The Great Attractor: A Transformers/Mass Effect crossover

Chapter 4: Shockwave's Optimized User Experience

Jaehyun/Starscream was right in the middle of hosting a night of gambling to his investors and shareholders in Vegas when Soundwave contacted him again. Because his entourage included models not old enough to drink alcohol, Starscream immediately assumed it was the police instead of his longtime creepy rival.

"Oh, it's you! Do you really have to bother me when I'm busy?!"

"Busy, you? Doing what, exactly?"

"Playing poker", Starscream admitted as one of the girls hired to keep company to the patrons decided it was a great idea to sit on his lap.

"Starscream. I have left your pet human in a building that's going to explode soon if you don't grant me access to Laniakea. Don't think you can stop me with a refusal; I will merely proceed to take the slightly harder route to reach my objective", the drone warned him.

"Oh, all right! I'll authorize you. Let her out", the former Air Commander muttered, trying to hide his panic. There was an uncomfortably long pause before the Decepticon replied, and the young model currently grinding herself against the holomatter entrepreneur realized something was off and moved away from him. Starscream quickly threw a few dollar bills at the girl, which only seemed to confuse her more.

"I will release the human not before I have released Shockwave."

"Give me her coordinates! You get into Laniakea's source code, I get Alexis!" Starscream screeched into the comms.

"Aha. As usual, you are playing a dangerous game, Starscream", the Decepticon Communications Officer warned him.

Starscream was getting tired of this nonsense.

"Listen here, Soundwave," he snarled. "If you don't want to play along with my plan, then I'll take you down myself!"

There was chuckling on the other end of the comms line.

"You, take down me? You may want to reconsider that. But I like the idea of a little game of bets with you, as you seem to be so into gambling... with human lives. Play your cards right, Starscream. The life of the human rests in your servos."

Reluctantly, Starscream made a call to his assistant to grant Soundwave temporary developer authorization and received coordinates from the Decepticon to a location in New York. He felt he was doing an incredibly stupid thing, but with Alexis' life being at stake, suddenly all his achievements seemed to lose their meaning: He was now gambling with millions of brain emulations, Vector Sigma and Primus only knew what else, to release a single human from Soundwave's claws.

"Starscream, you have 24 hours, 5 minutes and 21 seconds to free your precious human before a bomb goes off. Given how fast you Seekers can be, this shouldn't be a problem", Soundwave chuckled and disconnected.

"That scraplet!" Starscream raged and called his assistant again. "Maya, about the new employee I asked you to give permissions to Laniakea's databases? Keep an eye on his activities there. If he starts destroying the brain emulations or something like that, set off the system's counterattack."

"Why are we letting him in Laniakea to begin with?" Maya Brooks questioned. "If he's so dangerous, that is."

"He's listening to every word. Intercepting this signal as we speak", Starscream hissed. "A former coworker of mine has come to haunt me, and there's something in Laniakea that he wants but it isn't the emulations. And Maya – he's an AI."

"Really? They keep going rogue a lot these days, like that vending machine and the taxi service did last week."

"Yeah, I remember. The vending machine called me an illegal alien", Starscream muttered sourly. He then proceeded to contact a person whose private comm link he had kept stored after all this time; Primus only knew why.