randomplaces | Sam Walker's 'verse. Nellis AF base. Tense interlude.

Elita watched the jeep from where she sat to one side in the crowd, her spark twitchy with concern as she remembered her youngest son's face when he'd brought his friend's body to Ratchet and begged him to fix her. It had hurt to see the gruff medic put his arms around the youngling and explain that there was no way he could repair the little femme, and it had hurt worse to see Ceejay pull away and go to hide alone in his room.

That had been two days ago, and the normally well-spoken and cheerful young mech was still withdrawn and silent, avoiding even Zoe, who was also mourning.

The experimental jet flew low over the crowd, eliciting a cheer that made her look up momentarily. She should feel proud; she'd helped to design the sleek silver plane, but that wasn't very high on her priority list at the moment.

Then she snapped to attention as she noticed a wobble in the jet's flight. It was slight, but....

It came again as the jet went into a drop, and then Elita's horn tooted with alarm as she realized that the pilot had lost control of the sensitive and responsive craft. //Pull up!//

//I can't! I need to level it out, but it's not responding!// came the panicked human reply.

Elita scanned the area around her, groaning at the numbers of uninformed civilians. She couldn't move without breaking the directive! Could only watch....

The jet was nearing the ground, and people were running as they realized that something was wrong. Elita couldn't move....

The base commander's favorite jeep suddenly flashed to life, roaring forward driverless before transforming and meeting the jet with upraised hands that shoved its nose upward.....

Ceejay was knocked flying by the impact and skidded across the tarmac, bursting into flame as the jet roared skyward. As Elita watched with frozen horror fire trucks and personnel swarmed him and contained the blaze.

A silence fell over the crowd as one fireman jumped down from his truck and walked over to cautiously touch the side of Ceejay's face.

Elita couldn't move.

And then Ceejay slowly turned his head toward his comforter and lifted a hand slightly.

Tom Plooie found her then, settling himself onto her seat and kicking her engine to life as he aimed her toward her son.

And Elita could move.