CHAPTER 14
Once the sun had set, Jack figured it was time to head back to the city.
They stopped to get McDonald's on the way back. It was bad enough that Jack could hear his mom’s disapproval in every bite, but he couldn’t help but think Arcee was judging him, too.
“Feels a little weird leaving them out there, huh?” Sam asked.
“Yeah.”
“I mean, they’re not pets or anything.”
Jack nodded. “Sentient alien robots, yeah.”
“Yeah. Still feels weird leaving them out there, though.”
“Not like they can fit inside exactly, anyway.”
Sam slurped from her shake. “That’s true.” She paused. “Think they can lipread?”
Jack paused to think about that. Hoped not. “I guess we’ll find out.”
The drive back was more sedate. No second chances at the inaugural Los Angeles Cybertronian cup, no titles defended. Jack still wasn’t sure where they’d go from here. What’d happen before Arcee’s comrades arrived, what’d happen after. How they’d even know to find each other. How the Decepticons would react. There was an odd feeling of apprehension in his gut. What if the Autobots left? He hadn’t even known them both a week, but it felt like he’d be losing another brother-in-arms. A sister-in-arms.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Then, as they approached the turn that led off the I-5 and toward Sam’s place—Bumblebee didn’t take it. “Uh,” Jack said. “Arcee? Shouldn’t we have, y’know, turned?”
“Relax, soldier boy. Call it a surprise.”
“Please tell me we’re not abducting a teenage girl.”
“Okay,” Arcee replied. “We are not abducting a teenage girl.”
“Thank God.”
"Technically, you are."
Jack frowned, opened his mouth to say something, and then just sighed inside his helmet and shook his head.
Five minutes later, Bumblebee took the next exit, Arcee following like everyone else was in on it. They kept going, and Jack wondered if Sam was as confused as he was. Then, a street sign—Griffith Observatory.
“One sight for the day wasn’t enough to, uh, see?” Jack asked. Arcee didn’t reply. “I think it’s closed for the season.”
It was. Ahead of the two-vehicle convoy, blocking the rest of the route up to the observatory, there was a chain link fence and a big red stop sign. Another sign hanging there read: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION, NO TRESPASSING. Bumblebee slowed, as if reading it—then revved up and slammed straight through the gate.
Jack hoped he hadn’t taught him to do that.
Then, the observatory was there ahead of them, scaffolding wrapped around one wing. The immaculate paths and lawns. The Astronomer’s Monument with its six historic astronomers. One of them was Galileo. Back in middle school, Jack half-remembered coming to the observatory and being able to name all six. The lights of Los Angeles glittered on the far side of the observatory.
Bumblebee came to a stop and Sam climbed out, looking around, looking up. And then, Jack began to think—no, surely not tonight, not so soon. He climbed off Arcee, peering up at the stars. With all the light pollution, the stars were practically invisible—
“Bee says they’re coming,” Sam murmured, eyes wide, alight with wild hope. “Like, now. From the stars. We should be able to see them soon.”
“Arcee called it a surprise,” Jack replied, eyes up, trying to see.
“Look,” Sam said, pointing. “There!”
One star, brighter than the rest. A spacecraft, Jack wondered, and then—no, not one star, but four. Four points of light. Stars that were brighter than the rest, and growing brighter still, until they were the brightest things in the sky, extending tails. Not spacecraft, not stars—comets. Their tails igniting as they hit the atmosphere, friction ablating them layer by layer as they dove toward the planet’s surface. He couldn’t stop staring.
“They really are angels,” Sam breathed. “Wow...”
They were growing closer, and closer still, less like comets and more like incandescent fireballs. Jack felt himself take a step closer to Arcee, set a hand on her bodywork. Part of him wanted to shout incoming. “Where the hell are they—”
The four cometary Autobots roared overhead, and Jack flinched as Sam did, and plunged straight toward Los Angeles. “It’s him,” Arcee whispered, like she’d looked upon the face of God Himself.
Jack swallowed, let out a breath he only just realized he’d been holding.
“Who?”
She said, “Optimus Prime.”
Jack checked the time. It was 9:27PM. Sunday. June 10.
He thought of Maggie's flightless birds.
