The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (35 page)

Traskk roared and lunged to the back wall of the bunker. Vere pulled a blaster from the holster on her hip. Before she could aim and fire, another blast sailed past her cheek and hit the wall behind her.

Vonnegan forces were coming into the bunker from a small hole on the far side of the underground room. One of their trench machines must have made it all the way to the bunker without being detected, and then the troopers had dug sideways into where Vere and the others were located.

A laser blast hit Traskk in the shoulder as he lunged toward the Vonnegan troopers. A second and third laser blast flew past Vere as she knelt to get a better angle and avoid shooting Traskk in the back.

Other nearby CasterLan soldiers joined her in attacking the first wave of Vonnegan troops, but none of them could fire at will until Vere yelled for Traskk to move to the side. With the helmet of a Vonnegan trooper clenched between his mighty jaws, he growled and moved to his left. The trooper, whose head was still inside the helmet, was nothing more than a limp sack of armor.

Vere pulled the trigger of her blaster over and over. Each time she did, another Vonnegan trooper crumpled to the ground as he appeared through the tunnel opening. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced back at the display system just long enough to see a small holographic feed that revealed hundreds of Vonnegan troops disembarking from the crashed Athens Destroyer. Hundreds more of her soldiers and those from the Round Table armies all rushed across the field to confront the enemy.

Any semblance of two distinct sides—the invaders by the forest and the defenders near the wall—was gone. The entire field was blaster fire and yelling. The last wave of armored mechs and transports was swerving around the crashed Athens Destroyer. It was so large that it looked out of place, like a Llyushin fighter parked amongst a collection of child’s toy spaceships. With the field flooded with combatants, the snipers on both sides gave up precision and instead used the same rapid fire blaster rifles that everyone else fired.

Looking back at where the Vonnegan forces had appeared, Vere saw Traskk grab a Vonnegan trooper by his neck before throwing him through the air. Another trooper took a direct hit from Traskk’s tail, causing a crunching noise that sounded as if he might have broken in half. A third was crushed under Traskk’s weight when the reptile jumped on him and began tearing his purple and gray armor to pieces.

Pistol received another comm update. Turning to Vere, he said, “Vonnegan forces have appeared out of fifteen tunnels near the capital wall so far.”

“Any behind the wall?”

“Only one.”

“And?”

Pistol’s eyes glowed as he received the information. “They were dispatched by Kaiser Doom’s forces.”

“Good,” she said, but her tone was melancholy. She didn’t tell Pistol, but if so many Vonnegan troopers had successfully penetrated their defenses, the Round Table forces underground must have taken heavy losses. Hector and Morgan and everyone else she knew was either dead or battling for their lives.

92

Hector looked behind him one last time to make sure his soldiers were safe and still walking back in the direction of the capital. He had reminded one of the returning squad members to radio back to the command center and inform them which tunnel opening they would be appearing from. The last thing Hector wanted was for his soldiers to be victims of “friendly fire” when they reappeared near the wall. Knowing what war did to people, he knew it was only natural that once laser blasts started flying, some soldiers withdrew mentally, shooting anything that moved. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he saved some of his squad from enemy blasts just to have them accidently die by allied forces.

Alone now, he waited at a spot where three tunnels connected. If any Vonnegan forces tried to make their way to the capital wall, they would have to go through him.

Although he was better off than the soldiers who had been buried underground, he still wasn’t one hundred percent. Each time he moved his stomach burned from where a laser blast had hit him. His left arm was limp and useless after being shot multiple times. With a groan, he recalled the same sensation in his legs before a doctor had removed them. If he survived the battle, he would have to ask Quickly how he was getting along with his replacement android arm. It wasn’t much of a thing to have to look forward to. Maybe the doctors would be able to create a gravitational field that could be attached to his shoulder, similar to the disk his torso rested upon.

War was hell. Only the lucky ones were going to make it home. And even they would have lost family members or limbs in the fighting.

