Chapter Text
Alarms scream in the cockpit of their stolen escape pod. Jazz pulls himself back from the mental link, his consciousness briefly brushing past Prowl’s. It feels massive, that it could engulf him in one go, all consuming. Despite that Jazz has no fear, only an intense curiosity. His life as a mecha pilot had never been normal, but the last few hours alone were enough to give a sane, well adjusted adult a mental breakdown. Case in point Jazz can feel a mild flicker of concern over his current train of thought.
The joys of being mentally linked to a massive alien made of living metal.
There’s another distinctly uncomfortable screeching sound and every part of Jazz aches as he’s flattened into his pilot’s seat. A headache blooms behind his eyes, his fried brain unable to decide who’s set of eyes it wants to process. The result is a blurred mess, Jazz somewhat making out the displays in front of him and while also seeing the army of angry flashing flight controls that Prowl is wrangling with.
Do you know how to even fly one of these things? Jazz thinks, maybe, slightly a little hysterical.
The G-forces are really beginning to take a toll, its getting harder and harder to expand his chest to take a full breath.
I know that you cannot.
The snarkyness of the reply would make Jazz laugh if he could, but now he can feel his field of vision narrowing. It’s disconcerting because Prowl is completely unaffected and his point of view is beginning to overtake Jazz’s.
Are you okay? the Praxian asks through the link, still stubbornly fighting with the throttle.
I might pass out soon, don’t freak out. I’ll wake back up once you can get the Gs down.
Jazz can actually feel Prowl pulling all of his focus onto that very task. If they weren’t at a high risk of dying this would be the coolest, weirdest thing he’s ever experienced. Jazz’s damaged pilot suit finally gets its shit together and tightens along his legs, forcing blood back up to his head. He does a round of cyclical breathing, the short bursts pushing his lungs to the max. It does the job, and the black tunnel that had been encroaching on his vision recedes.
Prowl does something and the punishing g-force reduces further and Jazz finally doesn’t feel like he’s been strangled in his chair. The shuddering and shaking ceases, the excruciating sound of screeching metal stops. The alarms become blissfully quiet.
They are alive.
Jazz hears the rapid whooshing of Prowl’s spark settle, out of direct danger for the moment. The pilot hadn’t realised until now how intense the sound had been, completely contradicting Prowl’s outwardly calm persona. Interesting. Jazz can feel Prowl take a deep, long vent and loosen his death grip on the controls ever so slightly. The disgusting mix of techno-organic Quint tech leaves a faint sensation of wetness that echoes onto Jazz’s own hands. Ugh. There is some sort of god that Jazz isn’t touching that muck directly, the phantom sensation alone was making his skin crawl.
Good for you.
Jazz can’t help but smirk at the pure resentment he can feel from Prowl. From the outside you’d assume that the stoic Cybertronion had no emotions at all, but now their shared link is now ratting him out.
As you so clearly pointed out earlier, I don’t know how to fly one of these.
Hmmmm
Now that they are not actively fighting for their lives Jazz can fully comprehend that he’s sitting in the chest of a sentient alien mech. He’d met Prowl out in the depths of space almost a year ago, flung through a Quint portal and left stranded among foreign stars. Those first couple of days had been rough. Jazz had had to survive a hoard of Quint soldiers, he’d been awake for like 36 hours, plugged into Bebop for around the same time. Reality had begun to blur a bit at that point so when Jazz came upon another mech surrounded by a swarm of Quints, he just cut through them all like paper and promptly passed out.
It’s been Prowl and him ever since, a duo that the Quints learned to fear.
Greatly.
Until perhaps their reputation became too notorious. That ambush that landed them both on a Quint prison ship was strategic to a scary degree. Unusual behaviour for Quints, worryingly so. When had they gotten smart?
Bebop had been catastrophically damaged during their escape attempt. Jazz allows a moment for his heart to ache. She was everything to him, his home, his armour, his weapon to protect everyone he holds dear. It was so quick too, one moment he was in her cockpit ripping apart a Quint, the next Prowl had him cradled in his massive hands sprinting for cover.
I am sorry about Bebop.
Prowl startles him, the link is becoming so familiar now that Jazz’s brain doesn’t register the other presence as strange. The pilot sighs deeply. Was it normal to grieve something that was never truly alive?
