DISCLAIMER: I don't own Armada. Good for me. I wouldn't mind David Kaye's voice, though.
"How much farther is it?"
Alex glanced over her shoulder at Jay, a few feet below, and redirected her attention to the rope. "Not far now. Come on, you have the stamina of a whelk. The view from up here has to be seen to be believed."
"Have I told you lately that I hate you?" he asked, grunting as he shifted his weight and reached for another handhold.
"About fifteen minutes ago, I believe." Alex kept climbing, enjoying the dull burn of exertion in her arms and legs. Jay, below her, decided to save his breath for climbing; they were silent all the rest of the way up to the top of the canyon, and then they continued to be silent in awe at the view spread out below them. Far below, the river curled and wriggled its way through aeons of rock; scrub pines and pinon clung to outcrops, sagebrush gave up its scent in the baking heat of the sun. The canyon walls here formed a natural echo chamber; even hundreds of feet above, they could hear the chattering and burbling of the river as it flowed over its rapids.
"See? Told you." Alex lit a cigarette after a while, watching the ravens soar and wheel below them in the shadows of the canyon itself. "Worth it."
"Yeah," said Jay, grudgingly. "I guess so." He remained where he was for a while, getting his breath back, and then unpacked his camera and started fitting lenses. "I still hate you," he added, but distractedly, caught by the patterns of light and shadow, the moving texture of the rock as the cloudshadows drifted over. Alex laughed, and shifted over to lie on her stomach, looking down into the chasm.
Her chin was resting on her hands on the rock, so she was first to catch the vibrations coming up through the stone; she glanced around for any sign that the rimrock they were sitting on was about to collapse, but it seemed stable. Still, there was a faint rhythmic vibration, like very heavy footsteps a long way away.
"Jay?"
He wasn't there; he was photographing clumps of red-hot-pokers in the shadow of a pinon some way down the rim. "Jay," she called, louder. "D'you feel that?"
He looked up. "Feel what?"
It was getting closer, almost on the edge of hearing. "It's like..thunder, or something."
"Too early for the afternoon storms," Jay called back. "Probably someone's truck somewhere. Chill, Alex."
She sat back on the warm rimrock and looked out at the view. He was probably right, but the hair on the backs of her arms was still standing up as if an icy wind was blowing over her. Something was wrong, somewhere close.
"Damn," said Jay, a few minutes later, scowling at his tripod, "it's shaking my shot. You think there's a rockslide somewhere?"
"It wouldn't go on this long," she said. "Shh—I think I hear something."
She stared down into the canyon. The noise was getting louder; there was a rumble, not unlike thunder, and a separate rhythmic pounding. And...voices?
Jay joined her at the canyon rim, and they both stared as, far below, what looked like a green and purple tank rolled into view at the bottom of the chasm. After a moment, something enormous on legs joined it, an orange-and-yellow behemoth with what had to be gunbarrels sticking out of its shoulders.
Alex shot a glance at Jay, who was staring with his mouth open and possibly reliving some of his college acid experiences, and looked back at the two things that should most definitely not have been at the bottom of a canyon in central Utah. The tank-thing seemed to be having difficulty negotiating a narrow part of the canyon.
"Blast," said a voice, muffled with distance but still memorable: an elegant baritone voice with a hint of an upper-class British accent. "Why do these Minicons always have to be in such infuriatingly remote areas?"
"I dunno, sir," said another voice. This one was the sort of voice Alex associated with large, muscular, intellect-impaired grunts in Vietnam movies.
"The question was rhetorical, you idiot." The tank nudged back and forth a little, and then the first voice gave an exasperated sigh. "Transform!"
There was a bizarre series of noises accompanied by an eye-bruising display of flexibility, and the tank, now bipedal, walked forward into the wider part of the canyon. Alex reached over and twitched Jay's camera, with telephoto lens, out of its owner's nerveless hand.
Through the lens she could make out that the two things in the canyon were in fact vaguely humanoid, and appeared to be giant robots; the one that had up until recently been a tank sported a pair of antlers on its head which reminded Alex of certain beetles she had met, while the one with the gun barrels on its shoulders seemed, as far as she could tell, to have one of its eye-things much bigger than the other. She focused in a little further.
"You said the Minicon was in this area, Demolishor," said the first voice, which apparently belonged to the tank-thing. It folded its arms and stared at its companion.
"Uh, yes, Megatron, sir. It should be just up ahead."
"Well," said Megatron, pleasantly, "why don't you go and get it, Demolishor, before I use you for target practice and melt your carcass down for scrap?"
Alex watched, speechless, as Demolishor marched past its...his....evident superior and proceeded up the canyon. Jay, finally coming out of his daze, nudged her.
"Gimme the camera!" he hissed. "We're gonna be famous!"
She passed it over, sighing. "No one's going to believe you, Jay. Any fool can Photoshop stuff like this."
"Alex," he told her through clenched teeth, furiously snapping off shots as quickly as he could wind the film, "we are witnessing alien robots walking among us!"
"Walking in the bottom of a canyon, actually. And this is an area known for datura cultivation." She stared down at the tank-thing, whose gun was now attached to the back of his hip, pointing firmly right. He was leaning against the canyon wall with his arms folded, managing to look as nonchalant as a giant green and purple tank robot with horns can look. After a moment there was a green flare from around the bend in the canyon, and the one called Demolishor came back holding something.
"Got the Minicon, Megatron sir," he said, proffering it. Alex couldn't make out the thing he was holding without Jay's telephoto lens. Megatron took the offering.
"Excellent," he said, sounding pleased. "Back to base."
The air shimmered, and then the canyon was utterly empty of giant alien robots. Alex and Jay looked at one another for a long moment.
"That was.....weird," said Jay.
"That didn't happen," Alex countered.
"I got a whole roll of it!"
"Bet you it won't develop," she said. "These things never do. Let's go home and make appointments for CAT scans, shall we?"
"Can we go to the bar first?"
"I think we'd better."
Some time later, there was a very science-fiction-y noise and then a strangled yell, and a full-size semiarticulated lorry materialized in the tightest part of the canyon, struggled a bit, and dematerialized again.
Somewhere, the skies over central Utah filled with laughter.