This Bloody Game

by Dan Schiro

  Aurelia looked down into her glass, swirling the clear liquor. “I’ll reach out. I still might have a couple of friends among the Green after all these years. Maybe they can find something on this Guild.”

  Orion stopped mid-drink. He knew she didn’t like to lower herself like that, the Exile asking for help from those who had turned their back on her. But the Green were a very old culture, and if anyone knew the secret history of the galaxy, it would be their priestesses. “Thank you, Aurelia. I know that—”

  “Please,” she scoffed, “don’t.” She took a long drink. “If that’s all, I’d like to get back to deciding which one of these grunts I want to copulate with.”

  “On your way,” Orion said with a smirk, stepping aside for her. “Do be gentle with them. They’re only boys.”

  Aurelia sashayed away, and Orion felt his own desires flare to life. How long had it been? So much had happened that Biz Tessia’s touch felt like a lifetime away. Quickly he scanned the officers and mercenaries milling between the bunks and the common area of the barracks. The crowd looked to be mostly male, but not without a few promising exceptions. The female Briarhearts were out, since they technically worked for him. This was unfortunate in the case of Reddpenning, who he knew liked him, and inconsequential in the case of Adler, who had as voracious an appetite for women as he did. That left the female Union officers — two humans, a durok, a freyan and a temba nubu, all anatomies he knew well. Yet before Orion could gauge interest or peacock over to the most likely prospect, his datacube went off again. The source of the message had been blocked, but Orion knew who had penned the projected text that read, “Tarzzak?”

  Orion snubbed out his cigar, dropped his glass on the nearest bunk-side table and slipped out of the barracks. After a quick trip to his quarters to change into AO-branded workout clothes, Orion traced the path to the gravity gym where he had first sparred with Commander Vanlith. He found her waiting by the door to the tarzzak court. She wore icy armor in her eyes, and her bow-shaped lips curved into a tight frown. Orion had made enough mistakes to know an angry woman when he saw one.

  “Everything okay, Commander?” he asked as he approached.

  “You’re here for competition, Grimslade.” She jerked the door to the zero-gravity chamber open. “Not conversation.”

  “Okay, that’s a little more game-face than I was expecting,” Orion said, ducking his head to avoid her penetrating stare. “But fine. Let’s get after it.”

  They floated out into the ovoid space and maneuvered between the rubbery bumpers until both of them hovered in front of their goals. The room automatically materialized their flippers, fins and scoops, and after a few moments more, the 12 red tarzzak balls appeared. They scrambled for the apple-sized orbs, and the game began with a mad flurry of shots. Orion noticed immediately that she played with poor form, but he moved tentatively to see if it was some kind of bizarre stratagem. After a few shots careened wildly off the bumpers, Orion realized that she was simply playing sloppy-mad.

  “What’s wrong?” Orion called as he caught a carelessly flung orb and sent it spinning back.

  “Nothing,” she grunted as she kicked in vain to block the shot.

  Orion scored a few quick goals while she floated out of position, bounding out to an early lead. “Do you want to put this off until later? You don’t seem like you’re in the right headspace for tarzzak.”

  “Shut up and play,” she shouted as she hazarded another flurry of slapdash shots.

  She definitely threw the tarzzak balls harder this time around, but all that force became useless without the ability to read the angles. Orion let her shots bounce free and flapped his finned arms, bringing himself to a hover in the middle of the chamber. “Listen, I’m not going to play when you’re like this. You could get hurt if your head’s not in the game.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  With a grimace, she gathered a red orb in her hard-light scoop. “You get back and defend, or I’ll take your head off.”

  Orion shot her a cool smirk. “Oh come on, you know you’ll feel better if you open up a little. I’m very easy to talk to, and god knows I’ve had enough psychiatry to offer—”

  Commander Vanlith flung the tarzzak ball with a primal growl. The bright blur flew through the bumpers as if on a frozen rope, straight at Orion’s head. With his quick reflexes he could have dodged, but instead he steeled himself to make a point. At the last second, he tipped his head down so the hard-light tarzzak ball struck the thick crown of his head instead of his forehead where it could have cracked his skull. All the same, the impact didn’t exactly tickle.

