The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (27 page)

These underground paths would house the majority of the Round Table soldiers, keeping them safe from Mowbray’s ships. It also gave Vere’s forces a chance to work their way across the battlefield, toward Mowbray, without being out in the open. Thousands of soldiers coordinated with the generals of each army to build tunnels at various depths. None could be too close to the next or it might weaken the ground and cause both to collapse. The pace was feverish and frenzied.

The exception was in zone one, where there was no discernable activity at all. Vere had offered the Gur-Khan the use of her trench diggers but they had declined. She offered them additional ion cannons, gravity mines, anything they wanted. These too, they declined. As far as she could tell, the Gur-Khan weren’t digging tunnels or fortifying defenses for their portion of the field. Various rumors had spread along the front that the Gur-Khan had deserted.

Traskk, sure they would betray Vere, told her she needed other soldiers there instead.

“All I can do is trust them,” she told him. After his snarling response, she added, “I know, it didn’t work out two years ago, but I have to learn from my mistakes. Trusting other armies wasn’t what got me in trouble.”

To this, Traskk gave another growl.

She did have to admit that the morale of the other soldiers seemed to rise and fall depending on the news about the Gur-Khan. When the ten soldiers had first arrived, everyone else on the battlefield had been sure it was a good day to be a part of the Round Table army. Minutes after having left the command center tent, word spread that anyone who got too close to zone one during the impending battle would be killed. Half of the soldiers in the middle section began to look at holograms of their loved ones. Some requested permission to transfer as far away as possible, to zone three. Then the Gur-Khan disappeared and the spirit of almost everyone across the front was visibly deflated. Soldiers from various armies, all of whom had been working in cooperation with one another, began to quarrel. One of Kaiser Doom’s soldiers shot one of Gerchin the Suspicious’s soldiers in the face with a heavy blaster from a yard away, killing him instantly. A pair of Baron Von Wrth’s soldiers got into a brawl with two CasterLan fighters.

Each time a fight broke out or was about to, senior officers from both sides rushed to quell the violence and to remind everyone they were fighting for a common cause. Nothing could lower the tensions, though, and as soon as one quarrel was broken up, another started.

Vere closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. The noise and chaos around her subsided and was replaced by the hazy image of Mortimous in his robes.

Am I doing the right thing?

Mortimous nodded.

I’m not making a mistake like I did with the Excalibur Armada?

Mortimous shook his head.

Do you still think the round table will be the answer?

His reply, although impossible for anyone else to hear, resounded inside Vere’s thoughts. “Of course. You are on the right path, Vere. Do not stop now.”

Another fight was getting ready to start, this one between one of Gerchin the Suspicious’s soldiers and a thick, brown alien wearing the rust-colored uniform of one of the smaller kingdoms that had joined the round table’s cause. Before the violence could escalate, a rumble began to shake the ground under everyone’s feet. At first, everyone looked to zone one to see what the Gur-Khan were up to. That portion of the field was still empty, however. The rumbling persisted. Every part of the ground felt as if the trench diggers were directly underneath. And yet the earth-moving machines were more than a mile away, underground somewhere, working toward the center of the field.

A humming could be heard, unrelated to anything the collective forces were doing. Far away, barely perceptible, the trees on the outer edge of the Forest of Tears began to sway.

“They’re here,” a soldier said.

A horn sounded.

“They’re here!”

“Positions, everyone.”

Hector had been right. Mowbray’s forces didn’t want to go any place where they were susceptible to the Crown. Knowing they would be easy targets of the Round Table’s flagships if they centered their attention on destroying the Crown, they avoided a low approach as well. They also didn’t want to enter into a battle with the combined navies of every military that had answered Vere’s request. Instead, Mowbray’s fleet was forced to enter the planet’s atmosphere from the far side of Edsall Dark, coming in low but stopping well away from where the battle would take place. As a result, they were now between the mountains and the forest, unloading ground forces in preparation for the war. The rumble everyone felt and heard was the pounding of dozens and dozens of Athens Destroyers landing in the distance.

