“I need a wash,” Sunstreaker growled.

“I didn’t copy that, Sunstreaker,” came Prowl’s voice, through the intercom. “Can you repeat?”

“I said I need a wash. Got scummy handprints all over my doors. It’s putting me off. The dust concentration in this headwind isn’t helping much either.”

A kink in the road thumped beneath their tyres. Prowl hesitated, then:

“Sunstreaker… maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary.”

Sunstreaker glowered and accelerated ahead of his commanding officer. Prowl did not, could not understand the distraction caused by being violated, sullied by human hands. His brutishly practical Earth mode was too ugly to draw onlookers, too much an emblem of local authority to invite approach. He, Sunstreaker, on the other hand, had
made the critical error of choosing a chassis that matched his style, his power, his enduring good looks. But this planet’s dominant species, he had come to realise, had no respect for beauty. No appreciation for non-violent artforms. They’d only cast aside their ignorance and look on him in rightful awe when the battle really broke out, when Prowl stopped this cloak and dagger nonsense that never came to anything anyway. Then, when he strode amongst the flaming wreckage of Decepticon warriors in his towering, svelte robot mode, then they’d understand.

“Sunstreaker, slow down. You’ll give us away.”

“So what if I do? We’re here to skirmish, aren’t we? I’m tired of holding back and waiting for them to crawl out of their hidey hole. This is our chance to tip the playing field in our favour.”

“Listen to me.” Prowl’s voice was measured, heavy. “It’s extremely unlikely the target will turn and fight us. He’ll run for cover as soon as he realises we’re onto him. We’ll never be able to keep up, and then bang goes our chances of tracking him to the Decepticons’ infiltration bunker.”

“Yeah?” Sunstreaker prepped his thrusters. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?”

~

Less than one hour previously:

Disguised as a grapefruit-yellow Lamborghini Diablo, Sunstreaker crawled through the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, his mood bleak. The highways he did not mind so much – a chance to burn off some steam, kick up some dust. In the busy metropolises of a planet like this, however, the sheer density of traffic prevented him from working up any kind of speed. He was boxed in, unable to stretch himself. And all around him, the tide of humans babbled and frothed, stinking, often coming far too close, nearly touching him.

For the sake of appearances, his front seat was occupied by a holo-avatar that resembled one of them. He did not like it. It was by far the most unpleasant element of his Earthen disguise. Humans were aesthetically jumbled, weak and soggy, twiglike, lumpen, with parts that hung out and wobbled and had to be covered up. Their heads sprouted fibrey cables of dead cells. He’d seen worse, but not often. He had tried to choose one of the least offensive specimens for his avatar, though it was a somewhat pointless struggle. This one had more dead cell matter on its head than most, but at least it had some curves.

He could run a few down. Just for kicks. It’d be funny, if he turned his avatar off and went straight at them. But nah, he decided, realising that he’d probably get blood all over his hubcaps.

The air was filled with a piercing trill. Two of the grounded humans, he realised, had clocked him, and were making the shrill sound by blowing air through their mouths. He ignored them. Then he heard one of them shout:

“Hey, baby! Wouldn’t mind some of that!”

Sunstreaker realised that they were, in their own dim way, trying to compliment him. He wanted to go on driving, knew he should, but somehow he found the remark impossible to ignore. His engine skipped a rev. Paying scant regard to the resulting eruption of car horns, he stopped, switched gears, and reversed back alongside the two humans. He wound his driver’s window down.

“Cop an eyeful while you can, boys. I’m not one for hanging around,” he said, speaking through his avatar.

“Ho, man!” said one, the one who had shouted. “Pinch me, I’m dreaming. Listen, I’ve gotta tell you, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Nice of you to notice,” said Sunstreaker.

“Are you kidding? Every guy in this city must have noticed. Or did you think we’re all blind?”

“I trusted you were all too busy with your own affairs to pay much attention to a well sculpted chassis.”

“Don’t mind him,” said the second man, who had grown visibly incarnadined. “He just can’t stop embarrassing himself. Hey, nice ride, by the way. Is it yours?”

“Nice… ride?!” Sunstreaker spat. “Yeah, yeah, it’s mine. Of course it’s mine. That is, it’s – hold on. What were you talking about before?”

“I’m really digging the pimped up engine. What was I talking about before what?”

“When your friend said ‘Wouldn’t mind some of that’.” Sunstreaker turned his avatar back to face the first man. “And when you said I was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen in your life. What were you talking about?”

“What do you think? I was talking about your faaaahn body, baby,” he replied, looking the avatar up and down. “You don’t mind a little flattery, do you? And I know it’s a long shot, but what are you doing tonight? No, wait – ain’t no way a girl like you hasn’t already found herself a date, am I right?”

“What? Hey!”

The man had leant in and was crossing his arms on top of Sunstreaker’s door. The other one had worked his way round the back and was patting his spoiler.

“Keep your mitts off the finish, worms!”

