The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (31 page)

He watched with helpless frustration as the mechs got closer and closer to CamaLon’s perimeter wall. Just as he was about to swoop down and shoot a pair of them, a trio of Thunderbolts began taking aim at his engines. An alert let him know his shields were still fine—for now—but that he couldn’t afford to let any more Vonnegan ships behind him.

The worst part was that because he was flying above the battlefield he could clearly see one entire zone of the Round Table defenses was undefended. Mowbray’s mechs had a clear path to getting into the capital or else attacking Vere’s forces from the side. And yet, right after evading the three Thunderbolts and setting his weapons systems to target the largest cluster of mechs, another Thunderbolt hit the left wing of his Llyushin fighter with a pair of laser blasts before he could send any proton torpedoes down to the ground.

Surrey, in a Llyushin fighter on the far side of the battle, said into the comm for all the other pilots to hear: “I just blew a Thunderbolt into so many pieces I don’t even think there’ll be debris left over.”

While Quickly liked to remain silent so he could focus on the task at hand, Surrey was the exact opposite. He couldn’t shut up, using the microphone to give a running commentary of everything he did and saw.

“I swear, the Thunderbolt pilot behind me has to have the worst aim of any fighter pilot I’ve ever seen,” Surrey announced with a chuckle.

Far overhead, in the space above Edsall Dark, Quickly saw a lone Solar Carrier and a lone Athens Destroyer break away from the rest of their respective fleets. From the way the other ships in both armadas remained in formation, he could tell that neither vessel had permission to do what they intended. Instead of having a duel between the two great flagships, the rest of the Vonnegan fleet locked their cannons on the Solar Carrier, easily wiping it away. The fleet of Solar Carriers did the same to the lone Athens Destroyer.

The rest of the captains, seeing what happened when they broke from formation, stayed exactly where they were supposed to be.

“I could be blindfolded and I’d have better aim than this poor sucker behind me,” Surrey said.

Down below, the fields of Aromath the Solemn were obscured by explosions, so many that Quickly couldn’t always tell who was firing at who or what was being destroyed.

As he turned to assess another section of the fighting, a jolt caused his Llyushin fighter to shake as it flew. An alarm began to sound. Another pair of Thunderbolts had come up behind him and shot the top of his ship. Each area of his shields was getting weak.

Shaking his head, Quickly abandoned the idea of giving any help to those down below on the ground and flew next to a Thunderbolt that had no idea he was there until the two Thunderbolts behind him, still firing, accidently hit their fellow Vonnegan ship.

“Partner,” Surrey said, “You need any help over there?”

“I’m fine,” Quickly said.

Surrey laughed again.

81

Frustrated with how long it had taken the trench machine to burrow to the Vonnegan side of the field and sure that Mowbray’s forces would be ready for her squad to burst through the surface there, Morgan decided a change of plans was called for.

“Here,” she said to her soldiers, looking at her wrist display.

The device’s visual indicated that a Vonnegan trench machine had passed directly over them minutes earlier. Rather than continue walking behind her own machine and bursting out of an opening that the Vonnegan troopers would be able to detect ahead of time, she told her logistics specialist to have their trench digger alter its course slightly so it would connect with the tunnel already dug by the enemy trencher.

Signaling to her soldiers, she had them back away a safe distance on the chance that the ceiling might collapse when her trench machine tried to connect to the existing Vonnegan tunnel. Once it did and she was sure the path was clear, they would have a clear shot to the heart of the Vonnegan side of the battlefield. She would be within striking distance of Mowbray within minutes.

The plan worked. At least for two minutes.

“Do you hear something?” one of her soldiers asked almost as soon as they were beginning to make their way through the Vonnegan tunnel.

Without a trencher in front of them, they could all now hear each other without the need for the earpiece communicator.

Impatient and wanting to kill Mowbray as soon as possible, she barely paused in her stride. She was just about to say she didn’t hear anything when she stopped.

“I hear it too,” another soldier announced.

