The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (25 page)

“Where are you?”

“Upstairs. Where are you?”

“Downstairs.”

“Where’s Baldwin?”

The second source of blaster shots also paused, then Baldwin yelled out, “Upstairs too. Down the hall from Fastolf.”

With none of the blasters sending streaks of laser back or forth any more, Vere leaned over and looked directly up at one of the holes where she had been returning fire. Baldwin was there, his back pressed against the wall, with no place to retreat if she had fired a little further to the right. When he saw her, his shoulders collapsed in relief and he dropped his blaster.

Morgan took a couple steps in the opposite direction, looked up, and said to Fastolf, “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot your fat ass.”

Fastolf yelled, “I didn’t do anything to get in trouble, I swear!”

Traskk sniffed the air, then growled. Before he could do anything else, one of the hostesses jumped on his back and tried to bite down on the closest part of him. In a flash, before her teeth could make contact with his leathery skin, Traskk’s tail smacked her all the way across to the far side of the great room. Before hitting the wall, though, she changed shapes and dissolved into the wood panels.

Just as quickly, another of the Sirens fell from above, the form of a thin sheet sneaking through the narrow lines. As she fell from the ceiling to the floor she changed into the shape of the hostesses and she too was on top of Traskk. Vere and Morgan both held their blasters up to shoot the bounty hunter off his back but he was spinning and thrashing too quickly for them to get a clean shot.

Above them, more blaster shots came down through the ceiling and Fastolf renewed his yelling. Behind Vere, the first Siren came charging at her. She leveled her blaster at it and shot it straight through the temple. Its momentum kept it sliding toward her for a while, but by the time it came to a rest by her feet, the once beautiful hostess had turned into a blob of silvery goo.

Vere heard footsteps above her. She looked up and saw Baldwin wasn’t there, and guessed he was running to help Fastolf fight off the third Siren. Behind her, Morgan kept circling Traskk, trying to get a clean shot, but it didn’t matter where she moved because he was jumping and thrashing all over the place. The only thing saving him from getting bitten and having his bones turn to mush was the fact that he kept throwing his hands behind him, jamming his claws under the hostess’s chin to keep her venom away. When he slammed his back against the wall, the Siren gave up the form of a woman and went flat against the wall, causing Traskk to hurt only himself.
 

They did this deadly dance around the great room while Fastolf and Baldwin took shots at a Siren that kept falling through one part of the floor—from Vere’s perspective, the ceiling—and then pulling herself back up through a different part of the floor to attack them again and again.

A pair of laser blasts landed right next to Vere and she yelled, “Hey, watch it,” but neither man heard her.

Across the room, Traskk looked at her. He still had the second Siren bounty hunter on his back, his claws under her mouth, but he couldn’t get the shapeshifter off him because she would change forms just long enough to free herself from his grasp. Seeing that Vere was looking back at him, he quit thrashing for just a moment. The Siren, thinking she had broken his spirit or had tired him out, gave a yell of victory and turned her mouth so she could sink her fangs into his flesh.

The Siren’s victory cry came to an abrupt end when a laser blast passed straight through Traskk’s hand and then into the shapeshifter’s face. The bounty hunter fell off his back and immediately turned from a ravishing hostess to a silvery blob just as the other had.

Vere lowered her weapon and hoped Traskk would understand. Without the Siren on his back, the enormous reptile hissed in anger as he used his good hand to hold the injured one. Morgan and Vere could both see a hole the size of a human eye going straight through Traskk’s palm.

He looked down at the remains of the dead siren and growled. Knowing enough to stay away from the silver goo but also needing to get his anger out, he slammed his tail against every wall and piece of furniture within reach until there were huge gaps of the structure where open air came into the cabin and no chairs or tables remained in one piece. Morgan and Vere waited while he got it out of his system.

When he finished, Vere said, “I’m sorry.”

Traskk lumbered over to her, patted her on the shoulder and gave a gentle purr.

