CHAPTER 15

For a time, Jack wasn’t anywhere. He wasn’t sure he was anything. His mind drifted. His inner ear screamed that he was falling, and at vast speeds. Everything felt unfathomably wrong, his stomach was doing backflips—yet it was like he couldn’t remember where he’d left it.

Then, a planet, and he was falling toward it. A glittering silver world, made up of an endless hexagonal lattice. Layer upon layer of overlapping hexagonal shapes. Jack had no idea what he was looking at. Scaffolding, some great work left incomplete? Or art made by a species that saw perfection in angles and mathematics?

“Cybertron,” Optimus said, thunderous voice soft in Jack’s ears that his sense of self didn’t have. “Our home.”

He slipped through the hexagonal lattices like a feather in a drifting breeze, and beneath that lattice were pillars, and obelisks, and gleaming spires. He wasn’t sure if they were buildings as such, or if there was even any distinction between structure and Cybertron itself. He remembered what Arcee said of how vast it was, beautiful and interconnected, like Earth but not...

“Our planet was once a powerful empire. Peaceful and just. A race of scientists and explorers, we were guided by the Pax Cybertronica, its wisdom laid down in the First Time, by Primus himself. Until we were betrayed—by Megatron.”

Something drew his attention to the glittering lights in one of those spires, and he was drawn across the balcony that had to be large enough to hold an aircraft carrier, if not a whole fleet, and past the guards. How ornate these Cybertronians looked, and how regal. If this wasn’t Cybertron’s golden age, then it had to be close to it.

Then, a moment’s disorientation, and Jack found himself inside a vast hall. Above him, up thirteen massive steps, were thirteen Cybertronians on thirteen monolithic thrones, each as distinctive as any other. Was this the High Council that Ratchet had mentioned? They debated with fervent voices, nodding and gesturing and discussing, addressing someone near where Jack was, someone he couldn’t see, when—

Something detonated, ripping through the doors. Jack’s perspective twisted, catching the quick quartet of energy blasts—heliotropic purple and viciously bright—that cut through the Autobot guards, and then, through the smoke, came a gunmetal juggernaut, armored and angular, with a massive cannon built into his right arm. His two crimson optics burned through the dust like dead stars in a nebula.

Megatron.

“This council,” he intoned, “has been disbanded.”

His voice was the velvet grove around an iron fist. Dark and authoritative, a vicious edge beneath the feigned politeness.

One of the High Council, cyclopean and majestic, lurched to her feet: “On whose authority?!”

Megatron's expression didn't shift.

“Mine."

And, as simple and as obvious as an avalanche, he raised his right arm—and blew the councilor to pieces.

The presentation or the recording or whatever it was (a memory?) froze then. Megatron with his right arm raised, his expression implacable, having just fired the shot that would begin the war—had begun the war. An eruption at the point of detonation, the councilor’s pieces and limbs and components scattering through the air, defiling the vast hall and its eons of history. The explosion glimmering against Megatron’s darkened frame, catching on the countless glyphs etched there and and the scars from countless battles, like it reflected the wrath that burned within his blazing optics, the decision he had made...

“And so began the war.”

And so it was—war, on a scale that Jack could barely comprehend. Cybertron was burning, breaking apart. The vast latticework collapsing, shearing through layer after layer, plunging into the glowing depths of the planet. Slowly, and then quickly, the lights in the great pillars and monoliths went out.

Cybertron was dying.

As were its people. All across the metallic world, everywhere Jack could think to look, Autobots and Decepticons were fighting and killing and dying. Great starships falling from the sky, plunging into the vast cityscape like knifes through tinfoil. Cybertronians large enough to crush their comrades under foot dragged down through sheer weight of numbers. Starfighters—no, flight-capable Cybertronians—dueled and danced above what had to be Armageddon itself. A battle for a planet that was dying, was already dead. It was crumbling beneath their feet.

And, there—Optimus leaping the ruined wrecks of his comrades, edges of his arm-blades glowing orange-hot, charging his foe. There, Megatron, tearing something out of the chest of a wounded Autobot, crushing it with a cobalt burst that flared through his clenched fist, and turned to face Optimus with a wicked sword in his hand, glowering with fury...

