The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (29 page)

“It doesn’t have to be you. It could be someone who steals your communicator. It could be someone posing as you. I doubt the guards even verified your identity before you entered the tent.”

“Of course they did,” Vere said, indignant.

Morgan called out, “Cormac, did you search Vere and her friends before they entered the command center?”

From the outside, a voice answered, “No, Morgan. I’m sorry.”

Morgan shook her head as she pondered how Edsall Dark had become burdened with such an immature ruler.

“Given the bad influences you surround yourself with, it’s amazing you follow any rules at all.” Then, looking at Traskk and Baldwin, she added, “Present company excluded.”

Traskk’s tongue darted in and out of his mouth as he gave a low growl.

Vere tossed the tiny communicator device to Morgan, who released her grip from Vere’s shoulder.

The tent was filled with a variety of familiar and new faces. Traskk and Baldwin were there, of course. And Morgan. Other than them and two others, Vere didn’t recognize anyone. Vere’s eyelids became heavy then as she remembered who was missing.

“How is Fastolf doing?” she asked.

Morgan looked both offended and confused. “How would I know? And, more importantly, why would I care?”

Vere held her breath for a moment before she asked, “Didn’t he turn himself over to Cade when he got back to Edsall Dark?”

Morgan scoffed. “Not that I’ve heard. Then again, and of course you wouldn’t know this, but I’ve been here since our last meeting, doing this thing I like to call,
Preparing for all-out galactic war
.”

Vere was incredulous. “He didn’t turn himself over?”

Morgan smiled, her interest piqued. She called to the other side of the tent and asked, “General, do you happen to know if Fastolf turn himself over to Cade?”

Westmoreland looked up from the schematics he was reviewing with his men, shook his head, then went back to his meeting.

“What’s this all about?”

“He messed up at the Excalibur,” Vere said. “I couldn’t let him put anyone else at risk, so I ordered him to fly Quickly back to Edsall Dark for medical attention and then turn himself in.”

As pleased as Morgan was to hear that Vere had finally lost patience with the drunken thief, it was difficult for her to show her delight at that moment because of how sullen Vere looked as she relayed the story.

“I’m beginning to think,” Vere said, “that we won’t see him or hear from him ever again.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Morgan replied, wanting badly to add that she
would have been a lot happier if she’d never met him in the first place. She resisted the temptation for Vere’s sake.

Vere tried to smile. Losing Occulus and A’la Dure had been tough on her. Now, she had lost another of the few people in her life she had truly trusted. He hadn’t been a good influence, but he had been a good friend, and that had always been enough.

Traskk gave a soft whimper and tapped the back of Vere’s leg with his tail. The Basilisk’s senses were so adept that he probably realized the same thing she was thinking: he was the only one, other than Vere, who still remained from their days at Eastcheap. It seemed like only yesterday that they had spent every waking hour drinking, thieving, fighting, and laughing. Now, it was only the two of them.

“Okay, Morgan,” Vere said, trying to smile. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

Morgan nodded, the stand-off from moments earlier already forgotten. “Much more important than that,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on with the Excalibur Armada.”

Baldwin and Traskk found a pair of empty seats and closed their eyes. Vere and Morgan began to whisper. After a moment, Morgan called for Westmoreland to join them. Everyone else, knowing what was expected, left the tent to give them privacy. Vere pointed to the largest map on the wall, found the sector she was looking for, and proceeded to tell Morgan and Westmoreland everything she knew and everything she hoped.

For more than an hour, she spoke and the other two listened. Their eyebrows raised when they heard Vere’s plan, their eyes widening with each new detail. When Vere finished with a triumphant, “And that’s how we win the war,” Morgan and Westmoreland both laughed with relief and disbelief.

66

A voice called out from the distance. “Vere.”

After having explained her plan for the Excalibur Armada to Morgan and Westmoreland, Vere wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Having spent almost every waking hour on the asteroid, she had lost track of the last time she had gotten a decent night’s rest. As soon as she closed her eyes, she was fast asleep.

