The Green Knight (Space Lore Book 1) (35 page)

78

In the light of Edsall Dark’s smaller sun, every part of the king’s chambers was cast in a burnt red except where the setting sun shown against the king’s gold linens and the tapestries arranged between each window. These were the few parts of the room that glowed orange as day gave way to night.

In front of a tapestry with the CasterLan family crest sewn into it, a streak of orange vapor cut through the air where Vere’s blade came racing down at Modred. When he deflected it, instead of the clang of metal on metal that occurred with any other type of sword, a thundering boom sounded and sparks sprayed in every direction.

He took a step back so he was standing in front of the last remnants of sunlight, then swung back at her. The blade couldn’t be seen, but the spot where it tore through the air left a trail of red vapor behind it. When he moved back another step, in front of the next tapestry, his next swing left an orange trail.

So light was Vere on her feet that she didn’t even have to deflect his swing. Instead, Modred’s Meursault sword slashed a line straight through the marble floor they were both standing on. He swung again. Again he missed. And this time his blade cut a line through the curved metal girders that gave the room its structure.

She stepped to the side, then swiped her hand at him. Although the blade could only be seen when she curved the sword to the side, a line of vapors showed where the Invisible Death had passed through the air. Modred brought his sword up just in time to deflect the swing.

A boom sounded. The room was showered with sparks of light that disappeared as quickly as they had formed.

“You’re no one,” Modred hissed. “You’re a drunk. A thief.”

“Does it bother you that a drunken thief is getting the upper hand on you so easily?” she said, smiling.

He bellowed a cry of indignation, then brought his sword down through the air. Again, it missed Vere and sliced through the marble by her feet. Immediately, he swung again, this time from side to side, missing her and cutting a stone pillar in half so that hundreds of pounds of rock fell between them.

She brought her arm back, then pitched it down by his ankles. As he brought his own sword down to protect his legs, she swung a second time, this time at his neck. He brought the king’s Meursault blade up to his face just before he would have lost everything above his mouth.

Sparks covered them as the booms echoed in the cavernous room.

He backed away and she followed. He circled and she circled, trying to cut off any space for him to flee. Running out of ideas, he looked at the king’s resting spot in the middle of the room and made a dash for it.

“What are you doing, Modred?” she asked with more impatience than anything else.

But then she saw what he had planned and she gasped. He couldn’t win in a fair fight. Even if he wasn’t the skinny kid she had once known, he was still outmatched. But even more than that, he was mad that he was being handled by someone he so thoroughly despised, someone he regarded as an inferior even though everyone else thought of her as the future of the kingdom. If he couldn’t hurt her, he planned to hurt her father. He was already dead, of course. But she still couldn’t stand the thought of Modred desecrating his corpse. Maybe he would cut the king clean in half. Maybe he would cut off Artan’s head and toss it out the window, letting it fall hundreds of stories and splattering on the ground with so much momentum that no one would be able to identify the remains of their once beloved ruler.

Modred brought his sword back, then let it dash downward. Instead of defending herself, Vere darted forward and stuck her own blade out to deflect his blow. In front of the gold tapestries in the king’s chamber, a trail of orange vapors appeared through the air where the invisible blades raced, booming with a shower of sparks that covered the king’s pale skin.

As soon as Vere defended her father’s body, Modred turned and began attacking her again. When she brought the sword up to defend herself, he changed course and swung for the dead king’s legs. She leapt forward and managed to keep Modred’s swing from cutting anything except the corner of the bed.

After moving to the side and protecting her father’s corpse, Vere said, “You’re a disgrace to everyone who’s ever known you.”

Everywhere they moved, the Meursault blades changed from invisible to visible to invisible once again. Everywhere Vere and Modred swung their weapons, trails of colored vapor lingered in the air, either red or orange depending on where they were in the room.

He was swinging wildly now. Once at her, then at her father. At her father, then at her. After saving her father’s right arm from being cut off, she barely had time to bring her sword up to her side to keep her torso from being cut cleanly in half. Modred swung again, missed, and sliced through another pillar. More rock came tumbling down around them.

