Avalon

by Chris Dietzel

  The mechs didn’t move. Nor did they attack or communicate with her in any way. It was possible the Hannibal were calculating the extent of deaths she could cause in a short amount of time before the mechs killed her. It was also possible they were analyzing whether or not they could trust her.

  The odd thing, she noticed, was that the circles of living light continued to move this way and that, even though she was there. They could have avoided the room she was in but they didn’t, and that made her guess that they needed to continually frequent each part of the Juggernaut for some purpose that was beyond her understanding of their species.

  Each second that passed felt like minutes. Both of her Meursaults and one vibro lance were out and ready to use if necessary. The only hand that remained empty hung at her side, useless. Beside her, Traskk shifted from one foot to the other as the stump of his tail whipped back and forth.

  “Do you understand?” she said. “Let us go and we’ll leave the rest of you alone.”

  Again, Traskk offered a complaint and she knew exactly how he felt. They hadn’t risked their lives just to give up and offer a truce once they were in harm’s way. She agreed with the reptile. She just couldn’t let him know that she was delaying until the next part of their plan was enacted.

  “We’ll leave,” she said again.

  Still, the mechs said and did nothing.

  She leaned closer to Traskk and whispered, “They can’t do this forever. They’re either going to try to kill us or let us back into the hallway. If they let us out, run.” He started to complain and she said, “We need more time.”

  While they were aboard the Juggernaut, it would have been orbiting the planet, along with the portals above EndoKroy and the Excalibur vessel. Between the Carthagen technology depicting thousands of objects for the Hannibal to target and Lancelot and her crew aboard the Juggernaut, the enemy had been slowed and distracted. Lancelot just needed a little more time.

  Outside the improvised doorway, an explosion sounded and she braced for the onslaught to begin. Instead, a flash of light caught her eye and she saw the black mech become engulfed in flames.

  “Let’s go,” she said as she raced for the gap in the wall.

  Traskk followed right behind her. Sticking her head out, she saw the black mech’s hover platform trying to stabilize it and keep it from toppling over. The platform the mech was standing on was covered in flames. Fifty feet away, Quickly lay motionless on the ground.

  Without any time to see if he had an injury that might be exacerbated by being moved, Lancelot yanked him off the ground and tossed him over her shoulder. Then she was running. Traskk was behind her, his clawed feet clacking on the floor as he raced to keep up.

  Around the first corner, she saw Talbot and Philo rushing toward them. Behind her, she heard new portals burst into life and knew she wouldn’t have time to explain why she and Traskk were running. Without saying a word, both Philo and Talbot turned and began running in the direction they had just come from. Even with Quickly’s weight, Lancelot was able to run faster than the others.

  “What’s happening?” Talbot said.

  “Why are we running away from them?” Philo added.

  Lancelot glanced over her shoulder to make sure the mechs weren’t directly behind them. “We need more time.”

  A portal burst into life directly in front of them. The gray mech began to appear through it. Lancelot turned down another hallway and the others followed. To her side, the white mech began to appear through a circle of energy. Lancelot jumped down an opening, allowed her suit to recalibrate to the new change in direction, then began running straight ahead again.

  Behind her, Talbot gave an involuntary cry of pain. Lancelot turned to find him on the ground. The white mech was a hundred yards away, reloading another ion arrow into its bow. Talbot tried to get back up but he was either too weak or the systems in his space armor had failed.

  Philo and Traskk paused to see if Lancelot wanted them to charge or hold their ground. In the split second they were motionless, Philo was engulfed in a wave of energy that sent him sideways into the wall. Lancelot turned to find the gray mech approaching from their side.

  She glanced behind her, saw the black mech approaching, its metal boots clanking on the ground, and she knew they had only one direction they could go. However, it was blocked by a wall of black gas meant to ensure they were trapped.

