Pendragon's Heir

by Lori Bond

  “Hi, Princess,” past Arthur said. He still looked basically the same as he did now although his hair had a little less gray in it. He wore board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, so his lousy taste in fashion wasn’t new. “You have no idea how excited I am that we finally found you again. When Ginny showed me your location and we brought you all up on the satellite, I thought we were both going to cry. I got to tell you, you’ve grown a lot since I last saw you.” He gave the camera a smile, but his eyes looked kind of glassy like he might cry then too.

  “Ginny and Tori have been talking, and we’re trying to figure out how you can visit me or how we can visit you. Things aren’t all too safe these days with the Dreki still looking for your folks and their never-ending hatred of me.” He stopped as if brooding for a minute before focusing on the camera again with a smile. “But that’s not something for you to worry about. We’ve figured out harder stuff than this before, and we’ll figure out tougher stuff again. But until I can see you, I thought I’d send you this video. I love you so much, Princess, and I’ve got so much to show you.” He waved and a child-sized suit of armor marched onto the screen. “I’ve made you a couple of different ones over the years,” he said, “but I’m so excited that you’ll be able to have this one.” He frowned for a minute. “Your mom and Ginny probably won’t let you ride in it, but little Morgause here is an excellent knight to protect my Princess.” He waved at the camera. “I’ll go now, but I’ll see you very soon. If you want, send me a video back or even call. I can’t wait to hear from you.” Arthur waved again, and the video cut out.

  I stared in shock. I tried to speak, but for a moment nothing would come out. “Percy, load the next video,” I said.

  I watched the next five videos in a row, but after that I skipped around. Arthur had made at least one video a week for six years. For the first few years, all of them ended in the same way as the first, asking me to communicate back. He was never pushy, never demanding. Arthur didn’t beg or ask why I never did. He just gave the camera a smile that got a little sadder with each video and asked me to respond.

  By the time I was fourteen, it was clear he didn’t think I was watching the videos. I couldn’t decide if he thought I didn’t care or if I wasn’t getting them. He probably couldn’t decide which it was either. He still kept making them though—even if sometimes his cheerfulness was a little forced. None of the videos were long—most were under four minutes—but he’d catch me up on the week or tell me about something he’d invented or a battle Pendragon had fought.

  In the next-to-last video, he’d rescued Will and some boy on the way to LANCE’s Institute. Arthur actually mentioned Will by name. Something about taking this Darren kid to the Tool Shed seemed to upset Arthur. He had a lot of nasty things to say about LANCE, and Will seemed to get caught up in that dislike. In the video, Arthur worried about the boy and some other kids trapped at the Institute. “Trapped” was the word he used. No wonder he had fought so hard to keep me out of there. He seemed to be fighting equally hard to get those kids back out.

  When Will came to say goodbye some time later, he found me staring blankly off into space while still sitting on the drawbridge, tears streaming down my face.

  He knelt down beside me. His thumb wiped at the tears on the left side of my face, his touch so gentle I thought at first I’d imagined it. “Don’t cry,” he said.

  “He didn’t abandon me,” I said turning to Will. “All this time, deep down, I thought it was all just talk. I mean, Arthur Keep, the Arthur Keep, the powerful Pendragon, couldn’t just lose someone like he and Ginny claimed. I figured he’d always known where I was, that it was just easier or safer or whatever to stay away.”

  Will continued to kneel next to me, silent. He didn’t interrupt my babbling.

  “Even when he was arguing with Stormfield about the Institute or insisting I stay, I figured it was just guilt from having been absent for so long. Every kid dreams their dead-beat parent is being kept away or something, but Arthur really was.” I reached out my hands, and Will took them, helping me stand up. “He made a video a week for years because he wanted to stay connected. Years. How could Tori and Raul have kept him away that whole time? Why didn’t they remind me, tell me about him when Arthur and Ginny found us six years ago?”

