Skygnaw walked to the prow of the Nemesis alone.
He stared down at the Mithril Sea, which lay as still as dead water.
In the end, The Trader had handed over the coordinates of the resource planet.
Skygnaw kept his word and let the merchant go.
A rogue wanderer with access to a sprawling interstellar information network might prove useful later.
Killing him now would be a waste of a good asset.
"Kugrage."
Skygnaw repeated the name silently.
This was the resource world The Trader had revealed.
The Trader certainly lived up to his reputation as a wandering merchant who could secure starships for the Autobots in the original timeline.
He didn't just deal with Autobots and Decepticons; he ran business scripts with other intelligent species across the cosmos as well.
However, Kugrage was more than just a resource planet.
It was an inhabited world currently fighting off an invasion from an outside civilization.
According to The Trader, the data came from a fellow broker.
While he hadn't seen the conflict firsthand, he calculated the reliability of the report at over ninety percent.
Interstellar merchants came in all shapes and sizes across the galaxy, but they all operated under a baseline code of honesty.
At worst, that honesty came with a few loopholes and verbal traps.
Take Bumblebee's vocal synthesizer, for example.
The Trader had exploited the fact that Bumblebee... had wasn't specific with the parameters, deliberately supplying a unit programmed with a female voice.
Yet technically, he hadn't breached the contract.
Blaming the customer for vague specifications was always a viable defense.
But if a wanderer brazenly relied on pure fraud to make a profit, the rest of the merchant community would instantly blacklist him.
They couldn't tolerate a rogue unit destroying their collective reputation.
It threatened their entire livelihood and damaged the shared interests of the trade networks.
"I hope the natives of Kugrage can hold out a little longer," Skygnaw thought. "It would be perfect if they fell just as I arrive."
His optics focused, casting one last look at the motionless silver sea before he turned back toward the bridge tower.
The Seacons would likely be diving for a while longer.
He decided to input Kugrage's coordinates into the star-mapping console of the Nemesis first.
His choice was finalized.
He was going to Kugrage.
The cosmos was simply a city built on a grander scale.
Some individuals starved in the slums, while others feasted inside luxury estates.
Some worlds were populated by primitive tribes, while others had already launched campaigns across the stars.
Expansion and development were the unchanging themes of any civilization.
Most of the time, this wasn't an active choice, but a passive response driven by necessity.
Resource depletion, shifting internal conflicts, the raw ambition of tyrants, or the grand vision of rulers all forced spacefaring civilizations to claim colonial territory.
It was all about making the pie bigger.
Only by constantly expanding could a species prevent its society from fracturing through internal friction.
If a manageable enemy popped up every now and then to unite the population, the scenario was perfect.
Entering the command deck, Skygnaw manipulated the consoles with practiced ease.
A grand holographic display projected from the interface, filling the entire room.
Cosmic nebulae shifted lazily while countless multi-colored planets blinked in the dark, creating a beautiful view.
This was the star map integrated into the Nemesis, though it represented only a fraction of the galaxy.
The Cybertronians had spent eons locked in endless warfare.
A standard spacefaring civilization would have mapped out more than half the galactic sectors by now.
Instead, the Nemesis's navigation arrays only held records of a few star systems in the western sector, covering less than one percent of the galaxy.
"It is that distant?"
Skygnaw noted the coordinates with surprise, watching a lone red dot flash inside a vast patch of uncharted dark.
The vector lay completely beyond the pre-loaded boundaries of the ship's map.
No wonder neither the Autobots nor the Decepticons had stumbled across Kugrage before.
When searching the void for resource worlds, both factions relied primarily on systematic grid sweeps, which naturally limited their maximum travel range.
Kugrage's position sat right along the inner rim of the galaxy.
The sector surrounding Cybertron had an exceptionally low density of stars, measuring millions of times lower than the central galactic core.
It was a completely isolated backwater.
It must have been an exhausting task for the Thirteen Primes when they originally scoured the cosmos to harvest suns.
Of course, isolation also meant it was incredibly difficult to locate, offering a certain tier of relative safety.
If no one ever comes here, of course it is safe, Skygnaw thought dryly.
Primus might have factored exactly that into his calculations when he chose this remote sector to enter his long rest.
If the galaxy were compared to one of the massive cities he used to overwork in during his past life, Cybertron's position sat well past the outer ring roads.
If a spacefaring civilization from the galactic core ever encountered a Cybertronian, their first reaction would probably sound like this:
"What? The Centauri sector? How far out is that? Does that sector even count as part of the galaxy?"
He studied the interface for a while until the star map calculated an optimal route, then rose and left the deck.
Although The Trader indicated that the natives of Kugrage possessed limited military capabilities, Skygnaw decided to resolve the remaining affairs on Cybertron before initiating the transit.
