This Bloody Game

by Dan Schiro

  The quartermaster grunted and activated the datacube on the counter. A holographic interface appeared in the air between them, lines of information scrolling through its intangible rectangle. “Yep, same as yester — well, looky there.” An entry flashing red appeared on Sergeant Clynn’s list. “Well then,” he grumbled without meeting Orion’s eyes. “Quit wasting my time so I can get you checked in.”

  With a few swipes of his finger, the quartermaster read through Orion’s clearance papers and got to the list of items that Orion had declared upon boarding. “Let’s see here… three passengers due for private rooms on the C deck, another nine passengers headed to the bunkers on D, hmm.” He glanced at Orion for a moment as if trying to find a point to contest. “Some 90 items of clothing or tactical gear, one skysled, one mid-size dropship… well now, I don’t know if we’ll have room for that dropship.” He grinned.

  Orion knew this was nonsense. The Star Sentry was a Monitor-class Union vessel, an older model originally designed to transport thousands of people and tons of equipment for eco-modification projects. It had been repurposed and reconfigured years ago for general transport, and since Zovaco Ralli’s campaign team traveled relatively light, the vast hangar bays were almost empty. “Sergeant Clynn, please. I docked the craft myself.”

  “Did you?” Seemingly unconcerned that he’d been caught in a near-lie, Sergeant Clynn looked back at the list. “Well, what else? Emergency medical supplies, including field-dressing consulin, dehydrated rations, eco-bubble units, thermal blankets, 12 licensed pulse weapons and corresponding charge cartridges and… a Cane Corso?” His face twisted and he guffawed. “You don’t seriously mean to bring a pest-ridden animal aboard my ship, do you, human?”

  Orion cleared his throat. “Bully is a genetically engineered, certified therapy canine, cleared for travel on Union vessels under the Sentient Beings with Disabilities Act of the Third Union Era.”

  “God’s Eggs, boy.” The quartermaster frowned and stood up from his seat, his old bones creaking. “He’s a bloody vanity beast, and I won’t have him on my ship!”

  Orion felt his temper flare and the spellblade beneath his skin tingle. “Now listen here, old bird. Where I come from, if you talk about a man’s dog that way, you’d better be ready—”

  “Filthy human, I say what gets on my ship—”

  “Your ship, Sergeant Clynn?” A third voice cut their argument down like a scythe. “I’m sure Commander Vanlith would be interested to hear that characterization.”

  Orion turned to see Zovaco Ralli stepping into the quartermaster’s austere office. He wore a casual grey suit that looked pale against his inky blue skin, and he walked with his four-fingered hands folded neatly behind his back. “Now, what is the problem?”

  Orion and Sergeant Clynn immediately went back to talking over each other and pointing fingers. After a few seconds of their muddled grumbling, Zovaco raised his hands and patted the air for silence.

  “Please, please, gentlemen,” he said, blinking his three eyes calmly. “Sergeant Clynn. Does the animal in question appear on the list before you?”

  Clynn glanced up at the hologram indignantly. “Well, yes…”

  “And is that list of items approved for transport?” Zovaco’s third eye opened up a little wider, his gaze bearing down on the quartermaster.

  “Approved by who?” Clynn scoffed. “Approved by you?”

  Zovaco nodded, his flat face emotionless. “Under the mandate afforded to me in my campaign for Union Parliament.”

  Clynn seemed to clench up at these lofty terms. “Your way, then,” he muttered after a moment.

  His back straight, Zovaco brought his chin to his chest in the customary freyan show of respect. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Authorization granted,” Clynn barked, raising his gruff voice to trip the datacube. “Clynn, rank sergeant, quartermaster of the Star Sentry.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Orion said with a smirk. “I look forward to working with you, by the way.”

  Clynn snatched the datacube out of the air. “I’ve got a job to do. I don’t have time to waste in pissing matches with bureaucrats, you know.” He turned on a heel and stormed through the doors to the supply room behind his counter.

  “Thanks for the assist,” Orion said to Zovaco, smirking as he watched the quartermaster go. “He’s a prickly one.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Zovaco said as they turned to walk out together. “Because of my plans to de-escalate military spending, my team isn’t too popular with SpaceCorps.”

