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definewisdomMaster Post
part 4
When Avalon arrived at Ealdor, some of the fires were still burning, and the bodies of the dead littered the ground. Nobody followed Merlin as he ran towards his mother’s house, there was so much pain there that they would never have been able to handle his grief on top of their own.
The place was a massacre site, blood and burnt earth. The trees were no more than charred twigs, splintered across the ground, and every new body they found made the silence grow more intense.
Arthur had never thought that silence was possible, not the complete absence of sound, but Ealdor was now so quiet the silence seemed noisy in its own right. It rang in his ears, and when one of them stepped too heavily and the ground beneath them rustled or cracked, it was a moment of relief from the remorseless lack of sound.
Merlin emerged from his house, his mother’s body in his arms, his face silent and there were no tears in his eyes.
“They pay for this,” Valiant said, looking around at the devastation. “For this, we hurt them.”
“For this,” Lancelot said in response, his normally quiet voice even quieter, whether out of respect for the dead or rage Arthur couldn’t tell. “For this we destroy them.”
By his side, Gwen nodded firmly, fury evident in every centimetre of her.
Will found Gaius’ body slumped over their view screen. He took in the sight without even blinking. What they had not seen over the cortex was the bloody mess that had been made of his stomach. It looked as though it had been hit by a rocket, the size of a hole there was. The blood was dry now, dark brown stains over the equipment.
He left the hut, left it all and went into his ship, where the quiet was comforting rather than aching. He stood on the bridge and went over it in his mind, how he could have stopped it, and he saw no way. No way to keep everyone safe. How could he have known that the Alliance would kill them all?
He tried to reach their other friends, anyone they knew. Every image came up the same, death, static and nothing more.
He stared at their bodies for a while, he wasn’t sure how long had passed, and he added them to the list of dead he carried in his head always. Their names were included with those he had served with in the army. All the people he had never been able to save, his father at the top of the list.
After minutes, or maybe hours, or perhaps only seconds, had passed, the images were all replaced by one face. He looked hard at it, tried to memorise it because this, he knew, was the face of the man who had killed them.
His hair was blond, his face thickly scarred with burn marks, and he smiled serenely, as though he had not a care in the world. He didn’t need Gaius to tell him that this man had no conscience, it was etched into every feature. The eyes were frozen, staring at him, so calm, so assured for someone with so much blood on his hands.
“This could have been avoided, Captain, if you had simply allowed the Pendragons to be taken into Alliance custody. These people would not be dead, if not for your presumption to take the law into your own hands.”
“You killed them, not me,” Will replied, “the blood is on your hands.”
“Yes, it is. But that does not bother me… you on the other hand.”
“I’m going to kill you for this,” Will swore to him. “These people were innocent and you slaughtered them.”
“For which I am truly sorry, but I’m afraid that it was necessary. Morgana Pendragon is dangerous… she must be contained. As must the information that she knows.”
“Is that what you said to her father before you killed him?”
“So you know about Uther… I was wondering if Gaius would have been informed of that fact,” the man said, nodding. “He understood the dangers his children posed to the future. But his love for them was too great. It is a dangerous thing, love.”
“You’re mad.”
“No, I am simply very good at following orders.”
“Do you even know why you’re doing this? Do you know what Morgana knows?”
“No, and nor do I want to, or care. This is not about the whys and wherefores, Captain. It is about what must be done. We are forging a new world, and there cannot be rebirth without sacrifice.”
“You don’t ask questions, then? Is that it?”
“I do not need to ask questions. I know what I am doing is for the best.”
“How can killing children be for the best?”
“The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.”
“Þín heorte béo ábiten be mearcweardum, þu gydig dóc!38” Will roared at the screen. The man on the other end did not even blink.
“You anger clouds your judgement, like your anger at the Alliance has always clouded it. Your best course of action is surrender.”
“Never.”
“You are not in Avalon now, Captain. This is not the war.”
“No… this is worse, because in the war we saw you coming, and you killed soldiers. Some of them were only children, but at least they had a uniform, now you’re killing indiscriminately.”
“We will keep on killing them until you surrender.”
“Then kill them,” Will snapped.
“You do not mean that.”
“Yes, I damn well do.”
“You are not a Skinlaeker, Will. Not a monster like me. You have a conscience and-”
Will switched it off, a plan forming in his mind, and the man’s face burning his eyes. The smug self-centred git, so sure of himself, so devout in his belief that the slaughter of innocent people would be made up for by the protection of a mysterious secret.
He turned on his heel and left the bridge, and then the ship, marching over to where his crew stood, clustering together to try and separate themselves from the death around them.
“Merlin,” he said, barking out to his friend. The mechanic looked up, his eyes red, but his cheeks still dry. “I need you to get the ship ready. Make the engine look as dangerous as you can without killing us all, and make it exude magic, you know what I mean. I want us to be a bloody beacon to any Sensitive in a five light year radius.”
“Will?” Merlin asked, his voice breaking slightly. “My mother’s dead.”
“I know… I know,” he breathed, before breaking away to look at the rest of them. “Gather up what bodies you can. String them together and tie them tightly onto the hull.”
“What?” Gwen asked, before swearing at him fluently, beside her Lancelot added his own voice in outrage. “These are our families, our friends. And you expect us to mutilate them. We respect our dead. It’s what makes us different from the Skinlaekers and the Alliance. I will not stand by and watch as you…”
“Today we can’t be different from the Skinlaekers, Guinevere,” Will’s use of her full name pulled her up short. “We must appear to be the same if we want what we’re about to do to work. Those of you who aren’t doing that – Arthur, Gwen – tear up the hull as much as you can without killing us, okay. Just enough to look authentic.”
“You mean to try to get to Nimueh?” Lancelot asked, though from the look of his face he already knew the answer.
“I mean to succeed.”
“We can’t do that… these people are our family,” Merlin protested, echoing Gwen’s words.
“Merlin,” Will said calmly. “They’re dead; the least we can do for them is make those deaths mean something more than just people who got caught in the Alliance’s wheels.” He took a second to draw himself up to his full height. “That was not a question and this is not a democracy, Avalon is my ship, you are my crew and I am the Captain. I am in charge, and if any of you have a problem with that, stay here. I want to find out why these people died. I want to know what secret is so fucking important that the Alliance is willing to destroy hundreds of people for it. Anyone have a problem with that?”
Merlin opened his mouth and stood up.
“Will you can’t…”
“No, I can and I will. I’m not going to let them get away with this… Any questions?”
There was no sound from anyone.
“Good, then get to work.”
*
“It’s done, sir,” Lancelot informed Will shortly, before starting to walk off.
“Lancelot, if you’ve got something to say, then say it.”
“I think it’s all been said,” his first mate replied, but he didn’t look him in the eye.
“I know it’s bad and I know this is probably suicide but it’s the only way I can see.”
“I know, and I don’t disagree, but…” he paused. “I wish there was another way.” He looked up, his face sombre.
“So do I…”
“You always did like suicide missions,” Lancelot said. It sounded like he was amused, but there was no merriment in his eyes when their gaze met.
They parted, neither looking up again until they got to their destinations.
*
Morgana walked through a park. The trees were in blossom, raining down pink petals on her hair. Her feet were bare and she could feel the grass between her toes.
“Morgana,” her father said from in front of her, “it’s going to be okay. We just want to make you better.”
He tried to hand her the glass of water he had in his hand, but she dashed it to the ground where it shattered into pieces. The water spilled out onto the grass and where it touched, the green turned to shrivelled black.
She looked up and her father’s eyes glowed brilliant, electric blue. His face became a twisted mass of scars and he raised one hand, throwing her across the room.
As he raised his other hand, she saw a knife in it. He advanced, knife first, until it was kissing her skin with its blade. The tree behind her turned into a wall, and she couldn’t get away as he brought the blade down her cheek and began to slice into her flesh.
She woke screaming again.
*
“This is suicide,” Valiant whispered to himself as they entered Skinlaeker space. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and he could feel the magic in the air. He was no Sensitive, but there was so much of it that he felt as though he could almost touch it. “We’re gonna die out here in the black… I’ll kill myself before they touch me.”
Next to him, Arthur nodded his agreement.
*
Morgana could feel them, all around, their minds screaming for blood and pain. She could feel them ripping her flesh apart and ripping her brain apart, though Merlin’s adjustments made it impossible for them to touch her brain.
“Lost souls,” she whispered out to the windows. “All the lost souls are crying out for blood.”
