Thieves' Guild Series (7 eBook Box Set): Military Science Fiction - Alien Invasion - Galactic War Novels

by C. G. Hatton

  They’d left the ship separately and he’d hightailed it straight to Polly’s. She’d given him a hug, said she hadn’t seen LC and had let him into her stockroom to climb up and break into the station’s maintenance core. The drop box on Abisko was simply one in a bank of lockers used by the orbital’s crew. It was easy to get to. Some of their boxes were hidden in ridiculous places that no ordinary person could even hope to reach. He couldn’t face a climb with his wrist in the state it was, so again this was a good place to start.

  The box had been empty.

  Polly pushed across another whisky and took his empty glass. She was wise enough not to ask any questions but she’d held his hand and brushed a finger over the scar on his forehead, and looked at him disapprovingly.

  “Mendhel was a good man,” she said.

  Polly was one of only two people outside the guild that he’d trust with his life, that even knew what he really did for a living. She ran the bar with an iron fist and a warm heart, and every patron knew with absolute certainty that their secrets were safe.

  Hil nodded and drank the shot down in one. Polly topped up the glass, looked up over his shoulder and nodded. “Watch yourself, babes,” she said and turned away.

  He watched the guy approach in the mirror behind the bar, saw the glint of silver at his belt. The bounty hunter sat down on the stool next to him and waved to catch Polly’s attention.

  “Whatever he’s drinking,” the man said, waving casually towards Hil.

  Polly brought over the whisky bottle and another glass, filling it and leaving the bottle by Hil before backing off and making it clear that she was watching.

  Hil downed his and filled it up again.

  “You came in with Sean O’Brien,” the man said, picking up his own glass.

  “You’re mistaking me for someone else,” Hil muttered.

  “No,” he said loudly. “You see, I know Seanie and I saw you leave her ship. So what’s the story?”

  The man had ruddy cheeks and carefully groomed stubble. And there was a pistol at his waist next to the badge.

  Hil let his left hand wrap slowly around the base of the whisky bottle while he took a drink with his right, holding the glass as well as he could with the restriction of the brace. As he put it down, the man’s left hand shot out quickly and pinned Hil’s wrist to the bar, squeezing hard. Pain shot into his hand and up to his elbow.

  Hil raised his head, winking at Polly as she edged sideways towards her alarm button by the till. She rolled her eyes and hit the button anyway.

  The bounty hunter stood up, moving closer, leaning his weight into the bar and increasing the pressure on Hil’s arm.

  Hil let himself relax completely. “You really don’t want to make a scene in here,” he said quietly, fingers tightening around the bottle to his left.

  In the mirror he could see two of Polly’s guys moving in, one on either side. Polly was reaching under the counter.

  A voice at his shoulder broke the tension and he had to shift his weight slightly to see Sean standing behind him.

  “McKenzie,” she said over-cheerfully. She put a hand on the guy’s back and leaned in to pop a kiss on his cheek, whispering, “What the hell are you doing to my little brother, McKenzie?”

  Hil grinned at him and shook the hand off his arm, still smiling as he slipped his arm under the counter to nestle in his lap. Crap, that had hurt.

  McKenzie opened his mouth to speak but Sean shushed him with a finger to his lips. She turned to Hil. “Time to go, little bro. Get back to the ship. I’ll see you there.”

  She edged her way in to the bar, putting her body between him and the other bounty hunter. Hil stood up, still grinning. Polly waved off her guys and leaned over to hug him across the bar. “Be careful, babe,” she whispered. He kissed her on the cheek and pushed away from his stool.

  McKenzie was glowering at him. Hil waved a sloppy salute at him and grinned at Sean. “See you there, sis.”

  One of Polly’s bouncers followed him to the door and stopped him outside. “Look out for yourself, Hil. A lot of people have been here asking about LC,” he said quietly. “What the hell are you into?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Hil said. “Look after Polly. Tell her we’ll be back once this has blown over.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Hil looked into the guy’s eyes. Tavner was one of Polly’s long time protectors, closer to her than a member of staff should be they reckoned, and he’d known him a long time but there was something in his eyes that made Hil feel more uneasy than he’d ever felt here. This was supposed to be somewhere safe.

  He shook his head. “I don’t and don’t ask me again.”

  Chapter 7

  The Man stood up and wandered off around the room to light more candles. “Never in our history,” he said, “has the Federation of Bounty Hunters dared accept a contract on one of ours. Why now?”

  NG twisted around in the chair and watched as the Man shuffled from shelf to shelf, the glow in the room brightening as the scent of oils deepened. The answer was a difficult one to voice. And in thinking it, he’d already replied.

  The Man turned and smiled. “My ego is not so great that I can’t face our limitations, NG.” He returned to his seat behind the desk. “So, there are petty factions of men who consider themselves powerful enough to take on the Thieves’ Guild?”

  “There always have been,” NG said. “It doesn’t usually take long for them to realise the error of their ways. But occasionally, circumstances collude to create momentum that it takes time to overcome. We can’t be everywhere, all the time. Human occupied space is extensive and we have allies but there will always be individuals that have ideas beyond their abilities. They tend to have great influence over the weak and such mob-mindedness is always going to be dangerous.”

