The Only Game in the Galaxy

by Paul Collins

  ‘I’m placing a time lock on the field so that if I’m killed or don’t come back, you’ll automatically be released,’ he said. He had not forgotten that, like him, she had once been a slave.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But you’ll be back.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  Maximus squatted in a dark doorway, sweating. He’d pushed his luck too far, but come through unscathed. He couldn’t say the same for several trackers, but he had stuck to his original intention of not killing anyone. Stunned humans dropped as quickly as dead ones. Odd that the idea had never occurred to him before.

  After leaving Deema, he’d gone deeper, heading down to the bowels of the Fortress, to parts unaltered since the time of his visit one thousand years ago. He noticed a mark on the wall, very old, blurred by time, and realised he had made it while showing engineers how their new field-generated fuel source would work. His stomach tightened with fear, as if ghosts surrounded him.

  According to his memory tattoo, part of the Fortress’ life support system looped through these lower levels, avoiding a massive neutronium battle shield that was part of the inner defences that protected the heart of the Fortress, even from a nuclear bomb detonated nearby.

  He intended to sabotage the system, then hightail it out of there. He’d laid a few explosives on the way and he would blow the ones furthest away simultaneously, making it difficult for those tracking him to pinpoint his position.

  He stood up, having gotten his second wind. He checked the corridor up and down, then stepped out – straight into an engineer.

  The man was bald, short and stocky, his hands and overalls stained with grease. He looked tired and overworked. ‘Who the hell are you?’ the engineer asked.

  ‘Enemy spy,’ said Maximus cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d blow up the life support system.’

  ‘Where the hell were you last Tuesday?’ grumbled the man. ‘Coulda had the whole week off!’

  He laughed. Maximus followed suit, then hit him in the throat. As the man gagged, he stunned him, then dragged his body into a side room. He’d recover, just not for several hours. He might also be cold, since Maximus stole his clothes, ill fitting though they were.

  He found the environmental system, planted several explosives, field-synched them, and departed. From a safe distance, he set them off. They made a satisfying series of booms. He then detonated three other devices more than a kilometre from his position.

  Alarms sounded, automatic suppressant systems kicked in, and he heard shouts and running feet. Dressed like an engineer, he fell in with one group then peeled off into a side passage where he got an odd itchy feeling in the middle of his back. He ducked.

  A blaster beam – not on stun – blazed past.

  The heat-flash gave his arm and cheek second-degree burns. He suppressed his pain and threw himself at a door, taking it off its hinges. From the corner of his eye, as he slammed through the doorway, he glimpsed Anneke Longshadow readying her aim for the next shot.

  But by then he was gone.

  He passed through three offices, along a short access corridor, doubled back up a side passage then took random turns: left, left, left, right, left, right, right … He didn’t think about it, didn’t choose; he let the turns choose him. He wished the Envoy was here so that he could consult him.

  His primary aim was to put as much distance between himself and Longshadow as he could. He didn’t kid himself. At that moment she was better than he was. For weeks he’d felt that softening process, the lessening of his inner sharpness, as though he was losing focus. Worse, he didn’t seem to care.

  And without that focus, the killer instinct he’d carried for so long, he was no match for Anneke. He didn’t have the heart for it anymore.

  Still, he wasn’t about to give himself up and start writing poetry.

  He was still Maximus Black – but Jeera’s proposal, the implication, had grown more and more attractive in his mind – especially when he was being shot at.

  Even so, he had to get some focus back, or he’d be dead.

  He cleared his mind, breathed deeply and slowly, then ran through a RIM training mantra.

  An icy calm settled on him.

  He was through being Mr Nice Guy – for the time being.

  The battle raged closer and closer to the outer wall. In some sectors, it had come within four city blocks and the demonic howling of the Omegans could be heard inside the Fortress, even through the dampening of the field-walls. A murmuring apprehension swept through the corridors, wardrooms and barracks of the Fortress, infecting everyone with foreboding.

