Swordnew still wasn’t moving.
“Is he dead?” asked Talbot.
Lancelot shook her head. “Not yet.”
“What can we do?”
“Get away from here,” she said. “Draw the black one away like Quickly did the others.” He started to ask how and she said, “By attacking the walls.”
She said it loud enough for both Traskk and Philo to hear as well. Talbot saw Philo look around as if considering leaping into the portal behind him and disappearing. Traskk gave a roar and darted down a different hallway. Lancelot couldn’t see what they were doing, but the black mech hovered backward into a portal and was gone. Just before it left, though, it sent forth a surge of the black cloud in all directions. Talbot had to back farther away from Lancelot.
None of it made sense. Why would attacking the walls of a battleship be enough to distract the mechs? It was what Lancelot wanted, however, so he was going to do it.
“I love you,” he shouted to her. “I don’t care if that makes you angry. If I never see you again, I need you to know that.”
Then, not waiting for her to answer, not wanting to hear what she would or wouldn’t say in return, he ran. At the corner of the next revolving intersection, he took his Meursault in both hands and cut a deep gash into the wall beside him. One of the white circles of light had been directly behind the section of panel he slashed. It dissolved into nothing. The others around it continued to pass along the hallway walls, ceiling, and floor in seemingly random directions.
A flash of light erupted behind him. A large circle of white energy glowed there, only feet from where he stood. He knew what was going to come through it, and so he began to run as fast as he could in hopes of getting away from whichever mech came for him.
132
Swordnew was critically injured. Lancelot and Philo were hurt. Quickly, Talbot, and Traskk were running for their lives. Vere watched the battle unfold, horrified by what she was seeing.
We have to help them, she thought. We can bring about galactic peace but only if we defeat the Hannibal.
The same notion had been running continuously in her mind. Each time, she paused for the Word to offer a response, and each time there was nothing.
She watched as the white mech stopped chasing Quickly, only to appear through a portal behind Talbot. General Reiser’s son ran to the next revolving intersection and, without pause, plummeted into the depths of a downward facing hallway.
Many years ago, Mortimous knew it was important for me to return to Edsall Dark. The Round Table was another vital step. All of these things happened for a reason, to work toward a specific objective. Please don’t give up on us now.
She waited, but again there was no response. In front of her, she observed the white mech give up its pursuit of Talbot only to disappear through a portal and reappear through another that was directly behind Philo, who was crouched behind yet another portal. The former Fianna was waiting for the gray mech to come around the corner so he could ambush it. Instead, the white mech fired an ion arrow into Philo’s back. The blast sent him hurtling forward, into the portal he had been hiding behind.
We can’t wait any longer! They need us. They’re the only hope we have for galactic peace. Please.
The gray mech, which had been used to distract Philo’s attention, finally appeared through a portal and began to chase Traskk, who was snarling at the black mech, frustrated that he couldn’t get close to it.
The time of universal peace is near? How many times has that been said before?
Vere blinked. The thought had not been her own but the Word’s.
She thought about reiterating that nothing is done overnight, that real change takes time. Instead, she merely thanked them for listening to her.
We do not like to interfere. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.
Of course, she replied. I understand. But occasionally those who are strong must help the weak. I am weak. My friends are weak. Help us. Help guide us, she thought, directing her gaze toward Lancelot and Talbot and the others.
We do not like to interfere in others’ affairs.
133
With the mechs gone, Lancelot sheathed her weapons and moved to where Swordnew was lying on the floor. The Carthagen was missing a large section of armor, but more important, he was missing a chunk of his abdomen. The exposed wound was mostly cauterized by the heat of the laser, and much of the flesh was burnt.
“How are you?” she said, scooting beside him so his helmet could rest on one of her legs.
“I’ve been better,” he said, no anger or pity in his tone. The elders would have been proud of his stoic demeanor.
“We’ll get you patched up after we get out of here. We’ll—”
“I’m not going anywhere, Lancelot. We both know that.”
His head swiveled slightly so he could take in his surroundings. Underneath the clear panels of the walls, the circles of light continued to move without any discernible pattern. The oversized passageway seemed more like an abandoned hangar than a corridor on an enemy vessel.
He looked down at the missing part of his armor and his gaping wound and said, “Even if I weren’t injured, I couldn’t leave the ship. I’d never survive in space.”
“We can fly a transport up to the edge of the Juggernaut. We’ll figure it out.”
“It’s okay, Lancelot. Don’t worry about me.” She started to speak but he added, “I’ll be fine, I mean it.”
“I’m sorry I was so tough on you,” she said. They both knew that she was referring to the times they had sparred for the Dauphin.
“I would have done the same thing if I had been as good as you,” he said.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
He let out a sigh and said, “I can’t believe you convinced me to come here.” She expected him to blame her for his imminent death, but he added, “Thank you, Lancelot.”
“Don’t thank me.”