Mowbray’s army was here, and they were going to be coming out of the woods at any moment.

69

“Watch yourselves,” Morgan said as she walked along the outside of the capital wall.

Most of the soldiers, regardless of what armor they wore or what insignia it had on the chest plate or shoulder, were either eating or resting before the battle.

Morgan continued, “All of you have trained for this. You’ve prepared for this. Do what you know how to do and you’ll get through it.”

Hidden in the bushes beside her and crouched on an elevated platform, a sniping duo, a man and a woman in camouflage armor, worked to get a long sniper blaster mounted atop a tripod concealed in the heavy vegetation. The two specialists leaned over the sniper’s computer, adjusting the scopes.

“Over one degree,” said the sniping male, a huge pair of binoculars up to his eyes. “Down one click.” After a moment’s silence: “See him?”

“I see him,” the sniper woman said, entering a command into the long-range blaster’s computer.

Other sniper teams were set up atop the wall behind man-made barriers. Some were so well hidden Morgan couldn’t even spot where they were.

As she watched, the closest sniper team finished setting up the shot. The soft tick of the sniping blaster’s trigger sounded. A burst of laser went streaming out across the field in a straight line. Miles and miles it went, all the way across the fields of Aromath the Solemn, into the line of trees beyond.

The sniper pulled her head away from the scope of the long blaster and looked at her partner.

“Got him straight through the chest,” the other soldier said, the binoculars still up to his eyes.

The pair began targeting for another shot, slightly to the right of the previous one.

Morgan scanned the area beneath the team, near a group of soldiers who were lying on the ground, just inside the mouth of one of the newly created tunnels. She had thought to remind them why they were there. The truth was, though, that she didn’t really know herself.

All her life, she had been fighting for the CasterLan Kingdom. For its banner. Its people. Now, she was fighting for other kingdoms to sit at a table together and tell her how to live. Rather than say anything else, she nodded to the soldiers and walked further along the wall.

After a few more steps, a bright light passed across the field and went past her. She turned just in time to see a laser hit the sniping specialist in the bushes who had been holding the binoculars.

“Everyone down,” Morgan said, but they already were.

She knew what would happen next. One of the other sniper teams behind her would work on finding Mowbray’s sniper and would eliminate him. In turn, a different Vonnegan sniper, hidden somewhere at the edge of the Forest of Tears, would begin targeting them. And on and on. Teams of snipers would continue killing anyone they saw moving on the other side of the field.

The battle had begun, not with two fleets unloading their cannons against one another, not even with two armies racing across the field, but with a single laser blast. Then another. Then another.

70

Hector was the only one in the command tent when the first laser blast sailed miles across the field and into the forest. If everything unfolded according to his predictions, Mowbray would begin sending trench machines under the planet’s surface, toward the capital wall where the Round Table forces were assembled. Not wanting to confront a superior force in space and knowing the troops he sent across Edsall Dark’s surface were easy targets, it was his only option. Both sides would send squads of fighters through vast lengths of underground tunnels, not only to defeat the other side but to try and destroy each other’s trench machines. This effort would ensure both sides kept their fleets intact and allowed a relatively small number of soldiers to determine the momentum of the battle.

Meanwhile, Mowbray’s Athens Destroyers and the largest ships belonging to the Round Table forces would maintain their positions because they would only wipe each other out if they did anything else. It was in Mowbray’s best interest to conduct the battle at or below the planet’s surface, where a Vonnegan strategy could lead to overtaking CamaLon and controlling the Crown. And it was in the Round Table force’s best interest to limit the battle to one area if possible. Rather than have hundreds of thousands of people die in space, they would cut off Mowbray’s forces at the neck.

Each side would keep the other occupied by sending multiple armored hover mechs across the surface of the fields. These would be destroyed by the opposite side’s heavy blasters but their true purpose would be in the distraction they provided. Each time a mech was being targeted, it meant the forces working their way to the other side, via the underground tunnels, were not.

Hector shook his head in disgust. The greatest civilizations that the galaxy currently possessed had all gathered in one spot. And the reason was the oldest one the universe knew. War.

