The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) (4 page)

She moved left. The holographic beast moved diagonally to keep her from getting behind it.

There was no more space left behind her or to either side. Everywhere she looked she had an idea of how she might attack, but after an assessment she saw more ways to be killed than do the killing.

The beast lunged forward. She tried to bring her sword up for defense, but only one of its arms was slashed off. The other three grabbed her, two by her shoulders and one by her neck. The monster roared, then paused. A surge of electricity washed over her, causing her body to seize up for a second and, to her utter shame, producing an uncontrollable cry of pain.

Without any further punishment delivered, the hologram lowered her back to the floor, then began to disappear.

As she gathered her senses, she counted herself lucky that it was a computer-generated brute and not the real thing, and that she had suffered only a stinging shock and a bruised ego instead of something deadly. If the monster had been real, she would have been alive long enough to watch it rip her arms from her body as it feasted on her.

Applause rang out behind her. She was turning to give Pistol a dirty look before she realized the android didn’t care if she won or lost. Her eyes shifted to the figure standing next to him. Morgan. And she was laughing.

“Better luck next time,” the general of Vere’s army said.

Vere was still getting her strength back after the electric jolt, but she was able to say, “You should try Level 74 some time.”

“Level 74?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, I’ve beaten that one already.”

Vere laughed. “Yeah, right.”

Morgan took a step forward. “With a pocket knife.”

Vere laughed again, then realized the other woman wasn’t joking.

“Pistol said the Vonnegan fleet will be here in less than ten days.”

Morgan nodded. “It was nice of you to show up to the emergency council meeting.”

“How was I supposed to know there would be an emergency?”

“What were you doing instead?”

“I was here, training.”

“Do you think the entire war will be avoided if you challenge Mowbray to a one-on-one duel? Do you know real life doesn’t work that way? His generals would still destroy every last reminder of the CasterLan Kingdom.”

“Listen, what do you want from me?” Vere said, taking a step toward Morgan. General or not, able to defeat Level 74 or not, she wasn’t going to let someone talk to her that way for very long before she did something about it.

“What do I want from you?” Morgan said. “Show up to your council meetings. Especially when the Vonnegan fleet is ten days from destroying your kingdom.” Vere started to say something, but Morgan kept going: “And next time you decide to spend the night reliving your less than glorious days with your fat friend, wear a better costume.”

She dropped something on the ground, then turned and left. When Vere crossed the room and kicked the object with her foot, she saw it was her padded disguise from the night before.

Vere with Her Sword
, by Molly Evans –
 

watercolor and ink

6

The column of Athens Destroyers stretched as far as the eye could see. In the grand scheme of the universe, no amount of ships that man or any other alien race could build would ever be more than flecks of sand. After all, there were infinite stars and billions of solar systems. But on the local scale, their impact was significant. Two hundred Athens Destroyers were not only capable of extinguishing life on every colony and every planet they visited, they could do it with impunity.

The procession of Destroyers was joined by another hundred Vonnegan ships of various shapes and sizes. The entire group passed the mining planet Beglin-D at the same time a giant cargo vessel emerged from the planet’s atmosphere loaded with enough raw materials to keep a colony functioning for another year.

The cargo ship had no armor and no cannons. Even so, it was an awe-inspiring sight. The largest Beglinian cargo vessel was an astounding twelve times longer than a standard Athens Destroyer. Any ship wanting to pass through a portal while a Beglinian cargo vessel was entering it would have to wait almost half an hour for the portal to clear. However, they were also incredibly fragile and cumbersome ships. Whereas a small fighter could swerve into and out of turns in a second, the bulky freighter took minutes to make a slight change in course. Trying to make it alter its direction any quicker would cause the vessel’s long frame to break apart.

As the first Athens Destroyer flew by Beglin-D, its captain quickly realized he was on the same path as the cargo ship.

“Change course?” an ensign asked.

They had been given strict orders to follow a specific flight path.

“Bear two points to starboard,” the captain said.

He would stay on the same general course, only adjusting directions ever so slightly. Not even the generals in the ships behind him would notice.

“Changing course, two points starboard,” the ensign said.

As they altered direction, the cargo ship also began changing its course.

“What’s he doing?” the Vonnegan captain said, not wanting or expecting an answer.

He knew, though, what was happening. The same way people, as they walked toward each other in corridors, happened to move in the same direction to avoid the other person and instead moved right into their path, so too was this freighter trying to get out of the way by moving directly into the slightly altered path the Athens Destroyer was now taking.

“Change back to the original course,” the captain said.

“Changing back,” the ensign replied.

But right as he did, the cargo ship began a painfully slow adjustment to its original trajectory as well, taking it right back into the path of the oncoming fleet.

“What do we do?” the ensign asked.

The Vonnegan captain flexed his jaw, then said, “Brace for impact.”

“Sir?”

“We have orders to follow this course. Do you want to be the one to tell Mowbray we didn’t think his orders were serious enough to follow?”

The ensign only cringed.

Alarms began sounding.

The captain stared at the freighter. He had done what little he could do. He was not going to risk Mowbray’s wrath by altering their course anymore than he already had.

Another set of alarms began.

“Impact in ten, nine, eight, seven…” the ensign said.

