Exiles Page 25

  This situation, with Junkions just at the horizon blasting and hacking away at Decepticon ground troops? And Seekers coming in to strafe the Ark? And the Nemesis itself looming over Junkion, its tractor beams already ripping at the bottom of Wreck-Gar’s great pit? Here it was, so big that the Seekers looked like toys streaking low toward the Autobot position. Prowl knew there was no way for them to destroy the Nemesis, not from here. Their only hope was to hold off the Decepticon attack until Optimus Prime returned and they could try to mount a focused assault on the ’Con leadership. Of all the places in the universe for a showdown with Megatron, Junkion might well have been the last Prowl would have thought of. He had never even believed it existed until setting foot on it himself. And yet the Decepticons had found them, and there was something on Junkion—other than Autobots—they wanted.

  This was crazy.

  The only thing that would make me feel better right now, Prowl thought, is to shoot down a Seeker with a missile.

  He fired.

  The missile, crossing paths with a fusillade of missiles from the incoming Seekers, missed Starscream but hit Skywarp squarely at the base of one wing. The explosion buffeted Slipstream, who had been just above Skywarp, ruining her aim. She fired at the Ark but missed, her energy cannons chewing trenches in the junkscape around the Autobot ship.

  But Starscream and Thundercracker were right on target. Their missiles exploded in a jagged line across the Ark’s flank, from the bridge most of the way back to the newly plated hull covering the fuel reservoir that Clocker and Mainspring, with the help of the Junkions, had just finished welding and sealing into place.

  “Well, I’ll be …” Clocker never finished the sentence because another missile knocked him off his feet. Mainspring flicked out twin energy cannons and stitched a line of holes across the bottom of Starscream’s fuselage as the Seekers screamed overhead before banking out in a wide sweep to come in for another pass. Skywarp, the Autobots noticed, was lagging significantly behind and trailing smoke from his damaged wing.

  Prowl fired again as the Seekers came around. This time his missile hit Starscream a glancing blow before detonating in the Seeker’s wake. A rain of missiles and energy blasts fell among the Autobot defenders.

  That was when another one of Prowl’s tracking devices pinged to let him know the subject had come back within range. Each of them had an individual frequency and signal, but Prowl couldn’t believe he was hearing the one he was hearing.

  He glanced down at it, ducking away from the spray of shrapnel and debris raised by a missile impact between him and the Ark.

  It was true. Prowl raised his head again and looked around, trying to get the signal’s bearings to match up with the real-world environment.

  “Optimus?” he said.

  The Space Bridge near Solus Prime’s tomb accepted the four bots smoothly. As had happened the last time, there was something strange—almost a hesitation—in their sense of reality, of existence, before they appeared …

  … and slammed—Silverbolt first and then the other three in a tumble—into a huge pile of slag and twisted metal and the cinders that were the residue of superhot polymer blast furnaces.

  “No,” Silverbolt said as he reassumed bot-form and dug his way out of the minor junkslide the impact had created.

  “Yes,” Optimus Prime said.

  Bumblebee squawked as Silverbot said, “We’re back on Junkion!”

  The implications of this dawned on each bot individually, except Chaindrive, who had just arrived and still was having a little trouble assimilating the fluid and complicated situation. He was looking around at the immensity of the pit and the industrial works it contained. He might also, speculated Optimus Prime, have been looking at the clear signals of battle coming from the highest rim of the pit … or at the one bot, a recently deceased Decepticon, who came bouncing and bumbling down the terraces to crash near where the four Autobots had reappeared.

  “If we are on Junkion, then the Requiem Blaster is here,” Optimus Prime said. “And so is Megatron; I can feel his proximity. So now is the time to discover what happens when this puzzle is put together.”

  He thought furiously. How could he not have anticipated this? The Matrix had led them to Junkion, and he had delved deep into its interior. How had he not sensed something as powerful as the Requiem Blaster? Was it cloaked, or had Optimus Prime been so certain that the object of his quest was the Star Saber that he had let his judgment be clouded by that certainty?

