Each ship launched a pair of proton torpedoes toward the city and then raced off just as fast as they had arrived.
“Squad 16, go,” Pompey said into his comms device.
A group of Vonnegan resistance fighters emerged from various hiding spots, four blocks away from where the proton torpedoes had landed. Most had blasters and ion grenades, which they began using at will. One had an ion rocket launcher. A couple had heavy blasters strapped to their torsos, blasters so powerful they pushed the soldier carrying them back a step with every shot fired.
The white mech was pelted by dozens of blasts before turning and firing a pair of ion arrows. Explosions took out two of the soldiers carrying blasters and made many of the others dive for cover. The white mech began toward the nearest portal. The Thunderbolts’ proton torpedoes struck between the mech and the portal, however, trapping the mech between the explosion and the Vonnegan fighters on the ground.
It was at that moment that Pompey decided to use one of the best traps that he and Thidian had set. Without thinking of the consequences to the people on the surface, without thinking of the unprecedented nature of what he was doing, he said into his comms, “Activation code, three, one, seven. Now.”
A series of explosions rang out. From where Pompey was standing in the observation deck, he couldn’t see the result of the explosions until the famous Mer-ress skyscraper shuddered one time, then began a quick collapse toward the ground. It was followed by the high-rise across the street from it. The force of the double explosions would no doubt be felt for miles.
The timing hadn’t been perfect. The white mech hadn’t been directly between the two skyscrapers when they imploded, but the force of hundreds of thousands of tons of building material collapsing at a near free fall only a hundred feet from where the mech was momentarily trapped was enough to throw it from its hover transport.
The disk that the white mech rode upon was programmed to immediately move toward its rider. The mech got to its feet, but the lost seconds were enough for the resistance fighters to do considerable damage. Twenty blaster shots hit the back of the mech. A pair of ion grenades hit the rear of its legs. But the most obvious damage came from the soldier carrying the ion rocket launcher. He crouched to one knee to steady his aim, made sure to get the mech in his crosshairs, then fired. An ion rocket blasted away, soared two city blocks, then hit the back of the mech’s helmet, throwing the unit into the ground.
Pompey couldn’t help but shake a fist in the air in celebration. They were going to save Greater Mazuma. They were going to repel the Hannibal.
The moment of triumph was short lived. A second later, every resistance fighter in the area was wiped out with waves of energy released by the gray mech’s scythe. It had appeared from a portal two blocks away and began laying waste to everything that moved. Once the fighters were dead and it was sure the Thunderbolts weren’t coming back, the gray mech approached the white one, then accompanied it back toward the Juggernaut. At the same time, the black mech and the rust colored mech returned to the planet’s surface.
Neither looked like they had received any damage. Pompey groaned, knowing the white mech would return later in the battle in a similarly new state.
Without pause, the black mech held out the scale in one of its hands and began releasing the poisonous energy cloud that emanated from it.
56
The Round Table ships were close enough to the sun that all they could see out the entire curved glass of the cockpit was fire and solar flares and swirls of intense heat. Each ship had sensors that automatically activated protective tinted barriers to keep the pilot and passengers from going blind as they approached ID-1D-0067.
“We’re ready,” the pilot said while as many crew members as possible packed into the cockpit to see what was happening.
“Send in Lancelot’s ship first,” Talbot said.
The pilot nodded, then pressed a button located between him and the co-pilot. The order was relayed to the pilot of the Type B Strain transport that Lancelot had flown to breach Arc-Mi-Die’s secret base inside the sun. While everyone in the Llyushin cruiser watched, the transport plunged into the giant sphere of fire and energy. There was no visible barrier or shield that Talbot or the others could see. For a moment, he expected the transport to catch fire and explode into flames. But as the vessel dived into the fiery mass, he saw how the waves of orange heat curled around the ship, engulfing it immediately. The transport disappeared into the flames.
“Is it still there?” Talbot said.
It was the co-pilot who scanned a holographic display and answered, “Affirmative. The transport is continuing ahead at the same speed and course. No damage reported.”
They waited for the pilot of the transport to confirm this before anyone else entered the star themselves. After a minute, he radioed back that there was no status change and no threats to report.
“Okay, let’s go,” Talbot said without enthusiasm. “One at a time.”
The pilot nodded and pushed the ship’s controls forward, then told the other ships in the vicinity to proceed only after he gave the okay. As the cruiser began to move closer to the star everyone in the cockpit held their breath. The cockpit window continued to filter out more of the brightness until what everyone saw resembled a gray sun rather than the fiery mass that was actually in front of them.
Flames lapped at the frigate, forcing Talbot to push back at the panic welling up inside him. His jaw clenched. His hands were numb because they were squeezed into tight fists. He imagined the containment field failing and the vessel bursting into flames. What if the Carthagens were not only advanced with their technology but were so cunning they had sent a human dressed in their armor whose sole purpose was to get revenge by convincing the Round Table fleet to fly into a star and destroy itself? It would be treachery of epic proportions, so vile and ruinous that parents would tell their children about it thousands of years later.
