The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (15 page)

They passed through a long expanse of rocky mounds and crevices before coming upon a crater the size of a Solar Carrier.

“My god,” Baldwin said, “I’ve been on colonies that were smaller than this.”

Unlike naturally occurring craters that were caused by meteors and space debris, the crater caused by the exploding Excalibur ship was perfectly smooth. If they hadn’t known that the explosion had killed all of the workers who were trying to excavate the ship from the asteroid, Baldwin would have guessed that a giant machine had scooped up a portion of the rock and let it slide away. And yet, as powerful as the blast had been—enough force to destroy everything nearby and eliminate any sign of the Excalibur ship—the area to either side of the crater was undisturbed.

“Glad I wasn’t here when it exploded,” Quickly said.

During the thousands of years that explorers had been trying to figure out ways to free the Excalibur Armada from its rocky prison, a few dozen of the ships had detonated. Standing at the edge of one of the giant craters left behind, the sheer scale of the object that had been there was overwhelming. All he could do was shake his head in disbelief. And yet, in the totality of the asteroid, it was only a little hole.

Baldwin’s pulse increased. He was sweating. Then he looked out at the rest of space, which made even the asteroid seem insignificant, and his breathing became loud and his legs wobbled.

Quickly steadied him. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just breathe.”

Baldwin forced himself to close his eyes for a moment and took in some long, slow breaths.

When he was calm again he said, “The size of the ship that was here makes our transport seem so miniscule.” He choked the words out at first, then got his tongue back. “But then the rest of the asteroid makes this one crater seem tiny. And then the expanse of space all around us makes the asteroid seem like a pebble.”

“Buddy, everything you see in space is incredibly humbling if you allow it to be,” Quickly said. “The galaxy is always ready and willing to remind you of how insignificant you are if you let it.”

It took them half an hour just to walk down the side of the crater. If they walked clear to the other side of the gaping hole it would take another two hours.

Quickly looked at the readings on the wrist control of his space armor, then announced, “We won’t have much time to explore. It will take twice as long to get out of the crevice as it did to walk down. And then we still have to make our way back to the ship. Let’s give ourselves ten minutes, then we’ll head back. If we need to, we can bring the ship down into the crater to save time on our next trek.”

Baldwin nodded and they set off.

Any hope they had of uncovering a clue was rapidly extinguished. There was nothing to learn from where the Excalibur ship had been embedded in the asteroid. Every trace of the vessel was gone. The one thing that did interest Baldwin was the smoothness of the exposed rock where the explosion had occurred. Beyond that, it looked like any other slab of stone. The only parts that weren’t uniform were the places that had been pelted by meteors in the years since the ship had exploded and left the crater.

“How’s it possible?” Baldwin said, running his fingertips against the smooth stone. “What kind of explosive system can destroy a supposedly indestructible ship while leaving the stone like this?”

Quickly shrugged. “If I knew that, buddy, I’d also probably know who put the ships in the stone in the first place, and I’d also probably know how to get them out.”

Baldwin closed his eyes and thought. The best way to come up with an answer that no one else could discover was to ask a question no one else was asking. For ages, people had been asking who put the ships in the stone and if the vessels could be freed. Baldwin ran through a series of different questions. How could the ships be impervious to any type of galactic exposure, yet self destruct so thoroughly and completely that any trace of them vanished with the explosion? How could the sensors ignore random meteor strikes but explode at the first sign of intentional tampering?

Seeing that Baldwin had his eyes shut, Quickly shook his head and said, “There are too many mysteries to solve. Nothing about this asteroid makes sense.”

On their way back to the ship, they examined parts of the crater where small meteors had impacted. Crater after crater they found nothing but holes where two pieces of the galaxy, both on their own trajectories, had happened to collide. Each one revealed nothing but ordinary craters.

Then Quickly called out, “Here, Baldwin. Look at this!”

