literature

The Fugitive: Bit five

Deviation Actions

Sunstars's avatar
By
Published:
515 Views

Literature Text

Survival of the Fittest

"Was it safe to return?" Starscream asked himself settling himself down just before dawn.

It had been a week since his wingmates had appeared. And he looked to the sky often, hoping for their return. He saw nothing. Just a few passenger jets that travelled across the planet, carting its passengers who were blithely oblivious to the Decepticon below. They were unaware that even mechanoids felt pains of hunger. While they dug greedily into their organic based fuels, Starscream carefully stored away another cube of unrefined energy and sipped on his meagre rations. While they chatted cheerfully with their neighbour, the Decepticon sat, alone, trying to get himself comfortable so he might rest.

Since Thundercracker had arrived and left, Starscream did not rest easily. He was also worried that they would bring the force back to get him; however, that had not happened. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps Megatron thought he was dead. Would Megatron seriously object to his return? He knew was in no condition to challenge his leader. Would Megatron realise that himself?

Starscream also knew that Megatron could easily take him out in his weakened condition. Starscream weighed his options, going for the worst scenario his mind could muster. What demise would he choose? It would be fast and probably painful by Megatron, or slow, drawn out energy starvation. What would be better? Fast at the point of a weapon as a Decepticon's demise should be? Or would he choose the weakened and suffering demise like that which Autobots seem to enjoy inflicting upon its weak and aged? Honourable or embarrassing? What should it be?

Starscream exhaled in a irritated sigh. "I'll sleep on it....Brain, shut off.  I just want some sleep," he told himself. For some reason, it was as easy as that. Starscream's mind happily shut off its morbid train of thought and let him fall into much needed rest.

*  *  *

Or perhaps his mind had an agenda of its own.

It was definitely winter. Cold winds blew past the mouth of the cave, snow blew in with great clustered flakes. Starscream's few possessions were pushed nearer to the back of the cavern, close to a large stone bolder that Starscream called the back wall. Large triangular icicles formed around the cavern mouth that reminded Starscream of the crystalline Cybertronian spires that were scattered across the planet before the worst of the war had destroyed them.

Starscream had attempted to fashion a crude snow barrier in front of the cave to block out the snow. It did sort of work, for the most part; however, it seemed to create a drift on the inside.

The Seeker stood at the mouth of the cavern with his arms crossed in irritation. He was watching the blizzard as it engulfed the region in a wall of white. It was pretty, for a few moments and then it was bothersome to his current way of life. Stealth was difficult when he left huge foot prints in the snow. His treks to get energy was limited to the immediate area. Not that the snow hindered him at first. It was the ice that formed on the beaver lake was what had managed to mangle his carefully laid plans for collecting energy and sent him down a very precarious path.

Use the beaver dam to collect energy was a brilliant plan, at first. Starscream prided himself on his genius thinking to use local materials and what was available to him to further his attempts at scoring a few dozen cubes of energy. There were several advantages. Firstly, the dam was there, local and quite high. It should provide ample energy. Another advantage was the beaver lodge was not too far away from the structure. Once the giant rodents were eliminated, a messy affair that Starscream had both enjoyed and found revolting, it would provide a natural shelter for the resultant cubes. The forest canopy provided cover virtually to the edge of the lake which meant he could move around fairly freely.

With these advantages in mind, Starscream set off to the abandoned logging camp to collect materials for his master plan. Wires were carefully collected, parts from broken down machines removed and carefully carried to his cavern. There he set to build himself the under water turbine and energy collector that he needed. Even setting up the generator was a fairly simple affair and he had a working generator within a couple days. Energy was created and converted into energon. He was set...or was he?

It was about a week after that first success that the disadvantages started to show their ugly heads. It was Autumn and some of the trees started to drop their leaves. The coniferous trees, as they naturally do, kept theirs but it left the forest without the cover he had originally planned for. It was an easy problem to solve, he would simply collect at dawn or dusk, under the cover of night.

Then another pair disadvantages started to disrupt his plans. Energy collection abruptly dropped significantly. This forced  Starscream to check out the turbine underwater. There he found  sediment, lose branches or other underwater debris had managed to get itself in the way or into the turbine occasionally breaking the fins off. Starscream, increasingly irritated, managed to deal with it and set checking the turbine before he collected his cubes. Problem solved.

Then another evening he saw that the area where his turbine was had broken open. Water in the lake was starting to drop and the force of the water began to erode the dam away. He hurried to shore the dam up with stones and logs then had to hunt for the turbine in the river itself. It took two hours to repair it and reset the turbine into operating order.  Unfortunately, the result of the damage, left the generator not as efficient as it had been. Back to the drawing boards.

Realising his energy was going drop, he devised a couple back up plans. Again he returned to the lumber camp and nosed through the wreckage collecting various bits and pieces he did not collect the time before. It was getting sparse and Starscream did not wish to disrupt the appearance of the camp. He figured his damage would be written off to salvage looters who wanted to collect metal for sale to scrap yards. 'An honest business', or so Swindle would insist.

Within a week, Starscream had a small wind turbine, with wooden blades that he made like wooden propellers, and a small device that was created to focus solar light and heat energy to a central point. He had them working together to collect enough energy; but they were not very reliable.

