He focused on what the ship’s sensors told him was actually there instead of the bedlam projected all around him. His hands pulled the ship’s controls and he sent the Carthagen shuttle through another portal and then another. Each one brought them out of one enormous energy field and into view of dozens more just like it. Without the aid of the navigation sensor that showed his ship’s location among the maze of chaos, they would have become lost in seconds. To add to the confusion, the Hannibal portals continued to deactivate and then activate again, jarring his sense of perspective and direction.
“Just keep flying,” Lancelot said as if reading his thoughts.
From the co-pilot’s seat, she reached forward with one of her lower arms and pressed a yellow button to open a comms line.
“Quickly, you there?”
A moment later, the human pilot’s voice came back with an affirmative. Swordnew checked the navigation sensor to see where the other ship was located and found it on the opposite side of the Juggernaut. A second later, he guided the Carthagen shuttle through another portal. Quickly must have done the same because the two ships were near each other but in a completely different area of space above EndoKroy.
Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters raced past him in every direction, every ship looking for a way through the maze of energy.
“I’m here,” Quickly said. “I’m just trying to figure out where here is.”
Right after speaking, the human’s Llyushin transport appeared from a portal next to where Swordnew and Lancelot were flying, then plunged straight into another. Swordnew turned to Lancelot, who offered a shrug, and then Swordnew yanked the controls to follow the vessel.
They hit a wall of white light and came out in another different part of space. Diagonally in front of them, a pair of Thunderbolts emerged from another portal. They were followed by a mech that was twice the size of a one-man spacefighter. It was white and had an ion bow, which it fired, sending a glowing arrow sailing through space. The arrow hit one of the Thunderbolts just before it reached the next portal. A ball of fire erupted for an instant, then disappeared as it hit the wall of energy it had been trying to escape into.
“Target the mech,” Lancelot said, leaning forward in anticipation.
Swordnew was already activating the ship’s cannons. Ahead of them, the human pilot was turning his craft in a tight arc so it could come back around and do the same.
“Watch it!” Quickly yelled through the comms.
Alarms sounded in the cockpit. Swordnew glanced at the displays in front of him to find the threat. A holographic image of the ship appeared in front of him, letting him know the rear edge of his shuttle was gone, sliced off by a closing portal.
He pushed the steering mechanism forward as fast as he could. A long beam of light came down in front of the cockpit, exactly where the middle of the ship would have been if he hadn’t swerved.
He couldn’t make sense of what the beam of light was until the ship finished a spiral and he saw another mech, this one reddish brown, coming after them with a long ion sword.
107
With each portal that Quickly’s Llyushin transport entered, Talbot grew more tense. Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters darted out of one energy field and into another, barely missing each other. A pair of Thunderbolts appeared through a portal only seconds before Quickly was to pass through it. The Llyushin transport dived at a ninety degree angle to avoid a collision.
After blasting through two more portals, they saw a glimpse of three Thunderbolts darting into a portal as a squadron of Llyushin fighters appeared from the same spot and the fighters had to scatter in various directions.
Talbot gritted his teeth but remained silent, allowing Quickly to handle the situation how he deemed best. Behind him, he could hear the tip of Traskk’s tail tapping nervously on the floor. Through the next portal he saw one of the mechs.
“I see it,” Quickly said, already swerving away from it and plunging into another portal.
“We’re never going to find the Juggernaut this way,” Talbot said. “The portals are resetting too fast.”
On cue, the hundreds of Hannibal portals deactivated in a rolling wave. A second later, each portal reignited into a blaze of bright, white energy.
Lancelot’s voice came through the cockpit speakers, asking for Quickly. Talbot hated himself for wishing Lancelot wanted to talk to him instead of the pilot, especially at such an urgent time. They were in the middle of trying to save EndoKroy and the entire Round Table and he was broken hearted over not receiving enough attention. It was pitiful and he knew it but couldn’t help himself.
They went through yet another portal and as soon as they did Talbot saw the Carthagen shuttle beside them. Quickly saw it as well and nodded. They were only a second from darting through yet another portal. His eyes darted to the nav sensor, hoping Swordnew and Lancelot would be able to follow.
From every portal they appeared through, the first thing they saw were armadas of holographic Solar Carriers and Athens Destroyers and real spacefighters that zipped from one portal to another too fast to keep track of. Quickly swerved hard to the right. Talbot almost asked what was going on but then he saw it too. The black mech had come through a portal in front of them. Before Quickly could get a shot off, the mech moved backward and disappeared into the energy field. To their opposite side, a pair of Thunderbolts appeared through another portal. They were followed by the white mech, which fired an ion arrow through one of the fighters, causing it to erupt in flames.
Quickly pulled the modified transport into a sharp turn. As they came around, the rust-colored mech appeared as well. It was racing after the Carthagen shuttle atop its hover platform, its long ion sword ready to strike. Talbot’s hand darted to the comms system.
“Watch it!” he yelled, but it was too late.
The mech’s sword sliced off the back edge of the Carthagen shuttle. Talbot watched in horror as the glowing three-story tall sword barely missed the ship.