Baldwin pulled himself out of the ten foot wide crater he was standing in and jogged to the one where Quickly’s head was sticking out. The hole was just like the others, except, at the bottom, Quickly was standing on metal instead of stone.

“One of the ships,” Baldwin said, lowering himself into the same hole.

Quickly nodded. “It must run length wise,” he said, motioning ahead and behind him. “The rest of the ship must be completely encased in stone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Why wasn’t there an explosion?” The physician crouched down, rubbed the metal, and added, “Any time someone came here and tried to drill into the asteroid, the nearest ship detonated and killed everyone who was trying to claim the Excalibur Armada for themselves. But meteors are hitting the asteroid all the time and nothing happens. No ships explode. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s almost as if the asteroid is smart enough to know the difference between an attempt to free the ships and a random meteor.”

Baldwin frowned. “That would be the most advanced sensor system ever created.”

“To protect the most advanced fleet ever created,” Quickly added.

He had a point.

“But why would someone go to the trouble of building such an advanced and invincible army, just to keep it locked away in a self-destructing chunk of rock with an equally advanced system of sensors?”

Quickly patted Baldwin on the shoulder and shook his head. “That’s the question that has plagued people for thousands of years. But also, why they would not only build the army and keep it locked away, but also why they would put it in an asteroid that circled the solar system so everyone could see it?”

Baldwin groaned and collapsed on the ground.

“Buddy, you okay?” Quickly said. Thinking the physician was having another panic attack, he told Baldwin to take deep breaths.

“It’s not that,” Baldwin said, trying and failing to regain his composure. “What hope do we have of getting these ships free? You said it yourself: people have been trying to figure this mystery out for thousands of years. What chance do a doctor and a pilot have of solving the problem?” And then, putting his helmeted face in his gloves, “Everyone we love is going to be killed by the Vonnegan fleet.”

Quickly didn’t answer. What was he supposed to say, that maybe they would have more luck than the explorers who were a hundred times smarter than them and had unlimited resources to experiment on the asteroid? The fact was that he agreed with Baldwin; this mission was foolish.

They were five minutes past the time he had said they needed to start heading back, but he gave Baldwin another moment to collect himself. When the physician finally got back up to his feet, he nodded and began climbing back out of the crater.

They walked back in silence, both of them trying to figure out if there was any significance to what they had just seen.

Quickly was right that it took longer to climb out of the hole left by the exploding ship than it had to climb down into it. Even with little gravity holding them to the asteroid, the crevice presented awkward angles from which they had to pull themselves out of. By the time Baldwin was near the top, he was huffing for air and a sensor on his space armor was telling him he was soon going to run out of oxygen.

His eyes widened when he turned toward Quickly to tell him he only had two minutes of oxygen left and at least five minutes of walking before they got back to the ship.

“Don’t worry,” Quickly said. “We’ll have Fastolf bring the ship to us.”

Baldwin’s eyes began to blank out as he tried not to panic.

“Fastolf,” Quickly said. “We need you to bring the ship here. We’re running out of oxygen.”

Baldwin stumbled backward another step, then his heel caught on a rock and he fell backward, hitting the back of his helmet against a stone.

“Fastolf?” Baldwin said, then growled when he realized the man was probably sleeping off a hangover.

He reached down to pull Baldwin back up to his feet, but the physician was crawling away on hands and knees.

Still scurrying away, he said, “Quickly! Quickly!”

The pilot responded in a calm, soothing voice to assure Baldwin that they were going to be fine. “Yeah?”

Baldwin pushed himself to his feet and looked over his shoulder. “Quickly!” Even as he did, he was scrambling to get away.

“What is it, buddy? Calm down. Everything will be fine.”

The next time Baldwin turned and looked behind him, Quickly realized the physician wasn’t looking at him. He was looking past him. He turned just in time to see a shower of tiny meteorites flying toward him. None of them were larger than a finger, but just one, depending where it struck him, could be lethal.

“Move! Fast!” Baldwin was mumbling, crawling across the ground again after having stumbled, not even thinking clearly enough to remember how to get back up to his feet and run.

