Plague Untitled
(Here's
another unfinished story idea. I wanted to give Rampage a companion, a femme who
was as crazy as he was, but...never finished it)
Rampage
couldn’t remember being so bored.
The transmetal king crab scuttled along the bottom of the sea, his
sideways-moving legs kicking up sand and bottom dwelling fish. A flounder
blundered out of the grit and swam awkwardly out of the giant robot’s way.
Rampage’s chela clicked loudly. How
banal, he mulled to himself. Not even
my old friend comes out here anymore. Being a pelagic creature, Depth Charge
kept to the open waters, yes, but this particular open area in Predacon nautical
territory was rather unattractive. The sandy sea floor was littered with
numerous ugly rocks and boulders, and undersea geysers spouted superheated magma
into the water. It was a little warm in this sector, to say the least. Nothing
grew, few things lived. No wonder the manta quit coming around.
Rampage regretted that. He needed a playmate in his time of ceaseless
boredom. Some subspecies of stingray, about six feet across, stirred out of the
sand at the killer crab’s approach. You
will have to do...for now. With speed that misrepresented Rampage’s size,
a huge purple chela shot out, grabbing the stingray by the middle. The
frightened elasmobranch struggled, undulated its circular body in an attempt to
escape its captor. The claw twitched shut and the ray’s struggles ended in a
cloud of crimson. Rampage’s outer mouth parts guided the carcass to the inner,
which eagerly devoured the stingray’s lifeless body. He’d much rather have
fleshmetal, the muscle-cords and fascia of a robot, but finding someone to kill
was difficult on this Pitforsaken planet. Rampage never could figure out how
Maximal backup always arrived right
when he was settling in to kill....
“Alert:
Stasis pod entering planetary atmosphere.”
Whaggrr..?
His
computer continued, droning on in the usual monotonous manner. “Estimated
landing trajectory: Three-zero-three.”
A stasis pod? There hadn’t been a stasis pod landing in months, and the
last one to crash on ancient Earth had imploded into itself, destroying the
spark. Rampage waited for the orders he thought would surely come, waited for
the holder of half of his spark to contact him. The metal crab lingered for
several cycles, but his comm-link remained silent. Hrm.
This was a strange development. It was also an opportunity, an opportunity to
find this pod and feed on its occupant. The familiar pang of hunger swept though
his semi-organic stomach. It had been FAR too long since he had last tasted a
spark, since he had devoured the soul of a transformer and felt it die within
him.
Having made up his mind, the king crab activated his internal scramblers
- at this moment his signature disappeared from all Predacon scanners - and
turned west.
***
Far
beyond Predacon nautical territory..
***
The damaged gray stasis pod sparked in the wet darkness, water from the
broken cave roof dripping onto the scuffed metal. Impaired computer systems
droned out a garbled message to no one in particular. Brown bats perked their
ears, but soon lost interest and resumed their vertical slumbering. An alpine
newt remained motionless underwater. The creek dwelling amphibian twitched,
strange eyes peering into the water as a yellow ray of light swept over it. The
stasis pod droned out another obscure message, then fell silent as the vessel
began to hum to life..
****
Rampage’s six legs thumped separately on the sand as he ascended from
the warm depths. Salty ocean water dripped off of his gleaming metal form. The
pod wasn’t far from here.
Crab mouth parts twitched in eagerness. So good it would be to devour a
spark again. Who knows, maybe the pod would already be active. Maybe he would be
able to kill a living transformer and feed off of their fear. He wasn’t
counting on it, but he could hope.
A damp, dreary cave mouth loomed ahead of him. According to his scanners
this was where the pod was.