by Greg Pace
• • •
When the day had ended, we all gathered by the hangar door, and Pellinore gave Merlin an expectant glance. Merlin sighed and held out a hand to Pellinore: I can’t. You do it.
I swallowed as Pellinore clasped a hand on my shoulder, his grip impossibly strong.
“Ben Stone, you are hereby relieved of your duties as a knight. There is but one decision for you to make now. You may leave, or you stay as a grounded member of the RTR.”
I felt like I had a million eyes on me. I didn’t dare look at the other knights, but I did glance in Merlin’s direction. He had his head lowered, eyes shielded. My heart sank.
“I think . . . I’ll go home,” I answered, but it wasn’t easy.
Pellinore nodded. “Very well. Merlin will escort you. I only ask that you respect our code of secrecy.”
I hesitated a moment, but only because I was trying to make sure my voice wouldn’t crack too much when I spoke.
“Of course,” I managed.
Pellinore looked directly into my eyes. “I wish you well, Ben Stone.”
“Thanks for the opportunity,” I told him, then found enough courage to give everyone else a wave. “Kick butt when the aliens come, okay?”
Malcolm stood tall, gave me a crisp “Affirmative,” and smiled a little bit. It was a smile that said he had come to realize I wasn’t all that bad, and that maybe, in some other life, we could have been friends.
“Keep on drivin’, Earnhardt,” Kwan said with a grin.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I don’t drive.”
His grin only got bigger. “Whatever.”
“See ya, Ben,” Tyler offered.
Right before I turned away, Darla once again mouthed “Thank you,” and Ivy and I exchanged one last glance. Her face looked exactly how I felt inside: confused, conflicted, sad, scared. I couldn’t help feeling like our lives had been changed somehow by meeting each other, even if I wasn’t exactly sure how yet.
She took a deep breath, then turned away, so I did too.
“C’mon, Merlin,” I said softly. “Take me home.”
34
059:01:03
MERLIN SAT on Malcolm’s bed as I packed my few belongings into Dad’s fire-department duffel bag. I had already changed back into the regular clothes I was wearing when I arrived.
“I’m sorry about this, Merlin,” I said without looking at him.
“Don’t be.”
“All that star stuff is . . . well . . . maybe you read it wrong. No offense.”
He shot me a concerned glance and handed me my jacket. “None taken. Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”
I nodded. “I don’t belong here.” I picked up the duffel bag and stood in the center of the room. It was hard to believe I was leaving. I took a deep breath. “Let’s get outta here.” I reached out so he could take my hand and whisk me back to Texas.
“Wait. What about this?” I still had a countdown watch installed on my wrist.
Merlin sighed. “Curses. We can’t have you walking around with that on. We’ll tell Percival. He can have it taken off right away.”
Five minutes later, Merlin and I stepped into the gym. Nobody saw us at first because they were so busy working out against the spar-bots. Pellinore was walking among the knights, offering advice and encouragement as they each battled an opponent.
“Keep it up, knights! You’ve got to take everything your opponent does into account!” He weaved between the matches effortlessly. “A battle is a battle, whether against a spar-bot or a fleet of alien ships. Don’t give up, Tyler! Use your brawn to overpower him! Fantastic, Malcolm—nice advance! You too, Kwan! Parry! Parry! Darla, use your small size to frustrate him!”
Not a word to Ivy.
Merlin held up a hand. “Percival?”
When Pellinore looked over, he was plainly shocked to see me. He pulled a remote out of his pocket and froze the spar-bots in place.
“Benjamin can’t leave yet.”
“Why not?” Pellinore asked impatiently.
Merlin simply lifted my wrist to reveal my watch. Pellinore sighed and snapped his fingers to a couple of techs who were watching from the corner. They dutifully rushed to get whatever they needed.
“We’ll have that off of you in no—” But he didn’t get to finish the sentence. Everything happened in a flash.
