Salvation: Part II

The crew of Salvation watch the skies along with them, but see nothing. The New Decepticon fleet was, as of yet, too far away to be seen.

However, Bludgeon and his minions were fast approaching, and the fanatical warlord wasn’t exactly holding all the cards this time. His spy had been oddly silent, the encrypted communique he had sent him only containing a set of coordinates on just above the planet’s equator, to the east of the prime meridian. He knew not what awaited him there, or even if Salvation and our heroes were still at that location. The Knights’s shroud, along with the timing at which our heroes had lowered it, had left the New Decepticon order largely in the dark as to what they could expect.

However, these coordinates happened to be not too far away from Optimus’s colony ship. Looking up, Epsilon could see thirty-odd streaks of orange in the morning sky as the New Decepticon fleet fell through the atmosphere.


The lights in the arena dimmed as the Splitter brothers took the Blue Omega Key out of the fortress.


Salvation just detected a substantial radiation surge on the far side of this planet’s moon,” Greasemonkey reports. “Those careless spawns of glitches just set the whole rock ablaze.”


Epsilon contacts the Salvation, “Bludgeon’s here!” He yelled.

Something inside King-Quan’s spark made him smirk beneath his mouth plate. “We have the upper hand.” He spoke more so to himself as he remained still and patient.


Scorchlock scoffs. “Was there even a point of coming here in the first place?” He asked as he looked around some more.

Starchaser flew as high as she could, determined to take down a few flyers before their sensors could even detect the others.

“They set the moon on fire?!?”
Breig exclaimed in both fear and shock.

Salvation just picked up their radiation surge,” Flyby reports, sitting at his usual post in the pilot’s station on the Fleetcarrier’s bridge. “Are you guys still at the colony ship?”

Starchaser’s flying takes her away from the gorge and the fortress within it, until eventually she could start to make out the thumbtack-like shape of the colony ship that Gatecrasher and Epsilon-5 were exploring. And above them, arrows of flame in which Bludgeon’s warships rode through re-entry.

On the bridge of his flagship, the Armageddon, Bludgeon scowls as he sees that Salvation was no longer here; evidently she and her crew had moved to another location. Or perhaps they had already claimed the Omega Lock and were bound for Cybertron at this very moment…

The warlord clenches his fist; on reflex, he deploys one of the energy swords stowed in his gauntlet. The Decepticons around him flinch, sensing that their master was displeased. And when a Decepticon warlord was displeased, heads tended to roll in short order.

The lackeys are spared a senseless death, however, as their ship’s scanners detect a cluster of spark signals in a gorge below them, and two more rising up to meet the fleet. Bludgeon retracts his sword and sighs in relief; so his foes were still here. There was still time, then.

“Scramble a fighter squadron,” he orders. “Destroy these stragglers.”


The arena was dark and silent, the only signs of life coming from himself and the two angelicons behind him.


“One of the hazards of travelling by conventional warp drives,” Greasemonkey explains. “Anything right in front of the ship gets incinerated when you slow back down from lightspeed. All that energy in the warp field has to go somewhere, after all.”

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Starchaser decided to have a bit of fun. Doing something she knew could potentially be a very bad idea. But having put so much distance between here and the ground forces all she risked was giving away her own location, which she could more than handle. She sent a musical transmission directly to the flagship, hoping to give them a bit of a scare.

Man and machine and nothing there in between
A flying circus and a man from Prussia
The sky and a plane, this man commands his domain
The western front and all the way to Russia

“Well then why haven’t we been doing the same?”
He asked, rather confused.

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Scorchlock turned around and glanced at the two angelicons. “Any ideas?” He asked.

Gatecrasher, about to do the same, noticed the open channel, and had already hopped on, while he head for the exit. “Affirmative, any orders?” He asks.

The transmission reaches the Armageddon, and Bludgeon smirks as he recognizes the calling card of a particular Decepticon flyer.

“Want me to shoot her down, boss-bot?” his apprentice, Banzaitron asks eagerly from behind the warlord.

“No,” Bludgeon refuses, holding up a hand. “You and I have more important matters to attend to.”

“But Teach, those goons you’re sending out,” Banzaitron insists, “they’re gonna get shredded.”

“Their sacrifices will be remembered in the Cybertron to come,” responds Bludgeon dismissively.

Seven streaks of vapor break off from the Armageddon, weaving through the sky until their sources come into view, revealing themselves to be Decepticon spacefighters- single-occupant ships adorned with a disproportionately-large pair of engines and a plethora of guns:

Six of the fighters peel away and rocket off toward the colony ship, while the remaining one barrels down toward Starchaser, its two main plasma autocannons flipping into firing position.

“Uh… get back here and don’t die?” Flyby guesses, not quite used to being in a position of authority.

