Exiles (36 page)

Optimus Prime gathered himself and carried on with his plea to Vector Prime, though inside he was scarcely able to believe he was actually talking to this mysterious hermit of the Thirteen, the monitor of time and space, the enforcer of celestial laws. “We have need of you, Vector Prime. Cybertron is on the verge of destruction. A long period of injustice ended with the beginning of a war. That war has been going on for millions of cycles now. I have been selected by the Matrix of Leadership to resist the domination of Cybertronians who call themselves Decepticons and seek absolute power. Their leader was once a gladiator and is as pitiless as that might lead you to expect.” Optimus paused. There was much more he could say about Megatron, but he was not sure how much should be said.

In truth, what did it matter?

“Wars have broken out among our kind before,” Vector Prime said. “I retired from your dimensionality
because
of war, because I grew exhausted and could no longer see any way for the warring parties to come to peace.”

“We have not yet come to that point,” Optimus Prime said. “As Prime, I believe in the ideals of Cybertron. I believe that the AllSpark can be recovered and that all
Cybertronians can be brought together under the ideals that gave rise to our civilization. Once we spanned the stars,” he said quietly. “Then we turned inward, and abandoned the spirit that fueled our greatness. Now a crisis has come. I have left Cybertron to protect the planet from the worst excesses of Megatron … but I also seek the AllSpark.”

“ ‘Recovered,’ you said. Where is the AllSpark? Why is it not still in the Well?”

Optimus Prime considered how to tell the story. The direct approach seemed best. “I ejected it from Cybertron,” he said. “The threat to it was too great. Megatron had gained control of a well of Dark Energon. If it had polluted the AllSpark …”

Nodding, Vector Prime said, “Megatron. This is the gladiator?”

“Yes, Vector Prime,” Optimus said.

“It would require such a one to unleash the corrosive power of Dark Energon,” Vector Prime said. “He would require the indomitable will of a gladiator, but not just that. This Megatron, his name recalls Megatronus. Perhaps he has something of Megatronus’s love of power as well. That, too, would suit him to the pursuit of Dark Energon.”

“He began with noble intent,” Optimus said. “In the beginning he desired only freedom. But when he saw the power his leadership created, he felt the allure of tyranny too powerfully. I tried to prevent a war. I tried to reconcile with him. We were friends once.”

Vector Prime was silent, lost in thought. “This is a story I have heard before,” he said eventually. “It is a story we Thirteen lived ourselves in a time long before yours.”

The scholar in Optimus Prime, the remnant memory of Orion Pax who lived for nothing but knowledge, burned to know what was within Vector Prime’s mind at
that moment. So much history, he thought. So much lost because those who could tell it preferred to remain silent. Could he provoke Vector Prime to tell the story? He did not know, nor did he know if he should. Perhaps long-held secrets should remain secret. Releasing them back into a world that had turned its back on them could have unforeseen consequences, and Cybertron had seen enough unforeseen consequences in recent times.

Still, he could not entirely let go of the desire to know. “I have read some of it, and Alpha Trion told me more,” he said.

The ancient bot’s head came back up, and he met Optimus Prime’s gaze. “Alpha Trion lives?”

“He does.”

“I wonder who else of us remains,” Vector Prime murmured.

“That I do not know,” Optimus Prime said. “But what I do know—what makes my errand here most urgent—is that Megatron seeks the Requiem Blaster.”

“Ah,” Vector Prime said.

Again he fell silent, and Optimus Prime waited respectfully. When he felt he could wait no longer, he said, “Vector Prime. However fast time passes beyond the borders of this space, pass it does. I must act. Will you aid us?”

Vector Prime nodded. “I will.”

Optimus Prime took a step back toward the gateway, but Vector Prime raised a hand to halt him. “Prime.”

