X-Calibur: The Trial

by Jackson-Lawrence, R.

  “Stop moving,” she said after a moment's thought. “Tell me how to free Arthur and the others from the pods.”

  The two Mori looked at each other again before the furthest away from her whispered, “What's it saying? Do you think it's going to kill us?”

  “I'm Sol-Dan,” the closest Mori announced. “And this is Mir-Bir. Please don't hurt us.”

  Triltan smiled to herself. They couldn't understand a word she'd said to them. Arthur and Gwen had their capsules, and Lance used a small earpiece to translate what she said to him, but the Mori before her knew nothing of the Teleri or their language.

  She returned the rifle to her back and moved quickly back up the stairs, retrieving the scanner from the console. She'd used one to transmit sounds before, deep beneath the ice of a frozen planet. It should be easy enough to use it to translate what she wanted to say to her captives.

  Her captives. Thinking about it like that made her feel better, stronger somehow. Her father had been so worried about her, insisting she run away and hide until he arrived to rescue her. Now she'd taken prisoners and she was about to question them, make them give her answers.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the scanner held before her as she thought about what she wanted to say. Once she'd decided, she relayed the words through her capsule which translated them through the speakers on the scanner.

  “I am Caran Triltan, Principal of the Ardent Dawn,” she lied. “You have imprisoned three of my, erm, officers, and I demand that you release them immediately.”

  “We didn't imprison anybody,” Mir-Bir insisted, shaking his head.

  “Does it mean the rogue slaves we captured?” Sol-Dan asked.

  “They are no longer slaves of the Mori,” Triltan said. “Release them, now!”

  Triltan was quickly settling into the role she'd created for herself. She had found it quite easy after the initial nervousness, simply imagining what her father would do in that situation. Although she'd never seen him interrogate a prisoner, she'd been on the receiving end of his disapproving tone more than enough times to emulate it.

  “Sorry, we didn't mean-” Sol-Dan began.

  “I said release them!” Triltan interrupted. “I'll give you to the count of three.”

  “We can't!” Sol-Dan screamed, his voice breaking with anxiety. “We don't know how!”

  “One,” Triltan said, her eyes fixed on the cowering figures before her.

  “We're sorry,” Mir-Bir stammered. “We didn't mean to.”

  “He made us do it!” Sol-Dan cried.

  “Two,” Triltan continued, louder than before.

  “It's not our fault,” Mir-Bir added.

  “We didn't want to do it,” Sol-Dan said.

  “Three,” Triltan yelled, her impatience growing. She didn't know what to do. She'd reached her deadline and had no intention of harming them unless they forced her to. Why couldn't they just free her friends from the pods? They'd put them in there, it should have been a simple matter to let them out again.

  “We don't know how to let them out,” Sol-Dan said again.

  “Anything, we'll do anything you want,” Mir-Bir added. “If we knew how to let them out we'd tell you.”

  “Last chance,” Triltan said, though the voice coming from the scanner lacked any of its former conviction. They were children, just as she thought, given a task to accomplish. They weren't the ones behind the message, behind the trap. They were just pawns in someone else's game.

  “Please, please don't kill us!” Mir-Bir screamed.

  “No, please don't kill us,” Sol-Dan sobbed.

  Triltan turned and stormed back up the stairs, angry at herself for not knowing what to do next.

  *****

  “You're sure this is the way?” Arthur asked.

  “No, not really,” Merlin replied, a look of confusion upon his face. “The geography bares no relation to Britain, ancient or not.”

  They had been walking for hours, following the winding muddy roads west, the direction Merlin had suggested led to the Isle of Corbenic. The sun was beginning to set in front of them turning the sky a deep red. Merlin was again impressed by the quality of the simulation, the detail in the clouds and the scattered light as it danced upon the road ahead. It was almost like looking at a sunset through the external cameras on the real Earth.

  “Should we rest?” Arthur continued. “Are you feeling tired?”

