Zoom in on the planet Cybertron.
Like any world, it looks peaceful from space.
But its streets are paved with war...
500 years ago
Lights flashed; once quickly, on and off, then a slow fade-out, a slow fade-in, and a final fade to darkness. Warm auxiliary lights filled the steel-walled room. The computer screen flashed an alert.
The female rushed to the console, punched several buttons, scanning, wondering what had gone wrong. That was when she felt the first explosion. The complex pitched beneath her feet, and she stumbled against the computer just as the screen flared in a flurry of violet symbols. They'd followed! The raid had gone wrong! And the reserves...
"Status report:" the alto voice rushed from the pale metal lips; "Supply Holds Delta, Gamma."
"Destroyed," responded the computer.
The last of the energon in the Autobot outpost. Gone, the last of the precious life that was these rebels' only hope.
White metal fists, narrow and delicate, pounded the computer console, punishing it for its unfeeling response. The radio on the console crackled, but no words issued forth from the troops above, experiencing fire, casualties, no doubt, in the upper levels of the underground complex. Energon explosion interference was jamming their comlinks, though it hadn't brought the scanners down yet.
She left the console at once, breaking into a run toward the tunnel exit and heading for the reserve holds and her comrades she heard screaming now, in short bursts over the radio static. But, she stopped, as her internal sensors picked up a signature, approaching in the service elevator to her right. She turned to face it, and pulled the gun from her side, leveled it at the elevator door. Three, two, one... the raider drew near, and the lone signal flashed in her visor... Decepticon, Decepticon, Decepticon.
Radio silence-who ever owned the crackling communicator had gone completely off-line. And the female's eyes opened wide, for she'd had a sudden suspicion. She'd caught the scent in the air: burned-out fuel with a shudder of energy, force and familiarity. As her scanners gave her positive identification on the intruder, her base senses had already told her... even before the door slid open.
Her energy pistol was leveled at his chest; she was less than five feet away. She looked up, into a face that betrayed no feeling: a single, white eye, set in the center of an octagonal plate. A face unencumbered by mouth, nose... sentiment.
The lone eye looked down on her, did not blink. The tenor voice issued from somewhere at the base of the intruder's neck. "Elita."
Her response was bitter. "Shockwave."
He nodded his head to her outstretched arms and the weapon poised to fire. "Planning on shooting me?"
"Call off your troops." Her voice was steady, but her hands shook. "They're KILLING my Autobots."
"A diversionary tactic." His voice had the lilt of an aristocrat's accent; he was used to being in charge. "It will cease, when I have finished my conversation with their commander."
She pulled the trigger.
She missed. At a five-foot distance, Elita One, Autobot general, had missed a twenty-five foot target. She knew she had done it on purpose, and so did Shockwave. He took a single step forward, and Elita's reflexes kicked in; she snapped into focus and leveled the barrel at his head.
He watched the determined set of her Autobot-blue eyes, and stared at them as she tracked over to where her blast had made a burn mark on the wall. "Nice to see three million years meant something to you, after all," he commented.
"That is OVER, Shockwave. We are over, and YOU are OVER."
"You're right," he responded, and his coolness stayed her trigger finger. "I am over, the Autobots are over, and the age of the Decepticon… is over. I am leaving Cybertron."
Her lips parted, and her weapon lowered. "You invaded my base to tell me THAT?! You killed my—"
He dove forward with a swift grab, and caught both of her lowering hands in his only one: his right. It was a move she had not expected, and her fingers trembled in his grasp. Her pistol clattered to the floor, but she barely noticed. Her eyes were transfixed on the cyclops' gaze as he spoke. "Come with me."
"You—you must be mad! Your war—"
"I have been watching the patterns. We will LOSE this war."
Elita was stunned; she'd never imagined a Decepticon, let alone the haughty general Shockwave, would swallow his pride this way.
"Galvatron is not the same leader as Megatron. And after Unicron's attack, we are short on numbers. I may take your complex, I may win this battle, but yours will win the PLANET."
She smiled. "Thank you, then, for offering me your surrender."
He shifted his weight to remind her of his stature, and pointed his left arm—the barrel of a gun, at her breast. It was aimed at the spot where both knew concealed her vulnerable spark, her core of being. "It is a surrender with conditions. Elita One leaves Cybertron tonight. I'd hoped she could do it alive."
"Threatening me?"
"Begging you." And as he leaned into her, she became aware, not of his firepower, but... of his TOUCH. "Our world was better than this. In time, little time, we shall have it again. Simply...not today."
Her lip quivered as memories of ancient times ran through her processor. His single eye missed nothing, and, more softly, he inquired: "... Had that dead daydream really been worth the wait?"
