The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (9 page)

Predictably, all of the Thunderbolts took up pursuit, ignoring any other possible threat that could be near the spaceport. Cade was once again alone and safe.

Without front shields, Quickly couldn’t race straight ahead for too long without any evasive maneuvers. The closer he got to the Athens Destroyer, the easier it would be for the flagship to hit him. Laser blasts sailed past the Griffin Fire from behind him. The ship was at its top speed, too fast for the Thunderbolts to keep up with, but the pilots were still hoping for an errant shot to hit the mark. Two of the Thunderbolts accidently hit the much larger, much easier target in front of the Griffin Fire—the Athens Destroyer. Although the blasts did no damage, Quickly couldn’t help but smile at the amount of trouble that the responsible pilots would get in when they returned to their flagship.

Alarms began sounding inside the Griffin Fire’s cockpit. A moment later, the assortment of cannons alongside the Athens Destroyer came to life. Wide beams of energy shot toward his ship, but Quickly was so close to them by the time they started firing that only one volley of shots had any chance of hitting him, and even those missed entirely. One of the dots on his screen vanished. The Athens Destroyer had accidently destroyed one of its own fighters.

Quickly discharged a single ion bomb right next to the Athens Destroyer, then turned in a tight half circle and began racing back toward the planet and the Thunderbolts that were rapidly closing the distance.

Another round of cannon blasts erupted from the Destroyer. Quickly sent the Griffin Fire into a spiral and watched as every shot sailed past the cockpit and into the distance. Again, one of the flagship’s cannons hit the wrong target; a laser beam, over a yard wide, hit one of the Thunderbolts, which exploded into hundreds of pieces.

As fast as the Griffin Fire was, Quickly was confident he could keep up this game of chase-the-leader as long as he needed. Maybe Cade was right. Maybe this was going to be easier than they thought. It went against all of his superstitions as a pilot to humor such a thought, but he had to admit this part of the plan was working.

The galaxy instantly proved that it wasn’t only words that could jinx pilots, but also thoughts. Quickly’s temporary moment of confidence was immediately ruined by two things. The first was the ship’s sensors beeping an alert that another extremely large vessel was entering the area. Another Athens Destroyer, which also meant a minimum of another dozen Thunderbolts. The other thing that turned his stomach was the sight of a squad of Vonnegan guards in full armor out on the platform of the Terror-Dhome spaceport. Each carried a heavy assault blaster. The group had surrounded the Pendragon and was looking for a way to gain access inside the vessel. Cade would either have to defend the ship and thus draw the attention of the Thunderbolts, or else he would sit there and let the Vonnegan troops capture the ship that everyone was supposed to get away in.

20

“Balor is wreaking havoc,” Le Savage shouted.

The warden of the Cauldrons could no longer look down from the control room windows and see the monster. Instead, he had to watch a monitor that showed various parts of the facility. On one, Balor was seen tearing apart the prisoner intake station. Twice, guards had been sent to stop the one-eyed goliath, and both times they had shriveled up into corpses within seconds. There was nothing Le Savage could do but watch until additional reinforcements were sent in.

It wasn’t only Balor that was driving him into a fit of rage, however. It was also the fact that the ion cannon that was supposed to be used to kill the raiders had instead been used to destroy much of the perimeter wall where Le Savage’s guards had been positioned. It was only by sheer luck that the section of wall containing the control room hadn’t been hit.

His colonel stepped forward but said nothing.

“Speak up,” Le Savage growled. “Don’t just stand there.”

“Well, sir, on the bright side, Balor is also blocking the raiders’ only way out. They can’t get off the prison grounds until the tunnel is cleared. So they’re trapped. We have all the time we need.”

Le Savage prided himself on being a man of self-restraint. When his guards on top of the wall had been given regular assault blasters rather than sniper blasters, he hadn’t sent anyone to their death. Instead, he recorded the officer who had made that poor decision and ensured the man would be transferred to a small and remote prison somewhere less prestigious than the Cauldrons. Someone else in his security detail had thought it a good idea to keep the only passage open, allowing Balor to pass through and cause havoc, thus stalling any other efforts to get to the raiders. Through it all, Le Savage was proud of himself for not killing anyone unfortunate enough to be in the control room with him. He hadn’t even struck anyone. But this last comment made his jaw set and flex.

