The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (17 page)

34

“Vere.”

Pistol was crouched above her when she opened her eyes.

“There is a ship above us,” the android said, without any urgency or alarm.

“Just one?”

Pistol nodded.

“Is it a CasterLan ship?”

“Doubtful. It’s running on a pair of Type III LACE ion engines. There are no registered ships in your father’s fleet with that configuration.”

She gave a soft whistle, which echoed through the system of caves. Traskk immediately stirred awake and, using the muscles in his tail, silently pushed himself into a standing position.

“Get the others awake,” she said. “We need to move out.”

As the android followed through with the command he had been given, Vere put dirt on top of the embers remaining from the campfire that had kept them warm for the few hours of rest they had managed.

One by one, Occulus, Fastolf, and the others wiped sleep away from their eyes and groaned as they got to their feet. It would take an hour of walking just to loosen up their legs and to be able to take a step without limping. It turned out that the worst thing you could do to prepare yourself for an extremely long hike was sit in a bar for years on end.

Traskk walked up to her and hissed a series of noises.

“Whoever it is,” she said, referring to what she guessed was another bounty hunter who was biding his time, “is probably worried that if he shoots where he can’t see, he’ll just block us in and make it harder to kill us.”

Looking up, even though all he could see was stone, Baldwin said, “Why doesn’t he just drop in from above or sneak up behind us?”

Morgan wiped dust and grime off her pants. “I hope you’re a better physician than you are a bounty hunter. Whatever is up there would break its legs trying to scale down the rock face fast enough to get us before we got it. And it would be an even easier target than we are if it tried to follow us into the rock tunnels.”

Vere shook her head and sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly personable?”

For once, Morgan ignored her.

“So what do we do then?” Baldwin asked, as if Morgan were the one leading them through the mountains.

“Keep going.”

“And let it attack us as soon as we get out of this maze of rocks?”

“We have to actually get through the mountains first. If we don’t do that, we’ll never get back to CamaLon in time. What other option do we have? If we head in another direction, the bounty hunter’s systems will still eventually find us. If we wait in here and play a game of patience, there won’t be a CasterLan Kingdom when we do finally get out.”

“Let’s go,” Vere said—her way of agreeing with Morgan without saying as much.

The day before, they had walked in silence for the majority of the time. Now, though, every time someone stepped over a large rock, they grunted in pain as their tired muscles complained with every exaggerated movement. Instead of ignoring their hunger and thirst as they had previously, they commented on it incessantly. Fastolf even withdrew a flask he had kept hidden and passed it over to Vere after taking a gulp himself. She took a sip, handed it back to him, and kept walking.

“You really think now is a good time for that?” Morgan said.

Vere turned and, with her mouth closed and her cheeks sucking inward, stared at the newcomer to their group. “I’m still going to get there the same time I otherwise would. It’s just that I won’t be so grumpy about it.”

Fastolf nodded in agreement, then said, “Don’t worry about her, Vere. If she had any friends they would’ve told her to stop being such a worry-wart a long time ago.”

“I have plenty of friends.”

“Sure you do,” Fastolf taunted.

“I have more friends than you,” Morgan said. “You have these people,” she motioned in front of and behind them, “and that’s just because you keep them too drunk to realize how annoying you are.”

“And you have…” Fastolf said, looking behind a rock and under a stone, then shrugging. “I can’t seem to find anyone who likes you.”

“Remember what I did to your face the last time you annoyed me,” Morgan said.

“Wait.” Fastolf withdrew a leather pouch from his pocket. “Let’s see if you have any pictures of your supposed friends.”

Seeing him with her wallet, she lunged toward him, her hand darting for his neck. Vere was between them, though, and blocked the attack. Morgan turned her attention to Vere, assessing whether or not she would have to go through the supposed future of the CasterLan Kingdom and whether that made any difference to her. Traskk stepped beside all of them and gave a soft growl.

“Give her back her stuff,” Vere said, continuing forward through the caves. Behind her, she heard Morgan catch the small leather bag after Fastolf tossed it to her.

