Exiles

by Alex Irvine

  Because Axer knew where it was already. While Megatron thrashed ahead with his grand plan to destroy the Autobots, Axer would keep his goals simple. One, he would take care of Makeshift, and two, he would get the Requiem Blaster. Then he could decide whether to trade it or use it.

  A plan. Axer liked having a plan.

  From the edge of the pit, looking down at the Junkions’ pointless digging and up at the wrack and flotsam that drifted through their near space, Megatron put in the call.

  The Nemesis emerged from behind its screen of space junk and slowly descended toward the surface of Junkion.

  “This is where it all ends, Starscream,” Megatron said.

  “I hope not all of it,” Starscream joked. Then he assumed alt-form and rocketed upward to rendezvous with the three other Seekers, who even then were detaching from the Nemesis and flying in a wedge low along the horizon in the direction of the Autobots’ Ark.

  From the bottom of the pit, Wreck-Gar looked up. Far away at the pit’s rim, he saw an unfamiliar bot—and another flying away. Silverbolt? Perhaps, but then, who was that left behind, raising his arms and releasing an atavistic roar that carried all the distance down and cut through the roar of the furnace and the thunderous groan of the rolling machines?

  What bot could that be?

  “Junkions!” Wreck-Gar called out. “Work stoppage! Defend the resource! Defend Junkion! Rally!”

  He wasn’t sure, maybe, and he didn’t necessarily trust the Autobots all the way to the bottom of the pit, but Wreck-Gar knew that if Axer was one of those Decepticons, that was all he needed to know. There wouldn’t be any Decepticons on his planet. Not any live ones, anyway.

  Not unless every Junkion was dead first.

  The great machines fell silent and the roar of the blast furnace ceased almost immediately as Wreck-Gar’s call went out. The Junkions, wherever they were on the floor or walls of the great pit, began their climb up the spiraling perimeter road, marching to the defense of their world. Some of them reached the top almost immediately, and the flash of energy weapons began to appear like sparks from Wreck-Gar’s position. He roared and accelerated, spoiling to get into the fight.

  Outside the Ark, Prowl, Bulkhead, and Ironhide were complaining about not being able to go with Optimus Prime. “Big mission through the Space Bridge,” Bulkhead was saying. “See a whole new part of the universe, but no. Not us.”

  “Enough,” Ironhide said. “Optimus knows what he’s doing.”

  “I don’t doubt it. He still could have brought all of us. I mean, I love Bumblebee, but communications aren’t that easy when he’s around. Also, you know what? I feel a little better when Silverbolt’s around, just because that means we’ve always got some air strength while we’re waiting for the Ark here to get all patched up.” This was more consecutive words than Bulkhead had spoken since leaving Cybertron. He talked and talked because he was frustrated about being left out of the mission.

  “I don’t know,” Prowl said. “Airpower’s overrated. It’s not like we can’t shoot down Seekers from the ground.”

  Ironhide had been about to agree with Bulkhead, but now Prowl had him convinced the other way again. “Okay, true. I’d like to be able to fly, though.”

  “Not me,” Prowl said.

  What he wanted at that moment was to know where Axer was. They had lost him a few cycles back and hadn’t been able to pick up the trail again. It was getting to the point where Prowl was considering cutting Makeshift out of his holding tank just so he could make a deal for Makeshift to go find Axer. It would be a bad deal, yes, but the uncertainty was killing Prowl, plain and simple.

  The sound of thunder from the air reached them. “Huh,” Ironhide said. “A little quick for Silverbolt to be giving them a ride back, don’t you think?”

  Prowl had the best optics of any of them, in keeping with his surveillance activities. He was looking at the horizon, over toward the great pit. “It’s not Silverbolt,” he said.

  “Who is it?” Ironhide said. He jumped to his feet and squinted in the direction Prowl was looking. Cut out for close combat, he couldn’t get a lock on the target yet.

  “You mean ‘they,’ ” Prowl said.

  They. The implications of the word sunk in. Silverbolt was the only flier among the Autobots. If there was more than one flying in now, that could only mean one thing.

  The Decepticons had found them.

