Airazor made her way through the narrow corridors of the ship as quickly as possible, with the hope of avoiding another confrontation with RC. She had finished cleaning up the mess, and was looking forward to locking herself in her quarters for the remainder of the trip. She knew it wasn't a realistic idea, but she was willing to promise herself anything at the moment. This couldn't have been the mistake it felt like.

It's not a mistake. Everything is fine. This is how it's meant to be. It's destiny, or something.

This was the mantra she ran back and forth through her processor, trying to convince herself of its truth. It was taking a lot of effort- enough effort that she did not pay close attention to where she was walking. She rounded a corner, and did not stop in time to avoid a collision with a mostly-unfamiliar silver femme. A datapad flew out of her hands and clattered just out of reach behind Airazor, who scrambled to pick it up.

"Oh scrap," stammered the flier. "I'm so sorry, I didn't-"

"It's all right," said Airazor's victim. A second glance made her identity obvious- she was the scientist from the briefing. She hadn't seen her since, until now. She was middle-aged, but wrinkles were only just beginning to set in on her face. As she regarded Airazor, she tapped her cheek, deploying a pair of corrective lenses for her aging optics. Beyond the magnifying effect of the glass, her eyes widened.

"Uh… is it all right?"

"Of course, I'm- I must apologize. I thought you looked familiar."

"I've been getting that a lot lately," Airazor sighed, handing back the data-pad. "I'm Airazor. I'm… new."

"It's nice to meet you, Airazor," said the older femme, who bowed in return. "I am Breakthrough, of the Takara clan."

"So you're along to survey this planet, right? I don't mean to pry, just wondering." asked Airazor, recalling the discussion she had in the briefing.

"I am," replied Breakthrough, her countenance mournful. "It's… an opportunity, I suppose. But I am afraid our introduction must end here, I have some sensors to recalibrate."

Seeing an opportunity of her own, Airazor spoke up. "I could help you with that!"

"Oh? Well, if you're not busy…"

"Definitely! I mean, not! I mean, definitely not busy!"

"If you insist," smiled Breakthrough.

Airazor wished she hadn't insisted. While it got her out of RC's way and occupied her with something other than the rookie short-straw jobs, it wasn't exactly an entertaining diversion. Breakthrough sat at a computer console, plucking away at the keyboard, leaning in close to the screen to discern hard-to-read characters. Meanwhile, Airazor sat next to her at another console, recording the variables that the other machine produced.

"So… with the alpha channel at thirty, the spectrum scanner's range is… root fifty seven… carry the one…"

Breakthrough's ramblings were not easy to decipher, and it didn't help that she would occasionally slip into speaking Yōke, which was completely beyond Airazor's comprehension. Perhaps her frustration was too obvious, because after calling out the last few values for the alpha channel, Breakthrough turned to her and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Airazor, do you really want to be here?"

"Honestly, I'm not very good with sensors."

"No, I mean on this ship."

"I don't know," she replied. Airazor wished she had a better answer.

"You're indifferent to being a soldier?"

"It's not like that. I just don't know what to make of it yet. I just started. What about you? You've got experience, what do you think about it?"

Breakthrough's optics narrowed. "I don't know which to take more offense at, calling me old or assuming I'm a military woman."

"But aren't you?" asked Airazor, confused. "A military woman, I mean. You've got the Autobrand, right there," she countered, pointing to the insignia on her collar.

"Just because you're an Autobot doesn't make you a GI. I was a geneticist. I worked on mapping the Cybertronian genome, and… some other projects. But it didn't matter. Once I did what they needed me to, they stopped funding me. That's why Zhicorp bought me up. The point is, you seem like such a nice girl. I don't know why you signed up and it's not my place to. But I want to warn you that all of this could chew you up and spit you out."

It wasn't the kind of advice Airazor had expected to hear. She didn't want to believe it, didn't want it to sour the vows she had made back in the briefing room. This was how it was meant to be, wasn't it?

"I guess… I'll just have to see how it turns out, then."