I still can’t believe we’ve done this. Jazz says, gesturing to the controls around him.
It was the only option that ensured both of our survival.
A list of figures and statistics flood Jazz’s brain. Prowl had gone through every possible angle. With Bebop offline and Prowl’s limited close quarter combat skills, the Praxian had determined that this had been the solution with the highest chance of survival.
You are such a nerd. Also how were you able to scan Bebop so quickly? This is amazing, like you even have all of the controls in English Jazz shifts in the pilot’s seat. Shit even the seat was a perfect match to his measurements.
When you first revealed to me that you were an organic. I did it in case of emergency, if Bebop’s life support failed and we were too far from the base. Prowl finally takes his servos completely off the controls, the pod’s course was mercifully now stabilised.
Oh. That’s kind of intense, but Jazz can’t complain. That forethought had saved both of their lives. There would have been no way for them to escape if Prowl had been holding Jazz’s tiny human body the whole time and even if they had miraculously gotten away, his oxygen would have run out fairly quickly. Jazz’s flight suit could keep him alive for a few hours, but Bebop had been his entire life support system for a few months until Wheeljack had built him a dedicated hab on the Ark.
Prowl shifts, sudden motion unexpectedly catching Jazz off guard. His head spins. Ugh. The adrenaline coursing through his system must be falling. Jazz can feel every little ache and pain making their presence known. Perhaps it's time to pull back further from the link. He probably should disconnect soon, before his brain gets scrambled. Some of Prowl’s thoughts flutter through, but he’s thinking in Cybertorion and it’s a bit too much for Jazz’s delicate head right now.
Stop processing so hard then.
Jazz squeezes his eyes shut, if only to limit the immense sensory assault on his brain. Easy for Prowl to say, a human can’t just on demand stall their thoughts. Maybe some can, Jazz is not one of them. The further he separates from their shared space, the more disoriented he becomes. It feels like he has four arms and legs. Phantom twitches race up his back, mirroring the minute flutters of Prowl’s doorwings. Jazz takes a few long breaths, palms flat on the arm rests, the contact grounding him a little.
During the escape there had been no time to fully examine their new shared headspace. Instinct kicked in, the pair merging into one. Jazz still cannot get over the breathtaking amount of trust Prowl gave him, allowing Jazz to take over his motor controls. Jazz had never felt anything like it. Bebop would always be his pride and joy, but ‘piloting’ Prowl was something else. They moved like a deadly assassin, each action carried as one fluid motion.
All of a sudden the shared sensations unexpectedly stop and Jazz feels alone in his body. Confused, he reaches out mentally and finds what he can only describe as a ‘wall’ separating his consciousness from Prowl’s. A wave of instant relief washes over him.
”Thanks, I think I just need a few minutes,” Jazz says aloud.
Prowl replies through the radio in his helmet.
”This is… a new experience for both of us,” the tactician says.
”Are you injured anywhere?” Jazz asks, examining his new cockpit. It’s similar to Bebop’s, but more streamlined. There’s less buttons and switches, the whole piloting process far simpler when the other person can literally read your mind. Prowl’s cockpit is a little bit smaller than Bebop’s, but not too small to be horrifically claustrophobic.
”I have some minor damage. Nothing self repair won’t be able to handle. The Quint’s emptied my sub space though,” Prowl grunts.
Hm. At least they hadn’t had time to disable Prowl’s weapons. Speaking of weapons…
”Did you perform real time trajectory calculations?” Jazz asks. He hadn’t even had time to think about it, just aiming and firing. Some of the shots had been just plain ridiculous, involving ricochets and killing multiple targets with one shot. Bebop had impressive targeting software and Jazz himself wasn’t a bad shot, but what Prowl had been doing was just plain outrageous.
”Yes, Tacnet can lock onto various targets at once. It was designed to handle much larger volumes of data than what we encountered,” Prowl says and Jazz can feel the smugness radiating from the mech.
Fair enough he guesses. He settles into a more comfortable position, his heart finally calming, the adrenaline running its course.
”So do you break out of Quint prisons often?”
Prowl can hear Jazz’s stomach growling. The organic is curled up behind Prowl’s chest plate, nestled just beneath his spark chamber. He’s in recharge for the moment, leaving Prowl some quiet time to ponder on their next move.