Morgan looked at the reptile’s hand and saw the hole was no longer there. In its place was flesh that was brighter than the rest of his skin.

“He regenerates,” Vere told her.

“Apparently so.”

They heard footsteps from above, then saw Fastolf and Baldwin walking down the few steps that still remained.

“Is it clear down here?” they asked in unison.

Vere nodded and said, “How about up there?”

“Got one,” Fastolf said.

Morgan looked at a device on her wrist. “Well, there goes our chance for a rest. It’s time to get going again.”

Outside, Pistol was frozen in place, standing upright, as if in an android version of sleep. As soon as they exited the inn and began crossing the moat to join him, a circle of light illuminated around both irises and he turned his head toward them.

“There are eighteen more hours,” he said. “And a twelve percent chance we arrive there by the deadline.”

“I know, I know,” Vere said. “We’re going.”

Without looking back at the inn and the collection of dead aliens inside, the group walked toward the forest’s edge to where the fields of Aromath began.

53

All around the CamaLon spaceport, pilots of every species congregated around their ships, trying to figure out what they should do. Their homes were on Edsall Dark. Their families were there. But word was spreading that the Vonnegan fleet was on the other side of the portal, waiting to come through.

“Why don’t they just turn the damned thing off? Keep the fleet from coming through.”

“Beats me.”

On a dare, one of the pilots had gone through the portal. That was ten hours earlier. He hadn’t returned. Although no one knew for sure, everyone suspected a Vonnegan coat of arms was probably glowing in space to indicate where they had destroyed yet another ship on their way to Edsall Dark. No one else was willing to go through the portal to verify this, though.

That caused yet another problem. If the pilots did decide to have their families board their ships and leave, where would they go? The closest portal had an entire fleet of Athens Destroyers on the other side of it. As far as any of the commercial pilots could tell, the CasterLan fleet of Solar Carriers wasn’t doing anything in response. That meant that traveling out into space would be riskier than normal. Any ship leaving the relative safety of Edsall Dark—for as long as it remained safe, anyway—would fall prey to bands of traveling pirates or mercenaries looking for ships to steal.
 

The dilemma led to hundreds of personal vessels remaining at the spaceport, no one sure of what to do or where to go in order to be safe. The one thing everyone was sure about: don’t go through the portal if you want to live.

54

They walked through the last of the forest and entered open fields for as far as they could see. In front of them, the sun was coming up, bathing everything in a golden light. Somewhere over the rolling hills were the Edsall Dark spaceports, commercial district, and Vere’s father. Even though all of those things were out there, the group paused at the forest’s clearing.

 
“Nowhere to hide if more bounty hunters try to get us,” Vere said.

Morgan nodded. “
When
they try to get us, not
if
.”

“There’s no other way?” Fastolf asked. He turned away from Morgan when he took a sip from his flask, but also refrained from offering any to Vere.

Pistol’s eyes lit up. “The next best route would take us an additional four days and five hours of walking.”

“You could have just said no.”

The android added, “As it stands, there is now an eight percent chance we arrive before the Vonnegan fleet.”

“We really don’t have any other options?” Baldwin said, looking out at the expanse of open fields where they would be easy targets for hours and hours.

“I’m afraid not,” Morgan said.

Without another word, Vere began walking. The others, even Traskk, gave each other shrugs, then followed.

“I used to walk in these fields every day when I was little,” Vere said to no one in particular. “Not this far out, but it’s all the same for miles and miles.”

She looked to her left, at the fields all around her. To her right, there was more of the same. Hills and fields. Fields and hills. She smiled at the sight as if it were a long lost friend. The thought crossed her mind that for all the bad memories a place could have, it could offer just as many good memories; it was just that the bad times worked their way into her head more often than the others, making the good times easy to forget. How had she gone so long without walking in these lovely wheat-colored fields? The tan grass flowing in the breeze. The rolling hills, one after another. It made her feel young again.

