The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  “You think they’re running a mass powered big area projector?” Arnholt asked, looking at her and Brendan.

  “Makes sense,” Brendan said. Such a device wasn’t common, but some existed in military storage for ground engagements on a large scale, meaning individual combatants didn’t need to use their own summoners in the heat of battle to summon spirits. “It’d also explain why the power went down. If we can take it out, it’ll make things easier.”

  “You sure?” Khan asked dryly. “You two aren’t the youngest anymore.” She managed a smirk as she said it.

  “We were both doing this when you were still in training,” Brendan said dryly. “Any more comments like that, Agent Khan and these two old timers will put you on your ass.”

  “Come on!” Arnholt said as the three of them made for the door. “Mister Bond stay here. We have this. We need to get…”

  Before he could finish, the door swept open and Harvey Rocastle stepped into the room, flanked by his thorned troll, a sickly grin on his face. He had a weapon in his one good hand, a long-barrelled pistol with a hint of ornamentation peering out the bit of the grip seen beneath his fist. “Look at this,” he said. “The nerve centre of the entire operation. You get all that? Didn’t she look fabulous on the screens. Everyone’s going to be talking about this tomorrow.”

  For a moment, the three of them were stunned into silence, Arnholt was the fastest to react, went for his weapon and Rocastle shot him three times, would have been four had Khan not barged him out the way, taking one in the shoulder herself. Brendan’s X7 spat laser fire at Rocastle, he turned neatly aside and dropped into a crouch, the barrel of his weapon parallel with Brendan’s navel. “Byesies,” he said cheerily. “See you in the next life, possums.”

  Something happened, something none of them quite saw but the next moment he was struggling for balance, nearly falling, and had to scamper back as Brendan’s next round of shots hit the wall behind where he’d been crouched moments earlier. The troll sent a flurry of green needles towards Brendan who had to hurl himself out the way behind the couch. Rocastle’s head briefly turned towards Arnholt and Khan, smirked wickedly as he saw the two of them entangled in an untidy heap, the smell of smoke and burned flesh prominent in the air.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re only going to miss the big finale. Your daughter won’t though, she’ll have a front row seat…” He turned his head, looked back out the door and blanched, turned to run. As the two of them fled, the troll fired more needles away from its arms, covering their exit. Wherever they were going, they had to be away quickly. Barely ten seconds later, Clara Wallerington rushed in, amethyst and white kjarnblade in hand, her hair tied back in an untidy ponytail and burns pockmarking her clothes.

  “Oh shit,” she said, seeing the scene in front of her. Bond had caught a shot in the throat, the wound smoking and he wasn’t moving.

  “I know you,” Brendan growled, getting to his feet. He didn’t lower his weapon.

  “I’m friendly,” Clara said as she deactivated her weapon. The blade retreated down into the hilt of the metal cylinder in her hands. “I’m with Master Baxter.”

  Khan let out a pained cough which turned into a splutter, tried to sit up and looked at her shoulder with distaste. “Bloody bastard,” she said. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

  “I…” Clara didn’t have an answer other than a sarcastic “You’re welcome. Thanks for saving our lives. Oh, it was no problem, any time.”

  Arnholt laughed, a pained sound turning into a hacking couch, scarlet spraying the ground. It faded, he slipped backwards, his eyes going blank and pain-stricken features relaxing as he lapsed down into unconsciousness, his skin cold and clammy.

  “Oh crap,” Clara said. “What can I do to…”

  She was cut off by Nick charging into the room, Clare turned to face him, weapon raised once again, Nick did the same. With the barrel of the weapon inches from her face, the blade of her weapon inches from his, he raised an eyebrow and gave her an uneasy grin.

  “Friendly?!” Nick asked hopefully.

  “He is,” Brendan confirmed “Most of the time.” Clara lowered her weapon, Nick did the same, looking past her at the stricken Arnholt.

  “Shit!” he swore, already looking around for any sort of first-aid kit. There had to be one somewhere. “That’s all we need…”

  “Agent Roper!” Brendan said loudly. “We’ll deal with the director.”