"It's all anybody can do," murmured Breakthrough, staring into the center of her screen. She blinked once or twice before turning back to Airazor, visibly upset. "I'm sorry if I scared you, I- I shouldn't have said that. I just don't like how young they convince kids to enlist these days. So I saw you and just… you have to forgive me. Don't listen to me. I'm just a jaded old woman. Put tea in boiling water too long and it will be bitter."

"No- I understand what you're saying, but maybe you were right the first time. I've had my own doubts about all of this, and I don't think convincing myself that there isn't any risk is the right solution, not anymore. So I'll thank you for the perspective, if that's okay. You really poured yourself out, there. And we've only known each other for a few cycles!"

Breakthrough smiled and nodded, burying her face in her hands. "Oh… I suppose I didn't- I'm sorry, it's like I said before, you look like someone I once knew. I felt like I was talking to them. I really am a silly old lady."

"You've just had more time to get to know people, that's all. Thanks for your time, Breakthrough," said Airazor, who stood and gave the older femme a courteous bow before leaving. Breakthrough folded her hands in her lap and sighed, thinking about the young mech's face, his soft lips twisted in worry. She then remembered that she was in the middle of calibrating the sensors, and no longer had an assistant.

Silly, silly.

The clouds formed an endless white plain below, the stars an ocean of black above. Only a tiny glimmer of orange broke that pinpricked tapestry, flickering brighter with every passing second. Two fighter jets hung somewhere between, knitted together in tight formation, cruising across the crests of the cloud-peaks. NASA liveries crested both of the prototype machines' tails, marking them as prototypes, but a diligent observer would know that the Grumman X-29 and General Dynamics F-16XL had been grounded for years. The museum pieces had other plans.

The X-29 performed a gentle roll, never breaking formation. It came to rest inverted, its cockpit hanging downwards towards the dense clouds.

"This is taking forever," she groaned over the comms to her wingmate. "Can't we put in another call to Overcast?"

"Orders says we let Overcast call us, not the other way round," replied the larger fighter. "'Sides, their job's just as boring as ours is, and just as important. Look on the bright side, you ain't gotta suffer alone."

"But I like suffering alone. That's pretty much my favorite thing."

"That and your black chic chips," cooed the mech. "Skywarp, the world can be a nice place if you let it."

"Nice places are lame."

"You're all kinds of backwards."

"Pretty sure you're the only backwards one here, Thundercracker."

"Knock it off, you two," crackled the voice of their commander. A third fighter emerged from the clouds below, grey like the fin of a jet-powered shark. It was a modern F-22, which did little to mend the credibility of the other two fighters.

"Whatever," sighed Skywarp, rolling right-side-up and inching aside to let her commander take the lead position.

"How's it look down there?" asked Thundercracker.

"We're good. Dirge will keep an eye on things down there. It's time for the next stage of the operation."

"That means it's time to stop goofing off," the F-16 jabbed.

"That means it's time to stop goofing off," Skywarp sing-songed back.

Their commander gave an irritated grunt, silencing them before he opened the comms channel again. "This is Knife Leader to Lookout, do you copy?"

"This is Lookout, reading you loud and clear," boomed the voice of Overcast. "How's the weather, Starscream?"

"Clear up top and down below. Let's bring it home."

"Copy that. Lookout to Knife Team, proceed to your designated watch positions on full combat alert."

"Roger," said Starscream, breaking formation and banking west. "Knife One, beginning air combat patrol."

Thundercracker broke off in the opposite direction. "Knife Two, beginning air combat patrol."

Skywarp remained on her previous course, taking the opportunity to roll inverted once more. "Knife Three, beginning air combat patrol."

"Dirge will maintain air combat patrol," echoed the voice of Dirge over the comms.

"Solid copy, Knife Team," said Overcast. "Basket One, you are clear for landing."

Slowly, the orange glimmer grew brighter, transforming into a distinctive silhouette. The Decepticon dropship screamed down from the night sky, its heat-resistant underbelly still glowing from its recent re-entry. Starscream would have piloted the ship smoother, he was sure, but he was glad to be flying on his own. He did not envy whatever unlucky pilot was carrying that cargo. His musings were interrupted by Thundercracker opening his channel again.

