Chapter 23

"Ashes"

It was Hive. It was Traveler-damned Hive. Oryx's people. Crota's kin. Xol's servile apostles. Vengeance-spawn of the Worm Gods.

It was them.

::Invasive species 62732CA-a(b) have dug in,:: Sandstorm mused. They were hanging in 62732CA-a's exosphere, dangling from invisible wires and floating on nonexistent currents. ::They're hitting the Imojel hard.::

::Bleeding them dry,:: Swiftsear darkly added. ::It's a war of attrition.::

It was a feast. Not a war - not to those monsters. Hawkmoon shook with reignited fury; it had been the same on Luna. Just… food. Murder for the sole purpose of easing a self-imposed stomachache.

Monsters. They were monsters.

::Not detecting any energon,:: Sandstorm went on, unbothered. ::Imojel are burning coal, powder, bodies - and their sun's light. I don't recognize that tech - the solar-panels. Look at them; they're using furnaces and civ-class IV sun-eater generators. Ridiculous, but that's... that's still impressive machinery.::

::It doesn't fit them,:: Vale observed, her tone one of bewilderment. ::It's more elaborate, more elegant, more sophisticated - they have their stamp on all their machines, yes, but those tanks, those airships, those rifles, they're all sun-powered. It's alien. They're incorporating alien tech into their own.::

::It's not ours...:: Swiftsear noted. ::What about the 62732CA-a(b)? Tech-theft, maybe. Dispute over stolen property.::

::Seems extreme for that. Besides - look at those creatures. Bone and stone and shell - that's what they're working with. Not solar-panels. They're an even worse match.::

::Hideous, aren't they?:: Sandstorm quipped. ::Some organics, right? Wouldn't want to be caught dead living like tha-::

::Aren't we supposed to do something?!:: Cyberwarp cried out. ::Swiftsear! They're killing each other down there!::

Of course they were. Killing was all they knew.

And all she knew where dealing with their kind was concerned. Hawkmoon's combat protocols snapped into place, sliding to the forefront of her processor.

Monsters…

Swiftsear stayed silent.

::Organics die,:: Sandstorm flippantly told them. ::It happens. It's natural.::

There was nothing natural about the Hive.

::But we can't just stand aside! There has to be something we can do!::

Skydive shifted - his alt-mode's node pointing away. ::Uh, sir?::

::What?:: Swiftsear lowly demanded.

::The locals are transmitting.::

They all paused. ::Not to us,:: Vale realized. ::They're sending it off-world, but... not to us. They don't see us.::

::Yet,:: Quell forebodingly pointed out.

::Overcompensating too,:: Sandstorm observed. ::High local magnetic fields, plays the Pit on conventional comms. They really want to be heard.::

::They're calling for help,:: Vale said. ::They must be.::

::Because they're dying.:: Cyberwarp stressed. ::Please, Swiftsear, we have to-::

For everyone who'd died on Mare Imbrium. For all who'd fallen at Burning Lake. For each loss suffered during the Taken War.

::They die,:: Hawkmoon darkly promised. Her thrusters powered up - and she directed herself downwards, edging towards 62732CA-a's oppressive gravity well. ::Those fraggers die now.::

For you, Gecko. For you.

Swiftsear jolted. ::Hawkmoon what are you doizzzzzzt-::

Hawkmoon switched her comms off - then shut down her already tightened bond with Nacelle and Cyberwarp just as she dove down and burned her way into the wartorn planet's atmosphere. She received urgent pings from the others, almost all of them, and was only distantly aware of Vale, Swiftsear and her own trine tearing after her - but she left them behind, accelerating, always accelerating, coating herself in the fires of violent re-entry and driving on, on, on.

The planet was aflame - literally. Some of the Imojel cities had fallen - and the broods had set the dead places alight, breaking into the locals' coal deposits and setting off sparks. Almost half the cities were already in the clutches of the sparse hordes, given over to green pyres running on hissing fossil fuels and the souls of the screaming dead. It didn't take a genius to figure out where the assault had sprung from; in the midst of the deadlands a tower of dark hex-smoke climbed high into the stratosphere, rising from a massive concave in the earth where a capital Seeder Ship had brutally hammered into the crust. Judging from the burnt-out ruins in the area around it, and the dissipating pool at the centre of the crater, it must have landed smack-bang in the middle of an Oasis-City.

The Imojel hadn't stood a chance.

But that didn't mean they weren't giving it their all.

