Ep 1.5 - Drifting, Falling - closed

[perceptor]

From this side of the galaxy, the stars were fascinating. Metroplex's destination coordinates, fixed on the Autobot outpost on a planet on the galaxy's very periphery, ensured that Perceptor saw most of them. Without a target space bridge, and in a ship without a functioning transwarp cell (and indeed not intended to be a ship at all), the journey was... scenic.

If he had succeeded when attempting the transwarp shift from his own ship to Metroplex, millennia could've been spared and spent instead alongside Prime, rather than touring the Galactic Center, draining Metroplex's energon reserves at every minute shift of trajectory. The time had not been without value, in terms of physical knowledge gained of their current galaxy. Extensive time to observe and reflect upon other things, as well.

And in this moment, he was relieved to find that finally he observed a planetary alignment consistent with that of the solar system for which they had set course fifty millennia ago.

"Look," he told Metroplex, sending along with his message a locator node for the small, blue planet in question, still quite distant but easily seen with slight magnification. "Earth."

Relying on only the most basic communications amplification systems as not to tax Metroplex unduly, he noted the time and their coordinates in his internal logs and made his first attempt at general contact.

"This is Perceptor to any receiving Autobot. I must speak to Optimus Prime. I am in transit to Earth, accompanied by Metroplex."

[Steeljaw has volunteered to answer the phone, then hand off to Optimus ]

[Deleted]

If there was a gold star award for being on comms when new mechanisms arrived, Steeljaw was going to earn it. Literally, as he seemed to invariably be sitting on top of the monitor banks when it happened - sensible enough, as it was where he spent most of his duty shifts, regardless of who else was sitting comms at that moment as well.

At that VERY moment it was Steeljaw alone - it was afternoon, local time, on a weekday, when Arcee, Bulkhead and Bumblebee all begged off to go retrieve their human charges after school. Whenever any of them were on duty, as Bee was that day, it was an unspoken given that Steeljaw would cover for them while they were gone. So it was Steeljaw who stretched along the top of the controls and reached one lazy pede over to tap the comm control, barely bothering to open his optics. The signal coding was old but on the legitimate roster, one of several the Prime had sent word out through before, and Steeljaw forwarded it to Blaster to verify as he answered, his drawled tone a bit sharper than necessary. "This is Autobot Outpost Omega, and though I hate to break the string of completely irregular incomings we've had, I don't suppose you have any actual ident codes to verify, whoever you are? Or any other reason I should patch you through to the Prime?"

Because really. For a supposed military organization, the incoming Autobots tended to treat routine security checks and comm protocols like an afterthought, and nine tenths of the time it fell to whoever was on comms - and Steeljaw and Blaster - to disabuse them of this lackadaisical notion. There were Neutral ships who ran a tighter system of protocols than most of the incoming Autobots, and Steeljaw would know - he'd lived on board them.

Which was why he rather thought he might be forgiven a certain amount of sarcastic sass at yet another abrupt and pre-emptive new arrival. Yes, yes, someone incoming, they'd get a chance to talk to Prime in due course, after their idents and checks had all been run and all the other niceties taken care of. Speaking of which... ::Blaster? Does it check?::

The reply came through on an uncharacteristic moment of lag and muted burst of static from the comm officer. ::Frag and scrap... Primus! Put him through to Prime, NOW!::

Steeljaw jerked upright, audials slanting back. THAT wasn't the response he had been expecting. Maybe this 'Perceptor', whoever that was, had some weight to be throwing around after all. Venting in irritation, Steeljaw toggled the comm line again, modulating his voice into a more pleasant rendition of a call operator's. "Please hold, your call is being transfered." He leaned out to tap several more controls, routing the incoming signal into the base comms, and one comm line in particular. ::Optimus? Incoming. I have a 'Perceptor' on the line who says he needs to talk to you. Something about in transit, with a 'Metroplex'.::

[Deleted]

There was a beat. Then:

::What?::

Optimus, who’d been half-way in recharge across the base, came fully on-line so completely that his processor surged and four dozen thought strings wildly derailed as he abandoned them and coalesced the myriad fragmentation of his panic and disbelief into a single immediate focus. Eons too late, he registered the sub-phoneme structure he’d emitted across the comm-line had been too unguarded by far, flagged openly with shock and a single terrible chord-thread of hope so pure it burned through him. He instantly cleaned up his secondary transmission, sitting up in his berth, swinging his pedes to the floor.

::Patch me through, Steeljaw.::

And for a moment he waited there, unmoving, sitting on the edge of his recharge slab, optics set forward and seeing absolutely nothing but the inside of the Ark at the Exodus, hearing and feeling simultaneously the calm Neocybex of their last city-former’s last words. In that beat of static between Steeljaw’s changing over the feed Optimus relived, in almost perfect physical recall, the virus-like spread of despair through his systems as the Ark’s engines had burned their stolen fuel to break atmo. And then the moment was gone and the Prime stood, ignoring the ghost of pain data though his endomass, pulsing briefly though his abdomen and chest.

The new comm-feed feed a fresh frequency ID into his HUD and he spoke, voice controlled again to command calm.

::Perceptor. This is Optimus Prime.::

[Deleted]

Metroplex was not an impatient mech. Patience was as much a part of his spark as devotion to his inhabitants.

However, he had to admit that he was very, very glad to have the small planet in sight. If by "in sight" one meant "Perceptor could tell that that particular well in the gravitics of space coupled with that other particular cluster of EM waves meant a planet that corresponded with the universal coordinates they'd been heading toward for roughly forever".

Metroplex was also not, at spark or in frame, a spacefaring mech. Though his new alt mode was, technically, spacefaring (if by "spacefaring" one meant "able to hurl one's self through space with acceptable efficiency"), he was not a ship and did not have the instruments a ship might have. Such as, oh, interstellar scanners, or sensitive EM detectors, or anything else that might aid in evaluating the space around him. Perceptor had been able, over the years, to jury-rig what long-range sensors they did have and to augment those via occasional jaunts to Metroplex's outer hull to use his own in-frame sensors.

Thus, they could "see" Earth. Finally.

Metroplex was more relieved than he would have been able to find glyphs for, to hear the Prime's response routing through his own communications grid. They had taken so long to arrive, he'd been concerned that they would arrive too late to be of any help.

To hear that the last Prime still functioned, that he had an outpost and--presumably--a cadre to support him...was good.