The Only Game in the Galaxy

by Paul Collins

  ‘WHAT are they doing?’ Anneke asked, puzzled.

  The scene, as relayed from orbital scanners, showed the Quesadan fleet dispatching a multitude of shuttles and scout ships to the fleet of dreadnoughts, already swelled in number by the newly arrived dreadnoughts from the third weapons cache, giving Maximus sixty percent of all the Demon class vessels.

  Anneke slapped her forehead and turned to Maximus, who was grinning.

  ‘They were unmanned!’ she exclaimed. ‘They were sitting up there unmanned!’

  ‘You could have wiped us out any time you wanted,’ said Maximus.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Herik said.

  ‘He never had a full crew,’ Anneke explained. ‘He didn’t have time to man up. All he had were bays full of maniacal Omegans – and they could hardly be conscripted into running a ship.’

  Arvakur shook his head in disbelief. ‘It was a bluff?’

  ‘The Tactics of Mistake,’ said Maximus. ‘You people prefer to talk first and shoot later. I took advantage of that.’

  ‘Great,’ said Anneke.

  A sub-lieutenant raced in to make her report to Anneke. ‘City is evacuated as far as possible, Commander. Military units are in place, but a number of diehards have remained, as well as local militias – hasty set-ups, if you ask me, but what they lack in coordination they make up for in determination.’

  The sub-lieutenant piped up: ‘The Fortress of Kestre shall not fall, but for the breaking of faith. And whosoever rules here, rules everywhere …’

  ‘Quite,’ said Maximus. ‘Even so, if I were you –’

  An explosion rocked the room. ‘Report!’ yelled Anneke.

  ‘They’ve begun bombing the city,’ said a comm officer.

  ‘They’ll be landing troops soon,’ said Anneke. ‘Until then, the Fortress can stave off any attack. Herik, we’ll need your men in the streets as soon as the bombing stops.’

  ‘They’re ready,’ he said quietly.

  Anneke looked at him, sad. ‘It’s just one long battle for you, isn’t it?’

  Herik smiled ruefully. ‘A good soldier never expects to outlive the day. Avoids disappointment.’

  There were barks of laughter around the room.

  Anneke ordered Maximus to be locked up in the most secure, neutronium-plated field-enhanced lockup the Fortress possessed. She also ordered a complete examination of him: x-ray, ultrascan, blood work including DNA, dental matrix, the works. Whatever else happened, Black was going to be one well-documented inmate!

  But probably not very happy.

  Two hours later, after intensive bombing, Quesadan transports grounded all over the city. Huge metal doors fell outwards with a hollow clang that echoed through empty streets, and out streamed the baying hordes of Omegans.

  Watching on a viewscreen from the war room, Anneke reflected that names had a peculiar power, even the power to affect destiny. The Omegans might be the symbol of the end.

  The thought made her shiver. If madness and deformity won this day, she wasn’t sure she wanted to live through it.

  As she watched the screen, she saw the first engagement between Omegans and Herik’s forces. The Omegans were fearless, and difficult to kill. Each was worth at least three armed fighters. It wasn’t long before the streets ran with blood.

  A noise behind Anneke made her turn. She froze.

  Standing between two guards, a squad of soldiers at his back, their guns trained on him, was the Envoy.

  Alisk loped down the street.

  She had joined the first surge of Omegans into the city charging the ranks of defenders, slaying and slashing, filled with hatred and anger, wanting to kill, to obliterate all who stood in her path. Pulsing in her brain, driving her onwards, was the thought that she must get to the Fortress – take the Fortress of Kestre, take the Fortress of Kestre …

  But as her bloodlust was sated, another deeper idea intruded: yes, the Fortress – go to the Fortress – go to Him …

  It was hard to think clearly. For long periods of time that intrusive voice in her head was drowned out, surfacing only at moments of panting stillness, momentary lulls in the battle.

