The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (10 page)

Finally, she mumbled, “I’m fine, Traskk. Thanks for coming to get me.”

In response, the reptile gurgled a happy noise. Rather than stand and join the escape effort, though, Vere remained sitting on the floor, squinting as if forcing her mind to concentrate on something.

“I found a door,” Morgan called out, her voice echoing in the cavernous room.

Pistol joined her by the steel door. There was an access panel next to the door but nothing to indicate what the code might be or what might happen if they entered the wrong series of symbols. Even more importantly, there was nothing to let them know what was going to be on the other side of the door.

Morgan shrugged and smiled, “It’s not like we’ll alert them to our presence if we enter the wrong passcode.”

“Permission to enter the numbers I’ve seen posted around the storage room,” Pistol said, referring to the signs posted next to each storage bin.

Morgan nodded. First, the android began entering a sixteen digit code he had seen next to a pair of crates, but a red light began flashing after only the eighth number to indicate an incorrect access code. That at least let him know he could cut out the other numbers he had catalogued in his head that were all longer than eight digits. He entered a number that had been posted on a bin next to the newly opened wall, but that too resulted in a red light. The other numbers he entered all resulted in the same flashing error code.

“I’m calculating millions of other options,” his monotone voice said. “Do you have any preference which number I enter next?”

Before Morgan could say anything, the door they were standing in front of flew open. A squad of Vonnegan troopers was there, each soldier in full armor, their helmets hiding the shock they must have felt upon seeing their target close enough to reach out and grab.

Without blinking, Morgan brought her blaster up and began firing, hitting the three troopers who were closest to her. But there were too many for her to shoot before the others began firing back. A trio of blasts hit Pistol, who was standing in front of Morgan. One hit him above one of his eyes. Another in the neck. Another in his chest.

The blaster Morgan was holding had already lost its charge, so she reached down and grabbed one from the first guard she had shot. She darted behind Pistol, who was moving to the side of the open doorway where he wouldn’t get hit by more lasers. Crouching behind him, Morgan fired time after time through the open doorway. The guards were also hiding to the side of the doorway, so she couldn’t hit them, but the continuous stream of blasts at least kept them from flooding into the room.

After another round of shots, she turned to Pistol. The android’s fingertips were glowing and touching various parts of his face.

“How you doing, buddy?”

“I think I’m going to need some repairs,” the android said, the lack of inflection in his voice making him sound almost pitiful.

When she turned to see what he meant, she sucked air in through her teeth. The damage to the android’s face had fried some of his circuits, and one of his eyes was black and motionless. He had already lost his right arm from the bicep down, but the blast through his neck must have severed the cables running to his right shoulder. The stump that remained hung uselessly while the other arm continued exploring his charred face. Pistol seemed more confused than pained by the lack of response to some of his systems. The singed black eye worried Morgan most of all. She relied on his sensors to tell them where they should be going. If he couldn’t do that, they might as well all wear blindfolds as they wandered the Cauldron’s corridors.

“Is that going to be okay?” she asked, pointing at his damaged face.

Pistol’s other eye glowed to life, then dimmed. His other arm worked fine as well.

“It seems that none of my critical systems have been impaired,” he said. After Morgan let loose with another round of blaster fire through the doorway, Pistol added, “Unless my diagnostics were also damaged and I’m getting a false reading. In that case, I have no idea.”

A trooper appeared in the doorway. Morgan blasted him twice. Besides the sound of her blaster firing, it was surprisingly quiet. Each time more troops ran down the hallway to join the ones already clustered around the open doorway, she could hear all of their steps and movements.

Reaching down to grab another discarded blaster, she tucked the one she had been firing and the new one under her arm, tugged on Pistol’s shirt to get him to retreat, then ran back to the far side of the giant room, where Traskk was still with Vere.