With his one good arm, he held a staff blaster in front of him and aimed into the darkness of the tunnels. Only a minute later, however, his energy disc began to sputter. Its regulator had also been shot. The energy circulating within the disc, the force that kept him hovering a couple feet off the ground, faded, causing him to sink to the dirt floor.

Once it was completely dark, Hector lay on his side, his weapon still pointed down the dark corridor, still wishing this madness would end once and for all.

93

Racing down one path, Morgan and her squad came across a group of Vonnegan troopers trying to dig their way past a portion of tunnel that had collapsed. She sliced half of them down with her Meursault blade before they knew what was happening. Her soldiers blasted the other half. Not a single Vonnegan laser blast was fired. Rather than continue to look for a solution to the blocked tunnel, she and her squad backtracked to the nearest adjoining section and began racing once more toward the capital wall.

Within five minutes, they came upon another group of purple and gray armored Vonnegans marching in the darkness toward CamaLon. This group was four times the size of the previous batch. Without saying anything, Morgan broke into a sprint, leaving her soldiers to catch up. The faster she ran, the more steady the trail of dark mist that followed as her Meursault blade passed through the air.

In one running stroke of her sword, a quarter of the soldiers were sliced apart and on the ground, felled by a weapon they had never even seen. By the time the Vonnegans realized the enemy was behind them, Morgan was already in the middle of their formation, cutting down more troopers with each motion of her invisible blade. In the darkness, her position could only be guessed at by following the sound of clanking armor and the trail of mist behind her weapon.

Rather than fire and kill each other, the Vonnegan troops each swung the blade end of their weapons. Each time they did this, though, Morgan brought her sword up, slicing off the energized halberd blades from their poles.

A moment later, her soldiers caught up to her and began engaging the few Vonnegan troopers that still remained. She had already killed nearly one hundred of them by herself. Yet it was the soldiers in her group who were hunched over, exhausted and thirsty, while she was ready to begin hunting Mowbray again.

In each of her soldiers’ eyes she saw that they wanted something very different than she did. They gasped for air, their hands on their knees. Every part of their body language said they wanted to stop and get some water. Their legs were tired. Their throats were dry. They had been down in the tunnels for hours. There was no telling how many miles they had run. Each of them wanted nothing more than to sit down on the ground, rest for a few minutes, and feel cold water moisten their cracked lips.

And yet none of them wanted to let her down. Not one of them was willing to speak up and say, “General Le Fay, we’ve been running all day below the planet surface with these insufferable breathing masks on; please just let us rest and recover for a moment.” They had trained for this. Many of them had dreamed since childhood of serving in the CasterLan Corps. Here they were now, elite soldiers, fighting on their own planet, defending their own families, their own homes. There was no chance any of them would ask for a moment of rest even though they lagged further behind her with each length of tunnel.

They raced through more underground paths. At the next intersection, she looked at the display on her wrist. Showing various colored dots everywhere—the display’s version of the chaos of war—it told her nothing useful, nothing to indicate where Mowbray might be. She listened for the sounds of troop movements far ahead of her, using that to gauge which fork in the path was the best choice. However, with the clamor of war above her and with the trench machines still burrowing holes in various places under the fields, she couldn’t be sure if there were noises down each path or not. By the time her soldiers caught up to her, their breathing was so loud she would never know for sure.

More sprinting. Through another tunnel. Another enemy in her sights. Once again, by the time her squad caught up to her, the small group of Vonnegan troopers who had gotten separated from the rest of their party were already laying motionless on the ground and the last remnants of her Meursault blade’s vapor was dissolving into the air.

She was running again. At a place in the tunnel where the dirt had caved in, she saw a dirt-covered hand sticking out of the debris. Without the time needed to find out which army the struggling life belonged to, she allowed her soldiers, gasping for air, to catch up to her.

“It’s okay,” she said, looking at each of them. “Stay here and help this solider out. If he’s one of ours, get him medical help. If he’s a Vonnegan, take him prisoner.”

