Project X-Calibur

by Greg Pace

  I hung up and turned back to Malcolm’s bed, intending to ask him about that medal he was polishing. It was attached to the tattered ribbon I’d noticed earlier; it was what had gotten him so wound up. But now he was standing at his open closet, pulling out his padded sparring outfit. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Going to the gym,” he said flatly. “Do you really think Pellinore would rather have me sitting around doing nothing?” He turned and headed toward the bathroom.

  “Wait—how do you know Ivy?” I called out. “When you tackled her earlier, you already knew her name.”

  That stopped him. “I was just trying to help. You don’t think Pellinore is angry about it, do you?” His expression softened with genuine worry. I probably could have messed with his head, but I wasn’t going to lie to him, even if he had been kind of a jerk so far.

  “Nah.” I grinned. “I think he was impressed.”

  He surrendered a rare smile. “Ivy and I go to the same academy.”

  “Academy for what?”

  “School. Same as yours at home, I’m sure.”

  I was pretty sure Ivy’s and Malcolm’s “academy” was nothing like my school at home, unless of course it had an ancient air-conditioning system that broke down every summer.

  “You think Ivy’ll be flying with us now?” Tyler joined in now that he’d finished his call home. “She can already rock and roll up there.”

  Malcolm’s smile fell away. “You better hope not.”

  “Why not?” Kwan asked, also joining us.

  “Because unless there’s another ship somewhere, there were five ships—X-Calibur, plus the four others built by Pellinore’s team.”

  Tyler squinted, not grasping what that meant.

  “If Ivy is given a ship, then one of you is out,” Malcolm clarified.

  “What about you?” I asked Malcolm. “You could be out too, you know.”

  He gave me a look like I had just said pigs could play baseball. He had zero reason to be worried.

  “Not likely, Benjamin,” he replied and leaned toward me to make it count.

  I stiffened. He’d love nothing more than to see me lose my place here.

  “I guess we’ll see,” I said stoically.

  “Guess we will,” he replied, stone-faced, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  I let out a long exhale. Keeping cool in the midst of Malcolm’s aggressiveness could be exhausting.

  Tyler whispered to me, “Maybe we should go to the gym too?”

  “Are you going to listen to Malcolm over Pellinore and Merlin?” I scoffed, already shaking my head.

  “I guess not.”

  Kwan moved to the enormous window screen and flipped through each background, pretending to channel surf. “Repeat . . . Seen it . . . Blah . . . Whatever.”

  I looked up at one of the wall clocks. Even though it only showed the countdown at the moment, it was still basically a flat-screen TV. Hmm. I climbed onto my bed for a closer look.

  “You’re wasting your time, bro. There are no buttons,” Kwan said.

  “No remote, either,” Tyler added. “I looked everywhere.”

  There was an inch of space between the TV and the wall, so I grabbed the corner of the TV and pulled. It didn’t budge at first, but then it squeaked loose a few inches, revealing an adjustable viewing arm installed behind it. “Anybody have a screwdriver?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. I always travel with tools,” Kwan cracked.

  “Maybe a dime will work,” I suggested, so Tyler fished out a dime from his stuff. I went to work, using the dime to loosen the TV’s screws.

  “Mind telling us what the heck you’re doing?” Kwan barked.

  “HQ has been here for decades, right?” I gritted my teeth as I struggled with the screws. “Long before the RTR knew exactly when the aliens would show up. The countdown was probably only started recently. Which means—”

  “These TVs were probably real TVs before that,” Kwan finished excitedly.

  “Yup. Remember all those newscasts we saw on the tour? This place is getting a whole bunch of channels already.” I pulled the final screw loose and gently pulled at the TV frame. “We just have to find a way to access them.”

