ESCAPE 8

Soundwave shocked Laserbeak out of stasis. She pinged him with worry, residual fear still clinging to their link. /Yes, Laserbeak, he's gone. We need to hasten our progress. Find me my humans/

As she set to work, Soundwave revised his plans. Unicron was strong, but apparently, he still was bound to this rock. Otherwise, he would have acted sooner. There was no telling if the imposter possessed all of Megatron's might or if Unicron added something on top of it, but of one thing Soundwave was nearly sure: he had no space bridge.

Soundwave had to make sure the abomination would not lay his hands on the space bridge.

Laserbeak pinged him with mission accomplished and passed up the coordinates and arrival estimation of five of six humans Soundwave had expected. One appeared to be still in town. Laserbeak expected the humans to reach the meeting point within one to one and a half hours. The drone's report sounded apologetically. She was not used to such wide estimates and considered her inability to calculate speed and time more precisely to be a failure of a kind. Normally, Soundwave would comfort her, but now he was too busy calculating possibilities.

Bot's base, the space bridge on the orbit, the Harbinger. Three sites he had to secure. And pass the warning to cons on Cybertron. And possibly prevent Megatron - pseudo-Megatron, he corrected himself, - from gathering 'con forces that remained scattered on Earth. How much time did he have?

Definitely not enough to continue with his current cautious and subtle plan. When time was of the essence, considerations of finesse and delicacy should be put aside. An alternate plan formed in his processor.

Soundwave set down to devise a virus. Laserbeak pinged him with query /Yes, alert me when they are on site/

Should he perhaps contact the bots and warn them so they would protect their base better? That might be logical, but reaching out to them from the shadow zone would put himself at their mercy. And recalling how they were going to dissect him last time he had been at their mercy, that option he would spare for when he really had no choice.

No, he needs to be out of their reach first.

Soundwave had never been a slow-thinking mech, but his processors could really do marvels when working under pressure. The virus was ready even before his humans arrived at Harbinger's site.

/Laserbeak: stand by on their communication. Calls, files, sms, anything - alert me/
Laserbeak pinged him back nearly immediately and streamed him the intercepted video call from Jimmy. As Sounddwave expected, his group of humans wasn't baffled in the least that he didn't show up when expected. He succeeded at creating an image of a loser that could just chicken out at the last moment. They were five (Soundwave was expecting six, but apparently, one of the females didn't make it and now Jimmy was calling to tell her how much she had missed), they were adventurous, they were full of some stupid bravado.

Soundwave appointed a meeting on a spot that provided a perfect view on the Harbinger's crash landing site. But he might not worry - they had found the ship using google maps satellite view and were too excited to have doubts.

So far, perfect.

Soundwave sent them all a message "Sorry, guys, can't make it - I'm stuck here" and completed it with a virus, embedded into the dancing mouse flash. There was something ironic in using the decoy Raf used on them on humans.

"WOW! You guys look at that!" - the humans had reached the ship. Even broken in half, the decepticon transporter was a sight to behold.

It was still a couple of hours before sunset, so it was decided, they would recon first and set up camp later.

"That Safe&Sound guy is missing the adventure of his life. Loser. And what's this crap he's sending anyway? Is it just me, or did you guys get it too?" - Beth remarked, reading the MMS before walking in into the torn and empty cargo bay.

One by one they checked their messages. One by one Soundwave gained control over their phones. He re-routed their cellphones to a non-existent node (his node, which was technically non-existent). Now nothing would really go out into the net and he had both visual and audial.

Wait. All he had to do was wait.
"Moron" - Austin commented, deleting the message. He wasn't aware that the damage has been already done, - "You filming it, Jim?"
"Yup. This place is HUGE!"

Listening to human's chatter was extremely annoying. But he had to stand by not to miss a moment when they would enter the command bridge.

"Guys" - Lindsey said, her voice slightly trembling, - "is this thing still working? do you think there might be aliens in here? Maybe we shouldn't..?"

"Come on! this place is clearly abandoned, look at all this dust! It crashed here years ago" - Jimmy urged her on. "And if something is still living, Chad here brought a crossbow"

"Don't worry, Linds, I won't let aliens abduct you" - Chad showed off his weapon.
Hadn't the situation been so dire, Soundwave would laugh at them.

"Yo guys!" - Beth's voice came from next room - "check this out!"

The control bridge. Finally. Jimmy (good boy!) turned around, catching all the insides of the bridge as beams of light from five flashlights made consoles and control panels emerge from the darkness. Soundwave noted that the power core had been cabled to the energon line. He expected that much, since obviously Starscream had not been known for cleaning up his mess. The spy was just about to trigger his virus, when he realized that something was missing.

He quickly called up Harbinger blueprints and specifications from his databank, and realized with horror that the niche that should have contained the bridging equipment was stripped clean.

The Autobots. That is how they managed to get a new ground bridge after Megatron destroyed their base in Jasper...Those fraggers really needed to start building their own toys!

Luckily, Soundwave had a plan B. As the humans were discussing if they should leave for now and start settling for the night, Soundwave triggered his masterpiece of a virus. All the cellphones started ringing, only... it hadn't been a ringtone. It had been old cybertronian. All decepticon vessel were hard programmed to activate and switch to voice command upon the trigger code sequence. The codes were unique for the vessels, but Soundwave hadn't been a Chief Communications Officer for nothing. He invented those codes.
The power core activated and consoles lit up.

"WHOA! What the hell?!"
"Black code plague alert! Engage quarantine mode" - the phones chirped in unison, not that humans could understand what they were saying. But as the sliders shut into place, locking the bridge and all other rooms, dividing the Harbinger into many small sealed pockets, they did understand.

Initially, Soundwave wanted to wait till the panic calmed down. But seeing as that was not going to happen for a while, he played a high-pitched yell that made them stop shouting at last.

"Hello, humans!" - Jimmy dropped his phone when it said that in a mechanical voice, and upon hitting the floor it lost its battery, but Beth's phone continued in the same voice smoothly, as if nothing happened: "It is Safe&Sound speaking. Like I informed you before, I am sorry I couldn't make it to the meeting point. But I am stuck here. And you, humans, will help me get out. Now, before you start harming yourself against the interior of my ship, I want you to know that while your well-being is of no value to me, I do not intend to harm you unless absolutely necessary. Compliance: desirable"