Omake: This Snippet fits into Mizuki Stone's Cannonfodder during Entry 40 and 41. You can find Cannonfodder in the creative writing archive at Spacebattles dot com.

threads/ canonfodder-charge-of-the-lite-brigade.268567/

F.U.B.A.R!

Situation Normal, F# ked Up Beyond All Recognition!

Staring

Patrol Leader Sigma1356 as "F1"

Vehicon Omicron1203 as "F2"

Vehicon Sigma1358 as "F3"

Vehicon Alpha0075 as "F4"

Vehicon Epsilon0548 as "F5"

Section Leader Sigma1361 ... doesn't get a fancy designation.

Vehicon Delta0437 as "R1"

Vehicon Sigma1363 as "R2"

With Special Guest Stars

Salvage

as

"The Enemy Seeker"

and

Lickety Split

as

"The Autobot"

Earth.

Eight Vehicon Seekers launch from the shadowed length of the Warship Nemesis into the airless void above the oblivious planet below. As they accelerate away from their base ship they arrange themselves into a double arrowed formation and take course towards the huge bulk of the Decepticon's Space-Bridge. Two cycles later the flight of Seekers plunge into the swirling green energy pool of the active gate and are gone.

Cybertron.

"Aaaaargh!" Alpha0075 twisted away from the Null Beam strike, trailing smoke and wreckage from his right gun mount. "Primus forsaken drone!" Cursing aloud at the hostile Seeker arrowing up from the planet's surface to intercept the patrol didn't accomplish a lot, especially since there currently wasn't enough atmosphere to carry sound, but it did relieve a little frustration as Alpha0075 opened the Tactical Comnet sent his ID and reported. "I've been hit."

"What's your status Alpha0075?" Sigma1356 the Vehicon patrol's commanding officer demanded sounding pretty stressed.

Alpha0075 shunted power into his thrusters, fighting against his built up momentum, banking hard to loop back towards his wing mates after his evasive manoeuvres led him far out of formation. "Offensive abilities halved sir, one of my guns is slagged."

"Shake it off Alpha0075 and get back here, do you have visual on Sigma1361?" Sigma1361 was the patrol's second in command, his normal position was leader of the rear element which put the other Vehicon almost alongside Alpha0075 own position as far flank of the forward element. Alpha0075 had seen him get hit an astrosecond before he'd been tagged himself. The Vehicon quickly brought up his last solid contact with the Section Leader and tried to extrapolate the missing officers course while burning some processor capacity tracking radar contacts all the while wondering why the Patrol Leader hadn't done it himself.

The most obvious return in any direction of course was the unshielded Autobot signal racing across Cybertron's surface.

Alpha0075 easily spotted the stricken Section Leader once he knew which direction to look, it wasn't like there was much in the skies of Cybertron. "Affirmative visual on Sigma1361 sir, he's in free-fall, terminal velocity. Nearing the surface, doesn't look good sir." In fact it looked worse than that according to Alpha0075's sensors. Sigma1361 had lost 42% of his mass somewhere, having nearly half your body blown off wasn't very survivable even without what looked to be shaping up as a really impressive crash.

"Scrap!, get back here Alpha0075 NOW! Be aware that communications and targe##bzzzzzzzzz##" Sigma1356's voice dissolved into static and Alpha0075 realised why his Patrol Leader hadn't been scanning for his second in command himself as he ran straight into a ridiculously powerful jamming field. Alpha0075's senses went haywire as false data slammed into just about every sensor he had, only his optics were still tracking at anything close to 100%. Alpha0075 was almost back into the thick of it when he saw the rest of his team split up arching away from each other, most darted towards the enemy Seeker. Positioning themselves to attack from multiple angles, Sigma1356 must have been able to get some orders out to the others despite the jamming.

"Foolish, your only hope was to fight united." It didn't seem to bother the enemy either, he still seemed fine broadcasting his creepy damn voice over the supposedly encrypted secure Decepticon channel.

Alpha0075 ignored the taunting and powered on trying to get a decent attack angle on the enemy's alt mode. Which Alpha0075 noted looked uncannily like his own, a different colour scheme, some extra lumps that could be thruster assembles and was a bit bulkier. Alpha0075 could see Sigma1363 was closing in on the traitor from above. The Vehicon figured if he could keep the traitor busy for just a cycle his team mate would be able to get in a good hit.

Alpha0075 managed a single shot from his remaining Energon projector before his target whipped around in an impossible looking manoeuvre and slid out from under his targeting reticule. "SCRAP!" The Decepticon tried to follow but could barely keep the enemy seeker in sight as the imposter whipped around and opened fire on Sigma1363 who had been powering in for his strafing run. Null Beams speared straight into Sigma1363's fuselage before he even got a shot off, shattering armour and ripping the unlucky Mech's internals to confetti. A few hits and the Vehicon was reduced to so much tumbling metal.

Omicron1203 and Sigma1358 the Patrol Leader's wing mechs roared past, thrusters wide open and accelerating for all they were worth, heading straight down towards the Autobot signal.

Alpha0075 clawed his way around again, inertia compensators redlining, he could see Sigma1356 trying to pull up behind the enemy and fell in with Epsilon0548, and Delta0437 who were laying down covering fire for the Patrol Leader.

"An admirable attempt." Again with the freaky voice.

Before the Patrol Leader could get a decent shot the bogey abruptly corkscrewed around and dived, chasing after Omicron1203 and Sigma1358.

