"Decepticreeps coming over the horizon, Prime." Ironhide's
voice was tinged with deep loathing.
	"Noted. Blaster?"
	"I'm not gettin' anything but static...wait! Oh, man, if this
is true, we're in *real* deep trouble!"
	"Ah knew it!" Ironhide smashed a nearby tree. "They've
betrayed us!"
	"Calm down, Ironhide. What do you hear, Blaster?"
	"They're all chattin' with each other...nervous. *Starscream*
is leading them and...if I'm gettin' this right...the Enemy has
captured Megatron!"
	Optimus Prime's eyes darkened, becoming hexagons of deep
purple. "That *is* bad news. We could have used Megatron's cunning,
not to mention his raw power. Blast!" Prime walked away from his two
lieutenants and focussed his optics on the swarm of tiny dots becoming
visible on the horizon. Starscream was even less trustworthy than
Megatron, and, without Megatron's iron grip, keeping the Decepticons
disciplined was going to be even more difficult.
	Prime was standing on a thickly wooded hill. Buried beneath
him, he had been told, was a massive base once owned by a band of
renegade humans and later taken over by the Decepticons. They, in
turn, had abandoned shortly after the spacebridge was finally taken
out of commission a few years back.
	He activated his magnification functions. There were the jet
warriors in the lead...he could see some of the larger fliers carrying
others.  Astrotrain, Vortex, Ocatane, and more. This was one of the
largest assemblages of Decepticons he'd seen since they had come to
Earth. Where was Starscream? he thought. Blaster said he had taken
over command...
	Minutes later, the Decepticon armada landed. Trees cracked and
shattered as they transformed to land. Astrontrain landed in his
shuttle mode, clearing a landing pad by brute force. His rear hatch
opened, and Starscream emerged...missing an arm. Optimus Prime
cautiously approached him.
	"I take it you're in charge here now?"
	"Yes, Prime. At long last." There was a bitter taint to the
damaged robot's voice, something different from his usual whine. "Not
as I would have chosen it. Megatron was to be mine to take down!" He
looked down at the charred stump of his arm. "It doesn't matter
now. The truce still holds, Prime...but don't let it go to your
head. If we survive this, I will still someday build my throne from
the wreckage of your body!"
	"When Primus walks." Optimus sneered. "Now, let's get on with
it."
	"Very well. Decepticons -- Disarm and enter the base!"
	"Autobots...accompany them. And keep your grudges to
yourselves."
	The various troops, muttering and clearly ill-at-ease,
followed orders.  The alliance, tenuous as it was, had begun.

***

	"Are you sure"
	"you know where"
	"you're going?"
	Reflector asked from within Cosmos' hull, his triple
consciousness splitting the sentence between his bodies.
	"Certainly. I'm quite comfortable in Earth orbit."
	"That's not what I"
	"heard from"
	"Blast-Off. He says"
	"you get"
	"spacesick."
	"He's a pompous liar. And we have a job to do." Cosmos slowed
to a near stop. His long range sensors detected the enemy ship in a
low lunar orbit. "Do your little spy act." He opened his inner
airlock. Reflectors three bodies leapt out as one, then combined and
shrank into a tiny camera. There was no change for several minutes,
then they split apart again and returned to Cosmos.
	"We can"
	"return"
	"now."

***

	"Curious....this protrusion clearly was not there before. And,
look -- over here -- doesn't that appear Rigellian to you? But
certainly not.  Perhaps an offshoot of the Rigellians?"
	"Will you please try to focus on one task at a time? This
endless waiting is bad enough, but listening to you prattle on..."
	Starscream turned away from Perceptor and tried to calm
down. No point in setting a bad example for the others...this hideous
situation was bad on them all. The Autobots' pet flesh-creature kept
scurrying about and making peeping sounds, as if it was trying to
talk. Oh, wait -- there were two of the little things. Maybe one would
try to kill the other.
	He was interrupted by Perceptor's continuous drone. "...and
this is clearly some sort of mass displacement locus! But nothing in
the original scans is even remotely comparable..."
	"Mass displacement locus?" Starscream suddenly realized what
was occuring.
	"Why, yes. And this is..."
	"No, no, you idiot. Get back to the locus!"
	"Very well." Perecptor keyed the hologram back a
step. "There."
	Starscream studied the image very closely. There was a pattern
of much thicker grooves running around the cube, grooves which were
not there when the ship had been encountered in space. The locus was
positioned right where it should be if...if...
	No. That was too monstrous, too impossible. By Primus, the
craft was nearly five kilometers along an edge! If what he suspected
was true, these creatures were countless millenia ahead of even the
finest Decepticon scientists...and that was fundementally impossible.
Cybetronians were superior to all other life;Decepticons were superior
to all other Cybertronians, and thus were the only ones fit to rule,
for the greater good of all.
	If that credo were false, the whole war would be meaningless.
Therefore, it could not be false.
	"Do you want to say something, Starscream?"
	"No, no. Go about your business, Autobot. I need some
energon." And maybe I'll ask Frenzy for some of that "Enerbeer" he
claims to have invented.

