Project X-Calibur Tapa dura - 2013

The curves of the tunnel ended at two enormous steel doors in front of us.

“What do you keep in there?” Tyler asked, mouth agape. “Godzilla?”

“Maybe you can wrestle it,” Kwan joked.

An electronic scanner glowed red at the side of the door. Pellinore leaned down and smiled, letting the device get a read on his teeth. The glow turned green and the massive doors slid open, revealing an empty room the size of two football fields, with a hundred-foot high ceiling.

Eyes twinkling, Pellinore turned and shouted into the vast space. “Reveal X-Calibur!”

Nothing happened. The five of us looked at each other, confused. Had Pellinore and Merlin gone senile in their old age? There was a hiss in the center of the room, along with the faint whirr of gears turning below the floor. A section of the ground split in two.

My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides. As I took a step forward, my mind raced back to the stories Dad would tell me about the most famous sword ever crafted, and how it had been kept in an underground cavern before rising up from a magical lake to reveal itself to King Arthur.

As the floor opened wide, something rose up on a steel platform. My jaw dropped.

X-Calibur wasn’t a sword at all. It was the most kick-butt spaceship I had ever seen.