Exiles

by Alex Irvine

* * *

  The Nemesis passed by, and Jazz, Silverbolt, and Ironhide conferred on what to do now that their first plan—to blow it apart where it stood—had failed. Then all three of them were distracted by the reappearance of the modified and even more fearsome battle cruiser—immense and glittering in the light of the nearer suns—that suddenly loomed out of the halo of Junkion debris over the edge of the pit. “Look at that,” said Ironhide, who had never seen it before. It was bigger than the Ark and built along more menacing lines. The insignia scored into various parts of its hull meant nothing to any of the watching bots whether they were Cybertronian, Velocitronian, or Junkion. From its sides protruded two great curving extensions that once had been … Ironhide couldn’t believe it.

  “The Junkions just built a Space Bridge into that ship,” Silverbolt said wonderingly. “How?”

  “Doesn’t matter how,” Jazz said. “What I want to know is what it does.”

  “We might be about to find out,” Silverbolt said.

  Aboard the pirate ship, Wreck-Gar watched the captain stump his way back and forth along the bridge, watching the chaos on the surface of Junkion. “Time to make an example of some Cybertronians!” he growled. Around him, his minions cheered.

  “And who do we make an example of?”

  “The leaders!”

  “And how do we make an example of them?”

  “With the blades of our swords!”

  “Yes!” the captain boomed, standing up behind his bridge chair as all around him the pirates roared.

  “Don’t,” Wreck-Gar said.

  “Don’t what?” the pirate captain asked without looking at him.

  “Don’t destroy Optimus Prime. He is a noble bot. He’s no junk.”

  “He is a Cybertronian,” the captain growled. “He must die. The other one, too.”

  The Nemesis hovered level with the bridge, the Autobots’ relentless attacks beginning to show in a number of smoking holes torn in its armor. But the damage done to it did not yet threaten to impair its function. It dropped its nose slightly, aiming the Requiem Blaster directly at the bridge.

  “We’ve got to help!” Bulkhead said. He and Bumblebee blasted away at the Nemesis’s bridge with no more visible effect. The Decepticon ship was close enough to finish its job. “Someone do something!”

  Ironhide and Prowl, too, had ducked away from their fights with Decepticons to concentrate on distracting or, if they could, destroying the mighty Nemesis. Jazz now was climbing up toward the ship on a cable magnetically attached to the bottom of its hull, carrying some kind of crowd-control bomb Prowl had given him. The other Autobots provided covering fire, and Silverbolt swooped and screamed around the Nemesis’s nose, firing enough to provide a distraction but not so much that he would hit Jazz.

  It almost worked. But Slipstream and Thundercracker had never let up in their pursuit of Silverbolt, and it was they who noticed Jazz clambering up the last length of the dangling cable. Thundercracker fired … and hit the Nemesis! But the explosion also knocked Jazz most of the way free. He flailed for a gut-wrenching moment before catching on to the cable again. He looked up. The magnetic clamp at the end of the cable was attached just below the Requiem Blaster’s emplacement, and for a brief moment Jazz thought maybe he could get to the Blaster and disable it somehow or possibly even blow it off the ship.

  Instead, Slipstream decided that she had spent enough time trying to pick Jazz off the cable. Coming around in a tight turn, she accelerated and screamed just over his head, her right wing severing the cable just below the clamp. Jazz was jerked off to one side by the rush of her passage and then fell free, the cable coiling around him as he tumbled down into the depths of the pit. Above him, the Nemesis began the Requiem Blaster’s firing sequence.

  They fought their way out along the bridge, skipping and lunging across its cobbled-together girders. Optimus Prime lunged forward, the Cyber Caliber striking sparks from Megatron’s shoulder as Megatron pivoted and smashed his ax into Optimus’s arm.

  Optimus skipped around a return stroke, barely keeping one foot on the bridge and bringing Megatron to one knee with a blow from the Cyber Caliber that left a molten welt across his back. “Still think it’s a toy?” he said, leaning deftly out of the way of Megatron’s answering ax blow.

