"Cyclonus told me there would be days like this!" yelled the charging red and yellow Rhino as he stampeded across the rocky ground. Tantrum fled across the lonely surface towards a set of hills of a world that had so little importance in the grand scheme of things that it hadn't even been given a name when it was catalogued, merely a string of alphanumeric characters. But Planet 1 of Star BC3462-A did have two advantages for the Decepticons in these harried times: It was the closest planet to the weak red dwarf primary, and had the greatest collection of heavy metals and energy from the stellar furnace. Second, it was quite a distance from any of the major players in the war between the two ancient fractions. Cyclonus had chosen the Predacons to guard a small energy production facility, figuring they could use the exercise, and the fact he couldn't stand to put up with the group for any longer.
"Yeah, but you didn't believe him!" snorted Rampage, who skidded to a stop on top of a low rise to fire of his machine guns, causing the two jets in the sky, pretty much identical but for one yellow, and one blue for a paint job, to snap around to avoid the fire. The jets' professionalism and response to fire worked against them, since Rampage's guns had the same chance of hitting at this range as Galvatron had to get along peacefully with his subordinates for a whole week. Still, when they broke off, it gave the two a chance to get towards the hills, where the jet's speed would work against them.
Razorclaw and Tantrum also fled towards the hills from another direction, pursued by a heavy bomber. Luckily, the Autobots had messed up several times. For one thing, the Predacons had picked the Autobots' approaching ship up on their sensors, and Razorclaw had managed to conceal the facility to a degree, and by letting loose the Predacons to battle in the skies had allowed the battle to be drawn even further from the facility. Tantrum standing up and shouting insults hadn't hurt, since it was very difficult for any warrior to ignore that good an easy target. Tantrum, luckily, had gotten off with a slight lmp.
Razorclaw had been working towards these hills for an hour. He had seen Divebomb heavily damaged by fire when the 'con had tried to take on the whole shuttle by himself, and crashed somewhere in this area. Sadly, Divebomb hadn't realized that the shuttle's surface would be energized sufficiently by reentry to project a magnetic field sufficient to rend Divebomb's internal circuitry useless. Razorclaw was depressingly use to these occurances, and had calculated a while ago that Divebomb should be about back up on his feet by now. The five Predacons could manage their slower robot modes and use their heavier firepower to pick off the Autobot jets that ruled the skies. It was another mark against the Autobots that they were allowing the Predacons to retreat to a defensible location.
To Razorclaw's benefit, his reasoning was exactly right, assuming the Autobots had been in their Earth mode of 'protect the energy resources'. He didn't realize that the Autobots were on the hunt.
Things started to go bad for the Predacons when a large desert camouflaged tank burst from a covered hillside and started firing its cannon at Rampage and Headstrong. The two broke away as a large crater appeared in front of them. Meanwhile, for Razorclaw and Tantrum, they had the pleasure of dealing with a large robot, with the typical wings of a flight mode and wheels on his legs, who held a big rifle and stood in front of an energy-bound Divebomb. "Looking for something?" he asked with a rather large grin.
Razorclaw's oil pressure rose alarmingly. Tantrum merely lowered his head sightly and sped up, ignoring his limp. A tiny working part of Razorclaw's cerbro-circuitry noted that he would have to deal with the complaints later after the joint gave out. Otherwise, Razorclaw was busy dodging around side to side, as the Autobot was standing to close to Divebomb to allow Razorclaw the use of his concussion blasters.
Tantrum was angry. Not a shocking turn of events by any means, but the bull was angrier than usual. He disliked being shot when he couldn't shoot back, and now he had a nice big target to sink his horns into. Unfortunately, the target was showing very little fear and an alarming amount of reason. The robot calmly target his rifle and shot at the weakened leg.
One benefit of running an energy farm was that Tantrum could keep his backup power cells full. One disadvantage was that these backup power cells weren't very well armored, especially when one had half the armor already blown off their leg. The leg remained fully functional, but the explosion was enough to temporarily stun Tantrum.
