“I’ve been kind of preoccupied by other events. If you haven’t noticed, there have been a bunch of bounty hunters after us.”
Morgan was still chuckling. “I mean, damn, the guy reached down and picked his own head off the ground. That’s not someone I’d want to mess with.”
“Why does it matter?” Vere said.
“Call me old fashioned but I’d want to know who was going to kill me.”
“If you’re going to die, why does it matter what kills you?”
Morgan looked confused. “Because there’s no honor in that.”
This time, it was Vere’s turn to laugh.
“Well, it couldn’t have been an android,” Morgan said, “considering we were in a bar where electronics don’t work.”
As much as she didn’t want to join in the guessing game, Vere said, “It couldn’t have been a man.”
“Then it had to be an alien. Maybe a Frolink.”
Frolinks were the same size as humans but their eyes, mouth, and brain were halfway up their bodies.
Vere shook her head. “Have you ever known a Frolink to speak Basic? They don’t have the tongue for it, literally. And a voice simulator wouldn’t work in the bar.”
“Magic?” Baldwin said.
Everyone stopped walking and stared at him.
It was Occulus who said what everyone else was thinking: “Lord help us survive a physician who believes in magic.”
“I was only trying to think outside the box,” Baldwin mumbled.
Fastolf slapped his belly and said, “I have to admit, it’s really fun trying to guess what might be chopping off Vere’s head a couple days from now.”
After saying this, he offered her the flask again. This time, though, she declined and kept walking.
They walked for another eight hours, taking a short break at three various points through the cave and tunnel system.
“We have to be getting close,” Morgan said, looking at her maps.
After another hour of walking they finally saw their first glimpses of sunlight. Pistol’s skin, which he had illuminated again to show them the path forward, slowly returned to its normal pigment the closer they got to the opening.
Fastolf remained tolerable and relatively mature because of the flask in his pocket. Occulus seemed to shrink within himself, as if vanishing from his physical body was a way to cope with the pain and fatigue of the journey. Twice during their walk, Vere had come up beside him and asked if he was okay to continue and both times he had merely nodded and pushed on ahead.
“And here we are,” Morgan said. “Daylight!”
But when they got around the corner, with natural light coming in everywhere, they saw it was because of an opening above them, not in front of them. They were still only part of the way through the underbelly of the mountains. Everyone groaned in unison. The claws on Traskk’s feet dug into the stony ground with irritation.
Morgan pulled her map back out. “But… I could have sworn…”
Vere turned to Pistol and asked how much further it would be.
The android’s eyes glowed. “Unsure. My systems are affected by the stone all around us.”
“Only one thing we can do,” Vere said and started walking again.
“Maybe the Green Knight was a hologram,” Baldwin said.
“Wouldn’t have worked inside a room with a Treagon barrier.”
“And,” Vere added, “his neck didn’t feel like an image when the axe cut through it.”
“Maybe it was—”
“Enough,” she said. “I don’t want to think about it.”
For an hour, they walked in silence.
Finally, Baldwin said, “Fine, I’ll be the one to ask: how much longer? We have to be lost. We’ve been walking forever. We’re going to end up lost just like Petric the Notorious and his army.”
“Who do you think we plan on eating first?” Fastolf said, grinning and patting Baldwin on his back.
All Baldwin could do in response was cringe and shiver.
“It should only be another two hours,” Morgan said. “I think. Then it should open up and we’ll be clear of the mountains.”
Vere turned to Pistol for his take.
“Based on the scans prior to entering the tunnels and how long we’ve been walking, that sounds accurate.”
For a split second, everyone felt good. Then the android added, “We then have to get through the Forest of Tears and the Fields of Aromath the Solemn,” causing everyone to groan again. Even Morgan and Vere.
As they walked, the bounty hunter’s ship passed by another three times. Never, though, did it come into view due to the mountains and rock formations that blocked their view of the sky. Nor did it fire proton torpedoes into the mountains in a rash attempt to kill them.
“Maybe it was a Baltriac Shapeshifter,” Morgan said after a while, and Vere knew she was talking about the Green Knight again.
“Even if it was, any part of it that I chopped off should have caused it significant pain and blood loss. The Green Knight didn’t have either. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by not having a head.”
“Are you going to ask it before it kills you?”
“Ask it what?”
“What it is.”
Fastolf giggled at Morgan’s questions. Vere only sighed and kept walking.
“We are coming up on the mouth,” Pistol said, his skin once again returning to a slightly translucent cream color.
Ahead of them, they could see where the rock tunnels and paths opened up and the mountain pass ended. Just beyond that, a tiny, one-person ship was hovering ten feet off the ground. When they faced it head-on, the ship looked like an eyeball with three wings. Pistol had been right that it wasn’t a vessel from anywhere in the CasterLan Kingdom.
“What do we do?” Occulus asked.
Morgan and Vere looked at each other, as if hoping for the first time that the other would have a plan and speak up. Neither of them did.
It was Baldwin who said, “Well, you said yourself that we can’t turn around or wait it out.”
