Ever since Dirge and his crew dropped the scrap-merchant onto the deck plating, Skygnaw had remained entirely silent.
Instead, he single-mindedly studied the Cybertronian, whose armor completely lacked any Autobot or Decepticon insignia.
The more he looked, the more a sense of deep familiarity resonated within his processing core.
Suddenly, a tiny mechanical mosquito, barely half the size of a servo, buzzed out from the massive pile of metallic refuse secured to the merchant's back.
A sharp spark of memory flashed through Skygnaw's thoughts, and he finally identified the unique profile.
"You are... The Trader?"
Although the words were delivered as a question, the absolute certainty in his tone was transparent to everyone on the deck.
"Commander, do your databases contain a record of this unit?" Dirge asked, looking thoroughly confused.
He couldn't recall ever seeing this eccentric figure anywhere near Skygnaw's previous operations.
"I hold his data profiles in my registry," Skygnaw nodded smoothly, adding a dry calculation. "But my signature remains completely unknown to his systems."
He had assumed the Inquisition had merely swept up an ordinary Autobot straggler, never expecting Dirge to deliver such a magnificent surprise variable.
Securing an asset like The Trader was exponentially more valuable than capturing a generic resistance fighter.
In the canonical records of his past life, the black-market merchant operated as a prominent shadow broker within the system.
His physical configuration perfectly matched his self-proclaimed title, fusing the attributes of a ruthless merchant and a master technician into a solitary, eccentric frame.
He was an exceptionally unique anomaly among the Cybertronian species.
Driven entirely by a core directive of absolute self-preservation and profit maximization, he routinely navigated the dangerous boundaries separating the Autobots, the Decepticons, and the civilian refugees.
He specialized in extracting and supplying highly classified, rare hardware components that could only be harvested through the deep channels of the interstellar black market.
Of course, in Skygnaw's professional estimation, the magnificent treasures the merchant flaunted weren't exactly flawless masterpieces.
If his inventory truly packed state-of-the-art tech, he would have easily managed to evolve his own chassis into a High Commander cycles ago.
Navigating a negotiation with a unit of this classification was simultaneously simple and exceptionally complex.
Such characters typically maintained a fierce devotion to the baseline rules of trade.
Yet as long as a deal didn't violate their primitive core principles, they would ruthlessly manipulate the parameters to secure the absolute maximum profit margin.
Skygnaw held a perfect memory of a specific record where The Trader had sold Bumblebee a replacement vocal synthesizer.
The hardware turned out to be nothing but a defective, low-grade counterfeit.
The moment Bumblebee integrated the component into his throat plating, his vocalizers emitted a high-pitched female frequency.
The scout was so thoroughly infuriated he ripped the faulty module straight out of his neck casing after a few words, swearing an absolute oath of vengeance against the merchant.
油 然 而生的是更加诡异的交易记录; during the later stages of the war, the broker had managed to present Starscream's intact skull alongside Jetfire's historic walking cane.
In the standard timeline, Starscream's helm had been completely vaporized by a specialized human explosive deployed by Sam.
Yet the merchant had somehow produced a flawlessly preserved skull asset for sale.
This data led to two potential conclusions.
Either the broker possessed the advanced engineering skills required to perfectly reconstruct a demolished helm, or the asset was a complete forgery fabricated the exact millisecond word of Starscream's deactivation hit the networks.
Skygnaw heavily favored the second theory, given that the merchant possessed a prominent historical registry of running fraudulent trade scripts.
A highly flexible set of ethics was fundamentally identical to having zero ethics at all.
Meanwhile, in stark contrast to Skygnaw's relaxed posture and calm expression, the merchant's internal processors were running a frantic anxiety routine.
He held zero records of ever conducting a trade script with this specific Decepticon powerhouse.
Furthermore, did his databases not dictate that Megatron was the solitary Leader-class titan commanding the faction?
Where in the cosmos had this secondary Decepticon Leader suddenly materialized from?
The monumental energy signature emanating from the titan's chest core was an absolute, verifiable reality.
That raw power was the precise reason why the merchant hadn't attempted an immediate escape maneuver.
He only possessed the combat specifications of an ordinary elite warrior; launching a tactical flight before a Leader-class titan was a quick calculation for absolute suicide.