----------------------------------------
“—some truly incredible reports coming in tonight, folks—”
“—claiming that the explosions were four separate meteors that struck—”
“—straight through the western stands and exploded, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Sarah, right on top of the pitcher’s—”
“—rangers report minor fires around the impact crater in Tapo Canyon Regional Park—”
“—daughter must have heard the explosion and gone outside! We’re all okay, thankfully, but our pool—”
“—a hundred times cooler than Armageddon, I swear to God! I hope that guy’s got asteroid insurance—"
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“—incredibly, emergency services representatives are saying there are, at this time, no reports of injuries—”
“—an exciting time, but we must ask for all residents to keep their distance until—”
Jack leaned back into Bumblebee’s shotgun seat, listening to the radio. For some reason, he felt very important to remind himself to breathe. Fifteen minutes after landfall, and the ‘meteors’ were all anyone was talking about. He couldn’t exactly blame them. The good news was that it didn’t seem like anyone had caught sight of any giant robots. That, and no one seemed to think it was anything other than a once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes event: a quadruple meteor shower that’d somehow left Los Angeles with no casualties whatsoever.
“Talk about making an entrance,” Jack said. “Arcee,” he continued, feeling a little odd as he addressed Bumblebee’s radio, “I figured your guys would be coming in covertly.”
“Our transition forms aren’t exactly made for interstellar agility, and many of our higher functions are minimized in transit,” she replied. “But this angle of approach is definitely more... conspicuous than I had expected.”
“That’s how you two came to Earth?” Sam blurted.
“That’s right. And, right now, Optimus and the others will be looking for appropriate vehicles to conceal their protoform and create a new exoskeletal structure.”
Bumblebee cut in while Jack was processing that: “‘I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.’”
“Very funny, 127.”
Sam grinned. “You’re not laughing, Arcee.”
“Ha,” she said, “ha.”
“Who’s this Optimus?” Jack asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare to speak for him, but you might call him our leader,” Arcee replied. “We’ve got coordinates for a rendezvous. Bee, I’m taking point.” And she did, overtaking, and settling into the lead position. There was nothing to indicate that Sadie was anything but a normal human.
Arcee led the way to one of the industrial areas of Los Angeles, an area Jack didn’t know well. An area where he wasn’t sure anyone had come in a long time, given the repeating rows of broken windows and long expanses of graffiti. Arcee turned left, down a wide alley between two tall buildings, and stopped.
Bearing down on them, was something huge. Jack and Sam climbed out of Bumblebee. Jack whirled at the sound of engines behind them, and the brief trill of an emergency siren, red lights flashing atop. He thought of someone calling a greeting, waving. A silver sports car, a huge black pickup truck, and a bright yellow emergency four-wheel drive, the one with the siren.
And the first vehicle, the one that had come in ahead of them, was a tractor cab—and not just any tractor cab, but the largest one Jack had ever seen, with blinding headlights, shining chrome, and custom blue lights. The truck rolled up to them both. The fact it had a paint job of blue and red flames struck Jack as barely notable compared to the rest of the work done to it, and when compared to the icon at the top of its grill—an angular, stoic image of an inhuman face.
It took every ounce of Jack’s discipline not to step back as the massive machine rolled closer, stopped barely a foot away—and split apart.
The grill divided first, the massive combustion engine coming apart behind it, folding back and away beneath the windshield. It was an impossible sense of motion, a flurry of activity, a three-dimensional puzzle organized to the whim of a system his eyes couldn’t track and his brain couldn’t make sense of. Then, the sound of feet, the cab and windshield rising up as legs resolved into being, wheels spinning into place and locking at what had to be thighs.
Jack stared, gaping. Arcee and Bumblebee had been one thing, but this was something else. Not just a truck standing up, but a titan incarnating itself in the world of man, flexing, stretching, a head emerging, an impression of a crested helmet. He, and Jack had no doubt he was a he, not with how his windshields gave him pectoral definition, had to be thirty feet tall.
And with a great inhalation, the panels and doors and windshield plates clicked into place, and the process was complete. The other three Autobots were also shifting humanoid, but all of Jack’s attention was on the massive one, the truck, the one who had to be the leader, as he took a knee, looming over him and Sam through nothing but sheer size. But he moved like he was too-aware he could crush them without quite noticing.
“Be not afraid,” the truck began. “Are you Samantha Witwicky, descendant of Archibald Witwicky?” His voice radiated stern warmth. Reminded Jack not just of the father he never really had, but the one he truly never had. That no one had ever had.
“Yes,” Sam murmured.
