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definewisdomMaster Post
part 3
“We have the details of the crew, sir,” a young officer reported, saluting the operative smartly. “I’m putting them through to your screen now.”
“Thank you.” Edwin looked down at the screen and the files flashed up one after another, the faces of Avalon’s crew appeared one by one, each covering the one before. When the images stopped, Will’s face was staring blankly outwards. He wore the brown jacket of a military uniform, sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. “Sergeant William Moore, fought for the Independents, of course. Volunteered… as did his father, who died in action.” The text beside the picture scrolled down automatically. “Received a commendation for the Battle of Avalon.”
He flicked to the next screen.
“Corporal Lancelot Du Lac, served in the same regiment. Another volunteer – unsurprisingly. Again, commended for valour. Both of them fought in the Battle of Avalon… Ground forces.”
“I didn’t think any of the Independent ground forces made it,” the General said, stepping up, “General Pendragon didn’t go easy on them.”
“There were five survivors of the Independent forces on the ground after the battle was officially ended, only two of whom made it out of that valley alive,” Edwin corrected him. “All of them received awards for service. Those who had died were awarded posthumously of course. The medals were sent to their families, along with condolences.”
“Of course.”
*
“We’re going to get through this,” Lancelot said, sitting down on the edge of the bed he shared with his wife. “Somehow, we will get through this.”
“This is bigger than anything we’ve ever done before,” Gwen said slowly. “I’ve never…”
“No harm will come to you,” he said so firmly that she had to smile, walking up in front of him, between his legs. She lifted one hand to his face and traced her fingers down the curve of his jaw. As her hand drifted down he caught it in one of his own and pressed his lips to the centre of her palm. “We will all be safe, Arthur and Morgana, too.”
“You’re a good man,” she said, letting her and come to a stop on the curve of his neck, where it met his shoulder. “His father…”
“Is not him,” Lancelot said.
“I know, but Will is having a hard time telling the difference.” Gwen commented lightly. “You don’t even seem to pause.”
“Arthur is a good man, too,” Lancelot said, “and the war was a long time ago.”
“You still remember it. I see when you wake up… you don’t cry out but you tense up,” she looked at him carefully, clearly wondering if she was stepping over a line. “I never know how to help.”
“You help just by existing,” her husband murmured, putting his arms around her and pulling her closer. “You saved me.” Gwen tilted her face down and kissed him, softly at first, but gradually more desperately. After a moment she pulled away, smiling at him like he was the only thing she could see.
“You didn’t need much saving,” she told him, whispering the words across his skin.
“We will survive,” he replied, “we will live. And when this is all over we should take some time off. A holiday.”
“Where will we go?”
“Anywhere… as long as it’s you and I, I don’t mind.”
“And who will fly this ship?” Gwen asked, laughing as Lancelot tugged her down to sit beside him on the bed. “I can’t just leave Will and the others in the lurch.”
“Yes,” Lancelot told her, dropping the slightest of kisses to her lips, “you can.”
“When this is over…” she said thoughtfully.
“Yes?”
“I might just have to take you up on that holiday.”
“You won’t be bored?” he asked, smiling with genuine happiness.
“I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”
*
“Guinevere Du Lac, née Summerland, married Lancelot Du Lac four years ago. Passed top of her class in Caerleon flight school, although there’s a note from her teacher that she had a habit of undertaking overly dangerous manoeuvres. The Alliance government attempted to recruit her into their special forces, but she turned them down, instead taking low paying short trip jobs until joining the Avalon’s crew five years ago… Never convicted of any crime, no known associations with any rebel groups.” He tapped the screen and Gwen’s smile was replaced by Valiant’s glare.
*
Avalon was quiet, the hum of the engine the only noise. Will was in the bridge, keeping an eye on things and just staring out into space. Valiant didn’t know what the man saw out there, but it could keep him occupied for hours. Gwen and Lancelot were in their bunk busy with each other… he smirked slightly at that.
Merlin and Arthur were in the engine room talking to each other. And the little witch was still trussed up in the storage room.
Alone.
He ran his hand over his forehead where she had knocked him unconscious, and smiled grimly to himself. Well, he wasn’t going to let her have the drop on him again.
*
“Tanis Valiant, Convictions for robbery, smuggling, wanted in… seven settlements for larceny, murder and assault. Originally from the Western Isles of Albion, still has a mother there and three younger siblings – all of whom are trying to get a list of convictions longer than his. No affiliations with either the Alliance or the rebels, no qualifications, unless you count being owed over fifty years of jail time.
“Merlin Emrys, Son of Hunith. He grew up on Ealdor, like the Captain. Worked in his mother’s ship yard during the war and was picked up by Du Lac and Moore shortly afterwards. Unremarkable, really. No convictions. No formal qualifications beyond the usual. Currently working as a mechanic.”
*
“When did you realise you could…?” Arthur waved a hand around the engine room vaguely, watching as Merlin gently prodded at the engine. The mechanic turned around and shrugged.
“I’ve always been able to do it really. Machines, I don’t know how to describe it, but they talk to me. It’s like I can hear them tell me what’s wrong and I know how to fix it without being told. My mother used to call me her little miracle worker,” he smiled in reminiscence. “She’d give me all the parts she couldn’t work out how to fix, or take me onto the ships and let me play around in them. I never really knew what I was doing back then, but I’d find the broken parts for her in minutes.
“Of course, she never took me onto any of the official ships we got in the grounds. She refused to let me register. At that time the act wasn’t in place – it was just before the war – and she didn’t want the doctors to poke and prod at me,” Arthur nodded tightly. “After the war, when the registration act came into effect I was old enough to know what I could do and Mum sat me down and told me that I didn’t have to register if I didn’t want to. No one knew about me who’d tell the Alliance. So I didn’t.” Arthur watched him for a moment longer. The man climbed up the wall of the room to tweak a lever, and he could just about hear the slight change in tone of the engine.
“Morgana’s been doing it as long as I can remember,” he said after a moment. “She’d tell me that I should wear a coat when it looked like it was going to be good weather all day, and it would always rain. She knew the days when our father would be home and she always made sure dinner was waiting for him… She even knew our mother was going to die. It’s my first memory – her crying in the bathroom, and she couldn’t tell me what was going to happen, just that it was going to be something bad.”
Merlin dropped down to sit next to him, so that their shoulders were just touching.
“She told Father that she didn’t want to go…” Arthur remembered. “That fight was one of the worst they had ever had. She was screaming at him, and I thought that she was so stupid, not to want to go to some big exciting school where she would learn interesting things, instead of just quantum mechanics.” He sighed. “When she left she hugged me, and I just wanted her to go…
“It was never like this though. She was still herself; she’d just know things sometimes. Things no one else knew. Then… It’s like it’s taken over her head.”
“She’ll get better, Arthur,” Merlin assured him, patting him on the knee. “I’m sure she will.”
“I hope so, but every day she seems to be getting worse.”
“We’ll figure out what’s wrong, and she’ll get better.”
“Yeah…
*
Morgana worked the cuffs off, resting them very softly on the ground, so that they made no noise, and she was on her feet in seconds, her footsteps silent as she walked over to the door.
She wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
*
“And the other two, of course we know,” the operative finished as Morgana and Arthur’s faces flashed up on the screen, only to be replaced by Gaius’. “Who’s this?”
“Gaius Hale, former crew member, sir,” the young officer supplied. “Their doctor. He left them six months ago to settle on Ealdor. I thought you might want to know about him as well. You said not to leave any information out.”
“Quite right…” Edwin smiled at the officer, the expression was chilling. “No information is useless. So, Ealdor?”
“Yes sir… there are several settlements on the planet. Gaius lives near Emrys’ mother. That settlement is one of their usual places of berth.”
“Interesting… any others?”
“A few, sir. But if I might make a suggestion, from the route they took leaving Tintagel it seems likely that they are going there.”
“Never underestimate your opponent,” Edwin said, steepling his fingers together for a moment before lacing them together. “Moore and Du Lac did not make it through the Battle of Avalon by doing what was expected of them. They are not stupid. What is their closest known port of call? Lay in a course for it. If we cannot know which one they are going to, then we must deal with them all.”
“Yes sir.”
