Held Accountable
Cheetor might see his first long-range expedition, new and exciting. The shiny infatuation would wear off once he was reassigned. Rattrap might see an older model, still useful but hardly flashy. It would be easily abandoned if the rat saw an opportunity to move on. Dinobot might sneer over Maximal technology and its supposed inferiority when compared to Predacon counterparts. He had no attachment to the ship itself beyond a place to withdraw. Optimus might see it in terms of his responsibility to the 'bots under his command: it kept them sheltered and protected, and that safety was what made it important. The loss of the ship would be less of a blow than if he lost a single crewmember.
Rhinox knew what his fellow Maximals might see when they looked at the Axalon, and he could understand why they saw it their way. It really was only a ship, one of who-knew-how-many built for deep space exploration. The people on board were the ones who gave it a personality, a name, a purpose. By itself, it was just a hunk of builders' junk…really, really expensive builders' junk. Millions of credits worth of hull metal, sensitive computer equipment, weaponry, and everything else than came with a starship, all eating up the Maximal High Council's finances. While Optimus knew, as any good commander did, what his vessel had cost to construct and prepare, the actual money-work had ended up on Rhinox' broad shoulders. It had been something he could manage while his old friend handled the crew side of the bureaucracy, and it had never been either of their intentions to leave him with the burden of trying to balance a budget that had long since lost its meaning.
The fact remained, however, that the ship's accountant hadn't arrived on the planet with them. Whether still in a stasis pod somewhere in orbit waiting to be activated or lost forever in the time warp that had brought the Beast Wars to Earth, the one who had been meant to deal with the Axalon's credits simply was not there. Nevertheless, if--WHEN--the Maximals returned to Cybertron, the High Council would expect the damages to be cataloged, cause and effect with the monetary loss side by side with the estimated repair cost. While the others could see the potential off the spreadsheet, Rhinox watched with an accountant's nervousness as the worth of the ship gradually dropped.
And the others wondered why he rarely left the ship anymore…
.
Poor Rhinox; he makes such an ODD accountant.