The truck’s optics shifted to look at Jack. “Which means you must be Sergeant Jackson Darby.”
“Jack is fine,” he replied, unsure of what else to say, “really.”
“My name is Optimus Prime. I assume that your guardians have already explained who and what we are.”
“Autobots,” Sam said. “From the planet Cybertron.”
“That is correct,” Optimus said, rising to his full height. “Allow me to introduce my fellow Autobots. My first lieutenant, designation Jazz.”
Jazz was the silver sports car, a Pontiac, with a humanoid form that looked sleeker than his compatriots. He grinned easily, although he had a single visor instead of paired optics. “What’s crackin’, little bitches?” he asked, in a voice that was almost as deep as Optimus’, and crossed his arms with a display of remarkable self-assurance. The shortest of the new arrivals, and still twice Arcee’s height.
“My assault specialist, Ironhide.”
Who was the big black pickup truck. A bit over twenty feet tall, if Jack had to guess, but broader and bulkier than the others. His right optic looked like it’d narrowly missed being torn out and that side of his face with it, and the way each side of his front fender settled over his shoulders, one headlight on each side and all, made Jack think of an armored leather jacket. Ironhide caught him staring, inclined his head downward, scowling.
“Feeling lucky, punk?”
“Easy, Ironhide,” Optimus said.
“I’m kidding,” he replied, but his gruff voice had a chagrined edge.
“My medical officer, Ratchet.”
His neon yellow plating made that Autobot stand out. The half a dozen or so floodlights that’d been on the roof of his emergency truck mode had settled on his chest and shoulders. His face, as vaguely human-ish as the others, felt kindly—and, to Jack, evoked an impression of a big cat, a lion.
“And former emissary to the Autobot High Council,” Ratchet remarked, bowing his head in greeting.
“You already know your guardians,” Optimus continued. “Arcee and B-127. Two of the finest scouts among our ranks.”
“It’s Bumblebee,” Sam said. Optimus’ optics narrowed slightly, then he glanced at Bumblebee.
Bumblebee nodded. “‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’”
“Then it is as fine a name as any other,” Optimus replied, nodding.
“I see his vocal processor is still damaged,” Ratchet replied, as if discussing an academic problem. “Despite my best efforts, we’ve been unable to restore it. I fear his voice may be lost to us forever.”
Bumblebee shrugged like it wasn’t a problem.
“Megatron,” Jack said. “Arcee told us. Ripped his throat out.”
“Essentially, yes. But I must say that the work required, much less the knowledge, is a bit beyond any of your laryngoscopic procedures.”
“That Megatron guy,” Sam said, looking up at them all. “He’s here on our planet, frozen. My great-grandfather found him.”
Optimus turned his gaze toward the stars. It was as if the weight of the galaxy rested on his shoulders. “Then our war truly has come to your world,” he said. “For that, in Primus' name, I apologize.”
Primus. Optimus Prime. Jack pondered that. Was there a connection?
“But you can fix it, right?” Sam asked.
“That, I do not know. But, for the sake of your species, we shall endeavor to try.”
Arcee, her head bowed, spoke: “Optimus, I have told the humans something of our history. But, now that you are here, it may be best for them to gain a more complete understanding.”
“Rise, noble Arcee,” Optimus replied. “There is no sense in an Autobot scout keeping her sight so firmly set on the ground.”
Arcee nodded, and raised her head to look upon Optimus. Just who was this guy? To see Arcee so positively demure was more startling than any other factor. It said far more about the level of admiration she had for her leader—that all of them had for him—than anything else. Jack glanced to Sam, and she caught his gaze, mouthed something like holy shit, this is so cool.
They really were a whole society. The thought of it sent Jack’s mind spinning with vertigo. An entire civilization of alien robots. And here they were on Earth. True first contact between Earth and a spacefaring civilization—and he was here. He grinned. Rangers truly led the way. But, God, what he would’ve given to have Glen here. Just to see how he'd react. Whether any of his stories could compare to this.
Optimus turned his thoughtful expression back toward them both. “You shall know the history of our world, and the true extent of Megatron’s lust for power—and the tragic reason that has brought our species together. Samantha Witwicky, Sergeant Darby,” he continued, raising one massive hand to the side of his armored head, and the luminosity of his bright blue optics double, tripled—and grew brighter still. Jack had to shut his eyes, lest the radiance of Optimus' gaze blind him.
“I bid you, learn.”