The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  He smiled. For all those credits and all that size, this airbase couldn’t hold out against them. Not for long. Maybe, just maybe they’d be able to take it intact. And wouldn’t that be another medal just waiting to happen.

  They’d waited a few moments longer as Noorland had moved to the consoles in the hangar and had started the process of breaking into them. Although it wasn’t his forte, probably Will Okocha would have been a better choice for doing it, Al Noorland wasn’t too bad at it. Nobody would dispute his skills. Wilsin had been there when Arnholt had forbidden Okocha from going on the mission. Too important. The rest of them probably should have been insulted but in a strange way, Wilsin felt proud that he was here. To say this was important was perhaps understating it.

  Brendan’s golems continued to move around, patrolling the edges of the hangar bay, stepping over the bodies beneath their giant feet rather than around them when they should come by them. Noorland slipped an automated hacking tool out of his pocket and into the console, tapping a series of rapid quick commands into it. Wilsin could see his brows furrowing, his breathing quickening as he leaned over to the console and clucked his tongue.

  It wasn’t a good sign. It was one of frustration and Wilsin found that unnerving, perhaps more than anything else about this whole thing.

  “Few moments,” Noorland said, glancing around at them with an easy grin. His discomfort had faded rapidly. “Tricky system to break, but I’ll get it. Just another…” He hit a key, they all heard a faint beep. “Damnit! Hang on, hang on…”

  “Damnit Agent Noorland, quit playing around and work it out,” Brendan said angrily. He didn’t like theatrics, Wilsin remembered. And Noorland did tend to showboat when he knew people were watching his performance. He loved playing to the crowd, he was a master of it. “This isn’t a…”

  “Done,” Noorland announced cheerfully. “I’ll guide you all to your destinations, see if I can track down the objectives.” He jerked a thumb towards the exit, a thick sliding blast door that was already opening even as he did so. “Over there. That’s the start. Hurry back, yeah?”

  They were still here and along with them another Taxeen stood half at alert, ready and waiting. This one, Nick couldn’t help but open fire on, setting a triple blast into his upper body and watching him go down, knives drawn but dry. He exhaled sharply, swept the stolen weapon around him to check he was covered, before moving back into the cells. Now that the shit had hit the fan, he was almost feeling nostalgic for the prison cell. There’d been no doubt that was what it was, no two ways of looking at it. He found the right cell immediately, the woman in the Unisco flight suit had retreated to the back of it. She wasn’t alone in there, another guy sat down on the bed.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “How did they get hold of you?” Already he scrambled to unlock the door, searching out the controls. Somewhere, somehow, he’d work it out. “Unisco?”

  The man didn’t react. The woman, the Vazaran did, rising to her feet to appraise him coolly. “Perhaps.”

  He decided to take a chance. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “Do your best,” she said. Still amused.

  “Don’t rush to thank me then,” Nick said, fiddling with the controls. Idly he considered leaving her in there for a moment. The man on the bed finally looked up, grinned at him.

  “She likes her jokes,” he said. “Anything to keep the spirits up. You one of us?” He was also wearing one of the flight suits.

  “Not a pilot,” Nick said. He knew how to fly but he’d never had an aptitude for it. He could get from point to point with minimum fuss, Unisco made a point of insisting that as many of their agents as possible could manage various vehicles, but there were some who were a lot better than others. Some belonged in a cockpit, looked more comfortable in there than they did on the ground. These two looked like pilots, the suits gave a subtle hint to it. “Not a career one anyway. But a friend.” He hit the switch, the door ground open with a screaking sound that ached his ears. He got the impression it hadn’t been opened for a while. “After you.”

  “You with the agency?” She finally looked interested. “How will we ever thank you?” Interested but still no mistaking the sarcasm.

  “Well,” Nick smirked. “I could use someone to fly me out of here. Soon. Got something I need to do first.” He clutched the weapon tighter to him.