  My question had been rhetorical, but Will half-nodded. “They’d built a whole new life, and you didn’t remember the old. They probably didn’t want you to, for how would they explain Arthur without admitting who they had been?”

  “Who they were still being when I wasn’t around.” I glared at Will, but both of us knew my anger wasn’t for him. “Mom mentioned hacking someone a few months before Arthur rescued me. I doubt they ever gave up their old life. They just invented an illusion they didn’t want me to see through.”

  “Maybe.”

  We stood there for a minute, each trapped in our own thoughts.

  “I don’t know much about parents,” Will said, breaking the silence. “LANCE took me out of foster care and placed me in the Conservatory when I was six. Until then, the longest I ever stayed in one place was three months. And the Conservatory isn’t the kind of place where you find the nurturing, parental types.”

  Since LANCE agents ran it, I could only imagine.

  Will turned me so I was facing him and had my back to the moat. “But I’ve known since the minute I saw Arthur with you, even before he told us he was your dad, that Arthur loved you. He looks at you and Ginny in the same way. It’s a different love, but it’s the same look. That man would die for either one of you.”

  I knew Will was right.

  His phone buzzed. He pulled it out and made a face before stuffing it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ll be late. Another thing to irritate Stormfield.”

  “Oh.” I pulled the little button out of my pocket. “This might offer some protection. It won’t stop a punch, but it should deflect a bullet.” I frowned down at the little piece of tech before putting it in Will’s hand. “It might blow up everything around you when it does, but it should protect you.”

  Will’s hand closed around it, but otherwise he didn’t move. “It’ll be okay, Elaine.”

  I looked away, feeling abandoned all over again. “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He sounded so certain, I looked back up at him. And then I realized why he felt so confident, why he was so sure it would all work out. “You’re going to use your power on Stormfield,” I said. I wanted to collapse from relief. All the fear I’d been keeping bottled up inside seemed to drain out of me onto the drawbridge and into the moat. “You’re going to persuade yourself into safety.”

  Will looked horrified. Not just horrified, disgusted. “I told you I never do that.”

  “But you said when there was no other choice …” My voice faded away. Surely, Will understood that he needed to use everything he had to save himself.

  “There is always another choice,” said Will. “I don’t use it on humans, just irritating AIs.”

  “But then, how do you know this is all going to be okay?” The confusion in my voice had to match the confusion on my face.

  “Because I know that if something happens, you’ll come rescue me.”

  Will wasn’t lying. He wasn’t persuading me out of my fears. He seemed to believe what he was saying. I couldn’t think why he would have so much faith in me.

  Will reached up and brushed back the hair that had blown in front of my eyes. He looked at my eyes and then at my mouth and then at my eyes again.

  “Elaine,” said Will, but his voice sounded different, lower like he was going hoarse. He leaned toward me, and I froze. I wasn’t sure what had changed in the last moment, but my heart beat in my chest so loud I could hear it, like the thump-thump of whirling helicopter blades.

  “Elaine.” Will no longer sounded weird. He sounded panicked. His eyes opened wide, and he no longer seemed to be looking at me, but at something behind me. I turned, but I didn
’t even make it an eighth of the way around.

  “Percival,” Will yelled, “get Elaine in armor. Now!” He shoved me hard in the chest. I went flying off the drawbridge into the moat.

  20

  WHERE WILL SACRIFICES HIMSELF FOR NO REASON AT ALL

  TIME SEEMED TO STOP. EVEN THOUGH I KNEW IT WAS ADRENALINE OR something, the world around me shifted into slow motion. Off to the side, my armor fell into individual pieces headed for my body. Behind Will a helicopter rose up inch by inch past the crenellations. I wondered if Will had seen another helicopter over my shoulder. As my body hurtled toward the moat, I marveled that one or more helicopters had gotten this close to the Rook without Percival or any of the dozens of guarding knights sounding an alarm.

