"Rampage" - Transformers Fan Fic for the Halloween Season

I had so much fun writing that how-fast-can-I-do-it short story about Grimlock that I decided to do another one for Halloween. Character credits are owed to Beth Bornstein and Mairghread Scott (for Elita-1), Bob Budiansky (for the Seacons), and Greg Johnson (for the villain). (And obviously everything belongs to Hasbro).

[Continuity note: This story involves Elita-1 and other members of the Carcer's crew, before the events described in Combiner Wars.]

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Rampage

Sharkutikhan dropped out of the thin atmosphere of one of the Carcer’s dorsal hangars and accelerated towards the dark blue marble below them. Elita’s antennae buzzed from the electromagnetic flux, and she felt the fuel in her lines bubble slightly as the pressure and gravity changed. Or at least she imagined she did – Obsidian always insisted their bodies were too well regulated to experience such perturbations.

“Not the most graceful departure ever,” Elita murmured.

“I’m right here, you know,” Sharkutikhan said, his voice coming from no particular point of origin, “I heard that.”

“Of course,” Elita said, “if that had been in doubt I would have shouted.”

In the seats around her the Carcerians in her small away team dealt with their circumstances in different ways. For Elita it was fascinating to spend time with her crewmembers like this. There were hundreds of bots aboard the Carcer, and as the ship’s First, she typically had to think of them in an aggregate sense, giving no more consideration to the individual personalities that comprised the crew than one gives to the individual components that comprise a computer terminal or a laser rifle. Now, though, she could see them the same way she saw the Carcer’s command crew every day – as people with novel idiosyncrasies and perspectives.

Blastcharge was a soldier among soldiers. All Carcerians were trained to fight, and drilled daily, prepared to defend their ship and its dangerous cargo at any cost, but Blastcharge had been trained by Strika herself. He wasn’t the most accomplished or remarkable warrior amongst the crew, but it was notable that here, in the midst of this turbulent descent, he was resting in power-saving mode. His optics were dim, his body slack in the harness that buckled him to the wall, and the powerful (if somewhat antiquated) engine that drove his six monster wheels idled loudly.

Mirage, by comparison, revved nervously every time Sharkutikhan made a clumsy course correction. The small racer was clearly used to being free to move about, and the confining harness seemed to be causing as much anxiety as the potential for some catastrophic error on the part of their transportation.

Spystreak still seemed more than anything to be sour about their mission’s destination. Life onboard the Carcer was rough for fliers – Obsidian himself had confided as much to Elita. The Carcer might have had some big open interior spaces at one time, but endless revisions, modifications, and repairs had turned its interior into a crowded three dimensional labyrinth. The Carcer’s fliers were capable of amazingly precise maneuvering, but seldom had opportunities to ‘stretch their wings’, as it were. Spystreak had signed up for away mission duty because of that, but here he was, on his first mission off ship, and he was going to spend the entire mission onboard another starship, and this one was going to be under three kilometers of liquid.     

Scavenger, the stout little machine that she was, would be a hard read to most. Her head was recessed into her boxy, armored torso, leaving only her eyes exposed above a high collar. Those two eyes, though, were enough to tell she wasn’t happy with Sharkutikhan’s flippant disregard for protocol; Carcerians did not generally talk to their First the way he just had.

On the other hand, lying was a capital crime aboard the Carcer, so sycophancy carried its own perils.

Their vessel lurched again, Mirage and Spystreak both wincing with the abrupt shift.

“Is there a problem of which we should be aware?” Elita asked.

“Is it still illegal to lie when we’re not physically aboard the Carcer?” Sharkutikhan asked.

“When you’re addressing your First, it certainly is.”

“Hm,” Sharkutikhan said simply and otherwise declined to answer her question. On a ship where tacit discipline was the norm, the bot had a reputation for being obnoxious. Irreverence aside, though, he’d been fairly tame so far. Sharkutikhan had been spawned with an aquatic, submersible alternate mode, which was relatively useless aboard the Carcer. Painful alterations had converted his alternate mode into a short range spacecraft, to allow him to contribute aboard the ship, but Elita didn’t have to know Sharkutikhan well to imagine the sort of impact that would have on a person’s sense of self. And now, ironically, they were headed to a planet with a thick atmosphere and a vast ocean. In a painful irony, he’d had to endure very quick modifications to restore some of the functionality that had been stripped to make him spaceworthy. Elita was certain that the hurried retrofit had now left Sharkutikhan less than confident about his worthiness in either medium.

The g-forces in the cabin reoriented again as their transportation adjusted his angle of descent closer to a dive.

Elita had an excellent sense of time, but no concept of their speed in the windowless compartment. “How long before we…?” Sharkutikhan jerked suddenly as his retro thrusters fired to slow their descent, and soon thereafter there was a jarring shock as he hit the surface of the vast sea of dihydrogen monoxide that covered most of the small planet.

“Am I leaking?” he asked, “I don’t feel like I’m leaking…”

Spystreak sighed dramatically. They’d passed from hard vacuum to subsurface in a matter of seconds. He didn’t say anything, but the sigh effectively voiced his dissatisfaction with missing a rare opportunity to fly as their creator had intended.

“What do you see?” Elita asked.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” the ship said with an awestruck tone, “There’s life… I mean, it’s strange – the place was supposed to be barren, right? But whatever these things are, they’re not made of higher-end elements. They look…”

“Organic,” Elita said, “That’s the term. Carbon-based.” Most life in the galaxy was, but the Carcer deliberately avoided most life in the galaxy, so Sharkutikhan’s naiveté wasn’t strange. “Do you see the titan?”

“Aye captain,” he said, “we’re right on course.”

“That’s ‘First’” Elita said, correcting his use of titles.

“Maybe in space,” Sharkutikhan said, “but down here it’s ‘Captain.’ That’s what the books say, anyway.”

Scavenger shifted uncomfortably, “Well, maybe you should forget what the books say, and listen to your First.”

Elita smiled slightly, but decided to humor the stressed aquabot, “Sharkutikhan is the closest thing we have to an expert on nautical matters,” she said, “I’m sure it’s best he not forget everything he’s read about such matters.”

“Yes, my first.” Scavenger bowed slightly in her harness.

“You mean ‘aye capt’n’,” the vessel said.

“Don’t push it,” Elita said sternly.

“Yes ma’am. The titan’s in ship mode,” he got back on mission, “on the precipice of an abyss.”

“What are we qualifying as an abyss?” The titan would be over three kilometers long in its starship form – about as long as the ocean was deep – so all but the largest geographic features would look modest when measured against it.

“The far side looks about seventy kilometers off,” he answered, “I can’t get a depth reading – the density of the suspension in the trench is blocking my scans. So, effectively bottomless.”

Obviously it couldn’t be literally bottomless, but his point was valid nonetheless. If his scans couldn’t find the bottom, the suspension would be too dense for them to function – and except for Sharkutikhan, they would all sink like rocks. They might hit bottom, but they’d be crushed into stasis-lock by the time they did.

Blastcharge stirred from his rest, “We there yet?”

“Just looking for a door,” Sharkutikhan said.

