The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)
Read The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) Online
Authors: Chris Dietzel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidence.
THE ROUND TABLE, Copyright 2016 by Chris Dietzel. All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Watch The World End Publishing.
Click or Visit:
http://www.ChrisDietzel.com
Cover Design: Grosnez
Cover Typography: TrueNotDreams Design
Editor: D.L. MacKenzie
Author Photo: Jodie McFadden
Illustrations:
This book contains concept art based on various aspects of the story. For each design, an artist was given a basic description and then allowed to create their vision of that scene, character, etc. Artist biographies can be found at the end of the book.
Also by Chris Dietzel
Space Fantasy
The Green Knight – Space Lore I
The Excalibur – Space Lore II
Dystopian
The Theta Timeline
The Theta Prophecy
The Theta Patient
A Quiet Apocalypse
The Man Who Watched The World End
A Different Alchemy
The Hauntings Of Playing God
The Last Teacher
The Round Table
Space Lore III
Chris Dietzel
1
Emerging from the portal in the Terror Sector, the ship’s tinder walls withdrew, revealing the cockpit. It was a mid-size vessel, insignificant compared to a Solar Carrier, but four times the size of a single-man fighter. A moment later, a second ship, slightly smaller than the first, also appeared. This ship’s tinder walls also raised after it came through the portal’s bright white energy field.
Neither ship resembled anything that had ever come out of a starship yard. Both had been heavily modified with armor and parts scavenged from other vessels. Even an expert in starships would have been hard pressed to guess the origins of these hodgepodge monstrosities. Ships like these were common amongst independent freight haulers, smugglers, and pirates.
The Terror Sector was the site of one of the oldest known portals in the galaxy. It was slightly smaller in circumference than most others like it. The ring of three hundred and sixty cylinders that made up its frame was battered with dents and scratches where, over hundreds of years, ships had accidently scraped its sides while either disappearing into the portal or reappearing from somewhere else in the galaxy.
It was said that an ancient civilization in the Terror Sector had created the technology thousands of years earlier that eventually enabled ships to jump from one point in space to another. Other than the portal, no remnant of that ancient civilization had ever been found.
But that wasn’t what the Terror Sector was presently known for. Now, it was associated with having the galaxy’s most infamous prison. Terror-Dhome, the second closest planet to the sun, was the site of the Cauldrons of Dagda, the notorious prison whose name was feared throughout the known universe.
Most ships appearing through the portal avoided the planet entirely, continuing on a course to other planets in the system. Some vessels were forced to land on Terror-Dhome because they were affiliated with its mining colonies. However, the two ships that had just arrived through the portal set a course directly for the prison’s spaceport.
As they neared the lava planet, a sheet of metal pulled away from the first ship. Immediately, another piece of metal also began to pull apart. As the vessel entered the planet’s atmosphere, the metal sheet whined and pulled further and further away until the last set of bolts could no longer hold it in place. The metal piece ripped away from the craft and fell toward the endless seas of lava, where it would melt into nothing.
The two ships continued into the planet’s atmosphere, toward the Cauldrons of Dagda.
Terror-Dhome
, by Tim Barton - Digital Art
2
Morgan scanned the Pendragon’s sensors and monitors. One displayed the space all around them. One presented ship diagnostics. Another detailed possible alternate courses and trajectories. Morgan’s attention focused on a monitor scanning the ship in front of her.
“Looks like a piece of their plating ripped off,” she said, seeing the new, small object appear on one of the displays.
A sheet of metal was turning red hot as it fell toward the planet’s molten surface.
Baldwin looked back and forth between the ship’s display of the surrounding area and the approaching fiery planet outside the cockpit.
“It’ll be fine,” Cade said with a grin.
The young man had come a long way since being designated as CamaLon’s head of security. In the weeks leading up to the Excalibur battle, Morgan had constantly criticized him for being unsure of himself and the information he was providing. Now, he offered an air of confidence in everything he said.
Cade no longer served as head of security for CamaLon, however. Edsall Dark’s capital city was under Vonnegan rule, along with the rest of the planet, which left him free to join Morgan and the others in their quest.
