“She should. As long as you keep increasing the energon concentration to match her needs, by all safe assumptions she should survive.” He began to pack up his gear.
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“I’m sure our doctors are up to the task,” the muscle car Knight says.
Grabbing a handhold on the side of the stasis pod, the Knight then pulls it behind her as she marches back to the hangar. The prisoners from the fight on Astrum are loaded aboard the Citrinitas. As the Knights retreat aboard their vessel, Repentia looks out over the hangar one more time to wish our heroes well.
“Til all are one,” she says, before turning back around and disappearing through the airlock.
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The Citrinitas detaches from Excalibur II’s hull, the former diving into Primogenitum’s atmosphere while the latter sails past the planet’s moon. Excalibur II’s engine blocks retract into her main body as her transwarp drive spins to life, and on the bridge, Redshift inputs the location data from Sentinel Prime’s journal into the ship’s navicomputer. In a flash, Excalibur II winks out of normal space, and the starry expanse outside her viewports is replaced by the psychedelic patterns of the space between dimensions.
The flight to Lacuna is uneventful, giving time for our heroes to prepare for whatever may lie in wait on the desert planet. Liege Maximo is mostly silent throughout the duration of the trip, a pensive expression on his face as the shifting rays of light streaming in from the windows dance on his emerald armor. After so many eons, he hardly has any better idea of what to expect than anyone else on the ship. Spotwelder and Lampyridae, Excalibur II’s chief engineer, assist Niko in making repairs to Ferrex.
After two days of traveling, the ship leaves transwarp, plunging its corridors into darkness once more. Toward the bow, those looking through the windows see a white and brown disk rapidly grow in size against the blackness, quickly becoming an arid world almost half again the size of Earth. As Excalibur II flies above its surface, one can make out vast stretches of bone-white sand girded by long, jagged lines of rock, the rippling of the dunes almost resembling gentle waves on an open ocean. Patches of bedrock peaking out from the sand suggest that such oceans once existed on this planet, eons ago, but such times predated even the age of the Thirteen.
“Lacuna, huh?” one of Megaton’s bodies remarks in a low, raspy voice, looking out over the wasteland. “Doesn’t look all that special to me.”
“The ancients disagreed,” Gravastar says, her eyes glancing down at a holographic report materializing by her chair. “Kappa’s picking over ten thousand satellites in orbit. Material composition matches the hulls of Golden Age orbital structures.”
Lacuna’s sun peaks out over the horizon to Excalibur II’s port side, casting long shadows over the pale dunes. All around the ship, mysterious spherical objects with dark grey hulls pockmarked by collisions with microdebris sparkle like gems as the sunlight strikes them. Redshift delicately maneuvers around these satellites, not wanting to provoke any automated defenses, while Teletraan Kappa searches for signs of the research station Liege Maximo had spoken of.
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“So, any ideas what we’ll find here?” Firestorm asks Spotwelder as he looked out the hanger at the planet.
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*I
n the meantime, Hualer tries to ingratiate himself with the Excalibur’s medical staff*
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“I was hoping you guys could tell me,” Spotwelder says, following Firestorm’s gaze. “Liege never talked about this place.”
Nearby, resting with his back against the hull of Present Memory, Liege tilts his head in their direction as he, too, looks out at Lacuna. “I haven’t thought about Lacuna since I was awakened from stasis,” he explains. “I had dismissed it as another one of the universe’s oddities- one of those mysteries that would never be solved.”
Moreyn shows Hauler around the medical bay, introducing him to its equipment and provisions. Most of it probably familiar to Hauler, but there are some items that he likely would not have used very often in his usual practice.
The doctor points to an apparatus next to a pair of beds, on which a long cable is coiled up in a spool. “That’s the cortical psychic patch, ideal for mnemosurgery. Excalibur’s the only ship of her size with such a device.”
Next, Moreyn identifies the ship’s reserve of medical-grade energon and protomatter, along with a row of fabricators used to shape the protomatter into replacement limbs and mechano-organs for patients. “I’m sure you’re quite familiar with machines such as these,” he remarks.
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“I don’t believe I am actually,” Hauler corrects “I’m more familiar with cold construction, and we generally use raw mechanical components. It’s a required process due to the nature of my home moon.”
