The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (7 page)

Was she supposed to carry his axe out of Eastcheap as her reward for accepting the knight’s challenge? Was she supposed to drop it in front of the Green Knight’s feet? Should she slide it back into the harness on the knight’s back? Maybe use it to poke the knight’s chest so he fell backward and stopped making her uncomfortable? Even without a head, the knight remained taller than anyone else in the bar.

Fastolf inched up beside her, a drink in one hand. With his other arm, he slowly reached out until his fingers were only inches away from the Green Knight’s massive chest. He was going to do what everyone else in Eastcheap was surely thinking: make the knight topple to the ground, the way a body without a head is supposed to.

When he was an inch away from touching the knight, a thick green glove jerked up and caught Fastolf’s wrist.
 

“Argg!” Fastolf cried, snatching his hand out of the Green Knight’s grip and retreating out of sight, splashing his drink everywhere as he did so. For once, aliens that were quick to fight about anything and everything ignored having a drink spilled on them because they were all too entranced by what was happening in front of Vere.

The hand lowered back to the Green Knight’s side, making it unclear if the knight’s muscle had seized up, making the arm jerk up and then lower again as the muscles relaxed, or if the knight was somehow in control of his arm even though his head lay on the ground between them. Finally, his knees bent and he leaned forward, dropping to the floor. He did not collapse in a deathly heap, however. Instead, his movement was measured and purposeful.

The bar was completely silent. No patron dared make a noise. Most, without realizing it, were holding their breath. The only sound in all of Eastcheap came from the Green Knight’s armor plating as it shifted with his movement.

When the knight’s hand was all the way to the ground, it curled into a fist, grabbing hold of its helmet by the thin strip of fur that made up the plume. This too, of course, was the color of fresh moss. The Green Knight, helmet in hand, straightened so he was once more towering over Vere.

“I’ve never seen that before!” Fastolf said from the back of the group. Unable to laugh, he gulped from a drink he had found on the table next to him. Whoever the drink belonged to didn’t notice because they were too busy looking at the amazing thing that was happening near the entrance.

Without any doubt in his movement, as steady as if his head hadn’t been lopped off, the knight replaced the helmet back atop his neck. Once again, there was only the darkness of shadows where the knight’s eyes and nose and mouth should have been. No one, not even Vere, who was within arm’s reach of him, could see if there was a face behind the helmet or if there was nothingness. The lack of blood was as disconcerting as the lack of visible flesh.

Aliens all around the bar gasped at the site of the Green Knight in one piece again. With his helmet back atop his head, he seemed an even more imposing figure than when he had first stepped into Eastcheap.

The familiar monotone boom sounded once more as the Green Knight said, “Do not forget our agreement.”

Stammering, Vere said, “But I told you, I don’t know where the Green Chapel is.”

“True man can but try. If you attempt to find me, you will.” And then, as if anyone should want to seek out the Green Knight, even if they had given their word, he added, “In seven days, your neck will be repaid.”

Without waiting for a reply, the Green Knight turned on his heel and strode out of the bar. Sparks flew from the ground where the knight’s heels dug into the stone. The few aliens that were within arm’s reach of the knight scurried backward as he passed by them.

Once everyone was sure the knight was gone and wasn’t returning, the galactic chatter started up again. In more than twenty different languages, patrons tried to figure out what had just happened. Every single alien and man in Eastcheap was going to tell all of their friends and family that not only had they seen a Meursault sword, they had also seen a knight’s head lopped off and then witnessed that same knight reach down, pick his head and helmet off the ground, and place it back atop his neck as if it were an ordinary occurrence.

A’la Dure came up to Vere’s right side and patted her friend on the shoulder, her quiet way of offering encouragement.

Occulus joined them on Vere’s other side and said, “Well, I’ll bet no one expected
that
to happen when we all woke up this morning.”

“Are you okay?” Baldwin asked.

“I’m fine,” Vere announced, trying as hard as she could to force a laugh. “I’m not the one who just had my head chopped off.”

“Yet,” Fastolf said, laughing.