  Talbot lay on the ground. Philo was trying to get back to his feet but was stumbling and clearly didn’t have his wits about him. Traskk, half of his tail missing, had to reach out and put a hand on the Fianna’s shoulder to keep him upright. Lancelot was missing an arm and their pilot was unconscious on her shoulder.

  Worst of all, she had no plan for how they were going to live long enough to save EndoKroy.

  146

  Vere watched as Talbot lay on the ground. The only reason Philo was on his feet was because Traskk was holding him upright. Swordnew was dead or dying. Quickly was unconscious. Lancelot was missing an arm.

  They need help! she thought to the Word. We wouldn’t expect your help without sacrificing something ourselves.

  Another idea entered her mind. At first, she thought it was her own memory of Mortimous’ words that she couldn’t be the one. Then she sensed the Word’s presence and understood it was them communicating with her.

  It won’t be me, she thought. And then, when she knew it would seem improper to make promises on someone else’s behalf, she added, I’ve told her everything I know. I told her of the deal Galen fulfilled. She would gladly do the same.

  Are you sure?

  We want peace throughout the galaxy, she thought. We want the Round Table to become what it was supposed to be. Nothing else matters.

  She waited for another question. She waited for the Word to give another excuse for why they couldn’t become involved in the affairs of other species and their senseless conflicts.

  Silence continued and it took all of her concentration to filter out her own insecurities and concerns and stay focused on the presence of the Word all around her. They offered no counter argument or acknowledgement. They said nothing, and she thought they had made their choice. They were going to leave the Round Table to face the consequences of their dysfunction. They weren’t even going to bother to tell Vere of their decision. They were done talking, it seemed.

  She was wrong, though. The Word did finally offer a response. It was short and to the point and yet it was everything she had hoped for.

  Very well.

  147

  Every system in Talbot’s space armor was offline and recalibrating. Until it was done, he had no option but to lay immobile on the ground or to try and take off the hundreds of pounds of armor that was now weighing him down. He might have been able to perform that feat if the residue of the energy shockwaves weren’t lingering in all of his muscles. He felt nauseous and thought he might throw up inside his helmet. His legs and arms spasmed. His stomach felt like thousands of needles were poking him.

  To his side, the white mech took aim at Lancelot, who was able to sidestep the shot. To his other side, the gray mech had its scythe drawn back, ready to slash at Philo and Traskk. Directly in front of him, the black mech had its hand extended to allow the cylinders on either side of the scale to spew its toxic, black energy.

  Immobile, his suit only halfway done recalibrating, he knew there was no way he would be able to get out of the way of the poison that drifted toward him. He was going to die aboard this ship, as were all of the others around him.

  The thought of his own death didn’t bother him as much as the thought of Lancelot’s. He didn’t have a purpose in the galaxy. He had stumbled from one place to another without a vision of what he was supposed to be doing. Lancelot was different. She had a purpose. She knew what she wanted and was here because it was where she was supposed to be. It struck him as unfair that she would suffer the same fate as him.

  The black mech stepped forward to avoid the slow rev
olution of the corridor behind it. As the walls of the Juggernaut continued in their gradual turns, one set of possible paths closed behind the black mech and another set began to open. No longer could someone approach the black mech from the left or right. Now, the corridor directly behind it opened from below and from above.

  Seeing almost no progress in his space armor’s systems, Talbot groaned and tried to muster the strength to push himself up to his feet. It was equivalent to trying to do a pushup with half a ton of metal on top of him and he gave up a moment later.

  The white mech fired at Lancelot again, and this time she was unable to dodge the glowing arrow. The blast struck her shoulder, spinning her around and sending Quickly’s limp body flying away from her.

  “No,” Talbot said. He meant to scream but it was barely a whisper.

  The black mech’s cloud continued to drift toward him.

  He had thought the end would come for him inside the Carthagen tunnels but he had survived. Hours later, he had been sure both he and his father were going to die at the ledge of the Carthagen asteroid before being saved by Brigadier Desttro. All of it just to die here. It was senseless.

