Project X-Calibur (13 page)

26

087:52:19

JUST AS IVY
had predicted, we woke up to the news that we'd be flying the prototypes later than expected. After a quick breakfast from Arlo's food cart (a single bowl of cornflakes, in case I managed to make myself nauseated again), we headed to the gym and trained while waiting for Merlin and Pellinore to take us to the ships.

Before long, I was getting my butt handed to me by a spar-bot. Earlier, Darla and I had secretly switched training helmets with each other. When she saw all of the adjustments I'd made to the inside of mine last night, she'd looked downright scared.

“How is this going to help me?” she'd whispered frantically.

“I'll explain later,” I promised. “You just have to trust me.”

WHAM! The spar-bot bearing down on me whacked me in the ribs with its sword, its blue eyes aglow with a burning desire to
destroy me.
Even though my sparring outfit was padded, the blow still knocked the wind out of me.

“You really have some anger issues,” I grunted, then swung back with both hands on my sword handle. The overgrown toaster easily dodged the swing and whacked me in my
other
side. I gasped as spittle flew out of my mouth.

Malcolm and his spar-bot were moving about the gym as they traded impressive sword moves. Did I regret spending time with Ivy last night instead of practicing in here with the other knights? Nope. But it still sucked playing catch-up, especially when it meant the rest of the knights got to watch me cower in the corner while a spar-bot practically beat me to death with a fake sword.

“New strategy!” I shouted. I dropped to my knees and scrambled between the spar-bot's legs, emerging on the other side and running off. The shiny warrior whirled, its lighted eyes piercing.

“You're supposed to fight it, Earnhardt!” Kwan yelled with a chuckle. “Not play hide-and-seek with it!”

As I ran across the gym, I could feel my sparring outfit sticking to me, my entire body coated in sweat. Sword
running
was apparently even more of a workout than sword
fighting.
I reached the opposite wall and turned to see my spar-bot charging at me like some crazed Energizer bunny.

“Don't sell yourself short,” I muttered to myself as the spar-bot came at me.

WHOOSH!
The spar-bot swung the sword in a wide uppercut, but I dodged to my right and it missed me. Thrilled and surprised, I turned, raised my sword, and—
WHAM!
—struck the spar-bot's back. There was an electronic
buh-bloop
as I finally scored some points against it.

“You want some more?” I challenged, but the spar-bot spun low and hit me behind the knees. I went flying backward and landed on my back with a jarring thud, gasping for breath.

“Ugh. I think I just popped a lung,” I wheezed.

As I looked up into the glowing stare of my triumphant opponent, it gently put one metallic knee on my chest and stuck the tip of its sword against my throat.

“I win,” it said flatly. It almost sounded like a computerized version of Pellinore.

“Rematch?” I gulped. The spar-bot hesitated, its sword still at my throat.

“I accept,” it replied and stood.

“Lucky me,” I groaned. I pulled myself up for another go, but the gym's door opened and Pellinore entered, crisply dressed as always, with Merlin right behind him in brown corduroy pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt that emphasized his scrawniness.

“Who's ready to pilot an actual ship?” Pellinore asked.

“I am, sir!” Malcolm called back. I glanced at Merlin and he gave me a nod. Even after the barf fiasco in the BSR, he still seemed to believe in me.

“Me too,” I told Pellinore as I stepped forward.

“No more accidents, I hope?” he asked me sternly.

I fought back a blush and tried my best impression of Malcolm. “No, sir! All good! I only had one bowl of cereal for breakfast! Sir!”

Merlin smirked while Malcolm scrunched his nose and Pellinore eyed me like I'd lost my mind.

“Very well. Get into your training jumpsuits and grab your helmets, knights. Let's go do some flying.”

27

086:22:34

LINED UP
by the four X-Calibur imitations, holding our helmets and buzzing with adrenaline, we prepared to finally try what we'd been brought here to do: fly. A million thoughts raced through my head as I tried to give Darla a reassuring smile. She was nervously clutching the helmet I had given her. Was I delusional to help her? What if my helmet adjustments didn't work, and she crashed in front of us all? Were we really ready for this?

Stop thinking so much.