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(Would Firestorm know anything about what is here?)
Firestorm’s optics flicker, as he tried to go through his memories for any relevant info on this place.
“Considering this was after Unicron’s first defeat, I was kinda not anywhere in time and space at the time so, I don’t really know anything.” He says.
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Maximus and Honeycomb were together in the hangar, both looking out a porthole and taking in the view. Honeycomb was enamored. Her eyes sparkled with awe and fascination at the beautiful sight before her. Maximus meanwhile had his focused trained on the countless satellites around the planet, watching them with weary caution.
Though when he glanced down at Honeycomb and saw her unbridled wonder, he couldn’t help but smile. He remembered a time when he was much the same. When all he could ever dream of was getting to venture out and see the stars. But after all the time that had passed, and all that he had been through, the cosmos had lost its luster to him. So seeing the young insecticon with so much excitement and enthusiasm in her optics, it warmed his spark in a way he had almost forgotten.
Niko was making his way to the medical bay.
Two days ago, Nova had promised to come clean to him about her past. She said she was going to finally explain everything so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. But when she tried, she wouldn’t. Or, couldn’t, maybe. She locked up, and couldn’t bring herself to talk about it.
The mikesu boy was understanding about it in the moment, but he couldn’t help but to feel uneasy about it. She was hiding something from him, something big, and the fact that she barely interacted with him the last two days only made him more nervous.
Though he was able to push that out of the front of his mind, at least for a moment. As he walked into the med-bay, he walked up to Dr. Hauler and tapped him on the back of the leg.
“Hey, excuse me doc bot. Do you have a moment?”
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Nova meanwhile decided to follow through on something she had been wanting to do for a long while now. She walked up to Liege and knocked on the side of his leg as though it were a door.
“Hey! Tall green and pointy, you got a minute? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask ya.”
Axis Prime was still in her quarters, deep in meditation. She was taking this moment to consult the spirit of Alpha Trion, trying to gleam any last minute information she could about their destination.
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Hauler looked down in surprise. “ah, yes? How can I help?”
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“I just wanted to check and see how close you are to finishing Nova’s leg?”
Niko asked
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“No, not yet, It’s a slow process. It requires precision, especially working on one so small.”
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“Then you know as much as anyone else,” Liege assures Firestorm. The Prime of Lies then feels a faint tapping on his shin.
“Ah, the pilot,” Liege says, looking down at Nova. At roughly twenty feet tall, the Prime was only slightly shorter than Gungnir. “If it’s about this place, I’m afraid I’ve already said all I can.”
The ancient satellites are similar to the automated defense platforms that orbit Eukaris and the other Prime Colonies. At this moment, these ancient machines seem inert as they drift by the ship, but it is more likely that their sensors are presently studying Excalibur II and her crew just as intently as Maximus is studying them.
Starboard, one of Lacuna’s moons can be seen: a lump of black rock blemished with deep crevasses carved into its surface that drink up the light from the sun. Within some of the larger gashes, the sunlight glints off metallic surfaces peeking out of the stone.
“You’re welcome to the equipment here, if any of it might be useful to you,” Moreyn offers. “Though if Nova and the other aliens will be staying with us, we will have to find a way to procure facilities more suited to their needs.”
The Matrix’s dreamscape takes the form of one of the vaults beneath the surface of Sophos, in which the descendants of Alpha Trion store their troves of historical artifacts. Some vaults put the Grand Museum in Iacon to shame; this one holds objects significant to the Thirteen and Cybertron’s Golden Age.
The Spirit of Alpha Trion rests against a plinth above which Liege Maximo’s lost horn floats. Continuous streams of holographic cyberglyphs scroll over his pink and purple armor. In one hand, he turns over a grey-green medallion engraved with the sigil of the Knights of Cybertron on one side, and a crest depicting a sword and lantern wreathed in flowers on the other. With the other hand, he strokes a long beard made of braided fiberoptic cables.
“I wish I had more to tell you,” the Prime of Knowledge says apologetically. “However, the secrets of Lacuna eluded even me. What we were supposed to find here, The Covenant didn’t say, and the surveys and excavations led by Alchemist yielded more questions than answers.”
