Exiles (39 page)

Nexus Prime was always a difficult ally because he was a difficult bot to predict. Proud and enormously powerful, he could also be humorous and even a bit of a prankster, although I confess I do not remember any of his jokes and in all likelihood did not find them funny. The times of the Thirteen did not permit of much levity
.

Vector Prime was very different
.

Of the Fallen and Liege Maximo, there is little I wish to say. And of Solus Prime, I have said all I care to. The others … there are too many stories. I cannot tell them all at once and cannot inscribe them all in the Covenant. How many pages would it take to do justice to the lives of one of the Thirteen? Sometimes I think there are not that many pages in the entirety of the Covenant, and yet there are great numbers of bots who think the age of the Thirteen is passed or that they (that
we,
I should say) never existed at all
.

History is a great winnower, but what is winnowed out sometimes is the truth
.

Vector Prime, of all of us, most believed in the supremacy of ideals. He had at the core of his being an understanding of the immutability of natural law, the essence of time and space and existence. He held us Thirteen together—it now, so many cycles later, seems to me—by the sheer force of his belief
.

But no belief survives forever. The passage of time destroys all things. Even, if we are to believe the scientists who theorize on the nature of our universe and others, time itself. The great creator, the great destroyer, time annihilates even the idea of time in the end. First, however, it gradually erodes the memories of even the greatest of ideas. And ideals
.

Vector Prime saw this happening in the aftermath of the wars we fought among ourselves. When the Fallen murdered Solus Prime and another conflict erupted around the ambitions of Liege Maximo, Vector Prime saw that he could no longer act as our exemplar because we had lost our ability to follow any example. We had become too enamored of ourselves as the Thirteen, the mighty avatars of all bots who were to follow; we no longer knew how to view ourselves honestly or speak to each other without the hostility and condescension that comes from thinking that only you—only I—am really worthy
.

More even than Solus Prime’s death, it was the revelation of Liege Maximo’s treachery that ended Vector Prime’s desire to be part of us. He could understand a moment of fury such as overtook the Fallen when he killed Solus Prime. But Vector Prime was unable to tolerate living in a universe where bot would plot against bot
.

He was ready to escape to his own universe, and so he did
.

It may be that Optimus Prime can find him. I tried, long ago. Then, with Alchemist Prime, I began to oversee the beginnings of civilization on this planet, and I lost track of the search for Vector Prime. Once Cybertron began to grow, there was enough to do here. Alchemist Prime, seeing that this civilization was running and would survive, disappeared to hunt for Liege Maximo, who had fled to a distant vastness, galaxies away. Eventually he was caught, and I believe—although who can know, with the Space Bridges collapsed and the archives devastated by war—that Liege Maximo is imprisoned still. Only Alchemist Prime knows for certain, and he has not been seen since well before the Age of Wrath
.

Alchemist Prime was the last of the Thirteen I saw. But right before that, I saw Nexus Prime for the last time as well
.

He, you must understand, was almost exactly the polar opposite to Vector Prime. A lover of change, of mutability, Nexus Prime had this in common with the trickster Amalgamous Prime. He differed in temperament, however, and in the nature of his mutability. Nexus Prime could bring a number of bots together and mold them into a single form. He was the first and greatest of the combiners. Even when he stood by himself, he seemed overlaid with the forms of possible combinations
.

He was fascinated by the transformations of matter: phase change, the creation of new elements in the mighty forges of stars. He vexed some of the other Thirteen, but I believe Solus Prime was a little bit in love with him. She, who also had all of her soul invested in creation, could not help but see a kindred spirit in Nexus Prime
.

This, of course, made the Fallen and Liege Maximo hate him all the more
.

These stories are old, older than the dust under the feet of Shockwave’s Insecticon soldiers, who are doubtless
coming here even now to drag this bot away. I will fight them, and the Wreckers will fight them with me, and whether we live or die, our resolve will be known. That truth, I hope, will not be among those winnowed away in the great arc of history
.

I have been experiencing visions of the Cyber Caliber. This is why Nexus Prime is on my mind. It was he who collected the pieces of the Cyber Caliber after the terrible battle with Liege Maximo, and he who hit upon a scheme to make sure that time and circumstance would only grant the return of the Cyber Caliber when it was necessary, when its loss could no longer be acceptable
.

Only Nexus Prime could have conceived of the expedient of shattering himself into five bots and concealing one of the pieces of the Cyber Caliber within each. And even if another of the Thirteen had conceived of it, only Nexus Prime would have been
willing
to do it. He was our mad experimenter, our bot who could envision anything and try to make it happen, our member who could see himself in any bot and any bot in himself. When the Cyber Caliber needed to be hidden, he simply envisioned his single body as five … and so it was
.

That was the last time any of the remaining Thirteen ever saw him
.

It is a different universe, a different history, now. I am the last of the Thirteen who still exists among the bots whose worlds we created, whose culture and civilization we set in motion. I am a holdover from ancient times, hunkered down amid relics of a past that only I experienced or can remember …

Unless some of the rest of us still survive
.

Perhaps the Fallen lives. Liege Maximo, as I said, is imprisoned or perhaps has died. Vector Prime vanished into a pocket universe of his own creation so long ago that his creation might well have wound down into a heat death of its own by now; Nexus Prime’s five constituent
parts have never been heard from again, but how would we know if they had?

The rest … of them I know nothing
.

You must have understood some of this before I sent you, Chaindrive. For I believe there is something of the Thirteen in you …

But those musings are for another time
.

