The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  The great fleshy face that stared into his radiated anger and hatred. “Fuck you! I’ll take you all with me!” Harvey’s hand plunged into his jacket and he swept a blaster out in a clumsy motion, bringing it to bear on Wade. He might even have been able get a shot off, had the smaller man not swept in, put a hand on the wrist and started to twist it towards the ground, his eyes meeting the bigger mans. “Not a good idea. Do you know how much pressure is needed on the human wrist before it breaks? I do.” He continued to twist, the blaster pointed at the ground, away from harming anyone. Scott and Pete had already thrown themselves flat again the rooftop, well out of the firing line. Now Scott looked up, saw the pained look on Harvey’s face and steel in Wade’s eyes. “Drop it, or I’ll show you.”

  Defiantly, Harvey shook his head, petulance breaking through the pain. A bare second later, the crack of breaking bone rang through the night, followed by a shriek of agony. The flash and the snap as the blaster discharged into the roof before another thud, elbow meeting nose, fists meeting ample gut and then Wade was rubbing his forehead having driven it hard into Harvey’s already damaged face. Scott watched him hit the ground, down for the count, the rooftop shaking under his weight.

  “What’s going to happen to him now?”

  Wade looked down at the two boys in front of him, realised boys was maybe the wrong term. They’d done something incredibly brave. Stupid and naïve perhaps but also brave. They’d faced down a maniac and although they’d done a lot of things wrong, they’d gotten away with it.

  “I assume he’ll be processed in the regular fashion,” Wade said. “Assault, attempted kidnap, there’s a rumour about a body in his hotel room they want to talk to him about…” He saw the looks on their faces. He’d said too much, they were lucky Okocha had sent out an alert to find Rocastle. Very lucky indeed. “One of the officers let it slip. Good thing I’m not with the media.” He tapped the side of his face, grinned at them both. Fuzzing their recollection of the brief scuffle with his muffler wasn’t a tricky thing, but he needed to do it under Unisco regulations. Just in case.

  His forehead ached, and he knew he’d have a bruise there from that final smash to Rocastle’s face, he knew it had been a good blow. “I’m just glad I managed to talk him down before he did something truly desperate.”

  “It’s good you managed to talk him down,” Scott said slowly. “Before he did something desperate.”

  “Thanks for that, by the way,” Pete said. “Bravest thing I ever seen, especially when he pulled the blaster on you.”

  “Shame he fell down the stairs on the way down,” Wade added, tapping the side of his face again. Already he could imagine the muffler working its effects, not erasing just confusing what they’d seen with what he said they’d seen. He’d been in touch with Okocha, the electronic footprint was being monitored for anything potentially incriminating. So why did he feel so worried? Maybe because it was his boss’s daughter, already being seen to by a pair of medics. He hadn’t even realised who it was until after the event.

  Good job on observation, Wade, he chided himself. It had been entirely fortunate he’d made the connections. Harvey Rocastle. First time he’d been involved in the arrest of a spirit dancer, normally they weren’t the bad sorts. But there was a first time for everything, he supposed. Every group of people had their rotten ones, why would the dancers be any different? A thought for another day, he brought his hand down to his waist and switched the muffler off, tucking a thumb into the loop of his belt as he looked down at them, wondering the best way to give them the talk. The one about staying out of other people’s dangerous business. Maybe they wouldn’t take it in, it didn’t mean he didn’t have to give it them, if only for his own conscience.

  Wade sighed as he looked at them, the words clear in his mind. “A lesson for you, boys. It’s not always about power. To get to this point, you should know by now strategy trumps power every time. That is why you couldn’t defeat him. You didn’t utilise your advantages. Two against one, you could have double teamed him, coordinated your attacks. Instead both of you attacked as individuals and it nearly cost a young woman her freedom, if not her life.”

