WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 2412 DECEPTICON FIELD EXERCISE STAGING AREA ARAVEX, CYBERTRON Megatron stood on the stage of a half-ruined amphitheater with his hands folded behind his back, surveying his assembled troops in silence. He didn't look impressed by what he saw, and some of the Decepticons closer to the front fidgeted nervously under his gaze. Truth to tell, the Decepticon army had always been a rather motley lot, for all that they were institutionally more a proper army than the Autobot forces. Apart from the Sky Soldiers, who were all of a standard chassis type, there was too much variation in individual Decepticons' configurations to give them much of a uniform appearance on the parade ground. Today, though, they looked particularly ragtag, with most of them still trying to come to terms with all that had happened over the last few days. Many of them looked shell-shocked, slightly dazed, or warily uncertain. A lot of that, Megatron had to concede, was of his own making. Even four centuries after the Battle of Autobot City, most of the Decepticons he saw here before him had been admitted to the force with his blessing, and the new faces looked for the most part as if they'd been measured by the same standards he'd left behind - which, after so many millennia of war with the Autobots, had not been all that high. Or, to put it less charitably, there were some serious slackjaws out there, gazing dumbly back at him as if they hadn't quite grasped that he wasn't Shockwave. Well, he thought grimly to himself, that's part of why we're here: to weed out the ones who simply can't or won't measure up to the -new- standards. "My Decepticons," he announced suddenly, making a few of those at the front jump in surprise. "Today we begin a three-day exercise by which I hope to determine your state of military readiness. We can hardly expect to be accepted as Cybertron's protectors in our current state of disarray. I shall be watching throughout these war games to see who has what it takes to serve in my army... and who has not." He let that ominous last part sit for a moment before continuing briskly, "For stage one of the game, we will divide into two teams. Soundwave." Soundwave stepped forward and activated his chest-panel holojector, displaying a giant map of the ruined Aravex sector. <> he said, illuminating a subsection of the map in the appropriate color. <> "Thank you, Soundwave. You may withdraw." <> The assembled Decepticons consulted their comm systems to check their team assignments as Soundwave transformed to vehicle mode and left the staging area. Megatron was pleased to see that they at least knew enough to divide into their two forces without prompting, the reds going to one side of the amphitheater, the blues to the other. "You will notice," Megatron told them, "that there are no rank or function assignments specified within your teams. Those will be for your team commanders to determine. I wish to see how well you can function in a fluid battlefield situation with minimal guidance. "For phase one of the game, I will command Force Blue myself," he went on. "The commander of Force Red will be... " Megatron swept his eyes over the ranks of the red team, then half-smiled and announced, "... Thundercracker." Thundercracker blinked and pointed to himself in the international "me?!" gesture. His nearest teammates drew back slightly to stare at him in astonishment. A few members of Blue laughed. "Is something funny, Runamuck?" Megatron inquired icily, cutting off the laughter at once. "Uh... no, Megatron," Runamuck replied after a moment's awkward pause. "Good. Because these 'games' are no laughing matter. We Decepticons have laughed off our true purpose for far too long." He held Runamuck's nervous gaze for a moment, then addressed all the assembled bots: "For five million years we Decepticons have been sliding into a morass of brutality, rapacity, even mindless cruelty. Throughout the galaxy our name is a byword for evil's worst excesses." He made a gesture of flat denial. "No more. Primus has called all His children home for a reason, my Decepticons, and that reason is this: This galaxy stands on the brink of a terrible darkness. An evil lurks in the shadows of the Rim that may be beyond sapient understanding." Leaning forward slightly, Megatron preempted any mutterings of puzzlement that this statement might have elicited from his troops with four grimly intoned words that, coming from him in the way that they did, struck fear into the spark of every Decepticon present: "I have seen it." He let that sink in for a moment, then straightened and went on, "For the sake of the entire galaxy, we Decepticons must be again the force which joined hands with the Autobot resistance to throw off the Quintesson yoke and lead Cybertron into her first Golden Age. We will no longer be the ravagers and despoilers history calls us. We will have discipline. We will have order. We will be -professionals.- Starting right here, right now, all of us will recapture the glory and honor of the Decepticon name... or we will die trying." For five seconds of deafening silence, Megatron held all his Decepticons in rapt attention, as he had aeons before, in the days before the Dark Times. Then he broke the spell by saying in a more briskly commanding tone, "This briefing is concluded. Report to your assigned areas and begin preparations. Further instructions will be relayed by Soundwave from the strategic exercise command center. Oh - and one more thing. If any of you are looking at this live-fire exercise and thinking it's a perfect opportunity to stage a few 'accidents' and even up some old scores, remember what I said about professionalism. Jeopardizing your team's performance for personal reasons is not acceptable. Beyond that... " Megatron smiled darkly. "... may the best bots win." Standing straight and sweeping them with one last penetrating gaze, he concluded, "The eyes of the galaxy are upon us. I will accept nothing short of excellence. Decepticons: dismissed!" /* Joe Satriani "Musterion" _Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock_ (2008) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Imagination, Unlimited present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED Issue #5: "Intrusion Countermeasures" Benjamin D. Hutchins Philip Jeremy Moyer The Transformers created by Hasbro/Takara (c) 2011 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited AUTOBASE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER IACON Ironhide turned to Optimus Prime, his battle-scarred face set in a frown. "Nice little speech, but talk's always been cheap with Megatron," he said. Prime nodded thoughtfully. "Agreed, old friend... but let's try to keep an open mind." "Oh, mah mind's open," Ironhide assured his commander. "But I'm keepin' mah safeties off too, 'til he backs up his fancy words with some actions." He cast a skeptical glance across the CommCen control room toward Soundwave. "Can't say I like havin' him in here either." "This -is- the logical place for him to be," Prowl chipped in. "From here he can monitor both sides of the game and keep us posted on everything that goes on, and sending him here is an unexpected olive branch. Megatron didn't say it in so many words, but he's basically a hostage." He indicated the guards on the entrances and the various Autobots posted at other consoles around the big, mission-control-style room. "Even Soundwave would be hard-pressed to fight his way out of here if Megatron did anything to change his shoot/no-shoot status. They've both got to know that." "Yeah, I know, Prowl," said Ironhide. "Still feels wrong. Reminds me of the time we came back to the Ark an' found him plugged into Teletran-1." "You think it feels wrong to -you,- look at Blaster," said Prowl. "If he ignores that end of the room any harder it'll cease to exist." "They've got a lot of history," Prime agreed. "None of it's good... but Blaster knows his job." Raising his voice slightly, he called across the room, "Blaster. We're leaving for the observation area." Blaster swiveled and gave his leader a thumbs-up. "We're buttoned down and lovin' the sound here, Prime. I'll keep a channel open for you." Prime nodded, turned, and left the room with Ironhide and Prowl in tow. Out in the Iacon central plaza, the First Autobot Guards were mustered and ready. These were Optimus Prime's elite, the closest any Autobot Prime had ever had to a praetorian guard - the bots who had gone to Earth with him all those millennia ago, less a few, like Red Alert, who were needed too much at their jobs to participate in this gesture. They were all shined up for the occasion, their weapons cleaned and racked with greater-than-usual care, and they stood in neat ranks waiting for their leader. "Is everyone ready?" Prime asked. When he received answers in the affirmative, he went on, "Remember, we're going to play this straight for as long as the Decepticons do. Be alert and ready, but don't start anything." He tilted his head slightly as he noticed a small figure standing near Sideswipe. "Colonel Katsuragi. Are you joining us?" "If you don't mind," Misato replied. "I'm intrigued, and I don't have much else to do while our equipment's in the shop." "It might get dangerous," Prime told her, but Misato only smiled slightly. "I can do dangerous," she said. "She'll keep me out of trouble, Prime," said Sideswipe, drawing a laugh from his colleagues. "Very well," said Prime. "Happy to have you along. Autobots: transform and roll out!" FIVE HOURS LATER ARAVEX "Greetings, sports fans! I'm Eject, with me is my good pal Slamdance, and we are HERE, LIVE, aboard the good ship Cosmos 130,000 feet above the Aravex Expanse! Down below us are many of the Decepticon Army's up-and-coming warriors, scattered among the scrap-piles and building shells, ready to give their all in this, the first-EVER Open Decepticon Operations Battle!" "This is indeed a landmark occasion, Eject. Never before have the Decepticons publicly announced wargame operations, nor for that matter, issued warnings beforehand as to the time and place. This is an unprecedented move on the part of the Supreme Commander of the Decepticons, and may very well be indicative of the changes coming for Megatron's New Order." "Right you are, Slamdance. Unless, of course, it's just the opening move in an elaborate Decepticon scheme that will see Cybertron plunged back into unending war." "There is always that possibility, Eject - but let's look on the bright side! We've got great seats either way!" One of the things Megatron had always admired, albeit somewhat grudgingly, about Autobots was their ability to maintain an even strain. He'd known Autobots to make jokes on the way to the scrap heap. Now, listening with half a channel to the patter of the two "commentators", he watched his Blue team complete construction of their headquarters defenses. He'd put three of the Constructicons with each team, so as to take Devastator off the table and give each team some building expertise for this phase. Each team also had a dedicated comm officer, one of a pair of twins sparked under Shockwave's command, both of whom would be coordinating with Soundwave in his role as overall observer and wargame referee. "Feedback to Megatron," came the voice of his team's twin. "Message from Soundwave." "Proceed, Feedback." "'Preparation time limit has expired. Proceed with phase two.' Message ends." "Acknowledged. Megatron to all Blue Force Decepticons. The exercise has begun. Scouting teams, move out. I want to know where the Reds have set up their command post within the hour." AUTOBASE COMMCEN IACON "Looks like the show's started," Blaster observed. Sylvie nodded. "Yep. Probably not going to be anything really interesting happening for a while, though." Blaster peered at one of the monitors. "Looks like the Reds're making some moves already. Can't say Megatron's decision didn't surprise me, but... " He studied the screen for a moment longer, then said, "It looks like Thundercracker's on top of things so far. Didn't know he had it in him." "Yeah, I've read his file, he's... well, if I'm being honest, I'd have figured he was just a -thug- based on that. Certainly not leadership material." "Same here... based on -long- personal experience," Blaster said ruefully. "But it looks like he's doin' okay so far." He shook his head. "Man, this whole thing is messin' with my head, I don't mind tellin' you. This war's taken some weird turns in the past, but this is the weirdest thing ever." "You think it's for real?" Sylvie asked. "I dunno," Blaster admitted. "Half of me agrees with Ironhide - Megatron's up to something and we oughta take him down before he finished settin' it up, whatever it is. But the other half of me... -wants- to believe. Because I remember what this place was like before the war. I wouldn't be an Autobot if I didn't hope this was the real thing." Sylvie smiled. "Still tough to realign your worldview so quickly." Blaster nodded, shooting a quick, almost furtive glance across at Soundwave. "Yeah," he said. "-Real- tough." He sat back and simulated a sigh. "Maybe I'm just gettin' old." "You said something yesterday about something weird going on in the ether," Sylvie remarked, tactfully changing the subject. "What was that about?" "Oh, that - bunch of anomalous network traffic in Hydrax. It stopped while we were reactin' to Megatron's announcement. Haven't seen a trace of it since." He shrugged. "Probably a bad signaling module someplace. A lot of Cybertron's still a mess - even the mostly-cleaned- up places like Hydrax, below the surface. We'll track it down eventually. I think I just got so excited 'cause we were all on edge anyway. Jumpin' at shadows. Speakin' of which, where's your other half today?" Sylvie looked around the room as if just noticing that she was the only human there. "I... don't know," she admitted slowly. Then, with a look of slowly dawning dismay, she went on, "But I have a suspicion... " ARAVEX Priss Morgan watched while Megatron directed the opening moves, then collapsed her electrobinoculars and tucked them into one of her belt pouches. She was in the middle of a simulated warzone without authorization, after all. It wouldn't do to get so focused on her distant target that she lost awareness of her immediate surroundings. She was on the upper level of a ruined building whose original purpose she could no longer discern; it offered an excellent vantage point from which to observe the Blue command post, and also a good, quick and discreet exit, should a Red scout have the same idea. Priss had no intention of interfering with the game. She just wanted to watch. As she watched the Blue-team Decepticons at work below, her ear caught the sound of someone entering the structure from below. Whoever it was was moving very quietly indeed - astonishingly quietly, if the new arrival was a Transformer - and she had only seconds to decide whether to try for concealment or make her escape. She opted for the former, curious as to who it was, since it was unlikely that anyone from the Red side had reached this area yet. A moment later, an indistinct figure emerged from the empty lift shaft at the back of the room and crept forward, keeping low. For a second Priss thought he was using thermoptic camouflage, until she took a closer look and saw that he was just making very effective use of a conventional urban-camo overspray - and once she knew that, she recognized the silhouette immediately. "Bumblebee," she whispered, easing out from her cover. The Autobot intelligence chief turned his head and spotted her, but didn't look particularly surprised; he eased closer, moving almost silently, and settled down at the edge of the broken wall, about where she had been, to begin his own observations. With a small gesture, he indicated that she should move up beside him, then offered her a comlink cable so they could converse silently through her neuroprocessor. "I see I'm not the only one who had the idea of a little unauthorized close-up observation," he said cheerfully. "Aren't the 'Cons going to be suspicious if you're not with Prime's party at the official observation point?" Priss replied. Bumblebee smirked slightly. "Nah, nobody ever notices if I'm not there. It's part of my job. I'm like the wind! Or as much like the wind as a bright yellow '69 Dodge can be, anyway." They watched the Decepticons at work for several minutes in silence; then Priss said, "Now that you mention it, there's something I've been wondering." "Shoot." "I've seen file holos of you. You used to be a classic Beetle." Bumblebee nodded. "Yep. I liked that alt. It was nice and unobtrusive, which was a very good thing at the time." "Why'd you change?" "I got sued by Volkswagen for trademark infringement." Priss blinked. "... Seriously." "Uh-huh." "Doesn't Volkswagen own Lamborghini? Why isn't Sideswipe in the same boat?" Bumblebee shrugged. "Scrapped if I know. Probably because he looks good on the posters." The Autobot scanned the Blue camp one more time, then shifted his weight and started getting up. "Welp, nothing much going on here right now. I'm gonna head over and see if I can get an optic on what the Reds are up to. You want a lift?" "Nah, I'm gonna stay on Megatron for a while." "OK, suit yourself. Just keep your head down, yeah? Human armor's not too tough." "I bet you say that to all the girls," said Priss with a smile. She disconnected the cable, gave him a wave as he left, and then settled down to keep watching. Elsewhere in Aravex, Thundercracker looked up from the planning table his half of the Constructicons had set up and surveyed his base camp. It struck him as slightly odd that he wasn't more nervous. After all, he was going up against Megatron himself now, if only in simulation. It was for fear of doing just that thing that he'd stayed a Decepticon as long as he had, if he wanted to be entirely honest with himself... and now here he was. He couldn't decide whether he was being given the chance of a lifetime, for reasons he couldn't even begin to guess at, or being set up to fail. He didn't know, but he'd decided at the outset that if the latter were the case, he wasn't going to just roll over and go quietly. Thundercracker had never had much pride, but the events of the last couple of weeks had kindled something like it in him. He'd seen his most forlorn hope - that someone would come along and light the Decepticons' darkest hour - come to pass with Shockwave's destruction and the reclaiming of Vilnacron. Megatron's speech at the opening of the games had stirred his spark in a way he hadn't known it could be stirred, reminding him of that long-ago daycycle when he'd decided to join the Grand Army of the Decepticons in the first place. In such a climate, he was determined to give it his very best shot. If that wasn't enough, it wasn't enough, but Megatron would never be able to say he hadn't tried. If Thundercracker was nervous about anything now, it was the fact that not all of his comrades on the Red team felt the same drive to succeed. They weren't motivated, they weren't inspired, they weren't... they weren't -on his side.