Avalon

by Chris Dietzel

  He felt a sharp pain and let out an angry hiss. Held in the air against the wall, he saw the rest of his tail on the floor below him. The mech had cut it off with its scythe. But still, Traskk couldn’t go anywhere.

  The blade of the scythe appeared from the corner of his eye and he knew it was coming for his head this time. Instead, a loud boom rang out next to his face, so thunderous he thought both of his ear drums might have ruptured. His eyes darted to the side.

  The gray mech’s scythe had stopped a foot away from Traskk’s throat. There, it had met the edge of a green blade. Traskk, his head ringing from the explosion of noise next to him, unable to hear anything let alone make sense of what had happened, looked for the source of the blade that had saved him.

  It wasn’t a Meursault or any other weapon his allies had brought with them. It was an emerald green axe, the one the Green Knight had carried into Eastcheap years earlier. Traskk knew then that he had actually died and this was a vision of some kind of nightmarish prelude to the afterlife. That was the only explanation for seeing the weapon again.

  For a split second, the Green Knight’s helmet swiveled slightly to face Traskk. In the narrow slit where his eyes should have been, Traskk saw only darkness. Then the Green Knight turned back to the mech, threw his weight into the axe so it pushed the gray mech backwards, and began his assault. To defend itself, the gray mech released its grip and Traskk fell to the floor. As he gathered his senses, the Basilisk saw the massive Green Knight swing his axe back and forth, causing the mech to backpedal until the white mech, having sneaked up beside them, shot an ion arrow into the Green Knight’s rib cage.

  The knight let out a grunt but continued its onslaught. The gray mech was backed against a wall with nowhere to go. The next ion arrow caught the Green Knight in his hip, forcing him to one leg and preventing him from getting back up to two feet.

  From his side, Traskk saw Lancelot race toward the white mech. The knight turned in the same direction. Lancelot ran toward the white mech as fast as she could but it wasn’t fast enough. The third and final ion arrow hit the Green Knight’s helmet, throwing him sideways to the floor, where he lay motionless.

  150

  Lancelot realized the black mech was gone. She also saw the gray mech had met its match and realized Vere must have sent the Green Knight to help. Vere had told her the Word was powerful and now Lancelot saw proof of it for herself. Somehow, they had managed to make a warrior appear in the middle of the Juggernaut. And not just any fighter, but one large enough and strong enough to fight back the Hannibal mechs.

  The knight had the gray mech pinned against a wall when his side was hit with an ion arrow. The blast would have killed a normal person. The Green Knight barely noticed it. The second shot, however, brought him to one knee.

  In a booming voice, the Green Knight turned to Lancelot and said, “It makes sense now. Of all the visions I’ve had, only once did I see my own death. This was it.”

  The knight’s voice wasn’t angry or afraid. It sounded as if he was curious as to what was going on, who the people were across from him and where exactly in time he was.

  Lancelot raced toward the white mech in the hope of stopping its assault on the Green Knight. If she could keep him alive a little longer, he might be able to help them get off the ship. Even as she ran, though, something in the back of her head told her this was going to play out a certain way and that her actions were futile. She had closed half the distance between herself and the white mech when a third ion arrow sailed past her, hitting the Green Knight’s helmet and throwing him sideways to the floor. There was no doubt that the knight was dead.

  She reversed her grip on the one vibro lance still in her possession and threw it as hard as she could. At the same time, the white mech fired an ion arrow at her. She almost jumped over it, but her back right leg couldn’t get high enough and was incinerated at the knee joint.

  As she landed, the vibro lance burst through the white mech’s helmet. Without pause, she planted her front legs against the mech’s stomach and pushed with all of her force. The mech was driven backward into the intersection created by a revolving wall. Sparks flew from where the vibro lance had impaled it, and she brought both Meursaults up to finish the job.

  Instead, an explosion sent her flying backward, away from the mech. She was knocked senseless, no understanding of which mech had attacked her. In front of her, the white mech was gone, as was the section of the Juggernaut behind it. So were all of the hallways beyond that one. A massive hole had been blown into the side of the vessel. Pieces of the white mech drifted off into space. It finally dawned on her what had happened.

  The explosion meant one thing. The Excalibur vessel, slowly drifting around EndoKroy so as to not draw any attention to itself, had finally passed beside the Juggernaut and detonated.

  The next phase of her plan had begun.

  151

  Moments before the explosion, still not understanding what had happened to the black mech, Talbot peered over the edge of the corridor it had been pulled into. It was a pile of metal junk. Both arms and both legs had been chopped off. A huge gash had sliced the head nearly in half. He looked for the knight that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere but didn’t spot him.

  Around the next intersection, he heard more fighting and ran to see who he could help. The only reason he wasn’t thrown through the air when the explosion shook the Juggernaut was that his space armor anchored him wherever he stood.

  At the turn, he saw a vast expanse of open space where the Juggernaut’s hallways had been. Outside it, asteroids and Athens Destroyers and Llyushin fighters, all projections created by the Carthagen technology, continued to plague the Hannibal vessel with the threat of damage that would never actually be inflicted.

