Exiles (10 page)

They walked in silence. Then Optimus Prime gave voice to something he had been wondering. “How did you make your voice sound so slow in there? You must have—”

“I made each syllable last cycles and cycles,” Clocker said. “And I made them really high-pitched. I had to push my vocoder, and it hurt, but that was the only way I thought I’d be able to get through.”

“Smart. That was very well done,” said Optimus Prime.

“That means a lot coming from you,” Clocker said.

The Velocitronian looked up to him, Optimus Prime could see that. He hoped it didn’t turn out badly. There were many Cybertronians who looked up to him, and many others who resented him, and many others who once had viewed him through a prism of idealism but now considered him no better a bot than any other. There were as many opinions about Optimus Prime as there were living Cybertronians. It was one of the more vexing burdens of leadership.

“Clocker,” Optimus said. “Why didn’t you come into the slow space?”

“Scared,” Clocker said, and looked away.

He was lying. “Clocker.”

“I didn’t know what you were doing in there and thought you might need time to finish,” Clocker said. “So I thought I’d hold them off while I could.”

“Brave,” Optimus Prime said. “But next time you had probably better interrupt me.”

“I didn’t come in even though I wanted to,” Clocker said. “Well, I didn’t want to, but also I did.”

“I understand,” Optimus Prime said.

“What did you find?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did the Matrix of Leadership want you to find it?”

“I don’t know that, either,” Optimus Prime said.

“Oh,” Clocker said. After what was for him a long pause, he said, “Let’s get back to Delta. I want to race.”

A qualifying race was on at the speedway when Optimus Prime and Clocker got back to Speed City. Clocker immediately roared off to see it—and get in on one of the last heats if he could—while Optimus Prime took the opportunity to check in with Silverbolt and Ratchet on the status of the Space Bridge.

According to those two able bots, progress was not all that bad. “If we’re not careful, we’re going to get this thing working,” Silverbolt said.

“Good news,” Optimus Prime said. “Don’t say any more until we’ve gathered the team.”

A short time later, the Autobot leadership gathered in a small repair bay off the main Delta hangar. Override had given them that space for their private consultations. In addition to Optimus Prime, Silverbolt, Jazz, Ratchet, and Bumblebee, Hound was there. Optimus had decided it was time to integrate him more fully into the command structure. Around them, the structure of the vast hangar creaked and clanged in the sandstorm that raged outside. One by-product of Velocitronian planetary engineering was that fierce windstorms roared around the flattened surface with little in the way of topological interference. That had the corollary effect of making some races as much a competition against the
elements as against the other racers, which Velocitronians loved. A change in the weather could have dramatic consequences for who qualified to run the next Speedia, and if the Speedia itself was run during a storm … The history of Velocitron, Override had told him, was rife with incidents of leadership changing hands because of a freak windstorm and accidents on the track.

“This is a strange place,” Jazz said, speaking for all of them.

“Indeed it is,” Optimus Prime agreed, wondering when (and whether) he could safely tell the other Autobots about the ambush he and Clocker had survived at the pole. “But we came here for a reason.”

“Did we?” Silverbolt said. “I thought we came here because the Space Bridge blew up and we didn’t know where we were going in the first place.”

“We did, but I believe the Matrix was leading us here, anyway,” Optimus said. He showed them the worked piece of metal he had recovered from the ancient beacon near Velocitron’s south pole. “And I think this is why.”

Every bot present looked at the artifact. Optimus could sense the power in it and sense—through the Matrix, he felt sure—its incomplete nature. He did not know if they could also detect that, but some time passed in silence before Bumblebee tried to say something. His vocoder emitted a series of grinding noises.

“I think what he’s trying to say is, ‘What is it?’ ” offered Ratchet, who had become something of an expert on Bumblebee’s attempts at speech.

That was a good question. Optimus Prime had spent much of the previous orbital cycle considering it, when he wasn’t considering how to address the ambush and what he believed it meant. “I believe it’s a piece of the Star Saber,” he said, letting his intuition speak. It made sense. The Star Saber existed in pieces, scattered in the aftermath of the war among the Thirteen. In such desperate
times as these, a legendary weapon might well turn the tide against the Decepticons, and the Matrix might well be guiding him to discover it.

Uncertainties piled on uncertainties, yet Optimus Prime thought this was the explanation that best fit the available facts. “And if I’m right,” he went on, “the Matrix has guided us here to find it. We may know more about the nature of our quest because we have come here.”

“The Star Saber,” Silverbolt repeated. “I’ve heard stories about it.”

“We’ve all heard stories about it,” Hound said.

“Just like all the stories we heard about the Thirteen,” Ratchet said. “Myths.”

“The stories about the Thirteen aren’t all myths,” Optimus Prime said. “And neither are all the stories about the Star Saber.”

“So which ones are true?” Jazz asked. “Did the Matrix tell you that?”

Optimus Prime shook his head. “The Matrix has its own way of doing things. But if it led me to this, then it is important that we find the other pieces. The Star Saber was one of the great weapons created by Solus Prime, the artificer of the Thirteen.” Optimus heard himself quoting Alpha Trion and was proud. He had learned much from the old archivist. “There are so many myths about it by now that no bot knows the entire truth. Some say that it was created out of three bots and wielded itself. Others say that it was built and then integrated into the chassis of one of the Thirteen. Still other stories hold that Solus forged it from the core of a star, using that star’s own heat as her furnace. It has been lost since the Thirteen fell out into feuding and violence.”

The implication was clear to them all. If this was in fact a piece of the Star Saber, they had confirmed the real historical existence of the Thirteen. For Optimus Prime
this was not an enormous surprise, as he had long suspected that Alpha Trion was one of the Thirteen and had gotten used to the idea over time. But for the other Autobots it was a wrenching moment, the discovery that an empirical truth lay behind the stories they had told as if they were parables.

