by C. G. Hatton
NG was considering his own knight. “LC has an innate complement of talents for everything we do here. He can run the Straight in the fastest time we’ve ever recorded. He can break into systems we’ve built to be impregnable. He’s patient. He’s determined. He survived frontline combat before the age of thirteen.” NG made the move, the knight moving into position to threaten the Man’s queen, and looked up. “From everything we’ve heard, he handled himself well.”
“Good.” The Man stood and left the circle of light to go to the cabinet, the motion sending the flame of the candle into an erratic frenzy. It looked for a briefest instant that it might extinguish, plunge the chamber into absolute dark, but it settled.
NG studied the board, trying to guard his train of thought. He could hear the sound of bottles clinking behind him as the Man took his time to select more wine.
The black queen glided silently across the chequered surface, withdrawing to safety.
NG drained the last of his wine, feeling the ambient temperature rise. It wasn’t often that the Man resorted to such obvious displays of his abilities.
“So what happened?” the Man said from the far side of the room.
“LC isn’t just good, he’s lucky,” NG said. “And on Poule, his luck ran out.”
•
LC went sprawling at the bottom of the steps. An agonising heat stabbed into his leg and a painful cramp constricted the muscle low down in his back.
Duncan pulled him back and LC struggled to get to his feet, right leg refusing to take his weight.
There were yells up ahead of them.
“Got any ideas?” Duncan hissed, still firing steadily over LC’s head.
Passing out seemed like a good idea. LC almost laughed. He couldn’t think straight.
Thom’s voice was a gentle whisper inside his head. “I’m back. What’s going on? You need to move. Back up and duck left. You’re about to get company.”
“We’ve got company.”
“Yeah, your company is about to get company – this is getting out of hand – and you’re right in the middle. Luka, listen to me, you need to move.”
Shit. LC blinked. He heard Sean relay the message and Duncan pulled him back as footsteps began to echo up from behind them, coarse yells and shouting.
Gunfire erupted in both directions as they ducked left into an alcove and pushed through a hatch.
The corridor was empty and quiet, the noise of the maintenance area they’d left sealed as the hatch slammed shut. LC leaned against the bulkhead watching as Duncan clicked a fresh magazine into his pistol. Sean and Thom were saying something, urgent exchanges that he thought he should try to follow but he couldn’t focus. He had a hand gripped tightly around his thigh. It was sticky and hot. Blood leaked through his fingers.
Sean glared at him again, swore and grabbed his other arm, hoisting it over her shoulder. “Come on, we need to move before we can see to that.”
They made it to the stairwell and stopped half way up, LC collapsing finally, shivering in a cold sweat, with a throbbing behind his eyes matching the pulsing agony from his leg. Sean eased him down onto the step and sat behind him, letting him lean and he could overhear her thoughts as if she was speaking out loud to him, hearing her decide he was her only link to LC, cursing that she was down to depending on a damned thief to lead her to the thief she wanted. She wasn’t impressed and was less impressed that he’d got himself shot, that he was wasting her time even more.
Duncan knelt in front of him. “Check with Thom that we’re clear.”
“We’re clear.” He couldn’t sense anyone anywhere near. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out Sean and her cacophony of thoughts, one hand pushing down on the hot spot on his leg. He’d been shot before, more than once, but not since the lab, and the pain taking hold of his back was almost worse than the pain from his leg.
He felt Duncan place a hand over the hand he had clamped to his thigh.
“This might hurt,” the big man said, peeling his hand away and pressing something against the wound.
LC tensed and cursed. Might hurt? The excruciating sting of a trauma patch hit his leg and instead of the anticipated numb that should have followed, the pain magnified. He bit his lip, expecting numb any minute but it got unbearable fast. He tore off the patch, sagging back.
“What the hell was that?” he gasped, eyes closed tight.
Duncan pushed pressure against his leg again. “You need a trauma patch, bud, or you’ll bleed out. This doesn’t look good.”
LC coughed. “Crap, that was a trauma patch?” He didn’t understand. He’d used patches before but never felt anything like that. “Just bandage it, I’ll be fine.”
“You’re mad.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told. C’mon, help me here.”
Thom was nudging them again by the time they got moving. LC felt sick, light-headed and ticked off, sure that getting shot had never hurt this much before. So much for being invincible.
By the time they reached the top, he was out of breath and he could feel that his right leg was soaked through right down to his boot. The burning was getting worse and it felt like someone was pushing a hot spike through his flesh. They stopped two steps from the top and Sean let him drop to a sitting position, back leaning against the wall. She spoke quietly with Duncan and came back to kneel beside him.
“You’re losing a lot of blood,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want a trauma patch but you need to realise you’re in real danger here.”
She seriously thought he was going to keel over and die right there.
He shook his head and muttered, “Another bandage. That’s all I need and a beer if you have one.”
She didn’t smile but she did wrap another field bandage tightly around his leg, the black cloth soaked before she’d finished. The vial in his pocket was looking more and more tempting. It was an easy out, something one of the extraction agents had given him once and told him never to use.
He leaned over, hands gripping his thigh either side of the bandage, feeling the heat spread.