Gwen’s hand found hers, warm in the sea of cold, like a lifeline. Morgana gripped it tightly and held on. They didn’t look at each other, just stared out the window at the ships that passed by.
*
When they reached the other side, the collective drawing of relieved breath was the loudest they had been for hours.
“Fly us over,” Will said to Gwen, “I want to see what’s there before I land on this godforsaken place.”
“Of course, Captain.”
He walked out of the bridge and to his room before drawing a shuddering breath and feeling the tension leave him. They had made it one way, they were here. They would find out what the Alliance didn’t want them to know, and they would use that to get out of this mess.
*
Nimueh was a large planet, with its own moon, they counted several cities as they passed over, and the land seemed normal enough.
“I don’t understand why I’ve never heard of the place,” Gwen said, looking confused. “I’ve never seen anyone scheduled to fly there, or from there. But this place – it’s huge.”
“There’s definitely something up,” Will agreed. “We just need to find out what. Take us down by that first city we came to. I want to see it up close. It might give us more of an idea.”
“Yes Captain.”
*
Outside the ship, the cities of Nimueh looked just as perfect and untouched as they had done from the air. Clean white lines and aesthetically and ergonomically designed streets. Arthur was reminded of his home, but it was like a dream, where all the people other than himself had disappeared, lost in the sea of white. The sun was high and brilliant in the bright blue sky, and small, artistic white clouds punctuated it. It should have been a beautiful day. People living there should have been out in the streets and the parks making the most of it.
But the place was a ghost town. The only sounds to be heard came from they themselves.
“I think I’ve picked up a beacon,” Gwen said, looking at the analyst in her hand. “Due west from here.” She started walking towards it and the others followed, spreading out into a long jagged line as they walked.
It felt as though they were in a crypt or a graveyard. Their voices were hushed, their movements slow. Valiant’s gun was drawn and he pointed it at the slightest provocation, jumping whenever there was a sudden sound or movement.
Arthur’s hand was on his own gun, handed to him by Will before they walked out of the ship, and he couldn’t quite pull it away. There was something so wrong about this place. It made every atom of him nervous.
Just in front of him, Morgana walked on. She had changed into trousers and a baggy top for this, but the sleeves still swept along behind her, carried by a breeze that Arthur couldn’t feel.
“The air’s normal,” Lancelot said, his voice barely higher than a hushed whisper. “The buildings are all intact, the temperature’s fine – did they just decide not to settle here after the Skinlaeker’s came?”
“That must be it,” Gwen agreed, although her voice made it clear that she didn’t think so at all.
“No…” Morgana said. “They’re still here. They came here, and they lived for a time. But then they stole their souls.”
Valiant’s gun swung round to point at her, and Arthur’s fingers tightened round his own immediately.
“Keep your thoughts to yourself,” the thug hissed at her angrily. Morgana held his gaze.
“They’re not my thoughts. They belong to Nimueh,” she said, before beginning to walk on again, her face growing paler and paler as Arthur watched.
There was a pillar outside the entrance of a building, holding up an awning, and Gwen passed it calmly, but froze on the other side.
“Eallwealda árdæde39,” Gwen breathed, rooted to the spot. She stared ahead of her vacantly and Lancelot hurried to her side. He froze too. “That can’t be…” she muttered. “No.” Her husband wrapped his arm round her shoulders and she turned her face into his shoulder. But Lancelot did not look away. Will came up on their right and swore fluently.
The others came up to them and soon the entire party had paused on the edge of the next plaza.
It was a huge white paved square surrounded by buildings just as clean and beautiful as the others. But in the centre, it was black. A pile of char and ash, the paving stones scorched black and what looked like scorched sticks. Except they weren’t.
“That’s people,” said Valiant, his face twisted in disgust. “People… burnt.”
“A plague, perhaps,” Merlin said, taking an almost unwilling step forward.
“No,” Morgana whispered. “They weren’t ill… not when they came here, and not ill in the body.”
“Morgana?” Arthur asked, going to her, but before he could reach her she had darted forward until she was kneeling at the edge of the black staring at the bones and charred skin in front of her.
“They stole their souls and then they led them to the pyres,” she said. “Jumping flames, burning people. Children came too, just walking. Their faces blank. They led them to the pyres, to cover it up. Everything has to stay hidden. And they walked onto them. Their eyes were open, but there was nothing behind them and they walked into the fire.”
“Suge40,” Valiant spat, “Stop talking nonsense!” He swung his gun round to point it at her. “There was a plague, or an illness or something. They burnt the bodies to stop the infection from spreading, that’s all.”
“If that was all,” Will said calmly, looking around, “then why are they so scared of this place?”
Morgana reached out and picked up a blackened fragment. For a moment Arthur thought it was a stone, before she turned it over and he saw that the other side was concave – a fragment of skull so small it could only have come from a child. He was at her side in an instant, prying it from her fingers.
“Put it down, Morgana.” Her eyes were full of tears as she stared at it. He managed to drag it from her grasp and gently placed it on the ground away from her. “It’s okay.”
“If he had been able to want,” she said to him, looking up, “then he would have wanted to scream. I can hear them in my head, not screaming. I can see them,” she gestured to the entrances to the plaza, “they walk in, step by step and they walk in, and the others are watching, the ones who took their souls. They watched them burn. They’re not screaming… all of them inside my head, and they can’t scream, they can’t even want it. So I do it for them. But it hurts too much… Lá Eallwealda, behwierfe mec to stáne.41”
“We have to find out what happened here,” Will said decisively, gesturing to Gwen. “We’ll find that signal and then maybe we’ll get some answers.” Gwen nodded, moving off, Lancelot’s arm still round her shoulders as he whispered into her ear. The others followed slowly. Arthur leading Morgana, though her eyes were glued to the pyres still.
They saw many others after that, huge piles of charred bones, flesh and cloth in almost all the squares. None of them save Morgana looked at them, the others keeping their eyes to the ground.
The beacon led them inside one of the buildings and up the stairs. The walls were glass looking out over the city. It would have been a beautiful view if not for the black marks that marred it.
Up they went, right to the top floor, the penthouse, where the windows extended round the whole of the circular room. There were dozens of black heaps outside of the window.
The room they came to was empty.
“What are we looking for?” Will asked looking around. Gwen shrugged, but Morgana, coming out of the stairwell walked straight to the recorder and slipped a disc into place.
A hologram swam into view, a pretty woman in a red dress with bright blue eyes.
“When I accepted this position,” she said, looking directly into Morgana’s eyes. “I didn’t know. I thought I was going to be doing good. Helping people to control what they couldn’t help. And at first, we were. But… Things got out of hand.
“We asked, why stop at control? Why not try to rid them of the mutation all together?” The figure reached over to press a button and an image started to play, a group of people staring sightlessly ahead, not looking at anything, not speaking, not moving. “We succeeded. We put it into the water. Poisoned their drinking supply – of course, we had our own. The first results were a great success, but, the effects increased. We didn’t just rid them of their abilities… we took everything that made them human. We stole their souls.” Morgana’s lips moved with the woman’s words and Arthur tried to shake off the chill that ran up his spine at that. “They still breathed, blinked, and they ate when we fed them, but there was nothing in them.
“When our report was brought to the attention of those who ran the facility,” she said, “they… ordered that we clear up the operation. They had us… I can’t…” She broke off and pressed another button. The image of the pyres, when they were still burning, came onto the hologram, and the blank people being herded and made to walk right into them. They didn’t pause for a second, even as the flames began to lick at them, they just kept on walking right into the middle of the fire. Men, women and children just walking to their deaths, like some automated conveyor belt of death.
“Some of them were just children. We took the life from them and then we made them kill themselves… I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them get away with it. Not that.” She took in a deep breath. “But that wasn’t all of it. There were others. Whether they had a genetic mutation that reacted with the drug, or whether there was something corrupt about that batch, they had the opposite reaction from the rest. They didn’t stop, they… reverted, to savagery. They became monsters. Their powers weren’t diminished, they grew, and they attacked everything. The things they’ve done.
“I’m the only one left now. The only witness to what has happened here. They’re hunting me down as we speak. I won’t survive to tell this to anyone, so I can only hope that this recording gets out one day.
“It started out as good work…” tears were rolling down her cheeks, tears mirrored on Morgana’s face. “All these people.” There was the sound of breaking glass, and the hologram started, turning to look to the side. “They’ve found me. There’s not much time. If you find this… let people know. They have to know.”
