The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Also By Chris Dietzel

  Title Page

  1

  Art1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Art2

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Art3

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  Art4

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  Art5

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  Epilogue

  In the future

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Artists

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidence.

  THE ROUND TABLE, Copyright 2016 by Chris Dietzel. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Watch The World End Publishing.

  Click or Visit: http://www.ChrisDietzel.com

  Cover Design: Grosnez

  Cover Typography: TrueNotDreams Design

  Editor: D.L. MacKenzie

  Author Photo: Jodie McFadden

  Illustrations: This book contains concept art based on various aspects of the story. For each design, an artist was given a basic description and then allowed to create their vision of that scene, character, etc. Artist biographies can be found at the end of the book.

  Also by Chris Dietzel

  Space Fantasy

  The Green Knight – Space Lore I

  The Excalibur – Space Lore II

  Dystopian

  The Theta Timeline

  The Theta Prophecy

  The Theta Patient

  A Quiet Apocalypse

  The Man Who Watched The World End

  A Different Alchemy

  The Hauntings Of Playing God

  The Last Teacher

  The Round Table

  Space Lore III

  Chris Dietzel

  1

  Emerging from the portal in the Terror Sector, the ship’s tinder walls withdrew, revealing the cockpit. It was a mid-size vessel, insignificant compared to a Solar Carrier, but four times the size of a single-man fighter. A moment later, a second ship, slightly smaller than the first, also appeared. This ship’s tinder walls also raised after it came through the portal’s bright white energy field.

  Neither ship resembled anything that had ever come out of a starship yard. Both had been heavily modified with armor and parts scavenged from other vessels. Even an expert in starships would have been hard pressed to guess the origins of these hodgepodge monstrosities. Ships like these were common amongst independent freight haulers, smugglers, and pirates.

  The Terror Sector was the site of one of the oldest known portals in the galaxy. It was slightly smaller in circumference than most others like it. The ring of three hundred and sixty cylinders that made up its frame was battered with dents and scratches where, over hundreds of years, ships had accidently scraped its sides while either disappearing into the portal or reappearing from somewhere else in the galaxy.

  It was said that an ancient civilization in the Terror Sector had created the technology thousands of years earlier that eventually enabled ships to jump from one point in space to another. Other than the portal, no remnant of that ancient civilization had ever been found.

  But that wasn’t what the Terror Sector was presently known for. Now, it was associated with having the galaxy’s most infamous prison. Terror-Dhome, the second closest planet to the sun, was the site of the Cauldrons of Dagda, the notorious prison whose name was feared throughout the known universe.

  Most ships appearing through the portal avoided the planet entirely, continuing on a course to other planets in the system. Some vessels were forced to land on Terror-Dhome because they were affiliated with its mining colonies. However, the two ships that had just arrived through the portal set a course directly for the prison’s spaceport.

  As they neared the lava planet, a sheet of metal pulled away from the first ship. Immediately, another piece of metal also began to pull apart. As the vessel entered the planet’s atmosphere, the metal sheet whined and pulled further and further away until the last set of bolts could no longer hold it in place. The metal piece ripped away from the craft and fell toward the endless seas of lava, where it would melt into nothing.

  The two ships continued into the planet’s atmosphere, toward the Cauldrons of Dagda.

  Terror-Dhome, by Tim Barton - Digital Art

  2

  Morgan scanned the Pendragon’s sensors and monitors. One displayed the space all around them. One presented ship diagnostics. Another detailed possible alternate courses and trajectories. Morgan’s attention focused on a monitor scanning the ship in front of her.

  “Looks like a piece of their plating ripped off,” she said, seeing the new, small object appear on one of the displays.

  A sheet of metal was turning red hot as it fell toward the planet’s molten surface.

  Baldwin looked back and forth between the ship’s display of the surrounding area and the approaching fiery planet outside the cockpit.

  “It’ll be fine,” Cade said with a grin.

  The young man had come a long way since being designated as CamaLon’s head of security. In the weeks leading up to the Excalibur battle, Morgan had constantly criticized him for being unsure of himself and the information he was providing. Now, he offered an air of confidence in everything he said.

  Cade no longer served as head of security for CamaLon, however. Edsall Dark’s capital city was under Vonnegan rule, along with the rest of the planet, which left him free to join Morgan and the others in their quest.

