The corridors were pitch black with the darkness of space. Only the most necessary of the starship’s systems remained online, and even the emergency lights that normally would have glowed at corners and doors had been turned off to conserve power. The air’s gas mix was heavy in oxygen for a Cybertronian ship, but the beast modes it had originally been enriched for would have gasped at its thinness. The other robots from Earth were gone, however, and the ship’s recycling plant had been dialed back to operate at the minimum level to support a crew of two. The far-off hum of the engine vibrated, more felt than heard due to the lack of air, through the metal walls and flooring. There was something broken in the thrum, a suggestion of a hitch where the engines had been mended and held together with make-shift welds and desperation. That slight stutter was the only indication of movement on the ship, a hulk sleeping peacefully as jets pushed it slowly toward a planet still far away.

On board, two lights were awake. Two read-outs crawled blue status reports, reflected over and over again down a double row of clear glassy surfaces until the stasis pod containment area held a faint glow of gray against the black of the ship. It was enough to pick out highlights on the two robots upright in their pods, offline and waiting for rescue. It made them look ancient, like they had been waiting for years.

Reflected from metal surfaces down the corridor came a brighter light as a viewscreen woke suddenly, power surging into unused sensor systems that tracked an unknown object coming toward the Cutting Edge. The bridge took on a dim gray cast, the tangled wires and savaged consoles a confusing mass. The lobotomized computer ticked through a series of queries to the sensors about collision vectors and possible identification of the object. It considered rerouting power to bring the few working cannons to bear. If the object was a chunk of rock or ice, then that might suffice. Had the computer not been so damaged, it would have run an analysis on the fuel available and chosen an evasive maneuver instead despite the fuel burn. It would cost less fuel to enact a gradual course change than activate one of the cannons.

Unfortunately, the computer had lost too much of its original programming. Queries answered to mechanical satisfaction, the engines changed pitch to roll the starship enough to get a clear shot, and the threatening chunk of ice and rock vanished in a laser flare. Minutes later, the hull pinged as the remains hit in a miniature shower that pitted already battered alloy. The weapon that had fired took a hit to its mounting structure and stuck at an angle, and before the computer could deactivate it, the hatch that was meant to protect it closed, crushing the cannon’s barrel. Pinned in place, it registered as open when it shouldn’t be. The computer mindlessly ordered the mounting structure to continue trying to withdraw the cannon back into the ship, wasting precious energy.

The threat eliminated, the console screen slept again. The inky black didn’t return, however. In the semi-darkness, among the snarled knots of cording, a small gauge had lit. It was a dim light, and getting dimmer as the bright red lights that filled it inexorably burned out. The computer calmly noted its message. Its primary objective had once been to preserve the lives of its crewmembers, but that objective had been lost in the explosion that wiped the mainframe. It had been given a new goal: reach Teartorn. All other functions would be suspended to fulfill this objective. The computer examined its options and began to cut off ‘unnecessary’ functions. These included the rescue beacon, weaponry…and life support.

The air thinned further. A distinct chill filled it. Inside their glassy pods, two robots limned in faint light faded to indistinct forms, then joined the dark as blue script blinked and slowed, vital power filched away.

The red gauge continued to burn down.

“Central…Central…come in Central.”

This is Clie Central. Your call sign reads as a salvager. Identification, please?

“Central, this is salvage scow Garbage Gamine, opt-in’ A-Y thirty-forty-one-one out onna skiff run. Ya copy?”

#304011, I.D.ed as Garbage Gamine, copy that. What in Wyr’s sacred snot are you doing running a filter operation out in Sector A-Y, Bades?

“Thought that was you, Taka. How’s your brother’s spawn brood?”

Good enough for him to beg extra hours just to stay away from home. So what’s up? Why are you way the Fer back there?

“Wanted somethin’ easy to do while I shake down the new compactor crew, and skiffin’ the space rocks is easy ‘n’ cheap. Came ‘cross somethin’ I thought you might wanna check out, though. My scanners are pickin’ up a floater over in B-Y.”

You’re kidding.

“Serious as Fer, Taka. Take a look-see at my scans. She’s driftin’.”

No power? Can you scan for life signs?

“Too far out to catch if there’s anybody still aboard. Central want me to get closer? That’s gonna take me ‘nother three rotations, an’ the wife’ll have my hide if I’m overdue.”

I’ll placate the beast; Central wants a better scan. If there’s somebody on that ship, we want I.D.

