Transformers: Retribution (29 page)

“Stage One is complete. May I congratulate you on your mastery of the courtroom just now—”

“Do not presume to comment on our legal expertise.
Confine yourself to the science. What is the status of the energy readings?”

If the Curator had sweat glands, he would have been using them now. “Everything is under control. I hope to report initiation of Stage Two within minutes.”

“Have there been any complications?”

That was a trick question. There were always complications, but the Curator’s masters never wanted to hear about them. They certainly didn’t want to hear that despite all his maneuverings, it was going to be touch and go whether he achieved enough energy for Stage Two. As always, it came down to what the Prime would do. The Curator longed for the days when Primes would no longer be a factor in anybody’s calculations. He stared at his masters and forced himself to be calm.

“No complications,” he said. “We cannot fail.”

“
Cannot
is a strong word. Are you compensating for a lack of confidence? Do you need reinforcements?”

The Curator knew what
reinforcements
meant. It meant
shall we replace you with someone more capable?
It would be his body in the Piranhacon pit if he went down that road. He shook his head.

“There is no need for reinforcements. We are more than equal to the challenge before us. The Cybertronians still have inklings of what they are facing. They possess no idea our real trap has yet to be sprung.”

“Let us hope you are correct, Inquirata.” The Curator stiffened to hear himself addressed by his proper name. “Much depends on your success.”

“A success we must have,” said a second voice.

“For the sake of our ancestors,” added a third.

“And our descendants,” said a fourth.

“We rose,” said a deeper fifth voice. It was that of the chief magistrate. “We rose, and we fell. Now we rise again, and this time we shall not falter. Nowhere will
escape our reach. All the universe will be gathered up under our sway.”

“For the greater glory of Quintessa,” the Curator intoned.

“For the greater glory of Quintessa,” the magistrates repeated.

The screen went blank.

For a few moments, the Curator stood there, breathing heavily. It all came down to his next move. Everything was at stake now. He longed to get off this useless backwater world, longed to be recalled to Quintessa itself. Or perhaps he would resume his Curator status on a more important world. That was its own kind of promotion. Especially with the right kind of world. Something strategic. Something valuable. Something worth planning for eons to dominate.

He had one in mind right now.

CYBERTRON

I
ACON WAS A CITY OF MANY LAYERS
.

There was the surface, of course, that once-proud skyline laid bare by war and now eclipsed by Shockwave’s tower. There were the sublevels stacked beneath that, many of them still buzzing with industrial activity. But as you kept going lower, that activity died down. The corridors grew emptier, the echoes were louder, and the infrastructure was in ever greater disrepair. There was no one point where you could be said to have entered the undercity, but once you got there, you weren’t going to quibble. Lighting flickered sporadically when it flickered at all. Corridors lost that distinction and became tunnels. Steam hissed erratically. Elevators no longer worked. Ladders ended halfway down chutes. The place was an utter maze.

The denizens weren’t really under anybody’s control, either. Maintenance droids gone rogue, digging machines with glitched programming, rat-bots of all sizes, gladiators who had escaped the pits and gone feral somewhere along the way … They kept out of sight mostly, although Wheeljack wouldn’t have wanted to come down here by himself. He could hear them scuttling here and there in the dark, just beyond the range of his lights, and the only reason he wasn’t seeing them was that no one down here was foolish enough to mess with a heavily armed team of
Autobots. Predators preferred easier meals, and the prey now passing looked anything but easy. Wheeljack had never dreamed that such anarchy existed so short a distance below civilization. It seemed strange to him that even though the ancient castes had been overthrown—rejected with such alacrity by Autobot and Decepticon alike—the lowest rung of that system had persisted almost unnoticed throughout the war that followed. These creatures down here were the true untouchables, not even worthy of classification in the heyday of the caste system and certainly not meriting any attention now. It made Wheeljack question many of his most cherished assumptions. All the more so as none of his teammates seemed to notice the irony. They were focused on more tangible issues.

That was understandable enough.

“We must be at least four miles below the surface,” Springer said.

