After she was sure his injuries weren’t life threatening, she gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You look awful.”
“I’m going to need a new arm,” he said, his voice as flat as Pistol’s.
If his energy disk was any indication, she doubted he would opt for anything resembling an actual human arm. He had lost his arm for the exact same cause he had lost his legs—war. He would want everyone who saw him to remember what happened when two armies fought each other rather than settling their disagreements through diplomacy. Maybe scientists would create an energy field near his shoulder to match the one that his torso rested upon.
“How are things above ground?” he asked.
She smiled and wrapped her arms around the giant of a man.
“We won,” she said. For a while she didn’t say anything else because she wasn’t sure if she would be able to maintain her composure if she did speak. Instead, she sat next to him on the ground for a few moments. Finally, she added, “Most of Mowbray’s forces were destroyed. Some surrendered. The Round Table army is victorious.”
“Mowbray?”
She shook her head. “No sign of him yet. I found two of his Fianna further down a side tunnel. A bunker buster went off almost directly over them. The tunnel they were in collapsed thirty feet into another one below it, which in turn collapsed into yet another tunnel sixty feet below that one. Mowbray’s body is probably down there somewhere, although I’m not sure we’ll ever find it.”
Hector nodded but remained silent. Maybe he was reliving the chaos that the battle had engulfed them in. Maybe he was thinking that amidst the madness and anarchy, anything was possible, both good and bad.
“There’s no chance he survived,” said Vere, answering the question before Hector could ask it. “Even if he did, he’s trapped down there and will die of thirst in a few days. And besides, he doesn’t have a fleet any more.” A moment later, she added, “It’s truly over. The round table did it.”
Instead of savoring the satisfaction of knowing the Vonnegan Empire would never again terrorize the galaxy, Hector only said a single word. “Morgan?”
Vere closed her eyes. “I found her next to where the blast hit Mowbray and the last of his guards. Buried under dirt and rubble. Dead Fianna all around her. A few more dead Fianna further back in the tunnel from where she had come.”
Hector nodded, not saying anything. To an average warrior, defeating just one Fianna would have been a legendary feat. For Morgan, killing almost all of them would have only left her regretting that she hadn’t killed every last one of them. For Hector, though, the fact that she had died meant she hadn’t won, no matter how many of the enemy she had taken with her. There was a difference between having defeated the enemy and being victorious. One required killing and death. The other meant simply living another day. It was the difference between Hector having legs and not having legs. It was the difference between returning home or sharing a grave with the very people you were trying to kill.
“I don’t know why she did it,” Vere said.
“Did what?”
“Went after Mowbray by herself. She had to have known there was no way she would survive, even if she did kill them all.”
Hector stared off into the darkness and sighed. “There are a lot of things I could say about her. I’ve met many others like her through the years. She reminded me a lot of Hotspur.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe, in the end, that was why she needed to do what she did, because there was no other way for her to come to terms with the round table taking the place of the CasterLan Kingdom.”
“Perhaps.”
They sat in the darkness of the tunnel for a while, neither of them speaking. There was no telling what Hector was thinking about. Vere could focus on only one thing. Years earlier she had been sitting around a table enjoying drinks with her friends in a dingy bar. A physician had shown up and told her she had to return home. A young CasterLan officer had shown up and repeated the sentiment. Now, all of those people, except for herself and Traskk, were dead.
She closed her eyes and imagined Fastolf bellowing with laughter after returning to the table with someone’s wallet. She imagined Occulus observing the action and then asking what one word would best describe each person’s life. A’la Dure was in her vision as well. Vere’s former copilot and friend was content to sip her ale and let other people do the talking. Baldwin, good-natured and straightforward. And Morgan, angry and impatient, never backing down from anyone. In their own way, each of them had influenced her and made her into the person she had become.
She closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her. As she did, her heart rate slowed and the world around her faded away, a profound peacefulness coming over her. Instead of hearing Mortimous, she could have sworn it was Occulus’s voice in the distance, repeating the same question he had been so fond of.
“What one word will describe your life?”
When she opened her eyes, the voice faded and she returned to the tunnel.
“Will you do me a favor?” Hector asked.
“Of course.”
Would he ask her to ban the production of warships? Was he going to tell her that every army should be more like the Gur-Khan and refuse to fight unless invaded by another force?
“Will you help me back to the capital?”
For the first time since the battle had started, she smiled.
Then, poking his huge bicep, she said, “If you want to get back any time this week, how about if I call a transport to come get us?”
She called back to the command center and asked for someone to send a hover transport to her coordinates. While they waited, the two of them continued sitting in silence. Hector, no doubt, was hoping the same thing she was: that it had all been worth it. Hopefully the round table would unite the galaxy and bring an end to this type of pointless death and destruction.
