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        The greatest threat to Cybertron had come and gone.  Unicron, the eater of worlds, had been destroyed and Galvatron, leader of the Decepticons, lost in deep space.  The Decepticons themselves had been driven from Cybertron, and Shockwave--the only potential successor to Galvatron's throne-was killed in the fighting.  He himself had declared the Cybertronian Wars over.  Peace reigned within the galaxy.

        Prime was dead.

        Rodimus walked the streets of Cybertron, watching the Autobots and their human allies working together to rebuild the planet nearly destroyed by Unicron. Enormous metal plates that had been in place for over 4 million years were torn up and replaced with new metals, stronger metals. Cybertron was healing itself.

        "Rodimus!" Jazz drove up to the leader of the Autobots and transformed. He had barely survived his brush with Unicron; now he was in charge of communications between Earth and Cybertron. He and Blaster spoke very easily with each other; Rodimus couldn’t begin to comprehend their constant references to human popular music, but it seemed to be very efficient at transferring information. That, and it made a very effective cipher. "The report just came in—Autobot City’d love to be called Metroplex now."

        Rodimus nodded. "Excellent, Jazz. If the Decepticons ever try attacking us on Earth again, they’ll be in for quite a surprise."

        "I don’t know, Rodimus. They’re in pretty bad shape. They ain’t gonna be attackin’ anybody for a long time."

        Rodimus nodded. "To maintain freedom we must be ever-vigilant. How’s Perceptor’s search going?"

        "He hasn’t found a Decepticon yet. We’d have better luck lookin’ for a speck a’dust in deep space."

        "Hmm. Have him keep looking. The Decepticons haven’t been quiet for millions of years—I don’t trust this sudden silence, even with them exiled from Cybertron. Keep looking." Jazz nodded. "Has Wreck-Gar contacted us yet about getting that head out of orbit?"

        "Not yet, Rodimus."

        "Junkions." Rodimus said, exasperated. "Call them again. If you need to, have Kup talk TV to them. Just get them here." Rodimus looked up at Unicron’s head, floating eerily in the black, star-spotted sky of Cybertron. "The tidal forces generated by it are making repairs more difficult, and I don’t like the idea of the Planet-Killer looking down at us all the time."

        "Right. Anything else?"

        "No, that’ll be all." Rodimus watched Jazz transform and return to the Iacon base. They had been operating out of the Autobots’ most secure base since retaking Cybertron—the traps and defenses the Decepticons had emplaced on their own strongholds were too tricky to risk operating out of one of them.

        He knew Jazz didn’t like him. Very few of the Autobots did. Kup respected him, and Wheelie seemed to like him well enough. But the others, the ones who had fought for years under Optimus Prime, he could sense their judgment when he spoke with them. They were deciding whether he would be a great leader like Prime was. They were judging him by the standard of Prime.

        He hated them for it.

        He knew what they thought about him. That he was the one responsible for Prime’s death, just as much as Megatron, if not more so. That he had taken the mantle of leadership that Prime had given to Ultra Magnus for himself, selfishly. No matter that the Matrix had chosen him—what mattered was that he wasn’t Prime’s choice. They thought that the retaking of Cybertron should have been Prime’s achievement, not that of some young punk who could barely get himself out of a scrape, and who had killed his predecessor.

        Rodimus almost wished the Decepticons would reappear, so that all the Auotbots would have something to take their minds off the loss of their old leader and their hatred of their new one.

        "Scourge, report! What is it you’ve found?" Cyclonus made certain to keep his voice in check—he was eager to find Galvatron, yes, but he did not want Scourge or the Sweeps, or any other Decepticon for that matter, thinking that he felt himself incapable of leading the Decepticons. Indeed, he felt quite the opposite—and his performance over the past year certainly proved it.

        After Shockwave’s death, he had gathered all the Decepticons together, despite the growing factionalism in their ranks, and brought them to a new homeworld, Charr. Granted, it was a burnt-out husk of a planet, but it kept them from wandering the universe, and it was such an insignificant speck that the Autobots would probably overlook it in their search for the remaining Decepticons.

