Pledge Allegiance

T
he Circle Slums
, Iton-3

A
n incessant knocking
at my door woke me. I opened my bleary eyes and sat up in bed, wincing at the pounding in my head. Squinting at the grimy window, I saw a dark sky beyond filled with distant pale stars. I’d slept the day away, and it wasn’t the first time.

What had I done last night? The last thing I remembered was staggering through the door in the early hours of this morning. The sky had been brightening then, the stars barely more than specks. I’d been holding a bottle of booze in my hand, I was sure of that.

The hammering on the door continued. I climbed out of bed and stepped into a cold wet patch in the wooden floorboards. I glanced down. A bottle of whiskey, obviously one I’d been nurturing last night, lay on its side, its contents spilled onto the floor where I’d just stepped.

The room stank of stale sweat and alcohol.

Cursing, I avoided the other empty bottles and fast food containers strewn over the floor and moved stiffly to the door to open it. “What is it?’ I asked before the door was fully open. I just wanted to get back into bed and catch a few more hours of sleep before I went out to the Lucky Dragon to play WarZone. I hoped my luck would be better than it had been last night.

Mr. Chow, the landlord, stood in the hallway outside. He jabbed an accusing finger in the air between us. “You’re late with the rent again.”

I held up a hand and nodded in an attempt to placate him. We had this “rent meeting” every month. Playing WarZone wasn’t the most stable of careers, and—if luck was against me, or I was beaten by highly-skilled players—I often had trouble making ends meet where rent and food were concerned.

That was why I lived in a crummy apartment in the most run-down district of The Circle. The only people who lived here were those who couldn’t afford to live elsewhere. “I’ll have it for you tonight,” I said.

“It is tonight.” He pointed toward the dark window at the end of the hallway. “See? Night. Now where’s my money?”

“I mean I’ll go get it now. You can have it in the morning.”

He shook his head. “No. In the morning, the guys will be here to change the locks. Get your stuff and get out. I’m tired of you, Blake. You’re no good. You don’t pay on time and you wake up everyone else when you stagger in here drunk every night. Enough is enough.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said. “Look, I just need to go to the Dragon tonight and get your money. I’ll have it in a few hours.”

“No, you’re out of here. Most tenants in this building, they don’t give me problems but you, you give me problems all the time. You leave tonight and don’t bother coming back because the locks will be changed. Goodbye.” He turned on his heels and stalked toward the stairs.

We’d had these run-ins before and Chow had threatened me with eviction each time, but now it sounded like he meant it.

I guess I wouldn’t know until I returned home in the morning. If the locks were changed and I’d been evicted, then Chow had been serious. I had nowhere else to go. If I really was kicked out of here, I’d be sleeping on the streets—a dangerous endeavor in The Circle.

I closed the door and padded into the bathroom, grimacing when the bright overhead fluorescent light flickered on. I had to leave the booze alone tonight and keep my head clear. I needed to stay sharp at the WarZone table and return here with the winnings so I could pay the rent and get Chow off my back for another month.

After splashing cold water on my face and brushing my teeth, I took a couple of painkillers and dressed as quickly as I could without moving my aching head too much. Then I locked up and headed down the stairs, past Mr. Chow’s apartment on the first floor, and out onto the damp, misty street.

The city was always shrouded in mist. Tendrils of it clung to every building and floated over the streets. The days never got hot enough to burn it completely away, just enough that the tantalizing stars could be seen in the night sky. Iton-3 was definitely not a tourist trap.

The planet had started life as a mining project by some big corporation. Terraformed to support human life, Iton-3 was then mined for its buried resources. Eventually, cities had sprung up like this one. And where there were cities, there would eventually be slums.

The corporation couldn’t hire enough miners when the planet’s precious metals and minerals were spilling over but, as time wore on, the mines had to be dug deeper to make a profit. A group of cautious accountants, probably in one of the big cities on Earth, decided to cut overhead. Miners were laid off.

