The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  No pressure.

  The girl lowered the blade and she let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware she was holding.

  “Please,” she said. “Help me.”

  Prideaux beamed sweetly at her, the expression dripping with venomous sarcasm. “Of course. If you’d asked me nicely in the first place, we might already be on our way. Consider that a lesson for the future. Jam and vinegar, all that sort of stuff.”

  It took very little time to find a ship, an old Saravejo SS-1 freighter that had seen better days. What it was doing here, Prideaux didn’t know. It looked massively out of place but as she bypassed the controls and stepped up into the ship, she knew it’d do. Provided they weren’t shot down. Always a risk.

  “What a hunk of junk,” the girl said. “How we going to get out of here in this? We probably won’t make it past the hangar doors.”

  “Shut up,” Prideaux said pleasantly. “I can deal with negativity but not your bleating. Have faith. Isn’t that what you’re all about?”

  “No, I prefer…” She tailed off, suddenly glancing at Prideaux as if seeing her for the first time. She could see the cogs grinding away in her head, the sudden wonder forming and blooming deep inside. “What do you mean by that?”

  Inside Prideaux smiled. “You’ve made some strange decisions that most people wouldn’t have, faith seems to have gotten you this far so far. You’re not behaving like a rational person would. Maybe you’re desperate but you’re following your heart in what you believe is the right path. Sounds like faith to me.” She worked away at the controls, wincing to herself at the way they failed to respond adequately to her attempts to power up. Always a handy ability to break into a ship. She’d taken those classes in Unisco training, always figured they’d come in handy one day.

  It appeared that day was today. Of course, that had been military grade hardware they all practiced on back at the academy. Hard to break but at the same time, there was always a readable pattern to the system. Once you figured it out, you could break it. This was a civilian one, not wired up in the same way. Once you worked one logging pattern out, the next one would be entirely new and fresh. Perhaps. Depended how much someone wanted you to avoid stealing the ship. This piece of junk, she didn’t know how secure it would be when they took to the skies.

  Maybe she was just rusty. That was possible too.

  The entire station suddenly jerked around her, almost hurling her from her seat. A warning alarm sounded outside, though she couldn’t quite hear what it said from in here. Whatever it could be, it probably wasn’t good. Turned out that was just the sort of incentive she needed to get working harder and harder until she broke the final code, heard the reassuring ‘cling’ of success. All systems lit up, she became very aware of the girl stood tapping her foot. Resisting the urge to turn around and slap the bitch, she instead settled back in her seat and strapped herself in.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, firing up the engines. They let out a cough, a low pained hum and then threatened to fire into life. Only for a moment and then they died. Prideaux swore, beat them with a fist.

  “I don’t know what you’re smirking at,” she said aloud.

  The girl let out an indignant sound. “I wasn’t…”

  “Talking to the engine,” she said, moving to reroute power. Things couldn’t possibly be a bad as they looked. This thing couldn’t just be… The station shook again. “Damnit, I wish they’d pack it in for the time being, let me think!”

  Divert power from all non-essential systems… Interior cooling, don’t need that. Sure, it might be hot but it’ll be even hotter if this thing blows up while we’re inside it. Weapons, shields… Nice to know they were optional in the first place. Guess we really will be a sitting duck when we take off. Thrusters, working. Landing controls, ouch, they look dodgy. That might be touch and go.

  “So, what are our chances?” the girl asked. Prideaux didn’t realise she’d spoken out loud.

  “If we get into the air, about fifty to fifty,” she said. “We fail to get off the ground, probably about… Yeah zero. No chance. We’ll die here.”

  The girl closed her eyes and just for a moment nothing happened. Then the ship shuddered, threatened to rise off the deck. It stuttered and then slid back down. She opened her eyes, suddenly panting.

  “Too heavy,” she said. “It’s too heavy.”

  Useless little bitch… “And completely useless as well,” she said, still working her fingers away over the controls. “All we need is a spark…” She paused as inspiration struck, she rerouted power down through the secondary diffusers, caught it on the rise and then flooded the spare back through the primary. This time when the engines kicked to life, they stayed alive.