“We're going to get you airborne two at a time,” Pellinore explained. Then he and Merlin stood aside to let Professor Barrington take the lead.

“Once the first two prove capable of handling their spacecraft, we'll put the second two up,” Barrington growled, chewing on his trusty nail. “Your goal is to fly laps. Nothing more.”

“I've had the techs install temporary guards over the laser triggers, so firing won't be an option for you, anyway,” Pellinore added.

“What about X-Calibur?” Malcolm asked. “Who gets to fly that?”

“No one—” Merlin began, but Pellinore interrupted him.

“
Not yet.
But prove yourself worthy, Malcolm, and X-Calibur will be yours soon enough.”

“If we go up in pairs, that'll leave someone out, right?” Kwan asked. “There's five of us, and only four ships.”

Pellinore nodded and was about to answer when Darla suddenly offered, “
I
can go last.”

We all turned to look at her, and I spotted disappointment on Pellinore's face. The last thing he wanted was a kid who didn't want to be here. Darla was only drawing more attention to herself, and if my helmet trick was going to work, we needed to keep it under the radar.

“If that makes things easier, I mean,” Darla added uncertainly.

“Ben and I can go up together,” said Malcolm. “If that's okay with him, of course.”

He wasn't wasting any time trying to make sure I looked worse than I already did.

“Of course it's okay,” I said firmly. “I'm ready.”

“Excellent!” Pellinore declared. “After that you'll be joined in the air by Kwan and Tyler.”

Kwan slapped Tyler on the back. “Booyah!”

Pellinore gave a curt cough and continued. “
Then,
one of you will swap out with Darla.”

“I'll swap with her after I get my chance to fly,” Malcolm offered.
Seriously?
I guess he figured it wouldn't take long for him to make me look stupid up there. I thought I might barf again.

A few minutes later, I strapped myself into my pilot seat. Even though the RTR's engineers had done an impressive job of replicating the one-of-a-kind alien ship, there were still some differences between X-Calibur and the prototypes, like the amount of space inside the ship's cabin. There was barely two feet on either side of me; the walls of the prototype were thicker and bulkier than I had expected.

I grabbed the ship's steering handlebars, and the prototype hummed with power as it came to life. Through the windshield I could see Merlin, Pellinore, Barrington, Darla, Kwan, and Tyler watching.

“Can you hear me, knights?” Pellinore asked through our helmets.

“Ready when you are,” Malcolm said.

“You may begin,” Pellinore advised, and my ship began to rumble from the thrusters below.

I pulled back on my steering handlebars (slowly,
measured,
like Ivy had advised) and my ship hummed louder and the front end began to rise.

“You're going to need some thrust, Benjamin,” Merlin suggested.

I put my foot on the floor panel labeled THRUST. It glowed as I made contact with it, but I hit it too hard and my ship suddenly rose straight up,
fast,
headed toward the ceiling. I would smash into it in about two seconds flat and die a very moronic death if I didn't do something. I panicked, and then it occurred to me to simply
take my foot off the thrust panel.

Whew.
I was now hovering in place, with Malcolm's ship only thirty feet away. Every few seconds, I gave my ship some gentle power to keep it afloat.

“Release the lap markers,” Pellinore ordered. I looked down through my windshield and saw a couple of techs carrying a remote-control unit with buttons on it. Panels in the hangar's ceiling suddenly slid open, and a few dozen orange glowing pyramids, each about six feet long, descended on gleaming silver chains. As they settled into their positions, they transformed the hangar airspace into a circular flying racetrack. The hangar lights dimmed, and the pyramids cast an eerie orange haze over the entire place. It would have been cool if I hadn't been so darn nervous.

“This should be fun,” I muttered, then took a deep breath.

“The course is all yours, knights,” Pellinore prompted. In the blink of an eye, the back end of Malcolm's ship lit up with a surge of power, and he soared forward. Even though we were just supposed to fly laps, Malcolm was going to turn this into a race.

I gave my ship some power and moved forward, much slower than Malcolm. I just wanted to avoid the glowing pyramids, and I did a pretty good job. Problem was, I looked like a grandma driving a Ferrari. I wasn't going to impress anyone at this speed, and when I saw Malcolm whizzing around the opposite side of the hangar, I knew I had to kick it up a notch.

