Alien Game Read online

  Alien Game

  Rod Walker

  Copyright

  Alien Game

  by Rod Walker

  Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

  Copyright © 2016 by Rod Walker

  All rights reserved

  Editor: Vox Day

  Cover Art: Lars Braad Andersen

  Version: 002

  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

  Chapter 1: It’s Good To Have Friends

  There are two things you have to understand.

  First, I never, ever should have listened to my girlfriend.

  Second, my Uncle Morgan hated the Ecology Ministry. He wasn’t a violent man, but if EcoMin was on fire, Uncle Morgan wouldn’t have crossed the street to relieve himself on it. He would have driven home, picked up a lawn chair and a cooler of beers, driven back and enjoyed the show.

  Actually, on that topic, there’s a third thing I should probably mention.

  I live on the planet of New Princeton, and New Princeton is the kind of world where the right bribe to the right person will get you out of anything. The government is a dictatorship, and while I wouldn’t say it’s a benevolent dictatorship, it’s probably not what you’re thinking of either. It’s more of an incompetent and passive-aggressive one.

  There are worse places.

  There are planets where if you don’t pray to the right god seven times a day, they stone you to death in the public square, and other planets where if you don’t get up at dawn to applaud the Supreme Leader’s morning rant against reactionary wreckers, they starve you to death in a labor camp.

  New Princeton isn’t that kind of place. The unwritten rule is that so long as you pay your taxes, bribe the right officials when necessary, and don’t get involved in politics, the Acadarchy will let you be. And even if you get involved in politics, they don’t send the police to beat you to death or put you up against a wall and shoot you. No, what happens is that you suddenly find yourself on the business end of a bunch of lawsuits, the inspectors from CareMin and EcoMin start leveling fines for various infractions, RevMin discovers you’ve been underpaying your taxes, and eventually you go bankrupt, find yourself on Basic Income, and aren’t allowed to vote any more. That’s that. Mr. Royale says that it’s all very civilized, and compared to places that have Supreme Leaders I suppose it is, but Mr. Royale says a lot of things like that.

  Anyhow, about that girlfriend.

  Her name was Theresa, and the way she looked pretty much shut down my brain. I wanted to impress her so I did a lot of stupid things. In hindsight, I probably should have thought more about what it meant that she was so easily impressed by such stupid stuff.

  Mr. Royale warned me that she was trouble, but I only met her because of him, so you could almost say it was all his fault.

  Yes. It was definitely his fault. All this began the day I met Mr. Royale.

  It was a Tuesday in late spring, right after the first planting was done. Uncle Morgan owns thirty thousand acres of prime farmland, with the title to the land dating all the way back to when our first ancestor signed New Princeton’s colonial charter fifteen centuries ago. He was always worried EcoMin would find a way to screw him out of the land, but they hadn’t managed it yet, and thanks to the miracle of modern robotics, thirty thousand acres was just profitable enough that he could operate the farm without outside investors. Ever since my parents had died, I had more or less worked for Uncle Morgan, and I was driving my electric truck along the outer edges of the farm, stopping every so often to do a maintenance check on the irrigation pumps. Uncle Morgan hated mechanical things, but I didn’t, so he often dumped the maintenance on me.

  I saw Mr. Royale on my fifth stop, and I was so surprised that I just stared at him.

  I never saw people on the farm. New Princeton is the kind of place where 98 percent of the population lives packed into twenty-five different megapolitan areas scattered around the globe, and everyone who lives outside the cities is either a farmer, an EcoMin employee, or a worker on the rail links between the cities. So when I saw a man in a white suit running for his life down the dirt road, I was too astonished to say anything.

  Then I saw why he was running for his life.

  Three fangwolves were after him.

  I vaguely remembered from my biology study module that fangwolves were native to New Princeton, that they had been the apex predator long before humans had ever shown up. Despite the massive changes we had brought to the planet’s ecology, the fangwolves continued to thrive, probably because they could eat almost anything that had protein in its makeup. They had almost been wiped out during the colonization, but as more of the planet’s population had moved into the cities, the fangwolves had made a comeback.

  Now the vicious things were everywhere, which was why I never went out without a rifle.

  I sprinted for the bed of the truck and snatched my rifle out of its rack. It was a Mordecai Sportsman .30 hunting rifle that could hold nine rounds, and while that caliber of bullet wasn’t useful against some of the bigger predators that wandered the wilderness of New Princeton, it would work just fine for fangwolves. I flipped the safety off, raised the gun to my shoulder, and took aim, my finger settling on the trigger.

  The fangwolves gained on the fleeing man, and I took a deep, calming breath and started shooting.

  My first shot was a good one. It thumped right into the side of the first fangwolf and hurled the beast over on its side. Despite their name, fangwolves didn’t actually have any fur, though they did have six clawed legs and fangs like long, curved knives. All six of those legs thrashed madly about as the fangwolf died. My second shot smacked into the road with a puff of dust, and the remaining two fangwolves stopped, confused by the bizarre behavior of their fallen companion.

