The Beginning of the End

« Transformers: Beast Wars #16 » «
"The Beginning of the End"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 25, 2022
Cover date	May 2022
Written by	Erik Burnham
Art by	Josh Burcham
Letters by	Nathan Widick and Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Jazmine Joyner and Riley Farmer
Continuity	Transformers: Beast Wars

The mutual threat of a common enemy forces the Maximals and Predacons to work together, but a traitor in their midst threatens their fragile truce.

Synopsis

Desperate times might make for desperate allies, but on board the Axalon an incredulous Rattrap can't believe that Optimus Primal's seriously proposing an alliance with the Predacons, and neither do any of the other Maximals. Despite their reservations, Primal insists that cooperation is the only way to defeat the Vok... and, across the valley, aboard the Darksyde, a similar conversation plays out as Megatron convinces the Predacons under his command to, however, grudgingly, put their differences aside for seven cycles and work together with their hated foes. When Primal's delegation touches down outside the Darksyde in their shuttlecraft some time later, the tense mood keeps both sides on edge as Optimus and Megatron exchange personnel: Rhinox and Dinobot will work with the Predacons, while Waspinator, Skold, and Blackarachnia will join the Maximals aboard the Axalon once Optimus fits them with movement-limiting restraining bolts. Rattrap again criticizes the wisdom of inviting Predacons on board, but Optimus reminds him that they've got more physical resources at their disposal than their rivals, and the Predacons might help them find a way to turn their scientific and physical advantages into anti-Vok weaponry.

As time passes, the Maximals and Predacons on both ships gradually settle into an uneasy truce. On the Darksyde, Rhinox and Scorponok figure out a way to repurpose the ship's scuttled transwarp drive; with a little help from Scorponok's code-breaking skills, they can use it to send a data packet through unspace to Cybertron... but are puzzled when they discover that someone's sabotaged the damaged drive and locked crucial functions behind a password. On the Axalon, meanwhile, Blackarachnia and Cheetor salvage whatever they can from the ship's armory as they mull over the Vok's intentions, and Nyx and Skold's inquest into energy disruption takes an new turn when Skold hits on the idea of scanning for unspace energy signatures directly on the ship. On the Darksyde, Scorponok makes a surprising discovery: when he finally cracks the Darksyde's security systems, he discovers that someone's deliberately locked down the transwarp drive—someone using Megatron's authorization code! When the two bring this to the Predacon leader's attention, Megatron promptly rounds on the untrustworthy Tarantulas... and although the Predacon scientist first tries to shift the blame to Dinobot, he quickly realizes the jig's up, fires a blast at Megatron, and escapes amidst the chaos! As he skitters away, Tarantulas gloats that the Vok made him a better offer: given the choice between learning the secrets of the universe or forever toadying at Megatron's side, who wouldn't side with the Vok? Tarantulas escapes Megatron, leaps out a side hatch, and races out into the desert... but didn't bargain on Dinobot, who catches the spider off-guard and incapacitates the traitor by impaling him through the abdomen.

As Rattrap and Waspinator successfully get the Axalon's engines up and running and forge an odd friendship in the process, Skold and Nyx explain their working theory to Optimus: the presence of anomalous unspace signatures aboard the Predacon ship just after their crash suggests that the Vok must hail from unspace itself. Before the Maximal leader can formulate a plan based on this knowledge, however, Cheetor bursts in with dire news: there's been an attack on the Darksyde!

One betacycle before, Tarantulas comes to in the ship's interrogation chamber, face-to-face with a furious Megatron, who orders him to tell him everything he knows about the Vok before he kills him. Unperturbed, the mad scientist merely uses one of his spider legs to flick a hidden switch, activate his latest experiment, and successfully stalls in time long enough for "experiment ZT-Omega" to reach Megatron... a horrific, reanimated Terrorsaur! Monstrously strong and unpredictable, the creature swats Dinobot aside, blasts Megatron in the chest, and even though Rhinox puts up a fight, even he eventually falls. With his three guards unconscious, Tarantulas and his creation almost have free run of the ship, but the mad scientist quickly realizes something's amiss: where's Scorponok? As it turns out, Scorponok's watched the entire horror show play out from the Darksyde's engine room... and although he quickly hits on the idea of adapting Rhinox's theory to send a distress message through unspace to warn the Axalon, Tarantulas and Terrorsaur find him! A defiant Scorponok shouts that he's too late, and that he's already warned the other Maximals and Predacons... and although Tarantulas had planned to capture Scorponok and deliver him to the Vok as a gift along with his other captives, he has a better idea, and tells Terrorsaur that he's free to consume Scorponok's energon.

