Avalon Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  By Chris Dietzel

  Avalon

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  Art 1

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  Art 2

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  Art 3

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  Art 4

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  Art 5

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  Art 6

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  Art 7

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  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  About The Artists

  Copyright

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

  AVALON, Copyright 2018 by Chris Dietzel. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Watch The World End Publications

  ISBN-13: 978-1727845518

  ISBN-10: 172784551X

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

  Cover Design: Loic Denoual

  Cover Typography: TrueNotDreams Design

  Editor: D.L. MacKenzie

  Author Photo: Jodie McFadden

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

  By Chris Dietzel

  Space Fantasy

  The Green Knight - Space Lore I

  The Excalibur – Space Lore II

  The Round Table – Space Lore III

  Lancelot - Space Lore IV

  The Sword in the Stone - Space Lore V

  Avalon - Space Lore VI

  The Gordian Asteroid (short story)

  Dystopian

  The Theta Timeline

  The Theta Prophecy

  The Theta Patient (short story)

  A Quiet Apocalypse

  The Man Who Watched The World End

  A Different Alchemy

  The Hauntings Of Playing God

  The Last Teacher (short story)

  The Last Astronaut (short story)

  Satire

  The Faulty Process of Electing a Senior Class President

  Avalon

  Space Lore VI

  Chris Dietzel

  1

  Above Edsall Dark, a pair of portals glowed bright and constant. The two flat disks were filled with dazzling energy that looked like billions of flashes of lightning within a ring of three hundred and sixty metal cylinders. The portals were bright enough to be seen from the planet’s surface, like two-dimensional suns orbiting the world below.

  Between the dual portals and the planet’s surface, in the highest reaches of Edsall Dark’s atmosphere, six Round Table flagships hovered in a holding pattern. Two groups of three faced each other as enemies. A Solar Carrier, an Athens Destroyer, and an HC Ballistic Cruiser were on one side. Across from them were a Solar Carrier, an Athens Destroyer, and a Havoc Gunship. All six vessels of war were decorated with the Round Table’s crest of blue, red, and yellow cogs. The ships and their crews once had a common allegiance defined by the Round Table that had united them, but were now aligned into opposing factions.

  On the planet’s surface, outside the Great Hall, two groups of soldiers faced each other. A line of Round Table guards was on one side. Each held a pike longer than the guards were tall. Each guard also had a small blaster strapped to his hip. Except for the Round Table insignia on their chests, their uniforms were varying shades of gray. Octo and Winchester stood in front of them.

  They faced a line of Round Table soldiers, each dressed in battle armor. Through the narrow slits of their untinted helmets were the faces of men and women who had fought in the blood tunnels years earlier. Cash and Cimber stood in front of them.

  In the center of the courtyard, Lancelot stood three paces from Julian’s son. Between them, Hector’s lifeless body hovered in the air atop his energy transport. His arms hung down by his sides and his head slumped forward.

  General Reiser’s son took a step forward and said, “Now who will lead us against the Hannibal?”

  The air left Lancelot’s lungs. “The Hannibal?”

  The heavier of the two representatives standing near the guards said, “They’re a race of aliens past the Cartha—”

  “I know what they are,” she said, her voice booming through the modulator in her helmet.

  The young man in front of her said, “They’re headed toward Edsall Dark. We think they mean to destroy the Round Table. We currently have a fleet of ships confronting them two sectors away.”

  “If you ever want to see any of the people on those ships again, you’ll call them off.�
��

  The young Reiser shook his head. “It’s too late. The battle has already begun.”

  Lancelot’s voice dropped. She was already thinking of returning to her ship and leaving the planet.

  “Then they’re already dead,” she said. “And so is everyone here when the Hannibal arrive.”

  One of the representatives standing in front of the soldiers shouted at her. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you killed Hector.”

  She turned her lances toward him and rose up on her hind legs. The man’s eyes grew large. His hands quivered. Lancelot guessed that if he weren’t frozen in place by fear he would have scurried behind the soldiers who each raised their weapons and pointed them at her.

