“Does Lancelot doubt his ability to protect the Carthagens?” the first Dauphin asked.
Lancelot’s bitter laugh echoed in the cavernous room. “I can kill everyone who enters the caves. But to what end? Is there no other fate for our people? Do you have a plan for when twice as many invaders show up next time? Or for when they abandon the idea of getting into the tunnels and simply launch missiles at us?”
He expected the elders to hiss or stare at him in silence. The voice that answered came from behind Lancelot rather than from in front of him.
“A good question indeed.”
Lancelot almost turned around, catching himself only after his head had twitched to the side. It was the familiar voice from his private quarters. Mortimous. The old man had never dared interrupt a conference with the Dauphin.
Lancelot looked at the three elders to see their response, but there was no reaction. They didn’t comment on the unannounced visitor behind their warrior. They didn’t jump back in alarm at the human who might infect them with his germs. The Dauphin couldn’t see or hear Mortimous. Their sensor technology, as advanced as it was, couldn’t detect his presence.
One of the elders said, “We will worry about the fate of the Carthagens because we are the Dauphin. You will worry about the beings who try to infect us because you are our greatest warrior.”
He viewed the Dauphin as the Carthagens who understood everything. They knew when ships arrived at the edge of Orleans. They had plans for how to keep the race alive. Because of this, and because of the way they continually gave orders, it was easy to believe they were worthy of being followed. But not being able to see or hear Mortimous when Lancelot could was proof the elders weren’t as all-knowing as they pretended to be.
Ignoring the cloaked visitor, Lancelot bowed to the Dauphin and said, “I will continue to kill for you but I feel it is my duty to recommend you find an alternative course of action. If I should ever perish, you would not be able to employ the same method. The other warriors simply are not up to the task.”
He thought they might hiss at him but they didn’t. Instead, the three Dauphin nodded. Lancelot gave a slight bow, then turned and left the chamber.
44
“When do you think they’ll come home?” Margaret asked as she stared up at the stars again.
Somewhere out there, among the millions and millions of tiny dots of light that glittered in the night sky, her husband was off on another conquest and this time their son was with him.
It was an odd thing what long tours of space duty did to a relationship. It was one thing to be young and in love and hold hands with a lover and look up at the stars and know there were objects of universal permanence. They were reminders that something like love between two people could endure the test of time.
It was quite another thing for a lover to disappear into that infinite starlit abyss and to always wonder where they were and if they were in danger. Did they think about returning home? If they did, was it a longing or an obligation? The vastness of space seemed to expand until it became unbearable. Instead of two lovers returning to the life they once had, the most they could hope for was survival of the relationship and perhaps its evolution.
One quick glance at Portia was all the proof Margaret needed to know this was true. The two women had once been almost the same. Then Hector had come back from war a completely changed man, half his body gone. Portia was happy just to have her husband alive, even if he wasn’t the same person he had been, even if their marriage wasn’t the same as it once was.
Instead of answering the question, Portia asked one of her own. “When you look up at the stars, what do you see?”
Margaret scanned the sky once more, let the lights of all the far-off celestial bodies glimmer in her eyes. “A giant space vessel that’s so far away it’s nothing more than a dot, just like all the stars. And one of those dots is Julian and one of those dots is Talbot and one day soon they’ll be home.”
There were millions of tiny dots in the night sky, but none of them could be confused for her husband’s fleet, which was much too far away to be visible, even with the highest powered telescopes. But the image was real enough for Margaret. It was all she had, really.
As they watched, the tranquility of the night was broken by a series of commercial vessels leaving the spaceport and roaring off into space. When the ships were gone, Margaret asked the same question of her friend.
“I see Hector’s sadness up there,” Portia said. “I see so much of it that it goes on forever and ever. Then I blink and I know he’s back home where he belongs.” After a moment, she turned to her friend and added, “Julian will come back home soon too. Talbot as well. I know it.”
45
Julian regained consciousness to the sound of humming and beeping directly beside his face. The same medical bots that had repaired his stomach were working to fix the injuries to his shoulders. The third bot was directly behind his head, running scans of his entire body.
His heart rate quickened when he thought of how wide Lancelot’s lances were at their base and the tremendous pain they had caused. It wasn’t just holes through his shoulders that the medical bots had to fix. It was torn muscles where his pectorals connected to his shoulders. It was both clavicles. The entire socket that formed the shoulder. The medical bots would have their work cut out for them, and all Julian could do was lie there and wait for them to be finished.
It would be normal to abstain from looking at the progress as the bots worked. Julian’s shoulders were giant open wounds that were being lasered and scanned without pause. Most people would rather sleep while the bots operated. Julian wasn’t one of them. He would much rather be awake and smell the burning of flesh and the application of variously colored ointments rather than continue to experience the same dreams that had been plaguing him.