  “My knees continue to remind me of my age,” Merlin said with an annoyed huff. “But I can keep going. Trust me, time catches up to all of us eventually.”

  Arthur smiled to himself. He was technically only two years old, the Mori birthing pods advancing him to physical maturity in a mater of weeks. He couldn't imagine ageing to a point where his knees hurt when he walked and his skin wrinkled. Few of the human slaves he had known lived for more than a year or two, and certainly not long enough to suffer from the effects of ageing.

  “I hope so,” Arthur said, surprising the older man. “I hope we all get to live long enough to wish we were young again.”

  “Fear not, Arthur,” Merlin replied. “By my count, that's the seventh sunset we've witnessed in here. The Ardent Dawn will be freeing us from this prison any minute, we just need to keep going until they do.”

  “I know,” Arthur agreed. “I hope Triltan's been okay without us. What if something happened to her while we were in here?”

  “She has a wise head on her shoulders,” Merlin said confidently. “Just because she defied her father's orders and boarded the hive, she'll have taken more than enough precautions. She'll likely be the first face you see after emerging from the pod.”

  “Not if Lance gets to her first,” Arthur said with a grin.

  “He does seem to have developed quite the crush,” Merlin agreed.

  “Crush?” Arthur asked, confused by the use of the word. Back on the mining asteroid, crush had had an entirely different meaning.

  “He enjoys her company,” Merlin clarified.

  “Ah,” Arthur replied with a chuckle.

  The red sky gave way to stars and a bright full moon, lighting the track before them. Merlin repeatedly picked his robes up from around his ankles, shaking off the caked mud and dirt before allowing them to trail along the ground once more. Arthur fared a little better, the roughly stitched trousers tucked into the high boots he wore.

  Once the sun set the temperature dropped, but it didn't seem to bother either of them. Though Merlin's knees hurt, his legs never seemed to feel fatigued, and neither of them seemed to grow hungry or thirsty despite the absence of food or water. On Merlin's suggestion, they continued walking for as long as the road would allow.

  “What's that?” Arthur asked, placing a hand on Merlin's shoulder. Ahead of them they were able to make out dim lights, flickering in the light breeze.

  “That, my King, is hope,” Merlin said, redoubling his pace as they rushed towards the settlement.

  *****

  Triltan sat at the console, tapping icons randomly on the screen in the hope of finding inspiration. The code she thought would help her free her friends had turned out to be nothing but a trick to waste her time, and her prisoners seemed to know nothing about how the system worked.

  Someone else was in control, the Mordred from the message she thought. Merlin had suspected it to be a rogue AI, though Gar-Wan had insisted that was impossible. She checked the chronometer on her scanner and realised that it had been almost fourteen hours since she'd lost contact with Arthur and the others and she was still no closer to freeing them.

  But that's not quite true, is it? she reminded herself. She'd been tricked by the false code in the system programming, but she'd also identified it for what it was and abandoned her analysis. The real code was in there, somewhere, and if anyone could find it she could. Lance and Gwen knew a little about computers, but not like she did. If she were trapped inside the pod and they were out here, would they have recognised the ruse so quickly?

  At
least they'd be able to get the prisoners to talk, she thought, but again the prisoners had been talking, they just had nothing useful to say. She considered the possibility that they had been lying to her, but their overwhelming sense of abject terror quickly put her mind at ease. She may not be as tall and physically imposing as Arthur or Lance, but the two young Mori had never seen a Teleri before and didn't know what she was capable of.

  When all was said and done, Triltan was doing far better than she ever imagined she'd be able to. If only she could find a clue that would point her in the right direction, the one real piece of system code or what was happening to them inside the enormous mainframe.

  She stopped suddenly, hand hovering over the next random icon on the display. In all the excitement of her prisoners waking up, she'd forgotten about what Gar-Wan had suggested. If she could access the security logs, she should be able to find out how the interrogation machines extracted memories from the accused. She had been beginning to work her way through the encryption when she'd heard the sounds from the bottom of the stairs, but maybe with the help of one of the security personnel she wouldn't need to decipher the encryption at all.