  Out of the corner of his optics he could see the Nemesis coming to a halt and preparing the Requiem Blaster for firing. Optimus Prime’s plan was working for the moment. The Requiem Blaster could not repeat its fire quickly. If he could survive the first shot, the Autobots would have the advantage again because Megatron would be without his most powerful weapon.

  Except, of course, the Nemesis itself. But that problem would have to wait until this most pressing issue of the Requiem Blaster was dealt with.

  “Nemesis!” Megatron roared. “Destroy Optimus Prime!”

  Yes, Optimus Prime thought.

  The Nemesis pointed the barrel of the Requiem Blaster at Optimus Prime. Optimus saw that the Blaster was ready, but it did not fire as the ship’s pilot hesitated for a fraction of a cycle, seeing the target still so close to Megatron. Optimus had the passing thought that Starscream must not be in charge on the ship or his proximity to Megatron would not have been a deterrent. He struck at Megatron with the Cyber Caliber, and Megatron swung his ax to parry, but at the last moment—before the impact—Optimus redirected the stroke, bringing the Cyber Caliber down on the bridge itself.

  The Cyber Caliber’s blade sheared the bridge in two with a shock that ran up Optimus Prime’s arms and rocked him backward. The bridge shuddered under his feet, but he was on the anchored end. Megatron, on the opposite side of the smoldering wound in the span, staggered to keep his balance as that entire portion of the bridge tipped and slid into a titanic collapse. Optimus Prime raised the Cyber Caliber. Knowing what would come next, he threw back his head and roared to the stars.

  “AUTOBOTS!”

  Megatron, lunging forward as the bridge collapsed beneath him, hit Optimus Prime in the midsection, bearing both of them down on the cleaved end of the bridge. Optimus looked up, the Autobot name still ringing in his head, and saw Megatron, one arm pointed toward the Nemesis, screaming out an order. But Optimus knew it was far, far too late.

  The Requiem Blaster unleashed such force that for a moment Optimus Prime felt himself dislocated from the passage of time. His mind functioned, but he had lost touch with the categories of time and space, he had no way to organize the stimuli he felt, he did not know where he was … or, for a protracted and agonizing moment, who he was.

  Then he felt the Matrix calling to him, and he formed the word that was his identity: Prime.

  And the universe collapsed back into place around him enough for Optimus Prime to realize that he was badly hurt. The Blaster had destroyed the bridge and churned much of the surrounding trashscape into a mass of half-melted and smoking slag. He lay on one side, covered with parts of the bridge and other debris that had avalanched down into the pit after the bridge’s collapse.

  He had survived.

  So had Junkion.

  What had happened?

  On the heaving slope of the pit floor, the Autobots got to their feet or dug their way out of the hundreds of collapses and eruptions caused by the explosion.

  “Did you see what I saw?” Prowl asked. He noted that Jazz was digging himself out of the pit floor, too, looking not too much worse for the fall. Lucky, Prowl thought. Jazz was always lucky.

  “If you’re asking me,” Ironhide answered, “I saw the Requiem Blaster blow away a big piece of this junk heap. Along with Optimus and Megatron.”

  “Find Optimus!” Prowl commanded. The Autobots surged toward the wreckage.

  Up another part of the slope, a Decepticon combat team led by Lugnut was clambering toward the burning site of the main impact. Bumblebee screamed a challenge and charged ahead of them, heedless as always of his own safety when the outcome of the battle was still in the balance. The rest of the Autobots followed. Bu
t where, Jazz asked himself, looking around and up at Silverbolt’s rejoined aerial dance with the Seekers, was Nexus Prime?

  He decided he would be happier when all of the Thirteen left this universe permanently and did whatever they were going to do without bothering ordinary people. All the same, though, he wished they would stick around at least through this fight.

  On the pirate ship, every bot got his balance in the aftermath of the incredible discharge of energy from the Requiem Blaster. The viewport showed a scene of massive destruction. The bridge was gone, and the canyon mouth as well. Everything that could burn was burning.

  Yet Junkion still existed.

  This should not be, Wreck-Gar thought.

  Apparently the pirate captain was just as perplexed. “Sandstorm! Why is that junkheap still there?”

  “Don’t know, Captain,” Sandstorm said. “Seems like everything should be gone, but the two Cybertronians … I think they’re still there.”