But he knew it couldn’t be a trap because Lancelot wouldn’t deceive him. After only one night with her he trusted everything she said. He knew anyone else would cringe if he confessed that but it was true. No one else knew Lancelot the way he did. If she said the containment fields would work, they would. If she said one of the keys to defeating the Hannibal was hidden inside a star, that was true too.
Talbot asked the pilot how it was going. Everyone else stared at the mass of fire in front of them without speaking.
“Well, I’m flying into a star,” the pilot said. Then, turning and seeing Talbot wasn’t amused, added, “No signs of stress on the ship. The containment field seems to be working.”
Everyone gathered in the confined space broke into smiles. All except the pilot, co-pilot, and Talbot went back to their normal duties.
“Tell the next ship it’s okay to proceed ahead.”
The pilot relayed Talbot’s order.
“The transport is up ahead,” the co-pilot said but Talbot couldn’t see anything other than orange oceans with bursts of yellow and white.
Everything around the cruiser looked the same, an endless landscape of stellar energy that caused the co-pilot to remark how awful it would be if their navigation stopped working and they became lost in the immense sea of fire.
A sensor next to the pilot chimed.
“Ten seconds,” he said.
“I still can’t see anyth—” Talbot started to say before falling silent. In an instant, they passed through a pocket of swirling fire and came out the other side. When they did, he saw it. Arc-Mi-Die’s base. Still there, still protected by the containment field around it.
But more importantly, the last remaining Excalibur vessels were also there, each one surrounded by its own containment field. Each one invulnerable to laser blasts of any kind. For months they had been the symbol of Arc-Mi-Die’s reign of terror. Now, they would become the symbol of hope in defeating the Juggernaut.
57
“Trust me,” Lancelot told Swordnew. “It might seem scary a
t first, but before long you’re going to be amazed by everything you see out there.”
The two of them were flying in the shuttle they had taken from the Orleans asteroid field while Quickly piloted his modified Llyushin transport. They had just reached the edge of Orleans and were seeing the first glimpses of a galaxy that wasn’t surrounded with rocks.
It came as no surprise to Lancelot that Swordnew offered the standard Carthagen warrior response: “I’m not afraid.”
The comment, rather than frustrate her, made her smile because it was the exact same thing she would have said a few months earlier. Having been raised as a warrior by the Dauphin, there was no room for fear. If she or any of the other warriors had expressed any hesitation or dread during the duels or while carrying out their responsibilities as protectors of the Carthagen people, the Dauphin would have humiliated them.
Lancelot still remembered the final times she had defeated Hammerblow in the duels. The fight hadn’t lasted ten seconds before Lancelot sliced off all four arms of the other warrior. The medical bots were able to easily reattach the four limbs and Hammerblow was ready for combat two days later, but even though he was perfectly healthy and suffered no residual effects from the previous fight, he hesitated when the elders called for him to go to the middle of the chamber and face Lancelot again. What Hammerblow appreciated, what the Dauphin didn’t because they themselves didn’t fight, was that even though he had been healed and the duels were a place for the warriors to test themselves without concern for actually losing their lives, it was traumatizing to lose one limb, let alone four. At the time, Lancelot hadn’t thought anything of it because she herself had never lost a fight and knew she never would. But as she began to talk to Mortimous and Vere and began to develop the capacity for empathy, she realized Hammerblow must have been miserable and scared, and must have detested Lancelot for hurting him so badly. Looking back, she was ashamed by the amount of pride she had taken in besting him in record time.
Things hadn’t gotten better for Hammerblow after that. Even though he obviously didn’t want to, he had stepped to the center of the room. Lancelot’s ego was out of control. She had been set on defeating Hammerblow even faster and more ferociously than she had before. That time, she had cut off all four of his legs in nine seconds. Hammerblow had tried to remain silent in defeat, but he had let slip a cry of pain. To this day, Lancelot wasn’t sure if it had been the physical pain of losing his legs or the mental anguish of knowing he would be sent back into the duels a couple days later.
The Dauphin didn’t order him to fight again, though. After the medical bots dragged him out of the chamber and fixed his injuries, Hammerblow was forever relegated to the end of the line of warriors, no chance of ever being considered anything but the weakest of the group. For the Carthagens, it was humiliation of epic proportions. Lancelot suspected it was the elder’s way of punishing Hammerblow for his weakness. After leaving Orleans, she thought of a second possibility. The elders knew Lancelot was capable of killing the other warrior if they ever fought again and they didn’t want to lose one of their fighters. In their own jaded way, they had been protecting Hammerblow from Lancelot’s uncontrolled sense of superiority.
Hammerblow had become a symbol of the torment and hurt Lancelot was capable of inducing, and he was one of the people Lancelot most wished she could ask forgiveness from. It could never happen, of course. Hammerblow had died during the Round Table force’s invasion. It was possible Talbot had been the soldier who had killed him, a fact that neither helped nor hurt her impression of him, but made her once again appreciate the interconnectedness of all things in the galaxy.
She wished there was a way she could explain all of this to Swordnew as they left Orleans. It wasn’t possible, though. Not yet.
