eugenesis-text

‘Patch him through,’ said Quantax, knotting his hands behind his back and facing the prime monitor.
Q-715’s face was chalky with static. He was holding the Matrix.
‘You have it!’ exclaimed Quantax.
‘I hunted down the Autobot leader and tore the Matrix from his corpse.’
‘Excellent, excellent.’
‘Unfortunately, the other Autobots escaped. The fled the moment we breached their defences.’ He
paused to review his summary and added: ‘Their leader stayed behind to cover their retreat. He was no
match.’
‘How many escaped’
‘I cannot say. A hundred. Less.’
‘Return to base immediately - and bring Rodimus Prime’s body with you.’
Inside Delphi’s technical pool, Fastlane dragged a grimy fuel line from the jet plane’s undercarriage
and checked the bioscanner on his inside wrist. ‘Can you hear me, Raindance We found you about an
hour ago. You’d crash landed.’
‘I… I think I ran out of fuel.’
‘That’s what we suspected,’ said Siren, folding his arms. ‘But no. You’ve got three full tanks. Fastlane
thinks that you were simply too tired to keep flying.’
‘It’s the Inhibitor Chip, it makes you…’ Even now, infused with energon, he felt the gentle bite of
lethargy. ‘It wears you down.’
Siren’s second-in-command, Cloudraker, passed him a databoard. ‘We haven’t had the test results
back, Raindance, but you were in a state of acute psychosis when you touched down outside. You were
talking about microchips, red paint and something downstairs.’
Raindance transformed into cassette mode and was fed into the comms port. His voice boomed from
the speakers as pictures of Polyhex under siege filtered on screen. ‘This,’ he said, ‘will explain everything.’
Death’s Head ran onto the bridge and for a moment thought that the Autobots were already dead.
They were arranged like incubated babies, glowing white in the half-light – except there were no colourcoded
wires or bobbled tubing, no thumbs in mouths or plastic tags on puppyish ankles. The Autobots
were cold and rigid, their bodies little more than spray-painted containment boxes: packaging to protect
their humming brain modules.
He shook Ultra Magnus by the shoulders and, when there was no reaction, prised open an optic
cover. ‘Oh well. Guess I have to do it the hard way.’ He stood back and punched Magnus in the face. The
Autobot’s bodyweight pinned him to the chair, auto-lock mechanisms ensuring that only his head snapped
sideways. Death’s Head delivered a second, harder punch. When he pulled back for a third and final
attempt, someone grabbed his wrist.
‘Step away or I’ll shoot,’ said Ratchet, a pistol in his free hand.
‘Relax. Misunderstanding, eh’
‘That’s what I thought. Now, would you mind telling me what’s going on’
‘You have a Quintesson on board, heading this way. I was trying to warn the others, yes’
‘You can’t override voluntary systems shutdown by punching someone in the face.’
‘Exactly the hypothesis I was testing. So how come—’
‘I was injured. I didn’t shut myself down.’ Ratchet holstered his weapon and ran for the door. ‘If
you’re in such a philanthropic mood you can help me find the intruder.’
‘What about the others Could use their firepower.’
‘There’s no way to forcibly resuscitate an off-liner.’
‘Really’ Death’s Head followed Ratchet after a parting punch that knocked Smokescreen to the
floor. ‘Hmm. Guess you’re right, yes’
Bright-eyed and twitchy from digging death-pits in Mytharc, the Quintessons had been tempted to
simply wade in and open fire. But no, they’d gone by the book: three-way squad division, scout n’ rout