The external doors of the Nemesis forward flight deck slid open, admitting a rush of artificial atmosphere as the hangar bay depressurized into the relatively thinner air of the Earth's thermosphere. Twelve Vehicon engineering techs emerged, visors and biolights glowing in the nighttime darkness. Six members of the repair crew hauled a new parabolic dish for the damaged communications array, while the rest carried metal beams and other toolboxes.
"… and the strangest thing happened this evening," one engineer was telling the others as they exited the hangar. "I was on monitor duty, right, and then I saw this alert that Steve's trying to enter Nemesis airspace."
"Well, that's not so unusual. Steve likes to go flying at night. Says the cold air is good for his paint nanites," another engineer replied.
"Yeah, but get this. When the alert came in, Steve was standing right there at the workstation in front of me! Figured Steve was playing a prank, so I authorized the entry and everything, but then I asked him after shift and he didn't have a clue what happened."
"Weird. Must've been a glitch in the system. Those happen. Have you ever been assigned to watch the cameras around this area? I swear, every other cycle they freeze up for no reason."
"I noticed that, too! They might even be frozen right now. The timing is right and everything—wait, who's that?"
The repair crew stopped in their tracks, sizing up the two ground-framed Cybertronians sitting in alt-mode at the far end of the runway. Since scanners did not register any distinctive Autobot signals or faction symbols, the repair crew reacted with confusion instead of hostility. They moved forward to get a better look at the closer intruder.
"No idea. Too big to be Breakdown, even if he somehow survived."
"Makeshift?"
"Thought he was dead, too."
"Heh, I thought Makeshift was dead after Velocitron. Didn't realize that he was still around 'til four stellar cycles later when I ran into myself in the mess hall." The engineer shuddered. "Uncannily accurate impression, I'll say that much."
"No, I'm pretty sure Makeshift is gone for real this time. The officers had a memorial. Speeches and everything."
"Who else could it be? We don't have any other big grounders aboard."
The ground-frame rolled forward, revealing the caterpillar treads and muzzle of a tank. The muzzle swung around to point directly at the repair crew.
"Hostiles! Call for backup—AAAGH!" The speaker crumpled to the ground, convulsing. Smoke and energon poured from a hole on his left shoulder and torso. His detached arm landed some distance away, trailing wires and vital fluids.
Another shell whistled overhead, exploding on contact with a wall. The camera mounted there exploded in a hail of glass fragments. If it had not been malfunctioning before, it certainly was now.
"Down, get down!" Two engineers seized their injured fellow's arms and dragged him to the side. The rest of the repair crew scrambled for cover, abandoning tools and charging up their weapons.
"Security, come in! Security! We need backup on the flight deck," one engineer shouted into his comms, only to receive static. With the signal relay transceivers on the communications array damaged, the thick hull of the Nemesis blocked transmissions from any outside source, including terrified repair crews pinned under enemy fire on the external flight deck.
Blaster fire lit up the night, interspersed with the much more destructive thunder of heavier ordinance from Brawl. Two aerial Vehicons transformed and launched into the sky for a better vantage point, but Onslaught targeted their wings. One injured aerial crashed onto the hull of the Nemesis, while the other spiraled into the inky abyss below.
Meanwhile, Swindle, Blast Off, and Vortex had been waiting beside the hangar bay doors. Amid the chaos of Brawl's cover fire, they slipped behind the Vehicon repair crew to enter the hangar.
Starscream had kindly provided them with a schematic of the Nemesis that described the locations of camera and sensor arrays. The hangar bay had two cameras, one by the external door and one watching over an interior corridor entrance along the left wall. Vortex disabled the cameras and associated motion sensors with precise laser shots.
Swindle halted, glancing around with a suspicious frown. The wide floor and vaulted ceiling held enough space for several shuttles the size of Blast Off's alt-mode to fit without crowding, yet that vast space was entirely unused. Only a few metal sheets and girders, probably intended for construction or renovations, were stacked to one side.
"Some hangar this is. Where are all the ships?"
"Another flight deck? Deployed? Scrapyard?" Vortex shrugged, scanning the corners for any other cameras that might not have shown up on Starscream's map. There was one camera placed at a seam along the floor, but its field of view covered a portion of the floor tiles and wall on the far left side of the hangar. At one point, it might have monitored a transport dropship or other small craft, but now the camera only watched over an empty area.
"Quiet." Blast Off tapped on the door controls to access the interior of the ship.
The door slid open. Three Combaticons went through. The door shut behind them, muffling the sounds of battle.
The adjoining corridor was neatly maintained and clear of debris, a healthier version of the Harbinger's own layout without the accumulated rust and detritus from millions of years out of service. Lights placed at regular intervals along the ceiling gave the ship a civilized ambience compared to the perpetual darkness of the Harbinger. The air contained a refreshing blend of nitrogen and argon, familiar gasses that matched Earth's own atmospheric composition without the presence of oxidizing compounds. Two smaller corridors branched off the sides of the main walkway in front of them.