“I got first salvage claim, otherwise? Skiffin’ space trash don’t bring near what a floater’ll bring.”

She’s abandoned, she’s yours, with Wyr’s blessing.

“I’ll get back to ya. Garbage Gamine out.”

“Clie Central out.”

Something stirred in the darkness, a muted thump felt only through the metal floor as a pair of cuffs fell to it. The air had long since been pulled back into the recycling plant’s storage, and with the power cut, it hadn’t been refiltered out again. The sound of the stasis pod opening, therefore, went unheard. Twin emerald optics lit and cast the row of emergency pods into green-tinged gray relief. Lit by their light alone, the face they were set in looked concerned.

Rampage was cold. By that he knew there was something wrong. The numbness afflicting his beast mode’s extremities told him how little air there was, and that, too, was wrong.

His joints shuddered in stiff protest as he forced them to bend, pushing slushy servofluid through his body. Mechanical bodies, while tougher than organics when it came to exposing them to the elements, had their limits. His servofluids were nearly frozen, crystals already forming in internal passages and causing aching throughout his form. His aquatic beast mode had a larger balance of liquids than most Cybertronians, and most of the extra fluid was water. It had frozen enough to expand, and that HURT. Had he truly been in stasis instead of merely sleeping, the hardening of his fluids might have gone unnoticed, and he may never have woken up, forever an icy statue of a killer robot. A quick inspection of the outside of his stasis pod revealed that it had lost power, which at least explained why it had allowed him to cool so much without keeping the inside heated or bringing him automatically out of stasis. The question remained, then, of why the pod had lost power.

He looked up and down the row of pods, but no blue status crawl was visible on any of them. Without that to guide him, he had to move down the row by memory and the faint light of his own optics, thinking all the while. If the other stasis pod was deactivated as well, then either there was a complete loss of power for the entire ship, or the computer had shut down life support. The lack of air indicated it was ship-wide, whatever had happened. Rampage’s internal computer couldn’t tell time reliably anymore, so he’d have to check the bridge to find out if enough time had passed for the jets to have burned all the energy. It was possible that they’d been asleep that long, but wouldn’t they have reached Teartorn before fuel burn-out? But if the computer had shut down life support…

His optics lit familiar features encased under a clear lid, and Rampage studied his unconscious captor. Depth Charge looked surprisingly peaceful in stasis, an expression he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on the manta ray. One massive red hand lifted and gently laid against the pod lid without the usual ‘tinktink’ as each finger touched down. As he’d expected from the cold around him, the surface was freezing cold under his palm. “So, old friend,” he whispered, the sound nonexistent in the airless ship, “you’re dying and not by my hand. I wonder, should I give you a merciful death? You need not ever wake. I could let you freeze solid, or perhaps a quick shot to the head...it would be what you expect from me.” Regretfully, the Center had taken away his smaller caliber weaponry, leaving him only his missile launcher. It would be messy, but fun. “Your life is at my disposal, my friend, and you don’t even know it.” He chuckled, then shivered. A brief sparkle of light and energy danced around his chest as his divided spark fought the temperature and melted his fluids. A slight tingle around his air filters indicated that his spark was keeping him from suffocating as well. The freezing pain ebbed a little, but he was well aware of how much energon he’d need to keep that trick up--energon he didn’t have. Well, he could tolerate the pain for a while.

The Maximal didn’t have his stubborn immortality, however. What was slush in his own body would be close to solid in the raybot’s. Depth Charge’s systems were upgraded for tight situations and might take more abuse than most Cybertronian’s, but even he couldn’t survive long in the airless, cold vacuum of space. Without power, the pod wouldn’t bring him out of stasis or keep him alive; the ray was too frozen to do it on his own by now. Rampage gave him a searching look, this time picking out the tiny shadows his optics cast on blue-silver metal, tiny shadows that he didn’t remember being there previously. Tiny shadows cast by tiny bulges and bumps where expanding ice had forced the metal out. So. It was a fair bet that, being a sea creature as well, the Maximal had close to the same balance of water in him, and that water had frozen. His other fluids wouldn’t be far behind, then. The lack of air wasn’t as immediate as the freezing temperature, but it would kill, too.

“You haven’t long, have you. Hmm.”

