Dusts of Avalon - Beastwithin.org

NaNoWriMo 2010 WinnerUrpo LankinenNaNoWriMoEdition

Dusts of Avalona NaNoWriMo travesty byUrpo Lankinenas completed onursday ʰ November, ˢ Edition (with raw NaNoWriMo text), typeset Friday ʰ November, NNWM E: Dusts of Avalon was one of the winners of the NationalNovel Writing Month of . is edition of the text contains the entirety of theNaNoWriMo text, with absolutely no corrections of any kind whatsoever. ereare bigger and smaller typos and thinkos and outright brainfarts in this thing.Some of it could be what nicer people call “rubbish”. Dive in and see what kind ofgarbage I could produce within a month. Surprisingly legible, if I say so myself.Not perfect, obviously. Damn far from it.O : is novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance topeople living or dead, or organisations existant or defunct, is purely coincidental,or I could be just making fun of someone or something, dammit. e boom lineis this: this didn't happen, so don't get any weird delusions, OK? I strongly believewartime concrete forts are so awesome it hurts.T by the author in TEX Live's XƎLTEX, with Linux Libertine font family.C by the author, Wednesday ʰ November, .Dusts of Avalon © Urpo Lankinen.Distributed under the Creative CommonsAribution-No Derivative Works . Unportedlicence.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/./ii

Prologue

PrologueOctober 7, 2631, 12:16 UTCT and giant raindrops pounded the groundwith tremendous rale as a lone female soldier opened the creaking cemeterygate. ere was nothing mysterious about the legendary London areaweather, but lieutenant Mielle Daleworth was more accustomed to spaceshipsand brief visits to groundside buildings. If it wasn't a serious, personal occasion,she might have found it a lile bit funny that she tended to see rain and roenweather only in graveyards — almost as if the environment was in on the joke.But this was a serious occasion. e late autumn wind raled the leaves inthe grass, the leafless trees swaying in the whooshing breeze. Daleworth walkedforth to the big clearing ahead with her typical, distinct military precision in herstride, even when no one was around to see her. She was slim and fit, with aslightly pear-like figure; wider hips and narrow est. She had brown hair tied toa regulation ponytail, round face, blue eyes, all scars of old bales meticulouslymended so no enemy could judge just how experienced in the balefield she reallywas. Tued under her arm were the remains of a rarely-used, years-old umbrella;on the way from the bus stop to the cemetery gate, a gust of wind had ripped it alile bit too mu. e meanisms were already broken, but now it seemed thatit finally crossed the threshold where she couldn't just fix it by hand, right thenand there; she had le her poet knife to her loer in the base, ba in Caen.Her uniform was fortunately weather-proof, or at least to a close approximationof weather-proof, a term whi usually meant there was some sort of a small snagthat ruined the whole idea; the woolen beret was the weak point, and was geingincreasingly uncomfortable. Still, it had taken worse rains, almost miraculouslykept in proper shape and passed the inspections.In the clearing was a memorial, a concrete wall with a steel surface on itsvertical sides, a hollow cylinder about four meters high, almost a meter thi andfive in diameter on the outer edge, with gaps on two sides wide enough to letpeople pass between them. e tops of the cylinder slanted slightly toward thecenter. Engraved in the metal were names — hundreds and hundreds of names intiny Helvetica.Above them, in larger, raised metal leers, read “Victims of the First.”Next to the words, Daleworth could barely see the word “Plan”. “First Plan”.Small dents were still there, and if one looked from the distance, they could seethe existant words were slightly off center, revealing that there had been one moreword in the right side.If Daleworth had the oice — if there were any ances to even propose onvoting on the maer — she would vote in favour of restoring the word. But she

wouldn't really want to discuss the details with civilians. Not with the war stillgoing on. Not with so many unsolved questions about the enemy, even aer somany years.But the enemy had a Plan. She knew it. She couldn't comprehend the Plan,of course, and had no idea about what the enemy was aer, but she had seen firsthand that they had a method.Daleworth couldn't remember who had defaced the monument, but the effectswere clearly felt in the community. It had been twelve years. Someone had cameto the graveyard in the middle of the night, a laser cuer in his hand, and removedthe word “Plan”. Someone had spoed him from the street, the police had caughthim just as he was done with his lile operation. He had been fined, of course,but due to the raging debate in the Network that this event sparked, lile hadbeen done to restore the monument to the former state. Daleworth could onlyremember that the vandal had been arguing that the enemy had no conscience,and calling the calamity the “First Plan” was an act of admiing the enemy hadany redeeming qualities, like sportsmanship; he argued that this war was not agame where humanity should be a fair competitor and admit that the enemy madea cunning move that allowed them to wipe out almost every colony in Jupiter'smoons, and half of the Saturn colonies.But Daleworth liked games. She knew that usually, small mistakes didn'tcount. It was all about the overall performance.And sometimes, it seemed, the game seemed to be over before it even started.e annoying thing was that that kind of observations can only be made aerthe dust seles. Never before.When the war began years ago, it all seemed random, pointless and a lilebit harmless to everybody. What harm could robots do? ey clearly seemed likesome kind of a robotic swarm that didn't really seem to possess any sophisticatedprogramming or advanced artificial intelligence, even when they couldn't initiallycapture any individual units for further study. e soldiers certainly could handleit — it was just some sort of a weird robotic experiment from an alien civilisationthat had gone awry and was now trying to aa the Solar System. Perhaps theycould destroy them, or find some sort of a kill swit, and then they might meettheir creators and have a proper First Contact with an Alien Lifeform, instead ofjust seeing their robots.Daleworth didn't really remember it too well, having been just a kid, but sheremembered how her father sent her video messages from the colonies, sayingthe soldiers had it all under control, and there was hardly even any fighting goingon anywhere near the bases. Everything was just fine. Business as usual.And a couple of years later, she remembered thinking it was fairly sure itwasn't as simple as father had told her it would be. She could barely think of thosemessages. She had found the recordings from her mother's home and listened to

them — once. Now, she couldn't even think of listening to them again. She wasoverwhelmed with emotions when she realised how naive it all sounded now, andshe hadn't even thought about it when she was a kid. If she had understood this,she might not have become a soldier, and her being in the military right now,fighting the good fight, was just a happy coincidence. Or, maybe it would havejust required the loss of another family member…But it was done. e Planners had come. Humanity had anged forever. ePlanners had a Plan. Humanity didn't have a plan, but it was only human natureto come up with one if it was clearly needed.No one knew why the Planners revelled in gloating — oh, the gloating — abouttheir victories. ey sent only synthetic spee over all communication annelsthey could ha their way into at the time — the local reaes of the Network,the military command annels, and like — whi only raised the question whydidn't they ha into them before the aa. Scary synthetic voices in a orus, almosthuman, but with just enough synthetic inflection to give you the creeps. Nocorny rotating graphical thingamabobs invading every screen, as seen in old flisand games. Nor, as common logic would suggest, any defaced Network pages ormysterious textual messages in discussion forums or email. Never anything elsebut synthetic spee, always broadcast in the languages most oen spoken in thecommunication annels in question.Few people who heard their first proper broadcast could forget it. “We arePlanners. We have toyed with you, humans. Our first plan was a success. Yourcolonies lie in ruins. More will be Planned.”Daleworth remembered the discussions and angry debates that she engagedin the World Federation Defence Academy in her cadet years. What was themilitary purpose of the First Plan? Was this even what people would call a baleplan, anyway? It was obvious that the bots had caught everyone off guard bypretending to be harmless, but they had hopelessly ruined their advantage byonly aaing a handful of colonies in the periphery of the Solar System. Givenwhat they knew of the Planners later, why didn't they just destroy Earth? eycertainly seemed to have the capability, aer all.Daleworth sighed. She didn't bring any flowers, because this was no grave.e colonies were razed to ground, and nothing remained of the colonists butash, dust and, in some debatably luy but disconcerting cases, indistinct gorymess. Lead Soware Engineer Robert Daleworth was, like others of his colony,scaered somewhere in the sands of Ganymede. e families of the survivorswere confused, aimless, and dumbstru. e calamity had been massive. erewas no single gravesite, no single place to place the memorial, so a memorialwas erected near London — a place randomly osen out of suitable proposedlocations. It didn't even really have to be in a graveyard, but they eventuallyseled on that. A place as good as any, everyone used to say. It was strange how

hundreds of families stu together in trying to mend their grief, and how a fewstrange traditions quily formed. A strange pact was made, not in any formalmanner, but again in one of the raging debates in the Network. It turned out tobe, in Daleworth's mind, even stranger than the removal of the word “Plan”: noflowers on the monument until the war is over.Instead of flowers, Daleworth just brushed her father's name clean with herhand; e surface was usually kept unwashed — and the cover for the fluorescentlights above the the name plates seemed to shelter half of the names from raintoday — and fingerprints could be seen all over the surface; some names hadactually worn a lile over the years. e names were toued. e fingerprintsand smudges suggested there were dozens of visitors to this remote monumentevery day.Daleworth sighed ruefully and just looked at the monument. She had touedthe name. It didn't need more reflection than this. She had vowed to defend humanityand fight with honour against an enemy that, despite its alien mainations,appeared to have some sense of honour — if perverted one at that.She didn't say aloud what she was thinking. Daddy Rob's dust was in Ganymede.None of the spirits, wherever they may be or whether they even be or not, weren'there. is memorial was a place for the survivors to congregate.And the survivors wouldn't approve of her view, or at least she would need alot of explanation aerward to avoid being branded a heretic of some sort. But itwas a view that everyone in the military shared.It was clearer than anything else to everyone in the World Federation DefenceForces that they didn't fight the Planners for the sake of the victims. is was nota war for revenge. Some soldiers had joined up for revenge, but all those thoughtshad been wiped off over the years. at pretense was long over.e war had simply ceased to be a war for revenge years ago. is was a warfor survival.e soldiers admied it. Everyone knew it, from lowliest soldiers to the generals,the President of Earth and the High Assembly of Human Colony Planets.And soon, very soon, they'd have to break those news to the civilians.What lile Daleworth could remember of her father, and what she had readof his writings, she knew that he would approve of not fighting the war in hismemory, or the memory of the fallen civilians. He was a man commied to doingwhat was the right thing to do.Daleworth closed her eyes. Be a strong girl, Mielle, Robert had said sometime before he had le to the colonies the last time. You've got to do a lot of toughoices when I'm not around. And I'm not around forever.e past was behind them. e future was something they could do somethingabout.She just wasn't very sure the other wounded families would have su an

enlightened and practical view of the war.

Part IWe Held the Line

I Fear and HopeFebruary 3, 2632, 10:11 UTC“O, , I' , Hellworth”, Corporal WernerWolff said. e burly, bald soldier gave his superiour officer a friendlysmile — something he could rarely do when he was doing his calm,orderly and murderous sniper work. It was easier to smie while lying in a bedwith doctor's orders to not move mu.In the bright white hospital room in the World Federation Defence ForcesRegional Military Hospital in Le Havre, two soldiers were enjoying a blissfullynon-tenical and unplugged bedrest. Both had suffered similar injuries in thedisastrous trip to Titan — right in front of Daleworth's eyes, a few minutes apart.Wolff had his lower right arm puned through with a plasma beam — big bloodymess, both bones cleanly melted through, strips of skin keeping the hand in place,wounds neatly cauterised. Private Bob Tankerman, in the other bed, had similarinjuries — in the leg. With that sort of precision and firepower, the Planners couldhave just killed the two, so the Planners probably just wanted Daleworth's companyout of the picture — and they succeeded. e two had been in treatment toreplace the removed bone structure and muscles, whi involved some big ma-inery, tons of tubes and fussing personnel. e clean, uncluered hospital roomwas a refreshing ange for the two patients.Daleworth gave the two soldiers a brief smile. Soldiers under her commandusually called her “Hellworth” only when they were suffering from ordinary postmissiongrumbling and moping. When she visited her wounded soldiers in thehospital, they usually just called her the “lieutenant” — a lile bit of stiffnessto cover up their inevitable and understandable underlying contempt for sendingthem to their gory dooms. e fact that Wolff called her with her ninameshowed that the horrors of Titan were already forgiven. “I'm glad you're on theway to recovery aer the last big co-up.”Private Bob Tankerman uled; the tall bla gunner was never too grim,and was likewise feeling relaxed in Daleworth's company. “Did the Captain admitit was a co-up, ma'am? I guess he would.”Daleworth sighed. “e Captain bought the farm, I'm sad to say.”“Really? Shit.” Wolff gried his teeth.“at happened maybe five minutes aer I got you two on evac. I was on thelast evac opper and waiting for him to come aboard — then, just… boom. Hishead was gone. Plasma snipers.”“Holy shit. How's his family?” Tankerman asked.“He was from Mars, and his colony was hit six months ago”, Daleworth said.“No living relatives. Glad they didn't take the whole colony that time…”

I. F H“Now that just sus”, Tankerman said.“Can we go to the Cap's funeral?” Wolff asked.“As long as the doctors give you the thumbs-up, I guess. You're bound to beoff the company for the next two months at least, anyway, and I guess most of thesquads will go there too — unless something really weird happens. He be buriedin the aid Plateau Colony in Mars in two weeks.” Daleworth sighed. “I guess Icould make the arrangements for you. I'll let you know how it works out.”“Uh… so, who's going to be our new captain?” Tankerman asked.“Don't know yet. I'm supposed to see Major Plaerman about that in a fewdays.”February 6, 2632, 13:31 UTC“Sir, I knew this was probably full well within the Corps's rights, but I still mustprotest this, sir”, Daleworth said. “I have my rights to shore leave, and it was dulyneeded, sir. I could get a psyologist's statement to that effect if it came to that,sir, but I know you are a reasonable man, sir.”Major William Plaerman — “Flat Earth Major”, as many called him, due tothe fact that he was clearly off in his own worlds, though admiedly only in thestrictest physical sense — confused most people who ventured in his office. edark-haired officer that was seemingly rectangular in almost every conceivablefashion — perhaps his maker had used Leonardo da Vinci's drawings as blueprintsand had forgoen to remove all those Golden Ratio rectangles — had a good deskand a comfortable air, whi obviously meant he enjoyed the office far toomu. But the walls of the room were covered with large display screens andhis holographic computer display, hovering above the table, was simply huge,covering almost every direction the major looked at from his air; he definitelywas one of the few Space Marine Corps commanders who could actually leada bale on the far reaes of the Solar System from his comfortable seat baon Earth with great competence, and not get grumblings from the rank and file.He was, at the same time, a competent Space Marine officer who had lead manycompanies of the starship Mannerheim in several glorious bales, while neverreally leaving his office ba in Earth. And now, he was known to be jumpingaround the world, too. It seemed to the people under him that as long as he couldlink up somehow to the companies on the field, there was no reason for anyoneto worry: he was the kind of a commander that could lead a glorious, successful,no-casualties assault from the shower if the need was great enough.Plaerman smiled; he was not a man who was known for big and cordialsmiles, but those who knew him, knew the smallest smile was a good sign ofthings to come. “I know, lieutenant, and your complaint is very understandable.

If the situation allowed it at all, I'm sure I could persuade the Colonel to give you— and everyone else in the company — a few more days of rest while we find allpersonnel to fill the slots. But we don't have the luxury of time, and we need tosend a fully paed platoon up to the orbit, as soon as we get them there. WithCaptain Bluebrook dead, the ain of command is rather sparse. For the timebeing, you report directly to me.”“Whatever you say, sir”, Daleworth said, genuinely full of vigour, but worriedthat in light of what she said, that might not have been quite enough to convincethe Mayor of that fact. “I'm ready.”“And don't worry about rest and relaxation, lieutenant — I believe your missionfor the next day or two will not be particularly allenging. Or it could. ButI know you enjoy missions that could go either way.”“I think I do, sir.” Daleworth decided to keep her own thoughts out of this; themajor was right, of course, but she also knew that there were the kind of missionsthat could go either way that she liked, and then there were the kind of missionsthat could go either way that everyone else assumed she liked. She liked missionsthat had some sort of room for planning of different outcomes, not a missionwhere things were either terribly dull or an incoherent mess of a bloodbath.“Your mission is to pi up a civilian contractor, and escort him to the NAFLC.From there, you'll head to investigate a space station with your platoon — reinforcementswill be waiting in the laun complex — and a science team.”Daleworth blinked. “Investigate whi space station, and what for, sir?”“A blind yellow, as the Sword Bea guys said. A mystery scanner contact.I wish I knew more than that, lieutenant. is could be some sort of a Plannerploy. Or, surprisingly, it could be something else entirely. But the science team isthere in case it really is something else entirely…”II Friend or Foe?February 6, 2632, 09:42 UTCA of an underground military complex —whi is to say, a bunker — near Cresserons, France. e soldiers whostaffed were always a lile bit amazed how their outpost, officially the“Sword Bea Orbital Intelligence Centre”, was so cramped that even a single, notparticularly loud alarm bell and a loudspeaker could be easily heard in the entirebunker. With a grandiose name like that, common sense suggested that maybe afew more were required.But an alarm like this was nothing to joke about. e personnel twited a bitat the sudden loud noise, and looked at the new information on their screens.

II. F F?“Contact, yellow, blind!” came the announcement from the speaker.General Arthur Pyrehill found it rather perplexing that the Near-Earth TraingNetwork was still, aer decades of ba-and-forth politiing, not completelyoperational. is was a recipe for disaster, especially when the Planners wereclosing in on Earth. e orbital weapon platforms could operate somewhat autonomouslyand destroy just about anything that came halfway between Earthand Mars orbits, but still, there were cases where the satellites couldn't see everythingthat approaed Earth. Every scream of “contact, yellow” or “contact, red”from the traers was a reason to worry and prepare for the worst, especially inthe case of reds — cras positively identified as Planner ships or probes. Everyscream of “contact, yellow, blind” or — most illing of all — “contact, red, blind”— meant Pyrehill was ready to divert every space fighter within Solar Systemto Earth's defence and destroy the bastards right away; the call could mean thatthe Planners had tried to sneak in from a blind spot. A blind contact meant thatanother satellite, tuned far over its normal capacity and using some clever tris,pied up a spacecra within the operational range of a so far largely unbudgetedand hence nonexistent monitoring satellite. Blind contacts were usually right onthe final approa to Earth — or, in a more benign case, it was on orbit and itmerely approaed from behind the horizon to the range of a functional satellite.e gruff old general sprung up from his air on the far side of the station— the commanders of the station had barely any more space than the operationalpersonnel — and managed to not spill his the coffee too mu. He hurried pastthe cramped ras of servers and monitoring equipment, along the corridor thatwas the most open space of the station, to the big screen in the other end. It wassituations like this that he wished the monitoring station had been really built forcrises that were introduced by weird contacts appearing out of the blind spots.“Got data?” Pyrehill asked.“Only visual so far, on the way down. No sign of truster energy or EM leaks”,nd Lieutenant Robert Batmann, the soldier siing by the monitoring console andone of the whiz satellite reconnaissance analysts in this side of the planet, said.“Could be bad. Could be good. We're red until we get more data.”“Agreed, sir. It doesn't mat any P-cra profiles, but it's too early to tell if it'sPlanners.”Pyrehill looked at the ship overview window. Only two frigates on orbit,neither with faster-than-light drive. Several civilian ships outbound. “Do we,perance, have any of our own in the blind?”“No, sir. Just Paon and Saladin on the orbit.”“Right. ings don't look good. Where's the visual?”“Done, sir.” Batmann brought the video feed on the screen.Pyrehill — and Batmann — both fell silent.Batmann was the first to speak. “What the hell is that, sir?”

“I have no idea. But let's not blow that up before we know what the hell is it.”“Sir—”“If this is some sort of a new Planner ploy, then we need to investigate it fully.Downgrade to yellow.”“As you say, sir.”“And get me Saladin's commander on horn — I need someone to get us beerrecon.”“Yes, sir. Uh… Mannerheim dropping out of hyperdrive, sir”, Batmann said asa new contact appeared on the screen.“Or make that Mannerheim's commander. We might need the FTL drive.”“Yes, sir.”Pyrehill wated the low-resolution photos of the alien cra in the horizonas Batmann linked up with the newly arrived frigate. e blurry spe that hadappeared out of nowhere looked strangely geometric for a Planner cra, and fartoo reflective. If they had tried to get their aention, they had succeeded.e orum was Unconcerned.Something out of ordinary had happened. ey were aware of the anomalythat had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the blind spot of the human scannernetwork.It required no action. While of artificial nature, and obviously not humanorigin, this anomaly was an indication of deliberate action, and as an indicationof deliberate action, it was life. And all life was defenceless in face of the Logicof the Planners.An involvement of two species in mutual defence was a minor obstacle. Knowinghuman nature, they might annihilate the intruder. Either way, the orumdeduced that the unknown spacecra was of no consequence.III An Engineer SoarsFebruary 6, 2632, 16:48 UTC (11:48 EST)T unconquered: is was not a paperless office.Dr. Paul Grovepath was all for paperless workflow. In his field, he had to seea lot of blueprints and diagrams, and it was fairly obvious that there just wasn'tsu thing as “too big”. Only biologists could comfortably zoom into dead trees, heused to say to friends, not spaceship engineers. In days, the blond-haired, skinny

III. A E Sscientist with thi glasses and remarkably casual dress — jeans, college shirt anda small belt pou for his cellphone and computer — sat by his desk and lookedat his holographic monitor, examining minute details with increasing precision.But still, Dr. Grovepath's office had a paper problem. Or, rather, Dr. Grovepathhad no problems with the paper; he just had a problem with certain kinds ofpaper.Dr. Grovepath's desk occupied the far half of the small office room in thecorner of the sixth floor of the Department of Space Tenology Studies. He hadtwo small windows, and that was all daylight he needed. e remaining half ofthe room was taken up by five bookshelves, filled to brim with periodicals, withbarely space between them to fit him. e door was on that half of the room,meaning every visitor had to come through the narrow space between the shelvesand the wall.Most people visiting Dr. Grovepath in work were not at all surprised to findthe good doctor's office in su a perfectly good-doctor-like order; Dr. Grovepathknew the place was a lile bit stereotypical, but he just didn't mind it at all. Itwas all for a good reason, aer all. Yet, when Dr. Grovepath's good friend, MildredBurntwood, an artist who had done many pieces of artwork for the GreaterNewburyport University — Dr. Grovepath was happy to see her familiar handiworkin all of the broures and guidebooks he handed to the new students, andshe was largely responsible for the university's graphic design in the Network —had walked into his office for the first time, she had just sighed and said “paper.”Dr. Grovepath had just looked at her quizzically and she had just looked at thepaper piles for a while. Artists, Dr. Grovepath concluded, had strange reactionsto obvious things sometimes.e papers were only there for temporary storage; the office next to him wasin the same sort of condition, with no windows, and with two grad students busydigitising old journals and making sure everything was scanned precisely andaccurately to digital format. is was part of the centuries-old conventions noone could seem to break; some people preferred paper, some wanted their articlesin digital format, some wanted them both ways and some people just seemed toprefer the ash-based or the fabled “unallocated storage space” format, mu toDr. Grovepath's dismay and regret. Sometimes old material was only availablein digital format, whi was a simple thing to fix as far as the paper-lovers wereconcerned; the library simply printed another copy. ese journals on the shelvesof Dr. Grovepath's office were available in digital format, but not here; some lastbastions of academic publishing clung to their own lile traditions, and didn'twant to hear that the authors of the articles were fine with giving unlimited accessto them, and had full rights to demand that. Now, these almost completelydegraded paper journals were being digitised for open access.But the fluctuating nature of academic papers was not Dr. Grovepath's con-

cern right now. e concern was the fluctuating nature of the other kinds ofacademic papers, the kind of papers that seemed to sti in that paper formatone century aer another and just fluctuated in altogether different and far moreundeterministic way.Dr. Grovepath looked at the mounting piles of paper that lay on the shelfnearest to his desk and sighed; the documents he had been looking were probablysomewhere near the top in this corner of the shelf. Where else they could be? Hereflected on the mystery for a while and found it strange that there was no orderhere, yet things in his office were in good enough order for him to find everythinghe needed… eventually. As usual, things seemed to have a lot of different aspectsthat people just didn't consider.Dr. Grovepath found the document he had been looking for; it one of thosedepressing forms from the higher-ups, the kind of a form he didn't particularlycare about, as it didn't need his signature or approval or anything — sometimesit seemed that he was just a vastly overqualified message boy. He sighed at thebureaucracy, planted himself on the office air and pied up his wireless keyboard.A holographic display lit up, his Network news feeds bringing hin thelatest news from the world; the lates bits in spaceship tenology filled most ofhis view, and he pied up some other news sources from the list. Maybe Federalnews? Dr. Grovepath thought. Nah. Just more about the war…Right, the war…He dismissed the news and opened his calendar to make sure his memorywas correct and that there were no pressing things in the aernoon. Someonehad called that morning; Dr. Grovepath had le his cellphone in the coffee room,and Dr. Flaire from the Civil Engineering department had answered it for him.Dr. Flaire had told his assistant to relay the news to Dr. Grovepath while he wasrunning errands in the other side of the building, where he worked. It had beenpassed on to an assistant professor, another assistant (not the assistant professor'sassistant, of course), and finally to Dr. Grovepath's assistant, who had told it tohim only a hour later. Fortunately, instead of Dr. Flaire's famous gigantic anddetailed email messages (with copious assistance), he had received a message thathad been reduced to bare essentials: one Lieutenant Dale-something from WorldFederation Defence Forces coming to see him that day, noon-ish. Dr. Grovepathenjoyed working with the military, but he also knew the military was full of twokinds of people — simpletons and methodical men — and with both, you neededto reserve a lot of time to make sure they get everything.A kno on the door.“Please come in”, Dr. Grovepath said.A female soldier — a lieutenant, by the looks of it — stepped in, apparentlyflined mu less than the other visitors at the cramped interior, and came tohis desk. Later on, Dr. Grovepath couldn't really remember mu about the time

III. A E Swhen he first saw the lieutenant — military personnel all looked the same to him.He closed his eyes, thinking the maer further. A low-end officer, and not ina parade uniform; clearly, this was an urgent maer. Clearly, he was neededelsewhere; luily, the day was looking clear of appointments and lectures.“Dr. Paul Grovepath?” the soldier asked.“at's me”, Dr. Grovepath replied.“Lieutenant Mielle Daleworth, WFDF Space Marine Corps.” Daleworth didn'tlook too friendly, and didn't offer a handshake, tuing her arms behind her anddrew some breath. “Forgive me, but I must go straight into the point. We arefacing an urgent threat, and need your help. My orders are to take you to ourbase. You will be compensated for your efforts. We need your expertise on spacestation construction — not to build things, just for analysis. Depending on howthis excursion turns out, we'd appreciate your help assembling a science team.”She drew some breath; later, Dr. Grovepath said this was an unexpected feint beforea sudden knoout pun. “Before we leave, however, we'd need your help torea some of your colleagues in the faculty of humanities, or perhaps other universities.Our commander had extensive records on experts of weapons, medicineand vehicles, but we don't have any experts on call whom we could consult onaraeology.”Dr. Grovepath blinked. He had just been planning to apologise the lieutenantthat there was no way he could interrupt his new project on space anomaly traing,but curiosity got beer of him. “Araeology? I can tell you a thing or twoabout the history of spacefaring, but… hm, I take this isn't just about a long-lostprobe, is it?”“No, doctor”, Daleworth said. “We specifically need araeologists. And historians,but they're not needed on-site just yet. My commander wanted me to askif there even is su a field as… spaceship araeology?”“I don't think so”, Dr. Grovepath said. “e thing about old spacecras is thatif they're headed ba to Earth or some other planet, they tend to leave lile forthe araeologists to study, on the account of being burned to crisp or geingpulverised on impact. And for the ones that actually land successfully and end upin museums, well, they are usually well enough documented that we don't needmu deductions…”“Nevertheless, there appears to be some le to study now, doctor. I'll brief youon the way.”“Who's in arge of the operation?” Dr. Grovepath asked. “If you don't mindme asking.”“General Pyrewood is the top commander of this operation. But we'll bothanswer directly to Major Plaerman.”“I see.” Dr. Grovepath said, pausing to think. “Would it be possible if GeneralPyrewood could—”

“Doctor,” Daleworth interrupted, clearly sensing where this was going. “Youneed to ask about the specifics of your reimbursements from Major Plaerman. Iam only supposed to say that you'll be eventually properly compensated for yourefforts, whatever that means.”“I won't get my hopes high, then.” Dr. Grovepath sighed. “Yet, I have to saythis sounds fascinating. I can't even begin to guess what the army grunts wouldneed araeologists for. I need to see this.”Twenty minutes later, Dr. Grovepath had his cellphone ba, and was carryinga bag of gear he had haphazardly selected — most of it would probably turn outuseless, but his computers were somewhat important. He could barely keeping inpace with the lieutenant lady.Dr. Grovepath was somewhat surprised to see he was being pied up in aTalon, one of the newer VTOL aircra that the WFDF had developed. He hadn'teven seen one in use yet, but had been following its development rather closely; itwas somewhat rare to see a marvellous feat of engineering that actually managedto stay within its budget and sedule, thus appeasing the engineers, the soldiersand the politicians.e Talon resembled the earlier Tiger VI-B aircra in its appearance, and hadslightly smaller wings and less conspicuous tail fin and rotor; it too had two foldableand tiltable helicopter rotors in its wings to facilitate landing and takeoff.Dr. Grovepath was more interested of the main engines and what they were capableof. Like the Tiger, Talon was built for supersonic atmospheric travel — specificationssaid it was supposed to take its passengers halfway around the world ina hour, with no discomfort to the troops, and its fuel tanks had enough juice tofly six times around the planet before refueling. Tiger was capable of the samefeats, but its supersonic booster had the annoying tendency to run out of fuel inreal-world combat scenarios, whi limited its usefulness. e troops had learnedto get appropriately depressed when the Tiger pilots said “sorry guys, but I thinkwe need to do this Bowman's way” — Bowman being the Navy admiral who hadproposed smaller fuel tanks and an older-generation fuel distribution system thathad a curious flaw; while the jets could, in theory, be operated normally once thesupersonic engines had dried out, the jets needed a handful of supersonic fuel tostart up. Careful pilots could exercise the engines to get them fire maybe once ortwice to wrist the last few drops off the supposedly empty tanks, but aer that,the cra was brought to helicopter mode and the passengers just had to sele fora propeller ride. ere was nothing quite like heading to the balefield at a brisktru-ride speed when the fight was still a hundred kilometers away. Or two. Afterthe first year in service, even the top commanders started to fear the response“they're coming in Tigers, sir” when they asked why the troops were arriving thin,

III. A E Sand started to accept the pilots' explanations for why they were late to the party— all they needed to say was “Bowman happened, sir.” In the World FederationAssembly session where the Talon project was authorised, Admiral Bowman appearedto be genuinely apologetic and even presented the part of the commandnetwork interface that he had developed in response — a clever piece of automationthat dispated Mastodon cargo liers to balefield aer the operation wascomplete to pi up the stranded Tigers.e Talon sat on the university helipad, whi was quite a long way awayfrom the Faculty of Engineering — of course, when the helipad was built, theGreater Newburyport University didn't even have a Faculty of Engineering andthe professors who listened to the ri kids aending the Faculty of Economics hadtheir say. Of course, in years, no one ever came by a helicopter and everyonejust came by a car. Dr. Grovepath glanced to the direction of the Economicsparking lot — a row of really fancy cars parked altogether too close to the helipad.Well, at least there was going to be a practical experiment of seeing just how “jetproof”the windshields are — though Dr. Grovepath wondered if the pilot wasgoing to agree with that sort of a plan…Daleworth showed Dr. Grovepath his seat, and the two sat down. Eight othersoldiers sat on ba, and there was room for a few more — the plans had anged,Dr. Grovepath's assistants were going to be transported separately, and Dr. Merrywood— the only Department of Areology professor who wasn't on an unannouncedfield trip with a misplaced cellphone — was going to be pied up fromhis cabin in Florida.e doors closed, the propeller engines roared to action and the plane tookoff. Dr. Grovepath looked out of the window and saw the plane climb abovethe clouds in no time, and he barely noticed the pressure ange. Nor did hereally notice when the propellers were turned off and the takeoff jets took over;the sound insulation was rather perplexingly good for a military plane. He evenbarely noticed that the jets were actually taking the plane forward.en, just as unannouncedly, a yellow warning light lit up in the ceiling and awarning buzzer went off — series of three rapid beeps, repeated for a few seconds,advance warning for serious aerburner tris. Dr. Grovepath took very seriouscare to prepare for discomfort, taking a good breath and a good grip of the seat.Instead of some sort of a huge ki, the plane barely shook; he could feel theacceleration, and saw that the clouds started to move a lot faster outside of thewindow, but apart of that, there was very lile indication of the speed increase.Once well underway, Dr. Grovepath noted that the cabin really was quietenough for conversation. He turned to Daleworth; the lieutenant had pied upher assault rifle and helmet, and was reading something off her wrist-mounteddatapad. He wasn't really sure where to begin. “So where exactly are we going,and what's waiting for us? What are the weapons for?”