The wind turbine's blades often broke and needed to be repaired. Or the wind was not strong enough to turn the blades. Even keeping it low key was toward the difficult side as he could not put it high enough to catch good wind without attracting unnecessary attention. He was pretty sure a wind turbine standing in the middle of nowhere would raise a few questions and curious humans or foes.

The solar collector was even less reliable than the wind turbine. Autumn was in its later stages and it had been increasingly cloudy. Not only that, the days were short and the nights were becoming tediously long. The longer nights left him with more cover to go about his business, which was collecting energy or thinking up better ways to do so.

After a particularly nasty cold snap, with frost and light snow, the next problem with the dam became apparent. It was this problem that drove his shaky morale into the ground. The beaver lake had formed a thin skin of ice. A problem that could easily be solved by breaking through it, however, Starscream wanted to keep a low profile. Breaking the ice could attract unwanted attention. He figured that it would do to leave the lake alone for a few days as it would likely warm up and thaw out enough for him to collect. He was wrong.

If his situation could get any worse; it had. His optics watched the snow fall and he heard a sharp cracking snap  followed by  a muffled thump. He clenched his fists and exhaled in a shrill sigh. At the base of a tree, sitting in snow already piled about six feet high, lay the wind turbine with the wooden blades. It was shattered beyond repair.

Disregarding his plans for stealth, Starscream waded out into the snow to collect what was left of his generator. Some parts were useable, but the blades were broken, the turbine's axle was bent and the tree had fallen on what remained of the rest of it.  His energy crisis was snow balling, so to speak.

Starscream shivered and looked over the broken pieces in dismay. The wind generator was his pride. It was reasonably reliable, and close to his hide out. He could have energy more frequently and he had not thought to save much. So it, along with his morale,  lay in ruins. He had two options left to him, small solar-collector and returning home to whatever fate he would face.

Starscream was not ready to return home, so he opted to fight on, and finish what he had started. His fear of the unknown was almost his undoing. His fight for survival was at its peak. The nights became incredibly long, and he wondered if he had crashed in British Colombia or had actually ended up somewhere in the Yukon. He realised the northern areas of Canada could be extremely hostile, even to the humans who could consume the animals that lived there. The days were too short for him to collect much energy from the solar collector, an idea that looked good on paper and functioned very well at the time of year when light was plentiful. It was barely sunny long enough for the collector to get enough heat energy to form a single cube, let enough to run a Decepticon at even basic power. It had its purpose.

Starscream's thoughts returned to the hydro-electric turbine. He wondered if it was still there at all, but the river was frozen over and had several feet of snow and ice covering it. Starscream knew that he should have left the valley when he still had the energy to do so. But his confidence in his plans was strong and he felt he could not possibly fail. Unfortunately he was foiled by mother nature herself. To him, that was as embarrassing as being executed by Megatron. It could not get any worse. Or could it?

He needed to find another source of fuel quickly before he ran out of energy. Forcing the panic out of his mind, Starscream struck upon another plan. A plan for liquid fuel that would provide him with the energy he could use to convert into energon manually. He carefully set up a plan to make wood alcohol in his cavern as he did, he realised he had a new problem. Yeast required warmth to ferment. Shifting through his salvaged materials he pulled out a small fuel tank that was large enough to fit inside his canopy. He blended in the ingredients and stuck it inside and carefully incubated it. It worked relatively well, enough to get him small amounts of energy to keep him at the base line of survival. Inactivity kept his energy use down and he virtually slept the rest of the winter, waking up every few days to re fill his fermentor and collect the energy from what he had created. The end result was a bitter energon, and a Decepticon who smelled like a drunk human.

It was not until nearly March when the days became noticeably longer did Starscream find his fight for survival easier. But by then, he was extremely weak. Mother nature had almost defeated machine.
This is called

Survival of the fittest. I wanted to use this title, but so far, hadn't found an opportunity. I had an idea for this chapter for about a week, but I had no idea of how to write it. I even started to day, scrapped it and rewrote what I had.

How starscream managed to survive 8 months in the wild. Particularily the winter.

So again, pokes please at grammar, it's kinda rougly midnight and i am tired out of my mind and kinda hungry. Ironic since that's starscream's problem. I spent all night trying to cook some dinner and had to eat it in two bits since part of it wasn't finished cooking by the time I had finsihed the "easy" stuff.

Fic is nearly done another chapter or three. I am not sure how many in the end.

The Fugitive Chapter 1 Creatures of the Night
The Fugitive Chapter 2 The Outcast
The Fugitive Chapter 3 Cat and Mouse
The Fugitive Chapter 4 Thundercracker
The Fugitive Chapter 5 Survival of the Fittest
The Fugitive Chapter 6 Shades of Grey
The Fugitive Chapter 7 While You Were Away
The Fugitive Chapter 8 Effective immediately
© 2008 - 2024 Sunstars
Comments6
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Schmedderling's avatar
As bad as it gets, Screamer finds a way to keep going. ^_^ I wonder if TC will visit again after the winter...

I find the idea of Starscream making moonshine rather amusing, but where did he get the yeast?