Shockwave is coming
.

When the
Nemesis
came unexpectedly around to angle itself for deployment of the Decepticon ground forces, Optimus Prime realized they had been gone longer than he had thought. He had been busy fighting off the sorties of the Seekers, who harried him constantly on his way back until he figured out that they would not shoot at the Requiem Blaster. He hunkered down in his original spot, just below the base of the Blaster’s barrel, and grappled with Slipstream and Thundercracker when they came in to pry him out manually. Slipstream possessed remarkable powers of recovery, Optimus Prime noted, almost as remarkable as the constant stream of insult and invective that poured out of her mouth while they battled. He had fought them off, but they were still swooping around the
Nemesis
, and Optimus Prime could not get away from the Blaster without exposing himself to a barrage of missiles. The stalemate was fine with him, as it gave him time to regroup and undoubtedly gave the rest of the Autobots time to marshal their limited resources in anticipation of the Decepticon landing.

Optimus Prime took stock of the situation. He was under fire on the cowling of a ship whose entire crew bore him implacable ill will. That crew—and their immensely
powerful leader who had once been his friend—was charged with killing him and destroying everything he stood for. They were barreling through a hail of drifting debris to a final confrontation on the remains of a planet that only recently had been torn into pieces, and the ship he was counting on to carry him forward on his quest was damaged and barely able to keep itself from crashing into larger bits of debris.

In a situation like this, careful prioritization was almost as important as firepower. There would be plenty of time to complete repairs on the Ark once the Decepticon threat had been dealt with. First he would handle the impending rendezous on the central remnant of Junkion itself, where Megatron no doubt would attempt to end the Autobot resistance once and for all.

Where were the Autobots? Optimus craned around, but he could not see the Ark and could not move far from his position without exposing himself to fire from the Seekers. The
Nemesis
made its final approach to the central fragment of Junkion, with the shattered pit still at its center. Optimus Prime also saw Wreck-Gar’s improvised Energon reactor drifting free, emitting occasional sparks as other, smaller pieces of debris deflected off it. If it collided more forcefully with a larger bit of junk, it could well detonate with enough force to destroy a ship. Optimus filed that away, thinking that a floating bomb might come in handy in the battle to come.

They would need all the help they could get.

Over the edge of pit where the Decepticons had made their discovery, crossing a deep-cut canyon that snaked away into the broken horizon, stood a bridge erected eons ago for purposes long since forgotten by the Junkions who excavated beneath it. Perhaps it once had led to
one of their innumerable machine shops or smelters, or perhaps a Junkion had built it simply because he had seen a gorge and reasoned that any gorge needed a bridge to span it. It was made from scavenged girders and beams, pieces of ship hulls, and other bits of metal whose original function was impossible to determine.

That gorge grew shallower the farther away from the pit it ran, and at the shallow end of it lay the ship of the now-imprisoned Decepticon Axer, who was at that moment scheming to find ways to make himself indispensable to the pirate captain; that was the only way he could envision not being killed by the bot’s mad hatred of all things Cybertronian.

From the tumbled wreckage just downhill from Axer’s ship, another bot stood up and looked around as if in confusion. That wreckage once had been the ship that Axer was looting when the delayed release of Space Bridge energy had catapulted him to Junkion. This drifting wreck had come, too, and so had its sole crew member, who now appeared to get its bearings and head straight for the pit, where Clocker, Mainspring, Chaindrive, and Pinion waited.

The Junkions worked at an incredible pace. Megatron would not have thought it possible for them to do everything that they had. “When I have enslaved these Junkions,” he said to Starscream, who, to Megatron’s irritation, still refused to take part in the harassment of Optimus Prime outside, “they will do great work for us.”

“Without a doubt, yes,” Starscream said. “Nobody works with pride and commitment like a slave.”

Megatron let that slide, so fixated was he on the transformation of the ship. The sides of the immense battle cruiser, with its improvised and customized weapons
emplacements and its fixtures cannibalized from a thousand different cultures, now were adorned with the two halves of the Space Bridge nearest to the center of the Junkion debris field. Held to the main body of the vessel by long struts welded together from the longer and straighter pieces of steel found floating near the ship, the Space Bridge halves began to glow as if charged by some unknown source.

Megatron almost hated to tear himself away. But the
Nemesis
had reached the main remaining part of Junkion, and it was time for that face-to-face killing he’d been so anxious to start. Later he would add that ship to his fleet.

“Optimus Prime is out!” crackled Thundercracker’s voice over the command commlink.

“After him,” Megatron commanded. “Harry, but do not kill.”

Leaving the
Nemesis
to hold its position, he charged toward the drop doors, spoiling for a fight.

When the
Nemesis
got close to Junkion, the surviving Autobots on Junkion’s central remnant watched in awe as several things happened simultaneously. The great ship came in low over the edge of the pit opposite the Ark’s initial crash site. Behind it, the Ark drifted in, barely able to move itself but now drawn again back toward Junkion by the pull of the Requiem Blaster. As it reached an altitude from which Prowl could almost have hit it with a thrown knife, it held and drop doors on its underside opened.

At the same time, Optimus Prime, dangling from the barrel housing of the Requiem Blaster, jumped.

“Optimus!” Silverbolt yelled, and took off even as a stream of Decepticons began pouring from the
Nemesis
. Two of them—Thundercracker and Slipstream—had
been outside it already and dived after the falling Optimus Prime.