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"Anywhere that isn't here is good enough for now. I'm a fine pilot, just tell me what you need me to do..."
"What the warrior said, tell us what to do and I'll do it, I've sacrificed too much already to lose what little I have left."
We're going the wrong way?! Of course we are.
"If you can get us going the right way, I'll make sure the engine holds together!" Skitter shouts into the comm. "Come on, hold together, hold together..." he mutters, doing his best to keep everything running smooth.
Redshift tries to program the ship's lights to encode his words, but the computer is shot, and trying to program and fly simultaneously are next to impossible. Whether the frantic button stabbing does any good is anyone's guess. The ship curves around the planet, using it's gravity well for a speed boost.
Ahead, the star continues to shrink. In response to Ulastron and Warhawk's request for what to do, Redshift grimly hauls the controls around as the ship behaves like a whalebot on a rust beach. "Strap in!"
The countdown reads 823.4 when the sun suddenly becomes intensely bright for a few seconds, and then begins to rapidly expand again, it's color turning from yellow to blue to white and then rapidly heading back down the spectrum toward red!
Radiation warnings begin to flare (and some short out with bursts of sparks). "Scrap!" The front viewport, 2 feet of duratransparasteel, begins to haze over as hard radiation sleets into it at a density more than it was designed to take.
Skitter dances back and forth from one component in the engine room to another, not so much trying to keep the engines working at peak efficiency as to try to juggle the overload, constantly pushing it from one system to another, as the systems become more and more unstable.
Through the ghostly hazed viewports, the crew begin to see natural space bridges opening in the distance, each lit by a green or blue or red light as the tears in space time leak energy.
Passing the 818 magic number, Redshift looks desperately for a space bridge to fling the ship into, and then in a miracle, a massive space bridge opens a few hundred thousand miles away.
Wrenching the ship's controls hard enough to bend the yoke, Redshift slams the ship into a high g turn, sending Skitter flying across engineering and against the bulkhead hard enough to knock the microbot nearly unconscious.
Those on the bridge grip their restraints, and Warhawk cries out as his ancient harness snaps under his bulk and he's sent flying across the bridge and through the already dead comm's panel, energy flooding his system painfully.
The ship finally though passes into the gaping maw of the space bridge, but it's like no ride the crew has ever had before. Natural space bridges are not neat and stable, they twist and energy rockets through them randomly.
Red energy dances over the ship, flooding it and the Cybertronians inside, arcing from one shattering console to another to the crew itself, burning holes in their frames and blowing through internal systems with little or no regard for their safety.
Within minutes, the crew is unconscious. As the solar storm that was the outer layer of the star screams through the space they just left, it snuffs out the other end of the wormhole, and then brushes aside the shattered planet that is still breaking up with the bow-wave hits, erasing it from the universe.
A glaring red wormhole opens just inside the orbit of Jupiter, the massive gas giant's gravity field acting as a lensing effect to draw in the wildly whipping end of the wormhole.
A dead ship shoots out, bleeding atmosphere, heat, and radiation. The dead ship drifts, it's speed slowed considerably by the gas giant's bulk. For days the ship silently struggles to maintain enough of it's velocity not to be pulled back into the massive gravity well. It's touch and go, for the unpowered ship, it's crew in stasis lock. However, eventually it finally slips over the edge of escape velocity, now slowly tumbling toward the inner system.
On small blue sphere in the same system, the last of the megafauna struggles against their inevitable extinction. The last of the woolly rhinoceros, cave bears, cave lions, and sabre-tooth cats are bleekly searching for mates in a world where few still exist. .
The dead ship is given an accidental, and nearly fatal, gravity assist by the red planet as it has a near miss, just skipping off the atmosphere. Bits of Cybertronian technology are left behind as debris on the red planet as bits of the ship tear free.
On the small blue planet, the dominant life form, Homo Sapiens, is beginning to understand how to forge Bronze, the beginnings of the Bronze age.
After being slungshot into a slowly decaying orbit for nearly 5,000 years, the cybertronian ship finally becomes caught in the Earth's gravity well. On the surface of the planet, the Idustrial Age is just getting started, and in St. Louis, the Louisana Purchase World Exposition is in full swing.
