“Sharkticon superstition,” the dying Gamekeeper muttered. Optimus was surprised he wasn’t dead yet. There must have been more of his blood in the tidal pool than there was left in his body. Optimus stepped past a weakly grasping claw and placed his boot on the creature’s head.
“Care to tell us what you mean?” he asked.
“The Sharkticons … they were conquered long ago by … Quintessons …”
“We figured that out already,” Megatron said.
“They were brainwashed … conditioned. But some of them once told stories … of the one who would come to free them …”
“And that’s the guy on the wall?” Optimus asked.
“The Sharkticons who drew that were killed long ago. I … consumed them personally. There has been no talk of freedom since. But … but …”
“But what?” Megatron demanded.
“They tasted sweet,” said the lobster—and died.
“I still think that looks like me,” Megatron said.
“Never mind that,” Optimus said. “We’ve got to somehow find this bridge, defeat the Quintessons, and save Cybertron.”
“It may already be too late,” Megatron said.
“It’s never too late. Are you with me or not?”
Megatron raised his fusion cannon in the old gladiator salute.
Chapter Thirty-seven
CYBERTRON
IACON WAS IN A STATE OF NEAR PANDEMONIUM. THERE had been no official announcement, but by now everyone was aware the planet had been invaded. Scarcely anyone outside Shockwave’s high command knew the identity of the invaders, but that didn’t really matter. Rumors were sweeping through the city like wildfire. Megatron was back and had turned against Shockwave! Optimus had returned with the AllSpark and was thrashing the Decepticons once and for all! But anyone who got past the surface level of the rumor mill knew that something far worse was afoot. Something alien had landed on Cybertron, something no one had seen for many millions of years.
“Those slagging Quints,” Maccadam said.
Ultra Magnus nodded as if he understood what that meant. Wheeljack and Springer refrained from asking the obvious question, waiting to hear more. But Rack n’ Ruin had no such patience.
“Who are the Quints?” he asked.
It was Alpha Trion who answered. He’d been sitting in the corner of Maccadam’s ever since they’d got here. Coming back to the bar was the last thing Wheeljack would have expected them to do, but all the tunnels that led out of the city were being rapidly sealed or blown up by Iacon’s defenders. Alpha Trion’s eyes were scarcely focusing, as if he were still having trouble processing events.
Or else was way ahead of them.
“The Quintessons are an ancient evil who once enslaved us,” he said slowly. “They’ve returned to finish what they started.”
“Okay,” said Wheeljack. “In that case, why is all the radio chatter talking about sharks?”
“Not sharks,” Springer said. “Land sharks. There’s a difference.”
“Sharkticons,” Alpha Trion said. “They are the servants of the Quintessons, who have sent them across the bridge.”
“So when do we see the Quintessons?”
“You don’t,” Alpha Trion said. “That’s the point. They always work through proxies.” He drew a deep breath. “I am to blame for all of this.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ultra Magnus said. “Shockwave used you.”
“I should have self-destructed rather than fall into his hands.”
“Well, you’re here now,” Maccadam said. “And frankly, we could use your advice.”
“Advice?”
“What do we do?”
The room shook with a deep rumbling. For a moment, Wheeljack thought that Maccadam’s was under attack once more, a suspicion that seemed to be confirmed when the camera feeds showed Decepticon battle tanks on the street outside. But they weren’t stopping. They were trundling past, rolling toward the city walls.
“Shockwave’s moving up his reserves,” Springer said.
But no one listened to him. They were all still focused on Alpha Trion, wondering whether he had an answer, whether he could give them any hope at all, no matter how slender. He took a deep breath.
“We need to get to the Hall of Records,” he said.
NO DOUBT ABOUT IT; THIS HAD BEEN THE WORST DAY of Ratbat’s life.