  Their hesitation let me drill the second one right through the skull.

  The third one suddenly whirled and came right at me, all six legs driving it forward with terrific speed. Animals descended from the species of ancient Earth still retained their ancestral fear of humans. Animals native to alien planets did not, and some of them, like the fangwolves, reacted to the sight and smell of humans with ferocious rage.

  Fortunately, this was far from my first encounter with the creatures, so I just took careful aim, then shot the charging fangwolf in the chest. It tumbled head-over-tail to a halt about twenty yards away, its bluish blood seeping into the dirt.

  I looked around, my rifle at the ready, but no more fangwolves seemed to be prowling around the dirt road.

  “You okay?” I said, walking forward towards the man in the white suit.

  He stared at me. He had been sprinting at a pretty good clip, but he wasn�
�t breathing all that hard, and he didn’t look as frightened as I would have expected, given that he had nearly been ripped apart by fangwolves. I guessed he was about thirty-five, and he was obviously from one of the cities since no one out here dressed in white suits. My next thought was that he worked for EcoMin or TransMin, but the nearest rail line was forty miles away, and the EcoMin agents usually traveled in caravans.

  “Son, I know a thing or two about firearms,” said the man. Definitely, a city guy—his accent pegged him as someone from Wilson City, the nearest megapolis to Uncle Morgan’s farm. “That was excellent shooting.”

  I shrugged. “Getting bitten by one of those things isn’t fun.” I tugged on my left sleeve to reveal the nasty scar on my forearm. “So I’m real motivated not to repeat the experience.”

  “A sensible policy,” said the man. “Were you aware that it’s illegal to shoot fangwolves without a permit?”

  I eyed him. Maybe he was from EcoMin. Was he looking for a bribe? “What about it?”

  The man blinked, and then laughed. “Ah! I see! No, young man, you misunderstand me. You just saved my life, I am in your debt, and I always remember my debts. I just wondered if you might happen to have a convenient way of disposing of the carcasses. If not, I have the facilities to take care of it.”

  “I do,” I said. “Well, my uncle does. He’s got an organic decompiler at one of the barns. I’ll dump the bodies in there, and it’ll render them down into fertilizer.” I eyed him. “That going to be a problem?”

  “Certainly not,” said the man. “If I help you load them into your vehicle , will you give me a lift? I’m afraid mine broke down about three miles that way, and I was looking for help.”

  I frowned. “Couldn’t you call someone?”

  He tapped his jacket. “No signal out here.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s spotty in these parts. Depends on the weather. Well, if you help me load those things into the truck, I’ll give you a lift.”

  He grinned. “My suit’s already ruined, so why not?” He extended his hand. “Name’s Ian Royale.”

  I shifted my rifle to my other hand and shook his hand. “Sam Hammond, Mr. Royale.” I set the rifle down, grabbed one end of the nearest dead fangwolf, and he took the other. “What brings you out here?”

  “Business,” he said, lifting the dead animal. Together we dumped its carcass into the back of the truck.

  “What kind of business?” I said. He definitely wasn’t with EcoMin or any of the other Acadarchy departments, I was sure of that. Otherwise, he would have commandeered my truck by now.

  “This and that,” said Mr. Royale. That made me wonder if he was a drug dealer. “Basically, my business is in favors.”

  “Favors?” I laughed as we grabbed the second dead animal. “You in with one of the cartels?”

  “Not at all. You see, Mr. Hammond, there are two kinds of people in this world or any other world. People who have things they don’t want, and people who want things they don’t have. That applies to most aliens as well, though that is not the point. People owe me favors, and I use them to bring together the two kinds of people. And then I collect a small fee for my services, and everybody goes home happy.”

  “So how’s that work?” I said.

  He explained, rather more openly than I’d expected. Mr. Royale, as I soon learned, liked to talk, and he talked during the entire drive to the barn with the decompiler. He had started forty-seven different business ventures, and of them, forty-three had failed either completely or catastrophically. However, the four that succeeded had done very well. In fact…

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re the guy who owns the KwikBreet machines?”

  “Yes indeed,” said Mr. Royale.

  “My uncle loves KwikBreets,” I said. “Every time we go to Wilson City he eats like three of the things. He really likes the teriyaki ones for some reason.”

  “I knew those would go over well,” said Mr. Royale. “My investors, they thought I was nuts, but the teriyaki-flavored ones are the best sellers. God intended burritos to have teriyaki flavor, I tell you.”

  I frowned. “There must be like a thousand KwikBreet machines in Wilson City.”

  “One thousand four hundred ninety-six,” said Mr. Royale. “I’m hoping to expand the franchise to Clinton City. Which is why I was on my way to Rusk Station, as it happens. The station master owes me a few favors, and I was hoping to trade in on them to reduce my shipping expenses.”

  “I see,” I said.

