FORGE FOR A BLADE

 

 

WARNING:  This is a vicious little story!  R-rated for implied brutality and violence. 

 

I originally wasn’t going to write this down.  I figured enough of Tempest’s early past was implied in other fics, and Stormrave’s account (Stormrave fled Kilair, whereas Tempest’s crippled engine prevented her from doing the same) explained what had happened to their home world.  Unfortunately, to those who know only part of the story, Tempest/Samiel’s future viciousness makes it easy for both readers and RP’ers to categorize her as one of those “born evil/evil for the sake of being evil” villians.  This is a stereotype I tried hard to avoid when creating this character, and now I feel it’s necessary to explain exactly where Tempest came from—the crucible where the future Warlord was forged.  Is this a justification?  Of course not.  Tempest’s made some serious mistakes in her life, and her beliefs have hurt her as badly as she’s hurt others in the name of those beliefs.  Still, it’s too easy to judge her as inheritly malevolent somehow.  It’s far more accurate to say she learned the wrong lessons from these, her formative experiences.  Those with strong enough stomachs can read and then make their own judgements.  But be warned—Tempest’s youth is not particularly pretty. 

 

The quote that inspired me to write this story:

 

I can’t see Tempest as any kind of victim. She's never been a victim and her life is the way it is because of choices SHE made.                                                               --Inuarai

 

 

Thank you Inuarai.  Your comment’s given me a fic—especially the “Tempest’s never been a victim.”  In a way, you’re wrong.  In a way, you’re right.

 

***

 

Transformers belong to Hasbro, but Tempest and Stormrave belong to me.

“Out of the Silent Planet” is by Iron Maiden, from the CD “Brave New World,” and was my “theme song” for this fic.

 

***

 

Withered hands, withered bodies begging for salvation

Deserted by the hand of gods of their own creation

Nations cry underneath decaying skies above

You are guilty, the punishment is death for all who live…

 

The killing fields, the grinding wheels crushed by equilibrium

Separate lives, no more disguise, no more second chances

Haggard wisdom spitting out the bitter taste of hate

I accuse you, before you know the crime it’s all too late…

 

Out of the silent planet, dreams of desolation

Out of the silent planet come the demons of creation…

 

***

 

 

            Looking up into the night sky, she could see the stars shining down, watching.  Their light was wan and pale, ineffectual.  They looked down on brutality and did nothing. 

            She struggled to blot out what was happening to her body.  She was exhausted, first from running and then from her helpless struggling.  There was no point in screaming any more—the hand over her mouth muffled her cries.  The pain where she’d been raked with their lasers and beaten with their fists threatened to overwhelm her, and much as she feared the pirate raiders, she feared oblivion more. 

            Unable to watch her body ravaged any longer, and unwilling to return to the void of darkness and pain behind her closed optics, she looked up at the stars.  She struggled to cloak that sharp and intimate pain coming from her chest behind her childhood dreams.  Out there, the storytellers said, lived all the great heroes of Kilair.  When their time on Kilair was done, they left their shells and returned to the stars.

            Another pirate jerked his fellow away from her and took his predecessor’s place, shoving his jack into her port so roughly that it caused her optics to squint reflexively and a tiny whine to tear its way from her throat.

            Blinking back tears, she returned her attention to the stars.

            If it was true—if the heroes lived among those stars, if they watched their home planet, as the legends said—then they had sat back and done nothing while the pirates massacred the Kilairians and looted the planet.  She sent out a silent plea for help, but her only answer was the groans and laughter of the pirates ringing in her audio sensors. 

            And she wondered if the stars were empty.  Was there nothing behind that light?  Or perhaps there was something…and it just didn’t care.

            She gathered her strength to scream for help again, and got off one good cry before they choked her throat so she could not scream any more.

            This cry, like all her others, went unanswered.

            And the stars observed dispassionately, never blinking.

