"Negative," Optimus Prime replied, his vocalizers deep and resonant as he addressed the weapons specialist. "This deployment is merely a temporary hold."
"It is an undeniable truth that this planet has proven itself to be a magnificent secondary cradle for our species, yet our baseline trajectory will always guide us back to Cybertron."
His mentor, Sentinel Prime, had etched a single core subroutine into his thoughts eons ago: never permit your resolve to fracture, regardless of the parameters.
The current strategic layout of the resistance was undeniably catastrophic, but that data held zero power to make him surrender the fight.
While Optimus Prime addressed Ironhide, the stealth attack shuttle settled onto the landing pad with a heavy hiss of pneumatic pressure.
The primary cargo ramp dropped, allowing Silverbolt to step onto the tarmac first.
"Optimus, my calculations carry a heavy burden of failure; accept my apologies."
The first phrase from the flyer was an absolute apology; after all, he was the commander personally appointed by the Prime to anchor their forces on the home world, yet he had been forced to execute a ragged retreat.
Faced with the leader and the remaining survivors of their race, he felt a profound wave of professional shame.
"Silverbolt," Optimus Prime said, stepping forward to place a massive servo onto the flyer's shoulder armor without adding any heavy reprimands.
Silverbolt was essentially his direct apprentice, a warrior invested with a high percentage of his strategic expectations, and the Prime could read the internal conflict within his processors instantly.
Yet on a live battlefield, total deactivation was a variable that could claim any combat asset, and his own signature wasn't immune to the math.
The sacrifice of Ultra Magnus couldn't be blamed on their tactical performance; the absolute fault lay solely with the Decepticon vanguard.
"Ah! The environment is perfectly verified! I have cleared the transit!" Hound boomed, pushing his heavy frame past the Wreckers to clear the exit hatch.
"Oh, Mudflap, run a diagnostic on the sheer volume of ballistic iron bolted to his frame; does he not flag a structural weight warning?"
"Confirmed, Skids; look at his primary midsection plating, the metric cleanly outscales your own chassis specifications."
"Defective code! My structural filters are currently running a high-intensity optimization routine!"
Maintaining an equal level of utter contempt for every entity they encountered meant the twin brothers technically discriminated against no one.
Skids and Mudflap didn't bother lowering their vocalizers as they traded jeers, seemingly fearless of whether their target intercepted the frequency.
Although they held Hound's basic data profile in their registries, they lacked any personal familiarity with the veteran.
No matter how fractured the Autobot resistance had become, it was once one of the two largest ruling military factions on Cybertron, making it perfectly logical that many surviving units shared zero prior operational history.
"Hound, your signature is a welcome addition to this grid!" Ironhide bellowed, his demeanor significantly more amicable than the twins.
As the garrison's chief weapons specialist, he harbored a deep professional appreciation for a warrior who chose to pack an absolute excess of firearms onto his chassis.
"Our units maintain absolute freedom of movement across this specific sector, though your tracking systems must remain alert for Decepticon activity; Megatron currently commands an active network on this planet, and his current hiding coordinates remain unverified."
Operating an autonomous fortress far from human oversight was a development that brought Ironhide immense satisfaction.
It granted the resistance a comfortable tier of structural privacy and operational independence, ensuring their internal calculations weren't constantly restricted by primitive human observers.
"Relax, Ironhide; my targeting reticles are fully calibrated," Hound replied, patting his chest armor as the two veterans moved down the path, exchanging tactical data.
"Optimus, detail our next set of combat parameters," Leadfoot demanded the moment his heavy boots cleared the boarding ramp, approaching the Prime directly.
The subtext behind his query was transparent: the warmonger simply wanted to verify if there was a live deployment scheduled to hunt Decepticons on this world.
For a high-intensity combat asset like a Wrecker, an environment devoid of active violence was a severe drain on his processing subroutines.
"Silverbolt, what is the exact census of the Autobot survivors remaining aboard the Ark?" Optimus Prime asked, completely bypassing Leadfoot's question.
"Seventy-three functional units," Silverbolt reported instantly, the metric permanently burned into his active memory.
Optimus Prime's optics experienced a brief, flickering lapse in focus before his systems re-established control.
