Exiles Page 21

  That was civil war, Starscream thought. All of a planet’s treasures went up in smoke because neither side could stand to see the other side have them.

  He chased away the thought, which was too much like Autobot sympathy for comfort. He had made his choice, Starscream had, and now he was biding his time until the moment came when he could assume control of the Decepticons at last. Then, perhaps, would be the time to talk with the Autobots, from a position of strength. For now he was a Decepticon, and he would cooperate with Megatron as long as their goals coincided.

  He had come lower to get a better look at some of the damage and see if it could have been caused by the Autobots—though he knew this was highly unlikely—when he heard voices cry out from below. Apparently he had indeed made an impression.

  Just as quickly, however, Starscream learned that he had not made the impression he had intended.

  “It’s Silverbolt!” some of the Velocitronians called out. “Silverbolt’s back!”

  Silverbolt?

  That two-bit bot?

  Furious, Starscream banked around and came in for a hard landing among the gawking Velocitronians. He reassumed bot-form as he did so, and the Velocitronians gasped. “It’s not—hey, you’re not Silverbolt!” one of them said. It might have been the first one who had called out and pointed. Starscream wasn’t sure.

  “You, bot,” he said, seizing the chatty one. “Come with me.”

  He dragged the protesting bot off to the edge of the city, the outcry over his actions drowned out by the sudden roar from inside Delta Raceway. When they got to the city boundary, where concrete and steel abruptly gave way to flattened earth and swirls of dust, Megatron was there waiting for them. Starscream quietly reported his findings.

  “Identify yourself,” the Decepticon’s leader said to the Velocitronian.

  “Syncol,” the bot said. “I work in the hangar, mostly on the track bots.”

  “Syncol. You thought this bot here, whose name is Starscream, was another bot whose name is Silverbolt. Explain that.”

  Syncol did that as well as he could, outlining the arrival of Optimus Prime and the Autobots, along with the problems the Ark had encountered. He didn’t know much; he’d been at the races most of the time, including Speedia. Oh, bot, he could not wait for the next Speedia …

  “To the point,” Megatron said in a quiet but deeply unsettling tone.

  “Yes. Right,” Syncol said. “Two of us, Mainspring and Clocker, went with them. But if you ask me, they were never really Velocitronians anyway. I mean, they came with the Ogygia, they were here from the beginning, but they didn’t fit in. Like machines? Sure, they like machines, they like making them go fast, but they didn’t believe in what I’m saying, they didn’t believe that we need to go fast and that however fast we’re going there’s something else we can do to go faster.” The bot trailed off, and Megatron realized he was staring. He didn’t care particularly, but it had been a long time since a bot had made him stare in utter incomprehension. “Guess they’re better off gone with Optimus Whatsis-name,” the bot concluded. “I gotta go lube some of the jacks over at the hangar.”

  Roaring off, the bot kicked up a cloud of Velocitron’s ever-present dust. It was a fairly calm day for the Speed Planet, and the dust swirled around for only a few kliks before settling into a haze around Megatron’s boots. As it settled, the form of Backfire was revealed. He had watched the conversation from cover so that Syncol wouldn’t recognize him. No need to rush the inevitable.

  Megatron wondered if all Velocitronians yammered endlessly without saying anything. They reminded him of that insufferable Autobot Bumblebee, only worse. He should sterilize this planet, was what he should do, Megatron thought. Just so those Velocitronians would shut up.

  Instead he said, “Backfire—”

  Backfire cut him off immediately. “You need to meet Ransack. He doesn’t talk much. That’s the bot you’re going to want to talk to, and I guarantee he’s going to want to talk to you. Except for, like I said, he doesn’t talk much compared to some of us.”

  “Then why are we wasting time out here? Where is Ransack?” Megatron shoved Backfire toward the road and Delta. “Lead the way. Now.”

