The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  There was something he wasn’t saying, Arnholt knew that. But as to what he was hiding, that he couldn’t say.

  “But you know who did?” Crumley asked, raising an eyebrow. Mazoud tutted angrily and waved a finger playfully at her.

  “Ms Crumley, this is not our first dance. You know I can’t divulge that sort of sensitive information. It goes entirely against our organisations principles. We can’t share it with you of all people.”

  “It goes against the principles of your organisation to start fights with Unisco,” Crumley said angrily. “Remember, for all the people of Vazara might see you that way, you are not the law. You’re not even close. You’re just thugs for hire.”

  “Thugs for hire who have you outgunned five to one,” Mazoud replied, his voice as oily as his hair. “Ms Crumley, don’t make threats you either aren’t prepared or aren’t capable of carrying out. Don’t insult my intelligence by thinking that I make my decisions lightly.”

  “Mister Mazoud, you don’t have to be against us on this. We look after our own. You look after your own. Surely we can come to some understanding.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms Crumley but I’m sure it would be highly inappropriate for an organisation of our status to associate with you. Some of our clients are the unsavoury type. A conscience is nice but business is business. I do not want to war with you. It would be bad for both of us.”

  “All we want is a name,” Crumley said. “Just point us in the right direction.”

  Mazoud shook his head. “I will not give up our clients no matter the circumstance. You assume too much that I respect your organisation. How long do you think you can continue to go on when your leader won’t even come out and face me? Your days are numbered far fewer than ours.”

  That settled it, Arnholt thought, striding out into view. Time to make an executive decision. And something was bothering him about this whole thing. “Okay, Mazoud, I’m here.” He saw Mazoud’s face light up with delight and carried on speaking before he could come out with some sarcastic comment that would defuse the whole situation. “Answer me one question and we’ll let you get back to your day. All this time you’ve overseen the Suns and you’ve never hassled us before. For that, I respect you. It makes both our jobs easier. We don’t want to go to war with you. Just as you don’t with us.”

  “I am not giving up my client,” Mazoud repeated. “Director Arnholt. So nice of you to make an appearance.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to give them up,” Arnholt said. “I respect your integrity. I find it infuriating but I respect it. I’m going to give you it in a different way. For as long as I can remember, you’ve not hassled us. But you had to have known what you were getting into here. HAX gunships are easily recognisable. Someone had to have radioed it in, if it was a surprise. But I’m curious. How many credits did it cost to make you attack us?”

  For a moment, he thought Mazoud might disconnect the line in disgust before the thin lips broke apart to reveal a yellowing set of teeth and he heard the bark of laughter breaking out across the line.

  “A good question,” he said, folding his arms. “Director, I want to correct you on something. Our order was never to attack. Only to delay. The order was given to only fire in self-defence. It wasn’t the case, but in these situations, you can’t plan for anything. To answer your question, five million credits. Our single biggest job in the history of our organisation. I’d have been crucified if I’d turned it down. We have our honour but business is business and there’s no changing that. I am sorry for the loss of your pilots, I truly am.”

  “And I for yours,” Arnholt replied. “If you’d turned it down, we’d all be better off. You know who the prisoner was who they took back?” Once again, he didn’t wait for Mazoud to reply. “It was Harvey Rocastle. Only a few hours earlier, he tried to kidnap my daughter. When did it become Sun policy to aid pieces of scum like him?”

  Mazoud said nothing for a moment. “We all have jobs to do, Director Arnholt. I can’t turn back the clock, reverse the decisions that were made. Neither of us can. But that is our burden. We put people where they will be hurt. You’re making this personal and it is unbecoming of you, I have to say.”

  He was right and that stung. Arnholt drew a deep breath and took a moment to regain his composure. “It’s never personal,” he said. “Not even slightly.”

