Soundwave stood quite confidently, arms at his sides, a familiar tilt to his head that could have meant he was thinking or listening. He nodded easily, field sparkling with confidence, which could have been entirely for Prowl’s benefit, whose own field was sodden with an excited dread. He was trying to stand with poise, but next to Soundwave it was all too obvious the way his doorwings quivered and his biolights flickered. Cosmos felt his spark sink.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, stepping as close as he felt Prowl’s anxiety would allow. “It’s just supposed to be fun, but I don’t know if it will work if you’re…” Was there a way to say ‘terrified’ that wouldn’t offend Prowl’s pride?

Cosmos spent too long thinking about it. Prowl’s doorwings hitched up, his gaze sharpening though his biolights continued to waver.

“I want to do this,” Prowl said. “Faulty risk analysis, that’s all. Not worth a delay.”

Cosmos doubted Prowl’s programs were at fault: he was the only mech Cosmos knew who made algorithm tuning a part of his regular maintenance, and what they were doing was potentially very dangerous. Before he could make a mistake of trying to reason Prowl into fear, though, Soundwave put a hand on Prowl’s shoulder, the ring of hand meeting plating indicating that Prowl had been shivering.

“Cosmos: accomplished in interspacial rescue,” he said. “Soundwave: can locate Prowl at any distance. Prowl will be found, if you want to be.”

“Of course I would want to be,” Prowl snapped, but it seemed like Soundwave’s words had done the trick. Prowl had calmed under his touch, not trying to flick the hand away, and after taking a moment to cycle a ventilation he looked back to Cosmos.

“You’re ready?” Cosmos asked again, and this time Prowl nodded, grim but certain.

“Ready,” Soundwave said, his light tone an intentional contrast to Prowl. He stepped closer to Cosmos, his hand dropping down to Prowl’s to gently encourage him forward. He surveyed them, not searching for anything specific now but just as a general final check. And to steal an opportunity to look at them.

“Okay,” Cosmos said. “You know the drill. I can hover for a few seconds, but the sooner you grab on the better. Then, just… hang on.” He’d done this in the past, but usually it had been an officer delivering the instructions while he and a crewmate or two waited for the signal to go. He knew the process well enough, but instructing someone else (and perhaps instructing these mechs specifically) was a different feeling.

They both nodded, though, betraying their confidence in him, so he stopped himself before he could start overthinking it. He did a short hop up into his alt mode, the last panels only just sliding into place when he felt two hands wrap around his grab bars. He almost hesitated, but the reassuring brush of Soundwave’s field propelled him forward and up, launching out and away from Sanctuary.

There was only a moment of conscious drag before his systems recalibrated to accommodate the additions to his undercarriage. Prowl and Soundwave were doing exactly as instructed, holding on tight to him with their free arms wrapped around each other. For his part, Cosmos tried to keep his acceleration even, adjusting his velocity by hundredths of a degree to avoid jarring his passengers. He didn’t talk for a full minute, focused on escaping Sanctuary’s artificial gravity bubble, but as the pull finally dwindled to a negligible enough force it stopped factoring into his propulsion algorithms, he allowed the iron grip of self control to relax.

“And that’s all there is to it!” he said, maybe a little pridefully. He was, after all, pretty good at his job. “How are you both doing?”

“Status: impressed,” Soundwave said.

“And Prowl?”

His answer was not so forthcoming, and without being able to see his expression Cosmos wasn’t sure whether it was because he was thinking or too frightened to get any words out.

“I’m okay,” Prowl said at last. “It went… exactly as you described.”

“Well, good,” Cosmos said, even if that didn’t tell him much about how Prowl actually felt about the experience. “You want to go back any time, just let me know and I’ll get us straight back home.” He felt a bloom of warmth in Soundwave’s field, the same he always did when one of them called Sanctuary home, and even Prowl released a couple gentle blossoms at the word. “Otherwise, we’re going nice and easy: a quick tour over Jupiter, maybe do a couple passes over an upper atmospheric storm, and then back. Sound good?”

“Affirmative,” Soundwave said. Prowl didn’t say anything, which would have worried Cosmos had Soundwave not been there, monitoring the things Prowl wasn’t ready to say out loud. He pushed confidence at Cosmos, who returned it with his own, swooping over Jupiter’s orbit.