While Vortex and Blast Off shot precise holes through the nearby cameras, Swindle pulled up a holographic projection of Starscream's map and manipulated it to zoom in on their current location. There were two flight decks on the upper level, one pointing forward and one back. Swindle, Vortex, and Blast Off had entered through the forward hangar above the bow of the ship. Their target was the bridge. This had been sensibly located in the center of the ship, four decks below them, to maximize the chances of command staff surviving a spacefaring battle. Two routes were highlighted on the map. The first route, a direct path from the forward hangar to the bridge, had been reserved for Brawl and Onslaught. The slightly longer second route intercepted the first one at three separate checkpoints before ending at the same destination. Swindle, Vortex, and Blast Off would take the second path, turning from the main corridor to a parallel side branch.
A peculiar error caught Swindle's attention. He rotated and sifted through the map, searching room by room, but the error persisted. The map legend had a specific indicator for energon-containing areas, but none of the areas on the map were marked as containing energon. Though there were storage rooms aplenty, the description was just vague enough that energon could be located in any of them, or none of them. Starscream must have purposefully erased the energon markers to hinder the Combaticons' plans.
"What if we took a small detour?" Swindle highlighted another segment on the map.
"Swindle. Remember the plan," Blast Off warned.
"Yes, yes, the plan. I'm just saying, we're—" a slight pause to check the chronometer, "seventy-four seconds ahead of schedule, and this room is marked 'storage.' Wouldn't take long to check out."
Onslaught had given the advance team an enormous time buffer considering the distance they were meant to cover. They had seventy-some seconds to spare at the very start of their route, and moving quickly to the next checkpoint would bring them even further ahead of schedule. Even considering all the cameras they needed to take out along the way, Onslaught's plan had budgeted enough time to walk through from the forward hangar to the bridge and still have a few minutes to spare.
"It could have the energon we need to get off-world. Worth a look." Vortex sprinted off in that direction without a second glance, lasers already shooting another pair of cameras into smoking husks.
"Oy, wait up!" Switching off the holographic map, Swindle dove into alt-mode and zoomed down the corridor after Vortex.
Blast Off followed rather more reluctantly, cannons primed. Sooner or later, someone would notice the convenient trail of camera blackouts.
Four corridors and seventeen disabled cameras later, they arrived at a nondescript storage closet. It was locked. The control panel next to the door prompted them for a passcode.
"Same auth code as the perimeter guns?" Vortex guessed. Blast Off poked in the sequence that had enabled them to enter Nemesis airspace without incident.
The control panel flashed red. "Access denied. Insufficient clearance."
Swindle shot the control panel. The display melted, leaving a few remaining pixels that flickered sadly around the edges. The door clicked but remained closed—if anything, more locks had engaged after the controls were destroyed.
"Must be a new design," Vortex noted. In the old days, doors had been hardwired to open when the control panel was manually disabled. This acted as a safety mechanism to prevent personnel from getting trapped in the event of power outages. It also had the unintended side effect of helping Autobot saboteurs gain entry, but the common consensus had been that being trapped in an abandoned base was far worse than the rare infiltrator slipping past security.
Swindle kicked the door. Metal clanged, echoing through the empty corridors. All three of them winced. The door was barely scuffed at the impact site.
"Pitiful. Stand back." Cannons hummed with charge, and Blast Off shot the door. The blast cleanly vaporized a circle of metal around Blast Off's knee level. The molten edges of the hole glowed with heat.
The gap was just large enough for a minibot to walk through comfortably, but it would have been a tight squeeze for even the smallest of the Combaticons. Swindle crouched down, poked his head through, and made a pleased noise.
"Be quick," Blast Off said.
"You two keep watch. I'll be back in no time." Swindle scuttled through on hands and knees, leaving a few streaks of beige paint on the jagged edges of the hole. Hot metal stung as Swindle brushed past it, but the discomfort faded once he reached the other side.
The storage room consisted of a door and three walls lined with densely packed shelves. It was long yet narrow in structure. Swindle had barely enough space to turn around while standing, although a mech of Vehicon proportions would have had little trouble navigating between the shelves. The wall opposite the door had a matching minibot-sized pit from Blast Off's cannon, and shelves on either side of the hole sagged from the heat. Whatever had once been in the affected region was now a molten puddle of unidentifiable glassy residue on the floor.
Despite the small space, the intact shelves held a treasure trove of miscellaneous useful supplies: patches, portable welders, wires, cables, vent filters, metal plates, quick-dry adhesives, optical lenses, a disproportionate amount of red paint—the list went on and on. There was no energon, but the other contents more than made up for that minor disappointment. With the ease of long practice, Swindle scanned over the inventory and identified the most valuable items. Scooping up a handful of pneumatic actuators, Swindle began to fill up his subspace.
Vortex dragged claws across the outside surface of the door with an audial-splitting squeal. "Still alive in there, Swindle? What do you see?"
"Medical supplies," said Swindle, adding a container of premium car wax to his rapidly expanding collection of loot.
"Oh? Grab me a couple of laser scalpels, will you?"
"Sure, just a moment."
"Vortex…" Blast Off sounded impatient for some unfathomable reason. They were still thirty-two seconds ahead of schedule for this particular location, and the checkpoint was just around the corner from the storage closet.
"Aha! Plenty to spare. Here, catch." Swindle tossed a packet of cheap, disposable laser scalpels through the hole. The more valuable high-precision surgical lasers were already in his subspace.