“Even if I live another hundred years,” Occulus said, “You won’t make me walk back through those mountains again.”
Vere cringed. Morgan sucked air in through her teeth. Traskk growled. All the while, the bounty hunter’s ship hovered above the ground, waiting for them.
“So, what else is there to do?” Baldwin said.
As if to answer, Vere stood up, pulled a pair of blasters from the bag of weapons they had been carrying with them, and ran toward the bounty hunter’s ship, screaming as she fired one blaster and then the other.
35
“Your men fear you,” Minot said.
Back in the boy’s private quarters, General Agravan was free to give whatever answer he wished with no concern whether it might hurt the morale of his officers.
“They do not fear me. They understand my expectations and they know they must fulfill those expectations. There is a difference. If you rule your men with only fear, they will follow merely to survive, not because they believe you are capable of leading them. When men follow you out of true loyalty, they will die for you because they believe it’s their purpose.”
“Is it their purpose?”
There was something about the way the boy asked these questions, about the true nature of all things, that put General Agravan in awe of the future of the Vonnegan Empire. The innocence. The curiosity. One day, Minot would rule more of the galaxy than any other ruler in history.
Agravan smiled. “It doesn’t matter if it really is their purpose or not. What matters is that they believe it is.”
“Would they follow my father the same way they follow you?”
“But of course, Minot. I am a mere extension of your father. When they follow me, they are actually following him. They know it. Your father knows it. One day, you will know it.”
For as long as there had been a Vonnegan Empire, it had slowly expanded throughout the galaxy. A t
iny bit here, a tiny bit there. Some Vonnegan rulers had claimed only a single planet under the command of a minor warlord. Others had taken over chains of remote planets controlled by gangsters. Monsterac the Conqueror had taken control of an entire sector from the dwindling Rork Kingdom. Only once had the Vonnegan Empire decreased in size. Nearly five hundred years earlier, the crazed tyrant, Muligia the Disastrous had been so unfit for leadership that he did everything except maintain the army. By the time his son killed him, an entire sector had defected. Only seven years later, Muligia’s assassin, Moterath the Loathsome, retook the sector, enslaving everyone who had dared defect.
Each Vonnegan leader had built upon what the previous rulers had done. It was the nature of the Vonnegans. It was why their neighbors feared them more than they feared anything else in the galaxy.
The corner of Minot’s mouth curled up at the side as a thought crossed his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it.
“Speak,” Agravan said.
“It’s silly.”
“I’m here to answer every question, no matter how silly you think they are.”
“I take it back,” the boy said.
“You can’t take back a question you never asked. Out with it.”
The boy looked through the viewport of the Athens Destroyer. The light of the portal poured through the window, reflecting the Vonnegan’s slightly purple skin onto the pane in front of him.
“I just wonder,” Minot said.
“What do you wonder?”
“I wonder if I’ll ever be able to live up to what my father does here. The Vonnegan Empire is going to double in size in a few days. No matter how many planets I conquer, it won’t compare to defeating the CasterLan Kingdom.”
“Minot,” the general said, putting a gloved hand on the boy’s head. “There will be plenty of kingdoms for you to defeat. Plenty.”
The boy’s eyes sparkled with pride when he smiled. “What is the next lesson? I want to learn everything there is to know.”
And if Agravan hadn’t already been sure, he was now convinced beyond a doubt that Minot would one day become known as the Vonnegan leader who ruled over the entire galaxy.
Minot, the Future of the Vonnegan Empire,
by Zaina.A. - Digital Art
36
Traskk and Morgan looked at each other with wide eyes. Vere was still shooting one blaster and then the other as she raced toward the bounty hunter’s ship. Without thinking, they darted forward and raced after her. Morgan carried an assault blaster with a laser beam eight times more powerful than either of the blasters Vere carried. She shot while she ran, but even these blasts did little damage to the bounty hunter’s ship. With each leaping step he took, Traskk tore the pin out of an ion grenade and threw it so hard it could have killed someone even before it exploded just because of the force he had behind it.
Unlike the blasters, the grenades could do significant damage, and the bounty hunter’s eyeball ship immediately began returning fire with a pair of small cannons mounted underneath the vessel.
The first ion grenade went just to the left of the ship, erupting against the side of a mountain and sending blue waves of energy twenty feet in every direction.
The bounty hunter took aim, and rocks exploded on either side of Vere, Morgan, and Traskk as the bounty hunter returned fire. All of them turned gray under the dust of blasted stone. But then the next of Traskk’s grenades hit the ship and blew one of the cannons off. For a moment, the entire ship was engulfed in blue energy as the pilot reset the ship’s systems and tried to keep it from crashing. A moment later, the grenade’s energy dissipated and the ship rocketed skyward to regroup.
Even as it did, Vere and Morgan continued firing their blasters at it just because the shots offered a distraction and gave the bounty hunter something to think about.
“We could be here all day and our blasters won’t do a thing,” Vere said.
