"Lord Megatron," Skygnaw said, landing beside the warlord the exact moment his boots touched the stone. "I have bad news."
"Speak!" Megatron barked.
Standing atop the apex of a towering pyramid, Megatron exuded an aura of absolute dominance, looking down on the world as if it were already his.
"The human NEST forces and the Autobots have arrived," Skygnaw reported. "They brought Optimus Prime with them."
During his initial sweep, Skygnaw had confirmed that the forces dug into the local abandoned village were indeed the Americans' primary strike team and the bulk of the Autobot resistance.
"Optimus Prime..." Megatron murmured, confusion registering on his face for a split second before transforming into raw fury. "The Matrix of Leadership!"
"Skygnaw, they want to use the Matrix to resurrect Optimus!"
"The boy must have found it. But how could he possibly know that the Matrix can restore a Prime we chose to execute?"
"Perhaps the Autobots told him?" Skygnaw guessed, narrowing his optics.
"Impossible," Megatron snapped, dismissing the idea instantly. "I only just learned this from my Master. The Matrix has been sealed for millions of years. It belongs to him, and no one else understands its true parameters."
*That's because you don't know about the existence of a little thing called plot armor,* Skygnaw thought, silently ridiculing his leader. Outwardly, he simply maintained an expression of deep, concentrated thought.
"Enough," Megatron said, lifting his gaze toward the horizon. "We cannot allow that boy to get anywhere near Optimus Prime."
"Skygnaw!"
"Awaiting your orders, Lord Megatron."
"You will command the Decepticon army here. I will personally hunt down and capture that human. My Master's plan will not suffer any failure!"
"understood, Lord Megatron."
With a violent roar of thrusters, Megatron transformed and shot into the sky.
Only when the Decepticon leader vanished from sight did Skygnaw internally breathe a sigh of relief. Fortunately, Megatron remained completely oblivious to the fact that he had crossed paths with Sam Witwicky just yesterday. Otherwise, he would have instantly topped the suspect list.
Stepping up to the position Megatron had just vacated, Skygnaw looked down at the dozens of Decepticons gathered at the base of the pyramid. Though the vast majority were lower-tier soldiers, their sheer numbers were terrifying, at least by the standards of modern Earth.
These hatchlings, freshly birthed from the gestation pods of The Fallen's starship, stared up at their new commander with raw curiosity, shifting their weights and readying their blades as they waited for the order to kill.
*Sam, you better not let me down,* Skygnaw thought, a bead of metaphorical sweat forming for the boy.
Gazing out across the shifting sands toward the crumbling village miles away, Skygnaw raised his right arm. His heavy armor shifted seamlessly, deploying his integrated photon cannon. He pointed the barrel toward the human stronghold and roared:
"Decepticons! Attack!"
---
Along the western perimeter of the village, a sentinel screamed into his radio. "We've got movement! The Decepticons are advancing!"
The soldier's voice trembled violently. Anyone standing in his boots would have felt the same primal terror watching dozens of massive, towering war machines marching across the dunes with weapons raised.
"Give me a count!" Lennox ordered, jogging up to the firing line.
He had picked up the signatures the moment the enemy moved, but as the defending force, they couldn't afford to break cover and risk an active assault.
"Hard to tell, sir! At least fifty or sixty of them!"
"This is bad. Incredibly bad," Epps muttered, ducking behind a crumbling limestone wall to steal a quick glance. "With this many hostiles on our grid, today is going to be a bloodbath."
"Focus up, Epps. Get the heavy fire teams consolidated along this line," Lennox commanded calmly, despite the impending storm. "Prep the anti-armor missiles. The primary thrust is coming straight through this sector."
A qualified commander maintained absolute clarity on the precipice of slaughter, refusing to let panic dictate his tactics.
"Ironhide, Sideswipe, I need you holding the center lane," Lennox said, turning to the bots. "My squads will anchor the left flank to draw their heat."
"Ratchet, Jolt, take the Arcee sisters to the right flank and run recon."
"Where is Bumblebee? How close is his convoy?"
"Boss, they're approaching from the north sector! They're almost on top of our position!"
Bumblebee was less than three hundred meters from the safety of the perimeter, but that short distance suddenly felt like a bottomless canyon. A terrifying adversary had just blocked the road.
"Boy! Surrender the Matrix!"
A deafening roar split the air as a Cybertronian jet dropped out of the sky, slamming onto the asphalt directly in front of the Camaro.
Bumblebee swerved violently, his tires shrieking as he attempted to chart a path around Megatron.
"Miserable insect!" Megatron's optics flared with pure contempt. He raised his heavy fusion cannon without a second thought.
*BOOM!*
The Camaro was violently upended, flipping through the air before crashing down as Bumblebee was forced to shift into his robot mode. The impact hurled Sam and Mikaela into the sky.
Megatron lunged forward, his massive claw reaching out toward the airborne youth. "I have you now, boy!"
A high-caliber sniper round tore through the dust, slamming squarely into Megatron's chest plate.
*BANG!*
Before his fingers could close around Sam, a barrage of heavy explosive fire rained down across his chassis.
The force of the impact made Megatron take a step back, his massive claws grazing past Sam's jacket as the boy crashed heavily onto the sand.