  “Three,” Prowl said. “No, four.”

  Bulkhead got on the commlink and sounded the alert. “Autobots, assemble! We have ’Cons on Junkion, and we will commence immediately kicking them off again! All Autobots report for ’Con-kicking duties now, now, now!”

  He broke the connection as Autobot reinforcements, led by Clocker and Mainspring, came running and rolling to join them from the back of the ship. “How’d that sound?” Bulkhead asked.

  “A little informal for my taste,” Prowl said.

  Ironhide shrugged. The Seekers were close enough now that he could see all four of them. “Got the job done,” he said.

  Prowl nodded. “Guess so,” he said.

  The Seekers drew closer. When they were within range, they opened fire.

  Amid the somber beauty of Solus Prime’s tomb, Optimus Prime was stunned at the first words from her avatar’s mouth.

  “Leave?” he repeated. Optimus Prime felt awe, pure and simple, at being in the presence of one of the Thirteen even if, as must have been the case, it was a hologram-persona given a fleeting sentience by the Matrix of Leadership. He did not want to leave. He wanted to learn from her the history of the Thirteen, their falling into schism, their scattering and their deaths … How much this remnant of Solus Prime must know!

  “Leave,” the hologram said. It opened the tongs, and the star spun outward into a great spiral galaxy. Optimus Prime felt as if the universe was spinning around him as the galaxy grew in size, exploding outward until it filled space as far as he could see in any direction, overlaying itself onto the real backdrop of stars. “Here is a Space Bridge,” the hologram said, and a blue spark lit in the hologram galaxy. Simultaneously, a blue flare appeared in the emptiness near the asteroid, opposite the Space Bridge that had brought them from Junkion.

  Yes, thought Optimus Prime. Silverbolt had seen it when they got here, and so had he.

  “There you will find the Requiem Blaster, which your enemy seeks. But it may be that he has already found it. You must go quickly lest he escape with it; if this were to happen, your quest for the AllSpark would be delayed for far too long.”

  The galaxy contracted, spiraling back into a blinding pinpoint of starlight that lingered for the barest moment before winking out. The hologram disappeared in the same instant, leaving Optimus Prime shaken and exhilarated. One of the Thirteen! At the same time he struggled to focus on what the hologram had said. If Megatron was on the trail of the Requiem Blaster, Optimus needed to cut him off before he got it. “The Requiem Blaster,” he said. “We cannot let Megatron possess it.”

  Bumblebee tried to speak, but his vocoder only made a series of inquisitive chirps.

  “An ancient weapon of enormous power,” Optimus said, understanding that Bumblebee had tried to ask a question. “I’ve only read of it. According to the archival material I have seen, it channels and releases the energy of nearby stellar anomalies. It can focus a quasar’s sound waves, a supernova’s thermal energy … even the gravity of a black hole. Whatever is nearest. There are few references to it actually being fired, but when it is …” Optimus shook his head.

  “Right. Bad,” Bumblebee said, trying to conserve as much speech as possible.

  “In all the stories, I do not know of any bot that has ever survived a direct hit from it,” Optimus Prime said.

  Bumblebee clapped his hands, the impact ringing down through the asteroid and vibrating in Optimus Prime’s feet even though no sound reached him in the vacuum on the asteroid. “Megatron.”

  “That’s what I was saying,” Optimus said
, interpreting Bumblebee’s meaning. “We must not let Megatron have it.”

  “And I’m agreeing,” Silverbolt said. “Now, let’s go.”

  “There’s one more thing we have to do,” said Optimus Prime.

  “More than one, perhaps,” came another voice. The Autobots spun around, leveling weapons, and saw a bot that none of them recognized holding his arms up and palms out. “Please, Optimus Prime,” said the bot. “I am Chaindrive. I have come from Cybertron, and I bring word from Alpha Trion.”

  Optimus Prime was speechless.

  Silverbolt and Bumblebee, however, were not. “How did you get here?” Silverbolt asked, and Bumblebee nodded vigorously.

  “You should really ask Wheeljack that,” Chaindrive said. “I was in a small ship, but I think he built it and I don’t know what he powered it with. That bot is one genius with junk.”

