The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  Deep breath, Nick heard a crash and a more muted roar, temporary silence from Cacaxis, the metal around its great head ringing as Unialiv smote it a great blow to the face. A mental cheer, he soon found himself flinching as the giant lizard let loose a burst of iron tinged fire towards his spirit. Perhaps he shouldn’t have worried. Unialiv spun away gracefully, formed a blade out of pure green energy and struck out at the face, the air thick with smoke from the great mouth. Wade and Bakaru were still circling, hitting the giant lizard with attacks when its attention was elsewhere, keeping out of range of counter attacks when its focus turned back to them. And now Theobald Jameson had entered the fight against Cacaxis, Nick could see him and his great green anklo stood several tiers down, letting loose barrages of razor sharp leaves and forest-based attacks against it. Roots grew out of the shattered ground, locked around its feet and prevented it from moving, at least for the moment. They couldn’t be that strong.

  Go for the eyes, go for the eyes, he willed silently towards Unialiv. If you can... Slowly he allowed himself to peep over the seating, trying to spot the guy who’d been aiming for him, weapon aimed first. He needn’t have worried, one of the people with the laser swords had cut him down, Nick saw him… He thought it was a him… throw down a salute. That was all the cover he needed for the moment, he rose to his feet and emptied the BRO-60 in the direction of several doom dogs nearby, cutting them down and allowing a group of startled spectators the chance to flee. Some of them were burned and bloody, they’d need to be able to make their own way out. He was needed here. By the sounds of it, the rest of Unisco were trying to organise an escape route, the people just needed to survive long enough to get to it. He scooped up a new rifle from a fallen corpse, turned and saw Lysa Montgomery running towards him, unarmed and a trail of shots following her, three of the black-clad figures locking in on her. He raised the weapon, fired again and again. Then it was two. Then it was one.

  She came to a halt, out of breath but still with a defiant look in her eyes. She reached down, scooped up a discarded BRO-60 and ran a quick check over it. “Bastards,” she said. “They’re taking liberties here, aren’t they? They’re not going to be allowed to get away with this. I mean, the whole five kingdoms pretty much just saw this…”

  Lysa tailed off as Nick shook his head sadly. “Think that…”

  She fired behind him, he ducked down instinctively, saw one of the attackers fall under the blasts. A dozen new wounds filled his body. “Oh, look out,” she added. “By the way.” He rolled his eyes, shook his head. He’d have rebuked her, didn’t have the heart to do it right now. Too much else to worry about.

  “Think that was the whole point of this little exercise for her,” he said. “Cover me, I’m going to find the director and Brendan. They were up in the studio.” Nick drew a deep breath, glanced around then started to run, sprinting up the stairs. Behind him, Lysa’s weapon started to fire again. At the top, a trio of doom dogs came running to greet him, slather prominent in their smoky pointed muzzles, he activated his summoner and sent Empson at them, the penguin gracefully darting into existence, cutting two of them in half with his razor-edged flippers before crushing the third hard against a wall with a torrent blast of water. Summoning the bird back, Nick continued to run. Cacaxis was in issue, but not his any longer. He’d left Unialiv the instructions to keep attacking, fight smart…

  It might be a fool’s errand but it was all he could do right now. That spirit would have to look after himself for the time being.

  Bakaru caught a glancing blow, suddenly the two of them were going down and Wade found himself stood back to back with Theo Jameson, his anklo still attacking against the apparently invulnerable foe.

  Nothing is invulnerable, he told himself. And we don’t need to win, just drive it away.

  Jameson looked ragged, a streak of blood running down his face, his clothes ripped and covered in dust. But still his eyes burned with fury and defiance, Wade could almost feel it radiating from him like a fire. He was more than angry, he was incandescent with rage and Wade could see it in the way he was fighting against the huge foe. He wanted to put it down, more than that, he wanted to hurt it in the process.

