Chapter 2
Hundreds of seekers were now patrolling the sky over Cybertron, securing the planet for the Decepticons.
In some places a few remaining groups of Autobots were still holding up some isolated cases of resistance, senseless resistance for a great part.
Some just didn´t know when to stop, some however were trying to buy time for others.
So was the small group that was still defending the headquarter of the Autobot forces in Iacon. The base was under attack by a large number of Decepticons, that including Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and two of his Sweeps, Soundwave, Sixshot and the three seekers Ramjet, Dirge and Thrust.
These Decepticons were standing in a half circle in front of the base´s gates and exchanging fire with a handful Autobots and the automatic defense guns of the Autobots HQ.
A well placed shot from one of the Sweeps killed one of the guards, who was blocking the door. Cyclonus and Scourge took the automatic defenses out with their improved precision. It was over very quickly.
The Decepticons were now entering the most important Autobot base on Cybertron.
xxx
Inside the building the last Autobots present prepared their "departure". The base had direct access to the underground sewers of Cybertron. Twelve robots were standing at the entrance tube to the tunnels which the Autobots now used to go into the "underground", in the truest sense of the word.
"Are you ready to go Inferno?"
"Yes, from here we are able to reach an practically unknown part of the planet. The Decepticons won´t find us there for the longest time."
"Good, then go now."
The team of three robots was separating from the rest of the Autobots.
"What are you doing?", Inferno asked incredulous.
"We will cover your retreat", one of the three said to the shocked group.
"That is madness", Inferno shouted at them, "you will all get killed."
"You know as good as me that we can´t all escape. The Decepticons would follow us and wipe us all out or take us as prisoners. We have decided to stay on Cybertron to build a resistance movement, but that won´t happen if we don´t escape now."
"Camshaft…", one of the others tried to convince the determined Autobot.
"You know that as good as me and if we wait any longer we all will die anyway."
"I see, you have made your decision", Inferno finally gave in. "Come", he said to the rest.
As the other nine Autobots had escaped into the tunnels, the three took cover behind walls, consoles and machinery and waited for the Decepticons to come.
Their group had never been quite important. The most people don´t even seemed to remember them. But now the Omnibots would buy the rest of their comrades their escape.
xxx
Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and Sixshot were now walking into the heart of what had once been Autobot headquarters in the sector Iacon.
After less than a minute, as they had reached the control center, the first laser blasts were fired at them.
Galvatron didn´t bother in taking cover somewhere. The shots just glanced off his armor harmlessly without even leaving a mark.
He saw that is were three Autobots trying to make a stand against them. Hopeless, but he had to respect them for trying.
As far as he could tell, their alt-modes were earth sports cars, typical Autobot ground forces.
He aimed his particle cannon and shot straight through one of the monitoring-consoles, hitting the Autobot who was covering behind it. The robot was blown backwards, damaged.
Scourge had drawn his gun.
"Good, let us see what we can do together Fracas", he said to his transformed nebulon partner.
"You will see Scourge", the nebulon replied.
Both minds of the targetmaster worked together, the Transformer and the humanoid. That allowed them to aim and shoot faster than any regular Transformer could have.
The blast hit one of the Autobots, a silvery white robot, directly in the spark chamber and killed him in an instant. Cyclonus and Sixshot were taking the last of the group under heavy fire. He went down under the combined shots of the two Decepticons.
The robot Galvatron had shot, a grey and blue robot, was standing up again.
"I am truly impressed Autobot, it really takes something to stand against me and my elite like that", Galvatron commended him, "but of course you never had a chance."
He lifted his cannon and fired. The shot ripped completely through the Bot´s chest and he sank down, destroyed. He felt a grim satisfaction about killing the last Autobot and the triumph of victory.
As the robot fell, it was over.
They had won. After seven years they had retaken Cybertron.
"Cyclonus", Galvatron addressed his second in command, who was standing next to him, "we have finally made it", he announced, "Cybertron is ours."
xxxxxxx
Three months later
Two ships were meeting somewhere in deep space. Somewhere in unclaimed territories aside from earth and Cybertron, a place nobody was paying attention to.
One was the flagship of the Autobot forces, the other was an old dated long range transporter. They docked on each other and a group of Transformers were entering the second ship,
Optimus Prime, Hotrod, Kup and a number of others. With them was the human Spike as representative of his planet.
They were awaited by a group of robots they had never met before. The leader was a Autobot even larger than Optimus.