  With her spirits lifted, Triltan retrieved her scanner and ran down the stairs to find out how to proceed.

  *****

  The few trees lining the dirt road gave way to wooden huts, topped with tightly bundled twigs to keep the rain and wind at bay. Candles burned in windows and torches lined the streets, though there was no sign of anyone awake to greet them.

  “Should we start knocking on doors?” Arthur asked anxiously.

  “Not just yet,” Merlin replied. “Let's see if we find a boat before we go rousing people from their beds.”

  Arthur nodded as he followed Merlin past the closest houses and towards a wooden walkway. The air seemed different, tangy from the smell of saltwater in his nostrils, and the gentle breeze seemed to invigorate him. The walkway became a jetty, the light of the moon shimmering on the small waves as they lapped against the wooden supports. Merlin was almost running as they raced towards the end where a single wooden boat rocked gently.

  “Not quite the Ardent Dawn, or the Vanguard for that matter,” Merlin said as he tapped it with his foot. “But it's seaworthy and should get us to where we need to go.”

  “Are you suggesting we steal it?” Arthur said with surprise.

  “Do you really think the owner will just give it to us?” Merlin asked.

  “Well, no,” Arthur agreed.

  “If it helps, think of us as just borrowing it,” Merlin suggested. “Once we have the Grail, we'll bring it right back.”

  Arthur said nothing more and stepped into the boat, stretching his arms out to help him balance. Once he was sure he wouldn't fall, he helped Merlin aboard and sat where he was instructed.

  “Where are the controls?” Arthur asked after looking around for a console or display. “Which end has the engine?”

  Merlin laughed to himself. “You're the engine, and these are the controls,” he said, handing Arthur the first of two oars. “Slide the bigger end into the water and row!”

  After a few minutes spent banging against the dock, and a further few minutes turning around in circles, Arthur finally got the hang of the oars and began to pull away from the coast. The light from the moon was enough to highlight the surrounding water, and Merlin looked to the starts for navigation.

  “That way is north,” Merlin said, pointing out the Pole star. “If we keep heading west, we should be able to see the Isle of Corbenic come morning.”

  “I have to keep rowing until morning?” Arthur asked incredulously.

  “I'm but a feeble old man,” Merlin said wryly, a twinkle in his eye. “My old bones, my aching knees.”

  “Oh, don't start,” Arthur snapped, though he was already smiling back towards the older man. “Just make sure we don't get lost.”

  “Of course, my King,” Merlin remarked, his smile widening as he got comfortable on the wooden seat.

  *****

  The two Mori guards froze as Triltan stepped from the last stair into the dark corridor, flicking on her torch. She couldn't tell what they had been doing, but they both still seemed to be restrained. “Tell me how to access the security logs,” the scanner translated for her.

  “To do what?” Sol-Dan asked.

  “Access the security logs,” Triltan said again. “Tell me your access codes.”

  “We don't have any,” Mir-Bir replied.

  “No, we don't have them,” Sol-Dan agreed.

  “I thought you were guards?” Triltan asked with annoyed confusion. “Security personnel for the hive?”

  The two Mori remained silent, looking at each other and then back at Triltan. “We are,” Sol-Dan said hesitantly a moment later. “We're just, well, special guards, that's why. We have a special, secret mission. We were chosen.”

  “A secret mission?” Triltan said with disbelief. “You two?”

  “It's true,” Mir-Bir insisted. “He chose us, told us if we were successful we'd join the ranks of the Imperial Guard.”

  Triltan remembered what Arthur had said about the Imperial Guard, the highly trained soldiers chosen to protect the Mori-Gran. They were the best of the best, and Arthur and the others had barely survived an encounter with one of them, the Imperial Commander, Ul-Dar. It had only been luck and teamwork that had allowed them to defeat him.

