The Excalibur (Space Lore Book 2)

by Chris Dietzel

  Everywhere she walked, she inspected the rock as if it were something other than a giant stone racing through space. She looked for doors leading to secret tunnels. She looked for hidden keys or touch panels. She looked for anything at all other than ships and stone. But that was all she ever saw.

  “Everyone I know is going to die. If you’re out there, you have to help me.”

  Of course there was no answer.

  When she got frustrated she picked up a stone and threw it as far as she could. With the Excalibur’s extremely low gravity, the rock sailed through the air further than she could walk in one two-hour session. Another time, overcome with anger, she kicked the side of an Excalibur ship until she thought she had broken her foot. Her tantrums never made her feel any better.

  Every once in a while she got to a section of the asteroid where a crew of workers had set up camp decades or centuries earlier. Tools still lay where they had been abandoned. However, only fragments remained after the asteroid passed by the blue sun. Otherwise, she might have been able to find an equipment tent or a tiny containment field with old gear still inside.

  There were chisel marks in the stone where the workers had gone about trying to free the ships. These indentations were always light, never penetrating more than a few inches into the rock because the crews knew that anyone who dug too far would set off the Excalibur’s self-destruction sensors.

  “I don’t want the ships for myself,” Vere said to no one. “I don’t want to conquer the galaxy or anything. As soon as I turn the Vonnegan fleet away from my kingdom, I’ll never use them again.”

  How many other people had come to the rock with the same idea? Would she really have it within her to return nearly one thousand starships when she was done with them? Surely not. Anyway, if she did just send them floating off to space, pirates would get them and begin terrorizing every sector in the galaxy. She would have to hold onto them. She wouldn’t live forever, though. Whoever followed her might want to expand the kingdom. With the Excalibur Armada, nothing would stop them from doing so.

  Every time she spoke it was to some person that Mortimous had mentioned, never to the asteroid itself. Every child knew the tale of Vinion the Longer, who, as a twenty-year-old king, had spent his remaining fifty years on the asteroid, asking its permission to take the ships. He had asked in every possible language, in every possible word order, in every possible fashion. He became obsessed with the idea that carving the rock away would never lead to the treasure beneath it. What you had to do instead, he told everyone, was simply ask the rock for permission to take the ships. No matter how many languages he spoke, no computer or being or anything else within the rock had given him that permission.

  “This is all a waste of time,” she said, kicking a rock. “My people are going to die and I’m not going to be able to protect them.”

  “Starships don’t prevent death and suffering.”

  Vere spun around to face whoever had spoken to her.

  Someone was there, almost within arm’s reach of her. Like Mortimous, the figure was covered in robes. But this one, unlike the seer, was shorter and more delicate in stature. The robes covering the figure were a light cream, almost white. Vere didn’t question whether it was Traskk or Baldwin playing a joke on her because they were both much too large to be the person in front of her. Not to mention that the voice that had spoken obviously belonged to an older woman, not a young man or a Basilisk.

  But most of all, she knew it wasn’t them or any other ordinary person because there was no space armor underneath the robes. Also, no way to be heard. And yet this woman had communicated with Vere without speaking through the earpiece in her helmet.

  It was the Matron of the Mineral. It had to be.

  Vere stared at the figure for a moment, the single sentence the woman had spoken echoing in her head. That familiar voice, along with the woman’s slender frame, triggered a slew of memories. Standing before Vere was the Matron of the Mineral, but Vere knew her by a different name.

  “Mother?”

  48

  A holographic image of Morgan hovered over a display in the Griffin Fire’s cockpit.

  “Any luck there?” she said, her eyes fluttering shut in irritation, her tone conveying that she knew exactly what the answer would be.

  Baldwin shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “When is Vere planning on returning?”

  The honest answer was that Baldwin didn’t know if Vere would ever return to Edsall Dark without the Excalibur Armada. She had become obsessed with it the same way as every other ruler who had come here and hadn’t left. In the past three days, he had seen her for less than thirty minutes each day, and only then because she needed to refill her space armor, get some food, or take a brief nap. All the rest of her time was spent out on the Excalibur.

  The most troubling part of seeing her consumed by this preoccupation was that she was wasting away in front of him. She looked as though she had lost ten pounds from a combination of not eating and not sleeping enough. Each time he did see her, the dark circles under her eyes were larger than the previous time.

  “I don’t know,” he told Morgan.

  In the copilot’s seat, Traskk gave a soft grumble.

  “Well, it better be soon,” Morgan said. “The portal has been activated. Our Solar Carriers are arriving. The Vonnegan fleet is nearly here.” Her voice grew louder, angrier. “The only thing missing is the woman in charge of the entire kingdom!”

  “I’ll let her know,” Baldwin said.

  Morgan grunted in disgust. The three dimensional image of her face vanished. The comms link was closed.

  What else was he supposed to say? It wasn’t as if he could very well tell the leader of the CasterLan Kingdom that she had to report to her own battle.

  Beside him, Traskk growled again.

  49

  “Mother?”

  Vere stared at the figure in the cream robes, almost within arm’s reach of her. She knew she wasn’t dreaming, but she also knew it was impossible for someone to be out on the Excalibur without space armor.

