The Only Game in the Galaxy

by Paul Collins

  ‘Don’t you mean empire?’

  ‘That is precisely what I mean,’ Maximus said.

  Herik snorted. ‘We’ve had our fill of empire.’

  Maximus turned to the man from the past. ‘Why, if it isn’t Herik of Vane.’ There were gasps and murmurs all over the room. Anneke waved them to silence. Maximus went on: ‘Forgive me if I don’t prostrate myself before you. I learned, during my interesting sojourn through your time, that history has a way of … fiddling with the truth.’

  ‘Well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ said Anneke.

  Maximus smiled. ‘You have eight hours. If you do not surrender, I will obliterate the Fortress and set up my seat of government – of empire – elsewhere.’

  ‘It might not be as easy as you think,’ said Anneke.

  ‘Eight hours. And counting.’

  Maximus cut the connection.

  The room plunged into uproar as everyone vainly tried to be heard. Herik’s bullhorn voice shouted them into silence. He motioned Anneke to take the floor.

  ‘You heard him,’ she began. ‘We have eight hours. Don’t fool yourselves into believing surrender is an option, that Maximus will deal lightly with us if we give up. The man is a brutal sociopath and a megalomaniac. He aims to see the Old Empire restored, and nothing short of that will satisfy him. If any feel that might not be a bad thing, I’m sure Herik – or his Lost Legion onboard our fleet of dreadnoughts – will be happy to set them straight. In the meantime, we must increase planetary defences and call in alliances. The stakes have never been higher: from this day forward, we can choose to live free or under the heel of a brutal tyranny.’

  An hour later, when she managed to get away for a brief moment, Anneke secured a link to RIM and spoke to Jake Ferren. He was overjoyed to see her but appalled that war was imminent and that Maximus Black – who’d been sitting in his office two days earlier – was Nathaniel Brown, the mastermind they had been seeking for so long, and the man who had murdered Jake’s best friend, and Anneke’s beloved uncle, Viktus.

  Jake cursed himself.

  ‘Plenty of time later for recriminations – I hope,’ said Anneke. ‘Right now, we need your help.’

  They discussed the tactical situation. Jake promised to mobilise every RIM asset to assist Anneke, save those needed for a defence of Lykis Integer itself.

  Anneke thanked Jake, promising to keep him informed.

  ‘I’m sending you an encrypted data package,’ he said, and they broke the connection.

  Next, Anneke went to see Deema. The girl was overjoyed and threw herself, bawling like a baby, into Anneke’s arms. Anneke staggered and sat down on the floor, hugging the child, who suddenly pinched her hard. Anneke yelped.

  ‘Why’d you do that?’

  ‘To make sure you’re real,’ said Deema, dashing tears from her eyes. ‘And because if you are, you deserve it!’

  Anneke laughed, then cried, then laughed again and held Deema as tightly as she could.

  ‘You’re squishing me,’ said Deema at last. ‘But I don’t mind.’

  Anneke had Deema collect her belongings then took her to the Fortress, the safest place on the planet. Anneke nearly made a detour to see if Mirella, hidden at the empty Sentinel Consulate, was okay, but there wasn’t time. She would contact her later.

  With Deema safely ensconced in her apartment, Anneke convened another war council. The usual faces were there, as well as men and women from the Se’atma Minor military bodies and intelligence agencies.

  ‘RIM is sending a large contingent, though Maximus believed they wouldn’t,’ Anneke began. ‘I have also been in contact with Bodanis and Sasume of the Imperial Myotan Combine, and they are also sending a massive force.’

  A collective sigh of relief ran through the room, but Anneke dispelled it as quickly as she could. These people needed to know the hard reality they were facing.

  ‘The Omegans are, in essence, deformed Sentinels.’

  The council members were appalled.

  ‘We’re doomed,’ said a dark-haired woman.

  One man placed his hands over his ears, as if he could block out the horror of what he was hearing.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Anneke, ‘maybe not. But we have another card up our sleeve. We have a third fleet of dreadnoughts –’

  Anneke was interrupted by the dark-haired woman. ‘How have they been discovered after so long?’

