The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  She’d been lucky. Aerial dogfights, weapons… She had people to do this for her. She leant back against the wall, her heart pounding in her chest. So why did she feel so alive? She had more credits than she ever knew what to do with but it was the first time she’d ever felt this rush. She knew it had to be bad for her. Doing it too often would be to invite catastrophe. Unisco agents were trained saboteurs, investigators, killers, to go up against them on her own repeatedly would be suicidal. Sooner or later, it would backfire and everything would be for naught. She was lucky they hadn’t identified her and they weren’t already at her door.

  She couldn’t risk it again. Not yet. Things would soon change all circumstances permitting. All it would take was patience. It felt like a dirty word in her mind. Yet she knew the value of it. Waiting might be infuriating but there was ultimately very little she could do. Suffer the tedium of the present to bear the fruits of the future. She drummed her fingers against the desk, stared down at the report in front of her and forced herself to read. The memory of adrenaline in her system still hadn’t quite faded and it was a tough chore to discount the way it screamed at her. This was important. Too important to ignore.

  The report came from one of her people downstairs, for her eyes only and extremely sensitive. It didn’t make for good reading. Too many potential excuses and complications for her liking. Perhaps running off on unplanned jaunts to Carcaradis Island wasn’t the best idea for the future; the evidence was just stacking up in favour of that. Things needed to be kept an eye on here.

  But who was going to keep an eye on her?

  She’d already had the argument with Domis. Dear sweet Domis with his unshakeable loyalty and desire to do nothing but protect her from those who wished her harm. For a moment she considered setting him loose on Unisco and its agents but had quickly decided against it. It would be a fool’s errand. They were too scattered, too anonymous, too varied a group of targets. By the time he killed enough to warrant the execution of the mission, the rest of them would be in retreat. Sending him into one of their office buildings would likely be a waste of his talents, even should he survive it, the chances of his anonymity remaining were low. That was his great talent. That he didn’t exist in any sense of the world. He existed on no database in any of the five kingdoms save the one inside her mind. The truly anonymous man.

  She was the only one which knew the truth about him. With Domis, she had something quite remarkable that she’d soon decided she’d rather nobody else knew about. Those who’d helped her with him in the early days no longer could talk about him. He was the closest thing she had to a son, she valued him more than she did her good-for-nothing daughter and the constant drain on credits that she constantly found her to be. That was before you even got onto the subject of this infernal wedding…

  He’d been agitated when she’d returned, hair windswept from the flight, breathing heavy and smelling of smoke. Her own black knight, her bodyguard and closest confidant, she’d found him pacing her study as she strode in, the grin plastered over her face.

  “Mistress!” he’d exclaimed as he’d clapped eyes on her. “You are alive. I was worried. I saw the news, there was an attack at Carcaradis Island.” He paused, looking wary in his worry, like he knew he should desist but unable to. “And I recognised what the attacker was riding. Looked awful like…”

  She cut him off. “Yes, it was me.”

  Two sides of him wrestled for control, she could see the twitch in his face. The one that was subservient, the one that loved her too much to stay silent. The latter won. “Mistress, I wish you wouldn’t… I didn’t know. If you’d been hurt, I couldn’t protect you from here.”

  “I am alive, am I not?” she said. Had it been anyone other than Domis, they’d have felt her full ire at being questioned in such a way. This from a man who’d recently recaptured Rocastle. Who’d flown a vos lak into a dogfight with a squadron of Unisco fighter ships. Yet she stayed her tongue from chastising him. He’d earned the leeway and she’d let it go. Bullying him into submission wasn’t going to do her any favours. She didn’t want to push how devoted to her he might be. Those big hands could break her into pieces as easily as any weapon. “Domis, don’t question me. I am capable.” It was a gentle rebuke, nothing more. “There was something I needed to attend to. It escalated. Believe me, this was never my intention.”

