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        To Chapter Twenty-Six
 

        A Year has passed. A year in which the Cybertronian Wars exploded with a fury that the galaxy hadn’t known in more than four million years. The Autobots have suffered defeat after defeat. The Decepticons have conquered every human and Cybertronian settlement in the quadrant. Earth and Cybertron have been cut off from each other by the seemingly unstoppable Decepticon armada and their relentless attacks. For the Autobots, it has become a war of attrition. For the free races of the galaxy, it has become a war for survival.

        "Go, GO, GO!" Kup yelled, pushing Blaster forward with one hand while firing his laser behind him with the other. The air was electrified with ion discharge; the walls were scored with carbon from the shots exchanged when they came in, and even now as they left. A shot ricocheted off the wall next to Kup’s head; he felt the burn of its passing on his skin plating, strangely soothing against the tingle of the electric air. Kup shot back, and the Decepticon who had fired took the shot in the face, blowing a hole clean through his helmet. He fell backwards, interfering with the shots of the Decepticons behind him, and Kup took the opportunity to duck and bolt after his team.

        This had been the most insane mission he’d ever been on—and in his six million years of fighting, he’d been on some crazy missions. It started out simply enough. . .sneak into one of the Decepticons’ smaller outposts and quickly, quietly, incapacitate somebody inside and bring him back to Cybertron for interrogation. There had been very few direct battles between the Autobots and the Decepticons over the last year; it had seemed as if the Decepticons were almost toying with them, preventing them from maneuvering easily and hemming them in. Even in those few battles, there were no Decepticon casualties that could be questioned; they all seemed to be completely wrecked, even though a lot of them were only taken down by a few shots.

        It had been driving Rodimus Prime crazy, this constant cat-and-mouse dance between the Autobots and the Decepticons. There had been Autobots in the past who could stand that game—Optimus Prime had been one—but there were others, like Rodimus and Ultra Magnus, who were more direct, who wanted decisive battles and substantial victories. The Autobots had had neither since the Battle of Iacon—it was as if the Decepticons had suddenly become more powerful, more coordinated, more numerous. Definitely more numerous—Decepticons Kup hadn’t seen since the disappearance of the Ark were coming back out of the woodwork to join in the War. Tough thing was, they were winning, and all the Autobots knew it.

        Rodimus wanted answers. Finding none on the battlefield, he decided that they needed to try kidnapping a Decepticon—maybe then they’d be able to get some facts. Kup didn’t like the idea too much when he’d first heard it. After all, since when did the Autobots stoop to kidnapping in order to beat the Decepticons? He liked it even less when he got volunteered for the mission.

        But, he had to admit, it made a kind of odd sense. If they could find out where the Decepticons suddenly got their fighting spirit back from, especially after they lost Cybertron, most of their old leadership, a battle where they seemed to pit all their forces against Cybertron, and Galvatron himself. . .

        Kup dodged a blast as he exited the Decepticon outpost. Across the field sat the stripped shuttle they had come here in—no weapons, minimal shields, no cargo hold. Just engines and a cockpit, built for stealth and speed. Between it and him were Blaster; Eject and Rewind carrying the unconscious Frenzy between them; and Blurr, running interference and drawing the Decepticons’ fire while he and the others made their way back to the shuttle with their cargo. Just off to the side, and coming in fast, rolled Blitzwing in tank mode.

        "Autobot! You’ve kept too many kills from me—now I shall kill you!"

        Kup rolled his optics. "Isn’t that just like a Decepticon?" Stealing a quick glance over his shoulder to see what other Decepticons were on the field—fortunately, none who were looking in his direction—he stopped running and opened his arms as if to hug Blitzwing. "Come on, Blitzwing. Shoot me. You couldn’t hit anything you’re not already touching, anyway."