She was thrown back, held in mid air, unable to move, by invisible forces. The crew could see her struggle, but it was in vain. Figures started to appear on the edges of the image, unclear but definitely there. They held knives, and as the crew watched they lunged forwards and the woman began to scream.
Lancelot pulled the disk free, giving a deep shaky breath.
“Those were Skinlaekers,” Merlin said, his eyes wide. “The Alliance made them… they created them.”
Morgana lifted her hand to the space in the air where the woman had been standing before, and Arthur placed a careful hand on her shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes… I am now,” she told him, turning with a sad smile. “They’re gone.” She half threw herself at him, wrapping her arms round him tightly and holding on as though he would be snatched away in a second.
“Good… I’m glad.”
Will slipped the disk into his pocket as they left. No one spoke, but there was a silent agreement that they wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
*
“I’m not ordering you to do this,” Will said, looking from one face to another. “I couldn’t order this of you, any of you. I’m not asking either. I understand that this is beyond anything I’ve ever asked or done before. But they rounded up people, children, based on things beyond their control, and they drugged and experimented on them because they were afraid of what they represented. They wanted to change the way people thought, what people were. And then, when it went wrong, they covered it up. They’ve been hiding this for years.
“I can’t let them hide it any longer. This isn’t what any of you had in mind when you came onto this ship. This isn’t what I wanted but, like it or not, we’re the ones this has fallen to. We’re the ones who know, and I know that I have to tell other people. Because they will try again. Morgana is living proof of that. And they’ll come round to this idea again, the idea of rounding them up at birth and trying to improve them.
“I’ve never planned to be a hero, but sometimes you have to play with the cards life deals you, and it’s dealt us some pretty sodding awful cards.
“But I’m through staying below the radar and playing nicely. I’m through letting them run everyone’s lives, and I’m through being lied to.
“I aim to misbehave.
“Who’s with me?”
“Þes biþ dwæs unræd,42” Valiant said, “but it’s a kind of stupid I like.”
“If I’m going to die young,” Merlin said with a quirk of a grin, “then I might as well die for something worth dying for.”
Will looked at the others, Gwen nodded once, her jaw tight, and beside her Lancelot just looked at him, as if to ask why he was asking such a stupid question.
“What’s the plan?” Arthur asked leaning forward over the table.
“The Dragon,” Will said, looking around at them. “He can broadcast this everywhere… we get the word out and let people know what’s really going on.”
“We’ve still got to get past the Skinlaekers,” Valiant pointed out.
“And the Alliance…” Gwen added.
“If they knew about Ealdor and everywhere else,” Merlin said, swallowing tightly, “then they probably know about the Dragon too. I heard once that it was them who stuck him there and made sure he couldn’t get out.”
“Don’t worry,” Will said, smiling slightly. “I’ve got a plan.” His crew did not look impressed.
*
“Greetings, Captain,” the Dragon said over the cortex.
“Can’t talk long. We’ve got something important, and we want to broadcast it to everywhere at once, can you do that?”
“Of course, the edges of the web-”
“Good,” Will said, cutting him off, “we’ll be there in a little while… be ready.”
“Certainly, Captain. Your dest-” He was cut off as Will ended the connection, leaning forward to rest his head on his forearm where it rested near where the controls met the ceiling.
“Can I just go on the record as saying that this plan is completely insane?” Arthur asked, looking over to where Will was standing.
“That’s why they won’t see it coming.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
*
“They are coming,” the Dragon said, turning to look at Edwin. “And for this I win my freedom?”
“Yes,” the operative said, “you will be free. Forever.” The Dragon’s hand crept into his pocket and tightened around something there, pulling it out.
If Edwin had been paying attention when he held up a hand, fingers splayed and watched as the Dragon crumpled to the ground, he would have noticed the man’s right hand glow golden, almost imperceptibly just before he crumpled. But he did not, and shook his head almost sadly before turning to his men.
“Destroy everything that you can find. I want it to be gone before Avalon gets past the ion cloud.”
*
Timing was everything. If they moved too soon they would be ripped apart by the Skinlaekers before they even made it close to the Alliance forces, if they left it too late, the Alliance would pick them off before the plan had a chance to go into effect. And it wasn’t like they got a chance at a trial run.
*
“This could get interesting,” Gwen said to Lancelot as he walked into the bridge.
“You’ll be able to do it – you’re the best pilot I’ve ever seen,” He kissed her hair and she smiled a little bashfully. “You’ll be fine as soon as you’re flying, you know it.”
“Two armies and me in the middle of it all? I’ll let you know on the other side,” she said, checking the readings from the ships that once again surrounded them, wincing as one passed a little close for comfort.
“We will get through,” Lancelot said. “We must.”
*
Merlin sat in the engine room, concentrating on maintaining the magic levels that would disguise them until Will gave the signal.
There was sweat forming on his brow, he’d never had to use his abilities so constantly before, or to such an extent, and it was tiring him.
He shut his eyes and concentrated, letting the whirr and growl of Avalon’s engine soothe him, trying not to think about what would happen as soon as Will gave the order to stop.
*
“How far through are we?” the Captain asked, jogging up the stairs into the bridge. Lancelot and Gwen turned to him.
“Eighty three percent,” Gwen told him.
“Now or never,” Will breathed. “If this all goes horribly wrong…”
“We’ll say I told you so,” Gwen told him with a weak smile.
“Be ready to fly, Gwen. Do whatever you have to.”
“Yes Captain.”
Will reached up for the ship wide announcement radio and brought it down to his mouth. “Ready or not… here we come,” he whispered before pressing the button that opened the channel. “Merlin, now.”
*
In the engine room, Merlin relaxed and began to pray, keeping an ear out for any complaints from Avalon.
*
Morgana and Arthur were in the crash seats, ready for a bumpy ride. Morgana’s fingers found his as they felt the engine kick in and accelerate.
She could feel the rage of the Skinlaekers as they began to pursue them. The hunger for them. They were coming, and now there was no way out.
But the voices were gone, the soulless people had left her head and Nimueh was no longer screaming out for her.
*
“He’s coming,” the General said, coming up to stand by Edwin’s shoulder, hands clasped behind his back respectfully. “Our long range sensors have picked up movement in the cloud.”
“Good… be prepared to fire as soon as we see their ship.”
The Alliance army filled the air over the Dragon’s lair, cruisers and battleships hovering, every one waiting for the signal to fire. The light of the ion cloud made the long clean lines of the metal shine blue.
“Almost visible, sir,” a young officer said over his shoulder.
They all watched as the tiny ship emerged from the cloud, and Edwin’s face spread into a smile.
“This is the end, Captain. I hope that you feel you are dying for a good reason,” he said to the screen before turning to the weapons’ officers. “Prepare to fire at my signal…”
“Yes sir.”
“Sir, we’re picking up more movement in the cloud,” the navigation officer said, confused. “Bigger… and…” his voice faded away as more dark shapes emerged from the light, broken, huge monstrosities of vessels, that had been mutated from their original designs, or two different styles stuck together. Parts jutted out from them, spikes came off them.
“Skinlaekers,” the General said in shock. Edwin stood, staring, for a moment longer, before starting to speak again, barking out orders as quickly as he could.
“Target the Skinlaeker’s ships, shoot them down, all of them. Fire… somebody fire, for God’s sake!”
*
“You shouldn’t have made this personal,” Will muttered as Gwen began to weave around missiles and laser blasts in earnest.
Outside their ships, things started to explode, the Alliance ships were firing, and the Skinlaekers were retaliating. They saw one ship take out right in front of them, cut in half by a laser weapon, and Gwen flipped Avalon onto it side and flew between the two halves as they separated. Will saw bodies float past as he lowered himself into the copilot’s seat and buckled himself in. Behind him Lancelot did the same.
“Gwen, on your right!” he yelled as an Alliance ship appeared from nowhere.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him, “ic béo leaf an þæm winde, bescéawaþ humeta ic flotere.43”
“Gwen?” Will said urgently, but the pilot was completely focussed on what she was doing, looking constantly ahead, aware only of what was happening outside of the ship. “What does that mean? Gwen, are we okay or… Gwen! Not that…” They flew straight past a missile that flew over them, missing by such a narrow margin that Will found himself waiting for the explosion and the rush of air from the atmosphere of Camlann. “Just take us down as close to the Dragon’s lair as you can.”
“That’s where we’re heading.”
“And try not to kill us…”
“Can’t make any promises, Captain.”
