A/N: What a week, seems like I've hardly had the time to sit down and even think XD; This week's chapter is thus a bit on the short side, but I tried cramming plenty of food for thought to make up for that. I hope you've all been enjoying the ride, we're getting pretty close to the grand finale! Thank you SezWho and Meg for your reviews, they are my writer's life force XD
To all my wonderful Readers and Reviewers, Please Enjoy!
"You're sure you won't come with us, Hosehead?"
The red-clad Colonist finally turns his helm to look at me, a sullen expression on his face, his arms crossed in a guarded posture. He's never gonna forgive me for this, I can see it in the way he's looking at me. He shakes his helm, "Why bother, Cybertron's not gonna be around for much longer as it is."
I release a heavy vent of air and bite my lip. I'm breaking my promise to him, leaving like this. He probably thinks I'm a coward, following Mommy home with my tail between my legs. That's what he thinks. But what choice do I have? She literally has me by the arm, despite how many times I've tried pulling it away.
Siren, on the other hand, seems to have quietly accepted his fate of being returned to our home planet, his optics dim as he stands on the other side of my mother, his wrist encircled by her hand. I look up at Mom and Devcon, not really caring to listen to their parting words as we all stand on the enclosed boarding bridge connecting the Monacus to Lockdown's hijacked ship. I can see Prowl and some Dinobots waiting at the other end of the bridge, the Praxian's ice optics boring a hole into my helm. Makes it hard to tell if he's gonna hug me or smack me upside the helm once we get over there.
"Well… This is it, then." Mom looks from Devcon to Hosehead, "It would be no trouble at all, dear, you're more than welcome to join us…" After getting a blank stare from the Colonist, she sighs and turns, tugging me and Siren along, "Alright, boys, let's go…"
As we walk along the bridge towards the hull entrance to Lockdown's commandeered ship, a cold knot starts to harden in my tanks, prickling along the back of my neck as my spark beats deeply. We've come so far, we're so close to finding the end of this all, to unlocking the truth and finishing what my father left to me… all for naught?
Just as we step over the threshold connecting the two bridges linking the ships together, however, my senses are shot as a chain of events unroll faster than I can react. A strong arm suddenly wraps around my waist and yanks me away from my mother's hold, and I can hear Siren release a startled yelp as he's likewise plucked away. My mother turns around with stunned optics and a mouth that's surely opening that widely to shout something nasty just before a blaster door slams shut over the bridges' threshold in front of her, thus separating us from her in the two linked bridges.
Turning my helm, I can't be too surprised to see Devcon as the owner of the arms that snatched us away, "What are you doing?!" As if I really need to ask.
"You know you were gonna do it yourself, kid, I'm just takin' on your mother's scorn for ya!" Turning, Devcon quickly runs us back through the hull entrance of his ship and shouts to an intercom speaker, "Alright, Fera, I got 'em! Bring in the boarding bridge and let's get the frag outta here!"
"On it, Devcon." Fera's voice is way too calm.
"Are we—Are we gonna finish the mission?" Siren's optics are larger than half his face in a look of shock, clearly still trying to process what just happened. Did they just boot Minerva off onto Prowl's ship and trick her?
"Looks like it, Si…" I puff as I'm set abruptly onto my peds, watching Devcon run up the hall towards the cockpit to assist Fera in our getaway. Looking to Siren, I lightly smack at the kid's cheeks to get him out of his dazed funk before putting my hand on his shoulder, "We continue on how we were going, Siren, we're doing the right thing…"
I hope. Mom's gonna kill me—once she's done with Uncle Devcon, of course.
Hosehead walks over to us, and if I'm not mistaken, he's trying to hide a smirk, "Good to hear it, Detective."
A tiny voice pipes up from Siren, "I'm gonna be grounded forever."
Both Hosehead and I pause and look at him with deadpan faces, and I can feel my optic ridge twitch.
Up in the cockpit, Devcon quickly straps himself down before taking the main controls, "Alright, let's put as much space between our ship and my sister-in-law's frown as possible." Flicking several switches, the powerful engines of the Monacus rumble into life.
"I thought you said we couldn't outrun Lockdown's ship, that it's too fast…" Fera frowns lightly, her nerves getting the better of her as she stands behind Devcon's seat with her hands on the backrest, looking out the expansive windshield of the cockpit to the other ship.
Devcon chuckles, "You said it yourself, Fera. From the way they 'navigate' that beast, they're clearly not Lockdown, nor can they fly it like he can. I don't think we'll be having much to worry about from them." With that, he pulls back a lever before launching the ship forward, the red ship of the other crew becoming a distant speck.
"What the Pit just happened?" Prowl's face is pale as he quickly runs across the boarding bridge to Minerva, turning her around to face him to make sure she's alright. Upon seeing the look on her face, he wishes he hadn't.
"That selfish fragger!" Minerva clenches her fists tightly and shoves past Prowl, going quickly across the bridge and re-entering the ship. The Dinobots occupying the hallway leading to the navigation room flinch and hastily move out of the scorned femme's way, watching her go by as if they can see flames trailing her path. Entering the navigation room, Minerva approaches Grimlock as he sits in the pilot's seat, "What are you waiting for? Go after them!"
