Cybertron. 1985.

Metal moved in the dank tunnel system beneath the torn surface of Valios. No organic could have caught it, a moment of starlight reflected on polished enamel, but for the sensitive optics watching, the momentary glimmer stood out like a flare.

“Sloppy these days, aren’t we?” the hidden mech whispered, from his high perch. Optics whined gently as image-enhancement software probed the gloom in the half-exposed pipeworks, torn open in bombardment unknown vorns ago. Movement, yes…two at least, and trying hard not to be seen. Another subroutine opened up, almost by instinct. The unseen observer began to calculate from whom within the Regency the greatest rewards could be gained for this snippet of information. After all, there was never just one Femme. Certainly not this close to Iacon. In the darkness below, there moved a pack.

“As you can see, Lord Prime, the Autobot Femmes may be elevating themselves from nuisance to problem”

On the Lair’s viewscreen, the image of Optimus Prime looked up from the sentinel’s report.

“I am…surprised…that you bring this to my attention, Ultra Magnus”, the impassive warlord growled from the com-screen. “If you are unable to maintain security even on Cybertron itself, perhaps I should replace you with someone more capable.”

“The loyal servant reports all news, good or bad, my liege…” Magnus replied, straining to keep all sarcasm out of his tone. “I demand accurate and complete information from my administrators, I have no doubt that you expect the same from me. Furthermore, the last time we had the honour of your presence you specifically enquired as to the activities of your, ah, former consort. I thought it best to bring this to your attention. This is the first piece of activity in their sector we have tracked for nearly eight vorns.”

The tyrant eyed his governor in silence. Ultra Magnus kept his expression neutral, adding even a hint of boredom…though behind it the Regent’s processors raced in anticipation.

Come, Optimus Prime, you must perceive it.

Can’t you taste sweet opportunity here?

Come, dance to my tune.

…and sure enough, behind the hatred and suspicion, a new light flared in the Prime’s eyes. Possibilities, dark and violent, rose, and mingled with memories of old desire. Without breaking his observation of the Regent, the Warlord, finally, spoke.

“Cliffjumper. Summon Sideswipe and Arcee to my ship, and commence a six-breem countdown. Now.”

Ultra Magnus remained impassive. Optimus leaned closer to the screen.

“See you soon, Magnus.”

Thus the wheels begin to move…but something in this is not right. I rush to take advantage of something I do not myself understand. Matriopolis has been comparatively quiet for vorns – why has a pack suddenly been moved forward, and towards Iacon, of all vectors?

Perhaps the old turbovixen grows bold – yet even she must know this pack is too few. Have I miscalculated somewhere?

Time will tell. At least Optimus is predictable.

“He WHAT?”

“Two breems ago, Lord Magnus! The three of them, sir, they must have turned straight back round the moment they dropped their gear! The Prime, he shouted for an assault shuttle and two escorts. He’s…not someone I could really say no to, Dreadlord – AUGHK!”

Ultra Magnus dropped the unfortunate adjutant, who scuttled away clutching his throat.

This is unexpected. It’s insane; he’s just going to walk into Matriopolis, with no backup worthy of the name and demand to speak to her. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, it’s… just like him. Blast.

Will they just shoot him down? I’m not READY yet!

No, they won’t. I may not have predicted this. But SHE will have. Plus, even if she hasn’t, she knows there’s only one male mech in the Empire who’d dare to just barge into her domain.

Matriopolis, as always, appeared dead from the speeding assault shuttles. Not blasted ruins like many city states, just…empty. The thin air drove fine metallic dust clouds with the shock of their passing. Veterans aboard noticed this, and reflexively tightened their grips on their rifles and close-combat gear. No truly deserted town was ever this…hushed. For those new to Matriopolis and its inhabitants, only the near-constant chirping of the threat-receiver told the tale, as hidden batteries found and locked onto the speeding craft. No Antares Delta member dared to look back, but the brooding presence at the back of the centre shuttle made no sound, Optimus Prime apparently unwilling to even dignify the implied threat with a response.

