Avalon

by Chris Dietzel

  They stepped nearer to the intersection in front of them. It was as if the inside of the ship had no sense of up and down. She had the option of turning left or right, walking ahead or backward, or shifting directions and walking up or down a new hallway. Without the anchoring technology built into the feet of their armor, the journey could be treacherous. However, with the soles of their feet locking onto any surface, she could walk into a wall, then begin walking up it, along a new passageway as if up were straight ahead.

  She also observed that the walls of the ship were glowing. Circles of light, each approximately four feet in diameter, moved behind a translucent covering in the walls. It would have looked like energy traveling up and down various parts of the ship except the balls of light didn’t move in straight lines. Some traveled up the corridor then turned at an intersection. Other came toward them, then went up a passageway over their heads. A few ran in straight lines for a while before pausing in place or slowing down at an intersection.

  “Sensors of some kind?” Philo said.

  “A tracking system?” Swordnew offered.

  “Beats me,” she said, turning once again to make sure they were alone.

  Philo was standing perfectly still. All four of Swordnew’s hands were twitching as if he wanted dearly to cut an enemy in half.

  She turned her attention back to the intersections and realized the junctions were slowly turning. It was difficult to see at first because of the way all the walls glowed with light. Now she recognized that at each intersection, a glowing wall moved in the fashion of a gradual turnstile, spinning so that a straight passageway would become a dead end after the wall shifted into place, leaving the occupant with the choice of turning right or left or waiting for the wall to continue spinning so they could once again go straight. Another wall slowly moved to present the same options upward and downward. She watched in fascination as the walls continued their slow revolutions. The circles of light moved without urgency, using the new intersections to vary their paths in all different directions. The walls seemed to be designed specifically to allow the circles of light to continue uninterrupted to every part of the ship.

  It wouldn’t take long to become disoriented in a vessel that had no fixed system of direction. The farther they traveled into the vessel, the more they would become lost in a labyrinth of intersecting hallways that all looked alike. She was going to tell Philo and Swordnew that they should stay together so they didn’t get lost, but before the words got out a humming noise formed in the distance and began to steadily grew louder.

  Swordnew grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. A figure was far down the hallway. Its height caused it to fill much of the corridor from floor to ceiling. It had two arms and two legs and was built thick and sturdy. It stood atop a hover disk.

  The mechs.

  In that instant, she yelled something she never thought she would hear herself say. It was only one word but it went against everything she was. If the Dauphin were there and heard her they would have demoted her so she was no longer their lead warrior. It was, however, the only word that would keep them alive long enough to defeat the enemy.

  “Run!”

  And without waiting to see if Philo and Swordnew were following, she galloped as fast as she could down the first interior hallway, deeper into the Juggernaut.

  The humming grew louder, and she realized it was coming from another direction. The mechs were trying to surround them.

  115

  As he floated through space, Talbot glanced over his shoulder to see how Quickly was doing. The modified Llyushin transport dived under one ricocheting streak of laser, cut a sharp turn away from another, then plummeted underneath the next. With the mechs having returned to the Juggernaut, there was no reason for the pilot to risk his life by flying inside the shell of portals that allowed cannon blasts to ricochet back and forth in an endless cascade of bouncing beams of death.

  “Get out of here, Quickly. There’s nothing else you can do right now.”

  For a moment there was silence, and Talbot wondered if there was a problem with the microphone in his helmet.

  “Roger that,” the pilot said finally, clearly unhappy at the idea of leaving his associates behind. “I’ll be just on the other side of the wall of portals if you need me.”

  Talbot didn’t turn to ensure he got away. Instead, he looked to his side. Traskk was still floating next to him. Both of them were drifting closer and closer to the opening Lancelot had cut into the Juggernaut. With his claws and fangs covered by various pieces of the protective suit, Traskk didn’t look nearly as menacing. Talbot knew better than to tell the Basilisk that, however.

  At the opening, both of them waited for their boots to adhere to the vessel’s surface. It was only ten steps to the hole but they raced to get there. Talbot’s own Meursault, the one that had been found in the collapsed tunnels underneath Edsall Dark and had led to his father’s assassination, left a trail of clear vapor behind it as he moved.

  The two of them leaned over the edge of the gap and peered inside. At first, a haze of light made it difficult to see what was there. The resulting halo effect made Talbot squint. After a moment, the sensors in his visor confirmed what his own eyesight had determined. The floor wasn’t ten feet below them but roughly forty feet.

  “Ready?” Talbot said, making sure the voice translation software was turned on so anything Traskk said would come through his helmet in Basic.

  Traskk hissed an affirmative.

  Without waiting another second, Talbot held onto the edge of the hole, then allowed his space armor to fall inside. With the suit on, he barely experienced any sense of falling. And when he landed, instead of breaking his legs, the space armor absorbed the impact, making it feel as if he had merely jumped off a three-foot ledge rather than having fallen four stories.

  Traskk landed beside him. Lancelot was nowhere to be found. Nor were Philo or Swordnew.