  Before I hit the water, the parts of my knight’s armor enveloped me. As they snapped into place around me, I snapped back out of my shock. Time resumed a normal pace, and I had one final glimpse of Will’s determined face turning to meet the threat before my helm slid in place, locking me in darkness. I landed in the water wearing close to a hundred pounds of graphene armor and sank down to the bottom of the moat.

  “Initializing,” said Percy. The symbols for possible hostile forces lit up all over my viewscreen. My jaw dropped open. There had to be sixty troops swarming out of four helicopters that hovered on the edges of the parapets. Sixty bad guys against Will, all alone up there on the terrace.

  “Percy, show me Will. Percival, get Arthur back here now.” My viewscreen zoomed in on a cluster of dots. Will ducked behind a large stone planter at the back end of the drawbridge, shooting at a group of Dreki advancing on him. Of course, it was Dreki. I could see the dragon patches on the shoulders of their SWAT uniforms.

  “Percy, we have to get to Will. Fire flight rockets.”

  “We can’t right now.”

  “Why not? Are we damaged?” My eyes shot around taking in all the various readouts and gauges, but all systems were running within normal parameters.

  “No. The Dreki have activated a directed electromagnetic pulse. All the electronics are being fried. I’m cut off from Percival and all the rest of the Keep systems.” I panned out wider and watched as Arthur’s knights dropped out of the sky. For a second, I forgot I was in my armor, and I tried to raise my hand to my mouth in shock. All I did was knock my glove into my helm. I switched my viewscreen back to Will. He still held off the Dreki, but they were coming closer.

  “Percy, get Arthur.”

  “I told you. All the unshielded electronic stuff is toast.” Percy sounded more fretful than usual. “I hope Percival’s somewhere safe.”

  As touching as the AI’s concern was, seeing as I had thought the two programs hated each other, now was not the time. “Percy,” I said, trying to redirect the AI’s thoughts back to our crisis. “We need Arthur. This isn’t something we can do on our own.”

  Percy huffed. “What do you want me to do? All the usual communication stuff isn’t fit for a salvage yard at this point.”

  “Then use an unusual way.”

  Little clicking sounds indicated Percy was thinking. The whole time we’d been arguing, I’d been following the track of the battle. Will still held them off on the drawbridge. He must have had spare clips of bullets for his gun, and it wasn’t electronic, so it still worked. I wanted out of the moat, to at least fight alongside him, but Percy was right about the weapon. Some energy pulse was still beating against the Rook, dropping every knight in sight. The Dreki had us trapped until they turned their weapons off.

  “Elaine? Elaine?” Arthur’s voice came through the speakers in my helm.

  “Arthur?” I almost cried. I hadn’t realized just how scared I’d been until I heard his voice. “I don’t know what to do. There so many of them and some sort of weapon has knocked out everything. All the knights except mine seem to be down, and I guess all the house defenses and everything else is too.”

  “I know. Percival is feeding me the data. How come you have an operational copy of him in your suit?”

  I didn’t have an answer and was too distracted to come up with one.

  “My lord,” said Percy sounding exactly like Percival, “Lady Elaine thought it prudent for Morgause to have a complete copy should she ever find herself cut off from the copies in the Rook or Pendragon.”

  “That’s good,” Arthur said. I couldn’t tell if he sounded suspicious or not. “I’ve been trying to warn you for the last few minutes, ever since I realized something was wrong. Whatever they were jamming the signal with must have fried with the rest of the electronics. Are you safe in one of the labs? Those are all protected from this kind of pulse. I never dreamed the Dreki had a weapon like this. We’re going to have to protect the whole building.” Arthur’s irritation showed in his voice, and it was oddly comforting. If he could worry about the building and not me, I couldn’t be in that much danger.

  “I’m in the moat.”

  There was a pause, and then Arthur laughed. “Brilliant. The water turned your suit into a Faraday cage protecting all the electronics inside.”

  Bullets pinged the surrounding water. A few hit my suit, but they did no damage.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I think they’ve noticed me. I’m being shot at.”

