The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)

by Chris Dietzel

  44

  In the Kerchin Sector, Gerchin the Suspicious read the notice that his helper dronebot had brought him. He couldn’t believe what he was reading, but Gerchin didn’t believe many things he read and heard. He had, after all, earned the moniker the Suspicious by not trusting his first wife, second wife, or third wife, or any of his children by any of those wives. He automatically assumed everything said to him by a relative or assistant was due to that person having an ulterior motive. It was one of the many reasons he had refused to meet with Vere’s emissary two years earlier when she had tried to recruit Gerchin’s help in fending off the Vonnegan fleet. The only source he trusted was the trusty dronebot that had been programmed to be incapable of deception.

  The dronebot was a combination of an android—designed to resemble Gerchin’s alien race—and a simple bot. The result was a machine modeled after a specific alien race and that had the intelligence of someone like Pistol, but that sounded and acted like a classical robot.

  “What purpose could she possibly have in sending this message?” he asked.

  At two stories in height and weighing one ton, Gerchin was a giant compared to humans. His ears were larger than Vere’s head, allowing him to hear every whisper and whimper for a mile in all directions.

  Gerchin’s helper dronebot was programmed to remain silent when his master posed rhetorical questions. Upon hearing Gerchin’s most recent question, the only noise it made was from its power system completing another cycle.

  “What kind of trick is she trying to play?” Gerchin asked, narrowing his eyes.

  In another part of the galaxy, the reaction was different. As ruler of the perpetually turbulent War-Pon Sector, Kaiser Doom didn’t have any of the same reservations or anxiousness as he read Vere’s message.

  The Kaiser knew war made people do crazy things. After all, he had claimed the throne by cutting off his own father’s head. Over the years, he had seen various types of aliens, humans included, become cannibals from the relentless stress of battle, overwhelmed by the ferocity and violence around them. He had witnessed a dozen different varieties of aliens kill their own kind, even when that was one of the few acts forbidden by their species. During the course of a particularly gruesome and prolonged war, he had even witnessed two different alien species driven to extinction. Just the week before, he had squelched an uprising when his most trusted lieutenant tried to take the War-Pon throne for himself. Power, war, prestige, honor—these were the things that made reasonable leaders unreasonable.

  Every part of Kaiser Doom was engineered for war. His species had evolved over time to have a shell of naturally occurring armor that was impervious to most weapons. His vital organs were buried underneath three hard layers of rough skin. Horns protruded from his head, shoulders, and most other joints. From the time he had first held a weapon in his hand, he couldn’t remember a month in which he hadn’t taken part in one battle or another.

  So when Doom read Vere’s message, he nodded and grinned, taking it at face value, knowing that a defeat like the one the CasterLans had suffered at Dela Turkomann could make any leader lose his or her mind.

  Elsewhere, the Expo-CTD Sector was one of the few areas of the galaxy that shared a border with both the Vonnegan Empire and what had been the CasterLan Kingdom. Baron Von Wrth, leader of the Wrth Clan, had an ancestry that mixed human and Vonnegan blood with at least two other species. Parts of him resembled each race, and yet he identified with none of them.

  It didn’t help that he knew his time was limited. His fleet of Mach-Z Cruisers wouldn’t have been a match for Vere’s fleet of Solar Carriers, let alone Mowbray’s forces, which were superior to any other near him. And now Mowbray had claimed Edsall Dark and the rest of the former CasterLan Kingdom as part of his extended empire. Two thirds of Baron Von Wrth’s territory was now surrounded by the Vonnegans. He didn’t have to be able to predict the future to know that the next time Mowbray wanted to extend his territory, it would be at the expense of the Wrth Clan. Of course, he had known that before Vere’s forces had been defeated, too. The diplomat she had sent to the Expo-CTD Sector had told him that the last thing he should ever want would be Mowbray starting to encircle his territory. If the Vonnegan forces defeated the fleet of Solar Carriers at Dela Turkomann, Peto had said, nothing would stop Mowbray from doing the same to the Mach-Z Cruisers. It hadn’t been enough to convince the Baron to commit his forces to the battle, though. Now, reading Vere’s message, he thought that if anything would ever get him to send his fleet into battle on someone else’s behalf, this would be it.

