by C. G. Hatton
This was how the guild worked, how the entire galaxy worked. I never understood its intricacies. Money talked, I knew that. But the relationships and the mutual back-scratching, and wheeling and dealing…? I’m supposed to be smart and I still don’t get it. Except I know I don’t like it. And the worst thing…? I was leaving Imogen alone with that dangerous idiot Tenaka.
Matron nodded, forced a grim smile and stuck out her hand. They shook, Mother gripping Matron’s paw in both her white silk gloved hands for possibly a moment too long, and that was it. They didn’t even let us go back to our dorms for our things, not that I had anything there with me that I cared about. A deck of cards I had in my locker but it wasn’t Charlie’s, that was on the Alsatia.
We were ushered out into the bright sunshine of the courtyard and into a waiting limousine.
Mother sat opposite us and tore off her gloves the instant the door closed, loosening her scarf and fixing me with a glare that was as cold as the poles on Winter.
I opened my mouth to protest my innocence.
She held up her hand, fingers rigid with tension. “You screwed up.” Her voice was frosty, all hint of motherly concern evaporating, reverting back to good old Field Agent Sotheby, bane of my life. “You want to make it at the guild, boys, you take every chance you get to establish the IDs you’re given. You especially take deep cover operations like this seriously. This is not a game. It’s taken us more money than you can imagine to get the two of you embedded in this school. And you blow it over a dare? I must say I’m not surprised at you, Anderton.” She cast a more disgusted look at Hilyer. “But you…? You set off a beacon because a stupid prank went wrong?”
A beacon? Shit. It hadn’t even occurred to me to set off an emergency beacon. That at least partly explained how she’d got here so fast.
We must have been secure. Shielded. It had to be for her to feel safe enough to be talking like this.
Hil took a moment to answer, breathing calmly, hooking a finger into his tie and pulling it loose as he looked across at me. “It’s all yours, bud. You’re the one that did it.”
Sotheby glowered at him and switched her glare to me, with a suspicious, “Did what?” pointedly unimpressed.
A pulse of adrenaline hit my chest just at the thought of it. I had to take a second to make sure my voice didn’t shake. “We found McIntyre.”
Chapter 8
When the Thieves’ Guild hustles, it hustles fast. We were on board the Alsatia and in front of NG within two days.
“Blackstone has a ledger? At Westinghouse?” NG looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, still wearing combat gear, dried mud on his boots and jacket. There was a pile of weapons on the table, fresh from a battle by the looks of them, a scattering of paper maps, and more data boards scrolling what looked like satellite imagery.
Wherever he’d just come from, he hadn’t even taken off his belt. He unbuckled it then, placing it, holsters, pouches and all, on top of the pile, and came across to perch on the front edge of his desk. He had a cold tang about him, not so much gun oil as the sharp hint of explosives.
The Chief was in there, glowering at us, Sotheby and Mendhel standing to the side, both of them with their arms folded across their chests.
In the two years since we’d been extricated from the attack on the Academy, the guild had been hunting McIntyre and Spearhead, actively, relentlessly hunting them. No one messes with the Thieves’ Guild? Yeah, well, McIntyre and Spearhead had messed with the guild and got a load of its best people killed. But they’d vanished. No one had turned up anything on either of them, and nothing on the black ops programme we’d been sent to after Redemption.
NG knew about McIntyre’s ledger. Everyone did. I’d told Mendhel when we got back from the Academy. No one had reprimanded me for not mentioning it before. I’d not had a chance. After Kheris, the guild had known I’d tried to transfer Dayton’s money to Maisie but then I’d been thrown straight into training for Redemption. I hadn’t hidden what I knew about McIntyre, I’d buried it, fast and deep, along with everything else. When we got back after Redemption, Hil had dragged me into Mendhel’s office and forced me to stand there and admit it. I’d given them every line, every number, every alphanumeric digit and symbol. It had taken me days. Wiped me out completely. But even then, without a main cypher, it had been impossible to work out exactly what all of it was referring to. It had been too well obscured. Esoteric codes and layers of obfuscation.
