"I just wonder what phase the war on Planet Kugrage has reached. And those starships, why do they look slightly familiar?"
Skygnaw was debating whether to launch a direct assault or wait for a definitive victor so he could sweep in afterward, when a sleek silhouette stepped onto the command deck.
"Skygnaw, have we arrived?"
The speaker was Blackarachnia. She was the only unit permitted to enter the bridge tower of the Nemesis without prior administrative authorization.
Skygnaw hadn't granted her this privilege simply because she held a Commander-class rating. It was a calculated display of respect and unique authority.
To put it plainly, he was actively working to recruit her to his side.
Skygnaw had already mapped out the behavioral programming of the Decepticon high command.
Soundwave answered completely to Megatron's network. Starscream used to maintain superficial compliance while constantly plotting a coup the second a variable shifted.
Blackarachnia operated on a matrix of partial obedience and mutual cooperation, while Shockwave maintained a status of absolute functional equality.
Historically, his status had matched hers, even if she technically fell under his administrative loop. But now that his core had achieved a Leader-class classification, taking a Commander-class warrior as a subordinate was entirely logical.
"Affirmative," Skygnaw replied, his optics locked on the approaching horizon of Planet Kugrage. "That is my primary objective. The orbital fleet matches the description of the invaders provided by The Trader, though I didn't expect the local civilization to hold out this long."
"Skygnaw, what are your execution parameters?"
Blackarachnia understood exactly why he had charted a transit to this distant star system, as he had laid out his operational goals to her from the very start.
She had initially assumed he was simply providing a mission brief, but his calculated inquiries down the line finally forced her to process his underlying objective.
Skygnaw wanted her to switch her alignment permanently.
Having survived uncounted conflicts, her databases held zero space for primitive concepts like romance or emotional attachment, and she never calculated that his attention was driven by vanity.
Filtering out the impossible variables left only a solitary conclusion: Skygnaw intended to draw her out of Megatron's network and integrate her into his own faction.
A single domain could never sustain two apex predators. The Decepticon hierarchy might tolerate two Leader-class titans for a brief duration, but long-term co-existence was mathematically impossible.
In fact, ever since Skygnaw elevated his core parameters to Leader-class, her behavioral routine toward him had become distinctly nuanced.
The deep caution and mutual suspicion that used to define their interaction had given way to a baseline of relative transparency.
To her, although the young titan lacked deep historical seniority, the Decepticon regime always operated on raw power. Furthermore, Skygnaw's tactical style aligned much better with her own subroutines than Megatron's harsh rule.
One was a comrade who had practically preserved her spark and shared a brutal campaign on an alien world. The other was a warlord who did nothing but issue relentless operational directives, caring only for final data returns.
Her cognitive balance was already tilting toward a definitive choice.
Skygnaw didn't offer an immediate response, allowing his processors to evaluate the situation for a brief moment before summoning Dirge to the platform.
"Commander, I await your directives," Dirge said, his optics locked on his leader while ignoring the female warrior entirely.
"Dirge, order Ratbat to launch an atmospheric descent toward the target planet to scout its current operational metrics."
"Notify him that this serves as his absolute first assignment. I require his tracking arrays to verify..."
Blackarachnia remained perfectly silent to the flank, offering zero input. If one ignored the predatory, unsettling configuration of her frame, her quiet bearing carried a strange sense of poise.
It almost felt like refined royalty.
Skygnaw was thoroughly startled by his own internal deduction, shaking his helm rapidly to clear the file.
My processing core must be glitching to generate such an illogical calculation.
Historical records indicated that navigating the deep void shared identical traits with deep-sea submarine transit. Over extended cycles, a unit's cognitive functions were mathematically prone to developing minor stability errors.
Could his personal sanity protocols be fracturing under the strain?
Even if he hadn't logged the parameters firsthand, his databases held ample files regarding her absolute brutality across Cybertron during the war.
A warrior anchoring such a dark historical directory was fortunate to have avoided a total cognitive collapse. Expecting her to operate like a benevolent saint was pure foolishness.
Over the last few cycles, Skygnaw had successfully mapped out her logical baseline.
His strategy simply required a definitive catalyst to close the deal.
Planet Kugrage was perfectly positioned to serve as that exact catalyst.
Ultimately, Skygnaw calculated that while elite Cybertronian warriors possessed immense pride and resisted playing subordinate roles, Leader-class titans stood at the absolute apex of the Decepticon regime.
He had offered the maximum structural respect and guaranteed her premium assets, so what variables could possibly make her decline?
Ancient human text detailed a legendary strategist who required three personal visits before joining a network. Securing her badging couldn't possibly prove more resource-intensive than that primitive historical loop.
Tas City, the fifth defensive ring.
Inside the trenches, Mindborn soldiers fired their mag-rail rifles continuously, while various long-range artillery batteries kept up an unbroken roar.
Deep within the city, General Silae calculated that once this campaign concluded, his remaining troops would easily elevate into the absolute elite vanguard of the entire Mindborn Empire.
