Transformers: Retribution (15 page)

“Now would be a good time to start screaming if you so desire,” the Curator said.

O
PTIMUS
, J
AZZ
,
AND
P
ROWL APPROACHED
I
RONHIDE ON
the tarmac while the rest of the Autobots prepared to split up into search teams. Ironhide had decided before they arrived that he would take full responsibility for the entire situation. He knew that he had let Optimus down. If he could turn back the chronometer, he wouldn’t have been persuaded by Kup; he would have stood his ground. But the only thing he could do now was face the frequency.

“Optimus, I’m so sorry. I never should have—”

“No time for that, old friend.” Privately Optimus was furious, but right now his people needed a leader, and as Prime he knew that this was one of those occasions when he had to stand tall for the rest of them. “You’re chastising yourself far worse than I could,” he added. “And right now we need to find them. Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”

“They wanted to take a better look at the ocean floor. To see if they could locate anything our initial scans might have missed.”

“Now why would they want to do that?” Jazz asked.

“We’d already completed the reconnaissance phase,” Prowl spit out, sounding insulted.

“Well, I didn’t put much stock in what Rodimus and Bumblebee thought,” Ironhide said uncomfortably. “But when Kup agreed with them, I figured there might be something to it.”

“Something to what?” Prowl almost growled.

“Look, they just didn’t trust these Aquatronians.
I
don’t trust these Aquatronians. They said this whole setup seemed too good to be true, and they wanted to take a closer look around.”

“I wish they had come to me first,” Optimus said.

“They violated the chain of command!” Jazz added.

“That’s not the issue, Jazz.” Optimus lowered his voice. “The fact of the matter is that I agree with them. There’s something very wrong about this place, and I can’t quite put my finger on it.” He didn’t add that in truth, he really wasn’t sure if there
was
something wrong. He was still shaky from earlier—still convulsed by larger doubts—but he knew this wasn’t the time to give voice to them. He just had to trust his instincts. “If Rodimus had come to me personally, we might have been able to make a better coordinated and more exhaustive search. A subtler one, too, that didn’t require us to tip off the Curator. But as it stands, we still might be able to use this opportunity to take a closer look around.”

Prowl nodded. He obviously felt negligent himself, but there was only so much a scan of the planet from orbit could accomplish. “How do you want to proceed, Optimus? Perhaps we should wait until the Curator has his search vessels ready.”

“No, I don’t want to use their ships.” Optimus had tried to think of a way to keep the Aquatronians out of the search altogether but had decided that was impossible. If nothing else, he would still need the maps and satellite data the Curator had offered. But Optimus wanted to find his people before the Aquatronians did, and that meant he was going to have to move fast.

“Well, the combat shuttle doesn’t have the same deep sea capability as the dropship. We can only use it for an
hour or so of underwater use before coming back to the surface. So it’s virtually useless for search and rescue.”

“Maybe the Aquatronians have—”

“I said I don’t want to use their equipment for this. Jazz, contact Silverbolt and find out how long it will take to prep another dropcraft for underwater use. Also, find out if there are any other ships on the Ark suitable for the search that we can deploy immediately.”

“On it.” Jazz stepped away, using his internal communication systems to link back up with the Ark. Optimus turned back to Prowl.

“I want you to take command of some search teams and cover the shores of this whole island. Maybe they were able to swim back. I know it’s a long shot, but we’ve got to check every angle on this one.”

Prowl saluted, then changed into his pursuit-vehicle mode and sped over to the groups of Autobots gathered around the Aquatronian holo-map projector depicting satellite imagery of the seabed. Optimus knew that Prowl was more than a little irate that Rodimus, Kup, and Bumblebee had behaved so rashly. But he also knew that if Prowl was given a specific task, he would complete it to the very best of his ability, and that was the kind of can-do attitude Optimus needed right now.

“What do you want me to do, boss?” Ironhide asked. Optimus put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder.

“You stick with me, just like old times.” Optimus seemed to hesitate, then said, “I’ve been having some issues, Ironhide.”

“Tell me about it,” Ironhide said. “This is a bad situation we’re in.”