“You should not run, Captain.” Edwin said to thin air. “We could have avoided this atrocity.”
*
Valiant looked through the small window into the storage room, it was empty apart from the cuffs lying alone in the centre of the floor.
“Wédenheorte drýicge31 got out…” he muttered to himself. “She can probably walk through walls.” His hand went for his gun, but before he reached it, his wrist was grasped by a slender hand, and quickly pulled round and back until his hand was between his shoulder blades. “Look – I just came to talk…” he said, in as soothing a voice as he could manage. “Let me go… I’m a friend, remember? I’m a friend, you little tife32.”
Morgana looked at where her hand was, around the throat of the snake tattoo that ran along Valiant’s arm, The head pointed upwards to his own head, the tongue almost touching his neck. She leaned in close, until the thick black lines blurred in her sight.
“You are not my friend,” she said calmly. “Your only friend is yourself… But you’re not a bad person. I know you Valiant. I see every part of you.” And she could. He was all laid out before her, flesh and blood and bones. She could see his thoughts, his fears. “You’re afraid I’ll kill you. I could. You should remember that. I can kill you with my mind. But I’m not going to…” She pressed a hand against his head and felt him go limp in her grasp.
Morgana lowered the man to the floor, before heading over to the door. Halfway there she stopped, staring at the empty space beyond it. They were coming, and they couldn’t see her – they would stop her.
She looked upwards and to the left, where there was a well concealed panel in the ceiling that led into the crawl space of the ship. It took a matter of seconds to remove the panel and pull herself up into it.
The trailing end of her dress slowly slipped away into the ceiling and she made her way to the bridge.
*
“So we question her,” Will said, walking alongside Lancelot towards the galley. “We keep out of the way of the Alliance, somehow, and we find out what’s wrong with her by asking.”
“Arthur says that she might not even know what she’s doing,” Lancelot pointed out.
“I’m not sure I believe that,” the Captain said, shaking his head. “Morgana’s intelligent, and I swear that she knows far more than she lets on. Sometimes she just watches you…” he shivered slightly. “I’ve been around plenty of Sensitives in my time, but none of them made me feel that-”
“Naked?” Lancelot suggested with a small smile.
“Not the word I was going to use, but it works.”
The pair of them stopped at the door to the galley and the first thing they saw was Valiant, crumpled on the floor.
“Dwæs andéaw hornungsunu docgan!33" Will swore, keying in the unlock code for the door, but the ship bleeped back at him. “Damn witch has overridden the lock!”
“Is she still in there?” Lancelot asked, leaning forward to look into the room as much as he could.
“She could be anywhere.”
“I’ll start looking.”
“I’ll head to the bridge and tell everyone what’s happening…” He shot another look at Valiant’s unconscious body. “We shouldn’t let him think.” Lancelot was halfway down the corridor already. Will turned to head in the opposite direction – towards the bridge.
*
They knew that she was out, only a matter of time now. But the soulless people were growing more restless every second. She was close, so close. Nimueh held the answer.
“Life and death in the palm of her hand,” Morgana muttered to herself. “Just a drop of water… just one drop.” She didn’t understand the words that came out of her mouth, but they came all the same. She often felt as though she was possessed, with someone else speaking through her. Her body wasn’t her own.
Nimueh wasn’t recognised in the major registration section – she hadn’t been expecting her to be, but then Morgana’s fingers began to move over the keys in a way she hadn’t planned, every step seemingly laid out again. She was just following the footsteps again.
There was a banging on the door.
Found… She had to move faster, faster. She couldn’t leave this undone. Her dreams might never let her go if she did.
*
Gwen was heading towards him when Will turned away from the door to the bridge.
“She’s in there,” he said, jerking his thumb backwards. “She’s in control of the whole damn ship from there, and she’s overridden the door lock as well.”
From behind Gwen, Arthur jogged up to them, his eyes wide.
“What’s she done?” he asked.
“Taken down one member of my crew and locked herself in the bridge,” Will told him. “Happy now. Thank you for bringing your problems to my door.”
“She’s not a threat…” Arthur started to speak.
“Tell that to Valiant.”
“If she hurt him then I imagine that she had a very good reason for doing so. After all, he is the one who wants her to be spaced, isn’t he?” Arthur said, standing his ground.
“I’ll do what I have to. I’m not having this ship under the control of someone who’s only half there. She could take us anywhere.”
Will levered a hatchway in the floor open and ducked his head down into it.
“Should be enough space for me, I’ll pop in and see what she’s up to.”
“I’m coming too,” Arthur told him pushing forward, but Lancelot caught his arm from behind, seemingly appearing from nowhere.
“Let the Captain go.”
“She’s my sister…” Will cocked his gun. “If you shoot her…”
“I told you, rich boy, I’ll do what I have to in order to protect my ship and my crew.”
Will dropped down and Arthur watched. He waited a long second before bringing his elbow up sharply into Lancelot’s nose and pulling himself out of the man’s grip before diving down after Will.
*
She was almost there; she could taste it in the air.
There were muffled noises below her – the crawl spaces – two of them. The Captain and Arthur.
She didn’t even turned around, just pointed Valiant’s gun at the place where they would come up. The hatch clanged open and Will clambered out, before freezing when he saw the gun trained on him. Arthur followed him.
“Morgana?” he asked incredulously. She cocked the gun, aiming it unerringly at the Captain’s head. “Put the gun down.”
“I can’t, Arthur. I’m sorry.”
“That’s it.” Will reached for his own gun, she could feel the thought in his mind. He would shoot to disable, not kill. She turned and fixed him in place with her eyes, the barrel of her gun not wavering. She wouldn’t have to shoot twice. “Okay…” he said slowly and his hands rose away from his gun until they were both in the air.
Her other hand was still racing across the keys when she turned back, typing in coordinates she had never known before.
An image appeared on the screen, nothing special, just another moon, it was the name blinking next to it that interested her.
“Nimueh.”
*
“It’s a place,” Will said, when Morgana had been disarmed and the overrides had been undone. The crew was gathered around, Valiant glaring at Morgana angrily where she stood next to her brother.
“We have to go there,” she said imperiously.
“No offence, but you’re not in charge of this ship – I am,” Will told her, but he took a deep breath anyway and switched his attention to his crew. “But she’s got a point: whatever this is, it’s big enough that the Alliance is willing to kill for it.”
“So, if there’s something there, it’s something they really don’t want anyone to find out about,” Lancelot agreed.
“We could go and check it out,” Merlin suggested.
“That’s not a good idea,” Gwen said, suddenly, back in her usual chair. “I mean to say, it’s a good plan if you don’t know what I know, but when you do know it’s not a good plan.”
“Why not?” Lancelot asked, leaning forwards across his wife’s shoulder to see the screen she was pointing at. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Will asked, coming over to stand next to them. “Eallwealda árdæde áhreddaþ ús,34” he breathed, looking at the readings. “Skinlaekers.”
“How many?” Merlin asked.
“All of them.”
“Skinlaekers?” Arthur asked looking round at the faces of the crew, even Valiant’s was pale, and he looked as though he had seen a ghost. “They’re not real.”
“Trust me,” Will told him, not even bothering to sound condescending. “They’re real. I’ve seen them.”
“The stories are true?”
“They’re only part of it,” Gwen whispered. “They’re nightmares made real. We can’t go through there.”
“But…” Arthur said.
“They rape you, and they eat you and they skin you and when you die it’s a relief,” Morgana muttered. “They can play with your mind, they can bring you to your knees with a look, a word, a thought.” Her voice was hollow, echoing, like she was reciting something she had heard before. “They live only to cause pain, only to torture.” She dropped into a sing song voice, like she was singing a nursery rhyme. “On the edges of space, the Skinlaekers come. They laugh and they howl as they tear you to bits, they rape you to death and shatter your wits. You’ll die screaming on the edge of the black, and no one will hear you, you’ll never come back.”
“We’re heading for Ealdor,” Will said decisively, ignoring Morgana’s chant, although everyone else was still staring at her, faces pale.