Flying over objects as large as planets was never without risks. Cosmos’ fuel tanks, though standard for interstellar class shuttles, were still finite, and dip too far into a large gravity field could result in overtaxing his systems trying to break free again. He had spent enough time near Jupiter to be familiar with its unique quirks, though, and as he’d said, the flyby came easy to him now: he could put one part of his processor to handling the flight while another gave voice to an ongoing commentary about the gas giant and its role in the solar system. Prowl and Soundwave listened obligingly as they passed over orange clouds marbled with white and ribbons of charcoal shadow. Soundwave was a rapt listener, asking indulgent questions that allowed Cosmos to spin off on tangents about the chemical makeup of the clouds and the gravitational interplay of the planet’s many moons.

This, though, they could see easily from almost any window on Sanctuary, so Cosmos angled south, taking them to the planet’s underbelly. There, cumulonimbus whirlpools roiled in shades of blue, spitting lightning just visible to Cosmos’ specialized sensors. He took pictures and sent them across the link to Soundwave and Prowl, explaining as he did so the unique makeup of Jupiter’s clouds and the forces behind its raging storms.

“It reminds me of the electron storms that started after the Gatterus Assaults,” Prowl said, the first time he’d spoken beyond the occasional hum to indicate he was listening.

“Precisely!” Cosmos said. They were still well within the safety zone, so he angled them slightly closer, searching the clouds for a better example of the phenomenon Prowl was referring to. “I haven’t had time to read all their literature, but some human researchers have proposed—”

He was cut off as he was startled by a particularly explosive burst from the planet, bright enough even his companions could have seen it. Whether it was the lightning itself or the electrical feedback or Cosmos’ sudden movement, he didn’t know, but Soundwave’s grip loosed and he slipped away, sinking rapidly into the void.

“Whoops!” Cosmos reacted instantly, transforming and pulling Prowl to his side with one arm while he activated the jet propulsors in his pedes. Prowl was rigid against him, his field a mess of jagged fear, but Cosmos projected back all the calm certainty he truly felt as he held Prowl tight.

Though the tether kept Soundwave from drifting far, uncontrolled drift was disorienting and unpleasant; Cosmos caught up to him rapidly and snagged him with his other arm. He pulled Soundwave into his side and shut off his jets. Soundwave, in turn, made a grab for Cosmos, clinging to him tightly in a way that was nonetheless not unpleasant. Though his motors were buzzing with activity, his field wasn’t projecting high stress, which was a huge relief.

“Alright, Soundwave?” Cosmos asked, old training keeping his tone lighter than he felt.

“Affirmative,” Soundwave responded. He loosened his grip momentarily, though clung on again almost instantly. Cosmos, for his part, kept his grip firm. “Soundwave: flight capable.”

“I know.” Cosmos wouldn’t push the issue though. For the moment, Soundwave appeared calm. There would be time to delve more into things once they were all back on the station. Cosmos gave Soundwave a quick squeeze before turning his attention to Prowl, who had not released his hold on Cosmos and was perhaps clinging even tighter now. “What about you?”

“I was enjoying it,” Prowl said, tone clipped, “up until that.”

Not unexpected. Cosmos kept his disappointment to himself (as much as one could in Soundwave’s company).

“Prowl: not reassured by Cosmos’ demonstrated retrieval proficiency,” Soundwave said.

“I was already well aware of it,” Prowl said. “In case you’ve forgotten, I was his commanding officer. I’ve seen his records.” Prowl shuffled, freeing one hand to reach across the short space and grab Soundwave’s elbow. “I’d just… never seen it happen before. I wasn’t ready to see you… floating.”

Soundwave took Prowl’s arm in turn, perfecting the trio’s huddle.

“Soundwave: unharmed,” he said. Their voices were getting quieter, the buzz of motors dampening as they calmed down from the brief fright. Cosmos angled his propulsors to keep them on a safe trajectory, but otherwise didn’t interrupt, focusing on holding them close to himself and each other.

“I know,” Prowl said. “Don’t coddle me.” He was, though, still holding tightly to both of them.

They drifted in silence for some time, in no rush to get back to the station. Cosmos could have flown them back in his root form, but it would have been an uncomfortable ride for all of them, possibly more off-putting than what had already happened. Instead, he waited, and eventually Prowl spoke up again.

