Burnt Bridges: Part 4: The Need for Speed... (Side 2)
Even at full power, I’m not even close to matching Excellion and Dirtboss’ speed. Which makes it very fortunate that as I rush over the unending desert at top velocity, I can tap into what Roddy’s twin is seeing.

He has the sense to keep enough distance to avoid immediate detection. They’re approaching some kind of outcropping, slabs of dull rock rearing against the sky. The Decepticon’s stooges are headed straight for the gap between two of the biggest chunks. As he/we get closer, the gap becomes a downwards-sloping tunnel, into which Dirtboss and Landbullet vanish.

Excellion slows and slews to a stop. He waits a moment – the cursory minute or two by Velocitronian standards – and transforms. When the data-feed’s stopped jittering, I find him creeping along the tunnel. The only sound is the gentle moan of a faint breeze caught in the passage. Underfoot is loose sand, overhead smooth rock. A slight amount of radiation is leaking from up ahead, the merest hint that something odd is going on.

The tunnel narrows before widening out into a far more regular, obviously mech-made one. Steamhammer’s gang has been busy. Moments later the place branches off into five identical, circular sub-tunnels. Excellion halts.
#Any ideas?#
I don’t know which is more startling, the sudden reminder that we’re comm-linked or that he’s asking for my help.

I consider.
#Yep. Third one from the right#
#How can you be sure?#
#Just trust me. I know how Steamhammer works#
Without further comment, he goes on. I’m glad I don’t have to explain exactly why I can be so certain about Steamhammer. It’s a long time since I’ve had to face up to having put that…Decepticon back together and the guilt is very nicely suppressed, thank you.

Besides there are more important things to be concentrating on. The radiation has grown in intensity, to slightly worrying levels. One sharp bend later and voices join the EM waves. And a very familiar row it is too.

“My patience wears thin, sweet Prime.” A harsh crackling sound underlines Obsidian’s words. “How do we lower this shield?”
“She’snotgoingtotellus. Iwarnedyouthiswouldn’twork.”
The lovely Dirtboss is still in evidence then.
“Bettertojusttearherarmsoff. Thissparkythingjustwastestime!”
At a guess, that would be one of his scrawny little helpers, not sure it matters which. Excellion creeps a little closer. Light’s filtering around another corner. It’s not a warm light but an angry, dull glare, the sort of light that makes a shriek-bat’s eyes look friendly or a smelting-pool appear attractive. Closer still we go, close enough to sneak a look around the turn.

Obsidian, Dirtboss, Ransack, Landbullet and Gasket are grouped together in front of a curtain of red fire, one that obscures half of a wide cave. What holds Excellion’s attention for obvious reasons is the figure at the centre of the macabre gathering.

Nitro Prime, kneeling, held down by thick energon chains.

I know it shouldn’t be possible for emotion to travel along the sensor tap-in. But a wave of anger rises up inside me that I know isn’t entirely my own. Obsidian’s tendril-fingers are at full extension, wrapped tightly around Nitro’s neck. Every second or so, electricity coils along them, biting into the femme. Then it really hits me. She’s moving slow. At normal speed for me and you, perhaps, but her jerks and recoils are…snails pace compared to what she was like at the start of the race. Primus alone knows what the Deceps have done but that must be the most horrendous torture imaginable.

Back in my world, I reach the outcrop, having picked up enough grit in my undercarriage to defrost a road in Antarctica. Every fibre optic in me screams to throw myself into the tunnel, gun arm blazing. Excellion seems ready to leap as well. Which makes the impact of someone’s fist against one or other of our backs even more shocking.

Turns out it’s him face down, not me. The unseen attacker tries to hoist the former-courier up in an arm lock but they’re too slow and he evades them. Unfortunately, this makes him stumble headlong into the cave and the clutches of Crumplezone, who shouldn’t have the right to appear from nowhere like that.

