The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  Groshna was lying. He had to be.

  The troglodan gave a burbling grunt, as if he’d had an amusing thought. “I was reticent to believe, of course, when my patrol reported they had slain the new Knight by mistake. I had to go and check for myself. Facial structure too damaged for our scanners, you see.”

  Nate felt sick.

  “Alas, you already know what I found.”

  It couldn’t be.

  “No Excalibur,” Groshna said, tapping thoughtfully on Iveera’s head with one thick finger. “Only a defunct quantcomm node, and a pile of feeble human bodies.”

  Nathaniel…

  “And having met you now, runt, I must say, I am supremely surprised you were not among them.”

  Nathaniel!

  “Kill him.”

  The command came so abruptly, so offhandedly, that for a precious moment, it was all Nate could do to gape. This wasn’t right, his dumbfounded brain whispered. None of it was right. He was supposed to keep Groshna talking. Supposed to play on the troglodan’s superior dismissal. Find the opening. Find his friends.

  Just like in the goddamn movies.

  And so his brain continued to insist on screaming hyper-loop as the troglodan standing over Iveera’s dead crewmate raised his huge pistol and pulled the trigger.

  37

  Dregs

  “DO IT, EX!” Nate screamed, slamming down into a wild roll as the second clap of thunder split the air and something cracked into the deck right beside his head. “DO IT! DO IT!”

  He kept rolling, tumbling over the edge of the command overlook, falling toward the sweet lip of cover on the pit deck below. Falling too long, his stomach informed him, even as the deck magically hovered just below, not coming any closer in the sudden, stomach-turning weightlessness.

  Ex had done it.

  And now they were all falling—who knew how many thousands of tons of metal and savage aliens all plunging together for the dark cyclone-churning waters of the ocean below.

  Nate’s eyes locked on the viewport, a soundless cry lodged in his throat, and for a long, empty second, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but watch the dark waters approaching, listening to the booming cries of fisting and spotted runts that filled the bridge, smoldering with the grim satisfaction that he’d caught the bastards off guard—that maybe he’d even just repaid them some small fraction of the hell they deserved for what they’d done to his planet. And to his friends.

  Then he caught sight of the dark-armored troglodan sailing toward him in their zero-g environment, and all that bitter hope and grim satisfaction shriveled up cold, right along with his insides.

  He haphazardly spun and scored a lucky kickoff from the one wall within reach. No time for questions, and certainly no time to account for where the maneuver would send him.

  Which just so happened to be straight at Groshna.

  If he’d had the wind left to scream again, he probably would have. But then he caught sight of Iveera, drifting weightlessly in her restraints beside the massive troglodan, and he remembered the plan. Groshna had lost his death grip on Iveera’s head in the chaos, and was now holding onto her by a single armored boot. It seemed like good news, right up until Groshna noticed Nate coming and spun his way with a devastating cannon-arm backhand.

  Nate tried to rock clear, reflexively shoving off of the cannon with his hands, and promptly found himself spinning ass over teakettle through a nauseatingly fast zero-g backward somersault. Ceiling. Deck. Crimson tree trunk. He caught sight of Iveera’s floating form somewhere “below,” let his rattled brain fill in the rest of the geography, and kicked with all his strength.

  He almost cried out in relief when his heel struck what felt like a troglodan arm. Then something hard smacked into his upper back, jarring his senses loose. The deck, some part of him realized as he bounced back into the air, too high. He’d kicked himself straight into the deck, and bounced right back up into free fall. But it had worked, he realized. Iveera was floating free, spinning off toward the bridge entrance.

  An instant of relief.

  Then Groshna caught onto Nate instead.

  Blind panic spiked through him as the beast took his entire goddamn torso in one massive hand like a bottle of ketchup he fully intended to squeeze for every last drip. And squeeze he did.

  Nate did scream then, though he couldn’t have said if any sound actually came out. He was too busy watching in horror as the crimson monstrosity hefted him up on high, apparently intending to splatter him on the deck like an especially infuriating egg.