  “Oh, you little beauty,” she said, already working the stick back to guide it up off the ground. “Let’s get the hells out of here.”

  Bits of the ceiling were starting to fall away around them as they made their way to the hangar doors, she had to be quick on her feet to evade the debris, last thing she needed was to be crushed like an egg in here. Prideaux swore as one came down in her path, had to nudge the ship to the side to avoid crashing it. That would have topped an already stressful day.

  They’d just about made it through the hangar doors when the airbase collapsed around them.

  Total collapse might have been an exaggeration but at the same time, the wing of the structure that they’d been in was crumpling away, the twin outer structures falling away from the central ‘eyeball’ part of the base. They’d jettisoned the damage parts, Prideaux realised, the destruction clear to see from up here. Smoking craters and long trails of destruction had been painted all over the surface of the twin outer hulls, fires dying down as they fell away through the air. At least there was nothing but water below. No chance of a small town being wiped out by them hitting it.

  For a long moment, the orb hung there in the air, dwarfing even the dreadnoughts away in the distance. And then it turned to run, hitting maximum acceleration in a matter of seconds. No time to track it, no time to guess where it might be going. One moment it was there, the next it was a speck in the distance.

  Out of sight but not out of mind. Prideaux swore. This mission had to have been the biggest bust ever. All for nothing. She’d been interrupted from her own task by this little bitch and all that was left now was what to do about it. The girl looked relieved. Time to see how long she could make that last for.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine. From Here.

  “I’ve always been a firm believer that if you want to hide a door, then the best way to do it is in plain sight. It helps if it doesn’t look like a door, of course. Some people display an almost chronic inability to see beyond the surface of things.”

  Almer Rushford, former Vedo to his apprentice.

  The fourth day of Summerfall.

  Nobody was saying anything much and certainly nothing more than they had to. An aura of pervasive silence filled the makeshift Unisco office as everyone present found themselves crowded around the viewing screen, watching the speech that was ongoing. Six people were present in the pictures, all of them widely known throughout the five kingdoms.

  Ahead of them all was Cosmin Catarzi, Chancellor of the Senate of Representatives, the nominated figurehead in charge of it all. Behind him were the rulers of the individual kingdoms, Adam Abbot, First Minister of Canterage, Joseph Christopher McCoy, President of Premesoir, Luisa de Alcacer Giminez, High Queen of Serran, Masahiro Nakamura, Emperor of Burykia and finally Leonard Nwakili, the Premier of Vazara. All wore expressions of solemnity, a show of unity. A dozen or so prominent senators stood behind them, all part of the fabric of the government that made up the five kingdoms. All together in one space at one time.

  Nick couldn’t help but think that was a tremendously bad idea. If things went south, as it felt like there was a pretty good chance of them doing right now, a lot of them would be in danger. Arnholt had told them as much, Catarzi had pushed it off. He’d refused to
bow to the threat, saying that they’d show the solidarity that had formed the kingdoms initially. They’d live together and they’d die together if it came to it. He couldn’t help but wonder what some of the senators would have thought about that given the choice. Most of them weren’t renowned for having a strong centre of fibre when it came to statements like that.

  “From here on out,” Catarzi intoned deeply, drawing on every word as if his life depended on it. “There is no way to mistake it as any other, we are at war. And yet our war is not with our neighbours abroad, it is a war with an enemy within our midst. Yesterday, the first shots were fired in the skies above the Vazaran ocean. Many lives were lost, plenty of servicemen and women who devoted their lives to peace will not be returning to their families. It is a war of interests, a clash of ideologies. The enemy is none other than a woman that many of you may have respected or even liked or even taken credits from over the years. Claudia Coppinger. Vital Unisco intelligence acquired at great risk has shown some of the truly sinister nature of her plans, including building a battle station and a fleet of warships. And although a five kingdoms taskforce managed to deal serious losses to her, she escaped. Most of her lieutenants escaped. Her station escaped, the limits of her armies remain unknown.”

