“This isn’t some theater show,” Moses said.
“Oh, you’re most certainly wrong about that. All of life is a play, whether you realize it or not. And at the end of this particular act, the Rutheni will be rewarded with full access to the higher-level rifts on this planet.”
Flanagan marched over to the comms device and pressed the button. “One problem with your plan. It requires killing us. I don’t see you doing that, Mr. Director.”
The Rutheni knight seemed taken aback at Flanagan’s words. “Dealing with the rabble on the RTF’s worst vessel is a simple task for twelve Rutheni knights. You underestimate us.”
Moses’ expression turned grim. “You fired upon the Tachionese nobles. You will leave the palace, or we will kill you.”
“Damn it, Moses.” Flanagan palmed his face. “Why you gotta go and give them an option to flee? That’s no fun.”
“Tell him we’re going to chop his toes off and mail them back to the Rutheni emperor,” Leith said.
“Tell him we’ll drink beer from their hollowed-out skulls,” Olav recommended.
“Have you ever tried to do that? You have to fill in the eye sockets, and you really can’t fit much liquid in it,” Leith explained with a heavy sigh.
“But what beer I can fit in will taste ten times better.” The berserker chuckled, and it became clear to me that everyone onboard the Stalwart was all sorts of insane.
And maybe I was too, since I would stand beside them if it came to a fight. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be a member of the crew for much longer, I was currently a squire on the Stalwart. I was also committed to defending the innocents on this planet.
“I’m not saying that,” Moses said. “This is serious. These guys are breaking the treaty. This could be the beginning of a war. We can’t run into battle unless it’s absolutely necessary. Even if we’re provoked, it could still mean war within the Triumvirate.”
“Take a page out of their book,” Olav said. “We’ll destroy the video feeds. Burn their bodies once we’re done. Threaten the Tachionese nobles into silence. No one will ever know.”
“If this is meant to be a covert mission, I guess I can’t ship any body parts to the Rutheni emperor, right?” Leith asked, seeming genuinely disappointed.
“No one is shipping anything anywhere. But I don’t see a way out of this without a fight. These Rutheni have done a great evil. They must be brought to account.” Moses turned back to the comms. “On second thought, we’re not gonna let you leave.”
“See you soon, shitheads,” Flanagan yelled into the microphone.
The Rutheni knight raised a finger to the camera and returned to the other eleven enemy knights waiting in the garden.
“Alright,” Olav said to everyone gathered in the foyer. “Let’s go kill these bastards.”
His confidence made my stomach churn with nerves. This sounded like a bad idea. Twelve knights against four were terrible odds, not to mention the Rutheni soldiers who would join their knights.
The Tachionese official had said the eastern door wouldn’t hold up against Runetech weaponry. Now the Stalwart’s knights were practically begging the Rutheni to breach the palace.
I couldn’t stay silent any longer. I had to make them see sense.
“Sirs!” I said a little too loudly. The knights whipped around to face me. “Ah, I don’t know whether taunting the enemy is such a clever idea. There are twelve knights out there and only four in here. I don’t mean to state the obvious, but we’re outnumbered.”
“It’s okay,” Moses said to me with a wide smile. “We got this, Nick.”
“They better get that door open soon, or I’m gonna go over there and open it for them.” Olav jumped on his toes with eagerness.
Moses turned to the other Space Knights. “We have less than an hour before the Tachionese troops arrive from the barracks. What’re the chances those Rutheni knights won’t breach the east wing until then?”
As though the enemy had heard the shield knight’s question, the screen showing the entrance to the east wing blacked out.
“The enemy has delivered an EMP wave to the tech throughout the east wing,” Zac said as he peered at the console. “The defense and surveillance systems are no longer functional in the area, sir.”
“Then they’re minutes away from knocking down the door and entering the palace,” Moses said.
