The Alpha Choice (32 page)

‘Certainly not, I know you’ll do us both proud.’

They clasped each other’s shoulders, and Gorn made his way to the changing rooms. As he did so, he could not help thinking,
when I've done, will any of this be left
?

Ω

With the furore surrounding the match taking several days to subside, Gorn and the other players were given three days shore leave to get themselves back to reality. All of them bar one were interviewed, and in his absence pundits fell back on speculative theories to explain how he could achieve such prodigious feats, most were nonsense.

Gorn did not need time to collect himself, and only Genir understood that. To Gorn, zagball meant nothing, it was merely a game, albeit one in which he excelled. As the person closest to him, Genir was interviewed the most. Asked questions relating solely to his friend, he sidestepped them as neatly as he had outmanoeuvred Daraq in the cuboid. When the interviewers became exasperated he would smile and ask: ‘Now, what do you want to know about me?’

Darl came to see Gorn once during this time. Once the superlatives were exhausted, he asked why Gorn had not joined in the celebrations. Rather than tell the truth - it was imperative he keep Darl on his side - he said that he put everything into the game and, as his abilities were purely instinctive, he did not want to muddy the waters, with half baked attempts to rationalise what he had done. The best way to avoid those questions, was to avoid the people who asked them.

His commander appeared satisfied with the explanation, after all men of extraordinary skill, like men of genius, were notoriously difficult to fathom, and Gorn was both a young man of extraordinary skill, and a genius.

The day after the match, the
extraordinary
young man went to see his father.
 

Zaran invited him into his simple apartment, and they both sat. ‘Thank you,’ he began.
 

‘For what?’

‘The goal!’

‘I thought you’d like that. Of course, you knew it was coming?’

‘Only when I saw you move your players out of the way. You knew it was impossible to navigate them, as well as your opponents. Even then, I wasn’t convinced you could do it, but that’s the difference between us. Your mind can compute faster than anyone I've ever known, and I've met some smart ones. If anyone could do it then it would be you,’ he paused, looking with unbounded pride, at his son. ‘I’d like to say that your mother would have been proud, except we both know she couldn't stand the game,’ he paused again, and while he laughed, his son’s eyes brightened, in the knowledge that what his father said, was absolutely right.

Sobering Zaran continued. ‘Still, she would have been proud, I certainly was. I wanted to shout out
that’s my boy down there,
but we both know that can’t become common knowledge.’

Gorn nodded.

‘But the game isn’t why you're here, is it?’

‘No,’ Gorn answered.

‘You're joining your ship in three days, and you’ve been asking yourself whether you can do what Narol’s asked?’

Gorn nodded again. To his father, he was not the all conquering zagball hero, he was his twenty-one year old son, who was about to embark on something incalculably dangerous, with consequences that would shape the lives of almost two and a half billion people, not counting any other races.

‘You’ve already made that decision.’

‘I don’t know if anyone can do it, but Narol’s right, if I can’t no one can. Maybe I can do it, and we both know there’s only one way I can find out.’

‘So if it isn’t that, what brings you here to ask my advice?’

There was an awkward silence that answered for his son.

‘Narol, you want to know if she can be trusted?’

Gorn did not need to say anything, the look on his face was confirmation enough.

‘I can't pretend I’m comfortable with what you’re about to do. It’s not that I think it shouldn’t be done, but I have selfish reasons to prefer that it wasn’t you. We've just begun to get to know each other properly, and the first advice you ask of me, as your father, and not a zagball coach, is probably the most difficult you’ll ever ask. The course you’ve chosen is terribly dangerous. If you survive, it will change you in ways you can’t imagine. You’ve always been alone, confided in no one, and now you need to know that you won't be alone on that ship, Narol will be there for you, and you can trust her.
 

‘I love my sister, but I respect her more. I admire her commitment, which is absolute, and by that I mean nothing is more important to her than the cause to which she has dedicated her life. So, to answer your questions, she will do everything that can be done to make sure you succeed, because that will aid her cause, and she will do that, without regard for your personal safety. I don’t believe she’ll deliberately place you in harm’s way, but if you find yourself in danger, Narol will do nothing to save you unless, inaction risks mission failure, or exposure of the cause. As for trust, you can trust her to do what she thinks is right, and that might not necessarily be what’s right for you.’

Gorn had his answers, he was alone. He would proceed, Zaran was right about that, but he did so knowing he could trust no one, but the man in front of him, and Genir, and that created its own set of problems, how much should he tell his friend?

They stood and embraced, neither sure they would see each other again.
 

Zaran watched his son walk down the pathway that led away from the apartment block, then spoke the name of an old friend into the console. It was time they talked.

Ω

Just as he preferred walking to swifter modes of transport, Gorn always chose transfer by shuttle over teleportation, and for the same reason. He enjoyed being alone with his thoughts and the instant transfer, afforded by teleportation, robbed him of that.
 

Site-to-site teleportation was limited, because of the energy necessary to extend a teleport field beyond an enclosed area, such as a ship or a building. Extending a field from an orbiting ship to the ground took an inordinate amount of energy, that could be better employed, elsewhere. However, an exception was made in the transfer of crew about to embark upon active service, here the Council’s view was that it seemed less than noble to penny pinch. Gorn hoped it would be a long time before random teleportation was possible, notwithstanding his preliminary research papers on the subject.
 

He was fairly unique in his views on teleportation. Indeed, it was a source of constant frustration to most Te’ans that despite its
discovery
, six hundred years earlier, their scientists had spectacularly failed to advance the technology beyond its ‘field’ limitations. As with much of Te’an technology, teleportation had been stolen from a conquered race, one that, rather than submit to domination, destroyed their only planet, together with all their science not already purloined by their conquerors.
 

