Vivian looked up at Merlin from under her dark lashes. “I have seen our differences, but I do not know what you mean. I have the same knowledge as you. We are not machines; you could not have been programmed. Not written.”
“Not programmed,” he sighed as Uther reemerged from being clean. “I was told to make things right.”
Vivian glared at Merlin as he left her side and said to Uther, “Alright, sir, if you will lie on this table and allow this mask to cover your nose, we will begin. Shall I explain?”
As Uther laid himself down, he only nodded, not daring his voice to speak for fear the tension he now felt would betray him. He could not relax as he caught sight of the laser tools next to him.
“I suppose a detailed explanation should have come first.”
“I understand your fear,” Merlin said. But he still did not seem relaxed either. “After all, this is how we D.R.U.I.Ds were created as well. Made to look more human as it were.” Uther caught the tint of malice in his voice. “First, sir, we shall sedate you. We have Galois’s DNA from the military archives ready and duplicated. Your new skin will take only moments to reconstruct.”
“It takes days,” Uther interrupted.
“Avalonian technology takes days to duplicate Avalonian DNA. Human DNA is far more simplistic. Yours and Galois’s have been mixed to reconstruct your face. Now as Galois is significantly taller and broader than you are, Avalonian metal will be used to reconstruct the bones to more suit his body type.”
Uther paled at this. “Perhaps this is too dangerous?”
“Nonsense, we do it for our own young now. To continue to suit the human need.” He added on the last sentence almost like an apology. “Your DNA will be mixed with that of an Avalonian to speed up the healing process and adherence to the metal to cause it to not be rejected by your body.”
“Blasphemy,” Vivian hissed. “Giving our superior blood to a human such as him.”
Merlin glanced side-long at her. “I have my orders.” He turned back to Uther with the sedation mask in his white hand. “You will fully resemble Galois by the time the Avalonian healing is complete. In the meantime, may I suggest you stay out of eyesight of others.”
Uther relaxed now. He gazed up into the white lights above him. “I will fight this war now. I will be in Excalibur. No one will see me.”
Nodding, Merlin slipped the mask onto Uther’s face and watched as his eyes immediately began to glaze over.
“What will you do when you have won this war?” he asked cautiously.
A dark smile spread Uther’s face. “Go home to my new wife, of course.”
In just a few heartbeats, Uther was unconscious. Merlin gave a sigh of relief and dropped his face into his hands. Vivian scowled at him and turned to leave.
“An Avalonian gone so low.” Her voice was just over a whisper. “I see much, Merlin, and for you all I see is a human god’s slave. You have turned your back on your people to aid this beast?” She flicked her hand at the sleeping Uther as the D.R.U.I.Ds went to work on him. “Have you no honor?”
Merlin didn’t stop her as she left with the soft swishing of her robes and the lab doors. She could never know that what he did, he did for every D.R.U.I.D and Avalonian. And every human.
8
Family
Far above Camelot, on the glowing moon of ever-evening Lothian, Galois stood in his floating manor above the wild bioluminescent forest below him. Lothian shared in Camelot’s gravitational pull and when the moon waxed new, the gravity became light and his keep hovered above the rest as well as large masses of loose earth where some had built their homes. Below, a strange creature cried its howl to the sky above blazing with stars. He had left Camelot. He felt like a coward hiding on the moon, but his daughter had welcomed him warmly.
Igrain watched him from her station where she had been sorting through the census that had just finished for Lothian. The eco system thrived, beautiful and perfectly in balance. The D.R.U.I.Ds still resided close by even though they were supposed to evacuate. After talking with Galois, they decided there was no reason to make them move. They seemed peaceful enough.
“Everything is coming along,” she said quietly to not disturb her husband. Standing up, she moved to her wardrobe and changed in to soft evening clothes. Her black skin and red hair made her look like a goddess in the glowing Lothian night. Galois continued to watch the distant orb in the sky, Camelot, as Igrain tried to distract him with her sensuality. From the balcony, Camelot appeared as a soft radiant blue planet. No sounds of war could be heard.
