Exiles (15 page)

“We will need a landing team,” Optimus Prime said.

The Autobots were not enthusiastic. Junkion—if Junkion this was—had none of the attractions of Velocitron, which in the end had the allure of being the first planet any of them had ever seen save Cybertron. But Junkion? An accreted interstellar rubbish pile?

“Please, Prime,” Jazz said. “Make me do some kind of maintenance instead.”

That was how most of the other Autobots felt, too.

“I need a team,” he said. “Hound, Ratchet, Ironhide. You’re on.”

“Right here, Prime,” Hound said. The excitement on his face made Optimus Prime a little sad. This was a bot who needed action, a true believer. Optimus Prime hoped that more experience of real war didn’t kill that optimism and fire. He knew he had made more of a statement than he’d intended by picking the second team to go first. Jazz, Silverbolt, and Bumblebee might be angry about it.

“Demoted, Prime? Is that it?” Jazz said.

“Second-guessing will not accomplish the mission,” Optimus Prime said.

He was feeling strong and focused after the successful transit of the Space Bridge and the final events on Velocitron. Override would be a strong ally, and their trip to Velocitron had gained them two fragments of an artifact he felt must be the Star Saber. The Matrix had guided them there, and if they had left behind a civil war, they also had left behind clarity. Optimus Prime trusted Prowl’s take on the Velocitron situation and believed that Override had the courage to put down Ransack’s power grab. No bot could afford to be neutral in such times as these. Intuition, thought Optimus Prime. He was learning to value it and live in the uncertainty that was a necessary part of it.

“Seems like we could use a little more second-guessing,”
Jazz said. “We ran out on Cybertron and didn’t know where we were going. Then we started a war on Velocitron and ran out again, and now we’re in orbit around a trash heap. Is this how we’re going to find the AllSpark?”

Optimus Prime faced his old friend and said, “We will not find it by bickering among ourselves and complaining about hardships we cannot avoid.”

In the background, Bumblebee whistled and beeped. Jazz, with what Optimus Prime thought might be a bit of gratitude for the opportunity to save face, whirled in Bumblebee’s direction and said, “Is that your best idea? Toot tweep burble? Good thing Prime here is calling the shots and not you.” He stomped off toward the door that led back into the Ark’s interior. “Let me know when the second landing team’s on call.”

The door slid shut behind him, and a tense silence hung over the bridge. It was one of Optimus Prime’s least favorite parts of being Prime, this occasional necessity of reminding these dedicated bots what was at stake. “Would anyone else like to register dissent?” he asked the room.

“Not me, Optimus Prime,” Hound said. “I stand ready.”

“I am sure all Autobots stand ready, Hound,” Optimus Prime said. “Even the ones who need to vent once in a while.”

He felt uneasy about dressing Jazz down as he had, but if they were to survive their quest, discipline was crucial and so was the chain of command. They were orbiting around Junkion, and Optimus Prime needed a landing team. He didn’t need bots to complain and malinger and ask to be assigned to maintenance duties instead. End of story.

“Let us go,” he said, and without further ceremony they went.

The closer they got to Junkion, the more intense the experience of it was. Optimus Prime remembered his trip to the subsurface levels of Iacon with Megatron long ago, before the war had destroyed their friendship. Junkion was like that, only more chaotic because it was not sport that happened here. These bots had stumbled across the planetoid or been abandoned or marooned or crashed here … yet it was a place of action and consequence, a place of necessity, a place of ingenuity and incredible invention.

Optimus Prime already found his opinions changing as he and the landing team hit the rugged, broken surface and he saw in every direction bots involved in the work of keeping themselves alive. He admired Junkion and its bots on the principle that they did what needed doing without pining for things to be different—or, if they did pine, they kept it to themselves.

Still, he didn’t want to spend any more time here than he had to. It was loud, the sensory by-products of all the reclamation endeavors were overwhelming … and he had no clear indication from the Matrix why it had sent the Autobots here or what it expected Optimus Prime to find or do.

He felt much better when he had a clear mission.

“Recon,” he said to the team. “Split up, see what you can learn, and report back in one megacycle. Clear?”

“Clear,” the three Autobots said in unison.

Optimus Prime named each bot in succession, indicating a direction as he did so. “Don’t start any conversations but don’t shy away from any, either,” he said as the team rolled out.