A pair of troopers appeared in the doorway. Morgan shot twice. One blast hit a Vonnegan in the stomach, dropping him into a fetal position. The other laser struck the wall just to the side of the doorway, then immediately came back toward her. Ducking behind a nearby storage container, she narrowly avoided the laser, which passed by her face. She was just about to stick her head back out to see if more troops were coming through the doorway when one of Traskk’s huge clawed hands grabbed her shoulder and yanked her down to the floor. The same laser blast had bounced off various bins and walls behind her before zipping by her head again as it went back toward the open door. It bounced off the walls three more times before the armor coating inside the room finally absorbed it.

Looking all around the large room, she figured out what Traskk had already guessed. The entire room was blast proof. There was only one reason to do that. Something inside the room needed to be protected.

“I think I have identified the purpose of this room,” Pistol said, unbothered by the black burns where his right eye used to be.

“And?”

“It seems to be the explosives storage for the mining colony that adjoins the prison.”

Morgan rubbed her eyes with her free hand.

“All of these containers have…” she allowed her voice to trail off.

“Vast amounts of explosives,” the android said with a nod. “Yes.”

22

Vere was back in her body. She was aware that her friends had arrived to rescue her and that she was no longer at the Circle of Sorrow. For the first time in two years, she was in a different portion of the prison than the places where she slept, ate all of her meals, or labored away. She even registered the nearby blaster fire and the sounds of Morgan and Traskk and Pistol trying to figure a way out of the mess.

But still she remained on the floor, thinking about everything Mortimous had told her. She remained there not because her mind had warped or wasted away under the suffering she had endured, but because the conversation she had just had with Mortimous was more important than anything else at the moment. While the urgency of his message had been clear and was certainly vital in her thoughts, the dreaded possibility existed that she might forget it the way she could forget a vivid dream only seconds after waking. Because of this, she kept replaying his words in her head, over and over, until they were so ingrained in her memory that there was no way she could forget them.

Occasionally, when she was calm, she would get the feeling that another being or beings were close by and that she was returning to the void she had visited so often. Now, though, she resisted the urge to continue speaking with Mortimous until she was free of the prison and had enacted his message.

“They’re nearby,” she had said to him minutes earlier, referring to the aliens that weren’t burdened by the limits of time or space and because of that could perform feats that humans thought extraordinary.

“They are always nearby,” Mortimous had replied. “It’s just that you only have a fleeting sense of them when you are most at peace.”

“When can I see them?”

Mortimous had laughed. It was a laugh that used to make her want to strangle him. Now, though, she understood it for what it was—the joy of a man sharing his insight.

“You know,” he had said, “Galen used to ask me the same thing. So did your mother. So does everyone who follows this path.”

“The members of the Word.”

Mortimous had laughed again. “No one signs up to the Word. There is no organization to join. You are simply following a path that takes you to that which cannot be given a name.”

“Galen said the same thing when I saw him in the cave.”

Her vision of Mortimous had flickered then, just as Mortimous began telling her once more about the round table. That was the moment Traskk had gripped her shoulder out on the prison grounds. Vere was pulled back into the Cauldrons of Dagda. Controlling her breathing, she tried to get back to that place of calm that would allow her to communicate with Mortimous.

Until her friends arrived, the guards could have been whipping her physical body and she wouldn’t have known. It was trivial in comparison to the things Mortimous told her: that she would be freed from the prison, that she was going to do great things. About the round table.

Now, Mortimous was gone. Her consciousness had returned to her physical body.

Traskk was beside her. Good old Traskk. Dependable Traskk. And Morgan. What was there to say about her? Volatile Morgan? Stubborn Morgan?

Vere had endured what no one thought possible. She had survived the Cauldrons of Dagda.

Survivor? Was that her own word? How different the options were than when the question had first been posed to her. Ages ago, she would have been described as thief or hooligan or irresponsible.

Behind her, more shouting erupted. Then, more blaster fire, and a moment later, Morgan’s voice.

“If we don’t get out of here immediately, we’re all going to be blown sky high.”

With a groan, Vere pushed herself up to her feet and asked what she could do.

23

“What should I do?” Cade asked, his voice loud and strained.