  “The right thing isn’t always the popular thing,” Orion shrugged. “Wait, did you still need the quartermaster for something?”

  “Actually, I came to find you, Orion,” Zovaco admitted as they walked down the wide starship hallway. “I was hoping to introduce you to Commander Vanlith personally.”

  “Thanks,” Orion chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to make another enemy for life today.”

  The glass doors to a square elevator opened and they stepped inside. “All the same,” said Zovaco, “if you thought the quartermaster prickly…”

  “Ah,” said Orion. “Should I expect more of the same?”

  “The woman is positively barbed,” Zovaco said with a soft laugh.

  They rode up several floors to the command level, the gravity lift humming softly while they made smalltalk. Zovaco asked basic questions about Earth, and Orion returned the same regarding Trizuni until the doors opened on a short hallway. Zovaco’s bio-scan granted them entrance to the Star Sentry’s fortified command center, and the politician led the way down into the round, terraced room. Holograms glowed softly over a half-dozen operation stations, and viewscreens mounted to the curved walls conveyed a dizzying array of information captured by the Star Sentry’s swarm of security drones. At a glance, Orion saw the forward view, the glittering Maker Rings, the outside of the boxy SpaceCorps starship and shots of traffic flowing in and out of the ports in the Maker Rings’ underside. On a large central screen, Orion recognized a pixilated gravity map of the Maker Rings’ artificial star system, the invisible ether routes highlighted neon green as they branched out into space. Orion and Zovaco received a few cool looks from a multi-racial crew clad in navy-and-white SpaceCorps uniforms, and a tall woman rose out of the captain’s chair as they came down the stairs. Orion was surprised to see that she was human.

  “Mr. Ralli.” Commander Vanlith aimed her eyes at Orion like pale blue spears of ice. Her black hair fell straight and sharp like a sheaf of dark rain, just barely tickling her neck, and her navy-and-white uniform hugged her strong body like a second skin. “Perhaps I should have made it clear that your command center clearance does not include a plus-one.”

  “My mistake, Commander Vanlith,” Zovaco said with a deep bow. “And please, call me Zo. I only hoped to introduce—”

  “I know who Mr. Grimslade is,” Vanlith said, her words like hammer blows as she cut the politician short. “And you, Mr. Ralli, know my opinion of his presence on my ship.”

  Orion fought the impulse to let his gaze linger on the stern woman’s long-legged figure and stepped in. “Actually, I insisted that Zo introduce me.” Orion struck out his hand. “Orion Grimslade III, ma’am. I thought it only proper to say hello, since we’ll be working together.”

  A moment or two passed, the command center silent but for the soft bleating of astronavigation instruments. Then the commander grasped Orion’s hand and gave it a slow, grudging shake — she could do no less in front of her watching crew. “Commander Katherine Vanlith.” She turned her straight nose up at him, and the cruel lines of her lips bent into a condescending smile. “And I’d say that ‘working together’ might be a bit of a stretch.” She looked him up and down, taking hold of his blue-gray smartcloak and peeking at the high-tech bodysuit beneath. “Unless you’ve got a SpaceCorps uniform under there? No?”

 
Orion heard a suppressed chuckle from someone at an operations station, but he didn’t let his chagrin show. “I should congratulate you, Commander Vanlith,” Orion said with a smirk as he admired the tough-but-elegant cut of her face. “I didn’t know any of our kind had ascended to the rank of Commander. And at the young age of…?”

  An annoyed line appeared between her finely drawn black eyebrows. “I am the first and only human commander in the SpaceCorps, but certainly not the last. And as for my age,” Vanlith continued, a snarl flitting across her face, “you should know better than to ask a lady from Earth.”

  “Indeed I should.” Orion offered a contrite smile. “I don’t want to step on any toes, ma’am, and I only have one aim here—”

  “I don’t care about your aims, civilian.” Commander Vanlith looked up at the officers and technicians at the operations stations, sneering as if only they could get the joke. Then she looked back at Orion, her eyes sharp as ice picks. “I have orders to ferry Mr. Ralli from one campaign stop to the next for another 17 weeks. So that’s what the Star Sentry will do, with the precision and efficiency of the finest crew in the fleet. And if you come within a foot of treading on my tiniest toe, we will have our next and last conversation, Mr. Grimslade, and you will be off my ship.”

