Exiles Read online

  “Rest, traveler,” he said to the long-buried form, and pushed sand over the visible hand and arm again. “Let this monument to Cybertron’s former greatness be a monument to your voyage as well.”

  Op, said a slow, slow voice.

  Optimus Prime looked around and could not see where the voice had come from. He looked down, shocked and momentarily thinking that the dead bot somehow had spoken to him across the ages and the unbridgeable gulf between life and death.

  … tim …

  No, the voice had come from outside. Optimus Prime looked back over his shoulder toward the edge of the slow space around the beacon. The world beyond was a blur, but in that blur he thought he could see the distinctive flicker of energy weapons discharging in the dust storm.

  … us …

  It was Clocker.

  Optimus Prime charged toward the edge of the slow space, his consciousness already reorienting itself to the pace of the Velocitron outside its boundaries. He felt as if he were being torn between two speeds, not just of thought and motion but of existence and time themselves. Calling out to Clocker, Optimus realized that whatever he said would not survive the transition across the barrier. The sound waves would bunch and accelerate beyond the normal range of any bot’s audio sensors.

  He burst through the invisible boundary and reeled for a moment as his perceptions adjusted to the sudden whirl of existing in real time again.

  “Optimus Prime!” Clocker cried out, drawing his attention to the mouth of the narrow canyon where they had come down from the nearest road.

  Clocker was at that moment ducking away from a plasma beam that tore into the canyon wall over his shoulder. Optimus Prime deployed his ion blaster and tracked the source of the plasma fire. There were three bots grouped near the canyon entrance, laying down covering fire for a fourth, who at that moment was closing in on Clocker’s flank. The young Velocitronian, in a panic, fired wildly at the three and had lost track of the fourth, who was raising a vibrosword and leaning into a final charge to get within melee range.

  Optimus Prime calmly shot that bot down with his ion blaster and approached Clocker at a steady pace. “I am here, Clocker,” he said.

  “Optimus Prime!” Clocker called out again, almost as if he hadn’t heard. “They just came out of nowhere!”

  And that is where we will send them again, Optimus Prime thought. The bot closest to Clocker tried to get to its feet, and Optimus Prime shot it again, the ion bolt blasting away pieces of its head and neck. It went down again, this time for good. Answering fire from the three at the canyon’s mouth staggered him momentarily. He reached Clocker’s side and dragged the Velocitronian back and around a knob thrust out from the canyon wall. “Clocker,” he said. “You must not panic.”

  “They came out of nowhere!” Clocker repeated.

  “No, they came from the road, just as we did,” Optimus Prime said over the impacts of what sounded like both slugs and energy fire against the sheltering rocks. “Now there are three of them. Ready your weapons.”

  Optimus Prime’s steady demeanor rallied Clocker. “Yes, Prime,” he said. His engine-blaster ratcheted back into place. “Orders?”

  “I am going to come out and go straight for them,” Optimus Prime said. “They will fire at me immediately. When they do that, you step out and focus on whichever of them is farthest away. That will prevent them from keeping up a covering fire. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  Optimus Prime charged around the knob of rock and found himself within striking distance of one of the attackers, who was hugging the canyon wall near Clocker’s original position. The bot raised a long energy rifle, but Optimus Prime closed so fast that by the time the bot got off a shot, he was knocking the rifle barrel upward with one hand while with the other he manifested his ax and crunched it sideways into the bot’s midsection. It slammed back into the canyon wall, wildly firing its rifle. Optimus Prime heard shouts from the other two bots and heard the roar of Clocker’s engine-blaster as its double-barreled fire chewed across a location at the mouth of the canyon. With both hands on his ax now, Optimus Prime severed the closer bot’s rifle arm and with the return stroke lashed his foe back into the wall, fatal gouges in its torso spitting sparks and leaking Energon. Optimus Prime was already turning away as it fell.