No. The Autobot heroes had not been as she'd remembered them four million years ago. Their triumphant return to Cybertron had not brought peace with victory, but suffering. Optimus Prime—he had risked himself to save her once...out of duty. And as the war still beckoned him he'd turned his back on her, without so much as an embrace. But would Shockwave, cold, unforgiving, offer her that comfort?
He would. As she fell into him, the steel arms closed around her body, and she was secure, wrapped in his energy.
The voice from his neck was a whisper. "I did not know what to do, Elita, when I discovered you, too, were alive. But now that our Megatron is dead, and your Optimus, is, truly dead, and your fight almost over, what more reason have we to remain?"
As if to form a response, the radio flared to life, a light on the console flashed, and the voice of an Autobot woman cried out from the combat above. "Lieutenant Chromia calling Elita One! We are experiencing heavy fire. Our reserves are destroyed—repeat—RESERVES DESTROYED. Do you copy?"
Shockwave opened his arms. "Of course." He turned away. "Your comrades cry out for you, Elita One. Go to them. I will not impede you."
Elita walked over to the radio and held the button for response. "I copy."
"Oh thank the Matrix! Elita, we are—"
Elita pushed the button again, interrupting. As a Decepticon cannon lowered at her back, Chromia, Elita's trusted lieutenant, heard the last words she would ever hear.
"Farewell, my sister. 'Till all are one."
200 years ago
Darkness. A dim awareness. Cold.
Then a flood of information as vocabulary tracks, conditioning, and primary programming entered the new protoform. A voice dark as space rumbled in his head. "You are my chosen. Everything you see belongs to you. There is something you must destroy."
No, not something, many, many things. ...Cybertron... He knew what it meant, even though he knew nothing about it. The voice's message echoed through his mind; he wished it was not so loud. He had a vague sense of light, somewhere ABOVE. He reached out to it, and found it nearer than he expected. He pushed.
The light source was a globe, glowing a dim purple-white nearly fifty feet above. He held up his hand to inspect it; it was silver, nearly skeleton-thin, shining under the cold light, and wet with some kind of afterbirth. He had the presence of mind to ask who he was, but no sound echoed from his voice. No atmosphere. And as the other voice did not hear him, it did not respond. Its message was done.
The inner computer, the same one that told him the physics of the room, the radio bypass for sound communication in no atmosphere, and the nature of the artificial gravity that held him on the floor, answered his question by supplying his identity.
I'm Tarantulas.
He had a name, but it meant so little.
Tarantulas reached out at the light again, and ripped away the organic fibers and polymer coating of the shell that held his body. He put two hands on the cold metal floor, and pulled himself forward. The shell of his chrysalis cracked and split, and his shoulders were free, followed by his body. A quick motion followed as his shoulders pulled forward again and he unfurled huge, empty wings: metal spires without covering that stretched like claws above his back, dripping with slime. He shook them out, and rose to his feet, then shook the fluid off his body and the heavy horns on his head.
The room was a cross between a technological wonder and an ancient ruin. The ceiling was an immeasurable distance away; empty wings could not fly to it. Around the base that held the light rested a cluster of pods like his, perhaps a dozen. His was the only one that had opened. No other hatching ever seemed to have happened here. Tarantulas inspected a pod with a gentle touch, then, frustrated with his broodmates' lack of ambition, took matters into his own hands and tore the covering away.
Tarantulas wondered briefly if he looked like this, but his internal diagnostics assured him he did not. This one was different: only mostly formed, features and detail still indistinct, and in a bath of fluid. It was a slender body, different, lovely, and Tarantulas wanted to touch it.
Father said I own everything I see, so, this is mine, he thought, and touched as he liked. And as he, newborn, was hungry, he ate what he touched, sinking mandibles into the organic portions of the unborn body to drink fluid from the plastic lines beneath. One part in particular was interesting; it was a glowing sphere, and his infant databanks had no information to help him understand it. As he removed it from the body and started at it, he watched its light flicker, then, it disintegrated in his hand, into a dark, sticky liquid. He found that taste unpleasant; it was thick and bitter, and he drew back with a hiss that had no voice in the airless room.
He left the corpse now to inspect the rest of the room again. A wall had a fluid leak; non-viscous and red. Tarantulas tasted it, too, and found it tasted like metal, like everything, like the body he'd eaten, but without surprises. He would have to learn more... So much more... Everything.
The room had tunnels in branches, and ladders and a spiral that lead toward the ceiling, into darkness. No sign of whatever had deposited his clutch. He knew the pulsing, purple-white glow would know, but he didn't know how to ask.