 

***

 

            The next evening at sunset she dragged her aching body from beneath the overhang of crumbling mortar.  The pirates had finally left her locked in the basement of a house, allowing themselves the possibility of returning for another evening’s entertainment.  Sometime during the day she’d fallen asleep, and later been woken by the concussion of a bomb blast that had knocked a hole in the basement wall.  Digging with a fallen shard of metal, she’d worked her way out of the basement and now stood in the shadow of the building, casting her optics upon the corpse of a city.

In the northern sky the setting sun was fire.  Ribbons of smoke hung heavy in the air, reeking of cordite and melted plastics.  Here and there a few heaps of debris still smouldered.   Nothing was recognizable—it was hard to believe she was even on Kilair any more.  What was this metamorphosis that had befallen her planet? 

She tilted her head for a moment, examining the structure that yawned, half-collapsed, across the street.  The hole that had been blasted into its main wall was a gaping maw of blackness; protruding bricks were its teeth.  She shrank back reflexively, imagining that it reached out to swallow her.  It took her a moment to recognize the building as Silicia City Hall.  Yesterday it had been resplendant with its brass pillars and bold green trim; today the pillars were fallen and the trim almost obliterated by scorch marks. 

On the street in front of the hall, she saw a familiar outline.  The wide red shoulders, the hovercar jets on his hips, the ornamental hook on the top of his head were all dearly familiar to her.  The little robot scampered over, crying the name of her former teacher.  She fell down at her teacher’s side, shaking him, urging him to help her.  He looked back at her out of sightless optics and did not move.  It took her several minutes to realize the significance of the fluid-stained blade through his chest.

            There had been nothing distinguishing about yesterday morning.  All the young robots went to school as they always did.  They received a mid-day break, as they always did.  She had been at play with her best friend, as she always did…

            …and then the dark raiders descended from the sky, beams of light blazing from cylinders in their hands, and whatever they touched fell in pain.  Deactivated.  Dead.  Or if not immediately dead, then crippled, rendered easy prey for the killers and their weapons.  Before yesterday, she’d known only a handful of very old robots who’d been deactivated when the vital circuits in their mental processors gave out, and she’d heard of two younger ones who’d been crushed in accidents. 

            Today her list of the dead included nearly everyone she knew.  Or, perhaps not everyone…so many were simply gone.  In a way a corpse was a comfort, since its message about its owner’s fate was, at least, definite.  In absence was both hope of a friend’s survival, and fear of a more hideous fate.

            Briefly, she raised her head skyward.  Her best friend had fled out there, somewhere, beyond the atmosphere and into the realm of the stars.  She could not follow.  She stamped her right foot, feeling the throbbing in her crippled engine.  She was bound to the Kilairian atmosphere, thanks to the aftereffects of a glancing laser blast.  Her right engine simply did not work as it should any longer and she could not get the necessary thrust to enter space.  She’d tried soon after the first attack, falling time and again back into the smoky Kilairian sky, unable to break the gravitational field of the planet that kept holding her back, sucking her down to her doom.

            Lost, frightened, alone, she curled up beside the body of her teacher and cried.

 

***

 

            Sometime later she raised her head and looked about, only to realize that what she had hoped for while she rested had not come to pass.  As she’d laid there with her head buried beneath her arms, she’d wished fervently that when she next looked up, Kilair would be restored and all would be as it had always been.  As of yesterday, precious little had changed in Kilair since the day she’d come off the assembly line.  As of today, the planet’s face had altered radically in a single cycle of the sun.

            The sight of the shattered city of Silicia told her that it had all been real.  Wish though she might, it was not simply a dream…a dream beyond her nightmares, for nothing in her prior experience had lead her to even imagine that such a fate as this could exist for any living thing.

            Lesson—Tears cannot save you.

            She looked at her teacher’s corpse with curiousity.  She’d never seen death so close before.  Yesterday she had not had the luxury of stopping to examine the bodies of the fallen.

Her teacher’s face looked the same—his skin even felt the same—but his body was cold, and the comforting purr of machinery inside his chest was absent.  The transformation had been brought about by another thing she’d never seen up close before:  a weapon.

