The
Maximal Gambit
Part
One: Prosperity
Chapter Three
Whump!
The target drone died in a muffled explosion, and Rodimus’ optics began searching for the next. He hadn’t personally faced a Decepticon—or, indeed, any other threat—since he defeated Galvatron just over a year before, and he knew he needed to stay in practice to make certain that his targeting scanners remained in calibration. Ah. There was another—
Whump!
Oh, how he wished that had been Ultra Magnus. It would give him no small pleasure to fight that big, dumb bot one on one, just to show him who was who around Cybertron. He used to appreciate Magnus’ advice, thought he was wise in giving it. Of course, that was before he realized that Magnus was only trying to shape him up into another Optimus Prime. Probably was doing it so that he wouldn’t look like such an idiot, either.
Whump!
Rodimus never planned on losing the Matrix of Leadership as he did, taking it out of its hidden compartment in his chest and clawing at it stupidly, trying to open it while Galvatron walked up to him calmly and had him blown away. That more than proved that Ultra Magnus wasn’t fit for leadership, so why should his advice be any better?
Whump!
"In all my time serving with Optimus. . ." Rodimus said this quietly, almost unaware he was doing it. The drones were swarming all over, now that the difficulty setting had risen. They would start shooting him in another 10 seconds or so.
Whump! Whump! Whump!
Rodimus heard the pause in Ultra Magnus’ voice. Heard how he added "and with other leaders" just so that Rodimus wouldn’t feel bad. Well, isn’t that sweet, he cares about me. He cares about making me into another Optimus, and we all know that the great Optimus Prime would never get upset. He had often wondered why all of his fellow Autobots thought Prime was so great. After all, he had chosen Ultra Magnus to be his successor, hadn’t he?
The kick of his photon rifle in his hands felt good, felt relieving. He just wished he had some Decepticons on the other side of it, instead of all these little target drones. They exploded one by one, never existing long enough to fire their little stinger rays. He needed Decepticons. If he had Decepticons, he could show the others how great he really was, how he was every bit as good a leader as Prime, and they wouldn’t have time to think about how Prime was dead. He wouldn’t have to think about how Prime was dead.
Whump!
Whump!
***
The Sharkticon’s head exploded, the fragments of its sharp teeth driving like shrapnel into the other Sharkticons near it. This satisfied Cyclonus. He had already destroyed thirty or forty of the Sharkticons, leaving only a few hundred left. Part of him wondered what it would be like to have Megatron’s fusion cannon, or Galvatron’s laser artillery. These Sharkticons would know their true master then, that would be certain! As it was, though, he was only Cyclonus, and he had only his oxidizing laser pistol. Fortunately, he had anticipated such treachery before arriving on Quintessa, and had raided a fuel depot on a human outpost world to recharge both himself and his weapon. He had more than enough charges to take on this minor army—minus those he used to kill all the witnesses to his raid, of course.
He was surprised at how poorly constructed these Sharkticons were. The Quintessons apparently chose quantity over quality, the exact opposite of the way Unicron did things. Cyclonus supposed that was good especially for himself, as if he were any lesser a Transformer he would most likely have been destroyed by now.
Cyclonus continued to sink, kept his body as streamlined as possible so that he would fall through the water all the faster. That kept all the Sharkticons on one side of him—above—so he could pick them off at his leisure. The tubby, grotesque bodies of the Sharkticons were swimming after him, but they had nowhere near his momentum, and their speed underwater was poor to begin with.
There! A Sharkticon down here, with him, off to the side! Cyclonus spun quickly, fired. The red of his laser pierced neatly through the Sharkticon’s eye, first exploding the eye and then imploding the brain circuits. Its head first crumpled slightly, then exploded, sending fragments of itself tumbling lazily through the water. Cyclonus felt a slight pang of guilt at destroying that particular Sharkticon, as it had been the only robot here that had shown even the slightest bit of intelligence, hiding at the bottom of the pool to catch whatever got through the teeth of its brothers. And, granting that its brothers typically acted as stupidly as they were now, Cyclonus had just destroyed a very well-fed Sharkticon.
He winced. The quick jerk of the head reminded him of the holes in his neck and shoulders where the barbs had pierced through his epidermal layers. He picked out the final barb with his left hand, flung it angrily aside. He could transform now, for all the good it would do him underwater. They would pay for damaging him so, yes they would. But first, a demonstration of his power in the destruction of this horde of Sharkticons.
Cyclonus keyed a small switch on the side of his weapon, one that was easily overlooked despite its tremendous importance. The laser went to fully automatic, and Cyclonus depressed the trigger. A near-constant stream of red energy pulsed from his gun, lancing into Sharkticon after Sharkticon, tearing some in half, imploding others, exploding still more, and destroying them one by one.
The water became cloudy with coolant and lubrication fluids. Robot parts floated down all around Cyclonus, some bumping into him in their descent. He ignored them, kept firing. He fired until three-quarters of his energy was spent, until the largest parts of Sharkticons left were no bigger than his fists. He then disengaged his autofire, engaged his boosters, and his streamlined body flew straight up out of the pool of water, high into the air, and hovered there over the pit.