Hector looked down at Vere’s hip. “No Meursault blade?”
She shook her head. Mowbray’s—the one he had taken from her on the desert moon years earlier—was part of his private collection and would probably be plundered by thieves as his former empire fell apart.
“I did find Morgan’s,” she said.
It had been her father’s before Vere had given it to her friend. Before that, it had belonged to a long line of CasterLan leaders. Although Morgan had never said as much, Vere could tell that owning the sword had been the thing in life Morgan had been most proud of.
As if sensing what Vere was thinking, Hector said, “Those swords were the symbol of your kingdom for a very long time.”
She tried to smile. “Then I guess it’s appropriate that a symbol of a kingdom that no longer exists should also no longer exist.” He nodded but didn’t ask what she meant. She explained, “I carried it as deep into these tunnels as I could and thrust it into the stone, all the way to the hilt. The only thing still visible is the grip. You’d have to know exactly where it is to find it.”
He nodded again. “You left it there?”
“I doubt anyone will ever find it. If they do, I suppose it’s their destiny to be its next owner. Anyone who goes to the trouble of finding it and pulling it out of the stone is free to have it. Of course, the longer these tunnels exist the more prone they are to collapsing. No one would be foolish enough to risk their life searching miles and miles of tunnels.”
Moments later, a light appeared far off in the tunnel. The transport. The light grew larger and brighter until the hover ship pulled up beside Hector and Vere.
“Let’s get you home,” she said, rising to her feet.
Traskk and Pistol descended from the transport’s ramp and helped Hector aboard. Once everyone else was ready to go back to the capital, Vere smacked the transport, signaling for them to go on without her.
When Traskk turned and looked at her, she mouthed the words, “I’ll be back later.”
The transport faded into the distance in the same direction from which it had come.
Once more, Vere was by herself in the tunnels.
100
Further up the tunnel, halfway between the capital wall and the forest, a voice sounded beside Vere.
“Quite a journey you’ve been on.”
Without turning to look at him, she said, “Hello, Mortimous. I was wondering when I would see you again.”
“Quite a journey you still have left to go, too.”
Opening her palms toward the carved underbelly of her home, she said, “I hope this was all worth it.”
As usual, instead of answering her directly, he asked, “When you were a child, did you ever guess that your life might have turned out this way?”
With a laugh, she said, “Cut off a green knight’s head so he could return the favor? Try to win a war by freeing an armada of legendary ships from the stone it was embedded in and lose the war anyway? Unite the galaxy at one round table?”
When she did finally turn to look at him he was wearing his usual robes. As always, his face was hidden, so that even after years of conversations and lessons, she still had no idea what he looked like. It was possible that he was made of flesh, but just as likely that he was nothing but a skeleton. Given that he kept company with beings that transcended time and space, he might have no physical body at all. The robes might be an illusion for her benefit, there to give her an idea of what he had once been. Anything, she realized, was possible.
“The galaxy certainly has a way of keeping you on your toes,” she added.
“That it does, Vere. That it does.”
“You know, there were times I didn’t like you very much.”
“Oh?” he said, trying to sound surprised, but she could hear the amusement in his voice.
“When Galen said he made a deal with you. When you let me waste all that time at the Excalibur. You could have helped, you know.”
“But I’ve never helped anyone,” he said matter-of-factly. “Everyone I have ever known has been responsible for everything they have done or not done. The same goes for you, Vere CasterLan.” His cloaked figure turned away from her, as if he were looking at something in the distance that she couldn’t see. “We are all bystanders in each other’s lives, and also in the greater scheme of the galaxy. The only part of the universe we can actually control is incredibly small,” he said, turning back toward her. “And it’s right here.” A finger, so thin and withered that she still couldn’t tell if it was flesh or bone, reached out and pointed to his head. “But in that tiny speck, incredible things are possible.”
“I know,” she said. “I understand that now.”
Epilogue
Not everything went smoothly with the foundation of the round table. No matter who comprised the first group of representatives sitting around the table, there was bound to be some contention. It didn’t help that one former kingdom decided to be represented by a legendary general.
The people from Edsall Dark, having seen firsthand how unnecessary wars could engulf a planet, elected as their representative the one man who would rather die than allow another battle to take place: Hector.
Kaiser Doom, seeing a former CasterLan general at one of the round table seats, demanded that he be allowed to appoint one of his own military leaders as his representative.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Vere reminded him. “The people say who they want sitting for them. If your people want a general to be their voice, so be it. I have a feeling, though, that they won’t.”
“I won’t stand for this,” Doom said.
“Look at him,” Vere told the Kaiser.
