Exiles (9 page)

“What are you going to do?” Clocker asked, backing away another step.

“This.” Optimus Prime took a step closer to the monolith, drawn by an unspoken imperative from the Matrix of Leadership.

At the third step, Optimus Prime crossed an invisible barrier and felt everything … slow … down, as if the entire planet of Velocitron were pausing for a long moment of reflection. The imperative to speed left him even as he looked back through the barrier and saw the blurs and dusty plumes of the Velocitronians’ passage along
the excellent roads just on the other side. None of them stopped. None of them slowed down. It was not in the nature of Velocitronians to do either. Closer, just on the other side of the barrier, Clocker spun through a series of tension-relieving circles. He had exerted enormous self-control, staying calm as long as he had at the edges of this field, where everything seemed so slow to him. Where Optimus Prime now stood, it would have seemed to Clocker as if time had frozen entirely. Mythical guardians or not, it was a good thing he had not come along. The languid pace of time in this isolated zone would have driven a Velocitronian crazy. Perhaps that was the origin of the myth, Optimus Prime speculated. He looked around, curious to see whether any entrapped Velocitronians might have left their physical remains at the site, but all he saw was gravel and sand and the monument itself, around which time became distorted. Optimus Prime’s sensory apparatus began to return unusual data.

The unusual nature of the site became clearer as Optimus understood what it once had been: a great beacon, fallen into malfunction and disrepair gigacycles ago when the Space Bridges’ collapse meant that every Velocitronian suddenly was cut off from the source of Cybertronian identity. These beacons, Optimus Prime had read in the archives, existed on every colony planet, guiding ships in from the area of Space Bridges, which did not always return ships to normal space at exactly the same coordinates.

Errors had been recorded of as much as half a light-year. Hence the beacons. But this one … it had not given off a signal since well before Megatron had entered the gladiatorial pits for the first time, uncountable cycles before this moment. Optimus Prime envisioned it functioning again, bringing in a steady flow of traffic, commerce, ideas …

I fight for this, too
, he realized. For the rebirth of not just Cybertronian civilization but the great matrix of colony worlds that once looked to Cybertron for inspiration, guidance … and, of course, trade.

It would be that way again.

But not until he returned to Cybertron with the AllSpark, and there was much yet to do before he could imagine that happening.

The first of the many things that needed accomplishing was to figure out why the Matrix had drawn him here, and why now. In this bubble of slowed and clarified space-time, Optimus Prime looked around and found himself reaching for a metallic gleam that showed itself through the sand and gravel around the monolith’s base. He brushed the grit away and saw a long, narrow piece of some kind of alloy. One edge was sharp, as if it once might have been used as a weapon. The other edges were irregular, as if it had been shattered, but in examining it he could find no obvious point of breakage, no clear dents or damage. The artifact looked almost ornamental, as if it had been designed to evoke the idea of a weapon without ever fulfilling the function of one. He liked it. Normally art was not one of Optimus Prime’s primary interests, but he decided that if all art looked like this piece—martial, strong, aesthetically pleasing but evocative of power—he might like more of it.

His artistic preferences, however, were of no use in reasoning out why the Matrix of Leadership had led him to this long-silent beacon and disclosed to him the presence of this artifact buried in the soil. Optimus looked it over again, forcing himself to ask different questions this time. If it had been made like that, what was its purpose? How could it have survived millions or billions of cycles in the windblown, sandy heights of polar Velocitron and still have a sharp edge and an un-pitted surface? He did not have answers to those questions,
but framing them and confronting their mystery confirmed in him the initial belief that this was no abandoned bit of junk. And why had it …?

There.

A shifting in the sandy ground where he had pulled the artifact free opened a shallow pit as sand poured into an invisible space below. Not a large space as far as Optimus Prime could see, but whatever shift he had caused was in the slow process of exposing the ancient chassis of a bot.