- Most were doing their duty, but only that. -They- clearly didn't think he had what it would take to lead them to victory. And a few were just sitting around in spite of the instructions he'd given them, flouting his authority outright. What would Megatron do? he wondered, and the answer came to him in an instant's reflection: Megatron would make an example. "Runamuck," he said. The white Battlecharger turned his head, but didn't rise from where he slouched on a vaguely-divan-shaped piece of rubble. "Yo." "I believe I told you to scout Sector 12," said Thundercracker, keeping his voice calm and reasonable as he strolled around the situation table toward Runamuck's perch. "Uh-huh," Runamuck replied, unconcerned. "Then why are you still here?" Thundercracker asked. "Did you think I meant for you to do it later?" Runamuck snorted. "Screw you," he said. "You ain't Megatron, and you ain't the boss of me." "That's odd," Thundercracker said. "I could have sworn I heard Megatron say I was." Runamuck swung his legs down and turned so he was facing the blue-armored Seeker, but didn't get up. "Get real," he said. "Do you seriously think Megatron's crazy enough to put -you- in charge and expect anything to come of it? Even if he -is- crazy enough to make an alliance with the Autobots? Pff. This whole thing is a -joke,- man." "Really." Thundercracker stopped a couple of paces away. Behind him, at the periphery of the camp, a few of the other Reds paused in what they were doing to watch the situation unfold. "Then why am I not laughing?" Thundercracker continued calmly. Runamuck sat back against the wall, folded his arms, and replied, "'Cause you ain't smart enough to have a sense of humor." Thundercracker stood looking down at the mutinous Battlecharger for a few moments. Then, without a word, he turned, walked a few steps away, and then transformed and took to the air, vanishing from sight in moments. On the far side of the camp, the Red team's three Constructicons looked at each other. "Did he just -leave?-" Scavenger asked. "OK, wow," Bonecrusher said. "I wasn't expecting that." Runamuck just returned to his lounging position, satisfied that that was the last he was going to hear of -that- foolishness. Thundercracker never had possessed very big bearings... ... wait. What was that noise? "Aw, scrap," he muttered, bolting up from his perch and dropping into vehicle mode with the eyeblink speed that made him a Battlecharger. There was an overhang of wrecked highway about a quarter-klick away that would provide decent cover - - but he was out of time. Thundercracker streaked past overhead and a KRAKA-THOOOM so loud it defied comprehension slammed down on Runamuck, shattering his car mode's windows and crashing his audio stack. He swerved out of control and smashed into the column holding up his intended cover, returning to robot mode on impact and sprawling senseless among the rubble. A moment later, Thundercracker returned to the camp, landing next to Runamuck's battered form in robot mode. He reached down and lifted the Battlecharger by the neck, holding him clear of the ground, and waited for him to reset. "Are your backup audio receptors functioning, Runamuck?" he asked, his voice still perfectly calm. "A... affirmative, Commander Thundercracker," Runamuck replied groggily. "Thanks to you, I've just revealed our position to the Blues, if Megatron has the presence of mind to have someone scanning for acoustic anomalies, which of course he has. We now have to relocate our base camp. This will set us back several hours... " He smiled coldly. "... so I'm afraid there won't be any time for you to report to Repair. You'll just have to get by on your backup systems until the games conclude. Understood?" "Un... understood, Commander." "Good." Thundercracker released his hold and let Runamuck fall to the ground. Then he crouched down, leaned over the fallen Battlecharger, and went on, "While we're having such a fruitful exchange of information, Runamuck, understand this as well. You're right. I'm not Megatron... and you're not Starscream. Cop that attitude with me again before the end of these games and I'll scrap you." Satisfied, Thundercracker straightened and said crisply as he strode away, "Pull yourself together and get started breaking down the perimeter scanners." Scavenger and Bonecrusher, without being told, started to dismantle the situation table and load it onto Long Haul. "He gets style points for that," Bonecrusher observed. "Seriously," Long Haul agreed. WEDGE DEFENSE FORCE AIR STATION CYBERTRON AUTOBASE, IACON The pilot of the gleaming silver SF-15D Cosmo Eagle prototype that had just arrived stood up from her seat, pulled off her classic Bellcom Valkyrie helmet, and shook out her long blonde hair, then flipped down the boarding ladder and disembarked. "Welcome back to Cybertron, General Currier," said the dark- haired woman in the smart grey suit who had come out from the aerospace terminal to meet her. "Good to be back, Alexis," Patricia "Terror" Currier replied, grinning. "Orbital Control was touchy. I guess I picked the wrong week to show up on Cybertron with a fighter that looks like an F-15," she observed with a thumb over her shoulder and a smirk. "We always knew this RetroTech thing would cause trouble, but that wasn't really what we had in mind." "You've returned at a very interesting time," Alexis agreed. "Jetfire has a full briefing for you. And for the record, your timing's not -too- bad," she added with a grin. "We might not be able to keep to the original testing timetable, but you and the Getter Team are still likely to have plenty to do in the next little while... " ARAVEX Megatron stood at the crest of a small ridge (actually a fault scarp thrown up by the buckling of two massive plates of ground armor in some ancient bombing raid), looking off toward the southeast. "Razorclaw. Report," he said into his comm. "We've reached the origin point," Razorclaw's voice replied. "There are signs that there was an encampment here recently, but they're gone now. They must have pulled out as soon as they knew they'd given away their position." Megatron nodded. "Excellent," he said. "I look forward to learning why Thundercracker found it necessary to do so in the first place. Track them to their new location and report back. Do not engage without my authorization." "Understood." "Megatron out." The Decepticon leader closed the channel and stood for a moment longer, looking across the Aravex wastes. As he'd hoped, Thundercracker was showing a glimmer of ability - more than a glimmer, perhaps. He had often wondered what it would take to make the Seeker rise to his potential and become more than the simple thug he pretended to be. Now, it appeared, he knew. Satisfactory. He caught movement out of the corner of his optic and began to turn, powering up his systems for combat. Megatron had suspected that going off on his own, presenting himself as a target, would attract the attention of some dissident or another in the Blue ranks. He'd been rather curious to see which one of them would dare to try him first. Now he saw it was Windrazor, one of the new air units sparked during Galvatron's reign - one of those he'd tagged as a potential troublemaker during his initial review of the files. But though the grey-armored jet warrior was standing on the high ground of a half- ruined building's exposed upper story, his weapon leveled, for some reason he didn't attack. While Megatron watched, puzzled, Windrazor stood motionless for a few moments, then toppled forward, bounced off a jagged outcrop of an intermediate floor, and crashed to the ground at his feet, twitching feebly. Megatron looked down at him for a moment, bemused, and then glanced back up to Windrazor's former position. There was someone else up there - the silhouette that of an early-model Sky Soldier, as they were before Earth - all detail lost in the gloom of the wrecked building's interior. "Show yourself!" Megatron commanded. "I'm disappointed, Megatron," a familiar voice rasped from the shadows. "I'd hoped that if you had learned -anything- from me, it would be to always watch your -back.-" Then, stepping fully back into the darkness, the interloper transformed and streaked away out the other side of the ruined building, leaving behind a sardonic, drifting chuckle. Megatron stood looking after him for a moment, and then his face took on a darkly satisfied little smile. "Excellent," he murmured. What was -that- about? wondered Priss from her latest hide, a hundred yards away. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2412 AUTOBASE COMMCEN IACON DECEPTICON WAR GAMES: DAY 2 "Morning, gang," Sylvie announced as she strolled into the comm center, a breakfast sandwich and orange juice from the commissary in hand. She wasn't really expecting a response, and indeed she didn't get one. Everyone within earshot of the entrance was busy, some monitoring various surveillance devices around Aravex, others handling routine comm traffic with Cybertron's various outposts and colonies, and still others engrossed in tasks sufficiently arcane that Sylvie didn't recognize them at a quick glance. Soundwave was still exactly where he'd been when she left the night before, hunched over the corner console with Rumble on one side and Frenzy on the other, ready to assist in whatever capacity their boss required. He didn't even look up, nor did Frenzy, though Rumble turned and gave her a high sign before returning to his work. Sylvie smiled to herself and walked around the upper-level catwalk, passing consoles at which various Autobot comm techs were at work and catching snippets of their conversations, mostly meaningless without context, as she went by. "... to Sector 217 for routine... " "... was right there a second ago. Check it again... " "... eedom's Progress immediately to investigate... " "... don't care how many credits... " "... mited four and eight are... " She reached the console at the end where Blaster was and had to stifle a laugh at the sight. Despite the fact that it was manned by a 20-foot-tall robot, the station looked like that of any human console jockey after an all-nighter, littered with casually discarded data solids, carelessly stacked (and in some cases overturned) energy-drink empties, and crumpled snack packets. "Jeez, Blaster, have some pride," she said, stepping off the catwalk to the Minicon-scale station next to his. Surveying the debris, she asked, "Didn't you even stop to recharge?" Blaster jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Not while Blue and Gruesome's still in my Comm Center." <> Soundwave announced without turning around. Blaster groaned. "He's been like that all NIGHT. I swear to Primus, he's trying to get me to crack." "Riiiiiiight," Sylvie replied dubiously. "And the pile of Kremzeek Cola empties by your workstation has nothing to do with it." "Hey, I gotta stay awake -somehow-." Sylvie shook her head and sighed as she took her own seat. "Whatever. Fill me in with what's happened while I was out." "Been reasonably quiet, thank Primus," Blaster reported. "The 'Cons actually seem to be -having a wargame.- Either Megatron's for real, or he's gotten more patient than he used to be. In the old days, if he was up to something, he'd have sprung it by now. Instead, he's playin' it straight so far. Both teams have made a couple of probing strikes, there's been one fairly big firefight in the central district, but for the most part they're still firmin' up their positions. I think Thundercracker's waitin' Megatron out. Tryin' to force him onto the offensive. Say this for the boy, he's not as dumb as he looks. He knows the defender always has an advantage." Sylvie nodded. "What about the rest of Cybertron?" Blaster shrugged. "Same as it ever was. Red Alert and Hot Rod are runnin' extra patrols on the non-aligned districts near Vilnacron, but there hasn't been a peep. Airspace is clear. One of the colonies has gone silent, but it's probably just comm problems. They've had a lot of trouble with their HW transmitter the last few months. IPO actually sent a consultant out there to help 'em out with it last month, but I guess they're still havin' issues. Axalon's checkin' it out." He spread his hands. "Other'n that? Big pile of nothin'." Just as he said it, an alarm sounded at the other end of the room. Blaster swiveled to see Soundwave bend a little more intently over his console, then turn and announce in the most urgent of his limited range of vocal tones, <> Rivalry or not, something in the Decepticon's flattened tone told Blaster that this was something to take seriously. Pivoting, he punched keys on his own console, syncing it to what Soundwave's was displaying; then his optics went wide at the sight of the frantic data stream this revealed. "Whoa, OK, that's weird," he muttered. "Like what we saw from Hydrax, only... more so." Then, in a more carrying voice: "Soundwave, unlock your console for crosslink, let's see if we can't get a better idea of what we're dealin' with." <> Sylvie sat back and watched them work for a few moments, impressed by the professionalism both comm officers displayed. She knew they were very old foes, set in perpetual opposition by the simple fact of their functions in their respective forces. At least twice that she knew of, they'd dueled to the death, or intended to before circumstances beyond their control had separated them. And now, in the face of this unidentified weirdness on the net, they could use the long familiarity that opposition had bred in them to work together instead. Smiling a private smile, she switched her own console to monitor mode and watched them work from the other side, observing the network traffic and the two Transformers' efforts to get a handle on it. Watching the green holophosphor flow, she could instinctively envision the information structures it represented, watching with avid fascination as Blaster and Soundwave traced connections, rerouted traffic, threw up emergency firewalls, and sought to contain the incursion while simultaneously working to understand it. Containment came faster. Within five minutes, they managed to lock down the network district the anomaly was occurring in, preventing it from spreading to neighboring sectors of Cybertron's sprawling infosphere - but they got no closer to figuring out what it -was.- "The hell is goin' on in there?" Blaster wondered aloud. "It's almost like some kinda self-replicating virus, but the vectors are all wrong... " <> Soundwave replied. <> Sylvie shook herself out of her fascination, switched her console to active mode, and linked it to the others. Passive observation wasn't in her nature at a time like this. REVIEWING STAND ONE ARAVEX Unaware of the sudden drama unfolding on the other side of the wire, the wargames' Autobot observers were actually starting to become slightly bored. The game was in a maneuvering phase right now, with the Blue side feeling out Red's perimeter defenses and the Red scouts working to keep the defenders one step ahead. This was militarily interesting, and held Prowl's attention readily, but some of the others were finding it less than entirely stimulating, if they were honest. That was about to change. "Holy - did you see that?" Sideswipe said. "Back it up. Eject! Back it up!" "What?" Eject's image asked from one of the monitors. "Red basecamp, camera three - back point five five. Yeah! Look at that!" Trailbreaker leaned closer to the screen. "Is that Razorclaw?" "Yup. Right under Scavenger's nose." "Man," said Cliffjumper. "Thundercracker's lucky this is just a game." "Yep, I think we're about to see Red log a command change," Sideswipe agreed. "I'm not so sure," Brawn remarked. "You looking for a little action on that?" Sideswipe asked. "Sure. What'd you have in mind?" Eject, sensing excitement in the offing, threw that camera to the big main display - just in time for the audio stream to include a noise so loud the pickups could only register it as a sort of high- pitched twang. On the screen, the whole side of the building Razorclaw had entered disintegrated, bursting outward, and the Predacon leader hurtled across the empty lot beyond to crater the half-fallen wall opposite. Scavenger, who a moment before had been standing next to the door, staggered back in visible shock. A moment later, Thundercracker emerged from the shattered ruins of his makeshift barracks, and he did not look amused. "It took you long enough to make your move, Razorclaw," he observed. "Did you seriously think I'd take a rest period in the middle of the game?" Razorclaw picked himself up, transforming to robot mode, and drew his blazersword. "Don't try to bluff -me,-" he snarled. "Your reactions are good, but you were still sloppy." Thundercracker gritted his teeth. "I'm getting tired of being underestimated. First by my own troops, now by you. But if I have to make another example, that's fine." He held out a hand, forestalling Scavenger, as the Constructicon shook off his shock and readied his weapon. "Stand down, Scavenger. I'll deal with this myself." "Uh... OK," Scavenger replied. "Fool!" Razorclaw roared, leaping. "You're scrap!" /* Powermad "Nice Dreams" _Absolute Power_ (1989) */ Right then and there, something inside Thundercracker seemed to snap. In dealing with Runamuck's insubordination, he had been cool, measured, as if he were playing the role of Megatron as icy commander. Now, faced with Razorclaw's arrogant dismissal, he seemed to draw his inspiration from a different facet of his returned leader - Megatron's supremely focused -fury,- the single-minded drive to destroy the foe that had served him so well against Shockwave. If the former had been surprising to both his temporary subordinates and the Autobot observers, the latter was downright -shocking-. They all remembered Thundercracker as reasonably powerful but lacking focus, unsubtle, and not too bright, the kind of bot who could safely be trusted with the job of, say, blowing up a dam, but not anything more taxing than that. There were those, though, among the Autobot old guard, who had dim, faded memories of ancient times, and they found those tattered old datatracks returning to life at the sight that unfolded before them now. Razorclaw's first inkling that something other than blind luck had been involved in his failure to carry out a quick, clean mock assassination on the Red leader came when Thundercracker stood his ground instead of fleeing to the air, as he might have expected any Sky Soldier to do in the face of his fury. He had been prepared for that; such a cowardly stunt would have earned Thundercracker the full attention of all five Predacons, who would have brought him to ground and torn him apart, game or no game. Instead, the jet warrior remained