by C. G. Hatton
LC could feel her heart pounding.
She touched his chest and he could feel her feeling his own heartbeat.
“I only get paid if you’re alive,” she sent, raising her eyes to meet his. “Stay alive. Okay?”
They left the ship and walked through a long tunnel into a sterile entry terminal, efficient, cold and impersonal. Sean and McKenzie were both wearing silver badges on their belts and they flashed documents that got them past the first two checkpoints with no trouble. The third took longer.
LC was on his best behaviour, head down, avoiding eye contact. McKenzie had refused to relinquish the remote to Sean and a persistent throbbing emanated from the device. Somewhere along the way the virus had begun to compensate and it wasn’t so much painful as distracting. It was like the FTH rounds – the more he was exposed, the more his system seemed able to adapt. He managed to keep his breathing steady and scanned ahead just far enough to anticipate trouble. The facility was on a high alert, heightened security, and it was hard not to panic. His plan to dupe them with the lure of the package seemed flimsy in the face of the armed guards watching them troop through security barriers laced with bio-sensors.
Sean was nervous. McKenzie was arrogantly anticipating the notoriety this was going to attract. The woman at the third desk looked at them as if she’d seen this a million times.
“You don’t understand,” McKenzie said, smiling, “I have a delivery for Fiorrentino.”
LC shifted awkwardly, hands bound, standing there in public as McKenzie referred to him as a delivery. Sean placed her hand on his back. He wasn’t sure if it was to reassure him or warn him not to react.
“I’ve logged it,” the woman said. She glanced at LC and spoke to McKenzie. “You want to leave him with us, we’ll make sure he gets delivered.”
LC looked into her mind as she turned back to her console. It wasn’t the first time they’d accepted live merchandise for processing. It made him feel cold inside. He’d been sent on tabs across the entire galaxy to steal thousands of items, never once anything living or sentient.
McKenzie leaned on her desk. “Payment on delivery.”
“Then you’ll have to wait,” she said without looking up. “Mr Fiorrentino is busy.”
It wasn’t the reception McKenzie had been expecting. He laughed. “Get your boss over here, lady. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
She did look up then, eyes flashing to the side. A guard sidled up next to McKenzie and put a hand on his shoulder.
The bounty hunter turned. “Get your hand off me,” he murmured, “or I’ll break your arm.”
Sean had set her mind into neutral, ignoring her buddy’s behaviour and rubbing LC’s back. McKenzie was a jerk but she was using him and she wasn’t going to let herself feel embarrassed by him.
The woman held up her hand, staying the guard. “We have procedures, sir. I’ve logged your arrival. Mr Fiorrentino is in a meeting that is not to be disturbed. He’ll be informed that you’re here as soon as he is finished there.”
An urgent alarm sounded from her console.
The guards all tensed in unison, anxious glances and an automatic alertness sparking in each mind.
LC felt his stomach backflip.
The woman snapped. “Sir,” she said, corporate courtesy through clenched teeth, “please wait in our lounge. I’m sure Mr Fiorrentino will be with you as soon as he is free.” She looked back at her console and muttered, “This is all we need.”
Security upped another level while they were being ushered into a waiting area. McKenzie scowled, activated the remote out of spite, and helped himself to a drink from a hospitality counter at the far end of the room.
LC sat. He closed his eyes, feeling the virus working overtime to shut down the pain receptors, trying to be patient and not pull out the damned device himself. He felt Sean sit next to him.
“Something’s wrong,” she sent.
“Yeah,” he managed to send back, “your buddy is a psychopath.”
She stared puzzled, then reached to the back of his neck. A stab of intense agony shot into his spine as the device disengaged. He thought he was going to throw up.
“This is the highest contract posted in history,” she sent. “I thought we’d be hustled right in.”
LC leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, the nausea easing slowly. “The staff out there don’t know anything about me or the contract,” he sent back. “Whatever’s going on, it’s off the record. It’s not normal business for these people.”
Sean didn’t question how he was so sure of that. It had been evident in the desk clerk’s mind. The alert that had come in was nothing to do with him. And she hadn’t had anything on her system to make her spark up priority treatment for McKenzie when he walked in to deliver the guy her bosses had tagged with a price tag of eighty five million. It almost made him feel inconsequential again, like nothing was really going on and if he wanted he could walk right out of there and get on with his life.
Except he knew that wasn’t true. And he knew that these people, with their shiny facility and plush carpets, tying themselves in knots with tight assed bureaucracy, were the ones who had killed Mendhel. He didn’t want to walk out – he wanted to meet them head on.
McKenzie paced over. “Can you believe this?” He laughed. “We chase all over the galaxy looking for this little shit and we get told to wait when we turn up to deliver him. God, these people live in a different world.”
He was embarrassed and trying to brush it off. He’d expected this Fiorrentino guy to come running. He was a hair’s breadth from flipping out.
LC slouched back in the chair. Sean recognised the danger signs and stood, taking McKenzie’s arm and leading him back to the bar. She fussed over making him a drink, standing close and flirting.
LC ignored them. He skipped from mind to mind looking for someone who knew what was going on, why the security status was so high, and trying to get behind the veneer of slick corporate operations.
