The three predacons were calmer now, confident that all the people around them weren’t a threat. A few of the doctors remove some of their restraints to make the clones more comfortable. Ripclaw’s tail and severed arm are reattached.
Facelift walks by, whistling as he glances over what remained of the transwarp drive.
“Oh, scrap,” he remarks. “That, uh… that’s gonna complicate things.”
Topside was in the main hangar, surveying the damage there with a heavy spark. Shatterpoint joins him, wordlessly placing a hand on the Autobot’s shoulder to console his counterpart.
Forcep and the other medics start to take Sprocket and Greasemonkey to a medical bay.
Topside clears his throat, and Shatterpoint straightens his posture.
“At least all this was worth something,” Topside says, audibly relieved. “Hopefully.”
“We have little time to waste,” says Shatterpoint gravely. “With all four Omega Keys in our possession and the enemy in retreat, there must be some way we can return to Cybertron, despite Salvation’s condition.”
Bombshock seems to understand Zepar’s words, but Ripclaw and Lazerback don’t. The two dragons are at ease, however, all the same.
“We can fix this, right?” Facelift asks. “I mean, we’ve taken hits before and we’ve always come back.”
For the first time, the Butcher of Tetrahex sounded genuinely concerned for the mission and its success, as if the reality of the last three months had finally registered in his mind.
“Not like they could make things much worse than they are now,” Topside says.
Bombshock’s mouth opens and closes as the hybrid predacon tries to mimic the sounds he’d heard our heroes making to one another. The mandibles on the sides of his face click rhythmically as he croaks out a word:
“Bomb… shock. Bombshock. Bombshock.” he says hoarsely, his diction harsh and enunciation stilted.
Broadwing approached cautiously. He transformed into his beast mode and gave a short animalistic cry. A simple greeting. He hoped that taking a more bestial approach could bypass this language barrier.
OOC: Now I’m really curious. What’s the timeline like between Broadwing and the predacons? Who was made first? Were they ever in Shockwave’s lab at the same time in the war?
“I was wondering if you’d be willing to to send someone to help a friend learn the skill of speech.” Zepar says, “He has a lot of physiological similarities to an Insecticon and I’m hoping an Insecticon may be able to help him out with learning this skill.”
Shadowraker perched on Zepar’s shoulder.
Epsilon heads to the Conflux, mutters a brief prayer to Primus and puts the Keys in their place.
Garand continues to help the salvage and rescue efforts.
Each of the four Omega Keys locks into place on the dais with a sharp ringing sound. Reunited at last, an androgynous choir moans a low, otherworldly canticle. The four knight statues above their plinths climb to their feet; the likenesses of Atlantis, Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Ogygia draw their swords and point them out toward the model of Cybertron and her colonies hovering between the dais’s gyroscopic rings. A rainbow of energy pulses out from the platform’s center and fills the ancient mechanisms of the Conflux with light; the pit beneath the dais glows an ethereal blue-white.
The guards start and jolt to attention, drawing their weapons on reflex, but lowering their arms as they stare in wonder as a final holographic map weaves itself from strands of light within the rings: a watery planet dotted with long chains of archipelagos and a single continent in its southern hemisphere, with veins of blue, green, violet, and crimson light running beneath the sea. It was the planet Sero, which our heroes had visited weeks before.
Facelift pitches in too, in an uncharacteristic silence. He pulls trapped engineers from ruined machines and repairs their damages without so much as a crack about harvesting their internal mechanisms. Some engineers found this sudden change even more disturbing than his usual demeanor.
The bridge was in much the same condition as the rest of Salvation: its right side wall had been blown open, and many of its operations consoles were smashed or darkened. Flyby, Brakeswitch, Broadband, and Motherboard all had black marks and dents on their armor, and were weary from the battle.
“Let’s try to get this ship spaceworthy again.” Epsilon said.
—————————-
Garand helped Facelift with his efforts and asked, “You’re oddly quiet; need to get something off your chest?” As much as he resembled Megatron, his whole demeanor was different as he had a kind, caring, fatherly vibe to him.
————————
“We’re in sick bay.” Zepar tells the queen, “How’s the hive doing? Do you need a medical and salvage team?”
“That’s Sero, ain’t it?” One of the guards comments. “We’ve been there already.”
“You mean it wants us to backtrack now?” another says. “I mean, I guess it makes sense. We gotta turn back around to get to Cybertron, and all.”
Facelift sighs.
“I’m gonna be real happy when we’re done here, don’t get me wrong,” he starts. "Even without the looming threat of mass extinction, this trip has been way more than I bargained for. And I know it’s selfish of me, but I’ve been thinking lately: what happens to me when it’s over?
“I mean, I jumped on this ship to get away from a whole bunch of bounty hunters that both factions paid to bring me in- and I’d net them a hefty sum, if I may say so proudly. The Decepticons want me dead; the Autobots wanna lock me in a cell for the rest of my life. Neither option is particularly attractive to me.”
“Many of our warriors were injured in the fight,” Arthropoda says. “But Forcep has sent medics to us already.”
