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"Light/Star"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	June 9, 2021
Cover date	May 2021
Written by	Brian Ruckley
Art by	Alex Milne
Colors	John-Paul Bove
Letters by	Jake M. Wood
Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz and Riley Farmer
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

While searching for Vigilem, Lightbright, Lodestar, and the Technobots uncover a sinister conspiracy on a distant Cybertronian colony.

Synopsis

At the Black Hub, Lodestar's just undergone a full refit: sporting extra weapons and heavy armor, she and her Cityspeaker Lightbright make final preparations for their mission to find and deal with Vigilem. They won't be going it alone this time, as Colonial Security operative Scattershot and his Technical Solutions team will be supporting them on this deep space mission. As they get underway, Lodestar and Lightbright both raise their concerns about the imploder Scattershot's men have brought aboard; although Scattershot points out that it's a weapon of last resort, the Titan dislikes the idea of transporting the same device that killed Croaton during the War of the Threefold Spark. Scattershot reminds them that keeping the peace out in the colonies is different from life on peaceful Cybertron; sometimes he and his team can negotiate their way out of a problem or improvise a peaceful solution, but dangerous problems require lethal contingency measures, and the imploder is just that: a contingency. Nine cycles into their mission—in between test-firing Lodestar's new armaments and passing the time with games and other diversions—Lightspeed barges into Lightbright's quarters during her private dancing time to bring an urgent message: they've picked up Vigilem's trail.

Eight cycles later, Lodestar arrives at the distant colony of Hexagon; Vigilem has already arrived and docked with the asteroid city for repairs and refuelling. At first, Scattershot tries a two-pronged diplomatic approach: while he calls up the colony's administrator Thunderwing, Lodestar reaches out to Vigilem to try and convince the ancient Titan to peacefully power down. Although embittered commander-turned-bureaucrat Thunderwing wasn't aware of his role in the recent Tether disaster, he refuses to surrender Vigilem out of fear of the collateral damage that could result should Vigilem not come quietly. Lodestar's conversation with Vigilem goes even worse: the Titan bristles at the idea of diminishing himself any further by returning to stasis and cuts the feed instead. With diplomacy off the table, Scattershot and his team take a direct approach by using one of Lodestar's shuttles to travel into Hexagon and manually disconnect Vigilem from his berth. This plan sounds simple... but the moment they leave their landing bay, they're stopped by a familiar face: Bludgeon!

On Lodestar, Lightbright tries to distract herself from their current situation by remembering happier times with her Titan, like the time they navigated a crystalline asteroid belt together. As Lightbright stands under a shimmering hologram of those asteroids, Lodestar admits that she has no desire to kill Vigilem—Titans were never meant to fight one another—and Lightbright agrees. All they can do is hope that a better option will present itself...

Bludgeon takes the five Autobots through the asteroid city to meet with Thunderwing, but Afterburner isn't happy to see Bludgeon, who's been hopping in and out of stasis prisons since the end of the war. But Bludgeon is an upstanding citizen compared to Thunderwing's other hires: the unpleasant mercenary trio of Ramjet, Dirge, and Thrust, who glower at the team as Bludgeon escorts them into Thunderwing's office. Though Thunderwing snaps that he's had to up security after the recent diplomatic incident with the Thraal, Scattershot cuts through Thunderwing's bluster: as a Senate operative, he outranks Thunderwing. He and his team are going to suspend repairs and disconnect Vigilem from the city's energon reserves whether Thunderwing wants to or not; although Thunderwing snarls that the Senate doesn't exist anymore, he grudgingly backs down, but warns them that whatever happens next is their responsibity.

Afterburner stays behind with Thunderwing and Bludgeon, Ramjet and Thrust take Scattershot and Nosecone to the docking controls, and Dirge leads Lightspeed and Strafe down to Vigilem's berth, but Lightspeed points out that something's wrong: they already downloaded Hexagon's schematics before they arrived, and Dirge is leading them in the wrong direction. Furthermore, their schematics didn't include a massive, locked door in this corridor... and this comment prompts Dirge to pull his weapons on the duo. When Lightspeed radios Scattershot for help, however, a sudden station-wide comms blackout renders everyone's systems inoperable—something Ramjet and Thrust write off as Vigilem interfering with their systems. That's one coincidence too many for Scattershot: he points out that Thunderwing's somehow aware of the Senate crisis playing out on Cybertron despite claiming no knowledge of Vigilem's role in the disaster, didn't contact anyone on Cybertron when a Titan suddenly showed up on his doorstep, and recently recruited a group of known malcontents with criminal tendencies. Scattershot whips out his blasters and orders them to tell them where they're really taking them; at that moment, Afterburner pulls out his own gun on Thunderwing and Bludgeon when the comms go down, only for Bludgeon to easily get the drop on Afterburner and send him flying with one swing of his sword!

