by E. M. Foner
“Nova is a two-player game,” Paul objected. “One wins, one loses. In Nova, I’d force the action by launching a point attack and then try to outthink and outmaneuver my opponent once things got messy. But I can’t just order my wing to make a suicidal attack that I know will cost at least a quarter of the players their ships even if the rest of our fleet and allies support the move properly, which is doubtful. It would put all those guys back at square one, rebuilding their game profiles.”
“Shout from our invisible overlords on algo channel alpha. It’s square,” Patches broke into the conversation. “Says, whoa!”
“As in, slow down?” Blythe asked skeptically, as she eyed the lack of action on main viewer.
“It says the opposite,” Patches reported excitedly, forgetting to speak in banter. “It says that no combat credit will be granted for ships involved in fleet actions unless one side takes over ten percent casualties, effective immediately. And it says that player profiles won’t be wiped for ship destruction in fleet actions. They’ve removed the cost of getting killed!”
“I believe you’ll get your excitement now,” Dring told Blythe drily.
“Keep the squadron together,” Paul shouted at Patches. The main view screen showed the two opposing fleets accelerating towards each other at maximum speed. “Blythe, don’t shoot any of our guys.” With that, Paul retreated into a world of fevered gibberish consisting of number and color codes, as he coordinated with the other wing commanders in the Earth fleet, and managed the three squadrons under his direct control.
Blythe put her faith in the identification-friend-or-foe system, which in accordance with her preloaded preferences, showed the enemy ships as little green dresses. She kept the weapons hot, taking them up to ninety percent capacity over and over when high probability targets presented themselves, but holding out the last ten percent in case of emergency.
Dring watched with fascination as the commanders on both sides of the battle developed new tactics in real-time. Discipline broke down almost immediately in the newer squadrons and in some of the ad hoc groupings that were formed from allied ships, creating a background soup of every man for himself. But the older squadrons held together, and began forming a variety of three-dimensional formations that had been practiced and used in smaller fleet actions.
Less than an hour into the battle, the number of participating ships had been decimated in the true sense of the word, perhaps one in ten remained. Paul’s wing had lost around a quarter of its original ships, but with the “death” of another Earth wing commander, it had grown in size by integrating the two surviving squadrons from the leaderless wing. His reputation as a Nova champion was proving to be a bigger draw for gamers than the recently established chain of command.
Three hours into the battle, both Paul and Patches were hoarse from shouting orders, but the squadron was still operational and had become the rallying point for the remaining Earth ships and their allies. Both fleets were down to a few thousand vessels at this point and had spontaneously disengaged, as if by mutual consent. Paul had the Earth vessels arranged in a formation like a bowl with the base facing the enemy, while the Horten-anchored fleet resembled a starfish with the arms reaching forward. The lone wolves and smaller groupings were all gone. None of them could stand for a second against the concentrated firepower of a large formation.
“Just about an hour left on the clock,” Blythe informed them cheerily. “This has been fun, but all the shooting is getting a little monotonous, plus it’s making me hungry.”
“We can take ‘em,” Patches croaked to Paul. “That starfish-looking thing is crazy. We could run right in there and take the arms off one by one. It’s almost like they’re begging us to flank them.”
“It’s just attrition at this point,” Paul rasped in response. “Their remaining ships are the ones with disciplined pilots, same as ours. It’s a draw unless somebody does something stupid. It’s just a question of how many ships each side will have left at that point.”
“You’ll think of something,” Patches insisted. “We just have to mix it up!”
“It’s too even,” Paul repeated. “In Nova, I could play to the other guy’s personality and style, sacrifice to distract his attention from a weak point and attack. But here he’s got thousands of pairs of eyes watching for him, and I’m not going to trick them all.”
“Might I ask something?” Dring spoke up for the first time in hours and turned to Patches. “Did the communication from the game programmers you reported earlier contain any other rule changes, or was it just the two you mentioned?”
“There was a bunch of other stuff,” Patches replied tiredly. “I just told you the bits that mattered for right now.”
“What sort of other stuff?” Blythe asked. “Can I see the transmission?” Patches acquiesced silently and made a few motions in his holo controller. A dense text document appeared on Blythe’s jury-rigged fire control station.
“Did you know about this ahead of time, Dring?” Blythe asked suspiciously, looking up from the new addendum to the Raider/Trader rules. “It addresses exactly what you were talking about earlier, the construction of capital ships. It even gives a list of ready-to-go battleships that you can purchase with Trader gold. And players can now get their combat credit by owning a share in a capital ship, they don’t have to put in the gameverse time themselves. That’s a relief.”
“It all sounds logical to me,” Dring replied. “No, I didn’t know anything about this ahead of time, but the circumstances seemed to demand it. Apparently, the game programmers anticipated the ‘fleets of equals’ problem, prepared these rule changes as a solution, and then waited to see if their prediction was accurate before making the announcement.”
“These pre-built solutions are expensive, but they look pretty neat,” Blythe said, as she moved from the text document to the newly-launched gameverse store. “You can buy a Thark battle cruiser for a half a million in Trader gold. But I thought the Tharks were a race of glorified accountants.”