He was pleased to see the looks of alarm on the faces of the Quintessons and their whip-armed guards. That was what they needed in the first place—the proper respect for one who was their better. They chose instead to resist his power. So be it.
"You have chosen to attack me, when I raised no arms to you. So be it! Learn, then, the power of the Decepticons!"
He fired into both guards. His laser, by itself, did very little damage to a robot’s body. However, once it got inside, once its heat touched exposed circuits, those circuits began to fuse together. With his gun on single-shot fire, and given where he aimed, that fusion would spread, slowly, painfully, until both guards were offline. They would continue screaming, though, screaming in agony until their cores shut down once and for all. Cyclonus smiled, hearing those screams. Such agony—agony to all the enemies of the Decepticons!
Cyclonus landed at the base of the stairs leading up to the Quintessons, who were now clustered together in seeming fear. Good. It was about time they showed him the proper respect. He stepped over the quivering body of the first screaming guard. The second, though, he had plans for—to make a point. Instead of stepping over it, he brought his right foot, and all the weight of his body, down on the creature’s head. He felt it give underneath his foot with a fizzing crunch, felt coolant and oil splash up on his leg.
There was something about destroying another robot that he just couldn’t get in destroying fleshlings. Robots died with at least some effort, and the sounds of their deaths—fleshlings only made wet sounds when they died, and they were so small and weak that even a single misstep could destroy dozens. There was no satisfaction in killing fleshlings. They died too easily.
"You belong to me, now." Cyclonus heard the echo of Unicron in his voice and smiled. What better role model of conqueror could there be but Unicron?
The faces of death had retreated, replaced once more by the jovial, red-helmeted ones. "Of course, Cyclonus Supreme Commander! A simple accident, is all—how may we serve you?"
***
A white Enterprise-class space shuttle approached the small human settlement on Darios IX, its three engines burning blue-hot with propelling force. In the cockpit of the spacecraft, Cliffjumper sat at the control console, trying to raise a response from the settlement on the standard communications channels.
"I do not like the look of this," Sky Lynx said, his voice echoing throughout the cockpit. "I fear for the people of this outpost."
"Me, too, Sky Lynx. Me too." It wasn’t just the 100 people of Darios IX he worried about—as they got closer to the asteroid, Cliffjumper saw the telltale signs of laserfire. Carbon scars marred both the silver-blue exterior of the mining colony and the surrounding rockface. If those blast marks meant what he thought they meant, then maybe the Cybertronian Wars weren’t over after all. "Darios IX, come in. Darios IX, come in." He slammed his fist down on the console when he heard only static as his reply. "Nothing!"
"Please, Cliffjumper. Try to avoid damaging my circuitry—I’m going to need all of it un-addled in order to land on the rather precarious perch of this asteroid."
As the shuttle approached Darios IX, its well-armored underside opened, and Sky Lynx’s four-legged puma form partially transformed and descended out of his cargo bay to give him stronger landing gear than the shuttle itself was equipped with. A port on the side of the blue landing platform opened, and Cliffjumper walked cautiously down the ramp that descended, his blaster pistol at the ready.
"This is definitely laser scarring," Cliffjumper said, examining the black patches on the rocks at his feet while, behind him, Sky Lynx finished his full transformation into dragon-like form. Lynx’s enormous white head came down next to Cliffjumper, sniffed the ground.
"I agree."
Cliffjumper began walking toward the settlement, and Sky Lynx followed, taking a single step for every dozen of his smaller comrade’s. As they got closer, they both saw the blaster scars on the side of the metal dome, saw the hole that had been torn in its side. Cliffjumper transformed and drove top speed closer to the dome, and Sky Lynx broke into a run.
Sky Lynx had held out hope that the humans here had been able to hold off whatever threat they had encountered, but seeing that horrendous gash struck out his hopes. He slowed down as he got closer, and Cliffjumper transformed back into his robot mode. The area immediately outside the hole was strewn with human corpses in varying degrees of vacuum-damage. Sky Lynx looked away; seeing that much death pained him, even after all his years fighting the Decepticons.
Cliffjumper knelt, checked to make sure there was no way of saving the humans. Finding none, he clenched his fists and shook with anger. "I’m going inside, Sky Lynx. I’m hoping somebody was able to hide, or get into a pressure suit, or something. You radio Cybertron and tell them what’s happened here."
Sky Lynx nodded silent assent, and Cliffjumper climbed into the colony through the hole that had been blasted in its side. The inside of the base was far worse than the body-littered landscape outside. He could tell the humans put up quite a fight—they were every bit as tough as Transformers, even if they weren’t as strong or as hard to destroy, and Cliffjumper respected them for it. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, if their death toll might not have been a little lower had they not fought.
Everyone inside the colony was dead. Bodies were thrown over rampways,
partially disintegrated, stepped-on, or tossed about like rag dolls. It
took Cliffjumper nearly a minute to realize that the walls had not been
painted the same color as his outer shell, but were actually spattered
with that much human blood. He had counted a hundred dead when he heard
the rattle of something moving about in a closed-off room. He checked his
gun—fully powered up, safeties off—and began walking toward the blast doors
of the colony’s cargo warehouse.