Conclusion

"What the hell is happening?" Spike screamed as the floor fell away
under him. He grabbed for a metal rod that was extending outwards from
the wall and clung to it in desperation as a gaping pit appeared below.


"Exactly what we expected. Incredible!" Carly was alternating between
studying her handheld monitoring device and staring in awe at the scene
surrounding her. Walls of metal, skyscraper sized or greater, were
moving, shifting, expanding...and far above, she could *see* a subspace
portal opening and absorbing a gargantuan slab of latticework metal as,
far below, another portal disgorged a series of glistening cables that
seemed to spin themselves into the surrounding structure.
"It's...beautiful!"

"Yeah! This is totally awesome!" Rumble added, momentarily ignoring the
fact he was agreeing with a hated fleshling.

"Heh! Gonna be real cool to see it EXPLODE!" Frenzy sneered. "In fact,
I think it's time for a little rock-and-ROOOLLL!!!" He shifted his arms
to powerful jackhammers and, in orgy of sheer violence, began pounding
on the nearest wall. The vibrations resonated through the immense inner
chambers.

"Damn it, Frenzy, not YET!" Spike tried to shout over the din and
maintain his balance. "It's your blasted leader we're supposed to be
rescuing here!"

Rumble leaped onto Frenzy, disorienting him. They rolled around on the
shifting surface, cursing and smashing. Between the fighting and the
spitting static of their accelerated conversation, it looked like a
mechanical version of a catfight.

Finally, after two minutes of violence while the humans looked on
helplessly, it stopped. Frenzy withdrew. Rumble spoke, "Alright, little
brother? Had enough? Or do you want some more?"

Frenzy sneered, then drew back for a leap, "Hey! You're MY little
brother!"

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah!"

They were distracted from resuming their fight by a streak of golden
metal appearing in front of them. The Autobot, Steeljaw, stood between
them, growling.

They turned, stunned, to see the human female standing with her arms
crossed, grinning smugly. "You overgrown eight-tracks didn't think I
was going to let your short tempers and dim wits blow this mission, did
you?"

Rumble was the first to speak. "But...Optimus Prime ordered you..."

Carly shrugged. "Orders are meant to be broken, blue boy. Now, let's
get moving. Oh, yeah -- send that damn signal to the team below. " She
rambled off a cryptic list of numbers and letters. "Got it? Good."

Their fury momentarily calmed, they moved on. The five proceeded into
the altered ship, following a trail only Carly could detect. The humans
in front, the Decepticons in the middle, and the newly transformed
Autobot bringing up the rear. Time passed.

Spike whispered to Carly. "Er...next time you change one of Optimus'
plans -- TELL ME???"

"Sorry, Spike -- but you would have told him. You're a bit too honest
for your own good, sometimes." She smiled warmly at him, as if this was
a trait she admired while being glad she did not possess it. Then she
went businesslike again. "OK, time for you two to do what's best --
through that portal." I just hope THEY didn't change the plans on us --
we're all expendable now.

The two Decepticons needed no encouragement. With a whoop of joy, they
leapt to the portal, tearing it to shreds in seconds. Behind it, a
horde of Borg stood to face them...and beyond the Borg, the altered
body of Megatron, plugged into the ship itself. His eyes glowed dimly,
the lifelight still active, but his body was slumped and immobile.

"Party time!" someone shouted -- and Spike couldn't tell if it was one
of the two Decepticon warriors or Carly. He glanced at her. She was
holding her arms as if she was cradling an imaginary hand cannon -- and
then, with a familiar flicker, she *was*. Shot after shot exploded
outwards. Spike just moved forward, on instinct -- there was going to
be a LOT to discuss if they survived this.

Rumble was in his glory. Hordes of beings *smaller* than he was, all
rushing forward to die! They crunched like Autobots and splattered like
fleshlings -- two for the price of one!

But they kept getting harder and harder to kill. Each one seemed more
capable of avoiding his blows and, in the back of his mind, his battle
computer predicted destruction in fourteen-point-six seconds.

He turned off the battle computer with a mental flick and kept on
hitting.

*****

"Time is critical. Window is closing. We have the frequency."

"You think I don't know that? We got to give the guys  a chance!"

"We will act in sixty  Terran seconds."

"Soundwave, how can you be so cold? Those are your children up there --
AND your leader!"

Blaster's outburst was interrupted. "He knows that, Brother. And yet,
he does his duty without delay or excuse."

