The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  …Just caught them in the palm of his hand and he wasn’t whimpering in pain, just smiling coldly. Not a hint of a reaction beyond that smile. It was the single scariest thing she’d ever seen in her life.

  Anne’s eyes widened, if she hadn’t just seen then she wouldn’t have believed. She’d always known Baxter had some special powers. He’d been the one who’d taught her that her empathic abilities weren’t a curse but rather a gift. That they were 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, then 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 sort of 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 of character who’d stick around to see it bear the rotten fruit it had left him with. By the same token, she didn’t mind that he’d run like the coward he was. She 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. In a lot more ways, she felt a sense of relief that had been missing from her life for such a long time. She’d run with him, pushed him through a side door everyone thought was 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. People 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 but he was determined to take them two at a time, not apparently caring if he fell and broke his neck or not. 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 that for any sense of chivalry Ritellia might have previously shown, it was lost to him now as he reached the bottom of the steps and 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. He was 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 now 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 to know the truth. Only she and the mistress had access to get through it, not even Domis had been granted that privilege. The rock wall moved as she approached, recognising everything about her from the way she walked and held herself to the biological profile of her that it had stored in the small but exceptionally complicated electronic brain that had been 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.

  Not 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. She’d been 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 five kingdoms just now, not when she knew the truth.

  In truth, 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 left down here to guard it close by. 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…

  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 grate to it now that hadn’t been there before. Like she’d picked up an overtone somewhere, a voice beyond the voice. Alana hadn’t asked, she wasn’t entirely sure if knowing the answer was something that she truly wanted. And then there were the eyes… 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, trying to run back the way he’d come. Alana 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 out 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 fucking whore!” She wanted to hit him with the blaster, might have gone through with it 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 came out her mouth until it was little more than a growl.

  He didn’t like it. But he obeyed, largely because he saw he didn’t have any choice, Alana imagined. Shame. 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, his face scarlet with anger and impotence but he obeyed. All the way to the mistress, shuffling over to the timing of her boot tap-tap-tapping against the stone.

  “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 that suggested 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 that had he not already known, he might have guessed. It was pure murder, it was the face that had bullied and cajoled ICCC executives, anyone who’d tried to stand up to him really, for years but she stared back at it with pure indifference. He still made her skin crawl even in his moments of weakness.

  “You bitch!”

  “The blood of the man who would be king,” Claudia said, looking up at the shrine. “Do you see it, Ronald? Do you know what this is?”

  Ritellia turned, looked up at the statue of Kalqus and when he spoke, it was with a voice filled with scorn. “Is this why you brought me down here? To stare at relics?”

  “No,” the mistress said softly. “I brought you down here to remove one unwanted relic from the world. It’s all down to interpretation. Blut never could work this thing out, perhaps his passing was a blessing with hindsight. Alana…”

  This was the moment she hadn’t been looking forward to and yet it still needed to be done. Stepping over, stood by the mistress’ side, she handed her the blaster and took the ceremonial dagger from her. It was a beautiful piece of weaponry really, she found herself noticing the curve of the blade and the ivory polished handle as she moved to Ritellia and dug it in deep, his eyes widening in surprise as she twisted it in his guts. Not content there, she thrust in again and again until his front was a mess of scarlet, stray sprays of scarlet gushing over her. Soon his legs gave out and as he dropped to his knees, she saw the pleading look in his eyes, the way his mouth opened ever so slightly at the beginning of a beseeching look.

  It was to be the last sound he ever made, she slashed open his throat and stepped back, letting his body fall. It felt like blood covered every square inch of the floor below the shrine, Ritellia’s final breath coming out as one ragged bellow, his final movements little more than spasms before ultimately, he gave one final twitch and went still.

  “Out of death comes life,” Claudia said softly. “The price is paid, the bargain is struck, the king is dead, long live the queen.” She clapped her hands together, the next words that spilled from her mouth Alana couldn’t even come close to understanding. They sounded like a mixture of coughs, splutters and barks with the occasional howl thrown in. She could have sworn Ritellia’s blood started to shine, even if it was just for a moment.

  Must be imagining it. Surely.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Okocha said, looking at imagery pushed out to them from the team on site at the stadium. They’d relayed the tactical information about the pillars containing the spirit projectors out, Aldiss and Leclerc had made efforts to try and get to one of them, either knocking it out or pulling it down. Their spirits had soared for the peak of the pillars, Aldiss’ being a huge scarlet eagle, Leclerc holding beneath a huge bat that had its talons gripped around his forearm. No sooner had they got within twenty feet of the projector than did fresh doom dogs materialise out down below it, more than thirty streams of white hot fire shooting up into the air, a web of destruction and death that drove the two spirits back. “They can’t get close enough. Defence matrix.”

  “Can’t we get more people up there to deal with the dogs?” Nkolou asked. She’d made her way into the action centre, a blaster strapped to her hip, having been woken up for the crisis. “Seems like the best…”

  “We’re spread too thin,” Noorland said. “If we had more people, we might be able to do it. Most of our people on the ground are tied up ensuring that civilians get out of there alive. We can’t divert those resources.”

  “You take one of these towers out, you’re making the problem smaller,” Nkolou said. “It’s standard warfare. Before you hit the enemy, you hit their resources, they can’t hit you back as hard if they’re already hurting.”