  “Reckon they still got our HAX’s in storage?” the Vazaran asked, her companion shrugging at the question.

  “Hells if I know. I’d have slagged them first chance I got. Remove the evidence.”

  “What squadron?” Nick asked, curious. One way to work out if they were genuine. Things could be faked, given enough prior knowledge. And just because it wasn’t common, didn’t mean it wasn’t available.

  “Remnants of Wolf Squadron,” the man said, throwing a salute. “I’m Sergeant Ross Navarro, that’s Lieutenant Alexandra Nkolou.” The woman rolled her eyes.

  “And that’s why people call me Alex,” she said in a tone that suggested he should too. It was a tone that suggested resentment for being called Alexandra. He wasn’t entirely sure why but he’d humour her for now.

  “An unusual name,” he said. “But I’ll oblige you… Wolf Squadron? I heard you all got wiped out.”

  “Not all of us, clearly.” Nkolou wasn’t having it. She reached down to the fallen Taxeen, snapped one of the knives away from his wrists. It broke off with a ruptured crack, Nick nodded in appreciation. She looked like she knew how to handle it, he said nothing. “You got any other weapons?”

  “Nope.” It wasn’t a lie. “Hangars are…” He turned back towards the doorway, trying to work out where they were, based on what he’d seen so far of this damn place. “Back that way. Find a ship, wait for me, I’ll be as quick as possible.” He gulped, saw the looks on their faces and felt the weight of his conscience on his shoulders suddenly. Things were getting hairy out there by the sounds of it. Nobody knew how much time they’d have on here, all it’d take would be one lucky shot and the whole thing could go up. “Fifteen minutes. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, or if you don’t hear from me, get out of here. No point you…”

  “What’s happening?” Navarro asked.

  Just for a moment, Nick felt lost for words. “Outside, there’s a five kingdoms fleet. They’re here to beat the bad guys. The bad news is…”

  “We’re right in the middle of the enemy?”

  “That’s about the sum of it,” Nick had to admit. “So yeah, we’re one lucky blast… or unlucky, depending on how you want to look at it… from being blown to the great below. I’ll understand if you don’t want to stick around.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” Nkolou wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Got to try and kill her,” Nick admitted. “Claudia Coppinger. The brains behind all this. If I don’t make it, you got to find Arnholt, confirm that. Maybe he already knows, maybe he doesn’t but he needs to hear it from me.” He threw them the Unisco salute, fist clenched and tapped it to his temple. They returned it quickly and he felt reassured. “Divines be with you.”

  “You too,” Navarro said. “You got a name?”

  He smiled. “Nick. Nick Roper. If we all make it out, rendezvous on Carcaradis Island, we’ll celebrate it. Sound good?”

  “Sounds fantastic,” Nkolou smiled. It was the first time he’d seen it. Probably a sight many’d consider worth waiting for. “Don’t dawdle, yeah?”

  “No intention of it,” Nick grinned. “Good luck.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five. Battle Heat.

  “Just get the fucking job done and survive!”

  Terrence Arnholt’s silent prayer to Unisco operatives before any dangerous mission. Later became the unofficial motto of the agency.

  The third day of Summerfall.

  They’d run into trouble almost immediately, the numbers of armed grunts on this airbase might have been trimmed but they were still in plentiful supply, David Wilsin could testify
to that. It felt like they’d hit every single group of them in their push for the cells, under Noorland’s directions. He had to constantly reassure himself that Al wasn’t doing this deliberately, that he couldn’t help where the patrols were based. That would have been massively unfair on their eyes in the system. They were pushed for time, he had to get them there as quickly as possible.

  He jerked the Featherstone up above his head, fired blindly from behind cover, Derenko and Aldiss moved out under his support, he heard their own weapons erupt with fire. Muscle memory and instinct took over, he continued to point and shoot, any sense of higher thought lost within the moment as more and more of them came running out for the team, all eager to shoot, all eager to kill.