“All the time we need?” he asked, stepping toward his colonel. “All the time we need?”

The colonel took a tiny step backward, hoping that Le Savage wouldn’t come any closer. Le Savage took hold of both of the colonel’s lapels.

“All the time we need? Say it one more time.”

The colonel winced. When he tried to take another small step away, he noticed that his own legs were no longer in control of where he went. Instead, Le Savage’s grip was keeping him off balance enough to control his movement.

The colonel cringed again, then mumbled, “All the time we—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Le Savage had him off the ground, pivoting on his hip and using all of the leverage to throw the colonel over his shoulder. The officer crashed through the glass of the command center that overlooked the prison grounds and the molten sea. For hundreds of yards, the colonel screamed as he fell through the air. The yelling only stopped when his body splashed into the lava and vanished.

“All the time we need,” Le Savage said, laughing now.

On a different video feed, something caught his eye. Movement. The intruders had somehow moved into the prison’s main ventilation shaft. Access to it had been protected with a layer of flexible metal screening that ensured no prisoner could get through. Not only that, but the screen was held fast by a series of locks that only three people on the prison grounds could access.

“How?” he mumbled.

Then he saw something else. The raiders’ leader acted as if she were withdrawing something from her waist but nothing was there. When she moved to the side, however, the angle changed slightly and Le Savage saw that what had seemed like an invisible tool was actually a sword. But not just any sword.

Turning to the other officers who were still in the command center, he yelled, “I want them dead. Right now! I don’t care how. If they aren’t dead in the next ten minutes, all of you will take their place.”

The officers looked at each other for a moment, then ran out of the room. Looking back at the screen, Le Savage saw the woman’s Meursault blade slice through another layer of the supposedly impenetrable mesh as if it were made of string.

21

Pistol had been the first to notice the air vent.

“Not even a prison would have only one passageway,” he said, wrapping his fingers through the flexible mesh that covered the exhaust system’s opening.

With the one arm he had remaining, he entwined his fingers through the metal strips and pulled. No matter how much force he used, however, it wouldn’t tear. Traskk motioned for him to move aside, then, with Vere still draped over one of his shoulders, used his claws and fangs. The only result was Basilisk saliva on the cage and sparks flying from where his long teeth scraped across it. The protective metal was undamaged. Stepping back, he wound up his hips and slammed his tail against it. Instead of tearing, the fence remained intact. Traskk’s tail simply bounced off.

Morgan withdrew her sword and the mesh was gone before Traskk and Pistol could step back to give her more room. A trail of silvery mist lingered where the flexible metal grating had been.

Sheathing the Meursault blade, she gave a polite smile and said, “Okay, where to next?”

Pistol’s glowing eyes looked left, then right. Pointing diagonally away from the passage they had entered through, he said, “The Pendragon is in that direction.”

All they had to do was follow a system of ventilation shafts toward Morgan’s ship and they would eventually get away from the Cauldrons. They were only halfway down the second tunnel, however, when blaster fire erupted.

They retreated a few yards until they were safely tucked away in a side passage. Peeking out, Morgan saw a group of eight troopers in purple and grey armor, all with blasters. Three laser blasts zipped past her face. As soon as she withdrew to the safety of the side passage, the blaster fire stopped. Even so, she could hear the Vonnegan troops running down the hallway, getting closer with each step. When she leaned forward to see exactly how close they were, the shooting began again. One laser hit the hallway directly in front of her face, causing sparks to spray her eyes and making her curse.

From behind her, she heard a series of mumbled phrases. “Your word... the round table...”

Vere was blinking over and over as if regaining consciousness and an awareness of her surroundings.

Traskk growled a series of noises to her even though her head and upper body were hanging over his back.

The only thing Vere said in response was, “The round table is the solution.”

“Ignore her,” Morgan said. “She’s out of it.” Then, to Pistol, she added, “We can’t go that way any more.”

