The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wrath of Pandora

"SAM!"

He might have answered Miles, if he had been a different time, place and situation, in a slightly more respectful way. The operative word being might; right now, he was way too busy getting his ass pawned by a seven-foot-tall, knife-wielding, cannon-firing, six-eyed drone, which seemed intent on kicking the crap out of him, to give his friend much more than a strangled bawl in response to the near-hysterical shout of his name.

Jeez, the battle had been on for what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? And so far he'd only managed to kill three of these walking piles of garbage. He'd taken about ten minutes on each one, hitting them with everything he had - his M16 machine gun, the short Cybertronian sword that Sideswipe had given him, even his fists at one point - and yet still, they really took it out of him. He guessed it was to expected... the drones being powered by a planet-sized monster, and so on... but seriously.

The ugly thing bared its teeth, growling. "Target: human male. Mission: annihilation."

The little bastard sounded so much like Soundwave that it sent a chill down Sam's spine, but he was getting really pissed now. All he wanted was to kill these drones and get himself and all of his friends out of here in safety, and they were standing in the way of that goal. "Yeah?" he yelled, his voice cracking a little and taking him back to his high-pitched freshman days for a single, would-be-embarrassing second. "Come and annihilate me then, idiot!"

Oh, who the hell was he kidding?

He was absolutely shitting himself!

Three drones may have gone down at his hand, but each one had been a fluke - due to good luck and excellent timing rather than actual skill. He sucked with weapons, and he had a sinking feeling that this was going to be a really long battle. His arms were already killing him from his occasional attempts to stab something with the sword, and the pain in his hands indicated that he still wasn't using the machine gun properly... kind of sad, when he had had three years to learn how to do defend himself properly.

C'mon, Optimus, he thought frantically as the drone extended its massive hand towards him, looking as if it was going to rip his entire face apart in true, grotesque Saw style. Hurry it up, man... we're losing this...

And Alexis... was she okay?

Backing away from the drone, Sam glanced up anxiously and saw that Starscream and Thundercracker - or so Jade had told him that he was called, from her position in the air - were having some kind of aerial death match, both of them hammering the other with bullets. Skyfire, on the other hand, was higher up across the other side of the city, dropping the occasional bomb where the drones were thickest in their throngs - but mainly struggling to fight off a Decepticon interceptor jet that Sam didn't recognise.

He was brought back to the ground with a jolt when the drone suddenly charged at him, looking as if it was going to ram him with its shoulder. He threw himself out of the way immediately, landing in a crouch and bracing himself for a blade in his back.

Nothing came.

Instead, a mechanical screech cut through the air from behind him; he craned his neck to see Bumblebee holding the drone high above his head, glaring at it from beneath the eyeholes of his battle mask. "Greater than man," a dark voice came from his guardian's radio system before he took the smaller robot by the legs and hurled it overarm towards a fast food shop - it smashed through the window, screaming, and Sam's eyes bulged in awe as it disappeared from sight.