Chapter Text
It felt like Grace had only just closed his eyes when the blaring alarms of the Hail Mary dragged him back into consciousness.
WARNING WARNING
Jolting upright, Grace rapidly blinked the drowsiness from his vision, body still sluggish and half asleep as he stumbled out of bed and promptly tripped over Rocky.
Luckily for him, Rocky quickly caught him, two arms winding around Grace’s midsection to stabilize him.
“What’s going on?” Grace yelled, knowing Rocky’s hearing was probably being overwhelmed by the cacophony of noise echoing around the ship.
“Rocky not know!” Rocky replied, carefully setting Grace back onto his feet and pointing a free arm toward the control room. “Mary saying nonsense!”
Grace tried to focus on what Mary was saying, but it was impossible; her voice drowned beneath the onslaught of alarms. And if Grace couldn’t hear her, well then, Rocky definitely couldn’t. The last time he'd heard these alarms was when the taumoeba had breached containment—oh god.
“Grace? Grace!”
Grace stumbled past Rocky, rushing toward the lab, heart pounding its way out of his chest. Had the taumoeba adapted again? Had they permeated their enclosure like they’d done with the xenonite? His brain fired through thousands of possible scenarios, each one worsening his panic and sending his anxiety skyrocketing. They couldn’t afford another mishap, not when they were so close to Erid.
Skidding to a stop in front of the hybrid nursery they’d set up, Grace’s fingers scrambled over the keypad, trying to access the logs.
“What wrong, Grace?” Rocky prompted from behind him, the pitch of his voice creeping upward in a way Grace had long since learned meant worry.
“Hopefully nothing,” Grace replied, eyes darting back and forth across the screen as he digested the information with a heavy sigh of relief.
Nothing seemed to be amiss, at least from what he could tell. The hydroponic garden was still functioning, little green shrubs and foliage continuing to grow beneath the array of heat lamps and root support systems they’d set up.
Grace had been lucky he’d been sent up with a small variety of herbs and vegetables, and even luckier that the nitrogen-resistant taumoeba had turned out to be a fantastic bioinoculant. Aka—he now had a little garden of food he could stave off starvation with.
Grace shuddered at the thought, thanking his lucky stars that he hadn’t had to resort to eating taumoeba by itself instead. That would have really, really sucked.
Sensing the decrease in his heart rate and blood pressure, Rocky nudged his carapace against Grace’s leg, drawing his attention downward and back to the unanswered question at hand.
If the lab hadn’t triggered the alert system, then what in the Hail Mary could have?
As if answering his question, the ship suddenly lurched, sending the both of them careening forward.
“Sugar honey iced tea!” Grace cried out in surprise.
Between trying not to faceplant and the ship-wide alarms still screeching all around them, Grace somehow managed to discern Mary’s voice above it all.
WARNING: PROXIMITY ALERT. BLIP-A APPROACHING.
Blip-A?
Grace shot Rocky a confused look, the Eridian mirroring him. They'd long since left the Tau Ceti system, and with it, Rocky’s ship—Blip-A.
Which could only mean…
Grace felt his heart drop into his stomach for the second time that day and took off toward the control room, Rocky hot on his heels.
“Grace think same as Rocky?” Rocky asked, overtaking him and clambering into the pilot’s chair, pointing his texture monitor at the radar for a better look.
“Aliens?” Grace guessed, squeezing behind the chair and headed straight for the observation window.
“Aliens, statement.” Rocky confirmed.
Peering out into the expanse of space, Grace immediately noticed the strange lack of stars greeting his sight.
“What the—?”
A wall of darkness stretched endlessly past the observation window, so massive and so close that Grace’s brain initially refused to process what he was seeing. With his hands and face pressed up against the glass, Ryland Grace realized that what he was looking at was not some cosmic void, but the hull of a very, very big spaceship.
“Grace,” Rocky said, voice pitching upward in the telltale way it did when he was nervous.
Eyes still tracing the seemingly never-ending ship, Grace swallowed thickly. “Yeah, buddy?”