“What the frex is the leadfoot doing here?” Dirtboss snarls in the second it takes Obsidian to look round.
“An Autobot?”
“And one who seems eager to assist the damsel in distress.”
I don’t recognise the scratchy voice and we can’t see who’s speaking, although it’s presumably whoever gave Excellion a shove.
“Spying on us too! Honestly, a mech can’t trust anyone these days!”
“Quite.” The heli-con’s neck cranes to point his snout at Dirtboss. “You know him?”
“Yeah.” With deliberate steps, the purple bruiser advances. “He’s a no-hope, broken-axled, puncture-ridden excuse for an off-worlder who thinks he can cut it on the tracks but never. Stood. A. Chance.”

Some very well placed blows to the jugular, abdominal and knee sections neatly punctuate these last three words. Excellion howls incoherently and struggles futilely.
“Cease.”
Obsidian releases the Prime and drifts closer. Dirtboss stops punching.
“Why? I’ll enjoy beating the bearings out of him.”
“Possibly but I would like to know how long it will be before we can expect company from his comrades.”
“Comrades?” Excellion spits, “What comrades? Listen to your hired grunt! I’ve been here vorns. I haven’t seen another Cybertronian since I materialised.”
“Funny that,” says the shoving voice, “given that you seem to be transmitting telemetry to someone. And there’s the life-sign reading I’m getting from the other end.”

“From around about here, I’d say.”
Odd, I could have sworn…frag.

I turn round. The Decepticon holds out his hand.
“I think this is how those funny little squishes do it, isn’t it? How dya do? “
Apparently this mech was built specifically to be a Decepticon. No one on the side of the angels would voluntarily choose to coat himself in quite so many black, sharp edges. Almost no one, anyway. The guy looks like he magnetised his shell and stood in the middle of a razorblade factory. What isn’t black and spiny is orange or gold and interspersed with smooth aircraft components. A cockpit forms his upper torso, wings act as leg armour and a large armoured plate sits on his left arm, a shield from which project clusters of scythe blades. There’s a Deceptibrand inset into this defensive weapon but another, stranger symbol on his chest catches the optic. It looks a bit like a star burst. Odder still, it’s familiar though I certainly couldn’t tell you what it is. It’s his face that really holds my attention though. Or lack thereof. Just a blank, glowing window set into a horned, inverted triangle of a head. Depending on how you looked at it, it could be an abstract butterfly or an insane grin, an effect helped along by the two faux eyes that form part of his crest.

This rapid and clinical analysis out of the way, I get round to snapping my left arm into a firing position and charging my laser-torch to weapon-level output.
“Whoa there!” The stranger backs away and turns his shield to face me. “You really don’t want to do that.”
There’s a hiss from within the plate and the scythes fold inwards. At the same time Decepticon insignia slides upwards…and an Autobrand fills the space.
“Allow me to introduce myself: Sideways, Cybertronian State Intelligence Division deep cover operative. And boy o boy do you Autobots put your lead-feet in it!”
Funnily enough, the sign-change has been accompanied by his voice lowering and becoming less scratchy.

Even funnier how it’s the little things that make sense when the rest of the universe has looped the loop.

“The CSID went out of business vorns ago.”
Even simple facts are probably about a secure as a Vehicon’s firewall with all that’s been happening recently but it does buy me some thinking time.
“True,” Sideways acknowledges, “But its agents didn’t. And I’m damned if I’m going to let an artefact of that power fall into the Decep’s hands. Don’t worry, I have everything planned. Or had, anyway. Might still work. As long as you and the other nosy twerp play along. Honestly, a guy has to wonder how you lot carry on surviving when all you do is get in the way of people who actually know what they’re doing.”
For a second, his eye-mask widens. Perhaps it is a grin after all. Or maybe I’m just going cuckoo.
“‘Play along’?”
“Yes, you know, I’ll pretend to capture you and we can take it from there.”
“And I can trust you on this because…?”
He contrives to look pained.
“That hurts! And isn’t this enough?”
The Autobrand is waved under my nose.

