GUNS’N’AMMO (or IRONFIC)
November, 1985.
“What’s this?” asked G.B. Blackrock for perhaps the sixtieth time since first setting foot in the
Ark. His guide and new business partner, Prowl, replied with the same patient indulgence as he had the first time – and the second, and fifty-ninth times. Clearly he had decided from the start to answer each inevitable question put to him politely, if not fully. It was all part of establishing the trust needed to make this essential relationship work.
“That is the body of Optimus. It stands here inoperative, a grim reminder that we can never rest until we rescue his head, which is a helpless captive of the Decepticons.”
Blackrock shuddered. “That’s not just grim – it’s downright creepy! But wait a minute…” he interrupted himself, picking up a train of thought from an earlier part of their conversation. “I just remembered – the phones at the plant are bugged. I devised the system to improve security there – make sure no-one was saying anything they shouldn’t. To activate the system, all I have to do is dial a special code to a phone there – no-one even has to answer it! Then we can listen in all we want!”
“Huffer can build a telephone hook-up for you to use.”
“Yes, it would be simple to make,” agreed the homesick Autobot engineer. “If only it were that simple to call Cybertron.”
“Huffer, you must direct your thoughts to-”
An alien sound unintelligible to human ears beeped and buzzed from Huffer’s console.
“The inter-Autobot radio!” explained Huffer for G.B.’s benefit. “It’s Bumblebee calling in from his surveillance mission!”
Prowl acknowledged with a curt nod to request silence. “Bumblebee, this is Prowl. Proceed with your report… in English, please. We have a guest present.”
Bumblebee’s voice sounded over the speaker.
“Something’s going on down at the plant – something bad – but I’m not sure what! Laserbeak just flew out… He’s shooting two missiles at the army encampment… It’s too smoky – I’m not sure what’s happening now!”“What’s going on?” G.B. demanded. “Have the soldiers been killed?”
Bumblebee was obviously able to hear the question, for he replied to it directly.
“Negative. The missiles have released a gas that is altering the structure of the metal alloys in the humans’ machines. Their vehicles, weapons and communications devices are all melting, but the humans appear unharmed. I guess Shockwave took advantage of our period of captivity to plunder some of our weapons technology, including Cliffjumper’s glass-gas!”G.B. breathed a sigh of relief. “It seems the Decepticons don’t want to kill us after all. Maybe we can reason with them?”
“You misunderstand their intentions,” said Prowl. “Neither our weapons nor the Decepticons’ have been developed for the purpose of killing humans. They have been developed over a thousand years specifically to disable robotic opponents in the most efficient manner possible. Carbon-based life-forms have played no part in our war up until now. That is the one and only reason the Decepticons are not equipped with weapons specifically designed to destroy bodies of your type. Make no mistake – as far as Shockwave is concerned, destroying the soldiers’ machines and destroying the soldiers themselves amounts to the same thing. He just used the closest weapon to hand. For the moment, that is a weapon that targets the soldiers’ machines. But if our war on Earth drags on, the Decepticons’ arsenal may broaden to include biological weapons – if they are considered more effective against your forces than weapons that target your machines.”
“The Decepticons are using the smoke as a diversion,” Bumblebee interrupted over the radio.
“I see six vehicles driving out of it.”“Follow them, Bumblebee! I’ll send reinforcements to intercept.”
After despatching Hound, Bluestreak, Sideswipe, Ironhide and Huffer to join Bumblebee, and Windcharger to replace him in observing the aerospace plant, Prowl returned his attention to his human visitor. He deliberated within himself for a few seconds – an eternity for one with his processing capacity – and then bid Blackrock follow him.
“Come. Let’s finish our tour of the
Ark.”
Blackrock sensed that Prowl had been debating whether or not to show him this final room, and he could understand why when he saw what it was – the armoury. It was as you might imagine, a large room whose walls and floor were lined with guns and missiles such as G.B. had previously seen wielded by the robots in the field – and one of those robots he had seen wielding them, Wheeljack, was in the midst of them, tinkering away, clearly in his element.
“Take a good look, G.B. Here are all our weapons. Is there anything you’d like to ask?”
“I don’t know where to begin, Prowl!” He pointed to a rack nearby on which several identical-looking silver rifles were stored. “What are those?”
“Those are BSP-38 hand weapons.”