  And whatever else might happen, he wasn’t about to be upstaged by a youngster when it came to deal out the hurt on something. He withdrew Bakaru, sent out Thracia. As sea serpents went, this one was decidedly on the large side, blue and cream scales covering a huge body that scraped over seats, crushing them down. Thracia’s mouth was so large, she couldn’t even close it, filled with needle sharp fangs. Her face looked like one of those ancient Burykian masks, all frills and frippery, the basis for the masks in fact he believed. He’d found her in the seas around the Burykian mainland a long time ago.

  Aiming for the eyes, she curled her neck back, strained upwards and fired a uniblast straight at Cacaxis’ face. Always nice to let a fresh fighter into the fray. Cacaxis wasn’t invulnerable, it just wasn’t falling. So much damage had been inflicted upon it, great sheathes of skin and flesh were missing, sometimes it gave the impression of wobbling although Wade wasn’t sure if that was his imagination or not. Either way, it had to be doing something. They’d pumped enough attacks into the damn thing to win an entire tournament and yet still it stood.

  Nick’s spirit continued to buzz about its head, still distracting it, still running air support. He didn’t want to think what might happen if that thing went down, if Cacaxis was suddenly allowed to bring its full attention onto the two of them. That was perhaps the only thing that had let them survive unscathed for as long as they had. The sobering truth.

  In the studio, they had the best view of it all. Arnholt, Brendan, Pree Khan had all looked at each other as the great leather skinned bird had flown down, disabled both spirits. The power had faded moments later but still they could see. Hearing it had been difficult but they’d caught the gist. Arnholt had looked haunted by the appearance, but he’d shaken it off enough to unbutton his jacket. All three of them were armed. They hadn’t expected anything but none of them had wanted to take any chances. As the armed men and the doom dogs had appeared around the stadium, the feeling of terror had only grown. It was palpable even up in the observation box where they’d sat. Two of the armed men had tried breaking into the studio, Carlton Bond had screamed in fear until Pree Khan had shot them both in quick succession, neither of them registering what had happened until they were down on the floor, bleeding out.

  “We need a plan,” Arnholt said. “We can’t just hide here…”

  He tailed off as the dozen kjarnblades roared into life, all around the stadium. Khan looked particularly interested at that sight, tearing her gaze away from the door and towards the overlook window.

  “What the hells?” she said, her voice laced with shock.

  “Baxter,” Arnholt said knowingly. “Cunning bastard.”

  Below them, it was chaos, Brendan had slipped a Unisco earpiece into his ear and could hear every bit of transmission going on around the area. His brow furrowed. “Derenko’s got them mobilised. They’ll be here soon. They’re going to try and secure the exits, get as many people out as possible.”

  “The guys with the guns aren’t the problem,” Khan said, continuing to watch the carnage down below. The lower tiers of the stadium were dripping with blood, human and spirit, all running straight down towards the giant crater left behind by Cacaxis, a veritable lake flowing towards the hole. “If those doom dogs keep coming, they’re going to get swamped sooner or later.” One of the figures bearing a glowing kjarnblade moved through a crowd of them, cut a half dozen down in quick succession but already more were materialising out of nowhere.

  “You think they’re running a mass powered big area projector?” Arnholt asked, looking at her and Brendan.

  “Makes sense,” Brendan said. Such a device wasn’t common but most of them existed in military storage for ground engagements on a large scale, meaning individual combatants didn’t need to use their own summon
ers in the heat of battle to summon spirits. If every summoner could sustain two spirits max for any length of time, there was a huge discrepancy between the number of enemy forces and the number of spirits on show. “It’d also explain why the power went down. If we can take it out, it’ll make things easier.”

  “You sure?” Khan asked dryly. “You two aren’t the youngest anymore.” She managed a smirk as she said it.

  “We were both doing this when you were still in training,” Brendan said dryly. “Any more comments like that, Agent Khan and these two old timers will put you on your ass.”

  “Come on!” Arnholt said as the three of them made for the door. “Mr Bond, stay here. We have this. We need to get…”

  Before he could finish, the door swept open and Harvey Rocastle stepped into the room, flanked by his thorned troll, a sickly grin on his face. He had a weapon in his one good hand, a long-barrelled pistol with a hint of ornamentation peering out the bit of the grip that could be seen beyond his fist.

