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

by C. G. Hatton

  The Man sat and watched, waiting and NG tried to figure out how much to say.

  “It was a good place for O’Brien to go,” he said finally. “If there was ever anything going on in the Between, Badger knew about it. He scrounged together technology and developed systems that Science would be envious of. With hindsight, I should have pulled him back here but as it was, he was too valuable to us on Redgate. I think he knew where LC was. The danger was if someone else found out that he knew.”

  •

  Hil felt broadsided. He’d been expecting an introduction to Quinn, not a tab. What had happened to being off the list? And Skye wasn’t ready.

  NG carried on before he could say anything. “Skye isn’t ready, we know. You’ll be going out with Genoa. Kase and Martha will be running escort for you. This isn’t a usual tab. These aren’t usual circumstances.”

  Hil picked up the board. It had the usual details on it and even looked run of the mill but he wasn’t ready. He still couldn’t support his weight on his right arm and he hadn’t been able to keep up with Sean without having to stop to catch his breath and ease the stitch in his side. How could he go out on a tab? With a ship he didn’t know? The panic that rose up was unfamiliar and that panicked him even more. He put down the board before the shaking in his hand became too obvious.

  He said, “Am I back on the list? The Chief said I was grounded.”

  NG jumped down and pulled up a seat at the table.

  “This isn’t a normal tab,” he said again. “This has come from the same source as the one Mendhel was handling from Earth.”

  “How do you know what, where…?” Shit, he couldn’t think straight.

  “We know. Don’t ask how, it’s complicated. But we know. Trust us. We know that it was a professional hit on Mendhel. And we haven’t been able to contact his daughter.”

  NG let that hang in the air. Only a few people in the guild had ever met Anya. Mendhel was fiercely protective of his only daughter. They all were. This was getting worse and worse.

  “You left here with LC presumably to meet Mendhel about this tab. He turns up dead, Anya is missing, LC is missing and we’re still trying to piece together what that job actually was,” NG said. “We want to sort this out. No one messes with the guild. We’re not going to let them get away with this. This new tab is definitely from the same source. And they’re asking for you, by name.”

  That in itself was massively suspect. Clients didn’t request operatives by name. No one from outside should even have known his name. It was disturbing on a whole new level that made Hil feel queasy beyond his upset stomach and throbbing headache.

  “How do they know who I am?”

  “Hil, like I said, this isn’t an ordinary tab. Whatever happened with Mendhel, these people now want you. We want you to take this tab and then we’ll see what happens.”

  “So I’m bait?” The words popped out before he could decide not to say it out loud.

  “Yeah.” NG was nothing if not blunt.

  “Does the Chief know about this?”

  “It’s not his decision. We want LC back and we want that package. You know what we have to do, Hil. You know we won’t let anything happen to you but the integrity of the guild is everything. You know that, don’t you?”

  Yes was the only answer, again. He nodded reluctantly. Arguing that he didn’t work well with company, or need an escort, wouldn’t stick because right now, he didn’t know what he needed. Food and more sleep were high on the list.

  “Legal are trying to trace whoever is behind this but they’re embarrassed at how long it’s taking them to get anywhere,” NG said, standing up. “And as far as this tab goes, Quinn will handle things from this end.”

  He looked at them both and walked to the door. “I’ll leave you to sort out the details. But be aware that we are still investigating Mendhel’s death and we’re running an internal investigation. And however this goes down, we won’t be losing anyone else.”

  He left the room and Hil could see him talking to the two guards. He watched, ignoring Quinn, feeling even more like he was under arrest or something. Like he’d done something wrong and it was his fault Mendhel was dead. It might be, for all he knew.

