“There’s no reason to stay here,” she told him. “But if protecting people is really what you want to do, I could use your help. You’ve trained your entire life to defend others. Well, now is the time to do that.”
He remained silent for a while as he continued to cycle through the thousands of asteroids in Orleans. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to say anything else, he told her he couldn’t leave.
“Trust me, I felt the same way,” she said. “The exact same way. But you can’t live the rest of your life here in isolation. There’s an entire galaxy out there.”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t turn around. One by one, various asteroids of different shapes and sizes appeared as holograms in the air in front of him. All of them were depicted in varying shades of gray. None of them had any of the yellows, oranges, or reds associated with the heat signatures that living things would give off.
“But more than that,” she said. “I need your help.”
He turned and looked at her. “You, the great Lancelot? You need my help?”
She had no idea what it was like to know you were inferior to someone else. She had always been the victor in the Carthagen duels. That meant that Swordnew and the others had always been the defeated. Not only that, her pride and ego had forced her to dispatch them as fast as possible, which meant Swordnew must have been painfully aware of how much better she was than him at the one thing they had all been raised to believe was their true purpose.
“There are people who need our help, who need our protection. But they aren’t here. And I can’t stop them by myself. I need you and I need the technology the Dauphin developed.”
She held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t ask who they would be helping. If she told him it was the same people who had arrived in warships months earlier and who had fought and killed some of the Carthagen warriors in the asteroid tunnels, he would never go.
Instead, he said, “You really need my help?”
Before this all started, before Mortimous and Vere began appearing to her and before she began to see the Dauphin for what they were, her ego never would have allowed her to admit she did. If Swordnew had taken satisfaction in knowing Lancelot needed assistance with anything, she would have drawn her weapons and taught him a quick lesson about humility.
Now, though, she understood his gratification for what it was: the last vestige of hope in someone who had been let down time after time. He was just another person who needed a purpose, a glimmer of contentment, and was willing to fight for just a shred of it.
“Yes, I do. Will you help me?”
He swiped a hand through the air, causing the asteroid holograms to disappear. Then he turned to her and raised himself up on his four legs as tall as he could.
“When do we leave?”
44
Pompey watched the mechs descend toward the planet, the black mech’s poisonous energy beginning to seep from its weapon while the other three units kept guard. He assumed they were scanning for threats and any other signs of life.
At first, the black cloud formed from the scale rather slowly. After a minute, it was only a hundred feet in diameter. But as the two components seeped out of either canister, the cloud grew with increasing speed. After another minute, it was two city blocks in size, and it began to drift down toward the street level even though the four mechs were still flying at the same height as the tallest skyscrapers. After another minute, the cloud engulfed one entire tower, all the way from its top to the ground floor.
That was when the first cannon was fired by the resistance. It had been positioned three block away and was automated—Pompey wanted only computer-controlled weapons in certain public spaces. The cannon was large and had been mounted on a tripod secured to the pavement to keep its massive recoil from knocking it over after the first shot. The stream of laser it emitted was powerful enough to destroy a Thunderbolt or Llyushin fighter. It would have likely done considerable damage to one of the mechs, too, but the one it had aimed for managed to move aside and dodge the shot.
The cannon only fired one time. Before a second blast could be discharged, the white mech sent an ion arrow down, hitting the heavy weapon and causing a radiant burst of blue fire to rise up a hundred feet in the air. The same mech turned and fired another ion arrow toward the ground. Another bright explosion appeared in the holographic feed Pompey was watching. The matte gray mech swung its scythe, unleashing a streak of energy that tore down toward the ground and triggered another explosion. The mechs, upon identifying the threat of the cannon, had immediately set about destroying any other similar structure. All three automated heavy cannons in that one portion of Greater Mazuma were gone, with only one shot having been fired from any of them.
It was just as well, Pompey thought. Even though the cannons would have been nice to have around, no one had died and Pompey got a glimpse of how the enemy responded to threats. That was a good thing, considering the mechs were approaching the first area where small groups of actual resistance fighters were hiding.
As he watched, the black mech was hit in the back by a pair of laser blasts. Sparks flew like tiny fireworks, and the force of the shots caused the mech to momentarily lose its balance. The other three mechs turned to find the source of the attack. In the distance, much too far for them to hit, a lone Thunderbolt raced away.
The gray mech spun on its transport disc and pursued it. Pompey, watching via holographic feed, was amazed by how fast the mech was able to travel on what seemed to be a clumsy mode of transportation. It was deceptively fast and had no trouble matching the Thunderbolt’s speed.
The pilot of the Thunderbolt must have realized he was being chased because he took the fighter up toward the clouds and to space. The mech, picking up speed, began to close the distance between it and the craft it was chasing. As it did, it swung its scythe from side to side, sending waves of energy toward the Thunderbolt. Ten seconds later, the Thunderbolt was hit and exploded into pieces. A trail of fire followed the fighter as it lost momentum and began to plummet toward the ground.