*
The operative, who was currently going by the name of Edwin ran for the escape pods. He still had a job to do, even in the chaos that surrounded them. If Captain Moore thought that this was going to be enough of a distraction to let them get through then he had another thing coming. He ran to the escape pod chute and leapt down it just as he heard the unpleasant clanging that told him they had just collided with a Skinlaeker ship.
He slid down the chute and into the pod, and then he was falling through space. The pod was too small to be noticed by anyone in the current battle. He hoped, anyway.
*
“Captain,” Gwen said, “There might be a problem.”
“What sort of problem?” Will asked, leaning forwards.
“Not a good sort of problem,” Gwen said risking a glance round at him with an almost apologetic smile. “We’ve got a tail.”
“Alliance or…”
“Not Alliance.”
“Dóc tifan!44”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Can’t you lose them?” Lancelot asked, already strapping himself in.
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder,” Will snapped.
Suddenly there was a flare of light past the port side of the bridge and then everything went black, all the dials faded, all the blinking lights went out.
“What was that?” Will asked, although he had a horrible suspicion he already knew.
“EMP…” Gwen breathed, flicking switches frantically. “They’ve taken out everything… we’re going into freefall.”
“What about the back up power?”
“It’s not on.”
Valiant popped his head into the bridge. Clinging to the metal surround for dear life as the forces of freefall began to become more intense.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“The Skinlaekers have an EMP, it knocked us out of the sky – emergency landing.” Will didn’t even have to clarify, the man turned and ran down the corridor, sheer momentum keeping him from falling to the sides, he didn’t stop until he was in the living quarters, making sure that everyone was firmly strapped in.
“At terminal velocity,” Morgana said quietly, “when we hit the ground we’ll be dead in less than a second.”
No one told her to be quiet.
*
The ship began to spin, wheeling round and round as it fell, the engines dead.
Will had not prayed in a long time and, as his hands gouged out holes in the arm rests of his seat, he didn’t see any reason to start now. Any God there was out there had almost certainly forsaken them by now, if they had ever been paying attention.
That was when the back up power decided to kick in.
Gwen struggled to get Avalon back under control, wrestling with the controls, biting her bottom lip bloody as she did so.
“We’re not going to be able to brake properly at this distance,” she said, over the scream of the engine as it struggled with the gravity and the atmosphere. “The landing’s going to be a little bumpy.”
“How bumpy?”
“Well… we might not die.”
*
The screech of metal and the sudden friction against the ship’s landing gear hit them at once. The sound cut through the air and into the crew’s heads. Down in the living quarters Arthur felt as though his head were exploding with the sheer force of the sound.
Avalon bounced… if it could be called bouncing, and slid towards the hangar that stood at the entrance to the dragon’s lair. Sparks flew up from where the bottom scraped against the hard surface of the ground and, as they collided with various buildings and machines, parts of her were torn off, each making the ship shudder and rattle.
Behind them the Skinlaekers continued to come, reluctant to give up their prey, even one as troublesome as this.
Avalon kept scraping over the ground, slowing down gradually, until part of her frame caught on another piece of masonry, but this time it held, no longer having enough momentum to crash through it, and they came to a juddering halt.
It took Will a second to remember to breathe, and then another second to check that he was still in one piece.
Gwen turned to him.
“There,” she said, with a satisfied smile. “We’re down safely.”
“Lancelot…” he said, There was a familiar whirring sound and Will dragged them both to the ground as a thick wooden spear flew over head, burying itself in the wall where they had just been standing. “We’ve got to go.”
“Yes,” his friend said, almost hollowly. “We have to go.” He helped his wife out of her seat and the three of them hurried for the exit.
Will hadn’t seen Lancelot move with quite so much purpose since Avalon – the battle, not the ship. He strode out, not one movement wasted. His hands were already checking his gun.
They grabbed as much weaponry as they could on the way out and met the others at the cargo bay, leaving through that door as they always did when they landed anywhere. Will wasn’t sure he had ever seen Gwen with a gun in her hand before. She looked scared but determined, they all did. Lancelot and Will went first, checking the area for Skinlaekers as they went.
It had been a long time since he had been down in the Dragon’s lair, but Will could remember the way – just about, and he charged down the corridors. The roar of the Skinlaekers behind them a constant reminder that they had to keep moving.
“Stop…” Lancelot said, as they reached the doors that led to the inner base and the elevator that would take you down into the heart of the lair. “This is it.”
“This is what?” Will asked, turning around, to see that Lancelot had that look on his face. The determination that meant he was about to sacrifice himself. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he ordered.
Next to him Gwen looked up into her husband’s face and, not caring about the other people around spoke to him in a tone of voice that made the others embarrassed to be listening in.
“You told me we would get through this,” she said. “Lancelot.”
“Some things are worth dying for,” he said, looking at her a little sadly. “But we will get through this… I swear to you. We will not die here.”
“And if we die,” she said, tilting her head up stubbornly, “then we die together.” Lancelot did not answer, but turned to the Captain, ignoring his look of discomfort at having overheard that conversation.
“If you mean us to succeed then this is the only place,” he said, “I remember the layout of this place well. This is strategically the best place for us to stand.” Will had no answer to that. “You go on ahead, reach the Dragon. You need someone to cover you and that’s what we’re here for.” For a moment Will could have sworn they had gone back five years, Lancelot covering him while he made some half-arsed attempt to complete some suicide mission. But the image was gone as soon as it had come, erased by the other familiar faces around them. This was not the war and the people around them were civilians. Lancelot continued. “They’ll have to come in one or two at a time. We’ve got the crates for cover, and if we lose advantage, we go back behind the blast doors. Merlin can stop them from opening.”
“Lancelot.”
“It only takes one of us to get the message out, sir,” he said, nodding almost to himself. “And we’re wasting time talking about it. The rest of us will cover you.”
Valiant punctuated Lancelot’s point by tossing a grenade down the corridor towards the roar of the Skinlaekers and they ducked for cover. Lancelot did not even blink.
“Hold… and get behind the doors if anything goes wrong,” Will said, holding Lancelot’s gaze for as long as he could. His voice was the same one he had used in the war, a sergeant’s voice. Lancelot didn’t back down, and Will had to leave. He ran to the end of the corridor and boarded the elevator.
“Good luck,” Merlin called after him, and he smiled at his oldest friend, who gave him a firm but scared smile in response.
*
The grenade didn’t buy them much time, just enough to build up their barricade and to make their heart beats race in the anticipation.
Over by the corner Lancelot watched in amazement as his wife cocked a gun perfectly.
“I thought that this day might come,” she said with a weak smile. “In our line of work.”
He slid his hand round the back of her neck and pulled their faces together, kissing her desperately. Valiant, next to them, coughed awkwardly.
“Now’s not really the time,” he commented. The pair ignored him.
“If they break the line,” Lancelot whispered, his forehead still resting against his wife’s, “then you fall back behind the blast doors.”
“I’m not going to leave you out here with them,” she said, outraged, trying to pull away, but his hand was firm, keeping them close.
“Gwen, I need to know that you’ll be safe.”
“Then if they break through we both draw back,” she said.
“I would die for you,” he said.
“I don’t want you to die for me,” she hissed, “I want you to live for me.” She held his gaze, waiting for an answer, but at that second the roars got even louder and Valiant shouted out a rather unnecessary ‘They’re coming’. Lancelot released her and turned to aim his gun at the door. Gwen watched him in frustration for a second before hurrying over to where Arthur, Morgana and Merlin crouched, only Arthur holding his weapon in a way that looked even the least bit professional.
Arthur went through all his training in his head, regretting the fact that he had ever been more interested in hand to hand weapons than guns. But training seemed so far away now. The Alliance military academy faded into insignificance. The lessons he had thought were difficult looked so different from this direction. They taught you discipline and how to shoot, but they never taught you how to cope with knowing that you were about to die. He took a deep breath just as Morgana began to hyperventilate. He had to turn to her.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “Breathe.”
“I am breathing,” she whispered, “it’s just, they’re coming. There are so many of them… so many. They’re screaming in my head and they want us.”
“Well, they’re not going to get us,” he said, wishing that he believed the words coming out of his mouth.
“I told you things would get worse…” she told him with a choking laugh. He smiled weakly with nervousness before turning back.
Then they came.
Valiant and Lancelot had the most effective weapons, and they were holding them off at the door, with Arthur barely having to fire a shot until Lancelot broke cover and relinquished his gun in favour of the sword that hung from his belt.
“What are you doing?”
And that was when it all went to hell.
