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

by C. G. Hatton

  It was absurd.

  “What do we do now?” he said.

  Hil shrugged and threw the pebble into the sea. “Go back. What else can we do? NG wants to talk to you. He’s waiting with Sean.” He grinned again and flicked a finger at the metal tag in LC’s ear. “I told Sean she’d never catch you.”

  “She didn’t,” LC said, a tad too indignantly. He smiled. “Can you believe I gave myself up to a pair of bounty hunters so they wouldn’t kill her? I must be insane.”

  Hil laughed then looked across thoughtfully. “She said you’ve had a really rough time.”

  LC shrugged, knowing that Hil wouldn’t ask him outright about the lab, about the bioweapon they’d been sent to steal. “I’m over the worst of it,” he lied, not wanting to think about what had happened to him while Earth was annihilating Zang’s facility. He was dreading going back to the Alsatia. There was no way he wouldn’t be hauled into Medical to get checked over. That wasn’t going to be fun.

  Hil looked him in the eye, serious still. “We’ve been assigned to Quinn,” he said. “The Man has plans for some kind of special projects team. You and me. Off the list. If they ever decide to let you out again.”

  The sun was setting by the time they set off back to the cabin, long shadows stretching out behind them as they walked. Hilyer was struggling, holding a hand to his side as if he had a stitch. He laughed it off and called ahead to Sean to say they were coming in. It was odd to hear Hil talk to her like that, as if they’d known each other for years. LC felt a step removed from reality, like things were happening all around and he had no part in it, no say in anything.

  It was only as the cabin came into sight and he saw NG and Sean sitting on the porch that he started to feel, for the first time in as long as he could remember, that it was going to work out, that everything could be okay.

  Sean stood and waved as she saw them, heading inside and leaving NG to wait for them, a strong, warm presence watching them approach. There was no enmity there at all, just calm camaraderie, but even so LC’s heart started to pound. Hil clapped him gently on the back and followed Sean inside.

  “Sit down,” NG said gently, an invitation rather than an order. Hilyer had said they were here alone, no guild agents, no grunts from Security, no question that LC wouldn’t come back with them.

  LC sat on the step, trying not to think.

  He almost flinched as NG placed a hand briefly on the back of his neck but that fleeting touch was reassuring, a spark of warmth in the connection that was so relieving he felt his eyes almost well up. All the anxiety vanished in an instant.

  He blinked and they both sat there, staring straight ahead out towards the sea.

  “It’s good to see you’re alive, LC,” NG said finally, softly, non-threatening, no trace of anger or retribution.

  LC almost faltered then. Mendhel wasn’t and that was his fault.

  “We know what happened, Luka. You had no choice. We know it’s been a hard time, and believe me, the guild hasn’t had an easy time of it either, but we want you back.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to blurt it all out but that was a whole different dilemma. Going back to the guild was one thing, admitting to NG that he had the package, that he was the package, was impossible to contemplate.

  He dropped his eyes and stared at the floor, counted pebbles and scuffed the toes of his boots against each other.

  He heard NG ask about the package. That was what it all came back to. NG wanted to know where it was and the lie was on the tip of LC’s tongue. But you didn’t lie to NG. No one ever lied to NG.

  “I don’t know where it is,” he lied.

  He felt NG’s surprise, became painfully aware that NG turned slowly to stare at him. Shocked.

  LC turned his head to look at NG, adrenaline pumping. He closed down his mind, as much as he’d ever managed to do, breathing difficult, heart beating fast.

  “You didn’t say that out loud, did you?” he said, voice almost a whisper.

  ‘What happened out there, Luka?’ he heard NG say inside his head, direct thoughts, not through any artificial connection.

  This changed everything. It felt like the entire universe shrank to that tiny cabin perched on a small piece of coastline on some abandoned planet in the Between.

  He felt his face flush. He was caught between absolute horror that he’d been discovered and immense relief that he wasn’t alone.

  NG stood up. “Come on, let’s walk.”

  Walking gave LC a chance to do something other than fold in on himself. NG was smart and he knew how to get the best out of his people, LC had always known that. As much as it was Mendhel who’d rescued him from the firing squad on Kheris, it was NG who had welcomed him into the guild with no questions and no doubt.

  “Talk to me, LC.”

  “What do you want me to say?” He flashed back to the lab, getting hit with the virus, the after effects, almost dying after getting shot on Poule, sharing the void of each death at the massacre – a whirlwind of painful memories that left him doubled over, gasping for breath.

  He felt a rush of healing warmth stronger than any drugs he’d ever used as NG held a hand against the back of his neck.

  “The Earth lab was destroyed after you got away,” NG said quietly. “And chances are Zang didn’t know exactly what it was he was sending you in there for. Does anyone else know?”

  LC hesitated and that in itself gave NG his answer.

  “We need to bring them in. Do you understand?”

  He nodded reluctantly, wondering how the hell Elliott and Duncan were going to react to the guild.

  “Anya’s with Pen,” he said.

  NG nodded. “We’ll deal with Anya.” He paused. The sun was an orange ball dropping below the horizon behind him. “Are you ready to come back?”

