The Game of the Millennium: A Novel

by James Martin

  “Why do you say that? It must’ve been a pleasantly pampered life.” She meant to be playful, not at all sarcastic, or at least, that’s what she told herself.

  “In some aspects.” Sarcasm was lost upon Astraos.

  “And others?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Terrible?”

  He laughed. “We are what you call an absolute monarchy.”

  Lauren found humor in the fact that she didn’t know much about what he was talking about, and yet, it was about humans. “Where the ruler has absolute power, right?”

  “Yes. But you never had one.”

  She gave a curious look. “I thought we did. . . Russia seemed to be that way for centuries. . . if I remember my history classes correctly.”

  He grinned, one that Lauren now identified as the I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin. “Right. Well. . . not truly, those Russian Czars still had high nobility that they had to please and negotiate with. It’s why absolute monarchs on your planet were continuously in financial straits.”

  She laughed. “You know a lot about this.”

  “My father had me study it. Told me, ‘if you’re going to waste your time on all things Earth, some of it should be productive.’”

  “Not bad advice.”

  “It was boring at first. But. . . seeing the differences and how striking they were, I became very studious.”

  “So you have a true absolute monarchy. Meaning. . .?”

  “Nothing like it anywhere in the galaxy. I ended up reading about all kinds of civilizations and species. We are very unique, just like most species. But where we are genuinely one of a kind is concerning how we are governed and our societal hierarchies.

  “When a ruler succeeds the previous by a duel, all serve without question. Whatever his desire may be.”

  “Without question?”

  Astraos frowned. “Yes. Without question. Let me give you an example: We have one rule that every ruler has abided by and carried throughout the history of our kind except for one. The rule is: You cannot challenge the ruler without having killed a hakliar, which is the most vicious and fearsome animal in the galaxy. You must win ten thousand duels with no losses to be granted access to the Wilds of Halibar in order to fight the hakliar.

  “Generations ago, Ezbeth succeeded to the throne. It is said that he was the most ruthless to ever sit upon the seat, the most psychotic of us all. He loved death, loved killing people. He issued a decree that anyone may challenge him, welcoming it, because killing a hakliar was not a true measure of one’s might.

  “He was the most skilled swordsman the cheshirs had ever seen at the time. They say he took on almost fifty cheshirs a day, killing them all. He also blew up Station V and VI, and caused our population to dwindle from seven planets to four. It is also said that during his reign, he essentially killed a planet’s worth of male cheshirs and the repercussions were felt for millennia.”

  “Wow.” She mouthed the word at a turtle’s pace. She shook her head in disbelief. “And no one did anything?”

  “Not a thing. Our population oscillates depending on who’s at the throne. Or at least, that is what I’ve gathered. When cheshirs believe a good ruler is in the seat, the king may die at the throne never being challenged. When they do not, many come to duel and duel and rise to fight the hakliar and die and die.”

  “I noticed you only spoke of men. No women?”

  “It has always been the female’s job to procreate with as many males as possible. I do not know the reasoning nor has anyone questioned it. . . But it is the only reason the cheshirs exist today; because if that was not their sole job, we would’ve died out long ago from killing each other. My father did a study and found that a female cheshir must give birth to an average of four males in order to sustain our current population.”

  Lauren’s mouth stayed open, perplexed. She landed on whistling then saying, “You’re not like your kind, though?” It was sort of a question but more of an affirmation and an opening for him to elaborate because she knew he was radically different than Pilox.

  “No. I’ve never been.”

  “You question your father?”

  “Yes, I have and I do, privately. He is slightly different than other cheshirs in that he meant to hide and develop me so that I could be the one to bring change.”

  “He said that to you?”

  “In so many ways.”

  “That’s a lot to put on you. Do you want that?” She didn’t ask the question for self-interest but to understand Astraos more, something she had never done or attempted with any other man.

  “What can I do?” He asked rhetorically. “If I rule, I can preserve my kind until I am displaced by death or someone’s weapon. But that doesn’t change the culture, we would end up going extinct either way.” His eyes became watery. “And is it worth it? Sacrifice myself and what I may want for them? I thought I wanted that. I thought I would in the end come home and do that for my people. But now. . . I’m not so sure.”

  Lauren stroked his forearm, giving a consoling smile. “That’s tough.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Me?” She asked the question but it was more meant for herself. What would I do? She rolled this over in her mind. “I can’t say. That’s a selfless decision. I, or anyone in my position, wants to believe they’re capable of it but can’t know unless its thrown upon them. But I think. . . No matter what you or your father presume, you could be a terrible ruler because of the bitterness you would harbor against the position taking away your life.”

  “But what if it’s the only way?”

  She brought her hand to his shoulder, massaging it slightly. “Let’s find a different way.”

  He met the response with silence.

  She perused, “Why do you have to be the ruler to do the most good for your people?”

  “Because it’s an absolute monarchy, they must listen if I rise to power.”

  “Okay. I get that. And that’s because you see having all the power and dictating being the way to do the most good.” She stroked him once more. “But why does that have to be the only way? You can do some good, maybe not the most, but enough and that’s all right too.”

