Revolution's Fire Page 2

  “See you in a minute.” Finally, he turned to look at her. “Seriously. Just let me finish this. It’s delicate. Once you start, you got to finish. Otherwise it compromises the entire pattern. We don’t want that, okay?!”

  Okocha was bent down by a central projector in the middle of the floor of the briefing room, his fingers working overtime to set it all up. The call had come for all available agents to attend, Nick even told to come despite his leave. Brendan had informed him they wanted another set of eyes, another opinion and nothing had changed with his situation. A little frustrating but not unsatisfying. He’d given him a nod and gone to sit down near Lysa Montgomery, David Wilsin and Tod Brumley.

  Arnholt was stood by the wall, tall and straight backed, no hint of a leaning and he watched Okocha like a hawk. Seconds later, a hologram flashed into life and a figure Nick didn’t recognise appeared in the image, a tall woman with short cropped black hair and iron coloured eyes. Neither did Wilsin or Lysa but Brumley nodded.

  “That’s Agent Perrit,” he said quietly. “She’s a credit sniffer.”

  “A what?” Lysa asked, glancing around at the combat instructor with interest.

  “She follows the credits,” Wilsin said, adjusting himself in his seat for comfort. “You never heard that term before?”

  “I’ve never heard it called that before,” she admitted. It was true, she hadn’t. “But why’s she here.”

  “Guess we’re about to find out,” Nick said as Okocha stepped away from the projector and nodded at Arnholt. Roughly about the same time, Al Noorland sloped in, stretching his arms with a mug in his hand.

  “Okay, attention,” Arnholt said, his voice calm and quiet but drawing maximum attention. “We’re here because Agent Okocha has a presentation to make in regards of our situation, a collation of the events here over not just the last several weeks but several years. We want operational theories and thoughts. Anything looks suspicious, you bring it up. Those of you who don’t know, this is Agent Beverly Perrit, she’s been following inquiries in conjunction with Agent Okocha at the other end of the line.”

  “Hi,” Perrit said brightly. “How’s the weather out there, guys?”

  Okocha cleared his throat, a ball of holographic jumble appearing out the top of the projector and he reached down to it, pulling it out to scatter the one image into a variety.

  “Right,” he said. “Okay so it starts with this tournament. Always does. There’s been some strange stuff ongoing here. Let’s look at that first. Six years ago, Reims decided to bid to hold the Quin-C here and made all the arrangements. They managed to outbid Cerulia and Litnos in Serran and Tam Rivers in Premesoir to hold it here. But the big problem they faced was it was highly inadequate to hold a tournament. So, they needed huge amounts of revenue to turn it into what we’ve seen today.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Perrit said dryly, bringing a laugh from some members of the team. “It’s raining where I am, and I can see a hair salon for Vazarans out the window.”

  “As we all know, the cities bidding for the tournament usually end up paying for getting it all up to scratch,” Okocha said. “It’s different in this case. There’s no real government out here, Reims offered to pay for it. Hence the fortune it no doubt cost. These hotels and stadiums don’t come cheap.” He paused to take a drink of water. “Agent Perrit, you’ve been checking into Reims’ financial activities. You found anything untoward?”

  “Only that they’re absolutely haemorrhaging money. I’m not joking. Not just Reims but every company under their remit, every company Claudia Coppinger has a controlling interest is slowly being gutted so gradually it’s hard to spot unless you’re specifically looking for it. Profits are down massively, they’re making just enough to keep afloat, to pay their employees and their taxes but that’s it. Companies excelling before Reims got their hands on them are now struggling to keep their heads above the water.”

  “So, is it bad management?” Fagan asked. “Or…”

  “I don’t think so. They’ve not dropped the quality of their work. They’re still making a stupid amount of credits in theory but they’re spending them as fast as they make them and it’s not entirely clear as to where they’re going. Some of them were earmarked for the Quin-C development, some are marked for going down on research and development. Judging by some of the sums here, they’re sinking more into R and D than any other company in the five kingdoms. In short, they could pay for the tournament and they have but they might have overreached themselves with it.”