He swung at her. She defended. He swung at the king’s body. She defended. Booms of thunder sounded every time their invisible blades collided.

“Fine,” she said after a while, letting her sword drop to her side as she collected her breath. “He’s already dead. Do whatever you want.”

Modred was gasping for breath, trying to collect himself. At first, he thought she was trying to trick him into lowering his weapon. Then he saw her back away and his eyebrows raised.

“You have no pride about anything do you?” he mocked.

“Do it,” she said. “You can’t defeat me, so attack a dead man.”

He grinned and moved toward the king’s body.

“You don’t think I will?”

But her only response was to move another step backward.

He stood at the king’s side for a moment, wondering if he should actually go through with it. Then he shrugged and brought his hand up over his shoulder.

“Modred?”

He turned to look at Vere. She was twelve feet away and no longer a threat. Even so, she was gripping her Meursault blade as if she meant to use it.

Seeing recognition go across his face, she gave him a genuine smile. Then she brought her hand through the air from her right side to her left. A slash of vapor appeared on one side of another pillar, disappeared into it, then reappeared on the other side.

After a slight groan, the stone slid away and a third pillar came crashing down. Rocks fell all around her and she had to jump backward not to be crushed. With three of the four pillars in the room gone, the last stone column had no chance of supporting the entire ceiling.

There was a creak, a crack. Then, without further warning, the entire roof came crashing down into the room. Vere jumped back a second time, toward the doorway, to escape being crushed. Dust flew up everywhere, covering her face and also the Meursault so that its outline was finally visible.

Only when the dust cleared and the sound of rocks falling finally stopped did she step forward. Her father’s bed and body were completely buried.

“Help,” Modred said in a pained whisper. “Help.”

She circled the pile of rocks. Two feet away from the top of the king’s bed, where Modred had been prepared to cut her dead father to pieces, she saw his hands trying without success to move the rocks off of him. She reached forward and removed a boulder, exposing his head. His face was covered in blood. His arms and legs and chest were
 
buried under stone and most likely were crushed. He would soon be dead, no matter what she did. Probably, he wouldn’t live more than another minute or two. She removed two more rocks.

“Modred?”

“Help, please.”

“Modred?”

He blinked back into reality, seeing her standing over him.

“Yes?”

“Don’t go too soon.”

She brought her sword down and sliced through his neck and the surrounding rocks.

79

 
“Will it always be this easy?” Minot asked, looking out at the destruction displayed by the holographic models of the battlefield.

Everywhere he and General Agravan looked, there were destroyed Solar Carriers, some crumbling to pieces, some drifting in space without any ability to fire, move, or defend themselves.

A Llyushin fighter raced past the window of Agravan’s Commander Class Athens Destroyer, followed by three Thunderbolts, which were firing dozens of laser blasts as they pursued it. A moment later, the Llyushin fighter erupted in blue flames and then exploded.

“No,” Agravan said. “Not always this easy. But do not discount our losses. More of our ships have been destroyed than I would have preferred.”

All around them, even though the Vonnegan fleet was going to win the battle and had suffered a fraction of the CasterLan losses, they could still look out any viewport and see an Athens Destroyer that was no longer functioning. Most of the damage had been done by the Crown. Although he would have it disabled soon enough, it wasn’t as quick and easy as simply sending down a missile because the Crown was vaporizing everything within its target radius. That meant his ships had to circle wide of the planet and land where the Crown couldn’t blast them away.

In response to seeing his fleet be destroyed one ship at a time, he had told his officers to move his Destroyer further away, directly behind the portal, where it would be protected.

Nothing was more important than Minot’s safety. Mowbray wouldn’t mind the losses that had been incurred to his fleet. After all, they had still been successful in taking over the CasterLan Kingdom and Mowbray had been the one who guaranteed the Crown wouldn’t be activated; Agravan would have used a different tactical approach if it had been up to him. The only thing that could make this effort be considered a defeat in the eyes of Mowbray was if something happened to Minot. Agravan didn’t like hiding behind the portal—it went against all of his sensibilities as a leader—but if that was what it took to guarantee the future of the Vonnegan Empire, he would do it.

