Exiles by Alex Irvine Page A

the Ark’s archives carried was megacycles out of date, and it didn’t make sense to spend time on a planet and not leave with a good map. Override had offered one, but the Velocitronians didn’t much care about cartography, it turned out; what she gave him was a finely detailed matrix of roads, with Delta dead center, but it said nothing about other topography. So Optimus did what explorers do: He sent out his own team, careful to make sure that Hound took along representatives from both Ransack’s and Override’s administrative operations.
    Thinking of the tension between those two bots, Optimus remembered something. “Jazz,” he said. “Want to hear a joke?”
    “Always.”
    “One time I thought that if I was going to be Prime, maybe Megatron and I could share the power and end the war that way.”
    “Shared power?” Jazz laughed loud and long. “Good one!”
    It wasn’t just a joke. Looking back, Optimus Prime knew that he had been almost fatally naive to consider the possibility. Looking around him now, he saw that the coleadership of Override and Ransack was fraught with sublimated rivalry that would lead to open conflict sooner or later. He had a feeling it would be sooner.
    When it came to intelligence gathering, there was one Autobot Optimus Prime knew he could rely on. He sent for Prowl.
    “You have probably had this thought already,” he said when Prowl appeared and they found a reasonably private place to meet. It was a dead-end side street hemmed in by workshops and small factories, every one of them empty and gradually filling with Velocitron’s ever-present dust. “But I am concerned that there might be a serious schism developing here between Override and Ransack.”
    “You can bet on it,” Prowl said. “This place is about to explode.”
    Normally, Optimus Prime would have thought this might be overstating the case a little. The effect of Cybertron’s civil war on Prowl had been to take his ingrained suspicion and develop it to a nearly full-blown paranoia. He saw conspiracies and budding revolutions everywhere there were three bots together.
    In this case, however, Optimus Prime thought he might be right. “Look around,” he said. “See what you can hear about who is allied to whom and whether the citizens in general seem to lean toward Override or Ransack. While we are getting the Space Bridge online, we are also going to need to make sure that Velocitron does not erupt around us.”
    He hated saying it that way, but Optimus Prime could already tell that the Autobots’ arrival had been extremely disruptive to Velocitron. It was now his responsibility to keep that disruption to a minimum—and to make sure that the Velocitronian leadership understood what was at stake in the conflict between Autobot and Decepticon.
    “Optimus Prime,” Prowl said. “I can observe, I can report. Under what circumstances should I act?”
    “Only if confronted with a direct threat,” Optimus Prime said.
    “To myself or to others?”
    After a moment’s consideration Optimus Prime said, “Either. But Prowl, try to avoid getting into difficult situations. Gather intelligence. Let that imperative guide you for now.”
    “Understood,” Prowl said, and the two of them walked back toward the central hangar adjacent to the speedway, making innocuous conversation along the way for the benefit of whoever might be listening.
    Already Velocitron was no longer a welcome oasis, but a place rife with possible threats. Or at least, Optimus Prime thought, it was prudent to regard it as such.
    The next cycles passed uneventfully. Prowl looked around. Optimus Prime consulted with Override and to a lesser degree Ransack on Velocitron’s situation, which appeared to be at least as dire as Override initially had characterized it. Perceptor and the other scientists aboard the Ark undertook an extensive analysis of Velocitron’s sun and the planet’s mineral deposits, demonstrating that Override’s concerns were