  One of the representatives on the other side of the courtyard turned to that man and shouted, “Julian was the leader we needed, you fool.”

  Lancelot gripped both lances tighter. Her patience was running out. She told both men to shut their mouths. This caused the Round Table guards to raise their weapons at her as well.

  Julian’s son put both hands up, palms facing her as he took a step forward, his way of showing he meant no harm—as if he could have caused her any in the first place.

  “Listen,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t know why you’re here, but you have to be careful. They will use their weapons if they have to.”

  Lancelot thought for a moment the young man in front of her was joking.

  “These people?” she said, waving one lance at the soldiers and the other at the guards.

  But before anyone could unite against her, the representatives on either side began shouting at each other again. A bald man with bushy eyebrows accused one of the representatives across from him of participating in Julian’s assassination. That man replied by shouting that, unlike Julian and his associates, he and Hector had actually cared about keeping the Round Table intact.

  A moment later, the two sides were once again pointing their weapons at each other instead of at Lancelot.

  “It looks like they’re too busy trying to kill one another,” Lancelot said to Julian’s son. “Heroic action in a post-heroic galaxy.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

  Lancelot scanned the courtyard and motioned to the representatives and soldiers alike.

  “They all want to be heroes but none of them actually are.”

  Talbot shrugged and shook his head, not understanding what she had been saying.

  “What are you doing here, Carthagen? We left your sector.”

  “And your name is?” she said, taking time to observe him for the first time.

  “Talbot Reiser.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you, Talbot?”

  She took a long step forward. Before Talbot could move, his neck was in her hand and he was standing on the tips of his toes so he wouldn’t choke.

  “You still think you can go anywhere you want, don’t you?” Frustration made her tighten her fist around Talbot’s neck. “I guess all you have to do is tell the Hannibal you turned around and everything will be fine.”

  “You think they would listen?” he said, his eyes raising with hope as he coughed under the force of her grip around his throat.

  “You’re even more oblivious than your father was.” And with that, she flung him across the courtyard.

  2

  On the command deck of the Solar Carrier Legacy, Brigadier En-O-En watched and waited. To one side of his vessel was an HC Ballistic Cruiser. On the other side, an Athens Destroyer. The captains of those flagships, one an officer in the former Vonnegan Empire and the other from Kaiser Doom’s kingdom, hadn’t known Hector the way En-O-En had. Decades earlier, En-O-En had been an ensign fresh out of the academy, serving his first mission aboard a Solar Carrier commanded by Hector. It had ended up being the mission in which En-O-En’s idol had lost his legs and most of his crew. It had ended Hector’s military career, but it had also given En-O-En a glimpse of a greater type of leader.

  Although he hadn’t left the military like his mentor, he had followed Hector’s example in many other ways. He had fought above Edsall Dark both times Mowbray’s Athens Destroyers had threatened the sector. Other than that, however, he only volunteered for humanitarian missions. He had gone to Dietrich-2 with a flagship full of food and supplies after a catastrophic sandstorm decimated the moon colony. Following a series of raids by Drickdorian pirates, he had opted to go to the outer rim and spend an entire year protecting a pair of colonies most people had never heard of. He was fine with other officers accepting the high-profile missions that could lead to promotions because Hector had taught him there was a better way.

  To him, the greatest thing the Round Table ever did was remind everyone how similar they were to one another by doing away with kingdoms and empires. People had different political views and religious beliefs, but almost everyone just wanted to live in peace and be happy. When the Round Table was formed and various fleets were brought under one banner, more people remembered that.

  Like En-O-En, Captain Mogston hadn’t joined the Vonnegan forces to help conquer the galaxy. Rather, he had been a boy and seen a Vonnegan officer delivering food to villages before lifting off in his great space vessel. Mogston had wanted to do the same. Now, he was in command of the Athens Destroyer beside En-O-En’s Solar Carrier.

  To the other side of the Solar Carrier was Captain Ruction’s HC Ballistic Cruiser. Ruction hadn’t cared much for Kaiser Doom’s ambition. But he had understood that HC Ballistic Cruisers were the most feared vessel in the entire sector and he had wanted to command one in order to protect farmers from galactic bandits and miners from space pirates.