        But his was a broken people. He had not declared himself the new leader of the Decepticons, as by doing so he would instantly be making himself one of the factions he had been fighting among the Decepticons. Indeed, the inevitable attacks from other Decepticons seeking his position would prevent him from operating in the way that he needed to, to keep the Decepticons from running amok. The Decepticon Empire had been so powerful for so long that its people had forgotten what it was like to fight for energon, to steal and scrape by for it. What they needed, he decided, was a leader. Someone who would inspire them as Galvatron and Megatron before him had inspired the Decepticons.

        And Cyclonus had not given up hope. He would find just such a leader, hopefully in Galvatron. He and the other troops created by Unicron had left Charr nearly a month before, ostensibly to seek out a new source of energon. In actuality, though, they were scanning the universe for Galvatron—Cyclonus had never come to believe that Rodimus Prime had killed Galvatron, as many of the other Decepticons believed. He somehow felt his programming would identify if Galvatron had been destroyed. No, he was alive, somewhere, and Cyclonus knew they would find him.

        "Still no sign of Galvatron, Cyclonus. But we did find something else very interesting." Scourge’s voice came, crackling over the commlink. They were several light-years from each other—Cyclonus was surprised Scourge was so clear. Unicron outdid himself when he engineered them.

        "I’m happy you find our lack of a leader so fascinating, Scourge. Tell me, should I, too, be so rapt of attention?" Cyclonus responded, irritated. He was no longer being constantly powered by Unicron, and his energon levels were running low. Had been, now, for quite some time.

        "We’ve found Unicron’s leg."

        That gave Cyclonus some pause. He remembered the battle with Unicron, towering nearly 1200 miles over the surface of Cybertron. After Galvatron’s failed bid to free himself from Unicron’s control, Unicron had attempted to destroy Cybertron. He had turned his own weapons against his creator, and was making a pass when the first ray of green energy stabbed through Unicron’s thick hide. He barely missed flying through it—he remembered looking back, seeing Unicron fly into space and tear his own leg off before the energies of the Autobot Matrix consumed him.

        Unicron’s leg. Besides his head, that was perhaps the only bit of the Planet-Killer’s body left intact. It no doubt had higher technology that that of the rest of the Transformers in the universe. Unicron had been the largest of them, after all, and he had been able to rebuild Megatron and the other Decepticons severely damaged at the battle for Autobot City with only his nigh-divine breath. Rebuild them with more sophisticated technology, nonetheless.

        "I’m changing course for your position, Scourge. Whatever you do, do not allow that limb to escape your sight! It may hold the key to the Decepticons’ salvation."

        "Ah! Smell that air, Daniel! It’s good to be home."

        Spike Witwicky stepped off the Autobot shuttle, listening to the birds singing in the trees surrounding the newly-rebuilt Autobot City. The place was a lot different than he remembered it; gone were the massive, armored orange walls and towers. They had been replaced by a single large white complex, Metroplex, and the sunlight shining off it make Spike shield his eyes for fear of being blinded.

        He looked down at his only son, Daniel. The boy had been in Autobot City the day it was attacked by Megatron a year ago—indeed, he was the one who discovered Megatron’s treachery. He still praised God that Daniel hadn’t been killed in the attack, as so many Autobots were. Wheeljack, Huffer, Windcharger, Optimus. . .all had given their lives to stop Megatron once and for all.

        That was probably one reason for the change of scenery here—old Autobot City had been so badly torn up, and held so many memories of that terrible day, that the Autobots had decided to simply tear it down and build a new city. And it seemed to work out well enough—Metroplex was the largest Transformer that had ever existed besides Unicron, and by himself could probably handle almost any Decepticon attack on Earth.

        He had forgotten what the air on Earth smelled like, he had been away for so long. Two years, now—since the plans to lay siege to Cybertron from its moons were first concocted by Prime. He still found it hard to believe that Optimus Prime was dead—he had seen the records, he had watched Prime’s deactivated body lose its color. He had even been present when the ark carrying the bodies of all the dead Autobots was launched from the Iacon base, from the same launching pad that the first Autobot Ark had used 4 million years before. The universe seemed unfair, though, that the peace Prime had fought all his life for had finally arrived, and he was not here to see it.

