Skygnaw calculated that deploying his entire army to Planet Kugrage was an absolute impossibility.
Even within the Aerospace Force, he had only selected a small vanguard.
The cargo bays of the Nemesis lacked the capacity to house thousands of heavy Decepticons.
He intended to launch the expedition using only his flagship.
The massive cache salvaged from the Sunken City of Po-Sua provided more than enough fuel to sustain a localized campaign.
Kugrage was a prize he was determined to claim.
As for what the remaining Decepticons left behind on Cybertron would do once he stripped these supplies?
He trusted Shockwave's processing capacity to figure something out.
If all else failed, the low-tier grunts would simply have to endure a period of structural starvation.
Launching a planetary campaign across the stars sounded brutal.
Yet the endless cosmos held zero space for moral definitions or arbitrary concepts of right and wrong.
The strong conquered, and the weak were systematically deleted from the grid.
When the calculation involved raw survival and expansion, there was no room for hesitation.
It matched the exact script the Quintessons executed when they originally colonized Cybertron.
If you chose not to hunt across the star systems, another empire would eventually mark your coordinates.
No one restricted a commander from playing the role of a benevolent savior.
But that strategy required the absolute strength to protect your assets first, or you simply became a clown in the eyes of the galaxy.
Deep within an unmapped star system, a brutal war of invasion and resistance was raging.
One faction comprised the native biological population born to the terrain.
The opposing force was a powerful empire that had dropped out of deep space.
The primary theater centered around a dusty yellow planet, the homeworld of the natives.
An invading fleet hovered constantly just outside the upper atmosphere.
Inside the largest dreadnought at the center of the hostile formation, a cyborg officer stood before the primary briefing room.
The creature possessed a massive shark head integrated onto a humanoid mechanical chassis.
He raised a heavy fist, hammering against the security door.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Enter," a commanding, highly irritable voice barked from the interior speaker.
"Commander," the soldier said, stepping through the hatch and lowering his helm in respect.
A significantly larger, more heavily armored version of the same mechanoid stood in the center of the deck.
His name was Silas Trifang, the supreme commander of the orbital fleet.
The entire armada under his authority was composed exclusively of his own species, the Sharkborn.
"Report your data," Silas Trifang ordered, fixing his optics on the subordinate.
He recognized the unit as Garth Gnash, an ordinary communications officer assigned to the flagship.
"Commander, a high-priority transmission just arrived from Lord Garrick Krok."
"Deliver the text," Trifang commanded, his lidless eyes narrowing to a sharp focus.
"Lord Krok is demanding an immediate update on our operational timeline. He states that if our legions cannot finalize the conquest shortly, he will deploy his Gatorborn fleet to reinforce this sector."
"What?" Before Gnash could even finish the sentence, Trifang's facial plates twisted with rage.
His rows of sharp teeth ground together, emitting a harsh, screeching vibration.
"Outrageous!"
Since when did a treacherous bastard like Krok ever volunteer his assets out of pure generosity?
This wasn't an offer of military assistance.
The crocodile simply intended to hijack the mission parameters and claim the absolute credit for the conquest.
"Gnash, transmit my direct response to Krok. Two months."
"Our forces will secure absolute ownership of this world within two cycles; there is zero requirement to trouble his fleet."
Two months was a carefully calculated deadline.
Any shorter, and his processors couldn't guarantee the total subjugation of Kugrage.
Failing to meet a declared timeline would expose a flaw in his command, and Krok would gladly use that data to ruin him before their masters.
Furthermore, it would require Krok at least two months to fully mobilize the Gatorborn armada and navigate the transit to this coordinate.
The crocodile held a significantly higher status under the high lords than Trifang currently possessed.
If that reptile actually managed to insert his forces into this theater, all of Trifang's prior sacrifices would be wiped from the ledger.
He had fought for eons to finally awaken an independent consciousness within his spark, and he refused to be stripped of his free will.
He would never allow their masters to format his processors, turning him back into a cold, mindless killing drone.
The calculation caused Silas Trifang to shudder, his vocalizers turning sharp and frantic.
"Route an immediate directive to every legion chief entrenched on the surface. Accelerate the offensive parameters, and ignore the casualty metrics."
"Furthermore, deploy every single reserve battalion remaining aboard the fleet."
"Every single drone down to the dirt."
"Notify the troops that I will personally anchor the frontline vanguard for the final clash."
"Understood, Commander."
Gnash locked the execution parameters into his memory sectors, kept his helm low, and rapidly exited the command deck.
Following the supreme commander's new directives, the legion chiefs remaining with the armada began assembling their divisions.
Rows of three-meter-tall Sharkborn infantry units formed up across the open flight decks and staging bays.
The crimson light radiating from their optics was completely dull, lacking any spark of independent thought.
They were mass-produced drone models engineered to execute hardcoded slaughter scripts without question.
Units possessing a fully awakened mind and a distinct identity, like Silas Trifang or Garth Gnash, were a rare minority among the species.
Trifang filtered his definitions strictly, viewing only these conscious individuals as his true people.
Every single one of them managed a heavy legion or held an elite administrative post within his chain of command.