To hear one of the Thirteen call him that shocked Optimus. He had long since grown used to hearing the title from other Autobots, but the word in Vector Prime’s voice seemed to carry with it an indescribable weight.
I am Prime
, he thought.
Vector Prime himself has said so
.

“I am not the solution,” Vector Prime said. “The universe has passed me by, has passed all of the Thirteen by.
I will be of what assistance I can, but your fight with this Megatron … it is your own and can only be your own. I and the rest of the Thirteen are the past. You are Cybertron’s future. I will aid you. I have already given you aid. But I will not leave with you.”

“Understood,” Optimus Prime said after a pause. His sense of leadership’s burden returned. Even one of the Thirteen was standing aside for him.
I am Cybertron’s future?
He could not even be certain what Vector Prime meant by this. Yet if this was the truth of the situation, the course ahead was clear. They could not rely on the Thirteen, could not expect any salvation from the near-mythical depths of the Cybertronian past. The Autobots were on their own and would make their own history.

Vector Prime stood next to him at the verge of the gateway. “It is a troubling burden to bear,” he said.

“I took it up a long time ago,” Optimus Prime said. “I will not put it down now.”

He emerged through the gateway back into … Optimus Prime wasn’t sure what to call it. Real space? The home dimension? The existence of Vector Prime’s pocket universe had unsettled his sense of what was real.

But he didn’t have long to think about it. All of Junkion was quaking and shuddering around him, and he saw the other Autobots stumbling and sprawled, as if some great impact had knocked them off their feet while he was with Vector Prime. As they got their feet under them amid the rubbish heaps and welded flotsam of Junkion, one of the first things they saw was the Requiem Blaster, hanging in the space below the
Nemesis
, with a spreading trail of debris slowly falling away from it back to the exploded floor of the great pit.

“Optimus,” Jazz said. “He’s here. Megatron.”

“For how long?”

“Just now,” Jazz said. “I don’t think he knows we’re here.”

“Then we’ll be able to offer him a little surprise,” Optimus Prime said. He was about to explain to them what he had learned in his consultation with Vector Prime, but at that moment the
Nemesis
began to lift skyward, the Requiem Blaster going with it, and Junkion began to shake again.

As the Requiem Blaster lifted away from contact with the surface of Junkion, seismic jolts began to rock the entire planetoid. Bots all over Junkion looked first up and then down, and then the upheavals knocked them flat. Great chunks of Junkion tore away from the surface, trailing fragments of machinery and rubbish. The Junkions’ communications network, JunkNet, lit up with alarms and warnings, all saying the same thing:

The planet is tearing itself apart!

And it was. Optimus Prime, from his position on the edge of the pit looking down on the hole torn by the Requiem Blaster’s removal, saw that the Blaster itself was causing the disturbance. He could not believe his optics; it was as if the Requiem Blaster had provided Junkion’s center of gravity, accreting the entire planetoid around itself and providing the stability that teracycles of Junkions had depended on and taken for granted.

Now it was all being destroyed as the very shape of Junkion deformed to follow the immense gravity of the Blaster. The picked frames of long-abandoned spacecraft flew again, with neither crew nor engine, spinnning slowly up into the irresistible well of attraction that the Requiem Blaster created. Around them circulated all the rest of Junkion: the modular colony housing that had
never reached its destination, the thousands of kliks of cables and wires meant for other colony worlds but repurposed for the JunkNet, and the millions of smaller bits of flotsam that had given Junkion its mass and its citizens their home.

All of it disintegrated as Optimus Prime watched, and he was part of its disintegration. Around him, the Junkions cried out and flailed helplessly as gravity failed and they floated in the great stream of rubbish, themselves now discarded parts. Closer to Optimus Prime, Jazz and Bumblebee grasped at nearby trash; Silverbolt had assumed his alt-form and was doing his best to keep the six of them together.

“We need to get to the Ark!” Optimus shouted.

“Well, that’s one good thing about this place falling apart,” Jazz said. “Look.”

