A Check for a Billion

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “You think that I ask every meal I eat what it’s called? If they’re foxes, good for them. In my day, they were displayed in cages and there wasn’t even the whiff of sentience about them! This place was built to ensure that the food comes to me. Otherwise, I will grow disgruntled and come out. I’ve eaten all kinds, all races. Mmm…Fluffy ones, smooth ones, gray ones, blue ones. Even living pieces of metal. Can you believe it? I was downright shocked when some robots popped in here…”

  The incoming call to my PDA came as a surprise. Belmarad froze in mid-sentence. NPCs only do that when a call is really important. It was from an unknown caller.

  “Speaking!”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Panzer. This is Galactogon customer support. Your partner asked us to inform you that she respawned perfectly sound and sane. In particular, she asked us to emphasize that there were no problems with the child and there is no need to worry. She also requested that you contact her as soon as possible as there is important information about penalties related to your home. You may answer her if you wish. She can hear you. However, you are only allowed to discuss real-life matters.”

  “Thanks, honey! I really was worried,” I replied, mulling over the situation as I spoke. For some reason, Eunice had deemed it necessary to contact me right after Brainiac had sent off the message to her. Or is this a coincidence and there really were some kind of fines related to our house? “I am very glad that you respawned without any problems. I got your message about the penalties and I understand. Wait there. I will be back soon!”

  The PDA disconnected and Belmarad immediately resumed, ending his sentence. Only I was no longer listening. Brainiac had managed to warn Eunice that I was going to pull this terrible creature out of here and my wife was trying to warn me. The content of the call was complete nonsense, besides the part about the ‘penalty.’ There is no way that has anything to do with our IRL house. I’m willing to bet that Eunice meant our ‘in-game house’ — the orbship or even Blood Island. But in any case, the call was a warning. I cannot permit this ‘guest’ to leave this place!

  “Belmarad, I have another request,” I interrupted the creature. He had already launched into a long rant about how the grass used to be greener and the sky used to be bluer in the good old days. “Since we’re going to be working together, I’d like you to use your true appearance, please. I’d like to see you without all your masks.”

  The Uldan — and there was no doubt that my guest was precisely this — began to consider my request. He fixed his eyes on me, his AI building the right behavioral algorithm, until finally he said:

  “I suppose that will be acceptable.”

  His form changed once more. The fox vanished and in its place, one of the winged progenitors of Galactogon appeared before me. I could still clearly remember the only living Uldan I had met. And this creature too resembled Warlock — as an ape resembles a human. Yet though both have two legs and two arms and one head, the difference between them is fundamental. In the same way, as far as I was concerned, Warlock and Belmarad could have belonged to two different races, if you could even say that about Uldans.

  Belmarad radiated darkness, the air around him seemed heavy and filled with negativity. Black mist swirled around his wings, his long claws terrified with their sharpness and his grin or scowl was more frightening still. It was like a scene from a horror movie or a cheap thriller when a new character appears and everyone in the cinema knows that that’s the crazed serial killer. Worse than that, for some reason, the Uldan decided to start playing his hallucinatory tricks again.

  A deep sadness welled up from within me. The melancholy filled me from head to toe. I began to ruminate on my inescapable loneliness, my fundamental worthlessness. Eunice faded to a fleeting dream and the orbship’s crew seemed to me nothing more than some mercenary strangers.

  “Cap’n, what’s wrong with you?” the engineer’s voice reached me from afar. Here she is — the traitor. I always knew that they were all just biding their time to betray me! How painful and humiliating it all is!

  “Captain! Cap’n, dear Surgeon, wake up,” the calling grew closer and more insistent. With surprise, I felt moisture on my cheeks. “Cap’n…wha…what are you doing?! Don’t cry…”

  Cry?! Who is crying? Jolted, I momentarily forgot about the overwhelming self-pity I felt. What in the living hell?!

  The obsession subsided, leaving behind only an echo of resentment against my companions. In its wake, I realized that the source of the pain was this Uldan’s aura.

  “Brainiac, how are you?”

  “Everything is nominal, Captain,” replied the computer. “All systems are functioning one hundred percent! Blood Island has plenty of raq in case we need repairs.”

  “I would not make any rash moves if I were you.” Belmarad intervened again.

  The computer was openly hinting that it was time we blew ourselves up. Immediately! Functionality would drop to thirty percent, but that didn’t matter. There was enough raq to go around. The only problem was that I doubted that Belmarad would allow me to push the self-destruct button. That bastard has tapped into every comm line I have. I’d wager that he can fly the ship and all if he wanted to and Brainiac simply hasn’t realized it yet.

  “Well what do you think? Don’t be angry now! You’ve done well! You deal with the attack better than an average human. We should work together.” The Uldan’s voice was full of contentment.

  “We’ll see about that. But it would be better if you did not do that. At least until we get out of this place. Where do I look for the Zatrathi planet and how do we get out of…here?”

