The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  “Sounds about right,” Caldwell said, stretching out his arms behind his head. “She wanted to find people disillusioned with the current system…”

  “Currently that extends as far as the ICCC and probably us, but it could move towards the Senate as well. Chances are that it will go towards the Senate in time. Can’t do anything about it,” Khan said. “What we absolutely don’t want to do is give her weapons to use against us. If she’s going on about how the Senate are corrupt and want to safeguard their power and will do whatever it takes to ensure that happens, and then it comes out that they’re telling us to do whatever we must to do just that, it could give her fearmongering a new angle…”

  “See,” Arnholt said. “Knife edge. I still expect all my agents to use their judgement as wisely as possible in any given situation.” Nick thought it was a touch ironic given what had happened just a few weeks earlier in the whole Jeremiah Blut affair but didn’t bring it up. Under new rules, he’d have probably gotten away with it. Irony. He rolled his eyes at that thought. “This is all just hypothetical anyway. The Senate are voting on it later in the week.” He lowered his voice. “The rumour I hear is that they’re waiting until the Quin-C final. They want to bury it amidst a bigger story in the media. It’s not a decision that’s going to make them popular. A lot of people already don’t like what we do. The Senate might not even vote to approve it.”

  “I think we all appreciate your optimism, Director,” Okocha said wearily. “But the general feeling is that the senators are terrified by everything going on. If Coppinger goes after them, they’re going to want to do everything they can to get her first.”

  “Where you hear that?” Tod Brumley asked, curiosity in his voice.

  “What, you’ve not got sources on Five Point Island?” Okocha asked dryly. “I know a few of our guys who work down there. There’s that much terrified chatter in the air, it’s screwing with the auditory detectors. Some of them are already finding excuses to leave their homes on the island and return to somewhere a little less exposed. Seriously, not lying.”

  “I think what Will’s trying to say,” Noorland said. “Is that scared people do desperate things. And those senators sound scared, by what he’s saying.” He grinned around the room. “Because whoever heard of a politician ever leaving luxury accommodation willingly?” Nick knew what he meant. Five Point Island was the home of the Senate building, a huge colosseum of a structure opened to the sky but protected against the elements by use of a protective shield like those employed around spirit battling fields. Surrounding it for most of the expanse of the island were private accommodations, each of them easily as luxurious as the best hotels on this island. The only reason the media didn’t absolutely slate them for living like that was perhaps because they truly didn’t know the extent of the decadence present. The only journalistic presences on the island were limited to the Senate building, they had their own landing pad, passes were only available on a strictly vetted availability. Anyone caught outside the approved zones was arrested for trespass. It had happened many, many times and each time the journalist in question had been dealt with under the full force of the law of the island. Suffice to say exposing the lap of luxury had been the last thing on their mind when faced with the trial for their supposed crimes.

  When you thought about it like that, it wasn’t hard to see why Claudia Coppinger had decided to do something. Granted maybe she was going about it in an excessive way, but maybe she had a point. Nick sighed to himself. This was all going to be a horrible mess before too long.

  “Okay then, we have a building of terrified senators, we’re going to be ass-deep in bounty hunters wanting to make a name for themselves, we’ve got a sociopath ready to really fuck things up and we’re allowed to do whatever we want to stop it before it really descends into chaos?” Lysa asked. “Any good news to throw at us, anyone?”

  “Just that while they might be wrong to go about it the way that they are,” Arnholt said, “It doesn’t mean they’re not right in thinking this needs to be resolved quickly. If we fail to do so…” He didn’t need to finish his sentence. Everyone knew. They didn’t like it, but they knew. Just as they knew that the stakes were higher than they’d ever been for them.

  Burykia.

  The fifth day of Summerfall.

  The town of Hoko stood silent in the night, the only sounds of life beyond the crickets being the crunch of grass beneath her boots as she and Wim Carson made their way through the fields. She looked around under the faint lights that lined the streets and found herself if not at peace, then definitely more relaxed here than before. Now she was away from it all, things felt good.

  Since they’d landed in Burykia, she’d heard from Rocastle, had been pleasantly surprised to hear he’d done some good for her. Finally, and not without good timing as well! The man was a liability and the potential for buffoonery but maybe she’d misjudged him. Perhaps he could hold some further long-term use. His role in her plans had initially been a small one, yet it had turned out to be key. He’d had to jettison parts of the Eye, but she’d ordered him to do it, so he couldn’t be faulted for following orders. Not this time. When she returned from this trip, she would have to run an inventory, see what had been kept and what had been lost by the efforts. What had been up there wasn’t her only stockpile, she had others around the kingdoms, but it was still a blow. Silently she cursed her foul run of luck in the recent days. What had brought Unisco and the five kingdoms army to her doorstep? She never knew but she suspected Collison had something to do with it. The absolute fucking snake! She stopped for a moment, let the rage flow through her, hot white anger brushing against her vision. She’d trusted him! Let him back into her life when he’d tried so hard to get away from it and what had he done? He’d betrayed her. Admitted to conspiring with her enemies against her. The bastard would have to be dealt with at some point. A message to all those that might go against her when it mattered.

