The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (33 page)

“My apologies,” he said. “I pride myself on remaining composed, no matter what situation I am presented with. But you have to admit that, under the circumstances, your bluster is quite comical.”

“I’m not laughing, Mowbray.”

“You sound like someone who has the upper hand. Look up at the sky. Count how many Athens Destroyers you see. Then count how many Solar Carriers you have above us and tell me why you think they are equal when they clearly are not.”

Vere looked back at Traskk, still standing by the tent with Morgan, Pistol, and Scrope. The reptile was constantly alternating his weight between one clawed foot and the other in anticipation of being allowed to kill a Fianna. Next to him, Morgan hadn’t taken her eyes off of Mowbray’s guards and was most likely still calculating how best to take them on. Vere was sure that if a single Fianna moved forward, a swish of colored air would come at it from Morgan’s Meursault blade. Pistol, like Mowbray, was unaffected by the desert heat. To the far side of the group, Scrope had his back to her and wouldn’t stop staring at the ships in the space above them and at the portal.

Something caught her eye, a darkness out of the edge of her peripheral vision. A new figure was there, on a dune not too far away from where she was standing with Mowbray. It wasn’t Fastolf. Nor was it one of her companions. Rather, it was a figure covered in black robes despite the unbearable heat. With one look, she knew exactly who it was.

Mortimous.

Her gaze darted back to the Fianna, Traskk, and Morgan. None of them reacted to the figure in black robes. Nor did Mowbray. They couldn’t see him. That was the only explanation for the Fianna not targeting him with their weapons since he was clearly within attacking distance of their king.

Turning back to Mowbray, she said, “One last chance. Turn your ships around. Or die.”

Mowbray looked up at the sky once more, shaking his head and smiling. She knew what he must have been thinking: Did this headstrong woman truly think her tiny fleet could match the forces he had brought with him?

Mortimous had been looking straight at Vere through the black cloth, but his gaze dropped so he was looking down at his feet. His shoulders sank.

“The Excalibur Armada won’t save you,” he said in a soft tone.

Never mind him
, Vere told herself. But the sage’s words, the same as her mother’s when Vere had been on the asteroid, echoed in her head.

The Excalibur Armada will not save you, Vere
.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “What’s your answer, Mowbray? We can still stop this before it’s too late.”

Across the sand from her, the figure in black robes shook his head and sighed.

When Mowbray still didn’t answer, she nodded a second time. For a moment, nothing happened. Mowbray’s eyebrows raised, unsure of what kind of trick she was trying to perform and unimpressed with whatever they were. Then, slowly, as her signal made its way through the CasterLan fleet, her bell-shaped fleet began drifting slightly away from each other, forming a larger bell with a hollow middle that passed straight through from the back to the front. She and Mowbray watched in silence.

Mowbray shrugged, still unimpressed.

Then, in the distance, she saw it. The first of the Excalibur Armada ships.

From the way she stared at it while it approached, she was sure Mowbray must have noticed where her attention was directed and had seen the Excalibur ship as well. Over the course of a few quiet and agonizingly long minutes, the vessel grew from being a dot in the distance to the outline of a flagship to the clear and distinct form of an Excalibur craft. While she and Mowbray watched, the ship sped toward her fleet, across the open expanse of space. As fast as it was surely traveling, it seemed to be making its way across the sector at a crawl.

“Do you see it, Mowbray? Do you see why you should have listened to me?”

Rather than answer, the Vonnegan ruler furrowed his brow and continued to watch the vessel as it approached.

Instead of going around the Solar Carriers, the Excalibur ship entered the hollow opening of the bell formation they had created. Even this seemed to take an excruciatingly long amount of time as Vere and the others watched from the desert floor. Everyone aboard every starship was surely watching the same thing as well.

She looked back to where the first Excalibur vessel had appeared in the distance. The second and third ships were already visible. In a moment, the fourth and fifth ships would be as well.

The first ship began to emerge from the bell’s front opening. Instead of stopping there, however, it advanced on the Athens Destroyers. More precisely, it was moving straight toward Mowbray’s Supreme Athens Destroyer, the jewel of his fleet.

