eugenesis-text

sidewinder tactics, the ever-popular pincer movement, diversionary flash-fire and an 11 th hour
slaughterhouse rush. No fudge or slack or leeway. The Autobots, suddenly surrounded, didn’t know what
was happening.
Wheeljack dashed between circling hoverbikes. Craters sprang open at his heels, circuitry burst from
his back, his legs buckled and he fell. Lying beside a gutted hoverbike, he laid his gun-arm flat and squeezed
off a few shots. He ignored the emergency codes scrolling down his optic sensors and tried to keep focused.
He was sure he’d just seen two new figures skidding down the hillside, darting in and out of shadows. With
pained resignation he counted another internal glitch: outdated visual data was being cross-referenced from
his mem-net archives: he was hallucinating.
Okay, so maybe they weren’t hallucinations. Hallucinations couldn’t leap onto passing hoverbikes and
kick the pilots into their own jet-flame; they couldn’t perch on ledges and pick off riders one by one, or
somersault between explosions. That only left one possibility: that Nightbeat and his friend were real.
But… but… wasn’t Nightbeat posted at Delphi What was he doing out here, and who was that
Optimus look-alike fighting alongside him One of Swerve and Pincher’s tasteless experiments Before he
could even begin to think about the other alternatives - hard-light holograms, thought-projections, evoclones,
Decepticon doppelgangers, shape-shifters and quasi-autonomous facsimile constructs – he was hit by
a shaft of divine light. It pinned him to the spot, hesitated and the moved away, snaking across the
battlefield. He looked up and saw a hovering spacecraft, too large to land in the valley, balancing on beams
of light.
The tractor beam fell on Optimus Prime and pulled him carefully off the ground. He dangled in midair,
a Quintesson in each hand. He looked up quizzically. Nightbeat was screaming his name and firing at
the sky.
‘Take cover!’ yelled Wheeljack, pushing Sygnet and Centurion into the convict ship. ‘Nightbeat! Get
over here!’
Sygnet bundled the investigator inside. ‘What’s going on Did you lead that Quint ship to us’
‘What We came to save you!’
They were engulfed in green light. The weight slumped from their bodies and the floor peeled away
from their feet. Loose components hung in the air, corpses rolled skyward and spilt lubricant gelled into
glossy baubles.
Centurion sparked his boot-jets, ploughed through a nest of floating Decepticons, and started pushing
against the floor. Flames fluttered like streamers at his heels.
‘It’s not working,’ said Sygnet, bobbing in mid-air.
‘Isn’t it’ Nightbeat peered through the gaping hole in the side of the ship. ‘We’ve stopped moving.
The tractor beam can’t cope with the weight.’
The colour in their world seeped away, green to white. The beam released its grip, and for a second
time that day the convict ship crashed into the valley below.
It was a lot heavier than he thought.
Not surprising, when you considered what it actually was. When you considered what it actually was,
it was amazing that it could fit in the palm of your hand at all. Surely it should be the size of a gas giant
Surely it should eclipse the sun Surely whole galaxies should register as whorls of dust against its infinite
surface Ah, but that was why the Masters were so called; that was why they’d almost reached the
Metarealm.
Quantax held the Matrix close to his chest and slid his fingers into the handgrips on either side. Even
the casing intrigued him; slightly scuffed and as warm as sunny skin, he wondered when it had been added.
There was no record of it being there in the first place… but then there had to be some way for Primon to
hook it inside his tin-pot chest.
He wondered if this was what it felt like to be an Autobot leader, to be one of the ‘Matrix Masters’
scattered across the Cybertronian sparkline. It was a strange feeling, like being pushed and pulled
simultaneously. No wonder Ghyrik was swayed, no wonder he demurred; the Matrix did that: it sung to
you. Perhaps it was the historical baggage – the images of Weaver teams and deep-core drilling – but for
the first time he felt a direct link with the Progenitors.