  “Who did this?!” Nick asked, still not giving up his search. He stuck his head back out the door. “Think I saw one…”

  “Agent Roper!”

  That caught his attention, Brendan at his most authoritative. He turned back, fought the urge to salute. “This was the work of Harvey Rocastle,” Brendan said. “He fled rather than stand and fight. Agent Roper, I give you this order in simplest terms possible. Find him. Kill him, both him and Coppinger if you can. Do not let them get off this island. That is your only objective. Everything else is a distant second.” He slid Arnholt’s X7 from its holster and swept it across the floor towards him, an extra weapon just in case. Nick picked it up, slipped it into the back of his waistband and nodded.

  “Understood.” Ever since Rocastle had been mentioned, there’d been an air of cool implacability over him. “It will be done.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five. The Killing Fields.

  “One cannot survive without the other. The truth is, under duress, a spirit will always abandon all previous orders and move to protect its caller, if only for its own existence.”

  Little known spirit calling fact. Doctor David Fleck to students.

  The ninth day of Summerfall.

  In front of them, Noorland and Okocha had set up a schematic readout of the blueprints of the Carcaradis Stadium in full holographic display, the first stadium ever built on the island, always intended to hold both the opening bout and the final one. And now they needed to find the one design flaw inserted into it nobody had known about, and quickly.

  “The thing with these projectors,” Noorland said, not moving his eyes from the display, “is they’re not small. You’d notice them if they wheeled them into the stadium, you’d need at least four to form a decent grid. Some sort of four-sided shape is usually best for a projection field. You could do it with three, but it’d be tricky. There’d always be safe zones over this size area, effectiveness would be compromised.”

  “So, are we assuming she had them built into the structure of the stadium?” Okocha asked. “I mean, the way she’s gone about this; I think we have to assume she’s planned this for a very long time. Everything leading up to this very moment.”

  Noorland studied the holographic image, pursed his lips. The stadium from above had been shaped like a diamond, two triangle shapes stacked base to base, eighty thousand seats surrounding a regular battlefield, complete with all the concessions and facilities ever needed by the masses. It was supposed to be cutting edge, he noted but now ironically being cut up on order of the woman who’d paid for it. Each of the four edges of the diamond bore a grand pillar rising to the sky, visible from every point of the island. He clicked on the display, magnified it to look at their peaks, the first vestiges of a theory forming, even as Okocha looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. “What? It makes sense tactically. Highest point of the stadium. Hard to get to. There’s no stairway access. None. And those projection fields, the good ones anyway, they pump higher and deeper than they do wide, in case you want to launch from the air. It’s military tech at heart, don’t forget.”

  “So, if we can bring one of those pillars down…”

  “Yep,” Noorland said. “Bring one down, it should collapse the whole thing. A field of this power can’t be maintained by three projectors alone. At the absolute worst, it’ll collapse from a diamond into a triangle and there’ll be a haven the other side of the stadium… Well, the guys with the guns’ll be able to go there but one problem at a time. The dogs are the biggest problem currently.”


  “Okay, so how do we bring it down quickly?” Okocha asked. “You’re the engineer, you tell me.”

  It had all been going so well, Anne thought as she emptied her X7 into the figure, watched him crumple and drop, several entry wounds visible across his body. She barely had time to push in a new power pack before two more of them rushed her, weapons held high and fingers on the triggers. She was dead, she knew it, reality just hadn’t quite caught up with the truth yet…

  You have the power!

  The voice bellowed through her mind, she heard the clink of something metallic on the ground and almost instinctively she reached for it, and with one hells of a bounce surely, it sprang into her hands. It felt right, steel and rubber beneath her palm and she thumbed the activator switch. An azure and silver blade fountained into existence, the shots coming simultaneously at her. Moving to block them felt like a dream, as if someone else were in control of her body, a power she’d never known before guiding her movements. Two she beat down into the ground, the next she deflected into the face of the closest gunman, more came her way and she beat them aside before burying the blade into the second man’s chest. He went down, as he fell, she became very aware of her surroundings for the first time, the death and destruction around her and beyond it all, the glowing weapon in her hand.

