The Gaming Outpost

Jessamine Cantrell, former Miss League beauty queen, smiled professionally at me as I entered the penthouse office. Even ten years past her victory, she caught your eye with her glistening chestnut strands, and graceful moves.

“The boss needs to see you, Harry.” She said in a dulcet tone. She was happily married, but I ranked high in her book as I had saved her life once. I was chief of security for Nils Hansen, billionaire canal-builder. Saving his employees lives was my job, but for Jessamine, who was as lovely inside as outside, it had been a true pleasure.

I nodded, and walked across the silk carpet, and opened the heavy mahoghany doors. They swung open at a touch.

Nils looked up from his breakfast of salted eggs, and waved at me to sit down and join him. I saw my breakfast of grits and bacon sitting on his desk.

I had barely touched it, when he flicked a button on his desk. An AV picture appeared on the screen at the end of the spacious office.

It showed stars. I shoved a bit of bacon into my mouth, knowing I needed fortification to keep up with Nils. The man had started at eight years old being kicked out of his home by a stepfather. He had his first million by sixteen. His biggest project was the Siberian Canal.

Then he flicked up another picture, also of stars, but something nagged at me. They were the same stars. But right in the middle was a new star.

“K2 Observatory saw this new star. They have no clue what it is.”

“Drive flare.” I said with certainty.

Nils looked at me, and shook his head.

“I hired you for…that.”
I looked at his gray hair, his tight mouth, and his too keen eyes.

“I’ve never asked you what it is. You have your secrets. But sometimes you know something no one could know, and you’re almost always right. I did not just hire you because you were a world-class security expert.”

Of course. I am a verser, an extradimensional traveller. I look twenty-seven, but I’m 115 years old. And I’ve seen a Bussard ramjet sublight starship, up close, as I had worked as a technician on them in a starport.

“It could be a missile, interstellar. If so…” I did not want to continue that statement.
“We’re toast as things stand. Our strongest laser is a hundred kilowatts and there is no way we could hit an object going at a decent fraction of lightspeed.”

“Not that that is likely. If you’re going to shoot someone with a dart from another star, you don’t usually put visible rockets on it. You want to be stealthy.”

It was a somewhat frail branch of hope I offered.

Nils nodded.

“The other is that its a ship.” He paused, and breathed in. “I need you to research this, dig into this. Find out what’s going on.”

And he looked at me, and I saw that in his mind, he was calling in all the markers he thought I owed him. I am not sure I owed him as he thought. I gave him good service for good money. But then, he had made a place for me at his Christmas table, and introduced me to his grandchildren.

“Okay, boss.” I said, and grabbed another bit of bacon before heading out the door. To the left, was my office.

Inside, Carmen stood as I entered. It was not just politeness, but a means of getting ready for a fight disguised as politeness. I had taught that and a hundred other tricks to my boys.

“Carmen, I’m going solo. You’re taking over day to day.”

I could see his eyes unfocus as he mentally shifted from being about to dump his problems on my shoulders to deciding how to handle them himself.

“Get me a hundred K in gold minis, a combat vest, and prep the Rutherford.”

“Yes, sir. You sure…”
They always offered to have someone come with me, and I always refused. I can do things no normal man in this universe can do. Hard to explain to your normal human employees why you have metallic retractable talons, or you can punch through a steel door with your bare hands. Jessamine knew I was not normal, but she had kept her mouth shut about it.

I went into my office, and spun open the Always Closed Safe.

Inside it were my identity papers for a dozen worlds, some of them from the same universe, various forms of portable wealth, and my plasma carbine.

With it, I could, well, let’s say I could win an arguement with a tank. It was more powerful than the ten story Battle Laser the League Army was testing out east.

With that, and my other toys stowed in a briefcase, I checked on my appearance. Yeah, I looked like the properly soulless go-go ambition driven business type in my suit and black thin tie, and my close-cropped hair.

Carmen walked me down to the basement, and handed me into the Rutherford. It was my special car, heavily modified by the locals to this universe.

I waved, and then shoved the gas pedal down. Happily, this universe had plenty of nuke power, and plenty of oil power. A V12 was not that unusual, but every time I hit the pedal, and the thing leapt forward, I marvelled.

We sung like a steel violin string on our way out of the basement garage.

I zipped across downtown, and headed toward City Gulf College. There a quick visit to the Dean’s office, and I was sent to meet with Dr. Marvin McCullough, professor of ancient history.

His office could have fit inside one-tenth of Nils’ office, but then Nils had been no doubt, more than a hundred times more useful to the human race. Which was no slam on the professor who gave me a friendly enough smile.

“Looking for material to write a book on ancient battle tactics and modern business?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I helped write ‘Classical War Strategies for the Current Business Season.’ Jerk never paid his last fee.”

