The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she said breezily. “Given we’re going to die in the next thirty seconds unless you do.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, fighting the urge to whistle jauntily. Now that the end could well be imminent, she was surprised to find herself not sad or scared but rather a part of her was tinged with regret at what could have been.

  His glare at her grew but she couldn’t find it in herself to care overtly. Not when the weapons lock warning turned into a missile incoming warning, she blew on her fingernails and wondered if she had time for a last drink. And then Wim Carson stood up with a look of deep loathing on his face. He craned his head about, narrowed his eyes and then threw out a hand. She imagined it must have looked exceptionally strange to the naked eye, on the tac-reader the missiles simply ground to a halt themselves and then exploded a good way short of their target. Looks like she might have time to put those regrets right after all.

  “And the pilots,” she mused. “They need removing from the equation. Unless you want them to keep on trying to kill us.”

  Alex saw it and couldn’t believe her eyes as the two Makeshifts she’d despatched towards the shuttle were flying normally for a moment and then everything changed. One of them suddenly jerked wildly starboard-side and crashed hard into its wing mate, both fighters going up in a sudden eruption of fire and debris. First the missiles, a surprising experience by themselves and now this?

  “What the hells just happened to them?!” Navarro yelled. “Never seen any idiot fly like that before. Straight into the side! Some people just shouldn’t be allowed in a cockpit!”

  Either way, it looked like her mind had been made up, regardless of Navarro’s rantings. She jerked her control stick about, drove the Wolf Rose after the shuttle, already plotting out an intercept path in her head. At this rate, she’d be on them in moments and then they’d be hers. It was something that needed to be done and she was going to damn well do it right.

  “What the hells is that thing?!” Brendan barked as the creature closed in on them, flying without wings, gliding gracefully through the air until it came to halt just ahead of them.

  Caldwell took one glance at it, then blanched, all the colour draining from his face. “Oh fuck!” he exclaimed. “Not that thing! She wouldn’t have!”

  “What is it?” Nick growled out the corner of his mouth. Lysa had gone for her summoner, Brumley still had his weapon pointed at it. Fagan looked like he was caught between those two options and the third of making a break for it. The creature was big, easily taller than Nick and it studied them with bemusement through three slit-like eyes.

  It was humanoid but there was something distinctly unnatural about it from the way it held its body, sort of stooping and weirdly elasticated, to the red-blue flesh that covered its body. Now Nick looked at it, he could see that the skin was little more than pure muscle covering its internal organs. It had four ears, each of them shaped like a miniature antenna. Thick spines emerged from its legs, each of them looking sharper and pointier than he wanted to know about.

  “It’s one of her patented spirits,” Caldwell moaned. “It…”

  The creature moved, sprang towards him with an almost electric motion, crashed a clawed fist across his jaws and sent him to his knees. Already Brendan’s golem was moving to intercept, the steel behemoth towering over the creature. The two stared at each other before the trio of eyes began to glow vengefully. Any hint of an attack building up inside the golem was quickly lost as the energy took hold of it and Nick saw it go hurtling back through the air, straight through one of the walls. He winced, that had to hurt.

  The second golem, the stone one turned towards the new creature, broke off bits of its anatomy and started to fire the rocks at it with crushing force. Or it would have been had any of them even come close to landing. It was fast, way too fast, it shot up in the air as if fired from a laser cannon and came back down again like a swoop bat, crunching its body into the golem. The stone spirit staggered backwards, the unfamiliar creature swung out a fist brimming with energy and…

  Holy shit!

  … The sound of bored rock broke through the room, there was a moment of resistance and then the punch went straight through the great stone body. Nick could see Brumley on the other side, he sent a spray of fire towards the creature from his Featherstone. He almost shouted a warning, realised even then that it would be too late and a futile gesture. The thing was just too fast for Brumley, it was around the remnants of Brendan’s golem and on him in an instant, a great hand reaching out to grab him by the neck. Brumley was big and Brumley was strong but even he was dwarfed by the size and menacing strength of the otherworldly creature. He flailed out, kicked it in the stomach with a satisfying clunk but if it did anything other than annoy it, Nick couldn’t see it.

