Vere turned and looked at him. “So what?”
“It doesn’t change anything. We still have to get to Edsall Dark to find out why the king ordered the attack. We still have to find a way to keep the Vonnegan fleet from destroying our planet.”
Morgan added, “And we have to make sure we do it all in the next six days so you have time to get your pretty little head lopped off by the Green Knight.”
Vere laughed for a moment. Baldwin joined in, but the mild chuckle didn’t sound genuine, and it gave the impression he didn’t want to miss a joke even if he didn’t know what was funny about an impending decapitation. Occulus and Morgan smiled as well, hoping Vere would be okay and wanting to keep everything civilized. As soon as their guards were down, Vere’s tranquil pretense fell away and she lunged for Morgan.
The cockpit door slid open. A’la Dure poked her head out to see what was going on, saw a fight had broken out, rolled her eyes, and closed the door again.
Baldwin tried as best as he could to pull Vere off Morgan, but he was no match for her strength or fury. And Occulus, stuck between the two women, both of whom were nearly a third his age, could do nothing but hope he didn’t get hurt. Fastolf, entirely entertained, simply sat back and laughed at the chaos, applauding each time Vere got in a good punch.
Morgan did her best to avoid a punch despite being jammed against a side panel with almost no room to move. Vere’s fist glanced off the edge of her jaw. Morgan returned one of her own jabs, missing Vere and hitting Baldwin in the same nose that had been broken hours earlier.
He let go of Vere and stumbled backwards. Occulus, seeing the havoc that was spiraling out of control, cried out, “My back! My back!” Vere immediately stopped fighting and took the old man in her arms to keep him from crumpling to the ground.
“Morgan,” he said, gasping for breath, “Help me get back to the medical station. Vere, see if Baldwin needs to have the ship’s bio-medic system reset his nose again.”
Morgan put an arm around Occulus’s waist and helped him, hobbling and groaning, out of the room and toward the back of the ship.
Once they were gone, Vere’s gaze dropped to her feet. “All this trouble just to get my head chopped off,” she grumbled.
Baldwin wasn’t sure if he should say something or leave her alone and so, still holding his bleeding nose, he said, “Not only that.”
“What?”
“It’s not just that. You aren’t doing this just for that. You’re doing it for your father and your kingdom.”
Vere closed her eyes and shook her head. “For my father?” She wanted to add, “For a king who cared more about politics than his daughter’s happiness? For a king who would remarry immediately after my mother died?” Instead, the only thing she said was, “For my father,” and tried to laugh.
She smiled in a way that made Baldwin step backward for fear of having his already bloody nose become even more damaged. There was something about her eyes and their pure gray irises that made her look capable of anything, good or bad, when she smiled that way. When she saw his response she put a hand up.
“You’re fine,” she said, and he finally exhaled with relief. But then she added, “I only take on people who can offer a fair fight,” and then he felt even more defeated than before. “Come on,” she said, standing and reminding him which way he needed to go to get to the bio-medic unit that would repair his nose once again.
He followed a few steps behind her. At the medical scanner, as lines of pale blue light began graphing his face, he said, “Whatever your father—the king—did, your people still need you.”
“They aren’t my people.”
“Whose are they then?”
“They aren’t anyone’s but their own.”
“Well, tell them that when you get there.”
He thought he had put her in her place, but all she said was, “Be still or the computer will think your jaw is broken too.”
“That’s not the way a medical computer works,” he started to say, then saw her eyes narrow, saw the threat in them, and understood what she was getting at.
On the opposite side of the ship, above the Griffin Fire’s mechanical room, where Traskk and Pistol worked to get the ship working again, Morgan escorted Occulus into the sleeping bay.
“Can you get yourself onto the bed, or do you need help?”
He immediately went from hobbling and offering cries of pain, to standing upright and looking for a drink of water.
“I think I’ll manage,” he said, smiling.
“You aren’t hurt?”
“I may be old, but I’m not fragile. I needed to make sure the two of you didn’t kill each other.”
She thought about leaving the old man there and going and finishing the score with Vere, but now that time had passed it seemed foolish to try and get in one last punch.
“Would you like some?” Occulus said, but he was already pouring a glass of water and handing it to her without her accepting.
Morgan looked out the viewport at the vastness of space. “This is all such a mess.”
“Things could be worse,” Occulus said, and when Morgan opened her mouth to remind him of the impending galactic war, a kingdom with a dying king and no respectable heir, not to mention the Green Knight, he added, “She could have refused to come.”
“We wouldn’t have let her.”
Instead of growing angry, the way Vere would have, Occulus simply laughed. “You would have forced the king’s daughter to return home and put her head, quite literally, on the chopping block?”
“It’s better than joining her in drinking and thieving.”
“You make it sound as if you would have to do those things just because you were there. I sat with them for six years and I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. Nor did I ever get drunk. You do yourself a disservice when you make assumptions.”
“You drink with her. I saw you.”