  She looked up, Ruud Baxter threw her a salute from several rows above. “Keep it!” he shouted. “Might come in handy!” He spun around, four of them closing on him and he didn’t have a weapon to defend himself from them. By the looks of it, one of them said as much to him and it brought nothing but a cold smile from him. He threw out his hands, thin needles of blue fire lancing from his fingertips, too many to count but they swept through the bodies of his enemies, leaving charred holes through flesh. One of them managed to get some shots off at him, Baxter’s hand moved faster, face not changing as bolts crashed into the palm of his hand, he wasn’t whimpering in pain, just smiling coldly. Not a hint of a reaction beyond that smile, the single scariest thing she’d ever seen.

  Anne’s eyes widened, if she hadn’t seen, she wouldn’t have believed. She’d always known Baxter had special powers. He’d been the one who’d taught her empathic abilities weren’t a curse but rather a gift, only the start of something great. He’d done more for her than countless doctors and therapists in helping her get them under control. As far as she was concerned, he was nothing but the best of men, someone who absolutely could be relied on when it came down to it.

  If he wanted her to have the weapon, she’d take him at his word. He tossed her one final salute and then turned out of view. Weapon still in hand, Anne glanced around, saw a group of people in trouble, doom dogs surrounding them, and she sighed. Time to go to work. She had the weapon, she almost had the knowledge. Time to put it to good use.

  When it had all kicked off, Ritellia’s first intention had been to run. Of course, it had, Alana Fuller noticed with disgust. He’d sown part of this, he wasn’t the type who’d stick around to see it bear rotten fruit. By the same token, she didn’t mind he’d run like the coward he was, just needed him to run to a certain place. She knew what needed to be done, the Mistress had told her as much. She had told Alana where Ritellia needed to be, how she had one final task for him before that usefulness ended.

  In a way, she was sad, though in a lot more ways, she felt a sense of relief that had been missing from her life for so long now. She’d run with him, pushed him through a side door everyone thought a janitor’s closet. To the best of her knowledge, only she and the Mistress knew what it really was. The people who’d built this specific passage of the stadium hadn’t been left alive. It was just too dangerous. People talked, speculated. They couldn’t be allowed to know what was here. It was a tough push, he was heavier than her, but she was taller, and he was off balance and they went through the door, she grabbed his hand.

  “Come on,” she said. “I know a safe place down here.”

  He didn’t question it, the poor deluded fool as he followed her, first down the brief corridor and then down the steps into the bowels of the island. They were quite steep, yet he was determined to take them two at a time, apparently uncaring if he fell and broke his neck. A stab of anger flushed at her gut. That wouldn’t do. She needed him to be alive. She had one part in this entire plan and she needed to get it right. It’d do even less than before to disappoint the Mistress now. Even more annoying was any sense of chivalry Ritellia might have previously shown, was now lost as he reached the bottom of the steps, lumbered forward into the darkness. She could hear his choked breaths, the sounds of his panicking. He’d not expected this, he’d thought he was untouchable and if anything, that made him move faster, determined to save his own skin, she be damned. It hurt but it wasn’t unexpected. She’d always known what she was to him. An easy fuck. Someone to unburden to. Someone who could be discarded when the occasion came. And it was here. Unfortunately, that went both ways. She could hear him ahead, punching on the wall with his bare fists, breath ragged and panting.

  Fool! He wasn’t getting anywhere, not until she let him through. For all intents and purposes, this was a dead end. In truth, they just hadn’t wanted anyone knowing the truth. Only she and the Mistress had access to get through, not even Domis had been granted the privilege. The rock wall moved as she approached, recognising her biological profile it had stored in the small but exceptionally complicated electronic brain left down here, protected against the damp and the dew. The Mistress hadn’t wanted just anyone to stumble on it by mistake and Alana had felt honoured at the time. Now, she just got the feeling that she’d been guided to this point almost as surely as Ritellia had been down his.