****

	Prime walked in on the silent trio, who were arguing loudly
and furiously.
	"Danger imminent. Prognosis - failure."
	"Quit yappin' and start zappin! We can break their ice!"
	"I'm afraid I concur with Soundwave, brother. They are
powerful...very powerful." Though her physical form was still in
omnisynth mode, her cyberspace incarnation radiated a placid sadness,
a resigned acceptance of defeat.
	"No way, no how! We've beaten worse than this!" In cyberspace,
Blaster looked at this two partners. Chorale was holding back,
hesitant to move again;Soundwave was standing, arms crossed, in
contemptuous anger. The Borg ship still remained an impenetrable wall
of lightning before them.  "Alright, let's jack out and fuel up. We'll
go in again later."
	He became fully conscious of the room around him, and of
Optimus Prime standing at the doorway. He transformed out of his radio
form and gave a quick perfunctory salute. He could hear the other two
shifting behind him.
	"Report." Prime's voice was flat, but Blaster could sense the
growing worry within him.
	"They've got enough ice to sink a fleet of Titanics. And
there's something real spooky about it...it's like the whole
consciousness of the collective -- we got that much, that's what they
call themselves -- is starting to change."
	"Change? Into what?"
	"I don't know, Prime. We were startin' to make some
headway..."
	"An inaccurate description. Progress -- nonexistant."
	Blaster glared at Soundwave, but said nothing.
	Prime nodded, not willing to take sides. "I'm sure all three
of you have done what you can for the moment. I came here to remind
you to take a break and recharge."
	Chorale spoke then. "Are the others...are they making any
progress?"
	Prime frowned. "A lot of them are building weapons systems,
but I think we know that won't do much good. I've got Ratchet and
Afterburner analyzing the scans we have for exploitable
weaknesses. Perceptor and Starscream were working together, but
Starscream seems to have gone off by himself and Perceptor has locked
the lab door." He shook his head. "I know, not good news."
	"Hopeless. I should have stayed on Candarvis. It wouldn't have
mattered."
	Soundwave turned to her, the lifelight in his eyes curiously
muted.  "Never hopeless. Not while consciousness remains."
	She looked back at him. Blaster sensed a communication pulse
between them, but it was encrypted and very brief. Then she
nodded. "You're right, Soundwave. Energon?"
	"Affirmitive."
	The four of them left the room.

***

	Tenth analysis. Eleventh. Twelveth. There must be an error,
Perceptor thought. There must be. Thirteenth. Fourteenth. There?
No. It still works. Fifteenth. Oh, give it up, he thought. I've never
run from the truth before. Must tell Prime, though.
	Perceptor deactivated the privacy seal on the lab. It had
taken only a few seconds to reach the same conclusion that had sent
Starscream off to Primus-knows-where, but he had checked and rechecked
for endless hours, until there was no doubt remaining.
	He began to walk towards the central command room, where
Optimus and Shockwave were conferring. Suddenly, a thought flickered
through his consciousness. He turned and ran back to the lab, calling
out as he did.  "Afterburner! Ratchet! Wheeljack! Hook! Meet me in the
engineering room!  At once!"

***

	With a roar of jet engines and a squall of animalistic fury,
Laserbeak swooped into the base. Soundwave opened the portal to his
interior universe, and Laserbeak transformed and slid in. They bonded,
then, and Soundwave displayed the data.
	The Borg ship was no longer in lunar orbit. It was moving,
relentlessly, towards Earth.
	"ETA: 2 Terran hours." The time of doom, delivered in flat and
emotionless tones, was heard by all.
	There was not time for them to accept that, though, when every
monitor and viewscreen in the complex flared to life, each displaying
a single image.
	It was...Megatron, but distorted and mutated. Alien machinery,
raw and ungainly, sprawled across half his face. One eye had been
replaced by a hideous black carbuncle, like a fleshing wart. Cables
and protrusions of dark metal covered his upper torso. And when he
spoke, his voice was distorted and broken.
	"I am Akarnos of Borg. I speak for the Collective. Do not
resist assimilation. First the Cybertronians, then the Terrans, will
be assimilated into the collective. Resistance is futile. Prepare
yourselves."
	Then the monitors went dark.

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