The combiners other two components lug the shield module into our heroes’ new ship and begin to install the module. They work quickly, but efficiently- this procedure is so routine for them that they could probably do it in stasis mode.
While the Pulsar was an elegant vessel built for comfort, this new vessel- named Pack Mule on its registration- is comparatively sturdier, but less refined. Its aesthetics are more industrial, and its machinery lacks the self-maintenance systems of the Pulsar. The Pack Mule could take more of a beating than her predecessor, especially with an energy shield, but she still lacked the offensive capabilities of a private vessel or a proper battleship.
“I suggest we each review our intelligence networks for potential leaks,” Sum-of-Many advises the council. This is met with nods and short affirmations from the other colony leaders; though many feared to consider the possibility of the quintessons’ involvement, none could oppose such a reasonable action. Gabriel had to be getting his information from somewhere.
“Gabriel’s not an uncommon name among humans,” Chancellor Patel tells Defender. “And aliases lifted from the Abrahamic faiths have been popular among those with delusions of grandeur for eons. I can make you a list of the more recent- and more exciting- examples.”
Optimus Prime subtly eyes Kitai from the other end of the council chamber; wordlessly imploring the hybrid to share whatever he might have to say, if anything, about the possibility of quintesson activity.
“If there’s nothing more to be said, then I must concur with the Prime,” says Rampart. “She and her company have shared that which they have wished to tell us, and now we must all do what we can to learn more.”
There is another round of discontented shifting and half-hearted assents from the council. Whatever the individual opinions of the colony leaders are, it is clear that no-one is very pleased with the outcome of this meeting. Ironclad, Oddball, and Index exchange glances, all of them displeased with how little they have truly learned from our heroes. Rampart and Sum-of-Many glower disapprovingly at the three, standing by our heroes both figuratively and literally. Chaplain, Chancellor Patel, and Hammerhead glance between these two camps uneasily, while the rest of the council fearfully ponder the possibility of quintesson machinations proposed by Firestorm. Only Optimus Prime is unreadable.
Ironclad looks to our heroes, wordlessly inviting them to officially end the meeting.
Well, might as well say a few things.
“I may be… aware… of a few things.” Kitai said slowly.
"Before we arrived here, we entered the wreck of the mercenary ship, only to find the few occupants mangled and contorted, almost like the were forced to transform with certain metal machinations. And, some sort of blades were also found, impaled into the chest of the copilot. They were a fusion of bone and metal, and i was able to identify that they were quintession in nature. "
Firestorm was quiet, both of them were. They had read historical records on past conflicts, including those with the Quintessons. But, this information was very startling that they would do something like this and they faced Unicron.
Axis considered letting the other council members respond to what Kitai had said, but this meeting had gone on long enough. Action needed to be taken.
“I know that the circumstances at hand are far from ideal. But I promise all of you that I will do absolutely everything in my power to see this Gabrial defeated and brought to justice. Just as we defeated the heralds of unicron before, I will not rest until I can assure Cybertron and all her colonies are safe. With that being said, this council meeting is officially adjourned.”
She gave her staff another sharp stamp into the floor. Letting its ringing clang echo through the chamber.
Oreo looks around in surprise, the sound ringing in his auditory sensors.
“Well, let the adventures begin, I suppose,” he says.
Defender grins at the quip.
“Commander, with your permission, I will accompany Lady Axis on this mission.”
He saluted Ironclad, standing to attention.
The two workmen exchange a few curious glances between each other, but they nevertheless comply with Seraphicon’s requests, loading some spare parts and heavy-duty repair equipment into the Pack Mule’s cargo bay. If he were anyone else, Seraphicon’s abundance of caution might’ve struck the two combiners as overly-paranoid, but one didn’t level such accusations at a national hero.
“Y’know, this ship’s actually Bellatoran,” one of the workmen says, just trying to make some small talk while he works. “A pair of shipbuilders there apparently wanted to try making something other than a dreadnaught. This was the end result.”
“How it ended up here in Iacon’s rental service is… well, therein lies a tale, I’ll just say,” the other bot comments.
@ProfSrlojohn Iacon’s spaceports bustle with their usual level of activity. Despite the dangers looming on the horizon, the flow of interstellar travel and trade continues. With the Pulsar returned to her rightful owner, our heroes will need a new vessel with which to sail the stars on their quest. Seraphicon, Razor, Maximus, and Honeycomb have gathered at a particular dock to arrange transport to Astrum, while they wait for the rest of the party to return from the Primal Basilica. Seraphicon follows a pair of dock workers as they load crates onto a boxy, tough-looking ship, while Maximus and Honeycomb disappear into a banged-up transport of an older make and model. Nearby, various merchants hawk salvage and curios that they have collected from around the galaxy.
“Hey, you!” a human man with long dark hair calls to LD-L1. “You look like the kind of bot who appreciates history. I’ve got some old mementos here from Earth’s Final War- why don’t you take a look, see if anything catches your-… uh…”
He was about to ask if anything caught the Follower’s eye, of course, but he stops as he sees that LD-L1 is somewhat lacking in obvious optical mechanisms. “Why don’t you just take a look?” he settles on saying.
“Not one for crowds, huh?” Quickdraw remarks. “Yeah, me neither. Anyway, you two make yourselves comfortable. Avalanche and I will be taking us out soon, unless you’d rather stick around a while longer.”
Axis’s words fail to entirely reassure the council, as Kitai’s words seem to confirm Firestorm’s theory. Whatever Gabriel had planned for whatever treasure he sought was now only a secondary concern to whatever the quintessons’ stood to gain from his exploits.