“I can pop an airlock if we need to,” Spystreak held up his heavy duty claw arm, opening and closing the giant clamp to emphasize his point.

“No need,” Sharkutikhan said, “he’s still got power.”

That was hard to imagine; how long had he been down here? “Is he conscious?” Elita asked.

“No captain; I think the power source is artificial. I think someone’s hooked up something to animate his peripheral systems.”

Looters had beaten them to the titan’s remains and selectively reanimated parts of him while they tore apart his corpse from the inside. That was gruesome. It also meant they might have a hostile reception waiting.

“Weapons live?” Blastcharge asked as he began checking the triple-barreled launcher built into his chest.

The classic response, of course, would be ‘don’t fire unless fired upon’, but Elita always felt that put her troops at an unacceptable degree of risk, and she wasn’t feeling much sympathy for whatever maggots were crawling around inside this titan. True, they’d come here to scavenge vital components as well, but there was a difference between taking what was necessary to sustain their own titan, and ghoulishly ripping the dead behemoth apart piece by piece.

“Respond to any indication of hostility with a definitive show of force,” she ordered. Blastcharge’s armored faceplate couldn’t smile, but the guns in his chest cocked loudly and confidently.

Sharkutikhan managed to access the titan’s unconscious network and open a large airlock on the port nacelle, near what would be the giant’s wrist would be if it were in robot mode. He came to rest inside the flooded hangar, and with a fair bit of effort, the larger ship pumped the saline solution from the compartment.

When Sharkutikhan dropped his forward loading ramp, the claustrophobic Mirage bolted eagerly for the opening, but Blastcharge silently grabbed him by the arm to stop him. With a twist and a heavy thud, the slow, awkwardly built mech dropped onto his massive wheels, and rolled smoothly down the ramp, his turret scanning for threats. Elita followed on foot, rifle at the ready.

The hangar was small – too small for Sharkutikhan to maneuver. The bot’s transformation to robot mode mass-shifted him down considerably, but given that the change in size only kicked in half way through, there wasn’t enough room for him to initiate the sequence; for now, he was stuck as he was.

The Carcer was a dark ship, there was no doubt about that. Avoiding interaction with the outside galaxy meant that his crew had to be minimalists, and with each bot having some degree of low-light vision, and there being a general lack of stunning vistas within the tight corridors of the ship, lighting was an aesthetic indulgence.

That being the case, the darkness here would not have bothered Elita too much, but the lighting that was functional flickered erratically, making it impossible for her optics to adjust to the darkness. Fluid dripped from the ceiling into the puddles on the deck, the sound echoing in the metal box. The dissonant sound of multiple drips combined with the random lighting changes was disorienting.

“So this is what a drowned titan looks like on the inside?” Mirage asked, “I think we were better off onboard Sharkutikhan.”

“I’ll take that as a complement,” their conveyance said.

“Spystreak,” Elita said, “Give us directions.”

The Carcer had been modified so much over their millennia of travel that fulltime residency aboard him would have ill-prepared them to navigate a strange titan, even if they weren’t all unique. Spystreak, though, had a better chance than most, being among the few of their kind with an innate connection to the beings.

“Given there’s only one set of doors leading in,” Spystreak pointed out the obvious, “I would guess that way.”

Scavenger grumbled, once again annoyed by her teammates’ disregard for propriety. Again though, Spystreak’s answer was honest.

“I meant in the more general sense, ensign,” Elita said.

“This hangar should connect to a large corridor that runs the length of the port nacelle, First. There might be a little confusion where the titan’s elbow joint is, but beyond that, a right turn at the port weapon’s battery should lead us through his shoulder into the main hull, and the bridge will be easy to reach from there.”

“Let’s go then,” Elita said, “Scavenger, get the door, please.”

The stout bot tromped over to the control panel, tapped out some commands with her claws, and with a pop and a hiss the big doors unsealed. They opened less than a meter before grinding to a halt. Plenty of room for most of the galaxy’s races, but few of their kind could fit through such a small gap.

“Probably because of the erratic power,” she explained as she sank her claws into the breech and forced the doors apart manually with her augmented arms. With a clumsy drop, she shifted to her halftrack mode and waited for Blastcharge to rumble past. Elita followed in her own armored truck mode, with Mirage close behind her in his armored racecar form. Spystreak hopped into the air, the ungainly little bot shifting into a sleek jet. He wasn’t really intended for VTOL, so his hovering thrusters caused him to wobble awkwardly at this low speed.

The corridor was fairly roomy, though, and it was easily half mile to the elbow, “Spystreak, why don’t you scout ahead a ways; make sure you know where we’re going.” There was no ‘yes First’ or ‘aye captain’, Spystreak simply opened up his main engines and flew over their heads with a deafening roar.

Elita’s hearing recovered in time to hear Blastcharge say something like, “Sure makes a lot of noise for a little guy,” but she couldn’t tell if that was a complement or a complaint.

“Found something,” Spystreak said, “At the elbow. Hurry please.” They picked up the pace and caught up to the small bot within a few moments. He was back in robot mode, the double missile launcher on his right arm readied for combat.

“Did you find one of the looters?” Elita asked.

“Maybe,” he said, “but if so they weren’t your standard fare opportunists.”

There was corpse caught in part of the massive elbow joint, its left half ground into scrap metal by the joint’s action. There were many inorganic, mechanical races in the galaxy, but this one clearly shared their physiology – if nothing else, the grey death pallor of the de-energized cybermatter in the dermis was a dead giveaway.

Scavenger rolled up and illuminated the body with floodlights on her excavator arm, “Part of the original crew?”

“Would the body look this fresh?” Mirage asked. Even inside this titan, there was some evidence of rust from the surrounding seawater leaking in. This fellow, however, showed little corrosion.

“How did he get in there?” Mirage wondered.

“Maintenance accident maybe?” Blastcharge suggested. 

Scavenger studied the giant seams around them, “My guess? He was trying to squeeze through this space, and triggered some sort of post mortem reflex. The titan’s arm spasmed a little and the gears dragged him in.”

“What would he have been trying to get to?” Elita asked.

“Maybe he needed a little elbow grease?” Spystreak suggested.

Elita shifted into robot mode and studied the corpse by the light of Scavenger’s lamps. A splash of purple on one shoulder had caught her eye, a badge that hadn’t faded like the rest of the corpse, and scraping away some dried energon, she found her concerns validated, “Decepticon.”

“Slag,” Mirage swore. The Decepticons were trouble; they were an aggressive, expansionistic faction of racial supremacists from their home planet of Cybertron. Fortunately, they knew nothing of the Carcer’s existence, the Primes’ titans having left Cybertron well before the Decepticons emerged, but ensuring that they never discovered the Carcer’s existence was among their highest priorities. The Decepticons hunted for any of the ancient titans they could find, plundering their minds for vital historic and scientific data, and doubtlessly hoping to one day reanimate one of the titans to serve their cause.

“He was trying to hide, wasn’t he?” Mirage said nervously, “What does a Decepticon hide from?”

The Decepticons’ reputation as ruthless and effective warriors was well known, but Elita was certain it was at least somewhat exaggerated. “Not every Decepticon is an elite super soldier,” she said, “this poor spark could have been a technician or a researcher.” She added, “And it’s entirely possible he was lost. He could have been crawling in there because he thought it was a storage closet.”