"Batteries not included," Vortex read from the package. "Huh. Never saw that written on a laser scalpel before. Are you sure these are legit?"
"Optics up, Vortex. You're meant to be keeping watch," Swindle replied, returning to his far more important task.
As an afterthought, Swindle handed over a box of single-use energy cells to go with Vortex's new set of scalpels. He also placed a welder and a stack of larger metal sheets next to Blast Off's foot. General patch supplies were always useful, but they took up excessive volume in one's subspace that could be better used on more important items, such as a power capacitor bank likely intended for installation in an electro-shock prod. Swindle's primary subspace compartment was full. His secondary subspace compartment—an illegal pre-war upgrade that had somehow carried over to his new frame, despite the loss of most of his more recently acquired mods—still had plenty of room. Swindle stuffed in the whole bin of capacitors.
Back at the hangar, Onslaught and Brawl were engaged in an intense shootout with the Vehicon repair crew. Despite their initial surprise at being ambushed and cut off from communications, the surviving engineers had settled into formation behind various metal spurs or outcroppings on the hull. They sustained an organized pattern of crossfire that had driven Brawl and Onslaught to seek refuge behind their own cover: the partially destroyed communication dish housing.
Brawl handled the offensive work, exchanging volleys with the Vehicons while Onslaught monitored time and travel distances. As the Nemesis ascended westward, the air thinned with each passing moment. Onslaught lacked the precise altitude sensors that Blast Off possessed, but a rough estimate placed them in the lower exosphere by now.
The ship picked up considerable velocity as it approached cruising altitude. The blue-green sphere of a night-encased Earth spun by in the distance below. They were quickly approaching a vast ocean to the west of the landmass that hosted the Harbinger wreckage. Onslaught routed more power to built-in magnetic clamps to keep himself firmly grounded on the outer hull while the ship accelerated. Seconds ticked by on his internal chronometer, ponderously slow compared to the rush of wind and the hail of blaster bolts striking the armored plates of their shelter.
Three. Two. One. Mark.
The brilliance of the Earth's star flashed over the western horizon behind Onslaught, blinding the ranks of Vehicons. Jagged shadows slashed across the flight deck from every plate and protrusion on the hull as the Nemesis chased and overtook the setting sun.
"Advance," Onslaught ordered.
"About time!" Brawl's engine roared, and the ship's hull vibrated with the force of his enthusiasm.
They burst out of cover simultaneously, Brawl pulling just a fraction ahead of Onslaught. Haloed by the blaze of an artificial dawn, the two Combaticons landed with wheels and treads spinning. They charged across the runway toward the still-open hangar doors.
Vehicons fired, desperately trying to slow their advance, but the sudden burst of sunlight overloaded optical sensors and disrupted targeting protocols for a few critical moments. Blaster fire missed vital points and splashed off heavily armored exoplating, heating dense metal with only a localized burning sensation. The damage was inconsequential. Brawl and Onslaught had both fought through far worse injury in the past. With the rising sun at their backs, their vision remained as sharp as ever. The Vehicons' efforts barely slowed them down.
Brawl bulldozed through the few Vehicons crouched at the hangar entrance. One unfortunate Vehicon engineer was flattened under his treads. The remainder scattered with alarmed shouts, diving out of the way to avoid being crushed. With the path now free of obstruction, Brawl and Onslaught raced through the empty hangar bay.
At the other end of the hangar, Brawl transformed and triggered the interior door controls. Panels retracted in near silence. Onslaught, still in truck mode, zoomed through to enter the long corridor beyond. Brawl returned to tank mode to defend their rear.
Seven Vehicons regrouped behind Onslaught and Brawl, pursuing on foot or with ground-vehicle modes. Five ground-framed Vehicons had racecar alts that were faster and more agile than either the truck or tank. The other two aerial frames chased after on foot at only slightly slower speeds, laying down cover fire to divert attention from their faster compatriots. All of the Vehicons easily kept pace with Onslaught and Brawl through the corridors.
Brawl's turret rotated through a full hundred-eighty degrees to shoot backward at the pursuers. One Vehicon perished with an agonized scream, armor torn to shreds by direct hits from Brawl's artillery. The remaining six were agile enough to dodge or roll around his shots, and they continued firing at the intruders. The static-hiss of encrypted comm signals emanated from those Vehicons: calls for backup, no doubt. Now that they had entered the ship, any advantages gained from the damaged communications array were now neutralized.
This, too, had been accounted for in Onslaught's plan. As reinforcements converged on their position, the number of Vehicons in pursuit increased from six up to twenty. With this increased tail, Onslaught's objective shifted from outright fleeing pursuit to leading those same pursuers in a controlled route.
Elsewhere on the Nemesis, in a much quieter sector of the ship, a certain green Autobot had been wandering the halls for some time. Bulkhead was no master of stealth, especially when compared to his smaller and more compact colleagues, but there had been no trouble as yet. It was quiet—improbably quiet, in fact.
After a routine energon survey mission in Texas went terribly wrong, Bulkhead had found himself stuck aboard the Decepticon flagship in fully hostile territory. The ship layout was unfamiliar, adding to the disorientation of suddenly being spirited into an unknown and unwanted environment. In an amazing stroke of luck, Bulkhead had not run into any patrols, nor even spotted a single Decepticon wandering in these halls.
