The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sidewinder

"Optimus? Please... please, wake up..."

Vector Sigma...

Optimus groaned as he came back online, and was faced with total darkness as a tight, agonising pain clutched at his central processor like a vice. He remembered what had happened immediately - the Axalon had been drawn into Unicron's mouth by the Dark Lord's power - and alarm took him at once. How long had the ship been down for? Every moment was valuable in a mission such as this one... every second they wasted was another second of fierce battle for his Autobot soldiers and the humans still on Earth.

His night vision flickered on after a few moments, and he found himself face-to-face with a very frightened-looking Alexis. The green hue that the night sensors cast over his visualisation made her face look even eerier than before, darkening the shadows under her eyes and casting her already pale skin into a gaunt, sickly light beneath the covering of her oxygen helmet.

"Alexis..." he ground out, reaching up to his head and wincing when he felt how tender it was. "What... how long have we been down here for?"

"N-not too long," the girl stammered, visibly shaking. A bluish contusion was darkening on her forehead and her shirt was torn in several places; otherwise, however, she appeared to be unharmed. "About ten minutes, I think... y-you went offline when we crashed..."

Ten minutes... not as long as he had feared, then. But there was still no time to lose.

Optimus hauled himself into a hunched sitting position in the gloom, looking down at his body armour and running a succinct self-diagnostic. Everything was still functioning well; the source of his blackout was impact trauma to the cranium, but the minor damage had already been repaired by his recovery systems in the ten minutes that he had been offline. His red-and-blue paintwork was covered in a thick layer of rock and dirt, but it was nothing that a dab of Jade's paints couldn't have corrected... if they had been returning to the planet.

He looked around the room, appalled by the damage that had been done to the Axalon's control room. The front window, which had been exceedingly large - a good fifty by fifty feet - had been completely shattered during the crash, and the remains were scattered around the crushed room, along with broken fragments of the controls.

All of Skyfire's work... gone.

"Are you injured, Alexis?" he asked the female worriedly, looking down at her again. It was a wonder that her helmet hadn't cracked and let all the oxygen out - now that they were no longer sealed within the Axalon, she would have died almost instantly. "And the All Spark - you still have it?"

She nodded quickly, indicating the necklace. "It's fine... and no, I'm n-not hurt... just my head, a bit..."

Optimus nodded and extended a hand for her, which she climbed into readily and settled herself on his palm as he slowly climbed to his feet, ducking his head to avoid it colliding with the caved-in roof of the control room. Curling his fingers around the trembling girl, he moved forward carefully and manoeuvred himself through the open space where the ship's viewing glass had once been, extending a foot and making contact with what appeared to be a fine dust of some sort on the uneven metallic ground.

Scanning the surroundings, he saw that the Axalon had crashed in what appeared to be a cavern of some sort. He found that he no longer needed his night vision; not only was the crushed wing of the spaceship still smouldering and lighting the place with a soft, orange glow, but purple and green illumination seemed to be emitting from the many tiny Cybertronian symbols etched into the craggy walls.