She looked back at the stage, suddenly deeply curious as to what or who was on it. She headed back again, determined to resist the strange feelings that had assailed her before. Once again she approached the stage and once again the sickness washed over her like dirty water. She wanted to spit and scrub herself, feeling dirty and pointless. Old stories she'd heard about the Lords suddenly came flooding back.
She had heard of this happening. It was rare to meet one in person because they invariably made you feel terrible. No one knew why, or if it was some deliberate thing done by the Lords, but as she stood now, hands wrapped around herself in an attempt to resist the urge to run, she finally understood why they had the power. If armies felt like this, no wonder they never had any luck defeating them.
She was only just managing to stay upright, fighting the need to scream and throw up. Looking around, she saw that no one was interested in her. She was twelve, well, nearly and small for her age and the Gamers were far more interested in drinking as much of the strange liquid as they could. She turned back to the stage, swaying and forcing each foot to rise and fall. Reaching the edge, she looked upwards and knew, as the ceiling spun, that she would only get one chance at this. The carved handrail was above her, a good distance away. She crouched down, shaking her head in an effort to clear the pain that was hammering away inside.
Then she launched herself upwards, hands outstretched. Her fingers met the bar and she heaved, pulling upwards as hard as she could. She chin-upped until her head came over the edge of the stage and she could finally see them.
They had their backs to the room. They weren't wearing any clothes, not so she could tell, and were huge, 3 or 4 metres tall, and broad. Their backs looked like insects, a long oval of dark green, something or other. They were stood in a row, apparently looking out at the stars. There were no voices, though she felt sure that they were communicating with one another. They would occasionally turn towards one another, or wave a hand as if in response. Their hands were like pincers, long claws stuck on the end of stick thin arms.
Her own arms were getting tired and she knew she would have to let go. Her head was thumping and her stomach in knots. She was about to release her hold of the bar when one of the Lords turned and stared right at her. It didn't have a face, just two enormous, multi-faceted eyes that seemed to pierce straight into her brain. Its body was green and oily, vast rolls of flesh fighting for space below the mandibles that took up the lower part of its head and the limbs that protruded from it.
As repulsive as it was to look at, it was nothing compared to how she felt when the voice spoke inside her head.
"Good evening, young lady, you must make a very good gamer with all that curiosity inside you. Would you like to come and join us?"
It held out a claw and she shrieked, letting go of the bar and tumbling to the ground. She landed awkwardly and felt her ankle twist. Inside her head she could hear a slick, high pitched giggling that made her want to vomit even more. Unable this time to resist, she stumbled away from the stage and hurled, spewing dinner and drink across the floor.
She shook herself, dragging her unwilling body away from the thing behind her and into the crowd. The people parted to let her through, eyes wide as she shoved them aside in blind panic. She was desperate now to get out of the hall and back to the engines, to the hidey-hole that she and dad slept and lived in. She could still feel the thing inside, its voice creeping through her mind like oil over tools, slippery and viscous. And just as with oil, she thought she could live for many years and never feel clean, never feel entirely free from that invasion.
She'd escaped the hall and run back to the engine, wrapping herself in her meagre bedsheets and shivering. The tears came and she found that she couldn't stop sobbing, her body heaving until she was coughing and hacking, bile burning at the back of her throat.
As time went on and the teams grew, Alicia began to feel more confident as both a pilot and strategist. She and dad would discuss options whilst they waited for the Overseer to make the calls, him coaching her to explore all of the options and think through them logically. More and more, the plans she came up with were strong and workable. When they matched up to what the Overseer decided, they generally won, and when they lost a game, she could normally see why, and what they could have done to win it.
Of course, with the greater understanding came frustration. She was, after all, just a girl, still green to the game that some had played for decades. That dad was one of those players seemed to mean nothing to the Overseer. When the new style of games had begun, the Overseer role had been taken by a new person every few weeks, but apparently, the audience soon developed favourites. Once the Lord found someone who was popular with the audience, they would stay as Overseer. Now, whenever they battled other Homeships, they were pretty sure to know who would be running the show. For the gamers, it took some of the interest out, but for the audience, it gave them characters, people to root for. That's what Stem thought, and she agreed with him.
What pissed her off more than anything was that the Overseer knew very well how good a pilot she was. He would often use the Vale as a distraction, putting her and dad in the firing line, because more often than not, they got away with it. So if he could respect that side of her, why wouldn't he listen to what she had to say?
Their Overseer was a smug man, almost gaunt as so many of the slaves were, and bearing a very disagreeable face. He had been gaming for about 15 years dad reckoned, which was pretty respectable. He flew a tiny ship, fast and manoevrable and packing some fairly serious weaponry. As far as his actual decision making went, she didn't have that much issue with him. He was pretty good at his job and had some flair, which was what had endeared him to the viewers at home in the first place. But, and it was a big but, well two buts actually.
