Synopsis

In deep space, the crew of the Nemesis continue their mission to track down the last Star Harvester. The ship's commander, Soundwave, has just been informed that an energy signature like that of the AllSpark has been detected when the sarcophagus that the ship carries begins speaking to him telepathically, commanding him to follow the energy. Immediately afterwards, an unidentified Cybertronian spacecraft briefly materializes in the same physical space as the Nemesis, taking with it a chunk of the hull and one unfortunate member of the bridge crew. With their ship crippled by the event, Soundwave's crew are forced to set the Nemesis down on a nearby moon.

Scanning the immediate area, Soundwave realizes that the mystery ship has left a lingering space-time portal in its wake, and at the insistence of the voice from the sarcophagus, he has the smaller Longshot warship readied for pursuit. Unwilling to cede his new relationship with the relic to anyone else, the Decepticon commander has the entire crew, including a large complement of Constructicons, pack aboard the Longshot, which flies into the anomaly.

Reappearing near a blue-green planet, the Decepticon warship is nearly struck by the other craft, which has somehow appeared after them. Soundwave leaves the Longshot to follow in vehicle mode, and goes in to investigate once the ship crashes down on the planet's moon. Venturing inside the breached craft, the Decepticon finds a deceased crew of Autobots, and a crash vault containing two things: strange pillars, alight with the same energy as the vortex that transported the ships, and the inactive form of Sentinel Prime, the great Autobot inventor. Performing another scan, Soundwave notices that the AllSpark energy the Nemesis had previously detected is even stronger here; somehow, the ancient artifact is on the planet below. Then studying the stars, the Decepticon comes to one more startling realization: the portal has not only transported them in space, but flung them forward in time!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

Errors

• Laserbeak's name is spelled "Lazerbeak".

Continuity notes

• This chapter hits the ground running by filling in a huge continuity black hole, explaining what became of the Nemesis after it left Cybertron in Defiance #4, only to turn up wrecked without explanation on another planet later in that same comic, and in the Revenge of the Fallen film.
• Although it was already somewhat implicit, both this and subsequent chapters confirm that most of the warriors sent to Earth by Soundwave to search for the Star Harvester in Alliance were Nemesis crewmembers, as were some of the new Decepticons in the Revenge of the Fallen film itself.
• The description of the Ark on Hasbro's website mentions that its scanners tracked down the AllSpark, a claim that seems to stand at odds with Foundation, in which the Ark left the planet well before the idea of launching the AllSpark into space was even conceived. This chapter smooths that contradiction over, explaining that the Ark has been bouncing through space and time courtesy of a space bridge, and did indeed lock on to the AllSpark after one of its jumps took it to a point in time after the cube had been set adrift.