The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  Nate was watching it unfold, feeling a bit like the college party wallflower who didn’t know what to do with his hands, when he noticed that Mr. Balls, Voice of Earth, was talking with Iveera. Or talking at her, more accurately.

  “—ot saying I’m not grateful for whatever galactic rank you just pulled, Ma’am. I’m just asking you to explain to me what it is our planet just signed up for. My people need to know.”

  Iveera looked from him to Nate and tilted her head ever so slightly, inviting him to do something useful and deal with his own kind. He blew out a breath and went to crouch beside Mr. Balls, reaching out to inspect the man’s shackles.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, man,” Nate said, taking a firm grip and preparing to snap the chain, “but you might be the craziest bastard I’ve met all day. And it’s been a day.”

  “Well, shucks,” said Mr. Balls in that easy drawl. “That sure means a lot, coming from you, Nate.”

  Nate froze, too surprised to even think about how to handle that. If he’d had any shot at denying the stab at his identity, though, it probably went out the window the moment he reached up and patted his faceplate just to make sure it was still there.

  It was.

  “How…?”

  Before he could decide how to finish the question, the guy’s shackles fell to the grass of their own accord, and he offered a hand to Nate, casual as could freaking be. That was when Nate noticed the emblem on his shoulder. The same emblem he’d seen in more than a few internet searches these past weeks.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Jaeger of the 501st SAS,” said Mr. Balls, his smile friendly, and his eyes perfectly piercing. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you, kid, but frankly I think we have a hell of a lot more important things to talk about.”

  46

  No Rush

  “So… Excalibur Knight, huh? Sounds serious.”

  Nate looked down at the hand Lt. Col. Jaeger had just taken in the pretense of a handshake that quickly turned into a full on inspection.

  “This doesn’t really look like it’s from around here, Nate. Can I call you Nate?”

  “Uh…”

  “Never mind that, Nate. What I’m really wondering here is how you got caught up in all of this, and what it is that you and your friend are actually doing here.”

  Nate looked up and met Jaeger’s dark-eyed stare, and it only really then struck him just how boned he could be if and when the rest of the world found out who and what he was. Before, it had been one thing, trying to hide the voice in his head and some bizarre YouTube footage, half sure he’d simply lost his mind. But now?

  “Uh…”

  Looking at the chaos and ruin all around them, Nate was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what manner of dark hidey hole Uncle Sam might be looking to throw him in after all of this, or what they’d do to find out how he’d come by mysterious alien tech, and why—if he wasn’t some kind of traitor to humanity—he hadn’t seen fit to go straight to the authorities with everything he knew the instant the Merlin approached him.

  Never mind that he actually had tried.

  There was a soft hiss from behind. Iveera, he realized. Exasperated.

  “We are envoys of the Galactic Alliance,” she said. “And we would do well to remember that.”

  You are embarrassing us, Nathaniel.

  Nate sighed and rocked back to stand, too flustered in the moment to remember his hand was still in Jaeger’s grip. Whether he meant to or not, Jaeger came along for the ride.

  “Well,” he said, releasing Nate’s hand and taking a step back, clearly a little thrown off by Nate’s unexpected strength. “Friendly as that sounds, it doesn’t exactly tell me much.”

  “I came to your planet to put an end to this unlawful invasion, and to remove the artifact that drew the troglodans here to begin with.”

  “That’s… accurate,” Nate said at Jaeger’s questioning glance.

  “And now, if you don’t mind, Lt. Col. Jaeger,” Iveera said, taking Nate rather firmly by the elbow, “I must speak with my… colleague in private.”

  “No disrespect, Ma’am, but it’s my duty to mind.”

  It was only then that Nate noticed the small huddle of soldiers that’d formed up around them, not quite boxing them in, but not far off. Several shot uncertain glances at Jaeger when Iveera began to drag Nate away, like they were waiting for the orders to step up and stop them.

  “Wait,” he found himself saying, tugging back against Iveera’s unbudging grip. She looked at him as if he were a puppy who’d just figured out how to talk, but he was already turning back to Jaeger, stuck on a tiny wisp of hope. “Tessa Kalders. She’s one of yours?”