I thought, and looked about the heavily stacked office, filled with bookshelves and more books and papers than even I could read in a dozen years, and took out my checkbook.

I wrote a check for five thousand.

“This is a possible retainer, and it is for absolute discretion.”

He took the check, and choked a bit. I waited until the reaction subsided. Sometimes the grand gesture is very effective.

He nodded and waited for me to ask.

I asked him about the legends and mythologies of the ancient world, particularly as they dealt with deep space.

“Well, as you know, this is a colony world, settled several thousand years ago…”

I blinked. I had not know. My surprise showed, and he shook his head while muttering something about ‘what are they teaching these days?’

My problem was my knowledge of this world was in only limited areas as I had first arrived fourteen years ago from another dimension.

“Okay…,” He considered how to simplify his lecture without being condescending in manner. “Starships come from other stars, where humans lived, and land here, and we spread, and we lose the technology of the starships and the memories.”

I nodded that I understood.

“But, we have legends, and folk tales. Its surprising how long such tales can hold a kernel of truth. The song ‘Kiltie’s House’ says lightning struck the house, but what it is referring too is a battle fleet invading Kelten Harbor and the first use of cannons to knock down the duke’s castle. And that happened nearly a thousand years ago.”

Rather slow technological growth, I noted. Earth had proceeded from ship borne cannons to tanks far faster than a thousand years.

“So you’re saying some of the old legends hold memories of the past, perhaps in disguised form like that song which everyone thinks is about the mythical Kelties sea nymphs.”

“Just so.” He nodded in satisfaction that I had grasped his point. “Now, the legends differ. Some say, many ships came. Others say only one ship came. And there is a lot of dispute about the name of the one ship, and the nature of its crew. I think there must have been a mutiny.”

“Which might explain the lost technology.” I filled in. It could easily happen. The Captain says…ship’s broke. We’re living here. Crewmen say ‘no, we have to get home’.

“Ok. But what about the possibility of people evolving?”

“Oh, you’re talking about the ancient philosopher Derby. The problem with that is that you would have to have innumerable tiny alterations, and each set of alterations would have to be fossilized. The evidence would be there. Instead, we see that there is nothing, then there is something. Almost none of what we have ever shows any sign of change, and what it is, is very small, probably only that we’ve seen a child and an adult fossilized. And then things die. The Camboric Expulsion, shortly after the Landing, well, there were several dozen species who simply died. I personally think it was a nuclear strike on the greenhouses for some reason. Right now, we only have Lions, but in the rock near Camboric, you can see Pumas, and Tigers, and Elephants. Our biggest land creature is a dwarf rhino, and why do we call it a dwarf? Because someone centuries or millenia ago, knew of a larger rhino.”

I caught some of his enthusiasm.

“So, no evolve.”
“No, you got some Nativists, as in born here, who worship the planet as a life-giving goddess or something, but no one takes them seriously.”

I thought.

“Ok, what about the stars and ancient myth…”

“Ah,” He paled a bit. “Always bad. In every Creation Story, the Ship or Ships were fleeing from Horror, and were pursued. In every story, the Depths of Space is the realm of demons. Even now, in popular culture…” He thought. “There has to be about four or five movies this year on that topic….from the Depths of Space Evil Comes.”

Come to think of it, he was right. I had seen “Shadowcreep” about an alien serial killer with a date. Let me tell you, not a good choice for a date movie.

This was seriously troubling, I thought as I let myself out. If their legends held truth, then it was very possible something malign and technologically advanced was heading the direction of the planet.

Thinking deeply, I walked out to my car. But still, that doesn’t excuse my inattention.

The first thing I noted was that something was swinging toward my head. I ducked, and back-kicked the offender in the chest. Wheeling about, I stop-thrust a punch to the charger’s chest. He folded. Four more came in, and I flipped into a roll back on the top of my car’s roof. A twist about, and a scissor’s kick and the fellow on the far side of the car was now breathing past a broken nose. I dropped down near him, and searched his pockets even as he feeby fought me.

“This Planet is our Cradle. Worship the Lady. We Evolved Here.”

It was a three-sided groupid. People here tended to collect little three sided slogan holders, in place of thinking, as markers for their personal identity. Nils forbad his employees from doing so with his company name.

“I’m just very rich. I’m not a god. I don’t want worshippers.”

Right Nils. But Mankind needed to worship, it was built into us by our Maker, but all too frequently short circuited.

I pulled out my gun, and backed up. They were coming around the car on both sides. When they saw my gun, they halted.

“Yeah. I have a gun. I’m also a Combat Pro instructor. So beat feet you lunatics back to whatever hole you came from.”

They did, but I give them marks for getting their wounded.

Still, I had learned a new curse word. Evos.