  Eggs and bloody ketchup. That was all he could think about in his final moment.

  Then the ship struck down with a resounding crash of alien metal on unforgiving water, and weight came back with a vengeance even the mighty Groshna wasn’t ready for.

  If the troglodan hadn’t been there, Nate was pretty sure he would’ve been deck paste—which seemed obscenely ironic, given what that troglodan had been preparing to do. As it was, Nate’s hundred-and-eighty-odd pounds of spotted runt ass crumpled down on Groshna’s head like a sack of butcher’s meat, and rode the superior shock absorption of the trog’s strong back and tree-trunk knees all the way down to impact.

  Which was to say, it still hurt like hell.

  For a time, Nate was too rattled to even piece together where he was, much less what the hell had just happened. Then a huge crimson hand struck the deck beside his head, and a gaping cannon barrel abruptly filled Nate’s view, a terrible, fiery blue energy crackling to life in its depths.

  Groshna’s growling face appeared over him. “You petulant little—”

  A wet thunk and a roar of pain, then something struck the troglodan and sent him flying past Nate faster than anything his size had any business flying. A streak of copper and glimmering red blurred after him like a deadly gust of wind. Nate barely refocused in time to see Groshna strike the viewport, a sprawling spider web of cracks detonating out from the point of impact. Somehow, Iveera was already there, skidding to a halt below the troglodan as he began to fall. She thrust her open palms up, bellowing the most tortured, chilling cry Nate had ever heard, and Groshna exploded through the viewport, rocketing skyward on an invisible tsunami of force—gravitonic or otherwise, Nate couldn’t have said. He was too busy gaping at the gorgon. As were Groshna’s cronies.

  The two closest trogs died before they could so much as blink. The other two were already charging for the bridge exit, not even bothering to aim so much as a pot shot at Nate or Iveera. One died with a blue blaster bolt to the back of its head. The other staggered into the corridor outside and took off for the loading bay at a thundering troglodan sprint.

  Iveera watched him go for a bare second, spared a few more to look expressionlessly down at her dead crew mates, then she covered the distance back to Nate in an effortless leap, like she was hopping up a single step instead of thirty feet across the room. She turned back to the viewport, speaking a single word Nate didn’t catch, and a network of holographic controls and displays appeared around her. A chair began to rise out of the deck just behind her, taking shape organically, like a plant growing in fast forward, inviting her to sit. Iveera ignored it, busy at her controls. She ignored Nate too, but that was fine by him as he took a few moments to gape from the smoking metallic scraps of the restraint rings she’d somehow burst free from, back to the dead trogs, and finally to the shattered viewport that was already beginning to mend itself.

  The deck bucked beneath him, nearly taking him down with it. Outside, the ocean looked like something out of The Perfect Storm. With a start, Nate remembered the gaping breach back in the loading bay and glanced to the bridge exit, half-expecting to see a torrent of dark ocean water flooding in.

  Nothing. Maybe the bay had magically repaired itself too.

  Before he could ask any of the dozen imminent questions clamoring in his mind, though, the downed ship hummed to life under Iveera’s ministrations, and shot up from the salty waters fast enough that Nat
e had to grip onto her unused chair to keep from falling over.

  “I will deal with Groshna and his ships,” Iveera said quietly, still flicking through a confusing blur of holographic controls like she hadn’t even noticed the unsteady footing. “You must locate the Beacon below.”

  Her voice was frighteningly flat after everything that’d just happened, but it was her last words that truly startled him.

  Him, locate the Beacon? Below? Down… He stared out at the unnatural column of churning waters in the distance—the tip top of whatever alien sorcery was currently coercing the ocean to make like the world’s most colossal kitchen sink drain. How many troglodans had already dropped down that thing? Where the hell was it even leading? And how was he supposed to—

  “Where are we?”

  Out of all the questions that could’ve fallen out first, he wasn’t sure why that was the winner.

