“It’s no wonder you don’t have any friends,” Fastolf told her, tossing his empty glass on the ground behind him.
“It’s a wonder you do,” Morgan shot back.
A block down the alley from where the Eastcheap was located, a pair of tall, lanky aliens were looming over their next victim. Both were wearing long overcoats, but the little bit of their orange glimmering skin that was visible showed they were Organguans which weren’t to be messed with. Some poor man had sealed his own fate when he owed them money or failed to pay a debt or deliver on some other kind of underworld agreement. Vere and the others walked toward the spaceport without bothering to find out what the man had done or what would happen to him. On Folliet-Bright, everyone was one step away from having a figure walk out of the shadows and aim a blaster at them.
They passed a winged alien, the color of a fading sunset, as it threw up in the alley after one too many drinks. On the other side of the alley, a human man was pressed against a female Diamal and all three of her tails. They passed a scaly thing, the basic shape of a human, but with almost no facial features and skin that looked like wet sand, as it leaned against a stone wall and relieved itself.
“Use a restroom,” Morgan said, staring the alien down and slowing her pace until Vere pushed her forward.
“That is the bathroom,” Vere said. “And anywhere else you want it to be.”
A series of expressions passed over Morgan’s face. When she finally understood that Vere, the supposed future of the CasterLan Kingdom, had probably done the same thing many times herself, she shook her head in dismay while Vere laughed.
“Maybe it’s good you’re here,” Morgan said, “and not where your father’s people can see you.”
Instead of taking offense to the comment, Vere only laughed again and said, “You don’t know the half of it.”
15
The barrier surrounding and protecting the New Zephyr colony from the lightning storms and toxic atmosphere of the surrounding planet was an environmental containment field. It was not a defensive security measure. The Vonnegan fleet could have aimed their thousands of blasters and destroyed every building and every sign of civilization in the colony. They didn’t have to, though.
Instead, the ten silvery modules drifted down toward the land just beyond the containment field and the normal, oxygenated air and mild weather preserved inside it. The ten projectiles made their way through the lightning-filled sky. When they landed, it was with a puff of dust. Instead of exploding, the capsules hit the ground and disappeared.
The containment fields that protected each colony usually extended at least twenty meters underground, where a protective base kept toxic elements, natural to the planet, from seeping up through the soil. By weakening the entire surface of that section of the planet, it was a matter of time until the containment field lost its integrity. As soon as even one tiny part of it broke, the entire force field would fail. Thousands—if not tens of thousands—of humans and aliens would go from living on a mild planet with regulated weather and air that everyone could breathe, to living amongst brutal lightning storms that would strike every spaceship, structure, and person within minutes. But no one would be alive that long because as soon as they took one breath of the toxic Zephyr air their lungs would shrivel up and they would die.
For a minute, however, nothing happened. General Agravan began to wonder if the projectiles they had fired were duds. Rather than ask, he was content to continue watching until something happened. Finally, it did.
The ground began to rumble and shake. The containment field flickered ever so slightly. That was the only indication the Vonnegan General needed to know that the cylinders hadn’t been duds. The containment field would collapse.
Moments later, the containment field flickered once, twice, three times. Then, section by section, it crumbled to nothing. As it did, there were no crashing sounds or explosions or destruction. There was only silence.
The Vonnegan fleet continued to drift about in orbit above the planet. Never once did they activate their cannons, send space fighters down to wreak havoc, or even land a brigade of troops. Destroying the containment field would cause a complete loss of life on the colony with much less effort. The Vonnegan fleet was willing to accept a quiet victory. Rather than the glory of explosions and rampage, they were content with saving their weapons for when they would actually need them.
The entire time, all of the rich and influential citizens of Zephyr must have watched the scene from their homes, wondering what the fleet of Athens Destroyers was doing, never suspecting they were in danger until it was too late.
From within the Captain’s deck of the lead Athens Destroyer, General Agravan looked out at the sight before him. The fancy skyscrapers and luxurious spaceships that few people could afford were immediately sparking with thousands of lighting strikes. Fires broke out everywhere. A few seconds later, after the fire and natural gases combined to burn up all of the oxygen and all that was left was the natural air of Zephyr, the fires all went right back out again. Nothing. Then fire. Then nothing. It was the chaos of the universe at its finest.
But even before the fires had extinguished themselves, Zephyr’s natural gravity level, also altered by the same containment field that created a livable environment, was immediately returned. Buildings that were made to withstand the standard regulated colony gravity level were quickly pulled down to the ground under the weight of sixty times stronger gravitational forces than before. Skyscrapers, hundreds of floors high, came crashing down. Starships that were hovering just above their space docks exploded onto the platforms below them.
Before General Agravan’s eyes, an entire colony of buildings, ships, and most important, lives, became a giant pile of rubble with millions of lightning bolts turning the civilization into debris. The debris into ash. The ash into nothing.