When Vere turned and furrowed her brows at him, he cast his eyes downward and sipped from another drink he had found.

“I guess
now
you’ll be willing to go to Edsall Dark?” Morgan said. When they walked outside the bar and into the dirty alley without Vere offering a reply, Morgan added, “Well, let’s get you there soon so you can clean up your father’s mess before you have to get decapitated.”

“It’s no wonder you don’t have any friends,” Fastolf told her, tossing his empty glass on the ground behind him.

“It’s a wonder you do,” Morgan shot back.

A block down the alley from where the Eastcheap was located, a pair of tall, lanky aliens were looming over their next victim. Both were wearing long overcoats, but the little bit of their orange glimmering skin that was visible showed they were Organguans which weren’t to be messed with. Some poor man had sealed his own fate when he owed them money or failed to pay a debt or deliver on some other kind of underworld agreement. Vere and the others walked toward the spaceport without bothering to find out what the man had done or what would happen to him. On Folliet-Bright, everyone was one step away from having a figure walk out of the shadows and aim a blaster at them.

They passed a winged alien, the color of a fading sunset, as it threw up in the alley after one too many drinks. On the other side of the alley, a human man was pressed against a female Diamal and all three of her tails. They passed a scaly thing, the basic shape of a human, but with almost no facial features and skin that looked like wet sand, as it leaned against a stone wall and relieved itself.

“Use a restroom,” Morgan said, staring the alien down and slowing her pace until Vere pushed her forward.

“That is the bathroom,” Vere said. “And anywhere else you want it to be.”

A series of expressions passed over Morgan’s face. When she finally understood that Vere, the supposed future of the CasterLan Kingdom, had probably done the same thing many times herself, she shook her head in dismay while Vere laughed.

“Maybe it’s good you’re here,” Morgan said, “and not where your father’s people can see you.”

Instead of taking offense to the comment, Vere only laughed again and said, “You don’t know the half of it.”

15

The barrier surrounding and protecting the New Zephyr colony from the lightning storms and toxic atmosphere of the surrounding planet was an environmental containment field. It was not a defensive security measure. The Vonnegan fleet could have aimed their thousands of blasters and destroyed every building and every sign of civilization in the colony. They didn’t have to, though.
 

Instead, the ten silvery modules drifted down toward the land just beyond the containment field and the normal, oxygenated air and mild weather preserved inside it. The ten projectiles made their way through the lightning-filled sky. When they landed, it was with a puff of dust. Instead of exploding, the capsules hit the ground and disappeared.

The containment fields that protected each colony usually extended at least twenty meters underground, where a protective base kept toxic elements, natural to the planet, from seeping up through the soil. By weakening the entire surface of that section of the planet, it was a matter of time until the containment field lost its integrity. As soon as even one tiny part of it broke, the entire force field would fail. Thousands—if not tens of thousands—of humans and aliens would go from living on a mild planet with regulated weather and air that everyone could breathe, to living amongst brutal lightning storms that would strike every spaceship, structure, and person within minutes. But no one would be alive that long because as soon as they took one breath of the toxic Zephyr air their lungs would shrivel up and they would die.

For a minute, however, nothing happened. General Agravan began to wonder if the projectiles they had fired were duds. Rather than ask, he was content to continue watching until something happened. Finally, it did.

The ground began to rumble and shake. The containment field flickered ever so slightly. That was the only indication the Vonnegan General needed to know that the cylinders hadn’t been duds. The containment field would collapse.

Moments later, the containment field flickered once, twice, three times. Then, section by section, it crumbled to nothing. As it did, there were no crashing sounds or explosions or destruction. There was only silence.

The Vonnegan fleet continued to drift about in orbit above the planet. Never once did they activate their cannons, send space fighters down to wreak havoc, or even land a brigade of troops. Destroying the containment field would cause a complete loss of life on the colony with much less effort. The Vonnegan fleet was willing to accept a quiet victory. Rather than the glory of explosions and rampage, they were content with saving their weapons for when they would actually need them.

