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

The colossal creature was feared throughout the galaxy, and along with the lava and heat, was a big part of why everyone dreaded being sent to the Cauldrons of Dagda.

Most inmates didn’t fear being crushed by Balor. They feared his single, bulbous eye. One look from the monster was lethal. Balor’s eye was positioned in the very middle of its head, and it emitted a constant stream of lethal gas. The gas dissipated, so at a distance it wasn’t deadly. But if the creature was close enough to reach out and touch you, it was already too late. The noxious gas released from Balor’s eye would kill you in a matter of seconds. And not in any kind of pretty way.

The gas caused almost every kind of liquid to dry up. Because most species, humans and aliens alike, have water as the majority of their body composition, nearly every alien species in the galaxy that Balor looked at would die of dehydration in less than ten seconds.

The most gruesome deaths were the ones where Balor only glanced at a prisoner for a second. It was long enough that the inmate was brought to his hands and knees and felt terrible pains shoot through his body, but not long enough for the monster’s single eye to kill them instantly. These were the prisoners who begged for death.

Vere wondered if the alien at the other end of the wooden beam from her could possibly have any moisture in his body. It didn’t look as if he would, but he obeyed all of the guards’ orders, so she could only conclude that the monster could indeed kill the Ignus Moris if it wanted it to.

Together, Vere and the Ignus Moris pushed the wood beam in a circle from the time they woke up until the time they were allowed to go to sleep. In return for their labor, they were given three meals a day and they were allowed to stay alive for as long as they could keep performing their task.

It was an expectation that Vere refused to follow. Upon arriving at the Cauldrons, she had killed a guard with his own vibro whip. Afterwards, three other guards had lashed her until she was nearly dead. Instead of being pushed into the lava seas, however, she was taken to the medical bay and allowed to heal. The scars across her back and arms still reminded her of the punishment she had endured that day.

Mowbray, she guessed, wanted her to die on his terms and not on her own. If she was going to die at the Cauldrons of Dagda, it would be because she could no longer stand it. He wanted her to quit of her own volition, to walk into the lava sea, or else drop dead the way the Gthothch had. He must have felt she was getting off too easy if the guards killed her like any other prisoner they became unhappy with.

As soon as she had regained her health after the beating, she was sent to the Circle of Sorrow. There, she spent the next two years of her life pushing the same beam in a circle. Every week or so, after the alien across from her died and was dropped into the lava, a new alien appeared across from her and aided in the task.

She dug her foot into the ground, braced herself, then pushed once more. Again, the beam, thicker than her body, groaned as it moved another foot forward. Across from her, the Ignus Moris did the same thing.

Over the months and years, the act of putting all of her strength into moving the giant beam for hours at a time had the opposite effect that Mowbray had intended. Because the prisoners were allowed to eat as much as they wanted, and because she was performing grueling work every day, she had lost every ounce of fat on her body. Instead of becoming weak and frail, she had become an imposing figure. Her arms were twice as thick as they had been. Her back bulged each time she pushed. The veins in her forearms rippled each time her hands braced against the beam. Even her neck was stout with sinew and muscle.

Not only did she look like she belonged amongst the galaxy’s deadliest criminals, she acted as if she did. One night, after ten hours of pushing the wooden beam, a completely black alien, devoid of any color or skin pigment, had walked up to her at the mess hall and motioned for her to give him her plate of food. Without saying a single word, she killed the alien and left his body in the middle of the cafeteria for everyone else to see.

But her true legend at the Cauldrons was earned by the mere fact that she had lived as long as she had. Two years. Most of the prisoners she saw being brought in each day didn’t last a week, their bodies tossed into the lava beside her. She couldn’t guess how many inmates she had seen receive that fate during her incarceration. Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. Some of them cried as they were dragged to the lava. Some begged to be allowed to jump in if it meant they could die quickly and stop their suffering. Some died at the hands of guards with vibro whips. A few had turned into withered corpses after having Balor look at them. Their fate, in the end, was always the same. Death.

