Retribution Read online

  Transformers: Retribution is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. Based on Hasbro’s Transformers® Action Figures.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro and used with permission. © 2014 Hasbro. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-0-345-51987-0

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54672-2

  www.hasbro.com/transformers

  www.delreybooks.com

  Cover art: John Van Fleet

  Cover design: Scott Biel

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: Alpha Trion

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Epilogue: Alpha Trion

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  Prologue: Alpha Trion

  MY TIME HAS COME.

  Yesterday Shockwave came to me again. He talked and talked—he is so proud of himself, so arrogant. And yet (as is ever with such hubris) the real meaning was in what he did not say. He claims the Decepticons have almost won control of all Cybertron, but I know better. Ultra Magnus and his fearless Wreckers are unleashing havoc … hit and runs on convoys, surprise raids on isolated bases, sudden severing of supply lines … guerrilla war gradually intensifying to the point where now only the Decepticon forces in the major cities are secure from attack.

  But Shockwave could care less. His lord and master Megatron craves total domination, but Shockwave thrives on chaos. It took me longer than it should have to understand this—to realize that Shockwave now regards all of Cybertron as his laboratory. For him, the Wreckers are simply culling the weaker Decepticons, making the race as a whole that much fitter. His is the most dangerous kind of insanity: the kind that stems from logic run riot. Even as the Wreckers inflict ever more damage, Shockwave cultivates his larger agenda. To him, the Wreckers are unwitting tools.

  Whereas I know the role that he expects from me. Again, he would not tell me directly. But here in the Hall of Records, I can hear his Insecticon guards buzz outside my door, and I know that they will lead me elsewhere very soon, to a place I would rather not go. It is not the impending pain I fear, though I would hardly claim to welcome it. It is the thought of the forces Shockwave might inadvertently unleash. It is disquieting to reflect that there are far worse outcomes than his crushing of all resistance on Cybertron.

  What is happening half a galaxy away is testament to that. So far from where I write this, yet I know enough of it. Even if so many of the mighty space bridges have fallen into disrepair—even if so much of our once-great culture lies in ruins—I am still one of the Thirteen, and I am not deaf to the manifestations of my brethren.

  Nor am I unaware of the machinations of ancient enemies. Civil war is the worst kind of war; every shot fired, every blow struck, all of it leaves one’s people that much more enfeebled when it is time to face the real foe. Had I been able to spend enough time with Optimus before he left our battered planet in search of the AllSpark, I might have had the chance to tell him that … to explain to him what the gladiator who once called himself Megatronus knows intuitively, that an infinite universe contains infinite opponents by definition. To learn to live in peace with this reality: there can be no higher aspiration. And even though Megatron will almost certainly never attain any such serenity, his way of fire and sword has nonetheless granted him the easier path.

  At least in the short term.

  And though I am a being that measures time in eons, the short term is all I have now.

  Because now I hear them: Shockwave’s personal guards striding toward the door. They will drag me from the solace of my records, from the Covenant of Primus that I have hidden in a place they never will find, all those pages containing words of the future crashing like ocean on the jagged shore of now. I stand upon that shore and yearn for days when I was younger. Oh, yes, I admit it. Why should I not? Even as I know it for the ultimate temptation … and thank Primus himself that I am too old for it to sway me: to stride onto the bridge of a ship plowing across the parsecs, readying weapons with which to rend your foes to pieces. Megatron, I envy you such simplicity of purpose. Would that I could have turned your malice to better ends. Would that I could somehow stop those who now advance to claim me. But all I can do is write these words and hope that somehow they make it past my captors to tell the tale of events heroic and terrible … an epic inferno to echo all the way to the day in which you (in a happier time, a sunnier time perhaps) sit here and read and wonder.

  Chapter One

  AN ENDLESS WALL OF GLITTERING STARS; A SINGLE spaceship sweeping in toward it.

  For weeks, the Nemesis had traversed the gulf between two of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Now that journey was almost over. Ahead was the edge of the Orion Arm; that of Sagittarius lay far behind. As the Nemesis gracefully slipped out of faster-than-light mode, its cloaking systems kicked in automatically. Dozens of sensor dishes bloomed like flowers along the titanic warship’s spinal mount, scanning the approaching field of stars, processing everything they saw, and relaying their findings to the ship’s bridge.