  Mid North Atlantic, Ex offered, when Iveera gave no sign she’d even heard Nate. I believe we’re looking at the gateway to—

  “Come,” the gorgon said abruptly, waving her displays away and taking him by the arm with such effortless strength that he nearly fell over.

  “Where… Where are we going?” he asked, scrambling to keep up as she hauled him into the vine-strewn corridor outside the bridge.

  She didn’t answer. Maybe it was a trivial question. But then, considering what she’d just said about him dropping down the giant oceanic troglodan hole to battle who knew who for who knew what in the middle of who the hell knew where, it also kind of seemed like—

  Atlantis.

  —the most important question in the world right then.

  What?! Nate didn’t register he’d drawn up to a halt until the unstoppable gorgon freight train peeled him off his feet and continued along, dragging him almost casually down the broad corridor ramp. What the fuck are you talking about, Atlantis? he demanded, scrambling to get his feet back under him.

  I’m fairly certain that’s where the oceanic gateway leads.

  The—You mean that thing’s—But…

  Nate was still trying to wrap his head around any single part of what Ex was telling him when Iveera hauled him into the loading bay, and another sobering realization struck. Not that the ship had sealed its ventral breach, or that it had allowed the less critical hole to remain in the ceiling. Somehow, those tidbits almost seemed sensible at this point. He was entirely more concerned with the fact that she’d brought him here, to the place where she’d imprisoned him.

  Here, to the place where he was suddenly certain she was expecting him to jump out of a speeding spaceship, a mile over the raging Atlantic Ocean.

  “Listen,” he started uncertainly, “Iveera? I’m—I’m sorry about what happened to… to your ship, and to your crew, and to everything, but—”

  The world lurched. Hard wall slammed into his back, Iveera’s long forearm crushing into his chest, pinning him to the bulkhead as phosphorescent eyes leaned close, skewering him on the most frighteningly alien glare he’d ever seen.

  “Do not speak of them, human. Do not dare.”

  The armor of her free hand rippled as she spoke, morphing to birth some kind of miniature wrist cannon on the back of her quietly burning words. Nate tensed against her titanium grip, suddenly sure that he’d overstepped in mentioning her crew, and that he was about to pay for it. Then she thrust her arm to the side and fired, and Nate watched with wide eyes as the last dark-armored troglodan slumped out from behind cover across the bay, unmistakably dead, heavy pistol clattering to the deck.

  She hadn’t even looked.

  “You must focus,” she said, jarring him against the bulkhead to draw his shocked attention back to her burning eyes. “You must decide now if you are the one who will defend this world, or the one who will stand by and watch it fall to ash and ruin.”

  Nate searched her alien face, distantly aware that his jaw was trembling—hating that his jaw was trembling in this moment. Behind Iveera, the bay deck parted, just as Nate had heard it do before each of her bloody drops in the past hours. Rushing winds filled the bay, carrying pungent wafts of burning oil and ocean salt.

  “Find the Beacon,” Iveera said.

  “But I don’t know how to—”

  “Listen. Choose to listen—to truly listen—and you will feel its call.”

  “The troglodans—”

  “Will not stop an Excalibur Knight.”

  “But I’m not a—”

  “You are today, human.” She released her choke hold on him, taking half a step back and cupping his shoulders almost gently. “Whether you wish it so or not.”

  For a moment, there was something in her eyes. Something he didn’t understand. Then Iveera Katanaga’s almost gentle hands clamped down on his shoulders, and she hurled him across the deck—straight through the shimmering green barrier. Straight into open blue sky.

  38

  Interference

  For one shocked instant, it was all too much to take in. The tearing rush of wind. The endless sprawl of the Atlantic Ocean below. The hellish cyclone boring an impossible hole into the dark ocean depths far below. All of it spinning nauseatingly fast in his wild tumble. Just like the dark, craggy shape of the troglodan carrier below that, no matter how much it spun, only seemed to race closer and closer. The thing looked something like a giant dragon head hewn straight from a mountain, some part of his shocked brain noted.

