Burnt Bridges: Part 1: What came before... (Side 1)
Burnt Bridges: A Five-part saga from the planet Cybertron
Part 1: What Came Before…

“Watcha’ doin’?”
“Working.”
“Watcha’ workin’ on?”
“Tactical analysis.”
“Interestin’?”
“Very.”
“Why ya doin’ it?”
“In case we need some unique and workable strategies.”
“What for?”

I slowly lower my datapad and send an icy glare towards Airraid. Sprawled on his bunk, the latest copy of ‘Play-Bot’ lying across one leg, my fellow Aerialbot does not so much as flinch. I resign myself to speaking slowly and loudly.
“If the Decepticons start up again now, when we’re at our weakest here, we’ll need all the strategies we can get.”
“Oh, get real!” He folds his arms behind his head. “Like the ‘cons have any chance of coming back!”
“They’re still a threat. Especially now with –”

“Primus, Skydive! It’s been what, ten years since the big M got smelted –”
“Ten and a half. In which time they’re have been three different uprisings –”
“Yeah, yeah…first Shockers tried to pull ‘em out of the furnace –”
“Very nearly killing Optimus in the process –”
“Before we kicked his aft off the planet. Then that nutcase Galvatron shows up with his ‘Decepticon Armada’.”
He describes the quotation marks with his fingers.”
“And almost conquers every known Autobot outpost in –”
“Before we blow up his flagship, taking him, most of the Seekers and Scorponok with it.” Airraid holds up three fingers and folds back two. “And then Starscream tries to conquer Earth with a buncha battleships –”

“Five. Which we only stop by putting fifteen ships of our own in orbit.”
“Right. So we got a…a…what’s that word that means a really boring ending?”
“Stalemate?”
“Right! So the Decepticons ain’t a problem anymore.”

I tap the datapad.
“We have Starscream in a face-off. Hardly an ideal situation. Besides, there is at least one rouge Decepticon faction on Earth, not to mention that Shockwave is still MIA. We have to be prepared. Especially with our orbital and ground to atmo’ defences offline during the rebuilding effort.”
“Sheesh! Get real! The Decepticons have about as much chance of winning as Signalflare has of getting it on with a femme! It’s gonna be boring old peace from here on in.” He scoops up his magazine again. “So give the tech-work a rest and get a ‘load of that fender!”

I should perhaps explain that the bunkroom is about fifteen paces square, with two double-level recharge pallets on either side. I’m sitting at the top of one, Airraid on the bottom of the other.

This means I can achieve a perfect trajectory as I launch one of my styluses at the over-revving little punk’s skull.
“Ow! Hey!”
“My finger slipped.”
He puts on a sulky expression.
“Well you ain’t getting it back.”
“A good job then, that I keep spares.”

I bend over my work.
“Now…where was I…?”
A blast of discordant sound attacks my audios, nearly knocking me off my perch. His hand on our sound system’s volume control, Airraid grins evilly. My optics narrow and I reach for my styluses.
“Alright, scraplet – this means war!”

But before I can fire the opening volley, our comms-units start blaring.
“Priority one! Aerialbots red and blue wings to report to main launching bay! Priority one! Aerialbots red and blue wings to main launching bay!”
Airraid’s already through the door. I leap after him, tossing ‘pad and stylus over my shoulder. Outside, the corridor is thankfully nearly empty.
“No afterburners in the hallways!” shrieks a technician as he waves a fist impotently at the rapidly receding streak of black and blue. I give a helpless shrug in passing as I ramp up my anti-grav and hurtle after my brother.

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Half a minute later, we shoot into the cavernous hanger.
“Blue wing reporting as ordered!”
“What kept you, slowcoaches?”
I would like, at this point, to say something pleasant about Slingshot.

Would like to, but can’t. My red and black twin has the charisma of a ballistic missile, the common sense of a Vehicon and is generally as likable as a rust rash. On his good days. But, mutual desires to the contrary, we are of the same ilk. I owe him a witty retort of some kind, even if he won’t appreciate it.

