Puppet master, p.1
Puppet Master, page 1
part #6 of Arena Series
PUPPET MASTER
BOOK 6 IN THE ARENA SERIES
DANIEL YOUNG
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Also by Daniel Young
CHAPTER 1
A door slammed behind Captain Joel Richmond. He spun around to stare at the closed door, but there was no one there.
He turned the other way to face forward. He was back in the Necrodrome holding cell--and he wasn't alone.
His friends stood gathered around him. Corporal Redmond Hayes, Sergeant Jasper Leatherwood, Zuna, Niur, Aemon, Yagni, and Fadek all cast glances around the cell, but there could be no more question about it. The friends were back in the Necrodrome, about to go out into the arena for tonight's bout.
There was one glaring difference between this bout and all the others the group had endured during their prolonged stay in the Necrodrome: Richmond and his friends were the only prisoners in the holding cell.
"Where is everyone?" Hayes murmured. "Why are we the only ones here?"
"It doesn't matter, because we already know a way out of here," Richmond replied. "We'll do the same thing we did last time. We'll stall for time until the end of the bout. Then we'll leave."
"What are you talking about?!" Yagni hissed under his breath. "No one escapes from the Necrodrome! We're all going to die!"
Richmond took a second before he remembered that Yagni had never been in the Necrodrome before. He opened his mouth to explain about the hidden tunnels and the marked brick in the holding cells under the palace. Yagni would be able to let himself out of his cell and rejoin the party before they escaped.
But Richmond didn't want to talk about the tunnels here, not where the broadcast cameras would pick up everything the prisoners said. As it was, he didn't get a chance to say anything before the opposite wall slid up and slammed into its slot in the ceiling. All the same ships sat parked inside the hangar beyond the guard screen.
Richmond's gaze immediately snapped to his upright ship. At least he wouldn't have to fight anyone for it tonight.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end when the usual announcer stepped into the hangar to give the night's briefing--except it wasn't the usual announcer. The old Lilri who usually gave instructions to the prisoners wasn't here. The armed soldiers escorted a Vasyke into the hangar.
Richmond's confusion turned to fury when he recognized Zaliv Temobos, Sevao of the Vasyke, ruler of Narillia and the architect of this whole disaster.
Temobos stopped in the announcer's usual place and turned his old superior grin on the prisoners behind the guard screen.
"Welcome to the Necrodrome, gentlemen--and lady." Temobos snorted with laughter at his own joke. "As you can see, tonight's bout is going to be a little different in honor of all of you."
He waved his hand in an imperious gesture he probably hoped would look either impressive or condescending or both.
"What the hell do you want?" Aemon snarled.
"It's simple, don't you see?" Temobos went on. "All of you are celebrities--the biggest celebrities the Necrodrome has ever had. Our viewing rates have skyrocketed since you all formed your 'alliance'. I can't thank you enough for that, but it had to come to an end sometime, didn't it? Your exploits are becoming the stuff of legend, both inside the Necrodrome and outside it. You can't expect us to pass up the chance to capitalize on it while we still have you all here alive and well."
"Just tell us what you want and leave us alone, you piece of shit," Hayes snapped. "Now you're just stalling."
Temobos curled his lip at Hayes. "I have no reason to stall, Corporal. I can take all the time I want and enjoy myself--which is more than I can say for all of you. Tonight we have a different set of rules, as you can see. The eight of you will go into the Necrodrome alone, as I'm sure you must have already figured out."
"You can't make us fight each other," Leatherwood fired back. "You'll have to kill us first."
Temobos' smile evaporated. "That can be arranged if it's what you really want, Sergeant. If you don't fight each other, we'll send in Lilri fighter craft. You can fight them instead, if you prefer, or you can fight each other. The choice is yours. Apart from that, the same rules apply--one person to a ship. There are no rules once you enter the arena."
He walked off, taking his armed escort with him.
He left a tense silence in his wake. "Now what do we do?" Niur asked.
"We'll put up appearances of fighting each other," Richmond replied. "We can shoot at each other without doing any damage. In the meantime, we'll fly around the stands and try to damage the big broadcast screens and the emitters the way we did before. We might be able to find another vulnerability."
They didn't have time to discuss it any further before the guard screen dissolved. The group had all the time in the world to walk across the hangar at their own pace. No one attacked anyone before they all went on board their ships and powered up.
Richmond went through the usual sequence and scanned the Necrodrome from inside the hangar. The silence became unnerving. The Necrodrome looked haunted and ghostly without other prisoners flying around.
He flew out there first. He had the entire course to himself until his friends flew out behind him. He waited by the maze and took the time to scan it so he could find the route through it. He wasn't paying attention when Fadek, Aemon, and Yagni flew toward him.
Aemon fired at Richmond and woke him up fast. The shot zinged over Richmond's head, and then the others traded a few shots. None of them really tried to hit each other. When they did, those shots glanced off and did no damage.
