The star didn't have a name, that would require for someone to care about it. Nobody cared about it. What it did have was ruins from a bygone age. Until recently, it had had a thriving recycling business initiated by several alien species, both organic and cybernetic.
Of course, the sun had been unstable for millions of years, spewing out radiation and flares randomly. Most of the planet's surface was scoured clean. Fortunately, the ruins were mostly buried deeply under the surface. Unfortunately, the instabilities had been growing lately, and when it was realized the star was finally getting ready to either expand from an yellow dwarf to a red dwarf, or was ready to explode, depending on how things went, the scavengers had fled the planet like vermin fleeing a sinking a planetary wet navy ship.
Too bad you missed all the boats...
Chatterbox, Skitter, and Warhawk had been on an ark ship that had left cybertron six cycles ago. The ship had entered hyperspace, but a parting shot by a Decepticon Dreadnought as it entered the hyperspace portal it had generated sent it severely off course, and killed half the bots aboard.
The ark had come out in a dying solar system with a 'semi' habitable planet. Most of the atmosphere had been blown off it's surface by increasing solar storms, but below ground there was still life and atmosphere, protected by the heavy iron content in the surface.
The planet was called by it's inhabitants, what few were left, 'Graveyard', as that was all that was left, graveyards. Ancient ruins scavenged by the creatures that eked out an existence here. Or at least, they had. Now, there was no one here anymore, the sun was too unstable, and could go any day. Unfortunately, the Ark ship was too damaged to escape the gravity well, and the bots on board had to take the escape pods before it hit.
Chatterbox, Skitter, and Warhawk had been in one of the pods. They had no idea if anyone else had survived. They landed near some ruins and quickly got under cover...
----------------------------------------------------------
Ulastron had been making a decent living on Graveyard, up until six months ago, when the planets few science brains had figured out the sun was going critical. Ulastron had tried to get onto one of the fleeing ships, but with the reputation... nobody had been willing to take Ulastron. In fact, several had tried to vape Ulastron to make sure they understood just how not welcome on the ships they would be.
When the rudimentary radar Ulastron had cobbled together from the ruins of the old space port had picked up a ship, it had seemed like a miracle... then the ship plowed into the opposite side of the planet at maximum speed, dashing all hopes.
And then 3 autobots had come into the ancient ruined landing facility... just wonderful...
----------------------------------------------------------
Redshift had awoken several hundred years ago, not in the familiar embrace of Heliaxon, but in a burned out shell of a Titan. He never had found out what Titan he was in, the Titan's body was so damaged it looked like he'd been in a war, and then scavengers had set into him, at least 2 million years ago.
Redshift had eventually made it to the surface of Graveyard, and found aliens, both biological and cybernetic, found out about how war had been ravaging Cybertron for 4 million years, and then returned to the dead Titan to try to repair it, if possible, having nothing else to do.
But lately, the planet had been having many earth quakes, far more than normal...
"Where do you think we landed? Is this where we were supposed to land? Do you think anyone else survived? Maybe if they survived, they would contact us, right? I mean I would contact someone if I survived, but I DID SURVIVE so maybe I should contact someone, right? But who should I contact? I mean I don't know if anyone else survived but how would I know because if I did know then I would know I know and since I don't know, I don't know. So I guess logically since I don't know, then no one else survived. I mean, that follows right? ...Guys? GUYS?!? Come back!"
Chatterbox runs to catch up with the others who have inexplicably gone on ahead without telling him.
Warhawk scans the horizon, trying to take in their situation around the nattering of Chatterbox.
He speaks slowly, his deep voice echoing from the walls of the ruins.
"Chatterbox and Skitter, standard reconnaissance sweep. Let's see if there is anything, or anyone, here that can help us get back on track."
The ruins the trio find themselves in looks suspiciously like a small space port, although there are no ships at all around. However, there are signs of recent and frantic activity, as if this place were abandoned within the last month or two. The port opens out onto a deep crevice in the outside landscape. The landing bay itself is steeped in radiation near the entrance, but the main hanger is relatively lightly irradiated.