  He didn’t know how many he’d done for personally, just that the body count was racking up and still nobody had gotten hurt. At least not badly. Mel Harper had screamed when a stray shot had punctured her shield and grazed her shoulder but she was still moving, if not freely. Wilsin allowed himself a glance up at her. She’d live. Blood stained her armour, her face contorted in pain. Yet still she continued to fire, if erratically at times. One came out a side door nearby, weapon up and Wilsin clubbed him with the butt of his weapon. He went down, Wilsin brought his weapon back up to bear, glanced down the corridor. For the moment, silence. Nobody was shooting at them; it was quiet bar the ragged little gasps coming from Harper.

  “Wilsin,” Derenko called down at him. “Take care of Harper, catch us up in a minute. Get that wound patched.” By the looks of it, he’d noticed the erratic shooting as well. Wilsin reached for the pack on his waist, digging out some numbing agent and a patch. It wouldn’t be a perfect job but it might mean Harper enjoyed a little less discomfort.

  “Roger,” he said, throwing him a nod. Derenko, Aldiss and Khan moved off, he noted the direction they’d gone before turning back to Harper who’d already peeled off her armour with great discomfort. It hit the ground with a thump, she staggered back to lean against the wall with a pained look on her face.

  “Damn,” she said, looking down at the wound. Her eyes were glazing over, her breathing laboured and the blood running freely. “That really, really hurts, yeah? Fuck me!” She spat the words out viciously.

  Wilsin said nothing, just moved in close, broke open the numbing agent and sprayed some of it into the wound. Her eyes went wide and hot, she bit down a scream as the agent met the wound, but he saw her leg spasm involuntarily, Mel Harper reached out and clutched his wrist tight as she continued to swallow down any sort of audible reaction. Screaming now possibly wouldn’t be the best idea, there were still who knew how many guys running around out there. He could hear blaster fire in the distance, the rest of the team had run into opposition by the sounds of it. And they were two agents down…

  “My hero,” Harper murmured as he started to apply the patch. At least the trembling had stopped, some semblance of recognition was returning to her eyes with the absence of pain. Still she favoured her shoulder when she moved but it was manageable for her now. Or so he guessed. She didn’t look like she was struggling. “Thanks, Dave.” If he’d looked down at her, he’d have suddenly seen her eyes go wide with fear.

  He muttered that it was nothing, moved to put away the medical items. It was when he closed the clasp on his pouch that he realised the lights had dimmed in the corridor. David Wilsin blinked several times, not exactly sure what had happened until he looked up. He blanched, swallowed a very deep breath and suddenly clutched his weapon a whole lot tighter.

  He’d seen the man stood over them before. The big fellow. The missing link. The blank slate. Whoever he was, he looked a whole lot bigger up close. Especially with the fixation on Wilsin in his eyes and his arm coming back to hurl a punch.

  “Oh crap!”

  It was like getting hit by a mag-rail carriage, suddenly he was airborne, a blinding pain rupturing through his chest as his armour was compromised and he hit the ground in an untidy heap.

  Unilasers and gravity bombs hammered into the airbase’s shields from two different angles, Criffen could see that they were having a slow but gradual effect. No shield, no matter how strong could take abuse like these ones were being issued, continuous bursts of bright blue unilaser fire ripping into the shields side by side with the blinding white boom-blast from the gravity bomb that were followed by a sudden temporary absence of sound. Gunships swept down to follow up with slasher missile bursts, each of them sending a pretty scarlet sweep over the shields and Criffen smiled at the report that the shields were slowly being compromised by the continuous assaults.

  Let the Bounty Snatcher and the Lost Lucie deal with the shields, pound and pound away until they were no more and then his own ship would start to shred the airbase below with fire when they went down. It felt like the perfect plan. Getting past the shields would take all the firepower of those two ships, they’d withdraw and recharge while the Stallion moved in for the kill.