Olav, Leith, and Flanagan let out a cheer and pumped their weapons into the air. I glanced at the other squires, and they shared my confused expression. The knights seemed almost childish in their hunger for battle, as though fighting was some kind of game.
While the Stalwart’s crew often appeared crazy, they showed no shortage of bravery or honor. I had trouble believing such men were capable of treachery against the Queen.
Had I made a mistake by taking the duke’s mission? Polgar seemed intent on the idea that these men were traitors, but I saw no clear evidence besides missions unreported via the RTF’s chain of command.
The day had already been filled with fighting, and every muscle in my body cried out for rest. But I couldn’t allow my aching body to prevent me from giving my all against the enemy.
The Stalwart was my ship. These men were my brothers in arms.
And they were about to fight a battle with odds they couldn’t possibly surmount.
“How soon can we get to the east wing?” Moses asked Zac.
The artilleryman touched the console, and a map of the palace appeared on the monitor. “The map suggests the east wing might be a maze, sir.”
“A fucking maze.” Flanagan’s eyes widened like a child discovering a new playground. “I love mazes!”
The only maze I’d ever been inside was the Wayfarer commune on Bratton, and that had ended with dozens of dead innocents.
“Keep your head on, Flanagan,” Moses said. “We got somewhere to be. Need to deal with these Rutheni quickly and ensure the nobles are safe. Zac, you got some details on this maze?”
The artilleryman stared at the computer for a bit and hit a few keys. “I think so, sir. I’m patching through a layout of the maze to everyone’s prot-belts. I can’t guarantee it’s current, though.”
“What do you mean? Recent renovations or something?” Olav said.
“I think it moves.” Zac’s voice was unsure, as though he didn’t think the knights would take him seriously.
“Great,” Moses said. “As if finding those Rutheni inside a maze wouldn’t be difficult enough. Now we learn the thing moves.”
“I enjoy hide and seek,” Leith said as he picked his teeth with the end of a dirk. “Just when I thought this day wasn’t going to get any better.” He peered down at his prot-belt, and I saw hundreds of scratches across the item. The lines etched into the metal looked a lot like kill tallies. “I claim three of those Rutheni.”
“You know that’s not how it works,” Olav said as he plaited his mohawk and activated his full-helmet. “It’s first come, first served.”
“We still counting assists?” Flanagan tweaked the tuning machines on the headstock of his stringed axe. “Because I have a new tune I wouldn’t mind testing.”
A thunderous sound rocked the walls, and dust drifted from the ceiling.
“That’ll be the Rutheni breaching the eastern door,” Olav said as though he were announcing the arrival of a friend. “Let’s go kill ‘em!”
Chapter 19
I stopped outside the doorway to the palace’s east wing. The lights were out from the Rutheni’s EMP weapon, but moonlight shone through the reinforced glass skylights every few meters along the corridor. Fountains trickled down the walls, and the mosaics of the many-winged goddess looked devilish in the low light.
The glowing runes on equipment faded as the knights and squires activated their dampeners.
After selecting the maze layout Zac had uploaded to my prot-belt, I stared at the portion of my visor showing the maze’s intersecting corridors. I hadn’t come up with a good theory a
s to why the king built a maze inside his palace and examining the layout didn’t give me any answers.
I peered around the narrow entrance corridor and searched for any indication the enemies might be nearby. I didn’t find any, but my eyes remained focused. These Rutheni were equipped with cloaking tech, although I doubted it would be capable of masking heat signatures. If any kingdom could afford that level of technology, it was the Rutheni.
“Flanagan, can you give us a runesong before we set out?” Moses asked.
“I can muster something up.” The herald knight brushed his blonde hair out of his eyes and rested his axe-harp on one knee. He gave it a strum, and a clear note reverberated through the corridor.
After tuning the instrument a little, he broke into a riff that resounded in my ears and filled my limbs with magical energy. All my tiredness faded, and I felt like I could lift eight-hundred kilos above my head with ease.
