Exiles (17 page)

“Good. We need parts,” Ironhide said. “And time and space for repairs.”

Optimus Prime was about to jump in and modulate Ironhide’s overbearing approach, but it immediately became apparent that he didn’t need to.

“Right up our alley! Repairs is what we do!” Wreck-Gar said. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he added, “Also, we junk what can’t be repaired, melt it down, and then make it into new stuff that breaks down later. It’s what we do!”

Amazing, thought Optimus Prime. These worlds, cut off from the nerve center that once was Cybertron, slowly developed obsessions about a single thing. He was thinking of Velocitron again, but then it occurred to him that Junkions might not have had any choice. The stories of this place were all focused on hardship and disaster from the beginning: marooned explorers, crashed ships, accidents and betrayals, bots inadvertently left here after the ships they had arrived on went on without them. So no wonder, he supposed, they were so fixated on making something out of nothing.

“Saw you the nanoklik you got here, you know,”

Wreck-Gar said. “Had Axer follow you around. Axer’s a strange one. Not like us! Even though he’s one of us.”

“Who did he follow?” Ironhide asked. “Not me. Nobody followed me. I would have known.”

“No, he followed this one!” Wreck-Gar said, pointing at Hound, who had just arrived and was standing at the edge of the group as if waiting to tell Optimus Prime something. “Then he reported back to me. Then we all came here!” He looked around as if trying to locate the bot called Axer.

“We thank you for your offer of help,” Optimus Prime said. “Many bots would despair at being marooned this far from other planets.”

“Not Junkions! We make do! Lots of things to do here!” Wreck-Gar focused intently on Hound again. “Where did you go with Axer?”

Hound glanced at Optimus Prime, then back to Wreck-Gar. “He must mean the bot who attacked me when the others dropped the net over you, Optimus Prime,” he said. “I fought him off, and he disappeared. I didn’t know where the rest of you had gone, and while I was looking, I saw the Ark crash and rushed back here.”

“Don’t talk to Axer! I don’t trust him!” Wreck-Gar said.

“Then why did you send him to follow Hound?” Ironhide asked. It seemed like a reasonable question to Optimus Prime, who had been about to ask it himself.

“Because I didn’t trust you, either!”

Hence, thought Optimus Prime, the ambush and attempted cannibalization of the Autobots for parts. He and Ironhide exchanged a glance. “Well, nothing untrustworthy happened from the sound of it,” Optimus Prime said. He was starting to understand that as stalwart and admirable as the Junkions were, the teracycles of isolation had made them … they had become what
Alpha Trion would delicately have called “highly individualized.”

Or were they not displaced Cybertronians at all? Again Optimus Prime saw the possibility that life had found a way to spread in the absence of the AllSpark. This ran counter to everything he had ever been taught, but the evidence—these amazingly
different
bots—was getting harder and harder to ignore.

The Matrix prodded and goaded him from within. There was a reason it had brought the Autobots to Junkion, and now it was time to begin to find out, although what could it be other than another piece of the Star Saber?

Careful
, he heard Jazz’s voice telling him.
The Matrix has its own reasons for doing things, and they don’t always square with any bot’s assumptions. Even if that bot is Prime
.

It was good advice whether Jazz said it or Optimus Prime said it to himself in Jazz’s persona. Be where you are. Keep the quest in front of you but don’t let it prevent you from seeing the moment-to-moment tasks of leadership that will allow you to fulfill it.

He decided that the best course of action was to get his interaction with Wreck-Gar on a more comfortable footing while they waited for the damage assessment and a list of parts needed for repairs. “How long have you been here?” Optimus Prime asked him.

“Wreck-Gar has been on Junkion as long as Junkion has been! No Junkion without Wreck-Gar! We’ll fix ’em! Now back to work!” The Junkion leader assumed alt-form, a blocky compactor vehicle. Acting as if they’d been ordered, although Optimus Prime had heard no orders, the other Junkions present quickly loaded Wreck-Gar’s compactor with random junk from the area. Then Wreck-Gar roared off, leaving Ironhide and
Optimus Prime to look at each other through a cloud of dust.

When it cleared, Jazz was joining them. “Where is he taking that stuff?” Jazz said. “This looks like a perfectly good dump to me.”

“He will probably bring it right back tomorrow, once he has dumped it off there and picked it up again.” Optimus shook his head. “What can you report about the Ark? Come with me.”

He and Jazz walked back toward the blast furnace as Jazz filled Optimus Prime in on the damage to the Ark. It was extensive but not crippling. “Could be we’re lucky it happened here,” Jazz said. “If there’s any place in the galaxy that has what we need, this’ll be it.”

Following Wreck-Gar’s progress, the Autobots watched as he made stops at several points along a rough road paved with polymer sheeting over scraps of metal and occasionally stone. At each stop, Wreck-Gar took on more seeming junk. At some stops, he dropped off part of his load and waiting Junkions gathered it up and took it to a local machine facility of some sort. Optimus Prime observed plastics-separation works, at least four different small furnaces and forges, an equal number of chemical laboratories … Everything Wreck-Gar did had a purpose, and every other Junkion appeared also to have a well-defined role in the functioning of this strange society.

Both of the bot worlds they had seen since leaving Cybertron, Optimus Prime reflected, were extremely challenged for resources. But they were not challenged for resourcefulness, that was sure. More and more he was realizing that the struggle happening on Cybertron was an expression of bot resolve. Cybertronians—and their various descendants scattered throughout the universe—simply did not give up.

It made him proud.

And it clarified for him just what was at stake on the Autobots’ quest and just how much determination and resolve was expected of Optimus Prime if he was to prove himself worthy of the title of Prime. The Matrix had expressed its faith in him, and he had led his bots in a war … but the next stage in the grand struggle with Megatron would be more difficult yet.

