by Lori Bond
“Nothing,” I said almost like a reflex. I winced as the words flew from my mouth, sounding like the classic kid caught misbehaving. I wouldn’t have believed me for a second. Arthur didn’t.
Although Pendragon’s impassive visage didn’t move a micrometer, it felt like the knight narrowed his eyes at me. “Elaine.” Arthur drew out the word. “You and your downloaded Percival are acting weird.”
I shrugged, and my armor shrugged with me.
“Everything still seems to work out,” Arthur said, almost like he was talking to himself. I heard the frown in his voice though. “You sure everything is working over there?”
“Yeah, everything seems fine.”
Arthur headed for the door. He turned back when I still stood there. “You coming? I thought you were in a hurry to save your boyfriend.”
“Right, yes.” I stopped studying my displays one last time and turned to catch up to them.
“Then let’s do this,” Arthur said. Pendragon held out an arm and rested it lightly on my armor’s shoulder. “And Princess, be careful.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid,” I said, worrying I planned to do something tremendously stupid. Kicking Percival out of my suit in the middle of a battle if Arthur threatened to sideline me wasn’t one of my better plans.
“Our definition of stupid doesn’t always match.” Pendragon’s arms crossed over his chest, and I felt Arthur’s glare even through two different suits of armor.
“That’s true,” I said. “I don’t take the risks you do.”
Pendragon’s arms dropped, and Arthur seemed to cheer right up. “That’s true. You’ll be fine.” Pendragon slapped me on the back, almost knocking me over.
With that we turned and at a jog headed for the nearest way out of the building.
23
WHERE I DISCOVER THAT RESCUE MISSIONS ARE EVEN MORE EXCITING IN REAL LIFE
GALAHAD AND LEODEGRANCE MET US OUTSIDE THE BUILDING. WE FLEW toward the ocean and the Dreki’s flying fortress at top speed. Even so, it would take us seven minutes to get there. The helicopter had a huge head start, but we would arrive right behind it. If I was lucky, that kiss between Evie and Will would never happen.
I frowned at myself. I shouldn’t be jealous. It wasn’t like the two of us were together. Sure, I’d thought he might kiss me on the drawbridge right before the Dreki attacked, but he’d probably been staring at something on my face. I shut my eyes, my face heating even though my armor was climate controlled to the perfect temperature. I couldn’t believe I’d thought he was about to kiss me when I’d probably been wearing part of my breakfast. Would it kill me to use a mirror every once in a while?
I was about to have Percy scan my face for food when Arthur swore over the comms.
I checked all of my readouts, but nothing seemed to be coming for us. “What?” I asked. “Everything looks okay from here.”
“LANCE isn’t coming.” Arthur swore again, this time in a language I didn’t recognize. “They’re supposed to be one of those ‘leave no one behind’ kind of groups.”
“Really?” My surprise was genuine. “I kind of got the impression they were one of those ‘we pretend we don’t exist so we can’t help you’ kind of groups.”
“There’s that,” Arthur said with a small chuckle, “but that’s more for when governments of countries that aren’t in the League of Nations catch a LANCE agent. For something like a Dreki capture, they’re happy to storm the castle. You saw how Stormfield got when I turned my weapons on the LANCE task force that night Will tried to claim you for the Tool Shed.”
“That might be the answer to why Stormfield doesn’t want to help you anymore,” I said in a dry tone.
“Well, this wasn’t about helping me.” Arthur sounded peeved, like I was missing the point. “This is about one of their own. I can’t figure out what about Will rubs Stormfield the wrong way. On paper Will is their perfect agent. Recruited insanely young, successful at every mission he’s sent on, popular with agents and civilians alike. That young man even charmed me, and I was more than predisposed to hate him. What do you think Stormfield’s problem is?”
“Well, actually,” I started. I paused not sure how to go on.
“That was rhetorical, Elaine.”
“I realized that, Arthur,” I said back, just as snide. The stress was getting to all of us, so I took a deep breath before continuing. “The thing is, Will has this power thing he can do, and I bet Stormfield doesn’t like that Will won’t use it.” I thought for a second. “Or at least he doesn’t like that Will won’t use it to do what Stormfield wants—if he even knows about it that is.”