Spystreak led them through the twisting elbow joint to the port weapons assembly. Not surprisingly, there were signs that someone had been doing research here – crates, data pads, portable terminals, and more bodies, looking about as horribly mutilated as the first one they’d encountered but without an apparent cause. Their metal frames were bent, twisted, snapped, sheared – there were shell casings, scorch marks, and other signs that the Decepticons had fired on their attacker, but none of them showed any evidence of having been shot with a ranged weapon. Something had disassembled them manually.

She thought about their transport, sitting alone, undefended, and unable to transform in the tight hangar. She radioed Sharkutikhan quickly and told him to back out into the open ocean – stay close, but stay safe. He was their only means of escape.

They reached the bridge and found more evidence of combat; more corpses, more collateral damage. Scavenger fiddled with some interface and the erratic flicker of the white lights was replaced with a steady red glow. Moments later, monitors and holographic displays came to life all around them, and the heavy blast shields at the front of the bridge withdrew, revealing large windows that looked out on the titan’s flight deck.

“This is odd,” Scavenger said, “The most direct access to the titan’s neural network has been destroyed.”

“A lot of things have been destroyed,” Mirage commented.

“This was shot at pointblank range,” Scavenger explained, “It had to be done deliberately.”

“Can you bypass it for me?” Elita asked. As the Carcer’s commander, Elita would have nearly all the security protocols they needed to access the system, provided they could physically do so, and the antennae on her head weren’t for show – once connected she’d have nearly as much access as a cityspeaker.

“I might be able to patch you in at the titan’s lasercore,” Scavenger answered, “But all I can do here is get you into the Decepticons’ local network. They were using the titan’s peripheral nervous system to connect their computers, and it looks like they were a bit lax about data security.”

“Maybe they figured three kilometers of ocean was enough to hide whatever they were doing,” Spystreak commented.

“Take Scavenger and Blastcharge up to the lasercore,” she ordered the small flyer, “The Decepticons will be back, and I want to know if there’s anything in this titan’s memories that could lead them to the Carcer.”    

Mirage replaced Scavenger at the unlocked terminal while Elita checked her rifle, trying not to look somewhat anxious about their situation. She walked over to the windows and looked down – there was the flight deck, hanging out over the abyss, and for the briefest of moments she thought she saw something moving at the edge of the deck, but it was gone in an instant. She knew there was nothing strange or nefarious about that. The exterior of the ship was covered in growth and sediment, becoming the locus of its own, tiny ecosystem on the ocean floor – it should be swarming with moving things.

On the other hand, despite all of the sedentary life thriving on the deck below, there was a notable absence of autonomous creatures swimming through the waters above. It seemed as if anything capable of vacating the area had done so. Perhaps the blast shields opening had startled them.

“Find anything yet?” Elita asked.

“Maybe…” Mirage answered, “The Decepticons thought this titan belonged to someone who’d served under Nexus Prime and Onyx Prime during the war of the primes.”

That was bad news. The two of them had been involved in some questionable research after the death of Solus Prime. Many of their kind thought of the ancient Primes as gods, and if they were, then Onyx Prime was the god of all things wild and feral. He was the only Prime to deviate from the two arms, two legs pattern, and all of the bestial mechs among them were supposed to be modeled after him in some fashion. But Onyx hadn’t been satisfied with the creatures Primus spawned, and had attempted to augment, enhance, and alter their forms to make them more powerful, and more savage, effectively attempting to engineer predacons built for war. Similarly, Nexus Prime was supposed to be the progenitor of the now lost secret of combination, a process by which multiple individuals could merge into one entity, with its own individual mind, and with access to power second only to the titans. Elita had encountered very few Decepticons, but the appeal of either line of research was obvious, and in the context of the ripped apart bodies, very disturbing.

“Anything else?” Elita asked.

“From what I’ve heard of Decepticons, nothing too surprising,” Mirage said, “Experimenting on themselves, and upon each other. All fun and games until some of the crew members started experiencing dissociative episodes.”

“Dissociative episodes?”

“You know,” Mirage said, “Missing time, the sense that their actions weren’t their own, things like that. I’m locked out of the security systems, but it looks like large portions of the ship are partially or entirely flooded.”

“Spystreak,” Elita radioed, “Have you reached the lasercore? What have you found?”

“Slag,” Spystreak answered.

Elita sighed, “Thusfar I have been relatively indulgent on this mission, and permitted the lot of you to speak as you please, but that’s not an appropriate way to answer a direct question from your First.”

“Respectfully, First,” Spystreak responded, “My answer is slag. Someone scrapped the lasercore. This titan is lobotomized. Basic systems are intact, but anything that would form the basis of consciousness has literally been melted down with thermal charges. If there’s a spark of life left in this titan, it wouldn’t matter, because he’d be permanently comatose.”

Scavenger cut in over her radio, “It’s a safe bet that any memories of the Carcer or her cargo aren’t just irretrievable, they’re gone.”

Elita turned to Mirage, “Make sure the other records are sanitized,” she said, “erase any information about other titans they might have retrieved before permanently disabling this one, and then wipe out their research records.”

“First…” Mirage spoke hesitantly, “respectfully… I thought we weren’t supposed to get involved in the war for Cybertron.”

“I’m considering this an extension of our mandate to deal with the consequences of the Primes’ mistakes.”

“Yes ma’am,” Mirage nodded, and set about his work.

Elita was now completely on edge. Despite ages as the highest ranked warrior on a ship filled with warriors, no amount of discipline or experience could entirely counteract the effects of subconscious emergency protocols adjusting false-positive/false-negative ratios in her sensation routines. When a heavy metal clang sounded against the bridge door, she jumped inside her armor, and raised her rifle to fire without thinking. If she looked overly nervous, Mirage didn’t notice – the smaller bot had dived behind a comm station and had both of his wrist rockets armed.

There were two more clangs, and then a voice, “Please, please help us.”

The source of the voice had been one of a pair of Decepticon survivors. They were odd fellows. They were each slightly larger than Elita, and both of them had a number of appendages hanging off of their backs. One was the same green as shallow sea water, with fin-shaped armor plates on his knees. With the many-jointed appendages on his back, he looked rather like a very large, seaworthy insecticon.

“I’m Nautilator,” he explained, holding all of his appendages in the air as the door slid shut behind him, “This is my brother, Xanus. Though I call him X, because it sounds cool. But never 'Doctor X' or anything, because he gets mad. Are you here to rescue us?”

“No,” Elita said flatly. Honesty being a moral imperative for Carcerians meant that tact was often burdensomely difficult, “Why are you here?”

“I-I’m a Decepticon subaquatic recovery specialist,” he explained, “I was the one who initially scouted this wreck, and was in charge of excavating much of it.”

“And your brother?” Elita looked at the red, orange, and purple bot warily.

“Personnel resources,” the mech said, “You know, duty assignments, workplace efficiency, psychological evaluations. We can’t all be elite super soldiers.” The choice of words left Elita wondering how long the two had been watching them.

“What happened here?” she asked as she pointed to the remains on the floor, “Who killed these bots?”