Eventually, Iton-3 was abandoned, becoming nothing more than a red mark on the balance sheet as far as the corporation was concerned. But to many of its inhabitants, the place had become home, and they stayed to eke out a living in any and every way possible.

I hated the place. Every moment I spent here reminded me how far I’d fallen. From commanding an Imperium star ship in the Horde War, to making a living in seedy gambling dens and trying to drink away my memories.

Iton-3 was five gates away from Earth, a long way from my old life. I’d thought that by settling here, the memories of my old life would eventually fade from my mind.

But I’d just been deceiving myself. I might be far away from Earth and the Imperium geographically, but my memories of the destruction of the ISS
Oregon
could not be clearer if it had happened yesterday.

I looked up at the distant stars as I walked the familiar route to the Dragon. The pinpoints of light shone pale in the misty night. The space they inhabited was the only place I’d ever truly felt at home. Now, I had no home, maybe literally if Mr. Chow was true to his word about changing the locks on the apartment door.

Turning off the main street and into the alley that led to the Lucky Dragon, I dug my hands into the pockets of my jacket. The action was meant to look like I’d merely put them in there to keep them warm, but it also put the flick knife in my right pocket within easy reach. These alleys were dangerous. The fingers of my right hand wrapped loosely around the cold steel handle of the knife.

I strode through the winding maze of alleys, avoiding the deep shadows and shapes in the piles of garbage that could be men lying in wait for an unwary wanderer. I didn’t have time to get into any trouble; I needed to get that rent money and square everything away with Chow, for another month at least.

When I saw the neon green electric sign hanging over the door of the Lucky Dragon ahead, I felt lucky just to have made it here without incident. Not every night had been so uneventful. I had the scars to prove it.

Once, I had won enough credits to pay my rent for three months and then been jumped by a half dozen muggers on my way home. My assailants had left me bleeding and penniless in an alley, and it was only when the sun rose that I’d regained consciousness. I was so desperate for money that I went straight back into the gambling den and resumed playing WarZone with blood still running from a cut above my left eye and bruises throbbing all over my body.

The two bouncers standing beneath the sign, their faces lit green by its glow, nodded to me as I stepped past them. They knew my face. Everyone at the Dragon knew me by sight, even if not by name, because I was here almost every night.

Inside, the place was busy, smoky, and noisy. A low hum of chatter from the players and croupiers was accentuated with shouts of glee from winners, and groans of frustration from losers.

I went to the bar and ordered a bourbon. A little hair of the dog would help me concentrate and might even bring the final death of the headache that still let me know it was there despite the painkillers dulling its sharp edge.

As I took a sip of the amber liquid and felt it burn down my throat, I glanced over the WarZone tables. I didn’t recognize any of the players. That was good. It meant I could use my favorite strategies in the game and not have to worry about any of the other players recognizing my moves from past encounters.

I only hoped that none of the men or women moving their troop avatars over the randomly-generated terrain on the table was ex-military.

The game was won by defeating the other players’ units in a simulated ground war. It attracted veterans of actual wars, and such players were usually unbeatable. When two or more veterans went head to head on the WarZone table, it was a sight to behold and such matches were usually broadcast on TV, the winners taking away big money.

I was ex-military myself, of course, but I didn’t have the years of experience that some of the older veterans brought to the table. If any of those players were old hands, I would have to cut my losses and run.

I had to start at the smaller tables anyway because I only had a tiny amount of credits to wager. Only after I had won a bigger stake would I be able to move up to the higher-paying tables, which was where any veterans would be playing.

I looked around at the run-down joint and laughed softly to myself. Top class players wouldn’t be found in a place like this; there were planets like New Vegas, only one gate from Earth, where the big games were played live on TV.

Only amateurs or people on the run from their old life, like me, played WarZone at dives like the Lucky Dragon.

Most of the Dragon’s business took place through a door marked VIRTUAL. There, customers could be jacked into the digital reality known as Virtual and escape reality. I had been tempted to try it myself, the escape part sounding perfect. But Virtual wasn’t a game like WarZone.