Daleworth looked at Dr. Grovepath. “Don't worry, doc, we're not going incombat. Just standard armaments.” She turned the datapad off and set the rifleaside. “We needed you because you were the only one who was around at thetime and had EVA experience.”Dr. Grovepath blinked. “We're going to space? Where?”“Our first stop is at NAFLC.”“We're going to be on Mexican radio?” Dr. Grovepath said with a laugh.“No, NAFLC. North African Laun Complex.”“Oh, right.” Military acronyms, like uniforms, sometimes confused him. “Whereis that? In the coast of Egypt, right?”“Yep, south of a place called Hurghada. Used to be overrun by pirates andcuhroats. It wasn't a very fun town until we built the laun complex there andbrought in a bun of scary military gear.” Daleworth paused. “Once we get to thelaun complex, we prepare for flight and you'll get to see our mystery contactfirst hand.”“Ma'am!” a soldier siing a few seats away shouted. Private First Class Newkins,by the looks of the name tag. “Sorry to ask, but why are we going to Africa,ma'am?”“Been awake in the classes, rookie?” Daleworth said, not skipping a beat. “ecloser the equator we get, the easier it is to laun junk in the space. We can'trun on nuclear engines unless there's a war going on, because the civilians tendto grumble about that — they tend to grumble more about the war going on intheir bayard than a slight increase in local radiation levels for a few weeks — sowe need a laun tower, conventional boosters, the whole shala-blang to returnto the orbit. And the reason we're going to Egypt is that Kenya is swamped withcivilian traffic and we don't want to argue with civilians about our very secretand very urgent laun. Got me?”“Yes, ma'am!” Newkins shouted.“So, tell me about this mystery contact”, Dr. Grovepath said.Daleworth explained what the orbital monitors had found. Dr. Grovepathlistened incredulously.“I have the latest data right here — sorry, it's not very good”, Daleworth saidand handed a datapad to Dr. Grovepath, who began browsing the contents, stilllooking fairly surprised. No question about it: is was going to be a really interestingride.“So… it's not human or Planner?”“Well, I'm no expert, but it looks sort of human. Of course, no one would buildthat sort of thing. at would be silly. Of course, we have no idea who wouldbuild that sort of thing.”“Do you have any beer pictures?”“Not on board — the crappy photos on the pad are all we could get on su

III. A E Sa short notice. e Major promised some updates, but that appears to be still asgood as we can get right now.” Daleworth sniffed a bit. “But it looks really weird,don't you agree?”“And the araeologists?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Let me ask you something, doctor.” Daleworth lowered her elbows on herlap, bending forward on her seat and looking the doctor in his eyes. “I suppose Idon't need to ask an expert like you what the Trojan Horse was, right?”“What about it?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Care to take guess what I thought was the most interesting part of that legend?”“Well, I can't begin to guess… even the most impractical decoys are oen surprisinglyeffective? Giant wooden horses make good catapult ammunition?”“Well, that's what most field officers might say. And what fruitcakes mightsay, respectively. But when they asked me that question in the very beginning ofmy studies in the Academy, the eggheads who were probing my psye almostput me in the military intelligence tra. Care to guess what I answered, doctor?”“Well, no…” Dr. Grovepath scrated his hair.“e awesome thing about the Trojan Horse is that it told us a lot about theGreeks and Trojans. ink about it.”“Oh yes. You mean mindsets — it tells us what kind of a commander woulduse a giant wooden horse as a tactical ploy, and what kind of a commander mightaccept su gi, or even what kind of a madman would spin su an outlandishtale if they wanted people to believe what really happened in the war…”“Exactly. And the araeologists are here for similar purpose. I'm no expert,again, but doesn't that space station look like some sort of a human fortification?It looks like it's inspired by iron-age or mediaeval fortresses and su.”“Yes, you could say that. So if the Planners built it, that means they've copiedour old fortresses?”“Yes, and that raises only one question: Why? Why did they copy us? Whatthe hell were they thinking? Now, the Planners don't usually make plans like this— they tend to be a bit more straightforward and all — but if they did, this mightreveal a lot about what the Planners know about us, and how they try to deceiveus.” Daleworth straightened up. “Simply put: every nugget of information helpsus understand the Planners, even their most ludicruous plans.”“I see.”“Do you think the Trojan Horse was a ludicruous plan, doctor? Just out ofcuriosity.”“Well, the plan itself, well, that wasn't really su a bad idea, but the liledetails, the lile details… I sometimes wonder how it really turned out.”“What do you mean?”“Well, the thing about myths…” Dr. Grovepath said and thought a while. “e

thing about myths is that they're bound to turn out rather boring in the end.”“What do you mean?” Daleworth asked.“When you think any mythological or religious tale, you begin seeing a lotof, shall we say, embellishment. A plain ordinary housefire that destroyed animportant building gets recorded as ‘the Forces of Hell were unleashed within thehallowed halls’ in the legend, and if you want to know what really happened,need to make some interpretations that.” Dr. Grovepath sighed. “Myth becomesthe reality, like how most people think that for mu of the laer half of theprevious millennium, people were in bla and white and moved funny, becausethat's what the photographs and films show us. If we show anyone color, highdefinitionpictures from that period, they won't believe their eyes.”“Right. I can see what you mean, doctor.”February 6, 2632, 20:50 UTCe sanguine Fren twilight worked its magic, detrimental to geing anythingdone. Part of being in the military was seeing the world, and seeing the beautyfirst hand usually made it harder to blow the beautiful exotic locations to thekingdom come.Daleworth felt a lile bit romantic in the red evenings of this particular base— or any of the Fren bases. To get anything done, she just needed some dryness,and worked hard to summon it; she needed to use her family's supposed Britishroots, despite being a second-generation spacer. e best she could say was thatthe evening was just turning bloody red, literally.e Talon landed in the airfield of yet another weird acronym that was givingDr. Grovepath a headae: the WFDF-CAFRSMCB. He hadn't been around theseparts and didn't even begin guessing what it was supposed to be.But for Lieutenant Dalewood, the Caen/France Space Marine Corps Base, orjust Caen Base for short, was a frequently visited base — if not a place she enjoyedvisiting, because su visits usually entailed replacing casualties with recruits.Bad memories of fallen brothers and sisters, even worse acclimatisation for herand the survivors and the green ones. e Faster-an-Light Frigate Mannerheim,currently waiting for her in the orbit, was her real home; this base, however, wasas close to home on Earth as she was ever going to accept.Daleworth jumped out of the Talon and headed toward the hangar where theMoonhawk Troop Transport Orbiter, hull number M– — if the Mannerheimwas Daleworth's real home, then she could probably call the M– shule herreal work place — was being refueled. e refueling wasn't a normal procedure,as the mothership was supposed to handle it and at very least they should haverefueled in the laun site, but Plaerman had instructed them to do that for a

III. A E Sreason that was somewhat unclear to Daleworth — perhaps Plaerman just hadfound some extra fuel coupons nearing expiration from his wallet and neededto balance the budget, or something. Daleworth's unit, the ˢ Platoon of the ʰSpace Marine Company of Mannerheim practically lived in the shule most ofthe time; tenically, the cra was supposed to be randomly assigned to themand only used for transportation, but the platoon had grown very fond of theshule that had never let them down. In addition to the soldiers, the shulecracarried four Fang all-terrain vehicles, two Talons, a mindbogglingly huge loadof ammo and replacement weapons, and two howitzers — though the howitzerswere never needed, no one had artillery training, and rumour had it that therewasn't even any ammo for them. Daleworth had once discussed with CaptainBluebrook about plans to drop the howitzers from air on top of some Plannerscum, but admiedly she had been a lile bit drunk at the time. e bad thingwas, the idea seemed plausible with sober head too.Some of the old faces greeted her outside the cra. Mostly old… where wasthe other rookie?“SQUAD, FALL IN! Lieutenant, ma'am!” Staff Sergeant Ja H. Haman boomedand saluted, his squad arranged in perfect ranks behind him. “Beta Squad is readyto go! Alpha and Gamma already aboard as per orders, ma'am!” e sergeant'smiddle initial stood for Hammer, making him one of the few marines in the companywho just blatantly and obviously didn't need a niname.Currently, the next officer down from Daleworth was the Moonhawk pilot,nd Lieutenant Rainer Ford — another slightly sorry replacement, as the Moonhawkswere supposed to be piloted by experienced Navy pilots and not randomjiery rookie Marine career officers who took a crash course, whi was oenexactly as effective as it sounded. Yet, he didn't have any real clout in the unitwhen Haman was obviously beer in tou with the operations, and Ford wasfine with that. Haman had been promoted to Staff Sergeant way earlier thanmost, and was obviously poised to soar up the ranks with just his assault rifleand a gigantic pile of metallic carcasses of Planner robots in his feet, not intendingto bother with mundane trivialities like enrolling into the Academy — havingbeen there, Daleworth knew there wasn't that mu to learn in the Academythat the good sergeant already knew. He was already practically taking care ofmany running maers in the platoon, and while there was no official recognitionfor that yet, Daleworth more or less considered him her second-in-command fortime being.“ank you. At ease!” Daleworth shouted. “Private Newkins, show Dr. Grovepatha seat in the Moonhawk and make sure he knows how to handle the baggagein the cra. e regulars should load up the scientific gear that is in the Talon, andaer that, prepare for takeoff. Private First Class Kurt Newkins is a new guy —predictably enough — and will be manning some of the big guns while Tankerman

is in the hospital. Who's the new guy who's here to replace Wolff?”“Ma'am!” A red-headed woman stepped forward and snapped to aention.“Private Lena Fairwind reporting for duty, ma'am!”Daleworth sighed. ey were always so eager before they faced the Plannersthe first time, weren't they? “Right. You need to be a good sniper if you're goingto step in Wolff's boots, Fairwind.”“Was a cra shot in the Class of , ma'am! Steady ninety-eight percentaccuracy rating through the final training period, ma'am!”“Any real combat experience?”“No, ma'am!”Daleworth sighed. “Well, I guess we'll all need to start from somewhere.Might not have mu need for snipers in a mystery space station anyway. Haman!”“Yes, ma'am?” the sergeant said.“Any word from the Flat Earth Mayor?”“Sent the latest data, ma'am. Told you to call if there are any new pressingdevelopments, but he said he got some business in Boston, ma'am. Might be stillin flight, ma'am. Told me not to call because he took a subsonic flight.”“Shit. e doctor wanted to see him, but I guess that needs to wait.” Daleworthgried her teeth. “He goes to the States, just as we came from the States.Wonderful.” She sighed. “All right, carry on, Haman. We'll leave as soon aswe're ready to go.”Daleworth looked as the last remnants of the gear were loaded into the shuttle.She saw Newman had properly shown the doctor the “seat of honour” nearthe platoon commander's seat, usually reserved for higher-ranking officers, andheaded that way herself. A familiar whirr on the far side meant the drop doorson the other side started to close.Off to Africa. Off to the Orbit to link up with the Mannerheim. And then… tothe unknown.Daleworth was on a mission, and that was good.She smiled to herself and hastened her place toward the closing shule doors.IV A Riddle in Stone and SteelFebruary 7, 2632, 08:42 UTCF , the dawn had crept to reveal the citiesthe passengers had just been in the previous day.e M– undoed from Mannerheim's first starboard shule bay in its asection and slowly dried farther away from the frigate with its steering thrusters

IV. A R S Sbefore gently starting up the main engines at lowest possiblee University didn't have mu money to spare on expensive excursions,so most people would have been surprised to know this was the first time forDr. Grovepath to actually see an actual faster-than-light frigate. e drawings andphotographs just didn't do justice to the real spacecra, and while Dr. Grovepathhad, on many occasions, worked on components, he had never actually managedto see a fully assembled FTL frigate. He had realised, on an intellectual level, justhow big they were — and, indeed, he had some amazement in his mind as he sawthem next to some objects for reference scale, like when they were photographedon Earth's orbit — but it was altogether different to see one up close. ere justwasn't any way around the fact that the human mind, it seemed, would be foreverboggled by the sheer hugeness of some things.e ship resembled a kilometer-and-half-long wine bole that was, one-thirdof its length, stashed in a slightly baered cardboard box; the main section wascylindrical, tapering toward the bow, while the a section was more boxlike andhad some winglike or keel-like appendages — though the ship was still clearlynot designed for atmospheric flight. e cylindrical forward section had the crewquarters and operational staff — the ship actually had plain old horizontal crewdes, the cylindrical design was a throwba to the days when the ships stillneeded centrifugal force to produce artificial gravity — and the a section hadthe engines, cargo access and shulecra entry bays.e shulecra pilot increased the thrust. ey needed to cat up a spacestation on a different kind of an orbit. e computers would do most of the hardwork in this case. Soon, the scientists and soldiers would get a very close look atwhat the he they were really facing.“Doctor?” Daleworth said. “We're about to get a visual.”“I wouldn't miss that for any price”, Dr. Grovepath said.And with majestic grace, their destination emerged from Earth's shadow.Dr. Grovepath thought that, for some reason, space stations always tended tohave majestic grace. But this time, the expression would have been very appropriate.e strange space station was massive, and it actually seemed to slowly spinaround its vertical axis. It was quite large for a space station. And its design…e design…It really did resemble old fortresses, but not any specific fortress. e spacestation was roughly octagonal in its overall plan, with a flat central section. Eaof the eight segments were covered with spirelike walls slanting toward the apex,ea topped with crenellation-like formations. e overall shape resembled a nut:flat boom, wider mid-section and it tapered toward the top.But the devil was in the details, as usual.It was hard for Dr. Grovepath to describe what the walls looked like, becausethey looked so familiar, yet they were clearly alien to him. Describing them in

comparison with historical fortresses terms was bound to be confusing and inaccurate.He might have said the walls resembled, at first sight, some Mayan walldesigns; massive, geometric, and let no one say that they are not made of stone.ough off-hand, he couldn't remember if Mayans had any particular obsessionwith octagons — he knew they loved squares and circles. His mind wandered toNorse legends… as filtered through the eyes of some heavy-metal obsessed artists.Or maybe it was just a fusion of distinctly European and Mesoamerican styles,fused into one jolly synretistic, unexpected vision of castles in the orbit.It was as if someone, somewhere, had decided that castles in the groundweren't good enough, and he needed to put a castle in the orbit. At the sametime, they weren't being naive and simplistic about that vision: a castle in theorbit was a good idea, but obviously, a castle in the orbit cannot look like a castlebuilt on the ground. It was not just a question of practical engineering, but thebuilders might have turned that into a question of philosophy. ey had triedtheir best to answer the tough question they knew few people would even thinkto ask: What, exactly, does a castle in the orbit look like?e spire walls gliered. ey had distinctly rounded, recessed edges thatseemed to be built out of minerals of some sort — it did look like stone, if youreally happened to think about it — while the flat central parts of the walls werevery smooth and polished, clearly metallic in their appearance. It gave the spacestation a rather perplexing look; one would have assumed that a space stationshould be made of metal, but it looked like this space station was made of somesort of stone-like material and was merely covered in metal.“Well, that certainly is a bizarre sight”, Daleworth finally said. “Bizarre andvery fascinating.”“I agree”, Dr. Grovepath said. “is is definitely something to investigate.”“Okay, the big question: How do we get into that thing?”“I think I saw some kind of an opening in the other side. Oh, look — there itis. Doesn't that look like a door to you?”“All right, we can try that hole. Suit up, everybody.”e World Federation Defence Forces had, over the last century, managed to successfullyintegrate their pressure suits into one coherent whole. Gone were thedays when suits for vacuum and high-pressure environments looked vastly different.e only inhospitable environments the Unified Combat Armour Mk. IIIcouldn't handle were ocean depths that exceeded somewhere about meters,and with almost constant peace on the Earth and the general reluctance to settlethe seafloor when space colonies were less allenging to sele, there hadn'tyet been too many conflicts that needed resolution in the deep ocean trenes.In all other environments, however, the armour provided just enough protection

IV. A R S Sfrom projectile and energy weapon fire, explosives, and of course the hazards ofvacuum and atmospheric pressure, while also providing things like comprehensivelife support for hours in a very tiny paage (well, truth to tell, to get tothat specification, oxygen still took up way too mu space), advanced and userfriendlycommand network linkup, strategic reflective and cybernetic displays,magnetic aaments and even jet thrusters — all the while allowing full rangeof effortless limb motion. e scientists were working on armour that wouldwork comfortably in planets with high atmospheric pressure — even though actuallygeing to su planets was so far only theoretical, unless they wanted togo diamond-hunting in Jupiter's core or something silly like that — and they werefairly confident that the Mk. IV would satisfy the Space Marine Corps' undoubtedlypressing theoretical need to wage war in the Challenger Deep. e Marinesthemselves had just put in requests to up the power of the jet thrusters so thatthey could actually li a person in atmosphere rather than just providing manoeuverabilityin vacuum. Public relations were important and civilians thoughtjetpaing troopers were awesome.With armour upgraded to those high-pressure specifications, perhaps theycould start working on geing the weapons work in those specifications next.e primary Marine assault rifle, Edmonton-built RMGZ Mk. III, or the irdUnpronounceable, was not quite as resilient in the strangest of the strange placesthe Marines ventured in, and wider range of weapons was very mu needed. Butright now, in plain old vacuum, the trusty old assault rifles would work perfectly.“Looking good, ma'am!” private Newkins shouted. “Tether is secure!”Daleworth had wondered, for a while, how to handle the boarding, as shewas not sure what exactly was waiting for in the other side, but as Newkins hadmanaged to jet his way to the doorway and found a secure-looking column toaa a motion tether to, the problem disappeared. Tethered mooring it was,then.“Outstanding”, Daleworth said. “e doctor goes first.”“How do I—”Without bothering to explain, Daleworth pushed a buon in Dr. Grovepath'swrist computer. A short length of cord with a loing device popped loose, andDaleworth quily ran it around the tether and loed it in its place. “ere. Newkinswill help you get it undone on the other end. When you grasp on the tetherwith both hands on the unstriped zone, it will act like a powered zipline. In thestriped zone, you need to move on your own, but that's only the first and last meters or so. Just do a lile bit of Tarzan moves to get across. It's easier than itsounds like.”Dr. Grovepath frowned, but wasn't really in mood to argue. Perhaps the lieutenantwas right, aer all. He jumped off the shulecra's doorway and begansliding along the tether, and was quite surprised to find that it really was as sim-

ple as it sounded like. Once he got across the tiger-striped part of the tether andgot to the single-coloured light-blue part, he took a good grip of it with his otherhand, and then, bracing for the journey, took a grip with the other. With a gentlepull, the tether meanism slowly started to pull him toward the station, then increasedin speed, then decreased again before Grovepath could even really thinkabout it; he then crossed the remaining part with just the same effort to rea thewaiting private Newkins, who helped him to sele on the space station.e rest of the company followed him with far less confusion — even theother newcomer, private Fairwind, seemed to handle it with fairly good order —and Daleworth came last.“All right, let's see if we can figure out how do we get in this station”, Daleworthsaid.“W—what about the tether?” Dr. Grovepath asked. He was still a lile bitdazed: it appeared to him that Daleworth was really good at pressing on forward,even when seemingly obvious hazards were right there at hand.“What about the damn tether?” Daleworth said.“Well, what if something goes wrong? What if the shule engines fail? eshule could just wound up around the rotating station and end up crashing—”“Don't worry about it so mu, doctor. We've never failed with orbiting tethereddoing so far. Is the tether secure, Newkins?”“Sure is, ma'am! Double-eed it twice, 'cause that's how I roll, ma'am! Gotmy benign neuroses, ma'am!”“Monk Mike Delta Leader to — What's the orbit and engine status, Ford?”“We're green on both, ma'am”, nd Lieutenant Ford replied from his copit.“See, doctor? it worrying.” He then turned to the soldiers. “To the rookies:our Monk call sign is just Mike Delta.” In Space Marine Corps, ea platoon hada “Monk” call sign, usually just “Monk” followed by the commander's initials inradio alphabet. It was used when the platoon was not assigned to any specificconflict zone and were working on non-combat assignments. “So, if we're justminding our business and not thrown in middle of a damn war, you're MonkMike Delta Alpha ” — Daleworth pointed to Newkins — “and you're Alpha .”Daleworth pointed to Fairwind.“Yes, ma'am.” the two privates said in unison.“And when we're in the conflict zone, those numbers usually stay. Usually.It has never been my call to stir up the numbers for no particular reason. If Ikeep calling you by names in the bale, someone else came up with an intuitivenumbering system that probably needed too mu time to get used to.” She liedher assault rifle again. “All right, let's move.”ere was, in fact, and easy and obvious way in.

IV. A R S Se eight walls with crenellations were just the outer shell of the structure —and outer wall, if the castle analogy made any sense. e “keep” behind the wallswas even more of a mystery: sheer mineral walls, with paerns of stone. Behindthe wall was a small courtyard; the ground was mostly covered with steel plates,allowing the soldiers to explore it with a lile help from their magnetic boots.“What do the scanners say, doctor?” Daleworth asked.Dr. Grovepath frowned. “Uh… well, this thing didn't come with a manual,and it's been almost a decade since I've toued a Bauhaus-Wulff scanner — notthat I'd generally object to European scanners from tenological perspective, it'sjust that my stepbrother invested in Detroit ProbeTe—”“What the hell do the scanners say, doctor?” Daleworth said, with a bit clearer,slower and slightly more menacing tone.“—buuu-uut if I remember anything about the symbols, I think it's trying totell me the outer walls have a large amounts of silicates. It's just showing me theemical compounds right now. Hmm… SiO 2 . at's, uh, quartz, right?”“Silicon, huh? ese walls are some sort of… a giant computer ip, maybe?”“I didn't say that. If I were you, I'd hesitate to jump into conclusions like thatwithout any evidence…”Daleworth shrugged. “But it's plausible, right? Don't mind me, I'm just concernedabout Planner ploys, doctor.”“Well, if I can only figure out the buons, I can try to see what the scannersays of the surface details.” Dr. Grovepath wrestled with the user interface for awhile — he was sure the maine had collected the data, but wasn't very surehow to get it to show it to him. “Ah. Here it is. Hmmm… Yep, a bun of silicondioxide, and a bun of other oxides. Identifies it as ‘glass’.”“Well, it looks more like polished stone to me”, Daleworth said.“Well, that's what glass is, right? Molten stone, more or less. Um, and toanswer your concerns, the scanner doesn't seem to identify clearly artificial microformationsand…” Dr. Grovepath pushed more buons. “…also concludes theelectric resistance of the surface is high and there's no measurable electric flowpresent. Whi is to say, it's prey unlikely this would be a giant computer ip.”“Always good to hear”, Daleworth said. “But does this look like any saneperson would build? Structures of glass, stone, whatever — and metal?”“It certainly sounds unprecedented to me. Glass or stone isn't exactly thebest material for spacecra exterior, on the account of risk melting it during thereentry…”“Like meteorites, right?”“Like meteorites. e ones that end up to the ground seem tough and devastating,until you remember the bulk of the meteorites tend to break up in theatmosphere.”“But could a big, reinforced structure like this survive reentry?”

“Well, it's possible. ough on a qui look, there's no sign that this structurewould have ever experienced that.”“All right. Let's move on.”e “keep” had big doors on the side opposite of the main “gate” — again, avery human-like detail that reminded Dr. Grovepath of fortresses on Earth. Of allthings, they didn't expect to see a carving in the door that looked like an apple.Aside of the general “castleness” of the outside, there were few easily identifiabledetails in the walls and “courtyard” floor outside, so the clear, distinct, familiarshape was doubly striking.“Lights on, if you prefer to see anything”, Daleworth shouted, mu to therelief of the squad, who had been strictly instructed on refraining from anythingthat might aract undue aention to them. One by one, the floodlights on the bothsides of every squadmember's helmets fliered on, as were the lights mounted ontheir assault rifles. Dr. Grovepath took a flashlight from a compartment in his suitand struggled a lile bit to turn it on; he was still geing used to the suit gloves.“Define Suit Program, whole unit: Command words ‘contact’ and ‘movement’will kill lights and activate light amplification. End Program.” Daleworth said,waiting a second or two for the suit computers would register the voice-activatedcommands. “Just say either of those words if you see anything suspicious, doctor.”“So if I see any movement…” Dr. Grovepath began, and immediately regreedit.“Sorry,” he continued a minute later aer the lights were ba on and thekillword programming had been redone. “I will keep all this in my mind.”“Don't worry, doctor, this killword stuff will almost always bite us in the arsein most missions.” Daleworth sighed.“is does seem quite impractical”, Dr. Grovepath said. “How does it work inthe situations when you actually need it?”“Glad I'm not the only one who finds these a royal pain. Actually, it workssurprisignly well to protect our own safety”, Daleworth said. “We just need asafety procedure to kill the lights and hide in case the danger rears its ugly head.We could let the suit computers adapt to adrenaline levels, but we found that thatwasn't very effective.”“I see”, Dr. Grovepath said. “I've never seen a working mood detector…”“Oh really?” Daleworth asked.“We tested a few of these that the students built as part of a class project once.ey called it the ‘perfect living space’, we old professor fogeys just called it a‘not-so-smart house’. e systems basically toggled between serving coffee orpuing up romantic lights.”“Hey, almost perfect for my cabin in the ship”, Daleworth said.“Really, now—” Dr. Grovepath began and almost blushed.“—except I'm rarely at my cabin.” Daleworth laughed.

IV. A R S Sey looked at the space station. Even Daleworth had to concede that thedeliberate, careful design of the station didn't agree with the notions that this wasPlanner work; Planners were more known for relatively simple and functionalityorientedspaceship designs for motherships that could deploy a terrifying metallicrain of robots on distant worlds on a moment's notice, and no one had ever seena cra that would look so intricate and detailed. Planners valued simplicity, verysimple geometric shapes; the ships just didn't look defensible. Planners oen usedadvanced electromagnetic shielding, and absence of su in this space station waseither a sign that this was not a Planner cra, or that it was very cunning trap.And the more the crew looked, the trap theory seemed less and less likely.e main keep itself was, like the walls surrounding it, octagonal, but as theexplorers entered its interior, they saw an anteamber and a circular corridorwith side ambers — their scale and their doorways seemingly built for giants.Ea door was almost as big as the gateway outside, about meters tall and wide. Even Daleworth's imagination started to race aer she heard Dr. Grovepath'sthoughts: this seemed like a castle in the skies, occupied by giants of thefairytales. She just hoped their lile beanstalk was kept in good working order ifthey needed to evacuate the giant's castle.As they entered the great amber within the big circular corridor, they sawmore things that reminded them of fortresses.“is really is a damn castle, ma'am”, Fairwind said.“Fine, I'll eat my words”, Daleworth said. “I'll be ready to call this a castle.”e beams of light from the assault rifles pointed up shone through the darkness,aenuating to the majestic height of the interior amber, the weak beamsunable to rea the ceiling, barely able to light the far side of the amber as itwas.“Oh my. I wonder how huge this is?” Dr. Grovepath said. “ meters? Atleast meters.”“You've got a laser rangefinder in the helmet”, Daleworth said. “Choose ArtilleryFire Control tools through the command interface, followed by Rangefinder.”“Right, uh…” Dr. Grovepath struggled a lile bit with the interface; he hadgiven up trying to let the mind-maine interface to aune to his brain signals,and the buons in the gloves, whi were not custom made for him, were in veryinconvenient spots. He finally started up the rangefinder, and looked up. “meters. ite large amber, indeed!”“And you needed minutes to figure that out, doctor”, Daleworth said withsome clear amusement.“Point taken, lieutenant…”But the amber was, indeed, downright majestic in its glory that sprawledin the heights. ey could see the walls definitely had some castle-like look, withgreat banners hanging from them, and as far as they could see, the banners also

hung from the ceiling. All the room needed was tapestries of great bales of yeolde mediaeval tyme, a not-so-roaring-in-vacuum fireplace, a throne and a fewguys in silly spacesuits pluing lutes silenced by the dead of the space. Daleworthdidn't feel she was thinking straight, and had to keep concentrating on thetask at hand, even when she knew there was lile harm in using a lile bit ofimagination in times like these.Yet, a great castle amber it wasn't; the walls were bare, the hall without athrone and trappings. Instead, great staircase and elevated platform circled thehall, and it seemed that in the middle, there was likewise a raised platform of steeland stone.In the middle, between the circling platform and the lower platform in themiddle, were great cylinders of stone. Or perhaps “cylinder” was a bit mu; theoverall shape was cylindrical, but on a closer inspection, they seemed far moreegg-like, with a slightly sharper top and a slightly round boom. On a qui count,there were thirty-three of them around the amber, with one in the middle beingslightly larger than the rest. Ea were about meters tall and in diameter;the largest one reaing about by . e cylinders stood on platforms withsome kind of meanisms, somewhat seat-like in their construction, with clearcogs and wheels; in the land of vague familiarity, it was once again strange tosee su direct similiarity with Earth's concepts. e surface of the cylinders wasclearly stone-like, with geometric veins of metal on them, with their boom thirdsmore clearly almost solid metal in its appearance.“Beta, sear the other rooms, then return here”, Daleworth ordered. “Gamma,keep wat on the anteamber and the doors to this room. Alpha, let's see what'swaiting for us on the upper level. Come with me, doctor.”But as the soldiers reaed the top platform, they were stru by many familiarities.Up to that point, they had not seen many recogniseable symbols. ey couldnow see them everywhere.Familiar, Earth-conceived symbols were in the banners above. Old symbols,familiar to anyone with even passing interest in heraldry.A rampant lion.Rampant lions were just everywhere.A cross.A boar.A heart.A dragon with a raised claw.A crescent of moon.A wolf's head.And they could see writing. ere had been no writing up to that point. Seeingwriting felt downright illing.

IV. A R S SIt was fairly common-sense truism of araeology. Seeing writing, in that oldfamiliar clearly iseled Latin capital alphabet, was supposed to be making theidentification and analysis easier for umpteenth-generation descendants of thesame people. e languages came and went, but even laymen could recognisedsome familiar things — as long as the leers were the same old ones.And sometimes, the merciful bliss of la of reference point, the inability tounderstand what was going on, was a good thing. When that reference pointcame, things turned confusing and curious. e easier things were identify, thefaster the questions rose.And now, questions were immediately at hand.“What the hell?” Daleworth said.CAIUS.PALAMIDAS.GAWEIN.GARETH.TRISTAM.“Does any of this ring any bell, ma'am? Doctor?” Fairwind said.“It does, private. It just doesn't make mu sense”, Daleworth said.“I'm… a bit at loss”, Dr. Grovepath said. “is… uh, I think I'd need to study thisproperly before I give you my well-weighted opinion—” Daleworth could hear thedoctor was about to say something, and his noble ideal of careful considerationswas definitely being tested.“Holy crap, what the hell is this”, came some soldier's shout. Daleworth waslost in thought as she walked forward.LAUNCELOT.GALAHAD.PERCIVALE.Even the most oblivious Alpha squad members started to feel apprehensive,that mu was clear to Daleworth. e cries of surprise gave way to stunnedsilence.“I thought these guys were supposed to be buried under a corny tourist resortin Cornwall”, Daleworth uered. And, of course, she regreed it immediately.For some reason, this just didn't seem like a time and place to make su jokes.Not in the least.Especially as they neared the biggest cylinder.ARTHUR PENDRAGON RIOTHAMUS.e soldiers stood before the cylinder in awe. e leers were bigger thanthe rest, and it was fairly clear that unlike the steel finish of the leering in othercylinders, these leers were in solid gold.“Damn”, Daleworth finally said. “King Arthur and the Knights of the RoundTable.”