  “Amongst all the Mori aboard this hive,” Triltan continued, still trying to understand what they were telling her. “You two were chosen for a secret mission that would see you join the ranks of the Imperial Guard?”

  “Really,” Sol-Dan insisted. “He said we had 'hidden depths'.”

  “And who is he?” Triltan asked.

  “We can't say,” Sol-Dan replied quickly.

  “That's part of the secret,” Mir-Bir added.

  “Then I shall make you tell me,” Triltan remarked, raising her rifle as she took a step towards them. The two Mori winced as she moved, and she thought she heard Mir-Bir squeal and call for his mother. By the time she took her second step, Mir-Bir was already talking.

  “Mor-Dred,” he stammered. “He came to us, chose us.”

  “Shut up!” Sol-Dan demanded.

  “Mor-Dred,” Triltan repeated. “Where is he? Tell me everything.”

  Sol-Dan tried to kick out at Mir-Bir but the bindings made it difficult, and the words poured from Mir-Bir's mouth without delay. “After the slave revolt,” he began, “the Mori-Gran took to her chambers. Everything was chaos. My mother had our slaves executed in case they wanted to rebel, but then there was no one to do the work. There wasn't enough food, we had to start doing everything for ourselves.”

  “And Mor-Dred?” Triltan interrupted.

  “He chose us,” Mir-Bir said again. “Our father, he took us to one of his meetings with some of the other members of the Senate. They wanted to do things differently, make changes and get everything working again. We've always been ruled by a Queen, that's what they said, and there were always problems. Maybe it was time for something new, not a Queen but a male Mori to take charge.

  “Most of the Senate were male, the soldiers too. Why should it always be a Queen?”

  “And you met this Mor-Dred?” Triltan asked. “He came to your meetings?”

  The two Mori exchanged another look before Sol-Dan sighed and began speaking. “Not at the meetings, no,” he said. “Mor-Dred contacted us after, said he knew of other hive ships where the males were in charge, called them Kings. He said a great change was coming and we'd been chosen to help him.

  “After the accident, when the external doors opened all on their own, he directed us to the birthing chambers but told us not to enter. He knew the Mori-Gran-Ra would come after him, try to place another Queen in charge. He even knew she'd use the rogue slaves against him, so he had us set a trap for them. We weren't to kill them, that's what he said, but we were to place them in the pods until he could deal with them himself.”
<
br />   “He saved us,” Mir-Bir added. “After the external doors opened and people were fighting he made sure we were safe, because we were special, important to the future.”

  “And he was right, about the rogue slaves,” Sol-Dan continued. “We put them in the pods, just like he told us to.”

  “And what then?” Triltan asked. “What were you supposed to do next?”

  “We watch over the traps,” Sol-Dan replied. “We keep the birthing chamber safe until it's time.”

  “Time for what?” Triltan prompted.

  The two Mori looked at each other again, not sure how to respond. In truth they hadn't really been told what they were waiting for, just that they would be an important part of it when it finally happened. They imagined the people would emerge from the pods and Mor-Dred would rule the hive as its first King, the two of them at his side.

  Their story sounded bizarre, but the two Mori before her didn't seem like the brightest aboard the hive. Whatever was really going on inside the pods, the two young Mori before her seemed to believe what they had been told. Whoever or whatever Mor-Dred was, they were just mindless pawns tricked into doing his bidding. She still needed to access the security system and try to work out how to free her friends from the pods.

  “You don't know, do you?” Triltan said. “You don't know what happens next.”

  “Mor-Dred will tell us when it's time,” Mir-Bir replied, a believer to the end.

  “Then in the meantime,” Triltan continued. “I want you to take me to the nearest security station. Maybe I'll be able to find out what I want to know there.”

  *****

  Gwen was startled by the sound of the lock opening on the door to the cell. Lance was still sleeping, his head resting in her lap, his blackened, twisted left arm held tight against his chest. Easing out from under him was far easier than she expected; he barely stirred as she lifted his head and rested it on the cold stone of the cell floor.