The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)

by Chris Dietzel

  As much as Morgan still bristled at fighting for a ruler who wanted to give up her kingdom, she couldn’t help but smile when she heard the word home.

  Edsall Dark, where that bloody traitor Scrope was hiding. Where they would have their revenge.

  52

  When the first ships came through the Tevis-84 portal, Scrope whimpered. Llyushin fighters. They would be followed by Solar Carriers. He had been sending Mowbray urgent requests for troops, yet every communication had gone unanswered. Even if the fleet of Athens Destroyers arrived in a couple days, it would be too late for him. He had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

  As he watched, the Pendragon appeared through the portal. A moment later, the Griffin Fire.

  It was difficult for him to decide who he was the most afraid of. Traskk had claws and fangs and would gladly rip him to shreds. After all, Scrope had been the one who had chopped off the Basilisk’s arms, legs, and tail. Scrope’s own legs trembled, thinking of how far Traskk would go in brutalizing the man who had betrayed him before he considered the debt repaid.

  And yet Vere had the potential to be just as brutal. There was no telling what kind of example she might make of him. He would be publicly executed. School children would see his death as a lesson of what happened to traitors. The crowd would chant his name, along with every filthy nickname they could think of for the man who had double-crossed an entire kingdom. She would make sure his name was synonymous with failed treachery and incompetent evil.

  Morgan, though, would do her damage in a different way. Traskk might tear him apart, but he imagined—hoped—it would at least be quick. Vere would have him executed and seal his legacy, but his death wouldn’t be gruesome. Morgan, on the other hand, would take her time and make sure he was tortured for hours or days. Maybe weeks. She would hurt him as severely as possible without allowing him go into shock. Then she would stop for a day to let his injuries heal before going at him again. She would break his nose, have a medical bot fix it, then break it again. Over and over. Maybe a hundred times. There was no telling how much vengeance she was capable of before she grew weary and killed him.

  More Solar Carriers were passing through the portal above Edsall Dark. There weren’t many, certainly not the fleet of nearly one hundred he had seen at the battle of Dela Turkomann, but they were massive flagships and he was one man. He knew his time was rapidly coming to an end.

  Looking over at the window, he thought about jumping to his death. It would be quick and painless. Or he could hang himself. Or slit his own neck. He had options. They just weren’t the kind of options he wanted.

  53

  Although Mowbray hadn’t given Scrope any ships or soldiers to defend the planet, he did have his engineers construct a new portal above Edsall Dark. It spoke volumes about the Vonnegan ruler’s reputation throughout the galaxy that no pirates, warlords, or other kingdoms had dared to send their forces through the energy field to capture the defenseless planet.

  Even though Edsall Dark was supposed to be an easy target, the remaining CasterLan forces took every possible precaution upon arriving back home. First, a group of Llyushin fighters led the way by passing through the portal before any other ships. With their sensors on, the ships circled the Crown to make sure it wasn’t being powered up. Next were the Solar Carriers. After they passed through, along with the Griffin Fire and Pendragon, the flagships provided cover for each other and for the few frigates still under Vere’s command. To ensure the CamaLon spaceport wasn’t booby-trapped, a squad of CasterLan soldiers dropped down onto the platform and did a full sweep before any vessels landed.

  In every instance, their precautions turned out to be unnecessary. Everything they had heard about Mowbray leaving Scrope on his own was indeed true. The Crown was never activated against them. There was no one waiting near the spaceports to ambush them. No explosives had been set up to destroy ships as they landed.

  Even so, Vere, Morgan, Traskk, and a squad of CasterLan soldiers remained cautious as they made their way off their respective ships. While Pistol remained aboard one of the Solar Carriers to get his eye and arm repaired, everyone else made their way into the city center.

  “It really is a ghost town,” Morgan said, looking around at the empty buildings and quiet streets.

  Vere listened to the echo of Morgan’s words in the empty alleys, then said, “I never thought I’d see CamaLon in this condition.”

  Having received reports on Edsall Dark’s status, Morgan already knew what to expect. It was her secret hope that seeing her former home in this state would be enough to make Vere change her mind, to see that the CasterLan Kingdom was worth returning to its former glory. Certainly, seeing it abandoned would make Vere rethink what she planned to do.

  And yet, as they walked from one formerly busy street to another, now deserted and infested with rodents, Vere didn’t seem nearly as upset about the condition of the capital as Morgan did.

  “It’s like something out of a nightmare,” Morgan said, standing in an open square, a statue of Colber the Generous towering behind her. It had been a place where hundreds of vendors used to sell produce, blankets, and trinkets. Now, the entire square was empty.

  “All it needs is for the people to return,” Vere said, inhaling deeply. “If you close your eyes you can still smell the fresh-baked bread they used to sell here. We just need to get everyone to return.”

  Morgan sighed and shook her head. “You really think it’s that simple?”

  The old Vere would have taken offense to being questioned in front of her soldiers. Even without them there, she would have taken a step forward and stood eye to eye with Morgan to see if she wanted to make an issue of it. Now, though, Vere only smiled and nodded.