An intermittent GPS signal from human satellites flickered at the edge of Bulkhead's perception, marking a rapid string of locations as the Nemesis orbited the globe: Texas oil fields, California coast, the Pacific Ocean. Now, the ship was flying over Hawaii, and Bulkhead was no closer to finding an escape route than when he had first arrived.
Bulkhead had spent the first half hour of his unexpected tenure on the Nemesis doggedly avoiding any sound that resembled footsteps or comms chatter or vocalizations. After a while, though, curiosity got the better of him. Bulkhead knew that he was not the most quiet of mechs; he did not have an equivalent to Arcee's stealth mods or Bumblebee's scouting experience. Surely, someone had to have noticed the sound of his footsteps by now—right? At the very least, Soundwave, who was rumored to be able to intercept comms transmissions from half a solar system away, would have marked Bulkhead's intrusion and was currently plotting to ground-bridge him to the Arctic, right?
Right?
Nothing happened. It was most unsettling. Suspicious, even.
When tempting fate failed to conjure up a Vehicon patrol bent on exterminating the Autobot intruder in their midst, Bulkhead decided to take a more active approach. Thus far, Bulkhead had steadfastly avoided the wider corridors that should have led to the command center as surely as rivers flowed toward the ocean. Approaching the command center meant a higher likelihood of running into the more dangerous Decepticons: Soundwave, Dreadwing, or perhaps even Megatron himself. Even so, a Wrecker was meant for action, not silence, and the stillness ate away at Bulkhead's nerves until he could stand it no longer. Bulkhead turned from a narrow side path into a broader corridor and followed that one to its end.
A sound broke the silence. It was not a normal ship sound, such as the pneumatic hiss of automatic doors or the steady creak of metal panels settling under a temperature gradient. This noise was sharp, rhythmic, almost like Miko's music: a succession of whooshes ending in a sharp snap, and whistles ending in the screech of tearing metal.
Weapons? A shootout happening on the Nemesis itself? What were the odds that the rest of Team Prime had noticed Bulkhead's disappearance and decided to stage a rescue, risking themselves in the process?
In the distance, a voice screamed.
Bulkhead broke into a run. He skidded around a corner to see the flash of blaster fire and smoke. No less than twenty Vehicons chased two mechs with Earth alt-modes. Through the billowing smoke, Bulkhead could just barely see that the lead vehicle was a truck. Bulkhead's hopes of rescue leapt for a moment—then plummeted.
Optimus Prime had some blue on his frame, but he was definitely not green. That particular shade of green stood out as especially distinctive. In an era before the war, it had been the exact shade of green reserved for disposable-class laborers or military frames. It was the same green that Bulkhead himself still wore as a testament to his humble origins.
Those mechs were not Bulkhead's colleagues. This was not his fight. Self-preservation instincts kicked in, all the stronger now that curiosity had been satisfied. Bulkhead tore his eyes from the unfolding chase, turned around, and ran quickly in the opposite direction.
Bulkhead's first priority, as before, was to find a way off this ship.
In the main corridor of the upper deck, Onslaught and Brawl had picked up a few groups of reinforcement Vehicons as they drove through the halls of the Nemesis. Their pursuit now hovered around seventeen Vehicons, plus or minus a few as reinforcements joined or Brawl's shots landed.
Onslaught, who was driving in front, held the comparatively easier task of watching for enemies in the forward direction. So far, there had been none, although Onslaught had caught a glimpse of green exoplating at one corner. Whoever it was had wisely fled rather than face Onslaught's missiles, leaving the forward path clear of obstruction.
Twenty-nine seconds ahead of schedule, they drove past a side corridor uneventfully.
"SOMETHING IS WRONG," Brawl shouted over the Combaticon radio channel, transmitting a signal with a far larger carrier wave amplitude than was necessary given Onslaught's close proximity.
"Lower your output volume," Onslaught returned, using an appropriate signal amplitude that would be undetectable outside a ten-meter radius. Brawl's initial transmission had been loud enough to be heard across half the ship; even if others were not able to break the encryption, they would definitely have detected the unauthorized radio channel as a garbled screech of static.
"siR," Brawl tried again, in a valiant attempt at lower volume that instead emerged as a strangely modulated convolution of large and small-amplitude transmissions, "ThAT wAS supPOSed to be THE fiRst chECKpoiNT. The OTHers didn't mAKE iT!"
"There is no cause for concern. I anticipated this diversion. Proceed to the second checkpoint," Onslaught replied, pulling a hard ninety-degree turn into a perpendicular corridor.
In an astonishing display of maneuverability for a tank, Brawl also managed the sharp turn. Most of their pursuers followed with varying degrees of ease. One Vehicon turned too sharply and skidded into a wall. The resulting pileup took out two more Vehicons. They sprawled on the ground in a dazed heap that rapidly vanished into a speck in Onslaught's rearview mirrors.
Onslaught and Brawl raced down the corridor. Fourteen Vehicons chased after them.
