“This is not the way to conduct yourself,” Octo said, his face contorted with anger.

  Cimber lunged for the representative again but Cash held him back.

  “But trying to install a leader is the way to conduct yourself?” Cimber shouted.

  “Come on,” Cash said, ushering Cimber in the opposite direction. When he managed to get his friend to follow, he called back over his shoulder, “This can’t happen. We’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

  35

  Ten minutes later, the representatives filed back into the Great Hall. Julian returned with them, but this time, instead of observing the proceedings from behind Octo and Winchester, he stood behind Hector.

  Julian noticed how Cimber and Cash gave questioning looks toward Hector, unsure of what was going on. Each time they did, Hector gave them a reassuring nod that did little to comfort the two cynical representatives.

  After everyone was seated, Hector turned and smiled and Julian returned the kindness. He could see now that Hector had been right. It was easy to get caught up in the momentum and frenzy of the crowds who yelled for him to become King Reiser or Emperor Reiser. When he listened to Octo and Winchester say the Round Table needed him to be their leader, such a thing sounded not only reasonable but also absolutely necessary. Speaking to Hector in private, however, allowed Julian to see things from a different perspective. Hector wanted nothing to do with the cheering crowds and was able to see the situation for what it was. In turn, he had helped Julian do the same.

  As Julian watched the hundreds of representatives file back into the room and take their seats, he noticed that Octo and Winchester, smiling and laughing back when he had been standing on their side of the Great Hall, now whispered to each other, both of them talking through gritted teeth. He winked at them, trying to let them know everything was going to work out. Neither of them seemed amused or quelled by his good nature, however. He was sure their mood would change once they found out he was going to be taking Hector’s seat at the Round Table.

  He would bring a fresh voice to the room. All the representatives who applauded his return would be more willing to unite as one voice. The few representatives who didn’t want to alter the structure of the Round Table would also have their wish. Everyone would win.

  But Hector didn’t announce that Julian was going to take his seat at the Round Table. Instead, after his android assistant handed him a small device, he said, “Everyone, we have an urgent update.”

  Julian stepped closer to see what Hector was looking at.

  “As you all know, we lost contact with Cartha-Minor-d nearly twenty-four hours ago.”

  A hologram appeared in the middle of the Round Table, filling the Great Hall with blue and white light. The image was a cosmic map. The stars magnified from millions of dots to show the Cartha sector. Cartha-Minor-d was just outside the Orleans asteroid field. Everyone in the room glanced at Julian, knowing it was the last successful stop on his campaign prior to confronting the Carthagens.

  Hector said, “We had assumed the loss of communications was due to solar storms or some other disruption. But we have just received news that Cartha-6 and two other colonies, every point of civilization we sent ships to in the Cartha sector, have also ceased to send communications.”

  The room swelled with murmurs of disapproval. Julian heard a representative a few seats away from Hector say that it was surely a rebellion. A woman with translucent skin and white hair said that they might need General Reiser’s ships to return and remind them of their commitment to the Round Table. Another said it surely must be the work of Arc-Mi-Die.

  The three-dimensional image filling the middle of the table changed from blues and whites to mostly black. The room became enveloped in darkness. The map now showed a section of outer space rather than a collection of stars and planets. Julian recognized the planet and realized he was looking at a video feed of Cartha-6.

  In the distance of the holographic image, a large ship, big enough to be Cartha-6’s moon, approached. Julian gasped. Not because of how large it was, although that was surely why the rest of the room let out a collective exclamation of their own, but because he knew at once what it was. It was the third warning the Carthagens had created as his ships approached their home.

  Because he had seen the ship before, he knew what was going to happen next.

  “Please, no,” he muttered, his hands shaking.

  Glimmers of light appeared from the side of the vessel. A pair of objects began making their way toward the planet’s surface, where they were joined by two others that had departed from the far side of the vessel. Moments later, the hologram stopped. Everyone in the room, Julian most of all, knew that must have been the exact moment that Cartha-6 had fallen under attack.

  “Magnify and replay,” Hector said.

  “No,” Julian whispered to himself, trying with all of his might to will this not to actually be happening.

  The video feed started over. This time, the hologram zoomed in on the Juggernaut itself. Only the very edge of Cartha-6 was visible in the corner of the magnified image. Four hangars had opened from the enormous craft. A different colored mech appeared from each. They rode atop hover platforms that carried them toward the planet’s surface. Julian recognized them as the exact same mechs he had seen in front of the Carthagen asteroids.

  “No,” he mumbled again and forced his hands into his pockets to keep them from trembling.

  The four mechs were half the way to the planet’s surface when their weapons began to glow. That was also the same time the hologram went dark.

  “What does it mean?” a Gthothch representative said from the other side of the room.

  A feathered alien, yellow and grey, squawked a series of noises that were translated as, “We need to send the fleet there immediately.”

  Julian closed his eyes. The room became filled with people calling for the Round Table fleet to go back to the Cartha sector, this time to confront the massive ship. Of course, none of the representatives doing the shouting would be aboard the vessels themselves. All of them would be safe back on Edsall Dark while they called for soldiers to risk their lives on everyone else’s behalf.