  A fusillade of energy fire blasted into the pit walls nearby, spurring Optimus Prime out of his reverie.

  “We should maybe get behind some cover,” Silverbolt said. All four of them scrambled, ultimately finding a recess in the wall, a cavity created by the most recent dig in that area. Once in a more secure position, Silverbolt added, “We should get a ping out to Prowl and Sideswipe, too, make sure they know we’re back.” A rumble shook the ground below their feet, dislodging long-impacted pieces of junk from the walls and arching ceiling of their makeshift cave.

  Optimus Prime looked at the ground between his feet and began to understand. “We need to hurry,” he said. “Silverbolt, inform the other bots that we are back. But I might not be able to stay until they can rendezvous with us.”

  He looked at the pieces of metal in his cupped hands and said, “We now know that we do not have the Star Saber. But what do we have?”

  He held out his hands and let the five pieces of metal drop over a piece of sheet metal that would serve as a makeshift tabletop. They fell in a pattern, hooked ends toward the center and arms radiating symmetrically outward. Another tremor shook them back and forth on the table’s surface, but they maintained their symmetrical relationship to one another.

  “When I dropped four of them, they did the same thing,” he said. “Also three. But two only? Then they just fell as you would expect two pieces of metal to fall. Something greater happens the more of them are interacting simultaneously. Ideas?”

  “They’re like the hands of a clock,” Chaindrive said.

  “Except there are five of them,” Silverbolt pointed out.

  Optimus Prime had been considering this problem. He stepped forward and looked again at the five pieces where they lay on the ancient steel sheet. Once, perhaps, it had covered a bulkhead on a starfaring ship … Junkion was like a great puzzle, every piece of it a hint of long-forgotten history. “Perhaps it is a sort of clock that measures something more than time,” he said. “Or different from time.”

  “Alpha Trion told me that Vector Prime hid himself away in another dimension,” Chaindrive said. “If we think of those clock hands as pointing toward coordinates …”

  “Yes,” Optimus Prime said. “Two for time, three for space.” And with that idea in his head, he thought he knew where that set of coordinates might be found.

  Before leaving Cybertron, during his last consultation with Alpha Trion, Optimus Prime had asked whether he might take a copy of the Covenant with him. Alpha Trion had informed him that that was not possible. “The Covenant does not permit itself to be copied,” he had said. “It does not even permit some parts of itself to be memorized.”

  Shuffling among the litter of artifacts and scholarly flotsam on his desk, Alpha Trion had come up with a data gem. “You may, however, take this with you,” he had said. “The Covenant states that you will. I have had it in my possession for so great a span of time that I no longer remember where it came from. I would tell you to consider it a gift, but the truth is, I have no real choice about whether I give it to you or not. The Covenant removed that choice long ago.”

  Optimus Prime had accepted the gem. “I’ll say thank you, anyway.”

  “Your sense of decorum is impeccable,” Alpha Trion had replied. As usual, Optimus hadn’t been able to tell whether he had been joking. Alpha Trion’s sense of humor showed itself rarely, and a bot could almost never be certain whether the archivist was being proper or gently mocking.

  Further consid
eration of Alpha Trion’s humor had been interrupted by a glow from the data gem. A sparkling beam had appeared, linking it with the center of Optimus Prime’s torso, where lay the Matrix of Leadership. It had lasted just a moment, but when it was gone, so, too, was the gem. “The Matrix has taken the information into itself,” Alpha Trion had observed. “You are not meant to know of it yet.”

  “Then I will trust that the Matrix will reveal it to me at the correct time.”

  Now, thinking back on that conversation, Optimus wondered if the correct time had come. He closed his eyes and focused his mind on the gem, feeling a response from the Matrix within him. Silverbolt and Bumblebee watched, curious but calm. They had long since grown used to the Matrix’s revelations and could tell when Optimus Prime was experiencing one. Ratchet and Jazz came scrambling into the cave, having gotten Silverbolt’s message.

  “Status update,” Jazz said. “It’s hell out there. Megatron’s bringing in the Nemesis, and unless I miss my guess, he’s going to bring it right down here. It’s already close enough that we’re having to redeploy away from it.”