Arcee, in the midsection, was trying purely to stop herself from keeling over in her seat from energon exhaustion. She had been fully fueled before boarding the Imperial transport on Earth, but five orns of the gut-wrenching tension and raw terror of being trapped virtually alone with the Warlord had bled every system dry.

Why was she even here, she wondered despairingly. If the Lord Prime believed a Femme signature detected aboard the speeding gunship would save them, he was severely mistaken.

He knows the Femmes better than that. So why am I here?

Arcee turned her head to watch Sideswipe- the tall red mech was peering out of one of the side firing ports, his left hand absent-mindedly caressing the pintle-mounted rocket launcher which faced the hatch as he watched hostile territory speed beneath them. Anything to distract her from the uncomfortable conclusion that was presenting itself to her processors.

It’s a test, isn’t it?

Sideswipe felt her eyes on him, but he didn’t bother to meet her optics. I’m not Sunstreaker, he thought. The threat receiver increased its warbling as the juddering roar of the engines cut back, and the shuttle began to circle in for landing. They were now moving slowly enough for mech-portable missiles to track them as well as the heavier stuff. The shuttles were now three fat slow-moving targets, and there was no way the countermeasures could spoof them all.

He imperceptibly winced as he recalled the response to his suggestion that the Lord Prime travel in the right-hand shuttle, the apparently escorted being the more obvious target than the escort. A growl had been his only warning before a casual swipe of the warlord’s fist had lifted him off his feet and into the side edge of the hatchframe. Curiously though, as he had staggered back to his feet on the sloping ramp, the Warlord had then paused for a second, and addressed him in an offhand but almost friendly manner. “Appearances are everything here”. As the shuttle touched ground, Sideswipe understood. The Lord Prime did not wish to be seen taking precautions. Precautions implied fear.

The borderlands of Iacon and Valios also appeared dead. Silent. In the shadow of the blasted shell of the Varian amphitheatre, the skeletal ruins of a habitation complex were draped with the shattered remains of the expressway that had once run above it, linking Iacon to Valios and Matriopolis beyond. Now the ruins overlooked an eerie plain, a smooth near-imperceptible glacis stretching almost to the horizon, where the brooding mass of Iacon loomed. These were the Fire Plains, country-sized killing-grounds for the leviathan Autobot artillery emplaced on the infamous walls. The ruins were the borderline, seeded with motion-sensors and hair-trigger explosives.

The lone Empty slowly picking his way through the ruins knew all this, of course, and like the Antares veterans who had roared overhead mere breems before, he knew that even the dead sectors in truth crawled with hidden life. Retrorats and glitchmice, Micromasters, turbofoxes, other vermin. All who, like him, scratched energon and life from the rubble and the weak.

Auto-repair systems shorted by years of energon deprivation, the mech was little more than a stumbling skeletal armature. Armour and non-essential systems discarded, blasted or simply rusted away, the mech weighed almost nothing, yet this gaunt frailty made him silent as he edged through the ruins, his one functional optic scanning the wreckage field. This was his patch, he had scoured it many times after being driven south by another, bigger, Empty half a vorn ago.

So he was surprised when he set his weight on one unremarkable piece of this familiar ground, only to feel it give way beneath him. He fell.

In hushed Matriopolis, starlight glimmered for a moment on painted enamel, within a low doorway. A momentary gleam, but enough. Sideswipe’s anti-sniper instincts blazed, and he swung out of the cover of the hatch, while in his peripheral vision the Lord Prime noticed the same thing, though he did no more than incline his head in the direction of the movement…

His hand was still dropping towards his holstered weapon as the figure sauntered delicately into the half-light. Sugar-pink paint and enamel caused Sideswipe to pause, then hold. A low growl from the Warlord followed the Femme’s progress, a growl that turned into a harsh bark of laughter as she paused expectantly halfway between the ship and the point of her appearance.

At first appearance, her frame was light, almost absurdly so, but Sideswipe had encountered many Femmes in times past, and his experienced optics rapidly noted the subtle power built into the chassis. Considerable musculature was concealed by the smooth curvature of her armour, while the delicate precision of her movement betrayed untapped reservoirs of controlled power.

