The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (8 page)

“Hello, Vere,” the android said, his lips barely moving. “Do you need the ship?”

“Yes. How long?”

“Five minutes,” Pistol said, not asking permission or explaining what would take that long.

A’la Dure nudged Vere’s arm and pointed at a part of the ship, causing Vere to ask, “Pistol, are the tinder walls working?”
 

 
When the android switched from looking at Vere to A’la Dure and then back to Vere, only his eyes moved.

“They are.”

“We’re leaving as soon as you’re done,” Vere said.

Without acknowledging her, Pistol turned and moved back to one of the open panels. It was possible for android software to mimic real emotions but Vere preferred hers to be monotone, emotionless, and apathetic. Even so, she couldn’t help but suspect some part of Pistol’s programming took it personally when everyone else went to Eastcheap all day while he had to stay behind and watch over the ship. It wasn’t in her control anyway; his entire system would shut off as soon as he set foot inside the bar due to the Treagon barrier. She still thought, though, that he was curious about what happened there and regretted that he couldn’t add a new experience to his understanding.

Aboard the ship, she passed Baldwin and Fastolf getting their injuries healed. A’la Dure and Occulus followed her into the cockpit, the old man standing behind the two pilots. Traskk was somewhere in the middle of the ship making sure it was ready for flight.

“What will you do?” Occulus asked.

Vere turned from her chair and from the vast array of buttons, switches, displays, and controls in front of her. “We’re going to Edsall Dark.”

“And?”

Vere hummed. She liked and respected Occulus as much as anyone in her group, and she loved that he asked questions rather than telling her what she should do, but it was times like these that she wished everyone in the world was like A’la Dure and didn’t speak a single word.

With a shrug and roll of the eyes, she said, “And fulfill my destiny, I guess.”

She tried to smile, but it seemed like a lot of effort, much more than turning her attention back to getting her ship off the planet and heading toward the nearest portal.

Occulus said, “A wise woman once told me that the universe conspires to cause all things. Everyone would have simpler lives if they just accepted that.”
 

“Funny.”

“Hmm?”

“My mother used to say the same thing.”

Occulus smiled and tapped a finger to his head. “Great minds think alike.” When Vere only nodded silently he asked, “What concerns you the most?”

She groaned and turned her attention away from the ship’s displays for a moment. “What are my choices?”

“Your father’s illness. The approaching war. The Green Knight’s challenge.”

Vere laughed, prompting Occulus to frown and look at A’la Dure to see if she knew what was so funny.

When she saw Occulus didn’t understand the joke, Vere said, “Do you really think I’m going to volunteer to have my head chopped off?”

“That was the point of the challenge.”

She sighed and shook her head. “And?”

“And you were the one who accepted the Green Knight’s game.”

“Some game,” she said, shaking her head. Then, leaning across and nudging A’la Dure, she added, “He’s a real joker sometimes.”

A’la Dure only raised her eyebrows and continued getting the ship ready to fly.

Behind them, barely audible over the sound of ships arriving and departing, someone began to scream. Vere jumped out of her seat and raced back toward the ship’s ramp. With every step, the yelling became louder and more violent.

“I’ll rip your face off and kill you,” a woman’s voice bellowed.

At the top of the ramp, Fastolf was laughing and shrugging. “I have no idea who she is,” he told Pistol.

Vere came around the corner to see Pistol and Morgan a foot apart from each other, both getting ready to attack the other.

“She was trying to get aboard the ship,” Pistol said when he heard Vere behind him.

The android’s job while everyone else was at Eastcheap, other than keeping the ship ready for flight, was to prevent thieves from stealing it.

Fastolf laughed again and said, “I’m telling you, I think she might be part of a criminal ring. Looks like trouble to me.”

“I heard you the first time, fat man,” Pistol said in a completely emotionless voice.

Even with anger seizing her entire body, causing the muscles in her arms and legs to clench, Morgan couldn’t help but laugh. But when she did, the android’s eye glowed as he re-assessed the possible danger in front of him.