"So you've seen them up close, right?"

"What?"

"The humans," the other Seeker clarified.

"Yeah," Starscream replied, without enthusiasm. He would rather not think about what happened on the night of first contact.

"Do you think we could get along, us and them?"

It wasn't something Starscream had even considered.

"It's too much of a risk. If we want to stay safe, we'll never know."

"Until somebody slips up and transforms in front of a human. Then we'll know for sure," suggested Skywarp dryly. "Hey, this whole 'robots in disguise' thing was your idea, wasn't it?"

Starscream briefly switched his radar into air-to-ground mode, just to be safe. "I didn't invent it, I just recommended it to Megatron," he clarified, his attention focused more closely on a tiny pulse echoing back to his sensors.

"So if somebody screws this up, it all comes back to bite you in the aft," Skywarp giggled, her high-pitched inhalation lost as static over the comms.

The signal was weak, but it was getting incrementally stronger, inching its way towards existence. There was something there, something small- and that was all it might take to ruin everything. He didn't want to make the call, but he had to. He opened the comms on all channels.

"Bogey bearing 0-3-0, range 15 kliks, altitude point two kliks, aspect 0-0-5 right, closing," he reported, remaining calm.

"Knife One, this is Lookout. Should we abort?"

"Negative. I'll break to intercept. Everyone keep doing what you're doing. This mission is too important, we've got to push through. I'll update you when I can."

Starscream pushed his engines into full afterburner. He broke off from his patrol course and veered towards the target below. He looked for a light, a glint of reflected starlight, anything that might illuminate the intruder, but he saw nothing. It was so low, what was it? Maybe it was just a large bird- Soundwave said that the largest flying creatures on this planet were comparable in size to some species of Cybertronian fauna, which was a very Soundwave way of saying things. She had been assembling whole charts of measurement conversions and translated maps and "Survival English" guidebooks, all of which she sent to him first for evaluation. Starscream knew nothing about the language or measurements or the topography, so he would smile and thank her and tell her that they looked great. He knew she didn't actually expect him to have advice. She had spent enough time studying that flirting didn't come naturally to her, especially when they were so far apart, or at least that was what he had to assume she was doing.

With the river the humans called "St. John" to his left, Starscream ducked down lower, matching his target's low altitude. He eased off of the throttle, halving his airspeed. He felt the air around him slow down, the lift that held him aloft slackening its grip. He switched the radar back into air-to-air, and his target reappeared. He guided the beams closer and closer until he locked it in. Out in the distance, he could see it, but only faintly. A sliver of moonlight that had slipped through the clouds bounced off of a tiny teardrop-shaped fuselage. Inside sat the tiny profile of a human, clad in thick, bulky clothes. Above was a swept, triangular wing, flapping in the night air, and behind it was a sputtering engine, driving a small propeller. Starscream considered his new body's fighter form, its sleek lines and huge screaming engines. It had been built by humans to help them fly, and so had the tiny, pathetic rattletrap ahead of him. But how? He was surprised such a machine could even stay aloft. It looked like a strong gust of wind might tear it apart, and there were plenty of those tonight.

He gently began to bank, making a slow turn, carefully easing up behind the un-airworthy craft. He reduced his airspeed further and turned on his navigation lights. His intention was to pull up alongside the ultralight and imitate the interception procedures Soundwave had sent him, but the universe had other plans. The lift beneath his wings weakened as he slowed- he was going to stall, and he was still three times faster than the ultralight. He had never really thought much of the hovering fliers, who were almost always slower than jets like himself. What was the point of hovering in vehicle mode, when you could hover in robot mode? But now that his vehicle mode was a disguise, his inability to hover seemed like a crippling weakness. Unable to slow down any further, he blasted past the ultralight and began to bank hard into another turn. He reluctantly turned on the radio, and sent out a message on the civil band.

"Attention, you are in violation of restricted airspace," said Starscream, careful to pronounce the words exactly as Soundwave instructed.

