Something in Sam’s attitude, or perhaps in his tone, persuaded the giant to halt. More likely it was due to the thought that had just occurred to him.
“Wait. Where am I going? What planet am I on?” As he scrutinized his immediate surroundings, his bewilderment only increased. “This doesn’t look— right. Doesn’t look right, doesn’t sound right, doesn’t feel right.”
“Uh,” Sam ventured, “this is Earth.”
Gazing up at the stricken, disorientated giant, Mikaela found herself experiencing something she never thought she would feel in the presence of a Decepticon—sympathy.
“You—you don’t remember where you are?”
The great head squealed as it swiveled to look down at her. “Reach a certain mileage, Milady, the old circuitry begins to fail you. Tell me—is that pointless war still going on? Decepticons: such heathens and cowards! That’s why I defected to the Autobots. Can’t we all just get along?”
A small, gleaming shape scurried past the staring humans. Trailing a piece of the chain that had been used to restrain him and moving too fast for either Sam or Mikaela to grab, Wheels raced toward the towering robot. The smaller Decepticon had finally managed to break free of the metal box in which he had been imprisoned. All four humans watched helplessly as the giant who called himself Jetfire scooped up his far tinier relation and brought him close to his face. While Sam and his companions looked on, the two machines began to converse energetically in their own language.
“They’re talking much too fast for me to catch anything.” Mikaela found herself fascinated by the verbal electronic byplay even as she wondered if it might
be prudent to start running at full speed in the opposite direction. “Wonder what they’re saying to each other. ”
“Kill all humans.” Leo smiled wanly.
Sam was shaking his head. “It doesn’t sound hostile.” He eyed the ex-agent. “What do you think?”
Simmons grinned contentedly. “What? You want my opinion again?” His attention swung back to the two briskly chattering robots. “I don’t get it. The big one acts like he’s escaped from someplace more medically oriented than a museum and the small one is yapping and dancing around like a puppy. I will agree with you that neither activity seems to presage the imminent deployment of lethal force. Of course, I’m templating human motivations onto alien mentalities. There’s no telling what they might decide to do.”
Whatever Sam and Simmons believed the Decepticons’ next move would be, it was safe to say that neither man was anywhere near the actual mark.
Doing a backflip off Jetfire, Wheels landed next to Mikaela and reached out to grab one leg. Letting out a yelp, Leo jumped to one side. An equally alarmed Sam started toward Mikaela, only to have Simmons hold him back. The metal limbs gripping her leg were not twisting, not cutting, not piercing. They were .. .
Hugging?
Wheels was babbling anew in English. “Jetfire says can change sides! Change sides! Wheels on Warrior Goddess side. I worship Warrior Goddess! Need discipline!”
Her expression that of someone who had just stepped in something unappetizing, Mikaela struggled to shake off the clinging Decepticon. Refusing to be dislodged, Wheels clung to her tightly. Sam fought unsuccessfully to repress a smirk.
“Hey look, your new sadomasochist boyfriend needs discipline.”
“Oh, that’s cute,” she growled at him. “Bet he’s a better kisser than your dead girlfriend.”
“Probably not as shocking,” Sam snapped back. They were interrupted by a flatulent ploof! as a large trapezoidal parachute unfurled from the general vicinity of Jetfire’s dorsal zone. Catching the breeze that was gusting through the storage yard, the ’chute ballooned to its fullest diameter. Limited though it was, the resultant tug was enough to cause the ancient Decepticon to totter backward. Tripping over part of the fuselage of a yet-to-be-restored Antonov prop job, the alien landed backside first before collapsing all the way onto his back. Having reflexively self-conditioned himself to speak in the current dominant language, his words were probably more intelligible than he would have preferred.
“Seeping selenium sealants! Can’t even walk properly. Updating says I’ve been stuck on this miserable little world for thousands of orbits around its insignificant little sun and that I’ve got a mission, but I keep forgetting what it was. Wait! Of course! We must destroy the dinosaurs!”
