Freelance Traveller

Playing Games

by Jeffrey Schwartz

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue.

It was back when I was a 2LT in the Marines. We were stationed on __________, trying to keep the locals from revolting against the Imperium. It was a messy situation—they were about TL9, mostly urbanized in large, sprawling low towns with churches and city offices in high spires, and a few multi-story shopping malls.

I’d placed my marksmen on top of the mall in our assigned area, and put fire teams in the open areas around the mall at ground level. Those open areas—we called them mercados—had little shops and cart-vendors, with a bunch of bistro tables and chairs along the street/parking lot that led to the mall proper.

The Stilties were just shy of 3.5 meters standing fully erect, though their torsos were about the same size as a human’s. Most of the height was in the long legs, and they had equally long arms. The head was a flat crab like thing, with eyes in pods on either side, and the scalp was all photosensitive skin, giving them a 360 degree low-resolution field of view of everything above them. The mouth wasn’t attached to the head—it was a vicious shark-toothed thing built into the upper torso, feeding directly into the crop.

They wore a poncho-like thing, low cut to clear the mouth so they could talk and eat, with a hood of thinner, gauzy material they could pull up to shade the scalp at mid-day, sort of like sun glasses for us. There was a central pocket in the middle of the poncho, open on both sides and sewn top and bottom, just below the mouth, that was big enough to hold a pair of the oversized pistols they carried.

The Stilties would often sit at those tables in the mid morning, sitting in fours around one of those tables playing a sort of four sided checkers/backgammon style game. I didn’t fully understand it, but I had figured out by watching that pieces moved straight forward to attack, but if you lined your pieces up side-by-side and your line was longer than the other guy’s, you were safe and pieces couldn’t be taken.

Sgt Ortez and I, just on a lark, decided to get a chess board made up, and we set up a camp table and chairs on the mercado and started playing chess in the morning. I figured it might make us seem more like real people to the Stilties, that maybe we had something in common.

One of the females that ran a food truck, for want of a better term, seemed curious, and watched us play. That was fine; it put her, Killam by name, where I could see her. There was a lot of motion in the mercado that seemed to imply she had a position of respect in one of the local gangs/resistance groups, and if she wanted to stay where I could see her and have her flunkies come to her so we could identify them, that was fine with me.

It was four days after Ortez and I started playing chess, sitting under an awning on the south side of the mall when the trouble happened. It was an overcast day,with light mist and occasional rain, and I was wearing a poncho over my CES. I’d been sitting a lot, and had moved my sidearm to 10 o’clock cross draw because it didn’t dig in and I could draw while seated when Cpl Menny yelled on the radio from the east side.

Sarge and I ran over, to find Menny and her fire team, sidearms drawn, yelling at a group of Stilties, standing tall, looming over them in tight ranks, hands near those pockets. Menny was yelling “Show me your hands! Hands out where I can see them!” and the natives weren’t listening.

Killam came up, yelled something to the locals, and they took a couple steps back, still tall and hands near the pocket. A few had their hands in their pockets, and weren’t taking them out, and we were all waiting for one of those things that straddled the line between magnum handgun and SMG to come out.

Killam looked at me, bent down a bit, head back with a curved neck like an angry chicken and chest forward—but her hands were off to her sides, no pistol, and her legs were crouched a bit so she wasn’t trying to loom over me. She yelled “STOP!”

She had no gun, wasn’t reaching for one, so I reached under my poncho and holstered mine.

That made her blink.

“Wait, you put your gun away?”

I shrugged, “Yeah, you seem like you want to talk. Hands away from where a weapon might be, not looming over me all threatening to hit me in the head, eyes at the same level as mine so we’re equals.”

She squinted, looking confused, “I had my arms spread, for in the days when we had no guns, in a fight you’d grab someone and drag them into your teeth to kill them. That was me threatening you. “

A light began to dawn.

“With us, threatening is getting taller and bigger, and getting above the person you want to hit.”

She did the weird head wobble that meant no, and said, “Getting above means you’re letting them see you with all their eyes, and you’re blocking the view of them your scalp offers. Tall and narrow means you can’t bite or claw from the sides.”

Everybody - her troops and mine - looked at us, and one of her gang members took a step to the side and said, “What the mating, you’re talking with her?”