He drummed his fingers against the stasis pod, staring at the helpless ‘bot. It was true that the raybot would expect only death at his hands, even the peaceful death by cold. No one would ever expect Protoform X to stir himself to do anything but kill; it would boggle the scientists who’d made him that he considered saving someone. They probably would have keeled over in shock that this wasn’t the first time. Should he try to keep the ray alive, though? His spark hid in one of the Maximal’s subspace compartments, but as the Center had taught him intimately, there were ways to get into someone else’s subspace pockets. If he waited to open the stasis pod until Depth Charge’s spark gave out, it would be an unsatisfactory kill but an assured one. The raybot would die, he’d get his spark back, and it would be such an easy solution to his current dilemma…if he didn’t think about the consequences.

“You and I have an agreement, do we not?” he mused, speaking without sound. “You have no idea how few times I have given my word. Could you possibly know its value, or did you only observe the formalities of getting my cooperation, relying on my spark to control me? Strange, my friend, that I would promise my aid and only now when you’re unaware of how your, ah, ‘trust’ has come to be tested, that I would decide whether or not to honor such an oath.” Red fingers trailed shadows down the unconscious ‘bot he spoke to, the unfelt caress all the more disturbing for its possessiveness. “To let you die so easily would cheat me of my hard work, can’t you see? Oh-ho, you are my best work and all the more beautiful for your tragic ignorance. You cannot possibly know how I use you even as you think to use me.”

With the tenderness of a born killer, he reached with those senses his immortal spark gave him, and gloried in emotions running stable and calm. He REACHED, and took what he found. Depth Charge slept so deep he couldn’t even dream, his mind shut down in stasis, but his spark lived. That spark, that familiar spark that Rampage knew well. From a security chief he’d left for dead with a spark full of fears and hopes, connections and links straggling from and weakening the whole, he had molded this singular ball of scintillating life seared of the unnecessary emotions. Strong, controlled, and independent; unwilling to be bound to others because of the experience of loss that happened over and over again, veteran enough not to panic, and able to hack it on his own. This was a robot that didn’t flinch away from a fight. In fact, he’d limped after it in pursuit. He had nothing left to lose but his life, and when he came face-to-face with death, he counted even that as expendable.

Rampage had thought for a while that the Maximals on Earth had softened Depth Charge, but the Center’s slaughter had taken care of that. There was a slightly brittle edge to the raybot now, a fear of failure that shrilled on the edges of Rampage’s tolerance, but all in all, the Maximal’s spark had become more than he’d dared hope for: a clean spark free of the frivolous, changing emotions of everyone else. Stability in the one spark he was practically attuned to among all he came across. He knew it, could predict it, could ride the variations in emotions where his experimental spark was caught up in anyone else’s.

This was the result of his labors. The fights, the trail of killings, the taunting that ripped open the Maximal’s mind and laid it bare of self-deception and the mask of civilization--all to produce this one, single spark. He could almost thank the Center for throwing them together. Their struggle for survival had given him what he needed to bind himself to the raybot in a way he hadn’t been able to before.

Would it work how he hoped? He didn’t know yet. It would take exposure to other lifeforms before he could be sure.

In the meantime, he stroked his hand down the stasis pod with possessive pride. The urge to kill was there, but he suppressed it with a control he’d never had. What an odd sensation, this stability, balanced between the sociopath and psychopath. A killer still, but far more normal now than he’d ever been. It would only last until the raybot woke, but still…

IF the raybot woke. “I could bring you online, but if there’s no power left, you’d only be awake long enough to die. Leave this to me, Fins.” His face twisted in a smile, optics bright. “I need you alive more than you’ll ever know.” Laughing at the Depth Charge’s imagined response to his words, Rampage turned toward the bridge. Oh, he needed the raybot for vengeance on Kilju and Jirex, and that was excuse he would give if the ray lived. He had his own plans, after all, and it wouldn’t do for the ray to know them. Did he need him for more than vengeance?

For now, yes. But he knew himself well enough to know that if the Maximal hadn’t been offline, he very well might have torn the spark from him, need or no. Next time, Depth Charge might not be so lucky.

The walk was made more treacherous by the dark, but he made it to the bridge. He barely felt his crab legs hit the doorframe, and he scowled. His spark obviously couldn’t do much about what the lack of oxygen was doing to his beast mode, but as long as the numbness remained only an annoyance, he’d live with it. Shaking his limp crab legs back with a shrug, Rampage glanced around the dark control center and winced. There were no viewscreens on. That was a bad sign. When he picked his way through the tangled wires to a console to try it, there was no response. Stumbling a bit in the semi-dark his optics caused, he found the main computer and tried to turn it on.