in robot mode, faced Razorclaw's charge, and unleashed a storm of incendiary fire on the Predacon leader, then sidestepped his strike and wrenched the sword from his hand with a quick, precise Metallikato empty-hand counter. Razorclaw was still recovering from the shock of that reversal when Thundercracker changed his grip, applying painful pressure to the Predacon's shoulder actuator, and then hurled him through one of the remaining walls of his barracks, causing the ruin to collapse the rest of the way. ("Ho. Ly. SCRAP," Cliffjumper observed back at the reviewing stand. Around him, his fellow Autobots watched, slack-jawed.) Razorclaw pulled himself to hands and knees, shaking his head, not quite able to believe what was happening. The last time a hunt had gone this far awry, his prey had been a Matrix-bearer. A simple jet soldier should pose no kind of threat, even a veteran such as Thundercracker. Roaring, he transformed to beast mode and sprang, intending to bring his superior speed and his titanium-rending claws into play - Thundercracker met this attack with a pair of drone rockets that sent the Predacon tumbling across the ground, then charged after them, the jet thrusters in his legs giving his leap tremendous speed and range. Razorclaw had barely regained his feet when a whirling kick with the full thrust of a fusion turbine behind it send him hurtling into another wall. He returned to robot mode and tried to bring his concussion blaster to bear, but Thundercracker was already upon him. "You don't -get- it, do you, Razorclaw?" Thundercracker demanded, knocking the weapon away and delivering a tremendous punch to the Predacon's midsection. "None of you -ever- got it. I'm not just some Sky Soldier. I'm a -Seeker-." He blocked Razorclaw's counterblow, caught him in another one of those agonizing holds, and threw him halfway across the clearing. "Decepticon Special Forces, Thirteenth Air Commando. I survived one of the most grueling selection processes in the history of Cybertron." He hauled Razorclaw upright just to knock him down again. "You were -built- for your position. I -earned- mine. And if I haven't done much of note since then, well... maybe that's because I came to believe the Decepticon cause didn't merit my best efforts. Did you ever consider any of that?" Roaring with fury, Razorclaw put every bit of his remaining energy into a single last-ditch effort, lunging with all his might toward his opponent, fingers bent into tearing claws. Thundercracker stepped into the charge, putting all the force of his body behind his right fist, and dealt Razorclaw such a punch in the jaw that it spun the Predacon completely around and stretched him full- length on the ground. ("Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" cried Wreck-Gar with the voice of Howard Cosell. "Slamdance, make a note," Eject mused. "We'll need to get the rights to that sample cleared through Avalon Broadcasting.") "No, of course you didn't," Thundercracker answered his own question. "Well, now you have something to think about in the CR chamber. Scavenger - get him to Repair." Scavenger just stared at him for a second, then shook his head and replied, "Uh, r, right! Right away, Commander." "Gentlemen," Trailbreaker declared, "I think I have now officially seen everything." "Slaggin' -A-," Cliffjumper agreed. "That was -bitchin'.-" Sideswipe sighed and turned to Misato. "Looks like next time we go drinkin', you're buyin'," he said. "See, that's why I don't gamble my booze money," she said sagely. AUTOBASE COMMCEN IACON Grimacing, Sylvie massaged her temples as she squinted at the waterfalls of code that scrolled down her screens. For three hours she had been trying to decipher the communication channels of the unknown constructs, but a mixture of eyestrain, information overload, and slipperiness on the part of her quarry was making it difficult. "... dammit. Okay, that's it. I'm calling in the big guns on this. Let me get my best protocol guy on the horn." She toggled on her Curtana's telephone app and launched one of the speedcom codes. A moment later, Blaster was vaguely surprised to hear a guitar. It took him a second to place the riff - it was the intro from ZZ Top's "Woke Up with Wood" - and a second more to accept that he really was hearing it, in the Autobot Commcen, in the middle of an inexplicable network crisis. Then it stopped, eight bars into the song, and started over, and he realized it was a telephone ringtone. Blaster and Sylvie looked at each other, then turned slowly in their seats to look across the room toward the source of the music. It appeared to be emanating from Soundwave. The Decepticon comm officer hesitated, as if feeling their incredulous gaze on him, and then continued resolutely on with what he was doing, leaving the riff to play over and over again. "Ain't'cha gonna pick up, boss?" asked Rumble. Soundwave ignored him, so after two more rings, the Minicon leaned over, pressed the PLAY button on his leader's abdomen, and announced jauntily, "Soundwave, Rumble speakin'." Sylvie stared at her Curtana for a second, then cut the connection and started stalking around the Commcen perimeter catwalk with what even Blaster recognized as a someone-has-some-explaining-to-do gait. Drawing even with Soundwave's station, Sylvie stopped, put her fists on her hips, and said icily, "Excuse me. Soundwave? Or would you rather I called you Gabe?" Soundwave glanced up, met her gaze, and then returned his optics to his work. <> "I can't believe this!" Sylvie blazed, ignoring his demurral. "I mean, me of all people, you would think I'd be -aware- that nobody on the Net is who you think they are, but for Christ's sake, YOU'RE Gabriel Blackrock?!" <> Blaster stared at the scene playing out in front of him. "Oh, you have -got- to be -kidding- me..." Sylvie folded her arms, scowling. "Well, I guess I know now why you couldn't make it to MultiCon. Protocol guy for a network apps company, active in the Takara Sector Society for Online Anachronism. My -ass.-" Soundwave stopped working for a moment and looked blankly at her. <> he explained. <> Sylvie threw up her hands. "Everything about you was a bunch of lies!" <> Soundwave corrected her. <> Sylvie opened her mouth to berate him further, then ground to a mental halt as she realized he was making movie references - ones from a film that had been one of the points of intersection between her pop culture continuum, as it were, and that of "Gabe Blackrock". Which meant... what? That something of what she'd liked about Gabe was really in there, somewhere, under the weird voice and detached affect that marked Soundwave out even among his fellow Decepticons? Then her face reddened and she clapped a palm to it. "... Oh my God, I just remembered the Christmas holo I sent you last year." Soundwave nodded, still bent over his console. <> Sylvie looked out between her fingers at him. "You did? Seriously?" <> "I can't decide whether that makes me feel better or even weirder," she said matter-of-factly. Then, putting both hands to her head, she declared, "Aaaagh, I don't have time for this right now." <> replied Soundwave, shaking his head resignedly. "'Course, that was after we hadda explain what it -was,-" said Frenzy, but before he could go on, his brother had grabbed him in a headlock and hauled him away from the console. "(Ixnay, dude,)" Rumble grumbled. "(You tryin' ta screw up the only shot the boss's ever had or what?)" Frenzy eyed his brother. "(Are you gettin' deep on me, bro?)" he asked skeptically. Sylvie ignored them, or possibly didn't hear them; instead she kept glaring at Soundwave for a moment longer, the anger not completely gone from her face but largely replaced by bemusement, then sighed. "I have to get back to work. We'll talk later. And believe me, we WILL be talking." <> was Soundwave's only reply, but Rumble turned his brother loose and sprang up to the catwalk to pace alongside her as she recrossed the room to her own station. "The boss ain't real good with the whole 'feelings' thing," he told her, "an' we ain't really got the time right now, but I just want'cha ta know - apart from me an' the rest o' the boys, you're pretty much the only friend he's had in about six million years. So, ya know... don't be too hard on him." Sylvie stopped by her console and gave him a thoughtful look. "You wouldn't bullshit a girl too, would you, Rumble?" she asked. "Hey, I'm a punk, but I ain't no fink," Rumble replied. She looked at him for a moment longer, then said, "I'll take it under advisement. You better get back to it. But thanks." "Not a problem," said Rumble, and then he sloped back to the other side of the room. "Don't. Say. Anything," Sylvie cautioned Blaster when she noticed he was looking at her with a look of complete bafflement on his faceplate. "I wouldn't even know where to start," Blaster admitted. "'Sides, I'm up to my skidplate in weird, weird stuff here." "Yeah, sorry about that." Sylvie sat down and started scrolling back through the error messages that had piled up while she'd been across the room. Then she sighed. "Frag it, I'm not gonna get anywhere with this. Without a low-level scan, we're not going to gain any ground on cutting them off at the source. I need to get boots on the ground, metaphorically speaking." So saying, she dug into her pack and came out with a barrier collar, fitted it on and made sure its jackplugs were seated in her C- spine ports, and then cabled it to her Curtana. "I'm goin' in," she said, and without waiting for an acknowledgement, she hit the big green holobutton. WDF AIR STATION CYBERTRON OFFICERS' LOUNGE "... operational again in the next couple of days," Chuck Keith reported. Terror nodded. "Good. And nice work, by the way, I'm looking forward to reviewing the video," she added with a grin. "It's good to see the Getter Team is keeping the old WDF 'baptism of fire' spirit alive." "Oh, we're definitely doing that," Keith agreed. "So this Decepticon thing, it just came out of nowhere, huh?" Terror asked. Alexis nodded. "Much like Megatron himself," she added wryly. "I know, right?" Terror said. "That's wild. Are they -all- back on Cybertron now?" Alexis shook her head, a shadow momentarily crossing her face, and replied, "No... not quite all." DECEPTICON FORCE BLUE HEADQUARTERS ARAVEX "Lord Megatron," said Feedback. "Incoming communication from Force Red." Megatron looked up from his planning table, blanked it, and asked, "Can you track its origin?" "Negative," Feedback replied. "Shriekback has routed it through at least a dozen ghost relays and satellite cutouts - just as I would have. She knows precisely how long I would need to trace the signal all the way back; I guarantee you she will not permit Thundercracker to remain online that long." Megatron chuckled dryly. "Then we'd best not keep him waiting. Hail, Thundercracker! What can I do for you?" Thundercracker, scuffed and dented, looked out of the holotank with crossed arms and declared flatly, "I have defeated Razorclaw. Under the Predacon Code, he and the rest of his team work for me now." Megatron seemed oddly pleased by this intelligence. "Indeed!" he said. "Congratulations. You are aware, of course, that once the game is over, you'll be at the top of his personal revenge file." Thundercracker gave the barest of smiles. "Enemies make life interesting." Megatron actually laughed at that. "Wise words, Commander. Very well! I shall forward this redistribution of forces to Soundwave to be logged in the official record of the game. And Thundercracker - " "Yes?" Megatron smiled. "Well played. Megatron out." From the corner of the Blue command post, Onslaught observed calmly, "You seem very sanguine, for a commander who's just lost a significant asset." "I am delighted," Megatron agreed. "Thundercracker continues to surprise me. That's worth the possibility of Predaking fighting for the Reds." Onslaught eyed his commander, but said nothing, for several seconds. Eventually Megatron said pleasantly, "Is something on your mind, Onslaught?" Onslaught weighed his reply carefully. "I'm... re-evaluating the length of the game you're playing, sir." Megatron sat back in his command seat with a satisfied expression. "Excellent. You're beginning to catch on." AUTOBASE COMMCEN CYBERSPACE Even though Sylvie had entered the local network quite a few times these past few weeks, entering Cybertron's infosphere always caused her to take a virtual breath, just to take it all in. In her short life to date, she had logged thousands of hours in the networked infrastructures of multiple worlds, and although each one had been created by a different sapient species, they all had an overarching flow and format in the way the domains and network sites were connected. Network architecture was like DNA - it could do a billion different things, but down at the scale of the base pairs, it was all basically the same stuff. You had your data corridor trunks, your heavy-load router hubs, your infinite levels of branching domains and access points. Multilayered nodes of data and processing power, connected by communications links spreading out in a fractal filigree. Clusters and rings of networks accreted upon themselves in layers as societies grew and expanded their computing capabilities, sometimes removing the legacy networks, sometimes consuming them. But always, there was a sense of artifice about it: that these things had been created by mortal hands, and had developed over a finite span of time. Cybertron's infosphere was different. /* Daft Punk "Recognizer" _Tron: Legacy_ (2010) */ Yes, there was much that was familiar to Sylvie's netdiving experience - giant transforming robots used the Internet and had their own computing centers just like anyone else - but that was just a thin veneer over the gigantic, non-Euclidean mass that was Cybertron's internal network. Everything, from the largest building to the smallest door, had a network identity, a means by which to communicate its status to something else. Roads and river gates, streetlights and scrap processors, cottages and city-states: those that still functioned continually reeled off updates and queries to their neighbors. Among and between them flowed the rapid-fire messages of the denizens of the planet: not of the Cybertronians themselves, but that of its "wildlife" and maintenance drones, going about their lifecycles as they had for millennia, with no means or need to use anything as inefficient as acoustic vocalization. Systems large and small repeated their litanies of status updates and function executions to anything that would pay attention to them, or to nothing at all, the very messages themselves forming much of the underlying structure of the digital world. This level of interconnectedness was practically unheard of in every other networked system that Sylvie had ever read about or experienced. It was as if Cybertron were an organism in and of itself, and she was only seeing a minuscule portion of the whole. Sylvie shook her virtual head. No more time for woolgathering, time to get to work. She pulled up a diagnostic and checked that her avatar was running properly, with all the relevant utilities cached and ready to run; stepped her auto-annotation level down three steps from where she normally kept it so her field of view wasn't completely crammed with tags identifying every node and system she could see from the broad chrome plaza on which she'd resolved; switched her avatar into combat mode, which caused it to manifest a virtual suit of CVR-3 armor; and then brought up a navigation pointer to direct her to the affected node. It was a short run from the Commcen's arrival plaza, short enough that she didn't bother launching a travel utility. She arrived to find Soundwave and Blaster already there, along with various of their Minicon helpers, their avatars ultrarealistic renderings of their robot forms. The sector beyond was surrounded by a rippling blue-white curtain of energy, a visual representation of the firewalls they'd erected to bottle up the incursion in that one area. "OK, fellas," she said, "let's go see what's what." With administrative permissions set, they passed through the firewall as if it weren't there and entered the affected sector, to find a scene of utter chaos. The sector was like the digital equivalent of one of the devastated zones of Cybertron's real surface, its surfaces corroded and corrupted, some of its structures damaged, others crashed outright. The online icons of Transformers, most of them small, rushed here and there, some trying to make a stand, others simply fleeing in panic; others were sprawled on the virtual ground or frozen in place, their avatars flickering or partially derezzed. "OK, wasn't expecting -this,-" Sylvie observed. "What the crap is going on in here?" "Let's ask somebody," Blaster said. Reaching out a hand, he caught one of the running Minicons by the shoulder. "Hey! Buddy! Take it easy, I'm an Autobot, I'm here to help. What's goin' on?" "Error," the other Transformer replied, his voice tinny and flat, low-resolution audio - and, disconcertingly, female, where the icon itself clearly represented an M-type chassis. "Unauthorized program access." "What the - that's his status computer talkin'," said Frenzy. "Hang in there, buddy, we'll help you out," Blaster said. "Error: Stack overflow. Voluntary functions compromised," the Minicon's status computer announced. "Energy systems disrupted. Spark loss imminent." His avatar began to derez. Lacking the time or inclination to do it any more elegantly, Soundwave pushed brusquely past Blaster, transformed one of his hands into an interface spike, and rammed it into the hapless victim's chest. <> the Decepticon comm officer intoned urgently. <> The Minicon rerezzed, his avatar going rigid; then his computer replied, "Software purge complete. Stasis lock commencing," and he disappeared - a clean logoff, not a crash. Blaster, Sylvie, and a couple of Blaster's cassettes all just stood there staring at him for a second or so; then, ignoring their looks of shock, Soundwave pointed into the distance and said, <> The others shook off their surprise and looked where he was pointing, up the digital canyon that was the sector's main trunk. For a second they detected nothing, apart from more fleeing forms of networked Transformers trying to reach the firewall - and then they saw it: a dark and indistinct shape at first, then... "Some kind of -swarm- program," Sylvie muttered. "Hunter nodes," Blaster said. Soundwave nodded. <> Sylvie opened one of her utility menus and rezzed up a broad- spectrum antiviral, which manifested itself in an Ihara-Lisberger environment as a sort of high-tech flamethrower. "Somebody call an exterminator?" she asked. Frenzy glanced at her, a faint cousin of a smile touching his face - this human might have a little style after all - and then the swarm was upon them. The Minicons of this district had been going about their everyday business, maintaining