Of course, that strategic matrix depended entirely on securing a victory and surviving the meatgrinder.
With the conflict reaching this critical phase, Silae refused to hold back any reserves. Aside from routing his elite mech detachments to plug the holes along the perimeter, he systematically deployed his remaining air wings and tactical weaponry.
演变 Specialized tactical towers forged from a crystalline alloy matrix directed thousands of swarm drones universally designated as Devil-birds, which filled the airspace as they swarmed across the field.
Every time a Devil-bird dropped into the hostile lines, a localized explosion immediately tore through the coordinate.
As for the damage metrics sustained by the Sharkborn drones, the data remained unverified.
While the automated arsenal of the Mindborn Empire comprised only two variants—static gun turrets and swarm drone networks—their internal logic parameters were exceptionally advanced.
The Devil-birds fielded two distinct loadouts. The variant packing a light ballistic machine gun held zero functional utility in this siege, while the configuration integrated with high-explosive payloads secured highly accurate kills.
The drone wings constantly launching from the walls belonged exclusively to the high-explosive loadout, operating essentially as kamikaze units.
By this cycle, the first four defensive perimeters had been entirely captured by the Sharkborn legions, and the concrete pillboxes separating the rings had been completely reduced to scrap.
Multiple fortified coordinates were reduced to blackened craters filled with shattered structural debris and severed organic limbs.
The scrap heaps held a mixture of Sharkborn drone components and Mindborn biological remains.
The surrounding alien legions desperately tried to shatter the absolute final defensive ring outside the walls, but the automated gun turrets crowning the ramparts barked relentlessly, halting the Sharkborn advance for an extended duration.
Combined with the irritating aerial swarms overhead, the overall campaign vectors settled into a temporary stalemate.
Following another successful repelled charge, Silae, who had personally moved his terminal to the front lines, rapidly commanded his engineering regiments to repair the damaged structures along the fifth ring.
While the drone swarms held zero fear of death, their conscious legion chiefs could not completely ignore their baseline casualty rates.
Suffering excessive losses without delivering substantial operational returns would severely downgrade their standing before Silas Trifang.
None of the chiefs desired to experience the severe disciplinary updates that accompanied a failed rating.
The First Engineering Regiment of the Third Silae Legion was assigned to patch the defensive barriers anchoring the southern perimeter.
Ganmo gripped his repair implements tightly, his features completely blank with numbness as he tracked his sergeant's footsteps.
The sergeant's expression remained heavily grim, and a tense silence locked over every engineer in the unit.
They had executed this exact deployment loop an uncounted number of times over the last few cycles.
They had started at the first defensive ring, shifted to the second, and maintained the pattern across the third.
Now they were locked onto the fifth ring, and the proximity to the city walls was alarmingly short.
A quiet dread was spreading through the ranks, causing many to calculate that Tas City was on the verge of falling.
Operating as a basic combat engineer, Ganmo lacked a fully sealed tactical suit, allowing the pungent odors of the battlefield to flood his senses directly.
A foul, acrid stench filled the air, thick with the smell of charred organic tissue and melted alloy.
Reaching a fractured bunker coordinate, Ganmo aligned his efforts with the rest of the engineering crew to initiate repairs.
The older veterans who had cracked jokes at his expense during his very first cycle on the digging lines had completely vanished from the roster.
Every single one of them had been cut down by sudden Sharkborn assaults while trying to patch the perimeters.
Strangely, an unrated novice like himself had managed to keep his vital metrics online, though whether to calculate it as luck remained unverified.
If it was luck, his baseline survival was preserved. If it was misfortune, he was doomed to repeat a dangerous deployment loop that could delete his signature at any millisecond.
"At least my operational theater carries a higher survival matrix than the front-line infantry," Ganmo reassured himself silently.
He watched a wounded soldier being evacuated on a litter, a massive cavity torn clean through his chest armor. Ganmo's eyes filled with pity, shadowed by a quiet trace of panic.
During off-duty cycles, he had overheard files indicating that the weapons fielded by the alien drones triggered agonizing system feedback.
If a tracking line from their blasters locked onto your frame, your best calculation was praying for an instant termination code.
Otherwise, your processors would endure an intense loop of absolute agony before system shutdown.
While the First Engineering Regiment focused on the southern front, the engineering cells of three secondary legions directed repairs across the remaining sectors.
Ganmo had just finalized a structural patch and prepared to pause his subroutines when a panicked scream tore through the defensive net.
"Hostiles inbound!"
The Sharkborn legions had launched a fresh offensive wave.
Ganmo fell into the retreating column, sprinting back behind the city gates with a fluid speed born of pure repetition.
When it came to executing a rapid retreat script, his execution was perfectly optimized.
The thunder of heavy artillery outside the walls shook the landscape, but the metrics no longer concerned the engineer.
Yet amidst the high-intensity fire being traded across the perimeters, neither faction registered a mechanical avian scout slowly cutting through the upper sky in the distance.
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