by David, Peter
“Watch out, watch out!” Sam shouted unnecessarily, because the sports car and and the Camaro were already responding, darting out of the fire truck’s way. Immediately Sam saw the wisdom of Sentinel’s actions: He was clearing the way for his protectors to be better able to move into defensive positions.
The sports car and the Corvette dropped back, adjusting their speed so that they were coming up alongside the Suburbans. The Autobot vehicles switched out of Stealth Force mode, their weapons coming online. Matching the speed of the Suburbans, the two sports cars opened fire. The Suburbans swerved wildly, trying to avoid the weapons blasts that chewed up the highway around them. The sports cars crisscrossed, coming at the Suburbans now from opposite sides, firing again and this time scoring hits on the enemy vehicles.
The Suburbans abruptly seemed to lose their taste for battle. They suddenly cut hard to the left, approaching the median railing. There was no convenient break in the median strip for them, but that didn’t slow them. Instead they vaulted upward, changing in midleap to creatures that looked like jungle cats. It happened so quickly that if Sam had blinked, he would have missed it. And when they landed on the other side of the railing, they instantly changed back into cars. With a screech of tires, they tore off down I-66 in the other direction.
But the Autobots were not inclined to let them get away all that easily. Sam didn’t know whether it was because, after many months of their mortal enemies having disappeared from the landscape, the Autobots were eager for a battle or if they were filled with indignation that some Dreads had dared—dared—to assail someone as revered as Sentinel. Whichever the reason, they weren’t about to let the Decepticons simply go on their way unmolested.
One moment they were a sports car and a Corvette; the next they had left their car forms behind and changed into their formidable robot bodies. They easily leaped the median strip and took off after the fleeing Decepticons.
iii
Crowbar and Hatchet, the two remaining Dreads, moved as quickly as they could, fully aware that the Autobots were bearing down on them.
Mirage and Sideswipe, skating rapidly, came up behind them. Mirage cast a glance toward his battle mate. “Can you keep up with my speed?” he said.
“Easily.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want you to miss the fight … presuming you have the heart for it,” he said with just a hint of a challenge.
“I hate the notion of war,” Sideswipe said, “but I love the thrill of battle.”
With that, Sideswipe actually pulled ahead of Mirage slightly, drawing closer to the Decepticon.
Sideswipe readied the massive swords on his arms to slice at his enemy, but he never had the opportunity. A blast from Mirage’s arm cannon ripped right past him and slammed into the speeding Crowbar, striking him broadside. The car spun out, flipping end over end.
“I had that one!” Sideswipe turned back to look at Mirage with irritation.
And then Mirage yelled, “Duck!”
Sideswipe turned just in time to see that directly in his path there was an overpass. It was high enough for cars or even trucks but not high enough to accommodate two robots over fifteen feet tall.
The tumbling Dread slammed into one of the concrete supports of the overpass just before Sideswipe and Mirage got there. Sideswipe leaped upward just as Mirage bent his knees and ducked his head. Over and under went the Autobots and then continued their pursuit of the Decepticon Hatchet.
They were operating on the assumption that Crowbar had been put thoroughly out of commission by the impact of the crash.
They were, as it turned out, wrong.
The Dread had used its skills to make the damage it had sustained look worse than it really was. The instant they were out of sight, Crowbar snapped out of his “crumbled” heap of an appearance and took off.
He was heading the wrong way on the highway.
Oncoming cars honked and tires screeched and drivers flung their vehicles to either side to avoid a head-on collision while the Dread continued on its path. Within seconds it had overtaken both Bumblebee and the rumbling red fire engine that was Sentinel and gone past them.
Crowbar prepared for his run at the single Autobot that had been left to guard Sentinel.
iv
Sam was just starting to relax, with Bumblebee having pulled alongside the greatest warrior in the history of the Autobots, leading Sam to believe that the danger was past. Within minutes they would reach NEST headquarters, and everything would be fine.
Then he saw a Decepticon go ripping past them on the opposite side of the road, and things seemed less than fine.
He watched in horror as the Decepticon kept going, leaving an array of swerved cars and multiple crashes in its wake.
“Houston, we have a problem,” came over the radio.
“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”
Sam thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. That perhaps the Dread, realizing that it was overmatched, was simply attempting to escape in the most damaging way possible. That would certainly be consistent with Decepticon thinking: Whenever possible, even when retreating, be sure to inflict maximum carnage.
“Carnage,” Sam said aloud, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation, he chuckled. “Car-nage. Get it, Bee? That was …” Then he shook his head. “Y’ know what? Never mind. It wasn’t that … funny …”
His voice trailed off.
Crowbar had doubled back and was heading toward them.
Straight toward them.
“Ah, Bumblebee …?” Sam said nervously.
Bumblebee chose not to reply with either his broken voice or via the radio. Instead he let his actions speak for him.
He sped up.
At that moment, Sam suddenly found himself remembering his high school driver’s ed course. He had studied the manual cover to cover and had been impressed by the length and detail in which the manual discussed all the rules of the road. But what had struck him as particularly memorable at the time was a section notable for its brevity. It was the chapter that talked about head-on collisions. By contrast, for instance, the material about three-point turns went on for two pages and the part about how to compensate for rain-slicked roads was even longer.
