by C. G. Hatton
“Welcome to the Badger’s set,” he said and led her through a warren of corridors and stairs as doors opened for them and the guild’s deepest and most elusive agent let them enter his domain.
Chapter 9
“I understand she’s still working for us.”
NG nodded. “She’s good. If she wasn’t so well known, I’d ask her to come in. As it is, she’s probably more useful to us maintaining her position within the Federation. She’s registered with Earth but I know she’s worked across the line and is as popular on both sides. She has a natural charisma. I’ve heard it said that some fugitives have given themselves up for a chance to travel with her a while.”
“A rare quality.”
“It is and one that we’ve exploited on a number of occasions.”
The Man smiled. “We incubate extremes of temperament in our people. That is when man truly reaches his potential. Adversity and necessity – it has been proven time and again throughout the ages. A content man is a being in decline. Survival of the fittest was sorely damaged in the burgeoning of man’s technological advancement, in man’s striving for soft comforts. It is fortunate that man’s own nature tends towards jealousy and insecurities.”
NG sat back and the need to defend humanity was too great to resist. “The colonies have known hardship,” he said.
“No one in this galaxy has known hardship,” the Man said. “That is why we must prepare. That is why, NG. A million threads of destiny must be brought together. I will not be defeated again.”
•
Badger was sitting in the centre of a mass of monitors and banks of equipment tapping away at a board on his lap. He didn’t look up as they walked in.
Badger looked thinner and more wild than Hil remembered, dark hair sticking out in all directions, dark glasses perched on the edge of his nose.
“The shower’s on the blink,” Badger said without looking up, “but it works if you hit it with a wrench. There’s food in the kitchen. Grab some beers, will you?”
Hil smiled and steered Sean in the direction of the bathroom. It was surprisingly clean and there were towels heating on a rail.
“Nice,” Sean said. “Do you mind if I…?”
“Make yourself at home. There’s a drier in the corner and I’m fairly sure Badger doesn’t have cameras in here.”
He left her to battle with the shower and wandered into the kitchen. He wound up the gauge on the heating panel and shrugged out of his wet coat, leaving it draped over a chair to dry. There was a pot of chilli bubbling on the stove. He grabbed two beers and went back to the main room.
Badger glanced up then. “You won’t believe some of the stuff that’s going on. What the hell have you been up to?”
Hil edged his way through to the table in the centre of the room and pulled out a chair laden with data boards and electronic gizmos. He piled the gear onto the floor, sat and leaned his arms on the table, resting his head down and letting some of the tension in his shoulders relax. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“It’s all kicking off. You’re taking a big risk working with her.”
Hil looked up. Badger was still working, maps and lists flashing across the boards he had spread in front of him.
“Badger, what have you heard about Mendhel?”
“From the guild? Nothing. They’re keeping closed on that. They’ve sent agents to Earth and requests for information all over the place but they’re not giving out anything.”
“What about from elsewhere?”
Badger stopped and looked at him. “It was a hit but it wasn’t the Assassins. I’m sorry.”
Hil bit his lip and popped open the beers. He sipped at his, feeling sore and cold, and let Badger busy away with whatever he was working on. His eyes were starting to close when Badger said, “Here,” and pushed a board across the table to him.
“What’s this?” Hil said, trying to figure out what was in the blurry image on the screen.
Badger cast his eyes over to the door and leaned forward suddenly to wipe a hand over the screen.
“It’s nothing,” he said and grabbed the board back.
Hil looked over his shoulder to see Sean standing there watching them. He turned back to Badger and mouthed silently, “Was that LC?”
Badger nodded.
Hil said quietly, “Help me here, Badge. NG told me to work with her.”
The agent pushed across another board, this one clearly showing a star chart with Palmio at the centre. He wiped its screen as soon as Hil had glanced at it.
“The contract on LC has been posted by a corporation but they’re using a bitch of a system of bypasses and subversives to hide its origin,” Badger said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I haven’t broken it yet but I’ll get there. In the meantime, I’ll keep watching out for him.” He looked up at Sean. “You watch out for yourself, Hil.”
“I’m trying to,” he muttered.
The heat from the shower took a while to work itself through the cold in his joints but by the time he’d dried off and rescued his clothes from the drier, he was starting to feel more hungry than tired. Beer on an empty stomach had been a bad idea.
There was a bowl of chilli waiting for him, still steaming, and another beer already open. Sean and Badger had finished theirs and Sean had spread a cloth out on the table and was carefully stripping and cleaning her firearms.
Badger looked up as he sat down. “The guy you killed in the subway was a sub-commander in a band of rebels. They’re not much more than a gang of thugs, more talk than action, and there are people who’d thank you for it. But even so, you’ll need to watch yourself going back.”
Hil reached for the beer and Sean pushed the bowl across to him. “That was an impressive throw you pulled off,” she said. “How come their wand didn’t find the knife?”
“It’s not metal.”
The chilli was good. He knew he was eating too quickly and it burned the inside of his mouth but he didn’t care. Crashing out at Badger’s place was a safe and familiar routine that was helping him get his head straight.
