The battleship translated out of folded space at the edge of a dying star system, its arrival silent, its presence hidden behind layered cloaking fields and reality anchors. Ahead, suspended like a wounded god drifting through the void, hung Cybertron.
Alex stood on the command deck and regarded the planet without awe. It was larger than Earth, its surface a labyrinth of interlocking plates, fractured spires, and dormant city-structures that wrapped the world like scars. Energy readings flickered across his displays. Ancient. Vast. Inconsistent. The planet was alive in a way that defied organic classification.
So this is where they were born, Alex said.
Gear's voice flowed through the bridge, precise and analytical. Cybertronian civilization detected. Planetary core exhibits artificial construction. Energon signatures pervasive. Indigenous mechanical lifeforms possess autonomous cognition, transformation capability, and self-repair functions.
Living machines, Alex murmured. Elegant. Wasteful.
He did not come as a conqueror. Not yet. He came as a thief of gods.
The battleship slipped closer, threading through sensor shadows left behind by millennia of war. Alex had already analyzed intercepted transmissions and historical echoes embedded in subspace. Autobots. Decepticons. Primes. A civilization that had torn itself apart over ideology and resource scarcity, then exported its war to the stars.
Familiar patterns.
Prepare insertion, Alex ordered. Minimal footprint. No engagement unless unavoidable.
A single drop pod detached from the battleship, wrapped in distortion fields and guided by predictive algorithms that threaded it through Cybertron's fractured orbital defenses. It pierced the atmosphere and vanished into the metallic canyons below, striking ground without sound.
Alex emerged alone.
The surface of Cybertron was cold beneath his boots, metal grinding softly as his weight settled. Towering structures loomed overhead, their designs alien yet unmistakably intentional. Massive conduits ran like veins through the ground, pulsing faintly with Energon.
He could feel it.
The planet's machine spirit was not singular. It was a choir. Countless overlapping intelligences woven into infrastructure, memory, and code. Cybertron was not merely a world that produced machines. It was a machine that produced life.
Alex activated his scanners and began to move.
He avoided active zones first, slipping through abandoned sectors and dead cities where the echoes of ancient battles still lingered. Here, massive Cybertronian corpses lay half-buried, their frames stripped by scavengers or fused to the environment by time. Alex paused beside one, placing a hand against its armor.
Data streamed instantly.
Structural schematics unfolded in his mind. Layered armor composed of living alloys capable of adaptive reconfiguration. Internal transformation matrices that allowed mass redistribution without violating conservation laws. Spark chambers housing what Cybertronians called their souls, energy constructs tied directly to the planet's core.
Fascinating, Alex whispered.
He did not linger.
His true target lay deeper.
Alex reached one of Cybertron's primary data vaults, a cathedral-sized structure fused directly into the planet's crust. It was guarded, but not in the way humans would recognize. Defense protocols were woven into the walls themselves, semi-sentient systems designed to identify hostile intent.
Alex did not bring hostility.
He brought inevitability.
He interfaced directly, bypassing surface protocols and drilling into foundational code layers using logic derived from the fused Mother Box architecture and Kryptonian computation frameworks. The vault resisted, its systems adapting in real time, but Alex was already ahead, rewriting assumptions faster than the planet could respond.
The data flood was overwhelming.
Cybertronian history unfolded in raw, unfiltered form. The creation of the Primes. The rise of Sentinel. The schism that birthed Autobot and Decepticon. The discovery of Energon as both fuel and sustenance. The decision to wage planetary-scale war.
Alex filtered mercilessly.
What he took was everything.
The complete mechanical tech tree of Cybertronian design. The principles governing living metal synthesis. The transformation algorithms that allowed machines to reconfigure at will. The construction methods for Cybertronian bodies, from scouts to titans.
He learned how to build them.
More importantly, he learned how to break them.
Critical vulnerabilities surfaced as patterns emerged. Spark destabilization thresholds. Energon feedback loops. Neural lattice overload points. Alex cataloged them all, not with hatred, but with the same calm he applied to any engineering problem.
Knowledge without sentiment.
Space Bridge technology followed.
Alex traced its development from crude dimensional tears to stabilized interstellar transit gates capable of moving armies across galaxies instantaneously. He absorbed the equations, the field harmonics, the anchoring requirements.
This alone would change everything.
Energon processing systems revealed themselves next. How raw Energon was harvested, refined, weaponized. How it could be converted into matter, energy, or both simultaneously. How Cybertronians used it not only as fuel, but as currency, religion, and lifeblood.
Then he found it.
The Sun Harvester.
Alex paused as the data unfolded.
A colossal construct designed to siphon stellar plasma directly from a star, converting it into refined Energon at catastrophic scale. Entire suns consumed to fuel Cybertron's war machine.
Wasteful, he judged. But effective.
He downloaded everything.
Minutes stretched into hours as Alex stripped the vault bare, copying not just static data but adaptive learning matrices and manufacturing heuristics. By the time he disengaged, Cybertron's greatest archive was hollow, its knowledge mirrored perfectly within his systems.
Gear confirmed completion. Cybertronian mechanical framework fully integrated. New technology branch unlocked.
Alex stepped back from the vault and looked around.
Cybertron did not scream. It did not retaliate. It simply continued to exist, unaware that its greatest strength had just been taken.
That was enough.
Before leaving, Alex gathered samples. Living metal fragments. Refined Energon crystals. Pieces of transformation cores salvaged from dormant frames. Each was cataloged, contained, and stored within his system space.
As he returned to the drop zone, a presence stirred.
Alex froze.
Massive footsteps echoed through the metal canyons. A towering figure emerged from the shadows, optics flaring to life. A Decepticon patrol unit, its frame scarred from countless battles, cannon arm swiveling toward him.
Unknown unit detected, it rumbled. Identify yourself.
Alex did not answer.
He raised one hand.
A single, precise energy pulse lanced forward, calibrated not to destroy but to disable. The Decepticon staggered as its spark chamber destabilized, systems cascading into shutdown. It collapsed with a thunderous crash, inert but intact.
Alex walked past it without another glance.
Engagement unnecessary, he said.
The drop pod extracted him moments later, vanishing back into the void as Cybertron continued its endless, dying war.
The battleship received him in silence.
As soon as Alex returned to the command deck, Gear began processing the acquired knowledge, weaving Cybertronian tech into existing systems. New possibilities unfolded instantly. Self-transforming warframes. Adaptive starships. Autonomous constructs capable of operating independently across hostile realities.
And beyond that, something more ambitious.
Earth.
Alex turned his gaze toward the distant blue dot hanging in the void.
Cybertron's war had spilled across the galaxy and destroyed its creators. Earth would not suffer the same fate.
Set course for Earth, Alex ordered. Begin integration of Cybertronian frameworks into planetary defense and manufacturing sectors. Space Bridge prototypes prioritized. Energon synthesis adapted for non sentient use.
Acknowledged.
The battleship folded space once more.
Behind them, Cybertron turned slowly in the darkness, unaware that its secrets now belonged to someone who would use them far more efficiently.
Alex stood still as stars stretched and vanished.
The universal war was expanding.
And Earth was becoming something far more dangerous than its enemies realized.