The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  Steven’s final spirit hit the mangled ground with a thud and as Scott took it in for the first time, his heart fell. Oh crap!

  He might not do it after all. Whatever it was, he’d never seen one before, though it was huge. Its body fashioned out of a dark blue metal, it stood towering above him on five legs the size of tree trunks around an oval-shaped body, as it stood there staring at him through eyes twice the size of dinner plates. Two of those legs stuck out either side of the giant eyes, one at the back of its body. When the mouth opened, he could see it was filled with giant triangular teeth, almost shark-like. It looked like a giant five-legged metal spider and he gulped. Crush wasn’t a small spirit by any means, but the crab was dwarfed by the enemy. As it thundered to the ground, he could see each of the five legs was tipped by a trio of pointed claws cutting into the earth like butter.

  “The mighty cavern crusher,” Steven said proudly. “Very rarely seen, very difficult to damage and this is where it ends for you.” They were the first words he’d said all bout, a vaguely aristocratic inflection to his voice, snobby pride in his words. It made Scott want to smash him in the face. “Very few opponents can conquer this creature. Can you?”

  He didn’t have time to consider the answer as the referee’s buzzer went and he cursed mentally, Steven had out-psyched him with the question. He’d spoken, distracted him and Scott had been too busy considering his words to contemplate a strategy. Stupid, stupid…

  He was doing it again, the crusher tensed its legs and sprang into the air with a clumsy leap, Scott quickly traced the trajectory with his eyes and blanched, screaming for Crush to get out the way. He responded just a little too late, the crab did duck but not fast enough, one giant leg smashing into his back with crushing force. Smashed to the ground, Crush let out a shudder, utterly pinned by the weight. Sudden panic running through him, Scott tried to keep a lid on it, the claws whipped out at his command and flailed impotently at one standing leg. Unable to get much momentum behind them, they clanged off with a desolate sound. He wasn’t even sure if they’d left a scratch on the skin.

  At the same time, he heard a cracking sound, for a moment he let his spirits rise that maybe they’d done something, all until he realised the source. It wasn’t coming from the crusher, it was coming from Crush, the weight still on the crab’s back and ever so gradually his thick shell was coming apart. If it broke, it would be all over.

  Guess he didn’t have any choice in dealing with it then, he’d have to take his chances with what he could do for now and hope his last spirit could take it home. Now though, Crush’s jaws slowly slid open, the tell-tale vivid sheen of orange energy already forming. Maybe it’d be more effective if he could fire one down its gullet, burn it up from the inside. Pushing that strategy aside for the moment, he saw Steven’s eyes widen and as the uniblast erupted from Crush’s jaws, the cavern crusher sprang up into the air as if fired from a springboard, the blast sailing wide. But it was off Crush’s back and he needed that.

  It took a great effort for the crab to rise to all six unsteady feet, only now could he see the cracked carapace where the crusher had dug in. It didn’t look pleasant, he forced himself not to look. Crush was wobbling, free or not he didn’t think he’d last much longer. Coming in on its three rear legs, the crusher went for the crab like a boxer, using its front legs like fists and it was all Crush could do to stagger out of reach. Another blow came. And another. And on the third blow, Crush caught the fist in a powerful pincer and Scott could see the exertion running through the shattered body as he dug in, trying its hardest to crush the arm in his grip.

  He never saw the other arm coming and suddenly Crush was airborne, hurled into the sky by a vicious uppercut, rising and rising until suddenly he was falling and suddenly Scott could feel the connection between the two of them fading. Crush was dying, might already be dead and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Except… There was something there still, a faint hint of a spark and he seized it instantly, silently urging the crab on. One final blow was all he needed, it might be key in the fight. For a moment, he held his breath as he studied the cavern crusher. It had to have a weak spot somewhere but…

  Where?

  He followed the outline of the body all around, nothing he could see…

  The orange blur hit like a comet, he knew he was out of time and in absence of a specific target, Crush had done the next best thing and driven heavy claws hard into the cavern crusher’s face, the crash deafening him as the echo of the impact rang around the arena. If it had done anything, he couldn’t say, Crush slipped down the face limply, falling at the feet of the opponent who had conquered him.

