CHAPTER SIX
Planet X
Wheelie knew that he was lost.
He could still hear the sounds from the arena, but they were well in the distance now. The hallway he had since found himself in was at least five times his size, making him feel even smaller than he already was. Every corner he turned simply led him down a different hallway, which then split off into two or three different corridors. To make matters worse, each room looked the same as the last, making Wheelie feel as if he was just driving around in circles.
Just as he was about to stop to try and collect himself, Wheelie heard voices coming from nearby. Quietly transforming to his robot mode, Wheelie walked in the direction of the voices, careful not to make a sound. He could them clearer as he neared a small room that he would have missed had he not been looking for it. Pressing himself against the wall just next to the doorway, Wheelie raised the sensitivity of his audio receptors to better hear what the individuals in the room were saying.
“…disturbance in Arena Two. Overseer Rexian is requesting reinforcements.”
“Dispatch Unit Five and Seven to Arena Two.”
“Should we strengthen security for Arena One?”
“Do that for all of them. This situation cannot bleed over.”
Suddenly, the door opened and Wheelie pressed himself against the wall, bracing for the worst. A pair of bots — both bearing armor with spiky edges — strode out of the room and walked past him, seemingly oblivious to his presence.
“The Drilling is about to begin,” said one of the two bots. “We cannot afford to have things be interrupted this late in the game.”
“I agree,” said the other. “Besides, you remember what happened to the last person to allow the plan to be set back.”
“Gah, don’t remind me. I can still hear the screams whenever I enter shutdown….”
The pair continued walking down the hall and turned the corner, disappearing from Wheelie’s line of sight. Realizing that the door was still open, he dashed into the small room and closed the door behind him. Once inside, he found himself facing a set of monitors, each linked to cameras in rooms throughout the facility. On one he could see the arena that he and Kup had been in, with the freed Monstercons still trying to fight their way out of the chamber. He was unable to spot Kup amongst the sea of Decepticons and could only pray that the older bot had gotten to safety.
Wheelie then shifted his attention to a monitor showing one of the other arenas. On the screen, he could see what looked to be hundreds of Autobots trapped in cells, with a pool filled with Sharkticons waiting below them. A five-faced Quintesson judge presided over the chamber while an overseer-type prosecuted the captive bots. Although Wheelie was not familiar with any of the bots being held prisoner, he knew it was his duty as an Autobot to help them.
As he started to hack into the console and find out where the prisoners were located, Wheelie heard the door open behind him. Afraid that it was the same bots who had been in here earlier, he braced himself for the worst as he turned around. Instead, he saw a short black and blue bot — about equal in size as him — who immediately froze upon seeing Wheelie.
“Uh… I don’t think you should be here.”
Moving quickly, Wheelie jumped onto the other bot and tackled him to the floor, clamping a hand over his faceplate. “Make nary a sound and I won’t give your head a pound,” Wheelie whispered to him.
The other bot blinked but said nothing. After dragging him inside and closing the door again, Wheelie pinned him against the wall and unsheathed a small blade, holding it up to his neck.
“Show me the way and this will not be your last day.”
“Why are you talking like that?” the other bot questioned him, eying the knife nervously. “Who even are you?”
“I should be asking you the same,” Wheelie replied. “Perhaps you could provide me with your name.”
“My name is Wipe-Out. Please, could you do away with the knife? It’s really not necessary.”
Wheelie did not lower the knife. With his other hand, he pointed to the set of monitors, indicating the one that was his main concern. “Can you take me there?” he asked.
Wipe-Out glanced at the screen in question. “You mean the Courtroom? I, uh, I guess I could.”
“Will you help me free them?”
“Um, well, I— I don’t know if that would be smart,” Wipe-Out said. “There are a lot of guards down there and there’s only two of us and—”
“We’re not confronting them head on,” Wheelie interjected. “We would be sneaking in and pulling a con.”
Wipe-Out tilted his head. “You’re… you’re a Decepticon?”
Wheelie blinked in confusion. “What? No. What makes you….” He shook his head. “Forget it. Just take me there and follow my lead. Got it?”
Wipe-Out said nothing at first, staring at Wheelie as if weighing his options. Finally, he nodded, albeit with some hesitation.
“Okay. You got it. I’m with you. Now can you please put the knife away?”
Wheelie did so, though he still kept a hold on the other bot. With his other hand, he hit the control panel to open the door. It slid open and he turned to walk out… only to see the two spiky bots he had seen earlier standing outside. Before he had time to react, one of the pair seized him by the neck and hoisted him up, a wicked grin on their face.
“Well, well,” the scarlet-colored bot said, a sadistic gleam in his yellow optics. “And just where did you come from?”
“I asked him but he wouldn’t even tell me,” Wipe-Out started to stay. “I think he—”
“I wasn’t talking to you, runt,” the larger bot snapped. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Flame?”
“Yes, but he sent me to fetch you,” Wipe-Out said hastily. “He, uh, he said needed your help or— or something.”
The spiky bot scowled. “Fine. Maybe while we’re there, he can find a use for this little intruder. If not, we can always feed him to the Sharkticons.”
Wheelie opened his mouth and was about to fire a sharp retort only to stop when the floor shook slightly. Wipe-Out reacted in alarm and even the two spiky bots seemed confused at first. Then, the red one smiled.
“Oh. So it has begun.”
“What?” Wipe-Out whined. “What has begun?”
“The Drilling.”
* * *
“I would like to thank you for agreeing to join me on this momentous occasion.”
Rodimus Prime glared at the being who called himself Primus, his arms still bound by energy rays. “I wouldn’t say ‘agreeing’ is the right word to use.”
Primus ignored the remark as he stared at a viewscreen showing the five planetoids that comprised his God Gun. “I know we did not get off on the right foot earlier,” he went on. “But I still wanted you and your fellow Primes to be present for what is sure to be a historical moment.”
Rodimus looked over to see that he and Convoy were not the only ones in the room with Primus. Vector Prime stood nearby, similarly restrained, while Liege Maximo and Amalgamous Prime loomed over him. Vector met Rodimus’ gaze with a apprehensive look but said nothing to the younger Prime.
Primus began speaking again, redirecting Rodimus’ attention back to him. “It was on this day, over twelve thousand years ago, that my younger self — through Adaptus — bore witness to what you are about to see for yourselves. As we speak, he travels through the Warren and by the time he emerges here, the Beast will have already arrived.”
“My friend Convoy here told me a little bit of your story,” said Rodimus. “Is this where you took Luna One after the Quintessons were driven away?”
“You know about that, do you?” Primus replied, turning to look at Rodimus. “In any case, you are correct. As soon as the Lunarians had finished building the moon’s engines, I — Adaptus, that is — took it into the Warren, a network of subspace tunnels that he had discovered shortly before he turned against the other four. It deposited me into the Benzene Cluster, thousands of years into the future, where I saw… it.”
“And just what is ‘it?’” Rodimus asked.
“Words cannot do it justice. Even seeing it would be enough to cause your processor to overload itself. Speaking of which….” Primus turned back to the viewscreen. “I do believe we are about to begin.”
Rodimus shifted his gaze to the viewscreen and saw that the five Cybertron replicas that made up the God Gun were beginning to glow. Beams of energy emitted from the spheres, linking them together before being redirected towards the central planetoid. As the beams converged onto Planet X, Rodimus felt the ground shift, as if the planet was threatening to split itself apart. Primus did not appear to be bothered by this. In fact, although he lacked a mouth, Rodimus was pretty sure he would have been smiling.
“Prepare yourselves, my friends,” the Grand Architect said quietly. “The Beast is on his way.”
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