When he got to the count of one, a shudder shook the Athens Destroyer. But as long as the Beglinian freighter was, it was ten times more fragile. When the Athens Destroyer ran into the cargo vessel’s bow, the freighter was sliced into two long chunks that floated away from each other. The Athens Destroyer flew through the remainder of the ship as cargo began dispersing into space. As the two halves of the Beglinian drifted away, they too broke into more pieces. Meanwhile, the Destroyer continued ahead, undamaged.

“Leave our banner,” the captain said.

“But we didn’t shoot it.”

“It’s destroyed all the same. And everyone needs to know when a ship was destroyed by the Vonnegan fleet.”

From the side of the Athens Destroyer, four tiny metal projectiles shot out, one toward each main hunk of the cargo vessel. Only a second before impacting, the tiny metal containers erupted into light. In front of the destroyed sections of the vessel rose a purple warhawk in front of red and gold flames. The Vonnegan coat of arms.

Each subsequent Athens Destroyer that passed by the freighter’s remnants saw the same insignia, painted in light in front of the destroyed ship, also sewn on their sleeves and helmets.

7

“Thank you, everyone, for attending this meeting,” Vere said.

Around the table sat the same people who had attended the previous night’s emergency meeting—the one she had missed—along with some additional faces. Westmoreland and Cade were sitting next to each other. On the other side of the table, Baldwin was in a chair next to Fastolf. Along with them were various dignitaries from other planets in the systems that were part of the CasterLan Kingdom. None of them mentioned that Vere’s seat at the head of the long table had been vacant the night before.

Rather than sit, Morgan chose to stand in the corner of the room with her arms folded. Next to her was a pair of officers she had come to rely on since taking charge of the combined CasterLan forces.

Before the meeting had started, one of them had noticed an empty seat and had moved to sit down. Morgan had gripped his elbow and told him they wouldn’t be there long enough to get comfortable.

Pistol stood in another corner, although without Morgan’s scornful expression. Instead of having his arms interlaced across his chest, he let them remain at his sides, his head not even moving to see who was entering the room. Traskk stood next to the android, his tail waving slowly back and forth across the stone floor.

They were high above the rest of CamaLon, only one story below her father’s chambers, where the King had died years earlier. Vere looked at each person in the room. Many of them had assembled for the same types of meetings when her father had presided over them. Others were only there because Vere had grown to trust them since returning home from her self-imposed exile. Six years earlier, sitting in a seedy bar filled with thieves and murderers and smugglers, she never would have guessed that she would go from being a patron at Eastcheap to leading a meeting at the CasterLan royal hall.

“By now,” she said, “all of you know the news: the Vonnegan army will be here in—” she looked at a display in front of her “—nine days and four hours.”

Even though everyone was already aware of this, she gave them time to whisper amongst themselves as a way to release the dread and anxiety that had built up since hearing the news the previous night.

When they were all focused on her once again, she continued. “We’re running out of time. We need a plan and we need it right now.”

“We’ve had six years to plan for this,” Morgan said, all eyes in the room turning toward her. The officers on either side of her cringed, seeing her talk to the leader of the CasterLan Kingdom that way. “If the plans we originally had were worth a damn, they wouldn’t have to change just because our time frame is cut short by a year.”

Vere had learned to stay calm when Morgan challenged her like this. Six years earlier, on their way toward trying to prevent the war that had taken place above Edsall Dark, she would have raced across the room, tackled Morgan, and thrown fists until both of them were bloodied and the fight was broken up. Now, though, she took a deep breath, centered herself, and acted like the leader of a kingdom that she was expected to be.

“We can discuss any issues with our prior plans later,” she said. “We only have a few days left. The important thing now is to do whatever we can in the little bit of time remaining.”

Westmoreland, who had been commanding a Solar Carrier longer than anyone else in the room had been alive, leaned forward so he could see the display of a tiny device he had brought with him. “In the next two days, one more Solar Carrier will come off production and be ready for battle.”

There was an audible groan in the room.

“Just one?” someone asked.

Under his bushy grey eyebrows, the old man looked around to see who had said it.

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a Solar Carrier?” he asked. “Even with the shipyards we have going on three different planets? The ship’s frame is solid atomized steel, some pieces more than one hundred times longer than this room. The engines are Category-5 IZers. Each one could power your home for a trillion years. The fiber optics that run through the ship are—”

Vere raised a hand. “I appreciate the difficulty. If anything, it’s even more difficult and intricate than you’re making it sound. Everyone knows you’re doing the best you can.”

Westmoreland sat back in his chair and shook his head. “The point I was getting to is that even with all of our resources directed at this effort, it takes more than one month to build each ship. We’re lucky we’ll have this one additional Carrier. The vessels that are partially constructed on Bercilak and Nede-Mum aren’t far enough along, no matter what we do, to get them operational in the next nine days. The one on Bercilak is nothing more than a steel frame. The two on Nede-Mum have no power or guidance systems installed. They would just take up space in the battle and get in the way of ships that can actually fight.”

“What are the current numbers?” Morgan asked.

Without needing to explain what she meant, Westmoreland said, “They have two hundred and sixteen Athens Destroyers, including ten Commander Class Destroyers and one even larger that we’re calling a Supreme Athens Destroyer. In addition to these, they have roughly one hundred more ships, smaller, but combat-ready nonetheless.”

“And us?” Morgan said. As general of all CasterLan forces, she already knew the numbers. It was important, though, for the rest of the room to know the situation they were in.

“Seventy-seven Solar Carriers,” Westmoreland said, “and a few additional ships, but most weren’t built for war and have never been in a battle.”