The Only Game in the Galaxy (13 page)

What the hell was going on?

A noise behind her sent her diving into a shadowed alcove where she crouched behind an ancient suit of armour as a squad of troopers marched past. They looked utterly fatigued and two wore blood-soaked bandages.

Behind them came two grizzled sergeants, conversing in low tones.

‘… they break through on the peninsula, they’ll lay siege, you mark my words.’ Anneke heard one say.

The other scowled. ‘You’re all doom and gloom, Taster. They’ll not break through, not on Demundala’s watch …’

Then the squad was gone. Yet even when the sound of their booted feet was out of earshot, Anneke did not move.

She was perplexed and unsettled.

The name Demundala. An odd name yet familiar. Where had she heard it? In what context? She racked her brain, but could come up with no answer, other than one that did not help: the name was
wrong
.

But why was it wrong?

And something else – the troopers’ leather harnesses had lacked field generators. If they had just been in battle why would they have left such basic items behind? Was the Fortress running short, so that they must be handed to those about to go into battle? And the
bandages
the wounded wore …

And who was fighting whom?

Anneke stood up. Time to get answers.

She made her way cautiously to the maintenance nexus and found an access hatch neither alarmed nor booby-trapped, which made her suspicious she had missed something. She climbed inside, dogged the hatch, and started climbing the shaft.

Like the hatch itself, the access shaft was not fitted with sensors. Either this was an older, more secure part of the Fortress or she had stumbled on the one shaft being refitted with more sophisticated hardware.

As if.

She climbed, scanning constantly for sensors, trip beams, pressure pads, subtle field emanations, the works.

She found nothing.

At least, not until she reached the Imperial Level, and there she encountered an old-fashioned padlock. She stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded, but then whistled softly. In this age of ultra-sophisticated locks and security fields, a padlock could cause a serious hitch. She must remember this.

Fortunately, her blaster melted the locking arm on the padlock and a moment later she was standing in a narrow corridor whose walls were decorated with rich floor-to-ceiling tapestries.

‘Guess I’m in the right place,’ she murmured to herself. She kept her blaster out, set on stun. And just as well.

A man appeared around the bend in front of her, moving as quietly as possible and listening for something. Anneke’s first impression was that he was an intruder like herself. In any case, she had him covered before he’d recovered from his surprise.

She motioned for him to stay silent, disarmed him, then gestured him back along the way he had come. Finding a small chamber that opened off a side corridor, she waved the man inside, making him sit on his hands on a lavishly brocaded couch. It was an undignified position, but kept both of them from trying to kill the other.

‘I gather you’re not here by invitation,’ said Anneke.

The man sighed heavily. He was short, stocky and ruggedly handsome; his firm features suggested strength and the ability to command.

‘No more are you,’ he said. His voice was deep and resonant, containing all the harmonics that suggesting trust and reliability.

‘Point taken,’ said Anneke. ‘So tell me. Who are you and what is going on here?’

He gave her a long appraising look, noted her blaster, and said, ‘I am Herik of Vane.’

M
AXIMUS
moved with utmost stealth.

Every nerve jangled, and he found himself holding his breath. The world was wrong, out of kilter, and it annoyed him that he could not put his finger on what it was. He stepped out into the corridor, and a man loomed at him from a side passage. Maximus jabbed instinctively, dropping him.

The man lay on the flagstones, gasping like a fish, clutching his solar plexus.

Maximus unceremoniously went through his pockets, finding nothing except odd-looking coins. He was about to discard them when he froze, his eyes widening. The profile stamped on one side was that of Rector III, the ‘Monster of Markum’, who had risen bloodily through the ranks of the Old Empire to become its cruellest emperor at the time of the Empire’s downfall – a thousand years ago.

Maximus stared at the coins, jangling them softly in the cup of his hand, as if weighing them – or their ghostly implication, a thought too far-fetched to entertain.

He checked the corridor in both directions, then dragged the man into a side room empty but for old furniture, and waited for him to recover. The man scrabbled backwards and leaned heavily against a wall, never taking his eyes off Maximus, which was just as well for him, though Maximus didn’t want to murder anyone right now.

He wanted information.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, when the man’s gasping had subsided to a steady wheeze.

The man licked his lips. He looked frightened.

‘Answer. I won’t harm you if you do as you’re told.’