  I had taken apart more than a few old televisions in my day (not to mention rusty toasters, broken washing machines, radios, and just about anything else I could find to play around with), so I felt pretty comfortable giving this a shot. I separated the back corner and looked inside. The good thing about newer TVs is how little there actually is inside them. All of the working guts are contained on one circuit board. The bad part is, unless you know what you’re doing, that circuit board might as well be a fifty-sided Rubik’s Cube. But then I saw something that gave me hope.

  “Anybody know what SkyTV is?” I asked. A three-inch cylinder had that name printed on the side of it, with an audio/video feed snaking out of the side. Could it really be that easy?

  “SkyTV is a satellite TV provider here in London.”

  I turned. It was Malcolm, standing in the bathroom doorway in his heavily padded sparring outfit.

  “What are you doing up there?” he hissed.

  “Even if you could get that thing to show something other than the countdown—which I doubt—we’d still have no way to change the channel, remember?” Kwan pestered me.

  He was right, of course. But a casual glance toward the atmosphere window gave me an idea. I pulled the descrambler through the back of the TV, then carefully yanked on the wire it was connected to. There were at least seven or eight feet of extra wire coiled into the wall. I jumped down from the bed and kneeled next to the window’s control pad, using the dime again to loosen its screws. Malcolm, Kwan, and Tyler watched me with baffled looks on their faces.

  “Earnhardt’s crazy,” Kwan chirped. “I love it.”

  In less than a minute I had connected the SkyTV descrambler to the window’s control pad. I gave everyone a wide-eyed grin. “Here goes nothing.”

  The view of London suddenly disappeared, and the entire window was now full of . . . static.

  “Impressive,” Malcolm deadpanned. “What do you do for an encore?”

  I held up a finger. “Wait for it.” Then I pressed the little “up” button on the window pad.

  “Holy guacamole!” Kwan gasped as the window displayed a soccer game. The game’s announcer yelled “GOOOAALLLLL!” as one of the teams on the field celebrated.

  “Let me try that!” Kwan wedged in next to me and hit the “up” arrow again. The channel changed to a cooking show. Kwan grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a rag doll. “You just became my new best friend, Earnhardt!” he shouted.

  Tyler also gave me vigorous pats on the back (almost slapping my lungs through the front of my chest). “Awesome, Ben! No wonder Merlin picked you! You’re like . . . a genius!”

  Malcolm’s expression turned so icy that I might have needed earmuffs.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say genius,” I mumbled. This wasn’t much different from the million times I had taken the guts out of a broken toaster and replaced them with new ones—but I wasn’t going to tell them that.

  “It’s not like we’re going to have time for TV, anyway,” Malcolm said stiffly. “While you bozos watch television, I intend to defeat a spar-bot or two—”

  KNOCK-KNOCK. Someone was at the door.

  Kwan, Tyler, and I froze in terror. Malcolm turned to give me a grin. “Good luck explaining this one, genius.”

  “Who is it?” I called out to the door.

  “Merlin,” the voice replied. Crap.

  “Just a minute!” Kwan shouted. “We’re, uh—”

  “We’re naked!” Tyler blurted in a panic, catching dumbfounded looks from me and Kwan. Even Malcolm scrunched his nose.

  “Sorry,” Tyler whispered sheepishly. �
�It’s all I could think of.”

  I lunged to the window’s control panel, disconnected the descrambler, then jumped onto my bed to push the countdown clock back into place, my heart practically exploding out of my chest.

  “All good. Let him in!” I whispered, then jumped off the bed as Kwan opened the door. It was Merlin, all right. And Darla was with him.

  “Everything okay in here?” Merlin asked. I was pretty sure my knees were shaking. I’d risked everything just so I could impress Tyler and Kwan and Malcolm with a dumb TV? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Kwan asked.

  “Yeah. We were just watching the uh, countdown clocks,” Tyler added, and he might have been the worst liar on the planet. “But we weren’t naked.”

  Merlin and Darla stood there, lost. Darla frowned.

  “Why are you dressed for sparring?” Merlin asked Malcolm.

  “I was just about to leave for the gym.”