Redshift had awoken several hundred years ago, not in the familiar embrace of Helaxis, but in a burned out shell of a Titan. He never had found out what Titan he was in, the Titan's body was so damaged it looked like he'd been in a war, and then scavengers had set into him, at least 2 million years ago.
Redshift had eventually made it to the surface of Graveyard, and found aliens, both biological and cybernetic, found out about how war had been ravaging Cybertron for 4 million years, and then returned to the dead Titan to try to repair it, if possible, having nothing else to do.
But lately, the planet had been having many earth quakes, far more than normal...
"01001111 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01110101 01110000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101101 01101001 01100100 01101110 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01100100 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110010 01111001 00101100 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110000 01101111 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100001 01110010 01111001 00001010 01001111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101110 01111001 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110001 01110101 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100011 01110101 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 00100000 01110110 01101111 01101100 01110101 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100111 01101111 01110100 01110100 01100101 01101110 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110010 01100101 00001010 01010111 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101110 01101111 01100100 01100100 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100001 01110010 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101110 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100100 01100100 01100101 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110100 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00001010 01000001 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100111 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101111 01110010 00001010 01010100 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110110 01101001 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101111 01110010 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101101 01110101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01100001 01110000 01110000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101111 01110010 00001010 01001111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101..."
Redshift pauses the playback of the old poetic classic "The Scraplet," pondering for a moment if he's imagining things. Something familiar, something... old...
Placing his hand against the wall that contained the neural relay housing he'd been trying to reroute power to for the last three days, he sighs.
"If only I knew your name," he whispers to the quiet hulk of this old Titan. "If only you could talk to me."
The familiar feeling had faded, for now, leaving him wondering if it wasn't his imagination after all.
As Redshift speaks, the neural core flickers to life. There are sparks, and pops.
And then the core goes dead in a brilliant blasting surge of energy, energon leaking from the now thoroughly destroyed core.
Nearby, a console flickers to life, ancient signs of extreme danger glowing sullenly.
"Well... scrap.."
Redshift immediately goes into panic mode, rapidly gathering up any and all containers he can find in the area, overturning his tool crates, repair kit boxes, and everything else he can find to gather up the last of the Titan's energon.
"I won't forget your gift, nameless friend." he says, sighing. It won't be much, but it's something. He has to make it matter somehow.
"Imminent destruction," he ponders. "But of what? The Titan wouldn't warn of his own death like that. At this stage of decay, he'd have just died..."
The recent rise in tectonic instability flashes across his mind. The math is easy.
"... SCRAP."
Sealing up the energon containers, Redshift sits down among them, and begins to take an inventory of any and all ships left on the planet as of his last trip up to find parts to try and fix the Titan.
Redshift hasn't been up to the surface in a hundred years. There were plenty of ships up there then, but probably not now.
However, as Red is going about picking everything up, he notices on the emergency console that it is listing out emergency information. Most of it is either Unknown or Disabled, however, one lone blue entry flashes 'Viable', the Cityspeaker's Shuttle. It doesn't have any faster than light engines, or at least Helaxis's didn't. But if it's viable, it would get Red off the planet.
Redshift hasn't been up to the surface in a hundred years. There were plenty of ships up there then, but probably not now.
However, as Red is going about picking everything up, he notices on the emergency console that it is listing out emergency information. Most of it is either Unknown or Disabled, however, one lone blue entry flashes 'Viable', the Cityspeaker's Shuttle. It doesn't have any faster than light engines, or at least Helaxis's didn't. But if it's viable, it would get Red off the planet.
"Well... So all I have to do... is clear out a kilometer and a half of debris between the shuttle bay and the surface. Hm."
Now if only there was something around here he could use to blast the launch channel free...
Redshift turns, pulls all of his supplies together, and heads down to what's left of the shuttle bay. There has to be a way off of this rock.
Somehow.
Actually, Red had never found the Cityspeaker's private area in the Titan's ruins. Each Titan had it in a different location.
However, this time, one of the chambers off the cerebral cortex complex that had always been sealed before (and had managed to avoid not only several million years of alien attempts to access, but also the best of Red's limited hacking ability) was powered up.
Checking it, the door began to open, a complex unlocking process that froze several times during the 10 minutes it took for it to finally open.