  “And our efforts to countermand the contract?”

  “Legal started to fight it as soon as we became aware it was out there but someone was determined to keep it alive. And with that much money on offer, it grew into a legend of its own. The more effort we put into closing it down, the more infamy it seemed to gather. And ironically, the harder it got to find LC.”

  •

  He could tell Sean was fuming when she got back to the ship. She threw her coat into a locker and glared at him in the same way Martha always used to when he’d been an ass.

  “Are you insane?” she said.

  He assumed it was a rhetorical question and yawned.

  Sean frowned. “God, they told me you were hard work – I didn’t think you’d have a death wish. I thought I told you not to drink.”

  “Sean,” he started and decided he didn’t know what to say so he shut up. It would have been rude to visit Polly and not stay for a beer but he didn’t expect her to get that.

  “The contract out on LC is going to be very lucrative for whoever takes him in,” she said. “Do you understand what that means? You look a lot like him. McKenzie was trying to figure out if your hair is naturally that colour or whether you could actually be LC. NG trusted me to take care of you, Hil. I can’t do that if you take off and risk running into money-grubbing bastards like McKenzie.”

  Hil yawned again. He couldn’t help it. He was tired and the whisky hadn’t mixed well with the painkillers that Medical had given him before they left.

  “Well, LC’s not been here,” he said. “We should go to Redgate next.”

  Sean clenched and unclenched her fists. He smiled at her.

  “My life has gone to shit,” he said sweetly. “Polly’s been like a mother to us both for a long time. I trust her. And besides no one on board the Alsatia would let me near a drink.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and sat down. “Okay, okay.” She watched as Edinburgh started up the engines then turned to him. “Tell me more about LC. I have to figure out where he’s going to be. McKenzie being this close, this soon is not good for any of us.”

  It took twelve hours t
o fly into Redgate from the jump point. Sean woke him up when they were less than two hours out and threw a ration pack at him.

  He’d woken with a headache and swallowed down a handful of painkillers as he tried to make his way through a squeezy pack of soup that was making his throat protest.

  Sean watched him struggle and laughed. “Hangover?”

  “Headache,” he mumbled.

  “So you really have no memory of what happened?”

  He shook his head, not wanting to go through it all again. She had all the information from the guild – the report would be in there.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” she said.

  “What do you want me to say? I’ve never worked with a bounty hunter before.”

  “Hil, apart from a few early training runs you’ve never worked with anyone,” she said, nodding towards his file as if to re-emphasise there was nothing about him she didn’t know.

  He frowned and bit down on the belligerent reply that was his first response. He paused and she smiled at him in the same knowing and annoying ‘I know what you’re thinking’ way that Martha always did and it suddenly hit him. She was toying with him in the same way Martha used to. Used to? Still did. Pushing his buttons to get him off his guard, although to be fair, Martha didn’t actually have to do a lot to push his buttons.

  “Okay, so you know all about me, I get it,” he said grudgingly. “Seems a little unfair, don’t you think? What about giving me some background on Sean O’Brien? How come you’re working with the guild? I thought bounty hunters were one step short of law enforcement. For NG to call you in at all must be pretty exceptional, never mind for him to say he trusts you.”

  “Fair enough, we’re going to be together a while,” she said smiling. “I’ve done some work for NG in the past. As far as being law enforcement, the badge is tolerated both sides of the line, more as a necessary evil than an officially sanctioned service. It has more influence in some systems than in others.” She looked away briefly to check some displays then turned back to him and the smile had gone. “And in some, they don’t recognise it at all. Tell me why we’re going into Redgate.”

  “We have a contact there.”

  “What are the chances that LC is there?”

  Hil shrugged.

  “What kind of contact?” she asked, sounding frustrated. “Hil, work with me here. Right now we have no idea who initiated the contract or why. That puts me in a difficult position and gives us a time frame that could rapidly diminish if more information on LC appears on the grapevine. I know you’re feeling like shit, but help me here.”

  “The guild has a deep cover intelligence agent in there. He…” It was weird talking to an outsider about all this but NG had told him to so what the hell. “He gets information for us. If LC needed help, he’d come here.”

  “And where is this guy? Last I heard, Redgate wasn’t terribly hospitable.”

  He shrugged again. “They don’t know which side of the line they want to be on. It doesn’t bother us. We’re never exactly legitimate visitors.”

  “This contact – what’s his name?”

  “Badger. He works out of the North Shore of the capital.”

  “Nice area. You have a way in?”

  Hil closed his eyes and leaned back. “Course I do.”

  “We go in together on this one. And we get in and out fast. I don’t want to spend more time in there than we need to.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “This isn’t going to be a social visit like Abisko. Badger doesn’t like company.” And they didn’t have a drop box there. If LC was there, he’d be with Badger; if he wasn’t, Badger would know if he’d been within fifteen systems of the place. The guy had access to the best material the guild’s techies could supply on top of all his own sources. And they had no way of communicating with him, except physically flying in and fighting through a war zone to get to him. Badger listened and watched, he didn’t broadcast. That was how he’d managed to stay hidden so long. And he was not going to appreciate Hil trooping in there followed by a host of bounty hunters. “It might be best if I go in alone,” he said.

