Gaming Aquarius

Fiction by Mike Adamson

Twelve months ago, by the calendar of old Earth, her name had been Gemma Corvane, and she had been a wharf rat—hanging around the space docks on Gagarin’s World, orphaned, her only true asset a phenomenal, almost inhuman skill at VR gaming. Now, by the good graces of her patron, Jaxartes Gower, she called Aquarius home and her name was Lasita Tyrell.

She drifted over the dropoff in crystal-blue water, twenty meters below the surface of the Aquarian Ocean, off the islands of Hesperus, and even now she could hardly believe how far she had come. Once, she had called watching the vast spaceliners the greatest thrill in her world, for they symbolised freedom, escape from oppressive streets and poverty. Today, freedom meant a new identity as a citizen of a new world and the respect of a career because gaming—real gaming—was the opiate of the people and one could grow rich in it.

At her side swam Lydia Tyrell, her guardian, posing as her aunt—a good scam, given that Lydia was Jax’s android partner of many years. But the paperwork was clean, and the sovereign nation of Aquarius had welcomed the Tyrell family when Lydia moved with her niece to open a branch office of Jax’s import-export concern—a respectable front that was all about legitimizing Lasita’s participation in the gaming scene.

But that was work, and Lasita was out here to unwind. She loved gaming, but three nights a week took a toll, and on her off-days she rested. Seventeen was very young in a universe of artificially elongated lifespans, and she knew how much was riding on her abilities. Pressure was something she had taken in her stride when she had no choice; now she had learned about pacing, rationing her energies, directing them into the most volcanic performances she had ever given. Before, as CyberRat, she had native talent, but now, playing under the handle of IronWing, she was beyond brilliant.

She turned over, looked up at the blue sky and white clouds on the other side of the meniscus of the waters, and sighed into her rebreather. Down here was peace, the silence of inner space, though Lydia was as close as voice contact. In an hour, they would swim a lazy circuit of the coral heads forming the peak of a submarine ridge, see a thousand creatures of the Aquarian biota, and when they returned to the collection point for the air barge, the stresses of being a gamer would have melted away. She would meet the next round with a level head, cool judgment and the spirit of a champion.

So, when Lydia’s voice interrupted her reverie, she knew something was amiss.

“A message just dropped into my private cache,” the beautiful android murmured. “Content is somewhat...alarming.”

“Define alarming,” Lasita replied dreamily, her eyes going to her friend’s in the shimmering wave-light.

“We’ve gamed to the letter of the law,” Lydia replied softly, her eyes unreadable as her central processor analyzed the communication. “But someone is trying to disturb the perfection of that equation.”

“Has someone...learned something they shouldn’t have?”

“There’s nothing to learn. They only think there is.”

Lasita glanced at the time display in the corner of her field of vision, then beckoned, and they finned hard for the pickup point. Real life had a way of intruding at the least welcome moments.

An hour later, they sat on their balcony, on the 31st floor of the Aurora Tower, one of the forest that rose from the great deck of Skyport Aquarius, the capital city of the planet. A product of a fifty-year human-alien cooperation, the incredible floating city rode antigravs, which held its two million tonnes serenely in the sky, drifting over the turquoise and indigo ocean. Great ships moored on its flanks as the liners came and went.

Wrapped in a robe of black silk, Lydia stared into some corner of cyberspace as she processed, then passed a hand through the field of a desk com, and the message appeared as a projection. Lasita sat forward, sashed her own scarlet robe and read with a frown.

“We don’t take kindly to strangers mining the profits. Consider this a warning. Not much trouble, but it could become so much more. Lose interest. We know who you are.” She blinked. “No ID tagging?”

“The feed was expertly sanitized. I’ve dug back as far as seven proxy servers, including two off-planet, and the trail is cold.”

“So, what is it they think they know?” the girl asked. A year ago, she would not have been especially troubled—the hard streets bred resilience—but now she had far more to lose, and her voice carried a note of concern, which brought Lydia’s hand to her arm for a moment.

“It’s less what they know than what can they know. Remember, we are completely within the letter of the law. Aquarian law does not oblige me to reveal that I am an android any more than that of Gagarin’s World. I am a cybernetic sentience with equivalent rights to organics, under chartered agreement with the other races with whom the human race shares this part of the galaxy. Our neighbors made it clear very soon after first contact that respectful relations with other species, including cybernetic life, were a non-negotiable area, and humanity has honored that in full measure. Androids of the late 21st century had all kinds of prejudice to contend with.”

She waved a fine hand in dismissal. “They intimate they know who we are—I’ve made no secret of who I am: the long-term partner to Jaxartes Gower. But you might have been recognized as Gemma Corvane, though I don’t see how. That would be the problem—you are posing under an assumed identity. Is that a crime? It depends. Was it done for fraudulent purposes? The fact you’re a champion gamer might mean it will be construed as such. There’s many a lawyer would take a crack at it. But we’ve paid all relevant taxes in full, so where’s the fraud? In gamespace, everyone works under an avatar. Then there’s Jax’s wagers, which are another matter entirely.”

“There’s a statute here that prohibits artificial intelligences from wagering; the odds are considered inequitable in competition with organics.” Lasita offered this up in a tone that suggested it had worried her for some time.

“I don’t wager,” Lydia replied with a mild shrug. “Jax wagers in real time by subspace link from New London. There’s nothing illegal in that.”

“Could they be trying to frame you as a player?”

“Anything is possible at this point.” The elegant woman quirked a fine brow at her companion. 

“I’ll encrypt a signal to Jax. Ultimately, it’s his enterprise at stake.” She concentrated for a few moments, then relaxed. “Done.”

