11 – Check

Brittany led the group into the golden dome. There was another group of four guards standing in their way as they made their way around the spindly catwalk, trusting Brittany's instincts and memory. She had told them in a hurried whisper as they had crossed the bridge that she thought she knew how to power the generator, so just trust her. First, however, they had to get to where they were going.

The guards were motionless as the four of them approached, until they were standing a mere foot apart from each other. The guard looked down at Brittany.

"Guild Master Jensen... always a pleasure," he growled. "What business do you have here?"

"Business on the upper level, Guild Master Bennett," replied Brittany, making a hurried scan of the man's uniform and fortunately spotting his identity card hanging from his belt. "We have been ordered to inspect the generator. I didn't ask why."

"They trained you well, Guild Master Jensen," replied the man. "Orders are not to be questioned, so I will let you through if you can tell me the password."

"Sustify, Guild Master Bennett."

"Well met." The man and the other three guards stood to one side to let the group through. Brittany paused and turned back to the guard.

"Is the bridge up, Guild Master Bennett?"

"I believe so, Guild Master Jensen."

"Thank you." Brittany turned off the round catwalk and exited the dome through the first door. The four of them walked around to the back of the Gate Room unhindered. There were no guards waiting near the Gate Room, or at least, not near this entrance. The four of them paused, and Brittany pointed at the long pathway that split the top of the golden dome in two.

"The controls are up there, I'm almost certain," she hissed. "The bridge across from the first entrance raises and lowers to allow access to it. We can access the upper level from the Gate Room if the bridge is up, which is why I asked him."

"Oh, is that what you said?" replied Rachel.

"Oh, of course, I forgot you can't understand..." Brittany turned to the Gate Room. There was no door aligned to this entrance, so she pressed the button. A door aligned with the entrance, but when Brittany poked her head into the room the other door had aligned with the steam pipe control entrance. She shook her head and pressed the button twice more, aligning the doors to this entrance and the main front entrance. She stepped boldly into the room, expecting a challenge from guards at the main Gate Room entrance, but there were none. She beckoned the others through the room, then pressed the button twice more to realign the doors. They hurried through the room again and up the raised bridge to the upper level of the dome. Surprisingly, there were no guards there either. The four of them approached the huge marble grid on the ground in the middle of the tunnel.

"We have to place certain marbles in certain locations on the grid, corresponding to the five smaller domes, which Gehn calls Fire Marble Domes. I've worked it all out... it was all on Plateau Island...

"Each dome, when we opened it, had a symbol that we used to open it, remember? Those symbols correspond to colours. The Dome Island dome used a circle with a dot in it."

"That's green, isn't it?" asked Rachel.

"Exactly, Rach," replied Brittany. "The Jungle Island dome used a sort of eye shape with a vertical line in the middle, like this." She pulled out her journal and showed them the drawings of the symbols. "That's red for Jungle Island. The Crater Island dome is a single vertical line, which is purple. The Plateau Island dome was harder to get, because the device to open it was crooked, but I think it was a single horizontal line, which is orange."

"What about the fifth island?" asked Maddy.

"Well... we don't know about that one, but there's only two marbles left, blue or yellow. We'll have to guess which one to use."

"And how do we know where to place them?" asked Jordan.

"Ah, well..." Brittany paused here. Fortunately for her, Rachel came to her rescue.

"Remember the floating building on the Totem Lake on Plateau Island? It was a sort of map room. When you pressed one of the island buttons on the balcony, you could view topographic maps of each island in there. I remember seeing the domes on the maps and thinking that it might help with this thing if I wrote down where they were. May I?" She extracted her journal from her pocket and flicked it open to a small grid she'd drawn. She stepped over to the grid on the ground and picked up the red marble.

"Red is Jungle Island?" The others nodded. "So it goes here." She placed it in the grid. "Green is Dome Island, and it goes here. Purple, Crater Island, here. Orange, Plateau Island, there." She paused. "I know where to place the marble for the fifth island, but which colour should I use?"

"We'll have to guess and check," replied Brittany. "Try the blue."


Grand Master May looked up across the table at Acting Grand Master Feltham. She was studying the position carefully.

"How is GM Meader?" asked May carefully.

"Not well, I'm afraid," replied Feltham. "He'll be off work for at least another week." She moved her knight and looked up at May.

"Not well, huh? My sympathies to him," said May as he, in turn, looked down at the position. "Any word from your guys yet? Any sign of the strangers?" He moved his queen and looked up as Feltham looked down again.

"No, nothing yet. DGM Lewis tells me that AGM Tinen is suffering from acute stress?" She moved her bishop. "Check."

"Yes, I'm afraid so. The Lord Gehn might have made a poor choice appointing him as AGM." He moved his knight.

"How is DGM Lewis coping as AGM in his place? He's too old for too much stress; I guess that's why the Lord Gehn didn't appoint him AGM after he sacked Neil." She castled.

