The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (12 page)

“So, what are you going to do?” Vere said. “Kill us?”

Beside her, Traskk growled.

“I could, Vere CasterLan,” Mowbray said. “I very well could. Any one of my Destroyers could wipe every trace of your puny ship away. But I won’t. If I did kill you in cold blood, you might actually become a martyr, a symbol for people to rally behind. No, I want you to have to return to your kingdom knowing that there is nothing you can do to save your people.” He rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger. “Or rather, your father’s kingdom, I suppose.”

“Mowbray, I promise you, your entire fleet will be destroyed if you attack us again.”

“I grow tired of you, Vere CasterLan. Be gone.”

“No amount of Athens Destroyers will bring you victory if you attack our kingdom. You don’t know what we have in store.”

“I will give you until the count of three. Then I will release one new Thunderbolt each additional second you remain here.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“One.”

Beside her, Traskk gave a low growl.

“Two.”

“Mowbray, please don’t do this.”

“Three.”

She saw his hologram image nod to someone on the other side of the deck from where he was standing. Almost immediately, the Griffin Fire’s sensors began to beep. A fighter had launched from the hangar of one of the Athens Destroyers and was already targeting her with its computers.

“Full shields,” she told Traskk. Then, to the comms feed in front of her, “Don’t do this, Mowbray.”

The first Thunderbolt fired a pair of blasts right at her ship. Instead of being absorbed by the Griffin Fire’s shields, a jolt of energy shook the vessel. The Thunderbolt roared past her, circling for another attack.

“Full shields,” she yelled at Traskk. “I said full shields.”

But when she looked over, she saw his giant claws hovering over the array of buttons and lights, trying to remember which one to press.

A second Thunderbolt had left one of Mowbray’s ships and was heading toward her. She throttled the Griffin Fire so it began to race past one Athens Destroyer after another. The Griffin Fire was speeding through space so fast that she passed by a different Athens Destroyer every two seconds. But each second that went by, a new blip appeared on her radar because an additional Thunderbolt had taken off and was heading her way.

“Mowbray,” she said. “I thought you said you weren’t going to kill us.”

“I gave you fair warning. If I had unceremoniously blasted you out of space, I could see how you might garner some sympathy. But I gave you a chance to leave and you refused it. No one will make a martyr out of a fool.”

She saw more dots on her radar than she could keep track of. Laser blasts from the Vonnegan fighters were flying past at every angle. She slowed the Griffin Fire and threw it into a series of evasive maneuvers, going in between the Athens Destroyers like they were part of an obstacle course. One of the Thunderbolts, going too fast to make the same turn in between Mowbray’s giant ships, crashed into the front edge of a Destroyer and erupted in a brief explosion.

“Damn it, Mowbray,” she said.

He was smiling now, enjoying the show.

Traskk finally had the shields up so any laser blasts that did hit them would do little damage.

“I swear, your fleet will be ruined if you attack us,” she said.

“How could you possibly imagine accomplishing that?”

Only three words popped into her head, and so they were the three words she spoke: “The Excalibur Armada.”

Mowbray’s smile flickered. For a moment, his eyes narrowed as he stared at her. His head moved slightly left, then right, as he surveyed her face for signs of deception. Then, instead of saying anything, he erupted in laughter.

Vere reached over and turned off the comms channel. The hologram of Mowbray instantly vanished.

“Okay,” she told Traskk. “We need to get out of here.”

Every second, a new Thunderbolt was still appearing from the sides of the Athens Destroyers that they were flying past.

Traskk gave a series of croaks.

“If we head back the way we came, we’ll only get back to Edsall Dark a day or two before them. If we fly where they came from, we can take the closest portal. Then take connecting portals back to the new one they’re going to turn on.”

He growled at this suggestion, not liking that they were going to be flying even further away from home.

“It’s the only way” she said and began putting the flight calculations into the computer.

Thunderbolts were racing all around them now. Laser blasts were hitting the Griffin Fire just as often as they were missing.

“Give me full rear shields,” she said, knowing that it was easier to keep all the ships behind her than it was to avoid getting hit anymore.