  Morgan didn’t particularly like Cade’s newfound bravado, and almost told him to keep his assessments to himself until he actually knew everything would be all right. After all, their plan could easily turn sour and all of them could be
come the Cauldron’s next batch of prisoners.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a set of finely laid plans had backfired. Only two years earlier, they had set a trap for Mowbray and the entire Vonnegan fleet. Mowbray was supposed to have seen the forces—Solar Carriers, Excalibur ships, the weapons of a warlord and gangster—and turn around to avoid certain defeat. Little had Morgan or anyone else known that a secret betrayal had already sealed their fate. No one could have guessed that things would turn out the way they had.

  Most of the Solar Carriers had been destroyed. Westmoreland had died. Fastolf, that drunken fool, had also been killed. Vere had become Mowbray’s prisoner.

  Part of Morgan actually appreciated Cade’s audacity, but the older she got, the more it became clear to her that no one was invincible.

  Not even Vere, who by all accounts should be dead already.

  The average prisoner lasted less than one week at the Cauldrons of Dagda before their dead body was unceremoniously tossed into the molten lava that bordered the prison grounds. Every once in a while, someone managed to survive for a month. Less often, an inmate would last three or four months. These were the ones who had an incredible pain threshold and a remarkable tolerance for the scorching heat that pervaded every part of the lava planet. Ewan Von Galt, a pirate who had been sent there after breaking out of every other prison in the galaxy, managed to survive one year and ten days. For his effort, even though he wasn’t nobility, he had become known throughout every sector as Ewan the Resilient. All because he had managed to live a few months longer than anyone else.

  His record had held for centuries until a new prisoner managed to nearly double it, surviving the Cauldrons for just over two years. Her name was Vere CasterLan. And she was still alive.

  The only reason her friends knew she was still alive was because the Cauldrons of Dagda was an open prison. Anyone and everyone was welcome to visit the facility. Vonnegan leaders learned a long time ago that the best way of discouraging an assassination attempt, an uprising, or any number of other violations, was to let everyone see for themselves the utter brutality and misery that existed at the prison. Instead of hiding it and keeping it off limits, each Vonnegan ruler encouraged children of all ages to see the Cauldrons of Dagda, lest they ever think of one day defying their ruler. Because of that, miners reported hearing from local prison guards that Vere refused to die.

  No matter how strong Vere was, however, no one could survive the Cauldrons of Dagda forever.

  “I still can’t believe the job our mechanics did,” Morgan said, changing the subject as a way of calming both Baldwin’s gloominess and Cade’s bluster.

  Back when the workers had finished, she hadn’t even been able to recognize the Pendragon. Underneath the metal panels and the false shell, her ship was still there, the same as usual, but it was buried underneath layers of plating, fake walls, and even a second cockpit which remained empty of any equipment and anyone to pilot the vessel.

  Vere’s own ship, the Griffin Fire, had looked like a pirate’s clunker, but had undergone a similar transformation. Even Vere wouldn’t recognize her starjet when she saw it the next time. Instead of its original oblong shape, the vessel looked like a pyramid with a cockpit at its point and engines at its base, with three small wings near the rear of the ship.

  “Why not just have us build you two new ships?” the lead engineer had asked when told what his assignment would be.

  “Because I only fly the Pendragon,” Morgan had said. And she knew Vere well enough to know that would have been her response about the Griffin Fire.

  “Anything yet?” Baldwin said, standing behind her as she piloted her ship.

  She nudged him away with her shoulder so he wasn’t hovering over her too closely.

  “We’re fine,” she said, looking at the cockpit’s alert display. No one down on Terror-Dhome had taken notice of them. No one cared that two ships had appeared through the portal.

  If everything they had heard about the planet and about the prison was true, disguising the ships wasn’t necessary in order to land undetected on Terror-Dhome. Unannounced vessels wouldn’t trigger some kind of security alarms because there were none. Mowbray didn’t care who tried to get onto the planet because no one in their right mind would be willing to fly into the heart of the Vonnegan Empire—Athens Destroyers always close by—just to set foot near the prison where no one wanted to be sent. The only reason she did insist on having the ships disguised was because she suspected the entire Vonnegan Empire would be keeping an eye out for the Pendragon and Griffin Fire regardless of where they were.

  The average pirate or smuggler was more than welcome to stop by the Cauldrons of Dagda. He would either never want to break the law again, or else he would say or do something stupid, become an inmate himself, and face having his lifeless corpse tossed into lava a few days after his arrival.