Above them, they ignored the bounty hunter’s vessel as it passed by them again, then faded away.

Moments later, Morgan appeared beside Vere, verifying her money and belongings were all still there. “Have you thought about the Green Knight at all?” she asked.

“Don’t start with me.”

“Not that,” Morgan said, referring to Vere’s obligation to have her head chopped off. “Have you thought about who or what it was that could have its head fall on a bar room floor and then pick it back up as if it didn’t matter?”

“No, can’t say I have.”

“You agreed to enter a contest where you would get your head lopped off and you never stopped to wonder if the Green Knight was an alien, a shapeshifter, or something else?”

“Why would I? I figured I’d chop its head off and it would be a pretty short contest. I was living in the moment.”

Morgan laughed. “And you haven’t bothered to think about it since then?”

They passed under a stone archway where the path widened to twenty feet before once again narrowing until they had to walk in a single file line.

“I’ve been kind of preoccupied by other events. If you haven’t noticed, there have been a bunch of bounty hunters after us.”

Morgan was still chuckling. “I mean, damn, the guy reached down and picked his own head off the ground. That’s not someone I’d want to mess with.”

“Why does it matter?” Vere said.

“Call me old fashioned but I’d want to know who was going to kill me.”

“If you’re going to die, why does it matter what kills you?”

Morgan looked confused. “Because there’s no honor in that.”

This time, it was Vere’s turn to laugh.

“Well, it couldn’t have been an android,” Morgan said, “considering we were in a bar where electronics don’t work.”

As much as she didn’t want to join in the guessing game, Vere said, “It couldn’t have been a man.”

“Then it had to be an alien. Maybe a Frolink.”

Frolinks were the same size as humans but their eyes, mouth, and brain were halfway up their bodies.

Vere shook her head. “Have you ever known a Frolink to speak Basic? They don’t have the tongue for it, literally. And a voice simulator wouldn’t work in the bar.”

“Magic?” Baldwin said.

Everyone stopped walking and stared at him.

It was Occulus who said what everyone else was thinking: “Lord help us survive a physician who believes in magic.”

“I was only trying to think outside the box,” Baldwin mumbled.

Fastolf slapped his belly and said, “I have to admit, it’s really fun trying to guess what might be chopping off Vere’s head a couple days from now.”

After saying this, he offered her the flask again. This time, though, she declined and kept walking.

They walked for another eight hours, taking a short break at three various points through the cave and tunnel system.

“We have to be getting close,” Morgan said, looking at her maps.

After another hour of walking they finally saw their first glimpses of sunlight. Pistol’s skin, which he had illuminated again to show them the path forward, slowly returned to its normal pigment the closer they got to the opening.

Fastolf remained tolerable and relatively mature because of the flask in his pocket. Occulus seemed to shrink within himself, as if vanishing from his physical body was a way to cope with the pain and fatigue of the journey. Twice during their walk, Vere had come up beside him and asked if he was okay to continue and both times he had merely nodded and pushed on ahead.

“And here we are,” Morgan said. “Daylight!”

But when they got around the corner, with natural light coming in everywhere, they saw it was because of an opening above them, not in front of them. They were still only part of the way through the underbelly of the mountains. Everyone groaned in unison. The claws on Traskk’s feet dug into the stony ground with irritation.

Morgan pulled her map back out. “But… I could have sworn…”

Vere turned to Pistol and asked how much further it would be.

The android’s eyes glowed. “Unsure. My systems are affected by the stone all around us.”

“Only one thing we can do,” Vere said and started walking again.

“Maybe the Green Knight was a hologram,” Baldwin said.

“Wouldn’t have worked inside a room with a Treagon barrier.”

“And,” Vere added, “his neck didn’t feel like an image when the axe cut through it.”

“Maybe it was—”

“Enough,” she said. “I don’t want to think about it.”

For an hour, they walked in silence.

Finally, Baldwin said, “Fine, I’ll be the one to ask: how much longer? We have to be lost. We’ve been walking forever. We’re going to end up lost just like Petric the Notorious and his army.”

