Avalon

by Chris Dietzel

  The same was true of the Round Table. His life, too.

  His father was dead. Hector was dead. A seemingly invincible enemy approached. An idea that had united the galaxy was at risk of collapsing under its own weight.

  It seemed silly to think that a home, a simple dwelling where he and his mother and father had lived since coming back to Edsall Dark, could have come to represent his personal security. When the entire galaxy was crumbling to pieces, a modest stone house meant nothing at all.

  The idea was compounded when he opened the door and walked inside. Even though it was daytime, the shades were pulled down over the windows so the rooms were cast in darkness. His mother was sitting in a chair in the corner, staring at an empty wall.

  “Mom.”

  She blinked back into the world of the living, turned to see who was there, then smiled when she saw it was her boy.

  “What are you doing, mom?” he said, walking over to where she was sitting.

  “Just thinking,” she said, sounding drugged or half asleep.

  “What about?”

  She brought a hand up to shoo the question away and instead asked what was on his mind.

  “A woman arrived from the Cartha sector,” he said. “Her ship has a technology the scientists are currently replicating. It’s the only hope the Round Table has of defeating the Hannibal.”

  She stared at him without any judgment on her face, no anxiety or happiness or other emotion. She continued to gaze at him, maybe through him—he was the spitting image of his father—and he wondered what she could be thinking.

  He leaned forward and took her hands in his. “I’m leaving to face them. I believe in the woman who came here. I believe that what she’s doing is good.” When his mother still didn’t say anything, he added, “I need to do this.”

  Margaret turned back to look at the empty wall. A slight smile appeared on her face, and he had no idea what she must be going through inside her head.

  Finally, his mother turned back and looked at him once more. “You’re in love.”

  As much as he tried not to let it, he felt his face redden. She laughed then. Her husband was dead, as was her best friend. Her son was getting ready to go to war, and yet she laughed!

  “You’re my son,” she said. “You don’t think I know your heart?” When he frowned and looked for an explanation, she added, “Your father had to twist your arm to get you to go into the academy and then again to go on the Cartha campaign. Everyone could see you didn’t want to do it and yet you did. Now, a woman arrives and you are eager to go? If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

  His first instinct was to deny it. Then came the urge to say nothing, which he managed for a few seconds. After that came the desire to find error in what she said. The thing was, though, there was nothing to correct.

  “She has no peer,” he said, remembering the way she had dropped Arc-Mi-Die’s head on the ground, the way she hadn’t taken the side of the representatives who supported Julian or the ones who had supported Hector but had seen through the treachery of both sides, the way she risked her life for those she didn’t know just because it was the right thing to do. Her eyes. Her lips.

  Forcing himself to stop thinking about her, he turned and looked at his mother once more. She smiled in a way that only a mother could. She smiled with the sadness of knowing he was leaving and she wouldn’t see him again for a long time. She smiled with the knowledge that while her boy was leaving he was finally doing what made him happy and so she couldn’t help but be happy even though it broke her heart.

  “All my life, I’ve been lost,” he said. When she began to protest, he added, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t know who I wanted to be. I went across the galaxy and almost got myself killed just to make Dad happy.”

  He paused, thinking of the officers he had seen die in the Carthagen tunnels. Funny how that was the memory that lingered in his head and not the one of a lance being driven through his father’s stomach before he was captured and presumed dead.

  He told his mother that people were fools or cowards when it came to what they wanted to believe. “I wanted to believe that joining the academy and going off on that silly campaign was the right thing so I did it. That was the story with me—I went where I thought I should go because I didn’t really have a true direction. But I do now. What Lancelot says is the truth. Her actions are the truth.”

  Margaret’s eyes closed as she smiled. “Looks like the academy and the campaign were for a purpose after all, then.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was making a joke, but he nodded. “They were. I can see that now. I was miserable during both, but without them I wouldn’t have found my true calling.”

  This made his mother smile as well. “It sounds like you know what you need to do.”

  “For once in my life, yes.”

  “Will you do me one favor?”

  “Of course.”

  She reached over and took one of his hands in hers, and with her other hand she pulled the blind open so a little bit of daylight entered the room.

  “Let’s talk one last time, mother and son.”

  He didn’t tell her it wasn’t going to be the last time because he would be back. Nor did he tell her he didn’t have the time. The engineers wouldn’t be ready with the outfitted ships and the extra containment barriers for at least another eight hours anyway.

  Instead, he said there was nothing else he would rather do in that moment, and then the two of them stared out the window at the little flying creatures and the children as they spoke of how the city had changed in the years since they had returned to it.

  37

  Lancelot had arrived to Kerchin-Joshua in a Llyushin transport and she also departed on one, but not the same ship. Instead, she and Quickly flew away from the frozen tundra in the craft he had originally flown to the planet. The ship had been stored in one of the tunnels next to where he lived with Enid, and over the course of his years on the planet, he had occasionally gone there and worked on it, performing all of the modifications he wished the designers had thought of when they created it.

