The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (13 page)

He realized his officers were still staring at him.

“Do you hear me?” he said, taking a step toward them. On the monitor, the raiders were still moving the highly volatile explosives from the storage container and placing them on the ground. “Blow the entire prison up if you have to. But resolve this immediately.”

The officers nodded and, in a display of self-preservation, left the room so Le Savage couldn’t throw them out of the window next.

29

“Careful,” Morgan said, receiving another bundle of explosives from Traskk, who in turn had received it from Pistol. Placing the red package on the ground, she kept an eye on Vere to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.

The Vere that Morgan knew was quick-witted and sarcastic, but the woman in front of her seemed too calm given their situation and had offered no criticism of their attempted escape plan.

The entrance into the explosives depot was already blocked, but Morgan had them empty a second container. After the explosives had been removed, she had Traskk climb on top of it, hook up a set of four cables from the room’s pulley system, and used the device Pistol had found to lift the second storage bin into the air, moving it to the side and placing it directly on top of the first one, only inches from the cable system and the ceiling.

She knew there were cameras capturing everything they did in the room. Her hope, though, was that the people in the control room would think she was simply trying to obstruct the entrances even more.

“Everyone inside,” she said, pointing to the storage bin on the ground. Once they were inside, she closed the container door.

Everything went dark. Almost immediately, a swish of black vapor sparkled around them as Morgan withdrew her Meursault blade. First, she cut a hole in the ceiling of the bin they were in. Then she reached higher and cut out a hole from the floor of the container that was stacked on top of them.

“Everybody up.”

Pistol had no problem jumping so his one remaining arm grabbed hold of the second level. With his one remaining arm, the android pulled himself up. Morgan looked at Traskk to determine who should go next.

“A round table,” Vere said to herself with a chuckle. Then, to Morgan, asked, “How much longer do you think until we get out of here?”

Morgan sighed and patted her friend on the shoulder. Then she nodded to Traskk as she told Vere to go next. Vere jumped as high as she could, just enough to grab hold of the opening above her, then felt Traskk pushing her feet upward to help her join Pistol in the second crate. Traskk went next, jumping to the next bin with ease.

Once Morgan had also pulled herself up, she told them what would happen next. There were cameras recording every inch of the room they were in, but none of them would be able to see inside the blast-proof containers. Anyone watching would assume she and the others were either scared and hunkering down or else were stupid enough to think they could hide inside the containers and not be found.

Morgan had a different idea, though.

It was obvious they couldn’t go down. Cutting through the floor would have only dropped them into the lava. Cutting through any walls would give them access to the same corridors where dozens of Vonnegan troops were amassing. The only option had been to keep going up, toward the space deck.

With the container’s access panel closed, everything was pitch black. None of them could even see their hands. But then a faint sparkle of black mist appeared again, swirling in tiny movements. A slash of black vapor tore through the second container’s top. Two more slashes caused a chunk of metal to fall inside the bin at their feet.

There was less than a foot of space between the top of the container and the explosives room ceiling. None of the cameras would be positioned to provide a view into that narrow of a gap.

Since Morgan wasn’t able to jump high enough to do what was required next, Traskk moved into place and held his tail up diagonally. Morgan walked up his tail until she was able to reach the ceiling, then slashed through it the same way she had cut through the storage bin itself.

Traskk jumped from the storage bin’s floor up to the opening Morgan had made for them, then let his tail hang down, giving the rest of them a way to climb up.

After Pistol was already up to the next level and it was only the two of them remaining in the storage bin, Vere tapped Morgan on the shoulder.

Morgan grimaced, sure she was going to hear something else about a round table or some other nonsense. Outside the bins, on the other side of the wall, she could hear troopers shouting at each other as they tried to find a way into the room.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” Vere said.

“No problem. But we aren’t free yet.”

30

Later, when Vere had time to look back on what had been happening, she would learn another valuable lesson: there were times when the best course of action was to be calm and leave her body for a more peaceful state of mind, and there were times where she had to focus entirely on her immediate surroundings.