Lasita Tyrell drew a breath, hands feather-light on the input grips of her Valkyrie fighter, and let her senses flow outward to encompass the total scenario. The event horizon of the Tartarus black hole lay a light minute to port, and she skimmed the rubble in the accretion disc, the remains of whole worlds spiraling into oblivion. Just a million kilometers closer, and time would begin to distort, reality would fracture, and the claws of gravity would do their work. But in this moment, she was surfing on the outermost edges of perdition, and her prey was amongst these asteroids.

Where are you? she whispered silently, a mantra that helped her focus. Scanner returns were distorted by quantum interference from the black hole and the radiation flux of particle decomposition. She licked dry lips behind her faceplate as she took in the mess of useless data. When in doubt, go with your gut, had always been her motto, and she nudged the grips, blipping the thrusters to send the fighter through the shadow of a titanic asteroid. For a time, the terrifying image of the black hole was blocked from her view, and she could concentrate—put herself in the place of her enemy.

Another fighter, another current-generation Fleet space-superiority craft, was out here with orders to take her down—orders from corrupt authority, which she would reveal when she had returned the compliment and landed back aboard the carrier Griffin. Her opponent was another matter, however. As clearly as she knew every particular of the craft he or she was flying, she knew nothing whatsoever of the person. A thrill-jockey, a stone-killer, a dispirited follower of orders? Only the best would launch on such a mission, but that did not mean they were not bringing all kinds of emotional baggage. The best flight surgeons, the most nuanced command decisions, could not keep a pilot’s mind from wandering one time in a hundred.

You’re in deep, Lasita thought, scanning visually all around as the lidar returns broke up and reformed from moment to moment. Her sixth sense pricked, and she jabbed the throttles to bullet away from the asteroid, turned hard and looped behind another, pulled a max-G reversal, and soared up and over its bulk. There it was—another Valkyrie, coming down from the radar shadow of another great rock twenty kilometers off. She had been creeping long enough—time to sprint.

She took a target fix on the visible light reflected from the enemy’s hull, centered it in her gunsight, and hit the canons. Twin streams of pulsed plasma rode their laser targeting beams away to perdition, vanishing against the stars, and she trimmed attitude to track the target as the other pilot combed her shot, twisting around her axis. He or she hit throttles and burned hard, spun to present their automatic tail defense guns, but in so doing showed her their engines, and the bright flares were a welcome target.

Lasita pulled up to increase G in the turn without losing target-aspect, holding the enemy within twenty degrees of her Z-axis, so halfway through her turn, as the enemy reversed angle in an attempt to shake her off, the target crossed her firing line, and her guns hammered again. A flash and a stream of burning vapor marked the hit; though the other fighter was not incapacitated, it was hurt.

The other pilot released a scatter of mines and flares. Lasita picked them up with seconds to spare and pulled up hard at maximum deflection thrust. The mines erupted in point detonations, flung steel balls in radial shockwaves, and the flares lit up space, shining on the asteroids with the power of searchlights as jammers shrieked to confuse her acquisition systems.

Shrapnel rattled across her electromagnetic shields. With a snarl, she abandoned the automatics and felt for the target—she knew the pilot now: daring but cautious, an odd blend. He or she was making the encounter work to their strengths—obviously—and they were not ready to go all-in, husbanding their remaining assets. Under these conditions, missiles would not guide; this was guns only, and they were going at it like the fighter pilots of olden days.

The stern flares of the other plane passed through the black shadow of a tumbling rock a kilometer wide. She flung her craft after it, passing into the shadow of the mass so the devouring, malevolent black hole was once more eclipsed, and found the enemy completing a savage course reversal maneuver to present his or her guns. Now they were going in for the kill—supersonic chicken: one of them had seconds to live.

Lasita pulled in on target, the gunsight magnification factor dropping rapidly as range decreased, and pulled the aiming point into line with a nigh-unconscious riding of the controls. Plasma streaked from the other ship, reaching for her, and she let it go unchallenged, the fire raging by twenty meters off her port wing. Only accurately locking the other fighter mattered. When she came down on the triggers and felt the guns judder in the sides of her fuselage, she squinted, rewarded a moment later by a titanic fireball as the other Valkyrie came apart.

Gases dissipated in a split second, leaving white-hot debris spinning and tumbling through the blackness. She made a wide avoidance turn, throttle at maximum as she climbed away from the plane of the accretion disk...and let out a long sigh.

“IronWing to Griffin, target destroyed. Prep landing deck to receive. I’m on my way home.”

A moment later, the legend MATCH OVER appeared in her visor, then the image dissolved in a cool wash of neural inputs—the grips faded from her hands, the press of the harness disappeared from her chest. All went dark, then lights came up softly, and she saw the close confines of the gaming cocoon. The time display was illuminated—just seven minutes to closing bell for the evening’s entertainment, and she knew that was insufficient for another challenger, especially with the three-minute mandatory rest time between matches. Downstairs in the gaming halls, the massed spectators—there to challenge or cheer any competitor they wished—would be breaking up, ready to call it a night.

She had fought twelve bouts and took a few minutes to relax in the molded couch, drawing on the drink tube by her lips for her favourite chilled rose milk. But as the session drew to an end, a message printed up in her field of view.

Lasita—I’ve been arrested. Check the CityWeb for my location and come when you can. LT.

She scowled and hit the cocoon release, eased off the neural interface helmet as cool air flooded in, and saw the dim lights of her ready room. Once she might have experienced dysphasia on returning from gamespace, but she was too seasoned a pro now and came out of the cocoon, shedding the metallic bodyglove of the sensory input system in moments. She found her clothes, laundered and pressed, beside a tray of supper, but had time only to slug down coffee as she dressed. She tapped her wristie to order her personal transport to the players’ exit, then selected the gaming palace’s com-net and logged out.

