The Game of the Millennium: A Novel

by James Martin

  Game of the Millennium: The Milky Way, Book One

  James Martin

  Copyright © 2017 James Martin

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or article.

  Table of Contents

  SUMMARY

  Part One

  August 8, 2015

  August 7, 2015

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Cheshir - Day 283

  August 1, 2015

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Cheshir - Day 262

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Feels Like Summer

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Feels Like Spring

  Part Two

  August 9, 2015

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Feels Like Summer, Still

  Galactic Calendar - 1258789 - Zolox - Day 297

  Galactic Calendar - 1258790 - Cheshir - Day 007

  August 23, 2015

  Part Three

  Galactic Calendar - 1258790 - Feels Like Fall Is Approaching

  Galactic Calendar - 1258790 - Zolox - Day 022

  September 3, 2015

  September 4, 2015

  Epilogue

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  SUMMARY

  Lauren was stargazing at one of her father's favorite spots, and while packing up after a night of nostalgia. . . an alien crash lands.

  Astraos came to the baby blue planet looking to indulge in his fantasies before accepting his role as Prince of the cheshir, third in-line to the throne. He had every intention of blending in with human society before the species who owns the Earth and its particular sector of space, the katros, discovered him; unfortunately, they shot his spaceship down as he entered Earth’s orbit.

  When the katros attempted to kill Astraos, he finds Lauren gawking at the scene and rescues her. They get picked up by Captain Nathan and his crew, friends of Astraos, who were in the sector "procuring" oil for a client.

  Stay tuned. . .

  The game is about to begin.

  Part One

  The Opening

  August 8, 2015

  Boom.

  The debris rained, amber flakes slapped across Lauren’s skin—still warm to the touch—each one branded her with a small ever-so-slight red mark, a hoarse muffled cry escaped her mouth, subdued by the cacophony of the explosion. She scowled and squinted her eyes while dust went up her nose, distributing its Arizona brand of powder and the smell of fresh rain. Unable to fully comprehend what just happened, Lauren mouthed the word, “wow,” as she rose from a bush of deer grass and used her arm to block the onslaught of soot.

  Lauren ran to her prized belonging, a telescope, to make sure it still lived a robust life with no blemishes. She was alarmed by the many jagged rocks that it laid upon but controlled the rising panic within. She steadily checked its entirety with the attentiveness of a surgeon. An object had crashed from space, and still nothing, nothing would exonerate her from the memory tied to this particular item. It had to be okay. It had to. Or she would not be.

  She bit her lip, assessing the scuffs and dings that dispersed themselves among its once sleek, perfect appearance. It’s okay. It’s okay. A small smile played on her lips. There was no damage to the any of the lenses.

  Gusts howled about her, small uprooted plants twisted in the cyclone and lightly smacked her on the cheeks—as if in the eye of a storm, she felt none of it. Lauren focused on the most precious item in her possession while tranquility washed over her and she said to herself, “I am fine with the scratches.” She repeated this, “I am fine with the scratches.” A modest mantra designed to abolish her guilt over the telescope’s new appearance. A thought that morphed into an epiphany: the telescope was a shrine to her dead father. A father who had many dings, nicks and scars from a middling existence in small town USA. And so, she convinced herself that now, the telescope was more authentic.

  She turned her attention back to the flurry and the object from space.

  “Holy shit," she said to the mushroom cloud, staggering back. A pillar of smoke with a hot, yellow core billowed into the atmosphere. The singe of dried death tinged her nose. A few plants were assigned new areas to inhabit from the blast’s wake, but the damage to the surrounding area was minimal, due to the lack of vegetation. The area was a secluded patch of nothing, dominated by red-rock buttes, canyon walls extending from Canyon Diablo, lone patches of grass and brittle earth. It had been the perfect area to set up camp and seek the stars.

  Lauren kneeled, expeditious and nimble with her hands as she dismantled the telescope so she could get it back into the heavy-duty duffle bag and on its way to safety. Her hiking backpack was located beside her, and right before the crash she had finished packing up her campsite and was ready to move to the second stargazing spot her father took her to all those years ago. She was halfway done disassembling when she noticed something emerge from a smoke cloud out of the corner of her eye, a spec in the bedlam. Her heart leapt and she grabbed her hiking backpack, unable to move or think, she stood motionless.

  Seconds ran away from her, Lauren was frozen, her mouth hung agape while dust particles nestled on her tongue. She was operating under the assumption that what crashed had been a meteorite, and at the off chance of it being something more, she hoped to be long gone. She decided to let the first responders have their lives altered forever, while she would live out her life—without alterations of the most grandiose kind. But as she would learn, life never listens. Is that possible? No. No. It can’t be. She remained a permanent fixture of the landscape. Lauren’s jaw held steadfast to its slackened state, the thump-de-thump of her heart blasted in her eardrums reverberating what she already felt, scared.

