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

by C. G. Hatton

  It felt surreal and he would have thought that two more fast whiskys added to the first and most of a bottle of beer would have at least begun to take an edge off the headache, but for all the effect it was having, he might as well have been drinking water.

  He turned his back completely to stand leaning up against the bar. Gallagher and Danny were talking about old times and the spec of the ship, not what Gallagher had wanted from what he could pick up but LC really didn’t care what type of shields it had or how slow it was. He listened politely, not even hearing half the words unless he made an effort, and he matched them for each shot of whisky that appeared in his glass.

  By the time Danny disappeared to go get another bottle, they’d had seven each and Gallagher was cheerfully inebriated.

  “We’ll show them,” Gallagher said, leaning in to yell it in his ear.

  “I’m sure we will,” he shouted back, not caring in the slightest whatever the hell he was on about. “Where are we meeting this navigator, Gallagher?”

  He didn’t hear so LC had to yell it again, wincing at the volume of his own voice.

  “Right here. She’s late but I’m sure she’ll find us.”

  Danny returned and they started again, talking about old times and old friends and the state of the colonies. LC’s ears pricked up at the mention of war and he leaned in to try to hear what they were saying but he could only catch occasional words, and it just seemed to be the usual rumours of the escalating tension between Earth and Winter that he’d been hearing since all this crap had started. The thought of heading back to the safety of the Alsatia was more tempting than ever but Hilyer’s warning had been clear. Don’t trust anyone at the guild.

  He rubbed his eyes, tired and strung out and about done being surrounded by this many people. Looking around the place for anyone suspicious was hopeless; they all looked suspicious. He tried to spot anyone alone, or anyone who could be working in pairs, but there were too many bodies milling around and no bounty hunter with any sense would flash a badge in a place like this. He was about to turn back to make an excuse to leave when he saw heads turning to follow a woman who was heading straight for them. She caught his eye and smiled. Gallagher must have seen her reflection in the mirror because he turned and grinned, and pushed past a couple of people to steer her into their space at the bar.

  “Danny, Luka,” he said, “this is Sean O’Brien. She’s our new navigator.”

  She had a holdall with her that she tucked up against the bar at their feet, happy to join Gallagher and Danny in yet another one for the road. LC opted for a beer, feeling uneasy that each time he turned back to the bar, she seemed to be watching him in the mirror. He drank the beer quickly, still keeping an eye out as the place got more rowdy and more crowded. Sean slipped into the conversation easily, charming both the older guys and still attracting glances from the other men around them. A couple of times her hand found its way to LC’s shoulder or lower back as people pushed past them, forcing them to close up against the bar. It wasn’t completely unwelcome but it set him on edge and as soon as he’d finished the beer, he put the bottle on the bar and caught Gallagher’s attention.

  “I’m going to head back to the ship,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Danny.”

  Danny shook his hand and LC turned away to ease his way through the crowd.

  “Hey lady,” a voice jeered behind him as he was a few steps away. “Why are you wasting your time with these losers?”

  He turned back to see Sean smiling at Gallagher, pointedly ignoring the guy. LC was about to turn away again when the guy pushed forward, bumping into Sean and jabbing a finger at Gallagher. “This jerk’s a lunatic, did no one tell you that?” he slurred loudly.

  LC needed to disappear quietly and everything in him screamed at him to do just that, to slip away and get out of there. He didn’t need to get involved.

  The guy raised his voice, “You’re not fit to fly a freaking shuttle-bus,” and pushed Gallagher in the chest.

  LC took a reluctant step back towards the bar. He could see Danny twitch and gesture to one of his staff. Gallagher objected and Sean stepped aside, putting a hand out to stop the guy. The drunk pushed forward suddenly, taking hold of Sean’s arm. One of his buddies stepped in and shoved Gallagher, who yelled, resisted and got a fist in the face.

