Robotech vs Transformers: Revenge Road

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Decepticon civil war on Cybertron raged onward.

Overlord and his faction held the capital, and were based out of Megatron's home city, Tarn. They had taken it for the symbolism, really, though it was also well fortified from the early days of the war with the Autobots.

Shockwave, annoyingly, was still free and rallying the locals to fight for him. Even a few former Autobots, like Impactor, had joined with him, apparently deciding he was the lesser of two evils. Force wise he only matched Overlord's army, and worse his troops mostly lacked as much combat experience.

(Overlord and his army of followers had spent the last centuries fighting from world to world, clearing the organics and finding energon reserves. At the same time Shockwave's troops had mostly just chased Autobot rebels and maintained martial law on Cybertron. Overall, they had fought much less than Overlord's troops.)

Acid Storm, a fighter mode Transformer and loyal follower of Shockwave, was watching the battle on the streets rage on. "WE should attack," he asked his fellow fighter.

Sunstorm shook his head, "No, Shockwave is saving us for an important mission."

Deadlock, a armored carrier Decepticon, frowned at the flyers. "Be ready to launch," he said flatly, "we may need you for crowd control."

"Crowd control?" Acid Storm asked.

"Overlord is trying to force the non-allied civilians to fight for him," Deadlock pointed at the screen. "He hopes to use them as cannon fodder."

"And we..." Sunstorm started.

"Will bomb them if needed," Deadlock said flatly.

Both flyers looked at him, stunned. "That's against the rules of war," Acid Storm offered.

Sunstorm and Deadlock looked at him with amusement. "WE just have to survive, fool," Deadlock told him flatly, then strode off.

"Don't piss off Shockwave's minion who can kill us both without serious effort!" Sunstorm scolded him.

"Sorry, it just surprised me," Acid Storm defended himself.

Sunstorm just ignored that. "With Commander Starscream dead and our best warriors on Earth, we need to be better," he said grimly.

"Yeah...," Acid Storm agreed.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Officially, there were thirteen Fortress carriers, controlled by UN SPACY. UN SPACY, of course, was a unified Earth military in theory... though in practice there were various agendas at play. The USA arguably was the biggest player, followed by Russia. China was a distant third, which they resented a bit.

In low orbit, they were building their own 'Fortress.' It wasn't officially one, of course, and they were developing their own design, but it was theirs. The ship would be a full third larger than the UN design, better armed and able to carry more forces.

Destroids modified for construction worked away, unaware that their work would be useless.

The new 'Destroids' drifted in, apparently released from a space shuttle. They brought in a bulky module, and began installing it in the engineering block. Soon another shuttle made a round trip, dropping more crew off. Then again.

Major Wong frowned, turning his Destroid as he looked at the workers. He had thought they already had the maximum workers up here. And strangely, the added work crews hadn't hailed him or any of the crew chiefs.

"Yang," he radioed the next ranking crew chief and asked, "did you know about any added workers coming up?"

"No, but the committee is pushing to get the Citadel design completed. They may have authorized added crews." Yang noted reasonably.

There was also the subtext that asking questions about this might be a bad idea. Both had heard about the bad old days where people asking inconvenient questions were disappeared. There was also the fact this whole project was being built against the wishes of the UN...

"Fair enough," Wong conceded after a moment.

Wong and Yang finished up their shifts, and took the shuttle back to the surface. If they had been paying more attention they might have realized the other shuttle looked off... but neither did. And by the time they were home, there was nothing they could do anyway.

"Now!"

The 'Destroids' shed their outer casings, revealing the Decepticons within. Weapons came up and fired, punching holes in the remaining workers before they could even get out a warning.

"We have taken the ship, sir," Darkshadow reported, the slim fembot floating nearby.

"Are any of the fleshlings aboard?" Megatron asked.

"The ship isn't pressurized yet. They can't stand hard vacuum," Darkshadow said.

"Search it anyway," Megatron ordered them. "Constructicons! Is the fold drive installed?" he demanded.

Hoist reported, "Fold drive installed. I would really like longer to calibrate it..."

Everyone knew Hoist was a perfectionist and would keep calibrating it until the sun grew cold, so they just ignored it.

"Constructicons and engineering teams, reinforce the ship's hull. We need it to survive the stresses of folding. Remaining troops, offload the energon from Astrotrain," Megatron commanded.

Sixshot floated over to Megatron as he said, "We couldn't bring all the energon you had gathered. What will happen to the rest of it?"

Megatron smiled coldly, "We've rigged it to explode. The detonation will be large enough to occupy the Autobots and Earth forces."

"Ah!" Sixshot nodded in admiration.

Scrapper radioed in, "We found a pressurized chamber. We punctured it, the humans inside are dead. No indication they got a message out."

Megatron gave Darkshadow a look, "They couldn't survive?"

Darkshadow looked profoundly angry as she said flatly, "I most humbly apologize."

The energon was loaded, then the Decepticons boarded the ship. It was a tight fit, and a few of them had to shrink or adopt their alternate modes, but they got everyone aboard.

"I declare this," Megatron said, "the Nemesis II!"

The Decepticons gave a hearty cheer.

"Activate reaction thrusters," Megatron ordered, "we need to clear the planet's gravity before we activate the drive."

The reason their test run had gone wrong was that the drive had activated in a deep gravity well. The sensors on the drive detected that it had been badly thrown off course. So to get better precision, they needed to get farther into space.

Almost on cue, the energon stockpile on Earth detonated. The huge blast was visible to them in orbit, and was probably causing great damage on the planet. The blast itself, a shockwave that would destroy whole cities and finally a wildly unpredictable energon storm that would disable Autobots all over the globe.

'It's too bad a storm like that disables Decepticons too,' Megatron thought, 'or we could use it on Cybertron.'

"Destroying the energon stockpile was a waste. We should have saved it," Darkshadow said as the glow of the explosion faded.

"It was a command decision," Megatron glared at her warningly.

"It was the wrong one," Darkshadow said in obvious challenge.

Megatron turned to her, "You do not want to..."

Darkshadow didn't let him finish and charged. Cleverly she got close before he could fire, then as she shoved him she kicked out towards his arm cannon. With an angry sound of tearing metal the cannon tore free, flying acoss the bridge.

"Clever," Megatron conceded, realizing she had to have practiced that move alot.

"I thought so," Darkshadow purred, a energon knife in her hand.

She slashed across Megatron's chest, ripping his armor but he dodged back. She slashed again and again, and he noted she was deliberately pushing him away from the arm cannon. Yes, she really was a clever fighter.

"Not clever enough," Megatron muttered.

"Oh?" Darkshadow asked.

Megatron drew the pistol from a compartment in his back, aimed and fired faster than she could react. The first few shots blasted holes in her chest and midsection, staggering her until she fell. He strode over, then aimed at her head.

"Really, it was a good try," then Megatron blew her head off.

Sixshot carried his cannon over as he bowed respectfully, "Sir."

Megatron reattached his gun as he ordered, "Toss this trash into space." He turned to the view screens up front, "Are we far enough away to fold?"

"Yes sir!" Hoist reported.

Someone opened a hatch and casually chucked Darkshadow out. They saw her body slowly drift away, momentum and gravity pulling her towards Earth. The hatch closed, and they all focused on Megatron again.

"Then fold to Cybertron!" Megatron ordered.

The drive powered up, a sphere of crackling energy formed around the Nemesis II... then they were gone.

To be continued...