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"That was Megatron's voice!" Magnify was almost hysterical. "He's out there-"

"With the sparklings-?!" Tranquil punched the door several times, to no avail, of course. The remaining sparklings looked terrified. "Frag it, frag it, frag it!"

Knockout frowned. "But the big M is in voluntary exile..."

"Don't you even say another word! You must have been the one who called him here, you two faced Decepticon!"

Knockout bared his dentas. "Listen, you street slag-"

"Run-to the-back!"

The words were muffled, and yet there was no mistaking that there were several voices. "Starscream? And Shockwave too?" Magnify looked ready to collapse. "And...Knockout?"

"But how could he both inside and outside?" Tipoff demanded.

"It's Soundwave." Knockout said with quiet certainty. "But - how?" Tranquil asked. "What happened to him after the Great War?"

"Nobot knows." Knockout snapped. "We've got to find a way to contact Cybertron. Since comm.s won't work this long range. And we can't access the ship."

"What about using this computer?" Diffractal suggested, patting a terminal. "The program for controlling the main door is on the screen." Magnify flew over to it, quickly typing in Deactivate TITANIUM SHIELD. "Though how in Primus's name the CPU is running after so many vorns, I have no idea..."

"Soundwave must have done something to it." said Tipoff darkly.

Command Prompt: Provide Authrisaton Freqncy?
User: 13G-75
Command Prompt: DENIED

"He's hacked into it, my old frequency won't work. I can't shut it off!"

"Can't you open up a parallel program to try to contact Cybertron?" demanded.

Magnify swallowed. "I can try."

He kept running in the background and opened file 800. A sparkling started to cry, and that set the others off as well. Tranquil and Tipoff rushed to comfort them.

Command Prompt: "Communication" Files? (Y/N)
User: Y
Command Prompt:
User: Open

"Thank Primus these files aren't protected."

Command Prompt: -TEXT
-VOICE
-IMG
User: Activate VOICE
Command Prompt: Enter Comm. Freqncy
User: 100

That was the official number of the Iaconian emergency services.

There was a loud beeeeep followed by, "Hello, Iacon Law Enforcement, how may I help you?"

Magnify found himself unable to speak, so Knockout roughly pushed him aside and laid down the situation in brief. "You need to get here, now."

A scream split the air, and for a long moment, everybot stood stock still. It had come from outside.

"Hurry!" Diffractal roared.

"We'll be there in 0.2 breems." The operator stuttered. "Hold on tight and keep calm. And don't try to get outside - we're coming as fast as we can." Then she closed the link. "As if we have a choice." Tipoff muttered.

He had failed.

He was better than her in combat - that had always been true - but her hunger for energon had changed her. She had become wise to his groundbridge trick, and to be honest, he no longer felt like using it. He wanted to finish Airachnid off once and for all, not leave her to fester on some planet for twenty-six more vorns.

But now she had managed to injure him instead, and would have finished him off if it weren't for the ship. Evidently, she still had a tiny bit of power left in her processor.

The ship. Stupid, stupid. He'd been so focused on protecting those sparklings and their minders that he simply hadn't thought about securing the ship.

Why?

Because he did care about them, in the end. Enough to forget his true purpose of protecting Cybertron. And that had made him sloppy. She was smart. She wouldn't go for targets that were too big for her to handle. She'd go for the weak, the young, the defenseless. He knew that it would be a long time before she was caught, and given the speed of Cybertronian bureaucracy, vorns and vorns before they figured out what to do with her.

He'd screwed it all. He watched sullenly from the ground as she skimmed towards the ship. She'd defeated him, then tossed him down like a piece of scrap when she noticed it. He tried to take comfort in the fact that the six sparklings were had escaped. Even if three of them had been injured pretty badly.

Airachnid was almost at the ship.

Then a groundbridge appeared between them. Airachnid paused cautiously. Then the Autobots burst out. Leading them was the blue Autobot femme from earth. Her optics widened when she saw Airachnid and she started blasting immediately.

Then everything went dark.

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