by J. J. Green
He repeated, “Permission to—”
“I heard you the first time,” she snapped. “Permission granted.”
He set off toward the exit, but before he reached it, someone yelled, “What the hell’s that?!”
When he turned back, all gazes were on the holo.
He peered at the moving dots, but he couldn’t see what was new. He was looking for another enemy vessel joining the battle, but he couldn’t see any additional ships.
The Valiant shuddered. Her spinal railgun had activated and begun firing, hurling titanium slugs at the EAC dreadnought.
“What is it?” someone asked. “Is it a new weapon? Or some kind of ship?”
Then Wright saw it. Something was heading into the frame of the holo, and it was moving faster than any space vessel he’d ever seen. But it looked nothing like a weapon or a ship. It was an opaque, amorphous, mass, only visible due to the fact it blocked out the light of the stars as it passed in front of them.
“The scanners aren’t picking up a single thing,” said Corporal Singh. “All they’re reading is the light reduction. According to the other data, it doesn’t exist.”
“Whatever it is,” Colbourn said gravely, “it isn’t ours.”
“No,” agreed the captain. “It appears to be traveling toward—”
“I think we hit her!” exclaimed Newcombe.
“Yes,” said Singh. “I’m seeing shrapnel ejected from the EAC flagship’s starboard bow.”
“Good shot,” the captain said. “Don’t let up.”
But Wright could see the man remained distracted by the oncoming unknown threat. So was Colbourn. She’d stopped pacing and was stalking toward the holoscreen, mesmerized.
Wright hesitated, now uncertain about his wish to take part in repelling boarders. He had a feeling it wouldn’t come to that—he had a feeling the EAC and AP would rather destroy the BA ships than try to acquire them.
The mass glided on, heading for the tip of the BA fleet. Due to her maneuver to fire upon the EAC dreadnought, the Valiant was hanging back, out of the imminent melee. Her remaining corvette, the Cornflower, flew by her side.
“What is that thing?” murmured Colbourn.
“The Fearless is about to find out,” Wright said. He also couldn’t remove his gaze from the holoscreen, trapped by grim fascination.
If the BA admiral aboard the flagship had noticed the approaching cloud, he hadn’t taken any evasive action.
Until that moment.
The Fearless suddenly began to veer off course, leaving the trajectory that would have taken her to the Bres. She was finally trying to avoid the strange mass bearing down on her.
“Does the admiral have any information on it?” Colbourn asked the captain.
“If he has, he hasn’t transmitted it to the fleet. And I wouldn’t want to distract him right now.”
“Uh,” said Singh, “the EAC dreadnought’s powering up her particle lance.”
“Damn,” the captain said.
“We’ve lost two Swifts,” reported an officer.
“Divert main power to shields,” said the captain.
The weapons officer slumped in her seat. The railgun couldn’t operate with all the ship’s spare power devoted to the shields. But without them they would be cleaved like fruit for the EAC ship’s dessert.
“Dear god,” whispered Colbourn.
The baffling mass was reaching out. On the holo, a finger of darkness was darting across space, moving even faster than the cloud itself.
The Fearless would never get away from it. The ship was like an ant trying to escape a flash flood.
Wright prayed the strange astronomical body was a harmless, directionless object that just happened to be acting like a predatory beast.
His prayer went unanswered.
The black tongue reached the Fearless and wrapped it in shadow.
The ship was gone, and the entire cloud had vanished too. The stars it had blanked out shone again.
The mass had disappeared as if it had never existed, and taken the BA flagship with it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The whoops and hollers of her fellow marines echoing in her ears, Taylan left her position at the Valiant’s aft hatch and went to take off her armor and stow her pulse rifle. She didn’t understand what there was to celebrate. Sure, the EAC and AP had backed off—no one seemed to know why—and, sure, the Alliance had abandoned its suicide mission of destroying the colony ship, but thousands of men and women were dead. The BA had lost four ships, three falling to enemy fire, and the fourth disappearing into the ether, swallowed by some kind of cosmic cryptid. Rumor said all contact had been lost with the Fearless, and the scan data showed no sign of her. From what she’d heard, they’d also lost some Swifts.
Pre-fight adrenaline still ran like fire through her veins. She was alive with tension, and she didn’t know how to come down. Booze was strictly forbidden aboard ship, which wasn’t to say it didn’t exist, only that she would be risking severe disciplinary action if she was discovered drinking. And after all the stuff she and Abacha had pulled, she couldn’t risk it. Not if she wanted to remain a marine, and, now, she thought she did. For a while, anyway.
She stepped into the armory, deposited her rifle, and began to take off her suit, snapping the helmet clips open and lifting it off her head. She was the first to arrive. Everyone else was still celebrating not dying. As she pulled out the tabs on each side of her breastplate, releasing it, her rack mate arrived.
“Hey,” said Abacha.
“Hey.”
“That was some fight we didn’t have.”
She snorted a brief laugh. “Yeah.”
