She knew she had come a long way, both as a fighter and as a person. If Vere or Mortimous were there, they would both agree. Years earlier, she had been a ferocious warrior who didn’t realize she was fighting out of fear. Fear of being recognized for who she really was. Fear of losing her one source of pride as the Dauphin’s best killer. Now, she fought to protect others. She fought on behalf of those who couldn’t fight for themselves, people who would never be able to pay her back.
Likewise, she had grown comfortable not only with what she was doing but with who she was. In Orleans, the only time she had taken off any part of her armor had been in private. She never spoke unless spoken to. Now, everything was different. She had revealed her identity to Talbot, Traskk, and the others. She had her helmet off just as frequently as she wore it.
Her eyes shifted focus from her own reflection to the last transport returning to the cruiser. Captain Thoft had said his crew would remain in space until either the preparations were complete or they got the alert that the Juggernaut was approaching.
An alarm began to sound. A hologram appeared from a console by her side.
“I know,” she said before the Vonnegan soldier, dressed in the colors of the Round Table, could tell her it was time. “I’m on my way.”
She took one final breath before scooping her helmet up and over her head. She was already on her way out of the living quarters and down the corridor of the cruiser as she clipped it into place.
After turning two corners, she was at the cruiser’s hangar. On the far side of the room, Talbot was there, talking to a pair of technicians. She altered her course to head straight for him. In the corner, Philo stood and began toward Swordnew’s Carthagen shuttle. Turning, she saw another door slide open at the opposite end of the hangar, and saw Traskk make his way to Quickly’s Llyushin transport.
Each nodded to her as she crossed the hangar. Each, she knew, was hoping her plan would work.
102
Quickly began entering commands into the controls of his modified Llyushin transport. The engines came to life. The navigation system came online. Across from him, the thrusters of the Carthagen shuttle began to glow. The Fianna that Lancelot recruited walked to the other ship, waited for the ramp to lower, then boarded. Below his own craft, Traskk tapped his tail against a metal panel to let Quickly know he was there.
Fifty feet away, Talbot and Lancelot stood next to each other, almost no room between them. Quickly didn’t need a pilot’s vision to see how intimate their postures were. He had no way of knowing what they were saying to one another but by the way their hands moved subtly toward one another, as if both wanted to take hold of the other, reminded him of when he had said goodbye to Enid.
A welcoming hiss sounded from behind him and he swiveled in his chair to greet the Basilisk. Together, the two observed the interaction between Lancelot and Talbot. Lancelot began to turn toward the Carthagen shuttle but Talbot reached out and took her elbow. She turned again and even though her face wasn’t visible behind her helmet, Quickly could tell from the angle of her visor that she was looking at Talbot’s hand. Something she said made his hand snap back to his side as if bit by a viper. They spoke for a moment longer and then for a second time Lancelot began to turn toward the Carthagen shuttle. This time, instead of reaching for her, Talbot said something that got her attention and she turned and faced him again.
Traskk hissed something and Quickly tapped the button to activate the translation software. A holographic series of words formed in the air.
What’s the hold up?
“We’re waiting for the love birds,” he said, which caused Traskk to give a dismissive hiss before returning to the main cabin.
Outside the cockpit, Talbot shook his head and this time he was the one who turned away. Instead of heading toward the Carthagen shuttle, the young Reiser began toward Quickly’s transport. Lancelot reached out and took his elbow. Facing each other again, Lancelot held onto Talbot’s arm. Finally, when she was done saying whatever it was that she had to say, he nodded and she let go.
Before Talbot could leave, Lancelot leaned down on her front two legs and wrapped her arms around him and held him close to her. They remained like that for a few seconds, then she released him, said something else, and the two began toward the respective ships they were to board.
Quickly waited for a sensor to confirm that Talbot had reached the top of the ramp, then pressed a button for it to close. A moment later, he appeared in the doorway to the cockpit. The son of Julian Reiser looked ten years older than he had only a couple hours earlier.
The two men stared at each other for a moment without speaking, then Talbot said, as if feeling he had to offer an explanation, “I told her I love her.”
The words forced Quickly to remember the first time he had said the same thing to Enid. It was the wrong thing to be thinking about before battle, however, so he pushed the thought from his mind.
“How’d that go?”
Talbot shrugged. “She told me if I wasn’t wearing armor and we didn’t have other people staring at us she would have smacked me across the face.”
“Not the best response you could have hoped for,” Quickly said. Talbot, he saw, looked like a man who was already defeated before the fighting had even started, so he added, “But certainly also not the worst.”
Talbot sighed and left the cockpit. Once again, Quickly’s thoughts turned to Enid.
“Think and die,” he mumbled to himself. “React and live.”
It was the motto he had carried with him every time he went into a combat situation. Rather than plan and focus on what he thought would happen, he simply reacted and let his instincts take over. Doing anything else would lead to the ship he was piloting meeting an unfavorable end.
An image of Enid standing in their home refused to leave his thoughts and he knew at that moment she was thinking about him the same way he was thinking of her. The realization made him groan.