  Debris erupted from the bottom of the pit, hanging in the column of a tractor beam. Tracing the beam, the Autobots saw that the Nemesis was lowering itself over the center of the pit. It had come down nearly to the level of Junkion’s surface. Futile streaks of Autobot defensive fire crackled on its surface, but the Nemesis did not even bother to return fire. Evidently it had a single task: recovering the Requiem Blaster.

  “Let Megatron search,” Optimus Prime said with a confidence he wasn’t sure he should have. He did, though. The answer was close, and he would find it as long as he listened to the Matrix. “We will be ready for him.”

  “Also, the Seekers are shooting up the Ark, but Prowl took a pretty fair piece out of Skywarp,” Ratchet said. “He got away, but I don’t think he’s going to be flying again until he puts in some shop time.”

  The five pieces lay on the table as Optimus Prime approached, eyes still closed. He opened them and arranged three of the pieces to create a center and a triad of legs radiating out. After a pause, he moved two of the legs to make the angle they created more acute. This done, he tapped his chest, and the three pieces rose into the air over the table, hovering in midair as they arranged themselves in space to create a three-dimensional figure. Optimus Prime picked up the fourth piece and placed it parallel to the floor with one end of it at the center of the figure. When he took his hand away, it, too, remained suspended in the air.

  “You feel that?” Silverbolt said. Bumblebee nodded. When Optimus had placed the fourth piece, it was as if a chord had been struck in the fabric of time and space. Now he held the fifth. He reached out and placed it in the air a short distance above the other four, using both hands to angle it. When he let it go, the five pieces together formed what looked like a strange three-dimensional rune. One after another, each of the five pieces lit up, and their ends were linked by curving arcs of indigo radiance.

  “This was never the Star Saber,” Optimus Prime said. “It’s …”

  “It’s a gateway,” Ratchet said.

  Optimus Prime was nodding. “A gateway to Vector Prime. It was once known as the Blades of Time. It was created by Vector Prime, as he had the power of space and time. He created this key to open the portals between the dimensions of space. He must have left it behind when he withdrew, knowing that someday Cybertron would have need of him again.”

  As he spoke, they all felt a vibration in space, surrounding them and creating harmonics within each bot’s body. Each of them save Optimus Prime took a cautious step back.

  “Tell you what,” Jazz said, “I’m getting a little sick of running across all of these hugely powerful and ancient artifacts. What I could use is a McAdams and something dumb to watch while I drink it. Like a race or something. When’s the next Speedia?”

  “Shut up, already,” Sideswipe said. “There won’t be a next Speedia if we let Megatron take over Velocitron and everywhere else he goes.”

  “Enough,” said Optimus Prime.

  Turning back to Optimus Prime, Ratchet said, “What happens now?”

  Optimus Prime reached out until his open palm was nearly touching the perimeter of the gateway. “The only thing to do is open it,” he said, and touched it with the tip of a finger.

  The gate, opening, tore a hole in space and time. It had no color and no definable outline. It was a field, an intrusion from another dimensional logic, and every bot present felt right down to its Spark that entering that field might well be the last thing it ever did. The five pieces of the key had vanished as if annihilated by the energies of the gate’s creation. Nevertheless, Optimus Prime stepped right up to it, feeling the fabric of reality come unraveled within arm’s reach. “None of you have to go with me,” he said. “When I return, I will let you know if it is safe. Or if another trip through this gateway is needed at all.”

  “With you?” Silverbolt said. “One of us should go instead of you.”

  Optimus Prime shook his head. “No. I am Prime. This is my burden, my responsibility. Already I give the Autobots too much to bear.” And the Junkions, he thought.

  Everywhere we go, he thought—everywhere I go—misery spreads in our wake like the disintegrating debris field of Junkion.

  Perhaps it will take one of the Thirteen to show me the way to lead the Autobots without destroying them.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Optimus Prime said, and stepped through the gateway.