“But what do they do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean, I don’t know what sort of energy or projectile would be discharged if I picked up one and fired it, because I don’t know what plug-in cores they are currently loaded with. The first thing you must learn about Transformers’ weapons, is that usually you can’t tell what they do by their outward appearance. The shape of our missiles and cannons is not dictated by their effect, but rather how they fold up and fit inside us when we transform, or when we don’t wish to appear a threat in upright mode. Bluestreak and I have the same body shape and transformation, and we both carry the BSP-38 rifle because it is shaped to interface with our hands and forearms, and stow away neatly when we transform. But Bluestreak has an ion-charge disperser core plugged into his, so when he electronically ‘pulls the trigger’ it shoots a bolt of blue lightning. I, on the other hand, keep an acid pellet launcher in my rifle. But I could pop it out and replace it with a disperser core here in this room. Then my gun would behave like Bluestreak’s.”
“Any particular reason for your individual preferences?”
Prowl employed the human gesture of the shrug. “I have greater skill with my weapon than Bluestreak, thanks to having more sophisticated targeting processors in my cerebral cortex. Hardware, not software, I’m afraid, otherwise I’d share them with him. And unfortunately my creator is long-gone. So I load my rifle and shoulder launchers with weapons that require greater accuracy at the point of launch. Bluestreak uses weapons that find their own way to the target if he’s a little off. He sometimes misses things, but his weapons are more destructive than mine when they do hit home.”
“More lethal, you mean.”
“Not at all. Neither of us employs weapons capable of killing another Transformer.” Prowl glanced around the room. “Look there for another example. On that Mobile Autobot Repair Bay or MARB is mounted a liquid dispenser gun. Ironhide normally loads his with supercooled liquid nitrogen, superheated liquid lead or incendiary liquids. But Ratchet uses the same gun for dispensing lubricants in his repair work. And there, that rifle on the wall is designed to interface with the body design of either Red Alert or Sideswipe. But while Red Alert puts a core in it that acts as a particle beam projector, Sideswipe prefers to shoot flares from his. Conversely, you could have a team of Transformers all armed with weapons that do exactly the same thing but look completely different, because they have different body shapes to fit into when they transform. But I’m not sure that any Transformer currently on Earth has a weapon capable of ending another Transformer’s life with a single shot on the battlefield.”
“Why not? I mean, why wouldn’t the Decepticons at least have such weapons, if they’re as evil as you say?”
Prowl sighed. “This is an important difference between our two species, and I want to make sure you appreciate it. You’ll see why shortly.” He paused, thinking. “All right. Let me approach it from this angle. What would happen if I ripped out your heart?”
Blackrock took a step back, alarmed at the sudden turn of conversation. “I’d die, of course.”
“Why couldn’t we heal you, though? We could quite easily construct a replacement heart for you. It’s only a simple pumping mechanism.”
Blackrock considered his answer. “When blood pressure drops too low, or when a person stops breathing, the supply of oxygen to the brain ceases. Our brain cells die – they are destroyed – within a few minutes of the heart stopping. It’s irreversible.”
“Right. I’ve downloaded all your species’ medical texts, incidentally, so I was aware of that. I just wanted to check how much you knew about it. Now, a few minutes ago you saw my friend Sunstreaker lying in Ratchet’s repair bay.”
“Yes. Jazz said he wasn’t sure if he would ever be operational again.”
“Now then, is Sunstreaker what you would call ‘dead’?” Prowl realised that this was precisely the conversation Spider-Man had deprived himself of having with Optimus Prime the previous year when he hurried away prematurely after they had all gathered up the bits and pieces of Gears.
“Jazz didn’t say.”
“Jazz couldn’t say, because the word – the very concept – of death doesn’t translate between our two languages. Sunstreaker is completely non-functional. There is no electrical activity in his brain. Just as there was no electrical activity in any of our brains when we lay buried in this mountain for four million years. It is a state that is unnatural for your species, but quite normal for ours. Sunstreaker isn’t alive. He stopped being alive several months ago. If no-one ever reconnects his brain circuits to a power source he will never be alive again. But nor is he dead – because we could go and reconnect his brain circuits now if we wanted to. He wouldn’t thank us for waking him up without a body – Sunstreaker cares a lot about his body – so we leave him as he is. So what is he?”
Blackrock thought for a moment. “Off.”
“Yes. Sunstreaker is ‘off’. Just as I was ‘off’ last night while my body was undergoing routine maintenance.”
“All right, I get your point. Your brains can remain viable when switched off and minus their bodies. But I still don’t see-”
“Suppose human brains were the same. How often would people ‘die’ in your wars?”
“Not so often, I guess. In battles with swords, arrows, even bullets, direct injury to the brain is very rare. Brain death is normally a consequence of injuries to other parts. If it didn’t happen, and both sides were able to gather up the undamaged brains from the corpses littering a battlefield and transplant them into new bodies, it would only be a few unfortunates who truly died. But suppose no-one ever retrieved the brains of the fallen. Are they alive or dead? I don’t know. And one could surely devise weapons that specifically target the brain, to avoid the enemy coming back to haunt you.”
