Up in the sky, near the portal, he thought he could see flashes of lights, maybe the beginning of a battle breaking out.
“And,” he added, “we are the ones who know what is best for this planet and this kingdom.”
When Lady Percy only cried some more, Modred threw his hands in the air and went in search of someone who could tell him if the bounty hunters had been successful yet.
28
Even before the tinder walls had slid back open, the holographic displays in front of Vere and A’la Dure told them what was happening. A ship had been waiting there, ready to attack as soon as they passed through the portal above Edsall Dark.
It was only one ship, not an entire armada, but with its weapons readied and with the Griffin Fire vulnerable, the damage had been quick and substantial. The ship’s communications dish was nothing more than space debris floating off into the distance. Their primary missile bay was inoperable. Attempting to fire a proton missile would probably destroy Vere’s own ship.
A’la Dure punched a button and the metal walls that protected the ship’s occupants through the portal disappeared in a flash. In their place was the black of the galaxy littered with billions of faraway stars. The sight was immediately replaced by flashes of laser sailing past the Griffin Fire as Vere jerked the controls left and then right.
A display popped up in front of her, showing the surrounding space. Edsall Dark was in front of them. The portal was behind them. But in between them and the giant circle of energy was a small sphere, almost the same size as her own ship, with four curved wings, two big and two small. When she magnified the image, she saw that the ship attacking them was completely disproportionate to the Griffin Fire. While her own ship had a small cockpit and small wings—the majority of the ship devoted to its engines, living quarters, and storage—the bounty hunter’s ship was almost entirely a spherical cockpit and wings without any room for anything that wasn’t designed for attacking other ships. To assist with this, the ship had a rotating cockpit that adjusted to remain locked on its target even while the engines and navigation adjusted to correct the ship’s path and keep it following its target.
Another bounty hunter. Vere knew what that meant: the first attack hadn’t been an isolated incident. Rather than hiring a single assassin, someone had put a price out on their heads for any bounty hunter with the skills to collect on it. They were going to keep getting attacked until they made it safely into Edsall Dark’s capital.
“I’ve never seen a ship like that,” she said, and A’la Dure nodded.
All across the galaxy, it was the bounty hunters who were driving forward innovations in ship weaponry and structure because they were the professionals who always needed to be one step ahead of every other killer. Their real-world alterations constantly exceeded the leading edge ideas that scientists created designs for. Gravitational claymore mines, dark matter napalm, and cloaked proton torpedoes had all been created by bounty hunters who needed a better way to capture or kill so they could collect a reward before their competitors.
The pilot of this ship had found a way to not only move the ship’s cockpit so the pilot could keep a steady visual on the target, he had also designed the engines to shift around the main body of the ship. Rather than rely on shifts in thrusters to make wide turns like every other vessel, this ship could change directions immediately. The result was a ship that was able to dart all around rather than arc into different directions the way the Griffin Fire had to. A’la Dure set the Griffin Fire’s automated cannons to target the ship but none of the blasts even came close to hitting it because it was in a completely different part of space by the time the laser bursts went to where it had previously been.
Traskk burst into the cockpit.
“Get to the turret,” Vere yelled. Morgan was behind the giant reptile. As much as Vere hated to give the woman any credit, she added, “And get Morgan into the underbelly turret. We need all the help we can get.”
Baldwin started to ask if he could help, but Fastolf took him by the shoulder. “This is above our pay grade,” he said with a laugh, escorting Baldwin to a table with a deck of cards on top of it. “This way, you can’t do anything that would get your nose busted again.”
Reluctantly, Baldwin sat down and followed Fastolf’s lead.
Without needing to be ordered to do so, Pistol went into the mechanical room to monitor the ship’s circuits. Occulus stood by a window, trying to get a glimpse of the elusive ship that was attacking them.
At the back of the Griffin Fire, Morgan dropped into the same turret she had been in earlier. From where she sat, she could hear Traskk growling what must have been the equivalent of Basilisk curse words as he repeatedly shot and missed the agile ship.
After her success with the previous pair of vessels, Morgan smiled and began firing blasts of her own. One after another, though, they each sailed out into the oblivion of space. The ship she was targeting was nowhere near where she was shooting by the time the laser blast got there. She tried to fire ahead of where the ship was going but it was able to change directions so quickly that it was never where she thought it might be going. Above her, she heard more growls and what she thought must be Traskk’s tail slamming into the sides of the turret bay in frustration.
The Griffin Fire was hit with two more laser blasts, shaking the ship’s entire frame. Morgan could smell smoke but, inside the turret, had no idea where it was coming from or if there was a fire to put out. When she shot back a succession of four laser blasts of her own, none of them came remotely close to hitting the bounty hunter’s spherical ship.
Traskk roared something but she had no idea if he was yelling more obscenities or trying to say something to her.
“We need to work together,” she yelled back. “We’re never going to hit this guy the way we’re going.”
Traskk said something back to her. Without knowing how to say “okay” or “yes” in Basilisk, she could only hope he was agreeing.