  “Look at this,” he said. “The nerve centre of the entire operation. You get all that? Didn’t she look fabulous on the screens. Everyone’s going to be talking about this tomorrow.”

  For a moment, the three of them were stunned into silence, Arnholt was the fastest to react, went for his weapon and Rocastle shot him three times, would have been four had Khan not barged him out of the way, taking one in the shoulder herself. Brendan’s X7 spat laser fire at Rocastle, he turned neatly aside and dropped into a crouch, the barrel of his weapon parallel with Brendan’s navel.

  “Byesies,” he said cheerily. “See you in the next life, possums.”

  Something happened, something none of them quite saw but the next moment he was struggling for balance, nearly falling, had to scamper back as Brendan’s next round of shots hit the wall behind where he’d been crouched moments earlier. The troll sent a flurry of green needles towards Brendan who had to hurl himself out the way behind the couch.

  Rocastle’s head briefly turned towards Arnholt and Khan, smirked wickedly as he saw the two of them entangled in an untidy heap, the smell of smoke and burned flesh prominent in the air.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re only going to miss the big finale. Your daughter won’t though, she’ll have a front row…”

  He turned his head, looked back out the door and blanched, turned to run. As the two of them fled, the troll fired more needles away from its arms, all about covering their exit. Wherever they were going, they had to be away quickly. Barely ten seconds later, Clara Wallerington rushed in, amethyst and white kjarnblade in hand, her hair tied back in an untidy ponytail and burns pockmarking her clothes.

  “Oh shit,” she said, seeing the scene in front of her. Bond had caught a shot in the throat, the wound smoking and he wasn’t moving.

  “I know you,” Brendan growled, getting to his feet. He didn’t lower his weapon.

  “I’m friendly,” Clara said as she deactivated her weapon. The blade retreated down into the hilt of the metal cylinder in her hands. “I’m with Master Baxter.”

  Khan let out a pained cough which turned into a splutter, tried to sit up and looked at her shoulder with distaste. “Bloody bastard,” she said. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

  “I…” Clara didn’t have an answer other than a sarcastic “You’re welcome. Thanks for saving our lives. Oh, it was no problem, any time.”

  Arnholt laughed at that, a pained sound that turned into a hacking couch, scarlet spraying the ground. It faded, he slipped backwards, his eyes going blank and his pain-stricken features relaxing as he lapsed down into unconsciousness, his skin cold and clammy.

  “Oh crap,” Clara said. “What can I do to…”

  She was cut off by Nick charging into the room, Clare turned to face him, weapon raised once again, Nick did the same. With the barrel of the weapon inches from her face, the blade of her weapon inches from his, he managed to raise an eyebrow and give an uneasy grin.

  “Friendly?!” Nick asked hopefully.

  “He is,” Brendan confirmed “Most of the time.” Clara lowered her weapon, Nick did the same, looking past her at the stricken Arnholt.

  “Shit!” he swore, already looking around for any sort of first aid kit. There had to be one somewhere. “That’s all we need…”

  “Agent Roper!” Brendan said loudly. “We’ll deal with the director.”

  “Who did this?!” Nick asked, still not giving up on his search. He stuck his head back out the door. “Think I saw one…”

  “Agent Roper!”

  That caught his attention, Brendan at his most authoritative. He turned back, fought the urge to salute.

  “This was the work of Harvey Rocastle,” Brendan said. “He fled rather than stand and fight. Agent Roper, I give you this order in simplest terms possible. Find him. Kill him. Kill both him and Coppinger if you can. Do not let them get off this island. That is your only objective. Everything else is a distant second.”

  He slid Arnholt’s X7 out of its holster and swept it across the floor towards him, an extra weapon just in case. Nick picked it up, slipped it into the back of his waistband and nodded.