“Bloody show off,” Olav muttered. “I could kill all the Rutheni knights without your enchantments.”
“Alright then,” Flanagan said. “I’ll apply a curse, and we’ll see how well you do.”
Olav grabbed the axe-harp’s fretboard and pulled it toward him. “Don’t you dare, or I’m never sharing my beer with you again.”
“Well, that is a terrifying punishment,” Flanagan said, and Olav released the instrument. “I shall throw myself upon the Rutheni’s blades.” Both the herald and berserker wore smirks, and I guessed they jested with each other like this all the time.
“Enough,” Moses said. “We have work to do. Forty-one minutes until the Tachionese troops arrive from the barracks. I’d like to avoid too many of their number getting killed, so let’s take out these Rutheni before the reinforcements get here. We’ll travel as one to make sure we don’t get lost. Squires fall behind the knights. I’ll lead with an enhanced prot-field.”
Moses’ chest armor glowed, and then a forcefield extended in front of him like a golden net of interconnected hexagonal shapes. It reminded me of Emeric, and I shuddered a little.
The shield knight marched through the east wing’s doorway, followed by Olav, Leith, and Flanagan. I took the foremost position among the squires, constantly watching for any sign of a heat signature on my visor. The detection system didn’t work through walls, but it would at least notify before anything got a jump on me.
The actual process of searching the maze took some time since we needed to enter every room and ensure enemies weren’t hiding among the clutter. It seemed like the maze’s chambers functioned as storage rooms since they held hundreds of objects made from precious metals and encrusted with priceless jewels.
I thought about how someone so rich couldn’t even afford food for his people while the knights searched a small chamber filled with golden statues of the many-winged goddess.
If Tachion hadn’t been the only habitable planet inside the Augusti Vetera System, the king could have sold these treasures for food and aid. An interstellar trip would be too costly. With jump magic restricted to the Triumvirate, they’d have to travel to the outer reaches of the galaxy to the rune beacon and barter for passage elsewhere. Ships filled with these goods would barely pay for the fuel, let alone a crew and upkeep for the transport vessel.
I was standing in the doorway, watching the knights maneuver from one side of the chamber to the other. Moses stopped at the far end, knelt beside a statue with its face obscured by a helmet with dragon-like wings jutting from the sides. It took me a second to recognize the helmet as a Rutheni item, and then Moses spun around.
“Enemies are close by!” he screamed. “Prepare to engage!”
The knights leaped into fighting stances, their backs to each other.
“There’s nothing showing up,” Olav said through gritted teeth. “Their cloaking tech must be able to hide their heat signals.”
“Squires!” Moses yelled. “The Rutheni could be anywhere. Keep your eyes--”
The knight was cut off as a grinding sound filled the corridor, and I jumped back as a slab of granite slammed over the doorway. The ground beneath me shook like an earthquake, and I grabbed onto the wall to stop myself from falling.
“Everyone still alive?” Richard’s voice cut through the darkness.
Two grunts answered him, and I added my own.
I deactivated my dampeners so my runes could illuminate the passageway. Dust flittered through the air, and specks marred my vision as the light from my runes touched them. The other squires were all covered in gray dust, but none of them looked hurt as they stood.
I whirled to face the obstructed doorway. The chunk of rock had sealed the knights in the room while the squires were still in the hallway. Either the Rutheni had planned for the knights to get sealed on the other side, or we’d somehow triggered one of the maze’s traps the EMP hadn’t taken out.
We were now sectioned off from the Stalwart’s knights. Prime pickings for the Rutheni enemies.
“What are we gonna do?” Nathan asked, his voice trembling.
“Probably get killed by enemy knights,” Neville hissed. “This is the perfect time for them to attack.”
“Do you have to be so pessimistic?” Richard asked, and his tone was soaked in worry. I couldn’t see his eyes through his visor, but I guessed they were wide and filled with terror.