  Pete looked annoyed, like there was something he wanted to say in outrage, tinges of red bursting lively into his cheek. Scott on the other hand looked a little ashamed and spoke up. “Ah, Mr Wallerington, sir?” he said softly. “It was my fault. I did everything you said. I saw her on the ground, I just… I was scared for her. I didn’t want that lunatic to hurt her. Pete did everything you said we should have. I just… It’d have been my fault. I just… I don’t know what I…”

  “You’re a passionate man,” Wade said. “But there’s a line we all must straddle between control and chaos. Let your passion rule you and it will consume you. A lesson for you. Learn from it, it’s the best thing you can do. Don’t ever let it happen again.”

  Pete smiled weakly. “Hells of a memorable first date for you, huh Scotty?”

  “Think she’ll want to see me again?” Scott said, before looking up at Wade. “Thank you, sir. I will learn from it. I’ll not let it happen again.”

  “Next time, alert someone professional about the whole thing as well,” Wade said. “What were you thinking going up there in the first place?”

  Scott suddenly looked a little sheepish. “Just a bad feeling, I guess. She’d been gone a while, I didn’t trust that freak and, well…”

  “I think what he’s trying to say is he doesn’t know,” Pete offered. “But it was a good thing he did. Rather than waste time arguing with someone who might not believe him.”

  Wade nodded. He wasn’t here to judge, and they had a point. Still, it didn’t mean they should be encouraged to do it again. Not without training. Hmm… Something to keep in mind for the future. They might be ideal candidates for Unisco. He’d have to keep an eye on them.

  “Can we go now?” Scott asked. “I want to see if she’s okay.”

  Wade let them, putting his hands in his pockets and switching the voice recorder off. Always handy to have a log of the conversation following something like this. The chances were, it could blow up into a stunning shitstorm, he wasn’t risking being unprepared for that scenario.

  He glanced over his shoulder, saw David Wilsin stood peering over the barrier at the scenes, a stunning brunette on his arm. She looked familiar, he couldn’t place her even if he wanted to. Either way, Wilsin looked a little bemused by the scenes in front of them, especially the victim walking towards the medical speeder.

  “Mia Arnholt?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Wade. “Unlucky girl since she got here, I think.”

  Aware of the events around the flood, Wade nodded. He’d hunkered down through all that, had missed most of the action. “You could say that.”

  “She okay?”

  “She’ll be fine. Nothing some time in hospital won’t fix. Nothing permanent. Rocastle came off worse.”

  “A damn spirit dancer going nuts… Damn.” Wilsin sounded about as disbelieving as Wade himself had about the whole thing. “Bet her dad’s going to go spare about this.”

  “Aren’t you relieved you’re not going to be the one to tell him?” Wade knew that job was going to fall to him, even if the director already knew. Even if it hadn’t been his daughter in danger, Arnholt would still need to know a spirit dancer had gone crazy and tried to kidnap someone.

  “Absolutely. Well, have fun with that.” He could see Wilsin wanted to head off, be alone with the brunette whose name still escaped him.

  “Enjoy your night, Dave,” he said, smiling at him and his companion. “See you around.”

  “Count on it, Wade. Until tomorrow then.”

  Outlaw Complex.

  Chapter One. Second Round Fixtures.

  “We’re not discussing changing it again. It’s not happening. Never. Not while I’m in office. I like it, it stays. If the competitors don’t like it, nobody’s forcing them to enter. End of discussion. Anyone who wants to carry on, there’s
the door right there. It opens, they can walk through it. Just don’t expect to come back. We won’t miss them.”

  Ronald Ritellia’s trademark diplomacy in reaction to calls to change the ‘Worst Winner’ rule in the Quin-C second round at an ICCC meeting pre-tournament.

  The fifth day of Summerpeak.

  Terrence Arnholt was uncharacteristically moody during the meeting the next morning, an uncomfortable void permeating through the room from his seat at the table Nobody could especially blame him, just as nobody wanted to set him off. Nobody wanted to take the brunt of his anger. It would be far too easy for him to suddenly decide to blame someone in the room, most of whom had been at the dance, for not spotting the psychopath with the grudge against his daughter. It would have been unreasonable, but nobody wanted to chance it being directed at them.