  But word had spread more quickly than Megatron had anticipated, even though it appeared that the civil war had done more damage than either of them had seen from the air or from their vantage point at the edge of the city. Following Backfire down the main road that led from the core city straight out into Velocitron’s flattened northern hinterlands, Megatron saw destroyed buildings, hasty road repairs, even traffic detours—surely a desperate action for so speed-obsessed a culture of bots. There were bots on the roads, to be sure, but they did not race with the maniacal abandon Megatron had observed was Velocitron’s signature characteristic.

  Civil war, he thought. You needed to have a sense of humor about it or you ended up with this. Not to mention the deleterious effects of visitation by interstellar pirates.

  With a grudge against Cybertron? Interesting, Megatron thought. He was looking forward to meeting those pirates to find out what about Cybertron had provoked them to such a fury.

  Then he would kill them.

  At the center of the city, of course, was the speedway, and near the speedway, Backfire said, was the place where Velocitronians conducted both their governmental affairs and their final preparations for the big races of the season. The expanse of parking area was littered with damaged and decommissioned machinery, and one corner of the hangar was collapsed. Bots with arms at the ready challenged them the moment they stepped off the street and onto the hangar property.

  “Identify yourselves!” the nearest commanded, leveling a portable missile battery at Starscream and Megatron. “Backfire, you we know. Who are the strangers?”

  “I am Megatron of Cybertron and leader of the Decepticons,” Megatron said. “This is my lieutenant Starscream; perhaps you just recently saw him fly overhead. I am here to speak to Ransack.” As he spoke, he walked toward the guard.

  “Distance,” the guard said.

  Megatron ripped the missile battery from his hands, dashed it to the ground, and in the same motion deployed his ax and split the guard from the base of his neck halfway down his torso. A spray of Energon and internal fluids arced across the poured stone of the parking area. Raising the ax, Megatron said, “I am Megatron! This planet is mine!”

  “Not yet, it isn’t,” came a voice from the hangar door. Standing there was a bot nearly the size of Megatron, but red and silver with sweeping accents at shoulder and lower leg. A typical bot structure when the desired quality was speed, Megatron thought. But this one was certainly larger than most.

  “You must be Ransack,” Megatron said. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

  “Velocitron is mine,” Ransack said.

  “One moment,” Megatron said.

  He raised one arm, and the Nemesis came into view over the flat horizon of Velocitron, looming for a cycle like a setting moon and then sending an astonished ripple through the crowd of alt-formed bots that poured from the speedway and nearby roads as the sound of its approach reached them. A low, almost geologic rumble echoed, the sound having been tuned carefully by Shockwave to induce fear and unease. Megatron knew that even Decepticons hated it—except those who had the power to self-install audio filters at that frequency. He could always recognize those bots because they didn’t look up or react when the Nemesis started its engines.

  He wasn’t overly concerned about those bots, though. The bot he was interested in at the moment was Ransack. If he committed to the Decepticon cause, Velocitron’s fate was sealed. It was apparent by the limited participation in this “civil war” that most of these speed-obsessed bots did not care who ruled what as long as their races were held on schedule. The few who did could be placated by a Speedia whose outcome was predetermined.

  If Ransack was still uncertain, Megatron’s path forward was less clear. He did not mind the idea of a batt
le, but he did not relish the idea of losing precious cycles crushing Velocitronians when what he needed to be doing was finding and eliminating the librarian and the rest of the Autobots once and for all.

  Ransack seemed to sense Megatron’s attention. He looked at Megatron and said, “Big ship,” his early bravado not quite so present anymore.

  Megatron nodded.

  Ransack hesitated for just a nanoklik. Then he said, “How fast does it go?”

  Megatron nearly killed him on the spot. It would have simplified things but perhaps also made them more difficult, since simple was not always the same thing as easy. Instead he decided to go with the joke.

  “It’ll make plenty more than lightspeed,” he said. “It may look like a dreadnought, but the Nemesis is the greatest ship any bot ever created. You’ll see when the librarian comes back.”