"Curse you!" Megatron glared upward, spotting the combined force of human soldiers and Autobots charging directly toward his position.
"Move, move, move!" Lennox roared, leading his men out of the village to cover Bumblebee as the scout struggled to his feet.
Megatron's arrival had been too swift. Lennox had concentrated all his tactical assets on the western front, completely blindsided by the ambush so close to their lines.
"All squads, establish a defensive wall around that boy!" Lennox screamed into his comms. "Everything rides on this run! Hold the line at all costs!"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Bumblebee threw himself into a reckless sprint, throwing his entire weight into pinning Megatron down. Behind him, the human rifle teams and the heavy Autobot barrels unleashed a continuous wall of lead and plasma, managing to stagger the Decepticon leader for a brief moment.
"Mikaela!"
Heavy artillery shrieked overhead. Sam spat out a mouthful of grit and scrambled toward Mikaela, who lay dazed a few yards away. "Listen to me! We have to run to where Optimus is buried! Right now!"
Mikaela rubbed her throbbing temples, her vision swimming. "Sam, go without me. My legs... I can't feel them."
"No! I am not leaving you behind!" Sam yelled, shaking his head violently as he grabbed her arm to haul her up.
Mikaela stumbled, her dead weight pulling them both down.
*Thud.*
They collapsed together onto the sand, their faces barely inches apart. It was a classic romantic accident, but given the ordnance exploding around them, it felt entirely absurd.
"I've got you," Sam said, rolling over to pull her up once more.
This time, with his feet planted firmly, he supported her weight and began a desperate, lungs-burning sprint toward the village.
Behind them, Bumblebee was repeatedly battered away by Megatron, only to roar and throw himself right back into the fray. Even as armor plating and mechanical links were torn from his chassis, the scout refused to yield an inch.
Ahead of them, a line of human operators and Autobot veterans kept their barrels flashing, refusing to give ground despite knowing they were staring down an execution squad.
Sam tuned out the world. The thunder of artillery and the wilderness around him faded into a dull hum; his entire reality narrowed down to a single objective: keep moving forward and bring Optimus Prime back.
"Insolent parasites!" Megatron roared, blasting Bumblebee backward yet again.
He couldn't fathom what kind of madness had possessed these Autobots and their human allies, driving them to throw their lives away just to shield a single squishy organism.
They reached a brutal stalemate, the deafening rattle of heavy pulse rifles erupted from the western edge of the village, followed by a chorus of explosive blasts.
*Excellent work, Skygnaw.* A savage grin spread across Megatron's face. He knew his main vanguard had breached the lines.
Before he could savor the development, a piercing shriek echoed from the clouds as an armada of jet fighters tore through the sky. Simultaneously, a column of heavy tanks and armored vehicles crested the eastern dunes, kicking up a wall of sand.
The reinforcement wings from theater command had arrived.
Before even clearing the airspace above the Decepticon vanguard, the fighter squadrons and heavy bombers unleashed their payloads, raining a curtain of precision-guided missiles down upon the desert floor.
*Fwoosh— Boom!*
Driven by an inherent hunger for violence, the Decepticons refused to give an inch, instantly shifting into their aerial alt-modes to intercept the aircraft daring to challenge them.
In an instant, a full-scale war erupted between the combined human military and the Decepticon legion.
As the acting commander of the Decepticon forces, Skygnaw remained stationed at the rear, observing the unfolding chaos without jumping into the fray.
"Skygnaw, aren't we going to assist Lord Megatron in capturing the human boy?" Blackarachnia asked, her mechanical spider form clinging to the stone blocks beneath his position.
From her perspective, their forces held an absolute tactical advantage. The scattered Autobots and fragile human infantry didn't stand a chance. She couldn't comprehend why Skygnaw was acting with such extreme caution, choosing to commit their forces to a mere probing assault.
"There is no rush, Blackarachnia."
Standing at the apex of the pyramid, Skygnaw maintained a pristine view of the entire valley, tracking every moving asset on the grid.
He was waiting. He needed Sam to reform the Matrix of Leadership first, but more importantly, he was factoring in the human military's potential desperation, specifically their willingness to deploy weapons of mass destruction if cornered.
Although a substantial number of human soldiers occupied the grid, and a densely populated metropolis sat only dozens of kilometers away, it was a mistake to overestimate political restraint. To defend their world, the human high command would easily write off a few thousand casualties as acceptable collateral.
Of course, if he was the one caught in the blast radius, it would be a completely different story.
Truthfully, Skygnaw wasn't entirely certain if his current chassis could survive a nuclear strike. Given his current Commander-class baseline, the probability was heavily leaning toward no.
Back during the battle in Mission City, he had seen specialized human kinetic penetrators inflict significant structural damage on Megatron himself. A payload of atomic scale would easily tear through his armor.
Fortunately, such options were a double-edged sword. A low-yield tactical strike wouldn't be enough to put down a Cybertronian of his caliber, while a high-yield deployment required a level of bureaucratic courage the human leadership rarely possessed.
Besides, even if they did pull the trigger, if he couldn't tank the blast, it didn't mean he couldn't simply outrun the shockwave.
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