eugenesis-text

Like self-healing skin, the vault door re-stitched itself and cauterised the hole in the wall. Xenon
listened to the slabs as they nuzzled and tightened: pure tessellation. He liked to think that the door could
withstand anything: lasers, drill-bits, path-blasters, nuclear detonations, meteorites, the expansion of space
itself. It was anti-environment. It was entropy-proof. It stalled the Unsteady State.
‘Is everything all right, my Lord You look concerned.’
Xenon watched Haxian approach from a connecting corridor. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘I was merely
checking to see whether the drilling had damaged the Cargo, but everything’s intact. Any news of the
invasion’
‘Generals Rodern and Quantax have yet to contact me.’
‘No matter. I am sure everything is in hand.’
‘Absolutely. There is nothing to worry about.’
‘I am not “worried”, Haxian.’ Xenon floated down the corridor. ‘I have every confidence in my
troops. It’s just that so much depends on this invasion; so much hinges on the next few days.’
‘Will we win, my Lord’
‘Yes! Yes… I hope so. We have to.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘There is always the chance of defeat, no matter how well planned the strategy, no matter how
powerful the armies.’
‘Yes, there is always that risk.’
‘Except this time we will not have another chance. We’ve poured all our resources into this. If we
lose, there’s nothing to recover.’
‘I would have no more of this nomadic life,’ said Haxian. ‘Wandering through space, trying to
colonise, jumping from one barren rock to another. Now I know how the Progenitors felt after the Raid.’
Xenon laughed. ‘How can you You were a Neoseed. But don’t worry, you shall have your new
home. Cybertron is wasted on the Cybertronians. It has become a shadow of what it was, and what it can
be again.’
They stepped inside the Teleport Chamber, where a fat cylindrical generator ran from floor to ceiling.
Ragged cords of propolax danced behind glass, struggling to escape. The two discs in front of the generator
supported a complete set of body armour, from headset to boot-jets.
Xenon walked to a row of recuperation booths and inspected a sleeping body, soft and post-natal,
fermenting in womb-juice and sweet lubricant. ‘Is this the one that was wounded’
‘Wounded is too strong a word, my Lord. He was merely disorientated. He mumbled something
about an explosion before passing out. I think the Teleport Armour suffered more damage.’
‘Can it be used again’
Haxian examined the headset under the generator’s maddening light. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. It’s
simply a matter of recharging it.’
‘And the prisoners are still off-line’
‘Yes, both of them. Hyperspatial teleportation with a full set of body armour is painful enough –
imagine travelling as a passenger.’
Mindwipe was not generally known for being calm.
From Autobot to Decepticon to Autobot again, he had a reputation for ravenous scheming, for
double-cross and back-stab, but not for composure under pressure. This went some way to explain why he
was sitting at a computer console, optics blurred with concentration, screaming.
The chronometer leant over his head like a guillotine poised for release, like Damocles’ sword, its
poisonously bright digits racing toward zero. The last time he’d dared to glance up the LCD had flashed
‘2:36’.
That was years ago.
The floor would not keep still. It throbbed and quivered, as if pumped with anabolic steroids. It even
looked sweaty under the strip-lights, under the balding bulbs. He had to ride each pulse and ripple to stop
his fingers from pressing the wrong keys: one glitch in the Endgame program, one typo, one misplaced