  On the bridge, Starscream and Soundwave studied the readouts. They were the only Decepticons on the flight deck. It didn’t take much of a crew to run the ship in standard transit mode, and that was just fine with Starscream. If they found anything, he intended to be the first to know. It wasn’t like the ship was going to tell them; the Nemesis had sustained considerable damage during its pursuit of the Autobots; not only had it lost the ability to shift out of spaceship mode, it was no longer sentient. The rest of the Decepticons seemed to regard that as a loss, but Starscream relished the fact that the thing had finally shut up. The last thing he needed was a spaceship with its own agenda, for power politics among the Decepticons was complex enough as it was. Let Megatron
sulk in his quarters; Starscream would rather watch from the front than give orders from the rear, would rather bide his time, for he knew that after the inevitable victory over the renegade Autobots, the real struggle between him and his master would begin. Until that day arrived, he took what satisfaction he could in bullying those below him. He turned his ruby-red eyes on Soundwave and pointed a long finger at him.

  “Proceed to secondary scans.”

  “At once,” Soundwave replied in his usual monotone. Starscream knew there was no need to vocalize what was merely standard operating procedure, but he did it anyway to remind Soundwave that he was second in command on this bridge. He enjoyed reminding all of them every chance he got. Soundwave might be Megatron’s loyal pet, but as far as Starscream was concerned, he was nothing more than a jumped-up communications officer with visions of spymaster grandeur, though he was nothing if not obedient: Starscream watched the results from the secondary scans flicker past him. Dozens of screens lit up as the Nemesis searched system after system, star after star—a search that now expanded to include substellar material: brown dwarves, burned-out suns, nomad planets, wayward rocks …

  There.

  “Isolate that signal!” Starscream barked. Soundwave was already on it; along one wall, a wraparound screen focused on the system in question, several layers back from the edge of the spiral arm. It was a young star surrounded by a huge cloud of debris. A typical circumstellar disk … but Starscream’s eyes narrowed, for such debris would be the perfect place for wounded prey to hide. And as the Nemesis’s mainframe broke down the signal’s composition, Starscream felt an emotion he rarely knew: joy.

  For it was unmistakably an echo from the engines of the Autobots’ Ark.

  Perhaps the Autobots were hoping the various debris and gravitational distortions could hide them. If so, they had underestimated the Nemesis’s powerful sensors. Back in orbit around Cybertron, it had been a state-of-the-art scientific station while in its Trypticon mode. And now its sensors were put to the test even further: They picked up a second signal, buried still deeper in the mix …

  “Autobot distress call,” said Soundwave.

  That wasn’t what Starscream was expecting him to say, but he instinctively hid his surprise. So the Autobots were in desperate straits. So much the better. Apparently they were hoping that someone besides the Decepticons was out there to rescue them from whatever they’d stumbled into. Pathetic, Starscream thought. They weren’t warriors by trade; they could boast of nothing approaching the instinctive grasp of tactics possessed by every Decepticon. There were times he almost felt sorry for them. It wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t been born for battle. Yet they’d made matters worse for themselves by entrusting their leadership to a glorified data clerk. That the no-name Orion Pax could become Optimus Prime was offensive to every self-respecting Decepticon. His leading the Autobots to their demise was only a matter of time.

  Now that time had arrived.

  “Shall I alert Lord Megatron?” Soundwave asked.

  Starscream thought for a moment. “No. You stay here and monitor the signal. If it changes in any way, contact me immediately. I shall go and alert Lord Megatron myself.”

  “As you wish, Air Commander.”

  MEGATRON HAD LITTLE USE FOR AMENITIES.

  He’d declined to use the captain’s quarters as his lair, instead opting to set up his command post in a massive observation bubble that sat high atop one of the Nemesis’s aft superstructures. In peacetime, that bubble had been the site of telescopes that charted faraway stars, but all such equipment had been jettisoned long ago, making it the perfect place for Megatron to brood and plan high above the troops he commanded deep in the bowels of the vessel. The Decepticon leader had felt the ship drop out of lightspeed and knew that very soon those subordinates would be clamoring for orders.

  For they were nothing without orders. There was no way they’d ever have gotten this far without him. Although each Deception was an excellent fighter in his own right, working together just wasn’t something that came naturally to them. They needed a strong hand to guide them to victory. Nor was it simply a matter of each Decepticon recognizing where his collective interest lay. It was far more basic than that—it was might makes right, the purest expression of the Decepticon credo, and everything Megatron did reinforced the fact that he was the mightiest of all. There would always be pretenders to the throne, but what was leadership without the occasional opportunity to grind would-be usurpers down to their basic components? It was a part of the game that Megatron relished.