  The tables had been laid out in a U shape in the middle of the room, Arnholt, Brendan King, Derenko and Noorland sat together along the base of the shape. Wade himself stood in the middle, Nick Roper, David Wilsin, Lysa Montgomery, Fank Aldiss, Anne Sullivan, all to one side, Chris Fagan, Pree Khan, Tod Brumley, Will Okocha, Mel Harper and Jacques Leclerc towards the other.

  “I suppose I’d do well to thank Agent Okocha,” Wade said, glancing over to him. “He got in touch and warned me to look out for this guy. You all have the report in front of you, island authorities put out an issue on him because of the body in his hotel room. One Maxwell Mikel Brudel, plenty of prior criminal records mainly for theft, some narcotic distribution, some unlicensed possession of a blaster. Never been in jail for long though for one reason or another. Was bailed out just a few weeks ago on this very island in fact.”

  A holoimage flashed up of Brudel on the wall across from them, followed by images of his corpse and the crime scene. The hotel bathroom looked like it had seen better days, the volume of the water damage on the floor had worn all the way through, leaving a massive hole in the ground. “People in the room below complained when the ceiling came through, management forced their way in, found Mr Brudel in the bath. Looked like suicide although why he’d do it in a room that was registered to someone else is open to…”

  “Hey, I know this guy,” Wilsin piped up. “I think… Yeah, I’m sure it’s him. I handed him over to the authorities on the boat over here. He was robbing some people on the boat, I apprehended him. Not sure how he got out of jail so fast, I figured he’d still be in processing.”

  “Small world, eh?” Nick said. “So how did he get out of there?”

  The images of Brudel were replaced by those of Harvey Rocastle, three in a row, one of him on the spirit dancing circuit wearing his flamboyant green tuxedo, one an image that looked like it had come from a security recorder, the third of him with a broken nose and arm in a healing cast, a bruise matching the one already blossoming across Wade’s forehead. “Meet Harvey Rocastle,” Okocha said. “He was the one who the hotel room was registered to. Hence why I put an Eyes Open out on him. If he was seen, we could take it from there.”

  “It’s a bit below our remit,” Fank Aldiss said. “Suspected suicides of petty criminals.”

  “And yet, it was a good thing he did,” Anne retorted. “I’d say that was good thinking on Will’s part. Otherwise we’d be on full alert looking for Mia Arnholt.” She bit her lip, looked over at the director as if wondering what reaction her words might have brought, yet he remained impassive in his silence.

  “Regarding Harvey Rocastle, you may or may not know his reputation,” Okocha said. “He is a kingdom class spirit dancer, yet the more you dig down into his history, it’s littered with unsavoury outbursts, mainly against women. He’s been warned about his verbal conduct several times on the spirit dancing circuit. Not a pleasant individual. And yet, it is the first time anything like this has truly transpired involving him.”

  “Director,” Wilsin said. “Has your daughter ever mentioned him before in passing? Any sort of connection between them?”

  Arnholt shook his head. “Other than a professional rivalry, I don’t think so. They know each other, that’s about it. I don’t know why he’d want to kidnap her.”

  “Who knows why anyone does anything,” Fagan said. “Short of asking him. I assume we’ve tried. Or is he out of our jurisdiction?”

  Wade smiled. “Oh no. See as he attempted to escape, he was caught up by two competitors in the tournament.” The holoimages disappeared to be replaced by ones of Scott Taylor and Peter Jacobs. “He attacked them with his spirit. Aggravated assault atop a kidnap of a spirit dancer. That makes it one of ours. It’s tenuous but we can get him for it. There’re agents waiting to talk to him at first available opportunity. This is a dangerous individual. He managed to defeat these two men at the same time. Neither are shabby fighters.”

  “I think we’re missing the most important question here,” Tod Brumley said. “Why is a spirit dancer with no known connection to any competitor here out on this island when there’s no reason for him to be here?”

  “Could be for the battling,” Pree offered. “As unlikely as that might be.””

