Morgan raised a hand and said, “The name of the portal is irrelevant.” Her knuckles turned white from how tightly the fingers of her other hand curled into a ball. “Where did they appear?”
“Just outside our sector.”
She bit down on her lower lip again before asking, “Just outside our sector?”
Cade nodded.
“And they’ll be here in ten days?”
He nodded again.
The armrest of Morgan’s chair creaked from the pressure of her grip on it. “Well, what are we going to do about it?”
The young man’s cheeks became a darker red when, after staring at her for a few seconds, he finally realized it hadn’t been a rhetorical question. “Uh, ma’am?”
Morgan walked behind her chair and wrapped her fingers around the back support. The wood there also creaked under the pressure.
“What are we going to do in the next ten days?” she said between gritted teeth, veins popping out of her hands as they squeezed the chair.
A man with a thick grey beard, sitting on the other side of the room, said, “We are already at full production on our Solar Carriers, but even with the additional time to build ships while the Vonnegan fleet has been in transit, we cannot match their resources. We estimate they currently outnumber us two to one.”
“Thank you, Westmoreland,” Morgan said.
The man nodded. Being that he was the oldest person in the room, and the most respected, everyone else wished he would continue to speak. But one of the very reasons he was well liked was that he knew when to speak and when not to. And because of this, he realized his part in the discussion had already ended.
Baldwin whispered something to the woman next to him about the Excalibur, but Morgan ignored it.
“Anyone else?” she said. “Traskk?”
The reptile gurgled and hissed a series of noises that no one understood except Pistol. The android had been instructed to translate Traskk’s comments only if they weren’t threats toward the Vonnegan fleet. Pistol remained silent and Morgan couldn’t help but smile. Maybe, in a different life, she had been an angry Basilisk.
“Peto?” Morgan said.
A man two seats down from Westmoreland shrugged. “We’re outgunned and outmanned. As I see it, one of the only things we can do is send representatives to the other kingdoms to see if they’ll help.”
Morgan nodded. “And who do you suggest would be qualified to serve as emissary?”
Peto chewed on a long piece of straw as if he were tending to cattle rather than sitting in the most important council meeting in the solar system. “I’d suspect Vere would be best suited.”
Morgan, still standing behind her chair, dug her fingers into the back of her chair once more. This time, instead of merely creaking, the wood broke in half. Splinters sprayed the people on either side of her.
After taking a deep breath, she looked at the only empty chair in the room, which also happened to be the chair at the head of the long table—the chair Vere was supposed to be sitting in—and said, “Yes, you would think so, wouldn’t you?”
“Does anyone know where she is?” Baldwin asked.
Traskk gave a low hum as his tongue flicked side to side. Pistol shook his head.
“Just like our other meetings,” Morgan said, using her boot to push the bits of her chair to the side.
A young man came to the doorway: “Cade, sir, we have a problem down in district four.”
Cade, rather than standing for duty, blushed so much that his rosy cheeks looked unhealthy. “I thought I told you not to interrupt me during these meetings.”
“You’re what passes for security these days?” Morgan said, looking at the young man.
Instead of answering in the affirmative, he simply groaned without even realizing he had done so.
“We’ve discussed everything we can for the day. Proceed as you were,” she told the group. Then to the young security guard at the door, she said, “I’ll handle the disruption in district four.”
“It’s turning into a near riot, ma’am,” the guard told her.
Morgan looked at the empty chair where Vere should have been sitting and narrowed her eyes. “I said, I’ll handle it.”
Leaving everyone else to organize their papers and excuse themselves, she stormed out of the room.
“I feel sorry for the poor bastards in district four,” Baldwin said, and everyone shook their head in agreement.
4
The entire bar had turned into a giant fight with no clear teams or groups supporting one another. One second, a bulbous-eyed Terrangulan was strangling the life out of a little drunken MaqMac. The next second he was having a chair broken over his head by a Khrrut with a back and chest twice as broad as he was tall, but arms so short they weren’t good for much else than drinking and throwing things. A pack of Wolvertons swarmed a pair of Gthothches, their sharp claws scraping and sparking against the latter’s stone skin.
Everywhere Morgan looked there was fighting, chairs and tables being broken, aliens grunting as they punched and kicked one another, and groaning each time someone was hit. A chorus of growls and threats from dozens of different alien species echoed through the din of breaking bones and shattered glass.
A tiny alien, the size of a human child, flew past Morgan’s head as she walked through the doorway. She dodged to the side just quickly enough to avoid having its razor sharp wings slice the side of her face open. It squealed in terror as it fled the bar, happy to survive another day.
She scanned the fighting for a moment before her eyes settled right in the middle of the room.
“I knew it,” she said, one hand curling into a fist and the other gripping the handle of the sword at her waist.
Fastolf. The fat man was in the center of the brawl. Not only that, he was laughing, loving every minute of the chaos.