  My voice faltered at the end of the sentence. It was easier to resist the Uldan’s psychic attack now that I knew the origin of what I felt, and yet it became more difficult to manage my own natural emotions.

  “This ship has good engines. We can simply fly away. The guards shouldn’t pose any problems.”

  “The planet!” I insisted. Belmarad attacked me again, demonstrating that just because I understood the problem didn’t mean I knew how to solve it.

  “First of all, destroy the cube,” ordered the Uldan. “You will have to use the main cannon on that cruiser over there. I left its crew alive for this very purpose.”

  “Not before you tell me where that damn planet is…” Instead of words, however, what came out from my clenched teeth sounded more akin to growling. It took everything to keep myself from grabbing my chair and smashing it on this stubborn butterfly’s head. Only my childhood conviction — instilled in me by my parents — that solving one’s problems with violence was unworthy of a grown adult, kept me from doing just that. Yet my seat’s armrests were creaking from the fierceness of my grip.

  “We will have only one and a half minutes before the source is destroyed. The orbship has some decent brains in it, your computer should be able to make all the calculations in time. Set course for Blood Island!”

  I jumped up from my seat, driven by the single-minded desire to twist the neck and pluck out the wings of this arrogant asshole. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage so much as a step in his direction. The Uldan took control of my armor suit and sat me back in my seat.

  “Psychic influence level four…That’s very good. In fact, given it’s your first time, I’d say it’s superb.”

  I felt relief and embarrassment simultaneously. Once again I had been manipulated by Belmarad without being able to help it. I was tempted to dial the corporation’s tech support but I was afraid that doing so would end with me being teleported away from the ship. Then I’d lose Warlock as a penalty for failing the scenario and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing without my ship. No, I need to calm myself, turn off my emotions. Just like Brainiac when he had disabled his personality matrix!

  “What about the planet?” My voice sounded almost computer-generated.

  “What have you done? Something has changed but I cannot tell what.” Belmarad looked me over pensively. Another wave of anger rolled over me, but t
his time it broke against my stony detachment. I wasn’t here. There was only the question I wanted answered — and I asked it again. Then again. And again. I kept repeating it until the Uldan gave up. A metal cylinder about the size of a cat appeared in his hands.

  “Here. This is a data drive. The coordinates you need are on it. Don’t get excited, Surgeon. I have encountered humans before. A few have ended up in this place. Your kind cannot be trusted. As a result, this data drive is protected with riddles. There are four riddles. I will give you an answer to each one in exchange for four months’ faithful service to me! I need to be sure, you see. Catch!”

  Belmarad still had control of my suit, so effectively he caught the cylinder himself. All I managed to notice on it was a small screen, some buttons and a comm jack.

  “Now let’s get down to business. It’s time we got out of here.”

  “Brainiac is the child still alive?”

  “Yes, he is fine. The timer is currently at thirty minutes.”

  “Snake, take it out of its container. The child needs to be returned to its parent.”

  As I assumed, Belmarad cut into our conversation:

  “What are you talking about? What child? Why don’t I know about it?”

  “We will introduce you shortly,” I replied aloud and ejected from my armor suit. Moreover, I even took off my body armor. I should not have a single device on me.

  The Uldan drew closer to me. He didn’t like my behavior. His wings grew darker and the fog they spewed grew denser. A wave of warmth passed over my body, triggering deep-seated, puerile feelings. Belmarad’s attack was a probing one and so not overly intense. As a result, my wall of detachment held. It had to hold.

  “Who is that?” the Uldan asked with surprise when the snake carefully carried the Relay into the cabin. The brainworm pulsed and writhed its tentacles, groping for food. There were two strokes of luck here. Belmarad’s aura did not affect my crew — and he had no idea what he was facing.

  “Just another creature. Didn’t you say you were hungry?”

  “Are you trying to poison me with this vermin, Surgeon?” the Uldan guessed. It looked like his own suspicion even took him aback.

  “Why not?” I did not bother denying anything.

  “Why I can swallow a red giant if I want to! I am the dark god — Belmarad!”

  “Now!” I yelled at the snake.

  The manipulators worked like a charm. The terrible monster had given us a mere second, convinced of his own invulnerability and power. That was what did him in. I spread the dark creature’s arms in different directions, while the snake slapped the brainworm on the Uldan’s head.

  “What the…”

  These were the last words of the entity known as Belmarad. Able to withstand a direct hit from three cruiser cannons at once and then fall into the center of a black hole, the Uldans’ dark overlord was defenseless against the Zatrathi parasite, just as humans are defenseless against hookworms. The winged creature’s eyes rolled up and we heard a nasty smacking sound: The brainworm had reached its nest.

  “Thank you for not letting me die,” came the guttural Uldan speech. The queen had imbued her Relay with only one language. “But I sense a strange emptiness within me. Something very important is missing. Something kindred.”