“Uh ... I think that kinda happened already,” offered Mikaela helpfully.
Still tentative but less afraid now, Sam approached the recumbent robot as closely as he dared. A dark shard on the ground nearby caught his eye. Bending, he quickly scooped up the scorched splinter of the Allspark from where it had fallen, having been jolted loose from the Decepticon by his fall.
“Uh, Sir? Mr. Jetfire? If you can help me, maybe I can help you.”
Enormous inorganic eyes shifted to focus on him. “You? Help me? You are only a small fleshling of limited physical strength and low-energy neurological output whose cognitive abilities are additionally restricted by limited cerebral development that is confined within a fixed calcium-based envelope.”
Mikaela nodded knowingly. “That’s what I keep telling him.”
Sam drew himself up to his full height. “Yeah, but I’m a small fleshling of limited physical strength and low-energy neurological output whose cognitive abilities are additionally restricted by limited cerebral development that is confined within a fixed calcium- based envelope who knows something you don’t know. ”
He manfully resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at both of them.
Symbol after precise symbol appeared as Sam traced line after line of ancient knowledge in the dirt of the storage yard with the tip of his fleshling finger. He looked as if he would keep at it until he fell over when an empathetic Mikaela finally reached out and gently placed her hand over his.
“Give it a rest, Sam. And remember to breathe once in a while.” She eyed him with concern. “You were starting to turn blue.”
Blinking and breathing deeply, he sat back and gazed in wonderment at everything he had just etched into the ground. What did it all mean?
It had better mean something, he thought. The police sirens they had been hearing for a while were noticeably louder now. Also, the hand he had been drawing with had gone to sleep. He tried to shake some feeling back into his numbed fingers.
“It just keeps coming. I get the feeling I could write this stuff forever. ”
Squinting through his lenses, Jetfire reacted in astonishment to the human’s handiwork. “The Fallen? As in The Fallen?” Genuine excitement leached through the aged metal. “Young fleshling, you may have saved us all. Now I remember what I was seeking.” His voice faded slightly as recollection filled him. “The Dagger— the Kings! And the key, of course, the key.”
Sam and the others gaped at the babbling Decepticon. “What key? What dagger?”
“No time to explain.” The alien seemed more alert than at any time since the splinter of the Allspark had revived him. “We have to get there before I forget where we’re going!”
Raising his hands defensively, Simmons took a wary step backward. “Wait, wait—where? Get wheref” “To where we have to go, of course.” Jetfire’s tone implied that anyone who bothered to ask such foolish questions was more than a little intellectually challenged. “C’mon, you dimensionally challenged runts, have faith. Gather tight, stand still now, hurry! And let’s just pray all my circuits are firing.”
Mikaela’s gaze had narrowed. “Why do we need to stand still?”
“So your parts get there in one piece,” the former Decepticon explained amiably.
11 One piece? As opposed to what}” Leo stammered.
Instead of replying, the Decepticon began to shudder. Violent groans and metallic grinding noises sounded from deep within his huge body. Behind their magnifying lenses the glowing eyes went dim as he appeared to be exerting himself
toward some unknown end with every iota of his being. His voice, however, still resounded clear and intelligible, if plainly under great strain.
“Technology of—the Ancients. Discontinued in later models due to excessive rate of failure—reportedly prone to—catastrophic malfunction.”
Leo swallowed hard, wondering if he should run like hell or if it was already too late and taking off running might result in his “parts” being scattered all over the storage yard. The police sirens were very loud now. He found himself hoping the cops would show—and fearing what would happen if they did. Something inside him, some instinct, was insisting loudly that this was not a good time to deal with such outside interference.
“Catastrophic,” he muttered. “I hate that word ...”
A tremendous convulsion shook the Decepticon. His armored breastplate began to open, the sections parting to expose his spark. Rising up from the ground (or maybe down from the sky—Sam couldn’t be sure), a swirling blue vortex began to engulf them all. At that point the Witwicky gene for survival kicked in and he shouted at the top of his lungs.