Her attention fell on the object that had wrought this sea-change—the sword that had found a new sheath in the teacher’s body.  It was a laser-beam, a rod of crackling blue energy emanating from a golden hilt.  The weapon drew her like a magnet.  She reached out, wrapping her fingers around the hilt and tugging backwards.  Nothing.

            She rose to her feet, curling one hand over the other and leaning back.  The blade slid, slightly, and then lodged again.  She braced her legs and rearranged her hands on the hilt so she could grip it more tightly; as she did so, her hand hit the little activation stud on the hilt and the laser blade died abruptly.  Its light vanished and the thin metal of the conductor telescoped, sliding neatly back into the handle.  She was still tugging on it, and at the sudden loss of resistance, she fell over backwards.

            She struggled up onto her elbows, her hand still holding the hilt, when her optics caught sight of a flickering movement on a crumbled wall nearby, a few milliklicks away to the right.

            Pirates?

            Terrified, she flattened herself back down so that the raiders wouldn’t see her.  She listened intently for their footfalls or voices, the telltale growl of an engine, but her audio sensors picked up nothing.  Carefully she raised her head, peeking only her optics and the top of her helmet with its twin blue spires above the wall.

            On the ragged foundation of what had once been a house, a sleek silver salamander placed one forefoot delicately in front of the other, observing a beautiful silicate insect that had alighted on a fold of metal.  The insect set off gorgeous iridescent hues from its dark wings; its multifaceted eyes glittered like jewels in the light.  The little robot smiled for a moment, remembering how she and her best friend had once chased those insects around the schoolyard, competing to catch the one with the prettiest wings. 

The salamander was a species that rarely came into Sicilia—they were more common on the outskirts of the city, near the oil fields.  It was beautiful in its own way, rounded and plump, its skin reflecting the ruby light of the dying sun.  It was studying the insect just like she was, admiring every motion of the lovely wings, stepping closer to inspect the intricate patterns, close enough to…

            The salamander’s tongue darted forward, wrapping around the insect, dragging the hapless bug into its toothed maw.  The lizard shut its jaws on the insect with a resounding crunch.

            She flinched, appalled.

            The salamander continued crunching with great satisfaction.  One shining wing broke off the bug’s back and fell to the lizard’s feet.  The insect’s fuel and juices ran down the salamander’s chin.  The silver beast simply licked its lips to suck up as much of the fuel as it could.  It seemed to grin with enjoyment of its meal.

            For the first time since awakening, she spoke.

            “You’re not sorry, are you?”

            The salamander did not answer, but if it could, she knew that it would not express any regret.  It started a little at the sound of her voice, turning its head to gaze at her.  She stayed perfectly still, and the lizard relaxed.  It turned in a circle a few times and shut its optics, settling down into its rest cycle, its fuel tank filled with the liquid energy it had obtained from its meal.  It would rest now, processing the insect’s matter into more energy.

            No.  It was not in the least bit sorry that it had destroyed something beautiful.

            Lesson—Beauty cannot save you.

            Briefly, she wondered why she’d never considered what salamanders ate before.  It was sad, in a way.  If only there were another way for the salamander to refuel.  But, since there was not, the salamander was condemned to a life of viciousness and…evil?

            The sleeping salamander did not seem evil, as it slept there.  Of course not.  It did not consider right or wrong.  When it was hungry, it ate.  To eat, it killed.  It was as simple as that.  Right and wrong did not enter into the equation.

            She turned her head back, speculatively, to the city.  The ruins of Sicilia smouldered in the dimming light, and with their smoke they spoke their condemnation upon the raiders who had brought them to this ruin.  The voices of the dead pronounced, in her mind, that they had been victims of a great evil.

            She turned her head back to the salamander.

            If you are hungry, eat.

            If you want…take.

            Lesson.

            Her own fuel tank was aching as she approached redline.  She’d wasted massive amounts of energon in her futile attempts to escape Kilair’s gravity.  She needed more fuel, and quickly.  The day’s rest had freshened her a little, but could not make up for the fact that she was very hungry.

            She eyed the salamander, fat with fuel.