*
part 6
part 4
When Avalon arrived at Ealdor, some of the fires were still burning, and the bodies of the dead littered the ground. Nobody followed Merlin as he ran towards his mother’s house, there was so much pain there that they would never have been able to handle his grief on top of their own.
The place was a massacre site, blood and burnt earth. The trees were no more than charred twigs, splintered across the ground, and every new body they found made the silence grow more intense.
Arthur had never thought that silence was possible, not the complete absence of sound, but Ealdor was now so quiet the silence seemed noisy in its own right. It rang in his ears, and when one of them stepped too heavily and the ground beneath them rustled or cracked, it was a moment of relief from the remorseless lack of sound.
Merlin emerged from his house, his mother’s body in his arms, his face silent and there were no tears in his eyes.
“They pay for this,” Valiant said, looking around at the devastation. “For this, we hurt them.”
“For this,” Lancelot said in response, his normally quiet voice even quieter, whether out of respect for the dead or rage Arthur couldn’t tell. “For this we destroy them.”
By his side, Gwen nodded firmly, fury evident in every centimetre of her.
Will found Gaius’ body slumped over their view screen. He took in the sight without even blinking. What they had not seen over the cortex was the bloody mess that had been made of his stomach. It looked as though it had been hit by a rocket, the size of a hole there was. The blood was dry now, dark brown stains over the equipment.
He left the hut, left it all and went into his ship, where the quiet was comforting rather than aching. He stood on the bridge and went over it in his mind, how he could have stopped it, and he saw no way. No way to keep everyone safe. How could he have known that the Alliance would kill them all?
He tried to reach their other friends, anyone they knew. Every image came up the same, death, static and nothing more.
He stared at their bodies for a while, he wasn’t sure how long had passed, and he added them to the list of dead he carried in his head always. Their names were included with those he had served with in the army. All the people he had never been able to save, his father at the top of the list.
After minutes, or maybe hours, or perhaps only seconds, had passed, the images were all replaced by one face. He looked hard at it, tried to memorise it because this, he knew, was the face of the man who had killed them.
His hair was blond, his face thickly scarred with burn marks, and he smiled serenely, as though he had not a care in the world. He didn’t need Gaius to tell him that this man had no conscience, it was etched into every feature. The eyes were frozen, staring at him, so calm, so assured for someone with so much blood on his hands.
“This could have been avoided, Captain, if you had simply allowed the Pendragons to be taken into Alliance custody. These people would not be dead, if not for your presumption to take the law into your own hands.”
“You killed them, not me,” Will replied, “the blood is on your hands.”
“Yes, it is. But that does not bother me… you on the other hand.”
“I’m going to kill you for this,” Will swore to him. “These people were innocent and you slaughtered them.”
“For which I am truly sorry, but I’m afraid that it was necessary. Morgana Pendragon is dangerous… she must be contained. As must the information that she knows.”
“Is that what you said to her father before you killed him?”
“So you know about Uther… I was wondering if Gaius would have been informed of that fact,” the man said, nodding. “He understood the dangers his children posed to the future. But his love for them was too great. It is a dangerous thing, love.”
“You’re mad.”
“No, I am simply very good at following orders.”
“Do you even know why you’re doing this? Do you know what Morgana knows?”
“No, and nor do I want to, or care. This is not about the whys and wherefores, Captain. It is about what must be done. We are forging a new world, and there cannot be rebirth without sacrifice.”
“You don’t ask questions, then? Is that it?”
“I do not need to ask questions. I know what I am doing is for the best.”
“How can killing children be for the best?”
“The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.”
“Þín heorte béo ábiten be mearcweardum, þu gydig dóc!38” Will roared at the screen. The man on the other end did not even blink.
“You anger clouds your judgement, like your anger at the Alliance has always clouded it. Your best course of action is surrender.”
“Never.”
“You are not in Avalon now, Captain. This is not the war.”
“No… this is worse, because in the war we saw you coming, and you killed soldiers. Some of them were only children, but at least they had a uniform, now you’re killing indiscriminately.”
“We will keep on killing them until you surrender.”
“Then kill them,” Will snapped.
“You do not mean that.”
“Yes, I damn well do.”
“You are not a Skinlaeker, Will. Not a monster like me. You have a conscience and-”
Will switched it off, a plan forming in his mind, and the man’s face burning his eyes. The smug self-centred git, so sure of himself, so devout in his belief that the slaughter of innocent people would be made up for by the protection of a mysterious secret.
He turned on his heel and left the bridge, and then the ship, marching over to where his crew stood, clustering together to try and separate themselves from the death around them.
“Merlin,” he said, barking out to his friend. The mechanic looked up, his eyes red, but his cheeks still dry. “I need you to get the ship ready. Make the engine look as dangerous as you can without killing us all, and make it exude magic, you know what I mean. I want us to be a bloody beacon to any Sensitive in a five light year radius.”
“Will?” Merlin asked, his voice breaking slightly. “My mother’s dead.”
“I know… I know,” he breathed, before breaking away to look at the rest of them. “Gather up what bodies you can. String them together and tie them tightly onto the hull.”
“What?” Gwen asked, before swearing at him fluently, beside her Lancelot added his own voice in outrage. “These are our families, our friends. And you expect us to mutilate them. We respect our dead. It’s what makes us different from the Skinlaekers and the Alliance. I will not stand by and watch as you…”
“Today we can’t be different from the Skinlaekers, Guinevere,” Will’s use of her full name pulled her up short. “We must appear to be the same if we want what we’re about to do to work. Those of you who aren’t doing that – Arthur, Gwen – tear up the hull as much as you can without killing us, okay. Just enough to look authentic.”
“You mean to try to get to Nimueh?” Lancelot asked, though from the look of his face he already knew the answer.
“I mean to succeed.”
“We can’t do that… these people are our family,” Merlin protested, echoing Gwen’s words.
“Merlin,” Will said calmly. “They’re dead; the least we can do for them is make those deaths mean something more than just people who got caught in the Alliance’s wheels.” He took a second to draw himself up to his full height. “That was not a question and this is not a democracy, Avalon is my ship, you are my crew and I am the Captain. I am in charge, and if any of you have a problem with that, stay here. I want to find out why these people died. I want to know what secret is so fucking important that the Alliance is willing to destroy hundreds of people for it. Anyone have a problem with that?”
Merlin opened his mouth and stood up.
“Will you can’t…”
“No, I can and I will. I’m not going to let them get away with this… Any questions?”
There was no sound from anyone.
“Good, then get to work.”
*
“It’s done, sir,” Lancelot informed Will shortly, before starting to walk off.
“Lancelot, if you’ve got something to say, then say it.”
“I think it’s all been said,” his first mate replied, but he didn’t look him in the eye.
“I know it’s bad and I know this is probably suicide but it’s the only way I can see.”
“I know, and I don’t disagree, but…” he paused. “I wish there was another way.” He looked up, his face sombre.
“So do I…”
“You always did like suicide missions,” Lancelot said. It sounded like he was amused, but there was no merriment in his eyes when their gaze met.
They parted, neither looking up again until they got to their destinations.
*
Morgana walked through a park. The trees were in blossom, raining down pink petals on her hair. Her feet were bare and she could feel the grass between her toes.
“Morgana,” her father said from in front of her, “it’s going to be okay. We just want to make you better.”
He tried to hand her the glass of water he had in his hand, but she dashed it to the ground where it shattered into pieces. The water spilled out onto the grass and where it touched, the green turned to shrivelled black.
She looked up and her father’s eyes glowed brilliant, electric blue. His face became a twisted mass of scars and he raised one hand, throwing her across the room.
As he raised his other hand, she saw a knife in it. He advanced, knife first, until it was kissing her skin with its blade. The tree behind her turned into a wall, and she couldn’t get away as he brought the blade down her cheek and began to slice into her flesh.
She woke screaming again.
*
“This is suicide,” Valiant whispered to himself as they entered Skinlaeker space. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and he could feel the magic in the air. He was no Sensitive, but there was so much of it that he felt as though he could almost touch it. “We’re gonna die out here in the black… I’ll kill myself before they touch me.”
Next to him, Arthur nodded his agreement.
*
Morgana could feel them, all around, their minds screaming for blood and pain. She could feel them ripping her flesh apart and ripping her brain apart, though Merlin’s adjustments made it impossible for them to touch her brain.
“Lost souls,” she whispered out to the windows. “All the lost souls are crying out for blood.”
