The other reason the recent string of kidnappings had gained attention was because Arc-Mi-Die only seemed interested in kidnapping scientists. The warlord could have made much more money if he ransomed rich heiresses or the children of former rulers, but he never did. Instead, it was only chemists, physicists, and the like who vanished.
Because of this, colonies, moons, and planets around the galaxy were providing more security to their scientists until Arc-Mi-Die was found and brought to trial. Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul could understand such precautions in the more populated sectors, but he was on a colony that interested absolutely no one. He wasn’t conducting any ground-breaking experiments. And, most important, he was on one of the most unappealing colonies in the sector.
“Read any good books recently?” Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul asked the pair of Gthothch guards.
One of the guards grunted. The other didn’t even provide that much of a response.
About a hundred meters from his quarters, they turned a corner and found three small bots in the middle of the walkway. Each bot was the size of one of the doctor’s shoes. They were mostly round, but had a pair of fins for balance and a cluster of antennae for communication services. Each bot, aligned in a neat line, emitted a single beep when the guards and Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul appeared.
“Well, aren’t you adorable,” the doctor said.
One of the Gthothchs grunted and stepped forward. The other withdrew a blaster from the holster at his hip and aimed it in the general direction of the bots. In response, the middle bot gave two more beeps. The units on either side of it had blinking lights at the tips of their antennae. The lights blinked yellow, then orange, and then red in quick succession. Before the Ghtothch guards could react, the first and third bots erupted into light.
When the blast faded, Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul could see nothing but a white blur. Over the next couple of seconds, his vision began to come back enough that he could tell that the flash of light had been a pair of extremely precise directional explosions. The guards, which had been on either side of him, were gone. Incinerated. All that remained of them was their shadows burnt into the wall behind them.
“I’m—” the doctor said, but before he could get another word out, the remaining bot shot out a coil of what looked like string toward the doctor’s feet. Before Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul could step away, the string erupted with energy, zapping the doctor at his ankles and paralyzing every muscle in the doctor’s fragile frame.
The doctor was just about to fall face first onto the walkway when a pair of heavyset Turgdorians appeared around the corner, snorted through their upturned noses, then motioned a command to the last remaining bot.
One of the Turgdorians scooped up the scientist, still motionless, into his arms. The other put a blanket over Dr. Ythoul-Ythoul so no one would see what was being carried away, then looked over either shoulder for anyone who might cause trouble. The bot raced back toward the Turgdorians’ stolen ship to get it ready for departure.
It was a quick walk to their ship. Once aboard, they left the colony without using the comms system in their cockpit. At the first portal they reached, they jumped to another sector, landed their vessel at the nearest colony and stole a different craft. After another portal jump they arrived at Folliet-Bright, changed ships once again, then jumped through another portal. With each stolen ship and each change in sectors it would become more difficult to track where the kidnappers had come from and where they were going.
And just like that, another scientist was missing.
12
Julian was alone aboard the transport, without even a pilot. He preferred to fly the craft himself, with assistance from its autopilot capability. He also didn’t bother bringing a CAB suit, choosing instead a simpler and more traditional suit of space armor because he expected no resistance.
Cartha-Minor-d was the smallest colony he had ever encountered. As the lone transport descended toward the swirling yellow and orange moon, only one containment field was visible. Roughly half the size of a Solar Carrier, it was a lonesome dot of grey and green civilization on the otherwise uninhabitable surface.
After passing through the clear energy field, he guided the transport away from the main landing platform and chose instead to land in the middle of the colony square where he guessed the largest concentration of people would be. He intended to save time by simply walking down the ramp of his ship, delivering his speech, and leaving. Landing in the public square would also make it easier for his officers, still orbiting near the moon, to track him. If he left his ship at the edge of the colony, he would have a decent walk ahead of him, filled with covered walkways and obstructed corridors, places where the video feed wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him. And that would make him an easy target. He didn’t expect any issues, but landing in the middle of the colony was one of the easy ways to reduce the risks.
It took a bit of piloting skill to land the craft amid the park benches and fountain. A pair of small statues decorated two edges of the park. One was of a MaqMac and the other a Feedorian. Both commemorated something that had been done on the colony long ago. A series of two- and three-story structures surrounded the square, each roughly the same height as Julian’s ship.
After landing, he scooped up the helmet of his space armor, placing it over his head and latching it into place. Then he pressed the button for the ship’s ramp to drop and began his descent while the plank lowered to ground level.
He was surprised by the size of the crowd. It seemed that the entire colony had stopped what it was doing to see who had landed and why he was there. A few of the onlookers were humans, but most were aliens of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. No one spoke. None of them made any noise at all except for their breathing.