            She fumbled with the laser hilt in her hand.  Her finger found and pressed the stud; the blade appeared with an electric zap.  The salamander’s optics opened at the noise, zeroing in on her.  She raised the blade high, aiming for the salamander’s midsection, and jumped up onto the foundation as she brought the sword down in a crude and unpracticed blow.  The lizard was far too quick for her; before her feet touched down the salamander was over the other side of the wall, and her blade came down on bare metal.

            Angered by the salamander’s resistance, she sprinted forward.  The lizard was fleeing across the trampled yard behind the wreckage of the house, heading for a grotto on the other side. 

            No, you don’t.

            She transformed into jet mode, firing her good engine and zipping across the yard, where she landed and transformed just in front of the salamander.  “You’re cornered,” she growled, raising the sword again.

            It looked up at her, hissing, and sank its teeth into her right foot.  In its mouth it had a sort of blowtorch, and it fired that appendage now, sending a sheet of flame out of its throat.  Heat seared her skin.  The animal’s fangs held to her leg, keeping the torch close to her, and if that wasn’t enough, her foot was still tender from the laser scorch that had crippled her right engine.  She shrilled out loud, kicking violently, and dropped her sword.  The salamander lost its grip and flew a few milliklicks; she lost her footing and fell over on her backside.  The salamander recovered faster than she and rolled onto its stomach, gathering its feet under itself and slithering into the grotto quick as silver lightning.  She sat there stupidly, watching it go.

            A few moments later, she gathered up the laser blade’s hilt and climbed to her feet.  Her right foot was tender where the salamander had bitten it.

            Lesson—It was possible to fight back.

 

***

 

            Limping down the street, she became aware of voices nearby.  Once again, reflexively, she ducked into a building and crouched beneath the shattered window, listening.  This time it was definitely robots; she could hear their heavy footfalls and the sounds they were making gradually developed from the distance-muffled noise of speech into clearly distinguishable words.

            “Figure that’s about it for this planet.”

            “Roger.”  A scuffle, as if the speaker had kicked a fallen shard.  “Not much here.”

            “Speak for yourself.  You shoulda seen what we got out of the mayor’s place.  Jewels, precious metals.  I’m gonna get a fortune for this stuff at Gnarth’s bar.”

            From their words, they were raiders, not native Kilairians.  There were three of them, she figured.  The first one spoke again, in a deep surly voice.

            “You sorry you came?”

            The second one laughed.  “Not in the least.  Just because I didn’t get a lot of plunder to take away with me, didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy my stay, if you know what I mean.”

            General laughter.

            “I’m tellin’ you,” said the deep-voiced raider, “the males here didn’t teach their femmes nothin’.  Those ladies should be grateful they got a chance to learn that stuff before they died.”

            “They died too easy,” the second one commented.  “And you know this lousy planet’s only got the one city, and a few outlying towns?  I just got back from the towns.  There’s nothing left.  We’ve scrapped the place in less’n two days.”

            “Still, it was a looter’s paradise!” the third raider laughed.  “I can’t believe all this stuff!”

            “Keep your stuff,” said the second pirate.  “I’d rather have my victims put up a little fight.  It’s more fun that way.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” whined the looter.  “Me, I’m never gonna have it this easy again.”

            “Awww.  You’re gonna have to work for your haul next time.  We’re so very sorry for ya.”  He snorted.  “Me, I was hopin’ for some new weaponry.  So much for that.  Unbelievable—a whole planet of unarmed bots.  Not a weapon to be found.”

            “Headin’ back now?” the second one asked.

            “Yeah.  Not much else to do around here,” replied the first pirate.  “Besides, the shuttle’s pullin’ out soon and me, I’m low on fuel.  I gotta catch a ride.”

            The shuttle.  She glanced down at her wounded engine.  The Kilairian leaders had dynamited the oil wells and energon factories in one last act of defiance when they’d realized their planet was lost.  She could not reopen the wells by herself.  She’d been trying when the pirate pack had found her.  That meant that soon there would be no fuel left on Kilair.  She would starve and die unless she left this planet.  And, with her engine malfunctioning, her only way out was aboard that pirate vessel.

