The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (4 page)

“But I need protection,” Scrope had said.

Mowbray had looked puzzled. “Being part of the Vonnegan Empire is all the protection you need. Who do you think will attack a planet that has the banner of the purple warhawk flying above it?”

Already having tested his new ruler’s patience, Scrope had let the matter drop.

Now, all alone, without an army to ensure his safety, he had hidden himself away in the king’s chambers. Even a small child or an old man who had remained behind could point a blaster and kill him. And Scrope was sure that anyone who was hiding in and around CamaLon would be more than happy to take the shot. Everywhere he went he thought he heard footsteps. Because of that, he stopped going anywhere.

But instead of breaking down the doors to get him, the few people who had remained on the planet had packed up as much as they could from their homes and had gone to live in the forests. There were no signs that anyone else remained in the capital, and yet a clanging or an echo would be heard and Scrope would be sure it was someone coming to get him.

He was the ruler of Edsall Dark. He had finally received the title he had secretly craved his entire political career. And yet the few times he had to restock his food supplies, he found himself scurrying down abandoned hallways and corridors. All of the humans and aliens that had sneaked away in the night were probably making jokes about him. Not even Mowbray took him seriously. Edsall Dark had been turned from the center of the CasterLan Kingdom into the laughingstock of the galaxy.

There was an old saying: If a ruler claps his hands but no one is around to hear him, is he actually a ruler?

Scrope had always believed the question to be foolish. Of course he was! Titles were what counted. It didn’t matter what his subjects thought of him as long as he ruled over them. Now, though, he knew the real answer to the riddle.

A scratching noise sounded behind him.

“Hello?” he said, backing away from the door.

A ranter scurried out from the shadows with a piece of food in its mouth. As Scrope watched, the little rodent darted into a crack between two walls and was gone.

Not even it cared what kind of authority Scrope had. Or thought he had.

7

Morgan, Traskk, Pistol, and Baldwin approached the main prison entrance as fast as they could without drawing attention to themselves. A pair of Vonnegan troopers stood beside a shuttle, neither of them paying any attention to the newcomers as they passed.

“Do you ever wonder how we keep getting into these situations?” Baldwin asked.

Morgan and Traskk walked in silence.

From underneath his hood, Pistol’s monotone voice said, “You keep associating with people who—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Baldwin said. “I mean, isn’t it funny how life works? A couple years ago, who would have guessed we would be trying to sneak
into
the galaxy’s most feared prison?”

Morgan came to an abrupt halt. Turning, she reached out and took hold of the fabric covering Baldwin’s chest. “Two things,” she said. “First, nothing is funny about this. Get your head straight or you won’t make it
out
of the galaxy’s most feared prison. And second, stop talking unless you want to sit in a ship that you don’t know how to operate while Cade comes with us instead.”

“But,” Baldwin began, then saw the look on Morgan’s face and went silent.

Without looking back to see if the others were following, Morgan resumed walking toward the Cauldron’s entrance. In front of them was a wall of black rock that stretched up hundreds of feet. Beams of dark steel crisscrossed the rock, reinforcing it. On top of the wall, guards with blasters walked back and forth, taking turns between looking out at the spaceport on one side and the lava fields and prisoners toiling away on the other side.

The hooded and cloaked group approached a rectangular gap in the rock, the only opening for them to pass through. Even Morgan had to crouch down to get through the passageway without hitting her head. Traskk hunched over so much that he was practically on all fours, and even then he was almost too wide to fit through. His bright green tail slithered back and forth as rock dust fell to the ground after his shoulders and hips squeezed by.

There was little light. Morgan paused inside the entrance until her eyes adjusted. Behind her, Traskk growled a low series of noises. The Basilisk’s eyes could see things her human eyes couldn’t, no matter how long she let them adjust to the darkness.

Pistol offered the translation without needing to be told: “He says we’re approaching the first sensor. There are no guards hidden in the walls.”

Nodding her head, Morgan continued forward again.