Morgan didn’t particularly like Cade’s newfound bravado, and almost told him to keep his assessments to himself until he actually knew everything would be all right. After all, their plan could easily turn sour and all of them could become the Cauldron’s next batch of prisoners.
It wouldn’t be the first time a set of finely laid plans had backfired. Only two years earlier, they had set a trap for Mowbray and the entire Vonnegan fleet. Mowbray was supposed to have seen the forces—Solar Carriers, Excalibur ships, the weapons of a warlord and gangster—and turn around to avoid certain defeat. Little had Morgan or anyone else known that a secret betrayal had already sealed their fate. No one could have guessed that things would turn out the way they had.
Most of the Solar Carriers had been destroyed. Westmoreland had died. Fastolf, that drunken fool, had also been killed. Vere had become Mowbray’s prisoner.
Part of Morgan actually appreciated Cade’s audacity, but the older she got, the more it became clear to her that no one was invincible.
Not even Vere, who by all accounts should be dead already.
The average prisoner lasted less than one week at the Cauldrons of Dagda before their dead body was unceremoniously tossed into the molten lava that bordered the prison grounds. Every once in a while, someone managed to survive for a month. Less often, an inmate would last three or four months. These were the ones who had an incredible pain threshold and a remarkable tolerance for the scorching heat that pervaded every part of the lava planet. Ewan Von Galt, a pirate who had been sent there after breaking out of every other prison in the galaxy, managed to survive one year and ten days. For his effort, even though he wasn’t nobility, he had become known throughout every sector as Ewan the Resilient. All because he had managed to live a few months longer than anyone else.
His record had held for centuries until a new prisoner managed to nearly double it, surviving the Cauldrons for just over two years. Her name was Vere CasterLan. And she was still alive.
The only reason her friends knew she was still alive was because the Cauldrons of Dagda was an open prison. Anyone and everyone was welcome to visit the facility. Vonnegan leaders learned a long time ago that the best way of discouraging an assassination attempt, an uprising, or any number of other violations, was to let everyone see for themselves the utter brutality and misery that existed at the prison. Instead of hiding it and keeping it off limits, each Vonnegan ruler encouraged children of all ages to see the Cauldrons of Dagda, lest they ever think of one day defying their ruler. Because of that, miners reported hearing from local prison guards that Vere refused to die.
No matter how strong Vere was, however, no one could survive the Cauldrons of Dagda forever.
“I still can’t believe the job our mechanics did,” Morgan said, changing the subject as a way of calming both Baldwin’s gloominess and Cade’s bluster.
Back when the workers had finished, she hadn’t even been able to recognize the Pendragon. Underneath the metal panels and the false shell, her ship was still there, the same as usual, but it was buried underneath layers of plating, fake walls, and even a second cockpit which remained empty of any equipment and anyone to pilot the vessel.
Vere’s own ship, the Griffin Fire, had looked like a pirate’s clunker, but had undergone a similar transformation. Even Vere wouldn’t recognize her starjet when she saw it the next time. Instead of its original oblong shape, the vessel looked like a pyramid with a cockpit at its point and engines at its base, with three small wings near the rear of the ship.
“Why not just have us build you two new ships?” the lead engineer had asked when told what his assignment would be.
“Because I only fly the Pendragon,” Morgan had said. And she knew Vere well enough to know that would have been her response about the Griffin Fire.
“Anything yet?” Baldwin said, standing behind her as she piloted her ship.
She nudged him away with her shoulder so he wasn’t hovering over her too closely.
“We’re fine,” she said, looking at the cockpit’s alert display. No one down on Terror-Dhome had taken notice of them. No one cared that two ships had appeared through the portal.
If everything they had heard about the planet and about the prison was true, disguising the ships wasn’t necessary in order to land undetected on Terror-Dhome. Unannounced vessels wouldn’t trigger some kind of security alarms because there were none. Mowbray didn’t care who tried to get onto the planet because no one in their right mind would be willing to fly into the heart of the Vonnegan Empire—Athens Destroyers always close by—just to set foot near the prison where no one wanted to be sent. The only reason she did insist on having the ships disguised was because she suspected the entire Vonnegan Empire would be keeping an eye out for the Pendragon and Griffin Fire regardless of where they were.