SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

One game, and then one of them would die.

“GAALAANN,” Mikey repeated, tapping four arms on the table.

Impatient. Childlike.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t send this kid to his death. She couldn’t live with herself if she did that.

If Captain Yokota chose to blow up his ship and kill his own crew, that was on him. That wouldn’t be Erin’s fault. It wasn’t her fault that the Quggano had named her to play this stupid game, or that this idiotic war was happening in the first place.

But it would be her fault if she killed this child.

Her hand trembled as she reached forward and picked up a dark short-bishop. It was entirely too early in the game for her to send it forward, especially now that every piece would be channeled into the center of the board, but it was the surest way to guarantee a quick loss. Once her short-bishops were gone, she would have no close-in defenses for her king.

She dropped the short-bishop onto the board and withdrew her hand. She looked up at Mikey.

“You’re not that dumb,” she said. “Come on, let’s just get this over with.”

He tilted his head at her. He leaned forward to study the board. Then he picked up a light side-rook and moved it up behind the light pawn in his left side lane.

Erin blinked. He had just locked up that piece, too. Nobody was moving out of the side lanes until one of those pawns got captured, and that wasn’t going to happen until somebody risked sacrificing a knight to do it.

“Look,” Erin said, moving her center knight into position to attack the light pawn in her right side lane. “Look. See that? What do you do about that? Come on, this is basic—”

Mikey seized his other side-rook and placed it behind his right side lane pawn.

“What the hell are you doing?” Erin stood up. Her hands clutched the sides of her head. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

Mikey tilted his head up toward her. “GAALAANN.”

Erin folded her arms and sat down. “Don’t tell me. That word does not mean what I think it means.”

Mikey repeated the sound. Erin strained to hear any difference in inflection or tone, but her human ears hadn’t been trained to understand Quggano. Mikey waved his arms at the board. Erin felt anger warming her cheeks.

“No,” she said. “Fuck you, kid. There is no way I’m winning this game. Fuck. You. ”

With the last two syllables, she picked up and then dropped her third knight, putting it right in front of a light short-bishop. It was a ridiculously dumb move, exposing her to at least three different attacks, and it should have been irresistible to any opponent.

Mikey ignored the knight and moved his tall-bishop out of attack position.

Erin couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She looked over the board, then looked it over again. Both light and dark positions were a mess. There was a chance that they could both end up blocking all possible avenues of attack and—

She gasped and looked up at Mikey. He tapped his arms on the table next to the board, dancing between the light side-rooks and pawns in the outermost lanes. The lanes which were now completely blocked.

He hadn’t been impatient. He had been trying to draw her attention to his strategy.

“Smart kid,” Erin said, smiling. “All right, short stack. Let’s do this. Gaalaann .”

She moved another short-bishop into the center of the board. Mikey made that cawing-laughter noise again, then moved one of his own short-bishops forward. Yes. Erin could see it now. She could see exactly what he was doing, and what he wanted her to do.

Neither of them wanted to win this game. Neither of them wanted to be a killer.

They were going to work together to reach a stalemate.

She tried not to think about what would happen after they finished the game. Darrow hadn’t briefed her on what the Quggano would do with the champions if their contest ended in a draw. She expected it wasn’t a possibility in single combat. Even with Ton-Gla-Ben, stalemate was rare, because it was easy to exploit even the smallest mistake.

But neither Erin or Mikey was trying to win this game. They weren’t trying to find an optimal strategy; they were actively working against themselves, cutting off lanes, blocking their own pieces, doing things that no serious player would ever consider. And they were both pretty good at playing badly.

She didn’t know how long it took, but when Mikey made the last move—jamming a pawn into a circle of pieces surrounding the dark king, ensuring that nothing could get through—the entire board surface flashed. Whatever intelligence was built into it must have been able to tell that no further moves were possible. They had reached a verifiable stalemate condition.

Mikey pulled his arms back and waved them in the air.

Erin said, “Now what?”

Both chamber doors clanged open. Four Quggano guards, looking even bigger and more menacing now that Erin had gotten used to seeing Mikey’s compact form, stomped into the chamber and grabbed Erin and Mikey. Erin didn’t even have time to say good-bye, or offer a handshake to her opponent. She hoped they weren’t both being taken away to be executed. Was not winning the same thing as losing?

Erin shivered as refrigerated oxygen cycled into the Myrmidon ’s airlock. She clutched her bundle of clothes against her private parts. The shivering was partly due to the cold air, but mostly because she’d had no idea what the Quggano would do to her for throwing the game, and she had feared the worst.

She had been pleasantly surprised when they escorted her back through the docking tunnel with remarkable grace and used their unexpectedly gentle pincers to nudge her into the airlock, where her clothes were still waiting in a pile on the floor. It would take her a few minutes to get over being scared out of her mind.

Lieutenant Darrow rushed forward as the airlock doors opened and threw a scratchy Fleet-issue gray blanket over Erin’s shoulders. He guided her onto a bench in the corridor. A crewman waiting there handed Erin a cup of something dark and warm. Erin spat out the red capsule under her tongue, sending it skittering across the deck, and watched the crewman race after it.

“You did it,” Darrow said. “I don’t believe it. I mean, it’s great that you won—”

“I didn’t win,” Erin said, pulling the blanket around herself. She felt not just cold, but numb. She gulped down the warm liquid. It might have been coffee, but the important thing was, it was warm.

Darrow frowned and knelt down next to her. “What do you mean, you didn’t win? They let you go.”

“S-stalemate,” Erin stuttered. She took another drink. Her fingertips tingled as feeling returned to them. “Nobody won.”

“That’s—” Darrow stood up, his mouth open. “I’ve never heard of that happening before.”

Erin chuckled. “First time for everything, I guess.”

Darrow’s wristcom chirped. He raised it to his face. “Darrow here.”

“This is the captain,” came Yokota’s voice. “Get Miss Bountain up to the bridge. The Quggano want to talk to her.”

Erin was glad that Darrow delayed the lift long enough for her to put on her clothes. Everyone on the bridge watched as she and Darrow walked out of the lift and over to where the captain stood, in front of the main viewscreen.

The display showed the Quggano bridge, with a similar array of personnel: the captain, wearing his ceremonial sash, in the middle; next to him, another officer; behind them, Mikey, flanked by his parents; and the rest of the crew at attention. Two dozen alien eyes stared out from the screen, dark orbs rotating back and forth occasionally. The Quggano stood perfectly still otherwise.