The Last Starfighter (10 page)

“Excuse me . . . sorry . . . pardon me . . .” He could only hope his apologies were being properly conveyed through the many translators in use in the room. To his dismay he seemed to be drawing more attention than he’d hoped to. This was due as much to his nervousness as to his inability to negotiate the sprawling limbs of various non-human listeners.

His usual agility deserted him utterly when he stumbled over a chair support, only to step back on something the size and shape of a garden hose. The hose whipped back like a retreating anaconda, throwing him off balance and toppling him into the lap of something with a face like a tormented cantaloupe.

Strong hands caught him and kept him from hurting himself. Alex got a good close look at them as they eased him back to a standing position. They were almost normal hands, if you ignored the peagreen color and the translucent webbing that joined the fingers. Dull red veins marbled the webbing.

The bulk that heaved behind him did not belong to those friendly hands, however, but to the owner of the bruised hose. Several identical hoses twisted and curled in anger, coddling the one Alex had stepped on. They looked capable of ripping pilings away from piers.

Neither a translator nor an intimate knowledge of alien expression was required to see that he’d stepped on the wrong toe . . . uh, tentacle. Skin rippled on the alien’s face and the fury in its eyes was clear enough to anyone who cared to look. Alex didn’t care to, but his retreat was cut off and he didn’t want to risk offending anything else in the room.

As conveyed by the translator button, there was nothing ambivalent about the alien’s tone, either.

“Biped of a thousand heavy pods! I should grind you to g’run dust!” A sweeping tentacle barely missed Alex’s face.

He didn’t know what g’run dust was but was positive his present condition was preferable. Swallowing, he fought to compose a suitable reply.

“I’m real sorry, uh, sir.” He let out a mental sigh of relief when the creature didn’t react. At least he’d gotten the sex right. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean it. I’m a stranger here. Just got in.” He raised the armful of clothing. “See? I haven’t even had time to change over yet, and I didn’t want to miss the briefing.

“Anyway, we’re all here because we’re on the same side, aren’t we? No point in fighting among ourselves, is there?”

The big alien glared at him a moment longer. Then it brought forth a prodigious grunt and sloshed back into its chair, muttering one last phrase about “clumsy bipeds” and their propensity to trip over everything in sight. But the initial anger had dissipated.

Carefully Alex resumed his course toward the empty chair he’d spotted from across the room. It happened to lie next to the friendly, web-handed alien who’d caught him when he’d first tripped.

“It
was
an accident,” he mumbled.

“I’ve no doubt of that,” his new-found acquaintance whispered back at him. “Only a true fool would do such a thing deliberately. You just don’t trifle with a Bodati. They just love to fight. That’s why so many of them have volunteered to participate in this war, although I understand that the majority of them have to be kept in the rear echelons, employed in support and logistics. They’re much too impulsive and reckless to be trusted with a gunstar. They have a racial tendency, so to speak, to shoot themselves in the foot. But it’s nice to know they’re around in case it becomes necessary to go to a suicide defense.”

Alex digested this information and quickly locked in on the operative word.

“Excuse me, but you did say ‘this
war
’?”

The alien eyed him uncertainly, its gaze traveling from Alex’s face down to the uniform he still carried.

“But of course. Why else do you think you’re here?”

“I don’t know. I was told,” he said slowly, “that I was to receive some sort of honor.”

“Ah.” The webbed alien looked satisfied. “A small problem in semantics. Not that your appointment is anything but an honor, though much depends on your racial mentality. You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

“Not really.”

The alien took a gargling breath. “You’ve been recruited by the League to . .

That was more than enough to trigger Alex’s memory. The rest he knew by heart. He knew it by heart because he’d listened to a monotone mechanical voice recite the same words over and over with the same inflection each time, speaking from just beneath the surface of a wooden box. A box that sat innocently on the porch in front of the Starlight Starbright Trailer Park.

That familiar videogame voice was very far away now, as was the trailer park and everything else he could call familiar. It was unnerving to hear those same words spoken by the slick-skinned alien seated next to him, though he should have expected it.

His first thought was for Centauri. For the first time in his young life he considered wringing an adult’s neck. If that was a sign of maturity, then he was maturing at an astonishing rate. But Centauri was nowhere to be seen. Alex wondered if he’d ever see the old man again.

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 anything 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.