  That was the thing about Mr. Royale, other than that he liked to talk a lot. He wasn’t exactly a mobster. None of his business ventures were illegal, and he scrupulously adhered to the letter of the law. He did, however, completely ignore its spirit, and carefully exploited every possible loophole to its maximum extent. In that, he reminded me a lot of Uncle Morgan, who liked to say that the law was what EcoMin used to screw over the small farmer. If the Acadarchy didn’t want him to ship his goods via rail to avoid the air tax, or hire his employees as contractors, or to incorporate some of his companies in Jackson City because Jackson City had the lowest fees, Mr. Royale said, then they ought to change the law. If they didn’t, that was their problem.

  “What are your other three businesses?” I said, intrigued now. We were almost to the barn. “The ones that worked, I mean.”

  “Ha!” said Mr. Royale. “Usually, people want to hear about the failures. One was a software company that developed a new middleware database.”

  “Huh?”

  “Software that talks to other software,” said Mr. Royale. “I sold that company, though I still have a stake in it. I also have a food distributorship, which comes in handy for KwikBreet. I have a cleaning robot rental business in Wilson City that does very well. Most people are too lazy to clean their own apartments…”

  “So you find people and sell them what they want,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Royale. “The last business is a safari company.”

  “Safari?” I said.

  “You know the one habitable planet in the Arborea system?” said Mr. Royale.

  “Sort of,” I said. I didn’t pay much attention to the news.

  “Well, the Acadarchy agreed to let a private company run hunting trips to it, and I got one of the contracts as a favor,” said Mr. Royale. “The Ecology Ministry had a fit. If the Ecocrats got their way, all colonization efforts throughout the Thousand Worlds would be shut down and then we’d collectively kill ourselves to preserve the pristine natural landscape on every planet… but I digress. The Acadarchy needs the money, so that’s that. In a year or two, I’ll be ferrying rich tourists to Arborea…”

  “In exchange for a reasonable cut?” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Royale.

  “All these companies,” I said. “You must be rich.”

  Mr. Royale laughed. “You’d think so, but I’ve lost more money than I’ve made. On paper, it’s a lot, but in practice, most of it is tied up in the companies. Which is why I often do things myself, such as dumping fangwolf carcasses into organic decompilers.” He craned his neck. “Is that your uncle’s barn?”

  “One of them, anyway,” I said, steering the truck into the gravel lot next to the barn and shutting down the engine. “He keeps some of his autonomous tractors here. Deserted right now, but you should visit around harvest time. Uncle Morgan hires on temporary workers then, and all the tractors are going 24/7. Heck of a time keeping them all operational.”

  “That’s what you do here?” said Mr. Royale. “Tractor repair?”

  I shrugged. “This and that. Mechanical stuff, mostly. I like fixing things. It’s Uncle Morgan’s farm, but my dad worked for him doing the same kind of stuff before the accident.” Hopefully, that would defuse the awkward questions about what had happened to my parents. I hated talking about it, and I hated the same stupid question and the same boring platitudes every single time.

  Mr. Royale was clever enough to pick up on that. �
��I see. And you enjoy this sort of work?”

  I shrugged again. “It’s what I’m good at. Someone needs to know how to fix a drive motivator, change a tire, or reboot a drone OS.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Royale. “You seem a talented young man, Mr. Hammond.”

  We got out of the truck and started dumping the fangwolf carcasses into the organic decompiler. The smell was horrible, of course, but it also meant a few extra kilograms of free fertilizer, so I didn’t complain. The endlessly rising cost of fertilizer was one of Uncle Morgan’s favorite topics.

  “I’ll give you a lift to Rusk Station,” I said once we finished.

  “There’s no need to put yourself out,” said Mr. Royale. “We seem to have signal here, and I can summon a ride.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Rusk Station’s only four miles out of my way, and I’ve got to check on the irrigation controller on the north field. I’ll drop you off.”

  “That’s very kind,” said Mr. Royale.

  I grinned. “Though if you wanted to give me a voucher for some free KwikBreets the next time I’m in Wilson City, I would not complain.”

  Mr. Royale laughed. “You have it.” He reached into his coat and produced a hundred-credit gift card good in any KwikBreet machine in the Wilson City area.

  “Hey, thanks,” I said. “My uncle will love that.”

  “Also, this,” said Mr. Royale, handing me another card. This one was made of cardboard and held a comms number and a digital address.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “If you ever find yourself in need of employment,” said Mr. Royale, “give me a call.”

  I blinked. “You’re offering me a job?”

  “You’re a clever young fellow, Hammond,” said Mr. Royale. “And exceptionally cool under pressure, as those dead fangwolves will attest.” He waved a hand in front of his nose. The organic decompiler is efficient and a great way to make fertilizer, but it smells like the locker room of hell. “There is always use for cool-headed individuals in business.”

  “I’ll have to think it over,” I said. “And talk to my uncle.”