Transformers: Retribution (39 page)

Then he couldn’t see a thing—the object in his chest was glowing so brightly that it was blinding him. Or maybe his optics were gone. Maybe he would never see again. Something was building up inside him, wreaking havoc on his circuits, rewiring his alt-modes, playing hell with his mind, building up until he couldn’t take it anymore, until he was ready to—

Energy poured out of him with a clap of thunder that shattered every screen in the room, hurling the Sharkticons, Optimus, and Xeros back into the walls. For a moment all was still.

Then Megatron slowly got to his feet and laughed.

For now he was reconstructed.

Vibrant blue and red had become the blue-purple of this planet’s people. His chest plate now resembled the head of a giant open-mouthed Sharkticon, frozen in an open snarl, showing row after row of teeth. His armor
had been augmented by razor-sharp scales that glittered even in the dim light of this chamber. Huge fins protruded from his forearms, and his eyes glowed a horrifying deep sea green.

It was Optimus who broke the stunned silence.

“Megatron …? Is that you?”

“Yes, librarian. It is I.” Megatron crossed the room and took Optimus by the shoulders. Optimus looked at his old nemesis with a mixture of awe and fear, but as Megatron made contact with him, something happened: Optimus’s Matrix stopped broadcasting gibberish. The Quintesson influence that had corrupted it dissolved like shadow before sunlight. Whatever steps the Curator was taking to control Optimus had failed, just as he had failed to anticipate Megatron’s sudden mutation—a mutation driven by Megatron’s own impulsiveness and arrogance. Optimus was about to thank Megatron when his old adversary reached out and placed his finger on his lips as though to hush him.

“I told you the power would be mine,” he said. “Our conflict is at an end, Prime. Good-bye, my brother.”

Before Optimus could react, Megatron hefted Optimus over his head and hurled him straight through the wall of the command center, sending him plunging to his doom down the endless shaft. Then he turned to Xeros, who backed away, a terrified expression on his face. Xeros had been ready to face death. But this was something far worse.

“Who … who are you?” the stunned scientist asked.

Megatron thought about it. He wasn’t sure yet. All he was sure of was the new power coursing through his circuitry. He felt as if he were one with all the life on Aquatron. Perhaps that was what bots meant when they said
until we are all one
. Perhaps they’d been talking about him all along. He saw another wave of Sharkticons
pour into the room through the ripped-up ceiling, heard Xeros ordering them to kill him.

“No,” Megatron said, turning to them.

The Sharkticons stopped, stared, and then knelt, row after row.

Xeros could not believe what he was seeing. The programming he and the Curator had created to control the Aquatronians had collapsed. The law of unintended consequences had played the cruelest joke of all. No longer would Sharkticons or any of the other people of this planet worship faraway Quintesson gods.

Because now their god was far closer.

“You can’t,” he heard himself say. “It’s not possible! You’re not supposed to—”

“Don’t talk to me of
possible
,” Megatron said. “Instead talk to me of last words.”

“What?”

“And here I was expecting something more eloquent.” Megatron stepped out of the way and let his Sharkticons rush forward and eat their fill.

O
PTIMUS PLUMMETED DOWN THE SHAFT
. H
E WAS TOO
far from either side to grab hold of anything; all he could see was blackness beneath him, and all he could hear was the whistle of the wind as he fell. So this is it, he thought. After all this time, Megatron had been right and he had been wrong. Though he hated to think of what Megatron would do with his newfound power. The only solace Optimus could take was that the Matrix was at last free of Quintesson manipulation. In his last moments, he let his mind go, basked in the Matrix, gave himself over to it completely …

And all at once his mind filled with light.

He was back on Iacon in the Chamber of the High
Council, only it was the way the chamber had looked millions of years ago, before the Golden Age. It was as if he was gazing at one of the pictures he’d seen in the ancient tomes of the archives, but now he was inside that image, a part of it. Thirteen shadowy figures were seated in thrones around the room. Optimus decided they were there to show his Spark the way. All his fear was swept aside in the consolation that at least his experience would be added to the ancient collection, his advice would inform future leaders, future Primes …

It is not your time, Optimus Prime
.

