Transformers Dark of the Moon (25 page)

Whatmight have seemed off, however, were the five strange-looking pillars that were lashed to the top and sides, which didn’t look like any sort of normal fire fighting equipment.

Sam was a pile of seething emotions: anger over what Mearing had said, frustration because she had a valid point buried in her accusations, and foolishness over having been so utterly deceived by Sentinel that he had—

“It’s not your fault,” Lennox said as if he were reading
Sam’s mind. He had released his hold on Sam’s elbow and was now moving at double time. Apparently he was expecting Sam to keep up. “Yeah, Sentinel fooled you. But he fooled the Autobots, too. If anyone should have known, it was them.”

“I’m not sure they’re capable of understanding that depth of betrayal.”

“Then you shouldn’t be down on yourself. Through here,” and he darted down a corridor and out an exit door. Sam followed, wondering if this was some sort of shortcut to the street. He hoped he had enough money on him for cab fare home.

Instead there was a Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey helicopter sitting about a hundred yards away. The propeller blades were just starting to fire up, and Lennox gestured for Sam to follow. Instead Sam stopped and stood there, looking confused. Lennox, seeing that Sam had ceased following, ran back to him and said impatiently, “Are you coming?”

“I don’t think they’ll let you land this near my house.”

“Don’t be stupid. We’ve got intel the Decepticons are heading to the National Mall. One that we think may be Megatron from the description was spotted near the Lincoln Memorial. With all that going down, what good are you going to be to us if you’re sitting at home watching cable news? Forget that: I want you near me when this thing goes down.”

“Even though I’m a civilian?”

“You stopped being a civilian the moment you bought a camouflaged robot at a used car lot. Besides, no matter what Mearing thinks, you’re probably the foremost expert on the Autobots on the planet.” He started running toward the Osprey, and this time Sam fell in behind him. He called over his shoulder, “I mean, c’mon! You brought Optimus Prime back to life, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope I don’t have to do it again, ’cause I’m not sure how many times I can pull that trick out of my bag,” Sam shouted back over the roaring of the Osprey’s rotors. He clambered in behind Lennox, and moments later they were airborne.

(The mighty Megatron strides up the steps that lead to a statue erected in the celebration and memorializing of a famed human leader. It is his understanding that this particular leader was responsible for freeing human slaves during a great war.)

(Freedom. What an utterly useless reason for a war.)

(War is about domination, not freedom. It is about taking, not giving.)

(This man knew nothing of the way of things.)

(On eye level with the seated statue, Megatron reaches forward, clamps his hand upon the statue’s head, and rips it off with a crunch of stone. Then he calmly sets the head aside and proceeds to shred the rest of the body seated on the chair while taking care to preserve the rest of it, or at least as much of it as possible, intact. He cleans away the remains of the debris and then turns and sits himself in the now-vacant chair. He tests its weight to make certain it will bear up under him and is satisfied.)

(He watches as Sentinel busies himself setting up the pillars in a wide circle around the National Mall. The Prime moves with confidence, jamming each one into the ground, affirming that each is prepared for the job it must do. Hanging brightly in the night sky, the moon looks down upon them as if blessing the endeavor.)

(Seeing him go about his business with such efficiency
moves his thoughts to Sentinel’s successor. He addresses the bearded statue head in his hand. “Prime never knew. When Sentinel left Cybertron … it was to defect. He was to rendezvous with me here on earth … before fate waylaid us both. To revive him … we needed Prime and his Matrix.”)

(Then he hears the sound of an air vehicle approaching. He leans forward and watches with interest as a helicopter descends a distance away. Once, he might have been concerned about such an arrival. The humans have shown considerable resources in thwarting the endeavors of the Decepticons in the past, in conjunction with the Autobots. But there is nothing to worry about this time. The humans, the Autobots, even their leader … none of their actions would have any impact on what was about to happen.)

(This time, the Decepticons would win. In fact, they had already won. At this point, it was just a matter of seeing matters play out to their inevitable conclusion.)

(Had he been capable of pity, he would have felt sorry for Optimus Prime.)

(But he wasn’t, and so he did not.)

Sam and Lennox emerged from the Osprey on the opposite side of the National Mall. Lennox was busy radioing in their location, while Sam simply gaped at the sight of the revered Autobot warrior completing the array of pillars while Megatron looked on from the Lincoln Memorial.

Seconds later Lennox stepped in next to him. “They used us,” he said with cold, dark fury. “Used all of us. Without our space program … without Optimus reviving him … none of this happens. We handed all this to the Decepticons and practically thanked them for the opportunity. And now he’s opening the space bridge.”

“To where?” said Sam, still not understanding. “I still don’t—” Suddenly he grabbed Lennox’s arm and pointed.
“Look!”

Hurtling across the Mall from the direction of the Washington Monument was an array of sports cars, plus one very familiar blue and red truck. They were barreling toward the site of the pillars at high speed, and then came a familiar series of sounds. The vehicles were far enough away that he saw the changes a second before the sound reached him. But still, he’d never been quite so relieved to hear that distinctive racket, like a series of metal dominoes falling into each other. There came Optimus Prime, moving with the speed and determination of a charging bull, followed by Mirage, Wheeljack, Bumblebee, Sideswipe, and Ratchet.

It’s gonna be okay. Yeah, Sentinel obliterated three Autobots like it was nothing, but that’s ’cause he’s a Prime. And so is Optimus, plus he’s got the others backing him up, while Megatron looks like five miles of bad road. Everything’s going to be fine
.

Sentinel, acting as if he had nothing but time, adjusted the final pillar—the six-foot one in the middle—and then rumbled in a voice that carried across the vast expanse of the Mall: “Power and initiate.”

One pillar began to glow, and then the next, each one in sequence, and the Autobots were still too far away to reach it.

