Games of War

"Quick! Power up the guns!" said Jace, beginning to panic.

"Jace. We don't have guns," said Elthera. To his astonishment she was quite calm. Her green face was composed again.

"No guns?" What were they going to do? They might as well be in a sardine tin. This thing would eat them…

"This is a scouting shuttle.  It's unarmed.  But I have a trick." She opened a case beside her and took out a metal fish. At her touch it began to flip its tail.

"Swim well." Elthera shoved it into a chute beside her.

Their little craft juddered again and began to be pulled away from the silver light of the comet, back into the dark ocean of space. Jace could see a colossal hulking thing drifting nearby, a great behemoth surrounded by steel tentacles… Then the huge form turned slowly in space to reveal a great, lidless eye, rimmed with fire. A glaring red eye with a pupil that was a slit into absolute darkness.

Jace got such a shock at the sight of the eye that he felt as if he had been plunged into freezing water. He yelled, although his voice seemed to come from far away.

Then Elthera's strong arms were around him and she hugged him tight to her, her green cheek cold and very smooth against his. Her firm breasts were mashed against his chest. Her sweet, synthetic scent filled his nostrils.

"It's alright, darling. My space fish is on the way. We're perfectly safe."

What was she talking about?

"See Jace, he's already rescuing us."

Jace risked a peek out of the porthole and saw the silvery form of the metal fish Elthera had released into space. It was glowing and emitting a forcefield of some kind at the metal behemoth which struck just as the monster turned, right in its huge, lidless eye. Immediately, the terrible thing writhed, its tentacles going rigid and releasing the shuttle in order to try and shield its eye from the onslaught.

Elthera let go of Jace and pressed on the shuttle controls. The little craft lurched away some distance, but then seemed to grind to a halt.

"OK, we should be out of any possible blast zone," said Elthera.

The heavens through the rear porthole were suddenly illuminated by marigold flames erupting in the darkness. The monstrous thing had exploded and in space there is no air to carry sound.

"Space Squid," murmured Elthera. "A Kraken version. The Rogue Robots manufactured them. Nasty things." She put a hand on Jace's shoulder. "You sure you're alright?"

"Um…"

She turned him round to face her and peered into his eyes. Her penetrating, sky-blue gaze made him feel like she was trying to read his mind or something. In spite of the shocking episode with the Space Squid, her closeness was quite thrilling…

Jace suddenly realised he hadn't exactly been very impressive.  First he upset her by mentioning her dead mother, and then he did nothing helpful when the Space Squid attacked. But what could he say?

"That squid… its terrible eye… don't know what I'd have done without you."

She grinned, scrunching her shiny green nose and gently touched his cheek with her cold, green fingertips. Rather like the plastic hand of a shop mannequin turned green. Oh dear, he had just admitted that he had been useless.

"Wait… have I failed…?"

She put her arms around him again and tutted. "No, no." She stroked his back. He began to feel better. At this moment he needed emotional support.

Elthera gently squeezed his shoulders and smiled at him, then turned to the control panel and switched on the vidscreen. "Calling Lighthouse Base. We were attacked by a Kraken and our engines have just died. We could use a tow."

"Acknowledged." Came the voice of an engineer from the telescreen. "We'll bring you into Pad G."

The invisible tractor beam from the station began to drag the shuttle down to the polished, grey surface of the landing pad.

Elthera's dark green lips formed a smile again as she turned to Jace. "Come on, I'll take you to dinner."

Dinner was in a Titan themed restaurant on one of the upper decks, with a great window that looked out into the starry heavens. The proprietor played loudly on a concertina as they sat down while singing (or droning) in the weird Titanic language. Jace was a little surprised when Elthera rose to her feet to join him in singing the last line, her mellifluous voice a contrast to his gravelly bass.

The other customers clapped. So Elthera wanted to show off that she could sing in Titanic?

"She taught me that," said the proprietor, clapping Jace on the shoulder. "Can you believe it? A Titanic song I'd never even heard."

"Oh. Right," said Jace, not sure how to respond.

"Anyway, she's mine. Don't get any ideas." He burst into raucous laughter as if he'd made a joke. Elthera laughed too, scrunching her shiny green nose. Jace didn't get it until the proprietor had already gone away.

It was just then Jace noticed that there was no cutlery, just slim metal wands made of a faintly iridescent blue metal. Looking around, everyone else was moving their wands in complex motions, which somehow caused the food to float off their plates so that they could catch it in their mouths.

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Elthera began to do the same. Her green cheeks bulged as she ate hungrily, but she could see he wasn't eating. She swallowed quickly. "Oh… sorry, Jace. Don't you know how to use anti-grav chopsticks?"

Given that Jace knew he had failed to impress her thus far, he thought he couldn't very well own to ignorance about the cutlery. "Oh… I use these all the time. Can't remember what a fork looks like."

He held up the chopsticks and tried to move them the way Elthera did.

"Hey!" A customer at a different table exclaimed as Jace's chopsticks somehow lifted a large glob of the strange food from his plate and hurled it against the wall.

"Oops." Jace tried again.

Elthera looked at him, her blue eyes anxious. "Simply create a down-thrust in the inverse of the field margin."

Jace had been with her all the way up to the word 'simply.' After that, he hadn't a clue what she was talking about.

He tried to pick up the wine glass, but it was fixed to the table.

"It's telekinetic wine. You have to will the liquid into your mouth. See?" Elthera pursed her dark green lips and a thin stream of the strange liquid flowed upwards into her mouth.

Jace tried to will the liquid into his mouth, but what happened was that a torrent like that from a hosepipe battered him in the face. Fortunately it stopped right away. It seemed Elthera had willed it back into the glass.

There was ribald laughter around the restaurant.

