liesdontfindyou | Open Post

"2548. We've been space-faring for... a few centuries? Give or take a couple decades. There's plenty of documentation on that but I haven't memorised it. We use slipspace travel, we have colonies anywhere from a couple of lightyears away from Earth to eighty lightyears."

She shrugs slightly.

"I'm only in my twenties. This is all I've ever known."

A beat. Then, shrill and almost angry, loud and screechy enough to rival a certain AI, "2548!? I've been floating in space for 540 years!?" His engines rev dangerously, and his vents cycle- Five hundred and forty years wasn't much in the life of a transformer - it was barely seven vorns that had passed in their own reckoning, after all - and yet so much could happen in such a short amount of time! Where the frag were the Autobots, the Decepticons?

His kind had been losing. Had they finally lost? Had they been ground under the Autobot pede for good?

His weapons whine as they fire up in his anger, but- He forces the null rays to quiet, to cycle back down. If anything, he could be even more on his own. Even more without anything to return to. "Seven vorns. Those idiots have probably blown themselves up by now!"

Connie jumps at the sudden loud noises and automatically scrambles back, staring up at him.

"Whoa, hey, try not to burst my ear drums!"

It's not hard to make the logical leap from 'vorns' to a measurement of time passage, much different from humanity's own, at least. Wow, that's a big conversion discrepancy.

"I don't care about whatever drums are in your ears!" But he is getting quieter, and red optics flick to watch the entrances to the hangar quite warily.

"All this time and you haven't heard a peep more from us!?" Oh, he doesn't like the implications of that. The Decepticons should've blazed across the galaxy now, if they were in any shape to make a mark.

"Not that I've seen. I mean, look, I know a lot of things I shouldn't know, but I don't have access to records stretching back... 540 years," she says, holding up her hands. "I don't have access to certain levels of clearance. There could have been contact but I have genuinely no way of knowing."

She can't say she'd be surprised if there had been and numerous governments had kept it covered up throughout the centuries. If the Covenant hadn't been actively hostile and trying to wipe out the entire species, she wouldn't have even been surprised if their existence would have been hidden.

"Your species has an inferiority complex. How am I not surprised?" His tone is absolutely bitter though, stained with it all the way down.

But he squints deeper at her datapad, over the planetary information, and snaps, "What does 'glassed' mean?"

Connie noticeably tenses, swallowing a lump in her throat. Her fingertips catch at a scar across her palm.

"Destroyed. Burned to the ground. The aliens we're fighting, they... they have this special type of energy source for their weapons. On a large scale, it's capable of reducing any human city to a melted, chemical soup that we just... call glass, because that's easier to say. Gets the point across."

She tries not to think too hard about that. About what her own home had been reduced to, somewhere lightyears away from here.

Starscream scoffs. He'd be an idiot to not notice just how many planets appeared to be glassed. "A waste of plasma and resources. Your opponents are more foolish than even your kind!"

"If your Autobot friends were still around, they would have cleared up that problem for you. But it seems your governments drove them off!" Or something. Starscream's just guessing.

"They probably did, I wouldn't be surprised, but I think this is beyond the reach of whoever the Autobots are, Starscream," she says, shaking her head. "The Covenant want our extinction, they won't settle for less. Anyone who gets in their way..."

She shrugs. The war has always been hopeless. She truly doubts that even a large number of Starscream's kind could have had an impact, and doubts even more than anyone would want to step in on humanity's behalf.

"Ah, well, they always did like hopeless causes," he mutters. But if these humans are threatened, that means Starscream is too- At least, as long as he stays aboard this blasted starship of theirs.

But it also affords an opportunity.

"How about I strike you a better deal than just for my information?"

Her fingers flex slightly before curling back to pick at that scar, but Connie raises a brow at him, "Depends what that deal is."

"As Air Commander, I am an accomplished fighter. The finest flier of the Seekers, second to none in the air! I'll protect this little starship of yours from your enemies, as well as give you information of my kind."