        "Spike! Daniel!"

        "Mom!"

        Spike shook himself out of his thoughts. He had been so lost in the events of the past that he hadn’t noticed his wife of twelve years, Carly, running across the landing deck on the upper level of Metroplex. Daniel had already run up to her and nearly bowled her over, he hugged her so hard. She was as beautiful as the first day Spike ever met her, even if she wasn’t quite as young.

        He walked toward her, happy to be home at last. He was glad to have a real sun’s heat on his brow, to be able to breathe the air of his home rather than the recycled, antiseptic oxygen of his exosuit. So many had died for the peace that had settled on Earth; he would not dishonor their memories by dwelling on the past. He would enjoy the future, bright now without the fear of Decepticons and millennia-long wars.

        There it was, floating serenely in deep space, just an enormous hunk of wreckage with no threat of menace about it, despite its former association with the most dangerous entity in the universe. As Cyclonus approached it, his scanners detected the Sweeps targeting him from hidden positions on the wreck—this was good, despite their hunger for energon they still served faithfully. He transformed and landed on the massive surface of the Planet-Killer’s leg.

        "Cyclonus, we’ve done as you commanded. However, I don’t see the point of—"

        "Silence, Scourge," Cyclonus replied sharply, "or my explanation will be drowned out by your confused babbling." Scourge quieted, but a look of resentment touched his optics. Cyclonus put one hand on the winged Transformer’s shoulder. "Scourge, Unicron was the most powerful of any of us, Autobot or Decepticon. He had the power to transform matter, any type of matter, into pure energon to feed his circuits. If we were able to discern that technology for ourselves, from this bit of wreckage, then we would no longer need to fear starvation—we could use the very soil of Charr to feed ourselves! We would no longer need to fear the Autobots—certainly, they have the humans and any number of other races throughout the galaxy on their side, giving them fuel to condense into energon, but we would be able to use any matter, not simply processed fuels! With this leg, we have the potential in our grasp of becoming an unstoppable force to sweep across the universe and reclaim all that once was ours!"

        The Sweeps began to cheer, but Scourge remained more skeptical than his troops. "How do you plan to extract such knowledge from this leg? All the greatest of the Decepticon scientists were killed when Unicron attacked Cybertron, and even without Unicron’s mind guiding them, the internal defense systems in this leg will do their best to prevent us from learning Unicron’s secrets."

        The enthusiasm of the Sweeps dimmed dramatically with Scourge’s words. Cyclonus stifled an upsurge of irritation—these Sweeps were little more than clones of Scourge, essentially mindless and wholly uninspired, but their moods generally followed those of Scourge, making him the Transformer to convince. They had been in the palm of his hand, though, and now he could feel them slipping away. He had to think fast.

        "We could always use the Autobot scientist, Perceptor. . .but then we would have to destroy him, for fear that he might escape and tell the Autobots the secrets of the conversion process. If he is able to learn the process. I do not like this idea in the least. No, it would be better if we were able to find some other scientists, perhaps not of the Transformers race. Tell me, have you heard anything about particularly advanced alien civilizations?"

        "Only one," Scourge said. "The Quintessons. They are said to be a small, weak race that has created other races, such as the Sharkticons, to serve them. They are said to be very cruel, and I heard a rumor that the Autobots led a revolt of Sharkticons against them a year ago, on their home planet of Quintessa."

        "Was the revolt successful?"

        "No, but I can’t imagine that the Quintessons would be happy about the destruction the revolt caused. They might aid us simply to help us destroy the Autobots."

        Cyclonus nodded. "An excellent idea, Scourge. You and the Sweeps tow this leg to safety—my records indicate that there is a star system with a large asteroid belt suitable for cover two parsecs from here. Make certain you are not seen."

        "What will you do, Cyclonus?"

        "I plan to travel to this planet, Quintessa, and have a talk with the Quintessons."
 

       To Chapter Two