  With a hundred others, Alisk crested a rise and saw before them, towering over the rooftops, the unmistakable skyline of the Fortress. A howl went up, a collective baying from a hundred monstrous throats, a sound heard throughout the city, sending fear shafting into the staunchest heart. Alisk bayed as loudly as the rest, but there was a joy in her the other creatures lacked.

  He is there, came the thought. Go to Him.

  She burst from the ranks, charging ahead of the others, who followed on her heels as their leader. Along the street she ran, losing sight of the Fortress now and then, but knowing where it was, as a planet knows its suns.

  There was more fighting, more death, more blood. Each vanquished foe brought her closer and closer. And as the Fortress loomed nearer, so did that other thought in her mind.

  Not far now … He is there …

  ‘Why I should trust you?’ said Anneke.

  ‘Because it was me who stole the master key from your ship.’

  Anneke stiffened. ‘You stole it? That’s supposed to make me trust you?’

  ‘I could have given it to Black. I did not.’

  ‘Well, thanks. Mind telling me why?’

  ‘The time of Kadros is at hand,’ said the Envoy. ‘It is time for the One to step forward and seize the threads of history, wield them as they choose – to bind, or to unravel. My people are the Caretakers. We have watched human progress for millennia.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Humans are shapers. They shape time through their unique consciousness, which the cosmos has ceded to them. We believe that humans create time, perhaps space, and that is why the cosmos holds them so dear, for they made the cosmos that makes them!’

  ‘And Kadros?’

  ‘Is the Shaper of shapers – the one who will preserve or destroy.’

  ‘Do you know who this is?’

  The Envoy duplicated a human shrug. ‘In our first conceit, we believed it was the human known as Maximus Black, and we aided him. But we were blinded. Our species is time-spanning – we exist in all parts of our timeline at the same time, beginning, middle and end. And yet there are blind spots, places we are not permitted to see, in case we interfere poorly.’

  ‘Black isn’t connected to Kadros?’

  ‘We are not sure. We have reinterpreted a word in our language differently than before. The word is kedra – it meant the moment of instilling, when the One steps forward …’

  ‘And now?’

  The incongruous shrug. ‘An older, more primitive meaning of kedra we discarded long ago is similar to your word three.’

  Anneke stared at the Envoy. ‘Three? Three? That’s as clear as mud.’

  The Envoy said nothing.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Anneke asked with a sigh. She felt like one of Socrates’ students, in the dim dawn of time: annoyed and frustrated.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said the Envoy, anti-climactically. ‘Perhaps three must step forward, three who are one. Perhaps there are three, but only one can shape Kadros. We don’t know.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here? I’m one of the three?’

  The Envoy nodded. ‘I am here to bear witness, so that this moment is not lost. I am in other places – and other times. All of us are watching, waiting.’

  Creepy, thought Anneke, but she wished there wasn’t a war, wished she could pursue this, and spend time digging into the meaning and implications of a species who spanned time, existing in all times simultaneously. In a few short minutes of conversation with the alien, she had learned more about the possibilities of time than in all her training at RIM.

  Did humans create the cosmos? If so, which was the chicken, which the egg?

  But she had no time to think.

  She had the Envoy shackled, both mechanically and via field distortion, though she had a prickling notion that if he wished to fr
ee himself, he could. He had not been caught by accident. The alien emanated a deadliness she had seldom sensed in another, even Black.

  As she returned her attention to the battle raging outside the walls of the Fortress, she could not get the notion of the alien’s three out of her mind. If she and Black were two members of the trinity, who was the third, and when would they make their move?

  For the next three hours, Anneke waged war, conducting the battle as a maestro might conduct an orchestra, bringing forces up to repel a hard charge by the Omegans, blocking streets – even if it meant detonating buildings – laying a minefield of field-manipulating traps, sowing gas-narcotic bombs to knock out anyone they came into contact with (friend or foe, and therefore used sparingly and with care), reinforcing one segment of the front while pulling back from another – often as a feint, or a double-feint.

