Exiles (28 page)

Of what use was it to be simply fast?

He had landed near the largest settlement on the planet, apparently called Delta, and he walked toward it now. He noted that parts of it were in flames and that there were visible signs that some kind of conflict was ongoing.

“Starscream,” he said. “Have we stepped into the middle of a war here?”

Starscream said, “I’ll find out.” He alt-formed and took off, thundering away in the direction of Delta.

A signal reached Megatron, automated and broadcasting in idiot determination for how many cycles he did not know. He decrypted the message within it:

The message was tagged with the unmistakable signature of Makeshift, his spy in the Autobot ranks. Interesting, thought Megatron, and sent out the requested auto-response notification. The Autobots had been here, and Makeshift had been undiscovered at least long enough to send this message.

He did not know how sophisticated Velocitronian homing and tracking technology was, so he stayed where he was until a single bot in the blur of passing traffic pulled off the road, assuming bot-form as it came to a halt.

“Megatron,” the bot said.

“If you are not Backfire, bot, you are starting your last conversation,” Megatron said. “What is the sign?”

“I am Backfire. The sign is 777, the number of your emissary when he was a gladiator with you.” Megatron signaled that Backfire should continue. “Welcome! It is time for new leadership on Velocitron. It is time for us to return to the place we once had in the civilization of bots, when we were intrepid explorers aboard
Ogygia
, before we descended into this state where all we care about is the sport of speed.” The whole speech sounded rehearsed to Megatron, but it also sounded sincere. He did not particularly like this Backfire, but clearly there was something worthwhile happening on Velocitron.

Before he continued his pursuit of the librarian, Megatron decided, he would cultivate this emergent Decepticon sentiment. Why should the Autobots be the only Cybertronians spreading a philosophy?

“Why is Delta burning?” Megatron asked. Backfire started to tell him.

Starscream flew over Delta partly to perform the reconnaissance he had suggested to Megatron, partly just to make an impression apart from Megatron. From the air, the city was laid out in an oval shape that was almost perfectly concentric to the great racetrack at its center. A race was even then going on, and Starscream could see that the stands were packed.

Some war
, he thought.
If they’re all stopping to watch a race, they must not be too anxious to fight
.

As he had the thought, a building at the other end of Delta from the direction he had begun his overflight blew up in a spectacular fireball, blooming upward and blackening as it reached the height of the city’s tallest buildings. Starscream headed in that direction but did a brief roll to get a look back at the speedway. Sure enough, the explosion had not stopped the race.

Coming closer to the location of the explosion, Starscream saw two small groups of bots fighting. He was not impressed by their training or discipline, but they certainly had enthusiasm. He banked away from them and headed over the center of the city once more, noting the sights of recent battles: rubble, scorch marks, even a destroyed bot or two lying where they had fallen in a neighborhood that looked largely abandoned. The hangar near the speedway, too, looked as if it had taken some serious damage. He could see the wreckage of sophisticated equipment inside; the hangar was clearly central to race preparation, which made it central to Velocitronian life.

That was civil war, Starscream thought. All of a planet’s treasures went up in smoke because neither side could stand to see the other side have them.

He chased away the thought, which was too much like Autobot sympathy for comfort. He had made his choice, Starscream had, and now he was biding his time until the moment came when he could assume control of the Decepticons at last. Then, perhaps, would be the time to talk with the Autobots, from a position of strength. For now he was a Decepticon, and he would cooperate with Megatron as long as their goals coincided.

He had come lower to get a better look at some of the damage and see if it could have been caused by the Autobots—though he knew this was highly unlikely—when
he heard voices cry out from below. Apparently he had indeed made an impression.

Just as quickly, however, Starscream learned that he had not made the impression he had intended.

“It’s Silverbolt!” some of the Velocitronians called out. “Silverbolt’s back!”

Silverbolt?

That two-bit bot?

Furious, Starscream banked around and came in for a hard landing among the gawking Velocitronians. He reassumed bot-form as he did so, and the Velocitronians gasped. “It’s not—hey, you’re not Silverbolt!” one of them said. It might have been the first one who had called out and pointed. Starscream wasn’t sure.

