Death by Chess

Chapter 4

Kim knew only two opening moves. She and Werner had started all their practice games with one or the other. She put her index finger on the computer screen in her tower console, touching the square in front of hers and dragging the Pawn two squares forward. The giant screens at the corners of the chess field instantly showed her move and the voice of the booth announcer boomed it out.

"Kim, the Harlot King, has made the standard opening, ordering the Pawn Samantha to move ahead two squares."

There was an audible clank as Samantha's ankle cuff snapped open. She stepped out of it and walked two squares forward to stand in the hot light of an overhead spot. She was alone now in midfield. The moment she clamped the waiting iron cuff around her ankle the ref blew his whistle again and Lyra, Kim's opponent King, had ten seconds to call the next move. Her response was also standard. She mirrored Kim's move. Half a minute later her own Pawn was standing face to face with Samantha. The two girls glowered at each other. But it was only for team spirit because Pawns could not attack any piece directly in front of them, so these two would never have to fight each other.

Now it was Kim's turn again. She ordered her King's Bishop's Pawn, a girl named Paris, to move up beside Samantha, a direct threat to Lyra's Pawn. Paris had no sooner locked on her cuff, when Lyra ordered her threatened Pawn to attack Paris. The girl's cuff snapped open and she rushed at Paris with her battleaxe held overhead. It was a fatal error that she should have remembered from her training. Paris simply waited for her to swing down, blocked it with her shield and swung her own axe sidearm, catching her attacker in the ribs. The girl screamed, grabbed her side and dropped to her knees. Paris, who had never fully understood the kind of damage her weapon could inflict, gasped in horror at the sight of what she had done. The other girl looked up at her with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. Paris broke into tears and pulled as far back as the cuff on her left ankle would allow. The wounded girl dropped her axe and began to sway, blood gushing through her fingers from the terrible wound. Paris watched in guilty fascination as the referee signaled to the Harlots' harpoon girl. Kicking her horse into action, the blonde rider — a tall beauty named Michelle who was two months pregnant — cantered in and fired a harpoon into the doubled over Vixen Pawn, hitting her in the small of the back. The harpies were trained to aim for the belly or the lower back, whichever side was available, to avoid damage to the valuable breast meat. The harpoon plunged through the girl's kidney and out her navel, the expansion flanges popping open so it could not be yanked out. The horse galloped past, the rope snapped taut and the dying girl was jerked briefly into the air, then dragged backwards to the sideline, screaming and trailing a loop of entrails.

Paris looked as though she might throw up, but Kim had no time to waste worrying about a squeamish Pawn. Her ten seconds had begun the instant the body crossed the sideline and the countdown clock on the arena screens was quickly approaching zero. If she missed the window, she'd lose the turn. Trouble was, she hadn't expected Paris to win. Attacking players had the advantage of being free to strike from any angle. Defending players were pinned to the center of the square by that ankle cuff. With just one second left, she touched her screen, dragging her Bishop diagonally from the square on her right to the fourth row, two squares to the left of Samantha. She heard the cuff clank open and her Bishop, a sturdy but shapely redhead named Glee, gave a startled glance at the arena screen to see a huge closeup of her own face. As the announcer explained the move to the crowd, she gathered her wits and trotted over to her new square, relieved that it was unoccupied and would not require a fight. She slipped the new cuff around her ankle and locked it.

Lyra, somewhat shaken by the loss of her Pawn, dispatched another Pawn, the one in front of her Queen, two squares forward to a position that gave her a choice of attacking Kim's Bishop, Glee, on her diagonal right, or Pawn Samantha on her diagonal left. Of course, that also meant that either Glee or Samantha could attack the Pawn.

For Kim the choice was easy. She ordered Glee to take her down. Lyra must have been coaching her Pawn through her earpiece, because she simply did what Paris had done, waited for the blow with her shield at the ready. But Kim was also coaching Glee. "You have twenty seconds. Take your time. Circle her, start overhand and when her shield comes up, cut the axe around to the side. Then when her hands come down to defend, strike her in the face. GO!" Glee moved in a blur, faking her opponent into raising her shield, slashing under it as it went up and over it as it came down again. With a look of astonishment, the girl toppled backwards on to her ass. A band of blood blossomed across her face and abdomen. Her arms, with the shield and axe, dropped limply by her side. The referee signaled to Michelle. The blonde Harpy galloped to the scene, launched a harpoon into the moaning girl's belly and dragged her off the field of play, leaving a second bloody trail.