He spent the megacycle traversing the highlands of Junkion and oscillating between amazement, despair, and admiration for the determination and aplomb of the Junkions, stranded on this trash pile for so long that they had constructed a civilization of their own. Most of
Junkion’s highlands were formed from the skeletal hulks of ancient starships. Smaller bits of junk drifted down into the valleys and formed smaller topographical features. Groups of Junkions dug through those valleys and excavated buried wrecks; according to Prowl’s preliminary intel assessment from orbit, each team focused on the recovery of a certain material. Elsewhere Optimus Prime could see the spark of arc welders and the glow of at least one blast furnace. What were they making? The answer, he imagined, was everything. Everything they needed.

He saw, below him in the direction he had sent Ironhide, a group of Junkions assembling some kind of machinery. It was small, less than half the size of the smallest bot in the group. They positioned it on a table made from a heavy sheet of polyresin still bearing the insignia of some long-forgotten interstellar corporation, fiddled with it some more, and suddenly it came to life! An image of a bot, very old in its configurations and coloration, appeared on the flat wall opposite the small machine.

A projector. The Junkions had put together, in the middle of all this wreckage, a video projector. Optimus Prime wondered how many vid-stories, in how many different formats from different ages and different worlds, had found their way here across the ages.

Farther away, he saw cranes and excavators dredging the scorched ruin of a space station’s hull from a shallow grave of more recent discards. The design was unmistakably Quintesson. How had all of this gotten here?

And, as always, the question was, Why had the Matrix led them here? Optimus Prime continued to have faith in the Matrix, but he was a rational being, a trained scholar and military commander. He needed reasons for things, and he did not have them. The megacycle was almost up. Optimus Prime made the turn to loop back
along a sinuous ridge of slag punctuated here and there by screes of plastic and shattered glass. He met up with the other Autobots at the rendezvous point, in the shadow of the main ridge nearest the drop point from the Ark, and discovered the other bots waiting. None of them had seen anything to give them a firm idea of what their next action should be.

Optimus Prime went back to basics. The best thing to do, he reasoned, was to talk to whoever the Junkions had decided was their leader. “They do not appear to be reacting to our presence,” he said. “Let us approach them more directly.” He looked around, but all the Junkions who had been visible moments before were gone.

Uh oh
, he thought.

Just as Optimus Prime was calling out a warning to the other Autobots, several soft thumps sounded from the ridge. Arcing out over the Autobot position, nets of braided steel cable spread and spun down, ensnaring Optimus Prime, Ratchet, and Ironhide. Hound barely avoided becoming fully entangled, but even he was tripped up by the edge of a net that briefly caught his legs. He went down and was getting up when a hidden Junkion pounced. They rolled away down into the deeper portions of the canyon. Other Junkions were emerging from their hiding places, approaching the three Autobots, who fought to get free of the nets but succeeded only in tightening them. Some kind of current—a damping effect—was running through the cables, and Optimus Prime fought to stay alert and focused.

Abruptly their struggles tipped all three of them and the nets off the edge of the path. They rolled and bounced down a steep slope, crashing to a halt in a flat area where their arrival froze a group of bots standing knee-deep in a tangle of scavenged wiring near a makeshift
blast furnace in which old parts were being melted down and reforged into new parts. The net and the three Autobots had come to a tumbling halt just short of the area where the heat from the blast furnace was having a visible effect on the metallic detritus around it.

Junkions leaped and crawled down the canyon wall after them.

“Autobots,” Optimus Prime said over the roar of the furnace. “Fight if you must.”

Ironhide didn’t need to be told twice. He unloaded a volley of plasma rockets in the direction of a group of approaching Junkions, who vanished in the blinding explosion. The rubble and detritus of the blast collapsed part of the canyon wall over the path the Autobots had followed. Shouts echoed through the canyon as the other Junkions descended, wielding weapons of their own. Ironhide fired again, and another cluster of Junkions vanished in a splatter of molten wreckage.

Then all the Autobots spasmed and fell limp as a signal pulsed through the cables. To Optimus Prime it felt as if a small bomb had gone off in his head, separating his consciousness from his body. He struggled to move and found he could barely twitch his hands and legs. His mouth worked, but no sound came out. Junkions approached, putting their weapons away. One of them, apparently the leader, stood a little behind the rest, putting away a small machine Optimus Prime took to be the transmitter that had paralyzed them. Where was Hound? They needed him to get a message back to the Ark.