Far away, near the small port town of Anchorage, Alaska, 183 miles off shore, the wayward craft slams into the ocean hard, and then sinks to the bottom, the heavy craft sinking in the mud at the bottom of the ocean.
A 7.9 earthquake, the epicenter only a few miles from where the cybertronian ship lay covered in mud, roils the sea floor for dozens of miles, throwing up what was once buried. A 'tidal wave' rolls into Anchorage Bay Harbor, doing little or no damage given it was only 8 inches high by the time it arrived.
Under the ocean, the ancient craft is rolled and turned until it sits at a 37 degree angle, it's nose sticking up above the surface mud.
The body of Ulastron flips and lands on the ancient emergency crew repair system, her head slamming face first into the manual override and shattering the silica shield over it, pushing the button down and engaging the ancient circuits.
"Repair... Repair... Repair..."
The ancient emergency system finally coughs to life, launching a small round hover drone, which promptly floats to the surface of the ocean. "Explore... Explore..." The hover drone scans for signs of civilization, and picks up power emissions from nearby. Heading toward the emissions, it encounters Anchorage Alaska.
It's first stop is the Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, floating over the assembled jets and choppers, until it comes accross something that fits the requirements for the life form detected in the bridge compartment. "Scan... Scan..." A beam of blue light emits and scans the Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion on the helipad. Nearby guards come running at the odd light, but by the time they get there, the small drone is off exploring again.
Inside a hanger, accessed via a vent on the roof, it finds a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator Drone, and blue lights flash again. "Scan... Scan..."
"Explore... Explore..."
Moving past the base into downtown Anchorage, the small drone finds a place with a wide variety of vehicles, and breaks in to it via the ventilation system. Dropping out of the ceiling into the convention floor, the drone begins to look at the various vehicles on display at the automotive show. "Scan... Scan..." A Harley Davidson Superlow... A prototype Dodge Tomahawk... A Haas VF-18 Formula 1 car...
Unable to find the last two things it needs, it breaks a $10,000 plate glass window, setting off alarms, and leaving behind some odd security video footage before zooming off, repeating it's mantra of "Explore... Explore..."
Finally, at 1:43 AM, it drops down into the Alaska Zoo, in Anchorage. It alarms a male Alaskan Timber Wolf by scanning it, causing untold confusion and alarm with the zoo keepers as the wolf snarls constantly for a week, always looking toward the sky.
Smashing another window on the visitor's center, it knocks over a sign declaring Special Exhibit! Cheetah Run! Courtesy of the San Diego Zoo! Come see the Cheetah's run! Limited time only! Shows daily at 10AM, 2PM and 5PM!. As the cheetah's snarl and claw the glass to get at the floating orb, the orb scans the largest female, before it floats off, just missing the Zoo's security guards.
Returning to the ship, the small drone drops through the water, and docks with the ship, transferring the data to the repair system before it's power core is exhausted.
Data is fed from the emergency system into Ulastron's damaged and stassis locked carcass. Energon is infused into her form, and new transformation information downloaded into her t-cog. Gradually she awakens to a nearly dark ship, lit only by the emergency repair system's emergency lights. "Repair... Repair..." It comments plaintively, unable to reach any other bodies in it's damaged state.
A sullen red light lights on a console, the console's AI considers, the contact is weak, and uknown, but identity is confirmed.
Nearby, a stasis pod hisses as atmosphere is released and doors open. A robotic hand reaches out of the pod, grasping the edge of the door as a hulking form pulls itself free of the pod...
A differently designed console comes to life, a blue dot blinking slowly. This consoles AI considers for several minutes, but then the blinking stops, and the console does nothing, except continue to operate in a newly hightened level of awareness...
A figure sits at a desk, working on paperwork, when the office door opens. A second figure enters, and tosses a photograph of a small orb in a convention center, a blue light flashing out over a Harley Davidson Superlow. "We have something..."
Ulastron sits up as her receptors bring the world around her into focus. She touches her own body and inspects it as if marveling at what she beholds. "I'm. I'm whole once more. Thank the Maker I thought I'd..."
As she looks around the ruined ship, "Hmmm. These Autobots and the pilot, not sure what his allegiance was. I should... I should leave them, what did their war ever do for me".