low-level wireless contact with the planetary network around them, because that made it easier to accomplish many everyday tasks. Most Transformers were so equipped these days, and few gave the link a second thought. Rarely did any of them actually extend their consciousness into the virtual world, shutting down their physical functions and focusing on their virtual avatars, the way Soundwave, Blaster, and their cohorts had done to get here; it was just something you had running in the background, to pull status updates, open doors, and look stuff up on Galactipedia. Even now, most of the figures Sylvie and company saw here weren't really "here", not fully; the avatar behavior they were seeing here was the virtual environment's interpretation of these individuals' reactions to what was happening to their links. The comm officers and their Minicon partners had barrier elements that were made of sterner stuff, as did Sylvie. Their active response, and determined resistance, caught the swarm by surprise. If it had been a simple distributed attack utility, such as one might use to crash a website, that would have been the end of it... but it soon became apparent that it wasn't. It knew what was going on around it. Sylvie realized it at the same time as Soundwave, when the swarm suddenly diverted, disengaging from the unexpected resistance and moving off in pursuit of the locals who had taken advantage of the distraction to leg it deeper into the sector. Seeing this, Sylvie reacted without really thinking; she shut down the antiviral utility, which was making limited headway against the swarm anyway, and rezzed up a transit mod instead, calling up a virtual Cyclone to go with her avatar's CVR-3. <> Soundwave called, but she'd already jumped into the saddle and raced away, leaving the protective circle of the two comm officers' barriers in pursuit of the swarm. Well, not the swarm itself. She blazed past that without a glance, outracing it easily. The group of Minicons she'd spotted had reached the firewall and realized they were trapped, lacking the correct admin permissions to pass through and escape. She pulled up in front of them, rezzed up her 3WA ident tag out of sheer habit, and told them, "Sector's locked down! Shut down your wifi modules and stay offline until further notice." The Minicon avatars looked at each other, so consumed with panic that they didn't realize what she was telling them at first. "They're attacking your neurosystems through your wireless links!" Sylvie yelled at them. "Unlink and get out now! They can't get you in the real world." I hope, she didn't add out loud. Then, twisting the Cyclone's throttle and slewing the back wheel around in a nicely rendered cloud of virtual smoke, she turned to face the oncoming swarm and tried one last time, barking back over her shoulder, "GET OFFLINE!" The Minicons finally seemed to catch on; one by one their avatars winked out as they disengaged from the network. Sylvie hunched over the handlebars, watching the swarm approach, timing her next move carefully; then she punched it, peeling back toward Soundwave and the others. Small, hard impacts peppered the Cyclone's cowling and the front of her armor, nearly unseating her; it was like riding through heavy hail, and for a second she didn't think she was going to make it. Then she burst through the other side, heading back for the group at full speed - A sharp pain pierced her upper right arm; the hand instantly went numb and she lost control of the Cyclone. She went down hard, unable to use her arm to break her fall. The Cyclone derezzed in her wake as she skidded across the simulated metal ground and fetched up at Soundwave's feet. <> he said urgently, kneeling to turn her onto her back. <> "Not sure. Can't feel my arm," she said. "I think one of them corrupted my avatar." She raised herself up and looked down to see the structure of her avatar's arm derezzing, silvery threads of static spreading slowly up from the site of the original pain toward her shoulder. "We got company," Blaster declared, blazing away at the oncoming swarm with a virtual representation of his electron scrambler rifle - to relatively little effect. <> said Soundwave. <> "I heard -that,-" Blaster replied. "Disengage utility's not running," Sylvie reported after a moment. "I'll have to cut my link outright. Which is going to suck." <> Soundwave told her. <> Straightening, he stood over her, put the edge of one fist to the open palm of his other hand, and drew a glowing sword-icon from it. Nice animation, part of Sylvie remarked as the rest of her concentrated on steeling herself for the dump. The last thing she saw online, before her vision broke up into staticky scan lines and blacked altogether, was him lunging to engage the swarm, his sword leaving a trail of lightning in its wake. "GAH!" Sylvie exclaimed, sitting bolt upright at the shock of disconnection. With a frustrated snarl, she yanked off her barrier collar and glared at it. It was uncomfortably warm, sparking and smoking from several of its seams. "Fuck!" "Whoa. Never seen -that- before," Rumble observed, rubbing his neck in sympathy. "Soundwave? I'm clear. You can get out now." Sylvie got unsteadily to her feet and made her way, first stumbling, then striding, then running as her body got back into better touch with her brain, to his station. "Soundwave! Hey!" Soundwave sat immobile for a moment longer, then twitched, his optic visor brightening, and turned to face her. <> he reported. <> "Distributed -AI?-" Sylvie whistled. "That doesn't sound like Megatron's doing." Soundwave shook his head. <> He tilted his head thoughtfully and added, <> Sylvie snorted, recognizing a (reasonably mild) dig when she heard one, but said nothing as she took over one of the Minicon stations adjoining his to see what sense she could make of her Curtana's incident logs. Blaster rose from his station and crossed to their end. "I got bad news and bad news." "What's the bad news?" Sylvie asked. "I got a partial lock on the network node we were in. Enough to know that whatever's going on, it's going on somewhere near here, physically." "OK... what's the bad news?" "I only got the first six octets. That leaves an area of about 250 square miles, and every outside-Iacon link in this room except the game feed from Aravex flatlined when we punched out." "Shit." "It's way past time we kicked this up the chain of command," Blaster went on. He leaned over Soundwave's shoulder, punched a couple of keys, and pulled an image of Red Alert's office onto that console's main screen. "Hey, Red? You got a second to check something for me?" "Can it wait, Blaster? I'm in the middle of some calibrations." Blaster groaned, and rolled his optics at the security chief. "No, it -can't- wait. We've got a serious sitch going on with our network security, we're getting no carrier across the board, and we've got a sinkin' feelin' that it's rolling over into the real." Sighing, Red Alert set aside the work he was already doing, turning to face the bank of monitors that cycled through the planet's multitude of security cameras. "Oh very well, if you insist. Where do you wish for me to start looking? This -is- a somewhat large planet we're talking about." Sylvie spoke up, consulting several of her displays. "We need the sectors around Uraya, Altihex, and the Touran Interpass checked out - we haven't been able to get anything more specific. Whatever's happening, it's originating from within the set of net addresses that originate from those areas." "All right, one moment." Sylvie watched with bated breath as the screens in the background of the image flickered too rapidly for the human eye (even enhanced) to see. "So far, everything looks clear... hold on." Red Alert paused in his review, then began replaying several sections of footage. A deepening scowl could be seen on his face as he started bringing up more monitors and sensor readouts. "What? What is it?" Sylvie asked, standing on her seat to try and get a better view. In the comm window image, she could see several images of streets populated with Minicons and Transformers... images that seemed too regular, too orderly for her eyes. "... oh -no-..." Red Alert nodded, confirming her unvoiced suspicion. "The cameras in the vicinity of Little Iacon have been spoofed. A mixture of video feed repetition and simulated imagery. Quite cunningly done, I am forced to admit. If you hadn't brought my attention to it, the automated systems likely would not have flagged it immediately." "Slag! We need to get eyes on target -yesterday-, Red!" "Already on it, Blaster," Red Alert replied, plying his controls. "Repositioning cameras on the border of Altihex and the Tower of Pion now, forwarding the visual matrix to your station." What they saw was not encouraging: a normally bustling district, its upper levels empty and peripheral streets (all that could be resolved from the neighboring zones) deserted. Overhead, strange craft with profiles reminiscent of some swarming insect or unknown ocean lifeform (or hideous combination of the two) moved in orderly patterns, some arriving, others leaving, while the area's antiaircraft emplacements did nothing to stop them. In the distance, a couple of the cameras could make out the flashes and smoke columns of ongoing combat. "Do we have aerial feeds?" Red Alert shook his head. "Apparently your mysterious intruders have managed to circumvent the observation satellites tasked to the area and the airspace above. Your team will need to take the time to re-establish contact with them and reboot them." "Damn! That's time we -don't have-," Sylvie clenched her fists, frustrated at how the situation was rapidly spiraling out of control. She looked up at her Autobot coworkers, and then pointed at one of them. "Lightspeed! Do you think you can handle the reboot on this end without our help?" Lightspeed hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. "We'll take care of it, Sylvie." "We'll do what we can to maintain the firewalls and re-establish comms with the dark zones, too," Chromedome added. "Good." She grabbed her critical gear, stuffed it into her rucksack, and looked up at Blaster and Soundwave. "Gather your guys, we're going on a trip." "Security assets are spread thin as it is, with the Decepticons in the field," Red Alert told Blaster, "but I'll see what I can do about getting you some backup down there, and notify Prime." "Thanks, Red," said Blaster. "We're on our way." With both comm officers' cassette crews gathered up, the three ran down to the rapid transit station on sub-level C, to find - as they might have expected - that the trains to Little Iacon weren't running. Blaster scowled at the OUT OF SERVICE holo above the subway tunnel for a moment, then rezzed up a holographic map on his comm panel and studied it. "Man, Little Iacon West's gotta be twenty miles from here. How are we gonna get there in time to do any good?" Soundwave looked up and down the tunnels for a moment - then suddenly transformed into not his usual microcassette-player mode, but instead a square-sided, solid-looking Cybertronic ground vehicle. <> he declared, opening a door. Blaster stared at him in shock. "Wh - you got - that is SO not fair," he sputtered, then transformed to boombox mode and let Sylvie carry him aboard. <> Soundwave remarked as Sylvie put Blaster on the passenger seat and belted herself behind the wheel; then he cautioned his passengers, <> before speeding back across the platform, up the stairs, and out onto the surface road leading away from the Decagon. "That's it, soon as we get back I'm goin' in for a reformat," Blaster declared. "I gotta have my wheels back. It ain't -right-." <> Soundwave said, drawing a sharp giggle from Sylvie. "Hey, HEY!" Blaster objected. "Pop culture references are -my- job. Or Jazz's. Not yours, you overgrown Walkman." <> Soundwave replied imperturbably. "You know what, I ain't even talkin' to you," Blaster remarked. "I'm-a go over the logfiles and see if I can figure out anything more about that whatever-it-was we just fought on the flip side. Wake me up when we crash." With that, the Autobot comm officer went quiet, the spindles of his playback module rotating silently. Soundwave ignored him, speeding past a barricaded side road that looked like a highway entrance ramp and then almost immediately lunging into a large, open structure along the side of the road. It reminded Sylvie of a multistory car park, and she wondered what possible use they could have for one of those on Cybertron as they sped onto a spiraling ramp leading upward, the lateral G-forces mounting as Soundwave drove ever faster up the spiral - until at last they emerged onto the roof. This was covered with a small forest of antennae and other high- tech devices she could not immediately identify, dispelling its resemblance to a parking garage. Soundwave navigated among the structures at full speed, heading straight for the low barrier that ringed the roof. Just as they reached it he jumped into the air with a burst of boost thrusters, clearing the barrier with ease, and flew in a gentle arc into the space beyond. Sylvie whooped with a mixture of surprise and delight as they swept through the air and slammed down on the highway whose sealed-off entrance ramp they'd passed on the way to the building. She'd heard of these before, the famous Cybertron speedways: transforming superhighways for a transforming planet, capable of being redirected from a central control network to make more efficient routes for priority traffic. The problem right now was that they were enclosed, roofed over by semicylindrical canopies of transpex, and Soundwave was on the outside. The slick, curved surface was ideal neither for steering nor traction. A couple of missiles solved that problem, and then they were falling through to land with a jolt and a scream of Cybertronian tires on the durasteel road deck. Flashing purple holo-arrows in the center indicated the direction of travel this particular speedway was configured for at the moment; at least -that- was in their favor. As Sylvie watched, eyes wide with wonder, a section of the highway ahead of them reconfigured itself, new sections seeming to build themselves out of "spare" flat and curved transpex panels - no durasteel in these segments - to join the main trunk they were on now to another that would take them closer to their destination. All of which was great, and very exciting, until the middle-of- the-road arrows suddenly turned red and pointed back the other way, and the segment toward which they were barreling at top speed began to retract. "Uh... I don't want to seem overly nervous," said Sylvie, "but is the highway supposed to be doing that?" /* Julien-X "Technical Difficulties" _Transformers: The Album (Soundtrack 2007)_ */ "Sylvie, this is Lightspeed, come in." Sylvie keyed her handlink. "Hey, Lightspeed, good timing. I got a little problem here." "That's what I'm calling about," Lightspeed told her. "The network incursions are branching. I've got Signal Lancer on the other line, we think one of their subprocesses is hacking the speedways!" <> Soundwave said, and data started streaming across the display in the center of his dash. "But if you're hacking, who's driving?" Sylvie asked. <> Soundwave replied. "Gah!" said Sylvie, grabbing the wheel. In the next couple of minutes, she put all the combat driver training she'd received at the 3WA Academy - and before that, from her motorhead parents - to good use, keeping Soundwave on the road despite the fact that, as he and the unknown enemy struggled for control of the speedway network, the road kept trying to get out from under him. Finally, and most alarmingly, one of the extending segments started to build its way -up into the air- while they were on it, constructing a sort of "ramp to nowhere" before the final section SELF-DESTRUCTED at the top. <> Soundwave deadpanned as they hurtled off the end and into the space beyond - - over the Little Iacon perimeter wall and into a wide, rubble- littered plaza at the edge of the district. They slewed sideways, then back the other way, Soundwave's wheels fighting for traction on the polished metal, and then fetched up hard against a fallen column that had once been holding up a decorative portico at the far end. An airbag burst from the center of the steering column and prevented Sylvie from getting a Decepticon shield embossed on her forehead; Blaster received no such consideration and bounced off the inside of the windshield, tumbling to the floor with a complete lack of dignity. "Ow! Sucka, that was -deliberate,-" he accused. <> Soundwave replied, retracting the airbag. <> Stifling a giggle, Sylvie retrieved Blaster from the floor and climbed out, after which both comm officers transformed to robot mode. Sylvie took a few steps into the plaza, made a quick survey of the damage, and then looked up at the two Transformers. "I hate to be cliche, but it's quiet - too quiet." Blaster looked around as well. "Yeah, I second that emotion, Sylv. This place is supposed to be one of the major access hubs - see the guard posts and access roads, and the central plaza? - but they've been hit hard." Soundwave nodded, and pointed out several places where building rubble had been purposefully collapsed into the streets, making rough but serviceable roadblocks. <> Blaster sighed. "Great. Well, we better be hoofin' it double- time. At least our signals back out to Autobase should be good." <> "Well, that's -something-, at least," Sylvie replied, and then muttered to herself, looking down at her jumpsuit - in the rush to get to Little Iacon, she hadn't had time to put on any armor - "REALLY wish I'd brought along a Cyclone." Soundwave tilted his head, apparently involved in some internal communication, and then reached up to press his shoulder eject button. <> As he announced each of his Minicons' names, they flew out of his opened chest door and transformed, landing on the ground in front of him or taking to the air. Immediately, Buzzsaw let out a brief screech of acknowledgement before flying down one of the damaged streets. Ravage gave a slight snarl of his own, before dashing off into the shadows of another street. Laserbeak began to fly around the group in a large, slow orbit, keeping his sensors tuned for any anomalies. Rumble and Frenzy cracked their servo joints, ready to cause mayhem at a moment's notice, as they moved to flank Soundwave and Sylvie. Not to be outdone, Blaster rolled his optics and repeated the process with his own cassettes. "Steeljaw, start sniffin' for hostiles; Rewind, cover our backs; Ramhorn, keep an eye on Sylvie, OK?" Sylvie watched the proceedings as Blaster's cassette crew got ready for battle, and then glanced up at their commander. "Feeling some cassette envy, hmm?" "Never mind, you." Allowing herself a slight smile, Sylvie squared her shoulders, consulted her updated gazetteer's holomaps, and led the way further into the