eugenesis-text

Back at Delphi, Sygnet bounced away from the comms-port as if he had been electrocuted. ‘That’s
the signal!’ he cried, half-expecting the communications lab to collapse around his feet. ‘They’ve hit the
Fortress!’
Chromedome accidentally crushed a connection lead between his fingertips. ‘Will you please calm
down’ He was leaning over the control desk, weighed down by a helmet of such taut and polished
blackness that it sucked the very light from the room. Mouth-mics copied the curve of his chin and figures
slid across his dark visor. ‘I’m running a little behind schedule, okay’
‘Tell that to Prime in…’ Sygnet consulted his chronometer, ‘two point six hours.’ But he took
Chromedome’s advice and left the room, careful not to antagonise him further.
Alone in the corridor, he flexed his servos to relieve the tension. Some warped and malnourished part
of him, a character aspect he thought had been buried with his Autobot badge, longed to be with Optimus
Prime and the others, whipping Quints and Sharkies on the front line.
It never used to be like this. In the past – that four million year gap between Arklaunch and Contact
– he had been content to lock himself in his lab. It paid not to get involved with the outside world,
particularly during the reigns of Straxus and Trannis – that hellish eternity of ethnic cleansing. It started
with Trannis’ virulent apartheid and the simple badge-tag system (yellow for Neutral, green for Empty); it
ended with phosphex blitzes (how to strip a robot to the core without leaving anything but a smear of
whitened ash), engex injections (with air bubbles big enough to boil your brain), microwave chambers,
mulch-pits and body-dumps. He was good with his hands and quick with his brain, so had somehow
avoided ‘crop-dusting’ duties, where one would wander through wastelands syringing bullets of pure
energon from the brains of the cleansed. And what was the end result When the global campaign was over,
when Straxus had washed his hands and retreated to his throne room, he announced that Decepticon
scientists had confirmed that there were six thousand ways to kill a Cybertronian.
If there really was a god, and if He was as benevolent as the Pentateuch described, then He had long
ago turned his back on the whole sorry mess and vowed never to intervene. Some races are beyond
redemption.
So, over the years, Sygnet had learned to hold the war at arm’s length, like a ticking bomb anxious to
explode. He’d done this not so much because he was a coward, more because he valued the more cerebral
elements of warfare. At least that’s what he’d told himself. Why wade through the Sludge Swamps filtering
Autoscent when you could be devising biotoxins and techno-weaponry, AI-guns and sub-light drives Not
to use on civilians – Primus no, he’d never gone in for all that sado-stuff, all that gang-slash and grouptorture
– but to use on the Autobots. The fighting itself – grubby, hand-to-hand knockabout stuff – had
never interested him, and if it hadn’t been for Ratbat’s tacit threats he’d have registered with the Empire
and joined the Cyberforming Exodus under Jhiaxus and the others. It was a missed opportunity he had
regretted, with depressing regularity, for the last few million years.
He followed a knot of cables that ran down the side of the corridor like a line of gunpowder.
Standing by the keg, two levels down, were Perceptor, Wheeljack and Soundwave. Sygnet had seen his
senior officer in various states of disrepair, but never as vulnerable as this. Stripped to operational minimum
(head, torso, couple of limbs), his endoskeletal circuitry glistened like frosted sugar, his plate-less scalp
bristled with needles, and conduit cables plugged every interface socket. He had become a living
transmitter.
The most disconcerting thing, however, was not his frailty, or the ring of portable energon packs
fencing him off, but his passivity; the way he lay there, head to one side, staring blankly as Wheeljack and
Perceptor stuck more pins into his body.
‘We’ve had the signal from Bluestreak,’ Sygnet said, still looking at Soundwave. ‘How is he’
‘Conscious,’ said Soundwave, ‘And tired of being talked about in the third person.’
‘You are now fully connected to Delphi’s transmitter,’ explained Perceptor. ‘Reaching the
Manganese Mountains will not pose a problem. As soon as you transmit the jamming signal, every prisoner
should break the Inhibitor program. Is Chromedome ready Anyone’
‘I’ll just call him.’ Sygnet pressed a finger to his audio receptor and nodded. ‘He’s ready. He says that
once Soundwave has transmitted the blocking signal he’ll piggy-back a secondary message giving the
prisoners co-ordinates and instructions.’ Sygnet paused. ‘He also wishes us luck.’