The voice came from all around. Optimus saw that the thirteen figures had vanished. All that was visible was a glowing light, and out of that light came a voice he had heard only once before, back at the core of Cybertron …

You have yet to fulfill your destiny. It is not yet time for you to pass on this burden. You are exactly where you should be
.

“But—”

Now go. Until all are one
.

Optimus opened his eyes to find that he was still tumbling down the shaft. He’d hoped that he’d be miraculously transported elsewhere, but there were no miracles to be found here. Just the strength to live or die as required. Now the bottom of the shaft was dimly visible, rushing up toward him. At the last moment, Optimus realized it wasn’t solid at all.

It was water.

Even so, the impact would have shattered a lesser bot. He plunged into it, sinking downward, away from a metal hull that stretched out in all directions—and he realized in that moment that the island that he’d been in and that housed the capital city of Hydratron was actually nothing of the kind; it was a huge machine that floated on the surface
of the lake. But topographical niceties didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that he was continuing to sink fast. As he struggled to get his bearings, he turned to see an enormous pair of jaws closing in on him.

T
HE
S
HARKTICONS THAT HAD SURVIVED THE FALL AND
chewed their way into the command center fell to their knees in front of their new god-king. They chanted that they had been delivered, that their liberator had come down from the stars and set them free of the yoke of Quintesson oppression. But most of all they chanted a single name:

“MEGATRON! MEGATRON! MEGATRON!”

Megatron basked in the adulation for a few moments. It was even better than it was with the Decepticons, because their loyalty was so total. There was no Starscream among these subjects. None of them were plotting against him. They were ready to do whatever he ordered without question.

“Rise,” he said. They rose as one. “You owe your freedom to me and me alone. And now you will serve me and me alone.”

“As you command!”
they replied in unison. Megatron smiled. With both Sharkticons and Decepticons at his back and Optimus no longer a factor, he would lead an army that could subjugate entire galaxies. A new force for a new age, ruled by Megatron and Megatron alone. But first things first; he had to subjugate Aquatron, and then he would complete the invasion of Cybertron under his own rule. With the space bridge open, he wouldn’t need to rely on overambitious lieutenants like Shockwave anymore.

“What are your orders?”
the Sharkticons asked.

“My orders are to shut up for just a moment,” Megatron told them. He studied the various readouts in the
control center. The screens were all broken now, but enough of the instrument readouts remained to show him how Xeros had been orchestrating the Sharkticons’ movements from this location. It was like being handed a gift from Unicron himself. Megatron used the command override provided to him by the Sharkticon Matrix and proceeded to issue new orders to his fishy legions. He listened over the speakers with satisfaction as the word spread. There was only one being that could stop him now. Megatron worked the controls of the elevator car to bring it adjacent to a wall. A door opened. He turned to his new minions.

“Find the Curator and kill him!”

“As you command, lord!”
Sharkticons stumbled over one another in a mad rush to fulfill the wishes of their new ruler. Megatron decided to stay in the inner sanctum so that he could monitor the situation. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if the Curator still had a few tricks left to play. Megatron knew better than to underestimate an enemy who had been planning for this moment for millions of years. Particularly since none of the Sharkticons knew where their former leader was.

The now-deceased Xeros wasn’t any help, either. Megatron hadn’t bothered to torture him because he figured there were more reliable ways to get information. After the Sharkticons’ devouring of every part of the Quintesson except his head, Megatron had personally searched through the circuitry in his skull only to discover that he hadn’t known where the bridge was or that the Curator had wiped that information from his memory banks. The Curator kept his operations very compartmentalized indeed. But the bridge couldn’t be far away. And when the Sharkticons found it, Megatron would be heading there, too. In the meantime, he worked the consoles and gave orders to Sharkticons all across Hydratron, humming
as he did so an old song he’d learned as a fighter in the gladiator maze beneath Kaon:

Come out, come out, wherever you are …

K
UP COULDN
’
T BELIEVE HIS EYES
. T
HE
S
HARKTICON
cannons aimed at the Ark were suddenly lowering their trajectory, all of them pointing at a single target. For the briefest of moments he thought that it was Superion—that the giant robot was about to wither under the rain of laser blasts—but then he realized they had in mind something entirely different.

