Ark

The ***Ark*** is a massive Autobot starship built under Optimus Prime's orders so that the Autobots could travel far from Cybertron and search for the lost Allspark before the Decepticons could seize it first. It has several Autobot shuttles that can be used to deploy the entire crew in small teams without landing the larger vessel. It is operated by the on-board computer, Teletraan-1 and its successor, Teletraan-X.

When it was discovered that Megatron sought to use Vector Sigma to reprogram the Allspark, the Autobots launched the sacred relic through a space bridge to parts unknown.

However, with the Allspark gone, Cybertron's condition began to decline, prompting Optimus Prime to commission a *Vanguard*-class deep space interceptor to locate and retrieve the missing artifact. The *Ark*'s crew included some of Optimus's most trusted comrades, such as Bumblebee and Arcee, the former exchanging a heartfelt goodbye with his friend Windblade when the time for launch came.

During its search, the *Ark* had several adventures, including running afoul of space pirates and taking a lava sailing trip on Hopak Nine, being caught in the collapse of a crystal ice moon without any shields, and using a shuttle to jump start a helium mining rig.

As the *Ark* sailed through space, its energon reserves ran increasingly low. Though the crew soon found ample energon on an icy moon, the moon turned out to be home to an insectoid race that had become dependent on the energon for life. Unwilling to endanger the future of an innocent race, Optimus ordered that the creatures be left alone and that, to save fuel, the *Ark* would be placed on auto-pilot while the crew went into stasis lock... a second before the ship's systems detected the Allspark and changed course.

When the *Ark* arrived over Earth, it suffered a hull breach. [ To preserve the *Ark*'s data and assist any of the crew who would survive the crash, Teletraan-1 ejected Teletraan-X from the ship before impact. Out of control, the *Ark* crashed in what would one day become Mount St. Hilary. The crash caused irreparable damage to Teletraan-1, the AI eventually collapsing over the eons.

Unable to find any of the crew, Teletraan-X instead began looking for the ship itself. Grimlock also made attempts to find the *Ark*, even recruiting the native dinosaurs to aid him, but was met with naught for his efforts before falling into stasis lock when the dinosaurs went extinct.

The Autobots remaining on Cybertron soon began to wonder what transpired of the lost ship. When the Decepticons theorized that the Allspark was on Earth, Perceptor repaired a space bridge enough to send Windblade to the organic planet so she could investigate. When the cityspeaker arrived, she found Bumblebee, now suffering from amnesia and thus unable to tell her what had happened to the *Ark*.

When the two friends realized that Maccadam had somehow been able to tell the future, they wondered whether his advice to find "the king of the dinosaurs" was a clue to the *Ark*'s current whereabouts.

After Slipstream's leadership had proven ineffective, Shockwave remotely tied into the cortical psychic patch that the cityspeaker was using to untangle Bumblebee's memories and trapped in the scout in a fake memory that painted him and Optimus Prime as Decepticon spies who had sabotaged the *Ark*.

In the following battle, Shockwave attempted to use a magnetic disruptor to trigger Mount St. Hilary's eruption and destroy the *Ark*. Having downloaded himself into the ship's mainframe, Teletraan-X managed to raise the shields just in time while using the warship's arsenal to scare away the Decepticons. Almost immediately after the crew had been reactivated however, the Decepticon fleet arrived, with the *Ark* as their first target.