The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (8 page)

He already had the most prestigious position for someone in his line of work. Perhaps Mowbray would next appoint him as the ruler of some newly conquered planet.

Knowing this, there was no way he could possibly hide the grin that stretched from one side of his face to the other.

17

Morgan continued to hold the dead alien up by its shell because it was the only thing protecting her from Balor’s desiccating eye. From around the edge of the makeshift shield, she saw the monster reach for her. When it roared and stumbled, she gritted her teeth and gripped her sword in preparation for the one chance she would have at cutting the creature’s eye out. If that wasn’t enough to stop the flow of its deadly toxin, she would shrivel up and die.

It was the only option she had. Even if she were able to use her Meursault blade to cut off the monster’s arms or legs, as soon as it looked at her she would whither away and die. She took a deep breath, waiting for Balor’s enormous hand to pull the remains of the shelled alien away from her.

A curious thing happened then. Balor stepped away from her. When she peeked around the side of the dried up shell that had once been a prisoner, she saw Traskk, four stories high, holding the back of the monster’s head. He had gotten there either by jumping all the way up or by using his claws to climb the giant’s back. Either way, Traskk was safely behind the monster where it wouldn’t be able to see him. Not only that, the reptile had a tight grip on both of the giant’s misshapen ears and was pulling and twisting in whichever direction he wanted Balor to look. Instead of gazing down at Morgan, the monster was forced to turn away when Traskk squeezed its ears.

When Balor started to reach up to grab at whatever was behind it, Traskk pressed the point of one claw into the monster’s ears. It only needed to feel the pressure one time to understand that it had to follow Traskk’s lead. With a whimper, it immediately dropped its mighty hands down to its sides, and it soon realized that as long as it went where Traskk wanted it to go and looked in the direction Traskk wanted it to look, it would avoid the pain.

Traskk could have used his ion axes to cut two enormous slices into the sides of Balor’s neck. The amount of blood squirting out of either side would have left half the prison yard covered in crimson. He didn’t want to hurt the giant more than he absolutely had to, however.

He knew the giant had already killed Baldwin and would just as soon have killed Morgan if given the chance, but the Basilisk had two reasons for not wanting to kill the monster of the Cauldrons. First, the monster didn’t know it yet but it was going to help them escape. And second, Traskk had a soft spot for the creature.

He knew what it was like to be amongst people that were afraid of him just because of how he looked, because he had claws and fangs instead of fingernails and teeth. He mainly sympathized with Balor, though, because Traskk’s mother had once read him a bedtime story about the monster of the Cauldrons.

No one knew how old Balor was or if there were other members of his species somewhere else in the galaxy. As far as anyone else knew, he was all alone. And for as long as he had lived, everything and everyone he had looked at had died.

“Imagine how lonely that life must be,” his mother had told him ages ago. “He can never make friends. Everything he likes dies when he looks at it. That type of cursed life could make a monster out of anyone.”

Traskk grew up thinking of the monster of the Cauldrons not as a rampaging beast but as a prisoner just like all the other inmates at the facility. But Balor would be a prisoner anywhere he went. All the giant wanted was to be left alone so his lethal eye didn’t kill people. Instead, he was forced to roam the prison yard, indiscriminately taking lives as he went.

As gently as he could, Traskk guided the monster away from Morgan and toward the perimeter wall where the guards were firing down from high above. The Basilisk, still clinging to the back of Balor’s neck, patted it to let it know it was doing a good job.

He guided the monster back to the same entrance where he and Morgan had entered the prison yard. A group of security forces was there, setting up a cannon. Two Vonnegan troopers were anchoring the weapon into a heavy base so that when the weapon was fired it wouldn’t be propelled backward. Two other soldiers were loading ion cells into the weapon so it could begin firing. Even with their armor on, all it took was one look from Balor and all four guards were dead seconds later.