“Look out!” Ivy screamed as, with a THWUNK, Pellinore was nearly knocked unconscious. Behind him, a spar-bot held its sword high. “Win! Win! Win!” it repeated, its voice changing pitch and speed like an old cassette player munching on a tape. Its eyes flickered on and off like mini strobe lights, clearly malfunctioning.
Pellinore’s eyes rolled up in his head as he went to his knees and wobbled. Darla screamed, and Kwan and Tyler yelped in surprise. If that sword had been real, it would have sliced Pellinore’s head in half.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK! Malcolm lunged at the spar-bot, pummeling it with sword strikes, but it whirled and effortlessly knocked the sword out of his hand. It grabbed Malcolm by his jumpsuit and tossed him like he was a half-empty bag of potato chips. Tyler managed to catch him, but the two toppled backward.
“Get away, knights!” Merlin shouted, waving his arms in a panic as he pushed Darla and Kwan aside.
Pellinore was just getting to his feet when the spar-bot went for him again and grabbed him in a one-armed choke hold from behind. Pellinore kicked and flailed, gasping for air. He threw a few backward elbows into the spar-bot’s chest.
Ivy screamed and rushed the spar-bot when it grabbed her father. She tried smacking it with her sword, causing it to throw aside its own weapon and grab Ivy’s neck as well, lifting her off the floor.
“En garde!”
I stood on the other side of the gym, holding a practice sword, crouched in a fighting stance. The crazed spar-bot turned to look at me, its eyes clicking and blinking.
“Benjamin, don’t!” Merlin cried, but I ignored him.
“Are you deaf?! I said en garde, you overgrown toaster!” I yelled at the spar-bot.
Thankfully, the spar-bot’s programmed response to en garde remained intact, and it dropped both Ivy and Pellinore to engage me in a fight. It swooped up its sword, yanked a second one from the fist of a frozen spar-bot nearby, and charged at me, wildly swinging both like a psychotic spar-bot zombie ninja.
WHOOSH!! It tried to slice me in half vertically, from head to floor. I dodged the first swing, and then another. Both swords hit the floor hard and their protective casings shattered, exposing the sharp tips underneath. I spun away, once, then twice, fast, barely avoiding the blades as they sliced past me and tore through the padded walls.
I backed up alongside the wall, eyes never leaving the spar-bot. When I got to another wall and had nowhere to go, I fought back, my one plastic sword whacking against the spar-bot’s two metal-tipped ones. We traded dozens of swings in mere seconds—parry, parry, lunge, fleche, lunge, neither of us making contact with anything but each other’s swords, everything moving fast and furious. When I noticed that the tip of my sword had been cracked by the many blows, I had an idea.
I spun sideways again, and with two hands on my sword, I smashed it down on the ground as hard as I could. It worked. The entire plastic casing broke away to expose the metal underneath. The spar-bot lunged for me, and I ducked and drove my sword upward through the spar-bot’s torso. The tip found a seam between two of its metal panels and the sword continued all the way out of its back. It fell to the floor with a lifeless clang.
“You lose,” I breathed, catching my breath, every nerve in my body zinging.
The gym door opened, and the two techs hurried in with a countdown watch machine.
“Sorry for the delay, sir. We’re ready to remove the . . .” The tech trailed off, eyes wide at the sight of Pellinore on his knees, still t
rying to collect himself, while a very worried Ivy stood by his side.
I looked to the faces of the other knights. I had honestly forgotten that anyone else was even in the room while I was fighting; all else had been blocked from my mind. Kwan, Darla, and Tyler gaped at me, and Malcolm looked utterly baffled. And Merlin? A smile played on his lips, like he’d just seen the greatest magic trick in the world.
The two techs rushed over to assist Ivy in helping her father to his feet. There was only silence until he flapped a hand at the countdown watch machine.
“Get that out of here,” he told the techs. Then he looked from me to Merlin. Merlin gave him a wide-eyed shrug. Across the gym, my duffel bag sat, still packed and ready to go home.