She stands up looking for the way out of the vessel than pauses her gears whirl in dismay. "No. No it's not right. I cannot abandon them like this".
Ula looks for the other minibot not entirely sure she has the strength to drag the larger bots to the repair drone, "Skitter. That was his name. With him fixed we can work together. Then go our separate ways. Luckily I don't think they recognized me".
Ula does just that, she seeks out Skitter to begin his repair process.
Ula is able to find the engineering section, and drag the limp form of Skitter (and his dismembered arm and leg) back to the bridge. The emergency system reattaches the limbs, and infuses him with an energon wash.
When it's complete, Skitter comes to as the stasis lock ends.
"You function once more. Skitter right? Help me, let's get the rest of these big lugs to the repair drone and then we can figure out where we are. It can't be worse than where we were".
Skitter takes a moment to orient himself. "Where... where are we?" He looks around and something seems to click. "The engine?! The star?!" He staggers to his feet. "Makers above! It worked!!!" He shakes his head and pats the other bot on the shoulder. "Thank you for reactivating me. What was your name again?"
He points over to Warhawk. "Ooo. He may be too heavy for us to move easily. Here, let's get a bit more help," he says pulling over Chatterbox. "Can you grab the pilot?"
"Any idea how long we've been out? Or where we are?"
Between them, the two manage to get Chatterbox and Redshift within the repair computer's reach, and it begins to make emergency repairs.
Within a few minutes, the two of them are up and moving again.
Redshift's eyes flicker to life, and he sits up, groaning and holding his head.
"St... Status report?"
He stands, rights himself after a moment's loss of balance, and looks down at his hands and arms.
"Exterior reconfiguration... Wherever we are, it's got intelligent life."
As Warhawk's repairs are completed, the emergency repair system explodes in a violent shower of sparks and smoke...
"Status report," he replies automatically. "We don't know where we are or how long we've been here. Systems are fried. The ship is non-functional. Annnd there goes emergency repair." Skitter checks to make sure that Warhawk's repairs were completed. "But the space bridge jump worked!! Five sparks accounted for and functional."
Ula "doesn't hear" Skitter's question regarding her name focusing upon her work to aid the Autobots allies in returning to full functionality.
"I've done some work as a scout before. I could exit the wreck and take a tour about to get a better feel for the environment if you all like".
Redshift pops open a panel on his arm, peering intently at it. Small flickers of light reflect in his eyes as he reads a rapid series of readouts, sighing and patting his chest, seemingly in relief.
He looks at the damaged viewports ringing the bridge, their surfaces long ago seared into opacity by the supernova.
"Who here can fly?" he asks the room. "Fliers should be our first scouting group. And we should go in pairs."
"Flight, check".
"Sure I could help the pilot, but do you feel funny? Like your transformation cog got jiggered in the crash? Maybe I've caught a virus? My commander caught a virus once and it made him laugh uncontrollably. It was the most fun he ever was, until he exploded. good times..."
He helps to drag the larger bots toward the repair drones.
"No can fly, but I can go so fast it looks like I can fly. Once I actually drove across a gap that was too big to jump by going as fast as I could and chanting 'ACME SENT ME ACME SENT ME' over and over again. Good times...
"I can fly, and can carry those of you who cannot."
Ula and Warhawk head out the airlock of the ship, the salty muddy water closing in on them as they exit. The pressure is impressive, over 270 kg/cubic cm. The water is, other than the Cybertonian's lights, completely black. The ship itself has been overgrown with organic debris and mud, making it hard to spot.
The bots bodies force water out of internal systems, and then they begin to swim upwards, internal vacuums making them more buoyant than they should be made out of metal. As they rise, and rise, and rise, over 6 kilometers, the water gradually loses pressure, until they are surfacing.
Near the surface, their transceivers begin to pick up radio chatter, which the military radios they scanned can actually understand, letting them build up a radio map of the local areas. As they break the surface of the water, the 'GPS' system in their scanned radios kick in, and positioning software they scanned begins to identify where they are.