  “Mistress, should you have been killed…”

  “I wasn’t,” she interrupted him. “Domis, I appreciate your concern. But you need to understand that you can’t be beside my side at every minute of every day. You are my strong right hand.” She took his giant hand in both of her smaller ones and smiled up at him, craning her neck back to take him in. No doubt he had to be one of the largest men in the five kingdoms, he loomed like a small mountain on the horizon, not just tall but thick as well. He looked like he had some cave troll in him, yet appearances were deceptive. He’d never be acclaimed for his intelligence yet it was always a pleasure to see the looks of surprise on the faces of those who met him and found him to be deceptively articulate.

  His resolve cracked, she saw the corners of his mouth tremble. She might view him as something like a son but more than once she’d wondered to the exact extent of his desires towards her. “When I need you, I know you’ll be there. Sometimes I need you to be elsewhere. You, I trust more than anyone else. Everyone else is replaceable. Everything else is replaceable. What you are is beyond that. You are the most unique singularity in my life.”

  She’d seen him swell with pride and had patted his hand before withdrawing. “Believe me; sometimes you can be more useful when you’re not by my side. Like when I send you on the little missions.” It was true as well. Others might see delivery duty as a demotion. Domis took it all in his stride without complaint, taking care of anything she didn’t want to come into the house through official channels.

  She didn’t expect to be attacked in her own building but he’d gone with her down into the labs to deal with the doctor. Maybe he felt a special attachment to the project. After all, study of him had led to the inspiration behind it. Like as not, he didn’t care. If he had a life outside of her, she’d yet to see any evidence of it. He lived on her property, he kept his wages in a lockcase under his bed and never spent more of it than he had to. Food, clothing and maintenance, beyond that he must have had a small fortune beneath his mattress.

  Doctor Andreas Hota looked up as she entered his office without knocking, the colour going from his face for a moment as he took in his visitors. He was aging badly and the colour fading didn’t do him any favours. “Ah, Madam, you took me by thurprithe.” His accent, thick from the western reaches of Serran left him with a lisp; she’d heard it before and no longer found it amusing. “I didn’t know you would be coming.”

  She smiled her cold smile, saw him shift uncomfortably in his seat. “I wanted to surprise you. Looks like I achieved that. I read your report, doctor.”

  “Madam Coppinger, the proceth ith going thlower than expected,” he said. “And we’re needing more medical web by the day. I have faith the project will be completed. I jutht need thome more time. We have some pothitive rethults already. Pleathe, allow me to thow you tho far.” He scrambled to his feet and started to open one of the cupboards, thumbing through a collection of flash drives. “We recorded thith during a tetht in recent dayth. Tho far it theemth to have taken.”

  Her ire momentarily replaced by curiosity she let him slide it into a monitor and prepared herself for what he thought she might find so interesting.

  She’d seen Subject A before. Nothing unusual there. There she lay on the operating table, mask over her face to keep her sedated. Her skin looked pale and clammy, not a well woman. That wasn’t her concern. Keeping her alive was imperative. Keeping her comfortable was not.

  “Here we have Thubject A,” the Hota in the room said as the camera turned to another Hota, one on the screen wearing a blue surgical mask and gown. “And there we have a charming ma
n ready to cut Thubject A up.” The Hota on screen gave the camera a thumbs-up and it focused in on the test subject, zooming in to cover the left hand. It was contorted into a claw, the nails still showing some trace of manicure. “Thubject is right handed. Thuth we decided that the left would make a more ideal tetht. We tharted out thmall, you thee,” the Hota in the room explained.

  On the screen, the whirring sound of a viraknife charging up could be heard in the background. Some of the knives were across the other side of the room, she could see them in a cabinet. They were an incredibly useful surgical tool, once heated up to the right temperature they cut remarkably easily through bone in mere seconds, through flesh in less than that.

  “Thetting temperature to low,” the Hota on screen said to the camera as he took one of the knives in hand, the blade glowing a dull orange. “Preparing to make initial cut. Thubject has been thedated, blood prethure ith low, breathing ith thtable. Firtht tranthuthion hath been adminithered.”