The round ship changed directions once more, hurtling toward them for another attack.
“Give me a line of fire diagonally from point three to point eight,” she said.
A series of blasts departed from Traskk’s turret and headed toward the bounty hunter’s ship, exactly as she had commanded. Without waiting for the ship to change directions in response to the shots, she started her own diagonal line of laser blasts from point ten to point four. Agile or not, the ship would only be able to avoid getting shot by going one direction. A second before the laser streaks that she and Traskk were sending out were due to cross, she wrenched the turret controls upward and shot ahead of where the ship would have to go. Only a single shot hit the rounded ship, but it was a start. Every victory had to begin somewhere.
“Nice!” she called out, and Traskk gave his own congratulatory slithering noise.
It was coming toward them again, however, and had only been hit once compared to the dozen shots the Griffin Fire had taken.
“Again!” Morgan yelled, but this time, before she and Traskk could get anywhere close to hitting the ship with their crossing blaster attacks, the bounty hunter piloting the round ship swerved away and fired a concussion torpedo at them. Rather than hitting the ship and exploding, it self-destructed just in front of the Griffin Fire, erupting into a hail of sonic bursts that shook the ship to its core. Smaller ships, vessels without as much structural reinforcement, would have been torn apart. A multitude of alarms began sounding all around Morgan.
She punched the button for the intercom and yelled, “Shut the alarms off, Traskk and I can’t hear each other.”
A moment later, the alarms went silent and she knew either A’la Dure or Vere had recognized how important it was to be able to coordinate an attack when they were so obviously outgunned.
In the cockpit, Vere was slamming the Griffin Fire’s control stick in every possible direction to keep dodging the cannon fire that was coming her way.
“We can’t take many more hits,”
Vere said, but even if her co-pilot was talkative there was nothing more that needed to be said on the topic.
Twice she had been able to trick the previous pair of ships into flying by the Griffin Fire. But whereas such a maneuver would mean certain destruction for most ships, this round and highly maneuverable vessel simply adjusted, swiveled its engines, and shot the Griffin Fire at close range before once again darting off.
“If I get my hands on this guy, he won’t have arms to pilot a ship ever again.”
But as she said it, her own vessel took another direct hit. Although the alarms were silent now, flashes of yellow and orange warning lights still signaled that various parts of the Griffin Fire were in dire need of repair to prevent a catastrophic failure.
She thought about using the intercom to tell everyone to get into space armor but knew it was pointless. The bounty hunter wasn’t going to leave them alone after destroying their ship. He would have all the time in the galaxy to fly around and shoot each person as they floated through space.
On a display to her side she saw that Morgan and Traskk had managed to hit the round ship a second time. But at the rate they were going the Griffin Fire would be hit ten more times and be a charred mass of space junk by the time the bounty hunter again.
Another alarm began sounding.
“I thought you turned them off,” Vere said.
A’la Dure pointed straight ahead. It was a new alarm, this one to signal that a ship or multiple ships was coming right at them.
“What took them so long?” Vere said, waiting for a fleet of her father’s W-model Llyushin fighters to come roaring up from Edsall Dark and destroy the bounty hunter.
What she saw, though, was that only two ships were racing toward her, not ten or twelve. And instead of having the distinctive Llyushin frame, they looked like diamonds with six equally spaced wings.
Before Vere could say anything else, these ships, still racing straight toward the Griffin Fire, began firing a barrage of proton torpedoes.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Vere shouted before grabbing the controls so hard her knuckles turned white. She immediately threw the ship into an upward spiral.
If she had been thinking clearly she would have realized how dumb her comment was; the ship had been performing evasive maneuvers ever since appearing through the portal. Nothing had changed just because two more ships had joined the battle. With A’la Dure being the only person who had heard the comment, Vere had no worry of being mocked.
“Where are the Llyushins?” she growled in a voice so furious and inhuman it would have made Traskk proud.
A proton torpedo exploded near the ship, causing one of the Griffin Fire’s engines to rip apart then fall silent. A new set of alarms began to sound but Vere didn’t pay them any attention.
In the rear of the ship, Morgan felt the explosions before she saw what had caused them. Knowing the bounty hunter she was taking aim at was still behind them, she frowned and swiveled the turret to face the other direction.
“Oh no,” she said, seeing two more ships racing at them, neither of which were CasterLan vessels.
Traskk made a noise that sounded like “tssssthh” and she guessed that the Basilisk was agreeing with her sentiment.
Seeing Traskk take aim at the two new ships, Morgan continued firing at the original spherical ship. Without Traskk’s help, though, she knew she had no hope of hitting it. It was a matter of time until they were blown apart. And so close to home.
The pair of six-winged ships darted past her windows after making their first rush by the Griffin Fire. But as soon as they got past their target, they saw the spherical ship that was also attacking the Griffin Fire and it too saw them. The original bounty hunter, not wanting to relinquish his prize, began unloading laser fire and concussion bombs at the pair of multi-winged diamonds. They returned fire in the form of laser blasts and proton missiles.