  There was a pause, during which the brainworm settled more comfortably into his new home. Having accommodated himself, he asked the most unexpected question of all that I could imagine:

  “Tell me, who am I?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I have a shoddy imagination. When the brainworm began to question his identity, the best I could think of helping him was to give him a name. It wasn’t a very original one: Balthazar. I think I remember a demon that went by that name. Or maybe it was some NPC from my Runlustia years, I can’t recall any longer. What’s important is that that was enough. The Uldan’s face broke into a wide, daffy grin, expressing the brainworm’s feelings on the matter. The Relay began ravenously filling in the gaps in his knowledge, eagerly absorbing everything there was to know about Galactogon. It took him just five minutes to devour the contents of the computer we pulled from the destroyer and then he reclined to digest the gleaned information.

  I can’t say I felt any better, despite the notification telling me that I’d retained the title of Devil’s Advocate. Now, in order to receive my due reward — which, by the way, hadn’t been mentioned — I would need to deliver the brainworm to any friendly empire. There were three problems, however. The first was that the brainworm had no idea where the Zatrathi homeworld was. The second was that Brainiac refused to divulge who Belmarad was, even after the individual in question had suffered a complete lobotomy. The Uldan’s order remained inviolable, explained my computer. And the third were the riddles of the cylinder, which I was free to see even now:

  In what year, according to the Varlian calendar, was the cryptix grubbled for the first time?

  How many full cycles of natanix are needed for the dysplasia of cartosis?

  What is Mercaloun’s main corpitain of dalir?

  What is the minimum distance of zlapartit for the mardiration of the ulborsa?

  This is how the riddles sounded in Brainiac’s translation — and he had no idea what it all meant. The only clue was Mercaloun, but going to see her would be sheer suicide at the moment. We couldn’t break through four flying fortresses.

  All we could do as a result was wait until the marine completed transporting the elo, the engineer completed her repairs to the hull, and Brainiac calculated a route to the cruiser which supposedly still had living beings onboard. It was time to get out of here.

  It wasn’t possible to claim the destroyer. The Uldan had short-circuited all its systems, causing the powercells to discharge immediately — transferring their energy to the helium soufflé. Brainiac did manage to figure out how to restore everything, but it would take him 2–3 hours to actually do the work. I didn’t feel like a D-class vessel warranted this. Not only would I earn very little for selling it, but I’d have to waste more time looking for the local ship graveyard. Not the best use of our time. The other ships were in a similar state. Everything short-circuited and not a single living soul onboard. A frigate, several fighters and even a now familiar Zatrathi tub. The sabotage had been applied equally everywhere.

  “Take a look, Cap’n!”

  The cruiser we were headed for stood out not so much as a result of all the holes and patches in its hull — which suggested a storied past — as the white skull painted on her bilge.

  “Greetings from hell! Yours truly, the Jolly Roger Brotherhood,” I grunted. “I guess that would be the flagship of the former leader — the one who considered himself immortal. I wonder if he made it..?”

  The question was a rhetorical one. Three woodlice circled around the cruiser, ready to devour any trespassers. They responded to our appearance with black rays that struck random points in our vicinity. For some reason, the bugs either couldn’t crush the orbship herself or weren’t allowed to. In any case, I could not afford to be intimate with these creatures who spawned black holes as easily as a magician pulling a bunny out of a top hat. Three accurate shots from Warlock and the rainbow cube had three less guards.

  I found my way inside the cruiser without any problems. Like all the other ships here, it had no power. The airlock looked quite functional, but then my air analyzers flashed yellow, warning of low oxygen levels, elevated levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. On top of this, paradoxically, the fire hazard warning also flashed on.

  “Water…I beg you…some water!” someone grabbed my leg weakly. I looked down, and the space scanner traced the outline of a creature that had withered to all but a skeleton. Mother of God, how did this corpse still have the strength to grab passersby like that? The silhouette looked a bit like a Precian, but you couldn’t be sure. He looked like he’d spent a month in an oven. I turned on the searchlight, but the Precian didn’t even react to it. There we
re no eyes on his grimy, scabbed face. Having decided that nothing would happen to him if he waited another half hour, I freed myself and went on my way, now carefully looking where I stepped. I encountered more mummies like the first one all along my way to the bridge deck. The mutilated and haggard pirates lay clinging to their lives with the last of their strength. They breathed rarely, conserving the already scant oxygen. Many more neither moved nor showed any other signs of life. Only the odd breath suggested that they were still living creatures and not just part of the decor.

  Somebody had broken down the door to the bridge deck, yet the passage was barricaded. Boxes, pipes, grates and partitions had been welded together to obstruct it. I shone my light at the obstacle and almost jumped. Two glittering blue eyes stared at me from a small crack.

  “Who are you?” Brainiac translated from Pyrrhenian. The question came in a hoarse whisper, the speaker having no more strength.

  “Lieutenant Surgeon of the Jolly Roger Brotherhood. I’ve come to help my brothers.”