eugenesis-text

‘What was that’
Mirage did not look up from the scanner screen. ‘What was what’
‘Something fell off the ship. It looked like – ah. I see.’ Hound nudged his co-pilot. ‘They’ve seen us.’
A laser cannon had been lowered from the Enslaver’s underbelly, and was pointing at the hovering
shuttle.
Bluestreak veered away, but it was too late: two thin laser bolts lunged through the Autoshuttle’s
viewscreen and punched holes in the rear doors. The shuttle wobbled on its axis and dragged a trembling
wingtip along the warcruiser before a second blast, brief but confident, gouged furrows along the fuselage.
Hound panicked, cut all power, and the shuttle dropped like a stone. Its rear doors peeled off their
hinges as it nose-dived towards the ground.
Hound could not hear himself screaming, but felt it safe to assume that his voice was trapped in some
sound pocket between the wind-rush and the gusts of grit.
This isn’t what happens, he thought.
This is the part where I reactivate the auto-systems and save the day.
He looked at his useless arms - two slabs of quivering steel pinned to the dashboard – and then the
monitor. They were heading for a human settlement – a city. He imagined the Autoshuttle exploding
across a plate-glass landscape, decapitating buildings.
So this is it. Not only are we going to die, we’re going to kill thousands of humans at the same time.
Through the Autoshuttle’s butchered windscreen he saw cabs, billboards, traffic lights and potholes –
and then the picture slid away. The shuttle had flipped sideways and was flying between the skyscrapers.
Cars crashed, people looked up from their soggy burgers and trees clawed at the warm rush of air.
Hound turned to his co-pilot. ‘What happened, Bluestreak I cut all the power to take us out of laserrange…’
Bluestreak hugged the control stick, his arms shaking. ‘And I,’ he said through gritted teeth,
‘managed to reinstate it.’
‘I think everyone’s safe,’ said Mirage. ‘But we’ve lost any chance of catching up with that thing.’
‘If it’s heading where we think it’s heading,’ said Hound, ‘It won’t stay lost for long.’
Nightbeat sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by hundreds of machine parts laid out in
widening concentric circles. He adjusted his monocular magnifying glass and frowned at the palm of his
hand. He was examining the cylindrical core of an H-type Ouroborus Spycam, a solar-powered security
camera designed to recharge itself so that it could, theoretically, record and re-record forever.
This particular H-type had been left untouched for centuries, recording whatever passed before it; in
this case, the last few seconds of Thunderclash’s life.
Stripping the spycam had taken him six hours. He had prodded and peeled, pinched and prised until
all that remained was a gold disc (they were always gold) and an encoder.
The Autobase Tannoy crackled into life. He registered the sound but was too engrossed in his work
to pay any attention to the message.
‘This is a code one priority announcement from High Command. This is Prowl speaking. I am taking this
opportunity to explain exactly what has happened over the last few hours, to clear up any misunderstandings, and to
quash any malicious rumours. Perhaps by doing this I can allay some of your concerns.’
Nightbeat was only half-listening, but it was hard not to hear the discomfort in Prowl’s voice. His
sentences were disjointed, broken by awkward pauses.
‘As you are all aware, the troop inspection was cut short by an explosion. This explosion has been traced back to
Doubleheader who, it has now come to light, was a Decepticon suicide bomber.’
‘We believe that he intended to assassinate Rodimus Prime. Thanks to the intervention of Red Alert and
Thunderclash, he did not succeed.’
Kup sat on a battered steel chair, elbows on his knees, head propped up by his fists. He stared at the
team of medics surrounding Rodimus Prime’s body and tried to ignore the message being pumped through
the medi-vault’s single white speaker.