  He looked more and more stressed out the longer the statement went on, Nick felt a little sorry for him really. It wasn’t the sort of news that anyone wanted to deliver. It wasn’t the sort of thing that anyone wanted to happen in their lifetime. And here he was, telling the entire five kingdoms that they were about to possibly descend into civil war. Whatever happened, whichever side won, history would remember Catarzi as the man who had let it happen. His legacy was already tarnished to a certain effect. He probably wanted it over as quickly and bloodlessly as possible. Something everyone in this room had in common.

  “Poor bastard,” Derenko voiced aloud. It was hard for him to look too sad, Nick noticed. Derenko had been buzzing wildly ever since they’d returned from the mission, his Unisco stock at an all-time high with the capture of every major crime boss in the five kingdoms, barring Cyris of course. He’d been told all about how the pardon for that man was already winging its way to Catarzi’s desk, urgent priority and highly recommended to be acted on. There were even rumours Derenko was about to be promoted off the back of it. No wonder he looked way too pleased, despite everything that had happened.

  “He’s not wrong though,” Caldwell said, still checking out his surroundings. To the best of Nick’s knowledge, this was the first time he’d been here and he was still treating it like there was an enemy around every corner. Still it paid to be suspicious for him. If Claudia Coppinger had a kill list, Caldwell was probably the top name on it. That wouldn’t just be business, it’d be personal as well. Right now, Nick didn’t envy Caldwell one bit at all. “It’s going to be a mess. You know how many people Reims has employed over the last ten years? You know how many people their feeder companies employ? Any of them could sympathise with my sister. A lot of people will. It’s probably how she accrued so many armaments in the first place without anyone noticing. Credits and charisma account for a lot. What you saw upstairs wasn’t the entire thing, it was just the start.”

  “As chairwoman and owner of Reims Incorporated, Claudia Coppinger has proven to be a truly shrewd mind in the business world,” Catarzi said. “We can only hope for a swift resolution to the situation and that her talents do not run as prolifically to warfare as they did to the business world. All Reims assets left in the five kingdoms are in the process of being seized and held in Senate acquisition.”

  “That’ll be the investors running for the hills,” Lysa said. “Maybe this’ll bring a quick resolution to the whole thing.”

  Caldwell shook his head. “I doubt it. That’s just the company. It won’t make a difference. She’s been bleeding the books creatively for years. It’s worthless really. Little more than a pretty shell. The real credits from it have long been siphoned out into personal accounts under a dozen different names in a dozen different offshore islands, some of which don’t even appear on maps. She’s smarter than that, she didn’t want it to happen this soon but she knew as soon as it did come out into the open, that it’d explode into one unholy mess. My sister might be many things but unfortunately, stupid has never been one of them.”

  “So, no quick resolution then?” Aldiss said hopefully. He echoed the thought that was passing through all their minds. The longer this went on, the more danger each of them would be in individually. The number of dangerous missions on offer would go up, all of them would be vital and there’d be a greater chance of being killed. Of course, it was what they’d been trained for. They’d all just prefer it if that wasn’t the case. If you were going to die, perhaps it was better to die for a just cause. What felt like a better one than this?

  “Not likely,” Brendan said.

  “In addition to this shocking act of treason,” Catarzi said. “Another has already been spawned out of it. The Vazaran Suns, tolerated by everyone despite the element of lawlessness that runs through them…” He shot Nwakili an annoyed look out the corner of his eye, Nwakili who continued to stare determinedly into the camera. His face betrayed no emotion. “… chose to join Coppinger in her treason. Dark Wind ships rushed to join the engagement in the skies yesterday, their involvement was key in ensuring that she could escape with most of her assets intact. Therefore, as is traditional in these times, I am posting bounties on everyone involved.”

  “This never helps!” Wilsin exclaimed. “I don’t know why he thinks it does!”