In five minutes, she was stalking for the transport pickup, a lithe figure in skinsuit and jacket, black hair loose to her waist. The travel capsule swallowed her up and purred rapidly into the city’s traffic flow as she interrogated the network to find precisely where the Police were holding Lydia Tyrell.

“There’s not much I can tell you at this point,” a bored duty officer said across his workstation in the reception area of the Quadrant 12 Public Safety Station. He was a fair-haired male of indeterminate age, descended from some northern stock, and his tag read Sherringer. “We received an anonymous tip that your guardian has been involved in illegal gambling activities, Miss Tyrell.”

“I can assure you, it’s a lie,” she returned flatly. “We know what the law says about gambling; we’re not going to do anything stupid by breaking the rules. Anonymous it may be, but you must still have some idea where it came from.”

“Through the CityWeb, that’s all I can say. We’re obliged to follow it up, Miss.”

“It shouldn’t take you long to find there’s no substance to it.”

“If so, then all’s well, and we’ll be looking for your guardian’s accuser on grounds of vexatious accusation. That’s an offence we take seriously here, Miss.”

She could only take a seat and wait, and 23.00 came and went as she amused herself with an entertainment feed via her com, the jack in her right ear and the miniature screen flipped around before her eye. But she was barely watching, her mind racing with its own concerns.

Whoever was out there knew something, or wanted them to think they did, but she knew plainly enough that it came down to profit sharing. Until IronWing appeared on the scene, the undisputed local champion of the gaming palaces had been a player by the handle of BlackNova, but he or she had dropped down a few ranks, as had others, as the senior echelon reshuffled, making room for a hot new talent. She could only assume that someone—whether a patron, a rabid fan, or simply someone who had invested in other players and was yet to get their returns—wanted to limit the competition.

The ordinary punters had already transferred their allegiances. They were at liberty to wager on any player they chose, as in ancient animal racing, and she had already made substantial sums for many professional gamblers. Jax, of course, was one of them, albeit laying his bets remotely. That was her whole purpose here—to make fortunes. She had promised Jax she would make him richer than he had ever been, and she kept her word every time she slipped into the VR cocoon and became IronWing. The public, watching her battles unfold on great screens, did not know who she was; every player had the anonymity of their avatar, and all battles were impersonal.

Was that what someone knew? Had they linked IronWing with Lasita Tyrell but not Lasita Tyrell with Gemma Corvane?

At last, an officer appeared from a hallway behind the desk and asked her through, and she found herself in an interview room with Lydia. She hugged the android and sank into a seat, and almost at once a pair of detectives stepped in, the junior, of Asian descent, with a tray of coffee, which he placed on the desk with four cups. The senior was tall, ebony-skinned and elegant in a silk suit and heels. 

She sank into a seat and gestured with an open hand. “Help yourselves, please. I’m Detective Onika Shabani, Twelfth Quadrant. This is Sergeant Kwan. Miss Lasita Tyrell? We’re glad you’re here. Now, we’ve checked the accusation, and it is, of course, groundless. The electronic log of all wagers includes the baseline ID of all participants, and Miss Tyrell senior has certainly not been wagering.” She paused, just a beat. “That would be improper and quite against the law for an artificial intelligence.”

Lasita paused as she poured the coffee, glancing around the group, but Lydia reassured her with a hand on her arm. “The Police requested I confirm or deny that I am an AI. I, of course, told the truth. While my countermeasures are fully up-to-date and I read as organic human to sensory systems, I have no reason to conceal the fact in response to a direct query from authority. I am breaking no law to present as human, but, by the same token, the Police now have the obligation to honor that choice and must hold the information in strictest confidence.”

“We are bound by law to do so,” Shabani returned easily. “What concerns us is that someone out there has also discovered this and tried to use it to discredit Miss Tyrell senior—while knowing, surely, that their accusation would not hold up.” She tapped a temple with a long finger. “Something makes no sense here.”

Lasita passed a cup to Lydia as Kwan poured for his boss. “Lydia has shown you the warning she received?”

Shabani nodded deeply, the lights catching her mane of black waves. “We have subjected that transmission to the same analysis as our tipoff message, and while they are obviously connected, there is no commonality—no fingerprint, no deep code, not even shared proxy servers for delivery. They’re very careful.”

“So, what do you make of it?” Lydia asked, sipping the coffee with pleasure.

“In the absence of facts, we can only speculate.” The detective smiled secretively and shared a glance with her junior. “The government’s Gaming Commission has very strict rules to keep out organised crime. Gaming in this system, given the provision for unlimited wagering, is a trillion-credit industry—very attractive to any criminal entity, but so far, we've been able to hold them at bay. But even rules can be perverted into a weapon. One rule is that gamers are anonymous. Fans adulate avatars, not people. If a personal identity were attached to an avatar, the person would never be safe again, and for the integrity of the industry, we work very hard to protect people on that score.”

Lasita sipped the strong, sweet brew but said nothing; she knew how the law affected her and that she was also protected by the palace’s own security. Nevertheless, Shabani was looking at her in a very direct way.

“It’s a matter of record that the new ace player, IronWing, first appeared in the lower rounds just ten days after you and your guardian arrived from Gagarin’s World, Miss Tyrell.” The detective gave an elegant shrug. “That’s purely coincidental, and I’m not asking if it means anything. But given the provocative moves, it’s food for thought.” She squinted hard at Lasita. “What do you think? Could someone have made a connection that would offend against the etiquette of anonymity?”

