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others not quite recognised in the heat of battle. Quintesson pilots were familiar with their odd-looking
commandants, and tried not to snag them by mistake.
Ryknia skirted the edges of battle and picked off anyone who got too close; Jolup delved gleefully
into the mayhem; and Sevax – poor, frightened Sevax – began sidling towards orbit.
The Ark moved slowly through the heart of the battle, shrugging off Trident fire. Bluestreak kept her
low, forcing the Quintessons to nosedive in attack, and after a few minutes of ground-hugging the Fortress
was suddenly within strafing range.
‘Keep her steady,’ Optimus said. ‘We won’t be here much longer.’ He opened another comms-link.
‘Mirage We’ve rung their doorbell. Time for you to move in.’
On a loading bay scuffed with fume and ancient traction, the Transformers watched the hangar doors
open and waited for Mirage’s signal. Once the forcefields had disintegrated, they launched themselves into
freefall. Some were vapourised by Quintesson fire as they fell, others sustained so many clips and grazes that
they crash-landed as limbless torsos.
Those that hit the ground conscious found themselves surrounded by hover-bikes and Sharkticons: it
was going to be messy fight. Sure enough, the air soon became clogged with buckshot and splattered
lubricant. Dead bodies rode explosion curves like ragdolls and puppets.
Mirage scooped Bonecrusher off the floor, brought his disrupter rifle down hard across the back of a
Quintesson’s head, and blasted a pathway towards the nearest pack of Cybertronian survivors.
Tracks burst from a bulging knot of Sharkticons, stripped to the chassis by teeth-tear and overbite.
Vibrating with shock, hands barely able to lift his black beam gun, he sank to his knees and was crushed by
a toppling am-tank.
Swindle kicked the disembowelled remains of Headstrong aside and turned his scatter-blaster to the
dash and scramble all around him. He thought he heard Crosshairs screaming for help but lost sight of him
as Dozer rolled by, tackling three Quints simultaneously.
Hosehead and Throwback bagged a sky-swatter platform and started raking Tridents out of the air;
Smokescreen, Trailbreaker and Carcass grabbed hover-bikes and attacked a back-up squad; Clawback
transformed to puma mode and tore his way through a ring of trigger-happy Sharkticons.
And so on, and so forth.
Bluestreak had not taken his eyes from the viewscreen since crossing into Polyhex: his life for the last
half hour had been the pulse and flex of the forcefields and the scratchy sky in front. ‘Well’ he said. ‘Are
we winning’
‘Impossible to say,’ said Optimus, the only other person aboard the Ark. ‘But in a few moments I’ll
have some front-line reports.’ He strapped another concussion blaster over his back and took steps towards
the door. ‘You know the drill, Bluestreak. As soon as the Fortress is in range…’ He took the vacuum lift to
d-deck, waited for the outer shields to flicker, and threw himself into battle.
Only the members of the Quintesson Royal Court had the ability to identify particular
Cybertronians, and even then, as Xenon had learnt to his cost, there was still room for error. The average
Quintesson trooper saw all Transformers as the same, both in allegiance and appearance; to a lowly
Sharkticon, the Cybertronians were practically a race of clones.
None of the Quintessons, therefore, paid much attention to the broad-shouldered red and blue
Autobot that came thudding onto the battlefield – at least not until he started swatting hover-bikes with his
bare hands and sniping runaways from two thousand feet; until he threw Sharkticons into the overhead
crossfire, transformed into an articulated tank-truck and butted rail-guns off their platforms. By then it was
too late. Autobots and Decepticons followed his example and fought with a renewed vigour.
Bluestreak, meanwhile, felt horribly alone. The Ark seemed far bigger and far more vulnerable than it
had been moments earlier, when a living legend was breathing down his neck. Tridents were nibbling at
the shields and soon the energy build-up would cause shutdown.
And then, suddenly, it happened: he was in range. The Fortress was clearly visible up ahead. He
primed the laser cannons, flexed his trigger-finger, sent up a prayer to Primus, locked-on and fired. The
upper west wing of the Fortress disappeared in a fireball ringed with matchstick-black shielding. When the
smoke cleared, the Fortress only had four intact sides, and the Ark was making a vertical getaway.