No one knew he was there, but Axer saw the entire exchange. Interesting, he thought. Who could have guessed that of all the rocks floating through all the limitless reaches of space, Optimus Prime would land on this one? It wasn’t really a rock, but Axer guessed the Autobots were flying blind, using Space Bridges as they could put them back together without knowing where they would lead.

Axer wondered what was happening on Cybertron.

He looked more closely at the Autobot team. Prowl and Ironhide he knew, of course, from their prewar prominence. But the fourth bot, Hound, had been unfamiliar to him before their brief recent collision. It had been a long time since Axer had left Cybertron, but even so, he had been there when the war was about to break out and he thought he knew most of the prominent bots on both sides. More recognizable Autobots followed: Silverbolt, Sideswipe, Ratchet. Most of Optimus Prime’s inner circle appeared to have survived the war … at least long enough to flee from it. With them were several bots Axer did not know, including an energetic black-and-yellow bot who seemed to be one of the Autobots’ favorites. They were a loose, easy group, working efficiently
together to get settled on Junkion until they could go on.

Where, Axer asked himself, was Megatron?

He could not believe that Megatron, who had fought to the death in every gladiator match he had ever started, would let as formidable a foe as Optimus Prime continue to live. Following that chain of reasoning, Axer thought he could assume that Megatron would be in pursuit. The only way this logic didn’t hold together was if Megatron had been defeated, but if that was the case, Axer imagined that the Autobots would be traveling in a bit more style than that afforded by the simple accommodations aboard the Ark.

These were refugees, Axer thought. Vagabonds at best. This was not a triumphant force.

With that thought came an absolute certainty in Axer’s mind that he would be meeting Megatron again before long. He was glad he had broken off the scrap with the bot calling himself Hound before things had gotten too serious. It was bad enough that Wreck-Gar had singled him out. To be branded the killer of an Autobot would have been a serious obstacle to the plan that even then was forming in Axer’s mind. Luckily, he still had the run of Junkion, and he could still make preparations for the inevitable coming of the Decepticons.

After establishing the beginnings of a rapport with Wreck-Gar, Optimus Prime returned to the crash site to get the rest of the details on the postcrash diagnostics on the Ark. Led by Sideswipe, the Autobots—along with Clocker and Mainspring, who had been involved with the repairs after the bombing on Velocitron—began a visual inspection of the Ark’s exterior in conjunction with the damage analysis of the explosion that had knocked out the engines and orbital stabilizers. It was an arduous and painstaking process but necessary. Together
with the previous damage from the collapsing Space Bridge at Cybertron and the first bomb on Velocitron, this most recent sabotage was going to necessitate extensive repairs, which would take much time.

And time was precious. Megatron was coming.

In addition to the other problems, Optimus Prime was discovering that not all of the Junkions were as sympathetic to their plight as Wreck-Gar appeared to be. One of them, which apparently had been isolating rare metals from debris when the Ark’s crash annihilated his excavation and smelter, was ranting at Sideswipe when Optimus Prime reached the ship to get what he assumed would be more bad news.

“You know what we’re doing here? We’re building a new planet from scratch. From junk! We, no one else! No one ever came to help! Junkions don’t need help!” the Junkion shouted. All Junkions, it seemed, had a tendency to shout. The entire planetoid was a cacophony of shouting bots, screaming machinery, roaring furnaces … No wonder they all seemed a little unbalanced, Optimus Prime thought as the shambling bot turned away from them and resumed picking through the debris where the Ark’s landing had plowed it up.

Sideswipe looked to Optimus Prime for some guidance. “Do we apologize?” he asked. “I don’t know how to deal with these Junkions.”

“We just got here,” Optimus Prime said. “It’s going to take a bit for us to get to know each other. Don’t do anything rash before I get back.”

“Get back?”

“Tell the others to stay with the ship unless they have an urgent reason not to,” Optimus Prime said. He already was moving toward the location where he first had met Wreck-Gar. Something there had set off an alarm in his mind, and he abruptly felt compelled to investigate
it. He didn’t ask any questions, he just went. The Matrix guided him, as it always had.

Something about the great pit drew him. The collapse of two of its walls had exposed strata of ancient debris that the Junkions were busy harvesting as they terraced the uneven slopes to match the other sides of the rectangular dig. Set back in a slightly larger rectangle, as viewed from above, a perimter of exploratory shafts went straight and deep into the heart of Junkion. They were largely unworked now that efforts were focused on that central pit, and that caused Optimus Prime to wonder why the Junkions were focused so singularly on that dig.

It was a question for the next moment of leisure he had, which was not right now. He stood at the edge of one of the exploratory shafts, feeling the atmosphere shift at the rim, falling at one corner, swirling at another. Across the pit, the collapse had partially exposed other shafts. If he could have chosen one of them, his progress would have been easier. It seemed, however, that the Matrix did not wish Optimus Prime to take the easy way. The shaft at his feet was the one the Matrix was directing him to explore. So be it, he thought. He would trust the Matrix. The shaft was too wide for Optimus, to reach across it, but its walls were rough. He swung himself over the rim and started to climb down.

On the way down, Optimus Prime was careful to keep track of his location not because he was worried about getting lost but because he wanted to be able to reconstruct his path another time if, as he expected, he found something at the bottom of the shaft and had to bring it up. Possibly he would need to commandeer Junkion resources, an action that no doubt would put an end to whatever tentative friendship might grow between Autobot and Junkion.

Reaching the bottom of the shaft, Optimus Prime still felt the tug downward. He got his hands around a long, gently curving steel pipe partially buried in the shaft floor. Pulling upward, he saw that he had broken through into a space below the floor. Amazing, he thought. If the Junkions had drilled their shaft just a bit deeper, they would have discovered …