That was when Quickly understood two things. The first was that Baldwin hadn’t been saying his name; he was trying to say they should get away as fast as possible, but none of the other options, like
Now!
or
Urgently!
or
Right this instant!
had come to the physician’s mind. The second realization was that he had completely ignored the fact that one aspect of an asteroid speeding through space was that it constantly got pelted by other bits of rock and ice and debris that littered the solar system. They had just been looking at the damage that hundreds of such projectiles had done to the asteroid and yet they had never concerned themselves with anything other than how much oxygen they had left.

That was all Quickly had time to think about before the first tiny meteor hit his hand. For something so tiny it caused an immense amount of damage. His hand was gone. No piece of it remained. Before he could do anything, however, a second bit of rock hit him at the elbow. His forearm exploded away from the impact. Then a third piece of rock hit him. This time, his shoulder. His bicep and tricep were gone.

Then he lost consciousness.

30

Inside the medical transport, Fastolf was sound asleep. Every once in a while, he gave a tremendous grumbling snore that echoed through the ship and sounded as if he were choking to death in his dreams. The following moment he was quiet and peaceful until the next gulp of air was needed.

With his feet up and his head back, all he was missing was a pillow. His arm dangled by his side. In his hand, his flask sloshed each time he belched another gigantic snore.

The ships’ comms were on, and Baldwin’s yelling could be heard through it, but nothing would disturb Fastolf from his sleep. If he could take naps in the middle of Eastcheap and not be awoken by the fighting and yelling all around him, a little bit of screaming through a ship’s comms system wouldn’t disturb his slumber.

31

The meteor shower was over as fast as it started. Baldwin looked at where Quickly stood.

Most of the rocks had landed inside the crater that the two men had just climbed out of. Only a few pieces had struck near them, but those few were responsible for the horrors Baldwin now saw in front of him. Quickly’s right arm was gone. He was staggering forward but Baldwin saw an emptiness in his eyes that told him the pilot had gone into shock. He fell forward, flat on his face, before Baldwin could reach out and grab him. The face plate of his space armor smacked against rock. The sickening crack was transmitted through the microphone of his helmet so Baldwin was able to hear the crunch through the speaker by his ear.

“Quickly?” Baldwin said. Then, remembering the ship, he said, “Fastolf?”

He began to cough.

“Fastolf?”

No answer.

Why was he coughing so much?

He remembered the limited amount of oxygen he had left and how much he had just used to scramble away from the meteorites in his panic.

I’m out of oxygen
, he tried to say, but no words came. Then he too lost consciousness and fell beside Quickly’s body.

32

The yelling had stopped by the time Fastolf did wake up. None of Baldwin’s shouting had disturbed him from his rest. If it weren’t for his own tongue, which had fallen back in his throat as he slept and caused him to choke, he wouldn’t have woken up at all.

Now that he was awake, he wiped the dirt from the corners of his eyes and yawned. Looking at the ship’s cockpit display, he saw that Baldwin and Quickly were a short distance away and figured they were fine.

Closing his eyes, he tried to go back to sleep. A thought kept troubling him, though. It had nothing to do with the safety of the men outside on the asteroid’s surface; it had to do with something Morgan had said to him before leaving for Dela Turkomann.

“You’re a bad influence,” she had told him, grabbing his lapels so firmly that he couldn’t move. “Vere listens to you and you’re misleading her.”

Indignant, the only thing he could think to say at the time had been, “How do you know she isn’t misleading me!”

Judging by the look that had crossed Morgan’s eyes, he had expected her to punch him square in the face again. Instead, she had said, “This won’t last much longer. It can’t. The day will arrive, and very soon, when you are thrown out on the street like the worthless bum you are.”

Now, sitting in the medical transport’s cockpit, he still grumbled about what she had said to him.

“Worthless bum?” he mumbled. “I’ll show her who the worthless bum is.”

Then he closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

33