“Yeah, yeah,” she said after hearing Pistol’s announcement. “Wait, what?”
“There was an emergency council meeting last night to discuss it,” the android said.
“What happened?”
“The fleet altered from the course they’ve been taking and passed through the Glyndwr portal, causing them to appear—”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Westmoreland gave an update on the fleet.”
“Same status?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Baldwin mentioned the Excalibur again, but no one paid him any attention.”
Vere sighed. Baldwin was always mentioning the Excalibur. Everyone else had heard the same stories the physician had heard and yet he was the only one bringing it up each time they talked about the Vonnegan fleet. She would have thought that someone raised to believe in science and what could actually be proved wouldn’t be the one holding on to myth and superstition.
“Anything else?”
“Morgan told everyone to proceed as they had been, then broke part of her chair.”
She knew better than to ask if any progress had been made in getting other kingdoms to join their fight. Six years after the destruction of the Ornewllian Compact triggered a galactic war and the CasterLan Kingdom still had no one willing to hear their side of the story.
“There isn’t much else we can do, is there?” she said.
Pistol’s human-looking irises began to glow with dull yellow light as he processed every possible action and outcome. When his eyes returned to their normal color, he said simply, “No.”
She took a deep breath, then exhaled. What would her father say? Would he realize she was doing everything she possibly could to prevent the kingdom’s destruction? Would he have found a solution that she was missing?
After a second deep breath, and a third, she nodded and turned away from Pistol.
“Next level,” she said.
On the far side of the room, a new hologram began to form. As she watched, particles of light melded together, piece by piece. A series of claws formed in midair before the fingers and hands that would bear them had appeared. A pair of three-foot long fangs came into focus, followed by the snout-like mouth from which they protruded. A tail started slithering back and forth before there was any body for it to be attached to.
Pieces of the creature continued to combine as she got her breath back from the previous round. As the monster materialized across from her, she tried to formulate a strategy for how to attack it, but each time she started to think of an approach, it was altered by the unpredictable formation of the beast as it appeared. It ended up having six claws on either hand but none on its feet. This led her to think about attacking low. But then an additional pair of hands materialized on another set of long arms positioned at the beast’s waist. Attacking low would be just as dangerous as attacking high. She considered circling it until she was able to get to its side, but then it formed a second tail, then a third, each with a spike at the end, and she knew there was no angle at which the monster would be any less dangerous.
“You really aren’t making things easy for me, are you?” she said to the room.
That was when the monster’s audio program finished loading. Even though the creature wasn’t completely formed and ready to stalk her through the training room, it began to bellow a series of thundering roars. Hologram or not, her knees went soft for a moment. Even the Green Knight, she was sure, would have wanted no part of the thing in front of her.
The audio program was inconsequential, really. It didn’t matter if the creature in front of her was quiet or yelling, just like it didn’t matter if an army on the other side of a battlefield was silent or clanging swords against their shields. The training program was simply using every tactic it knew to gain a psychological advantage.
As if the monster in front of her needed the help.
The holographic monstrosity had finished forming. It was unlike anything she had seen before. Fangs longer than her legs. Four arms, each with claws longer than her fingers. Three tails, each as long and as powerful as Traskk’s. And now that its skin was complete, she saw a series of sharp spikes protruding from the thing’s knees, shoulders, elbows, and back.
“Did you skip right to the hardest setting?” she asked.
The monster replied on behalf of the system that had created it. Its response was to stomp each paw on the ground and let loose another deafening roar. Somehow, the program was smart enough to make the room shake when the hologram stamped its feet. Then it began toward her, completely ignoring Pistol.
There was no use in racing toward it. Meursault blade in hand or not, the creature would kill her. She might be able to lop off two of its arms or all three of its tails before it did get her, but no matter what, attacking it looked to be suicide.
She backed away and to the left, but the monster immediately cut off any angle she would have to circle to the side and gain more space. When she started moving to her other side, the monster moved diagonally to cut off that part of the room as well. It refused to let her escape, and while it did so, it kept moving forward.
She twirled her sword in circles in front of her. The blade, only visible when the flat side came into view, began leaving trails of colored air where it passed through the training room.
She started to bring the sword back so she could slash off one of the monster’s arms, then paused. If she sliced off one arm, even two, the other arms would grab her and tear her to shreds before she could bring the blade back into a defensive position.
She moved right in order to edge away from the beast. Once again, it cut off her angle and narrowed the gap between them.
She started to angle the Meursault’s blade so she could thrust it forward, piercing the creature’s chest, then decided against this tactic as well. She would be even more open to attack that way. Without knowing where the monster’s vital organs were, she would have to be very lucky to kill it before it killed her.
She moved left. The holographic beast moved diagonally to keep her from getting behind it.
