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        "Coming in on Thrull now, Cyclonus."

        "Excellent." They had been traveling now for several days from where he and Scourge had stashed the head of Unicron. Scourge had wanted to destroy it, adding its particles to the asteroid belt in which it currently lay, but Cyclonus had been more hesitant. It could still be useful—after all, who knew what sort of information Unicron had collected in his long lifetime of wandering the universe? It had taken quite a bit of strain for Cyclonus to convince both Scourge and his Sweeps that it was better to leave Unicron’s head intact.

        As the small Decepticon fleet descended on the rocky, volcano-pitted world of Thrull, Cyclonus wondered at his choice of Decepticons to remain on Quintessa with the leg of Unicron. They were all starved for energon, which meant they would hardly be able to respond if the Quintessons suddenly decided to revolt against their conquerors. On the other hand, they would keep a tight rein on the five-faced aliens in order to make certain they would get the technology for unlimited energon. All in all, he thought he had chosen wisely—especially in leaving Soundwave as his sub-commander there. One of the oldest of the Decepticons, he was a master of espionage—and that meant he would be watching the Quintessons very closely indeed.

        Cyclonus transformed and landed, Scourge and the Sweeps following suit around him. The heat of this barely-formed world baked the paint of his outer layers, and Cyclonus thought in passing that if he stayed too long here, he would return to the Decepticons looking quite dead.

        "What a miserable place. What do you know of it, Scourge?" Cyclonus asked.

        "It was formed recently, on a geological scale. Still undergoing the throes of birth. Atmosphere composed primarily of gasses released from volcanic eruptions, and thus very thin. Watch your step—the lava here will rip through your armor and eat straight into your circuits."

        Cyclonus nodded, frowning down at a small pool of the stuff by his right foot. "Thank you for the warning. Now, if you will, locate Galvatron so we can get off this miserable rock ball as quickly as possible."

        Scourge nodded and looked around. Silently, he began walking away from Cyclonus and the Sweeps toward some low, rocky outcroppings in the distance. The Sweeps said nothing, merely turned and followed, and Cyclonus, taking this as meaning Scourge desired silence for his tracking, followed along quietly behind. He was nervous, leaving such an important task up to an underling; but he knew also that this was something he couldn’t do by himself, and filed his anxiety away as an irrational emotional glitch in his logic circuits.

        After about fifteen minutes, Scourge stopped and looked around. Both he and the Sweeps seemed puzzled as they stood on a jagged hill looking down slightly on an enormous lava pit.

        "What’s wrong?" Cyclonus asked.

        Scourge shrugged. "I don’t know. My sensors indicate Galvatron should be right around here, but I don’t see him anywhere."

        Cyclonus frowned, scanned the landscape. Nothing. Except for that lava pool—but if the lava was as dangerous as Scourge said it was, then Galvatron couldn’t be in it. It would have destroyed him. Perhaps he was buried in the ground around here, the force of his impact driving him deep underground and sealing the crater behind him?

        As Cyclonus bent to examine the ground on which he was standing, he felt an electrified breeze pass over him, and several microseconds later heard a familiar bth-wing sound that he had not heard in over a year. Behind him, one of the Sweeps crashed to the ground, a gaping hole burned through his chest-plate. Cyclonus saw this, stood to face their attacker.

        Towering over the pool of lava, the orange-red liquid dripping off of him, stood a gray-purple robot with a distinctive three-pronged crown atop his head. The orange cannon on his right arm hummed with energon, and a thin trickle of ionized gas crawled skyward from its barrel. His eyes glowed with a bright fire, and he spoke with a rumbling bass that was loud even in the thin atmosphere of Thrull.

        "Behold. . .Galvatron!"

        "Hey, dad, watch this!"

        Spike looked up from the book he was reading to see his only son, Daniel, speeding across the spacious grounds of the Witwicky estate, not far from the recently rebuilt Autobot City. Twenty-two years of association with the Autobots had been good to the Witwicky family. Even though his father was dead, killed in the war, the prestige of being the first human ambassadors to the giant robots, as well as savvy business sense and the occasional patent on Autobot technology (gifts from Optimus Prime to Spike and Sparkplug for their tireless service of the Autobot cause), had catapulted the Witwicky family, once blue-collar slobs, to the Fortune 500. Of course, he and his were scorned by many of the world’s other wealthy, either because they were Nouveau Riche or because they hadn’t really created what they’d patented—but in some ways he sensed the core of their problem was jealousy. Either way, the padded bank accounts did make life very comfortable in between Decepticon attacks.

        Except now that was all over. The Decepticons had fled after the Unicron Crisis, and now he was free to stay here, on Earth, at home, with his family. His life was certainly more peaceful, less hectic now than it had been since he had first seen Optimus Prime back in 1984. Of course, for his own reasons he would be more than willing to give up that peace. . .

        Optimus Prime had been like another father to him. More powerful, almost certainly wiser, it seemed. . .when Sparkplug had been taken as a slave by Megatron and Dr. Archeville back in that first chaotic year, Prime treated Spike with great care, doing his best to keep Spike from breaking down with grief. And Prime had died, here on Earth, while Spike was halfway across the galaxy. He never even got to say goodbye. It left an empty ache in him the likes of which he had felt only when his parents had died. Mom, in 1982 and dad in 1996. Neither had ever known Daniel.

