Operation: Coludarr

Summary
After cleaning out and mapping Cystal City's basement levels for Omega Supreme, the Autobots were given what seemed like a box of ordinary refuse. One of the items, seemingly an old broken datapad ... held information from the period when Sentinel Prime and Fortress Maximus led the Autobots against Straxus. One of the more juicy tidbits was about an Energon Refinery, located in a far off system and never heard of planet. Coludarr.

Jetfire and Chromedome, being the giant robot nerds that they are, can't help but grow perplexed at the thought of an automated Refinery operating for millions of years, and the subsequent energon that was produced. So like any good SCIENTISTS, they set off in search of energy and answers.

What they find however, is more than they bargained for.

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===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/131                    Posted        Author Datapad Deciphered                Fri Jul 16    Jetfire --

"Well, partially," Jetfire continues as he comes up on the screen, seated in a larger-bot sized chair in front of Teletraan-2. "After some trial, error and a bit of science mojo; my lab assistant and myself, along with help from Monstereo, Highbrow, and the morale support of several others present, were able to retrieve some of the information off an ancient datapad that was found in some of the 'junk' given to us by Omega from the Crystal City cleaning extertions. Most of the day was in cybertronian glyph of a dialect too ancient to read ourselves, so Kup provided translation help."

"What we got was some spotty tidbits about a resource mission from the era of Sentinel Prime to establish an energon refinery in a fair distant planetary system, Lygian. Though other than the name and astronomical point-coordinates, don't get me started on how gristly out of date THAT system is, that we were able to recalculate to accommidate for cosmic expansion drift and triangulate its current likely location, the information is still sparse. However, seeing our current status of supplies and the project to harness the solar collectors in Dyson being slowed down by Decepticon interventions, the potential of a cache of energon, even old and forgotten, is an oppritunity to not risk passing up. That and finding out what happened to the mission itself and why it seems like they were never heard from again."

"I'll report farther when I'm prepared to make an actual expadition to the system. Until then, keep this under your hoods, I'd rather not have the Decepticons finding out what we've discovered if we can at all prevent it. Jetfire, out."

**He turns partially to tap Teletraan's controls, ending the video recording**

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===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/132                    Posted        Author AAR: Colduarr                     Mon Jul 19    Kup -- Kup is standing on an unfamiliar alien beach, and he looks just about ready to tear something apart with his bare hands. He snarls, "That hexnut-sucking, piston-licking, son of a gun Motormaster made off with Chromedome! We gotta change all the codes AGAIN, because sure, Chromedome didn't have rank, but he was a hacker, and if he didn't have backdoors in our systems, I'll eat my spare tyre. Oh, and, we found Colduarr, and our men were there, 'cos we found an old busted radio." That part isn't important.

Spinny, as Kup devolves into more cursing

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===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/134                    Posted        Author Botnapping                        Fri Jul 23    Chromedome --
 * Autobot Spinny, then the frigid wasteland of the Yukon territory. Chromedome is set farther back, in his vehicle mode. His hood is open and jumpers are hooked up, running to the camera itself. Stylor, his ever stylin' Headmaster partner, paces in front of the lenses view.

"Oh, hey. Chromedome, it worked! What's up cats, Stylor reporting in from the battle front. I usually let Mr. Personality handle this -drab- responsibility, but as you can see." the Nebulon pauses, pointing to Chromedome revving his engine in the background. "Dire straits dudes."

"But to the point, Motormaster captured us on Coludarr. That overgrown gorilla threw me in a BOX, then took us to some out of the way run down warehouse. Yeah, so anyways. Mr. Genius behind me here did whatever that Deceptipunk wanted, including overclocking -his- chrome dome!! Nice one there bud. They all took off soon afterwords, forming that bigger group guy and mumbling something about the planet's natural forces. We came too out here in the wilderness, been trying to find an outpost ever since. So a word of warning Autobots, Menasor is heading your way. And this time, he's smart!"


 * The Autobot insignia replaces the scene.*

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===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/138                    Posted        Author Surprise Couldarr Discovery       Tue Jul 27    Jetfire --

Jetfire appears on-screen, sitting in the control center of the spacecraft being used as the base of operations for the Coularr exploration. The good news is that he's not looking so mopey anymore after having gotten out and done more SCIENCE. The bad news is he has his *the **** hit the fan* serious expression on instead.

"This is really important and I have a lot to cover, so I'll keep this short and to the point. While farthering the exploration of Couldarr tonight Chromedome, Swift, Warpath, Whirl, myself, and Fortress Maximus after he arrived late to help us exterminate some local pest issues, came across a discovery of something even more important and dangerous than the hostile wildlife on this world. Uncovered by the firefight with the xeno-insectoid swarm was," he pauses a moment for a breath then continues, "A lense. Yes, one of those large alien ones, burried under the ground. Why or how it is there, I don't know, nor did it seem to be active at the moment. My best theory at the moment is that it was somehow active in the past though, and that's the energy source that drew an expedition there to harvest it originally, but again, that's just a theory. More importantly is that we need to do something about it as soon as possible. Decepticons have already been sighted poking around Couldarr and Primus forbid if THEY find it as well..."

Jetfire pauses for a moment to recompose himself, and then continues. "Also, just before the firefight we found a directional relay post of similar age to the ancient datapad and the signal beacon on the beach. Despite the interruption I was able to remove its memory module and download some information from it. Not the exact location of the refinery, but the relay was for a material transportation system between it and the opening at the beachfront, so now we have acertained a specific direction to guide the rest of this trip and hopefully get some answers on both matters."

"I guess that's it for now. Jetfire, out."


 * back to spinny*

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===================== Autobot =================================== Message: 3/140                    Posted        Author Couldarr Update                   Fri Jul 30    Jetfire --
 * SPINNY* Then Jetfire appears, sitting in the bay of Fort Max's battlestation mode. There's a form on the table behind him, but it's covered up in some sort of worn out cloak or sheet.

"Well, this mission seems to seep just deeper and deeper into mystery, it would seem," Jetfire starts, folding his hands together in front of himself and leaning on them slightly. "After a defoliation team manage to clear a path through the densest part of the jungle, Chromedome, Perceptor, Clutch, Fortress Maximus and myself finally found the refinary... though while the building still stood, it contained nothing of use save a very old predacessor AI to the Teletraan series. Alas, no energon, and while it could be feasible to make the refinery work... I fear it may not be very plausible, and possibly take more resources than it would gain to do so. We may be able to mine up some of Korlonium crystals in the surrounding area though, so we at least bring something applicable back. Guess we'll just have to step up the operations in Dyson a bit more instead, hopefully with the Olympics truce some of the non-competators can get some unhindered work done."

That said he shifts a bit, so the shrouded form behind him can be seen a bit more clearly. "More importantly though, we found a surviving Autobot!... Who due to isolation and system depletion, was quite erratic. After a short and confusing confrontation, 'Specter' as he was identified as collapsed due to his state. It was rather touch and go due to his delapitated state, but between our trio of efforts we managed to stabilize him, and Perceptor and I have been taking alternating shifts between repairs and resting to see to his recovery. Hopefully once he awakens Specter will be more coherent this time and able to answer many of the other questions we still have about this place."

He opens his mouth as if to say something else, then stops, shakes his head, and decides on a different tangent. "Maximus can report for himself when he has something more to add." Note the 'when', not an 'if'. "Jetfire, out."


 * End of Message**

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