The Veiled Threat (15 page)

Payload saw it coming. Realizing instantly that he could never escape the flood in his present terrestrial guise, he started to change shape. The wall of water struck him as he was only partway through the process. Unable to get a grip on anything solid, the Decepticon found himself picked up like a leaf and swept downstream. In the crazed, roiling current he was sometimes shoved upward toward the surface of the flood only to be thrust immediately straight downward by its roiling currents. By the time he had fully shifted into his normal shape he had been slammed time and time again into the unyielding rock of the riverbed. His cognitive systems had been battered
to the point that it was all he could do to maintain consciousness.

High above, Starscream saw the flood race madly down the canyon. For an instant he felt the triumph rush through him, only to have the sensation turn to fury as he saw that the dam was still intact. At almost the same time he lost Macerator’s signal. When Payload also failed to respond to repeated requests to report, the frustrated Decepticon considered diving and strafing the Autobots who were clearly visible and exposed atop the dam itself. But as soon as he dove within range of them, he would likewise find himself in range of their own weapons. This was neither the time nor the place to confront the despised Optimus and his deluded companions with a final challenge.

“Get out of there!” he broadcast crossly to Dropkick. “Macerator has ceased all contact and I cannot raise Payload. Retreat to the agreed-upon meeting place!”

“I comply, Starscream.”

Below, Dropkick dodged a blow from Ironhide, backed up, and altered. As the Autobot weapons master fired, his adversary spun and shot away. The explosive shell detonated just behind the squealing pickup truck. Dropping into a crouch, Ironhide sighted along the top of the dam and prepared to unleash a stream of missiles in the wake of the fleeing Decepticon. A metal hand came down on his arm.

“No,” Optimus told him. “You cannot shoot. The far side is crowded with humans, and our friends are somewhere over there as well. Anything you fire that misses is liable to kill others.”

Temptation tugged hard at the veteran Autobot. “I have a clear line of sight, Optimus.”

“Clear enough so that you can be sure every shot will hit home instead of streaking past?”

Ironhide hesitated. Then, muttering under his breath, he straightened. His gaze followed the accelerating, fleeing Decepticon. “It pains my internals to let him escape. There are debts yet to be paid.”

“I feel the same.” Optimus gestured behind him. “But we cannot risk the injury to many humans.” Tilting his head back, he scanned the sky. “Starscream has fled. We have won the day, and struck a heavy blow against our enemies. Macerator is dead and Payload is at least injured.” He nodded in the direction of the escaping Decepticon. “Dropkick cannot do much harm on his own, and we will eventually run him down.” Looking to the far side, he found himself studying the terrain with increasing anxiety. “I see Salvage, but where is Ratchet?”

“That old complainer?” Ironhide grunted derisively. “Probably sitting in the shade watching the battle and waiting to see who gets hurt.”

Dropkick, in the meantime, did not know why Optimus Prime and Ironhide were not firing at him, but he was more than willing to accept that which he did not understand. The encounter had not gone as planned. Macerator was gone, probably killed, and Payload had failed to bring down the human construction. But he, Dropkick, was still alive and relatively undamaged. The ruined gateway lay just ahead. As he drew near, traveling at high speed in his terrestrial guise, a few of the surviving human soldiers noted his approach and resumed shooting at him.
The occasional small-caliber slug bounced harmlessly off his exterior.

Then he noticed that a single human was running
toward
him. Deranged, he wondered, or simply brainless? For a moment he considered shifting his course just enough to one side to run the figure down. It would provide some small measure of recompense to see it go flying, broken and dead, to the pavement. But Starscream had ordered him to save himself, and he reluctantly decided to hold to the quickest course.

As he sped past the human, the figure thrust something toward him. It could do no damage, of course, and so he ignored it. Then he felt himself lurch as a pulse slammed sharply against the driver’s-side door.

On the access road just off the dam, the pickup truck skewed wildly in surprise, barely regaining control as it started up the first slope that led out of the canyon. Halfway up it changed. Looking down at himself, Dropkick saw the small dark spot where the end of the stick had contacted his epidermis. He felt slightly—drunk. Too startled to retrace his route and confront his unexpectedly unsettling attacker, he pressed one hand to the discoloration and resumed working his way up out of the canyon. With each step he increased his stride. Soon he was out of sight. But he would not forget what had happened.

Below and behind, Salvage had rolled up alongside a panting, sweating Kaminari. She held her weapon at her side. Depressing a button, the apparatus ceased humming.

“Well struck, Kaminari!” In his excitement Salvage was about to give the female warrior a congratulatory shove, until he remembered that such a push
risked fracturing her fragile human bones. “That’s one Decepticon who will think twice before passing so close to a human.”

She holstered the weapon in the lightweight sling on her back. The sling was actually composed of a single long, flexible linear battery that would recharge the weapon while it rested against her spine.

“Well, it knows what one human with two advanced degrees and training in martial arts can do.” With the Decepticon now out of striking range, she turned her attention back to the gorge. “Ratchet!”

They waited while the battered Autobot climbed up the face of the dam and over the side wall to rejoin them. Safe again among friends, human as well as Autobot, the limping Ratchet proceeded to analyze his own injuries.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he finally announced.

“If I but had a tiny fragment of Allspark for every time I’ve heard you say that.” Ironhide’s tone was gruff as always, but there was no mistaking the affection that highlighted the observation.

Around them, the Zambian guards and technicians were beginning to recover from the shock of the attack. Soldiers attended to their wounded while techs and other personnel embarked on preliminary cleanup efforts. Ratchet turned his gaze skyward.

“What of Starscream?”