I said, “Sure, why not? She walked over talking to me…”

She made that creepy gurgling sound that served them for a laugh, “Talking has the mouth open, showing teeth. When they stand up, closed mouthed, they’re being non-threatening.”

I grinned, careful to do so with my lips covering my teeth,and said, “Closed mouth like that with the lips down is unhappy-about-to-fight for us.”

She said, “Why do your people demand to touch our N’sada?”

That’s a new word for me - “I don’t know what that is.”

She pointed at the pocket on her ‘hoody’ and explained, ”The N’sada is a place where we keep our totems for luck and fertility, and the ones for honoring the gods.”

I said, “Is that what they’re for? They’re the right size for keeping a pistol there…”

There was a whistle through the blowholes of most of them there, what I’d learned was a ‘shocked gasp’.

Several whispered “sacrilege!”

She blanched a bit, embarrassed, then said, “To put a weapon in the N’sada is … You put tokens of the things you want the gods to bless you with, and to bless your offspring with. Putting a gun there means you’re praying for…” She looked exasperated, trying to puzzle it out, then said, “Death penis that slays the woman you love and her offspring? Vagina that kills the child you’re pregnant with?”

“Wait - so when they reach into their … N’sada, you call it? … they’re praying?”

“Yes, one’s hands in the N’sada prevents reaching out to grab and fight.”

This was starting to make sense—“And us patting you down to check for weapons?”

She said, “How do you think a female would react to a male grabbing her genitals?”

I said,”You know, our rules of engagement say that if you’re uncomfortable with a soldier of a given gender searching you, you can ask for one of a different gender. If there’s one available, we’re required to comply. Would you feel better if a female searched you?”

Another of the Stilities yelled, “WE CAN ASK THINGS? AND YOU GO ALONG WITH IT?”

I said, “Well, yeah, if you come to us talking, we’ll talk back and try to work it out.”

He said, “And if I don’t want that one “—pointing at Menny—“the female, to search me? You’ll have a male do it?”

I nodded, then remembered to try to do the head-wobble thing, “Yeah, it works both ways, male for male if that’s what you want.”

There was a pause, and I said, “And Killam was well away from the rest of you, so I didn’t feel like you were all in a tight fighting pack.”

One toward the edge of their group said, “You want us to spread out? Our line to be wider than yours?” I flashed to their version of checkers—the wide line wins. A narrow line loses. “You guys were bunching up on purpose? “

Killam answered,”Bunched up, we can’t spread our arms to fight. Why? Are your people different?”

I said, “We stick close together to fight, so our comrade’s shield covers us. A tight pack is more intimidating, all working together to plow through the enemy line.”

She asked, “What about being flanked, since your line is shorter?”

I pointed up to the rooftop, where I had my marksman stationed, “Riflemen cover us from back there.”

She looked up, and said, “Bishops. Those are your bishops and rooks”, and her eyes had a light dawning.

“Yes. … your game doesn’t have those, so … that means you didn’t have bows in your early days?”

She nodded. “I’ve seen your ‘King of the Hand Ornament’ movies. Our chests are too wide for a bow to work, we used slings, which require a wider line of battle. Packed in close, we couldn’t use them.”

Everybody took another step back. The Stilties started to stand even taller, and Killam started talking real fast, faster than I could follow. Her ‘troops’ started laughing, then crouched down , the reverse knees bending as they got real low, arms way out from their bodies, heads bent down a bit. We all eased up a little, coming out of our combat crouches and standing up, shoulders rotating a bit. The Stilties laughed again, and some of us did too.

Menny’s troops holstered their sidearms, and one of Stiltie gangers stepped forward, then really carefully pulled his hoody/poncho thing to the side - showing us the weapon holstered upside down under his right arm, for an easier draw when his hands were out to the side, and impossible to draw when his hand was near that hoody pocket—the N’sada—that we’d all been nervous about.

I said, “Ok, how about leaving that thing holstered, and we all sit down. I’ll buy all the cold drinks you got in your truck, Killam, and we all sit and have some time to relax and talk this thing out.”

She frowned—and I realized it wasn’t a frown at all, but a hiding of every facet of those multi-rowed teeth—and said, “Yes, I think it might be a very good idea.”

 

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