  “Of course I do,” she said, continuing through the streets.

  Rather than argue with someone who didn’t care to fight back, Morgan signaled to the squad commander and to Traskk that she was going off by herself.

  There were no personal transports zipping through the streets. No hover-taxis taking people where they needed to go. With the streets perfectly silent, she could hear Vere and Traskk and the others as they made their way through the curving CamaLon alleys toward the capitol building and the king’s chambers.

  Morgan didn’t know what enraged her the most. She knew when she signed up for the CasterLan academy that the day might come when she lost friends to war. Even before she had actually entered the military and had it drilled into her that people died in space each time a battle was waged, she knew the tallies of casualties in all of the historic galactic wars. If Vere had her way, though, Morgan would be losing more than she ever thought possible. It was one thing to lose a superior officer or friends or soldiers under her command. It was quite another thing to simply give the kingdom away as Vere intended. Thousands and thousands of lives had been lost aboard the Solar Carriers that had met the Vonnegan fleet above Dela Turkomman. They had been under her command. They had been people she considered friends. Beings from dozens of alien species had come together to operate those Solar Carriers and they had died while she was responsible for them. Each of them had families. How many of them would have been willing to risk their lives if they had known the kingdom they had been fighting for would be ruled not by Vere or any other CasterLan representative, but by a round table of citizens from various kingdoms around the galaxy?

  She passed through a cross street where she and the other cadets in her class had passed during each of their morning runs. At the time, they had needed to duck and dodge and twist to avoid the people gathered on the busy sidewalks. She had laughed and joked with her friends while they ran. That seemed like ages ago. Back then, the pavement had been packed with humans and every imaginable kind of alien. Now, they were deserted. Without anyone working to keep the city maintained, the sidewalks were cracked and covered in grime.

  Turning right, she walked up a hill, toward the house she had grown up in. Her parents had sold it the year Morgan entered the aca
demy, and had then moved to a retirement colony on Edsall Minor. Morgan had no idea who had lived there in the years since. Having her own living quarters aboard one of the Solar Carriers, she had never needed to have a house—a real home—of her own.

  With the city empty, with the planet feeling as foreign to her as any other hunk of rock in space, she felt compelled to return to the dwelling that she and her parents had called home so long ago.

  The house looked exactly as she remembered it. The same green metal roof. The same dull gray front door. The same rusted steps leading up to the door.

  She could have gone inside without any problems. It wouldn’t have mattered if she did. The house was empty and if anyone eventually returned to it, they would never know she had been there. But rather than enter the premises, she was content to sit on the steps and remember all the times she had raced out the front door on the way to school, all the times she had played outside after class, and all the times candy vendors came by and her mouth watered.

  Rather than cheer her up, each of these memories made her shudder because each was a reminder of the round table Vere kept talking about. Breathing loudly through her nose, she groaned and stood up. Vere had been free of the Cauldrons for almost a week now, and Morgan still wasn’t sure if it had been a good idea to rescue her.

  Regaining her bearings, she turned and faced the city center and the capitol building. Vere and the others would almost be there by now. If she doubled her pace, she could meet them before they began making their way up toward the king’s chambers. Toward Scrope.

  54

  Mowbray knew Vere and the other CasterLan refugees had returned to Edsall Dark. Even though he wasn’t bothering to acknowledge any of Scrope’s updates, the communications continued to arrive every few minutes. As if anything that dirty politician could say would make the leader of the Vonnegan Empire change his plans. Regardless, Mowbray was already on his way to Edsall Dark with a fleet of Athens Destroyers.

  What Scrope didn’t realize was that Mowbray didn’t care whether Vere retook the capital. He wasn’t concerned with possessing the city or even the planet. That fact should have been apparent when he had appointed Scrope as the planet’s new leader. If he actually cared about maintaining Edsall Dark, he would have found an administrator with Le Savage’s penchant for brutal efficiency and posted him as the planet’s new governor.

  What he actually cared about was Vere herself. Not just her but also the idea of her kingdom. He wanted to destroy both. He was well aware of the message she had sent to the leaders around the galaxy. It was rubbish, pure and simple, and he was positive that her time at the Cauldrons of Dagda had done permanent damage to her psyche. That didn’t mean people wouldn’t consider her idea, however. By surviving at the Circle of Sorrow for so long, she had built up a following, had become a symbol of invincibility and determination. People who might once have ignored her message might now be willing to humor the notion.

  Of course, the idea would never work, at least not the way she envisioned it. Whatever the CasterLan Kingdom did become would quickly be corrupted by the people in control. Good intentions would mutate into various tribes battling in an endless series of wars until someone like Mowbray came in and conquered the entire territory.

  As he saw it, that was the inevitable outcome. He could simply wait for it to happen. He was certainly patient enough to bide his time. The problem, however, was that he couldn’t let Vere succeed in executing her plan. Not because he was afraid it would work, but because it would mean she had been successful in defying him. The Vonnegan Empire was built upon the premise that no one should question its ruler, that doing so would always result in pain and misery. If Vere succeeded in her plan, as trivial as it was, the only thing the galaxy would see was that someone had stood up to Mowbray and lived. Allowing that to occur, even if only for a few days, was not possible.