*
They walked off the ship and were immediately greeted by the inhabitants of Ealdor, Gaius at the forefront, with his customary medical bag hanging by one side. It was a small settlement, barely even a village and nothing like the towering white cities of Arthur’s youth, or the bright colours and dark walls of the less reputable planets. The first thing that struck Arthur was that there were trees, everywhere trees. Not in set patterns or organised groups. The bushes were not hemmed in behind small walls and carefully clipped into shape. They sprawled and cascaded everywhere. He’d never seen anything like it, even in the parks on Camelot.
Beside him Morgana laughed slightly, walking up to a tree and touching the bark slightly.
“It’s… incredible,” he breathed as Merlin passed him and the mechanic turned round with an amused grin.
“It’s not much,” he said again with a shrug, “but it’s a safe place… and it used to be home.”
“Home is on Avalon now?”
“Yes… but I’ve still got a soft spot for this old place… though it always makes Will sad to come back here.”
“If you two were friends growing up, why didn’t you both join the Independent army?” Arthur asked. Merlin’s face fell.
“It was too dangerous for me with my… abilities.” Merlin admitted, looking down at his hands. “My mother, she was scared.”
“But there were whole regiments of Sensitives in the Independent forces,” Arthur said.
“And do you know what happened to them when the Alliance got hold of them?” Merlin asked. Arthur shook his head. “Of course you don’t, they don’t tell you that part in your nice sterilised schools, do they?” He walked off. Arthur watched him walk up to an older woman and embrace her, lifting her clean off her feet as she laughingly chastised him and ordered him to put her down.
“Five hundred dead in two days,” Morgana’s voice said from beside him. “The Alliance policy was no survivors.” Arthur started, turning towards his sister, but she did not continue or elaborate.
“The trees like it here,” she said, “they like being free, like the people do. The stones like it too. They aren’t cut into blocks and stacked together like children’s toys. They can breathe out here.”
Arthur pulled himself together and drew in a deep breath, looking over to where the bonfire was being started and the food was being collected together.
“I know what they mean.”
*
Dinner had been simple, not exactly gourmet cuisine, but it was the first fresh food Arthur had had since walking aboard Avalon. It disappeared far more quickly than he had expected and then the after dinner conversation began.
Morgana was crouched down, talking to a small child who was attempting to explain his game to her. Merlin was with his mother, the woman he had been hugging earlier, laughing with some people he had clearly known his whole life, and the others were just enjoying having a chance to relax in a place they felt safe. Arthur sighed and looked at the flames for a moment.
He saw Will walking away out of the corner of his eye, sloping off into the dark with the air of someone who didn’t want to be followed.
So Arthur followed him.
The path the Captain took twisted and turned through the houses – shacks Arthur would have called them – until he came to a stop outside one that looked abandoned. One wall had clearly been reclaimed to build new houses and the ceiling looked as though it leaked dreadfully.
“I come here to be alone, not to answer questions from someone who can’t even look after himself,” Will said, not turning around. Arthur almost jumped, but just managed to hold himself together. “You’re not exactly stealthy you know.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No, you might as well stay. It’s nothing that everyone else doesn’t already know. Though they at least have the decency to let it be.” He paused sticking his hands in his pockets beneath his heavy brown coat and looking up at the stars. “This used to be my home – before the war, before Avalon, before everything.”
“It looks… nice,” Arthur offered. Will laughed and turned to him.
“And there was me thinking all you Alliance brats were brought up to lie from the cradle.”
“Prevarication was my worst class in school,” Arthur said back, risking a small smile. He wasn’t sure why he had followed the man out here. Part of his mind had just wanted to irritate the man, but now he was thinking perhaps he wanted to thank him.
“My father was in the army too,” Will said; “this was his coat.” He shrugged the heavy brown suede up his shoulders, “I never got round to fixing the hole made by the bullet that killed him. His left hand drifted up to his chest and he pushed his index finger into the hole with almost casual movement, as though he had done it a lot of times. “We got his dogtags back. He wouldn’t let me join up when he was alive, but when the soldier turned up with those I joined up immediately.”
“And you had to leave all of this behind,” Arthur said with understanding.
“Yeah. I never intended to come back, not after my mother died… but I had promised Merlin if I made it, I’d come and tell him. He wanted to come with me, but his Mum talked him out of it. I’m glad she did. If he’d been there…”
“Even if you’re just doing this to get back at the Alliance,” Arthur said, looking through the half broken doorway of Will’s old home, “thank you.”
“That’s not why I’m doing this,” the Captain told him, turning suddenly, and leaning forward, one finger raised. “I’m not doing this out of revenge. I’m not doing this in some petty attempt to give them the two fingered salute. I’ll admit that the fact that helping you and your sister pisses them off beyond belief makes me smile to myself when I get up in the morning, but I’m doing this because they take what’s not theirs. They lay claim to everything, and they meddle with it, all of it, and they took your sister’s brain and they did the same thing to that that they do to everything else, and I don’t think that’s right. They can’t be allowed to manipulate people like that. Everyone’s got a right to live free.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. There didn’t seem to be any other answer to give.
*
Early morning and Merlin was showing a less than fascinated Arthur around his mother’s ship yard, which turned out to be not much more than a fenced off pile of broken ship parts to one side of the small landing field.
On the other side of the settlement, Gaius was sitting down with Will and Lancelot.
“You’re in deeper than you’ve ever been before,” the elderly doctor said, peering at them over the table. “I’m not sure you know what you’ve let yourself in for.”
“Give me a gun and I’ll fight them off,” Will said.
“Only if you see them coming.”
“We couldn’t leave them behind,” Lancelot said, “you never leave a man behind.”
“They’re not your men,” Gaius said with a small smile.
“Yes they are,” Will snapped. “Maybe they’re not crew, maybe they’re not friends, but they’re my men as long as they’re on my ship…” he shut his eyes and dropped his head into his hands. “Did I do the right thing?”
“Yes,” Lancelot told him with certainty.
“I might have just killed us all.”
“If this is important enough for them to blow up a ship that might contain the pair of them then they’ll have sent an operative.” Gaius drew in a deep breath. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others, but I picked up a wave the other day – Uther Pendragon was found dead in his office.” The ex-soldiers stared at him in astonishment. “Suspected heart-attack, but the man was completely healthy, no history of heart problems.”
“What else could it have been?” Lancelot asked, leaning forwards.
“There are people who work for the Alliance, who report directly to Parliament – the high council, not the lower ranks – who are trained believers,” Gaius explained, “they are known as operatives and they work, not just beneath the radar, but completely invisibly. They do not exist as far as anyone is concerned and many of these people have… abilities.”
“Stinking hypocrites,” Will said.
“And these people can simulate a heart attack?” Lancelot asked, not wasting time on curses.
“They can kill a man without laying a finger on him. But not only that, they don’t stop, they keep coming. They cannot be stopped and they cannot be deterred.”
“You think this has something to do with Arthur and Morgana?”
“I hardly believe it coincidence that at the same time his children are hunted fugitives Uther Pendragon dies under mysterious circumstances.” Gaius raised his eyebrows and looked at the pair of them seriously. “As I said, this goes deeper than either of you has ever been before.”
“So we hide,” Will said, nodding again, “we go from place to place, we stay off the radar, we don’t talk to anyone we don’t trust implicitly.”
“The operative will find you, he’ll keep looking until he’s found and killed all of you.”
“Dóc bepæcestran!35” Will swore again. “We can’t do anything else though. We don’t have the man power to stay and fight against the whole of the Alliance, we can’t get to Nimueh without crossing Skinlaeker space. We run and hide, or we die. Those are the only options I can see.”
“I agree,” said Lancelot, leaning back heavily. “There is no other course of action.”
“Then you must do as you see fit,” Gaius said, with a nod. The three stared at the centre of the table for a few moments, none of them willing to look up at the others.
“Gaius,” Will said after a few seconds had passed. “How did you find out about Pendragon, and how do you know about the operatives?” The old man looked him in the eye, his face carefully blank.
“I’m an old man, William; there’s an awful lot about me that you do not know.”
“Well one day I plan to find out,” the Captain said with a grin. Gaius did not return it.
“You never will.”
The pair took that as their cue to leave, standing up and heading out to the rest of the crew where they were meeting up in the centre of the village.
Gaius watched them go before looking down at his old hands sadly.