            She shivered.  She could hardly bear the thought of seeing those pirates again.  What if they found her on their ship?  What new torment would they devise for her?  What other sport would be made of her?  All she wanted to do was run, run away and cry…

            …and die, without fuel, alone on a ravaged world.

            Lesson—Tears cannot save you.

            Lesson—If you want, take.

            They had no right to kill her.  No right, unless she gave it to them by giving up.  They had taken her world—they would take no more.  They could not have her life without price.

            Lesson—It is possible to fight back.

            The best way to fight back was to keep on surviving.  The only way to do that was to get aboard the shuttle.  Perhaps she could sneak away into the hold of the pirate vessel and hide there until the ship docked at another planet.  And if not—if they found her and killed her—then at least their victory would not come easy.  At least she would not kill herself for them, by giving up.

            The raiders passed her by.  She followed at a distance, shadowing them all the way back to their ship.

 

***

 

            The ship seemed monstrous to her.  It was as large as a house.  The Kilairians had possessed only a handful of space shuttles which were rarely used.  Kilair had been an isolationist planet, keeping to itself, hoping in that way to avoid the wars that scarred other worlds. 

            Fools, she thought.  To run, hide and pretend you are safe.  Look at the disaster you have brought to us.  Look at what became of us, and all because you did not teach your next generations to fight.

            What happened to me happened because of your omission.

            Why did you not teach me? she raged.  Why did you not tell me that there is no mercy in this universe?  Why did you not warn me that the weak will always be crushed by the strong? 

            Why did you choose to be weak?

            They did not answer her.  They could not.  They were dead, their bodies already developing a fine covering of rust.

            She knew, already, that she did not want to end up like them.  Perhaps she wouldn’t; somehow, she had survived this long.  Perhaps she was stronger than they had been.  Perhaps she had more in common with the pirates than the other Kilairians.

            She thought about the pain the raiders had put her through.  There was a stab from her interface cable, a reminder of the torture the day before.  She never wanted that to happen to her again.  No more helplessness, no more fear, no more pain.

            She remembered the lizard.  Eat or be eaten.

            And she opened her side panel and withdrew the hilt of the laser blade.  Yes.  She preferred to be on this side of the weapon.

            She was examining the ship, trying to figure out a way to sneak aboard past the milling pirates who were loading their plunder, when she heard the voice behind her.

            “Hello little lady.”

            She gasped instinctively and wheeled around.  It was the deep-voiced pirate from the earlier group.  He was not one of the pack who had violated her—or if he was, she didn’t remember him.  She barely remembered any of their faces; only their hands, their laughter, and the pain.

            He was eyeing her now with cold optics.  He held a long sword loosely in his right hand; its tip trailed patterns in the dust.  He was almost twice her height.  Like the other pirates, his transformation mode was obviously a black spaceship, but three red pinstripes down his wings and sides set him off from his fellows.  She could see the purple insignia on his wings clearly now.  They looked like faces with pointed chins and optics, painted on somewhat sloppily.  She felt herself rooted to the ground, unable to do anything but stare at him.

            He grinned.  “Well now little lady, what’re you doing hiding back here?  You ought to come out and play.  We could have lots of fun…heh, heh.”

            He reached for her, and in his leering grin she saw the reflection of the pack’s smirks when they’d had their sport with her.

            Not again.

            She ran.  Behind her, the pirate transformed and blasted off; desperate, she transformed as well and lit her right afterburner.  She was lighter, faster, and for a moment she drew away from her pursuer.

            And then, her fuel level critical, her good engine gave out.  She transformed just as she tumbled to the ground.

            In seconds the pirate was next to her, clenching her right shoulder in a vice-like grip.  “You aren’t going anywhere, little lady,” he hissed.  The exhaust of his breath was hot and smelled like spilled fuel.  He turned her roughly so that she faced him and put his other hand on her other shoulder, ready to force her to the ground.  In his optics she caught sight of the reflection of her own face, frozen with fear.

            His right hand reached out for her chest panel, ready to rip it open.

            “If you’re good, little lady, I’ll kill you quick when I’m done.”

