Soldiers Field: Prequel to the Octagon Series

by JK Ellem

  SOLDIERS FIELD

  PREQUEL TO THE OCTAGON TRILOGY

  JK ELLEM

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  1. The Drop

  2. Twins

  3. Red Water

  4. Innocent

  5. Cold

  6. The Green Line

  7. Spoilt Child

  8. Blood

  9. The Orb

  10. Seed

  11. Faith

  If You Enjoyed This Book

  Octagon

  I. Hell

  Cadet Log Entry #37

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Buy Octagon

  Books by JK Ellem

  COPYRIGHT

  First published in the USA in 2017 by 28th Street Multimedia Group

  Copyright © by JK Ellem 2017

  Soldiers Field, is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialogue and all characters are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the written permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Copyrighted Material

  www.jkellem.com

  JK Ellem on Facebook

  1

  THE DROP

  January 2032

  Her teeth ached.

  She could feel the vibrations through the metal decking under her feet, the sound of the engines changing from a high-pitched whine to a shuddering groan that resonated up through her legs, hips, up her spine and then finally into her jaw.

  They were coming in to land.

  The cargo bay of air-transport tilted and her stomach slid with it.

  The flying machine slid in to a low tight turn as it bled altitude.

  “She’s not bad. I might just get the chance to give her one if she makes it out alive.”

  Two aircrew members stood just feet away from the woman, bulbous helmets on, communications lines patched into the ceiling, visors pulled down covering their grinning faces, hiding their gloating eyes.

  The taller one laughed, “Mate have a look at her. She’ll eat you for breakfast. I’ll have to hold her down while you stick her.”

  The shorter one mocked, “You don’t mind going in second?”

  “Na. I’ll bring a few of the guys from the base back with us when we come to collect her. We can all take turns then. Give her a homecoming present.”

  They both laughed. “If she lives,” the taller one reminded his companion.

  “She’s death row. She’s good enough dead now as it is,” he replied.

  “Yeh,” the other chuckled. “But we’ll send her off right. Give her something to remember us by.”

  Magnolia Gray ignored the two idiots. Instead she sat quietly locked into the seat of the cavernous cargo bay of the air-transport, both hands and feet clamped. She was the only passenger, the other fifteen competitors would be dropped in by other means and at other locations. They would be scattered across an area of two square miles.

  They told her it used to be a famous university campus. She didn’t care.

  They told her there were sixteen competitors in total. She didn’t care.

  They told her she had two hours to reach the Orb, a marker placed somewhere below that the winner had to reach first. Winning meant living so that did interest her.

  It was cold inside the cargo bay, but she wore an all-back armorskin that kept her warm. She wanted the all-black color, it matched her raven black hair that was cut into a short bob. She had a narrow face and sharp features. She was of average height, but her body was lean and lithe, like a gazelle. Tucked behind her in an orange wooden scabbard across her back was her weapon, a katana, the only one she wanted and the only one she had trained with over the last six weeks.

  The airframe shuddered again then bounced as the air-transport punched through low cloud, jostling through the turbulence. Magnolia felt her gut tighten, her hands vice-like on the arm rests. She hated flying. She had only been in the air twice now. Once when they transported her from maximum security to Exile for combat training and now this was the second time; for the drop.

  The air-transport plunged again and her stomach lurched.

  “Thirty seconds,” one of the aircrew yelled at her. They both shuffled forward tethered to safety lines. Both wore side-arms. Just in case. After all their passenger had murdered seven people.

  Magnolia closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, her exterior a picture of calmness and composure, but her insides boiled with nerves and she felt like throwing up.

  Outside the air wavered and rippled as the hot ion-drives tilted forward, slowing the huge machine like a mechanical bird gathering itself in to land, its metal skin slick with condensation, the sky leaden, heavy and low.

  The transport slowed to a hover, its huge propulsion engines tilting downwards. Like a dragonfly it stopped mid-air momentarily then it descended slowly.

  The tail of the cargo bay split open, and a crack of light slowly widened, the rear ramp going down with a hydraulic hiss. An icy wind and a smatter of snowflakes blew into the cabin, her short hair ruffled against her face.

  “Ten seconds.” Another shout.

  There was a mechanical click as her hand and foot restraints unlocked.

  She opened her eyes and stood up, turned and faced the widening gap as the rear ramp extended further then locked into place.

  A following drone detached itself from a cavity in the ceiling and settled in beside her, just off her shoulder.

  Magnolia didn’t look at the drone, but sixteen sets of eyes turned and looked at her: Octagon engineers, bunkered in their control room miles away, their eyes on sixteen flat screens, one engineer for every competitor. Some competitors were already down in the Dominion, others would be landing in the next thirty seconds. Everyone in play in the next sixty seconds.