  In his report of the campaign, Julian had mentioned the three different holograms that the Carthagens had projected. He was sure anyone in the room who had actually read the document—Hector, Octo, and Winchester surely among them—would recognize the mechs and enormous ship he had described as being part of the third warning. Now, presumably, that vessel had extinguished all life within the Cartha sector.

  “What should we do, General Reiser?”

  Julian opened his eyes and scanned the room to see who had asked the question. Octo was staring at him, waiting for an answer. Julian glanced around at the people who filled the Great Hall. It wasn’t just Octo who wanted an answer, but everyone. Even Hector had swiveled on his energy disk and was waiting to hear what Julian had to say.

  He wanted to be able to take Hector and a few other people he trusted and whose opinions mattered to him and have a private conversation with them. He wished he could find out what exactly had happened to the people on Cartha-6 and the other colonies in the sector before committing to a decision. But he also knew most people in the room, most people in CamaLon and the rest of the sectors, regarded him as a sort of protector. If he told them he needed time to think, or worse, told them he didn’t know what to do, they would descend into arguments and bickering and fear just like they always did.

  “We need to send the closest flagships,” he said. “I believe we have three located in the 16-D-10 sector.” He saw Hector’s eyes narrow and added, “Not to attack, only to investigate who is piloting that Juggernaut and what they want.”

  Winchester stood. “Call for a vote: all in favor of following General Reiser’s suggestion?”

  Each representative had two buttons in front of them. One was red and the other green. A hologram in the middle of the room tallied the count. Over nine hundred representatives voted to send the three flagships. Fewer than fifty voted not to.”

  Winchester nodded to Julian. “General Reiser, the Round Table agrees. Have the three ships investigate what has happened at once.”

  36

  The inside of ThatAm didn’t fit the idea Lancelot had in her mind of a local bar. It wasn’t filled with drunks and brawling thugs, the way other stops on her quest to track down Arc-Mi-Die had been. There were no Turgdorians or any other kind of thugs or henchmen. Looking around, Lancelot noticed there were also no androids in sight. Instead, she was out of place because she was wearing full battle armor while everyone else was in expensive suits and glimmering dresses.

  A table full of Sheshnoors, an alien race with long, elegant necks, creamy pale skin, and fingers the length of daggers, sat at a table together, each of them wearing tailored clothes cut to fit their uniquely proportioned bodies. A half human, half Sirinse woman crossed the room in a sparkling blue dress that flowed behind her. A musician sat behind an oversized instrument that let off slow and haunting sounds as she sang in a beleaguered and sad voice that seemed more appropriate to a stage than a bar down the street from where organized crime was involved in something nefarious.

  The bartender and all of the patrons stopped their discussions just long enough to turn Lancelot’s way and appraise the warrior and her possible intentions. There were no chipped or cracks mugs in the establishment. There was no one hiding in the shadows. Everyone Lancelot saw was proud to be there. Each patron had a tall and slender glass filled with bubbling liquid.

  Making her way across the floor, she walked to the marble bartop. The bartender was a Gthothch dressed in a black suit.

  Remembering J’onne Marks’ professional advice to stop asking so many questions, Lancelot said, “I’m looking for work.”

  The bartender turned from a conversation he was having with a female human dressed in a shiny silver dress and smiled. “I’m sorry, this isn’t that kind of establishment.”

  “I heard it was.”

  “Oh?” the bartender said, offering a stone smile. “What is your area of expertise?”

  “Killing people.”

  Lancelot had not spoken the words loudly. But through the voice modulator of her helmet, the simple confession sounded unemotional and harsh, and that made the words seem deafening in such an establishment as ThatAm. The woman in the silver dress stopped laughing and backed away. The people at the nearest table broke into hushed whispers, dropped some money on the table to pay for their drinks, then got up and hurried toward the exit.

  The bartender shook his heavy stone head. “Like I said, friend, this is not that type of establishment.”

  “I heard it was,” Lancelot said again, trying her best not to withdraw a weapon and get the information the way she had grown accustomed.

  “What can I say?” The bartender shrugged. “I suppose you heard wrong.”

  Lancelot stared at the nicely dressed Gthothch, who went back to smiling and filling drink orders. A waitress, the size of a human child but covered in scales and with four small wings at her shoulders, flew in front of the bar and picked up a tray of fizzing drinks.

  When she was gone, Lancelot said, “Where do you suggest I go? I could really use some work.”

  She expected the bartender to press a button and call for help or else motion to whatever kind of surveillance cameras the bar used.

  Instead, he sighed and said, “There are quite a number of unsavory characters in the back alley.” Lancelot turned to leave and the bartender added, “Please, go out the back way.” Then, cringing in his stone manner, he explained, “It would be nice if as few people as possible saw someone dressed in full armor leaving our establishment. We are not that type of place.”

  Lancelot wasn’t offended. Rather, she took it as a compliment that she fit in more with the ruffians who lurked in the darkness than the hoighty-toighty patrons who wore expensive clothes while they drank out of ridiculous-looking glasses.

