GALACTIC COUNCIL INTERLUDE: THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Location – Galactic Council War Room, Teraxis Prime

POV – Third Person / Omniscient Council View

The Galactic Council War Room, once the centre of unity, nestled in the crystalline spires of Teraxis Prime, was now a sealed chamber of panic, fire, and fraying command.

The delegate's feeds sputtered. Some cut out mid-sentence. Others froze on their final frames: collapsing towers, flaming skies, drifting stars gone cold. The galactic projection map shuddered under the flood of alerts. Red glyphs pulsed like wounds across Council-held sectors.

Velkor IV: planetary bombardment. Biological vaults and warbeast creches — incinerated.

Hive Axis-3: signal lost mid-scream.

Aegis: offline. AI grid is unresponsive.

Venari Echo, Gladius Vortex, Neral's Divide: UNDER SIEGE.

"Our outer listening posts are gone!" shrieked a Vrix'thar delegate. "We can't see beyond our own stars!"

"The Ossan Corridor is gone," cried Mairev Vos, her diplomatic mask cracked. "Tens of thousands stranded between collapsed gates!"

"Velkor's shipyards — gone. Torn apart. Decades of biomechanical reserves — erased," General Draakon growled.

"Where is Lockdown?!" roared Crav Vox. "He was the Rift anchor! Without him—"

"Unknown," came a flat voice. "All communications are offline."

"Logic Spire-7 is active. The Omega Protocol AI is rejecting Council command. It's broadcasting one word: compliance."

"Colonies in Sector Vaelis are repeating Cybertronian. Their status is unknown, but it's presumed they're gone."

"Skaar Dominion's Second Armada engaged a Decepticon fleet. No contact since."

"My hives—" Hive Sovereign X'Kaleth wheezed, her image twitching—"the psychic lattice is unravelling. The Vrix'thar are falling into stasis."

"The Teraxis central archives have been sabotaged. Treaty records — gone."

 The central display snapped into override. A cold symbol spiralled into view — the seal of the Galactic Fiscal Reserve. Then: Minister Kelron Dase, pale, blinking too fast, lips trembling.

"This is an emergency transmission from the Galactic Fiscal Reserve," he said. "All interstellar credit flows have been suspended. Primary node failures are cascading. The Eastern Consolidated Exchange is offline. The Vaelis Mercantile Chain is unstable. The Neral Trade Axis is… believed lost."

A long pause. Then:

"Strategic reserves stand at eighty-four percent depletion."

 "Civilian trade routes have collapsed. Military input chains — cut off. TerraForge Prime is not responding."

 "The Galactic Market… no longer functions."

 His feed cut out before anyone could speak. No warning. No follow-up.

Only one glyph remained:

[TRANSMISSION TERMINATED – INTERNAL OVERRIDE]

The galactic map convulsed. Dozens of sectors flipped from REINFORCED to NO CONTACT. Borders redrew themselves in real time.

The Council's reach was shrinking by the second.

"We should never have provoked them!" someone shouted.

Another voice snapped through the noise:

"It was Asmodeus. He struck first. Cybertron. Unprovoked. No sanction."

Silence.

 "He said he'd burn their homeworld to ash."

 "He ignored orders. Sent the fleet anyway."

 "This isn't war. It's retribution."

 "We started this," a voice whispered — thin, cracked, true.

 Then: collapse. Screams. Accusations. Everyone shouting at once.

 "You backed Helios!"

 "You funded him!"

 "We could have stopped it!"

Amid the storm stood High Arbiter Delan. Unmoving. Silent.

He hadn't wanted a war, not with the Cybertronians.

 But he hadn't stopped it either.

In his mind, one phrase echoed — the final entry in the Helios Arc's log:

"We set course for Cybertron. We will burn their homeworld to ash."

And now, Cybertron was burning everything else.

A flickering alert blinked on a forgotten side console in the lower east ring of the Council chamber, tucked among hundreds of other feeds. A technician glanced at it, his eyes sunken from triple-shift rotations, barely registering the alert:

[AUTOBOT COMMAND SIGNAL – VERDANT PRIME | CHANNEL: EMERGENCY 3-RED]

He tapped it once. The window expanded briefly. Smoke. Fire. A soldier slumped behind a burning barricade. The nameplate registered automatically: KUP.

The technician hesitated, then closed the window.

"We've got bigger things," he muttered, dismissing the alert into the secondary archive queue.

He never saw the full feed.

If he had, this is what he would've seen:

Kup, battered and defiant, leaned toward a sparking console. His shoulder was torn open, and the sky behind him glowed with orbital fire.

"This is Kup... command unit Delta-Seven."

His voice was hoarse, but steady.

"Verdant Prime's done. They've won all our defenses gone in a matter of. No fallback."

He coughed — energon streaking down his plating.

"If you're getting this…"

He paused — optics locking with the lens.

"Don't bother sending help."

Then, lower:

"Tell Optimus... I'm sorry for never being half the bot you were, and to all the young bots who followed me, I'm sorry."