  Arthur’s laughter cut off like I’d lost his feed for a second. “Elaine,” he said before I panicked, “I’ve got six knights with me, and we’re only three minutes out. Patrick is on his way, but he was on the other side of the world, so it’ll take him a few more minutes to reach you. Visions haven’t been timely or useful this time around.”

  I snorted at that. Seeing Will tied to a chair had been all fine and good, but it would have been a lot more useful if I’d Seen this scene instead. I started to answer, but Arthur kept going. “You can hold them off for three minutes, Princess. This is no harder than a training exercise.”

  I laughed, a crazy uncontrolled cackle that bordered on hysterics. In no reality was this like a training exercise. More bullets bounced on my armor, and I could no longer see Will’s position. The Dreki shooting at me blocked my sight. “Are you joking?” I asked Arthur. “There’s at least sixty up there. I’ve never taken on more than eighteen knights. And I have never won.”

  “Please,” Arthur said. “Each of my knights is like ten of those Dreki fools. It’s like you’re only fighting six knights. And you can take down six knights. You can do this, Elaine.” There was a pause as if he were checking a data feed or something. “I will be there in time. You will do this.”

  “Percival,” I said, not able to use my AI’s preferred name while Arthur listened in, “is it safe to get back up there?”

  “The pulse is dissipating. I’ll power us up the second the danger’s gone.”

  “Then the moment we are clear of the water, target and fire the two big M84 rockets at the weapon that took out all the other knights. I don’t want to fall out of the sky.”

  “Target acquired.”

  In the left-hand corner, my viewscreen showed Percy aiming both M84s at a box on one of the helicopters. That must have been the pulse generator.

  “And then, Percival? We’re going to save Will.”

  “You bet.” Percy sounded skeptical, but I ignored his tone. I could do this.

  I took a deep breath. A vision or two of the future would have been nice right about then, but I didn’t have any exposed Dreki skin to grab onto. But this was what I had been training for. I had to believe Arthur was right, that I had the skills to survive. I didn’t have a choice. “Percival, fire flight rockets when it’s safe.”

  Four seconds later, I shot out of the water, like an avenging angel, ready to spew my righteous fire on the sinners spread out below me. The shock on the Dreki troops’ faces meant they had thought my armor incapacitated like the rest. Dreki troops seemed to freeze, giving us a chance. The second we were above the fray, Percival sent the M84s at the helicopter with the pulse generator. It blew the weapon to smithereens, taking the helicopte
r with it.

  I held my arms up and shot the laser cannons at the men around Will. The blast knocked the ones furthest from him off their feet, but the three that had already reached Will continued fighting him hand to hand. Will’s gun sat on the ground where he must have tossed it aside when he ran out of bullets, and I did kind of wonder why the men were trying to subdue him instead of just shooting him. I didn’t complain though.

  I landed on the ground about ten feet away. Drekis showered me with bullets, but I didn’t feel them although they sounded like hail from a major thunderstorm pinging off my sides. I sprayed my own bullets at the men, but their body armor protected them too. It drove them back, but no one fell.

  I turned to help Will, but something slammed into my back. I stumbled and almost fell, but instead I caught myself and turned around. Another one of the Dreki raised a shoulder mounted rocket launcher thing. I had no idea what the thing was, but I did not want it hitting me again. Before the soldier aimed it, I shot into the air and circled behind. I landed behind the Dreki, ripping the launcher out of the soldier’s hands and tossing it over the side of the building.

  Landing had been a mistake. One of Arthur’s knights might be better than one Dreki, but I had just landed in the middle of a whole mess of them. They dogpiled on top of me. Their weapons weren’t able to penetrate my armor, but their sheer weight forced me down. My knight had superhuman strength, but even she couldn’t stay standing with the weight of thirty grown adults bearing down on her.

  “Percival, suggestions?”

  “Flight rockets.”

  “Do it.”

  The rockets on my back ignited, burning those touching my back. The whole pile of bodies slid to the side until I had oriented myself better. Percy redirected all the available power to the rockets, and I pushed up and free of the crush.