The only exception was Vere, who managed to survive as the others perished, becoming a hero for breaking the record set by Ewan the Resilient many years earlier, for enduring anything the worst prison could give her.

Day after day she pushed the Circle of Sorrow, and day after day she wondered if Mowbray was regretting his decision to let her live. Instead of becoming a symbol of why everyone should fear the Vonnegan leader, for everyone to see what happened when they dared face him, Vere had become a symbol of strength and fortitude and resistance.

In fact, the previous alien that had toiled across from her on the Circle of Sorrow had turned to her in the middle of their task and grunted in his thick Turgurian accent, “You will be called Vere the Tenacious.”

A guard who had overheard the comment had whipped the prisoner into unconsciousness, then kicked his body into the lava. The Ignus Moris had taken the Turgurian’s place at the Circle.

Indeed, Mowbray must be regretting his decision.

5

“We won’t have long,” Morgan said into the Pendragon’s communicator.

Beside her, Baldwin and Cade waited at the cockpit doorway, staying silent until they were told what they should do next.

“Understood,” Quickly said from the Griffin Fire’s cockpit. “In and out.”

This wasn’t a mission where they would have to sneak into the prison, recruit guards to assist them, or even wear Vonnegan uniforms and pose as guards themselves. There was no need to show identification or register at the entrance.

The problem was getting out.

There was one path into and out of the facility. None of the intelligence they had been able to gather could identify what kind of security measures were in place to keep visitors from racing back to their ships other than the things everyone knew about. Weapons were confiscated on the way into the facility. Access was controlled with a series of steel doors. Groups of Vonnegan troopers patrolled the area.

Morgan had been able to plan for a few things. The unknown, however, was their worst enemy. She had a feeling that once she and her accomplices were identified, additional security measures would be unleashed and every nearby Vonnegan force would descend upon them.

“Quickly, you know the plan,” Morgan said.

The pilot was going to remain aboard the Griffin Fire. As soon as he saw the first signs of security having been alerted to their presence, he was to take off and provide air cover to the Pendragon so the rest of the group could get aboard and get to safety. It went without saying that if Quickly failed in his job, it didn’t matter if Morgan and the others were able to free Vere from the prison grounds; they would end up back at the spaceport without a way of escaping.

“Roger that,” the pilot said.

The three-dimensional hologram of Quickly that appeared in front of Morgan gave a nod. His shirt sleeves were barely long enough to cover his shoulders. Below that, Morgan saw one normal arm and one that was made of metal, the gears of which flexed to release the tension filling up inside him.

He turned to someone outside the hologram’s image and said, “Be safe, guys. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

After shutting down the comm link, Morgan turned to Cade and said, “You’ll do the same thing here.”

“But—”

“But nothing. We need someone to keep this ship ready for takeoff as soon as we get out of there.” She turned and pointed at Baldwin, “He can’t pilot anything, so that leaves you.” When Cade started to complain again, she added, “You’re a sitting target here so I need someone who can use a blaster. As soon as the alarms begin, you’re going to have security trying to keep us from getting back aboard the ship. I need you to provide cover fire for us.”

Cade opened his mouth to complain about Baldwin being allowed to go into the prison while he wasn’t. It had already been explained that the medical care Baldwin could provide might be invaluable when they found Vere. Thinking better about saying anything, Cade closed his mouth without having uttered another argument.

The entire plan sounded simple enough. Quickly, piloting the Griffin Fire, would provide cover fire for the Pendragon. The Pendragon, piloted by Cade, would provide cover fire for Morgan and the rest of the rescue party.

The problem was that in the long history of the Cauldrons of Dagda, only two men had supposedly escaped. The Anglin brothers, a pair of half human-half Tyllin pirates, had tried to escape over two hundred years earlier and had never been seen again. Half of the galaxy liked to think the brothers had somehow escaped and managed to disappear for the rest of their lives. The other half thought it likely that both men died in the lava fields. Either way, no trace of them had ever been found.