There was a weak beep and a flash of red on a gauge nearby before it dimmed offline again. Rampage immediately bent over the gauge, reading it by the light of his optics. “Ah. That is…problematical.” Worried now, he flipped the computer off and on again quickly. The gauge beeped, lit, and went out, but he’d read its message before it was gone. Low power. VERY low power. So low that he wouldn’t be able to activate the computer and find out why the power was gone, much less find out where they were. The jets wouldn’t be operating, then, much less life support. Depth Charge’s chances of survival had just plummeted to near zero, and the risk to Rampage was rising. Freezing was one experiment the scientists hadn’t tried on him, and he had no idea if it would eventually kill him or if he’d just drift with the ship until something thawed him.

Light sparkled around his chest, and he shook his head to clear the afterimages of the lightshow from his vision. If his spark kept fighting the cold, he was in for an extended, painful freeze as he starved. Suffocation wasn’t as big a problem for his robot form as it was for his beast mode, but eventually it WOULD become a problem, one his spark would expend yet more energy to fight. Wonderful. Energy deprivation was one of the more agonizing things he’d ever gone through, by length if nothing else.

Options? Without power, the ship was dead and blind. His choices were to kill the raybot himself or let him freeze solid. There was nothing else he had control over in this situation. Well, he COULD siphon off the ray’s remaining energy for himself, or maybe give the Maximal some of his own, enough for one last fight between them. It would be good to hear the ray scream one last time…

He blinked in dawning realization and began to run his hands along the computer bank. Sentiment was something he had learned, but he wouldn’t let it get in the way of his continued survival. Torturing Depth Charge would be a waste of energy. All signs indicated that he’d be alone on this wreck of a starship for quite some time, and if he was going to use his energy for anything, it would be to find out whatever he could about where the ship was. If he could activate an external camera, perhaps a scanner, it could give him an idea of how much longer he’d be stranded. Depending on when the jets had given out and how far the solar winds had swept them off course, the initial push from the engines would eventually get him SOMEWHERE.

“Yo, Central. Come in Central.”

Clie Central here. You are registered as call sign Garbage Gamine, I.D. #304011. Confirm please?

“Copy that one, Central. I got those scans ya wanted on the floater.”

Acknowledged. Hold, please.

“Gotcha.”

…Captain Bades, this is Liegetuant Rew. On the behalf of Clie Central, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you and your crew for redirecting your operation to accommodate us. The governor has already signed a reimbursement issue for your time and effort.

“Well, thank you muchly. Ya want those scans?”

If you would.

“I’m tellin’ ya, Liegetuant, this ship looks like she’s been through Fer and back. Dunno who built her, but she took that pounding and still kept goin’, she’s gotta be one tough scrapper.”

Oh? Why do you think she kept going after taking all that damage?

“Been watchin’ her for three rotations. She’s been onna straight course, with no aft-wobblin’ like shipkill’s give, ya follow? Ya ask me, she kept goin’ ‘til her power ran out. Central know her?”

She’s not registered here, but if she’s a dead ship, she could have come from anywhere. We’re running a cross check on the galactic shipyards. It’s a long shot, but…can you get a clear scan for survivors?

“Wyr’s toes, Liegetuant! She’s outta power! Nothin’ left for life support.”

Not even separate system power?

“Uh, gimme a quarter rotation. We’ll be close enough for a scan like that, then.”

We’ll have someone on standby, Captain. Clie Central out.

“Garbage Gamine out.”

He had to hold onto the console to stay upright.

The seat tempted him, but he knew that if he sat down, it would only make it worse getting back up again. His head spun already from the abrupt energy drain, and he didn’t want to think about what kind of vertigo moving would cause. For all that there was only screen on, there seemed to be an abundance of lights dancing around in Rampage’s vision. He forced himself to focus on the one he knew was real, cursing all the while the scientists who had designed him without a download jack. If he’d had one, he wouldn’t have needed to power up one of the viewscreens in order to see what the starship’s sensor net had caught. The sensor radius, fed by his rapidly-falling energy levels, was receding as fast as he was being drained, but right at the very edge of the wavering circle on the screen there was half a dot. It disappeared and reappeared, frustrating the crab’s attempts to identify it. Each attempt cost him more energy as the computer drew on his reserves, trying to discover if the blip on the screen was space debris or spacecraft.