“Slæp in éadnesse, Uther, ærgód géowine.36”
*
He didn’t know them well enough to do this, but Gaius hadn’t wanted to, and it fell to him. Lancelot had offered. Will had been tempted by the offer, but he couldn’t do it. He was the Captain. He wasn’t sure why that meant he had to do this, but it did.
“Arthur,” he said, after they had boarded the ship, drawing the man to one side. Morgana stood a little way away, watching them, her eyes clear as they always were, but somehow looking straight through him. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this…” the words were hollow in his mouth. Somewhere inside him a piece of him was rejoicing at the news. It was the piece of him that had stood in the valley of Avalon and watched his friends get blown away; the part of him that had wordlessly taken his father’s dog-tags from the man at the door; the same part of him that had, the very next day, shrugged into his fathers coat and gone to sign up in his place.
“The King is dead,” Morgana announced and Will turned to her startled. “Murdered. Our father was murdered.” Arthur started, looking at her, his face turning deadly pale. “He didn’t suffer though, it was quick and painless. Here one minute, gone the next. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.” She crossed over to Arthur, her face smiling in a way that made Will’s blood run cold as she raised one hand to his face. “We’ll crown you King in May, with the blossoms off the tree, and in your hand a golden sceptre and the world will bow to thee. All hail… all hail…” her voice trailed off and Arthur turned to Will, his eyes pleading.
“Is it… Is she right?” he asked, his eyes and his voice begging Will to tell him it was all a lie.
“Gaius got a wave on the cortex,” he muttered, unable to look Arthur in the eye. Uther Pendragon was a monster to him. The man behind the armies, the name that meant the Alliance. To Arthur he was a father. It was strange to realise that the figurehead of evil he had always thought of was actually a man. That there were people out there who loved him, no matter what he had done. “His information’s usually correct, and his sources are good. He’s sure about this one.”
“How…?” Arthur asked, sounding like a little boy.
“Heart attack’s the official word, but Gaius thinks it was murder.”
Arthur nodded, and suddenly it was like a switch was flicked, his face shut down, becoming blank, unreadable, and Will was left hanging.
“Thank you,” the man said, before grasping his sister’s arm gently and leading her away. As they left, Will could still hear Morgana mumbling about may blossom.
*
“We’re heading for Mercia,” Will told the crew as soon as Gwen had taken them up, “we’re going to keep our heads down and stay out of trouble as long as we can. While we can still fly, we run. Ácnéowe37?”
“Are we sure we can outrun these guys?” Merlin asked from across the table. “They seem pretty serious.”
“If they don’t know where we’re going, or where we’re starting from then they can’t chase us,” Will told him firmly. “We run and hide until they find some other poor fools to chase after. I’m sure this will all blow over if we leave it long enough. But we’re still here and we’re still in the air, so it’s all shiny right now, alright?”
“Just shiny,” Merlin said acidly, clearly not believing a word of it.
“I don’t see why we’re not just dumping the kids somewhere,” Valiant protested. “They’re the problem here – we hand them over, we all go away happy.”
“There’s just one little piece of trouble with that plan,” Will said, turning his full attention to Valiant. “The Alliance doesn’t want them alive and kicking, they want them dead, and if they know we have them, they will kill every one of us to get to them. They blew the Gedref apart without even making sure they were aboard. We’ve got to believe they know our faces after what happened in Tintagel, we saw the footage of that, so I’m guessing that someone on their side must have too. That’s probably the very reason they were broadcasting that trigger in the first place. They see us coming, we’re dead before we have time to say hello, let alone try to make a deal.”
“The Captain’s right,” Lancelot said. “Direct confrontation isn’t going to solve anything, it will only end in our deaths. We’ve got to lay low until we can choose a time.” Will blinked and looked at him.
“Right, yes.”
“Great…” Valiant spat, glaring at Arthur and then at Will. “Looks like the girl’s not the only crazy one around here.” He stalked out and Arthur sighed deeply.
“Anyone else got any complaints.”
“Would you listen to them if we did?” Merlin asked, still obviously annoyed.
“Yes,” the Captain replied, “but they wouldn’t make any difference. This is my bloody ship and I’m bloody well in charge, so I make the decisions. Anyone who doesn’t like it is welcome to get off this boat at any time.” Then he walked out too, leaving a very uncomfortable crew behind him.
*
“Hey Merlin,” Gwen said with a smile, “what are you doing up here?” The mechanic shrugged, coming to stand by the semicircle of the pilot’s controls with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“I’ve been thinking about what Will said yesterday, about the Alliance knowing who we are now because of the security feed from Tintagel.”
“Yes?” Gwen asked, turning to him with a smile. “What’s the matter?”
“If they know who we are, then they probably have our files, right?” he said.
“Yes, well I’d imagine so. But I doubt there’s anything interesting in them.”
“Apart from my mother’s name,” Merlin said again, his voice so soft it was almost difficult to hear over the ship’s ambient noise. “And where she lives.”
“Merlin, they wouldn’t go after… I mean, they’re after us, not your mother or anyone else. I can’t imagine that they would…” she broke off, looking worried. “You really think that they would do that?”
“Maybe they’d just want to ask her if she’s heard from me recently, but I don’t want them coming near her, Gwen. I don’t want her having any trouble because of this.”
The pilot nodded, turning round to the console, her fingers reaching out to the cortex.
“I’ll give her a wave and we can tell her and everyone to get out of there,” Gwen said, seriously. “She’ll be fine, Merlin.”
“Of course she will.”
As Gwen reached to switch the cortex on, though, a small light began to blink beside it.
“That’s a coincidence, someone’s giving us a wave…” she flicked the switch. “It’s Ealdor.” Merlin froze.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said under his breath.
“That’s what Gaius always says,” Gwen agreed, sounding cheerful although she was frowning as she opened the channel to Ealdor. As soon as the picture came on screen she gasped and Merlin, looking over her shoulder to see what her problem was, went pale.
Gaius’s face was on the screen, and in the background there were huge columns of black smoke. Dirt was smeared across his face and blood was streaming down from what looked like a nasty head wound. The doctor was breathing heavily, in the strained fashion of someone who can’t get enough air for their body.
“Merlin…” he breathed, and Merlin immediately reached up for the ship wide comm-link while Gwen asked Gaius what was wrong and immediately changed the course of the ship to head back to Ealdor.
“Will, you need to get here right now,” Merlin said. “It’s Gaius.”
“You’re in too deep…” Gaius wheezed. “Nowhere you can hide from them.”
“Them?” Gwen asked, suddenly all efficiency while Merlin was still staring open mouthed at the screen. “The Alliance did this?”
“My mother…” Merlin asked as soon as he had caught up with the conversation. “Is she alright? Did they…?” He couldn’t complete his sentence and Gaius coughed heavily, holding a hand over his mouth, but as he drew it away they could see the red stains on his hand and lips.
“Hunith’s yard was hit during the first assault, I’m sorry Merlin… she didn’t make it. None of us did.”
Will ran up the steps towards the bridge and through the doorway.
“Merlin? What’s happened?” He took in the scene, Merlin’s deathly pale face, Gwen’s determined but tearstained expression and Gaius on the screen. “Holy… Gaius, what happened?”
“Alliance, they came for us.”
“No,” Will said, “not for you, for us.”
“Yes,” Gaius took a deep breath, the air rattling as he sucked it in. “They killed us all. Will… Morgana’s important, you have to believe her… Everything she sees is…” He began to cough again and slumped forwards. “If you’ve ever believed anything, believe in her,” he whispered into the microphone on his side and then he fell still.
“Oh God,” Gwen said. “They’re dead… they’re all dead… How could they do that?”
The rest of the crew was beginning to appear in the doorway.
“Gwen,” Will said. “Turn us around.”
“Already done, Captain,” she said, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly.
“Captain?” Lancelot stood in the doorway, Valiant beside him and Arthur behind him. “What’s happened?”
“Oh God,” Gwen said again, turning to her husband, tears still streaming down her face. “They killed them all, all of them. Just because we might have been there.” Lancelot wrapped his arms round her and she sobbed into his chest. Her husband looked over her head to where the Captain was standing.
“All of who?”
“Ealdor,” Will said, his face expressionless, before pushing past the lot of them, Arthur and Morgana as well, come to see what the uproar was about. “They’re all dead.”