  Jaeger glanced back and forth between him and Iveera, calculating, then his mouth drew into a grim line, and he gave Nate a nod that set his stomach sinking. “She is. But she’s MIA, I’m sorry to say.”

  Nate blew out a shaky breath, hearing Marty’s voice all over again, Groshna’s sneering face hanging over his friends’ unmoving bodies in his mind’s eye.

  “She was with some friends of yours, from what I gathered. I’m guessing you already knew that. Last contact we made, they were headed this way. She told me what you’d said about New York.” He glanced at Iveera. “Told me you got nabbed, too. Tried to tell me more, but…” He shook his head. “We lost ‘em somewhere outside Philly.”

  Something in Nate perked up at that.

  “Could be they ran into some jamming,” Jaeger was saying. “Or got themselves caught.”

  Twenty minutes. That was it.

  It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes after Iveera had grabbed him from McClanahan’s that he’d heard the distress call from Marty. If Tessa had made it as far as Philadelphia…

  “Truth be told,” Jaeger said, looking around the encampment, “I was sorta hoping we’d show up here and find them taking names, you know?”

  Nate blinked back to the present. “You still came to New York after all this had…?”

  He trailed off, remembering that he was talking to an Air Force colonel, and not some amateur alien conspiracy nut. Jaeger just showed him a hard grin—the kind that said he was kind of amused, and also kind of capable of killing a man with his pinky.

  “That’s the job, kid. Not many units trained for first contact response with ETs, believe it or not.”

  “Been a real fuckin’ hoot so far, sir,” chimed one of the nearby soldiers, rather plainly listening in. He had an SAS emblem on his shoulder too.

  “At any rate, New York was the closest thing we had to a lead on this Beacon of yours.” Jaeger looked between them, watching for some reaction. “Don’t suppose either of you might be able to fill us in on that bit, by the way?”

  Nate felt Iveera’s sideways glance, but if she was miffed by the fact that he’d clearly told someone something, she didn’t press it. Just renewed her grip on his elbow like it was time to move. “The Beacon is no longer any concern of yours, Lieutenant Colonel Jaeger. Nor of any immediate concern to your planet. Now—”

  “And what about un-immediately?” Jaeger pressed. “All due respect, Ma’am, but we’re flying blind here. Why am I gettin’ the feelin’ we just opened Pandora’s box?”

  Nate opened his mouth to explain that one to Iveera, but her Excalibur must’ve parsed it for her, because she was already nodding. “The analogy is serviceable, and you are correct. Earth will indeed have little choice but to confront certain truths about its station in the galaxy moving forward.”

  As she said the last words, a thin, matte gray disc appeared in her armored palm, and she offered it out to Jaeger. “See to it your superiors receive this. It is the standard Alliance outreach protocol, designed for cases such as this one. It will tell your people everything they need to know.”

  Jaeger took the disc from her, frowning curiously at the plain-looking device. Iveera took one last look at the departing troglodans ascending their grav lifts, began to turn away with Nate in tow, and paused.

>   “You may also wish to inform your superiors that there are downed troglodan carriers at these locations,” she added, reaching out a slender finger to touch the disc, which sprang to life with a holo map dotted with multiple red blips and coordinates. “I trust you will find your uses.”

  And with that, she turned and stalked off, pulling Nate along with her. The troops didn’t quite move aside, but nor did that really matter when the ground fell away beneath them, and Nate and Iveera both rose a good ten feet on what his wriggling stomach informed him must be Iveera’s gravitonics.

  That got a murmur from the troops.

  “Ma’am?” Jaeger called after them. “My superiors would like to talk to both of you. In person. Standard outreach protocol or not.”

  Iveera slowed, swiveling to face them. Nate, by default, went along like a nervously panting puppy riding side carriage, whether he liked it or not.

  “I understand, Colonel,” Iveera said. “Alas, we have a matter of some urgency to discuss. So unless you wish to attempt without your weapons what the armada above was frightened to attempt with theirs, we will make our leave now.”