A crackle sounded out over the speakers, the alarm system finally fading away before being replaced by a sound Grace had never heard before—a transmission request.
“Aliens want speak with Grace and Rocky.”
It’d been another late night aboard the Lost Light, the hallways dim and scarce. It’d been a changeover of shifts, and Rodimus had been eagerly awaiting speeding over to Swerve’s to drink himself into recharge.
The novelty of jumping universes had quickly run its course when the reality of the situation had kicked in. A new universe meant no familiar routes, or known ports to resupply. And with no recognizable map for the navcomp to guide them with, they’d been jumping from planet to planet hoping to score the resources their ship would need.
Which meant they’d gone into conservation mode. Rodimus didn’t want to. But with Megatron and Ultra Magnus breathing down his neck about “scarcity and dwindling resources leading to shipwide panic”, he’d reluctantly caved.
In a bid to conserve energy, the plan was simple—only essential functions took precedent and everything else would be scheduled around it. Everyone had been brought up to speed on their duties, meaning everyone would at least have one rotation in the schedule, so as not to overburden anyone; with the exception of the field experts for said duty.
They couldn’t expect to send inexperienced mechs into essential duties without supervision, and it meant that a handful of the crew had to be constantly vigilant. This, much to Rodimus’ dismay, had included him.
Day after day, he’d sat slumped in his chair, listening to Ultra Magnus’ updates drone on and on about how low their energon reserves were getting, and how, if the next planet proved to also be fruitless, then they’d have to consider putting people into mandatory stasis to conserve what little supplies they had left.
So when his shift had finished, he’d planned to drink away his problems. Engex wasn’t in short supply, and while it didn’t fuel them like energon would, it still left his tank full, and his processor numb. Logically he knew they’d all made the decision to jump as a team, but that didn’t make Rodimus feel any less responsible for this whole mess.
He was only a few steps out from the bridge, spoiler low and exhaustion tugging at the edges of his vision, when Blaster’s startled voice froze him in place.
“Uh, Captain? We’ve detected a ship about three kliks out!”
Oh. There was no way he was missing out on this. Rodimus spun on his heel and bolted back onto the bridge just in time to see Megatron pull the vessel up onto the main console.
The ship itself was much, much smaller than the Lost Light—heck, it was smaller than the Rod Pod. Still, the design was interesting. It rotated slowly through space, gravity apparently generated through some kind of centrifuge force. Pretty primitive, all things considered. But considering this was the first intelligent life they’d encountered since arriving in this universe, Rodimus figured he could overlook it.
“Are they Cybertronian?” Megatron asked.
“On a ship that small?” Rodimus scoffed, elbowing his way into the captain’s chair to get a better look. “I seriously doubt it.”
Megatron exvented heavily, shifting just enough to allow Rodimus to perch himself on one of the armrests.
“No spark signatures,” Blaster reported. “But there are two energy signatures aboard.”
“Well what are we waiting for?” Rodimus asked, throwing a hand toward the screen. “Contact them!”
“We can’t simply contact them, Rodimus.” Megatron pinched the bridge of his nose. “We have no idea if they’re hostile.”
“Hostile?” Rodimus laughed, leaning back like the idea itself was absurd. “Has old age finally gotten to you, Megs? They’re tiny.”
Megatron lowered his hand slowly, fixing Rodimus with a tired look. “So are scraplets. And you’re well aware of the damage they can do.”
Rodimus winced despite himself, memories of Getaway’s spectacularly awful death immediately resurfacing.
“Yeah, yeah. Point made. Still doesn’t change the fact that they could help us.” Rodimus leaned in slightly, just enough to remain ‘professional’, but close enough to hear the stutter of Megatron’s vents as their fields brushed together. “We’ll never know if we don’t ask. Come on Megs, you know I’m right.”
They held each other’s gaze for a few quiet seconds. Then Megatron’s optics softened, the red filaments dimming in that familiar way they always did right before he gave into one of Rodimus’s terrible ideas.
“Blaster,” Megatron said, voice resigned, “send out a hail to the ship.”