  And he had about five seconds to do something before he went splat on it.

  “SHIT!” he screamed for starters.

  The Excalibur might’ve made some comment about overreactions. Nate couldn’t really hear past the throbbing pulse and the rushing white static in his brain. Purely on instinct, he spread his limbs and fought to steady out of his wild spin. That it started working was little comfort when his view centered on the trog ship, and on the craggy dorsal spines rushing up to end him.

  He angled his arms and torso, trying to glide right, hyperventilating all the way. Insides tingling with raw adrenaline, liable to detonate any moment. Nothing but the adrenaline and his churning water tunnel target. The whipping wind and the ragged panting of his own breath. The barbaric ship spines, speeding straight toward him.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  A fragment of memory flickered in the background, so small in the panic of the moment that he almost missed it. Repulsors. He wasn’t sure if that was Ex’s voice, or his own. It didn’t matter. Guided flight. He could do it. Had to do it. Had already done it.

  “Carefully,” he whispered—to himself or Ex, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t audible in the roar of the wind anyway. He just held the thought in mind, remembering how it had felt to take momentary flight back in State College, trying to detach himself from the flooding urgency of impending impact, and the fear of coming out too hard and going ass over teakettle straight into the ship. And there it was. Something pushing against his feet, through his rigid legs, thrusting him forward, forward.

  The ship, a hundred feet away, bristling with jagged spines.

  Fifty feet. Speeding straight for that starboard spine, right there.

  It was going to take him straight in the gut. Split him in two.

  Insides shriveling. Clenching.

  A wordless cry erupted from his throat, and he tucked his feet and turned into a forward somersault. Later, he would swear he’d felt the tip of that enormous spine scrape the bottom of his right sneaker. In that moment, though, all he could do was whoop and shout like a madman who’d just avoided violent death by alien spaceship impalement.

  Better, Ex admitted.

  “Better?!” Nate cried.

  You do still have to land.

  Nate sobered, sweet relief evaporating as he realized the Excalibur had a damn good point. He spread his arms and legs out wide, steadying and slowing his plunge as best he could while he scanned the choppy ocean waters and the cyclone mouth of the giant drain column to freaking… wherever.

  A trio of floating tro
glodans caught his eye before he had to actually think the mythical A-word, descending into the column’s swirling depths by what must’ve been the gravitonic lift of the ship he’d nearly boarded by gruesome accident.

  Lacking any better plan, or time to find one, Nate took aim as best he could in the buffeting winds and urged on another burst of flight. Again, he felt the thrust kick through his limbs. Again, he resisted the urge to look back and see the thrusters in action, sure the movement would throw his trajectory off. He was already coming in too slow, according to the primitive gauge of his clenching stomach.

  He tried to angle upward. Tried to feed a little more power to his miraculous thrusters. Overdid both.

  Panic spiked as he kicked into a wild spin, corkscrewing through the air too fast to distinguish up from down. He threw his arms and legs out wide, frantic mind screaming some indecipherable gibberish about figure skaters and moments of inertia, then his stomach gave a nauseating lurch, and he felt himself rebounding like he’d hit a wall of straight gelatin. That odd elastic force shoved him back the way he’d come, flipping him around to what his indignant stomach and the inverted skyline informed him was upside down. But at least he wasn’t falling so fast now, he thought, looking up at his feet, toward the hovering ship above.

  Straight into the beady eyes of the troglodan coming down the grav lift beside him.

  “Flying human?” the trog grunted, scrunching its face uncertainly.

  Nate spun and drove his heels into the beast’s chest, kicking off to buy some distance. The grav lift beam reeled him right back in its invisible gelatin wall bungee line. Right back into the troglodan’s waiting ogre hug. Which, it turned out, was frighteningly bone-crushing.

  “Nice try, little birdie,” it said.

  Nate strained to break free, but he had no leverage.

  “Still, little birdie,” the troglodan growled, squeezing harder, “or I break your wings.”