(Chapter 37–A Night Without Stars)
(Disclaimers in Chapter 1.)
(2021-Diego Garcia, deep space)
The words in the file were simple, concise, no room for interpretation. Twelve killed outright. Six in persistent vegetative states, technically alive only until their families decided to pull the plug. Two others who would be institutionalized for life with no hope of recovery. The oldest had been nineteen, the youngest only fourteen. They had been seen as disposable, easily replaceable commodities by those who had made use of them. The FBI had pieced together a story of young people selected from the ranks of highly skilled MMORPG players, traced and identified, then further selected for everything from their families' politics to the resources those families could bring to bear to find a missing child. Potential candidates had been groomed as if for induction into a cult, drawn carefully into a shadow world where their way of life was threatened by a coalition of godless liberals and aliens bent on world domination. By the time Bodine was finished with them, they willingly spent their lives to stop a threat that existed only in the imaginations of madmen. And Optimus Prime had been their executioner.
Usually watching the vast expanse of sea and sky from the point brought a peace of mind that let him think things through, but now there was no peace to be found anywhere. Twenty photographs accused him like an angry jury of broken vows and murder. Fourteen years ago when the first Autobots had fallen to Earth like flotsam on the vast sea of stars in desperate need of some beach to come to land, he had sworn that he would never harm the innocent people who had given them shelter. Now that holy vow lay in twenty blood-soaked shards, innocent lives destroyed by his own sword, or at the very least by those under his direct command. I didn't know seemed a thin defense.
He was the Magnus. One of the vaunted leaders of the world. He made decisions every day that affected the lives of billions. Yet he had not been wise enough to save the lives of twenty young people, all of them possessed of a brilliant potential that should have lit up their world like stars in the night sky. Now those stars had gone dark. And perhaps the saddest part of it was the way the American media had reported it. Those child soldiers weren't seen as victims, but as "homegrown terrorists" who had thrown their lives away fighting a jihad based not on religious convictions but on extremist politics. There were echoes of Columbine and Virginia Tech. The families were left to wonder what they had done wrong.
There would be a storm tonight. The clouds had already closed in and the waves crashed against the rocks. In lieu of a sunset, darkness settled over the island. A night without stars. That was fitting.
Against the fury of the sea, they were all insignificant. Yet the planet itself faced an imminent threat from Unicron. Given the opportunity, he would suck the life from this world and leave it a dead rock floating in space.
Optimus had never felt more unworthy to try to stop him. The next mistake he made might very well cost more than twenty lives.
He heard faint footsteps on the sand and turned to see a human figure moving toward him over the rocks.
"Optimus?"
"Sam." Neither of them was quite sure when he had become "Sam" rather than "boy." Sometime after the firey crucible of Chicago had burnt the last of childhood out of him.
"You made what feels like the mistake of your life and got somebody killed. Join the club."
"I wasn't an innocent. I knew what I was getting into and I was there because I chose to be. Those young people never had that choice."
"They caught a raw deal, but it was not your fault that Bodine lied to them."
"I should have known, Sam. I should have known."
"How? How could you have known they'd be harmed by killing the remotes?" Sam climbed onto his hand. "I understand that this happened on your watch, but it wasn't your fault. It was Bodine's, for starting the whole thing, for kidnapping and using kids in the first place, for not making sure they'd be safe if a remote offlined. They were collateral damage. It happens because we don't have a choice except fight back. If we'd done nothing in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, we might have had to fight them in some city somewhere with other people's kids in the way, or right here where it could have been our own kids caught in the crossfire. That's the mathematics of war and we didn't damn well start it."
"It was my mistake, Sam. None of us can afford such errors with so much at stake."
"Well, I'm sorry, but we're all going to make them, and we just haven't got time to spend on them. All you can do now is say it happened and move on." The words could have been cold and unfeeling, if it wasn't for the depth of emotion in his friend's dark eyes.
