The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)

by Chris Dietzel

  “Yes, sir?”

  “If you and your troopers don’t climb up through that hole and get them right now, you will be working out on the prison field while other guards use vibro whips on you. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  33

  Morgan, Traskk, Pistol, and Vere had encountered a pair of Vonnegan troopers who were on their way to carry out Le Savage’s orders. Traskk dispatched both with ease. It was so fast in fact that his clawed hands had ripped apart their helmets and armor before a single blaster shot could be fired. After that, the four of them passed a bot making its way from the mining colony back to an equipment room. The bot was short and round and hovered through the halls. A high-pitched alarm emitted from its round head when it saw the escapees. Morgan sliced it with her blade, first cutting it in half, and then into quarters. The bot’s beeping fizzled into distorted blurts and then to silence.

  “We need to go straight,” Pistol said, his one good eye glowing as it charted a route to the spaceport.

  The only problem was that they were at another dead end. They could turn right and continue down another corridor, or turn left toward an elevator.

  “Which way?” Morgan asked.

  Pistol gave a polite robotic shrug. “We need to go straight ahead.”

  Morgan shook her head in amazement. Why was it so difficult to find good accomplices?

  Rather than waste anymore time, she withdrew her Meursault blade and sliced her own path, making four big slashes in the metal. Traskk slammed his shoulder into the wall and a slab of steel fell forward and slammed against the ground.

  On the other side, a Vonnegan guard sat at a table by himself. His helmet was lying on the chair next to him, along with his blaster. In his hand was a mug of dark brown liquid. His big purple eyes, full of shock, stared at the raiders, but his hands didn’t move even a little toward his weapon. Traskk growled. Morgan’s grip tightened on her sword. Pistol’s one remaining hand began to glow. Vere narrowed her eyes. And still the guard remained perfectly still.

  The only movement the guard made was to look over either shoulder at the corners of the ceiling. There were no cameras monitoring what took place in the break room. Morgan’s hand remained at the grip of her sword, wondering what move the guard would make next. Instead of yelling or reaching for his blaster, he lifted one of his purple boots just enough to let it rest on the edge of the chair where he had set his weapon. Slowly, the guard pushed the chair away from him to let the group of raiders know he had no plans of reaching for it.

  Morgan nodded and the others in her group began to move past the Vonnegan soldier. When Traskk passed, he bared his fangs and the guard shivered. Pistol looked straight ahead, not acknowledging the Vonnegan.

  Vere paused between the guard and his weapon. With their helmets on, the guards had always been indistinguishable from one another while they tormented her and killed the other inmates. Some guards had been particularly cruel. Some had made a game out of trying to break her. Others tried to let infractions pass because they just wanted to get through their assignment at the Cauldrons and get transferred out. Even though Vere could see this guard’s face now, he remained as anonymous as ever.

  “Everything you do comes back to you,” she said to the guard. He nodded, and Vere continued past him.

  When Morgan walked by, she picked the weapon up and carried it with her to be sure he wouldn’t try to grab it after they were past him.

  They ran through another series of corridors. Each was deserted. Only a single maintenance bot, which wasn’t programmed to signal an alarm, rolled past them as they made their way closer and closer to the Pendragon.

  At the end of the next corridor, they came to another dead end. Pistol said, “The ship should be right on the other side of—”

  But Morgan had already sliced through the wall and was racing across the spaceport platform before the android could finish.

  She was only ten paces across the spaceport, heading toward her glorious ship, when she saw Cade. He was running too, but from the far side of the platform, where a Cirellian transport was taking off. Before it could get clear of the spaceport, a group of four Thunderbolts raced by, unleashing a volley of blaster shots at the vessel. It burst into flames, the front half of it dipping toward the platform, then crashed near where it had been parked.

  While all of this was happening, Cade was running back to the Pendragon, oblivious to the fact that a group of three Vonnegan troopers had their blasters pointed at him from the main entryway. Morgan raised the blaster she was carrying. By the time she could fire, though, the guards had already sent a round of laser blasts streaking toward Cade. Two of the three laser blasts hit him in the back. The third sailed past him, trailing off into the distance like a shooting star.

  A fraction of a second after Cade dropped to the ground, Morgan fired three shots at the troopers. Two were hit in the chest plates and dropped back. The third was hit in the shoulder and spun to the side before staggering away.

  The Thunderbolt pilots who had shot the Cirellian transport out of the sky saw the blaster fire and angled their ships to destroy anyone moving on the spaceport. Before they could, the Griffin Fire appeared around the side of the landing bay and let loose a dozen laser blasts. Two of the Thunderbolts exploded. The other two collided, leaving a fiery trail of metal streaking down and crashing into the lava seas below.

  The Griffin Fire passed by with a roar and was gone before Morgan could give any signals to Quickly.

  Cade’s body was to her side. He wasn’t moving. Two large marks emitted smoke from his torso. There was no use in seeing if he were alive.

  “Let’s go,” she yelled, running toward the Pendragon.

  Traskk and Pistol joined her in the race back to the ship. From the Pendragon’s boarding ramp, Morgan saw Vere in the middle of the platform, crouching over Cade’s body.