"Megatron was once the foremost protector of none other than my mentor, Sentinel Prime, and then, the protector of our homeworld in its entirety. But over time, his lust for personal power overcame any notion he had of duty and honor, until his ambition was such that he would not rest until he ruled Cybertron itself. He turned those he could dominate against those he could not. Builders became destroyers. Scientists became soldiers. All who defied him were destroyed. The fundament of our society turned into a tool of unending conquest, until the war finally consumed our planet—and the heart of it, our AllSpark, Primus' Gift, was lost to the stars."

Jack’s sense of everything halted, lurched—and then shifted. The war fell away, firestorms into embers, violence into noise, and then the great senate hall, and Cybertron itself, all of it racing toward some liminal horizon and—

Jack fell to his knees, surprised to find asphalt, and then his body remembered where his stomach was, and where he was, odd surprise and terrible vertigo whirling in his gut and behind his eyes, and he vomited.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hmm,” Ratchet said, openly musing. “Fascinating.”

It subsided as quickly as it had come. Jack spat twice, and shook his head. It was like he'd spent hours on Cybertron, and yet all he could remember doing was blinking. “I’m okay,” he muttered. “Sam, did you—”

“That was intense,” she said, groaning, which Jack figured for an affirmative. “I’m going to just stare at the ground until the world stops spinning.”

“My apologies,” Optimus intoned. “I was unaware of the effect that the illuminative process would have on your senses.”

“It’s fine,” Jack replied, even as he felt the first gentle knocking of a headache against his temple. He pushed it aside. “You couldn’t know. This AllSpark. It must be important. Arcee’s mentioned it before.”

She nodded, but looked to Optimus. Whatever it was, it appeared that it was his responsibility to tell.

“It is,” Optimus began, and appeared to catch himself. “It was the heart of Cybertron. The core of our world.”

“To put it in terms you can understand,” Ratchet cut in, “It was the source of all life on Cybertron. The prime mover of our kind.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Jack said.

“The AllSpark,” Optimus continued, “has the power to create worlds and fill them with life. That is how our race was born. When the AllSpark was lost, the one particle of solace we had in our darkest hour, was that Megatron would not be able to use its power to subjugate the galaxy. His ambitions would begin and end with Cybertron.”

Ironhide grumbled. “And how well that turned out, huh."

Optimus nodded. “Megatron’s hunger for the AllSpark was such that he abandoned his followers, and even Cybertron itself, to a slow death. In the end, there was nothing to do, but attempt to seek it out ourselves. But Megatron had the advantage of speed, and of time.”

“And that search, it brought him here?” Jack asked.

“Megatron will leave no planet unscoured. His search must have brought him to your star system, and to your world.”

“But the AllSpark isn’t here. Arcee said so. So, what’s Megatron doing in the Arctic?”

“If I may,” Ratchet said, taking half a step closer. “Your planet has an unusual flux in its magnetic field. It is likely that it caused Megatron to crash land, in much the same way as it affected our transitional deployment.”

“Leaving him in just the position to be discovered by Captain Witwicky,” Optimus continued. “It was an accident that intertwined our fates.”

An oddity in Earth’s magnetic field, that was what had laid an interstellar tyrant low. His higher functions in, what, sleep mode? So, Megatron had strayed too close, got caught in that flux, and went down with some sort of Cybertronian gyroscope failure? A history-defining event yet an accident on the cosmic scale—and no one on Earth had known about it, as Megatron lay torpid beneath the ice for generations. Silent, comatose, waiting...

But some had, Jack remembered. The linguistic similarities that Maggie had mentioned—and, hell, why not half the shit Glenn had gone on about, too? But Archibald Witwicky had known about it, had known about him, only because he’d weighed just enough to fracture the Arctic ice, only because he’d been tough enough to survive the plummet into the dark, and had come face to face with the frozen form of something that’d been waging war when his own ancestors had been rubbing sticks together on the savannah and thinking they were masters of the universe because they’d summoned fire...

“This is why he went crazy,” Sam said, eyes wide. “My great-grandfather. What if Megatron did this, too? The weird mind-memory thing. I mean, Jack and I had some warning, at least, and it’s still a bit much.”