  These were officers who knew what Hector had stood for and would fight to maintain his vision of the Round Table. They were officers who saw Julian go to the Cartha sector in search of glory while Hector had gone to the Great Hall and argued in favor of peace and restraint. They were there when Julian acted the part of the reluctant ruler, and they were there when mobs went through the streets, half of them cheering a potential tyrant’s death and half of them calling for revenge against the assassins. The Round Table was at a crossroads and these officers knew they had to do something.

  However, both of Brigadier En-O-En’s greatest fears had both occurred within minutes of each other. His mentor had been killed. Not in some foreign land or while protecting the Round Table but in the streets of CamaLon. With the Solar Carrier’s visuals up, En-O-En saw a magnified hologram of exactly what was happening in the courtyard outside the Great Hall as the Carthagen drove a vibro lance through Hector’s gut.

  He didn’t need a projection to see his other fear playing out. Directly out the main viewport of his Solar Carrier, he saw another Solar Carrier facing him, ready for battle. It was something he had only experienced during drills and war games, not anything he thought would actually happen in real life. On one side of that vessel was an Athens Destroyer. On the other side was a Havoc Gunship.

  Hector was dead. En-O-En was preparing to battle a Solar Carrier.

  The unthinkable was unfolding.

  3

  Talbot flew ten feet across the courtyard before landing on his back and skidding across the stone. The skin underneath his shirt felt as if it had been ripped apart as it tore across the ground.

  He thought the guards and soldiers might break away from their alliances and target the Carthagen that had thrown him, but when he raised himself to one shoulder he saw the two sides were still aiming their weapons at each other.

  “I order you to arrest them,” Octo said to the Round Table guards, pointing at Cimber and Cash.

  The nearest guard took a small step toward the middle of the courtyard. When he did, the others on either side of him followed.

  “Arrest us?” Cash yelled. “For stopping a dictator’s rise?”

  Cimber turned to the soldiers with him and pointed at Octo and Winchester. “Those men should be put on trial for treason.”

&
nbsp; The Round Table soldiers, many of whom glanced at the dead body of their still-hovering idol, stepped toward the middle of the courtyard.

  “Murderers,” Winchester shouted at the representatives across from him.

  “Traitors,” Cimber called back.

  Octo withdrew a small blaster from his vest, which he aimed and shot at Cimber. As soon as one shot was fired, the courtyard broke into a blaze of lasers and yelling. Talbot expected the Carthagen to join the fray but instead it snorted with derision and shook its head.

  He scanned the area for the best way to stop the fighting. As he did, a soldier got thrown back into him, knocking both of them to the ground. A guard with a pike came racing at that same soldier, not caring whether anyone else was struck. Without space to draw his Meursault and defend himself, without time to push the body on top of him away, Talbot’s instinct was to close his eyes and accept what was going to happen next.

  He expected his life to end, but a moment later he opened his eyes to see the ion pike was gone. Instead, the guard standing over him was holding onto a stub. The rest of the weapon sailed through the air in an arc and lodged into the ground.

  Without understanding what was happening, Talbot heard the guard who was standing over him grunt, then fly across the courtyard. He turned to see the Carthagen’s front boot come back down to the ground.

  “You closed your eyes?” the Carthagen said to him. “Seriously?”

  “I—” Before he could say anything else, he was yanked off the ground so he was standing again.

  The Carthagen spun him by the shoulders so he could see what was happening. All around him, the guards and soldiers were fighting. Most were too close to use any weapons on each other and were instead wrestling on the ground. A few, though, had managed to back away and create space between them and their opponents. From around the stone pillars, they fired sporadic laser blasts toward the fellow Round Table forces they had once fought alongside.

  Just as fast, he was spun a second time so he was looking directly into the helmet of one of the alien warriors that had slaughtered the Round Table officers in the Orleans asteroid cave.

  “Do you see what’s happening?” the Carthagen asked in a booming voice.