        Blitzwing howled and gunned his engine, jumping forward a lot faster than a tank should really be capable of moving, firing his single cannon at the ancient Autobot. Kup leapt forward, tucked, and rolled toward Blitzwing in a neat maneuver that had his joints creaking in overstressed agony. The move took him underneath Blitzwing’s line of fire, and he flattened himself out quickly so the Decepticon would roll over him without crushing his circuits. Then, once he was underneath Blitzwing, he slapped a fusion charge underneath the robot’s drive train, set to go off in about 5 seconds.

        Kup was already out from underneath Blitzwing and running away when the charge blew. He was expecting an enormous explosion that would knock him to the ground and burn his back with debris. What he got, instead, was a faint tremor in the ground under his feet and a muffled whump behind him. At first, he thought the charge had fizzled—when he looked over his shoulder, though, he saw that Blitzwing’s armor was simply too strong to shatter under the power of so small an explosive. The Triple-Changer was just sitting there, though, his treads off their runners, smoke trailing up from his undercarriage, the cannon on his turret pointed to the ground, as if it had lost all the power holding it up.

        Good. That meant one less Decepticon to worry about.

        Kup transformed into his pickup mode and gunned his engine, racing at his top speed to the shuttle. Ahead, Ratbat fell out of the sky and started clawing at Rewind’s head, trying to make him release Frenzy’s feet. He tried to beat the Decepticon away, but it kept coming back to sink its claws into Rewind’s white helmet. Kup watched, shocked, as Eject pulled his weapon and fired, point-blank, into Ratbat’s face. The top half of the cassette blew apart, and Kup wanted so badly to close his optics when the remains fell to the ground, the wings flapping feebly, plainly only a last bit of electrical reflex. He’d seen deaths like that before—he still wasn’t used to them being by Autobot hands.

        Soundwave broke the lines and ran forward for Ratbat just as Drag Strip and Wildrider came in for Kup from the other side. He gunned it, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to outrace them to the ship, especially since they were in a position to be able to cut him off. He got ready to transform into a leap, when all of a sudden, Blurr was there, by his side, firing away.

        Kup had seen a lot of changes in the Autobots over his long lifetime. Before Optimus Prime and the Ark were lost for four million years, there was a resigned determination among he and his fellows. Yes, they were losing, but that would change soon enough. They had been sure of that. After Prime and the Matrix were lost, that determination was broken. A lot of Autobots fled Cybertron for more peaceful places, hoping they could finally find refuge from the war. Others fought on, even though they knew that, without Prime, they had lost. Kup had been one of those who’d kept fighting. He remembered the despair that had flooded Autobase back then, how savage many of his closest friends had become. When Prime had returned, joy and hope filled the Autobots once again. They knew they were going to win the war, even after Megatron finally took Cybertron. After those glory days, Kup never thought he’d see the Autobots turn back to savagery.

        As he watched Blurr, comically fast-paced and dimwitted for as long as Kup had known him, fire the guns he held in either hand with a speed befitting his name, he knew those glory days were done. Over and over again, the superhot lasers burned through the advancing Decepticons, dozens of holes shot through them each second. Their gas tanks and tires exploded, and they flipped over and crashed into each other, smoking wrecks that exploded as soon as they collided.

        The heat of the explosion was enough to keep many of the Decepticons from pursuing, and several others ran straight for their fallen brothers to see what aid they could offer. But Kup knew—nothing they could do would save those two poor sparks. If Blurr’s shooting hadn’t breached their laser cores, the explosion surely would have. Had his head been deployed, he would have shaken it sadly. In all his years, he’d never seen anything like that done by the hands of an Autobot.

        He drove up the open entry ramp to the shuttle, Blurr running right along beside him. He transformed and sat in the pilot’s seat next to Blaster, who had already prepped the ship. They’d never shut down the engines—they knew that, if they had any chance of surviving this mission, they would have to be in and out in no more than five minutes. That level of surprise would, they hoped, shock the Decepticons into inaction or, at the very least, minimal action. He hadn’t expected quite so much destruction, though—from his experience, whenever there was a lot of killing in a battle with Decepticons, it was usually by Decepticons.