  The mouth of the canyon was obscured by smoke from engine-blaster impacts as well as a dust storm that roiled just beyond and set up swirls of dust inside the space nearer the ancient beacon. As the swirls reached the boundary, they slowed incredibly, keeping their shape even as their rotational velocity diminished so much that Optimus Prime practically could see each grain and mote.

  The impact of a studded club rang down his shoulder and arm, jarring Optimus Prime back into the battle. He looked over in time to lean back from a following sweep and got his ax up to parry as the bot hacked at him again. Optimus parried the blow down and pivoted on his heel, bringing his ax up and over into a downward stroke meant to sever both of the bot’s arms where they came together to hold the club. But he had missed ever so slightly and instead managed only to snap the club off and amputate part of the bot’s leading hand. It was already striking again, but the sudden loss of the club’s weight overbalanced it, and it flailed harmlessly with the truncated haft. Optimus Prime struck it with the butt of his ax squarely in the face, snapping its head back and sending it sprawling.

  As it fell, he saw that the farthest of the four attackers had just gone down, hit repeatedly by Clocker’s untrained but fortunate salvos. Clocker was even then closing, still firing, the engine-blaster tearing away bits of the falling bot’s armor and blasting pieces of rock from the nearer canyon wall. “Clocker, power down!” Optimus Prime commanded. Clocker stopped firing, but it was too late for his target. Optimus could see the Spark going out of that bot as he and Clocker drew close enough to gauge the severity of its wounds.

  That left only one. Optimus Prime turned back toward the beacon installation and saw the only surviving attacker getting slowly to its feet, looking at its mangled hand with confusion on its face. “This is over,” Optimus Prime said as he approached. “Who sent you?”

  He thought he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear this bot say it. Instead it looked him square in the face and charged, its good hand sprouting a vibroblade.

  Optimus Prime shot it down before it could get within striking range. As it fell, a volley of engine-blaster fire burst against the wall behind it. The echoes of their fire died away, and the only sound for a long moment was the moaning of the wind in the canyon walls.

  “Are you damaged?” he asked Clocker.

  “A little,” Clocker answered. “Not bad. They—why did they do this, Prime?”

  “I fear the rivalry between Ransack and Override is about to become something more than political,” Optimus Prime said. He considered options and then caught the nearest bot by the arm and started dragging it toward the boundary of the slow space around the beacon.

  Clocker watched. “What are you doing?”

  “I am burying these bots under your Velocitronian myths,” Optimus Prime answered. “When we are done, this never happened. Until someone else brings it up, and then we will know for certain who sent these bots.”

  Clocker nodded and went to the mouth of the canyon to get the bot he had killed. Optimus Prime noted this choice. It said much about Clocker. He was taking care of his own business, and he also was the kind of bot who, when a task presented itself, addressed the most difficult part of it first. This was a quality Optimus Prime found admirable.

  When it was done, they walked side by side out toward the flat part of the polar highland that would lead them back to the road.

  “I am sad, Prime,” Clocker said. “When we were moving them … I knew one of those bots.”

  “They made their choices and in making them left us none,” Optimus Prime said. “But I, too, am sad, for Velocitron.”

  “Everything was fine until you came,” Clocke
r said miserably.

  Optimus Prime did not take this as a personal comment. From Clocker’s perspective it was true. “Everything will be fine again,” he said.

  “After our sun blows up and Megatron comes to enslave us all,” Clocker said.

  “No,” Optimus Prime said. “We can at least fight Megatron. And your sun will not explode for quite a while yet.” That was, at least, the opinion of Perceptor and the other scientists aboard the Ark. Velocitron did not have long to live on a planetary scale, but there was plenty of time to settle things with the Decepticons and relocate the Velocitronians to a more stable home.

  They walked in silence. Then Optimus Prime gave voice to something he had been wondering. “How did you make your voice sound so slow in there? You must have—”

  “I made each syllable last cycles and cycles,” Clocker said. “And I made them really high-pitched. I had to push my vocoder, and it hurt, but that was the only way I thought I’d be able to get through.”

  “Smart. That was very well done,” said Optimus Prime.