Gwen’s hand found hers, warm in the sea of cold, like a lifeline. Morgana gripped it tightly and held on. They didn’t look at each other, just stared out the window at the ships that passed by.
*
When they reached the other side, the collective drawing of relieved breath was the loudest they had been for hours.
“Fly us over,” Will said to Gwen, “I want to see what’s there before I land on this godforsaken place.”
“Of course, Captain.”
He walked out of the bridge and to his room before drawing a shuddering breath and feeling the tension leave him. They had made it one way, they were here. They would find out what the Alliance didn’t want them to know, and they would use that to get out of this mess.
*
Nimueh was a large planet, with its own moon, they counted several cities as they passed over, and the land seemed normal enough.
“I don’t understand why I’ve never heard of the place,” Gwen said, looking confused. “I’ve never seen anyone scheduled to fly there, or from there. But this place – it’s huge.”
“There’s definitely something up,” Will agreed. “We just need to find out what. Take us down by that first city we came to. I want to see it up close. It might give us more of an idea.”
“Yes Captain.”
*
Outside the ship, the cities of Nimueh looked just as perfect and untouched as they had done from the air. Clean white lines and aesthetically and ergonomically designed streets. Arthur was reminded of his home, but it was like a dream, where all the people other than himself had disappeared, lost in the sea of white. The sun was high and brilliant in the bright blue sky, and small, artistic white clouds punctuated it. It should have been a beautiful day. People living there should have been out in the streets and the parks making the most of it.
But the place was a ghost town. The only sounds to be heard came from they themselves.
“I think I’ve picked up a beacon,” Gwen said, looking at the analyst in her hand. “Due west from here.” She started walking towards it and the others followed, spreading out into a long jagged line as they walked.
It felt as though they were in a crypt or a graveyard. Their voices were hushed, their movements slow. Valiant’s gun was drawn and he pointed it at the slightest provocation, jumping whenever there was a sudden sound or movement.
Arthur’s hand was on his own gun, handed to him by Will before they walked out of the ship, and he couldn’t quite pull it away. There was something so wrong about this place. It made every atom of him nervous.
Just in front of him, Morgana walked on. She had changed into trousers and a baggy top for this, but the sleeves still swept along behind her, carried by a breeze that Arthur couldn’t feel.
“The air’s normal,” Lancelot said, his voice barely higher than a hushed whisper. “The buildings are all intact, the temperature’s fine – did they just decide not to settle here after the Skinlaeker’s came?”
“That must be it,” Gwen agreed, although her voice made it clear that she didn’t think so at all.
“No…” Morgana said. “They’re still here. They came here, and they lived for a time. But then they stole their souls.”
Valiant’s gun swung round to point at her, and Arthur’s fingers tightened round his own immediately.
“Keep your thoughts to yourself,” the thug hissed at her angrily. Morgana held his gaze.
“They’re not my thoughts. They belong to Nimueh,” she said, before beginning to walk on again, her face growing paler and paler as Arthur watched.
There was a pillar outside the entrance of a building, holding up an awning, and Gwen passed it calmly, but froze on the other side.
“Eallwealda árdæde39,” Gwen breathed, rooted to the spot. She stared ahead of her vacantly and Lancelot hurried to her side. He froze too. “That can’t be…” she muttered. “No.” Her husband wrapped his arm round her shoulders and she turned her face into his shoulder. But Lancelot did not look away. Will came up on their right and swore fluently.
The others came up to them and soon the entire party had paused on the edge of the next plaza.
It was a huge white paved square surrounded by buildings just as clean and beautiful as the others. But in the centre, it was black. A pile of char and ash, the paving stones scorched black and what looked like scorched sticks. Except they weren’t.
“That’s people,” said Valiant, his face twisted in disgust. “People… burnt.”
“A plague, perhaps,” Merlin said, taking an almost unwilling step forward.
“No,” Morgana whispered. “They weren’t ill… not when they came here, and not ill in the body.”
“Morgana?” Arthur asked, going to her, but before he could reach her she had darted forward until she was kneeling at the edge of the black staring at the bones and charred skin in front of her.
“They stole their souls and then they led them to the pyres,” she said. “Jumping flames, burning people. Children came too, just walking. Their faces blank. They led them to the pyres, to cover it up. Everything has to stay hidden. And they walked onto them. Their eyes were open, but there was nothing behind them and they walked into the fire.”
“Suge40,” Valiant spat, “Stop talking nonsense!” He swung his gun round to point it at her. “There was a plague, or an illness or something. They burnt the bodies to stop the infection from spreading, that’s all.”
“If that was all,” Will said calmly, looking around, “then why are they so scared of this place?”
Morgana reached out and picked up a blackened fragment. For a moment Arthur thought it was a stone, before she turned it over and he saw that the other side was concave – a fragment of skull so small it could only have come from a child. He was at her side in an instant, prying it from her fingers.
“Put it down, Morgana.” Her eyes were full of tears as she stared at it. He managed to drag it from her grasp and gently placed it on the ground away from her. “It’s okay.”
“If he had been able to want,” she said to him, looking up, “then he would have wanted to scream. I can hear them in my head, not screaming. I can see them,” she gestured to the entrances to the plaza, “they walk in, step by step and they walk in, and the others are watching, the ones who took their souls. They watched them burn. They’re not screaming… all of them inside my head, and they can’t scream, they can’t even want it. So I do it for them. But it hurts too much… Lá Eallwealda, behwierfe mec to stáne.41”
“We have to find out what happened here,” Will said decisively, gesturing to Gwen. “We’ll find that signal and then maybe we’ll get some answers.” Gwen nodded, moving off, Lancelot’s arm still round her shoulders as he whispered into her ear. The others followed slowly. Arthur leading Morgana, though her eyes were glued to the pyres still.
They saw many others after that, huge piles of charred bones, flesh and cloth in almost all the squares. None of them save Morgana looked at them, the others keeping their eyes to the ground.
The beacon led them inside one of the buildings and up the stairs. The walls were glass looking out over the city. It would have been a beautiful view if not for the black marks that marred it.
Up they went, right to the top floor, the penthouse, where the windows extended round the whole of the circular room. There were dozens of black heaps outside of the window.
The room they came to was empty.
“What are we looking for?” Will asked looking around. Gwen shrugged, but Morgana, coming out of the stairwell walked straight to the recorder and slipped a disc into place.
A hologram swam into view, a pretty woman in a red dress with bright blue eyes.
“When I accepted this position,” she said, looking directly into Morgana’s eyes. “I didn’t know. I thought I was going to be doing good. Helping people to control what they couldn’t help. And at first, we were. But… Things got out of hand.
“We asked, why stop at control? Why not try to rid them of the mutation all together?” The figure reached over to press a button and an image started to play, a group of people staring sightlessly ahead, not looking at anything, not speaking, not moving. “We succeeded. We put it into the water. Poisoned their drinking supply – of course, we had our own. The first results were a great success, but, the effects increased. We didn’t just rid them of their abilities… we took everything that made them human. We stole their souls.” Morgana’s lips moved with the woman’s words and Arthur tried to shake off the chill that ran up his spine at that. “They still breathed, blinked, and they ate when we fed them, but there was nothing in them.
“When our report was brought to the attention of those who ran the facility,” she said, “they… ordered that we clear up the operation. They had us… I can’t…” She broke off and pressed another button. The image of the pyres, when they were still burning, came onto the hologram, and the blank people being herded and made to walk right into them. They didn’t pause for a second, even as the flames began to lick at them, they just kept on walking right into the middle of the fire. Men, women and children just walking to their deaths, like some automated conveyor belt of death.
“Some of them were just children. We took the life from them and then we made them kill themselves… I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them get away with it. Not that.” She took in a deep breath. “But that wasn’t all of it. There were others. Whether they had a genetic mutation that reacted with the drug, or whether there was something corrupt about that batch, they had the opposite reaction from the rest. They didn’t stop, they… reverted, to savagery. They became monsters. Their powers weren’t diminished, they grew, and they attacked everything. The things they’ve done.
“I’m the only one left now. The only witness to what has happened here. They’re hunting me down as we speak. I won’t survive to tell this to anyone, so I can only hope that this recording gets out one day.
“It started out as good work…” tears were rolling down her cheeks, tears mirrored on Morgana’s face. “All these people.” There was the sound of breaking glass, and the hologram started, turning to look to the side. “They’ve found me. There’s not much time. If you find this… let people know. They have to know.”