“I-I don’t know,” Nautilator said, “We were having some trouble maintaining consistent pressure throughout the ship after we got in. Lots of bots were having trouble with it – confusion, memory loss, blackouts. And then people started turning up scrapped. Snaptrap and his security team tried to hunt down the culprit, but there was just… so much chaos.”

“Why has access to the titan’s central network been sabotaged?” she pointed to the burned out access point next to Mirage.

Nautilator hesitated, clearly trying to fabricate a lie. Xanus answered quickly, though, “Commander Seaclamp was concerned there might be a viral infection aboard the ship, and feared what would happen if it reached the titan’s central nervous system. We’d declared the ship deceased, but for titans the boundary between life and death is a bit more ambiguous than for the rest of us.”

It might not have been the whole truth, but it sounded like a plausible answer.

“I don’t see what it matters, though,” Xanus said, “we could never access his central systems anyway. None of us knew the proper protocols for authenticating ourselves as titan commanders…” Xanus looked at her suspiciously; Elita could tell he was fishing for information, and she didn’t satisfy his curiosity.

Right now, the prospect of a virus was first and foremost on her mind, “If it’s a virus, how do we know you aren’t infected?”

“Y-you don’t,” Nautilator said, “W-we don’t. We’ve had the blackouts and memory loss. If those are symptoms, w-we’re definitely infected.”

“How is it passed?” Elita asked.

“No idea,” Nautilator said without any hint of deception. So, comprehensive quarantine it would be. That would be a nuisance, but the inconvenience would be nothing compared to what the infection might do to them if they actually caught it.

“Please, you’ll get us off this planet, won’t you? You’ll take us with you?”

“No,” Elita said flatly, “I’m not taking you aboard my ship.”

“The surface then, at least?” Nautilator begged, “We’re fitted for underwater operations, but we’re designed to crawl along the seafloor – we can’t swim all the way to the surface. Just get us to the surface, where a rescue party can easily find us when it does come.”

She wasn’t about to let them aboard Sharkutikhan, but it wouldn’t be difficult for him to tow one of the escape pods to the surface. If a Decepticon rescue team never showed up, and they eventually ran out of power waiting, then that was just fate. If a rescue team did show up, and carried a treacherous, team-killing plague back to their galaxy-conquering army, well… Elita wouldn’t spill any wiper fluid over it.

“We’ll tow you up in an escape pod,” she answered, “on one condition – you help us permanently scuttle this ship.”

“Deal,” Xanus said, “Plunge it into the abyss?”

“Exactly,” Elita nodded, “Assuming the descent doesn’t destroy the titan, it’ll at least put it well out of reach of anyone else who comes along. Mirage?”

“Enough power from the secondary drive engines could push him over,” Mirage said, “or maybe some demolition charges under the bow? It might take both.”

“Are there any other survivors?” Elita asked.

“We haven’t seen anyone since our last blackout,” Nautilator shrugged, “p-please, I want out of this place.”

The others returned from their excursion to the lasercore, reporting the distinct feeling that they’d been followed, but having no evidence that was the case. It was an unnerving thought, but they now had a large number of tasks to attend to. Mirage was almost certainly right – given the buildup of sediment and coral, the weakened engines wouldn’t be able to propel the ship into the abyss with what little fuel was left. Charges placed along the edge of the abyss, though, might shorten the trip, though, if they could start a landslide. That was two jobs, right there, and then there was the original reason they came – to scavenge essential parts for the Carcer’s maintenance. Elita didn’t like the idea of splitting up, but after a power fluctuation on the bridge prompted Mirage to re-evaluate the reserve power on the ship, time became a precious commodity.

Spystreak and Scavenger would make their way to what parts of the ship were accessible to retrieve as many parts on their list as possible. Rather than haul heavy components back out the way they came, they’d take them to the nearest exterior access point and leave them for Sharkutikhan to collect. Meanwhile, Mirage and Blastcharge would head to the engine room and try to get enough power for the push they’d need. The most dangerous task would be strolling out onto the seafloor to plant charges, so Elita insisted the two Decepticons take on that responsibility, but also insisted she accompany them – lest they be planning to blow the charges early and send the Carcerians to the bottom of the abyss.

Elita and the Decepticons went straight out onto the flight deck, Nautilator feeling that traveling out in the open was likely safer than navigating the flooded bowels of the ship. She made sure her seals were good, over-pressured her internal frame, and slid her battlemask into place to cover her intakes as the airlock flooded with the corrosive fluid – what Nautilator kept calling ‘water’.     

Despite this being the ‘safer’ alternative, Nautilator was still clearly nervous. He pulled out a heavy three-barreled launcher, and Xanus did the same. Elita’s laser rifle would be useless in this environment, so she unfolded the long pike-weapon she kept with her for emergencies. She certainly preferred firearms, but the energon blade on the pike’s tip could do plenty of damage if need be.

Even in the dim light provided by the titan’s exterior illumination, the stony formations and colorful plants and creatures that had inhabited its surface were beautiful in their own, strange way. It would be a shame to destroy them, but allowing someone else to plunder this ancient machine wasn’t an option. She briefly wondered what the ship might land on when it went over the edge.

They reached the point where the deck overhung the ledge, and looked down into the abyss. The word ‘bottomless’ echoed in Elita’s head. It really looked that way. In space, one never truly looked into a void. There were always some stars out there, visible in the distance. This, however, was absolute darkness, swallowing the light from their lamps.

Elita affixed a cable to a rail on the titan’s deck and tested her weight. Most bots or ships would have corroded away entirely long ago in these conditions, but titans were exceptional – they could survive conditions her people hadn’t even discovered yet, and their exteriors were especially rugged. Satisfied the railing wouldn’t disintegrate on her, Elita repelled off the deck down to the precipice as Nautilator and Xanus crawled down in their strange alternate modes.

Elita felt uncomfortable with her back to the open ocean, but Nautilator’s sudden startle was adequate warning for her to turn and brace herself against the hull, pike in hand. A dark shape glided through the edge of the headlights on her shoulders.

Nautilator shouted, his voice distorted by the water, “Seawing? Is that you? Overbite? Skalor?” he transformed to robot mode, muttering, “To be that quiet it has to be Seawing.”

When the shape came back, the inspiration for its name was clear – the bot looked more like a broad-winged aircraft than any sea-creature Elita had imagined, but it moved through the water propelled by its flexible wings. Its eyes glowed dimly green above a set of long toothy jaws.

“I thought you were dead, mech,” Nautilator said, “Why haven’t you made for the surface? You’re not stuck here like we are.”

Seawing moved about restlessly, and soon another shape, this one missile-like, moved in and began circling.

“Can’t leave,” Seawing said in slightly stilted speech, “can’t leave the hunting ground…”

The other shape moved in, “Can’t leave until I’m whole,” it said.

“Overbite?” Nautilator addressed it, “What are you talking about? You look fine.”

“Not Overbite,” the shape said. In eerie unison with Seawing, it added, “I am Piranacon.”

Nautilator laughed nervously, “Well, if you want to change your name, that’s fair, but it’ll be more than a bit confusing if you both choose the same name.”