"Oh, jeez," came the feeble reply. "I'm off course, then."

"I will escort you out of the area," he replied, passing the ultralight once more, making a slow turn southward. The ultralight complied and repeated his action, though its cloth wing was buffeted by a powerful gust.

"I think it's this wind that blew me off course," called the ultralight's pilot. "I don't have navigation signals out here. I took off from Red Pine Grove, could you get me back there?"

Starscream cursed under his breath and switched back to the Decepticon comms channel.

"This might take a while," he reported.

"Copy that, Knife One," replied Overcast. "I'll send Knife Three to cover your patrol area. Basket has nearly made it."

"Solid copy, over and out," replied Starscream, switching back to the civilian band. He hadn't studied enough of the survival English guide, but he had to make do with what he had.

"I can get you there. No further."

"That's all I need. Thank you, sir. You know, I always wanted to be a pilot," added the human that, as far as Starscream understood, was currently a pilot. "But the Air Force wouldn't take me. Bad eyesight."

Maybe that's why you flew off course, Starscream thought.

"I understand," is what he said.

"But I love flying. Loved it ever since I was a little kid. I wasn't going to let somebody stop me from getting up there. Up in the sky, you're free. There's nothing holding you down. But you know how that is."

"Yes," said Starscream, catching the meanings of a few of the pilot's words. He vectored his thrust upward, holding himself at a higher angle of attack, cutting his speed even more while staying aloft. This allowed him to get a closer look at the ultralight's pilot before passing them again. The human in some ways reminded him of the one from that first night, in that its face was lined with age. Its hair was not white, but a dull brown. Its face was softer around the edges- feminine.

"That's one of those new fighters, right? My daddy, he flew Mustangs. That's what I wanted to fly, but they're not around anymore."

The words might as well have been ancient Destron to Starscream's audio receptors, but he couldn't help be moved by them. This little creature, unaware of who or what he was, could sense the commonality between them. And he could sense it, too. They really were more alike than they were different.

For thirty minutes he stalled, looped, and doubled back, escorting the ultralight with an ungraceful flying limp. The whole time, the woman spoke; for a portion of it, Starscream listened. It wasn't for a lack of interest, but the language barrier. When he spotted the linear clearing in the endless forest below, he was disappointed. Disappointed that it had to end, that his connection to this human would end there, before he could hold a real conversation with her. She had reached out to him, after all. He loitered overhead while he watched the ultralight land, reconsidering his answer to Thundercracker's question.

"Thanks for the lift," she said, laughing.

"Yes," was all he could muster in response. He turned away, kicked back onto the afterburner, and climbed up through the clouds.

"Good to have you back on station, Knife One. I'll take it by the lack of gunfire that we weren't compromised?" speculated Overcast.

"No. Just a… Just a civilian. I escorted her out of the area."

"Took you long enough," snapped Skywarp. "Basket just landed. You got to sit out while the rest of us busted our tailfins up here. That's just the perks of being Air Commander at work."

Starscream wanted to protest, but couldn't bring himself to. He banked towards the landing zone as his wingmates formed up with him once more. He instead turned his focus to the task ahead.

"That's another mission for the books. Good work, Knife Team. Now we've got a new assignment- welcoming committee."

"I reckon I could rest my wings a spell," sighed Thundercracker wistfully.

They dropped down below the clouds and skimmed over the forest towards the hunched back of the huge transport ahead of them. One after another they cut their engines and transformed, landing between the trees in their robot modes. Starscream stood in the center, his tall, aggressively angled frame overshadowing the spindly Thundercracker and petite Skywarp. A sonic boom cracked overhead as Dirge arrived in the airspace, the Soviet bomber's wings swinging forwards to slow its descent before it converted into the fourth Seeker, who crashed through a swathe of forest before slowing himself enough to walk.

"Another classic Dirge landing," sniped Skywarp.

"Dirge lands in precisely the way he intends," answered the large robot emerging from the forest's remains, his bulky body dwarfing all three of the others. "Dirge's will cannot be restrained by the ground."

