The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (6 page)

Digging her back foot into the ground, she pushed the beam again.

Behind her, someone yelled, “Vere, we have to get out of here,” but she didn’t hear it.

She had learned very early on that if she just kept pushing the Circle of Sorrow, the guards wouldn’t whip her. They still harassed her, still yelled taunts at her, kicked dirt on her. They didn’t whip her, however, if the wheel kept moving.

“Vere, what are you doing?” the voice yelled again. “We have to go. Now!”

Rather than turn to see who had been talking to her, Vere pushed once more with all of her might. The wood beam moved further along its course.

Early on during her time at the Cauldrons, one of the guards would yell that a security door had accidently been left open, or that her friends had arrived and were trying to free her. If she did anything other than continue to push the wheel, she was whipped. Even if all she did was look up to see which guard had spoken to her, a vibro whip lashed her back. Other times, the guards told another prisoner to walk by Vere and whisper that an escape was being planned. All she had to do was stop pushing the Circle of Sorrow and run toward one of the exits and she would be saved. If she paused from pushing the wheel to consider what she had been told, the guards whipped her.

With a heave and grunt, she pushed the log forward again.

She had never been whipped by one of the ancient leather whips so she had no way of comparing what that punishment felt like compared to a vibro whip. She had heard, though, from prisoners who had received both types of beatings, that the pain and damage caused by a vibro whip couldn’t be matched by any other type of weapon.

Her body was a testament to that. Each place the vibro whips had lashed at her shoulders and back had been ripped open when the whip crashed against it, then bubbled for a few seconds as pain racked her bones and muscles. Then the skin healed as blistered and scarred tissue.

It was already a nearly impossible task to keep the Circle of Sorrow moving. She had to use all of her strength, hour after hour, to keep the heavy cylinder revolving. After being whipped, the task became a cruel joke. Each time she pushed forward, the wounds would split open and all of the infected blisters and lesions would begin dripping blood and pus down her back. If she were dumb enough to ask for a doctor, the guards would either immediately whip her again, or else they would laugh first, share the joke with the other guards, and then unleash the vibro whips again.

“Vere, we have to go,” a voice screamed at her. “Right now!”

Instead of turning to see who kept trying to get her in trouble, she dug her back foot into the ground, then pushed with all of the energy she had remaining in her body.

What the person who was yelling at her didn’t understand was that only Vere’s body was at the Cauldrons of Dagda. Her mind, under the guidance of Mortimous, was somewhere else completely. Somewhere far off, away from the screaming and fighting and suffering.

11

Quickly kept the Griffin Fire in a holding pattern over the spaceport. Without knowing how far Morgan and the others could make it into the prison before they triggered the first alarm, he was left to fly in slow circles around an open spot on the landing platform while mining ships continued to arrive and depart as they normally would.

At any other spaceport, someone from the dock control would have sent a communication telling him to either land or leave so the airspace was clear. But at Terror-Dhome, where not much traffic came or went, and where no one needed to be told to operate in accordance with all galactic regulations unless they wanted to go next door, into the Cauldrons, no pilot needed reminders of how to behave. He was actually surprised by how long it took for Morgan and the others to trigger the alarms and for the first batch of Vonnegan security forces to appear.

“We’ve got company,” he said into the ship’s communication system, just in case Cade hadn’t also noticed them.

Coming by for another pass, he saw the Pendragon’s blaster turrets begin to swivel and he knew Cade had also seen the threat. There was only one group of soldiers as a result of the initial alarms. Only ten men. Easily dispatched by one or both of their ships.

As he watched, Cade prepared to fire. But instead of using the Pendragon’s blaster turrets, mounted underneath the ship’s hull, Cade released a proton torpedo.

Quickly gasped. “No proton torpedoes when you’re on the ground!” he shouted into the comm system. It was too late, though.

Proton torpedoes were designed to detach from a ship in a zero gravity environment. Any pilot would know that. Cade, unfortunately, wasn’t trained as a pilot.

