MEANWHILE: GIANT SPACE BEES APPROACH TO DEVOUR ALL LIFE
Cybertron hangs in the half-light of a dying star, a mechanical wreck just clinging to the last vestiges of its orbit. The casual onlooker would spare it a glance, remember its bloody history, and turn away, remembering also how that history came to an end.
But peering closer they might spot the faint sodium-yellow specks littered across Iacon; might hear the message broadcasting outwards on all frequencies, never slowing or ceasing: Cybertron lives.
It says: The war is over. We are here. Come home.
In a distant quadrant a pair of ships orbiting a moon in perpetual stalemate gun their engines and shoot towards the same point in space, squabble forgotten.
In a battered ark sitting motionless within a dusty nebula, a thousand tired voices erupt in celebration.
And on the surface of some rusted, barren planet, something stirs.
Something swarms skyward.
Cybertron lives.
The cloud of creatures arcs through the atmosphere, radio waves vibrating through a million silver exoskeletons, the sweetness of steel and iron lingering on a thousand tongues.
We are here.
It breaks free, basking in the ruddy sunlight.
Come home.
It probes. Tastes.
Remembers.
Shifts, and speaks a single word spaceward: a name and a message.
Egregore.
And it moves towards its feast.