Cannon fire erupted across the hall. Blast Off and Vortex stepped out from behind support pillars behind the Vehicon cluster, cannons and lasers blazing. As the Vehicons braked and skidded around to face these new enemies at their backside, Onslaught and Brawl transformed, lunging into the fray with fists swinging. Blast Off and Vortex charged, bringing their own melee skills to bear.
Trapped between the two enemies behind and two before, the Vehicons took heavy damage. Soon, fourteen Vehicon frames laid smoking and partly dismembered on the floor. Four Combaticons stood around them, unharmed save for minor cosmetic scuffs. Onslaught checked his chronometer.
"Precisely on schedule." Onslaught glanced at a small side closet with a melted control panel and a larger melted hole in the door. "I presume Swindle is inside?"
Vortex glanced at Blast Off. Blast Off glanced at the mutilated door. A head poked out from the hole in the door. Large purple optics glowed innocently.
"Fancy meeting you here, boss! We were just taking a small detour."
"Hm. This dalliance was expected. All goes according to plan." Onslaught sent a data file over the short-range radio channel. This data file contained a map, just like Swindle's map of the Nemesis, except that the second checkpoint location and two routes had been adjusted slightly to include the corridor running past the storage closet. The new routes merged after this checkpoint, with both teams joining up and then proceeding directly to the bridge.
"Hehe, you really do think of everything." Swindle chuckled, albeit with somewhat forced enthusiasm, as he crawled out of the storage room. His paint had suffered from the experience, but Swindle was overall a richer mech than before, and that was good enough for him.
Fourteen terminated Vehicon frames sprawled across the corridor. Swindle's gaze alighted on them with the same opportunistic glee as when entering a storage room for the first time. With considerable effort, Swindle tore his gaze away from the corpses and looked at Onslaught.
"Time?"
"Ninety seconds."
Swindle did not waste another moment. He lunged toward the first Vehicon, finding and triggering the manual subspace compartment release mechanisms. A pile of junk appeared on the ground: three empty energon cubes, a data pad with a broken screen, and seven translucent Earth rocks of varying color but low elemental value. Rather disappointed, Swindle checked the next Vehicon, and the next.
"A pity they don't have much of value." The most useful item of the lot was a spare car tire that one of the Vehicons had kept in subspace, but it was too bulky to fit inside Swindle's own half-full secondary compartment.
"They do have weapons," Vortex noted, poking one Vehicon's blaster.
"Yes. Built-in weapons," Brawl pointed out. The volume problem seemed to have sorted itself out.
"Hardly a problem." Plunging sharp claws into an unprotected joint, Vortex tore off the Vehicon's arm. Energon and coolant dripped from torn circulation lines in the detached limb. Vortex selected a handful of wires and sent a small electric pulse through each. The arm-mounted blaster glowed and discharged, scorching a darkened patch on the wall.
"It's functional. Here, Onslaught—a present." Vortex offered the blaster to Onslaught with a flourish, though the elegance of the gesture was rather offset by the playful tilt of his head and splay of rotors. Onslaught took the weapon with a curt nod. If Onslaught had a problem with handling the dismembered arm, he did not show it.
Vortex repeated the process with two more Vehicons, disarming each with similar efficiency. "Brawl? Blast Off?"
Brawl took the blaster. In root-mode, the muzzle on his back pointed at the ceiling, forcing him to either crouch or stay in alt-mode while using ranged weaponry. This handheld blaster would make indoor fighting considerably easier.
"Decent range. Good rate of fire, but limited power," was Brawl's assessment.
Blast Off refused to touch the other severed arm.
"It is leaking," Blast Off said. Since his own cannons were humming with charge and very obviously functional in root-mode, nobody pressed the matter.
Sensing an exploitable instance of the old proverb about trash and treasure, Swindle interceded. "I'll take it off your hands, no problem. No pun intended."
The arm disappeared into Swindle's secondary subspace. Swindle would have gladly taken several more salvaged parts, just for the possibility of selling or repurposing them later, but his ninety seconds were almost up. Onslaught had already begun to cast thoughtful glances down the corridor.
"How unusual that the crew has failed to respond thus far," Onslaught mused. "After all this time, only low-level grunts have come to address our invasion. Are the Decepticons so short-staffed that Soundwave himself has failed to notice a convenient string of malfunctioning hallway cameras? Not to mention the noise."
No one had an answer to this. Vortex and Brawl busied themselves with hauling the Vehicon remnants into the storage closet. There was nothing they could do about the blackened marks of blaster fire on the walls, but hiding the Vehicon frames would at least ensure that the corridor looked clear from a distance.
Swindle called up his holographic map again, overlaying the projection with dotted lines marking Onslaught's revised route. There was an elevator lift not far from their present location. The lift would take them all the way to the fourth deck. From there, two central corridors ran laterally toward the bridge.
With the full team reunited and Onslaught in the lead, the Combaticons made short work of the remainder of the route. The Vehicon security squads that attempted to confront them soon perished under heavy blaster fire.
As the mission progressed without incident, Onslaught grew increasingly tense. The guns on his back clicked and realigned with increasing frequency, and he swept scanners over hidden corners or ventilation ducts multiple times in rapid succession. The others soon took note of this.
"You getting twitchy is making us twitchy. What's got your wires in a twist? Out with it," Vortex said.