  Lord Plonnenst was always looking for a reason to spread his brand of righteousness across the galaxy. As ruler of the Plusodien Sector, he had seen some truly miraculous and wondrous things. He had seen the final breaths of a dying star before it went supernova and turned into a black hole. He had seen two planets, each with fully functioning colonies, collide and become space dust. He had witnessed a solar flare so strong and powerful that it engulfed the smallest moon of the nearest orbiting planet. In each of these events, thousands, if not millions, of people had died. The galaxy was a harsh place, full of events that could make you believe in something greater than yourself. You just had to be willing to see it for what it was. Lord Plonnenst was one of the few rulers who didn’t look away.

  In his own way, Plonnenst was another testament to the miracles that the galaxy made possible. He had been born with no eyes or ears, as were more and more of his race as the generations progressed. Instead of allowing themselves to go extinct because of this odd form of evolution, the Plonnensts were fitted with mechanical skull enhancements that allowed them to see and hear. Instead of being helpless, they had senses far superior to any human. Instead of going extinct, they thrived.

  So when he read Vere’s message, he smiled, looked out at the vast array of stars, and knew the galaxy was working another wonder.

  It wasn’t only Gerchin the Suspicious, Kaiser Doom, Baron Von Wrth, and Lord Plonnenst who received Vere’s message, however. It was every ruler she had ever dealt with in one form or another. It was every leader her father had ever spoken with.

  Even Mowbray Vonnegan.

  45

  Greater Mazuma, the Vonnegan commercial district, was in sight. Near the sapphire-colored planet where the majority of Vonnegan fortunes were made and money changed hands, four portals hovered beside one another in a line.

  The amount of traffic into and out of the portals was astounding. At a nearly constant pace, lines of ships would disappear one at a time into the first and third portals. These were the ships that had finished whatever business had brought them to Greater Mazuma and were ready to go back to the far reaches of the galaxy.

  At the same time, lines of vessels appeared out of the second and fourth portals. These were usually either Vonnegan trading ships that were returning from another sector of the galaxy or foreign traders looking to make a deal.

  It was an endless stream of crafts arriving from and departing to four different parts of the galaxy. As Morgan had predicted, Mowbray was too proud to disrupt the operations because that would have meant admitting that a band of raiders could not only break out of the Cauldrons of Dagda and fly through Vonnegan space without being harmed, they could also disrupt the busiest commercial district in the galaxy. Mowbray’s ego wouldn’t let him make such an admission.

  Even if the commercial district wasn’t shut down, it still had a military presence that would make anyone think twice about bringing attention to themselves. Six Athens Destroyers were dispersed around the portals. Almost one hundred Thunderbolts patrolled back and forth in various numbers and formations.

  Morgan’s goal was to take the Pendragon into the nearest portal so fast that no one would be the wiser. Her and her friends would be off to another part of the galaxy, free from Mowbray’s forces, before anyone could stop them. Of course, there was the problem of deciding which of the four possible destinations was preferable, but that was a better pr
oblem to have than being surrounded by Vonnegan forces.

  Alarms began to chime inside the Pendragon’s cockpit. Every Vonnegan ship had been alerted to watch for them, and now all six Athens Destroyers and all one hundred Thunderbolts were taking aim.

  “Oh well, there goes the element of surprise.”

  Beside her, Traskk gave a disapproving hiss.

  Dozens upon dozens of large cannons fired at the same time. Every defensive alarm began to scream inside the cockpit.

  “Shields!” Morgan said, taking the ship into a series of evasive maneuvers. Without slowing the ship down from its top speed, she spun the Pendragon into a series of spirals, while simultaneously altering course for a different approach to the portals.