Airraid, however, gets there first.
“Smelt that, what the slag’s goin’ on?”
“How should I know, bolt-brain? No one’s exactly rushing to tell us what to do.”
“Oh, well. They probably saw you and turned back.”
Slingshot balls his fists.
“Go bend your wings, scraplet!”
“Oh, really cool comeback, sprocket-head!”

I sigh.
“Thus begins today’s battle of wits. Hmm…half-wits anyway.”
“Eh? What you on about?”
As usual, Fireflight is looking in completely the wrong direction.

An arc of electricity leaps between the other two, jolting them apart.
“Enough of that, boys! We’ve got a job to do!”
Silverbolt bounds into the room, flexing his motors.
“Form up, beta thuros formation and make it snappy!”
With assorted cries of “Sir!”, “Do I look like a flaming crocodile?”, “Let’s rock!” and “Where are we going again?”, we take to the air.

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Looking down on the world, it’s not hard to see the scars of conflict. Fallen towers. Cracked mountains. Buildings that have been pounded flat. Expressways broken in two. All in all, it’s rather depressing to see what our world had become.

Then again, not everything’s doom and gloom. Scaffolding and cranes loom over the wreckage, casting long, hopeful shadows. We are rebuilding, slowly but surely. One day, things may return to how they were before the War. It’ll be nice to see that in reality rather than on a history tape.

Below, Cybertron is clawing its way out of the dust. Above, the universe spins silently on. Between fly us – two A-10 Warthogs, two sawed off F-22s and an almost unrecognisably modified Lockheed Blackbird – or at least, that’s what most of the humans who saw us in action thought.

“ATC have detected a spatial disturbance in the upper atmosphere,” Silverbolt explains, “We’re to investigate and report back.”
“Surely this is a job for the science teams?” I query, “Astroscope, Skyblast, someone like that?”
“This disturbance is moving. Towards Iacon, no less. We’re to see if it’s hostile or not.”
“How do ya tell if a spatial disturbance’s hostile or not?”
“If it starts spewing Decepticons, ‘raid, it’s hostile.”

“It’s beautiful.”
“What?”
“Eh?”
“Pardon?”
Fireflight angles upwards slightly.
“It’s beautiful. The disturbance, I mean. Isn’t it? I’m looking at the right thing, aren’t I?”

He’s quite right. A point of silvery light is slowly descending from on high. Around it, the sky is, for want of a better term, rippling. Waves of distortion shimmer out from the light, twisting the air into bizarre shapes. The whole thing is roughly fifty metres across and moving at about a hundred kph. We sweep round and match velocity, moving ahead of it like an honour guard.

“OK, OK” Silverbolt opens a channel to Goldmount. “Iacon ATC, we have intercepted the anomaly and are proceeding to investigate. Right, blue wing: back loop and engage full-range sensors. All eyes open. Transmit telemetry to command as well as us.”
“Commander.”
”You’re the boss!”

With Airraid at my flank, I bank off and set about orbiting the distortion. My scanners go haywire. Not only is the atmosphere warping around this thing but as we fly closer, my chronometer starts acting oddly. If one accepts it’s readings, then time itself is reversing. Which is stupid. Chronometers count. They don’t measure time as such. Yet, mine has taken it into its head to run backwards.

A few seconds and the effect vanishes.
“Well that was odd.”
“No kidding!” Airraid does a barrel roll. “Something just turned my clock inside out!”
“Hmm…” I consider. “Just a minute. Hold steady a moment.”

I run a sensor beam over his fuselage.
“Now that’s interesting.”
“What? What? Have I got something on my tail? What?”
“I could be wrong but it looks like the natural degradation of your armour has been reversed by about…twenty ‘seconds or so.”
“Which means?”
“That thing is not just a spatial disturbance – it’s a temporal distortion as well.”

Silverbolt moves up to us.
“As in time warp?”
“Could be.”
“Hey, but,” protests Airraid, “We kept going forward! Why didn’t we just go backwards or something?”
“Haven’t the foggiest. I can tell you what happened, not why. Get someone at control to find the nearest expert.”

