The Only Game in the Galaxy

by Paul Collins

  Out of earshot, he stopped and emptied Melit’s flask down his throat, savouring the burning, dizzying fumes. ‘Pull yourself together, idiot!’ he snarled softly. He had never felt anything like that in his life; nor did he ever want to again. It was as if he’d woken from a dream to find himself standing on the edge of a cliff.

  Calmer now, feeling the whisky heat in his gut and creeping confidence seeping along his limbs, he went back to his task, finding what he sought: a captain of the home forces, imprisoned, in full uniform.

  He unlocked the door and stepped inside. ‘Greetings, Captain.’

  His blaster roared, and this time it was not on stun.

  A week later Maximus was promoted to major and accepted a posting to Commander Quizko’s staff. He hadn’t seen Anneke since they’d parted in the corridor.

  As he’d surmised, record-keeping practices were slipshod in this day and age, and not improved by the chaos and vagaries of war, the latter also accounting for rapid, inexplicable, promotions. That he’d demonstrated a tactical genius in the field and made sure it hadn’t gone unnoticed, also hadn’t hurt.

  He joined the command staff in a new uniform and with polished boots. The brass buttons on his tunic shone, and he’d encouraged the growth of upper lip hair. The moustache, such as it was, made him look older – and age, in this group of veterans, was a plus.

  Maximus saluted the commander on his arrival. ‘Major Blacknski reporting for duty, sir!’

  Commander Quizko was thin and wiry with an avuncular face. He moved with a slow tired stoop, as though worn out. Maximus had expected different. This was the Traitor, the Betrayer of Kestre, a man whose name was to become an epithet for the next thousand years, a man reviled by both sides in the war, winners and losers alike.

  Maximus almost felt sorry for him.

  Quizko returned his salute, asking Maximus to join him at Tactical – a huge square table in the centre of the room on which a three-dimensional hologram of the planetary surface and the cube of space directly above it were represented.

  ‘Bok,’ said the commander, ‘please bring the major up to speed.’

  A disgruntled-looking colonel, missing one ear, nodded. Deftly, with few words, he explained the current tactical situation. ‘The League has blocked our supply lines so effectively that fuel for the dreadnoughts has dwindled to a trickle, making them useless,’ he concluded.

  ‘We’ve enough fuel to run their blockade,’ said Colonel Bok sourly, ‘but nowhere to run them to. The Insurrection controls all the mining worlds. There wouldn’t be enough juice to get back!’

  ‘And then where would we be?’ asked a white-haired woman grimly.

  ‘Defenceless,’ said another.

  ‘So currently,’ said Maximus, ‘we have a stalemate? You need the dreadnoughts for defence, but without fuel they’re working at one tenth their firepower capacity?’

  Quizko nodded.

  ‘So if we could modify the dreadnoughts to use a different fuel source, an unlimited source, this would solve the problem?’

  Several of the officers laughed. Bok openly sneered.

  ‘You want us to invent a new fuel in the middle of a war?’ he said.

  Contempt filled the faces around the table; others were too exhausted to respond.

  Quizko cleared his throat. ‘It’s the man’s first day on the job. Cut him some slack.’

  ‘Should be his last,’ muttered Bok.

  Maximus surreptitiously made an adjustment to his field generator, then told Bok what he thought of him. He held nothing back, pouring all his scorn and arrogance into a fusillade of insults. Quizko’s staff gasped. Bok went white as a sheet.

  Having registered the man, he made a calculated statement about a member of Bok’s family. Bok’s blaster flashed out and before anyone could stop him, fired at Maximus, point-blank.

  A vortex of destructive energies engulfed Maximus. There were yells as men and women leapt back from the maelstrom unleashed by the deadly weapon.

  After ten seconds, Quizko, too stunned to react at first, barked a command at Bok who grudgingly snapped off his blaster. His face went slack in amazement.

  Maximus stood unharmed, admiring his fingernails. Pretending to have only just noticed the barrage had stopped, he looked up at Bok.