I gave my ship more juice, and the engines roared behind me like a barely contained inferno. Warmth from the fire spread through the cabin. With my sweaty hands clutching the steering controls in a death grip, I left my doubts behind and focused everything I had on keeping the ship on course.

Ivy was right. I can do this!

I was jolted by something surging past my windshield: Malcolm had lapped me. I squinted into the fiery red of his rear thrusters as he left me in the dust. So much for my awesomeness.

“Nice work, Malcolm,” Pellinore cheered. I wished Ivy was here to fly a ship and give Malcolm a run for his money.

“Okay, you two—Kwan and Tyler are on their way up now,” Barrington warned. “Stay sharp and remember: Communication is key. Talk to each other up there. You're a team.”

Tell that to Malcolm.

I looked around, trying to spot Tyler and Kwan. They suddenly appeared on either side of me. Even though their ships were at least twenty feet away, I felt nervous again. The seat belt that was crisscrossed over my chest was tight, making me aware of every inhale and exhale, not to mention my galloping heart.

“Eat my dust,” Kwan jeered. His ship rocketed forward and clipped a couple of the course markers, which swung on their chains like pendulums. One of them almost hit me, but I avoided it by inches.

KA-WHOOOSHH!!
I soared around a corner and accelerated into a straightaway, gaining some confidence again. The control over the spacecraft was exhilarating. I would have given anything to have Mom there to see me. Or Dad.

THWUNK.
I heard something collide with something else behind me. I tried to turn in my seat, but couldn't see what it was.

“Everybody okay? I heard something,” I asked.

“It was me,” Tyler responded. “I hit one of those glowing things. But I'm okay.”

“What are you doing up there?” Barrington snarled over the comm system. “You've got eighty feet of vertical airspace, and you're clustered together like a bunch of daisies!”

There was a roar above me as Malcolm suddenly rose higher. Kwan or Tyler also vanished.

“Kwan,” I called. “You high or low?”

“Low.”

I looked down at my feet. I didn't like that idea; he already seemed like a loose cannon as a pilot. Since Malcolm must have been way above me, I pulled back on my steering controls to give Kwan more room.

“Whoa!! Watch it, Earnhardt!” Kwan suddenly screamed. Then I looked around and my eyes widened. His ship was probably a foot above me. We were practically touching each other!

“You said you were low!” I hissed.

“I am low!”

“Then why are you
above
me?!”

“I meant I'm lower than
Malcolm
!” my earpiece crackled.

“How is that supposed to help me?”

“I don't know! You're the one who asked!” His ship teetered slightly from side to side.

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this flight.

“Where's Tyler?” I asked warily.

“I'm also lower, Ben,” he answered.

“Lower than
what
?”

“Malcolm. Well, you too, of course.”

What?
I yanked the controls to avoid crashing into Tyler and maneuvered left,
hard.
I surged completely off-course and through the middle of the hangar. Even worse, in my panic my knee smacked into the underside of the ship's handlebars, and I heard something knock loose on the console.

When I grabbed the controls with both hands again to stop my ship from twirling, my thumb accidentally pressed the laser trigger and—

KA-SWISH!!
I'd knocked the trigger guard loose, and now the hangar lit up like the Fourth of July as a laser blasted out of my ship! It crackled like a bolt of lightning as it tore straight through one of the hanging pyramids, blasting it to smithereens, the pieces soaring through the air like glowing rocks.

The laser kept going until it tore into the far wall, and a large slab tumbled down. In disbelief, I watched as it plummeted straight toward Merlin, Pellinore, Barrington, Darla, and the techs. Six people, two of them bona fide historical legends, were moments away from being crushed like ants.

All because of me.

28

085:36:17

TIME STOOD STILL
as I watched the massive piece of wall plummet. Without thinking, I grabbed the plastic guard of my ship's other laser trigger and pulled it so hard that it broke in half. I wrapped both hands around my controls. Blasting apart the falling piece of wall would be the only way to save everyone down there,
if
I could obliterate it while it was still falling.

KA-SWISH! SWISH!
Suddenly, two lasers, one right after the other, pierced through the darkened hangar and rocketed toward the piece of falling wall.