district. /* Harry Gregson-Williams and Hibino Norihiko "Opening Infiltration" _Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty_ (2001) */ About ten minutes in, having managed to work their way along two district blocks without encountering a single Cybertronian (active or not), Sylvie spoke up again. "So, any luck with that analysis, Blaster?" "Eh?" The Autobot paused from where he'd been looking into a damaged shop front, and then regained the conversational track. "Yeah, there's some seriously freaky stuff going on in those comm logs." He shook his head, and looked off down a side street. "You'd think a botnet like that would be tossing status and sensor messages around like crazy, but it wasn't. The bots, or whatever those runtimes were, weren't doing that at all. They were weren't just polling each other, but processing their inputs and forwarding recommendations to the rest of the group." Rewind, who had been listening in, spoke up. "A consensus hierarchy? Everybody contributes, majority wins out?" Blaster nodded. "That's what it looked like." <> Soundwave added, turning back to look at the group. <> Sylvie frowned, thinking this over as they began to move again. "I really do NOT like the sound of that. How many runtimes were active in there?" <> Sylvie whistled. "Shit. I'm amazed the entire civil infrastructure for Little Iacon didn't collapse under that processor load." "Yeah, well, that's the other strange thing," Blaster commented. "Those runtimes look to be low-impact, high-efficiency types. Not quite full-fledged intelligences, but good enough for government work. Definitely not a full-on ACI like Vision or EVE. Hell, even one of our maintenance drones would be smarter." "But when you get them all together like that..." "... Yeah, that's what worries me. It makes for one big-ass neural net." <> Soundwave observed, <> Sylvie rubbed her forehead. "That sounds -really- familiar. I could swear I've heard about a system like that somewhere before. Or read about it." Blaster frowned, and held his electron scrambler rifle a little tighter. "This whole sitch stinks like an Allicon pit." Soundwave looked up as if listening to something the others couldn't hear, then said, <> His chest holojector came online, projecting the feed from Buzzsaw's visual sensors. It took a moment for Sylvie to get her bearings - Buzzsaw had found a perch in an upper level of one of the buildings surrounding a small sunken corner plaza, and was looking down into said plaza with his optics zoomed. A Minicon, mostly red with white trim, was running full-tilt toward a lower-level bulkhead door that looked like it led to an underground maintenance shaft - - but he was gunned down from behind by what looked like plasma fire before he could reach it. As he fell, Buzzsaw panned back along the line of fire and zoomed in still further, resolving a grainy image of the Minicon's attacker. It looked like another robot, but built with an entirely different design concept than any Cybertronian Sylvie had ever seen - almost more like a GENOM Boomer, synthetic musculature clad in mostly smooth biosteel armor, with few of the discrete parts and visible seams that marked the average Transformer. It was vaguely humanoid, but disproportionately slender, with oddly-shaped lower legs and two-fingered hands, and its head was an arched cowl with a single glowing photoreceptor in the center. It scanned the square back and forth with this, looking for more targets. At the sight of it, Sylvie felt that memory fragment she'd been worrying at click into place. "Oh. My. God," she breathed. "Sylv?" Blaster asked. "It's the sprocking GETH," Sylvie snarled, her face flushing with anger. "The -what?-" Sylvie punched herself lightly in the side of the head, uttering a string of profanities in several languages. "I should have seen it earlier! The base code for the neural network, the collaborative polling, the huge number of individual instances - they're all features that the quarians used for designing the geth!" Blaster hunkered down so he was more or less eye-to-eye with her and said, "Sylvie, pretend for a second that I don't know anything about what you're talking about and just tell me what the slag is going on." "Geth," Rewind answered before she could. "Cybernetic lifeforms accidentally created by the quarian civilization, circa Standard Year 1895. Swarm intelligence architecture existing in a perpetually networked neural-simulation state. Responsible for the fall of the Rannoch Hegemony, 1896 SC. Implicated in Salusian Incursion, 2287 SC; reports unconfirmed. No subsequent sightings outside Perseus sector." He tilted his head in puzzlement. "Their motive for invading Cybertron is... unclear." "I don't think it really matters -why- they're here right now, do you?" Blaster asked. <> Soundwave agreed. <> Sylvie took a deep breath to center herself, and then straightened up, a grim expression crossing her face. "Soundwave's right. If the geth are here, in force, we need to stop them before they get entrenched further. But to do that, we'll have to get further in, see just how many there are and what they're doing here. Never mind the 'why'." "And do it without being caught," Blaster added. "Peachy." <> Sylvie brought up her gazetteer map. "Where was Buzzsaw again?" Soundwave tilted his head for a moment, then reported back. <> She nodded and highlighted the area in question, about a third of the way towards the core of the city, as well as their own location near the edges. "Ok, if we're here, and there's been no geth so far, they've probably pulled further into the city. Think Steeljaw and Ravage can sniff us out a path that'll avoid any patrols, if we move along this vector?" Both comm officers nodded, and then Blaster added, "Just filled in Red Alert about what's going on, and I'm tellin' you, he is NOT pleased. Please tell me you've got more info on these guys, Sylv..." "Was just about to offer it," she replied, popping a data solid out of her Fairlight Curtana and handing it to him. "That's the best I can do for now; it's all historical, but it's a start." "Well, what're we standin' around -here- for?" Rumble abruptly added. "Let's get goin'!" /* Looking Glass Studios "Hydroponics A: Cultivation" _System Shock 2_ (1999) */ They slipped deeper into the eerily silent city, guided by transmissions from Ravage, Steeljaw, and Buzzsaw. Sylvie had never particularly cared before that there was never really a day on Cybertron, since the planet had no sun, but now she felt the encroaching dark keenly. Little Iacon's streetlights - and most of the building lights, come to that - were on, and the district was no darker than anywhere else in the resettled part of Cybertron, but the black sky above and the shadows in the alleys and side passages seemed to press closer as the group moved carefully through the empty streets, every nerve alert for trouble. They'd penetrated about a third of the way into the sector, if Sylvie's map were any guide, when Ravage warned them to halt and find cover. At the end of the street there was a cluster of what looked like duracrete traffic barriers, a couple of them overturned, that seemed to have been hastily erected and then left behind when whatever was happening to the district had swept through this area at some earlier time. The smaller members of the party hid behind these while Blaster and Soundwave went to either side of the street, standing close to the walls of the buildings, and eased around to get a look at the trouble spot Ravage was warning them about. It was a subway station, or rather the street-level entrance to one - a low building built into the opposite side of the small square formed by the intersection of two main streets, its glass frontage opening onto a set of escalators descending to the tunnel level. A couple of geth combat forms - Destroyers, according to Sylvie's database, although she freely acknowledged that her information might be out of date - were standing as if on guard near the entrances. Hunched against the duracrete barrier, cradling one of his thruster guns in both hands, Rumble peered over the top and muttered, "They don't look so tough." Then he ducked down again and looked over at Sylvie. "Hey - ain't you got a weapon?" Sylvie sighed. "No, it appears not. No weapon, no armor. I was expecting a quiet day in the comm center, not a field trip to a firefight. That'll teach me not to pack for contingencies." Rumble smirked slightly, reached to his back, and removed the second of his two thruster guns. "Here," he said, handing it over. "Works about like you'd expect." Sylvie glanced at it, taking a mere couple of seconds to familiarize herself with the controls, then smiled at him. "Thanks, Rumble." "No trouble," he replied, shrugging and looking back at the geth. "Can't let'cha go into a fight without a gun." Sylvie thought she heard Frenzy stifle a derisive snort behind her, but ignored him. <> Soundwave said. Blaster nodded. "These two are probably the only geth in the area. Left behind to cover the station." "Why did they put guards on a train station?" Frenzy wondered. "I mean, pretty obvious they've -been- here already." "Must be something in there they think is important," Rumble mused. "We should check it out," Sylvie agreed. "Well, there's only two of 'em," Frenzy said. With muted transformation sounds, his fists converted into drills - very Getter 2, Sylvie realized with a touch of unexpected pleasure - and started to get up, but Sylvie grabbed his elbow. "WITHOUT attracting the rest of them," she said. "They're networked, remember?" <> Soundwave declared. <> Frenzy smirked, shrugged, and vaulted the barricade as Laserbeak swooped out of the sky. The two geth looked around, confused, as they suddenly lost wireless connectivity to the rest of the network, but before they could take any action, one had been cut down by Laserbeak's precision lasers and the other had been terminated with extreme prejudice - and, Sylvie had to admit, a surprising measure of skill - by Frenzy's drill fists. Warily, the group moved in. This entrance to the station was scaled for Minicons, so Frenzy, Rumble, Rewind, and Ramhorn descended to the platform level with Sylvie while the two full-size Transformers stood guard up top. "Hellooooo," Sylvie murmured quietly as she saw what was down there. Rumble scratched the back of his head. "Cargo containers?" Frenzy looked into the top of one of the containers - standardized modules used throughout Cybertron's transit system, each one about ten feet by five by five. "-Empty- cargo containers." "Well, I guess we know how the geth -got- here," Ramhorn observed. "There's gotta be a couple hundred'a these boxes in here," Rumble said. "How small d'ya think those things pack down to?" "Small enough," Sylvie replied, "that we've got a big problem." "How did they get onto Cybertron in the first place?" Rewind wondered. "SOMEBODY is asleep at the scanners down at the Hydrax Plateau Port Authority, apparently," said Sylvie. "That probably explains the burst of weird network traffic they had down there yesterday." They climbed back to the street and reported their findings, which Blaster relayed to Autobase with some urgency; then he said, "We gotta keep movin'. Jamming or not, somebody's gonna come lookin' for these two sooner or - " A geth patrol group, perhaps a dozen strong, rounded the corner at the other side of the square and, spotting the group by the station, immediately opened fire. " - scrap," Blaster finished, diving for cover. /* Looking Glass Studios "Hydroponics B/C" _System Shock 2_ (1999) */ The geth knew how to use cover too, when they weren't caught by surprise, and before long it looked like turning into one of those interminable gunfights like Sylvie had seen in old cowboy movies. Which was a situation that favored the geth, even if they were suffering greater attrition. "If they keep us pinned here much longer, we're gonna be up to our asses in reinforcements!" Sylvie pointed out. "I know!" Blaster replied. "I'm workin' on it!" <> Soundwave reported. "Steeljaw'll be with 'em shortly," said Blaster. "I just hope between 'em they have enough firepower to - aw, -hell- no," he trailed off as an enormous quadrupedal geth unit moved up behind the others. The thing was easily the size of a quite large Autobot, much bigger than the bipedal units it was supporting, and when it reached a position in the van of the geth formation, it unleashed a bolt of energy from a built-in weapon that blasted Frenzy's cover to smithereens, sending the Minicon tumbling ass-over-teakettle back into the station lobby. Sylvie consulted her database and didn't like what it told her at all. "Aw, crap, that's a Colossus." "They got one'a -those- in a standard cargo module?" Rumble said, impressed. "I guess they -do- pack up small." "I'm fine, everybody, thanks for askin'," Frenzy said as he scrambled into position next to his brother. "Who's got a plan?" <> Soundwave ordered. <> Rumble peeked above cover, then ducked again with a curse as the Colossus sent a spray of fire from smaller, rapid-fire blasters over his head. "I'm gonna have to get a lot closer," he said. "We'll cover you," Sylvie told him. "You better - hey, do you hear that?" Sylvie didn't, for a moment, until it filtered down through the noise of the firefight: the throaty bellow of a heavy piston engine, somewhere off to the east and getting steadily louder - - and with a blare of pneumatic horn and a cry of "GANGWAAAAY!" an enormous green vehicle, sort of a cross between a Meerkat patrol vehicle and a monster truck, roared into the square, slewed into a four- wheel drift, and neatly cut the Colossus's front legs out from under it. Just before the green vehicle came to a stop, a human-sized figure clad in two-tone pale gold armor sprang from the roof, where it had been crouching, and slashed across the geth machine's frontal armor, bright blue energon blades glinting from both arms. The Colossus, already falling, reeled back as its single optic exploded, then crashed to the ground on its side. It started getting up as the little figure darted into the group of bipedal geth off to the right, tearing into them with moves Sylvie recognized, even at this distance, as one of the more acrobatic of the various cyborg martial arts collectively known as the Panzerkunst. The green truck responded by backing up (complete with safety beeper, which got a laugh from Rumble) and crushing it, then, with engine roaring, commenced a series of donuts that threw up a great cloud of smoke and scattered the smaller geth in all directions. A moment later another vehicle, this one small (by comparison) and bright yellow, arrived from the same direction, then sprang up into robot mode and opened fire with a pair of forearm cannons. Within moments, the square was full of smoke and parts of defunct geth, and then the Commcen group's unexpected backup crossed to join up with them. "Boy, are we glad to see you guys," the yellow Autobot declared, converting his arm cannons back into hands. Then he blinked at the sight of Soundwave and his cassettes and added, "Well, maybe not -you- guys." Frenzy snorted. "Typical." "Hey, I'm glad to see anybody who isn't one of -those- things," the human-sized figure remarked. Sylvie couldn't tell whether she was a very small Minicon or a human in some sort of powered armor, but she definitely had a young human female's general shape, and Sylvie had never heard of a Minicon wearing a dress over (or as part of?) her armor. "What the heck is goin' on around here?" "Stinger!" said Blaster, shocked. "Sari! Bulkhead! What are you guys doin' here?" "No time, we have to move," Sylvie interrupted. "We can talk when we're not standing around at the epicenter of a huge disturbance in the geth network." "Good call," Rumble agreed. "Gettin' outta here first, explanations later." "Where do we go, though?" Frenzy asked. "This whole district's crawlin' with geth." Soundwave looked around, then pointed at the subway station's larger service entrance. <> They went all the way down to the platform, which was deserted and away from the prying eyes of surface patrols, but easily defensible if investigating units topside should decide to come down after them. Ravage and Steeljaw prowled the upper levels, vigilant for pursuit, while Laserbeak monitored the train tunnels themselves in case the geth were patrolling them. "OK," said Blaster. "Looks like the coast is clear for now. Sylv, surprised you haven't met this crew before - they've been cuttin' quite a swath through New Avalon the last couple years." "Yeah, but I've been on Meizuri for three," Sylvie said. "Hi. Sylvie Daniels." The small figure in gold turned to her, and then, with a faint, modulated transformation sound, her faceplate divided and folded away into the sides of the curiously shaped helmet she wore. This revealed a brown-skinned, pretty human face with wide eyes that, disconcertingly, glowed with the blue light of an Autobot's optics. "Hi!" she said, her voice no longer metallic. "I'm Sari. Sari Sumdac. This is Stinger," she said, indicating the yellow Autobot, "and this is Bulkhead," she added, patting the green truck on the hood. Grinning, she added, "You probably could've guessed that, huh." Then the newly arrived group delivered another surprise by revealing that there were actually four of them; Bulkhead had a passenger, a human girl dressed in a suit of black CVR-3F who climbed out in a state of great excitement so that he could transform to robot mode. "That was awesome!" she declared in a high, clear voice with a trace of a Neo-Japanese accent, shoving back her helmet's faceplate to uncover a face that went with the voice. "You guys are totally metal." Most other Autobots, apart from Jazz, might have had a problem parsing that remark, but Blaster just said, "Uh, thanks. And you are...?" "Oh, sorry, duh," said Sari. "Guys, this is Miko. She's Bulky's girlfriend." Bulkhead fidgeted uncomfortably. Miko rolled her eyes and said warningly, "SAR-iiiii." "OK, OK, she's my roommate at NAIS. But I'm telling you, I know the signs!" Sari insisted. "Whatever works," Sylvie told Miko with a shrug. She turned to Sari. "Pretty nice moves out there. Cyborg?" "Transformer," Sari replied. "Sort of. I'm kind of... me or robot-me. My dad had an accident with his DNA and a blank protoform one time." Miko snorted. "Not like that and you know it! Do we have to do this every time?" "Yes," Miko replied. Sari sighed deeply. "Anyway. Regular-me or robot-me. Regular- me has the face you can trust," she said with a cheesy grin. "Robot- me," she went on, recalling her battle mask and deploying but not using each system as she named it, "has palm repulsors (licensed from Stark Industries, sort of after the fact, that was embarrassing), these awesome forearm blades, and of course my patented energon hammer. Oh, and jet skates, those are handy. What else? Micron boosters, can't forget those. And these little wing things, which