“Change of plans,” Pellinore announced, his voice raspy from almost being choked to death. “Nobody’s going anywhere yet. You’re all going to get a chance at X-Calibur tomorrow.”
35
056:37:17
“WHERE DID YOU LEARN to fight like that?” Kwan asked after we’d returned to our room.
I shrugged anxiously. All along I had wanted to be special, but now that I had everyone’s attention, I didn’t want it. Not like this.
“I’d like to see you square off against Pellinore in a swordfight,” Tyler whispered in awe.
Me against Percival Pellinore, an original knight of the Round Table? I shook my head, embarrassed. “No way. Not a chance.”
Malcolm gave an exasperated snort. “If the aliens want to forgo ships in favor of a swordfight, Ben can fight them all for us,” he offered sarcastically.
He eyed me like I couldn’t be trusted, like I had tricked everyone. But if anybody had been tricked, it was me. How was I supposed to know I could do that? Malcolm did have a point, though. When it came to flying ships, I was still the least skilled here.
Even after we turned the lights off, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.
When lives are on the line, it’s all about doing, not thinking, Dad had said. I looked to the window and could barely make out a few stars glimmering through the London fog. The name Dredmore popped into my brain uninvited. It wasn’t a something, it was a someone—I could feel that in my gut—and whatever Dredmore was, he was coming to wreak havoc on my planet. Seeing Pellinore knocked to the floor by a spar-bot of his own design made me wonder what our chances of survival really were.
Suddenly, the countdown clock went blank.
I sat up, heart hammering, waiting. Two words popped up: ME . . . AGAIN.
A smile exploded onto my face as three letters flashed: BSR.
• • •
I stopped outside the BSR and looked up at the ceiling, waiting for the panel to slide open and reveal Ivy. I heard faint sounds of a battle coming from the other side of the BSR doors: alien ships soaring through space and lasers screeching. I squeezed through the opening, and for a moment my gut twisted in nerves.
“Hello?” I shouted over the storm of virtual laser fire around me. There was no answer. As I walked deeper into the vast space, an alien ship surged right at me. A hand suddenly grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me backward, into the open hatch of a pod. With the virtual outer space turned on, the pod had been camouflaged.
I crammed into the pod’s lone pilot seat with Ivy.
“I just saved your life,” she grinned. “You were about to become space mush. We’re even now, okay?”
When I didn’t answer, she shrugged. “Okay, maybe not.”
“Listen, about the gym—” I began. I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t tried to trick anyone, but she cut me off.
“Thank you, Ben. You saved my life and my father’s. He gets on my nerves sometimes, sure, but . . . I still kinda like having him around,” she said with a swallow.
“You’re welcome.” I took a deep breath. In the tiny pod, she was practically sitting in my lap.
“By the way, Darla told me what you did for her with the helmet. That was brilliant.”
“Oh. Thanks.” I wondered what else Darla had told her.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get in some target practice for tomorrow,” Ivy explained, gesturing to the pod’s windshield and the virtual battle beyond it.
“Your dad doesn’t encourage you like he does the others,” I found myself blurting out. “But he loves you a lot. More than anything.”
Ivy smiled but changed the subject. “Where did you learn to swordfight? It was incredible.”
I groaned. “I don’t know, it just happened. An instinct, I guess.”
“Well, whatever it was, you’ve got to channel it again tomorrow,” she said determinedly.
She jumped out of the pod and led me through the halls of HQ, into restricted areas I hadn’t seen yet.
“I was wondering . . . ” I whispered along the way. “I heard that you’re the reason we have X-Calibur in the first place. Is that true?”
She seemed surprised. “Who told you that?”
“Let’s just say you’re not the only one who’s good at spying on your father and Merlin,” I admitted, and her face lit up.