For Warhawk, this means he can 'see' an overlay of the local planet, with markers that seem to be for cities of some sort. For Ula, Ula is likely shocked to realize that she can read, imperfectly, the nav maps her Drone stored, and understands that there is a city to the north called 'Kodiak', and beyond it, one a much larger one called 'Anchorage'. She even understands what 'Anchorage' means, although 'Kodiak' is beyond her ken.
Local radio stations from Kodiak begin to blare over their transceivers, Warhawk has no idea what the alien language is saying.
Good morning, listeners, Jack Kailey of WJSO radio. The god almighty be praised, we are learning that there have been no deaths, and no tsunami from the earthquake that struck just after midnight local time.
Morning Jack, Angela Wallace dear listeners. Everyone should be praying and thanking the good lord for delivering us from danger this day.
The broadcast continues on, with lots of exaulting of 'God' and 'The Almighty', perhaps the local name for the Primes? Ula has to struggle a little to understand, as if listening to an odd dialect.
On other stations, music blares out, something the voice over calls 'Oldies' and 'Classics' and '80s'. Ula also picks up chatter from vessels on the ocean.
Ula turns to Warhawk, "Well we have sentients. Whether organic or robot is not clear yet. They seem to be primitives praising this "God". Unless this God is some sort of tyrant overlord.
Perhaps this seismic activity is what dislodged our wreck? If so maybe God is a Maker who saw fit to reactivate us?
Do we get receptors on one of these cities or report back now.
Also, we should try and find energon sources sooner rather than later".
"I like these 80s. I too am hungry like the wolf!"
”Let’s assess the political situation before we bring the others into it. If they are primitives, they may not take kindly to aliens.”
With a characteristic sound of transformation, Warhawk changes into his vehicle form, let’s Ulastron aboard, and flies toward the nearest city at top speed.
Those who remain behind, no doubt begin to check the ship over...
Redshift drags his fingertips along a section of the wall as he and Skitter work their way around the ship.
"This was a Cityspeaker's personal craft," he says. "I used to have one just like it, long ago. But... this one wasn't built for diplomacy. The colors are all wrong. Spectralism was never my strong suit, but... This wasn't an Autobot ship. Nor was that Titan any that I'd ever seen."
Redshift sighs and shakes his head. "And I thought I knew them all."
Now that Red can take some time to look over the ship, it is far older than he thought it was. By several million years. It may even date back to early golden age. Long before Decepticons and Autobots existed. Based on the overall design of the ship, and some of the things he'd seen in the Titan, the Titan may have been a Forge Titan. This ship seems utilitarian, designed for transport rather than diplomacy. That would fit with a Titan focused on making things and moving them around, rather than a City dedicated to it's inhabitants or politics.
According to the writing, the ship is the Deltorus, and was the ship for the Cityspeaker of Deltoria. Red's never heard of that Titan.
Watching Chatter climb into Warhawk, Ula shakes her head. "Riding in a small box with a Mouthicon? No thanks. I have my own wings. But I will take a ride high enough to take flight, my flight mode requires a landing place, or a lot of distance to fall and gain air speed"
She hangs onto Warhawk's landing skids until they are a kilometer in the air, and then drops free, switching mid fall into a Predator Drone. "Kodiak is 280 kilometers northwest, Anchorage is 563 kilometers north east." Ula comments over the radio, as her internal navigation system comes on line. She finds the local vehicle form has excellent sighting systems and navigational aids. "My drone mode's speed is much higher than yours. I can be in Anchorage in a little under one of the local time cycles, or Kodiak in half that time. Anchorage appears to be the larger city, while Kodiak is the closer. Which one? Or are we splitting up? If we split up, I should take the farther city, you don't look that fast."
"Okay, let's see what we have to work with." Skitter begins systematically looking over the ship, trying to determine what is and isn't salvageable.
Redshift and Skitter, between them, go over the ship's systems with a fine tooth cybercomb.
Computer : The computer is utterly shot, and can't be repaired. It can only be replaced.
Hull : The hull is in so so shape, it's been breached in a couple of sections, which are closed off via bulkhead drops. Local sealife has invaded for many years, so it would require a lot of cleaning and repair.
Electronics : About half the electronics systems in the ship are down.
Viewports : All the viewports need to be cleaned and the forward ones need to be 'shaved' to clear the damaged bits off it.