Jazz’s presence feels so unusually wrong yet so simultaneously right at the same time. A total juxtaposition. Any other Cybertronion would’ve described his plan as pure recklessness and perhaps a tad suicidal. To let some organic that close to your spark chamber was bad enough, to give that same organic complete motor control?
Foolhardy would be the understatement of the vorn.
Despite the absolute recklessness of the endeavour, Prowl doesn’t regret it. Jazz’s exemplary combat skills are the only reason they managed to escape. Prowl was under no illusions that he would have never been able to dispatch that many Quint’s without at least the bare minimum receiving incapacitating damage.
Ratchet will most likely dismantle Prowl if he gets his servos on the pair. He’s not particularly looking forward to the reprimand the medic will give him, but right now there’s bigger problems to focus on. They have no rations for Jazz. Prowl has nothing either, but Prowl can last significantly longer without a source of fuel than Jazz can. They’ve been aimlessly floating for only a couple of human days, yet Jazz is already suffering the effects from lack of sustenance. He’s tired and lethargic and understandably a little bit more irritable than usual. Prowl can read between the lines, Jazz will face a slow, painful death if they can not find something for him to eat.
Water will become another issue too. Jazz’s suit would normally be able to recycle all of his water, however it was damaged in all of the chaos. Jazz tells him it’s barely recycling 30% of his water.
It won’t be enough.
Jazz will perhaps survive a single human week, maybe a week and a half and only if his suit doesn’t fail first.
Prowl sits perfectly still, not that he can move too much in such a cramped space, to avoid accidentally waking Jazz. The Quint portal they jumped through spit them out in the middle of nowhere. Prowl doesn’t recognise any of the nearby star systems, except, unexpectedly, Jazz's. The issue was that they were too far to ever make it to Earth. Prowl might make it if he went into stasis, but Jazz had no such luxury.
Prowl doesn’t know what to do.
There’s an awful, yawning chasm inside him. It’s been a long, long time since Prowl has had no solution to a problem. Always, always given enough time, he eeks out some insane strategy. There’s always been sacrifices of course, you cannot save everyone. A brutal, cold truth etched into Prowl’s very spark casing. He thought he had gotten over it, used to the energon staining his servos, yet the possibility of adding Jazz to that list of the dead…
No.
They’ve been in a number of close calls since they collided into each other’s lives, surviving on the edge of space collecting Quint bases like medals. Jazz was a monster when it came to dispatching Quints. He flowed through battlefields with a skill and flourish that took a seasoned Cybertronion millennia to master.
Prowl’s spark has been saved several times over, more than he would care to admit by the young organic.
Jazz shifts slightly, an almost ticklish feeling. An odd, odd sensation. Prowl raises a servo to his chestplate. He cannot let his friend die, not like this.
Water. Food. A planet with a somewhat similar atmospheric pressure to Earth’s might have suitable food sources for Jazz. Prowl does another sensor sweep of the solar system their currently traversing. The pod’s sensor suite had been damaged in their escape, severaly limiting their range.
Frag.
Prowl feels frustration build inside him. He can try muck about in the Quint code to increase the range, but the physical damage itself? He doesn’t have the skills to fix it.
”Prowl?”
Prowl almost jumps. Almost. Jazz stretches and Prowl suppresses a shiver at the movement he shouldn’t be able to feel under his armour. His EM prickles slightly and Prowl is glad Jazz cannot interpret it. Smokescreen and Bluestreak would have a field day if they ever found out that Prowl was willing to do this.
“What is your status?” Prowl asks, fiddling with the star maps and running another sensor sweep. At least no one had been able to pursue them. A well placed explosive device had taken care of that accursed prison ship.
”I feel like shit, but not injured,” Jazz replies, voice crackling on their comn. line. They had very gingery disengaged the pilot link before Jazz went for a rest and now were relying on a more “standard” form of communication.
It feels so slow and clumsy compared to their synergy when linked. Prowl doesn’t want to read too much into that.
”That is good,” the Praxian finally moves a little, extending his legs as far as they can go. He gives his doorwings a little rotation, the appendages stiff from the unforgiving position he’s locked them in.
