Alien Game

by Rod Walker

  “How many?” said Tanner.

  “At least five hundred,” said Charles. “Possibly more.”

  I turned my head and saw the gunship flying overhead, a black shadow against the alien sky of Arborea.

  “Sir,” said Mulger. “I think we’re ready. Does the gunship have targets?”

  “Yes,” said Argent. “You’re at a safe distance, Mulger. Gunners, you are clear to fire.”

  The Security Ministry gunship started firing plasma shells at the tromosaurs.

  They were on the lowest power setting, Argent explained, so weak they would have been useless for ship-to-ship combat.

  Nonetheless, from the vantage point of the quadcopter, it looked as if God had decided to start raining fire down upon Arborea.

  There was a brilliant flare of white light, and then a roar as a line of fire erupted from the field and engulfed the tromosaurs. Mulger snarled and yanked the quadcopter’s stick as the shock wave buffeted the craft, and sent us banking back towards Outpost Town. Through the canopy, I saw a massive lake of roaring fire, and no trace of the tromosaurs.

  “Cease fire,” said Argent. “Mulger, status?”

  “I think that did the trick, sir.” He sounded more than a little awed. I know I was.

  “It is possible we are the first humans to successfully hunt tromosaurs using plasma-based weaponry,” said Charles.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it for trophy-hunting,” Mr. Royale observed.

  “Yeah, we made history,” said Argent his voice hardening. “Come on in and land at the administrative building. Royale tells me there’s an empty helipad on the roof. I’ll tell the gunship to land by the convention hall, and we’ll want your help to deal with any surviving tromosaurs. You want to make history, Mr. Charles? Well, we’re about to arrest half the richest men and women from twenty different worlds. We’re going to make a whole lot of history before we’re done.”

  We landed on the helipad and assisted the power-armored Security Ministry officers as they disembarked. As it turned out, the plasma barrage had wiped out most of the tromosaurs, so there wasn’t much left for us to do.

  So I was there when SecMin Colonel Cassius Argent arrested a whole lot of very rich, very terrified people.

  Chapter 10: Colony Company

  Arborea was all but destroyed. And as a result, New Princeton was in political disarray.

  We didn’t start a revolution, and we didn’t exactly cause the overthrow of the Acadarchy, but I think we indirectly triggered something of a coup. Without Valier at the helm, the other Ministries went after the Ecology Ministry with all the ravenous glee of a starving tromosaur, and the Security Ministry carried out mass arrests of EcoMin’s leadership. It turned out that a few officials had known about Valier’s little human hunts, and considerably more ministry employees had their hands in the till in one way or another.

  I think we also sparked an amount of economic upheaval across the Thousand Worlds. Many of Valier’s guests had been extremely wealthy and extremely powerful men, right up until they found out that tromosaurs respected neither wealth nor power. The deaths of executives from twenty-six of the Thousand Worlds’ most powerful companies caused a lot of infighting, the implosion of some companies, arrests at others, and many official disavowals of their recently devoured CEOs and chairmen.

  So, while there wasn’t a revolution or a military coup or anything like that, before the disaster at Arborea one set of people were in charge of the Acadarchy, and after the disaster a new set of people were in charge. Most of the former were either in prison, were discovered to have committed suicide with a bullet to the back of the head, or had voluntarily resigned in haste to spend more time with their families. That was probably how I found myself with my new job.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to Arborea for a bit.

  Argent’s men were good at their job. Once we had cleared Outpost Town of the last of the tromosaurs, the SecMin agents started searching for survivors. It turned out there were more than we’d expected. Only a few of the guests had accompanied Valier to watch him deal with us and shared his fate. Many other, however, had thought it was more fun to stay in the air-conditioned convention hall and watch the proceedings via video, so they got to watch in comfort as Valier and his men got eaten. Argent’s men found them there and arrested the lot of them.

  Most of them were billionaires, with a few trillionaires in the mix, so they all had the very best lawyers money could buy. Unfortunately for them, there was one obstacle no amount of legal chicanery could overcome.

  Valier had left behind an absolute mountain of evidence.

  His apparent sloppiness made sense when you considered that he planned to kill every last employee of Safari Company and destroy all of the evidence with Outpost Town. But Valier got himself killed before he could get around to that, and Tanner’s security cameras recorded everything. Also, Argent’s men took over Valier’s shuttle and found that the former Ecology Minister had kept meticulous records. Even without the video evidence, the records were enough to seal the fate of Valier’s guests and seven EcoMin vice-ministers. Theresa’s mother wasn’t one of them, though, and I was kind of glad about that.

  But something very interesting was revealed in Valier’s records.

  It was the second time he had done this.

  It turned out it wasn’t even his idea originally, he was carrying on a program that had been designed by the previous Ecology Minister as a method of population control. Valier’s insight was to realize how the vulnerable state of any human colony on Arborea would allow him to repeat the lethal game there as many times as he could wipe the slate clean.