  Although he was staring at open space from a crater blown out of the ship, there was no loss of pressure. Neither he nor any of his allies were sucked out into space. The sensor in his suit said the atmosphere and temperature were steady. The Hannibal must have had some kind of advanced containment field to prevent the inner workings of the ship from being exposed to the harsh reality of space.

  Outside the Juggernaut, another object began to slide into view. At first, he had no idea what he was looking at because of its elongated cylindrical shape and the fact that it wasn’t moving or shooting projectiles like all of the other holograms. It took a moment for him to realize it was the edge of one of the portals from the other side of EndoKroy. It, along with the Excalibur vessel, had drifted all the way around the planet during the course of the fighting.

  Unlike the Hannibal portals, it had a ring of three hundred and sixty metal cylinders that formed a perfect circle of energy. A moment later, as the Juggernaut continued to drift in space, the first glimpses of the portal’s bright light, sizzling and cracking within the confines of the metal ring, made him squint and look away.

  He knew what would happen next and yet he still stared, dumbfounded, at the portal and the giant hole in the side of the Juggernaut until Lancelot yelled at him to run. He turned and looked at her and smiled. But then he saw the trail of blood behind her and forgot about everything else. The blood, he noticed, was coming from what remained of her back leg. Red dots splattered the floor every time she took a step with her three remaining legs.

  “I’m fine,” she said before he could say anything. “We need to go.”

  Traskk approached from their side and joined them. His tail was missing, the breathing mask was gone, and three of his teeth were badly chipped or missing.

  “What about the others?” Talbot said.

  Philo was dead. Quickly was still motionless on the ground.

  “We need to go,” Lancelot said again.

  When Talbot didn’t move, one of her hands touched him on the back and he thought she was going to take hold of him and tell him she loved him but instead she merely pushed him forward.

  “Go.”

  He asked if she could run.

  �
�I’ll manage,” she said. “I’ll bring up the rear. Now go.”

  He saw why it was so urgent that they run. The explosion from the Excalibur had not only taken a chunk out of the Juggernaut, just as Lancelot hoped it would, it had also directed the vessel toward a collision course with the nearest portal. The ship they were aboard was careening into a field of energy that would send it across the galaxy to where it would never be seen again.

  They raced toward the general direction of the hole Lancelot had cut into the ship to board the craft, away from the portal that was getting nearer to them. After a mile Traskk slowed and went from jogging alongside them to lagging behind. He coughed and wheezed and his eyes became irritated. Talbot stopped and went to him but Lancelot pushed him away and told him to keep going.

  When he didn’t immediately do as he was told, Lancelot said, “I’ll catch up to you. I promise.”

  “I’ll go when you go,” he said and it was clear from his expression that he was serious.

  Lancelot unhooked one of the oxygen compartments at her hip and handed it to the Basilisk. It was awkward and inefficient because Traskk had no space armor to attach the oxygen cartridge to. The best he could do was unscrew the cap and cup his clawed hands around it as he held it to his snout.

  One of the Basilisk’s hisses was translated inside Talbot’s visor as “Thank you.”

  The reptile looked tired, a shell of his former self. It reminded Talbot of the accounts he had read of epic feats of mountaineering and what the lack of oxygen, combined with sustained physical exertion, did to the climbers.

  “Go ahead without me,” the computerized voice said after Traskk offered a couple more soft hisses. “I’ll be fine.” He took one hand away from the small pouch of oxygen and took hold of Lancelot’s hand. He hissed again. “Thank you for reconnecting me with Vere. Thank you for giving me one final mission.”

  Talbot didn’t know the Basilisk very well and so he was shocked when Lancelot stooped forward and embraced Traskk. She didn’t say anything, but wrapped her two shorter arms around him and held him against her armor for three long seconds.

  When she stood upright, she told Traskk he would see Vere again and the Basilisk cooed happily, nodding as his way of giving them permission to leave him.

  Neither of them felt good about abandoning him but they had no other option. As they ran, Talbot’s head was filled with a thousand things he wanted to say but he knew none of it was appropriate given another member of their party had fallen.

  At the next intersection, they came upon Swordnew. Miraculously, he was walking slowly down the hallway with one hand against the wall to keep himself standing. He didn’t seem to have any specific destination in mind.

  “Don’t they know it’s not easy to kill old Swordnew?” he said to Lancelot when he saw her.

  “We beat them,” she told him as they approached each other. “But we have to get off the ship right this minute.”

  Swordnew continued toward them, heading in the wrong direction.

  “Swordnew, we have to go,” Lancelot said, tugging on his arm, almost knocking him off balance.

  But the Carthagen was too far gone to understand or care. He continued, one of his swords acting as a walking stick, as he took small, staggering steps farther down the hallway.

  “We have to go,” Talbot whispered.

  His hand came up and touched the blast proof plating of Lancelot’s shoulder and he wished he could have touched her skin instead of a piece of armor. He told her a second time that they needed to go and she nodded.

  “Goodbye, Swordnew,” she said.

  The Carthagen paused but didn’t turn. “It’s not so easy to kill old Swordnew,” he said again.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “You did good, old friend.”