“More than that,” Ultra Magnus said. He was the only one who seemed to have an exact sense of their bearings. There was a lot of magnetism down here, and it was playing havoc with the compasses. But Ultra Magnus had the map Maccadam had given him, and it was proving far more trustworthy than their instruments. After their escape from the bar, he’d picked the nearest manhole and kept their course as vertical as possible for at least a hundred levels, pausing only to sow false trails off to the side every once in a while. It must have worked, too, for there had been no sign of any meaningful pursuit. Then again, there’d been enough chaos up on the surface to keep everybody busy. Omega Supreme had seen to that. By now, he was probably retreating at speed into the polar wastelands, daring the Decepticons to come after him so that he could ambush them in that desolate terrain. Wheeljack envied the giant bot. He had the simpler task. Then again, if truth be told, right now Wheeljack envied anybody
who wasn’t having to crawl like a mole-bot beneath the surface.

“Up ahead,” Ultra Magnus said. They waded through a corridor that was waist-deep in chemical sludge and climbed a staircase, and then that corridor suddenly ended in a convex steel wall that looked more than a little out of place down here.

“It’s
new
,” said Rack n’ Ruin.

It was so shiny that they could see their own reflections. Quick sensor readings indicated that the barrier curved away on either side of the crumbling corridor walls and was at least several meters thick: too wide for the sensors to say what was on the far side of it.

Though it was easy enough to guess.

“The train route,” Ultra Magnus said. “This is the way to Shockwave’s bunker.”

“So now what?” Jetfire asked.

“What do you think?” Rack n’ Ruin asked. One of his arms extended a welding torch, and he began slicing through. Blue flame stitched into steel; shadows played across the faces of those watching. But several minutes went by, and Wheeljack could see that the torch had made it through only a few inches.

“There’s got to be a faster way than this,” he said.

“You’re right,” Rack n’ Ruin told him. His other arm sprouted a drill that whirred to life and began plowing through half-melted metal. Wheeljack could see why Ultra Magnus had brought this peculiar bot along. Rack n’ Ruin switched back to the torch and then kept alternating between his two tools. In short order, he had to climb into the hole he was carving to keep extending it. And shortly after that—

“Paydirt,” he said.

“Good work,” Ultra Magnus said. “Wheeljack, you take over.”

Rack n’ Ruin clambered out of the cavity he’d dug, and
Wheeljack climbed in. Crawling forward to the rear of the area Rack n’ Ruin had sliced out, he found himself staring through an opening into a wide vertical tunnel covered with cables and wiring. Opposite him were rails that ran down the wall and disappeared into the darkness below.

“Well?” Ultra Magnus demanded.

“Looking good,” Wheeljack said. He reached out and removed the cover from one of the cables before slotting in one of his input jacks. There was a click.

And then he was in.

In a single instant, the physical world dropped away and the datanet expanded inside his head. Only it wasn’t the datanet he was used to. That was an endless grid of wires and conduits that stretched throughout Cybertron and covered the planet in a wireless cushion. This was much smaller, extending only to the tower that lay four miles above and down to more facilities many miles below.

It was Shockwave’s private net.

It was isolated from the rest of the communications links on the planet so that intrepid bots like Wheeljack couldn’t get in and hack it. The only way to do that was to do what Wheeljack was doing now: get past the armored walls that protected Shockwave’s personal domain and gain physical access. With the ease of the practiced hacker, Wheeljack bypassed security protocols and worked his skills. The rails hummed to life.

Two minutes later, a rumbling echoed down the shaft. A shape appeared in the darkness above, coming rapidly down the shaft toward him. He hit the brakes, and a two-car train, empty of personnel but by no means bereft of purpose, clung with electromagnetic clamps to the rails opposite him. Wheeljack smiled in satisfaction.

“Our ride’s here,” he said.

O
PTIMUS MADE HIS DECISION
.

He stepped to the gate, determined that no more Autobots would die. When that gate opened next and the Sharkticons came for their next victims, he was going to make a move. He didn’t care what the odds were. One way or another, this farce had to end.