            She felt sickened.  Again.  It was all going to happen again…

            Not fair.  It was not fair.  He was bigger, stronger, older, armed, part of a group.  She could not hope to best him.  It was not fair.

            The universe cared nothing for fair.  Fair meant nothing any more.

            He would hurt her, possibly kill her.  He would inflict pain on her for his own amusement.

            The universe cared nothing for her pain. 

            He would get away with his crime.  No one would punish him.  He would not regret his actions.  There was no justice.

            The universe cared nothing for justice.  Or no…justice was won by force of arms.  This was a world where one had to make his own justice.

            She was left alone with her pain, in a fight she could not expect to win, in a world where her emotions were of no value whatsoever.

            Lesson—so bury them.  They have no bearing on you.  They are no use to you.  Your fear, your hurt, will only hold you down.  Bury them.

            But in her spark was a light of something else:  a fire, burning hot and bright.  Not fair.  Not right.  Not important—you are worthless.  We are all worthless, in the end.  There were hunters out there seeking to victimize her and an uncaring universe willing to let it happen.  The fire was kindled from anger—rage against a heedless world—and deepened into something else, a feeling she did not know the word for.  One with more experience might have called it hate.

            Whatever it was, it stoked itself, feeding off her pain and fear, burning them away into something hot and pure and sharp, focusing itself on the pirate.  It sent pulses of energy surging through her system.  Her optics brightened, taking on a ruby glow.  Her breath quickened, whistling in and out of her intakes in a relentless rhythm.  Her frame tensed, ready for action.  Her mind raced.  Her fuel pump tightened, beating in a fatal crescendo.  Her hate was a reactor, turning fear into power.

            She felt, in her right hand, the hilt of the laser blade.

            He pushed her over.  She fell, but she fell deliberately, using her left hand to cushion her landing.  His left hand kept her pinned while his right hand opened his own chest.  The hilt was warm in her grip, but she waited.  She waited until he had his own panel open and his interface cable in his right hand.

            Slowly, deliberately, she raised her right arm.  He was so intent on his target that he never gave her movement any thought.  She lifted her hand as close as possible to his open chest and pressed the activation stud.

            With a zap the blue blade shot out, piercing into the pirate’s chest cavity, lighting up with its deadly blue glare.

            For a moment her breath caught in her intakes as she wondered whether the blow had wounded him.  The pirate wasn’t moving, save for his optics which were wide with surprise.  She kicked out, and though her foot connected with his leg, it didn’t do much to budge him.  She herself could not get away; his left hand was pressing down on her harder, pinning her to the spot.  She writhed, kicking out again, raising her left fist to punch his face.

            He collapsed to his knees, kneeling over her.  His hands retreated to his chest and a soft whimper tore itself from his throat.  She scrambled to her feet, almost slipping, but never once letting go of the sword.  He raised his hands to the hilt and she punched him in the face, knocking him over backwards.  Her grip on the hilt pulled the sword partway out as he fell onto his back and she stumbled on top of him.

            The pirate twitched beneath her.  He was reaching out for the sword hilt again.  She scrabbled to her feet and kicked his arms away.  His movements beneath her became weaker, but she did not trust him; she clutched the hilt possessively with both hands and glared down into his face.

            He had the same expression of helplessness and fear she’d seen on her own face when she’d looked into his optics.

            With curiousity, she leaned forward and looked there again.  The pirate screamed as her movement drove the blade back deeper into his chest.

            “No!” he cried.  A pause.  “Please…I’ll let you go…please…”

            His words echoed in her head.  “If you’re good, I’ll kill you quick when I’m done.”  She had no doubt what he’d meant to do to her. 

            The raiders were not like the salamander.  The lizard killed for food.  The raiders inflicted pain for sport.  And they could, because they were stronger. 

There was another lesson there.  Their power gave them the right.  This time, the tables were turned and she was the one with the power.  What was she to do with it?

            Experimentally she leaned down on the hilt, pressing her chest against it.  The pirate screamed, writhing under her in pain.  She braced herself, riding his movements until he stilled again.  She sucked in a breath and pushed down once more.

