The Game Players of Meridien Read online

  The Game Players of Meridien:

  Book One of the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind

  By

  Robert I. Katz

  Also by Robert I. Katz

  Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future

  The Cannibal’s Feast

  The Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series:

  Surgical Risk

  The Anatomy Lesson

  Seizure

  The Game Players of Meridien:

  Book One of the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind

  Copyright © 2017 by Robert I. Katz

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Steven A. Katz

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  —The End—

  Information about the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind

  Preview: The City of Ashes: Book Two of the Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind

  Chapter 1

  “Hold him down.”

  I winced. Both men were tall and broad shouldered, with shaved heads, wide, sadistic smiles and tattoos running up both arms and across their chests. They were holding a third man, slightly smaller and leaner, immobilized on the ground. The smaller man struggled. His face grew red and he gave out a high pitched, desperate squeal. The big guys restrained him with professional competence. One of them pulled a Bowie knife from a holster at his belt and pulled the smaller man’s head back. “I love this part,” he said.

  I pressed the stop button on my control panel and sighed. I had gone through this scenario more than once already. I knew that if I continued, bright red blood would spurt from a severed carotid artery and agonized screams would come from the victim’s throat. He would thrash his legs, drum his heels against the ground, struggle and die. Points would then be added to my score.

  I had a professional interest in games of all sorts but this one was a little too obvious for my tastes. Violence, like sex, always sells, but I have limited patience for gratuitous violence, violence that does nothing to advance a plot or to highlight a theme.

  Such games will always have their fans. I know that, but I have no interest in catering to them. This game was popular, particularly among young men of the Commons, but it wasn’t popular among the Guilds. If you want to reach the top levels of the game, the real game, a certain amount of restraint is required. You have to know when to go in for the score but if you’re going to survive, and ultimately to prevail, then you had better be able to identify a losing hand because nobody wins them all.

  It paid to keep up with the competition, though.

  I was seven years old when I invented my first game. The game started with a circle which turned into a square which turned into a wheel which turned into a spinning cylinder which turned into a torus and so on. It was a simple game but my father was smart enough to register the copyright and then he took it to one of the bigger conglomerates who decided to finance it. That game made me a lot of money, which a few years later, I used to fund a small corporation which financed another game, and then another, and pretty soon, my small corporation had grown into a larger corporation.

  I was good at games. Games have patterns, some meant to be obvious, some meant to be concealed, and I had a talent for spotting patterns.

  Some of my games are story games. You have to have a good story. It’s surprising how often storytellers lose sight of this fact. You can tell a story in the simplest of ways and it will hold the attention of your audience. A caveman sitting around a fire could do it. A medieval schoolman in the town square. Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, wise men with strong voices, writing their stories down on clay tablets or papyrus scrolls, if they even knew how to write. It’s easy to sell a good story and all the special effects and computer-generated crap isn’t worth shit if the story doesn’t cut it.

  You start with a hero. There has to be someone for the audience to focus on, to identify with. If you don’t have a hero, then you need an anti-hero, someone for the audience to hate. If you have neither, then it better be a comedy, but you still need someone they can laugh with (or at). I’ve never lost sight of the need to have a good story. It’s made me rich.

  My corporation, or what has become just one of the divisions of my corporation, continues to make games, but we do many other things, as well. All of my products are among the best in their field. I’ve found that it’s not too hard to make money if you’re better than your competition.

  You have to keep it all in perspective, though. You can’t fool yourself. Fooling yourself is the quickest way to lose. I’ve done well. I’m a medium sized fish in a very deep ocean. My corporation is profitable and respected but it’s nowhere near the biggest corporation around.

  But that’s alright. I have plenty of time.

  Aphelion, capital of the nation state of Meridien, is one of the oldest cities in the world, and one of the largest, though Meridien comprises only the city itself plus a few square kilometers of the mainland and some fifteen small surrounding islands. Aphelion is also the richest city in the world, its location in the largest harbor in the Western Hemisphere having made it an ideal center for trade.

  I walked down the street of the Central District of the city on a warm, pleasant evening. Tall buildings towered over me on each side, strategically placed to allow sunshine to reach the street. Shops and restaurants filled the ground levels and the sidewalks were wide and in good repair. Some kids played a game with a ball and a hoop in a small park and some others flew kites over a wide expanse of lawn. The crowd was polite, well dressed and orderly.

  A spot in the middle of my back, right between the shoulder blades, tingled. It’s not that anything had happened, or even been unusual. It’s just that things seemed…off. Something about the sounds; something about the patterns…the way the pigeons flew, the way the air smelled…something. Perhaps it was the scent of anticipation. The feeling had been growing on me for a couple of days. Just a feeling, but my feelings had usually proven to be correct.

