Chapter 269: Infiltrating the Nemesis

Washington, D.C., The Pentagon.

“Our cruise missiles are getting intercepted well before they hit the perimeter. Nothing is getting close to that skyline.”

Inside the hardened operations bunker, a multi-star general stood before the main display, laying out the situation in Chicago to the gathered room.

At the head of the briefing table sat President Holdren and Secretary of State Ponce. Flanking them were Colonel Lennox, called back under emergency orders, along with Director Mearing and Seymour Simmons, who were managing intelligence support.

“The metropolitan corridor is locked down by a screen of alien warships. We cannot punch through their air umbrella.”

“Our early warning satellites have been blinded, cutting our live feeds over the grid.”

“We have zero boots on the ground inside the perimeter,” Lennox added, his jaw set grimly. “The closest air wing sits fifteen minutes out by scramjet.”

“Three rapid response units—the 1st Air Cavalry, the 33rd Mechanized, and the 2nd Airborne—are moving toward staging positions. We’re looking at a two-hour window before their lead elements can dig in along the perimeter.”

These three divisions were the nation’s premier rapid-reaction forces, carrying distinguished battle histories and specialized for heavy combat. Committing all three at once proved that high command was past the point of posturing.

Diplomatic illusions had evaporated. The war was on their doorstep, and the nation was bracing for the collision.

“Lennox, this is absurd,” Simmons barked, rolling his wheelchair forward before the president could speak. “Are you telling me we haven’t managed to slip a single scout past the river?”

“We pushed multiple drones in,” Mearing countered calmly, adjusting her glasses. “Their point defenses knocked every single camera out of the sky. We dropped field teams across the bridges; all frequencies went silent within minutes. They are deliberately blinding us.”

“I’m taking a team in myself,” Lennox said, turning to face Simmons. “We’re going in with glide wings. It’s the only vector that can slip beneath their firing arcs.”

“I’m waiting on Sergeant Epps to confirm a safe landing zone. I will not throw those soldiers into a blind meat grinder. They are exceptional men.”

“I cannot promise they will all walk out, but I will make sure they hit the ground safely.”

Lennox’s voice was completely steady, without a trace of hesitation.

“Wait a moment,” the general suddenly blurted out, tapping his temple. “We have an experimental batch of micro-recon drones. Unarmed, cold-launch profile. We might slip those under their radar net.”

“Finally, some operational common sense,” Simmons sighed, wheeling his chair over to the tactical display.

“If you can get eyes inside the city, fly them straight toward that colossal warship hovering over the center.”

“Witwicky is trying to get aboard her. The man who runs his girlfriend’s firm is the primary human collaborator. He sold us out to the invaders, and I want him answering for it.”

“There may be another avenue,” Mearing murmured, turning toward the head of the table. “Mr. President, I need executive clearance to tap every surviving municipal feed in the city—traffic monitors, automated tellers, public security poles…”

Inter-agency friction was old news in Washington. Without an explicit mandate from the top, reaching across operational boundaries was guaranteed to trigger jurisdictional stalling.

“Granted. Clear the lines,” Holdren said.

It was the first time the president had spoken. He knew the room was packed with tactical experts and that his background was strictly political, so his priority was giving them whatever administrative support they needed.

Holdren paused, his hands resting flat against the edge of the mahogany table, looking torn.

After a long moment of internal calculation, weighing the risks of holding back critical intelligence, he leaned forward and dropped a bombshell:

“Actually… Optimus Prime and the Autobots are not dead.”

The briefing room fell dead silent.

Every official, analyst, and officer froze, staring at Holdren in total disbelief.

What did he just say?

Holdren had anticipated the reaction. Looking around the quiet room, he repeated the words with deliberate clarity:

“The Autobots are alive.”

Meanwhile, word of the Autobots’ survival reached Skygnaw’s audios.

“Understood. Relay the telemetry on Optimus Prime to Lord Megatron and Sentinel Prime.”

Skygnaw waved his servo dismissively, sending Talon away.

Every Decepticon attack craft maintained a telemetry link with the flagship, meaning any loss on the board registered immediately on the command deck.