By the time Quickly had finished bringing the transport out of its arc, the mech was already moving backward, retreating into a portal. Quickly glanced over at Talbot to see what he wanted.
“Don’t follow,” he said even though he wanted nothing more than to destroy the thing that had almost killed Lancelot. “It’s trying to distract us. We need to find the Juggernaut.”
Quickly glanced at the dozens of portals in front of them, then motioned to the sensor that displayed hundreds of more options.
“Full stop,” Talbot said.
Quickly frowned and glanced back at Traskk, who hissed at the idea.
“Stop for a second,” Talbot said again.
Quickly did as he was told. The transport wasn’t completely still—it would take too long to get it moving again if a mech appeared, but it was traveling so slowly that it might as well have been.
Talbot’s eyes kept darting back and forth between the space in front of him and the holographic cockpit sensor that displayed all of the objects in space around them. The next wave of portal deactivations and reactivations spread across space. As it did, Talbot stared at where the nav sensor said the Juggernaut was located. Because the portals were staggered and overlapped in waves, he never saw the massive ship but he did see where they needed to go.
“Avoid the portals,” he told Quickly as he pointed to the dot in the very middle of the holographic display. “Skip portals and get us there.”
“There’s barely enough space to maneuver between them. Do you know how slow we’ll have to move to make the turns? The mechs will get us without trying.”
Behind them, Traskk growled in agreement.
“I know,” Talbot said. “But we’re never going to make it through the maze of portals and we’re wasting time.”
Without debating the topic anymore, he reached a hand out and opened a universal comms line.
“All fighters in the area, this is Talbot Reiser. Converge on our coordinates. We need cover.”
Then he smiled and nodded to Quickly as if it were that simple.
108
“What are they doing?” Swordnew asked, turning to Lancelot. “They’re going to get killed if they fly that slow.”
She reached to open a line to Quickly’s ship, but before she could, a pair of Llyushin fighters erupted from a portal beside them. Both ships fired retro-thrusters, slowing and then falling into formation, one on either side of Quickly’s ship.
A moment later, a trio of Thunderbolts appeared from a portal on their other side. All three ships came to a near stop and surrounded the Carthagen shuttle.
“I don’t like this,” Swordnew said.
Lancelot could only guess what Talbot was thinking. Her suspicion was confirmed when the hundreds of Hannibal portals deactivated and then reactivated in its usual cascading wave. As soon as the portals were in place again—the vast array of holographic flagships, asteroids, and portals interspersed with them—the Llyushin transport began forward.
“Follow them,” Lancelot said.
There was only enough room for one ship to pass between the two closest portals, which forced the ships to file into a single line. They were joined by two more Llyushin fighters, which fell in at end of the line.
The slow caravan of ships proceeded straight through a holographic asteroid and an Athens Destroyer before coming upon another layer of portals. Every portal deactivated then activated again except for the fake ones created by the Carthagen technology.
“Slowly but surely,” Lancelot said.
Behind her, Philo said that slowly but surely is what got people killed.
In front of them, the matte gray mech appeared from a portal, sent a wave of energy from its scythe, then backed into the energy field again. Quickly reacted faster than anyone else, sending the Llyushin transport into a dive. At the slow speed they were traveling, however, the maneuver had little effect. The streak of laser disintegrated the Llyushin fighter that had been directly in front of them.
Two of Swordnew’s hands twitched at the weapons controls but the mech was gone by the time the ships in front of them were out of the way. A squadron of Llyushin fighters raced at them from the side, on a path to run straight into the shuttle. Swordnew gripped the stick, ready to maneuver the ship to safety, but Lancelot reached out and steadied him. The squadron passed through them without any damage or even a slight jolt.
“Your own technology,” Lancelot said with a smile.
Quickly’s Llyushin transport righted itself and the caravan continued between the next set of portals. Just before it was the Carthagen shuttle’s turn to pass through, Lancelot saw the white mech appear from a portal to her left. It spotted the line of ships and sent an ion arrow at them. A moment later, Lancelot looked at a sensor and saw that only two of the three Thunderbolts that had been accompanying them were still there.
Swordnew shook his head and gave a disapproving hum that would have made the Dauphin proud. “We’re barely moving,” he said. “We’re basically crawling there while they pick us off.”
One of the Thunderbolt pilots behind them must have felt the same way because he powered up his ship’s engines and soared ahead of the Carthagen shuttle, the Llyushin fighters, and Quickly’s transport.
“Stupid,” Lancelot said with a sigh.
The gap between the two nearest portals in front of them was only wide enough to pass through with perfect precision and that demanded patience. The Thunderbolt pilot made it most of the way through the space between them but the tip of his wing hit the edge of one of the portals. Through the sliver between the two energy fields, Lancelot saw that a portion of the Thunderbolt was gone, which caused the vessel to lose control and begin streaking left and right.
“He’s lucky he didn’t kill himself,” she said as the rest of the ships passed through more slowly. “That will be us if we go any faster.”
