Transformers: Retribution (42 page)

“That’s right, Megatron. Those are
digestive juices
. Most predators have to catch their prey, but
you’re already inside this one
.”

Megatron aimed his next shot at the speaker. Anything to shut the Curator up. He fired again, shooting his way into the next corridor, knowing that his only hope now was to keep moving.

S
TARSCREAM WAS JUST STARTING TO WONDER WHAT WAS
taking Megatron so long when hordes of Sharkticons broke the surface and began swimming among the protruding city towers toward the
Nemesis
and Ark.

“Just as Megatron promised,” Soundwave said.

Starscream keyed the ship’s intercom. “All hands, stand by to board the Ark. The Sharkticons are on our side. Repeat, the Sharkticons are on our—” He broke off as the
Nemesis
shuddered as if it had been punched.

“What the slag was that?” he asked.

He got his answer as an enormous tentacle smashed through the bridge’s window. He and Soundwave opened fire instinctively, their lasers cutting straight through it, and as the severed tentacle dropped to the floor of the bridge, pandemonium broke out in the waters around them. Masses of tentacles were appearing everywhere, sprouting from the sea, grabbing Sharkticons and pulling them down. The
Nemesis
began rising into the air; as Starscream dashed to the window, he could see it was caught on top of a gigantic balloon-like sac filled with unsavory-looking green fluid, which then gushed down onto more hapless Sharkticons, melting them almost instantly. Jazz’s face appeared on a screen.

“Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”

“This whole city’s alive!”
Starscream yelled. More
balloon sacs were bloating into view everywhere; the tentacles continued to snatch up Sharkticons, throwing them into those rancid-looking pouches for quick digestion. Tendrils were coming at the Ark and the
Nemesis
from all sides now. The gunnery on both ships opened fire. Starscream turned to Soundwave.

“We need to get airborne right now!”

“And I’m telling you we can’t!” For once Soundwave’s voice was breaking from its customary monotone. “We lack the thrust to reach orbit!”

Starscream cursed. Whatever Megatron had been trying to do had gone horribly wrong. The only good news in all of this was that the Decepticon leader was assuredly dead, but Starscream knew he was unlikely to survive him by more than a few minutes. He blasted away at the tentacles trying to force their way inside the bridge, swearing as he did so that whatever happened, he wasn’t going to end up getting digested alive. He’d put a laser through his own head first. He just wished he’d done the same thing to Megatron while he’d had the chance. Because the only chance they had now was that the Ark would prove strong enough to lift them both.

W
HILE
J
AZZ AND
S
UNSTREAKER FIRED AT THE TENTACLES
hammering on the bridge of the Ark, Sideswipe wasn’t waiting around. The threats of Starscream paled by comparison to what the vast entity awakening around them could do. He rushed to the consoles, undocked from the
Nemesis
, and fired the engines. The ship rumbled as the thrusters came online. Sideswipe amped up the motors. The Ark began to shake violently, rising slowly into the air.

Way too slowly.

“Those Decepticons have clamped onto
us
!” Sunstreaker yelled.

That made perfect sense, Sideswipe thought. Starscream undoubtedly was figuring that if the Decepticons had to die, so would the Autobots. And if the Autobots made it out of here, so would the Decepticons. Still more tentacles hurled themselves against both the Ark and the
Nemesis
, grabbing both ships and pulling them downward. Jazz keyed the com-link.

“Jazz to Superion, do you—”

“I’m on it,” said the great voice. Thunder rolled against the window as the giant bot flew past, firing at the waving tentacles, trying to sever enough of them so that the Ark could gain height. But then more tentacles slapped against Superion, and it was all he could do to keep himself out of trouble. Sideswipe put the ship’s engines into the red and began to steer amid the writhing pseudo-pods. But the Ark was still way too low, and it was reaching the limit of its power. There was a terrible shuddering noise, and then the Ark
-Nemesis
combo began to sink inexorably toward the myriad maws below.

T
HE
L
EVIACON HAD DESCENDED ONLY HALF THE DISTANCE
to the lake bed when Optimus felt ripples through the water; looking up, he caught sight of an amazing scene high above him: The base of the floating city was lighting up in a dazzling display of colors. Streams of bright light flowed out from it like star-filled tendrils. Optimus was almost lost in the dazzling display of color; it seemed for a moment that he was drifting free of the Leviacon, floating up toward a kaleidoscope of sheer beauty.