  Then Lysa entered the fray, sending one of her spirits for it, a gold-and-black striped lynx landing on its back and digging razor sharp claws in. That did get its attention, it let go of Brumley who hit the ground, his neck covered in blood. Before it could get to Lysa and her lynx, Fagan’s Cantish wolfhound sprang in as well, bit down on an extended leg and tried to tug the thing back away. It was a futile effort; Nick saw that immediately as the strange creature immediately pulled it a dozen feet across the floor before kicking it with its other foot. Still the hound hung on despite the crack of breaking bones rupturing around the hangar.

  With the attention momentarily away from it, the lynx lunged back in and went for the throat with toxic-backed fangs, Nick thought it had succeeded for a moment as well. Just for a brief second before it was halted in mid-flight, flailing helplessly with claws and teeth as the alien spirit continued to hammer away at Fagan’s spirit, eventually kicking it away from its leg. It didn’t bleed, Nick noticed, grimacing as the hound hit Brendan full on in the face and knocked him out cold.

  It was dealing with them one by one, he noted, not entirely sure he was relieved by that realisation. Not just the spirit but the caller as well. Most creatures when threatened, went straight for the most obvious threat and dealt with the next one where and when it came. Not this thing. His theory was reinforced as it sprang in a two-pronged movement, sending the lynx back towards Lysa, it hit her in the stomach and sent her doubling over in pain before snapping away into the opposite direction, looming over Fagan like a muscular monolith.

  That was when Nick burst into action, brought out his own summoner and sent Empson into the fray. Some might have been surprised by his failure to act until now, he rather thought of it as seeing how the thing moved and attacked. Everyone else was going on blind and it wasn’t doing them any favours.

  The penguin shot forward, steel edged wings tucked out in front of him like a knife, ready to impale the thing from behind. Nick winced again as he saw the creature knock Fagan out with a brutal slap to the head, he went down and hit the floor with a vicious crack and then it rounded on Empson.

  Lysa wasn’t unconscious but everyone else was either there or close and that just left him. It was a sobering thought but he smiled at the spirit, knew Empson was closing in and he had plans to see it didn’t wriggle its way out of getting hit here. The trio of eyes started to glow, it tried to halt Empson just as it had Lysa’s lynx but Nick smirked as he saw his penguin grind slowly to a halt. The beak opened and a torrent of water erupted out, hit it square on in the face and suddenly Empson was moving again, all trapped momentum let loose.

  If anything, he was moving even faster than he had before and the steel tipped flippers broke straight into its stomach, ripped through muscle like it was paper. The alien spirit looked down at the wound and at the penguin with bemusement in those strange eyes. Empson attacked again, swung out a flipper that would have decapitated anything else. The strange spirit blocked it with an arm and the blade-like flippers cut deep but didn’t separate the limb, Nick thought he saw a flicker of discomfort flash across those eyes but he was through trying to work the thing out. He just needed to put it
down…

  Or…

  Well that was just a crazy idea. He smirked to himself, urged Empson to keep fighting on, keep raining razor sharp hammer blows down onto the creature. Sooner or later it’d cut off something vital. The two continued to trade their attacks, Empson occasionally mixing it up with a beak slam or a blast of water. In retaliation, the foe’s eyes glowed bright and invisible force cuffed the penguin about the face and body, rapid blows threatening to break the bird’s concentration. Fair play to Empson, he never wavered, never gave in, never looked like falling. All while Nick ran through further plans of attack in his mind, a dozen different plots flowing through him and rejected before he decided to go ahead with his initial idea anyway. But he needed an opening. A good one.

