eugenesis-text

clamped around the navi-stick and his head was smeared across the side window, darkening the glass.
Mainframe climbed through the broken windscreen and handed Wheeljack a length of mangled machinery.
‘A present for you, Wheels. You get to keep it if you can tell me what’s missing.’
‘Hmm. I’m guessing that these are your basic piloting and navigation controls...’ Wheeljack poked his
finger through a rectangular gap. ‘The communication equipment is missing. The short-range ECT
would’ve gone here.’
‘There was another pilot in that shuttle, Wheels. I’m sure of it.’
‘Sygnet thought the same thing. He and Centurion went to find him.’
Three gunshots echoed around the valley. Sygnet and Centurion appeared on a hilltop and rolled a
limp green body down the slope. ‘We caught him trying to radio his friends,’ Sygnet said.
Mainframe stopped the Quintesson with his foot and cocked his head at the three gaping exit
wounds. ‘Right in the back. Nice shooting, Sygnet,’ he said coldly.
‘Compliment this guy, not me.’
Centurion looked away.
‘We’ve covered about 90 miles in the last few hours,’ said Wheeljack, scaling the copper-coated hill.
He scanned the horizon and saw them: six of them, in fact: six Quintessons on hoverbikes speeding towards
them.
There it was again.
Death’s Head pressed his head against the lab door and fine-tuned his audios. His horns made closecontact
difficult; not for the first time he considered filing them off and changing his name, but the cost of
reprinting all those business cards…
He heard another explosion. He couldn’t guess the proximity and could feel no tremor, but the
volume was steadily increasing. Was the Ark under attack No. Impossible. Silverbolt had rigged an earlywarning
alarm system: if the Quintessons were outside, the Autobots would be reactivated.
The next explosion tickled the soles of his boots. Someone was inside – on board. He looked around
the dimly lit room. Whoever it was would find the Autobots and… He dashed between worktops,
knocking microscopes and test tubes to the floor as he searched for a comms-link, a spy-cam, anything that
would let him see what was happening. He wasn’t going to miss this slaughter for the world.
He found a suitable monitor and peered closer. A grainy figure - a Quintesson - was running through
the corridors, breaking things.
Had the Quintesson been content to locate and destroy the Autobot crew, everything would have
been fine. He could have laid low until the space pirate had fled, then broken free, taken control of the
Ark, jettisoned the bodies and set a course for Scarvix and the next cred-cheque. The Ark would’ve settled
the debts. But no – this particular Quintesson was hell-bent on destroying the Autobots and their spacecraft
– with him on board.
Death’s Head unscrewed his left hand, pulled a gold-plated interface needle from his wrist and
plugged himself into an access port. His body tensed as a failsafe code collapsed and Aunty’s low-level
security codes laid themselves bare. He disconnected himself from the wall and walked through the open
door.
The control room was thick with found-sound and tenth-generation digital information, with
whispered binary, codes and modals. Senior officers sat at their desks, wedged earpieces into audio canals
and barked into microphones that bobbed against their lips.
General Quantax swept down the aisle and the reports flew like buckshot.
‘General! Quadrant T440, a.k.a. the “Dead End”, is now completely levelled; terraforming teams
moving in to—’
‘— squad has combed Quadrant P13, formerly “Vos”; report zero activity in neighbouring sector—’
‘Lieutenant Jolup confirms receipt of Grade Bs and requests that—’
‘—structural integrity of Sirrom Mining Complex makes it an ideal location for the west sector
smelting pool.’
‘Incoming message from Q-715, mid-range.’