Instead of shooting across the spaceport, the proton torpedo dropped ten feet and clanked against the ground, directly under the Pendragon.

A wave of nausea came over Quickly. He was going to watch not only Cade explode, but also the ship that Vere, Morgan, and the others were supposed to escape in. The entire rescue would be over before they ever got out of the Cauldrons. Not only would the prison’s impeccable record remain intact, with Vere dying there like every other inmate, all of her friends would die there as well.

He brought the Griffin Fire into a tight turn, punched the controls to speed up, and began racing right at the Pendragon. If their plan was ruined, he could at least try something crazy like shooting the proton torpedo off the platform so it dropped into the lava sea before it exploded.

Before he could, though, the proton torpedo’s engine began to glow. The torpedo’s metal casing scraped against the platform as it dragged itself toward its target, kicking up sparks on the ground behind it as it moved. Finally, after it was already half the distance between the Pendragon and the security forces who were running toward the ship, the proton torpedo was moving fast enough to get off the ground, correct its approach angle, and went crashing into the group of troopers in purple and black armor. A brilliant explosion erupted. When the smoke cleared, nothing remained except charred rubble.

“Cade?” Quickly said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t ever do that again. Blaster turrets only.”

“Roger that. I won’t do that again.”

12

From the windows high above the prison yard, Le Savage watched the scene as it unfolded. His arms remained crossed. His eyes did not blink.

“Colonel Krat?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Why is the group of raiders still alive?”

If his colonel’s response was that the guards on the grounds didn’t carry blasters, only vibro whips, Le Savage swore he would run across the command room and tear the officer’s head right off his shoulders.

But instead, the colonel said, “The shooters on the wall have regular blaster rifles, sir.”

“They don’t have sniper blasters?”

“No, sir. The ones they have are meant for general inmate control, not longer range precision.”

Le Savage watched the blaster fire scatter around the yard, hitting random prisoners, the ground, even the occasional shot at Balor. Every once in a while, a shot came within a foot of one of the intruders, but none of them was struck.

“Send a message to all of the shooters,” Le Savage said. “I want them to change their focus of fire from zones seven, eight, and nine, to zone four.”

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel turned and began relaying the order to the guards high above the prison yard.

The coordinated blaster fire, even if his troops were incompetent, would concentrate so many laser blasts in one direction that the four raiders would have no choice but to fall back. Eventually, they would run out of room and be pinned down.

“Also, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Order another squad of troopers through the prison yard entrance.”

“They are already on their way, sir.”

“And the two ships they arrived in?”

“They destroyed the first group of security forces I dispatched, sir.”

Le Savage turned from the fighting down below, amidst the bubbling lava and the raging beast, and looked at his colonel.

“And?”

The colonel winced slightly, then recovered.

“And the nearest Athens Destroyer will be here in approximately”—he looked at the display screen for a moment, then back at Le Savage—“in three minutes, sir. They have a full complement of Thunderbolts. It is a matter of time until the four intruders down below and the two ships they came here in are destroyed.”

“Very good, Colonel. One other thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Find out who gave the order to hand out blaster rifles to the guards on top of the wall rather than sniper blasters. Then bring him here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Le Savage turned his attention back to the fighting down below. Something he saw made him not only smile, but made him burst with laughter. In the middle of all the fighting, his most prized prisoner, the former leader of the CasterLan Kingdom, was still pushing the Circle of Sorrow. When he told Mowbray this hilarious bit of information, he was sure he would be promoted.

13

Baldwin had to shout over the noise. “Vere, we have to go.”

He had taken cover near the base of the Circle of Sorrow and the little bit of protection it provided, but blaster fire continued to pepper the ground by his feet.

Vere was oblivious to him, though, and to the rapidly escalating chaos around her. She didn’t run for safety or join them in attempting to escape. She didn’t even turn to glimpse in his direction. Baldwin looked into her eyes and saw they were dead to the world. It was as if she were in a chronic state of shock and exhaustion and simply didn’t realize what was going on around her.