  She didn’t avert her eyes as he cut into the palm of Subject A’s hand, going at it with surgical aplomb, taking the skin away with broad but delicate strokes. Within moments, he had the palm stripped of skin from wrist to the base of the fingers. Blood flowed but it was slower than she’d expected, sluggish even as it slipped out of the wound. She didn’t want to avert her eyes. This should have distressed her. She didn’t even flinch, watching with curiosity. He took away the skin from the back of her hand next, before moving onto the fingers.

  “The trickietht bitth,” the Hota in the room said thoughtfully. “But ultimately, a thucetth, I feel.”

  “I will be the judge of that,” she said. “How were her vital signs through this test?”

  “Thlow but thable. As expected. Thubject thurvived the occathion,” Hota said in a patient tone that clearly implied he wished to tell her nothing more than to wait and see for herself. On the screen, the other version of him finished with the fingers and straightened out.

  “Ath you can thee, the removal of the thkin wath completed within a few minuteth,” he explained. “Exact time, two minuteth, fourteen thecondth. Now moving to apply medical webbing.”

  She watched as the on-screen Hota started the process of applying the small metal gauze-like squares to the bare muscle, an eyebrow raising as they clamped onto the flesh and started to spread out across the surface of the skinned hand. They really were a remarkable invention. Hota had become world-renowned for his creation of them, patches that spread out across wounds and promoted the regeneration of fresh and healthy cells. Of course, normally they were placed above the skin. They needed something to knit together. Placing it on the bare muscle, to the best of her knowledge, it was something that hadn’t been done before. Or at least not with any success. If Hota failed, it wouldn’t go well for him. He wasn’t irreplaceable. Of course, they did have a little help here courtesy of the biochemists in another lab.

  “All thith time,” Hota continued. “Conthtant injections of the therum into her thythtem. We’re hoping over time thhe will thtart to produce it naturally. Thelf-regeneration on every level, yeth?”

  “That looks like it’d hurt,” she said watching the squares attach themselves to the muscle. They were starting to spread now, interlinking with those around them to form a web over the flayed appendage.

  “I can imagine that it doeth,” Hota said. “Thtill, thhe can’t feel it.”

  “No, you can’t,” Domis said softly. So softly she hadn’t even realised he’d spoken until he’d finished. “You can’t imagine the pain here.”

  Hota ignored him. “Thethe webbing patcheth were oneth intended to deal with thevere woundth. Broken boneth and the like. It ith often uthed to thupport the bone while thimultaenouthly repairing it. It hath to be tough, yeth? It therveth two purpotheth, you thee. Jutht a little more protection.”

  Subject A shouldn’t need more protection, she thought. Not if everything went to plan. Because after all, she couldn’t rely on Domis for everything now, could she? He’d given some of himself to the project. Without him, it wouldn’t have been possible.

  In the background, Hota was continuing to speak, seemingly more to himself than anything of use to her. Maybe his genius was growing more flawed as he grew older. Perhaps. Her eyes widened as she saw the recording.

  And perhaps not…

  Yes!

  Already the wounds were starting to heal up before her eyes, skin was starting to reform above the medical webbing, paler than it had been before but still fresh new virginal skin. She couldn’t help but smile at the result. The whole process took maybe thirty seconds and the hand looked as it had before Hota’s brand of surgery upon it. Other than the blood surrounding it, nobody would have guessed.

  “We need to work quickly,” Hota continued. “Dawdle and the wound will heal before we can finithh applying the medical webth. Ath time goeth by, it will be harder. The more therum in her, it’ll be harder to cut through her thkin. Her muthcleth will strengthen, they’ll be harder to theperate. We rithk damaging her unnecessarily. What we do won’t latht long. But it ith a thtart, no?”

  “Doctor,” she said. “You have done well. Make it so. Although there is still the matter of control to consider.”

  He nodded in agreement. After all, what use was a weapon when one couldn’t effectively direct it at your enemies?