He smiles, but it's all pride. "Is that suitable?"

They don't actually see a lot of direct combat with the ship, let alone with the Covenant considering their assignments, Connie thinks, but... she supposes if there ever was that any help would be useful.

So she nods, "Yeah, sure. That's suitable."

"Then it's a deal. How do you humans say it? 'You'll scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'?" He smirks and nods. "Perfect."

Honestly, Connie has no idea exactly what deal she just made and on behalf of who. No one else knows this... Cybertronian (wrapping her head around the word and all its implications is still a little difficult) even exists, let alone that she's talking to him, telling him things. She hopes it isn't a mistake.

"That's the saying, though I think I'd struggle to ever literally scratch your back." Oh, and she's joking with him now. Maybe she's been up too long. Maybe she'll wake up and somehow this was all a strange dream, provoked by Wash talking about some old cartoon or something.

(It isn't, she knows that really, but that'd certainly be simpler.)

To her credit, she does get a snort out of him, though he tries to cover it with a sound that's remarkably similar to a cough. "Well- Height issues aside," Starscream don't be rude, "I am looking forward to learning more about what's gone on in my... Absence."

"I can leave you with a few... less confidential, files, but I should not be down here this late." She's tired and she still has to keep to her standard project schedule in the morning, no matter how little sleep she actually gets. "Anything else, I'll have to show you... whenever I'm next down here, I suppose."

Starscream huffs, muttering to himself something about 'slagging organics and their short cycles' before turning back to her and nodding. "Fine. I will hold you to that!"

Starscream, you don't even know her name. You didn't even ask.

"What, do Cybertronians not sleep?" Connie asks, half an actual question, half a retort to his huffing.

She decides to leave him with a few basic encyclopedia-style descriptions of humanity's expansion since the Shaw-Fujikawa engine was first discovered; it's not everything, it misses out a couple centuries, but it's a start.

"Our recharge cycles are different!" And he's mostly been doing it during the ship's 'day' - when he has to - anyway.

He's going to just... Settle down there with the info and read, the expression of scrunched concentration on his face almost comical.

Connie bites back a slight amused smile that gets quickly swallowed by a yawn as she stands up and stretches out, trying to keep herself awake enough to make it back to her bunk.

"If you try and get past that AI again... keep note of how it acts?" She's... curious. Wants to know if F.I.L.S.S. is really all he's coming up again.

"Very well. If you wish." Grumble grumble. At least he looks as comfortable as he can be there, datapad in hand and still hunched over. Poor thing, the hangar really isn't big enough for him.

Connie heads back to the hangar exit, turning around at the door to give a vague wave before wondering why, exactly, she's doing so—not that she doesn't finish the gesture.

She's not going to get nearly enough sleep, assuming she manages to sleep at all before the inevitable wave of 'oh my god what just happened' hits and she's forced to confront the fact that she just met a sentient, alien ship in Project Freelancer's hangar. A sentient, alien ship that no one else knows is anything but a strangely colour sabre.

What in the universe just became of her night?

So, this was his situation. A tenuous deal with an organic of all things, refueling with subpar rocket fuel (did they still call it that? He thought it was a bit like their rocket fuel, anyway), and having to hide constantly. At least the squishy was tolerable, even being nice to him.

He couldn't even go out for a fly. That was going to be a problem.

And the worst part... More than five hundred of their years had passed, they'd reached the stars and beyond, and yet there was no sign of his fellow Decepticons. No sign of the Autobots. Cybertron was from outside their dingy little galaxy, of course, and he would admit it was fortunate that the organic didn't recognize the threat he could be, but... Why would his kind completely abandon their presence here?

There was something very strange about that, government cover up or not. And there was only one way to find out. So Starscream dug into this datapad, back into the ship's systems, and got to work.

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And that's a wrap (for now)!