"Starscream described the new Air Commander as a loyal Decepticon and a formidable soldier. That we have not encountered this Dreadwing yet is most troubling." Onslaught did not sound troubled. If anything, Onslaught's voice was as confident as ever, but the rarity of this very admission signified its importance.
The next time a squad of Vehicons appeared, Vortex asked them about it.
"Gone planetside," Vortex reported after a brief chat. "Dreadwing and Soundwave both. They aren't due back for another three hours."
The Vehicon pinned under his knee, missing half a visor and one wheel and three fingers from the opposite hand, groaned weakly. "Please... I told you everything... let me go..."
"Hush, now." A laser scalpel slipped between neck cables, and the Vehicon's voice cut to static. Vortex watched the light fade from the other's visor. "It will all be over soon."
"Lucky timing?" Brawl suggested.
Swindle scoffed. "Since when has luck ever worked in our favor?"
Vortex glanced up from the unfortunate Vehicon. "Maybe Starscream's well-wishes stuck."
Silence prevailed as everyone thought about the sort of "luck" that Starscream possessed. It was... a most unique and unconventional sort, but not a particularly desirable one.
"Perhaps." Onslaught still sounded suspicious.
They continued down the last corridor to the entrance of the bridge. As the doors retracted, Brawl rolled through in tank mode. Voices shouted in alarm, and blaster shots started to fly. The low-power energon plasma of standard Vehicon weapons splashed off Brawl's armor. While the bridge staff concentrated fire on Brawl, the other four Combaticons rushed out behind Brawl to eliminate the distracted enemies.
The bridge was only inhabited by Vehicons. Under the Combaticon team's coordinated assault, the bridge staff were soon neutralized.
Opposite the entrance, an elevated platform looked over a large viewscreen, currently dark and idle as there were no officers on the platform to observe the sights. Onslaught stood at the end of this platform and faced the door with all the regal authority of a ship's captain. Brawl and Swindle took up position to the left and right sides of the door, weapons primed to fire at the first sign of trouble.
The bridge platform held several workstations, but these consoles required passcode entry to awaken from idle mode. Several peripheral workstations were also arrayed below the platform. These consoles were presently unlocked, thanks to the Vehicon staff that had been working at those stations just moments prior. Now, smoking carcasses littered the floor, leaving those workstations unattended.
Blast Off hopped from the platform into the gallery below, crouching among the consoles and frames there. His dark color scheme blended in well with the shadows beneath the walkway, while his position granted a clear line of sight to anyone standing on the platform above. Vortex jumped down on the other side of the platform, heading toward one of the active workstations.
"Ready," Vortex said.
"Proceed."
The intercom system clicked on, and Vortex spoke in a passable imitation of a Vehicon voice.
"Lord Megatron, we have a problem."
"Yes, what is it?" Megatron sounded exactly as arrogant as the Combaticons remembered.
"Intruder alert. The traitor Starscream was last seen in the vicinity of the bridge."
Megatron chuckled, soft and malicious. "Starscream dares to come crawling back?" The intercom switched to a shipwide channel. "All Decepticons, clear the bridge area. I will deal with Starscream myself."
The bridge was already clear, but the Combaticons appreciated the sentiment. Vortex shut down the console and retreated into a position mirroring that of Blast Off.
Megatron did not keep them waiting long. The bridge doors soon retracted, and Megatron strolled in with utmost confidence. Megatron's frame had been altered since the Combaticons last remembered, with blocky and utilitarian outlines replaced by fearsome spikes and jagged edges. A small and extremely polished red ground-frame trailed in Megatron's wake, carrying a medical kit.
A few steps in, however, Megatron paused.
"You are not Starscream."
"Indeed not. But you are Megatron, leader of the Decepticon Empire… or what remains of it, anyway." Onslaught met authority with authority, standing with the flawless poise of a forged soldier. He dismissed the threat in Megatron's growl as though it had passed unheard.
Behind Megatron, the red medic gasped, noticing Brawl and Swindle on either side of the door. "Look out, my lord!"
Swindle grinned a perfect deal's-off-shanix-or-your-life grin and leveled one arm-blaster at the red medic. The other remained trained on Megatron. The red medic instantly fell quiet.
Megatron turned his head, surveying the bridge while keeping Onslaught within his field of view. Sharp optics picked out the shapes of Blast Off and Vortex amid the gloom below. A slow, deliberate smile spread across Megatron's faceplates.
"Well, well. If it isn't the Combaticons. You're looking quite lively for convicts supposed to be disassembled four million years ago. Did Starscream rebuild you?"
Onslaught's visor flared. "Starscream's contributions were negligible. Our efforts alone led to this moment."
"I see. What do you want, Onslaught? I presume that you slaughtered your way through my ship for some reason. Let's hear it."
"We come to deliver the Decepticons from the tyranny of one who puts personal glory over the greater good of the Decepticon Cause." As Onslaught spoke, Brawl and Swindle converged from behind, while Blast Off and Vortex crept to flank their target from below.
Megatron chuckled. "I am the Cause: its inception and its culmination. You call me a tyrant? Then tyrant I am—the very tyrant through which ultimate peace shall reign!"
