by Nick Cole
When it was all over, when his career was done, he’d become the master of cooking hash browns and eggs. Eggs cooked in real butter. Perfect golden brown hash browns, seasoned, fried in a cast-iron skillet, topped with cheddar cheese, bacon, avocado slices, and a couple of fried, runny-yolk eggs.
When the career was over.
But it wasn’t over yet.
And until it was over, you had to look good on camera and squeeze into a uniform that left little to the imagination and didn’t hide any fat.
So for now, it was hummus on a tasteless bagel at nine o’clock on a Friday night.
Jason’s agent texted him, “This is bad.”
“How so,” replied Jason.
“Studio heads saw what happened tonight. They didn’t like it. Not for the Thundaar epic, specifically.”
“What didn’t they like?”
“She made a monkey out of you.”
“We’re not allowed to see the feeds… female captain?”
“Yes. Twitch Tonight just showed the first look of their engineer unlocking some mini-game. Good-looking Italian kid. Anyway, one of the execs, Tabitha, she says, ‘There’s our Thundaar.’ Don’t worry, it might’ve been a joke. Sorry.”
“Okay,” was all Jason could text back.
He sat down on a folding metal chair behind the set and looked at his terrible bagel. He remembered times as an actor when he’d been so hungry he would’ve killed for this bagel. Sure, his parents would’ve easily deposited money in his account, but he’d never asked them to.
Instead, he’d just starved.
After he threw the bagel in a nearby gray trash can he leaned forward and looked at his hands while still sitting in the comfortless folding metal chair.
A moment later, he dragged out his smartphone, went to his contacts, and mumbled, “It isn’t over yet.”
***
Their mysterious passenger entered the bridge. Mara and the rest of the player crew of Cymbalum swiveled the POVs of their avatars to see the Vulcan female, gamertagged T’Daara, in a short violet mini dress with complementary curves, saunter through the doors of the turbolift like a hungry cat posing for its next meal. She was the reason for their secret mission inside Federation clan space.
Cymbalum was at warp, and therefore uncloaked, heading deep into the Federation spinward frontier en route to Starbase 19.
“Part of the deal, Captain,” announced T’Daara in a monotone purr, “is for us to arrive at my destination without an escort.”
Mara stared at the beautiful avatar, wondering who was running her, and not for the first time, what all this was really about.
“I’m not aware of any other ships. We left the Fed cruiser—”
“I know you did. But my sources tell me Intrepid’s back up on Twitch and in hot pursuit. They should be at extreme sensor range any moment now.”
The mysterious Vulcan leveled a cool, emotionless gaze at Mara, who was already busy studying the tactical display built into her command chair. Looking for the powerful Federation cruiser.
For a moment there was nothing. She waited… and then, at the farthest edge of the map, a lone blue blip appeared. Sensor waves emitted from it in concentric circles.
“Contact,” announced the euphoric Drex. “You know who, Captain.”
Everyone watched Mara. She could feel it in the silence of the chat as she stared at the tactical display.
How could this be? They’d crawled away from the last encounter cloaked, undetectable, and when safely out of sensor range, they’d gone to warp. They were heading, in what had to seem to the casual observer, the most random of directions. Not in toward the Federation’s core systems for some pirating, or a raid on a military objective, but instead out, toward the Federation frontier. Into the unknown. A place where players regularly lost ships due to the inherent dangers of the zone.
Here, it was more like original-recipe Star Trek than any other place in the Starfleet Empires game. Ancient civilizations. Doomsday devices. Aliens that were basically monsters. Any number of ways to get your ship crushed to pieces and your crew killed. Even Intrepid rarely came out here. If they lost the ship on livestream, the show was over.
So, wondered Mara, how was Intrepid already hot on the trail of a ship that could disappear via cloaking device? Her ship.
She turned her command chair to stare at the main tactical display.
Turn and fight?
We lose.
Run?
They’ll catch us.