“Don’t look directly at it!” the Leviacon said. “That’s how it snares its prey!”

Optimus shook his head violently as though to clear it
and grasped onto the Leviacon more tightly as the great bot steepened the angle of its descent, plunging downward, just missing a gargantuan tentacle that swept by them and wrapped around a whole school of fish-bots. Optimus could almost hear their terrible screams as they were crushed mercilessly. And now he saw more tentacles coming in behind them.

“What are they?”

“It is the drinking doom,” the Leviacon moaned. “The most ancient of all Aquatronians, that which was never meant to awaken! The Hydratron itself!”

“I thought Hydratron was the name of the city.”

“The city
is
the Hydratron,” the Leviacon said. “And now it hungers!”

Optimus adjusted his optics and finally got a clear view of the nightmare above. The city had transformed into the most monstrous of all jellyfish, a man-o’-war several miles across. Every creature caught inside it was surely just meat now. And its tentacles were coming down like the wrath of some ancient sea god.

“This is the Curator’s work,” Optimus snarled as the whale-bot’s dive steepened into the vertical. It was all he could do to hold on as the Leviacon did its best to outrun those unfurling tentacles. Below him, he could see glowing lights: the entrance to an underwater cave.

A
S STOMACH JUICES CHURNED DOWN CORRIDORS THAT
were folding up and twisting like tangled intestines, Megatron’s Sharkticons rallied to him, leaping onto him and clinging to him, serving as an outer shield of armor against the burning acid. They were literally dying to save him, yet their efforts would be in vain unless Megatron got out fast. He was blowing his way through corridors as quickly as he could, making for the nearest outer wall, but he wasn’t going to get there in time. He
felt like he was dissolving in his own arrogance; he’d believed for one shining moment that he was a god, only to find himself being digested inside the belly of a real one. The last of the melting Sharkticons fell away from him; he could feel the acid start to wash across him. He was going to die, yet in the back of his mind was a single fleeting thought, an imperative that had become second nature on the floors of the gladiator pits eons ago and a galaxy away: Never give up.

Never
.

Megatron summoned all his remaining strength, making one last herculean effort, stumbling forward, ripping through the outer wall with his bare hands, letting a tidal wave of pure water pour in, an inundation that would have destroyed the old Megatron but now was his salvation. He was staring out into the ocean, gazing at swathes of tentacles. He fired his laser through the water, severing the nervous system of one so that it unfurled limply. Then he reached out, grasped it, and began sliding down that tentacle, gathering speed as he plunged into the depths below.

M
ORE AND MORE TENTACLES WRAPPED AROUND THE
Cybertronian ships as they sank back toward the horror beneath them.

“We need more power!” Starscream yelled from the bridge of the
Nemesis
.

“Thanks for helping!” Sunstreaker shot back.

“Everybody shut up and let the pilot fly!” Jazz shouted.

Sideswipe was doing his best. Lights throughout the Ark dimmed as he pushed the motors way beyond the red. But the ship kept dropping. Sideswipe felt like he was sliding inexorably down a mountainside. Teletraan-1’s consoles flickered; the engines were about to burn out. Something massive hit the
Nemesis
from below; the reverberation
rippled through both ships. It was too big to be a tentacle; it had to be the monster’s jaws. But then something entirely unexpected happened.

The ship began to rise.

“It’s Superion,”
Jazz breathed.

He was right. The gigantic robot had managed to get beneath the
Nemesis
and was acting as an additional engine. The
Nemesis
-Ark combo continued to climb, gaining height, the guns of both ships frying the tentacles that still grasped them. Then there was nothing left holding them back, nothing above them except sky. Sideswipe hit the throttle and was pushed back in his seat as they thundered upward toward the heavens.

L
EVIACON DESCENDED EVER FARTHER
,
WITH
O
PTIMUS
holding on while they dropped through cave after cave, all of them filled with water. The whale kept on telling him they were almost there, but it seemed like he’d been saying that for miles. Yet all at once Leviacon changed direction and started swimming upward. Optimus saw a glowing light shimmering above him, a giant circle reflected in the shimmering surface toward which Leviacon was now surging up.