There was lightning and thunder out over the ocean. A lashing wind brought the first of the rain. Optimus carried Sam down to the road, then set him down to transform and opened his cab door. Sam didn't even need to look anymore to know exactly where to put his hands and feet. Their time together seemed short to Optimus, but for Sam, it was nearly half his life.
"Sam, is that you talking or the All-Spark?"
Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Hell, Optimus, what makes you think I even know anymore? I want to think I'm still me, but it's always there. Ratchet can't tell me anything other than what's going on in my scans because nothing like this has ever happened before. I haven't aged a day since my bones stopped growing. And the hell of it is, everything I don't know about me—Danny has to deal with it too."
"Has it affected him in any way?"
"You've seen his crayon drawings. Things he couldn't have seen anywhere. With a kid's scribbles, who can know for sure, but Bee swears he draws things from Cybertron. I have all those drawings in a notebook. Maybe when he's older he can tell us what they're supposed to be."
"I wonder if he could be remembering a past life there. Georgie came back to us as a femme. Why couldn't the same road go both ways? Sparklings often draw pictures of their past lives before they can process the information in any other way. It could be something that simple. If that's what it is, it's best not to make an issue of it."
"I didn't think of that. I hope he doesn't start having the damn dreams the way I do, at least not until he's old enough to handle it."
"You still have them?"
"Every night for the last six months. No more of the Cybertronian script—I wish there was, it might tell us something useful. I see Unicron. I figure they're genuine, because I can see the damage from those bombs Ironhide dropped on him. Then there's this...ice cold hunger. And I see Earth, or what's left of it."
"A prophecy?"
"If it is...doesn't mean I won't die fighting to stop it rather than on my knees praying for deliverance. I'm not going to just accept some apocalyptic vision as destiny from on high, not as long as I've still got some fight left in me. But maybe it's a warning, and the All-spark hasn't figured out I got it already. Or maybe I keep seeing it because I'm missing some important part of the message. We don't have all the senses you do. It could be something I'm blind to because I'm human."
"Many of the Primes had gifts of prophecy. I am not one of them. As with so much else, that knowledge is lost to us. If you ever dream of anything more, I need to know."
"I write everything down in a journal so I don't lose any details. But so far there's nothing more than I've told you."
"Sam. You see him against the stars. If you could accurately image that, it might tell us his location and how much time we have."
"No. There isn't a star field like you see when you look up at the sky. Just one band of stars behind him."
"You're describing the empty space between the galactic arms. You can see them, just like the Milky Way from Earth. But the void is broken only by distant galaxies. I think it means he hasn't repaired himself enough to jump. He's still stranded there."
"Then we make use of the time we have, Optimus. Nobody can change what happened to those kids, but we can still do something for their families."
He vented softly. "You're right, Sam. I do know that."
Sam only nodded, if he had learned anything in his life maybe the most important was when it was more helpful just to shut up. Optimus headed home before the main force of the storm hit, the two of them in a companionable silence that didn't need conversation.
When they got to the commons, the only ones around were Georgie and Sunstreaker. There were usually a lot of people in there that time of the evening, but some people had turned in early, and most of NEST as well as a lot of the bots had gone to a big Christmas party aboard one of the Navy ships. Elita had made an appearance with Will and a few other officers, then they had left to let the ranks have their fun. He touched on their bond and found that she was in their quarters.
His bonded was sitting in the lounge watching the storm when he came in. She smiled and made room for him on the couch as he came in. "Did Sam find you?"
"Yes. Did you send him?"
"No, he asked where you might be. He's a good friend."
"Yes. He made me face up to the fact that the universe doesn't revolve around me."
"What did he–?"
"Oh, he didn't put it that way. Just that what happened in Wyoming wasn't my fault."
"How did you get from one point to the other?"
"Who am I to think I can interfere with destiny? I couldn't stop Sam from becoming the All-Spark's vessel, though it changed him and his first-born in ways none of us can anticipate. Why should I have the hubris to think I could have interfered with those children's fate either?"