She noticed, however, that he wasn’t actually fighting anyone. Instead, he would push one alien in the back, causing it to sprawl into the aliens in front of it. By the time it turned around to see who had pushed it, Fastolf had already moved to a different creature and was doing the same thing. The result was a room full of aliens spurred into fighting because each one thought someone else was bringing the fight to them. All the while, though, Fastolf refrained from hitting any of his fellow bar patrons because it was more fun—or more lucrative at least—to pick the pocket of each one as he pushed them. All around the bar, he would push some alien, starting a new fistfight, only to duck out of the way, wait for the fighting to begin, and then quickly snatch whatever money the alien had in its pockets as it fought some other alien that had no idea why it was being attacked.
“Fastolf,” she screamed.
Even over the fray of fighting, he heard his name called and turned to see who had yelled it. After scanning the room, his eyes focused on her in the doorway. The smile immediately vanished from his face. He turned his head to look for the nearest exit. Without pause, he darted for it.
She tried to run after him but was immediately ensnared in the fighting.
“Stop,” she shouted at the aliens nearest to her as they fought each other. A QuaQuall was latched onto a human’s back, tearing at the man’s scalp with its suction cup fingers. Another man was kicking at a pack of ten tiny Tulins, who were all too fast to be caught by a boot.
When no one listened to her, she withdrew her Meursault blade, the one Vere had given to her, and brought it down in a slice in front of them. A trail of dark vapor lingered where the sword had cut through the air. The table she had cut, made of solid metal, fell into two equal parts.
The group closest to her stopped fighting long enough for Morgan to make her way past them. But there were still too many other aliens and humans fighting all around her to catch up to Fastolf. Instead of chasing him through the back exit, she turned and raced through the entrance. There, she turned left, then left again, and ran through the alleyway beside the bar. With one sweeping motion of her arm, her sword sliced
through a stack of crates that blocked her way, a yellow mist lingering where the blade passed through them. At a barbed metal fence, meant to keep burglars out, she slashed a V, then kicked the top portion of the fence away, hopping over what remained.
She saw him in the distance, running down a side alley. Squinting, she realized there was a second person with him. Without another thought, she took off after both of them.
In the dark, she raced past the shadows of aliens of every variety, each carrying out some mundane daily task. A short, hairy Ppollop poured hot water down a storm drain after closing up his restaurant for the night. Morgan raced past him without the Ppollop acknowledging that someone had even been there, let alone rushed past. An Ignis Moris was stacking wooden crates on top of each other behind his store. The fiery alien had to wear special gloves so that each crate didn’t burst into flames when he touched them. A pair of feathery, dainty aliens stood face to face in the middle of a lover’s argument. Morgan raced past these as well.
At the next intersection of alleys she paused just long enough to see which way Fastolf and his companion had gone. Turning right, she bolted after them. By the time she got to the next crossing she had cut their lead in half. At the next intersection, they turned left, she followed, and she was only twenty yards behind them. She laughed, knowing Fastolf was tiring and didn’t have much more left in him.
Racing down the next alleyway, she was almost upon them. But that was when, still running, Fastolf’s companion smacked a large, ogre-like alien on the back of the head as they ran past. When the Crunklin turned around, already growling and ready to kill whatever had hit it, Fastolf and his fellow thief were well past it and turning the next corner. The only thing it saw was Morgan.
She skidded to a halt and sheathed her sword, holding her hands out to show she didn’t mean trouble. The Crunklin was hunched over but was still a foot taller than her. Its arms were as thick as her waist. When it roared its displeasure, she saw thick teeth as long as her fingers.
“I don’t want trouble,” she said.
It growled at her but didn’t move forward.
To be safe she withdrew her Meursault blade again. A circle of dark mist made its way around her as she twirled the sword into a defensive position.
“I don’t want trouble,” she said again. “It was them, not me.” She pointed in the direction of the two figures that had disappeared into the distance.
The Crunklin turned and listened to the footsteps racing away, then gave a softer, lower growl.
“Are we okay?” Morgan asked.
The Crunklin gave a hum and backed away to let her pass.
The race was back on.
Even with the extra time to get away, it only took another three blocks for her to see Fastolf again. The man was hunched over, still trying to get away, but too out of breath to do anything but hobble forward. His fellow thief, just as wide as Fastolf, stood next to him, urging him forward.
“You don’t even know how bad I’m going to hurt you,” Morgan shouted as she closed the distance between them.
Fastolf looked at her racing toward him, then groaned. His companion waited a moment longer to see whether the fat man would attempt to climb over the next fence. Then, seeing that Fastolf was done for, the other thief began scaling the fence and was almost all the way over when Morgan got there.
She yanked on the first thing her fingers found: a bit of fabric. Instead of pulling the other thief off the fence, she came away with a cloak that was full of thick padding.
In the shadows, safely out of reach, the other thief stopped to look back at Morgan, and Morgan noticed the person Fastolf had been with wasn’t as big as him at all. Not even half his weight. Knowing that she had to choose between going after the other thief or remaining near Fastolf, she stopped the chase. She was alone with the one person she managed to like and detest at the same time.
