Space Pirates!

Space Pirates refers to a storyline in the Marvel UK comics running over some six issues.

Synopsis
The Quintessons are not having a good year. Space-time itself has been seriously ruptured due to the continuing presence of Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge in Earth's past, and the physical feedback is causing the Quintessons' homeworld of Quintessa to fall into its sun.

The Quintessons' original plan was to find an alternative homeworld to move to; to that end they surveyed a number of machine worlds (including Cybertron) and recorded the report in the Quintesson Journal. Unfortunately, they misplaced it and it fell into the hands of Wreck-Gar who withstood all attempts to wring out its location from him.

As such the Quintessons moved to Plan B -- direct conquest of Cybertron and elimination of the Transformers. Fear of the Matrix of Leadership had made them hold off to this point, but without any other option, they proceeded.

The plan they executed was two-pronged: simultaneously, a Quintesson fleet commanded by General Ghyrik assaulted and occupied Autobot City on Earth, killing many Autobots, while the remainder of the Quintesson army ambushed the massed forces of the Decepticons on Cybertron, commanded by Soundwave.

Rodimus Prime and a contingent of Autobot warriors were also ambushed at Autobot City when they arrived to investigate why the facility had gone silent, and the Matrix stolen by General Ghyrik.

It was at this point the plan began to fall apart. In his juvenile form of Hot Rod, Prime managed to reactivate Metroplex, the giant Autobot sleeping within Autobot City, who then began to unload a can of whoopass on the occupying Quintessons. Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Soundwave sent a distress call to the remaining Autobots there, commanded by Ultra Magnus, who reluctantly came to the aid of their ancient foes.

Their combined forces overwhelmed the Quintessons on Cybertron, although the civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons would still continue due to the shared belief that the two factions had been through too much to ever resolve their differences.

On Earth, Hot Rod managed to recover the Matrix by using a child's trick, and threw Ghyrik off a rooftop, thus winning the battle there.