Across the room, Hector was hovering around the entire circumference of the giant wood table. His repaired energy disk was smaller than the previous model. In place of his injured arm, the medical bots had given him a prototype gravity swayer. Instead of a bicep and elbow and forearm and hand, there was only a small half-sphere strapped to Hector’s shoulder where his muscular arm had been before. The sphere glowed in various shades as it functioned. One color of energy let Hector pull objects toward him. Another color of energy let him push objects away.
Everyone who looked at him saw how much of his body had been destroyed by war. He was, it turned out, not only the best voice for swaying people from future conflicts, but also its best physical reminder as well, a living monument to the ravages of war.
“Look at him,” Vere said of Hector, who was still circling the round table, admiring its beauty, “and tell me you think he has anything but pure intentions.”
Doom could only nod in agreement and let the issue pass.
In time, the people of each kingdom elected someone who truly represented them rather than the rulers they had inherited. A Lerrk farmer from the War-Pon Sector. An Ignis Moris teacher from the Expo-CTD Sector. And because the only things the people who sat around the table cared about were tending to their fields, teaching their children, and making sure everyone had food and shelter, there was never talk of foolish things like which kingdom or sector should be invaded next. For the first time in ages, there was peace.
**
Very few leaders throughout the galaxy could refuse their kingdom a place at the round table. As word spread from one sector to another of the new cooperation, rulers who at first were resistant to the idea couldn’t help but be swayed by their people.
Lord Vi-Dom, who had ignored Vere’s initial round table invitation, stated that he would never give up control of his kingdom. “Let them protest and chant,” he said from the top of the Vi-Dom tower as his subjects demonstrated below.
But not even a week later, the trash-strewn capital empty, everyone refusing to work, he remembered what he had once known but long ago forgotten: his kingdom could only do what his people allowed. Both the citizens and the ruler had forgotten the same lesson. The round table helped them remember.
Seeing steel workers and librarians, doctors and janitors, farmers and mechanics, all representing other kingdoms at the round table, the people of every other kingdom demanded the same. It wasn’t long until the round table had to be expanded, more wedges built around it so more seats could have a place.
**
Although there were frequent sightings of aliens resembling Mowbray, the Vonnegan ruler was never confirmed to have survived the battle. A slightly purple man with an inordinate amount of wealth and a home in the mountains of a remote moon. A tall hermit with a Vonnegan accent who begged for scraps of food outside Eastcheap. A slender man in the woods living out beyond the fields of Aromath the Solemn. Many sightings were investigated, but there was never a confirmation. The sightings persisted for decades, in every corner of the galaxy and every type of setting.
For a year following the battle, a succession of Vonnegan generals struggled over control of Mowbray’s empire. But without many ships and even fewer troopers willing to fight for their cause, the civil wars soon fizzled out.
Eventually, the Vonnegan people elected their own representative to sit at the round table, a five hundred year old Feedorian poet who had been in a Vonnegan prison for the last hundred years. The Vonnegan representative flitted his small wings in happiness at the coalition of humans and aliens around the wooden table. The tiny poet made sure the Vonnegan people would never again see their brothers and sisters sent off to war.
**
Vere had overseen the construction of the round table, but she never actually observed one of its sessions. Instead, she walked out into the fields of Aromath the Solemn each day, where leaders from around the galaxy had united with her in defeating Mowbray, the same fields she and Galen had walked across together so many times as children.
Children told their parents they often saw her crossing from one hilltop to another. A herder saw her walking toward the caves. A farmer reported having seen her enter the same cavern where she had faced the Green Knight many years earlier. Each of these people insisted they saw her talking to herself or to someone they couldn’t see.
Day after day, she walked out into the fields and disappe
ared into the labyrinth of rocks and moss that she had explored as a child. When she didn’t return to the capital one evening, Traskk and Pistol and everyone else who knew her figured she had decided to camp there overnight. When she didn’t return the next day or the day after that, the reptile and the android went in search of her.
She was never seen again, but neither were her remains ever found in the cave or anywhere else. She had simply vanished.
Some people whispered that, after years of searching for him, she had finally found Galen again. Others said she had followed the same path as Mortimous and many others before her.
A year after she was last seen, the people of Edsall Dark finally accepted that Vere was never coming back. At the same time, they began referring to her by her full name, the name by which she would forever be remembered: Vere the Enlightened.
Because that was her word.
The adventure will continue…
Coming in 2017: The next Space Lore trilogy
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Acknowledgments
As always, I am indebted to many people for their support: Jodie McFadden, for her constant encouragement and optimism; Matt Butterweck, for his eagle eye and his comments on the story; my parents and brother for their support; and everyone on GoodReads and in the BJJ and MMA communities who read my other novels and recommended them to their friends. That is the only way that books like mine have the chance to be successful, and I’m eternally grateful for their support.
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