  “Yes, keep telling yourself that,” Mazoud frowned. “What you don’t seem to understand, our jobs, everything about them is personal. Professionalism is nice but no matter what we do, it comes back to us. Success or failure are fine lines and I don’t know about you but I savour every victory as much as I lament every failure. Sometimes I feel we are little more than cards in a game of Ruin being moved around in some never-ending game for supremacy. The only winner is the one who backs all sides at minimum cost. The least possible risk for maximum reward is the favourable outcome.”

  “I assume you’re going somewhere with this, Mister Mazoud,” Crumley said. Stood there, Arnholt had almost forgotten she was in the room. He was too busy pondering the words, his chin resting in the cusp of his hand.

  Mazoud inclined a head towards him. “If your director doesn’t understand now, he soon will. In some regards, you lack both foresight and understanding, Ms Crumley. Don’t contact me again. I cannot see a future in which our goals will be the same. I advise you to keep your agents out of Vazara as well. It may soon become an unhealthy climate for Unisco.”

  With that, the line went dead and he heard Crumley sputtering with silent, unrestrained anger. “Who the hells does he think he is? Did he just threaten us?”

  Arnholt said nothing, still pondering the words that he’d just heard. It sounded that way. Mazoud hadn’t issued a threat in so many words. Not at all. That wasn’t his style. A man of his position and disposition didn’t issue threats. The first sign you got he was annoyed with you was when the door came crashing in and his soldiers opened fire through the gap. No, that wasn’t it at all. Privately he was disappointed with Crumley. More to the point, he was disgusted with himself. He shouldn’t have brought Mia into it. Never let them see what’s under your skin.

  But it wasn’t a threat. That much he was certain of.

  “He doesn’t think we can win,” he said softly. “Whatever comes next, he’s playing his cards close to his chest. He thinks we’re going to be wiped out and he wants to get in bed with the victors. It wasn’t a threat. It was a warning construed to be that way.” He sighed. “I’ve known Mazoud for a long time. I know how his mind works and this is classic from him. He thinks he’s cleverer than he actually is, unfortunately which doesn’t do anybody any favours.”

  “And him giving us that information,” Crumley said, the light dawning in her eyes as she realised. “He’s keeping his options open. Just in case. He’s not fermenting outright betrayal but just giving us enough to avoid declaring him an enemy.”

  “Exactly.” Arnholt frowned at the thought. “Five million is a lot for a holding action. Someone really must have been desperate to get the Suns onside here. Rocastle’s employers?” He asked it more as a question to himself, thinking out loud but Crumley nodded in agreement.

  “Reims,” she said. “Once more, it boils down to them. How long before it all stops being circumstance?”

  Honestly, Arnholt didn’t know the answer. Reims were hiding something. The questions were clear. It was the answers that were giving them all so much trouble.

  “I think I’m going to send someone to talk to the CEO of Reims,” he said. “See if we can halt this from escalating any further.” Now, what was her name again? He had it on a file somewhere.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up to Crumley who was solemn in the confined space of the cabin they’d set up as their communication hub. “Thank you for summoning me out here. I’m glad to be able to help.”

  Arnholt nodded. “Think nothing of it. Think you could go talk to the Lady Reims for me?” That wasn’t her name, he was sure of it.
Crumley nodded. “You might just be the only one I can trust.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  That might not have been the best thing to say. “I worry sometimes, you know, Allison. And given my job, the things I worry about are a lot scarier than what most people worry about. It’s enough to make you paranoid. And maybe that might be the case. But I do wonder how, if it was Reims, how they knew how Rocastle was being transported off the island and their travel vector.”

  “You think we’ve been compromised?” It was a scary thought. “Is this why it’s just you and me here?”

  Arnholt nodded. “I’m not sure if we have or not. But I’d like to not take the chances on a thing like this.”

  “Okay, this is the last place on the list that might be able to sort us the parts out,” Pete said as he shoved the door open and heard the bell chime an announcement to their entrance. He rolled his eyes at the pleasant little ting and held it open for Scott and Mia to follow on in. He wasn’t sure why Mia was coming along for the ride but Scott seemed to want her around. In the times since they’d been to that bloody dance, he hadn’t seen her and neither had Scott, he’d heard the resentful moaning enough to know he’d been hurting over the whole thing.