The two swimming Decepticons then fell into a loop, “I am Piranacon, I can’t leave the hunting ground until I am whole.” Nautilator gripped his head, energon beginning to faintly leak from some of his sensory ports.  Xanus showed no indication of distress.

“I think you two should get those charges planted,” Elita said.

“I think you’re right,” Nautilator returned to his alternate mode and crawled under the bow of the ship with Xanus.

Elita positioned herself behind her allies as they worked, keeping an eye on the two circling Decepticons. She whispered into her radio, “I have contact with two survivors exhibiting dissociative symptoms,” she said. “Report.”

“Nothing here, First,” Scavenger said over the radio, “but…”

“But what?”

“Just still feeling like something’s following us.”

“Same here,” Mirage said, “We’re almost done in the engine room, but I’d swear we’re not alone. Blastcharge felt the same way. He’s been hunting for whatever it is for a while now.”

“Wait…?” Elita’s piston’s almost froze, “Where is he? Do you have optics on him.”

“No, First,” Mirage said, “He’s been rolling through the adjacent compartments and hallways patrolling, but… actually, I don’t remember when I saw him last.”

“You’re alone?” Elita asked.

“When you put it that way…” Mirage’s voice got anxious.

“Permission to abort current operation and head to Mirage’s location?” Spystreak radioed anxiously.

“Captain,” Sharkutikhan’s voice finally broke in at a whisper, “I’ve got optics on your two new friends, but I’m also tracking something else moving towards you across the titan’s flight deck. It’s slow, camouflaged, and big.”

“Spystreak, Scavenger, Mirage,” she optimistically added, “and Blastcharge, if you can hear this, abort current operations and RZ at the bridge ASAP.”

“SCRAP!” Mirage shouted over the comms, “I’ve got company! Make it faster than ASAP, please!”

“We’re coming!” Spystreak shouted.

“You’re faster without me,” Scavenger said, “GO!”

Elita wanted to countermand that decision, but the missile-shaped Decepticon Nautilator had called ‘Overbite’ suddenly burst into action, darting at Elita, with a pair of wide jaws filled with serrated, moving teeth. The water churned as the chainsaws lining his mouth sped up, and Elita realized that the mindless attack would carry enough momentum to hit her despite the pike weapon and its deadly blade. She rolled right, careful not to become entangled in her line, and took a swipe at Overbite. She inflicted a deep cut along his port side that filled the water with fluid energon and sent the Decepticon racing off in a thrashing storm of movement.

Whether it was a difference in their mentality or their insanity, Seawing didn’t charge at her, but instead opened fire with his weapons – some sort of lasers tuned for use under water. Elita let her line go slack and dropped below the shots, hoping that none of them would happen to hit the thin cable. She turned off her headlights and stopped below the hull of the ship, right below the edge of the abyss, hoping that Seawing might lose her in the dark. Unfortunately, as hard as the Decepticon had been to see before, he was now completely invisible in the dark.

“Captain,” Sharkutikhan said over the radio, “He’s cloaked from my sonar somehow. In three seconds, give me light – lots of it.”

Elita trusted her crewman to know what he was doing, and counted quietly into the comm. At ‘three’ she turned on the headlights on her shoulders and chest, putting them at full brightness and activating her floodlights too. Seawing had been rushing straight towards her, but his dull green optics now went black as they shut down. He darted sideways, and was promptly hit by one of a pair of torpedoes Sharkutikhan had launched.

Elita was jarred by the blast wave from the explosion, but relieved to see Seawing drift to the ocean floor in stasis lock.

“That big one’s still out here somewhere,” Sharkutikhan said, “Better round up your crawly friends and go.”

Elita twisted around to look for the two friendly Decepticons. Their charges read as planted, but she’d heard nothing from either of them. Her headlights panned through the black depths, and then fell on Nautilator. He’d been right behind Elita, gripping the underside of the titan’s hull. She’d thought of the Decepticon as relatively weak despite his size – perhaps not physically, but in every other regard. His sudden appearance out of the shadows, though, gave her a good fright, and now there was something about the way he was looking at her that felt… off.

“Nautilator?” She asked, “Are you ready to go? Where’s your brother.”

“Not Nautilator,” he answered. “I’m Piranacon, and I can’t leave the hunting grounds until I’m whole.” With a quick and efficient snap of one of his oversized forward appendages, he snipped her cable and dropped her into the abyss.

The water slowed her motions, but Elita’s reaction was quick nonetheless. She stabbed her pike into the cliff face above the abyss, the energon blade melting into the rock, effectively fusing the pole to it. The weapon flexed with her inertia, and Elita twisted as she bounce back up, driving both feet into Nautilator’s beast mode face. The impact hammered the antennae arrays that were mounted in front of his optics. Her antennae were always fairly sensitive, and she imagined that wasn’t a unique trait. Indeed, the impact sufficiently stunned him to loosen his grip for an instant, and an instant was all it took – he thrashed about swinging his claws wildly to catch something, but he fell too quickly. His yellow eyes disappeared into the darkness below.

Elita got her feet onto her pike, hopped on it, and sprung up to the cut cable. She grabbed onto it and began scaling back up to the deck. She came over the edge just in time to see a large maw launch at her. The mouth was rimmed with a blade like beak and filled with long pointed teeth. It was nearly large enough to swallow her whole, and would certainly be sufficient to cut her in half. Elita kicked back and to the right, hoping it would be enough sideways momentum to land her on the seafloor rather than drop her into the abyss.

Her attacker lumbered to the edge and roared, a pair of cannons locking into position on the back of his dense armored shell. Nautilator had been big, but this guy was easily twice his size.

Elita hit the soft sand of the sea floor and heard Sharkutikhan on the comms, “Taking the shot.” She grabbed onto an outcropping as her crewman’s remaining torpedoes hit her attacker’s topside. The beast turned and glared angrily at his attacker, his shell apparently absorbing the impacts. He fired the duel cannons on his back rapidly, one after the other. The barrels slammed backwards with each shot, firing what looked like the underwater equivalent of flak shells. Sharkutikhan grunted and shouted unintelligibly as he pulled away from the explosions.

The beast set its sights on Elita once again, and slid off the deck of the titan, transforming into a towering robot mode as it fell. The mech drew a massive rifle from his back and took some quick shots at Elita. They were haphazard – almost playful.

“Let me guess,” Elita said as she tumbled and dodged through the seaweed. You’re Piranacon, this is your hunting ground, and you can’t leave until you’re whole.

“Something like that,” the beast said, “This body is… was? Snaptrap. He’s probably the most like me.”

“You’re a combiner aren’t you?” Elita realized, “A bunch of bots merging their minds into one entity.”

“Something’s missing,” the beast said, “I’m not whole. But maybe you have what I need.”

He began firing again, but Elita shifted into her truck form and took off. Clearly she wasn’t designed for underwater operations, or to drive along the see floor, but her wheels were still faster than his lumbering gate, and kicked up a dense cloud of sand and seaweed, disrupting his aim.

