Retribution

by David J. Williams

  But Maccadam was taking his own sweet time about it. He went behind the bar and began to pour each of them a cup of oil. That done, he set about cleaning another cup. That cup was already sparkling, but for an old-timer like Maccadam it was as much about the ritual as anything else. He’d been out on the streets, risking his life. Now he needed a few seconds to process everything. Finally he looked up.

  “Shockwave is trying to use Alpha Trion to harness Vector Sigma.”

  Ultra Magnus looked stunned. “I thought Vector Sigma was a legend,” he said.

  “It is,” said Maccadam. “It also happens to be quite real. And every bit as potent as the stories say.”

  “What’s Shockwave intend to do with it?”

  “Whatever he wants, presumably,” Springer said.

  “True,” Maccadam said. “But my contact has heard something more specific—that he’s attempting to build a superweapon. But he didn’t know more than that.”

  Ultra Magnus’s face was grave. “Does your contact know where all this is taking place?”

  “Fortunately, yes.” Maccadam unfurled an electronic map and folded it out across the bar. The screen showed the subbasements beneath Iacon. Maccadam hit a few buttons, and the view of those subbasements shrank toward the minuscule while a larger area below the planetary crust came into focus.

  “He’s down near the core,” the bartender said. “It’s one of the access points to Vector Sigma. Shockwave obviously has been planning this for a while, because he’s constructed an entirely self-sufficient bunker down there with at least two fully functioning Dark Energon refineries.”

  “And we’ve never heard of any of this before?” Jetfire asked. “How could he keep all this under wraps?”

  “Every worker who took part in the construction has been sent to the furnaces.”

  “That slag heap,” said Rack n’ Ruin. Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Shockwave is still down there,” Maccadam told them. “So whatever he’s trying to do, he has yet to succeed. Meaning there’s still time if you hurry.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “This,” Maccadam said, tracing a vertical red line that cut from the basements beneath Shockwave’s tower straight down to his secret bunker. “Shockwave’s personal maglev transport. That’s the most direct route.”

  “So you think we should break into the tower and—”

  “Everything around the tower is too well guarded. No, what I’d recommend doing is breaking into the maglev tunnel a few miles down. Jack one of the trains, travel in style the rest of the way. Otherwise—well, most of that area isn’t even mapped. We don’t know what parts are undercity and what parts are solid rock. You’d never get there in time.”

  “Got it,” Ultra Magnus said. Maccadam rolled up the map and handed it to him.

  That was when all hell broke loose.

  The entire bar shook with the rumble of an explosion right outside. A barrage of shots crashed into the building and would have perforated the walls if they had not armored and reinforced them. Maccadam brought up the security camera feed on the screens to show Decepticons taking up positions in the streets outside.

  “They’ve found us,” he said.

  The blaring of a megaphone sounded from the Decepticon positions. “This is Ratbat, commander of the city garrison. You’re all under arrest. You have thirty seconds to come out with your hands up before we demolish that whole place.”

  “This is all my fault,” Maccadam muttered. “They must have followed me.”

  “Your contact sold you out,” said Rack n’ Ruin.

  “Unlikely, given that he’s been passing me information for years. If they’ve gotten to him, he’s dead, too. No, I tripped a curfew. Or got spotted by a camera.”

  “Or we did,” Ultra Magnus said. “Look, there’s no use in recriminations. We need to get out of here, and we have to do it fast.”

  “Sure, but how?” Springer asked as he gestured at the screen.

  “I’m going to make a call,” Ultra Magnus said.

  RATBAT HAD SET UP HIS COMMAND POST SEVERAL BLOCKS away, well out of line of sight of anyone inside Maccadam’s who might be inclined to take a potshot at the Decepticon forces outside. And he had reason to believe it wasn’t just Maccadam in there, either. If the reports of a Wrecker commando force entering the city were true, it might have holed up there. If that was the case, Ratbat would have good news to tell Shockwave. That was excellent, because Shockwave hated hearing anything else. Ratbat had no intention of telling Shockwave about the Wrecker team until he had it in custody.