True enough, it does give off the right signals. But then again, I try not to be gullible.
“There is this wonderful thing called ‘forgery’ you know.”
“Oh come on! Do you really think I’d waste time like this if I were really a Decep? And besides…”
His body breaks up as if his personal reception just went bad. Then he’s standing right behind me and whispering into my audio.
“If you aren’t going to play along I’m afraid I’ll have to consider you a liability to my mission.” A broad sword comes swinging over my other shoulder and settles against my throat. “And that would not be pleasant.”
“How do you know I won’t expose you?” My voice is thankfully free of absolute, gasket blowing terror.
“Who are they going to trust? Someone who’s been a loyal little soldier for Primus knows how long or an Autobot just caught with his hand in the cookie jar?”
“Um.” Good point, you must admit. “Can I take some time to think about this?”
“Certainly. Take five ‘seconds. Tick tock!”
Well, when someone puts things like that…
“All…right…I’ll play along. But tell me something…”
“Why, certainly! Anything!”
“Isn’t ‘Sideways’ a bit of a stupid name for an undercover operative?”
“Not when you fly like I do!”

And who can argue with that?

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Teleporting is not nice. Especially if you know what’s happening to you. I’m no physicist but I do have some idea how being molecularly disassembled and squeezed through a minute crack in sub-space is supposed to work. It feels rather like being dissolved in acid and crushed through a sheet of filter paper while someone jabs you with a cattle prod. I assume. Not nice at all.

And when we reassemble in the red-lit cavern, the sight is equally unpleasant, what with Excellion hanging balefully in Crumplezone’s grip and the other creeps clustered round the captive Prime. The only cheering point is that the barrier is still in place.

Obsidian’s fingers are coiling across Nitro’s face now, seeking a way behind. It takes every bit of self-control I have not to snap Sideway’s false energo-cuffs and try to pummel the living scrap out of the airborne fragger. All that I can settle for is a yell and a stream of obscenities that represent another Ratchet-given aspect of being a medic.
“One Autobot spy,” Sideways proclaims as he jabs me forward, “Sorry I didn’t have the time to gift-wrap him.”
Executing a neat pirouette, Obsidian bears down on us, emanating something close to abject fury. Not, I think, directed at me.
“A medic.” His voice is on the verge of shaking. “The medic. Kill him. No. Wait.”
Sideways, very thankfully, lowers his sword.
“Dirtboss. Kill him. And the other one.”
He goes back to getting nowhere.

The purple brute comes towards me, fists clenched. I try to back peddle but Sideways is blocking my way. I silently pray he’s actually going to do something sooner rather than post-me.
“Brilliant.” I pour as much scorn as I can muster into my voice. “I get done in by the new running dog.”
If he doesn’t get the terminology, he gets the meaning.
“I’m no one’s ‘running dog’!”
Ah, thank Primus for that other universal constant: villains’ pride.
“Hah! And what are you then? ‘Cause you seem to be jumping a mile when old chopper-face up there says hop!”
He hisses.
“I want the Cup. And if I have to break your axles with my dental plates, I’ll have it.”
“Which is why you’re letting the Deceps take it from you?”
I’m ready for the punch. Still hurts.

Dirtboss leans close, the scope-eye rotating with a click-clack noise.
“You think they’ll take it, do you?”
“Obviously. But, then, I’ve never seen why people want to rule places so I don’t really see any problem with them having it – the universe conquering and world smashing bit aside, of course.”
His lips twitch.
“Funny. But I suppose you haven’t been chasing that damn femme’s tail for thousands of giga-turns, have you? Always not quite there while she gets faster and faster, feeding off that thing’s power. Close but never close enough. Watching again and again as she vanishes into the distance. NEVEREVERFASTENOUGH!”
Oh heck. I look into the crazed optic and the twisted face.
“Fragging marvellous. You’re not only stupid; you’re off your axis as well. Abso –fragging – lutely marvellous.”

I don’t know which of us screams loudest: Dirtboss as he hammers his fist into my face, me as Dirtboss hammers his fist into my face, Obsidan as he furiously and futilely jams his fingers against Nitro’s apparently impenetrable skin or Nitro as the needle points bore into her face.

“STOPTHISANDLISTENTOME!”
Excellion’s voice cracks out with all the force of a sonic boom, freezing us to our respective spots.
“I’ll open it.”
We gape at him, for varying reasons.
“I’ll open it.” His face contorts at the words – to use a human expression, he looks like he’s chewing a wasp. “Didn’t you hear me? I can lower that damn shield for you!”