“They were an aggressively expanding species that stayed off the Stryx tunnel network until an internal war of succession nearly drove them to extinction,” Dring explained. “It’s a common problem with warrior cultures when they run out of external enemies or simply fall into schism. The surviving Tharks stumbled into their current role as business enforcers by chance, and the generations have mellowed them. What other ships are featured?”
“It’s funny,” Blythe answered. “I don’t see anything from the species with real navies, like the Drazens or Hortens. It’s all aliens I’ve never heard of before. What’s a Brupt Destroyer Sphere? They want a million two for that one.”
“The Brupt were very ugly customers,” Dring assured her. “I believe the Stryx gave the Brupt a choice between leaving the galaxy or giving up all of their military capabilities. The Brupt chose to leave. Whoever these game programmers are, they either have very long memories or access to an excellent archive.”
“The Stryx made them leave?” Paul asked hoarsely, keeping an ever watchful eye on the main viewer, where the opposing fleets continued to drift apart. In another few minutes there would barely be enough time left in the gameverse to reengage if they wanted to. “Since when do the Stryx give anybody orders? I thought they were strictly into soft power.”
“Not everybody is amenable to economic inducements or technological bribes,” Dring explained. “There have been many occasions where the Stryx have acted to protect their version of the status quo. Whenever a native-grown species or an invader from outside of the Stryx volume of influence has displayed the capability and willingness to conquer or destroy worlds that have joined the tunnel network, the Stryx have presented similar ultimatums.”
“But they don’t have a military!” Paul argued. “Sure, they have a technological advantage over every other species we know of, but what good is a lab against weapons that can destabilize stars?”
“I see the Stryx must be growing modest i
n their old age if you, who grew up with them, question their military capabilities,” Dring commented dryly. “The Stryx don’t need ships and weapons, they ARE ships and weapons. It’s their mastery of space and energy that makes them the most powerful of the galaxy’s denizens. Perhaps one day another life form will arise that could challenge the Stryx on an even level, but I can’t conceive of anything that could defeat them, other than a change in the laws of nature.”
“How do you know all of this, Dring?” Blythe asked. She watched him carefully for a reaction, as if she could read something from the face of a small dinosaur.
“I have spent most of my life studying the galaxy and other complex systems. True complexity can only be understood through history, not by looking at the present state of some seemingly complicated construct. If you freeze time, everything becomes simple, or at least, amenable to explanation,” Dring corrected himself. “But true complexity encompasses processes, growth, the collisions of objects and peoples, whether they bounce apart, come together, or destroy one another. This gameverse we are currently part of aspires to true complexity by mimicking the real universe.”
“When people start making speeches like that, the fighting is over for the day,” Patches grumbled. “Should I tell the squadron you’re calling it, or are you going to let us just drift away from the Hortens until it’s obvious to everybody?”
“Drifting apart works,” Paul replied. “It’s not like a real war where we’d have casualties to tend or repairs to make. Besides, if I announced the end of hostilities, these gameverse programmers who never had anything to say before today might cancel the last hour’s combat credit, or make up a new rule.”
“Hey. Do you want a battleship, Paul?” Blythe asked.
“It’s a bit late for a birthday present,” he mumbled. It had only recently dawned on him that his girlfriend was on her way to becoming seriously rich, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
“I’m thinking of it as a business investment,” Blythe replied, with the growing enthusiasm that she brought to each new project. “I bet a lot of players would rather invest some Trader gold to buy a share of a capital ship, than to put in the gameverse combat time and have to deal with being a part of a fleet. Most of the gamers I’ve talked to outside of your barn are playing for the roving trader experience. They view the whole fighting thing as a sort of a tax.”
“I’ll take a battleship if he won’t,” Patches offered helpfully. “I already work for your dad so I may as well work for his daughters.”
“You can both have battleships. Listen. I’ll use Stryx creds to buy Trader gold on the exchange, and we’ll build a fleet quickly. We’ll sell shares to whoever wants to get their combat credit without fighting, or maybe offer a discount for qualified players who help crew for battles.” Blythe spoke rapidly, making it up as she went along.
“Why wouldn’t players just pool their own Trader gold to buy ships?” Paul objected.
“In order to afford and equip one of these virtual pre-builts, it will take thousands of players pooling their Trader gold, and then they won’t have it for trading. It’s just like the real world. If you tie up all of your capital in an investment without a liquid market, you may as well be broke. And how are thousands of players going to decide on who’s in charge of the ship, coordinate buying virtual supplies, and strategize with larger groups? It’s why backwards planets like Earth have corporations. They aren’t a good solution for anybody other than the executives and the major shareholders who get to make the decisions, but we don’t have the alternative business structures in place for large investments.”
“So how will this be different from an Earth corporation?” Paul asked stubbornly.
“It won’t, but we’ll be the executives and the major shareholders,” she explained, with a pitying look for his thick-headedness. “I’ll bet you dinner at the Burger Bar that all of the other species do the same thing, but with family, guild or clan money instead of a corporation. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few governments get involved as well.”
“Like I said, I’m in,” Patches repeated.