When his vanguard first departed Cybertron, the active roster of the resistance cleared a four-digit metric; yet after a few centuries of conflict, their species had been reduced to a double-digit statistic.
These seventy-three refugees, combined with the small garrison entrenched within this base, represented the absolute final lineage of the Cybertronian race.
"Instruct the Ark to maintain its stealth envelope within deep orbital space; Silverbolt, you and the Aerialbots will route regular logistical shipments to their coordinates," Optimus commanded.
Their cooperative alignment with the human executive branch had finally entered a stable, highly efficient honeymoon phase, and the Prime refused to allow a sudden variable to disrupt the balance.
Having spent a considerable duration on Earth, he held a perfect understanding of the political temperament driving the human species.
As long as the native populations remained entirely oblivious to the reality that a massive alien dreadnought was parked directly over their heads, the diplomatic nexus would remain unbroken.
After all, within the realm of organic diplomacy, unverified variables could simply be calculated as nonexistent.
Cybertron, Iacon.
The Nemesis had barely touched down within the capital's landing bays before its primary propulsion systems fired back up, launching the vessel into the sky once again without even replenishing its fuel cells.
Shockwave tracked the abrupt departure of the flagship, his processing core cycling through the brief data explanation Skygnaw had left behind before he silently returned to the Decagon.
This time, the navigation systems of the Nemesis were locked onto a completely unique geographical sector of the home world: the Mithril Sea.
Within a mere handful of micro-cycles, the colossal wedge silhouette of the dreadnought stabilized directly over the silver expanse.
Skygnaw stepped out of the high bridge tower, walking onto the primary exterior deck to look down at the endless metallic ocean below.
The Mithril Sea was a vast body of shimmering, liquid silver plating, standing out brilliantly against the dark, ash-grey crust of Cybertron.
That striking visual contrast was the precise reason why the ocean had captured his attention during his initial orbital descent onto the planet.
Compared to the natural bodies of water found on Earth, the Mithril Sea shared a nearly identical physical topology, separated only by its foreign coloration and exponentially higher fluid density.
"Commander Skygnaw, our subroutines are calibrated for descent," Snaptrap announced, leading the Seacons to face the Leader-class titan with absolute deference.
Their commander had ordered an immediate exploration of the silver depths, and although the underlying strategic parameters remained unverified to them, it finally provided an operational theater where their unique specs could shine.
"Very well. Initiate the deployment," Skygnaw nodded smoothly.
When conducting a campaign across the deep liquid layers, leaving his primary aquatic warfare specialists on the deck would be an absolute tactical error.
Five distinct impacts disrupted the shimmering silver surface as the members of the Seacons dove straight off the flagship's boarding deck.
Submerging into the high-density fluid, the five warriors executed their transformation sequences, shifting into their specialized mechanoid beast forms.
Snaptrap required zero explanation, reconfiguring his chassis into a heavily armored, massive sea turtle packing monumental endurance parameters.
As for the remaining four operatives, Overbite shifted into an ancient, armored coelacanth form, with dual-barrel corrosive-adhesive rifles extending from his lateral fin segments.
Nautilator reconfigured his frame into a colossal mechanical lobster, deploying a pair of primary claws so massive and razor-sharp they easily eclipsed the dimensions of his own helm module.
Skalor transformed into a predatory shark monster, acting as the primary scout for the detachment due to his exceptional computational intelligence, master-level espionage scripts, and flawless underwater assassination protocols.
Finally, although Tentakil's name suggested a crustacean design, his alternate configuration was that of a colossal mechanical octopus.
Massive, heavy mechanical tentacles whipped wildly through the liquid silver currents, while a high-caliber corrosive-shattering cannon deployed from his lower mantle, leaving him looking far more like a cosmic horror than a standard Decepticon soldier.
Operating under Snaptrap's direct coordination, the amphibious team dispersed rapidly across the seafloor, systematically scanning the terrain to locate their designated target parameters.
Standing along the open deck, Skygnaw waited in silence, his decision to chart a course toward the Mithril Sea driven by a critical piece of intelligence he had just extracted from Shockwave.
Buried deep beneath the silver waves lay the Sunken City of Po-Sua, a historic metropolis that once housed a massive, high-priority Decepticon logistical stockpile.