Razorclaw roared and charged forward. He knew that the plane would soon circle back behind him, if it hadn't already, and had to take out this Autobot now. The Autobot grinned again, and transformed into a freight engine. "Oh, slag," was the most polite thought through Razorclaw's head before the Decepticon saw quite a few stars.
The Autobot transformed himself back, and started to look around for binders. Meanwhile, the jet transformed smoothly besides him. The new robot had a blue and white color scheme, with missile pods on his hsoulders. Railram, the first one, spoke without looking up, "About time you showed up! If you hadn't taken your sweet time to get here Grinddown.."
The Autobot, about the same sized as Railram, rumbled, "You know how few landing spaces there are for a cargo plane around here?" Railram ignored the comment besides muttering, "Highfire and I managed to land."
Cued by dramatic necessity, Grinddown's radio spoke up, "I'm here, yeah?" Railram triggered his onto the same channel to here Highfire's report, as Grinddown started lassoing Tantrum.
"Well, besides knowing why Warpath enjoys his job so much, we didn't accomplish a lot. The two Preds managed to break around, and Skidpad and Fastrack can't hover. All we know is they're headed your way." The two Autobots looked up then, and grabbed their rifles, Railram keeping a prudent foot on Razorclaw's body.
Headstrong's diffraction sword seemed to have gotten an upgrade, judging by Grinddown's first indication was a sword slice nearly tearing apart his fuel line. Reflexively, the Autobot launched his shoulder missiles. Headstrong had managed it perfectly, so Grinddown, trying to keep an eye on Divebomb, fired his missiles around Divebomb, blowing apart the restraints.
Divebomb cackled madly, and transformed, shooting off both his weapons. Railram closed his eyes and triggered his forcefield. "Slagging Autobots with their slagging full fuel tanks," cursed the Predacon.
Grinddown, busy dueling hand to hand with a Headstrong who had dropped his cloak after the initial attack and a furious Rampage, called out, "A little help for those of us without nifty force fields, oh defense officer?" Railram nodded, and carefully aimed his energy rifle.
Razorclaw couldn't believe his luck. Despite some skill, these Autobots were either surprisingly inexperienced or uniformed about their enemy. Razorclaw's specialty was waiting for the right moment, and one qualified for when Railram's attention was diverted. The lion quickly heaved with his massive strength, throwing the surprised Autobot down.
Highfire, Skidpad, and Fastrack, approaching in their plane modes, winced in advance as they anticipated Razorclaw's next phrase, "Predacons, merge and form Predaking!" The five robots quickly assumed their beast forms and threw themselves together into the massive warrior.
Highfire hissed over the radio, and no one had any time to berate him for the breakdown in discipline, as the Triplebot commander watched two of his subordinates quickly take their plane modes and get the 'hell out of dodge' to quote Jazz. Highfire called over the channel, "Any suggestions anyone?"
Railram called back, "Well, let's see, the only reason we're still flying is that Predaking is trying to shoot down five Autobots all at once. He's probably the strongest of all the Decepticon gestalts, and he's also the best coordinated. He also has a forcefield generator as good as Defensor's, and power to spare on it. I'd say we try and see how fast we can get off-planet."
Grinddown broke in next, the low voice of the slightly older Autobot louder than usual to carry over the noise of Predaking's shots, "Well, things aren't as bad as they seem. Tantrum's been hit pretty bad, and the others have taken at least some damage. After all, Razorclaw was under Railram's foot for a centacycle or so, it's amazing he can function." Inappropriately, Highfire and the two younger Autobots on his wing snickered, but Grinddown didn't give them any time before saying, "And, I don't think the Predacons were briefed on us. I doubt they'd have let themselves be led if they realized that the 'brothers' and I had teammates on the ground."
Fastrack broke onto the frequency, "So what you're saying is the last thing Predaking expects at this point is to be hit by a robot about his size?"