  LC bit his lip. It was a rhetorical question and he knew it. He didn’t really have much of a choice.

  “Good,” NG said. “There’s someone I need you to talk to.”

  Chapter 35

  The Man drained his goblet and placed it slowly on the desk, reaching a hand gently to knock over his king, graceful in defeat. “How much of this is known?”

  NG sipped at the last few drops of his own wine. “Nothing.”

  The kid was in quarantine. No one knew anything.

  The Man stared at NG. ‘How strong is he?’ he thought, sending the question clearly and directly into NG’s mind.

  ‘He’s had to learn quickly and alone,’ NG sent back. ‘With training, he could be more capable than me.’

  That wasn’t easy to admit but he could sense it.

  “And where is the girl?” the Man said, switching back to spoken words.

  NG bit his lip. Anya had fooled them all.

  “She betrayed us,” the Man said. “She needs to be dealt with.” He leaned forward. “Zang Tsu Po is a worry. The bounty has doubled. He acts directly against us.” He leaned forward and said again, “Where is he?”

  “Vanished,” NG said, finishing the last of the wine. “Jameson is looking for him, Ostraban is looking for him, we have people on it and we have people watching them. With tensions this high and emotions this charged on both sides of the line, there aren’t many places to hide.”

  “We have enemies, NG,” the Man said softly. “We must take care. Zang’s wild actions are making him more dangerous than we anticipated. Find him.”

  •

  HARSH REALITIES

  (Thieves’ Guild: Book Three)

  by

  C.G. Hatton

  •

  Published by Sixth Element Publishing

  Arthur Robinson House

  13-14 The Green

  Billingham TS23 1EU

  Great Britain

  Tel: +44 1642 360253

  www.6epublishing.net

  © C.G. Hatton 2014

  www.cghatton.com

  Also available in paperback.

  C.G. Hatton asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of this work.

  •

  For Hatt

  Chapter 1

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  He sat there in silence, breathing in the tendrils of aromatic, narcotic fumes that were winding a lazy dance into the darkness of the room, staring into the flames of the fire blazing in the hearth beside them.

  “You must know,” the other urged. “He is your protégé.”

  The wine was hot and potent, far, far stronger than anything he’d ever served up in his own chambers.

  The Man took a sip from the goblet, savouring the consistency of the thick, silky liquid. He looked at the face regarding him.

  “He is,” he deigned to agree. “Indeed he is. But understand this, the situation in this galaxy has always been precarious. The nature of these fragile beings is tempestuous at the best of times. We set these events in motion, it is my protégé as you say that has had to deal with the consequences, harsh consequences. He is still young and he is still learning.”

  •

  A massive fist punched into the side of his face. He felt blood vessels burst, sparks flaring behind his eyes.

  He’d felt the intention behind the blow before he felt the force of it but he was restrained, upright, arms bound behind his back, ankles manacled to the legs of the chair he was sitting on. A cloth blindfold was tied around his eyes and a needle stuck in his arm was dripping what he recognised as Banitol into his bloodstream.

  He was about as far from the safety of the guild as it was possible to get.

  Another blow to the jaw sent his senses reeling. When sounds started to filter back into his awareness, they were of weapons being readied, a distant beeping and harsh voices. Footsteps echoed.

  Cold water hit his face. He lifted his head slowly and spat blood off to the side.

  “Let’s try again,” a voice said, up close, quiet. Earth accent and a mind that was cold and dark. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said softly with a faint smile, keeping his heart rate under control and feeling the Banitol spread its tendrils into his subconscious.

  A hand slapped him across the back of the head.

  He felt the guy in front lean in close and whisper, “Come on now, NG, you’re in no position to act dumb.”

  He blinked, feeling the rough cloth against his eyelashes. They’d hit him hard when they’d taken him down and the dull pounding at the base of his skull was getting steadily worse.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said calmly, just loud enough for the other three in the room to hear. He was aware of four more, patrolling outside. For hired muscle, they were above average, he’d give them that. He’d goaded them until they’d knocked him unconscious again and they still hadn’t slipped up. On the whole, the situation wasn’t going well.

  He sensed a presence move close in by his side and felt a slight tug on the needle taped to the crook of his elbow. A sharp jab hit the side of his neck, another drug on top of the crap they were already pumping into his veins to get him to talk.

  It would take more than that.

  He let his head drop and heart rate slow, hearing the echoing beep of their monitors respond with a shrill alarm.

  He drew back from attempting to read anything from them. It was tough enough trying to neutralise the drugs filtering into his system and dampen down the pain. He had no idea where he was, where they’d taken him, but it didn’t have the feel of a medical facility. It felt more like an aircraft hangar. Cold and empty with a lingering smell of engine oil.

  And it was doubtful that anyone at the guild even knew he was missing.

  The mercenaries surrounding him were cold and focused on their mission. Yet even though he was bound to a chair and beaten half senseless, they were still wary of him. Very wary. It appeared that his reputation had preceded him and it would have been almost flattering if they hadn’t been so intent on torturing the crap out of him.

  There was no hint in their surface thoughts of who had hired them and until he could make physical contact with one of them, he couldn’t find out anything more, couldn’t get as deep as he needed to pull the information from their minds.

