The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (19 page)

She propped herself up on one elbow and smiled. “Maybe you’d like to lead my forces then?”

He bowed his head slightly. “I’m afraid not.”

“I didn’t think so. And what makes you so sure the Excalibur won’t be mine?”

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be yours. I said it won’t win you the battle.”

She groaned and laid back again. “If you’re going to speak in riddles, just let me sleep.”

She could hear a smile in his voice when he asked, “So, you no longer think my visits are dreams?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure out what I think they are.”

For a while, there was silence. Vere closed her eyes, trying to find a sense of peace, while Mortimous watched her without saying or doing anything. Part of her hoped that if she kept her eyes closed long enough, that he would be gone when she reopened them.

Finally, he sighed and said, “If you can find the Matron of the Mineral, she might be able to help free the Excalibur Armada for you. But I’m telling you, Vere, those ships will not save you.”

With even the smallest hope of freeing the ships, her eyes shot open. “How do I find her? How do I find this Matron?” But Mortimous was gone. “How do I find her?” she asked again and again. “What do I say to her?”

There was no reply.

41

“We’ve finished our tests,” the lead engineer said. “Everything is working the way it should. The portal is ready for our ships.”

Morgan nodded. The quark collider had exploded and the entire circle of cylinders was full of brilliant white light, but that didn’t mean their work was done. They still had to test the portal to make sure it was functioning correctly. That was why, over the last hour, she had watched as various objects were sent through the portal, reappearing a few minutes later.

First, there had been a remote controlled missile without any payload. This was to make sure the portal was correctly aligned with the other existing portals. If it wasn’t, the missile would disappear and then never be seen again. If the portal was working correctly, however, it would appear at a portal of the engineer’s choosing. When this part of the test was successful, the missile was remotely turned and guided back through the portal again. There, above Dela Turkomann, the same missile they had sent into the portal came roaring back out of it.

Then they had sent a Llyushin transport, remotely piloted, through the portal. Aboard the transport were a pair of plants. With the transport’s tinder walls closed, the vessel went through the circular energy field. When it reappeared, the plants were still alive. This was to make sure that organic life could survive the trip. It should be able to as long as the portal and tinder walls were both working correctly, but there had been a few times in history in which minor adjustment was necessary to ensure a portal could safely transport life, even with functional tinder walls.

Morgan’s worst fear at that point in the mission was that she would have the fleet of Solar Carriers sent through the portal, only to discover it hadn’t been calibrated correctly. Every Solar Carrier would become a ghost ship. The fleet would be above Dela Turkomann, ready to face Mowbray’s Athens Destroyers, but without anyone aboard them to do the fighting. If that were to happen, she would be personally responsible for the collapse of the CasterLan Kingdom.

After the unmanned transport, it was time to test the newly activated portal with a real pilot.

“Want to try it out with me?” Morgan said to Pistol with a smile and a nudge.

He turned toward her and, his programming trying its best to determine if she was joking, said, “You are supposed to lead the fleet into battle; you should do your best to make sure you’re still alive to do so.”

So someone else had gone through to make sure they would survive the jump. They had. Moments later, the lead engineer sent a message to the Pendragon, alerting Morgan that the portal was ready.

“Send the command to Edsall Dark,” she told a Lieutenant. “I want the fleet sent here immediately.”

The holographic image of the officer opened his mouth to ask a question, then thought better of it. He nodded and went about carrying out his order. He was probably going to ask why the fleet should be moved here, she thought. The truth was that the orbit of Dela Turkomann was as good as any other place. It was away from Edsall Dark. It would ensure the battle was carried out far away from civilization. That was all there was to it.

“Now,” she said, turning to Pistol, “We just have to hope Peto and Scrope can convince someone to send their army through this thing to join us.”

42

Scrope read the report as it came across his ship’s computer. Peto was on his way back to Edsall Dark. One of his two fighter escorts was dead. The other had needed to eject after his Llyushin fighter sustained too much damaged, but at least he had survived and managed to board the transport. Either way, without a proper escort, Peto had decided to turn and head back for home.