“Hello. My name is General Julian Reiser. I have been sent here by the Round Table to—”
As always, he gestured grandly at the dozens of vessels orbiting above. Each of the flagships appeared as nothing more than a tiny dot in the sky, but everyone gathered around Reiser knew that for a ship to be visible at all from where they stood they must be gigantic vessels, each larger than the colony they called home. Everyone gathered also knew the purpose of such ships wasn’t to celebrate happy occasions but to deliver death and destruction.
“—to bring freedom and—”
No one was listening, though. He knew this by the way they all stopped looking at him and stared up at the sky, entranced by the great vessels orbiting their home.
A creamy blue alien, the height of a human child but with long white hair all over its face, gave a sorrowful groan. A human baby began to cry. It was joined by a Renwa pup and a young human-sarkonin hybrid.
Everyone who had gathered in the square began to back away, the majority of them still staring at the warships in the sky above the colony as they shuffled away.
“No, it’s fine,” Julian said, his hands out to reassure everyone. “You’re free now.”
No one was listening. They were all running to seek shelter in their homes or aboard the ships they had arrived on.
All Julian could do was shrug and begin walking back up the ramp of his transport. Once inside the cockpit, a small hologram of Exeter appeared.
The brigadier had a huge smile as he said, “The Scourge of the Cartha Sector strikes again, huh?”
“Something like that,” Julian said, unable to keep from smiling himself.
As the transport rose from the middle of the public square, the next proton flag was dispatched from one of the Round Table flagships. It rocketed across space for a moment before exploding into light above the planet. On his way back to his HC Ballistic Cruiser, Julian flew the transport next to the blue, red, and yellow pattern of circles and wedges, with the alternating crests in the middle.
He knew the history of why the three colors had been chosen. They didn’t mean much to him personally but he liked that they gave an idea of unity to the rest of the galaxy. Ideas, he had learned, were often more important than reality.
The first representatives had started with a sky-colored circle and wedges to represent the blue banner of the former CasterLan Kingdom, which had brought the rest of the kingdoms together. That first cog was then surrounded by a wheel of red to signify the blood that had been needlessly spilled for millennia and that no longer needed to be lost. A yellow circle and wedges surrounded both other colors to represent the many suns throughout the galaxy that shone on all life, no matter where it was from.
Because of Julian, the symbol was spreading across all of space. His spirits were lifted by the fact that each stop on his campaign was becoming easier than the previous one. As word spread of their mission, more and more of the galaxy knew of the Round Table fleet’s reputation and of Julian himself. He had set off on this voyage hoping to spread peace and minimize the conflicts along the way. It had gotten to the point where all he had to do was show his face, point to the vessels he had arrived on, and people were all ready to accept the Round Table as their new way of life.
13
In the Great Hall, Octo looked at the update his android had given him and then stood from his seat at the Round Table. To stand during active proceedings was an impropriety that had been frowned on ever since the time a Basilisk representative had leapt to his feet, roared a question, and threatened to rip the face off of a representative whose answer he didn’t appreciate.
Now, there was only one reason representatives stood to make announcements in open session. Every time it happened, it pained Hector to hear what came next. Cimber and Cash seemed to share Hector’s unease, but Winchester wore a wide grin.
Octo made sure all eyes were on him before he said, “I have received an update that General Reiser has just successfully added the colony on Cartha-Minor-d to the Round Table.”
Most people around the room broke into applause. Only Hector and the few others still loyal to him remained quiet. Everyone else, regardless of which former kingdom they represented, clapped their hands or tapped on the wood table with their knuckles or otherwise expressed satisfaction in the customary way of their species.
As the applause began to slow, Octo, still standing, added, “The general’s fleet is heading to the Orleans asteroid field next. There, they will welcome the final civilization in the Cartha sector into the Round Table.”
Again, applause arose from hundreds of the representatives sitting around the table.
Hector wanted to ask if the good people of Cartha-Minor-d had asked to join the Round Table but forced himself to remain silent. He also resisted asking if the people on that colony were any better off today than they were yesterday just because Round Table warships had arrived above their homes.
Rather than repeat the same sentiments he had offered numerous times before, he rested his chin on his remaining flesh and blood hand and closed his eyes for a moment. His questions wouldn’t change anything. They never did. They hadn’t the first ten times he challenged the idea of Julian leading ships to the far reaches of the galaxy and they wouldn’t now.
Looking back, he realized that he had only had a real chance of influencing the discussion around the Great Hall the very first time he had spoken up. Even then, as a dozen other representatives had tried to pose questions of their own and another dozen had tried to answer them, he had lost the opportunity amongst the disorder.