“Fled, as is his habit.” In contrast with that of his friend, Optimus’s attention was directed downriver. “We need to find Payload. I’m sure that he’s injured, though to what extent it is impossible to tell. In his terrestrial form he cannot move fast, and among local vehicles he stands out. In full Decepticon mode he
will attract even more attention. If we can get to him before Starscream does, we will be able to rid ourselves of yet another foe.”

“I don’t think Starscream in his local mode is strong enough to lift Payload.” Ironhide had moved up alongside his leader to join him in staring down the gorge. “Certainly not for any distance.”

“A positive thought. We should proceed on that assumption.” Turning, Optimus looked back at his human allies. “Will all of you ride with me this time? Better if Ratchet is left to heal unencumbered.”

“This riverine forest holds many wonders that I would like to examine at length,” Petr began, “but …” He shrugged. “I have a feeling that there will be other opportunities for studying of such things.”

Optimus nodded. “Among my kind learning is also a continuous and unending process. It is one more sign of the cerebral, if not physical, relationship that bonds us together.”

Simmons was only halfway through the copy of the ancient monograph and finding it hard going. Untrained in anthropology or archaeology, he was forced to continuously switch back and forth between the material and a translating codex.

There was so much to learn, he had come to realize. Trying to put things together, to come to some kind of understanding about these alien machines. Despite being dismissed from the service, his interest in the invaders—and they were all invaders to him, Autobots and Decepticons alike—had never flagged.

As chief agent for the now disbanded Sector Seven, he had always been more a man of action than academics. Required reading for his job had usually involved skimming manuals explaining the use of surveillance equipment or surreptitious communications gear. Fieldwork required training in the use of weapons, not library catalogs. Since Sector Seven’s dissolution and replacement by NEST, much of his time had been devoted to working in his mother’s deli. Not that he needed the money: his government pension covered all his basic needs. No, he needed something to do, to occupy his hands and body while his obsession with the aliens occupied his mind. So he
sliced and diced pastrami and brisket instead of the enemies of the United States and the planet.

Were
they enemies? It was one of the mysteries he was trying to unravel. About the Decepticons neither he nor anyone else had any second thoughts. The battle at Mission City had resolved that. It was the Autobots who puzzled him. They claimed to have come to Earth in search of the now vanished Allspark. All well and good. But why remain? Because they had no means of leaving, or because as their leader Optimus Prime claimed their presence was necessary to dissuade further depredations by the Decepticons, who if given the opportunity would make slaves of humanity?

In the convoluted (and sometimes convulsive) mind of former agent Seymour Simmons, something simply didn’t add up. While he was willing to give Prime and the other Autobots the benefit of the doubt, that doubt still remained.

Fortunately, between the Internet and the plethora of libraries and universities in the Greater New York area, he had access to more material than he could hope to process. That did not stop him from devouring everything he could find that he felt bore the slightest relevance to Earth’s new residents. The monograph copy he was currently laboriously deciphering, for example, was ancient Greek. Prior to discovering it, the only thing Simmons knew about ancient Greeks was that a retired couple ran a gyro restaurant down the street from his mother’s deli.

Occasionally he would look up from his work to cast a hopeful query or a casual curse in the direction of the gleaming metal entity that was firmly clamped
to the table in the middle of his basement. Regardless of their nature, comments on his part received no response. What remained of the head of Frenzy sat as stolid and immobile in the center of the table as an overpriced sculpture by Moore or Hirst, and about as comprehensible.

“If you could only talk.” Simmons rubbed at his tired eyes. “You miserable broken excuse for a Rosetta stone. Not your fault that you ended up a cross between a computer and a salad tosser.” In his wilder moments, of which Simmons had always had plenty, he had even considered bringing the alien skull to the deli and mounting it on the wall along with the hundreds of other donated and found objects that decorated the family restaurant.

What secrets the disembodied head must hold, he mused. What revelations, what knowledge. Only by deciphering all it contained might he learn the truth about the two contesting groups of alien robotic lifeforms.

What, after all, did mankind know of them and their origins? Practically nothing except what little Optimus had chosen to divulge. The Autobots had been reluctant to speak of themselves and were even more closemouthed about their advanced technology. Because of the personal relationship he had established from the beginning with one of the Autobots, that smart-ass kid Sam Witwicky probably knew more about them than anyone, and he wasn’t talking, either. In fact, the last Simmons had heard, the kid had turned down all offers to work for the government in favor of going to college. And the authorities couldn’t press him on his choice because doing so
would only compromise further their frantic attempts to cover up the true nature of the alien visitation. Not to mention the fact that if they came down hard on him, he could always go to the media.

So a reluctant government had to back off and watch helplessly as their main interlocutor with the alien visitors headed off to university. Simmons thought it just as well. Though he’d gained a lot of respect for the Witwicky kid in the course of the confrontation with the Decepticons at Mission City, he still could not escape the feeling that the youth was sneering at him behind his back. And as for the kid’s choice in female companionship, the less said the better.

Not that Seymour Simmons was dating anyone better than Witwicky’s foxy car thief. For one thing, he felt he couldn’t spare the time on fripperies like a social life.
Someone
had to try to make sense of what was going on. Someone had to be ready to save the world. In between serving corned beef on rye, of course.

“Without mustard.” Every time he thought of it, his blood pressure rose.

Princeton! The Witwicky kid was going to Princeton. Something didn’t jibe with that, either. The youth’s background, his family history, all pointed to him getting into a local small college, maybe going to a JC first. A state university at best. Not Princeton. Was he channeling Einstein’s ghost? So much to learn, Simmons thought. So much to try and figure out. And that car of the kid’s. It wasn’t talking, either.