Yet it was when she glanced at the ship, as if aware of being studied, that Sideswipe was forced to flinch, and look away. Even at this range, he recognised the cold fury that danced in her optics, and he understood why she and the Lord Prime were bound together. A cheery smile was on her faceplate, but azure flames danced behind her optics.

Prime marched down onto the hostile ground of Matriopolis. Looking neither left nor right, merely a silhouette at first in the glare of the shuttles spotlights, the Warlord did not speak until he loomed over her, his immense shadow casting her into near-darkness.

“Your packs infest Valios. Iacon draws you, so you send them to burrow like rustworms through the ashes of my conquests.”

Elita One settled herself against a low wall, leaning and stretching her body in a languid pose which allowed her to look half over her shoulder at the Warlord, meeting his unrelenting glare with half-closed but unblinking optics. “My packs roam where they do please…we don’t interfere with your Empire, my love, nor take what you’d miss.” Her eyes flashed with a teasing malevolence as she glanced over the Warlord’s shoulder, “…though we do observe, and see what your anointed pulls out of his prison camps.”

“Your state or activities are of little direct concern to me. However, it pains my soldiers to see one that once shared my bed fallen to queening it over scavengers and mudlarks.”

Her eyes flashed with fury at that, and her casual posture froze for a microsecond. Yet her carefree tone remained the same. “How thoughtful of you, Optimus, to care so much for what your dogs think of you.”

…the Warlord’s trigger-fingers are twitching, Sideswipe noted, never a good sign. With a greater sense of shock, however, he realised the Warlord had left his rifle, his near-permanent companion, on the ship. The Lord Prime had evidently anticipated his own fury, clearly determined that this should not be a violent encounter. Sideswipe was just starting to relax a hair when his optics refocused on the seemingly delicate figure, now teasingly tracing the edge of the Warlord’s battlemask with her fingertip as she spoke, with a confidence that came only with the knowledge of very heavy fire support. Prime, he recalled, had only half a say in the matter…

“I’d ask you why you were here, Optimus…but I already know. Magnus doesn’t, he can’t think that primal way.” She looked up into his optics without fear, “but I know.”

The Warlord stood impassive. “I want you by my side again, Elita.”

She threw her head back and laughed, dancing back two steps as she suddenly clapped her hands in amused delight. Automatically, Sideswipe followed back the opening angles between them, checking each window as Elita cleared its line of fire.

“WHY?” she shouted, still laughing, but there was rage in there now. “Why? For me? Or for my girls? She advanced on Optimus.

“ I know what’s in it for you, Optimus my love, you bind my Femmes to you as a tool, play them against Magnus. What I don’t see…” and she smiled sweetly… “is what’s in it for me”.

Sweet Primus thought Sideswipe he won’t even slaggin’ bother with the rifle- he’ll just tear her apart with his bare hands! No-one talks to Prime like that…

Yet again, Optimus somehow stood impassive, though now his entire frame was visibly shaking with rage. His voice, when he spoke, was harsher than Sideswipe had ever heard it, every syllable grated out, and hate dripping from every pause.

“I’ve…bought you…before…AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN!

Starlight, still dim and uncaring, scarcely reached the bottom of a deep pit which now gaped beneath the Varian sky. In the darkness below, the emaciated Empty scrabbled and picked helplessly at the jagged piece of upright steel that impaled him from skidplate to shoulder. In despair he twisted and flailed, impotently beating his skeletal palms against the unyielding trap. Sweet iridescent energon washed slowly like syrup down the spike, the sugary, choking, intoxicating smell of the lifefuel saturating the air of the shallow pit, and drifting on the cold thin air down the tunnel that yawned off to one side.

In the darkness, sapphire optics flared.

The mech twisted again as he heard, or perhaps just felt movement, the instinct of a hundred vorns reminding him just what happened to the crippled out here in the borderlands. Yet he was pinned, caught here in the choking silence. Metal brushed metal, footsteps, but quieter than he’d ever made. More footsteps, then a liquid sound. The hidden mech was standing over him, a boot unthinkingly resting in his pooling life-fuel.

The voice was soft, high, sweet, laced with sorrow and concern. “You didn’t scream.”