Lasita spread her hands in perplexity. “If so, I could hardly confirm or deny it.”

Very adult words from a seventeen-year-old. Lasita knew at once that Shabani would know they were rehearsed.

“Well, it’s none of our business. Unless it becomes a threat. I can tell you that we know the identities of several gamers, and have kept their confidence for years after some incident brought them to our attention. I’m saying—don’t be afraid to talk to us if this mess gets out of hand.”

There seemed no more to add at the moment, and in the long silence, Lydia leaned to put her lips to Lasita’s ear. “Jax gets in on the clipper in two days,” she whispered. After a moment, Lasita gave a ready nod and sighed.

“We’re expecting the advice of someone who knows a lot more about this than any of us,” she said simply, then gave a secretive smile. “Why don’t we meet again?”

“I know who they are.”

Jaxartes Gower stood against the morning light through the wide windows of his suite high in the Aquarius Hilton. He had toned his usual flamboyance down to a dark suit for traveling, his shock of hair tied back from his high brow and striking features. Lasita and Lydia had met him at the arrivals terminal that morning, where the girl gave him the hug of gratitude he deserved—he had got her out of New London, recreating her life in the process—and Lydia had drawn him aside for an hour or two, which was understandable given the year they had been apart. But now they were all business.

He swept the group with a level gaze, and Lasita might have heard a pin drop. Shabani and Kwan shared a glance, and Lydia cleared her throat, sitting back with one knee draped over the other. Android she may be, she still looked like a cat that had been at the cream. “Nothing came up on trace scans of either message,” she murmured.

“It wouldn’t. They have a long reach and assets on many worlds. But you don’t get to be in this business as long as I have without knowing the other players. And I don’t mean gamers. The moneymen behind the scenes. The sponsors.”

“Would that describe your own role?” Kwan asked bluntly, being the provocateur, as a detective sergeant was meant to.

“If you like. I own a gaming palace in New London, so there’s not one thing I don’t know about this trade. I run a clean house, but many don’t.”

“So, who are they?” Shabani asked on a pensive note, challenging him to make good on his boast.

He paced a few steps, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched. “I took a quick inventory of the local gaming scene. There are sixteen palaces with twenty to thirty house gamers in each. They take on all challengers, with thousands of members of the public competing in the lower rounds to qualify for matches against the residents. Up there, that’s where the real money can be found, where wagers become astronomical. Only the patrons of the senior league matter—those watching from VR dens across the city or the planet, and who win consistently.”

“All this we know,” Shabani said with a touch of impatience.

“Certainly. My point is, patterns constitute fingerprints. And I recognize theirs. It was all over New London a few years ago. Wagers of a certain size relative to the status of the gamer, modulated according to the opponent... It’s a formula, a very precise one, and while all serious wagerers use something similar, the precise tuning of the values is very distinct.”

“How did you make the connection?” Kwan asked, sitting forward, eyes sharp and bright.

“I checked the records, found the players they favored and tracked their positions in the standings.”

“Relative to...?”

Jax heaved a sigh and thumped into a seat. “Let’s not beat about the bush here. You’ll have run my wagering record, and you know I’ve made a fortune on a player handled IronWing.”

Now Shabani pinned him with a keen look. “And what can you tell us about IronWing?”

He squinted for a moment. “Genius. Pure genius. He or she came in at the bottom with the public challengers and massacred all comers. Clean sweep, twelve matches for twelve on the first night’s play. On his or her second appearance, odds were, of course, trending. Ten for twelve. The same on the third night. In a week, IronWing was at the top of the challenger table and was offered a match against a house player. It snowballed from there: IronWing joined the residents at the Gamer’s Haven palace in a fortnight. That’s talent—raw, natural talent plus a leavening of experience, years of it.”

He sighed, adjusted his coat and smiled at the detectives. “IronWing was, of course, the catalyst for all this. Suddenly the money was flowing in different directions; certain people started hemorrhaging cash. They reacted.”

“Clumsily,” Kwan fired in.

“These people would describe it as ‘being nice about it.’ An accusation they know won’t stick, a little inconvenience, nobody gets hurt but, hey, message received.”

“So why ‘inconvenience’ Miss Tyrell?” Kwan added, chasing specifics.

“Come on, detectives,” Jax returned with a wry look. “You’ve already worked out that Lasita is IronWing.”

Shabani smiled in the moment’s silence. “It wasn’t difficult. Surveillance networks show Miss Tyrell arriving and leaving Gamers’ Haven at times bracketing IronWing’s performances. So do many other gamers, but Miss Tyrell uses the residents’ reception lounge, and IronWing was unknown on this planet until the Tyrell ladies arrived a year ago.”

“Bravo, detective—that wasn’t hard, eh? Lasita is my niece in all but blood; she grew up in gaming with and against the best, so there are no mysteries about it. Except how her identity became known to those who just warned her—and Lydia, and by extension, myself—off.”

“You still haven’t told us who they are,” Shabani pursued softly.

“The name you’re looking for is Oberon Judd.” He let it hang for a long moment. “But you won’t find it hereabouts. Word is that he’s one of the shadowy kind; no one ever knows where he is, but his reach, his influence, is everywhere. He owns plenty of legitimate businesses, but he got his start on the other side of the fence and has never left it. His tentacle into the gaming industry runs out of offices on Utopia, or used to, and he has a wagering crew on each major colony. They run a master algorithm probably devised by his paid experts; my own AI reverse engineered it many years ago, and I kept my distance, moving around them, never in conflict. I reran the stats on Aquarius the moment Lydia messaged me, and there it was, hiding in plain sight in the public record—the Oberon Formula.”