He caught the message from the orbital as soon as it hit the security desk. He stood up as Sean turned to look at him, a curse on her lips and a transmission from Edinburgh echoing in her mind.
“Tell Edinburgh to go,” he sent. “Now.”
Tremors of a deep underground blast reverberated through the floor. A klaxon started wailing.
McKenzie turned, glass half full in his hand. “What’s going on?”
“Three warships just entered orbit,” Sean said.
Another blast shook the complex, closer to the surface. Dust shook down from the ceiling.
“What the hell?” McKenzie said and pulled out a gun. He strode up to LC and grabbed his arm. “Sean, come on. I know where Fiorrentino’s office is. Goddamn these people. We’re not leaving until we get paid.” He thrust the gun into LC’s back and pushed him out.
“Go with it,” LC sent to Sean. “We want to find this guy, right?”
Out in the terminal, it was chaos. As they ran through, the shockwave of an explosion hit them from behind, sending them stumbling, glass blowing out around them, debris billowing into the open area. McKenzie cursed and hauled LC to his feet, dragging him towards a set of double glass doors. Sean ran alongside them.
“LC,” she sent, “we’re in trouble here. Edinburgh says they’re shooting down any ships that try to leave and they’re dropping ground troops. If we don’t get out now, we might not be able to.”
“Is it too much to hope this might not be anything to do with us?”
“This is a Wintran planet, LC. And Edinburgh reckons those are Earth warships. You tell me.”
She wasn’t impressed. It hadn’t even occurred to him to mention it. He’d skipped over the incident in the lab when he’d spilled his guts to her. He hadn’t made the connection himself until Elliott had told him about Zang. Even then, the implications of a Wintran corporation sending them to steal from an Earth-run military facility hadn’t exactly sunk in. H
e ducked as another bomb hit the terminal behind them, dust and glass showering down. It was obvious enough now. Shit.
Chapter 33
“War,” the Man said, “is inevitable and these fools squabble over their petty insecurities.”
NG took a sip of the wine and placed his goblet back on the desk, cautiously inviting a refill. He was beyond tired. One more wouldn’t make a difference. “Zang Tsu Po thought he’d managed to steal the secret of eternal life. Colonel Jameson wasn’t going to let their hard-earned research go into enemy hands that easily.”
The Man frowned, studying the board. “They had no idea what they had their hands on.”
NG sat forward. LC and Hil had both taken the fight right to their enemies. They’d been trained well and it wasn’t too difficult to feel proud of the way they’d handled themselves. “Media thinks a conflict could be advantageous,” he said. “War between Earth and Winter could accelerate some of the developments we’ve been seeding.”
The Man looked up. “It will divide and dilute. Survival of the fittest is void once you equip the combatants with weapons capable of genocide. Men are fools and warfare makes them unpredictable.”
Humanity had been doing fine for millennia but NG didn’t say that. He didn’t know exactly where his boss had come from, but the Man had never set in motion any action that was anything but preservation of the human race in the face of some unknown enemy to come. As much as the Man berated the abilities and tendencies of humans, he had only that one purpose. And it was difficult for a mere mortal to comprehend when more immediate enemies were to hand.
“We can’t help but fight back when we’re threatened,” NG said and moved his queen, the most important and influential piece on the board, into the lion’s den to place the Man’s king in check.
The Man’s face was expressionless as he leaned over to take her with his knight.
•
The bomb bursts intensified. It felt like they were hitting the complex with deep penetrating bunker busters as well as surface blasts.
McKenzie pushed him through into a circular atrium and hustled him towards a wide staircase that spiralled down into the facility.
A recorded voice began to advise all personnel to evacuate, people rushing past them in the opposite direction, frantically heading for the terminal and a way out. A flood of panicked emotion hit LC with an almost physical force. He struggled to shut them all out.
“Mac, this is a bad idea,” Sean yelled.
Another blast rumbled deep below them. The lights flickered and died, blue emergency lighting casting an eerie glow.
“I’m not leaving until I get paid, Seanie,” the bounty hunter yelled back, keeping a firm grip on LC’s arm and tugging him close whenever anyone bumped into them.
It was tempting to snap out of the cuffs and punch the guy to the ground, but McKenzie knew who this Fiorrentino guy was and they didn’t so LC kept calm and bottled it up for later.
They made it down three levels before they got word from Edinburgh that ground troops were entering the facility.
“McKenzie, wait,” Sean shouted. “This is suicide. We do not want to get caught down here.”
Gunfire echoed down from above. McKenzie stopped as if to get his bearings, hand resting on his badge as if it gave him immunity.
“We have business to finish, Sean. I would bet half the bounty that these guys,” he gestured upwards, “are here to get their hands on him. I intend to collect before they have the chance.” He looked around. “One more level down then we take the west wing.”
Sean conceded at a nudge from LC. He wanted to find them, not run away.
They moved quickly. The west wing off the circular atrium was dark, no power and no people.
McKenzie took them the wrong way a couple of times, cursing, then found the office he was looking for. He shoved LC inside.
It was deserted.
McKenzie swore violently and kicked at a chair.
