“Yes,” Hector said with a nod. “I believe the difference is thousands of lives.”

  A few in the Great Hall hissed at this comment, not liking that someone was disagreeing with the great General Reiser.

  Cash said, “Will every representative in favor of sending our fleet into another battle be aboard one of the departing flagships?”

  There were a couple snickers. Then, realizing Cash was being serious, the room fell silent.

  “I didn’t think so,” Cash said.

  Octo sighed and wagged a finger across the table. “This isn’t the time for grandstanding. As General Reiser has said, this is the time to act.”

  “Great,” Cimber yelled. “And when will the time come to discuss why the Hannibal are approaching our doorstep? When will that time be?”

  Some of the same representatives who had just cheered the idea of the fleet being sent to confront the Juggernaut now shook their heads and reassessed the plan. Other parts of the room booed and hissed. Winchester motioned for these representatives to be silent.

  “It’s understandable that some in the room have reservations. Not everyone appreciates the threat before us as much as General Reiser. He will—”

  “You dirty piece of”—Cimber began to yell as he pushed his chair back, ready to circle the table and strangle Winchester.

  Hector caught his arm and Cash saw that even if Cimber had wanted to go against his friend and cross the room, he would be physically incapable of such a thing as long as Hector held him in place. Finally, Cimber nodded and Hector let go. Rather than retake his seat, however, Cimber walked toward the exit and left the Great Hall.

  “This isn’t the way to go about things,” Hector said.

  No one jeered or mocked this. They simply looked back and forth between Hector and the other side of the room, where General Resier, Octo, and Winchester were located. Cash closed his eyes, knowing how this would play out.

  Octo said, “All in favor of sending part of the fleet to confront the Hannibal?”

  The Great Hall rang out with hundreds of voices echoing in unison as aliens and humans pressed the green button in front of them.

  “Those opposed?”

  Hector pressed the red button. As did Cash. A few others did as well. In all, less than a hundred representatives were against the idea.

  “Very well,” Winchester said. “General Reiser, the Round Table has agreed. Send command to prepare the fleet.”

  43

  Lancelot had no idea exactly what she was doing and had no game plan of what to do next. After seeing the android dart away from the end of the alley behind ThatAm, she had immediately followed. If what J’onne Marks said was true and J was known to visit the bar, it would make perfect sense that Arc-Mi-Die’s assistant would want to avoid attention. She guessed that was why it had wanted to distance itself from the disturbance in the alley as fast as possible.

  Rather than go inside the establishment, though, the android kept walking. Lancelot trailed behind it for three blocks, all the while wondering how to figure out if this was the android she was looking for or just one that had happened to be in the area. From the advice she had received, she at least knew enough to realize she couldn’t simply stop it and ask. That wouldn’t end well for anyone.

  Her problem was that she had to stay far behind it to avoid detection and to stay safe. If the android was J and it was working for Arc-Mi-Die, it would no doubt be programmed with a self-destruct that would initiate the moment it thought it was in any danger of being captured. Although J would never talk, someone who knew android programming could break through the encryption and track exactly where J had gone and where Arc-Mi-Die’s secret base was located. The warlord would never permit such a thing. Instead, J would blow up at the first sign of being captured, thus erasing every part of the hardware that acted as its memory.

  That was why Lancelot not only didn’t ask the android’s identity, she also didn’t take a chance on sprinting through the street and trying to disable it before it self-destructed. Even with its back to her, his sensors would detect someone approaching at a fast pace, correctly interpret the act as a threat, and incinerate itself a split second later. That meant she had to keep trailing it from a distance until she came up with a better plan.

  Eventually, the android doubled back and headed toward the spaceport. Lancelot made a couple educated guesses. The first was that this was in fact J. No other android would have reason to be so cautious. The second was that Arc-Mi-Die had programmed his helper to be overly careful. Anything out of the ordinary, even a brawl in the alley, was reason to hold off on trying to make certain arrangements. Instead, she guessed, J had run an assessment and decided to be safe and either return another time or else do business at a different colony.

  Back at the entrance to the space dock, she saw J boarding a Type B Strain transport. It was a ship she knew to be popular with traders and pirates because of how easy it was to modify. Many of the visitors to the Orleans asteroid field had arrived in such crafts. After her lances impaled the unwelcome or surly guests, many of the ships had become part of the Carthagen’s stockpile.

  Rather than try to get closer to the android, Lancelot went back to the Ronan. Although unlikely, there was a chance J would fly back to wherever Arc-Mi-Die was hiding. Even if it didn’t, Lancelot could follow J to the next stop and hope for a better chance to disable the android there.

  The Ronan was on the far side of the platform from J’s Type B Strain transport. By the time Lancelot got to it, the other vessel was already in the air and heading toward space.

  “Excuse me, do you have a second?”

  A human dressed in dirty and patched clothes was standing at the spot where the Ronan’s ramp would lower.

  “I don’t,” Lancelot said, pushing the human out of the way, sending him sprawling.

