The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (5 page)

Baldwin closed his eyes and clutched his face between his hands. Cade groaned. To keep everyone from seeing the hopelessness in her eyes, Vere turned and looked out the window. Everyone in the room would interpret the far-off stare as solid resolve. That was her intention, at least. Little did they know she thought this situation was even more desperate than six years earlier when she had seen a fleet of Athens Destroyers appearing through the portal above her planet. At least then they had only been outnumbered two to one. Now, it was even worse than three to one.

There was no way they could win. Why fight at all? It would only result in death and suffering. Wasn’t the just and right thing to give over the kingdom to the Vonnegan army, turn herself over as their prisoner, and whatever else she could do to prevent the bloodshed? Even if it meant giving herself over for execution, if it could save another galactic war and thousands, maybe a million lives, how could she not do it? She had faced one potential beheading before and lived to tell about it. Surely she could face another.

From the silence around the room, it was obvious no one wanted to be the next person to speak after Westmoreland’s discouraging statistics.

Whether to be realistic or to further antagonize Vere, Morgan made sure everyone knew exactly what the numbers meant. “We cannot beat them in a face to face battle. There is no way. No general, no amount of space warfare tactics, and no maneuvers will give us a chance of winning. We can turn it into a prolonged battle and hope their resources start to run low, or we can hope to destroy as many of their ships as they destroy of ours. But we cannot be naïve enough to think we actually have a chance of winning.”

If Morgan’s goal had been to further discourage everyone gathered in the room, she succeeded. Traskk’s tail stopped moving. Cade leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling.

If someone else had said it, Vere would have thought them a coward looking for a way to avoid the conflict altogether. Morgan, though, with her chin raised and her eyes unblinking, seemed to be daring Vere to send her into the impossible battle.

From somewhere further down the table, however, someone started clapping. Fastolf.

“That’s why they call her
Ms. Motivation
,” he said with a laugh. “Bravo!”

“Enough, Fastolf,” Vere said, not looking the least bit amused.

Her friend gave an injured expression and sank down into his chair as much as his oversized frame would allow.

Turning back to Morgan, Vere asked, “What do you suggest?”

“We can only do what we can do. We use the ships Westmoreland has.” She pointed to a pair of men seated at the far side of the table who were wearing the light blue uniforms of CasterLan diplomats. “We use the next nine days to see how many other forces Scrope and Peto can muster. If we’re lucky, maybe at least one other army will be dumb enough to join us.”

Scrope frowned. “Even if we can convince someone to join us, how will they ever get here in time?”

Vere pointed up at the sky above them. Through the windows looking out above the Edsall Dark capital, a new portal had been constructed. Three hundred and sixty irregularly shaped metal cylinders formed a circle that any vessel would be able to pass through. It looked exactly like the Tevis-84 portal that Morgan had destroyed six years earlier. The only difference was that this one didn’t have a mesmerizing swirl of white energy in its middle. Instead, there was only black space, like the rest of the sky.

“Construction is complete,” Vere said. “We can energize it any time we please. If either of you can convince an army to join us, we’ll turn it on.” Then, looking around the room to make sure they knew the repercussions this could have, she added, “But once the portal is on, there’s no way to shut it off.”

“Without destroying it again,” Morgan said, offering a pleasant smile.

“Exactly. And we can’t allow that. I’m still having to explain myself to the other kingdoms on why we violated intergalactic law by destroying the previous one. It doesn’t look good when I’m already trying to explain to them that destroying that vessel in Vonnegan space was a terrible error and not the way we treat innocent crews.”

“So, that’s it?” Fastolf said. “We see if other armies will join us even though they have no reason to do so? And we take our meager fleet to face certain destruction?”

“Be quiet,” Vere said, beginning to wonder why she had risked inviting him to such a meeting.

He threw his hands in the air. “Morgan can talk back to you but not me? Not lovable Fastolf?”

