“No, but it is a good start and a choice.” Firestorm says, “it’s not ignorance to be positive while acknowledging the bad and a choice has the power of a single domino in that it can topple more in a chain reaction that can be massive.”
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“He’s right, though- this will get ugly,” Salvage concedes, nodding toward Kitai. “But if the only alternative is Judgement, Take Five, I don’t think we have much of a choice.”
“Excuse me, but don’t we have a plan already?” Leslie interjects, looking up at the much larger beings standing in front of her. “Gabriel needs whatever Sentinel Prime hid, but we’re the ones who know where it is. So we go to Lacuna and get our hands on it before he can- maybe we could even turn it against the quintessons.”
Beta Maxx grabs one of the quintesson baubles and turns it over in his hands. The cilia which had sprouted from them earlier are now limp and withering like dehydrated flowers. “If the devices in question are meant to interface with our technology, then yes,” he answers Razor. “These machines here, however, seem totally alien.”
He points to the empty spaces in the machine’s frame, ringed by the necrotic cilia. “They’re missing their biomechanisms as well,” he says. “No doubt they rotted away eons ago- but Gabriel somehow triggered this new growth while he was speaking…”
(@DuneToa)
Hangar doors on either side of Excalibur II slide open, revealing a small hangar bay behind them illuminated by stark white lights. Through the shimmering atmospheric shields, troopers stood in formation while maintenance technicians performed diagnostics on a ground bridge gate.
“No, Honeycomb, this place is deserted,” a youthful male voice drones. “Nobody here but us cyber-chickens.”
A red-and-black predacon steps into view from another room. His features evoke the image of medieval plate armor- one would be forgiven for mistaking him for a Knight of Cybertron. Talon raises his arms, offering a hug.
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“Talon!”
Honeycomb excitedly shouted. She pushed off the wall and transformed into her robot mode, practically leaping into the predacon’s arms and returning his embrace.
“Oh its so good to see you again! I really should have visited sooner. You have no idea how much I missed you guys!”
Finally seeing her friend again, the insecticon girl was sounding rather emotional.
Axis moved forward into the ship and touched down. She exited her flyer and looked around the hangar. While she did want to regroup with the others, taking a little time to familiarize herself with this new vessel couldn’t hurt.
Oh to hell with this crap! I didn’t sign up for a fricken war. First chance I get I’m ditching these lunatics. You guys are on your own.
Nova mentally declared.
“Are you sure it’d be a good idea to try using some cosmic super weapon that you yourself probably won’t understand? I don’t know about you but this whole thing feels like a bad idea. Every part of it.”
She retorted.
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“Fool.” Kitai said, staring at Leslie, his opticless and glazed-over eyes shining down on her. “That machine may be unpredictable, and would go against the wishes and hopes of hundreds, maybe even thousands. And what an idiotic thought to believe that the quintessons would not be prepared for such an eventuality. Furthermore, Gabriel used quintesson technology. Meaning he’s with them. And nothing ever Ally’s themselves with the quintessons and is still their own race.”
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“You are just a ray of sunshine, you know that? If you know so much about these Quintessons then maybe you could offer some potential weakness we could exploit? No one army can be completely without fault.”
Nova replied.
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“It could be like asking Unicron to help- a bigger problem than it first seemed,” Defender comments. “Thankfully that’s never happened. But I wonder… Nova, does your government have anything designed to fight extraterrestrials? Something like the weapons of the last millennium, made to cause immense and immediate destruction to an enemy whose course cannot be changed, as was often perceived during their development. Or have nuclear weapons become obsolete?”
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“Well as far as my government is concerned, I can’t tell you a whole lot. I know there some big guns hanging out in space to protect a few important places. As for nukes, I’m pretty sure they’re essentially banned from any form of practical use. But then again that is just one government out of dozens. For all I know every other space nation could be completely different. And to be perfectly honest, my knowledge on military hardware is fairly limited anyway. You wanna ask me about Neo-Germanic combat mechs I can go on for hours. Anything beyond that I never bothered to learn about.”
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Razor looked over at Kitai for a second. He was present… he was holding the device… was there a connection?
“Beta Maxx, would there be a chance that these growths could be triggered by contact? That the device is activated by the touch of the user?”
She looked at the parts again. What material were the cilia formed from, anyway?
“Why would this thing latch onto the user, rather than being held or worn?”
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Talon staggers back as Honeycomb jumps into him, holding her for a second before setting her down onto her feet.
“Yeah, I’ve missed you too, kid,” he says. “It’s been too quiet around here without you.”
“Well, quieter, to be more precise,” says a grey-colored cybertronian following Talon into the room, flanked by a slender green-and-white woman with fur on her shoulders and neckline. “Everyone can still hear you from halfway across the city, Talon.”
“I’m a predacon; we’re supposed to be loud and obnoxious,” Talon says defensively. “That’s our whole thing.”
“No, it’s just your thing,” the woman- Lunawing- comments. “I’ve met quiet predacons.”
“How have you been?” Gyro, the grey bot, asks Honeycomb. “You said in your last transmission that you had a surprise for us?”
Leslie pinches the bridge of her nose and draws in a sharp breath.
“Okay,” she sighs, irritated, “so he’s probably a secret cyborg tentacle monster- I won’t dispute that. What I’m saying is that if he needs this artifact for whatever he’s planning, then the quintessons must need it too. Even if they have a plan B, we can still deprive them of an asset. We can even destroy it, if it’s really so dangerous.”
“Or we could try to use it,” Salvage suggests. “We don’t have a lot of options right now, so maybe we shouldn’t be ruling any of them out. Heck, maybe we should find out what this thing is first.”
“Quintessons and their technology are connected by a hive mind,” Beta Maxx explains. “Maybe that collective was trying to establish contact with Kitai?”