A two-fold army, fielded by five different cities judging from the ragged trails of resupply caravans dragged across almost half the local continent, was assaulting the central Hive outpost, with airships laying down covering fire for their sprawling ground armies and hovertanks offering armoured artillery support.

They were still losing, though. Ranks of cleaver-bearing Hive warriors barred the way at the lip of the crater, and against all odds the flame-throwers and beam-rifles of the Imojel were no match for the accursed blades. They simply couldn't break through - and they were bleeding exterminator-soldiers at a dangerous rate.

Hawkmoon forced herself faster yet, booming into the innermost layers of the atmosphere and slicing through wisps of lightly-acidic vapour, the condensing moisture bubbling uselessly on her plating and trying to eat through even just her weatherproof paint in vain. It didn't matter; nothing did, nothing save tearing the bastards apart. Every. Last. One of them.

They deserved no less.

Hawkmoon swooped lower and lower, unfolding her missile-compartments and firing off almost half her payload as she approached the warzone - directing the projectiles manually, sending them into the ranks of Knights and Acolytes and other strange three-eyed forms she didn't exactly recognize. Didn't matter; they were all the same - just more monsters hungry for blood. The explosions rocked the area, tearing through the Hive with fire, energy bursts and stray shrapnel. The Imojel flinched as well, having escaped her wrath relatively unscathed but no less bewildered than their blinking, bellowing assailants. Hawkmoon heard, through the erratic din of random magnetic current-flows, the static-tinged hiss of biting alien words tossed across powerful, unguarded short-band radio transmissions, freely blared across every channel imaginable in hopes of establishing contact with the rest of the disastrously scattered retaliatory killforce.

Hawkmoon soared over the first Hive ranks at blinding, sound-shattering speeds. The hordes were massive; something was spawning new soldiers, rapidly, and she had a fair idea what - because it broke free of the darkness of the Seeder's crater to shriek at the earth-shaking disturbance, spells sizzling between its clawed skeletal fingers and a scream shaking from its fanged jaws. Hawkmoon transformed in mid-air, slammed bodily into the Broodqueen - who looked almost comically shocked to see her coming - and carried on, her own talons cracking through the mother-morph's Solar ward and sliding around the alien's chitin-clad neck.

It was smaller than she expected, Hawkmoon dimly observed in the back of her processor - the parts not given over to blinding fury. Smaller than any Broodqueen should have been. They all were: the Knights, the Acolytes, the Thrall and even the odd Ogre. All much more diminutive than they'd been before.

Or...

Or she was larger...

Hawkmoon snarled and only barely slowed down as they reached the sky-grasping spindle of the colossal anchor-shaped Seeder Ship - smashing the Broodqueen against the dark metal-chitin-blend spire and killing it on the spot. The Broodqueen's three burning eyes sputtered out, and its head fell from its pulverized shoulder and past Hawkmoon's servo to tumble down into the smoky gloom below. A horrified, frenzied roar emanated from below - something with age and only the faintest traces of noble bearing. The queen's widowed mate, she presumed.

Three green portals yawned open in the air around her. Tombships forced themselves through, groaning with semi-living exertion. Hawkmoon roared wordlessly - or continued to, anyways, because she forgot at what point she'd begun - and plunged down on one like a bird of prey, transforming her servos into superheated blades and plunging them into the Hive gunships' hull, slicing it into parts and shredding all those within.

Yeah, it was definitely her being bigger. There was no feasible reason why their own vessels would be shrunk along with them.

Hawkmoon moved onto the next, which was quickly realizing just how outclassed it was in terms of basic speed and was attempting to build up enough Void firepower to lob at her, but she just swapped a blade out for a shard carbine, unloaded on the chitin-crafted ship and tore it apart into dark, meaty chunks. It followed its fellow into death and tumbled down, a pair of venomous green blasts spiking up from the shadows below.

The third charged up its shots on time - but was summarily torn apart by a hail of gunfire from a collection of sources. Swiftsear and Vale darted past the dying thing, transformed and rounded on her.

"ARE YOU INSANE?" Swiftsear roared. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE-"

Hawkmoon ignored him, loaded up the rest of her missiles and fired them down into the pit. The whole place flared up with bright orange flames, briefly illuminating the press of just-immolated bodies below. The crater groaned; she'd hit one of the supports holding the Seeder aloft, and it shuddered with a promise of more.