Beyond, the Cityspeaker's chambers sat, undisturbed for millions of years. Dust had accumulated on the floor, and the air was stagnant, not that that bothered the cybertronian.
Entering, Red finds a spacious and luxurious but unused atrium, livving area, and repair bay. Beyond that, the Cityspeaker's Central Hub. Sitting before the hub display is a large metal chair. The chair is built for a warrior's stature, as befits the slowly rusting hulk of a Cybertronian corpse sitting in it. The console has exploded, the self destruct seal on it's console ripped up and out, meaning that the Cityspeaker is the one who terminated the Titan. Exactly what happened.. there's no way to know, with only emergency power, and the computer core gone. But the Cityspeaker, a massive figure still sitting in it's seat, with it's own sword driven into it's spark chamber, hands still clutching the hilt, is both somehow beautiful and terrifying simultaneously.
Beyond the hub chamber, the private landing bay of the Titan's Cityspeaker. Within, an ancient ship stands, slowly powering up. Over a 100 meters long, and varying from 10 to 40 meters wide, and 5 to 30 meters high... Red does not recognize the design, but if it's powering up, it might have enough power to blast it's way out from under ground...
"...Well... Scrap."
Redshift checks around the chambers, checking to see if there's still any power left to any of the various sensor arrays. Even without the computer core, the sensors themselves should be able to be operated.
If there's anyone or anything still alive on the surface, he can't leave them here to die.
... Well. Unless they're Decepticons.
Maybe.
Red finds that most of the ship is offline. Engines are working, life support, weapons, all working. The computer is dead, cloak systems, sensors, comm systems, all offline. The energon reserve is at 72%.
[ooc]Stealth
As the trio of Autobots are looking around the abandoned port, Skitter notices a biological of some type that is following the group suspiciously, keeping into shadows and corners.
Ranging out ahead of the group, Skitter notices something out of the corner of his eye. He halts for a moment, allowing the others to get closer. Acting as nonchalant as possible, he says, "I don't want to alarm anyone, but we are being followed. A very stealthy biological. It might just be checking us out. No need to jump to any conclusions." He had rarely been worried about most biologicals, at least not ones that aren't the size of a starship. This one was far too small to likely pose any danger. Of course, it may have information. That could be useful.
"Followed? Do you think they eat us mechanical types? Can organics eat mechanical types? One time I ate a biological 'fruit' and it bound up my innards for days. I was trying to process the thing and it hurt so much and I couldn't pass it and I swear it felt like I was passing a whole tire! I told my partner all about it and he told me "Chatterbox, shut up. I'm trying to power down." I swear he got really grouchy when he was trying to power down. This one time he actually shot me! Shot me! When I was trying to point out how the drop ship was on fire... Shot me!"
Afterdrive shifted the escape pod panel over his head that he was carrying for the 12th time. Again he jerked his foot from the semi-molten stone and sludged it forward again. "You sure your scanners are working in all this radiation and heat, Retro?" The warrior asked, for the fourteenth time.
The smaller scout/scientist tried not to flinch at the question. "I am absolutely certain, you cretin. That sun is highly unstable. It could blow in 10 minutes, or 2 years, but it's close! We have to find a way off this molten piece of slag."
Dustrazor, having more trouble in the semi-molten muck than either of her companions, thanks to her more pointed foot assemblies, broke in. "Lay off you two, we need to get the frag off this place. If Flux says his scanners are working, they are."
Afterdrive had the grace to sound embarassed. "Sorry, give me a Con to fight, and I'll rip it apart, but I can't fight a frag'n sun."
Flux nods. "Yes, yes, I know. I wish we were just worried about Cons right now. Ah, here we are, I told you there was..." Flux trails off as the trio come to a vast chasm. Looking down... and down... and down... "Oh dear..."
Dustrazor, looking down, shakes her head. "I'm no planetolobot, but that can't be good."
Afterdrive grunts. "I don't even know what a Planet o bot is, what's not good?"
Flux sighs. "That crevice is new, and it's penetrating the crust, to the molten core, that's where all that lava is coming from down below."
Afterdrive looks between the two. "And that means..."
Dustrazor shakes her head. "It means the planet's as unstable as the sun is, and it's breaking up."
