There was even more sin and debauchery in the alleys. Each time Lancelot passed a corner, she heard crying, growling, or begging. In most of the shadows, she heard combinations of these noises.

  Finally, she came to a dingy looking bar, which she entered. As she did, part of her suit stopped functioning and she knew she had passed through a Treagon barrier. The lens in her helmet stopped working. Her vibro lances would be of no use. Using her human arms and legs, she switched the automated parts of her armor to move in unison with her actual limbs.

  Like many of the other establishments she had been to, the bar was dimly lit. Without the aid of her helmet’s sensors, she had to squint to see who or what was taking a seat in each corner. In one, she saw a reptile hunched over a table and approached him.

  Standing over him, Lancelot saw that the enormous reptile had no interest in looking up to see who was encroaching on his space. He gave a soft hiss to let her know she should go somewhere else, then went back to lashing his tongue at the mug of ale in his clawed hand until the glass was empty.

  “Hello, Traskk,” Lancelot said. “An old friend of yours sent me here to talk to you.”

  49

  It wasn’t so much that Traskk abandoned the life he had known as the life he had known and grown accustomed to disappeared one day. When it did, the Basilisk had no idea what to do next.

  For years, he had followed Vere everywhere she went. She was his only true friend. He had gotten along with Morgan but she was too much like him—filled with rage, untrusting of nearly everyone and everything—for the two of them to bond the way he had with Vere. He had enjoyed being around Fastolf but it was impossible to trust someone who took delight in taking advantage of others. There was Quickly, the pilot, but they had only come together for the mission to free Vere from the Cauldrons of Dagda. Once that was over, and once the Vonnegan Empire had been defeated, Quickly had been eager to leave Edsall Dark and settle down.

  “I’m done watching my friends get blown out of space, and I’m done flying other people around,” the pilot had said to Traskk.

  At that moment, Traskk hadn’t been able to understand how someone could just leave the life they were familiar with.

  The Basilisk thought Pistol might become a good companion. The android didn’t talk too much, wasn’t self-centered. That was good. He might have made the perfect friend, but Pistol’s programming required he support a mission and Traskk had no mission to offer. Instead, Pistol had become Hector’s assistant. That was when the realization really hit him: everyone he had ever known was gone.

  Of the unusual mix of friends that had formed and spent their days at Eastcheap, Occulus and A’la Dure had died soon after leaving Folliet-Bright. Lovable yet infuriating Fastolf had died a few years after that. Then Baldwin—not part of the original group but a nice and respectful human nonetheless—had died in the Cauldrons. After that, Morgan. In the end, it had been just Traskk and Vere. Even with all the death and lost friends, that would have been enough for him.

  But then she too, the most important person in his life, had disappeared. Not because of death like the others. That would have at least been something he could come to terms with. From a very early age, Basilisks became acquainted with death. As a result, they accepted it more easily than other species. Vere hadn’t died, though. She had simply vanished. That was what weighed on Traskk’s mind and made it so difficult for him. He had loved her like a sister. They had saved each others lives. And yet one day she had walked out into the caves beyond CamaLon and never returned. She hadn’t been killed or fallen ill, she had simply chosen a different path and she hadn’t even cared about him enough to say goodbye.

  With nowhere to go and no place to call home, he had returned to the last spot he had been truly happy. Eastcheap. There, Fastolf had stolen wallets and told jokes. Occulus had tried to impart tiny bits of wisdom. Vere had refused to back down from anyone and had even chopped off an enormous knight’s head.

  It wasn’t the same as it had been, though. Like the old days, he did nothing but drink and brawl. The problem was, there was no joy to be found in it anymore. Now, instead of sitting amongst friends, Traskk sat by himself. Instead of laughing and joining in fights with his drinking buddies, he growled at anyone who came too close or who tried to sit at his table.

  The bartender threatened to have Traskk kicked out of the establishment. In response, Traskk had bared his fangs and roared a hiss that made half of Eastcheap spill their drinks as they darted for the exit. After that, the bartender left him alone.

  “Hello, Traskk. An old friend of yours sent me here to talk to you.”

  The reptile looked up from his mug and saw an alien in full battle armor, four arms and four legs, standing right in front of his table. Each part of the alien’s protective suit was bronze or brown, with gold accents.

  Whatever the creature looming overtop him was, he had never seen one before. However, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. Over the past couple months, more than a few humans and even some other Basilisks had approached his table. None of them had been welcomed either. Most of them had gotten the point that when a Basilisk turned and faced you with its oblong yellow eyes—its long claws digging into the table as it let out a hiss—that “go away” meant get out of my face right now it you want to keep breathing.

  True to his nature, Traskk turned to the alien and let out a similar guttural growl.

  Instead of leaving, the alien folded its two lower arms as if losing patience. With its two upper arms, it reached up to its helmet and unclipped a series of fasteners. Oxygen hissed free as the alien’s helmet came off.

  Traskk looked up at the thing and let out a reptilian gasp from his snout. The thing in front of him was no alien at all but a human female. Not just a woman but one with flowing blond hair, fair skin, and red lips.