”Have any idea on where we are? I would kill for a Holiday Inn,”
Prowl frowns. Jazz never ceases to confuse him with human idioms.
“We are 16 light years from Earth, in a system uncharted by the Quints. I do not have relevant information in my own databanks,”
”Oh. How long would it take to get back to Earth?”
Prowl’s servos pause, caught off guard with Jazz’s quiet tone.
”Four of your human years if we accelerated at near light speed, which this pod is incapable of,”
”Well fuck,”
There’s a long stretch of silence. Prowl can sense Jazz curling in on himself but there’s no noise coming from the human. His spark sounds like thunder in the quiet, betraying his own upset over their circumstances. TacNet spins furiously in circles over and over, only spitting out failure after failure, uncomfortably increasing his frame’s temperature.
After a while Jazz speaks up again.
”Can you show me the star map?”
”Yes,”
Prowl unspools his data cable from his wrist port, internal cringing as he connects to techno-organic Quint tech. He’d already had to jack in when they first hijacked the pod so it ‘welcomes’ him instead of launching a digital attack at his presence. Prowl pulls up the star map and sends it to Jazz's screens. It’s a weird thing to do, to display some data behind your own armour. It appears already translated into English for Jazz to examine.
”Holy shit!” He yells, loud and suddenly exuberant with energy.
“Prowl I know this system!”
Rocky was on his way to Grace’s Biodome when he was dramatically pulled aside by one of the astronomers. They click at him with extreme urgency, almost tripping over their notes incomprehensibly. Rocky searches his memory for their name, he doesn’t think he has ever spoken directly to them.
”Savouir Rocky! A ship has been detected entering our system!” They fidget with their claws, practically vibrating with the excitement of their news. Ferron. Ferron with their name.
Rocky can only stand still, shock freezing him in place, legs locked. A ship? The only ones capable of building ships other than Eridians were humans.
“Show me,” Rocky demands and Ferron obliges, leading him in the opposite direction towards the Astromonoy cluster. They sprint along, claws clattering along the stone corridor. A wall of noise greets them, astronomers and scientists skittering about. Rocky knows most of them, thrumming with them to share the knowledge he had learned from Grace about relativity and radiation.
There’s a tiny pause as those nearby registers Rocky’s arrival. He taps the floor a few times and clicks to get a better read of who’s present.
Someone calls out to him, waving a leg to get his attention.
”Rocky! Here, examine these readings. I have already contacted Saviour Grace,” Asper runs up to meet Rocky halfway. Ferron has already disappeared, off to do some other task.
Asper had assisted greatly with Grace’s survival when they had initially arrived on Erid. They are a little bit bigger than Rocky, with a wide and rugged carapace.
The scientist hands a sound tablet to Rocky’s awaiting claws. He eagerly focuses on it. A small blip tracks on the radar, its trajectory heading straight for Erid. Rocky scrutinises it closely, looking for any familiar features. The craft is… small. Too small for a 16 light year journey. Rocky hums. Many, many years have passed since the Astrophage crisis. Perhaps human technology has leaped forward in advances like Eridian technology had?
It’s shape doesn’t resemble anything like the Hail Mary or the Beetle probes for that matter.
“When will it arrive?”
Rocky flies through the airlock at unsafe speeds, and just about shimmies his xenonite suit on as the as pressure begins to drop.
”Jeeze Rocky, you are going to give me a heart attack if you keep doing that,” Grace is hoovering on the other side, clad in his favourite sweater.
Rocky hears the thump, thump, thump of Grace’s heartbeat. It’s a sound etched into his carapace, something that has become apart of his very being. Right now Grace’s heart is beating hard, a mix of both anticipation and nerves.
“I am a professional airlock hopper,” Rocky trills leaping out the other side.
He taps Grace’s legs in greeting and does not at any point, purr, as Grace calls it when the human reaches down to pat the top of his carapace.
“Did you see it? That’s nothing human like at all, like the proportions are wrong and the shape. There’s nothing coming up on the Petrova scope meaning that ship isn’t using astrophage for propulsion,"
”Yes, yes, yes!” Rocky squeaks, Grace’s enthusiasm only increasing his own.