As Terrorsaur feasts on his prey, Tarantulas turns his attention to the ship's computers, and the fruits of Rhinox's experiments with unspace communications. Although the Vok had ordered him to completely sabotage the transwarp drive, Tarantulas admits that he needed an insurance policy to get safely off-world... but with both ships now beyond repair there's only one other option on the table. Without hesitating, Tarantulas promptly fires off a message through unspace to the one planet in the universe guaranteed to have a transwarp-capable starship: Cybertron!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"This is total scrap, captain, and I won't do it! No self-respecting Maximal would just up'n willingly work with a group of Predacons... unless they had the taste to at least switch sides first, I guess."
"Surprisingly, I agree with him."

—Rattrap and Dinobot

"Besides, the Vok sound like bullies. Captain isn't going to back down from a bully."
"You landed on their planet and went to war. Are they bullies, or did they just lose patience?"

—Cheetor and Blackarachnia

"Why are none of you capable of the smallest bit of loyalty?!"

—Megatron

"Well, well. Look who's awake. Tell me everything you know about the Vok before I kill you."
"Don't you mean or I'll kill you?"
"I do not."

—Megatron and Tarantulas

"The Tripredacus Council was right about you. You are a poor leader. I thought I might steer you towards effectiveness, but all you want to do is make grandiose speeches! You'd be a terrible ruler."

—Tarantulas

Notes

Continuity notes

• To exchange personnel, Optimus and the other Maximals use the improvised shuttlecraft they built to assault the Darksyde in issue #10.
• Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tarantulas and Dinobot are still on bad terms—upon first meeting one another in this issue, Tarantulas sardonically asks if Dinobot plans to sabotage his work again, in reference to how Dinobot destroyed Tarantulas's experimental transformation lock lens when he betrayed the Predacons in issue #3.
• In the same scene, Rhinox asks Skold how she's holding up; when they last crossed paths on the battlefield in issue #12, Skold was still mourning the death of her friend Razorbeast, and Rhinox convinced her to stand down by trying to help her process that grief.
• Throughout the issue, Rattrap's shown munching on some of the planet's native fruit, a favorite food he'd previously developed a taste for in issue #2. That same issue also established Scorponok's predilection for codebreaking, a skill he uses here to unscramble the Darksyde's encrypted systems.
• While working together with Blackarachnia, Cheetor points out that she destroyed half of the Maximal armory during her escape from the Axalon, which took place in issue #8.
• The CGMG-Five, the cargo-loading exoskeleton Rattrap used to defeat Tarantulas in issue #6, makes a cameo on page thirteen, parked in the corner of the Axalon's engine room.
• In a conversation with Optimus Primal, Skold notes that the Predacons detected and attempted to track anomalous unspace readings all over their ship shortly after the crash, which occurred in issue #2.
• After capturing Tarantulas, Megatron and Dinobot attach him to the same improvised torture rack the Predacons used to interrogate Nyx in issue #3.
• Having perished at the hands of Skold in issue #12, Terrorsaur's dead body was last seen being examined by Tarantulas in that issue, who vowed that he would finally make something useful out of him. It seems that he's made good on that promise...

Transformers references

• Tarantulas has had close dealings with the Vok before—in the original Beast Wars cartoon, he possessed a strange amount of knowledge regarding their activities and motives, but usually worked in opposition to the enigmatic aliens. This new take on the character, meanwhile, has him actively betray his fellow Predacons in order to ally with the Vok... which is, to be fair, just as in-character for a 'bot as untrustworthy as Tarantulas!
• Rhinox boasts that he once dissected a kremzeek, an annoying electrical pest that appeared in the The Transformers episode "Kremzeek!" and has since become a perennial easter egg throughout the Transformers mythos.
• Among the weapons stored in the Axalon's armory is a bulky handgun based on Generation 1 Megatron's gun mode, complete with stock and silencer attachments, and an orange rifle based on the gun that came with Optimus Primal's "Optimal Optimus" figure.
• The Issue's title is taken directly from Tarantulas' own words at the end of "Other Voices, Part 1" in regards to the Vok's Planet Buster.

Real-world references

• To limit the movement of the Predacons while on the Axalon, Optimus affixes them with "restraining bolts", co-opting the name from a device from the original Star Wars trilogy.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Optimus, Cheetor, and Tigatron, by Emilio Lopez
• Cover B: Optimus versus Megatron, by Anthony Pugh
• Retailer incentive cover: Megatron on fire, by Sebastien Stone

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Reprints

• The Transformers: Beast Wars Volume 3 (October 5, 2022) ISBN 1684059380 / ISBN 978-1684059386
  • Collects Beast Wars issues #13–17, and Beast Wars Annual 2022.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers, and an one-page sketch by Burcham.

• 

  Beast Wars, Vol 3; cover art by Colm Griffin

External links

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