“Would it be worth the effort?”
“Probably not. I mean, a brain without a body isn’t much of a threat.”
“Indeed not. And that’s the point with us. It takes a lot of effort to build a Transformer body. That’s why Ratchet is trying so hard to salvage what’s left of Sunstreaker, and why Shockwave needs your aerospace plant. But if we were ever in the position where we had a surplus of bodies over brains, we could find quite simple ways around the problem – by splitting our consciousness between multiple bodies, or by making copies of our personalities. We have a few copies of the minds of comrades stored in the
Ark right now, that are simply awaiting bodies to live in.”
“So why does Shockwave need to steal this Creation Matrix program from Optimus?”
“He needs it because he wants new minds, not multiple copies of his currently limited talent pool. And you bring me on to another point – a few months ago Shockwave took control of the
Ark and had us all inoperative and at his mercy. Why didn’t he kill us by removing and destroying our brains? We wouldn’t be the threat we are now if he had done so.”
“An oversight?”
“I don’t think so. In fact, I doubt he regrets leaving our brains intact even now. Shockwave isn’t an idiot. He knows we’ve been gone from Cybertron for four million years. It is highly likely that the planet no longer exists – destroyed either by our war or by its headlong rush through space, which could easily lead it into the path of a star – or another asteroid field. We could be the last of our species. Huffer realises this too. None of us here on Earth takes it lightly. If Shockwave had killed us, and his plan to use the Matrix had failed, he would have destroyed two thirds of what remains of our race. And I doubt he relishes the prospect of repopulating the species using copies of the likes of Starscream, Skywarp or Thundercracker – or, worse still, himself.”
“So if you don’t want to kill each other, why fight?”
“Why do your kind have wars? Usually not because you want the people in the other army dead. Death in war is simply an unfortunate side-effect of war for humans – just as loss of the body is for us.”
“I think I’m starting to get it. You probably could develop weapons that kill other Transformers on the battlefield – I mean, destroy the brain module – but the power and effort needed to kill a Transformer could be applied more effectively to disable a hundred.”
Prowl steered G.B. out of the armoury and closed the door behind them. They were now alone, out of earshot of any of the other Autobots on the
Ark.
“Precisely. I must be honest with you, though – our war isn’t such a harmless game as I’ve made it sound. In the initial phases of the war on Cybertron, many millions of civilians truly died when their bodies were destroyed, because they were not shielded by the cerebral armour casing that is now standard. They didn’t make back-ups, and they didn’t have cut-offs to protect their circuits from melting as a result of power overload. But we soon started taking those precautions. We don’t have finite natural lifespans like you do, so all those lives being ended shocked and horrified us. Some Autobots were consumed by a desire for revenge, and would destroy the brains of Decepticons that fell in battle. Meanwhile, many Decepticons got a taste for killing and took sadistic pleasure in ending lives – often with their victims’ awareness of what was going on. Morality aside, it was all terribly illogical… and on that, Shockwave would agree.”
“So I guess some Transformers felt a need to design weapons that would end lives on the battlefield.”
“I’m afraid so. And despite history showing that rendering a figurehead impotent by imprisoning him or destroying his physical strength has a greater effect on troop morale than ending his life, making him a martyr and leaving a vacant spot for someone to take their place, there were some that would always argue for a policy of assassination.”
“Which required a particular sort of weapon.”
Prowl shrugged again. “Such weapons aren’t terribly practical. As we discussed, it takes far, far less energy to blow apart a Transformer’s body and then surgically remove, open and grind a brain module to powder than it does to destroy a brain module with that first shot. There are those who developed such weapons for sadistic reasons, or to ‘send a message’, but most find their use in battle as abhorrent as execution in cold blood – and the ammunition prohibitively expensive and inefficient to manufacture. There was one weapons developer – I think he started out as an Autobot but ended up with the Decepticons – who developed ‘cerebro-sensitive bullets’ that were not only capable of penetrating a Transformer’s brain casing, but actually homed in on it regardless of where you aimed. Optimus Prime and Megatron both independently banned their use, though for quite different reasons. I’d have banned them for yet other reasons. But there were a few on both sides who could stomach – even relish – their use. And assassinations did take place, sometimes tacitly condoned by those of us in command.”
Blackrock found Prowl’s candour quite chilling, but let him go on.
“A Decepticon called Shrapnel enjoyed killing his victims by electric overload. His weapon had much in common with that employed by your friend Josie Beller, except that his went beyond the point of causing his victim to shut down – his electric discharges were capable of penetrating and melting the cerebral circuits themselves, without opening up the body to get at them. Another Decepticon called Straxus liked to leave his prisoners conscious and then smelt them down at high temperature, brains and all – and when I say high temperature, I mean much hotter than molten lava, which merely physically incapacitates us. And Megatron can kill Autobots without opening them up first if he deploys his ability to draw antimatter from a black hole and release it in battle. That’s the sort of thing we’re talking about, anyway. But I wouldn’t recommend that you try to develop any of
these types of weapons to fight us Transformers. There are much easier ways to beat us.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share them with me?”