  Anneke raised her hand. ‘There isn’t time for these questions now. By my calculations, the fleet is due to arrive inside the elliptic plane of the local star system within the next few hours. Right now, our naval forces and Maximus’ are evenly matched. But if we can capture this fleet before he does – and he will be aware of its coming, if not the time of its arrival – then we will drastically restore the balance of power in our favour.’

  Herik rubbed his chin. ‘So we need a plan?’

  ‘And a back up, in case that one fails,’ said Arvakur, not to be outdone by Herik.

  Fat Fraddo slapped his enormous thighs. ‘Optimism is good!’

  Lob Lotang said nothing. Before the meeting, Anneke had told him what had become of Alisk, his lover. Already ill, dying from Maximus’ slave narcotic, he slumped further into dejection. Anneke felt profoundly sorry for him, though he had once tried to kill her.

  A plan was knocked together and an assault team readied. Anneke returned to her apartment and spent some time with Deema, dozing briefly in the zetus sleep the RIM mystics had taught her. Roused, refreshed, she contacted Mirella to ascertain the woman was well and in need of nothing. Mirella, sensing danger ahead, wished her luck.

  Moments after Anneke kissed Deema goodbye, and exited at a run, a data package from Jake was delivered. Deema called out to Anneke but she was already out of sight. Deema placed it on Anneke’s desk and hoped it wasn’t important.

  Not knowing the exact coordinates the arriving fleet would jump to, Anneke had decided to assemble three separate task forces and position them at intervals around the elliptic.

  She would lead one, Herik the second and Arvakur the third. Fat Fraddo had wanted to come, but some of the airlocks were too small for his bulk, so he jovially resigned himself to perpetrating murder and mayhem on solid ground. Lob Lotang had also volunteered, but Anneke told him to rest, as there would be plenty of fighting soon. He seemed content.

  An hour later, with only three hours till Maximus’ deadline ran out, Anneke found herself floating like a piece of flotsam through the great ocean of space. She crouched in a small stealth scout ship, a twenty-strong task force sitting silently in the dark around her.

  The ship, which contained a portable Dyson jump-gate to bring up reinforcements (and pilots) as rapidly as possible, had powered down, to avoid detection.

  And now it floated in silence. Waiting.

  MAXIMUS suspected manoeuvrings were afoot. He was still reeling. His internal senses jangled like raw nerves scraped with a nail. He’d been unprepared to find Anneke gazing back at him from the Fortress of Kestre, and profoundly disturbed by the implications.

  He’d meant what he’d said: they were playthings, their destinies shaped by larger forces, exactly what the Envoy had been preaching these last two years.

  His journey through time had changed everything. It had been too purposeful, too – neat.

  And now where was the Envoy when Maximus wished to confess his shortsighted sins?

  Gone, again. Gone as mysteriously as he’d arrived.

  Well, no matter. He’d be back. Meanwhile, the ultimatum was counting down and Anneke was reacting as he’d expected. He knew about the arriving fleet and he knew she had stationed three ships around the solar system, so she had no more idea where it would materialise than he did.

  At first, he’d intended to dog her ships with his own, but then he changed his mind. He would trust the Envoy’s Fate and place himself in the hands of Kadros …

  … he would take up a position blindly within the elliptic, and wait.


  If the gods favoured him, they would deliver the prize to his doorstep. If they favoured Anneke, then to hers.

  He almost didn’t care.

  That was Jeera’s fault. In a few short days she had become an ardent lover, a companion, even – to the limited extent that Maximus was capable – a confidante.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Jeera asked. He was dressing, about to leave the room they shared and head back to the bridge, intending to pick a random spot in the system and move the Saviour there.

  He stopped.

  Jeera pushed on. ‘You have more than most people will ever have in ten lifetimes. You have a third of the old empire fleet, as much wealth as you could want, and you have me. You could give this up, Maxim. You could leave it – peace isn’t a bad thing.’

  Maximus stared at her, and swallowed.