“If anyone’s in the control room, I need maintenance hatch ZZ28 open, NOW.” She raced towards the sealed door, and could feel the rifle shots getting closer with every meter. She slid to a stop just as the door blinked green and started to slide open. Klaxons inside the airlock were flashing with a sweeping red light that would inevitably provide her pursuer a target in the murk. She jumped through the gap and rolled flush against the wall just as more shots from the beast’s weapon streaked into the airlock, hitting the interior door. The level was already flooded, so she was entirely unconcerned by the damage, but she pounded on the controls for the outer door, trying to stop its opening sequence and get it to close again. As soon as the outer door started to hiss shut she rolled over to the inner door and yanked the emergency release. Bracing her foot against one side she forced it open.

The three-pronged tip of a massive two handed sword thrust into the airlock from outside, blocking the outer doors from closing, but Elita rolled through the inner doors, landed on her wheels, and took off through the dark passageway. Cranking her headlights up again she dodged debris as best she could, trying to manage the best speed possible while fighting against the water’s drag.

Her headlights illuminated a freight elevator ahead of her. Going full speed, she’d struggle to stop before hitting the doors, and she wasn’t certain she had too much time to wait for the elevator to come. She deployed a rack of small rockets from her truck bed – she’d had to forgo her normal loadout of smart missiles for something she could effectively use underwater, and while she was sure she’d hit her target, she wasn’t sure how effective the smaller warheads would be. She fired every shot she had before hitting her emergency brake and sliding sideways. The rockets slammed into the door, the rapid thudding against the metal vibrating down the hallway as they hit. Alone, they might not have breached the door, but evidently the elevator shaft hadn’t been flooded – it had, until now, remained air tight.

The doors burst inwards, and a rush of current pulled Elita through as she returned to robot mode. Fatigue briefly struck her – she wasn’t low on Energon, yet, but she was pushing the limit of how fast her body could metabolize the fuel. The need to rest faded when she saw her pursuer, back in his massive beast mode, plowing through the hallway, towards her. She grabbed the top of the elevator door’s frame, and pulled herself up, then grabbed a service ladder and started climbing. The water rose faster than she could climb, but the beast behind her couldn’t make use of the little service ladder, and had to follow the hard way – driving his claws into the walls of the shaft to pull himself up.

Elita looked up and saw a rapidly approaching, flashing yellow light in the dark – the elevator was coming down. An ordinary elevator would likely have floated, or drifted down in a water filled shafted, but without consistent gravity, most spacecraft elevators were powered going up and going down. This one was approaching like a fully loaded freight vessel. Elita stopped at the floor she was on, pried the doors open, and ducked aside just as the elevator scraped past her. She felt the deep rolling vibration of the elevator crashing into her pursuer below, but didn’t stay to gawk. She rolled as quickly down the hallway as possible until she found a small maintenance access hatch in one wall. If it was a tight fit for her, it’d be impossible for Piranacon or Snaptrap – whoever he was.

Elita squeezed her way through the crawlspace, trying to imagine where she was and where she wanted to be. If someone had opened the outer airlock for her and activated that elevator, it probably meant she still had a friend on the bridge. It was probably Spystreak, he’d know his way around the titan well enough to orchestrate that. She tried various routes there, but found most of them sealed to hold back the water. Anxiety gripped her spark as she heard the thudding sound of her pursuer walking up and down the hallway hunting her, just on the other side of the wall.

Elita finally came to a sealed door in the maintenance tunnels that connected to an airlock. Cycling the chamber allowed her to pass through, and once again she was not only making upward progress, she was finally clear of the seawater. The route lead straight through the titan’s spark chamber, but that wouldn’t be a problem – as commander of the Carcer, she had all the protocols she needed to unlock the doors and pass through.

It was a sad sight. The titan had held up very well considering how long it had been at the bottom of the ocean, but there was still substantial damage throughout the ship, and corrosion in some of his more sensitive areas. The massive sparkchamber of a titan was supposed to be a practically spiritual place, closely connected to the titan’s spacebridge and spawning pools. This one was filled with debris, and water dripped from the ceiling in different places. Most tragic however, was the glowing ball of light at the center of the chamber.

Against all odds, the titan’s spark had survived. Technically, the mighty being was still alive, but here the seat of his soul was rusting and falling apart. It wasn’t irreversible damage, and perhaps if the Decepticons had tried they could have reactivated him, but instead they’d sabotaged his lasercore, rendering the massive and ancient being functionally brain dead.

She had little time to pay her respects, though. They’d blow the edge of the abyss, fire the engines, and let the depths put the titan out of his misery. She headed onto the bridge, expecting to find her teammates there. Instead, Mirage’s corpse lay face down in the doorway Elita came through, his head blown out by a large caliber shell from behind. Spystreak had come through the opposite doorway, and by the looks of it, he had been shot straight in the chest by whoever had been operating the terminal.

Elita activated her radio, “Mirage and Spystreak are down,” she said, “Sound off.”

Before anyone could respond, there was a sharp screeching whistle as another broadcaster jammed the spectrum.

“I’ll do you all one last favor as a mortal,” it was Xanus’s voice, “if you want to live, don’t broadcast your position on a frequency Tentakil can pick up. Bait one of the Seacons and you’ll have the whole lot hunting for you. They are somewhat single-minded now.”

“You don’t seem to be worried about it,” Elita observed.

“Of course not,” he said, “I’m fishing.”

“It was you on the bridge, though, wasn’t it?” Elita asked, “Why murder Mirage and Spystreak, and then save me?”

“I wasn’t saving you my dear,” he said, “I’m a psychologist. I gave you a puzzle to solve and motivation to do so.”

“So why’d you do it?”

“Because in solving my puzzle you accomplished something I’d been unable to do for myself since my plans went awry,” he answered, “it unlocked the security protocols around the titan’s spark chamber.”

Elita scrambled to one of the terminals and brought up an internal camera feed. Xanus was down there, preparing for something.

“Don’t think I’m not grateful for your fortuitous arrival and effective intervention,” Xanus said, 

“That’s why I’m talking to you now – it only seems fair that I should give you time to run.”

“Run?” Elita grabbed one of Mirage’s laser pistol, and headed back to the sparkchamber, “What are you planning? To blow the ship? Dropping it into the abyss isn’t enough?”

Xanus laughed over the comm, “The ship is of no concern to me – soon I’ll have everything I need.”

Elita dropped onto an upper gantry in the large sparkchamber. Xanus stood below her, next to the titan’s suspended spark. The beast that had chased her was standing across from him, flanked by two smaller bots on each side. Overbite and Seawing were damaged, but had recovered. Some hideous monstrosity that had to be ‘Tentakil’ was playing with Blastcharge’s chest-mounted cannon – now removed from his chest, with parts of his spinal column still attached – and some other creature like them had Scavenger pinned. Scavenger was alive, but the fat slimy metal creature was salivating over her like a tender morsel.

“I am Piranacon,” the five said in unison, “I am not whole. Restore me!” they demanded.

“Of course, of course my friend,” Xanus said holding up some strange components, “If you’ll recall, I collected everyone’s power rectifier chips as part of the experiment. That’s why you’ve only been able to merge mentally, and not physically. Congratulations, on that, by the way. Out of two hundred Decepticons on this venture, only six were compatible with one another. I do hope you intend to retrieve my brother somehow, though. Nautilator could use some friends.

