Without giving any more verbal or physical indications to his crew, he went about assessing why the news had brought about that reaction. He determined it wasn’t because Julian was his friend or hero. He had gone back and risked his own life in the asteroid field to save Julian and anyone else still alive because it was his duty, not because he was saving a general or a living legend. Nor was he upset because it was someone he had known personally. He was more fond of Brigadier Exeter than any other commanding officer in the Cartha campaign and he hadn’t been upset when he got the news of his friend’s death. After all, he was used to death in space.

  What bothered him was that Julian had been a hero only a week earlier. Now he was dead, accused of potentially becoming a tyrant. The message ended by saying tensions were high in CamaLon, reports of violence between supporters of Julian and of the assassins were taking place all over the capital.

  Nothing was sacred.

  Desttro was upset because everything they had fought for in the Cartha sector could come to an end before he got home. Everything they were doing today might be meaningless tomorrow. Sacrifices might not be worth the blood and sweat they were paid in. That was what made him sit back in his chair and groan with a brevity his crew had never seen before.

  “General Reiser has been assassinated,” he said without emotion.

  There was dead silence on the command deck. He knew the report would somehow spread across the fleet, better to let his crew hear of the report through him than to find out some other way.

  He left the command deck and forwarded the report to the men and women in charge of the other ships in his fleet. The time gave his officers a chance to whisper amongst themselves and process the information. When he got back to the command deck, he told everyone that nothing had changed.

  “We still have a mission and we’re still going to do it. Unless we stop it, the Juggernaut will still destroy everything in its path until it reaches Edsall Dark, and then it will take away our homes and families as well.” He looked at each person standing at attention. “Unless we stop it,” he said again.

  Then he went back to thinking about the Juggernaut and how he would attack it the next time he saw it.

  113

  Talbot met with Octo and Winchester in an office within the Great Hall. They picked that location instead of going back to his house because he knew it was going to be the type of conversation Margaret wouldn’t want to hear. That, combined with the mobs of people who were roaming the streets following Julian’s funeral made the Great Hall’s proximity more than convenient.

  Most of the groups marching through CamaLon were looking for anyone willing to admit they still supported Julian’s assassination. That was a credit to Talbot’s speech. There were smaller groups of people who shouted that Hector was a hero for having preserved the Round Table. Each time the two sides met, clashes broke out.

  “Many people could die,” Talbot said, looking back and forth between the two representatives, both of whom were more than twice his age.

  They sat in a triangle, away from any desk. Talbot assumed this was Octo’s way of letting him know he was an equal member of their group, three sides of one triumvirate.

  Octo nodded. “The capital will be unsettled for a while. Things will quiet down, though, eventually.”

  “I didn’t want to create a divided kingdom,” Talbot said softly. “That wasn’t why I spoke today.”

  Winchester leaned to the side and clapped Julian’s son on the back. “You did great out there, my boy.” His voice was gravelly and low. “You honored your father. He would have been proud.”

  Talbot asked what would happen to Cash and Cimber. Octo narrowed his eyes, and Talbot knew he should have included Hector’s name as well. After all, those three representatives were also part of a triumvirate. However, something kept him from mentioning Hector’s name in the same breath.

  “There is too much at stake for them to be allowed to meddle anymore in the Round Table’s affairs.”

  Octo didn’t explain what he meant by this and Talbot didn’t care enough about what happened to the men who had killed his father to ask. Whatever happened was what they deserved.

  114

  Cash cracked his knuckles from inside the entryway of Hector’s home. “I told you we shouldn’t have let that brat live.”

  Hector hovered back and forth as he listened to Cash and Cimber relay the story of having to wait until dark to sneak down the street. They were forced to speak indoors for fear of being overheard in his backyard by the mobs who were still roaming the streets.

  “No one is going to kill Talbot just because he’s the son of someone else,” Hector said. “I won’t allow it. We’re supposed to be better than that.”

  “Better than what?” Cimber hissed, looking around at the vase and the framed painting nearest to him, trying to find something he could smash to pieces without facing Hector’s wrath. “Now the entire city is going to be out to get us.”

  Cash shook his head. “I told you we shouldn’t have let him speak, Hector. I told you!”

  Hector sighed and hovered to a different area of the room. “You’d murder him at his own father’s funeral?”

  Cimber pounded a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Damn you, man. Can’t you see what’s going on? The entire Round Table, the entire galaxy, is going to despise us because you not only wouldn’t let us kill Talbot, you actually thought it was a good idea to let him prosecute us in front of the entire population of CamaLon.”

  Hector took in a deep breath through his nose. As he did, his giant chest expanded. Then he let the air escape and made his way across the room.

  Directly in front of Cimber, he said, “You won’t talk to me like that in my own house.”

