The saffron-armored figure moved slowly, but with absolute steadiness—as though Bella and Shatter's conversation about Maccadam's had dredged up something buried very deep.
"Earth woman. Do you drink?"
The way he said it, in a setting like this, carried the weight of a challenge—the same unhurried energy as asking someone whether they wanted to dance.
Bella shook her head lightly. She rarely drank as a rule. Alcohol dulled the senses and clouded judgment.
"No. I don't drink." She paused. "And I definitely don't drink oil." Her small joke landed on silence. Neither Shatter nor the towering guardian had any reaction.
Shatter knew Bella was on her side, roughly speaking—but this giant was an unknown. She wasn't naive enough to assume that Cybertronian meant friendly.
Cybertronians had been killing each other—Cybertronian against Cybertronian, with everything they had. Running into one wasn't the same as meeting a compatriot. She stayed close to Bella, quietly on guard, while keeping her tone casual. "I've seen plenty of Earth women. They drink too. The men on that ship were at it for five days straight—drinking and singing. You humans aren't so different from us in that respect."
Bella nodded. "Fair point. Nothing wrong with them drinking. I just personally don't."
She'd prepared for this mission carefully. She'd run through several scenarios, and this one hadn't exceeded her expectations.
She spread her fingers. Psionic threads shimmered into visibility in the air around her—and within moments, fifty barrels of aviation fuel materialized from the Brotherhood's pre-positioned supply depot, deposited right there inside the Cybertronian ship.
"You said you didn't have any! You Earthlings are all liars!" Shatter exploded.
Bella gave an awkward laugh. She had genuinely forgotten about Shatter. "Well... I've always thought women should probably take it easy on the heavy stuff anyway?"
"Ha ha ha!" The saffron guardian burst out laughing. "Young women shouldn't drink. Now that's wisdom. Leave the drinking to an old man like me!"
He settled down on the floor, pried off a barrel lid, and downed half of it in one continuous pour.
The aftermath arrived immediately. Dark, oily vapor began seeping from the surface of his armor in thick plumes. Bella and Shatter both stepped back—whatever that stuff was, it did not look pleasant.
The saffron guardian finished the rest of that barrel, cracked open a second, then a third, then a fourth, before releasing a long, satisfied belch.
"Wasn't that supposed to be my payment?!" Shatter shot Bella a furious look.
"...Probably, yes."
The two Transformers sat on the floor with zero dignity between them, working through the fuel. Of the fifty high-grade barrels, they knocked back twelve in one sitting.
The saffron guardian glanced sideways at his still-dormant companions, quietly added one more barrel to his count, and then finally couldn't manage another drop.
"Now that hits the spot. Better than whatever that old Merlin used to serve us. Still not quite Cybertron, though..."
Bella had it pieced together by now. These guardian knights and Merlin had been something closer to drinking buddies than true allies—which wouldn't have mattered regardless, since Merlin's era had precisely zero aviation fuel available. At best, the old wizard would have been passing off some rough alchemical substitute to fill the gap.
King Arthur had offered his guests the finest wine he had. It had made absolutely no difference. The Guardian Knights didn't drink wine.
"Hi. I'm Bella. What should I call you?" A shared fuel session was apparently enough to consider the ice broken. She introduced herself.
"My true name has long since been forgotten. These days, I go by the Red Knight."
"Got it, Red Knight." She kept her tone easy. "Do you mind if we copy some of the technical data from this ship? As you've probably gathered, Earth's technology is... behind. We could really use some assistance with space propulsion systems in particular..."
Bella laid out her purpose plainly—no embellishment, no hidden agenda.
The Red Knight had just worked through a considerable quantity of her fuel. His tone shifted noticeably.
"I'm a warrior," he said, his voice a resonant drum-strike. "Technology isn't my domain. But if you're not going to damage the ship, there's no reason you can't copy what you need."
He hesitated slightly on the word "you"—he still wasn't sure of the relationship between Bella and Shatter, or what Earth and Cybertron were to each other now. He chose his words carefully.
The Red Knight powered up the ship's main computer terminal. Every technical file was in there. He glanced at Shatter—a genuine Cybertronian, at least—and without bothering to check whether Bella could read Cybertronian, picked up a barrel of fuel and moved off to drink at his own pace.
It took a full three hours before Bumblebee and the others finally navigated their way through the corridors to catch up.
Anton Vanko wasn't there this time, but Bumblebee filled the gap, keeping the group at four.
Earlier, they'd been stuck humming the Internationale without any accompaniment. Now that Bumblebee was there to provide it, the singing became something else entirely—full-throated, rousing, genuinely enthusiastic.
Anyone who didn't know the context might have assumed Bella was running some kind of corporate team-building retreat.
The group had the unshakeable energy of people marching to topple governments—down with the capitalists, down with the reactionaries. Bella instinctively took a small step back as they approached.
Compared to the Red Knight's ten-meter (~33-foot) frame, five-meter (~16-foot) Bumblebee really did look like a child. A very small child.
But fired up by the Internationale, he showed not the slightest hesitation—holding the Red Knight's gaze with complete confidence. The Red Knight stared back, completely baffled. What exactly is happening here?
Bella's Cybertronian spacecraft survey team had a clear division of labor. Group leader: Bella. Deputy leaders: 006 and Gavin Banks. Translators: Shatter and Bumblebee. The one doing the actual work: Ivan Vanko.
Bella cast Comprehend Languages on Ivan Vanko, and after that, it largely ceased to be her problem. When certain Cybertronian technical terms fell outside the spell's ability to interpret, Shatter would step in.
Shatter's knowledge was... fragmented. She'd never been interested in academics back on Cybertron. She could read the writing, but once too many characters appeared together, meaning tended to escape her.
After asking her a few questions, Ivan Vanko—toothpick still lodged in the corner of his mouth—felt his image of the all-knowing alien crumble entirely. She's worse than I am. He started working things out himself.
Bumblebee wanted to help too, but he'd lost his memory, and as a kid who hadn't even completed his basic Cybertronian education before the war wiped everything out, he was actually less useful than Shatter.
With two academic underachievers sidelined, Ivan Vanko ended up doing all the real work on his own.
At some point, Shatter made a detour back to the Flying Dutchman and ferried Anton Vanko over. Father and son set to work on Cybertronian technology together.
The breadth of Cybertronian spaceflight knowledge was staggering. The ship was also shielded from external electronic signals, which meant the Vankos had no choice but to record everything on their own devices and haul it back to the surface later. That slowed the process considerably.