Above the spiral along the wall there was a second source of light, and to see what was behind he climbed to it. He found a gap, breached with a balcony that was once a bridge to an interior room, which now lead out into endless oblivion. Tarantulas stood carefully on the balcony, wary to fall out into a world where falling was meaningless. The sight pleased him: a sphere of stars, countless in number, unmatched in beauty. The entire span of the universe, under his gaze.
It all belongs to me. This all belongs to me.
But to destroy it... It was enormous. Tarantulas did not know how he could begin. And it was all so beautiful. Surely he wouldn't have to destroy something so beautiful...
From his perch he glanced down at his unborn broodmate, lovely and certainly dead, then looked back to the infinite stars. He knew, then, it was his instinct, his destiny, to destroy beautiful things.
He did not measure how long he lived in that place until the ships came.
30 years ago
"Status on data track Viron!"
"Decryption at 73 percent."
"Well, decrypt it faster!" The voice of the computer was a female—like all females, she was sly, and could not be trusted, but responded well to manipulation. She kept silent, as she did not have a preprogrammed response to an emotional inquiry, and was unfazed by her master's impatience.
Tarantulas approached the computer, tapping his fingers—now, only two—against his folded arm. His yellow optics were intent on the status bar, as it inched beyond eighty... ninety... ninety-five...
"Decryption complete."
"Display!"
At last, at long last, the text of the ancient Alien Disk, displayed on his secret computer in clear, complete, Predacon script. Tarantulas chuckled with pride as the text unraveled itself, then begin his scan.
Looking for answers. Device One, Device Two... Three... this is where they are, and why. "Yes," he muttered to himself, "but who ARE they?" What Earth WAS. The nature of the Great Experiment. It made him laugh. Shouldn't they know their work was futile? And how DARE they—how dare they claim to own the universe his father had lied about when he promised it to him? WONDERFUL information—this alone was perfect—it was funny, but... who WERE they? He kept scanning the document, looking for a history, some sort of signature mark, a name, ANYTHING...
His hand paused. His eyes flew open in shock.
A nervous laugh, no, that wasn't what that meant.
He took a step back from the computer, and heard his own mouth give voice to his fear. "No. No... nonono... No." His hands began to shake as he read the words again, and his mandibles formed words he never thought he'd utter.
"Father... Protect me..."
"Fifth switch..."
Megatron stared into the monitor before him as he gestured to his assistant at a console halfway across the metal chamber. Power flickered through the wiring, into the screen. "Good, now, the third."
"By royal command!" The decree of compliance was unnecessary, but appreciated. Inferno was the only one of his troops Megatron could use for certain on a task which required such secrecy... He was too empty-headed to learn new tricks from this endeavor, and too loyal to "tattle" on his commander's prying. It had not been easy, but Megatron had located Tarantulas's computer on the network. The spider insisted in keeping a "Lair" away from the other Predacons, and stockpiling information and energon there as he pleased. Megatron had long suspected the lair's location, but had not confronted him. Rather, he'd set about entering the system, trying to establish a link-certainly Tarantulas could see into the main Predacon base—now, the Predacon commander could see into his. Megatron settled into his chair, and typed, a few commands into his own computer. "Now the second... No, no, now off with the third." Another set of keystrokes, and... "Yes."
The picture came into focus before Megatron's eyes. As Inferno sidled up to inspect it on his own, the commander's expression turned from glib triumph to honest surprise. Though he'd been prepared to witness any sort of depravity or travesty as he spied on his lieutenant's private workings, he was not prepared for what he actually saw.
Inferno summed the scene up instantly, confusion in his voice. "He... prays?"
Megatron changed his expression again, hoping to cover his shock with a poker-straight façade. "Yes, that he does, Inferno." Certainly Inferno could recognize the posture—on both knees in the dirt, hands clenched trembling before tight-shut eyes—as a posture of extreme devotion. But Megatron's eyes were drawn to the circle Tarantulas had drawn around himself in the dust, where he knelt in the center of a cross. For the first time, Megatron noticed the sweep of spider legs on Tarantulas's back. So OBVIOUS. And here he had passed his science officer off as a mere psychopath. "Another piece in the puzzle," Megatron muttered.
"What does it mean, royalty?"
"To you? NOTHING." Inferno snapped to attention as if he'd been rebuked for a crime. "And tell no one."
"As you command, my queen," responded the ant, with a bow.
Megatron in other company would have reprimanded Inferno for using that title, but he was once again intent on his monitor. Tarantulas's shoulders were shaking now—was he laughing, or...? Megatron traced the circle-and-cross with his gaze, knowing its meaning, and its weight. "Yes... There is power, in such an alliance," he mused, as he watched Tarantulas lurch forward, then throw out his arms and toss back his head in a full-force cackle. "But it is power with a PRICE."