He had survived uncounted eons, navigating the brutal meatgrinder of the global civil war intact, and he held zero desire to have his spark extinguished today.
事实 远非如此简单; his capture by the Inquisition was a stroke of absolute structural bad luck.
The Autobot scientist Wheeljack had contracted him to extract a highly specialized asset, offering a significant payload of refined energon cubes as a baseline trade metric.
After scouring multiple deep-space star systems, he had successfully harvested the exact hardware the scientist required.
He had mapped a return trajectory to Hecate to finalize the delivery script, completely unaware that the exact moment his silhouette entered the moon's airspace, a Decepticon patrol wing would flag his tracking signature.
Following the discovery of the massive orbital shipyards, Skygnaw had formally integrated the moon into the permanent surveillance grid of the Aerospace Force to prevent the resistance from quietly reclaiming the sector.
The low-tier Decepticon patrol that initially intercepted the merchant stood zero mathematical chance against an elite warrior.
But the moment the distress signal hit the networks of the Central Spaceport, Dirge intercepted the telemetry, ordered the Predacons to hold, and personally commanded a high-speed strike shuttle to interdict the target.
Once the enforcer successfully locked the merchant down, he routed the high-priority notification straight to Skygnaw.
The Trader was undeniably a highly qualified businessman, backed by an exceptional level of professional audacity.
He thrived on embedding his operations right along the volatile boundaries of active war zones, establishing contact with every warring faction to supply them with highly sought-after, questionable commodities.
Whether providing heavy munitions, rare replacement gears, or advanced medical repair modules, he kept his lines open.
But while he could traditionally construct a flawless sales pitch before any trade partner, facing a silent Leader-class Decepticon who did nothing but stare at his frame left his processing subroutines completely uncalibrated.
"My lord, since your databases already hold my designation, your systems must verify that my code shares zero alignment with the Autobots," the merchant pleaded, his vocalizers twisting into a desperate whine as he tried to clear his record.
Every citizen across the cosmos understood that the Decepticon high command was composed of fiercely tyrannical monsters.
A warrior capable of claiming a Leader-class classification had undoubtedly carved his path through a literal mountain of shattered metal and oceans of leaking blue fluid.
"My processors have fully verified your independence from the resistance," Skygnaw said, drawing back his scanning gaze before shifting his tone smoothly. "However, my networks indicate that outside of your eclectic inventory, your system houses an immense wealth of interstellar intelligence."
"I intend to execute a live trade script with your operation."
In the historical files, the broker didn't merely excel at liquidating his diverse catalog of merchandise; he constantly monitored the deep space networks for valuable information, converting the data into a premium currency.
Skygnaw held absolute zero concern regarding the merchant's structural reasons for landing on Hecate, knowing it boiled down to a simple delivery run for Wheeljack or basic scavenging.
Those variables were entirely trivial to his current focus.
But since fate had dropped The Trader straight onto his deck, letting him walk away without extracting a massive advantage was out of the question.
The exact millisecond the word business entered his audio receptors, the merchant's processing networks rebooted with sudden enthusiasm.
He completely dismissed his anxieties regarding how this Decepticon possessed his private data, rushing to align his vocal stabilizers.
"State your parameters, my lord."
"Whatever data sits within my memory sectors, I will unlock the files completely, ensuring an absolute transmission of the intelligence."
"Excellent," Skygnaw nodded, his expression reflecting total satisfaction. "I require the precise coordinates of the nearest resource-rich world adjacent to the Alpha Centauri sector, mapped out by stellar coordinates."
Within the traditional classification systems of the Cybertronian race, planets were filtered strictly into three categories: Inhabited Worlds, Resource Worlds, and Barren Scrap.
They held zero interest in charting stellar bodies based on primitive organic metrics like atmospheric gas compositions, orbital distance, or basic structural geology.
Attempting to define a world by its physical anomalies would result in a thousand separate sub-categories, cluttering the data arrays entirely too much.
"A Resource World?" The Trader muttered, casting a quick glance down at the metallic shell of Cybertron below.
His business subroutines instantly calculated that the Decepticon regime was on the absolute brink of total structural starvation.
As it happened, his memory files held the exact tracking parameters for a premium Resource World.