  ‘They say self-control is a virtue,’ he said. ‘But then virtues are overrated, don’t you think?’

  They were all staring at him. Quizko’s jaw had dropped.

  ‘I do apologise for my remarks, Colonel Bok,’ said Maximus, with a slight bow. ‘I merely wanted to provoke a demonstration.’

  ‘Provoke it, you did,’ said the white-haired woman, wringing her hands.

  ‘How did you do that?’ demanded Bok.

  ‘It’s impossible!’ another muttered.

  ‘Impossible or not,’ said Maximus, ‘I am still here. So let me tell you what is possible. It is possible to adapt the forces I just displayed, which involve high-level field mechanics and a novel adaptation of n-space emissions, to provide an unlimited supply of fuel for your dreadnoughts – and to turn this stalemate to checkmate!’

  Maximus wished he’d had a pin, so that he could drop it.

  They gave him everything he wanted, including the prisoner from the detention block.

  Before she arrived he wondered what he was doing. Helping the Empire achieve victory was simple, a nobrainer. He, like many others, had always lamented the defeat of the Old Empire, convinced that had the Empire survived, slaver ships would never have existed.

  He wasn’t sure of the logic, uncomfortably aware of his inability to apply logic to the matter. It was too tangled up with emotion, with scars scored deeply into the bone of his being.

  All he knew was that he intended to change history. He intended to save the life of one little boy, and everyone else be damned!

  A knock came. ‘Enter,’ he said.

  Then his heart missed a beat.

  Flanked by guards, she stood there, shackled, regarding him. He had thought her beautiful before, but he saw now that he could not tell whether she was beautiful or not. All he felt was hunger for her.

  ‘Re – release her,’ he croaked, and swallowed to clear his dry throat. The guards removed her shackles. He waved them from the room and motioned the girl to sit down. He placed a tray of food and drink on a low table and invited her to eat. She hesitated, then shrugged, and dived in, obviously famished.

  Maximus said nothing as he watched her eat.

  When she was finished, he asked her name, though he knew it already. ‘Hester,’ she said. ‘Sister of Herik.’

  Maximus nodded.

  ‘More food?’ She declined with a smile. The smile burned itself into his brain. This woman was dangerous. She undid him, laid him bare. He thought, fleetingly, that he was in love with her, though he didn’t believe in love, and especially not love at first sight.

  ‘They tell me you’ve been here nearly a year?’

  ‘A guest of the commander’s.’ Again, that smile. He must either have her, or kill her. She was too powerful, a walking field generator, able to warp his very being; but he had never been in love, did not know the niceties, the etiquette. How did one begin? Small talk? Holding hands? Kissing? What?

  His hunger for her was a predatory feeling that he tried, to his credit, to suppress, but he was afraid of her, afraid that if she told him to blow out his brains with his own blaster, he might just do it. Or worse.

  He was across the room and in front of her before she could react. Head bent low, he pulled her face to his and melded his mouth with hers. She did not struggle, seeming to collaborate.

  When he pulled back she slapped him. Hard. ‘Please have the guards take me back to my cell.’

  He took her then, against her will, as darkness ballooned inside of him. She struggled, crying out, but no one came to her aid. When he was finished, when the darkness had subsided, Maximus could not look at her. He closed his fly, straightened his uniform, and told her she wo
uld remain there with him.

  She made no effort to cover herself, nor did she scream, or rant, but instead fixed him with a mute gaze he found intolerable.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Why did you do that? I sort of liked you,’ she said, a tiny catch in her voice. ‘Even when you kissed me.’

  Maximus turned away, stricken. That’s why he’d done it – to destroy her power over him, to break the spell. Destroying was so much simpler than the alternative.

  ‘I want to go back to my cell.’

  ‘You will stay here, or die.’

  ‘Then I will die.’

  Maximus clenched the back of his chair till his knuckles were white. ‘So be it. Guards!’ He instructed them to take her to the execution chamber immediately. As the door closed behind them, he staggered and sat down …

  … and stared at his hand.