            Oh, yes.  It was much more fun on this end.

            She lessened up the pressure.  He gasped, whimpering, looking up at her with agonized optics. 

            She felt a sudden rush, full of her own power.  It suddenly struck her how the pirates had felt when they sacked the city.  Briefly, she heard her teacher’s voice echoing in her head…something about mercy and forgiveness.

            “Say you’re sorry.”

            “What?” the pirate whimpered.

            “I said…” and her voice was commanding, as it had never been before “…say you’re sorry.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “Louder.”  She pressed just a little on the hilt.

            “I’m sorry!”

            “Well now.”  She released the pressure and the pirate gasped in relief.  She moved back a little, bracing herself, clasping both hands firmly around the hilt.  The raider looked up at her with an expression of questioning, though his optics twitched every once in a while from the ribbons of agony that must be ripping through him from the hole in his chest.

            A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth and she spoke.

            “That’s too bad, isn’t it?”

            With all her force she drove the sword blade down.

            The pirate screamed, but his final cry ended in a gurgle.  He coughed, fuel gushing between his lips.  The thick blackness of half-processed energon puddled in his chest cavity, rising to spill around her feet.

            The light was fading quickly from his optics, but in their last flare she caught sight of her reflection—a little Seeker with hard and ruthless optics, and the grin of the victor.

 

***

 

            Only afterward, when she was certain that he was dead, when she had turned off the blade and returned the hilt to her carrying space, when the fires of hate had died down to a low smoulder, did she ask herself what she had done.

            Killing was unimagineable to her people.  Her best friend, always a fighter, had been constantly being disciplined for her impulsive ways.  The Kilairians hammered into all their young ones’ heads that hurting one another was evil.  Surely killing was a greater evil than a push or a punch.

            And now she…the little shy flyer …was a killer.  If the elders were alive, they would punish her to the fullest extent of their abilities…for she had done great evil.  For she was evil.

            She did not feel evil.

            Good?  Evil?  What had those concepts to do with life?

            She simply…was.

            And she would do whatever she must to continue to…be.  What else could she do?  Lie down and die?  So many of the other Kilairians had died.  She would have died, had she not killed the pirate. 

Someone would have died anyway, she realized.  Let it be him.  I was smarter.  I was faster.  I deserved to live.

He deserved to die.

I won my own right to survival, she thought, feeling suddenly very much satisfied.  She tossed the laser blade’s handle from hand to hand, and then, curiously, reached out and took hold of the pirate’s weapon.

Yes.  Something else she had won.  To the victor go the spoils.

There was a smell, nearly driving her to distraction.  Fuel.  It was his spilled fuel.  The pungent odour of half-processed energon reminded her that she was very close to redline, and if she didn’t refuel soon, she’d fall into stasis lock.  Here, on this dying planet, there was no one to reactivate her.  If she went offline, she would stay offline.  She needed fuel.  She probably could not make it back to the shuttle without it.

And there was a puddle of it right next to her.  The pirate’s chest made a bowl, holding in the fluid of life.

Lesson—If you want, take.

On ruined Kilair there was no one to criticize.  She did not know that even the pirates did not feed on their own dead.  She did not understand that Cybertronian cultures the universe over condemned cannibalism.  If she had known, she would not have cared.  She was hungry.  She fed.  It was what the lizard would have done.  It was what was needed, to survive.  It was what life had taught her, and she, the survivor—she had learned well.

She lowered her face and drank.

The fuel was thick, carrying a strange tangy residue that was reminiscent of rust.  The flavour was strong, but her hunger made it taste good.  She could feel the heavy fluid running down her throat into her fuel tank.  Clutching her fingers around the sides of the pirate’s chest, she ripped it open as wide as she could to expose more of his fuel lines.  The pointed teeth in her mouth, placed there at the time of her manufacture to aid her in gripping a fuel nozzle, were sharp enough to rend the pirate’s tubing and pour more fuel into her mouth.  When the flow stopped, she pressed her lips to his lines and sucked, drinking down all the energon she could draw out of her kill.  She drank and drank until there was no more. 