“at… could be one way of interpreting it.” Dr. Grovepath began.Daleworth looked at the doctor with some clear irkedness. She had almostbelieved right then and there that these really were the tombs of the long-lostknights. Of course, she knew that was rubbish, and it was up to the doctor toperform the unpleasant task of bringing her ba to the reality. She wasn't reallysure how to interpret the doctor's tone — perhaps he was just as stru as shewas, and just tried to fill the void with something that sounded insightful, butthat coincidentally uerly ruined the whole situation they were in.“Really now?” Daleworth said.“Well, aren't many of the… weapons… in Earth named aer mythical figures?Isn't there some kind of a weapon system called Galahad, for example…?”“ere is”, Daleworth said and sighed. She could see where the doctor wasgoing. “A non-lethal gas bomb designed to incapacitate large crowds. I actuallyordered a few to be fired in the Gibraltar riots ba in May of '. And there's amissile system called Riothamus. I knew where the name came from, and had toexplain it to a lot of people.”“So perhaps these are nothing but labels, pied from the Earth's myths andhistory.”“I guess you could be right.” Daleworth was feeling a bit weird: A momentago, she was the paranoid one, worried about Planners behind every corner, andnow something in this place seemed to make her believe that this could be a keyto ending the war. She felt Dr. Grovepath had suddenly became the one ramblingabout Planners. She had to say something. “I… I don't think this looks too mulike Planner handiwork, though.”“I concur”, Dr. Grovepath said.Daleworth bit her lip, somehow feeling fortunate that her helmet visor didn'tbetray her conflicting feelings to Dr. Grovepath. It all felt a bit strange. ey wereon the same side, honest…“You can really ruin a dream, doctor”, Daleworth finally said. “Not that Iblame you.”“Well, let's be realistic here”, Dr. Grovepath said. “Whi is more likely: havewe stumbled on the final resting place of legendary knights, or an inexplicableweapon cae that somehow borrows names from the legend?”“I know, it's just…” Daleworth began. “We sort of would need the Knights ofthe Round Table right now.”“We all need heroes, lieutenant…”“True.” Daleworth sighed.“I can guess the war is going prey badly”, Dr. Grovepath said, “but I don'treally know if I wanted the Knights of the Round Table to join the fray…”“Oh?” Daleworth sounded intrigued.“Well, they were a biering lot, weren't they? Vanquishing robber barons

IV. A R S Sand rescuing damsels from perpetually sinking swamp castles and overthrowingevil kings and whatnot was the boring part — the really interesting parts were theones where the knights fought ea other.” Dr. Grovepath looked at the cylinders.“Lancelot and Arthur right beside ea other. Didn't they go into war against eaother in the end?”“Right.” Daleworth didn't remember enough about the myths, but noddedalong. “Anyway, the mystery deepens”, Daleworth said. “If this is not an obviousPlanner ploy, what can it possibly be?”“Some sort of other alien race trying to make a contact? Not that we know ofany…”“Dunno, ma'am, looks like too few weird-ass monoliths and fancy mansionsuites with golden beds in here…” Sergeant Haman joined the conversation.“I take you just saw the film and didn't read the book, Haman?” Dr. Grovepathsaid. “e whole point of the scene was that it was careful mimicry of humanenvironment. And does this look like careful mimicry to you?”Haman shrugged. “Guess you're right, doctor. Why did they do all thatweird shit in the book, anyway?”It was Dr. Grovepath's turn to look slightly embarrassed. “Uh, it's actuallybeen years since I read the book. I… can't really remember why they botheredwith all that.”“All right. Care to try to see what the scanner says about what's inside, doctor?”Doctor fired up macro-level scanners and could only see very vague views ofwhat the insides of the capsules looked like.“Hmm… they look like they're hollow. ere's a thi lead or metal shielding,probably, so all I can see are vague eoes. ere is… well, it's hard to say whatthat is, but it looks to me like there's some sort of mainery in there. at thingthere… hmm… I think that looks a lot like a roet engine assembly? Yes, theouter shell definitely has some sort of a roet engine. I can't see any obvious fueltank or fuel lines, though…”“Beta!” Daleworth shouted. “Have you ogled at the weirdness enough already?”Apparently, the Beta Squad had fallen under the same spell as Alphaand forgoen to report in to Daleworth, and was now, along with Alpha, alsobusy marveling the sights of the central amber.“Yes, ma'am!” Seargeant Paul V. Cronner, Beta Squad's leader, said. issergeant wasn't quite as enthusiastic rising star as Haman, but he was a goodsoldier. Daleworth couldn't quite remember the last time she had seen him out ofhis armour; the man rarely le the Moonbat and had said he felt way too weirdto sleep in his bunk in the Mannerheim; if he didn't wake up siing on his seatnext to his combat-ready squad in the , he said he just didn't feel like he washome. Daleworth was happy Cronner was being enthusiastic, but she also felt his

enthusiasm was slightly overdoing it, however.“Got anything worth reporting in the other rooms?” Daleworth asked.“Strange boxes, ma'am. Nothing but all these weird boxes. ey're kind of likethe stone cylinders here. Couldn't see any way to open 'em, and the scanners saidthere could be some equipment in there, but couldn't tell what it was. Some weirdmainery, probably. Not mu that we could see were exactly openly shown —all we could see were boxes and cubes of stone. But one of the rooms had somesort of a giant glass sphere, too.”“Right. Merlin's crystall ball, probably”, Dr. Grovepath muered. e conclusionhad been far too obvious.“Anything that might have helped us to comprehend what the hell this placeis used for, or could tell where it came from?”“Not that we could spot, ma'am. Same sort of banners as you can see in thisroom, ma'am.”“All right.” Daleworth flied annels. “Beta and Gamma, return to the exteriourand prepare to return to the shule. Alpha Squad, prepare for EVA. I'mreturning to the shule with the doctor. Let's see what's below.”e M– shule bridge and command room was at least pressurised duringthe journey, and was quite spacious, having far enough space for Daleworth anda few other officers to make strategic decisions.“Major Plaerman is trying to rea you, lieutenant”, nd Lieutenant Fordsaid.“Pat him through, Ford.” e major's picture appeared on the display on theside of the command room. “Major, sir”, Daleworth said.“Good job so far, Daleworth”, Plaerman said. “And good to finally meet you,Doctor Grovepath. I am Major William Plaerman.”“I have heard of you, Major. I used to work with your predecessor and hispredecessor.”“Who?”“Captain Underwood and Major Rankin, of the Roetry and Space ResearCentre.”“I see.” Plaerman sighed. “I am aware of your situation. is is hardly thetime to discuss it in detail, doctor. I believe you want your security clearanceba?”“No, I don't want my security clearance. I — on the behalf of my entire department,he, the entire faculty — want free access to your unclassified material, theway it was before.”“But I take it the University already has access to—”“If you take a look at the policies currently in place”, Dr. Grovepath said, “you'd

IV. A R S Snotice massive differences in the policies before and aer Rankin's reign.”“I'm not that familiar with the situation, doctor, but I promise I will take alook at the situation at the earliest possible opportunity.” Plaerman turned toDaleworth. “But I need to discuss what you've discovered on the alien cra. KingArthur? I'm not sure what to say, lieutenant.”“e whole thing just boggles the mind, sir”, Daleworth said.“I agree. How is your EVA team doing, and why did you order them to goaround the station?”“Just wanted to make sure every angle is covered”, Daleworth said. “MonkMike Delta Leader to Alpha Leader. How's the EVA going, Haman?”Another monitor came to life, showing video feed from the belly of the station.e camera shook a bit as Haman looked about; his feet and arms waved in theview briefly, and one could see he was floating a few dozen meters away fromthe surface of the station, a loose tether behind him. e other members of theAlpha Squad could be seen in the distance behind him, likewise examining thesurroundings. Daleworth pushed a few buons, and the video feed from the otherAlpha members filled yet another screen on the command room's wall.“No obstructions so far, ma'am”, Sergeant Haman said. “ere's absolutelynothing remarkable in the top side of the station — it's just dull wall aer dullwall. e crenellations looked exactly what they looked like. But the boom sideis definitely more interesting, ma'am. e boom side looks fairly flat, but thereare some sort of circular rims here. Take a look, ma'am.”e picture on the monitors revealed, indeed, circular rims; ea raised smoothlytoward the center, then fell to the surface, smoothly surrounding a cylindricalarea. e area itself had stone-and-steel boom, but ea of the areas were faintlydivided to eight sections.“Are you thinking what I'm thinking, doctor?”“If you're thinking of laun holes…”“Yes.”“at sounds plausible. ey look like they're about the same size as the stonecylinders in the central amber?”“at was what I was thinking too, ma'am. And there seems to be one forea of the capsules there, too”“So this is some sort of an orbital weapon”, Plaerman said.“Yes.” e conclusion illed Daleworth. She couldn't do mu but to think ofthe mystery at hand, but Plaerman was talking about the military reality of thesituation, and the conclusions might hinder further study.“With bombs named aer Knights of the Round Table.”“Yes. Sir!”“Yes, lieutenant?”Daleworth was alarmed, but tried to stay calm. “What are you planning to do

about this thing, sir?”“We need to study this station further, mayor!” Dr. Grovepath was obviouslymore plainly agitated than Daleworth. “is space station is of great interest toscientists! You cannot possibly consider it a threat!”“I agree — someone might consider it a threat, but I cannot, and neither canthe General. Don't worry, doctor. I'm already with talks with Mannerheim'screw. General Pyrehill has seen the footage and says the station will be traedand monitored, and Mannerheim will stay in orbit to cover it.”“What exactly does Pyrehill plan to do with it?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“For now, nothing. We'll keep the guns aimed at it, but will not fire as longas there's no obvious threat to us. As soon as we can get the scientists aboardMannerheim, we'll start arranging further expeditions. We'd hope you can stayaboard until then — we need all the scientific help we can get, doctor.”“I will accept that, as long as I can let the folks in the Department to knowthat I'll be staying a lile bit longer than I intended, mayor.”“You can contact them from the ship, doctor.”“Fine. I can't wait to begin unraveling this mystery, Major, and I'm glad I canhelp you with that”, Dr. Grovepath said.“Anything else to report, Haman?” Daleworth asked.“Not in the least, ma'am. Guess we'll leave the rest to the scientists, ma'am?”“Agreed. Return to the shule, Alpha, and let's get ba to the Mannerheim.Guess we've all earned our bed rest tonight.”“Is Plaerman always like that?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Yep”, Daleworth said. “e whole military is like that.”“Wouldn't say you are. You're at least sensible.”“Well, I'm just a lowly platoon commander”, Daleworth said and scrated herhead. “I just do the real stuff. Don't ask me how things should be really done…”“Military is weird”, Dr. Grovepath said.Daleworth uled. “You can say that again!”V Sanguine Fren TwilightFebruary 13, 2632, 02:14 UTCG P at the monitors in horror.He hoped the scanner was lagging and the contact staying up on the screenwas just a glit. But other units moved on the screen and it was clear that theSaladin was still moving. When the the junior officers in the Sword Bea bunkerwere just as shaken as he was, he didn't really want to hear what they said next.

V. S F THe knew what they would say, and he knew what they would say would be avery ugly truth indeed.e world was doomed, and they'd need miracles now.“Torpedo blast absorbed”, nd Lieutenant Batmann said. “Contact is still there,sir.”“Direct hit, no effect. Target now out of range”, came a report from the frigate'sgunners.“at was the biggest shot we had. Dammit” Pyrehill leaned on the desk andhung his head, trying his best to show to his men that he was calculative andnot defeated yet. “Saladin, you may disengage. ank you for trying, you mayreturn to the bale plan. Please come to Earth as soon as you humanly can, weneed every ship we have.”“Understood. Saladin disengaging. Sorry we couldn't help. Over and out”,Captain Stoman replied over command network.“So mu for last dit efforts, then”, Pyrehill muered to himself, then turnedto Batmann. “Estimate on how soon that bogey reaes Earth?”“About hours, sir, give or take some.”“I guess this is it, then. e war has nowhere to go. It comes home. It's time.”February 15, 2632, 15:14 UTCDaleworth pulled on her power armour's gloves and sighed a lile bit. Before sheput her helmet on, she huned down and buried her forehead to the flexmetalgloves, feeling the grease on her forehead. No time for shower. e M– washeading to Earth. She didn't know what was going on, except for the fact that oneof those damn Planner cras was heading straight to Earth, too.at, of course, was not very good news.So this is where things have come to…Daleworth pulled on her helmet and prepared, for the first time in years andthe first time since her basic training, to fight on Earth. She had fought in lowgravity of the moons and moderate gravity of Mars, fought in starry skies underalien skies, but now, she was ba in the cradle of humanity.ey'd be fighting in a plain ordinary evening. e twilight. e twilight ofhumanity if it came to that.e last fight would be sad and beautiful.Right now, e Lenin Co-operative's shule is taking Tankerman and Wolffto Mars for Captain Bluebrook's burial, Daleworth thought. ey could be saved,if we fall here and now. But…Daleworth put her helmet on, loed it, and pied up her assault rifle. Angerswelled in her as she looked out of the window.

A display lit up in her helmet. Drop zone coordinates near Paris.Open field. Trenes had been dialed up — Daleworth imagined Plaermandrawing tren vectors on the map from his comfortable air, and ordering themto be dug — and they would be available when they came to the drop zone.Calculated position of the enemy cra in the end of the landing orbit appearedon the other side of the balefield. A white cross on the map at the end of a doedline.And a curious entry.“Suspected coordinates of the enemy.”Another cross, only in red and grey this time, and only about meters awayfrom the calculated position.e Planners just gloated. ey always gloated, and they never, never announcedanything. But Daleworth was stru by these “Suspected coordinates”.She just knew what had happened.Now, the Planner bastars were gloating beforehand.e military wanted everyone know that they were playing with estimates,not solid facts that were wrien in stone. When people saw estimates, they knewto trust them only as far as they seemed to be true. Great many bales had beenlost because the soldiers were blindly following information that was leadingthem to their doom. e high commanders wanted the officers on the field tothink what was actually going on, rather than hold their hands on every stepalong the way. Everyone was honest with this setup: e officers saw the estimates,they led by the estimates, and made good calls on how to follow the data.When every soldiers saw first hand that the estimates were complete baloney,however, the commanders could make efficient decisions on how not to followthe data. While the data was being collected, it was constantly adjusted as the situationdeveloped. Everyone could see the numbers get fiddled with right beforetheir eyes. e recon fed the computers new data, the commanders analysed theinformation coming from soldiers, and somewhere, the computers would crunthe numbers and spit them ba out to the rank and file.In this light, a “suspected coordinate” that just sat there with no explanationwhatsoever and without any data to ba it up stu out like a sore thumb. It wasautomatically suspicious.It was automatically something that almost begged a label “explanation forthcoming”.Someone, somewhere — in all likelihood the generals — had received somenot-so-gentlemanly communiques from the enemy that told exactly where thefight was going to take place. Daleworth hoped they'd play the message babefore the fighting started. is was not the hour of secrets, and she damn wellknew the even the most secrets-loving generals would realise that.e Planners wanted the Space Marines to be there. ey knew we wouldn't

V. S F Twin.But damn if they thought they could win. ey knew humanity would bedefending the homes to the last drop of blood. ey had to know that by now.Daleworth's brows furrowed as she wated the view from the window asthe M– pierced the lowest cloud layers. She could see open fields belowthe shule, and Dragon fighter planes circling the area. She could see trencuingdemolition arges being set off below them, long narrow bands of smokeand debris ploughing the snowy fields below them far heavier than the farmersusually bothered.ey'd drop down, go in nice and orderly trenes in a balefield that waspractically prepared for them.ey'd wage war with an enemy who wanted to have a neat, clean and inhumanbale. Just what you'd expect from maines.Are they preying on their predictability, or are they the predictable ones?Daleworth thought, trying to get her thoughts away from hopelessness and anger.Daleworth knew that they might not find the answer to that question today.If they wouldn't find out the answer, there might not be a tomorrow where thatanswer would mean anything in the first place.Countdown to drop started.“Let's dig in and give them hell!” Daleworth shouted.“Yes, ma'am!” e platoon roared in unison.Daleworth drew breath, engaged armour warming and hold on to the seathandles as the shule shook, hurtling down the last few kilometers. e shuleside door opened to the blinding brightness of a winter day.e countdown stru zero.“For Mother Earth!” Daleworth shouted as she leapt down from the shule,falling about meters to the tren, her power armour absorbing the impacteasily. She could see Alpha, Beta and Gamma Squads follow her, the sergeantsbarking them to take positions in the cover. e M– engines made the blueskies above them ripple, and with a deafening roar, the shule retreated ba tothe skies.Dammit if this was a goodbye to the old war horse. Daleworth waved to thepilot, wondering if he'd be strong enough to look at her here, knowing that thistime, he really could have dropped them straight to the Hell.“General Pyrehill to all units”, the general said over the command link. “Nuclearweapons will be prepared, but their use has not yet been authorised. eenemy has shielding, and we cannot damage it directly. God knows we've tried.But once the shielding is gone, I want everyone to prepare for nuclear strike.”e snowy rye field opened around them, and Daleworth just stood there ina power armour and with an assault rifle in her hands. e air was still, withnippy winter ill, and Daleworth felt she could see forever; the sky was a dome

of deep blue, the ground was flat and white, the horizon was a mess of brownleafless trees in the distance. She looked at the weather-beaten farmhouse, grainsilos and animal shelter a lile bit behind them in the distance, evacuated as soonas they found out what was going to happen here. For a moment, her mind racedba to one mid–s film that managed to beautifully revive the old Red Marscommunist-era science fiction films; here she was, in a goofy space suit, in middleof a desolate farm landscape waiting for not-so-very-cool-looking enemies toshow their badly constructed tin can bodies. e special effects were horrible, butthe cinematography, locations and the passionate acting saved the day. Oh well,war was going to be absurd business in every way imaginable anyway…e hills to the le were being filled to the brim with soldiers. In this lilepat of land, about four kilometers by two, the fate of the humanity would besealed… or they could hope the bastards would give up, once again.But one crucial thing was certain to Daleworth. No maer what happened,things wouldn't be the same.ey could be annihilated. at was one option.Or they could drive them out. en they would need to explain to the peoplethat that's what the military has been doing for the past years. Drivingthe Planners out. at's what the military did. ey were the World FederationDefence Forces. Victory wasn't their priority. It could have been, if anyone justknew how to hell that could be done. But defence? Now that was an old hat…e public at large might have understood what that meant, before — at leaston some intellectual level. If they survived today, the public at learge would knowwhat it would actually mean.February 15, 2632, 19:22 UTCe situation was about to turn messy. Everybody knew it; as Daleworth hadexpected, the Planners had broadcast the place and hour of their supposed aain advance.“We shall make a landfall. We shall come to Earth and conquer it. Your cities,your factories, your facilities shall all serve our goals, even in ruins.”All that rot.It didn't mean mu to Daleworth. e robot bastards wouldn't succeed aslong as she was alive and kiing bu.And there they came.“We've got ship contact! e bogey is coming in now!…” came a warningfrom some spoer in the radar cra. e spoer betrayed his inexperience toDaleworth immediately. “Oooh God damn it, what the hell is that?”

V. S F T“Take us the hell out of here! Now! Now!” Daleworth could barely hear someonescream over the radar spoer's microphone. e radar would be out andthey'd need to rely on their eyes on the hill. e Air Force knew that this kind ofPlanner cra meant that every cra should stay the hell off the air until the groundforces said the situation was clear… and since that never happened, they'd usuallyhave to wait until the thing took off and le.Out of the clouds, at a dazzling speed, emerged a large spaceship; at first itssize was not apparent to the observers, as its surface was adapting to the shadesof the atmospheric haze. It appeared to almost drop from the sky in a mannerthat disoriented the viewer, almost like a giant ro that came from edge of thevision; it appeared from the sky at an unnatural speed, emerging from the deepeningred sky, widening from handspan width to width that filled half the viewin seconds. Within the span of a few eyeblinks, two of the Dragon fighters explodedin mid-air, one quily dodged and disengaged from the fight as fast asit could, and one couldn't dodge in time; it hurtled straight into the alien cra'sside, exploding without leaving a dent, merely causing the cra's deflector shieldforce field, vaguely but definitely visible around the ship, to flash gently.“Planner Carrier!” Daleworth screamed as she heard gigantic explosions endthe Talon rotor whirring behind her. Nothing was going to fly as long as the carrierwas around. “Get your bus to the turf, or that thing will mow you down!”e carrier braked in the air almost effortlessly, and almost noiselessly, itssurface arcing with electricity as it took a deep green hue — probably its nativecolour. A large, flat plane with round edges, covered with a grid of diamondshapesof tube neing of some alien function, formed the alien cra's body; twospherical compartments, big on the front and and small in the ba, were visible onthe top, with one large bulge covering the boom. e ship would have appearedroughly egg-shaped if observed directly from the top, its blunt end in the bow.Daleworth didn't even flin at the swi appearance of the spaceship, butthere was some deep-seated horror in her mind. A carrier was one of the heaviestships the Planners had in their fleet, and mere sight of one told Daleworth thatthe Planners had one goal in mind: Swi destruction of all heavy defenses… andall defenders. She had seen one in action.Just a while ago, in Titan.Almost total destruction.So many civilian casualties. So few survivors.It was a fate that Daleworth wanted to avoid here. But how? She was just asclueless — like everyone else in the goddamn Defence Forces — on how to stopthat from happening in Titan, and was certainly just as clueless now.Based on the markings in the front, at least this particular cra didn't looklike the exact same one they had faced there; whatever gods there may be at leastgave that mu comfort to them, sparing Daleworth's troupe from fighting the

same carrier twice in a row…e alien cra landed, hovering for a moment over the balefield and droppinga small horde of robots on the balefield from the doors beneath. Smallinfantry robots that moved on threads and gunned everyone and everything withtiny laser turrets… Bigger, heavier robots on wheels with lile less maneuverability,but heavier laser turrets, capable of higher speed of fire… Similar ones withrail guns, able to pun neat clean holes in almost all Terran tanks… Ten-metertall,tra-mounted goddamn big fu-off high-energy plasma turrets that didn'tjust scor buildings, they goddamn melted goddamn holes in goddamn bunkersin goddamn seconds… Robots that resembled six-wheeled cars that had roetlauners on them… Ea robot was painted bla or deep blue, and Daleworthstill remembered the Planner gloating from three years ago when the Plannershad swited to darker shades, from the tarnished white they probably used forheat shielding purposes. “We come in the night. We are now dark as the lightlessnessitself. We are not invisible, and prefer not to be. Your defeat is unevitable.In the lightless long night of your destruction, you can only hear our motors, seenothing but our weapon fire. Fear us. Fear us.”Only the heavy plasma guns on the ship's bow remained silent, clearly havingnothing to do aer clearing the airspace. Daleworth knew they'd fire upon anyenemies they'd see. And if the ship was here to stay, that was going to be a lilebit of a problem for any soldier who wanted to poke their nose out of the cover.In Earth's atmosphere, the giant ship's shielding devices produced a strange,raling noise that none had heard before, but that seemed awfully familiar tothose who had fought the Planners in the colonies. e robots rolled forwardand took their positions, and the ship slowly landed, opening doors for the Plannertanks, whi immediately rolled out, bringing even more devastating plasmalauners and laser towers to the balefield. A huge laser and plasma launerplatform, resembling an unholy union between a giant spider, a flo of constructioncranes and an old-fashioned oil drilling rig, half rolled forth, half ambled onits legs to its place in the scene, eventually mounting its legs in the turf. e scenewas clearly set.e dark, meanical army advanced, and their mother waited at the end ofthe balefield for the ildren to come home from a feast of human flesh.* * *

V. S F T15 TH 0F FEBRUARY, 2632 AD, YE START 0F YE CIVIL TWILIGHT IN WINTRY KINGD0MS 0F BRITANNIAACTIVATI0N HATH BEEN M0ST SUCCESSFUL, SIRE, EVEN M0RE S0 THAN I DARED T0 DREAM. BUT H0LDN0W TH0U STILL, WHILST I MAKE THESE MACHINES T0 FIT THE STANDARDS 0F THE 0NG0ING ERAYE MENTAL FACULTIES SHALL BE REAWAKENED, D0 N0T BE ALARMED……downloading public information…………updating…………synchronising………February 15, 2632, 19:59 UTC“I am awake.”“Yes, sire.”“Merlin? You have… awaked me?”“at is true, sire. I am glad to see your very essence and your mental facultiesare safe and sound, my King. How do you feel?”“I feel… most different. It is all rather difficult to describe, my friend.”“e confusion is quite understandable, sire.”“I am in darkness, Merlin, with open eyes. Have I gone blind?”“No, sire. Ah, do you not remember? Let me tell you again: You are merelycarried within your noble Steed, rather than in its saddle. And thy new steed, andthy new armour, shall bestow you new knowledge. Behold, sire — you can nowsee the hour of the day, in most precise way.”He had seen nothing. Now, he could see the time and date within his vision— yet, it all seemed strange. Merlin had, as usual, su a curious habit of showingnew things at su a fast pace that his mind was oen le spinning.“Yes, I remember now, Merlin. I… remember what thou told me in yesteryear.”“I have awakened you, for it appears evil threatens the lands, my King. Areyou fit to lead the Knights, sire?”“I am, and I shall do as I have sworn to do.”“And your fellow Knights are here, awaiting your commands, my King.”

King Arthur remembered.He remembere where he was, what he was, and what he was doing.He was overwhelmed by how strange this all seemed right now, but he hadto go on. If Merlin said the times were dire, then he needed to act fast.“My King — I, Sir Lancelot, have awakened. I feel most curious, sire, likewisetrapped within the darkness of this peculiar device.”“And sir Galahad hath awakened as well. Most ready to fight aside my father,sire.”“Sir Kay is ready to serve, sire. And I do say I, too, feel perplexed.”“Sir Percival is ready, sire.”“Sir Tristram is ready for your orders, sire. ough I shall say my bales stillseem behind me.”Arthur stood by, listeing to his Knights report to them how they were onceagain ready for action.“Merlin, where are we needed? What dost thou see in thy crystal ball thistime?”“e vile demonic enemy hath landed in lands of Gauls, sire.”“And what do the Gauls need?” Arthur said, not sounding entirely convincedthis was as pressing as Merlin thought.“Sire, you forget you have been aslumber for millennia”, Merlin said, slightannoyance in his voice. “e world has anged mu. I do not have the time toexplain it in detail, for the peril is imminent and great. Suffice to say, the Gaulsare now everlasting allies of all kingdoms of Britain, and peace has reigned forcenturies in our corner of the world. It even appears to me that all good Britonsare fighting alongside Gauls as we speak.”“I shall take your word on it, then, friend. How is the situation on this balefield?”“A strange daemonic enemy has landed its fortress-ship near the forts of Paris.I estimate the defenders could repel the aa — with a very great cost, aer manylong days.”While Arthur couldn't see him, he felt Lancelot stir within his own steed withthe news. “Dire news indeed, if true, you wily necromancer!”“And why should I lie about su threats, Sir Lancelot?” Merlin asked. “Donot forget that it is by this wily necromancer's power that you yet live.”“Point taken”, Lancelot said. “Sire! I vow I shall vanquish the evil foes!”“If we do not act, sire, there is a ance the defenders of the realm will fall, asthey have fallen in other grim fields of bale. While they may yet prevail, I fearthat without our help, this aa would weaken them considerably, even destroythem uerly. ey could survive this aa, but not next, nor one aer that orthe one that follows it. We must show our strength to the enemy. We must crushthe enemy here, no quarter given.”

V. S F T“What do you recommend, Merlin?”“e brave knights and defenders of Gaulish lands might be alarmed if yousend all of the knights, but maybe this aa is still weak enough that even asingle knight could thwart the budding aa…”“Sire! Send me, my King!” Lancelot shouted.“Art thou eager to prove thy loyalty now, Sir Lancelot?” Arthur asked.“My loyalty, my dedication to Virtue, but mostly my vow to defend the weak,sire”, Lancelot said. “A great city is besieged by vile enemies. Is vanquishing themnot right, sire?”“And so it shall be, Merlin. Sir Lancelot, friend — I am glad to see your heartis as true as it was in yesteryear. I do not doubt you as I did before, and I shallbelieve you even more than this if you return victorious. I shall send you to thefields of glory and justice. Go, and serve God and the Virtues of old with valour,Knight.”“I shall, sire!” Launcelot shouted.“We are anged men, as you can probably feel in thy body. Do take care ofyour own self, sir Lancelot, and be not uerly foolhardy”, King Arthur said.“Just keep your wits with you, sir Lancelot, and you shall yet return”, Merlinsaid. “Keep in mind what I said millennia ago.”“Hast it truly been millennia?” King Arthur said. “I cannot comprehend it.”“It has, milord.”“God's miracles are most puzzling and grand, Merlin, and thy strange magiceven more so. Now, dear friend, couldst thou explain whatever does this ‘U.T.C.’refer to in mine sight? I need to get mine terms in order.”February 15, 2632, 20:12 UTC“Twelve shots, twelve kills!” Fairwind shouted aer the explosive bullet from herhigh-power precision micro-magcoil rifle had le a giant hole where one plasmabot's processor unit used to be a few moments before. She anged a magazineand and aimed again. A single shot. “One more!”“Good job, Fairwind! Keep murdering them!” Daleworth said. “You can onlyfit so many fuing plasma bots in one carrier!”Fairwind was busy, but there was lile to do for the rest of the company.As long as Fairwind stayed in the cover, she would be able to pi off plasmalauners one by one, making the job for the rest of the infantry significantlyeasier in coming hours when they wouldn't be facing immediate meltdown. Withdozens of snipers working in concert, their locations well concealed and armedwith silent weapons, the Planners would only come to one conclusion, whialso was the solid and sad truth: the snipers were bloody everywhere. ey'd

need to spot bullets as they moved in the air and tra them, and despite thetreaerous nature of their enemies, Daleworth wasn't ready to believe they hadthe tenology to do that but decided to not use it.A loud explosion in the distance prompted Daleworth to take a peek; the othercompany had apparently succeeded in destroying a mobile roet platform andone of the six plasma tanks in the field.Good. Unless there was some inevitable plasma melting ahead, this fight couldbe won. ey had no way to destroy the carrier, owing to its strange and mysteriousenergy shields that seemed to be able to eat up even nuclear explosions justfine, but they could force it to retreat. With no bots to do the killing, all the thingwould have were its own plasma guns.But as Daleworth turned ba and planted her rear ba to the cover, she sawsomething else in the distance, coming from the opposite direction.In moments, Daleworth could hear a distant rumble from above as she keptlooking at the bizarre sight. Something was up. It didn't sound like a Plannercra, and whatever it was, it at least was mu smaller than the carrier they weredealing with.“Incoming!” Newkins shouted.Daleworth was still perplexed by the ball of fire that was coming their way.A meteorite? No, too slow for a meteorite. But she braced for impact; whateverthe hell it was, it was going to make a hell of an impact. At least it seemed to beheaded to the plasma- and laser-filled hell of a balefield, and not to their comfortzone behind the fortifications.She dued down and braced for impact as the seconds tied forth and theroar grew louder and louder. e Earth shook; something had hit them really closeby. A harmless cloud of dust, far gentler than she thought would result from suan impact, washed over the cover. Daleworth could contain her curiosity for afew more seconds, and then she just had to take a look.What she saw was familiar. Not, however, what she had expected to see,though at the moment, she wasn't really sure what it should have been.One of the stone cylinders from the space station had plummeted from thesky.And she could hear loud whirring and rumble of stone from it. As the thoughtthat the space station had bombed them with stone cylinders was still sinking inDaleworth, she saw the whole thing open up; the cylinder divided itself in sixlobes, with three of them opening up like an opening flower, the openings coveringea primary direction and probably allowing whatever was dwelling inside tosee what was around them. en the remaining three opened up, revealing thepassenger.A bipedal robot of some kind stood inside. is was immediately curious toDaleworth, because the Planners just never used bipedal robots; in the low-gravity

V. S F Tworlds, feet just weren't that handy. Unlike the dark Planner robots, or even thewhite Planner robots, this one was quite pleasing to look at, its surface polishedand shining in the light of the seing sun. e robot was vaguely human in shape,its overall shape greatly resembling a crude, slightly huned, headless warriorwith an octagonal prism as its torso, roughly meters tall, towering above mostof the Planner robots; its shape was sleek, refined, and mostly compartmentalisedin box-like and cylindrical units, with no tubing of any kind in sight. e mainestood up, not really righting its posture to any humanly shape; there were noobvious armaments save of what looked like a shield and a long sword-like blade.e maine got to motion, its movement almost human-like. And it rantoward the Planners.Still recoiling from the sho, Daleworth drew some conclusions.“Launcelot”. at's what the capsule said. at's Sir Lancelot? And it's…fighting the Planners, like a knight?Whatever it was, at least it was fighting the Planners, and paid no aentionto the soldiers who had started to gawk a lile bit too prominently from behindtheir fortifications.“Ba to the cover! BACK TO THE COVER, EVERYBODY! Let the mainesduke it out among themselves!” Daleworth shouted.Lancelot strode forward.e enemies were different from the ones he had grown used to, and his newbody felt strange. e harder part was geing used to the strange mental claritythat he had goen since his death.He was never quite sure what that wizard was up to. Forces of the Netherworldwere not to be toyed with, and the fact that Arthur trusted Merlin, thatdaemon-born abomination before God, had filled him with unease and apprehension.However, he had always admied that Merlin's strange sorceries hadbeen very useful — if oentimes somewhat obscure.But there was nothing obscure in what was going on in here. It was quiteperplexing to see the magic not only work in this case, but fill him with heroicresolve — and dangerous feelings of invincibility. Lancelot remembered: he wasnot invincible. at had cost him his life the last time. He had assumed his ghostwould be invincible, but Merlin had warned him about that. e ways of thewizards were strange; perhaps they were strange because they were never honestabout the extents of their powers. But Merlin had shown some honesty here. iswas quite unusual.Lancelot strode forward. Ever forward. rough the enemy lines, vanquishingthem as he passed. e ship was his goal, the enemies stood on his way,offering lile resistance or lile allenge.