The laser blasts near Baldwin slowed down, then stopped. When he peered out from behind the metal base that the thick wooden beam passed through, he saw that the guards had begun shooting toward the entrance where he and the others had arrived. Knowing he would never have a better chance, Baldwin darted out from his hiding spot and ran to Vere’s side.

With a hand on her arm, he yelled, “Vere, it’s me, Baldwin. Come on, we need to get out of here. Now.”

Her bicep was as hard as the lava rock underneath them. When he reached out and wrapped both hands around her forearm to pull her away, she didn’t budge.

“Vere, we’re here to save you,” he said. This didn’t register with her either. She was so strong he couldn’t make her move if she didn’t want to. Defeated, he looked for Morgan. She would have a better idea of what to do. Through the smoky turmoil, he was able to spot her only by the trail of colored vapor that her Meursault blade left in the air each time she swung it. Swirls of red and orange and black lingered in the air wherever she had struck down a Vonnegan guard.

After making sure the guards atop the wall were no longer paying attention to him, he ran toward her. She was closer to the entrance than he was, though, and the blaster fire from the guards on top of the prison wall created a barrier of deadly lasers. He spotted the closest place where he could find cover, the remains of a rock wall that one of the prisoners had been building, and ducked behind it. Swarmed with blaster fire, Morgan hid behind a far section of the same crumbling wall. They were less than thirty feet from each other, but the laser blasts were slowly making their way closer to her, pushing Morgan back out into the open and toward the same door she had entered the prison yard through.

When he called her name, she didn’t seem relieved that he was safe. In fact, she frowned at the sight of him.

“What are you doing?” she yelled as blaster fire sprayed her face and hair with rock dust. “Why don’t you have Vere?”

A prisoner jumped over the rock wall next to Morgan. The cream-colored alien, with a patterned shell that covered his chest and back, laughed and yelled maniacally and then lunged at her. Morgan dodged to the side and punched the alien in the face as he slid past her, knocking him out with one blow.

Seeing Baldwin still down the wall from her, she yelled, “Don’t just stand there, get her!”

Baldwin held his palms in the air. “I tried. She won’t move from the wheel she’s turning.”

“Make her move,” Morgan growled, as if it were that simple.

“I tried!”

Rolling her eyes, Morgan turned to see where Vere was.

“Why do I have to do everything myself?” she mumbled.

But instead of finding her friend, she spotted Balor. The one-eyed giant was shambling across the yard toward Baldwin. At five or six times the height of an adult human, Balor’s shadow cast a long dark shroud across the prison yard. She had been so focused on the barrage of blaster fire and guards with vibro whips that she had lost track of the colossal monster. She gritted her teeth, seeing it lumber toward her friend.

“Morgan, I need help over here,” Baldwin said.

The monster roared as it continued to approach, its head eclipsing the sun far off on the horizon. A quarter of the work grounds became cloaked in the veil of the monster’s shadow.

“Morgan, what should I do?”

She thought about trying to create a diversion. Maybe she could catch the monster’s attention with the light of her sword. The only problem was that by making it turn its attention toward her, she was also focusing its poisonous eye in her direction. One look from it and she would shrivel up and die.

“Baldwin?”

He continued to huddle behind the rock wall without answering. Either he didn’t realize the giant was right behind him or he thought that huddling for safety might make him a less attractive target than the running and screaming inmates.

“Baldwin, run!”

Peering out from her hiding spot, she saw that he was still crouched against the wall, still motionless. Balor was only a few feet away now. The one-eyed giant was directly above Baldwin, looking right at him. Balor hunched forward and dragged his massive hands along the ground.

“Damn it, Baldwin, get out of there!”

Baldwin finally moved, but instead of running for safety, he swayed to the side, then fell backwards, crashing to the ground like a toppled statue. When he smacked the rock surface, Morgan saw that Baldwin’s skin looked more like marble or granite than it did human skin. Gray and textured, the driest places cracked and crumbled away.