The Armoured Ghost (2 page)

The machine heard a sound out beyond the edge
of
the town. The distant roar of rocket thrusters. From the forest at the edge of the ruined town, there came a burst of light. A small spaceship was blasting off, rising on a pillar of flame into the evening sky.

The ship disappeared after a few seconds, and then there was a bright flash high above the clouds as it jumped into hyperspace. There was no way of catching it now. The medallions were gone.

The robot looked down at the still form of the knight and let out another hiss. It almost seemed as if the old man was smiling.

‘NOT SUCH AN OLD FOOL AFTER ALL,’ the machine said.

It had taken the robot over a year to track down the two men who carried the last of the power totems. This dead knight had fought for just long enough to give his friend time to escape with them once more. The robot gave a long, deep growl, but showed no other sign of the anger it felt.

Crouching down, it continued to pull the armour off the knight’s body. There were several pieces it could use to replace its own damaged parts. The knight must have given his real medallion to his friend to carry away. That meant that the other
knight
had escaped with six power totems. One man now had half of the original Twelve. Their loss was a terrible failure, and the robot’s master would be furious. But perhaps it did not matter. After all, there was no one left alive to use them.

The time of the Armouron Knights was over.

Chapter 2

Getting Clobbered

RAKE WATCHED WITH
giddy excitement as the two armoured Gladiators circled each other out in the Arena. He was supposed to be working – there were floors that needed mopping. But this was too good a chance to miss.

He was able to watch the sparring match through a small window in one of the changing rooms. The window looked out from under a row of seats in the grandstand, where the spectators normally sat to watch the competitions. As a cadet, Rake hardly ever got to watch Gladiators in training. And getting to see Lanista in action, and watch her knock Stamper around, was a dream come true.

Lanista blocked Stamper’s kick and swept his feet out from under him with her sword. The young Gladiator landed hard on his back.

‘Yeeesssss!’ Rake cheered quietly, shaking the handle of his mop.

‘What’s going on?’ a small voice asked, making him jump.

Standing behind him was a little Far-Eastern girl with white hair. Her name was Snow, and she followed Rake around whenever she had a free moment. He sighed and pulled over a chair for her to stand on so she could see out of the
window
. Rake had to stand on tiptoe to see out himself.

‘Stamper’s getting flattened,’ he told her as she got up on the chair.

Stamper was back on his feet, moving round the Arena, his sword at the ready. But Rake could see he was on edge now. Lanista had him scared. Every time the warrior woman moved, Stamper flinched like a nervous dog.

‘Who’s that he’s fighting?’ Snow asked him.

‘How can you
not
know Lanista?’ Rake said. ‘She’s one of the greatest Gladiators this side of the galaxy. People say she was trained by one of the old Armouron Knights, before they all disappeared. Look, this is just training – a practice match. Stamper’s always jabbering on about how he’s going to slam heads now he’s started to compete in the Gladiator Games. This is his first year and I think he’s in for a shock.’

Most of the time, Rake didn’t mind Snow following him around. A lot of the other cadets were suspicious of her – they thought she was a bit of a jinx. Weird things tended to happen when Snow was around. She seemed OK to him. He was only a Grade Three Cadet, years away from
being
a Gladiator. But he dreamed of becoming a famous Gladiator and was keen to show off what he knew about their warrior world. This was fine with Snow, because she liked to listen. She was only a Grade Two, and still had a lot to learn about it all. And Rake was good at explaining things, even if he did like the sound of his own voice.

‘If
she’s
so good, shouldn’t you want
him
to win?’ Snow prodded her finger into his ribs. ‘You know, cheer for the underdog and all that?’

‘Nah, I hope he gets clobbered,’ Rake sniffed.

‘I wanted to show you something,’ Snow whispered to him. ‘Something I found this morning . . . it’s really weird—’

‘Hey! That mop’s not for leaning on!’ a rough voice shouted.

Rake turned to see one of the instructors standing at the door to the changing room.