The dead cilia appear to be made of flesh, and a murky mucus-like substance is leaking from them as they decay. Their connections to the technological parts of the devices are seamless, with muscle and metal smoothly blending into one another.
The formation of soldiers in the hangar snap to attention as Axis exits her vehicle, and their commander, a green-armored man with a face shaped like a gas mask, steps forward.
“Welcome aboard Excalibur II, ma’am,” the man says, his voice hissing from the nozzles in his cheeks. “I’m Captain Trenchfoot. It’s an honor.”
The hangar of Excalibur II looks much like that of the original Excalibur, though the ground bridge gate and its surrounding bay takes up much of the aftward bulkhead. There is also a small armory stocked with weapons.
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“And what happens if that sets off a chain reaction? Where ever it is, it could cause a disruption,jeopardizing many lives.”
Kitai retorted.
Kitai hears his name and the following conversation. “May I see that again?”
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“I’ve been great! I saw so many amazing things on Cybertron. Which leads me to the surprise. You guys are never gonna believe who I met there!”
Honeycomb turned to the doorway and raised her voice.
“Alright, you can come in now!”
Maximus walked through the entryway, having to duck just a little bit to get in. He looked at the three peculiar bots and smiled.
“Hey there! You guys must be Honeycomb’s friends, right?”
Axis couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia at the familiar sight. It felt almost like a breath of fresh air after all the recent stress.
“Greetings Trenchfoot. Could you lead me to the bridge? I’d like to meet the rest of the crew.”
“Odin’s ghost! Do you ever say anything that isn’t depressingly pessimistic?”
Nova angrily snapped.
“I’m not exactly the most positive person in the universe, but even I’m struggling to put up with this. Could you at least try to entertain the idea that failure isn’t a foregone conclusion?”
“Personally I think ‘Find the thing’ is a pretty good plan.”
Niko commented.
“Keeping the super dangerous magic thing away from the super villain looking for them is a pretty reliable bad guy countermeasure.”
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“Hey, I think it’s a good idea to at least beat Gabriel to this Macguffin,” Oreo said. He stood up from the crate, which bore distinct signs of strain from supporting a 1500 pound robot, and turned off his music.
“If we get there before he does, there’s a good chance that we could stop him from using it, or break it so that no one can use it. Or even just drop it in a black hole!”
He paused, suddenly realizing how ridiculous the latter statement was.
“Let’s at least try doing something about this threat,” he finally said. “These dark endings will certainly happen if we just sit around arguing. It would be better to even the chances, to try to get some advantage over both our enemies. Play both ends against the middle, perhaps.”
“Of course,” Razor says. She hands him the skull, feeling a little nervous at the massive difference in their sizes.
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Kitais giant hands nearly encapsulate Razors own as he picks up the skull. @Chromeharpoon
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“What do you want to do with it?” Firestorm asks.
Seraphicon navigates the Pack Mule to land in Excalibur II’s hanger.
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"Oh, scrap!" Talon hisses under his breath. He quickly drops to one knee, about to kneel before Maximus, but Lunawing grabs one of his arms and pulls him back up.
“We don’t need to do that, Talon,” she tells the predacon.
“Oh. Right, I-… I knew that.” if Talon’s face were made of flesh, it would be turning a similar shade of red as his armor plating from embarrassment. “I was just… never mind.”
“Welcome back to Eukaris, Maximus,” Lunawing says with a pleasant smile. “I’m Lunawing; this here’s Talon, and that one there is Gyro. We’re Honeycomb’s friends, yes- how much has she told you about us?”
“Nothing too embarrassing, I hope,” Gyro comments.
Trenchfoot nods. “Certainly, ma’am,” he says. He gestures toward a corridor leading toward the bow. “Right this way.”
The ship’s corridors also have a similar construction to those of the old Excalibur, sporting angled walls and narrow lightbars built into the floor and ceiling. The hum of the frigate’s main reactor drones quietly through the deck plating: a constant ambience that Axis and the rest of our heroes would likely soon grow deaf to as they spent more time aboard this ship. Crewmembers toil at their stations, preparing Excalibur II for her new mission.
The Pack Mule squeezes into Excalibur II’s hangar, taking up most of the available space within the chamber. The hangar doors slide closed again once the Bellatoran freighter lands.
“Thank you,” Leslie says to Oreo and Niko. “I, for one, am not ready to just lie down and let the quintessons turn me into protein sludge. Let’s at least try to put up a fight first.”
Beta Maxx looks on as Kitai takes the skull into his hand once more, curious as to what, if anything, may ensue.
However, this time, the artifact remains inert. The eyeball that grew within the skull while Gabriel was speaking is now glazed over, and the color has drained from its iris. The stench of decay emanates from it as the biomechanisms that had sprouted inside it now decompose.
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“It’s dead. Whatever little bit of juice was left within, gabriel used to give that message. The others too, most likely.” Kitai said to Razor.
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“Drat,” Razor said in a flat voice. “I had hoped–“
She paused, suddenly thinking.
“Would it be possible to extract DNA from the cilia remains?”
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“If it doesn’t degrade, maybe.” Firestorm says as Seraphicon makes his way to the cargo hold.
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“Yes, it should be possible,” Beta Maxx says with a nod. (@DuneToa)
With all our heroes aboard, Excalibur II accelerates away from Cybertron. Her inertial dampeners immediately compensate; the crew barely feel a thing. Her transwarp drive engages, and space unravels around the ship. Excalibur II darts through this opening and into the churning rainbow-hued expanse beyond, and the portal knits itself shut behind her. Flying along at top speed, the journey to Astrum should be a short one.
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“Well, here’s hoping Liege knows we are coming.” Seraphicon says.
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