  Regardless, he reminded her that he wished to be alone. His method of doing this was looking her straight in the eyes and barring his fangs.

  Instead of leaving, she put her helmet down on the table and said, “Vere sent me. I need your help and I don’t have much time.”

  50

  Arc-Mi-Die had contacts all over the galaxy. More accurately, there were goons in every part of space willing to get paid to do jobs they knew better than to ask questions about. None of these people realized they were working for the warlord, they just saw an android offering large sums of money and agreed to do whatever was ordered.

  Until its latest trip, J’s most successful stop had been on Sceptor-Major. There, the android had once hired three Fire-Gones to kidnap a physicist. It was also where J picked up a different scientist that a pair of Turgdorians had grabbed.

  The bar ThatAm had been a preferred meeting spot to find crews with the necessary skillsets. The establishment was upscale, so J could be assured no problems would occur inside. But it was also within the line of sight of other places where less reputable types liked to hang out.

  “Odd looking fellow was in here looking for you,” the bartender said to J when it had approached the bar.

  J’s eyes became illuminated as it processed the information and all of its possible repercussions. A thin ring of yellow light looped around its irises.

  “What did he want?” the android had said without emotion or urgency.

  “Wanted work. Said he was good at killing people.”

  It was not the type of conversation that was supposed to occur in ThatAm. J was the one who sought workers, not the other way around. And anyway, no one who might consider themselves a professional in that line of work would go to a ritzy place like ThatAm and announce their intentions.

  “Where did he go?”

  The bartender had given a jerk of the head over his shoulder. “I sent him out back.”

  J had nodded, walked back outside, and taken a look down the alley. There, a four-armed and four-legged thing was fighting multiple types of thieves and criminals. In an instant, J was able to assess that the alien wasn’t the type of person Arc-Mi-Die would ever trust. Even the Turgdorians, as rough around the edges as they had been, had known not to bring undue attention upon themselves.

  Two blocks later, J’s internal sensors told the android there was a high probability it was being tracked. Someone or something was following its exact path through the streets. Because of this, at the next corner, J had turned and started back to the spaceport.

  J’s ship was taking off when the eight-limbed alien got to the main deck.

  A couple minutes later, another set of sensors went off. This time, they came from J’s Type B Strain transport as the ship soared out of Sceptor-Major’s atmosphere and raced into the darkness of the galaxy. A holographic warning showed that another vessel was following the same trajectory. J had no doubt it was the alien from the alley. For an entire sector, J watched as the ship stayed a good distance away. The tactic was obvious and not well-executed because it was clear to the android that it was being followed.

  Because of that, the android went to Folliet-Bright because it wasn’t near Arc-Mi-Die’s hiding spot. It also had the added benefit of possessing an infestation of aliens who would gladly kill whoever was following it. Once that was accomplished, J could find some thugs to hire for Arc-Mi-Die’s next task.

  J entered a bar two doors down from Eastcheap, at an establishment where there wasn’t a Treagon barrier to prevent androids or electronic weapons. The android found two empty glasses, picked them up, and clanged them together in order to get everyone’s attention. J could have shouted in its loudest android vocal setting, but the type of beings who inhabited a wretched den of drinking like the one the android was in understood better the language of glasses ringing as a signal for announcements. A table of three grizzled aliens with hard shells covering every part of their bodies turned and looked at J. So did a pair of aliens with six arms and a pair of thick and hairy wings. A human and a gelatinous creature with an artificial exo-skeleton built around it also stopped drinking. Everyone in the room no doubt had at least one blaster and one ion knife strapped to them. Most were probably familiar with the sensation of taking a life and would be fine with doing it for money.

  J said, “An alien dressed in bronze and brown armor is nearby. It has four arms and four legs. I will pay ten thousand credits to every single person who makes sure that thing never leaves Folliet-Bright.”

  51

  For centuries, EndoKroy had been the center of the Vonnegan Empire. It was the place Murdok the Devious, Mantal the Executioner, Mowbray the Vanquished, and every other Vonnegan ruler had called home. It was easy to remember EndoKroy as the purple planet where rulers plotted which sector they would attack next. But it was also the place where the first replacement bio arm had been successfully attached to a living being and where the Mandestol monks had supposedly reached nirvana many millennia earlier.

  EndoKroy had undergone a dramatic shift in the years following Mowbray’s defeat to the Round Table forces. The skyscraper that had reached up into the grape clouds, home of the Vonnegan ruling family, had been turned into a university. The prison just outside the capital that had housed personal enemies of the Vonnegan rulers, where inmates were given slow, tortuous deaths rather than simply being executed, was turned into a museum dedicated to the history of space exploration and conquest.

