The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (31 page)

What else could happen? They might, somehow, actually come to some understanding and avoid the fighting altogether. There was almost no chance of this, she knew, but she could hope. Or they could watch the battle between their two forces unfold in space while both of them stood on the moon’s surface and acted as spectators. She doubted she would be able to stand there and watch that happen. Morgan and Traskk were just as unlikely to agree to be bystanders in the affair. More likely, she and her friends would attack whatever force Mowbray had with him and the two sides would kill each other while the starships in the space above the moon did the same thing, only on a more epic scale.

“I still think I should be up there with my soldiers,” Morgan said, staring up at the array of Solar Carriers.

Vere was also watching the ships above them—the two fleets facing each other from opposite ends of the moon’s horizon.

“I need you down here,” Vere said. “You should be honored.”

Morgan’s only response was a snort and a frown.

In the darkest corner of the tent, where the most shade was, Traskk rolled over in his sleep. In ancient times, Basilisks had earned a reputation for intimidating their enemies by being able to take naps before battle. The opposing forces couldn’t help but have their confidence shaken when they found out the warriors they were going to face were so nonchalant about what was going to happen that they could get some beauty rest beforehand. Traskk didn’t expect anyone above Dela Turkomann to be scared by his nap; he just wanted to find a way to make the time go by so he wasn’t impatient for the fight to take place for longer than he had to be.

“I hope this all goes according to plan,” Morgan said, still looking up at the sky.

“Trust me, so do I.”

72

The two fleets faced each other but held their fire. Each time one of the Vonnegan Thunderbolt fighters departed from an Athens Destroyer, the Solar Carrier crews were sure it was going to fly directly at them and that the battle was going to begin with a single proton torpedo. But then the Thunderbolt would fly toward the moon’s surface, circle the area where the command center had been, then return to its Destroyer.

Periodically, the cannon systems on a pair of Athens Destroyers would power up and the officers aboard the Solar Carriers would hold their breath, waiting for the general’s order to establish their front shields. But the cannon didn’t fire and the defensive order wasn’t necessary.

A trio of Thunderbolts departed from Mowbray’s Supreme Athens Destroyer. The men and women aboard the Solar Carriers tensed up, ready for the first laser blast to signal the beginning of war. But the three fighters carried out the same flight path as the previous small ships, descending down to the seas of desert below, then making their way back up to the Destroyer.

“Steady, everyone,” Westmoreland said.

All around him, officers who had trained for battle all their lives but had never actually seen it firsthand were beginning to tremble and sweat.

Westmoreland was afraid that one of the younger members of his crew would panic and fire a cannon without the order having been given. He knew how soldiers fidgeted and panicked before battle, their wits defeating them and their instinct for survival often overriding their training. Gripped by fear, someone might think for a moment that it was better to fire before being fired upon.

He had given a strict no-fire command two other times already, but decided to repeat the order. “Only fire on my command,” he said, the order going out to not only the men and women in front of him on the deck of his Solar Carrier, but also to the generals commanding the other Carriers as well.

As long as he was in charge of the ships, no Solar Carrier was to fire on a Vonnegan ship until he put out the order to do so. That didn’t mean that someone with a family back on Edsall Dark, someone fresh out of the academy and with no actual combat experience, wouldn’t become spooked at whatever it was the Thunderbolts were doing and open fire.

If they did, everyone aboard the Solar Carriers would get a good look at the full might of the Vonnegan fleet. Just one laser blast from a CasterLan ship was all it would take for all two hundred Athens Destroyers, all three hundred Vonnegan ships, to begin unloading every heavy cannon in their arsenal. The CasterLan fleet would be decimated before the cavalry could arrive.

73

After sending scouts to survey the moon’s surface and not detecting any life forms or devices, Mowbray decided that it would indeed be a pleasant treat to see Vere face to face. Rarely did a conqueror get to be within arm’s reach of the ruler whose kingdom he was getting ready to defeat. He owed it to young Minot, killed by Vere’s forces, to confront the person who was ultimately responsible for his son’s death.