"He's not doing too badly, but still, I'm forced to think that the Lord Gehn made a mistake in sacking Neil. Neither Tinen nor Lewis have been as good at running the Maintainers' Guild as him. I don't think anyone could do quite as well as him, except perhaps Guild Master Jensen. She is GM material, I think." He moved his queen's pawn.

"Oh yes, I quite agree. I really couldn't say how much stress would be involved in running the Maintainers' Guild... the Surveyors' Guild is half the size of the Maintainers' Guild, after all." She moved her knight.

"Indeed. The Maintainers' Guild is the largest of the guilds. Everyone wants to be a Maintainer. Nobody wants to be an Educator any more. We only had a dozen new intakes this year, you know!" He moved his knight.

"Really? Only a dozen? I thought we had it rough. We only took in twenty." She moved her rook. "Check."

"Oh, even a dozen is good compared to poor GM McPherson over in the Books' Guild. He only took on three this year." He moved his bishop.

"And still, the Books' Guild is the most efficient of all of us. The Lord Gehn told me that he wished the Maintainers were as efficient as the Books." She moved her queen's bishop's pawn.

"Ah, we all wish the Maintainers were as efficient as the Books. But now that Neil lost the top job, they're only going to get worse unless Jensen runs for the top job. I think she will, though. She's got a lot of support. If she runs she'll probably win." He moved his king.

"Neil got off lightly, though. The Lord Gehn sacked him in front of you and me, but what about Devery? He sacked her in front of three whole guilds, and GM McPherson." She moved her knight.

"And she got demoted further than Neil did. And a death threat thrown in as well! But it was no secret that the Lord Gehn never liked her. I think he was just waiting for an excuse to sack her." He moved his bishop.

"The Inkmakers' Guild will only get better now, though. I don't know how she ever got the top job." She moved her queen's rook's pawn.

"It's rumoured that she bought a lot of votes. Now that she's got the sack people might come clean and tell us if she bribed them. Do you think AGM Stevens will clean them up?" He moved his knight. "Check."

"Stevens? Probably. He can't be any worse. I think DGM Needham might have been a better choice, though. He might get the top job when they go to vote." She captured his knight with her queen.

"If he runs. He's getting on in years, and cleaning up the Inkmakers will take a lot of work. Can't be any worse than the Maintainers, though. You fell for that good and proper, by the way," he added, as he captured her queen with his bishop.

"No, I'm afraid you did," replied Feltham as she moved her rook. "Checkmate."


The generator was surprisingly quiet once it was running. Brittany led the way back down the stairs and through the Gate Room back to Guild Master Bennett's group of guards. Brittany held her breath as they approached the guards, but they did not appear to have noticed that the generator was now on.

"Returning now, Guild Master Jensen? Completed your inspection?"

"Yes, thank you, Guild Master Bennett. We must hurry back now... sustify."

The guards parted and the four of them strode past and down the drawbridge leading back to Crater Island.

"That went well," hissed Maddy.

"It's not over yet," replied Brittany. The four of them passed the guards outside Gehn's lab and climbed back down the ladder, following Brittany back to the crevice in the rock where they had spent the night. Brittany checked that the four guards were still tied up securely in there before reaching in and grabbing her clothes.

"Come on," she hissed, and the four of them returned to the ladder. They scaled it quickly, but this time went the other way down the stairs inside the cavern, which deposited them at the undergroud Fire Marble Dome. It was closed and spinning at high speed. Brittany closed the door quietly behind her.

"I don't think we'll be disturbed," she hissed. "Now, I'm going to get changed, stop this dome and hope that everything works... including our plan." She darted sideways into the small side passage where the device to stop the dome sat. After a minute the other three heard a small click, and then the dome slowly spun to a stop and flipped open. Inside it looked exactly like a smaller version of the large dome on Dome Island.

Brittany stepped out of the side tunnel, now looking like herself instead of Guild Master Jensen. "Jordan... the book, if you would?"

Jordan extracted the dark green prison book from Guildsman Wood's coat, where he had stowed it, and handed it to Brittany. "There's a code to open the dome, Brittany... I have it written down here." He tore the back page out of his journal and handed it to Brittany. "Good luck."

"I'll need it," replied Brittany. She stepped into the dome, glanced at the piece of paper that Jordan had given her, set the sliders to match the code and pressed the button. The outer shell of the dome swung back into place over the top of her as the golden cover rotated away out of sight. As the dome spun up to speed outside, the pedestal in the centre rose up slightly and a dim light came on above it, illuminating the book sitting innocently on top of the pedestal.

Brittany opened the book. For a split second, the panel on the back right page showed only blackness, but then a picture of a largish office flickered into view in the panel.

Judgement day, thought Brittany, and lowered her hand onto the page.