Elita took aim with Mirage’s pistol, she was likely to only get one shot off, and she had three targets – Xanus and those chips, the creature holding Scavenger hostage, and the titan’s spark. Not knowing what Xanus actually had in mind for the spark, preventing the Decepticons from creating a combiner was top priority, and right now that was well enough served by blowing the lasercore out of the one drooling over Scavenger.

She lined up the shot, steadied herself, and fired the small pistol. The shot landed straight between the slimy creature’s eyes, scorching the broad, shield-shaped metal scales that covered its body. It stumbled backwards, and Scavenger launched forward onto her treads, racing up one of the ramps that wound up the walls of the chamber. Overbite and Seawing started firing at them, and the big one – Snaptrap – readied his cannons to do the same.

“Not in here you fool!” Xanus shouted, “You’ll bring the whole room down on top of us!”

“What did you call me?!”

“Do you want your chips destroyed in the chaos?!”

Snaptrap backed down and grabbed the chips, he turned his back to Elita and blocked her retaliation with his broad shell while the others replaced their chips – including the one Elita had shot. Apparently, thanks to his transformation, his lasercore was somewhere under the base of his tail, rather than his head, as he ended up with nothing worse than a severe burn across his shins.

“What now?!” Scavenger shouted as she rolled up.

“The titan’s spark!” Elita shouted, “A dead shot will send it critical.” Elita wasn’t certain if Xanus heard her, or just guessed what she would do, but he threw himself in front of the delicate sphere of energy. With remarkable resolve, he held his ground as Scavenger’s minigun raked his back.

“Piranacon!” Snaptrap shouted has his voice merged with the others’, “Merge and destroy!”

Desperate, Elita played her last card, and broadcast the command for the explosive charges under the bow of the ship to detonate. The distant booming rolled through the passages of the ship, and the whole titan lurched forward. Scavenger spun her treads to stay on the gantry and finally shifted to robot mode and grabbed a strut with one of her claws.

Piranacon wobbled, his components nearly coming apart as the room shifted in the middle of his combination sequence.

Xanus staggered forward, but grabbed the titan’s spark, laughing maniacally. His chest plates slid apart, but he turned his back to Elita again before she could put a shot into his delicate internals. Piranacon was now mostly assembled, but there was a whining sound like a motor dying. He gripped the walls of the chamber to steady himself, but parts at his shoulders and knees clicked off on and on like they weren’t engaging properly. Most notably, he wasn’t growing the way combiners supposedly did – he looked like five cybertronian acrobats trying to pull off a bizarre stunt. Piranacon roared in frustration as Elita noticed the trail of energy being drawn from Piranacon’s core into Xanus.

“What have you done to us?!” the five voices roared in unison.

“Combination grants you access to a deep well of extradimensional power,” Xanus explained, “I modified your power rectifier chips to channel that energy into myself.”

“WHY?!”

“I need the unique energy of your transformation to reconfigure my own body, of course! Otherwise this titan’s spark would burn me out in a matter of hours!” he laughed as the panels on his chest slid together with an audible snap.

“TRAITOR!”

“I assure you it’s nothing personal,” Xanus said, “I only needed a onetime donation from you my friend; in the future you’ll be able to combine just fine. If you survive.”

Piranacon fell apart, but Snaptrap landed on his feet, and came at Xanus swinging. Unfortunately for him, Xanus had been growing as he siphoned off the energy, converting the power directly into cybermatter. He was now as tall as Snaptrap, and slightly better armored. He grabbed the blade of Snaptrap’s sword and stopped it dead.

Xanus looked back at Elita and laughed, “Watch this, my dear, and see what you’ve had a hand in creating!” Xanus twisted the sword from Snaptrap’s grip, and belted him across the jaw with his free hand. He tossed the sword into the air, grabbed its hilt, and threw it straight into Tentakil, pinning the Decepticon to the wall. In a flash he hopped backward and transformed into a hulking, armored beast – similar to the alternate mode he’d had before, but much larger. His now enormous purple claws grabbed Overbite and Seawing, squeezed them with a crunch, and then tossed them aside as his claws folded back over his legs. He transformed into some sort of bizarre tank, his monstrous head still visible above his three-barreled cannon, and fired pointblank into Snaptrap. Finally, he turned and rolled right over the fifth Seacon.

And he did all of it while laughing like a giddy maniac.

Scavenger fired the three rockets mounted on her frame, but the small missiles detonated harmlessly on Xanus’s carapace.

“Shall I continue my rampage with you, my dears?!” He shifted back to his beast form and began crawling up the ramps towards them.

“Bridge! Now!” Elita ordered Scavenger as she transformed. They raced to the shaft that connected to the next floor, and scrambled up in robot mode, Xanus hot on their heels. 

“Can you fire the engines?” Elita asked.

“Of course, but you’re faster, First!” Scavenger said.

“I could get there faster,” Elita said, “But it’d take me a lot longer to figure out Mirage’s boot up sequence. Go, and don’t look back, okay?”

Elita hit her emergency brake and spun around. Xanus was in the hallway behind them, laughing. He transformed back into his tank mode, the armored plows on his front spreading out to scrape the walls of the wide passageway. He revved his engine, and Elita revved hers.

“Every second we spend posturing is another second your little friend has to get to the bridge and send us tumbling to our doom, is that it?” Xanus asked.

“Pretty much.”

“You know I could just roll right over you, my sweet,” the tank shouted over the sound of his engine, “Or disintegrate you with a single shot.”

“And yet, we’re still talking.”

“Yes... but then, what’s the point of power if one can’t enjoy it, and these are the moments one savors,” the monster chuckled, “Please, tell me, are you afraid?”

Elita hesitated – she was First among the crew of the Carcer, embodying their values no matter the circumstance was as important as any other responsibility she had, even when no one was there to see it.

“Yes,” she said honestly.

The monster laughed heartily, “Of course you are! But it’s fascinating that you would choose to tell the truth in this situation. Who else would? In a way it’s unfortunate – your emotions would taste better if you repressed them more, but then… perhaps it’s good to allow them to breathe? Hm?” Without warning, he launched forward, his treads propelling him along surprisingly quickly as his plows threw up sparks on either side, and made swerving to avoid him an impossibility.

Elita stuck to her plan, and accelerated towards him. At the last moment she flashed her headlights on at full power, straight into his optics, and then vaulted over him in robot mode, firing Mirage’s laser pistol into the vents on his back end. Xanus stopped and tried to turn in the hall way, but even pulling in his plows it was too narrow. He tried to transform to robot mode, but the cramped quarters blocked the sideways action of his shoulders – he was stuck.

He roared in frustration – he could have simply rumbled on ahead and smashed his way onto the bridge where he’d have more room to transform, but he was perturbed at being outwitted, and instead drove full speed in reverse. Elita stood her ground, waited to the last moment, and then vaulted over him again, this time grabbing one of his antennae and yanking it free – the appendages had been a soft spot for his brother, hopefully they still were for him.

Xanus roared angrily, then laughed, “PAIN! RAGE!” he cried, “YES! I feel them so much more intensely now! Like my body and my senses, the depth of my spark has also grown! Make me feel MORE!” He initiated his transformation again, but this time he powered through the obstacles, his claws ripping open one of the interior bulkheads and flinging sheets of metal down the hallway.