  Still revenge could wait for now. It was a dish best served freezing, but she wasn’t intending to leave it that long. Not if she could help it. He knew stuff about her plans that could be fatal, she was just grateful she’d chosen never to reveal the identity of her source within Unisco to him. If he was with that group of malcontents, then it would have been disastrous to have the leak plugged. Perhaps she could arrange for her man to deal with her traitorous brother.

  As an idea, it was rejected the moment it entered her head. Drawing suspicion on her mole wasn’t the best course of action, even if it could be explained away. The unialiv had failed as well, though she wasn’t sure how. Rocastle had reported that there was no sign of it on board the station and no bodies in the hangar. If they couldn’t find a body, it wasn’t dead. They had recovered the body of one of the Unisco operatives, someone who they’d identified as a Melanie Harper. The name meant nothing to her. It meant that there was one less of them in the kingdoms. Either way, her remains had been disposed of.

  “I’ve never been here before,” she said aloud, anything to draw her out of her thoughts. Wim Carson had halted, arms folded and looked at her with a cocked eyebrow that made him look way too reckless. She’d noticed he’d been unarmed since his encounter with that troublesome little girl back at the base.

  “You seem troubled,” Wim said.

  “You know what?!” she said, anger suddenly rising in her gorge and she couldn’t stop the bile spilling out. “I am! I’m trying to heal these sick kingdoms, and everyone seems intent on stopping me! I didn’t expect them to lie down and die but their resistance is becoming tiresome. I had a plan and it’s all been blown to shit before we even started! Now I’m trying to get it all back on track and I’m worried where the next screw up is going to come from.”

  “They say every plan is sound until it comes into action,” Wim remarked evenly. “In my experience, it is perhaps not the ability to formulate a plan that defines the ability of an individual but rather the ability to adapt once it all falls apart. You can
not plan for every eventuality. To try and do so is a waste of effort. And you’re not doing too bad. You’re still alive. You still have most of a battle station. You still have most of the Ista Neroux.”

  That was a sore point. Two of them were unaccounted for right now. Not only was the unialiv missing in action but the sabuyak had never been retrieved either following that mini-breakout they’d experienced weeks ago. It was rather hard to track a ghost at the best of times but to have completely lost track of it irked her to say the least. It hadn’t been the most powerful of what they’d put together but still that it wasn’t where it was meant to be annoyed the hells out of her. It was her property and how dare it wander off!

  “You still have most of your facilities! You still have your vision,” he continued. “You know the medicine this place needs and you are in the position to ensure you acquire it. I can think of nothing else that you need. You perhaps are too critical on yourself.”

  She let out a bitter laugh, more for show than anything else. If Wim was half as sensitive to moods and emotions as he made out, it wasn’t going to fool him. But she didn’t care about that. Fooling him wasn’t part of the deal. “The thing is, if I’m not going to be hard on myself, who else is? If I fail, it’s all been for nothing and I can’t let that happen.”

  “Then don’t fail,” Wim said simply. “Do or do not. If you die, then at least you died making the effort. It’s more than most of the people in these kingdoms can say. If you die, your name will be mud. Everything you have done will be regarded with scorn and disgust. You will have lost everything, and it will be beyond you forever.” Then he smiled at her, a warm almost fatherly expression that made her think of days long gone and times that weren’t going to come back to her. “But what if you win?”

  Exactly. What if I do win? She was sacrificing so much in this venture with so little appreciation right now. She was set to be a pariah and her list of friends and allies she could count on was growing smaller by the minute. Rocastle had reported the crime bosses she’d invested so much effort and time in bringing together had been taken by Unisco. Phillipe Mazoud still had her back for now, he was throwing his lot in with her, but his organisation was limited outside of Vazara. If she was caught here in Burykia for example, he wouldn’t be able to do a lot to help her. No, she needed more. In recent months she might have been hesitant about this decision, but she had no other choice. Even had she the means to put it into play before, still she might have shied away from it.

  It was the statue. Of course, it was. She’d never been to Hoko before but everyone who knew anything about Burykia always said that the biggest brightest statue of Gilgarus was to be found here. It was, Claudia had to admit, damn impressive as she stared up at it from paws to collar to crown.

  “I remember the first time I saw this,” Wim said thoughtfully. “My master brought me here, told me the legend of how this thing came into being.”

  “Gilgarus?”

  “The statue. Although the two are linked. I believe you know the story. I believe your Doctor Jeremiah Blut did as well, not that he knew how to prove it or not.”

  “You always seem to know a lot about this stuff,” she said. “And yet you never share how you came about this knowledge.”

  He did that thing with his eyes, smiled without smiling. He had the look of a man smug beneath his secrets and privately he loved that feeling of superiority. “I wasn’t always a man of the streets. I did used to be someone. Before I got it all back, I lost it. And before I lost it, well who I was should have been feared. At least if people were in the know, they would have. I was the archivist for the Council of Nine.”