He could see only its hand and arm, the rest still invisible under millions of cycles’ worth of sand. But the hand was about the size of his own, flecks of color still clinging to it. Once this traveling bot had been green and gold. Its remains were slightly smaller than Optimus Prime, and the styling of its armor put him in mind of ancient records from the archives that dated from before the Age of Wrath. Striking to think of how old the civilization of Cybertron really was and how much of it lay scattered across worlds known and unknown. Who had this bot been? Why had he come here with this piece of broken metal?

Or was it broken at all?

A glimmering of speculation made Optimus Prime think of the lost weapons that were so much a part of the stories of the Thirteen. Could this have been a piece of one such weapon? From a particular angle … no, he thought. It is one single thing. Powerful, perhaps, but there was no way to know what its true function was or what it once had been a part of. He took a brief tour through the mythical lost weapons of pre-Wrath history: the Star Saber, the Blades of Time, the Proton Spear …

“Rest, traveler,” he said to the long-buried form, and pushed sand over the visible hand and arm again. “Let
this monument to Cybertron’s former greatness be a monument to your voyage as well.”

Op
, said a slow, slow voice.

Optimus Prime looked around and could not see where the voice had come from. He looked down, shocked and momentarily thinking that the dead bot somehow had spoken to him across the ages and the unbridgeable gulf between life and death.

… tim …

No, the voice had come from outside. Optimus Prime looked back over his shoulder toward the edge of the slow space around the beacon. The world beyond was a blur, but in that blur he thought he could see the distinctive flicker of energy weapons discharging in the dust storm.

… 
us
 …

It was Clocker.

Optimus Prime charged toward the edge of the slow space, his consciousness already reorienting itself to the pace of the Velocitron outside its boundaries. He felt as if he were being torn between two speeds, not just of thought and motion but of existence and time themselves. Calling out to Clocker, Optimus realized that whatever he said would not survive the transition across the barrier. The sound waves would bunch and accelerate beyond the normal range of any bot’s audio sensors.

He burst through the invisible boundary and reeled for a moment as his perceptions adjusted to the sudden whirl of existing in real time again.

“Optimus Prime!” Clocker cried out, drawing his attention to the mouth of the narrow canyon where they had come down from the nearest road.

Clocker was at that moment ducking away from a plasma beam that tore into the canyon wall over his shoulder. Optimus Prime deployed his ion blaster and tracked the source of the plasma fire. There were three
bots grouped near the canyon entrance, laying down covering fire for a fourth, who at that moment was closing in on Clocker’s flank. The young Velocitronian, in a panic, fired wildly at the three and had lost track of the fourth, who was raising a vibrosword and leaning into a final charge to get within melee range.

Optimus Prime calmly shot that bot down with his ion blaster and approached Clocker at a steady pace. “I am here, Clocker,” he said.

“Optimus Prime!” Clocker called out again, almost as if he hadn’t heard. “They just came out of nowhere!”

And that is where we will send them again
, Optimus Prime thought. The bot closest to Clocker tried to get to its feet, and Optimus Prime shot it again, the ion bolt blasting away pieces of its head and neck. It went down again, this time for good. Answering fire from the three at the canyon’s mouth staggered him momentarily. He reached Clocker’s side and dragged the Velocitronian back and around a knob thrust out from the canyon wall. “Clocker,” he said. “You must not panic.”

“They came out of nowhere!” Clocker repeated.

“No, they came from the road, just as we did,” Optimus Prime said over the impacts of what sounded like both slugs and energy fire against the sheltering rocks. “Now there are three of them. Ready your weapons.”

Optimus Prime’s steady demeanor rallied Clocker. “Yes, Prime,” he said. His engine-blaster ratcheted back into place. “Orders?”

“I am going to come out and go straight for them,” Optimus Prime said. “They will fire at me immediately. When they do that, you step out and focus on whichever of them is farthest away. That will prevent them from keeping up a covering fire. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Optimus Prime charged around the knob of rock and
found himself within striking distance of one of the attackers, who was hugging the canyon wall near Clocker’s original position. The bot raised a long energy rifle, but Optimus Prime closed so fast that by the time the bot got off a shot, he was knocking the rifle barrel upward with one hand while with the other he manifested his ax and crunched it sideways into the bot’s midsection. It slammed back into the canyon wall, wildly firing its rifle. Optimus Prime heard shouts from the other two bots and heard the roar of Clocker’s engine-blaster as its double-barreled fire chewed across a location at the mouth of the canyon. With both hands on his ax now, Optimus Prime severed the closer bot’s rifle arm and with the return stroke lashed his foe back into the wall, fatal gouges in its torso spitting sparks and leaking Energon. Optimus Prime was already turning away as it fell.