The Te did manage to capture a ship when it failed to self-destruct, but to no avail. Resigned to their ship being seized, the crew chose to kill themselves, taking their secrets with them. From the ship’s logs it was apparent that the, now extinct, race had mastered random teleportation, however, no clue was given as to how that technology operated. It was possible for Te’an engineers to replicate the limited field teleportation on board ship, but they could go no further, and Te’an ability to teleport remained limited.

Gorn’s paper, written while still at school, had been seized upon by Navy engineers as providing a clear exposition of the problems associated with random teleportation, but more importantly, the germ of an idea to solve them. The paper was considered so revelatory that the Council itself, petitioned Bakir to put his son into the Science Institute, rather than the Naval Academy. It was the only decision of his adoptive father for which he was grateful. Bakir refused not, as Gorn earlier believed, for his
son’s
benefit, but to prevent him from excelling where his own sons could not. Whatever Bakir’s reasons, it seemed that without Gorn to expand his theories, the work on developing teleport technology had ground to an ignominious halt.

As he looked at the shuttle that would take him to Eclipse, Gorn recalled the schematics of the flagship soon to become his home, perhaps his final home. Every plan and diagram relating to the ship had been committed to memory. He did the same with his first ship, far less data, but for a different reason.
   

Once on board the shuttle, he looked around at his companions for the nine-minute trip. From his vantage point, at the rear of the passenger module, he counted twenty-four. None were known to him, which was hardly surprising when the ship’s compliment was twelve thousand, all of whom, with the exception of this little group, would already be on Eclipse.
 

That this was a stragglers’ transport could be readily gleaned from a cursory glance along empty rows of seats lining the walls of the module. The standard shuttle carried over three hundred passengers, so this was clearly the last shuttle to the mother ship.

The ‘stragglers’ fell into three categories: the tardy, evident from the condition of their uniforms, and the general impression that they desperately wanted to be somewhere else; the ‘hung over,’ who had celebrated their return to active duty with a little too much brio; and finally, the compassionate leave returnees.
 

He mentally slotted each occupant into their respective roles until, halfway down the opposite row, he came across a young woman, about his own age, petite, with a slightly upturned nose and delicate mouth. Her hair was dark brown and cut short enough to be military, but not so short as to hide her femininity, neither was it too long to hide her eyes while her head was lowered.
 
She was firmly in the compassionate leave camp.

There was something about the stranger he could not quite place, a thoughtfulness that suggested she was not unlike himself. He decided to find out more about her, and created a complication he could do without.

Gorn had always thought there would be time enough to form relationships once he was established in his career, and never ascribed to the romantic view of there being one special person mapped out for an individual and, somehow, everyone was meant to find that person through nothing more scientific than pure chance. Logic told him it was potentially dangerous to pursue this line of thought. Of all the times when he should avoid distraction, this sat right at the top of the list.
 

It crossed his mind that the knowledge he carried might be influencing his reactions. Was he scared by what he knew? Was the potential destruction of his society causing him to take untenable risks? Probably, and yet something deep inside told him this woman needed his help, a totally illogical conclusion, and one he knew was unjustifiable. He had settled into the part his aunt had written for him in her tragic play, and now he was confused. For reasons beyond his understanding, he was sure a new character had just been introduced.

The remainder of the short journey was uneventful, and at no time did the young woman raise her head. Gorn knew this, because he never took his eyes off her. All too soon, the announcement came from the pilot that the shuttle was about to dock. Without being told, no one would be aware the manoeuvre was taking place. It was both silent and smooth, testimony to the sophistication of the technology, rather than the skill of the pilot.

Gorn waited as all the passengers disembarked. As he anticipated, the young woman was the last to leave. While passing where he sat, she raised her head and looked straight at him. For the briefest of moments, her eyes registered that her mind was elsewhere, then they appeared to focus and she noticed him. The look on her face was one of complete surprise, followed by confusion. Then she was past him, turning her head so that she was looking straight ahead. He watched as she left the shuttle and walked out of sight.

Of all the things he had seen, and heard, and experienced over the last few weeks,
this surprised him most. Why did she react in that way? As far as he could recall, they had never met. He made his way out of the shuttle, and into the boarding area.

In each of the thirty boarding areas of the great ship, was a three quarters segment of a circle just over sixty metres in diameter. Within its circumference were seventy-five arches, each of them one and a half metres wide, separated by a little over thirty centimetres. These were internal teleport stations that could take a person anywhere on the ship. Other than the arches, the area was empty. It was also completely unmanned.

Boarding was a more leisurely affair than abandoning the ship, which would, according to protocols embedded in its core processors, operate as a mass teleport to waiting escape pods. Gorn was impressed when he discovered that all three thousand crew, together with shock troops, could be evacuated to the one hundred and twenty pods in less than a second. Three seconds later, the pods would be six thousand kilometres from the ship.

Each of the passengers stepped into an arch and promptly vanished. The last person to teleport, prior to Gorn, was the young woman, who did not look at him before she too was gone.
 

He moved towards an arch and, before entering, paused to consider what had just happened. A few moments earlier he was fairly sure he had never met this woman. Now he was absolutely certain, but it seemed she clearly knew
of
him, perhaps something she had been told about him made her uncomfortable, and he did not think it had anything to do with zagball. Whatever his previous thoughts about the wisdom of speaking to her, matters were now out of his hands. He had to find out why she reacted as she did, for no other reason than she might know what he was planning.
 

Stepping into the arch he formed the thought,
my quarters
. The teleport system would identify him from its scans, and check the manifest stored within its database, to ascertain his quarters. The whole process took nanoseconds. Instantly, he found himself standing next to a teleport post in a cabin.