Face it. He was stuck.
“. . . defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada,” he muttered, finishing the sentence for his alien friend. All was becoming clear now. Much too clear.
This wasn’t a game. This was real. Evidently the videogame he’d mastered after dozens of hours and quarters was far more than a toy whipped up in Silicon Valley by energetic hackers to separate teenagers from their allowances. The game looked like other videogames, played like other videogames, but its fire control systems and stratagems were drawn not from some programmer’s imagination but from real interstellar altercations. From reality.
He’d been recruited because of his success at the game. He could be sure of that much now. There was an intimate connection between the game and this faraway conflict. For some reason outsiders had been chosen to participate in the coming war, and good ole’ game-whiz Alex was included among them. What an honor. What luck. What a great prize. The booby prize.
By passing some carefully constructed test disguised as a videogame he’d won the right to be carted halfway across the galaxy for strangers to shoot at. No way, Jose!
He looked anxiously toward the exit, but all the doors had been sealed. There was an undercurrent of anticipation running through the assembled sapients that he could feel, and he had to admit to a certain curiosity as to what this imposing Ambassador Enduran had to say. In any case, the only halfway clear aisle leading outward from his chair led past the slumping Bodati, and that was a path he had no intention of crossing again.
Besides, this wasn’t in the game. The game never said anything about a prebattle conference or a visit from some League official. He was curious, despite his anxiety. The League was a reality, not just a string of synthesized words.
There was much more to this than repetitive space battles. There were reasons behind the actions he’d mastered on the machine, real beings with matters of importance at stake. A lot more than a lousy couple of quarters, that was for sure. Though he hadn’t the slightest intention of getting involved, he couldn’t shut out his interest in the momentous events unfolding around him.
Anyway, he was stuck in the briefing room, at least until the Bodati moved. He might as well settle back and pay attention to the speaker. Nothing was wasted. He might get a good essay for English out of it.
His own concerns were soon lost as he became caught up in the ambassador’s speech. This was no game to Enduran or any of the other aliens seated in the room. Worlds were at stake here.
There was sadness in the ambassador’s voice, but also determination. Here, Alex knew, was an intelligent creature who abhorred war as the ultimate degradation of civilized species, who nonetheless had been forced to countenance and organize armed resistance. Alex could sense the strain this decision had put on him and found himself sympathizing. The speech Enduran was making wasn’t easy for him. He talked of the forthcoming conflict with obvious reluctance, as though the very mention of terms like “war” and “battle” caused him physical pain.
“Eons ago, our ancestors, your ancestors, joined together to form the League, an association of civilized, peaceful peoples and worlds. We abjured any further expansion, believing that further growth could only result in an organization too large to be governed efficiently.
“Others outside the League have always been jealous of our stability and achievements. To protect ourselves from their barbaric incursions the Frontier was established, a region unclaimed by the League which we allowed no others to claim. As you know, it is impossible to define an actual boundary in interstellar space because of the immense distances involved, so the real Frontier was in the mind.” He turned to gesture briefly at the illuminated screen hovering behind him. Lines of light moved about on the screen in concert with his words, illustrating the points he made.
“Each member world of the League was equipped with a shield projector, able to forestall the approach of any ship or cluster of ships determined to be hostile. As many of you are aware, such projections render the drives of all modern vessels inoperative and are capable of incapacitating an entire approaching fleet one ship at a time or all at once, as the requirements dictate. The closer a hostile vessel approaches the more devastating the effects of the shield projector. A formidable and yet civilized weapon.
“Safe from the chaos and ravages of war, we of Rylos and the other worlds of the League enjoyed all the prosperity and comfort that comes to those who choose peace over war. Insulated from these primitive conflicts we have done well. Each of your peoples has done well.
“It would seem to any reasoning creature that peace is preferable to war. Yet there still exist those who believe it is possible to acquire what they cannot themselves create by taking it from others through the application of force. They can build great engines of war but cannot see the folly of their own intentions. Still, even a small mind can bring down a great peace. This is the danger we now find ourselves confronting.
“I am afraid that the time for reasoned words is past. The Frontier remains, impenetrable as ever, the shields as effective as when they were first designed and installed. They stand ready to repel any assault from outside.
“The danger lies from within. We have been betrayed. The Frontier may be endangered from within our own ranks. We suspect someone with access to the most sensitive military information has delivered the design of the shield projectors to the Ko-Dan.”
This disclosure produced much nervous muttering in many languages as the import of it was discussed. Enduran let them talk for a while before gesturing for silence.
“Security has been increased tenfold around individual shield stations and backups on all League worlds. Our researchers are working overtime to find a method for modifying the projectors which will render them invulnerable to signal distortion or external interrupt. But such work takes time and cannot be hurried. It now seems we may not have that time.
“We here on Rylos are especially vulnerable, since the traitor comes from this world. And he does not work alone. The specter of absolute power tempts many otherwise decent citizens. This is an old pattern, repeated through much pre-League history. Absolute power is an aphrodisiac only the strongest are able to resist.