Finally, at long last, she raised her head with a laugh of triumph, savouring the taste of her final swallow, knowing as she leaned over the body of the pirate that she had what it took to survive in this best of all possible worlds.  In a gesture of triumph—and in defiance of the heedless stars above—she raised the pirate’s sword to the sky and loosed a scream of victory. 

Had there been any other Kilairians alive to hear her, they would not have recognized the figure that knelt above the pirate’s body.  The little yellow Seeker had been a shy one, a quiet one, an inobtrusive and well-behaved one, submissiveness and timidity personified.  Her name had become a small irony to her leaders and peers.  She’d been named for the weather on the day of her creation—she and her sister both.  Her sister had been named Stormrave, and lived up to it with her recklessness and temper.  Her name did not suit nearly as well.

That was then.  This was another time, another existence.  So much had been burned away by the flames that had ravaged Kilair—but such is the nature of refinement.  And the fires of war had only begun to fashion, of the quiet little Seeker, a weapon built to kill.

And she howled now, raising her voice to the rising wind, her optics blazing with red fury and her hands dripping the fuel of her prey.

Tempest—the storm.

 

***

 

            Lying low in the hold of the shuttle, she shifted a little, trying to get into a more comfortable position.  There was precious little room back here, behind the boxes of plundered goods.  The hold was stacked, floor to ceiling, with crates, interspersed with larger items of pillage.  Still, by twisting a little she managed to squirm her way between two crates to the wall of the ship.

            There was a little more space back here, as the boxes wouldn’t fit flush with the hull.  And there was a porthole, a little round window that looked out onto the blackness of space.  She climbed her way up from box to box; the edges of the crates formed a rough staircase which also served well as a stoop.  She sat herself down in front of the porthole, her legs dangling over the side of the box that served as her chair, another box supporting her back.

            Below and behind, she caught one last glimpse of Kilair.  The planet that had been her home seemed so insignificant now, one more ball amidst all the other balls hanging in the eternal void of space.  And here she was at last, amidst all those stars she’d always dreamed of.  They sparkled just out of reach on the other side of the porthole.  Up close, they were beautiful…

            …but emotionless.  They could shine overtop atrocity as easily as overtop peace.  They could look down on both cruelty and kindness, heedless of any distinction between them.  To the stars there was no good; to the stars there was no evil.  There simply…was.

            She peered hard into the blackness, but she could find no glimmer of the heroes, no legends come to life.  There was no ship of benefactors pulling over to the side of the pirate shuttle, holding out their hands to her and offering rescue.  There wasn’t even the tiny red arrow of her best friend coming to verify her welfare.  There was nothing.

            The stars looked down at her and their eyes were cold.

            She felt abandoned in the belly of the pirate vessel, and it was only as she sat there that she realized that she had been abandoned for all of her life.  There was no one here to help her now…but if the pirates had come earlier, if they had come last week, or last year, or ten years previous, would there have been anyone then?

            Of course not.

            Stormrave, her best friend, had left her to die.  For a moment she felt anger, and then, even that faded.  It did not matter.  This was a world where one looked out for one’s self.  The stars would not condemn Stormrave.  Why should she? 

            ~In the end we are always alone.~

Her prior existence seemed surreal now.  Her memories were dreamlike, hazy…her recollections, an ever-shifting mirage.  They lacked the diamond-edged pain that gave clarity to her current circumstances.  The world now was sharp, vivid, and hostile, pulsing with its own predatory energies.  She had never felt more alive. 

She slid her finger into her mouth, tasting the last trace of the pirate’s life fuel.  She had killed him and it was good.  She would kill again, when she was hungry…no, she corrected herself.  She would kill again if she wanted to.  She would kill when she felt like it.  It was within her power now.  Everything was, if her body was capable.  There was only one rule—the strongest must win, and the weakest must die.  That was the final and purest lesson.

There was no room for evil.  There was no room for forgiveness.  Life was magnificently clear and clean, a panorama of stark colours and harsh edges.  She would claim her place in it.

And to this universe she would show as much mercy as it had shown to her.