“Have you given thought to which kingdom you might want to invade when you become ruler?” he asked Minot.

“Kingdom?” the boy said, his eyes full of innocence. “Why just one? I was thinking about every kingdom.”

Agravan didn’t bother with a reply other than to smile. He was too proud to do or say anything else.

80

“Any suggestions?” Morgan asked with a sigh.

If she had used that tone when she was serving as lieutenant aboard Hotspur’s Solar Carrier, he would have crushed her windpipe in his massive gloved hand. But since she was sitting on a planet in the early stages of an invasion, the CasterLan fleet all but destroyed, and Hotspur was stuck in the maintenance room of the Tevis-84 portal, she could talk to him any way she wanted.

“Send a ship to come get me,” Hotspur said. “I’ll lead the ground resistance from the capital.”

She looked at the hologram display. To her and the others in the room, it was horrifying. In front of their eyes, an entire kingdom was being destroyed. But to Hotspur, it was inconsequential, part of a play in which he was the lead actor. Behind her, Fastolf stood at attention and mimed orders, his impersonation of Hotspur, and for once she shared in his mocking tone.

She let her chin rest on her hands and shook her head. “There are almost no ships left. Even if we could spare one, it would get blasted out of the sky by the Vonnegan fleet before it was able to get to you and come back.”

Hotspur’s fist smashed a console in front of him. The feed of his holographic image shook and bounced before resettling. Standing alone in the small room right next to the portal, only feet away from the massive energy field that transported ships from one part of the galaxy to another, he looked for something else to take his frustration out on.

“I’m the leader of the combined CasterLan forces,” he growled. “Without me, the army will fall to pieces.”

“The army has already fallen to pieces,” she said. “And, I might add, it did so while under your leadership. The battle is lost. Your fleet is destroyed.”

She watched as Hotspur broke a chair in two pieces with a single punch.

“Then what do
you
propose?” he said.

“The Crown is our only effective defense. The Vonnegan ships have to disperse if they want to survive. But there are still ships coming through the portal.” She let this sink in before she added, “There is no way to shut down the portal, but we have to stop the rest of the Vonnegan fleet from coming through.”

He was silent then, waiting for her to continue, until he realized she had said everything she intended to say. When he connected the dots of her implication, he leaned close to the monitor, his face enlarging on the display in front of her. “Morgan, I know we’ve had our differences, but—”

“Trust me, Hotspur, it’s nothing personal. I would do the same thing if anyone else were in there. Even these guys.” She motioned behind her to Baldwin, Fastolf, and Traskk. Realizing that meant little to Hotspur, she said, “I would do the same thing if the king himself were there. And I would expect the same if I were there. We need to do what’s best for the kingdom.”

“But I’m the leader of the CasterLan forces. Edsall Dark needs me to command the ground fighting.”

“It doesn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “It simply doesn’t.”

While she spoke, she entered a new target into the Crown’s system, and the five-headed cannon revolved slowly to move into position.

“Then I will die a hero,” Hotspur said, composing himself, straightening his uniform as best as he could.

“You attacked an innocent ship—”

“I was following orders!”

She ignored this and continued “—in enemy territory. You had to know war would result.”

“I was following my king’s orders!”

“It was your duty to question them if they could result in war and suffering, not to blindly obey them. You’re as much to blame for this war as the Vonnegan general. Your fleet is lost. Your king is dead. You won’t be remembered as a war hero, Hotspur. You’ll be remembered as a traitor to peace, a warmonger who craved battle and glory more than the lives of those you were sworn to defend… and entrusted to command.”

Another Athens Destroyer had begun to come through the portal. When Hotspur started to repeat the only thing he could think to say to defend himself, that he was needed in order to lead the ground resistance, she let out a deep breath and punched the glowing red button in front of her.