Chapter Text
The last thing Prowl needed today was a meeting with an alien.
At least he knew it was coming. That was something he could appreciate about these particular aliens--they believed in following clock time, even if it was the wrong clock.
He was trying to get his work done in advance. It was ultimately a futile endeavor, because they still hadn't reinstated interplanetary contact and trying to track the progress of the war on this planet was useless as a shallow tread on the outside terrain. There was no kind of effective centralization of information on this planet at all. The natives kept all their information on paper or physical punch cards. Sky Spy could only pick up so much data at once even at its highest speed orbit. Powerglide and Tracks, their only lucid flyers, weren't even allowed over some regions of the planet because the humans didn't want them there. They weren't allied with the Decepticons. They just didn't like the idea of Cybertronians overhead. Optimus was going along with it, because of course he was.
Well. Prowl couldn't actually blame him for that. The humans were puny but there were billions of them, and unlike the Decepticons, the Autobots could not depart en masse from the steaming heap of mud that still swallowed up half the Ark.
As if it heard him thinking about it, the mountain chose that moment to rumble. The update from Beachcomber appeared eight astroseconds later, assuring them all that this was the result of debris dislodging from the northeast side, not the harbinger of another true eruption.
Prowl tried to let go of eight astroseconds worth of panic-induced emergency fuel deployment, collected the manual adding machine he'd been forced to resort to for note taking, and left his office to go meet with an alien.
The Federal Coordinating Officer for disaster relief efforts arrived punctually, for an alien. He was driving one of the humans’ alt mode substitutes, the same kind Hound had adopted, a four wheeler unique in its capacity to run all its wheels directly from the engine. Another of this planet’s charming quirks was front-wheel drive. Prowl was stuck with it after his own rebuild until Ratchet had the spare time to map out and find parts for an alternative schematic.
The humans had put down broken rock as a crude road-paving measure. Supposedly they would manage actual asphalt paving, eventually, when the mountain was quieter (dormant, they called it, like a thing that lived and thought and consumed—Prowl had not decided yet if this was a preferable way to think about it). Prowl was not prioritizing the road paving. He had more urgent projects and less than zero desire to add to the weight of the mountain.
One of those urgent projects required the assistance of the Federal Coordinating Officer, which was why Prowl had agreed to this meeting. He wanted to stay on the human’s good side.
They greeted each other with polite phrases that did not acknowledge how much neither of them really wanted to be out on an ash-covered mountainside under a crudely erected tent. In the absence of communicable electrical signals, these humans had developed all kinds of little intricate greeting rituals for recognizing fellow sapients. Some of the Autobots thought it was fascinating. Prowl could admit it wasn’t uninteresting or even unimportant to figure out the nuances of communication among the species that controlled this planet’s vital resources, but it simply wasn’t a priority right now.
“Why did you want to meet?” Prowl asked, once the human had provided an update on road conditions and they had each provided a complaint about the lingering ash.
“Well, we’ve got a bit of a budget problem,” the officer admitted, scratching at the mask that kept his internal environment free of particulate. “It’s the mudflow in the waterways. The Columbia’s finally cleared up, and we’ve got shipping going again, but the three local ones are still clogged. The engineers finally got their estimate back to me for long-term dredging, and with conventional techniques, it’s going to be upwards of 200 million dollars. Our funding is less than 30 million. Congress is fighting out the appropriations now but if we don’t get the blockage cleared, we’re looking at some serious flood damage come the fall when the water tries to come through.” He flipped his hands out, palms up. “I got three different agencies giving me three different estimates and I haven’t locked them in a room yet to make them agree, but none of them look good. Figured we could use some serious help if we want to keep the fallout from this whole mess from going any further. Otherwise the fall’s going to drive a lot of people out of their homes. And, well. You all are a lot bigger than us. You’ve already cleared a pretty good chunk of the mudflow up here to get the roads going and your doors open. Now, I can’t promise anything, but it seems like helping us move some mud and clear the rivers sooner would be a solid goodwill gesture for the people around here who are still pretty panicky.”
Prowl listened to this proposal in increasingly frustrated bafflement. It made even less sense than the humans usually did. Prowl had begun studying human history, in order. Texts on the civilizations of the Nile and the Tigris and the Euphrates had made it clear flood festivals had been important for ensuring good harvests for millennia, but surely their agricultural infrastructure had overcome that by now. “I can take this proposal to my Prime, but the answer is likely no.” Because Prowl would tell him not to do it. “As you have noticed, we have cleared a pretty good chunk of the mudflow, but the vast majority of our spaceship is still buried under sediment. Our work on this is only further delayed by our attempts to surveil the Decepticons—” this human had nothing to do with the flyover restrictions and there was no point yelling at him about it. Extensively. “—and those of your fellow humans who don’t believe we should be here in the first place. The mountain could potentially erupt again at any moment and destroy what little we have managed to achieve here. You have said yourself that this eruption is an unprecedented event within your procedures. Inform your superiors that celebrating this water-moving festival will not be possible this year. If they object, send them to me and I will inform them that next year’s harvest will have to be managed with or without the blessing. If transporting that much water is not feasible in the given timeline, the liquid will just have to wait.”