“Works for me,” Topside says from beside Gatecrasher. From down the hall, the cloaked figure sprints toward the two, thrusting out a hand. The axe he had tossed onto the floor earlier shoots into the air and flies into its master’s grip. Topside, expecting an attack, draws his great sword at him.


Transwarp travel is much safer,” Greasemonkey elaborates. “Wormholes and non-spaces and healthy disregard for the laws of physics allow us to travel across star systems in a matter of hours, with the added bonus of not accidentally torching our destination to boot.”

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“Haven’t had a good dogfight in ages. Too bad it won’t last long. Hold tight little buddy, you’re in for a ride.”

Click chirped excitedly as Starchaser threw her afterburners into full force, reving up her machine guns. She set her coms to a full on open chanel, broadcasting to all the fighters in the area. Nothing like a bit of psychological warfare to start out a battle.

Death from above, you’re under fire
Stained red as blood, he’s roaming higher

“Fascinating.”
Breig said, looking up at the engines above.
"When this whole mission is said and done, I would love to dismantle one of these things and really see how they tick.

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GC turns quickly, launching a smoke grenade (standard on most tanks), out of pure instinct before actually registering the attacker.

The fighter’s cannons flash, and a torrent of plasma races down through the air toward Starchaser.


The smoke fills the corridor and hides the mysterious figure from view.

“…My apologies,” he says, realizing his mistake. “I was merely meant to retrieve my weapon to do battle with our enemies.”


“I can send you their schematics when this battle is over if you’d like, sir” Greasemonkey offers. “I designed the transwarp myself.”

She rolls to the side, easily avoiding the attack. Responding with a spray of machine gun fire. She tried to quickly dive under and circle around behind her opponent. Shifting into her propeller fighter as soon as she was behind them, and doing a tight turn so she was pointed straight at the rear of the craft.

Born a soldier from the horseback to the skies
That’s where the legend will arise

“I would much appreciate it. I’d love to develop some kind of way to compact these down for use in personal transports.”

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“Ah. Sorry sir.” Gc replied. “It’s instinct at this point. Just step through the screen.”

The pilot of the fighter sees Starchaser circling around him and rolls in the opposite direction. The craft’s engines flip around and begin to propel it upward on Starchaser’s right side.


The cloaked bot steps through the smoke, waving it away with his hand. Topside stows his sword after calming down some.


“With luck, there will a future in which that will become a reality for us yet,” Greasemonkey comments.


The New Decepticon fleet speeds away from the colony ship, having acquired Salvation’s current destination from the energy signature given off by the Blue Omega Key. Like bees from a hive, dropships begin to stream from the hangars of the warships and dart ahead of them toward the gorge.

“So you got some tricks do ya? Well they aren’t gonna save you!”
She taunted.

And he’s flying

Starchaser twirled out of the path of the fighter, and reorientied herself to face it.

Higher, the king of the sky
He’s flying too fast and he’s flying too high

She repeatedly fired her heavy amor piercing rifle at the enemy craft. Shooting to the rhythmic beat of her music. Aimig for the oversized engines.

“So… What do we do in the meantime? I’m not exactly a fighter. What am I supposed to do if we’re under attack?”

Starchaser, still relatively close to the main ship, takes notice.
“D@mmit. That’s not good.”
She broke off from her current targer, regardless of whether or not she managed to take it down, and locked on to the dropships. Firing upon them with her machine guns, hoping to draw their attention.

Higher, an eye for an eye
The legend will never die

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“We were on our way back to the ship, would you like to come with us?” GC offered, “assuming the captains have no objections.”

The fighter’s rightside engine goes up in flames, though the pilot of the craft still manages to belch out another stream of plasma from its cannons at Starchaser.

The fighter plummets toward the forest below as its pilot attempts to bring it back under control, giving Starchaser time to fly away. Her shots send bright sparks shooting up from the hull of one of the dropships, and a turret on its back swivels around to spit a stream of lead at the Decepticon.


Topside shakes his head.

“Fine by me,” he says. Of the stranger he asks: “what’s your say?”

The cloaked robot nods his head. “I have come to help you in this leg of your journey, and I will gladly fight alongside you all.”

Narrowly avoiding the plasma blast, she continues chasing the dropships. In her propeller fighter mode she effortlessly dances around the turret’s fire. She blasts at it three times with her rifle. If successfully destroyed, she changes to her space figther mode and accelerates so that she’s just above the craft.

First to the scene he is a lethal machine
It’s bloody April and the tide is turning

OOC: Heads up. Just about to start work. I’ll be back in 2 hours for my 10 minute break. Then two hours after that I’ll be off.

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The turret explodes, allowing Starchaser to position herself just above the dropship.


Greasemonkey taps his chin.

“Well, I will be staying here,” he says. “I’m afraid there isn’t much good I can do on the battlefield, either.”