During this momentary clearing action, the attention of most of the girls was drawn to the sidelines where the first casualty of the game had been stripped naked except for her helmet. She was still alive and grimacing in pain as she was laid on the steel table with her neck over the track of the radial arm saw. As two crew members held her down, a third grabbed the handle of the saw and in a single smooth motion drew the whirling blade through the girl's neck, neatly severing her head. One of the crew picked up the head and carried it over to the row of stakes on the Harlot's end of the field, impaling it on the first stake. A murmur of approval swept through the crowd as the headless body was trundled out on the gurney to be butchered.

Lyra, shocked by the loss of two Pawns in quick succession and distracted by the closeups on the screens of the head being mounted on the pole, waited one second too long to decide on her next move. A klaxon sounded just as she touched her screen and the PA voice announced that she had lost her turn.

Kim immediately made a modest defensive play, moving her Queen's Pawn up a square to protect Samantha.

Lyra moved still another Pawn to mid board, baffling both Kim and the booth announcers who wondered aloud if she was simply determined to break her run of bad Pawn luck. This time it was her King's Bishop's Pawn who got the call and was now face to face with Paris and theoretically threatening Samantha to her diagonal right.

At this point Kim realized this was nothing like a real chess match. It boiled down to a series of gladiatorial duels carried out within the limitations of chess moves. Lyra clearly was not playing anything vaguely resembling chess strategy. She was simply trying to kill off Kim's team. Well, Kim could do that, too. It was time to get her biggest gun into action. She ordered her Queen, Christie, to make a diagonal run from her starting place in the first row to the east side of the board just beyond midfield. There she was an immediate threat to two Pawns and Lyra herself, who was now in check.

Lyra had to get out of check in her next move or she would be checkmated and her entire team would be slaughtered for meat. As if to emphasize the point, the saw blade sliced through the neck of her second defeated Pawn and the head was picked up for mounting beside the first trophy. The most obvious way out of check was to block Christie's path. With little time to think things through, Lyra dispatched yet another Pawn, a small girl named Eadie, to move up a square and stand in Christie's path. Eadie tried to look brave and menacing, but Christie, at five foot ten and 150 pounds, towered over her by eight inches and outweighed her by forty pounds.

Kim decided to ignore that confrontation for the moment and get more of her forces into the action. She hopped her Queen's Knight to a second row square where it covered both Samantha and Glee, in case either of them were attacked and defeated.

Lyra really wanted to order Pawn Eadie to attack Christie and eliminate the threat from the powerful Queen for good. But if Eadie were defeated, Christie would have her in checkmate again. So instead, she decided to emulate Kim and make a bold move with her own Queen, a feisty, dark-haired girl named Chance with a strong, athletic build. She sent Chance straight forward from her home in Row 8 down to Row 3 to attack the Harlot's Pawn there. Chance, sixteen years old and eager for action, ran down the lighted file, waving her saber over her right shoulder. Kim's Pawn, a girl named Jenna, also sixteen, watched the onrushing Queen with growing terror, trying to guess where the blow would be aimed so she could block it with her shield. But it was hopeless. The saber had a longer reach than the axe and the force of its blow knocked Jenna off balance. She swung with her axe but missed as Chance danced just out of range. The next swing of the sword caught Jenna's upper arm just outside the shield and nearly severed it. She staggered, made one last attempt to swipe at Chance with her axe, but hit only air. A moment later the sharp blade of the saber sliced her left breast in half and she fell backwards, blood geysering from her split chest. Chance straddled the girl's prone body and followed up with a saber thrust into her heart. Jenna gasped, shuddered, and lay still as Chance stepped away. The Vixen harpy charged on to the field astride a handsome black stallion, galloped up to Jenna's corpse, fired a harpoon into it and dragged it away.

