The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum
The Blue Bubble
The Fanged Beauty
The host of the Contabri Bar looked at her fangs as she smiled her deadly smile. The host wondered if she was even from the Aatari Lok universe. She looked like she might be from the Frozen Skiff, perhaps even the Black Pulse. Why in Aatar’s name would she come to the Blue Bubble Convention Centre in Kollarum? He could imagine her in a back room high in the Big Four, grilling some poor bureaucrat for state secrets. But to be in a bar blocks from the glitzy Blue Bubble, packed with salesmen and sales gimmicks, it just didn’t seem plausible.
The host adjusted the dim lighting in the bar and took a closer look. The dark purple rings below her eyes, her powdery violet chest, and her crimson claws made her look like a Derelectan moll, one of those fabled women who would do pretty much anything. The host was something of an aficionado of alien species, and he had a particular interest in the creatures that inhabited the Soodbelt and the Black Pulse.
From his research, the host understood that Derelectans called their molls Derelecta, their mobster partners Derelectarat. The women were particularly fearless, having centuries ago made the men bear the children and stay at home. Yet his understanding was a mediated one, since he had never actually met a Derelecta before. He had seen pictures, though. According to these, the skin of the Derelecta was translucent, and yet a deep creamy white. It was like ivory polished so completely that in the right light it resembled a mirror. It was said that you could look into the visage of a Derelecta and see your invisible self, or what some called your shadow.
The host had also read that Derelectans were considered the fifth most dangerous Fallarian species, of which there were about 300 über-groups. They ranged from insect-like giants to reptilian shape-shifters, all of which had the ability to fly (the Fallarian term for any species who couldn’t fly was grounded slug). The most dangerous Fallarian species was the Lightning Demon, of whom the Demon Priest was the most powerful. Next came the Fractal Vampires, the Void Miners, and the Grey Blanket Wizards (or Grey Blizzards). The Derelectans weren’t as dangerous as these — not because they weren’t as vicious, but because they lacked the IQ and shape-shifting abilities of the demons, vampires, miners, and blizzards. While the Derelectans weren’t as fast-witted or agile as the others, they were as tough as Fallarians came, and that was very tough. Even a Fractal Vampire would think twice about crossing a Derelectan — unless there was a strategic reason to do so.
Fallarians were feared throughout the Soodbelt, and it secretly thrilled the host to think that they had outposts in several galaxies on the soodern edges of the Copper Tarn. But it was exceptionally rare to find one of their most dangerous species in Aatari Lok. And yet there she was, a real live Derelectan! Not just a Fallarian, but a Derelectan, no less! The host had to steady himself as he went over it in his mind: this light-skinned, harrowing beauty had travelled to the safety of a Convention Centre in Kollarum from the murkiest depths of the Black Pulse itself!
He couldn’t keep a recent image out of his mind: after she came in the bar she took off her dark glittering purple face-guard and cloak, which resembled a diamond-studded burqa. She took these off slowly, unveiling her stunning beauty to the room. Her torso was lined with stripes like a zebra, and her eyes shone like two green stars in the darkest void. The host was reminded of the words of Shakespeare: Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear, / Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. And yet the host suspected that this Derelecta would indeed use her beauty, with neither stint nor scruple, down here below. He was captivated. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! / For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
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The lady with the ivory-white fangs was masquerading as a travel agent from Aatari Prime. It had taken her 53 years to gain the trust of her Aatari superiors, who in a fervor of inter-species ecumenicalism had done their best to treat her as if she were one of them. And to hide their revulsion. She understood their unspoken horror and likewise exercised restraint: every time she heard them apologize and make excuses she had to stop herself from injecting their jaws with a neural toxin just to keep them shut.
You could spit in her face and you would think she believed it to be foreplay. This was a discipline she hadn’t learned in the ganglands of Fallar Prime. And because she was independently capable of such discipline, she was highly prized by the Demon Priests and Fractal Vampires who followed her progress with assiduity.
At first the Aataris found it hard to believe that she was a simple travel agent who wanted to live the dull life of a Middlebelter. But after 50 years of dealing with reservations and complaints, and after throwing a thousand vegetarian soirées (each one followed by the same card-game in which everyone won and no one lost), she convinced her bosses, as well as the Aatari security officers, that she posed no threat.