  “Bad management and greed,” Fank Aldiss mused. “Is there a worse combination?”

  “Yep, anger issues and live ammunition,” Wilsin said. It brought a smattering of laughter, Brendan cleared his throat to warn them back on the issue.

  It was Okocha who spoke next, rubbing his hands together before moving a holographic file close to the centre.

  “I went back and did this digging, I wondered why Claudia Coppinger wanted so badly for this tournament to be in Vazara. I mean, she isn’t Vazaran, so she can’t claim national pride. I did find this, and I just want to share it with you all, see what you think. Very rare footage, she doesn’t like to be recorded apparently.”

  He pushed down on it and the video clip started to play, a picture of a middle-aged woman with brown hair stood on the steps of the Ubiqitor. Everyone recognised the structure, they’d all seen a picture of it at some point, the big temple in Tagos, the former capital of Vazara. She’d chosen a good spot, right in front of the bust of Gilgarus and Melarius. The sound abruptly came on, catching her halfway through a sentence.

  “… Lovely country. Why do I want it here? I can’t give you just one answer. And I don’t think I should be able to either. What I should ask you, not just you the media but the ICCC and everyone who loves spirit calling, why shouldn’t you want it here? I’ve spent a lot of time in the kingdom over the years and it’s been good to me.”

  Nick pricked up his ears, considered the figure. She didn’t look like much. Certainly not the richest woman in the five kingdoms. She looked like she should have been organising her grandchild’s first birthday, something like that. There was something familiar in the way she held herself, he couldn’t quite place it right now though he was sure he’d seen her before somewhere. That would irritate him now until he worked it out, he knew.

  “Throughout my life, I’ve had two loves, one of them my family, the other being Vazara. I first came here a little girl, I saw the amazing indigenous wildlife wandering the plains and I was awed. I wept because I’d never seen anything so beautiful. This place has a lot of negative press but no worse than anywhere else. Somebody gets shot in Vazara, it’s a big story. Same thing happens twice as often in Premesoir, nobody bats an eyelid. You know what, I want to give something back to a country that’s given me a lot of good memories over the years. I want to give it an honour many would shy away from.”

  Her voice rose several octaves before she took a drink of water and licked her lips. “I want to be the one to see the first ever Competitive Centenary Calling Challenge Cup come here. I have a location in mind, I have a development plan and I intend to use local resources to create jobs and make this a reality. Together, we can make an idle impossibility a reality. This is very much in my plans, if it fails then I have failed…”

  “Strong stuff,” Okocha said as the video finished playing. “And of course, she succeeded. Nobody saw it coming. After discussions with Ritellia and Nwakili, Carcaradis Island was awarded the tournament.”

  “Why this island?” Leclerc wondered. “You have an answer to that? Because nobody else seems to.”

  “I did wonder myself,” Okocha replied. “Best I can work out is some sort of compromise from the ICCC and the Senate about security. They were leery as hells about having it on the mainland. This was a happy medium. I’m not happy Coppinger and Nwakili bent to Ritellia on that but hey, still here so… Sorry, I digress.” He moved another image to the centre, a shot of an untamed
jungle from the air. “This was Carcaradis Island before it all started. Looks different now, huh? She was as good as her word; she saw that thousands of Vazaran workers were shipped out here to clear it all away…”

  “This before or after the natives all got wiped out?” Nick asked, the question bringing silence to the room. He wasn’t about to forget that, even if Okocha hadn’t brought it up yet. He remembered that night in the sewers all too well. The key word there might have been ‘Yet’ but given the way Arnholt had danced around releasing the information to the media, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been omitted deliberately from the brief.

  “That came later. Apparently, nobody realised they were here until the workers started dying,” Okocha said. “I found correspondence, some of it official and well, it looks like Reims might have brought the Vazaran Suns in to pacify the natives.”

  “Huh, Mazoud again,” Wilsin said in Nick’s ear. “What are the chances? It proves there’s a connection between Coppinger and Mazoud.”