  Though such satisfaction fell far short of the pleasure he would know on the day he crushed the Autobots and personally destroyed Optimus Prime. It vexed Megatron greatly that the librarian had escaped his clutches thus far. Only luck had allowed that rebellious bot to escape Cybertron in the first place. But luck could take one only so far. As of late a new factor had entered the equation—after their clash at Junkion, Megatron reluctantly had to admit to himself that the data clerk was fast learning the art of war. No doubt about it, Optimus’s possession of the ancient Matrix of Leadership was making a difference. The Autobot leader had grown into his rule; he had led Megatron on quite a chase, but he couldn’t run forever. Sooner or later he would have to stand up and fight. And probably sooner … The sound of the door chime pulled Megatron back from his thoughts.

  “Enter,” he said. Starscream strode into Megatron’s chambers, dropped down to one knee, and bowed his head to his leader in a gesture that—though technically quite correct—bordered on the mocking.

  “Oh mighty Lord Megatron, it is my humble duty to—”

  “Dispense with the pleasantries,” said Megatron. “And get to the point before I decide your service is no longer required.”

  “We’ve found the Autobots, Lord Megatron.” Starscream keyed up the data on a screen in the observation module. “The system is awash with debris, but we’re sure this is an Autobot transponder.”

  Megatron studied the display. His traditional scowl shifted to a wry half smile, but he said nothing. As the silence lengthened, Starscream started to get a little anxious.

  “What do you think, sire?” he asked.

  The half smile became a full one. “I think the Autobots have set a cunning trap,” said Megatron.

  “A trap? For us? Impossible.”

  “You’ve always underestimated the Autobots, Starscream. One day that arrogance will be your undoing. They may not be born warriors, but they are more than capable of deceiving the likes of you.” The screen on the wall expanded out into a hologram. “Look more closely; do you see it this time?”

  Starscream was definitely nervous now. He had no idea what Megatron was talking about. He shook his head, wishing Megatron would stop talking in riddles. The Decepticon leader let out a low sound that was half growl, half chuckle. He pointed at a series of coordinates around the site of the transponder.

  “You forget, the Nemesis is purely automated intelligence. It cannot rival my judgment. These look like reflections from the primary source, but they are almost certainly heat signatures as well.”

  “I don’t understand,” Starscream said.

  “They could be ships, fool. Using the debris as cover for an ambush. They think if they can trap us between the star and the debris field, they’ll be able to maximize their weaker numbers against our stronger force. They know that the Ark is no match for the Nemesis and that the radiation in this debris field will play havoc with our targeting systems. So they’re trying to even up the odds. And had you been in charge instead of me, it might have worked.”

  Starscream ignored the barb. “So what should we do, my lord?”

  “Spring the trap, of course. Set the ship to condition red. We’ll finish this once and for all.”

  “At once, my lord.” Starscream hesitated. “And how shall we spring this trap?”

  “We? Try you. Take a detachment of your best Seekers.”

  Starscream didn’t like the
sound of that at all. He tried to think fast.

  “My lord, I’m not sure I’m worthy of such an honor.”

  Megatron laughed. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said.

  Chapter Two

  THE NEMESIS’S WARDROOM WAS A POPULAR PLACE FOR the Decepticon warriors to replenish their Energon, talk shop, argue tactics—and, of course, gossip about their leaders. But even away from the front lines, Decepticon hierarchy was very much in evidence. Thundercracker and several others in Starscream’s combat air patrol treated the place as their personal lounge. The less hearty of the Decepticons usually cleared out when they appeared in force to crowd around the rechargers and oil kegs. Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet spent most of their time arguing over who was the better Seeker while Skywarp fine-tuned the circuitry on his teleportation unit. As of late, the scuttlebutt had centered on the increasingly boring system-by-system search for the Autobot enemies: How long would it go on? Would they ever find their quarry?

  Not that anyone was so unwise as to express such sentiments to Megatron. The Decepticon leader kept his own counsel, and no one second-guessed it unless he wanted a good old-fashioned laser blast to the head. Though there had been plenty of talk behind his back about what he was up to. Because whatever Megatron had been doing these last few weeks was strange—it was almost as if he’d been told the direction in which to search but not how far out he had to go. Following a more or less straight line, the Nemesis had systematically made its way across the galaxy, all the way to the edge … and then it had just kept going, out into the void, crossing to the next spiral arm. Perhaps Megatron was chasing phantoms. Perhaps he had become too obsessed with his hunt. Perhaps he was losing it. No one said that out loud—not even to one another—but it was on all their minds. That was the problem with dictators—it was an efficient way to do business, but it all fell to pieces when they started making poor decisions. More than one bot aboard the Nemesis was beginning to wish he’d stayed behind on Cybertron. There were those among the naysayers who hinted at disaster …