  Not to miss an opportunity the taller man behind her called after her, shouting above the whine of the engines and the wind. “Don’t forget to come back alive so we can all celebrate together.”

  Magnolia Gray ignored the comment as she stepped forward towards the metal edge of the ramp, the snow-covered ground only a few feet away.

  She intended to win, and when she did, she would return and kill them both.

  She turned and looked at the two men, their eyes covered but their jaws grinning like two hyenas. She lifted one gloved hand and blew them a kiss mockingly. No smile, no affection, just a cold stare of death.

  The grins from their faces vanished instantly and they both felt like they had been kissed by a corpse.

  Then Magnolia Gray jumped off the ramp and the clock started ticking.

  SHE HIT THE GROUND RUNNING, boots crunching across the slush of water and ice, the air-transport pulling up and away behind her in a gush of rippling heat and plumes of white, leaving behind a lake of water in a field of snow.

  Twenty yards.

  She drew her sword even before she saw the blur of purple coming at her from behind. It was just a fe
eling, instinctual, her gut becoming colder than the surrounding air.

  Bates.

  Purple armorskin, short sword in his hand, sneer on his face. Child rapist, Exile inmate, sneaky bastard. True to his name he had seen the air-transport descend into the open square between the buildings, then ran and positioned himself near the ramp like a trap-door spider, hoping for a quick kill.

  So Magnolia killed him quickly, taking his head clean off with a pirouette, not stopping to watch him collapse to his knees, face-plant into the snow, his warm blood spurting out like an orgasm turning the ground into a Slurpee, wild cherry.

  Sixteen left.

  2

  TWINS

  A black streak against a field of white, Magnolia tore across the snow-covered ground. Ahead a large squat building appeared through the white haze, red brick façade, a row of twelve large stone columns across the front. Twelve positions to hide behind and kill a person as they ran up the wide wedge of concrete stairs seeking shelter inside.

  Magnolia took the chance. She needed to get out of the open.

  She took the steps three at a time, sword in front, her eyes scanning the closest columns. The space under the colonnade was empty and gloomy, shadows in the corners. She paused behind a stone column then scanned across the small square. All lines and grids, diagonal paths sheeted in ice, old decaying buildings hemmed in on all four sides, symmetry and order seemed like the design layout. On the opposite side a church rose with blackened bricked walls and a collapsed tower, charred and broken, where a fire had been.

  In the middle of the square the body of Bates was already partially covered by a powdery layer of new snow. By spring he would be just bones, the rodents and worms doing their job.

  Magnolia turned and regarded the building behind her. Tall wooden doors beckoned her within, it looked warm and safe, but Magnolia didn’t want to go inside. Seeking refuge was a sure path to death.

  She looked at her wrist-computer, a small screen on a thick rubber strap, too bulky for her narrow wrist, a red blip pulsing as she panned it around, brighter and stronger in one direction.

  Southwest.

  She needed to go southwest. Behind the building she was sheltering under.

  She moved towards the far stone column and took another bearing. In the gap between two buildings she could see a road in the distance.

  She slid off the side of the colonnade and landed behind a ragged line of overgrown bushes. Everything around was unruly, unkempt, decaying and neglected. Vines and creepers stretched up walls of crumbling mortar. Broken windows like missing teeth punctuated every façade. The place was cold and desolate, laughter and learning long since gone from these hallowed halls.

  There was no sound, no birds in the sky, nothing just the watery sun struggling behind a dull blanket of gray.

  Then a scream, a dying sound, distant. In front, ahead.

  Southwest.

  That made sense.

  She hid in shadows as she moved, skirting the edge of a broken path, past tall hedges frosted with snow. The temperature was dropping, but her armorskin compensated, thickening and warming her. It was designed to keep her alive longer. That way she could be more entertaining.

  Above she could feel eyes watching her, the following drone doing its job: following her, but she couldn’t hear or see it. At first she was annoyed when the Octagon engineers told her it would be there, spying on her, recording her every move. A scientific study they said, but she knew she and the others were guinea pigs, caught in some macabre game. To be watched, dissected then analyzed later for improvement, for entertainment. She was worried that the drone would give away her position, her advantage, her stealth. But they said the drone would remain hidden, that it would not reveal her position, it would only swoop in after she engaged with another competitor.

  But she didn’t care. She wanted it gone.

  Magnolia paused again in the shadows of a low wall, a slush of dirty ice under her boots, flakes drifting around her.

