands for Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers, if you recall -- where will the Transformers come in if you extricate us from the organisation?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Would you just tell us where you’re sending them?” Lennox almost shouted, his tan face reddened by frustration. “Whatever happens, they’re not going anywhere without a human NEST operative, so you’d better spit it out before I --”

“If you value your career, then I wouldn’t finish that sentence, Major.”

Lennox fell silent, but his features remained sourly knotted.

Galloway cleared his throat and continued as if nothing had happened. “Right. We’ve got a lot happening, trying to handle your war, as I’m sure you can imagine.” Galloway flexed his long, spidery fingers on his elbows. “There are certain people we need to aid us in getting the upper hand against your so-called Fallen, and certain things that need to be done before we can get any sleep in the White House tonight. We’ve just had an unsettling report from a female tourist in Sharm el-Sheikh, and I’m not in the mood for whining.”

Sideswipe looked blank. “Sharm el-Sheikh? Never heard of it.”

“Great. I’ll come back to that; I’m doing this in the order I want to, Sidesweep.” Ignoring the icy glower he received, Galloway consulted a list. “Right . . . which one of you is . . . Ratchet?”

“I am,” the medic said stiffly.

The human looked up, one eyebrow cocked. “Huh. You guys have the most fascinating names, don’t you?” Ignoring Ratchet’s nasty look in return, he glanced back down at his clipboard and tapped a black fountain pen against it. “You’re auspicious enough to be going on a nice little pre-paid aeroplane trip, my friend. All the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Courtesy of President Obama.”

There was an immediate murmur from the others.

Ratchet squared his shoulders proudly, denta gritted. “I see.”

“Pardon my interruption, Director Galloway . . . but I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of Ratchet being so far away from the rest of us,” Arcee’s purple manifestation remarked tensely. “He is, after all, our only medical officer. There would be little we could do if one of us was injured elsewhere, especially as no other human or Cybertronian on Earth is capable of understanding our anatomy. Could one of us not be sent across this ocean of which you speak? I would be happy to volunteer.”

“No can do.”

“Peace, Arcee. I will do, of course, as I am instructed by my superiors,” Ratchet said haughtily, though the violet femme still looked doubtful. “Where precisely will I be going, sir?”

Sarcasm dripped from his erudite baritone. Ironhide looked as if he might grin, in spite of his anger, and all three Arcee components tittered. Galloway bristled and fixed his attention on his clipboard, ignoring them.

“You’ll be heading down to the University of Oxford -- that’s in England,” he added, as if Ratchet could not access the World Wide Web and find out perfectly well for himself. “That’s the best college there; Ivy League sorta standard, if you aliens know where I’m coming from.” He squinted up at Ratchet, past the sun’s heated glare. “Specifically, you’re after a kid named Rosalie Brennan, who’s studying at St. Anne’s College. Find her, and not only will we continue to give you asylum on our planet, but you’ll be my new best buddy.”

“I can hardly contain my excitement,” Ratchet said dryly.

“Why does he need to find a kid?” Jolt asked, faceplates pulled into a frown. “We’re not dragging kids into this.”

Galloway rolled his eyes. “Whatever. She’s, what, twenty-one? Adult. Don’t be so pernickety, Sparky. You’ve dragged the whole planet into it – if not for you, Brennan could be left to swot up in peace.”

“Watch your mouth,” Ironhide rumbled, optics sharp with an unspoken threat.

“If you don’t watch yours, you’ll find that you no longer have a home on this world,” Galloway snapped, though sweat beaded on his brow as Ironhide’s plasma cannon sprung back to life. “These missions are being done in exchange for sustained asylum, you bunch of Martian leeches! You don’t complete the mission? We throw you off the planet! Don’t think I won’t order a rail gun attack on any ‘bot that returns empty-handed. I will,” he breathed heavily, spectacles awry. “As the President says . . . this is a time for change.”

Sideswipe cocked an optic ridge. “You certainly are loyal to your President.”

“Lugnut,” Jolt muttered under his breath, prompting a string of snickers from both mechs.

/Be quiet/ the Autobot medic hissed across the radio connection, and they both grinned slightly. /You two had better stop smirking and focus on what is happening. We are all being separated in exchange for refuge./

/We do have audio receptors, Doc/ Sideswipe informed him gravely.

/Good. At least you have those; you seem to have little else in that processor of yours./

“Pay attention, wieners!” Galloway barked, interrupting their wordless exchange. “Do you want to know where you’re all going, or would you rather it be a nice little surprise in the morning?”

“Apologies, Director,” was Ratchet’s stiff reply. “Do enlighten me further.”

“You’ll be travelling with Captain Bracewell over here,” the man continued brusquely. The British transfer soldier raised an eyebrow at Ratchet, who returned the facial gesture. “You’ve got three days to get over to that college, grab the girl – haul her in by her hair, if you have to – and get her back to this operations base. No excuses; no whining; just do it.”