He didn’t answer, couldn’t, but mad hope surged. His one good optic panned up, jerking and whining in its battered socket as he tried to focus on her shadowy form. Round blue optics met his, shining with sympathy. As she knelt at his side, he caught the outline of a delicate frame, narrow shoulders painted an innocent white but crossed with thick red lines. From a processor nearly silent from energon depletion, an instinct sparked from ancient memory …medic…

“Hmm. Empty, huh? Vocoder’s probably rusted to nothing, let’s see. Yep. Ah well…never mind.”

Tension collapsing, the mech almost sagged on his terrible perch, despite his agony…safe…

His escaping sigh of relief masked the whisper of smooth metal sliding. Pain already suffusing every processor, all he felt was a moment of sharp pressure beneath his surviving optic. Then his world went dark forever, and only agony remained.

Her soft voice drifted to his audials again, the same sorrowful sympathy lacing every word. “Never mind, honey, I prefer it when you can scream, I do…but I know it’s just the same inside.” Her innocent smile grew to laughter, sweet light laughter that tinkled through the tunnels as the flaying knife went back to work.

Two levels further down, in a small domed room lit only by a few dim monitors, two dozen audials caught the musical sound. After a moment, paired points of light turned in askance to a single central pair. With an angry hiss and a dismissive gesture more sensed than seen, the opportunity to join their sister in her recreation was denied. Optics returned to the monitors, one in particular suddenly drawing much attention. Three assault shuttles were visible, thundering back across the Fire Plains. Heading home to the grim spires of Iacon.

“Cloth. A little…morbid, don’t you think?” Optimus turned away from the cowled ranks of the honour guard ranked in the shadow of the assault shuttles, to regard the Regent with a quizzical eye.

“It’s a fine energy dispersal mesh, my liege. Cybertronian science has flourished under your renewed leadership.”

With an approving grunt, the Warlord was moving, striding down the ranks of immaculate Autobot guardians. His youthful bodyguard followed, though the expression there was more of contemptuous hostility, doubtless for their toy soldier appearance. A few of his “elites” would doubtless be waking up in med-bay tomorrow, the notoriously bellicose warrior’s point made. With a blare of trumpets, the guard about-faced and marched to follow their Regent as he too descended from the field. None, then, remained to see an exhausted pink shape stagger down the ramp, and totter off in the direction of the Imperial interstellar shuttle.

Iacon, High Command Operations Complex.

“I’ve ordered Kup to summon the monitoring and tactical response officer for the patrol sectors bordering Matriopolis. He should be able to tell us more.”

Ultra Magnus realised with indignation that he was trailing at the Prime’s heels as he spoke. He lengthened and quickened his stride, and looked forward, with head erect. For any Autobot watching, the pair might now appear equals, rather than commander and subordinate, as they strode together into the bustling chaos of the Iaconian Command and Control area.

Kup saluted formally from one of the four command podiums in the room. Magnus returned the salute, the Prime, however, was already surveying the furious activity of the room. High golden walls were almost obscured by bank after bank of elevated datascreens, information cascading into the High Command from all corners of the Empire, onto the walls and down through optics and interfaces to the techs and analysts in their console pits. Magnus let the Prime watch, secure in the knowledge that the sensitive flows had been rerouted to other secure sites the moment the Warlord had landed.

Striding briskly across the elevated catwalk that connected the primary command podiums, Kup crashed to a parade halt and saluted again before speaking. “Sir, Lord Prime, I have summoned the Autobot requested. Designation is Crossguns, 84 vorns service, commanding current position for seven.” Magnus had barely time to nod before a whisper of movement behind him.

Crossguns swung in through the door to Command and Control with the assurance of one who has done it a thousand times, and who expects the thousand and first to be no different. “What is it, Kup, you know I’m busy with…oh sweet Primal slag…”

Magnus took a half step forward. Appearing to wish to spare Optimus the indignity of directly interrogating this minor officer, it also would serve as an immediate reminder to the young monitoring officer, and the sea of other Autobots in the control area, of who precisely was their immediate and relevant superior. “The Prime is…curious...regarding unauthorized activities in your sector of monitoring. You have the resources I provide, sufficient to contain these...scavengers...yet they appear to run unchecked.”