  The alien creature swung out with a fist and suddenly Empson wasn’t there any longer, replaced in the fray by Carcer who swept down onto its back and dug claws and teeth in viciously. Still the wound didn’t bleed, just great empty holes that gaped out through the skin. Nick watched it swing around, trying to shake the shark-lizard off but Carcer held on firm, digging the claws in deeper, biting down with needle pointed teeth, ripping and tearing against hard skin. Just in the right position, he noted, it couldn’t reach Carcer from there and if his spirit hung on then it’d all be good. One more spin, another desperate lunge and he could tell it was struggling. He caught a glimpse of its broad back and saw that it looked a real mangled mess right now.

  “Closing in on target,” Alex said, guiding the Wolf Rose in on the same vector as the shuttle, aware that it was doing its best to flee. She wasn’t going to let that happen. “Gunners, prepare to light that thing up we…”

  She paused, her train of thought suddenly lost to her. For a moment, she wasn’t quite sure where she was. She… She’d just been about to do something…

  Instinct kicked in and she jerked the control stick to the side, evade a blast of laser fire from an oncoming eaglefighter, one that in her momentary reverie had managed to sneak up on them. Sullivan took it out with a well-placed blast of turret fire, she saw it explode on her tac-reader.

  “Sorry, we need to take it out and quickly. Admiral’s orders,” she said, turning her attention back to it. She couldn’t dwell on what had just happened. Not now. Back on target, closing in fast, finger on the trigger of her forward bound laser…

  It hit her just as she was about to let it fly, the sudden wave of confusion, she involuntarily juked the controls and lost her course again, turret fire flying all over the place.

  “Are you losing the fucking plot Commander?” Navarro yelled in her ear, but she was a little distracted, couldn’t quite make him out… Who was Navarro again? “With all due respect,” she heard the distant voice add hastily.

  By the time she’d forced her mind back onto the job, she was furious. Something weird was going on here and she didn’t like it. Nobody made her look like a bad pilot. For the third time, she righted her course, pivoting the ship down on a cred-coin and found the shuttle. It was doing its best to get away from her, but she wasn’t going to allow that. Setting her face into grim determination, she pushed forward, all thrusters on maximum as she went for it. She was going to get it; this was it…

  And that was when her controls locked up in front of her, suddenly finding herself unable to move them. Almost as if an invisible force was resisting her every effort to right them. Alex swore angrily, pushed at them but no joy. At least not until the pushing started in the opposite direction. And suddenly she was facing the airbase again.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she growled, hitting buttons with her free hand. One of them remained locked to the stick, she couldn’t move it even if she wanted to. Couldn’t even wiggle her fingers free. Worse, her hand pushed forward to move the Wolf Rose in that direction, speeding straight for the side of the airbase. Her heart leaped, the yelp died in her throat. She couldn’t adjust course, couldn’t shift it away from the vector. All warnings on the system told her a crash was imminent, there was the admiral on the comm system demanding to know what she was doing.

  At least if she hit it and the ship exploded on contact, she wouldn’t have to live with the shame of trying to explain this. Of course, there were other people on board. They shouldn’t have to pay for her mistake. Neither Navarro or Sullivan deserved to die. But die they would unless she got this thing back on course and out of trouble. Hitting the shuttle might be a mistake from this point.

  She had to let it go. It had already cost two fighters and it might take her out yet. She couldn’t divert more fighters from their bombing runs on the airbase. Not when their attacks were taking their toll. The Wild Stallion and the Bounty Snatcher were already moving into advanced positions, they were starting to pound the airbase from long range and the armour was starting to bear punctures in places where the assaults had been true. There was going to be a fresh new dent in it when they hit.

  “I don’t have control,” she admitted quietly, not broadcasting it, but just so Sullivan and Navarro could hear her. “Something’s wrong. I can’t get it off this course.”

  “You want me to come down and do the flying for you?” Navarro asked sarcastically. “Pull your head out of your arse or we’re going to die. I don’t mind being shot down but I draw the line at getting killed by you! Are you a damn good pilot, or aren’t you?”

  Well, that was a little uncalled for, she thought. The first part at least. The last part was just about damn right. She smiled to herself. Yeah. Yeah, I am and I’m not getting killed by a ship error. She set her jaw and pushed back against the controls, willing herself to do it, not content with dying here.