  Morgan’s circumstances were different, though. She found it hard to believe that Mowbray’s troops would knowingly let the general of the CasterLan forces, or any of Vere’s close allies, go wherever they pleased, even a prison where no one wanted to go.

  “If I were them,” she had told the others in her group as they planned their course of action, “I’d let the ships land right outside the prison before signaling all nearby forces to descend on the area. From there, it would be a matter of escorting the new inmates into the very prison they had been trying to sneak into.”

  When she had said it, Baldwin had almost thrown up. Cade had laughed, as if the danger involved wasn’t real.

  Looking down at the smoking red planet and thinking about their plan again, she had to admit it seemed incredibly foolish all of a sudden.

  3

  Terror-Dhome was primarily a mining planet, the majority of its surface flowing with lava, rich in minerals and rare gases. It was, in fact, one of the few places known to have the liquid form of some of the rarest metals in all of space. But despite the fact that the Cauldrons of Dagda accounted for less than one percent of the planet’s population, the prison facility was what most people thought of when they heard the name Terror-Dhome. They didn’t think of mines; they envisioned the facility where many inmates killed themselves rather than face the pain and torture that awaited them every day.

  It was said that the Cauldrons of Dagda were conceived by Maximillian the Bloody. The ancient Vonnegan ruler had realized that it was satisfying to win wars and conquer planets, but there were always uprisings and secret attempts to reclaim these kingdoms. It was Maximillian who figured out that creating vast amounts of misery was the best way to keep each vanquished kingdom in check. The choice for the recently conquered people was easy: behave and follow their new ruler or be sent to the Cauldrons. Maximillian never faced another uprising.

  In the millennia since its creation, the prison had been the site of inconceivable brutality. One Vonnegan ruler had become incensed by a Meekquay whom he felt had refused to greet him respectfully. To show the rest of the galaxy what happened when someone failed to offer demonstrable respect, he sent the entire Meekquay population, a race of mutes incapable of vocal greetings, to the Cauldrons of Dagda, where they soon became extinct. The prison was also where King Lutan the Incorrigible was sent after being defeated by the Vonnegans. Shinty the Kid, one of the most notorious alien gangsters in the history of the galaxy, had died there after two weeks of imprisonment. Tone-Murd, the warlord who had defeated every other rival leader in the Detth Sector to temporarily unify that region of the galaxy, had only lasted three days at the Cauldrons before perishing.

  The miners who worked on the planet stayed as far away from the prison as possible, but every so often a new member of the mining crews would have to visit the facility as part of their initiation. Most of these people, humans and aliens alike, never wanted to speak about the horrors they had seen. A few quit their mining job after the first day, deciding to work on a different planet, far away from the things that took place at Terror-Dhome.

  As the
Griffin Fire and Pendragon approached, a crew of miners hovered above the lava fields, chiseling away at the occasional boulder of black rock that protruded from the thick, red liquid. Each crew member wore a suit of thermo armor that closely resembled space armor but was designed to withstand intense heat. After collecting as much of the rare minerals as they could find, the mining crew got back in their vessel and departed for a different area of the lava fields.

  Every once in a while, the miners had to demolish a portion of rock protruding from the lava in order to gain access to the interior portions of the mass of stone and metal they were mining. When this happened, they called in an explosives expert to set up a targeted charge that would clear a precise path into the stone. There was no career in all the galaxy with a shorter lifespan than an explosives expert on Terror-Dhome. No matter how careful each demolition expert was, a bubble of lava or a burst of heat would often get too close and set off the charges before the worker could set the timer and get to safety.

  It was each miner’s preference to search for minerals as far away from the Cauldrons of Dagda as possible. Only when they had surveyed every possible area on the day’s itinerary did they head back toward the spaceport that the mining facility shared with the prison. Even when they weren’t particularly close to the Cauldrons, it was said the miners could hear the wail of prisoners being tortured and begging to die.

  The Cauldrons of Dadga had gotten its name because the entire planet was like a kettle of lava, and because the prison was situated atop a patch of rock surrounded by the Dagda lava sea. Three sides of the prison yard faced out to such molten oceans. Prisoners who got too close to the lava often had it bubble up to their feet and ankles, incinerating whichever part of their flesh it came in contact with. If they stopped whatever manual labor they had been assigned, even if it was to care for their injury, the prison guards lashed them with a vibro whip. If they were too badly injured to continue working, the guards simply pushed them off the edge of the rock and watched as the screaming prisoner sank under the burning seas.