  Quinn had stood up and walked around behind him before he realised. Quinn was a big man and one of the few handlers who’d never worked field-ops themselves. He was a pusher, not a doer and that was why it was tough working up any respect for him. Mendhel on the other hand had gone through the wringer as much as the rest of them before some injury had sidelined him. He never went into it, just impressed on all of them to keep their fitness up and take care. He’d always mother-hen’ed them and at the same time goaded them into being better and faster and never to shy away from a risk. Quinn tended to take easy tabs for his guys, easy successes but low rewards. The big man was out of his depth here.

  Hil twisted around out of his chair and squared up to him. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by a wanna-be.

  Quinn was trying to dominate at full height, leaning forward to tower over him. “Mendhel was a fool to let two numbskulls like you and LC run rings around him,” he said. “He deserved what happened to him. It was always coming. He was a naïve fool to think it was him handling you and not the other way around. Things are changing around here. You’re mine now.”

  Hil stood his ground. “What the hell did happen to Mendhel?” he said angrily. “No one will tell me a thing.”

  “He was stupid and it cost him. Trusting you two maniacs was stupid and he died for it. He broke all the rules to protect you and got himself killed on Earth in that safe house he was foolish enough to think he could keep secure.”

  Scenes flashed through Hil’s mind but there was nothing he could pin down. He’d been at the safe house before with LC and Mendhel many times and a memory that sparked up, of sirens and smog-heavy rain, could have been from any time. Except he flashed on a look on LC’s face, LC scared and hurt. LC was never scared. Hil tried to grasp the scene around the brief memory but it was fleeting and gone before he could hold onto it.

  “Mendhel was shot in the head,” Quinn said. “God knows what guild material he had stashed in that house that was compromised.”

  “Nothing!” Hil snapped back. “He kept nothing there that had anything to do with the guild. It was a safe house.” He took a step forward and Quinn glowered at him. “You wouldn’t know, because you never leave here. We go out there and we do our stuff and Mendhel was always there when we needed him.”

  Only he hadn’t been.

  Quinn saw his hesitation and pushed him back, pushing out with the flat of his hand against Hil’s chest. Bad move. Hil resisted, balancing his weight on his back foot ready to fight back, fists clenching by his side. He heard the door open and Quinn broke eye contact to glance over. Hil tensed, ignoring the door, weighing up his chances against the bigger man and reckoning it would be a breeze to knock him down.

  NG came into his line of sight behind Quinn and the moment was gone. Quinn stepped aside and Hil relaxed, feeling the shakes start again.

  “Sit down,” NG said to Quinn. “Hil, go up to my office and call into Medical on the way for some painkillers, for Christ’s sake.”

  It seemed like an age, waiting outside NG’s office, but it gave the meds time to work their way into his system and ease off the aches. He was still wound up from the confrontation with Quinn but pacing up and down had only irritated NG’s staff to the point where they threatened to throw him out. So he sat down and bounced his legs up and down against the deck and flexed his wrist trying to decide if he could take the brace off yet. His two bodyguard buddies watched from a distance.

  NG turned up eventually and showed him inside.

  “Sit down,” he said in a softer tone than the one he’d used with Quinn.

  Hil sat.

  NG sat down and rubbed his eyes wearily. “I need you to work with Quinn, Hil. I know your history with him and I know Quinn’s reputation. But he’s our b
est handler right now. Forget anything that has happened previously. Just get out there and let’s see where the flak flies.” He paused and his dark eyes looked up suddenly, and when NG looked right at you, it was hypnotic.

  “We have concerns over Mendhel’s recent activities,” he said finally. “We still don’t know who put out the contract on LC and we don’t know yet whether he is on the run from us or from some other party.”

  Or dead in a ditch.

  “And to be honest, Hil, there have been concerns voiced over you and your position in this.”

  That cut deep and Hil had to stop himself from jumping up and telling NG to go shove it.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said calmly.

  “There are inconsistencies.”

  “In what? No one has explained anything to me yet.” Except what Kase and Fliss had thrown at him before he was sent out of the way with Sean.

  “Where did you go with LC when you left here?”

