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[Chapter Six: Access Granted. Displaying Contents.]
. . . . .
Predaking landed at last, too tired to keep flying on. Injuries sustained in his final battle with Megatron combined with hanging on to the underside of the Nemesis even through a space bridge and a landing would have killed a lesser being, but Predaking was cast from no ordinary mold. Touching down in the ruins of some large polity far from Iacon at the edge of rust sea, the massive dragon craned his neck to the orange sky and bellowed a screeling roar of frustration, mandibles spread wide. If anything still lived near by, he intended to flush it out and deal with it immediately so that he could recharge unmolested.
Nothing came. The wind howled and fragments of oxidized metal pattered against his charcoal black hide like desert sand in a sudden sharp gust, but there was no call in return.
He was alone.
Predaking made no effort to find shelter himself, dropping onto his belly, curling his neck along his right side and covering himself with his wings, keeping the rust away from the seams of transformation plates and the openings of ventilation systems. The middle of the old highway was good enough, and his body ached inside and out.
Recharge overtook his systems swiftly after a few deep, miserable vents.
. . . . .
It took several minutes before Kickback stopped screaming, but when his vocoder was disconnected from the rest of his body, the constant clicking and whirring of the disassembler filled the vacancy of sound. Spread in an X-shape inside the hoop of the disassembler, the insecticon was in the process of being vivisected, components suspended through prehensile life support cables. Tiny spans of open air gapped his body parts, arranged piece by piece in anatomical order, as if time-stopped in mid-explosion.
He was, of course, fully conscious and aware of what was being done to him. The microsurgery that was being done to him at the mechanocellular level demanded it. His face reflected indescribable agony, until it, too, was disconnected from the framework beneath it.
"I look forward to the seeing the outcome of your efforts on this one," Tarantulas chittered, hunched forward near Shockwave, four of his hands resting on the guard rail of the control platform. "That is, if he survives the process."
"Despite being the weakest of the insecticons physically, Kickback is by far the strongest of them in terms of intellect and willpower. It is that willpower that will keep him alive, just as it did with the Autobot Grimlock," Shockwave assessed, manipulating the controls of the disassembler. Directly in front of and below the surgical suspension frame, the purple scientist kept a steely focus on the work set out before him. Altering Kickback at the deepest level, right down to the building blocks of his CNA, was no easy task, and regardless of his confidence in Kickback's odds of survival, a misstep or delay in the procedure would still prove fatal. The vast majority of Cybertronians could not withstand being separated into their base components, let alone being so deeply changed.
He had vaults of parts harvested from deceased experiments to prove it.
"And if he does?"
At Shockwave's left was his ever-present assistant, Feint, her visor turned up towards the experiment in progress, the precision butchery reflected in its glossy black finish.
"That is where you will come in," Shockwave said to her. "It will take deep mnemnosurgery to prevent psychosis from setting in after the changes have been made."
Tarantulas clacked his mandibles. "You would make your mentor proud, Shockwave. Frame-type alterations at the genetic level are something even Jihaxus found challenging."
"I would feel a sense of accomplishment in that assessment, were I still capable of it," Shockwave commented, looking now at the monitors of the microsurgical panel, making adjustments to a virtual representation of Kickback's CNA, which would soon be echoed in the efforts of the nanites now streaming into the energon support lines hooked into the insecticon's various organs.
"So this is how we're going to fix the clone degradation problem?" Feint asked Shockwave, gesturing towards the cluster of still living insecticon components now being reshaped by hundreds of tool-tipped manipulator arms from a pair of medical drones. "By changing Kickback into a femme frame?"
"Correct," Shockwave replied. "Of the insecticon species, only Kickback, Bombshell and Shrapnel are sapient, self-willed, intelligent beings; I have been unable to locate any others of their kind that are more evolved than mere drones. The swarming tactics of insecticons are highly useful and effective towards our ends, but even a large swarm can fall to attrition. Individually, insecticons drones are only slightly better than vehicons. I engineered a stronger, more intelligent drone named Hardshell and sent him and his clones to Earth millions of years ago with my predacon war beasts, but Megatron squandered both he and his clones, who are now lost to us."