“No,” he said as he reached up and gripped one of her wrists. “I mean it. You were right about everything. I was either going to die alone in the Orleans asteroid field or I was going to start truly living. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see more of the galaxy before...”—he looked down at his wound again—“this happened.”
“We can get you off this ship,” she said.
He released her arm and told her to stop being foolish. “You were always brutally honest. We all were. Don’t start lying now.”
He reached up to remove his helmet but his hands fumbled about and she knew his coordination was starting to abandon him.
“Help me remove my helmet.”
“Of course not,” she said. The breathing apparatus in the suit, even if it was damaged, would still be providing Swordnew with more oxygen than he would otherwise get.
“Fulfill my final wish, Lancelot. You owe me that.”
There was no pity or accusation in his tone, only calm. She nodded and her fingers ran along the underside of his helmet until they found the latches and unhooked them. A puff of air sounded when the helmet released. Her hands moved away, allowing Swordnew to pull off the helmet.
Carthagen warriors never removed any part of their armor in front of others. The elders were the only members of the species she had seen, but they had been aged and had worn breathing masks. Even Bookknow, the Carthagen elder who had taken her in and created an identity and armor for her, had never taken that breathing mask off.
Now, for the first time, she was seeing what a Carthagen really looked like. His eyes were black like the elders’, without pupils or irises or other features of human eyes. He had thin, brown lips and the few teeth she could see were sharp but short. His skin was rough and covered with hard wrinkles. His nose was upturned.
What caught her attention most was the expression on his face. He was smiling. The warrior whose arms and legs she had cut apart in combat and who was now dying looked up at her with an expression that revealed only kindness.
; “Thank you for getting me to leave the Cartha sector,” he said. “If I had stayed there, I would have died alone, protecting people who didn’t exist. Here”—he motioned around him with one hand—“I can die like a warrior.”
“What can I do for you?” she said.
“Leave me. Go defeat the mechs.”
If she needed further proof that she was different from the person she had been months earlier, it was that Swordnew had to tell her to stand back up and return to battle.
“Lancelot?”
“Yes?”
“The black mech is the key to defeating the others. Until you destroy that one, it will continue to keep you from defeating the rest.”
She knew that. The same thought had been keeping her occupied for much of the fighting. The problem was she didn’t know how to get close enough to it to do any damage. Even if she threw a vibro lance like a javelin through the cloud, she suspected the energy would dissolve the weapon before it could harm the black mech.
“I’ll figure something out,” she said.
“I know you will.” He smiled. “Okay, leave me now. Go help the others.”
She nodded, then gently removed his head from her leg so it rested on the floor. A searing pain wracked her shoulder when she stood but she ignored it and scanned her sensor displays to see where her allies were.
“It has been an honor fighting alongside you,” she told him. Then she turned and began to run.
134
Traskk darted around a corner, then sprinted up the next pathway. Behind him, the gray mech chased him for twenty yards before vanishing into a portal. In front of him, a circle of energy opened and the white mech emerged. The Basilisk dug his claws into the floor, turning sharply and racing up another corridor. There he saw the gray mech disappear into another portal and immediately reappear a hundred yards farther up the hallway, beside Quickly, who had to swerve on his speeder to avoid a collision.
At the next intersection, all Traskk could see of the black mech was the top of its head. The rest of it was obscured behind a cloud of poison, and he knew there was no way he could attack it. Instead, he roared, drawing the mech’s attention away from Talbot, who was at the other end of the corridor. Then he began running again.
Every where he went, a mech was appearing from or disappearing into a portal. The white mech appeared from a circle of energy, fired a single ion arrow at Quickly, then vanished again, only to reappear three corridors down. The gray mech slashed at the Basilisk with the long blade of its glowing scythe, then raced sideways into a portal. When Traskk saw it again a second later, it was chasing Talbot around a corner two corridors away.
All the while, the black mech’s dark energy spread, filling corridors and cutting off one route after another.
135
Philo’s mindset was one he had never had before, and certainly not in combat. In all his time serving Mowbray as a Fianna, he had known he would survive any fight. The training he had endured had taught him that he and the other Fianna in his unit could destroy any enemy.
But now there were no other Fianna with him, only a pair of warriors in Carthagen armor, a pair of humans, and a Basilisk that had tried to kill him not too long ago. His armor was damaged and his vibro halberd was gone. To further compound his problems, he had been shot at close distance by the white mech’s ion bow. The only reason he was still alive was because the blast had hit his shoulder, much of which was subsequently incinerated in the blast. Since then, his right arm refused to move. It dangled as he ran, and the only weapon he had remaining was the small cannon mounted to his left arm.
In short, he was no longer fighting with an invulnerable spirit but was counting down how much time he had remaining until he died. His goal was to take at least one of the mechs with him before that happened. Assuming the rust-colored mech was permanently destroyed, if he could defeat just one more mech, that would give Lancelot and the others a chance to be victorious. The Vonnegan people would likely never know how one former Fianna had fought to redeem himself, but that clear goal—one more mech—would be enough to make Philo feel that he had at least partially made amends for all of the horrible things he had done.