"I don't think it's your will that the ground's going to restrain," giggled the smallest Seeker.

"Dirge perceives a lack of faith in the fortitude of Dirge's will."

"I'm sure there's nothing wrong with your will's fortitude, Dirge," said Starscream, stepping in, "but you might want to tone down the landings a bit. If you make a mess every time you touch down, the humans will start to notice."

"Dirge will then limit his confrontations with this planet to more momentous occasions."

Starscream smiled and nodded, even though Dirge had completely missed the point. Knife Team might have been a mess, but they were his mess. They were family. Could a human be family?

The cargo doors of the dropship opened, and the cargo emerged. Constructicons, their broad shoulders and huge arms bearing new Earth vehicle shapes. They marched out and immediately set to work, their loud foreman immediately directing their surveyor to begin plotting the perimeter of their new project. Their scientist was familiar to Starscream- it was Mixmaster, who had no codex in her hand but did have an ugly-looking patch bolted over where her left optic should have been. A scowl of pure hatred was etched across her jaw. Starscream decided that now would not be a good time to exchange pleasantries. The final parcel to be delivered was the most important. Heavy boots clanked down the loading ramp as one last mech took his first footstep onto Earth. He looked around at the forest, took a deep breath in, and smiled.

"So this is Earth, then?" asked Megatron. "It seems like such a pretty place."

"I have to agree, comrade Megatron," said Starscream, snapping into a salute.

"You know, when the songwriters say the battlefields of the revolution will be beautiful, they weren't imagining this. I could admire this scenery all night, but we have some work to do first."

The Constructicon foreman fell silent, and his workers followed suit. They knew what was coming. Starscream was glad that he wasn't the only one to have picked up on the signals.

"Yes, my fellow Decepticons, tonight there will be no sight-seeing. There will be no daydreaming or idle chatter. Our lips will not move, but our feet will. Our hands will speak for us, our arms, our shoulders too. Tonight, the revolution will be drawn forward by the strength of our backs and the grease of our gears! Now our cause spans not worlds, but galaxies! On this fate-gifted world, we will make the proudest stand that a Cybertronian has ever made! We will change the course of our history! And that is reason to celebrate!"

A cheer burst forth from the crowd as fists rocketed into the air. Even Overcast opened the comms to whoop with the rest. When Megatron raised his hand, the raised voices descended, waiting.

"But we will not celebrate tonight. Tonight, we will earn our victory. Tonight…" he reached behind his back, removing a small cylinder. With a flick of his wrist, it expanded into a full-sized shovel. "… we dig."

"Unbelievable," growled RC. "Assaulting a superior officer, and what does she get? A slap on the wrist and cleanup detail. What kind of operation is this?"

The medic removed a tissue bonder stylus from a rack of precision instruments, tilting it sideways to check its battery charge.

"The kind that'd be easier if you weren't talking," she grunted, giving the device a flick, which activated the internal high-intensity laser. The medic stuck a finger under RC's lower lip and began to draw the damaged gums back together with the stylus. Her freckled face twisted into a grimace of concentration, which in RC's opinion was excessive for the task at hand. A few uncomfortable cycles later, and the medic withdrew her device, RC's mouth pleasantly vacant.

"You really got busted up in there. That rookie's got quite a punch."

"Hmph!" snorted RC, appalled that the medical staff would dare to compliment such reckless insubordination. She re-deployed her coat and stormed towards the medbay exit, but the medic whistled to get her attention once more.

"Hey, you're going to want to make sure that doesn't open back up again. I've got some advice."

"And what would that advice be?"

"Keep your mouth shut," grinned the medic.

RC reminded herself that she was a professional PROFESSIONAL professional and that most servicemechs and femmes probably harbored similar levels of resentment to Omnibots like her. On the surface, the Omnibot life seemed preferable to that of the GI. Omnibots got to jet around colony space, they had codenames and private ships, they had the latest gadgets and bleeding-edge augmentations. The Council rarely assigned Omnibots to the front lines- they were too valuable. They got cushy missions spying on enemies of the state, signals intelligence, and high-value target elimination- RC's forte. The perks were nice, but RC couldn't help but feel guilty about them. The Council had given her a penthouse in the center of Iacon after Schwarzwald, but spending time there felt wrong. Relaxing wasn't her job, keeping the empire safe was. And she was very, very good at it.