  “The what?” She wasn’t even a little bit ashamed to admit she’d never heard of them. The sense she got from him said he would have been even more surprised if she had. The supercilious way he’d been talking and acting since he’d brought them up, almost preening with his own foreknowledge, she got the impression she wasn’t expected to know them.

  “The rulers of the Vedo,” Wim said. “The nine strongest to govern them all. I was one of them. As I’m aware, the only survivor. Though that wasn’t without its cost. A life left living is worth more than a death dealt dead. There are others but by right I am the heir to the empty throne.”

  “Fascinating.” She only half meant it. Perhaps better to deal with Wim sooner or later. He could be a problem if he had thoughts like this.

  “You speak with scepticism?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I still find it hard to believe an organisation like yours existed for all this time and nobody ever found out about it.”

  “Well of course they did,” Wim said. “People found out about us all the time. Hence the need for our Buffers. They were always needed to be heavily employed whenever we announced our presence to the kingdoms. Always the circumstances would be great and our greatest Cognivites would be out there to fog the recollections of those who saw us, to make us as ghosts. We prided our secrecy. Anyway, enough about people long dead.”

  He cleared his throat, rubbed at his chest with the scruff of his fist. “In my role as archivist I found so much out, more than I could possibly ever remember. Information is the greatest weapon imaginable, I believe you would agree with me on that score. I always remember the rumours about this statue though. It’s built above a nexus of power; the fabric of reality is ever so slightly thinner here than anywhere else in the five kingdoms. Hence, with a place like this, you need something to mark it. And what better than a great statue of Gilgarus? It makes sense when you think about it, do you not think? More than that, people come here to worship. All that belief, all that faith, into an area where reality is weaker than everywhere else. Belief is a powerful force, Mistress.”

  “I think it’s big,” Claudia said. “It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a legend like that floating around. But if you’re telling the truth, if that is the true story then how come nobody has managed to get through? How come nobody could prove it one way or another? How come it’s just a legend?”

  Again, that smile. She fought the urge to slap him. It wouldn’t do anyone any good, as much as it might make her feel better. “Because anyone with the ability to open it by force should know better,” he said. “And those without the ability lack the key. Punching a hole through the fabric of reality is not a task taken lightly, it’s a dangerous undertaking and only someone truly desperate would do it. The consequences would be disastrous, even if as the stories say, the rip is the back door to Gilgarus’ own kingdom. Just picture about what might lie there? The items. The artefacts. The potential power.”

  “We have both here,” she said. “You could do it by force, couldn’t you? And we have the key.” She was grateful utterly she’d had the foresight to keep it with her always since he’d first smashed that statue of Melarius. “So why do you want to open it up?”

  “My dear Madam Coppinger,” Wim said sorrowfully. “I believe we’re both desperate individuals here. I believe this is the only course of action left. I do not wish to rip my way through it, but I will open the door for you. We had a deal. Once the deal is honoured, then I am free to engage in my own pursuits.”

  “Is this dangerous?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not going to cause irreversible damage or anything, is it? Using the key?”

  “Shouldn’t do,” Wim said. “The truth is I have no idea. There are stories of those who endeavoured to open it up. Their fates ultimately remain unknown. Perhaps the first thing you will see on the other side is the bones of those who have fallen. Or perhaps you will join them.” There was no emotion in his voice as he spoke, just a statement of fact. It might have worked to put a lesser person off. Claudia only felt the desire to find out for herself.

  She held out the key, the shiny stone and Wim raised a hand, calmly gesticulating with his fingers and she felt the kiss of it on her palm fade away. Slowly she watched it rise into the air, fighting against gravity and the wind but ultimately powerless against Wim’s mental to
uch. “There’s an indent on the wheel of justice,” Wim said softly, his face screwed up with concentration. “Missing a jewel. They always think it’s an aesthetic design flaw. An oversight. They never assume it’s actually meant to be like that because of…” One final flurry of his arm and even over the distance, she heard the slight click of the gem slotting into place. “Perfect.”

  For several long moments nothing happened. She folded her arms, tapped her foot on the grass. If this was the big finale, she wasn’t impressed. Not until the grass beneath her boot started to shimmer, faint at first to be confused for moonlight until its brightness eclipsed the lunar illumination. Wim jumped back several feet, well out of the way and for a moment she felt betrayed, until she realised he was watching her with an expression of utmost serenity. If she listened, it was like she could hear his voice in her head.

  This is your journey, Madam. It will make you or break you. It will be hard but everything worth doing is. You walk alone, and the world will still be here when you get back. Do not fear, just let the light take you.

  Those words continued to echo through her head as she pushed away all thoughts of hurt betrayal and tried to do what they’d suggested, just relax and let them take her. How she was supposed to do that, she didn’t know but it was warm in the light. It tickled her exposed skin, it made her felt safe, even as she found herself sinking deep into the glow…

  Chapter Twenty-One. Ruud Baxter.

  “The return of old friends is an occasion that should always be savoured. When they have been kept from you for a long time, you never know when next you’ll see them again.”