  Hil straightened up, feeling the atmosphere switch. He didn’t feel up to an interrogation but he sure as hell wasn’t going to slink away while god knows what was said about him behind these doors.

  “I don’t know,” he said stubbornly.

  “You two are the best operatives we’ve ever had and you’ve both always outright refused to team up then you suddenly take off together without a word to anyone. What did you do with the boards for the tab you took?”

  Data boards were always copied onto the ship’s logs then left in storage with Legal. “I don’t know,” he said again belligerently, knowing fine well that he hadn’t done that for some reason. It was just the reason that was eluding him.

  NG looked exasperated. “Hil, calm down. There have been concerns voiced. Not in this office. I’m not accusing you of anything. We know you left with LC. There were no boards because the tab didn’t originate here. We want to know how that information was passed out to you.”

  Blank on that.

  “Really, I don’t know,” he said feeling foolish that he’d over-reacted. “I can remember being with LC on Earth, at Mendhel’s place. But I don’t know if Mend was there or not, or what. It’s coming back slowly, in bits.”

  For all he knew, he might have just signed his death sentence, admitting to that.

  “Something was wrong,” he said. “LC was upset about something.” But beyond that, he couldn’t remember a thing except now he had a really unsettled feeling inside that it hadn’t been a routine tab, it hadn’t been an easy grab and whatever had scrambled his brain had done a really good job of blanking out any memory of a situation that had gone badly wrong.

  “We have people trying to find out what happened, Hil. Trust me. Liaise with Quinn, go out there and we’ll be watching closely this time.”

  “Why Genoa?” Hil said, hearing himself sound petulant.

  “She’s a good ship, Hil, and she volunteered. Just go and do the job. We need to find out who these people are. Come home safe and trust us to sort the rest. I’ve told Quinn to meet you in Acquisitions. Legal are getting more material together for you. Take your time. Work on it for a couple of days and try not to come to blows.”

  Hil stood up. “Do you trust LC?” he asked before he turned to go.

  “I do,” NG said. “But there are parties in the guild who don’t. Someone has got through our defences and it’s unsettled everyone.”

  Chapter 11

  The Man poured himself another goblet of the wine and held it in the palm of his hand. “Did we err in allowing Mendhel to stay on Earth?”

  It wasn’t often that the Man would ever consider the possibility of an error. In his eyes, every contingent was planned and any deviation was simply a new avenue to explore. It didn’t bode well if he was thinking they’d made mistakes – that NG had made mistakes. The guild operated like a massive family, all living in each others’ pockets, devious and closely guarded, every department working on a thousand different projects that all impinged on each other. It was his job to maintain coherency and avoid dysfunction in that huge living entity of incredibly talented and equally fragile human egos. It wasn’t simple and he had made mistakes.

  He set his own goblet on the table. The wine had already warmed its way down to his knees and he knew too much more would begin to cloud his judgement. The field operatives and their handlers were at the very centre of the guild and were the most difficult.

  “Mendhel’s relationship with his brother,” NG said carefully, “gave us an in to both sides of the line. Pen Halligan is well established in Wintran territory. Mendhel having insights into Earth itself and Winter, through Pen, has given us an advantage for a long time. Yes, it was risky. But it was a danger that we all cultivated. Somewhere at some point we got it wrong. We just didn’t know at the time who it was that had managed to break through.”

  •

  They spent three days in Ops squabbling over the plan. Quinn had no finesse. Hil always went over every detail himself, by himself, until he could see every possibility. And Quinn wanted to know exactly what he was thinking and why, picking holes in his reasoning. It was driving him mad. Mendhel always gave them free reign. That was where the magic came from – when pure initiative was in play, anything was up for grabs. Hil argued his corner and walked out twice, disappearing into the Maze for a couple of hours each time to work off his frustration.