Winding his window up in a snap, Sunstreaker accelerated with such keenness that the two men jumped backwards. There was a chorus of ‘Wo! Watchit!’s, and another crescendo of horns, but Sunstreaker was only interested in putting distance between him and the humans as quickly as possible. Ugh. He had to get out of the city. There was nothing there anyway. Why would the Decepticons bother trying to wade through this mass of pungent flesh? This was a waste of time.

Less than an hour to the rendezvous with Prowl. He could always get there early.

~

“Sunstreaker, I’m ordering you to stop!”

“Overruled.”

The target was in his sights. Astrotrain. Decepticon triple-changer. Should’ve known – their route had met with and followed the thrust of a railway line – the eastbound track of the Southern Pacific. One of Astrotrain’s secondary modes was a locomotive. The second was an Earth shuttle, primitive by Cybertronian standards, but despite the limitations of its shape, easily able to outrun both Autobots. That didn’t matter. Astrotrain wasn’t going to get a chance to transform. Sunstreaker bore down on his right flank, locked onto various weak points in the Decepticon’s armour, and let forth a battery of rocket-propelled explosives.

Two struck Astrotrain on his foremost wheels, jarring him off the rails. Others buffeted his engine housing, streaking his armour with black comets. No longer gripping the track, and given little time to react, Astrotrain was pitched into the sparse, dry earth. This had the unexpected effect of kicking up a great wall of ground up topsoil, the brunt of which socked Sunstreaker right in the windscreen. Enraged and half-blind, he skidded to a halt, like a bull whose charge had missed the matador. He clipped the railway line with his back tyre, cursed, and quickly transformed.

His electron pulse gun was drawn in an instant, but as he fired, so too were the Astrotrain’s rear rocket thrusters fired, a white hot hammer striking the earth beneath him. The Decepticon had had just enough of a window to transform first into his robot mode, and then, after a dash and a leap, into his shuttle mode. Though untroubled by the heat, Sunstreaker could not see beyond the sudden flare, and his weapon only punched a hole in Astrotrain’s wing. Sunstreaker fired again, hitting the Decepticon in the aft, but Astrotrain was away, gaining both height and distance, his velocity unmatchable.

Prowl bounced over a knotty protrusion of land, and transformed in midair – landing just in time to snatch a last glimpse of the shuttle’s rockets flickering in the overhead anvil of cloud. He lowered his pistol.

“Pleased with yourself? That brilliant manoeuvre will cost us hundreds of mega-cycles. In the long run, it could even have lost us this whole world. Why didn’t you slow down when I told you to?”

Sunstreaker shrugged.

“Obviously, I made a grave miscalculation in sending you out on patrol in the first place,” Prowl continued. “Who knows what other violations of orders you’ve carried out while my back’s been turned?”

“If I’m such a screw-up,” said Sunstreaker, smiling, “why did you pick me for the team, eh?”

Prowl lost his temper. He balled one hand into a fist, and jabbed Sunstreaker viciously in the chest with the forefinger of the other.

“As a matter of fact, I was doing you a favour! You think any of the other officers wanted to handle a reckless firebrand with a superiority complex? You think any of them thought you were worth the risk? If I hadn’t said I’d take you on my squad, you’d be on a suicide mission for special ops right now, if not a pretty corpse already. But I gave you a chance. I gave you a chance, Sunstreaker, and this is what I get for it. Insubordination. Disregard for necessary measures. Unfounded arrogance. Failure.”

Sunstreaker removed Prowl’s hand from the vicinity of his finish, and crossed the railway line. With some awkwardness, he squatted in the place where Astrotrain had hit the ground. Prowl watched him, slowly cooling off. A hoarse gust of wind showered both of them with a light coating of dust. The shadow of a carrion bird crossed the railway line.

“Look, Sunstreaker. I know you’re pent up, and I’m sorry I flew off the handle -”

“Nah, you’ve said enough. I get it.”

“At least we know he was headed east. Let’s assume that Astrotrain isn’t much of a tactician and didn’t mean to mislead us. There is only a finite amount of land between here and a vast body of water. The Pacific Ocean. The humans’ territorial idiosyncrasies divide that area into three ‘states’. This should limit our search somewhat.”

Sunstreaker knew that Prowl was trying, somewhat patronisingly, to make him feel better. The Autobots could monitor all Decepticon pulsewaves from the bottom of Lake Michigan. They hadn’t the numbers to constantly patrol the east coast of this landmass. So knowing roughly what area the Decepticons might have made their headquarters in was no use to them whatsoever.

This, however, was. Right at his feet - a spot of spilt fuel. He didn’t need to run a clo
se circuit odour analysis of it to realise that it was not quite the same energon the Autobots and Decepticons had been existing on since the abandonment of Cybertron. The Decepticons had uncovered something new. A hybrid fuel?

“You found something?” asked Prowl.

“Nah.”

Sunstreaker stood up and scanned, with disgust, the fan of crumbled earth that spattered his windscreen.

“No use hanging around here,” he said, transforming. “Let’s go. I need a wash.”