His spark warmed him again suddenly, and he grimaced as the sensors lost power and his knees went weak. His body wanted very badly to go offline from lack of energon; his spark wanted just as badly to keep him online to fight the cold. His mind, on the other hand, wanted to feed the computer enough energy to figure out whether rescue or disaster was about to happen. It was hard to think through the dual pain and nausea assaulting his body, but he thought that whatever it was out there would reach the Cutting Edge in less than a day. If the mystery object missed the ship by some miracle, then there was always the local star to worry about. A minor course extension calculation had revealed that not only did he have no idea what star system he was in--it was either ignorance on his part or the power-crippled scanners, he couldn’t tell--but the nearest star’s gravity well had latched onto the ship. It would take a while, fighting the original acceleration and the solar winds, but, eventually, the Cutting Edge was going to take a plunge into the fiery ball of gasses. Well, the starship would probably melt long before it reached that point, but the crab wasn’t exactly concerned by technicalities at the moment.

He sagged against the console, body shivering as light sparkled around his chest once more. He’d seen enough. He had hope for, at most, a day. With a soundless moan of effort, he severed the connection feeding his energy into the computer and dropped to his knees seeing double. Since the viewscreen went black the second it lost energy and his optics were dim with energon loss, he didn’t see a lot. It was still better than not seeing anything at all, which he was infinitely pleased to not suffer again.

The drain itself had felt worse than his low energy level did, and his body started to stabilize almost immediately. His beast mode was an empty, numb weight throughout his form, kept from dying of suffocation only by his robotic nature, and even that was failing, now. With the patience of the condemned, he waited for his vision to return to normal and worried that his spark might reject his beast mode to save his basic structure. The last time he’d starved, his body had failed as a whole. This time, his spark had to expend energon he couldn’t afford to use to keep his crab transformation from permanent shut-down, even if that part of him wasn’t functional anymore. He really didn’t know what his spark would do to keep him from freezing.

It was a strange thing to worry about, perhaps, but Rampage LIKED his beast mode. In his limited experience, there had been nothing like it. It was new, no scientist had designed it, and he hadn’t had to try and graft it onto himself. And in a weird way, although he determinedly didn’t think about it, it was something he could rely on when he’d exhausted his own experience. His crab form had come with a set of instincts that he, a created experiment, lacked. When worst came to worst, he still had his beast mode.

The subprograms the stasis pod back on Earth had put into him with his beast mode ran just under the surface of his mind. Having come up against something he couldn’t fight in the conventional way, he listened to the deeper, simpler thoughts of an animal:

Dig in. Wait. Survive.

Emerald optics flashed in the darkness as he rose from the floor. How easy animals had it, those Earth creatures who could not hope to control anything in their lives. Their world was beyond their comprehension, and they lived and died at its whim. They learned to deal with what they were given. Did intelligence mean that those with it sought to gain control of their lives? Yet in this situation, where he could do so little, he could slip into that way of thinking. Letting things happen instead of trying to direct how they happened was deceptively attractive.

The sparse light of his optics went before him as he dragged his heavy feet back the way he’d come, noting that his feet grew less heavy with each step. The starship’s gravity was giving out, finally. That told him that he’d be correct in thinking that the computer had run the jets until the last dregs, sending every scrap of energy to the engines; from Depth Charge’s hurried crash course in engine repair, he knew that internal gravity was the first and last to receive energy. It had something to do with how the engine was constructed, but since that part hadn’t been what he’d worked on, he didn’t know what. He just knew that if the gravity was only failing now, then the computer had still been trying to run the engine until the very last of the power was gone. He still didn’t know what had taken up so much of the energon than they hadn’t made it to Teartorn. He might not ever find out.

The quest for energon had led Megatron across time and space. Rampage stumbled down the corridor, pulling his way down the row of stasis pods by his hands as his steps grew longer and his feet left the floor more easily. He swayed to a stop in front of one pod in particular and studied the end to his quest. Like Megatron, all that stood between him and the energon he craved was the Maximal who’d followed him. An entertaining, irritating, persistent MAXIMAL. As much as he’d hated Megatron and his forced inclusion into the Predacons, Rampage had found that the faction suited him. Anything out to destroy the Maximals couldn’t be that bad, after all. It was the Maximal High Council that had condoned the Protoform X Project, and he’d never gotten over the bitterness he felt toward the faction. That the A.L.H Research Center was a joint operation with the Predacons hadn’t bothered him; the Predacons were SUPPOSED to be the ‘bad guys.’