  “You can call me Orion,” he offered with a smirk.

  “I will call you unnecessary personnel.” She took a step closer, her sharp jaw set. “I will call you a politician’s vanity.” Her eyes lit up as another thought seemed to strike her. “And those amateur mercenaries you’ve brought aboard? If one of them so much as thinks about stepping out of line, I’ll show them the other side of an airlock faster than yesterday’s refuse.”

  “Amateur mercenaries?” Orion put a splayed hand to his chest, feigning offense. “I only hire professional mercenaries, ma’am.”

  Her eyes widened with exasperation, and Vanlith looked at Zovaco. “Mr. Ralli?”

  “We will take our leave.” Zovaco offered another deep bow.

  Orion and Zovaco shared a quiet elevator ride down, both of them a little stunned by the “precision and efficiency” with which Commander Vanlith had put her steel-toed boot in their backsides. Zovaco bid him goodnight at the floor for the executive quarters, and Orion continued on down to the crew quarters, all the while distracted by the spark the striking commander had lit within him. He replayed their rocky conversation as he walked the steely, empty halls, and finally he came to troop bunker AG-12. He could already hear the familiar sounds before the automatic doors whooshed open.

  The room inside held rows of austere bunks, each with a large chest at the foot and a locker on each side. Costigan and his eight-human team — the Briarhearts, as they liked to call themselves — had settled in and were already getting to work. Earth rock n’ roll blared from a small set of speakers, and bluish trails of tobacco smoke wafted toward the ceiling as tattooed, muscle-bound men and women wearing hard-worn clothing moved about busily. They organized supplies, double- and triple-checked weapons, calibrated scanning equipment and fought over the bunks closest to the bathroom, filling the spacious bunker with more noise than the headcount would suggest possible. Orion hired them because they were cheap and good at what they did, but the little touches of humanity they always brought with them were a nice bonus.

  “OG3,” called a big bull of a man. “What’s up, chief?”

  Orion looked from one mercenary to the next as they smiled, waved and greeted him. There was Zagzebski, the big swarthy bull; Adler, an explosives expert with a shaved head and a dozen body piercings; a dusky young marksman named Seals; Woodward, a pale, twitchy man; their redheaded weapons master, Drakely; Dettman, a hard-charging lump of bald brute force; a lean, graying gentleman named Uphoff; Reddpenning, a multi-talented young woman with a tight black braid; and, of course, their leader Jim Costigan. The broad-shouldered man looked up from the table where he studied printed ship schematics and waved Orion over.

  Orion walked through the bunks toward the impromptu war room Costigan had cobbled together from a few tables and chairs. He slapped hands and tapped knuckles with the other mercenaries as he made his way, but they were at best acquaintances or friendly employees. Jim Costigan, on the other hand, was the only friend Orion had left from his old life — from before he went away, before the training and the spellblade and everything since. They had met and become friends when they were teenagers in the Military Institute of Mars. Costigan had earned his way there on scholarship, and Orion had been placed there as a punishment for ejection from his private school, but they formed a bond nonetheless. Though Orion was expelled after a semester and Costigan went on to graduate with distinction and serve with honor, they had never lost touch.

  “Thanks for coming, brother,” Orion said with an honest grin.

  A smile wrinkled the edges of Costigan’s brown eyes as he rose and shook Orion’s hand. “Thanks for having us on, boss.” He stood just a few inches shorter than Orion, but he cut a much thicker figure in his black leather mercenary garb.

  Orion shot a glance at his dark crew-cut. “Fade’s looking tight.”

  “And yours looks…” He pursed his lips as he tried to put a descriptor on Orion’s spiked, styled blond hair. “Elaborate?” He smiled broadly, showing a gleaming tungsten tooth.

  “You bet it does.” Smoothing his cloak, Orion took the chair across the table from Costigan. “So.” He tapped his gloved knuckles to the maps of the Star Sentry. “Let’s talk security for this empty beast.”