The ground began to tremble but her feet were still numb due to walking behind a trench machine for so long. She wasn’t sure if the tunnel actually was shaking until she reached over and touched the wall.

“It’s getting louder,” one of the soldiers said.

Each CasterLan squad member was looking at her to tell them what to do, but she couldn’t tell what the noise was or why it was getting louder. The Vonnegan trench machine had already passed by and was almost a mile further up the way. That much she was sure of. The Vonnegan troops that would be following behind it would also be in the opposite direction, getting further away from her rather than nearer. Yet, the noise her soldiers had heard was getting louder. And although she couldn’t be sure, she thought the intensity of the tremors was increasing.

Then she saw it. A hundreds yards away, in the darkness.

A second Vonnegan trench machine was coming through the same tunnel that the first machine had carved out. It wasn’t registering on her display, however, probably because it was still near the Vonnegan epicenter and the Round Table forces charged with detecting underground threats hadn’t yet detected it.

She groaned and shook her head.

Her soldiers were still looking at her to tell them what to do. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? If she were organizing the trench machines, she would have done the same thing. This way, a second machine could pass through the already created tunnel at a faster pace, then alter directions and create a secondary tunnel just before reaching the CasterLan forces on the other side of the field.

The trench machine couldn’t be missed now. It didn’t have lights on the front of it because anything other than the drills and cutters and compression plates would be ripped apart by the rocks and dirt that the machine was funneling away. The machine relied purely on internal sensors. Sensors that wouldn’t stop if a group of people were standing in its way.

“General Le Fay?” one of the soldiers said.

They could head back the way they had come, but her own trench machine was now blocking their way back where she had it merge paths with the Vonnegan tunnel.

The approaching trench machine was close now, a black mass of deadly sounds thundering through the dark tunnel, a steady tremor like a constant earthquake. The knees of everyone around Morgan were shaking from the force of the quivering ground as much as from fear.

“Back up,” she told them, also motioning with her hand in case the machine was too loud for them to hear her through their speakers.

Turning to face the trench machine, she shook out her hands like a prize fighter between rounds, forcing herself to relax. There was nowhere to go on either side of the machine, no possibility of sneaking past it. The trencher filled every inch of space in the tunnel. There was only the machine itself and the ground that encircled it. The giant trencher came closer and closer.

Taking a deep breath, letting her shoulders bounce up and down, she mumbled, “This is how legends are made.”

A glimmer of black air swirled around either side of her Meursault blade when she brought it up in front of her. Then she was off, racing to meet the giant machine before it could get any closer to her soldiers. A trail of black mist followed behind her as she went.

Even with a tunnel already carved out ahead of it, the trench machine was only moving at the speed of a slow jog. Only yards away from the tips of its grinders and drills, Morgan eyed the exact spot where she would attack. Without another thought, she brought the sword up, down, and around in a series of quick strokes. Each time the Meursault blade came in contact with the trench machine’s plates and drills, it was the machine that got torn apart rather than her sword. She inched backward as the Vonnegan goliath continued forward, slicing the front of the machine back and forth as it continued toward her. The trench machine ground up stones, metals, and minerals into powder, and yet when the Meursault blade sliced into it, the plates and drills were slashed easily in half. After two dozen slashes of her sword, pieces of reinforced plating fell to the side. Entire sections of drills, thicker than her torso, hit the ground, where they were ground to pieces by the very machine they had come from.

The machine was still coming forward, though. Looking behind her, she saw her soldiers a dozen yards behind her, no room to retreat any further. And still she was slicing, bringing the blade down, up, and from side to side.

After having carved away all of its front drills and plating, a hole appeared. An opening into the trench machine’s cockpit. The Vonnegan driver was still in his seat. But now, instead of looking at the sensor displays in front of him, he was looking into the actual tunnel, at Morgan holding her blade, and at the dark mist that lingered in the air where her weapon traveled. The driver’s purple eyes became huge. Without another thought, Morgan jumped through the opening, then rolled as she hit the cockpit floor. The driver, stunned at what he was seeing, had just enough time to reach for the service blaster by his side before he saw a streak of light come at him. It was the last thing he would ever see.

