Transformers: Retribution (31 page)

Somewhere else on Cybertron was.

“Impossible,” he breathed.

His fingers flew over a keyboard; a schematic of the entire planet appeared on the screen. It was a simple enough matter to map things out from there, to track the source precisely: a burning line that cut through the equator of Cybertron, a line that could represent only one thing … something that was no longer functional … something that
couldn’t
be functional.

And yet it was.

“The space bridge,”
he whispered.

An explosion shook the room. The vault doors at the far end of the chamber blasted open. Shockwave looked up to see a figure standing in that doorway.

It was Ultra Magnus.

“This ends now,” he said.

“With your death!” Shockwave yelled. He waved a hand; Insecticons and drones swarmed from the walls, moving straight in at Ultra Magnus. But as they did so, four other Wreckers appeared in the doorway behind Ultra Magnus: Wheeljack, Jetfire, Springer, and some misbegotten dual-bot Shockwave vaguely remembered from one of his less successful experiments. As all of them opened fire, Shockwave ducked behind Alpha Trion; that was the only place in the room that was comparatively safe. But only for a moment, because Shockwave was under no illusions about the outcome of the firefight now raging through the chamber. His guards didn’t stand a chance. He had no idea how these interlopers had managed to get in there. This bunker was supposed to be impregnable. But Shockwave hadn’t lasted this long by believing the hype of defense contractors. That was why he’d insisted on a final addition during the construction,
and then had taken the liberty of destroying the bots who’d built it for him, wiping the data off every grid. Because what was a command bunker without a secret escape route?

Shockwave slid open a hidden hatch in the floor and dived through.

U
LTRA
M
AGNUS WADED INTO THE FRAY
,
SMASHING
I
NSECTICONS
together and hurling the broken parts as lethal projectiles to bring down still more. Springer and Wheeljack double-teamed their opponents; Springer fired away while Wheeljack spun like a whirling dervish, cutting down Insecticons with his blades before they could bring their own weapons to bear. Jetfire buzzed around near the ceiling, raining shots down on drones and Insecticons alike.

Rack n’ Ruin was a force of nature. He charged in swinging both hammers in a blur, crunching through metal and sending Insecticon heads flying across the room. Two Insecticons ducked in under his weapons, but he shoulder-butted them onto the floor before bringing both hammers down with a sickening crunch. In short order, it was all over. Shockwave had ascertained the odds quite correctly.

“Where’d he go?” Rack n’ Ruin snarled.

“He escaped,” Wheeljack told him. “That bot’s always got a bolt-hole.”

“Never mind Shockwave,” Ultra Magnus said. His eyes went from Vector Sigma’s glowing maw to the bot that lay prone in front of the huge computer, connected to it with several cables that rumbled and shook along with much of the room.

“Alpha Trion,”
Springer said. Everyone gathered around.

“He still functions,” Jetfire said.

Ultra Magnus looked at Wheeljack. “Detach him from Vector Sigma.”

“First I think I need to figure out what’s
happening
to Vector Sigma.”

Wheeljack had a point. Vector Sigma seemed to be overheating. Cooling turbines were cranked up to maximum, but the temperature gauges were still climbing. Wheeljack stepped to the same consoles Shockwave had studied moments earlier. His eyes went wide.

“This is
crazy
,” he said.

“Talk to me,” Ultra Magnus said.

“Shockwave has somehow—I don’t know why, but he’s set up linkages with the space bridge; that’s where all this energy is coming from. It’s venting off the—”

“The
space bridge
?” Ultra Magnus was incredulous. “That hasn’t worked since the beginning of the war.”

“Well, it’s working now.”

“Can you route the overflow elsewhere?”

“I’m trying.” Wheeljack worked the keyboard like a maestro playing an instrument. “I’m sending it through the plasma energy chamber, which is out of commission anyway, so I figure it can take a little heat.”

“It’s going to have to take a lot,” Jetfire breathed. But whatever Wheeljack was doing was paying off, because the temperature readouts on Vector Sigma slowed their rise and then hovered in place before starting to drop. The rumbling that had been shaking the room grew softer, though it didn’t entirely subside.

“Good work,” Ultra Magnus said.