‘Cadet Snow, what are you doing here? I’m pretty sure you have work to do. Cadet Rake, I want to see this floor so clean you could eat your lunch off it – or you
will
be eating your lunch off it. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir!’ Rake barked, slapping his wet mop
down
on the tiles of the floor.

Snow jumped down off the chair and, with her head bowed down, walked out past the instructor. The man watched Rake for another minute to make sure he was getting stuck back into his work. Then the instructor touched his finger to the grape-sized phone in his ear to make a call, walking off down the corridor. Rake sniffed. The man was probably calling the office to report the two cadets.

Outside, Rake heard Stamper’s body hit the ground again. But the young cadet didn’t go to look this time. He just squeezed his mop out into the bucket of dirty water and moved on to the next room.

Rake was tall for his age, with light brown skin and spiked black hair. He couldn’t start training as a proper Gladiator for a good while yet. Not until he was fifteen – and then he had to work up to the level of a Grade Five, which was when you got your first suit of armour. But he was already learning everything he could about the life.

There were six changing rooms in this block of the Arena and Rake had to mop out all of the floors. When he was done with the mopping, he
had
to clean all the toilets in the block before he could break for lunch.

This was how things worked at the Academy. All cadets had to spend at least half their day, every day, working in the Arena. Rake had training after lunch. He lived for training. Even getting to mop the floors in the Arena’s Gladiator Block was useful, because sometimes he could sneak a peek at what some of the Gladiators were doing there. Sometimes he could even watch them practise their fighting methods. Cadets weren’t allowed to see the Gladiators training. Getting to watch Lanista was worth cleaning a few toilets.

Like most of the other cadets, Rake was an orphan. He didn’t know how his parents had died, because he had never been told anything about them. He had been brought to the Academy when he was four years old and had lived there ever since. Once they joined the Academy, cadets were hardly ever allowed out into the city that surrounded the huge complex. At least, not until they became Gladiators – or they failed and were thrown out.

Chapter 3

The Bloodstain

SNOW FOUND RAKE
again when he went to the cadet canteen for lunch. He was late, so most of the others had finished up. Her lunch tray was already empty, but she slid down the bench to be beside him.

‘I have to show you this thing,’ she said quietly.

‘What is it?’ he muttered.

He was looking down at the compartments in his tray. There was a grey mush he thought might be potato. Beside that there was an orange mush that was probably carrots. And then there were some brown pellets that were either cat food or freeze-dried meat. Or both. There was also a pale
grey
cracker that was so dry the cadets sometimes stole them to write secret messages on to each other. He was sure food wasn’t supposed to look like this, but cadets were raised on it, so it couldn’t be all bad.

‘You have to come and see,’ Snow insisted.

Rake sighed. He wasn’t hungry anyway and he had ten minutes left of his twenty-minute lunch break. Taking a few of the meat pellets to eat on the way, he followed Snow out of the canteen.

Snow did a lot of the same kinds of jobs as Rake. They both worked in Domestic Services, but she was a cleaner in the Arena’s hospital most of the time. She led him to one of the wards, a white and green room with eight beds and the soft sound of humming medical equipment. Rake had ended up in rooms like this a few times before, with injuries he’d picked up in training. Some cadets liked going to the hospital – they got to rest from work if they were injured. Rake hated the place. Being stuck in a bed meant he was missing training sessions.

‘So . . . what?’ he asked.

‘This is where they bring a lot of the injured Gladiators,’ Snow told him. ‘Mad Jack was
brought
here after his match on Saturday night. You remember how his helmet got knocked off when he was fighting Stamper? And he had all that blood coming out of the cut on his cheek?’

Rake nodded. He remembered it – he watched every match, unless the instructors made him work in the evenings. Stamper had only just started taking part in the Gladiator Games. The fight on Saturday was the first time he had beaten a major star. Mad Jack was a famous Gladiator, but people were already talking about how good Stamper was. They were saying he was the most gifted rookie anyone had seen in years.