“Mowbray?” she said.

The Vonnegan ruler still said nothing.

That was when the sky lit up with laser blasts from so many Athens Destroyers and Solar Carriers that Vere had to squint in order to watch the battle’s first strike be carried out.

The figure in black robes shook his head in sadness and walked away from Vere.

76

During his long and distinguished career, Westmoreland had been in more battles than anyone else in the CasterLan Kingdom. Hector was held as a hero, and deservedly so, but he had only seen half the action that Westmoreland had seen before losing his legs and deciding to never fight again.

The aged general had led attacks against warlords who were trying to conquer additional moons and also against gangsters who had tried to claim a colony as their own. He had been ambushed by pirates who thought they could steal whatever they wanted, even his Solar Carrier. And he had led attacks against pirates who were holding colonies for ransom. He had seen ships in his own fleet destroyed. But he also had destroyed more types of ships than most people even knew existed.

He thought he had witnessed everything there was to see when it came to war: Colonies with destroyed containment fields, everyone dead from exposure to the harsh natural environment of space; starships, some larger than small cities, drifting through space after being defeated; soldiers in space armor disintegrating after being hit by a starship that was traveling at almost the speed of light, no trace of the soldier or his suit remaining.

If it had happened in outer space and involved laser fire, a ship’s cannons, or proton torpedoes, Westmoreland would bet money that he had seen it. And yet he had never witnessed anything like the display of laser fire that erupted when the first Excalibur Armada ship passed through the bell and aimed itself squarely at the Supreme Athens Destroyer in the front of the Vonnegan formation. The entire sky lit up with laser fire that made the usual black void of space look and feel more like a prism of cannons and blasts. Some were light green, some a pale yellow. A few were white, but mostly they were sky blue.

Even he found himself hypnotized momentarily by the brilliance before him. It wasn’t just the lights flashing everywhere that he found mesmerizing, but the technology men and aliens had created, the ships they had built, the confrontations they couldn’t avoid.

“Glorious,” he muttered, so softly that no one else on the command deck would be able to hear him. His eyes were slightly moist. “The heavens are on fire.”

But just as quickly as he had been overcome by what he saw, he snapped out of his daze and began asking for battle reports. If he had been dazzled by the spectacle of what was going on, he didn’t doubt his soldiers were too. To counter this, he needed to make sure the other officers, both on his own command deck and on the other Solar Carriers around him, knew he expected them to do their duties.

It wasn’t his style to shout commands to the men and women around him. He didn’t have the communications officer send urgent orders to the generals of the other Solar Carriers. The time for training and drilling was over. He just needed to keep them focused on the mission in front of them.

“I want a confirmation that the Athens Destroyers fired first,” he said.

An officer behind him looked down at her console, then said, “Confirmed.”

“Speed of the R1?” Westmoreland asked, always having been partial to the name
the Red Army
.

A different officer looked at the display in front of him that was tracking the first Excalibur ship as it passed out of the bell formation’s opening. “Point three,” he said.

Westmoreland nodded. He would have liked to see it proceed toward Mowbray’s command ship at a slightly quicker pace, but the current speed would be fine.

“And the other ships?” he asked.

“R2 through R5 are at the same velocity. R6 is at point two eight. R7 is at point two one. They get progressively slower after that.”

Westmoreland turned his attention back to the battle in front of him. The Solar Carriers all around him were doing exactly as they had been commanded—staying in formation and focusing their cannons on the middle ships in the row on either side of the Supreme Destroyer.

All of the Athens Destroyers were targeting the first of the Excalibur ship. No matter how much they fired, though, no matter how many cannons, proton torpedoes, or ion blasts they sent, nothing damaged the legendary ship. All of the explosions were absorbed. All of the laser blasts were deflected.

“It’s amazing,” Westmoreland muttered to himself. “Everything they said about the Excalibur Armada is true.”