From the silence, she knew the troopers had stopped moving forward and were waiting a safe distance away for the raiders to make the next move. If Morgan were one of the Vonnegans, she would have done the same thing. After all, she and her friends had only short range weapons: her sword and Traskk’s ion axes. If they had blasters of their own, it would be a different matter, but they had nothing in their arsenal that could get to the troopers before they were blasted away.

Pistol turned in every direction while his eyes glowed.

Looking down the side tunnel they had stepped into, he said, “This leads back to the main entry. There will be even more troops that way.”

Traskk growled something that Morgan couldn’t understand, but she assumed he was warning that Balor would also be in that general direction.

Even though the Basilisk and the monster had become temporary friends, it was likely Balor was on a rampage and wouldn’t have the sense to think about who he killed. That direction was certain death.

To their right was the exit back into the prison yard. To their left were the Vonnegan troops. Straight ahead was the metal of the tunnel they had been walking along. Morgan asked Pistol what was on the other side of it. The android’s eyes lit up again, but then went dark and he shook his head.

“My sensors cannot penetrate that metal.”

“Is there a chance lava will pour in?” she asked, knowing that if she sliced a hole in the wall only to have the molten sea start filling the tunnel, they would all be dead in a matter of seconds.

Pistol shook his head and said, “We are slightly above sea level. At worst, you’ll cut an opening that looks out to the lava oceans.”

That was all she needed to hear. A small wisp of silver vapor followed the Meursault blade through the air as she withdrew it, stepped forward, and slashed through the metal wall. Blaster fire erupted once more as she stepped out into the tunnel. One blast nicked the edge of her back. Another skimmed her boot. One even deflected off the Meursault sword’s invisible blade, ricocheting back down the tunnel toward the troops.

Her sword tore through the metal wall without any resistance. After a second and third slash—lasers still streaking mostly past her, but one hitting her arm and another singeing her hair—a large triangle had been cut into the wall. Traskk pulled her back to the safety of the side tunnel, then stepped forward and slammed his tail against the triangle cuts. The metal groaned as it slid away from the rest of the wall. Instead of looking out into the molten sea as they had feared, Traskk peered into a cavernous room almost as large as the prison grounds.

Before he was able to get back to the cover of the side tunnel or proceed into the new room, two blaster shots hit the thickest part of his tail. He roared and looked as if he were so angry he might charge right at the entire collection of Vonnegans. Morgan tugged on his vest and reminded him that Vere was still over his shoulder and in harm’s way.

They could stay where they were. If they did, though, it was a matter of time until troops appeared at the other end of the tunnel and flushed them out. They could retreat to the prison grounds and have nowhere else to hide. Or they could take the option they knew nothing about. With a shrug, Morgan jumped across the open hallway and into the hole in the metal wall. Blaster fire flew down the hallway, but all of it was too late to hit her. Rolling over her shoulder as she landed, she found her footing in the newly accessible room. Pistol went next. Then Traskk, with Vere muttering nonsense the entire time.

“Where are we?” Morgan asked.

Pistol’s eyes began to rotate from left to right as he scanned the room. There were large metal cargo crates all over the room. Next to each crate were color-coded signs in a language they didn’t understand.

“Unsure,” he said. “Processing.”

Laying Vere on the ground, Traskk bent down and dug his claws in between the floor and the thick metal triangle that Morgan had cut away. With the muscles in his legs rippling, he lifted. A blaster appeared through the opening of the wall, but before the trooper could aim it at anyone, Traskk drove the chunk of wall forward. The blaster and the hand that had been holding it fell to the ground as hundreds of pounds of metal slid back into place before the trooper could pull his arm out.

With the wall back in place, the reptile bent over, grabbed the blaster out of the gloved hand, and tossed it to Morgan.

She and Pistol ran in separate directions, each looking for another door. Traskk stayed by Vere’s side, hissing words in Basilisk in an attempt to help her regain her senses. As he did, she pushed herself up so she was sitting on the ground. While he watched, she continued to blink over and over as if understanding where she was.