"Hey, don't laugh!" Elthera glared around at them. Jace wished he could sink into the floor.

Elthera put an arm round his shoulders and led him out of the restaurant and helped him clean his face in a washroom. He tried to wash his face in the basin as she stood right behind him. He could see her bright green reflection in the mirror. She looked a little sad. "Jace, you need to speak up for yourself. If you couldn't eat the food, why didn't you just tell me?"

"Um… I didn't want to inconvenience you," he muttered. He realised right away how dumb that sounded. Now she'd abandoned her dinner because of him. So embarrassing… oh well, he could scarcely embarrass himself in front of her more than he already had. For that reason, he actually felt more at ease around her now.

She led him back to her own quarters where they had a much more enjoyable dinner of takeaway pizza with a stuffed crust, which they shared on her couch. They shared a slice, Jace biting into the cheesy crust and Elthera into the tapered end.

"I got the crust. I win."

Elthera wrinkled her shiny green nose. "You forgot to tell me it was a contest."

"It's the way I could beat you."

She laughed and flicked her ponytail over her shoulder.

Josh wanted to talk to her about something that had weighed on his mind since he had read up on the Rogue Robots. "Elthera, I was going to ask you…" he tailed off, feeling himself blushing.

"Yes, Jace?" She gazed at him expectantly.

"It's a disturbing subject. About the Rogue Robots that threaten our borders," said Jace carefully. He remembered his gaffe earlier, when he had mentioned the death of her mother.

She looked solemn, but nodded. "Go ahead, dear."

"It's disturbing they way they were spawned by a game. That old virtual reality, fantasy game, where the players could use robots as their avatars and could even cast off their bad feelings by playing as evil characters. Those gamers messed up in a horrible way. What should have been fun turned into disaster for us all, when the evil player characters became self-aware in their robot simulant bodies. But seriously, who could have predicted such a thing? Nothing like it had happened before. But now we know we should expect the unexpected … people should try to think more than they do." He struggled to articulate what worried him most. "We're seeing people repeat the same old mistakes."

Elthera nodded. "Yes. Because we can't predict the future, we should all try to learn from history."

Jace felt a rush of relief that she understood him. He had rehearsed how to talk about the subject of the rogue avatars, but he had ended up gabbling a bit, even so.  He smiled. "I wonder which the worst Rogue Robot is."

"Most of the evil player characters who prevailed in the game gained Jackal spirit guides, to symbolise their cruelty and cunning. But an exceptionally evil one earned a Cobra icon. The Cobra leads the Jackals now."

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00O00

The Kraken had failed to kill the metahuman warrior maiden. The Jackal robot who had masterminded the failed ambush quaked in dread as he brought news of his failure to the Cobra avatar.

The Cobra's throne room on the Avatar Ship was in almost total darkness. The only light came from the flickering candles, shaped like human spinal columns. The evil leader of the Rogue Robots glared down, with glaring yellow, slit pupiled eyes, at the wretched Jackal quailing before him.

"I implore your forgiveness Cobra. I have failed."

"Forgivenesssssss … is a human concept. The Cobra knows it not. You know what you must do."

The Cobra chucked his obsidian sword with a snake shaped hilt onto the black tiled floor before the hapless Jackal.

The Jackal lifted the blade and gritting his fangs, shoved the blade into his gut. Steaming synthetic viscera and artificial organs spilled onto the floor.

The Cobra watched in cruel satisfaction for a while and then hissed again. "First! You will polish my Serpent Sword."

The Jackal blinked, bemused. "Polish?"

"Yes! Polish!"

"Just polish?"

"Yes, just polish."

"And is that all, Cobra?"

"No. Then you must write me a letter of apology."

The Jackal gritted his fangs. "So you want me to polish your sword and write a letter. Not disembowel myself?"

"You tend to jump to conclusions," said the Cobra, his evil voice shaking with mirth.

The Jackal picked up his organs and shoved them back inside his robotic frame. "Thank you for your mercy, Cobra. I think a new internal system is in order." He spied another organ on the floor. "Oops. That looks important."

The Cobra broke into hissing laughter as the mangy Jackal limped away. The metahuman had prevailed for now, but next time, she would not. The Cobra would make sure of it.

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00O00

Admiral Ajax had been playing a game of three dimensional chess with the metahuman Elthera. It was a game that required a lot of thought and also one that could last many nightly game sessions.

Ajax made his opening move. "How's your young initiate doing, Elthera?"

Elthera bit her dark green lip. "Fine." She did not meet his eye.

It was obvious she didn't want to talk to the Admiral about it, but he pressed the subject anyway.

"I know that look. You have your doubts about him."

Elthera looked up. She was frowning. Ajax could tell that, even if there were no eyebrows on her shiny green face. "It's not his fault, Ajax." She took his pawn.

He made another move. "I didn't say it was. But if he's having difficulty, you should confront him. Make him jump a bit, don't you think? You're supposed to eliminate unsuitable candidates, not mollycoddle them."

She glared, her blue eyes glinting. "Admiral… You know very well how the final phase of my metahuman warrior application went. How cruel Master Ghostal was to me and poor Jack who was tested alongside me. Jack couldn't take it." She breathed hard. "I held him in my arms as he cried each night - because of that old brute." She picked up a knight and set it down in the game cube again with unnecessary force.

Ajax moved a rook to intercept her knight. "The Ghost was a hard taskmaster. Even abusive, for all his charm.  But he eliminated all candidates except for the right one. You. Shouldn't you do the same?"

Elthera breathed through her nose. "I won't make a boy cry. I'd much rather be hurt myself than do that." She moved her queen. "Check."

"You won't do anyone any favours by being soft on a candidate." Ajax moved his queen. "Stalemate."