“How do you know all this?” Kwan wanted to know.

“Like I said, about two hundred years in the trade.” Jax was giving nothing away; they would have run his background already and knew he was on the level.

Shabani rose and put fists on hips in an unselfconscious pose of determination. “We’re talking the kind of organized crime the government of Aquarius has fought very hard to keep out. It’s a multi-systemic concern, far beyond our jurisdiction, but we would settle for trimming whatever part of it has taken hold here.” She looked around the group with a hard eye. “Any ideas?”

Lasita coughed softly. “I’d have thought it was obvious.” At their expressions, she gave a sly smile. “BlackNova can only have been their player. I’ll throw out a challenge: maximum stakes, winner takes all. And when we tangle, my opponent’s people will try to ensure his or her success. They know who I am, yes? Then use me as bait. When they come for me, you take them—and I’ll take BlackNova.”

The gaming community was abuzz the next day: the news was being reported all across the Middle Stars—the new Gamer’s Haven champion, IronWing, had issued a direct challenge to Thrill Mountain’s BlackNova. No house allowed challenges between members of their resident gaming team, but interhouse matches were something else. The game Lasita chose was Urban Sniper, and, as etiquette required, when BlackNova accepted the challenge, he or she specified the conditions in return. But Lasita would not learn what they were until she stepped into the VR arena.

She went into Gamer’s Haven the previous day and stayed. They had accommodation on the top floor and guard robots on patrol—the gamers were like living gold to the houses, which received 2% of all public winnings, and they took the best care of their investment. Jax and Lydia went in with her and were received by the boss, Cherylynne Khadr, with whom Jax had struck a deal for the transfer of his champion from the restricted wagering of New London to the unlimited local form. They had all profited handsomely, and Lasita herself had amassed a small fortune from both her house salary and the side bets Jax had fielded for her.

Khadr received them in her penthouse office with a long hug for the girl. “Gemma has made us a fortune,” she said simply as they sank into comfortable seats under a dome revealing the blue Aquarian sky. The coffee-skinned, raven-haired house mistress was lanky and confident, dressed in white linen and much gold, and when a robo-steward had delivered hibiscus tea—Gemma’s favorite from the old days—she eyed Jax and Lydia. “When you sent Gemma to me, I knew from her game stats that she was going to be big news, but I never dreamed she would overturn the national scene. In a way, she’s been too successful.” She leaned forward and spoke softly, though monitoring was impossible. “I’ve been approached twice in recent months about a transfer of contract.”

Lydia's expression told all. “I wish you’d advised me.”

Khadr shrugged. “It’s common enough in the Major League. Their offer was very generous, but I gave it no mind. There’s no way I was going to agree to anything; my deal is with Jax and always has been. But in view of the current situation, it was more than likely Judd’s people trying to recruit IronWing to their own stable. When they couldn’t buy her, the next obvious move was to threaten her.”

“We have full Police cooperation,” Jax said softly as he sipped the sweet tea. “You’ll need to brief your own security.”

“There’ll be no organic guards; robots only on the house gamers’ level. There’ll be no other challenges in play—there’d be no point. Nobody would be watching. So, Gemma will be the only gamer in VR on the level at that time. Every robot we have will be around her.”

“Judd’s people will know this,” Lydia mused. “What have they got in mind?”

“To walk through that lot and—what? Kill Gemma? Or abduct her?” Khadr threw up her hands in dismissal. “Either way, not happening.” She gave a canny smile. “I guarantee it.”

“Our friends at the Public Safety Force are scanning cyberspace every moment for Judd’s people—they’ll come up with the goods. They’re fielding a tac team.” Jax gave a confident nod. “We can do this. And when the moment comes...Lydia and I will be between them and Gemma, too.” He reached to squeeze the girl's hand. “That also is a promise.”

Gamespace was a frame of mind, and no one spoke to Lasita as evening approached. She napped in her quarters, took a light supper well ahead of showtime, and as the sun sank in flaming golds and reds over the ocean horizon, plunging the city in the sky into the glorious tones of day’s end, she was ready.

Her challenge match was laid on for 21.00, so all other gaming would be over by then—not just in this palace, but all of them. The audience was estimated at half a billion souls spread across the Middle Stars. That alone gave her the dry mouth of pressure, but she had long ago schooled herself to the reality that, once in VR immersion, nothing mattered but victory. Or, in this case, the kill. Urban Sniper was a combat game, one of the more exacting.

The public levels below were thronged tonight. The house gamers, on the third floor from the top, were fully engaged, but all matches would be done by 20.45. The staff would clear the building under Police escort, and maximum security would take effect above the public floors.

Lasita stood to watch the stars appear over the languid sea she had come to love. She calmed her mind, slowed her heart using techniques learned over a lifetime, and managed a small smile. Jax and Lydia were brave to a fault. She had watched them kit up in body armor, take weapons from the house security stocks, and go over the floor plan a dozen times. 

There was only the one access corridor to the gaming suites, so whoever came for her had to enter that way. Jax, Lydia and the robots would be in the way. She was a little afraid for them. Lydia, as an android, was nigh-indestructible; even her organic biosheath could be regrown from stored DNA data if need be. But Jax was mortal, albeit rejuvenated five times.

Shabani had assigned the tac team to cover all entrances—twenty men and women in full combat gear—and she swore none would get past them. Lasita lay at the heart of a web, and even one as tactically skilled as she had become could not imagine how an adversary would get through it. Even deep maintenance shafts down into the core and infrastructure of the vast platform that constituted the bulk of the city had been covered—maintenance ways closed, air shafts triple-sealed with titanium screens, while security drones flitted like bats through halls, vents and drains.