“In the morning, Uther will march against Vortigern and extract his revenge,” Galois sighed. “This is not how our lives were supposed to begin.”
Igrain knew it too. In a matter of hours, her husband, once bright and mischievous, had turned dark and serious. He hadn’t smiled or made a joke in days it seemed.
“We could warn him,” she suggested. Immediately she wished she hadn’t said that. That would mean betraying Uther and possibly aiding his death. Vortigern was older and wiser in the ways of battle. He thought Uther would never kill his father’s friend. He counted on Uther to be inexperienced and frightened.
“I cannot,” Galois said just as she knew he would. “He would kill Uther.” He stopped and cleared his throat as it tightened with tension. “I cannot do that to my friend. For Constans…” But his voice caught in his throat.
“Our friend,” Igrain reminded him gently. She stood next to him now, her military uniform and boots gone for the night. Now she dressed elegantly and simple in her white gown and long hair.
“Why can’t you be like this more often?” Galois asked as she slipped into his arms. “Why can’t I? Why do we have to be the military couple?”
Igrain tried to smile, but the memories were heavy on her lips. “Because we always have been. I never wanted to be this strong when I was girl. I loved our lives before the Project began.”
Galois scoffed. “Living on a simulated planet and not knowing how you got there? Not knowing what happened to our ancestors or where they went? I almost prefer the years of cryosleep.”
“And many years it was,” Igrain reminded him in a stern voice. “We had good lives on that ship.”
“But false lives.”
She exhaled exasperatedly and pushed away from him. “Why are you like this now? I cannot be the way you were: all smiles and jokes. I am tactical and cunning. It is your job to be clever and inappropriate.”
“When am I inappropriate?” he asked.
Her eyebrows went far up her head as she dared him to remember the incident.
“Alright, alright, so I told your mother she was comparable to a Meldorian ox, so what?”
“She was pregnant!”
“At least she was.” A smile almost played into his face. “Imagine if she wasn’t and I said that?”
Igrain tried to hold a stern face but it cracked into a modest grin. “Still, you never liked her.”
“That’s fine. I married her daughter; I don’t have to like her.” He cupped her chin in his hands and she sighed gratefully as he kissed her. For a brief moment, they forgot about Camelot and Vortigern and held each other in the sparkly luminescence of a moon all their own.
“We must warn Vortigern,” Igrain said quietly into his shoulder. “Uther will bring a greater civil war than we can imagine. The D.R.U.I.Ds will be involved and those Avamech. If this one battle gets out of hand—and you know it will—then the D.R.U.I.Ds will want back what is theirs once they see who is losing the war. It will become a bloody and long fight.”
Galois closed his eyes, praying for the strength to betray his only and greatest friend. “I love Uther,” he breathed into her floral scented hair. He clutched her as though she were his life preserver in a great ocean beaten by a storm. “We are like brothers. I am all he has left in that sense.”
“And he has pushed you away,” she said. “I love him too. If it were not for him, we never would have met. How I love him
! But Camelot is ours. Our first duty is to her and her people. Uther is not her king.”
Galois gazed instantly into her eyes as she said this. His heart slammed into his ribs with a new fear as realization dawned.
“He will be,” he gasped. “Uther wants to be king. He said I was committing treason. I cannot be because he’s not king. He will fight Vortigern and make himself a king over Camelot. That’s not what his father wanted.” He ran to his glossy desk and took up his uniform and put it back on quickly.
“Constantine wanted a government; a democracy! Uther will kill that dream to have his revenge. He means to be lord of this planet. I cannot let that happen.”
He ran to the door of the room, punched in the security code and called for a few soldiers as back up.
“Galois, my love,” Igrain called. She didn’t move to her com-unit or for her own weapons and uniform. “Try to stop him without killing him. Warn Vortigern, if you must. And please stay safe.”