  Through his improvements, it weighed eight percent less than a standard Llyushin transport. Its engine allowed it to fly twenty percent faster. Some of the armor was reworked to give more protection in vulnerable areas. Even the angles of the cockpit windows were slightly altered to allow him to see more toward his upper left and lower right, two places where the original ship’s designers had placed cockpit instruments.

  The controls were still the same, and that was the only reason he took his vessel and left behind the one Lancelot had arrived on. He had taught Enid how to fly the transport and while she had no intrinsic interest in piloting ships or leaving the planet, he had made her learn how in case an emergency ever occurred and she was forced to leave.

  For the first time on her journeys, Lancelot sat in the co-pilot’s seat of a vessel and let someone else fly. She had hoped they might fly some of the way in silence so she could collect her thoughts but there were so many updates Quickly needed that they spoke the entire time. She told him about the portal technology the Hannibal used as both an offensive and defensive measure. She told him about the four mechs and the death they delivered everywhere they went. After that, she related the details of Julian Reiser’s death and that she had been the one to kill Hector.

  “And now we’re going to recruit others to try and stop the Hannibal?” Quickly said.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Because of the portal in the Kerchin sector and where it jumped to, it had taken them less time to get to their next destination than if they had departed from Edsall Dark. In front of her, a familiar set of asteroids presented themselves.

  “We’re flying into that?” Quickly said without enthusiasm. When he realized that it sounded as if he doubted his own piloting skills, he added, “I can do it, I just wasn’t looking forward to putting any dents into my ship so soon.”

  “Not
into there,” she said, looking for the comms controls. Then, after finding them and pressing a white button, she said, “This is Lancelot. I have one other person with me. We mean no harm. I simply want to talk.”

  A moment later, half the asteroids vanished. Hundreds of others appeared where it looked as if there had been nothing but space.

  “Neat trick,” Quickly said.

  “That is where we’re going.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Art 3

  Three angles of the Llyushin Transport, by Ken V, digital art

  38

  While Philo was off training groups of men and women to fight against the Hannibal mechs and Thidian was working with crews to turn many of Greater Mazuma’s infrastructure systems into traps, Pompey was overseeing the rest of the preparations.

  One of his priorities had been to ensure the effort to convert part of an tunnel system into an underground shelter for millions of Vonnegans stayed on track. The tunnels had long gone unused and were originally intended for travel between parts of a shipyard that had existed centuries earlier. Now, those same tunnels were being lined with lead in the hope that the mechs wouldn’t be able to detect signs of life there.

  He also received updates on the effort to transfer as many children off the planet as possible. With little time left before the Juggernaut arrived, he had already sent the order that no more vessels would be allowed to arrive. Anyone who didn’t make it off Greater Mazuma in one of the ships currently at the landing pads would be stuck on the planet and share the same fate as everyone else.

  “Sir,” a young woman said. She was standing in the doorway of the room Mowbray had used when visiting the planet, famed for its view of the skyscraper-filled planet.

  He turned and nodded, not bothering to remind her or anyone else that he didn’t want to be called sir.

  “We’re getting reports that a group of approximately one hundred Vonnegans is on top of the Kryack tower with banners greeting the Hannibal.”

  “And?”

  “And they refuse to leave the roof and go into hiding.”

  Pompey shrugged and turned back to the view of the city. In the distance he could see the Kryack tower, one of the hundreds that seemed to glow because of the way the sun’s light reflected off the tinted metal. The people on top of the roof were too small for him to see but he imagined them dancing or singing or whatever it was that their deluded minds thought was appropriate.

  “Leave them. They made their choice. We can’t take any resources away from the people who actually want to live.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The woman clicked her heels together, turned, and left the room.

  A moment later, a middle-aged man stood at the same doorway and also requested Pompey’s attention by referring to him as sir.

  “Yes?”

  “The Mastoban tower is on fire.”

  Pompey turned to the east. Sure enough, a plume of smoke was rising into the sky. He swiped his hand through a holographic display and glanced through the plans that Thidian had sent him. The Mastoban tower was not part of the city planner’s strategy. He asked the man if he knew why the tower was on fire.

  “Not sure, sir. It could be random mischief. Maybe someone sabotaged it.”

  Pompey looked back down at the hologram floating to his side. “Mastoban tower,” he said, and the pixels changed to provide him with the latest updates on the structure. All he cared about was whether or not it had people in it. Once he saw it didn’t, he told the man to ignore it.

  “But what if it spreads, sir?”

  “Before the day is finished, there will be fires all over the city.”

  The man’s eyes moved away from looking at Pompey and instead focused on the view outside the window. Except for the lack of transports carrying people everywhere and the steady stream of ships descending to and departing from the surface, it looked like any other day. The fighting hadn’t broken out yet, so it was easy for people to forget that death and suffering would soon be upon them. The mind had a way of compartmentalizing. The man across from Pompey knew the Hannibal were almost there and yet he was concerned with one insignificant skyscraper.