"Exactly my dear."
Afterdrive looks between the two. "So, we need to find those power readings now, where are they Flux."
Flux points across the quarter mile crevice. "On the other side..."
Dustrazor and Afterdrive reply in unison. "Oh... scrap..."
Damn... well at least Autobots don't shoot first.
Clearly spotted, Ula pads out a bit to get a better look at the trio, she stops and sits in as non-threatening a manner as possible.
"Smokescreen! Report!" Magnus barked, as he lifted an internal bulkhead door and forced it far enough up into the ceiling for the locks to engage and hold it.
"Right boss, half the ship made it to the escape pods. Of the 43 remaining, 13 are confirmed to be at one with the all spark. Three are touch and go. Wheeljack reports that he's triageing as fast as he can, but it looks like the rest are going to make it. The ship is in bad shape, but we think we can get it back on line within a cycle. After stabilizing our survivors, Wheeljack's prioritizing the drive system, given the solar scrap storm that's going on outside. Sensors are down still, but we're broadcasting a rally signal. Without satellites, and with the solar storms, we'll be lucky if it covers a quarter of the planet." Smokescreen responds, checking over his console.
Magnus nods. "Hopefully those in the escape pods can either make it back before we leave, or find alternate ways off this death trap. If we have any fliers, have them do a scouting run in case any of the escape pods landed nearby."
"You got it big boss."
"Chatterbox, do you recall your role as a scout. In my experience, scouts, you know, look at things. I'm fairly confident the biological cannot eat you. Perhaps you would like to...scout it!"
Warhawk, but he thinks it is the least of his worries at this point.
Skitter moves towards the biological. Hmm, what was that universal greeting? Bah-weep-grah-na weep-ninny-bahm? Hell, I can't say that with a straight face.
Skitter cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, "Attention, biologic entity. We mean you no harm." Just in case the thing has a weapon, he readies himself to run... but it'll probably be fine... probably.
Skitter and Chatterbox, eyeing the biological, move closer, Skitter offering assurances to it that they are not hostile. Almost as soon as the words leave it's vocal synthesizer, the ground begins to rumble again, dust and pebbles and stones begin to fall from overhead, bouncing off their hides. This is a nuisance to the mechanical forms, but the organic form finds it painful.
Then again, the biological form finds the ground itself is growing painful, hot and painful, very hot! Even the mechanical's register the increased temperature in the ground before the ground begins to glow red!
Vehicle forms move the mechanicals away from the glowing ground quickly, as do fast and quick leaps from the biological, graceful bounds that eat at the distance faster than a biological should be able to move.
The glowing ground suddenly heaves up and molten stone fountains up into the air, adding to the danger to both bot and biological forms, and the biological form suddenly leaps into the air, a triangular miniature Seeker cybertronian form taking the place of the biological, although it's surface paint matches the scale patterns of the former biological.
Taking the brunt of the debris damage, Warhawk's slower pace lets him shield the smaller bots, and the now Seeker's new form allows it to dodge the debris in the air more efficiently.
Behind the four cybertronians, a cybertronian ship erupts from the ground, turbo blaster's glowing red from continued sustained fire. As the bots turn and raise weapons toward it, the ship orients itself and then adjusts to look directly at them, giving the four cybertronians a view of glowing blaster openings.
For a few tense moments the ship and bots form a triangle, weapons pointed in multiple directions, and then finally the silence is broken by a burst of sound from the ship. "...fragging external speaker control, by the Primes, whoever designed this control layout should be dipped in a smelting pit..." The voice trails off. A moment of silence. "Scrap! Which one was it? Never mind, get on board or shoot each other, but this ship is leaving in 60 microcycles!" The entry ramp on the ship lowers jerkily, allowing access to the interior.
HOT!
Ula leaps up and away from the molten ground eventually it is clear flight is required.
Then... salvation.
She wasted no time and flies into the open doors, Can't be worse than here is about to be.
"AHHH! Better hurry no time to waste!" Chatterbox cries out and shifts to motor-hover-cycle mode, shooting into the ship!
Surprised by the ship, Skitter accidentally transforms to robowolf. But, in this case, certainly no harm done. "Ah. Done and done." With that he bounds aboard the ship with the others.
