by C. G. Hatton
He left the cards.
LC scooped up the deck and shuffled, setting it up into four perfect suits in a series of fast, neat flicks. He placed the deck on the bed, pulled the IV line out of his arm and slipped down the corridor to his cabin.
It was definitely time to go.
He dressed quickly, pulled on his boots and was stuffing his few belongings into a bag when he heard heavy footsteps outside. He froze. A wave of hot raw emotion hit him, Gallagher and someone else, so sharp that it set off a pulsing pain behind LC’s eyes.
He grabbed the gun, heart hammering, and stood staring at the door but they passed, heading towards the medical bay, the onrush of agitation and anguish fading as they moved away. He laced up his boots quickly, slid the knife into place and tucked the gun into his waistband in the small of his back. He pulled on his jacket and glanced around. There was nothing there that he really needed to take and the faster he got off this ship the better.
He listened at the door before he opened it, reluctant to be confronted by anyone, and slid out into the corridor. There were fresh bloodstains on the deck, drips and footprints smudged in red, smeared handprints on the walls. Christ.
LC stopped, caught between the need to run and a cold empty vacuum of feeling he caught from someone behind. He turned and saw Gallagher and Elliott struggling to hold up Hal Duncan between them, the big man drenched in blood and sagging, struggling to stay conscious. They pushed through into the medical bay and LC stared after them. He cursed and ran to catch up, every instinct screaming at him to run the other way and get off the ship.
They were hoisting Duncan up onto a bunk by the time he reached them, Gallagher stepping back, shocked.
“They’re right behind me,” Duncan gasped, words slurring. His face was a mass of bruises and LC was almost overwhelmed by the intense pain the big man was trying to shut down and overcome.
“We have to go,” Duncan whispered and grasped at Elliott’s arm. “They’re coming.” His jaw looked broken and LC could feel his frustration as he tried to get the words out. “I had to warn you. Donnelly thinks you betrayed him.”
LC turned and dug around in the supply lockers for anything that looked like a trauma patch. He threw a pack to Elliott, trying to ignore the panicky confusion emanating from Gallagher and the cold despair surrounding Duncan.
Elliott pushed the big marine gently down onto the bed but Duncan struggled to sit, trying to look at Gallagher.
“McCabe’s here,” he said, voice breaking. “Gallagher, go. Get this ship away.” He sagged back, closing his eyes. “They’re right behind me.”
Gallagher swore and touched LC’s arm. “Luka, he’s right. Come on, we need to get to the bridge.”
Elliott nodded them away and calmly tended to Duncan, blood everywhere, IV lines trailing. LC couldn’t help feeling that this is what the room must have looked like when they brought him back from the dockside on Poule.
He backed away and ran after Gallagher, calling Thom and Sean on an open urgent link.
“Is the ship ready to go?”
Sean answered first. “We’re scheduled to leave in about an hour and a half. What’s wrong?”
“We have to go now.” He gave them a quick and concise rundown as he tried to keep up with Gallagher. It was easy to forget how serious the injury had been until he tried to move anywhere fast, then the wound in his thigh, which wasn’t entirely healed, pulled like a bitch and his limbs felt like jelly.
“We’re good,” Thom sent from the engine room.
“DiMarco’s drunk but I can get us out of dock,” Sean sent. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” he replied as they walked onto the bridge.
She looked at him in disgust. Gallagher hadn’t questioned why he was up and about but both Sean and DiMarco looked surprised.
“Feeling better there, buddy?” DiMarco said with a laugh.
LC ignored him, slipping into the engineer’s chair and hooking up with the ship without a word. He could sense Elliott in there too and the tech guy guided him through to a sitrep from the station. Donnelly and McCabe were dominating the docks, running roughshod over the security and approaching with a force bristling with heavy weapons.
LC threw the picture over to Sean and felt her ready the ship for departure with an increased urgency.
A deep rumble echoed through the hull of the Duck as grapples whipped free and the ship shifted.
Elliott broadened the scene and showed LC shields firing up to maximum, a couple of other ships undocking around them with weapons targeted.
“Oh shit,” he muttered.
Elliott’s voice was a calm and quiet whisper inside his head, “Tell them to set course and just fly. The shields will take care of anything these people can throw at us. I’ll arrange jump.”
“Give us warning this time, will you?”
Elliott didn’t reply but a display appeared on one of the screens with a countdown timer. Four hours to jump.
LC relayed the message and sat back. So much for slipping off the ship quietly and disappearing.
They watched the shields deflect missiles and ignored the threats that Donnelly was broadcasting.
Elliott’s countdown dropped abruptly to five seconds. Christ. LC warned Thom.
When they dropped out of jump, no ships followed them. DiMarco laughed. “Hell of an exit there, Gallagher.”
LC could feel that Sean wasn’t happy but was trying to reconfigure her plans on the hoof. She glanced around at him, furious but at the same time content that he was right there and she still had tight enough reins on him, wherever the hell they ended up.
He stood. “Gallagher, I’m going back to see if Elliott needs a hand.”
Gallagher nodded. “Right, no problem.” He looked confused for a moment then said, “Shouldn’t you be in medical anyway?”