She hadn't always been, but that was what their training was for. She spent days being tortured in the way that she would later be allowed to torment others. Suspended from her fingers, beaten, electrocuted, holes drilled through flesh, dipped in acid, burned. She was thrown onto the Sea of Rust for three weeks with nothing but a knife and a shovel- she survived by ambushing a raider convoy, killing the crew, and arranging their remains to look like wreckage, which attracted more vulnerable raiders. She memorized the silhouettes of every vessel operated by the Decepticon navy and where their critical systems were, and how to breach them. Her body was reformatted countless times to study the combat techniques that came most naturally to fliers, destroyers, cruisers, and splitters, learning how to counter each. She watched film after film explaining the evolution of the Decepticon ideology, highlighting the corruption of its leaders, how many lives each one was responsible for ending. They even plugged a film or two right into the base of her skull, making all of the facts much clearer and easier to understand. She could recognize the face of any Decepticon power-player in a crowd- she was terrified one day to realize that, upon looking in a mirror, that she had a little discolored patch below her right eye that looked vaguely similar to one on the face of Megatron, so she immediately resolved the discrepancy by digging it out with her knife. Placing her thumb against the scar was some faint, ghostly connection to who she had been before, a person that had been surgically erased from her mind. It was a reminder that imperfections can always be corrected with enough force. RC stroked the scar gently as she headed for her quarters, contemplating how much force it would require to correct this disaster of a mission.

Offing that rookie would be a start. I'm certain I could make it look like an accident. Or I could get in touch with some of my underground contacts…

She considered various avenues of correction until she arrived at her quarters, just past the berth compartments. By her request, she and her bodyguards had been given the rooms normally reserved for officers. Either Prime was particularly generous, or he was just as much of a pushover as she had assumed he was. The small section of corridor opened into four separate compartments, but none of them were occupied at the moment, as the contractors were standing in the middle of the hallway. They had been paid for by the Council, so it was not RC's place to turn them down. The Lightning Strikeforce firm had a reputation for reliability and efficiency, and they had even sent along the unit's organizer to ensure maximum effectiveness. His name was Grimlock, and he seemed to be exactly the sort of mech that would run a private military company: Big servos, big knives, big guns. He had not spoken to her beyond clarifying the terms of their contract, and the handful of instructions she had already given him. But there he was, talking to his soldier.

"Are you feeling nervous?"

Grimlock's subordinate mumbled a half-discernable affirmative. She certainly didn't look nervous. She had a vast destroyer-type chassis, layered in armor, gun pods, and grenades. She was taller than him by a significant margin, and wider, too. If anything, it seemed like Grimlock would be nervous in her presence.

"Don't worry. We don't have much further to go. You won't be all cooped up anymore."

"Hmmm," she gurgled in response, sounding satisfied.

"Am I interrupting something?" asked RC. Grimlock turned away from his fellow mercenary and acknowledged RC with a curt nod.

"Scorn doesn't like long flights and tight spaces. She can get a little worried and a little cranky when she has to deal with it for too long."

"You said we didn't have much further to go?"

Grimlock gently brushed his fingers across Scorn's forearm and pointed towards one of the doors, which the larger robot reluctantly shuffled towards.

"It's what I heard when I passed by the bridge earlier. Prime and that rustbucket were discussing ETA. A solar cycle, and some change."

RC nodded back. This new planet would be the same as any other- it was environment with targets for her to eliminate. After she was done, she would leave. Of course, the things that happened between placing bullets inside of cranial casings and leaving was what made things more complicated, but she was not concerned.

"Anything else of note?"

"They mentioned the long-distance communications systems. Maybe that means something to a spook like you."

"It means they're probably going to try to negotiate," RC huffed. "And there's no way that will go well."