  LC cursed under his breath and tried to push his way back to them, feeling people surge behind him as emotions flared. A body bumped into him. Someone yelled and he was jostled aside. He could see Sean talking, too quiet to hear, to the guy who was still leering at her. Gallagher was swearing, getting more heated. Danny was calling for them to break it up but too many people were shoving back and yelling and anything anyone else could have said to calm it down was getting lost.

  Someone grabbed hold of LC’s jacket from behind. He tried to shrug them off and when they wouldn’t let go, he thrust an elbow backwards, fast and hard, felt it hit home and pushed away. He pushed through and stepped in between Gallagher and the two guys, shouldering in to separate them.

  “Back off.”

  “Says who?” the first guy said with a laugh, too loudly. He still had hold of Sean’s arm but she was tensed and looking from him to Gallagher as if she was trying to figure out what she could get away with. The drunk pushed her away suddenly and LC saw the glint of a knife. The pain in his head vanished, the buzz gone, and for the first time in hours, he could focus clearly.

  He reacted, stepping in and reaching to deflect the blow as it came up in a slash. He caught hold of the hand and twisted, swinging his elbow into the guy’s face.

  Sean called out. The guy grunted and dropped the knife and in that instant, LC was aware of the guy’s buddy behind him and in that fraction of a second before it happened knew what the guy was about to do. He turned, caught the movement out of the corner of his eye as the man stepped in, another blade flashing, and LC instinctively blocked with his left hand, no time for anything fancy, the knife slashing through his palm as he caught hold of it.

  He kept the grip on the knife, balancing his weight on his back foot as both men lunged forward. Sean moved deftly to stop them reaching Gallagher who was still shouting and LC was vaguely aware of people pressing in behind him when a figure loomed up behind the two drunks, catching them both around the neck. With one smooth motion, the two men’s heads crashed together, the figure letting go to let them drop to the floor.

  Danny was pushing in then, arms up, saying, “Enough!” in the sudden quiet. The press of people eased off. LC turned to check on Sean and Gallagher, the pain of the gash in his hand kicking in and the buzz in his head returning with enough force to make his eyes water.

  Gallagher was talking to Danny, apologising; Danny saying not to worry, they were idiots.

  The big guy who had floored the drunks leaned in to Danny, said something quietly and turned to go. LC started to go over but Sean took hold of his hand, holding him back. He flinched as a spark flared behind his eyes at her touch. She called to a guy behind the bar for a cloth and pressed it into his palm, staunching the flow of blood.

  “Is it always this exciting?” she said with a smile.

  “Don’t ask me,” LC muttered, wrapping the cloth tight around his hand. “I’ve only been here a couple of days.”

  The music started up again and the conversation rose as people realised the excitement was over and got back to their free time.

  Sean looked back at Gallagher. “We should get him to the ship.”

  LC nodded. There was something disconcerting about her, an intensity he didn’t like being close to. Since the lab it had been easier to avoid people all together. He didn’t know what the hell he’d been thinking to sign on as crew. And he didn’t have the faintest idea about engines. He just needed to get away. The faster, the better.

  She touched his shoulder and he saw a look of curiosity in her eyes that left him feeling queasy. He was pretty much at the end of the line. Christ, could it get any worse?

  Ch
apter 3

  NG took a moment to decide where to start. The Man knew a lot of this and a lot more besides. The gathering of intelligence was the lifeblood of the guild but he always wanted to hear NG explain the details, the minutiae of operations at ground level, because he said he liked to get a feeling for those insights firsthand.

  NG took a sip of his wine. “We must consider that it was Mendhel who brought LC to us,” he said slowly, “in difficult circumstances and at a very young age. Mendhel has always been the only handler who could work with him. Losing Mendhel has been hard for us all but for LC, it was devastating.”

  The Man was watching intently, drinking in every word, the shadows shrouding the small room seeming to mirror a growing darkness outside.

  Mendhel had been one of their best handlers and for someone of that standing to have been killed, by people who knew far more about the guild than any outsider ever should, was unprecedented. NG knew without needing to pry into the Man’s mind that the question wasn’t so much why Anderton and Hilyer had taken it on themselves to run the tab but why they hadn’t returned to the safety of the guild when it went wrong.

