This Bloody Game

by Dan Schiro

  The elder Grimslade shook his head. “Owen is… well, between you and me, a little thick. And Olivia,” he scoffed, “she’s… what? A socialite? A consumer? And my son with Valeria, whom you still haven’t met, is in diapers.” Matching Orion, his father finished his glass. “This is about legacy! You’re my first son. You carry my name. You’re the special one, Orion. And if you think the story of our family is so bad, take us forward down a different path. Make us better.”

  “Legacy.” Finally Orion looked at his father. “I’ll never rape worlds for Grimslade Interstellar. I’m building something myself. I’m helping people, protecting people. I’m saving people!”

  His father shook his head. “Son, no matter how many people you save, you can’t save your mother.” He pursed his lips as if regretting the words as soon as they slipped out.

  Orion stared at him agape for a moment. “Oh, you’re going to play psychiatrist now? Go ahead, blow my mind with your insight.”

  Now his father turned to look out at the Velvet Rift, his blue eyes narrowed to a steely squint. “You know what I think?” His jaw muscles worked angrily. “I don’t think this is about lofty ideals and ‘building something.’ I think you still blame me for having your mother committed, even after she staged her suicide like a piece of performance art with her little boy as the audience.”

  “I don’t blame you for that,” Orion said quietly, bitterly. “I blame you for booting me through every private school and military academy and head doctor for the next 15 years.”

  “I only wanted the best for you.” His father shrugged, looking tired. “I didn’t know how to give it to you myself.”

  Orion turned his gaze back to the crimson-and-purple river of stardust, and for a few long moments, neither of them said anything. “So, we’ve had the conversation, yet again,” Orion said, breaking the tense silence. “Now, will you ease up on the operations commander so I can get off Kovac Station and do my job?”

  His father nodded, and they locked eyes. “Be careful, son.”

  Orion returned to the Star Sentry and took the shortest route to his quarters. Taking a seat at the desk in his suite’s study nook, Orion pulled out his brass-plated datacube and searched the datasphere. Again and again, he entered variations on “Nadia Sadé-Grimslade” and read everything. Hours evaporated as he pored over articles about Ares Wept, reports of her attempted suicide and news stories about her violent escape from Sea of Tranquility Asylum. He combed through all of the details he had memorized long ago, but he found nothing new.

  The night passed while he scoured the datasphere in vain, and soon he felt gravity subtly shift as the Star Sentry unmoored from Kovac Station. They were on their way again, and only then did Orion realize that he had missed his clandestine rendezvous with Katherine Vanlith

  Chapter 20

  The Star Sentry raced down the campaign trail, and all was quiet as they hit the stops that Mervyn of Claddaghsplough had singled out as must-wins. Orion and his people moved like a well-oiled machine with Zovaco Ralli at their pivot, and at times Orion wondered if they had squashed the threat. After a profuse apology, Orion had even managed to rekindle his secret relationship with Commander Vanlith. And though the disparate factions aboard the Star Sentry fell into a routine, life remained far from boring. Thanks to the campaign, Orion got to see ancient homeworlds that he had always dreamed of.

  They visited Brio Prime, a planet that resembled Earth in many regards but for the five-inch-tall humanoid briophytes who ruled it. Being small of stature compared to most sentient races, the briophytes usually wore huge mechasuits when off-world. To protect themselves on their own homeworld, the City of Visitors was the only place outsiders were allowed to land. Chrome warbots as large as Kangor patrolled the streets there, and though Orion kept expecting one of them to “malfunction” and try to kill Zovaco, everything went smoothly as they met with the tiny prime minister. Everything, except for the prime minister’s two-inch-tall daughter taking a liking to Orion. She tried to persuade her father to buy him, and Zovaco refused graciously.

  They visited the world known as the Nest, home to the insectoid hivers. The planet’s dry, windy surface covered in rocky spires and gaping fissures belied a wondrously bright and lush society within its caves, tunnels and hollow mountains. Orion met many of the “drones” and was surprised to find himself, a human, so easily accepted. After all, the First Contact War was less than 300 years ago, and hundreds of thousands of hivers had died. But the common hivers grew fast, learned fast and died at an average 20.5 standard years, so they didn’t tend to hold generational grudges. The Queen, deep within the great mountain of her stone palace, turned out to be thousands of years old. She loomed 10 times larger than the drones, with shriveled vestigial wings and atrophied limbs, nestled among slick opalescent eggs as tall as Orion himself. He stood on guard for a few hours as Zovaco conversed with the huge insectoid queen in a language Orion had never heard.