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked.
“Yes, what do you mean?” Patrick echoed although I hadn’t realized that Arthur had given him a headset. I didn’t see him yet, but we had to be getting close if he was in range of the comms.
By that point we were well over the Atlantic Ocean. A pit the size of the Grand Canyon had opened in the middle of my stomach. Will was waiting for us to save him. I shook a little in the armor, my jittery nerves reminding me I might have survived the last Dreki battle, but I had needed the help of Dad, Patrick, and extra knights to do it.
“ETA three minutes,” Arthur said from over the comms. “You okay, Princess? I think you need to tell us about Will’s power. Something has changed, but everything still seems on track for a successful rescue.”
“Right.” I’d almost forgotten. “Will has this power to tell people what to do. And they do it. He calls it ‘persuading,’ but it’s more like he hypnotizes with his voice.”
“Has he made you do something you didn’t want?” Arthur’s voice had gone low and dangerous, and I shuddered again although this time I was scared for Will not myself.
“Grief, no.” I rushed to reassure him. “Will’s never used it on any of us. He said we’d know if he had. He says he hasn’t tried his power on anyone since he was fourteen, and I’m pretty sure that’s what upsets Stormfield. I bet Stormfield suspects Will is capable of something like this, and it annoys him he doesn’t use it for LANCE.”
Pendragon didn’t stop flying, but Arthur seemed to have paused, taking all this in.
“So, you’re saying that Will could talk himself out of Dreki custody?” Patrick asked. “Just tell them to let him go.”
“Yeah, but he won’t. As far as I can tell, he only uses this weird power on Percival,” I told them. “Dad, it’s how he got out of his room today. I bet he ‘persuaded’ Percival to let him out.”
Arthur didn’t answer at first. We were flying high and fast enough that a small dark blob had appeared floating just above the horizon. It had to be the floating fortress. “Percival, you and I are having a long talk when all this is over.”
Percival didn’t answer, but I imagined the AI gulped.
“Right now though, we don’t have time to worry about Will’s powers. If he won’t use them …”
“He won’t,” I interrupted.
“Then, we stick to the plan. You remember it, Elaine?”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll follow the plan.”
“I know. Just checking.” Arthur clicked off the comms and started organizing the various knights that had converged on us from all directions.
I had to admire Arthur’s confidence. I didn’t feel nearly as sure of our success.
The Defender swooped down to join us. “The place is bigger than Elaine’s drawing would have led me to believe, but I found a weak spot we can use to penetrate the interior.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “It seems Vortigern is even more obsessed with medieval decor than you, Arthur. I’ve never seen a more ridiculous design for a military craft. I have no idea how no one has noticed it before.”
We didn’t get to answer. Although most surface radar couldn’t detect us, the Dreki had better caliber stuff. We were still a half-mile out when anti-aircraft flak exploded around us. We were far enough away the weapons couldn’t get a precise target on us. No
knights took any damage, and the Defender amused himself by blowing some of the flak up by exhaling bursts of flames. Arthur and I saved our ammunition, but we were close enough I could almost feel the heat of the explosions through my armor.
“So much for the element of surprise,” Arthur grumbled. “We’ll have to do this with brute force.”
At that point we had forty knights with us. Arthur hadn’t been kidding when he said he kept the things stashed all over the world. He sent a small force of about seven knights straight ahead to knock out as many of the Dreki’s weapons as possible. I had assumed it was a virtual suicide mission, not that the suits died. They were all run by Percival, the real Percival, and Arthur had his main program stored safe in Pendragon.
To my surprise, the fortified weapons—the huge laser cannons, the sonar pulse weapons, even the old-fashioned gun turrets spitting out live ammunition—all of it seemed to have been designed to combat larger threats like F-16s or even another floating fortress. It was almost as if the Dreki’s levitating base was an old-fashioned frigate being harried by Arthur’s knightly men at war.
