The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) (32 page)

When it was over, Hector’s right arm wouldn’t move, his stomach was burning, and he was having trouble breathing. But much worse, two thirds of his soldiers were dead on the ground around him.

“No,” he said again, this time softly, his head down, almost crying.

It was the very thing he had wanted to avoid ever since losing his legs. He had sworn then, long ago, that he would never fight again. Now, he was once again surrounded by the bodies of men and women who had entrusted him with their lives.

His surviving soldiers looked at him as if unsure what they should do next. All he could think about was the round table. All of this—this death, this pain and suffering—was for the promise that the round table would prevent similar misery from ever happening again.

“Go back,” he told them, pointing toward the CasterLan side of the field. “Rejoin the main forces.”

“But,” one of the other soldiers began. Then the man fell silent, seeing the way Hector looked at him.

“Go back and rejoin Vere and the others. Don’t let Mowbray’s forces get into the capital.”

By all the forces in the galaxy, even if it meant losing his other arm and every other part of his body, he would make sure the round table came to fruition.

Waiting until the last of his squad followed his orders, Hector then picked up a pair of staff blasters and continued toward the Vonnegan side of the field. Alone.

Hector in the Blood Tunnels
, by Zaina.A – Digital Art

83

As much as she wished the battle didn’t have to be fought, Vere knew it was the best example she would ever find of
a necessary evil
. She also wished she could make her way across the battlefield, find Mowbray, and kill him herself so all of the madness would stop. As the last leader of Edsall Dark and the CasterLan Kingdom, the person who had brought all of these other forces together, she knew she needed to remain at her station until the other leaders no longer needed her. Only when the other rulers were sure she had fulfilled her part of the deal and that the round table was worth risking their futures on could she join the battle and end this unwanted conflict.

There were increasing reports of firefights in the underground tunnels. As the two sides advanced on one another, these skirmishes would only continue to escalate. In one fight, a group of Vonnegan troopers came upon a group of Kaiser Doom’s soldiers. The two sides were locked in a standoff, more than one hundred yards below the planet’s surface. Both side’s trench machines had been destroyed and both armies had hunkered down until reinforcements could arrive. Until that support came, both sides launched rocket-propelled ion grenades down the tunnel toward the other side.

Two tunnels away and another hundred yards deeper toward the planet’s core, a CasterLan trench machine had collided head on with a Vonnegan trencher that had set itself on preventing the Round Table forces from getting across the battlefield. After the two machines impacted, an explosion wiped out half of both squads that were also down there. The other half were rapidly killing each other.

Near the planet’s surface, a trench machine had been calibrated incorrectly. The result was that instead of digging a hole dozens of yards underground, it accidently broke through to the surface and was immediately obliterated by Vonnegan cannons positioned along the perimeter of the Forest of Tears. The soldiers behind that machine were trapped. If they too came to the surface they would be blasted in a matter of seconds. Their only other option was to head back underground and rejoin the main Round Table forces at the capital wall.

In another tunnel, the CasterLan trench machine had broken down only minutes away from the Vonnegan side of the battlefield. The division leader was asking if he should wait for someone to repair the machine or if he should turn around and have his squad march back through miles of underground tunnels in hopes of finding a different path to their objective. Vere listened as the people in the main command center radioed back and told the division leader that there was no timeframe for when the trench machine might be repaired.

“Copy that,” the division leader said.

Without needing to be told anything else, he had his group of one hundred soldiers begin to backtrack, knowing that they were losing precious time.

There were nearly one hundred other tunnels being dug toward the Vonnegan side of the battlefield. In each, a different scenario was playing out. Some encountering no Vonnegan forces, others in shootouts. Some of the trench machines worked exactly as designed, while others had to be repaired every half hour.

Vere’s generals estimated there were just as many Vonnegan tunnels being dug toward her side of the field. One report stated that there were at least three enemy units, maybe more, situated directly under the portion of the battlefield where the Gur-Khan were supposed to be. If they didn’t encounter any resistance in the next couple minutes, Mowbray’s forces would not only have a direct path to the capital wall, but a path under it as well.

On the other side of the battlefield, none of the Vonnegan trenchers were concerned with making it all the way to the CasterLan defenses. Instead, they were all attempting to connect with CasterLan tunnels so the Vonnegan forces could race through the already carved paths and attack Vere’s soldiers from behind.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people would die in the tunnels underneath Edsall Dark, yet neither side was gaining an advantage on the other.

Above ground, groups of Kaiser Doom’s soldiers were beginning to break from their bunkers in order to board armored land cruisers. However, all of these armored cruisers were immediately targeted by the Vonnegan cannons on the opposite side of the field. Like Mowbray’s armored mechs, Doom’s soldiers either died in the explosion, were stuck near the wreckage, or else had to run miles across the battlefield. Those who took the latter option were soon cut down by snipers’ lasers. Often they were killed by ion cannons that weren’t even aimed at them specifically, but the sheer quantity of which was bound to kill something, somewhere.

Elsewhere on the ground, Baron Von Wrth’s Venator soldiers were whispering that they would assume responsibility for zone one. The famed Gur-Khan were supposed to have done it, but now that they were missing in action, the Venators wanted the glory that the Gur-Khan would have received for repelling an entire third of the Vonnegan army by themselves.

“If they leave their post, they’ll be weakening the area between zone two and three,” Vere said into the comm of the forward command bunker.