“I think—we should run!”
He turned to do so. So did Mikaela, Leo, and Simmons. None of them made it more than a couple of steps from the now-violently vibrating, mechanically shrieking Jetfire before his spark expanded into a ball of blinding blue fire spitting forks of blue lightning in all directions. Expanding wildly, growing with unrestrained speed, it engulfed the stunned onlookers before spreading to parts of the museum itself—including the rear parking lot. Looking back as he tried to flee, Sam saw one such bolt firing in slow motion directly at him. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to . ..
Normally at this time of day the fennec would be asleep in its den. Movement outside the opening had tickled it awake and drawn it forth into the blazing sun. Not that it was disappointed to have had its daytime rest disturbed. The fat lizard that had probed the opening was still close by and would make a fine meal.
It was just about to pounce when the earth exploded.
Two figures shot skyward out of the sand on either side of the startled fox. One was large, metallic, and troubled. The other was smaller, fleshy, and screaming. After rising twenty or so feet into the air from their respective points of ejection, both Bumblebee and Sam hit the ground hard. Adjusting his position in midair according to the precepts of his internal gyroscopic system, the yellow-and-black Autobot had no difficulty with the landing. His human counterpart was not so fortunate, ending up in a jumble of arms and legs. Thankfully, the soft sand helped cushion his fall.
Sand?
Struggling to a sitting position, a baffled Sam first checked to ensure that nothing was broken before beginning to study his surroundings. The desert expanse that stretched out before him in every direction was beautiful, the rust and ocher hues precise and sharply etched in a way no landscape of a mid- Atlantic state like New Jersey could ever match, the cute little big-eared fox gaping back at him lithe and limber and . ..
Hastily making tracks for the nearest hillside as it rushed to flee the location of inexplicable occurrences.
It was good that it did so, as three more figures who did not belong in its home territory burst out of the ground not far away from the first two. Training told Simmons he needed to roll over and take the measure of his surroundings the instant he hit the ground. The pain that was running through his body from teeth to toenails insisted otherwise. Pain won, and he lay where he had landed, groaning. Nearby, the Twins sat up and took stock of themselves, checking readouts, appendages, and assorted perceptive instrumentation.
The last two shapes to emerge geyserlike from the sand landed several hundred yards away from the others. Leo hit the ground first as Mikaela came down hard on top of him. The instant she tumbled off he rolled over, spitting out desert while clutching at himself.
“Whoa,” he moaned sickly, “I was having this beautiful erotic dream about you.” His face was screwed up in a rictus of pain. “Then I realized you had just landed on my testicles.” Turning away, he buried his face in the sand.
Regrouping, they walked up to the recumbent Jetfire. No one objected when Sam took the lead. The Decepticon was lying on his back on a rocky outcrop that protruded from the sand.
“What the—where are we?” Sam asked him.
“As still named according to your ancient tribal designations, Egypt. I told you.”
Sam stared at the prone Transformer. “You didn’t tell us anything! You—you blue-lighted us and something loud and painful and hallucinogenic happened and there was five seconds of Ted Nugent meets Thor and then ...! ” He forced himself to stop and catch his breath. “What d’you mean we’re in Egypt?”
Jetfire ignored him. “Ohhh—my aching epidermal alloys! Haven’t done transspatial porting for a long time.”
Simmons frowned. “ ‘Porting’? As in going through a ‘portal’?”
The Decepticon sounded pleased. “Oh, yeah. Fast, huh? Everyone check your appendages, make sure nobody is missing anything. Or got it switched.” Sitting up, he began to take stock of their surroundings. “Hmm—I thought there’d be a particular body of water near here. It’s gotta be close. My coordinates must be off by a little bit. ”
Sam was turning a slow circle, studying the environment while trying to make some sense of what had happened. “We’re in Egypt? Halfway to halfway around the world? But why}”
Jetfire harrumphed softly. “Can’t you fleshlings remember anything? I thought I explained that.”
