Summary: No-War, No-Factions AU. Festival of the Five: They were two stars circling a single gravitational point. One driven by faith, the other by desire. They came together only with the blessing of the Guiding Hand, and when they did all of Cybertron was caught in their orbit. They weren't destined for each other, but as Primus said: There is destiny, and then there is destiny.
Warnings: Sexual Content, including one (mild but detailed) tactile interfacing scene. Cannon-typical violence. Alien Religion and various issues thereof.
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Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Part Two: Festival of Solomus cont….
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Now, flying and racing properly, Sunstorm blazed across the sky like a shooting star. No amount of control could have kept his alpha ability fully restrained and he didn't have the processing power to spare for anything but filtering out the most dangerous wavelengths anyway.
He set his targeting software to solving the puzzles as he flew. He didn't want to devote too much attention from flying, but he also hoped that the coordinates combined with the clues would give him the answers so he wouldn't have to search once he got there. Stopping to do a search pattern would ruin his chances. The software blatted in protest at being repurposed, but set to its task.
That first equation was far beyond simple targeting though.
Fortunately the checkpoint was easy to find, set in the crossroad in front of a nondescript building whose only distinction was being at the proper coordinates.
He hurtled from the sky, passed within two meters of the flag and pulled up, already heading to the next destination.
He shunted the automated comm message strait to tactical and targeting software and focused on flying.
His HUD lit up with two notices. From tactical: he'd hit the checkpoint in thirty-third place. From targeting: based on his destination according to his nav systems, the tourist's map of Altihex he'd been given when he entered the city's airspace, his original four guesses and the new clue he'd been given, the next checkpoint was at the Harvest Moon, a high class engex bar.
Again, a sharp turn as he dove and pulled up and he was headed to the next checkpoint. Seventeenth place.
That one had been an incomprehensible collection of networked lines. The clue was that it was a map and added a number of engineering symbols to the image. His tactical database recognized some of the symbols and bombing software gave him the answer: a map of part of the city's electrical system, with the checkpoint marked out over a small hospital. A targeting solution appeared on his HUD.
Empty ordinance brackets under his wings clicked open as he dove for the checkpoint. Ninth.
The next puzzle had been quite literally a puzzle. The new clue added color to the architectural lines, but it wasn't until he saw the Altihex Deep Space Observatory ahead of him that his repurposed targeting systems made any headway. He abandoned the puzzle half finished as he swooped towards the flag. Still ninth.
The next was another word problem. Even with the new clue his programs only blatted error messages. The statue — and the flag — were obvious from the air though. Seventh.
The next checkpoint was the puzzle he'd initially figured out — the light from the beacon on top of Tower Stargazer — and he ignored the list of nobles that had inhabited the Tower since it'd been built that was the new clue in favor of a new problem.
Tactical systems flashed a warning: there was someone on his tail. A mostly mauve and green shuttle alt had apparently decided the seeker knew where he was going. Follow Sunstorm, then use his powerful interstellar engines to overtake him on the last leg back to the stadium. Essentially what he'd tried his previous three Solomus races, except tracking a canny ground car from the air wasn't as simple as following a fellow air-alt.
Sunstorm whipped around the Tower checkpoint — fifth — and ignored the warning from navigation informing him he was headed away from his next destination. He needed to lose the shuttle first.
He accelerated, forcing his pursuer to nearly top speed to follow. The shuttle was probably faster than him, and definitely more fuel efficient, and could beat any seeker in any strait-line race. They were built for it.
But seekers were built for dogfighting. And just as significantly, seekers were optimized for atmosphere, not for the near-vacuum of space.
He angled slightly up in preparation. Light flared out from his plating, brighter than any but a shuttle, designed for the rigors of space, could stand. Dangerous gamma and x-ray radiation didn't penetrate thick plating, but the unexpected nova scrambled his sensors and polarized his optics and he flinched. Sunstorm cut his primary thrusters and flared his landing jets, sending himself aft over nosecone. A moment of free fall, then he blasted his jets back to full power. A perfect Immelmann that even Starscream would have been proud of. Their belly armor nearly scraped as he passed the larger, less maneuverable shuttle. He was gone before the shuttle had recovered from the scrambled sensors and at this speed he'd have to circle most of the city before he could complete a one-eighty turn and follow or risk burning off his armor.
Losing the shuttle had taken time; Sunstorm didn't slow but angled up above most of the civilian air traffic as he headed towards the Praxus embassy and the next checkpoint. A mid air crash would definitely ruin his day. He didn't know anything about chemistry, but he could tell the diagrams were of something crystalline, not plastic or metallic. The new clue had only been an additional three diagrams added to the original one. But combined with the Embassy itself, that could only be the gardens and he passed two tank-alts too large to easily navigate the tangle of crystals without breaking them who were blocking the way so that the three cars behind them also couldn't follow. It was an almost vertical dive to get in close enough to whip around the checkpoint and the g-forces of pulling up nearly ripped his wings apart. Structural integrity sent a cascade of errors across his HUD and he cleared them impatiently. It wasn't combat damage, nor critical, so the alerts quieted obediently. Second place.
He couldn't see who was still in front of him; someone who'd solved the riddles very fast. Sunstorm dismissed the thought and focussed on pouring on the speed for the final approach back to the stadium. Light in the optical and ultraviolet spectra climbed brighter as he focused more on his thrusters and less on his alpha ability.
He spotted his last competitor as he came over the stadium stands. The green and white car was nearly a racing alt, but he'd had to circle the building to enter from the same door he and the other ground alts had originally all exited from. Otherwise he would have surely been at the finish already.
Navigation and tactical screamed at him. Warnings flashed, yellow then red and his flight systems joined in, sending their own alerts. That was the ground and his approach was too fast. Lethally fast. He didn't care. He adjusted his angle, spun and felt his wing cut the finishing ribbon.
For one glorious, triumphant moment he thought he'd managed to do it without crashing. Then his wake wrapped the ribbon around his tail fin and brought his momentum to a painful, sudden halt.
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tbc