Even after being told there were no guards, she couldn’t help but grip the handle of her Meursault blade, which was hidden under her cloak. If the reports she had heard were true, the prison had a sensor that would identify if someone tried to bring blasters into the facility. Supposedly, the warden didn’t care about weapons that couldn’t fire, things like knives or hatchets, because there were guards on top of the walls with sniper blasters, guards on the prison grounds with vibro whips, and a giant one-eyed monster that killed anything it looked at.

Already, the heat was scorching. Morgan and Baldwin were drenched in sweat. Traskk seemed to sink into himself as his body adjusted to the temperature. Only Pistol seemed unaffected.

Hidden in the cracks of stone, tiny insects made clicking and scratching noises. Not liking the sounds, Baldwin let out a steady groan that didn’t stop until Morgan turned and put a hand on his chest.

“Just a little further,” she whispered, and the physician quieted down.

They walked through a series of rock tunnels. Left, then right, then left. She soon got the sense that they were there simply to cause confusion and to slow an attempted escape. None of the tunnels were wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. Morgan guessed that if someone were trying to get away, a series of hidden traps would be initiated and the walls would either seal shut, crush the inmate to death, or else the floor would open up and drop them into the lava that was surely beneath them.

“My goodness, it’s scorching!” Baldwin said.

Morgan turned back, narrowed her eyes, then continued forward again.

It was hot, though. Not even to the second checkpoint yet, she could feel the heat seeping through the stone walls. The heat penetrated the thick material of her boots, burning her feet. Droplets of sweat were trickling into her eyes. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like being forced to perform hard labor amongst the open pockets of lava that were bubbling all around the prisoners.

There were no signs of guards. Yet.

After walking down various zigzagging corridors, the stone walls receded and they came to a metal scanner.

“Just walk through,” Morgan said under her breath. “Act normal.”

She passed through and no alarms went off. She guessed this sensor detected only blasters or explosives. The others passed through without any alarms sounding as well.

The heat was intensifying. Ahead of her, she began to hear the cries of prisoners, some screaming in agony, others begging to be dropped into the lava sooner rather than later.

To their side, they passed a large, open room. On the far wall, a dozen new inmates were being shackled together by a group of guards while the main overseer instructed the latest prisoners on how to conduct themselves if they wanted to survive.

“You live as long as you decide you want to live,” the overseer said.

One of the inmates, a thin alien with swirls of brown and orange in his skin, was crying, knowing he would never see his family again. Another alien, short but stocky and with four long arms, looked down at the ground in front of him without listening to anything he was being told. He already knew he was as good as dead.

The guard saw that none of the inmates had been listening to his speech and, walking down the row, slapped each one across the face.

“Enjoy this smack,” the overseer said. “It’s the softest reminder you’ll get. Wait until you feel a vibro whip hit you. Then you’ll be begging to have me slap you again.”

The other guards in the room laughed, unconcerned with how long the new inmates might live.

Morgan paused, her eyes narrowing. Traskk had seen this before and knew it was never a good sign. He gripped her shoulders with both hands, reminding her why they were there. Grudgingly, she continued ahead without confronting the guards.

In the next room, a trio of Vonnegan troopers were standing against a wall, laughing about a prisoner they had just tossed, still alive and crying, into the lava fields. The troopers stared at the four cloaked people walking through the corridors of the Cauldrons. Keeping her head down, Morgan glanced at them out of the corner of her eye, waiting for them to start toward her. But all three troopers shrugged, each figuring that no one would be there unless they had a reason to be.

After another long hallway, they entered into the next security outpost. Everything was automated, leaving no room for Vonnegan error. Morgan stopped before passing through the scanner. In front of her, beams of light stretched from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.

“Chances are,” she said, turning back to the others, “that our identities will be known as soon as we pass through this scanner. Be quick to follow our plan and we should make it out alive.”

She waited for any of them to say something or to ask a question. All of them remained silent and returned her stare with one of their own. The only noise, other than from the prison yard’s screams and wails, was from Traskk’s tail sliding against the floor.