16
On their way to the Folliet-Bright spaceport, Vere and her friends passed the bodies of aliens lying in the street, unable to determine if they were living or dead. They passed a man sprinting down the alley, chased by a group of three Yon-Trons that snarled and hissed as they darted after him. Each time they passed something like this, Baldwin made sure he was as close to Traskk and Vere as possible.
“I traveled aboard a frigate to get here,” the physician said. “Do you mind if I go back with you?”
No one said yes, but they also didn’t say no. And so he continued walking with them toward Vere’s ship.
Morgan had arrived to the planet in her own ship. When she got to the space dock where she had left it, she diverted from the others without saying goodbye or anything else. Vere guessed they would see a small W-model Llyushin, the most common type of star fighter in the CasterLan Kingdom, fly out of the Folliet-Bright airspace alongside them on their way to the nearest portal.
They continued through a series of dimly lit tunnels and ramps. Where there was light enough to see, they passed by every possible type of trash. When the roar of starships wasn’t deafening, they heard the growls and moans of aliens hiding in the shadows.
Eventually they came to a vast open chamber with a starship in the middle. Looking up, Baldwin saw only open air, leading out to space and to the greater galaxy.
The ship in front of them looked like two distorted, oblong discs that had been smashed together to form one vessel.
“Pretty,” Baldwin said, trying to be polite to the people who were taking him across the galaxy, but sounding somewhat ill instead.
“Nice,” Vere said. “A guy with a bloody nose and black eye is worried about how my ship looks.”
“Where did you get this thing?” he asked, still wondering if it really had been two separate ships at one point. He had seen plenty of fighters, frigates, cruisers, and destroyers from just about every different kingdom. The ship in front of him looked nothing like anything he had seen before.
“It’s a long story,” Fastolf said with the same grin he had given when lying about not
having stolen the alien’s money, and Baldwin wondered if this ship had been part of some heist. Was the king’s daughter, the heir to the CasterLan Kingdom, so disconnected from her royal heritage that she was stealing ships with the people she drank with?
“What do you call it?”
“The Griffin Fire.”
On the way to the ship, Vere told Baldwin to follow Fastolf. “He’ll show you where the medical supplies are. We have bio-medic suits in the back. You’ll be back to normal in a few minutes.”
Fastolf’s face wasn’t as bad as Baldwin’s but it was still bleeding. She watched as the two men walked up the incline of the ramp and into the recesses of the Griffin Fire. A’la Dure, Traskk, and Occulus remained by her side. Atop the ship, an android walked back and forth from one open panel to another.
“How’s it going, Pistol?”
Only when formally addressed did the android stop working and turn his attention to the people down below. He looked just like a human man, only without hair—not even eyebrows—and his skin was partly translucent. Vere had never been sure if Pistol’s skin was supposed to appear realistic or if it was intended to look the way it did, a cross between human flesh and dyed metal.
“Hello, Vere,” the android said, his lips barely moving. “Do you need the ship?”
“Yes. How long?”
“Five minutes,” Pistol said, not asking permission or explaining what would take that long.
A’la Dure nudged Vere’s arm and pointed at a part of the ship, causing Vere to ask, “Pistol, are the tinder walls working?”
When the android switched from looking at Vere to A’la Dure and then back to Vere, only his eyes moved.
“They are.”
“We’re leaving as soon as you’re done,” Vere said.
Without acknowledging her, Pistol turned and moved back to one of the open panels. It was possible for android software to mimic real emotions but Vere preferred hers to be monotone, emotionless, and apathetic. Even so, she couldn’t help but suspect some part of Pistol’s programming took it personally when everyone else went to Eastcheap all day while he had to stay behind and watch over the ship. It wasn’t in her control anyway; his entire system would shut off as soon as he set foot inside the bar due to the Treagon barrier. She still thought, though, that he was curious about what happened there and regretted that he couldn’t add a new experience to his understanding.
Aboard the ship, she passed Baldwin and Fastolf getting their injuries healed. A’la Dure and Occulus followed her into the cockpit, the old man standing behind the two pilots. Traskk was somewhere in the middle of the ship making sure it was ready for flight.
“What will you do?” Occulus asked.
Vere turned from her chair and from the vast array of buttons, switches, displays, and controls in front of her. “We’re going to Edsall Dark.”
“And?”
Vere hummed. She liked and respected Occulus as much as anyone in her group, and she loved that he asked questions rather than telling her what she should do, but it was times like these that she wished everyone in the world was like A’la Dure and didn’t speak a single word.
With a shrug and roll of the eyes, she said, “And fulfill my destiny, I guess.”
She tried to smile, but it seemed like a lot of effort, much more than turning her attention back to getting her ship off the planet and heading toward the nearest portal.
Occulus said, “A wise woman once told me that the universe conspires to cause all things. Everyone would have simpler lives if they just accepted that.”
“Funny.”
“Hmm?”
“My mother used to say the same thing.”
Occulus smiled and tapped a finger to his head. “Great minds think alike.” When Vere only nodded silently he asked, “What concerns you the most?”
She groaned and turned her attention away from the ship’s displays for a moment. “What are my choices?”