  He felt something happen to his senses, but when the sensation had passed, he still saw, heard, felt. Around him was an infinite black speckled with stars. Below his feet he felt a hard surface but could not see it or discern its outlines except by the absence of stars. He looked around, and his optics adjusted, shifting into different frequencies to take advantage of the starlight. His surroundings resolved themselves.

  A flat and featureless black plain stretched around him. Optimus Prime turned in a complete circle, and just before completing it he registered the presence of another figure on the plain. It was far enough away to be just at the limit of his ability to perceive it. Optimus began walking.

  “Optimus Prime,” the figure greeted him as he drew near.

  Optimus inclined his head. “Vector Prime.”

  “Yes.”

  “For a long time I thought you were a myth,” Optimus Prime said.

  Vector Prime did not seem upset by this. “Such is the nature of the passage of time,” he said. “Had you not known Alpha Trion personally, you might have thought all of the Thirteen were just stories.”

  This was true. Optimus Prime took some time to consider it. Then he shook himself out of the reverie and asked, “Does time pass here at the same rate it does in … where I came from?”

  “That I do not know,” Vector Prime said.

  Fear struck Optimus Prime. What if he emerged from the gateway to find that a billion cycles had passed, that Megatron had found his Autobots and destroyed them, that the stars of the galaxy had gone supernova and destroyed all life, that the universe itself had sunk into the heat death that was its ultimate doom?

  Vector Prime chuckled. “I shared those very thoughts,” he said. “I do not believe that will happen. I have had long cycles here to contemplate, to consider, to attempt an understanding of this place. I created it, after all. It is my duty to understand it. And as far as I know, there is no great difference between the rates at which time passes here and back in the dimensionality you came from.”

  “So you do have an idea,” Optimus Prime said.

  “An idea, yes. But perhaps not a good idea or a clear idea.” Vector Prime looked closely at Optimus Prime. “This is an important distinction.”

  Optimus felt that he was being challenged somehow. “I am becoming more and more aware of it,” he said.

  “That is one of the things leadership teaches,” Vector Prime said. “Now, tell me why you are here.”

  The Junkions, reported Lugnut, were t
ougher than anticipated. “I don’t know if it’s living here or what,” the bruising Decepticon said. “But they don’t go down easy.”

  “As long as they go down,” Megatron said. He had the homing device from Axer in one hand. “Hold them off!”

  He jumped down the terraces of the great excavation one after another until he reached the last ledge overlooking the open pit floor. Here were the oldest of the wrecks and jetsam that originally had swirled together, drawn by gravity and inevitable collisions to form a planetoid … which then, however accidentally, came to host life.

  Too bad it all had to come to an end, Megatron thought.

  He held the beacon from Axer in front of him. Seekers screamed overhead, strafing the valiant but overmatched Junkions on their way back to another strike at the Ark. On the other side of the pit, Megatron saw two Autobots—were they Bulkhead and Ironhide?—rappelling down the pit walls on cables Megatron would not have trusted to hold up a spray can of solvent. There was manic courage everywhere, apparently, which was only appropriate given the desperate straits in which the Autobot cause found itself.

  “Soundwave,” Megatron called. The great ship came closer. “Have the Nemesis make its final excavation.”

  He did not hear the command, but the great Nemesis lowered until it was entirely within the pit. Its mass and the energy of the thrusters that held it steady created screaming turbulence within the pit, tearing loose pieces from the walls and hurling surprised Junkions off the terraces to the floor below. The wind shifted, blew out and then in again. Tremors ran through the pit, resonating with the powerful vibrations emanating from the Nemesis as it lowered itself into the pit and extruded the focalizer for its primary tractor beam almost to the level of the pit floor.

  Junkion groaned as the tractor beam activated. Close, Megatron thought. So close. He did not yet have a visual lock on the Requiem Blaster, but the more wreckage the Nemesis tore from the floor, the better the signal from the homing beacon would be. Until then, his Decepticons would continue their battle against the overmatched Autobots and he would enjoy the delicious anticipation that came from knowing that a decisive advantage was coming ever closer. Junkslides ran down the walls of the pit, crushing away the spiraling pit road in places and creating dangerously unstable overhangs along the pit’s upper rim.