“I’m sorry, sir, Matriopolis, Valios, Avrian…it’s all just…bad country, if you catch me, sir?” On seeing the Prime’s expression, he gabbled on, attempting to make himself clear before the impending doom he could feel caught up with him. “It’s not like we haven’t been in, sir, we have, led a few of the incursions myself sir, it’s just that there’s nothing to fight, it’s just a warren and they prowl around inside and we just can’t track them, sir. You can, I mean, we’ll go through the same area a dozen times and nothing happens, but the next time, no-one comes through alive, and we find they’ve been there since the first time, just watching, sir, just watching…”

The terrified mech trailed off. His resources were far from “sufficient” – barely, in point, extant, but while that assertion might save him here and now, it would surely doom him tomorrow. To contradict the Regent, in front of the Prime, well he might as well just paint a purple badge on his chest and a target on his...

Magnus saved his life. Valios was truthfully a place of nightmares, a sprawling arena for intelligence-gathering and desperate plausibly-deniable fighting for both factions, as well as the primary infiltration route into Iacon for the denizens of Matriopolis. The Femme tunnels and rat-runs were reportedly burrowed up to five levels below the surface, and even the Fire Plains were occasionally rumoured to be subsiding from the honeycomb voids of mines and counter-mines. “My liege, perhaps with the Guardian, or the Aerialbots, something that could tear open their cover…”

The Warlord’s fury blazed forth again, and he turned away from the pathetic excuse for an Autobot to stare into the optics of his subordinate. “That supposedly secret project will be used for Earth, as you know well!” The Warlord’s mask tightened to his face as he leaned closer. “…and if you think I’m going to place another of my elite teams, yet alone my Aerialbots, under your command, think again!” With that, Optimus Prime stormed from the room.

He’s angry. Someone has defied him, and it’s not like Earth has taught him patience. But is he angry enough? Without his order, it’s all for nothing…

The arena had resounded again with the screams of the dying, and the sinister laughter of the master of the Autobot Empire. Magnus had borne it, suffered through the day, before staggering back to the Lair as the shadows grew long, while the Imperial convoy, led by an enormous red semi, had thundered back out to the landing field. He went to wait. To ponder the critical question. Is he angry enough?

Long hours later, deep in the Lair, Magnus’s personal com pinged. Decryption of the Imperial code took a full breem, seemingly excessive for the short message that finally emerged.

BURN THEM OUT. SEND YOUR BEST. NO SURVIVORS. PRIME.

…and Ultra Magnus laughed, low and loud, his question answered.

Two orns later, Iacon Command and Control.

It was like having a different parts of a script read to him. Resting easily again in the command chair, Ultra Magnus listened as the return of war to Cybertron was announced, by tinny voices calling in haste. No drama. The confused reality of combat. He’d almost forgotten it.

“…assault units moving to clear tunnel complex, grid sector 6211591…heavy casualties...”

“…sniper atop comm tower reference 591167, request air support…”

“…primary objective Aleph One-Five is secure, moving to secondary objective…”

“…further tunnel complex discovered beneath target designate Agon-6, request reinforcements and Excavitons…”

“…negative to that request, Gunrunner, hold position and await regulars…”

Magnus snarled in frustration.

“Get me visual, now!”

“Sir, Cosmos is coming into position in five…four…three...”

…and he saw…

Autobots dove down the tunnels with knives and grenades, broad armoured shoulders gouging lines in the narrow tunnels, into the spitting fire of the dug-in Femmes. The dead already clearly choked the tunnels, for each gout of underground flame drove a rain of shattered bodies out before it, yet there was no shortage of volunteers crowding the tunnel mouths. Autobot savagery at its most basic, the berserker instinct, was at play in these, the lowest rabble of his army. Undisciplined scum, Magnus thought, as likely to kill their own officer as the enemy, yet this day he had found a purpose for them.

“Set up a private data feed, basic telemetry only. Tight-beam transmission to Imperial shuttle Antiope…Let’s let Optimus hear the thunder of his hounds.”

