The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  “I’m not going to make a big thing about it,” Mia said, shaking her head. “But yeah I think I vaguely do… Oh… She lost her hair?” She suddenly burst out laughing. “Oh my… That’s fantastic, bet it killed her that.”

  “Nearly killed Pete, that’s for damn sure,” Scott said.

  “For starters,” Pete said, his voice annoyed as Scott bit into his sandwich again. “She didn’t nearly kill me, I had it under control the whole time. I was in no real danger. It’d take more than her to kill me. I regularly face down rampaging rhinos for fun.”

  “You’ve done that once,” Scott said, licking his fingers where the remnants of sandwich, sauce and grease lingered. “And it caught you by surprise as much as it did everyone else. Plus, if I remember right, you didn’t face them. You ran like a scared little bitch!”

  “You did as well!”

  “Yeah but I’m not professing to incredible bravery over it. Also, now we bring it up, that’s not brave. More like suicidally stupid.”

  “You two have had some adventures then,” Mia said. “Sounds like good times.”

  “Ah not always, you see,” Pete said. “Might have been better if Jess wasn’t there.”

  “You’d say that about anyone though,” Scott said. “Unless it was just you and me.”

  “Well we did have some great times though. Not just the rhino thing. Which was also your fault anyway.”

  “How was it my fault?” Scott protested. He wiped his fingers on a napkin in the bag and went back to his cooling coffee. At the same time, he moved over to Mia, slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her on the side of the head. He felt her acquiesce, her body still warm from the sun outside. “Thanks, snicks.”

  “No problem, flyboy.”

  Pete raised an eyebrow. “Really? You already gave each other nicknames? When the hells did that happen?” Without waiting for an answer, he carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Anyway, it was your fault because some idiot decided he was going to train a big fucking fire-breathing dragon and the local wildlife got a bit freaked out by the presence of such a big bastard on their turf.”

  “Oh yeah,” Scott said, blanching at the memory. “I remember that. Good times. And well, Sangare was a whole lot of help that day too. About as much as Permear is now. You know, doing that thing where they refuse to completely acknowledge your authority? That sucks! Majorly.”

  “Where is Permear anyway?” Mia wondered. “Haven’t seen him for a while. Not that I’m complaining,” she added quickly.

  “He’s still sulking after I didn’t use him in the semi,” Scott said. “I’ll occasionally hear him come out with some sarcastic comment about the way I live my life or the choices I make. I just try to ignore him.”

  “That should go well,” Pete said. “You know ignoring the problem usually doesn’t help, right?”

  “It does for me,” Scott said. “It’s worked for me really well to this point and I’m not stopping.”

  “Wow,” Pete said to Mia. “And you want to be in a relationship with this guy? Incredible. Can you spell denial much?”

  “Hey, shut up,” Mia said lightly. “Just because you got a bromance going on doesn’t mean anyone else isn’t allowed near him.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Bromance?” Pete asked. “We’re just good buds.”

  “Yeah,” Scott agreed. “Nothing weird about that.” He glanced down at himself. “I should probably put some clothes on.”

  For what felt like weeks now, Kyra Sinclair had hidden. It couldn’t have been weeks, but it felt like it. At most, it had to have been one week, she guessed, though the truth was, she didn’t know, and it annoyed her. She’d lost a week of her life hiding out on this bloody ship, not quite sure if the hammer would fall on her.

  Not that she worried too much about some of the rank-and-file discovering her. It was unlikely they’d be able to cause her too many problems, yet if corpses showed up with kjarnblade burns, the Vedo would know she was still alive and be bound to hunt her down. She held no illusions as to whether she could best him, he’d matched her once despite being unarmed. In hindsight, she hadn’t been attempting to kill him, so everything considered, the result had been fair. Only the outcome wasn’t satisfactory, leaving her hidden and hunted like an animal. It was the way it needed to be for now, but it didn’t mean it didn’t piss her off.