"They gotta die," Hawkmoon seethed. She spotted motion down below, something big and with ornate armour - and she dove. Swiftsear shouted after her, someone else too - but their voices were falling on deafened audials. Hawkmoon descended on the Hive warlord staggering out of the hellish pit and up the rise leading to the battle - probably hoping for a few easy kills to fuel some restorative spells - and glanced up only when she was a few... what, feet? Units of distance had changed for her, she didn't know what size she was in truth, but it didn't matter. Only when she was just bearing down on it.

The first of her blades found the space between neck and shoulder, punching down through the warrior-morph's collarbone and crunching into its ribcage from above. Hawkmoon slammed down, her pedes chipping the ashen stone below as she landed hard, and she shoved the talons of her free servo right into the oversized Knight's stomach - piercing through hard shell and soft flesh to sink into its stomach, to feel the parasite wriggling within and tear the wretched thing right out with a spray of green blood and bone-dry dust. The Worm struggled in her grasp - right up until she crushed it between her digits with an ugly pop.

The Knight gaped at her, uncomprehending, and its sword fell from nerveless fingers. Hawkmoon roared at him, grabbed his neck and tore it away from his body with only a little effort.

Her thruster powered back on; Hawkmoon boosted herself back into the air, sensors scanning for other airborne hostile, and tossed the Knight's remains back down below. Let his followers and progeny find it. Let them see the vacancy and squabble to claim it. They would do her work for her.

A pressure tightened around her pauldrons. Hawkmoon was spun around to face an irate Swiftsear.

"What," he growled, his voice dangerously subdued, "are you doing?"

"Kill their leaders," Hawkmoon snapped back, "and they'll kill themselves trying to fill the empty spot. Makes them easier to clean up."

"We're not here to 'clean up', Seeker," Swiftsear sternly reminded her, "we're here to save our world. Leave this. Now."

Hawkmoon raised her optics to his own - daring him to deny her again. Swiftsear recoiled - perhaps at the sheer hatred she was baring freely, for the aliens below and around more than anything else. "We need to kill them. We need to kill them all."

His grip on her pauldrons tightened. "We're leaving," he told her, leaving no room for debate - but she felt like it anyways. "Hawkmoon, I swear to Primus, you'll follow or I'll stun you into stasis-lock and we'll drag you after us."

Nacelle and Cyberwarp had arrived, kept at bay by Vale, and both helplessly looked on - and glancing around in worry while they were at it.

Hawkmoon heard the Hive horde howling at them. Heard the shriek of Wizards and otherworldly crash of more Tombships piercing the veil of realspace. Heard the thud-thud-thud of gunfire and artillery, the cheer of alien soldiers pushing into the foothold she'd created for them, retaliating against the disarrayed, leaderless ranks of beasts-shaped-like-people.

"We're not done," she muttered.

"No," Swiftsear grimly agreed, "we're not."

She only noticed, too late, that one of his servos had already taken the form of a shock-prod as it pressed against the plating of her chassis and overloaded her frame with a debilitating voltage - injecting within the abrasive shock a foreign command that broke right through her firewalls and forced a system-shutdown.

Lennox-2 sighed, head lolling back to graze over the dark, jagged and disturbingly wet rock. Weren't they in a... no, not a sewage system. Something else - a crypt. Not just the Hive kind either. "I feel objectified."

Ikharos snorted - then breathed out a hiss as he jostled his broken leg. His Ghost, Xiān, briefly materialized to cast some Light over the fracture and mend him right back to pitch-perfect health. "Why?" Ikharos asked. "Because that brute used you as a club?"

"Yeah!" Lennox kicked at the dead Knight's sightless face - then crawled forward to tug her knife out from under the alien's bloodied chin.

"If it makes you feel better, you make a great club. You have the hardest head around."

"Ha ha, very funny."

"Trust me - broke so many bones."

"Break some more now in a minute," Lennox grumbled - then shared a nervous smile with him. "Traveler above, we suck at this."

"Bad place to cross Hive," Ikharos agreed - sort of. "These catacombs go on for a while. This could end up being a big brood."

"Thought this was Kings territory?"

"Kings have been pulling out of Paris for months. No one messes with Hive, remember?"

"Except us," Lennox exhaled, leaning against the wall and pulling herself to her feet. "Biggest idiots around. Why'd we even take this assignment?"

"You wanted to see France."

"Oh yeah. I did, didn't I?"

"Idiot," Ikharos scoffed with a familiar fondness.

Lennox-2 laughed.