  They visited the Planet of the World Walkers, two silver-skinned, thousand-foot tall titans. One was male in appearance and the other female, and the politician’s small party walked the long path with hordes of pilgrims who had come to meditate at the World Walkers’ feet. As Orion learned from Mervyn, these two creatures — the sole inhabitants of their virtually lifeless world — owned 13 elective votes. Not as many votes as pseudo-empires like the briophytes or hivers, but more than Zovaco’s small planet of Trizuni or Earth’s modest interplanetary accounting. No one knew much about the World Walkers, except for the facts that they were ageless, indestructible and prone to smash anyone who used their planet’s manacite springs without permission. They also insisted on voting power in exchange for access to the rare miracle element. So Zovaco, like thousands of Union politicians before him, stood between their toes and pitched his platform, despite the fact that no one really knew what the World Walkers wanted. Time seemed to work differently for the glacially paced giants, and three days later, their slow, booming response echoed down. “You… have… our… votes.”

  They went almost two standard months without a glimmer of aggression coming their way, and Zovaco won powerful friends. His poll numbers reflected it, too. As important planetary systems gave him their nod, their colonies fell in line, and he sprinted out ahead of the incumbent, a durok named Curkas Dur Trag Curkar. And yet… Orion felt sure that their enemy waited behind some frozen moon or gas giant down the path, ready to strike.

  This peaceful leg of their journey came to an abrupt end one night while Orion and Katherine Vanlith lay naked in a dusty supply closet. An explosion rocked the Star Sentry and threw the lovers against the wall, and a long bout of violent shudders sent Ogga Food tins clattering down from the shelves all around them. After a minute that nearly rattled Orion’s teeth loose, the turbulence subsided. The lights and the artificial gravity flickered for a few seconds, and then the backup life support system came online along with a blaring emergency siren. Vanlith was nearly dressed by the time Orion found his pants.

  “Meet me on the bridge,” she shouted at him as she tore out the door.

  “Kat, what happened?” Orion called after her.

  “I don’t know,” she hollered over her shoulder, “but we just got ripped out of the ether!”

  “Kat, wait!” Orion flew into motion, running half-dressed past frantic SpaceCorps officers as they dashed for their emergency stations beneath flashing red lights. Stopping at his quarters, he quickly threw on his kinetic bodysuit and blue-gray smartcloak, whistled Bully to his side and ran to Aurelia’s room. He nearly crashed into her as she emerged carrying a heavy brown satchel on her silk-draped hip.

  “Kangor?” Orion said, counting on their personal shorthand amid the wailing siren and flashing emergency lights.

  “With Zo,” she said. “Last I saw.”

  “Command center,” Orion shouted with a sharp jerk of his head.

  The two of them a
nd Bully ran through the corridors of the Star Sentry until they found an in-service lift. Power and artificial gravity flickered as they ascended to the ship’s command level, but eventually they reached their destination and barged into the three-tiered command center. Inside, they found Commander Vanlith struggling with the manual controls of a navigation station, while her operations officers shouted status updates on the ship’s various failing systems. Zovaco, Mervyn and Kangor had already arrived, looking on stoically as the arc of a great blue-and-green planet filled the forward viewscreen.

  Orion ran over to Kangor on the upper tier. “What happened?”

  “Nothing good, little friend,” Kangor grunted.

  Zovaco spoke up. “There was an explosion that destroyed the ship’s manacite drive while we were mid-route.” His three eyes narrowed. “It flung us back into the material universe, and that’s all we know.”

  “A saboteur,” Mervyn exclaimed, waving his cane in his apish paw. “We’ve been infiltrated on your watch, your watch!” he shouted as he pointed at Orion. “It’s a wonder that we weren’t shredded to stardust on our way out of the ether!”