Obsidian looks incredulous and thoughtful at the same time. Dirtboss glares. Gasket and Ransack keep right on cowering while the bigger, bulkier twins still hover between suspicion and dimness. Sideways is, naturally, unreadable.
“Look it’s the only way you’ll get in! Let me go and let me get that thing down so you can frex the Pit out of here!”
Nitro makes no sound but her jaw works furiously, mouthing for him to stop. He doesn’t.
“Well?”
“Hmm.”
Obsidian rubs his prominent chin.
“Very well. Put him down.”
Crumplezone hesitates for a fraction of a second. Dirtboss gives a sharp nod. Excellion hits the floor.

He gets up slowly and rubs at the dents along his arms. Then he approaches the crimson fire. Weirdly like a conductor about to start conducting, he lifts his hands into to the air. And with one smooth motion, plunges them into the barrier.

Playing with strange energies is not a nice business. I’ve heard that whenever a Prime uses the Matrix it feels like they’re having their own Spark torn out even as they give life to others. You only have to watch him around us to know that energon hurts Kicker. Ask anyone who’s ever rewired live circuits or dealt with plasma bursts and they’ll tell you what it feels like.

Primus take me if I know what that force field is made of or how Excellion pushed his hands through it but if I know anything about anatomy, he should feel as if they’ve been cut off and someone’s using a flame-thrower on the stumps.

He doesn’t even wince. The redness shimmers, flickers and gradually, bit by bit, starts to fade. Not evenly though. A slice there and a patch here thin out, as vermilion lightning bolts up Excellion’s frame, cutting through him as it goes.

As the process goes on, two wing-like prongs cast in amber emerge from his backpack, identical in shape to Hot Rod’s icy blue pair. Which brings home to me exactly what’s going on. Energy absorption. Of course! Same in structure, same in power! Only this isn’t just the extraction of kinetic energy from air molecules. This is the full-blown sucking up of ambient power of any kind, the kind of ability that can let a mech win against an army. I’ve seen something like this before, in the accounts of Darkstar wielding the Star Sabre over Polyhex, but this is something else.

The field vanishes. Excellion drops to one knee, spoilers glowing like suns, stray arcs earthing themselves all around him. Beyond, the cave carries on into the distance. Immediately before us stands a stepped alter, a huge block of metal and circuitry which is at the moment smoking slightly.

Atop it is, quite simply, the Planet Cup.

Cup in fact as well as name. A golden bowl on a slender stem. Nothing fancy, nothing mythic. Just a plain, empty cup. Admittedly, it is hovering above the surface and throwing out enough raw radiation to flash fry any nearby organics but I can’t help a twinge of anticlimax.

Obsidian and Dirtboss leap forward, both greedy and grasping, the Velocitronian much faster. Faster still though, is Excellion. He flings his arms out again, jumps up and makes a hurling motion. Not at the Deceps but at Nitro. The flash is as blinding as the trap she was caught in. And its effects are as startling. The chains explode. She stands. She moves.

The leaders go down first. Nitro practically snaps Obsidian in two, leaving him to crash dive. Dirtboss finds himself pummelled from all sides, trying to resist a blur that is speed incarnate. With my ‘captors’ distracted, I slip my bonds. In the time it takes me, Landbullet hits the deck, so badly dented that it’d take a panel-beater months to get them all out. Sideways dissolves, reappearing by the pedestal, plasma charges erupting from his shield. It may have been bad luck or good planning but each of them misses and catches a goon somewhere unfortunate. The one-femme tornado doesn’t need the help. She mows down the already snivelling shrimps even as they try to get to motorcycle mode. Crumplezone fares no better. His fins and spikes get bent inwards right before his face does. Sideways though…he manages to evade Nitro’s vengeance by the tips of his wings, spiriting himself down to the far end, then back again. For a second, the Prime halts, trying to catch her bearings.

Sideways stops too. On the altar. With a triumphant hoot, he seizes the Cup, vanishing the instant before Nitro can reach him. He half reforms above Obsidian’s crumpled shape and then there’s just the three of us and the unconscious goons.
“Theymusthaveashipnearby!”
Excellion shouts it out just as I think it and head for the exit. Nitro catches us both before we can reach it.