Vere cringed. Why didn’t he ever learn? She knew for a fact that he had spent most of the previous night sitting in a medical bay having his nose healed after Morgan had broken it again. Maybe some men were just set on a path and there was nothing she nor anyone else could do to change it.

Morgan ignored the incurable jester and said, “We need to find a place for the battle to occur. We can’t afford another conflict above our planet. In addition to the casualties on the planet below, we spent half of our resources over the last six years rebuilding the parts of the capital that were destroyed when ships crashed into them. If we meet the Vonnegan fleet away from Edsall Dark, maybe we can catch them off guard and save some lives here.”

“War is still war, regardless of where it occurs.”

Everyone looked at the doorway to see who had spoken. Turning, Morgan was ready to tell off whoever had said it. After all, she had been the one to quit her post as Hotspur’s first lieutenant. She had been the one to risk her life getting Vere back to the capital six years earlier. The last thing she needed was to have some pencil-pushing bureaucrat lecture her on war.

But then, facing the man hovering in the doorway, she only nodded. Hector was there, his torso attached to the energy disc that kept him floating above ground.

“You can take it away from this planet, but the men and women who have families here will still die,” he said, his voice low and deep.

No one said anything. Vere and Morgan could only accept that what he said was the truth.

Fastolf laughed. “So, this is it? This is our glorious plan?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Morgan said, clenching her fist.

But before Fastolf could say anything else, Baldwin said again, “The Excalibur.”

Vere and Morgan looked at him, then at each other.

“We’re not wasting our time talking about the Excalibur Armada,” Vere said.

Traskk gave a confused growl. Fastolf giggled. For once, Morgan and Vere shared each other’s impatience.

“Why not?” Baldwin asked, looking back and forth between the two women as if it were a personal insult that his idea was so easily dismissed.

“Fine,” Vere said. “If you want to recover an army no one else has been able to free, have a blast.”

Instead of sinking back in his chair, he excitedly tapped a palm against the table in front of him and beamed with joy. “Fine, I will. Anyone want to come with me?”

No one raised their hands.

8

A series of ships took off from CamaLon’s primary spaceport.

In the front was a trio of O-Model Llyushin transports, a larger, modified form of the popular CasterLan fighter that was designed to carry delegates and high-ranking army officers to their posts. The first of these belonged to Westmoreland, who was on his way back to Ryl-Minor to oversee construction of the last Solar Carrier they would have available for battle. The next ship belonged to Scrope, as he made his way to the nearest corner of the Oman-S system to see if he could convince anyone there to join forces in the upcoming battle. The third ship belonged to Peto, who was on his way to meet representatives from the Ecator system to see if they would be willing to join in the fight. Each of the three O-Models was joined by a pair of M-Model Llyushin fighters. At the edge of Edsall Dark’s atmosphere, the three ships and their escorts began to arc away from each other, all of them heading their separate ways, each soaring to different parts of the galaxy as quickly as they could.

Next, Morgan piloted her personal ship, the Pendragon. It was part transport and part fighter, a craft that resembled a Llyushin fighter if it were taken completely apart and then reassembled in the dark.

True to her word, following the Battle of Tevis-84 she had returned to Folliet-Bright and begun searching for the thieves who had stolen her ship. It had taken a while, but she eventually found the Pendragon two sectors away in a mining colony run by a local gangster. The thug, a short, feather-covered alien named Dyyn-Mite, had added her ship as part of his fleet.

After breaking her way into his lair and killing all of his bodyguards, she had tortured him until he revealed the name of the alien he had bought it from. By the time she left his mining colony, Dyyn-Mite was featherless and begging for his life. He could hear the slaves he used as free labor chanting his name as they set fire to his lair.

From there, Morgan had tracked down the alien who had sold the ship to Dyyn-Mite. The creature, roughly the same size as a human, walked on hands and knees and was covered in wood-colored armored plating. It had four antennae on its head and bulbous black eyes that swiveled around the side of its face.

She had torn out two of its antennae before it told her the names of the thieves who had actually stolen the ship. She tore out the other two to ensure it had learned its lesson.

