Title: Waiting For Ravage
Author: Koi Lungfish
Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from The Transformers (c) 1986 Hasbro, Ltd. Used without permission. Text (c) 2007, Koi Lung Fish Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.
Subject: Megatron and Starscream wait for the moment to attack.
Continuity: G1 cartoon, pre-Earth.

It was the third week of the siege, and the rain had turned vicious. Megatron dubiously inserted his feet into the clear, slippery blobs supposed to protect him from the acid, tossed a chameleon slicker over his head, and ducked out of the half-ruined command post into the biting rain.

The sky overhead was a pale, grimy yellow, Homestar invisible behind the dimly lucent clouds. The rain came down in drifts, spattering walls with ripping noises. Megatron could see the thick bands of drops as they fell, randomly targeting the wrecked buildings in which his small unit was currently encamped. The walls ran with acid, the steep streets were all awash, and the main street up the hill was a small river. He was standing in two finger-widths of flowing acid, and despite his doubts about the acid-proofing globs his feet were not dissolving, unlike many of the exposed rooms. Half the buildings had been torn open by the Autobot bombardment - although their guns were all but silent now, as they had been for the past two days - and steam rose from unprotected inner walls. Across the road some unfortunate trooper was still lying facedown by a wall. He'd been there for six days now, dead as a girder, and Megatron wondered momentarily where the rest of his group were and why they hadn't removed his body.

Then he turned and walked up the steep hill, sloshing through the acid and the smoking debris it carried. At the top of the hill the buildings stopped abruptly where the Autobots had detonated a whole sector of the city, ripping open a new canyon. The side streets running along the edge of the sudden cliff were protected by hastily piled debris, the stumpy remains of tower walls, a few attempts at solid shielding, but they weren't of much account. Autobot shellfire could rip out the underside of the cliff in seconds, but the Autobots weren't bothering to target the cliff-face now. They were conserving their ammunition for moving targets.

Megatron kept close to the wall. Even with the chameleon slicker covering him like a translucent tent, plastered against him by the acid rain, his silhouette might still be visible to a sharp-opticced gunner across the ravine. He had no particular desire to prove to all and sundry that he could survive a direct hit from an Autobot four-span high-yield explosive shell. He'd already done that four times in the past three weeks.

Keeping his back close to the wall, he turned the corner. There was a shout from a sentry up in one of the few remaining high towers to his right, and at the same time he saw the flash of an Autobot two-span gun. The shell flew past him, close enough that he caught a glimpse of its white-hot metal, and flew smoking down the street. There was another cry from downhill and then the crump of impact. Megatron was already braced; the sentry wasn't and Megatron saw him fall from his post. So did an Autobot sniper. When the sentry hit the ground there was a clean hole through his torso. He lay groaning in the acid, insides already sizzling in the rain. Two warriors nipped out of the tower and dragged him inside, almost dancing as the acid ate into their unprotected feet and rotors. Megatron clip-checked the combat data-stream and found all in order.

"I doubt they were aiming at you," he said to the indistinct lump perched atop the smoking barricade-heap.

"If they were, it's taken them three joors to line up a rotten shot," Starscream replied. Under his chameleon slicker he was a grey shadow, but Megatron could just make out his head as he turned to face him. "Are we on schedule?"

"We're early," Megatron replied, leaning back against the wall. The acid rain pattered on the slicker over his face, blotching the world into grubby yellow and purple smudges, and Starscream receded into a blur of grey-green shadow.

"Then what are you doing out of your nice dry command post? I doubt you're here for the view."

Across the ravine, the Autobot position was a dull purple blur - three long tiers of trenches, one atop the other, dark holes burrowing into the cliffside, gun barrels pointing out at them. In the rain even the long barrels of the four-span guns were obscured. Below was darkness and mist. The ravine opened onto a champaign, now nothing but a dirty, cloudy blur. The hills around them were dark, distant blots.

"I expect it to become quite spectacular shortly."

