The Armoured Ghost Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Characters

  Maps

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: On a Distant Planet

  Chapter 2: Getting Clobbered

  Chapter 3: The Bloodstain

  Chapter 4: Stick Fighting

  Chapter 5: Identity Discs

  Chapter 6: The Investigation

  Chapter 7: Deep Down Underground

  Chapter 8: A Planet of Prisoners

  Chapter 9: Don’t Make a Fuss

  Chapter 10: Oddball’s Phone Call

  Chapter 11: Alone in the City

  Chapter 12: Armoured Combat

  Chapter 13: An Old Enemy

  Chapter 14: The Last Two

  Chapter 15: A Bunch of Misfits

  Chapter 16: A Desperate Message

  Chapter 17: The New Generation

  Chapter 18: The Beating Heart

  About the Author

  Also in The Armouron Series

  Copyright

  About the Book

  THE ARMOURON

  Elite warriors who banded together centuries ago to fight for justice and for freedom.

  PLANET EARTH

  Under the control of a huge corporation, led by the power-mad Chairman.

  THE CADETS

  Trainee gladiators at the Nu-Topian Academy – where something is very, very wrong.

  SALT

  The grizzled old master of the armour workshop, with a secret in his past.

  It’s time for a new generation of the Armouron.

  Time to buckle on the armour and take up the challenge . . .

  But beware the awesome power of the robot-creature known as the Armournaut . . .

  The new generation of the Armouron

  Rake

  Armouron title: Templer, the Fearless

  Role: Strategy and Offence

  Tea-Leaf

  Armouron title: Balista, the Shadow

  Role: Spy and Scout

  Oddball

  Armouron title: Sappar, the Inventive

  Role: Scavenger and Engineer

  Hoax

  Armouron title: False-Light, the Trickster

  Role: Deception and Misdirection

  Snow

  Armouron title: Alida, the Shieldmaiden

  Role: Protection and Evasion

  The Armouron master Salt

  Armouron title: Claymore

  Role: Master Craftsman and Teacher

  The Armouron Code:

  Honour, Duty, Compassion and Justice

  For centuries, an order of knights worked to keep the peace across the galaxy. Mighty warriors, the Armouron Knights fought for Honour, Duty, Compassion and Justice. They battled organized crime and helped defeat cruel dictators. They prevented wars. Life in the galaxy was not perfect, but people knew justice and peace.

  Then, on one planet after another, huge corporations began to seize power. They wanted to control the entire galaxy – and only the Armouron Knights were stopping them. The corporations spread lies about the knights, turning people against them. They sent their private armies to defeat them. Terrible battles were fought but, one by one, the Armouron Knights were captured or killed.

  Now the last of the Armouron are scattered around the edges of the galaxy. Not many are left, and they are getting old. A new generation is needed. Planet Earth is controlled by the Perfect Corporation. They call it a Perfect World, but in truth, it is a prison. Here, on Earth, one of the last knights has come to find some new recruits and train them as warriors.

  Because the galaxy needs the Armouron more than ever . . .

  Chapter 1

  On a Distant Planet

  THE OLD KNIGHT knew that this would be his last battle. He was already badly wounded, his red armour battered and cracked. He hobbled down the deserted street, moving as quickly as his injured legs would allow. Whatever happened, the monster must not get the medallions. Ahead of him was a stone temple, dark against the evening sky. It was shaped like a pyramid, but with a wide square top. It was as old and rundown as the empty, ruined town around it.

  Heavy footsteps followed the knight. The thing did not hurry. It thought it could take its time. But it was wrong.

  The knight backed up against the wall of the temple, taking wheezing breaths, glaring at his enemy. He had wounds in his shoulder, his side and both his legs. His left arm was broken. But his spirit was still strong. The giant figure stopped in front of him, its shadow falling over him.

  ‘YOU HAVE FOUGHT WELL, OLD FOOL,’ the armoured robot said in a cold, mechanical voice. ‘STAND ASIDE AND I MIGHT LET YOU CRAWL AWAY AND DIE IN PEACE.’