The mouth of the canyon was obscured by smoke from engine-blaster impacts as well as a dust storm that roiled just beyond and set up swirls of dust inside the space nearer the ancient beacon. As the swirls reached the boundary, they slowed incredibly, keeping their shape even as their rotational velocity diminished so much that Optimus Prime practically could see each grain and mote.

The impact of a studded club rang down his shoulder and arm, jarring Optimus Prime back into the battle. He looked over in time to lean back from a following sweep and got his ax up to parry as the bot hacked at him again. Optimus parried the blow down and pivoted on his heel, bringing his ax up and over into a downward stroke meant to sever both of the bot’s arms where they came together to hold the club. But he had missed ever so slightly and instead managed only to snap the club off and amputate part of the bot’s leading hand. It was
already striking again, but the sudden loss of the club’s weight overbalanced it, and it flailed harmlessly with the truncated haft. Optimus Prime struck it with the butt of his ax squarely in the face, snapping its head back and sending it sprawling.

As it fell, he saw that the farthest of the four attackers had just gone down, hit repeatedly by Clocker’s untrained but fortunate salvos. Clocker was even then closing, still firing, the engine-blaster tearing away bits of the falling bot’s armor and blasting pieces of rock from the nearer canyon wall. “Clocker, power down!” Optimus Prime commanded. Clocker stopped firing, but it was too late for his target. Optimus could see the Spark going out of that bot as he and Clocker drew close enough to gauge the severity of its wounds.

That left only one. Optimus Prime turned back toward the beacon installation and saw the only surviving attacker getting slowly to its feet, looking at its mangled hand with confusion on its face. “This is over,” Optimus Prime said as he approached. “Who sent you?”

He thought he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear this bot say it. Instead it looked him square in the face and charged, its good hand sprouting a vibroblade.

Optimus Prime shot it down before it could get within striking range. As it fell, a volley of engine-blaster fire burst against the wall behind it. The echoes of their fire died away, and the only sound for a long moment was the moaning of the wind in the canyon walls.

“Are you damaged?” he asked Clocker.

“A little,” Clocker answered. “Not bad. They—why did they do this, Prime?”

“I fear the rivalry between Ransack and Override is about to become something more than political,” Optimus Prime said. He considered options and then caught
the nearest bot by the arm and started dragging it toward the boundary of the slow space around the beacon.

Clocker watched. “What are you doing?”

“I am burying these bots under your Velocitronian myths,” Optimus Prime answered. “When we are done, this never happened. Until someone else brings it up, and then we will know for certain who sent these bots.”

Clocker nodded and went to the mouth of the canyon to get the bot he had killed. Optimus Prime noted this choice. It said much about Clocker. He was taking care of his own business, and he also was the kind of bot who, when a task presented itself, addressed the most difficult part of it first. This was a quality Optimus Prime found admirable.

When it was done, they walked side by side out toward the flat part of the polar highland that would lead them back to the road.

“I am sad, Prime,” Clocker said. “When we were moving them … I knew one of those bots.”

“They made their choices and in making them left us none,” Optimus Prime said. “But I, too, am sad, for Velocitron.”

“Everything was fine until you came,” Clocker said miserably.

Optimus Prime did not take this as a personal comment. From Clocker’s perspective it was true. “Everything will be fine again,” he said.

“After our sun blows up and Megatron comes to enslave us all,” Clocker said.

“No,” Optimus Prime said. “We can at least fight Megatron. And your sun will not explode for quite a while yet.” That was, at least, the opinion of Perceptor and the other scientists aboard the Ark. Velocitron did not have long to live on a planetary scale, but there was
plenty of time to settle things with the Decepticons and relocate the Velocitronians to a more stable home.