Firestorm shows the Gabriel transmissions.
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“Well, certainly ominous to say the least.” Axis said. “But it does confirm what I’ve already suspected. Whoever this Gabrial is, they’re watching us closely. We will need to be exceedingly careful moving forward.”
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“Agreed.” Firestorm says.
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“Defender, can you pick up any signs of life in this area from the ship? Other than us, of course,” Oreo says through the comms.
Defender activates the Pulsar’s scanners, combing the surroundings for life forms.
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“Oh Gods.” Kitai said, with a massive look of disgust on his face.
Kitai feel his body tighten. Like merge together like quintessions? But that wouldn’t make sense. Why would one be here? But those spikes. Oh gods.
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Overgrowth follows Axis outside, and Leslie does as well, climbing off of Seraphicon’s shoulder to film the wreckage. The reporter dons a mask to keep her from breathing in the smoke and engine fumes hanging over the site.
Overgrowth plays the two messages aloud so that those nearby can hear them, too. “At any rate, we now have a name for our enemy,” she says. She then looks down at Leslie.
“Human-” she begins.
“Name’s Leslie,” the reporter quickly interjects.
“Leslie,” the Knight begins again, “what significance does this name, Gabriel, have among your people?”
“It can mean a lot of things,” Leslie replies. “Off the top of my head, I can think of an archangel, the 57th President of the United States of America, and my ex-husband. None of those three strike me as the kind of guy to make a grab for ancient cybertronian artifacts, though.”
The Pulsar’s scanners detect no life-signs apart from those of our heroes, but this ship’s instruments aren’t very robust. It’s not impossible that someone- or something- else may be concealing itself within the wreckage, as LD-L1 fears.
In the light of the fires burning within the wreck of the dropship, the spiraling patterns on the spikes almost seem to move, twisting and writhing within Kitai’s fingers. Kitai wouldn’t feel anything, though- it may just as well be a trick of the light, or his own nerves getting the better of him.
As far as the mutilated corpse of the dropship pilot goes, the burning body does bear a resemblance to the images Kitai had seen in the Grand Museum and the Vector Sigma chamber. But while those cyborg creatures had been modified to turn them into living weapons, this poor pilot would not have been much of a threat if he was still alive. None of the bones visible through holes in his burnt flesh and tattered armor fit together as they should, and what’s left of his musculature is all wrong. His lungs, now studded with teeth, had been relocated to his thighs, with nothing to suggest that they would have been functional even if they weren’t currently on fire.
If Honeycomb walks past the room in which the mercenaries are being held, the door marked by deep scratches courtesy of Maximus, she might hear dreadfully off-key, monotone singing emanating into the corridor.
"Seventy-three bottles of beer on the wall. / Seventy-three bottles of beer. / Take one down, pass it around / seventy-two bottles of beer on the wall…"
“Ugghh…” A collective groan follows the last verse.
“Sarge, I’m getting kinda hungry,” one of the prisoners complains.
“Shut up, Peters,” another replies. “We’re all hungry, and you making us think about it is just making it worse.”
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Defender leaves the bridge, and enters the cargo bay. He then transforms into his tank mode, and rolls over towards the others.
“I haven’t picked up any signs of life,” he says, “but keep an eye out. There’s a chance something (or someone) is hiding around here.”
He pans his turret’s scopes over the side of the dropship’s hull, scanning it with a radiation sensor.
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“It could possibly be an alias. Given how secretive our foe has been thus far, I wouldn’t expect them to use their actual name in their transmissions.” Axis noted.
Honeycomb curiously opened the door, and her face lit up with intrigued excitement when she saw the prisoners within.
“Tiny squishy people! Are you those human things I’ve heard about? What are you guys doing in here?” She asked.
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“Probably an alias, and that makes things tricky.” Firestorm says.
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Defender’s sensors detect nothing out of the ordinary among the wreckage. Our heroes are the only living things in the vicinity of the crash site, and whatever killed the dropship’s pilots has gone elsewhere.
“So we chat up NEST and see if there’s a Gabriel on their hitlist,” Leslie suggests. “I can get in touch with my sources back in Sol, too.”
“What of the Romulus Mercenary Company?” Overgrowth asks her. “They may know more about this person, yes? Where are they headquartered?”
“Lupa, Alba Longa system- but good luck trying to get anything out of them,” Leslie warns her. “The UHP’s been trying for years to make them answer for a whole lot worse than what’s happened here on Cybertron.”
The mercenaries all scramble away from the door as it opens. In just a few short hours, Firestorm and Dark’s plot to make their incarceration as miserable as possible has been proceeding wonderfully. Maximus had torn up the room so thoroughly that there has been no comfortable place for the humans to sit or lie down for long periods of time, and the harsh lighting has forced them to squint almost constantly. Starving and sleep-deprived, they fear that their captors have come to add to their torment.
But then Honeycomb speaks, and the dozen-or-so mercenaries all seem rather confused. What did she mean, ‘what are you guys doing here’?
“We, uh… we tried to kill you and blow up your ship?” a man with a cybernetic eye says, looking around at his comrades as if any of them would understand what was happening better than he did.
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“NEST. That’s a human organization yes? I’m still not entirely familiar with all your groups and systems.” Axis asked.