  “That means a lot coming from you,” Clocker said.

  The Velocitronian looked up to him, Optimus Prime could see that. He hoped it didn’t turn out badly. There were many Cybertronians who looked up to him, and many others who resented him, and many others who once had viewed him through a prism of idealism but now considered him no better a bot than any other. There were as many opinions about Optimus Prime as there were living Cybertronians. It was one of the more vexing burdens of leadership.

  “Clocker,” Optimus said. “Why didn’t you come into the slow space?”

  “Scared,” Clocker said, and looked away.

  He was lying. “Clocker.”

  “I didn’t know what you were doing in there and thought you might need time to finish,” Clocker said. “So I thought I’d hold them off while I could.”

  “Brave,” Optimus Prime said. “But next time you had probably better interrupt me.”

  “I didn’t come in even though I wanted to,” Clocker said. “Well, I didn’t want to, but also I did.”

  “I understand,” Optimus Prime said.

  “What did you find?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why did the Matrix of Leadership want you to find it?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Optimus Prime said.

  “Oh,” Clocker said. After what was for him a long pause, he said, “Let’s get back to Delta. I want to race.”

  A qualifying race was on at the speedway when Optimus Prime and Clocker got back to Speed City. Clocker immediately roared off to see it—and get in on one of the last heats if he could—while Optimus Prime took the opportunity to check in with Silverbolt and Ratchet on the status of the Space Bridge.

  According to those two able bots, progress was not all that bad. “If we’re not careful, we’re going to get this thing working,” Silverbolt said.

  “Good news,” Optimus Prime said. “Don’t say any more until we’ve gathered the team.”

  A short time later, the Autobot leadership gathered in a small repair bay off the main Delta hangar. Override had given them that space for their private consultations. In addition to Optimus Prime, Silverbolt, Jazz, Ratchet, and Bumblebee, Hound was there. Optimus had decided it was time to integrate him more fully into the command structure. Around them, the structure of the vast hangar creaked and clanged in the sandstorm that raged outside. One by-product of Velocitronian planetary engineering was that fierce windstorms roared around the flattened surface with little in the way of topological interference. That had the corollary effect of making some races as much a competition against the elements as against the other racers, which Velocitronians loved. A change in the weather could have dramatic consequences for who qualified to run the next Speedia, and if the Speedia itself was run during a storm … The history of Velocitron, Override had told him, was rife with incidents of leadership changing hands because of a freak windstorm and accidents on the track.

  “This is a strange place,” Jazz said, speaking for all of them.

  “Indeed it is,” Optimus Prime agreed, wondering when (and whether) he could safely tell the other Autobots about the ambush he and Clocker had survived at the pole. “But we came here for a reason.”

  “Did we?” Silverbolt said. “I thought we came here because the Space Bridge blew up and we didn’t know where we were going in the first place.”

  “We did, but I believe the Matrix was leading us here, anyway,” Optimus said. He showed them the worked piece of metal he had recovered from the ancient beacon near Velocitron’s south pole. “And I think this is why.”

  Every bot present looked at the artifact. Optimus could sense the power in it and sense—through the Matrix, he felt sure—its incomplete nature. He did not know if they could also detect that, but some time passed in silence before Bumblebee tried to say something. His vocoder emitted a series of grinding noises.

  “I think what he’s trying to say is, ‘What is it?’ ” offered Ratchet, who had become something of an expert on Bumblebee’s attempts at speech.

  That was a good question. Optimus Prime had spent much of the previous orbital cycle considering it, when he wasn’t considering how to address the ambush and what he believed it meant. “I believe it’s a piece of the Star Saber,” he said, letting his intuition speak. It made sense. The Star Saber existed in pieces, scattered in the aftermath of the war among the Thirteen. In such desperate times as these, a legendary weapon might well turn the tide against the Decepticons, and the Matrix might well be guiding him to discover it.

  Uncertainties piled on uncertainties, yet Optimus Prime thought this was the explanation that best fit the available facts. “And if I’m right,” he went on, “the Matrix has guided us here to find it. We may know more about the nature of our quest because we have come here.”