  There wasn’t a sound of welcome, but she knew she’d been accepted, Ritellia was through the door even before it had slid all the way open and privately she was pleased by just how easy he was making it for her to lure him into this trap. The Mistress was waiting for them, here all along since everything had kicked off upstairs. This had been the whole point of it all. Everything had led up to this and finally it had reached fruition.

  No matter how different the Mistress might be since she and that Wim Carson guy had returned from Burykia, it was the time. Alana could remember when she’d finally broached the subject and found the courage to finally ask why. Why? She’d asked, why did it have to be here on this unremarkable island in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t believe the words given by the Mistress to the kingdoms, not when she now knew the truth, that there wasn’t just one sole reason, although the shrine in front of them was perhaps closer to it than anything else. It lay illuminated in cheap lighting, the bodies of two Unisco agents laid close by. Guards, she guessed. Their hearts had been ripped clean out, not a clean kill but maybe they’d had the misfortune to have put up a fight against the Mistress.

  The shrine of Kalqus. Once nearly opened a few weeks earlier with disastrous consequences. This could have been done elsewhere, there were more such shrines around the five kingdoms, but the Mistress had chosen this one for purpose. Claudia Coppinger turned to them, gave Ritellia a ghoulish smile that defeated even his sense of self preservation. “You!” he said, perhaps meaning it to sound defiant but it came out a whimper. Like a frightened child. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “I have no intention of getting away with it, Ronald,” she said softly. Her voice was different since she’d come back, it had a gravel to it now not present before, like she’d picked up an overtone somewhere, a voice beyond the voice. Alana hadn’t asked, she wasn’t entirely sure knowing the answer was something she truly wanted. And then there were the eyes, red-gold and horrific. She’d heard stories about an old statue of Gilgarus being completely decimated in Burykia, about the same time the Mistress was there, didn’t want to know if it was more than coincidence. “Getting away with it implies that there’s a sense of implicit guilt. I’m doing this for the best. Come, see.”

  She held out a hand and Ritellia turned, lumbering back the way he’d come. Ala
na stepped in his way, for a moment she thought he was going to barge her. He might have done had she not slipped the heavy weight from behind her, pointed the blaster at him. That stopped him short. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said scornfully. “Go listen to the Mistress. She told you to do something.”

  Confusion reigned on his piggy features just for a moment before being replaced by blind fury. “You… you bitch! You’re a fucking whore!” She wanted to hit him with the blaster, might have done so had she not felt the eyes of the Mistress on her urging her not to.

  “Language,” the Mistress said idly. It came across as more for effect than any actual indignation. “Come to me, Ronald. Be a good boy for once in your life and do what you’re supposed to.” Each word gradually carried more menace as it left her mouth until it was little more than a growl. He didn’t like it. But still he obeyed, largely because he saw he didn’t have a choice, Alana imagined. Shame, he probably thought he was going to make it out alive. After everything he’d put her through, she wanted to shoot him in the legs because he’d tried to run. That itself would be a pointless exercise. There was no escaping what could come. He wouldn’t have gotten out of the room. He was dragging his legs, face scarlet with anger and impotence but he obeyed.

  “I’m… Well I’m not sorry,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes met his, Alana saw the tightening of muscle in her fingers suggesting she wanted to clench very hard. “I really am not. You’ve been running out of time ever since we first met. If you’d have known how much you’d borrowed, I’d imagine you would have spent it a little more wisely. Miss Fuller over there… Mine from the start. Every depraved little act, every sick fantasy, all under my directive.” The look on Ritellia’s face suggested had he not already known, he might have guessed. It was pure murder, the face that had bullied and cajoled ICCC executives, indeed anyone who’d tried to stand up to him really, for years but she stared back with pure indifference. He still made her skin crawl even in his moments of weakness.