by C. G. Hatton
NG was nursing the goblet of wine, feeling the warm fumes haze their way into his bloodstream. “It didn’t come up,” he said, “but Ballack was uncomfortable that I was there.”
The Man laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. “I have initiated the establishment of a new coalition that will attempt to hold Redgate’s space port under an independent banner. It should be easier for you the next time you need to send people there.”
NG sat perfectly still, keeping his breathing steady. It wasn’t often the Man spoke of his other involvements. He knew the Man had interests throughout the galaxy, but NG wasn’t privileged to any of the details. And he didn’t ask. The Thieves’ Guild took his full attention.
“The one you call Badger?” the Man asked, eyes still closed.
“Still missing. He got out in time though. He’ll be in touch when he feels it’s safe.”
The Man shook his head slightly. He was thinking that he didn’t want to be this close to the individuals of the guild, the minutiae of everyday life and its dramas too cumbersome for him to waste time trying to comprehend.
NG kept his own mind neutral. The Man had been purposeful in letting him overhear it.
“I understand why you care so much,” the Man said, finally opening his eyes and leaning forward. “But the sooner the fallout from this escapade settles, the better for us all. There is so much more at risk than humanity can imagine and there will be losses.”
He reached for the queen and swept her forward to capture the rook and place NG’s king in check.
Damn.
•
Duncan didn’t move and didn’t shift his gaze. LC sat quietly for a long minute. The gun was heavy in his hand.
It was hard not to stand and walk away, realising that every thought that crossed his mind was wide open to the man sitting there so casually in front of him. He didn’t know how to shut him out. He’d learned how to shut out other people’s constant bombardment of thoughts when he wanted to but he had no defences against someone else listening in to his.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “I can’t go back.”
He could feel that Duncan was getting stronger. Elliott had been right; the virus seemed to have adjusted much quicker than it had in him.
“You saved my life,” Duncan said softly. “I don’t care where you’re from, Luka, or what you are. But I do need to know what’s going on if I’m going to be able to help us stay alive and stay ahead of the game here. I’m in this shit as deep as you are. You have to talk to me. And you have to trust me, whatever else you’ve got going on.”
LC took a deep breath. It felt as if his chest was going to burst, adrenaline pumping and heart racing. He hadn’t told Sean everything but Hal was right; he had a right to know.
The big man was still staring.
LC bit his lip trying to figure out what to say first. “I need a beer,” he muttered and pushed away from the table.
The fridge was well stocked, all long-lasting pouches and bottles, nothing fresh so maybe Badger had planned to go away. He grabbed three beers and wandered back into the den. His head was starting to pound and he couldn’t tell if the ache in his chest was from the broken ribs or a chill in his lungs from the river.
Duncan ignored the beer. “Why are we here?” he said. “That would be a good place to start.”
LC popped his bottle open and drank down most of it trying to decide what to say. He wanted Badger to tell him where to find Zang, tell him who in that organisation had initiated the tab and the price on his head afterwards.
‘Initiated what?’ Duncan thought.
LC looked up over the beer bottle, eyes hooded, flashing back to the scene on Earth, corporate suits holding a gun to Mendhel’s head and threatening to kill his daughter if they didn’t take the job.
‘Who’s Mendhel?’ Duncan sent softly.
LC frowned. He didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to explain any of this to anyone. ‘My handler,’ he found himself thinking. ‘He’s dead. They killed him because we didn’t get the package back to them.’
‘The virus?’
LC shrugged. ‘I don’t know if they really even knew what they were sending us to steal.’
Duncan thought to himself, Thieves’ Guild then. LC closed his eyes and leaned forward on the table, dropping his head onto his folded arms. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going back. How the hell was he supposed to introduce Hal Duncan to NG?
‘Who’s NG?’ Duncan asked.
LC shook his head, burrowing deeper into his sleeve.
‘Who’s us then?’ Duncan thought, wanting to know who else was caught up in this drama he’d found himself in. ‘Who were you with? This is important, Luka.’
‘Zach Hilyer,’ LC replied reluctantly. Duncan needed to know to assess the situation and it was only fair considering. ‘He’s another field-op. We went in together. I was hit with the virus and he split to take the heat away from me. I don’t know where he is.’
‘He wouldn’t give you up?’
LC opened his eyes and looked at the marine with disbelief. ‘Never.’
Duncan looked unimpressed. ‘Yeah,’ he sent, ‘I know how long never lasts when special forces gets their hands on someone.’
LC shrugged. Hil wouldn’t give him up.
They sat quietly then and he finished the beer, reaching across for a second. Duncan looked on disapproving, thinking that he drank too much; the big guy had never let his men near alcohol in the middle of a mission.
‘Try it,’ LC thought.
‘What?’
‘Try it.’ He drank, feeling the hit as the virus ripped apart the molecular carbohydrate chains turning the alcohol into fuel. The ache in his chest started to ease as his body used the energy to heal the damage.
Duncan picked up on it. ‘You’re shitting me.’ He frowned, reaching for the third bottle. He popped it open and raised the bottle to his lips, a questioning glance flashing across his eyes as he tipped it up.
