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

by C. G. Hatton

  He sent her a quick, “Devon, we can talk later.”

  “We need to talk now,” she sent back, no disguising the irritation in her tone. She was staring at Hil. “You should send Hilyer to the lock-up.”

  He had a bad feeling she was right, but he sent, “He should be in Medical.”

  “They were running an unauthorised tab, NG. We can’t let that go. I know, I know, they’re the best field-ops we’ve had in generations. Since the legendary Andreyev. I know the stories. But, NG, face it – these two are rogue. God knows what damage Anderton is doing out there right now.”

  She broke the connection and turned back to Hil, Media joining in the questioning. Science didn’t say much. Science tended to keep to themselves, taking the technology the field-ops brought in and playing with it as it suited them. They didn’t mix well and the head of Science was possibly the worst of them all.

  It didn’t take long before they were down to squabbling amongst themselves. NG braced himself to break it up. Hilyer didn’t need this, fading out, sitting there with his eyes closed.

  “Get him out of here,” NG sent privately to the Chief. “I’ll send a guard detail down to Medical. Don’t let Devon get anywhere near him.”

  The Chief nodded. “I don’t know what the hell is going on,” he sent, “but they wouldn’t betray us. I know them.”

  “I want them both off the standings board.”

  It was a drastic measure and the order got a raised eyebrow but no argument. Damn right there would be no argument. LC and Hil had a reputation for breaking the rules and that was what kept them at the top of those standings. But whatever was going on, no one messed with the Thieves’ Guild, field operatives included.

  NG glanced at Hil and looked back at the Chief. “Let me know if you hear from LC. And for Christ’s sake, don’t authorise any tabs right now without running the list past me first.”

  Devon waited for everyone to leave before she stood up. She was wearing black, as always, immaculate bearing and turn out. She always made him feel scruffy.

  He stood up and walked past her, sending a silent, “Walk with me, Devon,” to her through the Senson.

  She sidled into step alongside him, eyeing the array of bruises that hadn’t quite faded. “Been fighting in the playground, NG?” she sent softly back with the ever-present edge of sarcasm.

  He could smell her perfume, a clean subtle scent that was as sharp as the concealed knives she carried. Old habits die hard.

  “What have you got?” he said without breaking stride.

  Devon smiled. “On Mendhel or you?”

  They reached the lift and NG turned to face her as they waited for the doors to open.

  This was the game they played in private. Devon wanted his job and she knew he knew it. She’d never been granted audience with the Man but she’d used the channels she could access to make it very clear that she was NG’s successor and ready to take over.

  NG met her gaze, reading the satisfaction there. She thought she had one up on him, that he’d finally screwed up.

  “Five hundred,” she said. “Million. I wouldn’t go out alone again any time soon, if I were you, NG.”

  Chapter 3

  “Was it a risk to let one such as Devon get so close?”

  The Man smiled. “How could I stop it? Powerful individuals, strong characters, such types will always find each other whether they search for it or not. The guild needs personnel and it will always need the very best.”

  “But a risk nonetheless?” she said with raised eyebrows.

  He tilted his head and considered his goblet, offering it for a top up. “Every time we open the door and let someone in,” he said, “be it a high achiever or a waif and stray, we take a risk. Anderton. Hilyer. Mendhel himself. All have been high risk. These creatures are complex. They are short-lived and the ones that are special tend to have experienced life fast and hard. They are not straight forward and Devon was never an exception to that. An exquisite individual, extremely efficient, very clever and intuitive, with an edge about her that has served us well. But a risk to let her get close? It was inevitable. Had I tried to intervene, I suspect I would only have driven them closer.”

  •

  She left him standing there when the doors opened. He stared after her before following.

  “Half a billion?” NG said, a note of scepticism creeping in. “Are you sure?” He looked sideways at her through narrowed eyes as the elevator doors closed, trapping them together in that enclosed space. “Are you tempted?”

  She laughed. “I’m retired. You know that. And yes, I’m sure.”

  She hit the button for eleven and held out a data board. “Everything I have on Mendhel is in here. We’ve recovered Hilyer’s ship. There was a phony package on board – empty – and it looks like she’s missing memory modules. It’s going to be a long night. And really, NG, you look like shit.”

  He ignored the snide comment. He felt like shit and his head was still pounding. He didn’t manage to keep the tiredness from his voice as he asked, “What about LC?”

  She shook her head, a trace of contempt flitting through her mind. She didn’t like LC and she didn’t hide it. “No sign.”

  The lift stopped at her level. She held her delicately manicured hand on the button to stop the doors opening.

  “I know how much everyone here adores you, NG, but this is serious. Someone wants you dead. You need to be careful out there,” she said, a glint in her eyes. She was thinking how fortunate it would be for her if he got himself assassinated.

  A dark whisper deep inside reminded him that it was only a small step in logic before she started planning how she could arrange for that to happen herself.

  NG couldn’t help the small smile that crept out. Devon hadn’t retired from the Assassins – he’d made her a better offer.

  “I have a good team around me,” he said softly.