I don't think do anything but look cool, but maybe later... " She shrugged. "And, as you saw earlier," she added, retracting her mask and giving a semi- serious smirk, "mad combat skills." "And occasionally stabbing Bumblebee," Miko put in, making Stinger stifle a snort. Sari rounded on her friend, throwing up her hands. "It was the ONE TIME! Why does everybody have to bring that up?" "What are you guys DOING here, anyway?" Blaster asked. "We picked the wrong day to come down here for tapas," Bulkhead replied, causing Blaster to just blink at him. "Are you kidding? This rocks!" Miko protested. "Way cooler than cruising for robot food I can't even eat yet. Totally have to get one of those energon processor implants." "No, I mean, I thought you guys were staying at NAIS for the summer term," Blaster said. "Yeah, well... we were, but..." Stinger hesitated, as if not quite sure how to put the next part. "The -call- just... got too loud," Sari answered for him. "The guys could still put it off, but I got to the point where I couldn't sleep at night. I'd just pace. It was driving Miko up the wall." "It wasn't the pacing," Miko told her. "It was the constantly transforming your hands." She bent her fingers into the "repulsor beams" shape, imitating the sound Sari's transformations made, then relaxed them, repeating the noise. "If you gotta fidget, fidget quietly." "No, we had it pretty bad by then too," Bulkhead assured her. "We were ready. The time was right." "Do your mom and dad know you're back?" Blaster asked Stinger. "No," he admitted. "We came down here to do the tapas thing and... try to figure out how to break it to them." Blaster chuckled. "Figures. Well, I wouldn't sweat it. I expect Prime'll have a word with whoever it is at NAIS takes care of these things. Way things are goin' right now, we're gonna -need- everybody back home." "OK, so, what's with the Decepticons?" Miko asked bluntly, gesturing to Soundwave and his troops. "What are -they- doing here?" <> Soundwave replied. Miko eyed him. "Seriously? I thought you guys didn't really go in for that kind of thing." <> "... Huh." "It's a long story," Sylvie said. "Right now we ought to keep moving." "You guys might as well stick with us until we get this figured out," Blaster said. "You'll be as safe with us as you would be anywhere else in Little Iacon right now." <> Soundwave reported. He activated his chest holojector and showed them the view from Buzzsaw's optics again. Once more, the Decepticon spy had chosen a perch high above a plaza or square, but this one was much larger than the first, and it was filled with activity. "My God," Sylvie murmured as her brain absorbed the pattern. <> Soundwave said. Rezzing up blinking tags to indicate each landmark as he named it, he went on, <> The second of the landmarks, facing onto the square's south side, was devastated; the other two were guarded by Colossi. And in the rest of the sprawling city-center space... ... geth. Hundreds of them, surrounding a parked formation of the aircraft they'd seen in the distance on the security images Red Alert had shown them earlier. Now that they had a sense of scale to go by, they could see that these were transports of some kind. Each had a central boarding ramp. In the center of the square, geth troopers were herding the district's population into a holding area; there, a much taller, white- armored geth unit appeared to be... -sorting- them. Some were then forced to one group of dropships, some to another, and a few, as they watched in horror, were simply gunned down on the spot and dumped to the side. Dropships filled and lifted off, replaced by empty ones in a neat, orderly pattern. This operation had clearly been planned carefully. The whole thing was running... well, like a machine, which Sylvie supposed, given who was executing it, it was. "Where are they taking them? And what do they -want- them for?" Stinger wondered. "Does it matter?" Sari replied. "We have to get up there and STOP them." "Hold on," Blaster said. "I said you could stick with us while we figured out what was going on, but we can't take you head-on into an -assault-. You guys are -minors.-" "Well, -I'm- not," Bulkhead mumbled, but no one paid any attention. "We're Autobots," Sari shot back. "Those people need help and we're in a position to give it to them. And the longer we argue about it, the more the geth are going to take. Or kill!" she added, her voice becoming slightly shrill, as another unfortunate Minicon failed to make the cut for whatever the geth were doing and got blasted. Blaster looked at her for a moment, then turned to Miko. "And you?" "I go where they go," she replied flatly. "Um, you -do- know this is a combat zone we're entering, right?" Blaster asked. "We know. We've tried," Bulkhead replied, glancing down at Miko, who just grinned and flashed him a V-sign in reply. "Hey, at least you thought to bring a weapon," Sylvie told her, gesturing to the holstered handgun on the Japanese girl's hip. "I had to bum one off Rumble." Blaster smiled faintly. "Humans," he said with a wry glance at Sylvie. "Can't live with 'em, can't sell 'em for parts. OK, Soundwave, what's the plan, man? I assume you had one when you brought us down here." <> Soundwave replied. <> He pointed down one of the subway tunnels. <> Miko whistled. "Frontal assault. Ballsy! I'm in." Blaster shook his head, and for a second they thought he was going to argue, but a moment later it was clear he was reacting to another internal communication. "The Air Guardians are all tied up in Aravex, running CAP for the 'Con wargames. Red's gonna try to get the Little Iacon AA towers back online to keep any more geth dropships from coming in, but we're not gonna have much in the way of air support." He gave Soundwave a suspicious look. "Which is real convenient for the geth." <> Soundwave replied. <> "How do I know that?" <> Soundwave said. <> Blaster eyed him, saying nothing. "We're wasting TIME," said Sari urgently. Blaster and Soundwave stared each other down for a moment longer; then Blaster nodded. "OK. We'll play it your way. But if I find out you did have anything to do with this? You and me are gonna finish what we started at Autobot City." <> Soundwave replied. Then, dismissing the matter entirely, he issued a general recall to his cassettes (except Buzzsaw, who remained on station). Blaster did the same, then transformed to boombox mode while the others went to vehicle mode. Sylvie picked him up and carried him aboard Soundwave, Sari climbed into Stinger, and Miko boarded Bulkhead, and the little task force set off to do what they could for Little Iacon. WDF AIR STATION CYBERTRON Patricia Currier was sitting at the desk in the temporary office she'd been given, catching up on reports from some of the operations against the Federation Remnant she hadn't been part of herself, when the corner of her screen suddenly divided itself off and showed her the face of an Autobot colleague: "Jetfire to Terror. Are you there, General?" Terror keyed the channel open. "Right here, Jetfire. What's up?" "I hate to bother you when you're just getting settled in, but Blaster just commed me. He has some kind of situation developing in Little Iacon that involves the air defense network. I can't spare any bots to check it out for at least an hour - can you help me out?" "Sure thing," she replied. "I'm not doing anything that can't wait a little longer. Can you give me a little more info?" "I haven't got a lot," Jetfire admitted. "It looks like there's been some kind of network incursion, maybe tied with a physical landing, but we don't know who's involved. Details are very sketchy. It doesn't look like the 'Cons are doing it, oddly enough, but Prime wants me and my team to stay on the Aravex perimeter in case it's some kind of feint. What we do know is that the sector's aerospace defenses are down. Red Alert's working on that. Blaster's on the ground, but we have no way of getting a wide view without air assets." Terror nodded, getting to her feet. "Got it. Give me five minutes. I'll com you when my bird's powered up and you can shoot me some coordinates." "Roger that." Alexis Thi Dang knew something was up. Her official job was as a civilian liaison between the Autobot government and the Wedge Defense Force, but she was an Autobot ally of long standing in proportion to her young age - at twenty-four, she'd been involved with them in one way or another for almost exactly half her life - and she had extensive contacts in the Minicon community, particularly around Iacon. As such, it hadn't taken long for word, however sketchy, of the chaos in Little Iacon to reach her. Now she emerged from the air station's admin complex, where her office was, and headed across the apron toward the visiting officers' quarters, intending to ask General Currier if she knew anything more about the trouble. She was about halfway across when she noticed a tall figure who looked like an early-model Decepticon Sky Soldier standing near the SF-15D prototype, examining it thoughtfully with hand to chin. "Hey!" she shouted across the 30 or so yards that separated them. The Transformer turned, giving the "me?" sign. She didn't recognize him - his general type, yes, but she'd never seen this particular individual before - but she noticed even at this distance that he was battered and in need of repairs, and that he wore no faction markings. "This is a restricted area!" Alexis went on, quickening her pace, then breaking into a run. "Keep away from that aircraft!" "I was just admiring it," he replied. "I beg your pardon. I didn't mean any harm." Then he squinted at her, his optic shutters narrowing, and the half of his face that wasn't an immobile emergency patch took on a look of puzzlement. Then, somewhat to her surprise, he looked startled, turned, transformed, and streaked away, leaving behind just a contrail and an echo. Alexis skidded to a halt alongside the Cosmo Eagle, deeply confused. Had he -recognized- her? She was quite sure she'd never seen him before... ... but, she realized with a shock, his voice had been very familiar. Involuntarily, her right hand closed into a fist against her upper chest. She was still standing there, staring off toward the horizon, when General Currier arrived a minute later, fitting together her flight armor as she ran across the tarmac. "Hey, Alexis," she said. "Problem?" "Uh! Oh, uh, no, General," Alexis replied. "There was an unauthorized Transformer out here looking at your aircraft, but... it doesn't look like he touched it." "Autobot, Decepticon... ?" Terror wondered. "Non-aligned... I think," Alexis told her. Terror did a quick walkaround, ceremonially kicked the starboard main gear's tire, then shrugged and pulled down the boarding ladder. "Looks OK." She grinned. "Maybe he was transcanning it," she said wryly, then looked closer. "Hey, are you OK? You look like you saw a ghost." "Maybe I did," Alexis murmured. "Huh?" "Never mind." Alexis shook her head. "I assume you're out here because you've heard about the situation in Little Iacon?" "What little Jetfire could tell me about it. Have you got anything that might help?" "Only that the Minicons of the surrounding districts are frightened," Alexis told her. "Whatever happened down there happened fast, fast enough that very little word came out of the city before it went dark. Little Iacon's neighbors fear the worst." "Well, hopefully it's just some kind of glitch," Terror said, though neither she nor Alexis believed that, as she climbed up to the cockpit and started strapping in. "You better get clear!" PLATFORM #7G LITTLE IACON CENTRAL STATION The ad hoc strike group Miko had dubbed Task Force Megadeth (for reasons which eluded Stinger, whose musical education hadn't reached that point yet) arrived on the platform level of Little Iacon Central Station more in the manner of Ministry - fast, loud, and absolutely relentless. /* Ministry "Jesus Built My Hotrod (Short, Pusillanimous, So-They-Can-Fit- More-Commercials-On-The-Radio Edit)" _Jesus Built My Hotrod_ (1991) */ The geth presence on the platform level was fairly minimal - the synthetics clearly thought they had the district locked down such that they were unlikely to be attacked via the tunnels. Two hundred yards out, Sari disembarked from Stinger without stopping, literally hitting the ground running, and with her jet skates on she easily kept pace with Bulkhead as he took point. The geth sentries on the platform spotted him - he wasn't making the slightest effort to be stealthy, after all - but their light hand weapons were useless against his forward armor. The biggest member of Task Force Megadeth jumped from the tracks to the concourse without even bothering to transform, crushing human- scale geth troopers under his wheels, and slung himself sideways across the platform, mowing down barricades and sentries alike with his mass. At the end of the slide, as if it were all part of one practiced maneuver, he transformed to robot mode and Miko dove out between two of his sliding panels. She hit the floor rolling, bounced to her feet, drew her sidearm, and blasted the one geth trooper Bulkhead hadn't hit in the chest. Sylvie, who was jumping out of Soundwave with Blaster under her arm at the time, nevertheless had the well-honed tactical awareness of a Worlds Welfare Work Association Trouble Consultant - one with little field experience, admittedly, but that experience had been hard-won on the battlefields of the Galactic Civil War. She was a small-arms expert, second in her class at the 3WA Academy only to her partner Priss Morgan. As such, even from a distance of twenty or so yards, she recognized the distinctive profile and even more distinctive bark of an ExoSalusia Phalanx heavy pistol. This, she knew, was a weapon designed to kill Boomers, back in the days when GENOM Corporation's Military Arm had been the clearest, most present danger to the Empire of Salusia's interests. Not for nothing had the Salusian Marines who carried them in the War of Corporate Occupation nicknamed the type "the Dismantler". And, as Miko had just demonstrated, it was just as effective against geth soldier units. She flashed the Neo-Japanese girl a thumbs-up as she piled into cover behind a bench at the platform's edge; Miko, her face invisible behind the mirrored visor of her CVR helmet, threw the horns in reply with her free hand, then pivoted to cover the platform entrance as a mass of geth, summoned by their comrades' sudden offlining, flooded down the escalators from above. Sylvie grinned, knowing what came next, and slung Blaster across the tiled floor so that he passed between Stinger's feet and came to rest at the base of the banked escalators. The oncoming geth hesitated, puzzled, and then recoiled as the garishly colored piece of archaic personal audio equipment before them suddenly became a full-sized and very unfriendly Autobot. The platform was getting crowded, and Soundwave and Blaster both decided it wouldn't do to add to the confusion by deploying their Minicon troops down here; instead, the four full-size Transformers made a flying wedge and swept up the central escalators, crushing and blasting any geth foolhardy enough to stand in their way. The two humans and Sari flanked them on the Minicon-scaled stairs, picking off stragglers. "Watch out - wallcrawlers!" Miko cried, firing at something on the curved ceiling above the main escalators. Sylvie didn't see it at first, until Miko's fire hit it and caused it to fall amid a splash of some whitish fluid: a geth shell, about the size of the troopers, but skinnier, longer-limbed, and not armored. She looked up and saw more of them, clinging to the tunnel ceiling. They moved with a quick, darting motion that seemed entirely un-synthetic, and seemed to have some kind of beam weapon as opposed to the soldier geth's pulse rifles. "Oh, I don't -think- so," Sari muttered; then, getting up a bit of a run, she hopped the handrail at the side of her escalator and -ran up the curved wall-, scything through the group of them with her glowing blades and coming down on the other side, next to Miko. "Showoff," Miko grumbled, ejecting a spent energy cell from her Phalanx. The ticket hall was more heavily guarded, particularly since their incursion into the area had, by this point, drawn the full attention of all the geth in the square. From here, through the windows, Task Force Megadeth could see the sorting and loading operations going on in the center of the square, perhaps a hundred yards away - but there were an awful lot of geth, and larger ones than down below, between them and the prisoners. "Frontal assault, phase two," Stinger declared with a satisfied smile, blazing away at the smaller geth as they rushed into the room. "Gettin' pretty crowded in here," Blaster observed tensely, kicking a geth Destroyer halfway to the doors. "We gotta get some space before they bunch up so much they push us right back down the stairs!" "Guess that's my cue," Bulkhead remarked. So saying, he broke into a trot, then a run, bullrushing geth out of his path with his sheer mass, then leaped into the air. As he flew, his right hand transformed into a wrecking ball. He came down like a swimmer doing a cannonball in the center of the lobby. The impact cratered the floor and scattered geth out of the immediate area - and then he made the hole bigger by launching his wrecking ball toward the entrance on a cable, crushing everything in its path, and then whirling himself through a full circle, with predictable results. "That enough room for ya?" he asked, retracting the ball and turning it back into a hand. "I taught him that," said Miko smugly. "Whatever you wanted more room for, Blaster, do it quick, 'cause I think they're gonna fill it up again!" Stinger cautioned, pointing to the incoming next wave. "OK, boys!" Blaster declared. "Rewind, Steeljaw - do what you do best! Ramhorn - cover Sylvie!" <> Soundwave agreed. <> Then, after glancing over his shoulder for just an instant at Miko, the Decepticon comm officer did something entirely unexpected and started playing a music track of his own - one that drew instantaneous approval from both the girl and his Minicon associates. Sylvie didn't place the tune at first, though she was sure she'd heard it: it started with a distorted, snarling wail of electric guitar, not so much a melodic intro as a demonstration of volume, thrown down as a challenge to the listener. Not until Frenzy sprang last from Soundwave's chest panel, transforming to robot mode and diving straight into the oncoming wave of geth with both drills screaming, did she peg it, as Frenzy roared along with the vocalist the opening line: "KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!" /* Bad Brains with Henry Rollins "Kick Out the Jams" _Pump Up the Volume: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack_ (1990) */ The hard-charging music and Frenzy's sheer fury, out of all proportion to his size, seemed to galvanize