  Mia wasn’t looking as good as she once had, if he was honest. He could tell where her nose had been broken and part of him thought of Jess when he saw it. Jess had had an imperfection as well, those scars on her arm and he’d wondered if she was jealous of the way Mia pulled off that sense of flawlessness.

  Why was he even thinking about this now? Jess was in the past, he’d seen her leave the island a few days since. Not long after their tryst. In hindsight, he wasn’t entirely sure what to think of that. He’d enjoyed it, sure. But he’d also spent more than a few moments with his fingers crossed that Scott wouldn’t find out. Pete wouldn’t have put it past Jess to inform on him, just to screw up their friendship as a final fuck you to the pair of them. He was glad she’d gone now. He’d just about gotten over the difficult decision of whether to pester Scott to change his contact details just in case she got in touch randomly and felt like dropping the bombshell.

  Maybe he would. Just in case. It couldn’t hurt.

  Still it felt good to get his mind on something else. He’d help Scott here, focus on Kitti Sommer from a distance. Pondering the possible bad things that could happen wouldn’t be the smartest thing he could do. And besides, a little ghost hunting might not be a bad idea. He knew for fact she had at least one ghost and some practice against one of those slippery bastards could benefit him greatly. They weren’t entirely common to face as a species and had Scott not already set his heart on this one, Pete might have put a move in to try and claim it for himself. Especially if it was as unusual as his friend had described…

  He’s talking rubbish. He must be. No way a ghost talks. Not a chance. It’s impossible. About the most you could get back off a spirit was an occasional flash of strong emotion. Never actual conversation.

  But then again… There always had to be something new out there. He didn’t know why that worried him more than it should but it did. There was something comforting about the familiar. The idea that everything he’d known wasn’t quite right, Pete wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to buy that yet. He didn’t want to wake up in a world where the shields had been shifted.

  “Yay!” Mia said dryly as she took in the store around them. “Junk.” In classic Vazaran style, some of the stuff had been old five years ago. To call it junk would have been a compliment. Broken summoners lay in a pile, ready to be salvaged for parts. Shattered container crystals stood in a mortar dish ready to be ground up and recycled into brand new ones. All various bits of equipment that had long reached the end of its life but had not yet been deemed unusable.

  Yet it was not the only stuff available in the room, Pete could see a much smaller section filled with newer stuff. Really new stuff. Compared to the prices on the old stuff, the mark-ups on the new stuff were eye watering.

  “One man’s junk is another man’s older junk,” Scott said, glancing around. It might have been a surprise to find a place like this amidst the swank of Carcaradis Island, but Pete privately thought the owner had the right idea. Spirit callers were notorious for holding bits of valuable bits of junk about them, at least until they could either get rid of it or get it repaired.

  Added to the fact the place also did repairs, it wasn’t perhaps as farfetched as it might have sounded. And the sign did promise expert repairs at low prices and short waiting times. It was appealing to the skinflint that lived inside every caller. The equipment was expensive and warranties were short. Sometimes you needed good repair jobs. That it was a trade in which comparatively few were masterfully skilled meant they could charge whatever they wanted. A bad repairman went out of business very quickly. Maybe this guy was chancing it for the two months while the tournament was on. Even then, Pete couldn’t imagine he’d have gotten away with it for long if he was terrible.

  Both Scott and Mia were making a show of perusing, his attention moved to the guy stood behind the counter talking to the one other customer, a big guy who moved with the grace of an athlete and looked vaguely familiar from behind. He didn’t look much like someone who’d be in here for kicks, maybe the owner had done some bad repairing for him and was about to get his ass kicked.

  He did feel a little like a spare wheel lately, seeing the way those two hunched up close together, muttering stuff in each other’s ears, the way Mia let out a little giggle every so often when Scott said something that surely wasn’t as funny as the reaction warranted.