“Great,” Bracewell bit out. “A lawful abduction, then?”

“My sentiments exactly, Graham,” Ratchet muttered.

At least he was travelling with a human of character and honour, Ratchet supposed with relief. He and Graham Bracewell had become firm friends after a few weeks of working together in NEST, rather like Lennox had befriended and bonded with Ironhide. Bracewell had been the medic’s primary partner throughout the majority of the missions he had attended, though he tended to remain on call at the base. He was a strong, capable soldier with good principles and an open mind, all of which were qualities that Ratchet greatly admired.

“Now, a few of you are lucky enough to be travelling as a team,” their tormentor droned on. “Ironhide, Arcee -- all three of you -- and Jolt; you’ll be going all the way to Africa, along with Major Lennox, First Lieutenant Lovett and Sergeant Figueroa.”

Sergeant Leiana Figueroa was the daughter of one of Major Lennox’s deceased comrades, ACWO Jorge Figueroa, who had been murdered by Scorponok in the first battle against the Decepticons on Earth. She was a feisty, independent and frequently aggressive young Latina that had worked for NEST since coming of age. Though Ratchet had initially found her to be a little too loud-mouthed and brash for the sort of work they were doing, she was excellent at her job, especially given her age. The men called her “little sister” as a term of endearment, and though she pretended not to like it, the medic could sense that she loved working with her dead father’s closest friends.

Figueroa herself glowered at Galloway from where she stood with two other human members of their NEST division: First Lieutenant Virgil Lovett and Staff Sergeant Nicholas Kelly.

“Why Africa?” she asked harshly.

“Interesting question, Sergeant. The call originated from Petra, the archaeological wonder in Jordan,” Galloway informed her, just as curtly, and Ratchet could have sworn that his eyes flicked to the girl’s upper body for a moment. “Looks like we might have a bit of Deception activity there. You’ll be suppressing it, but under my orders, following my rules, and using my methods.”

“Who are you to make the rules?” Lovett snapped. He was an edgy man of twenty-seven, with little interest in anything but hammering cold steel into Decepticon alloy. “We take orders from Chairman Morshower.”

“Well, how about you take this National Security Directive and pull it outta your ass, Lovett?” The director flourished a piece of featureless paperwork at the taller man, who glared down at it with a curled lip whilst flexing his impressive muscles, perhaps to intimidate the papers out of his way. “Morshower may be the head of the JCS, but this is from President Obama. It’s on official stationery with his official signature. I have operational command now; is that clear, Lieutenant?”

“Robert’s right,” came the retort. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Galloway cut across him. “Oh, but I do. We’re on the verge of complete national panic. This is extraterrestrial bad blood, and it’s spreading across the globe like swine flu. Now we’ve got Parisian communiqués coming in.”

Nicholas Kelly narrowed his hoarfrost eyes. “We are dealing with the French.”

“No, Sergeant -- we are dealing with the French!” was the snooty rectification. “You are a bad miscellany of rejects and refugees that are putting our entire world at risk with your half-baked strategies and improvisation in the field! America will win this war as it always has: with a coordinated military strategy.” Epps’s cough sounded very much like Vietnam, but it could have been Ratchet’s audio receptors deceiving him. “We’re going to negotiate with this . . . Fallen . . . whilst you carry out the necessary errands.”

“You never did finish telling us what we’d be doing for you, Galloway,” Sideswipe pointed out. “I’m itching to know what I’ll be doing. Should I go to Washington and kiss the President’s aft for you?”

“Sideswipe!”

Galloway looked as if he might set down his documents and stamp on them all in outrage.

“No,” he almost exploded. “You have a special mission.”

Small optics narrowed. “What kind of special mission?”

“Search and recover.” The angry glare slowly mitigated into yet another self-satisfied sneer. “You’ll note that I haven’t mentioned the Witwicky kid yet. You are going to be the one to find him and take him to Diego Garcia, where he’ll be videotaped, photographed and analysed. We’ll present the footage to your Fallen and see if we can buy ourselves a little time through diplomacy. If he doesn’t respond to blackmail -- which, I suppose I’m about to be told, he won’t -- then we’ll have to hand little Witwicky over.”

“We are not handing Sam Witwicky to the Fallen!” Ironhide roared, finally losing his temper. “There are things in that child’s mind that would enable a Decepticon invasion of the entire universe, let alone Earth!”

“And no way in the Pit am I going to be the one to hand him over!” Sideswipe protested.

“You will all follow orders to the letter, or we are going to have a problem!” Galloway snatched up his papers and brandished them in the seven mechanical faces again. “Stand down!”