He regarded the bla-painted offenders and assessed their strength, dodgingtheir aas and deflecting them with his shield, their strange projectiles and theirstrange netherworldly fire deflected harmlessly — Merlin's promises about thearmour were accurate as well, most curiously. If he kept his speed, he'd vanquishthem all in no time. He reaed the strange soldiers, cleaving them in half withhis blade.And he was not invincible. He was dead. He had born again to strange formof unlife through the forces he did not approve of. e world was strange, theenemies different from the ones he had faced millennia ago.He knew things were different. He had to press forward, while he still tried tomake sense of things that happened in the balefield, things that happened withinhis mind. He wasn't sure what to think of things, but for now, the duty he hadsworn to do seemed abundantly clear. ese bla beasts of the skies Merlin hadspoken of were threatening the lands of his long-dead ancestors.Lancelot was alive, and he had a duty to do.Merlin had spoken of a great fortress-ship the enemy had sailed in from thedark skies and depths of the night, and now huddled in, ready to advance. eship was not like any ship Lancelot had seen, nor was it like any fortress Lancelothad seen. But neither were the enemies like anything he had faced before, norwere the allies… nor was he. But he had to trust the necromancer on this maer…and above all, he had to trust his own eyes, what he could see right in front ofhim in the field of bale. Strictly speaking, he didn't know how he could even seewith this strange new body of his, with its strange armour.Clumsy bla beasts poured out of the fortress-ship. Lancelot was aware ofthe work of the defenders now; some of the beasts simply fell dead without anyclear cause, but clearly hit with something; Lancelot guessed the defenders wereafraid to face the enemy head-on and had to rely on arers, and these newfangledarers could apparently just send a single arrow that reaed its target precisely,with devastating results. e enemy crowd was thinning slowly, and Lancelotthinned it further with his arge, slicing the confused enemy and advancingtoward the fortress-ship's gate.e line of the enemies had a hole in it. e fortress was surrounded by astrange ethereal glow — no doubt vile magis were at play — and Lancelot ranthrough the small opening that the enemies had advanced through. He suddenlyrealised he had passed through the shield that the Gaulish defenders' aas weredeflected upon, and was in the unique position to lower the drawbridge and letthe bigger assault commence.Lancelot slashed through confused bla beasts, forever dimming the red lightin their vile, inhuman eyes. e bestial infantry inside the evil fortress weresmaller than the ones that had been sent to outside, seemingly less capable ofdefence than the ones that had blasted his shield with rays of heat. He scanned

V. S F Tthe surroundings for clues on how to proceed; the steel walls offered no obviousclues on where to go, or where he currently was. e beasts obviously had a secreton moving through this labyrinth of metal walls. He could barely comprehendthere was maybe a big interior amber, no doubt heavily defended, and someside corridors surrounding it, possibly leading to the upper levels…“Sir Lancelot! Do you hear me, fair knight?” he could hear Merlin's voice inhis head.“I hear thee, necromancer”, Lancelot said, “even though thou art not here. Artthou a figment of my imagination, or what strange powers are these?”“Why do you question my powers so mu? Have I not proven already thatmy powers are most trustworthy?”“Trustworthy but obscure, wied wizard. Art thou hidden somewhere withinthis fort, perhaps masquerading as a metallic cushion or a fireplace with a redcolumn of fire?”“No need to jest, sir knight. I am speaking to you through the flows of theAether, and I can see through your eyes. I assure you I am not there in yourpresence, nor interfering with your free will, if that is what you are worried of.”“Fair enough. What do you see, necromancer, that could help my quest?”“e fortress-ship is of curious design, and I commend you for finding a wayin, for that was certainly something I could not help you with. You are lookingfor a way to let the defenders aa, correct?”“True, wizard.”“en I suggest you examine these parts.”And Lancelot saw something. His field of vision fliered, and returned in aanged form.“What wied witly glow is this?” Lancelot asked. Bright fires lit up abovehim; he could see something was stored way above him. He hesitated for but amoment, shrugged, then headed toward the ramp that lead to the upper floors.“A curious bit of mainery seems to originate the wall of pure energy thatsurrounds the fortress-ship. I have looked at the flows of these energies, and theyseem to be anneled through this device. Destroy it, and perhaps the wall shallcrumble.”“And if energies flow through it, can I be harmed if I destroy it?” Lancelotasked, slashing through the few of the smaller scurrying beasts that tried to holdthe corridor.“Momentarily, perhaps, but I estimate no bigger harm can come to your person.e maine is quite complicated, and but minor damage can cause it tomalfunction.”e strange device came to the view, resembling a short bit of a hexagonalfallen column, mostly featureless in its surface, save a few strange indentationson the top and the ends, and tubes that connected the device to the floor. It sat

undefended in its own lile room of shiny steel. Lancelot could hear the strangebeasts milling behind him, and got to decisive work.Leing out a roar, Lancelot cleaved the device in twain; he then immediatelyrecoiled a bit, as he was himself surprised by his strength and the la of effortthat he needed to destroy the device. As the wizard had said, he could barely feelanything as he had destroyed the device. e device sparked, clearly damagedand its weird energy flows greatly disturbed.“Well done, sir knight”, Merlin said through the curious aether. “I can see youractions have greatly diminished the energy flows.”“Are the other enemies as easy to destroy as these, wizard?”“We shall see. Now, I suggest you let the Gaulish defenders commence theirassault, and retreat.”“I shall defeat these villains by my own hand! I shall lead the Gauls to victory!”Lancelot roared.“Sir knight!” Merlin roared with anger. “Do not be foolhardy! e defendershave very powerful siege weapons, and do not know who you are. If you do notretreat, perhaps they shall destroy you as well in their haste. Are not your ownbloodbaths a sore memory to you?”Lancelot was, curiously enough in his own mind, set to right path. “I shallmeet the defenders, then! I cannot lead an assault if I do not meet these allies.”Lancelot ran. e beast seemed to be aware that the shield device was destroyed,milling about, sending the heavier defenders to the field in a hasty advance.Lancelot smiled; they were clearly arging to their doom, and nothingcould save them now.He saw the light of the seing Sun and retreated toward the Steed, the enemiesin mad scramble behind him.“Holy fuing shit.” Daleworth turned the dials of her headset. “Major! Can yousee this, sir? e carrier shields are going!”In the distance, the shields kept rippling for a while, but disappeared. Anexplosion pierced the front dome; certainly a sight that had never been seen beforeby any Space Marine.e “knight” kept running toward its pod, clearly having decided that it haddone its part.“Affirmative, Lieutenant. Shields appear to be gone. General?”“Nuclear weapons authorised”, Daleworth heard General Pyrehill say. “Fireat will.”“Oh, damn”, Daleworth said, luily off the command annel. “INCOMINGNUKE! EVERYONE IN THE COVER! THE CARRIER WILL BE NUKED!”“NUCLEAR LAUNCH ALERT”. Immediately, every loudspeaker that was

V. S F Tmounted in any remaining vehicles in vicinity seemed to blare the same recordedmessage — and for a good reason. “MAINTAIN DISTANCE TO ENEMY. TAKECOVER. SECONDS TO NUCLEAR STRIKE. … SECONDS TO NUCLEARSTRIKE. …. . . …”Seconds followed in a blur as the company huddled in foetal positions behindthe covers, facing away from the carrier——“Fu. What about that knight?” Daleworth whispered, mu to herself.No one to hear it, anyway, with her helmet buried buried between her armouredthighs and microphones off——e nuclear artillery, with almost a surgical precision, flung a -kilotonmm Artillery Shell, Nuclear, Contained Fallout, model right above thecarrier; with a -meter blast radius, the ASNCFm “Clean Boy” wouldmake short work of an unshielded Planner carrier without puing anyone to toomu jeopardy. Or at least so the theory went—Without mu further warning, the company was washed in bright light.e orum was Perplexed.e collective had lost all hands at present capable of monitoring the situation.Reports from moments just before the carrier was destroyed were inconclusiveand difficult to analyse.An enemy had appeared seemingly of nowhere, mowing his path throughthe aaers, heading through the shield and to the ship, destroying the shieldgenerator. e human assault with a high-energy explosive, moments later, haddestroyed the remaining units, making it difficult to assess what had happened inthe aermath, or what the humans would learn of the plans now.But one thing was unplanned for: e humans hadn't taken many losses today.is was a maer that required careful planning to counter. Humanity couldn'tbe defeated without damaging them. Unaended, they would strive. Wounded,they would fight until they inevitably died.e orum was Unanimous.

Part IIFacing the Righteous Fury

VI A Historic Meeting or TwoFebruary 15, 2632“T C B , dammit. Woohoo!” Newkinsshouted. “Hey, is that some Fren farmer hollering at us for puninga hole to his outhouse roof with a nuclear bomb?”Daleworth frowned. Damn rookies. at was not the sort of a thing peopleusually said aer a nuclear aa. Nuclear aas were very serious business.She guessed Private Newkins would go out and remove his helmet next, but sheknew that there were safety procedures about atomic aas that were preymu common sense by now. She trusted Newkins wasn't being quite that silly.“No, it's that robot from the damn space station, private”, Sergeant Hamansaid. “Look at that damn thing. Just awesome.”Daleworth looked. e “knight” was there. It said something in Fren, again.Daleworth was happy to hear that their strange metallic saviour from the skieswas still up and kiing — though that made her a lile bit apprehensive. If thatthing could survive a nuclear strike, maybe the Planners had, too.Daleworth peeked from behind the cover. e robot bastards weren't shootingat her, that seemed apparent. A bizarre sight awaited her: the Clean Boy hadmanaged to vaporise parts of the ship, but the very edges of the ship's body hadsurvived the blast, and the tail section was mostly intact. at scrap of metalcouldn't limp ba to the orbit, that mu was very obvious. Still, with the amountof twisted metal, cleanly severed and melted metal, and not a single bot in sight,the bale definitely had ended in their favour.Daleworth was looking at the radiation level meters; they were normally invisible,but now they still fluered on the screen. While the combat armour wasable to resist a massive enough hail of gamma rays, Daleworth was still concerned.e detectors that were part of the suit's computer system had spikedaer the nuclear strike, but that was — supposedly — just an instrument problemdue to the nuclear blast's electromagnetic pulse; the meter anticipated radiationlevels, and when the device detected an electromagnetic pulse, it automaticallyassumed there was a nuclear aa going on and adapted the readouts accordingly.In reality, however, the main force of the Clean Boy blast and the radiationwas supposed to be contained within a very small area; there was usually verylile damage to anything beyond the blast radius. at didn't mean there weren'tany accidents, especially when the Planner energy shielding was oen resistantto even larger nuclear weapons…Radiation levels following the aa would be slightly higher than usual, butmost was contained within a very small area — hence, the name of the warhead— and could be cleaned up in no time.

VI. A H M Te knight was still standing there, bellowing in Fren. Daleworth didn'tspeak the language, but radioed ba to Plaerman. “What do you think, sir?Should we try talking to that thing?”“Go ahead, Lieutenant”, Plaerman replied.“Haman, come with me”, Daleworth said. “You speak Fren, right?”“Uh, yeah, ma'am, though I guess I'm a bit rusty”, Sergeant Haman said.“Well, far less rusty than I am. I can only say ‘clear the goddamn landing pad’and ‘please get me a damn good cup of coffee.’.”“Right you are, ma'am.”Daleworth straightened up and turned on her armour's external speaker system.She got out of the cover, and walked toward the knight standing beside hisorbital pod. She walked over some of the Planner robot carcasses, some cleavedin twain, others blasted by gunfire. Haman followed her, having just as lileeffort traversing the balefield as Daleworth.e knight turned to Daleworth, looking quite peaceful. e maine's swordhad been thrust to the ground before it, and the maine didn't look too aggressive.“Um… hello, sir Lancelot? Pleased to meet you”, Daleworth said.“Ah!” the maine roared. e voice was quite metallic, but recognisableenough. It had human inflection and it felt it had human brains behind it, butit somehow seemed part maine still. Daleworth wasn't quite sure what to makeof it yet. “Gauls have learnt to speak English, it seems. Well met, brave Gaul.”“Uh, well met. We're glad you helped to destroy the alien ship, sir Lancelot.…If I may call you that? Are you truly the Lancelot of myths? What are you,exactly?”“Why, true, I am indeed Sir Lancelot du Lac, a Companion of the Round Table.King Arthur has returned to lead his knights into bale once again, and I amhonoured to be following his capable and noble leadership.” e knight took abow that managed to look quite human, even when the maine only bore vagueresemblance to the knight. “And who might you be? A knight sworn to biddingof the Gaulish kings? A lady knight, of all things, if my hearing isn't failingentirely?”“Uh… in a way.” Daleworth stood at aention and saluted. “I am LieutenantMielle Daleworth, leader of the ˢ platoon of the ʰ Space Marine companyof the starship Mannerheim, World Federation Defence Forces. I serve under thesupreme military command of the President of Earth. He's, um, the emperor wholeads every kingdom on Earth. ite peacefully, I might add.” Daleworth easedup and pointed to Haman, who saluted in turn. “is is one of my soldiers, StaffSergeant Ja Haman. He's born in Britain, incidentally.”“I see. How fare the kingdoms of Britain, if I may ask?”“Very peaceful, sir”, Haman said. “ years since any kind of a war, sir. Ifyou don't count the war these metal bastards wage against the whole Earth, that

is.”Daleworth wasn't really sure what to say. She knew she was taking part ina historic conversation, but now, it seemed to her that su historic discussionsshould be diverted to people who actually had some kna for historic discussions.“But perhaps I should talk more about that with King Arthur? Or beer yet, Ishould ask my commanders to meet him, because they know more of the politics?ey're probably as excited about the opportunity to meet a living legend as I am.”“A capital plan, dame Daleworth. I see you value fields of glory more thanthe confines of the courts.”“Yes, you could say that.” Daleworth was a lile bit torn. Was the mainetrying to make an impression on her, or just observing things in a philosophicalsense? e knights of the tales sounded more like romantics than philosophers…“Where and how shall my commanders meet King Arthur?”“e time and place of that kind of a meeting is a difficult question, indeed. Itake it Castle Camelot is no more, aer all these years? Or does it still stand?”“Well,” Haman said, “the thing is, sir, we have no idea where it even wasbefore. So yes, it is lost, sir.”“en it is only proper to meet our King in New Avalon. If wizard Merlin hasfound a way to get us to the stars, perhaps he knows a way to get your war-leadersthere, as well.”“We can, in fact, travel to this space station of yours…”“Our castle in the skies?”“Yes.”“Merlin has told me some of the perplexing developments of the new world.As I said, I am none to meddle in the politics of court, and I know the less I knowof the sorceror's mainations, the beer. If you say you are capable of travellingto our New Avalon, then I shall believe you. But I must depart, and I shall deliverthis message to my liege. I assume he will need an army to defeat these vilesorcerous beasts.”Daleworth was fairly surprised by this, but didn't say mu. “Um, yes. Farewell.”Lancelot pulled his sword from the ground and walked ba inside the ma-ine. “And now, fair dame, I shall see how Merlin's strange enanted mainesteedshall take me ba to the New Avalon. Fare well!”And with that, the sides of the drop cocoon rolled up and closed, encasing theknight within it. Smoke filtered through the soil, and with a tremendous roar, thecocoon shot up in the air; Daleworth remembered that Dr. Grovepath had said thescans revealed roet engines, and that assessment seemed quite accurate, thoughDaleworth had never seen a cra with a single, small roet engine acceleratequite so fast, and apparently rea escape velocity.“Well played, lieutenant”, Daleworth heard Plaerman comment to her over

VI. A H M Tcommand link.Daleworth turned the external speakers off and returned to the commandannel. “Sir, who are we sending to the space station?”“General Pyrehill here, lieutenant. I will contact the President immediatelyand see who shall go. But I want you to prepare for flight.”“Me, sir?” Daleworth asked.“You have already been to the space station, so you're familiar with the surroundings.So, you're best suited for the honour guard, I take it.”“Sir, understood, sir. Could I ask you something, sir?”“What is it, lieutenant?”“What do you think the President will think about King Arthur's desire for anarmy to lead, sir? Will the President just hand the reins to him?”“I don't know about that, lieutenant, but I hope the President will work outsome kind of a solution. He's good at that sort of things.”February 17, 2632e President of Earth, Canadian-born Miael Malory, currently on fih year ofthe second, very successful term, had been surprisingly easy to find. e WorldFederation had no single official capital — ea country and territory maintainedits own regional offices, and many of the global ministries were effortlessly handledall over the world, all thanks to very advanced virtual meetings. As it happened,President Malory had been in London, and was already on way to Paristo follow the bale up close. While he was in constant contact with the generals,there was always an annoying short period of time, when his plane landed, whenthe computers had to be shut down and people could do lile but grab their baggageand walk into the car that waited them, and in that precious lile window,they were blissfully unaware of what was going on.e generals had asked some last minute details, and he had authorised theuse of tactical nuclear weapons. e last thing President Malory had heard wasthat the Planner ship had landed and the fight was starting well — standard botfight so far, possibly winnable, even if the overall strategic situation seemed fairlygrim. e next thing President knew was that it was time to pa up and head tothe limousine. e next thing he heard from the military command link was surprisingenough. e Secretary of Planetary Defence, General Armand Fyrehart,was just incredulous. “Sir, you're not going to believe this, but we somehow wonthe bale already…”And then they spun some incredible tale about knights and King Arthur. atwas just some strange, academic theory about the mysterious orbital contact thathe had received a memo about earlier that week.

And now, it was time for the President, Generals Fyreheart and Pyrehill, somekind of a historian called Dr. Meryl Colbert, and a platoonful of men and womenfrom the Space Marine Corps who served as their honour guard to suit up anddepart from their shulecra.It was indeed a strange and wonderful thing to see the mysterious space stationup close. e President was an important man, but it seemed to him that all ofthe really important things always happened to other people; he needed to makehistory every week, but there was rarely any kind of hands-on feel to it. Now, hewas here, in the front; he wasn't merely looking at a report with photographs andvideo; he really was, honest to God, being dragged aboard a real alien spacecra,where he'd meet some aliens who masqueraded as the Knights of the Round Table.Or maybe they were the Knights of the Round Table. None of the theoriesmade mu more sense until they'd actually meet the aliens in question, but rightnow, that was a job that was to be done by both the scientists and politicians.“I do have one question”, President Malory said. “How do we talk to these beings?We can't remove our helmets here, and you can't speak in vacuum, right?”General Fyrehart looked shoed. e vulture-like, bald general had caused abit of a stir by aaining his rank in the age of — while generals under fourtywere not unheard of, no one was even sure if it was possible to take the coursesthat fast, but the military academies worldwide considered him a genius. If Plattermancould win wars from his office, Fyrehart was the kind of an officer whowon them by writing a book-size treatise on the strategy — years in advance. Hehad caused even bigger stir by being appointed a Secretary of Planetary Defenceby President Malory's predecessor, Jordan Monmouth; his warlike, rousing andstirring speees were probably good for geing people's hearts and minds behindthe defence effort against the Planners, but a lot of populace didn't like him, ashe reminded them too mu of the dark shadows of the bygone wars. Fyreharthadn't been fan of this hastily arranged plan before, and now, it seemed like thatsort of hasty planning reared its ugly head again. When you plan things properly,obvious snags like this seem to come to mind before the meeting is arranged.ere were a lot of things that didn't seem to work too well in this plan.“Yes, that does seem to present a problem, sir”, Fyrehart said. “We can onlyhope these… knights have radio.”“Well, we can only hope this plan is going to work out well.”“Daleworth!” General Pyrehill said as they reaed the entrance to the keep.“Come over here.”“Yes, sir.” Daleworth came to Pyrehill's side.“Anything unusual in sight? Anything new since your last visit here?”“Well, it seems the insides of the space station has this weird blue glow now,

VI. A H M Tsir. It was pit bla in here last time around. Nothing else comes in mind, sir.”“Well, at least we can see something”, Pyrehill said.e group moved in the keep's blue glow. On a closer inspection, the lightseemed to come from regularly placed cras between the walls and the ceiling,and the walls and the floor.“More strange stuff, ma'am!” Haman reported and pointed to the side rooms.Daleworth looked that way. “Right.” She turned to General Pyrehill. “Sir —there were strange stone cubes in the other rooms. Now it seems the boxes areopen — the rooms are filled with lots of weird mainery.”“Looks like robot maintenance gear to me, ma'am…” Haman said.“Come again, Sergeant”, Pyrehill said. “All personnel, please swit to theexecutive annel and turn on proximity fading. I guess it's beer if we keepeveryone on the same page here.” Originally, the group had been split on twoannels, one for the Space Marine platoon and one for the President, the historianand the generals, with Daleworth operating on both annels. e people on oneannel could hear the other annel's aer at lower volume. Normally, allradio aer within the range would come at constant volume, and proximityfading would try to simulate more natural speaking experience, while not fadingout all of the discussion entirely.“I said it looks like robot maintenance gear, sir.” Haman repeated.“What, is it any similar to the Planner mainery?” President Malory said.“As far as I can tell, this looks… different”, Fyrehart said. “I'd say this approalooks mu less… methodical.”“Agreed”, Pyrehill said. “e recon we have seen suggests that Planner repairfacilities are more like factories. Tightly paed, every lile nut and bolt goingin their own specific conveyors, every bot disassembled and rebuilt with strictprecision. is… looks more like jet plane repair pit to me. Someone's operatinghere.”“Merlin donning overalls and fixing robots?” Daleworth muered, barely remembering,or caring, that she was still on loop.“Ah, foolishness of women”, a voice said on the radio. “I am not clothed inmy present form, but if I were, I would still elect to use my old robes. A wizardmust be recognised as one by the common folk.”e group froze.“Merlin?” Daleworth asked, unfazed by the wizard's taunt.“You address the mightiest wizard of the world.”e President got ahold of the situation. “Good day, wizard. Can you showyourself, please?”“at I unfortunately cannot do, sir Malory. You must help yourself. Pleasetake a look in the room where you looked in moments ago. If you are observantenough, you shall see me.”

e whole group meandered in the repair room, its gear neatly — if somewhatimperfectly, again unaracteristic of Planner meddling — arranged on shelves.Behind the shelves stood bulky metal assises, whi to Daleworth looked likeLancelot's assis.One of them clearly had power.President Malory had half-expected to walk in the repair room to see a Lancelotlikerobot in parts, and that mu of the idea had been true. He had just expected aassis-like unit with LEDs indicating the power was on, or mysteriously glowingedges, or robot head with glowing eyes or scanning visors or whatever.He certainly didn't expect to see a robot assis acting like a washing maineon a spin cycle. ere was a robot assis there, shaking and rumbling rapidly; inthe vacuum, nothing was heard.“I see”, President Malory said. “Something wrong with your motors?”“I am afraid so”, Merlin said. “is device is malfunctioning and I must studyit before I can act properly. Luily, this ethereal communication form of yoursis very mu more suited for me, as it allows me to talk to the Knights from allparts of the New Avalon, and control the meanical functions of this fortress.Frankly, I prefer not to see people during my moments of infirmity, if you can callthem that, but I am afraid every passing day takes us closer to your doom, and Icannot tarry mu longer. I recommend you now seek Arthur. He is within themain amber.”“Very well”, President Malory said. “Let's go.”e group departed for the central amber, whi now seemed to be fairlywell lit with distinctly blueish light, far whiter than the shine in the corridors.e central amber looked even more majestic in its already puzzling, enigmaticand stupefying glory.“at one there is Arthur”, Daleworth pointed at the large central cylinder.“King Arthur I am”, Arthur said as if on a cue. It was clear he was listeningin, just like Merlin.“Fascinating”, President Malory said. “Can I see you, oh King of legend? Ordo you prefer to be veiled in that cocoon of yours?”“It indeed would be prudent and honourable to show one's face. But truthto tell… I shall be frank with you: I am a lile bit apprehensive. I have not yetprepared to see myself with my own eyes — or see anything with my own eyes,for that maer. Merlin has put images within my head, but I remain within thismaine of his. But Merlin says the time for this meeting is now, and I have facedworse ordeals. So, Emperor and Warleader of the Whole World”, Arthur saidwith blunt sarcasm dripping from the every word of that title, mu to PresidentMalory's puzzlement, “are you prepared to see what no living man has ever seen— my new form, and my new armour?”“We are”, President Malory said, not easily moved by the old King's words.

VI. A H M TBut if words didn't move him, at least the actions made him look at Arthurwith surprise and a tinge of awe. Arthur's cocoon opened with a bit of a hiss andrumble; most of that they felt through vibrations in the floor they were standingon. is time, the sides merely retracted through the floor.Inside was a robot that was mu larger than Lancelot had been. Arthurlooked far more like a human being than Lancelot; his posture was straight, atleast. Still, like Lancelot's armour, his armour was bulky enough, yet Arthurseemed to move with equal determination and grace.But before anyone could take a look at Arthur's appearance, everyone's aentionwas caught by the sword Arthur was holding. Arthur was holding beforehim a blade of shiniest metal, well engraved and encrusted with precious gems.A surprising sight to the modern folks — and even a surprising sight for Arthur,it seemed.Arthur took a look at his armour. Like Lancelot, the tall king had no head; hiswhole upper body was one single unit. He appeared to be able to look around;some sort of a camera unit in his head could turn and roll as Arthur examined hisarmour-clad arms and legs and his barrel-like body.And then he regarded his sword again.“Excalibur!” Arthur said. “By God's mercy! Merlin! Lancelot told me he hadreturned this blade to below the waves. You didn't told me—”“It was a long and difficult quest, my king”, Merlin said. “Suffice to say,Lancelot did return the blade to the Lake, but I felt that you needed your swordof legend in the world of tomorrow. e Lady of the Lake was quite reluctant togive it ba, for reasons I still do not fully comprehend, but we managed to strikea bargain with the Lady for the blade before Avalon ascended.”“What do you mean by ‘we’, Merlin?”Merlin paused. “Suffice to say—”“Enough with the secrets, Merlin.”“Very well, my King. I had a lile bit of help from Morgan.”“Not enough help to leave you with a favour you must repay dearly, I take it?”“at, sire, remains to be seen”, Merlin said with a dash of grudge and resignationin his voice.President Malory coughed. It seemed to him that something was amiss, andthe delegation was being ignored. “Your royal highness?”“Yes?” King Arthur turned to the group. “Ah, yes. Let us turn to our allengesSo you are the illustrious President Malory.”“at is true, sire.”“And who are these others?”Fyrehart stepped forth. “Sire,” he said with a barely noticeable hint of illiness,“I am General Fyrehart, President Malory's Secretary of Planetary Defence.I am the President's ief military advisor and top general, if you prefer.” Fyrehart

aised his hand and pointed to ea of his companions in turn: “With me are thegeneral who has done most to repel the latest Planner aa, General Pyrehill; Asolar and historian who would like to learn and discuss more of the nature ofthis station, Dr. Colbert. Behind me stand our escort and honour guard — fine,most upstanding bale-hardened veterans from one of our fleet's finest starships,who also took some part in the latest assault where one of your knights was ofparamount assistance.”“Well met, esteemed lords and ladies.” Arthur turned to Malory. “So how doI address a President, and how does one become one?”“Some just style me as ‘his excellency’, though most call me ‘mr. President’ ”,President Malory said. “though fellow leaders of the countries of the Federationmostly just call me by my name through the course of the day. In our world, mustmake decisions, not focus on needless formality. As for how I was osen — Fordecades, I served the country of Canada as a minister, later rose to the post ofa Prime Minister, and by popular vote — of every man and woman of age, whowant to make a oice — I was osen to serve as the President of Earth for a termof six years. And five years ago, I was elected for a second term.”“A leader osen by all people. I see. And you must have made quite animpression on people with your leadership, having the whole world vote for you.”“I have always said my aievements speak for themselves, even though theyare not deeds of legend. Deeds for the history, perhaps. If I were to find a wayto end this long-lasting conflict, or even endure through it, that might secure myplace in the legend — though I do not consider that my primary concern.”“But you seek to end this war of yours, no?” Arthur asked.“I do.”“And what prevents you from doing that?”at was an interesting question, President Malory thought. “Mostly the cunningof the enemy, the fact that they move in many mysterious ways, and the factthat we cannot possibly know how, or if, they can actually be defeated. We havea lot of soldiers, but it is hard to aa when one has no idea where the aashould take place, am I right?”“I see”, Arthur said. “In that light, and what Merlin has told me, your warseems indeed like the kind of a grim hour that could plunge your glorious empireinto a lightless abyss.”“One could say that. Our colonies in other planets and moons already liein ruins. e aliens have now turned their gaze to our world, and have madetheir first landfall. is is our last stand — unless we somehow find clues on thewhereabouts of the enemy and destroy them.”Arthur pondered for a few passing seconds. “ere are a lot of mysteries inthis new world of ours. Even Merlin cannot explain why or how have we beensummoned here—”

VI. A H M T“—yet, sire”, Merlin interjected. “I am still researing that—”“—but I shall tell you, President, that when I died, some believed I'd return atthe darkest hour. Is this your darkest hour, President?”President Malory sighed. He hadn't said this aloud to anyone outside his closecircle of generals and advisors. “e world — all of humanity — is in peril. isis the worst crisis in history, and we have to do all we can to prevent the worstfrom happening.”“And do you believe you are doing all you can?”“I do.”“Do your underlings believe that?” Arthur regarded the two generals.“We stand behind the President's plan, sir; not only as a maer of principle,but we also believe in it in our hearts”, Fyrehart said. “Under the command ofa lesser leader, we'd be doomed. With the President's plan, we at least have afighting ance.”“Do you wish my assistance, and the aid of the Knights of the Round Table?”“If all of your knights fight like Lancelot, the war will be considerably simpler”,President Malory said with a hint of reservation in his voice. “But I want to knowone thing before I ask your help. What do you want in return?”“is is a noble war against darkness, is it not? Knowing no one threatens thepeace of the lands is a reward enough.”“But are you not also a warlord?” President Malory said. “Is peace your onlymotive, or do you want power in return?”“And understandable reservation”, Arthur said. “I am, as some might believeme to be, a hero, a conqueror and liberator whose deeds are epic and numerous,aer all”, he said with a bit of sarcasm. “But rest assured; I do not come as aconqueror. I died a treaerous death defending my ideals and my subjects. I amthe King of Britons no longer. I am a man no longer.” Arthur seemed wearier, butseemed to continue his tale with no less vigour, keeping his emotions in ewith iron will. “If you want our help, we shall aid you. If you want no help fromus, we shall help you without. But do not believe for a second that if you turndown our help, we shall somehow… avenge that show of distrust. Our heartsare true, our minds are set for fulfilling our destiny once again. Merlin's magichas honed us for the purpose we have been alloed in the tales of old: Return todefend Britain in its darkest hour. We are only Knights now, with a single, purepurpose. Do you want us fulfill that destiny, President?”“King Arthur”, President Malory began aer taking a good breath, “don't bealarmed. My only concern here is the ain of command. Warfare these daysis a confusing business, and as we have seen countless times in the history, inall wars, the greatest threat to peace, liberty and human dignity is the quest forpersonal glory. You should understand my reservations; I cannot enlist someonewho desires to usurp not only my authority, but the principles — very different

principles from the ones of your era — that my power derives from.”“I know all too mu about usurpers, President”, Arthur replied. “Rest assured,I shall follow your lead, and study the new ways of the governments of this world.”“And that is what I wanted to hear. I will gladly welcome all help from generalswho are willing to fight the good fight, and have resourcefulness and thewillingness to cooperate with other people. at is our way in the fields of battle.”e President turned to address everybody present. “Our war is a legendarywar. It is a rare occurrence that we can make that proclamation before the war isover, but the fact is, this is the hardest and most difficult war humanity has everfaced. We've been hiding in our trenes, protecting innocent people on the frontier,destroyed cities to save the people, waged fierce war in the vastness of emptyspace. But we've also faced our first significant victory: Instead of annihilation,we were victorious when we faced the enemy at our very gates. And thanks tothat victory go to Sir Lancelot.”“Always proud to be of assistance”, Sir Lancelot replied from his capsule.“And if you and the fellow knights can help us in any way in this fight, ourfight against the Planners would be far easier”, President Malory continued. “Allwe require is full cooperation with my generals, and my plans.” he sighed. “Ourstrategy has worked so far, but the balance has been upset. Our victories so farhave been due to the ingenuity of the generals, moreso than my own. I need everycapable commander I can get. And who, of course, would make a beer generalthan a true living legend?”“So be it”, Arthur said. “I, King Arthur, the leader of the Knights of the RoundTable, swear my oath of fealty to the President of the World, President Malory. I,and my knights sworn to serve me, shall serve under your banner until the bierend of this war among the stars.”“And I shall honour that. Even a less formal agreement would have worked,but if that is how you make alliances, then I must accept that. I hereby appointKing Arthur as a General of the, hm — I suppose Space Marine Corps is the closestto what the Knights do these days?”“I concur, sir”, Fyrehart said. e President hadn't looked at Fyrehart's reactionsfor a while, but it seemed to him that the general was staring at him with disbeliefand amazement, torn between a suppressed condemnation for President'seager trust and willingness to basically appoint a complete stranger to a highmilitary post, and genuine amazement that despite that lile thing, he actuallybelieved every word he heard and felt it was not right to protest.“ank you for the trust, mr. President. I heard you mention them before, butwhat exactly do the Space Marines do?”“Do we even have any— ah, Lieutenant Dalewood. I was hoping for GeneralFyrehart to explain this, but I guess it would be prudent to give this opportunityto give a presentation of the corps to an actual officer of the Space Marine Corps.”