Commander Gnaw.

As the lasers struck him, he and his gigantic sea turtle caught fire. Kup doubted he even knew what had hit him. The Sharkticon subcommander disintegrated entirely; the guns switched off, and Kup realized that all the Sharkticons were making themselves scarce: swimming away, diving beneath the surface, withdrawing from the fight. Victory had been theirs for the taking, and they were throwing it away like they no longer cared.

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Rodimus said.

“Who’s arguing?” Kup said as the Ark fired its retros and floated in.

O
PTIMUS SAT ASTRIDE THE SILVER BACK OF THE MASSIVE
whale-bot as it dived deep into the sea. Moments before he had thought he was a goner. But at the last moment, the creature had swerved aside, losing all interest in consuming him. Optimus had grabbed onto one of its fins, hoping to hitch a ride back to the island above him.

But instead the creature began talking to him.

“Who are you?” it asked. The voice was deep, reverberating through the vibration in its metal, but it sounded
like it was talking in Optimus’s ear anyway. He realized he could communicate back through radio.

“My name is Optimus Prime,” he said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Leviacon.” There was a pause, then: “But I did not know that until you just asked it. I have the strangest feeling that I just woke up.”

“The Quintessons enslaved you.”

“The who?”

“Listen,” Optimus said. “What are you doing down here, anyway?”

“Swimming,” Leviacon said. “It’s what I do best. In fact, I never want to do anything else.”

“I mean, what were your orders?”

“Orders?”

“Someone told you to be here, Leviacon. The same someone who controlled you up until a few minutes ago. I need you to try to remember.”

“I seem to remember … something about defending a place. Somewhere below here.”

Optimus thought about that. “How far down is the lake bed?”

“Two miles.”

It all made sense now. Beneath the lake bed was a far better place for the space bridge infrastructure than in the floating city overhead. It would be much more secure; even if a bomb entirely destroyed the city-island, the space bridge would be safe. And two miles of water meant that creatures like the one he was riding could provide an additional layer of defense. He wondered why these bots weren’t under Megatron’s control now. Perhaps because the Decepticon leader hadn’t known about them, hadn’t given them any orders.

“Do you mind taking me down there?” he asked.

“No problem,” said the Leviacon, and plunged into the depths.

CYBERTRON

W
HEELJACK BRACED HIMSELF AS
A
LPHA
T
RION HIT THE
detonation button.
It’s been real
, he thought to himself …

And realized he was still thinking.

Alpha Trion hit the button again. But once again nothing happened.

Tyrannicon laughed and held up a second device. “Ever heard of a wireless jammer?” he asked.

“How did you hack our frequencies?” Shockwave muttered.

“Same way I hacked everything else, Shockwave—thanks to you. My masters have been studying this planet’s datanet by looking over your shoulder. Surely you’ve realized that by now.”

“You’re lying,” Shockwave said. “Ratbat gave you the codes.”

“You want to blame all this on
me
?” Ratbat asked.

“I can certainly try.”

“You’re in denial,” Springer said.

“I know traitors when I see them.”

Tyrannicon smiled mirthlessly. “Ratbat may have given me the keys to the city, but you gave us the keys to the planet, Shockwave.”

Ultra Magnus turned to Shockwave. “Don’t you get it? You’ve destroyed us all.”

“And here I was thinking Alpha Trion was the one trying to blow us up.”

“He was trying to make sure our precious data didn’t fall into enemy hands,” said Maccadam. “Which he wouldn’t have had to do if you hadn’t let these monsters in.”

“And I suppose that’s the
other
reason you’ve lost,” Tyrannicon said. “You Cybertronians just can’t stop bickering among yourselves, can you? A bunch of children is what you are.”