  She bobbed up. The wide path continued diagonally towards a gate, tall, black wrought-iron, flanked by two brick columns.

  The gates were ajar; her exit out of here and closer to her goal.

  She needed to move.

  Don’t follow the path, stay off it. Paths were bad.

  She moved along the wall, then scaled it, pulling herself up and over quickly, landing low on the other side, screened by more rambling vegetation. She parted brittle branches, dislodging a dusting of snow that fell on her head and shoulders. She pushed through the vegetation, then sprung to her feet and ran towards the gate along another building.

  She reached the gate and slipped through it. On the other side was the wide main street she had seen. It was deserted with a line of tall buildings on the other side. Two smaller streets ran at right angles to the main street.

  She looked at her wrist-computer, small digital numbers counting downwards in the corner of the screen. The red pulsing blip stronger now and directly ahead.

  Fuck it!

  She glanced both ways out of habit as if expecting traffic, then sprinted across the street, avoiding puddles of water turned to ice.

  Magnolia took the right street, it was narrower and had more shadows. Buildings blurred past as she ran, sacrificing cover for speed. She past another courtyard garden on her left, frozen and barren. Trees lined the street on both sides, bare with boney limbs clawing skywards.

  Then they came.

  Two of them from opposite sides of the street. One was hiding behind a low hedge, the other from behind an ornate column of brickwork with a low timber fence.

  A tactical pincer move, a simultaneous attack from both sides.

  The bastards had been waiting for her. Ballard and Gillian, blond and blue-eyed twin brothers. Sent to Exile for multiple gang-rapes. Filmed them for their own private collection.

  One following drone became three as they swooped in to record the engagement,

  Magnolia drew her sword and angled right, her natural side.

  Gillian, the taller of the two came at her, low and hard, frothing like a rabid dog, swinging a morning star, a spiked ball and chain, no room to avoid. It was the only weapon Magnolia feared. There was no countering the circular blur as it came towards her like a giant fan. The chain would snap her sword then would wrap itself around her wrist and forearm, the spiky ball slicing her arm to shreds.

  Gillian knew it too so he sped up, a twisted smile on a twisted face.

  A reflection of sky glinted off the slick road in front of him; a sheet of ice, a frozen puddle. Magnolia saw it and launched into a baseball slide. She hit the ice flat on her back, and accelerated under the swinging path of the morning star, holding her sword sideways as she slid past his outside leg. The blade of her katana sliced through Gillian’s ankle, taking his foot clean off in a spray of crimson.

  He screamed and collapsed sideways, pulling the sweeping ball and chain out of rhythm, up towards his head, the momentum wrapping the chain around his neck, shorter and shorter until his neck snapped and the heavy solid metal spiked ball smashed into his face.

  Magnolia slid past and cascaded through a small picket fence, punching a hole through the rotten timber with her feet.

  “Bitch!” Ballard screamed. He saw his brother fall and ran towards him. Dead eyes stared back at Ballard as he looked down at his brother, his neck bent at an acute angle, his face a bloody mush of pulp.

  Rage boiled up inside Ballard as he looked down at the body of his brother. They had been inseparable. Played together as children, hunted victims together since teenagers.

  Magnolia got to her feet and dusted the snow off. She turned and saw Ballard.

  “Hey fuck-face,” she yelled. “Whose cock are you going to suck now that your brother is dead?”

  Ballard glanced up, the veins of his neck pulsed, his face contorted. He screamed and ran at Magnolia, a double-axe held high ready to hack into her.

  Magnolia smiled as Ballard closed in o
n her like a freight train, his eyes bulging with hatred. She calmly adjusted her stance, bending her knees slightly, shifting to the balls of her feet. She brought her katana up in one hand, pointing it directly at Ballard’s head as he came on.

  He screamed like a banshee when he reached Magnolia. A wild downward swing of his axe split Magnolia in two, from the crown of her skull all the way down to her groin.

  If she was there.

  But she wasn’t, and the axe plunged downwards through thin air.

  Ballard recovered and looked up.

  The bitch was gone.

  He turned around to see her standing behind him, a few feet away, their positions reversed, katana at her side, the blade coated in blood. His blood.

  Warmth and wetness bloomed across Ballard’s torso then a sting of fire.

  He looked down just in time to see his intestines spill out in one meaty glistening discharge and land with a splat at his feet.

  “Good luck stuffing all that back inside you,” Magnolia said.

  Ballard’s eyes went wide. He fell to his knees, then collapsed face-down into his own entrails.

  Magnolia cleaned the blade in the snow, wiped it carefully with a rag, sheathed it, then walked away.

  Thirteen left.