“You, bot,” he said, seizing the chatty one. “Come with me.”

He dragged the protesting bot off to the edge of the city, the outcry over his actions drowned out by the sudden roar from inside Delta Raceway. When they got to the city boundary, where concrete and steel abruptly gave way to flattened earth and swirls of dust, Megatron was there waiting for them. Starscream quietly reported his findings.

“Identify yourself,” the Decepticon’s leader said to the Velocitronian.

“Syncol,” the bot said. “I work in the hangar, mostly on the track bots.”

“Syncol. You thought this bot here, whose name is Starscream, was another bot whose name is Silverbolt. Explain that.”

Syncol did that as well as he could, outlining the arrival of Optimus Prime and the Autobots, along with the problems the Ark had encountered. He didn’t know much; he’d been at the races most of the time, including Speedia. Oh, bot, he could not wait for the next Speedia …

“To the point,” Megatron said in a quiet but deeply unsettling tone.

“Yes. Right,” Syncol said. “Two of us, Mainspring and Clocker, went with them. But if you ask me, they were never really Velocitronians anyway. I mean, they came with the
Ogygia
, they were here from the beginning, but they didn’t fit in. Like machines? Sure, they like machines, they like making them go fast, but they didn’t believe in what I’m saying, they didn’t believe that we need to go fast and that however fast we’re going there’s something else we can do to go faster.” The bot trailed off, and Megatron realized he was staring. He didn’t care particularly, but it had been a long time since a bot had made him stare in utter incomprehension. “Guess they’re better off gone with Optimus Whatsis-name,” the bot concluded. “I gotta go lube some of the jacks over at the hangar.”

Roaring off, the bot kicked up a cloud of Velocitron’s ever-present dust. It was a fairly calm day for the Speed Planet, and the dust swirled around for only a few kliks before settling into a haze around Megatron’s boots. As it settled, the form of Backfire was revealed. He had watched the conversation from cover so that Syncol wouldn’t recognize him. No need to rush the inevitable.

Megatron wondered if all Velocitronians yammered endlessly without saying anything. They reminded him of that insufferable Autobot Bumblebee, only worse. He should sterilize this planet, was what he should do, Megatron thought. Just so those Velocitronians would shut up.

Instead he said, “Backfire—”

Backfire cut him off immediately. “You need to meet Ransack. He doesn’t talk much. That’s the bot you’re going to want to talk to, and I guarantee he’s going to
want to talk to you. Except for, like I said, he doesn’t talk much compared to some of us.”

“Then why are we wasting time out here? Where is Ransack?” Megatron shoved Backfire toward the road and Delta. “Lead the way. Now.”

But word had spread more quickly than Megatron had anticipated, even though it appeared that the civil war had done more damage than either of them had seen from the air or from their vantage point at the edge of the city. Following Backfire down the main road that led from the core city straight out into Velocitron’s flattened northern hinterlands, Megatron saw destroyed buildings, hasty road repairs, even traffic detours—surely a desperate action for so speed-obsessed a culture of bots. There were bots on the roads, to be sure, but they did not race with the maniacal abandon Megatron had observed was Velocitron’s signature characteristic.

Civil war, he thought. You needed to have a sense of humor about it or you ended up with this. Not to mention the deleterious effects of visitation by interstellar pirates.

With a grudge against Cybertron? Interesting, Megatron thought. He was looking forward to meeting those pirates to find out what about Cybertron had provoked them to such a fury.

Then he would kill them.

At the center of the city, of course, was the speedway, and near the speedway, Backfire said, was the place where Velocitronians conducted both their governmental affairs and their final preparations for the big races of the season. The expanse of parking area was littered with damaged and decommissioned machinery, and one corner of the hangar was collapsed. Bots with arms at the ready challenged them the moment they stepped off the street and onto the hangar property.