At the same time his shuttle, full of his personal guards, launched from his Supreme Athens Destroyer, a Llyushin transport departed from one of the lead Solar Carriers. Both ships were accompanied by a complement of their kingdom’s fighters. Six Thunderbolts roared alongside the Vonnegan shuttle. Two Llyushin fighters raced ahead of the transport and two more followed behind it.

The transport was supposed to have Vere aboard, but on the chance the Vonnegan fleet planned to destroy it and kill the CasterLan leader before the battle even began, Westmoreland had the ship set to autopilot with Scrope and Pistol aboard it.

Both vessels made their way beyond the protection of friendly ships and headed down toward the moon’s surface. From inside the tent on Dela Turkomann’s surface, Vere could hear both sets of ships approach. She didn’t dare look out the flap, though, to see what kind of ship was approaching first or where they would land because the masking effect of the bio-tarp could be compromised, alerting Mowbray that a possible trap was waiting for him. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to be patient by reminding herself that this would all be over soon enough, regardless of what happened next.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Morgan said, standing in a different corner of the tent.

Traskk growled in agreement.

“It’s just your officer’s sense of responsibility talking,” Vere told her. “You wish you were up there, where the Solar Carriers are. They’re in good hands; you’ll do more well down here.”

The wind kicked up as the ships’ engines came close, creating an enormous sandstorm. Even with the tent sealed from the inside, sand somehow managed to find a way into every corner of the area—into their eyes and hair, under their clothes.

After the ships were on the surface, there was a moment of calm in which Vere and the others inside the tent could hear the slight drum and buzz of millions of grains of sand scratching down the sides of the tent and settling once again on the moon’s surface.

A whirl of noise approached.

“Second vessel coming in,” Morgan said, closing her eyes and pulling her shirt up over her nose and mouth.

Vere did the same. Traskk closed his eyes and brought his tail up so it wrapped around his nostrils and jaw.

The second storm began and ended as soon as the first. After it was over, Vere and Morgan knew both sides of the battle had landed their ships somewhere near the command tent. Finally willing to take a peek outside, Vere unzipped the edge of the flap to see exactly where the ships were. A gust of sand blew in her face, forcing her to keep the tent sealed until the golden particles had settled.

“I just want to know how many ships are out there and where they are,” she grumbled.

“Two ships,” Morgan said, pointing at nine o’clock and then at three o’clock. “One there and one there. I’d guess Mowbray’s Thunderbolt escorts were ordered to circle the area after they ensured his ship made it safely to the surface. As soon as they did, our Llyushin fighters did the same thing.”

“You can tell all of that from the sound of the engines we just heard?” Vere asked.

Morgan shrugged. “You spend your entire life around starships, you get a sense for these things.”

Finally, there was stillness and quiet. The sand had settled.

“What we do this day,” Vere said, “will decide the fate of everyone we know.” She unzipped the tent flap. “So let good fortune look down upon us.”

Sun burst inside. She squinted from the light. Morgan and Traskk did the same. In front of them, off in the distance, Mowbray’s awkward looking star-shaped shuttle began to lower its ramp. To her right, the Llyushin transport was parked slightly further away and was also lowering its ramp.

Unsurprisingly, Mowbray was not the first to appear from his ship. Of course, he wouldn’t have put himself at risk like that. A ruler who had defeated so many planets and realms over his lifetime would never survive very long if he were willing to present himself as an easy target. Instead of Mowbray, two of his Fianna guards came down the ramp first.

Neither Vere nor Morgan had ever seen a Fianna in person, but they had heard stories about them. Every Vonnegan ruler kept a contingent of exactly nine Fianna guards. All nine protected the ruler at all times. They didn’t take shifts or alternate assignments. This was what first started the rumors that the Fianna weren’t living beings at all but were actually advanced tactical androids. Behind a shell of robes and armor, no one knew for sure what they were, other than the Vonnegan rulers and their closest advisors.