  Merlin shook his head. “You’re all to come with me right away, dressed in your standard flight training suits. You’ll be attending a training session with Nigel Barrington.”

  “The Nigel Barrington?” Malcolm asked, eyebrows raised.

  “The one and only.”

  I had no clue who Nigel Barrington was, and, judging by the confused expressions of Tyler and Kwan, neither did they.

  “Will Pellinore be there too?” I asked Merlin. I kind of really just wanted to know if Ivy was going to be there.

  “Percival will catch up later. Now come—you’ve all got a great deal to learn.” He glanced at me, and I gulped. I couldn’t make any more mistakes, or take any more stupid risks.

  16

  114:47:03

  AFTER DOWNING protein shakes provided by the staff, we were sitting at desks that had touch-screens for tops, which were tilted slightly for maximum efficiency. At the head of the spacious room, Nigel Barrington, retired military legend, showed us photos of death and destruction from the alien planet I had already seen firsthand. The pictures hovered behind him, ten feet tall, casting an eerie glow around his bulky silhouette. Tyler and Darla gasped as the next grisly image came up. Judging from the pale faces of the other knights in the room, I’d been the only “lucky” one to take a nightmarish trip to the devastated planet.

  “Not pretty, is it?” Barrington growled in a gruff British accent.

  He was a stout guy in his fifties with a gleaming shaved head. He had a bushy mustache and tree-trunk arms covered in faded tattoos. Though short, he wore a tight black T-shirt, camouflage pants, and massive combat boots that made him look like a distorted action figure. The dude was even chewing on a nail, which made the dainty cup of hot tea at his side look hilarious.

  “Next photo,” Barrington commanded. I glanced at Kwan. He was slack-jawed at the jarring images, but he still kept whispering to Tyler animatedly, even giggling at one point, and I couldn’t concentrate over his voice.

  “This isn’t a joke, Kwan,” I snapped. Everyone turned to look at me. “What if that was our friends or family in those photos? Or any one of us here? Would you joke about that, too?”

  Kwan withered. He looked like he wanted the desk to swallow him whole. I didn’t want to embarrass him, but I couldn’t help it. The memory of what I’d seen on that planet still hurt.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” I told him quietly. “You don’t have to hide behind jokes all the time.”

  At the front of the room, Barrington nodded. “If you’re not scared—any of you—then you’re not human. The greatest warriors throughout time have had fear—difference is, they make it work for them.” Then he took a sip of tea.

  “Sorry,” Kwan mumbled. He refused to look in my direction. I had a pretty good idea I was going to pay for this one way or another.

  Barrington walked closer, standing among our desks. He smelled like leather and tea spices. “Now, we’ve studied the victims of Dredmore extensively and concluded that the race of aliens on this devastated planet was, for lack of a better term, weak.”

  Dredmore. The word felt like a dark wind passing through the room.

  “Know yourself and you can win the battle,” he preached. “Know your enemy—”

  “And you can win the war,” Malcolm finished for him.

  A devilish grin made its way onto Barrington’s face. “Right you are, my boy. Our enemy’s aim is to kill.” He stomped his enormous boot and snarled. “But if these bullies want a fight, then we’re going to give them one!”

  It was right then that I happened to look up, and I saw something that made my heart skip a beat. Someone was crouched high above us, sitting in the shadows of the many ceiling beams.

  It was Ivy.

  17

  114:20:12

  I BLINKED a few times to make sure I wasn’t imagining her, but nope—Ivy was up there, watching and listening. When she saw me looking at her, she held a finger to her lips.

  Who was this girl—Spider-Man? What was she up to?

  Barrington walked to the front of the room. “Next subject: alien spacecraft you might encounter in battle.”

  Holographic images of weird-looking spaceships hovered a foot above our desks, pulling my attention away from Ivy. The hovering ships kept changing, one example morphing into the next.

  “Based on extensive research,” Barrington explained, “we’ve been able to speculate about the array of craft you might be up against.”

