summary: to move ahead, something must end

disclaimer: insert endless cycle of non-ownage here.

warnings: battle violence, character death of a minor character,

Replacement: Roads -- Horizons

Telepathy was almost useless on the battlefield.

Soundwave ducked a trio of shots from several human tanks, allowing himself to be driven away from the medic. A spike of pain echoed down the link as Buzsaw was shot out of the air. Lazerbeak circled to try and spot his fellow cassetticon's attacker but when he found the shelterd rock the Autobot had been hiding behind, it had already been abandoned.

To one side, Prime and his warrior were double-teaming Blitzwing. To the other the two mini-bots were similarly overwhelming Barricade. In the air, human pilots kept Sarscream and his subordinates from pressing their advantage of numbers against the Autobot seekers, who viciously tore into their enemies. The traitor, Scorponok was once again battling the cassettes with single-minded intensity, only this time, that damn Autobot sniper was covering the enemy drone, so it couldn't be double or even triple teamed again. Soundwave's opponent, the medic, should have been an easy kill, but the medic was moving with the sort of battlefield grace not often seen in non-warrior-builds, utterly focused on tearing Soundwave apart at the seams. And all around were humans, tanks firing whenever they could get a shot off, and teams of humans on foot running around. Those small weapons could be ignored, but more they were providing targeting information for the tanks and the occasional human pilot who made strafing runs, and that couldn't be ignored.

Not that there was very much he could do about them, occupied as he was with the Autobot and the tanks covering him as the Decepticon communications officer was.

No telepathy wasn't worth anything on the battlefield. There was too much confusion, too many thoughts, emotions, half-formed and abandoned plans, and all too often combatants who simply did not think, just acted. Too many, too much. And few and far between were mechs who could be accurately read through the battle focus.

More than slightly busy with the medic and his human allies, he barely noticed when a quintet of human jets managed to box in Starscream just long enough for an Autobot Seeker to crash into the Decepticon and hang onto him, like some of the more insane Autobot ground fighters had done to take down Decepticon Seekers on Cybertron, tearing off armor plates to get at the circuitry and other delicate components. Both seekers shrieked (vocally and with their turbines) and swore, Starscream's voice raising above the battlefield, as they fell. The Decepticon trine swerved, tried to dive to their commander's rescue, but were deftly cut off from the falling combatants by a dozen humans -- helicopters with high caliber chain guns this time -- and had to break off before the other Autobot swooped in to do some damage. Engines fired, and with one last screech, Starscream managed to transform just as he crashed into the ground, the weight of his attacker slamming down on top of him. The two seekers tore at each other like mad-mechs, rolling on the ground, hissing, shrieking and clawing.

There was no lull in his opponent's unusually focused attacks, but Soundwave felt a ripple -- for lack of a better term -- go through the minds of the Autobots, and more than a few of the humans, a fraction of all their attention shifting without distracting them. Triumph, and more than a little predatory glee -- even the medic. The emotions didn't distract the Autobot attacking the communications officer; instead they threw the medic more completely into his battle programming. Despite the heightened focus of his enemies, he now knew how to get the other Decepticons, and, most importantly, himself and his his cassettes out of this alive.

More humans, ones that had been hanging back behind the tanks, rushed onto the battlefield, crazily swerving through the fighting mechs in their jeeps, towards the two downed seekers. Soundwave didn't need telepathy to know their plan for Starscream -- the distinctive sensor-sheen of liquid nitrogen in canisters was enough. There was another shift in focus when Starscream shrieked in surprise at the first blast of cold.

"Decepticons: retreat." Soundwave broadcast openly -- any transformer would be able to pick up the transmission -- "Starscream: leave behind."

His cassettes were the first to successfully break off, Laserbeak engaging the traitorous drone to cover his siblings' escape. Barricade was next -- thrown small distance from his mini-bot harassers, he transformed and fled. The mini-bots transformed and pursued well past the loose ring of human tanks, but soon came back to circle the downed seekers like Earthen wolves. Blitzwing threw the black warrior into Prime and flew strait up in his MiG form, scattering human aerial formations and leading Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust nearly out of the planet's atmosphere in an effort to loose the pursuing human jets. The Autobot Seeker didn't even bother pretending to chase, just circled the emptying battlefield at an altitude below the human helicopters. Soundwave simply waited for the medic's attention to shift minutely to where the two mini-bots circled Starscream's position, then bolted, transforming literally mid-stride. He wasn't a racer, but neither was the Autobot who chased him a bit before looping back to focus on Starscream. Humans in jeeps chased him further, but they soon followed their Autobot ally's lead and left him.

He caught one loud, focused thought-image -- a fantasy -- from the black warrior-built as he retreated, of watching Starscream shriek in pain as he was slowly crushed one piece at a time by some compacting device, convincing Soundwave that sacrificing the Decepticon Commander -- technically their leader -- had been the correct choice. Very rarely had he sensed such viciousness in an Autobot -- they weren't programmed with it and their sparks rarely chose otherwise -- and never in such a varied group of them. He and Starscream had misjudged the traitorous drone's position in the Autobot group -- they'd assumed he occupied the position of a prisoner of war, or that of a lowly drone at best. It wasn't a surprise that Starscream had missed it completely, but Soundwave knew that Autobots didn't have a social position for a drone, and lacking that they'd probably adopt him into their "family" -- he just hadn't considered it because it was ludicrous to consider a drone that wasn't a cassette as anything but a disposable servant. And Soundwave had seen warriors take up assassination and spies turn into berserkers when their families were threatened.