The same thing had happened the second time Hector spoke up, only quicker and with even more disorder. But in addition to the disorganized banter, Octo and Winchester had directly challenged Hector in a way other Round Table representatives would never have imagined treating the former CasterLan war hero. Everyone else treated Hector with the utmost respect. Instead, Octo interrupted him to say all people deserved to be free from the chains of their rulers. Winchester added that anyone who resisted the notion of helping others might not be suited to sit at the Round Table. The rest of the room had become silent. Rather than take the bait, Hector merely scanned the hundreds of other faces around him and reminded them of Vere’s original vision for the table. He could see on the faces of those around him, however, that many of them were more interested in what Octo and Winchester had to say than what he was offering.
The next time Hector posed the same questions, fewer representatives had patience for him. More sided with his rivals. Even more the next time after that. The following session, when Hector asked the questions again, he actually heard a few of the representatives groan. He had lost them. Only Cimber and Cash and a few others still cared what he had to say.
Just that fast, the Round Table had turned from the idea of bringing kingdoms together voluntarily to a galactic body that sent ships to the edge of the galaxy in pursuit of expanding its realm.
He needed Vere’s help. The problem was no one had seen her for five years, not since she had vanished into the caves at the edge of CamaLon’s fields. Wherever she was, she would no doubt be horrified to see her idea of uniting the galaxy being turned into something potentially monstrous. Five short years after so many had given their lives to defeat an empire, men and women of all species sat around a table and argued in favor of actions that could easily put them on the brink of war again.
“Sir, is there anything I can assist with?”
Hector opened his eyes and turned to see Pistol standing behind him. The android had served Vere faithfully until the day she disappeared. With Pistol’s master gone, the android had volunteered his services to Hector.
There were days Hector couldn’t have functioned without the android. There were also days, like the one he was currently having, when Pistol’s presence only reminded him of Vere and her goal for the galaxy—and of how much it had already been diminished by the very people chosen to represent it.
“I don’t know, Pistol. Can you make hundreds of people listen to reason?”
The android’s eyes lit up briefly. “I’m sorry, sir. That’s beyond my programming.”
“Mine too, it seems.”
14
Lancelot’s private room was almost identical to the chamber that the Dauphin used. It had rough-hewn rock walls, littered with natural cracks and indentations. There was no furniture, nothing on the walls. The middle of the room was bathed in light while the outer perimeter was shrouded by shadow. It was in the darkness with his back against the wall that Lancelot enjoyed sitting. A pile of blankets in a corner marked where the warrior slept.
There was something about resting on the stone floor, his back and legs against the rock, that provided comfort and reassurance to the Carthagen warrior. Some of the other warriors slept on cots rather than the cold floor. The idea seemed outrageous to Lancelot, who didn’t want to be separated from the surfaces he trusted and walked upon every day. Sleeping anywhere other than on the hard stone was a rejection of the environment he lived in, a repudiation of the life the galaxy had given him.
It was when he sat on the ground in the dark corners of his chambers that the voice came to him. It was a recent development, something that had only begun over the last few months. He noticed it happened only when he was relaxed and able to find a sense of peace. Sometimes, that was before a duel and sometimes after. Lancelot would slow his breathing, close his eyes, and imagine the victory he was going to enjoy.
Then, a man would begin speaking to Lancelot.
The first time it happened, three things had puzzled him. First, Lancelot’s cave room was completely private. No one else had access to the room, and no one could approach close enough to talk through the walls. In the entire time Lancelot had lived in the stone room, not a single other Carthagen, not a warrior nor elder, had attempted to open the chamber door or speak to Lancelot there. It was against the Carthagen code to do so.
The second concern was that the voice clearly did not belong to someone he knew. He had grown accustomed to the speech patterns of the three Dauphin and to the other eight Carthagen warriors. The man’s voice he heard in his private quarters was different from those that Lancelot was familiar with. It was distinctly human rat
her than the deep and mostly monotone voice of the four-legged and four-armed Carthagens. But the Carthagen civilization was protected by a vast array of sensors and technology that could track all life in the Cartha sector and especially in the Orleans asteroid field. If someone had managed to evade that detection system and gain entry, they must be powerful indeed.
The third thing that bothered Lancelot didn’t occur to him until after he had jumped to his feet and drawn both Meursaults. He was still the only person there, and yet the voice continued with an amused tone as if there was no reason for concern in having infiltrated the forbidden area. Lancelot came to understand that the voice was in his thoughts and that made him question his own sanity.
The next time the voice visited Lancelot, the warrior’s reaction was drastically different. He didn’t stand and ignite his lances or point his Meursault blades toward the center of the room. He merely raised his helmeted head so he was looking at the rest of his room.
“Who’s there?”
“Only me,” the voice had said, accompanied by the same amused tone it often had in Lancelot’s dreams. “How are you today, Lancelot?”
Initially, he couldn’t help but ask the obvious: “Am I going crazy?”
The voice sounded entertained by the notion. “Not that I know of.”
Lancelot Page 5