A casual glance at the holographic map showed his Antares and Draconis teams now evacuating the sector, inconspicuously moving to a “containment” pattern as the regular troops charged in. Magnus smiled tightly, then returned his attention to the main display.

The scene shifted and tightened as Cosmos zoomed in, focusing on what Magnus immediately recognised as a last stand. A single low hemispherical bunker, dug in beneath the centre of Valios, was spitting fire and flame in all directions as Autobots closed in from three sides. Preparatory artillery had exposed the structure and torn away both of the doors. Two Autobot assault parties raced in under the withering fire – Jumpstarters, Magnus saw, as they flicked from vehicle to mech and began to place explosives. Heat flickered in the bunker…and a second later both teams were torn apart by white-hot sheets of twisting flame, their explosives going up a half-second later. Yet the unseen flamethrower Femme, evidently relishing the sappers twisting death dance amidst the inferno, lingered for a moment too long on the targets. A mass of Autobots swarmed over the bunker, crawling over the walls like Insecticons. Others, with suicidal bravery or the feral urge to kill, rushed the ruined doors. The dual flamethrowers cut searing columns through the charging ranks, but now its operator was panicking, traversing it hurriedly, trying to sweep back the advancing tide and failing as Autobots found cover around the wrecked doors and reached for grenades…

“…reminds me o’ the time on Carva Five…” Magnus heard Kup mutter. “Vorn after vorn of just diggin’ an’ burnin’ Decepticreeps out of their slaggin’ holes…”

An incandescent gout of blue-white plasma flame belched from every door and firing slit, the roof cracking like eggshell before bursting above the plasma grenade’s detonation. It was over.

Far above…

The shuttle bulkhead was dull ochre, unpainted burnished plate. Arcee studied it, fixed her optics there, drank in every detail. She imagined its strength, defiant against the stars that slid by as the Imperial shuttle cruised back towards broken Earth. After that dulled, she imagined its weakness - for a wild moment she pictured a horde of Decepticons tearing through, laughing as they slaughtered all aboard. Unfortunately, the impossible held even less diversion than the extant, and she returned to the wall. After the bulkhead could no hold further fixation, she started on the floor. Anything, anything, to stop her eyes drifting left, to the enveloping pool of darkness in the back of the shuttle in which only two cold sapphires shone. Unblinking. Now for the first time she understood how Silverbolt truly felt…Primus, she needed to get out, anywhere, just out of this hold…

“Arcee.”

Her moment of pity for the sniveling Aerialbot broke, as raw terror snapped across systems already fusing from accumulated surges. The Warlord had spoken so softly she had only half-heard his summons. She twisted awkwardly in her seat, peering back into the gloom.

“Come here.”

She unbuckled clumsily, and worked her way aft into the darkness. Prime sprawled in his black command chair, and automatically she knelt before the throne. Raising her head at the cue of a soft growl, she found the basilisk stare already boring into her optics, and she struggled to hold the gaze. Finally he grunted, and spoke.

“Sixteen Femmes are dead this morning. Firestar’s pack of thieves. I doubt they died quickly, and I doubt my men wasted certain…opportunities. How does that make you feel, Arcee?”

Arcee’s fuel pump almost seized as the question was posed, for the Prime had casually unlimbered his enormous rifle as he talked. Desperately she fought down the choking, lest her fear of the Warlord be fatally taken for grief at the news, and thus divided loyalties. “My loyalty is to the Empire, Lord Prime, and to you. Their deaths mean nothing if in the Autobot cause.”

It wasn’t as if she was lying. The deaths of her so-called sisters meant nothing. Arcee looked after number one.

Prime stared into her eyes a silent moment longer. Behind the insane blue lights, Arcee clearly saw him wrestling with the urge to kill her anyway.

“You are exactly correct”, Optimus grated instead. He sat back abruptly, as if he had suddenly won some internal battle. “Exactly correct.” He paused for a moment. “We must exult in their deaths, for by them the Autobot cause is served. My cause.”