  The next thing Orion knew, he floated end over end, a sticky, warm liquid dampening his blond hair. Slowly, the black vines receded to the edges of his vision, and he saw Vanlith swimming up through the zero-gravity chamber.

  “You idiot,” she said, catching him in her toned arms. “I didn’t think you’d really let me hit you!”

  Orion blinked and stared up at her face. “Ready to… tell me… what’s wrong?” he managed weakly.

  “I was wrong, twice,” she spat, cradling him. “I was wrong about you. You did track down the Kalifa of Light, and you crippled Dawnstar. And I was wrong about Zovaco. He put Union asses in gear to help the Collective Fleet after the Dark Spacer attack.” An angry vein struck out in her forehead. “You’re both good men, and I hate being wrong.”

  “Katherine…” Half-concussed, Orion decided to take a chance. “Kat…” He touched her straight black hair, craned his neck and kissed her. For a sliver of a moment, Vanlith seemed to recoil. Then she kissed him hard, forcing her tongue into his mouth. They entwined for a passionate minute, and then Vanlith managed to break her mouth away from Orion’s.

  “End game,” she muttered.

  Their hard-light sporting gear disappeared into a mist of pixels, and they tore at each other’s clothes. Zero-gravity sex was tricky, but luckily it wasn’t Orion’s first — or fortieth — time. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t Katherine Vanlith’s first time to the zero-g club either, and soon they were thrusting off the walls and pinning each other against the floating bumpers. It became a new kind of competition between them, an angry wrestling match for dominance that left Orion with bite marks and Vanlith with blazing red handprints. When their acrobatics finally ended, Vanlith moved deftly through the zero-g space to gather her clothing. Orion watched with a wan smile while she dressed silently, efficiently, smoothing her clothes with military precision.

  Vanlith fixed him with her icy blue eyes as she pawed the sweaty tangles out of her hair. “It should go without saying that this stays between us.”

  Orion met her gaze and nodded. “Understood.”

  “My crew can never find out.”

  Again Orion nodded, trying to look even more solemn. “I get it, Kat.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Kat,’” she snapped. “And I mean it, Orion — no one can find out. Especially not if you want to do this again. Later tonight. In the portside armory at oh two hundred hours.”

  “Oh,” Orion said, a grin lighting his face. “I absolutely, most definitely understand.”

  They filed out of the tarzzak court into the main gravity gym and saw that two of the ship engineers, a pair of thin s’zone, had come in to use the weightlifting machines. Commander Vanlith quickly headed for the exit as if she had never seen Orion and disappeared before the s’zone could look up from their gravity press. For a moment, Orion stood chagrined and woozy, and then the vibrating datacube in his pocket stirred him out of his reverie. Shaking his head, Orion tossed the cube in the air and opened a holographic interface.

  “Orion Grimslade III?” said a tentacle-bearing lockhovven in a SpaceCorps officer uniform.

  “Yes?” Orion said with a tilt of his head.

  “Yes, very good,” said the lockhovven, his fat, dark-gr
een lips wriggling like worms. “This is Kovac Station Operations Commander Morg Blugobnor… I am speaking to the Orion Grimslade III who is heir to the Grimslade Interstellar conglomerate, correct?”

  Orion rolled his eyes. “That’s debatable, but yes, I’m who you’re looking for.”

  “Mr. Grimslade, I request your presence on Kovac Station,” said Morg, a look of intensity in his bulbous eyes. “You see, your father is here, and he’s been a great friend to the Union in this sector of the galaxy…”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Orion said. “Tell him I can’t see him. The Star Sentry is about to take off — tell him I’m working!”

  “Understood, Mr. Grimslade.” Morg seemed to hem and haw over his next words. “However, as Operations Commander of this Union outpost, the outpost where the Star Sentry is currently moored, you see, I could always order further diagnostics before clearing the vessel for deep space…”

  Orion sighed. He knew the sound of a man who owed his father a favor all too well. “Alright, you got me. Tell him I’m coming over.”

