The Only Game in the Galaxy Read Free Page A

chaotic images of jungle and sky, intense heat, and a sensation of choking, followed by another flash of light and a sense of being wrenched away.
    Then coolness, grass under her cheek. The park on the outskirts of this city and, not long after, the city proctors, rounding up transients.
    ‘Get out of my way,’ said a powerfully built man the other ‘inmates’ shied away from. He was easily one-hundred and eighty-five centimetres and one-hundred and fifteen kilograms, all of it muscle. He reached out a fist the size of a ham, grabbed Anneke by the shoulder, and shoved her aside.
    In a blur of movement, Anneke seized his wrist, twisted, spun under his arm – forcing him to bend backwards – before lashing out with her foot, connecting with his groin, and following it through with two powerful swift jabs to the solar plexus and throat. The man went down, gurgling, gasping for breath.
    Anneke stood back, mouth open.
    How in the universe had she done that? Feeling bad, she took a step towards the man. He scrabbled away in fear. Anneke realised the other inmates were staring at her, as surprised as herself.
    ‘I’m sorry. You … ah … startled me.’
    She found a quiet corner with a host of silent dark eyes following her. But when she did nothing spectacular, the inmates lost interest, except for one girl, who sidled over and squatted a metre from her. The girl pretended to be preoccupied with grooming her hair, though her rat’s nest was a lost cause.
    She glanced over at some traders. ‘You lucky dey didn’t see you. Put him down real good,’ she said. ‘Where you learn dat?’
    Anneke shrugged. She didn’t know and didn’t feel inclined to explain.
    ‘Wha’s yer name?’ the girl suddenly asked.
    Anneke opened her mouth to answer but stopped. It hit her like a punch in the gut that she didn’t have a name. At least she didn’t know it. This bothered her more than the rest of her amnesia.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
    ‘You dun know yer own name?’
    Anneke shook her head. ‘I was in an accident. Must have hit my head. I don’t remember much.’
    ‘Yer talkin’, aincha?’
    ‘Good point. But what language am I speaking?’
    ‘Loquatch.’
    ‘Like a native?’
    ‘Nah. Like a fancy-born client.’
    Anneke filed that away. ‘You get a lot of fancy-born clients here on –?’
    ‘Tormat. Diz be Tormat. Oh, my, you dun even know what sod you’s on! And yah, we gets lotsa clients here. This whole sod is for dem rich buggers.’
    ‘A pleasure world.’ Anneke remembered hearing of such planets. Dedicated to supplying the needs of the sector’s elites, and highly valued for doing so. Of course, it was worrying not to know how she knew this. It was as if she had a computer in her head, supplying information upon request. If so, it had lost her name along the way.
    As if reading her thoughts, the ragged street urchin said, ‘Gotta have a name. Might as well pick one. Mine’s Selude.’
    Anneke fished a burnt fragment of plastic from her tunic pocket, the only thing she’d found on herself besides a few currency notes. The notes, of small denomination, had been issued on Lykis Integer, which Anneke vaguely recognised as a prime world, the capital of a galactic sector. That didn’t help much since she could have obtained the money anywhere in that sector and several others as well.
    The plastic fragment was different. It had contained a holographic picture and a code number, four digits in all, plus some letters. All but one line began with lowercase letters. The exceptions were three letters: A–n–n … What the rest of the letters were, Anneke did not know. She showed it to Selude.
    The girl licked her finger and rubbed at the smoke-blackened fragment, trying to expose more letters, but gave up after a few minutes, having revealed three new ones, all in uppercase: R – I – M …
    Anneke did not recognise them, but maybe she was called Rim .
    ‘I’m gonna call you Ann,’ Selude said