#comm link

He tilted his helm backwards with neck on the edge and helm hanging off the back of the chair. Lethargically, he reached forward and pressed the refresh button. Not even bothering to look as he pushed it. 

A nano-second later and the console responded in a smooth, feminine voice--

“No new messages,” he mouthed along.

Still no word from Optimus Prime, eh? What a surprise. 

Heatwave’s faceplate went deadpan at his own internal sarcasm.

It was almost as if the Autobots had forgotten they’d dumped the Rescuebots on Griffin Rock and basically told them they weren’t aloud to contact anyone the Prime didn’t approve of first. Which was a very small list of mecha. Excluding Heatwave’s own team, there were maybe five mecha on it. And he didn’t even know the comm frequency of three of them.

To be frank, it was getting ridiculous. But not in a funny, ha ha way. More in a way that made Heatwave want to send his fist through the damn comm console in vexation. 

Bah! If Prime was never going to be around to answer questions, Heatwave might as well--

He sat right up in his chair. A slow smirk spreading itself across his faceplate as a terrible idea came to his processor.

What if he didn’t ask Prime?

It would be unwise. Certainly not something a responsible leader would do. And had Optimus been present, he would have scolded Heatwave for his foolhardy behavior. But the Prime wasn’t here, was he? The matrix-bearer rarely ever was. Feh, how the frag was the mech supposed to set an example for him if he was never around?

His smirk faded and Heatwave let out a weary sigh as he made his decision. It was unlikely anything would come of it anyway. But he couldn’t keep sitting on his thumbs doing nothing as he waited for word from the Autobots. It was a small risk, anyway. What with how few of their race had survived the war. The chance of another mechanism answering were low at best.

But, still...

Thick servos hovered over the communications controls. The Rescuebots couldn’t continue as they were. So uninvolved with the Autobots and the rest of their Cybertron, they might as well have been organic. They needed answers somehow. From someone. Anyone.

Quickly, before he lost his ball bearings, he set the console to run through a random assortment of frequencies until one of them answered.