  Never had he been so tempted. The changes within him, the strange lightening of his mood, the moments of … happiness … swayed him sorely. He searched hard and deep inside himself to find the old hurt, the seeping sore that his childhood had been, the colossal hatred that had infected his whole life.

  When he found it and beheld it, it was not as it had been.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ Jeera said softly, patting the sheets beside her.

  He was so tempted … how easy it would be to undress … Let it all go …

  With a wrench, he ran from the room. He did not stop running until he had reached the bridge, where he threw himself into the captain’s chair, his shoulders, his whole body, slumping.

  ‘Order the AI to select a spot randomly and jump there,’ he said harshly. ‘Do it.’

  Moments later, the Saviour blinked out of existence, reappearing at another point in the system.

  Then, like Anneke and her cohorts, Maximus waited.

  And as he waited, Jeera’s words chased themselves inside his head, and his resistance weakened.

  Two hours later, an hour before Anneke’s time was up, Maximus made a bargain with himself. If the fleet arrived nearest to him, he would continue. If it arrived nearer to one of Anneke’s ships, then he would abandon all his plans and flee with Jeera.

  But it seemed the universe was not interested in his happiness.

  Maximus navigator reported gravitic distortions.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Section Gamma-6 – ten thousand klicks.’

  Maximus groaned. It was on his doorstep. Kadros had delivered. He had been so close to leaving.

  ‘Take us there – but keep your distance! We don’t want to share space/time with another dreadnought.’

  There were chuckles around the bridge as the crew moved to comply with his order.

  Now the fun began. Whoever secured the arriving fleet would win the war.

  The first dreadnought blinked into normal space less than a thousand klicks off their port bow. In rapid succession, several hundred more vessels appeared behind the first. Instantly, an armada of lifeboats, shuttles, scout ships and patrol craft streamed from the Saviour’s docking bays, swarming around the new fleet. Meanwhile, ten dreadnoughts detached themselves from their orbit about Se’atma Minor – Maximus did not have enough ‘human’ crew to man more than that. Anneke’s fleet dispatched twenty ships, hurling themselves at that sector of space. Maximus presumed Anneke’s stealth craft were also converging.

  Twenty minutes later, the first shots were fired. And shortly after, a fully-fledged space battle began.

  Maximus sat back and watched, annoyed that he did not feel elation as the numbers came in, the board blinking from red to green as more and more ships were ‘taken’.

  Of course, the real triumph wasn’t in acquiring ships, but in denying them to Anneke. It should have been a triumph, but he felt nothing. He did not have time to ponder the matter.

  An alarm blared. ‘Intruders on board!’ the ship’s AI reported. The Saviour went automatically to Defcon one.

  Maximus checked his blaster, then shoved it savagely back in his holster, and stalked aft. If he could not take satisfaction from the impersonal battle raging outside, maybe he could get it from something more intimate.

  ‘Secure all decks!’ he shouted over his shoulder to his crew. Then he was gone.

  He went first to check on Jeera. He got no further. Anneke Longshadow sat in a corner of their sleeping quarters, holding a blaster. Jeera was unharmed, nor would Anneke have harmed her – Maximus knew. Anneke knew he knew.

  When he arrived, the two women were chatting like old friends (Jeera had never mentioned the ‘kiss’ down in the Fortress) though the casual banter did not stop Anneke’s blaster snapping around swiftly to cover Maximus’ entrance.

  ‘Glad you could join us, Black,’ said Anneke.

  Maximus smiled, taking a seat. As far as he could tell, Anneke was alone.

  ‘Nice move,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you’d appreciate the unexpected.’

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘How about calling off your attack dogs?’

  ‘Can’t do it. By the way, I take it this whole thing was a set up?’ Anneke said nothing. ‘You weren’t trying to grab the new fleet, were you? You just wanted me distracted.’

  ‘Better this way. Less strenuous.’

  ‘What happened to the master key?’

  Anneke flinched slightly. Maximus picked up on it. ‘Ah. Stolen.’

  Anneke shrugged.