He was clenching his adding machine very tightly by the end of this. The human was silent for a minute. In the distance, another rockslide rolled down the slope, the rumble almost fully muffled by the falling ash.
“Mr. Prowl,” the human said finally. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse my ignorance. Does your...home planet...have a water cycle?”
“A what,” Prowl said.
The human used one of the surveying tripod legs to draw crude diagrams on the ground outside as part of his explanation. Prowl knelt down to study them without a thought for the ash in his joints. This information was more important at the moment.
The diagrams were very crude, but the gist was conveyed. Evaporation. Condensation. Precipitation. And constantly, ominously, the risk of downward flow.
“I mean no offense,” Prowl said. “but this system is grossly inefficient.”
“None taken. I didn’t design it.”
“So when your scientists described acid rain as a side effect of the volcano...” Prowl mused.
“The acid very much is. The rain, not so much. It rains here. We’re in the Northwest.” Prowl added this to his roster of internal complaints about the Ark’s current location. “We’ll have a decently dry summer, we usually do, but come fall and winter we’re going to get a lot of water falling on us with all its usual exits blocked. It’ll flow down the river valleys, but they aren’t deep enough to take it. People will lose their homes. Their farms. Probably some lives, even if we try to evacuate.” He looked up at the peak of the crater ridge to the east. “We tried to evacuate the mountain and some people just wouldn’t go.”
“How many?” Prowl asked.
“Not sure yet. We’re still looking for bodies. There’s at least fifty people we can be pretty sure were in the worst zone that nobody’s seen since.”
Prowl did not know the proper human protocols for recognizing grief, or expressing an understanding of loss. He looked down at the diagram again and the inevitable, inefficient cycle of deluge.
“I don’t know if we will be able to help you hold the flood back,” Prowl said, after a moment of silence. “I will talk to my Prime about it.”
The human exhaled so strongly a little puff of ash rose off his mask. “Thank you. Thank you. We do—we can probably handle this ourselves, if you all can’t spare anything. We have the tools. The engineers have worked a few miracles already. But I don’t want to have to count on them coming up with more.”
Prowl understood, acutely.
Optimus Prime said yes almost before Prowl had even finished explaining.
"These are our neighbors," he said, firmly, from where he was holding up a corner of a collapsed hallway so Bumblebee could carry out the supplies that had been stored there. "They have already given us their assistance. It's only fair to offer ours."
"Of course," said Prowl, who had never expected anything else and now couldn't even muster up the will to argue. "How?"
"We have the best of the Autobots here," Optimus said with that serene wisdom that never failed to get on Prowl's nerves. The worst part was that he believed it so sincerely you couldn't help but agree with him.
"The Decepticons—" Prowl made a valiant attempt to redirect what he could already tell was going to be one of those efforts that swept up everything around it.
"The Decepticons are struggling to adjust as much as we are," Optimus said with an unfair amount of insight. Prowl was not visibly struggling and did not appreciate being lumped in with anyone that was. "We will dispatch them as necessary, and if we can prove our willingness to cooperate with the humans, it may lead them to cooperate with us. In the long run, solidarity with the population of this planet is what will determine our success."
Prowl's transmission groaned. The mountain rattled around them. Bumblebee zipped out from under the lowered ceiling, between Optimus's legs, and crouched next to Prowl. They all held still, waiting until Beachcomber's all-clear came through five astroseconds later. Bumblebee, being more than a little insane, went right back into the collapsed hallway to finish retrieving supplies.
"I'll try to believe that," Prowl said, and went to go prepare a briefing on the situation with a minimum of visible struggle.
Prior to launching, most of the crew of the Ark had been put into medical stasis. The plan had been to work in shifts, prior to their undignified crash on this absolute backwater. A select crew would take the first turn flying the ship, and either trade off with other crew members or expand the operations team, depending on need and energy availability.
Post-crashing, most of the crew of the Ark was in the process of being extracted from medical stasis, based on various and updating priorities. Beachcomber had initially been at the bottom of Prowl’s list, given that waking from emergency stasis had involved a bridge full of angry, combative Decepticons. He had shot up to the top of the list once the understanding that disturbed geology could and quite possibly would destroy them far faster had set in.
Priorities had also favored rousing Perceptor and Wheeljack, which meant that there were three whole scientists at the command meeting who quickly grasped the implications of a moving fluid system far faster than Prowl had.
And then failed to provide a solution.