Malcolm.

He apparently had the same idea as me, and his lasers destroyed the slab in midair. Everyone below covered their heads as they were showered with pebbles, but nobody was harmed. Malcolm saved the day, but not from evil aliens; he had saved it from me.

I slammed my foot on my deceleration panel and whipped around just in time to avoid another wall. When I was sure I was far enough away from anything else dangerous, I took a stab at landing. I managed to get back on the ground without blowing myself up, although it wasn't the smoothest landing in history, that's for sure.

I paused to catch my breath, dreading what would come next. Would I be sent home after this debacle? When I finally got out of my ship, the first face I noticed in the dusty haze was Darla's. She shot me a questioning look, then glanced down at her helmet, as if to ask if I'd done all this on purpose. Did she think I'd planned to bury her under two tons of concrete?

“It was an accident,” I breathed. I flashed back to Pellinore lecturing me in the gym about not having any more accidents. I was pretty sure he would have traded a little barf for this mess right now.

“The trigger guard broke off. My knee hit it,” I explained sheepishly.

Barrington was staring at me, lip curled, his shaved head speckled with tiny pieces of concrete and plaster.

“And the firing?” Pellinore asked me pointedly, shaking similar dust from his hair. He looked like he'd just come from a snowstorm.

“Also an accident,” I muttered, but no one was listening, because Malcolm had landed and was headed this way.

“Malcolm, thank you!” Pellinore gushed and gave him a warm handshake. “We owe you our lives.”

“Just doing my job, sir.”

Merlin stepped forward. “Fine work, Malcolm. Fine work, indeed.”

I looked away, ashamed. Tyler and Kwan had messed up too, but at the end of the day, I had blown apart a wall. Behind us, the sounds of Kwan and Tyler landing with clunky thuds echoed across the hangar. The two of them jumped out of their ships and came over to us.

“Did you see me up there?” Kwan shouted happily. “I totally rule at flying!” He turned to me and scowled. “But what's the deal with the shooting, Earnhardt? Kinda dangerous, don't you think?”

“Accident,”
I grunted through clenched teeth.

“When can we fly again?” Tyler asked.

Pellinore surveyed the debris, then the damaged wall. “We'll need to get this cleaned up and make sure the hangar is structurally sound first. We're three hundred feet below ground. It won't do mankind any good if we're all buried alive.”

“I'm sorry,” I croaked. The words sounded incredibly tiny in this vast space. I looked at Merlin, because most of all I was sorry to him. But he looked away.

“I need the bathroom,” I said. I needed to be alone, and honestly, almost killing six people does strange things to your bladder.

Pellinore wagged a hand toward the door, like he wanted to sweep me right out of here and back to Texas. “Go.”

• • •

Five minutes later, I was still standing in a bathroom stall, eyes closed. My attempt to find peace was interrupted by a muffled sound. A door slammed somewhere in another nearby room. And then, two voices: Pellinore's and Merlin's. I looked up and spotted a heating vent in the ceiling.

With nothing to lose, I climbed onto the back of the toilet and stretched closer to the vent. The voices were louder now. I stood on my toes and pushed aside the vent cover. There was a metal beam running across the exposed space. I grabbed the beam and tried to pull myself up. I flailed back and forth until I had the momentum to swing my legs up and over one of the stall walls. I pulled and pushed myself into the open ceiling—Ivy would have been impressed.

Holding my breath, I crawled through the cramped space, following the sound of their voices. The network of beams and pipes was dense here, not giving me much wiggle room. But I soon looked down through another heating vent to see Merlin and Pellinore in a room that looked like Pellinore's office. They stood beside shiny metal bookcases, across from an ancient-looking tapestry with crossed swords.

“I have immense respect for you, Merlin, you know that,” Pellinore was saying.

“But?”
Merlin prompted, standing before him.

“You're misguided. That boy does not have knight potential.”

That boy.
Pellinore couldn't even bring himself to say my name. Even worse, Merlin apparently didn't have an argument to defend me.

Merlin pressed a hand to his forehead warily. “Let's talk about Ivy, then,” Merlin replied. My eyes widened.

“Please, not again—” Pellinore protested, but Merlin held up his free hand and silenced him. It was weird to see someone who looked like a kid put a big, confident guy like Percival Pellinore in his place.