Sean was looking at him quizzically. “Neither’s mine but those detectors still pick up polycarbons.”
Hil reached down and pulled the knife from his boot. He placed it on the table. “It’s made of stone.”
She picked it up and turned it, feeling along its blade.
“It’s one of a unique pair,” Badger said. “Mendhel had them made for a competition he set his field-ops. No one knows what kind of stone it is and Mendhel would never tell anyone.”
“You have two?” Sean asked, handing it back with some reluctance.
Hil shook his head. “LC has the other one. He was beating me but he can’t throw a knife for shit – even if his life depended on it. I caught up to him right at the end and Mendhel decided to split the prize.”
Sean picked up her pistol and wiped it with a cloth. “I need to know things like this, Hil. Is there anything else?”
He thought about it while he spooned in another mouthful of chilli. “LC’s got a weird memory. He denies it’s eidetic but he only needs to see something like a map once and he knows it. If he sees you anywhere twice, he’ll remember you. You need to be careful with that or you’ll spook him.”
“What else?”
Hil smiled. “Poker. Don’t ever get caught up in a game of cards with LC, he’ll take your eyes out.”
She put down the cloth and looked at them both. “Anything else?”
Badger laughed. “You need to know that you’re not going to find LC until he decides to let you.”
Hil smiled and pushed his bowl away. He flinched as an alarm sounded loud against the gentle hum of machinery. “Crap, what’s that?”
Badger leapt up and tapped a data wall behind him, the smooth surface coming to life with flashing lights and streaming data. “West Bridge,” he said. “Son of a bitch. You know, one day these people are going to wake up and decide this pile of crap planet isn’t wort
h fighting over.”
“What are they fighting over?” Hil asked, not really caring but guessing that Badger was done talking about guild business. It was getting warm and he was starting to feel sleepy. He resisted the urge to rest his head down on the table.
“It’s the nature of the Between, Hil. Everyone wants a piece of it. Earth isn’t ready to let go and Winter won’t back off. The latest,” he said, swiping a finger over the wall and creating a blur of images that made Hil wince, “is that some hotshot entrepreneur from Winter is looking to rejuvenate the whole planet as a centre of excellence for bleeding edge technology. Of course, those rumours set Earth off on a defensive ‘but we always valued Redgate’ campaign. It’s laughable.”
The alarm went off again, louder.
Sean stood up. “Are we in danger here?”
Badger ignored her and switched the content of the wall to another mix of images.
The alarm faded.
“What’s really sad,” he said, “is that Earth and Winter are both embarrassed by the situation. Neither want to commit resources to a place they abandoned but there are too many misguided fools here holding onto an age old allegiance with blind loyalty and as soon as one side twitches an ounce of support in this direction, the other jumps up and makes a noise because it can’t be seen to be losing face. Or losing ground, that no one wanted in the first place. It’s absurd. You should see some of the stuff that’s coming through here. It’s the only outright war in town and they get to try out all their new shit on the guinea pigs in the field here.”
“I just want to find out what happened to Mendhel,” Hil said, resting his head down. “And find LC. ‘Cause I have a feeling the guild isn’t going to let me back out there until I do.”
He woke up abruptly from a nightmare, the adrenaline of running through never-ending smoke-filled passageways receding slowly. His neck was stiff and there was a numbing tingle in his arm. He rubbed his eyes and clenched his fist trying to get some feeling back into his fingers. Someone had cleared the bowls away. Sean was standing with Badger arguing quietly about something they were looking at on the wall.
“Hey, sleepy,” she said, turning to him as soon as he stirred as if she had some motion sensor tagged to him.
“We need to go,” he said, yawning.
“Yes, you do,” Badger said. “You’ve been recalled. The guild wants you back on the Alsatia.”
He sat up. “What?”
“They’ve sent out an alert on you. A Black. They want you back and they’re letting everyone know they want you back.”
Shit. Hil stood up, feeling all the aches twinge afresh. “What time is it?”
“Two hours past dawn,” Sean said. “Badger here is showing me some of his insights into the political situation across the Between and the nature of the influence the corporations are building within a climate of structured innovative anarchy.”
Hil stared at Badger. The guy had a shy almost embarrassed look on his face.
“He’s not letting me anywhere near any of his really juicy stuff,” she said smiling at them both. “But hey, we have all day. We’re not going anywhere while it’s light, Hil. You might as well go crash out and get some decent sleep.”
By the time they got back to the airfield and Edinburgh, Sean had admitted that Badger had told her nothing that could lead her to LC.
“I thought I had him,” she’d said grudgingly as they trudged back through the snow.
“I can’t believe he showed you anything. Are you always that charming or does it depend on how much you’re getting paid?”
She’d feigned hurt and shoved him in the ribs and laughed. She wasn’t that similar to Martha he’d decided; MJ was never that light-hearted.
They took off after an argument with the overly defensive air traffic controllers and jumped back to the Alsatia where Edinburgh docked only long enough for him to disembark.
Sean walked him to the airlock and caught hold of his arm before the ramp opened. “I need to know where I’m going next,” she said softly.
Part of him wanted to shrug her off. He shook his head. “I don’t know where he is.”
