“But you won’t survive in here either.”
She smiled and looked back down the length of hallway they had just come from.
“I will. I’m going to see Vere now. But I promise you, we’ll see each other again. Much sooner than you imagine.”
He knew any attempt to resist was futile. Even damaged, Lancelot’s Carthagen suit made her many times stronger than he was in his traditional space armor. She squeezed his hand again. Then she leaned down to kiss him. He wished for nothing more than to be able to take off his helmet. As it was, her lips touched the visor that was inches away from his own mouth and he closed his eyes and remembered their first night together.
“My heart will always be yours,” he said, but he was already falling backward, having been pushed through the clear containment field that separated the inside of the Juggernaut from the void of space.
As he began to float away, he saw the massive Hannibal vessel beginning to plunge into the next portal. He stared at Lancelot and she stared back. There was no sadness on her face, only happiness. Her eyes narrowed with kindness and she offered a slight smile.
The last glimpse he had of her was of her smile, her long blond hair over her shoulders, her helmet in one hand and a Meursault in another. Then the portal enveloped her as well as the rest of the Juggernaut, and he was floating in space by himself. Alone.
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Lancelot began back in the direction she had come. It was easier than watching Talbot drift off into space. And anyway, she knew a Llyushin transport was waiting in the vicinity of each portal to ensure the Excalibur vessels delivered their payload and to pick up any survivors. The nearby pilot would find Reiser and take him back to Edsall Dark. Under a different set of circumstances, she could have spent the rest of her life with him. Instead, he would help the Round Table evolve into something greater.
“He’ll be okay,” a voice said beside her and Lancelot turned to see Vere, covered under a light brown hood and cloak.
“I know,” she said. And she did. “By the way, thanks for sending the Green Knight.”
There was an audible smile in Vere’s voice when she said, “It’s a lot better having him around when he isn’t trying to chop off your head.”
A wall of energy passed through the ship as the Juggernaut careened through the portal stationed in the Tullipron sector and appeared another two sectors away, where a final Excalibur vessel was waiting.
“This isn’t the end,” Vere said. “It’s only the beginning of something else.”
“I know,” Lancelot said, ignoring the pain in her leg. “I’m not afraid. I’m ready.”
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The second blast woke Quickly from his stupor. He brought himself up to one elbow and scanned his surroundings. Philo was dead on the ground. The white mech was a mess of wires and metal. The other mechs, as well as the people he had boarded the Juggernaut with, were gone.
It took all of his remaining energy to push himself up to his feet and shuffle toward a destroyed section of wall that looked directly out to space. The Juggernaut was drifting sideways toward another portal, directly in front of where Quickly was standing. As it got closer, he remembered everything that had happened and began to fill in the pieces of what else must have taken place after he lost consciousness.
Their plan had worked.
They had distracted the mechs and the Hannibal long enough for the portal and Excalibur vessel above EndoKroy to drift around the planet. The first explosion had pushed the Juggernaut through the portal, where it had appeared in the Tullipron sector. From his surroundings, he guessed that was where he was now. Judging from the way the Juggernaut was drifting toward the next portal, he knew the second Excalibur vessel must have also detonated.
He watched as the portal came closer and closer. Finally, it enveloped him and the rest of the ship. The next thing he saw wasn’t the empty space of the Tullipron sector but something else entirely.
A black hole. All around it, light curved and bent until it got to a point where nothing could escape its forces. He stared at it with wonder, overcome by its beauty. Even though he was counting down his final minutes, part of him wished Enid was there with him to see it.
He knew it was far away still, but once the Juggernaut was caught by its gravitational force, the enormous Hannibal ship would be rapidly pulled into the black abyss. As if on cue, the final Excalibur vessel detonated. Quickly was thrown forward, almost falling through the clear containment field in front of him and out into space. The massive explosion pushed the moon-sized Juggernaut forward.
It was slow at first. Painfully slow. Dread filled Quickly as he began to suspect the plan hadn’t worked. What if part of the Juggernaut’s systems were able to function well enough to keep the ship from being pulled into the black hole? But soon, the momentum began to pick up until the Juggernaut was tumbling out of control to its inescapable annihilation.