The distant throb and beat of the entertainment levels faded as evening progressed, and by 20.30, Lasita had dressed in the metallic bodyglove that interfaced her to the VR cocoon systems. She was strangely calm, excited only for the contest and looking forward to the challenge. So, when Khadr knocked softly and looked into her room, she could nod with assurance.

Bring it on.

Cool electronic stimuli washed over her as the VR interface took hold, and Lasita opened her eyes. She stood in a deserted industrial building, and drifted sand on the floor coupled with the drone of a hot wind through girders open to the sky told her the environment. Her hands flew over the gear the system had provided—each player was identically equipped. 

Her primary weapon was a Kruger Longreach—a .320-calibre sniper rifle that fired a variety of loads, each riding a 200-grain magnum cartridge. She had three magazines in her vest, so thirty-six shots. She had never taken more than one magazine to complete a match; the rest were mere insurance. For close defense, an automatic pistol hugged her right thigh, with three more magazines in its own caliber. One canteen of fresh water rode her belt, and she had no rations—the fight would not last long enough to need them. A coil of scaling line and a mechanical ascender, plus a selection of charges and grenades, completed her gear. A sensory helmet with wide-spectrum optical systems complemented sand-camo battledress, and she flexed her hands in tough gloves as the heat and dryness began to register.

In her helmet’s visor, a red legend blinked, counting away the thirty seconds of orientation time the players were allowed, and as the digits zeroed out and vanished, she hefted the rifle and left the windy vastness of the building at a dead run.

Her first priority was to find her opponent. When she peered out through a rusting metal door, she found sand blowing in a byway where huge vehicles had once passed. Opposite, a tower rose in a jungle of spars and pipes, and she crossed the way in a combat crouch, rifle panning back and forth. At a caged ladder, she slung the weapon and climbed hard, passing up among tanks and ducts.

Elevation gave her perspective, and she knew her foe would be seeking the same elsewhere in the complex. The game computers never launched players into action in immediately lethal proximity to each other—the audience must get its money’s worth, and such a combat could be expected to take fifteen to thirty minutes, under normal circumstances. But this was the equivalent of a championship grudge match, so who knew what was normal now? There could be no changes in rules or simulation parameters without prior agreement; any tampering at that level would invalidate the match.

She rolled onto a steel-mesh walkway thirty meters up and crouched to scan with her sensory helmet. No contacts in her visual field; thermal and EM were ambient. She went up one more stretch of steel rungs to a platform that circled the head of a rusting tank, giving her a view over half the complex. She brought the rifle up, flicked on the scope and began to sweep. Ten seconds, and she relocated around the curving platform to scan a new quarter, and again, until she had scanned out the whole complex.

It seemed to be a refinery of some sort, long disused, run to rust and rot. The wind droned through spars and towers under a watery blue sky, and low hills rose over the shimmering heat haze of the wastes. Not a bird or animal was to be seen, no blade of grass. The arena was stark and unforgiving, just as she had chosen a similar context when challenged in the past, albeit under a nighttime storm instead.

She was on the highest tower, had vantage over the entire arena, and could theoretically command the whole area from where she stood. But the tank at her back, rising through the platform, created a blind spot, and if positions were reversed, she would move to approach from that dead ground. She could only assume BlackNova would do the same, and counted in her head an unseemly pause of twenty seconds without moving—elementary entrapment—before whirling to the opposite side of the tower and scanning again. A figure moved in a blur from the sand-blowing streets into a building along from the roofless garage in which she had appeared, and could only be trying for elevation.

With the scope at her eye, she reduced magnification to take in a wide sweep of glassless windows, and controlled her breathing. She lay prone on the platform, elbows tucked under her to elevate the rear of the weapon, which jutted through the railings. She ignored its built-in bipod and balanced the foregrip on a low rung—not ideal, but good enough for the moment.

Where are you? She mused to herself, heart beating rapidly now. Her opponent must choose a vantage, show him- or herself, in order to engage and she swept back and forth, using her helmet sensors to seek motion, heat bloom, even sound signature. The block along from the garage was four stories high. It retained its roof, but every window had been shattered by storms in the years since this installation was abandoned, and she scanned for body heat against the dark interior. Against the sun-touched outside, catching a thermal trace from exposed skin was a big ask, but the system was exceptionally sensitive and able to exclude extraneous ‘noise.’

Her eyes went from window to window, and as the seconds blurred by, she heard the patter of boots on an internal stair. Come to me, she mouthed silently, then whispered a command: “Explosive, then two rounds, ball.” With a whine of micro-servos, an explosive round shuffled to the top of the magazine and injected, with two standard rounds ready to feed behind it.

Speed and surprise were her opponent’s best weapons, with only visual acquisition possible against the open sky from the lower building line. With Lasita’s exposed position, the steel mesh platform her only protection beyond her body armor, a fragmentation or fléchette round would be the weapon of choice—that would be her decision if positions were reversed. So, when a shadow moved at an aperture and the barrel of a Longreach appeared in the sun, she fired without hesitation—the explosive round targeted over the marksman’s head. The concrete over the window exploded in a wash of shards and splinters, collapsing over the weapon, and in the moment’s shock, she pumped both plain rounds through the space he or she must have occupied.

The thunder of the weapon rolled around the complex in returning echoes, and Lasita heaved up, rolled hard to put the steel tank between her and her opponent, and only then registered that she had heard the screech of fragmentation elements across the tank over her head. BlackNova was as good as his or her rep.

Her helmet picked up, amplified and repeated the sound of racing boots. The building was long enough for windows at each end of the same floor to offer a cone of fire that occupied more than half the circumference of the tank she was using for cover. If BlackNova went to the far end, either way, Lasita would be forced into a specific region for protection. The problem was, she had no way to know which end was occupied, and scanning would reveal her weapon or helmet, inviting a kill shot.