“At least it’ll give Traskk time to take aim and hit that eyeball again.”
As they coordinated their attack, Pistol walked beside Traskk, who was waiting for the ship to circle back around and come within grenade distance again. The android picked up the damaged eyeball cannon that had hit the ground and carried it back to the mouth of the cave.
Attached to the ship, the cannon had looked tiny. In the arms of a full-size android, it was clearly ten times larger than Morgan’s assault blaster. It was a reminder that every ship was larger than it looked and that weapons meant to destroy other ships were enormous compared to living beings. As big as the cannon in Pistol’s arms seemed, it was a thousand times smaller than any cannon on a Solar Carrier or Athens Destroyer.
The bounty hunter made a quick pass but all of its shots were too hurried to be accurate, and with only one cannon it didn’t fire enough blasts to be effective. Morgan and Vere both hid behind rocks until it began to pass by them, then leaned out and fired again. But while the ship was no longer posing as great a threat to them, they also had no chance of shooting it down. In fact, most of the shots that Morgan and Vere hit it with bounced off and ricocheted in random directions, some coming back at them and endangering them more than the bounty hunter. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter was smart enough to stay away from the ion grenades that Traskk was still launching.
“This is going to take forever,” Morgan said.
In the open, a grenade ready to throw, Traskk roared in frustration, his tail twitching and swinging from side to side. He would have preferred to take hold of the alien craft and tear into it with his claws.
Back at the cave entrance, Pistol didn’t need to be told to withdraw a battery from one of the bags they had been carrying. His safety protocol overrode any requirement that he wait to be told what to do. The battery was approximately the size of a human head and could power their camp each night—or would have if they weren’t running from assassins. He also withdrew a pair of tools and went to work, blindingly fast, straightening bent metal and other small repairs. Once he was finished, he tapped a silver panel on his arm and the skin slid away to reveal a trio of small cables. He took one and plugged it into the battery beside him. He took another and plugged it into the back of the cannon. With his free arm he picked up the weapon and began walking back toward Traskk.
When he was in position, Pistol put one knee on the ground to steady himself from the kickback he knew would be coming. Without saying anything, without telling the others to watch out, he began firing the ship’s loose cannon back at its pilot. A burst of red streaks flew toward the eyeball ship. Before the pilot could react, the entire ship exploded into a ball of fire. As they watched, it plummeted to the ground a quarter mile away from where Vere and the others were standing.
“Nice shot,” Morgan said.
Pistol didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He merely unplugged the battery from his arm, then the cannon, which he dropped on the ground where he had found it.
Fastolf came running out with a small handheld blaster. “Did I miss anything?”
“Funny,” Vere said, and began walking away from the mountains and toward the Forest of Tears.
Behind her, Occulus, Baldwin, and the others picked up their bags and began walking again as well.
37
In the king’s chambers, the frail, decrepit body of Artan the Good lay motionless. With each passing day, the already large bed, covered in its luxurious cloth, appeared to become even more ridiculously oversized as the king withered further away. Lady Percy stood over her husband. Modred stood by the window overlooking the main hub of Edsall Dark’s commercial sector.
An invading army was approaching, their king was sick and dying, and yet the financial androids zipped back and forth on their errands, cargo ships arrived each day with fresh batches of products for the shops, and robotic equipment labored away at building new structures and refurbishing existing ones.
“It’s as if everything they know and love isn’t about to end,” Modred said from the w
indow.
His mother didn’t say anything. She had heard the whispers that her son was refusing to leave the king’s chambers. Some people said it was because he was afraid he would be assassinated, either by someone who would want to become allies with the Vonnegan fleet when they arrived or else by someone who suspected him of that very same ambition. Others said he kept himself locked away there merely because he wanted to be thought of as their next ruler. What better way to do that than by stationing himself in the king’s living quarters?
Waving his hands at the robots, aliens, and people hundreds of stories below, he said, “Soon, the Vonnegan fleet will be here and all of their lives will be meaningless.”
Again, the king’s wife remained silent. This time, though, her lip quivered and she put a hand on the bedpost to steady herself.
“It’s a shame that it takes something like this,” Modred said, gesturing behind him at the dying king and then upward at the portal that would welcome the invading army, “to make people realize they are living life with their eyes closed.”
For a moment, Lady Percy looked at her son, her lips pursed, and he thought she was going to ask the same kind of sentimental questions she always asked.
Instead, she said, “They say Vere has arrived.”
“Who says that?”
“I don’t know. People.”
Modred laughed. “Her ship crashed on the far side of the Literac Mountains. Even if the bounty hunters don’t get her, she’ll never make it here.”
“You make that sound like a good thing.”
“Would you want her here?” he asked, turning to look at her. “You know her reputation just as well as I do. Is she the type of leader Edsall Dark deserves?”
He stared at his mother, challenging her to say something else, but she only remained there, her eyes downcast. Satisfied, he turned once more to watch the ordinary people living their ordinary lives far below. Their absurdity never failed to bring a smile to his face, no matter how angry he got.
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