  Ignoring the old kingmaker’s hysteria, Orion’s mind raced. “We took on too many people at Kovac Station, they must have slipped on there.” He shook his head, teeth grinding. “How bad is the damage to the ship?”

  “Fatal, obviously,” Commander Vanlith shouted up from the control station on the deepest of the three terraces, somehow able to hear them. “Broke her damn back coming out of the ether. It’s only a matter of time before decompression stress cracks the hull like an egg.”

  Aurelia’s brassy eyes went wide. “Perhaps an orderly evacuation would be appropriate?”

  “No time,” Vanlith grunted as she gripped control levers. “We’re caught in this big bastard’s gravity well.” She shot a nod to the planet on the screen. “You’ll be torn in half if you try to take a shuttle or a pod out as we hit atmo.”

  “Scans read oxygen-nitrogen mix,” yelled a young, white-winged freyan clinging to an operations station. “Breathable!”

  “Thank you for the good news, ensign,” snarled Vanlith.

  “Hit… atmo?” Orion muttered. He knew enough engineering to know that a ship built in space was meant to stay in space. “When are we going to hit—”

  The ship shook even more violently than before, and soon control stations and hologram generators exploded with cascades of white sparks. Orion wrapped his arms around the railing of the upper tier and fixed his eyes on the forward viewscreen. The fire that ensconced the outer hull blurred the image, but Orion saw fluffy white clouds above blue landmasses and great expanses of rippling sea-green.

  As they blazed a hot, debris-strewn trail through the thick atmosphere, Orion felt several sharp jolts as Commander Vanlith threw directional thrusters into overdrive and exploded them, trying every trick she had to straighten out the great tube-shaped ship. From what Orion could see on the viewscreen, he guessed that she meant to glide the Monitor-class vessel in over the garden planet’s wild green ocean and belly flop on the nearest coast. Even as the command center snapped to pieces all around them, Vanlith’s potent combination of fire and ice impressed Orion. It was no wonder that she was the first human commander in SpaceCorps.

  “Brace for impact,” she cried, her voice rising out of the pit with resolute fury. “Brace for—”

  As their huge starship splashed down in the shallows, Orion let go of the railing and enfolded Zovaco Ralli in his arms, hoping to cushion the impact for the man who had hired him. For a sliver of a moment, Orion wondered how the politician’s body could be so limber, so absent of tension. Then they hit dry land. The flaming wreck of the Star Sentry cut through tall trees, thick soil and solid bedrock as it carved a path inland for miles. A blow to Orion’s head turned the rest into a hazy montage of uncontrolled momentum.

  When he next opened his eyes, Orion found himself lying on a soft bed of blue moss. Tall trees with spear-shaped blue leaves and willowy limbs danced gently against the light green sky, and fragrances as thick and varied as a perfume boutique breezed through the air. He got to his feet with a shake of his head, slowly realizing that he must have been thrown free from the wreck as it rumbled across the landscape. Somehow, but for the bump on his head, Orion seemed to be unhurt.

  “Better to be lucky than good,” he said, repeating his father’s favorite mantra.

  He looked around the tropical forest, trying to orient himself. Here, wherever here was, the flora’s sunlight-processing pigment ran from pale blue to deep navy. Small, winged lizards flitted through the canopy singing strange songs, and huge insects sucked at the ripe purple gourds that hung from the trees. Orion could hear flowing water nearby, but the humid air must have measured near 100 degrees. Black smoke twisted above the willowy trees in the distance, and Orion could spot a flicker of flames through the thick groundcover of leafy ferns and thorny brambles. He threw up the hood on his blue-gray smartcloak to start its cooling system and set out through the underbrush.

  Orion went a few hundred feet, hacking his way through the wet vegetation with a hooked machete conjured from his spellblade. He could hear people shouting, fire crackling and torn metal shifting at the crash site ahead of him. Yet some tingle in the living metal that crept to his elbow compelled him to turn and look back the way he had come. A few miles past the spot where he had regained consciousness, Orion saw an island floating high above the landscape. The hovering chunk of bedrock and soil was topped with trees, and a pair of white-rushing waterfalls cascaded off the sides. Momentarily transfixed, he almost didn’t hear the rustle coming through the undergrowth.