        The massive engines on the back of the shuttle roared to full throttle from their idle, and the shuttle began to pull forward. The hatch ramp hadn’t completely closed, and Blurr was firing out the opening. He caught Soundwave, bending down over Ratbat, in the side of the head and cheered.

        "I got ‘im I got ‘im did you see? I got Soundwave right in the side of the head!"

        Kup frowned as he pulled the stick back, bringing the nose of the shuttle up between two towers proudly bearing the Decepticon insignia. The time was when Autobots wouldn’t be cheering about shooting Decepticons. He missed those times.

        "Blaster to Cybertron, Blaster to Cybertron, do you read?" Blaster spoke to the air, knowing his internal communications circuitry would pick up his words and broadcast them in a tight beam straight to Command and Control on Cybertron. "We’re bringing home the bacon, so fire up oven."

        There was a brief burst of static, then Hubcap’s voice crackled out of Blaster’s chest. "We read you loud and clear, Blaster. We’re real hungry, so bring it home fast—and watch out for traffic."

        "Roger, dodger. Over and out." Blaster shut off his comm circuits with just a thought, then glanced down at his scanner. "Kup, we’ve got company coming. Couple a’Sweeps."

        "Blast! We’ve got no way of shooting back in this thing. Can you give me a little more speed?"

        Blaster smiled and pressed a few switches on the console in front of him, disengaging the safeties on the engine. Seconds later, the shuttle rocketed forward with the power of new acceleration, burning up its fuel at a level that was dangerously unsafe. Kup strained his muscle cables to keep the ship on course, it was vibrating so hard around him. He heard a clang from behind—Frenzy hadn’t been strapped in, and was now pressed upside-down against the rear bulkhead.

        Blaster leaned forward to glance at his scanner again. "They’re still gaining. . .and we’re running out of fuel."

        "Looks like we won’t have to worry about running into traffic—traffic’s running into us." He glanced over his shoulder. "Blurr! You think you can crawl out onto the hull and start shooting back at them?"

        Blurr shook his guns, a pained look on his face. "I’m out I’m out I’m out! No rounds means no shooting no shooting means no fun no fun means we’re all gonna die!"

        Kup pulled his gun and let it slip from his hands. It flew backward at Blurr, who caught it clumsily.

        "Don’t give up just yet, lad. That pea shooter’s fully loaded. . .we can do some damage yet!"

        "Awright awright awright! Now I’ll bet we’ll survive and you know what survival means it means we get to go home in one piece instead of a million pieces like we would if we couldn’t shoot back—"

        "GO already!" Kup yelled, to which Blurr quieted and carefully opened the main hatch, scrambling out of the hull even as the door closed behind him.

        Kup decided that he would never again travel in a ship that had no weapons, even if by some miracle he lived to see the end of the Autobot-Decepticon War. Seconds later, the ship shuddered around him as the Sweeps closed in to firing range. He had no idea whether they’d had good enough aim to blow Blurr off the hull—even with magnetic clamps and no wind pressure in space, a well-placed shot could knock him clean into space. Not that there was anything he could do if that had happened—Blurr would be thousands of kilometers away by the time he could turn around to fetch him.

        The Sweeps flew over the cockpit, the high whine of their engines pounding against the hull.

        "That’s not my kind of tune, Kup." Blaster said.

        "Mine either, buddy. But we’re going too fast for this bucket to maneuver, and even at emergency throttle we can’t outrun ‘em." The last time he’d been in so desperate a situation had been right after the Battle of Autobot City. . .Galvatron and his fleet were hunting two shuttles filled with the last survivors of the Battle, and he and Hot Rod had about twenty missiles bearing down on them. Reversing polarity wouldn’t work this time—the Sweeps weren’t shooting missiles at them. He grinned with the satisfaction that, if they blew his ship out of the stars, he would take one of their own with him.