  “The Star Saber,” Silverbolt repeated. “I’ve heard stories about it.”

  “We’ve all heard stories about it,” Hound said.

  “Just like all the stories we heard about the Thirteen,” Ratchet said. “Myths.”

  “The stories about the Thirteen aren’t all myths,” Optimus Prime said. “And neither are all the stories about the Star Saber.”

  “So which ones are true?” Jazz asked. “Did the Matrix tell you that?”

  Optimus Prime shook his head. “The Matrix has its own way of doing things. But if it led me to this, then it is important that we find the other pieces. The Star Saber was one of the great weapons created by Solus Prime, the artificer of the Thirteen.” Optimus heard himself quoting Alpha Trion and was proud. He had learned much from the old archivist. “There are so many myths about it by now that no bot knows the entire truth. Some say that it was created out of three bots and wielded itself. Others say that it was built and then integrated into the chassis of one of the Thirteen. Still other stories hold that Solus forged it from the core of a star, using that star’s own heat as her furnace. It has been lost since the Thirteen fell out into feuding and violence.”

  The implication was clear to them all. If this was in fact a piece of the Star Saber, they had confirmed the real historical existence of the Thirteen. For Optimus Prime this was not an enormous surprise, as he had long suspected that Alpha Trion was one of the Thirteen and had gotten used to the idea over time. But for the other Autobots it was a wrenching moment, the discovery that an empirical truth lay behind the stories they had told as if they were parables.

  He laid the fragment on the table and noticed as he did so that a line of symbols was inscribed along nearly its entire length. Alpha Trion would be able to read them, but Optimus Prime could not. “I believe this is part of it. And as I said, I believe that the Matrix is leading us to the rest.”

  “How many parts are there?” Jazz asked.

  “I do not know,” Optimus Prime said.

  “Not a lot to go on here, Prime,” Jazz said. “You found a piece of metal with something inscribed
on it. How do you get from there to it being part of the Star Saber? The actual Star Saber made by the actual Solus Prime? These are myths.”

  “The Matrix led me to it, Jazz. I don’t think the Matrix would lead us astray.”

  Jazz shook his head. “Me neither. But like you said, the Matrix has its own way of doing things. I wouldn’t be so quick to think that you know exactly what it’s saying.”

  This was a good point. Optimus knew it, and he could see from the nods around the table that the other Autobot leaders knew it, too. “True,” he said. “But in the absence of concrete information, we have to navigate by guesswork.”

  “Give me concrete information any time,” Silverbolt said. “Coordinates, speed, and position and bearing.”

  “Tell it to the Matrix,” Jazz said. There was laughter around the table, and Optimus laughed, too. These are good bots, he thought. Good comrades. We will be victorious in the end.

  Before he could develop that sentiment further, he realized that they had a visitor, arriving so quickly and slamming to such a violent halt that it could only be Blurr. “I won again no sweat but you know I always win except when something’s wrong with the track but that’s not why I’m here Override wanted me to—” He stopped and cocked his head, looking at the piece of metal on the table.

  “Oh, hey,” Blurr said. “I’ve seen something like that.” And he vanished.

  “What?” Optimus Prime said, but it was too late.

  “Did he just say he’d seen something like that?” Jazz asked.

  Silverbolt was nodding. “That’s what I heard.”

  A screech of tires from outside told them that Blurr was back, and a bare cycle later he was among them again, carrying the trophy Override had awarded him at the finish of the last Speedia.

  “Uh oh,” Jazz said.

  Optimus Prime didn’t know what Jazz was worried about until Blurr set the trophy on the table next to the metal artifact from the beacon installation and said, “Look there.” Then, before any of the Autobots had a chance to look where he was pointing, he snapped the top from the trophy and with another sharp crack broke off one of the pillars that had supported the top. Inside the cage formed by the four—now three—pillars was a gleam that filled Optimus Prime with an uneasy combination of anticipation and joint-deep misgiving.