Debatable Space

by Philip Palmer

  We could program virtual-activity games too – we fought monsters and zombies and we piloted spaceships and rode horses and competed in dance tournaments. But the best thing of all was just wandering the ship itself – climbing up and down ladders into deserted bits of the ship with bulkheads and portholes and computer screens buzzing with activity.

  I loved the porthole zone, where they had those huge huge windows that gave you a panorama of the space outside our ship. If you stared for long enough, the ship itself would vanish and you’d feel like a particle of matter floating through the Universe for ever and ever and ever and ever.

  We also found a way into the engine room. It meant climbing through narrow pipeways, using cable for rope, leaping across live fusion chambers. I loved the throb of power of the fusion drive, and the clicking of microcomputers. I imagined I was in the belly of some mythical beast, a whale or a space-travelling orc. And every night, my mother would tell me stories of faraway lands and princes and princesses and oppressive ghastly tyrants who were hanged or castrated or crucified, which served them bloody well right.

  But the most fun of all was when we trained. Sometimes we got hurt – I had my skull fractured twice, and every limb got broken when I fell off a floating disk and landed badly. But that didn’t worry me, it was all part of the rough and tumble. And I much preferred real combat to playing virtual-reality warrior games. I got a real buzz whenever I strapped on a real sword, or charged up a laser blaster. And became a warrior.

  I was taught the art of kendo by my Uncle Harry; and it was hilarious! Whenever I hit him on the shin, he would growl and dribble spit down his fur. Uncle Brandon taught me how to build bombs and mentally calibrate distances before throwing grenades and flares and poison balls. And Uncle Alby was always there, flickering and snickering around, making dry sarcastic hissy comments. I loved Uncle Alby best, he was so funny, and so silly. Once, he hid in my pocket, and no one knew until my trousers caught fire and he crept sheepishly out!

  We had a gang, of course, and I was the leader, because I was the fastest, and the strongest, even though I’m a girl. The gang members were my brothers Jack, Roger, Rob Junior and Ajax, my dorm mates Ginger, Gorgon, Frank and Piers, my sisters Persephone and Shiva and Hilary and Silver and Garnet and Ji, and Holly, who came from another dorm but liked to hang out with us. Jack was my best friend when I was little. But now I’m all grown up and eleven years old, I spend more time with Gorgon. He is a cheeky monster of a boy, he takes no shit from no one. Uncle Flanagan used to try and tell him off, but it never worked. Gorgon worked out that children could get away with anything, provided they kept up their training routine. He sleeps late and never tidies anything even when he’s the one who made the mess and he eats three ice creams at a single sitting. He has two mothers, Jenny and Molly, and they scream and swear at him, but he takes no notice. Because Gorgon is a natural flier, he can zoom around on a jet pack like a Dolph swimming in the ocean. So Uncle Flanagan always says, “Leave the boy alone.”

  My mum, Alliea, is an important person on the ship. I can tell that. Uncle Flanagan always asks her advice before taking important decisions. And although Uncle Flanagan is in charge of everything and everyone, when they’re with us children, Alliea gives the orders. She once made Uncle Flanagan help her build a raft for us to sail down a virtual river. He started with a pile of logs and some twine, and after an hour he was swearing like, well, like a pirate. But Alliea just scolded him like a ten-year-old, and he grimaced and groaned and took it. So who’s the boss there then! I think my mum is pretty cool. I like Aunt Hera too.

  I know that there will be a war when we reach our destination. I know that many of us will die and it will be horrible. But I imagine, also, it will be quite fun.

  I’ve lived all my life in outer space, on a warship sailing between planets. Who could ask for anything more wonderful than that?

  Harry

  I am in the gym when the call comes through. But I am distracted. I stare at myself in the gym mirror and I realise with horror – I have grey hairs in my body fur. “This journey is taking too damn long,” I snarl. But then I hear the sound of the beeper.

  War stations.

  We run towards our positions. In every corridor, wall screens show us images of the Corporation fleet that has assembled against us. It is very very big. Then the screen switches to another camera’s perspective. It is more than very big. It is vast.