“I’m not done yet,” Wheeljack said. “Still need to rewire a few more fail-safes. Give me a moment.”

“We don’t
have
a moment,” Ultra Magnus told him. “Shockwave will be back with reinforcements. Wake Alpha Trion up and let’s get out of here.”

Wheeljack set to work, reversing the locks Shockwave
had placed on Alpha Trion’s mind. The others stood there and waited.

“Why would the space bridge be operational?” Jetfire asked.

“Maybe Shockwave was trying to contact Megatron,” Springer said.

“Maybe Megatron’s come
back
.”

“Everybody shut up and let Wheeljack do his stuff,” Ultra Magnus said, and Wheeljack most certainly was. It intimidated him more than a little to be working on a Prime, but he was too proud to admit that. Because really it was the greatest honor he could possibly have, the ultimate test of his skills. Wheeljack expertly removed the circuit clamps from the conduits that linked Vector Sigma to Alpha Trion, letting the parts of the Prime’s brain that controlled consciousness rev up, reboot—

Alpha Trion’s eyes opened.

“Ultra Magnus,” he said.

“Alpha Trion,” Ultra Magnus said. “It’s okay; you’re safe now.”

“Where is Shockwave?”

“He won’t be troubling you anymore.”

Alpha Trion shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“It’s all right,” Ultra Magnus said, his tone almost soothing. “We’re here to rescue you.”

“It’s not me that needs the rescuing.”

“What?”

“It’s our world,”
said Alpha Trion.

O
PTIMUS AND
M
EGATRON BOTH CAME TO THEIR SENSES
at the same time. Their predicament was about as bad as it could get. They were at the bottom of the Piranhacon pit, up to their waists in water and all too close to the myriad holes through which the Piranhacons would come. Far above, they could hear the roaring of the crowd.

“There’s got to be a way out of here,” said Optimus.

“Logic would dictate that we go back up,” Megatron said.

“I don’t think that’s possible.” As he spoke, Optimus saw the glowing eyes of the Piranhacons approaching. Megatron grinned.

“I hope you have some fight left in you, librarian,” he said. The next moment, Piranhacons surged into the room from all sides. Megatron met them head-on, plucking them from the water and hurling them against the walls and against one another, sometimes tearing them in half. Optimus opted for an alternative approach, moving straight into the mass of fish and lashing out on all sides, metal crunching under his feet. But sooner or later the sheer numbers of robotic fish would overwhelm them. Probably sooner …

“We can’t keep this up!” Optimus said.

“Speak for yourself, librarian!” Megatron was in his element; if he had to die, there was no better way to go
out than to do so while killing. But that was when Optimus grabbed him by one of the power couplings on his back.

“By Unicron, this is no time to continue
our
fight.” Then Megatron felt it: a sudden surge of power ripping through him. The blast of energy was so intense that he barely heard Optimus’s voice.

“Fire your cannon! NOW!” A minute earlier it wouldn’t have been possible. But now he had the necessary power, and he used it. The noise was deafening inside the cramped pit; the point-blank shot tore a hole straight through the wall. The water started to drain from the chamber.

“What in the name of all the galaxies did you just do to me?” Megatron asked him.

“I transferred some of the Matrix’s energy directly into your system.”

“I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Neither did I. I played a hunch.”

“Extreme risk taking,” Megatron said as he shifted back to robot mode. “I can still feel the energy. It’s like I’m fully charged again. We make a great team, librarian.”

“Don’t push your luck.” Optimus looked through the smoking hole to see an underground passage, half filled with water, in which floated hundreds of scorched Piranhacons.

“Where do you think that goes?” Megatron asked.

“I don’t know.” Optimus glanced up at the top of the pit hundreds of meters above, where Sharkticons already were starting to peer down. “But I do know this: Anyplace is better than here.”

S
IDESWIPE LET THE
A
RK THUNDER OUT TOWARD DEEP
space. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to just keep going, to get this accursed planet behind him. But he wasn’t listening to instinct right now. He had a plan,
and he was going to stick to that plan. What mattered was the planetary ring they were about to roar past, the one that housed the weaponry that had crippled the ship earlier. Right now that ring was crackling with energy that seemed to be linked to whatever was going on down on the planet.