“Worse, we have grown mature without becoming wise. Peace and prosperity have also brought with them boredom and monotony. There are those who would swamp such personal discontents beneath a wave of destruction. They don’t care if they succeed in their aim of overthrowing the League or not. They are interested only in the excitement and stimulation which war brings.
“These are not the dangerous ones. These are the sick, the ill, the misinformed and misused. Yet when their efforts are coupled with the more prosaic evil of the real traitors, the danger they present is all too grave.
“So it is not even the Ko-Dan we have to fear, but our own kind. It seems we are destined one last time to do battle with ourselves. The historians say such upheavals are inevitable, and that we have managed to prolong our great peace to its limits. If we can overcome this convulsion, that peace will return for a long time to come.
“If not . . .” He executed the Rylan equivalent of a shrug. “. . . then there is a good chance the League could disintegrate into civil war, with some worlds continuing the resistance and others allying themselves with the traitors. What the latter will not see is that behind all such eruptions wait the Ko-Dan, patient and ready to take over every world. This cannot, must not be allowed to happen.”
He pointed over their heads, toward the line of sleek, powerful ships arrayed in the big hangar outside the briefing chamber.
“So we have no choice left but to put aside peaceful methods of settling disagreements and dust off these relics of a more combative age. They have been updated and modernized to where they are as efficient and, I am sad to say, deadly as anything that flies. Our ancestors would admire their new capabilities. I cannot.” He sighed deeply.
“Yet it seems they must be employed. We believe they are quite superior to any
thing the traitors or the Ko-Dan have in their arsenal. Resistance to their attack they will expect . . . but not resistance of such effectiveness. They know we have relied for hundreds of years on the defensive potential of the Frontier. They should not be expecting us to attack them.”
“How can we be so sure of what the Ko-Dan can bring to bear?” wondered a voice from the rear of the assemblage.
Enduran allowed himself a slight, very human-looking smile. “Merely because we strive for peace does not mean we do not prepare for war. We have our own servants among the traitors. I am assured that our gunstars, completely rebuilt and updated as they are now, acting under the command of the best Starfighters the League can muster, are more than a match for anything the Ko-Dan have built. If we react in time. We are still not entirely sure of how the traitors and the Ko-Dan plan to announce their intentions.” He gazed past them, through the glass wall, to the line of ships waiting in the immense hangar.
“So much intelligence, so much effort and energy, wasted on the restoration of antique war machines. Taken together they have not the elegance or permanence of a single song cycle.” He let his stare drop back down to the waiting pilots and crews.
“What a tragedy. To think that we have come so far, achieved so much, at the expense of our own defense. Because while we still possess these machines and the talent to improve them, the ability to utilize them in battle has been bred out of the majority during the long peace.
“Hence the exhaustive hunts which have brought you together here. Just as these vessels are reminders of our violent adolescence, so are you and the abilities you still retain. You see, you all are also relics. Few are left who can use these ships. Peace breeds contentment, and contentment stifles the fighting reflexes and urges and what we might call the, uh, gift of doing battle.
“Among the billions of citizens of the League, grown contented and easygoing over the centuries, only a few are left who still possess this gift. Only a few. You few.” He let that sink in before adding, “The future of our civilization, of the League itself, rests on you. You, the most extreme throwbacks, the most primitive and yet skilled among us. It is a talent I have no desire to possess. I pity you for it. I envy you for it. I salute you for it.”
A muffled cheer rose from the assembled fighters. Many of them were outcasts, social misfits on Rylos and the other worlds. Now that which caused them to be shunned was to be their redemption. After this war they would be regarded as saviors; not to be liked, perhaps, but to be respected. All looked forward to the forthcoming conflict.
All, that is, save one, who kept his thoughts to himself and wished desperately that he were elsewhere.
Enduran waited patiently for the cheering and the shudderingly robust war cries to die down. He’d been told by the psychologists to expect something of the kind, but still, to see such naked expressions of violence among citizens of the well-behaved League was a shock.
A fortunate one, though. Without such citizens there would be no chance of turning back the Ko-Dan incursion. He studied the many different visages and expressions and marveled at the similarities. The urge to combat, to fight, to kill, had been drained from the general population by hundreds of years of peace. Yet a residue of the ancient feelings still remained. He felt terribly sorry for all of them.
“You alone,” he went on, hating what he was doing, hating the carefully calculated manipulation of primitive emotions but at the same time knowing how necessary it was, “stand between the rest of us and the dark terror of the Ko-Dan. You alone must do what the rest of us can no longer do. You alone must place yourselves between civilization and chaos, between aspiration and anarchy. You alone must resist, must fight, must destroy!” The speech clogged his throat and he could say no more.
He didn’t have to. The speech, carefully designed by the amunopsychs, had precisely the effect on the gunstar pilots they’d intended it to. There was a unity of feeling running through the assembly now that transcended such trivialities as racial type and world or origin. These pilots and navigators were defectives, on whom Enduran’s words had a powerful effect.