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“Would any small-scale help be required here?”
As Moreyn finishes speaking, Razor walks into the medical bay, carrying a bag filled with her tools and spare parts. She stops by the larger bot and looks around, only now noticing Ernyix’s absence.
“Where is the Knight? Where did you put her?”
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“No, no. Nothing like that. I just wanted to ask a few questions that have been nagging at me for a while. Like an interview to sate my own curiosity.” Nova explained.
Maximus frowned a bit. This place didn’t sit with him right. The complete mystery of it all only made him all the more uneasy.
He decided to pull his attention away from the window and walked up to Firestorm.
“Hey Firestorm, 'ol buddy. I feel like we haven’t really talked since all this started. I wanna know, what do you make of this place?”
“That’s a really good point actually.” Niko said nervously, as that idea somehow didn’t come to him until just now.
“Nova and I are a lot… squishier, than everyone else here. I would definitely be a good idea to find someone who can help the two of us when we get hurt.”
Axis sighed, looking nervous.
“A mystery not even the original 13 could solve… to be vulnerable for a moment, that fact frightens me. I’ve barely been able to lead this crew through everything we’ve been through. What hope do I have of leading them through a place that even the strongest and brightest in Cybertron’s history could not understand.”
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Firestorm takes a deep breath, “it’s hard to say; a lot of this was when I was falling through, well, some kind of void outside time and space.” He says, “if I saw anything, it was brief and more like fragments of pieces of dreams that I can barely remember any sort of vague details from.”
“Whatever’s going on, it’s really weird.” Dark says, “and Quintessons being involved adds to the weirdness of Primes being involved.”
“Add on the fact this was a heavily guarded secret of a past Prime and we get a mystery that could turn all kinds of ways.” Firestorm guesses.
“The most I can figure is we need to be very careful, hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.” He suggests.
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Maximus folded his arms.
“That’s definitely a good sentiment. Though it’s hard to hold to when more often than not, it’s the worst that finds us.”
He scowled, overcome with a nagging frustration that had been building on him for the last couple days.
“This whole place just sets me off. It’s nothing but one big mystery. And I can’t punch mysteries! Going into a place like this, having no idea what we’re going to be up against, it makes me feel… powerless, almost.”
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Firestorm nods, “unfortunately, that’s the best I can say for now. If I knew more, I would do all I could to help resolve the mystery.”
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Maximus shrugged.
“Yeah well, the sentiment is appreciated at least. But I just can’t shake the feeling that we’re running head first into something nasty.”
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“Now?” Liege says, tilting his head. “Are you sure this is the best time for that?”
Alpha Trion closes his fist around the old medallion; when he opens his fingers again, the relic is gone. Stepping away from the plinth, he says, “To live is to brave the unknown, Axis. To face what we do not understand is one of those fundamental obligations of all sentient beings- or so I have always believed, anyway.”
“And, with the threat being as dire as it is, do you really have any other option?” he then asks.
“Perhaps, upon our return to the New Imperium, we might enlist the aid of NEST in our endeavors,” Moreyn muses.
“Much as I am loathe to admit my own shortcomings,” the doctor sighs through the vents in the sides of his beak, “they would have personnel and equipment suited for treating cybertronians and organics both.”
“The Knights took custody of our captives when we stopped at Primogenitum,” Moreyn says, looking over to Razor. “I hope you’re not worried about them being mistreated- the Order are a good sort, and their knowledge of quintesson biotechnology outstrips my own.”
Spotwelder listens to Maximus and Firestorm lament their present predicament. “Well, gee, you two sure are inspiring confidence,” he deadpans. “You’re starting to sound like that big guy with the three eyes and the wings.” (@MakutaOisli)
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“Yes I’m sure. It’ll only take a couple minutes, and to be frank I don’t really have anything better to do.”
Axis closed her fists and took a deep breath, taking a moment to steel her resolve.
“No, I suppose I don’t. And standing around feeling sorry for myself won’t do any of us any good.”
“All I’m saying is that I got a bad feeling about this whole thing. I never said we couldn’t handle it. As soon as we’re up against something I can punch, everything will be alright.” Maximus retorted.
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