“Sorry to interrupt an’ all that,” sneers Slingshot, “but any a’ you bright sparks noticed that we’re leaving this temporal spatial thingy behind?”
Indeed, the disturbance has slowed while we’ve been talking and is now near stationary.
“Transform,” our leader orders, “Where are we now?”
“Two point oh four klicks from Goldmount’s outer south wall,” my GPS rattles off.

Other than stopping its forward motion, the rippling effect carries on unabated.
“Now what?”
Airraid has drawn his energo-batons. Silverbolt closes his optics and waves a hand at him.
“I don’t think hitting it will work. Suggestions Skydive?”
“Maintain position and observe. If nothing untoward happens for, say, five breams, call up a science team to quantify this.”
“Sounds reasonable. Take up stations, people. And keep your sensors on full.”

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Ho hum. A bream later and not much has changed. The only interesting thing I can say is that, visible light aside, the effect is not giving off any kind of radiation. At least, not anything detectable. Maybe better equipment would show something, but to my sensors, it’s absent on the electromagnetic, the gravitational, the thermal and even the sonic scales. Which means it isn’t a mere warp-gate or a spacebridge, or even a reality bomb but something far more unusual.

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Fireflight bumps gently against my wing tip. We both jerk.
“’Flight!”
“Wah? Eh? Where?”
“You dozed off again.”

Hardly fair. My admittedly distracted brother has a rather unique cerebral structure, designed to cope with the manic, chaotic conditions created by his weaponry. In order to prevent him from being dangerously hyperactive outside of battle, it was deemed necessary to reduce his standard net-speed to levels that, unfortunately, leave him lethargic and, well, dozy.

“Come on,” I say cheerfully as I right him, “We’re supposed to be watching…”

Something’s happening. The light at the centre of the rippling is growing. No, not growing, budding. Two globes of radiance split from the singularity and begin to circle it, moving ever outwards. They draw the ripples after them, stretching the temporal effect like a rubber sheet. At the same time, something begins to form just in front of the distortion. Lines of light draw themselves in the air, crisscrossing, intersecting, slowly meshing into a three dimensional shape…

The prow of a spaceship.

Silverbolt snaps his fingers.
“Combination manoeuvre – Aerialbots: Powerlinx!”
We leap together, transforming, our individual functions usurped by the command, our bodies becoming one –

=============================================================

Connect.

It’s strange being Superion. I am a vast, incredibly powerful, extremely fast, heavily armed super warrior, towering over most of my comrades – not least when using the mass converters laced throughout my body to increase my size to skyscraper proportions.

And, at the same time, I am only my own right boot. Or just an arm. Or simply my torso. The discrepancies are disconcerting. I am one being with five disparate sets of memories. I act based on a quintet of impulses. I see things from five points of view. Yet ultimately, I am as unique and individual as my components.

It would be easy to spend vorns just trying to work out how these could possibly combine to form a stable, individual psyche, or to examine my soul for all eternity, looking for the seems.

But I do not have eternity.

The ship continues to resolve itself into reality, becoming more and more solid. The hull is pearly white, so pure that it seems to glow with its own inner brilliance. I say hull but it is more of a latticework, a mass of ribs entwined into a long wedge shape. Within this cage are hundreds upon hundreds of cogs. Big, small, gold, silver, solid, hollow – every conceivable toothed wheel, all interlocking, all turning. They spin together, constantly moving, layered so thick that it gives the impression of molten metal flowing back and forth. The sound of their motion is like soft thunder.

A more filled-in section of dark brown plates emerges, followed by a faceted canopy of icy blue glass. Above this sits some form of deck gun, a long barrelled cannon that nestles between a pair of fins.

The rear of the craft comes into view, a great mass of engines. Two ramjets taper along the sides of a massive power plant, below which is slung a huge warp drive array.

Finally, great pylons ratchet out from the ship, one on either side, both containing yet more cogs. At their ends are what I can only describe as clockwork hover drives, downward facing engines apparently driven by the action of the cogwheels. And from these spread the ship’s wings.