Highfire said, "Definitely. If it was Meansor or Bruticus, the thought probably would have occurred to them, since they have some definitely strategic minded individuals. Predaking, though, from the reports I've seen, basically thinks 'shred, rend, destroy'."
Skidpad, unaffected even by a sixty-foot gestalt trying to shoot him out of the sky, said calmly, "Well, since you three need to transform before we can combine, I guess we'll just have to provide some distraction."
The other half of the jokingly called 'brothers', added, "Yes, once again, us tiny little carbots are saving your slow hides." The two F-22s did simultaneous barrel rolls as they dropped a few missiles from their wings. Predaking seemed not to notice. Fastrack gasped, "I don't believe it, he just shrugged off half our missile load!"
Highfire said in a mildly angry tone, "Listen, do you want to stay and play 'knock King Kong off the building' all day if you want, or we can actually try and take this guy out."
"Fine, fine, we'll be good, but we're going to be in serious need of a recharge afterwards," Skidpad answered.
Highfire went on in a more business-like tone, "All right then, everyone else, drop your ordinance. We'll need some cover against Predaking for a few seconds, and if he spots us lollygagging around in robot mode, we're slag. Railram, Grinddown, fire all your missiles in ten millicycles. Everyone else back up with the cannons. Once you're transformed into vehicular modes and have some speed, I'll drop down everything I got. Then Skidpad, Fastrack, hit them with everything you got left!" Everyone acknowledged the plan.
A huge assortment of missiles and bombs dropped from the racks of the smooth bomber and the massive modified cargo plane, whose nose opened to allow even more firepower to rain out. The firepower knocked Predaking back for a moment, and the smoke from the explosions obscured the gestalt's visual sensors. Meanwhile, Highfire's cannon on his A-10 jet form, the same as his tank, but modified for a little faster fire rate and a little less power, opened up. Skidpad and Fastrack had been firing through the whole experience.
The two large Triplebots landed and quickly went to their robot modes. Fasttrack and Skidpad, used to fire support, dropped two of their four remaining missiles at Predaking's head. Two missed the small target when Predaking twisted at the last moment, but the gap gave the two on the ground time to switch to their vehicular modes, a giant pickup truck and train. Predaking growled and opened fire on the two triplechangers. Explosions cratered the ground as the two grimaced in pain. Neither's shocks were designed for this sort of terrain.
"My turn!" announced Highfire, dropping some of the Autobot's finest work in explosives down. The Autobots had realized when giving the Triplebots the assignment to take out the Preds that the gestalt would probably be involved. Thus, Highfire's usual light show was taken up several notches.
"Ooh, pretty," commented Railram as he chugged along. Among other things, Highfire was currently packing light nukes for his plane form. "Still, I know how nervous those have been making him."
Highfire quickly settled down into a running transformation along the surface. Skidpad and Fastrack pulled into formation above as Highfire gave the command, "Triplebots, merge and form Sabertron!" Railram and Grinddown skidded to a stop, and rose themselves up to a vertical axis, flipping around to form the legs. Highfire was the torso, and the two planes settled down to form the arms.
Sabretron gave a cocky grin, "All right, Predaking. I've heard a lot about you. Let's get it on!" Predaking obliged, shooting off his energy rifle. The massive energy blast showed why Predaking was one of the most powerful gestalts ever constructed. But Sabretron's component parts had given up something in exchange for versatility. They didn't suffer as much from losses in firepower and armor in a mode as they could transform to best fit a situation. And while Sabretron was definitely far more powerful than the five separated, he also couldn't dodge as well as the Triplebots.
The Autobot gestalt skidded across the surface, tearing a path through the topsoil and rocks that ground against his back armor. Sabretron looked woozily at the melted spot in his armor. Another hit would probably breach his chest armor. "Hmm, did Highfire have a 'Plan B' prepared yet?" The gestalt looked up in fear as Predaking stomped closer, intent on finishing the kill.
End part 1