  Maximus said, ‘So you don’t have it, otherwise you would have used it. I don’t have it, otherwise I would thrown every ship in my fleet at your flagship, which means –’

  ‘There’s a third player.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  Anneke reached down to her belt, unclipped something, and tossed it to him. Maximus caught it, held it up and smiled. Handcuffs.

  ‘Put them on, please,’ said Anneke. Behind her, Jeera shifted position on the bed. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Anneke said to her.

  Maximus said, ‘Jeera, stay out of this – I don’t want you getting hurt.’ He slipped the cuffs on and clicked them shut.

  Anneke stood. ‘Jeera, nothing personal, but you need to go to sleep for awhile.’ She turned her weapon on the girl and fired a short blast. Jeera slumped. Anneke allowed Maximus to check her pulse. Satisfied, he let himself be herded out of the apartment and down the passage outside.

  Esprin Harbage watched Anneke and Maximus leave the ship. He could have stopped them easily. He had the element of surprise and knew Anneke would not fire on him or, if she did, it would be to stun only. He had little to lose, and much to gain.

  Maximus might be grateful, so grateful that Esprin pictured him handing over the cure to the slave narcotic that coursed in Esprin’s veins, patting him on the back for a job well done, and setting him free.

  Obsessed with this notion, Esprin trailed them through the backways of the ship, even anticipating Anneke’s course so that twice he got ahead of her, waited for her, gun out (on stun – Esprin was no killer), his finger nervously on the trigger, sweat making the gunmetal slick in his grasp. He shivered at the thought of what he might do.

  But Esprin never made that move.

  Deep down, he was a coward and he knew it, a coward born into a long line of heroes he could never live up to. But doing nothing as Anneke marched Maximus from the ship in handcuffs not only felt good, but was his own small act of heroism, for what it was worth. After all, not rescuing Black was a giant risk in itself. He had an uncanny knack of escaping and would surely seek his revenge.

  Maximus felt serene, as if all responsibility had been taken from him. He’d never felt such – fatalism – before. Part of him was shocked, wondering if he’d been drugged, a neuronotic perhaps, surreptitiously administered.

  He watched Anneke from the corner of his eye, appraising her. She was confident, but tensely aware, reading her environment and him with constant sweeps of internal scans as well as more subtle senses that born agents came with.

  He had no doubt she was just as awa
re of Esprin as he was. Poor Esprin, so bumbling, so tied up in knots, so desperate to do – something.

  Maximus did not know whether Esprin would act or not. This was a nodal point the Envoy spoke of, a moment that could change history, but which seemed inconsequential at the time.

  If Esprin stopped Anneke, Maximus would remain on his ship and take the actions he had planned.

  If Esprin did not stop her, Maximus would end up a prisoner inside the Fortress of Kestre and his second-in-command would blow the building into the next dimension, whether Maximus was in it or not. Considering his popularity aboard ship, Maximus thought there was more chance the Saviour’s captain would order a direct hit if Maximus was in the Fortress.

  Doubtless Esprin wasn’t seeing the larger picture, nor appreciating the nodal nature of what he did or did not do. Was Esprin part of Maximus’ fate? Was Maximus about to miss his destiny because of the poor fool?

  It was rather amusing.

  ‘Glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ said Anneke.

  Maximus could tell she was spooked by his mirth, unable to read him: was he messing with her head, implanting imaginary fears, or did he really have a plan, a backup to being captured on his own ship in the middle of a space battle? Unlikely, but he’d done such things in the past, out-thinking her and her comrades …

  On the other hand, if he could analyse Esprin’s stumbling bewilderment then so could Anneke. She probably found her fellow agent’s dilemma sad. Each to their own.

  As Anneke prodded Maximus through the airlock leading to her stealth ship, he realised that Esprin had made his decision. He called back over his shoulder, ‘I’ll deal with you on my return.’

  Twenty minutes later Maximus was disembarking on the rooftop of the Fortress of Kestre under heavy guard. By the time he was ushered into the chamber of the war council, the ultimatum timeline had run out.

  And with the perfect timing of fateful drama, he was just in time to see the Quesadan fleet heave to above Se’atma Minor.