  “Come on,” Morgan shouted.

  But instead of listening to what had been shouted, Vere reached down and turned Cade over so he was lying on his back instead of being face down on the metal platform.

  A pair of Thunderbolts raced by. They would certainly notice the raiders getting ready to take off and would target the Pendragon on their next pass.

  “Come on,” Morgan yelled again.

  But Vere didn’t move. They were too far away for her to hear what was being said, but she was sure she could see Vere’s lips moving as she crouched beside the dead man. Just when Morgan was about to race across the platform and grab her, Vere stood up, said one last thing to Cade, then turned and began jogging toward the Pendragon.

  “You could move a little faster,” Morgan said, waiting until she was absolutely sure Vere was safely aboard before pressing the button for the ramp to close.

  In response, Vere only smiled.

  34

  Ever since leaving the prison yard, Vere’s mind had been flooding with memories and emotions. Her friends had risked their own lives to save her. As she appreciated each of them, she relived some of the memorable times they had shared together. Traskk next to her at Eastcheap and at her side everywhere she went. Pistol doing whatever was asked of him. Morgan committing herself fully to every battle she faced. And Cade. She had seen him across the platform an instant before he was shot.

  He had also risked his life for her. She knew Traskk and Morgan and Pistol were racing across the platform toward the Pendragon, but she also knew Cade deserved to be remembered right then and there. If she had known Baldwin was shriveled up on the prison grounds, she very well might have insisted on finding him as well.

  Sliding her hands underneath Cade’s shoulders, she turned him over so he could at least face the expanse of the galaxy rather than have his mouth and eyes planted against the hard metal.

  His eyes opened and stared right at her. When she blinked, Cade’s eyes were closed again. Calming herself, she saw his face return to looking alive and healthy. Mortimous had taught her this ability while she
worked near the scattered dead at the Cauldrons. The inmates had been deceased, yet when she was in the right state of mind, she could see an expression of life remaining on them. Some were glad to be gone from the misery around them. Others were caught in a fit of rage.

  “They carry with them the essence of who they were,” Mortimous had said.

  “Carry it where?”

  “Where do you think?”

  In his typical fashion, he only revealed so much before he became elusive, which in turn made him smile. That damned smile.

  “I’m here,” she said to Cade, taking one of his hands in her own. His eyes were open and looking at her but she knew, at least as far as anyone else was concerned, that he was already dead.

  “You’re free,” she told him. Then, smiling, she patted him on the shoulder. “We’re both free, I suppose.”

  From across the platform, she heard Morgan yell, “Come on.”

  A pair of Thunderbolts roared past.

  She nodded to Cade and said, “I figured everything out. I understand why no one else would join our cause the last time.” Then, holding Cade’s hand, she added, “But this time, they will.”

  In the distance, Morgan was shouting for Vere to leave him and get aboard their ship.

  When she looked at Cade again, his eyes were closed. She stood and began making her way toward Morgan and the Pendragon.

  This time, things would indeed be different. More than anyone else could possibly imagine.

  35

  The last time the Griffin Fire had raced by the spaceport, Cade was running back toward the Pendragon, unaware that three Vonnegan troopers were taking aim at him. When Quickly turned the ship around, evading a pair of Thunderbolts that kept firing a continuous stream of laser blasts, he saw Cade’s body lying face down on the platform. Smoke was rising from the middle of his back.

  But instead of seeing the troops making their way over to Morgan’s ship, he saw two of them on the ground. The Griffin Fire was past the spaceport and speeding toward the Athens Destroyers once again when one of the ship’s systems sounded an alert. The Pendragon was powering up. Looking down at his display, he saw that its shields were active even before its engines could get it off the ground.

  “They made it,” he said to himself, his joy and relief diminished only by the loss of Cade.

  “Are we late to the party?” Morgan said over the Griffin Fire’s comm system.

  Quickly threw the ship into a downward spiral, then pulled it back up again in an attempt to get the pair of Thunderbolts off his tail. If even one more shot hit the engines or any other part of the Griffin Fire that no longer had shields, he wouldn’t get a chance to hear how the escape had gone.

  “Almost,” he said, turning the ship into a series of twists, cringing as laser blasts sailed past the ship, barely missing their intended target.

  The blaster fire stopped abruptly. Quickly looked at the holographic displays and saw that the two Thunderbolts were gone. In their place, the Pendragon came roaring up from behind, closing on the Griffin Fire.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Traskk acknowledged him with a growl. From the singed metal at the rear of the Griffin Fire, it was clear that its rear shields were down. To offer protection, the Pendragon remained directly behind it.

  “What now?” Quickly asked.

  Morgan said, “Well, we could either stick around and chat, or we could get out of here.”

  Immediately after saying this, a dozen Thunderbolts swooped in behind the Pendragon and began unloading one laser blast after another on it. Quickly initiated another set of evasive maneuvers. A second later, the Pendragon did the same. The only difference between the two was that Quickly continued in the same direction as the portal while the Pendragon circled back to face the Thunderbolts. With the Pendragon’s full complement of weapons and functional shields, Morgan could deal with the Thunderbolts however she wanted.

