The Kingdom of the Seven Stars: Chaturanga

Chapter 10

Alex jogged through the doors of the third room, straight onto the chessboard.

He stopped as he realised this. Alice, Ellen and Captain Zachary stopped behind him as they saw what was different about this room too. The chessboard in here covered the entire floor, running right up to the walls. The yellow and blue squares were bigger than they had been in the previous rooms, almost four metres square. The chess pieces standing on them were larger too. They were taller than Captain Zachary and wider than Alex could wrap his arms around. All of them were covered with chips, dents and scratches. While everything was bigger, it was also seemed smaller because the pieces took up more space, even though there were fewer pieces than normal. The board only had the black and white kings and queens and two bishops each on it. The room had a high ceiling with metal walls. There were no holes in them, but they were dented and scratched as well.

"Oh, dear," said Alice, looking around.

"What's wrong?" said Captain Zachary.

"I don't know. I don't recognise this one," said Alice. "Are we only playing with four pieces, Chata?"

"Yes, but don't worry. This a nice, simple variant," said Chata, appearing on the view screens. "All you have to do is checkmate me, before I can checkmate you, with only three pieces."

"OK. That shouldn't take long," said Ellen.

"Yes," said Alex, frowning as he studied the board. Even with only three pieces, it should be simple enough to checkmate Chata. But – after what had happened so far – it also sounded too easy.

"Is there anything we should know before we start, ma'am?" said Captain Zachary, looking carefully around, with one hand resting on his laser pistol.

"No, don't worry. This room's in much better condition than the others. It was more solidly built," said Chata, nodding at the metal walls. "And I've just run a full system check. Everything is working perfectly. You can start whenever you're ready."

"OK," said Alice, slightly quieter than usual, frowning at Chata and the board. "Bishop to Queen 3."

Alex started to nod. That was a good, sensible move to start with. But then he froze as the white bishop moved. It slid diagonally towards its new square, much faster than any of the pieces in the previous rooms had moved, almost as if was sliding over ice. The bishop reached Queen 3 and kept going. It slid straight across two more squares without slowing down, hit the wall and bounced off at an angle. The bishop shot all the way across the board and hit Chata's Queen's Bishop. It bounced off that and flew across the board to Queen's Rook 6, rebounded off the other wall and spun back across the board straight towards them.

"Oh, no! Look out!" yelled Chata.

"Aaah!"

Alex and Alice jumped left and Ellen and Captain Zachary went right. They only just moved fast enough as the bishop shot between them, back to its starting square and bounced out of that, before running out of momentum and gliding to a stop in the middle of the board.

"Holy Supernovas!" said Ellen.

"Ah," said Alice. "Billiards Chess."

"Correct, your highness," said Chata. "And I'm sorry. It seems we do have one problem after all. The momentum-dampener isn't working."

"Billy-what?" said Ellen.

"Billiards Chess, Princess," said Chata. "It's a variant game that was inspired by table top cue-and-ball games like billiards, pool and snooker. Think of the pieces as balls. Once they start rolling, they keep rolling. So make sure you don't stand in front of them. The pieces weigh one and half tonnes each."