  “That doesn’t work if you’re the one being ambushed,” Okocha said. “They really pulled a fast one on us.”

  “If I had a ship, I could blast it,” Nkolou offered. “Direct hit from a HAX, they’d go up in smoke.” The images showed Aldiss’ eagle hit the ground and vanish, Aldiss rolled away, clearly struggling but he managed to get half up to his feet before the first doom dog was on him, jumping on his back and tackling him to the rooftop.

  “Fuck!” Okocha shouted, the image showing the spray of blood gushing from him as the dog bit down. “You’re right, I’ll just pull a fucking HAX out of my damn pocket, shall I?”

  “No need for that,” Noorland said thoughtfully. “She might be onto something with what she said. We still have a hoverjet outside.”

  “It’s not armed though,” Okocha said, suddenly deadly calm again. “That thing couldn’t win a fight with an oversized pigeon unless it got sucked into the engine.”

  Noorland’s response was to head for the exit. A few seconds later, Nkolou followed him and Okocha swore loudly. All of this was more than he needed right now.

  In the confines of the spirit bout arena, it was considered proper conduct to be able to release a spirit anywhere within the boundaries of the battlefield on the condition its feet touch the ground when it appears. Letting it materialise several feet above your opponent so it dropped straight on them upon appearance was considered unsporting of the highest order and usually lead to disqualification.

  Spirit battling outside the arena holds no such rules, Wade noticed. Cacaxis went down, face hit the dirt hard, something stumpy and silver stood proudly on the back of its head. He narrowed his eyes, studied the four-armed figure. It couldn’t be called humanoid. Only perhaps in the vaguest sense of the term. It was made of what looked like organic steel, a crude face scratched into the surface of the top part of its body, the effect strangely disturbing. Simultaneously it gave the impression of both blindness and an intense gaze, a contrast in experiences he’d never thought he’d see. Each of the four arms ended in thick metal claws, its legs shorter than each of the arms. It was amazing really that it could stand upright for any length of time…

  He’d seen the golem before, quite a while ago. There’d been a few modifications made, but it was the same Iron-1 that Ruud Baxter had fashioned himself a very long time ago. The man himself stood high above them, peering down from the roof of the stadium. Wade could see him through the glasses, he raised a hand and waved. He knew Baxter could see him…

  Then Cacaxis rose again, reared up like a ship in a storm, hurling Iron-1 away into the stands, rounded on Wade and Theo with brutal anger. If the fight had gone out of it before, it was back now, roused with furious aggression.

  Wade swallowed, reaching for another container crystal. This might yet still be tricky.

  Nick ran, not entirely sure where he was going. All he could do was follow the general direction Rocastle had gone and hope for the best. It was all okay giving an instruction like Brendan had done, but sometimes you needed the means to be able to follow it through. That said, he was nothing if not resourceful. He’d hunt him down. Somewhere in this carnage, Rocastle was running. Finding out where was always to be the tricky part. He pulled up short, ducked under a rifle butt swung at his face and tackled the attacker, smashing him into a wall. He yelled in pain, drew out a knife and swung at him, Nick twisted back, caught his wrist and broke it. That yell of pain became a screech, he flung out an elbow and sent his foe crashing to the ground, knocking his mask away. He knew that face…

  Didn’t have time to dwell on it, he didn’t know too many Varykian people but he knew of that one. He’d seen him twice in recent weeks, not just at the tournament but also on Coppinger’s ship. One of Rocastle’s special soldiers, Claudia had called them. Something like that. Angels of Death? Something like that. Anything to be melodramatic apparently.

  What drew his eye was the clip on Ulikku’s
belt, he reached down and snapped it off, looked at it with interest. He knew what it was only too well. When large scale spirit projectors were used in battle, the side employing them outfitted their own side with tags like these, ordinary orange unremarkable-looking tags but containing a powerful pheromone inside that masked their presence to those spirits. Marked them as friendly to their own sides, meant the spirits sent rampant on the battlefield didn’t accidentally attack them.

  He clipped it onto his own belt, put his finger to his ear and radioed the new information over, anything to turn the tide. It might buy people an extra few moments to deal with the hoards if they had an advantage.

  Nick looked up, weapon coming up at the same time as he heard approaching battle, an ice cat firing cold beams at two oncoming doom dogs. The caller… Jacobs… Nick could see he was trying to get away, failing miserably until Nick stepped in front of him and for a moment he saw their confusion in their eyes. Right up until the moment he put a flurry of shots between them. The bodies faded immediately.

  “Shit!” Pete swore. “Where the fuck did you learn how to do that?”

  “Never mind that,” Nick said. “You see Harvey Rocastle anywhere?” He didn’t have time to be subtle. Pete’s eyes widened in shock.

  “As it happens…” he grunted. “We saw him, he came for us… Me, Matt, Sam… Mia! Where’s Mia! He had a gun!”

  “Yeah, so do I,” Nick replied grimly, hefting the weight of it in his hands. Mia Arnholt. It couldn’t be, could it? He’d pulled that trick before, was he really doing it again? Rocastle had shot her father, was it even possible that he was pushing his own agenda in all of this? Coppinger couldn’t know that, surely. Or maybe it had been a hit on the director of Unisco and Rocastle had enjoyed a spectacular run of coincidence. “Where were you? Show me!”