“I will do what I must, Igrain.”
“Go to him first, please.” Her eyes were dark in the light of the moon. “Please.”
“You are not coming? My tactical and cunning wife?” He almost smiled again.
Igrain wrapped her arms slowly around herself. “No. Not this time.”
The soldiers were waiting outside the door already. Galois nodded, strapped on his gun and ran out to stop Uther before things got out of control or went too far. There was no speed shuttle to take him, so he’d have to go in the slower transport between the planet and its moon. He prayed he arrived before sun up.
The slow swaying of the floating land masses lulled Igrain into a deep contemplation. She was almost asleep while standing when a communication buzzed through her master control desk. Panting at her ill alertness, she looked down at the screen on the top of the desk to see where it came from. A single word: Cantus.
Curious, she flipped open the three-dimensional map of their new solar system and its twelve planets to search for it. The communication still rang in her ear as she looked. Strangely enough, she couldn’t find it. Now she had to wonder if it came from outside of the solar system. If that were true, it would have to be a strong signal indeed. But her questions got the better of her.
“Hello, this is Lothian, second moon of Camelot. Identify, please?”
The answer was a rumbling sound punctuated with cracks and hisses every once in a while, like an angry fire. Like a huge, roaring fire.
“Hello? Are you in trouble? Send coordinates and we can assist you.” She waited. Perhaps someone had called the nearest station and then passed out? “Are you hurt?” she asked. Something was burning for sure.
At last, a voice came through. “Stay your sword, dragon, or you will be burned.”
“Excuse me?” she stuttered. “Dragon? Do you mean to speak to Uther Pendragon?”
But then the roaring, the voice, and the communication ended abruptly. Igrain switched hers off as well and stared at it as though expecting it to burst into flames. Taking a pistol and tying it to her hip, she walked out onto the balcony to look around. For some reason, it seemed plausible that the call came from close by and she thought she might be being watched. No such luck.
She put the gun away and sighed. Surveying the sky, she saw a large, red star that didn’t flicker. It had to be a planet, softly glowing, quiet and beautiful as though a civil war could never break out under its quiet light.
9
Blind
Uther was up early and prepared his uniform before the sun rose. He had decided to strike Vortigern before sunrise to keep the element of surprise on his side. So far, it had been too simple. He got prepped, debriefed, and in Excalibur before most of his troops were in their smaller Avamech. Merlin had assured him that his had been outfitted with the best frames, fuel, and weaponry they had available. When he brought this battle to an end, he planned to see to it that more advanced armors and weapons were in the making. And there was only one way to do that.
“Merlin, have the artillery Avamech follow me now and have the smaller ones with long-range weapons come after. Battalion leaders, do you copy?” he said into his headset.
They all confirmed one after the other. He flexed his toes and shoulders, feeling the power and weight of Excalibur inside his very muscles. This machine was amazing. He could scale mountains in moments and leap rivers. Camelot had just gotten a lot smaller and his reach longer.
“Sir, I’ve had the torque adjusted for the flight,” Merlin’s voice said. “You should be able to easily reach about 780 kilometers per hour in the air. However, flying takes more fuel and will drain your battery life faster.”
“What’s my running speed then?” he asked as he marched forward with his troupes.
“Roughly 270 kilometers per hour if you’re hovering, which I recommend for this stealth assault.” His voice showed no emotion. “The Avamech are quiet, but not undetectable. You have next to no cloaking, but plenty of shields.”
“And my weapons?”
“Excalibur is mostly a hand-to-hand combat type Avamech, but has been outfitted with some assault weapons and a long-range bullet-firing gun has been mounted near the left shoulder.”
“Hmm,” Uther thought. “Could these Avamech use other weapons? Think of the devastation one could dole out with a power blade.”
“Yes.” Merlin’s voice showed no amusement. “Think of that.”