“Identify yourselves!” the nearest commanded, leveling a portable missile battery at Starscream and Megatron. “Backfire, you we know. Who are the strangers?”

“I am Megatron of Cybertron and leader of the Decepticons,” Megatron said. “This is my lieutenant Starscream; perhaps you just recently saw him fly overhead. I am here to speak to Ransack.” As he spoke, he walked toward the guard.

“Distance,” the guard said.

Megatron ripped the missile battery from his hands, dashed it to the ground, and in the same motion deployed his ax and split the guard from the base of his neck halfway down his torso. A spray of Energon and internal fluids arced across the poured stone of the parking area. Raising the ax, Megatron said, “I am Megatron! This planet is mine!”

“Not yet, it isn’t,” came a voice from the hangar door. Standing there was a bot nearly the size of Megatron, but red and silver with sweeping accents at shoulder and lower leg. A typical bot structure when the desired quality was speed, Megatron thought. But this one was certainly larger than most.

“You must be Ransack,” Megatron said. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”

“Velocitron is mine,” Ransack said.

“One moment,” Megatron said.

He raised one arm, and the
Nemesis
came into view over the flat horizon of Velocitron, looming for a cycle like a setting moon and then sending an astonished ripple through the crowd of alt-formed bots that poured from the speedway and nearby roads as the sound of its approach reached them. A low, almost geologic rumble echoed, the sound having been tuned carefully by Shockwave to induce fear and unease. Megatron knew that even Decepticons hated it—except those who had the
power to self-install audio filters at that frequency. He could always recognize those bots because they didn’t look up or react when the
Nemesis
started its engines.

He wasn’t overly concerned about those bots, though. The bot he was interested in at the moment was Ransack. If he committed to the Decepticon cause, Velocitron’s fate was sealed. It was apparent by the limited participation in this “civil war” that most of these speed-obsessed bots did not care who ruled what as long as their races were held on schedule. The few who did could be placated by a Speedia whose outcome was predetermined.

If Ransack was still uncertain, Megatron’s path forward was less clear. He did not mind the idea of a battle, but he did not relish the idea of losing precious cycles crushing Velocitronians when what he needed to be doing was finding and eliminating the librarian and the rest of the Autobots once and for all.

Ransack seemed to sense Megatron’s attention. He looked at Megatron and said, “Big ship,” his early bravado not quite so present anymore.

Megatron nodded.

Ransack hesitated for just a nanoklik. Then he said, “How fast does it go?”

Megatron nearly killed him on the spot. It would have simplified things but perhaps also made them more difficult, since simple was not always the same thing as easy. Instead he decided to go with the joke.

“It’ll make plenty more than lightspeed,” he said. “It may look like a dreadnought, but the
Nemesis
is the greatest ship any bot ever created. You’ll see when the librarian comes back.”

“Librarian?”

“Optimus Prime,” Megatron said over the rising
thrum of the
Nemesis
’s approach. “He used to be a scholar in the Hall of Records at Iacon.”

“Ah.” Ransack nodded, a smug expression on his face. “I knew he didn’t have the look of a soldier.”

The
Nemesis
drew closer and lowered itself until it had created a localized dust storm at the edge of Delta. Protective shields slid down over the optics and intakes of all the Velocitronians present; only Megatron and one other bot, far at the other end of the gathering, did not deploy shields or filters.
And who are you?
Megatron wondered.
Not a true Velocitronian. You came from Cybertron more recently than the
Ogygia,
or else the librarian left you behind
.

He wasn’t sure which he would prefer.

“Ransack,” he said, leaning in close so that only the Velocitronian leader could hear him speak. “Who is that bot over there with no filters against this storm?”

“He goes by Hightail,” Ransack said. “He’s been one of my formation for a long, long time.”

“Since all of you arrived here? You mean since the
Ogygia?
”

“I’m not sure,” Ransack said. “What difference does it make?”

It might make a very significant difference indeed, Megatron thought. He resolved to find out more before proceeding in more decisive fashion. Also, a meeting with Ransack’s rival, the similarly named Override, was on the agenda.