  Even before the man picked himself off the ground and began to reach for the blaster located at his hip, Lancelot heard footsteps approaching from every direction. In front of her was another human, slightly heavier and taller than the first, an assault blaster pointed at her. To her sides, she heard heavier footsteps. One Orguantuan was to her left. To her right, another.

  “I would have thought you would learn your lesson,” she said to them, guessing they were two of the same aliens that had confronted her on the street.

  “I said, do you have a second?” the first man taunted as he got back to his feet.

  A smug grin covered his face, revealing stained teeth and a gap where one was missing.

  “And I said I don’t. What part of that could you not understand?”

  Knowing J’s transport was getting away, she withdrew all four of her weapons.

  “Move,” she said. “Now. I don’t have time for niceties.”

  One vibro lance pointed to her right and the other to her left. That would keep the Orguantuans away at least temporarily. A slash of silver vapor tore through the air. The man who had tried to block her way to the ship’s ramp was staring at her in confusion. The Meursault’s blade cut through his arm so efficiently that his brain hadn’t yet processed that the blaster he had been holding was now laying on the ground, along with his forearm and hand.

  Four laser blasts hit her armor before she was able to side step toward the second human. The man backpedaled without shame, the assault blaster jammed into the crook of his shoulder as he continued to fire at her. The pace with which he retreated made it difficult for Lancelot to get close enough to cut him down. She settled for slicing his blaster in half.

  The next time he pulled the trigger, there was no barrel and an energy blast erupted in a wide stream rather than being funneled into a condensed line. Seeing his weapon was useless, the man tossed it to the ground and reached for something else in his pocket.

  The Orguantuans were circling, trying to evade her vibro lances. Before the man could withdraw an ion grenade or whatever else he might have had, Lancelot spun and drove one of her lances through his chest. The man coughed and his hands dropped to his sides. When she retracted the lance, the man collapsed to the ground.

  “You’re interrupting something very important to me,” she told the Orguantuans. “If you stop now, you’ll keep your heads on your shoulders. If not...”

  She let the words linger to test the resolve of the aliens. Both growled and bared their fangs.

  “Oh well.”

  She swiveled her hips and shoulders so that both vibro lances were pointing toward one of the Orguantuans and both Meursaults at the other. The alien directly in front of her brought both fists above his head and roared. With his powerful frame, he looked angry enough to damage the side of her ship with his paws.

  Without giving the alien a chance to move, Lancelot darted forward. Two swishes of silver vapor cut toward the Orguantuan before his ally could formulate his own attack. The alien in front of her, not used to anyone being able to face him in combat, reflectively put his hands out. Both sets of clawed fingers dropped to the ground and the Orguantuan wailed in agony. The cry was cut short by another streak of vapor and his head falling from his neck and hitting the ground.

  The second Orguantuan rushed at her. He punched the blade of one lance away, not caring that the energy of the weapon singed the hair on his hand and burned into his knuckles. The Orguantuan grabbed hold of the other lance with such strength that Lancelot couldn’t move it, both of his hands sizzling as it did so. But no matter how big or strong the alien was, he only had two hands. Lancelot’s Meursaults cut his arms off while they held onto one of the lances, then cut off his head.

  “I gave you all a chance,” she said, scanning the lifeless bodies. Shaking her head, she lowered the ramp to the Ronan, got aboard, and ran to the cockpit.

  Every time she reached for a button near the pilot’s seat she had to remind herself that she was no longer in her own craft but in the unfamiliar one she had been forced to take from Thrice Won. As a result, it took much longer to get the ship prepared for takeoff than it should have. By the time the engines were roaring and the Ronan lifted off the ground, she was cursing under her breath in frustration. If she lost J now, all of her searching over the past few weeks would have been for nothing. And if that happened, everyone she came in contact with would want to cross to the other side of the street if they knew what was good for them.

  Without waiting to see if another vessel was approaching the spaceport, she jammed the thruster down and raced out into the blackness of the galaxy as fast as she could. On her way through the planet’s atmosphere, the ships’ sensors picked up more than thirty other vessels in the vicinity. With many of those vessels being small one-man or two-man crafts that weren’t even visible to the naked eye, she would never be able to find J.

  Instead, she had the Ronan search for any Type B Strain transports, making sure to identify it with her ship’s navigation sensor and not the weapons systems. If her targeting system locked onto the transport, J would immediately know someone was following it and all of Lancelot’s cloak and dagger efforts would be wasted. A display popped up showing her that there were two such ships nearby. One was heading away from the planet and one was landing. She slowed the Ronan to a cruising speed so she wouldn’t be noticed and then followed the one heading to a new destination.

  “How are you going to capture him?” a woman’s voice asked from the edge of the cockpit.

  Without looking, Lancelot knew it was the visitor who wore light brown robes.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  “It’s exciting, though, isn’t it?”

  The question took Lancelot by surprise. She was tracking an android across the galaxy that she still wasn’t absolutely positive was Arc-Mi-Die’s assistant. The word exciting didn’t exactly come to mind. She was also surprised that the mysterious figure in robes, who seemed distant from emotion and the trappings of normal life, would refer to the quest in such a way.