He tapped a pair of controls beside the steering mechanism. The modified transport began to rise from the hangar deck.
Again he whispered, as he would many more times in the coming hours, “Think and die. React and live. Get home to Enid.”
103
Traskk had been told of the Juggernaut’s size, but it was impossible to appreciate the sheer scale of the enormous ship until he saw it for himself. As soon as Quickly’s modified Llyushin transport left the cruiser’s hangar, the enemy vessel could be seen in the distance. An oblong metal moon where nothing had been before. A flick of anxiousness ran through the length of his tail. The long vertical slits of his reptilian eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. He growled from the doorway of the cockpit and Quickly turned, shook his head, and said he agreed.
Quickly guided the Llyushin transport so it raced directly toward the Juggernaut. Through the viewport, Traskk saw that the Carthagen called Swordnew flew his shuttle in the same direction. It looked as though two small vessels were going to face the Juggernaut all by themselves. The rest of the space around them was mostly empty and the cruiser they had been aboard was changing course so it could leave the area. On the other side of the planet, partially blocked by EndoKroy, the two portals shone bright, with the Excalibur ship hovering nearby.
Traskk knew that in space, it could be difficult to reckon depth and size. Two stars glimmering in the distance might appear equidistant when one was actually hundreds of light-years farther away than the other. With the Juggernaut, its size made it look as though it were already on top of them, but Quickly called out that they were still two minutes from being in targeting range. Already, the Juggernaut spanned the entire width of the cockpit viewport. Its colossal size reminded Traskk of the Excalibur asteroid, an object large enough to encase nearly one thousand flagships.
Talbot stepped by him, into the cockpit. The human, roughly the same age Vere had been when they had left Eastcheap many years earlier, told Quickly to open a comm channel to the control room. The pilot nodded an
d tapped a pair of buttons, then gestured to indicate a line was open.
Talbot waited for a second, nothing in front of them except the Juggernaut. Then he said, “Activate the Carthagen system in three, two, one...”
A moment passed in which nothing happened. There was silence in the cockpit and the Juggernaut was still getting closer and closer to them, a celestial object of metal and might. The next second, Traskk’s pupils shrank from the burst of light that exploded all around the ship. Where there had previously been only empty space and two small ships racing toward the enemy, there were seemingly now thousands of objects. Portals, Athens Destroyers, Solar Carriers. Even a dozen asteroids.
Each looked completely real, so much so that even though Traskk knew they were holograms he instinctively urged Quickly to turn away from an Athens Destroyer they were going to collide with. The entire battlefield was a vast array of projections produced by the same technology that had helped defeat the Round Table forces in the Cartha sector. Each object looked so real that his eyes couldn’t be trusted. The flagships had scorch marks along the ends of their cannons where lasers had been fired. The hulls were covered in cosmic dust. Each fake portal glowed with endless swirls of energy just like the authentic pair located on the other side of the planet. One of the asteroids even had an old rig on it where a mining colony had abandoned its equipment.
He saw that Quickly’s hands gripped and regripped the transport’s steering mechanism. The pilot was also having a hard time trusting his senses. It didn’t help that the ship’s sensors also indicated that the space around them was filled with the new objects.
“Don’t worry,” Talbot said. “System control will update your ship’s sensors.”
The transport flew straight through the body of an Athens Destroyer that was made up of pixels instead of atomized steel, only to appear on the other side of the flagship, where a Solar Carrier was floating near an asteroid.
A pair of beeps sounded in the cockpit and Traskk noticed that the same sensor that had just shown thousands of objects in the space above EndoKroy now only showed the pair of real portals and the Excalibur vessel on the far side of the planet, the Carthagen shuttle next to them, and the Juggernaut ahead of them. Everything else could be ignored. A moment later, two dozen more dots appeared on the sensor.
“The Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters are approaching,” Talbot said.
A squad of Thunderbolts raced from around the far side of the planet and began firing laser blasts at the Juggernaut. A trio of Llyushin fighters came from the opposite direction, each ship firing a pair of proton torpedoes that raced on their way to meet the Hannibal vessel.
Traskk’s forked tongue flicked in and out of his mouth with delight. They had the support of two dozen fighters and the Carthagen projection technology. It didn’t seem like much but he and Vere had faced long odds in the past and had lived to tell about it.
His momentary optimism blew to bits when the space all around them became illuminated by hundreds of portals. The Juggernaut disappeared behind one. The Round Table fighters vanished behind some of the others. Many of the projections that filled the area above EndoKroy were cut in half. Traskk’s tongue retreated back to his mouth and his fangs reflexively bared.
Quickly yanked down hard on the controls, causing the transport to swerve away from a portal that appeared directly in front of them. Without being buckled into a seat, Talbot was thrown backwards into Traskk. The Basilisk’s tail shot out and braced against the storage bin just outside the cockpit, keeping him from lurching backward as well.
The hundreds of portals cut off, returning the space to a sea of black, then activated again.
“They’re trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not,” Talbot said.