Wings? They are like sails, great triangular pieces of the same blue crystal as the canopy, curving outwards around the spear-like structures mounted on the sides of the hover drives. And as I watch, they appear to billow, like flags in the breeze. They are never still, rippling in time with the distortion that is even now diminishing.

As the ship becomes solid, the whirling globs of light spin further and further away, seemingly drawing the last of the disturbance with them. All at once, both are gone and only this bizarre, ticking craft is left. It hangs there like a solid ghost, sunlight glancing off the intricate, swirling patterns that cover its length and the endless, ceaseless cogs.

For maybe ten astroseconds, we face each other, ship and giant staring blankly. Then the ‘deck gun’ launches itself upwards, splitting away from the main body, becoming some kind of smaller vehicle, a jet of sorts. Now that it is gone I can see the symbol carved just behind the canopy – an Autobrand!

Before I can look closer, the ship spins on its axis. The warp drive folds down and forwards. The ramjet cowlings move up and outwards. The wings flatten and rotate. The whole thing bends in two.

And then I am not facing a spacecraft anymore. I am hovering before another mechanoid, a tall, regal figure in white and brown and gold. His face is kind, weathered with age and experience. His optics are filled with a warm red glow, the same light that fills the sphere embedded in his chest plate. Everything about him radiates power and wisdom.

He speaks before I can, holding up a hand in greeting.
“My blessing to you.”
I am uncertain how to respond. Five different alternatives present themselves. I choose.
“Kindly identify yourself.”
“I am Vector Prime, High Guardian of Xenothos. Whom do I have the honour of addressing, warrior?”

Prime? I did not mishear. He referred to himself as ‘Prime’. How could that be? Only one held the title of Prime - Optimus. Is this stranger mad? Is this some kind of trick? Or a mistranslation perhaps? My language software states that he is speaking modern Cybertronian, albeit an archaic form thereof but still…

“I am Superion, Autobot Aerospace Warrior.”
I pause. The flying gun has returned to this ‘Vector Prime’s’ side. And it too has transformed. A Minicon, also in white but with black replacing brown. He hovers just behind his fellow with a deferent, humble look.

A vast number of questions flood my processors. Too many to deal with now. One, however, seems imperative.
“What is your business on Cybertron?”

Vector Prime smiles, a pleasant sight.
“I come seeking the regent of this world. I bring tidings of fantastic importance. Will you take me to him?”

I pause again. For all the talents at my disposal, I do not think I have the skills for this situation. This must fall to my components.

Disconnect.

=============================================================

Vector Prime is clearly surprised by the sudden disintegration of his companion. Silverbolt grins.
“Sorry to startle you. We’re the Aerialbots, the air force around here. Superion is our gestalt form – we weren’t sure what was coming out of your time warp or whatever it was so we wanted to prepare for anything
“A temporal gate,” the ‘High Guardian’ confirms, “I apologise if my means of travel caused you distress.”
“Naw,” Slingshot grunts, “Just upset the crash-dummies at control.”
This, thankfully, passes our guest by.

“D’ ya believe this guy?”
Airraid’s evident disbelief echoes through our internal comms-grid.
“Not our place to decide.” I run a few scenarios past them before mentally shaking my head. “Let’s see what control wants to do.”

Though I don’t broadcast it, I am at a loss. Time warp shows up, disgorges the strangest ship I have ever seen which then transforms into a mech who says his suffix is Prime. I don’t know what to think.

ATC’s response is rapid and much more decisive than ours.

We have a quick round of proper introductions, after which Silverbolt points to the ground below.
“If you’d like to follow us, sir, Optimus Prime will meet you on the main runway.”

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I could be wrong but I don’t think anything quite like our little procession has ever graced the Goldmount airspace before.

If one has never seen Iacon’s fortmount before, one might expect the same wedge shaped, blank-faced, hard-edged monolithic structure as most of the others. And one would be surprised. It’s two of them. The obelisks stand some way apart, projecting from the wide dome of the city centre. As everyone knows, the golden skin of the fortress once shone like a lantern. Now, even after the many attempts to clean it again, it has a burnt, scorched appearance – again the consequences of battle.