        The Sweeps turned around up ahead of them and started firing again. From atop the shuttle, a single stream of energy fired back, clipping one of the Sweeps but doing no damage. The shuttle rocked under their battering again, and a sudden explosion to port nearly sent the ship spinning out of control. Blaster and Kup fought with the controls to keep the ship steady, but Kup knew there was no point. The portside engine had blown, and with it, half their fuel supply. With only half their fuel, and burning it up as quickly as they were, there would be no way they would be able to get even halfway back to Cybertron. And the Sweeps would pick them clean long before any help arrived.

        Blaster glanced at him. They both knew how grim their situation was. The trick was in deciding how to go out. If they self-destructed now, they’d be able to take the Sweeps and Frenzy with them. If they waited, their fuel would run out and so would their punch—the Sweeps would likely be able to overtake them and get Frenzy back. Either way, they were dead.

        Six million years, and in not a single one of them had Kup ever considered suicide. He never thought he’d have to consider it.

        The Sweeps were coming in again, turning lazily. This time, there was no fire from up top—either Blurr had run out of photon charges, or he’d been flung off into space. Kup thought it strange that he was hoping for the latter—that meant at least one of them would survive, even if he would be stuck in deep space, possibly for years.

        The shuttle began to shudder apart under the Sweeps’ lasers. The cockpit blast shield cracked, and the engine core finally began to splutter and die. Kup, never taking his optics off the approaching Sweeps, reached forward underneath the control panel in front of him, and opened the panel covering the auto-destruct switch. He sensed Blaster’s optics on him, but he couldn’t turn. The timing had to be just right, or this gamble wasn’t going to pay off. Not that it would pay off anyway. . .

        One of the Sweeps exploded.

        Kup sat back, shocked, yanking his hand away from the switch as if he’d been burned. Had the Sweep destroyed itself? No—as its companion veered off, away from the shuttle, a dozen wide, thick bolts of energy shot across its path, destroying it. Kup stared out to port, to see what had saved them—and six Autobot cruisers hovered there, approaching with the slow power of the indestructible, several smaller ships darting between them like insects.

        "Now that’s the kind of traffic I like!" Blaster cried.

        The shuttle’s radio crackled to life between Kup and Blaster with the unmistakable voice of Fortress, one of the Autobots who had resurfaced since the new flare-up of the War. "Hello there, fellas. Need a helping hand?"

        Rewind, Eject and Blaster cheered. Their ship was falling apart around them—they had had no hope, had in fact nearly destroyed themselves. But the Autobots came through. The Autobots came through.

        Kup sat back in the pilot’s seat, exhausted, flicking the radio switch. They’d probably elected to radio the ship itself instead of Blaster because they didn’t know Blaster’s condition. "This is Kup. You lads have impeccable timing. I haven’t seen a save like that since that time on Garibaldi 64 when—"

        "That’s great, Kup," Fortress said, cutting him off. The other Autobot would no doubt be frowning and tapping one foot. "What’s your condition?"

        Blaster stepped in here. "We’re all fine, though a little banged up. We’ve got Frenzy, but we’re not sure if we lost Blurr or not. Is he still standing on the upper hull?"

        "No, but our sensors detect him. Looks like you lost him when your port thruster went. We’ve already sent a pickup for him. We’re gonna go ahead and grab you with a tow beam. You boys want to ride back to Cybertron in that hunk, or in style?"

        "In style!" Rewind and Eject called out simultaneously.

        The squadron flagship, the War Dawn, moved over the shuttle and attached its tow beam with an echoing clang. Kup didn’t think he’d ever seen Blaster happier. Kup got up and helped Rewind and Eject prep Frenzy, who was starting to regain consciousness.

        "We did it, Kup." Rewind said. "We got the goods and got out alive."

        "Things are all right," Eject finished, smiling.

        Kup narrowed his optics. "Let me tell you something, lads. If things were all right, we wouldn’t be kidnapping Decepticons."

        The Autobot cassettes watched Kup silently as he climbed into the waiting cruiser.
 
 

        To Chapter Twenty-Eight