“That would be improbable, at the very least,” Ratchet said. “Disregarding the fact that Megatron would surely never deign to speak to any lesser form of life—no offense intended, humans—but many of his systems would be operating at reduced capacity. Between the flux and the crash, it is possible that he may very well be in stasis lock.”

“It is possible, old friend,” Optimus said. “Just as it is merely improbable, not impossible, for Megatron to communicate with a species he considers inferior to himself. It could also be that, in the course of his discovery, Captain Witwicky accidentally activated his navigation system.”

In his mind, Jack saw an impression of old Archibald Witwicky, encountering the gunmetal titan, reaching out gingerly, tentatively, to touch one of his huge metal fingers. Witwicky had encountered an ‘ice man’, not a metal comet... Megatron must have been in his more humanoid guise...

Which meant something. But what, exactly?

“Either way,” Sam powered on, “it left him crazy for the rest of his life. He filled every surface he could reach with that Cybertronian writing. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you do for decades just because you saw some weird symbols on a metal guy.”

“There was evidence of High Cybertronian, yes,” Arcee said, nodding. “One of the older dialects, including a number of Megatron’s personal glyphs.”

Optimus jaw shifted, expression turning grim. “Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost. Until he is defeated, the threat to your world is more grave than you can imagine.”

“Right,” Jack said, looking up at him. “So, what’s the plan?”

“First, I must confirm the contents of Captain Witwicky’s journal for myself. While I do not doubt Arcee’s capabilities, I must gain a complete understanding of what he discovered. We shall follow you to its location. Then, with a full account of Captain Witwicky’s discovery, we can prepare our next moves.”

“Soundwave’s gotta know we’re here,” Jazz said, leaned against the brick wall, arms crossed. “How do we think he’s going to play it?”

Ironhide grunted. “I just hope he’s stupid enough to try something.”

“Stupidity isn’t exactly what he’s known for, Ironhide,” Arcee said, fist against her hip plating.

“Well, what can I say?” Ironhide asked, shrugging his massive shoulders. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to spin up my cannons.”

“I wouldn’t count on getting the opportunity. With Frenzy’s death, he’ll be even more wary, and more vigilant.”

“You offlined that waste of metal?”

Arcee tilted her head. “Technically, I suppose I’m sharing the kill with soldier boy over there,” she said, and pointed to Jack with her thumb.

Ironhide regarded Jack for a moment, scarred visage unreadable, then looked away. “Hmm. Well. He was small for a Decepticon.”

Jack grinned, nodded to Arcee. She nodded back, almost imperceptibly—or perhaps it was just a trick of the moonlight.

“It does appear,” Optimus began, “that we have the Decepticons outnumbered and outgunned. But, for now, we will remain cautious. Many have underestimated Blackout and Soundwave, and many have paid for it with not only their lives, but the lives of their comrades. Samantha Witwicky, we will follow you to the journal’s location. Autobots, escort formation.”

As one, the six Autobots shifted back into their vehicle modes. When the musical car-crash-orchestra sound of it had subsided, and the desolate road was filled with shiny high-end vehicles, Sam stepped up closer to Optimus. She walked around his front, as if trying to figure out how to best address a tractor cab.

“Hey, so, uh... Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, given you’re traveled a billion light years to get here, but my dad will freak out if half an auto show parks in our driveway. Like, he's got high blood pressure and a baseball bat.”

“What do you suggest?” Optimus rumbled.

“I’ll go with Jack, Bee, and Cee. We’ll bring the journal to you.”

Of course, the thought of Optimus holding a human-sized book in his hands was so absurd that Jack was sure it’d make him laugh if he thought about it for too long. He wasn’t sure what Optimus was thinking. Their faces were difficult to read, sure, but Jack found himself trying to read headlights and windshields for any hint of what was transpiring under the hood.

So to speak.

“A wise suggestion,” Optimus intoned. “Then, for the time being, we shall reconnoiter the local area. Autobots, roll out.”

“I’ll plot a rendezvous point once we have the journal,” Arcee said, as the four other vehicles began to head out in different directions. Then, she rolled over to Jack and said, “Let’s go.”