The thieves, when she tracked them down, fared even worse. None of them would forget her face, and none of them would steal from her ever again. Not only that, the stories of how far she was willing to go to get her ship back spread through each sector until every thief knew not to steal from Morgan Le Fay. She was confident she could leave the Pendragon at the same Folliet-Bright spaceport where it had been stolen six years earlier, this time leaving the ramp open and the engine running, and no one would steal it.

Now, seated in the pilot seat of the Pendragon once again, she flew in the same basic direction as the approaching Vonnegan fleet. Her goal wasn’t to face them by herself. Instead, she wanted to scout out the space around the desert moon of Dela Turkomann, which the fleet of Athens Destroyers would be passing, to see how well it might serve as a field of battle.

“Pistol,” she said. “On our way there, calculate every possible strength and weakness that a conflict around Dela Turkomann could have for us, factoring in its gravity, speed of revolution around Mego Turkomann, and anything else you can think of.”

“Yes, Morgan.”

The android’s pupils became glowing orbs of yellow light. As he processed the information, she remembered why she loved riding with him so much and why she was glad Vere let him come along: he didn’t speak unless spoken to.

The Griffin Fire was the next ship off the planet. Without saying where they were going, Vere piloted her ship for a course similar to Morgan’s. It had taken months for her kingdom’s best mechanics to rebuild the ship after its crash landing on the far side of the Literac Mountains. Now, the ship was better than ever, with some special modifications she was eager to test out.

Except for Traskk, who sat beside her in the copilot’s seat, no one knew where she planned to go. She had failed to prevent one battle, which had resulted in countless unnecessary deaths and suffering. She would do whatever it took to not fail again. If there was a way to prevent this battle from taking place, she would find it. Currently, there was only one option she could think of. If anyone knew what it was they would have tried to keep her from leaving Edsall Dark.

The last ship to leave was a small D-Model Llyushin transport, older and slower than the ones used by Westmoreland and the diplomats. Aboard it, Baldwin and Fastolf, along with their pilot, headed directly for the Excalibur.

“Thanks for coming,” Baldwin said.

“We’re all gonna die anyway,” Fastolf said, then took a drink.

“That’s all you have to say?”

Fastolf shrugged. “It’s the Excalibur Armada.” When he saw that Baldwin didn’t share his skepticism, he took another swig from his flask and added, “Ha! Maybe you haven’t heard the same stories I’ve heard. If you had, you’d have brought your own flask. Or, even better, we wouldn’t be going there at all.”

9

The Excalibur. An asteroid as large as a moon. The Excalibur Armada. A fleet of almost one thousand ships encased within the rock of that asteroid. A fleet of ships larger than any ruler had ever obtained. From what explorers had discovered, the ships possessed technology more advanced than any modern vessel even though they were thousands of years old.

Everyone knew exactly where the ships were located. Ever since its discovery, one ruler after another had wanted it for themselves. But one thing ensured the Excalibur Armada remained elusive: any attempt to free one of the ships from the stone that encased it resulted in its self-destruction, guaranteeing the ship wasn’t commandeered, but also destroying everything near it as well.

Every seventy-five years, the asteroid completed one giant elliptical orbit around the mighty blue sun of the McKessel system. Along its highly eccentric orbit, the asteroid reached the furthest edge of the system before being called back toward the sun by its terrific gravitational force.

But what made the asteroid remarkable wasn’t how large it was—big enough to have its own core and a slight gravitational force. What made it remarkable was the fact that starships stuck out of the rock like sprinkles on a dessert. The side of one vessel protruded from a piece of the asteroid. The rear engine of another vessel stuck out from another part of the rock. A cannon. A deck. Explorers had agreed early on that all one thousand ships were identical, and so many different parts of the ships were visible that scientists were able to create a model of exactly what the ships looked like.

Each one was comparable in size to a Solar Carrier or Athens Destroyer. Each had four engines arranged in a diamond shape at the back of the vessel. They were constructed of seamless metal plates that made it look as if one piece of metal had been stretched over the entire frame.