“Next time, we’ll add an additional tether,” he said, “between Soundwave and myself. That way, if one lets go, the other has a better chance of holding on.” He looked at Cosmos, intentionally keeping his gaze off Soundwave. “He slipped away from me.”

Ah. The pieces fell into place, and Cosmos held Prowl a little closer.

“Sure,” he said. “I can also look into changing the angle of the grips to make it harder to let go.” It would take some time to find the tools for a mod, but Cosmos wasn’t in a rush to bring them out here again. Not until they were both ready.

“Soundwave: ready.”

Cosmos’ field brightened and he extended it to blanket them both. Despite the fact that he wasn’t ready yet, he was glad to hear Soundwave say that. He might have loved the universe, but space itself felt at times too big and too lonely, its many curiosities interesting but not as fulfilling when there was no one to share them with. Even just pointing out clouds from above, Cosmos felt at peace with his work in a way he hadn’t known in years.

Their thoughts cut him like millions of grains of sand caught up in the exhaust of a shuttle launch. There were questions, the standard Who is that?, Am I going to die?, and Is that supposed to happen? Then the observations, It’s dark, It’s light, He’s blue, He has a gun, and I have a gun.

Mostly, though, they were giving off impressions that could not be condensed so neatly into words, not without at least a few days’ practice to understand the ebb and flow of language. Without it, Soundwave could feel the crush of the darkness, the burning slice of the light. When he announced himself on arrival, his voice came back to him thirteen different ways, shivering or sliding or in boxes, an impressive feat for a group whose sum total life experiences were the inside of a dead shuttle and each other.

The volume increased as he approached them, both due to proximity and their own increasing anxieties. Their thoughts were loud enough to be knocking against his helm, adding to the cacophony the echo of his own internals, but he soldiered on, approaching the first cradle, its occupant staring at him with a mouthless expression that nevertheless seemed to snarl.

“Designation,” Soundwave demanded.

“Megatron.”

Hisses and whispers and flares. Soundwave wished he could turn down his sensitivity, but with all the cassettes investigating other casualty reports, he couldn’t risk making himself that vulnerable, even if it meant he would be taking a splitting processor ache to berth with him that night instead of recharge.

“Your designation,” he said, with no patience to start with.

The MTO stared at Soundwave, optics glancing first over his face and then the length of his frame. He started to speak, aborted the effort, attention straying to his comrades before snapping back to the officer. His thoughts were bright, sour, and runny, becoming more disorganized the longer Soundwave stood waiting for an answer. Now he was tearing through his data packs, the disorganized folders spilling open with instructions on how to shoot, who to shoot, which way to run—

“No designation,” Soundwave concluded, feeling a part of his psyche slump with resignation. “Serial code.”

The uncomprehending stare slid again to the other MTOs, whose own thoughts echoed the globular confusion. A few of them were in the same process of upending their entire storage libraries, and although any one of them could have accurately pinpointed the coordinates where their plummeting ship had disappeared off the edge of the battle map, not one of them could provide him the very basic information he needed to complete this task and leave these soldiers for the recovery teams to salvage.

Soundwave made a quick visual inspection of the MTO, who tried to lean away—not far, given that he was still suspended in the cradle—now that his defensive bluster had dried up. No printed serial code, nor was there on the MTO beside him, a quiet mech who barely glanced at Soundwave as he came close. No serial codes, either printed or coded.

“Any identification markers?” Soundwave asked the room at large. A flicker of movement: Soundwave looked down to the mech at the end of the starboard row, the one installed opposite the sole casualty, aside from the ship itself. His thoughts had been quieter than the rest, colorless and inflexible in a way that had suggested a concussion, but Soundwave’s question had provoked a brief flare. He was looking up: on the ceiling above his squadmate was painted the number 2.

That, unfortunately, was something that could be plugged into a database, checked against the shuttle manifest and production logs, and be used to reverse engineer a serial number. Success, though, depended on this being a legitimate deployment, and certain signs were suggesting the opposite, though none so definitively as to trigger a full investigation. Soundwave put out a recall signal to Frenzy and Ravage, wary of how isolated the shuttle’s final resting place was, and tuned his sensors up higher…

Only to immediately turn them down again as the minutiae of the newbuilds’ thoughts flowed like acid rain through fresh gaps in a roof. He could read the rudimentary threat assessments they were running on him and taste the swell of emotions too new to differentiate yet; the bravest among them had started to free curiosity from the mass, and they plugged it into every observation they made, building questions on top of each other until the thoughts were heavy enough to bend under their own weight. Within the shuttle, everything felt compressed and heavy on top of him.