“Adrian is on their way. Spacecraft has not tried to communicate with Erid yet,”
Rocky recalls his nervous hope when the Blip A’s radar pinged. When he’d been alone so long he didn’t know if he was sane anymore. He had thrown all caution to wind back then, barrelling towards the Hail Mary without really thinking of the possibility of receiving a hostile reception. Adrian had scolded him more than once when they found out about Rocky’s pure recklessness, that Rocky had ignored basic common sense when interacting with Grace for the first time.
This time around Rocky does feel some of that concern. It’s different. He’s not a single Eridian on the edge of space, slowly losing his grip on reality. Everything Rocky has ever cared about is here. He thinks back to some of the movies he watched on the Hail Mary.
”Do you think this will be like Independence Day?” He blurts, feeling a twinge of anxiety.
Grace startles and then laughs. Rocky lightly presses a claw on Grace’s foot feeling immediately embarrassed. Grace taps him with his cane.
”No, because that ship is tiny compared to the guys in Independence Day. Besides we couldn’t radio each other either, remember? This could be the same situation,”
Grace presses his palm on Rocky’s carapace again, this time keeping it in place. The cool pressure provides a grounding point and Rocky tries to push his anxiety away. Instead he focuses on Grace, letting out a few clicks and drinks in Grace’s form.
The human has aged much since their fateful meeting at Tau Ceti so long ago. Grace’s bones were no longer as dense, the joints creaking more frequently than they ever had before. His heart was still strong though, a steadying presence.
Rocky fidgets, mind racing through all of the possibilities of this new alien life.
“Come on bud, we’re like pros at interstellar relations. For all we know it could be some new human technology. A long time has passed since I was on Earth,”
Rocky scoffs.
”Heartbeat betrays you,” he says and Grace has the gall to laugh at him again. Humans are so weird like that, able to outwardly mask their inner feelings. Not that it works for Grace on Erid though. Sometimes it makes Rocky wonder how Earth society functions at all if people are constantly hiding their true emotions.
“Freaky spider lie detector,”
”Leaky space blob,”
The hiss of the airlock signals Adrian’s arrival. Grace eagerly waves them over as they cycle through the airlock at a much more standard pace compared to Rocky’s.
”Travelled as fast as I could,” Adrian says, vents puffing inside their suit.
”That’s alright. We still have plenty of time before the ship enters orbit. Rocky and I think we should head up the Hail Mary and see what she can tell us,” Grace gives Adrian a pat too, the greeting ritual long being established. It makes Rocky practically preen. Only Adrian and himself get Grace’s coveted carapace pats regularly.
“I will stay down here with the Astronomy team then. Head of thum has requested my presence as First Ecologist,” Adrian says.
Rocky feels a tad guilty that his mate rushed their way over to Grace’s Biodome just to immediately leave it again.
“You will be by the radio?” Rocky asks.
”Yes. Please both be safe,” Adrian hums clasping Rocky’s claws and Grace’s arm.
Adrian heads off once more, leaving Rocky to watch Grace clumsily put on his own especially designed EVA suit.
“Don’t forget your torch again.”
”Yes, mom,” Grace snarks but does reach back to grab his forgotten torch and they both head into the airlock together. Rocky doesn’t bother removing his suit, not if they were going directly to the Hail Mary.
The pair are pestered a bit on the way to the space elevator, curious scientists asking them questions that they had no answers to. Riding up to the Hail Maryin orbit feels painstakingly long. Rocky taps his feet impatiently. Grace is no better, one foot tapping and the hand on his cane is constantly twitching. If Adrian was here they would have been driven up the wall so to speak. Humans had such strange idioms, but Rocky loved using them even if it confused other Eridians.
“We could prove our hypothesis,” Grace says looking down at Rocky.
”You think we could be related to these aliens like life on planet Adrian?
”Panspermia theory, I mean astrophage potentially seeded both of our planets? Why not another one? Maybe they needed help with their star and realised that Erid’s recovered,”
That’s not the worst theory of why they may suddenly have alien visitors. The same scenario played out in Tau Ceti, why not here?
”We could save a third world,” Rocky remarks.