“Captain?” prompted the Vulcan player.
And we can’t show up to our secret destination with the most famous starship and crew in the game for what is most likely some kind of illegal operation involving the Make and intellectual property theft.
The star systems they passed were becoming fewer and fewer, the distances between them greater and greater.
Then she spotted Sigmus.
“Drex, what’s our intel say on the Sigmus star system?”
Everyone waited as the artificial being toned and murmured an insectile-like chitter to the ship’s computer. Some programmer’s way of distinguishing the various levels of shipboard computers. The insectile sound gave Cymbalum’s computer an outdated feel. An old computer for an old ship, thought Mara.
In real life she was getting hungry.
No time for that now.
Fight…
Or flight.
She waited.
“It’s a blue giant. Four planets. One of which, Sigmus Three, has an atmosphere similar to Venus. Completely inhospitable on the surface… but there is a Federation Free Trade Guild atmosphere mining operation.”
“Mr. Lizard, plot us a course into the system. Take us right into Sigmus Three’s atmosphere. We’ll try and hide out a bit.”
The massive lizard moved his claws over the console, and the warbird turned to port and dropped down into the elliptic plane of the system. At warp, they were racing past the outer planets, all of them bathed in a hot, almost blue light. Ahead, Sigmus Three spun like a tiny overcast Earth. Gray and white clouds swirled in large storms that covered the extreme violence on the surface.
“Detecting… no other ships in the immediate vicinity,” announced the Drex. “But not for long, I’m sure.”
“Impulse speed, engage cloaking device.”
“Captain, if you’re intent on fighting a Federation cruiser here, then we’re not going to make it to my destination,” announced the peeved Vulcan. “That ship is far too powerful for just you and your crew.”
Mara ignored her passenger.
She could feel Varek waiting to zing her.
“Federation cruiser dropping from warp… Huzzah! It’s Intrepid!” announced the Drex. “She’s powering up weapons and shields. We’re in for a real fight now! At last, our long-overdue demise has made its grand entrance!”
Mara continued to watch the forward tactical display. In the distance, the planet loomed beneath them, its upper atmosphere a clean layer of brilliant white cloud cover. Above that, high above, a ring of mining stations girded the equator like tiny futurist towers, or gossamer lighthouses, all of them connected by a lone, wire-thin transport system.
“Fly us in under the cloud cover. They won’t be able to follow or track us inside those storms.”
No one said anything as the bow angle decreased and the ship roared past a cold and lifeless high-altitude station and plunged into the storm-laden depths below.
“Going atmospheric, ssstrap your avatarsss in!” hissed the Gorn.
A moment later, there was on-screen turbulence. Everything shook. The forward display was covered in clouds and gray rain, and at times, cascading sheets of molten metal.
“Flying into an atmosphere is a nice little trick for these old warbirds,” said T’Daara, “but that’s a state-of-the
-art battleship out there, and they can wait us out. What are you going to do to get me to my destination, Captain?” The shapely Vulcan’s EmoteWare gave the voice over chat a velvety but emotionless depth. “Time is wasting, and I do need to arrive within the next six hours.”
“Arm plasma torpedo,” ordered Mara. “And load up a special also, BattleBabe.”
***
JasonDare watched the forward screen.
All eyes, he knew, including the now more than two million viewers watching what social media was trending as “The Duel,” were on him. They could watch the Twitch Channel and see him. But no one who was logged into StarFleet Empires could watch another ship’s feed. The game not only prevented players from “screen-looking,” it even locked your social media accounts and barred all access to internet references to anything in the game you were currently logged into. It was all part of the omnibus anti-hacking law passed ten years ago to make gaming “fairer and more fun”—or so the battle cry had gone during the worldwide three-day protests that had shut down major cities and the internet via riot and street protest.
But there were ways.
When Jason had gone to his smartphone after ditching the tasteless bagel, he’d DM’d one of his biggest fans. In fact, the admin of his fan page on Facebook.