  “Lady makes a good point, sir,” said the SAS guy who’d spoken earlier.

  Jaeger didn’t answer. He was too busy boring holes into Nate’s faceplate in what might’ve been stare-speak for c’mon, kid, help a fellow human out here, or maybe something more like c’mon, kid, you really think you can fly away from this one? You really think we won’t find you?

  “I’ll, uh”—Nate held up an armored finger, conscious of Iveera already maneuvering them back around—“I’ll just be right back with you guys, okay?”

  “Should we… stop them, Colonel?” one of the soldiers asked as they began to drift away.

  “Just get me a damn radio,” was the last thing he heard Jaeger growl.

  They didn’t fly farther than the rooftops of the skyscrapers lining the park before Iveera dropped Nate down to a startled landing. He stifled a yelp and yanked back from the concrete ledge, gaining his balance as she settled softly down beside him.

  Much as he didn’t appreciate being casually tossed onto a rooftop ledge, he was even more pissed at having been dragged off and basically forced to look complicit in telling the US military to piss off. It had been a mistake, he was almost positive, urgent business or no. But the complaint died on his tongue as he took in the smoking cityscape, and the destruction below.

  He looked down to the park, and his helmet display helpfully zoomed in on Jaeger and his people doing their best to start restoring order to the chaotic exodus. Steady streams of wide-eyed civilians were still pouring out of the park in all directions, plenty more mixing and churning in and around the encampment, the air full of their desperate cries for lost loved ones. Even with the minor relief of the first trog ship closing shop and ascending for the depths of outer space, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Beside him, Iveera was busy with her holo, checking a spooling reel of alien figures and an array of video feeds from what looked like several major cities across the world. Scouting reports, he realized, as a few of the odd glyphs wiggled before his eyes into words and numbers he could understand. Ship and troop counts, tagged by location and status.

  Probes from the Kalnythian Wilds, Ex provided, before he could even begin to wonder. It looks as if the commander has made good on his word to order a worldwide withdrawal.

  It certainly did appear that way.

  It might’ve even felt like good news, if not for the single metric that’d just wriggled into legibility from its original gorgon script.

  Estimated Human Fatalities, Troglodan Inflicted: 78,387

  Nate stared at the number, not comprehending. It was too big to even begin to wrap his head around.

  Bear in mind, Ex said slowly, that nearly twice that many humans die on this planet in a given day.

  Nate flexed his jaw, wanting to be furious that Ex would even think to draw a comparison between routine death and mass murder. He was too shocked to get there. In a way, Ex was probably just trying to give his grasping brain some iota of perspective.

  Nearly eighty-thousand lives, gone. Just gone. Who knew how many hundreds of thousands more would be irrevocably ruined in the vacuum they’d left behind—how many millions had been injured today, scarred for life.

  The second trog carrier began to lift up over Central Park, beating its slow, unapologetic retreat. Nate watched it go, suddenly wishing Iveera had torched them all from the sky. Quickly as it came, the thought disappeared down the bottomless pit in his gut, leaving him empty and tired, and more than a little bit lost.

  Iveera closed her holos, and turned his way, her helmet peeling back to show her somber green face. He searched her alien eyes, looking for some explanation for it all. But there was none, he realized. None that he needed to hear anymore. Nothing but the guilt he’d known ever since the trogs had first arrived, and the slow, painful truth that’d been growing in his heart since he’d broken free from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, twice-baptized by the twin furies of the drowning city and Iveera Katanaga.

  Of all the reasons this catastrophe had unfolded, there was only one that had anything to do with him—just like there was only one thing left for him to do about it now.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, not knowing where it was they’d be going, or how they were supposed to get there—only that he had to make this right. The trogs, the Beacon, the Merlin. All of it.

  Ex practically purred at the sentiment.

  “Yes,” was all Iveera said. She didn’t look particularly happy about it.

  Nate released his helmet back to e-dim so he could see her with his own two eyes. “You’re… okay with that?”