  On the vidscreen, like ocean waves, I see the warships of the Galactic Corporation sweep towards us. And in the real world, I see a female Loper pirate standing near me in the corridor. We lock eyes. It will be some time before the infantry have a role to play. There is time, just about, for some fur on fur. We move off together and find an empty cabin.

  As she manipulates my sexual organ, the girl Loper laughs. “You have grey fur,” she said.

  “I’m having it regrown,” I growl irritably at her.

  “I think it’s kind of cute,” she purrs, and for the first time in a long long while, I feel relaxed and content.

  Jamie

  I hear the alarm siren that tells me combat is about to commence. And I run up the ramps all the way to the bridge and end up too breathless to speak. “Hi,” I gasp.

  “Where’s Harry?” says Alliea.

  “Otherwise engaged,” Brandon chips in. He hacks into all the ship’s cctv cameras, he has a funny smirk on his face. Ooooh, I think, Harry’s up to something naughty…

  But back to me! Flanagan turns to the bridge crew: “Jamie will be supervising the computer links.”

  “Have we time for a vanishing trick?” I ask.

  Flanagan nods. “I’ve assigned five thousand vessels.”

  “They need to accelerate into position right away. You need a diversion.”

  Flanagan presses a button on his console. On the vidscreen, we vividly see one of our own ships explode.

  “Who did you kill?”

  “They were volunteers,” he says, curtly. Into the intercom: “This is your Captain speaking. Panic, please, act like a bunch of arseholes.”

  The fleet of ships panics, in incoherent unison, veering off every which way. I try to hide my grin. I have learned, painfully, that people don’t like it when you laugh at such moments. It’s considered bad form.

  “How many vessels in the Corporation fleet?” I ask.

  The computer flashes up an answer: circa 4,800,000. We have 251,602 vessels, having built all those extra ships during our long voyage. So, we’re way outnumbered.

  “This is your Captain speaking,” Flanagan says into the intercom. “ You have your instructions, and you must follow them to the letter. Remember: our aim is not to defeat this enemy fleet. Our aim is to reach Kornbluth. Let’s kill some robot.”

  “Flanagan!” A shrill voice cries out. Lena has arrived on the bridge.

  “ I was meant to give the order to attack,” she says petulantly. Flanagan hides a smile.

  “I haven’t yet given the order.”

  Lena presses the intercom switch. “This is your leader. Attack.” And she lets out a rebel yell. Despite myself, I feel goosebumps down my spine. I echo the rebel yell.

  Everyone in the bridge does a rebel yell. It feels good.

  We feel like real warriors.

  Brandon

  Lena is now in charge in the bridge. She runs around a lot and barks aggressive instructions. But most of our strategy is pre-programmed. So while Jamie runs the computer link, and the Captain tries to keep out of Lena’s way, I sit at my screen and flick from space camera to space camera to follow the totality of what is going on. The Captain nods. “Keep your eyes peeled Brandon,” he says, and I flash my teeth in an almost-smile.

  As always, the Corporation warriors show no strategy. Our fleet is diffuse and straggly; theirs is focused and compact, making a smaller and much easier to damage target. Also, while our ships are making a play of floundering about in panic at the “unexpected” accidental detonation of a warship, our a
dvance party of five thousand vessels have cloaked themselves in flying mirrors so that they cannot be seen in the blackness of deep space. As our main forces assemble, the ambush troop fly fast and high above the enemy fleet. There they hover, as the enemy prepare their force fields and laser cannons.

  We stand our ground. They move inexorably forward. Lena orders the launch of our torpedo. It weaves and curves its slow path through space, a small missile the size of a pea. It is, we hope, undetectable by any of their sensors; it’s a grain of sand on a sandy beach.

  They fire their laser cannons, and at one fell swoop our first rank of a hundred vessels is incinerated.

  “Panic more,” orders Lena and our fleet becomes even more undisciplined and incoherent. Then we launch our antimatter bombs.

  Wave after wave of antimatter bombs sweep through space… but the enemy have a counterplan prepared. Each of our AM bombs is snarled in a razor-wire net and forced to spin around in spiral patterns. Some of them come back at us and explode our own vessels. Some are hurled into deep space. Not a single AM bomb gets through; our great strategy has been a fiasco.