No one else had come close to getting away from the notorious prison in all its years of existence. Security sensors prevented anyone from carrying blasters into the prison. Even if inmates somehow managed to get away from the guards and from Balor, they would have to go through a series of security checkpoints that blocked any escape to the spaceport. Then they would need a way off the lava planet, and if they were still alive at that point, they would have to find a way out of Vonnegan territory, past all the Athens Destroyers that made routine passes near the molten prison.

That was why their rescue attempt had taken so long to implement. They knew that with each passing day Vere’s chances of survival dropped, and so they wanted to rescue her as soon as possible. But they also knew it was pointless to try and conduct the raid if there was an Athens Destroyer above the prison. This was the first time in months that one hadn’t been stationed there.

“Ready?” Morgan asked, looking at Baldwin.

When he nodded, the two of them pulled their hoods up over their heads, and she pressed the button for the Pendragon’s ramp to lower. Their long cloaks billowed behind them as they descended.

Across the spaceport, where the Griffin Fire was parked, two more figures appeared. Both were also wearing long cloaks with hoods pulled up over their heads.

She could have gone to the trouble of having elaborate disguises prepared. They could have worn reinforced shells that changed their shapes and made them unrecognizable. They could have pretended to be delegates from a foreign kingdom or any other cover story they wished. They could have put on prosthetics that made them look like a completely different species. But that only aided them in being undetected on their way into the prison, which was unnecessary. No matter what they looked like, as soon as they tried to free Vere, the full might of the Vonnegan forces would come down on them. Anyway, there was no telling what kind of scanning software the prison used. She could have gone to the trouble of wearing bulky false limbs that would slow her down, only to be discovered immediately once a retinal scanner identified her as not only human, but as one of the Vonnegan Empire’s biggest possible trophies.

That was why she had decided to use minimal disguises, something that wouldn’t hinder their speed but would keep them fairly unremarkable until it no longer mattered. Then they would simply have to run for their lives.

The two figures descending from the Griffin Fire, one human in size and one significantly larger, walked toward them.

When they were all gathered together, Morgan asked if they were ready. She was greeted by a nod of the head from Pistol and a low, guttural hiss from the large figure that was next to him.

The tips of Traskk’s hands and feet protruded from the edge of his baggy cloak. All were a vibrant green. The only parts of him that were still yellow were his torso, neck, and head. The rest of him—his arms, legs, and tail—were still too young to have faded into the sand color they would one day become. It had taken almost a year for the limbs to completely regenerate after they had been chopped off.

Traskk was lucky to be alive at all. Morgan had needed to wait two full days while the Vonnegan forces left their orbit above Dela Turkomann before she was able to return and search for him. At the time, she didn’t think there was any way the Basilisk would still be alive. He was a survivor, though. Using his snout, he had pushed sand away, then burrowed far enough underground that all of him was covered from the harsh desert sun.

By the time she found him, not too far away from where the traitor Scrope had cut his appendages off, Traskk wasn’t even able to blink, let alone offer a pitiful growl. Now healthy, there were only two things Traskk talked about: rescuing Vere and killing Scrope.

Knowing the reptile’s temper and having seen what he had done for much lesser offenses, Morgan felt bad for the first guard Traskk got his hands on.

6

On the other side of the galaxy, back on Edsall Dark, Scrope walked the hallways of the capital. No matter where he went, he was the only person. The shops were deserted. The spaceport was empty. The homes had been vacant for nearly two years.

Prior to the battle above Dela Turkomann, every ship, pilot, mechanic, and anyone else able to perform manual labor had been transported to the Excalibur Armada. Each of these people had taken their loved ones with them. Following the battle, what remained of the CasterLan fleet had supposedly rallied there before going into hiding.

Upon arriving at the capital after being appointed as Mowbray’s selection for ruler of the planet, Scrope had no one to lord over. He was the installed leader over an entire planet and yet had no one to rule. Mowbray hadn’t even bothered to leave a contingent of troops to keep him safe.