The Thunderbolt pilot ejected while he was still miles above the surface of Greater Mazuma. It was a costly mistake. Before turning and rejoining the others, the gray mech swung its scythe one more time. A wave of energy swirled through the air and crashed into the pilot. The wave of energy continued through the air but any trace of the pilot was gone.
Meanwhile, the black cloud of poisonous energy continued to spread through the streets and between the skyscrapers. When it got far enough to nearly touch one of the hidden bunkers, two soldiers pushed the false panel aside, jumped out of the previously hidden ditch, and began to run away. They only got twenty feet before both were hit by ion arrows.
“Okay,” Pompey said, breaking radio silence so he could coordinate with the troops below. “Northwest quadrant, sector 3, go ahead.”
Immediately, he clicked the comms device back off in case the Hannibal mechs could detect it. The mechs didn’t seem to respond to him, though, but to the fighting that broke out near them.
Three streets away, in the opposite direction of the destroyed heavy cannons, another series of automated blasters, these much smaller than the ones that had been mounted on tripods, appeared from the gaps where ground-level windows had slid aside. Each fired blasts that were trivial compared to the heavy cannon but they also fired ten times faster. They were joined by six armored combat bots, each of which had a pair of small blasters mounted to them. Across the street, two Vonnegan soldiers loaded a shoulder-mounted ion rocket launcher. On the opposite sidewalk, another two, still hidden in their bunker under a false roof, provided the exact coordinates of the mechs’ current positions into a targeting system that controlled a battery of ion missiles mounted atop the roof of the building above them.
The reddish brown mech began to descend with its ion sword to kill anyone on the surface. It was met by combat mechs and a third pair of soldiers, stationed on the fiftieth floor of the highrise. The soldiers spra
yed the entire area with quick-burst plasma rifles.
The white mech began pelting each of these areas with ion arrows. An ion rocket exploded at its right knee, buckling it and forcing the mech to adjust position. A moment later, it sent an ion arrow into the Vonnegan bunker containing the rocket launcher. The weapon exploded, engulfing both Vonnegans in blue and white fire.
Another ion arrow sailed into the skyscraper, fifty stories up, taking out the soldiers with the plasma rifles. The combat bots hit the white mech with ten shots before the gray mech, fresh from destroying the Thunderbolt, unleashed a series of energy waves that decimated all but two of the bots.
At the same time, another pair of Vonnegan soldiers appeared from the ground level doorway of a skyscraper across the street. They let loose with a shoulder-mounted ion rocket launcher, then backed away. They were not retreating out of fear. Rather, Pompey had ordered them to fire once and immediately retreat to a stronger defensive position. It was his way of testing the mechs to see if they would give chase. Knowing their tendencies would allow him to plan for the later stages of the battle. The mechs revealed much to him by remaining where they were and destroying the rest of the combat bots and soldiers in their immediate area. Only after the resistance fighters in the same city block were neutralized did the mechs begin to move to another street.
Pompey also noticed that except for the gray mech chasing the Thunderbolt, the four mechs remained near each other, which was different from what he had seen in other battles. He inferred from this that because they were in such a highly populated area, they would remain together until they had identified all potential threats.
He nodded with satisfaction. The fact that they were guarding one another meant something very encouraging.
The mechs knew they could be defeated.
45
Vere watched as Lancelot and Swordnew spoke. Without either of them noticing she was there, she closed her eyes. All she could see was black. After slowing her breathing and calming her mind, the conversation between the two warriors faded away and all became silent.
She remained that way until she began to sense the aliens who lived beyond time and space. In doing so, she brought her mind closer to the realm of Avalon.
Back when she was a girl living on Edsall Dark, she had thought the Word was the one concept or idea that summed up each person’s life. Later, she had thought it was a cult of sorts. It turned out to be neither. The Word was what she and others like her called the alien race that had no other name, the civilization that lived in a dimension most minds couldn’t comprehend, let alone perceive. Now, the Word was who she had tried to communicate with ever since the Hannibal began their march toward the Round Table.
Because they were in a realm without a past, present, or future, the Word had always existed. Because they were in a place without a here or there, a near or far, they were everywhere and yet nowhere.
It had been Mortimous who had given her instruction on how to visit Avalon. It was a dimension into which only her mind could go. In being near it, she was able, on a limited basis, to be in all places and no place at all. It was how she was able to appear in Lancelot’s cavern in the Carthagen asteroid and also in the transport as it crossed the galaxy. It was how Mortimous had appeared to her when she was a prisoner at the Cauldrons of Dagda and her mother had appeared, without a suit of space armor, standing on the exposed surface on the Excalibur asteroid.