  Somewhere off to the side, four of my men were strategically located in the middle of the crowd. Another sat at a table in an outdoor restaurant, eating cubes of meat off a wood fired grill. At least one more trailed behind me. All of them were competent. All were physically fit, tough, fast, well-dressed, well-armed and excellent with weapons of all sorts, a simple necessity for a rising member of the industrial class such as myself.

  In front of me, a man turned around and punched a pedestrian behind him in the face. I knew he was about to do it. I could see the exact instant that he began to move. His victim’s nose crunched flat and the victim fell without a sound. Next to the first man, a second started swinging at a plump, middle-aged woman, who screamed just once before her scream was cut off by a punch to the abdomen and then she too fell to the pavement, clutching her
gut. Her attacker smiled and leisurely kicked her in the ribs before both men turned toward me.

  They recognized me. It was obvious. Both of them took a step forward. One of them reached into his jacket and pulled out a curved metal band with four holes in it. He slipped his fingers through the holes and clenched his fist, the metal band fitting snugly. Their smiles grew wider and they came toward me and the crowd scattered, screaming.

  They were tall, both of them, young and strong. The clothes that they wore were casual, but clean. They didn’t look like thugs. They looked like regular guys who knew what they were doing, which they probably were, though they were also, without a doubt, thugs.

  My guys also knew exactly what they were doing. Two of them stepped in front of me, weapons drawn. Before either of these two clowns had taken a step, they both had guns pressed to their heads.

  Curtis, my squad leader, looked at me. “Not here,” I said.

  Curtis nodded. “Come along, gentlemen. Make no sudden movements and you might live through this.”

  One of them frowned, evidently thinking it over, then he gave a small shrug. The other, a bit quicker on the uptake, said, “Our Guild will ransom us.”

  “I’m sure they will,” I said, “and they will pay compensation to your victims as well.” I smiled. “But first, we’ll have a little chat.”

  The crowd, I noticed, kept its distance but watched us, a few with interest but most with indifference, now that the show was over. Guild business could often be violent but none of it was their concern. This was Meridien and they all knew better than to interfere. On the corner, a uniformed cop surveyed the crowd, looking for additional threats. He caught my eye, frowned, gave me a little nod then looked away.

  Two nights later, a small, slim man of indeterminate age sat at a black, metal table under a red awning. He sipped from a cup of espresso then glanced at his interface. He frowned, shrugged and switched on a hologram, a gymnastics exhibition, which projected into the air over his table. A pad and a pen sat in front of him. He had touched neither. He had been waiting for nearly an hour.

  The interface, I noted was a type that I was not familiar with, smaller than most, worn on a fob rather than around the wrist.

  I had been watching as he arrived and I continued to watch as he sat and waited. During the next hour, I walked around the block three times. A face in a bookstore window scanned the street. A woman shopping in a small boulangerie dawdled, spending more time than she should have. Her eyes missed very little. Her walk was smooth, her balance perfect. I spotted two more. Their disinterest seemed palpable, their boredom complete. I smiled to myself. Though they rarely looked either at me or at the man waiting at the table, their attention remained focused, a little of it on him but most of it on me.

  My men were also aware of them. If they tried to interfere, they would be dealt with. Or so I hoped.

  It had rained earlier in the day but the clouds were thinning into mist as the evening light faded. If I was going to do this, it might as well be now. I drew a deep breath, walked over to the entrance, smiled at the hostess and sat down next to the slim man. I said nothing. He looked up at me, glanced again at his interface and frowned. “Mr. Oliver?” he said.

  I nodded. “And who are you?”

  His eyes searched my face, then he shrugged. “I could provide you with a made-up name, but why bother?”

  “You wanted to see me.”

  “Yes.” He seemed to hesitate. He looked down at the table then raised his eyes. “I have a message for you.”

  I waited. His hands drifted toward the pen.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. “You can’t see them, but my men are all around us. If you try to pick that up, they’ll shoot you.”

  “Will they?” He smiled and glanced around. He seemed amused and not in the slightest bit concerned. “It’s just a pen.”

  “Maybe it is just a pen, but maybe it’s a pen that contains poison, or a laser beam, or a bullet.” I said this for effect since I could see that he was telling me the truth. His heat signature was smooth, even and unruffled.

  “It’s just a pen,” he said. “A very ordinary pen.”

  “You have a message for me,” I prompted.

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “You are to cease your activities in Sindara.”

  I stared at him. He continued to smile. “That’s it?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “It’s very simple; if you don’t do as I request, you will be eliminated.”