“She’s okay, Pistol,” Vere said. “Let her go.”

Immediately, the android’s eyes stopped glowing and his defensive stance changed to standing upright with his arms by his side.

“My apologies,” the android said.

“Just doing your job,” Morgan called behind her as she strode past him.

As soon as she was close enough, she made a fist and punched Fastolf in the nose.

“Damn it,” he cried, “I just got it fixed.” Holding his face in both hands, he stumbled back aboard the ship to have the bio-medic system fix his second broken nose in less than a few hours.

“What are you doing?” Vere asked, staring at Morgan without offering any niceties.

“My ship is gone, I need to head back with you.”

Vere chuckled. “Didn’t you pay someone to look after it?”

“I’m not going to pay someone to watch over my own ship! Not when it’s equipped with the galaxy’s best security system.”

“Honey,” Vere said in her most condescending tone, “security measures are useless on Folliet-Bright. You need to pay someone to guard it. Someone you can trust.” She pointed at Pistol. “Or have an android guard it.”

Morgan took a deep breath, doing her best to remain calm. “When I find whoever took it, they’re going to wish they’d chosen a different career path.”

Vere shrugged and started back inside the ship. On her way toward the cockpit she said, “Well, I hope whichever thief or vandal stole it is at least enjoying himself while he can.”

Without waiting to see if Morgan would follow, she went back to join A’la Dure at the pilot’s seat. When Occulus asked what was going on, she told him he didn’t want to know and went back to getting the ship ready.

17

“The fleet is preparing for battle. We will be ready when the Vonnegan army arrives.”

Behind Hotspur, the king, a fraction of his former weight and making little rasping breathing noises, went ignored. Holding all of their discussions in the king’s chambers where they had absolute privacy, Hotspur and Modred quickly got used to treating their frail and delirious ruler as nothing more than another decoration in the exquisite chambers.

“Very good. Any report of Vere?”

Hotspur turned from the window where he was looking out at the expanse of fields below and looked at Modred for a few moments before answering.

“She’s still on Folliet-Bright.”

“Still drinking and thieving?”

“I would guess so.”

Modred shook his head in mock disappointment. “So much potential. So much opportunity. It’s a shame she’s just throwing it away and making us lead.”

Hotspur turned back to the nearby window. Of the four sides he had to choose from he had quickly established the view from the west windows as his favorite. He hated seeing the commercial district and all the people who lived to buy and sell their wares. The windows that looked out at the perimeter wall weren’t good or bad, they were devoid of anything. But the windows looking out at the plains and the forest and the mountains calmed him. He didn’t like it because he liked nature; he liked it because he grew up learning of the historic battles that had taken place on those very fields.

“And what if she doesn’t remain on Folliet-Bright?” Hotspur asked.

“She’s been there for years. Why would she leave now?”

Hotspur looked out at a marker a thousand feet from the gate that allowed people into the kingdom. The plaque was too small to read from where he was but he knew what it said and what it commemorated. It was a memorial dedicated to the brother who had defeated his own sibling for control so many ages ago. For Hotspur, it was a testament to what it took to be a great leader. If a man had been willing to slay his own brother in combat in order to lead the kingdom, there was no one Hotspur wouldn’t kill to be victorious and be held in the same regard.

“I’ve learned, both from history and from experience,” he said, “that it’s best to plan for all possibilities.”

Modred rolled his eyes. When Hotspur didn’t offer a reply, Modred turned to see what his captain might say next. Only then did he realize the only other person still in the room was the king, and so he was essentially alone.

18

The Griffin Fire moved directly upward, out of the station where Vere had paid to dock her ship. For a brief moment, everyone aboard could see the seedy underworld of bars, brothels, hangouts, and gambling halls below them. A second later they were passing through the containment barrier protecting the colony from the rest of Folliet-Bright, and then they were out amongst the planet’s neon clouds. Only an instant later, they were enveloped by black space. Behind them, Folliet-Bright went from being a giant sphere of land with scattered colonies arranged at various places on its surface, to being the size of a human head, and then to a pin prick of color in the black reaches of space.