"How shortly?" Starscream asked. Megatron could make him out now, hunkered down. His wings spread the slicker out so it hung over him in a long fold, pinned up on his air scoops and intakes. He was holding something to his face, possibly rain-glasses.

"When Ravage finds the biggest ammunition dump he can shove that bomb into," Megatron replied, watching Starscream as he watched the Autobots. "What are you looking at?"

"The Autobots," Starscream replied in pithy tones, as if there was nothing else to look at. Megatron tensed slightly; could the enemy be onto their plan? "I can only see the tops of their heads over the tops of the walkways, but there's been regular traffic across the middle level all morning."

"And?"

"Looks like they're moving their wounded." Starscream shrugged his wings. "Or supplies. Or dead. Something that takes two Autobots to carry."

"Not shells?"

"Not unless it's the four-span shells, but they're moving them to that nasty little hole on the far right - see? Where that movement was?"

Megatron focussed as well he could through the rain. There was a faint suggestion of motion on the far right of the Autobot position, yes, but it could just be some panel shifting in the low wind. In any case, it was nowhere near the three big four-span guns, sat proudly atop the encampment, long barrels draped with acid-proofing nets.

One of the three-spans fired, the one on the extreme left of the Autobot position. The two Decepticons turned and watched the shell streak across the canyon, trailing smoke and steam, and vanish into the ruined city. The explosion brought little life to the combat data-stream.

"Either they missed or they're getting edgy," Starscream said, tucking his rain-glasses into his canopy.

"Or some idiot was waving his rotors at them," Megatron muttered. The unit had a surplus of helicopters, which meant a surplus of trouble. Starscream waved the comment away, or possibly just flicked at his slicker.

"Did you give Ravage orders to wait until the rain stopped?" Starscream asked abruptly. He sounded bored.

"No," Megatron said, feeling a smile begin. "It'll make everyone all the more eager to get into those tunnels if the rain is burning their backs off outside."

"Hmph. This is no weather for fighting!"

"I suppose you'd rather be mewed up until the rain stops, by which time the Autobots will be so dug-in we'd need seven Ravages to shift their defences?"

"I'd rather wait for a break in the clouds and then drop a two-fifty on this wretched city," Starscream grumbled.

"I want as much of the road intact as possible," Megatron said.

"The Autobots already blew out half of it," Starscream replied, waving a vague hand to their right, at the wrenched trestles where the main road had stood.

"The Construction Squad already have a temporary bridge ready to deploy." Megatron glanced up at a brightening in the sky, but it was just the clouds shifting. The day grew a few degrees brighter but the rain was unabated.

"Well, that will be fine for everyone under twenty tons," Starscream sneered.

"What are you concerned for? Do you have something important in the supply train?"

"I'd rather not go to all the trouble of messing around on the ground for six weeks, only to see our ammunition vanish into a hole!"

"Very well, you can fly the whole lot across yourself," Megatron was in the process of saying when the Autobot encampment erupted in fire and sound.

A great streak of red flame lashed across the upper tier of the Autobot camp, huge black clouds gushing from the tunnel-mouths. Broken bodies span up, twirling amongst the hot shrapnel, then cartwheeled down into the canyon. The right-hand side of the top tier shot up into the air, carrying one of the four-span guns, its long barrel tipping back as the heavy carriage sank, plummeted, and landed on the second tier with a resounding crash. A severed hand, still white-hot, landed at Megatron's feet and began to dissolve.

"Ravage is early," Starscream said, standing and throwing his chameleon slicker aside. Megatron kicked off his foot-blobs and flung his slicker to the ground. The acid hit him in a wash of brittle prickles and his feet began to steam. The combat data-stream halted, one moment of total silence as every Decepticon in the camp stood ready, waiting for that order.

Megatron levelled his cannon with one of the remaining four-spans and blew the ground out from under it, the explosion underscoring his roar that filled the air with charging bodies.

"Decepticons, attack!"

Author's notes & addenda:

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