  They responded. Just a little but it was enough to give her hope. Again, she gathered herself and pushed. The albus made a little groaning noise as if protesting. Less than three miles to impact and closing fast. This really was her last chance. With her free hand, she punched the stick, felt her muscles complaining as she pushed against it with all her strength, determined to force it up.

  Just let it go, a little voice said in her head. It’ll be a quick death at least. Which is more than can be said will happen if you persist this foolish course of action.

  That little voice felt calm and reassuring, just for a moment she was almost convinced that it was the right thing to do, that maybe she should just give up and let whatever happened happen. After all, it was supposedly one of the fastest ways to die, even if it was horrible for just a few seconds…

  But why?

  That was all her, that. Asking the question as to why she should just let it happen. Why should she? She wasn’t about to die. She didn’t want to. More than that, she wasn’t wanting to be remembered as a pilot who died by smashing her ship into the thing they were trying to blow up. Not least without it being a blaze of glory suicide so that everyone else could live type of thing.

  Because it’s easy?

  It wasn’t the answer she wanted and she berated herself for even thinking it. All this went through her head as she still fought with the controls. Navarro said something in the background, even Sullivan was starting to sound more than a little worried. Still all the possibilities began to run through her head, all of them offering the same little message about how she’d worked so hard and how it’d be nice to finally let it all go. Just let it all go and relax. The message felt almost hypnotic in her mind, so soothing and calm, sinking in deep and letting her know just how easy it’d be to give up and die…

  Screw easy! I’m not dying here! Get out!

  She didn’t know where it came from, or where she’d found the will to say them, but with those final two words, something released, like a pressure she hadn’t known was there in her head and suddenly she felt free and liberated again. More than that, the stick had freed itself and she was able to push it up and evade the airbase, the Eye of Claudia she thought she’d heard someone call it way back when.

  “Thank fuck for that,” Navarro said. “Thought you’d fallen asleep then.”

  A
lex ignored them, glanced down at the tac-reader. The shuttle was almost out of range, she guessed that maybe it’d be possible to catch it up. But it’d be a struggle. And right now, the airbase looked like a bigger problem. Makeshift Squadron was getting buffeted by laser fire and the eaglefighters were starting to retreat towards their home, making the air thick with plasma. Trying to blow this thing up had to be a bigger priority.

  And given her last two run-ins with this thing, plus what had happened to the HAX’s she’d sent after it, she wasn’t keen for a third go at it. It might come across as cowardly but she was still unnerved by the way her controls had locked and she’d been unable to deal with it. Almost as mysterious the way that those two HAX’s had crashed into each other with no discernible reason why.

  More mysteries she wasn’t at liberty to deal with as she pushed the Wolf Rose down through the smallest of gaps, between two eaglefighters, watched them both explode as the guns turned on them, Navarro whooping eagerly in the background.

  Nick jumped, a container crystal flat in his palm and he smashed it against the back of the alien creature, praying to himself and anyone that would care to listen that this would work, otherwise he’d look a massive, massive idiot. And it’d probably be a painful few minutes that followed if it didn’t. The creature’s skin felt grainy and hard, like wood but there was some warmth and the faintest trace of something slimy there like sweat or ichor. He focused up his will, started the process of claiming…

  And something hard kicked him out almost as soon as it had started, a mule-kick to the face that sent him reeling. Hot sticky fragments remained in his palm, he looked down dazed at them and saw the blood and glass all mixed in…

  It destroyed it…

  Supposed to be impervious…

  … and then the creature hit him, hit Carcer with the other fist and the shark-lizard was thrown far away across the hangar, heard the clang as he hit a shipping container. Nick was too busy being thrown on his arse to care, rolling to an ungainly stop against something solid and hard. He couldn’t think, his mind was all messed up, never been hit so hard before. Incredibly, it hadn’t broken anything, he didn’t think, the pain was tolerable but constant.