  Not that Shockwave was available right now, anyway. He was somewhere deep beneath his tower, engaged in one of his experiments, and had given orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed except in the event of a dire emergency. Which this wasn’t. That suited Ratbat just fine. The less he saw of Shockwave, the better. The two bots had been working together for only a short while now, but Ratbat had quickly come to realize just how unpredictable and dangerous Shockwave was. He almost longed for the days when Megatron was running things.

  Almost.

  “Time’s up,” he said to the Decepticons nearby. “Stand by to commence ground assault.” There was a clanking noise, and several giant Decepticons that looked more like tanks than bots rumbled past as smaller Decepticons scrambled to get out of their way. Gaining speed, the Decepticon assault units roared up toward the door of Maccadam’s like battering rams.

  But suddenly there was a distant shrieking noise, a sound that grew steadily louder, building to an overwhelming level as incoming shells streaked in and hit the leading Decepticons, smashing them to bits and sending pieces of metal flying for hundreds of meters. More shells kept raining down; more bots disintegrated, along with several buildings. Ratbat was still spluttering with shock when his bodyguards seized him and started dragging him away.

  “Who’s firing?” he screamed.

  “It’s coming from outside the city,” yelled one of the bodyguards.

  TWO MILES AWAY, OMEGA SUPREME CONTINUED TO fling all manner of rockets and shells over the walls of Iacon on the precise trajectories that Ultra Magnus had just given him. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for a long time. The only thing more fun than shelling the city was watching the Decepticons get the surprise of their life. He could see lights flashing along the walls, could hear the noise of Klaxons and sirens going off across the city. For several more seconds he was able to continue shelling with total impunity, and then, finally, Decepticon gun turrets along the walls began swiveling in his direction. Ultra Magnus had told him that would be a good time to leave, but as he reversed at full speed back into the wastelands, he switched his attention to those wall turrets, targeting them with withering accuracy. As turret after turret exploded, Omega Supreme permitted himself a moment of grim satisfaction. He just hoped he’d bought Ultra Magnus whatever breathing room his mission needed.

  ULTRA MAGNUS EMERGED CAUTIOUSLY FROM THE BAR and looked around.

  “All clear,” he said.

  “Impressive,” Wheeljack said. The smoke-filled street was littered with craters and smashed Decepticons.

  “They didn’t know what hit them,” said Springer.

  “That’s the way it should be,” Rack n’ Ruin said.

  Jetfire nodded. “Omega Supreme’s a good friend to have.”

  “But not an omnipotent one,” Ultra Magnus said. “We need to move quickly.”

  “Yes, you do,” Maccadam said as he emerged from the bar, locking the door behind him. “They’ll be back shortly.”

  “What about you?” Ultra Magnus asked.

  “I’ll be just fine,” Maccadam said. “Got plenty more places I can lie low. Once the heat dies down, who knows? Maybe I can even sneak back here.”

  He and Ultra Magnus shook hands. “Good luck,” said Maccadam. “Everything depends on you now.”

  “I just pray we still have time,” Ultra Magnus told him.

  Chapter Twenty-seven


  THE WAITING WAS DRIVING EVERYBODY CRAZY.

  The portholes still showed nothing but the black of deep underwater. Hours had passed since the prisoners had been taken into custody by the Sharkticons. They’d spent most of that time in the hold of one of the manta ships, Autobots on one side of the room and Decepticons on the other. Optimus knew that imprisoning them together was a deliberate gesture intended to add insult to injury. Both sides would have to suffer the humiliation of close-quarters incarceration after a fight. No doubt the Quintessons wanted to observe them and file away the reactions. So far there had been no incidents; both sides were still licking their wounds and trying to figure out what had happened. As to what the Quintessons had in store for them, well, that was anybody’s guess, although it didn’t take a genius to figure out it wasn’t going to be pleasant. The reasons the Quintessons would want them alive were few, and every one Optimus could think of gave him a chill. It didn’t help matters that he knew everyone else was thinking the same thing.

  “Optimus.”

  “Yes, Jazz?”

  “Where do you think they’re taking us?”