Richmond pretended to run away from them by zigzagging through the maze. The other three followed, crawled up behind him, and scattered shots on either side of his tail. Their gunfire deflected off the walls. He pretended to dodge and weave before he burst out the other side of the maze.
He could have swooped around the backstretch and headed back to the gate, but as soon as he got out of the maze, he spotted the big display screen directly above and in front of him. The chute the friends had used to escape last time was right behind that screen. Was it still there, or had the Vasyke eliminated that, too?
He punched his engines, climbed up the stands to get closer to the screen, and located the energy field emitters among the spectators' seats. He didn't want to shoot with so many people crowding around, but right then, Zuna, Hayes, and Leatherwood caught up with the others.
Hayes fired at Richmond too, but he deliberately missed. The shot punched into the stands right below the screen and deflected off the screen's protective energy field. The blast ricocheted down into the stands and made the spectators scream and run. They bolted out of their seats.
Richmond was still waiting for the commotion to die down so he could get a clear shot at the emitters. Hayes and Leatherwood caught up with him, and at that moment Niur hurtled past the screen, coming way too fast. He bombarded the energy field with a nonstop stream of shots. Aemon and Fadek dropped in behind Niur. Their assault on the energy field didn't damage the screen at all, but it did get the spectators out of the way.
Richmond trained his scanners on the emitters and fell in line behind his friends. It would only take one small adjustment of his aim to hit the emitters instead of the screen.
Niur, Aemon, Fadek, and Richmond swooped past the screen on a dead course for the emitters, but they didn't get there before two rotary guns rose on masts from either side of the screen. The guns pivoted in wide circles, targeting the prisoners' ships with deadly accuracy.
The four friends were flying too fast to get away in time. The rotary guns swiveled to trace their trajectory. Those shots didn't miss. One of the blasts clipped Aemon's rear engine.
"I'm hit!" He yanked aside, trying to correct, but he couldn't stabilize himself. "I'm going down!"
"Hold on, man!" Richmond called. "We'll cover you!"
"Look out, Joel!" Zuna warned. "The course is changing! The rotary guns are changing their position to match our movements!"
Richmond was too busy paying attention to Aemon to realize what she meant. Aemon's ship veered wildly out of control. It flew dangerously close to the ground and would have crashed, but Richmond punched his throttle and darted under it at the last second. Aemon's ship slammed belly-down on top of Richmond's vessel.
The weight knocked both ships closer to the ground, but Richmond's engines held them both up enough to break Aemon's fall.
CHAPTER 2
Richmond descended to the ground inside the arena. He planned to stay down here with Aemon until the bout ended.
He realized what Zuna meant about the rotary guns as soon as he got to the ground. They rose on masts at different spots in the course, targeted, and then sank back out of sight as others rose in completely different spots. No prisoner could predict which guns would rise and start shooting, or where they would shoot from.
Some rotary guns rose on masts at different parts of the course and didn't shoot at all. They just sat there doing nothing, or they followed the p risoners without shooting. Richmond wound up shooting at some of these inert guns and exposing himself to gunfire from other guns he didn't see in time. He couldn't respond as well as he needed to as long as he carried Aemon's ship on his back.
Thirty feet above the ground, another rotary gun materialized in the window of a nearby building. The gun wasn't there until just this minute. Its gunfire plastered Aemon's hull and toppled the stricken ship off of Richmond's fuselage. Aemon's ship rolled away and smashed down on the ground.
He still had power. Richmond scrambled to contact Aemon through his communications channels. "Get into that building and take control of one of the rotary guns! You'll be able to shoot back at anything or anyone who shoots at you!"
Aemon didn't reply. Richmond couldn't understand why. Maybe Aemon's ship had sustained more damage than he realized.
He only remembered after he said it that no one would be shooting at Aemon--not seriously. Aemon would only be shooting at someone if the Vasyke sent in Lilri fighter craft to attack the friends.
Aemon's rear hatch opened. Richmond turned outward to defend his friend so Aemon could get off the course, or at least to some protected spot. Richmond spun his ship around and took aim at the nearest rotary guns with a line of fire to Aemon's position.
Richmond dodged and danced in front of the rotary guns to draw their attention. They shot at him and he shot back, but he didn't have any trouble evading them.
He made his flight patterns more complex. Aemon bolted out of his hatch under Richmond's protection--and right then, the rest of the allies bombed in from somewhere and drew the rotary guns' fire too. The confusion of so many guns going off from all directions momentarily blocked Richmond from seeing whether Aemon got away.
The rotary guns unloaded on everything in front of them. The prisoner ships fired on the rotary guns, but the allies hit each other or accidentally flew into each other's gunfire as often as they hit the guns. The battle turned into a jumbled soup of everyone shooting at everyone and everything else.
A brutal concussion of more gunfire hammered Richmond's left wing from somewhere. His ship side-rolled out of the battle, and he finally spotted Aemon standing in the same building window where he had seen the rotary gun earlier. Aemon bared his teeth and snarled in a furious grimace. He clamped his hands around the rotary gun and yanked it to aim somewhere else. He must have been trying to hit one of the other rotary guns and clipped Richmond by mistake.