It was also whispered that the Fianna didn’t serve as royal protectors for a set period of time. An assignment in the Fianna was said to be for life. Of course, because no one knew if the Fianna were Vonnegans or androids, they also didn’t know if it was the same person or thing behind each set of armor for a hundred years or if it was a new guard periodically.

Not only that, but the belief that there were only nine Fianna could have also been a myth. How would anyone know if there were in fact two or three times as many guards, performing their duties in shifts so the others could get some sleep? They all looked exactly alike. They never spoke. They had no names. So it didn’t matter how many existed. All that mattered was that the Vonnegan ruler was always seen with exactly nine of them when he wasn’t in his chambers or aboard his Athens Destroyer.

One of the few stories Vere knew about them that was definitely true was one in which nine Fianna guards had single-handedly quelled an uprising. Three generations earlier, Mowbray’s great-great-grandfather, Munburn the Immune, issued an unpopular set of edicts. Instead of trying to put his people’s concerns to rest, he stoked the unrest and provoked an attempted revolution. Tens of thousands of people rallied at the Vonnegan capital before flooding through the kingdom gates to hold Munburn accountable. Without the help of any other Vonnegan forces, the nine Fianna guards ensured that not a single one of the insurgents who passed through the empire’s gate lived to tell about it. At the end of the short-lived uprising, thousands of bodies lay on the ground, missing their heads or with their stomachs carved open. Hundreds of gallons of blood flooded the ground level of the Vonnegan capital that day, but not a single drop of it belonged to the nine Fianna, who were all unharmed.

As Vere watched from the slightly open flap of the tent, the first two Fianna stood at the bottom of the shuttle’s ramp, surveying the desert and the tent and the few random ships still parked around where the command center had been. Then two more Fianna walked down the ramp, their steps in perfect stride with one another. At the bottom, the four guards aligned themselves in a curved row, blocking anything, even a sniper’s precision blaster shot, from passing by them and hitting someone further up the ramp.

The Fianna’s armor lacked anything that wasn’t necessary in defending their ruler. As far as Vere could tell, they had no oxygen reserves in case they were stranded outside of a livable containment field. They carried no food rations or water for themselves. Other than their primary weapon, a vibro halberd, they carried nothing at all.

Each plate of their purple armor met as closely as possible with the next. There was exactitude with the armor that hinted the suits must have been tailor-made for each guard rather than coming off an assembly line like the suits of armor that common infantrymen and soldiers wore. The finely made armor allowed the Fianna to move freely, without any armor plates hitting each other, but also without any gap for a blade or blaster shot to get through the protective suit. The few places where there were chinks between plates—elbows, shoulders, knees—purple fabric puffed out, obscuring the crevices so attackers would be unsure where exactly they were susceptible. Fianna helmets wrapped around each side of the head to cover every part of their face and neck. But the faceplate wasn’t smooth metal or tinted glass. Instead, it was fashioned in the shape of an angry demon, with teeth bared, nostrils flared, and with thick, arched eyebrows, giving each guard the appearance of being possessed by neverending rage even when he was standing perfectly still.

A fifth guard came down the ramp and walked past the first four. Instead of stopping at the bottom of the ramp, this guard continued toward the command tent. Vere took a deep breath as she watched the Fianna approach. When the guard was halfway to where she and Morgan and Traskk were hidden, Mowbray appeared at the top of the shuttle’s ramp.

“Don’t do anything unless I give the order,” Vere said to her friends.

Neither of them liked the order. Morgan scoffed and shook her head. Traskk demonstrated his frustration by growling and allowing his tail to sweep back and forth across the ground.

The lone Fianna continued making his way across the desert. The remaining four Fianna came down the ramp to join the other four already there, forming a circle around Mowbray so that he was completely enclosed by his guards.

“Okay, here goes nothing,” Vere said, stepping out into the sun.

The solitary Fianna, roughly twenty yards from the tent, stopped in place. Morgan and Traskk also revealed themselves. The Fianna didn’t flinch or seem concerned. He made no effort to raise or aim his weapon or even take a defensive posture. He merely stopped where he was, never turning his attention from the three people in front of him.