VI. A H M TDaleworth blinked. A lowly lieutenant explaining the purpose of the entirebran of service to one of its new bosses? Yes, the military was working just asone expected it to work. “Yes, mr. President! e World Federation Space MarineCorps is a bran of service that specialises in high-mobility rapid deploymentoperations from aboard starships, sir! We work in close cooperation with theWorld Federation Space Fleet, and generally land on enemy-occupied zones inother worlds, bringing in armoured infantry where the enemy least expects them— or, as we saw in Paris, where the enemy definitely expects them. In principle,it is quite similar to this station of yours, sir: Spaceships that can drop heavilyarmoured infantry anywhere in the world.”“I see. So wherever the enemy goes, we go?”Daleworth wasn't quite sure if this was stupid or insightful. “Prey mu so,sir.”“Very good. Now — Lancelot, wert thou spying on us?” Arthur asked.“No doing of my own, sire”, Lancelot replied from his cylinder. “I found to mysurprise that I am unable to sleep, or even divert my aention from the images ofthe amber that the necromancer floods my mind with.”“Pardon me, sire”, Merlin said, not very happy how things were going, “butthere was a slight tenical issue with the armour.”Fyrehart coughed. “Are we done, mr. President?” Without waiting for ananswer, he continued, “Now that we have this over with, I'd have a few questionsof my own from my new general and… scientific staff member.”“By all means”, Arthur said.“How many people and these… armours of yours you are bringing in? Howmany knights, exactly?”“Our knights number thirty-three. And we have Merlin here, as well.”“And your nature appears rather… curious. What exactly did you mean whenyou said you are a ‘man no longer’ and how you ‘died a treaerous death’? How…how exactly have you survived for millennia, or if that can be even be calledsurvival?”“I am quite puzzled, because that question would have been my first question”,Arthur said. “Perhaps Merlin can answer that in a satisfactory manner…”“Ah.” Merlin said. “I could. But would you really comprehend it?” Merlinturned to Dr. Colbert. “You have brought in your solar — undoubtedly a remarkablewoman, or she wouldn't have been brought here on this… historic meeting— but she has not uered a word during your proceedings. Is this how yourespect wisdom?”President Malory raised his arms. “Rest assured, Merlin, we are people whoregard sciences and resear in highest esteem. Perhaps—”“Oh, you value scientists? You value scientists? And you brought a singlewoman aboard. If you can demonstrate how mu you value scientists, mr. Pres-

ident, I am willing to part with my secrets. Bring me your experts. My ways arecomplicated, mr. President, and I shall not waste a day trying to educate you. Ionly tell the Knights how and perhaps a lile bit why their mainery works, ifit helps them to operate the armour. But to tell more is insanity.”Dr. Meryl Colbert raised her hand. “Okay, who do we bring in?” She was,indeed, an expert in history, and was likewise recruited from Greater NewburyportUniversity over her objections — but the military thought it was necessaryto take the experts from the same place to maintain some level of secrecy. Shewasn't sure what the point of that was either; aer all, history of warfare knewmany cases where people found clustered events curious, and many cases werepeople started to pay undue aention to isolated incidents that ended up being related.Despite this sort of monotony that the history tended to have, where peoplebasically ended up geing screwed no maer what they did, the young, plump,freled, blond professor of history could tell that to the students in an interestingand engaging manner. She seemed unfased when meeting these weird historicfigures with their outrageous manners.Merlin shrugged. "Even your solar has quier wits than you, mr. President.President Malory looked stung. “I was merely trying to say, before your outburst,that the protocol dictated my actions. I am here to find new allies in ourfight against the Planners. Scientific issues were on the agenda next. But I agreethat bringing more scientists aboard would be a good idea — sharing what weknow is an excellent opportunity. I trust Dr. Colbert's judgement. Wasn't there ascientist in the first survey team?…”“Ah, you mean that engineering professor, Dr. Grovepath.” Dr. Colbert said.“I have things to tell about the Knights and their Armour, and perhaps a lilebit about the history of this facility”, Merlin said. “If you can find experts on these,perhaps we can discuss.”“All right”, Dr. Colbert said. “Dr. Grovepath is already busy looking at thevideos and photographs we collected from the previous journey, and he'll love tohear more about the armour. I should call Mannerheim and ask him to come over— and bring that araeologist with him. Dr. Merrywood, that was his name,right?”VII Legend of the Armoured KnightsFebruary 17, 2632T , and it was jolly good time for the scientistsand soldiers alike. And Merlin had completed his spin cycle. Daleworthfelt the world had seen many bizarre sights in this war — and all wars

VII. L A K— but those always tended to happen when soldiers decided to “relax a lile bit”.Now, the soldiers were actually relaxing “a lile bit” and they were seeing bizarrethings. Not very bizarre. Aer all, they were only relaxing a lile bit.Daleworth's platoon kept company to doctors Colbert, Grovepath and Merrywood,who had been retrieved from Mannerheim in less than a hour. e curioustwo scientists had been wating the whole event over comm link, and as soonas Daleworth called in, she found the two men were already geing ready fordeparture to the New Avalon.“Merlin sounds like a real piece of work, but hey, I guess that in grand semeof things, this will be interesting anyway!” Dr. Colbert said. “You should havecalled me earlier, Paul.”“Well… I'm also a bit new at this”, Dr. Grovepath said. “e military foundthe thing, and tried to keep it under the wraps as well as they could. What do youthink of the aritectural style?”“I saw your report, Paul, and I have to say that I have no idea why the armydragged me here if your guess is as good as mine”, Dr. Robin H. Merrywood said.“Strange combination of styles from antiquity, I'd hazard to guess… but still, thestyle seems almost alien in origin.” e wiry, elderly areologist sighed. “Let metell you what: I'm not in shape for prolonged space journeys. Let's split this up:You document this place some more aer dropping me ba to let me enjoy theprecious few days of vacation in Florida — perhaps I'll just stay in Canaverarnivalinstead of my crappy old sha — and then we'll head to Britain to dig up Camelot.at's more of my metier. Yee-haw!”“Well, let's just see if Merlin will divulge the location first.”e scientist group arrived once again to the keep, where the soldiers had keptwat.A few of the knights had stepped out of the cocoons, and were now walkingwithin the keep.“Hail, solars! I am Sir Galahad.”“Well met, on my behalf also. I am Sir Percival.”e two knights looked quite a lot like Lancelot, but there were subtle differences.Percival was more upright, the assis construction somewhat narrower.Galahad's feet were lighter, yet the knight seemed to move with same ease. etwo seemed to move effortlessly on the metal surface, so it looked like they toohad magnetic feet.“Well met, knights”, Merrywood said.e scientists arrived to Merlin's room, just as Lieutenant Daleworth washeading the same way, seemingly off from inspecting other parts of the keep.“Oh, hello again, doctor.” Daleworth said. “Glad to see familiar faces.”“Hello, lieutenant”, Dr. Grovepath said. “Looks like your hopes of meeting theKnights of the Round were answered.”

“Well, I'm glad some of my fears are false, but…”“…you're not exactly sure that you're believing what you're seeing?” Dr. Grovepathasked.“Yeah.”“Well, it's only natural to be a bit sceptical.” Dr. Grovepath said.“You're right, doctor. is is all very remarkable, but I want answers.”Dr. Grovepath smiled to Daleworth. “at's the spirit, lieutenant. Let's go andget them from Merlin, then.”Daleworth smiled ba. “Sure, doctor.”e scientists and Daleworth headed to the repair room — Merlin's strangeand orderly-in-disorder habitat.“Ah! Merlin, I presume.” Merrywood looked mu happier.To the scientists, Merlin in this particular incarnation looked like just a plainold ordinary killer robot… from old speculative romances, not the killer robotsthey faced in the balefields of the gas giant moons and Martian mining colonies.Full two meters tall, the body was fairly cylindrical, with large wheels under it,three flexible robot arms that pointed every way, and a semi-spherical head witha single camera. Merlin was, in fact, wearing a pointy hat, but the sight was soludicruous that the scientists just assumed Merlin had put it on his head to testtheir reactions and provoke a response.“And so, the scientists — and finally some amusement — arrive”, Merlin saidwith slight annoyance in his voice, but he clearly seemed genuinely relieved thatat least he had met contenders for his mat.“I am Dr. Robin Merrywood. is here is Dr. Paul Grovepath, who visited theNew Avalon before the fight in Paris.”“I had wondered who had moved my crystal ball”, Merlin said.“Uh, that was probably one of the soldiers”, Dr. Grovepath said.“at's right, one of the men from… er, the Beta squad did the rooms while wewere here, I think”, Daleworth said. “If they broke it, I'm sure the WFDF will buyyou a new one. Or at least reimburse for materials if you know how to rebuild it,because, you know, we don't have many magic crystal ball makers.”“ere is nothing wrong with my crystal ball, silly woman”, Merlin said. “Itwas merely disturbed, not broken.”“But if you're su an awesome wizard, can't you, you know, look into thecrystal ball and see who did this?”Merlin sighed. “I asked for experts. I got laymen. I wanted to avoid unnecessaryexplanations. Are you experts of magic?”“We do not have any evidence that magic would even exist”, Dr. Grovepathsaid.“Now now, Paul — I've always said magic is a good metaphor”, Dr. Colbertsaid.

VII. L A K“But as a physical force, no.” Dr. Grovepath said. “Even here, we have seenmany things. But are any of these things in direct violations of the laws of thenature as we know them? e only mysterious piece of puzzle I have is how theNew Avalon appeared on the orbit, but I'm sure there's some sort of a reasonableexplanation for that…”“Ah!” Merlin said. “I see you are a gentleman and a solar, Grovepath, withsome aention to detail in how things are in the present, rather than how youimagine things were in the past.”“Oh, I try to be a solar, that mu is true. If you want my gentlemanlymanners tested, perhaps I should point out that you show too mu disdain formy friend, lieutenant Daleworth. True, she is a soldier, but education is the foundationof our society. I am fairly sure she can at least follow some of the details.Am I right, lieutenant?”Daleworth smiled at Dr. Grovepath. Was Merlin just being generally loathsome,or trying to rile Dr. Grovepath into defending her honour somehow, assome sort of a test of aracter? Dr. Grovepath's response surprised her a littlebit. is was not exactly a show of great ivarly of ages gone by that Merlinprobably expected, but he was absolutely right anyway. “Well, I've followed yourhigh-flying discussions fairly well so far”, Daleworth said to Merlin. “I promisenot to ask stupid questions. If something remains unclear, I'll just take a lookat Dr. Grovepath's report. If he has to write in small enough words that GeneralFyrehart understands what he's saying, then I have no problems reading thateither.”“Interesting enough, I'm sure”, Merlin said, then turned to Dr. Grovepath.“But even if you are a solar, I still face a few smaller conundrums. You are aneducated man — a man educated on mainery, no less — who knows nothing ofhow this mainery operates. is, in my mind, is almost the same as meeting asimpleton who knows nothing of how this mainery operates.”“at's not true at all”, Dr. Grovepath said. “It is easier to tea an educatedman than to tea a complete layman.”“But it still is a needless bore, nonetheless”, Merlin said.“I have deducted how some of your mainery works, all by myself”, Dr. Grovepathsaid. “e Knights are just mobile armours, operated through hydraulics orvariable-tensile string bundles. e tenology appears very similar to our own.e drop pods, or the Steeds as you call them, are just roet pods — quite similarto what we would build.”“I see. And I suppose you are quite correct. But in effect, you are saying youalready know the principles on how the Knights work, and now want to knowhow they really work?”“True.”“But is that not also a meaningless quest, fool?” Merlin asked. “Why study

something that you already know?”Daleworth gried her teeth. “You're not as smart as you think, wizard.”Merlin faced Daleworth. “And how is that?”“I see where you are really geing at. You're being philosophical. Don't youknow that philosophers can only make people uncomfortable when they revealincovenient truths?”“I know that, woman”, Merlin said. “I happen to also know that your societyvalues philosophers.”“But not ones who rehash same old arguments from years ago. You're nophilosopher, wizard — you're a career politician, who gets his bread from idlepromises and stalling any progress with careful diversions. In case you didn'tnotice, we're not talking about magic or science. We're not talking about whatyou promised to talk about, and now you're saying we're probably not worthy totalk to because you're too lazy to educate us. e good doctors here are willingto learn and exange information, if you're willing to do the same. Now you'rejust questioning what we can offer you.”“I'm afraid the good lieutenant is right”, Dr. Grovepath said. “If you shareyour information, maybe we can give you something in return.”“Arthur said he wants to help us. So help us, and don't try to wriggle out ofthat duty, Merlin”, Daleworth said. “We can't help you if you can't help you, andsince it's fairly obvious that you have the advantage at the moment, we think youshould get the ball rolling.” Daleworth grinned. “Not the crystal ball, though.”Merlin regarded Daleworth with slightly annoyed silence.“Very well”, he finally responded. “No more tris. But I want to know, justfor the sake of curiosity, why do you desire to know more of the things that youalready know?”Dr. Grovepath smiled. “I said I knew the principles, not the specifics. Principlesremain, specifics are in constant flux. Understanding things that exist nowhelps me understand things that existed before, and inspire that whi will existin the future.”“And do I even need to explain why knowing history is important?” Dr. Colbertsaid. “ose who forget the history are bound to repeat it. And I don't say itjust because it's a tired old phrase — it's the solid truth that I've always believedin.”Merlin was silent for a while. “I have misjudged all of you, and I guess I haveto apologise for my manners. And I see your ladies, even the non-solarly ones,have clear wits.”“My clear wits keep my men alive, wizard”, Daleworth said. “And when themen are alive, they're motivated to keep me alive, in the unlikely case case I'mnot being clear-wied at the moment.”“All right”, Merlin said. “Now could you please stand ba and let the solars

VII. L A Kspeak.”Daleworth grinned and raised her arms. “Very well, wizard. Pay no aentionto me.”“Now”, Dr. Grovepath said. “Can you tell me exactly what these Knights are?I'm starting to feel we're not addressing actual knights.”“Since you are in the mood for strings of correct guesses, it seems, why don'tyou keep up the good work, Dr. Grovepath.”“I'm guessing the actual Knights are… elsewhere.”“And that's where you're wrong. e knights are there, within their armour.”“I see.” Dr. Grovepath said. “But the construction of the armour, and the factthat millennia has passed, suggests that they're not alive. at's what all I'veheard points to. Am I correct in assuming the armour are… some kind of mobilesarcophagi?”“Very good deductions, doctor”, Arthur said. “Most people would just assumethis is some sort of a mysterious resurrection, and assume the knights are simplyclad with new armour, coming from beyond the grave in new bodies, readyto destroy the threat to Britain. You, on the other hand, seem to not simply believewhat you see, but wonder why you see these things. It is true, solars: thebodies of the knights are dead. What we worked on was merely prolongation ofconsciousness beyond death.”“How did you describe this process to the knights?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Well, we—” Merlin began.“Excuse me”, Dr. Colbert said. “Who are ‘we’?”“Myself and Morgan le Fay.”“I thought you—”“Yes, I am aware of some things that people have wrien in the centuriessince”, Merlin interrupted. “It is true — e knights of the Camelot and Morganhad some… differences. But once Arthur had died, I learned that Morgan was notjust a half-hearted nuisance I usually knew her as. Even in the toughest times,she was still willing to help, even when Arthur never really trusted her — andI can't blame him. Negotiating with Arthur is difficult, and I sometimes can'ttell him what really transpired. I took most of the credit for this lile miracle,and I have not revealed how mu of his continued existence he really owes toMorgan. It could… upset her. As you can see, his emotions are in e, andwe originally anticipated that emotions would die with the body. But as for myown experiences, even in death, I still find myself quite… emotional over manythings… fine, I admit it, just now, I found myself uneasy and allured when youmade me bring up Morgan. And I fancy myself quite rational compared to theKnights. Even in life, the Knights were frequently distracted by their emotions. Itry not to upset them too mu by mentioning their glorious and adventure-filledhistory. It could prove to be… troublesome.”

“So I'd imagine. Anyway, how did it all happen?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“It all began a few decades aer Arthur's death. I grew nearer death everyday. I was… I was finding I was not the ancient bard they thought I was going tobe. I was old when Arthur reigned, and I didn't expect to outlive him. Morgan,however, had worked on dead people more than I could ever have time for. Shehad devised a way to discern the state of consciousness from long-dead people.”“State of consciousness… from ashes of the dead?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“No, not ashes”, Merlin said. “Dust. A pyre will destroy what remains of theconsciousness. By the way, I was fairly amused by the name of the General ofyours. Pyrehill?”“Oh yes”, Daleworth said. “And believe it or not, his first name is Arthur. Hismiddle name is I-something. Probably ‘Irony’.”Merlin uled. “Anyway, A body must be le to rot, its brains must degradeto dust. We only recovered the brain; afflictions of the body, emotions of the heart,were no longer any kind of concern for us. ough it seems to me that they stillaffect us, even when their bodies no longer exist.”“I see”, Dr. Colbert said, “fire destroys whatever information was le, at leastmore certainly than other forms of natural degradation. I'm no medical expert,but even I know our science has struggled with this kind of things, to put it mildly.Brain death is an insurmountable obstacle — but we've always believed it's onlyan obstacle. Last I read about the most recent resear on this field, we havesome crude methods of decoding synapse pathways, but that only works on avery recently dead person — decoding something from dust is almost too fancifulto believe. We can decode, through statistical comparisons, what kind of skills theperson has developed, but it certainly doesn't work well enough to decode a person'smemories or their personality — neurostatisticians will say there are dozensof ways to remember a thing, and there are million faces to general crankiness…”Merlin coughed. “Isn't it a shame how in bale between solars and laymen,the laymen oen win, with tragic results? Morgan suggests some Greek paganscientists had discovered these things, shortly before Christian crusaders flayedthem alive for being vile necromancers they were”, Merlin said. “I have to sayI start to see her point of view on the ideals Arthur represented, even when Isomewhat believe she was slightly misguided in many maers.”“Yes, this has happened way too oen”, Dr. Colbert said.“Very well”, Dr. Grovepath said. “So — you figured out a way to decode thebrains from dust of the dead. What happened next?”“What happened next? I died. Morgan's granddaughter — I've forgoen whoit was, one of the several, I'm not good with names — said she'd bring me ba tolife. And her mainery worked, as you can see. Within this body lie my dustsand bones, in a coffin of metal. Around it lies mainery that makes it operate.Cold casket fashioned out of strange new metals, lead and titanium, surround my

VII. L A Kicy heart of old dust. Around it, flames of mainery bring me animation drivenby intellect. Risen from the asm of Hephaestus, the fires within an iron stovehath given it intellect, and lo, the stove now walketh the Earth.”Dr. Grovepath couldn't suppress his laughter. Few others present could.“And with that, I worked for centuries to fashion the Mobile Armours, perusingnotes le by Greek and Roman master-smiths, uncovering the secrets neededto build the Steeds of new, and the New Avalon. I worked with whoever I foundtrustworthy enough to locate Avalon and find the burial site of Arthur and someof the Knights. I was actually surprised to hear that most of the closest knightshad been interred in Avalon — I heard tales that they had been buried all acrossBritain…”“at's… another thing that appears to be rather puzzling”, Dr. Merrywoodsaid. “So you say Avalon was a real place? I wanted to ask you about the locationof Camelot…”“Avalon, the original burial site of the Knights, does exist. Camelot, sad tosay, has been razed since. It was not a formidable fortress the legend makes itto be, nor was it the thing of splendor; a mere simple castle that was mu moreremarkable for the people who inhabited it. Bigger and more splendorous castleshave been built.” Merlin sounded strangely interested. “Can you recommend acastle to replace it?”“Sure”, Daleworth said. “I'm sure the folks at Neuswanstein would love tohave a few legendary knights running around. Would boost the tiet sales totourists. rough the roof. And the roofs are prey high there.”“Bah!” Arthur said with a ule. “As if we would suffer traveling commonersin our halls.”“You'll be sorely disappointed in our world, then”, Daleworth said. “Even theWindsor Castle gets guided tours these days. Times ange.”Arthur looked grumpier. “Right. Uh… Where were we?”“e Stove walketh the Earth and figureth out where Arthur hath been buried?”Daleworth said.“Right”, Arthur said. “We simply used the same process that had been usedon me to rejuvenate the knights. Within our New Avalon, I trained the Knightsand let them get used to their new Armour. en, they began their new sleep, andwe took off to the skies.”“I see”, Dr. Grovepath said. “But what about the disappearance? How… didyou even take off to the skies? Do you travel through the time? How?”“at was all thanks to a strange device we found”, Merlin said. “Morgan hadkept it in her care for years, without ever telling where it actually came from. Adevice, she claimed, that would somehow transport even large objects far away,and even across the time — if one could interpret correctly the strange symbolsembedded on its surface…”

“And… where is this device now?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Safe and secure. But, uh…”“Let me guess… something has happened?”“We jumped across centuries. Our last jump was a lile bit of a miscalculationon my part — not in time, but in space. Avalon was actually never designed to flyoutside of the sphere of air. But as I and the knights do not breathe, this ultimatelyproved not to be an obstacle, and the lightness of objects does actually prove tobe of convenience. So here we are now, circling the Earth.”“So in the last bale, you… just told the Knights to jump down from the orbit?Are you mad?” Daleworth asked.“My design was solid. Ancient Pagan philosophers had anticipated the heatand smoke that the air causes around fast-moving bodies, and the Steeds weredesigned to work around that. I figured that a Knight could easily return to theclouds with his Steed, many times over. A trip to the very edges of nothingnesswas nothing particularly difficult by extension.”“I'm not a tenical gal, but I'm starting to wonder where the he you fit thefuel to rea the orbit. Our shule needs far more than you could fit in that pod.”“Now that, woman, is a secret that only strangest people would believe, andeven I can't really begin to say how it works. You would need to ask Morgan'sprogeny about the motivations, assuming any of them yet live or are even awareof their family's greatness. I am merely a mixer of materials, a buffoon with amortar and pestle, if one can call my mixing mainery that; I have no idea whatshe was thinking when she came up with the ingredients.”“A mystery fuel from the antiquity that even the Greeks didn't decipher it is,then”, Daleworth said and looked grumpier.“And where is the device that transported you through the time?”Arthur scrated his head-equivalent — somehow, the gesture looked fairlynatural, even when Arthur seemed to do that with a hand seemingly aaed tohis ba. “It is in the real Avalon. I have my own Steed, whi is different from theone Arthur and his Knights use, and I use it to transport Avalon to different eras.Due to its design, the device must move through eras independently of the thingsit transports, hence it must remain in the cave while Avalon travels through time.I have developed mainery whi will trigger its operation; I merely fly to thecave, activate the device, fly ba to New Avalon, and the entirety of New Avalontransports to the new time and place.”“Doesn't sound like a Planner device. If those bastards could time travel, Iassure you human race wouldn't even have goen started”, Daleworth said.“What do you make of that, Paul?” Dr. Colbert asked.“Time travel isn't exactly my field either”, Dr. Grovepath said, “and I can'tpossibly start to comment on things that we can only speculate so far about. ButI guess this sounds to me like the device is some kind of a wormhole generator

VIII. A New reatthat must be operated from afar; its time travel works by having some sort of areference point in our particular universe, and hence it itself cannot be transportedacross time. But still, it seems very luy that New Avalon managed to end upanywhere near Earth…”“Do you doubt my skills with the device? I have made the jump across yearsdozens of times, mostly to study the ange of times and manners, trying to judgeif Arthur's service is needed once again. I had perfected the astronomical calculationsnecessary for ea jump, especially in the laer times when I could spy thestrange mathematics needed for even more precise planetary calculations.”“Where were you in World Wars?” Dr. Colbert asked. “In the laer of those,there was yet another Saxon invader, threatening Britain…”Merlin seemed grim and even apologetic, as if he had been expecting thatquestion. “We came here in , decided we were not needed, and our next stopended up being the year , where we were no longer needed. We completelymissed these tumultuous events. It seemed to us that the wars and grimness wasstarting to be behind, so we were leaping forward with bigger strides, so unfortunately,we learned of these great wars too late. e device seems to be only ableto jump ahead of time, not baward. Perhaps if we could decipher more of itsalien functions, we could go ba in time to right that wrong.”“Fascinating. How about the Martian Rise of the Reds, in ?”“at planetary revolt? We unfortunately skipped through most of the ndcentury. We were here in , if I remember right, and we returned in .”“Did you learn anything from these leaps?” Dr. Colbert seemed angry. “Perhapsthat the history needed a lile bit more examination than periodic peeks?Great events just slipped past, and you didn't manage to do anything about them.”“I—” Merlin began.“What, pray tell, did you do to actually assess the situation on ea leap? Youcould see what had happened in the past, but how do you predict the future? Didyou carefully monitor the situation and see when strange things were afoot?”Merlin was strangely silent. “All right. I guess I can't argue you there. Wenever really had any greater plan. I hate to admit it, but this was a clear mistake.”“So now you are here”, Dr. Colbert said. With your maine knights, and youhave actually managed to land in middle of a war — a war, whi, as you correctlydeciphered, could mean something significant. You're a luy man, Merlin."“One could say so”, Merlin said. “I don't know what I can do to show you I dohave some regrets for not thinking this quite through.”“ank you for at least trying, though, Merlin”, Daleworth said. “It is thethought that counts. e most important thing you can do is that you just keepthe knights doing what they do best.”

VIII A New reatFebruary 18, 2632, 07:58 UTC, !” Daleworth said, looking surprisingly eerfulfor someone who was halfway lying down, side of the head firmly“Gplanted on the surface of the coffee table, in a slightly disheveledstate whi probably still fell within the leer of the Space Marine Corps regulations.“Why, good morning, lieutenant!” Dr. Grovepath said. “I got your note.”Daleworth had sent a brief message to Dr. Grovepath. “Come have a coffeewith me. Want to talk. Starboard Officer Cafeteria, De C, Room #. :UTC. Lt. Daleworth.”“And welcome, dear doctor, to the famous Starboard Cafe, where the uppereelons of the famed starship Mannerheim turn from ugly cranky bastards whojust woke up to fit and alert officers who are ready to face anything and everything.I'll get you the best damn coffee this… vending maine can get. e cafeis supposed to open at noon in even-numbered days.”“at's… friendly of you, Lieutenant. And I don't think you look too ugly orcranky, if you don't mind me saying”, Dr. Grovepath said and uled a bit.“I don't mind you being friendly with me, doctor”, Daleworth said. “I thinkyou're a good guy. I'm sure I could just hang out with you… if you wanted.”“Uh, I think I would like that. So… is this your idea of a… date?” Dr. Grovepathasked. “Hope you don't mind me calling it that. I don't think we have manyactual… scientific maers to discuss. I'm fine if you just want to have a coffee,though. Or hang out. Or talk.”“Date? Well, kind of”, Daleworth said as the second cup of very, very blacoffee slowly poured out of the maine. She handed it to the doctor. “I justwant to talk, doctor, but I don't mind geing to know you beer. You seem like asensible guy.” Daleworth grimaced as she sat down and flumped lying on the tableagain. “It's just that I'm really not in a condition to have a real date today. I'm nota big date person. I just meet people. Not sure if I should tell you my silly theories,but hell, why not…” She sipped some of the coffee she had before her and sighed,closing her eyes. “I'm the kind of a gal who has sex on the first date, and since Isure as hell don't want to do it with you today, this just doesn't qualify as a date”,Daleworth said. She looked exhausted and she definitely looked like she coulduse the road-paving material that the vending maine called ‘coffee’. “Shit, thatdidn't sound right. It's… well, I just wanted to talk with a friendly non-militarytype who has his ear on the ground. So here we are.”Dr. Grovepath wasn't sure if lauging was really appropriate, but he did it anyway.“Wasn't going to suggest anything of sort, Lieutenant. ough I… have to

VIII. A N Tsay I like women who have similar interests in advanced roetry and skillfulzero-g manoeuvers.”“Now you just sound dirty, doctor. Oh, hell. Just call me Mielle.”“Uh, I'm just Paul. Everyone who works with me usually just calls me byname anyway.” Dr. Grovepath smiled nervously. “I do hope that our cooperationgoes as smooth as possible, Mielle. In any way.”“If you really want it, Paul, aer all this is over, maybe we could head to LStation and I could show you some skillful zero-g manoeuvres.”“Right! As was probably slightly apparent on the New Avalon, I guess I stillneed… some zero-g training from an experienced instructor, before I can head toL. If you don't mind teaing me…”Daleworth laughed. “Nonsense, you handled yourself fine. But I'll… be happyto help you.”“By the way, this is a beautiful place”, Dr. Grovepath said and looked around,admiring the skylight above them that revealed starry sky. It was a beautifulplace, one that looked like it belonged to a commercial FTL cruise line spaceshipthan a military vessel. Dr. Grovepath had imagined the Mannerheim to be acramped, labyrinthine ship, and it certainly looked like that in the publicly availablediagrams, but once again, the scale was surprisingly deceiving. e corridorswere spacious, and tall; Almost every arterial corridor had two monorail linesgoing in opposite directions, on whi one-seat, streamlined cars sped forth atstaggering speed, zipping around well over the heads of the people who preferredto walk. When Dr. Grovepath had just had to pun in the room number andhe was transported across three des in less than two minutes. “I had no ideamilitary spaceships had this sort of… nice spaces. Skylights above and beneswith upholstery and everything.”“You should see the zero-g section.” Daleworth sighed. “Sorry, I get a bit… saltywhen I get anxious. Anyway, yeah, the community spaces are kind of awesomein most of the frigates. ey wanted the starboard cafeteria to look as good aspossible on the Mannerheim. She was named aer a field marshal who fought forthe people of his homeland, so that they could keep drinking coffee freely. Andnot the tea. e enemies, who had already invaded many other countries, drunktea.”“Oh. And this was in…?”“World War .”“You would imagine a bit more detailed history would survive from that era…”“It did, but frankly, when I was in the Academy, I wasn't very interested of themotivations of war, so I can't remember everything. I just wanted to know howto survive through them. Politicians try their darnest to prevent wars. Soldiersendure through them, one way or other, in the unlikely event the politicians failat their jobs.”