Elita turned and tried to transform, but the monster caught her foot in one of his massive claws and drug her towards his segmented jaws. They moved bizarrely as he spoke, “I want to keep you.” He said, “You fascinate me. Maybe as a research subject? A pet? A herald? A partner? Or something more… intimate?”

“You’re disgusting,” Elita grunted as he pinned her down.

“Probably,” the monster nodded, “But that’s not what I want to hear you say.”

“What do you want?”

“Lie to me,” the monster said simply, “tell me how brilliant I am for orchestrating this plot. Tell me I was a brave soul for enduring the torments of that research facility on Maxima VII, and that I’m a hero for turning the tables. Tell me you’re in awe of my newfound power,” he said, “lie to me, my sweet, and I will let you go free, unscathed.”

His claw tightened, and Elita could feel part of her chassis buckling. If there was even a chance he was telling the truth, shouldn’t she take it? One little lie; that was all he was asking for. And he even knew it was a lie, so it wasn’t really a lie, was it? The only reason he really wanted it from her was because he knew it was important to her.

But what would a vow of absolute honesty really mean if she sacrificed it as a matter of convenience? Maybe it would be saving her life today, but what would she lie to save next? And how could she resume her duties aboard Carcer knowing that she’d betrayed her oath?

“The truth is…” Elita winced. The monster turned its head to look at her with one of its unblinking, bulbous green eyes. “The truth is your only novelty is in your outward repulsiveness. Your narcissism and sadism are entirely ordinary,” she thought of the Carcer’s prisoner, the deceitful being they’d all sworn on their lives to keep imprisoned, “your strategies and manipulations are second rate. What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up? Were you going to get your brother to pick the lock to the sparkchamber? Or were you just going to pound on the door with your little claws and hope the titan felt sorry for you?”

Xanus growled and squeezed, forcing her to shudder in pain.

“You are a horrendous monster on the outside,” she spat at him, “but it’s a thin layer of armor over a tepid pool of mediocre villainy.”

Xanus glared at her and then began chuckling, “I like you; I really, really like you. But I said I’d only let you go unscathed if you said something nice, and I know you’d disapprove if I didn’t keep to my word.” He lowered his head and spread open his mandibles, the sharp teeth tracing the edges of her face as hot exhaust from his engines choked her senses. He laughed again as she squirmed, and then bit down hard on her right antenna. His teeth sank into the helmet she wore to protect them, and with a twist, he ripped the side of the helmet free, and pulled the antenna clear out of her head. Elita screamed as the world spun; the pain was unimaginable and all of her senses were now thrown off balance. To add insult to injury, the monster’s mandibles crushed the whole assembly and fed it down his fuel intake.

At first, Elita was too disoriented to tell, but as she regained her equilibrium, she realized the titan was starting to move.

“Well look at that!” Xanus laughed, “You did it – you distracted me long enough for your friend to send us into the abyss. I think it would be a shame for our fun to end that way, don’t you?” Xanus dropped her and stepped backward, “Yes, I think you and I have many games still to play, but our first game is, ‘who can get off the ship alive?’ I’ll give you a head start,” he laughed.

Elita staggered to her feet, shifted to truck mode, and accelerated towards the bridge as fast as she was able. “Scavenger,” she broadcast, “where are you? Are you still on the bridge?”

“Yes, First, waiting here for you, please hurry.”

“Alright, meet me at…”

“With all due respect ma’am, our exit’s already arranged – just hurry.”

Elita didn’t argue, she just did her best to stay on her tires as the floor slanted below her. It had managed a forty five degree angle by the time she reached the door to the bridge. Scavenger was braced behind a comm post.

“What’s our egress point?!” Elita shouted.

“THERE!” Scavenger hooked a claw at the massive windows and made a thumbs up gesture. Elita looked out and saw Sharkutikhan floating outside. With a sudden burst of power he rammed the bridge of the falling titan, and smashed through it. This time, the pressure change definitely made Elita’s fuel lines fizz.

Water sprayed in around Sharkutikhan at high speed, flooding the bridge as he opened his bow loading ramp, “Don’t wait for me to say something clever!” he shouted.

Scavenger leaped over the comm post she’d sheltered behind, and half fell, half slid into their transport. Elita jumped from the door way and dropped straight in, hitting one of Sharkutikhan’s inner walls and finally coming to a stop at the back of the passenger compartment.

“GO!” she shouted.

“My loading ramp is stuck!” he shouted, “I can’t raise it the whole way!”

“Can’t get it up when it really counts,” Scavenger commented, “Typical.”

“NOW? NOW IS WHEN YOU HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?” Sharkutikhan shouted.

The titan’s engines had stopped, and it was now gravity pulling them into the abyss. The vessel would accelerate as it fell, and once it reached a certain speed, Sharkutikhan wouldn’t be able to reverse hard enough to pull free.

Elita looked up and saw Xanus scuttle onto the bridge, his toothy mandibles shaped in a smile. “Slag it!” she shouted as she scrambled to the weapons locker Blastcharge had stocked, “Slag the door! Pull out anyway! NOW!”

“Aye Captain!” Sharkutikhan threw himself into full reverse, struggling against the twisted and buckled metal of the bridge. His hull groaned under the strain. Scavenger popped open an interior panel and began frantically looking for a means to override the door.

Elita pulled herself up the nearly vertical interior by the harnesses and kicked open Blastcharge’s locker. She scanned it quickly and found what she was looking for – one of Strika’s favorite weapons, a Z6 Requiem model “Targetmaster”. The targeting was less important right now than the obscenely large size of its ammunition. She unfolded it one handed, braced it against her shoulder and pointed it out of the door as Xanus closed in, his mandibles spread in an expression of glee.

“Smile you son of a glitch,” she fired the weapon straight out the door into the monster’s face. The blinding blast blew apart the bridge around Sharkutikhan and launched them backwards. Seawater flooded the passenger compartment. Scavenger was nearly washed outside but Elita grabbed her minigun barrel and held it long enough for the stout bot to clamp onto her.

Elita adjusted her eyes for the water that had filled the compartment. They were below the falling titan, pointed straight up and looking at the bridge. Xanus was still inside it, laughing gleefully, and for a brief moment, Elita was afraid he might catch up to them yet, but with a deft roll, Sharkutikhan dodged the bridge, and with a few more maneuvers he wove past the shoulder and head of the sinking titan. His engines groaned and sputtered.

“Talk to me soldier,” Elita said over the radio.

“I’m not meant to be full of water!” he answered, “and the displacement of the titan is sucking us down.”

“Don’t go straight up!” Scavenger broadcast, “Nose down and aim for the sea floor above the abyss.”

Sharkutikhan dropped his bow; they began to fall much more quickly, but he redlined his engines pushing forward, and escaped the pull of the dark trench. They came to rest amidst the seaweed and rocks where Elita had first contended with Snaptrap. They’d barely begun assessing the damage when a familiar shape scuttled up to the foot of Sharkutikhan’s boarding ramp.

“Can I still get a ride to the surface?” Nautilator asked.