  As she battled and strategised, a strange sensation pervaded her: certainty, as if she knew ahead of time which way the dice would fall, and could act before they hit. All her decisions, even the bold crazy ones, worked. She felt gripped by a foreknowing she had never experienced before. She caught the alien staring at her. He nodded, once, as if he knew what was happening.

  With her odd knowingness, she was able to maintain the front line, to slow the attackers, longer than she could have otherwise. Many lives were spared.

  But with slow inevitability, the defensive front fell back towards the outer walls of the Fortress.

  It was only a matter of time before the Omegans would reach the wall and breach it. Constructed of neutronium lattice, the inner wall (the outermost boundary of the Fortress when she had visited a thousand years ago) would hold longer. Only the pure neutronium metal was stronger. Even blasters could not penetrate neutronium lattice.

  It would buy them time, she knew, but not victory.

  Late in the afternoon, good news arrived. The RIM forces sent by Jake Ferren decelerated into the system, followed closely by the fleet dispatched by Bodanis and Sasume, who personally led them. Anneke greeted the reinforcements with heartfelt thanks, and deployed them on the three-dimensional chessboard of war.

  Since the ground assault, a fierce naval battle had raged in orbit directly over the Fortress. Several dreadnoughts on either side had been destroyed or crippled and six had been shot down in flames, crashing outside the realms of the city, two into the ocean.

  Neither side had enough familiarity with the old empire hardware to use the dreadnoughts to their full capacities, but the ships were such formidable monsters that even children at the fire-control stations could have wreaked havoc.

  The arrivals sent a shock into the attackers, and heartened the hard-pressed defenders. The front line surged outwards again, returning to where it had been two hours earlier. It also bought relief time. Anneke had been going all day, without a break. Now she handed over her tactical board over to Arvakur, who had shown strategic brilliance, and a local commander who knew the terrain. They had been watching her moves, providing backup, and handling second-level dispositions.

  Anneke used her time to see Deema.

  Deema was sitting pensively at a window (a view-window, which replicated the world outside so flawlessly that most people never realised it was fake). She turned as Anneke entered, giving her a hopeful look that quickly faded, augmented by a big sigh. She noted the careworn expression on Anneke’s face. ‘It’s not over, is it?’ Deema asked.

  ‘Not yet, sweetie.’ Anneke sat down and put an arm around her foster child. ‘It’s going all right,’ she lied. ‘Some friends just turned up.’

  ‘A present arrived for you.’

  Anneke’s brow creased. Deema pointed at the data package Jake had sent. Anneke laughed. ‘It’s not a present, Deema, it’s just some old –’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Deema. ‘It’s very important.’

  Anneke pulled back from her. ‘Did you look at it?’

  Deema’s querying look answered the question. Anneke fetched the package and sat down again. She could see it hadn’t been breached. She pressed her thumb to the tiny scanner on the top and watched the privacy field ripple and vanish. Inside was a data disk. She keyed in her combo, pressed the stud, and closed her eyes as the data flowed into her computational implant, waiting a few moments for the information to be integrated. As often happened with data flows, it would turn into a ‘movie’ in her head, where she saw and experienced the data rather than reading it.

  ‘What’s it say?’ said Deema, curious.

  ‘I’m still wait –’

  The information on the data flow stopped her dead. Several key factors not only leapt out in their own right, but cross-referenced themselves with other pertinent data in her storage implants – including some recent analyses she’d ordered.

  ‘Oh … my … god,’ she whispered, turning to look long and hard at Deema.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I? It is important.’

  Anneke put her arms around the girl and held her tightly. ‘Yes, sweetie. It might be the single most important thing in this conflict …’

  Alisk was so close she could taste it.

  She had been here an hour ago, but reinforcements had arrived, low-level vessels sweeping in over the city, strafing, bombing. More humans had showed up, trained in advanced forms of face-to-face combat – so the Omegans were driven back, and back. She’d gnashed her teeth in frustration.