“Who do you think we plan on eating first?” Fastolf said, grinning and patting Baldwin on his back.

All Baldwin could do in response was cringe and shiver.

“It should only be another two hours,” Morgan said. “I think. Then it should open up and we’ll be clear of the mountains.”

Vere turned to Pistol for his take.

“Based on the scans prior to entering the tunnels and how long we’ve been walking, that sounds accurate.”

 
For a split second, everyone felt good. Then the android added, “We then have to get through the Forest of Tears and the Fields of Aromath the Solemn,” causing everyone to groan again. Even Morgan and Vere.

As they walked, the bounty hunter’s ship passed by another three times. Never, though, did it come into view due to the mountains and rock formations that blocked their view of the sky. Nor did it fire proton torpedoes into the mountains in a rash attempt to kill them.

“Maybe it was a Baltriac Shapeshifter,” Morgan said after a while, and Vere knew she was talking about the Green Knight again.

“Even if it was, any part of it that I chopped off should have caused it significant pain and blood loss. The Green Knight didn’t have either. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by not having a head.”

“Are you going to ask it before it kills you?”

“Ask it what?”

“What it is.”

Fastolf giggled at Morgan’s questions. Vere only sighed and kept walking.

“We are coming up on the mouth,” Pistol said, his skin once again returning to a slightly translucent cream color.

Ahead of them, they could see where the rock tunnels and paths opened up and the mountain pass ended. Just beyond that, a tiny, one-person ship was hovering ten feet off the ground. When they faced it head-on, the ship looked like an eyeball with three wings. Pistol had been right that it wasn’t a vessel from anywhere in the CasterLan Kingdom.

“What do we do?” Occulus asked.

Morgan and Vere looked at each other, as if hoping for the first time that the other would have a plan and speak up. Neither of them did.

It was Baldwin who said, “Well, you said yourself that we can’t turn around or wait it out.”

“Even if I live another hundred years,” Occulus said, “You won’t make me walk back through those mountains again.”

Vere cringed. Morgan sucked air in through her teeth. Traskk growled. All the while, the bounty hunter’s ship hovered above the ground, waiting for them.

“So, what else is there to do?” Baldwin said.

As if to answer, Vere stood up, pulled a pair of blasters from the bag of weapons they had been carrying with them, and ran toward the bounty hunter’s ship, screaming as she fired one blaster and then the other.

35

 
“Your men fear you,” Minot said.

Back in the boy’s private quarters, General Agravan was free to give whatever answer he wished with no concern whether it might hurt the morale of his officers.

“They do not fear me. They understand my expectations and they know they must fulfill those expectations. There is a difference. If you rule your men with only fear, they will follow merely to survive, not because they believe you are capable of leading them. When men follow you out of true loyalty, they will die for you because they believe it’s their purpose.”

“Is it their purpose?”

There was something about the way the boy asked these questions, about the true nature of all things, that put General Agravan in awe of the future of the Vonnegan Empire. The innocence. The curiosity. One day, Minot would rule more of the galaxy than any other ruler in history.

Agravan smiled. “It doesn’t matter if it really is their purpose or not. What matters is that they believe it is.”

“Would they follow my father the same way they follow you?”

“But of course, Minot. I am a mere extension of your father. When they follow me, they are actually following him. They know it. Your father knows it. One day, you will know it.”

For as long as there had been a Vonnegan Empire, it had slowly expanded throughout the galaxy. A tiny bit here, a tiny bit there. Some Vonnegan rulers had claimed only a single planet under the command of a minor warlord. Others had taken over chains of remote planets controlled by gangsters. Monsterac the Conqueror had taken control of an entire sector from the dwindling Rork Kingdom. Only once had the Vonnegan Empire decreased in size. Nearly five hundred years earlier, the crazed tyrant, Muligia the Disastrous had been so unfit for leadership that he did everything except maintain the army. By the time his son killed him, an entire sector had defected. Only seven years later, Muligia’s assassin, Moterath the Loathsome, retook the sector, enslaving everyone who had dared defect.