the rest of Task Force Megadeth to even greater efforts. They exploded out of Central Station like shrapnel from a detonating bomb, tearing into the converging geth, hell-bent on reaching the middle of the square and freeing the Minicons who remained trapped there. There was no attempt at subtlety here, no strategy nor guile. Buzzsaw, who had remained on station the whole time to monitor the situation, broke cover and started savaging the geth's flank with his razor-sharp talons, beak and his twin mortar cannons, while Laserbeak's precise ruby lasers sought out the more critical-looking units and surgically removed them from the network. Ravage lived up to his name, springing from shadow to shadow, leaving destruction and the emotionless synthetic equivalent of confusion in his wake. Steeljaw was less stealthy but no less lethal, ripping into the flank opposite Buzzsaw. Rewind shadowed Blaster closely, laying down accurate covering fire. Rumble and Frenzy went straight up the middle, smashing and carving all before them. Neither even bothered with his blasters - their piledrivers and drill fists did all the talking for them. And Ramhorn stayed by Sylvie, giving any geth who got too close a taste of the horn. Even in the midst of this chaos, Sylvie had the mental bandwidth to take note of several things, though she wouldn't be consciously aware that she'd noticed them until later: Sari and Stinger complemented each other spectacularly in combat, each always seeming to be looking at what the other couldn't see. Sylvie had heard that Transformers and humans (or other Transformers) who had undergone the binary bonding process could do something like that, achieve an almost psychic rapport that made them able, with practice, to fight as more or less a single being, like two hands on one body. Then again, she and Priss could do something like that too, on their best days, and they didn't have any sort of technological or psionic link at all, as far as she knew - so maybe it was just the result of long and strenuous training. She wondered how old they were. Blaster had said they were minors, but she'd never heard of an underage Transformer before - and he'd said something about Stinger having parents, too, which was something that bore investigation later on. Bulkhead and Miko, by contrast, didn't fight as one unit so much as stay out of each other's way, but they were as good at that, in their way, as Sari and Stinger were at interlocking their spheres of battle. Sylvie would have been hard-pressed to say which one of them was the more fearless - the huge, invincible-looking Autobot warrior or the tiny, fragile-looking human girl - but they both gave the fight everything they had. And, most shockingly of all, Blaster and Soundwave were fighting -as a team,- shoulder to shoulder - occasionally back to back - in the van of Task Force Megadeth's increasingly ragged formation. It was like watching them fight the network incursion, using the intimate familiarity with each other's capabilities their long and intense rivalry had given them to read two steps ahead and adjust their maneuvers accordingly: turning knowledge honed for the development of countermeasures to the improvisation of cooperative tactics instead. The thought, even in the middle of this mad scramble to save and survive, made Sylvie smile as she forced her full attention into her -own- sphere of battle. Unarmored and wielding an unfamiliar weapon, she was perhaps at the greatest disadvantage of any of them; but she was MegaZone's daughter, Yuri Daniels's daughter, a 3WA TroCon and a member of the ACROSS Getter Team. Sylvie Anri Daniels was nobody's deadweight. That wasn't the whimpering statement of insecurity and bravado some people took it for. She didn't feel any burning need to prove it. She just lived it, every moment of her life, the way other people breathed. She gunned down one of the wallcrawling geth - based on their tendency to leap from place to place, she'd mentally dubbed them Hoppers, since they didn't appear in her database by any name at all - and looked past the spire it had been preparing to spring from. "-Scrap!-" she yelled over the din of combat. "Another dropship lifting off! Dammit, we've got to get some kind of a handle on the airspace in this district or we're going to lose everybody!" ALTIHEX Two Autobots pulled to a halt a block short of the Little Iacon wall, having taken the long way around to avoid the half-crashed speedway network. They sprang up into robot mode, then immediately took cover behind the road median, peering over it at their target a half- mile distant. "Looks like the reports were right," the larger of the two, a slab-sided, heavily armored figure in medium blue and red, murmured. Red Alert nodded, deploying a magnifying visor over his optics and zooming in on the base of the Little Iacon antiaircraft command tower. "Geth combat forms. According to the rough database Blaster relayed to me from Sylvie's records, the two red ones are called Juggernauts... " "Apt," his companion observed. "... and the quadrupedal one is an Armature." Red Alert retracted his mag visor and sighed. "At least it isn't a Colossus." "Small favors," the other remarked. "OK. Here's how I think we should play this. You're faster than I am and my armor's tougher than yours. I'll keep these clowns busy. You get into the tower and do what you do." Red Alert chuckled. "Not our subtlest plan, but then we're pressed for time." He nodded. "Good luck, Nightstick." "Luck is for amateurs," Nightstick replied, grinning; then he transformed back to his armored-car vehicle mode, rounded the corner, and made for the tower at full speed, opening fire with his roof-mounted twin blaster cannon. Red Alert waited until the geth guarding the base of the tower were fully engaged, then transformed and beat it for the tower entrance with all the speed he could muster. The Juggernauts noticed him - would have been hard not to, what with his bright red and white armor - and moved to intercept. Nightstick rammed the Armature, knocking it off its feet, and used it as a kind of ramp to spring into the air, transforming as he did so. He came down almost on top of the nearer Juggernaut to Red Alert's path, burying his sonic gladius in the mechanoid's shoulder, and sprayed the other one with missiles from one of his shoulder compartments. Red Alert threaded his way through the mayhem at full speed, transformed just short of the tower entrance, and crashed through shoulder-first, rolling and coming up on one knee with his particle beam rifle at the ready. The tower lobby contained a half-dozen geth soldier forms, slightly smaller than the ones outside - "Destroyers", according to his database. He gunned down the nearest one, then sprang over its fallen shell - tagging one of the ones across the room with a shoulder- fired missile as he went - and into cover behind a bank of secondary consoles. All the systems down here, Red Alert well knew, were just status displays and secondaries. The controls that would enable him to reactivate the AA grid for the Little Iacon sector were in the master control room at the top of the tower... and there were sure to be a lot more geth between him and them. That was all right, though. It had been a very stressful last few days, and if there was one thing Red Alert had learned about himself since he'd taken the job as Chief of Public Safety for all Cybertron, it was that stress relief was very important. He broke cover and started cleaning house. AUTOBOT AIR DEFENSE ZONE 17 (URAYA) ALTITUDE 25,000 FEET "Eagle-1 to Stardeck," said Terror into her comm. "Go ahead, Eagle-1," the voice of the Air Station Cybertron controller on duty - not a Transformer, just a callsign - replied. "I have a visual on Little Iacon," Terror reported. "Hostile aerospace activity is confirmed. Looks like Red Alert was right - it's some kind of transports. I've got two inbound and one heading out. Hard to tell from this far up, but it looks like a helluva firefight's going on in Central Square. Request priority tasking." "Roger, Eagle-1, wait one. ... Eagle-1, be advised, outbound transports are believed to be carrying Minicon abductees. Do not engage except with ion pulse weapons." "Well, that simplifies things, I haven't got any," Terror said. "Shit! If I had my Valk I could try to force them down in battroid mode... " "Can't be helped, Eagle-1. Recommend you concentrate on the inbound vessels. Good news is, you just crossed the Little Iacon sector perimeter. You are clear to engage. I repeat, weapons free." "Roger, Stardeck. Vectoring to intercept." Terror winged over, dumping altitude, as she switched on her weapons and locked her targeting system on the nearer of the two inbound ships to the plaza. As she did, her proximity sensor peeped, and a moment later another aircraft streaked past, supersonic, so close it rocked her Cosmo Eagle with its shockwave. "What the - Stardeck, I've got - " "Oh, no need to involve them," said a cheerful, rasping tenor voice, and the battered face of a Decepticon Sky Soldier appeared on her center VDU. "Don't mind me. I'm just going to have a crack at bringing down that outbound transport. After all," he added with a faint smirk out of the side of his face that could smirk, "I -have- got a battroid mode... as it were." Terror considered that, decided there wasn't much she could do to stop him anyway, and shrugged. "Couldn't hurt. And you are?" "Just a patriot, defending his homeworld," the stranger replied, winking one of his red optics. "See you around, General. And may I say before we both get to work - that is a fine-looking aircraft you're flying there." "Uh... thanks. Eagle-1 out." He disappeared; a moment later the voice of Stardeck asked, "General? Say again? Your last transmission was one by five." "Disregard, Stardeck." Then she thumbed in her afterburners and dove on the first transport, opening fire with the Cosmo Eagle's twin Gatling blasters, too busy to explain further. LITTLE IACON CENTRAL SQUARE Sylvie saw the explosions bloom from the forward segment of the closer insectoid dropship and watched it fall into the deserted streets to the east of the square; then her nanoenhanced vision caught the glint of starlight from the silver hull of Terror's SF-15D and whooped with joy, punching a fist in the air. "Yeah! Get 'em, Terror!" she cried. The geth noticed too - they could hardly fail to - and it seemed to make them double their efforts. It was as though they realized that their escape route was being cut off, and became all the more determined to force another way out. /* The Prodigy "You'll Be Under My Wheels" _Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned_ (2004) */ For all their fury and firepower, Task Force Megadeth hadn't made much progress in the - good God, it had only been five minutes? - since they burst out into the square. The geth seemed to have inexhaustible numbers; they kept pouring into the square from side streets in answer to calls for reinforcements, having, as Soundwave predicted, figured out a way around the Transformers' signal jamming. Slowly but surely, the task force was being squeezed toward the corner of the square, which was bad in two ways: one, it meant they weren't getting closer to their objective, and two, they were starting to edge toward a serious danger of being bottled up and then overrun. As it was, they were already being forced onto the defensive, taking cover behind rubble and damaged features of the square, tightening up their arcs of fire. Their air units still ranged freely, but Buzzsaw and Laserbeak could only do so much. Above, Sylvie heard the sound of something powering up, motors engaging. Thinking it might be geth trying to get the drop on them from the air defense tower in the corner of the square, she turned, looked up, and saw the twin-barreled turret atop the tower swivel... then open fire, wiping a second incoming dropship out of the sky. "All right Red!" Blaster yelled, blasting a Juggernaut before it could lob a rocket at Stinger. His weapons seemed to have little effect on the bigger geth platforms, leaving him at something of a disadvantage as the smaller ones became fewer in number. "Stinger! What's your status?" Sylvie asked, ducking into cover alongside him. "Low weapon charge?" "They're limited!" Stinger replied, blasting away at a Destroyer to no visible avail. He hunkered down as a rocket exploded against the wall behind him and explained, "I'm not authorized for full-power weapons. I've got a software block in my status computer that limits my stingers to 30% power. It won't come off 'til I clock 568 total elapsed petacycles. 'Bout six more months." Sylvie flinched as a spray of plasma fire spalled the top of the barricade she was crouched behind. "Fuck! Are you kidding me?" "Wish I was," Stinger said, laying down a bit more ineffective fire. "I told you I could fix that for you!" Sari called across the narrow walkway separating her corner of the sunken corner plaza from theirs. "Not really the time, Sari!" Stinger replied, and then, "Agh!" as a heavy bolt from an Armature tagged his shoulder and sent him sprawling to the ground. "Stinger!" Sari cried. "I'm OK!" he called back, though his shoulder was a smoking wreck and he was struggling to rise. "Hold your position!" Sylvie peeked above the barricade and saw the heaviest geth force yet closing in on them. They'd wiped out almost all the trooper- scale units now, so the force moving toward them was smaller in sheer numbers than the one they'd started with, but it was almost entirely Juggernauts and up in size and power - and far in the back, beyond the small knot of Armatures and Destroyers still hemming in the remaining Minicon prisoners, she saw what looked like another regiment of geth pour into the middle of the square from the main boulevards, with a pair of Colossi backing them up. "This is about 20 seconds from being a last stand!" Bulkhead called, crushing an Armature with an overhand swing of his wrecking ball. "Anybody got any more bright ideas, now's the time!" Rumble smashed his fists together, still incandescent with the fury that had carried him and his brother halfway to the Minicon holding area before the tide of geth had forced them back. They were Decepticons, yes, but they were also Minicons - the one was a tie of allegiance; the other ran much deeper. Neither was willing to let so many of their fellows be taken by these alien things without giving it every last bit of fight that was in them - and, as anyone who had ever faced them in battle knew, that was a hell of a lot more fight than their miniature shells looked like they could contain. "Come on, bro!" he snarled, clapping Frenzy on the shoulder. "If these fuckin' flashlight heads are gonna kill us, let's go show 'em how a bot from the Sonic Canyons dies!" And suddenly, with a mental flash like the detonation of a stun grenade, Sylvie knew what she had to do. Crouching fully behind her cover, she powered up her Curtana, loaded an infosphere probe utility, and saw what she expected to see in the holographic display field: these geth were cybernetic dual lifeforms. For every synthmuscle-and-metal shell marching toward them across the square, there was a swarm of those insect-like runtime avatars in its cyberspace equivalent. Without worrying about her slagged barrier collar, Sylvie cabled straight to the Curtana, her fingers flying over its holographic keyboard as she ran a lightning-quick simulation to see if her idea had any hope of working - and saw that it did. As fast as she could, she bundled it into an encrypted flashgram and fired it to Soundwave and Blaster. Soundwave finished interpreting it first. Almost instantly, he turned to her and nodded. <> Blaster was right behind him, with a slightly more equivocal but no less willing, "That just might work. And it ain't like we got a lot to lose at this point." He and Soundwave looked at each other, made an instant's optic contact, and nodded. Then both turned, sprang toward Sylvie, and transformed. She was already running, catching one in each hand. "COVERING FIRE!" she bellowed in her best battlefield command voice, which was copied almost tone-for-tone from her mother's. Then she raised Blaster in one hand and Soundwave in the other, aiming their speakers toward the oncoming geth army, and stepped out from behind the last of the cover, squarely into the middle of the steel-bricked walkway leading out of their corner and into the main square. Fire from Bulkhead's massive blasters, Stinger's much smaller ones, Sari's repulsors, Rumble and Frenzy's thruster guns, even Miko's pistol (with which, Sylvie noticed again, she was an excellent shot) ripped through the air around her, making the geth check their advance for an instant. It was all the time Sylvie needed. "BLOCK YOUR RECEPTORS!" she roared, and with that she sent a single cybernetic command to her Curtana, cuing Soundwave and Blaster to load the same program and run the same audio track simultaneously. In the real world and on the other side of the wire, both comm officers' outputs cranked straight up to "11". On one side music, and on the other side tailored cybernoise, poured forth at literally staggering volume. /* Iggy and the Stooges "Search and Destroy" _Raw Power_ (1997 remixed edition) */ Sylvie was driven back by the sheer wall of SOUND suddenly produced by the two Transformers. She grimaced and dug in her heels, her arms stretched straight out, each hand holding onto to the two robots' equipment modes. Her grip was so tight that she feared that she might break some of her finger bones, if the heavy vibrations from the two didn't do in her hands first. But that was nothing compared to the sonic, seismic, and subspace distortions now ripping across the open area, slamming straight into the massed bipedal and quadruped geth. They staggered and shook as they tried to regroup, falling back on default subroutines as their communication network was ripped to shreds by the etherwave onslaught. But it was to no avail, and as their gyro-stabilizers began to give out from the seismic vibrations blanketing the terrain, the sonic disruptions added their own counterpoints, shattering critical circuits, vulnerable components, and weapon collimators with dispatch. Sylvie thought she could almost -see- the disturbances crisscrossing the area; the sound and fury produced by Blaster and Soundwave's harmonic output was -that intense-. Privately, she was glad she had the 3WA's standard tactical cochlear implants; not only did they allow her to damp the noise to the point where it wouldn't fry her -own- brain, she wouldn't be walking around deaf until her ears could regenerate afterward. And even so - and even though she was behind the direct blast itself - she was nearly knocked out. The cassette crew wasn't doing much better, taking cover where they could. Rewind and Buzzsaw had retreated, choosing a niche in a nearby alley that didn't look like it would spontaneously collapse. Laserbeak, Steeljaw, and Ravage took shelter behind (and beneath) an overturned trash container. Even Frenzy and Rumble, easily the two noisiest and anarchic of the Decepticons, lovers of thrash rock music so hard and grating that it could shatter dilithium, were standing stock- still at the sight and sound of the chaos around them... ... but not for the same reason as the rest of their brethren. As lovers of hardcore rock and appreciators of the classics, Rumble and Frenzy had become immobile with shock, paralyzed by a sort of -religious ecstasy- at hearing the Stooges played at genuinely reality-warping volume. Never in their wildest dreams did they ever think anyone would get their boss and Blaster to play -any- track together, much less one that ruled as hard as "Search and Destroy". They were so engrossed in the music that they didn't notice the fact that Bulkhead, Stinger, and Sari were now taking advantage of the geth's paralysis, wading out - even with Stinger's bad arm and ineffective weapons - to lay down some serious scrapping on their paralyzed foes. (They also didn't notice Miko in the back, headbanging and throwing the horns, as the faceplate of her CVR helmet cracked right across.) Only Ramhorn remained on the immediate field of battle, his legs foursquare and locked in position beside Sylvie Daniels, his horn lowered and optics flaring, serving as the last line of defense in case any of the enemy synthetics managed to survive the acoustic or physical carnage. Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, only Cybertronians and humans remained alive in Little Iacon Central Square. Sylvie raised herself up on her elbows, blinking, and looked around. The world sounded like a great hollow dome with a waterfall beneath it until her aural implants finished rebooting. Toward the end they'd shut her vestibulocochlear nerves down entirely to prevent permanent damage - which explained, she imagined, why she was lying sprawled on her back amid the rubble of the square. Soundwave and Blaster, back in robot mode and apparently unconscious, lay in similar positions to either side of her. A moment later, both of them stirred and sat slowly up, holding their heads. "OK, wow, ow," Blaster said. "I like that song, but that usage is NOT going on my Top Forty anytime soon." "Can't argue with the results, though," Sylvie replied with a wan grin. <> Soundwave agreed. Miko ran over to them, her cracked visor open, and knelt down next to Sylvie. "THAT WAS _AWESOME!_" she yelled at the top of her voice. Sylvie winced. "You don't have to yell," she said. "My implants reset, I'm fine." "WHAT?" Miko asked. "Oh," said Sylvie. She dug in her pack, came up with a Miraculon field ampule, and plugged it into the medical port on Miko's CVR plastron. "GIVE IT FIVE MINUTES!" she hollered. "YOU'LL BE FINE!" Miko gave her a thumbs-up and the kind of smile that said she wouldn't have minded if it'd required -surgery- to put her right after an experience that sublime. Strange girl, Sylvie thought. I quite like her. Then she struggled to her feet, Blaster and Soundwave rising as well, to take stock of the mess they'd made. It was total. Smashed, burned, crushed, slashed, or just plain fried geth shells and pieces of same lay scattered everywhere, amid rubble and wreckage left behind by the battle itself. In the middle of the plaza, deafened and stunned Minicons were hesitantly thanking Bulkhead, Sari, and Stinger for the rescue. In one back corner, the lone geth dropship that was still on the ground when the endgame began lay over on its side, burning. All else was sparking, smoking, twisted ruin. And then, as a sort of cherry on top of the craziest day of her young life, Sylvie Daniels saw... it. Another geth dropship, descending toward the square from the east. For a moment she thought it was another inbound, one that had slipped through the reactivated AA net - but the towers surrounding the square weren't moving to engage, and Terror's Cosmo Eagle, now coming into view behind it, was just following it down, not attacking. Then she realized it was on fire, its engines trailing flame and smoke behind it as it mushed unsteadily toward the ground - but it wasn't completely out of control, that much was plain from the way it moved. Sylvie squinted, looking more closely, then dug her collapsible binoculars out of her field kit and raised them to her eyes. There was a maroon-and-black Decepticon Sky Soldier standing on the upper hull of the geth transport, just above the blackened, cratered scar where the forward sensor heads had been. His right hand was raised above his head like a bullrider's in a rodeo; in his left, he clutched a fistful of sputtering cables he'd apparently dragged from within the transport's hull, their energies crackling and arcing all along his arm. His face was split in a huge, almost maniacal grin as he rode the beast down, wringing the vaguest semblance of control out of its burning engines and shattered core systems. With a sort of strange, ponderous majesty, the wrecked transport scraped over the roofs of the buildings bordering the square to the east, flared clumsily, and plowed almost gently into the ground. The wreck threw up a cascade of crumpled steel as it skidded, with a shriek of metal on metal and a great bow wave of orange sparks, halfway across the plaza. It came to rest, listing slightly to starboard, a half-dozen yards short of the spot where a startled Bulkhead had instinctively stepped in front of the still-dazed Minicon rescuees. Still grinning fiercely, the stranger jumped down from the ship's hunched back, jetted around to the side before landing, and blew the hull open with a couple of missiles, then announced in a high, rasping voice, "Last stop: Little Iacon Central Square! Thanks for choosing Cybertron Transit. Don't forget your belongings!" From within the shattered hull, another group of Minicons, equally dazed, emerged hesitantly, looking around in shock. "Blaster to Red Alert," Blaster declared. "The situation in Little Iacon is contained. Lift the sector lockdown and get search-and- rescue in here ASAP. We've got a -bunch- of people need medical attention in a hurry." "Roger that, Blaster. Help is on the way," Red Alert's voice replied. "Good job." "You too, Red. Those AA towers came back online just in time." Terror swooped her SF-15D low over the plaza, saw that everything was under control, and turned for home, waggling her wings. Task Force Megadeth waved; the Sky Soldier sketched a jaunty, casual salute, then turned and strolled toward Soundwave and Blaster. "Well!" he declared at the sight of the two of them surrounded by the obvious outcome of a hypersonic attack - one that he'd been able to hear even as he dueled with, and eventually mastered, the dropship he'd just ridden back to ground. Addressing Sylvie, he asked, "Your handiwork, I presume?" "I had help," Sylvie replied, gesturing to the two comm officers. The stranger half-smiled. "Of course - but I daresay it was your idea. Surely -these- two would never have thought of it," he added with a smirking gesture that took in both Blaster and Soundwave. Blaster was staring at him, his face blank with surprise. "I know that voice... " he murmured. Soundwave's face was -always- blank, but he still managed to register almost as much shock as he'd shown at Megatron's sudden reappearance as he said, <<... Starscream!>> The stranger bowed. "At your service." "That's... OK, no, that's impossible," Blaster objected. "Pff," Starscream replied. "What. -Megatron- comes back from the dead and everyone's, ooh, all hail Megatron," he said with a slightly camp handwave, "but -I'm- not allowed?" He shook his head. "Typical." Then, kneeling down and leaning over Sylvie to address her again, he went on, "Regardless, a very impressive piece of work, human. If I hadn't heard it with my own receptors I wouldn't have believed it. The bore and the beatnik, working together for a common cause." Blaster looked uncomfortable. "Oh, hey, well... guess we did." Soundwave shrugged. <> Blaster let out a brief laugh. "Nah. It's cool. Shake on it?" Soundwave looked down at Blaster's offered hand, then up at Blaster again, as if he didn't know what to do with this unexpected offer of detente. He looked down again, and saw Sylvie looking up at him. She nodded, a slight smile touching her lips. <> he agreed, and he shook Blaster's hand with his own. AUTOBASE COMMCEN IACON Battered and field-repaired but unbowed, Task Force Megadeth returned to Autobase with Starscream in tow. His presence raised a few eyebrows at the gates, but since he wasn't really recognizable in his current form, nobody reacted with alarm - just puzzlement as to why this beat-up early-model Sky Soldier, apparently non-aligned, was being let into Autobase with the newly minted heroes of Little Iacon. Still, Blaster vouched for him, so in he went. Commcen was bustling, with a double shift of techs and comm operators pulled in to try and get a handle on the fallout from the Little Iacon crisis. The geth were gone, either destroyed or escaped, but there was still the investigation of how they'd pulled off their intrusion to be done, and various aftereffects, like the crashed security net in that sector, to be repaired. And, at the same time, there was the game in Aravex. "What'd we miss?" Sylvie asked sarcastically as she returned to the Minicon station next to the console Soundwave had staked out as his own before. "The game's gone to phase 3," Lightspeed reported. "Megatron ordered a shift from positioning and exploratory tactics to fully active operations about half an hour ago. Looks like the RoE he transmitted are for a simultaneous capture-the-flag type scenario. Each team has an objective to defend and one to acquire from the other side at the same time. Couple of small firefights already, but nobody's quite built up any momentum yet." "Tell you what, though," Nosecone chipped in, "the Reds are fighting like -hell-. I don't know what Thundercracker did to fire them up, but it worked." "Oh, Soundwave, you've got a bunch of traffic from Megatron and the two teams' comm guys buffered at your console," Lightspeed added. "Mostly stuff for the game log." <> Soundwave said, taking his seat and plugging in; then he startled the Technobots slightly by adding, <> They blinked at him, then looked at Sylvie, who shrugged. "Work in progress," she said. "Ooooo... K," said Strafe. Then, glancing warily across the room, he pointed with his chin at the battered Sky Soldier leaning against the wall by the door and asked, "Who's your friend? He looks like he could use some time in a CR chamber." "Would you believe me if I said 'Starscream'?" Sylvie asked with a smirk. Three consoles away, helping to coordinate the efforts of Iacon's small WDF garrison to help Red Alert's overextended department secure Little Iacon, Alexis paused, looking toward Sylvie with shock on her face; then she swiveled to see the same battered jet warrior she'd seen checking out General Currier's SF-15 before. He noticed her looking at him and glanced away, his half-patched face unreadable. Before she could do anything about it, though, Scattershot got everyone's attention by blurting, "What the -scrap?-" "What?" Blaster asked, breaking away from the impromptu debriefing he was giving Red Alert to cross to the Technobot leader's console. "I just lost Aravex," Scattershot said, flicking switches, then banging a fist down on his console. "How is this happening?" "What do you mean you lost Aravex?" Blaster asked. "Everything just went out. All my links to the sector security net, the boundary stations, even the video feed from Cosmos. All dark." He made a low "powering down" noise. "Beeewwww. Just like that, gone." <> Soundwave said. <> "More geth?" Blaster palmed his forehead. "Oh, man, my luck canNOT be this bad." "No," Red Alert called from his station. "This is different. Nobody's masking the cameras or satellite imagery feeds for Aravex, like they did for Little Iacon. They're just -down-. Whoever's doing this doesn't care that we've noticed." He pressed a key. "Red Alert to Jetfire. Come in, Jetfire." Nothing. "Blaster to Optimus Prime. We got another mess developin' in your neighborhood, big boss. You read me? Over." Blaster tuned across a few more frequency bands, then gave up. "Slag. This is -weird.- It's like Aravex... ain't -there.-" Starscream levered himself away from the wall and said, "I'll go check it out." Red Alert turned and eyed him. "And who might you be?" he asked. The battered Sky Soldier half-smirked. "Red Alert," he said reproachfully. "I'm crushed you don't remember your old friend Starscream." Red Alert's optics went wide. "... You... that... how?" "It doesn't sound like we've got time for that," Starscream told him. "Do you want my help or not? Bear in mind I'm going there regardless," he added. "I'd hate for Almighty Megatron to get himself scrapped again before I have a chance to tell him how glad I am that he's back among us." Red Alert stared at him for a second, unspeaking. "He helped us out in Little Iacon," Sylvie told him. "'S true," Blaster agreed. "Saved a whole bunch'a Minicons the geth had already carted off." Red Alert eyed the ex-Decepticon for a second or two longer, then made his decision and nodded. "Go," he said. "Try to keep in touch with Commcen as long as you can." "I'll do my best," Starscream told him. "I don't suppose you have any backup you could send with me? That charming woman with the silver fighter, perhaps." As if on cue, General Currier's face appeared on a screen near Red Alert's station. "Red, it's Terror," she said. "I'm rearming now. I can be down there in 15 minutes." "We'd appreciate it, General," Red Alert told her. "Be aware, though - we have no idea what you'll be flying into. Whatever's blacked out comms in that sector could have a nasty surprise for anyone who comes around investigating." "Well, if I wanted a quiet life I'd open a flower shop," Terror replied with a smile. "Setting my waypoints now. Should be airborne again in - " She glanced at something outside her commset camera's field of view. " - 90 seconds." "We've got a wingman for you, if you want him," Red Alert added, turning his station's pickup to show her Starscream. "We've met," Terror said dryly. "Why not? Crazy help's better than no help at all. I learned that from 300 years flying next to Haywire." Starscream grinned. "Now there's a legacy to live up to," he observed. "Right, then, I'm off. Expect me when you see me." In the wake of his exit, nobody noticed Alexis slipping out after him. "He's... different," Frenzy mused. Rumble snorted. "Yeah, well, bein' dead probably does that," he said. "Look at Megatron." "I wonder," Sylvie murmured; then she shook her head and got back to work, backing up the Technobots and Soundwave as they tried to find a way through the firewall that had sealed off Aravex. And trying not to think too much about what might be happening to Priss in there. She was, after all, a big girl. She could take care of herself. WDF AIR STATION CYBERTRON Starscream stepped out onto the apron and watched Terror's Cosmo Eagle take off; he was preparing to follow when a voice from the middle balcony of the control tower stopped him: "Starscream!" He paused and turned to see Alexis standing at the rail, just about at his optic level. "You're... -my- Starscream, aren't you?" she asked quietly. Starscream considered trying to brazen it out, but it wasn't in him. Instead he bowed his head slightly and replied, "I... am, yes." "How is that possible?" she asked. The battered ex-Decepticon sighed, his shoulders sagging. "It's a long story, Alexis, and I have a job to do. I'll tell you all about it when I get back." She hesitated, on the verge of insisting that that wasn't anywhere near good enough, but then relented. "All right. But before you go, at least tell me this much." Searching his face with her eyes, she asked, "Why did you leave?" Starscream smiled a sad smile with the half of his face that could smile. "You were growing up," he said gently. "You didn't need your imaginary friend any more." Then he transformed and was gone, streaking off to the south. Alexis stood watching the sky until his contrail dissipated, then turned and went inside, muttering, "The hell I didn't." AUTOBOT AIR DEFENSE ZONE 19 (ALTIHEX) ALTITUDE 30,000 FEET "Coming up on the edge of the Altihex perimeter zone now," Terror said. "No sign of anything out of the ordinary so far. We should have eyes on the outskirts of the Aravex Wasteland itself in about 30 seconds." "Roger, Eagle-1," Stardeck replied. "You're still five by five." "OK, here we go. Look sharp and stick close." Starscream's damaged face half-smiled at her from the center VDU. "Right with you, General," he said, sounding only slightly sarcastic. "Crossing the outer boundary... now." And just like that, the link back to Stardeck went dead. "Yeah, I was afraid something like that would happen," she said. "Starscream? You still read me?" "Loud and clear. Whatever they're doing, it's not normal jamming." "Mm. I don't like this at all. One of us should get back outside the zone and report - " Off to the southeast, just on the horizon, a sudden flash so bright it momentarily washed out the starlight above lit up the broken landscape of the Wasteland, and in its wake, a column of flame-shot smoke boiled up out of the shattered streets of Aravex. " - what in the hell was that?" Terror wondered. "I'm not sure," Starscream said. Then, without changing his tone of voice at all, he added, "Perhaps we could ask -them.-" /* Team Sleep "The Passportal" _The Matrix Reloaded_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Imagination, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED Issue #5 - "Intrusion Countermeasures" The Cast (in order of appearance) Megatron Soundwave Thundercracker Runamuck Ironhide Optimus Prime Prowl Blaster Misato Katsuragi Sideswipe Eject Slamdance Feedback Sylvie Daniels Priss Morgan Bumblebee Scavenger Bonecrusher Long Haul Patricia Currier Alexis Thi Dang Razorclaw Windrazor Starscream Rumble Frenzy Trailbreaker Cliffjumper Brawn Wreck-Gar, King of the Junkions Chuck Keith Onslaught A Hapless Minicon Red Alert Lightspeed Chromedome Buzzsaw Ravage Laserbeak Steeljaw Rewind Ramhorn Bulkhead Sari Sumdac Stinger Miko Nakadai Jetfire Nightstick Nosecone Strafe Scattershot and Introducing THE GETH COLLECTIVE With Thanks to THE MINICONS of LITTLE IACON Written and Illustrated by Benjamin D. Hutchins Philip J. Moyer With the Gracious Assistance of The EPU Usual Suspects NEXT ISSUE: While the Autobots pick up the pieces in Little Iacon and try to figure out how the geth came to be sacking the district - and why - even stranger things are afoot in Aravex. Starscream's return may not be the most unexpected of the day - but it might end up being the shortest... TRANSFORMERS: CYBERTRON RELOADED #6 "Adapt and Survive" E P U (colour) 2011