  He responded with a short laugh. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “We can travel around and help people. And if that changes, it changes. But what I learned in my short time here is that if I constantly worry about Earth and think of all the ways I should or could do something, I end up doing nothing. And that’s much worse.”

  “You think about Earth often?”

  “A lot. But it’s less, and with time it’ll continue to be less and less as long as I am out here doing something.”

  He smiled. “You are incredible. To exhibit such change so quickly—”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. I know you’ve changed since we first met.”

  “Maybe. . .”

  She eyed his half-naked body. The stripes that identified his species as cheshir were aflame.

  Astraos made a sudden movement, and Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I think you can.”

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Nate was helping Macellus with repairs on the bridge, some motherboards fried during their illustrious escape.

  It would take a few weeks to get to a warp gate. They were on the fringe of an arm in the Milky Way that was termed: a dead zone, because sentient life was extremely rare. Stars were too young and planet building material was still being gathered. The ones with planets were either too close or too far from a habitual zone. Some species have come from the most exotic environments, such as the ganglafesh of Beta Zero where temperatures could rise to two-hundred-and-seventy-degrees Fahrenheit. . . And of course, the well-documented rise of the katros.

  It was possible some species were developing in this environment, but it could be millions of years before they were space-faring, or it could be yesterday, or right now. The gal
axy is funky like that.

  Nate found his all-purpose-tool, grinning to himself and flipping it in his hand. “There you are.” It was best described as a screwdriver. The difference were the switches that allowed the user to snatch up certain metals—small wiring jobs took a fraction of the time.

  He walked out of his cabin, looking down and face planted into one of Jaziel’s breasts, lefty. “Oh. . . uh, s-sorry about that.” He took a step back, not able to detach his gaze from the barely clothed tit, with the garment’s signature twirl around the nipple. My mouth definitely just kissed that nipple.

  “Captain! I apologize. . . Actually, I do not. I quite liked that.”

  She pressed her body on his and kissed him.

  He took another step back and disengaged, dizzy by the compilation of events. “Wooo there, I mean, you are undoubtedly fantastic to look at but—”

  Jaziel having never heard of someone saying no to her (Pilox being the closest anyone’s gotten), ignored him. “I would have you as my concubine.”

  “Say what?”

  “I have a husband and many concubines. You would be the star. With my approval, you may have sex with any female that will fill your needs when I am not attending to you.”

  “Come again?”

  She stroked his chest, a seemingly tried and proven tactic for her given how many times she has done it to him. This time she dived her hand underneath his shirt and scratched at his chest hairs. “Do you not know how wild you make me?”

  Nate’s face was a cross between ‘what the fuck is going on?’ and ‘I am not sure what I am supposed to do here.’ Jaziel missed the facial expression, she was only concerned with being pleasured by him. “Uh. . . No? Wait. . . What makes you think I’ll be a concubine?”

  Her tone changed, deeply affected and perplexed by someone suggesting they would not want to be hers forever. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “Look, sister, you’re gorgeous. . . beautiful. But I don’t want to be your concubine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He shrugged, making a tortured face. Can I be anywhere but here right now? “I like my ship, my crew. We fly around the galaxy taking jobs, fighting people, getting paid. . . sometimes. . . it’s what I do.”

  She dismissed the statement. “This can’t be.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know nothing about us, the plythiens?”

  He pondered about this and remembered an old smuggler he met a while back. Whatever you do, Nate, watch yourself around a plythien. They’ll make you a sex slave for life if you get too close. You’ll be sent to the swamps once your mileage runs high. Keep your distance.

  “Oh shit,” he said to himself, then looked up and saw her hungry eyes. “Oh. Right. . . I guess it’s too late. Yeah, a friend said something about it.”

  “What did this person say?”

  “To keep my distance.”

  She laughed, a rosy one filled with mirth. “You did not listen, captain.”

  “I did not remember.”

  “So you don’t want to be my concubine?” She came closer, breathing on him. He inhaled it and tilted his head; the smell reminded him of roses. Not bad.

  “Nope. Not interested.”

  “Well. . .” It was her turn to take a timid step back. “I am stunned.”

  He raised his eyebrows and scrunched up his face. “Eh. What can you do?”

  “Your friend did not elaborate, did he?”

  He thought again but nothing came to mind. “Nope.”

  “Female plythiens excrete a pheromone known to drive males mad with lust and love for us. There are very few species that are immune to it. The ones that are, we usually don’t care to have, like the katros. When it does “fail”—she displayed her body by shimmying and stroking her hand down her breast and then gliding past her privates—“our bodies usually do the trick. . .” Her tone became more egregious. “I’ve never been denied.”

  “You can’t win them all.”

  She sighed and approached him again, slightly touching her lips on his ear. “And we shall not have sex, either?”

  This made him think of Kat, almost instantly. “Nah.”

  Jaziel’s head snapped back. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Look, when I get old and lonely, I’ll look you up.”

  “I don’t want you old.”