“Need to know where they’re going,” he’d written.
“I can find out. Give me five, Jason.”
Sometimes you can put your fans to use, thought Jason, and then felt vaguely dirty for even thinking such. He’d vowed never to be “that guy.” And here he was, being “that guy.”
Five minutes later he was feeling some buyer’s remorse. Just a little. But it was there. And it felt good in a way. To still know the difference between right and wrong.
“Got it, Jason!” came the text.
He hesitated, staring at his smartphone. This was cheating.
And then there was his career to consider…
“She made a monkey out of you!”
And…
“There’s our Thundaar!”
How long was Captain Dare, Twitch, this show, gonna last?
You’re either moving or you’re dying, his old acting teacher used to say. Moving or dying. Words that had meaning. Words meaning more than just what was said. Life stuff. Career stuff.
And because JasonDare, once Ben Mueller, was basically still a good person, even the stuff of heroes, he asked his number one fan for a little moral guidance. Like some latter-day Achilles having a moment of doubt and looking to the hoplite just behind him on the beach, asking, “Should I go on?”
“Do you think this is cheating?” he texted.
Pause.
He knew his fan was having the greatest moment of his life. Being confided in by his personal idol. Confidant status awarded. The consigliere. A member of the inner circle of a celebrity.
“No, man,” texted the fan, but spelled “man” as “mam” in his excited thumb-rush to answer.
Jason waited.
Give me a reason, he thought. C’mon, man. Give me a reason not to cheat.
“It’s classic Kirk!” texted the fan. “This is your Kobayashi Maru. Your test against a game that can’t be won.”
And… what does that mean, thought Jason. He really didn’t know much about the old captains. He’d meant to learn, but there had never been enough time. There was always some photo shoot, some ComicCon, or some industry party he simply had to be at that night.
“James T. Kirk, the greatest captain ever, would’ve—no, did, and would do—the same thing you’re doing. Whatever it takes to win, Jason. This proves you’re the next Kirk.”
All right then, thought Jason, thinking of the Thundaar role. Thinking of playing to win the game. That’s what you did, you played to win. And if you won… you got the Thundaar role. You got to fight another battle in the eye of world. The Circus Maximus of entertainment programming. Never mind the blood on the sand.
“Give me their location,” he wrote back. And added a, “Thanks, you’re the best.”
Now, sitting in his command chair back on set with everyone watching the planet in front of them, he knew they were all asking the same question.
How’d JasonDare figure out where the Romulans went?
I have no answer for that one, and so… I’m not going to give them one, thought Jason. Instead, I’m going to give them one hell of a show, and maybe they’ll forget all about it. Leave it to the nerd conspiracy theorists to manufacture another theory so they can go on believing in all of this. Leave it to the producers to clean up.
Tonight I’ll just give them a fight they won’t forget.
“Look sharp, she’s in there somewhere,” he announced to the crew as he studied the swirling storm-laden planet on the forward viewscreen.
He knew the composer would be syncing a soundtrack on the fly to match the high drama of the moment. He could hear it if he wanted to. But he didn’t need that right now. He had a pretty good idea of what it sounded like. He also knew that by the end of this fight, everyone would be tuning in and watching clips that would give new meaning to “going viral,” some even hoping to see Intrepid go kaboom on livestream tonight.
Good, he thought. More viewers that way.
“Energy signature directly beneath us, Captain.” Tempturia in her best purr and lilt. “The metal storms are interfering with our sensors.”
“Can we get a lock, MrWong? ”
“Trying… wait… she’s surfacing now. Romulan warbird dead ahead, Captain!”
Below, dangerously close in fact, the port wing of the warbird’s warp nacelle rose from the cloud cover like some ancient whale surfacing for the last time. Then the main U-shaped hull followed up through the cloud layer, and finally the other wing nacelle.
“She’s got lock!” someone screamed.
