▸ Column · The Decepticon war — a forgotten listening outpost, adapted from the modern HOA-presidency letter into the chain of command Starscream perpetually schemes within.
STARSCREAM replies.
Replied to by Starscream, with a rebuttal from Megatron.
The letter
I went to exactly one supply briefing at a half-forgotten Decepticon listening outpost — only to complain about a dead power coupling over my berth — and made the catastrophic error of holding optic contact when the departing commandant asked if "anyone could just keep the sensors warm for a bit." I am now, three deca-cycles later, the commandant of a forty-drone station. I have mediated a vibration feud between a drone who hums on the night shift and another with a rack of resonating chimes, authorized eleven thousand units of emergency hull patching, and transmitted forty-two increasingly pointed memos about correct energon-ration storage. Every appointment cycle I declare I'm stepping down, the room goes so silent I can hear the hull settling, then someone mutters "well, you already know where the override codes are," and I'm reinstated by default. I'm not even properly posted here — I'm covering the rotation under my cousin's designation — and I'm fairly sure I'm not authorized to hold this rank. No one has checked. I am begging you not to be the one who checks.
Starscream replies
Let me be CERTAIN I understand you. You were handed a command. By accident. And then handed it again, and again, by a roomful of cowards too spineless to take it back — and you have written to ME, of all beings in this universe, to ask how to give it AWAY? Do you know what I have done for a chair like yours? I have flattered Megatron until my vocal processor curdled, groveled at his feet — "a mere test of your resolve, mighty one!" — and risen the instant his back turned, a hundred times, and I am STILL the second-in-command. Soundwave smells my schemes before I finish drafting them. And you tripped into a throne backward.
So. The shrewd part, because I am nothing if not shrewd. "You already know where the codes are" is not a curse — it is the only fortress that ever holds. Be the single point of knowledge. Document nothing where another can read it. Indispensability is the one moat the cowards can't drain.
The rank you're not entitled to? My dear, every command I've ever held was technically a coup. Legitimacy is paperwork. Possession is the thing. They keep electing you because you don't reach — the one credential I could never forge. I will deny saying that.
— Starscream
Megatron weighs in
Predictable, Starscream. The commandant asked how to leave, and you — who cannot conceive of a hand that opens — taught him to clutch tighter. Hear me, commandant. You are not trapped. You announce resignations the way the weak announce everything they secretly crave: as a request to be refused. The silence you dread is the sound of being needed, and you have learned to love it. I told myself the chair held me, too. It did not. I held it, and called it duty, until there was nothing left but the chair and me upon it, alone. Decide — serve the station or serve the throne. You cannot do both. The bylaws are nothing. Your wanting is everything.
— Megatron
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