A green light flickered at the top of the wall. Morgan stepped forward, into the wall of light. The glow of green turned to red once she stepped into it. She paused there while the sensor performed its scan. The beam went through the robes she was wearing, through the hood that was still over her head. It was mapping her face, identifying every aspect of her.

She was just about to turn and say, “See, no problem at all,” when the first alarm started going off.

She threw the hood of her cloak back, said, “Oh well,” then ran forward, into the prison grounds.

Roaring for her to slow down, Traskk did the same. Pistol and Baldwin looked at each other, then at the direction their friends had gone. A second set of alarms began to sound. Remembering that they had already walked past more than a few Vonnegan guards, all of whom were armed, they also ran toward the prison yard.

8

From high atop the prison, Le Savage heard the alarms sound the same time as his guards. As warden of the Cauldrons, he had the galaxy’s most notorious prisoners under his watch. He had a monster roaming the grounds. He even had Mowbray making surprise visits so he could personally see Vere’s anguish and the pain and suffering of the others who had done something to anger the Vonnegan ruler.

Maybe in less strict prisons around the galaxy, the wardens could put their feet up and go to sleep while the facility functioned without them. But not at the Cauldrons, where desperate inmates were constantly trying to kill guards and escape before they could begin serving their sentence. Balor, his giant one-eyed monster, was constantly killing prisoners, which was good. But he was also indiscriminately killing guards, which was a liability Le Savage was forced to accept. Lashing Balor with a vibro whip only angered him. The guards had learned a long time ago to subtly make their way toward a different portion of the prison grounds whenever Balor lumbered toward them. That wasn’t enough, though, to keep Le Savage from needing to constantly request fresh batches of guards from around the Vonnegan Empire.

It simply wasn’t possible for Le Savage to be anywhere but the command center stationed atop the thirtieth floor of the prison wall. Unless he was sleeping, that was exactly where he was.

When the alarms began to sound, he was already on his feet and approaching the guard on the other side of the room.

“Sir,” said one of his senior guards from behind a display in the corner of the command center. “The alarm is coming from Zone 2.”

“Someone trying to break out again?” Le Savage asked.

He couldn’t help but smile, remembering how long it had taken his staff to clean the hallway where the last pair of inmates had tried to make their escape.

His guard was hunched over a holographic display that provided an image of what was happening at each hallway, door, and room of Zone 2.

“No, sir. Trying to get in. Four people.”

Le Savage’s eyebrows raised. “Trying to get in?”

His smile didn’t disappear, though. He merely shrugged and walked over to see the security feed for himself.

“That’s why he’s the ruler,” Le Savage said, but no one around him knew what he was talking about.

What they didn’t know was that Mowbray had told Le Savage that Vere’s friends would eventually try to break her out.

“It’s a death sentence for them to try,” Le Savage had replied.

Mowbray had smiled and put a hand on the warden’s shoulder. “Ensure that it is.”

Month after month, he had waited. Given that most of his prisoners didn’t live very long, he had to admit that after three months had gone by and no one had shown up, he assumed Mowbray had been wrong. After all, it was a matter of time until Vere CasterLan simply died. When a year had passed and still no one had arrived to rescue her, Le Savage stopped expecting that anyone would ever try. He had been looking forward to being able to tell his ruler just how gruesomely the rescue party had died.

But now they were here, and what he saw made him laugh.

“Only four?” he said to the guard, who was in the process of going back and reviewing the feed of all the cameras that showed their approach prior to the alarm.

“Yes, sir. It looks that way.”

Le Savage shook his head as he chuckled. “I guess she didn’t have many friends.”

“I guess not, sir.”

He looked over at the guard sitting in the chair next to him. The guard had no way of knowing which inmate he had been referring to and yet had agreed. An urge came over Le Savage to strike the man across the side of his helmet. Either knock the helmet off completely, forcing the guard to walk across the room and pick it up, or else knock the guard out cold. There weren’t many things he despised more than men who agreed with him just because he was their superior. He understood it was supposed to be a sign of respect, but he would rather the guard remain silent to demonstrate he understood that Le Savage didn’t want or need his men to agree with him.