  “I don’t know. Just stay alert.” Optimus was trying to keep up a good front. His men needed him to be strong. He didn’t need a Matrix of Leadership to tell him that. He wished he’d never had the Matrix in the first place, wished he’d never listened to its siren song of duty, because then he would never have led his people into this mess. Duty had led him astray—or was it glory? Was that the real temptation to which he had succumbed?

  “Why do I feel so weak?” Rodimus asked. “I can barely move.”

  “I can’t activate my weapons,” Prowl said while trying to pop his Investigator Special. Perceptor pointed to the glowing lights embedded in the ceiling.

  “I think they’re using an energy-dampening field,” Perceptor said. “I hate to say this, but they were probably able to tune it to our specific physiology because of the scans we let them take of Optimus. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry …”

  “No sense in crying over spilled oil, Perceptor.” Ratchet was trying to console his friend but wasn’t really succeeding. “Right, Optimus?”

  Optimus chose his words carefully. “The Quintessons are masters at blending fact with fiction. They tricked us into disregarding our own instincts.”

  “You sound like you know these Quintessons well.”

  “Not well enough. They managed to hide my own memories from me. I knew them millions of years ago, back in the days when I was just Orion Pax. They enslaved our world—”

  “They admitted as much,” Ratchet interrupted.

  “They ruled us mercilessly. Eventually Sentinel Prime rose up and defeated them, drove them from Cybertron. We thought they would never return. We forgot them and went on with our lives. But they seem to have forgotten nothing.”

  Jazz couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why didn’t the Matrix alert you to any of this?”

  “They’ve been manipulating it, Jazz. They drew us here, making us think the AllSpark lay somewhere along this vector.”

  “They got to the Matrix?” Ratchet asked. “Then we are truly lost.”

  “We’re lost only if we believe it,” Optimus said. “And right now I choose not to.”

  Perceptor’s brow furrowed. “So where is the AllSpark?”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” Optimus told him. He didn’t even want to speculate; he was all too conscious of unseen listening devices all around. “Right now we need to focus on the here and now. Quintessons hide their moves within moves, bury their plans within plans. There’s some larger game in play here. It can’t just be about the trap they set for us. There’s something more to it.”

  “Even if there is, that doesn’t explain why they would blow up their own temple,” Rodimus said.

  “What makes you think it really was a temple?” Jazz asked.

  “I know what happened,” Bulkhead answered as he staggered to his feet. “Those Decepticons tried to kill us!” At the sound of the challenge, Thundercracker stood up and wobbled toward Ironhide. A few Decepticons behind him started to stir.

  “You miserable scum! You were the one who tried to kill our lord Megatron!” Thundercracker rasped.

  “Say that again, you scrap heap!” Ironhide yelled. But Optimus managed to get between the would-be combatants.

  “Enough!” he said. “Fighting among ourselves isn’t going to change anything!”

  Megatron’s laughter rang out. “Always the voice of reason, aren’t you, librarian? Did it even occur to you that maybe you’re responsible for the situation we are in? You were the one who fell for this whole peace nonsense in the first place.”

  “Whereas you just planned to betray us all,” said Ironhide.

  “Shut up, fool; I’m talking to your sniveling excuse for a leader. Optimus, would it surprise you to know that the Curator came to me and spoke at length about how weak you are? How much contempt he has for you?”

  “I’m sure the Curator told you all sorts of things,” Optimus said drily. “And you were far too eager to listen.”

  Megatron shook his head. “Don’t try to change the subject, clerk. Wasn’t your Matrix of ‘Leadership’ supposed to keep you from making these kinds of rookie mistakes?”

  Optimus was too weary to indulge in recriminations. “You’re in the same cell with the rest of us, Megatron.”

  “Not for long.” But Megatron’s bravado rang hollow in that cramped hold. Some of the Autobots laughed openly at him. Optimus simply shook his head sadly.

  “Megatron, don’t you realize who the Quintessons are? They’re the very same race who sent you to toil in the mines millions of years ago! If I’m a fool for believing them, then what does that make you?”

  Megatron smashed his fist against the floor. “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  The manta ray ship suddenly ground up against something solid.