  On the way back up, she fought the urge to rest her head against the wall of the elevator and close her eyes. Her sleep had improved only marginally. Her dreams hadn’t relented. Vivid as ever. She didn’t want to think about them now. Instead, her thoughts drifted to Rocastle and the mess that he’d inadvertently brought upon himself. Had he not been caught in the act, had he not been locked up, she’d have been a lot more secure in things. But no, who knew what Unisco had managed to deduce from his jaunt. He’d sworn he’d not said anything but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to believe that. She couldn’t ask her contact. They might share an arrangement but she couldn’t be sure quite how he’d react given the operation to recover Rocastle had led to the death of four Unisco pilots and the capture of two. Better to keep it quiet. If there was anything that affected her drastically, she was sure he’d tell her.

  But she’d risked a lot to get him back. The Vazaran Suns were crying foul over the loss of several of their attack ships, compensating them was going to be the least of her problems. She’d risked exposing the Viceroy to those who might spot it. She’d risked Domis. He’d been shot several times in the attack, not that you’d know it from looking at him. The man had a knack for healing. He’d survived everything that had been thrown at him. Often the questions as to what exactly he was had formed in her mind but she hadn’t been of the mood to seriously consider them. He was what he was. He was hers. And that might well be all that mattered in the scope of things.

  Without him, she would not have had Rocastle back. Left to the Suns, it would have been a disaster. And Rocastle was going to pay her back for the favour, he just didn’t quite know it yet. She couldn’t let him rot in a jail cell. He might talk. He knew too much. However much of a loathsome character he might be, he still had his uses. But he’d been warned. One more mess like the one he’d gotten himself into on the island and he’d be out. He might be a big guy. He might hate women. But she would send Domis to eliminate him if he took his toes off the line. However big he might be, however tough he thought he was, Domis would break him into a thousand little pieces. Bone by bone if need be.

  It was Rocastle who’d provided Subject A. The ideal sample for the project ahead. Everyone had tried to find subjects. Rocastle had succeeded and in such an audacious manner she’d had to approve. Everyone was looking for her but they wouldn’t find her. He’d covered his tracks too well. Rocastle had made himself useful in that regard. He’d risen in her organisation and privately she was proud that he answered only to her. More than that, she secretly loved seeing his discomfort when she yanked his leash. Why he hated women, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to know
. But knowing that she could control him against his basest desires, well that was a feeling wealth couldn’t bring her.

  Either way, until further notice, she was keeping a close eye on him. He wasn’t to be trusted running loose on his own at this moment in time. Plus, when his disappearance was inevitably discovered, there’d be an all-out search for him. People would want a man they considered to be a dangerous lunatic found. It was important that he wasn’t. She hadn’t moved to get him out of jail only for him to be thrown straight back.

  Back upstairs she removed her jacket, wrinkling her nose as she caught the smell of it. It was there, almost imperceptible but infinitely irritating to her. She knew it was there and thus couldn’t abide it. The smell of the labs hung on her. She’d like to have changed completely but it wasn’t an option. She had another meeting imminently.

  Beep-bip-beep-bip!

  That came as a surprise, the holocom brought her up short as she sprayed perfume over herself, not enough to be overpowering but enough to drown out the scent of the sterile labs. She glanced at the ID on the image. It was inconvenient but she needed to take it.

  Damn you, Coshi. On the other hand, at least it wasn’t Rogan. That man really was turning insufferable.

  “Domis,” she called through the door. “Inform those who’ve already arrived that I will be with them in a moment. Offer them my sincerest apologies.”

  “At once Mistress.”

  She sighed. This better be important. “Answer call.”

  The holocom burst into life, bringing up a miniature 3D image of Johan Coshi onto the table in front of her, his features ghostly transparent. He bowed, clutched his hat against his chest. “Ma’am,” he said softly. “Greetings.”

  “I can’t make small talk for long, Mr Coshi,” she said abruptly. “You’ve caught me at a bad time. I assume you have something important for me?”