  Sean hit him on the arm. “No way. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

  He sat up and looked at her. He didn’t have much choice in the matter and he knew it. “We go in silent,” he said. “No electronics, no wacky devices for anything. I know what kind of stuff you people use. You have to go nakid, nothing live at all or he’ll spook and we’ll never find him. And if he’s got LC with him, we’ll have no chance.”

  “What about weapons?”

  “Everyone carries weapons in Redgate. He won’t care about that. But you’ll have to lose the badge. And if you take so much as a whistling key fob, he’ll know.”

  It was unsettling to be going in there without Skye. She always gauged the situation and gave him the rundown on troop movements and current politics before he went in anywhere.

  “Can you monitor chatter from the surface?” he said.

  The ship had been quiet but she piped in then, “Of course we can. What do you need to know?”

  “We’ll have to wait for a ceasefire. And we need to check who’s in control of the area around the airfield. Bring up maps of the city and I’ll show you where we’re going.”

  He followed Sean through the terminal, glad he’d put on extra clothes, and uneasy to see so much security.

  They had waited for two days while reports of escalating trouble came out of the capital. Redgate had been enjoying a precarious rumbling peace, rumoured to be at the behest of some Wintran corporation that was looking to invest in the city. Hil couldn’t see that there was much of a city left to invest in and according to the reports that Edinburgh was picking up, the Earth Empire loyalists had ducked for cover and were trying to build a case to blow off the deal. What a corporation would want with the place, he couldn’t fathom. It was lousy timing that they’d arrived just after a band of loyalists had attacked a Wintran envoy and sparked a new round of hostilities.

  They’d watched the reports and finally Sean had declared that they couldn’t wait any longer. Hil had reluctantly agreed. Usually he had an unlimited time frame in which to operate. Timing was everything and waiting for conditions to be right was a key part of every tab. This time, they had no time and he had to give in and take a chance.

  He’d told Sean to wait until the city was on the darkside to start their descent. Edinburgh had flashed up more information than he could digest and he’d had to harry her to condense it all to the facts they needed. Sean had laughed and asked her ship to behave. It felt like he was outnumbered and like he was the butt of a private joke between the two of them.

  From the data Edinburgh had gathered, it was cold in the northern hemisphere and the temperature in the capital had dipped well below zero.

  “Tell me there’s somewhere warm next on your list,” Sean had grumbled, pulling on extra layers and cold weather gear.

  “LC likes the cold,” he’d said. “I’m thinking Winter itself next,” and she had looked at him like she thought he was insane, or maybe she’d been thinking that she was insane to be there with him.

  The papers she produced cleared them through customs, with only a short delay while the official decided whether the bribe was adequate, and they took a taxi into the city. A light snow was falling and the vehicle was freezing cold despite the proud reassurance of the driver that his was the warmest car in the rank. Smoke was trailing skywards from bombed out buildings and the car passed tanks and armoured soldiers at each street corner.

  “Wintran militia,” Sean said. “Their gear sucks. See, they haven’t even got full body armour.”

  They were stopped at two roadblocks before they reached the city centre and the massive warehouses bordering the river. It would have been better to get further in but the military presence was getting heavier and they needed to duck out of sight before someone decided to put a tail on them. They had about an hour before curfew, l
ess than that to disappear.

  They pulled over and he watched the street while Sean paid the driver. Half the buildings didn’t have lights and most of those that did looked like they’d been damaged. It was worse than the last time he was here, but for the moment it was quiet. They walked briskly for about half an hour, the pavement getting increasingly icy, their breath frosting in the chill air. The main street was deserted already and they walked along it, travelling parallel to the river, seeing glimpses of it to the north between buildings. There were more potholes and bomb craters than he remembered and all the shop fronts that weren’t boarded up had broken glass in their windows.

  They were running out of time and it was tempting to run but twice, armoured vehicles crawled past them, soldiers sitting upright on top tracking them with rifles. There was always tension in the Between, lots of skirmishes and rebel actions but it wasn’t often that outright war broke out. Redgate was different and it had always been different. It was the forgotten frontier, the last way point between Earth and the colonies that had been bypassed and abandoned long ago as the jump range of ships increased, except by the people who lived here who had pledged their allegiance to one or the other and who were stubborn enough to keep on fighting. For the guild and Badger it was the perfect place to monitor both sides of the line.

  The snow began to fall in heavy billowing flurries and it was a relief when finally the faded sign of the tube station appeared up ahead. Hil led the way down icy steps to the underground system. It was damp and cold. Most of the lights were out and a heavy odour of unwashed bodies and smoke held in the air. A prickly unease nagged at the back of his neck and his eye caught the twitch of a surveillance camera swivelling to focus on them. It had been burnt out but new wires showed that someone had bothered to fix it.

  “Something’s wrong,” he muttered.

  He slowed, feeling the chill seep through his joints despite the layers of clothing. He’d wrapped a black thermal bandage around the wrist on his right hand, finger tips to elbow over the brace, and even that wasn’t stopping the bone deep ache that was setting in.