In the planetary system known to its native sentients as Sol, a small Autobot ship scarcely larger than a shuttlecraft sped toward an anomalous energy disk suspended in space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. Just two days before, the greatest threat to the Cybertronian race, a planet-devouring creature called Unicron that they had thought defeated years ago, had emerged from this anomaly and started toward the planet Earth, the only inhabited planet in the system and the location of an Autobot colony-base. The two Autobots on board the ship, Trixter and Jazz, had the unenviable task of setting up equipment near the anomaly that would redirect its energies into a shield between the monster and Earth, effectively sending it back to whatever time it had come from. To them the cost was much higher than losing an inhabited planet to a fate they had brought upon it. They stood to loose the only place where either of them had truly felt at peace in their war-torn lives.
To ease the tension the pair had been telling stories of what had happened since they had last seen each other. Trixter reclined in the pilot's seat, her feet up on the control board, and Jazz sat beside her in the co-pilot's seat. "And then there was this one time in this spaceport near the Sirius system," Trixter said, smiling, "when Upstart, get this, he actually..." She was cut off mid-sentence by the screeching of an alarm. She swung her feet down from the controls and sat up in the seat, suddenly tense. She tapped a few buttons and an image of the swirling, milky anomaly appeared on the viewscreen that covered most of the wall in front of them. Numbers flashing in the corner gave their position. "Aw, slag..." she muttered.
"What's all the noise about, Trixie?" Jazz asked anxiously. For all his skill, he was no starship pilot, and Trixter's Starcruiser was highly customized, leaving him clueless as to the meaning of the blaring alarm.
"It's the collision alarm. We're almost in position to turn on the equipment, but that thing seems to have some kind of gravitational pull. It's pulling us into it!" She flipped a switch to turn off the autopilot, saying, "We know next to nothing about that thing, if it sucks us in we may never get out. For all we know whatever's on the other side could demolecularize us or something. Hold on!" she warned him a split second before shifting all the ship's propulsion to the retro-thrusters. The shift in momentum so close to the anomaly threw them forward violently. Struggling with the directional controls, Trixter turned the ship around and switched the main thrusters back on at full power. Looking up at the screen, she saw that the power of the ship's engines only slowed their fall into the cloud. "That energy transmitter equipment Perceptor an' Wheeljack put in the back is heavy, it's making it harder to break free," she said to Jazz as he looked worriedly up at the screen.
"Hey, maybe if we turn it on now the anomaly will be gone before it can pull us in!" Jazz said hopefully.
"It's worth a try," Trixter said. "Just be careful, okay, Jazz?" she added, looking up from the controls at him.
He got out of his chair and slowly made his way to the back of the bridge, where the controls for the transmitter had been temporarily installed, holding onto the navigation control panel on the side wall of the bridge to brace himself against the shaking of the ship. When he reached the back wall he turned to Trixter. "Okay, I'm here. How do I turn it on?"
"There's a big red switch. Just flip it and the computer will take care of everything else," she shouted back over the roar of the struggling engines. It took only a second to find it and, though unseen by those inside, the twin dishes on the outside of the ship swung to life, quickly aligning themselves and redirecting the energy of the anomaly to the recieveing tower on Earth.
The power of the transmitter made the shaking of the craft even more violent, and Jazz struggled to maintain his balance while he made his way back to Trixter. As he reached the back of his chair, the gravatational field around the ship shifted, knocking him off his feet. The floor became tilted at a sharp angle toward a relative "down" at the back of the bridge. He lunged for the chair, but the metal flooring was too slick and he slid down toward the back wall. Suddenly Trixter shouted. "This is it," she yelled grimly over the noise. "We're being sucked into it!" Jazz looked back over his shoulder to see the back wall of the bridge obscured by an opaque white mist.
Trixter turned to the co-pilot's seat only to find it empty. Then she heard a shout from behind her. "Trixie! Gimmie a hand here!"
"Jazz!" she cried, looking back to find him slipping toward the mist. She lept out of her chair and, holding tightly onto it, reached for him. He reached out for her hand, but it was too far away. "No!" she exclaimed as he slid further away. Then the ship shuddered again and she lost her grip on the chair. Trixter tumbled into Jazz and they fell together against the back wall.
Stunned, they looked around. "I...I think it worked!" Trixter exclaimed, looking up at the monitor as the ship's artificial gravity realigned itself. There was no sign of the anomaly. The screen showed only the blackness of space, specked with stars. Then with a sigh she collapsed into his arms. "Oh, Jazz, I almost lost you..."
"You know, Trixie," Jazz said, smiling, as he held Trixter, "that's the most beautiful the stars have ever looked."
