Kaela stood at the helm of Soren's Reach, her hands steady despite the silence.
The stars here felt colder.
Ever since the solar flare split the fleet, her ship had been drifting along a less-traveled route, guided only by coordinates the relic had relayed before everything went dark.
The crew was small with just twenty-seven Atlanteans. No senior council members. No Aeloria. But Kaela had been trained well. She wasn't a soldier or a leader by title, but responsibility had a way of finding those who didn't run from it.
"Course holding," her navigator confirmed. "No signs of the others. Comms still jammed."
Kaela nodded.
"Stay sharp. If we're isolated, we don't get sloppy."
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. The crew felt the weight of every decision now.
Far behind them, tucked between two fractured asteroids, the Autobot scout ship drifted.
Inside, Cliffjumper leaned forward, watching the Atlantean vessel through a filtered lens.
"No weapons primed. No escort. No hostile energy patterns."
He ran another scan. The results flickered across his screen.
Power signature: Unknown hybrid tech
Origin: Earth-based alloy, non-Cybertronian
Anomaly: External interference… relic pattern detected
He rubbed his chin.
"Definitely not Decepticon. Definitely not human. What are you?"
He tapped his console.
"Prime, this is Scout 7. The isolated ship's maintaining a linear course. No deviation. I think they're following a signal. Not broadcasting. Just… following."
The voice of Optimus came through after a long pause.
"Keep watching. Do not reveal yourself unless necessary. But Cliffjumper…"
"Yeah?"
"If they make contact… listen first."
Back aboard Soren's Reach, Kaela stood in the observation bay.
She couldn't sleep. Not out here.
Her fingers hovered over a side console, replaying sensor logs from the moment the flare had hit. The relic had pulsed right before the burst, and now she couldn't shake the feeling that something was still near.
Watching.
A soft chirp interrupted her thoughts.
One of the engineers called out from the bridge. "Commander Kaela, something just moved on our radar."
She was already moving. "Debris?"
"No. Small ship. One signature. Holding position."
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "How long?"
"Unknown. It's been masking its presence. Only revealed after we passed its position."
She stared at the blinking dot on the display.
"I want visuals."
A few seconds later, the screen flickered.
A single craft. Matte. Angular. Alien. Floating just on the edge of their scanning range.
And then, a signal.
Not a weapon.
A message.
Kaela watched the stream unfold, not in words, but patterns.
Rhythmic pulses. Light-based encoding. She leaned closer. The structure wasn't Atlantean. It wasn't human. But it was… methodical. Almost respectful.
She turned to the comms tech. "Can we respond with our own pulse sequence?"
He nodded. "We can mimic the structure, not the language."
"Do it," she said. "No aggression. No encryption. Just signal back that we see them."
The bridge went quiet.
On the Autobot scout, Cliffjumper watched the ping return.
He smirked.
"Well, would you look at that."
The ship hadn't fired. Hadn't run. Hadn't sent a wall of noise.
Just… answered.
A basic acknowledgment of presence. Calm. Calculated. Controlled.
He opened a new stream.
"Scout 7 to unknown vessel. This is an exploratory vessel. Not hostile. Repeat, not hostile. Scanning for confirmation of peaceful intent."
He waited.
A few seconds passed.
Then, Kaela's ship responded again. This time, the signal included a waveform that mimicked Cliffjumper's tone, then softened it. Smoothed it out. A pattern of harmony. Of logic.
"Okay…" he muttered, nodding to himself. "You're not just smart. You're thinking."
Back aboard Soren's Reach, Kaela stood before the internal monitor, watching the data stream unfold.
"Whatever this is," she said softly, "it's intelligent. And it doesn't want to fight."
One of her crew whispered, "Do we trust it?"
Kaela's voice was steady.
"We don't trust the unknown."
She paused, then added, "But we don't fear it either."
On Cybertron, Optimus Prime reviewed the transcript of Cliffjumper's transmission.
He studied the visual of the Atlantean ship.
The design was foreign. The tech hybrid. But the signal… it had matched something else, a faint echo from the Allspark archive. Not exact. But close.
"Send a message back," he said at last.
"What should it say?" Ratchet asked.
Optimus looked out over the horizon of a recovering Cybertron.
"Just one word: Listening."