  She needed to escape, she wanted out of here, but it wasn’t as simple as finding a back door and slipping ou. She’d tried that already once and had nearly died. She needed another plan, preferably one that worked. Kyra had all but healed her wounds, moving from area to area between meditations to avoid a concentration of energy in one place. That could be tracked to lethal effect. She was playing a dangerous game as it was, but it was a necessity. As the injuries had healed, she’d carefully set out to explore her surroundings, mindful always of what could happen if discovered. Over time she’d found a ship-issue jumpsuit and had put it on to avoid attracting suspicion. At least she could walk around inconspicuously.

  Nobody had given her a second glance… Well almost nobody. Nobody important. The crew around here were an odd bunch, a mix between those with the strange overlapping Kjarn presence and those normal. If there was an explanation, it was beyond her now. Not without further information. She’d tucked her blade into one of the deep pockets of the clothing and tried to get comfortable wearing the blue-green jumpsuit that was just a little too big around the shoulders. She’d rolled them up four times at her wrists and ankles, just to be able to walk comfortably. So far, she was amazed nobody had commented.

  There’d been a guy, easily twice her age, he’d noticed her and tried to strike up a conversation. She supposed he’d been cute, if that sort of thing interested her. It didn’t. She’d tried to brush him off politely, last thing she wanted was to attract attention by causing an argument. Or by brutal decapitation which had been a thought lingering in the back of her mind. His eyes had been the same colour as her jumpsuit, the green bits anyway and he’d had elements of roguery about him. He hadn’t taken kindly to her attempts to avoid his attentions in the eatery mess.

  Down below, she might have made some subtle tweaks to his mind with the Kjarn, up here she was less inclined to do so. Never know who might feel it. Plus, it wasn’t her strong skill. She’d never been overly talented with dealing with minds. Not with subtle tweaks. She could break it easily enough. Bending it… That was beyond her skillset. She wasn’t a Cognivite, not like her master. Sure, she’d tried it down at the mountain but that had been different. Any result at that time would have been a good one. If his mind suddenly snapped in this confined space, last thing she wanted was a big investigation as to why. Expect the worst and that way you won’t be disappointed. She couldn’t take the chance.

  Her clothing might have been oversized but at least it got her into the eatery with minimum fuss. If she kept acting like she belonged, as long as she kept exuding an aura of confidence then nobody would question what she was doing. The food wasn’t bad; she’d had worse on the road on her travels. Cooking had never been her strong point, anything that kept her going would do.

  She’d started to judge the days going by in conjunction with the meals after a while. Two meals she considered as one day, one in the morning, one in the evening. That sounded about right. What was being served, the way the time went by, made it a reasonable assumption to make.

  Two days and four meals later, she made the decision that it was time to start looking for a way out. Her first realisation was different coloured jumpsuits meant different areas. And lacking an access card, she’d been unable to get out of the maintenance corridors running around the ship like a tir rabbit warren. It was immensely frustrating really, being able to see the other people in public areas of the ship moving around, cream coloured jumpsuits and invariably smug expressions. She’d needed a plan and so she’d turned to Thomas Quinn, her not-so-subtle admirer. She’d sat across the table from him in the eatery and
gave him her sweetest smile. The unfamiliar sensations made the muscles in her mouth ache, but she did her best to bear it.

  “Morning beautiful,” he said. “You look cheery today.”

  Kyra fought the urge to punch him in the mouth. He’d find out just how cheery she really was then. “Well it’s a good morning, I think,” she said. “Time runs together down here. Forget how long it is since I saw sunlight.”

  “You never go up to the observation decks on your downtime?” Quinn asked.

  She shook her head. “Never seem to get the time.” There were observation decks? Of course, there was, by the sounds of it. And downtime… She’d never seen anyone have any. They all just seemed to wake, eat, work, eat, sleep, repeat. Then again, something had to break up the monotony, she supposed. Not everyone trained like the Cavanda. That whole experience of learning made what went on here look like a pleasant experience.