Come at it laterally, her instincts told her. She slung the rifle and unhitched the scaling line from her belt, attached the quick-release connector over the safety rail of the platform, snaked the line down the blind side of the cracking tower, then set a fragmentation grenade for a 50-second delay. She left it on the platform, swung out on the line, and plunged 35 meters in twenty seconds. The clamp released at the top at a signal, the line came whirling down, and she had time to bundle it up before the grenade blew.

Distractions were always a good idea—the moments of confusion and processing allowed both escape and attack. Lasita crossed the street at a run, just a single round chasing her, well wide of her dust-lifting boots. She crashed a round through the lock of a ground-floor door, kicked it open to plunge into cooler gloom, and paused to listen. Her enemy was somewhere three floors above her, and with an icy smile, she slung the rifle and drew her automatic. Nothing in the rules demanded a kill be with the primary weapon. It could be done with her bare hands and still count.

But, as she edged through the musty stillness of the trash-filled ground floor, her heart raced for another reason entirely. The combat was nearly ten minutes old. What was happening outside VR, where her body lay in its cocoon and people she loved stood between her and someone far more tangible than a gamer? It was semi-suicide to divide her attention when in-play, but Khadr knew she needed to know what was happening outside, and had programmed a back channel. 

In the corner of her helmet’s visor, she called up a small window displaying the feed from a security cam in the hall beyond the gaming suite and nodded with a tight smile as she saw Jax, Lydia and four security robots, all armed and facing the only way in.

Lydia was aware that Lasita was watching the feed. As an android, she registered the fact at once, and a pang of emotional emulation went through her—she was torn between Lasita needing the solace of knowing they were as yet fine and the risk of her taking her attention from the match. As yet, the entire complex was rated secure: from the sealed door before them to the outermost Police perimeter, nothing stirred. Twelve minutes into the challenge, the status remained quo, and each sixty seconds brought a prayer of gratitude to the gods of space.

But when Oberon Judd finally made his move, Jax and Lydia were stunned, a cold dread racing through them. Three of the four robots went offline spontaneously, while the fourth turned purposefully towards the inner door and leveled a sledgehammer fist to begin to pound relentlessly, its aim to tear free the mechanical locks on the inside.

They heard Khadr’s gasp from her control bay on the top floor. “No, no, no! They’re into our software! They’re not trying to attack physically! That door won’t hold for long!” 

With their com screens deployed at each right eye, Jax and Lydia saw a schematic of a Sanderson Guarddroid appear with flashing red indicators. “Those are the weakest points,” Khadr called. “I’ll do what I can from here, but—”

“On it,” Jax grunted, and they brought up their automatics to target the robot’s casing over the crucial systems.

In deep gameplay, Lasita felt a thrill of horror as she saw the weapon flashes in the small window. A Sanderson was a formidable piece of machinery, and her heart raced as she realised the goliath was now not between her and her foe—it was the foe. Not ten metres from her physical body, the beast was tearing down the last security partition, and panic rose like a shrieking banshee, but she beat it down.

No! She thought savagely. I will not be defeated! Trust Jax and Lydia, they’ll find an answer!

One battle at a time. With strange and sudden calm, she deactivated the cam feed window and turned her attention firmly back to her opponent. BlackNova was still on the third floor, and the rusted metal stair between levels was likely to squeak or groan, betraying movement. Lasita could send armour-piercing rounds up through the floors above, but without a firm targeting steer, she would just waste ammunition. Evasion was the mark of a player out of options, and her loyal viewing public knew she never gave ground in that way. Her trademark strategy was to outflank—but of course BlackNova knew that. So, for the first time ever, Lasita gave ground. 

Back down the way she had come, through into the deserted warehouse or vehicle garage in which she had appeared. She ran, breath rasping in her throat, to a back door and dirty windows, blew out the glass with three quick rounds from her automatic, and went through into the brilliant sun over the decaying industrial complex. In a dozen heartbeats, she was across an open laneway and down among rusting tanks.

She knew she had to end this fast. Whole worlds of gamers were watching, and it would be a black day for the sport if she were physically killed while in VR. So, with ice-cold resolve, she laid a trap—climbed to an overlook among girders and catwalks, set the Kruger’s bipod, and propped the weapon on top of one of the great tanks, the butt elevated by thrusting her water canteen under it to make it seem she scanned back the way she had come, as if she meant to channel her prey into the bottleneck. Then she changed magazines in her automatic and ran to the other end of the catwalk, parallel to the lane. From that position, she had an oblique view of the rear of the buildings. With bated breath, she drew a grenade from her belt and slipped its launch adaptor over the barrel of her pistol. 

Now she must wait, and the fear resurged. If she concentrated, she could feel thudding vibrations through her long bones—the robot’s blows on the door—and if Jax and Lydia had not been able to even distract the machine yet, they were not going to. Her life was measured in the strength of the door, yet despite this, she crouched and let her visor resolve all it could of the darkness behind the back windows of the block.

Would he or she take the bait? How could they not?

Setting a fixed trap invited her opponent to outflank her position, which she was counting on, and when her visor showed her a faint heat bloom at a smashed window one floor higher than her vantage, she more snarled, than smiled. BlackNova had a view down on the tank farm and would see only the barrel of the Kruger, trained on the broken window through which Lasita had come. Therefore, her opponent would open with an explosive round— 

The crash was deafening. A star of chemical flame blinked among steel over the spot she had left the Kruger, and as BlackNova followed up with a scatter of standard rounds, Lasita rose, presented the pistol and sent the grenade up in a fast arc. Glass shattered, and an instant later the window was filled with flame and smoke. Lasita broke cover for a better vantage, sent a second grenade through the aperture, then dropped to the ground and sprinted to a fire escape further along the block. In thirty seconds, she was on the second floor. She kicked in a window and ran, weapon outstretched. If she were wrong, she was dead.