Not a single one of them could speak until they had gulped air and lowered their heart rate. Each of them knew what she was saying. Without specifically stating as much, she was telling them that she was going to continue on her own and that they were free to take a break.

“Morgan, we—”

But she held up a hand to silence the soldier who had tried to speak for the rest of the group.

“It’s fine,” she said. “You’ve all done your job. Rest here as long as you need. Watch your backs for Vonnegan troops arriving late to the party.” She smiled, trying to make them feel like they weren’t letting her down, but they were all too tired to return the well-wishes. She added, “After you get some water and regroup, make your way back to the wall.”

Without waiting for a response, she began running alone, back down the same tunnel to the previous intersection.

It did no good to listen for any indication of where Mowbray might be. The collective noises and rumbles and echoes were too great to make any sense of.

Frustrated, she growled and shouted, “Mowbray!”

After her voice finished echoing in the empty tunnels, there was still no answer.

All she could do was run down the other branch of the forked path. She passed the remains of a trench machine that had been so thoroughly destroyed she couldn’t tell which way its drills had been facing. She couldn’t even decide if it had been Vonnegan or CasterLan. She passed the remains of a group of Vonnegan troops intermingled with CasterLan soldiers. All were lying in unnatural positions on the ground. None of them were breathing.

“Mowbray,” she screamed again.

All of this was because of him. Going all the way back to the unnecessary war that had caused her to pick between Hotspur, her mentor, and Vere, an undeserving drunken thief who just happened to be the king’s daughter. It was because of Mowbray that her life had changed forever. Many of the people she had been cadets with were dead. And now, because of the round table, the CasterLan Kingdom, the very thing she had gone to the academy to fight for, would also fade away.

She raced down another tunnel, always getting closer to Vere and her friends and the place she had started, but never finding Mowbray.

Down another section, she found the remains of a group of Kaiser Doom’s soldiers. Through another, she found more CasterLan and Vonnegan troops, all dead on the ground.

At another fork in a tunnel, she yelled the Vonnegan ruler’s name again. Once more, she heard nothing. After another minute of running, she came across not a dozen or two dozen dead CasterLan soldiers as she had in other places, but easily a hundred. They were littered across the ground as if a tornado had picked them up and thrown them into every wall. Something about the scene made her pace slow to a walk. The carnage was unreal. Even in the midst of war, with battles going on in every direction around her, the soldiers in front of her had been torn apart with inconceivable savagery.

Then her eye caught something in the middle of the piles of bodies. Purple armor. Purple cloth. One of Mowbray’s Fianna.

Over one hundred CasterLan soldiers had come across Mowbray and his nine Fianna. In the end, all one hundred of those men and women had died while only one Fianna had been brought down.

“Mowbray!” she yelled again.

Finally, she knew she was on the right track, and not only that, she suspected he was close enough to be able to hear her calling his name.

Even though it had taken a hundred soldiers to bring down one of Mowbray’s Fianna, one of them had indeed died. They weren’t invincible. No one was. It was proof that she could do the same thing. Not only to one of them but to each of the remaining eight. And then to Mowbray himself.

Just like that, she was running down the tunnel again, into the darkness.

94

There was chaos everywhere on Edsall Dark, including over it and beneath it. But nowhere was there as much pandemonium as in the narrows, where so many laser blasts were being fired that it burned the retinas of anyone who looked directly at it for too long.

And yet no one could be certain where the Gur-Khan were firing from. They seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Laser blasts erupted from cannons that no one could see, obliterating everything in front of them, but when the Vonnegan forces targeted one area, a thousand other cannons seemed to fire at them from elsewhere. Moments later, the places that the Vonnegan forces had targeted flashed into a frenzy of laser blasts once again as the Gur-Khan’s advanced weaponry began sending bursts with such frequency that it was almost a continuous laser aimed at everything that approached.