Free The Round Table (Space Lore Book 3) by Chris Dietzel Page A

not even he could have held the cannon in place if the soldiers hadn’t anchored it to the base platform.
    The ion blast hit the prison wall about three-quarters of the way up the structure. A chunk of rock and steel, almost as large as a Llyushin fighter, was incinerated. Cracks began spreading out from the damaged area. Traskk moved the cannon’s sight a little, then fired again. Another blast erupted against the wall, slightly higher and to the right from the first blast.
    All of the marksmen were shooting at him now. A laser blast hit his arm. Another hit his foot. Each time his skin sizzled from the lasers and pain seared his recently regenerated limbs, he bared his fangs and slammed his tail against the ground, then sent another ion blast up the wall. Then another.
    “Watch out,” Morgan yelled.
    He turned and saw her standing in the middle of the yard. He ran toward her, and when he was halfway there, he felt the ground shake as if the entire prison would fall into the lava. When he turned back, half the wall was gone, turned to a massive pile of rubble on the ground. The entrance, where he had been standing, was buried under tons and tons of rock.
    Pistol, having lost an arm sometime during the fighting, came up to them.
    “The good news is that we’re safe now,” he said, referring to the lack of laser fire from atop the wall.
    Morgan knew what he was going to say next, even before he said it.
    “The bad news is,” the android added, pointing to the rubble obstructing the entrance, “that was our only way out.”
    “Well,” she said, gesturing at Vere, “at least that gives us time to figure out what’s going on with her.”
    In the middle of the prison yard, Vere was still pushing the Circle of Sorrow.

18

    “Vere, you can stop pushing,” a voice called out. It wasn’t in Basic, but in some other language she used to know but couldn’t remember from when or where.
    Rather than turn to see who was speaking, she dug her foot into the ground, resting her fingers against the thick beam of wood, then heaved forward with all of her strength.
    “Vere, stop.”
    This was a different voice. A woman’s. In Basic.
    She didn’t stop pushing, though. During the fighting, she had come back into her body just long enough to see that her partner, the Ignus Moris, was gone. She was left to push the Circle of Sorrow by herself. No matter. Having slipped back into her conversation with Mortimous, she was no longer concerned with what was happening to her physical body. Far more important were the things he had to tell her. That was why she took two deep breaths, then grunted and pushed. The Circle of Sorrow moved another few inches forward.
    She was detached from her physical body so often and for such extended periods of time that she wasn’t even aware of the reputation she had earned around the galaxy for surviving at the Cauldrons as long as she had. It was one thing to manage to keep living at the prison for a record amount of time; it was quite another to spend all of that time pushing the Circle of Sorrow. Ewan the Resilient had earned notoriety for surpassing one year at the Cauldrons, but none of that time had been spent at its most grueling mechanism for punishment. Not only had Vere managed to survive for longer than he had, she had done so at the Circle of Sorrow. All because of Mortimous and the invaluable things he told her.
    Prior to Vere, no one had lasted more than three weeks at the Circle of Sorrow, a record held by the Giant of Acronoor. Everyone had agreed that if the record were to ever be broken, it would be by someone even taller and heavier than the giant, who was three times the size of a human and weighed half a ton. After three weeks of the task, the giant had slowed until he was routinely being whipped. After a dozen lashings from the vibro whips, the giant stumbled, fell, and never got back up to his feet.
    That was why people whispered about her in every spaceport and bar. At