17:08 26 December 2552 Alliance Military Time
Southern Border of the Stellae Cimeterium
The Xaaron was a quick little ship.
It had cut a path through Regulon, past Floron, and had reached the edge of the Stellae Cimeterium in only a few short sols. A cruiser like the Xantium IV would take at least a meg-sol following the same path, speed was one advantage the frigate definitely possessed.
Arcee eased back into her chair, imagining her ship swooping and weaving around asteroids, moons, planets, its bow cutting a wake in a gorgeous turquoise nebula. She knew it wasn't nearly so dramatic looking in real life. Space was a lot more empty than people liked to think.
Opening her optics, she directed her sight to the large viewscreen that dominated the bridge. It showed the enormous, empty space laid out before them with markers showing the locations of distant obstacles (small meteors and the occasional large asteroid) as well as their intended location.
They were only a few mega-kliks away.
"Brink us in, Naviko." she directed at the slim, azure bot at the helm.
"Got it!" she chirped back, adjusting her controls deftly. The Xaaron turned like a dancer in her hands.
Arcee felt servos tensing behind her and suppressed a smirk. The bronze bot at her left shoulder wasn't happy about how casual the crew were with each other, and especially with their captain, but the regulations allowed it so she felt no desire to pull on their reigns. Hopefully this posting would put a bit of oil back in his old gears.
She turned to her right and looked down at the small creature sitting at her elbow. Even in the powered-armour suit he was only approximately a third of her size. He was intently examining his data screen but turned to look up at her. "Please contact engineering, Mister Fairborne. Tell them to prepare for deployment."
"Yessir." He nodded and immediately connected to internal coms.
She turned back to the viewscreen just as the other human, at the sensor station, shouted out "Fifteen kliks and closing!"
"Hitting the brakes!" Naviko happily announced as Arcee felt the mild tug of the reverse thrusters kicking in.
"Thank Primus for inertial dampeners." Arcee thought. Quite often actually.
"You'd better get down there, Goldbug." The bronze bot nodded stiffly and turned to make his way off the bridge, sidestepping to fit his substantial width through the door.
Arcee adjusted herself in her seat. It was still a new feeling, but she was just so happy to be out here.
It had been too long.
The Earth-Cybertron Alliance Ship Xaaron (ESPP-289) had been laid down at the Artemis Orbital Shipyards, the twenty-first of the Cybertron Aerospace Engineering Corps Magnum-type High Speed Interstellar Transport platform line. The line had been tweaked and improved with each new ship to the extent that it now barely resembled its first entrant, the Iron Will III.
It had taken six cycles to construct the vessel and Arcee had followed every single step of the process.
After the signing of the Pax Cybertronia had signalled the end of the Great War the Autobots had found themselves undertaking their greatest challenge of all; forming a government.
For what had been something of a ragtag military full of rather independent personalities, the idea of building a functional bureaucracy was equivalent to pulling bolts. Somehow they managed it though.
Arcee had found it easier than most. She went from Autobot Intelligence to Cybertron Intelligence. She answered to mostly the same people and took a lot of the same reports. But now events were less immediate, threats were just something to keep an optic on, not targets to be taken out and she found herself more and more stuck in the massive senate building, not even seeing the sun for sols on end. During the war she was a field agent, spending her days ferrying data between outposts and command centres, driving through battlefields, dodging patrols or fighting through them. She'd never thought of herself as a warrior so much as a courier and investigator, one who could always be trusted to get the information where it needed to go. But now she realized how much she sincerely missed it.
So after a couple of hecto-cycles she submitted an application. She wanted her own command, and her record should absolutely qualify her. Her supervisor, Jetstorm, was not exactly confident.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather be transferred? A change of scenery might be what you're really looking for."
"No, sir. I do think this is my best option."
"They're looking for agents to station on Delta Pavonis IV, might be interesting? Very peaceful."
"Not really the kind of posting I'm looking for, sir."
He rubbed his head and gave her a serious look. "You know Great Convoy has been making some big moves these last few cycles? He practically runs half the fleet now! And he's not interested in putting anyone without a Maximal badge in the captain's seat."
She knew this already, but she also knew she couldn't agree with how those Maximals were trying to run things. "I know they're not going to put me on a battlecruiser, sir. I just want a chance to get out there again."
He nodded and put through the request, clearly not happy about it. Maybe he was worried about getting Maximal attention, about annoying someone higher up who controlled his retirement plans, or maybe he just didn't want to lose his best intelligence agent.
The request was granted two sols later.
Early after the war she had known and been close to practically every important bot there was. But over the hecto-cycles they had all been replaced by new faces, ones she didn't have any history with. She had no real connections or friends in the senate anymore. So in her spark she knew any posting she got would be incredibly minor. No large warships or decorated diplomatic vessels, or critical frontier stations. But still she couldn't deny the pang of disappointment when the form listed a small scout ship.
Still it was hers and she was going to make the most of it.
That very sol she made her way to the shipyards over Artemis and met with the project leader. Aquablast was very enthusiastic about the fine tuning he'd done on the Jones-Onishi Mark-VII Stardrive and slight rearrangement of the cargo and crew areas, but otherwise was very helpful. He happily walked her through the design and function of the ship and the construction timetable. She met with some of the engineers and left feeling much more confident.
She was there when they laid the central pillar. It was the single piece the entire ship would be built onto and around. There was a whole ceremony to this step and after it was done tankards of oils were passed around and music and singing and dancing broke out. She couldn't remember the last real party she'd attended like that, Starscream's had tended to be a lot more uptight. She drank, she danced with someone (or two), she arm-wrestled with one of the larger engineers. After she lost she convinced him to join her for a song.
She regained her senses sitting on the very end of the pillar, her legs dangling two thousand kliks over the empty air above Artemis. But her optics could only look up at the deep, impossibly vast blackness above her.
She felt a smile, freer than any she could remember. This was the beginning of the rest of her life.