“Well, then. Leave this room.”
Julian groaned as he took a hand away from the stone wall and tried to raise his arms over his head. One by one, he touched the various injuries he had received at the hands of the greatest Carthagen warrior, who, it turned out, was no Carthagen at all.
“And go where?” she asked Mortimous without speaking.
When she didn’t receive an answer, she turned to face him but he was gone.
“And go where?” she said again, but this time whispering the words out loud.
Julian turned and asked if she had said something.
Rising to her feet, she transferred her helmet from her shorter arms to her longer ones, put it over her head, and strode past him.
As the rock door slid aside, she turned and said, “They have sensors everywhere. When you leave this room, they’ll know.”
“Understood.”
He began to say something else and she thought he was going to ask what she planned on doing with him. Instead, he asked where she was going.
“I need to have a conversation with the Dauphin.”
“About?”
“My future,” she said, and then she was gone and the stone door slid shut behind her.
71
Arc-Mi-Die paced back and forth from one end of his protected lair to the other. Outside the Treagon barrier, his android assistant reported the lack of progress by the Round Table in regard to negotiating the warlord’s terms. Arc-Mi-Die wasn’t pacing because he was annoyed by their lack of progress. Rather, he was pleased with himself and the chaos he was bringing upon the entire galaxy. A single warlord was able to cripple the united forces of dozens of former kingdoms. It was a miraculous feat to observe.
He also paced because he was delighted with all of the options still at his disposal. He could send every Excalibur vessel in his possession to a different colony, wipe them all out, and become the most infamous warlord the galaxy had ever known. While not practical, it was within his ability to make that happen and he already had the resources necessary to initiate the plan if he wanted. This course of action, however, would only gain him notoriety.
Better to earn power, riches, and notoriety. That was why he would continue sending one ship out at a time. Predictably, the Round Table would be unable to agree on anything, he would detonate the ship, millions of lives would be eliminated, and the galaxy would come to know what Arc-Mi-Die was capable of. With the technology developed by the scientists that he had kidnapped, he was confident the colonies would never be able to detect the ships until it was too late. They would either have to give into his demands or else continue to die.
The part of the plan that tantalized him the most was the possibility of escalating the game beyond even what the Round Table could comprehend. Two colonies were already destroyed. The death toll was astronomical. But colonies were inherently detached from the greater part of any kingdom. They were, after all, self-sustaining spheres completely encapsulated and insulated from the space around them. Few were truly crucial to galactic commerce or development.
What Arc-Mi-Die needed to do was bring one of his Excalibur vessels to one of the principal planets rather than another remote colony. The capital of a former kingdom, perhaps. What better way to let the galaxy know the full terror he could unleash than to wipe out a place that a great ruler had once called home?
There were many options. Gerchin the Insecure’s former capital in the Kerchin Sector. Kaiser Doom’s former capital in the War-Pon sector. Baron Von Wrth’s or even Mowbray Vonnegan’s. This last option made him cackle with glee. Even the most ambitious warlord wouldn’t dare attack such a place. The Vonnegan Empire was no more, but its legacy would take decades, if not centuries, to fade from the minds of those it had menaced. Arc-Mi-Die was no ordinary warlord, however. His lust for spreading misery and terror had no bounds, and so not even these options seemed too radical. There was only one possible target that was worthy of everything he had worked toward.
He would send an Excalibur vessel to CamaLon, former capital of the CasterLan kingdom and current capital of the Round Table. As far as anyone was concerned, it was the center of the galaxy. That was where Arc-Mi-Die would bring his terror.
And that was why Arc-Mi-Die paced, and why he could barely contain the smiles that stretched across both of his hideous mouths.
72
Everyone at the Round Table knew it was a matter of time until Arc-Mi-Die struck again. They also knew that neither General Reiser nor his forces had been heard from since entering the Orleans asteroid field. Some of the representatives assumed their general had encountered some type of tragedy and that the fleet was lost, although they kept these thoughts to themselves. Others insisted that Julian was merely busy converting more kingdoms to the Round Table and must have some communication issue. And yet while each representative knew there were issues they needed to address, no one was able to agree on a resolution.
“With hundreds of representatives, they’ll never be able to agree on anything,” Octo said as he walked with Hector following the next session. “Civil dissension is a viper. It must be wiped away.”
“They aren’t dissenting,” Hector said. “They just aren’t agreeing with one another. If consensus were easy, there wouldn’t be a need for the Round Table at all.”
Octo offered a bitter laugh. “Indeed.”
Even between just the two of them, Hector and Octo agreed there were issues that would never be resolved if they were unable to arrive at a compromise. Nevertheless, neither of them could accept the other’s point of view. There was no place in the middle for them to meet. Hector was adamant that no one should lead the sessions because it went against the original idea of the Round Table and Octo was convinced that putting someone in charge of the entire group was the only way to save the fragile collection of kingdoms that had unified.