Traskk began changing the shield settings. But when another blast hit the ship, the explosion sounded throughout every part of the vessel and a pair of alarms began sounding in the cockpit.

Vere took a look at the display and said, “Rear shields! Rear shields!”

Traskk’s tail slammed in frustration against the floor, denting the metal platform, but he immediately began fixing his mistake.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Take a deep breath. Stay calm. You know what to do, we’ll get through this.”

She scanned the displays to see what damage the ship had incurred. One of the rear guidance levers was destroyed, as was one of the rear cannons. She was lucky the engines were intact or their next step would be decided for them.

“We need to get out of here,” she said. “Get ready to switch all power from shields to engines.”

She jerked on the Griffin Fire’s controls. Her ship plummeted into a spiral, directly at one of the Athens Destroyers they were racing past. Just as fast, she brought the ship out of its spin, doing a circle around the Destroyer as it moved along with the rest of the Vonnegan convoy. Two of the Thunderbolts got the turn wrong and collided with each other as they tried the same loop around the ship. A trail of white and orange fire burst from both ships until the oxygen tanks were empty and the ships became charred debris.

She saw the last Athens Destroyer in the line, four times the size of a regular Athens Destroyer. Only Mowbray would be egotistical enough to have such a large personal ship. Another Thunderbolt took off, this time from a ship directly next to her. She had to jerk the Griffin Fire’s controls sideways to keep the Thunderbolt pilot from accidently ramming her ship and killing all of them.

So many Vonnegan fighters were racing through the black void of space trying to shoot the Griffin Fire that they were accidently shooting each other.

And still the Griffin Fire raced toward the end of the fleet as fast as it could, swerving in between, under, and over Athens Destroyers anytime the Thunderbolts got too close. If A’la Dure were there, Vere could have sent Traskk to one of the turrets to clear away some of the fighters. But with only the two of them on the ship, she needed all the help she could get in the cockpit.

Circling back in order to get the Thunderbolts off her tail, they raced past three Destroyers they had already passed. As they did, errant laser blasts sailed past them on every side. But even with most of the shots missing, a few made contact, sending jolts through the entire ship and rattling Vere and Traskk in their seats. The rear shields could only withstand so much force. The sheer number of hits the ship had taken was taking a toll. A pair of alarms began sounding, indicating the Griffin Fire had taken substantial damage. Another cannon was destroyed. One of the radar systems was gone.

“Get ready,” Vere said.

They were beside the Supreme Athens Destroyer again. She thought about taking the Griffin Fire up and around the command deck in hopes that Mowbray’s own fighter pilots would miss their target and hit their ruler’s Destroyer instead. It wouldn’t damage such a large and armored ship but it would infuriate Mowbray. Deciding against it, she took her ship under the Supreme Athens Destroyer’s massive belly to get away from the swarms of Thunderbolts.

Once she had the Griffin Fire pointed in the right direction, she said, “Punch it!” and Traskk sent all the power that had been going to the rear shields into the engines.

The Griffin Fire roared ahead. A few Thunderbolts tried to keep up the pursuit but rapidly lost too much ground to hope for anything but a lucky shot.

The Supreme Athens Destroyer, a giant only moments earlier, now faded into the distance of space.

Vere cringed, knowing that even though the Vonnegan fleet was getting smaller with every moment that passed, it was because they were heading closer and closer to Edsall Dark while she was flying further away from it. The thought made her chest burn the same way it had when she had arrived at CamaLon too late to stop the Athens Destroyers from appearing through the Tevis-84 portal.

A minute after the last of the Thunderbolts had fired at them and they knew they were safe, Traskk grumbled. His tail moved between his legs.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re still learning. A year from now, you’ll be working in the cockpit with a blindfold on.”

She gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder, knowing that even the gesture and the words wouldn’t be enough to keep him from being upset with how he had performed. Basilisks were cold-blooded and vicious when they were fighting, but they were also emotional and had misgivings any time they made a mistake.

When he hissed a question, she replied, “We can’t go back home. I wasn’t lying to Mowbray; the Excalibur Armada really is the only thing that can save us now.”