“Fastolf, Fastolf, Fastolf. What am I going to do with you?”
After running farther than he had run in his entire adult life, he was still too exhausted to say anything. Each time he sucked in a new breath of oxygen he sounded like a ship’s engine struggling to start. Gasping, he couldn’t form clear words. Instead of saying anything intelligible, he whimpered a series of noises like a newborn baby. As he did, he raised his eyebrows as if she would understand what he was saying and take pity on him.
“Why don’t you ever learn?” she said, cracking her knuckles.
She paced back and forth in front of him, slapping a fist into the palm of her other hand. He saw this and put a hand up to protect his nose.
“I’m a captain,” he gasped, “in the army.” After another heave of his chest, he managed to muster, “You can’t treat an officer like this.”
She still had no idea what had possessed Vere to appoint her buddy as a captain to the CasterLan army. Maybe Vere had thought the sense of responsibility would straighten him out and help him get his act together. If that had been her intention, she had been sorely mistaken. Of course, it was also possible Vere thought it was funny to mock the strict code of the CasterLan military by appointing a fat drunken thief as an officer.
“A captain?” Morgan said. “A captain? I’m the general in charge of the entire fleet!” she yelled. “Do you know what that means? Your boss’s boss reports to me, you dumb slug.”
She reached down with one hand and raised his chin so he was looking up at her.
“Well, let’s get this over with,” she said, pulling her fist back.
His yells could be heard many blocks away, all the way to the bar where the brawl had started and where everyone had finally settled back down to enjoy themselves.
5
Vere’s hair stopped before her shoulders. The monster in front of her, twice Vere’s size, had tentacles hanging from its chin that were the same length. Vere stepped sideways, brought her sword down diagonally, and cut through its left arm, which fell from the creature’s body and slowly evaporated. The monster screamed in pain and reached for her with its other arm. This one she also chopped off, and the beast yelled again. With its final attempt, it lunged, trying to impale her chest with its tentacles and rip her to pieces. She easily sidestepped, though, and thrust her sword through the middle of its head. The monster’s nose, eyes, and cranium flew off, dispersing into pixels, while its mouth and chin tentacles remained attached at the neck.
The two of them stood far enough apart that the monster wouldn’t have been able to reach her even if it did have arms. It was also the distance at which, with her arm fully extended, the tip of her blade could touch the closest part of the computer-generated beast. Just when she thought the armless and eyeless monster might make one last lunge toward her, the hologram gave a low cry of defeat, then the entire creature evaporated.
“Any updates?” she asked.
Pistol was standing in the corner of the training room. His emotionless face made him appear supremely unimpressed by the vanquished monster and by Vere’s skill in defeating it.
“The Vonnegan fleet will be here in nine and a half days.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, used to hearing daily reports of how soon Mowbray would arrive.
Ever since the CasterLan army had managed to defeat the waves of Athens Destroyers coming through the portal, mainly by destroying the portal itself, she had been told that the Vonnegan ruler would be coming for revenge.
First, she had received daily intelligence updates about the progress of Vonnegan efforts to rebuild their fleet of Athens Destroyers. The information was so specific and detailed that it was obvious that Mowbray wanted her to know how many ships he was building. To him, that would be the best way to make her regret having destroyed the first, smaller fleet, along with his son, who had been aboard one of the Destroyers.
Those reports had occurred each day for two years. Then she started receiving daily updates on the fleet’s progress toward Edsall Dark. Without the Tevis-84 portal, the ships wouldn’t be able to appear right at
her doorstep. It would take them years to make their way through the galaxy to her solar system. As they came closer, other Athens Destroyers were still being built. These did use portals, but only to catch up to the main fleet as it traveled across the galaxy.
As the years went by, she did everything she could to prevent another war from breaking out. She began efforts to have a new fleet of Solar Carriers and Llyushin fighters constructed. She sent communications to Mowbray to tell him the first battle had been a great mistake caused by an even greater misunderstanding. Although she knew he received these communications, he never replied to them. It was obvious that nothing she said or did would make him waver from trying to settle the score.
Another year. Two more years. The Vonnegan fleet made its way through space, directly toward Edsall Dark. Whenever Mowbray’s ships had the option of arriving earlier by taking a portal, they ignored it and continued on the same course. In addition to giving the Vonnegans more time to build additional Athens Destroyers, it sent a clear message to the rest of the galaxy: Mowbray wouldn’t let his need for revenge blind him with rage. He was calculating and determined and knew that any kingdom that even considered aiding the CasterLan cause would rethink their position when they saw how large his fleet was. Once they saw the hundreds of Athens Destroyers, no one would ever defy Mowbray again.
The idea seemed to be working. There wasn’t a single colony in the entire galaxy that didn’t know the Vonnegan fleet was crossing the farthest reaches of space to destroy everything Vere held dear. And yet none of them answered her requests for help.
The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) Page 2