"The original insecticons are a mirror of our own species' greatest problem: We can generate protoforms from spark-splitting, but cold constructed Cybertronians suffer degradation of power, longevity and intellect in the process. Forged Cybertronians are an evolutionary dead-end, thanks to the loss of the Allspark. We may be physically and technologically superior to organic forms of life, but they will ultimately out-number and overrun us due to the fact that their numbers continue to grow, while ours can only shrink."
Feint was beginning to grasp Shockwave's ultimate plans, turning to stare at him, her visor displaying a shocked emoticon for a face. "Have you somehow found a way to forge sparks apart from the Allspark?" she asked, incredulous.
"All thirteen frame-types descended from the Thirteen Primes, according to the most ancient of records," Shockwave commented. "To descend from Primes would indicate that some form of spark-generation occurred in the past, prior to the Age of Wrath, when our bodies were altered by the Quintesson invaders. Few records prior to the end of that age survived, but what we do know indicates that, perhaps at one time, we did not need the Allspark to forge new Cybertronians."
"And Kickback needs to be a female frame-type to accomplish this?" Feint cautiously questioned.
"Yes," Shockwave answered flatly. He gave no further input as to how or why.
The blue femme flier kept her unease to herself, her visor blanking its digital expression; it was far from lost on her that as a female frame-type, Shockwave might decide to extend his experimentation to his assistant; he used whatever he felt was most effective and readily available to accomplish his objectives. Feint fell into both categories, and she wanted no place on Shockwave's lab tables... not any more, anyways.
Tarantulas had kept quiet through the discussion; he was old enough to know that listening was more valuable than speaking, and this was one of those times when age and experience was on his side. Jihaxus had been right about Shockwave's potential to push the Cybertronian race to its proper place among the stars, and observing the Insecticon's augmentation filled Tarantulas with a sense of pride and a longing for old friends now long gone, lost to history aboard the original Ark. Of course he couldn't tell Shockwave the truth about what had happened in the times before the Age of Wrath, during the era of the Ancients, when Cybertronians colonized planets across space and time and had set into motion backup plans for backup plans for backup plans to ensure the survival of their species; the truth would drive Shockwave to despondent madness and may cause him to abandon his quest for Pax Cybertronia - peace enforced by Cybertronian supremacy over all other forms of life. The ancient beastformer just watched the scientist's progress, and pretended to be less knowledgeable and sane than he actually was.
Sparks flew as metal was reshaped, Kickback's spark pulsing rapidly inside the cage of its frame. It was bright and very much alive, a good sign when in such deep alteration of form, but it was also indicative of the apoplectic fit of pain and trauma being experienced by the locust. The nanites were finishing the retroviral injections into Kickback's CNA, more potent energon mixtures being fed into the suspended body parts to nourish and recover organ systems that had been torn and rebuilt at the genetic level. The nightmare was beginning to end for Kickback as the suspending wires and tubes began to pull him literally back together, making adjustments for new and altered components.
"Feint," Shockwave commanded. "Take your place at the suspension harness. Kickback is ready for mental alteration."
The blue femme was startled out of her mental rumination. "Yes, Shockwave," she quickly acknowledged, turning from him and making her way down the stairs, across the laboratory floor, and up the dias of the suspension harness, approaching the reconstructed insecticon's back. Data cables slipped from their ports at the middle of her back, dozens of interface needles spreading from their blossoming metal tips as she maneuvered them into position, plunging them into the back of Kickback's neck.
The insecticon's optics widened and reattached faceplate went slack, his mind invaded.
Across the face of Cybertron, several thousand insecticon drones began shrieking.
. . . . .
[Chapter Six: Complete.]
[End of Transmission.]