There was no more space left behind her or to either side. Everywhere she looked she had an idea of how she might attack, but after an assessment she saw more ways to be killed than do the killing.
The beast lunged forward. She tried to bring her sword up for defense, but only one of its arms was slashed off. The other three grabbed her, two by her shoulders and one by her neck. The monster roared, then paused. A surge of electricity washed over her, causing her body to seize up for a second and, to her utter shame, producing an uncontrollable cry of pain.
Without any further punishment delivered, the hologram lowered her back to the floor, then began to disappear.
As she gathered her senses, she counted herself lucky that it was a computer-generated brute and not the real thing, and that she had suffered only a stinging shock and a bruised ego instead of something deadly. If the monster had been real, she would have been alive long enough to watch it rip her arms from her body as it feasted on her.
Applause rang out behind her. She was turning to give Pistol a dirty look before she realized the android didn’t care if she won or lost. Her eyes shifted to the figure standing next to him. Morgan. And she was laughing.
“Better luck next time,” the general of Vere’s army said.
Vere was still getting her strength back after the electric jolt, but she was able to say, “You should try Level 74 some time.”
“Level 74?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, I’ve beaten that one already.”
Vere laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Morgan took a step forward. “With a pocket knife.”
Vere laughed again, then realized the other woman wasn’t joking.
“Pistol said the Vonnegan fleet will be here in less than ten days.”
Morgan nodded. “It was nice of you to show up to the emergency council me
eting.”
“How was I supposed to know there would be an emergency?”
“What were you doing instead?”
“I was here, training.”
“Do you think the entire war will be avoided if you challenge Mowbray to a one-on-one duel? Do you know real life doesn’t work that way? His generals would still destroy every last reminder of the CasterLan Kingdom.”
“Listen, what do you want from me?” Vere said, taking a step toward Morgan. General or not, able to defeat Level 74 or not, she wasn’t going to let someone talk to her that way for very long before she did something about it.
“What do I want from you?” Morgan said. “Show up to your council meetings. Especially when the Vonnegan fleet is ten days from destroying your kingdom.” Vere started to say something, but Morgan kept going: “And next time you decide to spend the night reliving your less than glorious days with your fat friend, wear a better costume.”
She dropped something on the ground, then turned and left. When Vere crossed the room and kicked the object with her foot, she saw it was her padded disguise from the night before.
Vere with Her Sword, by Molly Evans –
watercolor and ink
6
The column of Athens Destroyers stretched as far as the eye could see. In the grand scheme of the universe, no amount of ships that man or any other alien race could build would ever be more than flecks of sand. After all, there were infinite stars and billions of solar systems. But on the local scale, their impact was significant. Two hundred Athens Destroyers were not only capable of extinguishing life on every colony and every planet they visited, they could do it with impunity.
The procession of Destroyers was joined by another hundred Vonnegan ships of various shapes and sizes. The entire group passed the mining planet Beglin-D at the same time a giant cargo vessel emerged from the planet’s atmosphere loaded with enough raw materials to keep a colony functioning for another year.
The cargo ship had no armor and no cannons. Even so, it was an awe-inspiring sight. The largest Beglinian cargo vessel was an astounding twelve times longer than a standard Athens Destroyer. Any ship wanting to pass through a portal while a Beglinian cargo vessel was entering it would have to wait almost half an hour for the portal to clear. However, they were also incredibly fragile and cumbersome ships. Whereas a small fighter could swerve into and out of turns in a second, the bulky freighter took minutes to make a slight change in course. Trying to make it alter its direction any quicker would cause the vessel’s long frame to break apart.
As the first Athens Destroyer flew by Beglin-D, its captain quickly realized he was on the same path as the cargo ship.
“Change course?” an ensign asked.
They had been given strict orders to follow a specific flight path.
“Bear two points to starboard,” the captain said.
He would stay on the same general course, only adjusting directions ever so slightly. Not even the generals in the ships behind him would notice.
“Changing course, two points starboard,” the ensign said.
As they altered direction, the cargo ship also began changing its course.
“What’s he doing?” the Vonnegan captain said, not wanting or expecting an answer.
He knew, though, what was happening. The same way people, as they walked toward each other in corridors, happened to move in the same direction to avoid the other person and instead moved right into their path, so too was this freighter trying to get out of the way by moving directly into the slightly altered path the Athens Destroyer was now taking.
“Change back to the original course,” the captain said.
“Changing back,” the ensign replied.
But right as he did, the cargo ship began a painfully slow adjustment to its original trajectory as well, taking it right back into the path of the oncoming fleet.
“What do we do?” the ensign asked.
The Vonnegan captain flexed his jaw, then said, “Brace for impact.”
“Sir?”
“We have orders to follow this course. Do you want to be the one to tell Mowbray we didn’t think his orders were serious enough to follow?”
The ensign only cringed.