“If anything, this mishap has proven how much we need her,” Merlin began. “And need I remind you that we wouldn't even have a chance of using X-Calibur against the coming extraterrestrials if it wasn't for Ivy?”

Pellinore lowered his head as if he couldn't keep it up any longer under the weight of everything. “You're not telling me anything I don't already know,” he admitted.

“I know how much you care for her, but when it comes to your daughter, you wear blinders,” Merlin chided him.

Pellinore looked up again, pleading. “She's my only child, Merlin. I've watched so many people I care about come and go. I've outlived them all—”

“As have I,” Merlin interrupted.

“—but never my own flesh and blood. I resisted getting too close to anyone after our brothers in the knighthood died. It was only after Ivy's birth that I understood the joys of family again. They are beyond compare, old friend.” Pellinore's face clenched. Seeing how much he cared about Ivy made me miss my father even more than I already did.

“If we fail, and if our knights cannot rise to the challenge, then we're all dead,” Merlin reasoned. “And no amount of love will be able to save her then. Or anyone else.”

I held my breath as I waited for him to say something. I heard a toilet flush behind me. Someone was in the bathroom, and I had left the ceiling panel open! Panicked, I scrambled back the way I had come as quietly as possible. When I got to the open panel over the bathroom stall, I lowered myself through it.

SPLASH!
My feet landed in the toilet. I lost my balance and fell backward, toward the stall door, hitting it with my head. It flew open and I hit the bathroom floor on my back, my sopping wet shoes now propped up on the toilet rim. If that wasn't bad enough, I looked up at . . . Malcolm.

He crossed his arms. “This is odd,” he said, deadpan. “Although I'm beginning to think odd is your middle name.”

“I, uh, heard something in the ceiling. A rat. I was trying to catch it. They carry diseases, you know.”

He rolled his eyes and extended a hand, so I took it and stumbled to my feet.

“Thanks. Not just for that, but for, you know, saving everyone. I don't know what I would've done if they—”

“Just be more careful next time, okay?” he said, his tone softening a bit. I think he had finally concluded that I was zero competition for him.

“I'm trying, believe me.”

He eyed me a moment. “Look, we all know Merlin brought you here.”

I nodded. “Yeah?”

“Well . . . being like that . . . it probably messes with him, don't you think?”

“Being like what?” I asked.

“Aging backward. Who knows what that does to a bloke's mind.” Malcolm's lips thinned into a stiff line.

We were both suddenly startled by the sound of Pellinore shouting out in the hall. When Malcolm and I joined everyone in the atrium, there were whispers among the techs that Pellinore had an important announcement. Merlin spotted me, then looked to my shoes. They were dripping wet, creating a puddle of toilet water around me.

“I can explain,” I whispered, but he held up a hand. The stress of championing me had probably aged him a couple of months backward already.

When everyone finished gathering, Pellinore stood before us, and, to my surprise, I realized
Ivy
was next to him.

“For those of you who don't already know her,” Pellinore began, “this is my daughter, Ivy.” He took a deep breath. “From now on . . . she'll be a part of our team.”

Ivy was glowing at the news. I've never seen someone look happier, and I couldn't have been happier
for
her. We even shared a knowing smile.

“Not only will Ivy be a potential prototype pilot,” Pellinore continued, “but she'll also be in contention for the honor of . . . flying X-Calibur.”

I looked over at Malcolm. His jaw was clenched, genuinely intimidated. I'm not going to lie—I loved it.

“However, in light of the fact that we now have five ships and six pilots, our plans will have to be altered somewhat,” Pellinore added. “Knights, in only a short time, one of you will be
cut
from this mission, and your knighthood terminated.”

Gulps all around. “Who's going to be cut?” Darla asked. She was still clutching the helmet I had given her, like it was a life preserver.

“That remains to be seen,” Pellinore replied, though he glanced in my direction.

“Can't you just build another ship?” Kwan asked.

Pellinore sighed. “Each of our four X-Calibur prototypes took sixteen years to build. None of the others are even
close
to ready. To put it bluntly, this is now survival of the fittest. Show us what you've got—or go home.”