This disaster of a battle wouldn't have happened if he'd just disobeyed Starscream then. It was going to take a while for the Decepticons here to have the strength the to do anything except lay low. Still... he was hardly broken up about Starscream's sacrifice -- while Soundwave had followed Starscream's commands, he had been loyal to Megatron not Starscream. Now with the seeker dead, or as good as dead, he could focus on his own agenda, his reason for coming to this organic smear of a planet: vengeance for Frenzy. And there were mechs who would answer Soundwave's call, who wouldn't have even considered coming while Starscream was here.

There was a hum of cool, observant focus pacing him somewhere nearby -- nothing on visuals or sensors, but not bothering with the programming tricks that would hide his mind from Soundwave's telepathy -- the invisible Autobot spy, making sure the retreat was genuine.

The memory of Scorponok's image-taunt rose in his processor, and he nearly whirled to attack the blue and white spy. Logic reasserted itself -- Ravage was alive, somewhere ahead of Barricade in the line of fleeing Decepticons, and the spy was pacing Soundwave, not trying to pass him. And this specific spy had followed Soundwave for light-years without either him or his cassettes noticing -- if he was hunting Ravage, or any other of Soundwave's creations, likely they wouldn't know until the spy was shooting at them.

When he judged they were far enough away from the battle and the vengeance-focused Autobots, he transmitted his instructions to the other Deceptions -- they needed a new base to start, since they'd been routed from that one, and Soundwave wasn't going to make plans for one until they'd lost the following spy.

888

Of course Optimus Prime would never have allowed the vengeance-driven, slow execution Ironhide desired. So it was perhaps fortunate for both Optimus and Ironhide that despite his almost feral frenzy, Air Raid had known what he was doing. Had known exactly how and where to injure another seeker to inflict fatal damage, and the almost intimate way he'd chosen to attack had insured that his ripping and tearing counted in a way you just couldn't be certain of with plasma guns and missile strikes.

Maybe the Decepticon could have been saved, if there had been no Autobot injuries for Ratchet to attend to before he'd even think about saving the 'Con. Air Raid had taken the most damage due to his close combat with Starscream. Fireflight was a close second. Even with the Air Force evening the odds, they'd still been two seekers versus four.

Besides, the American military was very reluctant to take such a dangerous prisoner they weren't sure they could effectively hold -- Megatron's escape from Sector Seven had pointed out the flaws in that approach even before it was an option to apply to others. And since they couldn't hold the seeker, and flat out refused to simply let him go to continue being a danger to their country and entire planet, they wanted him dead, his shell keeping those of the rest of the Mission City Decepticons company.

So, with his Autobots offering nothing except increasingly gruesome methods of destruction, Ratchet making it clear that any order to repair the Decepticon would be ignored until every last scratch on an Autobot (including scars they'd had for vorns) had been taken care of, Starscream dying already without those repairs, and the American Government officials that had be contact almost as soon as the battle had ended clamoring for his death, Optimus allowed it.

(Air Raid found the energy to be silently pleased that he'd managed to rip out the glitch's vocalizer and damage his transmitter -- it meant he couldn't beg for mercy and make this even more complicated than it was.)

He insisted on giving him a merciful death at the very least. Prime would have carried out the execution himself too, had Ironhide not grabbed him to prevent it. Bumblebee was the one to shoot Starscream's spark.

Optimus had been thunderously angry -- if any of them were to dirty himself with an execution, it should have been him. Ironhide and Bumblebee just looked defiant. Ironhide went so far to say to him, "Didn't hurt us any to kill him -- slagging glitch doesn't deserve your pain."

Throughout it all, Scorponok offered no opinion. Later when asked why, he told Optimus, He hurt you, Master, and for that if nothing else deserved to die. You asked me not to pursue it, and I didn't.

Optimus had nothing to say to that -- nothing he hadn't said before anyway, though it'd bear repeating, many times, but later.

Days of living, training, talking, and playing resumed, continuing the eternal process of making this planet their home. Life went on. And when Soundwave eventually got his resources and forces together, so did the fighting.

Optimus Prime waited for the Autobots to answer his call:

"We are here. We are waiting."

fini

notes: of all the wide and varied muses in this thing the decepticons were seriously the most consistently uncooperative. the only reason i was able tell the battle from soundwave's pov was because i pinned down soundwave-muse and starscream-muse long enough to tell them that one of them was going to die. in response starscream-muse sulked and soundwave-muse volunteered to narrate, which is why starscream's the one who died.

timing -- about two months after "conversation 10" and a bit before the mirage character study.

at this time i'd like to apologize to all the fans of cliffjumper, air raid, fireflight, and mirage who might feel like they didn't get enough attention. their character voices just aren't as distinct for me as the movie'verse autobots'. rereading everything now, it seems a bit like their inclusion in the storyline was a bit pointless, except as foils and complications for the main characters. that wasn't my original intention -- though they were always going to be more minor characters. back when i started drafting my timeline, with "replacement" on one end and "strength" on the other and the middle mostly blank, once starscream landed there was going to be a lot more decepticon skirmishing. then the relationships started evolving nicely without the stress of more visible decepticon presence, better even, and i couldn't get the decepticons to tell me what the frag they were doing anyway, causing characters i'd originally brought in to help against the deceptions to kinda fall aside. sorry.

epilogue coming soon...