But the chapter on head-on collisions said this and only this:
Head-on collisions should be avoided at all costs. Chances of survival are not good.
That was it. Fifteen words that said it all. Do whatever is necessary to make sure that you and another vehicle don’t come face to face at high speeds.
Granted, the book hadn’t been written with the idea that your car might actually be a robot warrior and you weren’t going to be given a good deal of say in the matter, but still …
“Bumblebee!” Sam shouted, his voice cracking in fear. “Slow down!”
Bumblebee ignored him. Or perhaps he didn’t, if one could term doing the exact opposite of what you were told ignoring the speaker. Rather than slow down, he accelerated even more. Sam watched in horror as the speedometer rocketed to well in excess of a hundred miles per hour.
And the Dread showed no signs of being inclined to peel off.
He had one final remembrance from his past: his mother telling him, when he was a child, that it was always important to wear clean underwear when you go out because what if you should be in a car accident and they wind up taking you to the hospital? Did you want the doctors laughing at your dirty underwear? Of course not.
Sam, gripping the wheel as tightly as possible, instinctively pushed himself as far back in the seat as he could. As he did, he couldn’t help seeing the flaw in his mother’s advice. Rescue crews were going to extract him from the twisted yellow metal wreckage that was going to be his coffin, and his parents would come pulling up to the hospital in that ghastly RV of theirs, and they would go running in and be confronted by a doctor who would look at them sadly and inform them that the paramedics were busy scraping the remains of their son into a sandwich-size Baggie, and if they wouldn’
t mind waiting a few minutes, they could take him with them. And his mother would ask about the only thing that really mattered at that point: “Was he wearing clean underwear?” And the doctor would say, “Well … he might have been before the crash. But afterward? Not so much.”
And as that entire worst-case scenario went through Sam’s mind, Bumblebee’s cannons came online and unleashed a furious barrage straight at the oncoming Decepticon.
If having a head-on collision with another car was a surefire recipe for disaster, so too was having a head-on collision with Cybertronian mortar shells. The cannon fire struck Crowbar straight on while he was barely yards away, and this time the Decepticon was unable to engage in a clever subterfuge to make the damage look less than it was. Instead, the direct hit from Bumblebee’s cannons tore through him, and Crowbar was blown to pieces. Debris flew in all directions, and a ball of flame erupted in their path. But Bumblebee went straight through it without slowing down, moving so quickly that none of the flame had a chance to attach itself to the Autobot’s exterior. He pushed right past stray bouncing bits of debris, and seconds later the road ahead of them was clear.
Sam let out a sigh of relief that started from somewhere around his ankles. “I love this car,” he said softly.
Suddenly the voices of Hall and Oates came over the radio. “Whoa oh, here she comes. Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up …”
Immediately Sam glanced in the rearview and moaned. “Oh, you gotta be kidding.”
The remaining Dread, the one that had been behind them, had doubled back. It was now coming up fast, nearly matching Bumblebee’s speed. Mirage and Sideswipe were behind it, Mirage firing off blasts from his arm cannon and Sideswipe from his big guns. But Hatchet was swerving deftly, avoiding every blast while closing the distance between itself and Bumblebee.
Every second that passed brought the Dread closer still, but Mirage and Sideswipe were getting closer as well. Sam was never the greatest at math, but he tried to guesstimate the distances and realized that Mirage and Sideswipe were going to overtake the Dread before it managed to catch up with Bumblebee.
Apparently Hatchet realized it as well.
In what could only be termed a final act of desperation, Hatchet shifted himself into his full robot form and, with a furious screech of anger, fired two missiles.
They hurtled through the air, locked on to Bumblebee.
If Bumblebee had not had a human passenger, dealing with the missiles would have been less problematic. But with Sam on board, it became far more of a challenge.
Sam no longer had his hands on the wheel. He had turned completely around in his seat and was watching in wide-eyed horror as the missiles converged on him.
Brains popped up from the back, glanced around, took one look at what was coming, and without hesitation leaped out the window. He hit the ground and bounced along the asphalt, skidding to a stop as the missiles hurtled past him.
“Thanks for nothing, you little coward!” Sam shouted, and then he saw that the missiles were almost upon him. Moving as fast as he was, jumping out was not an option. The flesh would have been shredded right off his body.
The missiles were almost upon them. They had seconds remaining at most.
And suddenly Sam Witwicky was airborne.
Bumblebee had shifted into his robot form and, using his momentum, had hurled Sam into the air. Thanks to the laws of physics, Sam continued with his forward motion even though he was no longer in the car. Then, in an acrobatic flip that would have qualified him for the Cybertron troupe of Cirque du Soleil, Bumblebee leaped high and somersaulted in the air.
The missiles, which had been tracking him when he was car-sized, streaked right under him.
Sam continued to scream as he began to fall, and then his scream ended in a startled gasp as he landed in Bumblebee’s outstretched arms.
Immediately the missiles whipped around in a midair U-turn and reacquired their target, which was now considerably larger. They flew straight at Bumblebee’s chest.