  “We do have some intelligence in regards of that,” Will said. “I managed to loop into the interview process, got the local authorities to ask Ms Arnholt it when they were getting her side of the story for their records. Just in case. Rocastle told her himself, and I quote ‘he was here on a scouting mission for callers who looked like they need a fresh start’.”

  “Excuse me?” Melanie Harper asked. “That sounds like a lie.”

  “Not necessarily,” Derenko said. “It’s not an uncommon practice at smaller levels. Why he’d be scouting around here is suspicious, I’d say. To get here, you need to be at least uncannily talented.”

  “Not the sort of people who’d look for a fresh start anyway,” Fank added. “That makes it a cover then. It feels like a cover.”

  “Don’t suppose she happened to say who he was working for, did she?” Jacques Leclerc inquired. Okocha shook his head. “Ah that’d be too easy, would it not?”

  “Was anyone here approached by this individual?” Brendan asked, to an immediate sea of shaking heads. “Damn, that’d have been even easier.”

  “Do we know anyone who was?” Nick asked. “That’d be the next step, surely. See if you can trace his presence around the island, see if you can see him talking to anyone…”

  “It’s a long process, Agent Roper,” Okocha said. “I’m still finishing up doing the Jeremiah Blut work that you left me needing to. I already had to outsource the triplet work back to the mainland headquarters. That said, it’s about our best chance.”

  “I wouldn’t say it is urgent,” Noorland say. “We have Rocastle in custody. However, I think it prudent to see if we can find out what his intentions truly were in regards of this so-called scouting mission. If only for our own peace of mind nothing sinister is involved.”

  Aldiss spoke next. “I do have one opinion to voice. The young woman, Director Arnholt’s daughter. Are we quite sure this wasn’t a plot against him?”

  “That thought has occurred to me, Agent Aldiss,” Arnholt said. “And it’s one that kept me awake last night. Will?”

  “We have no evidence suggesting. it was anything beyond coincidence. However, we’re unwilling to rule it out yet,” Okocha said. “It’s something we have to keep in mind.”

  “Because there’s no such thing as random coincidence,” Brendan remarked. “It’s too risky to ignore that link.”

  “Regardless, I’ll be speaking to my daughter and warning her to be more careful,” Arnholt said. “And my son. Any hint of a threat and measures will be taken.”

  It was the unspoken feeling all of them there had held at one point or another. The fear that someone they loved would fall into the hands of someone who wished them ill. All the protocols and plans were in place to protect that and yet the fear remained a factor deep in the recesses of the mind.

  “Anyway,” Brendan said. “With that out of the way, we can get down to the allotte
d purpose of this meeting, I believe. Since we arrived here, it has become clear something is going on.”

  “Understatement,” Wilsin said dryly. It brought a few laughs out of the other agents, Brendan’s face kept impassive, though his lips tightened against each other.

  “Thank you for that input, Agent Wilsin,” he said. “As you know, there was an unexpected phenomenon earlier in the week, freak weather patterns believed to be linked to the actions and subsequent deaths of several unknown parties at the hands of Agents Wilsin and Roper. These men have not been identified.”

  Several images of the three triplets appeared on the wall behind him. “Although the others found dead at the scene of the crime were known memories of the Vazaran Suns Group,” he added, naming the most famous mercenary company in the five kingdoms. “The only one we have an identification on would be Doctor Jeremiah Blut…”

  A fresh image of Blut appeared to replace the others. “Expert in religious theory and radical academic troublemaker. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to discover much about what he was doing here. We’ve sent agents to his home to no avail. No immediate family, his home had been cleaned out of anything that might hint as to his motives. Either way…”

  “Although we’re currently following a financial trail,” Okocha offered. “Sorry for interrupting, Chief. Just pointing that out. We’ve checked the payments into his personal accounts and he was slowly becoming a very rich man. Frequent monthly payments of fifty thousand credits a time.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” Nick said dryly. “Who was paying him.”

  “The company that paid him only exists as a shell corporation. We’re trying to find a way to the top, although I have a theory if anyone would like to hear it?”