Not for much longer, though.

Sideswipe keyed the intercom. “All hands, prepare for action,” he said.

“Ready when you are,” said Sunstreaker’s voice over the speakers.

Sideswipe opened fire. Heavy lasers ripped against the ring, and then a bracket of torpedoes hit home. The ring lit up with thunderous explosions.

T
HE POWER READINGS IN THE
C
URATOR
’
S INNER SANCTUM
began fluctuating wildly. The Curator looked from screen to screen in near panic. Had he made a miscalculation regarding the power matrix? Had the circuitry overloaded? Had one of the batteries blown?

The truth was far worse.

“Lord Curator, we are under attack!” Xeros yelled.

“What? Impossible!”

But the cameras showed otherwise. The first and most powerful of the planetary rings had just sustained fatal blows from the Ark. Even as the Curator and Xeros stared, the ring began to crumble into its component pieces. Very soon the planet of Aquatron would be the proud owner of a brand new asteroid belt.

“Those treacherous dogs!” the Curator snarled. But he took heart from knowing that the Autobot attack had come too late. Tyrannicon and his legions already had crossed through the space bridge. The invasion of Cybertron was under way, and there were now more than enough Sharkticon forces there to conquer the entire
planet, ravaged and divided as it was by civil war. That meant the Curator could focus on problems closer to home.

“Target all gunnery on the Ark,” he hissed.

“Yes, lord!” Xeros began reeling off the necessary orders.

S
IDESWIPE
FIRED TWO MORE VOLLEYS AT THE RINGS
, but he wasn’t waiting around to see the results; instead, he turned the Ark around at the sharpest angle possible and vectored straight back toward the planet. Although he was much farther away than he had been before leaving orbit, he was now on the side of the world that mattered. What the Quintessons initially had thought was a craven attempt to flee was actually a gambit intended to give the Ark line of sight on the capital city of Hydratron. Sideswipe engaged the afterburners and thundered in toward it. They were going to rescue Optimus or die trying.

But up ahead was the
Nemesis
, still in near orbit above the city. Sideswipe could only hope that the Decepticons weren’t going to interfere with him. Or that they wouldn’t interpret his closing in as an attack on them. He was going to find out in a few moments.

S
TARSCREAM AND
S
OUNDWAVE WERE COMPLETING THEIR
final system checks when the Ark shot the ring to pieces and did its about-face. Now it was bearing down on their position at several thousand miles an hour.

“Destroy them!” Starscream yelled, happy to have a distraction. He’d far rather fight Autobots than rescue Megatron.

“They’re not coming for us,” Soundwave shot back. “They’re obviously making for the city! Which is what
you said we were going to do!” Before Starscream could protest, Soundwave revved up the
Nemesis
’s engines and sent the Decepticon warship screaming down into the atmosphere. The fire of reentry licked past the window; the weather buffeted the ship violently, but the howl of the engines was drowned out by the noise blaring from the intercom: the roar of hundreds of Decepticons cheering at the top of their lungs throughout the ship. Soundwave brought up the targeting system and put the approaching city in his crosshairs …

X
EROS NO LONGER HAD THE PLANETARY DEFENSES OF
the first ring at his disposal, but he had plenty of other resources to draw on. All across the planet, ground-to-space batteries whirred to life. But even as he began targeting them on the Ark—which had turned around, he noted—the alarm lights began flashing as a new and far closer menace swooped in.

The
Nemesis
.

“Recalibrate defense parameters on the following lines!” he yelled, barking out a series of coordinates.

But it was too late.

Long tongues of flame streaked in across the sky toward the city. The incoming
Nemesis
had barely reached the lower atmosphere, but it was already opening fire with everything it had. Explosion after explosion rocked the Aquatronian capital. Through the window, the Curator watched in horror as a torpedo hit the roof of the Hall of Justice. A column of fire roared across the sky, and then the view was blotted out as armored plates slammed into place across the inner sanctum’s windows.

“Lockdown complete,” said an automated voice.

The Curator turned to Xeros with murder in his eyes. “I told you to do something about those ships!”