“But you know where he might go.”
“Sean,” he started but didn’t know what to say. Going with her to a couple of places was one thing, giving away their favourite haunts and having no say in what she might do there was another.
“There are bounty hunters like McKenzie getting close to people you both know,” she said, “and with that much money on offer, guys like Polly’s friend might not be so loyal as you’d hope they’d be.”
That hit a spot deep inside. He’d seen the look on Tavner’s face and he knew she was right.
“Palmio,” he said reluctantly. “There’s a club there called Joanna’s. And the station at Sten’s World. I’ve never been there but LC mentioned it a couple of times. He knows a girl there.”
She smiled and squeezed his arm gently. “You guys hang out in the most pleasant of places. What’s her name?”
It felt like he was betraying LC as he said, “Olivia. She runs an escort agency.”
Sean nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ll find him and I’ll bring him back safely.”
Hil walked off Edinburgh into a chilly dockside that was bustling with too many people to be routine. Two of the Man’s guards were waiting and they picked him up straight away, without a word, one falling in to either side of him as he walked across the dock. He frowned at them.
“Hil,” Skye greeted him immediately, the connection sparking to life with a welcome warmth that relaxed a tension in him that he hadn’t realised was there.
“Skye, what’s going on? Have they started repairs yet? Are they letting us go out?”
“No, honey, we’re not going out.” She sounded sad. “NG wants to see you in Ops.”
Ops was where they were given the details of their tabs. It was the domain of the handlers. NG didn’t interfere with Ops unless something was wrong.
“What’s happened, Skye?” he said, panic starting to clutch at his stomach. “Have they found LC?”
“No,” she said again, lighter that time and he forced his heart rate to calm. “I don’t know what’s happening, honey, but NG is in Ops with Mr Quinn and they’re waiting for you.”
Quinn. Crap. Hil hoisted his bag over his shoulder and edged past the crews of dockworkers throwing boxes of supplies onto loaders headed for the ships. Some of the extraction teams were there supervising and as he caught sight of Martha, he stopped, wanting to talk to her but not here, not surrounded by her freaky extraction buddies, not in the cold public space of the docks with two of the Man’s personal guards at his heels. He watched for a moment as she ticked off items on a clipboard and argued with the dockie who threw up his hands and shook his head. She laughed and turned and stopped as she caught Hil’s eye. The laugh faded and instead her face broke into a wide grin. And it wasn’t a happy to see you kind of grin. She said something to the dockie and left him to it, walking over with long strides and a look in her eyes that he couldn’t fathom.
“You are in a world of shit, sunshine,” she said.
He bit back the irritation at her tone and the fact that she knew more than he did.
She waved the clipboard at him. “You and LC both.”
“Martha, we need to talk,” he said quietly, knowing they had a growing audience as more people stopped what they were doing to look over at them.
She shook her head and rested the clipboard against his chest. “Whatever it was you went after out there, Hil, you’d better hope your ass that LC has it and he comes in.” She walked away, and said without looking back, “Quinn wants you in Ops.”
She’d cut her hair since the last time he’d seen her and it bobbed as she walked, soft red curls bouncing on her shoulders. Hil bit his lip. Skye was right, she was still pissed at him.
He stood there amid the stares.
“Now, honey,” Skye interrupted, “you really need to get your cute ass t
o Ops. Mr Quinn is getting impatient.”
That was the sarcastic Skye he knew and loved. Quinn could wait all he wanted. The man was a toad sucking, lackey of a scum dweller. But keeping NG waiting was never a good idea.
He burst through the door into Ops with a temper building at the thought of having to deal with Quinn. Mendhel had always been a superstar who knew exactly how to wind them up, calm them down and get the best out of all his operatives. It wasn’t a coincidence that the top six field-ops had all been Mendhel’s. Quinn was an upstart who’d never done anything to impress anyone so why the hell was he being handed Mendhel’s people? The Chief should have had better judgement than that.
He was pointed in the direction of a briefing room and he went in, leaving his two newly acquired bodyguards waiting outside.
Quinn was sitting at the head of the table, alert and pretentiously formal. NG was perched nonchalantly on the bench along the side wall, flicking through data boards. Hil pulled out a chair and sat down, looking to NG for a lead in.
Quinn cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak but NG threw a board down onto the table before he could get a word out.
“Mr Quinn here is your new handler,” NG said. “You have a tab.”
Chapter 10
NG eyed the jug and tried to calculate how much wine was left and how many goblets it could fill. His head was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol and a tingling in his cheeks gave away the fact that there was more than mild inebriation at play in here.
“Tell me about Badger,” the Man said.
It wasn’t often that the Man took an interest in individual guild personnel, but then it wasn’t often that individuals in the guild put so much at stake.
“He’s one of our best,” NG said, swirling the last of his wine around the goblet. “It was worrying when he disappeared. But he’s easily spooked and this business has upset the equilibrium surrounding a lot of our people. He sent word that he was going to disappear for a while so I’m hoping that he’s either resettling somewhere and will be in touch soon or he’s waiting this out before returning to Redgate.”