  It was over, and he wasn’t any closer than he had been at the start.

  So, what now? It was a question he wasn’t entirely sure he had the answer to.

  Chapter Six. The Bowels of Her Castle.

  “It’s about more than just society. That’s the whole, I want to think about the parts which make up the whole. Because without the sum of the parts, the whole is nothing. Think of a machine. A dozen tiny pieces all working together in concert to ensure everything works perfectly. If just one goes wrong, the whole thing will come grinding to a halt. That is the truth of society. Introduce just one flawed element into the way the whole thing works, and it churns to a halt. Change has been conceptualised. Be it permanent or only temporary, there it is. An actual difference exists with the potential for better or worse.”

  John Cyris pushing his Freedom Triumphant philosophy to listeners.

  The tenth day of Summerpeak.

  Had it been the right thing to do? She’d considered the question for hours now, constantly demanding the whole thing kept to the forefront of her mind. The first line in the sand had been drawn. She’d attacked, made the first move. She’d declared war on Unisco in the name of advancing her goals. Had it been the right thing to do? Perhaps not. Maybe she could have stretched out the first inevitable confrontation for further down the line. After all, she had made her move and it could have backfired spectacularly. She could have been killed. By all rights, on another day, she would have been.

  She’d been lucky. Aerial dogfights, weapons, all things she had people to do for her. She leaned back against the wall, heart pounding in her chest. So why did she feel so alive? She had more credits than she ever knew what to do with, but it was the first time she’d ever felt this rush. She knew it had to be bad for her, doing it too often would be to invite catastrophe. Unisco agents were trained saboteurs, investigators, killers, to go up against them on her own would be suicidal. Sooner or later, it would backfire, and everything would be for naught. She was lucky they hadn’t identified her and weren’t already at her door.

  She couldn’t risk it again. Not yet. Things would soon change, circumstances permitting. All it took was patience. It felt like a dirty word in her mind, yet she knew the value of it. Waiting might be infuriating but there was ultimately very little she could do. Suffer the tedium of the present to bear the fruits of the future. She drummed her fingers against the desk, stared at the report in front of her and forced herself to read. adrenaline in her system still hadn’t quite faded, tough chore to ignore the way it screamed at her. This was important. Too important to ignore.

  The report came from one of her people downstairs, for her eyes only and extremely sensitive. It didn’t make for good reading. Too many potential excuses and complications for her liking. Perhaps running off on unplanned jaunts to Carcaradis Island wasn’t the best idea; the evidence stacking up. Things needed to be kept an eye on here.

  But who was going to keep an eye on her?

  She’d already had the argument with Domis. Dear sweet Domis with his unshakeable loyalty and desire to do nothing but protect her from those who wished her harm. For a moment she considered setting him loose on Unisco and its agents but quickly decided against it. It would be a fool’s errand. They were too scattered, too anonymous to be worth it. By the time he killed eno
ugh to warrant the mission, the rest would be in retreat. Sending him into one of their office buildings would be a waste, even should he survive it, the chances of his anonymity remaining were low. That was his great talent. That he didn’t exist in any sense of the world. He existed on no database in any of the five kingdoms save the one inside her mind. A truly anonymous man.

  She was the only one which knew the truth about him. With Domis, she had something quite remarkable she’d soon decided she’d rather nobody else knew about. Those who’d helped her with him in the early days no longer could talk about him. He was the closest thing she had to a son, she valued him more than she did her good-for-nothing daughter and the constant drain on credits she constantly found her to be. That was before getting onto the subject of this infernal wedding…

  He’d been agitated when she’d returned, hair windswept from the flight, breathing heavy and smelling of smoke. Her own black knight, her bodyguard and closest confidant, she’d found him pacing her study as she strode in, the grin plastered over her face.

  “Mistress!” he’d exclaimed as he’d clapped eyes on her. “You’re alive. I was worried. I saw the news, there was an attack at Carcaradis Island.” He paused, looking wary in his worry, like he knew he should desist but unable to. “And I recognised what the attacker was riding. Looked awful like…”

  She cut him off. “Yes, it was me.”