*
part 5
part 3
“We have the details of the crew, sir,” a young officer reported, saluting the operative smartly. “I’m putting them through to your screen now.”
“Thank you.” Edwin looked down at the screen and the files flashed up one after another, the faces of Avalon’s crew appeared one by one, each covering the one before. When the images stopped, Will’s face was staring blankly outwards. He wore the brown jacket of a military uniform, sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. “Sergeant William Moore, fought for the Independents, of course. Volunteered… as did his father, who died in action.” The text beside the picture scrolled down automatically. “Received a commendation for the Battle of Avalon.”
He flicked to the next screen.
“Corporal Lancelot Du Lac, served in the same regiment. Another volunteer – unsurprisingly. Again, commended for valour. Both of them fought in the Battle of Avalon… Ground forces.”
“I didn’t think any of the Independent ground forces made it,” the General said, stepping up, “General Pendragon didn’t go easy on them.”
“There were five survivors of the Independent forces on the ground after the battle was officially ended, only two of whom made it out of that valley alive,” Edwin corrected him. “All of them received awards for service. Those who had died were awarded posthumously of course. The medals were sent to their families, along with condolences.”
“Of course.”
*
“We’re going to get through this,” Lancelot said, sitting down on the edge of the bed he shared with his wife. “Somehow, we will get through this.”
“This is bigger than anything we’ve ever done before,” Gwen said slowly. “I’ve never…”
“No harm will come to you,” he said so firmly that she had to smile, walking up in front of him, between his legs. She lifted one hand to his face and traced her fingers down the curve of his jaw. As her hand drifted down he caught it in one of his own and pressed his lips to the centre of her palm. “We will all be safe, Arthur and Morgana, too.”
“You’re a good man,” she said, letting her and come to a stop on the curve of his neck, where it met his shoulder. “His father…”
“Is not him,” Lancelot said.
“I know, but Will is having a hard time telling the difference.” Gwen commented lightly. “You don’t even seem to pause.”
“Arthur is a good man, too,” Lancelot said, “and the war was a long time ago.”
“You still remember it. I see when you wake up… you don’t cry out but you tense up,” she looked at him carefully, clearly wondering if she was stepping over a line. “I never know how to help.”
“You help just by existing,” her husband murmured, putting his arms around her and pulling her closer. “You saved me.” Gwen tilted her face down and kissed him, softly at first, but gradually more desperately. After a moment she pulled away, smiling at him like he was the only thing she could see.
“You didn’t need much saving,” she told him, whispering the words across his skin.
“We will survive,” he replied, “we will live. And when this is all over we should take some time off. A holiday.”
“Where will we go?”
“Anywhere… as long as it’s you and I, I don’t mind.”
“And who will fly this ship?” Gwen asked, laughing as Lancelot tugged her down to sit beside him on the bed. “I can’t just leave Will and the others in the lurch.”
“Yes,” Lancelot told her, dropping the slightest of kisses to her lips, “you can.”
“When this is over…” she said thoughtfully.
“Yes?”
“I might just have to take you up on that holiday.”
“You won’t be bored?” he asked, smiling with genuine happiness.
“I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”
*
“Guinevere Du Lac, née Summerland, married Lancelot Du Lac four years ago. Passed top of her class in Caerleon flight school, although there’s a note from her teacher that she had a habit of undertaking overly dangerous manoeuvres. The Alliance government attempted to recruit her into their special forces, but she turned them down, instead taking low paying short trip jobs until joining the Avalon’s crew five years ago… Never convicted of any crime, no known associations with any rebel groups.” He tapped the screen and Gwen’s smile was replaced by Valiant’s glare.
*
Avalon was quiet, the hum of the engine the only noise. Will was in the bridge, keeping an eye on things and just staring out into space. Valiant didn’t know what the man saw out there, but it could keep him occupied for hours. Gwen and Lancelot were in their bunk busy with each other… he smirked slightly at that.
Merlin and Arthur were in the engine room talking to each other. And the little witch was still trussed up in the storage room.
Alone.
He ran his hand over his forehead where she had knocked him unconscious, and smiled grimly to himself. Well, he wasn’t going to let her have the drop on him again.
*
“Tanis Valiant, Convictions for robbery, smuggling, wanted in… seven settlements for larceny, murder and assault. Originally from the Western Isles of Albion, still has a mother there and three younger siblings – all of whom are trying to get a list of convictions longer than his. No affiliations with either the Alliance or the rebels, no qualifications, unless you count being owed over fifty years of jail time.
“Merlin Emrys, Son of Hunith. He grew up on Ealdor, like the Captain. Worked in his mother’s ship yard during the war and was picked up by Du Lac and Moore shortly afterwards. Unremarkable, really. No convictions. No formal qualifications beyond the usual. Currently working as a mechanic.”
*
“When did you realise you could…?” Arthur waved a hand around the engine room vaguely, watching as Merlin gently prodded at the engine. The mechanic turned around and shrugged.
“I’ve always been able to do it really. Machines, I don’t know how to describe it, but they talk to me. It’s like I can hear them tell me what’s wrong and I know how to fix it without being told. My mother used to call me her little miracle worker,” he smiled in reminiscence. “She’d give me all the parts she couldn’t work out how to fix, or take me onto the ships and let me play around in them. I never really knew what I was doing back then, but I’d find the broken parts for her in minutes.
“Of course, she never took me onto any of the official ships we got in the grounds. She refused to let me register. At that time the act wasn’t in place – it was just before the war – and she didn’t want the doctors to poke and prod at me,” Arthur nodded tightly. “After the war, when the registration act came into effect I was old enough to know what I could do and Mum sat me down and told me that I didn’t have to register if I didn’t want to. No one knew about me who’d tell the Alliance. So I didn’t.” Arthur watched him for a moment longer. The man climbed up the wall of the room to tweak a lever, and he could just about hear the slight change in tone of the engine.
“Morgana’s been doing it as long as I can remember,” he said after a moment. “She’d tell me that I should wear a coat when it looked like it was going to be good weather all day, and it would always rain. She knew the days when our father would be home and she always made sure dinner was waiting for him… She even knew our mother was going to die. It’s my first memory – her crying in the bathroom, and she couldn’t tell me what was going to happen, just that it was going to be something bad.”
Merlin dropped down to sit next to him, so that their shoulders were just touching.
“She told Father that she didn’t want to go…” Arthur remembered. “That fight was one of the worst they had ever had. She was screaming at him, and I thought that she was so stupid, not to want to go to some big exciting school where she would learn interesting things, instead of just quantum mechanics.” He sighed. “When she left she hugged me, and I just wanted her to go…
“It was never like this though. She was still herself; she’d just know things sometimes. Things no one else knew. Then… It’s like it’s taken over her head.”
“She’ll get better, Arthur,” Merlin assured him, patting him on the knee. “I’m sure she will.”
“I hope so, but every day she seems to be getting worse.”
“We’ll figure out what’s wrong, and she’ll get better.”
“Yeah…
*
Morgana worked the cuffs off, resting them very softly on the ground, so that they made no noise, and she was on her feet in seconds, her footsteps silent as she walked over to the door.
She wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
*
“And the other two, of course we know,” the operative finished as Morgana and Arthur’s faces flashed up on the screen, only to be replaced by Gaius’. “Who’s this?”
“Gaius Hale, former crew member, sir,” the young officer supplied. “Their doctor. He left them six months ago to settle on Ealdor. I thought you might want to know about him as well. You said not to leave any information out.”
“Quite right…” Edwin smiled at the officer, the expression was chilling. “No information is useless. So, Ealdor?”
“Yes sir… there are several settlements on the planet. Gaius lives near Emrys’ mother. That settlement is one of their usual places of berth.”
“Interesting… any others?”
“A few, sir. But if I might make a suggestion, from the route they took leaving Tintagel it seems likely that they are going there.”
“Never underestimate your opponent,” Edwin said, steepling his fingers together for a moment before lacing them together. “Moore and Du Lac did not make it through the Battle of Avalon by doing what was expected of them. They are not stupid. What is their closest known port of call? Lay in a course for it. If we cannot know which one they are going to, then we must deal with them all.”
“Yes sir.”
“You should not run, Captain.” Edwin said to thin air. “We could have avoided this atrocity.”