Whiz.

The desert dusty settles around us and the Prime drops me. Five severely battered figures loom out of the sand. Steamhammer’s face is a mixture of confusion, anger and relief. We all look up.

The lower tower of a Vitriol-class warship protrudes from the sky, the sleek bulk of the craft blotting out the sunlight. A smaller, blacker vehicle, a boomerang mixed with a saucer, flits between us and the ship, dissolving and appearing at random as it follows a zigzagging flight path. It’s going mostly sideways in fact.

The Constructicons vanish, swept up in his wake as he abruptly zips past our very noses. His wings dip jauntily as he angles for an already closing hanger entrance. I raise my arm and fire, knowing that my gun won’t so much as scratch the indigo hull. Ignoring us, leaving us to curse helplessly and me to waste my remaining weapons’ reserves, the ship lifts away, stealing the Key from it’s rightful home with arrogant grace.

Or not.

A second sun bursts into existence in its path, a sun with billowing wings and a sword held high. Every micron the avenging knight, Vector Prime descends on the Vitriol, the possibly quite literal wrath of Primus. But there’s no impact. Instead, reality parts before his blade and the white warrior passes through the hull even as the ship accelerates to ramming speed. It carries on, leaping towards the stars.

And the Xenothoian comes out through the thrusters, a golden cup clasped tightly to his chest.

He lands among us as the ship vanishes and the rest of the Autobots arrive, flanked, incidentally, by several thousand Breakdowns. With the utmost reverence, he holds the Cup out to Nitro.
“Blessings to her whom the Keys have embraced. My spark at your service, my sword at your side.”
She frowns, as if in incomprehension. Then snatches the Key from the Ancient’s fingers, flipping it almost casually under her arm. Her optics fix on Excellion, who’s hobbling a little. His wings have folded away again and he certainly looks the worse for wear. They’re eyes, as the cliché goes, meet.

Zoom.

And they’re gone, leaving me to face Hot Rod and chums. He rolls up, in equal parts bemused and triumphant.
“What the…?” he begins.
“ARRRRRRRGGHHHHHHHH!”
The congregation looks over my shoulder. So do I.

Dirtboss staggers out of the cave, all but foaming at the mouth, apparently incapable of coherent sentences beyond the obligatory insane yell. I reach into a leg storage compartment as he sees me and totters menacingly in my direction, clearly intent on murdering the evil-plot-foil-er nearest to hand.

Just before he reaches me, I draw back my left arm and hit him squarely between the optics. With the hammer I usually use to beat dents out of people. He goes down as if I’d just whipped out all his servos.
“Now that felt curiously satisfying.”
I grin at the others.
“Please don’t ask any questions right now. I need a long, hot oil-bath and to deactivate this sensor link before I start blushing.”

Funnily enough, no one argues.

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Sorting things out doesn’t take long. Well it wouldn’t, would it?

We can take the Key with Nitro’s blessing the moment she’s done activating the next generation of Velocitronians. The only condition is that Excellion go with it, as a sort of official envoy. No one pries into how the Autobot and the Prime hammered that out – and I use the phrase while wincing – but the deal was settled. It all came through Excellion, Nitro still having no time for any slowcoaches except (now) the blue bot. But we have what we came for and who knows, maybe one day there’ll be some kind of diplomatic relationship between our planets. If we get round to breeding a bunch of super-speedsters.

Pitstop, between goggling at and lapping up the medical information I swamp him with, simply shakes his head.
“Doubt it. What could you give anyone around here that they don’t already have?” He looks pensive for a moment. “Don’t know though…maybe one day…here, what does that bit do?”

Everyone’s very intrigued by my description of Sideways. Communications are already zipping back and forth on priority channels. As far as central command knows, the CSID is dead as a doornail, ruined thanks to the Decepticon’s reverse infiltration. Not that it would be impossible for a few cells to have survived ‘till now. Just very unlikely.

All in all, the mission has been a general success. With only one loose end. Or should that be two?