  “AAARRRGGGHHH!” The cry, torn from the captain’s throat, appeared to make him feel better. “Whatever weapon that is, we want it, too!” the captain roared. “Prepare for boarding!”

  “Boarding the ship?” Sandstorm asked. “Which one?”

  “Boarding the planet!” the captain thundered. “Go forth my Star Seekers!”

  Megatron reared up from the wreckage at the base of the bridge, shaking off the flaming and molten bits of Junkion that clung to his plating. He didn’t look frightened or even enraged. He looked ecstatic, as if he had been granted a vision he had never expected to have or had never imagined was possible. He looked down at Optimus Prime, who also was digging himself out. “Brother!” he called out. “I thank you for being so close to me!”

  Optimus Prime looked up at him with confusion … and then with dawning realization and fear. Megatron turned and began gesturing wildly to the Autobots, who were closing toward him while fighting a rearguard action against pursuing Decepticons. In the air, Skywarp, the late-arriving Starscream, and Thundercracker—as well as the cursed Silverbolt, whom no other Seeker seemed to be able to finish off—were all just getting their flight bearings back after the astronomical discharge of energy from the Requiem Blaster.

  Megatron wanted more than ever to add that ship to the Decepticon fleet that would rule the universe. But first he had to get off this trash pile. It would be poetic justice for the exit of the Requiem Blaster to tear Junkion to pieces once and for all.

  From the flames strode the apparent leader of the new bots, sweeping aside the blazing wreckage with a casual backhand stroke of his cutlass. “Meet your doom, bot!” he boomed. “Cybertron left us to die, and Cybertronians will pay!”

  Optimus Prime rose slowly, staggering a little from the fragments lodged in his legs. He raised his sword arm and felt something different about the weight on the end of his arm. He looked.

  The Cyber Caliber was gone, blown away by the explosion. He looked around for it and did not see it. But there was no time to look. The echoes of what had happened during the explosion still rang in his mind. “Autobots!” he cried. “To the Ark!”

  At the same time, Megatron called out to the Decepticons: “To the Nemesis, to ship! Decepticons, we are leaving!” He clambered up the slope to the truncated end of the bridge and turned to meet Starscream, who typically shuttled him to the Nemesis in these situations, but instead of Starscream, he found himself looking at a shifter, some bot who never stayed in the same form for more than half a cycle.

  “Makeshift,” he said. “You have done well here, but it is time to go. Get on the ship or stay here.”

  Nexus Prime leaned in close. “Do I know you, bot?” he asked, looking hard at Megatron’s face.

  “No,” Megatron said, wary now. “And unless you’re Makeshift, you better step back before I step you back.”

  Nexus Prime shoved Megatron away. “You remind me of a bot I once knew, and despised, and in the end should have killed,” he said. “Do not remind me of him.”

  “I am Megatron of Cybertron, and I will do what I will,” Megatron said, leveling his fusion cannon at this impostor.

  “And if I do what I will,” Nexus Prime said, “you will not leave this battlefield alive. Bot.”

  “But I will leave this battlefield any way I want to, shifter,” Megatron said. “Because maybe you could kill me and maybe you couldn’t; I never met the bot who could. But if you are that bot and you take the time to do it, you’ll never get off this junkpile alive.”

  He pointed toward the far angular edge of the planetoid, where the battle cruiser hung over the Ark and drew it ever closer. “You’re not a Decepticon,” Megatron said. “And I don’t say this often, but I wouldn’t trust you to be one. That makes you an Autobot. You want the rest of the Autobots going with that ship over there?”

  Nexus Prime looked at Megatron. “What’s on your mind, bot?”

  What was on Megatron’s mind was a fragment of a vision he had been given. In the moment when he and Optimus Prime had both been struck by the Requiem Blaster—with both of them so close to the Cyber Caliber—Megatron had been granted a momentary glimpse into Optimus Prime’s mind.

  Perhaps the librarian had been given the same glimpse into Megatron’s mind, but if so, Megatron was perfectly willing to bet that he had gotten the better end of the deal. Because whatever the librarian had seen, Megatron had—for the briefest span of time, a time that made a nanoklik look like an orbit—known where the AllSpark had gone.

