The following takes place approximately three years before the events of

the first Transformers Live Action Movie

Part 1

"What the hell are you doing now?" the chief engineer barked over the mechanical thrumming of the motor pool. The target of his indignant yell was an oil stained sleeve that was protruding between the two large black tires at the rear of an old, yellow airfield fire-truck. The arm did not react, but merely continued to search aimlessly for something that wasn't there. After another thirty seconds of no response, the chief could take no more. He stepped forward and stood on the tips of the fingers, light enough to not break them, but hard enough to make them sore.

That got a reaction.

The arm tried to pull away sharply, and a loud thunk echoed out from beneath the fire-truck, followed almost instantly by a long, lingering groan of pain. Lifting his foot, the chief let the hand shoot back under the truck, and waited as the rest of the young mechanic slowly crawled his way out on his knees, one hand supporting his weight, the other clamped tight against his head, rubbing it where he had smacked it against the drive shaft.

"I'll ask you again," the chief said grumpily, looking down at the young man. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" It took a few moments to get a reply, as the young mechanic sat himself on the concrete floor of the garage and rested himself back against the big tyres.

"I want to know why it doesn't work," he seemed to whine.

"It doesn't work because it's an awkward piece of shit that the bosses decided to buy without letting me take a look at her first," the chief hissed.

He had already been having a bad day before he had stepped into the motor pool. His car had needed to be jump started by his neighbour with whom he did not get on, his wife had forgotten to pack his lunch forcing him to pay for what passes as food at the canteen, and security had chosen that morning to demand that all their vehicles be serviced and checked. Apparently they had developed a persistent fault ever since that unexplained meteor shower the week before.

He didn't know, or care, what the fault was. He just knew that he had ten cars and jeeps to service by the end of the day, a loading truck with dodgy hydraulics, a towing tug that needed a complete front rebuild after a collision with a wall, and now an annoying mechanic had taken it upon himself to lumber them with another big project he could be doing without – the fire-truck.

"Get that thing out of here," he grumbled, turning his back on the unsightly beast, the patches of rust that were scattered across the body turning his stomach.

"But..." the young mechanic began, but the chief cut him off.

"Now!" he barked.

"But... I can't," he said, still rubbing his bruised and reddened knuckles.

"Why not?" the chief growled, rounding on him sharply.

"I may have, kinda, broken the tow truck trying to get the fire-truck out before you got back," he admitted grudgingly, shuffling quickly to his feet, his eyes flickering to the distant corner of the garage.

The chief looked back over his shoulder and felt a shiver of sadness flood through his spine. There, in the shadows, he could see the old work horse, with a heartbreaking ribbon of steam hissing from the radiator and a river of hydraulic fluid gushing from beneath.

"I'm sorry, chief..." the young mechanic began, but the chief simply held up a hand to silence him. He clamped his other across his face, pinching the bridge of his nose hard as he crunched his eyes shut.

"Just go," he said with all the control he could muster. He did not turn around until he could hear the young mechanics feet shuffling rapidly across the oily concrete floor, and vanishing into silence as the door to the crew room slammed shut. Left along, the chief risked opening his eyes once more, and felt a stab of pain hit at his heart. The tow truck had been on the base longer than he had, and it had been one of the first things he had repaired. That had been the beginning of a life long love affair with the old girl, and to see it sad and broken in the corner left him feeling broken.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he gave the old fire truck a sneer of hatred and, hunching his back, walked away from it towards the nearest security vehicle to begin its service.

Jaknife watched the chief engineer walk away towards the black cars, happy that once again he had escaped an inspection. It was the third time he had found himself being forced into this dingy, dank building and his undersides poked and prodded. But thankfully the grumpy middle aged human had never looked at him close enough to notice the obvious. He was more than an old, clapped out fire truck, with rust creeping across almost every joint, sealing the faded silver shutters tight. He was more than a broken down emergency vehicle, the yellow paint faded, and the red stripes chipping.

He was an Transformer, a cybernetic life-form from the distant planet of Cybertron, and part of a military faction named the Autobots. His home planet had been abandoned many, many years ago, lost to the cold reaches of space when a civil war had burned across its surface. The Autobots had tried in vain to stop the rapid rise of the Decepticons and their tyrannical leader, Megatron. The war raged for years, and cost both sides greatly. Megatron finally breached the memory core at the heart of Cybertron and learned of devices of great power that had been cast out across the galaxy. In his unending quest for absolute power, he left the planet in search of these relics.

Fearing what he would do if he acquired any of these devises, the Autobots gave chase.

A few brave 'bots stayed behind to defend what was left from the vast forces of the Decepticons Megatron left behind, but it was in vain. Jaknife and his team were the last to leave.

For years they had floated through the vast nothingness, cold and alone until they received word from a moon orbiting a small, bluey-green planet that clung to the warmth of a distant yellow sun. A planet called Earth.

Sentinel Prime, the hero of the war and the one remaining Prime, had fled Cybertron in the Ark with a weapon that would have changed the outcome of the war. His ship had been thought lost during its escape, shot down by Starscream – Megatron's first commander. But now it appeared that they had escaped and had crashed, activating the emergency distress beacon. Calculating their position, Jaknife and his team found the wreck of the Ark, and the crew still inside, all locked in stasis.

The side of the ship had suffered major breaches to the outer hull, and there was signs of scorch marks across the antennae and drive pods. Decepticons had played a hand in their crash.

Without the power of a Prime, there had been no way to wake the Autobot crew from their slumber. But with a bit of work, the team's scout had nursed the computers back into life, if only momentarily. In the damaged core of the ship, they found a list of locations plotted across the planet they were orbiting. Their purpose, Jaknife could not discover, but if they were logged in the Ark's computer, they must have been vital. With no other idea of what to do, and evidence of Decepticons having followed the Ark, Jaknife took the data and returned to his ship, vowing to find those locations and defend them in the name of Cybertron.

For over ten years, that is what he and his team had done. In that time they had almost no contact with other Cybertronian signals, either Autobot or Decepticons. The only exception had been the whispered signals from the crashed Decepticon ship, the Nemesis, that was lying derelict on some other distant planet. Nevertheless, they maintained a constant vigil.

Their mission had now brought them here, to this unassuming airbase on the eastern coast of a country the natives called Scotland. After almost a decade of searching, they had finally picked up a faint Cybertronian signal. Something had been unearthed.

The big rolling door to the garage shuddered visibly as it began to raise into the roof and revealed the wet, rain-splattered landscape beyond. The distant mountains were shrouded in the dark grey clouds as they hung low in the sky, and the trees beyond the perimeter fence leaned painfully as the gale force winds whipped up through the valley across the mile long stretch of tarmac. The rumbling growl of a massive plane's straining engines slowly grew louder, echoing across the almost still base. The clouds tore open, and a military cargo plane sliced through, dropping out of the clouds as a whale breaks through the foamy ocean. It dropped lower and lower, until its wheels squealed loudly, the rubber tyres suddenly dragging along the tarmac.

A silent crackle whispered in Jaknife's ear as the communicator burst into life. It was followed almost instantly by a grumpy sounding voice.

"Jak," it hissed. "It's here."