The smaller bots do it with much more grace, but Warhawk clambers aboard behind them
"Whoever you are, thank you for your assistance. This planet seems to be grinding its gears and flying apart. Autobots, let us see if we can offer our new host any help."
"Yeah, thanks for saving us and not letting us get eaten by organics because I wasn't entirely sure that I could be eaten by an organic but I ate organic fruit once and it didn't agree with me so I thought maybe it could eat me not fruit but maybe something bigger..."
Ula transforms into her robot mode, a female bot with no apparent allegiances to any faction visible though she certainly looks Cybertronian.
"Indeed. Thanks. The last group that left the planet must have... uh... forgotten me in their panic to leave".
She regards the three autoboots before her, "So Autobots huh? Were you the ones that were in that ship that crashed?"
Skitter does a double-take at the female bot. "Hmm, I could have sworn you were organic? How...?" He shakes his head. Must have a sensor loose. Or she an organic transform circuit?! Oooo... think of the possibilities. All I would have to do is... He shakes his head again trying to focus on the here and now.
"Umm, yes, we did crash. In an escape pod. And now we're escaping again. I hope."
"Yes, let's go thank our savior, 'hawk."
"Wow, lucky you survived that. So, who are you all?"
"I am Warhawk, and these are my friends, Skitter and Chatterbox. We fled Cybertron at the orders of the new Prime, Optimus Prime. Our ship was damaged in the escape and we ended up here. Now we have an obligation to rejoin Optimus Prime and do whatever we can to aid him in his war against the Decepticons."
Warhawk moves toward the bridge or cockpit, attempting to locate their savior.
"Right, the first rule of survival is to get back into danger as quickly as you can. I think no one with any sense taught me that rule".
A voice comes over the All-Comm, sounding out through the ship.
"I'm sorry to sound brusque, but I need your attention. I'm lighting the way to the Bridge in white and Engineering in Green. I need you to sort yourselves by usefulness in both of those areas and get to where you'll do the most good. This ship... well... it's seen better days."
After a few beats:
"Soon would be good."
Ula heads to the bridge as in engineering she'd be of no use.
"Ah, that would mean I need to follow green. Pardon me, please," he says scurrying after the green lights to engineering. All aboard a ship barely kept in the air. Some things never change. There's a hint of a smile across his face as he focuses on where he's heading.
Skitter heads toward engineering, following the (mostly intact) line of green lights.
The other three head toward the bridge, where they find a scout bot struggling to handle the manual controls built for a warrior sized bot, jury rigged hand and foot extensions allowing the scout to reach the controls.
In engineering, Skitter finds an ancient engine, and an energon repository that's showing 40%. What he doesn't find is a super-luminal drive, just a regular space drive. He does find lots of burned circuits, damaged relays, and fused interfaces that used to be various other bits of ship systems. The ship's computer core, behind a plexi-steel case, looks like someone used it for a smelting core.
As the ship thrusts up and away from the planet, flying out of the underground port facility, Ula and Redshift notice that there is something wrong with the sun... it's not big enough. And as they watch, it visibly get's smaller.
"Oh... scrap..." Both say, in near unison.
As the ship hurtles away from the planet at it's top speed, the bots receive a static laden transmission on their personal transmitters, although it's hopelessly too far to transmit back.
"Unidentified ship, respond. This is Ultra Magnus, aboard the Autobot ship Ark VII. I repeat, identify yourself. This system is in the process of collapsing toward a supernova event. Engage hyper-drives immediately."
The ship cannot enter hyper-space by itself, however, when the sun goes nova, the gravitational lensing effect will create multiple natural space bridges in a sphere around the star. They will be short lived and highly unstable, with random destinations, however, it's safer than staying for the shock-wave of near light speed stellar matter. The bridges will collapse when the shock-wave reaches them. The ship must be between 87.5382 and 115.3875 times the stars original diameter to be in range to enter a naturally occurring space bridge.