NEST forces were now pouring in from all directions. Helicopters, jeeps, even tanks were converging. The air was split by the howls of sirens as police cars and SWAT teams came rolling in, discharging human passengers who were armed to the teeth.

Meanwhile, a dome of light had spread from one pillar to the next, enveloping them like a glowing tent. In the center was the Prime from the moon, standing there like the sentinel that was his name.

The Sentinel …

“Oh, my God!” Sam abruptly said to Lennox, speaking all in a rush.
“The Sentinel!”

“What about him?”

“Not him! It! Look,” he said with growing excitement, “the other night Carly and I wound up watching
2001: A Space Odyssey
on one of those classic movie channels.…”

“So what? Sam, is this really import—?”

“Listen! There was this old boring guy introducing the movie, and he was going on about how it was partly based on this short story Arthur C. Clarke had written called ‘The Sentinel.’ About how it turns out there’s this whole alien base left behind on the moon that has all kinds of advanced technology, including this object that they based the Monolith on in the movie. But it was, like, this warning beacon, because when humans got smart enough to find it and screw with it, it would mean that we had become a possible danger and it would summon the race that built it so that they would come and maybe destroy us! Don’t you get it?
Arthur C. Clarke knew all about this somehow! Maybe he was even trying to warn humanity before it was too late!
”

“So you’re saying this guy Clarke can help us?”

“Yes! Wait … no.” Sam suddenly remembered. “He died a few years ago.”

Lennox stared at him. “Yeah. That was useful. Thanks.”

(They have been lying dormant all this time, their internal systems operating at such a minimal level that even when the Autobots were inspecting the remains, they did not detect them. They have been waiting for a signal, and if it had never come, then they would have waited for eternity.)

(But now it does come, an inviting pulse sent by five pillars that is received by hundreds of objects just like it. And each of those objects sends a jolt into the beings who are holding them, awakening them, telling them that finally
, finally
it is time.)

(They emerge from the shadows of the Ark and from the barren soil of the moon. One by one, then by tens, then by hundreds, the Decepticon warriors arise, each of them holding a pillar that serves as a receiving point for the beacons that are summoning them to the verdant world below. Saying
, Now, now, come to me now.
)

(They obey. The pillars on the moon begin to glow, creating a web of energy that crackles with irresistible force. And in an instant, all the Decepticons are transported from the lunar surface, traversing the distance between the moon and the earth in a heartbeat.)

(The moon is now wholly dead.)

(The earth may soon follow.)

Sam watched in horror as Decepticons poured out of the space bridge. There were dozens, no, hundreds of them, practically falling over one another to scatter in all directions.

The various police and military vehicles that provided transportation and weaponry for the humans now served as templates for the Decepticons. They instantly began transcanning the cars and vans, the tanks and helicopters, and seconds later they were shifting into brand-new earth shapes, driving and flying every which way. It quickly became impossible for the humans to distinguish simple conveyances from robots in disguise that were determined to kill them.

Some of the Decepticons didn’t bother to camouflage themselves. They strode forward, proud and lethal, and just started firing away with their onboard weaponry. A millennium is a long time for a bellicose race to sit around and wait for a call to action, and they were taking every advantage of the situation, hammering away at anything they saw.

The NEST and SWAT teams were overwhelmed. They had not been remotely prepared for an onslaught of such magnitude. They returned fire as best they could, but engaging in a sustained battle with a hoard of Decepticons was simply not a reasonable option.

Explosions erupted across the National Mall. Gigantic
swards of grass went flying, replaced by huge craters from the Decepticon blasts. The air was quickly filled with vast black clouds and was thick with the stench of incineration. Soldiers and police officers were falling back, still firing, still dying. Even if the Decepticons had been capable of perspiration, they wouldn’t have been working up a sweat. They moved anywhere they wished, not in pairs but in squads of a dozen, knocking aside trees to get at the humans who were daring to try to impede them. The humans were like ants squaring off against lions.

Sam, at the outer edge of the fight zone, looked at the battlefield with dismay.
There’s too many! They’re everywhere!

And through it all, Sam could see Megatron seated upon his “throne.” He was surveying the damage like a proud warrior king, and when the Autobots came through the smoke and debris to face him …

Sam Witwicky in his time had seen many expressions on the face of the primary nemesis of the Autobots: arrogance, fury, disdain …

But he had never seen Megatron displaying complete, utter, and total confidence.

That was what he was witnessing now. Megatron was acting as if the outcome were so assured, there was no reason to expend concern about it. Any opposition offered by the humans or the Autobots was of no consequence. The victory of the Decepticons, as far as he was concerned, was guaranteed.

And Sam couldn’t say he was wrong.

The Autobots charged into battle, firing blindly, firing everywhere. They managed to create a firewall between the Decepticons and the humans, buying time for the desperate survivors to flee the field in the face of overwhelming odds.

“Here we are!”
Megatron’s voice carried across the Mall.
“Fight us now!”

Sam, when he was much younger, had once been at a seaside resort when an offshore hurricane caused the waters to swell. He remembered seeing the men gathering at the shoreline, tossing up sandbags, literally trying to stem the tide. But they had succeeded for only a short time, for eventually the ocean had overwhelmed the bags. He would never forget his last recollection of that town, watching out the back window of his parents’ speeding car, driving away to higher ground while the ocean cascaded over the bags and annihilated the houses lining the shore.

That was what he was seeing now, except the Autobots were the sandbags and the Decepticons were the ocean.

They had beaten back the initial wave, but now all the forces of the Decepticons, having heard Megatron’s defiant cry, turned their backs on their assaults on the humans and converged on the only opposition that truly meant anything to them.

Optimus Prime surveyed the situation and shouted the words Sam never thought he would hear:

“Autobots! Retreat!”