  “You—” Optimus Prime had a hundred questions. First among them was, “Who is Wheeljack?”

  “Oh,” Chaindrive said. “Right. You wouldn’t know him. He’s an engineer, inventor … you name it. We found him wandering outside Crystal City. We think he escaped from Shockwave, or at least that’s what Alpha Trion thinks.”

  Hearing that name referred to in the present tense lifted Optimus Prime’s spirits. “Alpha Trion lives?” he asked. “The war is not lost?”

  “Yes and no, Prime,” Chaindrive said. “Alpha Trion is still Alpha Trion, spending lots of time sitting by himself thinking about things and writing in the Covenant. Shockwave doesn’t attack him directly; I think he is afraid, but I’m not sure why. Autobots are managing to hold Iacon. On the rest of the planet, there are pockets where Autobots still fight, but most of Cybertron has settled into exactly what Megatron wants. Peace through tyranny, with Shockwave presiding.” He saw the effect he was having on the assembled bots and added, “We fight, and we’re not losing. We’re holding. But the quicker you can find the AllSpark and get back to Cybertron, the better it’s going to be for everyone.”

  “Understood, Chaindrive,” Optimus Prime said. “Thank you for the report. I am especially glad to hear that Alpha Trion still survives. Now, why has he sent you?”

  Chaindrive stepped closer to Optimus Prime and held out to him a sliver of polished metal, one end pointed and the other twisted and hooked as if it had been torn apart with great force. “He said I should give this to you immediately. And he said that you would know what to do with it.”

  Several things happened at once. Optimus Prime reeled from the sensation of time and space deforming and then stretching and rebounding to their natural equilibrium as he accepted the fifth piece of metal and felt an escalation of the sensation of power he had felt ever since the first two had come together thanks to Blurr back on Velocitron. He also felt a piercing sense of disappointment, because at that moment he became certain that they would not be assembling the Star Saber. He now had five pieces of ancient metal and could sense that whatever the artifact’s purpose or power, it was not a weapon in and of itself.

  The sudden uncertainty, following so close on the heels of his confidence that he knew what the metal fragments were, shook Optimus Prime down to his Spark. Right at the center of that uncertainty was a fear that he had failed Alpha Trion. Knowing his mentor was alive, Optimus Prime had rejoiced, but from what Chaindrive had said, Alpha Trion had trusted Optimus to know what to do with the metal artifacts, and he did not. Everything suddenly seemed to hang in the balance. What was he to do?

  “Autobots,” he said, “I was wrong about something. This is not the Star Saber.”

  “But …” Chaindrive looked around as if Optimus Prime was reacting to speech he could not hear. “How do you know?”

  “This—whatever it is—is complete,” said Optimus Prime. “If it were the Star Saber, I would know how to put it together.”

  “Remember what Jazz said about not assuming we know what the Matrix is doing,” Silverbolt reminded him. Bumblebee nodded and tried to say something, but all that came out was a faint electrical hum.

  “I do. But I feel certain of this. These are the pieces of something that is not meant to be a weapon.”

  “Then what is it meant to be? Alpha Trion wouldn’t have sent this bot all the way from Cybertron just to bring a little piece of metal,” Silverbolt said. “You know more than you’re letting on, Optimus.”

  “I’m not sure what I know,” Optimus Prime said. “But I think I know a way to find out.”

  “I don’t know, Optimus. Shouldn’t we get back to Junkion? Axer’s running around back there, and sooner or later …” Silverbolt trailed off, but Optimus Prime knew what he was going to say.

  “Yes. Sooner or later Megatron will pick up our trail, if he hasn’t already,” he said. “But we will be much better prepared to meet him if we have tracked down whatever it is that Solus Prime is directing us toward. She told us that the way to get to the Requiem Blaster was through the other Space Bridge here, so we must go. When we get there, we will be in a position to … do whatever this artifact does. And then we will know.”

  Chaindrive had remained silent through most of this exchange, but now he spoke up. “Alpha Trion said I should tell you that Shockwave has been to see him, making threats. He believes that the time is coming when the Decepticons still on Cybertron will make an all-out assault. If you could be back on Cybertron by then, I think the Autobots would rally.”