Traskk patted the giant on the head and relaxed his grip on its ears. Balor raised his hand again, but this time Traskk didn’t dig his claws to keep the one-eyed giant from moving. He could tell, from the way the giant moved, that it didn’t have bad intentions. Traskk let Balor’s hand, which was almost as large as Traskk himself, stroke his new friend’s scaly skin. No one, not even Traskk’s mother, would have believed the contented sound that Balor made then. Instead of roaring or groaning, the only two noises the monster had made since arriving at the Cauldrons, the giant offered a low purr.

Traskk climbed down from the giant’s back, then gently pushed it forward into the tunnel. The opening was barely large enough to accommodate the beast, and Balor didn’t like being in an enclosed space, but he did so because his new friend urged him ahead. Traskk watched the giant lumber away, down the hallway. If any more Vonnegan ground forces were dispatched, they would be killed by their own monster.

The ion cannon was there, ready to be used. Traskk had just taken up a position at the Vonnegan heavy weapon when a laser blast shot straight through the thickest part of his tail. With a roar, he grabbed the handle of the cannon and dragged it out of the doorway and into the prison yard. Aiming it almost straight up in the air, he pressed the trigger. Nothing. A second time he pressed the trigger and still nothing happened.

Hissing, he looked at the fuel cell and then at the cables. With a click, he locked the tube leading from the ion cell to the cannon into place. The entire platform that the cannon rested on began to rumble and hum with the force of the energy building up inside the weapon. Lining up his shot, he pressed the trigger again. A great ripping stream of energy blew out from the cannon and streaked up the length of the wall. As strong as Traskk was, not even he could have held the cannon in place if the soldiers hadn’t anchored it to the base platform.

The ion blast hit the prison wall about three-quarters of the way up the structure. A chunk of rock and steel, almost as large as a Llyushin fighter, was incinerated. Cracks began spreading out from the damaged area. Traskk moved the cannon’s sight a little, then fired again. Another blast erupted against the wall, slightly higher and to the right from the first blast.

All of the marksmen were shooting at him now. A laser blast hit his arm. Another hit his foot. Each time his skin sizzled from the lasers and pain seared his recently regenerated limbs, he bared his fangs and slammed his tail against the ground, then sent another ion blast up the wall. Then another.

“Watch out,” Morgan yelled.

He turned and saw her standing in the middle of the yard. He ran toward her, and when he was halfway there, he felt the ground shake as if the entire prison would fall into the lava. When he turned back, half the wall was gone, turned to a massive pile of rubble on the ground. The entrance, where he had been standing, was buried under tons and tons of rock.

Pistol, having lost an arm sometime during the fighting, came up to them.

“The good news is that we’re safe now,” he said, referring to the lack of laser fire from atop the wall.

Morgan knew what he was going to say next, even before he said it.

“The bad news is,” the android added, pointing to the rubble obstructing the entrance, “that was our only way out.”

“Well,” she said, gesturing at Vere, “at least that gives us time to figure out what’s going on with her.”

In the middle of the prison yard, Vere was still pushing the Circle of Sorrow.

18

“Vere, you can stop pushing,” a voice called out. It wasn’t in Basic, but in some other language she used to know but couldn’t remember from when or where.

Rather than turn to see who was speaking, she dug her foot into the ground, resting her fingers against the thick beam of wood, then heaved forward with all of her strength.

“Vere, stop.”

This was a different voice. A woman’s. In Basic.

She didn’t stop pushing, though. During the fighting, she had come back into her body just long enough to see that her partner, the Ignus Moris, was gone. She was left to push the Circle of Sorrow by herself. No matter. Having slipped back into her conversation with Mortimous, she was no longer concerned with what was happening to her physical body. Far more important were the things he had to tell her. That was why she took two deep breaths, then grunted and pushed. The Circle of Sorrow moved another few inches forward.

She was detached from her physical body so often and for such extended periods of time that she wasn’t even aware of the reputation she had earned around the galaxy for surviving at the Cauldrons as long as she had. It was one thing to manage to keep living at the prison for a record amount of time; it was quite another to spend all of that time pushing the Circle of Sorrow. Ewan the Resilient had earned notoriety for surpassing one year at the Cauldrons, but none of that time had been spent at its most grueling mechanism for punishment. Not only had Vere managed to survive for longer than he had, she had done so at the Circle of Sorrow. All because of Mortimous and the invaluable things he told her.