  He thought of his mother living out her final years without a husband or son. He thought of Lancelot spending almost all of her life in the near seclusion of Carthagen society only to die after seeing a glimpse of the wonders that the galaxy had to offer. He thought how beautiful it was that Traskk and Philo, sworn enemies only a day earlier, were fighting side by side.

  When he looked back at the black mech, his eyes squinted in confusion. Through the energy cloud, it was difficult to tell for sure but he would have sworn he saw a thick metal glove reach up from the newly opened corridor behind and below the mech. The hand was covered by a heavy gauntlet, lined with metal and fabric. Talbot couldn’t be sure because the cloud obscured his perception of colors the same way he could look at a black and white picture and only guess what color the objects were. If he had to guess, he would have said the massive gloved hand was green. Green fingers. A green hand. A green sleeve.

  In the depths of the newly opened tunnel behind where the black mech had been, Talbot heard a booming crash and the sound of metal being torn to pieces.

  148

  The Green Knight understood the galaxy in a way most people could never begin to comprehend. And yet there were still so many things he didn’t understand and never would. He perceived that time was only a dimension and that beings not tied to a three-dimensional world might also be able to exist outside of the fourth dimension as well. If he had lived during the same time as Mortimous, the two men would have been intellectual peers. The Green Knight, however, had existed thousands of years before Mortimous, Vere CasterLan, or Lancelot. He lived in a time where superstition ruled over science and where many of the basic concepts that would be taken for granted millennia later were attributed to spirits and demons.

  His real name was Bertilak de Hautdesert. Because of his search for wisdom, he had originally become known as the Green Monk. Eventually, as rumors spread about him—that he was appearing and disappearing from the cave he lived in and had supernatural abilities. People whispered he was the Green Witch.

  Local farmers spread stories about him. Some were true. Some weren’t. A dozen people from town arrived at the entrance to his cave with torches and pitchforks, and Bertilak de Hautdesert was forced to change out of the green robes he normally wore for green armor. He was a monk by choice, a warrior by necessity, and soon the people were calling him by the name that followed him forever after.

  The townspeople were turned away but stories of the Green Knight continued to spread. They persisted for years until finally, King Owhowin the Curious sent a military expedition to see what was real and what was myth. The Green Knight allowed half of the battalion to return to the capital. The other half lay dead by his feet. Next, King Owhowin sent an entire brigade of his best soldiers. Bertilak de Hautdesert’s green axe tore through dozens of fighters with each swing.

  He fought with complete abandon because he knew he wasn’t going to die that day. In fact, he knew he wasn’t going to die on his homeworld at all. He had seen the exact place he would perish and it wasn’t on a celestial planet.

  During his day-long meditations, he often sensed beings that couldn’t be seen or heard by other people. He had visions of faraway places, saw himself on other planets and alien ships. It was his own life, he realized. His future.

  The first time he disappeared, he hadn’t understood how it happened. All he knew was that a woman needed to be confronted. He had offered his head in return for hers. After the first part of the game had been concluded, he appeared back on Edsall Dark in the same cave where he had been before he closed his eyes. A tinge of pain ran across his neck and he knew that although it would have been easy to say the episode had been a dream or hallucination, it had been real.

  Outside his cave he saw an army of soldiers approaching from the distance. It looked as though the king had sent every single man and woman to defeat the Green Knight. There might have been a million people marching across the field.

  None of them would ever kill him, however, or even see him again, because the Green Knight was being beckoned once again to help a group of beings he sensed but couldn’t see. He had glimpses of himself in a distant place. He comprehended that somehow those things were happening at the same time he was currently alive, that all things were happening at once and that the beings he sensed understood there was no time—no past, present, or future—as people liked to believe.