"Sounds almost like you admire that, sis!"

"I do."

For once, Blaster had nothing to say. Chorale had always
been...intense, even obsessive -- but always mixed with a glorious
passion for life and joy. Now, it seemed as if the loss of the
Candarvis colony, so suddenly, had driven her deeper into herself. The
joy had been burned away, leaving only the intensity.

"Yeah, alright. Sixty seconds."

"Fifty five."

*****

Onslaught was standing with his Combaticons. They could not combine due
to their still-healing wounds, but it wouldn't matter. Devestator,
Defensor, Menasor, Superion -- all had fallen. The forest around them
was in flames. The tally of the dysfunctional kept rising, and if the
fight didn't end soon, they would begin to die. For fourteen minutes
they'd assaulted the giant with everything they had, using every weapon
developed in four million years of war -- and each small victory simply
resulted in it getting stronger and stronger. It *moved* like Megatron,
even, but a Megatron devoid of passion or pride -- just raw,
unrelenting, *purpose*.

It noticed them. A fist the size of a small asteroid drew back....

*****

"Ten Seconds."

*****

Spike slammed a tiny black disc onto the shoulder of the immobile
Megatron. Their gamble had paid off.

The collective consciousness of the Borg had become tainted by their
chosen spokesman. Megatron's inherent contempt for humans and disdain
for those he considered weak had altered the way the Collective would
respond. Two humans and the two smallest, weakest, Decepticons were
simply ignored as irrelevant until it was too late. Even in the final
fight, the Borg had gone after Rumble and Frenzy -- leaving the humans
free to act.

Spike screamed. "Skywarp! Now!" Oh, please --- just this once -- let
Afterburner be right!

For a single second, nothing happened. Then, Megatron, the Borg, the
ship, Rumble, Frenzy -- all vanished in a flare of light. Then there
was a flash of green and brown, and the feeling of something very hard
smashing into his back with considerable velocity. Then blackness.

*****

"Five seconds."

"Wait! They're out! Do it now!"

"Complying."

In a small clearing in the burning forest, surrounded by a glowing dome
that had resisted all attempts to breach it by the enemy, Blaster
stood, in robot mode, hands resting on the multi-leveled keyboard of
his sister's Omnisynth form. Resting on that mode, connected into it,
was what would look to any observer as nothing more than small Walkman.

Blaster's fingers touched the keys in rapid succession, playing a
complex melody which resonated not in three dimensions, but in *many*
-- and its' purpose was not beauty, but destruction. The sounds
generated filled the air with eerie harmonics, but they also passed
into Soundwave's form, where they were filtered, focused, amplified,
condensed....and, finally, a nanosecond later, emitted as a field of
four-dimensional vibration reaching not only through the air, but into
subspace, as well. It was a sound that was carefully and precisely
tuned to the single thing they knew the Borg could not have
decentralized when they assimilated Cybertronian transformer technology
-- the transforming cog, the multidimensional crystalline lattice that
served at the control for the matterflow between realspace and
subspace. Each Transformers' was unique, a key to a private universe --
and this song was aimed solely at the one in the heart of the Borg
giant above them...through a key provided by the team that was *inside*
when the ship transformed, the only way to possibly obtain it.

******

So this is doom, thought Onslaught. The rush of water-soaked air being
pushed forward by a wall of living metal.

Then, doom stopped.

Onslaught looked up.

The being was staggering, beginning to transform -- but it was a
hideous, lurching dance as random components of its' body began to
shift and fold. Screams of agony erupted from across the battlefield as
the myriad Borg soldiers, part of a single collective mind, were caught
up in the firestorm of conflicting orders as the carefully orchestrated
components of the transforming ship warred with each other for
dominance. The left arm tried to transform itself back into a wall of
the cube, while, somehow, the creature as a whole was trying to unfold
wings. Energy, both crackling lightning and an odd, amorphous sort of
plasma field, played across the surface of the convulsing giant. 

It doubled over, tried to fold into itself, and...

...vanished.

Silently.

Swindle, standing with Onslaught and his fellow Combaticons, had made a
concerted study of human culture, in order to better..ah..swindle them.
Out of thousands of hours of human entertainment, one phrase bubbled,
insanely, to the forefront of his mind.

Where was the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering
kaboom!

But the only sounds his audio sensors could pick up were the crackle of
wood burning and the breeze whipping through the trees. And the screams
of the maimed and dying.

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