The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)

by Chris Dietzel

  “Only those who want to join me should do so,” he said, calling behind him. “There is no guilt in remaining behind.”

  And then, not bothering to look back and see if he was by himself or if other soldiers were joining him, he ventured into the darkness of the tunnel that he knew would lead him toward Mowbray’s army.

  71

  Vere watched the streaks of sniper fire dashing from her side of the battlefield to the other, followed by two more returning from Mowbray’s side. Each blast sailed across the field in perfect silence.

  The command tent had been taken down. The first thing each Vonnegan sniper would target was a ruler, military leader, or anyone else who looked like they were in charge. Now, the primary command center was situated inside the capital wall. The only way Mowbray’s forces would get to it was if they defeated the combined armies in front of them. If they did that, they would not only take the command center, they would take all of Edsall Dark and every other part of the CasterLan Kingdom because it would mean there was no one else left in the galaxy to stop them.

  Vere guessed that if the combined forces lost on this day, any surviving leaders would swear they had never been serious about the round table but had only been trying to gain intelligence for Mowbray’s benefit. They would all try to insulate themselves and hope Vonnegan retribution fell on someone else.

  This theory was bolstered by the fact that most of the other leaders had chosen to remain aboard their flagship vessels, selecting a top general to be on the ground to oversee things on their behalf. Kaiser Doom, in his dark gray armor, towering above any human near him, was the only other ruler on the planet’s surface. Of the leaders who claimed to have committed to the cause of the round table, only Vere was on the side of the wall where sporadic bursts of laser were going across the field. Every other leader’s sense of self-preservation kept them where they could make a quick getaway if needed.

  Traskk, sure that this was the sign he had been looking for that there was not only one traitor in their midst but a dozen, had growled that he didn’t trust the other rulers. The same thing that had happened two years earlier was going to happen again, he said.

  All Vere could do was pat him on the arm and say, “I know. Trust me, I know. But if you never give people a chance after getting betrayed one time, the entire galaxy would be full of people who didn’t trust anyone else. That’s not the type of universe I want to live in. And without enough trust, the round table would fail anyway.”

  Her Basilisk friend had given a low hiss and slumped his shoulders, walking off in search of more evidence of double-crossing and betrayal.

  Only minutes later, Morgan pulled Vere aside and told her to consider using the Crown on the first Round Table ship that looked like it might try to flee.

  “If one of them starts to run, all of our allies will follow. We need to let them know they must remain loyal.”

  “You can’t force loyalty,” Vere had said, smiling and patting her friend on the shoulder. “All that will do is give them an excuse to say we weren’t serious about the round table in the first place.”

  The ground beneath their feet was rumbling. The entire planet felt and sounded like it had become part of a great machine. There were so many trench machines burrowing under the fields, each working without pause, that the planet’s surface felt like a starship getting ready to take off. In addition to the rumbling, the air hummed with fully charged cannon cells, each waiting to be fired at the first Vonnegan transports that made their way across the field. There was also a steady whir from the Vonnegan troops themselves. Even though they were miles and miles away, hidden behind the Forest of Tears, the sound of hundreds of mech tanks, armored capsules, and land destroyers was still loud enough to be heard. Anyone standing near them would become deaf without protective gear.

  The noise and the shaking ground were both unsettling, but it was the animals that made Vere groan with sadness. There were thousands of different types of life in the Forest of Tears, from tiny insects to the gelatinous floating Scyphozoans. The animals didn’t bother one another, nor were they bothered by humans or aliens hiking through the woods. But to these creatures, whose simple lives revolved around the peace and quiet of the trees and vines and brush, the appearance of the Vonnegan Empire must have been beyond comprehension. Through a pair of binoculars, Vere watched as animals of every size and shape darted from the forest, even if it meant running into the vast openness of the fields.

  Most of these animals would have their homes destroyed. Some would die out of simple fear, their hearts not meant to withstand such a disturbance. Some, too frantic to think clearly, would run the wrong way and get plowed over by the very machines they had tried to get away from. The Scyphozoans—peaceful, going only where the wind took them—might be completely destroyed.

  Racing across the field, a furry four-legged creature darted from the metal beasts making their way through the forest. With animals running in every direction and snipers on either side, what happened next was inevitable. The animal, concerned only with saving itself from the monsters behind it, ran straight into a sniper’s laser beam. The creature didn’t even have time to yelp. Its remains resembled little more than a dirty mop head.

  It was enough to make Vere put her hands up to her face and whimper.

  All because of an idea, perpetrated by the rulers around the galaxy, that their kingdoms must expand, that their quest for more power superseded their people’s happiness. If that wasn’t a good enough reason for people to demand their leaders accept the idea of the round table, she didn’t know what was. No kingdom with a representative at the round table would need to expand because everyone would be a part of the same kingdom. Ordinary people, not leaders set on gaining more power, would chart the course for the galaxy’s future. These were the people who would ensure the galaxy became peaceful and quiet.