“Victory or death!” shouted one uniformed support officer. The chant was taken up by the others, including the pilots. The force of it shook Enduran. He’d been warned, and the tranquilizers they’d pumped into his system helped him to remain calm, but the feeling of raw violence that now overwhelmed the chamber was terribly unsettling to anyone who regarded himself as a civilized creature.
And he’d been chosen to deliver this presentation because he’d tested out emotionally more resilient than his colleagues. The fury of the fighter’s response to the speech would surely have caused poor Masurv of Cann’our, next in line to make the presentation, to faint on the dais.
They were on their feet now, circulating through the briefing room like a living storm, pilots and navs and technicians and engineers, all selected for defects in their emotional makeup. Defects which made them pariahs on their home worlds but heroes of the battle to come. They pounded each other enthusiastically with hands or tentacle tips, slapped backs or carpaces as they strove to bolster each other’s spirits. Fighting spirits, Enduran told himself. We have not progressed far enough.
Which was lucky for everyone else.
Alex was on his feet with everyone else, stumbling through the crowd and trying not to get trampled in the excitement. His course wasn’t planned and he was just trying to reach the far wall without tripping over any chairs or Bodati tentacles. In a few moments he found himself nearly in the clear, on the opposite side of the chamber.
Where a familiar figure was moving easily through the mob, its attention fixed on a handful of glittering crystalline shapes.
Alex started shoving his way through the remaining crowd, ignoring occasional outcries and not even caring if he offended some belligerent Bodati. The figure he was heading toward was joined by a uniformed alien. Together they headed for an open doorway.
“Centauri, Centauri, wait!”
His recruiter/kidnapper didn’t hear him. Or maybe he did and was hurrying out of the room. Alex was clear of the press of alien bodies then. Their cheers and whistles echoed in his ears as he plunged down a short hall and out into the main hangar.
It was filled with noisy equipment being operated by the usual assortment of strange creatures, some of whom were more outre in appearance than the machines they worked with. There was no sign of Centauri, though he thought he saw a half-familiar shape vanishing around a far corner.
He ran, waving and yelling, and not looking where he was going. Fortunately, the alien he ran into was no Bodati.
5
It was quite humanoid, though completely hairless. The rounded skull and the face with its deep-set yellowish eyes was covered by a thick orange-yellow crust that reminded Alex of desert ponds months after scorching heat had caused them to dry and crack. He was tall (the “he” another sexual presumption on Alex’s part which turned out to be correct) and, thankfully, devoid of tentacles.
“I’m sorry,” Alex apologized. There was no sign of Centauri now, and no way of knowing which way he’d gone.
“This is a restricted area, off limits to . . .” The alien stopped in mid-sentence, examining Alex more closely as they both knelt to recover Alex’s clothes and the small handful of components the tall being had been carrying.
“I don’t recognize your species,” he said.
“Human.” Alex stared at a six-inch-long something that filled his hand. It looked like a cross between an oversized ballpoint pen and an electric toothbrush. He suspected it was neither, and handed it over.
“From Earth,” he added.
“Earth what?”
“Just Earth. We like to keep things simple.”
I don’t believe I’m having this conversation, he told himself. I don’t believe a bit of it.
“That’s a uniform.” The alien gestured with a thick-skinned hand at Alex’s bundle of clothing.
“Yeah.” Alex ga
thered it up. As he rearranged it in his arms, the alien caught sight of the insignia on the front. His manner changed abruptly.
“Pardon me, Starfighter. I am Navigator/Systems Operator Grig. At your service, sir.”
He performed an awkward salute which Alex found interesting to observe but impossible to duplicate. So he took the thick hand and shook it instead. Grig inspected his freed limb thoughtfully.
“Curious custom.”
“We like it.”
“Individualistic yet intimate, this personal physical contact. Never cared much for it myself, but everyone is entitled to his own mode of greeting, isn’t he?”
“If you say so, Grig.” Alex nodded toward the line of silent gunstars. “You fly those?”
“Me, fly? You mean as an attack pilot? Dear me, no. I am a Navigator and Systems Operator. I run the ship during combat, thus freeing the piloting Starfighters to do what they do best: fight.”
“Your job sounds tougher than the other.”
“Not in the least. I have only mechanical problems to deal with, instead of mental ones. You are named?”
“Sorry. I’m Alex Rogan.”
“Two names?”
“That’s our custom.”
“Naming does vary from system to system, culture to culture. I find the use of more than one name unnecessarily duplicitous, though there are those species who make use of a dozen names or more.”
“Hate to have to sign my name like that.” Alex studied his new acquaintance. Grig was more than polite; he was downright deferential. He also struck Alex as straightforward, honest and devoid of guile. Maybe this was his chance to get a straight answer or two to some questions.
“Listen, Grig, maybe you can help me out. See, I was playing this game back home, a videogame, and this guy comes along, only he’s no guy. He’s an alien, a non-human. I get into his car, only it’s no car, it’s a spaceship, and there’s been a biggggg mistake somewhere along the line.”
Grig stared back at him. “My friend, you sound very confused.”