  A creature burst through the brush and loosed a roar that seemed to shake the trees. Two hideous heads snarled at Orion, one with bony tusks and horns, the other with fanned ears and slavering fangs. It stood almost twice Orion’s height, with a spiked hide, muscular limbs and a tail like a club. Acting on instinct, Orion transformed his spellblade into a long lance as the creature charged him. He felt the lance sink in, felt the spray of hot blood, felt the snapping jaws inches from his face…

  And then Orion heard the zap of rapid pulse bolts and smelled charred meat as the beast fell forward on him. With a leg trapped under the creature’s dead weight, Orion looked up to see Kangor Kash wielding a pulse rifle in his right arm. His left arm had been torn away below the elbow.

  “Little friend!” the vycart bellowed. “Thank the ancestors, you live.”

  Chapter 21

  “Kangor, what the…” breathed Orion as he pulled his aching leg from beneath the two-headed beast. He drew the silver lance back from the creature’s chest, his spellblade gauntlet pulsing with red veins as he got to his feet. “What happened, man?”

  “Have you injured your head?” Kangor lowered his still-warm pulse rifle. “The Star Sentry has crashed.”

  “I know that, I meant your arm.” Orion pointed at the stump just below Kangor’s left elbow, the fresh wound still oozing with viscous crimson blood. “How are you still standing?”

  Kangor chuckled, throwing the pulse rifle back on his shoulder. “A true vycart warrior will keep fighting with half a body.” He held up the stump, examining the gooey caul coagulating at the site of the wound. “The hand and wrist were so badly mangled that I had to amputate it myself with a shard from the wreck. But do not worry, our flesh is not so delicate as yours. It will grow back.”

  “Well… good,” Orion shrugged. A small, flying lizard with bat-like wings landed on a spiky shrub next to him. “But… where are we?”

  “Where are we?” cawed the flying lizard, tilting its head to catch Orion in its beady eye.

  Kangor swung the pulse rifle down and took aim at the flying lizard, but it flapped away into the blue treetops before he could pull the trigger. “A strange wilderness, little friend.”

  Orion followed Kangor, and when they crested a g
rassy hillock, Orion saw the crash site for himself. The shattered, smoking wreck of the Star Sentry had carved a blistering trench across the landscape, leaving charred pieces of itself all the way back to the shore. As for the remainder of the immense, tube-shaped ship, it sat steaming in a valley. Their descent had ripped away panels of the vast hull, and a jagged exit wound gaped where the initial explosion had blown out the manacite drive. Orion had little hope his dropship or skysled had survived, but that was a minor concern at the moment. He still couldn’t fathom how he had been thrown so far and remained unhurt.

  They hustled down the hill to join the dazed survivors already milling around the wreck. Orion saw his first sign of good news when his dog came bounding up and knocked him on his backside. “Bully boy,” Orion laughed as the dog licked his face. “You’re a good boy, you’re a lucky boy, aren’t you?” He hugged the slobbering beast’s wrinkled face to his own for a few seconds and checked him for wounds, but the dog was fine. “Bully, heel,” Orion said, getting to his feet. “With me.”

  With the hound trotting at his side, they walked into the smoky wreck of the Monitor-class vessel. They found Aurelia tying a tourniquet around the stump of a freyan’s wing, and from there the AlphaOmega team moved through the wreckage together, pulling bodies out of mountains of metal and glass and shouting back and forth with other survivors. In the hours that followed, Orion put together a reasonably complete picture of their situation. Zovaco was dirty and ragged but otherwise unhurt. Mervyn lay battered in the triage area, the old kingmaker unconscious but stable. Commander Vanlith had a thoroughly broken arm that added sting to her imperious voice. Costigan had lost an eye. While Reddpenning, Zagzebski, Seals and Adler had come through the crash with no more than scrapes and bruises, no one could find Drakely, Dettman, Woodward or Uphoff. Of the Star Sentry’s 300-some officers, soldiers and utility workers, Orion counted only 47 survivors including himself and Bully. After several hours of searching, Orion didn’t expect to find many more.