For the last two years, almost all of her time had been spent doing two things: pushing the Circle of Sorrow and speaking with Mortimous. Every muscle in her body was conditioned to push, brace, re-center, then push again, over and over. Every part of her brain was accustomed to focusing on her breathing and the sense of internal quiet she required in order to see Mortimous.

Yet the mindful aspect of her time at the Cauldrons was the only part she actually focused on each day. The extended periods of serenity, contemplation, and learning had become a safe haven from the misery of the prison. So much so that she had relied on avoiding her immediate surroundings in order to live another day. Now, though, she had to find the balance between the two.

Hugging Traskk’s tail with her arms and squeezing with her knees, she worked herself up toward the ceiling.

As she did, she thought how wonderful it was that Mortimous had finally helped her answer one of the many questions that had plagued her over the years. A round table. She hadn’t believed Mortimous when he had first suggested the idea, but after talking with him at length about the possibility, she too had become convinced that it was the solution she had sought all along.

All the preventable suffering and unnecessary wars... The round table would solve all of it.

As she climbed, Vere wondered if it would make as much sense to her friends once she explained it to them, or if they would think she had lost her mind out at the Circle of Sorrow.

31

Half of the Griffin Fire’s shields were gone, and the other half wouldn’t last much longer. The ship was out of proton torpedoes. There were too many Thunderbolts to keep track of. Quickly didn’t have nearly enough firepower at his disposal to damage either of the Athens Destroyers hovering above the planet, but now he was headed directly toward them anyway.

Without shields protecting the back third of the Griffin Fire, he couldn’t fly in a straight line for longer than two seconds without the ship’s engines being vulnerable to enemy fire. The result was an endless series of maneuvers that must have made it look as if the Griffin Fire’s pilot were out of control or intoxicated. He swerved, did half turns, half spins, over and over, all in a desperate attempt to avoid the constant eruption of laser blasts around him.

Because of this, the Thunderbolts began firing at will. Any time one of them was facing the same general direction as the zigzagging Griffin Fire, they let off one shot after another. Quickly’s flying was so erratic that the Vonnegan pilots sometimes accidentally shot each other while trying to keep him in their sights, but every once in a while a blast would also strike the underside or top of the Griffin Fire.

All of this was in an effort to give Cade as much time as possible. When the lucky shots began to hit the Griffin Fire more often than he dared allow, Quickly finally jammed the controls forward until the ship looped back toward the prison colony and its spaceport, then turned the engines up to full speed to put some distance between himself and the Vonnegan fighters again.

Around the far side of the prison, the spaceport came into view. A moment later, the individual ships parked there could also be seen.

“Come on,” Quickly muttered, hoping Cade had managed to sneak into another ship, set its autopilot, and get back out, all without being noticed.

He saw it then—the Cirellian transport—beginning to lift off from the spaceport. But Cade was nowhere in sight. If he hadn’t been able to climb back out of the ship before it took off, he would be stuck inside a vessel programmed to carry out a suicide mission.

With the Thunderbolts trailing far behind, Quickly had the luxury of briefly slowing the Griffin Fire enough to get a better look. The Cirellian transport’s engines were glowing bright yellow. The ship began to rumble.

It was three feet off the ground when Cade appeared from the door at the side of the ship. His foot caught on the edge of the opening and he went tumbling, feet over head, then collected himself and started running again, back toward the Pendragon and to safety.

“That’s my boy!” Quickly shouted, smiling.

The Cirellian transport was ten feet off the ground now. Twenty feet. Thirty. Then it was adjusting its direction, facing toward the Athens Destroyers.

Quickly ignored it and turned his attention back to Cade just in time to see a group of three Vonnegan troopers appear from the spaceport entryway. Although he had slowed down enough to check on Cade’s progress, Quickly was still flying much too fast to turn toward the guards and do anything to divert their attention.

“Come on,” Quickly muttered, willing Cade to run faster.