He was heavily armed and was looking extremely dangerous. The ones who were informed why this group had originally left Cybertron knew how ironical that was.
This robot, Fortress Maximus and his followers had fled their home-planet years ago in an attempt to escape the war and find peace.
They had landed on Nebulos, a to this time peaceful planet and tried to settle down there. But a number of Decepticons under the leadership of the sector commander Skorponok had followed their group
and the war came with them.
They attacked the Autobots also on this new world. Their conflict had spread over to Nebulos. The entire planet was thrown into war and chaos.
It had not only been the Transformers who had been fighting against each other. Different factions of the nebulon natives themselves, who had different ideas how to deal with the Transformers and the threat they represented and with their technology, were turning against each other.
The society and the people of Nebulos were breaking apart.
Behind Fortress Maximus stood a line of smaller Autobots, Highbrow, Brainstorm, Hardhead, Chromedome, Nightbeat, Hosehead and Siren.
Like the Decepticon group under Skorponok they had binary bonded themselves to the people of Nebulos. They were the Autobot headmasters.
"Optimus Prime", their leader greeted the newcomers, "I am Fortress Maximus. I am honored to meet you."
"So I am Fortress", the Autobot leader answered. "We have received your message and your offer for a meeting. As you told us you were one of the groups of Transformers that had left Cybertron during the war."
"We were probably the last of this groups. By the information you gave us, we started only a few years before you were reactivated on the planet called earth. At the time you had been missing for millions of years. We only knew about you and the ark crew from old stories. As you can imagine we were intrigued to hear that you had indeed survived.
For the blink of an eye, Optimus expression became hard. He thought about all the Autobots they had lost. He himself had once been dead and he had to thank his return to some of their worst enemies.
"Yes, we came back, but not all of us had made it to this point."
"I know Optimus. That was the reason we had left our world in the first place. We had hoped to leave the war behind us, but our problems had followed us. And so we have also created a completely new threat."
"What do you mean?" Optimus asked.
"Nebulons show yourself", Fortress Maximus ordered.
His group of followers transformed into vehicle form, while their heads separated in front of the shocked other Autobots and revealed humanoids who were wearing highly developed exo suits.
"Optimus Prime", Fortress Maximus said loud, "I want to officially request our return to the Autobot army. We have important information for you. You have a new enemy."
xxxxxxx
Galvatron was sitting on his throne in the command center of his new base on Cybertron. Next to him stood Cyclonus, Scourge, Skorponok and Soundwave.
Cyclonus and Scourge´s nebulon partners Nightstick and Fracas were standing a few meters aside from the Decepticons in their full exo suits.
Right now he was receiving reports from several officers about raids by isolated Autobot defense groups in a few of the less secured sectors of the planet. Only stings with a needle ultimately, but still worth dealing with it.
The regarding officers were standing in a long line before him. A seeker captain had just finished his report as the last one of them stepped for. This one was a dark blue Decepticon who transformed into a car.
Galvatron had chosen one of the former Autobot fortresses as their new headquarters. Like many others in their ranks, he would have rather resumed their old capital in the sector Polyhex, but their old headquarter there had been completely leveled during Unicron´s attack. Something else he owned the Chaos Bringer for.
During the time after Optimus Prime return, since he was freed from the insanity that had been influencing him after Unicron´s fall, the Decepticons had not been inactive.
They had developed new technologies, explored new regions of space, built up new colonies and outposts and planed and prepared.
The Decepticon empire was now far more powerful than it had ever been before.
"As I have told you Galvatron, we have so far not been able to detect any Autobot hide-outs in our sector, despite our efforts. Given the fact, we can only come to the conclusion that the Autobots are not operating from my territory."
"Interesting, so you suggest that we stop searching your sector and concentrate on the others?" Galvatron asked.
"It would be an waste of resources sir", the Decepticon answered. He looked convinced by his statement, at least at the outside.
"Yes, I guess you are right. You have after all already scouted the area several times", Galvatron told him with a side look at Soundwave. "Thank you for your good work Counterpunch. You can go now, all of you and find me the Autobots."
"We are making good progress Soundwave", he said as the line of Decepticons was gone.
"Indeed Galvatron."
xxxxxxx
Optimus Prime and Spike had been talking to both, Fortress Maximus and Galen, the nebulon leader who was bounded to him. They had been informed about the history of the planet Nebulos and the role the Transformers had played in it in the last years.
