Post by Solsabre on May 28, 2011 20:41:00 GMT -5
The Final Charge
Book Three of the Cybertronian Histories
"There was a time long ago, when we didn't say 'Till All Are One'. Rather we shouted in salute 'As All Are One'" Dreadheart - Decepticon Warrior and Deacon City Commander
Preludes- The Final Charge
The Halicon Guard
They are the true Elite and upper class of the Decepticons, also known as the ‘Old Guard’
The Halicon Order believes every individual has their place in Cybertronian Society. Thus they view Megatron as a usurper out of his place. Are disgusted by Gladiator battles, because they barbaric and not honorable.
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Part One
Present Day
In the light of Cybertron’s new found star, two mechs crept through the main gates of the deserted Decepticon HQ at Dark Mount. They moved through the base quietly to avoid announcing their presence to any inhabitants, baring the same insignia upon their chests, still in the vicinity. Many Decepticons remained hidden on Cybertron after Unicron’s attempt to destroy the planet and didn’t flee with the main Decepticon force lead by the Unicron-reborn Decepticons.
Entering the Decepticon Control Room, the winged mech leading the way scanned the room only to find it as vacant as the rest of base. Similarly, the other glanced out the floor-to-ceiling viewing glass on the south side toward the outer perimeter for signs of pursuit.
Discovering no sign of pursuers outside, the treaded mech faced his winged commander, who was quietly punching away on a dimly lit console. The treaded mech fidgeted momentarily before finally speaking up.
“Frag it, Dreadheart, what if the Autobots find us snooping around here?” Triblade grumbled, pacing among the display console and chairs, impatiently. “Tentative truce or not, I sincerely doubt they would tolerate us coming here as we please.”
“Be silent, Triblade,” Dreadheart ordered bluntly never taking his optics off the screen before him, causing Triblade to be taken back by the unusual sharpness rarely aimed at him. “Let them think what they want for now. What I came for does not affect them or their pursuit for Megatron’s former forces.”
His vocals dropped to a low whisper, “this is personal.”
The computer bleeped in a successful search of queue found within the quarter roster listed on the screen. Dreadheart immediately deactivated the console and proceed down a corridor branching away from the control room, not bothering to see if his comrade was behind him. Triblade hurriedly followed at his commander’s abrupt order “Come”.
Tromping through various dark halls and turning right or left so often so quickly, Triblade soon became twisted around and unsure of the way back. Dreadheart continued his fever pace, never slowing down and silently confidence of his directions.
Finally, at one small intersection Dreadheart paused, granting his dizzy and huffing 2IC a relieving respite.
“Stay here, keep watch,” he instructed Triblade as he walked down a particular unremarkable hallway. “I won’t be long.”
Heading down the lifeless and dark hallway, distance memories began stirring within the depths of the exiled seeker’s mind. Memories recounting the last meeting between Dreadheart and the mech his considered his mentor.
************Flashback***********************
6 Million Years Ago
In a sector of decrepit buildings, a looming shadow narrowed in on the limping mech laboring way in a clearing below. The mech remained oblivious to his surrounding as the shadow moved closer. The mech’s armor was chip and dull in color; chest and shoulder wounds left untreated; dents and joints caked with dried dirt and grease. A flicker of sadness appeared in red optics at the stricken mech’s state.
Coming up behind the stricken transformer without a sound, the watcher placed a tentative hand on a wretched shoulder and spoke in a gruff voice, “Dreadheart.”
The decrepit figure jerked around in panic at the touch and sound, cowering ever so slightly. Dreadheart tensed until he recognized the mech before him, quickly turning his optics away in shame.
“Primetheus,” Dreadheart barely acknowledged him and instead turned away from the old commander of the Halicon Guard.
Primetheus furrowed his optic ridges at his former pupil’s disgraceful posture. By Primus…what have they done to you? The Halicon Leader thought to himself.
He reflected back to the memory of a proud Decepticon warrior standing tall before him at the Oath Ceremony, recognizing the young Dreadheart as fully-fledge warrior of the Halicon Guard. However, that time had long since past and he did not see that proud Decepticon before him now. Primetheus glowered in anger
“Face me when I address you, fool! Stand with some dignity as fitting for a Halicon warrior or do you have no honor left?” Dreadheart pivoted around at the command, standing as straight as he could, but his optics still lacked luster.
