The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

There’d been a guy, probably not much older than her, he’d noticed her. 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 towards the back of her mind. His eyes had been the same colour as her jumpsuit, the green bits anyway and he’d had the elements of roguery about him. He hadn’t taken kindly to the 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 a bit beyond her. 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 up here in these confined places, 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 the minimum of fuss. If she kept acting like she belonged here, as long as she kept exuding that 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. Another thing that had never been amongst her talents. Basically, anything that kept her going would do, preferably stuff that didn’t have to be heated up.

  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… It was 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 that different coloured jumpsuits meant different areas. And lacking an access card, she’d been unable to get out of the maintenance corridors that ran around the ship like a tir rabbit warren. It was immensely frustrating really. She could see the other people in the public areas of the ship moving around, cream coloured jumpsuits and invariably smug expressions.

  She needed a plan and so she’d turned to Thomas Quinn, her not-so-subtle admirer. She’d sat down 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 up, 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 was growing ever stronger by the second. Thomas Quinn was not an unpleasant looking man and as much pleasure as ruining that face might do for her, there was still the need for secrecy and escape. In that order. Short term relief might not do much for her in the long term, 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 that 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. 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 over 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 just 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 any sort of 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 why 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 hells of a lot 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 to get out of here.

  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 its 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 in him and she’d done very little to dissuade that in him
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 that she’d long since thought had been quashed out of her by her master and his training methods. More than once she’d accidentally on purpose rubbed her body against his in squeezing past him in the crowded corridors, she’d felt his hidden excitement boiling deep down 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 spent that time talking to him. An emotion tickling deep within her that both disturbed and troubled her. She didn’t think it was love… She didn’t have a problem with love. Emotions were powerful things but sometimes she thought they could be a distraction. And distractions 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 of here. 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 feeling ever 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 was something that had been 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 humble experience, women could be just as bad as men when it came to matters of the heart. More than once she’d found that out. More than once she’d been 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 when something had been on the verge of development. Attachment was wrong. Only destiny was something that 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 that it’d end with her breaking his heart in as devastating a manner as possible. It was the way it would have to be. Would she feel sorrow in that? Some part of her knew that she would, just as most of her had come to accept that it would come to 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 that had 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 of old 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 ever so slightly when the master had told her that 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, weapon-less and… there’d been something about him that 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 doesn’t have 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.

  She’d made up her bunk hole carefully, avoiding the mini barracks they had down here. Staying there would offer up more questions than she might be able to answer in a pinch. She’d seen regulators moving around down here, checking cards and asking questions. She wanted to avoid answering them, just in case. It’d be easier this way. She’d managed to steal a blanket and had cut a hole in the wall behind one of the boilers where it was warm. Squeezing herself in between the pipes, she’d made herself comfortable for sleeping purposes before replacing the section of wall she’d cut out with her kjarnblade. Probably not the best place to bring Quinn back to. If it came to that, they’d go to his bunk not hers. She wasn’t going to let it go that far. Last thing she wanted was him writhing on top of her unless there was no other choice.

  Still Kyra felt like she’d made good progress today and tomorrow might be the day she got out of here. Settling away in her section of cut out way, she took out her kjarnblade and twisted the casing open to remove the k-crystal. The small lump of rock held all the energies of the Kjarn and worked as a conduit to power up the fearsome blade that could cut through metal and flesh alike with comparative ease.

  She held it in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes and opened her mind to it. Like any power source, it could be depleted over time and she’d neglected it for some while now, largely due to other circumstances. Still it flickered hard with power in her presence and she felt some relief at that, letting some of her own latent Kjarn presence flow down into it. Just a touch. She didn’t want to attract the wrong sort of attention.

  The third day of Summerfall.

  She didn’t entirely know how much time had passed when she saw Quinn again, hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit and a nervous look on his face. She could sense he was really struggling with something as he approached her.

  “Morning,” he said. He didn’t move to kiss her, she sensed that he wanted to but something was holding him back. He jerked his head towards a side room. “Can I have a word? In private?”

  Her senses were warning her now but she kept her face calm. Forewarned was forearmed after all. With people all around them, it wasn’t the best place for anyone to cause a scene. Not her, not him. Kyra cocked her head towards the room, extending out her senses. There were people in there already.

  What the hells? She could decline but that’d look suspicious. Really suspicious. She still needed Quinn to get out of here. Or she could accept and go in forearmed. A hand dropped to her pocket and her fingers rested around the hilt of her blade.

  “Ooh someone looks serious this morning,” she said in a teasing voice. She put her other hand on his and smiled at him. “Not about to tell me about your wife are you?”

  “Just… Just come inside will you?”

  He looked like he was going to be sick as the two of them stepped into the room, she paused and took in the uniforms of the regulators. Neither of them were dupes, she caught that immediately. They both gave her the sort of looks that a hungry cat gives a canary and now the Kjarn was screaming for her attention, doing its best to warn her as to their intentions.

  “Hey what gives?” she ask
ed, doing her best to sound surprised. “What’s going on here?”

  “Ma’am, we’re going to need to see your ID card,” the regulator on the left said. He was tall and sandy haired, the other was a lot smaller and bald. Both were armed but not with anything heavier than hand blasters. In other words, about as much threat as toothpicks to her.

  “I…” She almost said don’t have one. “I… haven’t been issued one yet.”

  They scoffed at that. She tried to keep her face neutral but she knew that the ruse was up.

  “I wanted to find you, surprise you,” Quinn said monotonously. “Went and looked to see what barracks you were in. No record of you on the manifestos anywhere. No last-minute replacements or anything. So, I asked the regulators. Had to be some sort of error, right?”

  Her heart fell. Oh Thomas, you big dumb bastard. You soft fucking idiot.

  “No card, no right to be here,” the bald regulator said, his voice high but menacing. She almost laughed at hearing it. “You’re going to have to come with us, right now Miss!”

  “I said!” she snapped, putting the persuasive force of the Kjarn into her voice. A tricky gambit but a desperate one. “I haven’t! Been! Issued! One yet!”

  The reaction was immediate and noticeable, they both recoiled like she’d slapped them. Doing two at once was tricky, the effect was diluted. As far as she knew, she’d done it perfectly. But would perfection be enough?

  “I’m sorry…” One of them started to say before hands dropped to blasters. Shit! Something had gone wrong! The confusion was there on their faces, they didn’t know who or where they were, she could sense their fear. Behind that fear, she could sense violence wasn’t far.

  Kyra couldn’t hesitate, her blade came out and suddenly the shorter one was even shorter, minus a head. The taller one lost a hand first, then stared down in shock at the blade protruding from his chest. Quinn screamed and she spun, gesturing with her fist to grasp him about the throat with the telekinetic force of the Kjarn…