His chin sank to his chest. He rubbed at his temple, trying unsuccessfully to make the throbbing behind his eyes go away. Other than the ghost pains he still suffered from legs he didn’t even have any more, the pain behind his eyes was the most frequent symptom he still carried with him from his old injuries.

There was no telling how many people would lose their lives today, tomorrow, and the next day—however long the battle raged. While he had sworn never to take up a blaster again, he knew he could help bring about an end to all of this madness. What better cause was there, even if he died in those tunnels, than to never have to see this insanity again?

His stomach muscles tensed slightly, enough to move his energy platform forward. With only the hum of his hover disc making any noise, Hector traveled across the command tent, passing through the opening and then over to where a group of CasterLan soldiers were gathered.

All of them, even the ones who were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep, stared at him as if he were a god. He leaned to the side, picked up a spare blaster, checked its charge, then continued into the darkness of a tunnel that one of the trench machines had already dug.

“Only those who want to join me should do so,” he said, calling behind him. “There is no guilt in remaining behind.”

And then, not bothering to look back and see if he was by himself or if other soldiers were joining him, he ventured into the darkness of the tunnel that he knew would lead him toward Mowbray’s army.

71

Vere watched the streaks of sniper fire dashing from her side of the battlefield to the other, followed by two more returning from Mowbray’s side. Each blast sailed across the field in perfect silence.

The command tent had been taken down. The first thing each Vonnegan sniper would target was a ruler, military leader, or anyone else who looked like they were in charge. Now, the primary command center was situated inside the capital wall. The only way Mowbray’s forces would get to it was if they defeated the combined armies in front of them. If they did that, they would not only take the command center, they would take all of Edsall Dark and every other part of the CasterLan Kingdom because it would mean there was no one else left in the galaxy to stop them.

Vere guessed that if the combined forces lost on this day, any surviving leaders would swear they had never been serious about the round table but had only been trying to gain intelligence for Mowbray’s benefit. They would all try to insulate themselves and hope Vonnegan retribution fell on someone else.

This theory was bolstered by the fact that most of the other leaders had chosen to remain aboard their flagship vessels, selecting a top general to be on the ground to oversee things on their behalf. Kaiser Doom, in his dark gray armor, towering above any human near him, was the only other ruler on the planet’s surface. Of the leaders who claimed to have committed to the cause of the round table, only Vere was on the side of the wall where sporadic bursts of laser were going across the field. Every other leader’s sense of self-preservation kept them where they could make a quick getaway if needed.

Traskk, sure that this was the sign he had been looking for that there was not only one traitor in their midst but a dozen, had growled that he didn’t trust the other rulers. The same thing that had happened two years earlier was going to happen again, he said.

All Vere could do was pat him on the arm and say, “I know. Trust me, I know. But if you never give people a chance after getting betrayed one time, the entire galaxy would be full of people who didn’t trust anyone else. That’s not the type of universe I want to live in. And without enough trust, the round table would fail anyway.”

Her Basilisk friend had given a low hiss and slumped his shoulders, walking off in search of more evidence of double-crossing and betrayal.

Only minutes later, Morgan pulled Vere aside and told her to consider using the Crown on the first Round Table ship that looked like it might try to flee.

“If one of them starts to run, all of our allies will follow. We need to let them know they must remain loyal.”

“You can’t force loyalty,” Vere had said, smiling and patting her friend on the shoulder. “All that will do is give them an excuse to say we weren’t serious about the round table in the first place.”

The ground beneath their feet was rumbling. The entire planet felt and sounded like it had become part of a great machine. There were so many trench machines burrowing under the fields, each working without pause, that the planet’s surface felt like a starship getting ready to take off. In addition to the rumbling, the air hummed with fully charged cannon cells, each waiting to be fired at the first Vonnegan transports that made their way across the field. There was also a steady whir from the Vonnegan troops themselves. Even though they were miles and miles away, hidden behind the Forest of Tears, the sound of hundreds of mech tanks, armored capsules, and land destroyers was still loud enough to be heard. Anyone standing near them would become deaf without protective gear.