No one else had come close to getting away from the notorious prison in all its years of existence. Security sensors prevented anyone from carrying blasters into the prison. Even if inmates somehow managed to get away from the guards and from Balor, they would have to go through a series of security checkpoints that blocked any escape to the spaceport. Then they would need a way off the lava planet, and if they were still alive at that point, they would have to find a way out of Vonnegan territory, past all the Athens Destroyers that made routine passes near the molten prison.
That was why their rescue attempt had taken so long to implement. They knew that with each passing day Vere’s chances of survival dropped, and so they wanted to rescue her as soon as possible. But they also knew it was pointless to try and conduct the raid if there was an Athens Destroyer above the prison. This was the first time in months that one hadn’t been stationed there.
“Ready?” Morgan asked, looking at Baldwin.
When he nodded, the two of them pulled their hoods up over their heads, and she pressed the button for the Pendragon’s ramp to lower. Their long cloaks billowed behind them as they descended.
Across the spaceport, where the Griffin Fire was parked, two more figures appeared. Both were also wearing long cloaks with hoods pulled up over their heads.
She could have gone to the trouble of having elaborate disguises prepared. They could have worn reinforced shells that changed their shapes and made them unrecognizable. They could have pretended to be delegates from a foreign kingdom or any other cover story they wished. They could have put on prosthetics that made them look like a completely different species. But that only aided them in being undetected on their way into the prison, which was unnecessary. No matter what they looked like, as soon as they tried to free Vere, the full might of the Vonnegan forces would come down on them. Anyway, there was no telling what kind of scanning software the prison used. She could have gone to the trouble of wearing bulky false limbs that would slow her down, only to be discovered immediately once a retinal scanner identified her as not only human, but as one of the Vonnegan Empire’s biggest possible trophies.
That was why she had decided to use minimal disguises, something that wouldn’t hinder their speed but would keep them fairly unremarkable until it no longer mattered. Then they would simply have to run for their lives.
The two figures descending from the Griffin Fire, one human in size and one significantly larger, walked toward them.
When they were all gathered together, Morgan asked if they were ready. She was greeted by a nod of the head from Pistol and a low, guttural hiss from the large figure that was next to him.
The tips of Traskk’s hands and feet protruded from the edge of his baggy cloak. All were a vibrant green. The only parts of him that were still yellow were his torso, neck, and head. The rest of him—his arms, legs, and tail—were still too young to have faded into the sand color they would one day become. It had taken almost a year for the limbs to completely regenerate after they had been chopped off.
Traskk was lucky to be alive at all. Morgan had needed to wait two full days while the Vonnegan forces left their orbit above Dela Turkomann before she was able to return and search for him. At the time, she didn’t think there was any way the Basilisk would still be alive. He was a survivor, though. Using his snout, he had pushed sand away, then burrowed far enough underground that all of him was covered from the harsh desert sun.
By the time she found him, not too far away from where the traitor Scrope had cut his appendages off, Traskk wasn’t even able to blink, let alone offer a pitiful growl. Now healthy, there were only two things Traskk talked about: rescuing Vere and killing Scrope.
Knowing the reptile’s temper and having seen what he had done for much lesser offenses, Morgan felt bad for the first guard Traskk got his hands on.
6
On the other side of the galaxy, back on Edsall Dark, Scrope walked the hallways of the capital. No matter where he went, he was the only person. The shops were deserted. The spaceport was empty. The homes had been vacant for nearly two years.
Prior to the battle above Dela Turkomann, every ship, pilot, mechanic, and anyone else able to perform manual labor had been transported to the Excalibur Armada. Each of these people had taken their loved ones with them. Following the battle, what remained of the CasterLan fleet had supposedly rallied there before going into hiding.
Upon arriving at the capital after being appointed as Mowbray’s selection for ruler of the planet, Scrope had no one to lord over. He was the installed leader over an entire planet and yet had no one to rule. Mowbray hadn’t even bothered to leave a contingent of troops to keep him safe.
“But I need protection,” Scrope had said.
Mowbray had looked puzzled. “Being part of the Vonnegan Empire is all the protection you need. Who do you think will attack a planet that has the banner of the purple warhawk flying above it?”
Already having tested his new ruler’s patience, Scrope had let the matter drop.
Now, all alone, without an army to ensure his safety, he had hidden himself away in the king’s chambers. Even a small child or an old man who had remained behind could point a blaster and kill him. And Scrope was sure that anyone who was hiding in and around CamaLon would be more than happy to take the shot. Everywhere he went he thought he heard footsteps. Because of that, he stopped going anywhere.
But instead of breaking down the doors to get him, the few people who had remained on the planet had packed up as much as they could from their homes and had gone to live in the forests. There were no signs that anyone else remained in the capital, and yet a clanging or an echo would be heard and Scrope would be sure it was someone coming to get him.
He was the ruler of Edsall Dark. He had finally received the title he had secretly craved his entire political career. And yet the few times he had to restock his food supplies, he found himself scurrying down abandoned hallways and corridors. All of the humans and aliens that had sneaked away in the night were probably making jokes about him. Not even Mowbray took him seriously. Edsall Dark had been turned from the center of the CasterLan Kingdom into the laughingstock of the galaxy.