Without pausing, Morgan reached down and turned off the trench machine’s engine. Slowly, over the course of another minute, it got quieter and moved slower.

When the machine was silent and motionless, Morgan stuck her head back through the opening she had cut into the trencher and said, “Come on. We don’t have all day.”

One by one, her soldiers climbed through the hole she had carved into the machine’s front end and emerged from the rear. They were off again, running toward the place where Mowbray’s machines had come from. His command center.

82

A different kind of chaos was unfolding in a tunnel on the other side of the field. A quarter of Hector’s squad had died when the tunnel ceiling collapsed and a Vonnegan trench machine had fallen on them. Another quarter had died in the first moments of the ensuing firefight.

True to his word, rather than saving himself, Hector focused only on protecting those around him. With one enormous hand, he leaned over, grabbed a dazed CasterLan soldier, and tossed him back ten feet, behind the protection of some rocks. With his other hand, he grabbed another soldier who no longer knew where she was or what she was doing and threw her backwards as well. When he saw the Vonnegan troopers take aim on a pair of his soldiers, he tilted his energy platform forward and raced over to them. A second later, his soldiers protected, he leaned as far back as possible so the transport disk was in front of him, momentarily perpendicular with the ground. Instead of hitting him, all of the Vonnegan lasers dissipated into the energy disc around Hector’s waist. As soon as the Vonnegan troops realized that continuing to shoot was pointless, Hector brought his energy platform down, shot two times, and took out both Vonnegans.

There was still blaster fire everywhere, however. He turned to tell one of his soldiers to retreat, but before he could, the man was hit in the chest with a laser blast and collapsed to the ground.

“No!”

Hector positioned himself in front of three more CasterLan troops. Only an arm’s length away from where he was hovering, however, another of his men was hit by a Vonnegan laser.

Faster than any man with two legs could move, Hector’s energy disc carried him across the tunnel. He brought his staff blaster down on the heads of two Vonnegan troopers. A laser blast hit his arm.

Racing to neutralize the enemy before another shot could be fired, he roared with anger. He got there just in time to rip the blaster from the Vonnegan trooper’s hands. Enraged, he picked the armored Vonnegan up over his head. Then, heaving with all of his strength, Hector threw the soldier ten yards down the tunnel, where the trooper collided with two more of the enemy.

Another laser blast hit him, this time in the stomach. He grimaced, then zipped over to the trooper and ripped his helmet off so fiercely that he almost took the Vonnegan’s head off with it. The arm that had already been shot once was hit by a second laser blast.

Vonnegan troops were all around him. Seeing that they could easily kill the few remaining CasterLan squad members once their leader was out of the way, they turned all of their attention to Hector. Five fired at him from one side and six from the other side. Three made their way closer to him, the blades of their vibro staffs glowing and ready to cut him down.

“Curse all of you!” he screamed, then took a proton grenade in one hand and removed the pin.

Rather than toss it down the tunnel, though, he simply let the explosive roll off his fingertips and hit the ground in front of him. The Vonnegan troopers, thinking Hector had a matter of seconds to live, stopped firing and watched.

A split second before the proton grenade detonated, Hector brought the full weight of his enormous arms and torso down on his energy platform, lowering it and tilting it forward. When the grenade detonated, it didn’t kill Hector at all. Instead, his energy disk channeled the explosive force forward at the Vonnegan troopers, wiping out six of them. Another two were buried under rock. The blast also pushed Hector through the air like a tidal wave, causing him to crash into the group of five Vonnegan troops behind him, each of whom gurgled and screamed as giant muscular hands crushed their armor and broke them in half.

As the number of Vonnegan troops began to dwindle, Hector’s few remaining soldiers regrouped and were able to either hit the last of the enemy units or else force them to retreat.