Transformers: This Is How It All Began: 2.0: Shrikebats
This Is How It All Began
A Story From Before the Great War
Act 2: The Last Days
2.0: Shrikebats
Cybertronian Mining Operation
Planet Dromedon
A very long time ago
Nothing on Dromedon was ever dry. No matter how hard you tried, the infernal damp got everywhere. It seeped into every piece of equipment, ever storage crate, every joint. Every night you came off patrol soaking and even after a full rest cycle, you still squelched when you moved.
Worse still, the conditions allowed the local plants to flourish to an unholy degree. Gigantic trees blocked out most of the natural light, their boughs weaving together into an impenetrable mesh that made low-level flight impossible. What wasn’t blocked off by branches was festooned with creepers and vines, the kind that clung and stuck and caught until you became so hopelessly tangled up in the things that you couldn’t move. Algae and mould bloomed everywhere, on every surface that was porous enough to take them, leaving the few bits of truly solid ground slippery and treacherous. If that wasn’t bad enough, the rest of the ground consisted entirely of a layer of weeds and slime covering the kind of bog that sucked you inexorably downwards, your body flooding with foul black sludge.
The only thing worse than the plant life was the animal life.
Snarling, Megatron fired a salvo of energy bolts into the whirling mass of slick purple bodies. The burning red light simply vanished into the creatures’ midst. It must have killed or at least injured a dozen of them but their sheer numbers made it impossible to tell that any had fallen. Around him, the rest of the battalion kept up similarly futile barrages, most while trying to free themselves from the various pitfalls the terrain offered.
Nothing seemed to deter the bats. Most weapons only succeeded in dispersing them for a while. Only chemical weapons seemed remotely effective on a large scale and the atmospheric conditions made it virtually impossible to deploy those on a useful scale. They just kept on coming, weaving through the trees with almost unnatural precision, their bodies flexing and contracting as easily as any Cybertronian’s, allowing them to flit through the tightest of gaps. And the instant they got into a reasonably open space, they swarmed and became clouds of snapping jaws and flashing talons, all the while screeching and screaming until the din filled the forest, echoing and rebounding over and over again.
“Look out!”
Megatron was already in motion by the time the cry reached his audios, ducking below the plummeting bat’s outstretched claws. He lashed out with a balled fist, catching the animal a devastating blow to the spine. Ion bolts whizzed over his head, neatly bisecting a second bat as it tried to take advantage of his momentary distraction.
“This is hopeless!” Optrion yelled, dropping into the gulley to join his commander.
“I’ll welcome your suggestions,” Megatron grated back, repaying the squad leader by blowing yet another bat into charred meat nano-cycles before it could take a bite out of Optrion’s arm.
“We can’t just keep blasting away at them,” the red and blue mech shouted, continuing to blast away, “There’s too many of them this time!”
“Are you just going to repeat the painfully obvious for dramatic effect?” came the acerbic reply, bellowed over the howling of the swarm and the shriek of weapons fire.
“My point is, sir, that we need to split them up somehow - stop them attacking us all at once.” Optrion swivelled abruptly, taking out a particularly large and vicious-looking beast that had been dive-bombing a lanky green warrior fighting to haul an insensate tank out of the swamp.
“An excellent idea - but since we’re completely surrounded and up to our knees in a slagging swamp, how were you suggesting we draw them off? Hope they’ll follow us into the ground?” Megatron punctuated this sarcastic question by half-transforming - far enough for his rail gun to come together - and launching two proximity missiles. The resulting explosions blew gaping holes in the bats’ ranks, which promptly closed up again, the maddened fury of the monsters unabated. “Of course, if there were any solid ground in this wretched place,” he grumbled, retaking biped form, “I could change properly and even the odds.”
“I was thinking sir,” Optrion put in with remarkable composure, “These things home in on our energy signatures, yes?”
“Yes! Something useful before I rust, Iaconian!”
“The charge in our armour,” he continued quickly, “That’s a big part of our detectable signatures - perhaps if we drained it or…inverted its polarity, it would…distort our signatures enough to put the bats off - or at least confuse them long enough for us to get the upper hand.”
Megatron threw him a brief, incredulous look. “That has to be the most ludicrous idea I’ve ever heard!
A bat flashed past, its talons slicing a broad gash along his back. Optrion’s hand shot out, closing tight around the thing’s barbed tail. With one mighty heave, he flung it against the nearest tree. “You didn’t say they had to be good suggestions, sir.”
Grunting, Megatron straightened, his self-repair systems already working to seal off the damaged sections. A moment later, he triggered his com-link. “All units: initiate a polarity reversal within your charged armour on my mark. Mark!”
The swamp lit up with the glare of momentary electrical discharges. Megatron’s frame sparked for an instant, a strange disorientating sensation flooding his body. Optrion actually flinched, clearly unprepared for the physical effect of the inversion.
The bats reacted instantly. The swarm lifted out of the gulley, a visible jerk of surprise running through the cloud of wings and fangs. Then, all at once, it broke apart, great swathes peeling away and disappearing back into the canopy. Freed from the constant attacks, the Cybertronian warriors were suddenly able to aim with considerably more accuracy and hundreds of the startled creatures were cut down as they raced for the safety of their nests. Staring up as the last of them vanished behind a maze of foliage, Megatron let out a long, low hiss of static. He looked down to see Optrion, water dripping from his every part, wearing the expression of one extremely surprised his plan had actually worked.
“That settles it,” Megatron growled, shaking his head in a futile effort to dislodge his own coating of slime, “First chance I get, you’re being promoted.
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