  Two sides of him wrestled for control, she could see the twitch in his face. The one that was subservient, the one that loved her too much to stay silent. The latter won. “Mistress, I wish you wouldn’t… I didn’t know. If you’d been hurt, I couldn’t protect you from here.”

  “I am alive, am I not?” she said. Had it been anyone other than Domis, they’d have felt her full ire at being questioned in such a way. This from a man who’d recently recaptured Rocastle, had flown his vos lak into a dogfight with a squadron of Unisco fighters for her. Yet she stayed her tongue from chastising him. He’d earned the leeway and she’d let it go. Bullying him into submission wasn’t going to do her any favours. She didn’t want to push how devoted to her he might be. Those big hands could break her into pieces as easily as any weapon. “Domis, don’t question me. I am capable.” It was a gentle rebuke, nothing more. “There was something I needed to attend to. It escalated. Believe me, this was never my intention.”

  “Mistress, should you have been killed…”

  “I wasn’t,” she interrupted him. “Domis, I appreciate your concern. But you need to understand you can’t be beside my side every minute of every day. You are my strong right hand.” She took his giant hand in both of her smaller ones and smiled at him, craning her neck back to meet his eyes. No doubt he had to be one of the largest men in the five kingdoms, he loomed like a small mountain on the horizon, not just tall but thick as well. He looked like he had some cave troll in him, yet appearances were deceptive. He’d never be acclaimed for his intelligence, yet it was always a pleasure to see the surprise of those who met him, finding him to be deceptively articulate.

  His resolve cracked, she saw the corners of his mouth tremble. She might view him as something like a son but more than once she’d wondered to the exact extent of his desires towards her. “When I need you, I know you’ll be there. Sometimes I need you to be elsewhere. You, I trust more than anyone else. Everyone else is replaceable. Everything else is replaceable. What you are is beyond that. You are the most unique singularity in my life.”

  She’d seen him swell with pride and had patted his hand before withdrawing. “Believe me; sometimes you can be more useful when you’re not by my side. Like when I send you on the little missions.” It was true as well. Others might see delivery duty as a demotion. Domis took it all in his stride without complaint, taking care of anything she didn’t want to come into the house through official channels.

  She didn’t expect to be attacked in her own building, but he’d gone with her into the labs to deal with the doctor. Maybe he felt a special attachment to the project. After all, study of him had led to the inspiration behind it. Like as not, he didn’t care. If he had a life outside of her, she’d yet to see any evidence of it. He lived on her property, he kept his wages in a lockcase under his bed and never spent more of it than he had to. Food, clothing and maintenance, beyond those, he must have had a small fortune beneath his mattress.

  Doctor Andreas Hota looked up as she entered his office without knocking, the colour going from his face as he took in his visitors. He was aging badly, and the colour fading didn’t do him any favours. “Ah, Madam, you took me by thurprithe.” His accent, thick from the western reaches of Serran left him with a lisp; she’d heard it before and no longer found it amusing. “I didn’t know you would be coming.”

  She smiled her cold smile, saw him shift uncomfortably in his seat. “I wanted to surprise you. Looks like I achieved that. I read your report, doctor.”

  “Madam Coppinger, the proceth ith going thlower than expected,” he said. “And we’re needing more medical web by the day. I have faith the project will be completed. I jutht need thome more time. We have some pothitive rethults already. Pleathe, allow me to thow you tho far.” He scrambled to his feet and started to open one of the cupboards, thumbing through a collection of flash drives. “We recorded thith during a tetht in recent dayth. Tho far it theemth to have taken.”

  Her ire replaced by curiosity, she let him slide it into a monitor and prepared herself for what he thought she might find so interesting. She’d seen Subject A before. Nothing unusual there. There she lay on the operating table, mask over her face to keep her sedated. Her skin looked pale and clammy, not a well woman. That wasn’t her concern, keeping her alive was imperative. Keeping her comfortable was not.