Completely healed (for the second time), Fastolf sat at a table where he tried his best to teach Baldwin a card game. Every time he explained a new rule for how the game was supposed to be played he also insisted that they make the game more fun by betting on who would win. To his credit, Baldwin declined each offer, which only caused Fastolf to groan and shake his head.

Traskk did his best to help Pistol fix one of the Griffin Fire’s radar systems. Every once in a while the giant reptile reappeared from within the ship’s inner workings, growling and slithering his tongue in and out of his mouth, before receiving more instructions from the android and then disappearing back into the ship’s mechanical room with a different set of tools.

Occulus knew Vere well enough to know that when she and A’la Dure were piloting the ship they didn’t want any distractions. Fastolf had barged into the cockpit one time and had yanked on Vere’s shoulder to get her attention. It hadn’t mattered to her that he was in one of his drunken stupors. The next time Occulus saw the court jester, one of his eyes was swollen and purple and he was sulking in the back of the ship, taking turns between asking what he’d done wrong and hiccupping.

That left him at a side table with Morgan. For a while, as the ship flew through space, she remained silent, staring out the nearest window at the expanse of stars, probably wondering where her own ship was and daydreaming of all the ways she would hurt the crook who had stolen it. Occulus turned his thoughts to the Green Knight and what Vere would do about her father’s declining health and the war the king was supposedly intent on starting before he died.

Life wasn’t predictable. If it were, all of the pain could be avoided. Along with it, though, all of the joy. And yet he had known for a long time that when someone became completely calm, allowing silence to engulf them, a clearer understanding could be attained of what life might have in store. As he tried this now, slowing his breath and trying to think about nothing rather than everything, he still couldn’t guess if Vere would even be alive in seven days, let alone everyone else on the ship. Not to mention everyone living on the planets ruled by Vere’s father. Seven days from now, they might all be dead... including everyone aboard the Griffin Fire.

“Has she always been like this?”

Occulus blinked back into awareness of himself and his surroundings on the ship. Even though Morgan was staring out at the vastness of space, she had been talking to him about their pilot, the king’s daughter.

“No,” he said quietly, ensuring Baldwin and Fastolf wouldn’t hear him from across the room. “She didn’t used to be anything like this. You wouldn’t recognize the person she was six years ago from the person she is today.”

“What happened?”

He looked behind him to make sure the cockpit door was closed so Vere couldn’t overhear him. The beating Fastolf had taken for bumping into her while she piloted the ship would pale in comparison to what she would do if she knew someone was sharing her secrets.

He started the only way he could, by asking a question: “Where were you six years ago?”

“In the academy,” Morgan said. “I’d just gotten done with basic training and was testing to be an officer.”

“Vere is almost the same age as you. But she didn’t have the option of a normal life. She had one path in front of her and one path only: to take over as ruler of the kingdom when her father passed away.”

“Tough life,” Morgan said, rolling her eyes. “I feel so sorry for her.”

Instead of acknowledging the sarcasm and defending his friend, Occulus said, “Sometimes the toughest thing isn’t passing physical tests or doing better than everyone else. There are people all around you with problems you never know about. Sometimes they’re minor, seemingly trivial. Sometimes they’re incredible weights to bear. The things that would break another person are often so well hidden that you never even know someone is suffering.”

“Let me guess, her crown weighed too much and hurt her neck. Or the royal robes they had to wear would have clashed with her eyes.”

“You really dislike her,” Occulus said.

“She’s had everything handed to her. She had the life every kid dreams of, and she threw it away to be a thief in some dirty bar. Meanwhile, everyone else is suffering because the lunatics are running the insane asylum.”

“You mean her father, the king?”

Morgan laughed. “I wish. From everything I’ve heard he hasn’t been well enough to lead a kingdom in years.” She nodded toward the cockpit and toward Vere. “Modred. Her brother—”

“Step-brother,” Occulus corrected.

Morgan shook her head and sighed, and Occulus saw that she and Vere had at least one thing in common: neither had much patience for those they disagreed with.