When the tectonic plates shifted and the city suddenly collapsed into the abyss, the entire cache of military resources was dragged straight down to the ocean floor alongside the infrastructure.
Even the smallest scrap of refined fuel held monumental value to his current long-term calculations.
Although the total volume of the cache was far from infinite, managing the reserves carefully would yield enough energon cubes to sustain his faction for several orbital cycles.
Indeed, before he could initiate the construction of a star-fleet, he was mathematically obligated to stabilize the baseline consumption requirements of his Decepticon forces.
While he could easily freeze their financial wages, a workforce of heavy machinery still required regular inputs of raw fuel to keep their systems online.
"I truly operate as a remarkably benevolent corporate cap... negative, a benevolent Decepticon commander," he amused himself silently.
Ping!
Before his thoughts could track the calculation any further, an encryption request rattled his primary communication array.
His optics narrowed slightly as his chest projector cast a live holographic display into the air.
"Commander Skygnaw! My vanguard cell has successfully secured an active Autobot asset!"
The transmission originated from Dirge, his vocalizers carrying an unsuppressed wave of raw excitement, conducting himself as if he had just balanced the entire faction's ledger.
Truthfully, the members of the Inquisition had been struggling with a deep sense of professional inadequacy, calculating that they had contributed absolutely zero value to Skygnaw's recent campaigns.
After all, the moment their commander joined the front lines, Ultra Magnus was ICC-terminated, forcing the entire remaining resistance into a frantic interstellar retreat.
"An Autobot?" Skygnaw murmured, his optics blinking as he processed the data.
Had the resistance not packed their entire remaining population inside the cargo bays of the Ark before fleeing the system?
What active Autobot assets could possibly be left wandering the surface of Cybertron?
Perhaps it was a straggler who had missed the evacuation window, or an explorer returning from a deep-space campaign who was entirely uncalibrated to the catastrophic changes that had rewritten the capital.
Recalling the long-range scouting divisions Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus had deployed during the early eras, Skygnaw's interest spiked immediately.
"Dirge, execute an immediate transit to route the asset directly to my coordinates."
If this target truly belonged to an ancient, deep-range expedition cell, his databases might hold exceptional, unharvested data logs that could accelerate his strategies.
A brief duration later, five distinct tracking signatures breached the horizon, heading straight toward his position over the sea.
The five Decepticon starfighters closed the distance rapidly, though Skygnaw's optical sensors registered a bizarre anomaly hanging directly beneath the lead craft: a massive, tangled heap of... industrial refuse?
He blinked smoothly, his processors running a quick check on Dirge's vocal report.
What strategic purpose could possibly be served by dragging a literal scrap pile across the sky while claiming to have captured an elite Autobot soldier?
As the fighters entered his immediate airspace, his magnification filters resolved the image clearly.
The silhouette wasn't a collection of structural junk, but an exceptionally bloated, heavily encrusted Cybertronian bearing a colossal pile of metallic refuse on his back that cleanly eclipsed the dimensions of his own chassis.
"Has the Inquisition managed to track down an ancient Cybertronian whose primary programming is locked into gathering trash?" Skygnaw couldn't help but criticize internally.
Thud.
"Ah! Fragile alloys!"
Accompanied by a sharp shriek of physical distress from the bloated mechanoid, the five members of the Inquisition touched down onto the primary exterior deck of the Nemesis, locking their frames into a rigid line before their commander.
"Commander, here is the active Autobot asset we flagged," Dirge announced, gesturing toward the scrap-merchant who was currently scrambling to retrieve the metal shards that had scattered across the deck plating.
"Your scanning subroutines have suffered a severe glitch; my code shares zero alignment with the Autobot faction!"
The prisoner scrambled to his feet, his vocalizers firing in a frantic attempt to correct the narrative. "Furthermore, my chassis carries absolute zero allegiance to the Decepticon regime!"
"I operate strictly as an independent merchant, a displacement refugee, and an absolute neutral entity; my spark has never participated in the political warfare dividing your factions!"
"Neutral?" Dirge sneered, his vocal array twisting into a cold, contemptuous hiss.
To a dedicated Decepticon enforcer, the concept of a neutral entity was mathematically impossible; if an asset didn't wear their badge, it was categorized as a target for systematic liquidation.
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