Outside the Pendragon, a squad of troopers were checking the ship’s ramp and emergency hatch to see if either were unlocked. As soon as they discovered both were secured shut, they would begin setting up explosives and force their way in. After that, Cade was a goner. With a blaster, he would be able to keep the initial wave of Vonnegan troops away, but it would be a matter of time until more descended. And of course they could simply radio back to the Thunderbolts and have them launch a series of proton torpedoes, destroying the Pendragon while it still rested in the docking station.

“I used to work security,” Cade shouted. “Security! I’m supposed to be arresting people, not getting arrested myself.”

“Calm down,” Quickly said, assessing the situation as the Griffin Fire raced toward the spaceport again.

Only half of the original squadron of Thunderbolts were still chasing him. The other half were either liquid metal floating in the lava seas or else were junk floating in space. Now that a second Athens Destroyer had arrived, however, it was a matter of time until another contingent of fighters began launching from their landing bays. As soon as that happened, the skies would be swarming with Thunderbolts. Furthermore, there would be two Destroyers ready to confront the Griffin Fire instead of one. No matter how fast Vere’s ship was, it couldn’t last forever under those circumstances.

“Hang tight,” Quickly said, taking the Griffin Fire up a little, then jamming the yoke forward so the ship began to nosedive straight toward the lava.

“Hang tight?” Cade said. “They’re going to blow a hole in the side of Morgan’s ship and you want me to hang tight? Do you know what she’ll do to me if I let them damage her ship?”

Quickly couldn’t help but smile as he plummeted toward the deadly red lava. Even with a squad of troopers trying to get into the ship he was sitting in, Cade was more afraid of Morgan’s reaction to her ship getting wrecked than he was of becoming a prisoner at the Cauldrons.

Quickly altered his descent slightly so he was now diving toward the edge of the spaceport rather than the lava seas beyond it. As the Griffin Fire dropped through the air, the individual ships parked at the dock came into view. Pulling back on the throttle, he slowed the Griffin Fire to a free fall. The Thunderbolts behind him easily caught up with him and began firing. The Pendragon was clearly visible now. If he maintained his heading, he would crash into it and destroy both vessels.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Cade asked, but Quickly ignored him.

As soon as the first Thunderbolt pilot connected with a laser blast to the back of the Griffin Fire, Quickly began jerking the ship’s controls back and forth, causing it to roll to either side while continuing straight at the parked ship below.

“Morgan would kill you if she knew you’re putting her ship in danger,” Cade said, although he sounded more concerned with his own health.

The Thunderbolts kept firing, but couldn’t hit the zigzagging Griffin Fire. In the process, they did Quickly’s work for him. Their errant shots peppered the spaceport deck, taking out half of the troopers that had been gathered around the Pendragon and causing the other half to scatter for cover. Because it was their own ships firing on the Vonnegan troops and not the Griffin Fire, the Thunderbolt pilots still hadn’t taken notice of the Pendragon.

Quickly adjusted the Griffin Fire’s trajectory so it was pitched slightly forward. Now, he would miss colliding with the Pendragon but was once again on a course straight into the molten seas. The Thunderbolts continued to follow him. Alarms began blaring, alerting him that the Griffin Fire would burn up if he didn’t do something fast. He was only seconds from plunging directly into the lava when he released an ion depth charge and brought the ship up as sharply as the controls would allow. The Griffin Fire was parallel with the lava for a split second, alarms screaming, then was racing up toward the sky again.

The Thunderbolts followed right behind. But just as they began to climb up and away from the lava, the depth charge triggered from just beneath the sea’s surface and sprayed lava fifty yards in the air. Two Thunderbolts had superheated liquid rock splash across their wings. One was able to angle away from the lava fields, but with its wings melting, it could only maintain course for a few moments before losing control. The Thunderbolt crashed into the far side of the spaceport, erupting in a mighty explosion. The other melting Thunderbolt careened out over the vast lava sea. The pilot could have ejected but that would have only shot him up into the air and, after the thrusters in his navigator’s space armor were deployed, the pilot would have only fallen toward the lave more slowly, giving him a minute or two to watch death creeping up toward him. Better to crash and dissolve in an instant, which is exactly what the Thunderbolt pilot did.