  With the Thunderbolts also taking aim, hundreds of blasts were coming at them. The collective light of the lasers was so bright that both Morgan and Traskk had to squint to see what was ahead of them. When shots began hitting the front shields, they reflected enough light that anyone in the cockpit would only be able to see shades of gray until their eyes readjusted and colors eventually blinked back into existence.

  Traskk growled something over the sound of the alarms. When Morgan looked down at the ship’s status screen, she saw the front shields were already nearly depleted.

  “What’s going on?”

  Pilot and copilot turned just long enough to see Vere standing in the doorway of the cockpit. Neither of them answered her, figuring that as soon as she looked out and saw the dozens of Vonnegan ships in front of them, no explanation would be necessary.

  Instead of asking Morgan how she had gotten into this situation or demanding to know what she planned to do to get them out of it, instead of shoving Morgan out of the pilot’s chair and taking over control of the Pendragon herself, Vere simply said, “I’ll be reading a book in the back. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  Morgan shook her head and maneuvered near a line of freighters and haulers that were waiting to get into the first portal. The laser blasts from the Athens Destroyers stopped momentarily. As soon as the Pendragon appeared on the other side of the queue of ships, the laser blasts started again. She would have liked to keep the Pendragon on the opposite side of the line of vessels but the Thunderbolts followed her wherever she went and flushed her back into the open.

  “Lower the tinder walls,” Morgan said. “We’re going through.”

  Traskk gave another growl.

  The ship’s system hadn’t yet gathered where the portal would take them but they didn’t have time to be picky. Another laser blast rocked the ship. Traskk gave another growl.

  She aimed the Pendragon directly at the portal in front of them. Her ship raced past dozens of vessels waiting for their turn to pass through the portal. Traskk hissed, but she ignored this one too.

  “Ten seconds,” she said.

  The portal got bigger and bigger in front of them. Traskk kept complaining but couldn’t get Morgan’s attention. Finally, he leaned over and punched her arm so hard it went numb for a moment. When she turned to see what his problem was, she saw what he had been trying to tell her all along.

  The tinder walls wouldn’t close.

  One of the laser blasts must have damaged the casing around the walls below the cockpit, keeping it from lowering all the way. If they went through the portal with the tinder wall even a fraction of the way open, no one aboard the ship would survive the jump.

  Two seconds before the ship was engulfed by energy and spit out in another section of the galaxy, Morgan jammed the controls sideways, causing the Pendragon to swerve left and away from the portal.

  All of the Thunderbolt pilots had assumed their target would disappear into the energy field. It took them a moment to realize they still had a chance to destroy the enemy. Hundreds of laser blasts began streaming toward the spiraling ship once again.

  “Get it fixed,” Morgan said, turning the Pendragon in every possible direction and using the commercial vessels for protection.

  Traskk said something she couldn’t understand.

  “Just fix it!” she yelled.

  The reptile threw his hands in the air and left the cockpit, his tail slamming against her seat on the way out.

  She took the ship behind the portals and back around to the front. She zigged and zagged between parked cargo vessels waiting to get through the circular energy fields. Everywhere she went, she was given a second of reprieve from the rain of laser blasts before once again having them zip all around the Pendragon.

  Every once in a while she glanced to look at the display on her side and saw that various diagnostic and repair programs were being carried out to fix the problem. Hopefully, Pistol was assisting in the efforts.

  Two more laser blasts hit the ship.

  “By the time they fix the tinder walls, every other part of the ship will be gone,” she said to no one but herself.

  The front shields were down. Her rear shields could only take another two or three shots before they were also gone.

  All around her, the stillness of space burst into flashes of white and yellow as the Thunderbolts fired again and again.

  Finally, Traskk reappeared and sat in the copilot’s seat.

  “Ready?” Morgan said.

  The reptile nodded.

  She immediately turned the ship around, shot a pair of Thunderbolts for good measure, causing both to spin out of control and crash into a cargo freighter waiting to be allowed through the portal.