“I used to say the same thing,” she told Swordnew. “I used to take pride in not being scared of anything. Well, I’m still not scared of any warrior. I’m not scared of the possibility of losing in combat. But you know what? There are a lot of things that do scare me.” Swordnew turned and stared at her, and Lancelot added, “I’m scared of not living up to my potential. I’m scared of wasting the life I’ve been given. I’m scared of disappointing my father and Bookknow and myself. And you know what? That’s just fine. I can use that fear to be a better person.”
“The Dauphin wouldn’t like to hear you say those things.”
Lancelot laughed. On more than one occasion, she had said the exact same words to Vere back when the cloaked visitor had first begun appearing in her private chamber.
“The Dauphin aren’t here anymore,” she told Swordnew. “And you’re already more courageous than they ever were. They never fought in the duels. You did. They never faced visitors themselves. You did. They were too scared to leave Orleans. Now, look at you; you’re out in the galaxy.”
“Lancelot?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you can defeat me in battle. You did so more times than I can count. But if you keep belittling the Dauphin I’ll be forced to set this ship to autopilot and draw my weapons. Do you understand?”
She smiled and nodded. She reached over and patted his shoulder with one of her gloved hands. It would take time for him to come around. She had no doubt that he eventually would, however.
“Yeah, I understand.”
58
With hundreds of portals giving the mechs the ability to teleport instantly from one part of Greater Mazuma to another, almost all of Pompey’s planning had to be revised. Even though the four armored units could travel surprisingly fast in any direction aboard their hover transports, the path that each had taken was straight forward. Regardless of whether the mechs stuck together or strayed to different parts of the planet, Pompey could plan accordingly. Now, as he watched, the enemy jumped from place to place in the blink of an eye. After they vanished, he had to reacquire their locations and see what defenses were situated in that quadrant. By then, the mechs had already disappeared into the portals and reappeared somewhere completely different.
While it traveled, the black mech kept its hand outstretched, its toxic energy seeping from its scale. But now, because of the portals, there were dozens of clouds throughout Greater Mazuma instead of just one.
Pompey noticed that the matte gray mech had a tendency to follow the black mech. Sometimes it would appear from the same portal the black mech had just come through and send a wave of energy from its scythe at a Vonnegan soldier who was taking aim at the black mech. Other times, it would go through a portal ahead of the black mech, slice an ion tank or proton missile battery in half with the curved blade of its weapon, then watch as the black cloud arrived behind it.
The rust-colored mech seemed to have a completely different goal in mind. It ignored the Vonnegan combat bots and other military targets and was instead set on driving people from their hiding places so it could kill them. It would leap through three or four portals, pick a seemingly random skyscraper, and then travel around the perimeter of the structure with its long ion sword cutting through every side of the high-rise’s foundation. Once that was accomplished, the rust-colored mech would lower a shoulder and ram the side of the skyscraper, toppling it into another building. Pompey guessed that it was causing chaos in order to get any hidden fighters to flee from their hiding spots so it could cut them down.
After returning to the fight, the white mech, whose hover platform had been severely damaged by thermal grenades, fought as it had before being damaged. It wasted no time, firing ion arrows into anything that moved. A pair of resistance fighters appeared from opposite sides of the street, each leaning out of the doorway of a high-rise. One was hit directly with an ion arrow. The other managed to duck back inside the building for safety, but the ion arrow tore through the wall and exploded with enough force to send debris flying, burying the woman under metal and concrete.
A Thunderbolt came by for a quick attack run. The pilots had been instructed not to linger in any one area, and this pilot obeyed that ord
er by keeping his engines at full power. But the white mech, with a score to settle, sent three ion arrows into the sky in slightly different directions. One was aimed ahead of the Thunderbolt. The other two were fired on opposite sides of its current path in case the pilot swerved. The fighter did swerve, and managed to evade all three shots, but was struck by the following volley of ion arrows. The Thunderbolt left a trail of black smoke billowing behind it as it nosed into an controlled descent toward the planet’s surface. The pilot, knowing the buildings were vacant, made no attempt to ditch the Thunderbolt into the ground or a body of water and instead ejected a moment after setting the fighter to fly directly into another of the mechs. The mech easily moved aside, however, and the Thunderbolt exploded in a ball of fire near the two hundredth floor of a high-rise.
Pompey watched all of this through the series of holographic displays projected in front of him. He thought about all the things he could have ordered his troops to do. If he stubbornly tried to adhere to the original plan, the response would be a mess. Traps would be activated too late. Soldiers would be waiting for him to give the order to attack after the mechs had already jumped to other portals and were gone. Any reliance on him would only burden the people fighting on the ground. In the end, there was only one thing any good military leader could say, and so he activated the comms device next to him.
“Each of you knows why you are out there fighting. The mechs are moving through the portals too fast for me to coordinate an effective counterattack. Instead, each of you should fight as you see fit. Activate traps when the enemy is in sight. Perform the same tactics we reviewed. I will try to offer advice if possible, but from here on out each of you is on your own to do what you think is best. Fight well.”
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