During his recent expedition to harvest components for Wheeljack, he had intercepted a data log from a fellow broker detailing a planet currently locked in a brutal interstellar conflict.
The primitive biological natives of that sector were currently facing a full-scale invasion from an aggressive external civilization.
A world capable of spontaneously generating organic life, to the point where multiple spacefaring empires were violently contesting its ownership, was bound to pack an immense wealth of raw minerals.
"My lord, my memory sectors hold the precise coordinates for a world matching those metrics, however..."
Skygnaw's optics brightened instantly. "Identify the limitation."
"Regarding the transactional baseline..." The Trader rubbed his servos together, his face armor twisting into a blatantly opportunistic grin. "What currency does your high command intend to utilize to balance our ledger?"
A payment metric?
A brief flash of genuine surprise crossed Skygnaw's optics, followed by a wave of internal amusement.
A primitive organic phrase flashed through his mind: Humans die for wealth, birds perish for sustenance.
Prioritizing profit margins over absolute physical survival was truly the terminal glitch shared by every merchant across the cosmos.
He had already bypassed the broker's blatant treason for operating inside an active combat zone on Hecate, offering him a clear window to preserve his spark, yet the merchant held the absolute audacity to demand a transactional payout.
Skygnaw settled back into his systems, his vocalizers emitting a remarkably bright, blindingly brilliant chuckle.
"Trader, I intend to utilize an asset you will undoubtedly find exceptionally valuable to clear our transactional ledger."
"Detail the commodity, my lord," The Trader asked, his optics spinning with sudden expectation.
Surely the private vault of a Leader-class Decepticon would house relics that completely eclipsed the value of his raw junk pile.
"Your life."
"Huh?" The Trader froze, his internal gears locking up as his face armor stretched into an expression that looked significantly more painful than a full system crash.
"My... my lord, surely your processing units are running a basic humor script?"
"Do my metrics suggest a humor loop?" Skygnaw replied, his vocalizers maintaining a smooth, amicable frequency while the red glow in his optics turned completely ice-cold.
"The Commander never runs a joke algorithm!"
Dirge and the members of the Inquisition caught the sudden shift in the atmosphere, stepping forward with savage grins as they encircled the broker, their targeting reticles locking onto his frame with malicious intent.
Securing your absolute survival in exchange for a single data coordinate was an exceptionally generous trade loop; what right did this scrap-merchant have to demand more?
"This..." The Trader muttered, looking at the heavy weapons deploying around his chassis, completely stripped of his usual sales vocabulary.
To a true businessman, executing an absolute deficit trade was psychologically more agonizing than violating his own operating codes, but the lethal specifications of these enforcers had been perfectly demonstrated back on the moon.
Skygnaw monitored the system response in silence; if the broker failed to calibrate his calculations to the reality of the room, he would simply order the Inquisition to initiate a physical disciplinary routine.
Although The Trader held no formal alignment with the Decepticon badging, he was far from a righteous saint.
In truth, if one utilized standard organic definitions of morality to evaluate the factions, neither the Autobots nor the Decepticons could be categorized as noble heroes.
Had Optimus Prime or his Autobot garrison ever truly calculated the structural survival metrics of the common human natives on Earth?
Skygnaw had witnessed the reality firsthand during the catastrophic clash in Egypt; the Prime's heavy artillery barrages had frequently collateral-damaged innocent bystanders without a second of hesitation.
Expecting a Prime to experience a severe guilt loop or offer systemic compensation to the survivors afterward was like waiting for a moon to spontaneously combust; it was completely outside their operational parameters.
Naturally, from the strategic standpoint of the Autobot faction, a certain tier of collateral sacrifice was entirely acceptable to ensure the survival of the wider cosmos.
If Skygnaw were forced to operate within their badging, he would likely support that mathematical logic with both servos.
But if one threw himself into the perspective of those innocent, vaporized bystanders, his vocalizers would unleash a pure stream of critical errors.
"Your philosophies sound magnificent, but why does the equation demand my specific deactivation? Why do you not volunteer your own chassis for the meatgrinder instead?"
A citizen could be sitting perfectly at peace, consuming his local sustenance and singing his cultural hymns, only to be instantly obliterated by a stray plasma shell; who could he possibly appeal to for structural justice?
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