He wondered how many other people, both on his side and in the Vonnegan ships, were more focused on the historic relevance of what was happening rather than the immediate impact of it. R1, the first of the Excalibur ships to appear, was halfway between the two fleets, directly in the middle of the laser blasts, surrounded on all sides by cannon fire and explosions. But the ship wasn’t actually firing anything of its own. Even though it was equipped with a plethora of cannons that were surely as advanced as its armor, the weapons systems remained inactive.

How many other generals, Westmoreland wondered, noticed the same thing?

Instead of firing on Mowbray’s command ship, R1 continued straight toward it, undeterred by the explosions erupting all around it. As Westmoreland watched, the ship continued forward on what looked like a slow suicide mission.

Wave after wave of Vonnegan Thunderbolts began racing out of the Athens Destroyers’ hangars. Dozens and dozens of the fighters began circling R1, focusing all of their bombs, missiles, and lasers on the ancient ship. Every laser blast bounced off. Some of the Thunderbolts’ lasers deflected and hit other Thunderbolts. Some blasts bounced away and hit nearby Athens Destroyers. And still the Excalibur vessel advanced, undaunted.

When there was no longer enough room between R1 and the Supreme Athens Destroyer for either ship to avoid the other, Westmoreland inhaled deeply and gripped the arm rests on either side of his chair. And still the ship moved forward. Now, not only was there no longer enough room for the two ships to avoid the impending collision, there was also not enough room for the swarms of Thunderbolts to pass between the two vessels. And still R1 moved straight ahead!

Laser blasts and cannons were firing everywhere. At the moment before impact, the frequency of the laser blasts quickened to a frantic pace. Then the front edge of the Excalibur Armada ship rammed the Supreme Athens Destroyer, a ship three times its size.

The front of Mowbray’s Destroyer began to crumble under the force of the ship that was pushing into it. Metal bent and screamed as the structural integrity of the great machine began to weaken.

“Now,” Westmoreland said.

An officer to his side said, “Yes, sir,” then pressed a single glowing button. A split second later, the Excalibur ship, which had absorbed everything the Vonnegan fleet could send at it—more cannon fire, bombs, and torpedoes of every kind than any other ship had ever taken in recorded history—erupted into an explosion of brilliant orange and yellow.

The explosion was so dense that it obstructed Westmoreland’s view, but he could see that the Athens Destroyers flanking the Supreme Destroyer had also been obliterated. Both ships looked like vessels that had been stripped by pirates for hundreds of years rather than subjected to a detonation. When the smoke and debris cleared from the main impact zone, Westmoreland saw there was also no trace of R1. The only part of the Supreme Athens Destroyer that remained were its rear engines, which were now useless shells. The rest of Mowbray’s prized command ship was entirely gone.

77

If Vere had just watched her command ship be completely decimated in a single explosion, she would have gasped. If Morgan had seen her colossal ship destroyed in front of her eyes, she would have gone berserk, breaking the noses of everyone around her and swearing vengeance on everyone responsible. But Mowbray offered neither reaction. The Vonnegan ruler watched the scene unfold in perfect silence. The corners of his eyes fluttered. His nostrils flared. But he remained quiet, keeping his calm demeanor even though he must have been filled with rage at having seen the prize ship of his fleet vaporized, the first casualty of the entire battle.

To her side, Vere saw Traskk’s tail wagging happily back and forth at the explosion above him. Morgan had a grin larger than Vere had ever seen. The Fianna remained completely still, none of them taking their attention away from their ruler or the CasterLan people in front of them. The entire Vonnegan fleet could have been destroyed and the Fianna wouldn’t move from where they were until Mowbray was in jeopardy or else he gave them new orders.

“I warned you,” Vere told Mowbray. “I gave you a chance to turn your ships around.”

They watched the fighting from the top of the same sand dune they had been standing on when the first Excalibur ship initially came into sight. Mowbray stared, unblinking, at the vessels in space as the battle ensued.

“And I’ll give you one more chance,” she said. “But it’s your last one. Call your fleet off. Turn around right now. Do that, and I’ll stop the Excalibur Armada from destroying every last one of your ships.”

The second Excalibur Armada ship was passing through the bell formation on its way toward the Vonnegan fleet. Mowbray raised a hand to his chin and stared at the vessel as it made its way toward his prized fleet.