His own transport pilot, seeing that an update had arrived, said, “Any change in orders, sir?”

He was asking because Scrope had also lost one of his escorts. With the Llyushin pilot lying dead on Arc-Mi-Die’s landing platform there had been no one to pilot the second fighter.

Upon meeting the warlord, Scrope had smiled and said, “A gift from Vere CasterLan to the infamous warlord: a Llyushin fighter to add to your arsenal.”

It was the best possible twist on a bad situation. And, more importantly, it had worked. He had managed to secure an alliance with Arc-Mi-Die. Now, in addition to the Solar Carriers and full supply of Llyushin fighters and bombers, the CasterLan fleet would also have forty of Arc-Mi-Die’s converted fighters, a pair of small war frigates, and a single King-Class Battlecruiser.

This last ship was slightly larger than a Solar Carrier but was fitted with outdated armor and weapons systems. The Battlecruiser was one of the reasons other warlords rarely started battles with Arc-Mi-Die. It was easy for a gangster to get a handful of rebuilt fighters; getting a King-Class Battlecruiser, even if it was outdated, was something that most thugs couldn’t comprehend.

In all, the warlord’s committed forces weren’t much. Vere already had roughly seventy-five Solar Carriers and a fleet of Llyushin fighters. The equivalent of a few more squadrons of fighters and one more flagship vessel wasn’t going to change the outcome of the battle. It was something, though. Every extra ship and every extra fighter would be needed.

The warlord, with a grin that showed off his four sets of ghoulish teeth, had even promised to send the newest addition to his fleet: the Llyushin fighter that was sitting at his space dock, since the headless pilot no longer needed it. If Morgan had been there to hear the comment, she would have ruined the delicate alliance by withdrawing her Meursault blade and daring Arc-Mi-Die to repeat what he had said. But Scrope had merely laughed and said that it was a fabulous idea. That was why he was the diplomat and Morgan was not.

“Sir, any change in orders?” his transport pilot asked again.

Beside them, their lone Llyushin fighter escort matched their course through space.

“Change our plans? Of course not. We are proceeding to the D-Burlin sector.”

“Very good, sir.”

After successfully negotiating with Arc-Mi-Die, he was now on his way to recruit the alien gangster Ballona and her group of galactic toughs. He had no question that when the visit was complete, he would also have her support in facing the Vonnegan fleet.

And maybe this time the pilot who accompanied him would know enough to keep silent when her guards approached. That way, he would keep his head on his shoulders.

43

Baldwin and Traskk had given up asking if they could accompany Vere out on the asteroid. After being told no every time they did speak up, they got the point and left her alone. One of the times they had asked, she told them she didn’t care if they wanted to inspect the Excalibur by themselves, as long as it was a different part of the rock. She would conduct her own search completely alone.

A pattern had formed. As soon as she woke up, she put on her space armor and went out for two hours. When she came back, Traskk refilled her oxygen supply while she ate a small breakfast. Then she was back out on the Excalibur again, investigating a different part of the same ship she had previously investigated or the same crater where a ship had once been. The next time she arrived back at the Griffin Fire she changed suits and had Traskk move the ship to a different part of the asteroid. This would allow her to search another spot of the Excalibur without wasting her oxygen reserves getting there. When that third trip was finished, she ate a quick lunch while Traskk refilled her suit. She went back out two more times each day, four more hours, investigating a different spot before having dinner with Baldwin and Traskk. Then she went back out two more times. By the end of her final search each day, her body was so tired that she fell onto one of the Griffin Fire’s cots and was asleep without saying a single word.

Two days went by like this.

Each day she went out on the asteroid and found nothing to solve the Gordian puzzle. And each night the Vonnegan fleet was closer to her kingdom.