Again, the portals cut off, moved to a slightly different part of space, then reactivated, slicing holograms in half. At the same time, projected versions of flagships began moving toward the Juggernaut, asteroids careened toward it, and fake portals and real portals merged into one. The chaos of the scene, the lack of sense it made, caused Traskk to wish for the days when it had just been him and Vere in a single vessel against countless enemies.
104
They need our help, Vere thought.
The cruiser she was aboard was heading away from the impending conflict. In the distance, everything had become a jumble of lights. Instead of seeing a pair of small craft racing toward the Juggernaut, the space around EndoKroy was illuminated with hundreds of real portals and thousands of holographic projections, all of which combined to form some abstract painter’s vision of madness among the stars.
Their entire plan was based on confusing the Hannibal long enough to change the tide of the battle. With hundreds of portals trying to dissect holograms, the Juggernaut was already trying to adapt to its surroundings. If they didn’t act fast, Lancelot, Traskk, and the others would be wiped away before they had a chance to save everyone on the planet below.
We can defeat them, she thought. We can make the galaxy a better place. The Round Table isn’t perfect, but we can make it better. We just need a chance.
She did her best to quiet her mind and let silence engulf her. The only sound she heard was her own breathing and then even that faded away.
And how many chances do you need? For millennia ships have gone into space to fight one another while leaders and soothsayers have promised that if just one more chance is offered, people can finally learn to live in peace.
Instead of denying the Word’s truth as she had before, she accepted it. Instead of arguing, she thought, But look at how much progress we’ve made. Rulers are gone. Kingdoms no longer battle one another over imaginary borders. We can continue to improve.
She waited for their response. In the silence, she opened her eyes to see hundreds of Hannibal portals continue to activate and then deactivate over and over as they tried to make sense of their surroundings. Each instance signaled less time her friends had to defeat the invader.
105
Philo remained in the back of the Carthagen shuttle as it sped toward the Juggernaut. Part of his training to become a Fianna had focused on mental preparation prior to a fight. He knew from experience that battles were often won or lost before the first strike. His hands felt the weight of his weapon. With each movement, he visualized the vibro blade slicing through one of the mechs, imagined himself sidestepping an attack and then bringing down his blade on the enemy.
He could hear Lancelot and Swordnew speaking to each other but couldn’t decipher actual words and didn’t particularly care. The shuttle began a series of twists and turns that forced him to brace himself.
Lancelot shouted, “You’ll want to see this.”
He considered staying in his seat, but then the ship lurched sharply before descending a moment later. He reached out for the wall to steady himself so he could make his way toward the cockpit and see what was so important.
He was half way there when the ship dived again, then banked to the right. He heard Lancelot tell Swordnew not to bother with anything other than following Quickly’s lead.
She must have sensed Philo behind her because she turned, nodded, then faced the cockpit’s viewport again. Her front and back legs were spread out to keep her from falling as Swordnew piloted the ship. When she moved, Philo saw what she had been referring to.
Although he wasn’t a pilot and the Fianna had never accompanied Mowbray to the bridge of the Athens Destroyer he commanded, Philo had seen glimpses of space battles. From the surface of a desert moon, he had witnessed part of the Excalibur battle. During his training, he and the other members of his Fianna squad had carried out simulated battles aboard a flagship that had been overrun by enemy forces. He had never witnessed anything like the scene in front of him, however.
“Just stay with him,” Lancelot said to Swordnew as the Carthagen shuttle tried to keep up with the modified Llyushin fighter’s swerves and twists. It flew through a Solar Carrier that looked real but wasn�
�t, then dipped under another portal, and then flew through a holographic asteroid. The scene was the same everywhere Philo looked. There was almost no place where he could actually see the stars or space. Everything was replaced by glowing portals, careening asteroids, and flagships. Too much of everything to make sense of anything.
“Look there,” Lancelot told him as she pointed to a display located diagonally in front of Swordnew.
Instead of thousands of objects, he saw only hundreds—the Carthagen holograms were filtered out of the ship’s sensors.
“How long until we face the mechs?” he said.
“Watch it,” Lancelot hissed and Swordnew jerked the ship’s steering column to the side as fast as he could.
Unable to get the shuttle’s direction altered fast enough, they plunged through a portal that Quickly had managed to avoid.
“I don’t know,” Lancelot said to Philo, trying to remain calm. “We’re working on it.”
106
Even Swordnew, who had witnessed the Carthagen technology in use on multiple occasions, was impressed by how the system was deployed above EndoKroy. The few times the Dauphin had activated the advanced hologram system, it had usually depicted asteroids or a fleet of enemy ships. They had been realistic in their depictions but each had been organized and fairly static. The scene in front of him was completely different.
All was chaos. Every bit of space was havoc and disorder. Portals, both real and fake, were arrayed in no discernible pattern. Real Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters sprayed laser blasts everywhere while holographic fighters and flagships did the same. Asteroids were here and there, interspersed between the same types of flagships the Round Table had brought to Orleans months earlier.
Avalon Page 27
