eugenesis-text

‘That doesn’t solve the problem of reaching the base,’ said Nightbeat, speaking to Optimus as if was
the only other person in the room. ‘Surely our shuttle will be shot down the moment it breaches Aquarian
airspace.’
Centurion, tucked between Technobots in the fourth row, raised his hand. ‘There’s an undamaged
Trident in the Rust Sea,’ he said, almost apologetically, as if someone more experienced should have
spoken first.
‘He’s right,’ said Mainframe. ‘It crashed near the Terbium shoreline.’
Optimus sank back in his chair. ‘So we have a means of infiltration. I need volunteers to travel to the
Rust Sea and recover this Trident.’
Every Autobot raised his hand. The Decepticons did not move.
Ryknia turned loops in the air, preening himself. The planet’s curve flattened like a relaxing scanline,
the air lost its arctic tang, and the Manganese Mountains zoomed closer. The air was humid and dewsoaked,
the sky crammed with fume-clouds and run-off stains. Mount Edeus, once rainbow-gold, was now
fermenting in a haze of greasy pollutants.
He rolled onto the landing strip, deserted save for a pair of Quintessons patrolling the perimeter. The
entrance hall inside the mountain was covered in red footprints and crates full of unused Inhibitor Chips.
He took a short cut through the spray chambers and found Jolup closing the door on a descending staircase.
‘Making any progress’
Jolup stiffened. ‘Oh, a little. You know. Slow but significant.’
They looked at each other for a moment. ‘You’ll have to show me sometime,’ said Ryknia, and then:
‘Sevax reported twelve Grade Cs missing: more than your normal ration.’ He craned his neck to see what
Jolup was hiding. ‘What’s that on the door’
‘What, this It’s a padlock. Cold-set and motion-frozen, with state-of-the-art internal clampdown
mechanisms and three layers of tenium alloy. There, happy’
‘What are you playing at All three of us are supposed to have Downstairs access.’
‘Calm down. It’s not designed to keep you out: it’s designed to keep them in.’
Ryknia laughed and led the way upstairs, where Sevax was dragging a corpse from an open cell.
‘There’s another one on cell block seven,’ he said, checking his hands for paint. ‘We heard this one scream
and found him hanging from his chains. What the hell is going on’
Ryknia crouched by the body and massaged its neck. ‘Good question. One of my work-team died
today. It had the same pattern on the back of his neck as this one. I think the Inhibitor Chip is exploding
inside their brains. I think it’s an unforeseen side effect.’
‘Damn it! This is all we need!’
Jolup punched him playfully on the arm. ‘Calm down, Sevax. It’s only a couple of Reddies. What’s
the matter’
‘There’s something else,’ said Sevax quietly. ‘I need to talk to you both privately.’ He led them to the
control room and pointed to a steel-plated sarcophagus. ‘It’s a bodyscanner. I found it underneath the
remains of the Decepticon base.’
‘What were you doing there’ asked Ryknia. ‘First Jolup starts padlocking the stairs, and then you go
gallivanting across New Quintyxia collecting Decepticon trash. Am I the only one without a hobby’
‘I went there to look for information on our host bodies.’
Jolup slumped into a chair. ‘You’re not still going on about that, are you Why not just write a poem
about it and move on’
‘He’s right, Sevax. It’s getting tiresome.’
‘It just bothers me, okay So you two don’t care about where these bodyshells came from. So it
doesn’t bother you that I can’t find ID codes or medical scans anywhere in the Decepticon mainframe…’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Jolup. ‘You want to download our body stats, go back to Polyhex and doublecheck.’
‘It’ll take two minutes inside the scanner. It doesn’t hurt.’
Ryknia nodded with weary resignation. ‘Okay. Fine. Anything to shut you up.’ He stepped inside the
bodyscanner and emerged a few moments later feeling slightly disoriented. He staggered into the anteroom
and saw that the comms port was pulsing with an incoming message.