  But now she was alone. She’d left the others behind, penetrating buildings, leaping rooftops, moving around behind enemy positions, flanking them, going deeper and deeper, all the time closing in on the Fortress.

  Go to Him … He is there … waiting …

  A bittersweet pain throbbed in her chest, and she rubbed it, unaware of its meaning.

  Anneke hurried down the passageway, heading for the war room. She was excited, and apprehensive, even scared. The words of the Envoy echoed in her mind: The time of Kadrosis at hand. It is time for one to step forward and seize the threads of history, wield them as they choose – to bind, or to unravel.

  Anneke shivered.

  She had felt the hand of Fate brush her. Maybe the Cosmos was taking an interest in what unfolded. Maybe everything was preordained, as the Envoy implied.

  Maybe.

  As she entered the long hall leading to the war room she broke into a run. Men and women, hurrying about their business, saw the tightened jaw, the dark revelation in her eyes, and flattened themselves to the wall to let her by.

  She was barely aware of them.

  She burst into the war room and skidded to a stop. Arvakur and Fat Fraddo stood in the middle of the room, their faces pale.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s Black,’ said Arvakur. ‘He’s escaped.’

  Fat Fraddo hung his huge head. ‘And he done took that little girl, your Deema.’

  HE was getting soft.

  Not only had he not killed his guards, he had checked to make sure they were still breathing. A waste of time, though he consoled himself that by not killing them he increased his own chance of avoiding being lynched by their friends if he was caught. The golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These people believed it, more fool them.

  Maximus hadn’t gone so soft that he didn’t strip the field-generator from the captain of the guard, or relieve the guards of their weapons. Finding the girl had been pure accident (though thanks to the Envoy he was beginning to believe nothing was an accident). He’d stumbled down a long passageway and ducked out of sight as a door opened and Anneke strode swiftly off in the opposite direction. Curious to see where she had come from, Maximus stepped into the room.

  Deema turned and regarded him. She showed no surprise, or fear, though she remembered him, despite his renovation. Interesting.

  ‘Are you going to kidnap me again?’

  ‘Haven’t decided.’

  ‘I think you have to,’ said Deema, matter-of-factly.

  Maximus almost laughed, then saw she wa
sn’t joking.

  ‘Do you want me to kidnap you?’

  Deema seemed to ponder. ‘You haven’t asked it the right way,’ she said.

  ‘How should I have asked it?’

  ‘Like this: Is it necessary for me to kidnap you?’

  ‘And I take it the answer is yes?’

  Deema nodded. Maximus gave her a mocking bow and shaped a restraining field around her, lassoing it to his own field. She could not run away, nor could she make sudden moves. A dampening field around her head would suppress any shouting.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Step one is to get out of the Fortress. Step two is to steal a ship and get back to my vessel in orbit.’

  ‘I won’t be going into space with you,’ Deema said, in that same business-as-usual tone of voice. Maximus shook his head, amused; a faint prickling at the back of his mind suggesting he should analyse what she was saying. Instead, he dismissed it as childish nonsense.

  Shortly, Maximus and Deema were several levels lower and a significant distance from where they’d started. He should have been moving upwards, towards the docking bay on the roof where there were plenty of ships and probably a useful degree of chaos. But Anneke would anticipate that move, and the one he was making. Fortunately, long ago he had had the internal layout of the Fortress tattooed onto his neural circuitry for the day when he would lay claim to his ‘throne’.

  With the help of this mental map, he quickly located one of the arsenals scattered about the Fortress, arming himself with more powerful weapons and low-level bombs and incendiaries.

  As per the RIM agent’s manual, he planned to ‘implement any and all forms of sabotage’, ‘create opportunistic diversions’, and ‘cause maximum mayhem’ to the ‘enemy’.

  A straight-down-the-line, by-the-book mission. His RIM trainer would be proud.

  He found an abandoned room, buried at the back of a maze of disused offices and storage rooms. He restrained Deema, leaving her room to move about, but unable to make a noise or call out.