*
Valiant looked through the small window into the storage room, it was empty apart from the cuffs lying alone in the centre of the floor.
“Wédenheorte drýicge31 got out…” he muttered to himself. “She can probably walk through walls.” His hand went for his gun, but before he reached it, his wrist was grasped by a slender hand, and quickly pulled round and back until his hand was between his shoulder blades. “Look – I just came to talk…” he said, in as soothing a voice as he could manage. “Let me go… I’m a friend, remember? I’m a friend, you little tife32.”
Morgana looked at where her hand was, around the throat of the snake tattoo that ran along Valiant’s arm, The head pointed upwards to his own head, the tongue almost touching his neck. She leaned in close, until the thick black lines blurred in her sight.
“You are not my friend,” she said calmly. “Your only friend is yourself… But you’re not a bad person. I know you Valiant. I see every part of you.” And she could. He was all laid out before her, flesh and blood and bones. She could see his thoughts, his fears. “You’re afraid I’ll kill you. I could. You should remember that. I can kill you with my mind. But I’m not going to…” She pressed a hand against his head and felt him go limp in her grasp.
Morgana lowered the man to the floor, before heading over to the door. Halfway there she stopped, staring at the empty space beyond it. They were coming, and they couldn’t see her – they would stop her.
She looked upwards and to the left, where there was a well concealed panel in the ceiling that led into the crawl space of the ship. It took a matter of seconds to remove the panel and pull herself up into it.
The trailing end of her dress slowly slipped away into the ceiling and she made her way to the bridge.
*
“So we question her,” Will said, walking alongside Lancelot towards the galley. “We keep out of the way of the Alliance, somehow, and we find out what’s wrong with her by asking.”
“Arthur says that she might not even know what she’s doing,” Lancelot pointed out.
“I’m not sure I believe that,” the Captain said, shaking his head. “Morgana’s intelligent, and I swear that she knows far more than she lets on. Sometimes she just watches you…” he shivered slightly. “I’ve been around plenty of Sensitives in my time, but none of them made me feel that-”
“Naked?” Lancelot suggested with a small smile.
“Not the word I was going to use, but it works.”
The pair of them stopped at the door to the galley and the first thing they saw was Valiant, crumpled on the floor.
“Dwæs andéaw hornungsunu docgan!33" Will swore, keying in the unlock code for the door, but the ship bleeped back at him. “Damn witch has overridden the lock!”
“Is she still in there?” Lancelot asked, leaning forward to look into the room as much as he could.
“She could be anywhere.”
“I’ll start looking.”
“I’ll head to the bridge and tell everyone what’s happening…” He shot another look at Valiant’s unconscious body. “We shouldn’t let him think.” Lancelot was halfway down the corridor already. Will turned to head in the opposite direction – towards the bridge.
*
They knew that she was out, only a matter of time now. But the soulless people were growing more restless every second. She was close, so close. Nimueh held the answer.
“Life and death in the palm of her hand,” Morgana muttered to herself. “Just a drop of water… just one drop.” She didn’t understand the words that came out of her mouth, but they came all the same. She often felt as though she was possessed, with someone else speaking through her. Her body wasn’t her own.
Nimueh wasn’t recognised in the major registration section – she hadn’t been expecting her to be, but then Morgana’s fingers began to move over the keys in a way she hadn’t planned, every step seemingly laid out again. She was just following the footsteps again.
There was a banging on the door.
Found… She had to move faster, faster. She couldn’t leave this undone. Her dreams might never let her go if she did.
*
Gwen was heading towards him when Will turned away from the door to the bridge.
“She’s in there,” he said, jerking his thumb backwards. “She’s in control of the whole damn ship from there, and she’s overridden the door lock as well.”
From behind Gwen, Arthur jogged up to them, his eyes wide.
“What’s she done?” he asked.
“Taken down one member of my crew and locked herself in the bridge,” Will told him. “Happy now. Thank you for bringing your problems to my door.”
“She’s not a threat…” Arthur started to speak.
“Tell that to Valiant.”
“If she hurt him then I imagine that she had a very good reason for doing so. After all, he is the one who wants her to be spaced, isn’t he?” Arthur said, standing his ground.
“I’ll do what I have to. I’m not having this ship under the control of someone who’s only half there. She could take us anywhere.”
Will levered a hatchway in the floor open and ducked his head down into it.
“Should be enough space for me, I’ll pop in and see what she’s up to.”
“I’m coming too,” Arthur told him pushing forward, but Lancelot caught his arm from behind, seemingly appearing from nowhere.
“Let the Captain go.”
“She’s my sister…” Will cocked his gun. “If you shoot her…”
“I told you, rich boy, I’ll do what I have to in order to protect my ship and my crew.”
Will dropped down and Arthur watched. He waited a long second before bringing his elbow up sharply into Lancelot’s nose and pulling himself out of the man’s grip before diving down after Will.
*
She was almost there; she could taste it in the air.
There were muffled noises below her – the crawl spaces – two of them. The Captain and Arthur.
She didn’t even turned around, just pointed Valiant’s gun at the place where they would come up. The hatch clanged open and Will clambered out, before freezing when he saw the gun trained on him. Arthur followed him.
“Morgana?” he asked incredulously. She cocked the gun, aiming it unerringly at the Captain’s head. “Put the gun down.”
“I can’t, Arthur. I’m sorry.”
“That’s it.” Will reached for his own gun, she could feel the thought in his mind. He would shoot to disable, not kill. She turned and fixed him in place with her eyes, the barrel of her gun not wavering. She wouldn’t have to shoot twice. “Okay…” he said slowly and his hands rose away from his gun until they were both in the air.
Her other hand was still racing across the keys when she turned back, typing in coordinates she had never known before.
An image appeared on the screen, nothing special, just another moon, it was the name blinking next to it that interested her.
“Nimueh.”
*
“It’s a place,” Will said, when Morgana had been disarmed and the overrides had been undone. The crew was gathered around, Valiant glaring at Morgana angrily where she stood next to her brother.
“We have to go there,” she said imperiously.
“No offence, but you’re not in charge of this ship – I am,” Will told her, but he took a deep breath anyway and switched his attention to his crew. “But she’s got a point: whatever this is, it’s big enough that the Alliance is willing to kill for it.”
“So, if there’s something there, it’s something they really don’t want anyone to find out about,” Lancelot agreed.
“We could go and check it out,” Merlin suggested.
“That’s not a good idea,” Gwen said, suddenly, back in her usual chair. “I mean to say, it’s a good plan if you don’t know what I know, but when you do know it’s not a good plan.”
“Why not?” Lancelot asked, leaning forwards across his wife’s shoulder to see the screen she was pointing at. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Will asked, coming over to stand next to them. “Eallwealda árdæde áhreddaþ ús,34” he breathed, looking at the readings. “Skinlaekers.”
“How many?” Merlin asked.
“All of them.”
“Skinlaekers?” Arthur asked looking round at the faces of the crew, even Valiant’s was pale, and he looked as though he had seen a ghost. “They’re not real.”
“Trust me,” Will told him, not even bothering to sound condescending. “They’re real. I’ve seen them.”
“The stories are true?”
“They’re only part of it,” Gwen whispered. “They’re nightmares made real. We can’t go through there.”
“But…” Arthur said.
“They rape you, and they eat you and they skin you and when you die it’s a relief,” Morgana muttered. “They can play with your mind, they can bring you to your knees with a look, a word, a thought.” Her voice was hollow, echoing, like she was reciting something she had heard before. “They live only to cause pain, only to torture.” She dropped into a sing song voice, like she was singing a nursery rhyme. “On the edges of space, the Skinlaekers come. They laugh and they howl as they tear you to bits, they rape you to death and shatter your wits. You’ll die screaming on the edge of the black, and no one will hear you, you’ll never come back.”
“We’re heading for Ealdor,” Will said decisively, ignoring Morgana’s chant, although everyone else was still staring at her, faces pale.