“Sure, let’s add another one to the resume,”
They ascend into orbit. Grace had informed Rocky that Erid was a gorgeous blue, that the rings around the planet only added to its beauty. Rocky has less interest in Erid itself, more focused on the Hail Mary. She was so advanced yet so frail compared to Eridian technology. The onboard lab was hundreds of years into the future, let alone Mary herself. He still remembers when Grace told him the voice wasn’t alive, that she was a very sophisticated programme. The Hail Mary still had her shape, but much of her outside hull had been replaced over the years with xenonite as normal wear and tear began to accumulate.
“You know I still don’t know how to feel about her,” Grace says and Rocky knows that he’s looking in the direction of Earth.
”Hail Mary is a symbol of hope on Erid. People buy models of her for good luck now,”
“Hmmm,”
They finally arrive, the elevator locking into place with a loud hiss as it connects to the orbital platform. Entering the Hail Mary always feels a little bit surreal to Rocky, never forgetting the first time he boarded. While the exterior of the Hail Mary has changed, the inside remains untouched. Grace lets out a small gasp. He hasn’t been up in a year or two.
”You are okay?”
“Yep, all good Rock. It’s weird coming back up here,” Grace closes the airlock behind them and strips off his suit. His hands trial the walls as they make their way up to the bridge.
“Welcome back Dr. Grace, welcome back Rocky,” Mary chirps.
”Hi Mary,”
”Blip P detected,” she alerts.
Grace gets into the pilot’s seat and activates the Petrova scope. Eridian scientists had already checked for the tell tale light frequency of astrophage, but Grace liked to double check things.
”Well there’s no denying it. They aren’t using astrophage as fuel,”
”Interesing. I would like to examine their engines if we get the opportunity,” the prospect of looking at a new foreign form of propulsion would be exciting.
“Mary, how long until Blip P reaches Erid?”
”At current velocity the Blip P will arrive at Erid in three hours and twenty-seven minutes,”
More systems are failing. Prowl is back to wrestling with the pod’s controls while Jazz is cursing up an unhelpful storm through their comn.
”We just need to sit in orbit!” The human yells, voice pitched higher in stress.
“I know that,” Prowl snaps back, doorwings hiked high in anger.
He’s not angry with Jazz, not directly, but Prowl’s patience is running thin as every bit of pod’s shoddy Quint tech malfunctions. Slagging, useless Quint tech. The engines won’t turn off. Prowl has pulled the throttles to idle, cut fuel flow but they still stubbornly burn. He’s jacked back into the pod trying to wrangle broken code as the whole control system collapses in on itself. There’s a trail of dead sensors spread in a terrifying but recognisable pattern that could only mean one thing. There’s a fire. It had been probably only smouldering until it hit something particularly combustible, Prowl’s not sure. The damage the pod received may have stripped some wires somewhere hidden, unseen until it sparked and engulfed too many critical components.
There’s nothing Prowl can do.
Slag it to the Pits.
”Jazz we are going to crash land. Strap in,”
“Fuck! What can I do?” Jazz squirms in the cockpit, Prowl can feel his hands on the handle of the exit hatch.
”Nothing, I believe there’s a fire somewhere on board. We losing control one system at a time,”
“I can go fight the fire, I’m small, I can get into the maintenance panels!”
”No, it's too late for that. Prepare for a hard landing, I am going to try to slow us down,” the Praxian locks the exit hatch, ignoring Jazz’s protests. The pod was beginning to fill with smoke now, it was getting hard to see the screens. Heat was building at Prowl’s back. They didn’t have much time before they would be engulfed.
Prowl manages to jettison one of the fuel tanks but the other doesn’t respond. The momentum sends the pod spinning wildly, Prowl is thrown against the seat constraints. Jazz had thankfully followed his advice, buckled in just in time. Prowl has no main engine control but positional thrusters are still online. He fires a few bursts calming their wild spiral. The planet Erid looms in front, its mass filling up the entire viewport.
TacNet flares with possible entry trajectories, all with abysmal odds of success. Something sparks to Prowl’s left and an awful burst of heat licks at his side, scorching paint. He hisses in pain, dimming his sensor grid as low as he can.
”Prowl what’s going on out there? Should we link?”
”No, I don't know what damage it will do to you if I get knocked offline. We are going in hot. Prepare for decompression,” Prowl grits his denta, fighting to correct their angle of attack. It’s too high. They have too much velocity. The sound of sizzling now is unmistakable, the organic part of the Quint tech burning. The stink of it is pungent and the lights cut out.