  “I’m sorry,” Quickly said into the ship’s comm. “I wish I could help.”

  Morgan’s voice came back: “You’ve done enough, get out of here. We’ll be right behind you.” A second later, she added, “And thanks, Quickly, you did a great job.”

  The Griffin Fire’s thrusters ignited and the ship raced at full speed toward the portal.

  Watching on the Griffin Fire’s cockpit display, he saw a tiny holographic version of the Pendragon release a series of proton torpedoes. Two pairs of Thunderbolts collided with each other as they tried to evade the projectiles. The dots representing them vanished from the holographic display. Another five Thunderbolts disappeared after the torpedoes found their targets. Still another three vanished from what Quickly assumed was follow-up blaster fire.

  But even with the Pendragon destroying twelve ships in a matter of seconds, there were still too many Vonnegan fighters to continue engaging them. Two of the ships were behind him again. A blaster shot hit the underside of his vessel, perilously close to where the shields were down. A second blaster shot hit the same spot. A moment later, the Griffin Fire’s alarms began to sound again, indicating that yet another portion of the ship was completely without shields.

  Normally, he would slow down when nearing a portal in case a ship began to come through from the other side of the energy field, but he couldn’t afford to be a part of the battle any longer. Without waiting for the ship’s sensors to get a reading of the area, he pressed the button for the tinder walls to lower. As the metal panels engulfed the cockpit windows, the nearest Athens Destroyer began unloading a barrage of cannon fire at him.

  At the same time, the Griffin Fire’s comm system beeped to announce a new message had been delivered to the ship’s computer. Glancing down, he saw it was a data message rather than a voice message and it had been sent from the Pendragon. Without time to read it, he flew into the portal and disappeared.

  36

  Le Savage waited for an update. Sitting alone in the control room of the Cauldrons of Dagda, he looked out at an endless sea of molten lava far below. Swirls of black and orange moved around each other so slowly that he could close his eyes, reopen them, and still see the same collection of molten rock making its way through the fiery sea.

  He knew why no communications were coming through; all of his staff were either dead or were afraid to tell him what was going on.

  “They were weak,” he mumbled.

  He was supposed to be the warden on the most feared and notorious prison in the galaxy and yet he had been given a complement of officers who couldn’t capture a single raid party of only four people.

  “Someone tell me what is going on!” he yelled into the microphone when he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

  For a while, no one replied. He imagined all of the officers looking at each other in some other part of the facility, each trying to find some rationale or leverage over the others so they wouldn’t have to be the one who reported the news.

  Finally, the most junior officer—so that was how they decided—radioed back, “I’m sorry, sir. The raiders have escaped.”

  “Escaped?”

  “Yes, sir. They somehow managed to slip through our defenses and get back to their ship. One of the two vessels has already gone through the portal. The other is…”

  Le Savage stopped listening. Letting out a long sigh, he walked away from the comm system and the displays that were supposed to show every possible hiding spot in the complex. With the officer still talking in the background, Le Savage walked to the same window he had thrown two of his officers from.

  One of the ships was already gone. Even if Vere was aboard the other one, and even if the Athens Destroyers managed to capture it, news would get back to Mowbray that the warden at the Cauldrons of Dagda had allowed his prized prisoner to get off the planet. It wouldn’t matter that it was because his officers were incompetent or that no one had ever planned on Balor getting free from the prison yard and causing havoc in the facility’s inner corridors. It wouldn’t matter that the raid par
ty had managed to cut through walls that were supposed to be blast-proof. All Mowbray would see was that the man in charge of keeping the prison functioning had managed to lose control of his guards, his prisoners, the monster. Everything.

  Le Savage had worked his way up from nothing. Through hard work, he had gone from being a prison guard on EndoKroy to a junior officer at a larger prison to a senior officer on Greater Mazuma to becoming the warden at the most notorious prison in the galaxy. All of his hard work and determination had paid off.

  Now, though, it was over. Or, at least, it would be as soon as Mowbray sent troops to detain Le Savage for his blunders.

  Behind him, the junior officer’s voice might have still been reporting the latest update through the comm system. It didn’t matter. Without saying another word, Le Savage took one more step forward. The hot wind of Terror-Dhome rushed against his face as he fell hundreds of yards, the sea of lava racing toward him.

  His career was officially over.

  37

  From inside the cockpit of the Pendragon, Morgan watched the Griffin Fire disappear into the portal. Before she could turn the ship around and follow, an alarm sounded inside the cockpit. Her shields were low after facing the dozen Thunderbolts. Three more Vonnegan fighters moved into position behind her. She swerved left and right, evading their blasts, but wasn’t able to out maneuver the three other Thunderbolts that were approaching from her side. Two more blasts rocked the ship.

  “This isn’t good,” she mumbled, throwing the Pendragon into another series of loops and spirals.

  From the copilot’s seat, Traskk hissed an agreement.

  Five more fighters were coming at her from the direction of the portal, ensuring she didn’t have a direct path to it. Behind them, both Athens Destroyers began moving into a position in front of the energy field so that the length of each vessel stretched across the portal’s opening, doing their best to obstruct Morgan’s path.