16

The student council election at Galactic took a rather unique form, at least as far as I was aware. I’d never paid attention to how things were run at Polaris, but I assumed they had actual elections instead of a mock fleet battle. On the last day of March, all other activities on the station were suspended so that everyone could assemble in the tower with a bunch of micro-gravity scooters that had been modified for the event. Even Burton and Dr. Pavlita showed up to watch.

I had no real intention of participating either, but I was quickly dragged onto center stage. Division into the rival fleets began with selection of two admirals by popular acclamation. Almost immediately, as if someone was behind the scenes pulling the strings, chants of Reb’s name and my own filled the massive hall like rumbling thunder. I wasn’t surprised to hear her nominated since she was already the vice-president, and I suppose it wasn’t really a surprise that many in the tilting faction would want me to take charge either.

Isidro stood on a small platform at the center of everything, the arbiter of the event and one of the few people who could not be nominated as an admiral. Obviously, any seniors who were preparing to move on soon were also disqualified. The battle was not simply a showdown between fleets, but apparently some strange contest over the fate of “the captive prince of the stars,” Isidro. His platform at the center of the cylindrical shaft was an imprisoning tower and victory would go to whoever freed him, or recaptured him, or something. I didn’t quite understand what was going on.

Things only became a little clearer when Isidro urged me with furtive gestures to plug my subdermal net into an access port on the scooter I’d been handed. The device was like a small log with handlebars and gas jets. The modification, I found out, was that it had been connected to their virtual reality server and thus so was I.

Another world painted itself over my vision, the tower falling away into open space brightly lit by spotlight-like galaxies and the scooters transforming into robust spaceships armed with fiercesome plasma cannons. The virtual world didn’t hide our own bodies and we all looked rather silly holding onto the ship-scooters.

Isidro leaned on the rail of his dark tower wearing fine vestments adorned with stars that swam across the cloth. I got the feeling that this was not actually any sort of tradition, but rather something he had made up on a whim. The crowd of students were excited though, especially Reb, who set her face with serious determination and changed her virtual outfit to that of a decorated officer. Once the admirals had been selected it didn’t take long for everyone else to be split up into opposing camps.

“Well thanks for the vote of confidence I guess, but I really don’t know the first thing about spaceship battles,” I said to the fleet of students mustering around me at one end of the tower. Compared to the opposition, who were altering their digital costumes into uniforms that matched Reb’s, we were a ragtag lot wearing all sorts of fantasy armors and bizarre fashions, and I was naked in the virtual sense.

“Don’t worry then,” one of the electrical engineering students called out. “Leave everything to our boy David.” This brought a murmur of agreement and cheers from the group. I knew the man he was talking about, a real nerd of a history student whose focus was on the development of human civilization in space, as short a history as that was. I found his face in the crowd, made a bit more challenging by his glasses being transformed into large goggles, and gave him a nod of approval.

“Okay,” he began thoughtfully while studying the actions of the opposing fleet. “If I’m going to be in command, then how about we use you as bait, Ashley? Looks like Reb is taking charge over there so I think she’ll ignore the goal and come gunning for you.” His idea made me realize that I didn’t even need to survive the battle to get a technical win. That somewhat dashed my hopes of avoiding becoming the next president by getting myself shot down. I wasn’t looking forward to telling them all that I was declining the position.

David quickly organized our little fleet into a battle line while I tried to read up on the mechanics of the game as quickly as I could scroll through a digital display. The fleet at the far end of the tower became obscured in the darkness of virtual space despite being easily visible in reality. It seemed that this might have actually been some sort of repeated event considering the rulebook made mention of all kinds of head scratching nonsense about superluminous radar detection, electronic counter-measures and electronic counter-counter-measures.

Finally, Isidro announced the start of the battle over voice comms and I edged my ship forward at the head of a small vanguard as David had planned. My escort moved up to the central bulge of the tower, barely defined in the virtual image by wispy trails of stardust but with its core dominated by the wrathful glare of a large sun. We caught sight of several advance scouts nosing toward us around the sides of the star. I pointed out one of the isolated ships and my vanguard turned in unison to fire upon it, easily overwhelming its shields with a barrage of plasma bolts. A fake explosion hid the student from view before the scooter automatically boosted the pilot to the sidelines.

What the hell am I doing? I had to ask myself. Playing pretend battleship wasn’t exactly on my list of my priorities, but it was hard not to get invested in the game. To my surprise, sinking the first ship was fun and I found myself joining in with the cheers of those in the vanguard.

As David predicted, a large portion of Reb’s fleet soon appeared in a concentrated battle line that advanced directly toward us. Their scouts had been looking for targets and we gave them exactly what they wanted. They opened up with a salvo that splashed across our conjoined shield. Despite their advantage in numbers, we were able to block their fire because it was mostly directed at me, as expected.

In response to their advance, we began to fall back, but their fleet didn’t overextend in pursuit. Even this had been predicted by David, who appeared at that moment to lead an attack with a harassing force on their fleet’s left flank at the same time as we in the vanguard drove into firing range again. After a few exchanges, both parts of our fleet reversed course.

Reb drew their battle line into a tight cluster and rushed in to try to break through our vanguard, as we were warned they might. Our reaction was to fold into a line on our own right flank and invite them to pass us by. Sensing the intent behind our move, Reb directed her fleet to turn away and double back in the direction from which they had come. Had they continued to charge, their clustered fleet would have been exposed to both our vanguard and the main fleet that had attacked their flank before.