  When she turned to look and see if the women was joking, she surprised herself by saying, “It’s hard to believe I was living in an asteroid not too long ago, and now I’m seeing places I never even knew existed.”

  She could hear the smile in the hooded apparition’s voice when she said, “The galaxy works in mysterious ways. There’s so much to see when people are willing to notice it.”

  “Any advice on how to get the android before it self-destructs?”

  The Type B Strain transport altered its course slightly. Lancelot made sure the ship was far enough away that she couldn’t see any part of it except for the feint glow of its thrusters in the distance. Without her ship keeping track of where the vessel was going, the transport would be easy to lose track of.

  “I said, do you have any advice on how to get the android?”

  Still not getting a response, Lancelot turned to see what the woman was doing. The robed figure was gone.

  Lancelot shook her head and sighed. She did have to admit, though, that for the first time in many years she felt like she was finally alive.

  44

  Within the walls of CamaLon, a pathway led between the historic cemetery and the edge of the Artan CasterLan floral park that adjoined the market area. Not many people knew the pathway existed and fewer used it because its length was bordered on either side by a two story-high stone wall. Anyone who took the path was forced to stay on it for hundreds of yards. No matter where they were going in CamaLon, which added twenty minutes to their journey. In a time when street vendors were busy selling their goods, men and women were racing off to work, and kids had more options of things to do in the streets and fields, it was time almost no one wanted to waste.

  The exception was Julian. The path took him close to his house, and the added time walking in silence gave him a chance to calm his mind and collect his thoughts.

  To his surprise, a figure, hunched over and small, was leaning against the wall in the middle of the path. The man was hooded and his sleeves came down below his fingertips, ensuring no part of him could be seen. Julian approached the robed man without saying a word, lost in thought of how the Hannibal had defeated the three flagships and thinking of possible ways to combat an enemy who possessed technology other civilizations hadn’t yet developed.

  “What will you do?” a creaky and aged voice said from underneath the hood when Julian was next to him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw a sleeve reach for him and reacted on instinct. His Meursault was out and leaving a trail of stone colored vapor in its way as the blade came up to offer defense from any possible attack.

  Rather than put his hand up to defend himself or beg for mercy, the robed man laughed. Defiance in the face of not only the great general but also the legendary Sword in the Stone brought about a wave of irritation in Julian. He moved the sword’s tip so it was an inch away from the fabric that hung over the old man’s face.

  “What will you do?” the old man asked again.

  “Do I know you?” Julian said, leaning slightly to see if he could bend over far enough to look under the cloth that hung down and obstructed any sight of the man’s face.

  He already knew the answer, though. He did know the man.

  “Do I know you?” the old man asked in return.

  With his free hand, Julian reached out to pull the man’s hood back, but when he did his hand touched nothing but the stonewall.

  Startled, he jumped back and brought his sword to bear again.

  “Unless you want your torso separated from your legs, I suggest you tell me who you are.”

  “Unless you want your allies to turn on you, I suggest you find out who you are.”

  What happened next might have occurred because Julian was upset with Hector’s stubbornness or because he had just watched three Round Table flagships get destroyed with little effort from the enemy or because Julian had ignored a warning about the Juggernaut. Julian unleashed the Meursault across the man’s body. A trail of vapor lingered in the air. Even though the mist passed directly through the spot where the robed man was standing, he didn’t fall over or grab his waist. In fact, the old man didn’t indicate any kind of injury at all.

  “That’s what you’re going to do?” the man asked, confused instead of angry. “That is your response?” The man sighed. “Julian, you are proving me wrong. I’ve worked with some wholly and unquestionably difficult people in my time. Some take longer to see the light than others. You, though, are taking longer than anyone.”

  At that moment, Julian realized why the voice sounded familiar. It was the same one that had tormented his dreams ever since he had become Lancelot’s prisoner. It was the same person who Lancelot spoke with in her cavern. It was the same voice that had called to him from across the field during the people’s celebration.

  Stepping forward, Julian said, “Mortimous?”

  The robed figure’s hood bobbed when the old man nodded.

  “What did you mean when you told me to beware the tide of the march?”

  A sound caught his attention and Julian turned to look down the pathway. As soon as he did, he cursed himself for his stupidity because he knew what was going to happen. He was going to turn back to where the man who called himself Mortimous had been standing and he would be gone. Every time Julian had woken from a dream he had the sense that the voice talking to him could disappear as easily as it had arrived. When he saw Mortimous standing near the ramp of the HC Ballistic Cruiser, the robed figure had disappeared as soon as Julian turned to ask Margaret if she had also seen him.

  He sighed and turned back to where Mortimous had been standing. Of course, the soothsayer was gone.

  Julian let out a long breath and glanced back down the pathway again.

  A voice called again even though Mortimous’ body was nowhere to be found. “What have you done to be worthy of leading these people? Do you really think possessing the Sword in the Stone is enough?”