  Delicate arms brought both hands up to the hood of her cloak. When the fabric fell back, Vere saw the most beautiful smile she had seen in over a decade.

  “Mom,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Without thinking about what she was doing, she stepped forward to put her arms around Isabel. If the apparition were a bounty hunter or some other kind of trap, it could have easily withdrawn an ion knife from its robes and driven it through Vere’s ribs. But instead, the figure reached out, put both arms around Vere, and offered a gentle squeeze.

  “Mother,” Vere said again, an uncontainable smile across her face.

  Isabel had succumbed to her illness months before Vere had run away to Folliet-Bright, which felt like a different lifetime. And yet now she was standing on the Excalibur.

  Rather than scream or go into shock, Vere forced herself to remain objective. Nor did she turn on the microphone in her helmet and tell Traskk to bring the ship closer. The apparition of her mother had formed out of nowhere. She was afraid that if she called the Griffin Fire over, Isabel could disappear just as quickly as she had appeared.

  Instead, she merely said one word over and over again—Mother—while she enjoyed the way it felt to have her mother hug her once again.

  Finally, Isabel spoke as well. “Oh, Vere.”

  Her arms squeezed a little harder when she said her daughter’s name. They embraced for an entire minute, long enough for Vere to remember the blanket of protection that her mother had offered. Finally, Vere leaned back and looked once again at Isabel. Her face was rounded and full, yet her hair was gray and she had wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, by her mouth, below her jaw. It was her mother as she remembered her, before the sickness had ravaged her body and turned her into a frail and withdrawn figure.

  Somehow, it really was Isabel.

  Vere couldn’t contain herself. “What are you doing here? How did yo
u get here? Where have you been?”

  If the figure wasn’t actually her mother, it might have given up the form it had been taking and revealed its true identity before killing Vere. But Isabel only smiled, the corners of her mouth curling ever so slightly, then gave a short yelp of laughter. The same laugh Vere had heard when she was a girl.

  “Still as curious as ever, I see.”

  A trio of comets passed in the distance, each leaving a trail of white light behind them as they made their way through the galaxy. The sun began to come up over the far side of the Excalibur, turning the section of asteroid they were standing on from shadows and darkness to what it would be like during the day back home.

  For a moment, it seemed Isabel wasn’t going to answer, or was going to play some game of riddles and mysteries like Mortimous or Galen.

  But then she said, “I’m here to help, of course.”

  She flashed the same smile, and each time she did Vere couldn’t help but grin in return. That one thing, her mother’s happiness, made her feel safe and taken care of and loved.

  “You’re the Matron of the Mineral?”

  Isabel’s smile changed. It was still genuinely pleasant, but the corners of her eyes narrowed with deviousness. “That was one of Mortimous’s silly jokes. But yes, I am the person he was referring to.”

  “But, you’re…”

  Even this amused her mother. “Dead?”

  Vere nodded. “I helped care for you when you were ill. I was there when you died.”

  For the second time in her life, Vere heard someone she had loved and lost say the same thing: “There is so much more to this galaxy than what we can see.”

  Galen had said the exact same thing to her in the cave years before.

  “Mortimous,” Vere said, her voice lowering to a growl.

  “Don’t blame him for anything. He really is trying to help. Not to mention, he saved me. He’s the reason I’m here.”

  “But you died.”

  “Death is only the beginning, Vere. He taught me that there is much more to experience than what we see when we think our eyes are open. Without him, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “But how?”

  Isabel waved the question away. “Some other day.”

  “No, Mom. I need to know.”

  Her mother shook her head as she chuckled. “Vere, Vere, Vere. Ever so stubborn. A long time before I ever met Mortimous, he—”

  “Mom, I asked how you got here.”

  Isabel put a hand on Vere’s shoulder. “I’m explaining, honey.”

  Under the helmet of her space armor, Vere felt her cheeks turn crimson from embarrassment. “Sorry.”

  Her mother continued, “Mortimous gained a reputation as a mystic and a seer, but that wasn’t the truth of who he was or what he did. When he disappeared for weeks or months at a time, going out into the Forest of Tears or the Literac mountains, people thought he was just being strange. But he was set on finding out the answers to the galaxy that no one else knew. To do that, he wanted to get away from people. Even himself.”

  Vere’s brows furrowed and she shook her head. “Even himself?”

  No matter how far Mortimous walked in order to be alone, Isabel said, the same doubts and fears pervaded his thoughts. It was only when he sat in perfect quiet, drifting off in a state where he didn’t think about daily life, or about anything at all, that he began to find the serenity he was looking for.

  Isabel smiled. “That was when he saw them for the first time.”

  Vere sat on the nearest boulder and motioned for her mother to do the same.

  “Saw who, Mom?”

  “A race of beings no one else had ever known about. A race that isn’t bound by our perception of time or space. Because of that, no ordinary being had ever come across them or knew they existed. But Mortimous, in his isolation, stumbled across them.”

  “Mom, the Vonnegan fleet...”