“Yes,” he said, sipping his water and chuckling. “I have a healthier liver than anyone in the galaxy.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. For the past six years I’ve had more servings of Yantik fruit juice than I can count. It’s the same color as ale and barely has any smell. Everyone at the table assumed it was something else and that I was as drunk as the rest of them.”
Morgan leaned forward, unsure if she should be getting her hopes up or if she should just be annoyed at what the elder member of the group—and maybe the only responsible one among them—was saying.
He leaned in close even though they were the only two in that part of the ship.
“If I tell you something, you can’t repeat it to anyone else.” When she nodded, he said, “It was no coincidence that I showed up at Eastcheap almost immediately after Vere. I knew her mother—a great woman—and I swore, when she was sick, that I would do anything I could to watch over her daughter. After Isabel died and Vere’s father made the mistake of thinking a broken heart meant an indifferent heart, I knew it was a matter of time until Vere would flee. What other choice did she have?”
“So you just sat there in Eastcheap and let her waste her life away?”
Occulus shook his head and sighed. “How did you fare when you tried to tell her what to do?” he asked. He motioned toward her bruised face and then to the other side of the ship where Vere was off getting Baldwin’s nose fixed once again. “She is the most strong-willed and stubborn person I have ever met, and the most bullheaded. If I had gone there and started telling her how to live her life, she would have thrown me out of the bar. So I sat by and gave gentle guidance, made suggestions when possible, gave her someone she could trust.”
“Trust? Didn’t she know you were there because of her mother?”
Occulus smiled. “What did I say about making assumptions? I had never met Vere before I saw her in that bar. She has no idea I knew her mother.”
“So you spent six years of your life drinking fruit juice and watching over h
er?”
“In a way. Not just watching over her, but trying to provide the subtle kind of guidance she might be more willing to accept. It wasn’t always easy. Fastolf has a big heart, but he isn’t the best influence. I know it looks like Vere is a lost cause, but it could be worse. At least she’s on her way to Edsall Dark.” He saw the look that Morgan gave and added, “Of her own free will.”
A panel slid open by their feet. A platform raised, bringing Traskk to the main deck beside them. The giant reptile hissed a comment to Occulus before stalking toward the cockpit.
“The engine is fixed,” he translated for Morgan. “And the tinder walls will be operational in a moment.”
The platform that brought Traskk up from the inner workings of the ship plummeted back down into the darkness of the Griffin Fire’s mechanical underbelly. A moment later it rose again, this time with Pistol on it.
“The tinder walls are fixed,” the android said. “I suspect we will be leaving momentarily.”
He walked off without waiting for a response.
At the cockpit, Vere asked A’la Dure if everything was set and received the obligatory nod.
At the tables and seats outside the cockpit, Baldwin had buckled up across from Morgan, as far away from her as possible in case she had the overwhelming urge to smash his face again.
Through the ship’s intercom, Vere announced that they were getting ready to pass through the Tevis-84 portal and emerge outside of Edsall Dark’s orbit. They would be home in a matter of minutes.
Each of them pulled the harnesses over their chests and waited for the sense of pulling and pushing that came with transporting from one point in space to another.
They heard the tinder walls slide down over every accessible part of the ship. A series of beeps sounded, and then each of them felt as if they were in one of those spinning intergalactic carnival rides that pushed everyone back against their chairs. A moment later, the sensation changed and each of them felt as if they were being pulled toward the surface of a body of water that was in front of them instead of above them. That too only lasted a fraction of a second, the entire ordeal taking no longer than two seconds. Without needing the ship’s sensors to beep an acknowledgement, they all knew they had passed through the portal and that when the tinder walls slid up they would be able to look out the ship’s windows and see Edsall Dark.
25
“You let them go?” Minot said. “My father told you to destroy everything you passed in the CasterLan kingdom.”
General Agravan had left the deck of his Athens Destroyer to see how Mowbray’s son was getting along with his studies. There was no trace of accusation in the boy’s voice, only curiosity. Even so, if someone on the command deck had asked the same question, a bot would have carried their dead body away from their work station so a replacement officer could take over. The Vonnegans on his command deck were there to follow Agravan’s commands, not to question them. The boy had a point, though. Agravan had not completely followed Mowbray Vonnegan’s orders.
Standing over the boy at his desk, the general put a hand on Minot’s shoulder. With the helmet of his space armor off, the sharp lines of Agravan’s cheeks and jaw caused vast differences in how light reflected off the purplish tint of his skin, making his eyes and mouth appear ghostly at some moments and incredibly human at other times.
“That is true,” Agravan said. “Your father did give me those orders. But a good ruler, as your father is, knows to give orders that can be flexible, leaving a good general, which I am, to know the proper way to administer those orders.”
“When I’m ruler, I should expect my generals to interpret my orders rather than follow them exactly?”
“Not always. Sometimes, I carry out your father’s orders exactly as they were given.”
“And other times?”
“And other times, like now, I make decisions I know will ultimately benefit the Vonnegan Empire. I could have captured Vere’s ship and sent a communication back to EndoKroy to verify what your father would have wished done with them. But a good general has a sense of what their ruler wants. I am certain that your father, if presented with the pros and cons of the situation, would have ordered me to let her go and give her time to try and clear up the confusion.”