Vehicle Mode(s): Redshift's vehicle mode is still a vaguely-Cybertronian hybrid of a Formula-One racer and his old GES (Ground Effect System) vehicle mode. On Earth, he sticks to using his wheels, but in a pinch can switch to a limited form of his GES (purposely limited, so as to conserve fuel) in order to traverse rivers, lakes, and other wheel-unfriendly terrain (such as chasms).Vehicle Mode Image: Redshift looks very much like this image of Mirage in both Robot and Vehicle modes, except his color scheme is shifted to Red (replacing Blue and Black), Yellow (replacing White), and Silver (replacing Red).
Robot Mode Image: See above. Redshift carries a sword (a symbol of his status as a City Speaker), as well as pair of blast-cannons (one in each arm).
As the ship hurtles away from the planet at its top speed, the bots receive a static laden transmission on their personal transmitters, although it's hopelessly too far to transmit back."Unidentified ship, respond. This is Ultra Magnus, aboard the Autobot ship Ark VII. I repeat, identify yourself. This system is in the process of collapsing toward a supernova event. Engage hyper-drives immediately."
Redshift clears his throat and jabs at the Trans-Com button, muttering about the mental alacrity of the Ship Designer who decided that the Trans-Com and All-Com buttons should be placed one within the other.
"Ark VII, this is... Well, this is Hexalon Cityspeaker Redshift aboard... Uh... Escape One... I have five sparks aboard this vessel. We have no hyperdrive at this time, but I have people in Engineering right now... They're... They're working on it. At least, they're trying."
Skitter shakes his head as he looks at the "engine," such as it is, when he hears the message sent out by the Ark VII. A supernova? Well scrap. There's just no way without a... hang on a second... if we... and...if there's a... HEY! That just might work! If he had a bulb in his head, it would have shone like am miniature nova itself.
"Engineering to bridge. I've got good news and bad news. The bad news: there's no chance we're going to have a working hyperdrive. But, the good news: there might actually be another way." He starts to spew this jargon-laden speech about time space, singularities, and how worm-holes can spontaneously form, temporarily creating...
"Scrap it! The short version. There's a non-zero chance that this event will create a space-bridge we can use to fly outta here! We just gotta be in the right place at the right time." He transmits to the bridge the approximate coordinates where they need to head for the greatest chance to catch a space-bridge.
"I can't predict exactly WHERE we'll end up if this works, but it won't be here. And that's a definite improvement."
Redshift realizes after fruitlessly trying to respond to the hail, that the comm systems, like most other systems on this ship, are fried to scrap.
When Skitter transmits the information to the bridge, it's only sort of coordinates, it's more a formula to calculate where to be. But, it's missing one vital piece of information, the local Star's original diameter.
INT
Redshift and Ulastron both look at the formula, and then almost in perfect unison say the same thing. "We need to be between 621.5 and 818.1 Dectets from the center of the system!"
Everyone looks at the current location of the ship, 898.5 dectets... 898.7 dectets...
"Would it help if I got out and pushed?" Ula exclaims clearly distressed by what appears to be impending doom.
"I've survived how long just to be blown up on this miserable mud ball of a planet..."
"I can't believe we have to go back toward the star," Redshift sighs.
He starts to tap the All-Comm, then hesitates for a click as a thought hits him.
Routing the All-Comm to repeat his words in Flash-Code over the ship's external lighting, Redshift speaks to the "crew," punching in commands on the control panel as he speaks. From time to time, he points Ulastron in the direction of control terminals and dials that he needs shifted in order to get the ship to turn around.
"As our Hyperdrive is out, we will be engaging in a Collapse-Horizon Event Transversal, utilizing the solar primary's own gravity displacement to transit via natural Space-Bridge to a random destination. We have no telemetry on the exit point. We must be between 621.5 and 818.1 Dectets Offset System Center for this to work. We will therefore begin a full inverse-burn to optimal Space Bridge Formation Horizon immediately. Any Cybertronian vessel receiving this Flash-Code message, we advise you utilize your Hyperdrive to exit this system's Heliosphere immediately... or follow us in. Hexalon Cityspeaker Redshift, aboard Escape One, end transmission. Until All Are One."
Over the All-Comm, he then follows this up with:
"Okay, you all caught that? We need to pull a full 180-degree turn and make for optimal bridge formation range. NOW."