  “Librarian?”

  “Optimus Prime,” Megatron said over the rising thrum of the Nemesis’s approach. “He used to be a scholar in the Hall of Records at Iacon.”

  “Ah.” Ransack nodded, a smug expression on his face. “I knew he didn’t have the look of a soldier.”

  The Nemesis drew closer and lowered itself until it had created a localized dust storm at the edge of Delta. Protective shields slid down over the optics and intakes of all the Velocitronians present; only Megatron and one other bot, far at the other end of the gathering, did not deploy shields or filters. And who are you? Megatron wondered. Not a true Velocitronian. You came from Cybertron more recently than the Ogygia, or else the librarian left you behind.

  He wasn’t sure which he would prefer.

  “Ransack,” he said, leaning in close so that only the Velocitronian leader could hear him speak. “Who is that bot over there with no filters against this storm?”

  “He goes by Hightail,” Ransack said. “He’s been one of my formation for a long, long time.”

  “Since all of you arrived here? You mean since the Ogygia?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ransack said. “What difference does it make?”

  It might make a very significant difference indeed, Megatron thought. He resolved to find out more before proceeding in more decisive fashion. Also, a meeting with Ransack’s rival, the similarly named Override, was on the agenda.

  First, though, he and Ransack had to reach an understanding. “When you said that this planet was yours,” Megatron said, “I think what you meant was that it was mine.”

  Ransack met Megatron’s optics for a long time, long enough, in fact, that Megatron barely held himself back from cutting him down where he stood, as he had the insolent guard.

  Then Ransack said, “Velocitron pledges itself to the Decepticon cause.”

  “That will do for now,” Megatron said with a smile.

  He found Override in a cheap district of junkyards and chassis-painting bays, far away from Delta’s racetrack nerve center. “You are Megatron,” she said upon seeing him.

  “And you are Override,” Megatron said. “I am told you were recently in charge here.”

  “I am still the lawful ruler of Velocitron,” Override said.

  “Spare me. You won a race.”

  Megatron looked around. He had come alone to show he had nothing to fear from this—or any other—bot. The other Decepticons waited down the block, with only Starscream listening in on Megatron’s personal commlink. “I’ll tell you an uncomfortable truth. Your situation here reminds me of the Autobots back on Cybertron. Hunkered down in the forgotten parts of their planet, waiting for the end even as they try to bluff their bravery and pretend that they’re going to pull through somehow. Aren’t you tired of it?”

  “I can see why Ransack and you would join forces,” Override said. “I can’t stand either one of you.”

  Megatron picked Hightail out of the crowd of Override’s armed supporters. “That bot, there. Hightail. Where did he come from, anyway?”

  Override looked as if she were taken by surprise. “From the same place as the rest of us from Velocitron.”

  “Are you sure?” Megatron studied her closely. He thought about killing her—lately, starved of battle, he thought about killing every bot he saw—but decided against it. The librarian had seen something here and stopped for it before going on. Megatron needed to know what that thing was. “He looks familiar to me,” he added.

  “Hightail,” Override said without ever taking her optics off Megatron. “Where have you seen this Cybertronian before?”

  “Over by the hangar talking to Ransack,” Hightail said without hesitation.

  “And why were you over by the hangar, Hightail?”

  “Registering for the race tomorrow,” Hightail said. “You can look it up. I was one of Ransack’s bots, but I’m changing my mind, and I’m not afraid to say it. I listen to all sides.”

  Override never looked away from Megatron, and he knew immediately that she was testing him. This was a seasoned leader in difficult circumstances, he thought. “There’s your answer,” Override said. “Like every other being with a Spark, Hightail has the right to go where he wants. Now take your provocations somewhere else, or if you’re going to fight, then let’s fight. But enough talking.”

  Not so different, perhaps, from a powerful gladiator who drove himself to greatness by rising out of the pits into leadership of most of a planet. “You must be fast,” Megatron said.