“Bravo,” she said excitedly and gave me a high five. “I’m the reason they were able to get the ship to turn on.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When I was eight, I was sneaking around in here and found my way into X-Calibur. I really just wanted to see what my father was doing all the time.” Ivy suddenly reached out and pushed me back against the wall, putting a finger to her mouth. I looked down the hall and saw Arlo turning a corner. Luckily, he turned down another hall and out of sight.
Ivy continued walking cautiously and whispering. “X-Calibur was essentially a massive paperweight at that point. Nobody could turn it on. That’s why my father had all the techs build imitations of it, because the real one had proven useless.”
I turned to her. “But it responded to you?”
“As soon as I touched the steering controls, it powered up. Everyone was shocked. But I couldn’t get it to do anything else. I had no clue what it was even supposed to do. I was a kid. They kept telling me to push buttons and panels, but nothing happened.”
“That’s when they started bringing in more kids?”
“Yes. They found that older kids could get the buttons and things to respond, although not always in the way they wanted.”
I remembered Merlin explaining to me that the buttons inside X-Calibur seemed to change daily, like the ship didn’t want to be tamed. As Ivy and I turned a corner, we passed an office that had a glass window on its door. I blinked quickly: I could have sworn the countdown clock inside flashed those strange symbols again. But when I blinked again, the numbers there were correct.
I was about to shout ahead to Ivy when I heard a hum to my left. I turned. There was another hallway that branched off this one. The ceiling light at the start of the hallway was getting brighter, then darker, then brighter again, humming with each pulse as the electricity level rose and fell.
The light seemed to be beckoning me. Just like in my dream. I pinched myself.
“Hey, what are you waiting for?” Ivy suddenly asked, startling me. She was headed back this way. Everything returned to normal.
I nodded to the hallway where the light had been pulsing. “What’s down there?”
Ivy shrugged. “Lots of things. Satellite monitoring stations, engineering department. It’s also another way to get to the hangar.”
“Where the ships are?”
“Yeah. Come on,” she said, waving. “We’re almost there.”
I gave the hall one last puzzled look and hurried after Ivy. Less than a minute later, we had reached our destination.
Ivy grinned. “Ready to see something that’s not on my father’s tour?”
We were standing at the end of the hall, looking at . . . a wall. Ivy pulled out a key chain t
hat had a little digital voice recorder on it. Right before she pressed PLAY, she grabbed my hand.
“Hold on,” she cautioned, and our fingers interlocked. This is the greatest moment of my life, I thought.
Pellinore’s voice came out of the little recorder. He said just one word: “Protector.”
I felt the unmistakable magnetic pull of the floor in my feet and legs. Ivy and I dropped as the panel we were standing on plummeted down a steel shaft, taking us with it. The plunge lasted only a split second, but we dropped about ten feet to a secret, shadowy room. The magnetic pull vanished from our legs and we stepped forward.
“What is this?” I squinted, until my eyes adjusted to the darkness.
A clear cylinder of glass, about seven feet tall and four feet wide, stood on a steel base. My eyes widened when I realized there was something floating in it. Ivy reached down to hit a switch at the cylinder’s base. A light shone up into the fluid. My jaw dropped.
There was an alien suspended in there. It was dead, partially mummified, about five feet tall and skinny, with greenish gray skin. But the thing that really got to me was its face. It was wrinkled and scrunched together, eyes closed. It looked a little bit like an old man, a creature that might pass for part alien and part human, with an undeniable softness to its face.
“This is the alien scientist that flew X-Calibur to Earth, isn’t it?” I asked.
Ivy nodded.
I stepped closer to the glass and put my hand against it, inches from the alien. “You know, Merlin said something to me last night about there being no accidents.”
“What do you mean?” Ivy’s finger traced the base of the cylinder absentmindedly.
“Just that everything that’s meant to happen does happen. I think it must have been your dad’s destiny to find this alien and X-Calibur, don’t you? There’s no way it was just blind luck.”
Ivy’s brow furrowed. “Of course it wasn’t blind luck. He and Merlin had been tracking the origin of King Arthur’s sword, so it made sense that it led them to the alien.”