There was an old saying: If a ruler claps his hands but no one is around to hear him, is he actually a ruler?
Scrope had always believed the question to be foolish. Of course he was! Titles were what counted. It didn’t matter what his subjects thought of him as long as he ruled over them. Now, though, he knew the real answer to the riddle.
A scratching noise sounded behind him.
“Hello?” he said, backing away from the door.
A ranter scurried out from the shadows with a piece of food in its mouth. As Scrope watched, the little rodent darted into a crack between two walls and was gone.
Not even it cared what kind of authority Scrope had. Or thought he had.
7
Morgan, Traskk, Pistol, and Baldwin approached the main prison entrance as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. A pair of Vonnegan troopers stood beside a shuttle, neither of them paying any attention to the newcomers as they passed.
“Do you ever wonder how we keep getting into these situations?” Baldwin asked.
Morgan and Traskk walked in silence.
From underneath his hood, Pistol’s monotone voice said, “You keep associating with people who—”
“That’s not what I meant,” Baldwin said. “I mean, isn’t it funny how life works? A couple years ago, who would have guessed we would be trying to sneak into the galaxy’s most feared prison?”
Morgan came to an abrupt halt. Turning, she reached out and took hold of the fabric covering Baldwin’s chest. “Two things,” she said. “First, nothing is funny about this. Get your head straight or you won’t make it out of the galaxy’s most feared prison. And second, stop talking unless you want to sit in a ship that you don’t know how to operate while Cade comes with us instead.”
“But,” Baldw
in began, then saw the look on Morgan’s face and went silent.
Without looking back to see if the others were following, Morgan resumed walking toward the Cauldron’s entrance. In front of them was a wall of black rock that stretched up hundreds of feet. Beams of dark steel crisscrossed the rock, reinforcing it. On top of the wall, guards with blasters walked back and forth, taking turns between looking out at the spaceport on one side and the lava fields and prisoners toiling away on the other side.
The hooded and cloaked group approached a rectangular gap in the rock, the only opening for them to pass through. Even Morgan had to crouch down to get through the passageway without hitting her head. Traskk hunched over so much that he was practically on all fours, and even then he was almost too wide to fit through. His bright green tail slithered back and forth as rock dust fell to the ground after his shoulders and hips squeezed by.
There was little light. Morgan paused inside the entrance until her eyes adjusted. Behind her, Traskk growled a low series of noises. The Basilisk’s eyes could see things her human eyes couldn’t, no matter how long she let them adjust to the darkness.
Pistol offered the translation without needing to be told: “He says we’re approaching the first sensor. There are no guards hidden in the walls.”
Nodding her head, Morgan continued forward again.
Even after being told there were no guards, she couldn’t help but grip the handle of her Meursault blade, which was hidden under her cloak. If the reports she had heard were true, the prison had a sensor that would identify if someone tried to bring blasters into the facility. Supposedly, the warden didn’t care about weapons that couldn’t fire, things like knives or hatchets, because there were guards on top of the walls with sniper blasters, guards on the prison grounds with vibro whips, and a giant one-eyed monster that killed anything it looked at.
Already, the heat was scorching. Morgan and Baldwin were drenched in sweat. Traskk seemed to sink into himself as his body adjusted to the temperature. Only Pistol seemed unaffected.
Hidden in the cracks of stone, tiny insects made clicking and scratching noises. Not liking the sounds, Baldwin let out a steady groan that didn’t stop until Morgan turned and put a hand on his chest.
“Just a little further,” she whispered, and the physician quieted down.
They walked through a series of rock tunnels. Left, then right, then left. She soon got the sense that they were there simply to cause confusion and to slow an attempted escape. None of the tunnels were wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. Morgan guessed that if someone were trying to get away, a series of hidden traps would be initiated and the walls would either seal shut, crush the inmate to death, or else the floor would open up and drop them into the lava that was surely beneath them.
“My goodness, it’s scorching!” Baldwin said.
Morgan turned back, narrowed her eyes, then continued forward again.
It was hot, though. Not even to the second checkpoint yet, she could feel the heat seeping through the stone walls. The heat penetrated the thick material of her boots, burning her feet. Droplets of sweat were trickling into her eyes. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like being forced to perform hard labor amongst the open pockets of lava that were bubbling all around the prisoners.
There were no signs of guards. Yet.
After walking down various zigzagging corridors, the stone walls receded and they came to a metal scanner.
“Just walk through,” Morgan said under her breath. “Act normal.”
She passed through and no alarms went off. She guessed this sensor detected only blasters or explosives. The others passed through without any alarms sounding as well.
The heat was intensifying. Ahead of her, she began to hear the cries of prisoners, some screaming in agony, others begging to be dropped into the lava sooner rather than later.
To their side, they passed a large, open room. On the far wall, a dozen new inmates were being shackled together by a group of guards while the main overseer instructed the latest prisoners on how to conduct themselves if they wanted to survive.