  That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Someone had dared challenge the Thieves’ Guild and had given their operatives no choice but to comply. Once that choice was made, circumstances had tumbled out of their control.

  The Man leaned forward and topped up the two goblets. “The audacity of our enemies sets the bar by which we exist,” he said and gestured towards the board, an invitation for NG to commence. The flame of the candle wavered.

  “They set the bounty at a figure we couldn’t ignore,” NG said. He moved a pawn. “And given the price on his head and the heat that attracted, it wasn’t surprising that LC ran to the Between if he suspected that the guild had been compromised.”

  •

  He woke with a jolt, disorientated, and for a moment couldn’t place where he was. Rumbling echoed through the bare metal bulkheads next to his bunk and it was hot. So not the Alsatia then. He grabbed his pistol from under the pillow, sat up suddenly and banged his head on the hard surface of the lockers above. He almost panicked disentangling himself from a sheet that was so thin it might as well not have been there and looked around a cabin that was dark but for the soft red glow of night lighting.

  He was on the Duck, he realised, calming his heart rate and listening to figure out what had woken him. The hull of the ship was reverberating. That was all. They must be loading cargo. He sat with the pistol a reassuring weight in his hand. His palm was itching. He’d cleaned and bandaged the gash and it felt like it was healing already.

  The headache was gone. He was hot but that was because the cabin was hot. And the shakes had gone so it was over, at least for the moment. The gaps between episodes seemed to be getting longer and it was weird but some of his old aches, pain he’d lived with for years, were easing off. He stretched out his left leg and massaged the knee. It was fine, only a faint twinge of the ever-present ache he’d had since he dislocated it falling off a roof when he was a kid.

  He rubbed a hand across his eyes and looked at the band on his wrist to check the time. It was the middle of the night and he was wide awake. He’d never downed so much alcohol with so little effect and if he hadn’t seen the state Gallagher was in, it would have been tempting to think Danny was watering down his whisky. Another two or three beers, he thought, was what he needed to help him get back to sleep. He dressed, tucked the pistol into the small of his back, pulled his shirt out over it and wandered out to find the mess.

  He walked through the Duck’s main deck, a dark and claustrophobic level crammed with tiny living spaces. The ship spared no energy on superfluous lighting or fancy environmental control, like it didn’t care too much about the humans it needed to keep it flying. Gallagher had said there was no AI so it was just a hulk of a hull with cargo space premium and temperamental engines. Thank god Thom actually was an engineer. The kid was more than capable from what he’d seen and they might even make it to their destination intact, and once at Harbin or Erica or wherever they were going, he’d split and find another ride out. Keep running for now, at least until he had a plan.

  He touched a hand to his pocket, no need to pull out the tiny object that was stashed there, just a touch to reassure himself it was still there. It was his only lead, the only clue as to who had sent them into that lab, who’d taken Anya and killed Mendhel. Pen Halligan had told him about the corporation and slipped the implant into his hand as he’d left. “The woman who sent you after that damned package is dead,” he’d said. “Hilyer pulled this Senson out of her. We can’t get a damn thing off it. See if you have any luck.”

  He hadn’t. Yet.

  Before the lab he would have bust it wide open in seconds. Before the lab he never used to wake up in the middle of the night shaking. He still couldn’t face the thought of having to admit to anyone what had happened. If Hil hadn’t been there backing him up, there was no way he would have got out alive. LC owed him a lot, his life, more than anyone could have asked. He could still feel the heat of the explosion behind them. And whatever the hell it was that he’d been exposed to in there, his body was still adjusting.

  He needed a beer.

  The door to the mess was ajar and he could see the flicker of a screen in the darkness inside. Muted sounds and voices almost made him turn away but the last thing he needed to do was sit in a hot cabin, wide awake and going insane.

  DiMarco was in there, sprawled across one end of the L-shaped seating that took up two walls of the cramped space. One of the station’s news channels was playing on the screen alongside three music streams and the pilot was flicking idly between them. He looked up as LC walked in.