They all quietened, but reluctantly. Sergeant Figueroa looked as if she might throw a punch at the director, as did Lovett, but Kelly remained almost robotic in his cold approach. Lennox and Epps looked equally ill at ease. Ratchet’s mood steered more towards that of the latter pair. Even a processor as wise and systematic as his was struggling to absorb all that was happening; it was all too fast and too sudden. NEST had been a new home, a new way of life to throw themselves into . . . and now, once again, they were being forced back into a nomadic existence. A nomadic existence that they all feared, somewhere in the deepest depths of their sparks.

“Ironhide,” he murmured, “perhaps we should leave this world.”

The Chief Medical Officer had no wish to leave the planet they had found a temporary home on. Over the years, he had come to appreciate Earth: its lush, fertile land; its spectacular sunsets, and the dawns that stained the sky with colours wilder than those seen in a supernova; the first-rate examples of humankind they had befriended; the general sense of comfort and belonging he had taken from the planet. But now . . . seeing as the President was keen for them to go . . . perhaps it would be easier to obey.

The human NEST members looked aghast, and even Galloway appeared shocked by his soft suggestion. The battle-scarred Autobot, however, grunted diffidently and shook his head.

“It’s not what Prime would’ve wanted, Ratch’.”

Ratchet lowered his optics.

/Right again, old friend./

/I agree with you on leaving/ Ironhide reassured him gruffly. His one working optic shifted to the mass of metal and wheels that had once been Optimus Prime. /But . . . we have to follow Prime’s directive. We owe him that much./

/To be sure./

Figueroa folded her toned, well-tanned forearms, which drew Lovett’s eye like a moth to a flame. “So let’s go over this one more time,” she suggested to Galloway, her Californian accent strong and influential in the silence. “Ratchet and Graham are headed for England; I’m with Will, Ironhide, Arcee, Virgil and Jolt in Jordan; Sideswipe’s getting this Witwicky kid . . . and Bobby and Nick?”

“The Master Sergeant will be travelling with Sideswipe,” Galloway groused. “Staff Sergeant Kelly will be returning to Diego Garcia to rendezvous with Chairman Morshower. Unfortunately, we need some NEST intelligence on the active Decepticons.”

Kelly pursed his lips. “Unfortunately ain’t even the word for it.”

“You’re askin’ me to betray Sam,” Epps muttered. “I . . . don’t think I can do that, Director.”

“You’ll have to.” Galloway’s uneven teeth were allowed a touch of sunlight as his smirk cracked into a faux sympathetic grin. “Protocol is protocol, Master Sergeant. I have my orders; you have yours.”

“This ain’t protocol, man. This is pure, lowlife treachery.”

“Then treachery is what will win this war.” The sagging brown eyes looked into the stronger, darker, more pronounced ones for a moment, then flicked back to where the overwrought Lennox was hanging his head at Ironhide’s feet. “Get your ‘assets’ on their way to the other continents, Major. We’ll be getting rid of that scrap metal,” he added derisively, eyeing the corpse of Optimus Prime. “Your medic can take a look at him once he hands Rosalie Brennan over to the US ambassador in London.”

Lennox raised his head to frown. “He’s more than scrap metal.”

Having experienced such opposition to his decrees many times in the past -- and at the hands of many more eloquent challengers than William Lennox -- Galloway merely shrugged and turned to where his Jeep awaited him. “Go home and argue that to your wife, Major. You’d better kiss your daughter goodbye for a few weeks whilst you’re there.”

Ratchet had heard and seen quite enough. Whilst Lennox looked as if he might follow Figueroa’s example and punch his fist behind Galloway’s unsuspecting back, the medic caught the director’s attention with a quick flash of his circular headlights.

“Incidentally, Director Galloway . . . I would like to inform you, as a farewell piece of advice from an ally, that you have the most bizarrely shaped and asymmetrical chin that I have ever seen on a human being of your gender,” the Autobot stated nonchalantly, just as he initiated his transformation to Hummer mode. “Plastic surgery is highly recommended; I am sure your extensive salary will allow you that luxury. Good day to you, and I look forward to seeing your facial adjustments upon my return.”

Galloway glowered.

“NEST,” he muttered to himself wittily as the formation of Autobots blazed towards their leader’s body, hands tucked into his pockets haughtily. “Nobody Even . . . Salutes Them . . .”

At his side, a security officer named Mike shook his head.

Some people just didn’t have it.

Author’s Note: Just to clear things up for you -- this story takes place during Revenge of the Fallen. Essentially, it’s a different take on what happens during and after the ‘arrest’ scene; in the movie, the Autobots were shipped back to Diego Garcia, but in this fanfiction, they are sent around the world instead. I thought it would be an interesting idea to have them do missions for the government in exchange for continued asylum.

Leiana Figueroa is adapted from Leiana Grey, who belongs to Ninjalala. As you can see, I’m reworking a couple of well-known original characters for this fanfiction; I can’t resist playing with different interpretations. ;] Rosalie Brennan, Virgil Lovett and all other characters not in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen belong to me.