  “Don’t remember seeing you at orientation,” Quinn said nonchalantly. “Think I would have. Why was that?”

  “Must have missed me,” she shrugged. An idea struck her. “I was a replacement. Last minute. Remember that guy who got killed?”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah, something about burn wounds. And some psycho. I didn’t get the full story. Just wanted a last-minute replacement and, well I needed the credits.” Describing herself in that abstract way, she found that particularly amusing if she was honest.

  “Probably easier ways for someone like you to get credits than come all the way up here.” He leered at her as he said it and the urge to strike him grew stronger by the second. Thomas Quinn was not an unpleasant looking man and as much pleasure as ruining that face might give her, there was still the need for secrecy and escape. In that order. Short term relief wasn’t going to benefit her, she knew that. Employing patience was the only way she’d leave here.

  “That’s flattering,” she said calmly. “But I like working with my hands. And it seemed like a good place to put my skills to good use.”

  “What do you do up here?”

  “Maintain the rear power shield stabilisers and their control core,” she said immediately. It was a lie, hopefully one he’d believe. She added just a little hint of Kjarn influence to her words, pushed the impression on him it was believable. “You wouldn’t believe the rate they degrade under less than ideal circumstances. And this whole thing seems thrown together so rapidly in places I don’t know how it ever got off the ground. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Don’t let the dupes hear you say that,” Quinn said. “They report everything back.” He jerked his head over towards one of the guys with the weird presence. “No scruples that lot. Soulless bastards.”

  Huh… So, there was something off about them, it wasn’t just her having a weird feeling. “Ah, dupes? Didn’t hear about those.” She managed to sound offhand about it, shrugging her shoulders.

  “It’s a secret but not a secret sort of secret. We all have an idea. Just look at them.” Quinn jerked his thumb towards the closest group of them. “It’s like, really weird, you get me? You look at them and it’s unsettling. You’ll see one, you’ll see another and another and another and then you’ll start to look closer.”

  Puzzled by his words, she did just that, scraping her chair around to glance at them. For once, she tried to ignore what she could feel and focus on what she could see. Quinn did have a point; they did have a certain type of eeriness about them. There was something cold and mechanical about the way they all ate as one, uniform in their movements. Their faces were blank as if they lacked emotion and from what she’d been able to sense, that might well be the case. It took a good few seconds of watching but she thought she saw it. Two of them had the same nose. Not just similar but exactly alike.

  Dupes… Duplicates.

  Huh. Interesting. Just more of the reasons she needed to get out of here as quick as possible. One of them raised a head, a movement strangely out of kilter with the others as they continued to eat and sniffed the air. The emotionless eyes turned towards her, the head tilted, and they focused in on her curiously. She nodded her head at him, smiled and then went back to her food.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Quinn asked. Perhaps there was a hint of jealousy in his voice, there clearly was in his aura. Lust made men do strange things. He was just about old enough to be her father and here he was wanting to fuck her. It was amusing.

  “What?!” she asked, letting mock-confusion slip into her voice. “He’s cute.” Behaving innocent like that did have its advantages. If nobody took you seriously, it made it easier to stab them in the back when they didn’t expect it. Quinn wasn’t expecting it. She’d seen the ID card he had, and she’d made the decision immediately she might have to take it from him.

  Of course, there were varying degrees of force she could employ in removing it from his possession. One would be to kill him and simply take it. But she couldn’t take the chance that his remains would be discovered before she got out. Or she could steal it. Again, not without problems. When he discovered it lost, he’d doubtless report it, they’d cancel the access if they had any sense. A useless card would be no good to her, she’d be back to the start once more. No, she needed to play this cool. And by playing it cool, she needed to inflame Thomas Quinn’s passions. He was attracted to her, she could sense it and she’d done very little to dissuade him from then on as distasteful as it might be. She’d given him enthusiastic greetings when she’d seen him in the corridor, letting parts of her out she’d long since thought had been quashed by her master and his training. More than once she’d purposefully rubbed her body against his while squeezing past him in the crowded corridors, she’d felt excitement boiling deep in him like a heating kettle.