  “I know, dear. But you asked. And understanding this will help you more than anything else you could be doing while Mowbray approaches. Anyway, these beings, with no constraint on time or space, were able to go anywhere in the past or the future, were able to exist in every corner of the galaxy at all times.”

  “The old gods?”

  “No, just a race of beings far superior to anything we have ever known, beings that most people will never be able to have contact with. The more Mortimous drifted off into a state of solitude and quiet, the more he was able to glimpse these beings. First, he saw them in his dreams. Later, in his waking life. He came to understand that their ability to live in five dimensions gave them the ability to do anything they wanted. They were capable of things we consider to be impossible. They could do things like bring a knight, dead for a thousand years, back to life in another part of the galaxy.”

  “The Green Knight.”

  Isabel nodded. “Just as they are able to let me be here now.”

  “Then why don’t they stop Mowbray? Why don’t they free the Excalibur Armada and let me protect the CasterLan Kingdom?”

  “Quite frankly, dear, because they hold a very low opinion of what we think of as advanced life. For thousands of years, they have seen constant war and suffering in one part of the galaxy or another. They could be visible to us if they wanted. The only reason they appeared to Mortimous was that they saw him reject that way of thinking. They saw that he was interested in true knowledge rather than power.”

  “Then why bring back the Green Knight? Why send you here?”

  “Because every once in a while, Mortimous is able to convince them that by performing one small act, thousands or maybe millions of lives may be saved. He tells them that people can change their ways, that we can learn from our mistakes and one day live in peace.”

  Vere took hold of her mother’s arm. “Tell him to convince them that I need the Excalibur Armada. It’s the only way I’ll save our people.”

  “Vere.” Isabel reached out and put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Those ships won’t save you. That’s not why they’re here.”

  Vere’s smile vanished. Her eyebrows dropped. It was the expression that had always signaled to Fastolf and Traskk and everyone else who knew her that they had better keep their distance. Something bad was about to happen.

  But it was her mother in front of her, so she closed her eyes for a moment and calmed herself. “You don’t understand. The Vonnegan fleet outnumbers us three to one. We don’t stand a chance.” And then, just to make sure her mother understood completely, added, “Our kingdom will be lost. Everything father worked to build will be destroyed.”

  Upon hearing this news, Vere expected anyone she knew to ask how they could help, to declare that nothing was more important than stopping the oncoming assault. Especially her mother, who had loved her husband, and he in return, so much so that it had taught Vere to never expect that same kind of rare love for herself. Her mother, however, didn’t seem concerned by the news at all. The smile on her lips didn’t waver for even an instant.

  “I know all of that, my dear.”

  “And you still won’t help me free the ships? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “I’m not here to help you free this armada,” her mother said, opening her palms toward the stone-encased fleet, “I’m here to stop you from trying to free them.”

  50

  The war room of Mowbray’s Supreme Athens Destroyer was unlike any other in the galaxy. There were no generals standing over an assortment of maps or military leaders trying to convince one another of their strategy. Nor were there any first officers, computers, or communications systems providing constant updates.

  The only other people in Mowbray’s room weren’t there at all. Only their three-dimensional holograms were present at the table. Only those who were absolutely essential were allowed to attend. The meeting was limited to ten of Mowbray’s most trusted generals, each aboard their own Athens Destroyer.

  One entire wall of Mowbray’s war room consist
ed of floor-to-ceiling clear panels that made it look as though the Vonnegan ruler could simply step off of the flag ship and drift into space. The opposite wall was reflective, making it look as though he was surrounded by the galaxy on both sides. On the walls to his left and right were the battle flags of kingdoms that previous Vonnegan rulers had conquered through the generations. Each was a cloth banner rather than an electronic display that floated in space to indicate a defeated vessel. All of the flags shared one thing in common: they were scorched, torn, and soaked in blood. Rather than symbolize a destroyed craft, they represented the defeat on an entire kingdom.

  One was in the pattern of fire, a clenched fist in the middle of the flames. Another was of a pair of swords crossed to form an X, with four different objects in the spaces to each side. Yet another was the outline of a warrior holding a shield and battle axe, black and gold stripes behind it. All belonged to extinct empires.

  Each opposing ruler had sent his fleet into battle against the Vonnegans and each had lost. The flags adorning Mowbray’s wall could have been in pristine condition if the other rulers hadn’t been so stubborn.

  “The CasterLans have activated the new portal above the third moon of Mego Turkomann,” one of Mowbray’s generals said.

  Another added, “Our latest intelligence indicates the fleet is moving away from Edsall Dark and is heading toward that moon.”

  Mowbray nodded. “Very well. We will meet them there.”

  A third general said, “There is a remote chance, however unlikely, that they are expecting reinforcements to appear through the portal. If so, we might consider conducting the battle somewhere else.”

  At this point in the discussion, another ruler of Mowbray’s stature might end the meeting, then send his guards to kill the general who would question his ruler’s commands. Mowbray, though, only shook his head.

  “There is no chance of reinforcements,” he told the room of holograms. “Whether or not Vere CasterLan thinks there is a possibility of such a thing is quite another discussion. I can assure you, however, that no one will be coming to the aid of the CasterLans.”