“Your father’s illness. The approaching war. The Green Knight’s challenge.”
Vere laughed, prompting Occulus to frown and look at A’la Dure to see if she knew what was so funny.
When she saw Occulus didn’t understand the joke, Vere said, “Do you really think I’m going to volunteer to have my head chopped off?”
“That was the point of the challenge.”
She sighed and shook her head. “And?”
“And you were the one who accepted the Green Knight’s game.”
“Some game,” she said, shaking her head. Then, leaning across and nudging A’la Dure, she added, “He’s a real joker sometimes.”
A’la Dure only raised her eyebrows and continued getting the ship ready to fly.
Behind them, barely audible over the sound of ships arriving and departing, someone began to scream. Vere jumped out of her seat and raced back toward the ship’s ramp. With every step, the yelling became louder and more violent.
“I’ll rip your face off and kill you,” a woman’s voice bellowed.
At the top of the ramp, Fastolf was laughing and shrugging. “I have no idea who she is,” he told Pistol.
Vere came around the corner to see Pistol and Morgan a foot apart from each other, both getting ready to attack the other.
“She was trying to get aboard the ship,” Pistol said when he heard Vere behind him.
The android’s job while everyone else was at Eastcheap, other than keeping the ship ready for flight, was to prevent thieves from stealing it.
Fastolf laughed again and said, “I’m telling you, I think she might be part of a criminal ring. Looks like trouble to me.”
“I heard you the first time, fat man,” Pistol said in a completely emotionless voice.
Even with anger seizing her entire body, causing the muscles in her arms and legs to clench, Morgan couldn’t help but laugh. But when she did, the android’s eye glowed as he re-assessed the possible danger in front of him.
“She’s okay, Pistol,” Vere said. “Let her go.”
Immediately, the android’s eyes stopped glowing and his defensive stance changed to standing upright with his arms by his side.
“My apologies,” the android said.
“Just doing your job,” Morgan called behind her as she strode past him.
As soon as she was close enough, she made a fist and punched Fastolf in the nose.
“Damn it,” he cried, “I just got it fixed.” Holding his face in both hands, he stumbled back aboard the ship to have the bio-medic system fix his second broken nose in less than a few hours.
“What are you doing?” Vere asked, staring at Morgan without offering any niceties.
“My ship is gone, I need to head back with you.”
Vere chuckled. “Didn’t you pay someone to look after it?”
“I’m not going to pay someone to watch over my own ship! Not when it’s equipped with the galaxy’s best security system.”
“Honey,” Vere said in her most condescending tone, “security measures are useless on Folliet-Bright. You need to pay someone to guard it. Someone you can trust.” She pointed at Pistol. “Or have an android guard it.”
Morgan took a deep breath, doing her best to remain calm. “When I find whoever took it, they’re going to wish they’d chosen a different career path.”
Vere shrugged and started back inside the ship. On her way toward the cockpit she said, “Well, I hope whichever thief or vandal stole it is at least enjoying himself while he can.”
Without waiting to see if Morgan would follow, she went back to join A’la Dure at the pilot’s seat. When Occulus asked what was going on, she told him he didn’t want to know and went back to getting the ship ready.
17
“The fleet is preparing for battle. We will be ready when the Vonnegan army arrives.”
Behind Hotspur, the king, a fraction of his former weight and making little rasping breathing noises, went ignored. Holding all of their discussions in the king’s chambers where they had a
bsolute privacy, Hotspur and Modred quickly got used to treating their frail and delirious ruler as nothing more than another decoration in the exquisite chambers.
“Very good. Any report of Vere?”
Hotspur turned from the window where he was looking out at the expanse of fields below and looked at Modred for a few moments before answering.
“She’s still on Folliet-Bright.”
“Still drinking and thieving?”
“I would guess so.”
Modred shook his head in mock disappointment. “So much potential. So much opportunity. It’s a shame she’s just throwing it away and making us lead.”
Hotspur turned back to the nearby window. Of the four sides he had to choose from he had quickly established the view from the west windows as his favorite. He hated seeing the commercial district and all the people who lived to buy and sell their wares. The windows that looked out at the perimeter wall weren’t good or bad, they were devoid of anything. But the windows looking out at the plains and the forest and the mountains calmed him. He didn’t like it because he liked nature; he liked it because he grew up learning of the historic battles that had taken place on those very fields.
“And what if she doesn’t remain on Folliet-Bright?” Hotspur asked.
“She’s been there for years. Why would she leave now?”
Hotspur looked out at a marker a thousand feet from the gate that allowed people into the kingdom. The plaque was too small to read from where he was but he knew what it said and what it commemorated. It was a memorial dedicated to the brother who had defeated his own sibling for control so many ages ago. For Hotspur, it was a testament to what it took to be a great leader. If a man had been willing to slay his own brother in combat in order to lead the kingdom, there was no one Hotspur wouldn’t kill to be victorious and be held in the same regard.
“I’ve learned, both from history and from experience,” he said, “that it’s best to plan for all possibilities.”
The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) Page 6