“I’m not joking,” he said. “Beer would be good.” His eyes felt heavy, too much effort to focus. It took him a minute to realise Sean was talking again, out loud, up close.
“Luka,” she said. “Elliott can’t break the security around the cells remotely. Can you do it from the cellblock? He says there’s a command post on the security deck. Luka?”
He tried to recall the layout of the permissions that controlled the cells. They were isolated. That was why they wouldn’t be able to bust them from the ship.
“Five minutes,” he said finally, unsettled by the breathless catch in his voice. “Give me five minutes in there and I’ll have Gallagher’s cell open.”
Duncan was tumbling a grenade in his palm. Sean turned to him. “Two guards are patrolling each side. How do you want to play this?”
LC sensed a hesitation in Duncan and whispered, “I’m fine.”
Duncan wasn’t convinced and for a second, he flashed again on Richardson and other faces with such a sense of loss that LC had to squeeze his eyes shut.
“I’m fine,” he said again, struggling to keep the pain out of his voice.
Thom sent, “Luka, you don’t sound fine.”
For Christ’s sake, he’d about had enough of working with people. He coughed and straightened up stiffly, the knot in the small of his back emanating a constant ache as his body fought to fix itself. “I’m fine. What’s the plan?”
“You wait here,” Duncan said. “O’Brien will come back for you.”
He didn’t have much choice and he didn’t argue. He sat and waited, right leg stretched out along the step, left hand resting on the pistol he placed by his knee.
It was quiet. He listened to the calm exchanges between Sean and Thom, a remote commentary as they moved in on the guards. His leg was still bleeding – the gunshot wound throbbing and the field bandage Sean had wrapped around it soaked through. Sitting there quiet
ly, he kept his breathing steady and deep. The shakes were getting severe and he could feel a bead of sweat trickling down his back. Whatever the hell it was in his system that speeded up the healing process, it took a helluva toll on the way. This was just about as bad as it had been.
After a while, he sensed Sean’s presence at the top of the stairs and waited until she moved towards him before looking up. She’d been standing there for a while. She had her hand on her belt, thinking about the knife, that it was her only lead and the only connection she had to that lead was sitting down there bleeding all over the stairs.
He looked up at her, eyes hooded.
She was also watching how he had his left hand, not right, on the gun, and she was wondering if there was any way he could be the one, thinking about what Hil had said about LC’s memory, how confident he’d been about the route to take, and trying to decide if there was any way NG could have given her the wrong information.
She trotted down the steps and knelt by his side. “We’re all clear. Are you good to go?”
“I want my knife back,” he said.
She stared at him in disbelief. “We don’t have time for this,” she said. “Come on, we need to get you out of here.”
LC sank into the main chair in the command post, taking the weight off his leg and back a massive relief, the pistol in his lap.
Sean left him to it and went back to watch the corridor. He waited until she’d gone before he linked in with the system.
Breaking in was far harder than it should have been and twice he broke loose, sat quietly for a moment and tried again. Trying to concentrate backfired. It always did. The more he wanted to be able to do something, the less likely it was to work. The instructors at the guild had hated him, hated the throw-away attitude and lack of concerted effort but he couldn’t help it. The more he tried, the worse he got. It had to be pure instinct, laid back, take it or leave it, catch it out of the corner of your eye nonchalance, and that was when he could work miracles. His problem now was that he cared, cared more than he was comfortable with, about Gallagher, Duncan, the kid and strangely about Sean.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, shutting out the pain and blocking out the last few weeks. It came quickly then and he hooked up and bypassed a tangled mass of protections to bust into the system. It was still a mess from his last interference but someone somewhere was working hard to fix it. He closed them down, isolated cell seventeen and popped it open.
DiMarco was nowhere on this level. LC cursed and dug deeper, trying to figure out where they were holding the pilot.
He got what he needed, then pulled back and tried to figure out what the station was trying to protect. UM had increased security on the station about three weeks earlier, shipping in people to up the output of the mine and stripping station personnel to high security only. Elliott was right – they’d dropped into the middle of something. And for some reason they’d targeted Gallagher as a threat. It didn’t make sense.
By the time he’d finished, he knew why it didn’t make sense and a headache was banging away behind his eyes.
He didn’t move, eyes still closed. He could feel Sean standing at the door. He’d stretched his leg out, resting it up on the desk. He could feel himself healing, feel the round embedded in his flesh like a red hot needle tip that was being pushed out, slowly and excruciatingly. If he could sit here quietly for a little while, he’d be fine.
“Time to go, Luka.”
LC looked round. He didn’t know how long she’d been there but it was obvious that she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight for long.
“DiMarco’s being held one level up,” he said, sitting up, using both hands to grip his leg and gently ease it to the floor. “It wasn’t Gallagher they wanted – it was DiMarco.”
Sean scowled. “Where is he?”
He stood up. His heart rate was low and he could feel his blood pressure falling. He didn’t know how he was going to make it back to the ship. If he’d been on his own, he would have found a bolthole and waited it out. Having Sean on his case, that wasn’t going to be an option. And as much as DiMarco was an ass, he wasn’t going to abandon the pilot to the mercenaries and a death sentence.