Although Lodestar and Lightbright detect the presence of a massive signal dampening field, they can't penetrate it. Fortunately, the Technical Solutions team are capable fighters and capable of thinking on their feet—while Nosecone drills through the bulkheads so that he and Scattershot can escape into the ventilation system, Lightspeed hotwires the mysterious door while Strafe battles Dirge and eventually drives him away. Once they're in, however, the pair discover a strange, glowing shaft... before they can figure out what this means, however, Thunderwing uses the intercom system to finally drop all pretenses and explain his real plan. Although the Senate might have exiled him to Hexagon, they were never able to blunt his ambitions or change his nature; with the Senate in shambles and the new regime ascendant, he will repair Vigilem, deliver the Titan to Cybertron, and ingratiate himself to the new regime.

As Bludgeon uses his tank mode to pursue Afterburner through the corridors, Nosecone and Scattershot break through the wall and rescue their teammate by using Nosecone's drill to pierce Bludgeon's armor and take him out. Lightspeed pulls the plug on Thunderwing's speech by hotwiring the comms system to request support from his teammates. As he does so, he discovers that this mysterious room is connected to every part of Hexagon—from here, he can even disconnect Vigilem from his docking bay. Before he can do so, however, a voice warns him not to as a dark shape scuttles up the shaft: Airachnid! Wanted for her depraved experiments, the twisted scientist has struck up a partnership with Thunderwing and turned her talents towards a new goal: recreating the Artifacts of the Primes. While she monologues, Lightspeed dives towards the control panel and releases Vigilem; the furious Airachnid is too late to stop him, and when Scattershot and the others arrive, they promptly charge the villain. Airachnid retaliates by launching an explosive barrage from her body that knocks them off-balance and sends them all plummeting into the depths of the shaft...

Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust regroup as Thunderwing demands a status update... but, at that moment, a terrified Airachnid races out of her laboratory, shouting that Scattershot and his team have fallen into her experimental Combination Core, an artificial copy of the Enigma of Combination. Seconds later, she's proven right when a gigantic arm punches its way up through the floor! The combiner rises from the wreckage, tears its way through the station, and swats the three Coneheads into open vacuum; Airachnid warns Thunderwing that the only way to save Hexagon from the rampaging combiner is to jettison the stricken section entirely; swearing vengeance against Scattershot for forcing his hand, Thunderwing just does that, launching part of the colony out onto an escape trajectory and taking the self-proclaimed "Computron" with it. Lodestar detects the launch, but Lightbright reminds her that they have other problems: Vigilem's on the move and setting a course for Cybertron. Despite Lodestar's attempts to reach out, she cannot penetrate his cryptic ramblings, and her attempts to reach out only provoke the rogue Titan into transforming and attacking her with a torpedo barrage. Lodestar also shifts into robot mode to better defend herself; although her point defenses shred his torpedo barrage, she can't keep up the pace for long. There's only one option left—as Lightbright urges her on, Lodestar closes the distance, ejects the imploder out of an airlock, and rams it deep into Vigilem's chest. The explosion vaporizes Lodestar's right arm but fatally blows Vigilem apart; as his shattered corpse drifts into the gravity well of the nearest star, Lodestar reestablishes contact with her Cityspeaker. While she's sustained serious damage to the point where she can't transform back into starship mode, Lodestar has just enough energy to limp off in search for their companions.