  Chapter 19

  Orion passed through the boarding tube from the Star Sentry into the stern angles and polished surfaces of Kovac Station with slow, reluctant steps. He could see the signs of a military at high alert, both in the runner lights that flashed red and in the faces of the security technicians who met him at the gate. As he waded through a few invisible security scans before entering the station proper, Orion thought that all of the frantic readying of weapons was likely for naught. Dawnstar, or the Assassins Guild, or whoever their true enemy might be, had deployed the cold ship against the Collective Fleet to get to Zovaco. That didn’t mean the Dark Spacers were back — or at least he hoped not.

  When all of the scans came back negative for weapons and pathogens, the heavy doors in front of Orion whooshed open. “Welcome to Kovac Station, Orion Grimslade Iteration Three,” said the thick-bodied quadruped waiting for him.

  “Hello,” Orion said, stepping into the well-lit, spacious hall. He had never met a dobvaniri, but the symbiotic combination of brawn and brains had always fascinated him. The sturdy brown creature had a body that resembled a small, trunkless elephant. At the back of the thick skull, a pink brain slug bulged like a veiny goiter. From what Orion understood, the durable pack animal did the walking while the intelligent gelatinous parasite did the talking. “And you are…?”

  “We are Laguanas,” said the monotone dobvaniri, lifting a paw-like foot in greeting. “We are the SpaceCorps escort assigned to bring you to your progenitor.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Orion said with an easy smile. “After you, Laguanas — to the progenitor.”

  Laguanas led the way, thick nails clicking on the pale gray tiles of the hallway floor. SpaceCorps officers passed them from both directions, dozens of different races all wearing their shared devotion on the breasts of custom-cut uniforms. Small, boxy robots zipped between the foot traffic, constantly cleaning the floors and making minor repairs. As they wound their way toward the station transit tubes, Orion noticed Laguanas glancing at him with his dull-brown eyes. Finally the plurality of sentience spoke up.

  “We apologize for staring,” they droned as they turned their stocky neck toward Orion. “We have never been in close proximity to a human before.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Orion said with a wave of his hand. “And if you’ve got a question about something, just ask. I know we’re new around here.”

  The dobvaniri nodded. “You’re not nearly as fantastically ugly as we had heard.”

  Orion straightened his AO-branded shirt a little as they walked. “Um, that’s not exactly a question.”

  “We apologize, we apologize.” Laguanas bowed their head. “We are curious… if you are the third iteration of the Orion Grimslade, how is it that your previous iteration is still operational?”

  “Well, the name…” Orion shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand. Why wouldn’t he still be alive?”

  “When our host body passes from an animated state,” Laguanas explained, “we must migrate to a new host, our next iteration.” He tipped his neck down to show the slick pink parasite sac. “I am the fifth iteration of we who are Laguanas.”

  “Yeah, well, things are a bit different for humans.” Orion smiled. “We’re stuck with the one body. Basically…”

  They boarded an empty gravity lift, and Laguanas listened with rapt attention while Orion described the human lifecycle in broad strokes. They whizzed through Kovac Station’s system of diamond-glass rapid transit tubes for a few minutes, and soon they reached the embassy suites on the far side of the vast, bowl-shaped space station.

  “So you see,” Orion said as the pod doors opened, “only a combination of genetic material gets passed along, no memories. My father happened to choose his name for mine because, hey, why not try to force your identity on your child? Good times.”

  “You are a fascinating people.” Laguanas nodded their anvil-like head as they started down a short passage adorned with the symbol for the sovereign planet of Earth, an iconic representation of a geocentric solar system. “Your families sound much like the duroks’, though they lay eggs rather than producing live hatchlings. My people are very different. I have no relationship with the Yubba tree that seeded my brain sac, and my host body’s parents are just two of a herd.”

  Orion nodded as they approached the heavy-set security door at the end of the short corridor. “In a weird way, that sounds simpler to me right now.”

  The dobvaniri raised one of its thick paws to the door, activating its biometric authorization. “I have enjoyed our interaction, Orion Grimslade the third iteration. I bid you good luck in interacting with your progenitor.”

  “I’ll need it,” Orion muttered.