Whether it was because of the drugs that the medical bots had given him, the trauma his body had undergone, or the knowledge that he might never leave these caves, his dreams had been a nearly continuous stream of disturbing nightmares. Just as with his earlier dreams, voices issued ominous warnings. The voices came from everywhere and nowhere. Unseen entities without physical form were chasing him and he was unable to get away. Sometimes it was only one voice. Other times it was two. Sometimes a man. Other times a woman. There was never a clear message he could remember, only the feeling that if he didn’t listen to what was being said, he and everyone he loved might die. One of the things that distressed him most about the dreams was that no matter how urgent the voices were Julian could never reply to them.
He didn’t want to dream, but he remained on the ground, allowing the medical bots to continue their work.
“You adapt fairly well,” a voice said from behind him.
He didn’t need to turn his neck and interrupt the medical bots in order to know it was Lancelot watching his progress.
“I’ll get the better of you next time,” Julian muttered, but his voice was weak and there was nothing convincing about what he said.
Lancelot gave a gentle, metallic laugh. “So eager to die after being healed?”
“Why are your leaders having you do this? What do they gain from torturing me like this?”
“My leaders?” Lancelot asked, sounding amused. Julian could hear the Carthagen lift himself to his feet and walk closer to the blanket on the cave floor.
One of the medical bots extended a syringe from within an open compartment of its round body and stuck it next to the sealed wound of Julian’s left shoulder. The pain made him wince, but it was over in a second. A moment later, the other bot did the same thing to his other shoulder. This time he was prepared for it and managed not to grimace.
Lancelot was standing over him. “The Dauphin, my leaders as you call them—” there was contempt in the warrior’s voice when he said this “—have no idea you are here. They would be most displeased if they found out.”
“You’d risk reprisal from your superiors over the
chance to do combat with me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, old man. There is nothing to fear even if they did know. I am their greatest warrior. The worst they can do is have one of the others challenge me and they know how that will turn out.”
Julian allowed his head to come slightly off the mat so he could get a better look at the armored giant standing over him. “Then why do anything they say? Why not let me go? Let me get my officers out of here and I swear I’ll never come back.”
It didn’t matter if it was a sincere suggestion or not. Lancelot laughed derisively all the same. “Nice try, Terror of the Cartha Sector. If you keep talking like that, you’ll make me regret having the medical bots return you to health for another round.”
Julian’s head fell back to the padding underneath it. “What then? You keep bringing me back just to defeat me again?”
“All of a sudden, the Terror of the Cartha Sector doesn’t sound so tough.”
“I told you to stop calling me that,” he growled, his hands curling to fists.
Lancelot laughed. “Ah, there you go. There’s the fighting spirit I want to see. Tell me, old man, how—”
“That’s not much better,” Julian said, but it didn’t make him as angry as the other nickname.
Lancelot took a step backward, then bent his hind legs to sit on the ground beside Julian.
“Being thought of as the conqueror of entire civilizations is equal in your mind to not being as young as you once were?” Lancelot shook his head. “It is fascinating to hear the rationale of the subjugator.”
“Subjugator?” Julian tested his repaired shoulders by pushing himself slightly up on one elbow. “We were freeing people, not ruling over them.”
“Oh really?” Lancelot said, a slightly computerized hint in the words that came though his helmet. Just as fast, the chuckle was replaced with ridicule. “Did they have a say in what happened to them?”
“Kings and emperors are a dying breed. The galaxy will be better off without them, and misery will no longer bury their people.”
Lancelot stared back for a moment, then asked if Julian really believed that.
There were many things Julian could have said in response. He might have offered the argument that no civilization would choose an imposed ruler over the group representation of the Round Table. He could have said many species had no idea of the options they might have because they had only known one type of rule. He didn’t say either of these things, though, or anything else. Instead, he closed his eyes and lay back down on the blanket.
“We weren’t supposed to be thought of as conquerors.”
“And yet you didn’t argue when your own officer called you the Terror of the Cartha Sector?”
“Why does that bother you so much?”
Lancelot got back up to all four feet and paced around the circular stone room. He didn’t bother to look at Julian when he replied, “The mighty vessels you arrive with are what drive fear into those you have subjugated.”
“We are not subjugating—”
“If you had approached a true empire rather than colonies and outposts and minor civilizations, you would find they would not bow down to you quite so easily.”
“They are not bowing down to—”
“And when you do face a combatant,” Lancelot said, withdrawing his pair of vibro lances and his pair of Meursault blades, “the only terror is upon your own face, not mine.”
Both vibro lances ignited, their tips coming within arm’s reach of Julian’s face. Both Meursault blades, otherwise invisible, left trails of vapor in the air as Lancelot swung them in circles.
“Now,” the Carthagen said, his voice rising in anger. “Are you ready for combat or not?”
Julian took a long breath, then exhaled. He propped himself up on one elbow, then on both. There was no pain in either shoulder. Sitting upright, he moved his arms in small circles. There was no discomfort, no reduced range of motion as far as he could tell.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”
Without another word, he walked to where his CAB was lying on the ground and began putting each piece back on.