“The good news: there’s enough differences in these scans to rule out cloning.”
With the command crew, the Guardian and a gaggle of trainee race-medics all eagerly watching as I prod and probe our unlikely duo, the Arc’s med-bay is a touch on the crowded side.
“You were, however, built in the same place at the same time. Perhaps even split from the same spark. Basically: congratulations, it’s twins!”
“That’s impossible!”
Hot Rod props himself up on his elbows. Excellion copies the movement almost exactly.
“He’s right. I never had a twin.”
“And I wasn’t brought online ‘till the war had started and he was already off the planet!”
I shrug unconcernedly.
“I just read out what the scans tell me. Excellion, where were you protoed?”
“Um…” The racer’s face goes blank, then he frowns. “I…it’s a bit fuzzy. So long ago, you know?”
“Hot Rod?”
He lies back, sighing exasperatedly.
“I don’t know. Everyone knows I don’t know. It was in Pion but during the attack that levelled the place and I was found in the rubble.”
“Pion?” Excellion’s frown deepens. “I suppose it might have been…” He clams up again, optics daring anyone to intrude further.

“There are these wonderful things called ‘stasis tubes’,” I remind them as I scroll through the data, “And anyway, that’s not the most interesting part. You’re systems are virtually identical and you have equally wonderful personalities but it would appear that Excellion is…more evolved than you, Roddy.”
“More evolved?” Roulette joins the twins in frowning.
“Sloppy term,” I admit, “but it fits. They both have exactly the same potential but in Excellion, things are more advanced. Hot Rod will one day be able to access the same power transferring abilities but in the other guy they’re already at…oh, half they’re possible strength. Most likely the constant racing and general head start in life were responsible. All those physical ‘upgrades’? Just window dressing really.”
I rap my knuckles on an extraneous intake for emphasis. Excellion winces.

Hot Rod meanwhile has taken on a bedazzled expression.
“You mean I could do what he can do?”
“Give the boy a coconut, he’s got it! You’ll have to have practice. A lot. But yes, there’s no reason why not. And another thing I’ll tell you for free: the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced they were built the same. Not formatted afterwards like Seekers but intentionally constructed or directed along the exact same lines.”
“Why?” Pitstop peers at the readouts. “Who’d go to the trouble of building two identical mechs? What for?”
“I must admit to curiosity myself,” Vector Prime intones, “I have never heard of such a thing.”
Everyone looks at me expectantly.

I glower.
“How the frag should I know? I’m a doctor not a fortune teller!”

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It’s only later, in flight, with Velocitron disappearing behind us, Excellion on the tour of the ship and the Cup safely in the hazardous materials chamber, that I have a really good look at the information I gleaned from my rummaging around in the twins’ superstructures. On a whim, I cross-reference their bio-static signatures with the entire known Cybertronian population. Might as well check for triplets. Nothing shows up. I widen the search, introducing a few variables. Not sure why I’m doing this but it fills in time. The computer pings.

I scroll through the list, realising that I’d somehow included the decreased as well as the living. Showing snags at my attention. On yet another whim, one born from the chill in my endoskeleton, I type one extra criterion.

‘Prime’.

Readout reads:
Aven (nx Avenus)
Vitus (nx Vitron)
Centuros (nx Guardian)
Optix (nx Optimus)

I slump in my seat, wondering who up there is taking perverse pleasure in throwing these ever more unlikely curve balls in my direction. Steamhammer. The Keys. Velocitron. Nitro. Excellion. Dirtboss. Sideways. And now this!

Enough of it!

My finger stabs into the ‘clear’ button and the search screen is wiped away. I think I’ll pretend I never saw that. Go on. Just ask me. I’ll say ‘never saw what?’ right back at you. Hmph. Not as if there could have been anything in it. Coincidence. Wonderful force.

Maddening but quite wonderful.

Now, where did I put my list…ah, here we go. Next up for routine inspection: Cliffjumper. Two days early but what the heck. Nothing like a full medical examination to take one’s mind off…that stuff I never saw. And the crazy events on that crazy planet.

It’s my lot in life to leave the action to the heroes, tag on behind and pick up the pieces. That’s what medics do. All the others can get on with winning wars and saving civilisation. We’re content to weld up the wounds and save the lives.

And, once in a while, kick tailgate with the best of them.







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