The different weapons tried to target the seven knights headed for them, but they didn’t have the maneuverability of the smaller invading force. An elephant had a better chance of swatting a specific gnat with the tip of its tail than the Dreki weapons had of even nicking one of Arthur’s knights. Firing lasers and pulses from their swords, the knights knocked out most of the Dreki weapons faster than I would have believed. The Dreki managed to scramble a couple of nimble jet fighters and even a helicopter into the air to stop us, but by then they were too late. Arthur’s entire force of knights, including me, had made it to the deck of the fortress.
Patrick hadn’t been kidding. Vortigern and the Dreki seemed to have taken “flying fortress” a little too literal. If Arthur had built a castle tower in mid-Manhattan, Vortigern had created a flying bailey keep to hover in the sky.
When we had been flying, the flying fortress had looked like a rectangular prism covered in weapons. Landing on the top of that thing, we discovered that the top deck was a glass enclosure for a giant courtyard surrounded on all sides by a crenellated wall. Gone were the super-engineered metal alloys and futuristic weapons. Below us sat an entire European keep.
“Huh,” Arthur grunted. Pendragon swung his huge sword down into the glass beneath our feet. The laser field running up and down the sword’s edge cut through the foot thick glass like a knife slicing through a piece of plastic wrap used to protect a day old casserole from spoiling.
While the Defender continued tossing fighter jets out of the sky, Arthur’s other knights followed Pendragon’s lead. My armor, Galahad, and the three knights that made up my entourage hung back. For one thing, we didn’t have the same kinds of swords. I didn’t have a sword at all, just the dirks I had been training with. The three knights with me had swords, but they were the kind that only shot lasers, not the ones with a laser edge. Arthur’s sword did both, but the rest of us had to make do with less impressive technology.
While we waited for Arthur and his knights to cut a hole large enough for the group to drop through, I ran a visual analysis of the ground beneath us trying to match the layout to the drawings I’d doodled when I first came to Keep Tower.
None of my visions had been of this courtyard. I hadn’t even suspected it existed. I cursed which got Percy’s attention.
“What’s up, buttercup?” he asked.
I muted my comms and stuck a second firewall up, blocking Percival. “I don’t trust Arthur not to keep me out here under Percival’s control. Are you ready to kick Percival out if needed?”
“Please,” said Percy in the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Percival is too busy to bother with running a diagnostic. He hasn’t even noticed you’re not under his direct control anymore. Of course, that might be because I’ve got you spoofed in his system.”
My jaw fell open almost hitting the bottom of my helm. “You can do that?” That was so much better than kicking Percival out, something Arthur would have noticed. But it wasn’t something we’d planned on doing. Will and I hadn’t coded him to do that.
“Like, duh,” said Percy. “I wouldn’t be much good if I couldn’t.”
I swallowed hard and turned my attention back to the cutting happening around us. Arthur and the knights were almost through. The square piece they were cutting out of the glass began to sag on one side. It was enough that Arthur dropped what looked like a small grenade through the hole. I half ducked even though the weapon was thirty feet below, and I was in nearly indestructible armor.
Percy snickered at me. “That wasn’t a weapon, well not a physical one. Arthur just dropped a wireless relay that will allow Percival to hack into this ship’s systems. The knights aren’t the only brute force attack Arthur has planned.”
I didn’t bother to respond. With a huge shriek the glass broke free and shattered into a jillion safety glass sized pieces on the flagstones below. Three at a time, the knights jumped into the hole after Pendragon. Arthur led the way with my three knights, Galahad, and me tagging along at the end.
“Vortigern, you dragon-spawned-beast,” Arthur shouted. Either the Dreki’s firewalls were a joke, or Percival was as good of a hacker as Ginny. Arthur already had control of the Dreki’s sound system. His voice projected from every speaker in every reach of the ship. Even through my armor the sound was deafening. “How dare you invade my home, attempt to steal my daughter and actually steal my son. Get out here and face me yourself, wyrmling.” Arthur stumbled over the last word, so I almost missed it. It didn’t matter. My brain had short-circuited at the word son. If it turned out I had a major crush on my brother? Well, I didn’t know what I’d do. Possibly bathe my brain in hydrochloric acid when we got back to the labs in the Rook.