  Their chats had continued in the eatery; she’d created a whole persona for herself. She’d graduated from the university in Blasington, Premesoir with a diploma in specialised systems engine maintenance and had joined this mission to gain some experience. Because after all, the pay wasn’t particularly good according to Quinn, but she’d trumpeted the value of experience. She enjoyed playing the harp, holo-dramadies set in hospitals and long walks on beaches in moonlight (She’d tipped him a wink as she’d said that) and seen him lapping it all up.

  It was a strange feeling really, something in her she couldn’t describe as she spoke to him. An emotion tickling deep within her, both disturbing and troubling. She didn’t think it was love though. She didn’t have a problem with love. Emotions were powerful things but sometimes she thought they could be a distraction, which could be fatal. Maybe she was investing too much in the part she was playing. She needed him to believe it after all. If Quinn doubted she was sincere for just a moment, then the whole jig would be up, and she’d need to resort to more extreme circumstances for getting out. Credit to her, as arrogant as it might sound, he never once doubted her.

  The first kiss they shared was just as confusing, he’d surprised her with it but in a nice way, it had left the confusion more palpable inside her. Throughout her life, men had done nothing for her. She’d hated her father and as much as her master and Gideon Cobb had done for her, they hadn’t exactly gone out of their way to ingratiate themselves to her on a personal level, affection something sorely lacking from their interactions with her. Of course, that was perhaps the way it should be. When you had a bond with someone, you couldn’t teach them properly. She wouldn’t have taken Master Amalfus seriously if he’d have been patting her on the head and showering her with praise every few moments. It’d have given her a false sense of accomplishment.

  Most of her affections, when they’d manifested themselves, they’d steeped towards the so-called fairer sex. Those of her own. She’d never gotten that. The fairer sex. In her experience, women were just as bad as men when it came to matters of the heart. More than once she’d found that out, she’d seen the truth in that statement. It hadn’t been pleasant but there’d been many a woman who she’d had to leave behind without saying a word whe
n something had been on the verge of development. Attachment was wrong. Only destiny was something she should seek out, look to be forever partners with. A few stolen kisses, several long moments of pleasure in a clumsy fumble wasn’t going to change that.

  And neither was Quinn. As nice as he had turned out to be, she had no doubt it’d end with her breaking his heart in devastating circumstances. It was the way it would have to be. Would she feel sorrow? Some part of her knew she would, just as she’d come to accept it would pass. Some part of her had already moved on, determined to do it with as little pain as possible. But that was against what she’d been taught. Pain was power. Pain was striking back with relish against those who hurt you. Closing yourself off was never the answer, the master had always said, only weak-minded fools afraid of their own potential do that. The Vedo had cut themselves off from the word, looking inward rather than out. They’d do anything they could to avoid feeling. They’d had this power and they’d wasted it, let it stagnate in their caves like bloody savages. Who the hells lived in caves these days? She’d laughed when she’d heard it, dialling it down when the master had told her they’d all died. What was the point in an eternal enemy if there were none left to challenge you?

  Clearly, she’d miscalculated on that part. There was one here on this ship and he’d managed to best her, unarmed, there’d been something about him she’d long considered since their fight. He hadn’t been at full strength. His efforts had been cumbersome and laboured, like a man going out strong because he lacks the stomach to draw it out. Somehow, she felt that if it had turned into a longer fight, she would have dealt with him in the end. Escape had been her priority. Still was. Hence her dalliances with Quinn. She’d been trained to be ruthlessly single minded in her chosen path. That she wanted to do it without bloodshed was just a matter of practicality. Gid Cobb would have done it differently, but he wasn’t her and she wasn’t him. She was better than Cobb and one day she’d prove it when the master returned.