Mere hours ago, it had looked like he was going to capture the leader of the Wreckers. But then Omega Supreme and his long-range cannon had intervened, and things had been going downhill ever since. Faced with the prospect of telling Shockwave that not only had he let the Wreckers get away but the forces he’d sent after Omega Supreme had been ambushed and destroyed by that giant robot … Well, Ratbat had been worried about more than just his career. And now a remorseless enemy was closing on Iacon, and he was in charge of stopping it. Shockwave had made it very clear that if the invaders got past the walls, he’d personally perform a very special experiment on Ratbat aimed at discovering just how long a bot could survive when it was sliced into several thousand pieces.
Ratbat was thus doing his utmost to bring some order to the city’s defenses. So far he was failing. He’d set up his command post at the city gates, which were still in a state approaching anarchy. The defenders weren’t even bothering to try to stem the tide of refugees flooding into the city. Once the enemy came into sight, the gates would have to be shut, of course, but right now Ratbat doubted that he could get his soldiers to fire on the refugees. They’d be just as likely to shoot him, and they’d probably enjoy it a whole lot more. A vid-screen on the wall started buzzing. Ratbat picked it up.
“Yes?”
“Report,” said Shockwave.
“Everything’s under control,” Ratbat said automatically.
“That’s not what I’m hearing.”
Then why are you asking me? Ratbat wanted to say. But a lifetime of deference had trained him in the art of not uttering the first thing that popped into his head. “Lord Shockwave, I just arrived at my command post. I assure you the defenses will be at peak performance momentarily.”
“For your sake,” Shockwave said, “they had better be.”
IN HIS TOWER, SHOCKWAVE SWITCHED OFF THE SCREEN and went back to studying the map of Iacon and the surrounding area. He knew that Ratbat’s assurances were worthless. Frankly, Shockwave had never expected that Ratbat would have to contend with a situation this grim. If he had, he would have picked someone more capable. But skill in battle meant a potential rival, and Shockwave’s whole regime was based on the principle of divide and conquer, making sure that no one bot ever attained enough power or prestige to challenge him. That had worked well enough for dealing with sporadic guerrilla warfare, but the current threat was a different story altogether.
Then again, even if he’d had the right officers in place—and Megatron had taken all the best ones with him anyway—Shockwave doubted it would have made much difference. The last thing anyone had been expecting was a full-scale invasion fleet to roar out of the dormant space bridge. Shockwave stared at the flames darkening the sky around Iacon and mulled over his fast-dwindling options. Most of his bots had been ground to powder already. All his remaining reserves had been moved to the walls and were waiting for what was probably going to be a fairly quick demise. Shockwave studied video imagery of the invaders: their manta ray crafts, their finned troops. They all looked like they’d been run off the same assembly line.
Except for one.
The leader wasn’t exactly keeping a low profile. Obviously, his approach was very different from that of Shockwave, who preferred to stay in the most fortified place possible while others did the fighting. The Sharkticon leader stood resplendent on the exterior part of the bridge of his flagship, at the very front of his onrushing forces, his scaled cape streaming in the wind. Shockwave stared for long moments. An old aphorism came to mind:
Kill the head and the body will die.
Shockwave had
in mind just the bot to do it, too. Even if that bot wasn’t loyal to him, he knew its general location, in the vicinity of Iacon.
And Tyrannicon was heading right for it.
“THE CITY IS SURROUNDED, LORD.”
Tyrannicon nodded. His armada had spread out, extending its flanks on precise vectors so that it enclosed the entire area around Iacon. Now it only remained to tighten the noose. He gave the order to advance; his flagship rumbled forward through the jungle of metal that constituted the polar badlands. Far ahead, he caught a glimpse of a tower protruding from the far horizon. Presumably that was the Tower of Shockwave: the highest point of Iacon’s skyline. Tyrannicon smiled to himself. There was nothing that could stop him now.
That was when the ground below his battle craft began to shake and splinter open; a titanic rocket poked out of the growing hole, followed by what appeared to be a number of rail tracks that folded and converted into a huge hand that grabbed the front of Tyrannicon’s ship, twisting the entire vessel and pulling it downward. Tyrannicon was thrown clear, but most of his crewmen were crushed as the ship smashed into the bottom of the gully. Simultaneously, high-altitude Decepticons began dropping smoke bombs onto the fleet; in short order, visibility dropped toward near zero. Tyrannicon heard terrible rending noises as his ships struck one another. But he knew that the real target wasn’t his fleet.
