What did safe conduct mean, anyway?

Chapter 2

Operate Controls To Play Game

You never said to your parents, ‘Hey, I really need a computer because that way I can play Megasteroids.’

No, you said, ‘I really need a computer because of school.’

It’s educational.

Anyway, there had to be a good side to the Trying Times everyone was going through in this house. If you hung around in your room and generally kept your head down, stuff like computers sort of happened. It made everyone feel better.

And it was quite useful for school sometimes. Johnny had written ‘What it felt like to be different sorts of peasants’ on it, and printed them out on the printer, although he had to rewrite them in his handwriting because although the school taught Keyboard Skills and New Technology you got into trouble if you used keyboard skills and new technology actually to do anything.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t much good for maths. He’d always had trouble with algebra, because they wouldn’t let you get away with ‘What it feels like to be x²’. But he had an arrangement with Bigmac about that, because Bigmac got the same feeling when he looked at an essay project as Johnny did when he was faced with a quadratic equation. Anyway, it didn’t matter that much. If you kept your head down, they were generally so grateful that you were not, e.g., causing policemen to come to the school, or actually nailing a teacher to anything, that you got left alone.

But mainly the computer was good for games. If you turned the volume control up, you didn’t have to hear the shouting.

The ScreeWee mother ship was in uproar. There was still a haze of smoke in the air from the last bombardment, and indistinct figures pattered back and forth, trying to fix things up well enough to survive the journey.

The Captain sat back in her chair on the huge, shadowy bridge. She was yellow under the eyes, a sure sign of lack of sleep. So much to be done . . . half the fighters were damaged, and the main ships were in none too good condition, and there was hardly any room and certainly no food for all the survivors they were taking on board.

She looked up. There was the Gunnery Officer.

‘This is not a wise move,’ he said.

‘It is the only one I have,’ said the Captain wearily.

‘No! We must fight on!’

‘And then we die,’ said the Captain. ‘We fight, and then we die. That’s how it goes.’

‘Then we die gloriously!’

‘There’s an important word in that sentence,’ said the Captain. ‘And it’s not the word “gloriously”.’

The Gunnery Officer went light green with rage.

‘He’s attacked hundreds of our ships!’

‘And then he stopped.’

‘None of the others have,’ said the Gunnery Officer. ‘They’re humans! You can’t trust a human. They shoot everything.’