  A ruler’s time is always limited if they are having to quell rebellions and disturbances. The only ruler who has a chance of holding onto power indefinitely is the one who prevents uprisings from starting in the first place. Vere’s plan, no matter how asinine it was, was definitely a form of uprising against him. She was supposed to be his prisoner, not a leader willing to transform her kingdom. His duty was to remind her of that.

  He would kill her once and for all, as he now knew he should have done two years earlier. He would make an example of her and everyone else who dared return to Edsall Dark. He might even destroy the entire planet, just to send a message to the rest of the galaxy that they had best not take part in Vere’s scheme if they wanted to keep whatever meager kingdoms they still controlled.

  55

  Everywhere Vere walked, she was struck by the difference between the Edsall Dark she had known and what it had become.

  When she was a child, CamaLon’s spaceport had seemed to be the busiest place in the entire universe. It was so hectic in fact that her father hadn’t allowed her to go there unsupervised until she was a teenager.

  To ensure she wasn’t tempted to sneak off on her own, he had given the young Vere a smile and said “Many a ship’s captain in that spaceport would love to kidnap a cute little girl.” He patted her head. “You would be halfway across the galaxy before anyone knew you were gone. Your mother and I would never see you again.” The words had done the trick; she had been too petrified to go there without permission.

  Each school in Edsall Dark’s capital used to have hundreds of children laughing and playing in the courtyards during recess. When playtime was over, teachers could be heard delivering their lessons, along with children answering the questions posed of them. She remembered her own time as a student, passing notes, copying Galen’s homework, and making jokes when the teacher wasn’t paying attention.

  The city, the entire planet, had always possessed a unique character for as long as she had known it, even after leaving for nearly a decade and then coming back. Nothing had changed in those years of self-exile. Now, though, the spaceport was barren except for the Griffin Fire and the few other CasterLan ships that had come through the portal with her. There were no freighters dropping off shipments or rigs loading vessels with cargo to be taken across the galaxy. The schools had no children and no teachers.

  “It’s like no one has ever lived here,” Vere said as she continued walking toward the tallest building—the capitol building and the king’s chambers atop it.

  As they made their way through the city center, Traskk let out a series of low hisses. The quiet, along with the collection of buildings devoid of any people, was as unsettling to the Basilisk as it was to everyone else.

  “Anyone?” Vere asked one of the soldiers escorting them.

  The man looked down at the device in his hands, which offered a steady and unchanging beep.

  “No signs of life anywhere,” the officer said.

  At the royal gates, she thought about telling them to go on without her so she could continue walking, beyond the main wall and across the fields. The caves she had visited with Galen seemed to be calling to her. The Green Chapel. The place they had explored as children and the spot she had returned to when it came time to fulfill her part of the deal and have her head lopped off. Willing the urge away, she let the thought form in her head that she would return there only when the round table was settled and not earlier.

  One of the things Vere had realized while pushing the Circle of Sorrow was that everyone had their own issues and their own way of dealing with them. In her younger years, her way of coping had been to run away from problems. Galen’s had been through introspection. Morgan’s way, both then and now, was through anger. Maybe she would use that anger for something positive. Maybe it would eat her up inside. All Vere could do was hope things worked out for her friend. That was another thing Mortimous had taught her during her time as a prisoner: people couldn’t change each other; they could only change themselves.

  “Mowbray is going to pay for this,” a voice said behind her.

 
When she turned, she saw that Morgan had rejoined the group.

  Traskk let out a reaffirming growl before slamming his tail against the ground. The pavement cracked underneath him. Morgan looked to Vere for the translation.

  “He said Mowbray isn’t the only one who’s going to pay.”

  They looked up at the king’s chambers, which was easy to spot with the Crown’s five-pronged cannon on top of it. They had found no signs of life so far, so she guessed that if Scrope were still on the planet, he would be somewhere in the tower above them.

  Morgan cracked her knuckles. “You can’t even fathom how bad I’m going to hurt that bastard.”

  As much as Vere knew Scrope deserved whatever was coming to him, part of her hoped he had the common sense to flee before they arrived. Maybe he had a personal transport and was already on his way back to Vonnegan territory and to Mowbray’s protection.

  It wasn’t that she thought he should go unpunished. She knew how the galaxy worked; one way or another the politician-turned-traitor would get what was coming to him. The galaxy had a funny way of ensuring good things happened to good people and bad things happened to bad people. Somehow or some way, people always eventually got what they deserved. That realization made finding Scrope seem unimportant to Vere. It was another thing Mowbray had inadvertently taught her by sending her to the Cauldrons.

  56

  Looking out the windows of the king’s chamber, Scrope saw the group of CasterLan soldiers coming to get him. They were hundreds of stories below, much too far for him to identify or even count them, but he would have bet anything that Morgan and Traskk would be amongst them. When he forced himself to stop muttering out loud like a lunatic, he realized his time was coming to an end.