  Outside, men and women – and Omegans – died. Bloodied streets stood out, dark and dazzling, to aerial observers, a gruesome map of the history of the battle.

  The fighting was at its fiercest in Herik Plaza. Ironically, the human contingent was led by Herik himself, who’d spared a few bemused moments to savour the dubious immortality of having a shopping precinct named after him.

  The battle surged back and forth. Bombs were lobbed into the thick of the Omegans, blowing them apart; snipers picked them off by the dozen, but nothing stopped the inexorable flow towards the walls.

  Maximus vaporised a section of wall and plunged through, bursting out of a cloud of smoke and dust on the other side. A blaster beam sizzled and he snap-rolled aside, coming up against a wall, then returned fire, making whoever was still out in the corridor think twice.

  Using the lull, he darted through an open door, finding himself in a large warehouse-style chamber with lots of open space. He’d never make it across alive. He lobbed a microspike in the doorway he’d come through and broke into a manic sprint, adopting a zigzag pattern as he crossed the space. Behind him, the spike blew, picking up someone in its proximity.

  If that was Anneke, Maximus had no doubt she was still upright.

  But that hadn’t been his intention: making it safely to the other side had. Now he controlled the field of fire. He dropped behind a tractor, scooped out a handful of mini-microspikes, and spilled them onto the floor of the chamber like odd-shaped marbles.

  Since they worked on proximity, sensing the natural field given out by organic life forms, he’d effectively stopped anyone from crossing the chamber.

  For a while, anyway.

  He paused to rummage through his medkit, giving himself a shot of stimulant plus painkiller. He needed to stay sharp and loose.

  But nothing prepared him for Anneke’s next move. She hadn’t tried to come across the floor because she didn’t need to. Instead, she launched a heat-seeking shredder, or the ‘humane’ RIM equivalent: instead of gouging into his nerves and chewing its way to his brain, causing an unpleasant amount of pain along the way, this type went straight for the neo-cortex …

  And shredded it.

  The brain had no pain receptors, hence the designation ‘humane’.

  Nitpicking, he thought, as he took to his heels, firing blindly back over his shoulder. He threw himself through a doorway, slammed the door shut, pelted down a corridor to a T-junction and swinging into the left-hand turn. Behind him, he could hear the faint eerie whistling of the shredder as it gained on him.

  He needed an alternative heat source.

  He dropped an incendiary device, then stumbled. The bomb whooshed and suddenly the corridor was a flaming inferno. The blast caught Maximus, lifting him off his feet and sending him flying down the corridor. He thumped into a wall at the next junction and slid down onto the floor, shaking his head to clear it.

  He heard rather than saw the shredder. It wasn’t the heat-seeking type, he’d originally thought. It had been attuned to him – oh yes, the tests Anneke had ordered. You had to give it to the girl. Very, very bright.

  In ‘pure’ reflex mode, he waited till the last second, then jerked up. The shredder – the size of a pinhead – took him in the shoulder, paused to work out if it had hit the brain as it had been programmed, and realised it was off by many centimetres. That’s when
he blasted, flicking his beam aperture at the last second to its minimum pencil setting.

  Since he was still alive when he released the trigger, he figured he’d gotten the little sucker. But he’d also blown a hole right through his own shoulder. He needed medical attention urgently.

  Alarms rang through the Fortress. He guessed that the outer walls had been breached. Right now, quite possibly, Omegans were pouring into the stronghold itself.

  Time to go.

  He lumbered to his feet, clutching his shoulder. Sprinkling more microspikes behind him, he broke into an unsteady jog.

  He found Deema where he’d left her and dropped, exhausted, into the room.

  ‘Need you to do something … for me …’ he gasped, peeling his tunic away from his shoulder. The burn was worse than he’d thought. The shredder hadn’t entered cleanly, veering at the last moment and gouging through his pectoral muscle, shearing a few ribs. He was soaked in blood.

  Deema inspected the wound. ‘You have to get your tunic off,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Then I need to cut it away.’