We touchdown just as Prime (our Prime) emerges from the main gateway, flanked by Lieutenant Commander Jetfire and the newly promoted Hot Rod. We just have time to sort ourselves into as near parade-ground-perfect attention as we ever get. Which is never particularly good given that we consist of a sullen egotist, a rush-mad lunatic, a dazed hypersensitive and a commanding officer who is constantly trying to distract himself from that thing that no one is supposed to know about. And me.

Silverbolt snaps a smart salute. The effect is slightly spoiled by the fact that he’s clearly trying to remember the protocol for occasions like this as he goes along.
“May I present Optimus Prime, err, Regent of Cybertron. Sir, this is Vector Prime of Xenothos and his scribe, Roots. Um.”

Fortunately, Vector Prime clearly has a better idea of what to do. He steps forward slightly and gives a formal bow.
“Blessings to him whom the Keys have embraced. My spark at your service, my sword at your side.”

Optimus is, obviously, not one to be easily flustered but this throws him off balance.
“Ah. Yes. Likewise. Ahem.” The confusion is pushed quickly aside. “Welcome to Cybertron. I believe you have something to…tell me.”

The other Prime straightens back up and nods.
“I come to you to reveal what has been hidden from your people for far too long. I come to return to you your past and to help build your future. I bring you this.”
He suddenly produces a broadsword.

Naturally enough, we all stiffen and reach for our weapons. Optimus signals for peace. We stop but our tension doesn’t.
“A sword?”
“This is no mere weapon, I assure you.” He holds it up to the light. The blade looks like it is forged from the same substance as his wings, although it does not billow as such. Instead, there is something…unreal about it. As if it doesn’t quite belong…

I try not to look too hard.

“Watch,” says Vector Prime as he sweeps the sword in a downward arc, “And learn.”

The world boils away. That’s the only way I can describe it. A wave of something bursts along the sword’s length and keeps going, wiping away Goldmount and Iacon and leaving behind…

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…another city. A beautiful city. A massive city. An unimaginable city. If I had any breath to be taken, it would have been. Spires the likes of which I have never seen dominate the skyline. Domes and pyramids stand amid rows of palaces. Innumerable expressways thread their way past and indeed through the buildings. Ships fill the sky, flying past with stately massiveness. Parks full of sculptures and fountains are built into every empty space. There is not an inch that has not been covered by something wondrous rendered in silver or gold.

If I seem to be rambling, it’s because I think something vital in my head just went offline in shock.
“Wow.”
Hot Rod is the only one of us who can come up with anything vaguely sensible. Vector Prime sheaths his sword and flings his arms wide.
“Welcome to the golden age. Welcome to what came before the Cataclysm. Welcome to Cybertron’s past.”

“This is some kind of illusion, I take it.” Jetfire kneels to examine the polished bronze that now covers…that covers what was…would have been…eh, where the runway had been. “A holomatter construct or a solid light image. That would seem to be the logical conclusion. An image overlaid on Iacon.”
“He’s trying to say he thinks this isn’t real,” Slingshot sumrises.

On cue, someone walks into me and out the other side.

I don’t feel anything – the first I know about it is when the back of a neck suddenly fills my vision. I step back hurriedly. And realise that the wheels hanging from his shoulders are sticking out of my chest.
“I suppose this answers that particular question, doesn’t it?”
Funnily enough, while I felt nothing, this ‘illusion’ did. He stops and looks round frowning. After a moment he shakes his head and continues on his way. The others hurriedly make a path.

“In a sense,” explains our ‘host’, “we are the illusions. I am projecting us through time. This is reality eons ago. We are the ones overlaid upon it.” He gazes longingly at the city. “This is the height of our race’s glory…and the final days before everything crumbled.”

Optimus turns from the vista – which he has been looking at with just as much desire – and walks to Vector Prime’s side.
“You spoke of a cataclysm. What did you mean?”
“I spoke of the end and the beginning, the destruction and the rebirth. Come.” He takes out his sword again. “We must go back further still – to where it was all set in motion.”

The world shimmers.







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