Exiles (33 page)

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.

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.