“I am still measuring,” Perceptor said, somewhat wild-eyed. “Do you understand that all of the elemental weights are different in this galaxy? If you want me to be able to calibrate anything, I need to have complete and accurate readings. Wheeljack may be able to get 'close enough' and fix things after they blow up, but I am a chemist for a reason.”
“I’m still trying to help Ratch get things up and running,” Wheeljack apologized, notably not denying the explosion accusations. “Teletraan-1 took a lot of hits and it’s not designed to operate without a network. If you give me a month, I’ll have more of the ship salvaged to work with, but we just don’t have the equipment right now.”
“I can tell you what the slag is made of, but I’m just one bot, mech,” Beachcomber said. “I’m a geologist, not an engineer. The earth’s gonna go where gravity takes it.”
“Thank you,” Prowl said, and did not thunk his helm against the table. “Thank you all very much.”
“What are the humans doing about it?” Jazz asked, flicking through the pages of the report in rhythm.
“I have no idea,” Prowl said. “They’re all very small. They’re probably using those types of drones that they cut the road up here with.”
“I can go find out,” Jazz offered, like it didn’t matter to him either way and he hadn’t been tearing off down the mountain road to make friends with aliens every chance he could get. Optimus had already had to give him three disappointed speeches about sneaking into places where the humans really didn’t want any visitors. If Prowl was lucky Optimus wouldn’t have time to find out Jazz was probably due for a fourth.
“I’ll help!” Bumblebee offered, because he had imprinted on one of the humans that had helped them in the first unearthing and really wanted to find him again, as he would tell anyone who held still long enough. Prowl had forbidden him from using Sky Spy to conduct surveillance on any individual humans because even he could see that was a diplomatic disaster in the making.
“Fine,” Prowl said. “Anyone else?”
“I’ll go,” Grapple said. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d found out about the damage to the Ark after being brought out of stasis seven planetary rotations ago. Hoist patted him on the shoulder.
“Fine, good, fine. Do you know where to find the human work site?”
“Sure,” Jazz said, and Prowl had a moment of relief before he followed it up with “How hard can it be?”
“If that isn’t a joke—” Prowl threatened.
“Joke! Joke, it’s a joke.”
Looking back on it, Prowl would have acknowledged that however eager he was to go, Jazz should not have been the one to agree to what the Autobots would be offering. Of course, he had the standing and wherewithal to make those judgements given his position as Prime’s other second. True, he had perhaps the best understanding of their army’s collective resources and capabilities. Yes, he was better at talking to humans than many of the Autobots, including Prowl.
However. Jazz did not seem to realize that among the Autobots, he was unique in his fondness for being in the water. The proposed plan he returned with was going to involve a lot of mechs standing in the river shoveling mud or putting up wire fencing for long stretches at a time.
“It’s the quickest way to go about it,” he argued, after Prowl had spent fifty astroseconds staring at the plan in silent despair. Unfortunately, he was not wrong. It would be the quickest way to go about it, it would require nothing other than mech-power and time, allowing them to conserve their own resources, and as part of the agreement the human Army Corps of Engineers was willing to provide them all with bulk quantities of fuel in return for their service. It would mean that those not directly helping with the river dredging project could focus on things that didn’t involve sourcing energon.
“Yes,” Prowl agreed, trying not to sound as exhausted as he felt. “Excuse me. I need to go talk to Ratchet about stasis removal. Please show this to Optimus and tell him I’ll have the first rota ready in a planetary rotation.”
Ratchet agreed to shuffle the next couple of stasis removals to make way for new priorities after Prowl had a talk with him. Well, he agreed on the condition that Prowl go into recharge for a solid half a rotation first. Prowl’s attempts to argue were ruined when he sat on a recharge bed and was almost immediately subject to a system override as his systems prioritized the energy stream and initiating defrag.
Once he came out of recharge, he felt saner than he had in several planetary rotations, but it was with enormous relief that he watched Hoist and Ratchet wake up Seaspray and Smokescreen.
“What’d I miss?” Smokescreen asked, blinking one optic at a time to check functionality.
“We crashed and many things are terrible and I need you to organize personnel,” Prowl told him.
“Well, only one of those is new,” Smokescreen said. “Immediately?”
“Immediately,” Prowl said.
“What am I here for?” Seaspray asked, sounding fretful. “I’m not good at personnel management.”
“I just need you to be in the water,” Prowl admitted.
“Oh!” The relief in his voice was obvious. “I can do that.”
“I take it you missed us?” Smokescreen asked, sitting up and slowly working through his limb functioning with the routine of someone who had been stasised many times before.
“Among others,” Prowl said, neutrally.
“Did we lose anyone?” Seaspray asked, a classic soldier’s question.
“Not yet. Not for good,” Prowl said, and was determined not to let it be a lie.