“Oh. That sounds pretty bad.” Honeycomb awkwardly responded. “I only just got here. Like with the group I mean. So I must have missed whatever went down with you guys.”
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“Maybe I can lend a hand?” Ivory said, leaning against the doorframe in “bot” mode. “I’ve some friends over in NEST, we… worked, together a couple times.”
———-
“Regardless if you picked up nothing in the ship sensors, there’s something unsettling, in this place. An inherent wrongness resultant of these… abominations of carrion.”
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Razor snaps a few pictures of the corpse. The disgusting mesh of flesh and metal reminds her of the remains her lab had worked with. She suddenly feels a pang of sadness at the destruction of the pilot’s body.
“It’s a shame to see such violation,” she remarks. “I wish I could have helped him…”
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“They’re a human-cybertronian peacekeeping force, ma’am,” Overgrowth explains to Axis. “They do good work. There some Knights among their ranks.”
Leslie spins around, having not taken notice of Ivory until he made his presence known. Just how many people made up this merry band?
“How long have you been-… never mind,” she says, waving a hand as if to discard the question. “Who are you? I’m still getting introduced to everybody.”
“Yeah, that explains it,” the merc with the cybernetic eye remarks. “Long story short: your new buddies have a datapad that belonged to some old warrior-priest or whatever, and this other guy wants it bad enough to throw a couple dozen RMC goons at you to get it. We failed- obviously- and now our bosses are gonna flay us alive as soon as they find out.”
“Yeah, thanks for that picture, Howe,” the mercenary leader grunts, the sarcasm in his tone almost palpable. “It hadn’t sunken in yet just how screwed we all are.”
The dropship’s flight recorder has given our heroes a name for their enemy, and further inspection of its data may yield yet more information that could be put to use. But everything else within the mercenaries’ ship was destroyed in the crash- there is nothing else to scavenge from the wreckage. Whatever killed the craft’s pilots so horrifically has evidently left the area, also, and there are no further clues as to its identity beyond the biomechanical quills it left behind and the state in which it left its victim’s bodies.
Beta Maxx flies toward Kaon, returning to the Vector Sigma chamber once more to conduct his own research into the revelations at the Tomb of the Primes. Though he and Vector Sigma were of little help in the initial step of this journey, there is one item among the newly-deciphered contents of the hidden cache in Sentinel Prime’s journal that is familiar to the immortal scribe. How it pertains to this mystery, he does not yet know. It has become apparent that there are gaps in both his memory and Vector Sigma’s records; such a thing should not be possible, and yet Sentinel’s message in the Tomb seemed to suggest that the old Prime had somehow made it so. Beta finds this conundrum equal parts intriguing and deeply disturbing…
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“Fascinating.” Axis noted, her interest having been thoroughly peaked. “I have a feeling this NEST will be an invaluable resource for the trials ahead of us.”
“Onyx alive! That’s horrible! What makes you so certain that’ll happen?” Honeycomb asked.
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“I’ll go back to the ship,” Defender said. “I hope whatever did… that… hasn’t gotten on board with us.”
He rolls back to the ship, and transforms into his robot mode in the cargo bay.
Razor, who is still standing by the corpse, activates a switch on her right arm. Her hand transforms into a device with several sensor probes, and a DNA reader. Kneeling beside the pilot’s body, she touches part of his skin with the probes. After a few seconds, she stands up, and retracts the device into her arm.
“I’ve got a sample of the pilot’s DNA,” she says. “We can have it analyzed at our next stop.”
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“Let us hope so,” Overgrowth replies.
Then Ivory interjects (@ProfSrlojohn). Overgrowth has so far only encountered the detective in his human disguise, so she does not recognize the new bot standing in the cargo hold. Mistaking him for another stowaway, she vows to have a chat with Salvage over his failings as a lookout.
“Primus, not another one,” she groans, reaching for her blade. “Are we really so easy to find?”
“Oh, so he’s not with you?” Leslie says, looking up at the Knight. She then takes a few steps back down the gangplank, in case this confrontation turns more deadly. “Why don’t I just get to a minimum safe distance and let you guys sort this out, eh?”
Salvage has been monitoring the Pulsar’s sensors while our heroes have been searching, and he has detected no additional life-forms in the area, just like Defender. The ship seems secure.
“It’s company policy to kill operatives who leak mission intel and information about our clients,” the mercenary leader explains. “Your friends scared my men into talking, so now it’s only a matter of time before word of that gets back to Lupa and we get paid a visit.”
“Yeah,” the one with the cybernetic eye says morosely. “And our client also threatened to kill us if we screwed up. I’m pretty sure he meant it, too- the General seemed to think he did, anyway.”
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As Defender enters the hallway at the back of the cargo hold, he notices two things: the sound of several people talking in an adjacent room or hallway, and the sound of Overgrowth’s voice from behind him. He turns, and sees the Knight and Ivory standing near the gangplank, and a blur of motion as the reporter back down out of his sight.
“Where did you come from? I didn’t see you on the way in,” he says.
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“He’s with me actually. I met this detective back in Iacon, not too long after the attack. We’ve agreed to help one another. He’ll be accompanying us on our mission moving forward.” Axis explained.
“And you’re just accepting that? Aren’t you going to try to do something about it?” Honeycomb asked.
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“Before anyone gets antsy, I’m with the prime, the name’s Ivory, private Investigator.” He said, flashing an ID
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