The truth was she could afford to have the Venators abandon their current post. There were enough other forces there to make up for them. What she couldn’t afford, though, was a breakdown in discipline. Those who saw the Venators leave their post would either assume they too could do whatever they wanted or else would think the Venators had changed their minds and were leaving Edsall Dark. Either way, the tide of war would rapidly change. Soldiers from every other Round Table army would lose faith in the cause. Anarchy would reign.

The only place where the battle was going according to plan was above the planet, out in space. There were occasional skirmishes between a single Solar Carrier and an Athens Destroyer, but for the most part the Vonnegan fleet and the allied fleet remained on either side of the planet from the other.

All of this could end so much sooner, she knew, if she and Mowbray just met in the battlefield, but of course, that would never happen. Either his snipers would get her or hers would shoot him before either met face to face. The thought persisted, though, that she wanted a way to end this conflict sooner rather than later. The longer the battle raged, the longer it gave the other leaders time to reconsider their participation. The longer it gave for something to go terribly wrong, for the Vonnegan side to get the upper hand. The longer it gave for soldiers of every type, from every corner of the galaxy, to die.

Patience
, a voice in her head said, and she wasn’t sure if it was her own or Mortimous’s.

“Tell the Venators that the Gur-Khan will be there,” she said into the comm. “I have faith in them.”

When she didn’t get a response, she told Pistol to repeat her message until he got a confirmation. Then she left the forward bunker to go above ground and see for herself what was happening in the fields where she had grown up, the place she called home. The place that was now a scene of laser fire and explosions and death.

84

There was no fear of soldiers swaying from their orders or abandoning the fight—at least not among the Vonnegan ranks. Mowbray’s generals either stood quietly in the command tent inside the Forest of Tears or else they departed to move forward and pursue their share of the victory.

Everything had already been said and agreed upon prior to the battle. Mowbray had strategized with his generals the entire way to Edsall Dark. He sometimes said a particular suggestion was unreasonable, but mostly he had nodded and considered the various concerns and theories that his best strategists had to offer even if he didn’t agree with them.

Now that the battle was underway, Mowbray wanted silence. His eyes dissected the holographic depictions of what was happening on the four levels of the battle. His mind replayed everything that had been recommended to him. His eyelids fluttered as he made rapid calculations: the number of trench machines lost against the number still out there, the average position of the units, the location and status of each armored mech.

As Mowbray watched one such display, the tiny, three-dimensional depictions of his armored mechs made their way across the fields. Most of them moved toward the side of the battlefield that didn’t have any CasterLan fighters defending it, but a few also made their way toward the center position.

“General Roese,” Mowbray said, not turning from the display.

“Yes, my lord?”

“How many armored mechs are still in reserve?”

“Two hundred and twenty, my lord.”

“Release them,” Mowbray said. “All of them.” He pointed to the place where, for some unexplainable reason, there were no CasterLan forces. “With orders for every single one of them to seize control of this area here.”

“It will be done, my lord” General Roese said.

Moments later, as Mowbray continued to watch the holographic display of everything that was happening on the surface level of the battle, two hundred and twenty more dots appeared and began making their way toward the capital wall.

85

The final stretch of time in the underground tunnels was the most infuriating for Morgan. All she wanted was to get above ground and kill Mowbray herself. But if her trench machine burst up through the ground anywhere near his forces, every Vonnegan gunner team and cannon crew would notice. She and all of her soldiers would be vaporized in seconds.

Instead of letting the machine burrow above the surface the way it was designed to, Morgan had it perform a Mallory maneuver. Named after Lord Mallory, who first employed the technique five hundred years earlier, the trench machine was brought parallel with the horizon line, as close to the surface as possible without disturbing the ground above it. There, it burrowed a tunnel past the intended destination point. This was to get it out of the way, but also to give the soldiers behind it a clear access point to the spot where they wanted to surprise the enemy.

To get started, she had her soldiers use some of the supplies they had brought with them to rig a makeshift platform eight feet off the ground. Only then were they elevated high enough to reach the roof of the tunnel that the trench machine had created. There, they dug upwards, scraping away little bits of dirt at a time. There was no pretty or easy way to do it. The two men assigned to the job were soon covered in so much dirt and sweat that they looked more like Truskdurian swamp monsters than CasterLan soldiers. When they finally did compromise the integrity of the tunnel ceiling, the two soldiers gave a soft whistle to everyone else below, then tucked their chins and held their breathing masks tightly to their faces to make sure the eventual avalanche didn’t pull them off.

The tunnel ceiling sagged, then caved in. Sunlight poured down on the squad. After being in the dark for so long, Morgan had to squint to see anything. Looking up, she expected to see a squad of Vonnegan troopers appear at the rim of the hole, their blasters pointed down. Instead, there was only sunlight.

As eager and she was to get at Mowbray, she forced herself to remain underground for a few seconds—long enough for her eyes to adjust to the light. There was no use in popping out of the tunnel if they could only see vague gray blurs.

A moment later, she smiled and said, “Ready?” and all of her soldiers nodded.

She was the first one out. If Vonnegan troops were waiting for someone to appear, she didn’t want to be sitting down in the tunnel listening to the blaster fire and the screams from above.

What she saw when she pulled herself up, however, wasn’t an ambush party at all. No one had taken notice of the man-made hole in the ground just behind the Vonnegan firing line. With all of the explosions and blaster fire on the surface and the Thunderbolts and Llyushin fighters roaring through the air, she could talk to her squad and the enemy still might not notice they were there.