Transformers Dark of the Moon (7 page)

Ron sauntered toward his son, obviously thinking that his wife was busy extolling the joys of traveling everywhere in a conveyance so large that it had its own ZIP code. “Like the dream machine, huh?” He winked. “Could be yours someday, kiddo.”

I can’t wait to have it run me over
. “Thanks, Dad. I’m getting the chills,” Sam said with his best forced smile. “Guys … you should have called.”

“Then we couldn’t surprise you!” his mother said.

Sam wasn’t exactly seeing the downside of that.

Mom, meantime, was busy straightening the lapels of his jacket. “Oh, Ron, look how handsome! See, I
told
you he’d find a job.”

“Took long enough,” Ron said. “We were getting worried.”

“Guys, I can’t talk. I’m gonna be late …” He paused.
Lie to them. Tell them you’re going to work. It’s their fault, not yours. If they had shown up when they were supposed to, you wouldn’t have had to lie. So just make something up …

And then the other side of his brain, the one that was aware that his parents certainly posed far less of a threat than a rampaging Megatron—although to give them their due, they were right up there—kicked in.

You’re an adult, Witwicky. Man up. There’s no good way to disabuse them of the notion that you’re gainfully employed. Best thing to do is just rip it off, like a bandage, in one shot
.

“… late … to my interviews.”

His parents looked as if they were deflating, and that was when Sam remembered just how painful ripping off those bandages could be.

“Oh. Interviews,” they said in unison.

Feeling bad for having disappointed them but confident that it would be only a short-term disappointment, he put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Look, this is gonna work out great. This way you’ll be here to celebrate with me tonight when I get the job. So go tour the museums, okay? I’ll be back tonight. Welcome to D.C.”

His parents nodded gamely, and Sam, knowing he had done all he could to make a bad situation better, headed to the garage. Wishing yet again that they had an electric door opener, he gripped the handle and pulled. The door
grunted in protest and then, making it clear that it was not happy about doing so, moved upward with a screech of metal.

For half a second, in his mind’s eye, he was staring at a beautiful yellow Camaro, and he was a teenager once again, falling in love with his first car … a car that returned that adoration in ways he could not possibly have anticipated.

Then reality caught up with him, and he stared, depressed, at the garage’s current occupant: a dilapidated Datsun. There were dings all over it, the paint was peeling, and the rear bumper was being held on with wire.

But hey, at least it ran.

Sometimes.

He climbed in behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine started to turn over and then started again, and a third time, and then began to choke itself out.

“Oh, no. No, not now, not today … 
please not today.
”

Except of course it was going to be today, because it was becoming abundantly clear that today was simply
that
kind of day. And it just wouldn’t be
that
kind of day if his parents weren’t there to witness every bit of his humiliation.

He begged the car to cooperate every time he turned the key, even though the engine was getting weaker and weaker with each successive attempt. But the car gods had never responded well to begging unless one counted making things worse as a response.

“Sam!” came Judy’s voice from behind him. He sagged forward, thudding his forehead lightly on the steering wheel. “Where’s Bumblebee?”

“You tell me, Mom. He’s off on his missions.” He punched the dashboard in frustration. “Had to buy
this
for backup.”

Ronald Witwicky stepped in behind his wife and said the absolutely perfect thing: “Uh huh. So your
car
has a job.”

As it turned out, that was actually the high point of Sam’s day.

In any war, there are calms between storms. It has been several years since the last Decepticon attack. And while the world knows of our existence, it remains a source of controversy. We now seek to assist humans in their early conflicts. To defend the free and protect the innocent. Usually at their request. Sometimes of our own volition …

The sun was no more blistering on this particular day than it ever was, yet Lieutenant Sulimani, for some reason, was sweating.

He was manning his guard post as he typically did outside the gated industrial facility. He didn’t actually know what went on in there, although he had heard rumors that as a result of the facility’s activities, he wouldn’t be able to have children. Considering the way the world was these days, he didn’t necessarily see that as such a bad thing. On the other hand, he’d also heard that you could indeed have children, but they would be hideously mutated. After giving the matter a good deal of thought, Sulimani had come to the conclusion that he didn’t actually want to know. It wasn’t going to change his situation, and he wound up sleeping better at night. Fewer strange dreams.

He felt as if he were having a strange dream right now.

In the distance, visible through air that was shimmering
with the incessant heat, there was the distinctive cloud of dust that always meant vehicles were approaching. Typically they were army vehicles, and had that been what was approaching now, Sulimani would have thought nothing of it.

Instead, as the caravan drew closer, he was able to make out a very familiar lead car: a Mercedes.

He rubbed his eyes, still allowing for the possibility that it was a dream or perhaps a mirage. Then he looked to his partner on the other side of the gate, Lieutenant Faraj. But Faraj clearly saw it as well.

“The defense minister’s car?” said an astonished Sulimani, seeking final confirmation that he was not losing his mind.

Faraj was nodding, looking no less perplexed. “Why did no one warn us?”

That was not the question that was puzzling Sulimani. He was willing to believe all too readily that someone had simply fallen down on the job in the chain of communication.

What he couldn’t fathom was where on earth the cars following in the convoy had come from.

Sulimani was something of an automobile buff, always had been. He loved to look at pictures of them, since that was naturally all that was available to him, and he would often imagine himself behind the wheel of some exotic muscle car, tearing through the streets of America, which he had heard from reliable sources were smooth and black and without an abundance of potholes, checkpoints, and bombs.

He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he would never get to see close up any of the cars he lusted over.

Yet here they were now, coming, as if the defense minister had for some reason decided to bring a car show along with him in order to entertain the guards.