  Costigan thumped down into his chair. “‘Beast’ — you’ve got that right.” He scratched his stubbled chin for a moment. “This big old tube can probably take a lot of punishment, but a Monitor-class ship is not designed for speed, evasive maneuvers or any kind of firefight, that’s for damn sure.”

  “True.” Orion conceded the point with a nod. “But there’s nothing we can do about that. And my gut tells me that whoever wants Zovaco Ralli dead is more likely to use poison than ship-to-ship missiles.” He shrugged. “That’s why I’m more worried about the ‘empty’ part. A full or even a half crew would make it a lot harder for a saboteur to do their work, or an assassin to infiltrate the ship.” He shook his head. “I’m worried we have too many empty corridors and unused rooms to lurk in.”

  “Right,” said Costigan, tapping at the maps on the table with his thick index finger. “Well, I’ve got a few ideas on that…”

  Orion and Costigan went over details for the better part of an hour before they called the rest of the mercenaries over. They parceled out heavy shifts for bomb sweeps, armed patrols and bodyguards for Zovaco Ralli, and the mercenaries agreed without argument. They discussed public event protocol, laying out how they would keep Zovaco safe in small rooms filled with rich donors and arenas holding tens of thousands of voters. In low tones, they decided that Woodward, the Briarhearts’ tech expert, would break into the ship database so that Reddpenning and old Uphoff could start vetting the SpaceCorps crew for potential moles. When Orion felt confident that Costigan’s team had their responsibilities firmly in hand, he bid the mercenaries goodnight.

  “Come on, OG, hang out,” said Seals as Orion rose from his chair. “Those of us that aren’t on first patrol are gonna toss some cards.”

  “Yeah,” said Drakely, the redhead. “You should give me a chance to win back the creds you took off me after we busted up that strike on Solocore.”

  “Sorry, gang,” Orion said with a smirk. “Things to do, dead people to see.”

  Orion took another short gravity lift ride and arrived on the level that held the officer quarters. Walking yet another undecorated hallway, he passed the doors to his own room and Kangor’s before he came to Aurelia’s quarters and heard beat-heavy temba nubu rap music. The unlocked portal hissed open upon Orion’s approach. Inside, Aurelia and Kangor argued loudly, while Bully slept like a great black lump by a porthole that looked out on the nearby M
aker Rings.

  “That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in centuries,” Aurelia said, lounging on a long couch, her shapely green legs folded. She took a sip of sparkling blue liquor from the round glass in her hand. “What about Viccor of Twinpine?”

  Sitting on the sagging loveseat across from her, Kangor took a long chug from a jug of purple wine and shook his head. “He is nothing to Thorpis Rian.” Kangor wiped his wet jaws with the back of his forearm, his tufts of fur having reverted to their natural burnt-orange. “Thorpis won nine out of the 10 events he competed in. He earned the vycart much glory that day. There is no one greater to participate in the Galactic Games.”

  “Oh, please.” Aurelia rolled her eyes. “All of his records have been broken since then, and the field of competition—”

  “What are you two gas bags on about now?” Orion said as he stepped into Aurelia’s comfortably furnished sitting room. “Just kidding, I don’t care. Are you settled in?”

  Kangor nodded, his nostrils still flaring from his argument with Aurelia. “I travel light, little friend.”

  Aurelia shrugged. “The accommodations aren’t quite as dismal as I expected.” She tossed back the rest of her sparkling blue drink in one gulp and set the tumbler on the low glass table in front of her. “Although I hope to find a drink that’s slightly above ‘swill’ somewhere on this ship.”

  “Well, don’t hope for it tonight.” Orion remained in the doorway, his hands on his hips. “We’re rolling out.”

  Kangor raised a furry eyebrow. “Out? Aren’t we meant to protect this politician?”

  “Costigan and the Briarhearts can handle that for the moment,” Orion said with a wave of his hand. “We’ll catch up with them when the Star Sentry arrives at the Collective Fleet, but we’re here to do more than just play bodyguard, buddy. If we can find out who’s trying to kill Zovaco and take them down, well, the rest of this job is a cakewalk.” He looked over at the dog sleeping contentedly in the starlight and almost felt bad waking him. “Bully,” he said with a sharp snap of his fingers. “Up, boy, up!”