“Vere.”

Upon hearing her name, her eyes snapped open again. She realized she was either dreaming or was still awake but so tired her mind was playing tricks on her. This realization was obvious because when she opened her eyes, she was standing on one of the Excalibur ships, without space armor. Around her, CasterLan crews of all sorts worked on the armada, carrying out her orders. A part of her, deep in the recesses of what she would ever admit, even to herself, somehow knew that what she was seeing was reality; she really was, against all logic, witnessing her people work on the Excalibur vessels, without oxygen or any other form of protection.

“Vere.”

The voice sounded further away this time.

“Mother?”

There was silence for a while. Vere turned her head one direction, then another, straining to hear which way the word might have come from so she could move closer and see Isabel again.

This time, when the voice spoke, it was so soft and far away that Vere could barely make out the words: “The Excalibur Armada won’t save you.”

She squinted and leaned forward, struggling to decipher the faint words. They were so soft she couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man, a stranger or a relative.

“Mother?”

“Vere...”

The voice faded away.

This time, Vere couldn’t be sure if she had heard her name at all or if the idea of her name being called had actually sounded from within her head, a sort of echo placed inside her thoughts.

“Mother?”

No response. Isabel, if she had ever actually been there, was gone.

Vere opened her eyes and was back inside the Griffin Fire. She could hear Traskk’s steady, growling respiration as he slept on the bunk in the next room.

“She’s right,” a man said from behind her.

Without a moment’s thought, she had her Meursault blade out and at the man’s neck. A trail of dark gray vapor, the color of the ship’s control panels, rippled through the air along the blade’s path.

Mortimous laughed, completely indifferent to the deadliest sword in the galaxy. Even behind his robes and in the shadows, she knew this magician—or wise man or whatever he was—was genuinely amused by her response, although she couldn’t tell if it was because he couldn’t be killed, even by her blade, or perhaps because he knew something she didn’t.

“What do you want?” she asked, lowering the blade from his neck to his chest.

“Your mother is trying to help you,” said Mortimous.

“And you?”

“And I’m trying to help you as well.”

“Why couldn’t you just have said Isabel was the Matron of the Mineral? Why does everything have to be a riddle with you?”

“Don’t wake your friend,” Mortimous said in a soothing voice, the index finger of one hand coming up to his lips and his other hand motioning toward the door to Traskk’s quarters.

“You should be the one worried about waking him, not me.”

But she knew that if he wasn’t afraid of having a Meursault blade at his neck, he wouldn’t very well be intimidated by a groggy, enraged Basilisk.

“Where is she?” Vere asked about her mother.

“Isabel is still learning. She is limited in where she can go and where she can’t. One day, though, she will be able to go anywhere she likes.”

“Like you?”

Mortimous nodded.

“Then do everyone a favor. Stop the war before it ever starts. You can save thousands of lives. All you have to do is appear in Mowbray’s quarters and slit his throat while he sleeps. If anyone can get past his guards, it’s you. You can even have my sword to do the job.”

Mortimous sighed. “If it were only that simple.”

“You said you can go anywhere.”

“I can.”

“But you won’t?”

“No.” For once, there was no pleasure in Mortimous’s voice.

“Tell your powerful alien friends that it’s important.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“What are they called, anyway? Tell me and I’ll call them myself.”

“They don’t follow our concepts of time or space, so they definitely don’t follow the idea of language and formal names.”

“They’re supposed to be everywhere and every
when
, and yet they don’t have a name?”

He shrugged. “Every word is their name and yet they have no name.”

She groaned. “Mortimous.”

“It’s not a riddle. Everyone who sees them calls them something different. It’s personal to each individual.”

A memory, far in the back of her thoughts, came roaring to the front. Galen had told her he was seeing things no one else understood. He had told her he wasn’t part of an organization, and yet he and the others who followed the same path had all disappeared.

“The Word,” she said.

Mortimous nodded. “It is different for everyone.”