Prior to Vere, no one had lasted more than three weeks at the Circle of Sorrow, a record held by the Giant of Acronoor. Everyone had agreed that if the record were to ever be broken, it would be by someone even taller and heavier than the giant, who was three times the size of a human and weighed half a ton. After three weeks of the task, the giant had slowed until he was routinely being whipped. After a dozen lashings from the vibro whips, the giant stumbled, fell, and never got back up to his feet.

That was why people whispered about her in every spaceport and bar. At Eastcheap, where she had cut off the Green Knight’s head years earlier, every patron agreed that the seat she had used back then should remain empty in her honor. The most common reason for fights in Eastcheap these days was when a new customer unwittingly sat in that chair and ignored the warnings to move.

“Vere, stop pushing that damn wheel.” It was the second voice again.

A clawed hand, green and covered in scales, rested on her shoulder. She didn’t shrug it off or acknowledge it in any way. Instead, she pushed as hard as she could until the Circle of Sorrow moved slightly forward again.

Vere was aware of the people standing beside her body, but all of her attention was elsewhere. In her mind, the Cauldrons of Dagda didn’t currently exist. Her only reality was the one in which she and Mortimous were speaking.

The two of them were at the king’s hall back on Edsall Dark. Scrope was there, pacing around the cavernous and empty room. However, he didn’t seem to know Vere and Mortimous were also there.

“This is where the round table should go,” Mortimous said.

“Here?”

The figure in black robes shrugged. “Where else?”

“You’re sure the round table is the solution?”

Mortimous faded from her sight. Or was she the one leaving? The entire hall within CamaLon faded into the distance in a way that made it difficult for her to tell if only he was leaving or if both of them were.

“Mortimous?”

He was gone.

Beside her, at the Circle of Sorrow, the same irritated woman said, “This is ridiculous. We came here to rescue her, not to watch her work. Every second we stand here, we’re giving the security forces a chance to regroup.”

The next thing Vere knew, the same clawed hand that had rested on her shoulder now hoisted her into the air. “Let’s go,” Traskk said in Basilisk, and he threw Vere over his shoulder and carried her away.

19

The Griffin Fire was already without its front shields, and there were too many Thunderbolts filling the sky to defend against all of them. Quickly directed all shield capacity to the belly of the ship, protecting it from the immense heat coming up from the dark molten death below, then took the ship low across Terror-Dhome’s lava seas.

A pair of Thunderbolts set the same course. Their shields weren’t as powerful though, and even before the pilots could bring the ships back up to a safe level, the navigation circuits of both were fried and the Thunderbolts plummeted into the lava.

Quickly immediately brought the ship back up and away from the lava. The maneuver was successful, but he frowned at the sheer number of Vonnegan fighters still coming at him. More Thunderbolts had departed from the Athens Destroyer and were joining the others already attacking the Griffin Fire. Looking at the cockpit display, he counted a dozen red dots angling from all positions, all converging on his ship.

Another laser blast hit, knocking away a false metal panel and revealing more of the actual vessel underneath it.

Cade’s voice came across the comm system: “Is there anything I can do?”

Below, the Pendragon was dark and still on the spaceport, one of five ships scattered on the otherwise empty deck.

“Don’t do a thing,” he said. “Just sit still. There are too many ships for me to keep them all away.”

Another laser blast tore apart two more sheets of metal. Half of the false ship remained, with half of the Griffin Fire exposed beneath it.

He changed course so the Griffin Fire was leaving the planet and began speeding out into space. Setting the engines for full power, he raced directly at the Athens Destroyer orbiting the planet.

“Hey, where are you going?” Cade shouted, but Quickly ignored him.

With so many fighters in the air, it was too difficult for Quickly to keep track of all of them. By racing out toward the Athens Destroyer, he would go in the only direction they didn’t expect, ensuring all of them were behind him—at least for a few seconds.