The space all around the Griffin Fire broke into a cacophony of lights, explosions, and tremors as the bounty hunters fought each other for the right to kill Vere.
“We’re going down,” Vere said into the intercom. “I repeat, we’re going down.”
Morgan jumped out of the turret and climbed back up to the main level. Traskk was still in his turret, still firing away, not realizing his foot-long tongue was darting and jabbing in every direction as he got more and more frustrated with the situation.
Racing to the cockpit, she heard Vere say, “Why isn’t anyone responding?”
Occulus was there, but wasn’t saying anything. Every time Baldwin tried to stand up from the table where Fastolf was collecting the cards that had flown across the room, the buffoon grabbed the physician’s arm and told him to stay seated.
“What’s going on?” Morgan asked.
For once, Vere didn’t tell her to get out of the cockpit.
“I’ve been calling down to Edsall Dark. No one is responding. No one is sending help.”
“Your comms are out.”
“We have a backup system that should be working. No one is replying, though.”
Morgan saw on a cockpit display that one of the three engines was out and one side of the ship’s guidance controls was completely destroyed.
In front of them, the planet that most of them called home was getting larger and larger. Its blue oceans, its neverending forests, not only came into sight, but became big enough that they filled the entire cockpit windows.
Behind them, one of the bounty hunter ships tried to take more shots at the Griffin Fire, but every time it did, the other bounty hunters began attacking it, forcing it to defend itself.
“Can we make it back to CamaLon?” Morgan said, seeing Edsall Dark’s capital off in the distance.
The entire planet—the entire solar system—was part of the CasterLan Kingdom, but Vere knew what she meant. They needed to make it back to the city with Edsall Dark’s main space port, the king’s chambers, and all of their allies, if they wanted to be assured that no more bounty hunters would come after them.
“Maybe?” Vere said, pulling on the ship’s controls, sounding like she didn’t believe her own answer. Then she added, “I doubt it.”
She tried to point the ship at the mammoth crown that sat atop the king’s chamber’s. There was no higher point on the planet than the royal palace and the set of hulking gold cylinders, each larger than the Griffin Fire, that circled the enormous structure. It wasn’t designed to be a crown, but everyone who grew up there thought of it as one, and the name had stuck.
“Maybe,” Vere mumbled.
But right then, another laser blast hit the rear of the ship. Already having lost most of its controls, this last shot knocked out what little thrust and directional capability the Griffin Fire had.
“No!” Vere yelled, wrenching the controls in every direction without any result. After seeing how useless her actions were, she punched the navigational column until her knuckles bled.
Baldwin, finally able to free himself from Fastolf, ran into to the cockpit to see what was happening.
“Pistol,” Vere said into the intercom. “Stabilize yourself. We’re going down.” The android didn’t reply. “Traskk, get out of the turret and get buckled in.”
The roar of frustration that the reptile gave on the opposite side of the ship was so loud that everyone in the cockpit could hear it over the alarms and their own heavy breathing.
Occulus, Baldwin, and Morgan didn’t need to be told to buckle up. Each of them retreated from the cockpit and pulled harnesses over themselves.
Only Vere and A’la Dure remained in the cockpit, watching as the Griffin Fire raced toward the planet.
“No,” Vere said weakly.
Beside her, A’la Dure shrugged and watched the earth race up toward them.
As she watched, her ship curved slightly away from the massive crown that welcomed visitors to their planet. Instead of crash landing at the spaceport or anywhere near it, Vere watched helplessly as the Griffin Fire raced off toward
the forests and the mountains and then, even further beyond.
“No,” she said again. “No.”
Without looking at the controls, she knew that every second the ship raced away from their intended target was another day’s worth of walking back toward her father’s home. She also knew that if no ships had come to save her from the bounty hunters, they weren’t very likely to come pick her up and escort her back home after they crashed.
Just like that, her ship racing across the planet without any hope of steering it back toward the intended destination, any hope of getting back to see her father within six days vanished.
Now, nothing would stop the Vonnegan fleet from invading Edsall Dark and destroying it as they had all the other CasterLan planets and colonies along their path. Nothing would stop the needless war and suffering that was going to ensue. All hope was lost.
And then the Griffin Fire crashed into the planet and everything went dark.
29
A trickle of water. Barely any light.
In the shadows, a collection of boulders, each larger than the last, each covered with moss.
Other than the sound of water dripping, there was no noise. No movement.
The relative silence was broken by the Green Knight, almost invisible in the darkness, grunting an unhappy hum. His shoulders rose with irritation and impatience. His gloved hands gripped his axe until it creaked from the incredible force.
Behind the Green Knight, in the darkness, a voice said, “She is getting closer. She will be here. I know it.”
30
One of the last things Vere remembered seeing were the mountains approaching. She had been trying to decide if it was better to lower the tinder walls so no one aboard the Griffin Fire would have to see their impending doom. As they barely cleared the mountaintops, that thought was replaced by the wrenching knowledge that they would never have a chance of getting back in time to see her father alive, let alone prevent a needless war.
The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) Page 11