Energon Converter : The energon converter is in decent shape, but needs some repair to get it fully on line.
Energon Reserves : The energon reserves on the ship are at 38%.
Weapons : The weapons are offline, but were working before entering the space bridge. They are likely repairable, but a weaponsmith will need to look at them to be sure.
Propulsion Systems : Skitter think the engines are heavily damaged.
Redshift stares at some of the readouts in disbelief.
"...Salt. The ocean is made of water. AND SALT. And the life-forms have adapted to thrive in it. What sort of crazed hell-world have we landed on?"
"Salt. And high levels of oxygen. How do they keep protect from oxidation?"
The weapons need to be serviced and recalibrated, but they should be repairable.
"Constant systemic regeneration?" Redshift muses. "The sea life is organic. Fleshy little things everywhere. They're so fragile, and yet, so diverse. Technologically advanced organics?"
Redshift starts puttering around in the nearest maintenance chamber, looking for a plasma lathe that can be modified to work under water.
"One of us should go out and work on clearing the foreward viewports. I hate being blind."
Red finds a lathe that will work under water, and exits the ship to work on the view ports, slowly cleaning off the local carboniferous life forms that have attached, and then shaving off some of the outter transparent metal. As he works, he attracts an audience of a bizarre creature with an arrow like body and a dozen arms nearly the size of the microbots. One giant black optic keeps him in view as it lazily swims around, apparently attracted by the soft blue light of the lathe.
Suddenly the water goes black as the organic shoots off rapidly. As the darkness clears, another audience member makes it's presence known. Or rather, members. Several massive organics as big or bigger than Red himself, attracted either by the light or by the other organic, swoop in graceful powerful loops near the ship.
Redshift's immediate response is to wonder if they're the dominant lifeform on this forsaken hell world, but quickly thinks the better of it. No manipulators, and so far, all the technology reported upon has been terrestrial.
Since they don't seem to be bothering him, he doesn't bother them, focusing on finishing up the cleanup job on the viewports and navigational thruster exhausts.
If they show signs of trying to communicate, he'll listen and try to translate.
Maybe the universal greeting will work on them. Never can tell.
Red does pick up on some of their language, and his databanks think there's more there than animal noises. However, it would require several hours of uninterrupted studying of their vocals, and his language subroutines are flagging that he's missing some of it, in the ultrasonic or infrasonic range or both.
It could be an actual language, or it could could be a pre-sentient precursor to language.
Either way, the creatures seem more curious than anything else, and mostly swim around, emitting high pitched clicks that are probably sonar.
Once he's done, returning inside the ship is easy enough, and the front viewports now can be seen through.
Redshift stows away the language files, making a note to study them again after he has the proper filtration technology, so he can get the full syntax.
Skitter gets to works trying to get the ship repaired. "Between the two of us, Reshift, we ought to have this thing up and running in no time," he jokes.
"I don't think we should split up for the moment. We have no idea whether the natives will be welcoming or hostile. Let's check out the larger city together. We aren't so desperate as to need to be incautious."
The trio (Warhawk, Chatterbox, and Ula) fly northeast toward the larger city. As they approach, they are lashed with radar from ground radar stations, and assaulted by many many radios.
At one point, Ula comms Warhawk. "The natives are hailing you I think, they're saying something about restricted airspace and calling WRHWK005, which is what's on the side of your tail assembly. You should turn to heading 090..."
The duo bypass the 'restricted airspace' and fly over the large city. it's huge, and spread out, but oddly mixed in with non-city. Large tracts of land in the city are covered with white snow and no buildings. The ground is covered in frozen water. This place is truly bizarre. The locals, small bipedal flesh beings not even as big as a microbot, scurry around and drive vehicles through the frozen wasteland.
The trio see no signs of hostile activity, as they fly around. Mostly the natives ignore them, although granted they're flying at a good height above the ground, getting a bird's eye view.
"These natives really like to talk, I mean, I like to talk, but they really like to talk. I don't know what they mean but I definitely think it would be fun to talk to them.. I wonder if THEY eat mechanical beings? I bet they do! Fearsome tiny mech-eaters! GRRRRR!" Chatterbox begins to make shadow figures of horrid terrible mech-eaters.