The second morning, when Baldwin told her she wasn’t eating enough, she had grunted and walked back off the ship to begin another search. When Traskk told her she was driving herself too hard and was going to make a dumb mistake out there, she smiled and said that if she could survive the Green Knight, an asteroid wasn’t going to be the end of her. She latched the helmet of her space armor and walked off the ship while he hissed his disapproval.

She had walked every foot of four different ships that were sticking out of the rock. Never during that time had she seen any indication that someone could get into or out of the vessels. There was no way to move the rock away from the ships except for the methods that had already resulted in self-destructing ships. Inside three different craters, she had left no stone unturned. Each ship was cleanly erased in an identical blast pattern.

There was never any sign of a way to free the ships. She had no idea who or what the Matron of the Mineral was, and began to hate herself for ever hoping that someone might be out there. More trickery by Mortimous, it seemed.

Every story she had heard about him involved a devious sense of humor. Supposedly, decades earlier, he had tricked a king into drinking poison that he had intended to kill his own wife with. Around the same time, Mortimous had convinced another ruler that he had a microscopic army that could sneak past any detection system.

Was he watching her now and laughing? Did he think it was hilarious that she was wasting her time out on this rock while an enemy fleet approached? If the other stories she heard about him were true, she was the punchline of a cynical joke while her kingdom prepared to be defeated.

She began to go through all of the other stories she had heard about him. In one tale, he had given a canister of rare gas to a nobleman who wanted to be rid of his worldly concerns. Only after the nobleman inhaled the canister’s contents did Mortimous reveal that it was filled with Helio-Finit, which, in large enough quantities, could lift a star fighter off the ground. The nobleman floated up toward the sky. As he did, Mortimous called out, “You have no worldly problems any more!” While it was technically true, it didn’t save the nobleman from floating into the planet’s upper atmosphere and then out to space.

Another tale she had heard when she was younger was of a ruler from a far-off sector asking Mortimous to provide the best suit of space armor in the entire galaxy. Mortimous said he would put something together for the tyrant. On the agreed upon day, Mortimous said he had the perfect suit for the ruler.

“Well, where is it?” the ruler asked.

“Right here,” Mortimous said, his hands empty.

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s invisible.”

The ruler’s eyes grew wide. “Invisible space armor? My space troops will never be defeated again.”

“Very true,” Mortimous said.

“I want to try it on before anyone else.”

“I had a feeling you would.”

The ruler and Mortimous went out into space aboard one of the ruler’s personal ships. Mortimous bent over and began putting a suit of space armor on the ruler that the ruler couldn’t see or feel.

“I can’t even tell I’m wearing it!”

Mortimous smiled. “There is no better suit of space armor in the galaxy,” he said.

The ruler’s advisors and subjects, the ones who could afford nice enough viewfinders, were all watching the scene from the ground.

“Okay,” Mortimous said, “You’re all ready.”

“The suit is completely on? I can’t even feel the helmet.”

Mortimous nodded. The ruler smiled and walked to the hatch. Only then, when the ruler drifted out into open space, did everyone hundreds of miles below realize that the ruler wasn’t wearing any space armor at all. The next day, a new king was crowned.

These were the stories people told about the soothsayer. Even if only some of the stories were true and the others were all just old wives’ tales, it was still enough for her to doubt that there was any Matron out on the asteroid. But then again, he had told her not to waste her time on the Excalibur at all, that the armada it possessed would not save her. Was that just his way of playing reverse psychology on her? Did he know that the more he told her not to investigate the asteroid the more she would think he was hiding something and want to check it out for herself?

And who, or what, was this Matron of the Mineral? Why hadn’t Vere ever heard of her before? For thousands of years, explorers and scavengers had been trying to figure how to free the Excalibur Armada and not one of them had mentioned the Matron of the Mineral. It had to be a trick of some kind.

Even so, part of her couldn’t stop hoping that what Mortimous said was true. She had turned off her space armor’s microphone so neither Baldwin nor Traskk could hear her when she called out for the mysterious Matron. “If anyone is out there, please answer. I need your help.”