  The door opened, the dobvaniri plodded back down the hall. Orion took a deep breath to still his mind and stepped across the threshold into the embassy for the sovereign planet of Earth. The main office was well-outfitted with lush Union-navy carpet and human-sized furniture made of fine briophyte leather and bio-mold cushions. A glowing symphonic spinner played softly on automatic, and large paintings shifted through a preprogrammed list of humanity’s great works of art. Orion found his father sitting behind the absent ambassador’s glass desk, scrolling with slow swipes of his finger through a holographic sales forecast. Orion Grimslade Jr. looked up and grabbed his gold-gilded datacube out of the air, extinguishing the hologram.

  “Hello, son,” his father said with a twinkle in his blue eyes.

  “Hello, second iteration,” Orion said, smirking.

  Confusion flitted across Orion Grimslade Jr.’s taut, tanned face. “What?”

  “Never mind,” Orion said with a wave of his hand. “Look, you twisted that lockhovven’s tentacles to get me here, so what do you want?”

  “Son, it’s been too long. You won’t take my calls. What was I supposed to do?” His father rose and started around the desk, opening his arms for an embrace. “Isn’t it possible I just wanted to see you?”

  “Yeah, right, like the conversation’s not gonna happen.” Orion stretched out his arm and stopped his father at a handshake. “Let’s do this, huh?”

  His father sighed and took Orion’s hand, shaking it slowly. For a moment they stood toe-to-toe, as close as they’d been in two years. Orion saw a lot of himself reflected there, though his father’s skin had become tanner and tighter thanks to consulin injections. His blond hair had long since turned to distinguished silver, and it was styled considerably less elaborately than Orion’s. But they were identical in their small, smirking mouths, their chiseled cheekbones, their strong chin and their lively blue eyes, the last only half mirrored by Orion’s own heterochromia. The old man wore an immaculate white suit, a tieless white shirt open at the collar, a red pocket square that reminded Orion of the dusty plains of Mars and custom-wrought leather shoes. Neither fath
er nor son seemed to know what to say.

  “Drinks,” his father said, finally releasing his grip on Orion’s hand.

  Orion’s father opened up the frosted-glass cupboards and rifled through the absent ambassador’s stash until he found a bottle of Earth-made bourbon and two stout tumblers. When they both had a fistful of brown, Orion’s father waved him over to the diamond-glass window that looked out on the Velvet Rift. The flowing crimson and purple of the twinkling stardust looked like a river of blood carving its way through the black soil of space.

  His father took a long drink. “I’m not going to hold out the big chair forever, son,” he said, squinting through the bite of the liquor.

  Orion matched his slug and rolled his eyes. “There it is. The conversation.” He looked out at the Velvet Rift and shook his head. “You know my answer.”

  “Grimslade Interstellar is your birthright.” Gently, his father gripped Orion’s muscular arm. “The story of our expansion is the story of humanity’s expansion, all the way back to your great-grandfather Horace. When he braved Saturn’s moons and found the crashed Engineers’ ship on Mimas, well, that changed everything. What your grandfather, the first Orion, built from there—”

  Orion shook his father’s hand off and continued to gaze out the window. “I’ve heard your sanitized version of this story too many times. Explorers and scientists and pioneers. Innovators of industry, right?” Orion took a swig, savoring the whiskey burn for a moment. “You like to leave out the weapons we manufactured for the First Contact War with the hivers, the planets we strip-mined, the indigenous species we wiped out.”

  A bitter edge came into his father’s voice. “And who ever told you that progress was supposed to be easy? That it was supposed to be clean?” He sighed, his flare of anger fizzling as quickly as it had ignited. “Listen, son. We could get you started overseeing the Venus eco-forming project. After, say, five years, I could move you into a vice president position that—”

  Orion laughed. “You know what I can’t figure out? Why you want me for this. It can’t be just some backward notion of primogeniture. You’ve got plenty of replacements from your three train-wrecks.” Orion took another deep drink, draining his glass. “Check that, I meant marriages. What about the twins?” Orion added, thinking of his half brother and sister from his father’s second wife. “Don’t they want the big chair? They certainly seem to like money enough.”