  The tab looked straight forward enough but as well as having to deal with a new ship, he’d have a scary ass, trigger happy, extraction team looking over his shoulder. Acquiring any item from any source was a delicate balance of timing, skill, luck and barefaced bravado. But this tab had too much baggage attached to it for it to be anything other than a massive risk he wasn’t sure he was ready to take.

  The package to be acquired was in a high security lab on Io Maximus. That was solidly in Earth territory and would be a bitch to get into. Their route in according to Legal was specified in the tab ¬– a pick up point would provide ID and access codes. He hated the sound of it. Hated relying on exterior intel to provide him the means to get in. But it was very specific. They had to fly out to Abacus A, which was a colony in the Between, to make contact. Hil had been there before and the idea of going back made him feel sick. And they were asking specifically for him. He almost baulked there and then and the urge to yell for NG to pull him from the tab was overwhelming. He threw a board across the room instead. Quinn smirked and Hil had to resist another urge to throw something at him.

  There were no details on the package itself but the lab was a corporate bio-feedback facility that was heavily guarded. Hil never tried to second guess the focus of a tab and it was driving him mad that Quinn was quibbling about what it could be. Considering the circumstances, Hil didn’t expect to make it past the initial encounter. The whole thing was yelling set-up. There probably was no package. There’d be no codes just god knows who waiting for the guild to deliver him up to them.

  The plan for Abacus A was simple. Make contact with the go-between, leave with the codes and avoid getting arrested for drunken brawling like last time. The go-between was supposed to make themselves known once they docked. He didn’t like the sound of it, didn’t like taking advice from Quinn and he didn’t like relying on anyone other than Skye.

  It sucked.

  By the time they’d been through all the data that Legal had provided Hil was tired, hungry and had reached the point where he simply phased Quinn out of the equation.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Quinn said.

  Hil closed one eye and squinted at the big man through the other. He threw the board he was holding onto the table and stood up. “I’m done,” he said and walked out.

  Something had been niggling at the back of his mind since he’d sat at that table with the section chiefs, since Martha and Kase had pulled his ass from wherever it was that he’d been. And that was it. He didn’t know where he’d been. There was a whole chunk of time missing from his memory and during that time someone had screwed with his
mind. He’d been so messed up he hadn’t even thought to question it before now.

  He walked past the Man’s two elite bodyguards, mumbled something about food and needing a break and led them into the mess. It was busy and as they joined the queue, Hil glared around the room, looking for a certain redhead, daring anyone to make eye contact.

  “Skye, where’s Martha?” he thought, not seeing her there. He spotted Sorensen at the same time the new number one field-op saw him and rose to his feet. Sorensen was the last person he wanted to speak to and Hil turned, muttered that he needed to go clean up, and was half way to the washroom before Sorensen intercepted him and caught hold of his arm. The two guards were right behind and they stepped in close, one with a restraining hand on the guy’s shoulder.

  Sorensen ignored them. “What the hell happened to Mendhel?” he hissed.

  Hil shook free. Skye spoke softly when she sent, “She’s in Legal.”

  People were looking their way. Hil looked at Sorensen and saw a couple of other field-ops standing up. He made a snap judgement and stepped forward, grabbing hold of Sorensen’s shirt and pulling him close.

  “Whatever you’ve heard, LC hasn’t betrayed anyone,” he said quietly.

  Sorensen tried to pull away, anger showing in his face. It wasn’t surprising. All of Mend’s field-ops had been dedicated to the man, above and beyond. Micah Sorensen was one of them and he was due an explanation. Except Hil couldn’t give him one.

  The two guards took hold of Hil’s arms at the elbow, one on either side. “Break it up,” one of them said.

  “Trust me,” Hil said to Sorensen and he could see the anger turn to hurt and confusion. He didn’t know what else to say.

  Sorensen narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to speak but one of the guards pushed him aside. Hil let go as they pulled him away and he walked out with them, seeing Fliss stand up on a table off to one side and mouth “Don’t worry,” to him. He smiled faintly and let them escort him out.