  “For a long time I was the fastest bot on this planet,” she said. “Which makes me the fastest bot in the universe, because nothing on wheels is faster than a Velocitronian.”

  “How do you lead them when there’s not a race to be run?” Megatron asked.

  “They’re bots. They want what all bots want,” Override said.

  “And what’s that?”

  She turned to face him. “I know who you are,” she said. “And I know that your ship can destroy every city on this planet. And I know that you’re sounding things out here so you can decide whether Ransack is a serious threat to me or not. So let me simplify things for you: If you side with Ransack, you will not have most Velocitronians. That’s just fact. If you side with me, you better drop the peace-through-tyranny angle because that’s not how Velocitronians do things. Peace here comes because we made a decision on how we were going to elect our leaders, and that’s how we do it.”

  Override stopped. She appeared to consider what she had just said. Megatron wanted her to do this. “Did you tell the pirates the same thing?”

  “No,” she said. “I treated them with less courtesy.”

  Megatron laughed. “You do not want me as an enemy,” he said.

  “I don’t think it is possible for you to be a friend,” Override said. “With anyone.”

  There might have been a fight then, but Megatron looked around to find himself surrounded by two dozen bots who were not trying to hide their weapons. Perhaps he could have survived, and there was a yearning in every particle of his being to take the first shot and let the pieces of his enemies fall where they might, but this was not the time. He had to hunt down the librarian and recover the AllSpark. This was a distraction.

  “Friendship is not worth the time,” Megatron said to Override. He strode from the hangar in the direction of the Nemesis. Ransack and his Delta wing of wheeled followers fell into a careful pace flanking him when Megatron got closer to the hangar again.

  Events are set in motion, Megatron thought. Optimus Prime did that. A savory irony. This planet is already burning in places, headed for full-scale war, and even I—even I!—could not stop it.

  “Ransack,” he said. “Your bot Hightail. Do you trust him?”

  “I do.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Megatron said. “He was with Override when I spoke to her.”

  “I sent him there,” Ransack said. “He reports back to me.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Megatron said. “I saw much I didn’t like. If you will not have him killed, at least exile him. Understood?”

  Ransack looked shaken, but he did
not argue. “Understood, Megatron. Understood.”

  That was how you dealt with bots who elected their leaders by racing, Megatron thought. They deserved no better.

  The war that had been sown on Velocitron satisfied Megatron. He didn’t have to push things any more than he already had. Wherever war was born out of competing ambitions, there the Decepticons had a natural advantage. Things would work out in his favor here. But the Autobots were not here, so he could not stay to enjoy the progress of the Velocitronians’ self-destruction. Instead he had to pursue the Ark. That was the first imperative. “Starscream,” he said. “Get the Nemesis tracking the librarian again.”

  “The Nemesis has already picked up an ion exhaust,” Starscream said. “Two, as a matter of fact.”

  “An error,” Thundercracker said.

  “No, a second trail. There’s another ship out there. But it doesn’t match the Ark’s signal.”

  “Interesting but irrelevant,” Megatron said.

  The only thing he cared about was bringing Optimus Prime to heel. Only when Optimus was dead and the Matrix of Leadership was torn from his broken body would Megatron be satisfied. Then Megatron would be Prime, as had always been his destiny.

  “Onward,” he said. “It appears the Autobots have done our work for us here. Now we must find them and convey our appreciation.”

  “Here’s what I want to know,” Silverbolt said as he ferried Optimus Prime and Bumblebee up off the surface of Junkion toward the far Space Bridge, which Wreck-Gar again had assured them was still operational. Perceptor had taken a scientific team up to low orbit and returned, confirming that as nearly as he could tell, the Bridge was indeed still in working order, although it had been so long since it had received a coordinate set from an incoming ship that it no longer automatically activated when a ship approached its vortex gate. “Why are we pretending we can trust Axer when we know we can’t and he knows we know we can’t … and we know he knows?”