eugenesis-text

He leant against the railings with rigid tendrils. Rodern was a loose end. Until he was accounted for –
preferably with confirmation that the Autobots on Earth were dead – the delicate fabric of his masterplan
threatened to unravel.
The convict ship shuttled noiselessly above the skyline. Soaked in lighter fuel and engine grease, it
keeled and freewheeled between hab-blocks and tenements, between spacescrapers and listless orbital
domes.
This area of Cybertron – this wedge of cold, contested halfway-space between ground zero and the
mesosphere – was as deserted as every other population-pocket and sub-settlement. Up here, things were
always passing through, never stopping. Sunrise brought the whiplash thermals, the detonation echoes that
ran rings around the planet: the legacy of a thousand shatter-bombs and dry-nukes. Sunset, and banks of
sweet-smelling petrolene would rise from the twitching turf and cling to the air like bubblegum.
Like everything else on Cybertron, it hadn’t always been like this. 50,000 years ago, Decepticon spycopters
and sky-cycles patrolled empty fuel tubes and monorails. 500,000 years ago the hab-blocks hid the
odd Neutralist bolthole or doss-den, maybe a sniper’s crash-pad (abandoned but lived-in: a tripod, some
stone-cold energon clips, a spiral of used and unused bullets). Five million years ago and the skyways would
have teemed with people-pods and skuttlers, hopper-jets and beam-trains; Autobots on hover mats in front
of tilting holoscreens or free-floating auditoriums; a civilisation climbing towards the stars, rung by rung,
storey by storey. Ten million years ago, the land would have been staked out and smoothed over, with
bands of Autobot settlers building bubble shelters and huge solar panels. Sixty million years ago – well, no
one knew what Cybertron was like sixty million years ago. It was pre-Prima, pre-Primon, pre-Primus. It
was, therefore, unthinkable.
Now though, on 26 December 2012, the convict ship was passing through just another stretch of no-
’bot’s land, another extension of Cybertron’s surface emptiness. The streets were deserted. Even the
Empties – the few who had escaped grading – had abandoned their usual shambling routes and found new
places to hide.
The ship was crammed with people. Two benches created a narrow aisle from the embarkation hatch
to the walled-off cockpit. The yellowed windows on each side looked like nicotine-stained fingernails.
Autobots and Decepticons stood or sat in silence, staring at anything but each other. Their faces were
illuminated by the gummy glow of a hundred energon bonds. The sole propulsion engine struck a doleful
rhythm beneath their feet and reminded them that they were on a journey - that this dingy, airless room
was moving towards Kledji, and god knows what.
Sunstreaker, Hoist and Grapple were huddled in the corner, their arms and legs strung together by
one heavyweight electro-chain. Sunstreaker, who was hunched up against the windowpane, had spent most
of the journey studying his own reflection – the drained blue of his optics, the scribble of cuts and scratches
on his cheeks. They’d crossed half of Cybertron, but only a few sights had interrupted this baleful self-study:
the flickering carcass of Darkmount, the glimpse of the pentagonal Quintesson stronghold on the horizon
(looking, somehow, as if it were the oldest thing on the planet), the fleet of hoverbikes and Tenderisers
moving across the Miniem Plaza. Little things caught his eye too: a Decepticon with one arm throwing
himself off Nova Point; a Sharkticon standing over a dead body, his face buried in his hands; Viroids being
chased across the Grease Pits, wires dangling from their mouths like spaghetti. He saw everything from a
distance, and it reminded him of his time as a gladiator in the State Games. You would have one chance in
the arena, one opportunity to fight, and then – if defeated – you would return to the viewing gallery to
watch the action unfold below, helpless to intervene.
He was no longer in the game. A few hours ago he had been in the thick of things, side-by-side with
Optimus, ready to plan the first stages of a counterattack– but not now. All he could do now was look at an
occupied planet and wish he were still free.
Down below, he saw a Quintesson squad emerge from a frontier building. They were using their rifle
butts to knock a couple of Mecannibals towards a portable recycling pit.
And all this was real; all this was actually happening.
The Quintessons had taken over Cybertron.
‘Oh Primus,’ he said quietly, ‘Just let it stop.’