That one shot had damaged his ship. Richmond couldn't stay aloft. His ship sank toward the ground.
He scrambled on the controls to locate the nearest rotary gun he could take over. His friends wouldn't shoot at him while he was stranded on the ground.
He couldn't say the same about the rotary guns themselves--or, if the Vasyke tried to pull a fast one, he might wind up shooting at the Lilri after all. He couldn't tell in the confusion if the allies were putting up enough of a fight against each other to convince the Vasyke.
The ship hit the ground and bounced. Richmond activated the cockpit controls to send himself outside. He really could have used a laser rifle about now. He'd just have to take the next best option.
The nearest rotary gun stood on a mast more than a hundred feet off the ground. He couldn't get to it. He didn't see any rungs or anything on the mast that he could use to climb up. Of course not. The Vasyke wouldn't want to make it that easy for the prisoners.
He didn't know where to go next or what to do, but as soon as he got outside, three rotary guns actually stopped shooting at his friends to turn their weapons on him instead.
He took off running for the nearest obstacle. It was another staggered series of walls, one behind the other. Ships had to slalom through the obstacle to get back to the home stretch outside the hangar gate.
The rotary guns followed him every step of the way. He ducked under his arms for all the protection they couldn't give him.
At that moment, the tall mast he'd just been studying started to telescope back into the ground. Another rotary gun slotted out of the ground thirty yards away from him and started to rise into the air.
He sprinted the rest of the way to it and took one last running jump to get on top of the mast before it rose too high for him to get to it.
Richmond strapped his arms around the gun just as it went off in his face. He barely managed to throw himself out of the line of fire without plummeting to his death in the arena below. Two ships broke out of the swarm and buzzed around him, but they couldn't help him.
He nearly dislocated his shoulders trying to hold onto the gun and get himself into a decent position to take control of the thing. It kept rising higher, and eventually locked into place just as high as the first one.
He had to continually adjust his grip when the weapon spun this way and that, trying to hit his friends who were still in flight on the course. This telescoping mast didn't offer any place to sit or stand while he aimed the gun, either. He had to hold onto it with both arms to stop himself from falling.
Richmond managed to drag himself up enough to hook his leg over the weapon. He hoisted himself on top of it, wrapped his legs around the top lip of the mast, and locked his ankles together. He finally got his hands on the weapon well enough to steer it where he wanted it to shoot, but at that moment, the siren went off to signal the end of the bout.
The gun stopped moving. It no longer tracked the prisoner ships.
All the ships shut down and drifted to the ground, but the mast didn't retract. It stayed fully extended with Richmond perched on top. He waited, but he had no other way to get down. Now what the hell was he supposed to do?
His friends left their ships, and the Lilri spread out from the gate to escort everyone back inside the hangar. Aemon came out of his building to join the group.
That left Richmond. The Lilri peered up at him--and then his allies stopped to peer up at him, too.
Richmond considered sliding down the mast. One glance at the ground so far below changed his mind. He looked away, feeling sick. The Lilri went into a flurry of confusion, herded everyone else inside, and then came back to stare up at him again.
He really didn't know what to do. He didn't want the Lilri to think he was trying to get away with something. He would really much rather have gone into the holding cell with his friends than get stranded out here on a rotary gun mast.
The Lilri went through a series of lengthy discussions about the situation before they decided what to do. Some of them went back inside the hangar, and the mast started to descend. Richmond rode it all the way down. The Lilri took him back to the holding cell without a word.
He found all his friends waiting for him. The Lilri hadn't taken the allies back to their cells yet.
His friends gathered around him, all talking at once. "Did they try to shoot you, Captain?" Fadek asked.
"They didn't try to shoot me. They just couldn't figure out how to get me down."
"We should have thought of that a long time ago," Niur remarked. "We might have been able to shoot out the energy field with the rotary guns."
"We already know we can't," Aemon interjected. "The energy field is calibrated to withstand them."
Yagni straightened up and squared his shoulders. "If we can't find a way out, I volunteer to sacrifice myself. You can shoot at me to stop the Vasyke from sending Lilri fighter craft into the arena."
"To hell with that!" Hayes countered. "No one is sacrificing anything!"
"You don't have to do that," Richmond told Yagni. "Once the Lilri take you down to your cell, you'll find a[?]--"
He broke off when the Lilri came back. None of the friends said a word on their way down to their individual holding cells.
Richmond didn't put too much stock in any of this. He and his friends would just leave through the tunnels again. What could be simpler?
He didn't have to lie down and rest from his injuries this time, so he got his food tray and ate what he wanted while he waited for the lights to go out. He didn't have to locate the brick with the mark on it this time, either. The Lilri had put him in a different cell, and he spotted the brick the minute he stepped into the room.
He waited until the lamp switched off, stuffed the last pieces of cake into his mouth, put the tray aside, and knelt down in front of the brick. This one was located behind the table at hip height off the floor. He pushed the brick inward.
