Space Pirates!

(Marvel UK issues #182 - #187)

Space Pirates! refers to a storyline in the Marvel UK comics running over issues #182 to #187 of that series.

Synopsis

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

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

Um, Mr. Ghyrik, the capture of the hero comes before the "Villain's Exposition"...

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 ambushed at Autobot City when they arrived to investigate why the facility had gone silent, the Matrix stolen by General Ghyrik.

I'm here to kick ass and eat chewing gum. And I'm all out of chewing gum.

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.

Meanwhile, Wreck-Gar managed to escape Quintesson and make his way to the Quintesson Journal's hiding place, where he transmitted its contents to the galaxy at large. A large number of robotic species discovered their worlds had been slated for potential colonisation. As a the result those Quintessons who managed to escape the death of their world would be galactic fugitives, hated and hunted by the machine races of the galaxy.