Kim knew this Queen was bad news and had to be destroyed or the game was over. Two Harlot pieces were in a position to attack: Bishop Glee and a Pawn named Autumn. Glee had a whip and a dagger; Autumn had a battleaxe and a shield. Neither seemed a match for Chance's deadly saber. With only three seconds left, she decided she had to use Glee because losing Autumn's Pawn position would open an easier avenue for Chance to put her in checkmate.

The instant Glee's ankle was released she lunged forward cracking the whip in Chance's face. But Chance dodged it, parrying with the sword in an effort to sever it. The whip merely glanced off the edge of the sword. Glee was not close enough to use her dagger, so she backed out of range of Chance's sword and prepared to attack again. This time she began a series of whip snaps at different levels as she slowly closed in. If any one of them struck Chance it would open a wound. Hopefully the pain would distract her long enough for Glee to step in with a dagger thrust. But the Queen also had a shield and used it to block the vicious snaps of the whip. Glee knew her only hope to use the dagger would be to get in very close. That would also neutralize the effect of the long saber. She began to vary the cracks of the whip high then low then high, getting into a pattern, hoping to vary it suddenly and catch the Queen by surprise. A gash opened up on Chance's knee, and another on her right shoulder, making her yip. But instead of getting sucked into a defensive pattern, Chance squatted as though taking a pee. Now, protected by her helmet, shield and boots, she was nearly impossible to hit. Glee circled quickly, striking constantly with the whip, but causing no damage. Chance simply turned on the axil of her leg cuff to keep facing the onslaught.

Suddenly Glee yelled "OW! OW! OW!" and hopped around clutching her crotch. The announcer clarified the situation. "The Harlots' Bishop has received a strong and very painful shock in her vagina for failing to attack with a lethal weapon within twenty seconds. She has another ten seconds to do so or will receive a far worse shock."

Glee stopped hopping abruptly as the implanted taser was switched off. Tears ran down her face as she took a new grip on the whip and dagger. She tried to wrap the end of the bullwhip around Chance's throat to pull her off balance, but in doing so she came within the reach of the Queen's saber and with a single horizontal slash both her breasts were split open at the nipples. Screaming with pain and outrage, Glee lunged in with her dagger, plunging it in under Chance's right rib cage. Chance grunted, pushed her away and slashed again, this time catching Glee in the neck. Glee, horrified by the gush of blood pouring down her body, froze long enough for Chance to stab the saber deep into her chest. Dropping her own weapons, Glee wrapped her fingers around the steel blade protruding from her body as though to hold it in place, and sank to her knees. She remained there staring at it, coming to grips with death as the referee signaled the black horse and its blonde rider to come collect her. Chance yanked her saber out of Glee's chest, slicing off two of the girl's fingers in the process. She stepped out of the way just as the harpoon smashed into the dying Bishop's belly.

Despite the savagery of her wounds, Glee was still alive as her naked body was laid on the steel table and decapitated. Her head with its Bishop's hat joined Pawn Jenna's on the trophy stakes at the Vixen's end of the field.

Reveling in this crucial triumph, Lyra immediately ordered her Queen to attack Holly, the Harlot Knight, who was directly in front of her and standing right next to Kim. Killing Holly would force a showdown with Kim for a quick, relatively bloodless (for her team) victory.

A Knight, however, was a distinctly more dangerous opponent than a Bishop. Knights carried two-handed broadswords which could cleave a girl nearly in two with a single swipe. They could easily take off a limb or a head. But Chance was buoyed by her victory over Glee and attacked the moment her ankle cuff clicked open. Holly was no pushover, however. She was a husky girl who, at five foot eleven, was two inches taller than Chance and had taken her training seriously. She was attractive, but because of her size (175 pounds) and a face that the inspectors found "too masculine," had only made Grade 4, chuck grade. She was sixteen which meant she would be activated and slaughtered for ground meat the day she turned seventeen. This game was her chance to survive longer. Kim had chosen her to be one of the two Knights on the Harlot team because her size and strength enabled her to wield the heavy two-handed sword with ease.