  Antimatter/matter explosions shatter the silence of space that looms between our two distant fleets.

  “Good,” grunts Flanagan.

  “Keep panicking!” screams Lena.

  “This is so sweet,” I mutter, my fingers running over the computer keyboard, dancing my dance.

  Apparently reeling after the total failure of our antimatter bomb attack, we fire our own laser cannons, but their mirrors and force fields easily deflect the cannon rays. Their own laser beams are “smart” beams brilliantly designed to change frequency and direction in a totally random way, obviating all barriers. We are totally outclassed.

  “They got us!” I yell. “We’re d”

  “oomed!” Jamie says, continuing my sentence.

  Flanagan smiles.

  The enemy wallows in smugness. We smarten our formation in space. No more fake panic.

  Then our ambush party attacks. They have been, for the last thirty minutes, hovering patiently above the enemy fleet. Now they unleash their full firepower. It takes a few seconds for the enemy computer to adjust to this new direction of threat and gear their weapons upwards . In that time, dozens and dozens of Corporation warships are blown up. And that is our cue to…

  … retreat. At high speed. We leave behind our camera-bots in space, to give us a bird’s-eye view of the carnage. Our ambush ships put up a valiant fight. They score direct hit after direct hit, and chunks of enemy hull go flying off into infinite orbits. Our ships’ laser beams cut through reinforced plastic and skilfully evade force barriers. But the reverse toll is devastating. The enemy warships are astonishingly heavily armed, and they wreak havoc with our pirate predators.

  Then the torpedo finally lopes its way to its destination, and the remote detonator is triggered.

  The torpedo is our most valuable weapon. It contains the residue of an asteroid compressed at the expenditure of vast energy to the size of a pin. And then compressed again, and again, to sub-microscopic dimensions, so that space itself is being crushed.

  This is a compressed space bomb, one of Jamie’s many brilliant inventions. It is, essentially, very much like the Universe before the Big Bang, a parcel of energy and mass in a form so tiny that the mind cannot imagine such a minuscule scale. These days, we use compressed space as a form of energy storage. Jamie’s unique genius was to find a way to release the energy all in one go, without entirely devastating the Universe.

  We cannot see or hear an explosion. The bomb merely pops, like an inflated crisp packet burst by a hand. And then, for a few chilling seconds, nothing happens.

  Then suddenly all the ships in the sky vanish. It is that simple. We have destroyed our own ships of course; but we have also cut the heart out of the enemy fleet. Two or three million Corporation warships have, in the blink of an eye, ceased to be.

  It is, of course, a dangerous and desperate strategy. Now that we have invented this weapon, we have to endure the bitter fact that the enemy will be able to copy it and use it against us. Our fabulous contribution to posterity is to find a new weapon even more appalling than the ones humankind has already created. But that’s a price we have to pay.

  “Fire the asteroid,” Lena says.

  Our workers have quarried out the inside of the asteroid and filled it with liquid hydrogen. Now rocket launchers at the arse end of the big rock are fired and the asteroid shoots through space. Inside it, the hydrogen is being drenched in huge amounts of energy, and the transmutation of hydrogen to helium is taking place.

  Our fleet tries to tuck itself out of the way of the flying and in-the-process-of-exploding asteroid, but it is inevitably caught up in the wake. And as it travels the asteroid slowly ignites. It flares.

  It becomes a sun.

  The flaming sun lights up black space as its course takes it through the region where the enemy fleet used to be, towards the second line of enemy warships. They are, frankly, flabbergasted to discover that we have thrown a sun at them. And, once again, the “warriors” on Earth who control the all-powerful Doppelganger Robots show their typical inability to adapt to new circumstances. They flail and flounder and do nothing.

  Then the sun hits the enemy fleet; and they are devastated. Another million ships at least are incinerated. And slowly the fires die down and we are left with the ragged remnant of the enemy fleet.