On their drifting section of Hexagon, Scattershot and his team try to figure out what's happened to them. Somehow, Scattershot absorbed the power of Airachnid's artificial Enigma; even now, his form glows with unnatural energy. At that moment, however the team receive a transmission from Lodestar, who's come to rescue them... though she warns that Lodestar's current state means that it'll be a slow, painful trip back to the Black Hub. Six cycles later, Lightspeed interrupts Lightbright's dance routine once more to report that they've intercepted a transmission from Cybertron that states the unthinkable: all of the Titans orbiting Cybertron have fallen and died. Overwhelmed by emotion, Lightbright tells Lodestar to play a different song as she silently gazes into a hologram of the crystal asteroids she once navigated, trying to process the loss—for Lodestar is now the very last Titan.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"How many times you beaten Afterburner now, Nosecone?"
"This trip? Four. Dunno why he keeps coming back. He never wins."
"Don't suppose he ever will. Fun that he keeps trying, though."

—Strafe and Nosecone

"I have ruled Hexagon since before your little technical solutions club was even formed. Perhaps you've forgotten, but I was consequential before they sent me here. I scoured the galaxy for resources that fuelled expansion! I commanded fleets, colonies, entire sectors!"

—Thunderwing

"We exist to excel. To exceed. Lodestar. Lodestar, is it? I can exceed you, if need be."

—Vigilem

"We have seen the light of so many stars. I want to see more. I want that future light. But nor do I want to deny it to Vigilem. They have made me capable, but never eager. It feels a kind of madness for Titan to fight Titan. We were never meant for that."

—Lodestar

"Far as I know, Bludgeon's not currently accused of any crimes."
"Yeah, but three times, is it, in punitive stasis?"
"Four. Starting to enjoy it. Restful."

—Scattershot, Strafe, and Bludgeon

"You should stay down, Afterburner."
"Oh, I just can't help myself, Bludgeon. I will keep comin' back for more."

—Bludgeon versus Afterburner

"Airachnid. This place only delivers the worst kind of surprises."
"Yeah. First time it's delivered one that's officially, currently, definitely a wanted criminal, though."

—Strafe and Lightspeed

"I am... a unity. I am... I am... Computron."

—Computron

Notes

Continuity notes

• Lightbright and Lodestar battled Vigilem in issue #17, but weren't able to prevent him from attacking the Winged Moon and severing the Tether that connected it to Cybertron. In issue #20, Orion Pax ordered Lightbright and Lodestar to report to the Black Hub for a weaponized refit, and a brief scene in the next issue showed the pair leaving Cybertron.
• This issue begins at some point after issue #23, which saw Megatron and his newly-minted Decepticons overthrow the Senate and declare martial law. The voyage to and from Hexagon takes at least twenty-nine cycles, and the last scene occurs just after issue #29, which ended with the Decepticons killing all the Titans over Cybertron.
• Nosecone namedrops a number of goings-on from the Galaxies anthology series: he notes that the planet Mayalx was recently "devastated" in a cheeky reference to the finale of the "Constructicons Rising" arc, and alludes to the disappearance of Ultra Magnus and his starship from the last issue of the "Storm Horizon" storyline—the final scene of that comic, which depicts him and his crew returning to Cybertron after a time-dilating adventure in the Black Sphere, must therefore take place after both this story and the "War World" arc as a whole.
• Jazz makes a quick cameo on a screen in the Black Hub, in keeping with his brief appearance in "Storm Horizon" that showed him as some kind of adjunct to Cybertron's Colonial Security division.
• A conversation between Lodestar and Scattershot reveals that the rogue Titan Croaton was destroyed with an imploder during the War of the Threefold Spark. Presumably, as per #29, this must've been the weapon that Citadel used to kill him.
• Nosecone and Afterburner pass the time by playing a chess-like game involving multiple boards, which first appeared in issue #29.
• The asteroid city of Hexagon appeared in issue #12 as the final colony Sentinel Prime visited before returning to Cybertron. Thunderwing justifies his decision to beef up security by hiring the three Coneheads as a direct response to the terrorist Thraal plot from that issue.
• Airachnid notes that the various Artifacts of the Primes went missing, a fact that's been alluded to multiple times in both the main ongoing and Galaxies. Intriguingly, Airachnid flags up her artificial Combination Core as a replica of the "lost" Enigma of Combination. Termagax seemingly took possession of the artifact in Galaxies #1 after using it to create the combiner who would go on to become Devastator, but this is evidently not common knowledge, as most of Cybertron regards the Enigma as having been "lost" at some point. In Transformers #26, Starscream said he knew something about the Enigma. And given how his knowledge of the Titansparks turned out...
• Computron makes his first appearance in an IDW continuity, leaving Piranacon as the only G1 Scramble City-style combiner yet to appear in either IDW incarnation. Combiners are still very rare in this version, though, with only Devastator and Abominus having appeared so far.
• In their final battle, Vigilem and Lodestar again quote Codexa's thoughts on the Titans from The Way We Were, by One Who Saw It: "we should fear what terrible circumstance might bring their waking, and what terrible consequence might follow it."
• The last scene reveals that Lodestar is the very last Titan—in #30, Megatron claimed that the sixteen Titansparks hidden underneath the Pyramid were destroyed when the building flooded with molten plasma... but, like, c'mon...