I glanced at Mend, not sure if we were supposed to answer but he gave me a nod, encouraging. We weren’t totally exonerated but just mention of that name had kicked this whole situation into a different sphere.
“Hidden under a FailSafe. Same codes, same cypher,” I said, keeping my voice quiet.
NG’s office was like that, like you didn’t want to speak too loud to disturb the peaceful ambiance of the place. Even kitted out as he was, in battle-worn combat gear, NG exuded calm, controlled but in a way that was so natural you couldn’t help but feel that everything was okay.
Even so it was taking me a huge amount of effort to stand still, stomach churning and that dark ominous dread tugging at the back of my skull. “I’ve got it all. Some of it’s identical, some lines are different.”
I could tell from his expression that he saw right off the implications of that. Massive implications. If we could align the two, we could crack them wide open.
“I’ve only broken some of it,” I admitted before he could speak. “There’s a chunk that has a deeper level of encryption.”
“And McIntyre…?”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat as the picture flashed into my mind. “Was at Derren Bay with Blackstone. There’s a photograph on his wall. Both of them in uniform with two other officers.”
NG stared at me, dark eyes piercing. “It was definitely McIntyre?”
The image of the photograph was seared into my memory in perfect detail.
I knew it was him. I’d recognise him anywhere.
And I knew it was Derren Bay. Right after the invasion of the Kholby townstead, after the rebels had been wiped out. I recognised it from reports I’d read, smoke spiralling from the ruined buildings in the background behind them, behind the DZ they were posing with, as if any of them would have seen actual front-line combat. I knew what had happened at Derren Bay. I’d read more than the official reports.
I nodded, heart thumping, and I couldn’t help myself asking, “Did you know?”
“That Blackstone knew McIntyre?” NG shook his head. “No. Otherwise we wouldn’t have sent you there. And that we didn’t turn anything up in their records to link them means that someone was working hard to sever that link.”
NG had a way of speaking that made you know he was telling the truth. No doubt about it.
I glanced at the weapons thrown haphazardly onto the table where we usually played cards. Every meeting I’d ever had in that office on Twelve, there’d be a deck of cards and we’d played, either poker, mean queen or memory games. And now there was a pile of rifles and handguns on there, all spattered with mud and what looked like blood, and I could hear the explosions, and the screams. I could smell the smoke. Feel the gun at the back of my neck.
“Luka…”
I blinked and looked up, adrenaline pounding.
Even then, that was all it took to throw me back to Kheris.
“What’s your current record for M3?”
I blinked again at the sound of his voice.
I could feel my heart beating, hear the air conditioning unit, even as quiet as it was, aware of Hilyer at my side, Mendhel there with us.
I could breathe again. I swallowed and whispered, “Three twenty four.”
Andreyev’s record was two fifty nine. I needed to shave twenty-five minutes off my time to get under three hours.
NG regarded me for a moment longer then said, “Good. You did well at Westinghouse. Both of you.” He started to shrug out of his combat jacket, moving as if he was sore, and
turned to Mendhel and the Chief. “I want that intel. All of it. And these two stay under the radar. Off the list. Get them back in the Maze, take them out to Aston, I don’t care, just keep them under wraps. Get a team into Westinghouse. Let’s see if we can figure out if these two things are connected.”
I didn’t know what two things. I should have asked. I don’t know how much difference it would have made if I had. But I do know that nothing was the same from the minute I hacked into McIntyre’s ledger at that school.
Mendhel took us back to Acquisitions and told me I had an hour to get cleaned up and grab something to eat before he wanted me to get started. Being off the list sucked. You had to be on the list to be assigned a tab. And you had to run tabs to get points on the standings board.