  The sad thing was that for peace to become a reality, many more lives—animals, aliens, and humans alike—gathered here from all around the galaxy, would die in the coming violence. She held out hope that the day’s battle would be over in less than six minutes like the Conflict of Tarkin. That was unlikely, however. She dreaded the thought that it would be like the famous Battle of Stenograd and last six years. Six years for one battle! Both sides out of ammunition. Both sides starving, going to unthinkable lengths to find anything edible.

  She had little doubt that the battle would be over soon enough. Already, Morgan and Hector were off in separate underground tunnels, each with a contingent of CasterLan forces, each working their way toward Mowbray’s side. They weren’t the only ones. More than a hundred similar tunnels were being created underground, all across the fields. Each one had a group of Round Table soldiers making their way toward the enemy.

  Given the tremendous loss of life they would be witness to in the coming hours, Vere’s next thought seemed silly. If she had shared it with Morgan, her friend might lunge at her with clenched fists. Her wish was that the tunnels dug by the trench machines didn’t damage the caves on the far edge of the field. They served no purpose other than to remind her where she had explored and played as a child and where she had returned to Edsall Dark to accept the Green Knight’s challenge. The caves would seem trivial to everyone else. To her, though, they were part of who she was.

  Trivial or not, when she thought about her time in those caverns as a child, she marveled at how they had seemed to be so much more than a collection of paths and rocks. Her energy was endless, her enthusiasm unlimited. There was always some unexplored corner of the caves to venture toward. Always some noise, hidden in the shadows, echoing around her.

  Somewhere along the way, she had lost that sense of wonderment in the galaxy. The woman who had fled Edsall Dark years earlier certainly didn’t care about such things. But the galaxy really was filled with things she had never thought possible. There were beings tied neither to time nor space. It was possible to be connected with people who were no longer connected to the
physical world. Only through the appearance of Mortimous had her sense of wonderment returned.

  Hearing and feeling the trench machines digging under the fields, she hoped the caves would still be intact after the battle was over. And she also hoped she would still be around so she could explore them once again.

  72

  In addition to the primary command center, located on the other side of the CamaLon perimeter wall, a secondary command center had been set up at the spaceport. There, a squadron of Llyushin fighters was being prepared for takeoff. Their primary mission was to ensure none of Mowbray’s Thunderbolts came in low to evade the Crown and either bombed the Round Table forces outside the perimeter wall or else targeted the Crown itself. The Llyushin fighters’ secondary objective was to detect where Vonnegan trench machines were positioned underground and then send the coordinates back to the command center. This would give Vere and the allied commanders a working map of where her tunnels were relative to Mowbray’s. The Llyushin fighters’ third objective was to destroy any Vonnegan ground forces they saw trying to make their way across the fields.

  As they readied for takeoff, every pilot had their own superstitions, even about things as simple as how to put on their outfits. With his robotic hand, Quickly brought his helmet up so it slipped over his head. His other arm patted his leg three times in order to fulfill some indescribable belief that doing so would help bring him back safely. In the next Llyushin fighter, Surrey took in long breaths, then pulled his helmet over his head with both hands. The glass of his pilot’s helmet fogged over for a second, then cleared.

  “Are you ready for this?” Quickly asked with a smile.

  After taking on dozens of Thunderbolts by himself in a ship he wasn’t overly familiar with, the thought of being back in a Llyushin fighter and having an even number of friendly ships seemed like a holiday.

  Surrey made a pair of fists and rapped his knuckles hard against the sides of his helmet—his confirmation that he was ready and eager.

  The engines of the first Llyushin fighter ignited, sending a haze of faint blue energy trailing behind it. One after another, the ships lifted away from the spaceport.

  73

  With the trench machines digging ahead of them, Morgan and the others who were traveling underground couldn’t hear anything except what came through the speaker beside their ears. The earpiece was underneath a small, translucent ear cover each person wore to keep from going deaf while also maintaining the ability to stay in contact with each other.

  In addition to the ear covers, everyone wore goggles and a clear diamond-shaped mask that covered their nose and mouth. Even though they were on a livable and breathable planet where humans and almost every type of alien could survive off oxygenated air, the air in the tunnels was toxic. This was because the trench machines ground up everything in their path. The result was air that contained floating particles of various minerals, dust filled with metals and rare elements, all of which would eventually coat the lungs and suffocate whoever breathed them in long enough.

  Everything else about the trench machines was a marvel of ingenuity and technology. The old machines relied on kicking dirt back out of the tunnels that were being dug. This created huge mounds of dirt that needed to be put somewhere. The new generation of trench machines functioned on a completely different principle. Instead of displacing the dirt, they had a system of grinding, compacting, and pushing the dirt up, down, and to either side. The result was that no dirt had to be brought above ground, no other equipment was needed to assist the machines, and the paths that the trenchers made were automatically reinforced by the dirt that had been pushed in every direction, creating walls out of the very dirt and rock that was being moved to create the tunnels.

  Morgan looked down at the coordinates on her wrist display. It showed that the trench machine in front of her was still heading toward the spot where the CasterLan command center estimated Mowbray’s own central command to be located. Happy with what she saw, she continued forward.