Elita said, "Because interfering with fate, when we can, is what makes a sentient being different from a stone. A stone is content to lie on the beach and let the waves wear it away to sand. We fight against it and try to improve our lot–the best of us, and that is you, my love, tries to improve everyone's lot before your own. We don't always succeed, Primus knows–but when we get the chance, we try and we keep trying. That isn't hubris. It's the will to live that Primus gave us. We can interfere with destiny, true, but we can't always circumvent it, even when it is cruel."
"True."
"I mourn their loss, so much promise wasted. But ending Bodine's madness prevented even worse, had nothing been done," she said, with a scout's practicality.
"Sam called that the mathematics of war. I suppose in terms of acceptable losses it must have been, but I hope I can never view younglings in that way. Some of them were barely even younglings, Elita!"
"How anyone could do that–deliberately lure younglings in harm's way–is beyond me. What did any of us ever do to that glitch to fill him with such hatred? He came from a wealthy family, he grew up in peace and plenty. He had all the opportunities of his world spread out before him from the moment he first saw the light of day. What twists someone like that into such a monster?"
"It wasn't hate. It was lust for power. The hate is just rhetoric to fire up their followers."
Outside, the waves crashed far enough up the beach to reach the edge of the area lit by their security lights. The wind howled around the building, rattling the windows, drawing their attention out to sea. "I hope they have the good sense to stay inside the carrier until this is over," Elita said. "It wouldn't take anything for someone to be swept overboard, or off the docks."
"I'm sure they will. This isn't much for the carriers, not in a sheltered anchorage like this." He checked with Hot Rod and confirmed, "They've got out in deeper waters away from the docks, but they aren't really noticing a rough ride."
Elita nodded. "Optimus, that cold and dark that permeated Unicron. Do you feel it coming?"
"No, love, I'm far more a warrior than a priest. But I believe you when you say that you do. Sam does."
"Sam? Our Sam Witwicky?"
"The All-Spark changed him when he became its vessel. Today I found out that change did not end when it left him. He stopped aging–and he dreams of Unicron's coming. I am concerned about what this will mean for him in time to come."
"Whatever comes, he won't have to deal with it alone," she said.
They watched the waves lash the island. Its highest points were only a couple meters above sea level. By all rights, the wind and the waves ought have reclaimed it long ago. Yet somehow it endured the fury of the storm.
Optimus knew the faces of the dead would never leave him. None of the others over all the vorns ever had. But there simply was no time to deal with it now. All he could do was accept, and make ready for the war to come.
*-T-F-Rising*
Many light-years away, Unicron's shattered form hung in the void between stars. Darkmoon's ill-conceived raid on Earth had cost him dearly. He had been forced to delay his advance on the life-force rich world that the Autobot spawn of his accursed brother now called home. All his resources had been turned to the construction of a jump point that his remaining Acolytes could use to gather raw materials from uninhibited worlds, then he had lashed them to make repairs at a feverish pace. Many had been sacrificed, for Unicron needed to consume life-force to restore himself.
He needed a new general to lead his minions in the conquest of Earth. Of all those sparks who had come to him since the beginning of Cybertron's apocalypse, there was only one whose hatred and thirst for vengeance matched Unicron's own. He had diverted resources from his own reconstruction to provide a frame strong enough to contain so strong a spark. "Megatron! From the depths of the Pit, I call you forth!"
A spark, surrounded by a corona of living darkness, appeared above the empty frame. The massive form convulsed as the spark shot into its chamber, then its ruby optics lit.
"Kneel to me, my general, and arise as Galvatron. Serve me, and the universe will one day kneel to you."
Galvatron felt the rush of dark energon through his lines. Once again, to live. For now, he would kneel to his "master." For now. One day, he would be the master. It was acceptable to feign servitude as long as it suited his purpose. Optimus Prime must die.