Warfare ultimately came down to a battle of consumption and logistics.
A highly advanced civilization held absolute technological dominance, but that data didn't mean they could effortlessly vaporize a lower-tier enemy.
It certainly didn't mean they were immune to being deactivated by a primitive foe.
A spacefaring civilization was simply a galactic empire, not a force capable of popping a planet with the flick of a finger.
Until a species achieved the fundamental evolution required to enter a higher cosmic tier, everyone operated under basic material limitations.
On Earth, a low-tier Decepticon grunt could vaporize a human military unit with a single blast, yet that same grunt could still be blown into scrap metal by a primitive human fighter jet.
Intervening on a world after the dust had settled was exponentially more logical than dropping into an active war zone.
If he arrived with his army while the two factions were in the middle of a fierce clash, what if they abruptly halted their hostilities to unite against him?
That would leave him in a highly inconvenient position.
Should he claim ownership of Kugrage immediately?
Or should he drive off the invaders first and simply take their place as the new conqueror?
If both factions joined forces to crush him as an outside threat, the situation would become messy.
When two forces fight, the spectator usually gains the advantage.
But until his scouts verified the exact military strength of the invading civilization, Skygnaw couldn't guarantee he would be the one collecting the profits.
A cautious approach was better.
He would let them finalize their conflict first.
After all, regardless of who secured the final victory, the winner was bound to pay a heavy price.
Returning to the exterior deck of the Nemesis, Skygnaw had just finalized his calculations when a massive cluster of bubbles erupted from the fluid below.
It looked as if the Mithril Sea had suddenly reached its boiling point.
A moment later, a massive mechanical sea turtle broke the surface.
"Commander Skygnaw," Snaptrap said, hauling his heavy frame onto the deck.
Skygnaw offered a slight nod. "Did your sensors verify the target?"
Counting the duration, the Seacons had been submerged for over two hours.
They were bound to have results by now.
The historical coordinates of the Sunken City of Po-Sua were well-documented; a buried metropolis lacked the capacity to sprout legs and relocate on its own.
"Commander, we have located Po-Sua," Snaptrap reported, delivering immediate good news.
"And the logistical stockpile inside the perimeter?"
"Fully verified, my lord."
"Excellent."
A slight smile crossed Skygnaw's face armor.
Shockwave had likely planned to salvage this cache cycles ago, but now that Skygnaw had entered the grid and cleared the remaining Autobots from the surface, the logician had shared the coordinates with him.
If Shockwave had attempted the recovery operation alone before his arrival, the payload would have likely been intercepted by the resistance instead.
Skygnaw had parsed a few scattered historical logs regarding the sudden disaster that had claimed Po-Sua millennia ago.
The files cited zero external impacts or internal failures, leaving it marked as one of the planet's great unsolved mysteries.
The workers remained completely oblivious to the truth, but now that he understood the true nature of the planet as the body of Primus, the event became perfectly logical.
The creator god had likely shifted unthinkingly during his long slumber, causing the metropolis to slide into the abyss.
While Po-Sua was a massive city to a Cybertronian, it was nothing more than a microscopic spec on Primus's armor.
"Deploy the recovery teams," Skygnaw commanded calmly.
"Understood, Commander," Snaptrap replied, diving back into the silver depths.
Spurred by his directive, the few surviving transport shuttles rose from Iacon's hangars, while the Decepticon Aerospace Force mobilized in full strength.
Following a relentless three-day salvage campaign, the entire cache discovered by the Seacons was successfully hauled to the surface.
Three solar cycles later, inside the Central Spaceport of Iacon.
"Commander, the entire inventory is secured inside."
Dirge stood before a massive storage vault with its primary blast doors thrown wide.
Skygnaw strode smoothly into the facility.
He had returned to the capital on the very first day of the salvage operation, leaving the field logistics entirely in Dirge's hands.
"Is the log finalized?"
"Confirmed, Commander," Dirge nodded with absolute certainty.
He had personally monitored the telemetry at the Mithril Sea; there was zero margin for error.
Furthermore, not a single grunt in the ranks possessed the audacity to skim resources belonging to a Leader-class titan.
"What is the status of the deployment roster?" Skygnaw asked, shifting to his primary objective.
"The vanguard units have been fully selected, Commander," Dirge replied, his posture hardening.
His leader intended to subjugate an entire world, and he was determined to ensure every operational parameter was flawlessly prepared.
"Excellent. Order the troops to board the starship and transfer the salvaged cache into the storage decks of the Nemesis. Once I finalize my consultation with Shockwave, we initiate the transit."
This was the true benefit of commanding a Decepticon legion: he never lacked efficient hands to execute his directives, saving his processors an immense amount of effort.
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