  There was a movement, an odd ripple, like when two incompatible fields intersect. He blinked as the last two fingers of his right hand, prosthetic replacements for those lost on Reema’s End two years before, altered before his eyes.

  In their stead were two real fingers. His own.

  He got up slowly, went to an adjacent room and activated a medical scanner. He placed his left hand inside the scan space, and watched an image appear on the adjacent screen. He switched from x-ray to ultrawave then requested a medical analysis of the blood from the fingertips of both fingers.

  There was no doubt.

  The fingers were not only real, they were his. The first shiver of fear moved through his gut.

  He returned to his chair and sat down, holding the fingers up to his face, studying them as if he could divine the meaning of this. Suddenly he frowned, punched a communicator and, never taking his eyes off his fingers, countermanded the order to have Hester executed.

  The guard at the other end acknowledged the new order.

  His fingers rippled. The prosthetics reappeared.

  He sat back, feeling as if there were a block of ice in his stomach. He knew what had happened. Worse, he knew what must happen.

  In ordering the girl’s execution he had altered time, had altered his future existence a thousand years from now. There were many theories of time travel and of the effects if one travelled back in time, but he had dismissed them. He had already carried out many actions in this ‘past’: he had interfered, interacted and killed people. Had there been even a perceptible effect? How could he tell?

  If time were sensitive to such things, then it wasn’t hyper-sensitive. A thousand years came with its own inbuilt shock absorbers, dampening out the actions of a would-be meddler in time.

  But not all changes. Some survived the long centuries. And he’d just stumbled on one.

  Of course, the loss or replacement of two fingers was nothing.

  But if ordering (and cancelling) the execution of a single woman could do this, what would happen when he reversed the course of history by ensuring that Commander Quizko was victorious, that the Empire defeated the League?

  He poured a stiff drink and sat without moving for a long time, until the shadows of evening engulfed him, and he was one shadow among many.

  And in that darkness, he began to shiver. He knew what he must do.

  ‘IAM Herik of Vane.’

  Anneke stared at him. Was the man crazy? Herik of Vane? How stupid did he think she was?

  Unless …

  She had a sudden terrifying thought. ‘What – what year is this?’

  Herik tilted his head quizzically. He told her.

  Anneke felt herself sag. She sat down in an armchair while the man who called himself Herik regarded her. He could have moved on her then, unarmed as he was, but didn’t.

  ‘What year were you hoping for?’ he asked. He spoke as if he were humouring a sick child.

  Anneke managed a grin. ‘Oh, just 37-2095, or thereabouts …’

  Herik pursed his lips. ‘You’re a little early.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Anneke. ‘A thousand years early.’

  ‘Did you bump your head? I have a medkit.’

  Anneke laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Look, no offence, but you’ve been dead for a millennium. Your statue holds special significance at RIM headquarters.’

  ‘A statue? Of me?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Did I die heroically in battle?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Herik sat back and folded his arms, regarding her quizzically. ‘Truly, who are you?’

  ‘Anneke Longshadow, at your service. Born on Se’atma Prime in the season of Hardish, 37-2076,’ she lied. It didn’t pay to give away your special secrets.

  ‘Well, I could be your great-grandfather …’

  ‘Fifty times removed.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘So tell me, Anneke Longshadow, visitor from the far-flung future, who wins this squabble of ours?’

  ‘You do,’ she told him, then wondered if she should have. Who knew what could change the course of history? She mentally kicked herself. She’d have to be more careful. Right now, though, she felt giddy, as if she’d imbibed too much Ruvian wine.

  And then a dark thought occurred. ‘I think.’

  ‘You think? They don’t study history where you come from?’

  ‘Oh, they study it all right. But I didn’t come back alone.’

  ‘Your tone tells me that your companion is not desirable company.’

  ‘My “companion” is a sociopathic killer who will try to hijack history and make himself Emperor.’

  ‘He can hardly do worse than our most esteemed Rector III.’