  That was what made it so easy for him to close his eyes. When he reopened them, he was no longer at the entrance of his cave. He was in an elaborate system of expansive corridors. White circles of light glided across the walls. In front of him, or above him—his senses were still adjusting to this new reality—was a large black boot. The Green Knight understood what he had been summoned to do.

  149

  The giant curved blade of the gray mech’s scythe was twice as large as Traskk. The weapon sizzled with energy that illuminated not just the arching blade but also the mech itself. Philo and Traskk inched toward it. The gray mech stood in place, neither moving toward nor away from them.

  Traskk’s preference would have been to charge the mech by himself. He liked his chances of lunging at the giant before it had the chance to slash him in half. But he also knew Lancelot had assembled a team for a reason, and that it was better to fight alongside trusted allies than it was to fight alone. The Fianna beside him had fought valiantly, but Traskk still hadn’t come to think of him as a trusted ally. Philo was also becoming more of a hindrance now than an asset. Traskk had to steady him so he didn’t stumble and fall over. The Fianna still had a small blaster attached to his left arm. All of his other weapons were gone or useless.

  The two of them, Basilisk and Vonnegan, inched closer to the gray mech. As Traskk let out a string of roars at the enemy, Philo looked over and gave a sad smile.

  “My death won’t make up for everything I did, but it’s all I have left to offer.”

  Traskk glanced to his side to see what Philo was talking about.

  “Can a death of atonement, done in a matter of seconds, make up for a life of spreading misery?” Philo said. Not waiting for Traskk’s response, he added, “I guess we’ll see.” He shrugged off the clawed hand that was keeping him upright. “It was an honor fighting alongside you, Basilisk.”

  Philo lunged forward toward the gray mech in a slow, stumbling advance. The gravely injured Fianna only darted forward four feet before starting to lose his balance. By the time he was directly in front of the gray mech, he was falling and twisting and landed on his side on the floor of the Juggernaut.

  Before Traskk could intervene, the gray mech’s scythe came down. The point of the blade stabbed Philo through his space armor. In response, Philo reacted in a way that neither the gray mech nor Traskk nor anyone else could have possibly imagined. The Vonnegan threw his remaining arm around
the end of the scythe and embraced it.

  The gray mech brought the weapon back up to his shoulder. Philo, refusing to let go, rose with the blade, blunting its edge with his own body. The gray mech shook the blade, trying to dislodge Philo, but to no avail. Each time the weapon swung one way or the other, Philo’s body swung with it. But still Philo clung to the weapon.

  “What are you waiting for?” the Fianna cried in a delirium of pain as he glanced at Traskk. “Do your worst.”

  The reptile didn’t disappoint. With the mech’s weapon burdened with hundreds of pounds and largely useless as a result, Traskk leapt toward the mech’s face.

  His claws dug into every crevice they could find, looking for anything to tear away. His fangs punctured holes all over the metal. The half of his tail that remained slammed into the back of the mech’s head over and over.

  Philo let out a maniacal laugh as the mech continued to smash the end of its weapon onto the ground in hopes of dislodging him. Each time it did, Philo’s body made a sickening crunch against the floor before being immediately jerked back up in the air, every part of him limp except for his remaining arm, which kept gripping the weapon.

  Philo’s laugh sputtered, then stopped completely. He groaned and said he was sorry, and Traskk wasn’t sure if the man was apologizing one last time for everything he had done while wearing the purple Fianna armor or that his body was failing before Traskk could utterly decimate the enemy.

  The reptile roared and went back to tearing at the mech’s face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Philo let go of the scythe, and the mech brought its oversized weapon down on the Fianna’s body three times for good measure.

  With Philo gone, Traskk knew the mech’s full attention would return to him. He tried to scurry behind the mech’s helmet but a large, metal hand reached up and grabbed him. The mech had him by the torso. Without any leverage, Traskk’s tail was useless. The best he could do was to scratch and claw at the mech’s wrist. In response, the mech slammed Traskk against the nearest wall, then held him there.