  Much of the rest of the capital city and the planet was unchanged, however. Tall buildings, reinforced with metal that resembled armor, reached high into the air. The sky and the clouds were always purple, and when the sun was out the entire landscape looked like an amethyst city. The population still consisted of many of the same people who had once called Mowbray their ruler but now they could walk the streets without worrying about Mowbray’s personnel guards coming to take them away or about a decree that more young adults would need to be trained and shipped off for another war. Instead of Vonnegan troopers patrolling the streets, looking for any sign of dissent, the city actually had people laughing and talking. Above the planet, three portals allowed terrific amounts of commercial space traffic to conduct business without the worry of Athens Destroyers finding reasons to confiscate goods.

  It was at EndoKroy, the former center of galactic misery and now a shining example of what the Round Table was capable of, that an Excalibur ship arrived. It did not appear through one of the portals, however, and no one was sure how it got close to the planet without being detected. It was first spotted as it began to make its way through the planet’s atmosphere.

  In the days of Mowbray and the other Vonnegan rulers before him, an entire fleet of Athens Destroyers would have been stationed there. Now, only five flagships were normally there and four of those had been ordered to rendezvous with Brigadier Desttro at Greater Mazuma.

  As soon as the Excalibur ship was spotted, the captain of the lone remaining Athens Destroyer ordered his crew to move the ship in between the planet and the approaching vessel. As it did, a dozen Thunderbolts launched from the Destroyer’s hangars. Crewmen worked to prepare a second squadron of Thunderbolts, as well as a pair of mechs armed with drills. However, the Athens Destroyer’s captain knew they would take too long to prepare, and so he relied on his own flagship and the fighters already racing toward the Excalibur ship.

  None of the Thunderbolt pilots bothered to shoot lasers or fire proton torpedoes. All of them were aware these weapons would have no impact on the legendary vessel. Instead, each let off a volley of gravitized depth charges. The canisters launched from each Thunderbolt, drifted toward the oncoming Excalibur ship, then erupted into a hail of metal shrapnel. One of the depth charges did the trick—a jagged piece of metal hit the approaching ship’s hull at over one thousand feet per second. The Excalibur ship sensed that someone or something was trying to penetrate its defense system and the entire vessel self-destructed while it was still miles above the capital.

  The Athens Destroyer’s captain knew the threat wasn’t over, though. That was why he put his ship in between the approaching ship and the city below. Debris would have rained down on the Vonnegan people unless his flagship was in the way to absorb the brunt of the blast.

  Alarms filled the Destroyer’s command deck. The Destroyer was crippled. Its shields had been wiped out by the explosion and the top third of the flagship was vaporized.

  With what little operational capability the Destroyer still had, the captain ordered it to proceed away from the capital. It would still crash and many people aboard the vessel would die, but the densely populated capital would be spared.

  “All crew to evacuation pods,” the captain yelled.

  Only he remained on the command deck of the Athens Destroyer to make sure it stayed on course, toward the Mungrin mountain range. While he watched, almost three-quarters of the escape pods managed to jettison, saving a large portion of the crew. Down below, only minor debris from the Excalibur vessel would cause damage. For what he did, the captain would be credited with saving millions of lives. That knowledge made his final moments the proudest of his entire life.

  Seconds before the Athens Destroyer crashed into the mountains and the captain was killed, he looked out the flagship’s viewport. What he saw brought about complete and utter dismay. So much so that the Vonnegan put his hands to his face and wept.

  A second Excalibur vessel was racing through the planet’s atmosphere and, with his own Destroyer moments from exploding and the others ordered elsewhere, there was no way to protect the capital from certain annihilation.

  52

  Margaret and Portia walked across the fields of Aromath the Solemn the same way they always did. Only now, instead of speaking the entire time, which was their ritual, they made their way in silence.

  Margaret could have asked what Portia thought of everything that was going on with the Round Table, but she knew her husband was upset with Hector for stubbornly refusing to discuss ways to modify its proceedings.

  Portia could have asked how Julian was getting along these days or about what it was like to possess the Sword in the Stone. She knew, though, from what Hector told her, that Julian was suspected of working alongside two of the representatives that her husband didn’t trust.

  Margaret was tempted to ask if Hector was candid about what he thought would happen, knowing that when she asked Julian, all she got in return were shrugs and comments like, “I think I can make a difference.”

  Portia had a question she wanted to ask as well but knew it would bother Hector if she did. The question was whether Julian actually intended to follow popular sentiment and take charge of the Round Table.

  All of it went unsaid and unasked. As did everything else the two friends thought to say. Each comment, no matter how trivial, could lead to an unintended quarrel. And so they walked across the fields without saying anything.

  53

  Lancelot, her helmet on the table so Traskk could see she meant no harm, took a seat across from the reptile. It wasn’t a good sign that he had bared his fangs and offered a guttural hiss, but J was somewhere nearby, Lancelot couldn’t capture the android by herself, and the woman in the brown cloak, who called herself Vere, said this alien could provide assistance.

  Her confidence in Vere’s suggestion was waning, however. The Basilisk not only seemed to be inebriated, he also made it clear he didn’t want anyone bothering him.

  “I don’t have much time,” she said again. “Do you want to help or not?”

  Once again, Traskk’s shoulders rose as he took in air, then resettled as he let out a hiss that lasted five long seconds.