  Anneke snorted. ‘Trust me, he’d give the Rector a run for his money.’

  ‘So the Empire falls, and we are victorious?’ asked Herik with false nonchalance.

  ‘Interference aside, yes. Sort of.’

  ‘Then this must be a well-studied moment in history?’

  Anneke wasn’t sure where he was going. At her nod, he continued. ‘So you must know my mission here?’

  Anneke rolled her eyes. Every ten-year-old in her time knew Herik’s mission inside the Fortress of Kestre, but just to make sure she asked him if it was April fifteenth. He agreed that it was.

  ‘Then you’re here to steal the master key.’

  He lunged, catching her off guard, knocking her gun aside. She twisted out of his chokehold, hit the floor, and rolled. He went for the gun, but she’d expected that. Her foot shot out. The gun skittered away into a corner. Herik swore softly, spun, then launched a kick that caught Anneke in the stomach.

  Anneke went with the kick, fell backwards, and was on her feet in an instant. They came together, trading blows, though for the most part Anneke’s were solely defensive. She had no intention of harming Herik of Vane, the hero of the Empire’s downfall. Besides that, she liked him. He reminded her of Arvakur.

  Herik renewed his attack, edging the fight sideways, placing himself between Anneke and his own gun, which she had earlier set on a sideboard, out of harm’s way.

  She decided she’d had enough. She pretended to stumble, ramped up her dampening field, and let him get his gun. He snatched it up, spun, and fired at her legs.

  Then he switched off the blaster and stared at her. She was untouched.

  ‘Nice of you to go for my leg,’ she said.

  ‘You seem like a nice person. How did you do that?’

  ‘It’s called a dampening field. Gets invented about five hundred years from now.’

  ‘You knew that my gun wouldn’t harm you, didn’t you?’ She shrugged. He holstered his weapon and sat down. ‘I’ve never seen anyone fight like you.’

  ‘What, you figured we were going to sit around for the next thousand years and do nothing?’

  ‘You could have killed me several times.’

  ‘You seem like a nice person.’

  Herik laughed, giving her a mock bow. ‘Now what?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Okay, I�
�m going to trust you. My gut says to and I always trust my gut. So, we go get the master key.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘Together.’

  ‘Maybe that’s not a good idea. It might come under the heading of interfering with history.’

  ‘How do you know you’re not part of this history, and always were?’

  Anneke chewed her bottom lip. The idea hadn’t occurred to her, but as she explored it, a snippet of history came to her, a reference to ‘an angel of the gods, who appeared from nowhere, aiding Herik in his time of need …’

  Her eyes grew wider. Angel? Her? Well, what if she was?

  But if she was, what of Brown? What role was he playing?

  The master key was indeed a key.

  Made of cyrillium wafer, one of the rarest metals in the galaxy, the master key was designed to override every Demon class dreadnought in the Empire’s space navy, assuming total control. Three such keys had been made when the dreadnoughts were built, two hundred years earlier. One had been destroyed. One lost. And the other was here, deep inside the Fortress of Kestre, in its most inaccessible heart.

  The Insurrection, as the League was called by the Empire, had captured a high-ranking admiral who knew of the key’s whereabouts and the access codes to the outer barriers. Only a handful of people knew all the codes, however. Until now, secrecy had been the key’s most successful protection: few even knew it existed.

  Anneke and Herik located the secret chamber in which the key was stored – the admiral’s directions proving accurate – but Herik was at a loss as to how to proceed once the initial barriers were down, or how to prevent Security Forces detecting their intrusion. He knew the further they penetrated, the more difficult – and dangerous – it would get.

  ‘The admiral also mentioned a series of rumours,’ Herik said. ‘Unsubstantiated, but chilling nonetheless.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’ asked Anneke.

  ‘Some ultimate protection – impassable. And the consequences of failure – terrible.’

  ‘Impassable. Terrible. Gotcha. Is that it?’

  Herik grinned. ‘Remind me, when they roast us slowly over a hot plasma fire, to point out the downside of cockiness.’