The entire time, all of the rich and influential citizens of Zephyr must have watched the scene from their homes, wondering what the fleet of Athens Destroyers was doing, never suspecting they were in danger until it was too late.

From within the Captain’s deck of the lead Athens Destroyer, General Agravan looked out at the sight before him. The fancy skyscrapers and luxurious spaceships that few people could afford were immediately sparking with thousands of lighting strikes. Fires broke out everywhere. A few seconds later, after the fire and natural gases combined to burn up all of the oxygen and all that was left was the natural air of Zephyr, the fires all went right back out again. Nothing. Then fire. Then nothing. It was the chaos of the universe at its finest.

But even before the fires had extinguished themselves, Zephyr’s natural gravity level, also altered by the same containment field that created a livable environment, was immediately returned. Buildings that were made to withstand the standard regulated colony gravity level were quickly pulled down to the ground under the weight of sixty times stronger gravitational forces than before. Skyscrapers, hundreds of floors high, came crashing down. Starships that were hovering just above their space docks exploded onto the platforms below them.

Before General Agravan’s eyes, an entire colony of buildings, ships, and most important, lives, became a giant pile of rubble with millions of lightning bolts turning the civilization into debris. The debris into ash. The ash into nothing.

16

On their way to the Folliet-Bright spaceport, Vere and her friends passed the bodies of aliens lying in the street, unable to determine if they were living or dead. They passed a man sprinting down the alley, chased by a group of three Yon-Trons that snarled and hissed as they darted after him. Each time they passed something like this, Baldwin made sure he was as close to Traskk and Vere as possible.

“I traveled aboard a frigate to get here,” the physician said. “Do you mind if I go back with you?”

No one said yes, but they also didn’t say no. And so he continued walking with them toward Vere’s ship.

Morgan had arrived to the planet in her own ship. When she got to the space dock where she had left it, she diverted from the others without saying goodbye or anything else. Vere guessed they would see a small W-model Llyushin, the most common type of star fighter in the CasterLan Kingdom, fly out of the Folliet-Bright airspace alongside them on their way to the nearest portal.

They continued through a series of dimly lit tunnels and ramps. Where there was light enough to see, they passed by every possible type of trash. When the roar of starships wasn’t deafening, they heard the growls and moans of aliens hiding in the shadows.

Eventually they came to a vast open chamber with a starship in the middle. Looking up, Baldwin saw only open air, leading out to space and to the greater galaxy.

The ship in front of them looked like two distorted, oblong discs that had been smashed together to form one vessel.

“Pretty,” Baldwin said, trying to be polite to the people who were taking him across the galaxy, but sounding somewhat ill instead.

“Nice,” Vere said. “A guy with a bloody nose and black eye is worried about how my ship looks.”

“Where did you get this thing?” he asked, still wondering if it really had been two separate ships at one point. He had seen plenty of fighters, frigates, cruisers, and destroyers from just about every different kingdom. The ship in front of him looked nothing like anything he had seen before.

“It’s a long story,” Fastolf said with the same grin he had given when lying about not having stolen the alien’s money, and Baldwin wondered if this ship had been part of some heist. Was the king’s daughter, the heir to the CasterLan Kingdom, so disconnected from her royal heritage that she was stealing ships with the people she drank with?

“What do you call it?”

“The Griffin Fire.”

On the way to the ship, Vere told Baldwin to follow Fastolf. “He’ll show you where the medical supplies are. We have bio-medic suits in the back. You’ll be back to normal in a few minutes.”

Fastolf’s face wasn’t as bad as Baldwin’s but it was still bleeding. She watched as the two men walked up the incline of the ramp and into the recesses of the Griffin Fire. A’la Dure, Traskk, and Occulus remained by her side. Atop the ship, an android walked back and forth from one open panel to another.

“How’s it going, Pistol?”

Only when formally addressed did the android stop working and turn his attention to the people down below. He looked just like a human man, only without hair—not even eyebrows—and his skin was partly translucent. Vere had never been sure if Pistol’s skin was supposed to appear realistic or if it was intended to look the way it did, a cross between human flesh and dyed metal.