It was him.
The Cybertronians were going to do their best to kill him in the confusion. It was a sound plan; in fact, it was exactly what he would have done. He wasn’t surprised when a huge shape shambled out of the smoke and loomed before him.
“Who dares defy General Tyrannicon?” the Sharkticon general yelled.
“THE MIGHT OF OMEGA SUPREME!” The bot’s voice was so loud that it practically shattered Tyrannicon’s sensors. He quickly searched his database. The lumbering giant in front of him was one of the last of the ancient Guardian robots. A true challenge if ever there was one. But maybe it was possible to win the bot over with reason. Or at least confuse it.
“Omega Supreme,” Tyrannicon said. “You are no Decepticon. There is no need for you to defend this city.”
“I AM CYBERTRONIAN. THAT IS ENOUGH.”
Sharkticons appeared at the edge of the canyon and opened fire on the Autobot behemoth. It was like watching peashooters in action against a brick wall. Omega Supreme stood there, absorbing the damage, and then he swung his rocket cannon up and disintegrated the enemy forces with a single devastating blast before turning back to Tyrannicon.
“LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH,” he bellowed.
FROM THE ROOF OF HIS TOWER, SHOCKWAVE TRAINED his telescope on the unfolding carnage outside Iacon. What was taking place was so far away that it wasn’t even visible from the walls; it was beyond the horizon of every structure in Iacon except the very summit of the tower. Shockwave stood there alone, letting the wind whip across his face. Through the barrage of smoke bombs, he could see plumes of fire where the Sharkticon ships had collided with one another. The exact extent of the damage was impossible to determine. All he knew was what he was picking up from the intercepted chatter on the Sharkticon com-links: that the Sharkticon fleet was in disarray, that Tyrannicon and Omega Supreme were battling for supremacy out there, that everything hung in the balance …
OMEGA SUPREME SMASHED HIS FIST DOWN, JUST MISSING Tyrannicon, but the sheer force of the impact against the ground was enough to send the Sharkticon leader flying against the wall of the gully. For a moment, all Tyrannicon could see was static. His systems were so overloaded that he couldn’t even think. He shook his head, clearing his vision. To his surprise, he wasn’t dead.
Just very angry.
“You’re the best Cybertron has?” he said. “No wonder we’re winning so easily.”
Omega Supreme raised the giant blaster on his left hand and fired, but Tyrannicon had already leaped to the side. Omega Supreme changed the beam setting to wide burst and tried to reacquire the smaller target, but the wily Sharkticon general apparently had ducked behind some nearby boulders. Omega Supreme advanced on them.
“THERE IS NO ESCAPE!”
“Who said anything about trying to escape?”
Omega Supreme turned to see that Tyrannicon had skittered up the rock face and was staring him right in the eye. The laser cannon on Omega’s head swiveled, but Tyrannicon thrust his battle trident straight into the weapon’s power supply, detonating the gun and sending Omega Supreme staggering backward. Tyrannicon leaped onto Omega Supreme’s shoulder and yanked his trident free. Omega Supreme tried to swat Tyrannicon off like he was an annoying insect, but Tyrannicon vaulted deftly over Omega Supreme’s head, straight onto his other shoulder; as he did so, he thrust the trident into Omega Supreme’s right optic, penetrating his neural circuitry. There was a terrible crackling noise; sparks flew everywhere; the huge bot staggered and then started to fall. Tyrannicon rode his toppling adversary all the way down, sliding down the massive chest, stabbing it over and over with his trident. Omega Supreme hit the ground with a boom that reverberated all the way to Iacon. Sharkticons peered over the edge to see their general standing atop Omega Supreme’s chest.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Tyrannicon said. “We’ve got a planet to conquer.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
THE WALLS OF THE HALL OF JUSTICE SHUDDERED BENEATH the impact of the Sharkticon guns. Most of the Autobots and Decepticons had taken up positions around the perimeter and were firing back at any Sharkticon that stuck its head out. Yet even as the bombardment intensified, Starscream and Jazz were engaged in a heated argument that was increasing in volume rapidly. No doubt about it, the uneasy alliance between the recently freed prisoners was starting to fray. But from the noise of the guns outside, if they didn’t get a plan together soon, it wasn’t going to matter.