Elliott was leaning against one of the bunks with his arms folded by the time he got back down there. LC stared. Duncan didn’t look good and he could feel the edge of a chill darkness creeping in.
Elliott turned and shook his head. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can do. There’s too much damage. It was a miracle he made it this far.”
LC could feel the big man slipping away. “There must be something you can do.” He spun around, pulling open drawers and throwing out pouches and syringes. “Come on, Elliott, do something.”
He could hear a frantic edge to his voice. The big marine had saved his life, and it was hard to stand aside and watch him die.
Elliott stood quietly. “I’m not a medic, LC, but I know when someone is too far gone.”
“You saved me,” he said awkwardly.
Elliott shook his head again. “No, I didn’t.”
LC felt cold inside, knowing exactly what he meant. “There must be something,” he said again.
“He needs blood and plasma, LC, lots of it and we don’t have enough. Apart from that, his injuries are too severe. He’s taken a huge amount of punishment from someone. I couldn’t even tell you how many broken bones and fractures there are. He’s got a punctured lung and massive internal bleeding. The best I can do with what we have on board is give him an overdose of painkillers and sedatives. At least it will take the pain away.”
LC blinked, the headache peaking again. “We can’t just let him die. There must be something you can do to stabilise him. We’ll find a colony with a hospital. Don’t you have an isopod? Anything?”
“There’s only one miracle cure for imminent death around here that I’m aware of, LC, and it’s not in the medical locker.”
LC backed away, staring at Duncan lying there. “We can’t.”
“I’ve seen accelerated regeneration before,” Elliott said calmly. “Earth is renowned for it. They test regenerative drugs on entire battlefield units. But I’ve never seen anything like whatever it is you have in your body, LC.”
“Elliott, god, no, you don’t know what it’s like. It’s a fucking death sentence.”
“He’s go
ing to die anyway.”
“I can’t do that to him. It would be worse.”
“Would it?”
LC started to shiver, flashing back to the lab and the cold jab on his neck, the heat of the explosion on his back as they fled.
“He’ll be better off dead than living with this,” he said, voice quiet and unconvincing.
Elliott was impassive. “You should know.” He looked LC straight in the eye. “It’s your choice.”
LC could see that Duncan’s breathing was slowing, feel his system shutting down, the big man’s essence fading. He shrugged out of his jacket suddenly. “What can we do? How do we do it?”
“It’s in your blood. Sit down. I don’t know how much we’ll need.”
Chapter 19
The solitary candle was struggling, fighting and failing to push back the darkness. The Man moved his queen into a position to threaten NG’s knight then sat back, still staring at the board.
The stifling heat in the room was almost unbearable. NG absently rubbed at the band around his wrist. There was no point looking at the watch; it always stopped when he entered this chamber but it felt like he’d been in there for hours.
The Man raised his eyes. “Colonel Jameson denies all knowledge of the research that was acquired from their laboratory?”
Jameson was Old Earth through and through and he’d been stubbornly guarded and obstructive every time NG had managed to speak to him. “He wasn’t happy.” That was an understatement. NG moved the knight to safety and reached for his wine. “He wanted a guarantee that we’d hand over their stolen property without poking our noses into it, was the way he put it.”
That elicited a smile. “Earth dabbles in the very fabric of life without appreciating how close they are to burning their fingers,” the Man said. “How old are you, NG?”
He paused with the goblet half way to his lips and returned the smile. “Older than I look.”
The Man picked up his own goblet. “What price, do you think, is this galaxy prepared to pay for immortality?”
•
He hadn’t meant to sleep. He’d watched as Elliott set up a transfusion system, watched as the guy drew blood and hooked it up to Duncan and somewhere along the process he must have keeled over because he couldn’t remember anything else and he woke up curled on his side beneath a blanket.
Elliott hadn’t bothered to give him an IV, probably thinking that Duncan needed any plasma they had left more than he did. His head was pounding and the muscle in his back twinged painfully as he twisted round to sit up.
Hal Duncan was sleeping peacefully on the opposite bunk, cleaned up and under clean sheets, breathing steady and colour starting to return.
LC checked the time on his wristband and watched the bioreadings scroll, meaningless numbers that were even more erratic than before.
He felt drained. It had only been three hours. The background sound of the ship’s engines was a constant thrumming drone. They were flying but he didn’t know where they were going, never mind how far out they were.
He didn’t want to speak to anyone and he was done lying around in medical so he got up, grabbed his jacket and left, standing for a moment watching the big man’s chest rise and fall and feeling the warm, passive calm of sleep emanate from his mind. It looked like he’d live but LC couldn’t help the uneasy apprehension in the pit of his stomach at the thought of what they’d have to deal with when the big man woke up. When he’d been on the run with Hil, neither of them had realised what was going on. They thought he’d been poisoned with some kind of bioweapon. It had been excruciating, every cell in his body burning in agony, and they’d had people chasing after them. No chance to rest up and recover. They’d just had to run and hide until Hil had offered to take the heat and they’d split up.
LC rubbed his eyes. He needed a shower and a beer, not necessarily in that order.