"I understand", Optimus finally said, "so that is the source of the Decepticon´s upgrades."
"Yes, we have found a way to literally merge a Transformer with a organic being. The problem is that the Decepticons had gone through the same process", Fortress Maximus told them. "You have to understand, on Nebulos we were separated from the rest of our kind. We had wanted to start new. Both us and the Decepticon group had somehow severed our ties to Cybertron. Our sub-groups became independent. We became dictators in our own right, if we wanted or not", he said cryptically.
"The binary bonding had we developed at first in an attempt of better understanding with the nebulons, an act of trust. When some people had recognized the potential for warfare it was already too late."
"Zarak had been the leader of a political group that saw a threat in all Transformers and wanted their technology to use for themselves. He and I were rivals in the government", Galen informed them. "He actually went as far to binary bond himself to Skorponok to get access to it and also for some illusion of control over the situation. The outcome was only that he got more and more corrupted. Zarak and Skorponok are now merely two halves of the same being."
"Like all of us are", Fortress Maximus said.
"Wars broke out", Galen continued, "first between the headmasters of both sides, then between Zarak´s faction of nebulons and the rest. Millions had died. Until we had decided to remove the cause of the conflict. We and the Decepticons had abandoned Nebulos."
"And now Zarak´s, Skorponok´s troops had rejoined Galvatron", Fortress Maximus pointed out.
"And this so called targetmasters we have seen?" Kup wanted to know.
"Obviously a variation of the same process. Instead of the head the nebulon takes te place of the gun."
"Can we replicate it?" Hotrod asked.
"Maybe, if you have data on the targetmasters. There are probably also other possible combinations", Fortress Maximus said. "We will try."
"Optimus?" Hotrod adressed the Autobot leader.
Optimus heard Hotrod´s voice. But there was also something else. In the moment the words of the younger Autobot reached him.
He thought he heard a voice, deep in his subconsciousness. A whisper in his mind.
"Core of Cybertron. Chosen one."
"Optimus", Hotrod said again.
The Autobot leader saw the expression of the younger robot. He knew.
"I have heard it too", he told him.
"Yes Hotrod, I know. We will find out about it."
xxxxxxx
Earth defense base on Mars
Through their contact with the Autobots, humanity had technically evolved far quicker than it normally would have been the case.
Humans, at least the ones of this universe, had already access to space-travel and relations to several alien species.
The force mostly responsible for the security of the human home world was the Earth Defense Command or short EDC. It was an international military organization, authorized with the defense of the planet and mostly active in space. The EDC had facilities all over the solar system.
One of their main bases of the EDC was the one on the planet Mars. From there they were monitoring the area of space for any sign of a potential threat.
"Sir, I think he have something here", one of the soldiers said.
"What is it?" Captain Green, the current commander of the base asked.
"Three objects, coming in very fast." The soldier put it on the monitor.
What appeared before them seemed like a anachronism. On the screen were a few old F-15 jets that for some reason flew in space. Everybody knew what that meant.
"Decepticons", Captain Green said.
The jet in front was mostly blue, the one behind him a mix of silver, red and other colors. In the background another one seemed to be black.
Green had been in charge of this base for two years. He had not much to do with the Transformers so far. He had however studied their history on earth. The picture before him reminded him of something.
"Impossible", he whispered.
"Start the jets. Contact Earth", he ordered loud.
In that moment they felt the ground under them shake and the lights went out.
xxx
The "objects" were the three elite seekers Skywarp, Starscream and Thundercracker, not seen together for many years.
As they approached the area of the base, they were met by six space capable jets and an armed shuttle. They were part of the forces of the EDC, highly developed fighting machines. Against three of the best Decepticon jets their chances were still not good.
Starscream avoided two shots and blasted the jet who had been targeting him apart. Thundercracker engaged a second one, shot one of his wings off and the jet spiraled down and exploded somewhere on the surface. Skywarp teleported directly behind two others and destroyed them before they had the chance to react. Then he fired one of his heat seeking missiles at the shuttle, that was already under fire from his two partners. The impact was too much for the already weakened hull of the ship and it exploded. It´s burning remains were falling down to the planet.
The last two jets broke formation and were trying to flee. But before they came far, they were destroyed by laser fire, coming from space.
A ship had entered the atmosphere and was helping the three seekers. It was descending upon the base. A half dozen robots with Decepticon emblem exited. They transformed and combined into a gestalt robot.
The giant landed directly on top of the base. He smashed easily through the roof, broke the walls apart and leveled the entire building in less than a minute.