  She knew exactly how good. She didn’t know that he knew that Evelyn was one of hers. Her eyes bore into him. “You know, NG, smiling at me like that doesn’t always get you what you want.”

  He knew what he was doing and let the moment hang. “…Yeah, it does.”

  She smiled, razor sharp, eyes sparkling. “Come find me when you’re done.” She slid through the gap in the doors and vanished as soon as they opened.

  “What happened on Earth?” the Man said, voice undulating gently from within the dark shadows of the chamber. It was hot, humid and a notch warmer than usual.

  NG was still standing. No invitation to sit so hopefully it would be swift; he wasn’t sure he could handle a drawn out inquisition.

  “We don’t know yet,” he said.

  “The Assassins have accepted a contract on you,” the Man said, no hesitation in going for the jugular. “Unprecedented.”

  NG kept his gaze straight, heart rate steady. It was unprecedented and he’d been trying to figure out what he’d done to upset someone, what the guild had been doing to upset the balance, that was so bad someone was prepared to pay that much to take him out. There was nothing obvious.

  “And yet those mercenaries didn’t kill you outright which means someone else wants you alive,” the Man said quietly, changing topic with lightning speed and beckoning him to sit. “I wonder, NG, if you fully appreciate the risk you take every time you go out alone.”

  NG sank into the chair, the aches making themselves known and it took some effort to keep the discomfort from his mind.

  “They weren’t going to kill me,” he said, the absolute confidence in that statement belied somewhat by the defensive tone he failed to temper. “They didn’t want me, they wanted the council.”

  The Man stood and moved away from the desk. “We have stirred emotions in some treacherous territory. I fear this is the work of the Order.”

  There was a clink of bottles from the rack on the far wall. NG didn’t turn, staring at the grain in the flat wooden surface of the desk.

  “Our old adversaries are f
ar more dangerous than you realise,” the Man said, finally settling on a vintage that suited his mood and wandering back to the desk. “They resent our reach. You risk too much.”

  NG bit his tongue. He’d never hidden within the confines of the guild and he’d be damned if he was going to start now.

  He felt a hand touch briefly against the back of his head as the Man passed, low down on his skull, the pain dissipating completely, instantly. He hadn’t appreciated how bad it was getting until it vanished.

  The Man sat. “You are far more important than you will allow yourself to accept.” He opened the wine and poured the dark red liquid into a jug before looking up. “The Order has had tendrils snaking amongst man’s corridors of power throughout human history. The guild is young in comparison yet they have never before managed to breach our defences. Why now?”

  NG stared, unblinking. If Banks and Martinez hadn’t pulled him out, he could have been one step closer to finding out.

  The Man pushed forward one of the goblets. “You would have been dead,” he said dryly. “They would not have hesitated to kill you once they had what they wanted. They have attacked us. Openly declared war. Find out which faction of the Order, which individual, is behind this. Find them and end it. Then find out which fool has had the temerity to place a price on your head.”

  He was alone when he woke, nowhere near rested enough and a demand for attention pulsing insistently at the Senson.

  “Boss, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed…” There was something strange about Evie’s tone. “Legal has turned up something against Hilyer. She wants to throw him in the lock-up. The Chief is standing his ground but it’s getting nasty. Media needs to know how you want the situation on Earth handling. Science want you in the Maze to sign off on some prototype. And Sean O’Brien is waiting in your office.”

  He sat up, disentangling himself from sheets that still held a faint scent of Devon’s perfume.

  He had a hangover. He could neutralise most substances but not the fine black powder the Man mixed with his wine to create the warmth and fumes that always set the atmosphere in those chambers. To open the mind, the Man said. It did that alright but it was tiring.

  The section chiefs could manage without him for another hour. Sean though? Sean O’Brien was one of the best outside agents they worked with and she was great company but he was exhausted. He could still feel the edge of the narcotics from the wine so he couldn’t have been asleep long.

  He scrubbed a hand over his hair and sent back gently, “Can’t it wait?”

  “Someone’s put a bounty out on LC.”

  It was so absurd, it didn’t register. “What?”

  “Twenty million. It’s gone galaxy-wide in hours. O’Brien thought you’d want to know.”

  It didn’t take long to shower and shake off the cobwebs. Evie had set the lights in the office low and put a tray on the table. She knew how to look after him after he’d been in there for a session with the Man.

  Sean was already sipping at a cup of tea. She was looking well. She stood and stuck out her hand as he approached. He shook it with a smile. It had been a while since they’d had her on the books but she was one of his favourites and it was good to see her again, despite the circumstances.

  “How’s the old man?” he asked, waving her to sit.

  Sean smiled. “Fishing in a boat off an island on some deserted planet he found in the Between. He built a cabin there. It’s very peaceful.”

  “Sounds tempting.”

  “It’s good for him. You’d hate it.”

  NG smiled as he poured himself a cup of tea. He couldn’t imagine Frank O’Brien spending his days fishing.

  “He’s threatening to come out of retirement for this one,” Sean said. “I told him to stay where he was.”

  “Twenty million?”

  She nodded.