But while her mentor had taught her to access Avalon, she was not advanced enough yet to communicate directly with the Word. Mortimous was the only person she knew of who had managed to not only transcend time and space but also communicate with the beings that existed there. Vere could sense their presence but she couldn’t actually see them, couldn’t gain a sense of whether there was one of them near her or a thousand or a million. She tried to speak to them but even as she did, she could feel a separation between them and herself as if trying to talk to them through soundproof glass.
“Don’t try to think specific words to them,” Mortimous had said. “They don’t even have a name for themselves or a language to use.”
“How am I supposed to communicate with them then?” she had said after many failed attempts.
“Don’t try to communicate with them at all,” Mortimous had said.
“But then how I am supposed to—”
“Think about the galaxy you want, the experience you want,” he said, cutting short her frustration. “Visualize an image in your mind, a living dream almost. Be in Avalon, but think about seeing Galen again or talking to your mother or helping an old friend. Envision whatever you like. Don’t be discouraged if the Word is unresponsive. They almost uniformly view our mental processes as less evolved than their own. And they’re probably right since they’re in Avalon while the rest of the galaxy is set on killing one another.”
“I’ll show you less evolved,” she had said in the tone she had used when she were younger and getting ready to fight someone.
The gesture only made Mortimous smile. “You may be more evolved in your thinking than most people, but wanting to help your friends is still trivial in the grand scheme of the universe because it’s something that binds you to the realities of time and space, of pain and suffering, of needs and wants. These are things the Word have transcended.”
Remembering that advice, Vere once again took in a deep breath, held it for three seconds, then let it out over another three seconds. All was quiet and dark. The Word’s presence was all around her. Rather than think of the request for the advanced beings to offer assistance, rather than asking how they could allow such suffering, a series of scenes played out in her mind.
She thought about the Juggernaut destroying every vessel it came across, of the mechs ending all life on the colonies and planets they visited. She thought of the Hannibal getting all the way to Edsall Dark and how that would mean the Round Table had truly been beaten. All of her efforts to unite the galaxy would have been for nothing. It would be a matter of time until local warlords gained power and became rulers of individual sectors. After a couple of years, empire and kingdoms would form again and go to war with one another. They might not call themselves the Vonnegans and CasterLans—they might have new names—but the death and fighting would be the same.
Even without the Hannibal, if given enough time, people would find a way to exchange the peace of the Round Table for the chaos of fighting and quarrels. It’s what they do.
The idea formed in the back of her head. She tried to shake it away but it persisted. It will be different this time, she told herself.
But she hadn’t believed that in the first place. Her brows furrowed. Her concentration lapsed. The entities around her were gone.
46
From the pilot’s seat of his modified Llyushin transport, Quickly watched Lancelot emerge from the asteroid tunnel and then disappear underneath the belly of his ship. A moment later, after having walked up the transport’s ramp and through the narrow corridor, she appeared in the doorway of the cockpit.
“You’re alone,” he said.
“Yes.”
“No one is coming with us?”
“One will. But he’s disassembling some of the equipment we need to take with us.”
Quickly began to get up from the seat but an armored glove rested on his shoulder, keeping him where he was.
“What?” he said. “I’m good with electronics. I can help.”
Lancelot’s helmet turned away from the pilot, toward the direction of the dark tunnel she had appeared from.
“He won’t take kindly to strangers. The last people who showed up here without permission all ended up dead.”
Quickly sighed and shook his head. “And this is the guy who’s going to help us defeat the Hannibal?”
“He’ll be different once he’s away from Orleans. The asteroid field is his home, and he’s been taught to protect it.”
“Wonderful,” he said, but there was no enthusiasm in his voice.
She turned her attention back to him. “And Quickly?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t tell him who I am.”
“He doesn’t know you’re human?”
“Not yet. And if we expect his help, we’ll need to keep it that way a little longer.”
He pressed both index fingers into his temples to stave off a headache that was forming.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
47
Thidian was one of five hundred thousand people gathered in an old and unused underground water tank. He had offered to remain above ground and provide expertise from the same location Pompey was leading the battle, but the former Vonnegan general had told the city planner it was unnecessary.
“You’ve helped us prepare as best you could,” Pompey had said. “If we defeat the Hannibal it will be largely because of your assistance in planning the counterattack. There isn’t anything else you can do at this point.”
Thidian had smiled at the gray-haired military leader, a man his own age, and told him that when the fighting was over the two of them would help rebuild Greater Mazuma together. Pompey had smiled and nodded.
Now, the mechs had arrived and Thidian, located three stories below ground, was standing in the corner of the ancient water system. A tiny cube in his palm projected a hologram of the scene that was playing out above them. The mechs were facing resistance from the first band of Vonnegan fighters in the northwest quadrant.
In case the images became too upsetting, Thidian turned his back and faced the stone wall so those around him wouldn’t be able to see much of what he was watching. A few people near him craned their necks to watch as well. He gave each a half smile to let them know he had no ownership of the footage—the people fighting above them in the streets were as much their friends and neighbors as they were his own.
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