  “Understood.” Ever since Rocastle had been mentioned, there’d been an air of cool implacability over him. “It will be done.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four. The Killing Zone.

  “One cannot survive without the other. The truth is, under duress, a spirit will always abandon all previous orders and move to protect its caller whenever it can, if only for its own continued existence.”

  Little known spirit calling fact. Doctor David Fleck to students.

  The ninth day of Summerfall.

  Out in front of them, Noorland and Okocha had set up a schematic readout of the blueprints of the Carcaradis Stadium in full holographic display. The first stadium ever built on the island, the one always intended to hold both the opening bout and the final one. And now they needed to find the one design flaw inserted into it that nobody had known about and quickly.

  “The thing with these projectors,” Noorland said, not moving his eyes from the display. “Is that they’re not small. You’d notice them if they wheeled them into the stadium, you’d need at least four to form a decent grid. Some sort of four-sided shape is usually the best to form a projection field. You could do it with three but it’d be tricky. There’d always be safe zones over this sort of area. The effectiveness of the spirits projected would be compromised.”

  “So, are we assuming that she had them built into the structure of the stadium?” Okocha asked. “I mean the way she’s gone about this; I think we have to assume she’s planned this for a very long time. Everything leading up to this very moment.”

  Noorland studied the holographic image, pursed his lips. The stadium from above had been shaped like a diamond, two triangle shapes stacked base to base, eighty thousand seats surrounding a regular battlefield, complete with all the concessions and facilities ever needed by the masses. It was supposed to be cutting edge, he noted but now ironically being cut up.

  Each edge of the diamond bore four grand pillars rising into the sky, visible from every point of the island. He clicked on the display, magnified it to look at the tops of them. He had a theory. Okocha looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.

  “What? It makes sense tactically. Highest point of the stadium. Hard to get to. There’s no stairway access. None. And those projection fields, the good ones anyway, they pump higher and deeper than they do wide, in case you want to launch from the air. It’s military tech at heart, don’t forget.”

  “So… If we can bring one of those pillars down…”

  “Yep,” Noorland said. “Bring one down and it should collapse the whole thing. A field of this power, it probably can’t be maintained by three projectors. At the absolute worst, it’ll collapse it from a diamond into a triangle and there’ll be a haven over the other side of the stadium… Well, the guys with the guns’ll be able to go there but one problem at a time. The dogs are th
e biggest problem.”

  “Okay, so how do we bring it down quickly?” Okocha asked. “You’re the engineer, you tell me.”

  It had all been going so well, Anne thought as she emptied her X7 into the figure, watched him crumple and drop, several entry wounds now peppering his body. She barely had time to push in a new power pack before two more of them rushed her, weapons held high and fingers on the triggers.

  She was dead, she knew it, the reality just hadn’t quite caught up with the truth yet…

  You have the power!

  The voice bellowed through her mind, she heard the clink of something metallic on the ground and almost instinctively she reached for it… one hells of a bounce surely… and it sprang into her hands. It felt right, steel and rubber beneath her palm and she thumbed the activator switch. An azure and silver blade sprang into existence, just as the shots came for her. Moving to block them felt like a dream, like someone else was in control of her body, a power she’d never known lay within her guiding her movements. Two she beat back down into the ground, the next she deflected back into the face of the closest gunman, more came her way and she beat them aside before burying the blade into the second man’s chest. He went down, hard and suddenly as he fell, she became very aware of her surroundings, the death and destruction around her and beyond that, the glowing weapon in her hand.

  She looked up, Ruud Baxter threw her a salute from several rows above. “Keep it!” he shouted. “Might come in handy!”

  He spun around, four of them closing in on him and suddenly he didn’t have a weapon to defend himself from them. By the looks of it, one of them said as much to him and it brought nothing but a cold smile from him. He threw out his hands, thin needles of fire lancing from his fingertips, too many to count but they swept through the air and crashed through the bodies of his enemies, leaving charred holes through them. One of them managed to get some shots off at him, Baxter’s hand moved faster, caught them all…