Written by: John Barber &Christos Gage
Art by: Alex Milne
Colours by: Josh Perez
Letters by: Tom B Long
Editor: Carlos Guzman
Publisher: Ted Adams
Plot
A few weeks before the attack on the Xetaxxis Solstar station, a Decepticon team led by Starscream are approached by Vekktral and his Dire Wraiths. At first Starscream is uninterested, but when he learns of Vekktral's encounter with Stardrive, he becomes interested, as he wants to know how she's been staying alive without access to Energon, and determines that if they get that secret then they can stop worrying about raiding other planets to get more...
A short while later, an Autobot shuttle holding Sky Blast, Bumblebee and Ultra Magnus inside come across a Decepticon team destroying a Galactic Council ship. They kill the Decepticons, but find the Galactic Council crew inside, all dead. They find it weird how the Decepticons were seeming to be trying to hide their involvement in the attack, since normally they'd announce this attack proudly. Magnus hacks into the computer and finds out that the ship was heading towards Xetaxxis for the negotiations, so they head there too...
About a week later, Rom attacks the newcomer Autobots, assuming they are allied with Starscream, but soon realizes that the two groups of Cybertronians are enemies too. He tries to form an alliance with them, but Magnus simply shoots him away, assuming, and insisting that the Solstar Order and Decepticons are allied together, and that Stardrive is a Decepticon who has been coated in the Solstar Armour, though Bumblebee points out that the Decepticons and the Knights are fighting each other too..
Outside, Sky Blast reports that the Station is falling apart, and the only thing keeping it in place is the force-field around it, as he observes some of the crew escape in shuttles and escape pods.
Inside, Magnus drives into Starscream, splitting him away from Stardrive, whom Bumblebee tries to help up, she assumes he's attacking her and shoots him away. Suddenly Sky Blast appears and attacks her, in order to protect Bumblebee.
Vekktral takes the chaos as an opportunity to send one of his troops to merge with the newcomer Autobot, which causes Sky Blast to mutate into a horrifying monster, and the Wraith's mind to be merged with him, creating a new primal creature. Everyone is shocked that a Wraith and a Cybertronian can merge, and how messed up they are.
The Knights attack the new Sky Blast-Wraith, but cannot do anything to harm him. Starscream and Doomwings go to retrieve the Energon Synthesizer and leave whilst everyone else is distracted, but Doomwings is grabbed by the monster and torn to pieces.
Starscream is pissed off with Vekktral for letting his new troop kill one of his men, but Vekktral reveals that he is not in control of the monster. The Decepticons try to fight off the monster too, but end up heading out of the station themselves.
Bumblebee approaches Stardrive again, insisting that she explains who she is, and when he learns that she isn't a Decepticon, but a Solstar Knight, he explains that the Autobots are opposed to the Decepticons and their allies too, which now includes the Dire Wraiths. Magnus interrupts them and disables the force-field of the station, hoping that the re-entry into the atmosphere will kill the monster.
Magnus summons the Autobot shuttle remotely for them to escape in, whilst everyone else starts evacuating too. However Starscream destroys the shuttle before leaving with the other Decepticons and Wraiths, intending to recover the Synthesizer from the rubbles of the station on the planet below.
Stardrive takes on her aerial form and flies the two Autobots into the planet's atmosphere, knowing that they cannot survive the fall without her.
Following the destruction of the station, the Solstar Knights follow Stardrive down to the planet. Livia and Sata dismiss Stardrive as having chosen her "own kind" over them, but Rom still believes she is loyal to them, so they go to find her.
The Decepticons arrive too, hoping that the Synthesizer has survived, but soon learn that the monster managed to survive the station's destruction too, and is heading towards the planet too.
On the planet's surface, Stardrive and the Autobots are in a crater, where Magnus attempts to arrest Stardrive for breaching the Tyrest Accord by sharing herself, and her technology with an alien empire. Bumblebee calls Magnus out on being ridiculous, but he doesn't care. However he is soon blasted square in the chest by Rom who threatens to do the same to Bumblebee if he doesn't surrender, as he mourns the supposed death of his teammate....
Characters
Autobot
Ultra Magnus - Vehicle Transport Seemingly Killed by Rom
Bumblebee - Car
Sky Blast - Rocket Merged with "Soldier"
Decepticon
Starscream - Jet
Dirge - Jet
Ramjet - Jet
Thrust - Jet
Blitzwing - Tank/Jet
Astrotrain - Galactic Council Shuttle
Doomwings - Jet Killed by Sky Blast-Wraith
"Plasma Torch Guy" - Jet Killed by Autobots
"Bulldozer" - Bulldozer Killed by Autobots
Megatron - Tank (Mentioned)
Solstar Order
Stardrive - Spacefaring Car
Rom
Livia
Sata
Orphion (Footage)
Nikomi (Footage)
Dire Wraith
Vekktral
"Soldier" Merged with Sky Blast
Dire Wraith Troops
Other
Galactic Council Crew Killed by Decepticons and Dire Wraiths
Stardrive's Classmates (Mentioned)
Notes
- Looks like my guess from last month about this Ultra Magnus not being the Minimus Ambus incarnation was correct, he acts nothing like out little rules-stickler from Roberts' work
- The Dire Wraith's original attempt to form an alliance with the Decepticons was to point out that they both can change forms...nice try kiddos!
- So it looks like the Galactic Council ship was indeed attacked by the Decepticons, and since we see some of their corpses here, it's likely that the Wraiths only used some of their body parts to take on their forms, just like one did with Joe Colton on Earth...though I guess this could be another group of Galactic Council crew members, but it's unlikely.
- The "Plasma Torch Guy" is based on a Prime Aerial Vehicon. The Bulldozer guy appears to be just a generic with his bulldozer shovel stored on his shoulders.
- So turns out that the Galactic Council-Solstar Order negotiations were actually a real thing, but the Decepticons and Wraiths simply ambushed the Council ship en-route and took their place for this attack.
- Awwww....All of Stardrive's trinkets got destroyed with the station...including her pig-alien teddy thing from last issue :(
- I was a bit worried about all the non-Knight crew members and dignitaries on the station when it blew up, but then I noticed that a load of shuttles left the station a few pages earlier.
- Sky Blast is a direct import of the Mini-Con character from Armada, just upscaled into a full-sized Autobot here.
- So....we heard about how terrifying a Cybertronian-Wraith hybrid is from Orphion back in the Rom series....EEEP!
- The problem now, is that just about all of the characters left in the story, excluding Sata and Stardrive herself, are known to be active in the modern day setting, so we know no-one else important is likely to die off in the remaining three issues of this series, so there's less of a threat element here...
- So...Stardrive's vehicle mode has a flight mode too? I'm not sure if she's a triple changer or just developed a space-faring version of her car mode. You'd think she'd have mentioned this during her issue-long intro last time huh?
- Wonder if we'll get a cameo of Tyrest next issue so he can call on the next Ultra Magnus, or see this one vanish for the process instead?
- Technically, Ultra Magnus is wrong about Stardrive sharing Cybertronian technology with the Solstar Order. She is Camien, not Cybertronian, they have different technologies.
- The next issue preview claims that they have crashed on a mysterious planet....aka the planet Xetaxxis, which we've been told the name of a few times now?
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