It was for that reason he fought with an abandon that none of the others had. He saw how Quickly raced through the hallways atop his speeder to avoid the mechs. The Basilisk had a fiery spirit, but he also ran more than he attacked.
Not Philo.
Instead of running away, Philo relentlessly engaged the enemy. He jumped through one portal after another, chasing mechs wherever he saw them. The mechs knew exactly where they would appear, though, which gave them a tactical advantage. When Philo jumped through a portal, he had no idea where he was, where his allies were, or which direction the mechs were. He was constantly chasing, but rarely hitting the mechs with laser blasts.
Instead of rethinking his tactics, he became even more willing to sacrifice his safety. After appearing through a portal and seeing the white mech hover down the next hallway, Philo gave chase. As he sprinted down the hallway, the white mech, only thirty yards ahead, turned around the next corner. Philo grinned and followed as fast as he could. A glint of light caught his eye from the opposite side. The gray mech’s scythe was coming at him with blinding speed. He raised his left arm and got off a single laser blast before the glowing blade cut through him.
The blade itself was painless, but the energy coursing through him knocked him off his feet. Flat on his back, he lifted his head to face his attacker. His right arm was on the floor a few feet away from him.
Philo taunted his attacker with a laugh and said, “That arm was already useless, you idiot.”
The gray mech didn’t move forward to finish the job. Instead, its legs buckled and it stumbled forward, almost crushing Philo when it hit the floor.
Quickly’s speeder went racing past him, smoke billowing from the laser cannons that had hit the back of the mech’s knee joints. Before the mech could stand, Traskk was on top of it, his breathing mask thrown to the side, and was chomping down on anything his oversized jaws could find. At the same time, the Basilisk’s claws thrashed about, ripping at the metal.
The black mech appeared from the side.
“Watch it,” Philo said.
Traskk, bloodlust filling his eyes, barely turned to acknowledge the Fianna. After Philo warned him a second time, he came to his senses and turned to see what the Fianna was talking about. Upon seeing the black mech, he jumped off the gray mech’s head, yanked Philo off the ground, then began running with him over his shoulder.
“Thanks,” Philo said, not glad that he was saved but for the opportunity to fight a little longer before he died.
In response, the Basilisk uttered a string of hisses. Philo was grateful he couldn’t understand what the Basilisk had said. It was probably something like, “I’m only keeping you alive so I can kill you myself after this is all done.”
136
In the weeks since the Juggernaut had begun its course toward Edsall Dark, Mortimous had become even more quiet and reclusive than usual. At first, Vere thought it was because he was working toward achieving a greater connection with the Word. That way, she thought, her teacher might be able to convince them to help. She had come to realize that wasn’t the case, however. Mortimous wasn’t advancing in his quest for enlightenment; he had given up.
He had always been a man of few words, but now he spoke of what could have been instead of what could still be. Maybe he blamed himself for not getting Julian Reiser to understand the course he had set for himself before it was too late. Or maybe he was let down by the inept organization that the Round Table had become. Years earlier, he had convinced the Word to affect the course of the galaxy by sending the Green Knight to Eastcheap. Maybe Mortimous was right, maybe that was the one and only time the Word would interfere.
“If the Word is like you say,” Vere told him, “then they would have known all along that it would end this way. There would have been no point in agr
eeing to send the Green Knight.”
His face remained hidden under the hood of his cloak. He sighed as he watched the small band of warriors race through the halls of the Juggernaut.
“We can’t understand the Word’s motivation. Maybe they did that to show us we had a chance and wasted it.”
She had always suspected that Mortimous was fond of turning questions back on people as a way of teaching. As they watched Lancelot run through an expansive hallway, she began to suspect her teacher knew less than she had given him credit for. He had always been adamant that he knew little more than anyone else. Instead of being a humble claim, she began to realize it was the truth.
“What did you say to them back then?” she asked. “You had to have said something to get them to send the Green Knight.”
He sighed again, then said, “I told them if they helped we could make the galaxy a better place. The same thing as you have told them, I’m sure.”
“And Galen?”
“He didn’t communicate directly with the Word. He wasn’t far enough along in his understanding of them.”
“Then why was he involved?”
“The Word needed a sacrifice. They needed to make sure we only asked for help when we truly needed it. Galen offered his life to show how much it meant. A rather archaic way to—”
As they watched, Traskk ran through a passageway with Philo draped over one shoulder.
Sensing Vere’s excitement, Mortimous said, “You can’t offer yourself, Vere. Your earthly body is already gone.”
But she already had other plans.
137
Quickly raced around the corner of a revolving corridor just before it closed access to the left and right hallways, forcing the mech behind him to go up or down. Only fifty yards farther ahead, the gray mech appeared through a portal directly in front of the pilot. Quickly leaned all of his weight to the side of the speeder as he pulled the controls back and to the side. The speeder swooped into a sharp left turn. The gray mech, repeatedly jumping from one portal to another, once again appeared in front of him.
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