Here he was, victim of the ‘good guys,’ baddest of the ‘bad guys,’ looking into a pod containing the hero, his enemy, his playmate and prison guard…and a fellow victim. Arguably the worst of the supposedly-good faction, a rebel and a runaway, who’d gone against the wishes of his own government, this ‘bot was both his captor and savior. Without Depth Charge, he’d have been left to the tender mercies of Admiral Jirex and Dr. Kilju. Without Depth Charge, he’d still be free. Rampage studied the offline Maximal with a clinical eye, seeing a source of badly-needed energon. His hand reached out and found the lip of the clear pod lid. His spark soaked up the sculpted emotions of the raybot’s own spark, and he hesitated.

In that hesitation was the conflict he always felt around this ‘bot. To let live for future amusement, for future use as payoff for past work; to kill for present pleasure, for present survival. The beast instincts said to live at another’s expense, because that’s how the universe was. The rage and hate that were always smoldering in him wanted the Maximal’s death, slow and full of delectable fear. The part of him that felt his old friend’s spark thought of a day’s hope.

A day of waiting for that unknown dot on the sensor net, until he knew if the situation was completely hopeless. A day of pain on his part, the energon loss wringing his systems dry, but Depth Charge wouldn’t live that long. Only the fact that he could feel the raybot’s struggling spark told him that the Maximal was still alive. He should kill him now and take his energon. Even if he wanted to wait and see if rescue might happen, the raybot wouldn’t be alive by then. The logical decision would be to alleviate his pain now instead of waiting until the Maximal died naturally.

But his hand wouldn’t tear the stasis pod open. The hesitation stretched out into indecision, and Rampage stared thoughtfully at his ally-victim-captor. A living being who rested, looking so peaceful and trusting, and he knew that he could end that life. It would be fun, and it was necessary. Wasn’t it?

The raybot’s mind had been laid out before him again and again throughout their long chase, but only recently had the crab exposed his own twisted psyche to the Maximal’s scrutiny. He’d used his vulnerable spots as a ploy to bring the hunter off-balance. Unfortunately, using them had only made him more vulnerable. To be believable, he’d allowed himself to succumb to strange emotions, things he hadn’t cared enough to bother feeling before, like shame or embarrassment. Along with these emotions came an odd attachment he’d felt only twice before. Both times, it had been spontaneous and so brief he hadn’t had to think about how to deal with it. Now he found that this…thing…had grown in him, gradually building to a strength difficult to resist. It was similar to what he’d felt before, but different. It came out of the cracks and crannies of his mind to stay his hand, and he stared at the unconscious Maximal as if he could pry an answer to this newest problem out of the raybot’s head.

“How strange,” Rampage told him, voice sucked away in the vacuum of space, “that I now see Transmutate in you. Or not,” he reconsidered, tilting his head. “I did, after all, feel her spark for the first time in a stasis pod much like this one. Your sparks are much alike, although her strength was the innocence of damage and yours the experience of loss.” He shrugged, dismissing the comparison. “It seems that I have all the more reason to call you my friend, now. Hmm. Surprising, but it changes nothing. Unlike some fool Maximal, I won’t let sentiment stop me.”

Indeed, he wouldn’t. It WAS surprising to find that his victim and pursuer had become something more to him during the long days of working side by side on this ship, but recognizing his vulnerable points would allow him to compensate for them. He analyzed the weakness and set it aside, raising his hand to smash the stasis pod open--

--and paused, optics wide.

There.

THERE.

On the edge of his senses, thrilling through his spark like he’d been shot, unmistakable and yet he could hardly believe it. He could feel life, tiny whorls of living emotions that caught at him and prodded the killer toward the limits of control. Emotions dragged at him, pushing and pulling in an inner conflict that made his hands twitch to wrap around those bright sources of life. In the midst of the tangle, his spark sought the familiar security of the raybot’s spark.

His head cleared. He shook it, then blinked rounded emerald optics in startled delight. There was life nearby, many living beings. The blip on the viewscreen had been a ship!