  Lauren’s brain tried to understand, to discern what her eyes beheld, attempted to turn the spec into a specter, a figment of the imagination, an illusion of the mind. Her heartbeat rose its call to her throat, and she swallowed forcibly, the sticky, pasty saliva of a mouth held open too long.

  “No. No. No. No.” She violently rattled her head to extinguish the image. “I—No. . .” Yet, the figure remained in the heart of the turmoil. . . her free hand moved and spread grime about her face then paused, hanging off her lip. “It can’t be. . .”

  And then. . . the figure moved.

  The movement was very—and Lauren found it hard to come to terms with this description—humanesque. The alien was merely dusting himself off as if the crash was a well-placed jab to his chin that he needed to shake off.

  A gust of wind rushed from above, a screeching wailing overhead, her vision was hampered by another rush of debris as she sought to look upon the living, the actuality, the reality. . .

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Astraos dusted the soot off his body armor, once white and pristine, now opaque and daub. He had a slick smile attached to his face. There was an aura of calmness and serenity that encompassed him in instances of chaos; he pined for each one and relished in the discord of the moment.

  He tapped the two blades on his back, activating them. A shroud of ice blue energy enveloped them, transforming the dull gray blades into unique objects of power. The two blades were similar in form to Chinese broadswords (daos), but longer and wider.

  He looked past the cloud of dust, seeing the Jacko-wing fighters that belonged to the landlords of this sector of space, the katros. They were the problem. Any unidentified spacecraft entering their realm was treated as an act of war: they would hunt down the pilot or cre
w until dead. They would seek retribution from that species by either coin, territory, colony, resources, or by conquering them.

  They opened fire as he started running. His heart steady, body and mind basking in the energy of battle, adrenaline coursing through his veins, this is what his species played homage to: the great battle, the fight, the honor in the instant, the glory of a moment that could bring the admiration of all. To Astraos, battles were exciting, intoxicating, and a part of his nature he could never deny.

  The cloud of smoke and debris dissipated, showing a human female standing there, gawking at him and the scene. He saw her deep, honey hazel eyes in the shape of an almond. Her dirt blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail—he convinced himself long ago that he loved blondes—and a vibrant, light pink hue graced her skin.

  At a speed that would’ve broken the hundred-meter-dash at the Olympics, he jumped over a rock as a beam of red death pierced the smoke and hit his back. The energy, however, was absorbed by his blades.

  He came barreling down at the human female who stood a football field away.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Another shot, another space fighter came into view with the roar of its engine following, Lauren pointlessly ducked, gasping—her mouth only able to issue hot air into a hotter climate. She saw the alien, a mad bull coming at her.

  She looked to side and saw her duffle bag and telescope (which rested partially disassembled on the dirt) and then her vision peered down to the hiking backpack that her hand clung to. She viewed these precious items, her eyes watery seeing herself through the ages, growing up with them and her father; his spirit imbued in each, they were treasured and invaluable. She saw him, an apparition, smiling at her with a tenderness from the beyond. Lauren. Let go. I remain in your heart and mind. Let go of these items. I am here, always. Run. Run, my little star catcher.

  And so, she dropped the backpack and left her duffle bag and telescope to their demise. And ran. She knew there was a trail inside a cliff up ahead that she could navigate better than this super-speed-alien-runner that was gunning for her with red death following in his wake.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Astraos cursed as earth blew into his face from a blast nearby. There are three of them, he thought. Many battles had taught him to count the recoil between shots to deduce the amount of enemy fighters.

  Another shot close by, he slowed down to vary his speed and approach. The female. . . He would have to save her, not just because it was the right thing to do, but because the katros would find and torture her. They would debilitate her and extract every morsel of knowledge from her brain. Whether they secured what they sought or not, she would become nothing more than a shade of what she once was or a corpse.

  They would find his image in her brain. And with that, they would know his identity: Prince Astraos of the cheshir, third in-line to the throne. They could use that information as proof that Prince Astraos and the cheshirs were looking to attack and steal the precious resource that is Earth, unprovoked. They could also spin the incident to look as if cheshirs were there to steal future dealings the katros and other species may have had. Most species wouldn’t go for it. But enough may, and that could potentially throw the galaxy into a galactic war where the cheshirs would be a prime target and possibly eliminated. A low probability outcome, but one he could not risk coming to fruition.

  He dashed to his right as he felt the prickle of energy sizzle in the air and let it be absorbed by his blades, aptly named Laverne and Shirley—to the annoyance of every family member and noble cheshir. When he acquired these blades, he knew what to name them because that particular Earth show was the beginning of his love for the baby blue planet and its inhabitants.

  He jumped and spun 180 degrees in the air, seeing the Jacko-wing fighter’s sleek, black wings. He pulled Shirley off his back and discharged the stored energy from two of their blasts at what he inferred to be the body of the fighter.