The stars on either side of the black hole began to blur and Quickly knew he didn’t have hours or minutes left, but only seconds. As the Juggernaut groaned under the immense force of the black hole’s gravity, both pulling it closer and squeezing it together, noises began to flood Quickly’s ears.
At first, he thought he was delirious. That was the only explanation for hearing Enid’s voice. She was calling him to stop working on his ship for the night. She was telling him she loved him. She was yelling in frustration as she worked on her own. They weren’t only memories that had been shared but experiences she had after he was gone, and he was sensing all of them as if they were taking place at the same time. She was laughing at one of his jokes. Her eyes narrowed when he tried to get out of doing a chore. She was exhausted after another long day of working by herself.
As he got nearer to the black hole, he sensed every moment of Enid’s life—the past, present, and future. Every moment washed over him as if it were happening at the same time. Their past together. Her present alone. And then... he didn’t hear her but felt her near him, and he knew that the future was also happening at that very moment and that he was seeing her again.
“I love you, Enid,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he was saying it then, as he stood on the edge of the Juggernaut, or if it was what he had said to her years before, or what he was going to say to her when they were reunited in Avalon.
Art 7
Black Hole, by Tim Barton, digital art
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Deep inside the network of the Juggernaut’s interconnected hallway system, Traskk didn’t have a view of the approaching black hole. He had felt the tremors caused by the third and final Excalibur ship, however, and knew from Lancelot’s plan what it signaled. He felt the gravitational forces of the black hole and it not only pulled the Juggernaut forward but also yanked at it with such force that it felt as if the ship were soaring through the galaxy at full speed while simultaneously being squeezed by a giant cosmic hand.
In the seconds he had remaining, he too began to hear voices from his past. He heard Fastolf joking in Eastcheap. He heard Vere and Morgan quarreling. He heard himself roar in anger as he killed the traitor Scrope.
Closer to the black hole, the sounds gave way to visions of each of these things happening, and in front of Traskk, all around him, he began to see his entire life. The unhappy time before he had met Vere. The best years of his life—laughing with Occulus and Vere and the others in Eastcheap. The battles he had fought alongside various friends. The deaths he had witnessed and the pain he had experienced. The spectrum of his life, full of colors and sights and sounds, played out before him, and he somehow knew he was watching the decades unfold seemingly in real time.
He smiled as Vere snorted with laughter at one of Fastolf’s jokes and then looked over at Traskk to make sure he had understood the joke as well.
And then he heard her voice.
“Hello, Traskk.”
He turned to see where Vere’s voice had come from. She wasn’t there. Neither, however, was the Juggernaut. The ship was go
ne. The hallways filled with glowing circles of light were no more. In their place were more scenes, an impossible amount to count. And yet he knew the voice he had heard was not a memory from the past. It was coming to him at that moment.
He couldn’t see Vere but he could smell her and sense that she was there with him.
He asked where she was and heard the familiar happiness in her voice when she said, “I’m here with you, where time and space no longer exist. In Avalon.”
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From the discussions Vere had with Lancelot about the Word, a common theme stood out. The Word lived outside of normal perceptions of time and space. It was Lancelot who connected that idea with what she knew of the galaxy. Inside black holes, neither time nor space existed. She became convinced that was where the Word could be found. When Vere came to her with a plan for how to defeat the Hannibal, Lancelot knew it was her destiny to send the Juggernaut into the abyss of a black hole.
As Quickly and Traskk had experienced, the closer the Juggernaut got to the black hole, the more scenes played out all around Lancelot. She saw herself, a little girl, crying and distraught, as her father kissed her forehead and told her he loved her. A Carthagen found her, but instead of killing her, he took pity and crafted a suit a human could operate. Julian Reiser and his troops entered the asteroid tunnels. There were scenes of Vere and Mortimous visiting her and of her leaving the Orleans asteroid field.
It was her entire life, but it was also much more. She saw not only her own past and present but also her future. She saw herself reunited with her father. In Avalon, where time and space didn’t exist, all things happened all the time.