Firstly, he had little time for the honour held between slaves. When most gamers boasted of how few people they'd killed, he was more than happy to list ship-name and casualties. Some said that he had been at the war and somehow convinced the Lord to let him return to play. Although she thought that was really unlikely, she did think that the Lord would have let him return, knowing that he would be greedy for blood. However civilised she had heard Earth was, they still seemed to love it when people got killed.
The second issue she had was that he refused to listen to others. That he ignored her came as no surprise, however much it rankled, but ignoring the advice of dad, or Moira, or any of the other handful of experienced gamers they had was just criminal. And stupid. And dangerous.
The port was now filling the horizon, huge warehouses hundreds of metres high rising from the dust that threatened to choke her long before she got there. They would be in the Vale within the hour and she couldn't believe how much she was looking forward to getting back to the Homeship and curling up surrounded by the slow, elephantine throbbing of the engines.
Chapter Four
Dad stumbled again, catching himself just before he fell headlong into the road. She grabbed his arm as he struggled to right himself. He looked down, giving what was intended to be a reassuring smile, but looked more like a grimace. She squeezed his arm and he put his hand over hers. For a moment they walked along like that before he let it fall, focusing all of his energies into putting one foot in front of the other.
He wasn't that old, not really, but the game aged you. It had aged her. When she saw pictures and movies of sixteen year olds on Earth, they looked really young, really immature. She already had lines on her face, tiny grooves from the corners of her eyes, and her skin felt tough, weathered. It was weird, considering that the only exposure she had to the weather were these weekly walks to the port. But then, these walks filled half her life.
Dad wasn't that old, but he wasn't exactly young either and the game had done for any vitality he may have had. Just the weekly tension of knowing that you could die, that there would be no one who cared enough to try and stop it, wore you down. She knew she couldn't survive doing this f
or ever. When dad went, it would be even harder, but even with him here, she felt her sense of desperation growing. It wasn't just being a slave that made her so bitter, but the belief that there was supposed to be more than this, more than what life had given her. She tried again and again to imagine what it would be like to live on Earth. The people she saw on the battered widescreen hanging in the canteen lived without fear and with a choice. She couldn't really get a taste of it, but she knew it would be better than this.
She glanced up and down the line, seeing the same faces, with the same lines of wear and sadness on them. None of them should be here, and she couldn't figure out why it was happening. She was sure she remembered, from when she was very young, hushed talk of rebellion, of people fighting back against the Lords. Nothing had happened, of course, and life had gone on as usual. It was as if there was a shared apathy, the entire human race content to just let things be.
She shivered again, feeling cold for no real reason, but feeling it nonetheless. She looked down the line again and felt her heart jump as she saw Stem. He was the only one she knew who shared the anger and belief that there was more than they were getting. Of course, he was particularly angry now, but that was for a wholly different reason. She didn't think it was fair he was quite so pissed at her, but it hurt. They'd been friends for nearly four years, and more than that for the past year, so how could he be so angry that he wouldn't even speak to her?
She remembered the first time they spoke, how nervous she'd been and how utterly cool he'd been about it.
She woke up sick and shivering. The memory of the ball, and the grotesque thing she'd seen on the stage burned in her mind, inescapable. She hadn't slept much, too nervous that it would come back, the master come to take her and share her with its friends. She had heard of slaves disappearing, just vanishing overnight. It wasn't that surprising really. Both she and dad worked deep in the engines, far away from the normal running of the ship and entirely ignored by the Lord. But despite this, she couldn't forget that they were slaves, owned and completely at its mercy. The game and this walk reminded them on a weekly basis, driving home, just how little freedom they truly had.
She climbed out of bed, glancing across the walkway to where dad lay, snoring gently. They each had a shelf, tucked between pipes and crammed with blankets and padding to make them as soft as possible. Dad's snoring mingled and mixed with the constant hums, groans and thunks of the machinery that surrounded them. The engine was a twisted, chaotic conglomerate of silver and steel pipes and tubes, some pencil thin, others wider than she was, and all in various states of repair. The space in which it sat was vast, the ceiling far above and walls far distant. The pipes ran both length ways and floor to ceiling, some traveling for miles as they transported various liquids and gases around. Between, above and below them lived enormous metal containers, pistons, sockets, pumps, and a myriad of other devices, all moving and groaning in sync as the vast machine breathed. No one slave really understood how the whole thing worked together, but each knew their own section perfectly. Different sections would show different styles of fixing, some held together with vast swathes of tape and random chunks of metal, whilst others held neat patches, interrupted by the occasional shine of entirely new parts.
Where she and dad lived was much like the rest of the engine, a walkway that terminated in a vast round container half covered in dials. The area they worked on covered probably ten square metres, enough to keep them busy every second they were on board, and their snug lay in the middle of it. Little more than their sleeping shelves and various other nooks and crannies that contained food and parts for the Vale, it didn't really feel like 'home' as she imagined it. But it was where they slept and talked and was as close as they were going to get.