  Across the battlefield, eaglefighters and HAX’s and chargers were engaging each other furiously, blowing up as many of the enemy as were taken with them, the numbers rapidly thinning out more and more by the second. Already they’d lost twenty percent of their attack force and the numbers showed no sign of slowing down. About the only saving grace was that they were taking them with them. Eaglefighter numbers had been reduced by the same amount, no wait, more, twenty-two percent, twenty-five percent…

  The shields went down, not with a bang but with a whimper, he’d privately hoped for more of a show as the announcement came out that they’d been disabled. Airbase was no longer a defended target. He fought the urge to rub his hands together in glee. That was exactly what he wanted to hear.

  “Stallion control, move in for the kill,” he commanded. “Snatcher, Lucie, proceed to move back out of range. We’re going to light this thing up now.”

  “Sir!” one of the analysts shouted, cutting off his train of thought. “The airbase’s weapons are powering up.”

  “What?!” Before now, they’d had no indication of weapons. Just that they were hiding behind shields. Scans had failed to pick up any sort of weapon systems on board it and suddenly he rounded on those analysts. “Where the hells did those come from?”

  The weapons lit up like a firework display, ten, twenty, thirty, forty… more than he could count suddenly… all erupted at the same time, weapons systems easily on a par with the unilasers that had been pounding the shields a moment earlier but outnumbering them easily by a comfortable few dozen and suddenly they were bombarded with calls from the Lost Lucie, the dreadnought’s own shields rapidly overwhelmed and suddenly it was the hull that was being breached by the corrosive fire, missiles suddenly joining in the fray. No ship could stand up to taking that sort of abuse for long…

  Criffen had never felt so impotent as he watched the Lost Lucie explode in a fireball, a lucky shot hitting their fuel banks, hundreds and hundreds of men and women suddenly lost forever. He exhaled sharply, collective gasps coming around the control centre. To be up against such firepower…

  “Impossible,” somebody muttered and he was almost in agreement with them. For a few moments, the control centre resonated with stunned silence and then he remembered himself. He remembered where they were.

  “Nothing’s impossible. Get back to them now! The shields are down and we need to take these risks! Squadrons, move in! Bombard them with all your firepower, you’ll be harder to hit. Watch out for eaglefighters on your backs. Bounty Snatcher, continue to assault, back those fighters up. Sitting Target, do you record any survivors?”

  “Negative admiral.” The words came like a hammer, he tried to block them out. The important thing would be to not be caught out by the same trick twice. It did absolutely nothing for those that had been already killed though.

  The metal ring flashed to life in front of them and Wim was momentarily surprised by it, only for a few seconds though. The portable projector on the floor of the shuttle winked into action, producing a tiny holograp
hic figure, just head and shoulders but one that he didn’t find familiar. Madam Coppinger did though, it would appear.

  “Mistress,” they said. Certain features were distorted, the voice electronically altered. It was difficult to even tell what gender they were. Not his business. “Unisco are here for you. I regret that I was unable to tell you earlier…”

  “What the hells do I pay you for?!” Claudia snapped at him. If there was any sign of distress in the figure’s demeanour, it didn’t show.

  “They’re here for you,” they continued. “I didn’t find out until the last moment, haven’t been able to get the message to you. I’m here with them, but don’t worry. I’ll ensure you get out. They won’t take you alive.”

  “That’s reassuring.” Some of the anger had faded from her voice. “Where are they now?”

  “All running through the ship, looking for you. I’ve managed to split away from them to send you this. I can’t stay but always remember I’m looking out for you.”

  She said nothing, just pursed her lips thoughtfully. Wim was suddenly bemused by the whole thing. It figured that she’d have someone from Unisco in her pocket but for them to be brazen enough to contact her in the middle of what was turning into a war zone… That spoke of loyalty to the credits she could bring to bear. And who was it who said finance couldn’t be turned into a weapon?”