  Cash moved between the two men before anything else could be said. “We’re all upset about what’s happened, but we have to stick together. We didn’t kill Julian just so everything could fall apart now. We aren’t simple villains; we were saving the Round Table. The people will remember that and everything will subside.” He paused before adding, “Anyway, if it doesn’t blow over, and if we don’t stick together, Hector has the most to lose.”

  Hector swiveled on his energy platform and took Cash by the throat. “You threaten me in my own home? Are your words supposed to scare me? I know what I did. The people know me for who I am. Can you say the same?” He looked back and forth between the two men. “Can either of you?”

  Cash rose on the balls of his feet as Hector almost lifted him completely off the ground by his neck. A moment later the giant hand released its grip and Cash coughed and dropped to both knees as he tried to catch his breath.

  Hector’s attention kept going back to the front door, and he realized his mood was as much to blame on not knowing where Portia was and if she was okay as it was due to his actions toward Julian. If Pistol were still around, he would task the android with scouring the city to find Portia.

  He turned and noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that Cash had a hand under his robes. His supposed friend would have no reason to withdraw a comm device or anything else of use.

  Hector’s voice was low when he said, “It would be a great dishonor if I saw an ion dagger in my own home.”

  Cash saw something in his friend’s eyes that made his hand immediately come back into view without anything in it. He held both palms out to show he meant no harm.

  Hector said, “I know you’re angry, Cash. But how much will your anger burn? Will it be a spark or will you let it burn you down to the ground?”

  Cimber reached into his own robe and Hector thought he might have to dispatch both men while they were in his own home. Instead of withdrawing a weapon, however, the representative had a comm cube in his hand. He pressed a thumb to it and read an update that had just come through.

  “The generals are arguing over what should be done. Half are loyal to Julian. The other half to the Round Table.”

  “We need to talk to them,” Cash said, getting back up to his feet. “We need to make sure they all know why we did what we did.”

  Hector’s head dropped. “We can’t have a civil war. If all of our pain and struggle leads to us fighting each other...”

  He put his hands up to his face and went silent. Not wanting anything to do with the other two men in the room, he hovered to the double doors that led out to the backyard. With the night sky, only the outline of the trees could be seen. He stared at them, hoping they might offer some sense of peace.

  What had been complete dark earlier was now cast in shadows because of the moon’s position overtop CamaLon. In addition to the outline of the massive tree in his backyard, he saw a narrow line running down from a branch where usually there was nothing but leaves. His mind tried to make sense of what could be there. Maybe someone had hung a device from the tree in order to spy on him. The thought jumped to a similar idea and then another.

  “No,” he whispered.

  Without thinking, he reached for the switch that controlled the back lights. He knew what it was going to be. Deep down, he knew. He also knew that his life was over.

  A flood of light washed over the yard.

  “No,” he whispered again.

  There, in the corner of the backyard, a noose around her neck, Portia was hanging from the tree Hector had liked to spend time under.

  “No,” he said again, this time a low roar.

  He said it once more, so loud it rattled the windows. Cimber and Cash both took a step backward.

  Hector turned the lights off again. Portia faded back into the darkness. Without saying anything to his friends, Hector opened the back door and went to his dead wife.

  115

  Through the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the backyard, Cash watched Hector travel across the lawn to where Portia was hanging from the tree. His first thought was that Hector’s wife must have been murdered. But as that part of the yard became visible from the light cast by Hector’s energy disk, he saw the stool Portia must have kicked away.

  He wasn’t sure why she had done it, but he did know Portia was even better friends with Margaret than Hector had been with Julian. Maybe she knew she would never be able to face her best friend again. Maybe it was atonement for what her husband had done. Perhaps she thought Hector had become someone other than the man she had fallen in love with. Unless she had left a note and unless Hector felt like sharing its contents, which Hector’s insular and private nature would never allow, Cash would only have his guesses.

  “What should we do?” Cimber asked, but Cash only shook his head and continued watching the scene in the backyard.

  Hector put an arm around his wife’s waist to support her weight. With his other hand he reached up as high as he could. His fingers were barely able to reach the rope around her neck. With a quick flick of the wrist, he snapped the cord, then shifted his weight to accommodate Portia’s limp body falling over his shoulder.

  Once he had her in his arms, Hector reached down and deactivated his hover platform. The energy that usually kept him floating above the streets and walkways faded, causing he and Portia to sink toward the ground. Without the energy of Hector’s disk illuminating the backyard, only his outline was still visible. The trees disappeared. The few objects that could be made out were nothing more than shadows.

  “What are we going to do?” Cimber said again.

  Cash sighed and turned to face his friend. “We go on without him. It’s the only thing we can do.”

  “We need him. The people won’t go along with us without him.”

  Cash grimaced and nodded toward the pair of doors leading to the backyard. “Do you want to be the one to tell him that?”

  Cimber winced. Both men could see the outline of Hector’s hulking frame as it shook with sorrow. Anyone who went out there and interrupted his grief, especially for matters of the conflicts that men brought upon one another, would be in severe need of a medical scanner afterward.