Hil shrugged it off, sent me a cocky, “Good luck, bud,” and disappeared into his quarters. We had separate rooms by then, next to each other, like we were real guild operatives and not kids anymore. I took a fast, cold shower, then stood at my locker with just a towel around my waist. I’d left everything here when we were sent to Westings, not sure what to expect and not wanting anything of value with me. Ironic, considering the company we’d ended up keeping out there, not that my idea of valuable was anything like theirs.
It felt like I needed my stuff back now. I snapped Charlie’s band back onto my wrist, flexing my fist as it connected with my bloodstream, and checking the lockpick was still hidden inside its edge, pulling it half out and letting it vanish back into its hiding place. Then I slipped the same hand through Latia’s knotted bracelet, my good luck charm, letting it nestle up against the cool black of Charlie’s wristband. The stones warmed up instantly on contact with my skin. Maybe I did need my great-grandmother’s luck after all.
I took out Charlie’s pocket knife and dog tags, holding them for a second, heart pounding double time, then slid them back into my locker for safekeeping. I dressed in basic field-op kit, pulling a plain black tee shirt over my head and feeling like I was me again. There’s something oppressive about wearing a uniform. School, military, whatever. Even just that word, uniform. I’d never understood how Charlie could take orders from idiots who knew less than he did. I still hadn’t figured out how Hil had fitted in so well at that school. I don’t know why. I wasn’t a little kid anymore. If I’d still been on Kheris, and if none of that had happened, I’d have been pulled into the resistance by now. I would have been given a gun and told to go fight for the cause.
I closed my locker and leaned my forehead against the cool metal, feeling the knotted stones warm on my wrist. There was no going back. And I had no choice but to not care.
Walking through Acquisitions it was obvious something was kicking off. You got used to that on the Alsatia, especially in our neck of the woods. The grunts were constantly getting pulled off into active theatre here, there and everywhere, sometimes gone for months at a time.
I didn’t know where Sienna was but she wasn’t on board. I was missing her. In the brief time I’d had before going up to see NG on level Twelve I hadn’t been able to find anyone who knew where she’d been sent. I didn’t have a chance then either. Mendhel was waiting for me in the briefing room. This time they had a medic to hand already. The guy checked me over, gave me a shot of something, pressed a bottle of water into my hand and stood back, waiting.
There was a board on the table. Mend looked at me with something like an apology in his eyes as I took the seat and picked up the pen. It wasn’t as easy as downloading the intel from the Senson straight into the system. I had to translate it. See it, switch it round as I deciphered it and write it down long hand. Like I used to for Dayton on Kheris. My stomach was in knots, nausea swirling, and a flash of blue sky and red dust flickering behind my eyes. I didn’t want the guild to find McIntyre. I never wanted to see that bastard again. But I knew the guild would never be safe so long as he was out there.
The board lit up as I nudged it. I could do this.
I closed my eyes and dragged the ledger up from the depths of the well I’d dropped it into.
It took me two weeks. I passed out twice, had to go to Medical once when my nose started bleeding again, and I slept for three days straight afterwards. I hadn’t cracked the cypher entirely but I’d matched up some of the data enough that Mendhel had argued with the Chief and said that would do for now. I wanted to crawl into a hole but I just crawled into my bunk and crashed out.
I woke in a cold sweat, chest heaving, a scream at the back of my throat, and no idea where I was, scrambling to get clear of sheets that had tangled round my legs like they’d imprisoned me. I bumped up against the bulkhead and sat there, breathing through it, red light illuminating a desk, locker, a pile of kit abandoned on the floor. I was on the Alsatia. Safe. In my quarters on the Alsatia. I had no memory of the nightmare no matter how much I tried to recall it.
Within five minutes there was a quiet rap at the door and Mendhel came in without waiting. We were monitored every second we were on board or out on a tab, life signs and vitals at least, if not active eavesdropping. Someone must have told him I was awake.
He pulled up my desk chair and sat by the bed. “You okay?”
I was sitting there drenched in sweat, shivering and struggling to breathe, but I nodded.