Grimlock scoffs and narrows his optics beneath his ruby visor, turning his helm to give the what-for to the small femme, but then hesitates upon seeing her own optics burning through his, "… Okay."
Starting up all the necessary components and controls, the Dinobot leader obeys and directs the ship along the trail of the retreated Monacus, moving along in a less-than-graceful fashion as he hardly knows how to navigate the ship.
Things quiet down aboard the Monacus once the excitement of the chase is left far back in an asteroid field, our trail buried, our escape complete. I let out a long sigh as I settle down on a recharge slab in one of the habitation suites, sitting back against the wall, Siren asleep off to my side. The door to the suite draws my attention as it slides open, Hosehead walking in and sitting down on the slab across the room, his turquoise visor landing on me.
"What's on your mind, Hosehead?"
"You need to know about Fera."
I blink lightly. All this excitement, and I so easily forgot the little mystery patch surrounding the lady of the crew. Fera Fatima. I wonder if that's even her real name, it's a bit too catchy.
I shift and sit up straight, hanging my legs over the edge of the recharge slab and interlace my hands, "Alright… I'm listening."
"She's one of them, Nightbeat." A sharp frown etches itself across the Colonist's expression.
If he's gonna tell the whole story in crypt, this will take a while. I patiently take in a vent of air before asking, "One of who, Hosehead?"
"She is a Shi-Lai."
I pause. Fera's Shi-Lai? She's from the empire of aliens working with the Decepticons for whatever dark agreement they've set up? Surely Devcon knows this, he was out in the Beta-Tri Quadrant for who knows how long, surely he's see the Shi-Lai before, surely he'd know that Fera was one…
I tilt my helm. It makes sense now. Forget the Shi-Lai's connections to the Decepticons, Hosehead probably couldn't care less about that. The Shi-Lai were the ones who destroyed his colony, took his people and forced them into slavery. No wonder he's been so bitter towards her. They took everything from him, and he's managed to wait so long and patiently to tell me about Fera. Gotta admit, I feel like a piece of slag right now.
"From what I've gathered about her, it sounds like she's an exile from her kind, Hosehead… Is there something you know about her that says otherwise?" I probably sound pretty insensitive, but I can't throw Fera under the bus just because of her species, despite what they've done to Hosehead.
A snarl rolls across his top lip as his optics narrow, "I don't know anything for certain, but I have a very strong theory, Nightbeat. She worked for that mob boss back on Pz-Zazz, you remember that?"
"Yeah, 'Antonio', she called him… What about it? She was down on her luck, probably had no other options if she'd just been cast away from her kind…" Why am I defending her so much? Hosehead's a fellow Cybertronian (in the grander scale of things), shouldn't I hear him out without fighting him at every turn?
"Pz-Zazz is in Shi-Lai territory, Nightbeat."
That's interesting… however, "Why didn't we see any Shi-Lai, then? Don't you think they would've spotted our ship?"
"Pz-Zazz is a toxic planet, the Shi-Lai wouldn't want anything to do with it if it didn't serve as such a good nexus for their supply network. Not only that… but planets like Pz-Zazz are ideal places for surviving Colonists like me to hide. Or at least, for a time they were. Our colonies used to span through that quadrant of space, but when the Shi-Lai took over, they did it fast. It was impossible to escape the quadrant unnoticed, so many had to hide on the planets located within that the Shi-Lai didn't seem interested in stationing bases on.
However, it didn't take long for the Shi-Lai to catch onto this, so they installed spies." He turns his optics to me, giving me a moment to figure it out for myself.
It would make sense. The Shi-Lai didn't want to waste the resources to put a base of operations on a planet like Pz-Zazz, but still needed a way of locating any escaped Colonists; not to mention, they'd probably want at least a few of their kind on a planet that served as a nexus point for supply shipments. Fera's so-called boss, the 'Fat Man' would make for a good cover for her, and there's the chance he was getting paid off by the Shi-Lai to keep hush-hush and maybe even assist them with their shipments; or, maybe he was oblivious. Fera did try making up the story that she brought Devcon and the others to him as a peace offering, hinting that her previous work under the mob boss involved herding in stray bots…
"So you think she's a Shi-Lai spy… You think she was on Pz-Zazz, tracking down Colonist survivors and turning them over…"
"It would all add up, wouldn't it?"
It would. It really would. But then what could be her intentions now? Wouldn't Devcon have figured her out by now, being her partner for so long?
Before I'm given the time to think through the possibilities, my uncle peeks his helm into the room and looks to me, "Alright, kid. Time to tell us what that sphere map zapped into your processor. Ya got coordinates or somethin'?"
I squint lightly, unable to read the information the sphere map gave me directly. We'll have to do this the hard way, "Does this ship have a direct interface I can link up to?"
Devcon raises an optic ridge, "Yeah, but you're gonna have the headache of a lifetime."