“What are you going to call it?” Paul asked grudgingly.
“InstaNavy,” Blythe responded immediately.
Sixteen
“Don’t the Verlocks hate everybody?” Joe asked, tightening his grip on the neck of the wine bottle as they exited the tube lift. Thanks to Kelly’s lengthy cross-examination of the latest Drazen girl sent out by InstaSitter, they were also late. “Are you sure the invitation wasn’t a mistake?”
“Is my big, strong, military attaché worried?” Kelly cooed in response, patting his arm. The truth was she had asked Donna to check with the Verlock embassy twice to make sure they were invited, and then she had triple-checked with Libby. “Don’t worry, we won’t be the only soft-skins there. If the three-toes decide to start eating diplomats, I’m sure they’ll start with the Grenouthians. I know I would.”
Along with their disdain for other biologicals, the Verlocks were primarily known for their mathematical achievements and their thick, scaly skin. They came from a volcanically active home world, and thanks to seeking out similar worlds when they achieved interstellar flight, they had never come into conflict with other species over colonization rights. The Verlocks could withstand huge temperature swings and breathe a wider range of atmospheres than any of the other unaltered biologicals, but they moved ponderously and spoke like slow-flowing lava.
“Welcome,” the Verlock doorman rumbled, starting on the word when the humans were five steps from the door and completing it as they entered the embassy. The reception room was brightly, almost painfully lit, and for the first time Kelly felt jealous of the financial resources of the Naturals League members. While it was true that the Stryx supported EarthCent in ways that were beyond a price, there was something to be said for having enough money to build a home away from home.
Behind a wall of tinted glass, lava flowed down a rocky chute into a glowing pool, from which it was continually pumped back up to the top. The floor of the room was tiled in obsidian that glowed with an inner light, perhaps a trick done with lasers. Dozens of artworks created from molten rocks or metals were scattered throughout the space. Some of these constructions may have been intended for utilitarian duties as tables or benches, but Kelly was afraid to be the first to put them to the test.
Ambassadors from many of the other humanoid and vaguely humanoid species were already milling about, most of them holding beverages of some sort or another, which led Joe to start looking for the bar. But just when he located it, aided by the creaking of the Frunge ambassador who had obviously arrived early, the doors to the banquet hall swung open and a bone-rattling gong was struck.
“Dinner is served,” intoned the Verlock majordomo, and the crowd of diplomats surged into the dining hall. It was no less splendid than the reception room, with an enormous table that looked like it was carved from a single rock, laid with gold cutlery and other accoutrements suitable for guests from dozens of different species. Holographic place cards floated over each setting, making it easy for the diplomats to locate their places, which were sensibly arranged to avoid violent outbreaks during the meal. It was apparent that when the Verlocks set out to be hospitable, they did so with the maximum effort.
Kelly found herself seated with the Drazen ambassador to her right and Joe to her left. Immediately next to Joe sat a stunning Vergallian woman who was unattended, leaving Kelly to assume she was the ambassador. As the table filled up, all of the diplomats looked around, trying to determine who had been left out. It reminded Kelly of Joe’s rule about playing poker, that if you can’t spot the sucker at the table, it’s you.
Bork, the Drazen ambassador, leaned towards Kelly and whispered, “I think all of the local species that can tolerate breathing the air are present except for Gem, not that a cloned individual counts as a species.”
“Any idea what this is all about?” Kelly whispered back, without shift
ing her eyes from the Vergallian home-wrecker.
“It’s the first time the Verlocks have thrown a party since Drazen opened an embassy on the station,” Bork replied with a shrug. “From what I’ve read of Earth history in that marvelous book you loaned me, that corresponds roughly to the beginning of your Bronze Age. I’d ask you what happens after all of the bronze gets used up, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
“Libby tells me that the Verlocks were one of the founding members of the Naturals League, so they’ve been around a long, long time. But they prefer such extreme environments that they’ve had relatively little to do with other species.” Then Kelly stopped and blushed, realizing that she was lecturing the Drazen ambassador with facts that could hardly be news to him. “The only time I’ve even sat down with a Verlock before was at a meeting to settle the gaming rules for the Union Station tourney that EarthCent sponsors.”
“You haven’t missed much,” Bork told her confidentially. Then his wife asked him something and he turned away, leaving Kelly to check up on Joe and the Vergallian temptress. Her husband’s voice sounded strangely stilted, and she listened carefully for a while to his story about some cavalry action he had led, before she realized that she was hearing her implant translating Joe’s words from Vergallian to English. Joe had mentioned picking up languages here and there during his mercenary years, but she had never listened to him in translation before.
The Vergallian ambassador appeared to be entranced by Joe’s story, and when she finally spoke, it was to invite him to dinner at her embassy. Kelly decided it was time to step in.
“How kind of you, Ambassador,” she interjected, leaning forward and putting an arm awkwardly around Joe’s shoulders without getting up from her chair. “We’ll be happy to accept.”
Whatever the Vergallian ambassador said in response was lost in another gong stroke, followed by a lot of shushing and posturing, as the gathered diplomats attempted to appear attentive before their host began to speak.