24

Westmoreland stood at the observer’s deck of a shipbuilding complex so large it could been seen from outer space. Inside the dry dock facility, hundreds of humans and aliens worked side by side on welding the armor plating to the undercarriage of a Solar Carrier. Dozens of tiny blue torches fused metal while machines pressed and held the slabs of atomized steel in place. Sparks rained down all over the factory floor from where the workers were finishing up on the ship.

In order to have a vantage point above the Solar Carriers as they were being built, the observer’s deck had to be over a mile in the air. Even that high, all Westmoreland could see was the mighty ship in its final stages of construction. The giant frame of the Solar Carrier blocked out the horizon and any view of the land in the distance.

“Sir,” the shipyard foreman said, entering the deck and standing beside his guest.

Westmoreland nodded. Far below, a winged alien with creamy blue flesh and no legs was hovering next to where a crane lowered a sheet of atomized steel toward the spot it needed to be welded. Further below that, a team of MacMaqs yelled at a clumsy Alonquon, who was carrying a tank of sealant all by himself—a job that not even one hundred MacMaqs could perform. They appreciated the Alonquon’s strength and work ethic. What they didn’t appreciate was that the sealant sloshed out the top of the tank, near where a team of red horned aliens with thick leathery skin worked with torches to finish some electrical systems.

“It looks hectic up here,” the foreman said, trying to sound confident. “But it’s all under control.”

“I have no doubt that it is.”

“The armor on this Solar Carrier will be completed in two more days.”

Again, Westmoreland only nodded. He wasn’t upset with the foreman; the man had come highly recommended, and the reports Westmoreland read through each night proved that he ran a tight crew. What bothered him was that for all of the resources they had devoted to rebuilding their fleet of Solar Carriers, Westmoreland knew the Vonnegan empire had greater resources at their disposal, and because of that they would always be able to rebuild their fleet faster and larger than he could rebuild Vere’s.

The foreman said, “We won’t have time to finish construction of another Solar Carrier before the Vonnegan fleet arrives. Do you still want us to continue work on the ones we have started?”

Looking at the crews working hundreds of yards below, finalizing the final parts of the largest ship in the CasterLan fleet, Westmoreland sighed and shook his head. Would the Vonnegan empire always be able to send a fleet large enough to destroy Edsall Dark? Was that all that modern space warfare had come down to, who could build starships quicker?

There was a time when generals had earned places in the pages of galactic history with their bold maneuvers above stars and planets, in asteroid belts and near black holes. History was full of generals who had gone into war with inferior armies and had somehow managed to emerge victorious. Every child learned about the heroics of the three hundred Phantom-Die ships that had somehow managed to defeat thousands of Arachnian fighters.

The galactic annals were full of examples of leaders who had gone into battle knowing they were facing superior numbers and yet they rallied their forces through superior tactics, adapting quicker than their enemies as the battle unfolded, keeping their troops fighting instead of fleeing. The only problem was that everyone who graduated from military school knew the same battles, the same generals, the same tactics that had been employed. What had worked for the Phantom-Die general would never work for Westmoreland or Morgan because the Vonnegan generals would have been educated on the same battle and would be ready for it. What else was there? Why even fight the battle if the Vonnegan army would always be able to send more ships than could be produced here?

“Sir?” the foreman said.

Westmoreland blinked back to attention on the observation deck. He scanned through his memory to think of what the foreman had asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Go ahead and continue building them.”

Then he turned and walked toward the exit, still unsure why he had bothered to order a shell of a Solar Carrier constructed when it wouldn’t be able to contribute anything to the battle.

25

Baldwin forced himself to breathe in, then out, then in, over and over again. If he didn’t, he was sure he was either going to vomit in his space armor (if he was lucky) or have a complete mental breakdown and go mad (if he was unlucky). This was a common reaction when people went out into space for the first time; they forgot who they were and what they were doing. Without a clear train of thought, they either floated off into infinite space, never to be seen or heard from again, or simply forgot their space armor had a limited supply of oxygen and wandered off. Their bodies were found lying peacefully on a planet’s or moon’s surface as if they had simply decided to take a nap and had never woken up.