“Optimus, what are you doing?” Jazz asked.

Optimus didn’t answer. It was all instinct now. As the Sharkticon guards approached the gate, he braced himself.

But suddenly doors beneath the giant screens slid open. Commander Gnaw entered the courtroom, flanked by more Sharkticons. They stopped in front of the pens with crisp military precision. Gnaw stepped forward and brandished his war baton. He pointed at Optimus and Megatron.

“Secure the leaders.” The guards pulled Optimus and Megatron from the pens and led them toward the Piranhacon pit, but as they approached, a metal cover slid across it. But it wasn’t the same flooring as before; it was an odd kind of shimmering material that Optimus had never seen before. An excited buzzing went through the watching crowd. Gnaw cleared his throat.

“Optimus Prime, Megatron, it has been decided that mercy will be shown.” Megatron wanted to tell Gnaw what he thought of his mercy, but the nearby whips
caused him to hold his tongue for once. “You have the opportunity to save your people.”

“I feel like I’ve heard this one before,” Optimus said.

“You haven’t. The high magistrate of Quintessa is considering commuting the sentence to banishment.”

“Banishment?”

“You leave and never return to this planet.”

“A tempting offer,” Megatron said.

“It’s not an offer. The commuting of the sentence will occur in tandem with a separate sentence for you and Optimus Prime.”

“Namely?”

“Trial by combat.”

“Really?” Megatron said. Now he was interested. He got even more so as Gnaw continued.

“The two of you will fight to the death to see whose people we will set free. The winner will get to choose whether the loser’s people face the Piranhacon pit or are simply melted down for scrap.”

“I like the way you think,” Megatron told him.

Optimus shook his head. “Megatron, this is clearly yet another trick.”

“Are you a coward even now, librarian?”

“Here are the rules,” Gnaw said. “Both of you will remain within this circle. None of your energy weapons will be repowered or given back to you. All fighting must be hand to hand. You will begin when I give the word. Do you accept?”

“Absolutely,” said Megatron.

Optimus bowed his head; if this was the only way out of here, then so be it. “Trial by combat it is,” he said.

Sharkticons tossed a variety of archaic weaponry at the feet of Optimus and Megatron and then retreated. Megatron picked up an enormous battle-ax lined with armor-tearing metal teeth.

“This is it, librarian. Your doom has finally arrived.”

“Megatron, are you blind? They’re still lying to us.”

“You know what, Optimus? I don’t even care anymore. Because even if they kill me, it won’t be before you meet death at my hands.”

Optimus picked up a pair of short swords and pointed them at Megatron in an ancient Cybertronian gladiator salute. “So be it, then.”

“Begin,”
said Gnaw.

The two bots leaped at each other.

T
HE NOISE WAS DEAFENING
. T
HE SCREENS IN THE
C
URATOR
’
S
chamber were filled with close-up video of Optimus and Megatron battling each other like there was no tomorrow. Which there really wouldn’t be—not for either of them. But the Curator was unconcerned about the details of the combat. He turned down the volume so he could focus on the only thing that mattered now: the rising power gauges on his instrument consoles. The metal on which the Cybertronians were fighting represented the very latest in Quintesson technology, and it functioned as an almost perfect energy sink. Not only was it slowly absorbing the life force of both combatants, the harder they fought, the faster the process went. And in their frenzied efforts to bring each other down, Optimus and Megatron were both expending enough energy to power many a factory; sparks of Energon literally flew off each of the combatants as they twirled and writhed in the deadliest dance there was. If the Curator had had more of a taste for combat, he would have recognized what was going on in the pit as sheer ballet. Certainly the roaring crowd of Aquatronians had never seen anything like it. As the fight became ever more savage, the Curator smiled as the power readings climbed higher and higher.

“It is exactly as you predicted, master,” Xeros said.
“This is a far better option than just throwing them into the pit. And much more entertaining as well.”

“If you say so. I never developed a taste for physical combat. I suppose I always thought of it as uncivilized.”