  As she walked, her Meursault blade faded into and out of sight depending on how the sword was angled. Everyone else in her group carried staff blasters. Roughly two-thirds the height of an average human, staff blasters had a crescent shaped vibro blade at their tip for close combat. Further up the shaft was a small blaster cartridge and sight. The result was a weapon that could fire limited blaster shots at a distance while providing an electrified blade for close combat.

  They were fine weapons, and as a cadet Morgan had always envisioned herself using one in battle. What she now realized, however, and what her troops would find out soon enough, was that in theory the staff blaster was a perfect weapon, giving its holder a choice between long distance fighting or close combat, but war didn’t work that way. Nothing was ever that black and white, though, especially not extreme violence. As much as each soldier was trained on how to use their weapons, a scenario would inevitably unfold in which the enemy was ten feet away and the soldier holding a staff blaster wasted a critical second trying to determine if the blaster should be used or the vibro blade. In a fraction of a second, the theory of war would become the reality of death and somewhere on the battlefront, one soldier would die because he or she paused to assess the situation rather than reacting without thought.

  In addition to Morgan’s Meursault blade, she also had a blaster strapped to her back. Although she didn’t plan on needing it. Her sword was lighter and more deadly than anything she would be facing. It was, she was sure, the only thing she would rely on in the coming hours.

  Looking down at her wrist sensor, she saw they were getting closer and closer to the Vonnegan side of the battlefield.

  “We’re almost there,” she said to her soldiers. “Stay alert.”

  74

  The CasterLan Solar Carriers, along with all of the ships belonging to the other kingdoms that had joined Vere’s cause, were all positioned on one side of Edsall Dark. In particular, Vere’s ships were above the same area that the Crown and its massive cannons could target. Because of this, the fleet of Athens Destroyers always remained on the other side of the planet.

  The plan, for both sides, was to remain in those positions and let the ground battle determine the course of the battle. But, much like the snipers on the planet surface who were miles away from their targets, ships from either side occasionally got in some shots whenever they got the chance.

  When an Athens Destroyer that was situated on the very edge of the Vonnegan fleet drifted too far away from the other ships and became visible from the far side of the planet, a pair of Solar Carriers aimed and fired. Twelve heavy-class proton torpedoes, six from either ship, streaked across space. The twelve projectiles curved along the outer layer of the planet’s atmosphere. Even though the Athens Destroyer was no longer visible by the time the proton torpedoes arrived, it was too late. The captains of some of the Solar Carriers reported seeing bright explosions over the horizon line. Even without being able to visually verify the actual destruction, they knew one less Athens Destroyer existed.

  For no better reason than to enrage the Vonnegan generals, one of the Solar Carriers released a single proton flag. The tiny capsule flew across to the other side of the planet. Moments later, near the site where the decimated Athens Destroyer floated in space, the projectile exploded into a blanket of lights that bore the CasterLan crest.

  When one of Gerchin the Suspicious’s armored rafts inexplicably drifted away from the rest of the combined forces—possibly because it was having mechanical issues—streaks of bright white laser raced toward it. Too many Athens Destroyer cannons had fired at once to accurately count how many bursts hit the armored raft before it was torn to scraps of junk metal.

  Moments later, a small trail of light flew across space, then erupted into a light display in the form of the Vonnegan flag.

  And yet neither side advanced on the other, both following orders to remain where they were and let the ground forces decide the fate of the galaxy.

/>   75

  Everywhere Vere looked, there were soldiers readying for battle or disappearing into the darkness of the underground tunnels. All around her there were also giant machines humming with ion energy, bots assisting here and there, and weapons pointed across the field, ready to be fired.

  “Vere,” Pistol said as he gave a light tug on her sleeve. It was her cue to bring her head back in from the doorway of the bunker so she wouldn’t be targeted by a Vonnegan sniper. It was the tenth time he or Traskk had reminded her.

  She walked over to the main set of displays in the makeshift forward command and scanned the few screens that showed a portion of the information being tracked in the main command center. What the holographic displays showed her were the four levels of possible conflict zones. On the first, the Athens Destroyers remained on the far side of the planet from where the Crown and Round Table flagships had amassed. On the second, in the skies above Edsall Dark, the first Llyushin fighters were making their way toward the fields. On the third, the vast expanse of rolling hills and fields, bounded on one side by the wall that protected CamaLon from invading forces and on the other side by the Forest of Tears, where Mowbray’s army was preparing. On the final holographic display, a three-dimensional representation of all of the tunnels her trench machines had dug under the fields and the possible routes of tunnels that the Vonnegan trench machines were digging.

  This was the display that Vere was most interested in because it was the arena of combat that Hector viewed as pivotal to the outcome of the battle. On the electronic display, blinking cubes, dozens of them, represented all of the machines actively burrowing toward the Forest of Tears. Behind each one, a yellow line traced the paths that CasterLan and other Round Table forces could take to avoid the open fields and yet still move toward Mowbray’s side. Some of these were only two dozen yards below the surface. Others, almost a mile. A few tunnels ran side by side with others, only a dozen yards away from the next closest path. Others were almost a quarter mile away from the next tunnel. Some were straight while others twisted and curved.