“Not those kinds of issues,” Optimus replied. He pointed to the Matrix. “In here. I’m having trouble trusting my own intuition. I need you to help keep me … Be my eyes and ears. Let me know if I seem to be acting
oddly and not realizing it. Will you do that for me, old friend?”

Ironhide nodded. He figured that Optimus simply wanted to keep him close to keep him out of trouble; even so, Ironhide was touched that Optimus would make such a show of needing his help. After all, Optimus was a Prime and was guided by the wisdom of the greatest leaders. Why did he need the opinion of a worn-down bucket of bolts like him? Yet Ironhide was proud to stand at his leader’s side regardless of the circumstances. It was the least he could do to make up for letting Rodimus and the others go off the reservation. But before he could voice his gratitude, Jazz came running back over with a frantic look on his face.

“Optimus! Sound the alert!”

“Calm down, Jazz. What’s going on?”

“It’s the Decepticons! They’ve found us!”

S
IDESWIPE HAD BEEN GETTING BORED
. T
HE
A
RK WAS
now in the middle of its tenth orbit around the planet below, and he’d already seen everything worth seeing. That which wasn’t wreathed in clouds was covered in ocean, and everything that mattered was clearly under that sea. The away team would have to figure out the rest, but apparently they were having some issues. Kup, Rodimus, and Bumblebee had managed to get themselves lost—or maybe there was something more sinister going on. The Curator undoubtedly was hiding something, but Sideswipe had no doubt Optimus was up to the task of ferreting it out.

“Anomaly detected,” Teletraan-1 said.

Sideswipe looked up. “Where?” he asked.

“In the second planetary ring.” The screens lit up with imagery showing a portion of that ring. It looked normal enough.

“Magnify,” Sideswipe ordered.

Teletraan-1 obliged, zooming in, the detail becoming fine enough that if someone had just walked onto the bridge at that moment, he’d never have guessed they were looking at a planetary ring. It was more like crystal under a microscope, filled with fractal edges and intricate patterns. Accompanying readouts showed the basic structure, most of it debris, that presumably once had
formed the space bridges that led to this planet. But there was something in that mass that had no business being there—blurry and indistinct yet too large to simply be more of that debris.

“Give me magnetometer readings,” Sideswipe said. “And let’s have spectrometers while we’re at it.”

Hatches on the hull outside slid open; instruments protruded and began active scanning of the anomaly. There was a disadvantage in doing that, of course, because if that anomaly was intelligent, it would know it had been detected, since now it was being subjected to a full spectrum of electromagnetic waves. But Sideswipe had to have more data.

In short order, he got it.

“Anomaly identified as the
Nemesis
,” Teletraan-1 said in a dispassionate voice that utterly failed to do justice to the situation. The specs of the massive warship lit up the screen, along with the faint pulsing of its engines. It must have been making its way through the complicated ring structure for some time, Sideswipe realized, slowly creeping in toward the Ark’s orbit. Now it was only a few thousand miles away.

And it was about to get a lot closer. Realizing it had been detected, the
Nemesis
gunned its engines to full blast, emerging from the ring and streaking straight at its prey, firing several barrages of missiles as it did so. Sideswipe hit the alarm; Klaxons began sounding throughout the Ark.

“Give me manual control,” he yelled to Teletraan-1 as he raced for the pilot’s chair. Even as he was strapping himself in, he was activating the thrusters, sending the Ark hurtling forward, moving away from the
Nemesis
at an angle. But the Decepticon warship altered its vector of approach.

As did its missiles.

“Impact in ten seconds,” Teletraan-1 said.

Silverbolt came running onto the bridge.

“What in the name of Primus is going on?” he yelled.

“What does it look like? We’re under attack!” Sideswipe retorted. Silverbolt glanced at the tactical display and saw the oncoming bulk of the
Nemesis
streaking toward them.

“Missile impact in five seconds,” Teletraan-1 said.

Sideswipe pulled back on the stick, twisting the Ark off to the side while he deployed several packets of decoys. The Decepticon missiles exploded among them, barely a few hundred meters from the Ark’s hull. Silverbolt slapped Sideswipe on the back and eyed the shipwide com-system.