Octo leaned closer to Hector and whispered. “Just this once, the two of us need to work together. You and I can decide how to resolve this situation with Arc-Mi-Die and also the loss of contact with General Reiser and then tell the Round Table how they should vote.”
Hector closed his eyes for a moment. He had no doubt that many more lives would be lost if the representatives were left to squabble among themselves. Arc-Mi-Die wouldn’t wait much longer. Hector also knew, better than anyone, all of the possible hazards that could be threatening General Reiser’s fleet.
“I’m sorry, Octo. I wish I could. But if you and I do this now, a reason will fall at our feet to do it again. And then again. Before long, the Round Table won’t be the thing it had been. It will have two leaders telling everyone else what to do.”
A great sigh escaped from Octo’s throat. “It will just be a different form of dysfunctional, you mean.”
73
Ordinarily, the sensor technology in a single Round Table fleet probe allowed an entire quadrant to be mapped in minutes. The job of mapping the Orleans asteroid field should have been accomplished within seconds. Instead, because each one had to be individually tracked, the task required seventy-seven probes and more than a day of manual charting. That wasn’t even to map the entire asteroid field, but merely to find a safe course for the ships to turn around and make their way back out of the trap.
Eventually, though, the task was complete. Each brigadier sat at a table inside the officers’ meeting room aboard their flagship and conferred via hologram with the other senior officers.
“If we’re going, we should depart as soon as possible,” Ver-Non-Ven said, sounding absolutely miserable at the idea of leaving fellow soldiers behind.
The brigadier put his hands up to his face, covering the portions that weren’t metal, disgusted with himself for speaking the words.
All of the senior officers knew the asteroids would eventually drift from where the probes had registered them. A path that had been deemed safe hours earlier might soon be obstructed by thousands of tons of solid rock, invisible and floating in their path.
None of the officers said anything because each of them wanted the same thing and yet all them knew that speaking the comment out loud would do no good. Each of them wanted to either wait for Julian and the others or put soldiers into every available suit of space armor and send the full wrath of the Round Table to face the Carthagens.
These were pointless sentiments, though, because they would only endanger the rest of the crew.
Brigadier Desttro scratched at his granite chin with his thumb and index finger. “Does anyone have anything else they want to say, or should we prepare to leave?”
The assembled brigadiers remained silent.
“Then set your courses,” Desttro said.
The order went out to each vessel. The remaining Round Table flagships powered their engines back on and began a slow turn to leave the asteroid field through roughly the same path they had entered it.
74
The stone door to the Dauphin’s chamber slid aside and Lancelot entered in full armor. All three elders turned from the displays against the far wall and focused their attention on her.
“We have not called for you, Lancelot. Is something wrong?”
Lancelot glanced at one of the displays behind the Dauphin. It showed the remaining invaders hunkered down in a defensive posture. She thought to ask why the warriors were prolonging the fight when the Dauphin could easily release a neutron bomb in the tunnel and wipe all of them out with one blast.
The answer was clear, however. The Dauphin wanted Swordnew and Curveddeath and the others to engage in a series of attacks as practice—without Lancelot as their leader. The thought made every muscle in her body tense, and she scanned the chamber to determine if a trap had been set for her.
Her duty as lead warrior had taught her over the years to say what needed to be said rather than what would be pleasant on the ears. She could have told the elders of her misgivings, but her resistance had only ever been interpreted by the Dauphin as disloyalty.
“I’m leaving,” she said, surprising even herself.
On her way to the Dauphin’s chamber, she still hadn’t been sure what she was going to say. Now that she had spoken the words out loud, she knew they were the right ones.
“I have killed enough for you. I’ve lost track of how many people I have pierced with my lances. If I am ever driven to kill again, and I’m sure I will, it will be of my own accord.”
All three Dauphin gave a low gurgle of confusion. Each elder spoke in turn, attempting to appeal to Lancelot’s senses.
“But you are a Carthagen.”
“But this is your home.”
“But this is where you are safe.”
Lancelot looked at each part of the Dauphin’s chamber. On the back wall, she had once stood in line with the other warriors as she waited for her chance to challenge the best fighters. In the middle of the room she had defeated a Carthagen even though he had a Meursault and she did not. Later, she had collected the other Meursault by defeating yet another warrior so often and with enough viciousness that he gave her the blade to stop the punishment. Across from her, the three Dauphin faced her.
“Each of you is mistaken,” she said.
She thought of the stone room she slept in each night—the only place she ever took off any piece of her armor. Not only was she wrapped in metal armor, it had mechanized arms and legs specifically designed to make her look like something she wasn’t.
“I am no different from the invaders out there. You just see me differently.”
Upon first bringing her into Orleans, Bookknow had needed to keep Lancelot hidden until he could make a suit for her. She had remained alone in a damp stone room for weeks, with only an occasional visit from the Carthagen. After that, she was able to walk the asteroid tunnels adorned in the Carthagen armor. She still wasn’t sure how Bookknow had been able to explain the fact that an additional Carthagen warrior had been identified.