  Before Astraos saw his bolt of energy make impact, he spun back around, rolled, and snatched up the backpack he thought contained essentials the female would need. He sprung back up, clutched the backpack in his right hand, while the crunch of metal hitting ground bounced and echoed off the sides of the buttes surrounding the area. The earth belched out pieces of debris and metal from the collision, making slight cuts on his bronze skin and enveloping him in soot and smoke.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Lauren may have told herself she would not look back, but was forced to when a burst of wind howled from behind and tossed her to the ground. She hit her face on little red rocks that were once part of a small butte—it had been torn to pieces by the formerly flying space fighter. She groaned, quickly flipped herself over and looked at the cyclone of dust coming straight for her.

  And out of that cloud. . .

  Came the alien.

  Lauren scrambled to get back on her feet, but the alien was too fast. He came on like a dog in heat and snatched her up with his left arm before she could think to move further.

  Astraos said, “I gotcha.” This came out as: “Gret’uch, earthchil.”

  Lauren bore into the alien’s peculiar, amethyst eyes. Astraos could tell what was coming before it did, for a deranged glimmer entered her deep, honey hazel eyes. Lauren balled her right fist tightly, twisted her body, and swung with everything she had. To her dismay, the alien grinned. He tossed the backpack into his left hand, while still holding on to her between his pit and bicep, pressing her to his side. He opened a pocket in his utility belt and out came a syringe-looking instrument.

  Lauren attempted to escape, wiggling and writhing like a worm. “No. No. No!” She yelled, beating her fists on his stomach, which was analogous to a two-year-old hitting her.

  Astraos stopped, injected her in the neck with Gizmo’s Universal Translator that implants language nanobots into her brain and said, “There you go. Done fighting me?”

  “Huh? What?” Lauren said looking up at him. “How can I—?”

  Laser shots hit the ground in front of them, caking them with dirt and a few rocks hit her in the head, the remaining two Jacko-wing fighters (J-Wing, for short) rumbled by, both doing a barrel roll pass to come around for another shot.

  “Earth has. . . hundreds of languages? Imagine a galaxy full of inhabited planets. We have to be able to communicate. Giz—”

  “Put me down!”

  He laughed, shrugging his shoulders. “We got a second before they’re back on us. Do you know a trail into one of these cliffs?”

  “I said. . . Put me down!”

  Astraos placed Lauren down. “Look. . . they saw me carrying you. They won’t kill you, right away. They’ll torture you and leave you”—he thought about the word for a moment—“mentally challenged. . . If you help me, I can get us out of here, I think.”

  “Who are you?”

  He did a slight bow. “Astraos, at your service.”

  Lauren saw the space fighters circling back as the clouds of smoke dissipated, fright entered her voice. “How can I trust you?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Huh?”

  “Look at me, and do what your gut tells you. We have ten seconds before they dust us.”

  Lauren gazed up at this alien that towered over her by almost a foot. He looked like a Japanese video game character, with his wavy white hair—a single strand fell perfectly across his forehead and a lean and muscular build to him.

  The lasers firing at them convinced her that going with him was her best option. She pointed and said, “One hundred and fifty yards to the left there is a trail up one of the smaller buttes. The trail—”

  “Talk as we go,” he said, grabbing her and dashing to the left.

  It was quite odd for Lauren to see approaching doom from lasers shooting red lines of death while being carried like a football.

  “Give me all the directions now. I have to make a call.”

  She felt like a child being told what to do, how to do it and
when to do it. But she had no experience in such a crisis, making it hard to argue with an alien who had grinned at her punch and ran with such incredible speed while carrying her under his arm. It was incomprehensible to her, but she felt safe. “Once you go forty more yards. Wait, do you know yards?”

  “Don’t worry, it translates. Keep going.”

  “There you will take a sharp left which will lead on to a trail. About five hundred yards up, it’ll split, take the right path and it will wind to the top.”

  “Perfect.” Astraos winked at her. “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”

  Lauren sighed and said to herself, “I wish I could believe that. . .”

  He laughed joyously. “I love this. Humans. . . so fatalistic. You just don’t get that kind of doubt and openness with my species.”

  “I—” Lauren cut herself off. Let the man, er, alien take care of this. What can you contribute here? She shuddered. The words were her mother’s, she could even hear the sneer in them. Lauren was disturbed that her mother’s effect had lingered enough from their last bout to somehow scold her now.

  He pulled out a small circular device, put it to his temple and clicked it. A lens covered his right eye much like a monocle.

  Dialing. . .

  Astraos took the sharp left, jumped and ran up the trail, then slowed down slightly as the incline increased. He felt an irrational desire to explain his actions to her—very strange for his species.

  “I’m seeing if anyone can pick us up.” He closed his mouth and gave himself a second to think. What am I doing? He cast the thought aside. No time for this.

  Lauren smiled to herself, feeling ease quail the anxiety that had been gathering beneath the surface. Ah. . . She exhaled, her decision was proving itself to be the correct one.

  A red blast shot right below and bits of rock flew up and almost greeted them. “Fuck,” he said.

  “What?”

  “They’re going to swing back and hit this cliff. We don’t have much time—”