  But there are still, at a guess, almost a million ships facing us. Some are badly damaged and disorientated, but we are still, after two massive strikes, outnumbered and outgunned.

  The Captain gives the signal to Lena; Lena gives the signal to us.

  “Charge,” she says, in cool and deadly tones.

  Our fleet forms itself into an arrow formation and charges. Our own ship holds back and we watch our people accelerate into the enemy ranks. A bitter space dogfight breaks out.

  Missiles and torpedoes flash and flare. Our ships break formation and start weaving and bucking. Sheer speed and brilliant piloting allow our ships to veer under and above the slow-thinking enemy battleships. A terrible carnage ensues.

  Then I see on my screen Doppelganger Robots abandoning their damaged ships and taking to open space. They are wearing body armour to further protect their frames, though all of them are able to “breathe” in space vacuum so none of them need to wear actual spacesuits. They do, however, wear body rockets and carry formidable laser guns. And, with their increased manoeuvrability, they are able to dive into the very heart of our fleet.

  “Okay, guys, go and get ’em,” says Lena.

  Lena

  It is an extraordinary event, war most bloody and barbarous. Legions clash and lasers flare and bombs shatter and hulls impact inwards and bodies are sundered and fried and internal organs are compressed and blood emerges from nostrils and space itself is shocked at the sheer atrocity of man’s atrocious cruelty to man, is that too many atrociouses? It is.

  … man’s contemptible cruelty to man and yet, ah, the green-glow-incandescence of it soars my spirit with bitter-bleak-black sweetsourness and Lena, please focus, there’s a battle going on.

  It’s okay, we’re in the rear flank, we’re a long way from the action. Not any more. Two Corporation battalions just appeared behind us.

  Shit.

  Jamie

  I am lost in the combat, my hands are a blur, my brain is in a million places at once. I steer the nanobots through space into Corporation ships, I send energy blasts, I steer the unexploded bombs into vital positions then explode them. I sit at my computer and I am a warrior as brave as many, but my fingers are stiffening, I fear repetitive strain of the brain will kick in…

  “Keep with it Jamie,” the Captain says, in an infinitely calm and comforting authoritative growl. I fight on.

  Harry

  I howl with rage, like the animal I am. Our ship is out of the battle zone. I yearn to stand and fight and bite and claw my enemies. But I cannot!
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  Alliea

  Hera and I are among the first to be propelled from the airlocks. We fly out into open space to encounter a scene of such vastness and grandeur that my heart stops. Huge spaceships are aflame, dead DRs and human beings float through space, a burning sun sears our vision as it speeds away into space – then veers, and kinks, and turns around, and comes back again for a second crack at the enemy.

  As we spin swiftly around, we see vivid red and yellow flame colours smeared against the inky blackness of the stellar backdrop. Then we fly like hawks with our rocket backpacks and shoot robots out of the sky. They are fast and powerful, but their controllers have little practice at this kind of warfare. We, however, have trained every day for twenty years. Flying is for us, as natural as walking, or weeping.

  My concentration is split. I have a computer readout on my visor; I hear intercom voices in my inner earpiece; I see a video screen of the battle which I can switch at will; and my heart is with Hera. I watch her tackle a dozen Doppelganger Robots, weaving in and out of them like a deadly dolphin in a shoal of shattered and bewildered sharks.

  They thought they could best us in open space! In truth, their only useful weapon is superior firepower and greater resources. In every other respect, they are, indeed, shite.

  “Left flank, Alliea!” Hera screams at me, and I zoom in a circle and blast the ambushing robots behind me. I complete the circle just in time to see…

  … two DRs blow Hera’s head and feet off simultaneously with their laser blasts.

  For a moment my heart stops.

  Then I cut the robots to ribbons with my own laser and speed into the next assault.

  The carnage becomes mechanical. After a while, I cannot believe I am still alive. But my rocket keeps flying me, my laser keeps shooting. DRs keep exploding. The war keeps on. The war continues. The war continues.

  The war is over. I am still alive. I check my visor. I have programmed my computer to flash red every time one of my children dies in the course of the battle. I have, in all, forty-three children. Forty-two of them are adopted, twenty-one are girls.