  He didn’t have a name. He didn’t even have a distance. But he had a bearing.

  He knew which way to go … and Optimus Prime did not know he knew.

  I was chasing you, librarian, Megatron thought, but now you can chase me.

  The shifter was gone suddenly. Didn’t want to fight, after all, Megatron thought. No bot ever really does when they come face to face with me. He swept into the Nemesis’s bridge to find the Decepticon crew reduced by one. “Slipstream never returned?” he demanded.

  “Haven’t seen her since she went out after Optimus Prime,” Starscream said. “She’s probably drifting around here somewhere.”

  Megatron thought for a moment. He hated to lose a Seeker, but the AllSpark was more important than any one Decepticon.

  Except himself, of course.

  “She’ll have to become a Junkion,” Megatron said with a cruel smile. “I’m sure they’ll welcome her if she can show she knows how to dig trash and weld it together.”

  The Nemesis lifted away from the surface of what was left of Junkion.

  “Megatron,” Starscream said. “We’ve got the Autobots down. We should finish them.”

  “We are going after the AllSpark,” Megatron said.

  “But we don’t know where the AllSpark is,” said Starscream.

  Megatron tapped the side of his head. “We do now,” he said, neglecting to clarify the part about not having any idea of its distance. The direction was good enough, and the head start over the Autobots was critical.

  He pointed ahead at the three remaining Space Bridges. “Now, let’s go.”

  “Do any of those work?” Starscream asked. “The Junkions took the one apart that the Autobots used.”

  Megatron shrugged. Whether they did or didn’t, it was an even battlefield. “Let’s find out. Now!”

  Then, in front of the Nemesis’s bridge viewports, a huge cluster of what looked like Energon reservoirs floated into view.

  At the same moment, Starscream said, “Megatron, the Requiem Blaster is starting to overheat.”

  “Eject it.” Megatron said without hesitation. He briefly enjoyed the astonishment on Starscream’s face before adding, “With what I have learned from Optimus Prime, we no longer have need of it. Let us go.”

  “Eject it? You’re not serious,” Starscream said.

  “I said eject it!” Megatron slammed a fist onto the bridge console. “Get it away from us before it touches that reactor or overloads on its own! NOW!”

  Thundercracker
punched in the necessary commands.

  There were two last things Nexus Prime needed to do.

  As the Decepticons melted away, he stood near the edge of the pit. Down below was Optimus Prime. Approaching Nexus Prime, the pirate leader kicked aside bits of wreckage from the discharge of the Requiem Blaster.

  Nexus Prime stood his ground and held up a hand to arrest the pirate captain’s progress.

  “That is going to be your last action, bot,” the pirate captain said.

  “I find that assertion ludicrous,” Nexus Prime said. “Permit me to explain the situation. You are going to leave because you bring chaos and because your misunderstanding caused misery, disorder, and death. In other circumstances I would kill you, but I sense you will yet have a role to play in the question of the AllSpark.”

  “The role I have to play right now is to kill you,” the pirate captain growled, as he brought his cutlass down in a vertical swipe that would have bisected Nexus Prime had he not been Nexus Prime.

  But it didn’t. No shock of impact ran up the pirate’s arm. No gush of fluids came sluicing out of Nexus Prime’s ravaged body. The pirate captain still held his sword, and Nexus Prime still stood where he had. Only for a moment, as the blade had passed through the space occupied by Nexus Prime, he had simply divided into two.

  Nexus Prime held up a sword that had not been there a moment before. “This is the Chaos Edge,” Nexus Prime said. “I will kill you with it if you do not return to your ship and release your grip on the Ark.”

  He made a gesture, and a hole tore open in reality. On the other side of it was the pirate ship’s bridge.

  “I am giving you one chance, just this one,” Nexus Prime said. “You would be wise to take it.”

  Initially the Autobots were jubilant at the sight of Megatron abandoning the battlefield. They had no idea why, but this was the first time they had tasted victory since well before leaving Cybertron. However it had happened, it had happened.

  Alone among them, Optimus Prime was not ecstatic. “Autobots!” he commanded sharply. “To the Ark! The time for celebration is not yet!”