“Ultra Magnus is reminded that Cybertron is not his alone. I could kill him tomorrow and set Elita in his place. He must guess at what was said in Matriopolis, and scratch again for my favour to insure his power. As for her…her first venture for vorns is defeated, her authority and visions are broken to shards. She is…” - Prime paused again, apparently savouring his thoughts - “...humiliated. Her packs will drift from her side, and consume themselves. Then, bereft of options, she will return to me.” His optics gleamed as he stared forward, lost in his reverie.

“Thus I will set them against each other, and neither shall bother me.”

With the Prime’s thoughts evidently elsewhere, Arcee’s terror receded, and her cunning mind began to race with the implications, and the value to others, of the Prime’s offhand disclosures. Yet, just as quickly, his optics refocused, as if he had caught her thoughts.

“Have a care, Lieutenant. Your death would mean nothing, in the Autobot cause or no.”

Iacon

As the brooding tyrant’s ship continued on towards Earth, Ultra Magnus descended into his private sanctuary, and stretched out on his recharge bed. Thus, when the Lair’s private communicator flicked on unbidden three-quarters of the way through the cycle, the Regent was surprised, and annoyed. None should be able to contact him without his wish. However, given that knowledge, he was not surprised by who then appeared. He continued to regard the high ceiling of his recharge bed, remarking in a bored tone,

“Your ability to infiltrate this line is impressive, Elita, but it is wasteful. I will trace and kill whoever in my ranks created this bypass.”

“I’m flattered to hear you’d make the time. Optimus would have already put a dozen shots through this screen and gone back to charge.”

Despite himself, Magnus grunted with amusement. How does she do it? The grand high she-wolf plays the kitten… “Banter is beneath me at any hour, Femme. State the purpose of this unpleasant surprise.”

“The Lord Prime would have us enemies.”

Magnus rose, bringing his imposing physique and glare to face the commscreen.

“We are enemies”, he said, bluntly.

The slender figure on the screen narrowed her optics, thrown and irritated by having to explain her point. The face, which he remembered being so commanding, seemed now small and pale beneath the overbearing, pretentious helm. “But enemies at peace, Magnus. At least, once. Now a pack of my sisters lie wrecked by Imperial hands.”

He started to reply, but she leaned closer to the viewscreen and spoke again, rapidly and in hissing anger. “Tell me why I shouldn’t call him right now, Magnus? I observe the prison camps. I know all you have and haven’t told him about the Empire! Or do you think jacking into your comm is the limit of my capabilities? Your life is in my hands, Lightbringer of Cybertron.”

He watched her for a moment, watched her delicate shoulders rise and fall in rage. He also observed, with the optic of one who knows what he is looking for, the deeper coruscating were-light within the light of her optics, and the way it flickered in ever-closer harmony with her words. More obvious, and closer than he remembered from all those vorns ago.

You really believe you have it beaten, don’t you? You think you’re immune, that because you were stronger once you’re immune forever. It almost has you, Elita. All these ages you’ve controlled it...but it has patience eternal, and you aren’t as strong as you think you are…

Enough. This is the last piece, which must be placed. Only after this are my hands clean....

He answered her question. “Mutually assured destruction, Elita…a human term, and one coined for weapons, not words, but oddly appropriate to the place we have found ourselves all these vorns. Knowledge is truly power.”

Ultra Magnus settled himself, speaking now as one lecturing. “With one transmission to Optimus you could destroy me. Yet you know that it would be sure death for you do do so. For now, it keeps you alive – surrounded by your thieving packs, no offensive of mine could crush you before the transmission was sent. Thus only inaction offers survival. Stalemate. Another human term. Until today.”

He leant forward.

“Now, I tell you the order came from Prime” he stated flatly. “You’d expect me to say that, it’s a disclaimer of responsibility. But, of course…” He paused, concealing all tension at the great gamble, as he focused on her optics, “…I don’t need to tell you. A group who could hack the Regent's own comm would already know.”

He watched...and sure enough, perfectly, amidst all the anger and confusion, the tiny edge of a smile momentarily tugged her precise lips, a flicker of emotion.

Pride.