As for the mass-produced meat-shields filling the transports, the commander held zero concern for their deactivation metrics.
As long as his vaults contained enough raw materials, fabricating replacements for the spent drones was a trivial task.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Heavy metallic footsteps echoed across a hangar deck before coming to a sudden halt.
A legion chief stepped out of his personal shuttle, evaluating the ranks filling the platform with immense satisfaction.
Although these foot soldiers stood well over three meters, their colossal heads comprised nearly a third of their entire physical frame.
The layout left them looking heavily hunched, with short, thick limbs that disrupted their physical balance entirely.
Because their massive skull modules served as their primary structural weakness, every drone was integrated with a specialized alloy helmet.
The armor left them looking like primitive, heavily reinforced juggernauts.
Yet every mechanical limitation came balanced by a corresponding offensive specialization.
While their bipedal movement was awkward and clumsy, their physical strike velocity was exceptionally fast and savage.
The teeth lining their jaws packed immense piercing specifications.
Their mouths occupied over seventy percent of their facial armor, lined with three separate rows of rotating, serrated fangs.
It was a magnificent biological weapon built purely for tearing metal.
Aside from their reinforced helmets, every Sharkborn soldier carried a heavy mace-spear lined with sharp barbs.
The firearm served as their standard-issue ordnance across the legions.
It functioned as a brutal melee implement in close-quarters combat but could also discharge a specialized corrosive laser to dissolve a target's armor.
The weapon covered both ranged and melee parameters perfectly.
Following a brief, harsh address, the legion chief ordered his helmsman to break away from the fleet structure.
The transport entered a steep descent trajectory, tracking toward their designated drop zone on Kugrage.
One by one, multiple dropships detached from the circling armada, screaming through the atmosphere toward their respective battlefields.
The upper sky of the planet rapidly filled with descending hostiles.
Planet Kugrage, the Holy City of Nikasa.
The exact chronological origin of life on this world was entirely unmapped, but the sovereign rulers of the planet belonged to an intelligent species known as the Mindborn.
They comprised the native population of Kugrage.
The Mindborn possessed a deeply anchored civilization, having survived countless territorial disputes and global civil wars throughout their historical development.
Eventually, they successfully united the entire planet under a solitary grand empire.
The system fused their global governance and spiritual hierarchy into a unified state structure.
During their early eras, the Mindborn allocated zero resources toward entertainment or culture, dedicating their focus entirely to raw survival and practical utility.
The High Order they answered to did not command them to worship a physical entity or seek comfort in abstract spiritual definitions.
It enforced zero rigid religious dogmas.
Instead, the tenets commanded every citizen to pool their cognitive assets, working collectively toward the advancement of their race.
Influenced by this global mindset, the Mindborn experienced a massive technological explosion a thousand cycles ago.
The young civilization rapidly developed a rich heritage and mastered the scientific means to reshape their homeworld's environment.
Following a millennium of consolidation, they finally prepared to transition off Planet Kugrage to explore deep space.
Yet launching a civilization into the star systems was identical to stepping into a savage hunting ground.
A species could never verify whether they were entering the field as the hunter or the prey.
Unfortunately, the Mindborn quickly discovered they were the prey.
Their very first deep-space voyage painted an absolute target on their coordinates, drawing the tracking arrays of a brutal enemy: the Sharkborn.
Now, inside the primary headquarters of the High Order within the Holy City of Nikasa, a high-level emergency council was underway.
"This is the intact chassis of a Sharkborn infantry unit; observe the physical layout carefully."
"Their upper limbs terminate in three-toed predatory talons, while their lower mobility blocks are reinforced with webbed alloy plates."
The heavy security doors of the council hall were completely sealed.
A deactivated Sharkborn soldier lay stretched across the center of an oval conference table surrounded by high-ranking Mindborn officials.
The specimen had been meticulously harvested for its pristine structural condition, missing only a minor section of its skull plating, which had already been chemically stabilized by the lab teams.
"Our data provides adequate justification to calculate that this species operates purely as a manufactured weapon of war," a researcher with dusty yellow skin explained, pointing a tool at the frame.
The Mindborn naturally possessed exceptionally tough, leathery skin with a distinct grey-yellow hue.
The physical attribute was an evolutionary response to the brutal climate of Kugrage.
Although the planet sustained biological life, its global weather patterns were notoriously severe.
Their leathery armor significantly minimized fluid loss, allowing their systems to endure rapid atmospheric shifts.
Furthermore, driven by the planet's high gravitational metrics, the average Mindborn stood over two meters in height with a heavily developed muscular frame.
They possessed humanoid facial features, but their countenances were flat, featuring exceptionally wide-set eyes, zero bridge structure along the nose, and a straight, slit-like mouth with sharp boundaries.
"Our frontline defense divisions have verified this behavioral pattern across multiple combat logs."
"The hostile alien soldiers rely almost exclusively on swarm tactics, demonstrating absolute coordination on the field while moving and striking in massive packs."
"Even when hunting down our broken infantry lines during a retreat, they refuse to scatter or break their formation parameters."
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