“Well… scrap,” Bootleg says quietly. “I-… I gotta go…”
One-by-one, the councilors’ holograms flicker out, each one leaving to prepare their worlds and their people for the worst- with quintessons, one couldn’t expect anything but the worst. Ironclad steps toward Kitai, but the hybrid leaves before he can speak. Muttering an ancient curse, he instead turns to Defender.
“Permission granted,” the Knight-Commander says to the old Autobot. " 'Til All Are One, Defender.
“I must prepare the Order for war,” he continues, striding toward the door to leave the council chamber. “You will have whatever you need of us.”
“If this is indeed the prelude to a new quintesson invasion, then Bellator will rise to the occasion,” Rampart vows as her hologram fades away. “My forces will be ready.”
“Humanity stood with Cybertron against the quintessons before, and we’ll do it again,” Chancellor Patel promises before she, too, departs. “You’ll have that list soon, Defender.”
Optimus Prime’s image vanishes into the ether, the prehistoric symbols around him lingering the air for a moment before they, too, dissipate into nothing. Only Ironclad and Chaplain remain of the council. Beside our heroes, Downburst types furiously at her datapad.
“I will never take a boring day at work for granted again,” she mutters, her fingers shaking as she types.
At an interstellar communications tower near the edge of Iacon, the reporter Leslie Jiménez-Hansen sits before a console designed for minicons and all other creatures of similar stature. An assistant had converted the machine’s display language from Neocybex to English, before leaving Leslie alone to contact her superiors on Earth. The monitor is blank, save for a line of text in the top right corner reporting connection integrity. Though Earth and Cybertron were an entire galactic arm apart, the transwarp technology in the comm-tower allowed for near-instantaneous communication between the two planets.
Leslie takes a silver pill-shaped device out of a pocket and plugs it into a port in the console. The device reshapes itself to fit into the machine, and the monitor dims for a second before resuming its usual brightness. The reporter then types a short message onto the screen:
Have a lead on the Order of Witwiccans. Remaining in New Imperium to investigate further.
A reply appears on the screen not three seconds later: Return to Earth.
Can’t do that, Leslie types. This is time-sensitive.
Not your assignment. Return to Earth.
Leslie sighs- in hindsight, she should’ve expected this. No-one at work ever appreciated her taking initiative- they tended to throw around words like “insubordinate” and “obsessive” instead, for whatever reason. This time, however, she was determined to make them eat those words.
As if reading her mind, the handler back on Earth types, Don’t you dare. But Leslie did dare- she terminated the connection and removed her scrambler from the console. To any prying eyes, it would appear as though the signal had been disrupted by a freak technical glitch before it could reach Earth, instead rendered a meaningless burst of static. Pocketing the scrambler and logging out of the console, she leaves the comm-tower and walks back out into the city of Iacon. Her lips spread into an almost manic grin as she makes to reunite with out heroes. Her contemporaries might call her a madwoman, but she knew that history would vindicate her in due time.
LD-L1 wasn’t one to fall for merchants often, as a follower, he was peddled clear facsimile religious artifacts all the time. But, a Follower always has time for his fellow man and indulged the Merchant. So he opted to come closer and take a look. “Very well, what do you have to offer?”
“I see you were successful in your search,” Razor says to Maximus. “Your choice of transport looks like it definitely fits our budgets.”
As she speaks, she glanced over the scratched, dinged, and dented surface of the hull. The starship looks serviceable, respectable, and secure. A good vessel for a dangerous journey. She also notices the ongoing addition of the shield generator.
“Should I be worried about this,” she asks Seraphicon, gesturing towards the device.
“Just being cautious considering who all we s coming; plus it’s Bellatoran, which means it is built to take some serious hits.” Seraphicon says, “probably a bit overkill, I guess old habits die hard.” He says, remembering how paranoid he was early on in their quest to destroy Unicron…and how paranoid that alternate version of himself was.
“Genuine relics from humanity’s last honest-to-goodness war,” the merchant replies. “Some of this stuff, I dug out of the grasslands around Nadia.”
Around the merchant are various crates on which his purportedly-genuine war-relics are displayed in vaguely-organized heaps. The rusted husk of a laser sidearm lies next to a boxy helmet from some ancient suit of powered armor. A pauldron propped up against the helmet- possibly coming from the same suit- is engraved with the image of an old candle lantern above a sword inside its scabbard. Suspended on a rack to the left of the merchant is the top half of some kind of android, and a small box next to it has various medallions on its lid, each one bearing the insignia of one of the many factions of the Final War.
“I’ve even got some Technoarchy artifacts,” the merchant boasts. “I’ve scrubbed them all, though, don’t worry. No Red Plague nanites on anything. Heck, I wouldn’t be here now if there were.”
As if on cue, a tiny purple jet comes zipping into the spaceport, a yellow trail of plasma streaming from its engine. Beta Maxx swoops down toward Razor and Seraphicon and transforms to robot mode, sprinting the rest of the way to the two. Faint hissing and popping noises emanate from his overworked and overheated mechanisms, and the old minicon looks about as out-of-breath as a robotic organism can.
“I haven’t missed anything, I hope,” he pants. “No more surprise attacks by unsavory characters?”
“I’m worried about you. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Firestorm says, “I know tensions are high, I’ve basically got a little gremlin in my head that is somewhat of a psychopath, I know stress when I see it.”
“Oh really, at least you have everything right in your head! I just figured out that I committed en masse killings a few days ago! I figured out that i had been loyal, no, obedient, like a pet, to the eldritch tentacle monsters that are literally the worst of the worst! And thats not even scratching the surface!” Kitai viciously replies, waving his arms around.
“And whats more, i have to deal with a stick-in-the-mud, who believes that we’re garbage, and further more, why didn’t anyone say a word!?”