Transformers references

• The five Technobots are drawn and colored to resemble their Unite Warriors toys, which were in turn decoed to match how the characters appeared in the original The Transformers cartoon. As a result, Afterburner is red and white instead of orange and grey, while Computron gets his show-accurate blue visor and gold face with no mouthplate.
• Metalhawk appears as a technician aboard the Black Hub; he's working alongside Syphon, who was originally one of the many "Disappeared" Cybertronians in the pages of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, and who was originally drawn by Alex Milne.
• Lightspeed notes his unfulfilled desire to become a Cityspeaker and travel through space aboard a Titan—this seems like a reference to Bob Budiansky's original profile for the character, which flagged up his secret desire to peacefully explore the universe as an interstellar spacecraft.
• Like many modern depictions of the characters, Bludgeon and Thunderwing appear as normal Cybertronians who wear bodies based on their more famous Pretender shells. While Thunderwing is a mostly faithful adaptation of his 2010 Generations figure, Bludgeon is a bit looser—he incorporates a number of traits like his skull-shaped chest from his Warrior-class figure from Robots in Disguise, but the rest of his body is a bit of a mishmash that doesn't map to any one specific version of the character.
• The three "Coneheads" appear as unaligned enforcers-for-hire; while they're typically depicted as Decepticons, the trio recently guest-starred in the War For Cybertron cartoon as members of Doubledealer's freebooting Mercenary crew. Like their appearance in that show, they are depicted with bodies resembling the Siege Seeker mold, which was never actually used for the Coneheads. Unlike that series, however, they are all drawn here with their distinct, individual styles of wings.
• Airachnid—a cross-continuity transplant of the Prime character—made her first IDW appearance in the last arc of Till All Are One, and later appeared in the Star Trek and My Little Pony crossover comics as a minor goon. This incarnation of the character hews much closer to the ruthless, amoral scientist who appeared in Till All Are One—and while previous depictions of the character depicted her alternate mode as either a spider or a Prime-style helicopter, this issue bridges the gap by depicting her as a full-fledged triple changer, though her flight mode only appears in Alex Milne's concept art for the character.
• Airachnid namedrops several Artifacts of the Primes: in addition to the Matrix of Leadership and the Enigma of Combination, other relics include the Lenses worn by Alchemist Prime, the "Cog" of Amalgamous Prime, the Darts wielded by the Liege Maximo, and the "Stone", which could either be a reference to Micronus Prime's Chimera Stone or Quintus Prime's Emberstone.

Errors

• In his first appearance amidst the staff of the Black Hub, Afterburner is colored tan instead of red.

Other trivia

• Author Brian Ruckley originally pitched this storyline as an entire six-issue Galaxies arc, but the concept was eventually compressed down into a single annual instead. ^[1]
• Originally solicited for May 26, this issue arrives just two weeks late, landing in the second week of June instead.
• Backmatter for this plus-sized annual includes concept art for Airachnid, Bludgeon, Thunderwing, and the Black Hub.

Covers (2)

• Cover A: Lightbright's plugged in, by Alex Milne
• Retailer incentive cover: Optimus Prime, by Freddie E. Williams II and Jeremy Colwell

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Reprints

• Transformers Volume 5: Horrors Near and Far (June 8, 2022) ISBN 168405883X / ISBN 978-1684058839
  • Collects Transformers (2019) issues #31–36 & Annual 2021, Transformers Halloween Special, and Wreckers—Tread & Circuits issues #1–4.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers.
  • Hardcover format.

• 

  Volume 5: Horrors Near and Far – cover art by Cryssy Cheung

References

External links

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