“I can’t access it from here,” he said. “I’ll have to come with you. Bastard promised me a bottle of moonshine. We can’t just leave him here.”
Chapter 12
Again, two pinches of powder went into the wine. NG could feel the fumes wind their way down his throat.
The Man poured. “Given the recent intelligence gathered regarding Anderton,” he said without looking up, “Legal feels herself justified in her recent challenge.”
He let that statement hang in the air, heavy amidst the pungent vapours.
NG sat up straight, not realising he’d slouched. “Legal needs to remember that these operatives are the ones putting themselves in danger every time they go out.”
He rubbed his eyes. He was tired. They all were and it didn’t help that Legal pounced each time Acquisitions was exposed like this. He reached for his wine. “She needs to remember what caused this. She wasn’t here when the decision was made to let Mendhel keep his daughter away from us.”
He moved a pawn.
The Man smiled and raised his goblet. “To the guild,” he said quietly, “and all our little foibles.”
NG drank, more than he intended, the wine in this mixture smooth with a delicate sweetness to it that tempered the tang of the narcotic. He glanced at the pieces facing each other across the black and white squares and saw clearly an alternative move he’d missed, obvious now.
The Man sat back. “Legal consider UM to be worth closer scrutiny.”
“It’s a corporation that gets results,” NG said simply. “Whatever you think of their means, they get results.”
•
Sean helped him up and out, every step shooting an agonising pain bone deep into his thigh. The entire security deck was dark, cells sealed and they moved slowly through, slower than Sean was happy with. He could feel her frustration and it was hard not to take it on, his own emotions feeling erratic.
They met up with Duncan, the big marine standing with Gallagher, the skipper holding a pistol like he didn’t know what to do with it. LC couldn’t help the faint smile that slipped out. How the hell had he ended up with this bunch of misfits? He thought for a second that Gallagher was going to run up and give him a hug but the skipper just clasped his shoulder and said quietly, “Nice work, Luka,” while trying to suppress a distinct queasiness at the sight of all the blood.
They made their way to a stairwell and struggled up another level, Thom warning them to hurry. By the time LC stood leaning against the holding cell door, he was soaked through in a cold sweat, hands shaking as he tried to work the lockpick and find the sweetspot on the mechanism. Trust DiMarco to get himself incarcerated in an old fashioned cell with manual locks that weren’t controlled from the central system.
Sean and Duncan were twitchy as hell at the delay and it took as much effort to shut them out as it did to concentrate on the door. Finally he got it. The lock clicked and Sean pushed the door open to let DiMarco out.
The pilot looked like shit, like someone had hit him in the face with a wall. He laughed. “Being the hero again, Luka buddy? Jesus, you look worse than I feel.”
Duncan hurried them along, throwing a rifle to DiMarco who took hold of it and checked it, way more confident with it than a drunken freighter pilot should be. LC was picking up a buzz of emotions and thoughts from all of them, and including the commentary from Thom through the implant, it was all making his head ache.
He cut the connection and let Thom talk to Sean, trusting them more than himself right now. Each step was a challenge and a couple of times he felt himself fading out. Gallagher dropped back and took up his other arm, helping Sean to almost drag him along.
They were lagging behind and Duncan was casting anxious glances back at them, holding DiMarco back while gesturing them t
o speed up. He was worrying that they’d get caught out again and he’d marked Gallagher and LC as liabilities. LC could feel the tension in the man, memories surfacing of shepherding civilians through supposed demilitarised zones. LC had been herded through enough front lines as a kid, heavily armed soldiers less than gentle and bombs dropping all around. He shut it out and did his best to ignore Duncan’s memories and emotions, while he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
He leaned on Sean heavily. She held him around the waist, Gallagher holding him up on the other side, and they made slow progress, every step agony. He was going as fast as he could and when Sean piped up to say that Thom was telling them to hurry, he couldn’t up the pace as much as he tried.
DiMarco dropped behind them while Duncan scouted ahead. A couple of times, there were loud gunshots as the big marine encountered guards. LC felt each death as a cold pop of void, like a punch to the stomach. He faltered each time, Sean’s exasperation building.
It didn’t help when DiMarco exclaimed suddenly, stopping to search one of the bodies.
“For Christ’s sake, DiMarco,” Sean hissed.
The pilot stood, dramatically flourishing a small hip flask. He unscrewed the top, took a mouthful and grinned. He kicked the guy in the head, muttered, “Thieving bastard,” and tucked the flask inside his jacket.
LC almost laughed but Sean dragged him forward and a sharp pain flared in his leg. It was a relief to finally see the elevator.
Sean pulled open the lift door, tugging it aside. “We go down,” she said. “Thom and Elliott have control of the main elevator. Then we find a way to cross the docks.”
LC sank down onto the floor, leaning against the back wall. The lift dropped fast, sending his stomach lurching. Duncan was reloading and showing Gallagher how to check his own magazine. DiMarco stood slouching by the lift door, hefting the rifle as if he was gauging its balance and smirking down at LC.