  As he’d pointed out, it was traditional in a time like this for bounties to be posted on criminals of this class, in hopes that those unfettered by the law might be able to end it all quickly. Nick had always thought it displayed a contradictory message but there was always someone willing to try and get the credits.

  Offering a million credits for the head of Claudia Coppinger certainly had its attractions. It was a shame that none of them would be able to claim it if they killed her. The theory put to them being that since they were already employed in a profession that meant they were being paid to pull the trigger on her when it came down to it, they were not about to be paid twice to do the job. Those putting the money up weren’t completely stupid.

  Of course, it never quite went as planned. So many would-be bounty hunters sprang up out of the woodwork at times of crisis like this, in hopes of striking it rich. It meant there’d be a lot of bodies piled up in the streets before long. Semi-retired soldiers, blaster nuts, medicated psychopaths, they all suddenly seemed to lose their sense and go after the men and women the bounties were posted on. And very few of them lived to claim the credits.

  Claudia Coppinger, a million credits. Fair enough. Phillipe Mazoud, eight hundred thousand. Arguably a much harder target to deal with. Had he been in the shoes of those bounty hunters, Nick wouldn’t have touched that one. It was pretty much a suicide note left unwritten. To remove Mazoud, one would likely have to fight through the Vazaran Suns as well.

  Connor Caldwell had already told them about Coppinger’s right hand man, a man named Domis who David Wilsin had already claimed to have killed. Noorland had even shown them video footage of some of the fight. Nick hadn’t quite been able to miss the smirk on Caldwell’s face when he’d heard him say that. He’d even voiced his disbelief out loud, pointing out how hard to kill Domis was allegedly. In fairness to him, Wilsin had agreed, telling them all how he hit like a wrecking ball and had a stupidly unfair ability to heal wounds dealt to him. Hence the confusion as to whether he was dead or not. He’d told them of Jake Costa who Nick remembered all too well from their encounter in the Carcaradis Island jail, the bounty had been placed on him at a paltry hundred thousand credits.

  Then there was Harvey Rocastle, Caldwell had informed them that he’d been instrumental in recruiting callers disillusioned with the current state of the competition to the Coppinger side of the coming conflict. He told how they’d
been subject to conditioning, trained, battle hardened to ensure that they were of maximum use. Unfortunately, he’d been unable to provide a complete list of names but had told them that Weronika Saarth and Reda Ulikku were on the list of those that he could name. Nick had felt a brief sensation of vindication at being proved right on that count. Most of the names were ones that he’d already pulled out in his investigation. New ones would be good but being proved right wasn’t to be sniffed at. It was the small victories that made all the difference.

  Rocastle’s bounty held at fifty thousand, on top of the twenty thousand that was already set out for him for escaping Unisco custody. He’d also named Doctor Dale Sinkins for them, a bounty listed at the same number as for Rocastle, fifty thousand. A preposterous amount for someone whose role had been research at most, still that was their choice. That was what taxes paid for apparently these days. Pay for us to hunt your enemies. And by your enemies, we mean our enemies.

  The final name on the list, Nick noticed was one Wim Carson. He couldn’t find it in his heart anywhere to agree with the bounty posted for him. Fifty thousand for him was massively undervaluing him. Caldwell had made him out to be some sort of guru slash advisor who Coppinger had plucked out of obscurity and kept his value to her secret. Even from her brother. A shrewd decision it would appear on her part. Nick wasn’t convinced as to the ease of the kill. He’d faced down Carson, he’d fought him and with that laser sword of his, he’d not just survived, he’d come out the better. If that girl hadn’t appeared, he’d have been dead. No doubt. It wouldn’t be some amateur bounty hunter who dealt with him. That bounty would go up and up and up, it’d either be someone like him or someone immensely lucky.

  “Makes your mouth water, huh?” Noorland said. “Makes you wish we’d all gone private before this whole thing, huh?”

  “It’s not too late,” Fagan said. “Reckon we can still form our own mercenary company, go after them and share the profits.”