  “Hello?” he said on his comms, hoping Lancelot might be close enough in the ship to hear him.

  He got no answer. They both spun in a circle to make sure they weren’t missing something. Not even the mechs were there. The enormous corridor of the Juggernaut was completely empty. The only noise that filtered through the speaker in their helmet was a soft vibrating hum. He assumed it was generated by the circles of energy that moved along the walls but he had no idea what they were or why some moved back and forth while others traveled along one corridor. There were no aliens in armor lining up to kill him. There were no combat bots or automated turrets taking aim at him. If he hadn’t seen Lancelot and the others disappear into the hole, he would have assumed they were in the wrong place.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Beside him, Traskk gave a low hiss of agreement.

  With no clear and present danger, he put his Meursault back in its sheath and considered his surroundings. There was no indication on the floor or walls as to which way Lancelot and the others had gone. Nor was there any sign they had come under attack. They simply weren’t there.

  “Do you know how to turn on your suit’s navigation displays?”

  Traskk grumbled a negative, and Talbot talked him through how to turn on the sensor that would map their location against all of the various corridors and intersections they might walk through. The suit’s sensors were unable to get a reading through the walls, but it was able to map the corridors within sight and show them where they were relative to the hole they had jumped in.

  “Lancelot? Are you there?”

  He waited, but again there was no response. Traskk growled and the two of them looked at each other and then at the vast array of empty hallways, each of which was large enough for an entire battalion of warriors to march through. Then he shrugged and they walked to the first intersection, waited for the revolving walls to open a new path, and began making their way deeper into the Juggernaut.

  116

  Part of a Fianna’s training entailed processing large amounts of sen
sory information in an instant. It had been a necessity of Philo’s job as one of Mowbray’s elite guards to be able to react in a manner that would ensure his ruler’s safety by the quickest and most efficient means. In a heartbeat, he could determine whether something was a threat and whether he should shield Mowbray or move to mitigate the risk. Those precious moments, fractions of a second, in which he was already unleashing his vibro halberd instead of pausing to think, were the difference between life and death—for Mowbray and for himself.

  However, for the very first time in all the years he had carried a weapon, he now stood still in the face of danger. Not because he didn’t recognize the threat racing toward him but because he was astounded by Lancelot’s reaction to it.

  “Run!” she had yelled before turning and galloping away.

  Instead of joining her, Philo had merely stood there in the oversized corridor, facing the giant mech as it approached. Run? He had never run in his life and now wasn’t the time to start. He was there to vindicate himself, not to be a coward.

  From a thousand yards away, the mech continued forward atop its hover transport, coming right at him. His instinct was to raise his halberd and fire off a couple shots from the laser cartridge. The small fire would never damage the mech, however. His only real options were to face the mech head-on and hope he could get close enough to slash at it with the glowing blade of his halberd or join Lancelot and Swordnew in their cowardice.

  A second thought pushed the first idea aside. He remembered Lancelot’s account of tracking down Arc-Mi-Die and all of the aliens and gangsters she had killed along the way. He believed all of the amazing feats she had mentioned because there was nothing in her voice that betrayed a false motivation. If anything, he had gotten the impression she had downplayed many aspects of the hunt, glossing over parts of the story that other people, lesser fighters, would have relished exaggerating. From listening to her, he gathered she was a warrior who prided herself on her bravery and tenacity. But now she was running. Either she wasn’t the person he thought she was, or she wasn’t running away from the mechs as much as she was finding a better way to confront them.

  Further up the corridor, the humming of the enemy’s transport grew louder as it continued to race toward him. It was close enough that he could identify it as the black mech.

  His assessment of Lancelot—that she was regrouping rather than fleeing—began to make more sense. After all, she had fought to get here. She had confronted the Juggernaut, had cut her way into the vessel, knowing what the Hannibal were capable of. It would be sheer lunacy to do all of that, only to flee when faced with a threat. That would have been like going to all of the trouble of finding Arc-Mi-Die, only to retreat once she found him. But she hadn’t done that. She had absorbed laser blasts and explosions and nearly died in order to cut off his head.

  Added to that was the fact that all of her weapons were designed for close quarters combat, as were Swordnew’s and Philo’s. Facing the mechs from a distance was suicide. They had to find a way to get right up to the mechs without first being shot by ion arrows or waves of energy. He turned to see how far his allies had gotten. Lancelot was already gone. Swordnew was turning a corner further down the corridor. When he faced forward again, the black mech was only three hundred yards away. Two hundred yards. One hundred yards.

  Philo turned and began sprinting as fast as he could. Without the luxury of being able to wait for the next turnstile intersection to open, he chose a different path farther into the depths of the Juggernaut. The mech’s hover platform sounded as if it were right behind him. The heavy thud of his space armor boots against the floor was drowned out by a hum creeping up on him.

  He didn’t turn to see how close it was, only kept running as fast as he could.