  “Here we have Thubject A,” the Hota in the room said as the camera turned to another Hota, one on the screen wearing a blue surgical mask and gown. “And there we have a charming man ready to cut Thubject A up.” The Hota on screen gave the camera a thumbs-up and it focused in on the test subject, zooming in to cover the left hand. It was contorted into a claw, the nails still showing some trace of manicure. “Thubject is right handed. Thuth we decided that the left would make a more ideal tetht. We tharted out thmall, you thee,” the Hota in the room explained.

  On the screen, the whirring sound of a viraknife charging up could be heard in the background. Some of the same knives were across the other side of the room, she could see them in a cabinet. They were an incredibly useful surgical tool, once heated up to the right temperature they cut remarkably easily through bone in mere seconds, through flesh in less than that.

  “Thetting temperature to low,” the Hota on screen said to the camera as he took one of the knives in hand, the blade glowing a dull orange. “Preparing to make initial cut. Thubject has been thedated, blood prethure ith low, breathing ith thtable. Firtht tranthuthion hath been adminithered.”

  She didn’t avert her eyes as he cut into the palm of Subject A’s hand, going at it with surgical aplomb, taking the skin away with broad but delicate strokes. Within moments, he had the palm stripped of skin from wrist to the base of the fingers. Blood flowed but it was slower than she’d expected, sluggish even as it slipped out of the wound. She didn’t want to avert her eyes. This should have distressed her, yet she didn’t even flinch, watching with curiosity. He took away the skin from the back of her hand next, before moving to the fingers.

  “The trickietht bitth,” the Hota in the room said thoughtfully. “But ultimately, a thucetth, I feel.”

  “I will be the judge of that,” she said. “How were her vital signs through this test?”

  “Thlow but thable. As expected. Thubject thurvived the occathion,” Hota said in a patient tone clearly implying he wished to tell her to wait and see for herself. On the screen, the other version of him finished with the fingers and straightened out.

  “Ath you can thee, the removal of the thkin wath completed within a few minuteth,” he explained. “Exact time, two minuteth,
fourteen thecondth. Now moving to apply medical webbing.”

  She watched as the on-screen Hota started the process of applying the small metal gauze-like squares to the bare muscle, an eyebrow raising as they clamped onto the flesh and started to spread out across the surface of the skinned hand. They really were a remarkable invention. Hota had become world-renowned for creating them, patches that spread out across wounds and promoted regeneration of fresh, healthy cells. Of course, normally they were placed above the skin. They needed something to knit together. Placing it on the bare muscle, to the best of her knowledge, was something that hadn’t been done before. Or at least with any success. If Hota failed, it wouldn’t go well for him. He wasn’t irreplaceable. Of course, they did have a help here courtesy of the biochemists in another lab.

  “All thith time,” Hota continued. “Conthtant injections of the therum into her thythtem. We’re hoping over time thhe will thtart to produce it naturally. Thelf-regeneration on every level, yeth?”

  “That looks like it’d hurt,” she said watching the squares attach themselves to the muscle. They were starting to spread now, interlinking with those around them to form a web over the flayed appendage.

  “I can imagine it doeth,” Hota said. “Thtill, thhe can’t feel it.”

  “No, you can’t,” Domis said softly. So softly she hadn’t even realised he’d spoken until he’d finished. “You can’t imagine the pain here.”

  Hota ignored him. “Thethe webbing patcheth were oneth intended to deal with thevere woundth. Broken boneth and the like. It ith often uthed to thupport the bone while thimultaenouthly repairing it. It hath to be tough, yeth? It therveth two purpotheth, you thee. Jutht a little more protection.”

  Subject A shouldn’t need more protection, she thought. Not if everything went to plan. Because after all, she couldn’t rely on Domis for everything now, could she? He’d given some of himself to the project. Without him, it wouldn’t have been possible. In the background, Hota was continuing to speak, seemingly more to himself than anything of use to her. Maybe his genius was growing more flawed as he grew older. Perhaps. Her eyes widened as she saw the recording. And perhaps not.