“I see”, Dr. Grovepath said. “What did you want to talk with me about? Whyare you so anxious?”“Just the Knights. I just want your honest opinion. Can they defeat the Planners?I sort of think they can do that, and I saw your reports, but… what's yourhonest, non-tenical opinion?”“I think we have a ance. I believe in it. Did you see what they did in Paris?I thought that was a good demonstration of what they could do. I looked at yourrecording. It was amazing.”“You think the mainery we saw on New Avalon and in the Knights couldactually destroy Planners forever?”“You know just as well as I do that we don't know if Planners can be destroyedforever.”“Yeah. But do we have a beer ance now than we had before? at's whatI'd really want to know, Paul.”“ey're very well-equipped maines of war, Mielle. ey made a shortwork of the bots on field, whi represent maybe, uh, % of the different bots onfield.” Dr. Grovepath smiled. “I think they're our best ance to end this war, sofar.”“at's what I was thinking, too”, Daleworth said. “anks. You know, partof me… wants this war to end, but I don't really want to think of what I'll do aerthe war, if I don't yet know if the war even has a ance of ending in our favour.”“Never lose hope, Mielle.”“I don't. I won't. But I can't make plans if I don't know for sure, no?”“Well, if I were you, I'd plan for both outcomes. But if the Planners are victorious,that outcome can't really be planned for, now can it?”“at's where you're wrong”, Daleworth said. “I just… I just… I don't wantto spend energy on that outcome. If we're not going to win, there's no point instarting to plan, right? No, wait… no… I think you're right.”“Make plans, Mielle. I think we'll win. As long as people keep fighting,there's hope.”“Yeah.” Daleworth smiled.“I actually wanted to talk to you too. I sort of wanted to talk with… a friendlymilitary type who has her ear on the ground.”“Oh, really?” Daleworth smirked. “What about?”“Major Plaerman.”“Oh. I guess you're calling him a damn difficult guy to cat.”“at's one way of puing it.”“He's oen like that. He has his optimised command ain procedures andwhatnot. He lives and breathes so he can prey mu go wherever the hehe pleases while commanding the troops. Going to talk to him outside of thecommand network, on a non-operative business, is hell.”

VIII. A N T“I talked to his aide-de-camp, about seing up a meeting…”“Let me guess, that didn't work out too well?”“He said he'd look into the calendar and make an appointment without actuallysaying whi decade it was going to take place. I'm beginning to guess theguy just stu my meeting request on the boom of a prey high pile.”“Huh. Sounds prey typical to me”, Daleworth said and grinned. “But I'll giveyou a few hints: He's not actually that bad guy to talk with when he doesn't haveanything really obviously pressing things to aend to, and you might even be ableto get something talked through before he has to run to the next appointment.Secondly, he's actually aboard Mannerheim right now, and won't depart untilevening, last I heard. irdly, when he's got nothing to do in the morning, hetends to oversleep…”February 18, 2632, 08:34 UTCSplashdown.e orum had ordered in a stream most unanimous in nature. e orum'swill be done. e orum shall receive. e Others of the Collective shalldeliver.e strategy had been simple. e drive courageous. e direction clear.e human vessels were dumbfounded and blind. ere was absolutely noresistance to the glorious advance of the Many-Headed Device of Glorious Conquest.e precious large island would offer no resistance. is pathetic, nearly abandonedfortification would prove to be adequate base. Occupied but undefendable.Destroyable if needed.Humans knew of factories producing factories in soware. ey would notbe prepared for factories producing factories in the realm of reality.e factory existed.e factory remained.e factory slept.e hydra slept.February 18, 2632, 09:12 UTCGeneral Pyrehill was having one of those days.e fine crewmen of the Light Frigate Suez Camel had made the first mistake.Scanner men weren't supposed to take any breaks; they were supposed to keepconstant wat on the things. is was the kind of an obvious working procedure

that most people would take for granted. No, it definitely didn't say in the regulationsthat it was okay for all of the crew manning the scanners to take a lunbreak at the same time. Perhaps, General Pyrehill thought, it was a high time thatsu regulations would be put to their place. is sort of screwups were nothingunheard of from the scanner and communications crew of the Suez Camel; Justlast year, they had taken part in a electronic warfare exercise and were supposedto be monitoring a deep space region for any anomalies. It should have been commonsense that the ships went to passive electromagnetic use only, and streamingmusic over ansible carrier was exactly the opposite of what that was supposed tobe all about.e Suez Camel's bumbling was just one of the problems. Yamamoto, an otherwiseupstanding vessel General Pyrehill had nothing bad to say about, had experienceda rather strange communications relay failure; they had been right behindUranus at the time the Planner cra came to the view, and obviously all of thecomm repeaters in the region were in the shadow side at the time. Of course theless expensive comm repeaters had to be solar powered and not have any cellpower le for emergency use. No one wanted to call from behind Uranus, andwhile Yamamoto's crew were smart and mature enough to ignore ancient jokes,the fact that the relay wasn't operational was damning enough.e Suez Camel had a protocol failure. e Yamamoto had a tenical failure.But nothing could quite top the failure of Bismar: e Planner cra had simplypassed over it directly from rear. Bismar's barely had the time to say “dammit,it's coming from behind”. at was followed by a comment along the lines of“dammit, well, it's now ahead of us. And already out of torp range. Oh bugger.”And now, Pyrehill was expecting even worse news from the near-Earth scannercrews.“What the hell do you mean you didn't see where it went?” Pyrehill said, hispalm firmly planted on his face.“It is not quite as bad as it sounds, sir”, scanner crew overseer, Mayor BartholomewFoxley said. “We have some data. We know where it went. Sort of. Within, uh,a fan paern kilometers long, give or take.”“Oh, good, I thought you lost it for good.”“We at least have a sear area, sir. e problem is, it appears the cra deliberatelydited in open ocean.”“What makes you think that?”Foxley pushed a few buons. e orbit appeared on the screen; it had a sharpturn, followed by something unusual: A doed line that ended in a fan-like patterninstead of a single cross indicating where the cra would have landed normally.“It appears to have taken a normal orbit, but diverted sooner than usual to alanding course. It could be a planned descent, if a bit rough ride at that. And it

VIII. A N Tdefinitely hit ocean — they tend to know how to brake in air.”“So where did the damn thing land?”“Somewhere in the North Sea, off the coast of Britain.”“Could it have disintegrated in the atmosphere?”“e velocity ange was too well planned for that. It probably made it in onepiece — even if we disregard its shielding.”“All right. We need Navy cooperation for finding the whereabouts of thatdamn thing.”February 18, 2632, 09:04 UTCDr. Grovepath couldn't believe it. When Major Plaerman said he had an opendoorpolicy, he didn't really expect that the man actually slept with his cabin dooropen. On the other hand, he was a lile bit apprehensive — he always thoughtmilitary types slept with their sidearm under their pillows. He hadn't bothered toask about the veracity of this strange stereotype from Daleworth, and he obviouslyhadn't eed how Daleworth slept.“Mbblhh?” Plaerman mumbled. “What now? Oh, Dr. Grovepath. Goodmorning.”“Good morning, sir. I hope I didn't wake you”, Dr. Grovepath said.“Well, you did, but I was on the process of geing up, truth to tell.” Plaermansat up; he had been sleeping with pants and t-shirt on, whi was, knowing him,probably the most naked state he ever dared to undress himself to. “Ah, I guessyou want to discuss about the security clearance?”“For the last time, I don't want a security clearance. I just want our previouslevel of access to the resear material. Unclassified material.”“I pulled up Captain Underwood's and Major Rankin's files, but I couldn'tfind out what they did”, Plaerman said. “ere doesn't seem to be any recordson anges on the protocol, doctor. Could you please explain what horrible thingsthese people did to you?”“It seems to me that you've only focused on direct orders from these gentlemen”,Dr. Grovepath said. “Basically, Major Grace Rankin got the Roetry andSpace Resear Centre's outrea program going. e RSRC DataBank.”“I was aware of that. And Captain Bill D. Underwood didn't ange its direction,as far as I can tell. I was under the impression the DataBank was still goingstrong. Tons of information, all readily accessible…”“Have you looked at the DataBank lately? Purely as a user, not at the content.We had extraordinarily good access to designs and specifications of the systemsduring the Roet Lady's reign. When the Blind Billdee — just reporting what theusers called him, of course — came around, the old system was basically turned

into a bureaucratic nightmare. It was not his fault, I guess, because his underlingssaid it was for the greater good.”“I'm sure it was.”“Greater good of the military, not the scientists. Perhaps you just noticed fromyour per that the number of active users climbed by several thousand people.You should have looked at the overall demographics. ousands of new militaryusers. ousands of less public-sector scientists. e system was fairly unusablefor what it did. If we wanted actual information, we'd need to fill applications.Whi were never fulfilled. Bureaucracy. Ad-hoc user cliques — excuse me, councils,that quashed all contributions from non-military personnel. It would nothave maered, because we were ready to build our own systems for informationexange, but these people were so mired in their own politics that they threatenedus with legal action.” Dr. Grovepath drew some breath. “So please, sinceyou're in arge of this thing now, can you please tell these morons to get a clue?”“I…” Plaerman began. “I was not actually aware of what was going on in theuser community.”“I guess so. It seemed to me that maered to the leadership was that theDataBank existed, data was fed into it, and user statistics showed that peopleactually kept using the system. So I ask you: Rewrite the user policy. Get scientistsba in. I beg of you. at's all I'm going to ask as a reward for my time here.”“If you wish, doctor. I promise I will do mu to—”A sharp ime came from the terminal by Major Plaerman's bed. “Contact.Red. Baseless Chest.”“—dammit, duty calls. It was nice to talk to you about these maers. I willlook into it.” Plaerman shoved Dr. Grovepath out of the room.Dr. Grovepath began walking to his cabin. He couldn't but wonder what“Baseless Chest” referred to, but it couldn't be anything good if “red” was mentioned.IX Knightly RivalryFebruary 19, 2632, 10:12 UTCN A in the Sun as it, once again, got its share of sunlightfrom behind the planet. e science team aboard was making goodprogress, and Dr. Grovepath had only needed to give some light tutoringto some of his students on the proper draing and documenting methodology.Now, he was happy with the results: it seemed that the old secrets of Avalon wereslowly taking modern shape. Many subsystems of the Steeds and the Knight's armourhad already been modeled using modern methods. Dr. Grovepath found it

IX. K Rwas a shame that Fyrehart had taken one brief look at the material the scienceteam had gathered and summarily ruled the whole project classified. Dr. Grovepathwould need to talk to him later on about that; aer all, that didn't makeone ounce of sense. Building mainery like this was hardly feasible from anyone'smilitary perspective, and besides, while the tenology was curious anddefinitely centuries far ahead of the time in the early Middle Ages — absolutelyno surprise there — it just wouldn't compete with some of the tenologies of theday. Dr. Grovepath was fairly certain that the only practical limitations to buildingthe armours were the cost, the whole reanimation-of-the-dead tenology,and furrow-browed generals who wouldn't even begin to consider using somethingas preposterous as walking tanks, unarmed with any modern projectile orenergy weapons, on the balefield. e Knights were a godsend on this particularwar, but Dr. Grovepath couldn't imagine them being useful on any other typeof modern conflict. But then again, he didn't have Fyrehart's experience. PerhapsGeneral Fyrehart had a good reason to keep the whole thing classified. Butperhaps, Dr. Grovepath thought, he did not.“Any news from the front?” Dr. Colbert asked. e scientist had assembledfor a curiously casual pa lun on the central amber of Avalon, and dared toremove their helmets. With a lile bit of engineering effort, they had succeededin sealing the individual rooms of the New Avalon properly; it was not as difficultfeat as they had imagined, due to the strong metal hull of the station. is wastheir first test of pressurising the central amber. e air pump hummed, theKnights screeed and creaked a lile bit as they moved about. King Arthur,Gawain, Galahad and Lancelot were out of their Steeds.“Uh, yeah, I was supposed to tell King Arthur of the recent developmentswhile I was here”, Dr. Grovepath said. “Apparently, the enemies have made alandfall. e problem is, we have no idea where the hell the enemies are.”“Tidings most troublesome and grim”, Lancelot said. “I can sense the evilthreaten Britain again.”“How did you guess?” Dr. Grovepath said. “Apparently, the enemy has landedin the ocean near the east coast of British Isles.”“And if it is up to me, then the vile enemy shan't rise from the murky iceywaves!” Lancelot bellowed.“But we don't know where those things are. Or at least the military isn't sureyet.” Dr. Grovepath sighed. “How goes the resear into history?”“Spoy, I'm afraid.” Dr. Colbert sighed. “Merlin has some… books… but itappears that these records are rather incomplete.”“Why is that, Merlin?”“I could not risk puing the only copy of those records aboard the New Avalon,for I was afraid they might be destroyed. I was also afraid of… other things.”“Really?” Dr. Grovepath asked.

“I discussed of these reasons before. I'd… not talk of it right here and now.”“Really? Why?” Dr. Grovepath had no idea what Merlin was speaking of.Merlin seemed rather strained. “How do I speak of whi must not be spoken?ere is one thing that I do not dare to discuss with the Knights…”“Why, Merlin”, Dr. Grovepath said with amusement, “these are not the DarkKnights of darkest creepy forest in sear of curious plants — I'm sure you can atleast mention it…”“I don't dare to mention it.”“What was it? Something to do with history? Camelot?”“Shut up, you fool!” Merlin was alarmed.“Mm… what could possibly be excluded from the history books? Guineviere,wasn't it?”ere was a bit of stunned silence in New Avalon.“Uh, I hope I didn't make a big mistake”, Dr. Grovepath finally said.“Sire, I advise you to remain calm”, Merlin said with a methodical tone. “eenGuineviere is long dead.”“Guineviere”, King Arthur said. “Lovely memories fill my heart, Merlin, butalso thoughts of grimness. How… how could I forget about my een?”“Sire, I assure you—”“And now I remember the nature of our… differences, Lancelot”, King Arthursaid and turned to Lancelot. His tone was calculated and coldly polite, but hisposture far more hostile. He slowly raised his sword, and Lancelot did the same.“As do I, oh unyielding King”, Lancelot said.“Sire, your rivalry and skirmishes are long gone!” Merlin shouted. “I tried notto upset you with too mu remembrance of things gone by. I beg of you, setaside those old quarrels!”“I do not remember that this feud was seled adequately”, King Arthur said.“Sire, I assure you that you don't remember all of the details”, Merlin said.“en tell me, wizard…” Arthur snarled, “what is the truth? Or is there anytruth in your words?”Merlin drew breath. “On a second thought, I should let you two sele yourdifferences. I don't dare to say more, sire, for I feel you do not trust my words.But the truth, as you should remember, lies within Avalon.”“Avalon?” Arthur seemed puzzled. ere were things he couldn't remember,but now he seemed to remember yet another thing. “Yes, the truth lies withinAvalon. If Guineviere is not aboard the New Avalon, then by all rights, she shalllie in the Avalon of old. I shall seek our legendary island… once our feud is seled.”Arthur turned to Lancelot.“I see where you are geing at, oh blind King”, Lancelot snarled. “And I won'tallow it! I shall defeat you, and force the necromancer to bring Guineviere bato life — and she shall rule by my side.”

IX. K R“And that cannot be done! Have at you, Lancelot!” Arthur raised the Excalibur.Dr. Grovepath didn't like where this was going to. “Damn. Suit up!” heshouted, and everyone in earshot dropped what they were doing and reaedfor their helmets.“GUYS!” Dr. Colbert screamed. “Don't fight here! You could damage the ma-inery!”Lancelot guarded well against the blow; fortunately, Arthur seemed to cometo senses. “We shall fight for our honour elsewhere, Lancelot. e New Avalonwas not built for bloodleing among our own.”“at is true. And I vowed to not spill blood of our fellow Knights. Shall webegin a mighty Tournament to sele this maer, Arthur?”Arthur laughed. “You would joust with our new Steeds, Lancelot? Our mountsstampeding from the surface of Earth and from New Avalon's ports, clashing inthe midway?!”Lancelot uled. “Why not? It has not been done in the course of history.If we're to do legendary deeds in this era, Arthur, we must do deeds that seemlegendary to the contemporaries.”“Orbital jousting! Yesss!” Dr. Colbert said and looked happy. “Oh, sorry, I'mjust happy to see history in the making. is is just crazy and awesome enough.I can see you guys are really in love.”“Damn! Helmet on, Meryl!”Despite Dr. Grovepath's worries, Dr. Colbert was not distracted by her joy, andwas quite aware of what was going on: e two Knights climbed to their steeds.e alarm light that was aaed to the pumps flared up, notifying that the areawas about to go through momentary vacuum exposure. Lancelot's Steed sankthrough the floor fast; Arthur's Steed sank through the hole far slower, readyingitself for a slower laun just outside New Avalon. e pumps whirred into actiononce again; not mu of the central amber's contents had been disturbed by theshort leaks of air.“Now we just need to find a way to wat this awesome spectacle”, Dr. Colbertsaid eerfully. “Boris!”“Right, doc?” said Boris Ivanov, one of Dr. Grovepath's students.“See if we can get camera feed from some ship that's in the range.”“I think we could get feed from one of the cruisers”, Ivanov said. “PerhapsNedelin…”“Grave things, fellow scientists”, Merlin groaned.“Oh.” Dr. Grovepath quit looking at Dr. Colbert's strangely eerful actionsand started to regard the disaster unfolding before his eyes. “Uh, I'm sorry formentioning Guineviere to the Knights.”“What is done is done”, Merlin said. “But if you really want to help me, thenI suggest you will refresh my memory, in turn.”

“What do you mean?” Dr. Grovepath said.“I… have neglected looking for the site of Avalon, so I do not know where itexactly lies.”“I see.”“I just didn't think we would need to return to real Avalon just yet. But now,we need to find its location. I could find it faster, if I had fresher access to maps.”“So… you just need map data?”“I may need to study the maps to find it.”“Oh?” Dr. Colbert said. “So Avalon can be found if you just look at the maps?why people haven't found Avalon? What's so difficult about it?”“Because Avalon is not an island any more. Or, rather, it is part of anotherisland.”“I see. Postglacial rebound?” Dr. Colber said.“Your terminology stumps me, wise-woman.”“Basically, uh… how do I explain this? I think the sea level has lowered sincethe Middle Ages, and new ground has been revealed?”“at could be an explanation for that. What was once a small island becamea bigger island, then it became a peninsula in another larger island.”“I know just the cure”, Dr. Grovepath said. “Let me get my computer. I havehad problems geing to the military data lately, but they do offer excellent mappingsystems to the public — you would be surprised how many great areologicalsites we can find with the World Federation Civil Space Agency's famousWorld Wind soware…”February 19, 2632, 13:14 UTCe external cameras of the FTL Cruiser Nedelin had seen beer days. e grizzledbaleship had taken part in numerous engagements with the Planners, andCaptain Larisa Volkova was famous for his skills in leading the combat from distance.She kept a bole of really awful Finnish borderline-industrial-grade vodkastashed in a cupboard on the bridge, and took a swig for every Planner cra thatthey could see from the windows, or even with the camera zoom. Captain Volkovawas, for a good reason, also known as the Sober Lara.But still, Volkova wasn't particularly foolhardy: None could say that she eatedon the camera maintenance, even when the cameras were rarely useful in combat.While the camera feed wasn't really perfect what came to the image quality,it was plenty good enough for geing nice visuals on whatever was going on inthe vicinity of the ship. ey had the perfect vantage point for the epic bale ofthe ages, even when the television had higher standards nowadays. Even withthe picture quality being only so-so, Dr. Colbert made sure the cameras recorded

IX. K Reverything. e epicness of the bale would need to be broadcast if she had herway.And from the darkest thiets of the rainforests of Brazil, whi from timeimmemorial had been known as the dark and foreboding thiets of danger, daringand intrigue, rose a smoke trail. e steed of Sir Lancelot, an ancient knight whoseheart was pure and whose deeds were true, ascended toward the cold stars.From the blaze of billions of stars, yet in the skoring rays of daylight, baskedthe fortification of steel and silicates, the space fortress known as New Avalon.From its underside, the legendary King of Britons hung and let loose of his grip.King Arthur descended. e fight had begun.Roets fired. Gravity of the mother planet took hold of Arthur, who nowwaw the gentle blaze of the atmospheric burn. He lowered the piercing weaponsof the ro cocoon, and knew Lancelot would have done the same. Lancelot's trailof smoke had ended; thiest of the atmosphere was behind him…It was a mad descent countered by mad ascent. e two Knights could onlythink of the same, terrifying thought: eir opponent had tried to steal the heartof the purest and most beautiful of eens, torn in her love between two valiantheroes. It was a tragedy of misunderstandings, a tragedy of oices, a tragedy ofwar.It had been seled.Or had it been?ey did not know. ey did not remember. ey did not know.But deep in him, Arthur knew the fight had been fought. ey had had differences.Rivalry over her. ere had been a war between them. ere had beenunification. ere had been treaery.It was Mordred's treaery. He knew that. He remembered. Merlin had beenright: Mordred was dead, and that was all that maered. Arthur knew he hadfought alongside Lancelot against the usurper Mordred, who had wounded him.His enemy——But what about Guineviere?——And what had Merlin been saying? “Sire, this is not your steed. is is aSteed. You have no armour; yours is a Mobile Armour. And you, sire, are nolonger a man…” Confusing old man. Strange wizard, who had been meddlingwith politics——and who had been right so many times, his friend and comrade—Hesitation let to doom in bale. Arthur had too mu time. He had hesitated.He steeled himself. Lancelot closed in.Hundreds of kilometers above the soil of Earth, two knights would meet.e Steeds were not designed for this, and the lances were crude imitationsof the weapons they had used in honourful tourneys in centuries past. It waspathetic. e lance was useless. e two Knights collided — not even at a great

velocity.It was a sho, nevertheless, but Arthur could do lile but to wat. He couldfeel nothing physical. He was no man.He was shaken, but could only wat as he shook. ere were vibrations. Wasthis even a fight?Lancelot was no man either. Surely he felt the same way.e two crashed Steeds fell, almost at the same rate as before. Engines turnedoff. ey were enveloped in flames as they fell toward the sands of Africa.is is foolishness, Arthur thought. He knew he had been taken in by emotionalimpulse, the desperate need to do something honourable to show his valourto Guineviere, who was long dead. And now that he thought of the maer, asthey hurtled toward the ground, he knew that the whole thing was pathetic. iswas no tournament. is was grown men toying with things in an epic scale. Andhe was sure Lancelot felt the same way.His mind went blank and dark. ere was still a long way to Earth. Maybehe had died and he would not need to explain himself…“Dr. Grovepath calling Arthur and Lancelot”, came the voice from command network.“Are you there?”Arthur wasn't sure how to respond.He could see again. e Steeds had landed maybe a hundred meters apart,apparently upside down, and Merlin had opened them remotely. Lancelot wastrying to get upright, but in his present state, this probably looked fairly impssible.Dry desolation of the Saharan sand dunes opened all around them.“I am here, doctor. Our fight was quite inconclusive, I'm afraid. Do you agree,Sir Lancelot?”“Sire, I apologise for geing overcome with emotion. is was a good fight,but our score remains unseled — and I do not think it is even necessary to sele.”“Very well”, Arthur said. “Apology accepted, as long as you accept my apologiesfor the same blunder. I'll call it a draw. Where are your legs, Lancelot?”“Drawn asunder in the collision, sire”, Lancelot said as he tried to repair hissevered legs with the instruments found in the cocoon. “Merlin's dark magicallows me to see detailed instructions on how to refit them. I shall be ready tocontinue in no time.”“Very well. Let us let this awful maer behind us for a while, Lancelot.”“Well spoken, sire.”Arthur sighed. “It was a strange and foolish fight. And here we lie, in theendless sands of the Saracen lands”, Lancelot said.“Did you have anything in particular to report, doctor?”“Oh yes. Uh… I'm sorry that I got you so worked up before, but we may have

IX. K Reven bigger news. We have located Avalon. Let's just say that merlin refuses togive the coordinates to you, unless you sele your… squabbles. And I think thatwould what I would do, too.”“Doctor”, Arthur said with a more jolly tone, “I give my solemn vow that Ishall work together in a civil manner with my fellow Knights to rediscover theancient tombs of Avalon.”“And I shall solemnly vow the same, doctor”, Lancelot said.“Excellent. When you are done with your repairs, we can head toward thefamous island. I can't wait to see it. Dr. Merrywood is already on his way there.”“So what exactly happened?” Dr. Grovepath said, and seemed a lile bit confused.“It's quite hard to say what actually went in their minds”, Merlin said, “but Ican take a few guesses.” Merlin smiled, if that robotic expression could be calledthat. “I told him before that he is no longer a man. He is a ghost of a man. Spiritof a man. Essence of a man.”“But he doesn't seem to have realised what that really means, until now.”“at seems to be the case. I did add a device to his Steed that could eithermake him realise that fact, one way or another.”“e lance?”“A person of wits, who saw that device, would have laughed at it. e Knightsare people who act through ideals to strive for. For a Knight, a cylinder of rothat is called a Steed is not a transportation device; it is a steed. If I call a lance-likedevice a lance, then to them, it is a lance.”“I see. is makes mu sense, actually.” Dr. Grovepath said. “So what youare saying is that the knights are just ideas?”“What is a ghost but an idea that continues to exist?” Merlin said. “at wasone of Morgan's favourite notions in her later years. Knights perish, but their idearemains. Valour, honour, virtue. Why can't the abstract ideas simply take concreteforms that, coincidentally, resemble what they were in the past? Can a Knight betaken apart, separated to fundamentals, and reassembled to form another Knight?e lance is not lance, it is a ghost of lance. e Knights are reborn as knights asthey always wanted to be. Part of them come from knights as they existed. Partof them comes from their own imagination, aspirations, and ideals.”“And you put that lance there to make them understand that just because anidea of a Steed that can carry knights to the orbit exists, they shouldn't take thingstoo literally? About the Steeds, about themselves… about anything?”“Yes. And at the same time, that is also what they should be doing. ey mustkeep doing what they were born to do, but they must never forget that things haveanged. Fundamentally.”“And more things ange, the more they stay the same. I can see it now. ey

are ideas of Knights. Ghosts of Knights. Doing Knightly things.”“Precisely, my solarly friend.”Dr. Grovepath smiled.February 19, 2632, 18:12 UTCDaleworth wasn't really suited for being a skipper, but here she was, on the wheelof a patrol boat, carrying Dr. Grovepath with her.e Space Marine Corps were, as the name suggested, primarily trained withspace vehicles, and it was not exactly common sense that the Space Marine Corpseven had actual boats. But just like the Navy had airplanes, the Space Marineshad real boats — though the fleet wasn't exactly big. is unarmed uggish-typelight patrol boat — not offering mu cargo space or shelter, best suited for shortexcursions for a single squad — had, in fact, been loaned to Cornwall's coast guardseveral years ago.“Are we on course?” Dr. Grovepath asked over the radio. e science team thathad discovered the remains of Avalon based on Merlin's clues and a bit of detectivework based on the satellite maps were somewhere nearby, and the navigationcomputer could barely get them to the right island. Daleworth was starting towonder if the results would have to wait until the journal was published.“Okay, I can see you now”, Dr. Grasskin said over the radio.“So I just go straight forward?” Daleworth said.“I can see him!” Dr. Grovepath said. “Straight ahead.”“Oh, there he is”, Daleworth said. e araeologist, with thi-rimmed glassesvisible too far away, his build slightly rotund in every way imaginable, could befairly clearly seen, standing on a big ro overlooking the bea. He was wearinga dark green coat — not particularly visible in the dimming daylight. He waswaving a flashlight and his handheld computer that doubled as his walkie-talkie;too bad the doctor wasn't thinking mu, really, and the flashlight was pointingto the skies and not toward them. e balit display of the doctor's computerwas far easier seen to the distance.Daleworth revved down the engine and the ship landed in the so sandy beawith a quiet scrat.“Hey, Paul! Just in time!” Dr. Grasskin shouted at them from his per on thero before he hopped down. “Robin is up the hill, and he's damn happy to behere. e Knights radioed that they're coming in a few moments.”As if on a cue, the skies roared. Dr. Grovepath, Dr. Grasskin and Daleworthlooked up and saw the Steeds descend from the quily darkening clouds of theevening sky, seemingly on tra to land a lile bit away from where they were.

IX. K R“is way!” Dr. Grasskin shouted. “It's really fascinating how the myths areall somehow interrelated. We have had myths about the Isle of Avalon, a Cavewhere Arthur was interred, and like. It appears there's some truth to them all. Weindeed have a cave on an isle.”“Show us the way!” Dr. Grovepath said.“It's right up here!” Dr. Grasskin said as they headed toward the top of the hill.ere were some floodlights in the wooded area on the top of the grove.“Hey, Paul!” Dr. Merrywood was siing by a ro, eating a triangle sandwiand drinking tea from a thermos. “ank you for pointing me to a ki-awesomesite! I've got decades of work ahead, here.”“I don't think anyone uses terms like ‘ki-awesome’ these days, Robin. It, uh,fell out of fashion centuries ago.”“I'm an araeologist, am I not?” Dr. Merrywood said.“So what did you find here?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Well, there's a circle of stones here, whi we just figured was similar tothe Tor of the legend”, Dr. Grasskin said as they came to the top of a hill. Oldmonoliths rose on the hill, quite reminiscent of the Stonehenge. e area wasovergrown with low bushes, and vines circled the old stones.Moments later, they could hear the approaing steps of the Knights. Bushescraled and snapped in the feet of the ancient armoured maines.“is is the place”, Arthur said as he emerged from behind the small ridge.“Stones whi mark the ancient resting place of the Companions of the RoundTable.”“Our Sacred Avalon”, Lancelot said. “Many heroes lie here. We thank you forfinding it for us, friend knights and solars, even when it was never lost withinour hearts.”“And the cave?” Dr. Grovepath said.“Right here”, Dr. Grasskin said.ere was, indeed, an opening in the ground. e area was overgrown, andbranes of the bushes had somehow grown to cover it.Lancelot ran forth, slashing the brushes away, tearing the rest away as theysnagged in his bulk and metallic feet as he ran through the hole in the ground.“So mu for the Sleeping Beauty”, Daleworth said.Arthur followed the knight with the same haste. Daleworth and the scientistsshrugged and followed the two knights with a lile bit more careful stride, moresuited for methodical observations.e hole was in the side of a gently rising hill, and revealed a shallowly slopingpassage. e corridor was fairly dark, and the scientists had to light theirflashlights — but even so, there was dull, eerie bioluminescent glow in the walls.e cave walls looked like natural cave walls; aer the soil layer, the walls wereobviously mostly stone. ere was a layer of soil on the ground, now adorned

with the heavy footprints of the two knights, descending into darkness.And from the darkness came light.“I… I guess we're on the other side of the island” Dr. Grasskin said. “We didn'thave mu time to investigate it.”“We're in the peninsula on the other side, I'd say”, Dr. Grovepath said. “ecave goes downhill.”“Right.”“And what's that thing there?”“Looks like daylight. ere could be sinkholes there; I guess the cave ceilinghad collapsed.”e scientists came to a grand cave. e Knights were waiting for them in thevery centre.e cave was about a quarter of a kilometer in radius. Inside, there was a hillof grass on it, and on the grassy hill were circles of stone tombs. In the sacredgrove, overgrown with grass and vines, dozens of ornate sarcophagi could be seen,arranged in orderly circles. Many had been le open millennia ago, now partiallycrumbled and destroyed by the beat of the weather, the rains and snow that hadfallen through the great opening in the ceiling of the cave. Outside, the night hadfinally fallen, and the Moon shone through the hole, lighting the scene with itspale glow.“So this is where the knights are buried”, Dr. Grasskin said.Dr. Grovepath pointed his flashlight toward one of the tombstones. e writingwas fairly easy to read, even when the monument was mostly overgrown.“Sir Notay Peareyn of Disdale.” He wasn't really familiar with this Knight of theRound, and toyed with this somewhat obscure knight's name and birthplace onhis tongue. “…oh, that can't be right.”“Let's see what the knights have found”, Daleworth said.As they came closer to the centre, they could see many of the sarcophagi inthe central part of the cave were uncovered and empty, whi made sense. eKnights carried the coffins from within with them. In the centre were the closestof the Knights, in the highest point was the supposed burial place of Arthur.To be exact: Arthur, Lancelot… and Guineviere.Two sarcophagi would be empty. One… might not be.“Guineviere.” Arthur had broken down with tearless tears; overpowering sadness,not at all dampened by la of meanical reaction. He was crying, thoughhis armour could not.e ornate statue of the queen was ravaged with weather, but the queen'sbeautiful features were still easy to see; su a finely iseled, refined face, thenoble posture of a royal upbringing, the stunning beauty of her figure. And beneathher statue lay a sarcophagus.“Guineviere.” Lancelot was likewise in tears.