He laid the fragment on the table and noticed as he did so that a line of symbols was inscribed along nearly its entire length. Alpha Trion would be able to read them, but Optimus Prime could not. “I believe this is part of it. And as I said, I believe that the Matrix is leading us to the rest.”

“How many parts are there?” Jazz asked.

“I do not know,” Optimus Prime said.

“Not a lot to go on here, Prime,” Jazz said. “You found a piece of metal with something inscribed on it. How do you get from there to it being part of the Star Saber? The actual Star Saber made by the actual Solus Prime? These are myths.”

“The Matrix led me to it, Jazz. I don’t think the Matrix would lead us astray.”

Jazz shook his head. “Me neither. But like you said, the Matrix has its own way of doing things. I wouldn’t be so quick to think that you know exactly what it’s saying.”

This was a good point. Optimus knew it, and he could see from the nods around the table that the other Autobot leaders knew it, too. “True,” he said. “But in the absence of concrete information, we have to navigate by guesswork.”

“Give me concrete information any time,” Silverbolt said. “Coordinates, speed, and position and bearing.”

“Tell it to the Matrix,” Jazz said. There was laughter around the table, and Optimus laughed, too.
These are good bots
, he thought.
Good comrades. We will be victorious in the end
.

Before he could develop that sentiment further, he realized that they had a visitor, arriving so quickly and slamming to such a violent halt that it could only be Blurr. “I won again no sweat but you know I always win except when something’s wrong with the track but that’s not why I’m here Override wanted me to—” He stopped and cocked his head, looking at the piece of metal on the table.

“Oh, hey,” Blurr said. “I’ve seen something like that.” And he vanished.

“What?” Optimus Prime said, but it was too late.

“Did he just say he’d seen something like that?” Jazz asked.

Silverbolt was nodding. “That’s what I heard.”

A screech of tires from outside told them that Blurr was back, and a bare cycle later he was among them again, carrying the trophy Override had awarded him at the finish of the last Speedia.

“Uh oh,” Jazz said.

Optimus Prime didn’t know what Jazz was worried about until Blurr set the trophy on the table next to the metal artifact from the beacon installation and said, “Look there.” Then, before any of the Autobots had a chance to look where he was pointing, he snapped the top from the trophy and with another sharp crack broke off one of the pillars that had supported the top. Inside the cage formed by the four—now three—pillars was a gleam that filled Optimus Prime with an uneasy combination of anticipation and joint-deep misgiving.

“Did you seriously just tear apart the Speedia trophy?” Jazz asked, rhetorically and incredulously.

“I keep winning it. It’s mine,” Blurr said. “I mean, who’s going to take it away from me? Look.”

He reached into the trophy’s center and produced a sliver of metal approximately the same size as the one Optimus Prime had found in the dead bot’s hand. It was
pointed at one end and seemingly had been snapped off with some torque at the other. The torqued end had a small hooked protrusion.

“This is going to be trouble,” Ratchet said. “Put it back.”

“I can put it back no problem,” Blurr said.

“Blurr, how can you do this?” Jazz still looked overloaded. “This is the—”

“Hey, if the sun’s going to explode, who needs a trophy?” Blurr said.

Blurr held the metal object out to Optimus Prime, who hesitated, still not quite able to believe what he had just seen. “Here. You have it. I don’t really want it, trophies make me feel weird like I have to have them to prove something that I already know and every other bot already knows, and the thing is when you have something you don’t really want is that you have to get rid of it or it makes you feel bad and then you get frustrated because it used to make you feel good, which is why you wanted it in the first place and knowing that makes you feel even worse—”

“Thank you, Blurr.” Optimus Prime took the piece of metal and looked at it as Blurr kept talking, the pace of his words accelerating until none of them could tell what he was saying. Of course, by then none of them really cared what he was saying anymore. With Blurr, meaning usually occurred in the first five seconds of speech.

“You better be careful,” Blurr said. “Nobody on Velocitron is going to like it that you wrecked the trophy.”

“Wait,” Jazz protested. “You wrecked it. You brought it to us.”

“No way. I have my reputation. I did it, sure. I mean, I don’t care, I know who’s fastest and I don’t need to prove it but there’s a lot of bots around here who take that trophy pretty seriously and if they know you just
came in here and broke it that’s going to rev them up pretty good if you know what I mean, but they’d be a lot more revved up if they thought I did it. So take it, use it, but keep me out of it okay?”

It took them some time to piece together this storm of words. “I was about to applaud your courage,” Optimus Prime said, “but then you demonstrated that it has its limits.”

“I think I have a solution,” Prowl said, surprising everyone present. It was usually more in Prowl’s nature to observe problems than to suggest solutions.

“Let’s hear it,” Jazz said.

“I’m going to need to bring in another Velocitronian,” Prowl said. “Optimus Prime, do you object?”

Optimus Prime looked at Prowl and saw that he was absolutely confident of whichever Velocitronian he was talking about. “If you are certain, yes,” he said. He was willing to trust Prowl’s judgment, but he also had a sense that breaking the trophy was going to be the least of their problems on Velocitron, especially since certain elements on the planet already had tried to kill him and Clocker, who, Optimus Prime reflected, was going to need to be very careful. He decided to set someone to keep watch over Clocker until they could maneuver the threat out into the open and force Velocitronians to take sides.

Prowl nodded and left the meeting.

Optimus Prime put the two pieces next to each other, arranging them this way and that. Whenever they touched, a shock—not electric but somehow energized—leaped from both of them. He felt it first in his head as a momentary intensification of his senses.
What were these things?
he thought, starting to feel a bit unsure about his own theory regarding the Star Saber. “Blurr, do you know how long this has been part of the Speedia trophy?” he asked.