Game masters? Another galaxy? Then I realised how familiar sounding the title was.
On Eden and many other inhabited planets, I couldn't avoid the aggressive advertising of the Iktomin subscription businesses eager to sell any form of galactic wide mass media, from news to bland and brainless type of entertainment, including those depicting porn and violence.
To the many fine working-class citizens of the space consortiums, the Iktomins presented themselves as leaders of inspiration to stimulate one's imagination for better things to come.
The most basic brainwashing technique is to repeat a lie too many times to turn the lie into a truth.
Trey is an example of their handiwork. He remained steadfast in the belief that I was part of their sick game, an ally of some sort.
The Iktomin's hidden agenda was to use those shows to brainwash and dumb down the vast populations by dissemination of subliminal hints and misinformation via a covert galactic wide network of mass media.
Knowledge is power, control knowledge via media, and one would be invincible. That's what the Iktomins are gunning for.
Then it clicked.
Trey was one of those gladiatorial entertainers.
The Iktomins had a series of galactic gladiatorial entertainment programs where they made claims about bringing other species from other galaxies.
In those shows, many of their key entertainers selected from different species, like Trey, had to assassinate whoever they targeted through their secretive surveillance networks.
No one cared about those targets when they were unknown. Most are just common folk milling about their everyday boring planetary lives. Space station bars often broadcasted those shows for their patron's entertainment.
Trey may be telling the truth about his origins from another galaxy.
Like the Nuwan Imperium and even us Kamuy, the Iktomin Conglomerate possessed the intergalactic ship technology to bypass the galactic barrier and navigate across the great void which separated one galaxy from the other.
Not all species concentrate on intergalactic travel or ships. To those indigenous to the Great Swirl galaxy, they had not fully explored all the quadrants yet. Even I haven't been out of my comfort zone in one quadrant.
The complexity and high cost of intergalactic ship technology deterred most spacefaring species in the galaxy. Multitudes of perils laid across the great void between the galaxies.
The great void, a vast ocean of nothingness between the galaxies, hid many monsters of unknown species lurking within, strange space anomalies and cosmic ray radiation.
However, the biggest hurdle is the galactic barrier. Entering and exiting a galaxy was far more complex than traveling within the galaxy.
To my knowledge, only a special type of Kamuy battle cruiser and the Amatsubune can survive the journey through the galactic barriers and the great void. My pathetic war cruiser wouldn't.
Heck. Even with over six hundred galactic cycles in my life, I never ventured out of this quadrant into another within the galaxy.
I rather stick to the familiar areas even if I don't like the species controlling the region.
"Your game masters - who are they?" I asked, encouraging him to reveal more.
The information flowing from his mouth may shift the Great Swirl Council's interest in me to him if the monitoring officer actually studies the recording of the cell.
After all, the Iktomin Conglomerate held a major share in their entire entertainment network and therefore present a bigger espionage threat than an individual roaming Kamuy.
Political threats trump economic interests.
Any hint of Iktomin interference in Eden's politics would place even the mega corporations and Great Swirl Council politicians, involved in the entertainment industry, within their territories under suspicion.
Better Trey than me.
"I don't know," Trey replied while tapping on the temple of his head with a finger. "They just communicate with the dashboard."
Definitely the Iktomins' infamous method of screwing around with minds and bodies to the extreme.
The Iktomins had no way of infiltrating the Battle Fortress. That much I know.
His so called 'game masters' cut him off once the Battle Fortress captured him, unless they communicated through some frequency I wasn't aware of.
"So you still have this dashboard in your vision?"
Trey shook his head and replied, "it disappeared just when the Battle Fortress came near. Still can't get it up. And I still had prizes to open."
"Prizes?"
"Yeah, for games. Some prizes are dumb, like some Jack-in-the-box shit with no purpose," he grumbled.
Yeah, made sense, play stupid games and win stupid prizes.
What is a Jack-in-the-box? Ah well, not that I cared.
"So, what are your games like?"
"Game missions include kil—mmmFfHH?"
I pressed my finger on his upper lip forcefully to causing him to muffle his speech.
He stopped blabbering with his widened eye, but nodded when my eyes moved to the location of the hidden camera.
"Complete jobs?"
Trey nodded again at my hint.
Completing jobs provided a vague cover for his actual activities or game missions, as he put it. Admission of killing on record was damning.
I remembered Mahara telling me about the dead assassin and the bone density belonging to a non spacefaring species.
Trey also belonged to a non spacefaring species and given how he thought his missions as a game made me uneasy.
The case of General Perkuna definitely linked back to the Iktomin conglomerate.
It occurred to me the Iktomins are now using some sort of assassin squad, which will be difficult to trace back.
Even if others captured an assassin, like Trey, the assassin would sound insane with the rambling about games, which made it easy for the Iktomins to deny any connection or even liability.
"There you go," I pretended to wipe his lip.
"What species are you?" Trey asked me, changing the topic.
At least, he isn't stupid.
"Kamuy," I replied.
No point in hiding my species from Trey. Damn bio scanners would just identify my species without a problem now. I can almost imagine the ruckus in the Battle Fortress command center reporting to their headquarters about finding a Kamuy.
The human mused in front of me as he leaned on the wall. "Kamuy? I heard a similar sounding word on Earth."
That statement caught me off guard for a moment. Maybe a different group of Kamuy went to his planetary system and settled down. My intergalactic kin was nomadic.
"What's Earth?"
"My planet."
"So what is that similar sounding word on your planet?"
"Well, that word doesn't belong to my race but in Japanese, I think… Kami… it means god. The Japanese worship them."
"Japanese?" I frowned. The mention of god made me suspicious. Did my species visit his civilisation under some pretext of being a divine celestial power? Sounds like the usual modus operandi.
"Well, my species split into different races: whites, Africans, Japanese, Chinese, Hispanics, etc," he explained. "Each with distinct appearances, different cultures and different beliefs."
What are this word 'races'? Was he referring to different mutations within the species relative to their environment on the planet?
"So some have four eyes, some three and some don't?" I asked, out of curiosity.
He coughed loudly. "No, no, most of us have the same type of bodies, just different in our appearances."
"So same species, but only look different," I surmised.
"How about your planetary system?"
"My home-world and planetary system were both destroyed," I replied.
Trey shifted uncomfortably on the bed at my reply in the awkward silence.
He rubbed his chin and then asked, "What are you in for?"
"False identity."
His eyes lit up at my reply and he exclaimed, "SAME!"
"So why did you fake yours?" I asked, feigning ignorance.