Away

     “The away team is late.” 

     Eggshell was perplexed. He looked at the current date. He looked at the agreed-upon date of return. He repeated this over and over but the dates continued to be the same. And yet, he failed to understand. The Dreadnought was docked in the agreed-upon location. They were wasting valuable time being docked. And yet the away team wasn’t here. 

     “Aw, relax, Eggy, so they’re just a little late! Happens all the time.” Voidstorm chuckled.

     Eggshell narrowed his eyes dangerously. 

     Nuisance of a second-in-command aside, it simply didn’t make sense. Osprey, maybe. He was emotional, despite being generally punctual. Nightwing was fickle.

     Menticide, though. Menticide was never late. 

     “Something must have happened,” he rumbled.

     “You’re being para-noid,” the other sang mockingly.

     He was lucky he was pretty. 

     “We can’t act if we don’t know what’s happened, captain,” Skyhigh spoke up from the shadows on his right. “I suggest we wait here a few cycles in case. We would conserve energon and work on minor repairs or the like.”

     Voidstorm scowled. “You don’t give us fraggin’ orders.”

     “Of course not, commander,” she replied evenly, keeping her eyes on Eggshell. “Merely my suggestion.”

     Voidstorm rolled his eyes at Eggshell and mouthed politicians. Though Skyhigh was still not deigning to look at him, he could feel her annoyance building. He was sure Voidstorm took some satisfaction from that.

     Ignoring them both, Eggshell said, “We will remain docked here for the next five cycles. Voidstorm, make sure defenses are up and set up a monitoring schedule to ensure we aren’t approached by any other ships. Skyhigh, you may assign crew to repair as you see fit during this timeframe. I will figure out what could possibly be hindering our away team. Be prepared to leave at any time. 

     “And Skyhigh,” he said, “send Autocorrect to me on your way.”

     The other two flyers gave him affirmatives and went off to do their respective tasks. Eggshell immediately occupied himself drumming up possible leads for where his Decepticons could be. The chances of every single one of them being late were very low. If it were something as simple as an astral storm he’d have surely seen something about it somewhere. He pulled up what few information channels were safe for him to use. It was so aggravating, having to keep his tracks covered and slog through so much alien language. Frustratingly, it was Menticide’s role to make up for the lack of available avenues for information, and she was not here.

     It made the warrior side of Eggshell want to thrash about. It made him want to throw caution to the wind and then shoot it with his cannons, to do whatever it took to get the information he wanted. Patience was a skill he had practiced out of necessity, not a virtue he had by nature. 

     Autocorrect entered. He immediately regretted asking after him. In all honesty, while Autocorrect was probably the closest on-board that would be of use for research purposes-- aside from, of course, Skyhigh herself-- Eggshell couldn’t stand the younger ‘con. He was stubborn and rigid and often interrupted. Most of the reason Eggshell had asked for him specifically was because he knew it would piss off Rumblestrip that his protege had been chosen over him.

     “Autocorrect. The away team is late. Pull up a screen and see if you can find any possible causes.”

     “Yes, captain,” the grounder’s response was mercifully short as he did as instructed. 

     Eggshell wondered, then, if these disappearances were related to the special circumstances of Osprey’s mission. It only made him colder to think about. For weeks now, he had felt that something was on the horizon. When he was younger, he’d consider these gut premonitions to be his mind playing games on him, but as war carried on he’d realized he had a good sense for when blood was in the water. So when he started to feel like something was coming once again, he’d called for the return of his away team in order to prepare. 

     But here, he’d thought the premonition would involve an attack from the Autobots while their numbers were lessened. Was it instead about those special circumstances? The report of dark energon being sighted? Eggshell thought that would be a long shot. It would account for Osprey, but none of the others. 

     “Oh,” Autocorrect said through his thoughts. “It appears that Osprey has recently arrived.”

     Eggshell nearly jerked up at that. “Retrieve him.”

     “Yes, captain.” Without preamble Autocorrect immediately dropped his current task to go off and find the newly-arrived flyer. One of the few traits to be appreciated in the grounder. 

     For his part, the astro plane growled to himself in the newly-vacated deck. He hated mysteries. Eggshell wasn’t an idiot, but he certainly preferred to brute-force his way through issues. This included his methods with paperwork and management, as he found himself constantly working and adjusting things until he was satisfied. Either way, he didn’t have enough clues right now to understand what was happening and it made him want to hurt someone very, very badly. If Osprey didn’t have any information to offer it might as well be him.