‘Can’t get drunk,’ LC thought at him. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried.’
He rested his head down again. He didn’t mean to sleep and the nightmare that snatched at his subconscious left his heart racing. It couldn’t have been for long but he woke to find Duncan gone and Sean there by his side.
She rested her hand on the back of his neck, massaging gently with warm fingers as he stirred.
“How do you feel?” she said softly.
“Like I was hit by a car.”
She was thinking about Hilyer, how Hil had fallen asleep at the table too. She stroked his neck. The last time she was here she was still looking for him. And she couldn’t quite believe that she was now sitting next to him, that she had the infamous LC Anderton right here beside her.
He twisted round slightly to look at her. It was suddenly difficult to tell if the personal feelings he was picking up from her were real or some kind of wacky idolisation.
She smiled and it was even more confusing.
The sound of the shower cut off. Sean leaned in close. “We can’t go to Aston, LC. It would be suicide.”
He knew she was right. It had been hard enough last time and Pen had been furious that he was taking such risks. “I don’t know where else to go.”
She sighed and stood, briefly touching the tag in his ear, thinking that she couldn’t lose him again. “Well, this is probably the safest place we can be right now,” she said. “Let’s take our time and figure out what’s going to be best.”
She gave his shoulder a squeeze and wandered off to the kitchen.
LC sat up, muscles he hadn’t realised he’d pulled aching stiffly. She was right again. Out of everywhere he’d run since it had all gone to hell, this was the closest he’d been to the guild. He looked round at Badger’s gear, neatly stacked boards and racks of dormant monitors and sensors. The data wall that was usually streaming with information and maps was inert.
He wasn’t worried about Badger. He’d never known the g
uy to work amidst anything but total chaos. Badger had had time to tidy – there was no way he’d left quickly or unexpectedly.
It didn’t take long to fire up some of the main systems. A lot of Badger’s kit was completely inaccessible, even to the field-ops. But LC had a couple of ins. He grabbed a data board and a beer and slouched on the sofa, taking his time to get comfortable. He could hear Sean and Duncan moving about in the kitchen. He shut them out and delved deep, resting the board by his side and using the Senson to connect remotely, managing to make a smooth link to query Badger’s system without too much trouble.
It recognised him – that made it easier. And Badger had left a few signposts specifically for him as if he’d wanted to make sure LC got the update if he made it here. Scanning through it all was hard going, made harder when he realised how much trouble he was in, how deep this all went.
He surfaced with a jolt, adrenaline pumping. Sean was watching, Duncan trying not to. LC looked across at them both, breathing hard. They’d finished eating, hadn’t liked to disturb him and had left his food in the kitchen. He hadn’t realised he’d been in there that long.
He ditched completely out of the system and shut it all down, swinging around to sit on the edge of the sofa, rubbing the back of his neck.
He got his breathing under control and looked over at them. “I need to give myself up,” he said, decision made.
Sean stared, confused, not sure how much she could say in front of Hal Duncan. The big man had caught some of it but not all. He kept his mouth shut.
“Why?” she said finally, cautiously, not sure what he meant by that, who he was intending giving himself up to.
“Hilyer’s missing,” he said.
It was worse than that. At least two of the guild’s extraction agents had gone awol, the guild had lost track of Hil even though he was supposed to be under surveillance and NG had initiated a Black Rogue Seven alert on them all. LC had never even heard of that level of alert, Black was bad enough. The guild had teams out with orders to apprehend and detain, extreme force approved towards any outside agency that interfered. The Thieves’ Guild never outwardly sanctioned hostilities towards anyone.
LC rubbed at his eye. That was what spooked him – the thought that whatever he and Hilyer had got themselves caught up in had far wider reaching consequences than they’d ever stopped to appreciate.
Badger had left a week or so ago and he’d made sure that the message was loud and clear if LC got here; don’t go back to the Alsatia, trust no one and for god’s sake, don’t get caught. This place suddenly seemed a lot less safe.
Sean stood up, gathering bowls. “You need to eat,” she said, like that would solve everything. She went to the kitchen, trying desperately not to over-react and throw him onto the floor in cuffs.
LC left the board he’d been using on the sofa and wandered over to the table. He had a headache pinching at the back of his mind.
“You need beer,” Duncan said and pushed over a bottle from a stash lined up in neat rows. Half of them were empty already. “Worse than you thought?”
LC nodded and sat, spinning the beer bottle around on its base. He should have known with the bounty spiralling up to such stupid levels.
‘Bud, excuse me for thinking this,’ the big marine thought, ‘but isn’t Sean a bounty hunter? Has she not caught up with you already?’
LC popped open the beer. Duncan needed to know. He had no choice but to open up. ‘Sean’s working for the guild.’
‘Ah.’
She came back with a bowl of chilli for LC and a packet of chips that she threw to Duncan. She sat down and stared defiantly at LC.
‘And she wants to take you back?’
LC took a mouthful of chilli. ‘Yep.’
‘And you want to give yourself up how exactly?’
LC took another slow mouthful of chilli and washed it down with beer. They were both looking intently at him. “I can’t go back to the guild,” he said.