“Good,” he said. He threw a board onto my lap, a weird look on his face as if he had good news and bad news and wasn’t sure where to start.
It fired up as I touched it. The standings. My name at fifty seventh, Hil at thirty second. We’d been down in the two hundreds before Westings. “How…?”
Mendhel gave me a half smile. “NG gave you both a shed load of points for the intel you brought back. You got a cash bonus for cracking the ledger. There’ll be another one when you finish it. I assumed you’d want me to…”
I nodded vaguely. I didn’t care about the cash. I trusted Mendhel to do what he’d promised. What I did care about was that standings board. I stared at it. Fifty six field-ops ahead of me, including Hil. NG had wiped the board clear and made everyone start from scratch when he’d taken over as head of guild ops, six months before we’d turned up on their doorstep. All the other field-ops were older than us, more experienced than us and had a six month head start. But we’d just jumped almost two hundred places after one tab? The Man’s tab for the amulet was worth enough points for me to leap right to the top.
I looked up. “But we’re off the list?”
“You are off the list.” Emphasis on ‘you’.
I blinked. “What about Hil? Where is he?”
I was checking even as Mendhel was taking in a deep breath.
“He’s out on a tab.”
My stomach flipped. “He’s back on the list?”
Mend nodded. “Don’t worry. Sanchez and Ayling are with him.”
I wasn’t worried about him, I was pissed that he was on the list and I wasn’t.
“And he’s got Skye.”
Skye had switched her core from the Thundercloud into a fast little flitter by then, just to team up with Hil. She’d been in orbit the whole time we were at Westings. It was weird.
“He’ll be fine,” Mendhel said.
I knew he would be. But like an idiot, I couldn’t help blurting out, “How come he’s on the list and I’m not?”
Mendhel took back the board and stood, looking down at me as if he was trying to figure out what to say. “Have you been having nightmares?” he asked eventually.
I didn’t answer. My heart was racing. I could hardly deny it.
“Flashbacks?”
“No.” The lie was automatic and wouldn’t have convinced anyone.
“How’s the knee?”
I couldn’t help rubbing it even as I said, “Fine.”
Mend gave a little shake of his head. “LC…” He tapped the board against his leg like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “Luka… I hate to say this, but the Chief wants you to pass a Paninski before they’ll let you out again.”
Gre
at.
Chapter 9
Mendhel stopped me before I went in to see the guild psych, holding my shoulder and sending privately through the Senson, “Be honest with them. You want to pass this and get back on the list, be honest with them. You have nothing to hide.”
I had plenty to hide. Mend was one of the few people I’d talked to, really talked to after Kheris, then after Redemption. I still hadn’t told him everything. I can remember thinking right then at that moment that if anyone at the guild had been able to read my mind, I’d have been thrown out of an airlock long before then. Ironic, huh?
Problem I had was that for all being a smart ass with an eidetic memory had its advantages, Paninski had me beat. Every time. Didn’t matter what I tried, how hard I worked at it, how long I studied the patterns and results, I couldn’t beat it. I couldn’t figure out what the right answers were, what it wanted, what I was supposed to do.
I was only on the standings board at all because Mendhel had argued I was an exception, and for some reason as head of all guild operations NG had overruled the Chief of Acquisitions and waived me through to put me on the list. I don’t know what they saw in me and I couldn’t help feeling that I was letting them down. I’d heard some of the other handlers saying they didn’t know why Mend put up with me. I don’t know why he did.
The psychologist gave me the kind of look that suggested she’d had a shit day already and wasn’t too chuffed that I’d turned up as her next in line. It didn’t help that I was still tired. A Paninski was the last thing I needed. But I sucked it up, dug deep, and spent the next five hours failing it again.
When they set me loose, Mendhel walked me back to Ops, told me not to be despondent and took me straight to the Maze, telling me to work it off, there was plenty of time, and anyway, I still had to crack that last bit of Blackstone’s ledger. It helped but he was never going to be able to help me pass a Paninski.