There was only a moment to think. And in that moment, there was only room for one thought. Barely two at most. JasonDare wondered in that brief second of surprise if the Twitch viewers were indeed really about to see Intrepid go kaboom, and—
“Plasma torpedo firing!” shrieked Tempturia.
—and, that he, JasonDare, wanted to win. No matter what.
He rose from his chair and shouted, “Overload photon torpedoes now! Stand by phaser banks. Wong, evasive action!”
Ahead of them, the massive Type R plasma torpedo swallowed the screen. It was the most powerful weapon in the game and it was seconds from impact.
“Reinforce forward shields to maximum!” ordered Jason.
“That’ll be all our reserve power!” roared Wong in response.
“We’re too close to the atmosphere. It’s having an ablative effect on our shield generators,” reported some actor Jason hadn’t met yet. He’d meant to. But there hadn’t been time. There was never enough time when it was your moment.
“We’re gonna hit!” screamed Tempturia in a very un-science officer-like way. The massive burning ball of hot plasma was closely followed by the winged enemy warbird.
A moment later, the torpedo struck.
And nothing happened.
The warbird barely missed the saucer section of Intrepid as it flew past, shaking the superstructure. Or so the game’s computers told the haptic set to react as such.
There should have been a massive impact. Damage alerts and klaxons and computer-automated casualty reports, along with “Shield Down” warnings ringing out like a three-ring circus on the bridge of Intrepid.
But there was nothing.
Oh no, thought Jason, suddenly sick to his stomach as a cold realization dawned within his mind. They, the Romulan clan commander, had fired a pseudo plasma torpedo. A fake. A decoy. A special, the Romulan players called it.
“High energy turn, now!”
Wong looked dumbstruck. A moment later, his hands flew to the controls
as the massive starship groaned to obey.
They came about just in time.
Just in time to see the warbird finishing its own high-energy turn. Odds favored that one or both starships would break down and be completely at the mercy of the other.
The odds lost.
The warbird fired her real torpedo this time.
“Fire photons!” yelled JasonDare, and watched as the bright flares screeched away from the cruiser. Three struck the warbird dead center, smashing her forward shields.
A moment later, the real plasma torpedo enveloped Intrepid’s weaker, un-reinforced starboard shields. Damage alerts, klaxons, computer-automated casualty reports, and “Shields Down” warnings rang out like a three-ring circus on the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rapp turned back to face the other survivors. They were all standing in the main dome of the UltraGym. Geodesic windows gazed out on the campus, the gardens, the labs, and the main entrance. The moon was high in the early night sky now, swollen and corpulent in the late summer heat. Its harsh glare illuminated the overturned tanker truck down the road and the tiny black shadows lying motionless on the ground nearby.
“We’re not survivors,” stated Evan Fratty, as he nervously stabbed his smartphone screen in yet another vain attempt to get a connection. The power was off here, and other than the light from the moon falling down into the shadowy gym, it was dark. They’d been arguing about what to do next. Evan Fratty had taken particular affront to Rapp using the term “survivors.” In fact, he’d taken it as a personal insult to the WonderSoft Corporation.
“Whatever, buddy,” said Rapp. “But don’t come cryin’ to me when you want some water, or you need a bear killed.”
“Believe me, I won’t,” spat Evan. “This is just corporate espionage. Not the end of the world. It happens all the time. In fact, more than people know. And I can’t think of why I would want a bear killed, idiot.”
“Listen,” began Deirdre. “I need to get home now, okay?”
“I don’t think so,” rumbled Rapp.
“Why?” she replied, suddenly furious with the big thug that had saved her life. At first she’d thought he might be a possibility, seeing as he was up here on the WonderSoft campus. But then she’d realized she’d seen him in town, bartending somewhere. What she needed was a suit like Evan Fratty, regardless of how he looked, or even how he treated her. She still had high hopes this could work out between her and Evan, even though he’d left her in the garden when those wolf-things had come running straight at them. She could overlook things like that for money and security. Real security.