  “Is that all?” Pompey said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pompey nodded and turned back to the window. An alert appeared in a hologram that formed to his side. The floating letters and symbols flashed red to note the urgency of the message. After reading it, he tapped a button on the device in his hand and a comm link opened.

  “Philo, the Hannibal will be here in ten minutes.”

  Philo’s voice emanated from invisible speakers installed in the room. “Okay, we’re moving into our positions as I speak.”

  “Fight well,” Pompey said before changing the comms signal to another recipient. “Thidian, the Hannibal will be here in ten minutes.”

  There was a delay in the response, and for a moment Pompey thought the city planner might have lost his nerve and made a dash from Greater Mazuma. But then the man’s voice also resounded throughout the room.

  “Sorry about that. The lead walls here are disrupting communications. We are set.”

  Pompey turned the comms line off without saying anything else. To the east, the Mastoban tower was still burning. The flames had grown in intensity, allowing Pompey to not only see smoke but also the fire that produced it. He had no doubt that the lunatics were still on the roof of the Kryack tower as well.

  He turned the comms device to yet another channel. “Captain Merceless, this is Pompey.”

  A moment later, the Vonnegan in charge of overseeing the evacuation of children aboard the flagships came across in the crisp and authoritative tone of someone who, unlike Pompey, was in the middle of his military career.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many ships do you currently have in the spaceport getting people boarded?”

  “Three, sir. One Athens Destroyer, one Mega-M cargo hauler, and a Class A Plutar frigate.”

  “Listen carefully, Captain Merceless. The Hannibal will be here in nine minutes. No matter what stage you are in of filling the ships, you are to immediately stop boarding any more people so the ships can depart.”

  “Sir, we have lines of thousands of children still waiting to board. They won’t make it off the planet otherwise.”

  “The people already on those vessels won’t make it if they don’t leave right this instant. Do you understand, Captain?”

  Pompey knew what he was ordering. If they lost the battle against the mechs, the deaths of the children he was preventing from boarding those vessels would be on his conscience. And by ordering Captain Merceless to carry out the order, he was consigning someone else to sharing that guilt.

  When he didn’t get a response right away, he thought about calling Philo and sending him over to ensure the order was carried out. A man of doubts, as Merceless might be, wouldn’t have the constitution to do the necessary and stop the lines of children from boarding the vessels. How could anyone be asked to say This child will be able to leave and be safe but the very next child will not? Each set of pleading eyes would beg for Captain Merceless to pick the next child in line after them.

  Someone like Philo would be able to carry out the order, though. Pompey had no idea what role Philo had performed for the Vonnegan army but it was clear the man had a cold and ruthless mentality, yet was calculating and reasonable. It was a combination of qualities that were trained into only a few roles, all of which made the hairs on the back of Pompey’s neck stand up. A man like Philo would have no trouble shutting the door on crying children if he were ordered to do so, not because he enjoyed their misery but because he would understand the necessity of it.

  “Captain Merceless?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m ordering the three ships to close their ramps right now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He knew that saying anything else was wasting precious time but something else needed to be said.


  “And Merceless?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You are saving the lives of everyone already aboard those ships. You have to look at it that way. If you don’t...”

  “Sir?”

  “If you don’t, there wouldn’t be anything to live for after this is all over.”

  Without waiting for a response, Pompey closed the comms line. Beside him, another hologram appeared in the air, flashing red like the previous one but more rapidly.

  He looked up at the northwest corner of the sky to see what the alert had signaled. It was there, in the distance.

  The Juggernaut.

  39

  With only minutes remaining before the mechs reached the planet’s surface, Philo put on his Fianna armor. It was the first time in three years he had brought it out of the locked storage chest in the bottom corner of his closet. As much as he still worked out, as fit as he looked when he glanced at himself in the mirror, wearing the armor again was a humbling affair. Each piece was tighter than it was supposed to be.

  With every piece on except for his helmet, he moved to the side, crouched, and then brought his arms up. With each movement, the armor that had been created to be perfectly silent back when it was sized to fit his body, now creaked and whined because it was a fraction too small.

  Outside, a group of soldiers raced past his door on their way to their assigned stations. He could tell from listening to them that there were four people in the group and each carried a blaster. The patter of eight feet and of the blasters’ straps jangling against their sides told him as much. His ability to instantly recognize information like that was due to his extensive sensory training. It gave him the ability to discern exactly how many people he should be prepared to slice down before entering a room and was one of the many reasons Fianna had always had an advantage before the first blow was struck.

  He withdrew the vibro halberd and slid it onto the latch behind his shoulder. He picked up the helmet and went to his door. His reflection in the glass caught his attention. A purple, armor-clad figure, reminding him of everything he had done. His hand came up, raising the helmet to the same height as his head. The already demonic laugh captured in the helmet’s grin was blurred in the window’s reflection. For a split second, he forgot it wasn’t his true face, only a symbol meant to instill fear. Now, he was someone else entirely. At least, that was what he told himself.