When this war finished, and it would be quickly, Uther had many plans for the great Avamechs. They would be feared and respected and all who piloted one would be as well. Perhaps a special school for Avamech pilots would be in order later. That would give him an army of elite soldiers with special skills. They could even be crossed with Avalonian DNA for faster healing, training, and other enhancements. That way, if the Avamech were like Excalibur, piloting them would be simple. The psychic meld to a machine would have to be explored though. He wasn’t sure what to expect once he finished. Would this kind of thing take a toll on his physical brain?
Either way, he had plans for Camelot and Excalibur that would make no one question his leadership when the time came.
Finally, in the distance and the dim glow of the rising sun, Uther spied Vortigern’s palace and the small city of elegant homes around it. Already he had amassed himself D.R.U.I.Ds to build for him and the people from his ship had not abandoned him.
“These people are traitors,” Uther said to his army. “They knew full well of Vortigern’s betrayal and yet did not turn away from him. Everyone is an enemy. We are attacking to take the capitol, the building that was once his ship. Do not hesitate to kill. Once the capitol is taken, find Vortigern and take him hostage.” No one would be permitted to kill Vortigern. Uther wanted that honor himself.
“Everyone, sir?” Lot’s voice asked.
“Everyone, love,” Morgause answered for him.
Vortigern’s army roared, ready to fight, but not ready to engage with Avamech. The army advanced when it heard war machines approach, but froze on their tera-bikes and vehicles when they saw the army of giant armored robots that fell upon them. A flood of laser fire and some bullets showered the Avamech, but the shields were too strong for simple weapons.
“Move in,” Uther commanded. “They can’t hurt us.” Manic glee set in. It was too easy and it was delicious.
His men did not move until he did. Walking the Avamech across the flooded battle field meant squashing men underneath their feet. This made some of the battalions stop and wait. When Uther charged ahead, they all followed. Using Excalibur’s martial-arts-like precision and balance, Uther easily kicked through the walls of the city and punched a hole for his men to assault the city through.
When they were this close, the wounded army of men and vehicles far behind and bloody, the power-turrets on the battlements began to fire on the Avamech. This was the only hard defense they had. The anti-aircraft weapons blazed and shattered the sound barrier as they fired at the charging Avamech. At last, a small delay d
aunted Uther’s otherwise unstoppable army if only weakly.
Delight filled him as he picked up audible signals from Vortigern’s army. The men were panicking and screaming for a retreat. They had planned on Uther’s army to be small and perhaps not quite as strong as they; man against man. Behind him, the field turned red, smeared with the squashed bodies of the pathetic human army.
“Let’s make them really scared now, men!” he called. “Destroy the walls.”
The assault Avamech and the power-based ones rushed closer in and began to level the city as its citizens scrambled for cover. Merchants, farmers just discovering their land, and craftsmen screamed and fled. Destroying the walls came as easy as breaking open an ant hill: wherever the Avamechs stepped, a slippery crunch became unavoidable. Once this was underway, Uther marched right up to the capitol, but had not prepared for what waited for him there.
On a balcony, high above everything, stood the armored form of Vortigern. He looked tiny and miserable compared to Excalibur, standing with his legs apart and a massive power-gunblade in his hand. With a smirk, the older man lifted it to his shoulder and fired at the Avamech, knowing Uther piloted it.
Uther thought blocking it would be simple and flicked out his hand to stop the strange missile from hitting him. The shock of the explosion erupted painfully in his hand, burning it and causing his whole body to shudder. Pain screamed up his arm and the vibration rattled his skull. In a reflexive moment of weakness, he cried out in pain.
“Didn’t expect me to have Avalonian weaponry as well, I see,” Vortigern laughed. “I’m just the preliminaries. Wait until you see what else I have. There are planets outside of Camelot, Uther, who know me already. You should have risen your gaze to the stars and not just on this earth. Your defenses are near-sighted.”
A New Home: A Sci-Fi Arthurian Retelling (The Camelot Project Book 1) Page 7