Cybertron's Outcasts; The Crash Landing

Chapter Twelve- Seeking

Two planes flew through the air above the desert.

Starscream was still angered about the way Shatterblade had talked to him and considered shooting her down and leaving her to die.

But if he came back empty handed and without Shatterblade... Primus knows what Megatron would do to him...

The dark seeker glided through the air lithely. She had the scanner, so he had to trust her judgement. She didn't say much to him, so he just followed her blindly.

"Where exactly are we going?" Starscream hissed through the comm line.

"Towards that mountain yonder," Shatterblade replied, silently gesturing to the mound of rocks far from their current location.

"And why is that?" Starscream scorned, "There is no possible way that the signal is coming from that pile of rocks! You wouldn't be able to track it!"

Starscream could tell that if she wasn't in her alt mode, Shatterblade would have been rolling her optics.

"The signal is coming from that mountain" Shatterblade pressed, "The tracker we were initially given was faulty. By using my personal scanner, I am getting a clearer signal."

Starscream huffed, ignoring the hint that Shatterblade had just made. She thought their tools were faulty, which wasn't unreasonable.

"Scrap..." Shatterblade hissed, losing her flight path for a second.

"What did you do now?" Starscream grumbled.

"A few autobot signals have appeared on my scanner."

-!=!-

"What exactly are we looking for?" Bulkhead asked, watching as Compton typed a few sets of coordinates into the console. Compton seemed to be cross referencing them, but there was no particular reason for it.

Compton wasn't tall enough to reach the console's type pad, so he was standing on a structure made of stacked, empty energon cubes.

"My friends," Compton stated simply, "or their ship."

"Didn't you say that you knew where it was?" Arcee questioned.

"I said I was unsure" Compton corrected, "I know the general vicinity, but not the exact location."

Arcee rolled her optics at the minicon, who simply flicked his tail at her. He continued to run his claws over the keypad, plotting a few points on the map.

"Alright..." Compton said, hopping down from the stack of energon cubes, "I've typed a few coordinates into this map that may be relevant to where my friends might be."

"Wait," Ratchet cut in, "How do you not know where they are? You are connected to one of them, are you not?"

"No..." Compton mumbled, "Actually I'm not..."

Ratchet raised his optic ridges at the cybercat.

"Yeah, you would honestly think I would be, right?" Compton chuckled, "But no, I'm not. But that's not the point; I just want to make sure that my friends are safe and aren't, excuse my language, fraggin dead."

Ratchet shook his head at the cybercat.

::Well, what's your plan?:: Bumblebee asked.

"Yes, right, the plan," Compton said, "I want to search the generally vicinity of where I landed. I already tried to scout the mountain out myself, but I was afraid that my energy would be too depleted to actually search for my friends when I got there. You know, since I'm much smaller than you."