  “Come on,” Talbot said and tugged at Lancelot’s arm, trying to ignore the blood pooling on the ground underneath her.

  They began to run again.

  152

  Vere held her breath as she watched Lancelot and Talbot navigate the array of hallways and intersections. The couple ran straight through one revolving intersection, turned left at the next, climbed up at another, all the while working their way as fast as they could toward the hole Lancelot had cut into the vessel. It was the only path out of the ship that wouldn’t lead them directly into the oncoming portal.

  “Faster,” Vere whispered, urging them on.

  Already, the first parts of the Juggernaut were drifting into the portal above EndoKroy. Miles of the Hannibal vessel had disappeared into the field of white light.

  “Come on,” Vere muttered.

  Everything depended on one of them surviving. It didn’t matter if EndoKroy was saved and the Juggernaut defeated if no one survived to return to the Round Table to ensure it evolved into a more effective organization.

  But as she watched, the rate at which the Juggernaut began to fall into the portal increased. More of the vessel was swallowed up. As Lancelot and Talbot raced away from the portal, toward the hole she had cut into the ship, the sound of crackling energy began to fill the hallways behind them.

  Vere watched in horror as the pair, realizing they were going to be overtaken by the portal, gave up their chase and turned to face their fate. A moment later, the energy field washed over them and they were gone, along with the Juggernaut.

  The Hannibal threat was gone, but no one remained to keep the promises Vere had made to the Word. The Round Table would never change.

  153

  Swordnew had never been happier. Life on the Carthagen asteroids had been difficult. It had been solitary and secluded, but at the time he thought it was a necessary and righteous path. Now, though, among the stars, he realized he was seeing the true wonders of space.

  He was mortally injured and dying, he knew that, but he was also a part of something that only a month earlier would have been impossible. Just like the Dauphin had told him he would, he was helping an entire civilization survive from invaders. The ironic part, and the thing that made him smile at the sheer absurdity of it, was that he wasn’t protecting fellow Carthagens, he was helping the same people he had driven away from the Orleans asteroid field.

  There was no anger or resentment that he was going to die as a result of saving these people. Rather, he credited Lancelot—who, it turned out, of all miraculous wonders in the galaxy, to be a human!—with allowing him to fulfill his destiny as a protector of people. He had become the guardian he had always wanted to be.

  A wall of white energy approached him, then passed by. In his condition, it made no sense. He knew of Lancelot’s plan to send the Juggernaut into a portal above EndoKroy but didn’t realize that was what was happening.

  “It’s not so easy to kill old Swordnew,” he said again and laughed.

  He stumbled farther down the hallway. His breathing was strained as his lungs struggled to get enough air.

  When death did arrive, it wasn’t from the injuries he had suffered at the hands of the mechs. It was from an explosion. When the Juggernaut reappeared through the other side of the portal, it was two sectors away from EndoKroy in the Tullipron sector. There, another freed Excalibur vessel was waiting. This one also detonated directly next to the Juggernaut, incinerating a second chunk of the craft and driving it sideways into yet another portal that was waiting to transport the enemy vessel even farther away. The explosion wracked miles of the Juggernaut, tearing away hundreds of decks of oversized hallways.

  In an instant, Swordnew was gone.

  154

  The second Excalibur detonation knocked Talbot and Lancelot to their knees. In front of them, a hallway they had been following that was supposed to be approximately two miles long was replaced by strewn metal and a stretch of open corridor looking directly out at the expanse of space.

  Gone were any signs of EndoKroy and of the advanced Carthagen hologram system that had created thousands of fake ships. In their place were millions and millions of far-off stars. The only object in
their immediate vicinity that he could see was the edge of the next portal that the explosion was pushing them toward. This one, he knew, was going to take them even further away from the Round Table and closer to their doom.

  He began to back away from the hole in the ship but Lancelot grabbed him by the arm.

  “That way,” she said, nodding toward the open gash in the Juggernaut.

  Talbot didn’t know what she had planned but he relented without argument. The two of them hobbled toward the charred and bent metal that framed the newly opened window to space. Talbot kept expecting to be sucked out into the galaxy but the Hannibal containment fields protected them from the vacuum of space, allowing him and Lancelot to walk right up to the edge of the abyss.

  At the ledge, Lancelot took his hand in hers. Everything they had gone through, everything they had seen and done, all the pain they had suffered, faded away and was replaced by happiness. With her other two remaining arms, Lancelot reached up and began unfastening her helmet.

  “What are you doing?” Talbot said. “I thought we needed to go.”

  “You need to go,” she said. “You need to get back so you can fix the Round Table.”

  He realized what she had planned and tried to step away but her hand refused to allow him to move away from the ship’s edge.

  “You’ve betrayed me,” he said.

  With her helmet off he saw the effect his words had. Her eye twitched as if he had slapped her across the face.

  “By saving your life?”

  “By leaving me.”

  She turned from looking at him and gazed out at the stars. “Eternity is on our lips and in our eyes.”

  He began to protest, to tell her she needed to come with him, but she told him she couldn’t. Gesturing down at her leg, she told him her armor was too badly compromised for her to survive out there.