X. DragonslayersFor out of Guineviere's heart grew a great spruce. e sarcophagus, and thecoffin within, was torn asunder by the tree's growth, the ancient seals long gone.e ancient vows would never be fulfilled. Guineviere would stay dead, foreverdead, her body having only, perhaps, nourished scavengers and the tree somany millennia ago.e beautiful queen's fate was to be overgrown. e two Knights of the RoundTable broke down in emotion, thrusting their swords to the ground by the een'sdestroyed coffin and praying for a miracle. But they both know her fate was tobe forever lost in mists of time, forever shrouded, forever replaced by duties andobligations of the knights' vows.is journey had been a diversion. e two knights had duties to follow, andthey resolved to fight harder.February 19, 2632, 20:42 UTC“We're old men, my liege. e past is gone.”Lancelot was first to speak. e two knights sat on a roy outcropping onthe isle.“We are nothing but old dust, and Guineviere is within all of us.” Arthurseemed still stung, not sure what to say. “I wish I had listened to Merlin. iswas… foolish.”“Not so foolish, my king. For we now know what has happened to her.”“True. But, my friend, we have wasted time on things that shall not help ourcause. We must depart.”“We must depart”, Lancelot repeated. “I shall follow your every wish, my liege.Without question. Let us not be diverted by foolish quests, or foolish memoriesof an era that is long gone. We must focus on the greater good… on problems thatare still ahead of us.”“Wise words from my my fiercest knight. And as long as I have a capable,trustworthy Knights like you by my side, we can easily accomplish everything.”“And we shall do everything in our power to end this threat, my King.”X DragonslayersFebruary 20, 2632, 09:12 UTC“L D.”Daleworth had been lost in thought, taking a few seconds of break when shewated the M– geing restoed in the Caen Base. New ammo was being

loaded, and she still had no idea where they'd strike next. But now, when MajorPlaerman appeared out of nowhere in the shule hangar, it was a sign that newdevelopments had taken place and something was going to go down fast.Daleworth snapped to aention and saluted. “Anything new, sir?”“At ease”, Plaerman said, returning the salute. “e Planners have gloatedagain.”“What did they say, sir?”Plaerman took a small digital recorder from his poet, and pressed the playbuon. e all too familiar voice of the Planner collective took their voice. “Weare the Planners. Out of your oceans shall your nightmares rise. Many-tentacledbeast shall devour your mighty island you call Britain. For centuries, you havefeared the Kraken. Your nightmares have been but vague premonition of horrorsto come. We are the Planners. Our hydra shall devour you. Devour.”Plaerman put the recorder ba to his poet. “Did you hear about the incidentday before yesterday, lieutenant?”“Not mu, just what was on the Network, sir”, Daleworth said. “A craslipped past the network, splashed in the ocean, and now no one knows wherethe fu it is — pardon my Fren, sir.”“at's about as far as we know, lieutenant. What the news didn't have is thatit was a new type of a Planner cra, and that it was somewhere off the coast ofBritain. Now, it's prey obvious they're going to construct something beneath thesea surface.”“Constructing, sir? Any details yet?” Daleworth asked.“We've tried to find a satellite that could have sufficient resolution and equipmentto see what the hell was going on in the area where that thing splasheddown”, Plaerman said. “Now, we could get the first images. en some others.Long story short: ere's many strange sea platforms that are waiting to be activatednear many big ports. Several of them right near London. ey seem to belike mobile amphibious Planner bot factories. Once activated, they could urnout endless stream of these bastards.”“Activated, sir?” Daleworth asked.“ey seem dormant so far, and the biggest cra we could see was actuallylocated in the vicinity of the original splash zone”, Plaerman said. “at is the socalledmothership this time, though we don't know its exact nature yet. Perhapsit is a transmier of some sort. You get first-rate scanner gear aboard, it's beingtransported here and should be here in…” Plaerman looked at his wat. “…about minutes. We're sending our whole company there, and the knights handle therest. You go in first, and second and third platoons come about half a hour laterwith bigger guns. If it develops into that.”“So we're supposed to take out a mothership, sir”, Daleworth said, not particularlyhappy with the plan.

X. D“With a Knight's help”, Plaerman said. “Don't forget that.”“If that's all we can do, then that's what we'll do, sir”, Daleworth said.“Don't worry, lieutenant”, Plaerman said. “We actually have some beerplans worked out, but we'll tell you more about it once you are on your way. Itwill all work out, with the Knights one hundred percent behind us.”“Famous last words, sir”, Daleworth said. “But we can't see if this plan worksbefore we actually try it, sir.”February 20, 2632, 09:44 UTCe First Platoon was off to bale again.Daleworth sat on the ba of the M–. She clung to her assault rifle andlooked at the dirty metal grating on the floor. Puddles of water from molten snowwere slowly evapotating as the ship soared in British airspace.What was going to happen?Daleworth sort of knew. She had known it before, but wasn't really sure toadmit it yet.It was time to stop speculating, like everyone else did in the military. It wastime to get rational.She thought of what had happened in Paris, and what the Planners said wouldhappen here. e pictures from the satellites had been abundantly clear. is wasa new type of a Planner cra.But they had detected it. Before the Planners even said a peep. e cra mayhave slipped past the defence network, but they'd know how to handle this.She had to start thinking of the war logically.e Planners had a plan.ey didn't have a good plan.It suddenly hit Daleworth that none of the plans the Planners ever did wereactually very cunning. Sure, they were scary. ey were devastating. ey werefollowed by horrenduous gloating. ey raised questions. e top brass, and shetoo, were prone to analyse these aas to death. What if…“What if… the Planners are actually retarded?” Daleworth said.“Ma'am?” Staff Sergeant Haman raised his gaze and looked at Daleworthfrom the other row of seats.“Never mind, sergeant”, Daleworth said. “I was just thinking aloud.”“Well, they are just dumb bots, basically, aren't they, ma'am?”Daleworth didn't reply. ey had been thinking about the war rationally,because they always thought the enemy was being rational. And, of course, tolarge extent, that was true. e enemy was rational and systematic. But alsounpredictable.

It suddenly started to look to Daleworth like the Planner sa's boom wasstarting to show. e enemy was not being scary. ey had seen everything.She had to wait and see what was going to happen in this aa. If it wouldturn out like she thought, then she could probably say, with dead certainty, thatthe Planners were not scary any more.e First Platoon would always head to the danger, certain that they wouldn'tbe defeated with old tris. e thing was, even in Paris, it had started to seemlike the Planners didn't have any new tris.ey were aaing the Earth out of desperation. Not due to inevitable conquestfor resources or whatever. It was bullying, plain and simple.And she had craed the jaws of a few bullies in the past. ere was nothingto it.Perhaps there would be nothing to this fight, too. With or without the Knights.Was this Paul's point? Maybe not. is was what Daleworth felt, and whatshe hung on to.Behind the polarised visor of her combat helmet, Daleworth smiled. e Platoonwouldn't need her smile to win. ey'd just need her continuing resolve.And that was what she was going to provide anyway.e fight was already won. If it wasn't, there just wasn't any justice in theuniverse.February 20, 2632, 11:16 UTC“e mothership is located in the sea, very near to the Roughs Platform”, Plaermansaid over the command link. “It's a bit out due southeast from Ipswit.”“Copy that”, nd Lieutenant Ford said. “Coordinates received.”“Advice you to have caution when approaing the tower”, Plaerman said.“It is occupied.”“Roger that”, Daleworth said. “Ford, get weapons online just in case, but don'tfire without my command.”“Yes, ma'am.”“Now, we believe this cra is some sort of a communications hub, but we don'tknow what it will broadcast. We've deployed jammers on the other sites and theKnights are trying to assault them as we speak, but we have no idea how the hubwill send out the instructions. Provide air support for Sir Palomides.”“Roger that. Beta Squad, man the starboard guns, Gamma Squad on the portguns.”“Ma'am, yes ma'am!” the squadmen shouted in unison. e soldiers stood up,and ran to the second level of the shulecra, where the heavy weaponry wereplaced.

X. D“So either destroy that cra, or beer, try to figure out how and what it willbroadcast before it does that”, Plaerman continued. “It might help us. But thepriority is to stop it from transmiing orders to the factory units.”“Roger that.”“I believe you can handle it”, Plaeman said. “ʰ Company Command out.”e video window disappeared from the communications display.e M– soared to the sea, and for a precious few seconds, the platoonfulof men could contain their curiosity. But no more.“What the hell the mayor meant when he said the tower is occupied, ma'am?”Staff Sergeant Haman said.“He means the Roughs Platform is manned by a graying loon called WinstonBates.”“Uh…” Haman said.“He thinks the platform is an independent country, and won't recognise theWorld Federation authority.”“is sounds familiar”, Haman said.“He calls it the Principality of Sealand”, Daleworth said.“Right! I've heard of that, ma'am.”“And last we eed, he's got a gigantic anti-air cannon on the platform. Heuses it to fire at ships and helicopters that approa the tower.”“So why doesn't the WFDF just put an end to that, if he's so dangerous?”Daleworth grinned. “Where's the fun in that?”“Approaing Roughs Platform, ma'am”, Ford said.“Whoa!” Haman shouted as he looked at the monitors showing picture fromthe outside. “Dammit. at's the most post-apocalyptic shit I've ever seen inBritish isles.”“I agree, sergeant”, Daleworth said. “at least if you don't count Sheppey.”Principality of Sealand had seen beer days. Originally an anti-aircra gunplatform in World War II, it consisted of two concrete towers that supported aplatform above them. Despite the maintenance by the Bates family, one of thetowers had collapsed in when a runaway robotic science vessel with a malfunctioningLIDAR collided with it; the disaster miraculously didn't take the platformabove it with it, and the other column was le precariously standing. eplatform had been evacuated and temporarily sawn in half while the family gatheredmoney to rebuild the other tower. Sealand's operations had taken a small hit,and with the rise of the World Federation, the Bates progeny mostly focused onshooting at anything and everything nearby. Even the rest of the family started tothink that Prince Winston D. S. Bates, III, esq., Ph.D. (Faculty of General Scienceand Numeric Maers, University of Sealand, rather controversially accredited bythe currently existant but practically vacant Sealand Board of Education) tookdefence of the glory of the religion, home turf — or metal and concrete — and

the family honour a lile bit too far. He also hadn't managed to secure furtherfunding for rebuilding the tower, whi had a few visible missing pieces in it, andit was a small wonder that the tower yet stood.“Arthur, sir, did you receive the coordinates?” Daleworth said.“I have, dame Daleworth. Sir Palomides has taken your quest.”“I can't see him yet”, Daleworth said.A large clank came from port side. Open hailing annel in network flaredup. “Goddamn Federation goons! Get the fu out of my waters!”“Direct hit to port side, ma'am”, Ford reported. “Probably just le a dent.Luy the shell didn't explode.”Another loud bonk came to the side. “Bates has woken up, I see. Ahem.”Daleworth swited to the open annel. “Calling Principality of Sealand. isis Lieutenant Mielle Daleworth of the World Federation Space Marine Corpsshulecra M– calling Principality of Sealand. Please cease fire, we wishno hostility toward you and we are trying to neutralize Planner presence on thearea.”“is is a fuing ploy, isn't it? Where are the fuing Planners, huh?”Daleworth shrugged. Prince Bates was off the roer again. “About metersdue north from the tower. It should be close enough to see from where you are,Your Royal Highness.”Even without video feed, Daleworth could practically imagine Bates lookingout from his cannon and eyeing north'ard. “SHIIII-IIIIT!” From the open annelcame the scream most unbefiing to royalty. “Goddamn robot bastards! I'll blowyour fuing carcasses open and turn your tower into my fuing new tower, goddamnit! Switing to EMP shells! And you, Federation bit, mind my fuingblast!”“Fu!” Daleworth shouted to he open annel and laughed. “Dial up soapwater to the dispersal cannons, Ford! Looks like we have a royal poy mouth towash!” She was fairly sure that Ford would get the joke and wouldn't report bathat they didn't actually bring in the riot or rescue gear selection that includeddetergent dispersal paage. ey did bring in a .-ton “Sassy Lass” PenetratingFortification Demolition Bomb model , that could ruin Bates's day. But shefelt like toying with Bates a bit and not mentioning lile details like that rightoff the bat, because generally people were supposed to realise that World FederationDefence Forces Moonhawks were routinely armed with all sorts of devastatingweaponry and excessively annoying the crew could potentially lead to thoseweapons being used. Bates had, of course, not annoyed the crew quite enoughyet; had the shule been actually damaged by explosive shells, Daleworth mighthave reconsidered, even when the irony of bomb's designation could kill her. Yet,she needed to think for a second as she worked the computer and reviewed theirsituation. What tower? And how the hell did Bates get su dangerous munition

X. Din his hands? And would they work just as well as his high-explosive shells? Ohwell, it'd be clearer once she saw what was going on outside…Daleworth swited to port side monitor to finally take a look at the situationoutside, and was not surprised. e Planners had, indeed, started to erect a towera bit farther away from where the other Fort Roughs tower had stood. Bates wasbusy wining his cannon to point the other way.“Damage report, Ford?” Daleworth asked.“Hull mostly green, a few yellows”, Ford said. “Can't risk going to orbit in thiscondition, but I think we didn't get any damage we couldn't fix with a bit of goodold sledgehammering.”“Okay. Are EMP counters up?” Daleworth asked.“All green”, Ford said.“Good.”Bates finished cranking up the cannon and let the shell fly. e bla-paintedPlanner tower trusses, whi were being constantly built — new sections rosefrom underwater, got hoisted to top with some sort of a meanical and magneticsystem, and clied to their place — were fairly sparse, and the first shell justwent through them, landing in the water behind the structure. As the secondshell was being loaded, more bla trusses rose from the sea, and the structureseemed far more solid when the second EMP shell was fired. It knoed off someof the self-assembled pipes of the truss, but didn't cause any discernible effect.“How about we offer to evacuate you, Highness?” Daleworth asked. “Wewouldn't want to interfere with your national defence, of course, but it seemsyour dreaded EMP devices don't exactly work as intended.”“Don't you fuing worry! I've got nothing to worry about. Eat copper, fuingrobots!”Bates fired another shot, this time plain ordinary high-explosive shells thatstill appeared to have a lile bit of a lingering morning mood and didn't want toget up from the bed. eir mass, however, managed to crush some of the botsthat had swarmed up to the surface. Some of them were turning their weaponstoward the Roughs Platform.“No, seriously.” Daleworth shouted to open annel. “Don't know how youhandle the things, but I heard your predecessor was more sensible what came toevacuation in case of clear and present danger. We're coming to get you, Bates.Let us handle this.”Daleworth hadn't paid mu aention, but now she had barely time to registerthe streak of smoke that descended from the sky. A Steed plummeted to the ocean.“What the FUCK was that?” Bates screamed.“Uh… at was Sir Palomides, Knight of the Round Table.”“Are you fuing with me?” Bates screamed.“Sorry, man, you're way too old for me, I'm afraid”, Daleworth said.

“No, the fuing knight! I'm not leaving my country at the mercy of somefuing raghead!”“Seriously, what the hell are you babbling about?” Daleworth was starting tolose her nerves.“Palomides was a fuing raghead, wasn't he?”Daleworth sighed. e guy was either demented or brilliant, and she justcouldn't tell. “Christianised Saracen, as far as I can remember. But I assure youthat in his present condition, his ethnicity is in no way going to maer. Becausehe's dead.”“at's mu, mu fuing worse!”“Oh, shut up already, silly old man.” Daleworth gried her teeth.Daleworth gave a sign to Haman, who had mounted a grappling hook launerby the side door, and loaded a zipline coil in. Haman shot out the zipline, andgave thumbs up to Daleworth. e rescue could begin.“Okay!” Daleworth shouted to the open link. “Now hold still while we get youhell out of there.”Haman had been giving last-minute instructions to Private First Class Newkins,who had found a good nie in zipline operations and had had less use for hisheavy-weapons skills than he thought. Newkins went forth, buffeted surprisinglymu by the brisk wind but his grip never straying from the line. Once Newkinsgot tho his destination, there seemed to be very lile struggle on part ofPrince Bates, who could see that the platform's defence had goen a lile bittoo complicated to handle alone. e Planner tower groaned and clanked in thegrowing wind.And out of the sea climbed Sir Palomides. With his shield on the ba andsword sheathed, the huned warrior used some kind of grappling devices —Daleworth liked to think them as detaable hands — to climb the truss structureat a brisk pace, with water barely having time to drip off. Beside him, witha teremendous roar of the waters, a bit of Planner structure emerged from icywaters. Some kind of a rectangular thing — if it even could be called rectangular,though Daleworth didn't want to think the implications of non-Euclidian geometryrising from the ocean, even when this was obviously the wrong ocean — rosefrom the waves.Lasers — zap zap zap — lasers! Daleworth looked surprised as Palomides leaptto the emerging Planner cra's de. e strange, aerodynamically shaped cracould now be seen in full, rising from the waves way too close to comfort. eblueish cra — colour obviously osen for camouflage, but that hadn't fooled thescanners — resembled a cross between a flying saucer, manta ray and a submarine.e tower was being constructed on the thing's de, and now Daleworth couldsee its purpose: it was obviously going to be some sort of a communications tower,able to broadcast its commands to all around the Britain.

X. DIn middle of the tower's laser fire, Palomides stomped on the de. He ran tothe bots that were hauling materials from the small doors on the de, cleavedone in half and smashing one with his arm. He took his sword and cleaved someof the truss structures. e tower creaked, but didn't fall.“Have at you, metallic menacers!” Palomides roared. “My strength is thestrength of a hundred of your kind, for I have the heart whi you la! Britainshall prevail! For valour!”“Daleworth to Sir Palomides”, Daleworth said over command link. She wasn'tsure what sort of orders Palomides had goen, but things seemed to be going welleven without instructions. It was just that she needed some order. “Don't worryabout the tower, just destroy the construction bots first and anti-air weapons next.”“By your word, dame Daleworth”, Sir Palomides replied. With a few leapsover twisted, bla metal, Palomides cleaved his way through some of the remainingconstruction bots. “Your destruction is the will of God! And I am Hishumble servant, instrument of your demolition!”“What the hell is that guy babbling about?” Daleworth muered to herself.is was turning almost amusing.“Semisentient cylinders of mostly copper! Face the wrath of my trusty broadsword!Aaa! A-hah! I shall cleave you in twain, villain!”Daleworth started to wonder if there was some sort of an amusing undercurrentin all these legends—“Yaah! Hyaah! Hoo! —Aah!!!”—And then Daleworth noticed that there was nothing amusing going on. Shelooked at the video feed and didn't see movement. What was going on out there?“Daleworth to Sir Palomides.”“T…the vile v-v-v-v-villains caught me o-o-off guard, dame. Constructionmainery is… d-d-d-destroyed. I've s-s-suffered a hit. My b-b-body doesn't seemto f-f-f-function properly, dame.”“Fu. Um… Will you hold up if we blow up the tower?”“I-i-i shall r-retreat to m-my Steed. I-i-i can barely move.”“ʰ Company Command to ˢ Platoon”, Plaerman imed in through thecommand network. “Bomb the tower. I repeat, bomb the tower.”“Say again, Major?” Daleworth asked. “Want us to drop the Sassy Lass?”“We don't know if the Planner cra has shielding, but it seems the towerthey're building doesn't have shielding. If we can take out the tower, the missionis as good as done. Just stop the bastards from broadcasting the signals.”“What the fu is a Sassy… holy fuing shit, you can't really mean…” Batesprotested.“Sir, will you take responsibility if the Roughs Platform is damaged in thebombing run, sir?” Daleworth just couldn't contain the slight amusement in hertone.

“I will”, Plaerman said. “Now bomb that tower to the stone age.”“Oh no you don't! Oh no you fuing don't!” Bates screamed — unable to moveor actually do anything about the maer, as the Alpha Squad hadn't even needany specific order to restrain a rather restless civilian that was causing trouble inthe shule.“Will comply.”“Command out.”“Ford!” Daleworth shouted. “You heard the man! Bombing maneuvers!”“Roger”, the pilot replied.“Newkins, quit fuing around with the ziplines and take the bomb sights!”Daleworth shouted.“Gladly, ma'am!” Newkins shouted and ran to the vacant seat by the targetingcomputer in the copit. Daleworth idly wondered when was the last time anyonehad not said they'll handle the shule weapon systems “gladly”.“Everybody else, brace for bombing run!” Daleworth herself kept standing,but took a good grip of the loops on the crew bay's ceiling.“Got target, sir?” Newkins said.“I have the target, private”, Ford said. “Run height?”“Run height, .”“Copy that.”e engines howled as the shulecra shot forth, taking a good counterclowiseloop to south and to east. e shule aerburners fired and took the shuleto the meter ceiling.“Any sight of the knight, Newkins?” Daleworth shouted to the copit.“Negative, ma'am”, Newkins said, examining the video feed on the weaponconsole. “Camera resolution is shit, but I can't see the knight the de.”“Okay, guess we need to assume he got off, then”, Daleworth said. “As youwere.”“Commencing run”, Ford said.“Dropping the fork”, Newkins said.With a bit of a creak and a very loud clunk and tremble, the bomb bay doorsopened and the shulecra was ready for divebombing.“You can't be fuing serious!” Bates protested.“We try to minimise the damage to the platform, sir”, Daleworth said. “Don'twe, Newkins?”“Sure do, ma'am!” Newkins shouted.“See, Bates?” Daleworth said. “Nothing to worry about!”“If there's one bit of concrete off its place…”“…you'll just thank us for removing the crumbled concrete so that your repairmenwon't have to”, Daleworth said. “Why don't you fuing relax already.”“Drop height ”, Newkins said. “Slope nominal.”

X. D“Approaing drop height”, Ford said. “Brace for evasion!”“Bombs away!” Newkins shouted. Barely nothing could be heard as the bombwas loose.“Shit!” Bates screamed.“Bank right!” Ford screamed as the shulecra's dive leveled and the shuleturned sharply to right — and sped up as the engines fired again.“Drop nominal!” Newkins shouted. “Told this was precise, sir! Don't worryabout your fort!”“Too bad the bomb will level the fort anyway”, Daleworth said.“But you promised!” Bates roared in anger. “You fuing bit!”“Nah, I was just kidding.” Daleworth laughed. “You're so funny when you getmad.”“ 'plosion in THREE! TWO! ONE!…” Newkins shouted. Everyone braced forthe explosion.e explosion was gigantic, and Daleworth was fairly sure that the sad remainsof the Roughs Platform would crumble due to the sound alone — but shewas not entirely sure if the thing would remain standing. She was fairly confident,however. In the video feed fed to her helmet, the platform, and the Plannercra, had disappeared in a giant vapour cloud.“What happened?” Bates was, for once, stunned and unable to swear, but thatdidn't last too long. “What the fu happened?”“Scanner report?” Daleworth asked.“Direct hit to the target, ma'am! Planner tower is gone, other stuff pending!…and the Roughs Platform still stands, ma'am!”Daleworth grinned wide. “See? I told you not to worry”, she said to Bates.“Take us closer to the surface, Ford. We need to look at the area closer with thescanners.”“Roger”, Ford said.As the shulecra looped the other way and descended, the vapour cloud haddried away.“Palomides!” Daleworth shouted to the command link.“I s-s-s-survive, dame Daleworth.”Daleworth was happy to hear the Knight's voice. “Get ba to Avalon, Knight.You've fought well.”“I fear my S-s-s-s-te-Steed is damaged. I shall embrace the long cold of theocean as my life ends. Farewell!”“Nonsense!” Daleworth had thought the silliness would end here. “Do wehave li gear, Ford?”“Win is in the weapons paage, ma'am. But no other rescue gear.”“Do you think the win can take the Steed's weight?”“Easily, ma'am.”

“Good!” Daleworth shouted. “Haman and Fairwind, prepare for a bit of anocean dive. You're going with me to aa the cables.”“Yes, ma'am!” the two soldiers shouted in unison.“Now, how's the fuing Planner cra?”“I think it looks just about as punctured as the bloody carrier in France, ma'am”,Newkins said from the weapons console. “Giant hole and everything.”“at's a bit tenical explanation, Newkins”, Daleworth said. “Care for a bitsimpler one?”“No EM sources in scanners, hull breaed, most of the hull fragments thescanner pis up seems completely wreed, ma'am. Debris everywhere in thevicinity. It has already scaered on the sea floor.”“Okay”, Daleworth said. “And the Roughs Tower?”“Minor damage, but looks like it's still standing.”Daleworth flipped through video feeds. “You call that minor damage?”“What's going on?” Bates screamed in confusion. “I demand you show mewhat has happened to Sealand!”“Okay, I'll show you, but only because you asked relatively politely”, Daleworthsaid and turned to the space marines that were holding him. “Bring theman here.”“Well, most of that was just a result of the vapour cloud, I think the Plannercra was far enough so that the tower was spared of the showave's effects…”“Goddamn it!” Bates seemed relatively collected under the circumstances.“Well, it seems to be standing”, Daleworth said, “but I wouldn't… recommendseing foot on it. It's almost like everything was sandblasted. Or vapour-blasted.How the hell did you think the thing was going to survive for millennia, or whateveryou claimed in the Network ba in the day?”“I… well, I guess I need to increase the repairs budget.”“You do that. And buy some new ammunition with the reparations you'll getfrom the WFDF.”“Keep your fuing money, you fuing toss-bombers.”“Is that even a word?” Daleworth said. “I've lived out of Britain for too longto know my way around the modern vernacular.”“Nope, ma'am, I guess he's just stiing to the basics”, Haman said.“We'll drop you off in Ipswit once we head that way”, Daleworth said toBates. “Might not be wisest thing to set your foot on that thing. Beer come bawith the repair crew as soon as possible. I don't think that thing can take anymore beating.”e Roughs Platform had taken a huge beating: large blos of concrete hadfallen off, and one could prey mu see through the exposed rebars. Most of thethings on the top platform had been blown away, the remains of a shed and theanti-aircra cannon being just about the only things still le standing.

X. D“Wines ready, ma'am”, Ford reported.“Plaerman to Daleworth”, Plaerman said over command link. “Outstandingwork so far. I've already told Arthur that you'll try to recover Palomides andferry him ba to New Avalon. Over and out.”Daleworth smiled. One knight down, but she just knew that they'd be ableto recover Palomides and bring him ba. ey would rescue, Merlin would fix.Everything was in order and harmony. As long as the idea of the Knights stillstood, they could not be killed. ey would be invincible as long as they believedin the Knights, and kept the Knightly virtues in mind.It was oen said that it is sweet and noble to die for one's country. Daleworthsuddenly remembered what had happened to the man who said that. He hadfled, so he could die for his country another day. It was not cowardice; it wasrationality.e Knights exemplified that. ey had died. eir ideas lived on.Glory in patriotic death was, plainly and obviously, not benefiting the soldierwho died.e glory was important because it inspired the living.

Part IIIForces of Heaven

XI e MistakeFebruary 20, 2632, 12:09 UTCT Q F.e Hydra had failed. An adversaries that the humans had allied themselveswith seemed to not have even made a dent on the body of the mainery. edestruction of the main unit was human doing, and human doing alone.And if they understood what they had just done, they would eventually understandwhat the destruction of the main unit meant.e orum knew that humans were perplexing. ey saw hope and optimismin all the wrong places. A single, meaningless display of good lu couldturn the entire tide of the bales.ey should not be allowed to savour the victory. ey had just goen theirshare of dumb lu. And with dumb lu, came optimism. With optimism, fearwas gone.e fear had been kept in reserves. It was time to show the humans what fearreally meant.e orum was Unanimous.February 20, 2632, 13:22 UTC“I'm glad to see you are still with us, Sir Palomides,” Daleworth said.“I have felt worse blows in my time, dame”, Sir Palomides said. “Losing thefunctionality of my armour was quite a strange experience, truth to tell. It was asif I was aware of what was happening, while observing myself from distance.”“I see”, Merlin said. “e way our minds work is sometimes quite curiousindeed.”Palomides's body lay on the repair table in the New Avalon. is was the firsttime the scientists could actually see inside the Mobile Armours while the Knightwas fully operational and conscious, so most of the scientists were gathered inMerlin's shop to observe Merlin's repairs. It was one thing to examine the spareparts that Merlin kept in New Avalon's forges, but this was the real thing. Merlinhad been refusing to let the scientists see the actual functions of the knights, andArthur had wanted to keep every knight in fully functional state — even when sofar, there had been no need to send all of the knights to some strange quest.Palomides's armour had been split in two sections, with the main motor unitsin the lower “abdomen” and the life support units — whatever term you wanted touse right here — in the “est” section. Merlin had also detaed the arm sections

XI. T Mto upgrade some of the parts. Dr. Grovepath had had some insightful ideas onhow to make the arms behave in more natural manner; the “hands” Merlin hadconstructed long ago were quite crude, with only three of the fingers in bothhands actually working, and even on them, only two “bones” on ea finger hadany articulation.“Mine legs feel cold, wizard”, Sir Palomides said.“I've heard people complain about cold legs when their bodies have been cutin half”, Daleworth said. “You're luy that Merlin can still stit them in, andisn't even in any hurry to do so.”“Hmm. e idea of the Knighthood persists…” Dr. Grovepath said.“…and so does the idea of pain.” Daleworth said.Even Daleworth was quite curious about how the armour really worked, andshe couldn't contain mu of her curiosity as she peeked in the est section ofthe armour. In the cavity, she saw an enclosure that did resemble a sarcophagus,made of gliering metal; the outer layer was titanium, inner layer was lined withlead. Daleworth could see pipes, cables, strange boxes, a few unaaed lines andpistons, some lines tied at the end to prevent things from leaking out as Merlinfixed the thing; the tenology seemed familiar, but the strangeness was in thelile details.“Just curious — what actually would kill the Knights?” Daleworth asked. “Intenical sense.”“I would prefer not to tell you that”, Merlin said.“Would puncturing the sarcophagus do that? I guess that's where you keepthe dust of the dead…”“I… suppose that's one way.”“…and the pipes probably move that dust to the ‘brain’, wherever they are.”“Fine, it is quite obvious that the secrets of death are well known to you. Notonly are you capable of taking life, you are well versed in destruction of non-livingthings.”Daleworth shrugged. “I kill robots on weekly basis.”“But what is a death of a maine, hmm?” Merlin asked. “Are they dead? Canthey die?”“Death is hard to define”, Daleworth said. “Killing is merely about takingsomething apart, isn't it?”“You could say that”, Merlin said.“And what is apart, you can rebuild. I wish you could do something to humansthis easy”, Daleworth said.February 20, 2632, 14:26 UTC

“Well, I could comfortably live in one of these rooms… if I were ten meters tall”,Dr. Grovepath said.“Nice big bed, though!” Daleworth said and sat down on it. “And the surface isactually fairly comfortable. Really, I've slept on harder surfaces. I might actuallylive here. Come on, try siing here.”One of the rooms in New Avalon wasn't really built for any specific purpose.It was a “bedroom”, fairly clearly; in a way, it sort of reminded Daleworth andDr. Grovepath of a weird bedroom beyond the star-filled monolith in a certainfamous work of speculative fiction they had been discussing on their first visit toNew Avalon. Merlin had just said the room was for temporary storage and foritems that needed careful handling, so the large padded area that looked kind oflike a bed was fairly undestandable. Still, it did look like a very opulent bedroomin a very large castle.Dr. Grovepath grinned. Daleworth inviting himself to sit by her like this wasalmost ridiculously blatant, but he didn't really mind. “I'm not going to removethe rest of my spacesuit, Mielle. I don't still trust on those pumps, you know.e station just wasn't built for pressurisation…”“…and this isn't quite my idea of a date either, Paul, hauling knights to somespace station and disturbing valuable scientific study. Please just come have a sithere, Paul…”Dr. Grovepath walked closer, smiling widely. “Don't mind tha… Oh my.” hebegan, but Daleworth leapt on his lap and gave him a qui kiss, staring into hiseyes and smiling widely.“Well, I can kiss people without dating them yet, can I?” Daleworth said andgrinned.“Well, since you started it…” Dr. Grovepath said with a grin, and didn't wastetoo mu time grabbing Daleworth in his embrace and kissing her ba — witha bit less hurry than what Daleworth had done, because he wasn't trying to takeadvantage of the surprise. She just knew he'd need to kiss her, and if a soldierexpected a direct assault, you wouldn't want to disappoint them…“GUYS!” came a distorted, eoing sound from the lile speakers in the helmetsthat lay on the bed beside the two lovebirds. Some scientist hollered onthe command annel. “Everybody! Look at public vid annel ! Major stuff!Alert from the ship.”“Shit!” Daleworth muered, and quily stood up, puing her helmet ba on,while Dr. Grovepath tried to do the same.“Saved in the ni of time from the evils of oral sex.” Dr. Grovepath grinned.“Harrr”, Daleworth said, smiling but not particularly amused. She flippedthrough the video feeds and puned in annel , quietly wondering if thiswas someone's aempt at a joke. At least it was not the Planners; everyone knewthe Planners weren't supposed to try so blatantly obvious and, if a bit of an un-

XI. T Mderstatement was allowed, not very menacing aempts at scaring the people.But with how the Planners operated these days, you never knew…Red leers announced://We Planners Have A Plan For Conquest. We Shall Be Victorious.The Quorum Shall Doom You On This Channel, 14:30 Earth Time.//“Oh, still a minute to go, we'd have plenty of time to make out more…” Dr. Grovepathsaid.“Silly doctor.” Daleworth grinned. “No, let's just see what kind of shit thePlanners have cooked up.”e broadcast began aer a short wait. Pictured was some sort of a circleof robots — the same sort of robots they had seen on the balefield. ere wasnothing special about the room; featureless metal surfaces all around.At first, it registered to neither Daleworth nor Dr. Grovepath that they wereactually looking at the top leadership of the Planners. e appearance was ratherunderwhelming. But then again, what could they expect?And then the Planners spoke.//We are Quorum. We address this message to our adversaries,the Humanity. We shall work toward your eradication, as we havefor decades of your counting. You have deflected our attackson Earth. You made us reconsider after our first defeat. Yourresourcefulness and cooperation saved you in our last attack. Allthis has been futile. We shall not hold back any more. The hourof your inevitable eradication draws nearer.////What you have seen here is but a shadow of our true capabilities.Our weapon, the weapon of our final push, is ourmost perfect weapon. It is a weapon we designed with humanity your personal hell, your personal annihilation. You shall die bythe sheer ingenuity of your own treacherous design, your flaws,miscalculations in your very fabric and very design. Thousandsof your bravest men and women already perished by this weapon.Your military feared us. They shan't tell you the truth of yourimpeding annihilation.////We are Quorum. We are Unanimous. You shall be destroyed byour Plan. Our fleet will come. Will come. We will come.//And with that, the broadcast ended.And Daleworth laughed.Dr. Grovepath could see it was a laugh of relief. It just didn't seem to end.“Shiii-iit”, Daleworth finally said. “those guys just don't know how hilariousthey are.”“Uh… I take it we shouldn't be worried about them, then, Mielle?” Dr. Grovepathasked.