Sean sucked in a breath and glared at him, total disbelief that he’d mention the guild in front of anyone.
“It’s fine,” he said casually, waving towards the big marine with the spoon. “Hal knows.”
She was thinking that he was out of his mind. She couldn’t have been more wrong. For the first time, he knew what he had to do. Ploughing through the information Badger had left for him to find, it was obvious that no one in the guild knew how to find the people who had taken Anya, forced them to take the tab and set the bounty when they’d failed. He knew exactly how to find them. He’d realised when he was lying on the floor of the bounty hunters’ ship, he just hadn’t been in a fit state to act on it. Now he was and he was going to do it.
Duncan gave a small smile and shook his head.
“What?” Sean said suspiciously.
LC pushed away the bowl. “I need to find Anya to finish this,” he said. “I know who has her. I give myself up to a bounty hunter and they’ll take me right to them.”
“You’re out of your mind,” she said. “You give yourself up to one of these money-grubbing bastards and they’ll take you right to the nearest processing centre, alive if they decide that keeping you that way is worth the hassle, and then you’ll be lucky if you ever see the light of day again.”
“They want the package, Sean. It’s Zang Enterprises, some Wintran corporation. They don’t want me or Hil, they want the package they sent us to steal.”
That took her by surprise. She sat back, uncomfortable that Duncan was hearing any of this, disturbed that the big man knew about the guild and completely unsure what to say. From the look on Duncan’s face, he was picking all that up too.
“Do you have it?” she said awkwardly.
LC nodded. She’d never asked before. It hadn’t been part of her brief and she was furious with herself that she hadn’t considered its importance when LC had first mentioned it. She couldn’t help thinking about Hil. She knew they’d run an unauthorised tab but that was all NG had said, and Hilyer had been too screwed up with amnesia to tell her anything else. It hadn’t occurred to her that all this could be about an actual package somewhere.
Duncan leaned forward. “Is there any chance they might have got their hands on Hilyer?”
It was possible that Hil was safe somewhere. Then again he could be dead or strung up in a bounty hunter’s hold. “Even if they have,” he said, “all they want is the package. If I can get to them, I can offer it in exchange. You follow and get me out, with Anya and Hil if he’s there.”
Sean went pale, biting her tongue as the memory of a conversation skipped through her mind.
“What?” LC said, knowing fine well what she was thinking, flashing back at her bounty hunter buddy bragging that she wasn’t the only one with a private contract. He hadn’t said who he was working for but he’d derided the suckers who were playing for the open bounty and it was only now that LC was talking about the corporation that had done this that Sean put it together.
Oh god, he heard her think, McKenzie’s working for Zang.
“No,” she said. “No way.”
Chapter 31
NG sipped at his wine, keeping calm and working out the convoluted consequences of each possible move.
The Man was watching his reaction. “I understand you initiated a Rogue Seven?”
“We had no choice,” he said, leaning in to move the king to safety. “We suspected a breach in security. It’s hard to send extraction teams into a situation when one or more of their own may turn and stab them in the back.”
It had been hard for everyone. Unprecedented.
The Man reached to move one of his knights. “And speaking of a knife between the shoulder blades, where are we with the Assassins?”
NG raised his eyes. He’d sent out a scale of alerts that had never been seen before, the Thieves’ Guild pulling its weight in every corner of the galaxy and the repercussions still resonating. “Still unresolved,” he said reluctantly, slightly grudgingly, diplomacy not
always his strong point, not when he had people actively in danger. Not when he had idiots like Ballack and the Merchants taking potshots. The Assassins’ Guild and its threats were not to be taken lightly but he wasn’t going to let it spook anyone.
“You rattled cages, NG. You should not have been surprised that it caused alarm in so many quarters.” The Man picked up his goblet and swirled it. “Did O’Brien know what Anderton intended to do?”
“Presumably but she’d stopped reporting to us by then.”
•
It took an age to get out of the city centre, taking care to avoid trouble. Sean had refused to be drawn into a debate and she’d simply said he was a damned fool.
It didn’t matter; he’d made up his mind.
They’d waited until dark then secured Badger’s place and ventured back out into the storm.
LC was finding it hard to concentrate, getting irregular bursts from Duncan, unintentional at times and conversational at others like he was experimenting with it. LC threw comments back, trying his best to keep a grip on shielding his mind the rest of the time with no idea if it was working. They were all soaked through again and chilled to the bone by the time they reached the ship.
The jeep was back in the hold and Elliott told them to ready for launch as soon as they set foot on board. “No hurry,” he sent. “There’s just a division or two of troops heading this way.”
LC went to the engine room out of habit more than anything. The klaxons began to sound before he made it, the engines firing up for launch and the ship’s mass beginning to shift as he ran into the control room and fell into the chair. Thom looked round apologetically.
“How much did DiMarco make on the andirium?” LC said, struggling to fasten the restraints as they took off.
“Enough,” Thom said with a grin. “Gallagher’s offered to split the profit with us all. Did you find the guy you were looking for?”
LC shook his head. “No, but I’ve got a plan. Where are we going, do you know?”
“Somewhere to buy medical supplies.”