She was thrown back, held in mid air, unable to move, by invisible forces. The crew could see her struggle, but it was in vain. Figures started to appear on the edges of the image, unclear but definitely there. They held knives, and as the crew watched they lunged forwards and the woman began to scream.
Lancelot pulled the disk free, giving a deep shaky breath.
“Those were Skinlaekers,” Merlin said, his eyes wide. “The Alliance made them… they created them.”
Morgana lifted her hand to the space in the air where the woman had been standing before, and Arthur placed a careful hand on her shoulder.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes… I am now,” she told him, turning with a sad smile. “They’re gone.” She half threw herself at him, wrapping her arms round him tightly and holding on as though he would be snatched away in a second.
“Good… I’m glad.”
Will slipped the disk into his pocket as they left. No one spoke, but there was a silent agreement that they wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
*
“I’m not ordering you to do this,” Will said, looking from one face to another. “I couldn’t order this of you, any of you. I’m not asking either. I understand that this is beyond anything I’ve ever asked or done before. But they rounded up people, children, based on things beyond their control, and they drugged and experimented on them because they were afraid of what they represented. They wanted to change the way people thought, what people were. And then, when it went wrong, they covered it up. They’ve been hiding this for years.
“I can’t let them hide it any longer. This isn’t what any of you had in mind when you came onto this ship. This isn’t what I wanted but, like it or not, we’re the ones this has fallen to. We’re the ones who know, and I know that I have to tell other people. Because they will try again. Morgana is living proof of that. And they’ll come round to this idea again, the idea of rounding them up at birth and trying to improve them.
“I’ve never planned to be a hero, but sometimes you have to play with the cards life deals you, and it’s dealt us some pretty sodding awful cards.
“But I’m through staying below the radar and playing nicely. I’m through letting them run everyone’s lives, and I’m through being lied to.
“I aim to misbehave.
“Who’s with me?”
“Þes biþ dwæs unræd,42” Valiant said, “but it’s a kind of stupid I like.”
“If I’m going to die young,” Merlin said with a quirk of a grin, “then I might as well die for something worth dying for.”
Will looked at the others, Gwen nodded once, her jaw tight, and beside her Lancelot just looked at him, as if to ask why he was asking such a stupid question.
“What’s the plan?” Arthur asked leaning forward over the table.
“The Dragon,” Will said, looking around at them. “He can broadcast this everywhere… we get the word out and let people know what’s really going on.”
“We’ve still got to get past the Skinlaekers,” Valiant pointed out.
“And the Alliance…” Gwen added.
“If they knew about Ealdor and everywhere else,” Merlin said, swallowing tightly, “then they probably know about the Dragon too. I heard once that it was them who stuck him there and made sure he couldn’t get out.”
“Don’t worry,” Will said, smiling slightly. “I’ve got a plan.” His crew did not look impressed.
*
“Greetings, Captain,” the Dragon said over the cortex.
“Can’t talk long. We’ve got something important, and we want to broadcast it to everywhere at once, can you do that?”
“Of course, the edges of the web-”
“Good,” Will said, cutting him off, “we’ll be there in a little while… be ready.”
“Certainly, Captain. Your dest-” He was cut off as Will ended the connection, leaning forward to rest his head on his forearm where it rested near where the controls met the ceiling.
“Can I just go on the record as saying that this plan is completely insane?” Arthur asked, looking over to where Will was standing.
“That’s why they won’t see it coming.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
*
“They are coming,” the Dragon said, turning to look at Edwin. “And for this I win my freedom?”
“Yes,” the operative said, “you will be free. Forever.” The Dragon’s hand crept into his pocket and tightened around something there, pulling it out.
If Edwin had been paying attention when he held up a hand, fingers splayed and watched as the Dragon crumpled to the ground, he would have noticed the man’s right hand glow golden, almost imperceptibly just before he crumpled. But he did not, and shook his head almost sadly before turning to his men.
“Destroy everything that you can find. I want it to be gone before Avalon gets past the ion cloud.”
*
Timing was everything. If they moved too soon they would be ripped apart by the Skinlaekers before they even made it close to the Alliance forces, if they left it too late, the Alliance would pick them off before the plan had a chance to go into effect. And it wasn’t like they got a chance at a trial run.
*
“This could get interesting,” Gwen said to Lancelot as he walked into the bridge.
“You’ll be able to do it – you’re the best pilot I’ve ever seen,” He kissed her hair and she smiled a little bashfully. “You’ll be fine as soon as you’re flying, you know it.”
“Two armies and me in the middle of it all? I’ll let you know on the other side,” she said, checking the readings from the ships that once again surrounded them, wincing as one passed a little close for comfort.
“We will get through,” Lancelot said. “We must.”
*
Merlin sat in the engine room, concentrating on maintaining the magic levels that would disguise them until Will gave the signal.
There was sweat forming on his brow, he’d never had to use his abilities so constantly before, or to such an extent, and it was tiring him.
He shut his eyes and concentrated, letting the whirr and growl of Avalon’s engine soothe him, trying not to think about what would happen as soon as Will gave the order to stop.
*
“How far through are we?” the Captain asked, jogging up the stairs into the bridge. Lancelot and Gwen turned to him.
“Eighty three percent,” Gwen told him.
“Now or never,” Will breathed. “If this all goes horribly wrong…”
“We’ll say I told you so,” Gwen told him with a weak smile.
“Be ready to fly, Gwen. Do whatever you have to.”
“Yes Captain.”
Will reached up for the ship wide announcement radio and brought it down to his mouth. “Ready or not… here we come,” he whispered before pressing the button that opened the channel. “Merlin, now.”
*
In the engine room, Merlin relaxed and began to pray, keeping an ear out for any complaints from Avalon.
*
Morgana and Arthur were in the crash seats, ready for a bumpy ride. Morgana’s fingers found his as they felt the engine kick in and accelerate.
She could feel the rage of the Skinlaekers as they began to pursue them. The hunger for them. They were coming, and now there was no way out.
But the voices were gone, the soulless people had left her head and Nimueh was no longer screaming out for her.
*
“He’s coming,” the General said, coming up to stand by Edwin’s shoulder, hands clasped behind his back respectfully. “Our long range sensors have picked up movement in the cloud.”
“Good… be prepared to fire as soon as we see their ship.”
The Alliance army filled the air over the Dragon’s lair, cruisers and battleships hovering, every one waiting for the signal to fire. The light of the ion cloud made the long clean lines of the metal shine blue.
“Almost visible, sir,” a young officer said over his shoulder.
They all watched as the tiny ship emerged from the cloud, and Edwin’s face spread into a smile.
“This is the end, Captain. I hope that you feel you are dying for a good reason,” he said to the screen before turning to the weapons’ officers. “Prepare to fire at my signal…”
“Yes sir.”
“Sir, we’re picking up more movement in the cloud,” the navigation officer said, confused. “Bigger… and…” his voice faded away as more dark shapes emerged from the light, broken, huge monstrosities of vessels, that had been mutated from their original designs, or two different styles stuck together. Parts jutted out from them, spikes came off them.
“Skinlaekers,” the General said in shock. Edwin stood, staring, for a moment longer, before starting to speak again, barking out orders as quickly as he could.
“Target the Skinlaeker’s ships, shoot them down, all of them. Fire… somebody fire, for God’s sake!”
*
“You shouldn’t have made this personal,” Will muttered as Gwen began to weave around missiles and laser blasts in earnest.
Outside their ships, things started to explode, the Alliance ships were firing, and the Skinlaekers were retaliating. They saw one ship take out right in front of them, cut in half by a laser weapon, and Gwen flipped Avalon onto it side and flew between the two halves as they separated. Will saw bodies float past as he lowered himself into the copilot’s seat and buckled himself in. Behind him Lancelot did the same.
“Gwen, on your right!” he yelled as an Alliance ship appeared from nowhere.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him, “ic béo leaf an þæm winde, bescéawaþ humeta ic flotere.43”
“Gwen?” Will said urgently, but the pilot was completely focussed on what she was doing, looking constantly ahead, aware only of what was happening outside of the ship. “What does that mean? Gwen, are we okay or… Gwen! Not that…” They flew straight past a missile that flew over them, missing by such a narrow margin that Will found himself waiting for the explosion and the rush of air from the atmosphere of Camlann. “Just take us down as close to the Dragon’s lair as you can.”
“That’s where we’re heading.”
“And try not to kill us…”
“Can’t make any promises, Captain.”