She could also see Talbot as he was picked up by a Llyushin transport and taken to the nearest Round Table medical bay to recover from his injuries. She saw him return to Edsall Dark weeks later, to the same type of fanfare his father had received. Instead of embracing it as Julian had, Talbot used it to change the Round Table forever. She watched as the young man she had fallen in love with went into the Great Hall and told the representatives that he would help them alter the Round Table in a way that would benefit the entire galaxy. Protests ensued from some of the representatives, but Talbot, growing into the role of a leader, asked each vocal opponent to step outside the Great Hall and hear whose name the people were shouting.
He didn’t become a tyrant or an emperor. As Lancelot had suspected, Talbot combined Julian’s good qualities with the lessons learned he had gathered from witnessing his father’s mistakes. He was tireless in ensuring the Round Table functioned, and he was passionate about creating a galactic body capable of bringing about an end to war.
In Avalon, the Juggernaut fell away, and Lancelot saw a panorama of the future drawn into the timeless domain around her. Talbot ordered the Round Table fleet to be dispersed across the entire galaxy. Instead of an armada built for war, a different flagship was stationed above each moon and planet in order to deter pirates and gangsters and to keep the peace. At the same time, the Round Table was returned to its humble beginnings. Instead of hundreds of representatives sitting around one enormous table, each bickering and shouting to get their point across, only nine representatives sat at the table, one from each sector.
And she saw Talbot grow old and become a man full of wrinkles and gray hair. He never married, never had children of his own. And when he died, she saw him approach Avalon and she whispered, “I told you we would meet again.”
Acknowledgments
As always, I am indebted to many people for their support: Jodie McFadden, for her constant encouragement and optimism; my parents and brother for their support; and everyone on GoodReads and in the BJJ and MMA communities who read my other novels and recommended them to their friends. That is the only way that books like mine have the chance to be successful, and I’m grateful for their support.
I would also like to thank all of the artists who were willing to devote their time and creative energy to designing the characters and places described in this book. Ever since I first saw Ralph McQuarrie’s sketches for the aliens and ships in the original Star Wars trilogy, I’ve wanted to create a world where artists could bring to life the concepts described throughout the adventure. Thank you to Azimuth, Tim, Ken, Ella, Leila, Molly, and Loic for doing just that.
Want to receive updates on my future books? Sign up for my newsletter at: http://chrisdietzel.com/mailing_list/
About The Author
Chris graduated from Western Maryland College (McDaniel College). He currently lives in Florida. His dream is to write the same kind of stories that have inspired him over the years.
His short stories have been published in Foliate Oak, Temenos, and Down in the Dirt. His others novels have become Amazon Science Fiction Best Sellers, been featured on the Authors on the Air radio network, and been required reading at the university level.
About The Artists
Azimuth - Azimuth is currently an art student at the university level. He is interested in concept art and game design. His website is: http://theazimuth.deviantart.com/
Tim Barton – Tim is a digital artist known for his stunning and colorful space artwork. He does his work in Adobe Photoshop and creates 3D scenes in Terragen. His full gallery of artwork can be viewed at http://www.cosmicspark.deviantart.com.
Ken V – Ken also creates art under the moniker "Jetfreak.” He is a freelance graphic and concept artist who specializes in aircraft profiles and renders. His website, where he regularly posts new illustrations and 3d renders, is: https://jetfreak-7.deviantart.com
Molly Evans – Molly majored in art history and studio art at the University of Maryland. She specializes in painting and illustration. Her inspirations are the concepts of the female identity as well as the places she has traveled around the world. Her website is: http://mollyevansart.weebly.com/
Ella Pennock – Ella is a self taught artist and plans on being a graphic artist in the future. She has been drawing since she could hold a pencil. As she continues to study design, Ella is looking for new ways to create art and her own personal projects.
Leila ElManfaa – Leila is a self-taught artist specializing in melancholic and moody designs. She was inspired by the old masters, particularly Renaissance, Baroque, and pre-Raphaelites. Nearly all of her work ties somewhere into stories and fairytales that she has read. Her website is: https://bethaleil.deviantart.com.
Loic Denoual – Loic is a concept artist and illustrator from France. He is a self-taught digital illustrator. His website is: https://grimdor.artstation.com/
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