  He’d not been around when it had been the start for Scott and Jess. It surely couldn’t have been this annoying. Not with Jess anyway. Hearing her laugh had been rare and it usually had been at someone else’s expense. Never the girly sound that came from Mia. Or at least if she had, it had never been something he’d heard. Jess in private… Well you couldn’t get much more private than what they’d done and he’d still never heard it.

  Why was he dwelling on this? Must be the constant reminders of it. Still if Scott was happy for the moment then good for him. He was less inclined to be a total tool when he was in a good mood. Although if Pete was honest, he wouldn’t have been looking to start a relationship right now, not with all the stuff that was going on in the tournament. He’d re-watched Scott’s bout with Steven Silver and but for an almighty effort in the last round when Palawi had put down that giant cavern crusher, he would have gone out without grace. He’d have won their bet about being the last one standing. He’d have had the bragging rights.

  Now where were they though? Pete himself had to face Katherine Sommer, bumped up to one of the favourites since Wade had bowed out… Odds compilers had her as one of the top five winners along with Sharon, Nick Roper, Reginald Tendolini and Lucy Tait, although where those last two names had been pulled from, he didn’t know.

  All he did know was he had a tough bout ahead. One with potential to be just as tough as the one he’d waged against Sharon in the group stage. That felt a very long time ago. It had been a good few weeks but it felt like months. Time was getting deceptive here in the middle of the goldfish bowl this tournament had become. He’d heard it said before but had never quite understood it until now, how when you were in the middle of something, time could simultaneously drag and fly at the same staid pace.

  It was the waiting around between bouts that did it, he decided. You were the first one to fight in the round, you’d have at least a few days to sweat before you even knew who you’d be fighting. Even then there was no guarantee you’d be the first to fight the next round along which would make things even more stressful.

  That, he decided, might just be part of the challenge. Not only must you conquer your opponent but also the threat of inactivity.

  Up at the counter, the customer finished his debate with the owner and turned around, a big box under his arms and seeing him from the front for the first time, Pete reco
gnised him. He was a hard figure not to recognise and upon revelation, the answers to why he was here becoming quickly apparent.

  “Al?” he asked, surprised. “Alvin Noorland?”

  Alvin Noorland, renowned spirit caller and world-famous inventor looked tired as he blinked at the sound of his name but quickly regained his composure and slid an easy smile across his face. “Hello,” he said warmly. “You, I know from somewhere. Paul? Parry?”

  “Peter,” Pete said. Inside he got a warm feeling of glee. Al Noorland remembered him from their last meeting. He’d held a tournament for his birthday back in his home, the Alvin Noorland Birthday Invitational. Pete had entered and gotten to the semi-final, hadn’t gotten close enough for the chance to face Noorland himself but he’d gotten some consolation words from the man himself. “I met you a few years ago. At your invitational.”

  “That was a good tournament,” Noorland said, nodding his grizzled head in agreement. “Must do it again sometime.” Already Scott and Mia were coming over and Pete wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t every day you got to meet someone on the level of Noorland… Well Scott wouldn’t. Mia probably did every time she went home. Heh, now he thought on it, Scott probably thought he did every time he looked in the mirror. Neither of them were on that level yet unfortunately. Pete grinned. He might be when he won this thing and got international recognition for his achievement. “Must do it again sometime. And you’re Scott Taylor.”

  “You know me?” Scott asked and Pete rolled his eyes as he heard the words and the surprise in them.

  “I know of you,” Noorland replied. “Seen a few of your bouts here. I enjoyed that last round against Steve Silver. That was intense. Real intense. You fight like that again; I might bounce a few creds on you. Not everyone can take down a cavern crusher the way you did.” His gaze slid across to Mia and the smile grew. In Pete’s eyes, it was a smile that screamed of sleaze but his words were courteous and well meaning. “Ms Arnholt, a pleasure.”