Chance came at her with a roundhouse slash of the saber which Holly flicked away with the broadsword, knocking the smaller weapon out of Chance's hand. Chance dropped to the ground and rolled away from Holly's return slash, springing to her feet and out of range to review her options. She seriously doubted that her shield would offer much protection from the broadsword. Even a glancing blow off the shield could take off her arm! But her twenty seconds were ticking away and she had to attack again. She decided her only hope was to trick Holly with a feint and move in before she could recover. Trying to look confident, she picked up her saber and lurched toward Holly with the start of a back-handed slash. As she had expected, Holly positioned her sword to block it. But it never arrived at Holly's sword. Instead, she wheeled it overhead past Holly's sword and in a fast underhand windup whipped it up into Holly's crotch. The sharp blade hit directly between the labia and severed the stitches holding the taser in her vagina. It also ripped through much of the surrounding flesh, greatly lengthening her slit. Holly screamed and doubled over, giving Chance just enough time to hack at her neck and back, opening frightful gashes and unleashing a tidal flow of blood. Holly realized she was mortally wounded and tried to strike back at her killer out of sheer fury, but only succeeded in taking a slice out of Chance's upper right arm. Infuriated by the pain, Chance returned the blow fivefold with her lighter weapon, opening bloody gashes in the Knights face, breasts, belly and thighs. She stopped, gasping for breath, only when Holly fell heavily to the ground, scrabbling at her wounds and keening in pain. A few moments later a harpoon drove into her lower back and she was dragged away in the slick of her own blood.

Panting, her arm drenched in blood, her abdominal wound on fire and bleeding heavily, Chance glared up at Kim on her tower. She knew full well that Kim had only one choice. She was in check and her only available move was to attack Chance with her last Bishop, a girl named Sara. Sara was five nine, the same height as Chance, though not as muscular. Chance had already demonstrated the superiority of her saber over a Bishop's whip and a dagger. On the other hand, her right hand was growing weak and the pain from the gash further up the arm made every movement intensely agonizing. It was bleeding even more than the stab wound. She held the sword up so the blood wouldn't get on the haft and make it slippery, but it was running in a stream off her elbow.

Kim was mentally kicking herself as she made the play on her computer screen. How could she have let herself get trapped like this? All that stood between her and disaster was Sara's courage and skill with that foolish bullwhip and dagger. If only she could fight Chance herself! But Chance had her in check and the rules forbade it.

Sara felt her ankle cuff snap open and braced herself for a contest she had to win. She reminded herself that she had chosen this course in preference to going meekly to the abattoir. A glance at the heads of her late companions on poles at the enemy's end of the field helped harden her resolve. She had three factors in her favor. First, she was fresh where Chance had just finished two battles. Second, Chance was wounded and her sword arm looked to be in bad shape. Third, Chance was once again chained to the ground whereas Sara could move around freely.

She moved in close enough to Chance to start flicking her whip at the Queen's arm wound. Chance quickly turned sideways to keep her left side and shield toward Sara, her damaged arm as far from the bite of the whip as possible. But that made her slashes with the saber far less effective, both because of the bad angle and the increasing difficulty of making her sword arm function. Sara kept an eye on the countdown clock; she had to make a credible strike with the dagger before these first twenty seconds expired or she'd start getting zapped as Glee had, which, aside from the pain, would impact her effectiveness as a fighter. Dropping back to the appropriate distance, she curled the whip around Chance's back so that the tip snapped into the wound. Chance screamed and involuntarily twisted away from the whip and toward Sara who was instantly upon her, plunging the dagger into her belly. She stabbed the surprised Queen three more times before the hilt of Chance's saber smashed into her face, knocking her away. Chance kicked her hard in the crotch to distract her from a second attack and then used both hands to bring the edge of the saber down hard into her neck. Sara staggered, but as Chance wound up for another stroke, Sara, slashed upward with the dagger, ripping the Queen's right forearm open from elbow to wrist, exposing a bone. Suddenly Chance was unable to grip the saber and it fell to the artificial turf. As she gazed in horror at the fountain of blood spurting from her arm, Sara drove the dagger into her heart. Chance twisted to the ground, her eyes glazing over as the ref signaled the Vixen Harpy.