*
The operative, who was currently going by the name of Edwin ran for the escape pods. He still had a job to do, even in the chaos that surrounded them. If Captain Moore thought that this was going to be enough of a distraction to let them get through then he had another thing coming. He ran to the escape pod chute and leapt down it just as he heard the unpleasant clanging that told him they had just collided with a Skinlaeker ship.
He slid down the chute and into the pod, and then he was falling through space. The pod was too small to be noticed by anyone in the current battle. He hoped, anyway.
*
“Captain,” Gwen said, “There might be a problem.”
“What sort of problem?” Will asked, leaning forwards.
“Not a good sort of problem,” Gwen said risking a glance round at him with an almost apologetic smile. “We’ve got a tail.”
“Alliance or…”
“Not Alliance.”
“Dóc tifan!44”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Can’t you lose them?” Lancelot asked, already strapping himself in.
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder,” Will snapped.
Suddenly there was a flare of light past the port side of the bridge and then everything went black, all the dials faded, all the blinking lights went out.
“What was that?” Will asked, although he had a horrible suspicion he already knew.
“EMP…” Gwen breathed, flicking switches frantically. “They’ve taken out everything… we’re going into freefall.”
“What about the back up power?”
“It’s not on.”
Valiant popped his head into the bridge. Clinging to the metal surround for dear life as the forces of freefall began to become more intense.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“The Skinlaekers have an EMP, it knocked us out of the sky – emergency landing.” Will didn’t even have to clarify, the man turned and ran down the corridor, sheer momentum keeping him from falling to the sides, he didn’t stop until he was in the living quarters, making sure that everyone was firmly strapped in.
“At terminal velocity,” Morgana said quietly, “when we hit the ground we’ll be dead in less than a second.”
No one told her to be quiet.
*
The ship began to spin, wheeling round and round as it fell, the engines dead.
Will had not prayed in a long time and, as his hands gouged out holes in the arm rests of his seat, he didn’t see any reason to start now. Any God there was out there had almost certainly forsaken them by now, if they had ever been paying attention.
That was when the back up power decided to kick in.
Gwen struggled to get Avalon back under control, wrestling with the controls, biting her bottom lip bloody as she did so.
“We’re not going to be able to brake properly at this distance,” she said, over the scream of the engine as it struggled with the gravity and the atmosphere. “The landing’s going to be a little bumpy.”
“How bumpy?”
“Well… we might not die.”
*
The screech of metal and the sudden friction against the ship’s landing gear hit them at once. The sound cut through the air and into the crew’s heads. Down in the living quarters Arthur felt as though his head were exploding with the sheer force of the sound.
Avalon bounced… if it could be called bouncing, and slid towards the hangar that stood at the entrance to the dragon’s lair. Sparks flew up from where the bottom scraped against the hard surface of the ground and, as they collided with various buildings and machines, parts of her were torn off, each making the ship shudder and rattle.
Behind them the Skinlaekers continued to come, reluctant to give up their prey, even one as troublesome as this.
Avalon kept scraping over the ground, slowing down gradually, until part of her frame caught on another piece of masonry, but this time it held, no longer having enough momentum to crash through it, and they came to a juddering halt.
It took Will a second to remember to breathe, and then another second to check that he was still in one piece.
Gwen turned to him.
“There,” she said, with a satisfied smile. “We’re down safely.”
“Lancelot…” he said, There was a familiar whirring sound and Will dragged them both to the ground as a thick wooden spear flew over head, burying itself in the wall where they had just been standing. “We’ve got to go.”
“Yes,” his friend said, almost hollowly. “We have to go.” He helped his wife out of her seat and the three of them hurried for the exit.
Will hadn’t seen Lancelot move with quite so much purpose since Avalon – the battle, not the ship. He strode out, not one movement wasted. His hands were already checking his gun.
They grabbed as much weaponry as they could on the way out and met the others at the cargo bay, leaving through that door as they always did when they landed anywhere. Will wasn’t sure he had ever seen Gwen with a gun in her hand before. She looked scared but determined, they all did. Lancelot and Will went first, checking the area for Skinlaekers as they went.
It had been a long time since he had been down in the Dragon’s lair, but Will could remember the way – just about, and he charged down the corridors. The roar of the Skinlaekers behind them a constant reminder that they had to keep moving.
“Stop…” Lancelot said, as they reached the doors that led to the inner base and the elevator that would take you down into the heart of the lair. “This is it.”
“This is what?” Will asked, turning around, to see that Lancelot had that look on his face. The determination that meant he was about to sacrifice himself. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he ordered.
Next to him Gwen looked up into her husband’s face and, not caring about the other people around spoke to him in a tone of voice that made the others embarrassed to be listening in.
“You told me we would get through this,” she said. “Lancelot.”
“Some things are worth dying for,” he said, looking at her a little sadly. “But we will get through this… I swear to you. We will not die here.”
“And if we die,” she said, tilting her head up stubbornly, “then we die together.” Lancelot did not answer, but turned to the Captain, ignoring his look of discomfort at having overheard that conversation.
“If you mean us to succeed then this is the only place,” he said, “I remember the layout of this place well. This is strategically the best place for us to stand.” Will had no answer to that. “You go on ahead, reach the Dragon. You need someone to cover you and that’s what we’re here for.” For a moment Will could have sworn they had gone back five years, Lancelot covering him while he made some half-arsed attempt to complete some suicide mission. But the image was gone as soon as it had come, erased by the other familiar faces around them. This was not the war and the people around them were civilians. Lancelot continued. “They’ll have to come in one or two at a time. We’ve got the crates for cover, and if we lose advantage, we go back behind the blast doors. Merlin can stop them from opening.”
“Lancelot.”
“It only takes one of us to get the message out, sir,” he said, nodding almost to himself. “And we’re wasting time talking about it. The rest of us will cover you.”
Valiant punctuated Lancelot’s point by tossing a grenade down the corridor towards the roar of the Skinlaekers and they ducked for cover. Lancelot did not even blink.
“Hold… and get behind the doors if anything goes wrong,” Will said, holding Lancelot’s gaze for as long as he could. His voice was the same one he had used in the war, a sergeant’s voice. Lancelot didn’t back down, and Will had to leave. He ran to the end of the corridor and boarded the elevator.
“Good luck,” Merlin called after him, and he smiled at his oldest friend, who gave him a firm but scared smile in response.
*
The grenade didn’t buy them much time, just enough to build up their barricade and to make their heart beats race in the anticipation.
Over by the corner Lancelot watched in amazement as his wife cocked a gun perfectly.
“I thought that this day might come,” she said with a weak smile. “In our line of work.”
He slid his hand round the back of her neck and pulled their faces together, kissing her desperately. Valiant, next to them, coughed awkwardly.
“Now’s not really the time,” he commented. The pair ignored him.
“If they break the line,” Lancelot whispered, his forehead still resting against his wife’s, “then you fall back behind the blast doors.”
“I’m not going to leave you out here with them,” she said, outraged, trying to pull away, but his hand was firm, keeping them close.
“Gwen, I need to know that you’ll be safe.”
“Then if they break through we both draw back,” she said.
“I would die for you,” he said.
“I don’t want you to die for me,” she hissed, “I want you to live for me.” She held his gaze, waiting for an answer, but at that second the roars got even louder and Valiant shouted out a rather unnecessary ‘They’re coming’. Lancelot released her and turned to aim his gun at the door. Gwen watched him in frustration for a second before hurrying over to where Arthur, Morgana and Merlin crouched, only Arthur holding his weapon in a way that looked even the least bit professional.
Arthur went through all his training in his head, regretting the fact that he had ever been more interested in hand to hand weapons than guns. But training seemed so far away now. The Alliance military academy faded into insignificance. The lessons he had thought were difficult looked so different from this direction. They taught you discipline and how to shoot, but they never taught you how to cope with knowing that you were about to die. He took a deep breath just as Morgana began to hyperventilate. He had to turn to her.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “Breathe.”
“I am breathing,” she whispered, “it’s just, they’re coming. There are so many of them… so many. They’re screaming in my head and they want us.”
“Well, they’re not going to get us,” he said, wishing that he believed the words coming out of his mouth.
“I told you things would get worse…” she told him with a choking laugh. He smiled weakly with nervousness before turning back.
Then they came.
Valiant and Lancelot had the most effective weapons, and they were holding them off at the door, with Arthur barely having to fire a shot until Lancelot broke cover and relinquished his gun in favour of the sword that hung from his belt.
“What are you doing?”
And that was when it all went to hell.
*
part 6