A rank smell of burning came to her nostrils as she crouched and whirled around a door post to find the chamber riddled with shrapnel, the floor in flames, and among it all a body in torn battledress, a Kruger flung aside and damaged. With a deep breath, she rose and nodded.

“Game over,” she hissed.

Jax and Lydia had expended their ammunition against the robot’s plating to no effect when the steel door finally yielded. With a screech of rending metal, it buckled in its frame. The robot reached massive hands into the chamber, folded the sheet aside and struggled to get through. Wild-eyed with dread, Jax held a hand to his com, shouting for Police assistance, but before he heard Shabani in his ear, a howl of servos warned of another of the massive blue Sandersons coming back online. He and Lydia shrank back from the monster as it powered up, but it turned, ignoring them, and in three strides tackled the first.

With a howl of hydraulics, the second robot lifted the first bodily and slammed it down with enough force to embed it in the floor. A titanic metal fist struck with the relentless rhythm of a crushing machine, smashing home in its sensory array. The first Sanderson flailed for purchase, closed a hand on the second’s leg and locked them together. Then the second knelt, forcing its full weight onto the chest of the first. The damaged beams between floors creaked and sagged. Jax and Lydia heard wreckage falling between floors, while the second robot ignored the battering left fist of the first, and took the head in both hands. It exerted the entire titanic strength of its hydraulics.

In a sparking flash, the head broke away from its servos, trailing cables and fluid links. LED running lights died as the body lapsed into a helpless maintenance cycle, and in the sudden quiet, the second robot straightened and turned. To Jax’s and Lydia’s amazement, it sent them a very human wave.

Khadr hosted the group in her upstairs sanctum once more, with Shabani and Kwan present this time. Gourmet coffee and sweets were most welcome, and Lasita sat between Jax and Lydia under the Aquarian stars framed in the dome.

“Judd’s crew got in on the robot command channel,” the palace’s owner said simply. “They knew they couldn’t get so much as a drone past the security we fielded, so they turned our own against us. It took a very powerful signal to break in, and they had the command codes—they must have been able to interrogate our system to identify the current code cycle, which points to the need for a whole new level of cybersecurity. It took me time to clean them out and reboot one unit on a fresh command code.”

Lasita flexed her hands with a grin. “After that, it was...very satisfying.”

At Shabani’s puzzled expression, Khadr explained. “Lasita is a genuine professional. She finished the match, no matter the jeopardy to her life. But the moment she was done, I switched her cocoon into the Battle Strider game and merged the input/output with the Number 3 robot’s scan system.”

“That put me in the pilot’s seat,” Lasita said simply. “The Sanderson design has no real weak points as such, but if you apply enough force anything will give.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible,” Shabani observed mildly, sipping coffee. “A standard gaming rig interfacing with hardware in the real world?” She tut-tutted for a moment.

“Come now, Detective,” Jax replied mildly. “There are only experts present.”

“Let me put it another way. It’s against the law.”

Lydia shrugged. “Then we’re all very lucky a law was broken tonight.”

The pause was uncomfortable, and Kwan filled the moment. “We tracked the signal burst that cut in on the robots. It came from an adjoining building, and the cybercrimes unit is on it. We’re backtracking—we now have justification to move against anyone the trail uncovers and a promise of cooperation from departments on other worlds.”

“We’re not saying we can lay this at Judd’s door,” Shabani added, “but we might be able to clean up his local operation. The Gaming Commission is all over this like a rash.”

“Where does that leave us?” Lydia asked softly.

The group traded glances in the silence, and Shabani gave a wide shrug. “Let’s say we overlook the protocol breach in using a gaming rig to tie a half-tonne combat machine to voluntary human control...but we’ll have to keep it in mind. As you’ve demonstrated, it’s a very handy tool to have in the kit. And who knows when the odd job might come along, which would be covered by terms like consultancy.”

“You...want me to work for you?” Lasita asked with a shrewd look.

“No, not at all. Just pitch-hit now and then, if conditions demand it.”

“I’m not sure I can agree to this,” Jax said with a raised hand. “I had hoped that after tonight, Lasita would have nothing to do with action outside the game ever again.”

“Think of it as ordinary VR telepresence,” Kwan said with a smile. “Every precaution will always be taken. But we’re thinking about what we could do with the skill and instincts of a champion gamer in a tight spot.”

“It’s that, or we apply the law as it stands,” Shabani added bluntly. “Your choice.”

The others held silence while Jax visibly warred with his conscience, but Lasita at last sat forward with a smile. “The path of least resistance is to just take the jobs as they come. I assume payment for such outings will be neither traceable nor taxable, yes?”

“Stringless credit—that’s a promise.” Shabani’s look was level and confident. At Lasita’s nod, she took a coffee refill with a sly smile. “My, my, Mr Gower. All these centuries cutting your own furrow, and now your protégé is working for legitimate authority after all.”

A wordless look passed between the three from Gagarin’s World. Life had a way of complicating itself, and this wrinkle had not been foreseen. Jax raised his cup to the others in toast. “All things are opportunities if viewed in the right light. So, here’s to tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” they chorused, and Lasita—the girl born Gemma Corvane, escapee from the gutters of New London and now Champion Gamer of Aquarius—could only wonder where life would take her next.