On Earth, from the Autobots' viewpoint just outside of Autobot City, the massive form of Unicron hung in the darkened sky. The monster was just outside the orbit of the planet's own moon, and getting closer by the moment. The sky was clear, but the bulk of Unicron had started having an affect on the climate of the planet, making the weather subject to drastic changes in a matter of minutes. The few dozen Autobots stationed at the base- including the usual crew of the Starcruiser- stod outside, near the tower built to recieve the energy from the anomaly that Trixter and Jazz had been sent to transmit. Perceptor and Wheeljack worked on putting the final touches on the machine as the others stood looking nervously up at the sky.
"He's right over our base," Afterburner said, his voice hushed. "Maybe it's something here that he's after."
"That would only be logical," Nightbeat commented. "Without our connection to the planet, there's nothing for Unicron here but a quick snack. And certainly nothing worth creating a space-time portal for. If only I could figure out exactly what he wants here..."
"Perceptor, are you two done yet?" Upstart called out impatiently. "I'm not really in a dying mood right now, y'know."
"We just have to connect the main power cable between the recieving dish and the shield projector," Perceptor informed him, annoyed. "If you'd just calm down..." Suddenly lights started flashing on the control panel near where the engineers were working.
"That's not supposed to be happening yet," Wheeljack muttered. Then the recieving dish turned into position. "Oh no, Trixter and Jazz must've started early!"
"Then there isn't time," Nightbeat said, to himself as much as anyone else. Giving one last glance to the threat above, he strode over to the open panel and took the ends of the two large, loose cables into his hands. "Quick, Perceptor, weld it together!" In that moment the raw energy from the Starcruiser reached the reciever and tore through him. A thick beam shot out from the top of the tower, filling the sky beyond the horisons with the glowing, swirling mist. Despite the pain Nightbeat held onto the cables until the beam fettered out. Only then did he let go and fall, smoking and unconscious, to the ground.
The desert landscape became washed in the pale-white glow of the anomaly cloud. For a few long minutes that was all that could be seen in the sky. Then, slowly, it began swirling faster right above them and shrunk out of existance, leaving the night sky filled with stars and nothing else.
EPILOGUE:
"But where are you gonna go now?" Jazz asked Trixter as she prepared the Starcruiser for takeoff in Autobot City's shuttle bay. He once again sat in the co-pilot's chair as he watched her run diagnostics on the ship's computer.
"I'm not really sure," she answered. "That's one of the cool things about this Firestormer thing, we pretty much go wherever we want, whenever we want. Unless we get missions, that is." She looked up from her work at him. "I told you that you're free to join us," she reminded him solemnly, wishing more than anything for him to accept the offer. But she knew in her heart that it would never happen. Earth was his home, after all. It was hers, too, as far as she was concerned, but she preferred "home" to be a place she only visited, not stayed at. He seemed stuck to the place with super-glue.
"So you guys haven't made any plans yet?" he asked.
"Well, Air Raid was telling us a few weeks ago about this resort city he had heard about in the Rigel system. We we seriously considering hanging out there for a little while. You sure you don't wanna come? After all the work you've been doing here, I'm sure you could use a vacation."
"What's this I hear about a vacation?" Nightbeat laughed, sticking his head through the open shuttle door. "If anyone here needs a vacation, it's me!" He joined them on the bridge, walking stiffly. In the past three days he had recovered for the most part, but he was still a little sore.
"I'm sure you do!" Trixter replied. "At least you're up and around now."
"Well, First Aid said it would still be a few weeks until I'm good as new, or even close. But yeah, at least I'm up and around. I'm still working on figuring out why Unicron came here in the first place. It just doesn't make sense..."
"Ready yet, Trix?" Upstart called from the doorway of the ship.
"Just a moment." She turned to Nightbeat and Jazz. "Well, I guess this is it. Bye, guys! I'll stop by here next chance I get, 'kay?"
"I need to get back to the base anyway," Nightbeat said. "Stay in touch, Trix!"
As Nightbeat left, Jazz stood up. "Are you sure you can't come with us, Jazz?" Trixter asked.
"Maybe some other time, Trixie, but right now I'm needed here. The base is understaffed as it is. Just do me a favor and come back to visit soon. And promise me you'll take care of yourself out there."
"I promise," she said as Upstart, Afterburner, Air Raid, and Strafe tromped through the door.
"C'mon, Trix, it's time to get this show on the road!" Upstart said. They all took their positions around the bridge as Trixter walked Jazz to the door.
A few minutes later Jazz reached the main doors to the base. He typed in the code to open the doors, then paused for a moment in the doorway to watch sadly as the Starcruiser dissappeared into the bright blue sky, a blue that served only to remind him of Trixter.
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