We were in unplanned for territory, so I looked to David for direction. He tried to speak to us through the radio but all that came through was scrambled static. Our comms were being jammed. Even though I should have been able to audibly hear David at the distance we were from each other, the virtual noisescape overwrote the sound of his voice. The gestures he was making were too complex to understand and the others in the vanguard whispered amongst themselves trying to decide what they meant.

Attack? Hold? I tried to think strategically and the best I could come up with was that their fleet would want to swing all the way around the star and get away from the wall so that they couldn’t be pinned with a flank unable to engage in battle. To strike decisively, we could move in an opposing arc and meet them head on as they came around the sun.

I led the vanguard toward where I thought they would appear with David leading the main part of the fleet to join. Reb’s fleet came on in a conical formation which we scrambled to counter by opening our planar battle line to allow them to pass through, but they halted at mid range and flattened out as we closed ranks so that finally a pitched battle began. A core section of their fleet led by Reb herself continued to concentrate fire on me, prompting David to take charge of rotating others in and out of my vicinity to keep our combined shield at full strength while focusing fire on ships at the fringes of their fleet.

Eventually, it seemed that we were winning an advantage in numbers so David signalled a breakthrough attempt. He gathered the fleet and we charged forward into their formation. It soon became clear that this was a miscalculation: a reserve force rushed out from behind the star to catch us in a pincer attack as Reb’s fleet turned around. We had mistaken the surreptitious withdrawal of a few students to the rear for casualties. Within moments, the savage close range fighting left both sides with only a handful of remaining ships.

“Heh, hahahahaha…” cackled someone above us. Isidro loomed menacingly in his tower. “Fools, now that you’ve laid waste to each other, no one will be able to oppose my bid to take over the universe!”

I looked around to the others remaining on the battlefield hoping they were as confused as I was, but they all seemed to be taking the strange declaration in stride. “Did I miss something, I thought we were fighting over him to determine who will be the next president?” I asked over the radio.

“Isn’t it obvious? The real goal must be to defeat him instead!” Reb replied revealing that the two sides were now using the same comms channel. As if to underscore her assessment, Isidro tossed a strange little drone into the tower. As it floated and spun the sphere released a torrent of vibrant “space” that flooded the dark void of the virtual universe. This was not ordinary space, but rather a blue and purple tide filled with glittering jewel-stars and breaking whitecaps of stellar energy.

“Welcome to the sea of the soul where your power can manifest! Behold!” he shouted grandly before some monstrous creature sprung from the waters behind him. Its twisting form grew and grew until huge wings sprouted from its back; a giant serpent with rainbow hued scales and feathered pinions flashing with lightning coiled protectively around him. Huge bolts of energy leapt out toward the few students still clinging to their ships.

Despite ostensibly being lightning, the crackling arcs were relatively slow and I managed to weave with my scooter’s jets to avoid them. However, as I surveyed the scene I saw that the remainder of the fleets had been whittled away to just one other survivor, Reb. She sat atop her ship with a look of awe tinged with some darker emotion I couldn’t quite place. She had not dodged the bolts but instead shielded herself behind the man-sized frame of an armored knight whose shining breastplate smoked where it had been smote. I heard her mumble something like, “So you’ve managed to get that far ahead of me…”

I turned again to Isidro and shuddered from the sight of the creature he had summoned. It reminded me of terrible things. I felt a bit of anger that he would bring something that looked like that before me, but it was nonsensical to think that he should know better. Perhaps some day I would tell him what that beast compared to in my eyes. But at the moment, he laughed again and prepared to finish us off with another attack.

“Ash!” Reb called out to me. “Use your Hand!” I was still quite confused and looked down at my hands to see if some change had occurred in the virtual world, but there was nothing there. “No, your Hand of Glory, you can use it here!” That statement was at least a bit helpful; I started to get what was happening. The game was no longer about spaceships per se, but rather the system was translating our brainwaves into action. If I thought about that device, it should appear.

Thunder crashed and more bolts flew forcing me to dodge again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Reb’s knight crumble away to dust. No Hand would appear for me. It wasn’t surprising. They probably thought I had some kind of affinity or attachment to those gauntlets, but I had only ever seen them as tools no different from any of the others we’d used in our mad crusade against the world. It wasn’t something I could think into existence.

That was fine though, a loss there would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with the prize of presidency. I resigned myself to taking the next storm directly. What nonsense it all was. My detachment made room for a strange reaction; I felt the desire to trump Isidro at his own game. Not just that, but to help Reb win. As sometimes rarely happened, I acted on impulse. A path to victory was clear to me. The other two there were thinking too much outside the box.

I planted my feet on my scooter, angled myself toward Isidro, and leapt. The oncoming lightning disappeared as I disconnected from the server, but his surprised face remained clearly visible. Across the intervening gap I soared to reach out and tackle him. Unlike a few weeks prior, he couldn’t easily brush me off. We started to tumble end over end with the platform he had been tethered to, but I quickly pulled his cord free and tossed him out into free space.

I looked past him to Reb and shouted, “Now, finish him!” What occurred next I couldn’t quite say because their actions in the virtual reality were hidden from me. She looked determined, pointed at his flailing, floating form, and finally let out a victorious whoop.

Eventually I would learn that she summoned another avatar to strike him down after I’d tossed him from the safety of his serpent guardian’s coils. Although there was some discussion over the matter of which one of us would receive the title of president, Reb won out in the end.