Kup turned, rifle raised, and charged toward the flames.

A blaster flare. A scream. Then:

[TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED – PRIORITY SYSTEM OVERWRITE ACTIVE]

And then came the next feed that hijacked the display viewing for the Council Session:

[TARNAC – NIGHTMARE'S PRIZE ESCAPE POD – PRIORITY BLACK]

Location – Great Council Spire, Teraxis Prime

POV – Tarnac / Third Person Omniscient (Council Broadcast)

[EMERGENCY BROADCAST – PRIORITY BLACK]

[LIVE COUNCIL SESSION – GALACTIC BROADCAST: FULL SECTOR COVERAGE]

A harsh signal burst across every feed in the Council Chamber. Delegates froze mid-sentence as the projection field twisted into a jagged glyph — NIGHTMARE'S PRIZE EMERGENCY RELAY.

Static gave way to a cracked viewport. Smoke billowed across the lens. Inside, lit by flickering fire and failing lights, knelt a shattered mech — half his armour scorched, one optic blown out, clutching a pulsing memory shard.

"This is Commander Tarnac," he rasped. "Second-in-command to Lockdown."

The Council went still.

"Lockdown is dead."

The silence deepened, punctuated only by shocked exhalations across the chamber.

"They hit us in orbit over Threxis Minor. No warning. No fleet movement. No standard formation. Just... annihilation."

"They didn't give us any chance."

"Thunderblast. Her Seekers. Drachen. The Decimator."

"It wasn't war. It was art and we were the canvas."

"We lost three heavy cruisers in two kliks. Deadspire imploded under one shot from the Decimator. Lockdown held the bridge until the last second — gave the order himself."

Tarnac held up the memory shard, scorched and sparking.

"This contains his final words. Battle telemetry. Command code signatures. Everything."

His voice cracked. "There were over two thousand aboard the Nightmare's Prize. Seven escaped."

"I'm six hours from Teraxis Prime. I need medical, relay access, and clearance. Help me—help them — and I'll deliver this."

"But don't think this is a strategy anymore. This is punishment."

"They want the galaxy to see us burn."

Sparks exploded behind him. Alarms screamed.

"We lost shield sync when they came up under the plane — I think they were tracking our jump wake or—"

Static surged.

"—repeat: seven survivors. We're—"

[SIGNAL LOST – TRANSMISSION CORRUPTED]

Location – Great Council Spire, Teraxis Prime

POV – Third Person Omniscient (Public Broadcast Session)

[GALACTIC PRIORITY BROADCAST – LEVEL OMEGA]

[LIVE TRANSMISSION – FULL SESSION – COUNCIL SPHERE: TERAXIS PRIME]

For a moment, the Council chamber was silent.

Then it detonated into sound.

"Seven?! That's all that remains?!"

"He said Thunderblast. The Decimator. And Drachen. That's a Named Kill Group!"

"How did they coordinate that fast?! How did they know?!"

"Why was Lockdown even in that sector?!"

"Why weren't we warned?!"

Voices shouted over translator fields. Dozens of dialects clashed in real-time. The roar echoed not only within the chamber but across a galaxy — billions tuned in, watching the Council fracture live. The Council forgot they were still live on air.

"ORDER!" Delan barked — his voice raw — but no one obeyed.

"Where is the defense fleet?" snapped High Marshal Kaelor, rising from his dais.

"Where is the reinforcement armada the Dralexians paid for? The one the Galactic Fiscal Reserve approved cycles ago?"

The question struck like a railgun.

A logistics officer stammered from a lower tier.

"The Venari Core Armada is still… en route. Its mass frame is too large for a standard jump. It requires a sub-light relay tether. It will enter this sector—"

He tapped a glyph.

"—within the week."

The silence that followed was worse than shouting.

"You built a fleet of golden coffins," said Vos.

"You knew it couldn't deploy. But it looks good on a status report."

A scoff cut across the chamber.

"I've toured the lead ship," said Councillor Vyrem, smugly folding his claws. "Stunning architecture. I'm retrofitting one into a private family command yacht. Twelve decks. Built on a dreadnought spine. Elegant drive coils. No recoil."

"Your yacht?" someone whispered.

"The stars are still our heritage, after all."

On screen, the glyph pulsed again:

[PODS ARRIVING – ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY CONFIRMED]

Followed by—

[COUNCIL ARMADA – LONG-RANGE SIGNATURE LOCKED]

Cheers rose from some platforms. Others went still.

Then—

[UNIDENTIFIED ENERGY SIGNATURE DETECTED – MATCH: DECEPTICON ARMADA]

The galactic map zoomed out.

Two fleets.

One battered, late, and incomplete.

The other fast. Whole. Relentless.

High Arbiter Delan slowly sat back in his chair.

The light above his platform dimmed.

His shoulders slumped.

And the galaxy watched the Council give up.

The Battle of Teraxis Prime had begun.