  “We’re docking!” Perceptor said. There was a rush to the portholes on either side as Autobots and Decepticons crowded around them, trying to get a look at their destination. The ship had surfaced in a massive undersea grotto, a gigantic military staging area. Multiple industrial cargo elevators ran back and forth between other manta ships while maglev cargo trains hauled Energon and weapons out of the room and into tunnels. Sharkticons were everywhere, some standing guard and others loading. Still others stood in long lines, where they were being issued with weapons and supplementary armor before marching into the open holds of the manta ships.

  “Looks like they’re getting ready for a war,” Rodimus said.

  “Sure,” Ramjet said, “but with whom?”

  “The Sharkticons in this room already outnumber us twenty to one,” Dirge muttered. “They didn’t need all this for us.”

  “So who are they planning on fighting?” Ramjet repeated.

  “Someone else on this planet?” Rodimus suggested.

  “I think they’ve got this planet locked down pretty tight.”

  “So who are their neighboring star systems?” asked Jazz.

  “We didn’t see any,” Optimus said.

  “Because you didn’t look,” Megatron said. “You were so eager to rush in and find the AllSpark, so trusting in your precious Matrix. That’s Optimus’s leadership for you, everybody! Fling the most important artifact in history into the cosmos just so you can spend your entire life running around looking for it!”

  “While you’d rather just spend your entire life running your mouth,” Ironhide said.

  “Impudent whelp!” Megatron snarled. “Your days are numbered!”

  But even as he said it, the holding cell doors slid open to reveal a squad of Sharkticons wielding laser whips.

  “Check out the welcome wagon,” Rodimus snarked. His comment was immediately met with a laser whip that lashed out and sent him sprawling on the ground.

  “NOT TO TALK!” a Sharkticon screamed at him. Another cracked its whip and pointe
d to the open hatch.

  “YOU, THIS WAY! NOW!” Both Autobots and Decepticons fell into line as their Sharkticon guards marched them out of the manta ship and onto the docks, where a maglev train awaited, its hatches open.

  “Looks like we’re going for another ride,” Ironhide said. A Sharkticon guard raised his whip threateningly.

  “YOU GET IN! NOW!”

  As they filed aboard, Optimus looked up and saw the huge Sharkticon general overseeing the entire process from an observation deck on his flagship. For a moment he and Optimus met each other’s gaze, and then Optimus stepped inside to join his companions. The Autobots and the Decepticons were loaded into separate train cars this time. That came as a big relief to the former, especially because the Decepticons were starting to be less than cooperative as they reached their designated car on the train. Megatron’s voice boomed and echoed through the cave.

  “I demand to know where you are taking us!”

  Megatron got his answer in the form of several laser whips cracking over his head.

  “SHUT UP! MOVE ON TRAIN! NOW!” At least some things were consistent, Optimus thought. Even in the face of the unknown and adversity Megatron remained a pompous scrap pile. But Optimus was thinking that maybe—just maybe—there might be a way to turn that arrogance to their advantage.

  THE TRAIN SPED THROUGH A ROCKY TUNNEL FOR A COUPLE more hours. Optimus did his best to maintain his bearings, but with all his systems frozen at such low power, it was all he could do to keep from falling asleep. At least this time they didn’t have to spend the trip watching their backs for Decepticon treachery, though perhaps leaving the Autobots alone with their thoughts was even worse. Optimus was glad when he detected a change in the train incline, which sloped ever more steeply, rising steadily from the level of the seabed. He went to a window to get a better look, half expecting to see that they were back in the water again. To learn that this train was partially aquatic would have been the least surprising thing that had happened that day.

  But he was wrong.

  Bleak landscape stretched off in all directions, punctuated by distant mountains, their peaks shrouded in low-hanging clouds and mist. A steady rain beat down. The only signs of life were overland power lines and pipes that crisscrossed the barren lands. Huge lightning rods rose up from the rails at regular intervals, no doubt to counter the constant storms. It was one of the most desolate wildernesses Optimus had ever seen, and it went on for mile after mile, until finally the weather began to clear a little and through the clouds up ahead Optimus caught sight of a distant city skyline.