"It pains me to admit that Starscream was right." Onslaught's flawless parade-rest stance drooped, and his shoulders hunched over as though in grave disappointment. "You've gone mad."
Onslaught dropped into a crouch, and twin missiles launched from his back. The red medic yelped and ran for cover, but Megatron had been the target of both missiles. Fire and light bloomed where Megatron had once stood. The concussive blast of the explosion was enough to send the red medic flying off the platform.
As the smoke cleared, Vortex and Blast Off hopped upward to take up position on either side of Onslaught. Brawl and Swindle sidled in from the back, cutting into the blast zone to pin down a rather dazed Megatron. Swindle restrained his left arm, and Brawl took the right. They dragged Megatron upright to balance on his knees. Megatron hung from their grasp like dead weight. Megatron's outer armor was rather the worse for wear after taking two direct hits to the torso, but red optics smoldered with fury.
"What exactly do you intend to accomplish with this little rebellion, Onslaught? You were a loyal soldier once. Your command has brought me many victories." Megatron's gaze shifted from Onslaught to Blast Off. "Your talents are wasted serving Starscream's petty power-plays. Swear fealty to me once again, Combaticons, and Decepticon victory is assured."
Onslaught's head dipped. "You had your chance as leader, and you squandered it when you abandoned Cybertron in the hands of those unfit to rule. We shall restore the Decepticon Cause to its former glory—without you."
"So, you have chosen treason." Megatron's fusion cannon began to hum with charge. "A pity."
Megatron heaved, flinging Swindle onto Blast Off before the former could react. In the same motion, Megatron pivoted around Brawl and kicked the tank's legs out from under him. Sparks showered from a damaged joint in Megatron's shoulder, but his cannon arm was free. Megatron stumbled back several steps and leveled the cannon at Onslaught.
"Farewell, Onslaught."
The fusion cannon blast struck Onslaught in the midsection, sending him backward into a workstation. Injured in pride if not in frame, Onslaught righted himself and reverted to the backup plan.
"Combine into Bruticus!"
Four visors and one pair of optics flashed upon receiving this command. All sense of individuality vanished into the base directive of combination, and five separate minds blended together under the awakening of a single greater consciousness.
Previously, on the lower level of the bridge, the missile explosion had flung Knock Out into a heap of dead Vehicons. After landing in a most undignified manner, Knock Out selflessly set aside concern over his mauled paint job to check up on Megatron's progress.
Not all was going well; in fact, after taking two missiles to the chassis, Megatron appeared to be incapacitated. As soon as the Combaticon intruders were finished with Megatron, they would surely come for Knock Out, who very much doubted that his own armor would be able to survive a direct hit from a single missile. That Megatron had managed to take two and still retain consciousness was quite the medical mystery, and Knock Out foresaw a significant amount of repair work in the near future—assuming, of course, that both Megatron and Knock Out survived this encounter.
Always motivated when his own survival was at stake, Knock Out scrambled over to the nearest console and logged in with his officer credentials. The ground bridge controls were easily accessible, but the settings posed a slight problem. Knock Out glanced at the coordinate values with growing desperation. Knock Out could calculate coordinates to within two kilometers as well as any other mech, but he needed a radius within twenty meters to make a portal that selectively removed the Combaticons without taking Megatron as well.
Knock Out ran the calculations and squinted at the numbers rolling by on his internal display. Were those coordinates correct? Who knew? Rusted scrap. Why did this have to happen while Soundwave was off-ship? Soundwave made custom portal placement into an art form. Soundwave could have run these calculations instantly.
In the distance, Knock Out heard a call to combine, of all things. Knock Out glanced up, and the Combaticons had all changed positions as the dreaded transformation sequence began. His calculations were all useless now. With a combiner onboard, the entire ship was doomed.
Wait. Not quite useless. If Knock Out adjusted those parameters there and there, compensated for trajectories and rotated the azimuthal angle seventy-two degrees…
Set coordinates. Set destination. Engage!
A portal flashed into existence to Megatron's right, much too far from the combiner to be of any effect—except, maybe, the unwanted effect of removing Megatron when Bruticus finished combining and inevitably punted Megatron through the portal. Panicking, Knock Out entered a shutdown command sequence into the ground-bridge controls.
Megatron turned at the noise, saw a portal opening, and sprinted toward the five transforming Combaticons. Bruticus had already stood up on two legs and was in the process of acquiring arms. Megatron grabbed the nearest threat, a right arm not yet linked to the main torso, and hurled Blast Off through the portal mid-transformation. The portal collapsed into thin air a moment later.
Bruticus roared in rage and confusion, clutching at the missing linkage with the other functional arm. The very floor shuddered under the force of his war cry.
Without Blast Off, the combiner's torso armor was thinner than usual, lacking the extra layers of triple-reinforced space-grade armor that would have extended from the right arm to shield the shoulder and chest region. Megatron noticed this deficiency. His fusion cannon began to charge again, but Bruticus moved faster.
A massive fist slammed into the ground mere meters away from Megatron, denting the solid metal floor with four knuckle-shaped imprints. A tremor shook the entire ship. Megatron barely stumbled back in time to avoid getting squashed. Bruticus shifted his weight into a crouch. The opposite knee struck the ground with a thunderous clang, similarly shaking the ship and crumpling the floor plates.