She walked in silence as the others talked to each other of what they were most looking forward to when this was all over. Baldwin said a good shower. Traskk said a good night’s sleep, although no one except Fastolf and Vere understood what he had said. Fastolf, unsurprisingly, wanted a big plate of dumplings and bread. Morgan didn’t have an answer.

As she walked, Vere wondered what her own answer would be. What was she looking forward to? The first thing that popped into her head were images of Occulus and A’la Dure—dear friends already departed.

The only other image that appeared was the Green Knight. Once he entered her mind, it was impossible to think of anything else. His absurd green armor. His helmet covering who or what he was. His axe and its green painted handle and green tinted blade. The next thought was only logical: a vision of the Green Knight bringing the axe down upon her neck. She imagined her head bouncing across the ground until it came to a rest on the other side of the room. There, she would look back at the rest of her body, still standing where it had been, minus the head.

Unlike the Green Knight, she wouldn’t walk over to the head and place it back atop her own shoulders. She wouldn’t have any other challenges to accept. After a moment, the muscles in her body would relax and the headless body would tumble to the ground, the way the knight’s should have. How lucky the Green Knight was to have been able to collect himself, to have a second chance.

If Occulus were here, he would have somehow known that right now was the perfect time to ask what things Vere would have done differently in life if she too were given a second chance. When she tried to think of an answer, there were too many regrets to keep track of. She would have spent more time with her mother after she became sick. Being young and naïve, she hadn’t appreciated just how fast the days went by. She would have spent less time goofing off with Galen and spent more time asking him questions. If he vanished without a word, there was obviously a whole part of his life that she had no idea about. She had thought of him as the person she knew best in the galaxy. Obviously, she had known very little. She would have reminded her father that just because her true love had left didn’t mean she was some piece of the kingdom’s property to be bartered with. She wouldn’t have run to Folliet-Bright. She wouldn’t have agreed to chop off a big green menace’s head without thought to what might happen next. She might have, she could have, she should have.

Looking back on her life up until this point, her lungs burned at the idea that if she ever did earn a name it very well could be Vere the Might-Have-Been. The thought made her groan and cast her eyes downward. There were so many better ways to be remembered. Occulus had been loyal and understanding. A’la Dure had been contemplative and serene. These were the things she wanted people to remember her as. Not as a thief or a drunk. Not as someone who didn’t live up to her destiny.

She was brought out of her daze by a low hum in the distance. As they listened, the humming grew louder and louder.

“Pistol, what can you tell me?”

“A modified Newleb rover, running on a single Trexel type engine.”

Before she could ask if it was a ship found in her father’s fleet, she saw it coming at them from the side, in line with the forest’s edge rather than straight across the field from the direction of CamaLon.

“Bounty hunter,” she mumbled, and then to everyone, “Find cover if you want to live!”

Except for Morgan, the group dispersed. She remained out in the open, arms folded, staring at the vessel as it raced toward them. Everyone else scrambled for a place to hide. However, there were few options for protection. Baldwin found a boulder that he curled up behind. Vere did the same. Fastolf and Traskk, much too large for any of the rocks to hide them effectively, looked at each other, then started running back into the forest, with Traskk getting there in less than a third of the time it took Fastolf.

As Vere watched from behind her rock, Morgan remained in the open, blaster in hand, refusing to move. She also didn’t shoot at the bounty hunter’s ship. Probably, Vere suspected, because she knew a handheld blaster would have little or no effect on a ship of that size. Once the bounty hunter’s vessel was close enough for the pilot and Morgan to see each other, the ship began firing. But instead of shooting at Morgan, it targeted the rocks where Vere was crouched. One by one, the rocks burst into sprays of tiny stone projectiles.

“Get away from the rocks,” Morgan said, still standing out in the open, still wondering what she could do to hurt the ship.

“There’s nowhere else to hide.”

Although Morgan couldn’t see him, she recognized the voice as Baldwin’s.

“If you’re standing behind one of those boulders when it explodes you’re going to wish you’d died from a direct blast. They’ll be picking rock out of your dead body for days.”