“But why?”
“It shows the Vonnegan Empire is not imprudent and rash. Yes, we have destroyed every CasterLan colony in our path, but when given the opportunity to settle the situation diplomatically, we accepted. The important thing to remember, however, is that it will all end the same way, regardless of what Vere does.”
Minot looked up with his big eyes and stared at Agravan. “What do you mean?”
“We show the rest of the galaxy that we are willing to listen to reason, but we also know there is nothing Vere can do to alter our plans. No matter what information she uncovers, the Vonnegan fleet will be arriving at their door in six days. And when we do, the inevitable will happen; we will crush the CasterLan Kingdom. Your father’s empire will double in size, and you, my young prince, will become the new leader on Edsall Dark. It is all as your father has planned, regardless of how we get there. That is how a good general works for his ruler.”
26
Having emerged from the portal, it would only be a moment before the Griffin Fire’s tinder walls were raised and Edsall Dark was in view. For each passenger, the prospect brought a longing but also trepidation.
Vere wanted to arrive so she could get the entire ordeal over with. She had left her home planet deliberately, and as soon as all of this was over with she planned to leave again. This time, forever.
Beside her, in the co-pilot’s seat, A’la Dure wanted to do whatever would make her friend happy. If that meant helping Vere face old ghosts, she would tag along. She had never been to Edsall Dark, had only heard stories about its grandeur. She certainly wouldn’t argue about exchanging the dirt and filth of Folliet-Bright for the majestic landscapes of Vere’s home world. At the same time, though, she didn’t like seeing how the trip was transforming her friend from someone who laughed and smiled all the time to someone who brooded and argued.
Outside the cockpit, Morgan wanted to begin solving the puzzle of why the king would order such an attack. While she was scared of no one, she wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation with Hotspur once she got there. She had been his second in command before going behind his back to try and stop this impending war. He wouldn’t forgive that, and she wouldn’t back down from him. Only one result was possible.
Baldwin wanted to get back to his family and to his mentor, the king’s primary doctor. Taking care of the king’s health was the most important role a physician could have. Baldwin was missing out on the opportunity in order to convince a thief and a hoodlum to return home. At the same time, he wasn’t convinced Vere would be effective at preventing the Vonnegan army from destroying the planet. She hadn’t given him much to be hopeful about so far, that much was clear.
Like A’la Dure, Traskk had heard stories about Edsall Dark but had never been there. That was reason enough to enjoy the trip. Knowing that there were people out there who wanted Vere dead, knowing that he would get a chance to kill anyone with such intentions, was the icing on the cake. Part of his Basilisk mind couldn’t help but be slightly apprehensive, though. After all, he still didn’t know the extent of what they were getting into. And he didn’t look forward to seeing the Green Knight again. Something about the giant warrior had unsettled him, and it had nothing to do with how unnaturally large he was.
Occulus was excited for Vere to claim her destiny. He knew she was capable of great things. He knew that up until now she had been gliding through life. Now was her time to seize her destiny. He was dreading, though, the moment when she found out who he was. It was inevitable that while they were on Edsall Dark she would find out that he had been good friends with her mother. She would realize that was why he had befriended them at Eastcheap, and then she would never trust him again. He had grown
to like her every bit as much as he had liked Isabel; the prospect of earning her distrust made his chest feel heavy.
Pistol cared about getting to Edsall Dark every bit as much as Fastolf, which was to say not at all. The android didn’t have a preference where Vere went or what she did. And Fastolf, drunk as ever, barely realized where they were.
Hearing the tinder walls rise, Baldwin started to say, “There’s no place like—”
But before he could finish, the ship lurched sideways and a great jarring passed through the vessel’s steel frame. Alarms began sounding all throughout the ship. Only five feet from where Morgan was sitting, an explosion blew out a panel of switches and lights. The ship shook again. When Occulus unbuckled his safety harness in order to look outside and see what was happening, the next blast knocked him off his feet and threw him backward. If Traskk hadn’t caught him in mid-air, he would have flown across the room and been seriously hurt. A second set of alarms began sounding.
Over the ship’s intercom, Vere said, “We’re under attack. I repeat, we are under attack.”
27
“It will be fine, mother,” Modred said.
He stood with Lady Percy in the dying king’s chambers. In the sky above them, the Tevis-84 portal appeared as large as a moon but only because it orbited the planet much closer than either of Edsall Dark’s actual moons.
His mother cried all the time recently. He thought it was because she was scared of everything that was happening, but when he said, “She’ll never make it here; every bounty hunter in the solar system has seen the price on her head and they’re all racing to get rich,” it only made her sob again and rest her hand on the king’s forehead, as if soothing him with a touch would make him better when nothing the doctors could do was working.
“But—”
“But nothing, mother. We have to be strong now. The people are depending on us. We’re the ones who have to lead now. We’re the ones who have to make the tough decisions. And so we make them.”
The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) Page 10