He pointed, and Optimus Prime saw that Junkion’s dissolution had freed the Ark from where it had crashed. Autobots swarmed over its surface, some of them still firing at the Decepticons, who clung to nearby pieces of Junkion and fired back. The Ark’s main door was open, and those Autobots who could were working their way over to it and escaping into the safety of its interior.

“Is it repaired?” Optimus Prime asked. He got on the commlink and raised Perceptor. “Perceptor, the Ark needs to be repaired. Tell me it is.”

“It is!” answered Perceptor. “Mostly.”

He scrambled across the surface of his own little piece of Junkion, a motley and irregular polygon welded together from pieces of starship and honeycombed with tunnels and living spaces. From inside it he heard the confused and angry shouts of the Junkions. Abruptly, JunkNet cut out as its physical connections and energy sources tore apart. Optimus could still feel some of the cries as vibrations coming up through his feet, but
he now tumbled silently in the wake of the Requiem Blaster.

The
Nemesis
had swung around to face the Requiem Blaster, which was now being drawn in toward a makeshift emplacement just below the ship’s nose. Simultaneously the
Nemesis
deployed a number of tractor beams, gathering in those Decepticons who had been dislodged into space by the disintegration of Junkion. The Seekers flew recovery missions to capture Decepticons that had tumbled some distance away, and along the way they strafed and blasted helpless Junkions.

Optimus Prime started to work out the basics of a plan. He let the Requiem Blaster draw him along, and while the ship was in the middle of a complex recovery operation, he leaped away from the bit of wreckage he’d ridden that far and landed as quietly and unobtrusively as he could on the exterior of the
Nemesis
.

Working his way over to the Requiem Blaster’s emplacement, he crouched right below the barrel, which extended over his head back in the direction of the central surviving piece of Junkion. Above it, the
Nemesis
’s bridge viewports glowed. Below Optimus Prime was the remains of Junkion, now mixing into the halo of drifting shipwrecks. The four Space Bridges were off to his left, one of them still lit up and awaiting its next transit.

He took in the situation and realized that the Autobots could turn the chaos to their advantage—but only if he could get Megatron back onto something like firm ground. As long as it was a ship-to-ship battle, the Decepticons surely would win.

He looked around and spotted the Ark, which was performing its own repair operations. Optimus Prime could not tell how many Autobots had been recovered and how many still might be trapped in the debris field.

Silverbolt’s voice crackled in the commlink. “Optimus Prime!” he called, streaking toward the
Nemesis
and dodging automated defensive fire. “Free yourself and I can pick you up!”

“Stay clear for now,” Optimus Prime ordered. “Perceptor, can you bring the Ark around to pick up Junkions?” He hoped the Ark had not been too badly damaged by the Seekers’ barrage. If repairs were necessary, they would have to happen in the dangerous midst of a field of floating space junk while the Autobots made sure that all the Junkions survived and had a way to keep themselves alive, which probably meant more bots on the Ark. How many could they take?

It appeared that a large chunk of Junkion was holding together, perhaps because there was enough mass in the fragment to maintain enough gravity to keep itself together … or because the millions of cycles of digging and welding and smelting had stuck its constituent bits of junk into an indestructible agglomeration. Optimus didn’t know which. The fragment was irregular in shape, looking roughly ovoid except for a giant divot out of the larger end of the oval, where the remains of the great pit could still be seen.

Around this central remnant planetoid, the rest of what had formerly been Junkion drifted in a long and ragged trail after the hyperdense Requiem Blaster. The Ark fired its thrusters to keep distant, but even it was being drawn in the Blaster’s wake.

Yes, thought Optimus Prime. He saw Silverbolt dodging through the debris in his direction and waved him away.

“Optimus?” the Silverbolt’s voice came through the commlink.

“Go back to the Ark,” Optimus Prime commanded. “Is Sideswipe aboard the Ark?”

“I’m here, Prime,” Sideswipe said.