  “Ah,” I leaned back in my seat. “Eliminated. You could have just said, killed.”

  He frowned momentarily but then gave me a thin smile. “You may take the statement any way you please.”

  “It’s just that ‘eliminated’ seems a little pretentious.”

  “Are you trying to annoy me?” he asked.

  I wasn’t trying very hard. I looked at him and entertained the notion of trying harder, then I took a deep breath. “So,” I said, “I’ll be eliminated, but presumably not right away.”

  He shrugged. “Sooner or later.”

  He seemed very calm. That worried me a bit. “You’re a messenger,” I said.

  He nodded. “Correct.”

  “And who is this message from?”

  “I’m sure you will understand that I cannot tell you.” He gave me a faint, amused smile. “In point of fact, I don’t know.”

  He was lying, which didn’t surprise me.

  “I’ll take your request under advisement,” I said, and rose to my feet.

  He nodded again and sipped his Espresso as I walked away.

  The two thugs had told us very little. They were questioned as soon as we arrived at my headquarters. Neither objected when asked to roll up their sleeves and neither said a word when the psychotropic was injected into their veins. They let the drug take them without resistance.

  Both had been contacted anonymously. A price had been agreed upon, the funds deposited into their accounts. The job had seemed simple enough: create some minor mayhem, assault me if they could and don’t resist if they couldn’t. They had not known each other prior to accepting the job but had been given descriptions, of myself and each other. Within an hour, we received enquiries from their Guild. The agreed upon restitution was paid and they were released. We even fed them. All very civilized.

  The assault delivered a message, a number of messages, actually, which became clear a few days later after my meeting at the café. They were willing to commit violence to get what they wanted, that was obvious. They had injured civilians, and so they were willing to break the rules, but restitution had been paid, which meant that they were willing to pay the price for breaking those rules. Their Guild had fronted the money but I had no doubt that the two thugs would be required to reimburse the Guild, and in turn, their nebulous employer would presumably be reimbursing them. There was an additional message here that I’m not sure they intended to send: if they were willing to pay the price, then there were some rules they would not be willing to break, because the price for breaking those rules would be too high.

  On the other hand, I thought, this last was an unproven inference. I drummed my fingers on the desk as I considered. It would be a mistake to assume too much. My real enemy was still unseen, his motivations unknown, and foot soldiers are expendable.

  Of course, I could have simply disposed of the two thugs. I actually did consider it; dump the bodies at sea or in a landfill and deny any knowledge of their existence. That too would have sent a message, but I wasn’t quite ready to send that particular message. The stakes weren’t high enough, not yet, anyway.

  A day later, I received the request for a rendezvous at a small café. All very dramatic, but it told me nothing. Many of us found it necessary to hire security and anybody could make threats. A lot of people had money and almost all of them wanted more of it, including myself. Most of us earned it. Some preferred to steal it. Either was acceptable to the power
s that be so long as the associated mayhem was kept within tolerable limits.

  So: message delivered, message received. Nothing to do now but wait and see… and play the game.

  Chapter 2

  My parents loved me but they didn’t understand me. Before you roll your eyes, please realize that I do know this to be a cliché. It took me many years to figure out that almost everybody feels that their parents, and their teachers and their siblings and certainly the overwhelming majority of the opposite sex, don’t understand them. Why should they, when most of us don’t understand ourselves? I was different, or so I thought. I was smarter than most of my classmates, for one thing. I was smaller than most, too, until I hit a growth spurt at sixteen or so and shot up eight centimeters in less than a year, but even before then I was fast and wiry and stronger than I looked, much stronger, actually.

  The real irony in all of this is that I really was different, but not in the ways that I assumed at the time. Most children feel awkward, feel like they don’t fit in, and most are too self-centered to realize that it’s the same for all of them, even the social butterflies, the beautiful and the athletic, the ones who seem to float far above the rest in their own little perfect world.

  All of them doubt themselves. All of them feel like they don’t deserve the good life that their parents’ money and position has bought them. All of them feel like they don’t belong.

  Except for the narcissists and the sociopaths, of course. More on them later.

  First, it must be understood that one can opt out of the game at any time, and sooner or later, most do. Also, before I go any further, I think it’s important to emphasize that I’m not using the word “game” in the play-something-because-it’s-fun-and-amusing sense, the sort of thing that my corporation manufactures and sells. No, I’m speaking about the more serious game, here. The game of life. And I realize that not everybody looks at life like a game but I do, and what is more important, so does my competition, and so do the Guilds. There are two ways to keep score in the game of life: money and status. The two most often go together, but not always. If you want to be successful, really successful, you have to be a player and as I’ve already said, I’m good at games