“His son?” Percy said. He whirred in the background as if he was checking every bit of data, every byte Percival had ever stored, to see if there was a mention of a biological relationship between Will and Arthur. “I’m not finding anything about Will being his son. There aren’t any records, and their DNA doesn’t match at all.”
“Not literal son,” Arthur snapped at us. “I meant figuratively. Your boyfriend is not a case of genetic attraction. Just the usual kind.”
I hadn’t realized our comms were back on. Flushing redder than the dirt on Mars, I hoped that Arthur didn’t notice how weird Percival sounded.
“And what is going on with Percival?” Arthur asked. “Why does he sound weird?”
“My lord, there is nothing wrong with my programming,” Percy started to say, in his best Percival voice, but he didn’t have time to finish. An entire battalion of troops dashed out of the building into the courtyard, surrounding us on all sides. From that moment on, both Arthur and Percival were too busy fighting to worry about my suit’s AI.
In some ways I was overcome with an odd sense of déjà vu. It was my high school parking lot all over again. Knights pummeled men in tactical gear. Bullets sprayed all over the place, and the knights fought back with their enhanced versions of medieval weapons. There was the same cacophony, the same dizzying visuals as a thrown Dreki foot soldier sailed in front of my helm.
There was one significant difference though.
Me.
I wasn’t cowering under a car this time. I didn’t need Will or Dad to rescue me. Not this time. I was in a fully functional suit with knights for backup. I shot into the thick of the fighting, slashing with my dirks and firing with the small laser cannons on my arms. When a Dreki got too close, I wasn’t above punching the soldier in the jaw.
The whole time I fought, Percy was in the background piggy-backing off Percival’s system hack.
“Got him,” Percy said. My display shifted to a map of the courtyard where we fought. A big red dot covered one of the exits into the actual structure. “That’s the closest door to Will’s cell. He’s still being held in the room you Saw in your vision.”
“Got it,” I said. “Ar
thur,” I called through my comms. “We’ve got a location for Will. I’m heading for him.”
“Take your entourage,” Arthur reminded me. “We’ll keep them good and distracted out here.”
“Come on 4Gs,” I said. “You’re with me.”
Sirs Galahad, Gawain, Gareth, and Gaheris moved with me toward the door. We had to be artful about it though. We didn’t just plow through the Dreki forces blocking our way. Instead, Percy and Percival worked together to make it seem as if the flow of battle was pushing us in that direction.
That was the whole plan: that we would sneak away from the battle and find and rescue Will without the Dreki noticing we had left the main skirmish.
It seemed to take forever, but finally I was by the open doorway. A Dreki soldier decided at that moment to launch a shoulder mounted rocket at me. I didn’t even have to fake diving after Galahad through the doorway to take cover. The rocket exploded just behind me, slamming into the fortress’s stone wall.
There was a creaking sound and stone crumbled around the new hole in the masonry. I didn’t bother to wait and see if the other knights were behind me. I turned and sprinted down the hallway after Galahad.
Percy had used a combination of the drawings I had from my vision and the schematics he’d downloaded from Percival’s hack to make a kind of map for us to follow. We encountered a pair of Dreki troops running for the mess in the courtyard, but a few well-aimed shots from the lasers on my dirks knocked them out of commission.
Within minutes, we stood in front of the metal door. Of course, the door was sealed shut with a complicated magnetic lock. I placed my armor’s palm on it so that Percy could interface. “Can you hack it open?” I asked him.
Percy made a humming noise. It had a sing-song quality to it, like Percy was trying to hum classic rock songs. The AI had no ear for music, but it distinctly sounded like he was channeling the melody to “Hotel California.”
“Uh, Percy, are you humming?”
“Sorry, I got distracted. Unlike their overall systems, this lock is trickier to break through. No idea why. I would’ve spent more time hardening my overall systems’ firewalls not worried about an individual door’s lock.”