‘Melit,’ said the man. ‘I’m called Melit, sir. I’m Assistant Master Turnkey, m’lord.’ He reflexively touched a bunch of metal keys that hung from his utility belt.

Maximus had to smile at the honorific.
M’lord
, indeed. The man was a bundle of habits.

‘This is, is it not, the Fortress of Kestre?’ The man nodded slowly. ‘And who is in charge here?’

‘Why, that would be Commander Quizko!’

Maximus started, feeling an icy chill crawl up his spine. He had to force himself to ask the next question. ‘What – what year is it?’

Melit appeared worried he’d been abducted by a madman. Maximus could empathise with the man’s feelings. He felt slightly mad.

‘The year is 36-2080, m’lord,’ said Melit.

Maximus sat down heavily on a chair.

Melit stared at him. ‘Are – are you all right, sir?’

‘The month, man, what month is it? What day?’

Melit looked confused. ‘April, sir. The fifteenth, as you must know.’

Maximus restrained himself from pointing out that if he knew, he wouldn’t have needed to ask. Yet he had known. From the moment he’d seen the coins, he’d known. His gut had told him, but he’d refused to listen, and yet it made a terrible sense, like seeing a picture whole when some of the parts were missing. The
wholeness
was inexplicably
right
.

But he didn’t want it to be.

‘Have you anything to drink?’ he asked suddenly.

Melit jumped at the harshness in Maximus’ voice and quickly fumbled a hip flask from his belt. He held it outstretched, his fingers trembling. Maximus took it, drank, and spluttered. The sharp whisky burned his throat, making his eyes water, and was most welcome.

He pocketed the flask, and a thought he’d had once before crept back into his mind:
Was there another game being played here, one that dwarfed his own manoeuvrings, making them seem childish?
Levels of order might be involved. A village feud seems everything to the villagers, but above their heads a galactic war might rage and they would never be the wiser. If this were so, the Sentinels had to be involved, unless there was something to the Envoy’s incessant ranting about
Kadros
… a galactic Fate that shaped the destinies of mortals.

Maximus shook his head. He needed to stay focused, he needed to calculate. Getting spooked by alien mysticism wouldn’t keep him alive.

‘April fifteenth, you say. So Herik’s forces, the League of Aligned Worlds, are at the gates of the city, but Quizko’s forces aren’t faring too well, correct?’ Melit nodded, saying nothing. ‘Good,’ said Maximus, more to himself. ‘Perhaps he can use some help.’

Maximus got to his feet. ‘Give me your keys.’ Melit handed them over. ‘Where’re the detention cells?’

Melit told him. They were close by.

Maximus pulled out his blaster. Melit gulped.

‘Fear not, man,’ said Maximus. ‘I’m setting this on stun. You’ll wake in twelve hours with a thunderous headache.’

‘Stun? No! You’re tricking me!’ His voice had risen.

‘Have it your way,’ said Maximus. ‘Sweet dreams.’

He pressed the trigger, watched the man slump, checked his vitals. He would live. Maximus always kept his promises – perhaps because so many had been broken in his childhood. Most of them were pledges or guarantees of death and destruction, which he was only too happy to deliver.

Maximus found only one guard on duty in the detention centre and quickly dispatched him to the same place he’d sent Melit. There was no point in antagonising his future employer any more than could be helped.

Moving down the main corridor, Maximus peered into each cell. At one point he stopped, arrested by what he saw: through the view-slot in the door he watched a strikingly beautiful girl on a bunk, braiding her hair. He felt his heart race and his face grew hot. He took several deep breaths, and stepped back from the door to steady his nerves. He was behaving like a lovesick teenager!

He peered through the slot again, and just as before his heart thumped against his ribs, and he felt dizzy. Then the girl, by some sixth sense, turned and stared straight at him.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked. Maximus jumped back as if stricken. Her voice pierced him, struck deep inside him, at an old long-buried part. It felt as if she were speaking to a ghost, to a part of him that had died. He jerked away as if scalded and leaned against the wall, panting.

Her voice came again and he clamped his hands over his ears and staggered blindly down the corridor, intent only on escaping.

Out of earshot, he stopped and emptied Melit’s flask down his throat, savouring the burning, dizzying fumes. ‘Pull yourself together, idiot!’ he snarled softly. He had never felt anything like that in his life; nor did he ever want to again. It was as if he’d woken from a dream to find himself standing on the edge of a cliff.