“Calm down,” he commanded, and winced at spikes of anxiety impaling him from multiple directions.

What a waste, he thought as he recovered from the burst, of his time and their lives. Nova Point was captured, the Autobot base overrun, and Starscream’s choice to put him on recovery meant vital logistics standards were being delayed. The already lengthy identification process would easily be doubled if this much of his processor remained dedicated to his hypersensitivity sensors, and he was vulnerable as long as the soldiers’ thoughts were filling his audio feed. Soldier was even a generous word for the mechs he’d been tasked with risking his life for. Their minimal data packs and emotional instability would make them ill-suited to the promotions occasionally offered to MTOs. They would be getting hauled out of one wreck only to be pressed into another, one that would more likely than not reach its intended destination.

Soundwave did not fault Megatron for leading a chunk of their forces off to the distant front lines on other worlds, but he did long for his leader at times. Megatron would know what was best, whether to forge ahead with the recovery efforts or leave them here to—

“A new row of unlit lanterns is marched in, And I can’t remember what my world looks like In the dark.”

The recording was poor quality, torn from a processor moments before it went offline. Soundwave kept hoping to find the rest of the poem, but bots who survived that time were few and far between, and they guarded their secrets fiercely. Because it was short, he let it play out, and when it finished the attention of the MTOs had narrowed.

“What was that?” the first one asked.

“Untitled,” Soundwave said, which wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a recording of a secondhand account that referred to the poem as ‘The Chain Runners,’ but had never been able to confirm it. He could have asked, but then he would have to tell Megatron he kept the old poem, and that wasn’t a conversation he was ready to have yet.

“But what was it?” The MTO jerked in his cradle; despite the clatter of plating, it did nothing to free him.

“Identification: a poem.”

The complete absence of understanding was a hole Soundwave could have fallen into. A couple accepted that as an answer—a poem must have been another form of marching order, the only communication style they had been brought online to understand—but the others prodded him with their curiosity, audials straining to catch another blip of that strange voice.

“That wasn’t you,” one of the others said.

“Negative,” Soundwave said. “Speaker…” He stopped, remembering how the first MTO, now gazing at him with useful curiosity, had snarled the poet’s name. Had that been out of a sense of pride? A desperation to answer the question, using the only scrap of information they had? Or had it been in worship, choosing his lord’s name to be his first word to the real world? The clashing, violent thoughts did not readily bear an answer to Soundwave, but they did give him pause as he considered his response, long enough that the MTOs’ anxiety rose up once more in a wave.

“What’s it mean?” one of them asked.

“Definition subjective,” Soundwave said. He still had so much work to do. “Silence requested.”

“It’s a code.”

“Negative.”

“Then it’s gotta mean something.”

Soundwave grasped uselessly for words, wishing Ravage were there already. He was better at this. Soundwave wasn’t good at conversation, but most of the time he could get out of it by virtue of the fact that the people he ran into were either his subordinates and afraid of him, or at about equal level and jealous of his proximity to Megatron. It was so rare for him to enter a room without his reputation having already made the rounds for him, he had no basis for navigating this.

He couldn’t come up with anything, and the longer he let the silence drag out the louder the background of thoughts grew to compensate. At a loss and desperate for relief, Soundwave dove into his archives and pulled a file at random, plugging it into his speakers without even scanning the contents.

“The revolution failed because the lords were unamused. The smoke that rose from the burning corpses of their clerks Soured their palmful drinks, And the chants which rose to their balconies, Calling for their heads, Were out of tune with the afternoon symphony.

(The first chair would be tossed out at intermission, And the crowd would suck closed empty fuel lines While inside, the lords sipped in peace.)”

Even with his speakers playing at a high volume, the relative noise inside the shuttle dropped instantly. Their minds were still working, turning over each word like they could find the meaning hidden underneath, but without the fear of the unknown it was quieter and reflective.

“If you still say your knuckles ache, Lay them here, on my knee. I cannot take from you That pain, But I will map the seams of your palm. I will memorize you, Memorialize. I will chart your construction And between your seams find…”