Suddenly, the aches in his limbs and the numbness of his beast mode didn’t hurt quite so much. They were only temporary, anyway. More important was the reality of rescue, or at least a ship being within reach. His fist dropped to his side again. Half a dozen schemes for forcing his way on board the approaching ship immediately came to mind, but he looked at the Maximal and dismissed them all. It would take close to a day for the ship to reach the Cutting Edge, perhaps longer for anyone to come in looking for survivors. Depth Charge had barely an hour left, if that. His interest in extending that time limit had abruptly been rekindled, and with rescue close enough to measure, there was an option or two open. They might not work, but it was worth a try…now. If they worked and the raybot lived, he wouldn’t need to kill or threaten his way onto the other ship.

Rampage laughed triumphantly, enjoying the freedom of control. Familiar and stable, the spark held in the stasis pod before him kept him within the bounds of controlled insanity. For the first time in his life, what he felt didn’t drag him down into murder. He didn’t have to kill. “It worked, Fish Face,” he chuckled without sound. “It worked.”

“Ya there, Central?”

This is Clie Central. Call sign Garbage Gamine, I.D. #304011?

“The one and only. The Liegetuant there?”

Liegetuant Rew has left standing orders for your calls to be put through right away. Please hold while I transfer you.

“Right…”

Captain Bades? What have you to report?

“I’m pickin’ up one life sign, maybe. Scanners are sayin’ it’s a mechaniod, but a weird one, at that. Ya want me t’ send inna team?”

We would appreciate it, Captain Bades. Clie Central still doesn’t have an I.D. for the ship, so we’d advise caution. Do you have any sort of status read?

“No idea. Could be anythin’. Dead, for all I know. Could just be a residual energy siggy. Mechanoids have all sorta weird status limbos. My scanners are showin’ two life signs, but they’re insistin’ there’s only one energy system. I dunno what coulda survived in this wreck, though. She looks even worse from up close.”

Even bodies would help us identify her. If you would record any energy signatures, we might be able to trace the crew.

“Ya got it, Leigetuant. Too bad if I lose salvage claim, but I hope t’ Wyr we pull somebody alive outta there. Poor rotter musta gone through Fer, an’ it’d be a shame not to hear THAT tale!”

Yes, although you’ll forgive me if my interest is somewhat more practical.

“Well, that’s what we pay ya for. Garbage Gamine out.”

Clie Central out.

Space was many things: cold, hot, dark, light, full, empty, quiet, and loud. Here in the ship, it was frozen black silence.

But in one corridor in particular it wasn’t as dark as it had been, and just a little warmer. Blue status crawl tracked slowly across a screen, telling anyone reading it that the interior of the stasis pod was at minimal life support, the temperature extremely low but not freezing, with a tiny amount of recycled air featuring a concentration of oxygen sealed inside. It was enough to keep the robot’s fluids slushy and his air filters working. It was barely enough to keep him alive, but alive he was. He nearly hadn’t been.

Space was also a measurement. Infinite or small, it could fit between anything or nothing, from planets to mere seconds.

In the space of a moment, Rampage had chosen to save Depth Charge.

Sitting on the floor, anchored by his grip on the bottom edge of the nearest stasis pod, the crab drifted with lightheadedness born of energy drain plus freefall. A thick tube led from his arm to the raybot’s pod. He didn’t watch energon drip out of himself, however; his green optics were offline, preserving what energy he could. It also helped him concentrate. There was no sound in the vacuum, and his body hurt too much from the lack of energon to feel any vibrations through his hands. That left his spark, and it could feel the approach of five lifeforms. That held his avid attention. Were they hostile? Were they a rescue team? Did they even know someone was here?

Had the Center found him?

Pain and weariness turned his body into a battleground. His mind, as always, waged war on itself. Massive red hands flexed, crushing metal in their grip without even trying. Energon continued to feed into the stasis pod beside him, pink-silver-gold. A spark glowed there, calm and unaware, and he held to its stability with difficulty. Five lifeforms, splitting up. Searching? He didn’t know. All he knew is that two of them were heading in this direction. Two lives, so easily ended…spared. Green optics lit dully, and in their light, Rampage smirked.

A decision made between here and there, now and then. The distance shrinking, quiet, cold, and dark.

He waited, suspended in space.

“Clie Central? This is Garbage Gamine, #304011. Come in!”

Clie Central here--

“Leigetuant Rew? We gotta situation out here.”

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Plot: (happily going toward Teartorn)

Rampage: Yoink! (runs off with plot to Clie)

LD: Hey! Get back here! Depth Charge, STOP him!

Depth Charge: (disoriented) Wha--? Are we there yet?

LD: ...well, you're no help at all.

Click here for part 9