And breaking.

But only barely. Only the Leviacon’s eyes protruded. Optimus crawled carefully up the creature’s back, sticking his head above the water to try to get a sense of what was going on in this chamber.

It turned out to be a lot.

An enormous cave with a titanic glowing hoop of fire covering the entirety of the far wall. Pouring through that space bridge were hundreds of Sharkticons, swimming out into the chamber, scurrying up the walls, trying to get at the command module that hung from the center of the ceiling. But the plasma cannon on the bottom of that module was spraying out death in every direction, knocking Sharkticons into the water and raining fire down on them. It didn’t take a genius to guess where the Curator was. Optimus patted the whale’s back.

“Thank you for everything, friend. I’ll take it from here.”

The Leviacon rumbled dissent. “There is no way you would get close to that alone. Together we have a chance to defeat the being that tried to enslave both our planets.”

“What do you suggest?” Optimus asked.

“I’m not
suggesting
anything,” said the whale, and abruptly submerged, diving while Optimus held on for dear life as it picked up speed, arcing back toward the surface, changing into a gigantic humanoid robot as it fired rockets that sent it streaking out of the water, reaching up with its mighty hands and pulling the control bubble clean off the ceiling, flinging it against the side of the cave. The module slid down the wall, coming to a halt upside down where a ledge met the water. As the Leviacon somersaulted and dived back toward the surface, Optimus caught a glimpse of masses of Sharkticons closing on the disabled module. The water closed in over his head; he figured that it was all over for the Curator.

He was wrong.

Suddenly the bridge glowed with the brightness of the sun as a surge of energy radiated out from it, frying the circuitry of everything that happened to be above the water’s surface at that moment. That included every Sharkticon. Its lower half still exposed to air, the Leviacon was burned badly. It transformed back into whale mode, thrashing in pain, retreating to the bottom to nurse its wounds. Only Optimus was left unscathed. As the bridge reverted to its normal energy output, he let go of the crippled Leviacon and swam quickly toward the command module, scrambling onto the rocks and vaulting inside.

The Curator was crouching on what had been the module’s ceiling, a self-satisfied smile on his face. Apparently
he’d been protected by the shielding in the module’s walls. Or he was simply immune to the more lethal effects of the bridge. After all, he’d built the thing. He straightened and gazed up at Optimus.

“Well, well,” he said. “Miracles never cease. Megatron told me you were dead.”

“Megatron has a bad habit of exaggerating.”

“And you have a bad habit of surviving where so many others don’t,” the Curator said. He eyed the hundreds of dead floating Sharkticons in the water. “I really didn’t want to do that.”

“You mean destroy them wholesale?” Optimus was puzzled. “They’d have chewed you to pieces otherwise.”

“I mean push the bridge to the limit like that. A portal through space-time might harness considerable energies, but what I just did had a 30.4 percent chance of shutting it down altogether. And I happen to still have need of it.”

“I don’t think you understand, Curator.” Optimus towered over the smaller bot. “It’s all over.”

“Over?” The Curator laughed. “It’s just
begun
. I trust you met my pet.”

“You mean that city-size jellyfish?”

“The Hydratron. I’m going to be sending it through the bridge to consume everything on your planet, Optimus. It may be the largest jellyfish ever created, but on the plains of Cybertron it’ll be more like a spider. And it will hunt your people down like the insects they are.”

“The caves leading here are too narrow, Curator. There’s no way you could get that monster—” But even as Optimus spoke, he heard a distant rumbling. The ceiling began to vibrate faintly. “Oh, no,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said the Curator. “It’s tearing its way through the lake bed to get to me. Such loyalty. Would that all my servants showed the same.”

“This has gone far enough,” Optimus said. He stepped
forward, ready to rip his foe apart. But just before Optimus’s fists connected, the Curator produced a wandlike object and pointed it upward; Optimus suddenly felt energy flowing out of him. It was as though the Matrix of Leadership was expanding in his chest to the point of bursting. He sank to his knees as the Curator smiled.