“Pitiful,” Primetheus spat.
He stood before Dreadheart and recited sternly, “You do know that by swearing loyalty to Megatron, you would have to bear any consequences because of your choice, even now when you have fallen from his favor.”
Silence. “I know.”
“You know that by our Code, you are bound to Megatron by your oath of service to him. You cannot break away from him lest you betray your honor and that of the Guard.”
Dreadheart gripped a trembling fist before him and spoke grimly, “You think I don’t know that! You taught me the Code yourself! You drilled them into me until I knew nothing else! Yes! Yes, I do intend to keep that oath and what honor I still have, even if it only leads to my eventual death.”
Primetheus widen his optics in pure shock, “What are you saying?”
“Death is the only way a Decepticon’s name is taken off the X-listed and forgotten as if they never existed.”
Ashamed, Dreadheart painfully turned toward the direction of the several half-collapsed structures currently serving as the barracks for X-listed Decepticons. X-listed. It was a death sentence. The scorn of the Decepticons was placed within those ranks.
Dreadheart quickly left Primetheus behind, hurrying faster than his body allowed him to go. The seeker’s stiff leg caught on fallen debris and stumbled to his knees. A tarnished hand grabbed his upper arm, stabilizing the warrior’s balance. Dreadheart groaned from pain radiating throughout his entire body. The hand eased its grip and pulled him back into a sitting position against a dilapidated wall. Primetheus knelt beside him, examining the down trodden warrior’s wounds and withdrew a basic repair kit from subspace.
“Dreadheart, I know what happened,” he said quietly not taking his gaze off the damaged leg. The former elite seeker cringed from the hands probing his leg. “If anything I’m proud of you.”
Red optics jerked upward startled at Primetheus’s words, lip components hung agape. “But the Guard…”
“You have discovered a truth so many are blind to, myself included. And so, you chose of your own will to enter the X-listed ranks rather than become an ambitious, self-seeking, and cruel Decepticon just like all the rest,” the Halicon Commander sneered with great distain as he spoke bitterly about the current generation of Decepticons. “You have not disgraced it for that reason. I, too, was blind to Megatron’s ambition.”
Aged hands shut several leg panels, completing the repairs and sub-spacing his med kit. Standing, Primetheus extended his arm down to Dreadheart. Grabbing the offered hand, the X-listed warrior wearily pushed himself off the ground using Primetheus and the fallen wall for support till his stabilizers could reconfigure themselves.
Lost in thought, Dreadheart surmised, “I just wish I knew what to do next.”
“Only you can answer that,” Primetheus replied gruffly. “I can no longer help you.”
“If only there were another option…,” he muttered looking in the direction of the run down barracks.
Realization shot through Dreadheart’s processor as a not-so-distance memory resurfaced of the state of despair emanating from the other X-listed Decepticons. Those Decepticons were shunned for their imperfections or failing to conform to Megatron’s policies. They were the ones who could not see a life beyond the next battle. Subconsciously, Dreadheart clenched his fist and his optics narrowed.
Primetheus shuffled backwards at the sudden change in his former pupil’s demeanor. No longer did a broke down mech stand before him; rather Dreadheart stood tall with a renewed vigor, anger seeped from his very body.
“The day I swore service to Megatron; I also swore loyalty to the Decepticon Cause.” He turned his head upward in contemplation. “I believed in it utterly, but that cause no longer exists if it ever did. Glory and expansion for all of Decepticon kind, but now I understand it was all a lie.”
“If it is my destiny to die, then so be it! I have my honor and I will make a new oath. Not to Megatron, not to the glory of the Decepticon Cause, but to those rejected by the Decepticon ideals, those who have no choice and no hope.
*********************
Present day
Traveling down the corridor a ways, Dreadheart stumbled across a regular non-descriptive door, but a door that actually belonged to the former Decepticon leader. Forcing the door ajar and reluctantly sliding back into its recess within the wall, the exiled seeker hovered in the entrance of the quarters of the Decepticon tyrant that forever destroyed Dreadheart’s world.
For a mech of such strength and power, Megatron’s quarters were quite Spartan until one saw the display of archaic weapons and other war trophies along the back wall…and in the middle of it all…laid the head of the mech he respected most…