Exiles Page 22
“The point isn’t to trust Axer,” Optimus Prime said. “The point is to try to make sure that when he betrays us we will know about it and, if possible, to make that betrayal happen under circumstances that suit us.”
“Good plan,” Silverbolt said.
Bumblebee chirped and squawked what sounded like a challenge, particularly in conjunction with an aggressive lean toward Silverbolt, who laughed. He tipped his wings, the alt-form version of a shrug. “Not my job to make plans,” he said. “I didn’t even pick the team.”
No, reflected Optimus Prime. I did, and in leaving behind Jazz and Ratchet, I made decisions I might yet live to regret. But he had a feeling those bots would be needed on Junkion. It was also necessary to keep all of one’s elite troops sharp, and Jazz and Ratchet had seen plenty of interesting action recently. Same with Prowl. Ironhide didn’t travel well in space outside a ship, and Optimus Prime wanted to reward Silverbolt for his developing leadership abilities and Bumblebee for his loyalty.
The truth was, he would have trusted any two of his inner circle to be up to the task, which made it all the more difficult to make the final selection. All the Autobots wanted every mission even when they complained about some of them, as they had with the first Junkion landing. Optimus Prime was proud of them one and all.
Back on Junkion, Perceptor and Bulkhead were leading the Ark’s repair team while Ironhide and Prowl kept an eye on Axer and made sure that Wreck-Gar was kept informed of some—if not all—developments related to that particular untrustworthy Cybertronian. How much easier it would be, Optimus Prime thought again, if his ethics were a little more like Megatron’s … or even Wreck-Gar’s. Then he could just dispose of transgressing bots without a second thought. The simplicity!
But that was not the Autobot way, and that would never be the way of the one the Matrix of Leadership chose to be Prime.
Not as long as he was Prime.
“So what is it we’re doing again, Optimus?” Silverbolt asked. “Looking for more Star Saber, or did the Matrix not tell you?”
Optimus Prime had no direct answer to that question. He had been asking himself the same thing. “I think somewhere on the other side of this Space Bridge is an answer about something that one of the Thirteen left for us to find.” He also wondered if maybe Jazz had been right when he had said something about Solus Prime’s forge. Could that be what lay on the other side of this Space Bridge? It was nearly unthinkable that such a thing could be completely lost to history for so long.
“I think that’s some planning,” Silverbolt said, “if one of the Thirteen saw us passing by Junkion a billion billion cycles after they all retired.”
“We need skeptics to keep us healthy, Silverbolt. Thank you,” Optimus Prime said. “Now fly us over there so we can replace speculation with real infomation.”
The Space Bridge approached. Optimus Prime wished that they really did have the fictional mechanisms they had shown Makeshift to pull themselves out of a malfunctioning Space Bridge. However, action taken without risk did nobody any credit. The easy way was very seldom the right way.
Trust the Matrix, he told himself, and it drew him ever onward.
They approached the Space Bridge, and Silverbolt said, “Here’s where we find out whether Perceptor knows as much about Space Bridges as he thinks he does.” He entered and transmitted a code that Perceptor had said would serve as a universal activation for the Space Bridge’s gate if the gate still worked. A cycle passed, then two … and then the Space Bridge lit up, lights tracking across the structure outward from the command module. Bumblebee chirped in surprise.
When the lights had tracked the entire circumference of the gateway’s broken ring, the vortex spawned in a swirl of color that briefly seemed to drag nearby stars into it. This was an optical illusion created by the Space Bridge’s operational effect on the fabric of space-time, but it was also a spectacular thing to see. Optimus Prime found it beautiful.
“Silverbolt,” he said. “Does it function?”
“All systems reporting just like they should,” Silverbolt said.
“Then let us go,” Optimus Prime said.
The twin arcs of the Space Bridge ringed them, and they were enveloped in light.
This time it was smooth. A brief sensation of displacement, of being lifted up or perhaps shifted to one side, and then it was over and they had arrived.
“What is this place?” Silverbolt asked.
It was no place at all as far as they could see. Empty space with the glittering arc of the Bridge behind them and around them, nothing save a few drifting wrecks, ships so ancient that none of them could determine what their original purpose had been.
After a moment, though, Optimus thought he caught a glimpse of something. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Bumblebee, do you see that? Silverbolt, do you?” He pointed, and both bots followed his gaze.
A small asteroid appeared, spinning slowly among the drifting ships. “There’s no planetary system anywhere near here,” Silverbolt said. “What’s an asteroid doing out in the middle of interstellar space?”
“What’s a Space Bridge doing in the middle of interstellar space?” Optimus answered. “Someone put both of them here.” He zeroed in on the asteroid, further enlarging it until they could see surface details.
It was roughly spherical, its surface pockmarked with the expected assortment of small craters. It spun slowly on an axis not directly correlated with its center of mass … if its mass was uniform. Ah, Optimus Prime thought. “There’s something inside it,” he said aloud. “Something throwing off its rotation.”
“Something heavy,” Silverbolt said. Bumblebee chittered and beeped.
“Something we need to see,” Optimus Prime said.