Right after she said it, the reddish brown mech appeared and slashed the streaking Thunderbolt in half with its ion sword.
“That will be us if we don’t go faster,” Swordnew replied.
The portals began another round of incremental waves of deactivating and reactivating. When the one diagonally in front of them glowed again, a black hand reached out from it, a pair of cylinders balanced in its hand. A moment later, black gas began to seep from one cylinder and black bubbles rose from the other. The two combined to form a toxic cloud of energy that spread until it blocked the path between the two closest portals.
One of the Llyushin fighters swerved away from the caravan, took aim, and began sending streaks of laser at the mech until the hand retreated back into the energy. The fighter pilot didn’t give the enemy time to regroup. Instead, he chased after the mech, plunging into the field of blinding energy and leaving the rest of the Round Table ships to continue their march.
Talbot’s voice came through the cockpit speaker: “We should be getting closer.”
They navigated through the tiny slit between the next layer of overlapping portals. It was there. The Juggernaut.
They didn’t have time to celebrate, however. The Thunderbolt in front of them exploded in a ball of fire. Alarms began sounding in the cockpit of the Carthagen shuttle. The mechs were positioned around them at two, five, eight, and eleven o’clock.
“We’re surrounded.”
An ion arrow barely missed Quickly’s transport. The reddish brown mech was coming at them with its ion sword ready. A wave of energy rippled through space from behind them, ripping through one of their wings. In the cockpit, more alarms began to sound.
“I’m losing control of the ship,” Swordnew said.
In a split second, the caravan was down to only three ships and one of them, the one they were aboard, was about to explode. Lancelot yelled for every ship in the area to converge on their coordinates, then raced out of the cockpit to evacuate the vessel.
109
As she rushed past Philo to grab a satchel she needed, Lancelot asked if he could survive in outer space in his Fianna armor.
“No. But I can’t fight in space armor.”
Years of training allowed him to ignore the alarms that were sounding throughout the ship and focus only on what Lancelot was saying. There was no sense of urgency in his response, only determination to destroy the mechs.
“Yeah, well, you can’t fight if you’re dead,” she said, then tossed him part of a suit of space armor and told him to start putting it on.
She darted back toward the cockpit as he stepped into the lower half of the suit. He could hear Swordnew and Lancelot yelling over the sound of the alarms but couldn’t understand what they were saying. The shuttle lurched hard enough to send him flying, helmet first, into the far wall. He picked himself up and began putting on more of the space armor.
“You aren’t done yet?” Lancelot said as she ran past him to the back of the ship, not waiting for an answer.
On her way back again a moment later, he asked what was happening and she told him the last blast had taken out the shuttle’s engine. This was in addition to all of the other damage the ship had taken.
Before going back into the cockpit, she gestured at the protective suit and said, “I’d put that on a little faster.”
His hands worked as fast as they could. It was awkward putting on a suit of armor over another suit of armor. The blast plates of his Fianna suit scratched and snagged against the space armor. There was no way, however, that he would take the purple suit off to make the space armor more comfortable. It was his second skin, and if he was going to get a chance to face the mechs he would need every piece of protection he could find.
Lancelot yelled something to Swordnew before appearing in the main cabin again. Philo pulled the helmet on over his Fianna helmet, then turned so Lancelot could fasten the clips.
“What about you and Swordnew?”
“Our suits are pressurized and sealed. We’ll be fine.”
With his back still to her, he reached down and took hold of his vibro
halberd.
“What now?”
Instead of answering with words, Lancelot pressed a button to release the emergency hatch. A rectangular metal panel blasted away from the Carthagen shuttle and drifted off into space. The pressure that had been maintained in the ship was lost and in an instant Philo was sucked out among the hundreds of portals and thousands of holograms.
110
All around Quickly, dozens of Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters zipped by in every direction. Only two of them—both Thunderbolts—were real. There were so many ships all around him that if they were all real, he would have collided with friendly craft a hundred times already. He no longer focused on what he saw outside the cockpit. It was too misleading. Instead, he brought up the nav sensor to project in front of him. The holographic overlay showed him where the four mechs and the few friendly vessels in the area were so he could ignore everything else.
He hadn’t seen the Carthagen shuttle take damage because he had been in the middle of sending his modified Llyushin transport into a spiral to avoid the mechs. When he came out of it, however, he saw a streak of smoke trailing across space and angled his ship to see what it was.
“That’s not good,” he said.
Beside him, Talbot sucked in a breath of air as his hands clenched into fists. The back end of the Carthagen shuttle was missing. A stream of blue fire erupted from it as it streaked through space.
“We need to help them,” Talbot said.
Behind them, Traskk growled in agreement.
Quickly responded by offering the only help he could provide to a ship that was about to explode. He angled his own vessel slightly to the right and began letting off a stream of laser blasts at the nearest mech. The shots knocked it backward, sending it through the portal behind it.
The other three mechs were focused on the swarms of holographic Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters all around them. The mechs had no way of knowing which ships were real and which were illusions and so they had to respond to each as if it offered a threat.
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