He recognized every single model. Rolling in behind the Mercedes was a yellow Camaro, a red Italian sports car, and a silver concept Corvette. Not a single one of those cars was remotely appropriate for the battered desert roads that served the facility, and yet here they were. Even more astounding, none of them showed the slightest signs of the sort of wear and tear one would normally expect the road conditions to impose on such vehicles.

“What the hell are they made out of?” he wondered aloud.

The sweat running down his forehead was becoming even more pronounced. Obviously, there was some matter of security at stake. The defense minister had to be coming here to perform a surprise inspection, and surprises—especially in this part of the world—could have dire consequences.

Immediately, Sulimani and Faraj opened the gates, swinging them wide in welcome. Then they snapped to attention, saluting, as the row of vehicles rolled in.

The moment the cars came through the gate, however, everything changed.

Literally.

The beautiful red sports car was the first one to undergo the metamorphosis. In rapid succession, so quickly that the guards could scarcely follow what was happening, parts twisted and gears emerged. The sports car was making noises that sounded like a combination of an oncoming locomotive and a series of head-on collisions.

It grew, higher and higher, until a shadow fell upon the guards because it was blocking out the sun. Seconds earlier it had been an idling sports car.

Now incredibly, impossibly, it was a towering flamered robot with gleaming swords for hands.

Shaking off their astonishment—which was, in and of
itself, one hell of an achievement—the two guards tried to unsling their rifles so they could bring them to bear.

They never had the chance. Unknown to them, that was actually fortunate. Had they managed to open fire, the bullets would have ricocheted and most likely hit them.

Instead, the robot simply brought his swords up and placed the points at their chests, nudging ever so slightly. If they didn’t fall backward, they would be impaled. Their knees bending, they dropped the rifles that they never had a chance to aim and fell onto their backs.

The titan leaned over them and spoke with surprising softness.

“We won’t be long,” it said.

While Mirage took the point and incapacitated the human guards as carefully as he could, the Mercedes, Camaro, and Corvette—Wheeljack, Bumblebee, and Sideswipe, respectively—were still in stealth mode. Truthfully, they could have simply stormed the gates in their robot forms, smashing the barriers underfoot and reveling in their superiority. But there was no reason to pull out all the stops if it wasn’t necessary. “Like killing a mosquito with an elephant gun,” as the humans might have said.

That, and the less the humans saw giant robots tearing around their planet, the better it was probably going to be in the long run. At least that was Wheeljack’s thinking, and since the learned Autobot was respected for his technological and scientific savvy, his opinion carried a good deal of weight.

Now that they were in, however, there was no point continuing the subterfuge. “Well, Autobots,” Wheeljack said. “Let’s inform them of the consequences of violating global sanctions, shall we?”

Within seconds, as the guards watched goggle-eyed, the rest of the disguised cars assumed their robotic forms. Accessing his arsenal, Wheeljack produced several new cannons and handed them out to his peers. “Here, lads,” he said convivially. “Might be a bit spicy. They’re fresh out of R&D.”

Bumblebee eyed his with curiosity, while Sideswipe cradled his as he would an infant. A very large, lethal infant that could inflict untold damage upon anything it was aimed at.

Then he swung it around and took aim at the facility. His onboard sensors swept it and found an unpopulated section. He pulled the trigger, and the cannon hammered the east wing. Brick and mortar flew, and a gigantic belch of flame leaped skyward.

It was all the incentive that the remaining workers in the facility required. They came tearing out in all directions, screaming, their arms raised over their heads, making no attempt to seem as if they were planning to put up a fight. That suited the Autobots just fine; it was impossible to teach human beings a lesson if they were all dead. The more survivors there were to inform the Iranian government of the ultimate folly of its actions, the better off everyone would be.

The Autobots set to work with a vengeance, and within minutes the entire facility had been reduced to rubble.

And just before they left, Mirage turned to the two guards, who had not moved from the spot where they had fallen. “See? Not long at all. Have a nice day,” he said.

The guards, who didn’t understand him but would have agreed to anything, nodded.

For there are missions for which we are more suited … to stand in harm’s way
.

   There were times when it seemed that the compound adjective “war-torn” had been coined specifically for Chechnya, and this was one of those times.

In one of the more notorious insurgent zones, rebels were busy planting a bomb in a disabled car. They thought they were unobserved.

They were mistaken.

From high above, a helicopter pilot radioed,
“This is Pale Rider-6. Confirmed visual on four targets placing roadside IED. You’re cleared to engage.”

Seconds later, a black 4×4 pickup, a GMC TopKick, came rolling up and glided to a stop alongside the men. They watched it warily. Two of them thumbed the safeties off their sidearms, ready to open fire on whoever might emerge from within.

Instead they were witness to the same astounding conversion process that had been witnessed in Iran, not to mention terrorist strongholds all over the world.

Looming over them, Ironhide looked down. If he could have smiled, he would have.

“What’s up?” he said.

ii

Still, while many trust in our human alliance, others believe we are to be feared. So, given this debate, we deem it best to call little attention to ourselves
.

Furthermore, there are greater concerns than the humans can readily comprehend. There are Energon detectors in Earth’s cities now. There are long-range defense systems watching the skies. And for years, it has been far too quiet. For in my Spark, I know … the enemy shall return
.

    The words came to Colonel William Lennox from all the way back in basic:
They also serve who stand and wait
.

He was clinging to that old saying now and holding tightly for all he was worth. The truth was that he didn’t feel like he was serving his country at all, no matter how many aphorisms claimed that he was. He hated standing and waiting.

By all discernible measures, he was succeeding in his career track. He not only had been steadily promoted but was currently being trusted with matters of greater and greater delicacy. Matters having to do with the security not only of his country but of the entire world.