Hawkmoon dragged herself out of stasis-lock with a desperate vent, her own systems struggling to reassert control. Her entire body jolted; something was cradling her, she needed to get away - then stilled as her optics caught up and told her it was just Cyberwarp.

"You're okay," Cyberwarp whispered, optics bright and wide with worry. They were in the Aurorus. Hawkmoon recognized the bright, sterile-white walls - they were by the rear compartment, on one of the seating-berths, and her... one of her servos was cuffed to the edge of it. The bindings were tight rings of hardy steel linked with an energy-tether, and it didn't give her any slack whatsoever.

"He didn't..." Hawkmoon choked. "That fragger - he-"

"'Moon!" Cyberwarp shushed her, trying to cradle her, keep her down, keep her relaxed and comforted but - but there were Hive out there!

There was motion at the other end of the ship - Swiftsear entering her view, stalling as he noticed she was back online, and then his faceplates hardened as he marched right over. "What the frag were you thinking?" he demanded heatedly.

Cyberwarp unlooped her arms, disentangled herself and straightened up, putting herself in the wait. "Sir, wait, there has to a mista-"

"There's none." Swiftsear coldly glared at her. "Vale checked her over - no virus, no compromising cranial-damage, no abnormal spark-fluctuations - nothing. You did that of your volition, didn't you?"

"And I'd do it again," Hawkmoon growled back. "You... you stunned me."

"I'd do that again."

"You have no idea what those things..." Hawkmoon shook her helm. "Where are we now?"

"Ooooh no, you're not the one who gets to ask questions." Swiftsear switched targets. "Get out."

"I can't-"

"Get. Out."

Cyberwarp raised her helm. "No."

Swiftsear stared. "You're disobeying orders too? Is your whole trine compromised?!"

"Sir, with all due respect, there has to be a reasonable explanation. Hawkmoon wouldn't... she wouldn't do something without good reason. You know this!"

"And yet here we are."

"Are we still in orbit or not?!" Hawkmoon snapped. She tried to activate her combat-blades, but her weapons configurations were locked. So were all her transformation sequences; there was a restraining bolt affixed to the back of her neck. She tried to reach it with her free servo - but Swiftsear stomped forward, grabbed the arm and held it tight.

"You broke formation," he hissed. "You disobeyed a direct order. Do you have any idea how severe your situation is? I could have you court-martialed!"

"Those things need to die-"

"You keep saying that! We've never encountered this species before!" Swiftsear leaned close. "We are Energon Seekers, not exterminators. Organics aren't our concern - we don't bother ourselves with their conflicts."

"But they will. They'll drag us into their war just to kill us all. They did it before!"

Swiftsear recoiled. His optics sharpened. "So you know these aliens?"

Hawkmoon's own optics widened and she realized, perhaps a touch too late, that she needed to shut the frag up - and both Swiftsear and Cyberwarp caught sight of shifting demeanour, and being the fraggers they were they capitalized on it.

"You do," Swiftsear exclaimed. "Hawkmoon - don't you dare lie to me now. Tell me everything you-"

A shout came from the front of the ship. Sandstorm appeared at a half-run, barely glancing at Hawkmoon. "Swift, you need to take a look at this."

"Not now," Swift snapped, still looking at Hawkmoon.

"Swift, there are incoming warp-signatures - ships. More aliens."

Hawkmoon's temperature-regulators stalled for a moment too long; heat, unwanted and stifling, blossomed within her chassis. "We can't- It's more of them, we need to move before they-"

"Shut up." Swiftsear let go - and Cyberwarp reluctantly took over, grabbing her arm. He and Sandstorm marched back to the shuttle's prow.

Leaving her with Cyberwarp, alone.

Who was staring at her, accusingly, with regret and hurt.

"Is this..." she started to say, then, perhaps realizing so, "This is it, isn't it? What you weren't telling me?"

Hawkmoon kept her vocalizer offline. She couldn't-

"'Moon, tell me. What's happening?"

"Get me out of these-"

"No!" Cyberwarp gave her a sharp look. "You went and killed them! What am I supposed to think of that?!"

"They'll kill everything else given the chance," Hawkmoon told her. "You have to believe me."

"I do believe you, I will believe you, but you have to tell me!"

Hawkmoon winced - she hated this. Hated the... everything about it, really. "The Imojel will die, if we don't help them kill the others. 'Warp, they're all going to die - to die. Wiped out, hunted all the way to extinction. And they'll be just the start; those monsters will spread out, hit more worlds, kill and kill and kill. We have to-"

"You want us to fight?" Cyberwarp asked, horrified. "I'm not... I'm not a killer. I won't..."