  He twisted one of his hands slightly. The restraints were tight and a gloved hand clamped around his wrists, another delivering a blow to the back of his head. He flinched, feeling the hairline fracture shift and propagate with the impact, having to concentrate to ease the throbbing pain that was rebounding around his skull in waves.

  A hand touched his arm. It was a woman at his side, he could sense that without trying. She was thinking that she didn’t really give a damn about their instructions. She wanted to kill him. Slowly. He turned his head slightly towards her, chin still down, shoulders slumped, willing her to take off her gloves and feel his pulse for herself.

  She was close. He could hear her breathing.

  She reached a hand to the back of his neck and stroked gently with a gloved thumb, pressing suddenly to engage a device that stabbed into his neck with a piercing sting.

  He bit down on a gasp. A hand pushed down on his shoulder from behind. The woman touched his leg, a soft glancing caress, and another needle of hot pain lanced sideways into the knee joint. It took all he had not to scream.

  The man leaned in again, touched his cheek with a gloved hand and whispered, “Where are they, NG?”

  He shivered as a piercing pain hit another pressure point. It was difficult to admit, impossible to even dare let the dark little voice in his head whisper it, but he was starting to think he might have underestimated the danger he was in.

  “You don’t know what you’re messing with,” he managed to say between sharp breaths.

  She touched his elbow softly, wrist, temple, ribs, each time leaving behind an agonising shard of pain.

  “Much more,” she whispered, “and you’ll be begging us to let you talk.”

  He’d never begged anyone for anything and this bitch wasn’t going to be an exception.

  “You haven’t said the magic w…” he said before another stab of white hot pain took his breath.

  It took him a second to gather enough wits to shut it out.

  She pressed a finger against his lips, resting it there for what felt like an eternity with a soft, “Sshh.” Finally, she pulled his shirt open and pressed an inert device against his chest, over his heart, and murmured in his ear, “You really don’t want me to activate this one.”

  She was enjoying it.

  He’d been enjoying a Mai Tai in a bar on San Pedro before they’d hit him over the back of the head, and he still had no idea how he hadn’t seen it coming.

  “The council,” the man said. “We know you meet with them. Where are they?”

  They had no idea that he was neutralising the Banitol in his system almost as fast as they were feeding it to him but for the moment he needed them to think it was working.

  He shook his head slightly and focused all his attention on delving into the woman’s mind. The room vanished. Pain gone, at least for the moment. He went as deep as he could without making physical contact, reading the immediate details of the mission from her thoughts. The impatient, arrogant greed was chilling, her motivation only hard cash. She didn’t care who he was. They had orders to deliver him alive and deliver intel on the council if they could. She wanted to kill him, that was dominant in her thoughts as she inflicted each new escalation of pain. It wrapped around her mind, stifling her sanity.

  As far as he could tell, she didn’t know who’d hired them.

  They demanded his attention by punching a fist into his face again and it was impossible not to slam back into the nightmare.

  “This situation is not going to get any better for you, NG, unless you start to tell me what I want to know,” the man said, voice drifting as he backed away.

  The heat of the pain spiking into each of the pressure points rose as the woman murmured close up, “You want this to stop? Just start talki
ng…” She pressed a hand against his chest and the device there sparked into life.

  As dark as her mind was, he’d been in worse places. Far worse.

  He breathed, slow and steady, riding it out, surviving. They had nothing in their arsenal that would ever make him betray anything about the guild. He just needed to bide his time until theirs ran out.

  It didn’t take long. The woman was tracing a finger along his jaw when the shockwave of a high velocity round cut through the air in front of his face. She fell back.

  Flash bangs exploded all around, reverberating detonations filling the massive hangar, multiple breaches occurring simultaneously. He sat completely still in the centre of it, head bowed, aware of the slick coordinated efforts of the extraction teams, sensing the cold brutality of the supporting assault troops spreading out around him, and not needing to see the red flashes on the armour to know that some of them were the Man’s elite guard.

  The Senson embedded in his neck was shielded with a dampening patch but he didn’t need to communicate with these people. They knew what needed to be done.

  More shots – short, controlled bursts, minimum effort, maximum effect – broke through the chaos and noise, followed by the sound of bodies falling and rapid footsteps pounding towards him.

  He felt someone he recognised as Banks run up behind him, fumbling to untie the restraints at his wrists and saying, “We got the four outside.”

  “I know,” he muttered. He’d felt them die. Each life extinguished like a light being switched off. “Glad you decided to join the party.”

  The device was pulled from the back of his neck. Banks and Martinez were supposed to be on special assignment. He felt Martinez kneel in front of him, gently disengaging the rest of the devices, reaching up to pull down the blindfold.

  She smiled. “Hey boss.”

  NG stood. His limbs felt like jelly and for a second, he thought his knees might buckle but Martinez placed a hand on one arm, Banks steadied him on the other side and they walked with him as he made his way over to the three guys and the woman kneeling on the floor. Four of the Man’s elite guards were standing over them, rifles held casually but unmistakably pointed at the captives who were still shaking.