The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (18 page)

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 window.

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.

38

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Fastolf said, an elbow propped against the nearest boulder, “But why do they call it the Forest of Tears?”

Vere was surprised at how well her friend was getting along, or at least, at how little he was complaining as they made their way across the planet. He was unfit for this type of adventure and there was nothing in her knowledge of him that suggested he would be able to keep up with the rest of them. But somehow he managed to keep from holding everyone back.

That was one of the reasons she had taken a sip from his flask whenever he had offered it to her; to keep things friendly and keep up the illusion that they might just as easily be sitting around a table at Eastcheap. This made it less likely he would throw his hands in the air and quit. Or worse, complain so much that he brought down the morale of the entire group.

She was sure Morgan had to be just as pleasantly surprised by the oaf’s endurance as she was, but the other woman would never admit it. After having her pocket picked a dozen times by Fastolf, she would never give him any compliment.

As they entered the forest, the mountains began to vanish behind a line of thick tree trunks and yellow and orange foliage. With the sun setting, the sky was the same color, giving the impression that the leaves could extend all the way up into space. In front of them, all they could see was endless forest in all directions.

Beside Fastolf, Traskk’s tongue slithered in and out of his mouth as he asked the same question. They, along with A’la Dure, had never been to Edsall Dark. The others couldn’t blame them for being hesitant considering the forest’s name.

Baldwin answered for the group: “It’s the only place in the known universe that you can find Scyphozoans.”

Fastolf looked at Traskk to see if that made any sense. When he got a blank stare, he said, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak Basic to us.”

“They’re jelly-like creatures that float just above the ground. About the size of humans. Lots of tentacles.”

“They make you cry?” Fastolf offered, chuckling as he passed the flask back to Vere and watched her take a sip. Of course, that would make the name of the forest seem logical.

Baldwin shook his head. “No, they kill you. Their
 
tentacles are lethal. They got the name because the main part of their body looks sort of like a tear drop. In the old days, people used to think the Scyphozoans were the spirits of people who had died while crying over loved ones. They were the physical embodiment of sorrow. Other people said the forest was haunted and it was the gelatinous floating creatures that kept the sad spirits from ever escaping the woods.”

The fat man laughed. “And people believe that nonsense?”

Occulus said, “If we come upon them, you’ll see for yourself how they could be mistaken for something other than the simple creatures they are. They’re the most beautiful things you’ll ever see, but—”

“I don’t know, a tall pitcher of ale is pretty gorgeous too,” Fastolf said.

“—but also the most deadly. One touch and you’re dead. No one has ever touched a Scyphozoan and lived. As deadly as they are, though, they have a certain peace about them. They don’t do anything but float above the ground, drifting whichever way the breeze takes them. If you leave them alone, they’re harmless. If you touch one, you get a dose of the deadliest toxin in the galaxy.”

Morgan said, “My father used to tell me that anyone who entered the Forest of Tears and never came back out lived for eternity as one of those glowing floaters.”

Other people had heard the same thing. In fact, myths and old wives’ tales about the creatures were so popular that aliens traveled from all over the galaxy to enter the Forest of Tears and see what many still believed were long-forgotten spirits. Every once in a while, someone became so overwhelmed by their beauty that they reached out to touch what they believed might be a departed loved one. When they did, they immediately fell to the ground, gasping for breath before dying.