He took off his helmet and slid it into its slot on the wall.
She caught him sneaking a glance at her.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. You’ve been...distracted lately.”
“Have I? Well, I’m fine.” She guessed she had been feeling down, but things had changed. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good. Same old.” Then he said softly, “Shame about the Daisy.”
“Yeah. A real shame.” Taylan hadn’t been close to her former platoon, but she also felt their loss. Dying in the vacuum of space, alone and maybe wounded, was a possibility she tried not to think about. She guessed everyone aboard BA battleships felt the same. She hoped that whatever had happened to her old shipmates had been quick and painless.
“If you hadn’t put in a request for my transfer to the Valiant along with you,” said Abacha, “I’d be dead right now.”
“Crap.” She paused a beat before removing the rest of her suit. “You and me both.”
“You saved my life,” said Abacha.
“Aw, c’mon. It isn’t like I took a bullet for you. And you’ve been there for me plenty of times. I’m glad you’re still around.”
“Glad you’re still here too. After all, who else do I have to beat at xiangqi?”
Taylan grinned, walked over to Abacha, and punched his shoulder. “See you around.”
“You’re going? What’s your hurry? I thought we could unwind over a game. You never know, I might let you win for once.”
“We both know that’s a lie. I’m going to see my new friend.”
“You made a friend? How’d that happen?”
“I can be nice, if I try. Now I have two buddies.”
“You mean me? I never said I was your buddy.”
“And I never said you were one of the two,” Taylan called out over her shoulder as she sauntered from the armory.
HER SHOCK AT HEARING what the stranger rescued from the mountain at Nantgarw-y-garth called himself had eased. She’d convinced herself her imagination had gone into overdrive about what the name meant.
And yet...she couldn’t get rid of the niggling feeling that the impossible was true, and she knew she would never be free of doubt until she’d seen solid proof.
&n
bsp; If this person was who she’d initially suspected he was, there was a way she could find out. The test would never stand up as a scientific experiment, but, to her, it would mean a lot.
She unlocked the cabin door. Major Wright had entrusted her with the security code just prior to the battle. When the door opened, she found the man sitting on his bed, petting Boots.
The cat miaowed, jumped down, and padded over to her. As Boots rubbed against Taylan’s leg, the stranger pointed and said a word.
“Uh, she’s a cat,” she said. “Cat.”
“Cat,” he repeated, adding something unintelligible.
Boots ran off down the passageway.
The man’s hair was wet. He’d obviously been trying out the shower, but he didn’t know it had a drying setting.
“Can you come with me?” she asked, beckoning.
He rose and padded over to her.
She sent him back to put on his shoes, and then she took him to the gym.
The place was empty, though Taylan could hear the far-off strains of some kind of party going on. She turned on the lights and walked directly to the equipment store. The man waited patiently as she rummaged around in the back of the store. She was sure she’d seen what she was looking for somewhere in there. Then she saw them, lying under a pile of sparring helmets, grubby and lonely in the corner: A pair of staves.
She reached in and slid them out from under the helmets, sending up a cloud of dust. When she’d wiped them off, the staves looked new and unused. She guessed Royal Marines were rarely required to fight with big sticks, and she didn’t remember any instruction in the weapons from Basic. That was a mistake in her opinion. Staff-fighting taught a lot of valuable skills different from hand-to-hand or knife combat. Her father had taught her how to use them well, both defensively and offensively. She guessed the ones in the store were there in case the trainers wanted to instruct in a modern martial art.
The man had moved to the shelves that held other practice equipment. He was examining the items, looking confused. But when he saw what Taylan was holding, his features cleared and recognition lit his face. He nodded, seeming to want to show his understanding.
Her stomach clenched.
Shit.
There was nothing for it except to go through with the test.
She found some protective gear that fitted him and put on her own. When she walked out into the gym and stepped onto the mat, he followed her.
They faced each other.
He smiled and readied his weapon.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He knew exactly what to do.
She lunged, aiming at his head. Her staff cracked against his as he met it easily. Then he pushed, using his greater height and weight to force her down. She slipped out from under him, making him collapse forward, and swung the end of her staff toward his stomach. He twisted out of reach, spun right round, and swiped at her.
She met the blow just in time and knocked his staff hard, trying to shock it from his grip, but he was holding it too firmly. She realized her back was exposed. She dropped to the floor and his staff whistled over her head. She swept hers upward again, this time aiming for his jaw, which was hanging over her after his move. He reared back, a fraction too late. Her staff glanced his nose.
They fought on, moving so fast her actions were pure training and muscle memory, with hardly any time to think.
She tried some feints, but he guessed her intention every time. She tried speeding up the pace even faster, but he kept up with her. And when he went on the attack, she was barely able to counter his blows.
Damn, he was good.
The split second of admiration resulted in a blow to the side of her head. Her helmet saved her from any real harm, but the man certainly didn’t cut her any slack. He redoubled his attack, and she was hard put to avoid being struck again, and to stay on her feet. He loved that low swipe, intended to knock her legs from under her.
