"I'm afraid my ability won't work. This distance is a little too far for me, and I don't know Cybertron's exact location in space, so Teleportation would be difficult."
Bella tried twice, but it did not work. Finding Cybertron's position in the vastness of the universe was extremely difficult. She could not understand the Autobots' cosmic coordinates or how to convert them into Earth's coordinate system, while they could not make sense of her mystical astrology either. Their systems of knowledge were simply incompatible!
"However, a while ago my space telescope discovered a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon. I don't know much about this, but it looks like your technology."
Every country was busy fighting the Tripods now, so there were no satellites watching them at all.
Bella wasted no time. She immediately used Teleportation to take the Autobots to the far side of the Moon. After a brief search, they found the spacecraft that had crashed there in the 1970s, inside an unmarked crater.
The aerospace authorities had strict rules forbidding major companies' satellites from spying on the far side of the Moon, but these days, the more someone told you not to look, the more you wanted to! The Assassin Brotherhood had no such scruples. It redirected space telescopes toward the far side of the Moon, searched around, and eventually found the spacecraft that had crashed inside the crater.
For several reasons, Bella had never touched the spacecraft.
"Ah—this is unbelievable. Incredible! Thank you! Thank you for telling me. This really is one of our ships. This is the Autobots' Ark. I had no idea it was still here!" Optimus Prime was visibly excited as he strode into the spacecraft.
He knew the ship extremely well. After looking around, he quickly found the control panel. A brief sequence of operations activated the ship's power systems, the hatch below opened, and the tall former leader of the Autobots, Sentinel Prime, slowly rose from beneath them while seated in a chair.
"His energy is completely depleted..." Ratchet tried to wake Sentinel Prime, but the former leader was in even worse shape than old Jetfire and showed no sign of waking at all.
Optimus Prime fell completely silent.
Back in Egypt, he ultimately had not gone to retrieve the Matrix of Leadership. He had not even tried. He believed the Matrix was safer hidden in the tomb of the original Primes than in his own hands. Since it had remained well hidden before, he decided it should stay hidden.
Bella wandered around nearby for a long time, but she did not see any spirits of the original Primes coming over to chat with her either.
In other words, Optimus Prime currently had no Matrix of Leadership and no AllSpark shards. He was flat broke, with absolutely nothing! He had no way to revive Sentinel Prime.
"He was a leader. He shouldn't be buried here. Let me take him back to Cybertron."
Bella supported Optimus Prime's decision to take Sentinel Prime away. Sentinel Prime truly had been scheming and deeply hostile toward Earth, but he was dead now. At present, they had no way to wake him. He was only a corpse, so Optimus Prime could take him.
Dying like this was a hundred times better than being killed as a traitor.
The Ark had suffered quite a bit of damage. They carried out emergency repairs. A full restoration was difficult, but they could get it flying again.
Optimus Prime left the four slackers—Jazz, Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Ratchet—on Earth to keep living their lives. A few more or fewer Autobots would not make much difference in the fighting on Cybertron. Rather than take them back into battle, it was better to leave them on Earth.
Earth was extremely important. If the fighting on Cybertron ended in defeat, the Autobots would still have somewhere to retreat. Jazz, in particular, had a good relationship with Charlie, and Charlie had a strong chance of becoming one of Earth's leaders. That relationship had to be put to good use.
Optimus Prime also had no particularly good solution for the Dragon of the Moon sealed inside the Temple of the Eternals. He set up another energy field outside the Dragon of the Moon's seal. He did not understand magic or things like demons born from resentment very well, but energy followed similar principles. The Dragon of the Moon's current strategy was to seep its own energy into the outside world and slowly corrode the seal's energy.
Optimus Prime struck at the root of the problem. His energy field would absorb and convert any energy that seeped out, leaving the enemy with nothing to use. In theory, the Dragon of the Moon could be sealed indefinitely.
"I'll go back and study this problem with my scientists. If we find a new method, I'll transmit the plan to Jazz and have him help you set up a new seal." Optimus Prime said earnestly to Bella.
Leaving three slackers and the kid Bumblebee to keep living on Earth, Optimus Prime took Arcee and Sentinel Prime's corpse aboard the Ark and returned to Cybertron to continue leading the Autobots in their war against the Decepticons.
Bella nodded in agreement. Jazz and the others really were not much use in a major war, but they were more than enough to protect Charlie and Samantha. With them at home, both she and Natasha could feel much more at ease.
After seeing Optimus Prime off on Titan, Bella did not teleport home. Instead, she waited in place for a while, then leaped into the air and flew south.
Beneath a valley shrouded in a silicon dust storm, she found Smaug, who had quietly slipped over, along with Starscream, who had accidentally become Smaug's captive.
Smaug shook his head in displeasure. The environment on this planet was truly awful, and the captured Starscream refused to behave. Smaug had had enough.
At nine meters tall, Starscream was like a child in the grasp of Smaug, whose body was more than a hundred meters long. Starscream wanted to escape, but no matter what he did, he could not get away.
"Boss, please let me go! Can you understand what I'm saying? I don't even know you! What exactly do you want? I was wrong. I really was wrong!"
Starscream was pinned beneath Smaug's foot, begging repeatedly. Just as he was trying to think of a way to escape, Bella came down into the valley from above.
"Huh? An Earthling? You... you? You and this guy...?" Starscream's expression changed dramatically. He looked at Bella, then at the unmoved Smaug, and abruptly realized this had not happened by accident.
"Oh, oh, I see! Hello, Earthling. I'll accept you as my boss. How about you tell this big guy to let me go?"
Bella calmly sized Starscream up.
She had returned the Ark to the Autobots and secretly intercepted this guy for the same reason: she had no better choice.
The spacecraft Weyland was designing still had not met her expectations. She and the Assassin Brotherhood had tried many ways to solve the problem, but unfortunately, none had produced much improvement.
There was no other reason. Their technological level simply was not high enough, and trying to leapfrog to that level of technology was far too difficult.
The gap between Cybertronian and Earth technology was not just in overall sophistication; the two civilizations had also developed along very different technological lines. Even copying what they saw was impossible.
Many elements common on Cybertron simply did not exist on Earth. As a result, the large amount of Cybertronian technology in their hands could only serve as reference material for human scientists, and very little of it could be adapted into technology humans could actually use.
Bella's solution was to find a Cybertronian scientist to help, designing a spacecraft from Earth's perspective using resources that Earth already possessed.