All of this time she had thought of the secret organization as a group of lunatics following the teachings of an insane leader. Now she realized that each of them had, in some limited capacity, found the same aliens that Mortimous had discovered, and he was teaching each of them how to remain in contact with them. The Word wasn’t a thing or an idea, it was how each person came to think of a race of aliens. And the actual
word
—their name—was different for each person who encountered them.

“Let me see them,” she said. “I’ll convince them that Mowbray needs to die.”

“I’m sorry, Vere. You aren’t ready. But also,” he said, his voice taking on an apologetic tone, “the beings you seek think of your impending battle as a triviality.”

“A triviality? Try telling that to the thousands of people who will lose their lives.”

“Vere, there are hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, and a hundred billion planets. Amongst that vastness, spanning the entire history and future of the universe, they see someone who calls himself the ruler of one planet preparing to battle someone who calls herself the ruler of another planet in an act of violence that will last hours or days. Compare that to everything that has ever happened amongst those hundreds of billions of stars in the infinite span of time. So yes, in that context, this war seems extremely trivial.”

Her fingers gripped at the handle of her sword. If she didn’t think he would simply disappear, she would tackle him and use the blunt end of the weapon to pulverize his face.

She could hear the amusement in his voice when he added, “But I can help you in other ways.”

“By telling me that the Excalibur Armada won’t save me?” When the robed figure nodded, she grew angry. “How is that helping me? How does that do anything for me at all?”

She was so irritated she wanted to test her theory and drive her sword through the sage’s stomach. She could hear Traskk’s tail sliding across the floor of the Griffin Fire, and she knew he was awake. As if to confirm that he wasn’t pleased at being woken up, he let out a long, guttural growl.

“It’s okay,” she said through the door that separated them. The last thing she needed was him seeing the stranger inside their ship and going berserk.

But when she turned back to face Mortimous, he was already gone.

After Traskk gurgled a question, Vere said, “Just ignore me and go back to sleep. I’m losing my mind.”

But she knew she wasn’t losing her mind at all. She had heard her mother’s voice in the distance. Somehow, she had been standing on an Excalibur ship at one moment and then awakened to be back in her ship the next moment. And Mortimous had been aboard her ship. Both he and her mother were telling her that the newly freed armada wouldn’t save her or her kingdom.

“That’s fine,” she mumbled to them. “I’ll show you.”

If they didn’t think an invincible fleet could save the CasterLan Kingdom, it just proved they were the ones who were out of touch with reality. Not her.

67

Back in Eastcheap, life continued as normal. No one in the dive bar on Folliet-Bright where Vere had once spent all of her time cared about the impending battle. The miners, thieves, and gangsters who frequented the bar didn’t lose any sleep about how long the battle would last or who would win. Their lives would continue on in the same fashion as they always had, regardless of which kingdom’s flag floated in space following the battle’s conclusion.

The MaqMac miners would still wake up the next day, go deep toward the planet’s core, and excavate more minerals. The Gthothch surveyers would continue to search underground for more places to establish mining operations. The Rens and Watchneens would still contribute their part to the daily operations.

The thieves would go on stealing until they got caught. In Eastcheap, that meant the thief would either be killed or a fight would break out all the way from one side of the bar to the other. Two other patrons would have too much to drink and do something to offend the other. They would enter into a duel, and the body of one or both would be carried out back and left in the alley. If there was a victor, he would receive a congratulatory drink while the vulturous aliens took whatever they could from the body of the vanquished. This would happen regardless of whether the Vonnegan or CasterLan forces won the impending battle.

The little winged Feedorian bartender who had made a habit of hiding when fights broke out was no longer there. He had died four years earlier when a brawl inside Eastcheap got so out of control that he hadn’t been safe even as he hid behind the bar. The patrons hadn’t blinked an eye at the loss of the alien who had served them drinks for so long. The next night a different alien, a Sung-sung with six long tentacle-like arms, was there serving drinks and the patrons went on in their merry and violent ways as long as someone was there to refill their glasses.