  “It took them a while, it took a lot of the Suns to do it and possibly the reason that Nwakili was able to bring them under control,” Okocha said. “Because there were that many out here protecting the workers while they did their jobs, it left them underpowered on the mainland. Eventually they got rid of the natives and the island was built up from scratch.”

  “Remember those scare stories?” Derenko asked. “How they didn’t think it’d be ready for the start of the tournament? I can see why when you look at it like this.”

  “Never underestimate the power of credits and an eager Vazaran workforce,” Okocha said. “You’d be amazed what those two things can accomplish. Before long, all the materials were being shipped in to create the resort and the stadia from the ground up. Thousands became tens of thousands of workers…”

  “Resources!” Pree yelled, before adjusting herself. “Sorry. When she said resources, where did all this material come from to build it? I mean, you’re talking hundreds of tons of concrete and metal here? Maybe more. I mean, it’s not a number than you can easily lay your hands on.”

  “Not a bad question, Agent Khan,” Okocha said. “I’ll check into that. I mean, I don’t remember seeing too much mentioned, maybe I’ll find answers. You see anything, Agent Perrit?”

  Perrit shook her head. “No. Nothing. I did see credit payments to Local Vazara Haulage, Echedjile…” She cleared her throat. “Sorry, it’s a tough word to pronounce that. Echedjile Excavations and Tom Harper Drills.”

  “Doesn’t sound local, that last one,” Derenko remarked. Nobody laughed. “Suggestive, I think. Are there any good drill places in Vazara?”

  “Yeah but they’re expensive,” Okocha said. “I think. And good by Vazaran standards is still inferior to other kingdoms top standards. I’ll try and talk to the companies, see if we can find out what they got. They should have it on record.”

  “Amount of credits that went into them, they should remember it off by heart,” Perrit said dryly. “Unless they’ve been paid to forget.”

  “We all seem to be operating under the assumption Reims has done something wrong here,” Noorland said suddenly, slurping down some of his ricefee. The smell of soy and rice filled the room as the film across the top of the liquid was broken. “Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? What happened to a little objectivity?”

  “It doesn’t look good, Al,” Wilsin said. “There’s something going on here. We’re just missing a piece of the puzzle. Something we’re not quite seeing.”

  “That’s not assuming guilt. That’s trying to work out what’s going on,” Lysa said, not entirely gently. “Remember? That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  “When you’re quite finished,” Brendan said sourly. He nodded at Okocha who cleared his throat and folded his arms, not quite in a huff yet, but close.

  “Right so, basically built the island up from scratch from the drainage to the buildings in six or so years…”

  “Wait a second!” Nick said. “So that chamber we found in the drains, the one with the Kalqus statue. If they built around it, they should have known it was there. More to the point, why the hells would the workers build around it. Divine of water in a country that has a lot of desert. Seems like they’d be bowing to it right there and then while offering supplication.”

  “Maybe they’d built around it, so it’d be left alone,” Aldiss said. “Possibly. They wouldn’t want people to come and disturb the Divine.”

  “Which is just supposition,” Fagan remarked. “From both of you.”

  “Shame there’s nobody we can ask,” Pree Khan said. “Reckon there’s any workers still out there who’d tell us?”

  “Might be hard to track them down,” Okocha said. “But I’ll dig into it, see what I can find. Or maybe there’s some of the Suns who were there who’ll talk to us. Probably harder to get rid of a group of comrades armed with powerful weaponry than it is a bunch of unarmed workers.”

  “Harder but not impossible,” Arnholt mused. “There was a rumour of a V.S commandant who did break free of the organisation a few months ago. Maybe he’s still out there. Think his name was…”

  “Joseph Itandje,” Brendan offered. “I remember it. If they did catch up with him, they probably wouldn’t advertise it. Probably just one more corpse in the street nobody wants to identify.”

  “Will, you’re better than anyone the Vazaran Suns have,” Arnholt said. “See if you can track him down. Double priority.”