  Cash turned and looked out at the darkness and shadows once more. The man he held in higher regard than anyone else was out there and he was suffering. There was a chance, he knew, that he might never see Hector alive again. Either he would become a hermit or he would leave Edsall Dark all together. And yet there was nothing he could do but try to prevent a galactic civil war from breaking out.

  “We go alone,” Cash said.

  The two men opened the front door and disappeared into the night, both unsure of Hector’s fate.

  116

  Just as Brigadier Desttro predicted, all colonized life on the frozen moon of Dasnoyk was destroyed by the time the Round Table fleet got there. One of his officers told him the Juggernaut was only ten minutes away.

  “Get us there as fast as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the minutes leading up to the next confrontation, he did a mental review of the directions he had given to the other commanding officers. Like their first battle, they wouldn’t rush the outcome. This time, however, they would not only ensure the Hannibal’ projectiles stayed a safe distance away from their ships, they would also keep any from going past them. That would ensure the Juggernaut was forced to engage them or else turn away. Desttro would also employ a different formation for his flagships. Instead of forming a wall, they would wrap around the Juggernaut on every side except the rear. The message would be clear: the Hannibal were free to go back to wherever they had come. If they didn’t, they would be destroyed.

  In the distance, a set of small blue lights glimmered. The Juggernaut. In a few minutes, they would be within range to unleash their cannons as well as their squadrons of fighters.

  As the ship got closer, Desttro couldn’t help but think of the string of events that had led to this confrontation. He had been one of many commanding officers assigned to accompany General Reiser through the Cartha sector. He hadn’t even been a member of Julian’s inner circle. That honor had belonged to Brigadiers Warwick and Exeter, both of whom had died in the Carthagen tunnels. Of the senior officers who had survived, Desttro had heard that Brigadier Ver-Non-Ven had decided to retire after realizing he was daring the fates. Others had requested time off. It was only Desttro who had needed to be out amongst the stars and had accepted the next call to action.

  Looking back, Desttro still couldn’t believe he had risked his life to attempt a rescue mission without having any reason to suspect Julian was still alive. It was outside his nature to do such a thing, and he still couldn’t pinpoint what had come over him in that moment. The most unbelievable part, though, was that the man he had saved had been assassinated by the very people he had been assigned to protect and serve.

  Desttro knew the officers around him were still whispering about what Edsall Dark would be like when they returned home. Half the crew seemed to think everyone would rally together. The other half mumbled that the Round Table might disintegrate. No one knew, though, and Desttro refrained from adding to the conjecture.

  In front of him, the Juggernaut was big enough to make out. It would take another two minutes for them to overtake the enormous vessel so they could turn around and obstruct the invader’s path. Gradually, the side of the Juggernaut came into view. Each cannon was large enough to destroy his flagship with one blast. None of them glowed with energy, however. None of them targeted the Hellship or any of the other vessels at all. Instead, the Juggernaut was content to continue flying toward the next outpost until it was blocked.

  Finally, the front of the Juggernaut came into view. Only after the Hellship was a minute past it did his nav officer begin to turn the vessel around so it could then face the approaching Hannibal. Looking out the viewports, Desttro saw the other flagships perform the same maneuver at different angles around the Juggernaut.

  He expected the giant craft to unleash its assortment of portals and then its four mechs. Instead, it kept flying ahead, although at a slower pace so it didn’t ram the flagships in front of it. It appeared as though each Round Table vessel was hovering in place but they were all slowly drifting backward to stay in the same U-shape around the Juggernaut. Only when the Hannibal ship could go no further without changing courses did the hundreds of projectiles burst from the foreign ship.

  “Keep them at bay,” he told his weapons officer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The hellship’s cannons broke into life, shooting the capsules in order to keep them from getting too close or from bypassing the fleet completely and going further toward Edsall Dark. It wasn’t only his vessel. The HC Ballistic Cruisers, the Flying Fortresses, the Solar Carriers, all of them. Hundreds of laser blasts targeted the tiny capsules that could somehow explode into fully functioning portals at the Hannibal’s command. Each time a blast struck an incoming capsule, the projectile was sent backwards until its small thruster corrected its course and it began to once again fly toward the Round Table ships.

  The entire region of space in front of Desttro glowed with the energy of laser bursts streaking this way and that. A series of capsules, each halfway between the Juggernaut and the nearest flagship, burst into life, and where there had been empty space a circle of brilliant energy instantly filled their views. A few final bursts of laser were fired after the portals ignited and the streaks of light went into one end of a portal and came out of another in the opposite direction. Two blasts zipped harmlessly into space. Another two were absorbed by an Athens Destroyer’s shields.

  All of the Round Table flagships ceased their firing. Only glimpses of the Juggernaut could be seen around the edges of the few portals that had ignited. Then a second set of portals burst into life behind the first batch and the Hannibal ship disappeared completely behind the layers of light.