"But I am," Hawkmoon went on. "I need to fight them - and everything like them. It's the only reason I'm alive."

"No, it's... what? No it isn't!" Cyberwarp gave her a cross look - and then she collapsed, down on the seating berth, her helm falling over Hawkmoon's pauldron. "Please just... stop. Just explain it. You're still hiding stuff. Hawkmoon, please!"

"I need to kill them," Hawkmoon repeated, vocalizer growing thick with emotion. "They took everything from me. Cyberwarp, please release me. The Imojel-"

"Let her out."

Swiftsear was back. He looked... uneasy.

Cyberwarp stood back up, her grip slackening. Hawkmoon didn't tear away - she couldn't do that to her. "Sir?"

"Get her up," Swiftsear repeated. Oh, he was still giving her the stink-eye, but... something had definitely changed.

Cyberwarp stiffly walked around Hawkmoon, averting her optics, and clumsily undid the cuffs. Hawkmoon slowly took her servos back and stood up.

"Follow me," Swiftsear ordered. Hawkmoon tailed behind as he turned around and walked back to the bridge - and slowed to a stop as she realized what he, Sandstorm and the Dartwings were fixated on. A holographic display of 62732CA-a, both its moons - one of which, from the looks of, they were landed on - and then, on the edge, a fleet of hexagonal-platelet shaped capital ships. Hawkmoon's optics darted to the viewport - and yes, there, tiny dashes of glitter shimmering in the light of the red star. Ships.

A bleep came from one of the shuttle's terminals - the comms-link.

"They're hailing us," Sandstorm announced, sounding somehow surprised. He approached the machine, digits darting over the screen. "Vessels are of an unknown make, but... they're battleships."

"Clearly," Swiftsear whispered, transfixed.

"Consulting datalogue... no entry."

"Put it through the transcriptoral-codex. See if you can find a match."

Sandstorm nodded. "Identifying speech patterns... Right, got a read on the language. Deciphering now."

::-zzsttttthis is Admiral Jehennes of the Fifth-Branch Marooner-Flotilla, of the Taishibethi Domain. You are in Taishibethi-space; identify yourselves immediately and admit yourselves peacefully into dominion-custody. We have a lock on your position and are ready to fire. I repeat, we have a lock on your position and are prepared to open fire.::

"Ship is moving!" Ampitude exclaimed. Two of the battleships were indeed moving - peeling away from their fleet and paddling towards 62732CA-a with haste. "Firing!"

"On u- No, not us." Swiftsear vented with relief - then, with newfound understanding. "They're striking invasion-holdfasts. What about native targets?"

"No hit!" Voltadron confirmed. "They hit only-"

Hawkmoon stopped listening. Something was... wrong. The message, what had it said? Marooner-Flotilla - no. Not that. Something was... odd about it. Something didn't sound right. "What did they call themselves?" she quietly asked.

Cyberwarp glanced at her, expression grave - wounded. Said nothing. It was Deciforge who answered. "Jehennes. Fifth-Branch. Taishibethi Domain."

It was the last one - Taishibethi Domain. Actually, forget the domain. The other word, the first word... it hung in her processor weirdly. She'd heard it before. Where...

And then it struck her.

"Oh no," Hawkmoon vented, shaking, shaking - drawing optics, concern, curiosity and some newfound contempt. Her spark gave a start - because, with a violent jolt, she recalled exactly why she recognized the word. That fragging word. A word thrown out of a stuttering, whimpering mouth - Ikharos howling with horror into the night after a data-retrieval mission, his eyes roving over glyph-scarred texts they'd ransacked from a lunar Hive cathedral within the heart of the World's Grave.

She remembered.

She remembered why he'd shouted the word - amongst so many others. A death toll. He'd been rattling out a death toll bearing thousands of names - and each of them a species, a people.

The Taishibethi hadn't been anywhere close to the finish of that death-toll, either. No - closer to the beginning, really.

"You bastard," Hawkmoon whispered, falling to her knees. Vector Prime, whoever that entity was, whatever, he'd put her... "You... you bastard."

"... 'Moon?"

"I'm... I'm in the..." I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be HERE! Oh gods no, please no... "They're dead. They're all dead."

She raised her optics to the holomap - to the approaching fleet.

"We're all dead."

AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!