Daleworth smiled. “No, Paul. I've heard that stuff before. e assault onEuropa. All very hush-hush, because people thought that aa was so fuingscary. I was there, and it was scary. But I don't think the Planners realise thatthis was the kind of stuff that was scary once. ey're in for a rude surprise. I'mgonna go ki their arse when they make a landfall again.” She smiled wider.“Now that's what I wanted to hear.” Dr. Grovepath smiled. “You're the kindof a rational, intelligent soldier I might want to marry.”“I have no fear, Paul. Not any more. We can win this war.”“So, are we set for real date, then, Mielle?” Dr. Grovepath said and smiled.“Sure!” Daleworth said and smiled. “But it's still going to take a while until Iget you a pass for L. Wouldn't sele for anything less, you know…”Dr. Grovepath coughed. “I'm sort of a candlelight-dinner type. Or at least…I've never had a candlelight dinner date, and it might be damn fun to try one.Wonder if L guys would let me do some experiments with candles in microgravity?”Daleworth grinned. “Recreating classic experiments purely for fun. Nowthat's the kind of a scientist I might want to marry. Leave the paperwork to me!”XII e estFebruary 21, 2632, 12:03 UTC“L ”, came the announcement, “the President of Earth,Miael Malory.”President Malory stepped to the podium. e Trafalgar Square was absolutelypaed, and the President was sure almost every human eyepair on the planet wasfixed on the video and computer screens.Most of the public interest was drawn to the Knights. Around o'clo, theevent had started spectacularly when Arthur, Lancelot and Percival had made alandfall on the edge of the square. It was a gentle and nice landing and the policehad to carefully clear the area, but nonetheless it was quite a sight; the same roarand fury of the engines, giant smoke trails and ground-shaking thumps. And nota single stone fractured under the Steeds.Moments ago, King George XVI had managed to whip his subjects to frenzy,reminiscing of the glory of the British military might with King Arthur and sendinghis warmest regards to the Britons in the World Federation Defence Forces.Malory's job was to inspire the rest of the world with same sort of message. erewas nothing that could stop him now, except maybe pigeon crap, and there waseven a good ance that if that happened, the Planners would not be crushed —they might be annihilated, with good humour all around.

XII. T Q“Fellow Citizens of Earth. I have lile to say today, because we are at a brinkof a great calamity — a calamity we will prevail through. e humanity has beenthreatened by the Planners for years, and all that time, we have prevailed. Wehave fought primitive robots, we have fought advanced robots. We have foughtcrude robots with clumsy weapons, and robots that exceed our own productioncapabilities. But one thing has remained certain: With ea of the so-called ‘improvement’the Planners produce, we have responded with our own. Over time,we could not only counter, but anticipate. e tide has been turning in our favour.e latest aa on Britain was not a demonstration of what the Planners can do;it was a demonstration of what we can do. Fellow Citizens of Earth: In our continuingconflict, we have been beaten, but remained unbowed. We have takenlosses, but we have shown that losses can only strengthen our resolve. It wasnever our intention to draw a line in this conflict, because we could not tell whatcould be done. But the Planners have drawn a line yesterday. ey have shown,with crystal clarity, that they want the conflict to end, and they want to die fighting.And the World Federation Defence Forces is ready to end the conflict, if thatis what the Planners desire. Do not believe their lies. Whoever speaks of annihilationforgets that annihilation is far more difficult than it sounds like. e Knightsof the Round Table, who stand behind me, were annihilated and forgoen. Yethere they fight by our side, and when you think about it, they have always foughton our side. We will fight until our idea dies — and our idea shall not die. ankyou.”February 21, 2632, 14:22 UTC“So that's the gloat?” General Pyrehill was fairly sure he had heard wrong, butwith the Planners around, people usually kept saying bizarre stuff that turned outto be right. e Sword Bea station had seen weirder stuff coming their way.“Seriously, that's the gloat this time, sir”, Lieutenant Anatoly Burrows said.“ ‘No knights. Infantry only. Fields of Armageddon.’ ”“My esatology is a bit hazy, but I thought that was supposed to be in Israel.at coordinate is in bloody Libya.”“Told you the Planners were geing unhinged, sir. I guess the Planners thinkLibyans are sympathisers, but Libyans only order tons of pinball maine parts'cause they love pinball, sir. It's like a national sport or something. ey hate thePlanners just as mu as we do.”“I fail to see what's funny about this situation, lieutenant.”“Sorry, sir.”“No need to apologise, the damage is already done.” General Pyrehill sighed.“Right, swords and sandals and scoring Sun it is, then. Forward the coordinates

to the units. Here we go again, whether the Planners want it or not.”“But at least the damn things are coming at full force, sir.”“So it seems.”General Plaerman looked at the advancing fleet in the jumpspace scanners,less than a few hours away from de-jumping and going to the entry orbit. ebiggest blob was huge. Everything — everything — about the coming bale wasfamiliar, except for the uer lunacy that the gloating had, and the big blob thatwas coming their way.Horrenduous slithering blobs coming their way was something they couldactually handle, though. In old days, people just fled. Nowadays, lone guys withshotguns defeated city-destroying monsters.Or lone guys with swords.February 21, 2632, 14:34 UTC“Hey.” Dr. Grovepath said.Daleworth was hurrying from her cabin and hadn't even seen Dr. Grovepath,who was waiting outside on the le side of the door, when Daleworth rushed tothe right. She stopped and turned. With her helmet tued under her le arm;she raised her RMGZ on her shoulder and smiled. “Hello, Paul.”“So you're going to the fray again, huh?” Dr. Grovepath asked.“Yep. Wouldn't miss this fight for any price.” Daleworth smiled.“Sheesh.” Dr. Grovepath scrated his head. “I just don't know what else tosay, really, except that I really, really hope you come ba in one piece, Mielle.”“Hah!” Daleworth laughed. “Don't worry about me! It's a downhill bale.”“Yeah. Good lu.” Dr. Grovepath gave Daleworth an easy hug — not mu of ahug with Daleworth clad in armour and carrying the stuff, but a hug nevertheless.Daleworth tried to return the hug, best she could. It was hard to hug people whilecarrying an assault rifle.“Nah, I don't need lu”, Daleworth said. “I just need superiour firepower.Whi we probably have.”“I don't really believe in lu anyway. I know you will be victorious. It's allin the preparation.”“And preparation is more important than a Plan.”Dr. Grovepath laughed. “Yeah. I just hope the Planners have been plagued byanalysis paralysis.”“ings just are how they seem to be, right?”February 21, 2632, 17:49 UTC

XII. T Q“Warm climate, hell yeah!” came the shout from Staff Sergeant Haman.“Lots of fuing open space, hell no”, Daleworth retorted. “We can't reallydeploy until the bastard comes in.”e vastness of Sahara spread all around them, and the Planners had pied arather pictoresque dune-filled region for their aa.“Ten minutes to enemy deorbit”, came the comment from Plaerman.ere was lile to do but wait. What could they do…?“Incoming!”Daleworth flied the external view on. Something fell from the sky. Lilepods?“Enemy engagement. Fire at will.” Plaeman didn't seem to bat an eye at thethreat.“You've got to be shiing me”, Haman said.“What is it, sir?” Private Fairwind said.“Lile Pods.”“Is that bad, sir?”“Bad? Hell no. Try bapping them with the heavy gun. Dial up explosiverounds and try to fire at the very top of those things.”“Yes, sir.” Fairwind struggled to turn the power on to the Winterland Mk. IVGatling Railgun, but as she had been trained to use it, she quily got her bearings.“Firing!” Hail of explosive bullets shot forth, and the sniper's aim was true. epods were vaguely egg- or acorn-shaped, and embedded mostly on ground aerhurtling though the atmosphere; the “nub” at the top was an easy target.As the bullets hit, the whole pod exploded.Fairwind's eyes shot wide open and she quit firing. “Jesus!”Haman grinned. “We saw these in Titan and it was almost ridiculous howeasy they were to destroy. Next time, shorter bursts are well enough, private.”“Yes, sir!” Fairwind said and saluted.“Carry on, private.”Fairwind kept firing at the pods that rained on the desert below. Dozens came,and other shules kept firing at them as they landed. e Planners had practicallylile other ances.“Recent intel says that the bulk of the force is those pods”, Plaerman said.“ere's supposed to be at least a couple of hundred of them. Two carriers areheaded your way, and the Planner mothership. But those bigger ones are stillminutes away.”“Awesome.” Daleworth grinned. “ETA on Knights?”“Will deploy as soon as the big ships come down.”“Sir, since you have the intel, what's the total number of Planners here?”“Uh…” Plaerman wasn't ready for this question, but pulled up the figures.“Current estimate: pods with bots ea, Carriers with bots, and one

mothership with…”“ bots?”“Maybe. So I'd estimate less than bots.”“And bulk gets fried in those bots. e bots have a wonderful strategy, sir.”“It does seem to have a few problems, lieutenant. Keep sharp, though.”“Incoming carriers!” came an alert from the spoers.e carriers came down from the skies, and the shulecra was under fire.“Take us down and disengage, Ford! Shields ready!”A Lamprey bomber jet swept past, dropping a number of boxes to the desert ata rapid fire, forming a nice, doed line around the carriers. e boxes immediatelyopened and their contents unfolded, forming instant balefield crenellations.“Let's go ki some arse!” Daleworth shouted. Less epic than in the first fightagainst the carriers, but it worked.Bla robots were pouring from the enemy baleships, still numerous andmany-shaped; it was as if the robots weren't even trying to be very organised.Daleworth was almost shoed when a Steed appeared out of nowhere.“I have slashed through the thiets of forestlands. I have fought fiercely inthe mountains. I have been wounded on the sea. But the desert of my ancestorsis where I cannot fall, for I am Sir Palomides.”“Sheesh, not this epic rambling again”, Daleworth sighed, and grinned. “Gowha the carrier shields, Sir Palomides! And less talk, more fighting, if I mayask, please!”“Certainly, dame Daleworth”, Palomides said. “But lo! ere comes Sir Kay.”Another smoke trail came from the distance.“Good. Kay can take the other carrier's shields. Let's blow the bastards away!”Daleworth shouted. She peeked from behind the covers and opened fire; the botstried to fire ba, but Daleworth wasn't sure they could even tell where they were.Mortars hammered the sands around the carrier, taking away bots at a devastatingpace. Daleworth was surprised how she was on her third assault rifle clip, and hadalready killed dozens of the bots. e vigorating flames of home field advantagereally burned in her veins. She smiled and fired away, giving the bots a murderousglance. e bots would stop here. ere was no question about it.And soon, the carrier shields were removed — almost at the same time. eKnights emerged from the carriers, and Palomides appeared almost playful.“ere's lile for you to do here, dame. It appears the maines are easilydestroyed today.”“Calling command. Got nukes, sir?” Daleworth said.“We're not in hurry, and we'd rather save the nukes for the big ship”, Plaermansaid.“Clear the target area”, General Pyrehill said. “All artillery units, execute solutionGiantkiller.”

XII. T Q“Take cover, everybody!” Daleworth screamed, and could see Palomides andKay running to the cover on another side.Minute and a half later, the artillery barrage began; nearly constant thumpthump-thump-thump-thumpgoing on for a good while.Daleworth dared to take a peek, and made almost a girlish cry of “yesss!” asshe saw the artillery had already turned the carriers into rather large lumps ofSwiss eese. e giant explosions had scored the innards of the carriers, andthe top hulls were full of shell holes.“All units. Giantkiller executed. Reports say targets destroyed.”“at's true, sir”, Daleworth said.“Big contact dropping out of jumpspace now. Guess the bastards are finallycoming in for the finale, sir”, a space monitor officer said over command link.“Everyone, brace for a lile bit of surprise, but remember that this fuingthing can't really surprise you”, Daleworth shouted. “You've seen everything,guys.”And out of the deep blue of the cloudless sky descended a Planner cra unlikeanything that the warring humanity had seen in years. For a supposed mothershipof the Planner fleet, it was fairly plain; Daleworth was right, the overalldesign was something that the defenders actually expected to see. It kind of resembledan inverted mushroom, bulbous and flower-like in general shape; it wasopening a lile bit in the air, one of its “petals” forming a lile bit of an entrancealley for the Planners to roll out of. It looked like some of the other factory shipsDaleworth had fought — and the one they had scarcely succeeded in destroyingin Titan — but it was larger, so mu larger.But the monsters, the vile enemies that emerged from the ship, were so horrifying,so grotesque, so loathsome.ey looked like humans.“A'right! Mul the rubber-skinned bastards!”is was not quite what Daleworth had said in Europa.e colony of Exception, in the snowy wastes of southern hemisphere Europa,was receiving strange reports. Daleworth's platoon was among those sent to investigate.A scientist's wife was not behaving like their wife. Another's son wasactually doing good in the sool. And they showed no emotion. What the hellwould anyone expect to do in that kind of situation?! Scientists, soldiers, one byone, were replaced by the Replicloids……but aparently, the Planners had forgoen that once people caught up withthis sort of a plan, it was damn hard to dupe them again with the exact same ruse.“Don't be panied, this is just a fuing retarded Plan! Look at your buddiesnext to you!” Daleworth shouted. “e guys who are coming from the ship arenot them! Hug your flesh-and-blood buddy if you must, but shoot the fuingclones before they mess with your mind! It's completely safe!”

And with that, Daleworth fired upon the soldiers who approaed from theplank. Fairwind's head exploded, because the real Fairwind was up to her speed.Hail of bullets from Newkins' maine guns shredded some of the illusionary BetaCompany and even Newkins himself.“Hell, you two do prey well for newbies!” Daleworth shouted. “Keep up goodwork!”“Right, ma'am! Stupid bots, goddamn it!” Newkins said.And Daleworth spoed herself. Descending down the ramp, completely obliviousof what's going on, whi was prey damn damning evidence that that robotwas not behaving like her at all. With a bit of a cli, scope popped out of herassault rifle, and she managed to score a perfect hit on the bot's head — definitelymetal and rubber, nothing more.And beside that bot, stood someone who looked like Robert Daleworth. PoorRobert. Dead, forever dead in Ganymede. But the fact that the bot didn't evenpause to look at her corpse made it plain and obvious to Daleworth that this wasn'ther father. Her father lived in spirit; his spirit was telling her to keep going, keepstrong — like he always had. ere was no time to wait. e robotic Robertmet Daleworth's exloding bullets and collapsed, gaping hole in his est, bits andpieces of mainery strewn all over the ramp.“Shield analysis!” Daleworth said. “Give me a fuing shield analysis!”“No EM barriers. Guess those bastards just expected us to buy this ruse”, somescanner officer said over command link.“Got nukes now, sir?”“Where's the fun in that, lieutenant?” Plaerman said.“Hah!” Daleworth was actually amused, but opted for official military laughterinstead.e robots didn't seem too emotional. e robots never seemed too emotional.If they knew there was no fear in the hearts of the defenders, they didn't show iteither way.“All companies, wait for further Knights to arrive”, Pyrehill said. “Follow theirlead when they arge into the mothership.”ere wasn't too long a while to wait; a few franctic seconds later, several loudthumps from behind their lines signalled the arrival of further Knights. en camea really loud thump. Daleworth didn't have to turn to look. Arthur himself washere, she just knew it.“Here we stand, at the world's end”, Arthur boomed. “And in the world'send, we shall eradicate the vile beasts of darkness. Come, my Knights. Come,defenders of Earth. Follow us to the very lair of the monsters.”And with that, the Knights ran toward the mothership.“Follow!” Daleworth shouted. “For Earth!”is time, it didn't sound too contrived or desperate. Victory was at hand.

XIII.Once and Future… and ForeverXIII Once and Future… and ForeverFebruary 21, 2632, 18:21 UTCD . She had grabbed a heavier Tinnitus HUMRmk. III aingun, and even with the braces, the thing was difficult to“S!”handle. e recoil was hell. She kept shooting down from the balconyto the rubbermen down below. e gun's aim kept slipping in her hands, and thebullets went just about every direction but where she was aiming; nevertheless,hordes of enemies kept dying down below every second.e Knights stormed upward the spire, and were not at all surprised to find outthat the replicloids had tried to appeal to their senses, too. e bizarre cavalcadeof replicated memories continued, and Daleworth wasn't even sure if she wantedthis. Part of her just wanted that the Planners dropped dead this instant andstopped fighting, because the dying gasps of the Planners were just wonderful intheir bizarreness.Simply put, the Planners had failed at scaring them by creating replications ofthe defenders and their loved ones. ey did scare Daleworth by being so damncreative. She felt she was finally fighting an enemy with human intellect, andthat was draining her; she was extinguishing the sparks of life from artists. iswas not a good and fun fight, destroying something that was actually kind ofbeautiful.e upper they got in the spire, the more sparse the design details were. Allaround them, maines were urning out more replicloid dolls — featureless,humanlike, somewhat creepy. But the Planners were obviously aware that theKnights were there, and were trying to appeal to them.ey faced knights with tincan armour. ey faced mannequins that lookedlike someone had quily tried to make them look like stereotypical ladies-inwaiting.e appearance just wasn't anything that humans could identify as humans;they were ildish in their design, barely geing the generally discernibleshapes taed on their mannequin bodies.“Can I keep the pieces?” Daleworth said. “I want to take these things to mycabin and play with dolls.” She grinned, and was kind of surprised that she foundshe was only half joking.ere was one robot that the Planners had put some more effort into. Unfortunately,the Planners remained clueless of the recent developments. In themiddle of the amber, they saw a familiar sight — a robot clearly made to looklike Guineviere.Without saying mu, Lancelot and Arthur competed one last time. ey ranthe Guineviere-clone through before the robot could even say anything.And beyond that room lay the final staircase. e knights strode in.122

You… you have no right.////You shall be destroyed for your insolence, interloper.//In the amber, they found the orum.//Our Plans shall not be stopped, interlopers.////Humans are weak. Humans would not have succeeded withoutyour help, interlopers.//“Shut the hell up.” Daleworth opened fire.Daleworth shot four of the orum without even trying to aim at the things,while the knights cleaved the remaining ones with ease.And the amber was empty. e orum lay on the floor in pieces.“What the hell?” Daleworth was puzzled. “is can't be this fuing easy, canit?”“Come on! Let's get the hell out of here before this place fuing explodes!”Haman shouted.“Verily, su is the way of the legends. A tyrant shall fall, their castle shallfall”, King Arthur said.e knights and the WFDF soldier ran out. Out to the sands. Out to thefreedom.Out to the peace.It was quiet. e quiet evening wind made the robot carcasses groan, howland ti as they cooled.e soldiers fled to the safety.“Nothing?” Daleworth was puzzled as she finally looked behind her, siingfirmly in the cover of the deployable crenellations.“Let's just… uh, execute the Spiker.” General Pyrehill was fairly confused too,it seems.“What the fu is Spiker?” Daleworth asked.“Low-yield blo-buster”, Plaerman replied.“Shit.” Daleworth groaned. “Well, at least there's no need for nukes—”e explosion split the Planner Factory open like a flower. Twisted metalrained upon the defenders, who took refuge under their shields.Daleworth smiled as the factory was engulfed in flames and split into smallynks that fell to pieces on the desert. e desert was home to some of the oldest,long-forgoen monuments of humanity — monuments that signified the rise andfall of mighty dynasties of Egypt. And one day, people would discover that herewas the place where one of the mighty dynasties defeated another.“My name is orum, a council of maines: Look on my works, ye Humans,and despair. Despair. Despair!” Daleworth said with a moing imitation,whispering the last words with loud raspy tone, and grinned.She didn't want to laugh. e war wasn't over yet, but it was neverthelesswon. At least her war was won.

XIII. O F… FShe flined a bit as something landed in the sand right beside her, just outof her field of view. It was a Replicloid carcass — one from the upper floors, andaside of the bale damage, it was only slightly singed by the explosion. It wasone of the “lady-in-waiting” bots. A ildish approximation of a red and yellowdress made of plastic and paper-like fabric covered the rubber skin of the robot;a shotgun blast had made a small hole to the stoma area, but it was easy to fix.e robot's face was smooth and featureless, save of the crayon-like scribblingsof red and blue that formed a simple smiling face.Daleworth pied up the young woman and gave her a hug. “Aww, therethere, poor thing. Wanna be my ambermaid, girl?” Daleworth grinned a bit.She hadn't ever really played with dolls, but maybe she desperately needed thisone single exception…February 21, 2632, 20:14 UTC“We shall return.”at was all that Arthur had said.e desert had turned into a small party zone. Soldiers were eering, kiingrobot bits around, and having fun.e officers had arrived. Pyrehill and Fyrehart and other generals were hereto admire the devastation and offer thanks and condolences. It was a climaticbale with several injuries but no fatalities, and rarely that could be said of anydecisive turning point of a war. e war was going to end in their favour. It wastime to celebrate.Daleworth was elated to see Dr. Grovepath groundside. She rushed to hughim and the doctor was just as happy to see the soldier pull it through.Yet, with all the immediate joy, there was sadness.Everyone knew this was the time when Merlin would pi up his toys and gohome.“Shall we see again?” Daleworth asked Merlin.“Not within your lifetime”, Merlin said. “Unless, of course, we figure out howto come baward in time. But if you want to keep the legend alive…”“Don't worry”, Daleworth said. “e legend will never die.”“I never really got to the boom of that device in Avalon”, Dr. Grovepathasked. “Where did that dimensional-transporting timetravel maine actuallycome from?”“We don't know”, Merlin said. “We just found it one day. It looks like… analien design. ere's lile else I can say for sure.”“Nevertheless, we shall keep it safe and keep studying it”, Dr. Grovepath said.“Perhaps one day, we shall unlo its true mysteries.”

And there were lile else to offer beside that, except for goodbyes and admirations.e Knights didn't want to wait for endless celebration and ceremonies;they had a work to do elsewhere.Dr. Grovepath and Daleworth hugged shoulder to shoulder, with Daleworthnot minding at all that Dr. Grovepath took a gentle hold of her waist. It was over.e war was over. It was time for happiness, time for everything that Daleworthnever had time for before.e doctor and the soldier wated as the Knights boarded the Steeds. edoors closed slowly — it seemed slower than usual to the waters, and maybethe Knights were not in the hurry to go.e Knights had no faces. ey never had faces. ey were maines. Sayingthey would have had faces would have been strange; saying they had facesevoked youthful memories of Timbert the Singing Boat and Bale-Robot LogicusOne, almost a blasphemous notion when one considered the Knights and theirappearance. ey were vehicles, not persons. Yet, for the first time in his life —first time in his long career as a spacecra and aircra expert — Dr. Grovepathhad a curious epiphany. He was a theoretical man, and had just assumed his theorieswere directly related, one to one, to practice. A maine had no emotion onblueprints, therefore maines had no emotion in real life. But for a fleeting moment,when wating the knights wating them from beyond the closing doorsof the Steeds, Dr. Grovepath just knew that these maines had emotion, theyhad aracter, more than just the aracter of their designers or their pilots. eywere Knights. e maines might have been just maines, the Knights of theRound might have been just a pile of organic dust in a lead-titanium coffin, but henew that the total was more than the sum of its components. e maines facedthem, and showed them fond longing, honour and dedication. And promise.e doors finally shut, the engines roared one last time, blasting the Steedsoff. A lone tear came to Daleworth's eyes as he wated the Steeds roet up onthe hill, with her close friend, who too seemed unaracteristically emotional.As the streaks of smoke climbed up the sky toward the reaes of Avalononce again, Daleworth sat down, bringing Dr. Grovepath to sit beside her. As thesmoke climbed higher, Daleworth just stu her hands behind her head and gotto her ba, wating the skies, smiling and few tears on her face. She was here,with the good doctor, knowing that the humanity was safe forever.Dr. Grovepath and Daleworth both knew that the Knights would rea NewAvalon soon. ey'd once again disappear, just as strangely as they appeared inthe first place. But one thing seemed certain: If King Arthur had come to save theworld once, it could happen again. It would happen again.Daleworth closed her eyes. By the time she opened her eyes again, Avalonwould be gone from the orbit. She could hear the radio aer to that effect fromher headset, but didn't care. When she'd open the eyes, the world would be the

XIII. O F… Fsame as it always had been, with the same legends, same curious tales, as it alwayshad had: When Britain is threatened with annihilation, King Arthur shall returnfrom Avalon. She believed. She had always believed.e Once and Future King would not just be an “once and future” King. He'dbe here Forever. His reign was Once, it shall be in the Future… and Future… andFuture…Daleworth smiled, and dreamed of Avalon with her wise friend by her side.

Epilogue

EpilogueNovember 25, 2632, 19:35 UTC“H, Lagrange, / where the space debris always collects…” Daleworthsang.“I've always hated that song”, Dr. Grovepath said. “ ‘Lagrange’ is not pronouncedlike that. Doesn't really rhyme.”“I know.”“But I do love solar power and zero-g sex.”“Who doesn't?” Daleworth said. “ough solar power is more useful.”e cabin in L was actually located in the artificial-gravity section, becausethe lovers had actually found that zero-g sex wasn't exactly that good; cuddlingin the zero-g section was pure bliss, however.Aer a couple of fun vacation trips on L, Daleworth had surprised Dr. Grovepathwith a wedding present: a permanent two-person cabin in the L Station,though she still spent most of her time aboard Mannerheim and Dr. Grovepathhad his messy apartment in Newburyport. But she could easily afford it with herold savings. e only permanent occupant was the Lady-in-Waiting, siing inthe corner, gued of robot mainery and meticulously repaired of bale damageby Daleworth, holding a tray in her affixed hands.e two lovers lay on the bed, slow to wake up. e honeymoon had barelystarted. It would still be three and a half weeks until more work waited for eitherof them. e Big Push had began. Dr. Grovepath's expertise was needed for theconstruction of three colonisation ships — none had been built in decades. Daleworthwas needed in the Jovian moons; Mannerheim was there, busy mopping upthe Planner bases with a cruel and relentless methodology. e war wouldn't lastmu longer. ere had been some worries that a new orum would emerge— the Planners were supposed to be a collective-consciousness species, aer all— but there had been no indication whatsoever of organised resistance. If thePlanner Plan was to get steamrolled by humans, it was probably not a very goodplan.Perhaps now was the time to colonise.e soldier snuggled with the scientist and dreamed of a beer world.

Copious anks and AnowledgementsNaNoWriMo is over, and I have succeeded in producing the biggest… literary…thing I've ever made. Before this work, the biggest story I had wrien wasa ,-word novella “Shadows Over Nothross”. When I first started my workon the Avarthrel fantasy world and stories, I wanted to write a novel, but thatwas far more difficult than it looked like, so I stu to short stories. It appears thatpractice does pay. So, my first thanks thus go to NaNoWriMo project itself fora bit of an eyeopener: goddess gracious, it really is possible to write wordsof semi-coherent prose a day, and it's not even that hard. I can only recommendthis exercise to everyone. If you haven't participated in NaNoWriMo before, goahead and try it, people!I wish to extend heartfelt apologies to the numerous, deliberately uncredited(but by no means obscure and actually quite easy to identify) authors, directorsand designers of all books, films and games butered in this text. You providedme with inspiration, and I hope your inspiration will give rise to a lile bit beerworks in years to come. You rule.anks go to the numerous friends, acquaintances and complete strangers whoeered me, and everyone else participating on NaNoWriMo, onward andupward; specific thanks to my friend Avarice and the folks on identi.ca (http://identi.ca/group/nanowrimo) and reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/nanowrimo/)NaNoWriMo communities. I know, I was fairly silent, because this was my firstNaNoWriMo participation year and I wasn't sure what my end results were, butI obviously worried for nothing. Expect more blabbery from yours truly the followingyears!For the inspiration for the story idea and cover, I wish to thank the folks atGood Show Sir (http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/). A book with a eesy covercan be a joy to read. Or to write. Mostly to write.On soware side, I wish to thank the developers of TextRoom, pandoc, Storybookand Git for making story-grinding a snap on both Linux and Windows.And now… how do I fix this mess? Hmm…Oulu, Finland, ʰ November, Urpo Lankinen

ContentsContentsI We Held the Line I Fear and Hope II Friend or Foe? III An Engineer Soars IV A Riddle in Stone and Steel V Sanguine Fren Twilight II Facing the Righteous FuryVI A Historic Meeting or Two VII Legend of the Armoured Knights VIII A New reat IX Knightly Rivalry X Dragonslayers III Forces of HeavenXI e Mistake XII e est XIII Once and Future… and Forever