Sara knelt down and removed the open cuff from the dead Queen's ankle and snapped it on her own. She tried to look up and high-five Kim in the adjacent square but discovered she couldn't turn her head. She also took notice for the first time of the copious flow of blood washing down over her left breast and arm. She felt cold and her body was beginning to shake as she tried to stand up. She realized she was about to pass out. She realized, in fact, that she was dying. The Queen's parting blow had opened her own arteries and she was watching her life flow into the ground. Oh well , she thought, they'd have cut my throat anyway in the abattoir. This was more fun.

While Kim struggled with the mixture of relief that she had escaped the trap she'd so stupidly fallen into, and guilt that she had purchased it with the death of her friend Sara, Lyra, at the other end of the field, was furious. It had been a perfect trap! How could her goddamned wimp of a Queen have failed? Now she faced a similar threat from Kim's Queen, Christie. At the moment Pawn Eadie was blocking the check, and she could certainly have Eadie attack Christie. But what were the chances with that? The Queen with her long, swift saber should easily be able to deal with a clumsy battleaxe; then, with Eadie dead, Lyra would be right back in check and on the run. With time running out, she decided to jump her King's Knight to the square directly in front of her as a backup for Eadie because the next jump would land the Knight on Eadie's square. If Queen Christie attacked and killed Eadie, the Knight would pounce on Christie with the advantage of an attacker's mobility.

But Kim did not attack the Pawn with her Queen. Not yet. First she castled. The Rook on her left moved to her side through the now empty back row squares and she moved around to the opposite side of the Rook. This left the Rook facing an empty file that ended on the square next to Lyra. Lyra would no longer be able to move in that direction because that would be moving into check by the Rook, which was illegal. She was also penned in by the Bishop on her left and the Knight now directly in front of her. There was only one other square she could move into: the one between her and Eadie. The trap was three-quarters closed.

Lyra decided to give herself another layer of protection from the threat of Kim's Queen. She moved the Rook on her left from her corner position to the neighboring square recently vacated by the Knight. Now Eadie was backed up by a Pawn, a Knight and a Rook. That should keep the fucking Harlot bitch Queen busy! Surely one of those three would kill her.

For the first time since being nearly trapped herself, Kim could smile. She ignored Eadie and, instead, ordered Christie to attack the backup Pawn who stood directly in front of the corner square from which Lyra had just pulled her Rook.

The Pawn did not look at all thrilled so see Christie trotting toward her, saber in hand. Her name was Kellie, a seventeen-year-old M3 with eyes almost as black as her hair. She had the sumptuous figure Musgrave meat girls were known for, but her legs were too short and her nose too long for Prime or Standard grade. With her birthday only days away and activation as Oven meat practically assured, she had jumped on the chance not only to extend her life but add some of the perks the Prime girls enjoyed. As with most girls bred for meat, she wasn't afraid to die, but she was afraid of pain. She planted herself and waited to block the first saber cut with her shield, holding the axe out to the side ready for a quick follow through, as she had been trained.

Christie fooled her. Instead of attacking with a slash or thrust of the saber, she crashed into Kellie's axe hand with her shield. Before Kellie could recover her balance and fighting posture, the saber blade had wacked into her throat, cutting her windpipe and jugular vein. Christie danced back and simply watched as the stunned Pawn gazed down at the blood cascading over her abundant breasts, over her flat belly and into the crevasse of her sex. She looked up into the sympathetic eyes of her killer. That didn't hurt so bad , she thought as her vision tunneled to a pinpoint. Nor did she feel the impact of her body on the ground as she crumpled to earth, her battleaxe still clenched in her hand.

Lyra's first reaction to the move had been astonishment that Kim passed up an attack on Eadie in order to take out the Pawn guarding her flank. Her next reaction was incredulity that Christie had killed Kellie so swiftly. Her third reaction was horror! She was about to be checkmated by Kim's Rook! If that Rook were to slide into the empty square on her right hand side, she'd have nowhere to go; she was still penned in by her Knight and Bishop, and now by Kim's Queen as well. Damn the rule that she couldn't fight her own way out of a check! She understood the reason for it: to keep the game from boiling down to a matter of the biggest, strongest King. But at this point it seemed grossly unjust, just as it had to Kim several moves earlier.