  Mr. Royale quoted some old Earth book about how the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another, but Mr. Royale does like his old Earth books, but Kayla only said in a quiet voice that it was just as well she hadn’t gotten her hands on Valier.

  For those of us who survived the destruction of Safari Company, we didn’t get in too much trouble, which kind of surprised me. I had to give a lot of interviews to various Security Ministry investigators, and I was questioned very closely about the sonic fence, but the investigators concluded that everything we had done had been justifiable self-defense. It probably helped that half the leadership of the Security Ministry had been after Valier for a long time. Colonel Argent even got promoted to vice-minister for interplanetary relations.

  At first, I went back to repairing KwikBreet machines and delivery vans for Mr. Royale’s company. Hoskins took over as his general manager, and Hiram Charles got a job with the Security Ministry in charge of overseeing dangerous wildlife. Tanner and Kayla returned to New Princeton as well, with Tanner moving into private security work, and Kayla writing technical manuals about quadcopters. One of the dead Safari employees had left behind an orphaned baby girl, and after much legal rigmarole, Tanner and Kayla adopted her. Kayla seemed pretty happy, and even Tanner seemed less surly than usual. I was pretty sure parenthood suited them, and that they would wind up adopting a second one sooner rather than later.

  I was glad to be alive, but it wasn’t long before I was getting kind of bored. As awful as it is surviving quad-crashes and slogging through the jungle, getting bitten by blood-sucking bugs and being attacked by vicious predators both human and inhuman, it turns out that it’s hard to go back to an ordinary life after that. Nothing really seemed to matter all that much anymore.

  I still didn’t like Wilson City very much. At one point Theresa even got in touch with me, wondering if we could get together, but I deleted the message and blocked her. I wasn’t that bored, and besides, it would be safer to date a tromosaur.

  But then Mr. Royale asked me to join his new business venture.

  One of the things that changed along with the leadership of the Acadarchy as their attitude towards establishing new colonies. New Princeton had not founded a colony in decades, thanks to the Ecology Ministry’s negative opinion on the matter, but Valier’s downfall
had changed things. Now the Acadarchy was chartering new colonies, offering them to the highest bidder… and with a little help from the new SecMin vice-minister Argent, he got a sweetheart deal. The Acadarchy had rights to a planet a few hundred light years away that featured an arid, but temperate climate, and they wanted to set up a colony there.

  After calling in a few more favors, Mr. Royale had won the bid to establish that colony.

  So that was how I became one of the founding members of the Tennent Colony Company. I wasn’t the only Safari survivor either. Charles signed on as well, as did the Tanners and some of the others who had survived Arborea.

  And to my very great surprise, Uncle Morgan sold the farm and signed on as well.

  “It’s a new world, Sam,” said Uncle Morgan, clapping me on the shoulder. “Never thought I’d see the day. You and me, I think people like us were born to be out on the frontier. We don’t belong here on a planet that’s been tamed and domesticated for centuries. Maybe we’ll make a mess of it, or maybe we’ll build something great. Either way, I’m looking forward to finding out.”

  “I am, too,” I said.

  Even more surprising was when Mr. Royale appointed me Assistant Advance Team Leader. He came to see us off on our trip to complete the initial planetary survey and select a site on which to establish the first settlement. He said goodbye to the others, and saved me for last.

  “I’d ask if you were ready for this, Sam, but I know you’re more than equal to the challenge.” He held out his hand and we shook. He had a firm grip.

  “I appreciate your confidence in me, Mr. Royale. And I appreciate the way you’re paying me this time even more.”

  He grinned. “Shoot straight and deal squarely, Sam, and not even the sky is the limit for you.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and watched him walk away.

  “Get a move on, Spraycan!” I heard someone call from behind me. “We’ve got a whole world waiting for us!”

  It was Tanner. I laughed, picked up my bag, and turned to walk up the boarding ramp of the colony ship.

  THE END

  Fiction

  Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

  The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

  Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf

  Fantasy

  One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

  The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

  Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright

  A Magic Broken by Vox Day

  A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

  The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

  The Last Witchking by Vox Day

  Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

  The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

  The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

  The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

  The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

  Science Fiction

  Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

  Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

  City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

  Somewhither by John C. Wright

  Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

  Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

  Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

  Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

  Alien Game by Rod Walker

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

  Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

  Military Science Fiction

  There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

  Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

  Non-Fiction

  4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

  A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

  Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

  Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

  On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

  Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

  Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

  Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

  Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

  SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

  Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

  On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

  On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: It’s Good To Have Friends

  Chapter 2: Environmentalism For Fun And Profit

  Chapter 3: Spit and Polish

  Chapter 4: The Most Dangerous Game

  Chapter 5: Interdepartmental Rivalries

  Chapter 6: Complications

  Chapter 7: Hostile Takeover

  Chapter 8: Tactics For Beginners

  Chapter 9: Man Against Nature

  Chapter 10: Colony Company

  Mutiny in Space

  Swan Knight's Son

  Castalia House