  “Well that seems unfair.”

  “Do you not know what we do with aged concubines in our society?”

  “I can only imagine that the answer is not good for that guy.”

  “They are given the blissful exit.”

  “I have to hear about this.”

  “He is given drugs to stay erect and many females come to fornicate with him until he dies.”

  “There you go, I’ll come by when I’m about to die.”

  “It doesn’t work like that!” She let out a groan of distaste and marched out of his cabin.

  He couldn’t help but laugh to himself. “Are there any women that don’t walk out on me, exasperated?”

  You may not be satisfied with the answer.

  “Thanks, Mariah.”

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Kat watched as Nate fell into Jaziel’s breast, then they started to kiss and went inside his cabin. Distraught, she dropped the food she was eating and stormed off to the bridge, clenching her fists and looking to expel the building mountain of rage onto something, anything.

  Macellus looked up from the motherboard he was working on. “What did he do now?”

  Through clenched teeth, she said, “You can tell?”

  Macellus laughed joyfully. “Who cannot?”

  A distinct hoarseness entered her voice that only came about in moments of heightened anger. “I’ve had it. I’m done.”

  Macellus stopped what he was doing, seeing the need to console her. They were both dear friends to him. He wanted nothing more than for them to hook up and commit to each other for life, so he could stop dealing with the dramatic outbursts that occurred from both sides. “What did he do?”

  “I saw Jaziel kissing him. They closed the door behind.”

  “Those cabin doors are automatic.”

  “So. . .?”

  “All right. I don’t believe that’s the whole story.”

  “It is the whole story. Beginning, middle, and end.”

  “Where is the middle and end?”

  “They kiss. They’ll fuck. The end.”

  Macellus’s laugh was cut short by an enraged look in Kat’s eyes. He was treading close to becoming cannon fodder. “Kat, I guarantee they are not mating.”

  “How so?”

  “I know him. . . Also she is too tall for him. His wife—”

  “Even if I admitted that you could be right.” She wouldn’t. She didn’t. But inside somewhere buried under the sands of time, she believed him. “The plythiens have pheromones and can take any male in the galaxy. . . so they say.”

  “Nate is too stubborn for pheromones. He would’ve been conquered the day she arrived.”

  Her breath became shallower, her anger dissipating as she began to believe Macellus. He was too calm not to. A thought interrupted the calmness that was starting to grip her body and relieve the fury, wait a minute. Did he—? “Wait. Wife?”

  His eyes widened, guilt and anguish wrapped around his throat. “Uh, oh.”

  Kat came marching over to him with a wrench-type tool that mystically appeared in her hand. Macellus was unsure if she had snapped it up on her way towards him or had it all along. “Explain.”

  He swallowed. “I didn’t say anything. I mean I didn’t say that. I mean. . . I didn’t mean to say that. Oh boy. . .”

  She pressed the tool on his chest. “Spit it out.”

  He threw his hands up. “All right. All right. I overheard him talking to Lauren about the story he told us.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He said that Lieutenant Vesilla was his wife.”

  Her mouth hung loosely. His wife?<
br />
  Macellus rattled on, feeling cornered and deciding that a mutual discussion of hindsight was the appropriate redirection. “You know, now that I think about it, his voice would get harsher when he mentioned her name. Even his eyes flickered, what does he call it? Yes, hindsight, I guess we should’ve seen it.”

  She ignored him entirely. His wife? All this time. . . A tear rolled down her eye that she smeared down her cheek. “I have to go.”

  Seeing he failed at navigating the conversation like a ship, he said, “Don’t tell him I said anything.”

  Kat dashed off the bridge and back to the mess hall, leaving a dust of wind as her reply to Macellus. He scratched his bald head and went back to the motherboard he was working on. “No wonder no one tells me anything.”

  Kat stopped next to the table and grabbed her plate. Moans could be heard from the cabin close-by: cabin five. Ah, the lovebirds at it again. She waited. Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes became agony, tension coiling around her heart, she clawed at the plate—savagely eating the food she usually deemed repulsive.

  The door opened.

  Jaziel came out with a look of defeat and not a drop of sweat glistening on her body. No way, she thought. They really did nothing?

  As if reading her thoughts, Jaziel sashayed over to the table, screamed and slammed her fist on it. She looked up to see Kat staring, eating her food.

  “Excuse me, I have lost my temper.” She stormed off and into Pilox’s cabin.

  Kat radiated happiness with a pep in her step as she loaded the food into the washer.

  Good boy, Nate. Good boy.

  August 23, 2015

  “You ready?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “You know to call me Nate. I’ve seen you do it.”

  “You got it, Nathan.”

  “Stop that.”

  Lauren laughed. She had been messing with him, calling him Nathan, Captain Nathan, Captain, or Captain Nate—just to inject some comedy into the seriousness of practicing with a device that kills people. She found it to be a nice distraction.

  She held the blaster in her hand, striking the strong stance Nate showed her, steadied herself and fired.

  “Bulls-eye!”

  Pleased with herself, she smirked. “Not bad, right?”