*
They walked off the ship and were immediately greeted by the inhabitants of Ealdor, Gaius at the forefront, with his customary medical bag hanging by one side. It was a small settlement, barely even a village and nothing like the towering white cities of Arthur’s youth, or the bright colours and dark walls of the less reputable planets. The first thing that struck Arthur was that there were trees, everywhere trees. Not in set patterns or organised groups. The bushes were not hemmed in behind small walls and carefully clipped into shape. They sprawled and cascaded everywhere. He’d never seen anything like it, even in the parks on Camelot.
Beside him Morgana laughed slightly, walking up to a tree and touching the bark slightly.
“It’s… incredible,” he breathed as Merlin passed him and the mechanic turned round with an amused grin.
“It’s not much,” he said again with a shrug, “but it’s a safe place… and it used to be home.”
“Home is on Avalon now?”
“Yes… but I’ve still got a soft spot for this old place… though it always makes Will sad to come back here.”
“If you two were friends growing up, why didn’t you both join the Independent army?” Arthur asked. Merlin’s face fell.
“It was too dangerous for me with my… abilities.” Merlin admitted, looking down at his hands. “My mother, she was scared.”
“But there were whole regiments of Sensitives in the Independent forces,” Arthur said.
“And do you know what happened to them when the Alliance got hold of them?” Merlin asked. Arthur shook his head. “Of course you don’t, they don’t tell you that part in your nice sterilised schools, do they?” He walked off. Arthur watched him walk up to an older woman and embrace her, lifting her clean off her feet as she laughingly chastised him and ordered him to put her down.
“Five hundred dead in two days,” Morgana’s voice said from beside him. “The Alliance policy was no survivors.” Arthur started, turning towards his sister, but she did not continue or elaborate.
“The trees like it here,” she said, “they like being free, like the people do. The stones like it too. They aren’t cut into blocks and stacked together like children’s toys. They can breathe out here.”
Arthur pulled himself together and drew in a deep breath, looking over to where the bonfire was being started and the food was being collected together.
“I know what they mean.”
*
Dinner had been simple, not exactly gourmet cuisine, but it was the first fresh food Arthur had had since walking aboard Avalon. It disappeared far more quickly than he had expected and then the after dinner conversation began.
Morgana was crouched down, talking to a small child who was attempting to explain his game to her. Merlin was with his mother, the woman he had been hugging earlier, laughing with some people he had clearly known his whole life, and the others were just enjoying having a chance to relax in a place they felt safe. Arthur sighed and looked at the flames for a moment.
He saw Will walking away out of the corner of his eye, sloping off into the dark with the air of someone who didn’t want to be followed.
So Arthur followed him.
The path the Captain took twisted and turned through the houses – shacks Arthur would have called them – until he came to a stop outside one that looked abandoned. One wall had clearly been reclaimed to build new houses and the ceiling looked as though it leaked dreadfully.
“I come here to be alone, not to answer questions from someone who can’t even look after himself,” Will said, not turning around. Arthur almost jumped, but just managed to hold himself together. “You’re not exactly stealthy you know.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“No, you might as well stay. It’s nothing that everyone else doesn’t already know. Though they at least have the decency to let it be.” He paused sticking his hands in his pockets beneath his heavy brown coat and looking up at the stars. “This used to be my home – before the war, before Avalon, before everything.”
“It looks… nice,” Arthur offered. Will laughed and turned to him.
“And there was me thinking all you Alliance brats were brought up to lie from the cradle.”
“Prevarication was my worst class in school,” Arthur said back, risking a small smile. He wasn’t sure why he had followed the man out here. Part of his mind had just wanted to irritate the man, but now he was thinking perhaps he wanted to thank him.
“My father was in the army too,” Will said; “this was his coat.” He shrugged the heavy brown suede up his shoulders, “I never got round to fixing the hole made by the bullet that killed him. His left hand drifted up to his chest and he pushed his index finger into the hole with almost casual movement, as though he had done it a lot of times. “We got his dogtags back. He wouldn’t let me join up when he was alive, but when the soldier turned up with those I joined up immediately.”
“And you had to leave all of this behind,” Arthur said with understanding.
“Yeah. I never intended to come back, not after my mother died… but I had promised Merlin if I made it, I’d come and tell him. He wanted to come with me, but his Mum talked him out of it. I’m glad she did. If he’d been there…”
“Even if you’re just doing this to get back at the Alliance,” Arthur said, looking through the half broken doorway of Will’s old home, “thank you.”
“That’s not why I’m doing this,” the Captain told him, turning suddenly, and leaning forward, one finger raised. “I’m not doing this out of revenge. I’m not doing this in some petty attempt to give them the two fingered salute. I’ll admit that the fact that helping you and your sister pisses them off beyond belief makes me smile to myself when I get up in the morning, but I’m doing this because they take what’s not theirs. They lay claim to everything, and they meddle with it, all of it, and they took your sister’s brain and they did the same thing to that that they do to everything else, and I don’t think that’s right. They can’t be allowed to manipulate people like that. Everyone’s got a right to live free.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. There didn’t seem to be any other answer to give.
*
Early morning and Merlin was showing a less than fascinated Arthur around his mother’s ship yard, which turned out to be not much more than a fenced off pile of broken ship parts to one side of the small landing field.
On the other side of the settlement, Gaius was sitting down with Will and Lancelot.
“You’re in deeper than you’ve ever been before,” the elderly doctor said, peering at them over the table. “I’m not sure you know what you’ve let yourself in for.”
“Give me a gun and I’ll fight them off,” Will said.
“Only if you see them coming.”
“We couldn’t leave them behind,” Lancelot said, “you never leave a man behind.”
“They’re not your men,” Gaius said with a small smile.
“Yes they are,” Will snapped. “Maybe they’re not crew, maybe they’re not friends, but they’re my men as long as they’re on my ship…” he shut his eyes and dropped his head into his hands. “Did I do the right thing?”
“Yes,” Lancelot told him with certainty.
“I might have just killed us all.”
“If this is important enough for them to blow up a ship that might contain the pair of them then they’ll have sent an operative.” Gaius drew in a deep breath. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others, but I picked up a wave the other day – Uther Pendragon was found dead in his office.” The ex-soldiers stared at him in astonishment. “Suspected heart-attack, but the man was completely healthy, no history of heart problems.”
“What else could it have been?” Lancelot asked, leaning forwards.
“There are people who work for the Alliance, who report directly to Parliament – the high council, not the lower ranks – who are trained believers,” Gaius explained, “they are known as operatives and they work, not just beneath the radar, but completely invisibly. They do not exist as far as anyone is concerned and many of these people have… abilities.”
“Stinking hypocrites,” Will said.
“And these people can simulate a heart attack?” Lancelot asked, not wasting time on curses.
“They can kill a man without laying a finger on him. But not only that, they don’t stop, they keep coming. They cannot be stopped and they cannot be deterred.”
“You think this has something to do with Arthur and Morgana?”
“I hardly believe it coincidence that at the same time his children are hunted fugitives Uther Pendragon dies under mysterious circumstances.” Gaius raised his eyebrows and looked at the pair of them seriously. “As I said, this goes deeper than either of you has ever been before.”
“So we hide,” Will said, nodding again, “we go from place to place, we stay off the radar, we don’t talk to anyone we don’t trust implicitly.”
“The operative will find you, he’ll keep looking until he’s found and killed all of you.”
“Dóc bepæcestran!35” Will swore again. “We can’t do anything else though. We don’t have the man power to stay and fight against the whole of the Alliance, we can’t get to Nimueh without crossing Skinlaeker space. We run and hide, or we die. Those are the only options I can see.”
“I agree,” said Lancelot, leaning back heavily. “There is no other course of action.”
“Then you must do as you see fit,” Gaius said, with a nod. The three stared at the centre of the table for a few moments, none of them willing to look up at the others.
“Gaius,” Will said after a few seconds had passed. “How did you find out about Pendragon, and how do you know about the operatives?” The old man looked him in the eye, his face carefully blank.
“I’m an old man, William; there’s an awful lot about me that you do not know.”
“Well one day I plan to find out,” the Captain said with a grin. Gaius did not return it.
“You never will.”
The pair took that as their cue to leave, standing up and heading out to the rest of the crew where they were meeting up in the centre of the village.
Gaius watched them go before looking down at his old hands sadly.