There was no one around in the crew’s quarters and he acquired a couple of beers by taking a detour to the mess. As he sat and drank the first, the implications of exactly what they’d done started to filter through. Sean had him tagged as her target but as far as he could pick up, she didn’t know why apart from knowing that he’d run an unauthorised tab and the guild wanted him back. She didn’t seem to have questioned what he could have been after that would warrant such an excessive bounty, so she probably didn’t know about the lab.
DiMarco could prove to be trouble but only in so much that he knew people were out there offering money for information.
And Elliott knew about the virus, or whatever it was, and the price on his head but not necessarily about the guild.
He’d have to figure out how much to tell Hal Duncan of all this. Or he could just split and leave Duncan to live with it. If no one but Elliott knew, it might go no further. Who could tell?
LC finished the beer and dropped the bottle in the chute, taking the other one back to his cabin. He didn’t mean to crash out again but woke up sprawled on his bunk with a headache. A fast cold shower didn’t do much to clear his head and not knowing where they were going was starting to niggle. He wasn’t a control freak like Hilyer but he had to leave next time they docked, no doubt about that; wherever and whenever it was, he was leaving.
There was no reply from Elliott when he tried to reach someone and Thom buzzed back quickly that he was busy and would talk later. Sean said she was in the mess and if he was hungry, she’d heat up a pack of soup for him. He wasn’t but she refused to talk, saying she’d bring him up to speed if he got his ass down to the mess.
By the time he got there, she had a pack of tomato soup sitting on the table for him.
Sean pushed the pouch in front of him as he sat and reached a hand up to his forehead, feeling his temperature before he could swat her away.
“You feel hot,” she said. “Should you be up?”
“Probably not.”
“How’s Hal?”
“He’ll be fine. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. So what’s happening? Where are we headed?”
Sean smiled and switched to the Senson, a tight private link. “Some place called T72. DiMarco knows it. We’re about three hours out. We’re dropping off his cargo then heading to Erica.”
Erica not Harbin.
LC snapped open the tube on the soup and took a sip. He hadn’t eaten anything in a while and it was weird to feel the hot liquid hit his stomach.
“Why are we talking privately?” he sent back.
Sean was watching him, thinking of Hilyer again. “Because we have a problem. DiMarco is bragging that he knows something about you that is worth thousands. He ran into a couple of bounty hunters on Sten’s World and he recognised the image they were touting around. He obviously doesn’t know how much the bounty is but it won’t take him long to find out. We need to leave.”
She said it matter of fact, as if it was agreed that he was going with her.
LC smiled and put down the pouch. “Sean, I’m not going with you,” he sent through the connection.
“What else do I have to say to convince you, LC? What’s the problem? You don’t trust me, fine, that’s probably smart of you. But it’s NG who wants you back. Don’t you guys all live and breathe guild? I’m offering you a fast ride back, as safe as you’re going to get.” She narrowed her eyes, thinking that she shouldn’t say what she was about to. “I’ll level with you, LC. It’s my fault that things are so hot around you. The other bounty hunters, they’re not tracking you. They’re following me.”
“One of your buddies tell you that?”
Sean flashed on the guy with the groomed stubble and he could feel her mixed feelings for the man. There was professional admiration but it was tinged with an uncomfortable aversion. That was interesting.
“No one knows I’m working for the Thieves’ Guild,” she sent. “The bounty on you is ridiculously high enough that a lot of people are after it and the easiest way for some of these lowlifes to have a go is to follow someone they know will find you. We
’re running out of time. I have a ship that can pick us up as soon as we dock. She’s been following us. What’s the harm in coming back with me?” She leaned forward. “What are you afraid of, LC?”
“I can take care of myself, Sean.”
He finished the soup while she watched, listening in while she desperately tried to think of something she could say that would change his mind. He was about to stand when Thom walked into the mess, trying to scrub dirt out of his fingernails and distractedly running an argument through his head, trying to persuade himself that he’d done the right thing. It was a noisy intrusion and LC had to concentrate to dampen it down but Thom couldn’t look either of them in the eye as he sat and it was hard not to think that the kid may have done something stupid that could affect them all.
Sean threw another pack of soup into the heater and asked LC if he wanted more. He shook his head, picking up that Sean was concerned about the kid too. As if things couldn’t get more complicated.
She pulled three beers out of the fridge and opened them without asking. Thom took his without a word.
“The Lewis is playing up,” the kid said eventually. “I’ve been trying to fix it without disturbing you, but…”
That wasn’t what was bothering him. He was fixating on a conversation, a dressing down, running the words through his head and LC couldn’t tell if it was recent or years old. He picked up that the kid felt bad lying to them. And when Thom ran through his head, clear as day – screw the mission, what the hell do I care, they can’t force me to do that to anyone – LC almost choked on a mouthful of beer. He resisted the urge to throw the kid against the wall and pound some kind of confession out of him. God knows who ‘they’ were but Thom was working for someone. And LC had no inclination to stick around and find out who.
He stood up. “The drive will be fine,” he muttered. “I’ll take a look at it later,” and he made his excuses, head pounding and needing space to think. It felt like the walls were closing in. He needed to cut loose and the sooner he could get off this ship, the better.