46
A hundred representatives shouted in Basic. Another two hundred argued in a dozen other languages, each translated by the Round Table’s software, which only added to the confusion and disorder in the Great Hall.
“Of course we can’t negotiate with Arc-Mi-Die.”
“If we don’t, a colony will be destroyed.”
“If we do, we are setting a dangerous precedent.”
“If you knew the attack was going to happen at a colony where your family lived, would you still say that?”
Hector had his own feelings as to the best course of action, but instead of sharing them, he worked merely to regain order among the hundreds of people gathered. It was a futile task. He would quell the ten or so representatives to his left, then begin working to quiet the next ten after that, only to find that the first ten had already gone back to bickering.
He could have slammed his giant fists on the table and stunned everyone into silence. He could have yelled, his voice thundering and echoing in the large arena, that everyone should be silent long enough for one representative to speak at a time.
“Quiet,” he said, almost yelling at the men and women near him.
The representatives near him became silent. The rest of the Great Hall continued its cacophony of bickering.
“Quiet!” he said again, this time in a roar while slamming a hand down on the table.
The entire room fell silent, but only for a moment. Seconds later, Octo said something to the aliens near him. Winchester whispered to a pair of representatives to his side. Pockets of discontent and disagreement spread across the Round Table until, only a minute later, hundreds of voices were once again shouting over one another.
47
Julian came back from the weapons compartment holding a lance and a sword. They were the exact same weapons he had used during the first fight. However, his tactics would be drastically different this time.
“I applaud your… consistency,” said Lancelot, standing in the middle of the chamber.
Julian, rather than offer a retort of his own, walked toward Lancelot in silence and activated his lance. He paused once his own lance and the warrior’s lances had crossed one another. Facing the Carthagen, he rolled his shoulders in circles to loosen them.
His approach this time would be based on patience. When Lancelot called him an old man he merely smiled. When he was called the Terror of the Cartha Sector, Julian merely nodded and offered a mocking laugh.
“The Scourge of the Round Table should come up with new material,” he said with a smile, to which Lancelot did not reply.
He would also be more restrained this time. There would be no lunging attacks, no attempt to commit both weapons toward Lancelot at the same time. It wasn’t that he was afraid of losing or even that he feared death. Rather, he knew that just one mistake would mean certain defeat. And with defeat, the likelihood of more Round Table forces coming to the Cartha sector would increase. When they did, they wouldn’t be looking for a diplomatic solution. Rather, they would aim to destroy every Carthagen they found. Surely, Lancelot had to know this.
He gave a light thrust with his lance just to see how the Carthagen would respond. To his annoyance, there was almost no reaction at all other than more galling insults.
“Is that the best you’ve got, old man? Did the medical bots stop before you were back to full health?”
Rather than allow himself to be goaded into a premature attack, Julian only poked experimentally again with the weapon. When he stepped forward and repeated the thrust a third time, Lancelot whirled diagonally forward. In an instant, one vibro lance appeared at Julian’s right foot. The other was aimed at his throat.
With his sword, Julian protected his neck as he backed away. The blade of his sword was able to easily deflect the long weapon as it came at him. With his lance
, he stabbed directly in front of where Lancelot had aimed to strike him. Sparks shot up between them as the lance collided with the rock floor. At the same time, Lancelot’s weapon clanged and deflected off of Julian’s, sending reverberations throughout the room.
To keep the Carthagen at bay, Julian held the lance as far from his as possible. As he circled left around the room, he poked the lance at his opponent in an attempt to elicit another response. Lancelot, however, was having none of it.
“Although you have survived longer than you did the last time,” the warrior said, “you will not win by testing my ability to stay awake.”
“Eager to be done with me?”
“It would be nice to get back to the rest of your soldiers and see how they are doing.”
The lance in Julian’s hand lowered ever so slightly. “They’re still in the caves? What are they doing? Are any more of them hurt?”
Lancelot chuckled in a way that the helmet’s vocalizer filtered as a slightly computerized hum. “They are hopelessly lost. I am allowing them to survive until I figure out the best course of action.”
Julian took a step forward. “Let them go, please. If you kill me, so be it, but please let them go.”
Lancelot only chuckled and twirled one of his Meursaults, causing Julian to slash with his lance at one of the lances pointed at him while also slicing with his sword. His intent was not to hurt Lancelot, at least not right away, but rather to disable one of his lances by focusing both of his own weapons on it from a distance. He swung his sword down and then to the side. He thrust with his lance, sidestepping Lancelot’s strikes. Getting rid of one of Lancelot’s weapons at a time would be Julian’s only reasonable chance of evening the battle and getting close enough to actually threaten the Carthagen.
Three more times he focused both his lance and his sword at the lance in the warrior’s right hand. As he began to wind up for the fourth time, a searing pain shot through his foot and instead of moving, he stumbled and nearly fell.
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