“Red alert! All hands to battle stations! I repeat, red aler—”

But suddenly Silverbolt was knocked to the floor as a massive explosion shook the ship.

“Where the slag did that come from?” he yelled.

The hull cameras had the answer. Flickering suddenly into view on one of them was—

“Skywarp!” Sideswipe snarled.

The Decepticon teleportation artist removed a plasma bomb from his armor and planted it on the hull. Apparently he’d already used one to considerable effect. Sideswipe stabbed a button on his console, and the hull of the Ark magnetized; Skywarp was hurled off into space as though he’d been shot from a cannon. One of the Ark’s gun batteries opened fire on him, but its shells ripped through empty vacuum as Skywarp teleported back to the
Nemesis
.

The next moment the second bomb exploded, ripping off a whole segment of the hull. Several Autobots were blown out into space even as air lock doors slammed shut to maintain pressurization.

“Damage report,” Sideswipe barked.

“Hyperdrive actuator is out,” Teletraan-1 replied. “Auxiliary actuator compromised.”

“What does that mean?” Silverbolt asked.

“It means we can’t go to lightspeed!” said Sideswipe.

“We wouldn’t want to,” Silverbolt said. “We can’t leave Optimus!”

“Sure, but if the intake accelerators are damaged, they’re going to catch us.” He keyed the coms. “We need an emergency repair crew down to engineering, and we need it now—”

But Teletraan-1 was already interrupting. “Negative. Engineering room hull breach.”

“Those dirty Decepticreeps!” Sideswipe cursed.

“They never fight fair!” Silverbolt yelled, slamming his fist down on his armrest. “There’s no way we can outrun them!”

“Doesn’t mean we’re not gonna try,” Sideswipe said. He worked the controls; the Ark surged toward the planet’s pole, exchanging fire with the
Nemesis
, which raced after it.

“Have you tried to reach Optimus planetside?” Silverbolt asked.

“I got word to Jazz, but now the Decepticons have jammed communications. We’re on our own up here.”

“Same down there,” Silverbolt said.

I
T WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL FIREWORKS DISPLAYS
,
AND
it was the last thing Optimus Prime wanted to see. The Ark was a ball of fire streaking across the sky—so close to the planet now that it was touching the atmosphere as it raced across the southern pole—while behind it came the
Nemesis
, slightly higher but reflecting enough sunlight to be starkly visible. Both ships were firing away at each other with everything they had. Flashes of
light roiled the sky, followed by the sound of thunder rolling over the ocean.

“This is not good,” Jazz said.

“Really?” Prowl asked sarcastically.

“He looks like he’s coming in to land,” Ironhide said. “That’s
atmospheric reentry
we’re seeing—”

“It’s not,” Optimus said. “Sideswipe’s cutting it as close to the planet as he can to get it between him and the
Nemesis
.”

“But why doesn’t he come down here and pick us up?” Prowl asked. “That’s the
ultimate battle
going on up there, and here we are stuck as spectators at the bottom of this gravity well.” He was beside himself with frustration, but Optimus just shook his head.

“Prowl, Sideswipe’s making the right call. The last thing he should do now is come pick us up. Because then the
Nemesis
would just rain fire down on him from space. Destroying all of us in the process.”

“So you’re saying all we can do is sit here and watch,” Jazz said through gritted teeth.

“Sometimes patience is the only option,” Optimus told him. But the calm with which he said those words belied the emotions raging within him. How could he have been so foolish as to take so many of his key lieutenants onto the planet with him? And why hadn’t he ensured that scouts were deployed throughout the system to provide early warning of any Decepticon approach? If the Ark was destroyed, they’d be stranded down here, and it wouldn’t take Megatron long to figure out that Optimus was still alive down on the planet. After that, Optimus wouldn’t be alive much longer, not when Megatron had the
Nemesis
and all his troops at his disposal. Optimus couldn’t help wondering if his errors of judgment were due to his inner turmoil and confusion over the Matrix and his memories. But that was no consolation whatsoever. And it certainly was no excuse.
He watched as the glow of the Ark vanished over the horizon, the
Nemesis
accelerating after it; he wondered how this situation could get any more precarious.