It had been years since she’d fought with a staff, and she was feeling the lack of practice. She’d never been able to persuade Abacha to give the weapons a try. If she’d been on top form, she might have been able to beat the mystery man. At her peak performance, she’d beaten her father a few times, to his great pride and admiration.
But she knew she wasn’t going to see victory today.
She knew what she needed to know. How to stop the fight without suffering a concussion or a cracked rib, though? The only words the man knew were her name and ‘cat’.
Sweating and panting, she jumped backward, out of his reach, and dropped her staff to her side.
The man understood the session was over. He gave a bow and spoke a short phrase.
“You fought well too,” said Taylan.
It was good to spar with someone who matched her abilities. He’d really tested her limits.
But concern of a greater nature overwhelmed her satisfaction with the match. No matter how mind-blowing and difficult it was for her to accept, no matter how much she wanted to deny the truth, she couldn’t do it any longer.
As well as a military veteran, her father had been a history buff specializing in ancient forms of combat. Staff-fighting was a very old sport, he’d told her, something rarely practiced any longer, at least not in the West.
Yet this man who Wright had found entombed inside a Welsh mountain could use a staff like he’d been practicing all his life.
She couldn’t believe it, yet she had no choice.
She felt absurd. What should she do? Drop to one knee and bow her head? Was that what people did around kings?
Instead, she walked up to the man and shook his hand.
“Hello, Arthur.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wright closed his eyes, opened them again, and then rubbed a hand over the top of his head.
“What?”
Ellis frowned at him. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“You’re telling me.”
She’d asked him to come to the cabin where he’d put the man he’d rescued from West BI. After the battle with the EAC and AP, he had plenty to do, but Ellis’s tone had been urgent, as if she had something extremely important to tell him, so he’d decided to spare her a few minutes.
Apparently, the critical piece of information she had to convey was that the man’s name was Arthur. After that, she’d spouted a load of gobbledygook about an ancient legend, fighting off invaders to the Britannic Isles, swords, prophecies, wizards, knights, and...tables?
“Are you seriously telling me you’ve never heard about any of this stuff?” Ellis asked tersely.
“I don’t know,” he replied, exasperated. “I might have done, when I was a kid. I don’t remember. But what’s all this got to do with him?” He indicated toward ‘Arthur’ with his eyebrows.
The man was sitting passively on his bunk while Ellis faced him over a table. He was watching them talk, but he clearly didn’t understand anything of what was passing between them.
Ellis slapped her forehead. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?!”
“Watch it, corporal.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but...” She got up and jabbed a finger at the mystery man. “It’s him. He’s King Arthur. The once and future king. In our hour of need, he will return. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Wright carefully studied her. She didn’t seem to be joking. She seemed to believe it all. Perhaps she was having a psychotic break due to the stress of the battle. All the marines in her former platoon aboard the Daisy had died. She would be experiencing grief and shock. Those strong emotions, coupled with her desire to return to BI, had probably made her confused and delusional. Rather than face her pain, she’d become fixated on the man under her responsibility.
Would it be better to humor her, or should he send her to sick bay?
He decided to try the former first before resorting to more drastic action. Maybe he could still reach the rational part of her mind.
“All right,
Ellis. Let’s say what you’ve told me is true. I need you to explain a few things for me.”
She looked relieved. “Okay.”
“If this man is King Arthur, returned from the dead—”
“No, he didn’t die. He was mortally wounded and carried from the field of battle.”
“Mortally means fatally, right?”
“Yes, it does...but he didn’t die. That’s the point. He should have died, but Merlin put him into a deep sleep, so he could—”
“Rise again. I get it.” Wright sighed. He could hardly believe he was having this conversation. “So he’s been in this deep sleep for...what, three and a half thousand years?”
“About that. Even historians who lived a few centuries after Arthur’s time weren’t exactly sure when he reigned.”
“Well...” He looked expectantly at the corporal.
“Well what?”
“How could he have been ‘sleeping’ for millennia?! It isn’t possible.”
“Isn’t it? Didn’t you say he looked like he’d been in that cave for years? And I thought the AP had made big strides in cryonic preservation. They claim they can put people under for centuries.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But Arthur wasn’t cryonically preserved. Believe me, I’d know. He looked like he’d been dead a long time.”
“Only he wasn’t, was he? He was still alive! Who knows what Merlin did to him so he could live so long? At that time, it might have seemed like magic, but maybe it was only highly advanced medical technology, even more advanced than we have now?”
“And how would someone living in the Dark Ages have access to highly advanced tech?”
Ellis huffed in frustration. “Look, I don’t have all the answers. I can’t explain everything. I’m just as amazed as you are.”
“Uh, no. I really don’t think you are.”
“Right, so, you tell me who he is, how he came to be inside a sealed cave and still alive after being mummified.”
“I can’t explain it. I never said I could. But that doesn’t mean I have to dream up a supernatural fairy tale as an answer.”