  “Hey, look who it is,” he said. “Throw me a beer, will you?”

  LC got two beers from the fridge unit by the door, threw one of the bottles across to DiMarco and sat down, putting his feet up on the low table in front of the sofa.

  He could feel the pilot looking at him and smirking, but he just leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the mix of voices and music wash over him.

  “I heard what you did for Gallagher in Danny’s Bar,” DiMarco said. “I had you down for the quiet type who’d run from a fight but the skipper says you’re a regular hero, Luka. Fancy that.”

  LC ignored him. The beer wasn’t bad and it was cooler in the mess than in his cabin so he could put up with the company for a while.

  DiMarco turned up the music and flicked backwards and forwards between videos. “Fast reflexes, Gallagher said.”

  LC had his eyes half closed and sensed more than saw the empty bottle thrown at his head. He caught it easily, not entirely sure why DiMarco was being such an ass.

  The pilot laughed. “What are you running from, Luka?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said casually, placing the bottle on the table and leaning back.

  “Come on. This place is the back of beyond. No one ends up here except burnt out miners, drunken freighter pilots and scum with something to hide.”

  “And which one are you?”

  DiMarco laughed again, louder this time. “That kid Thomas is out of his depth. He won’t last long. The woman – she’s something. I’ll figure her out. You? I don’t know where the hell Gallagher picked you up from, but I’ll find out, Luka. No one is ever who they seem to be. You don’t get to keep secrets on Sten’s World.”

  LC leaned across and pulled two more beers from the fridge. He threw one to DiMarco. He was starting to get a headache and the beer wasn’t doing much but he wasn’t going to give the pilot the satisfaction of spooking him out of the mess.

  “How long have you known Gallagher?” he asked, more out of a need to divert attention from himself than any real curiosity.

  DiMarco shrugged. “Long enough to know he has more than one screw loose. Trust me, I’m not piloting this bucket for him out of choice. The guy’s crazy.”

  He sat up suddenly and peered at LC. “You
don’t know, do you?” He laughed so hard then that it looked like he was going to choke. “Oh man, this gets better.”

  LC smiled and drank down the rest of his beer in one. He really didn’t care. Whatever these people had going on was nothing compared to where he’d come from. They had nothing on him and he wasn’t going to get involved. He’d been in crap situations before and he’d always got out. The more that assholes like DiMarco ribbed him, the more it helped him focus on that. He’d looked after himself alone for years as a kid before the guild had picked him up and then near enough ten years fighting to get to the top and stay at the top which had taught him plenty about taking care of himself. Hil and the others thought he had it easy, that he didn’t have to work at it, and that was an image he was happy to sustain. But it wasn’t entirely true. And compared to some people he’d had to deal with, DiMarco here was an amateur.

  The pilot was still looking at him with a feral grin creasing his thin mouth. He stood up, swaying slightly, and pointed at LC. “You need a real man’s drink,” he said with a laugh. “Stay there.”

  LC leaned back again and watched DiMarco stagger out of the mess. He scratched absently at his palm and pulled away the bandage out of curiosity. The knife wound wandered in a jagged line across his hand, red inflammation around it, but the gash was starting to seal already. He clenched his fist, opened and closed it a few times. He’d thought it might need medical attention but it was healing fine. In the time he’d been running since the lab, he’d taken a few knocks but he’d thought it had been the pure adrenaline that kept him going. The episodes of shakes and aches, bone-deep pain and agonising headaches that hit suddenly had kept him preoccupied enough not to think about the scrapes he’d had.

  He looked at the wound. It was weird that it was healing so fast but not unwelcome. He heard footsteps approaching and quickly rewrapped the bandage around his hand.

  DiMarco stumbled back in and set an unlabelled bottle and two shot glasses on the table. The bottle was a third empty already and the liquid in it was a murky green colour. The pilot laughed to himself like he had a private joke going on and poured the alcohol into the two glasses.