  Speculate? Why didn’t he just come right out and say it—he had no idea what we’d be facing.

  “The key to victory in any battle is to inflict maximum damage with minimal effort. Hit ’em where it hurts.”

  Tyler leaned forward, eyes hungrily taking in every inch of the latest ship. It was the most intense and focused I’d seen him so far. Sizing up an enemy was something he’d probably done a million times in his alligator wrestling career.

  “Can anyone tell me where you should strike this alien craft?” Barrington asked.

  Tyler immediately slouched again as Malcolm began to form an answer.

  “I think Tyler might have a good idea, sir,” I said.

  Tyler’s head turned to look at me so fast it was a wonder he didn’t snap his neck. His eyes were as wide as frisbees. This better work, I thought, or he’s going to break me in half.

  “Well . . . uh . . . ,” he began, examining the ship. It was oddly shaped, with two sphere-like sections connected by a thinner section in the middle. “If I had to . . . I’d go for the middle there.” He gingerly pointed to it. “It looks like . . . the stomach. And the stomach is always a great weak spot . . .”

  Barrington nodded. “That’s more or less correct, yes.”

  Tyler tried to suppress a grin, and I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “This sort of spacecraft will most likely have a torque-generating apparatus in its midsection, so a well-delivered strike there will not only sever the ship in two, but also ensure destruction of the remaining halves,” Barrington finished.

  There was a sudden knock on the door before it opened and Merlin and Pellinore entered. We all sat up straight.

  “Knights, I’d like to first apologize for the interruption earlier,” Pellinore said to us humbly. “I assure you nothing like that will happen again. My . . . overzealous daughter has been taken home.”

  I tried to stifle a grin. That’s what you think. I quickly looked up, but Ivy had vanished.

  Pellinore paced along our desks. “Flying in battle requires not only superb hand-eye coordination, but strength and endurance to handle the emotional and physical stress. When you add the rigors of outer space into the mix . . .”

  Barrington pressed a panel and the entire back wall split open, revealing a huge observation window. My mouth went dry. Every now and then the scope of our mission would hit me again, like a brick in the face.

  Bey
ond the glass was a massive space, curving hundreds of feet in all directions. There were hundreds of oddly shaped blocks hovering in midair as if weightless, each about the size of a fist. As I took a closer look, I realized they must fit together like puzzle pieces.

  “Are we going in there?” I asked breathlessly.

  Barrington grinned, those fiery eyes of his flaring to life.

  “Absolutely.”

  18

  113:56:34

  “THE EXERCISE BEGINS . . . now!” Barrington’s voice boomed into our earpieces.

  We had been given custom-fitted silver helmets with built-in communication systems. The platform we stood on suddenly slid forward, delivering us into the zero-g arena. Malcolm leaped up into the air effortlessly as we stopped moving. He somersaulted into a few puzzle pieces, sending them floating off in all directions. Kwan threw himself into the air a split second later and held his arms out as if he was surfing on air. Tyler’s bulk worked against him at first, and he looked like he was trying to swim in wet glue. Darla immediately began grabbing puzzle pieces and trying to fit them together.

  “Step one, knights. Assemble your keys,” Barrington reminded us. Each of us needed to find enough interlocking pieces to make a key that would unlock doors on the other side of the arena. Once past the door, we’d use a gyroscope to steer ourselves back to the landing platform.

  My entry into zero gravity wasn’t as flashy as the others’ by any means. I tried to follow Darla’s example, but it was easier said than done. Every time I reached for a piece through my bulky gloves, I’d miss it by inches and fall into a slow-motion somersault.

  “Step it up, knights,” Barrington warned. “At this rate, the aliens will be here by the time you finish.”

  Everyone’s keys started to take shape, even Tyler’s. I was falling further behind. As Darla casually tossed aside extra pieces, they’d float in my direction. I positioned myself so that when her castoffs hit my chest, I could pin them down with my gloves.