  “Thank you,” she said and the bartender nodded.

  The door leading to the back alley was made of reinforced steel and had a blast-proof coating, which meant the bartender hadn’t been wasting her time. She pushed the door open. The hinges whined like a siren. The fading sun cast everything in the already dark alley into an ominous series of burnt orange shadows.

  In one corner of the alley she saw the outline of what might have been two other Turgdorians. In another, she saw something that looked like an Ogrish. In another, a group of men and aliens in overcoats smoked from pipes and argued in hushed tones.

  The easiest thing to do would be to call out and ask if any of them knew an android named J. But like the gentlemanly bounty hunter had cautioned, all that would do would announce her as someone who was out of place from where she was supposed to be. If she had learned anything during her searches, it was that the people who made up the underworld of each planet and colony didn’t like seeing unfamiliar faces.

  A noise came from above her head. Stepping forward and spinning, she used her two upper arms to reach behind her shoulders for her Meursaults.

  One of them was gone.

  She cursed herself for being stupid enough to walk through the doorway without first scanning her surroundings—including above her. Even before she was done spinning on her heels to look above the doorway she had exited, her hand darted over her head to grab at whoever or whatever had taken one of her swords.

  She grabbed hold of an ankle. Swiveling, she saw it was the same race of alien as the four-winged waitress from inside the bar, only this one was a male and instead of fancy clothes he wore stained overalls and a blast-proof vest. As soon as his ascent with Lancelot’s sword was prevented and he had no hope of flying away, the alien tossed the stolen Meursault further down the alley, probably in hopes she would let go of him and chase after her blade. She had half a mind to slice the alien in half with her other Meursault. Instead, she wound her arm back and slammed him against the building like a wet towel. The alien crunched against the wall and fell motionless on the ground.

  It was easy to spot her sword in the poorly lit alley because a trail of dark orange vapor, the color of the setting sun, arced through the air, showing exactly where the blade had passed. Every other alien in the alley noticed the same thing.

  It was possible that they would have gone back to what they were doing if it had been a normal sword. But being that it was one of only seven known Meursaults in the galaxy and that there were wealthy buyers who would pay a fortune for such a rare object, each alien looked at everyone else nearby, then darted to where the sword lay.

  The pair of Turgdorians were on top of it first because it had fallen by their feet. Instead of acting as a team, they fought over it, which allowed the wart-covered alien that resembled a monster from a children’s book to tackle both of them. Three MaqMacs, thinking they might be small enough to be overlooked, jumped into the pile as well.

  Lancelot leapt over a trashcan, then past a single-person hover transport that might have been junk or someone’s ride. Two of the MaqMacs saw her coming and darted away from the pile. The third was trying to burrow through the tangled mess of alien limbs to get the sword. Lancelot grabbed it by the waist, wound back, and tossed it thirty feet down the alley.

  She was going to pull the Ogrish off next but a pair of laser blasts hit the side of her armor, causing her to stumble to her left. Spinning, she saw a human in light battle armor, crouched behind a dumpster. Another blast hit her shoulder, sending her back a step.

  “Do you fancy yourself some kind of bounty hunter?” she called to him.

  With her other Meursault in one hand, she withdrew and ignited both vibro lances with her lower arms. She had to admit: holding only three weapons felt strange. But even though her fourth weapon was only feet away, the Turgdorians and ogre could sort it out until she stopped herself from being blasted anymore.

  She stepped to the side to dodge a laser blast from hitting her sternum, then sprinted across the alley. It took no time at all for her to chase the human down. His Type-I heavy blaster was the first thing to go. Lancelot sliced it in half with the Meursault still in her possession.

  The mercenary or bounty hunter or whatever he liked to think of himself as had other weapons at his disposal but none that were ready to use.

  “Please, I made a mistake,” he said. “Just let me go.”

  He grunted when a vibro lance impaled him, then sighed as the life passed out of his body.

  The Ogrish roared and with all of its strength, picked one of the Turgdorians off the ground and threw him against the nearest wall. It got back to its feet and rushed the Ogrish, who, with one punch, knocked the alien out. He was about to do the same to the other Turgdorian when Lancelot began running toward them again.

  She was only four steps closer to them when a metal clink tapped the ground by her feet. She knew exactly what the noise was but had no time to react. The proton grenade erupted and tossed Lancelot through the air and into the side of a trashcan.

  There was no point to chasing down the Ogrish or reclaiming her weapon until she saw where the grenade had come from. Crouching behind the trashcan, she saw an alien perched on top of the roof across the alley, a grenade launcher mounted to the shoulder armor of his battlegear. His next blast landed at the feet of the Ogrish. After the blast subsided, the monstrous alien was lying flat on his stomach and wasn’t moving. The Turgdorian was still alive but was trapped underneath the heavier alien.

  The bounty hunter remained atop the roof to see if anyone else would dart out and make an attempt for the weapon. It took all of Lancelot’s restraint to remain hidden behind the dumpster. When nothing stirred, the bounty hunter ignited the retro boosters on his boots, which allowed him to drop twenty feet to the ground at half the speed of a free fall.