They flew toward the asteroid after setting a careful coordinate marker at the Space Bridge, which was now dark and seemingly inert. Silverbolt couldn’t tell whether it was still working. He did, however, notice a second Space Bridge at the far end of the drifting wrecks. Optimus Prime set an optical beacon pointing at that Space Bridge, too, with instructions to track its position relative to them. The problem with getting around in a place like an asteroid field or a vast drift of space junk was that nothing ever stayed still and everything always spun, so if you wanted a stable position, you had to be careful not to rely on any of the objects to orient yourself. Sooner or later, tiny impacts or even the minuscule pressure of interstellar winds set massive objects spinning and voyaging slowly through the vastness of space, throwing off any kind of mapping you might try to do.
“Times like—” Bumblebee said, but his vocoder went out again. Everyone looked at him, startled. It was very rare for Bumblebee to form any kind of speech since Tyger Pax.
Silverbolt made sympathetic noises. “Too bad, B,” he said. “I wonder if Ratchet is ever going to get that thing working again.”
Bumblebee just shrugged, as if not having his voice wasn’t really something he was worried about.
Maybe it isn’t, thought Optimus Prime. Bumblebee had suffered for the Autobot cause, and Optimus found it inspiring that he had not lost any of his enthusiasm or dedication. He was a lesson to all Autobots.
The Matrix was practically ringing in his chest as he felt the proximity of a site of incredible power. He still had no sense of what they would find, but the Matrix tended to respond to the presence of other artifacts and remnants of the Thirteen. Optimus Prime could not imagine what remnant might be this far out in the deepest reaches of empty space.
Although not that deep if it was known enough for someone or some group to dump wrecked starships there. There was a sense of foreboding over the place. “I don’t like it here,” Silverbolt said. Bumblebee rasped and crackled in agreement.
“It’s a strange place, all right,” Optimus Prime said. “Who dumped all these ships? How long ago?” And why, he was also wondering but did not say out loud, was even so fearless a bot as Wreck-Gar intimidated by this little bubble of space?
&n
bsp; Maybe the asteroid held some answers.
As they approached, they saw that what they initially had taken for one of the larger craters was in fact a constructed circle, its interior sunk levelly below the uneven topology around it. On closer inspection, they saw rectangular structures interrupting the smooth circular walls, aligned along the asteroid’s long axis.
The three bots landed one after another near the center of the circle, marveling at the sight. One of the rectangular structures framed a table made of a shining alloy that none of their scans could identify.
“Amazing,” Silverbolt said. “It’s no element that I’ve ever heard of, but its structure is almost perfectly homogeneous. It’s almost as if it was forged …”
“At the beginning of time,” Optimus Prime said. “When the forces at work in the universe were much more raw and powerful than those we harness now.”
“That’s right,” Silverbolt said. Bumblebee crackled.
They turned to face across the expanse of the circular plaza, whose stones were laid in a concentric pattern, with the number of stones in each ring equal to the sum of the number in the two previous: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 …
13.
Across the plaza stood a featureless stone door, recessed ever so slightly under an overhanging lintel, with no signs or pictures to indicate what its purpose might be. But Optimus Prime did not need any clues beyond what he had seen already. “This is the tomb of Solus Prime,” he said. “That is her Forge. After the great battle with the Fallen, the remaining Thirteen entombed her and set the tomb adrift. I read that story, but I never read that they built a Space Bridge to go with it. Perhaps there were pilgrimages. But then the Space Bridges fell into disrepair … We have lost so much of our history.” He looked to Silverbolt and Bumblebee. “We must get it back.”
The significance of the occasion silenced them for some time. To be in the presence of one of the Thirteen … Cybertronians, in large part, had long ago stopped believing that the Thirteen had ever existed. They were a collection of stories, an origin myth, not real bots who had lived and fought and died. That was the opinion on Cybertron. During the war, Optimus Prime had learned different. Alpha Trion, he knew, was one of the Thirteen, perhaps the only one who still survived. But here was proof that at least one other had in fact existed. Solus Prime, the great artificer of the Thirteen, rested here in the reaches of empty space. In the billions of cycles since her death at the hands of the Fallen, no bot had found her.
Now they stood at the entrance to her tomb.
“We will not enter,” Optimus Prime said.
Silverbolt looked at him, surprised. “Then what are we doing here?”
“The Matrix has brought us here. It will reveal what we are supposed to do.” Optimus looked over the tomb.
It was simply adorned, the edges of its sealed entrance carved with symbols he recognized from his long-ago archival work, but he could not read them. Perhaps, of any living bot, only Alpha Trion could.
What story did they tell? Optimus felt as if he had lost something because he could not read the symbols, though it was something he had never had. All Cybertronians had lost something if the true stories of the Thirteen could never be recovered. Some day, Optimus resolved. Once the war is over and the AllSpark restored to its rightful place. Once Cybertron is healed and the threat of Megatron is finally defeated. Then I will bring Alpha Trion here, and the story of the Thirteen will live again.
But not today.
“How long are we going to wait for the Matrix to reveal … whatever it is that brought us here?” Silverbolt asked. “Remember about Megatron and the thing with the civil war? Probably we should do something about that.”
Optimus Prime started to answer, then decided not to.