  ‘I’m not dead . . . not yet,’ the knight growled at the machine. ‘And I’ve beaten monsters like you before.’

  ‘YOU’VE NEVER FACED ANYTHING LIKE ME,’ the robot told him. ‘WHY DO YOU KEEP FIGHTING WHEN YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T WIN?’

  ‘That’s the difference between us,’ the knight said, gritting his teeth. ‘There’s more to me than a suit of armour. And it takes more than strength to win a fight. But no walking kettle will ever understand that.’

  Wincing with pain, he lifted his sword to swing it at the monster.

  ‘Now, come on! Fight me, you clockwork piece of garbage! Come on!’

  The robot attacked, its sword-strikes crashing down on the knight’s blade like hammer blows. The old man was shocked by the machine’s power and skill. It snarled at him like some kind of animal, grunting as it hit out at him. Robots weren’t supposed to do that. He blocked and deflected as many strikes as he could, stabbing at the robot’s heavy armour. Then his sword broke and only his own armour saved his arm from being cut off.

  Hoping his terror did not show on his face, he held up the stump of his sword, roaring his battle-cry.

  ‘Armouron!’

  But it was hopeless. The fight did not last much longer. With a final howl of despair, the knight was smashed against the wall, slumping to a silent heap on the ground. The robot reached down to pull the medallion out of the knight’s armour. It gave a low hiss as it realized that the totem was fake. There was no power in this useless piece of metal. It tore the old man’s armour apart, searching the body. None of the medallions were there. The knight had tricked him.

  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.

  ‘I had to clean the floor afterwards,’ Snow told him. ‘Normally, the medics clean up the worst of it, so there isn’t a lot left to do. They’re very careful when it’s one of the Gladiators who’s hurt. But this time, they left a bandage on the floor. It was the one they used on Mad Jack’s cheek. I was walking past and I saw it fall. It went in under that trolley there beside the bed. They didn’t spot it when they were clearing up.’

 
‘OK, I know I’m a big fight fan, Snow,’ Rake said to her. ‘But I’m not the weirdo type who collects used bandages, if you’re trying to sell it or anything.’

  Snow shook her head. She walked over to a set of cupboards under a counter at the end of the room.

  ‘You know how the instructors search you when you’ve finished work? In case you’ve stolen anything?’

  Rake nodded. Cadets who worked in the Arena were searched all the time. The instructors never trusted them. Anything that belonged to a famous Gladiator could be sold for a lot of money out in the city.

  ‘I was afraid I’d get searched, so I hid it here,’ Snow told him.

  She took out a box of bandages and rooted around in the bottom of it. Then she lifted a piece of gauze dressing with a white pad wrapped in it. The pad had a bloodstain on it. Rake smiled. She’d hidden a bandage in a box of bandages. Simple, but clever.

  ‘It’s fake,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘The blood on the bandage isn’t real,’ she said, holding it out to him.

  ‘How can you tell?’ He frowned, taking the dressing from her.

  ‘The smell,’ she told him. ‘It smells really sweet, like the fake blood we use in first-aid class. I’d know it anywhere. It reminds me of that really sugary breakfast cereal we get on Fridays.’

  Rake held the bandage up to his nose. She was right – it smelled like the fake blood all the cadets had to work with when they were being taught their first aid. He lowered it and stared at it for a minute.

  ‘It’s really weird, isn’t it?’ Snow said. ‘Mad Jack’s cut must have been fake. But why would they want to make it look like he was hurt in the fight when he wasn’t?’

  Rake thought he knew why, but he didn’t want to say. He wasn’t fond of Stamper, but Mad Jack was one of his favourite fighters. Rake hated to think that either of them might have been cheating in the match on Saturday night.

  ‘It’s just blood on a bandage, Snow,’ he said to her. ‘It doesn’t mean anything on its own. But, I suppose we could . . . no. Look, just forget it. I’ll keep hold of this, just in case. You could get in a lot of trouble if the instructors thought you were nosing around in here. Just forget it, OK?’