“Slæp in éadnesse, Uther, ærgód géowine.36”
*
He didn’t know them well enough to do this, but Gaius hadn’t wanted to, and it fell to him. Lancelot had offered. Will had been tempted by the offer, but he couldn’t do it. He was the Captain. He wasn’t sure why that meant he had to do this, but it did.
“Arthur,” he said, after they had boarded the ship, drawing the man to one side. Morgana stood a little way away, watching them, her eyes clear as they always were, but somehow looking straight through him. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this…” the words were hollow in his mouth. Somewhere inside him a piece of him was rejoicing at the news. It was the piece of him that had stood in the valley of Avalon and watched his friends get blown away; the part of him that had wordlessly taken his father’s dog-tags from the man at the door; the same part of him that had, the very next day, shrugged into his fathers coat and gone to sign up in his place.
“The King is dead,” Morgana announced and Will turned to her startled. “Murdered. Our father was murdered.” Arthur started, looking at her, his face turning deadly pale. “He didn’t suffer though, it was quick and painless. Here one minute, gone the next. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.” She crossed over to Arthur, her face smiling in a way that made Will’s blood run cold as she raised one hand to his face. “We’ll crown you King in May, with the blossoms off the tree, and in your hand a golden sceptre and the world will bow to thee. All hail… all hail…” her voice trailed off and Arthur turned to Will, his eyes pleading.
“Is it… Is she right?” he asked, his eyes and his voice begging Will to tell him it was all a lie.
“Gaius got a wave on the cortex,” he muttered, unable to look Arthur in the eye. Uther Pendragon was a monster to him. The man behind the armies, the name that meant the Alliance. To Arthur he was a father. It was strange to realise that the figurehead of evil he had always thought of was actually a man. That there were people out there who loved him, no matter what he had done. “His information’s usually correct, and his sources are good. He’s sure about this one.”
“How…?” Arthur asked, sounding like a little boy.
“Heart attack’s the official word, but Gaius thinks it was murder.”
Arthur nodded, and suddenly it was like a switch was flicked, his face shut down, becoming blank, unreadable, and Will was left hanging.
“Thank you,” the man said, before grasping his sister’s arm gently and leading her away. As they left, Will could still hear Morgana mumbling about may blossom.
*
“We’re heading for Mercia,” Will told the crew as soon as Gwen had taken them up, “we’re going to keep our heads down and stay out of trouble as long as we can. While we can still fly, we run. Ácnéowe37?”
“Are we sure we can outrun these guys?” Merlin asked from across the table. “They seem pretty serious.”
“If they don’t know where we’re going, or where we’re starting from then they can’t chase us,” Will told him firmly. “We run and hide until they find some other poor fools to chase after. I’m sure this will all blow over if we leave it long enough. But we’re still here and we’re still in the air, so it’s all shiny right now, alright?”
“Just shiny,” Merlin said acidly, clearly not believing a word of it.
“I don’t see why we’re not just dumping the kids somewhere,” Valiant protested. “They’re the problem here – we hand them over, we all go away happy.”
“There’s just one little piece of trouble with that plan,” Will said, turning his full attention to Valiant. “The Alliance doesn’t want them alive and kicking, they want them dead, and if they know we have them, they will kill every one of us to get to them. They blew the Gedref apart without even making sure they were aboard. We’ve got to believe they know our faces after what happened in Tintagel, we saw the footage of that, so I’m guessing that someone on their side must have too. That’s probably the very reason they were broadcasting that trigger in the first place. They see us coming, we’re dead before we have time to say hello, let alone try to make a deal.”
“The Captain’s right,” Lancelot said. “Direct confrontation isn’t going to solve anything, it will only end in our deaths. We’ve got to lay low until we can choose a time.” Will blinked and looked at him.
“Right, yes.”
“Great…” Valiant spat, glaring at Arthur and then at Will. “Looks like the girl’s not the only crazy one around here.” He stalked out and Arthur sighed deeply.
“Anyone else got any complaints.”
“Would you listen to them if we did?” Merlin asked, still obviously annoyed.
“Yes,” the Captain replied, “but they wouldn’t make any difference. This is my bloody ship and I’m bloody well in charge, so I make the decisions. Anyone who doesn’t like it is welcome to get off this boat at any time.” Then he walked out too, leaving a very uncomfortable crew behind him.
*
“Hey Merlin,” Gwen said with a smile, “what are you doing up here?” The mechanic shrugged, coming to stand by the semicircle of the pilot’s controls with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“I’ve been thinking about what Will said yesterday, about the Alliance knowing who we are now because of the security feed from Tintagel.”
“Yes?” Gwen asked, turning to him with a smile. “What’s the matter?”
“If they know who we are, then they probably have our files, right?” he said.
“Yes, well I’d imagine so. But I doubt there’s anything interesting in them.”
“Apart from my mother’s name,” Merlin said again, his voice so soft it was almost difficult to hear over the ship’s ambient noise. “And where she lives.”
“Merlin, they wouldn’t go after… I mean, they’re after us, not your mother or anyone else. I can’t imagine that they would…” she broke off, looking worried. “You really think that they would do that?”
“Maybe they’d just want to ask her if she’s heard from me recently, but I don’t want them coming near her, Gwen. I don’t want her having any trouble because of this.”
The pilot nodded, turning round to the console, her fingers reaching out to the cortex.
“I’ll give her a wave and we can tell her and everyone to get out of there,” Gwen said, seriously. “She’ll be fine, Merlin.”
“Of course she will.”
As Gwen reached to switch the cortex on, though, a small light began to blink beside it.
“That’s a coincidence, someone’s giving us a wave…” she flicked the switch. “It’s Ealdor.” Merlin froze.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said under his breath.
“That’s what Gaius always says,” Gwen agreed, sounding cheerful although she was frowning as she opened the channel to Ealdor. As soon as the picture came on screen she gasped and Merlin, looking over her shoulder to see what her problem was, went pale.
Gaius’s face was on the screen, and in the background there were huge columns of black smoke. Dirt was smeared across his face and blood was streaming down from what looked like a nasty head wound. The doctor was breathing heavily, in the strained fashion of someone who can’t get enough air for their body.
“Merlin…” he breathed, and Merlin immediately reached up for the ship wide comm-link while Gwen asked Gaius what was wrong and immediately changed the course of the ship to head back to Ealdor.
“Will, you need to get here right now,” Merlin said. “It’s Gaius.”
“You’re in too deep…” Gaius wheezed. “Nowhere you can hide from them.”
“Them?” Gwen asked, suddenly all efficiency while Merlin was still staring open mouthed at the screen. “The Alliance did this?”
“My mother…” Merlin asked as soon as he had caught up with the conversation. “Is she alright? Did they…?” He couldn’t complete his sentence and Gaius coughed heavily, holding a hand over his mouth, but as he drew it away they could see the red stains on his hand and lips.
“Hunith’s yard was hit during the first assault, I’m sorry Merlin… she didn’t make it. None of us did.”
Will ran up the steps towards the bridge and through the doorway.
“Merlin? What’s happened?” He took in the scene, Merlin’s deathly pale face, Gwen’s determined but tearstained expression and Gaius on the screen. “Holy… Gaius, what happened?”
“Alliance, they came for us.”
“No,” Will said, “not for you, for us.”
“Yes,” Gaius took a deep breath, the air rattling as he sucked it in. “They killed us all. Will… Morgana’s important, you have to believe her… Everything she sees is…” He began to cough again and slumped forwards. “If you’ve ever believed anything, believe in her,” he whispered into the microphone on his side and then he fell still.
“Oh God,” Gwen said. “They’re dead… they’re all dead… How could they do that?”
The rest of the crew was beginning to appear in the doorway.
“Gwen,” Will said. “Turn us around.”
“Already done, Captain,” she said, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly.
“Captain?” Lancelot stood in the doorway, Valiant beside him and Arthur behind him. “What’s happened?”
“Oh God,” Gwen said again, turning to her husband, tears still streaming down her face. “They killed them all, all of them. Just because we might have been there.” Lancelot wrapped his arms round her and she sobbed into his chest. Her husband looked over her head to where the Captain was standing.
“All of who?”
“Ealdor,” Will said, his face expressionless, before pushing past the lot of them, Arthur and Morgana as well, come to see what the uproar was about. “They’re all dead.”
*
part 5