  “Three seconds,” she said, aiming the ship at the portal.

  The portal got rapidly larger until it was so big all they could see out of the cockpit was the bright light of its energy. The tinder walls slid down into place and everything went dark inside the cockpit. She still didn’t know where in the galaxy they would reappear. Their priority at the moment was surviving, and anyway, it was too late to find out.

  She felt the brief pause of the ship’s momentum that occurred when it passed through the energy field, then the pull that signaled they had entered a new part of the galaxy.

  “Tinder walls up,” she said.

  Traskk raised the ship’s protective casing so she could see where they were. He pressed the correct button, but the tinder walls only raised an inch, then lowered again.

  “Tinder walls up,” she repeated.

  The reptile growled and pressed the same button over and over. Each time, the tinder walls rose an inch, then lowered again. Morgan leaned down to look through the tiny gap so she could see outside and at least make sure they didn’t fly straight into another ship.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Traskk growled back at her in Basilisk, then punched the console to his side.

  She could have flown using only the Pendragon’s holographic displays and alerts, but she was so used to flying with her eyes and a view of the space in front of her that it was more comfortable for her to see a small sliver of space than it was to see a three-dimensional computerized version of the entire area around her.

  The ship was jolted. Alarms began to sound. Looking at the display next to her, she saw three dots racing to catch up with her.

  “Thunderbolts behind us,” she said.

  If that didn’t get her copilot to fix the tinder wall, nothing would. A moment later, another three dots appeared from the holographic representation of the portal.

  Still not knowing where she was in the galaxy, she leaned close to the sliver of the slightly open tinder walls and began another series of turns and loops. Every once in a while, as the Pendragon was in the middle of the second or third turn in a series of twists, a Thunderbolt would come into view and she would take a shot at it even though she had little hope of actually hitting it.

  The tinder walls slid completely shut and she had to look back at the ship’s displays for all of her visuals. The tinder walls raised an inch, then closed again. Traskk was, no doubt, in the back of the ship trying to fix the problem.

  All Morgan could do was grit her teeth and cont
inue throwing the ship into a series of turns and hope that the Basilisk would get the tinder walls corrected before they all died without even knowing where they were.

  On the display in front of her, she saw that there were at least ten large ships in the nearby space but she couldn’t tell yet if they were Athens Destroyers or something else. Further away, there was a planet with a single moon and another planet still further away. Another laser blast hit the ship.

  “How much longer?” she yelled toward the back of the ship.

  When she didn’t get an answer, she threw the ship into a sharp U-turn, heading straight toward a pair of Thunderbolts. Both erupted in brief explosions as the Pendragon’s cannons blew them apart. She was heading straight toward the portal again.

  “Keep the tinder walls down,” she yelled toward the back.

  Just then, the tinder walls raised an inch, then lowered again.

  “Keep them down!” she screamed once more, but didn’t think Traskk could hear her wherever he was.

  They passed through the portal a second time, reappearing at Greater Mazuma and passing in front of hundreds of commercial vessels. For a brief moment, none of the Athens Destroyers shot at her. Nor did the swarms of Thunderbolts. All of them were probably too surprised to see her ship return through the portal. A second later, however, the shock was gone and every Vonnegan vessel began firing at them again. Cockpit displays flashed red to show her just how many threats were surrounding her craft.

  She immediately swerved into the third portal and was gone once more.

  There was a temporary calm in the cockpit as she waited for the first wave of Thunderbolts to follow her through the portal. She had the Pendragon run a scan of the area to determine where they were. A pair of planets were nearby, neither with any moons. A medium-sized red sun was off in the distance. The ship’s computer told her they were in the Grand-Galactal Sector, an area she had never visited until now. With good reason: they were at the edge of the Vonnegan Empire, but on the exact opposite end of Mowbray’s territory from where they needed to be. If they flew to Edsall Dark from where they currently were without the assistance of any portals they would all die of old age before they ever arrived home.