Slowly feeling began to return to Optimus Prime’s extremities. “Junkions,” he said too quietly to be heard. Ironhide and Ratchet lay silent. The closer Junkions readied a number of tools and at least one laser torch. Optimus Prime understood with a shock what was happening.

The Junkions were scavenging them.

He closed his eyes and called upon the Matrix for strength, called upon his memory of every Cybertronian who depended on him to survive, to seek out and find the AllSpark, to save Cybertron from the Decepticon menace. By sheer force of will he brought his body slowly back to him even while Ratchet screamed out as one of the Junkions cut into his leg.

“Heyo, take ’em apart and get the good stuff!” crowed the leader. “Junkions! Gotta make ’em junk to make ’em new!”

The torch cut deeper into Ratchet’s leg, through the armor and into the delicate activators in the joint at his knee. Optimus Prime gathered his strength and said, “Junkions! The Prime commands you to stop!”

As he spoke, the Matrix blazed forth from his torso, shorting out the pulse through the nets and sending a spasm through the Autobots. The pulse sent the Junkions reeling; they dropped their tools and scrambled back, their leader pounding away at the pulse transmitter without effect. Electronic noise screeched and warbled in Optimus Prime’s head, but he could move again. Inspired by the presence of the Matrix, he got one arm free through a gap in the tangle of netting and pointed directly at the leader. “You! Junkion leader!” he said. “We come on an errand from Cybertron. You must stand down and hear!”

The Junkion leader, a massive and blocky bot with armor patterned in orange and black, ornamental wiring all across his face and head, looked as if he had just heard a piece of trash recite poetry. “It speaks!” he roared. “Junkions, it ain’t spare parts yet!”

Coming closer, the leader looked closely at the brilliant symbol of the Matrix. “The story, almost spare parts!” he said, but Optimus Prime couldn’t understand what he meant.

“I think he wants you to explain the Matrix,” Ratchet
said between a series of agonized grunts at the wound in his leg.

“I am Optimus Prime,” Optimus said. “I bear the Matrix of Leadership as an emblem of my responsibility to all bots. I lead the Autobots on a quest to recover the AllSpark, and we have come here over a Space Bridge from Velocitron.”

“Tell him to get these nets off,” Ironhide growled, “before I start shooting again.”

“Shooting!” the leader shouted. “Spare parts, don’t shoot or you’ll be junk!”

“Ease off, Ironhide,” Optimus Prime said. “Ratchet, are you functioning?”

“I can get myself fixed up if we can get out of these nets,” Ratchet said. He sounded a bit calmer. Optimus Prime glanced over at him and saw that he had gotten one arm close enough to his wound that he could begin to work on it with his internal repair kit. The Junkions watched this operation with interest—and, Optimus Prime thought, greed.

He looked back at the leader and asked, “Junkion leader, what is your name?”

“Wreck-Gar!” that enormous entity shouted. “Mighty smooth ride!”

“What?” Ironhide said. Optimus Prime just observed.

“Wreck-Gar! I lead the Junkions! Been a while since we saw others like yourself!”

“How long?” Optimus Prime asked.

“It’s not about the clocks, it’s about the feeling!” Wreck-Gar shouted. Evidently he only spoke at one volume regardless of his surroundings.

“So a long time,” Optimus Prime said.

“That’s for sure!” Wreck-Gar agreed.

Optimus Prime decided to start over. “I am Optimus Prime. These are Autobots. We have come from Cybertron by way of Velocitron, looking for two things.”

“What are they? Lots of things here, spare parts!”

“One, we’re looking for the AllSpark,” Optimus Prime said. “But we know it’s not here.”

“Sure isn’t!”

“Two, we’re looking for some reason why the Matrix of Leadership might have led us here.”

“The what?”

Optimus Prime gave up talking. A long conversation with Wreck-Gar would destroy his vocoder, and then he could sit around buzzing and clicking with Bumblebee while the rest of the Autobots took bets on what they were trying to say. He tapped his chest, and the Matrix gleamed again, its light all but eclipsing the thundering fire from the blast furnace. Every Junkion present stopped what it was doing to look.