The moment an assault ship went dark over the southern grid, Skygnaw had dispatched an armed scout team to investigate. The notion of troops falling in the field without command noticing was a fiction reserved for cheap holovids. Senior commanders knew how to read operational boards.

The scout report confirmed what Skygnaw had known from the start: with human armor still hours away, the only force on this world capable of dropping a Cybertronian gunship was an Autobot.

Optimus Prime had shed his disguise and rejoined the fight.

And people claim Optimus is just a naive brawler who charges into the line without a plan, Skygnaw mused, a cold smirk touching his faceplate.

Megatron and Sentinel had tried to manipulate the humans, yet Optimus had matched them move for move.

Faking his demise dropped the enemy’s guard, clearing the way for him to return as the undisputed savior of humanity. Even when Washington realized they had been played, they wouldn’t dare scold the Autobots; they would build monuments to them instead.

For the past several hours, Skygnaw had held the flight bridge of the Nemesis alone.

Shockwave and Soundwave were off-grid pursuing their own operational directives, and Skygnaw hadn’t bothered to track them down. He had no command authority over Megatron’s personal lieutenants anyway, and the warlord had likely assigned them their own ambush points.

This campaign had drained Cybertron of its remaining legions. If the operation collapsed into ruin here, as it had in the original timeline…

Word of the Autobots’ return rippled across civilian frequencies, sending shockwaves through what remained of global communication nets.

Unlike Skygnaw’s detached amusement, Megatron’s reaction atop the Sears Tower was incandescent fury.

The warlord seized Talon by the throat cables, lifting the scout clean off the concrete deck:

“What did you just report?!”

“Lord… Lord Megatron…” Talon gasped, his optical lights flickering with static. “Lord Skygnaw… instructed me to inform you… Optimus Prime has breached the perimeter. The Autobots are in the city.”

Talon had sensed the icy tension between Megatron and Skygnaw over the past several days; this felt suspiciously like the supreme commander taking out his frustrations on the nearest messenger.

“Incompetent scrap!”

Megatron threw Talon violently across the terrace, turning his blazing red optics onto Sentinel Prime.

“Do you hear this?! The Autobots survived! Optimus Prime is marching through the lower sectors!”

“So much for your guaranteed trap!”

Compared to Megatron’s towering rage, Sentinel remained ice cold. He accepted the report without questioning the messenger, instantly grasping the operational reality.

“Their objective will be this spire. We must maintain an impenetrable guard over the master control pillar.”

“I will crush them beneath my treads first!” Megatron roared, storming toward the parapet. “Decepticons, hunt them down! Tear the Autobots to scrap!”

Several attack gunships docked against the glass curtain wall detached their landing gear, banking hard toward the southern avenues. At street level, the pavement tore open as a massive armored mechanical serpent began burrowing through the concrete foundation.

Watching the perimeter defenses around the master pillar peel away as Megatron scrambled his pursuit, Sentinel Prime looked at the warlord’s retreating back and muttered a single, icy word:

“Fool.”

Down in the city, within the tree-lined park that served as their rally point, Sergeant Epps circled the downed Decepticon gunship, eyeing its battered frame with calculating focus.

An idea crossed his mind.

“If only we had someone who could actually fly one of these birds…”

“We can fly anything with an engine,” a gruff voice called out from behind.

Epps turned to see Roadbuster wiping grease from a heavy wrench, his scarred chassis leaning casually against a ruined concrete wall.

“You’re serious? You can pilot their hardware?”

The alien craft was heavily armored, covered in jagged alloy ridges, exposed conduits, and jagged hull plating that looked built for an open warzone. Epps couldn’t tell if the ship was meant to look that battered or if it was on the verge of detonating.

He had watched it crash through the tree canopy only minutes ago.

“We can fly it,” Roadbuster grunted, thumping his chest plate. “Just needs a quick patch. Optimus tore the lateral stabilizers when he brought her down.”

Losing the Xanthium had left a bitter taste in Roadbuster’s vocal processor, but he recognized tactical necessity. With hundreds of enemy ships filling the sky, liberating one for themselves was pure poetic justice.