Everything important that she did to further the designs of the Priests & Vampires who beat their heavy wings beyond the Fallar Dominion, she did by stealth. Whatever she did, the Aatari security agents must never be allowed to imagine that she played a part.
Officially, she’d come to this week-long conference to network with other travel agents. Unofficially, she’d come to gather information about weaknesses in the outlying galaxies of Aatari Lok. If she was lucky, she might even run into a spy, an informant, or a black-data miner from galaxies further Nord. Above all, she hoped to seduce an Aatari security agent.
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The Waves of Kollarum
The fanged beauty came into the Contabri Bar with a large group who crashed through the door to escape a sudden shift in the weather. For two or three minutes after they entered, they continued to hold onto each other as if for dear life, because the winds outside were as fierce as a raging sea.
At noon the winds blew at 60 kph, whipping up small shards of metallic ice that hung everywhere in the sky. Yet this was nothing compared to the regular wind, which started blowing around 3 PM, and reached 480 kph by 3:30. As the wind sped up, the shards coalesced, and formed crystal projectiles that could penetrate two-centimetre-thick sheets of lead. All the bars, hotels, resorts, restaurants, and shopping complexes around the Blue Bubble battened down their hatches. Yet this didn’t disturb the Kollari in the least: while they waited patiently for the commotion above them to cease, they continued eating and drinking, gambling and speculating, buying and selling, working and sleeping, most of them completely oblivious to the howling surges above them. Winds of 500 kph + were the norm, while anything under 60 kph was rare. The optimistic Kollari referred to the slower winds as lazy moments of icy delight.
By mid-afternoon many of the travel agents were tired of the cheeriness and the sales talk. At the urging of a Kollari who was stationed in the foyer and called himself the host, they decided to explore the city. At 3 PM he led a group of 26 agents out the doors and into what he called an Icy Blue Paradise. Earlier that afternoon they had worked on names for new Kollari resorts, such as The Swirling Blue Heaven and The Turquoise Prima Donna of the Celestial Spheres.
The Blue Bubble invited such hyperbole, since it was an extraordinary building: a crystoplex Blue Bubble two and a half kilometres long and twelve stories high, with ten lakes, two sports stadiums, an intergalactic runway, and six specialized ecological zones: zero-gravity nitrogen, suspended ignightium gel, desert furnace, vapour magnet-fields, acid-swamp lysergia, and midnight estranium. The real treat, however, was above the Blue Bubble: hundreds of swirling, surreal currents of energy and air. Like the waves of an ocean, the currents slid around each other, never clashing or forking into lightning. In colour they were azure, aquamarine, navy, teal, indigo, ultramarine, and cyan.
When the 26 agents reached the sidewalk, they commented on what a challenge it was to see the sights and yet avoid the piercing ice. The host gave them sleet umbrellas and told them to form a conga line to make sure that no one was swept off the sidewalk by the wind. Strangely, a small group of agents seemed unaffected by the gusts, which were now reaching a hundred miles an hour. They seemed almost kept by magnets to the ground, and the host took note of the translucent waves of density surrounding them.
The host had promised them the ride of their lives, and intended to deliver. He had also installed speakers on his helmet, blasting what might be described as a mix of bossa nova, funk, Metallica, Galarian sinx, and cool jazz.
They held on tight as the wind threatened to sweep the tail of the conga onto a second-floor balcony. What an exciting excursion! Reaching the next block, they shrieked with delight as tiny periwinkle shards bit into their sleet umbrellas, and occasionally grazed their antennae and crenellated domes. It was like a non-stop acupuncture session, they agreed, imagining how that would look on a brochure: a naked torso with delicate fins, magnetic hands massaging and inducting, spines straightening. When the wind started to tear bits off their umbrellas, they concocted grim ad campaigns based on survival techniques and old video games: Battling the Needled Serpent, Climbing the Blue Powder Sky of Poison Spikes. Looking across the intersection at the next block, they cursed the planet of Kollarum, shouted “Fuck it!” and ran for the nearest shelter.
Qayam the host had of course timed their departure, and ushered them into his bar with all the flourish of a ringmaster of a three-ring circus.
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Next: 🎲 On Meliflorium
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