Megatron had watched the "battle" from some distance. Not that it really deserved to be called this. It was more an one sided slaughter.
He was approached by the purple robot who was watching the fight with him.
"My men had scouted the entire area. No signs of Autobot activities or of other humans."
"Have your people jammed all possible transmissions?"
"Of course Megatron."
"Good, we can not risk some of them getting through or escaping and warning the others. Your men have proved to be quite effective. Good work Sideways."
xxx
The three seekers transformed and landed next to Megatron.
"Now, I hope you like our small demonstration Megatron", Starscream addressed him.
This wasn´t his Starscream, this was the one native in this universe, Megatron reminded himself. Not that he was much of an improvement.
"Killing of weaker enemies is nothing that particular impress me Starscream", he replied.
"Oh, I think I will find further chances to prove myself", the former Air Commander answered with a smile.
"My Starscream had betrayed me. I am here, he is not. You should remember that", Megatron pointed out.
"Megatron, you shouldn´t mistrust me because of my counterpart. As I told you, I took over after you were lost in battle and I wanted to continue the Decepticons in your sense. But then Galvatron took over and killed me.
However, like through a miracle, my spark somehow survived."
Megatron gripped the seeker by the throat.
"Oh yes? I was told that you were the one who threw my counterpart into space and that this was the reason he was changed into Galvatron in the first place. And I was also told that you were bargaining with Unicron, putting the whole planet Cybertron at risk for your own gain. Only to get your useless body back that Galvatron had originally easily destroyed."
"Megatron, you had been misinformed", Starscream choked out.
"Oh I think not. And now go and scout the area for some humans or Autobots left in this place."
He let go of the seeker.
"I thought Sideway´s troops had already scouted the area?" Thundercracker asked then Starscream was out of sight."
"What you not say?" Megatron said sarcastically. "I am sure he will find a way to spend his time."
"So what do you think of our new troops? he asked his two advisers.
"They are fishes", Skywarp pointed out.
Megatron looked at him.
"The Seacons were a special unit built for underwater use."
"They are still fish", Skywarp replied.
"It was an ideal alt-form for the work under the ocean. Of course our home planet and many others we work on doesn´t even have a ocean in the first place." Megatron smiled admitting.
"I guess that is the reason that guys never got that famous at all", Skywarp remarked.
"It doesn´t matter. They have a quite powerful combiner form. Only that is important. Our new ally had promised to provide us with new troops and he did."
"Yes, the Seacons, one combiner team of", he interrupted himself, "well of fishes. Then that small bunch of mercenary rogues and Starscream, an outcast and traitor to everyone", Skywarp continued.
"He has betrayed the Decepticons and threw your counterpart into space, he teamed up with the Autobots against Galvatron and then turned against them, he allied himself with Unicron and by his own admission, betrayed him too. Our Starscream was already untrustworthy, but this guy gives the Earth term snake in the grass a completely new meaning."
"I know, but it couldn´t be helped. We needed troops and we couldn´t be choosers. Starscream had to do, at least for now.
You know that the Decepticons of this world had just succeeded in retaking Cybertron. Our position is thinkable bad so.
In the times Galvatron had been completely insane I could have possibly just marched in and taken over, but now it is far more difficult. When I show up now, I will just be a stranger who happens to resemble their old leader. Aside from this, they have no reason to believe that I actually am who I seem to be. Don´t forget I am not their Megatron. In fact, I don´t even look like the Megatron they remember anymore."
"Neither does Galvatron", Skywarp pointed out.
"Yes, but he has at last all memories of the old Megatron. I don´t have any of his memories up to 25 years ago. Knowledge that he can use to prove his, our identity that I lack. Right now, next to him, I would look like a simple impostor who had just reconfigured himself to look like Megatron.
I need to prove myself. Something more than just to slaughter a few humans."
He looked at Skywarp and Thundercracker.
"What I need is a military victory, a overwhelming one. Then I can challenge Galvatron." He balled his fist.
Cxx
The heritage I have chosen for the head- and the targetmasters is for a great part identical with the one from the comics. A notable difference is that only the headmasters are the Transformers who landed on Nebulos like in the headmasters cartoon series. While it were in the comics also the later targetmasters and several others.
A difference to Rebirth is that Skorponok and Fortress Maximus are actual Transformers and not mindless drones. From the personality, both will be portrayed very similar to their marvel comic incarnations.