In a panic, with only a second left on the clock, she moved the electronic Knight on her computer screen to the middle of the empty file to block the Rook. The human Knight, Sheila, was a twenty-two-year-old ex-Pleasure Girl, a black haired, blue eyed beauty who had put on too much weight and been demoted to M2 — Standard Grade meat. She had saved herself from activation by signing up for the game. She figured she was tall enough and brawny enough at five-ten and 163 pounds to take on the toughest competition. She'd provided plenty of rough sex for some very burly customers during her six years of pleasure duties and loved it. Now she was looking forward to the ultimate sexual excitement of mortal combat. She had been watching the butchers on the sidelines decapitating the casualties of the game. It generated a pleasant tingling in the center of her sex. Sheila was highly competitive and looked forward to slaying this Rook, but the idea of being held down, helpless, while her head was sliced off was a rush in itself. A win-win situation for Lyra's Knight.

The Rook, Melody, was Sheila's diametrical opposite. She was a lovely ash blonde with soft gray eyes, a sweet face, pale clear complexion and a small perfectly proportioned body. Unfortunately she carried a defective gene that would give her offspring a 50% chance of having cerebral palsy. With the prospect of having to destroy so many of her babies, the Company determined that she did not meet minimum production potential for Breeders and was classified as M1. She, too, was put in service as a Pleasure Girl, but two years of licking, sucking and fucking crude oafs who treated her like a slab of liver were more than enough. At eighteen she had decided to volunteer for activation and go out in a tidal wave of orgasms as a live roaster. But when offered the chance to be a chess gladiator instead, she jumped at it. How much sweeter it would be to be killed by other girls in honest combat, rather than by some dumbfuck chef basting her over a fire pit — even though it meant foregoing the orgasms.

Kim hesitated through fifteen of her twenty seconds, afraid that big Sheila would make mincemeat of little Melody. On the other hand, she had been consistently impressed by Melody's amazing coolness and confidence during training. Besides, if Melody managed to survive, this game could be put away quickly with most of her team intact. She made the move on the computer screen and the arena announcer immediately went into a paroxysm of speculations over the David and Goliath matchup.

Sheila smiled as Melody advanced up the file toward her. This girl couldn't be more than five foot three and couldn't weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Sheila hefted her broadsword, raising it in front of her, saluting her brave little victim. She thought she might toy with her a while to please the crowd, then cut her in two with a mighty swing. Or perhaps lop off her pretty little head. That would be fun. Not that Sheila had anything against her. She was probably no worse than any of the other snotty, pampered, bitch Primes with their perfect fucking bodies. Let's see how her perfect little head would look on a pole!

Melody stopped just short of Sheila's sword range. Her pike, its steel tip glinting under the overhead lights, was nearly twice as tall as she was. Now she lowered it to horizontal, holding it above and slightly outside her right shoulder, her hands well spread on its thick wooden shaft to give her maximum control. Sheila waited, both hands on her broadsword. She was under no pressure to strike and could wait patiently for the little Rook to make the first move. She could see that Melody's twenty seconds were nearly up. Melody made a soft thrust at the tall Knight, but corkscrewed the pike so that Sheila's powerful parrying swipe missed it entirely. Before Sheila could bring the sword up again for the next parry, it was too late. Melody had driven it hard into Sheila's right shoulder. Both girls twisted away from each other, Sheila gasping in pain as blood poured down her side from the nasty gash. Furious, she made a few futile swings of the sword but couldn't connect with the wiry little Rook. The second swing, however, left her just enough off balance that she could do nothing about the point of the pike as it drove into her abdomen. She dropped her sword and grabbed the pike, reflexively trying to pull it out, but the damned little Rook was leaning on it. Sheila reached out to grab her and pull her off it, but she was too far back on the long shaft. The Knight stumbled backwards, the pain beginning to blur her ability to think. What was the fucking bitch Rook doing? She was twisting the pike, drilling it deeper into her belly, chewing her inner organs into a bloody mass of incredible agony! Suddenly it was yanked out, right through Sheila's hands. Then it was back, plunging into her right breast, right under the nipple! Sheila knew she was finished. Blood bubbled into her mouth with her next breath and ran down her chin. With a terrible searing pain the pike was once again torn out of her body. A gush of blood followed its exit. Sheila was strangling. She tried to inhale but could only cough a spray of bloody foam. She watched helplessly as the diminutive Rook reached back and hurled the pike one more time. It drove all the way through her left side, just below the rib cage. I'll be damned , she thought, and looked to the end of the field where Kellie's head was just being mounted on a pole. Mine will be right next to hers. The image blossomed in her mind, along with a vision of her headless body being carved up for steaks, as she folded over, collapsing into a puddle of her own blood. The crowd watched her twitching, unaware that it was not from pain but from the tumultuous rush of her final orgasm, as the harpy charged in taking aim with her harpoon gun.