She pulled her clothes on and went in search of breakfast, hoping she could keep it down. Each part of the ship had stores, tiny rooms crammed with cupboards and full of basic foodstuffs. Every slave had a code to get in, changed regularly. They were mindful of security because of the runaways. The Homeship was the size of a small city and slaves would sometimes just leave their post and disappear into the bowels. She would meet one occasionally; wasted, terrified individuals, living in constant fear. She had thought about it when she was younger, but meeting one had made her realise that there were worse places than the engine, and worse ways to live. She'd wanted desperately to help her, but fear of what might happen if she did stopped her.
Stuffing a bread roll into her mouth, suddenly ravenous, she left the store and headed into the engine. She told herself she was heading back to find dad, but her feet led her on a different path.
The area she was in looked oddly familiar, although she had only previously glanced at it as she ran nervously past, and she realised where she was just as Stem stepped out from behind a hulking tower and into her path. She gasped, then became immediately embarrassed, eyes cast down and face turning red. She could hear him chuckling slightly and shame soon turned to anger. She looked up at him, face now wearing a scowl and he laughed louder.
"What? What's so funny?"
He shook his head, spreading his hands in front of him.
"Well to start with it was you being so shy, when I'm used to you trying to shoot me out of the sky."
"Yeah, and I managed it last month, didn't I?"
He grinned again.
"That you did, that you did. Destroyed one of my MK3's as well."
"Yeah, well, that's what you get."
"For what?"
She looked at him quizzically.
"I mean, that's what I get for what? What have I done to earn the destruction of the best weapon on my ship?"
He was still grinning and she realised that he was playing with her. She stopped just short of stamping her foot, imagining instead that they were still out there, still two pilots rather than a 12 year old girl and a really gorgeous 17 year old guy.
"I guess that's what you get for flying a souped-up taxi."
She grinned back at him smugly and he burst out laughing again.
"Touche, I can't really argue with that. Shame my taxi can still outrun your little pleasure cruiser."
"It can't, no way. I just don't..."
She cut herself off, suddenly aware that yet again he was getting a rise out of her. She stepped back, trying hard to look nonchalant. She had imagined time and again what their first meeting would be like, and perhaps that's why it was going so wrong. She realised her hands were clenched tightly and she tried to relax. He seemed to understand, because he also took a step back, finding a pipe at waist height to lean against. He crossed his arms and looked at her. She managed not to squirm under his scrutiny and instead met his gaze, holding it with her own dark eyes until he nodded slightly.
He stuck his hand out, looking slightly uncomfortable as he did.
"Hi, I'm Stem. Forgive me if that was a bit rude. It feels strange to meet someone you already feel like you know, as much as you really know anyone out here."
She took his hand, shaking it.
"Alicia, Ally. It's really nice to meet you too, you know, after trying to blow you up for so long."
They both chuckled at that, and she suddenly felt more relaxed. He led the way into the centre of his section, finding a couple of cushions for them to sit on amongst the mass of tools and rags that lay scattered about. They chatted about the game, about their ships, both admitting that actually they really liked one another's, despite the ragging. Within minutes they were trading talk of drives and weapons like they had known each other for years. It wasn't that long before their discussion turned to the previous night, and the mysterious ball.
"What was the point of it though?"
"I've got a theory about that. In the last couple of years things have changed, I mean, the Game has changed, right?"
She nodded.
"The Lords have done this whole team thing, and the Overseers and so on. Well, I think that the ball last night was all part of the show. It was a chance
for the audience to get a glimpse of us outside our ships, up close and personal. The better they know us, the more they'll care about us when we are fighting, you know?"
She was nodding harder, feeling slightly stupid that she hadn't thought of it herself. She suddenly put her hand to her mouth, face going bright red for the second time that morning. He grinned, nodding.
"Yep, that means your whole puking thing was beamed live to billions of eager viewers."
His voice had risen towards the end, taking on the persona of a TV advert. She hung her head, desperate now for this wonderful meeting to end. She felt his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Hey, Alicia, it's cool, don't worry. It's not like you're the only person who was feeling bad from that drink they gave us."
She shook her head vigorously, shaking off his hand, then regretting it straight away.
"It wasn't the drink."
He stepped back, eyebrows and hands raised in defence from the vehemence in her tone. She fished around for how to explain what had happened.
"It wasn't the drink."
She said again, more quietly this time.
"I. Did you see the stage?"
He nodded.
"That's where the Lord watches the game from, isn't it."
"Yeah, well, there were some of the Lords on it. I got a look at them. One of them saw me and..."
She paused, desperate to seem cool and calm, but could already feel the sweat breaking out on her forehead as the memory returned. She could also feel the tears pooling in her eyes and she blinked fiercely, trying to stop them, and failing. Stem stepped closer, putting his hand on her arm.
A Game of War Season One Amazon Page 3