  117

  The first minute after Talbot and Traskk left the modified Llyushin fighter was the worst. Everywhere Quickly looked, bursts of laser dashed about from one portal to another. So many beams of energy bounced in every direction at such blinding speed that there was no point in trying to react to all of them. Instead, he guided the transport out of the interior ring of portals as fast as he could.

  Between the middle and outer layers of portals, less clustered than the first, he began to send the ship into twists and spirals to avoid incoming blasts. The Carthagen hologram technology was still creating the illusion of asteroids, flagships, and fighters all around him but he got used to ignoring what his eyes were seeing and relied entirely on the cockpit display that eliminated everything except the actual objects in the area. The only moving dot in his vicinity was his ship. The few other fighters that had joined the effort had all been destroyed.

  The final ring of portals had the fewest portals and his transport easily soared through the outer layer of Hannibal protection. This area of space was devoid of activity. On the other side of EndoKroy, the Round Table’s portals were still active and the Excalibur vessel still orbited the planet.

  Once outside the battlefield, he didn’t know what to do. Where he was, there was no fighting and also no way of helping Lancelot and the others. Inside the layers of portals, however, his little Llyushin transport wasn’t capable of damaging the Juggernaut. He would be risking himself just to be near the fighting.

  Without a better plan, he began to circle EndoKroy. The pair of glowing circles above the planet were distinguishable from the hundreds of Hannibal portals because each had a ring of three hundred and sixty cylinders that contained the portal’s energy. The Excalibur vessel grew closer as well. As he continued to loop around the planet, he passed each object and the pair of portals and Excalibur vessel disappeared behind him.

  He thought of Enid and wondered what she was doing at that moment. Maybe thinking of him. More likely, performing the day’s chores because she now depended entirely on herself to survive on the barren world they had called home together.

  The thought crossed his mind again that he could easily alter course and head back to Kerchin-Joshua. Things would be so much simpler if he did. Life there was quiet. Enid loved him and he loved her.

  The fleeting hope was followed by the same realization that always followed it—if he left he would be abandoning Lancelot and everyone else who was depending on him. Hundreds of times since leaving Enid he had thought about returning to her and every time he had immediately been reminded of why he was needed here.

  The Llyushin transport continued its course around the planet until the outer layer of Hannibal portals came back into view again.

  “Forgive me, Enid,” he said as he guided the ship toward a gap between the outer layer of portals.

  118

  Swordnew had difficulty keeping up with Lancelot. He galloped at top speed through the revolving corridors of the Juggernaut, but she was always a little faster. By the time he turned another corner, she was already at the end of the next section of hallway. He trusted that she was choosing her path based on where she thought the mechs were located and where she wanted to confront them.

  They didn’t only turn left or right but also ran up some hallways and down others. The surface of their boots did all the work, orienting them to each direction as if it weren’t plunging and rising but continuing straight ahead. Without a center of gravity inside the Juggernaut, every direction felt the same, and he soon lost his orientation with respect to where they had originally entered the vessel.

  Behind him, the Fianna was even farther behind. He could tell this by looking at a sensor display inside his visor that mapped where they were in relation to each other and to known threats. The problem with the sensor was that it wasn’t able to adjust for the Juggernaut’s constantly changing floor plan. The display inside his helmet said Lancelot was directly in front of him but all he saw was a revolving wall so he turned right, dashed down the next corridor as fast as he could, and planned to take the next left in hopes of meeting up with her again.

  Only once had he seen another glimpse of the mechs. The white mech had appeared dow
n a long hallway to his left. A couple seconds later, a flash of light caught his eye and an arrow of energy passed by his head and sailed down a side passageway.

  No matter how fast they ran, the humming of the mechs remained all around them. Ahead of him, Lancelot turned a corner and disappeared again. Swordnew got to the same intersection a couple of seconds later, just before the revolving corridor temporarily shut off access to that path. At the next junction, Lancelot plunged down a hallway heading deeper into the ship.

  When he turned the same corner he hit a dead end. It wasn’t a wall he had smacked into but Lancelot’s back. He stood beside her and stared down the same corridor she was facing. Both of them observed a wall that was slowing turning to open a new path. As the first glimpses of what lay on the other side of the wall came into sight, he saw what was there. The reddish brown mech. It was facing them, moving atop its hover transport toward them, pacing itself so it would get to the junction just as the opening was wide enough for it to pass so it wouldn’t have to slow down.

  “We have to destroy that one first,” Lancelot said. “It’s the only one without a longer-range weapon, so we can get close.”

  “Okay.”

  She turned then and glanced behind her.

  “Where’s Philo?”

  “He had a tough time keeping up.”

  “Well,” she said, taking a step forward and drawing both vibro lances and both Meursaults, “he better get here soon.”

  Then she ran directly at the giant mech.

  119

  Traskk let out a long string of low, guttural hisses. It wasn’t until the metal glove of Talbot’s space armor reached out and gestured for him to calm down that he fell silent. It was unsettling, though, being inside the oversized hallways of the Juggernaut, especially since it was quiet and empty.