  Maximus drew out a knife, flipped it end for end, and handed it to her. She started sawing the tunic, which was tough. Her hands wet with Maximus’ blood, she slipped and sliced her finger. The moment the knife broke her skin, a strange rippling effect occurred.

  Although puzzled, Maximus was in too much pain to dwell on the ripple.

  With his tunic off, Deema followed his instructions, first giving him a stronger painkiller, along with a wide-spectrum antibiotic. Then, using a dermal renovator, she repaired the damaged skin and blood vessels as best she could. The ribs she left alone – they could be dealt with later. The main wound cauterised itself, but she still needed to extract the shredder. This she did using a magnetic scalpel. After the wound was cleaned and doused with disinfectant, she sprayed a dermal skin surrogate on top and applied a field bandage, all under Maximus’ guidance.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Maximus. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you going to let me go now?’

  ‘Soon,’ said Maximus, truthfully. ‘I just need to strike a deal.’

  Moving slowly, with frequent pauses, Maximus led Deema to a different location. There they rested. He was sweating, and panting hard, as if he’d run up a steep hill.

  ‘You need a hospital,’ said Deema.

  ‘So do a lot of people today.’

  Maximus tapped into a communications network and sent a scrambled call to Anneke. Up till now he’d kept his communicator off-line so that it wouldn’t show up on any sensor sweeps.

  Anneke’s face, weary and bruised, appeared on screen straight away.

  ‘Is Deema all right?’

  Maximus motioned Deema to move into the field of vision. Anneke sighed. ‘Are you all okay, sweetie?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ the girl said. ‘But Max is hurt pretty bad. He needs a doctor.’

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ said Anneke. To Maximus, she said: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Safe passage out of here, in exchange for the girl.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Don’t make me spell it out.’

  ‘Best you do,’ Anneke said.

  Maximus told her exactly what he wanted, and when.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Anneke.

  ‘I want your word.’

  ‘How do you know I won’t break it?’

  ‘I know. Believe me.’

  ‘Gee, compliments. I’m flattered.’

  ‘Your word, please.’

  ‘Fine. You have my word. Hand Deema over to me, unharmed, and you will be guaranteed safe passage back to your ship.’

  Maximus cut the connection, rose shakily to his feet, and held out his hand to Deema. She took it, and together they found a main corridor and followed it till they came to a freight elevator. Here two guards spotted them. Without a word, the man and the woman fell in behind, their blasters out, but not pointed at Maximus.

  All four rode the elevator to the roof.

  Deema helped Maximus from the cab, taking his weight on her shoulder. Together, they staggered towards a scout ship, prepped for takeoff. Anneke and several others waited nearby.

  At a safe distance, Maximus stopped. ‘Go to Anneke,’ he said to Deema.

  Deema started towards Anneke then stopped and turned around. Anneke called to her, but Deema ignored her. To Black she said, ‘It’s not your fault, you know, Max.’

  Maximus smiled. ‘What’s not my fault?’ He didn’t mind Deema calling him Max.

  ‘Being a slave, like me.’

  Maximus said nothing for a moment, then, softly, ‘I know.’

  ‘Thanks for not hurting me.’

  Maximus gave her a bow, sending red-hot pain through his shoulder. ‘My pleasure,’ he said.

  Deema ran to Anneke, and hugged her. Maximus limped behind. When he was only two metres away, he stopped. ‘Do we still have a deal?’

  ‘We do. But don’t push your luck. Get on board, and go. There are a lot of itchy trigger fingers around here.’

  Maximus nodded, turned and walked slowly towards the scout ship. He climbed inside, but before the two guards who’d followed him could fasten the hatch, Anneke called out to him.

  ‘Oh, Black. There’s something you ought to know.’

  He looked at her through the hatch. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you were a little boy, on Tormat, your name was Max, right? For Maximilian?’

  ‘What if it was?’

  ‘And your last name was Quist? Max Quist?’

  Maximus stiffened. He hadn’t heard that name in a lifetime.

