eugenesis-text

‘Which one This place is coming apart at the seams.’
‘I think Siren and Death’s Head are dead.’
He cocked his head thoughtfully. ‘Nope. Still not caring.’
‘Do you think they found the Matrix’
‘I’m not crouching here for my health, Magnus. The five-headed freak hiding around the corner is
Xenon, the Quintesson overlord. If anyone has your precious bauble, it’s him.’ Galvatron leapt to his feet
and ran.
‘What are you doing!’
‘He’s gone inside the vault!’
They found Xenon standing at the end of the walkway. The vault was filled with thousands upon
thousands of bodies, laid out in open pods, glimmering and fully formed, free from biowires and energon
feeds. Xenon, the oldest surviving Progenitor, was smiling, each of his five faces was smiling, and Magnus
was certain that every robot in every pod was smiling too.
Galvatron ran to the edge of the walkway and stared at the bodies.
He recognised them.
Pladen, Tomaandi, Primon, Sentinel, Cariot, Fastphase, Casaari, Lynchpin, Tempest, Caesura,
Miniad, and thousands more.
He recognised them all.
‘In some ways I’m disappointed that you’re here to witness this,’ said Xenon, his tentacles moving as
fast as to pallor the air itself. ‘Like the moment of death, the moment of birth should be a private occasion.’
‘You built all these robots,’ said Ultra Magnus, impressed and appalled. ‘Why’
‘Because we are a finite race with a built-in expiry date – circuitburn – and no means of procreation.
We are the exception to the universal rule that says Life Begets Life.’
‘What do you expect from Unicron’s offspring You were never meant to get this far: you should’ve
done the universe a favour and keeled over five years ago, when Rodimus used Primus to trap Unicron
inside the Matrix.’
‘How much do you know about us, Autobot How much do you know about yourselves I ask
because you seem to think we’re younger than you are. And because you seem to regard “Primus” and
“Unicron” as different things.’
Until now, General Quantax had been certain of one thing: victory in the skies. He’d remained on
the outskirts of the Sonic Canyons, safe in his landcruiser, confident that sheer weight of numbers would
see the aerial Transformers defeated. He wasn’t prepared for the surge of Cybertronian reinforcements. As
always, he saw them first on his radar screen – a rash of pixels that slid across the positioning lines. He
switched to the viewscreen, where they registered as a plague of red locusts. Fresh from Kledji to balance
the stacked odds, they compensated for their lack of weaponry by drawing fire and clipping wings.
As above, so it was below: the escapees had spread across the battlefield with the speed and stealth of
Corrodia Gravis, using their feet and their fists to tenderise the enemy. They pulled weapons from dead
hands, tore tails off Sharkticons and blurred into alternate modes.
It wasn’t just their colour that separated them from everyone else, nor was it the branding marks on
their foreheads: it was the way they moved and fought and used their hands. So swift, so silent, wearing
torture scars and cell shadows. They delivered each killing stroke with a sombre melancholy, as if they were
somehow fulfilling a moral obligation.
Galvatron stared at the thousands of perfect bodyshells below. ‘You’re pathetic, Xenon,’ he said
quietly. ‘You pontificate about a brave new race, about a new breed of Quintesson, but all I see are old
robots, millions of years out of date. Is that why you invaded Cybertron To steal the designs of dead
Autobots’
‘Stealing’ Xenon looked puzzled for the first time. ‘Do you really not know Do you really not
know what you are What we are’
‘What have you done with the Matrix’ asked Ultra Magnus.