“Indeed I am, and for the following reason. I like you, G.B. You’re a pragmatist. I realised that when you told me about how you bugged all the phones in your aerospace plant. That Machiavellian foresight may now help us to triumph over our enemies. However, the odds are still against us, and if we fail I don’t want to risk another situation where the Decepticons have free reign over the Earth. That very nearly happened when Shockwave conquered us last year, and we can’t take the chance that the same thing might happen again. If the Autobots fall, I want you humans to have a fighting chance. So I’m going to tell you all our weaknesses. I’m going to trust you. I ask that you leave the defence of Earth to us for as long as we remain active, but if you have to, then take what I tell you to your military leaders and make use of it. I realise that you could betray my trust and go straight to them, and set about destroying us all now, but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take to ensure that what happened to our civilisation doesn’t happen to yours. We’re already living on borrowed time.”
“All right. I give you my word.”
“The weapons I am about to describe have never been developed fully by us because they can so easily be turned back against the user – that is, if the user is another Transformer. But for use by humans, they are perfect, and relatively risk-free. You don’t even have to worry about our external armour. The undeveloped weapons technologies I speak of fall into three categories: physical infection, body control override, and remote reprogramming. Examples of the first class include Scraplets and the infectious strain of
corrodia gravis; of the second, jamming technology; of the third, Matrix-hacking.”
“I’m listening.”
After Blackrock had gone, Prowl sat alone, wondering if he’d done the right thing. Being the victim of any of the weapons the concepts of which he had shared with Blackrock was perhaps a fate worse than death for a robotic life-form. Maybe that made him a hypocrite. Then again, if the Autobots fell, he couldn’t see the humans surviving for very long in a world ruled by Decepticons. Even if not wiped out completely, they would be killed in large numbers whenever they got in the way. He and Optimus had crashed the
Ark into Earth to end the threat of the Decepticons, for the greater good of the universe, and giving the humans a hint at how best to defend themselves seemed to be the right thing to do. It wasn’t that he wanted the Decepticons dead – there was no logical reason to wish anyone dead. He just wanted them stopped. Perhaps once the Autobots got Prime and the Matrix back, Shockwave would be willing to talk. After all, they were the last few survivors of their race. It would be illogical to fight each other to the death – or force the humans to use the weapon concepts he had shared with Blackrock.
Prowl imagined another life, another universe, one where the Transformers were still plentiful in number and their war spread out across the Galaxy. He imagined what those Autobots they had left behind on Cybertron – Autobots such as the Wreckers, under their leader Impactor – might have become in their absence, on a war-torn world without hope. He imagined a nightmarish world where Transformer life was cheap rather than precious, where new bodies were easy to come by and so was brain death. Maybe that would make them like humans. Maybe the Galaxy would be a better place if Transformers did die as easily as humans – whether through injury or ageing. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it was important for two species with very different concepts, expectations and valuations of life and death to meet and compare notes, in order to truly appreciate the natures each had been given. But either way, his conscience felt clear for acting to protect life on Earth, even if it meant wiping out the last of his own kind as a final resort.
April, 1986, and a meeting of the executive board of the US Government’s top secret Intelligence and Information Institute.
“You’ve all heard of G.B. Blackrock, president of the Blackrock Corporate Conglomerate. I’ve invited him here since he’s had a lot of first-hand experience with the robots. Mr Blackrock…”
“Thank you, Mr Forsythe. Folks, these robots are certainly dangerous, but not all of them threaten us. I know some of them – believe it or not, they’re living creatures from another planet and they’re divided into two warring camps. First, there are the Autobots – a noble, honourable group. They helped me to recover my aerospace plant. They seek to stop the Decepticons from conquering this planet. The first step in solving this problem is distinguishing between the two groups. The Autobots can be our allies. We must-”
“Er, thank you, Mr Blackrock, for your time. We know you’re a busy man.”
“But I had more to-”
“We’ll be in touch if we require your expertise again.”
“Yeah, glad I could help…”
As the door closed behind him, G.B. caught the first words spoken in his absence: “Whether the robots are good or bad is irrelevant! Although evidence exists to support some of what Blackrock said, however preposterous it sounded, all robots are to be considered a threat!”
That night, G.B. Blackrock destroyed his prototype Scraplets and jammers, and all the notes he had made following his conversation with Prowl.
THE END