  “The Autobots will have to hold on a little longer,” Optimus Prime said, hating every word as it left his mouth. “I am beholden to follow the directives of the Matrix, and it draws us after the AllSpark. I may not return without it.”

  This added to his uncertainty. He wished he could return to Cybertron and fight for those left behind. At the same time he knew that he was fighting for those bots, every one of them, by forging ahead in the quest to recover the AllSpark and draw Megatron ever farther away from Cybertron. As long as Megatron was not there—Optimus Prime believed this with every molecule of his being—the Autobots could hold on.

  “You’re with us now, Chaindrive,” he said. “Unless Wheeljack came up with a way to get you back, too.”

  “No,” Chaindrive said. “He told me it would probably be a one-way trip. At least until I came back with you.”

  “He was right about that.” Optimus Prime looked around the tomb one more time. It was beautiful in its way, austere and silent. Beauty was for another time, though, and although it pained the curious nature that had led Orion Pax on the path to becoming Optimus Prime, he knew this was the moment for direction, not reflection.

  “Time to go,” Optimus said. “Back to the ship.”

  As soon as the team had shut the main hatch of the ship borrowed from Wreck-Gar’s vast field of junk, Sideswipe accelerated away from the center of the plaza at the tomb of Solus Prime, with the rest of the team watching out for debris as they traveled across the drift of shipwrecks toward the other Space Bridge. The beacon Optimus Prime had left pointed the way, but none of them needed it now. They had all seen the brilliant totem on the map brought to life by the avatar of Solus Prime.

  “What is this place?” Chaindrive asked as they flew.

  Optimus Prime had no answers.

  “Tomb of Solus Prime,” Silverbolt said. “Didn’t we just tell you that?”

  “I mean the rest of it,” Chaindrive said. “Where did all these wrecks come from?”

  Bumblebee crackled in what Optimus Prime assumed was questioning agreement. He, too, had been looking at the ships as they flew by, wondering where they had come from and how they had come to be abandoned—and by whom. Where had the crews gone? There were no other asteroids visible, no places to construct tombs or sepulchers. The ships themselves did not appear to hold many secrets; they were largely stripped and open to space, and that perhaps accounted for Wreck-Gar’s reluctance to come back.

  Although now that he had framed that thought, Optimus Prime was dissatisfied with it. It would take more than ordinary danger to warn away a
bot like Wreck-Gar. Something had happened to the Junkions here, something they had told no one about. Thinking about the lost passengers and crews of these many ships—and about Wreck-Gar’s curious reticence—gave Optimus Prime a dark chill. He had a feeling, irresistible and unwelcome, that he would someday find out the answers … and that that day was not so very far away.

  Axer had gotten all the way down to the bottom of the shaft. Prowl had him on a tracking display but had to let him go because with four Seekers on the horizon, the Autobots had more immediate concerns. Now they were close enough that Prowl could tell them apart: crazy Skywarp; Thundercracker, who would have been noble if he only had the guts to join the Autobots; the archcon-spirator Starscream; and the mocking Slipstream. Something about the power of flight made some bots … well, Prowl would have put it this way if he were composing a report: Their personalities were more intense than that of your average bot.

  But he wasn’t composing a report. He was trying to shoot those intense personalities down so they did not destroy the Ark and all that the Autobots stood for.

  He shut down the tracking holo and went to meet the Seekers, wishing that Silverbolt was there to fight by his side instead of off on some mystical quest with Optimus Prime. The quests for long-forgotten artifacts and conversations with the remains of the Thirteen … all of that could wait, thought Prowl, when there was a real and present threat from real and present bots.

  You had to live in the now.

  He snapped his missile launcher out and locked in on Starscream. All of Prowl’s militia and police experience told him that if you wanted to break up a group, you hit the leader first and you hit the leader hard. Then, if the group stayed together, you knew that they were well disciplined and you adjusted your tactics. He hated these free-form battle situations. Prowl wanted one suspect, one crime, one catch, and one conviction. Like with Axer, although even that was more complicated than Prowl preferred.