Alarms began sounding.
The captain stared at the freighter. He had done what little he could do. He was not going to risk Mowbray’s wrath by altering their course anymore than he already had.
Another set of alarms began.
“Impact in ten, nine, eight, seven…” the ensign said.
When he got to the count of one, a shudder shook the Athens Destroyer. But as long as the Beglinian freighter was, it was ten times more fragile. When the Athens Destroyer ran into the cargo vessel’s bow, the freighter was sliced into two long chunks that floated away from each other. The Athens Destroyer flew through the remainder of the ship as cargo began dispersing into space. As the two halves of the Beglinian drifted away, they too broke into more pieces. Meanwhile, the Destroyer continued ahead, undamaged.
“Leave our banner,” the captain said.
“But we didn’t shoot it.”
“It’s destroyed all the same. And everyone needs to know when a ship was destroyed by the Vonnegan fleet.”
From the side of the Athens Destroyer, four tiny metal projectiles shot out, one toward each main hunk of the cargo vessel. Only a second before impacting, the tiny metal containers erupted into light. In front of the destroyed sections of the vessel rose a purple warhawk in front of red and gold flames. The Vonnegan coat of arms.
Each subsequent Athens Destroyer that passed by the freighter’s remnants saw the same insignia, painted in light in front of the destroyed ship, also sewn on their sleeves and helmets.
7
“Thank you, everyone, for attending this meeting,” Vere said.
Around the table sat the same people who had attended the previous night’s emergency meeting—the one she had missed—along with some additional faces. Westmoreland and Cade were sitting next to each other. On the other side of the table, Baldwin was in a chair next to Fastolf. Along with them were various dignitaries from other planets in the systems that were part of the CasterLan Kingdom. None of them mentioned that Vere’s seat at the head of the long table had been vacant the night before.
Rather than sit, Morgan chose to stand in the corner of the room with her arms folded. Next to her was a pair of officers she had come to rely on since taking charge of the combined CasterLan forces.
Before the meeting had started, one of them had noticed an empty seat and had moved to sit down. Morgan had gripped his elbow and told him they wouldn’t be there long enough to get comfortable.
Pistol stood in another corner, although without Morgan’s scornful expression. Instead of having his arms interlaced across his chest, he let them remain at his sides, his head not even moving to see who was entering the room. Traskk stood next to the android, his tail waving slowly back and forth across the stone floor.
They were high above the rest of CamaLon, only one story below her father’s chambers, where the King had died years earlier. Vere looked at each person in the room. Many of them had assembled for the same types of meetings when her father had presided over them. Others were only there because Vere had grown to trust them since returning home from her self-imposed exile. Six years earlier, sitting in a seedy bar filled with thieves and murderers and smugglers, she never would have guessed that she would go from being a patron at Eastcheap to leading a meeting at the CasterLan royal hall.
“By now,” she said, “all of you know the news: the Vonnegan army will be here in—” she looked at a display in front of her “—nine days and four hours.”
Even though everyone was already aware of this, she gave them time to whisper amongst themselves as a way to release the dread and anxiety that had built up since hearing the news the previous night.
When they were all focused on her once again, she continued. “We’re running out of ti
me. We need a plan and we need it right now.”
“We’ve had six years to plan for this,” Morgan said, all eyes in the room turning toward her. The officers on either side of her cringed, seeing her talk to the leader of the CasterLan Kingdom that way. “If the plans we originally had were worth a damn, they wouldn’t have to change just because our time frame is cut short by a year.”
Vere had learned to stay calm when Morgan challenged her like this. Six years earlier, on their way toward trying to prevent the war that had taken place above Edsall Dark, she would have raced across the room, tackled Morgan, and thrown fists until both of them were bloodied and the fight was broken up. Now, though, she took a deep breath, centered herself, and acted like the leader of a kingdom that she was expected to be.
“We can discuss any issues with our prior plans later,” she said. “We only have a few days left. The important thing now is to do whatever we can in the little bit of time remaining.”
Westmoreland, who had been commanding a Solar Carrier longer than anyone else in the room had been alive, leaned forward so he could see the display of a tiny device he had brought with him. “In the next two days, one more Solar Carrier will come off production and be ready for battle.”
There was an audible groan in the room.
“Just one?” someone asked.
Under his bushy grey eyebrows, the old man looked around to see who had said it.
“Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a Solar Carrier?” he asked. “Even with the shipyards we have going on three different planets? The ship’s frame is solid atomized steel, some pieces more than one hundred times longer than this room. The engines are Category-5 IZers. Each one could power your home for a trillion years. The fiber optics that run through the ship are—”
Vere raised a hand. “I appreciate the difficulty. If anything, it’s even more difficult and intricate than you’re making it sound. Everyone knows you’re doing the best you can.”
The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2) Page 3