Without the presence of the knights, the twins seemed to lose all their confidence. They’d fought well against the enemies earlier today, but I guessed their assurance was slowly coming to an end. The darkness probably wasn’t helping much either.
“Deactivate your dampeners,” I said to them, knowing they were a few seconds away from panicking. “Make sure you have plenty of light. I’m gonna see if I can get through the obstruction. You guys keep an eye on the other side of this corridor. We don’t want anyone sneaking up on us.”
Richard and Nathan unsheathed their swords, removed their dampeners, and faced the darkness on the other side of the doorway with their glowing weapons.
Neville came alongside me as I pushed against the granite block. He added his strength, but it didn’t budge in the slightest. We were both empowered by Flanagan’s runesong, so the block must have weighed at least a few tons.
The open channel on my comms crackled with feedback. “Squires! We are surrounded.” I heard Moses grunt through my earpiece, followed by a bloodcurdling battle cry.
The other squires looked at me with concern, and I did my best not to join in their alarm.
“We gotta find a way through this obstruction,” I said. “Those men on the other side are the Stalwart’s knights.”
Even though they might be insurrectionists, I couldn’t sit back while they fought the enemy.
“Let me try,” Richard requested, and I moved out of his way. The squire slammed his shield against the brick obstruction. The stone sparked as the metal made contact, but it barely left a scratch.
I pulled the laser rifle from my magnetons and aimed at the granite slab. “You guys get back. I’ll try to blast a hole through it.”
The squires retreated fifteen meters behind me, and I emptied the entire gas cartridge into the wall. Besides a noxious smell, the rifle didn’t do anything at all.
“Damnit,” I said. “We can’t get through.”
Frustration coiled in my stomach, and I fought to keep despair from ensnaring me.
“Uhh . . . I think something is wrong.”
I turned to Neville, ready to scream his head off for stating the obvious when I noticed he was standing in the opposite direction of the doorway.
He held his rapier above his head, so the runes illuminated six meters in front of him. “This corridor doesn’t lead to the same chambers as it did before.”
I peered down the barely lit passageway and didn’t see any of the same doorways we’d entered when clearing the maze. In fact, I didn’t see any entrances at all. When we’d triggered the trap, the granite slab had come down, but the corridor must have also shifted beneath our feet.
Now we were in a totally different part of the maze, and this area hadn’t been scoured by the Stalwart’s crew. For all I knew, Rutheni knights could be hiding around the very next bend. Plus, the layout on our prot-belts would no longer be useful. Even if we found a landmark, there was no guarantee the rest of the labyrinth had remained like it was on the map.
The other squires seemed to share my thoughts, and I pushed my own doubts from my mind. They needed me to remain calm and focused. We were going to get out of here, and if we encountered any enemies along the way, we would kill them.
“Follow me,” I said to the others after glaring at the impenetrable doorway one last time.
I thought mostly about what other booby traps the maze might have in store for us. Enemy knights were bad enough, but speaking of other traps lying within the dark passageways would probably make the squires more likely to freeze with fear. I couldn’t keep the information a secret, though.
“We might have triggered a trap earlier. I think that’s what happened when the corridor shifted, which is why what’s beyond looks so foreign. The EMP took out all the east wing’s tech, so this shifting corridor must work on a system of gears and pulleys. Keep your eyes peeled for old-fashioned tripwires and pressure sensitive tiles.”
“I’m thinking maybe we should wait it out in here,” Nathan said as he froze on the spot. “The Stalwart’s knights will deal with the enemies.”
“Probably a good idea,” Richard said, agreeing with his brother’s worries for the first time.
Neville shoved them both from behind, and the squires almost went sprawling.
“We can’t stay here,” the nobleman said to them. “If those Rutheni kill the knights, it’ll only be the artillerymen and us left to defend the Tachionese nobles before reinforcements arrive. It is our duty to protect the innocents and our artillerymen brothers and sisters.”
Space Knight Page 29