Entering Virtual meant letting the technicians, known as Virtuosos, connect you to the immersive world. There was no way I was going to let anyone in this dump play around with my cerebral cortex. Virtual might be safe in the high-end clubs and private parties, but I’d heard rumors of people dying behind that door and the bodies being disposed of discreetly by the Virtuosos. That sounded about right for this place.

I turned back to the bar and took another sip of the bourbon. It was actually dulling the last remnants of the headache, which surprised me because my hair-of-the-dog reasoning had only been an excuse to get a drink, despite my earlier decision to stay away from alcohol.

A woman came over and sat on the stool next to me. She ordered a soda. I glanced sideways at her. She was pretty, with shoulder-length blond hair. She wore a dark blue tight-fitting uniform that showed off her lithe, well-muscled body and brought out the blue in her eyes. A logo over the curve of her left breast showed a planet with the letters SVI emblazoned over it. I’d never heard of SVI, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a company based on Iton-3. The uniform itself was of the type usually worn by bridge crew on a ship.

She turned to face me and I thought she was going to tell me to stop staring. What she actually said surprised me.

“Captain Shaun Blake.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement. She obviously knew who I was.

I was taken aback. The only people who knew me on this planet were Mr. Chow and a handful of the staff here at the Dragon. And none of them called me Captain. None of them even knew I’d once been one.

“I’m not a captain of anything,” I said. I took another mouthful of bourbon and swallowed it, finishing the drink. I put the empty shot glass on the smooth illuminated surface of the bar and stood. Coming here tonight had been a bad idea. I should have negotiated with Chow for more time and stayed at home. This woman unnerved me. I couldn’t say what it was about her that made me so uncomfortable—maybe it was the crew uniform—but I wanted nothing more than to get away from her.

“You were once,” she said. Her tone was neutral. If she was an angry relative of someone who had died on the
Oregon
and had come here to avenge their death, she was good at hiding her emotions.

There was no point denying anything. She was obviously in no doubt that I was Shaun Blake.

“Once,” I said. “A long time ago. Not anymore.” I slid my right hand into my jacket pocket. The tips of my fingers contacted the steel knife handle.

Her eyes darted to my pocket and then back to my face. From the way she slightly raised one eyebrow, I was sure she knew about the knife, or at least guessed that I had some weapon in there. “I’m only here to talk,” she said, turning back to the bar and sipping her soda.

I stood frozen to the spot, deciding if I was going to talk to her or head for the door like every instinct inside me was screaming at me to do. If she knew that I had once been Captain Shaun Blake of the Imperium Star Ship
Oregon
, anything she had to say was going to resurrect bad memories for me.

But those memories had never really faded, so whatever she had come here to talk about probably couldn’t make me feel any worse than I already felt regarding the events that had occurred in orbit over Savarea.

“Okay,” I said. “You seem to know who I am, but I can’t say the same about you.”

“Jane Baltimore,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the head of human resources at Solomon Vess Industries.”

I shook her hand. She had a strong grip. “No offense, but you don’t look like someone who works in an admin department.” She was built more like a fighter. If I had to guess, I would say she was an ex-soldier. Or maybe still serving.

“Head of human resources is simply a title,” she said. “My job involves many varied functions. Only one of them is recruitment of staff.”

I nodded as if I knew what she meant even though I had no idea what she was talking about. All I wanted to know was how she had tracked me down and why she was here on Iton-3 addressing me by a title I no longer possessed.

“So what do you want with me?” I asked. “I’m not looking for a job right now.”

“Of course you aren’t. I can see that your life is perfect.” She looked around the Dragon. “Pretending to be a commander at the WarZone table. Moving soldier avatars around a board instead of doing what you’re really good at, commanding real people in real-life situations.”

“Real-life is overrated,” I said.

She smiled thinly. “It is if you live in a run-down apartment on Iton-3 and spend every night drinking and gambling.”