“This is not my home,” she told the elders. “It is where I’ve been for the past twenty years, and it’s the only thing I know. But it has never been, nor will it ever be, my true home. If I have a home—and I don’t know if I do— it’s out there somewhere.” She gestured all around her at the infinite stars that lay beyond the asteroids.
In the very place where she stood, she had defeated one Carthagen after another. At first, they had possessed superior weapons to her. It hadn’t mattered. Each of them, Swordnew and Curveddeath and the rest, had been given countless chances to challenge her and learn from their mistakes. That hadn’t mattered either.
“I’ll be safe anywhere,” she said from behind her helmet, the voice emitted from the speaker low and rumbling. “This is where you are safe. But only because I have been protecting you.”
The three Dauphin looked at her without speaking and without betraying any emotion. They didn’t hiss as they did when she was insubordinate. This was something other than mere insubordination.
“The Carthagens will perish without you,” the first Dauphin said with a somber voice.
“You’re living in caves. I don’t even know where the main Carthagen city is, but they are doing the same. Isolating yourself from the rest of the galaxy is not truly being alive. You cannot perish if you aren’t living in the first place. It’s time for the Carthagens to stand up and realize that.”
“Do you not understand?” the second Dauphin asked. “There is no hidden Carthagen city to protect. There is no one to stand up.”
The Dauphin beside him added, “We are all that is left.”
Lancelot’s two real knees buckled slightly under the weight of this revelation. Inside her armor and with two additional legs, no one noticed.
“There are no other Carthagens?”
“Only the three of us,” the third Dauphin said. “And yourself and the other warriors.”
“I’ve spent my life defending the three of you?”
The question sounded absurd after the image she had developed in her head of some underground Carthagen city that was also hidden away in the Orleans asteroids. In each defense of her title as the best Carthagen warrior, in each of her encounters with foreigners who entered the asteroids without permission, she had thought she was protecting hundreds or thousands of a species that had escaped extinction and was rebuilding its civilization.
Instead, there were only three elders and a handful of fighters. Their society would never return. Hiding in the caves, they would never do anything except fade away, the same as Bookknow had done. She wasn’t the defender of young Carthagen school children. She was the protector of three old Carthagens who used the few remaining of their race to keep themselves alive.
The stone door to the Dauphin’s chamber slid to the side. Five of the remaining Carthagen warriors entered the room. Lancelot glanced at the Dauphin. Surely they had somehow signaled for these warriors to come to their chamber as soon as their unannounced visitor had shown up. Lancelot’s eyes narrowed as she tried to determine if the elders sought protection from her or vengeance against her. She had a brief vision of the other warriors trying to swarm her and cut her down, using their greater numbers to defeat her. Instead, they proceeded to the far wall of the chamber where they always stood until called upon by the Dauphin.
Lancelot glanced over the shoulder of the third elder. The display still showed the tunnel where the battle against the invaders raged. The wave of attacks had subsided and only two Carthagens remained in position, ensuring the invaders were trapped. The others, Swordnew and Curveddeath included, now stood behind her.
“I’m taking a shuttle and leaving,” she said while facing the Dauphin, yet loud enough for the warriors behind her to hear.
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True to the formality instilled in them, none of the warriors uttered a word. Nor did the Dauphin make a sound, most likely because they realized hisses of disapproval would have no effect on Lancelot anymore.
The room was perfectly silent except for each Carthagen’s wheezing breaths. No one, Lancelot included, moved an inch. Lancelot was tempted to unclasp her helmet and reveal exactly who and what she was. She wondered who would be more shocked that she was a human, the Dauphin who had relied on her for protection or the warriors who had each been handily defeated by her countless times. Rather than cause unnecessary dismay, however, she kept her helmet on.
“Before you leave,” the middle Dauphin said.
“Yes?”
The third Dauphin nodded toward her armor, or rather what was attached to the back of it. “Will you leave the Meursaults?”
Rather than answer the Dauphin, Lancelot turned and faced the warriors standing against the wall. “I won these by being victorious in the duels. I will gladly give them up if I am defeated in the same fashion.”
Each warrior stared past her, at the elders. None of them moved or answered her challenge.
The Dauphin, knowing what would happen if they did and wanting to save every warrior they still had, simultaneously answered, “That will not be necessary.”
Lancelot turned and faced the Dauphin once more. The fighter in her, the child that had needed to struggle and adapt in order to survive, expected the Dauphin to either release some hidden countermeasure, killing her on the spot, or plead for her to remain in Orleans. Neither happened, though.
“Farewell,” she said, walking toward the door.
The Dauphin did not answer. The door rumbled to the side, allowing her to leave. As soon as she stepped out of the chamber and began making her way through the stone tunnels, the door slid closed again.
Her life as she had known it was finished.
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