eugenesis-text

He had been scanning the skyline for so long now that he nearly missed the new arrival. But when
the UFO swerved to evade a downpour of acid rain, he took notice. He brought his wrist to his mouth,
flicked open a comms pad and stopped. That wasn’t the Autoshuttle. Autoshuttles weren’t green, and they
didn’t open fire on their own side.
General Quantax laughed when he first saw the long-range pictures (‘Four of them Is that the best
they can do’), but his face soon settled. It suddenly occurred to him: what if the wormhole had shut down
What if there were no means of escape He needed a failsafe, a rehearsal. He decided that if the wormhole
worked he would use it to jump backwards in time to the bridge of the landcruiser as it roared towards the
temple. He looked around expectantly, ready for his future self to materialise.
Hmm.
Nothing.
He decided he was destined to come up with a better plan. He hoped it would come to him quickly,
because lasers were already bouncing off his viewscreen.
Centurion would never know that it was his shot, his combination of human squint and timing,
which grounded the enemy. The landcruiser’s fuel tank exploded, sweeping blue flame across the
undercarriage and puncturing more hotspots. The viewscreen tore itself apart, lightning lanced the rear
thrusters, and the landcruiser crashed onto the plateau.
The Autobots stood their ground, firing in harmony, hoping to shred the somersaulting vehicle
before it hit the temple. Nightbeat imagined the cockpit of a Quintesson warcruiser poking into 1986, a
dead Quintesson at the controls. Explain that one.
In the end, the plateau saved them. Geo-tremors pulled open a crevasse wide enough to swallow the
tumbling speedster. It sat in the gap, fat and aflame, an optimistic thruster still chalking the sky.
Nightbeat watched Trailbreaker jog towards the wreckage. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said to himself, and then,
out loud: ‘It’s not safe!’
‘I have to know who,’ called Trailbreaker, climbing onto the buckled nose and peering through the
glass. Quantax’s shots knocked him to the floor, where smoke streamed from his mouth.
Hound and Red Alert would have rushed in, manhandled their friend, patched his wound and
offered fuel; they would have, if the planes hadn’t come. Sevax, Ryknia and Jolup flew nose-down to the
wind, as if propelled by invisible shockwaves. They were the unholy trinity, forever triangulated. They fired
without aim or mercy, nipping chunks from the upturned landcruiser, unstitching Trailbreaker’s leg from
his body and shaving mortar from the temple doors. Enough damage done, they transformed and landed.
‘They’re Decepticons!’ exclaimed Centurion, holding fire as the threesome moved closer.
‘They’re not ours,’ declared Nightbeat with a certainty he could not explain. He refused to accept
that the Alliance had already collapsed, and that these three unknowns were the first dissenters. ‘Autobots:
clip their wings.’
But the Quintecons were fast, and managed to avoid the blizzard of gunfire. Sevax hid behind a fresh
gravestone of metal and turned to Ryknia. ‘I can see it! The chrono-euclidiae! It’s inside the building!’
‘What do the Old Texts say about usage, Sevax’
“‘Bent to a tyrant’s touch / the euclidiae shrinks and burns anew / And wends a backward way
through time…’”
‘Summarise!’
‘We, er, just walk through it thinking about the same time and place.’
‘We take these Cybes out first,’ Jolup snapped. ‘Quick and efficient, nothing tacky.’ He leapt
headlong into the fray and Ryknia followed suit, hoping that his comrade would serve as the Autobots’
primary target.
Nightbeat ran away from the battle, leaving Centurion to fend for himself against Sevax. Hound
would have to tackle Ryknia, and poor Red Alert – still recovering from his injuries – would need to face
Jolup alone. He was running because Quantax, having pulled himself from the sandwiched landcruiser, had
just disappeared inside the temple.
A mercy dash, an outstretched leap, arms wrapped around legs, shoulder pressed against the weak
tubing of a damaged knee, and the only surviving general of the Quintesson army came crashing to the
floor. Wasn’t so hard, Nightbeat thought, before a fist buckled the aperture in his throat.