Alpha0075 plunged after him, naturally falling into formation with Sigma1356, Epsilon0548, and Delta0437 and joining the other three Vehicon's efforts to slag the glitchy fragger. Even pouring on the speed the false Vehicon still managed enough dodges to throw the patrols aim off. Alpha0075 thought he'd put a good hit into a wing but the mouthy freak had a mammoth acceleration advantage and the Vehicons only had moments before he drew out of range of their light Energon cannons.

As the impossible fake Vehicon opened the distance the Unicron spawned jamming faded enough to get a signal through.

"Report!" Sigma1356 barked. "Does anybody have any missiles left?"
"Racks are empty sir." Delta0437 replied immediately.
"Negative sir." Epsilon0548.
"I've barely got guns over here sir." Alpha0075 blurted.
"Shut up Alpha0075, you can take a Null Beam that might hit someone useful so you're contributing to the cause, what more do you want?"
"Armour that could take a few hits would be nice sir." Alpha0075 replied before he could stop himself, his gun mount throbbed like an Autobot heavy pounding on his motherboard and it was making him irritable.
"Shut up Alpha0075! we'll catch up with the slagger in 18 astroseconds unless Omicron1203 and Sigma1358 get him first or the crazy glitch head ploughs into the planet. Spread out and form a pyramid cluster, anchor on me as drag. Get him in a crossfire and fry his diodes!"
"SIR! YES SIR!" esprit de corps! Vehicons are full of it.

Alpha0075 drew level with Delta0437 and Epsilon0548 adjusting course to stay on the trail of the enemy Seeker. The chasers watched as the enemy fighter closed in on Omicron1203 and Sigma1358 as the two Vehicons arrowed down towards the Autobot.

The Autobot, Alpha0075 could just make out, was a very small and very orange three wheeler and was currently racing down one of the ruined Iacon roadways, heading towards the crumbling necropolis that used to be the Cybertronian capital's spaceport it looked like.

But the Vehicon barely spared the Autobot a glance. They, whoever they were, didn't have any weapon or targeting systems active so could be safely ignored for now. Alpha0075's focus was on the bronze coloured Seeker who had been flying rings around and shooting up the Vehicon's patrol.

The jamming was nearly back to full strength, they were closing in.

Alpha0075 opened fire with his remaining weapon Delta0437 and Epsilon0548 joining right in. They were hitting the fragger! But it didn't seem to be slowing him down at all, he just poured on more speed, chasing down Omicron1203 and Sigma1358.

Everything happened very fast.

The enemy seeker let loose with a barrage of shots at Sigma1358 walking his Null Beams toward the Vehicon then suddenly pulled another one of his impossibly tight turns to catch Omicron1203 off guard and nailed the Vehicon with a single precise shot, the powerful Null Beam blasting off one of Omicron1203's wings and sending him into a tail spin towards the surface. Even as Omicron1203 tumbled from the sky the bronze coloured Seeker pulled up and orientated on the still diving Sigma1358.

"Admirable but futile."

Sigma1358 tried to evade but the Null Beams cut into his hull and then speared straight through his body, speared straight through his spark.

Then the bogey was boosting straight back up towards Alpha0075 and the rest of the patrol's survivors!

Alpha0075 kept firing but his target continuously jinked and swerved, ducking out of his line of fire. The Vehicon knew he was getting some hits in but he also knew he wasn't getting enough. Alpha0075 was getting dizzy just trying to keep the mad mech in his sights and had no chance of actually following him as the Bronze seeker suddenly streaked through the centre of his Delta0437's and Epsilon0548's formation and charged straight at the Patrol Leader, showering Sigma1356 with a hail fast low powered shots.

"It's useless."

Alpha0075 charged in and saw one of his Energon blasts actually bounce off the other seeker's armour. "oh come on!" then the bronze fighter spun, seemingly almost in place and caught him with two decidedly not low powered beams. The first blew a hole straight through his left wing, severing Energon feeds to his remaining weapon and a third of his thrusters.

Painful? Yes. Crippling? Yes. But all in all Alpha0075 would have been perfectly happy to take that hit and call it a day, it wasn't to be however. The second Null Beam hit. It slammed into Alpha0075's torso and his body armour just disintegrated, shards became shrapnel and sliced into his internal structure, every system screamed with agonising error messages.

The Vehicon blacked out for an astosecond his processor overwhelmed as he fell away from the battle.

Alpha0075 came back online still falling, his rudimentary self repair bio-mechanism over clocking as it struggled to get a grip on the massive damage.

The wounded Seeker tried to take stock ... he was so incredibly slagged.

He was leaking Energon from just about everywhere, he was upside down falling towards the ground, none of his manoeuvring thrusters were working and his main jets were so much shredded scrap, oh and he was in more pain than he'd ever dreamed existed and was finding it hard to concentrate.

Alpha0075 transformed hoping he could get some thrusters going in his humanoid form, or at least turn over so he could get some idea of how soon he would kissing Cybertron.

The process, normally too fast to really note, was excruciatingly slow (he could actually hear his T-Cog groaning as it strained) and not too much to Alpha0075's surprise it was also very very painful.

... and then his left hand fell off.
"Unicron's sodding great moustache!''

"It ends."
"And you can shut up as well you loon!"

Alpha0075 was pleasantly surprised to find that he could indeed get the thrusters in his feet working, at least a little bit. He put as much power into them as he could, slowing himself down and even giving himself some control enough to orientate and stabilize himself standing up in relation to the surface ... of course they also ignited the Energon leaking all over his body as well.

"And Now I'm On Fire!" He was also getting worryingly close to the ground.