Head bowed, Bruticus knelt before the much smaller warlord.
"Bruticus functions to serve Lord Megatron."
Megatron stared at the combiner, too astonished to guard his expression. When Megatron at last regained his motor function, Bruticus still knelt in the center of the bridge.
"To serve?" Megatron approached cautiously, circling Bruticus with a considerable margin. "Really, Onslaught. After all this talk about tyranny and rebellion."
"Bruticus functions to serve Lord Megatron," the combiner repeated, tone level and placid.
Disbelief gave way to satisfaction. Megatron came to a stop in front of Bruticus, looking up into a deferential red visor. "Well, well. It seems that Shockwave has indeed come through on his promise to reprogram you into loyal soldiers. Your combined form, anyway—the individual components still seem quite uncooperative. Wouldn't you agree, Onslaught?"
Bruticus remained a motionless metal statue. His visor cast a warm crimson glow over the ruined floor.
"A pity about Shockwave's untimely demise. Far better if he had managed to finish the job," Megatron mused.
The ship jolted a fourth time, but this vibration was not from Bruticus. Megatron whirled around, bracing himself against an enormous arm.
"Knock Out, report!"
Knock Out, who had absolutely not been hiding under a console while Megatron tempted fate by taunting a one-armed combiner, crawled into the open. Returning to the console keypad, Knock Out keyed in a command sequence to activate the main viewscreen. The front half of the bridge brightened into a view of sunny blue skies and sparse clouds, along with roughly two hundred black specks.
"An Insecticon swarm?" Knock Out could not conceal his shock.
"Airachnid." All satisfaction had vanished from Megatron's voice, leaving only anger. Megatron activated a shipwide comms channel. "All hands to the upper flight deck. Defend the ship."
"Defense mission acknowledged." Bruticus stood, visor brightening at the promise of violence. One fist clenched at his side. When Megatron headed for the door, Bruticus followed afterward. Each step that the combiner took rocked the very framework of the ship.
Above decks, the situation was grim. Vehicon troopers fired at the Insecticon swarm, but they were hopelessly outmatched in firepower. Heavily armored Insecticons shrugged off Vehicon blaster-fire with barely a scratch, while weaker Vehicon frames crumpled or melted under only a single strike from an Insecticon. Aerial Vehicon units had greater agility than the Insecticons, but they, too, were overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies within the Insecticon swarm.
Megatron's melee prowess might have been impaired from taking two missiles to the chest, but his fusion cannon still worked fine. The destructive power of a single blast more than made up for its slow rate of fire. Fusion cannon charging to full power, Megatron began shooting Insecticons down one by one.
"Puny bugs." Bruticus plunged into the fray with gleeful abandon, swatting Insecticons out of the air and stomping them underfoot like the vermin that they were.
Even one-armed, Bruticus was a formidable foe. Rotor blades spun on his left arm, a whirling fan of destruction that slashed through armor plates and shredded Insecticons into pieces. Dozens of Insecticons spiraled out of the sky, bleeding smoke from torn wings or gashes.
Four Insecticons noticed the ferocity of this largest foe. They dove toward Bruticus in a coordinated attack, aiming for the right side where his missing arm left a gap in his defenses.
"Too slow!" Bruticus spun around with impossible speed. His hand clamped around the first Insecticon with crushing force. The Insecticon wiggled. Bruticus squeezed. The Insecticon popped, energon spurting from every seam. Bruticus flung its carcass into the next attacker, and both crashed onto the hull in a heap of twisted metal.
The remaining two Insecticons struck Bruticus full across the torso. The impact was too weak to dent his armor, but the momentum of the double crash knocked Bruticus backward. Bruticus stumbled over the edge of the deck and down, down, down.
For all his strength, Bruticus was still beholden to the laws of gravity. Bruticus fell from space for the second time in his existence, one hand reaching for a starship that would fly forever beyond his grasp.
Bruticus redirected his rage toward the two Insecticons attacking the site of his missing arm. They wrestled until the plasma of atmospheric re-entry scorched their plating to a red-hot glow and shattered Bruticus into four component consciousnesses. One torso, two Insecticons, and three limbs plummeted toward the Earth wreathed in fire.
Back on the Nemesis, Megatron saw his new combiner dragged overboard by Insecticons, but there were rather more urgent matters to address. Namely, keeping himself online. All of the Vehicon troopers were dead. The aerial Vehicons were dead. The combiner was gone. Only Megatron remained standing upon the upper deck, and standing was a very generous term at that. Willpower alone kept Megatron's leg struts locked upright where damage and exhaustion threatened to topple him over.
One Insecticon landed on the deck before Megatron. It was soon joined by five, then ten, then a hundred.
Burning with spite, Megatron charged his fusion cannon one last time. Megatron could not shoot the entire swarm before they overwhelmed his defenses, but he would perish fighting or not at all.
The Insecticons did not attack. They paused, shifting and glancing at each other, suddenly lost without the mental compulsion that had driven them here in the first place. When the entire swarm bowed to swear fealty before their one true lord and master, Megatron knew astonishment for the second time that day.
Then, the central power core went out, and the Nemesis took a nosedive toward the Earth.