The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (12 page)

“They are probably dumb enough to ask us for help,” Agravan said. “I do not want distractions. Ready a Keiser torpedo.”

“Sir, the ship is approaching fast from Sector 9.”

The general’s neck stretched upward slightly. His massive back, muscles buried under protective plates, widened when he held his breath. Rather than continue the back and forth from across the command deck, Agravan strode across from where he had been looking out at the blue and orange swirls of a decimated Decil-TRak to where the crewman was hunched over his display panel.

The crewman was whispering now: “Sir, the person contacting us insists she is Vere CasterLan and she wants to speak with you.”

The general put both of his gloved hands up to where his chin would be if it weren’t hidden behind his helmet. After seeing what the Vonnegan fleet had done to every colony in its path, everyone should be looking for a way to avoid the line of Athens Destroyers. Yet this ship was intentionally trying to open communications. What better way to do that than to claim to be royalty? The problem was that his crew was supposed to be better than to fall for some outrageous claim like this. Even acknowledging it was a shame on the fleet.

“Put them on the screen,” the general said. “If Vere CasterLan appears, you live.” He did not have to say what would happen if this was a hoax perpetrated by pirates or by some foolhardy escapees of the planet they had just destroyed.

In front of the entire command deck, a woman’s face appeared on the primary display. Taking up nearly the entire display area, the woman’s face was fifty times larger than life.

The general’s head tilted slightly to one side, but he didn’t say anything.

“General,” the woman said. “I am Vere CasterLan. My father is—”

“Yes,” General Agravan said, interrupting. He immediately recognized her from the books he had read about the CasterLan lineage. “We will get to you and your planet after we are done destroying everything else along the way.”

“General, there’s been a mistake. My father would never order one of his ships to destroy an innocent crew. And definitely not in your space.”

“It happened, though. Did it not?”

“General, please, let me go to Edsall Dark and find out what happened. I’m sure I can clear everything up.”

“Do as you wish. My ships will be making our way there, destroying all colonies as we go.”

“But this is a mistake! I’m sure of it. Something else must be going on.”

“That is not my problem.”

“Give me one week and—”

On the display, the image of an overweight man appeared briefly behind Vere, saying, “Better make it six days. Don’t forget you have to get your head lopped off in a week.”

Vere took a deep breath, then the video feed went black for five seconds. When it came back on again, Vere was sitting back down in the pilot’s seat of her ship and the fat man’s pained cries faded in the distance.

“Give me six days,” Vere said. “I promise I’ll clear all of this up.”

“And if you clear nothing up?” the general said.

Another voice came from behind Vere. This one, belonging to a young woman, said, “Then you can have her instead of destroying more innocent colonies.”

As the video feed continued, Vere turned and looked at the woman standing in the cockpit doorway.

“Who is that?” the general asked.

“Morgan—” the woman started to say but Vere turned and told her to shut up and get out of her cockpit.

General Agravan said, “You and the woman behind you.”

Vere frowned, not understanding what the general was getting at. Then, figuring it out, she smiled and nodded. “You’ve got a deal,” she said. “She and I will both turn ourselves over to you if we can’t straighten out what happened and clear the CasterLan name.”

The two of them, the general of the Vonnegan fleet and the heir to the CasterLan Kingdom, stared at each other across the pixelated screens hovering at the front of both of their respective vessels.

Then Agravan spoke: “Six days.” And the screen went black.

24

Vere stood with Occulus, Fastolf, Morgan, and Baldwin outside the Griffin Fire’s cockpit. Only A’la Dure remained by the controls, watching the ship’s displays and letting Pistol and Traskk know when any of their repairs on the third engine were successful. Once that was done, work began to ensure the tinder walls were functioning once more.

“Why would a bounty hunter be coming for us?” Vere asked.

The side of Morgan’s mouth curled with disdain. “Obviously, someone isn’t excited about the king’s daughter returning to Edsall Dark after being gone for so long.”

“Who would even know I was on my way, though? We just left.”

“Did you really think you were hiding from anyone? Look how easily I found you. Look how easily Baldwin found you.”

Tired of Morgan’s attitude, Vere took a step toward her passenger. Occulus stepped in between the two even though there was nothing he could do at his age to keep them from ripping each others faces off.

“It was easy,” Baldwin said, trying his best to keep tempers settled. “Even the Green Knight found you, whoever he is. And if we were able to, it wouldn’t be hard for anyone else to find you or know when you were leaving.”

“It doesn’t help,” Morgan said over Occulus’s shoulder, “that someone pulled out one of the only Meursault swords in the entire galaxy. Everyone in all the surrounding solar systems will know about that before the day’s over.”

Vere narrowed her eyes at the woman on the other side of Occulus. The old man signaled with his eyes for Baldwin to say something, anything, to keep a fight from breaking out.

“So a bounty hunter tried to kill you,” the physician said with a shrug. “So what.”

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 her?”

“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.”