Exiles (29 page)

First, though, he and Ransack had to reach an understanding. “When you said that this planet was yours,” Megatron said, “I think what you meant was that it was mine.”

Ransack met Megatron’s optics for a long time, long enough, in fact, that Megatron barely held himself back
from cutting him down where he stood, as he had the insolent guard.

Then Ransack said, “Velocitron pledges itself to the Decepticon cause.”

“That will do for now,” Megatron said with a smile.

He found Override in a cheap district of junkyards and chassis-painting bays, far away from Delta’s racetrack nerve center. “You are Megatron,” she said upon seeing him.

“And you are Override,” Megatron said. “I am told you were recently in charge here.”

“I am still the lawful ruler of Velocitron,” Override said.

“Spare me. You won a race.”

Megatron looked around. He had come alone to show he had nothing to fear from this—or any other—bot. The other Decepticons waited down the block, with only Starscream listening in on Megatron’s personal commlink. “I’ll tell you an uncomfortable truth. Your situation here reminds me of the Autobots back on Cybertron. Hunkered down in the forgotten parts of their planet, waiting for the end even as they try to bluff their bravery and pretend that they’re going to pull through somehow. Aren’t you tired of it?”

“I can see why Ransack and you would join forces,” Override said. “I can’t stand either one of you.”

Megatron picked Hightail out of the crowd of Override’s armed supporters. “That bot, there. Hightail. Where did he come from, anyway?”

Override looked as if she were taken by surprise. “From the same place as the rest of us from Velocitron.”

“Are you sure?” Megatron studied her closely. He thought about killing her—lately, starved of battle, he thought about killing every bot he saw—but decided
against it. The librarian had seen something here and stopped for it before going on. Megatron needed to know what that thing was. “He looks familiar to me,” he added.

“Hightail,” Override said without ever taking her optics off Megatron. “Where have you seen this Cybertronian before?”

“Over by the hangar talking to Ransack,” Hightail said without hesitation.

“And why were you over by the hangar, Hightail?”

“Registering for the race tomorrow,” Hightail said. “You can look it up. I was one of Ransack’s bots, but I’m changing my mind, and I’m not afraid to say it. I listen to all sides.”

Override never looked away from Megatron, and he knew immediately that she was testing him. This was a seasoned leader in difficult circumstances, he thought. “There’s your answer,” Override said. “Like every other being with a Spark, Hightail has the right to go where he wants. Now take your provocations somewhere else, or if you’re going to fight, then let’s fight. But enough talking.”

Not so different, perhaps, from a powerful gladiator who drove himself to greatness by rising out of the pits into leadership of most of a planet. “You must be fast,” Megatron said.

“For a long time I was the fastest bot on this planet,” she said. “Which makes me the fastest bot in the universe, because nothing on wheels is faster than a Velocitronian.”

“How do you lead them when there’s not a race to be run?” Megatron asked.

“They’re bots. They want what all bots want,” Override said.

“And what’s that?”

She turned to face him. “I know who you are,” she said. “And I know that your ship can destroy every city on this planet. And I know that you’re sounding things out here so you can decide whether Ransack is a serious threat to me or not. So let me simplify things for you: If you side with Ransack, you will not have most Velocitronians. That’s just fact. If you side with me, you better drop the peace-through-tyranny angle because that’s not how Velocitronians do things. Peace here comes because we made a decision on how we were going to elect our leaders, and that’s how we do it.”

Override stopped. She appeared to consider what she had just said. Megatron wanted her to do this. “Did you tell the pirates the same thing?”

“No,” she said. “I treated them with less courtesy.”

Megatron laughed. “You do not want me as an enemy,” he said.

“I don’t think it is possible for you to be a friend,” Override said. “With anyone.”

There might have been a fight then, but Megatron looked around to find himself surrounded by two dozen bots who were not trying to hide their weapons. Perhaps he could have survived, and there was a yearning in every particle of his being to take the first shot and let the pieces of his enemies fall where they might, but this was not the time. He had to hunt down the librarian and recover the AllSpark. This was a distraction.

“Friendship is not worth the time,” Megatron said to Override. He strode from the hangar in the direction of the
Nemesis
. Ransack and his Delta wing of wheeled followers fell into a careful pace flanking him when Megatron got closer to the hangar again.

Events are set in motion
, Megatron thought.
Optimus Prime did that. A savory irony. This planet is already burning in places, headed for full-scale war, and even I—even I!—could not stop it
.

“Ransack,” he said. “Your bot Hightail. Do you trust him?”

“I do.”

“You shouldn’t,” Megatron said. “He was with Override when I spoke to her.”

“I sent him there,” Ransack said. “He reports back to me.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Megatron said. “I saw much I didn’t like. If you will not have him killed, at least exile him. Understood?”

Ransack looked shaken, but he did not argue. “Understood, Megatron. Understood.”

That was how you dealt with bots who elected their leaders by racing, Megatron thought. They deserved no better.

The war that had been sown on Velocitron satisfied Megatron. He didn’t have to push things any more than he already had. Wherever war was born out of competing ambitions, there the Decepticons had a natural advantage. Things would work out in his favor here. But the Autobots were not here, so he could not stay to enjoy the progress of the Velocitronians’ self-destruction. Instead he had to pursue the Ark. That was the first imperative. “Starscream,” he said. “Get the
Nemesis
tracking the librarian again.”

“The
Nemesis
has already picked up an ion exhaust,” Starscream said. “Two, as a matter of fact.”

“An error,” Thundercracker said.

“No, a second trail. There’s another ship out there. But it doesn’t match the Ark’s signal.”

“Interesting but irrelevant,” Megatron said.

The only thing he cared about was bringing Optimus Prime to heel. Only when Optimus was dead and the Matrix of Leadership was torn from his broken body
would Megatron be satisfied. Then Megatron would be Prime, as had always been his destiny.

“Onward,” he said. “It appears the Autobots have done our work for us here. Now we must find them and convey our appreciation.”

“Here’s what I want to know,” Silverbolt said as he ferried Optimus Prime and Bumblebee up off the surface of Junkion toward the far Space Bridge, which Wreck-Gar again had assured them was still operational. Perceptor had taken a scientific team up to low orbit and returned, confirming that as nearly as he could tell, the Bridge was indeed still in working order, although it had been so long since it had received a coordinate set from an incoming ship that it no longer automatically activated when a ship approached its vortex gate. “Why are we pretending we can trust Axer when we know we can’t and he knows we know we can’t … and we know he knows?”

“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.”