Talis was originally part of the 614th fighter squadron, "Blackstaff" when he discovered that maintaining Cybertronian alliances and keeping out the bad guys was more about fists and firefights than the diplomacy involved within. It was when he was shot up during a combat mission that all that changed. Before he could be rescued by his squadron, he was picked up by the Freedom and taken to safety. Wanting to pay back the debt for saving him, and finding neutral ground to rethink his career, he remained onboard.
Talis is built with bulk. Fellow comrades tend to move out of his way when he walks by, which is usually with a little too much pace and positive energy for someone of his size. For someone so heavily geared, he would much more prefer to be in peacetime. Talis was part of his Squardon's special-teams unit, designed for specialized tasks during combat ranging from troop-extraction to stellar-midflight refueler.
Talis is capable of firing off a powerful thrust to accelerate himself to high speeds. He often uses this ability while homing in on a target, while in formation, or while performing special maneuvers. His flight mode is equipped with two forward-mounted cannons, as well as quad-cannon turrets both above and below his structure when in bomber-mode. They have full three-hundred, sixty degree turn ability, and can be either linked to fire together or set individually. He can also be equipped with a phasic disc located on his forward ventral area in flight mode. Talis' high fuel storage increases his range greatly--almost five times that of a normal Cybertronian flyer. In robot mode, he's equipped with two heavy cannons mounted on his arms.
While able to maintain a decent forward speed and is heavily armored, he is quite sluggish. This common rule-of-thumb with medium-to-heavy bombers doesn't ignore Talis--flyers can easily perform strafe runs on him while he's flying. Also, His high-thrust ability is limited in use. He can only sustain this high speed for a very few amount of minutes.