Slag.
”Decompression?! As in you get a giant hole?”
The Praxian doesn’t respond.
Prowl catches a glimpse of what he thinks is a ship in orbit, but the moment is too fleeting to properly look. He’s lost all control of the pod, only basic manual overrides working now.
“Prowl! Vent the atmosphere!” Jazz screams into the radio.
”What?”
”Vent the atmosphere, it will put the fire out! If we are going to crash anyway, I would love to not burn as well,”
That’s… That’s actually not a bad idea.
Structural integrity has already been compromised, they have nothing left to lose. Smoke has completely clouded the cockpit of the pod leaving Prowl to clumsily feel along the controls. He’d memorised the controls earlier and finds what he’s looking for, pulling the lever without hesitation.
Nothing happens.
Frag.
There’s a backup somewhere. Prowl finds it. The heat is now unbearable and smoke is choking his vents forcing them closed.
Again nothing happens.
They will be entering the atmosphere any second, they have to get this fire out now.
Prowl does something exceedingly stupid. He brings his weapons online and fires into the floor directly behind him.
One, two, three, four -
A sharp billowing bang of decompression occurs, Prowl is dragged against his restraints. Tongues of flames roar out into the blackness of space, the edges scolding Prowl’s plating on the way out.
”Prowl!”
”Hold on!”
They hit the atmosphere hard. It’s just a chasm of sound and pressure and heat. All Prowl can do is grip his chair tightly and pray that the pod doesn’t entirely disintegrate before they get to the ground. He can hear panels being wrenched away.
Jazz is yelling something. At this point Prowl can only focus on keeping himself secure. He might have purged if he’d had anything in his tanks. This must be so punishing on Jazz, human bodies were not made for this.
They hit the ground hard.
The response team rush to the site as fast as they can go. There was no direct mag line near to the crash site so they had to run the rest of the distance, hauling heavy equipment between them. It was a team of sixteen, a mix of scientists, biologists and some security, for the worst case scenario. Nervous anticipation rippled through the group, heightened once they were in range to echolocate the crash site.
Ruined bits of metal marred the landscape, a long scar dug out of the ground. What’s left of the craft is oval shaped, big on the ground but very small for extended space travel. Smoke billows outwards and there are the sounds of components melting.
“Halt!” Their squad leader thrills. Adrian settles behind them awaiting their command. It was fortunate that the crash had occurred so close to the science cluster, Erid had large expanses of isolated and rugged wilderness.
“Approach carefully, Security up front please,”
They approach cautiously. One of the scientists scans for radiation, their Eridian version of a Gieger counter remaining blessedly silent.
“Ja-zz….”
Everyone startles at the staticky noise, but Adrian freezes. He recognises the sounds instantly, a chill creeping into his carapace.
That was English. Grace’s native language. They rush forward, tapping their way onto the hull. There’s gaps in the plating, not that Adrian couldn’t sense through it anyway, but the gaps offer a much clearer picture.
”Adrian what are you doing?”
”That was English, Grace’s language. There must be a human in there!”
The group breaks out into anxious chatter. Another human? Here?
”A human? Exposed to our atmosphere, they would be dead by now,” the squad leader cries.
”Jaz-z z- w—akk-e u-p,” a stuttered burst of static comes from inside again.
“Hold on, we are coming to assist,” Adrian says hoping that they may understand. They know Grace sent back an Eridian dictionary to Earth when he sent the Beetles.
Adrian clicks loudly creating a solid sound map of the interior and almost falls off the hull when they fully register the information that comes back to them.
”He-lap —Jaz—zz,” a large, metal hand reaches out before falling back on itself.
Inside the pod is a massive, humanoid shaped being. It almost sounds alive, a thrumming core pulsing in the centre of its chest. Adrian can hear countless pumps and pistons and fluids pulsing in its metal body, not unlike the way Grace’s works except on a much larger scale. It’s shaped like a human too, two legs, two arms, it even has a human like face only much bigger. It dwarfs Adrian, and Adrian is large for an Eridian.
Adrian thrills again, not quite believing their senses because curled up inside the massive metal body is the small, unmistakable form of a human.