  Her phosphorescent eyes returned from some distant thought. “I am not okay with any part of this, Nathaniel, but I can hardly allow you to stay here alone with a practically undefended Excalibur.”

  I believe she is calling you a weakling.

  “I’m not—” Nate started, then he sighed and tried again. “I was offering my help,” he told Iveera, “not signing up for daycare.”

  “Moreover,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken at all, “I believe this arrangement is what the Merlin desired, should the impossible come to pass.”

  “I spoke with him briefly in the battle,” she added, at Nate’s confused look. “Released him from imprisonment aboard the Dread Knight’s Crimson Tide. He had been captive for some weeks, though I cannot say what manner of sorcery held him there.” She shot him a dark look, jin flattening. “Such a feat is well beyond the skill of any living Excalibur Knight.”

  “The Black Knight, then?” he guessed out loud, gross emasculation momentarily forgotten. “I think he was working with Groshna. I heard some of the trogs talking about it down there.”

  Iveera didn’t disagree with the assessment.

  “Did the Merlin… Do you know what that thing was? Who he was?”

  She gave a soft hiss, her jin cutting the air. “The Merlin feared that a formidable foe had returned from the grave.”

  Nate considered the cryptic tidbit. “Well, I’m pretty sure the Black Knight knew the Merlin. I think this entire thing with the Beacon might’ve been a trap just to get his hands on him.”

  “Impossible,” Iveera said, but the word was quiet, like she barely believed it herself. “One does not merely wake a dormant Beacon like the sparking of an ion engine. Even the Merlin does not command such power over the Lady’s Light.”

  “Well… Maybe this Black Knight is beyond the Merlin too, then.”

  “No.” Her jin swayed gently back and forth. “No, that’s not possible either.”

  “But why not? I mean, if he was the one who imprisoned him… And hell, he did overpower him in a fight. How do you know what he could or couldn’t do?”

  “I know because I fought him, too,” Iveera said, looking out to the horizon with a dark expression. “I know because the Merlin told me from where that blackened monster cam
e.”

  She glanced back at him, jin flattening. “He used to be one of us.”

  Nate was pretty sure he felt Ex’s surprise more sharply than his own. Maybe he was simply too ignorant to be properly surprised. A rogue Knight, returned from the grave bearing some kind of corrupted Ninth Excalibur? He didn’t even know what to—

  That was no Excalibur.

  He flinched at the bite in Ex’s voice. Ahead of them, Iveera looked even less happy about the revelation she’d just shared.

  “So then… How did…?”

  Iveera sliced the air with her jin. “All I truly know is that the Beacon and the Merlin must be recovered before they come to harm, or worse, fall into the hands of the Synth.”

  “The Synth?” Nate asked, wondering what Ex’s so-called ancient evil—the one that had apparently been nothing but campfire legend for well over three-thousand years—had to do with a single mad Knight.

  “Our oldest and most powerful foe,” Iveera said, plainly mistaking his confusion. “Do not tell me… It is why the Excalibur Knights were created. Merciful goddess, surely the Merlin or the Lady must have—”

  “No, yeah, I… I’ve heard of them,” Nate said, raising his hands in peace and thinking back to the all-destroying swarm he’d witnessed sweeping through the asteroids on the final leg of his spacewalk with the Lady. “Ancient evil, right? Big swarm thing out in space? Eats asteroid belts?”

  “Devours entire worlds,” she corrected, looking only marginally appeased. “Entire systems. The entire plodding universe, perhaps, if we do not stand ready to stem the tide when it rushes forth from darkness again.”

  “Then, uh…” He frowned, still not sure what this had to do with the Black Knight, but strangely absorbed with her words.

  Devour the entire universe? It sounded a bit dramatic. What did that even mean, really? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t seem to think of anything but the memory of that asteroid belt. The breathtaking ease and ferocity of that swarm ripping through gods knew how many millions of tons of asteroids, leaving nothing behind. The raw power, utterly silent in the dead vacuum of space. His heart beating faster. Cold terror slithering through his gut.