LC laughed. “What did you expect? That they’d be sitting here waiting for you?”
The bounty hunter grabbed him and threw a hefty right fist that smashed into LC’s face, connecting with the cheekbone that hadn’t totally recovered and sending him tumbling back against the wall.
He twisted his hands free from the cuffs as he fell and braced himself to fight back, vision clearing to look up as McKenzie pulled a gun on him, twitching to pull the trigger.
Sean didn’t hesitate to floor her bounty hunter buddy with a fast blow to the back of the head. McKenzie collapsed in a heap, gun skittering away from his hand.
“You’re mad,” she said, helping LC up. “He could have killed you. Now what?”
He threw the cuffs off to the side and blotted his hand against his cheek. “Now we find out where they are.”
The emergency power was maintaining enough of the complex’s crucial systems that it didn’t take too long to hack in. LC broke through the superficial barriers and worked fast to get into the secure areas, figuring out quickly why security was so high and tagging Fiorrentino’s ID codes to try to track the guy.
His heart was pounding by the time he was done and he broke free, cursing.
“Hilyer’s here,” he said, standing up. “That’s what the fucking important meeting was. Christ. Come on. We need to find this Fiorrentino guy.”
“Where’s Hil?” Sean said.
“I don’t know. With him maybe. I don’t know but this guy’s our only lead. C’mon.”
Sean followed him out. The corridor was beginning to fill with smoke. She pulled a pistol from a holster, checked the magazine and nudged it into his hand. He took it but held it loosely by his side.
He ran on ahead, sensing that she was following. One look at the internal layout of the complex while he was in their system had been enough for him to anticipate the most probable route the guy would take to escape, an executive core offset from the central shaft. The personnel safety and security system that tracked the location of every ID badge had shown Fiorrentino to be deep down in the levels that were just numbered, anonymous, not labelled with anything that made sense, like they wanted to keep it all buried and secretive. If he used the lift, they’d be lucky to catch him. If the power to that had been hit, he’d be taking the emergency stairs and they’d have a chance.
Another blast rocked the complex. LC began to sense people up ahead before he heard the shouts and screams. He closed off his mind, coldly refusing entry to the heat of fear and panic. He slowed and edged against the wall, aware of Sean close behind doing the same.
Thin beams of red laser sights bounced through the haze of darkness and smoke. There was gunfire and he faltered as a punch of void hit his mind. There was another and another, again and again, multiple hits. He couldn’t isolate them, couldn’t block them out and it felt like he’d been kicked in the head. He stumbled to his knees, vision narrowing as a chill darkness closed in. He felt his entire system shutting down, body going into shock. He grasped his hands to his head and curled up as the onslaught continued.
“What’s wrong?” Sean hissed through the wire.
He couldn’t move.
Sean grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet, dragging him back.
He was trembling as Sean pushed him into an office and away from the door. He sank to the floor, trying desperately to block it all out. He felt cold, bone deep cold, a black hollow consuming his entire being from the inside out.
Sean was fussing, checking his pulse, thinking it was an after-effect of the device or McKenzie’s drugs. He felt a sharp jab on his neck, warmth spreading to fend off the chill. He felt the virus seize every molecule of the drug, every blood cell coursing through his veins to fight back.
Sean brushed a hand across his forehead.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled, feeling far from it, pushing her away. He stood up, knees still shaky. “C’mon, we need to get to that stairwell.”
“Not that way, we don’t. Is there another way?”
He thought fast and nodded, feeling sick. “Up. There’s a secure access to the AI trunking.”
They checked that it was clear before stepping out and tracking back until LC found the access. He knelt, took the toolkit that Sean slipped to him and worked the lock, fingers shaking and concentration screwed. It was a bitch to bust open. It took way too long, working with gunfire closing in and a nagging at the base of his skull that was threatening to overwhelm again.
Running a tab was always covert, in and out. Alone. Peaceful.
It made him feel like a fraud – like he could work magic when all the elements were perfectly set for him but he was screwed if there was so much as a hint of a distraction. And this was one hell of a distraction, that pop of void hitting the core of his being every time someone died.
He’d lost it. He fumbled the lock again and had to start over. Mendhel would laugh and tell him to go find a woman, chill out and come the hell back with a better attitude if he could see him now. He felt a lump form in the back of his throat. What the hell would happen if someone he cared for died right in front of him? He felt the shakes start, and it was nothing physical, not the way it used to be. This was raw, black emotion. And he didn’t know how to control it. Not surrounded by this whirlwind of chaos.
Sean rubbed a hand across the back of his shoulders.
He closed his eyes. No choice but to shut it out and, with something bordering on desperation, he withdrew and concentrated, simply trying to block it out completely. For once in his life, intuition wasn’t going to cut it and he had to take control. He had no idea what he was doing but somehow it seemed to be working as the overwhelming darkness receded.
He focused again on the mechanism and the lock clicked. He pushed against the panel with his forehead, took a deep breath and squeezed in, climbing up into the crawl space between levels. He made his way along, heading in the general direction as fast as he could, trying to make sure Sean was keeping up behind him and trying not to flake out, breathing difficult and tears in his eyes blurring his vision.