Roadbuster squeezed his bulky frame into the narrow pilot bay, poked through the control linkages, and popped back out with a grimace. “She’s seized up.”

Epps’s face fell.

“Don’t count us out yet,” Roadbuster snorted with a confident grin. He respected the human sergeant’s grit, and with the alliance back on, he had no issue lending a wrench.

“Doc! Get over here! We need that oversized cranial unit of yours!”

Wheeljack—who had taken to calling himself Que among the humans—trotted over, his diagnostic gear whirring softly.

“Give me two minutes. Purely routine.”

Que circled the damaged craft, tapping a few primary power conduits with a specialized alloy probe before sliding into the belly of the ship.

A low, guttural hum rippled through the hull, and the craft slowly drifted two feet off the turf, hovering with a steady, rhythmic pulse.

“That’s our ride!”

Epps pumped his fist, sprinting over to where Sam and Bumblebee were conferring near a ruined fountain. “Sam, listen to me. We have an operational angle…”

In less than two minutes, Epps mapped out a bold infiltration plan: take the commandeered Decepticon gunship straight into the belly of the beast—the alien flagship hovering above the core!

“Are you insane? That’s a death run!”

Several Autobots objected immediately, arguing that flying straight into the enemy fleet was an express ticket to the scrap heap.

Yet Sam wouldn’t budge. With a clear path to Carly opening before him, backing down was out of the question.

Optimus Prime stepped forward, his deep voice carrying absolute finality:

“Then we split our forces.”

“Bumblebee, take the captured craft and assist Sam in retrieving Miss Spencer.”

“Thank you, Optimus,” Sam said, his voice thick with genuine gratitude.

Optimus shook his heavy helm. “You have bled for our cause across two worlds, Sam. It is our duty to stand by your side.”

“Time runs short. Move out.”

Without another word, Sam vaulted onto Optimus’s shoulder plate and swung into the cockpit hatch.

The gunship’s cabin was tiny, barely accommodating Bumblebee’s folded frame and Sam’s crouched form. Adding another passenger would have been structurally impossible; the craft was designed as a single-pilot strike unit, boasting atmospheric output only slightly above a human frontline fighter.

“Hold onto something, Sam,” Bumblebee chirped over the comms.

VROOOM—

The captured craft rose smoothly through the tree canopy, its engines spooling up before rocketing toward the city center under the watching eyes of the team below.

Within minutes, a colossal, wedge-shaped silhouette emerged from the clouds—a floating fortress of iron and dark metal blotting out the sky.

“There she is!” Sam shouted over the cabin vibration, his pulse racing.

Throughout the flight, the surrounding patrol ships had paid them no mind, reading their transponder as an allied vessel returning to base.

“That is the Nemesis,” Bumblebee crackled, steering the vessel toward the lower hangar bays. “Megatron’s personal flagship.”

Slipping into the landing pattern alongside several gunships returning for refueling, Bumblebee guided the craft smoothly through the magnetic shield into the main interior bay.

“I can’t believe we just strolled in through the front door,” Sam whispered, his eyes wide as he took in the cavernous flight deck.

Hundreds of attack craft were docked along the bulkheads. Heavy shock troopers moved between the staging racks, while clusters of warriors stood in low discussion near the lift doors.

It felt less like a warship and more like an industrial foundry suspended in mid-air.

“Sam,” Bumblebee rumbled, his right forearm shifting into a heavy plasma cannon.

“You’re on your own from here. I’ll blow the fuel couplings to draw their security detail to this deck.”

“Make it count, Sam. Move fast.”

“I’m on it, Bee,” Sam said, checking the magazine on the service pistol Epps had slipped him before departure.

Bumblebee cracked the lower canopy hatch just wide enough for Sam to drop into the shadow of a fuel crate.

The moment the human slipped into a maintenance corridor, Bumblebee leaped from the cockpit, leveling his cannon at the primary fuel lines without a second thought.

BOOM!

30+ chapters are available now and daily updates!