Calmer now, feeling the whisky heat in his gut and creeping confidence seeping along his limbs, he went back to his task, finding what he sought: a captain of the home forces, imprisoned, in full uniform.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. ‘Greetings, Captain.’

His blaster roared, and this time it was not on stun.

A week later Maximus was promoted to major and accepted a posting to Commander Quizko’s staff. He hadn’t seen Anneke since they’d parted in the corridor.

As he’d surmised, record-keeping practices were slipshod in this day and age, and not improved by the chaos and vagaries of war, the latter also accounting for rapid, inexplicable, promotions. That he’d demonstrated a tactical genius in the field and made sure it hadn’t gone unnoticed, also hadn’t hurt.

He joined the command staff in a new uniform and with polished boots. The brass buttons on his tunic shone, and he’d encouraged the growth of upper lip hair. The moustache, such as it was, made him look older – and age, in this group of veterans, was a plus.

Maximus saluted the commander on his arrival. ‘Major Blacknski reporting for duty, sir!’

Commander Quizko was thin and wiry with an avuncular face. He moved with a slow tired stoop, as though worn out. Maximus had expected different. This was the Traitor, the Betrayer of Kestre, a man whose name was to become an epithet for the next thousand years, a man reviled by both sides in the war, winners and losers alike.

Maximus almost felt sorry for him.

Quizko returned his salute, asking Maximus to join him at Tactical – a huge square table in the centre of the room on which a three-dimensional hologram of the planetary surface and the cube of space directly above it were represented.

‘Bok,’ said the commander, ‘please bring the major up to speed.’

A disgruntled-looking colonel, missing one ear, nodded. Deftly, with few words, he explained the current tactical situation. ‘The League has blocked our supply lines so effectively that fuel for the dreadnoughts has dwindled to a trickle, making them useless,’ he concluded.

‘We’ve enough fuel to run their blockade,’ said Colonel Bok sourly, ‘but nowhere to run them to. The Insurrection controls all the mining worlds. There wouldn’t be enough juice to get back!’

‘And then where would we be?’ asked a white-haired woman grimly.

‘Defenceless,’ said another.

‘So currently,’ said Maximus, ‘we have a stalemate? You need the dreadnoughts for defence, but without fuel they’re working at one tenth their firepower capacity?’

Quizko nodded.

‘So if we could modify the dreadnoughts to use a different fuel source, an
unlimited
source, this would solve the problem?’

Several of the officers laughed. Bok openly sneered.

‘You want us to invent a new fuel in the middle of a war?’ he said.

Contempt filled the faces around the table; others were too exhausted to respond.

Quizko cleared his throat. ‘It’s the man’s first day on the job. Cut him some slack.’

‘Should be his last,’ muttered Bok.

Maximus surreptitiously made an adjustment to his field generator, then told Bok what he thought of him. He held nothing back, pouring all his scorn and arrogance into a fusillade of insults. Quizko’s staff gasped. Bok went white as a sheet.

Having
registered
the man, he made a calculated statement about a member of Bok’s family. Bok’s blaster flashed out and before anyone could stop him, fired at Maximus, point-blank.

A vortex of destructive energies engulfed Maximus. There were yells as men and women leapt back from the maelstrom unleashed by the deadly weapon.

After ten seconds, Quizko, too stunned to react at first, barked a command at Bok who grudgingly snapped off his blaster. His face went slack in amazement.

Maximus stood unharmed, admiring his fingernails. Pretending to have only just noticed the barrage had stopped, he looked up at Bok.

‘They say self-control is a virtue,’ he said. ‘But then virtues are overrated, don’t you think?’

They were all staring at him. Quizko’s jaw had dropped.

‘I do apologise for my remarks, Colonel Bok,’ said Maximus, with a slight bow. ‘I merely wanted to provoke a demonstration.’

‘Provoke it, you did,’ said the white-haired woman, wringing her hands.

‘How did you do that?’ demanded Bok.

‘It’s impossible!’ another muttered.

‘Impossible or not,’ said Maximus, ‘I am still here. So let me tell you what is possible. It is possible to adapt the forces I just displayed, which involve high-level field mechanics and a novel adaptation of
n-space
emissions, to provide an unlimited supply of fuel for your dreadnoughts – and to turn this stalemate to checkmate!’

Maximus wished he’d had a pin, so that he could drop it.

They gave him everything he wanted, including the prisoner from the detention block.