Melody calmly removed the ankle cuff from the dying Knight and clamped it on her own ankle.

Lyra was pinned. Christie, the Harlot Queen, controlled the row in front of her so she couldn't move forward. Melody, the Harlot Rook controlled the file on her right and her own Bishop blocked her on her left. Her only hope was to have Melody killed. That job fell to the Bishop. She sent her forward three diagonal squares to block and confront the Rook. Melody would have to knock off the Bishop to re-establish control of that file. Even then, there was a Pawn on the Bishop's flank who would attack her again. Hopefully, Lyra was thinking, one of them, the Bishop or the Pawn, would kill this damned pint-sized Rook.

But Kim wasn't buying into Lyra's plan. She ordered her Queen, Christie, to attack Lyra's Rook instead.

This Rook, still standing in the home square of the now deceased knight, was much more physically imposing than Melody. The name the Company had given her at birth was July, but, as these things go, it had transmogrified into "Julie" within a week. She was five-eight, a solid 145 pounds, well shaped and equipped with an eye-popping veranda. But she was, by anyone's standards, plain of face. Therefore she had been graded M3 — Oven Grade meat. Not attractive enough for spit roasting but abounding in firm, flavorful breast and rump meat. She would have been in the abattoir on her seventeenth birthday for slaughter, but had signed up to take her chances in the game instead. Now she was facing her first — and possibly only — fight.

To everyone watching, this was obviously a very different matchup from the previous contest. Christie was far more competent than Sheila had been, and was better equipped. Julie was almost as tall as Christie and weighed only a few pounds less, but she was entirely lacking in the cool demeanor Melody had shown. Furthermore, Melody, as the attacker, had had the advantage of free movement, whereas Julie, as the defender, was chained to the middle of her square. When Melody had attacked Kellie, she had held her pike over her shoulder where she could either thrust it or throw it. Julie was holding hers at her side, her eyes fixed on Christie's deadly saber.

Christie, ever aware of the twenty-second clock, moved into Julie's square. The keyed-up Rook jabbed her pike twice at the oncoming Queen, but it was easily parried away by the saber. Julie swung it back for a third thrust, but not quickly enough. Christie had caught her rhythm and moved inside the third thrust to flick the tip of her saber across the frightened Rook's throat. A red line appeared, opening into a gaping wound. Julie was still trying to get her pike back into play, but Christie had grabbed it. Julie made a desperate attempt to snatch her dagger out of its sheath, but Christie rammed her sword deep into the terrified girl's stomach. Julie grunted and froze, her eyes wide. Christie yanked the saber free, grabbed Julie's right shoulder to steady her and plunged the blade into her left breast, splitting her heart in two. The focus drained from Julie's eyes and she sank to her knees, shivered once and fell over sideways at Christie's feet. Christie pulled her sword out of the dead girl's body and stepped back to let the harpy gallop in and tend to her grisly chore.

Lyra was now in check by Christie! Instinctively Lyra moved into the square behind her impotent Bishop. She knew it was hopeless, but she could not bring herself to resign. She wanted desperately to live!

Christie could hardly wait for her next order from Kim. It came without hesitation. Kim moved her to the white square diagonally behind the Vixen King. It was over. In regular chess Lyra could simply have captured the Queen. But these rules were fatally different.

The voice of the Chief Referee sealed it. "The Vixen King is checkmated! The victory goes to the Harlots!