  Anneke went on. ‘Your mother and sister didn’t die that day. They lived.’

  Staggering, Maximus put out a hand to steady himself. ‘That’s a lie. They’re dead.’

  ‘No, Black, they’re not. This is your sister. Deema.’ Deema stared from Anneke to Maximus, and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘She was just a baby that day, but your mother managed to hide away, to escape the first wave of slavers – though not the next. She stayed on Tormat though, and when freed she signed on with another merchant. Her name was Mirella.’

  Anneke paused. ‘Your mother’s here, Black. In this city.’

  Maximus stared, a ghastly fear evident on his face.

  LOB Lotang moved slowly, painfully, hugging the city wall. The slave narcotic in his bloodstream was winning its internal battle, building raider proteins that, despite the suppressants his scientists had developed, were disassembling his own.

  It would not be long now.

  The street, close to the wall, was quiet, the surge and cry of external battle far off, as if that pocket of urbanity had been abandoned, ignored. Up ahead, the girl moved quickly, taking minimal precautions.

  He had been following her for just under an hour.

  Deema wanted to know everything. ‘Where do I come from, who is my mother, what is she like, is she nice? Is she beautiful, like you? Does she miss me? Is Max really my brother?’

  It seemed as if the questions would never stop. When – what – how – why …

  Finally, Anneke clamped a hand over Deema’s mouth, the girl looking at her reproachfully over the rim of fingers.

  ‘Deema, please, you’ll see her soon. I only found out moments before Black grabbed you – it was all in that data package. There wasn’t time then – and right now, we have a war to fight.’

  Anneke took her hand away from Deema’s mouth. ‘Is my mother all right?’ Deema asked, subdued.

  ‘She’s fine. She’s hiding inside the Sentinel Consulate, and we’ve had reports that the Omegans can’t or won’t enter any Sentinel building or the grounds. So your mother is safe.’

  ‘For now.’

  Anneke sighed, hugging the girl. ‘Yes, sweetie. For now.’

  Anneke climbed to her feet. ‘I need you to return to your room, and wait. As soon as I can, I’ll get a message through to Mirella – even if I have to find a runner to take it there.’


  ‘Promise?’

  Anneke nodded. ‘Now go!’

  Deema ran all the way to the apartment, hurried inside, and started collecting what she would need for the trip. She had a backpack and in it she stowed the book she’d been reading, water, leftover food from breakfast, as well as the e-pad she’d been scribbling in, having started a diary at Anneke’s suggestion. She thought her mother might like to read it. Deema had put down her musings about who her mother might be, what she’d be like if she ever came for her, whether she’d want her to come and live with her again …

  She had a sudden thought. Reaching into the backpack, she took out the e-pad, checking that it contained a map of the city. It did. She found the Sentinel Consulate and mapped out a route, one that kept to back streets and alleyways.

  Then, excited and terrified, Deema flew out the door and made for the lower levels. The time she’d spent with her brother, Max, had been useful, as she now had a good idea of how to get out of the Fortress. In any case, being a slave had made her resourceful.

  She would manage it all, and very soon she would see her mother.

  Anneke watched the holographic map with weary eyes. She was desperate for sleep, already way over the limit on n-doze; next she’d be shooting up pure adrenalin, like a street junkie. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, blinked again.

  Sector Yellow went red.

  Another city block taken – swarmed – by the Omegans. They were so close to the east-side city walls they could have thrown stones.

  Anneke hit some buttons on her keyboard, expanding the hologram to include the battle in space (lately she’d tried to focus on the ground battle so as to not spread herself too thin). Despite its greater firepower, the Quesadan Empire – as it was becoming – was making little headway against the combined forces of RIM, the Imperial Myotan Combine, and the ships Anneke and Herik had brought from Carson’s Vortex. The Empire also outnumbered them nearly two to one and boasted fancy field-shielding, but the modern ships were no match for the old Demons. Klankis was a genius, Anneke thought.