“I’ll have you know my rank is air commander,” hissed Starscream, practically spitting in Jazz’s face. “That means I outrank you.”
“I’ve got news for you,” Jazz shot back. “You’re not in the air anymore. And we don’t need anybody to be in charge; we just need to cooperate. See the difference?”
From the expression on Starscream’s face, he didn’t. “So what are you proposing?”
Jazz gestured at the pit into which the Quintessons had tossed their victims. “We have to go down into the undercity and look for Optimus.”
“I’m not sending any of my people down into that death trap! And certainly not to search for the leader who led you into this mess!”
“It’s not just Optimus,” Prowl yelled. “Megatron’s down there, too.”
“He’s a big bot. I’m sure he’ll be able to find his way back here. But if you Autobots want to get down there and take a look, be my guest.”
“And here I was thinking we were supposed to be working together,” Perceptor said.
“We are!” Starscream said. “We’ll stay up here and guard the high ground while you Autobots go dig our leaders out of the rubble. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“What’s straightforward is you’re a coward,” Prowl told him.
“Say that again,” Starscream said. “Go on, say it—”
Jazz stepped between the two.
“Listen, Starscream, we need you to send at least some of your troopers with us. We’ve got no idea what’s down there.”
“Exactly why I’m not sending anybody. For all we know, you could be trying to send us into a trap. Divide us and then pick us off one by one.”
Perceptor’s face went red. “Unlike you Decepticons, we Autobots keep our word!”
“You dare to insult the honor of the Decepticons?”
“You mean to say you have honor?” Before Starscream could react, Jazz suddenly saw movement in the bottom of the pit. For a moment, he thought that it was Optimus and Megatron, that they had returned.
But then he realized otherwise.
“Sharkticons!” he yelled even as the Sharkticons who had entered the bottom of
the pit started firing upward. Simultaneously, explosive charges went off beneath the Hall of Justice, ripping away part of the floor. The next moment, Sharkticons began pouring from the smoking hole, swinging their mace tails and firing lasers from their shoulder-mounted weapon packs.
“They’re inside the perimeter!” Ironhide bellowed as he grabbed a nearby Sharkticon, tore its mace tail clean off its body, and proceeded to use that mace to smash another Sharkticon to bits. Hand-to-hand combat broke out everywhere.
“We’ll finish this later!” Starscream snarled at Jazz, and then: “Decepticons to me! Decepticons to me!” But none of the Decepticons were paying much attention; they were too busy fighting for their lives. In normal circumstances, Starscream immediately would have ordered his jet troopers into the air, but he was wary of the still-active ground-to-air defenses out there; anybody who decided to take off would be an easy target. That meant he was trapped on the ground, fighting side by side with Autobots against impossible odds. He heard more shooting as a second wave of Sharkticons rushed the building from the streets outside.
“Here they come!” said Prowl. He and Jazz and Ratchet were falling back into one of the corners of the Hall of Justice, trying to hold on. Meanwhile, Sunstreaker, Hubcap, and their strike force were coalescing in an arrowhead formation, advancing on the pit, shoving the Sharkticons that were coming out of it back in. As their opponents tumbled to their doom, Sunstreaker whirled around and let loose a barrage of rockets that blasted the Sharkticons emerging from the rift in the floor.
“Hubcap!” he yelled. “Find us a way out of here!”
But Hubcap already had consulted his datapad. “There may not be one! They’re coming in from the undercity! That means we’re trapped!”
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