  “Gotcha. So, they absolutely work like the forges of Ferros to get it all together, taking the natives of the island hostage while they do apparently and slaughtering them daily over an altar. And then when the tournament starts, you have monsoons linked with the very chamber Agent Roper just mentioned, a vanished doctor who was paid by Reims, three genetically identical soldiers guarding said doctor. We have attempted kidnapping of the director’s daughter, also by someone who worked for Reims in some capacity.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the odour from Noorland’s drink. “We have dead Sun soldiers wiped out by Agents Roper and Wilsin, the same group later took out a Unisco flight squadron to get back the same kidnapping lunatic associated with Reims and might have enough credits to pay them to do the same again. We have terrorism and murders, neither of which can be linked to Reims, but just because we haven’t found a connection doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist,” Okocha said, pausing to draw a grateful gasp of breath as he ceased speaking. “As you can see, Agent Noorland, this isn’t supposition. This isn’t just taking shots at Reims. There is something happening here.”

  “You know, that might be the understatement of the year,” Noorland said, rubbing his chin, before putting his mug down. “We best get working on tracking down Itandje then. If it’s important. See what he knows.”

  “I want a team ready to go retrieve him if he’s confirmed alive,” Arnholt said. “He was senior enough to know what was going on back then, even if he wasn’t involved directly. Perrit, keep up the work and follow up on those companies, I want it found out what business they did with Reims, I want numbers and I want details. If one piece of information is out of place, sit on them until they tell us the truth. The rest of you…”

  He looked around the room. “Fagan, I want you and Leclerc ready to get out there the second Okocha makes a location for Itandje. Aldiss, you and Derenko run backup for them. Anything you need, take. The rest of you, keep an eye out. Anything trivial, anything out of the ordinary, make a log of it. There’s something going on here might slowly be appearing to be our motto for this mission, but it doesn’t make things anything less true. If there is a bigger plan, then something else will happen and I want to be prepared. We’ve been too reactive here, I want more proactivity. The best way to foil an attack is to make sure it doesn’t happen in the first place. Even if there isn’t something going ahead, a little extra vigilance won’t hurt. Remember, the safety of everyone here on this island is on you. On us. If we fail, then they wi
ll fall. It will be our fault and I for one do not want to live with that. Can you?”

  The question was met with silence and contemplation, just the reaction he’d been expecting. Nobody made to move, nobody went to leave. He let them, allowing the words to sink in before nodding his head at them. “You’re all fine agents. I’m honoured to have you working under me here. If anyone can figure out what’s going on, if anyone can stop it, it’s you. On other matters, good luck to Agents Roper and Wilsin. May the best man win.”

  The twenty second day of Summerpeak.

  May the best man win…

  Those words still echoed through Nick’s head as he stared across the icy battlefield towards David Wilsin stood looking ultra-confident on the other side, arms folded, and summoner nestled on the crook of his elbow. The crowd were getting riled up and the announcer was doing his absolute best to whip them into a frenzy. He felt confident himself. He had a plan and he intended to stick to it.

  The video referee buzzed to start, and he shot Wilsin a cool grin. “Shall we start then?”

  Chapter Two. Friends and Foes.

  “No rivalry is uglier than that between those who call themselves friends.”

  Former spirit caller, James Carter.

  The twenty-second day of Summerpeak.

  Three each. Pretty standard. Nick grinned, sent in his first choice of Bish, the garj for the first time since that ill-fated bout with Scott Taylor. His one black spot in the tournament so far. Redemption would come. It was the garj’s time to renew the faith Nick felt he’d shown in him. His grin grew as Bish saluted with a bladed appendage, raising limb to forehead in a graceful sweep before turning to face Wilsin.

  Neither of them showed any reaction as Wilsin brought his spirit into play, a golden-furred elephant with three tusks and a powerful trunk. Nick counted four cavernous nostrils at the tip, hot breath exploding from them periodically. The size difference immediately worried him, Bish was slender and graceful, the rapier while the elephant, Chydarm, was a tank, power and durability. This might be interesting, he thought, studying the enemy spirit with cool disinterest. He folded his arms, observed as it took one trundling step forward and peered at Bish through small dull eyes.