“You live as long as you decide you want to live,” the overseer said.
One of the inmates, a thin alien with swirls of brown and orange in his skin, was crying, knowing he would never see his family again. Another alien, short but stocky and with four long arms, looked down at the ground in front of him without listening to anything he was being told. He already knew he was as good as dead.
The guard saw that none of the inmates had been listening to his speech and, walking down the row, slapped each one across the face.
“Enjoy this smack,” the overseer said. “It’s the softest reminder you’ll get. Wait until you feel a vibro whip hit you. Then you’ll be begging to have me slap you again.”
The other guards in the room laughed, unconcerned with how long the new inmates might live.
Morgan paused, her eyes narrowing. Traskk had seen this before and knew it was never a good sign. He gripped her shoulders with both hands, reminding her why they were there. Grudgingly, she continued ahead without confronting the guards.
In the next room, a trio of Vonnegan troopers were standing against a wall, laughing about a prisoner they had just tossed, still alive and crying, into the lava fields. The troopers stared at the four cloaked people walking through the corridors of the Cauldrons. Keeping her head down, Morgan glanced at them out of the corner of her eye, waiting for them to start toward her. But all three troopers shrugged, each figuring that no one would be there unless they had a reason to be.
After another long hallway, they entered into the next security outpost. Everything was automated, leaving no room for Vonnegan error. Morgan stopped before passing through the scanner. In front of her, beams of light stretched from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.
“Chances are,” she said, turning back to the others, “that our identities will be known as soon as we pass through this scanner. Be quick to follow our plan and we should make it out alive.”
She waited for any of them to say something or to ask a question. All of them remained silent and returned her stare with one of their own. The only noise, other than from the prison yard’s screams and wails, was from Traskk’s tail sliding against the floor.
A green light flickered at the top of the wall. Morgan stepped forward, into the wall of light. The glow of green turned to red once she stepped into it. She paused there while the sensor performed its scan. The beam went through the robes she was wearing, through the hood that was still over her head. It was mapping her face, identifying every aspect of her.
She was just about to turn and say, “See, no problem at all,” when the first alarm started going off.
She threw the hood of her cloak back, said, “Oh well,” then ran forward, into the prison grounds.
Roaring for her to slow down, Traskk did the same. Pistol and Baldwin looked at each other, then at the direction their friends had gone. A second set of alarms began to sound. Remembering that they had already walked past more than a few Vonnegan guards, all of whom were armed, they also ran toward the prison yard.
8
From high atop the prison, Le Savage heard the alarms sound the same time as his guards. As warden of the Cauldrons, he had the galaxy’s most notorious prisoners under his watch. He had a monster roaming the grounds. He even had Mowbray making surprise visits so he could personally see Vere’s anguish and the pain and suffering of the others who had done something to anger the Vonnegan ruler.
Maybe in less strict prisons around the galaxy, the wardens could put their feet up and go to sleep while the facility functioned without them. But not at the Cauldrons, where desperate inmates were constantly trying to kill guards and escape before they could begin serving their sentence. Balor, his giant one-eyed monster, was constantly killing prisoners, which was good. But he was also indiscriminately killing guards, which was a liability Le Savage was forced to accept. Lashing Balor wit
h a vibro whip only angered him. The guards had learned a long time ago to subtly make their way toward a different portion of the prison grounds whenever Balor lumbered toward them. That wasn’t enough, though, to keep Le Savage from needing to constantly request fresh batches of guards from around the Vonnegan Empire.
It simply wasn’t possible for Le Savage to be anywhere but the command center stationed atop the thirtieth floor of the prison wall. Unless he was sleeping, that was exactly where he was.
When the alarms began to sound, he was already on his feet and approaching the guard on the other side of the room.
“Sir,” said one of his senior guards from behind a display in the corner of the command center. “The alarm is coming from Zone 2.”
“Someone trying to break out again?” Le Savage asked.
He couldn’t help but smile, remembering how long it had taken his staff to clean the hallway where the last pair of inmates had tried to make their escape.
His guard was hunched over a holographic display that provided an image of what was happening at each hallway, door, and room of Zone 2.
“No, sir. Trying to get in. Four people.”
Le Savage’s eyebrows raised. “Trying to get in?”
His smile didn’t disappear, though. He merely shrugged and walked over to see the security feed for himself.
“That’s why he’s the ruler,” Le Savage said, but no one around him knew what he was talking about.
What they didn’t know was that Mowbray had told Le Savage that Vere’s friends would eventually try to break her out.
“It’s a death sentence for them to try,” Le Savage had replied.
Mowbray had smiled and put a hand on the warden’s shoulder. “Ensure that it is.”
Month after month, he had waited. Given that most of his prisoners didn’t live very long, he had to admit that after three months had gone by and no one had shown up, he assumed Mowbray had been wrong. After all, it was a matter of time until Vere CasterLan simply died. When a year had passed and still no one had arrived to rescue her, Le Savage stopped expecting that anyone would ever try. He had been looking forward to being able to tell his ruler just how gruesomely the rescue party had died.
The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) Page 3