In unison, all three troopers raised their blasters, pointed them at Cade, then squeezed their triggers.

32

Le Savage was the last person in the prison to find out that Vere and her friends weren’t still in the storage container that was stacked above the one blocking the main entrance.

Under strict orders to get in that room and apprehend the raiders, a crew had burned a hole through the first container, hoping the entire time they didn’t accidently ignite one of the explosives in the room, then climbed up to the second one.

On the monitor, Le Savage could only see the armored guards open the container door; he didn’t have a view inside the metal crate. When one of the guards reappeared, he simply shrugged.

Not being able to stand it any longer, Le Savage shouted into the comm system, “What is it? Stop standing around and tell me what you found!”

The only ranking officer in the group touched his wrist so the microphone in his helmet was activated.

“They aren’t here, sir,” the captain said.

“Where are they?” Le Savage asked, his throat burning from screaming so much.

“They aren’t here.”

“I know that,” Le Savage shouted. “You just told me that.” If the captain had been in the control room, Le Savage would have sent him flying out the window and down to the magma below. “Tell me where they went.”

“There’s a hole in the top of the second storage container and another through the ceiling. I’d say they went up one level and are working their way back to the ships they arrived on.”

“Captain Cicada?”

“Yes, sir?”

“If you and your troopers don’t climb up through that hole and get them right now, you will be working out on the prison field while other guards use vibro whips on you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

33

Morgan, Traskk, Pistol, and Vere had encountered a pair of Vonnegan troopers who were on their way to carry out Le Savage’s orders. Traskk dispatched both with ease. It was so fast in fact that his clawed hands had ripped apart their helmets and armor before a single blaster shot could be fired. After that, the four of them passed a bot making its way from the mining colony back to an equipment room. The bot was short and round and hovered through the halls. A high-pitched alarm emitted from its round head when it saw the escapees. Morgan sliced it with her blade, first cutting it in half, and then into quarters. The bot’s beeping fizzled into distorted blurts and then to silence.

“We need to go straight,” Pistol said, his one good eye glowing as it charted a route to the spaceport.

The only problem was that they were at another dead end. They could turn right and continue down another corridor, or turn left toward an elevator.

“Which way?” Morgan asked.

Pistol gave a polite robotic shrug. “We need to go straight ahead.”

Morgan shook her head in amazement. Why was it so difficult to find good accomplices?

Rather than waste anymore time, she withdrew her Meursault blade and sliced her own path, making four big slashes in the metal. Traskk slammed his shoulder into the wall and a slab of steel fell forward and slammed against the ground.

On the other side, a Vonnegan guard sat at a table by himself. His helmet was lying on the chair next to him, along with his blaster. In his hand was a mug of dark brown liquid. His big purple eyes, full of shock, stared at the raiders, but his hands didn’t move even a little toward his weapon. Traskk growled. Morgan’s grip tightened on her sword. Pistol’s one remaining hand began to glow. Vere narrowed her eyes. And still the guard remained perfectly still.

The only movement the guard made was to look over either shoulder at the corners of the ceiling. There were no cameras monitoring what took place in the break room. Morgan’s hand remained at the grip of her sword, wondering what move the guard would make next. Instead of yelling or reaching for his blaster, he lifted one of his purple boots just enough to let it rest on the edge of the chair where he had set his weapon. Slowly, the guard pushed the chair away from him to let the group of raiders know he had no plans of reaching for it.

Morgan nodded and the others in her group began to move past the Vonnegan soldier. When Traskk passed, he bared his fangs and the guard shivered. Pistol looked straight ahead, not acknowledging the Vonnegan.

Vere paused between the guard and his weapon. With their helmets on, the guards had always been indistinguishable from one another while they tormented her and killed the other inmates. Some guards had been particularly cruel. Some had made a game out of trying to break her. Others tried to let infractions pass because they just wanted to get through their assignment at the Cauldrons and get transferred out. Even though Vere could see this guard’s face now, he remained as anonymous as ever.