Efficiency

He had already reviewed the mission parameters: the raid was a straightforward attack on a human power station with a target goal of 500 astroliters of energon—a modest raid by their current standards, he gathered, and what would have sounded like unimaginable riches to him in the days of Chaar, when they had scrabbled after a dozen astroliters at a time in dried-out husks of dead planets, while on Cybertron the Autobots raised up wide fountains with the gifts of their human allies.

The perpetual energy shortage had surely aggravated Galvatron’s injuries, sped his mental deterioration. True, he had taken the largest share, but he required the largest share; Cyclonus’s own systems were designed for extreme efficiency, and Scourge and the Sweeps even more so. But even they had all gone hungry for long stretches, surviving on dregs and drips from their gas nets in between the occasional bounty of a successful raid.