His hands balling into fists at his sides, Simmons glared at the Decepticon. “No, you didn’t! You explained nothing! ”
“Oh, right.” Swinging his massive legs off the rock, Jetfire regarded the unlikely assembly of humans and Autobots. But while he took the measure of them all, the bulk of his attention remained focused on Sam.
“Your symbols, boy. They’re a story. The greatest story ever told. The history of our race. How we began. And,” his voice dropped slightly, “how we came to be divided.” Raising a creaky arm, he gestured outward, taking in the vast sweep of empty desert.
“Long ago on these very lands a legendary battle was fought. A monumental slaughter that divided us all. ..”
Listening in rapt silence, the four humans and three Autobots waited for the old Decepticon to continue. Jetfire regarded them with paternal contentment.
Several minutes of extended paternal contentment led Leo to finally exclaim impatiently, “And . . .
Jetfire peered down at the young human. “And what?” he inquired placidly.
“What about the battle?” an annoyed Sam inquired.
The old Decepticon was perfectly bemused by the question. “What battle?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Aw, c’mon, pay attention, man! You saw what the wind did to my inscriptions. Don’t make me draw those symbols all over again.” For emphasis, he let his right hand flap loosely on its wrist.
The young human’s conveyance of urgency seemed to jog something in Jetfire’s memory. He was about
to respond when a rising buzz in the air attracted his
attention. It also drew curious stares from his audience.
The source of the buzz turned out to be a biplane of World War I vintage, only instead of a Maltese cross or French bull’s-eye it flaunted Decepticon markings. Circling once, it then came in low and slow on a course that would send it directly at the placid figure of Jetfire. Humans and Autobots started to scatter, but before they could disperse the biplane’s buzz choked, started up again, and then died as the unimposing aircraft nosedived into the ground at the Decepticon’s feet. Covering Mikaela, Sam backed away as the biplane changed shape from terrestrial guise into bipedal form. Leo and Simmons retreated as well, but not the Autobots. Bumblebee regarded the interloper curiously, while the Twins set to arguing between themselves as to its true nature.
“Well, if it ain’t Jetfire,” the altered airplane declared bold
ly. “When you open up a transspatial portal, that kind of energy discharge is bound to draw attention—you no-good yellow-bellied traitor!”
At this Bumblebee took an angry step forward, only to have Sam move sideways to block the Auto- bot’s path.
“Metaphor,” Sam murmured. “That’s all.” He nodded in the direction of the looming confrontation. “They kinda seem to know each other. Let them settle it.” Reluctantly, Bumblebee stood down.
“Been looking for you for a long time,” the altered biplane muttered. “You think you can just mosey out on us?” He gestured contemptuously to his right. “Help humans? Today we settle things. Just you and me.
Drawing his arm-mounted weapons, he let loose with a volley consisting of—a single shot. It pinged harmlessly off the uncomplaining Jetfire. He eyed the spent shell thoughtfully, then raised a massive foot and brought it down hard. The silent desert air was treated to the atypical crunch of metal crumpling.
“Always disliked him,” Jetfire commented. Lifting the foot he had brought down, he began scraping detritus from the underside. “But yes, now it all comes back. Ah, the timing of remembrances! We were Seekers, me and that angry little fellow there. Among others. What were we searching for?” Before Sam or Leo could say anything, he continued. “Glad I asked.” He leaned forward. “Would you like to see?”
Leo spoke up uncertainly. “See? You mean, hear.”
“No. I mean what I say—when I can remember to say what I mean. That’s what I meant. I mean see.”
And so see-saying, an image was projected from his chest. Three-dimensional, irregular in outline, it floated before an audience composed of three young humans, three much older Autobots, and one semiparanoid obsessed curmudgeon who despite everything
that had happened recently, including a substantial transspatial dislocation, still smelled faintly of pastrami and lox.