Rewind was correct: they have cracked the Imperial encryption. So it was worth waiting for his command. His order was seen,and thus my hands are cleansed.

Tell a Femme something, and she’ll never believe you. But allow one to ‘discover’ it themselves, and they’ll believe it ‘til Primus comes.

After all, today’s events will destroy her, and it is now Optimus she must blame. In a thousand vorns, she could never now bear to aid Optimus by disclosing what she knows of me. And with the same perfect stroke, I ensure she must now seek aid, my aid, for protection from her own, and for her vengeance upon the Prime…

“Their deaths were…regrettable, Elita. Harmony was in both our interests for now. Yet I could not defy him.”

She eyed him a moment longer, then looked away quickly, then down to her feet, evidently bewildered by the soothing words and the turn of the conversation. Her armoured fists clenched and unclenched. So predictable. I have cooled your rage, and now you have nothing else to say… The moment of absolute victory swept over Ultra Magnus, the Damoclean weight of vorns finally lifting from his shoulders. Fullstasis, Elita, and you don’t even know!

She raised her eyes again. “One question…”

He favoured her with an indulgent smile: “Speak.”

“You have danced to his tune, Ultra Magnus. It’s not like you.”

Denial, immediate, was sensible, rational, so easy, but something in her eyes, the pain of her loss…and compassion here would surely serve his second purpose? Having relaxed, he now hesitated… and saw her notice… and in one awful microsecond before she spoke again, he realised his error. And just how easily he had been led to it.

...slag…

As casually as a gladiator might cast aside his battlemask, every hint of rage, of confusion, of submission, all just dropped from her expression and body. A transformation, without shift of mode or movement…the mark of the consummate actress, or manipulator. The warrior queen of Matriopolis, now so suddenly plain to see, loomed over Magnus's quarters, lithe and terrible. The bitter light of her optics, no longer screened, found and pinned him there in its intensity, while a numbed part of Magnus’s processor wondered just how he could have ever have been brought to read weakness into such a face.

“You are still on my hook, Lightbringer of Cybertron” she declared stridently. The voice retained its lightness, but now its edge could have cut plate armour.“Optimus Prime will pay, pay so dearly for this…order, but I inform you now that his action will not, despite the simple webs you seek to weave, drive me to align with you. Oh, don't fret, Lord Regent, your secrets are safe. I’d hardly want to play that card just now…” She narrowed her optics as she leaned into the viewscreen. “…but you have won nothing today.”

Magnus still did not speak, though it took much, too much, of his self control. I've still hurt you, you pink harridan. After your defeat today, your own packs will pull you down. Your corpse will rust in the borderlands...

Elita continued to stare into his optics, and seemed almost to hear his thoughts.

“Firestar was a whelp” she observed dryly, implanted undertones of loss that Magnus hadn’t even noticed suddenly and perceptibly absent. “She had…ambitions. You have done me something of a service, Ultra Magnus.” She smiled.

Comprehension dawned, the unwelcome answer to his earlier doubts, as the comm flicked off.

I have been her tool just as she has been mine…blast.

In distant Matriopolis, Elita One leant back from the com, and allowed her optics to dim.

From deep in her processor, a memory sparked. Four million years ago, bare beneath an raging electrical storm, their last goodbye before the Ark’s departure.

“I will be the death of you!” Optimus had roared.

Ariel’s, no, Elita’s new optics had sparkled, as the azure flames within them danced.

“Or I you, my love…”

Ah yes, I’m glad he’s back.

However, as the other participants in the power plays drifted off to charge, one at length rose instead into the fresh darkness of his quarters. Deep in the Lair, far from even the prying starlight, Ultra Magnus smiled the last cruel smile, as he pulled out an annotated casualty list from the units he had hand-picked for the Valios offensive. Aegis had thoughtfully arranged the colouring of the dead – blue for a mech loyal to the Regency, red for a mech who was reckoned to serve the Prime. Regular troops…undisciplined scum, killers and thugs…those to whom the dark song of the Matrix called most strongly, those who would always follow the Prime. Opportunities for convenient mass disposals were so hard to find these days. The smile broadened as page after page lit the Lair with a malevolent ruby glow.