Seeing them coming, Bumblebee promptly altered his mode back into the Camaro at lightning speed, tucking the terrified human into the driver’s seat as he did so. Once again the target changed shape faster than the missiles could adjust, and they zipped right past the roof of the speeding vehicle.
Witnessing all this happening in a matter of seconds, Hatchet let out a howl of outrage. Then he let out a howl of a very different sort as Sideswipe got close enough to bring his sword sweeping down and through. It sliced right through the Dread, cutting him into two discrete pieces. They started tumbling to either side.
Mirage, right behind him, immediately plucked both halves of the Decepticon out of the way. Then with swift underhand motions, as if he were bowling two balls simultaneously, Mirage sent the two sections of Hatchet directly at the missiles that had missed Bumblebee twice and were now seeking to acquire a new target.
Hatchet’s remains provided that target as, thanks to Mirage’s perfect aim, the two halves impacted with one of the missiles each, causing them to detonate instantly. Mirage and Sideswipe sped around the explosions—just beyond the blast radius—and emerged without so much as a dent in the fender.
“Hey!” Brains shouted, gesticulating wildly from the side of the road. “A little help here!”
Sideswipe ignored him, but Mirage, somewhat against his better judgment, slowed just enough to scoop up the irritating little robot. He held Brains up to his face and said, “Remember what you just saw in case you ever think about switching sides back to the Decepticons.”
“Message received,” Brains said. “Loud and clear, at quite a considerable decibel level, I might add. Want to know exactly how many decibels it was?”
“No,” Mirage said, and, changing back into his sports car mode, stuck Brains into his interior.
Meanwhile, in the driver’s seat of Bumblebee, Sam sat paralyzed, his chest seizing up. It was only when Sting and the Police started singing, “Every breath you take,” over the radio that he did, in fact, remember to breathe. He let it all out in a husky gasp. He waited until his heart rate dropped to something approximating normal and then finally managed to get out a sentence.
“Please,” he said, “don’t ever do that again.”
v
(They think they are safe. The Autobots believe that they have outmaneuvered the Decepticons.)
(They are fools. They have no comprehension of the scope of the Decepticons’ plans. They have no idea of the forces arrayed against them.)
(Do they honestly believe that all this time has passed and the Decepticons have merely remained dormant? That what is happening now is something that the Autobots can control?)
(No. Every step of the way has been carefully planned and thought through. Yes, there are some casualties. There will always be casualties. But those losses have been factored into the overall equations and are acceptable within the parameters of a successful mission.)
(The open assault on the convoy heading for NEST headquarters has been thwarted, with no casualties to the Autobots. The irritating human Simmons, however, will no longer be a factor, so that is something, at least.)
(But more Dreads are being dispatched to intercept them. They may succeed. They may not. It is irrelevant. The point is to keep the Autobots confused and off balance and given no time to think ahead. Enemies who are merely reacting cannot act. Enemies who are on the defensive cannot take the offensive.)
(And those defenses must be spread as thin as possible.)
(And so the attacks will come from all sides to draw them off, to distract them. They were fools to set up their headquarters so close to a populous area such as Washington, D.C. Were they in a desert, inflicting collateral damage during a fight would be problematic. But by focusing an assault on the nation’s capital itself, the Autobots’ determination to protect humanity—and their weakness for the human race—can be fully exploited. They will not know where to look first.)
(When an enemy does n
ot know where to look, it becomes that much easier to slip in from behind.)
(The convergence begins.)
vi
Alarms were screaming inside NEST, and soldiers, who had practiced drills so frequently that many had started to believe the real thing would never come, ran to their stations to be ready to launch into battle.
Colonel Lennox, for whom the days of sitting around in desolate offices chasing down pointless leads now seemed very far away indeed, sprinted down a catwalk, snapping out information and orders to his aides even as he strapped on his combat gear. “We’ve got Decepticons converging on Washington! Optimus is at Andrews! Get him back here, now! We need to guard Sentinel! Move every NEST team out and spread through Washington! Make a perimeter and send word that if POTUS and V-POTUS aren’t at secure locations, now’s the time to get them there!”
One of his aides ran up with a telephone, looking reluctant to say what he had to say but having no choice. “Colonel? It’s Mearing.”
Oh, God. The woman had called him every two minutes since Sam Witwicky had shown up in D.C. telling her what was going on. The fact that she had immediately informed Lennox and put NEST on alert was, naturally, greatly appreciated. The fact that she kept calling back, as if she didn’t trust him to handle matters, was not. He grabbed the phone. “Lennox.”
“I’m five minutes out. I won’t come in the front; it’ll be faster to go to the back NEST gate.”
“The area isn’t secure, ma’am. Decepticon Dreads have been reported in the immediate vicinity.”
“Then send Autobots out to deal with them, Colonel. That’s what they’re for.”
“I was about to, ma’am, but I got interrupted by a phone call,” he said.
“Your point is taken, Colonel, but I want a sitrep immediately. And I’m not a ma’am—”
Lennox snapped shut the phone, dropped it on the floor, and stepped on it as hard as he could. The crunching sound it made was extremely satisfying. “Scramble Ironhide, Ratchet, and the Twins.”