        "Daniel!" Spike jumped up out of his chair and ran across the deck, leaping over the railing and onto the lawn, running toward his son. He had only been paying half-attention while Daniel was hoverboarding acrobatically, but snapped to full alert when Daniel crashed into a sizable boulder. Despite the Autobots’ extensive terraforming of this area, there were still relics of when it was still a desert.

        Spike knelt next to his boy. "Daniel, are you all right?" He was sniffling quietly and holding his head with both hands. "Let me see, Danno." He gently pulled Daniel’s hands away from his head and saw a nasty bruise and a deep cut on the boy’s forehead. Already the blood was flowing down Daniel’s face into his eyes. "Okay, Danno, just put pressure on that and we’ll get you back to the house."

        Daniel did as he was told, and Spike picked him up and jogged him back toward the house (he really had no right calling it a house, it was much more like a mansion, but he was still a working boy at heart). "Let’s hope your mother isn’t in the kitchen, or anywhere around here, Danno. She’ll chew us both out for this."

        Daniel nodded with a mild whimper. Spike smiled—the Unicron Crisis had made Daniel much more mature than he had been before. In courage and coolness in the face of danger, he certainly wasn’t the eleven-year-old boy Spike now held in his arms. Daniel was still just a boy at heart, though, and the bumps and bruises of childhood would still give him the sniffles.

        "Oh my God, what happened?" Almost as soon as Spike was through the door, Carly appeared around a corner to see Daniel bleeding all over himself.

        "It’s all right, he just bumped into a rock hoverboarding around, that’s all. We’re gonna get him cleaned up and then he’ll be fine." Spike brushed past his wife in the hall and headed for one of the downstairs bathrooms. "Just you wait."

        "Spike, dammit, I told you that hoverboard was too dangerous for him! Now look what he’s done—"

        "And hanging around the Autobots is less dangerous? Come on, Carly, how many times have we almost been killed just because of how close we are to them? This is just a scratch—every kid gets ‘em" Spike sat Daniel on the toilet while he opened the medicine cabinet to get disinfectant. That done, he wetted a facecloth and used it to clean the blood off his son’s face. He was still bleeding, but that was the nature of head wounds. "It builds character."

        Daniel smiled slightly, but Carly wasn’t having any of it. "And why weren’t you watching him?"

        "I was watching him. But I’m not an Autobot—I can’t travel thirty feet in a single step."

        Carly sighed. "I know. But I’m a mother—I worry. Now get out of the way, you’re not doing it right." She pushed Spike aside, taking the washcloth and dabbing Daniel’s cut. "Daniel, you ought to be more careful."

        "I was, mom—"

        "Don’t give me that! If you were being careful this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. And another thing, what have I told you about. . ."

        Spike winked at Daniel and left him alone with his mother. Looking down at his shirt, he saw a spot of smeared blood—luckily he wasn’t wearing his Earth Defense Force uniform, or he’d be having to go buy a new one now. Bloodstains never came out. It made Spike wonder what brilliant fashion designer had chosen white as the uniform color of a military. Not only did it make no tactical sense, it meant a lot of replacements would be needed if anyone were ever to actually be hurt.

        His thoughts were interrupted by the vidcom, which began buzzing just as he was starting to take off his shirt. He swore under his breath, called to Carly and Daniel that he’d get it, and hurriedly shrugged his shirt back over his head. Punching the activate button, he said tersely, "What?"

        Once he saw the face on the screen, he straightened. "Oh! I’m sorry, sir, Mr. President. I meant no disrespect. What can I do for you?" He smiled nervously.

        President Kendall returned the gesture—but the smile didn’t touch his eyes, which seemed distinctly sad. "I understand, Ambassador Witwicky. I suppose you were in the middle of something? Well, I have some bad news, so I hope you’re sitting down."

        Bad news? What? "I’m fine, sir."

        Kendall nodded, looking as if he barely heard Spike. "Our mining colony on Darios IX was recently attacked and destroyed. The Autobots are investigating, and the only survivor stated that it was a Decepticon that attacked the colony before he, too, died.. From the description, the Autobots believe it was the Decepticon Cyclonus."

        Spike sat down. There had been something along the lines of 200 people on that world, all dead now. Killed, apparently, by Cyclonus.

        Even as he grieved for the dead, his mind called up what he knew of Cyclonus. It wasn’t much, really. One of the Decepticons that had appeared during the Unicron Crisis, he transformed into a long-range starfighter and served as Galvatron’s personal mode of transport. He had been at the Second Battle of Autobot City, and he had disappeared after the destruction of Unicron. He was known to be an excellent marksman, from the fact that he shot down an Autobot shuttle with merely three shots. He seemed to have a special kinship with Galvatron, standing quietly by his side as the Sweeps destroyed Ultra Magnus. Aside from that, nothing else was known of Cyclonus.

        "All of them dead, sir? Two hundred killed by a single Decepticon?" Spike heard the whisper in his voice, but couldn’t make himself speak up.

        The President nodded, understanding exactly how Spike felt. "Yes. There seems to have been a firefight—all our EDF forces there were destroyed, and all the energon at the colony was stolen. Rodimus Prime has taken this as the reopening of the Cybertronian Wars. And I’m afraid you know what that means."

        Spike paused. The Cybertronian Wars? But they were over—

        "Ambassador, we’re going to need you back on Cybertron, acting as our liaison there. Pack your bags, Mister Witwicky—I’ve been informed that the next Autobot shuttle leaves in little more than an hour."
 

       To Chapter Seven