  “How do you know it’s on LC?” The field-ops never used their real identities when they went out.

  “It’s in his name,” she said simply, pushing a data board across the desk. “LC Anderton. There’s a physical description and the contract cites the Thieves’ Guild. There’s no doubt. And it’s the highest bounty ever posted on a single individual. It’s going crazy out there.”

  NG sipped at his tea and flicked through the screens. There was information there that couldn’t have come from anywhere but inside the guild.

  He put the board down and looked up. “Just LC?”

  “As far as I know,” Sean said carefully.

  “Dead or alive?”

  “Alive, as far as I can tell. But I have heard rumours that it may change.”

  Sean was good, possibly the best bounty hunter currently working, on both sides of the line. That she was sitting here, that she’d brought this to him, spoke volumes. It was unheard of that the Federation of Bounty Hunters would accept a contract on a member of the Thieves’ Guild and it wasn’t hard to make a snap decision.

  “Standard rate plus expenses,” he said.

  Sean smiled. “You’ll need to give me more information on him.”

  “I can do better than that,” NG said. “I can give you the field operative he was with when he went missing.”

  Hilyer wasn’t impressed at being sent out with a bounty hunter and Devon wasn’t impressed at losing him and losing the chance for Legal to get one over on Acquisitions. But hiring Sean made sense. According to Media, news of the bounty was spreading faster than they could contain it. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” she’d said. “This could be really awkward.”

  When Media said something could be awkward, she meant catastrophic. Nothing was a problem as far as her department were concerned, every challenge merely a fantastic new opportunity to exploit. He’d told her to wrap up on Earth and go after the Federation. They’d always had a more than civil arrangement of mutual respect with the Federation of Bounty Hunters, which now looked like it had gone to hell.

  Worse than that, they had a breach. As huge as the guild was, it had never before been compromised. Somehow, personal intel on LC had been leaked. And someone had blown his own cover and the location of that meet and greet to a bunch of mercenaries.

  NG stared at his desk. He’d initiated an internal investigation and sparked a massive guild-wide review of procedures. He still had a pile of routine work to clear and a stack of special assignments to set in motion. Half the specials were pie in the sky long shots to try to smoke out something on the Order, not that he could reveal that to the personnel involved. There were a couple of active theatres that needed attention, conflicts they had security forces involved in, but the rest could wait – he had too many people on Mendhel and LC.

  There was also an encrypted grey-tagged file sitting there, something he couldn’t explicitly confide in anyone, something no one else could even access. The Man’s special project, compartmentalised and well beneath any radar.

  The Man had gone. Taken off in his ship, taking all the elite guards, off to do whatever it was he did. Meeting with the rest of the council, as far as anyone else was concerned.

  NG stood up and stretched, nipped across the office and switched the pot of tea for a bottle of whisky. He needed to find out who’d trashed his cover. He looked at the stack of work and poured out a shot. First things first. He dealt with the grey, always the priority, meticulously entering the intel into the matrix, then worked his way steadily through the rest. It was all complicated and it was frying his brain.

  He picked up the last board that was tagged urgent and stared at it, not sure he could face it. He decided not, sat back and put his feet up on the desk, tempted to close his eyes for a moment.

  Evelyn appeared outside his door, hovering, trying to decide if she could disturb him.

  “What is it?” he sent.

  She popped her head round the door, a tinge of bemusement in her mind, wondering how he did that, if he had sensors somewhere she didn’t know about. “Science really want you in the Maze. Why don’t you do
that then sack it for the day. I’ll fend off anyone else.”

  NG sat up. “What’s so urgent with Science?”

  Evie shrugged. “The message I got was that they want to implement some new drone in the Maze and want your go ahead.”

  “Tell them to go ahead.”

  “They want you to see it. Go on, it’ll take a minute.” She smiled. “You know what they’re like.”

  He knew fine well what they were like. Out of all the guild personnel, they were the hardest to handle. Science played at the bleeding edge of technology, so much so he’d swear they’d sacrifice goats if they thought it would give them an advantage. The guild gave the field operatives a lot of leeway because of their particular talents; the guys in Science got even more because of theirs. It was like babysitting an entire ship of child prodigies. Science had been working on this automated patrol drone for months. If they needed him to see it for no other reason than to impress him, then he needed to see it.

  It was cold in there so NG pulled an extra shirt and gloves from his locker before logging in. The Maze was the training ground for the field-ops and, himself aside, no else ever went in there except the techies for routine maintenance and Science when they wanted to dabble. It was a playground, as dangerous as you decided to set it, safety protocols almost foolproof. There were still areas where you could fall thirty feet and Medical were always complaining about the number of broken bones from reckless disrespect of the zero gravity in the Sphere.

  It was his favourite place on the Alsatia and he hadn’t realised how much he needed to stretch his legs.

  The two guys from Science were already logged in. If nothing else, he needed to get them out of there so the field-ops could get back in. Fights and altercations in Acquisitions always increased if the Maze was out of bounds.

  He caught up with them at the entrance to the Catacombs, halfway through the Maze and a nightmare if you had no sense of direction.