“I mean, we could always just relax here for a while and then go back to see how the war turned out,” Silverbolt went on. “I wouldn’t mind that, I guess.”
A hologram appeared before them, and Silverbolt quieted down as Bumblebee gave a surprised burst of static.
It was a bot, magnificent and regal. She was silver and black, one hand cupping a flame and the other holding a pair of tongs. In the pincers of the tongs glowed what appeared to be a star. “Optimus Prime,” the hologram said. “The Matrix of Leadership has spoken to me. Your quest is perilous and your situation dire. It is well that you came here, but you must leave.”
Megatron arrived at Junkion with quite a bit less fanfare than he had enjoyed on his Velocitronian touchdown. There was no organized Decepticon movement there, and the Junkions were a more practical and less easily impressed group of bots than the Velocitronians had been. That was fine for now. Megatron had come to Junkion for a reason greater than impressing a bunch of trash-picking bots. He was there because the Autobots were there.
Why were the Autobots there?
For one thing, that was where the Space Bridge from Velocitron led. For another, Megatron believed Junkion to be the resting place of one of the Thirteen’s signature artifacts, a weapon that would tip the balance in the Cybertronian civil war irrevocably in his direction. He wasn’t sure which artifact it was—the archives he had access to on board the Nemesis were partial and often contradictory, and he was aware of the irony of how useful it would be to have a good librarian right now—but something was here, and he would have it. Then he would worry about the more mundane task of crushing Junkion and bending all of its bots to his will.
He and Starscream left the Nemesis in a parking orbit hidden behind a drifting shipwreck the Junkions had not gotten around to stripping. Unicron only knew where it had come from, this far out in the middle of space. There wasn’t a viable star system anywhere close, and whatever had begun to create Junkion, Megatron reflected, must have started as an isolated enterprise indeed.
After the scene on Velocitron, Megatron did not know what to expect as he and Starscream first put their boots on the metal shavings and ground slurry of plastics and polymers that passed for soil on Junkion. There certainly did not appear to be a war going on anywhere. Most of the bots on the planet, in fact, were engaged in a large-scale reclamation project in a giant pit that extended a good bit of the way downward toward the planetoid’s center. Semisentient mechas hauled reworked steel and other reclaimed raw materials to …
“Amazing,” Megatron said. “They’re building a spaceport.”
These Junkions had spirit. No one could deny that.
Suddenly—from the broken planetscape of ruined machinery, shipwrecks, and heaps of everything from domestic trash to large-scale piles of slag skimmed from furnaces—came a bot. Both Megatron and Starscream recognized him.
“All hail Megatron!” he proclaimed. “It has been a great many cycles since last we saw each other. There are a lot of stories to tell.”
“Is that Axer?” asked an incredulous Starscream.
“So it would appear.” Megatron held up a hand as Axer—for that was certainly who it was—got close enough to be of some danger. Megatron feared no one, but neither was he foolish enough to pretend that no bot posed a threat. Every time he got a feeling like that, all he had to do was look around and see where Starscream was.
“Axer,” he said. “Explain yourself.”
In exhuasting detail, Axer did. Megatron listened with minimal interest. The quirks of the Space Bridges held no romance for him. If they worked as they were supposed to, that was convenient. If not, there were other ways to travel. Had he not just tracked the librarian across a nontrivial swath of the galaxy by the energy signature of the Ark’s engines?
“Axer,” Megatron said, stepping close to loom over the smaller bot and shut him up at least for a nanoklik. “The short version.”
After getting the short version—or at least as short a version as Axer could provide—Megatron had some questions. “The Ark is damaged, then,” he said.
“Badly, yes.”
“And Optimus Prime has gone off on some chase through a Space Bridge from here,” Megatron said.
Megatron turned to Starscream. “Do you believe this?”
“I don’t see Optimus Prime,” said Starscream. “And I did not see any of the other Autobots that Axer said had gone with him.”
“And where is Makeshift?” Megatron asked. “He has done well for us, and I would have expected him to be here to collect the praise due him.”
“I fear he is switching sides, Megatron,” Axer said. “From what he said to me, he was getting the kind of second thoughts that … Starscream, it was Thundercracker you used to worry about, wasn’t it? Yes. Makeshift was having some of the same thoughts. For now I believe he is still undercover on board the Ark, but I would not trust him for long.”
“He told you this? You lie,” Megatron said.
“That is what he said,” Axer insisted.
“Ah, well,” Megatron said. “He will be back soon enough.” He assumed Axer was lying, but he did not know what the truth was. He would find out, though, and it was almost as informative to know that Axer—self-proclaimed Decepticon since before the infamous decision of the High Council to make Orion Pax into Optimus Prime—would lie to Megatron immediately upon seeing him.
Axer had been a good bounty hunter and at times a useful interrogator in the informal operations that preceded the rallying of the armies and the outbreak of the civil war. His particular skill, as Megatron remembered it, was detecting who within an organization needed to be eliminated lest they prove to be a threat later. It was Axer who had first suggested that Starscream would be more trouble than he was worth. Megatron had not believed him then and did not necessarily agree now, but Axer certainly had been right that Starscream was trouble.