by C. G. Hatton
“Yet this attempt failed? I thought the Assassins never failed.”
“They failed because they underestimated. In every capacity. They calculated in terms of normal human boundaries and we are far, far beyond those.”
•
Everything hurt. NG lay still for a moment then stirred, sitting and reaching to his neck to pull out the dart.
He leaned back against the bulkhead, clamping a hand around the wound in his right arm and slowing his heart rate to slow the poison.
It didn’t take long for Evelyn to come running up, three paces ahead of a team that looked like it contained personnel from every division of the guild.
“Didn’t I say to keep a lid on this?” he sent to her privately, tired and not exactly wanting company.
She slowed to a walk and strode up, arms folded, looking down at him and along the corridor towards the Sphere.
“Less than ten people know about this, NG. I’m not sure what we’re going to tell the cleaning crew.”
He followed her gaze. Blood was smeared in streaks all along the deck.
The medic in the group kneeled by his side and started fussing with trauma patches and injectors.
NG leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I need to talk to everyone who had access to the drones,” he sent to Evie.
“NG,” she replied hesitantly, “Science is adamant that no one could have tampered with them.”
She sent that, the medic hit a sore spot and something snapped inside. NG felt every muscle tense, anger flaring as a dark mist flashed across his mind. He swatted the medic away and glared at Evelyn, eyes hooded.
“Get Science into my office now,” he sent without thinking, cold and scathing. “I’ll start with him.”
She stood her ground, startled but foolhardy enough to defy him. “You need to go to Medical.”
“I need to see Devon. Get her up there as well.”
He felt someone pull open his shirt, shoving a trauma patch up against the wound in his shoulder and NG almost lost it, grabbing the guy’s wrist as the patch activated with an agonising stab of burning pain. He bit down on a gasp and tried to brace himself to fend them off, coming up against a soft touch from Evie on the back of his neck and a calming whisper in his ear. He sagged back and closed his eyes again, the heat of the moment gone. Control returning.
Evelyn took hold of his hand and he squeezed, holding onto her like a lifeline, drawing strength from the connection.
“Come on,” she said softly, “let’s get you up to Medical.”
He still protested but she insisted. He won the argument that he could walk by persuading her in his own way, not hard with her hand still holding his arm. It wasn’t often that he did that to Evelyn but there was no way he was going to wait for a med team to bring a stretcher. While he was in her mind, he checked her out. She was the one who’d sent him down here but she was clear. Worried. About him and about the breach in security. He knew she always carried a concealed weapon but she’d added a sidearm, he noticed as they walked.
They had four members of the Watch with them, in full body armour, and somewhere along the way, Banks and Martinez joined the entourage. They were all patient with him, waiting without a word every time he had to stop to catch his breath. He shouldn’t have been so stubborn, but someone had cleared the way because they didn’t encounter anyone else until they reached Medical.
“We’ve doubled the Watch,” Evelyn sent through a private link, staying close as he was led into a private room and steered towards a bunk. “The Alsatia is on lockdown, no one in or out and maximum security across the cruiser.”
So much for containing the fact there was a contract out on him.
“The Chief thinks this has to be related to Mendhel,” she sent. “What’s the chance this could be a coordinated attack?”
NG perched on the edge of the bunk and let a medic help him shrug out of his sodden shirt, wincing as the guy started to prod and clean the wounds in his shoulder and arm.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, keeping the connection private and having trouble concentrating enough to switch off the pain. “Let’s be careful. Give me a couple of hours and we’ll come up with a plan.”
Evie frowned at the suggestion that he’d be fine in a couple of hours.
“Trust me,” he sent. “And get me some dry clothes, would you?”
Evelyn disappeared. She was more worried than she was letting on. NG lay back. She should be. The Alsatia had never been attacked before. Ever.
The medics left him alone finally and he closed his eyes, going as deep as he could to heal while still keeping an awareness of his surroundings. They’d left a guard on the door, but he still didn’t want to rely entirely on anyone else. Not until they identified how the drones’ weapons had been tampered with. Scanning for life forms, he had a range of about a mile. Reading someone’s immediate surface thoughts he could easily manage at ten feet, twenty at a push. Going for intentions and emotions that were buried deep, he needed to be close if not touching. It was going to be one hell of an operation to scan every single member of the guild until they found the leak.
Devon came by after a while. He opened one eye and looked at her as she wandered over, throwing a bag onto a chair, a smile creeping across her face when she saw he was awake.
“Hey,” she said.
He smiled back, well aware that it could have been her.
She shook her head, eyes flashing, the smile turning into a grin. “Do you know how rare it is for someone to survive an attack by the Assassins?”
“They’ll have to try harder than that. What do you think they’ll go for next?”
“If it was me, I’d use a high powered rifle over distance. Large calibre rounds to the head rarely fail.”
She was smiling but she was deadly serious. Devon had been one of the most successful Assassins in a generation. The only thing that had lured her over was the promise of more power. The Assassins’ Guild was tiny in comparison to the Thieves’ Guild. She had no chance of progression there. Here on the Alsatia, she had her own empire.
“Science is denying that they’ve been breached,” she said dryly. “They’re still analysing the poison.” She gestured at him to sit up. “Let me take a look. You got one in the neck?”
He obliged and sat patiently while she stroked a finger over the tiny entry point. More gentle than she usually was but even so it was still sore. He took the chance with that brief contact to read her thoroughly, as deep as he ever wanted to go with Devon. She was clean. Annoyed that someone had stepped over the line into her territory. But nothing to do with arranging it.
She stepped back, shaking her head again, but frowning this time, puzzled. She wanted to say something but didn’t, biting it back and saying instead, “The Assassins have full biometrics on you.”
That shouldn’t have been possible. He couldn’t even start to figure out how his biometrics could have been acquired by anyone; as far as he knew that data wasn’t even stored anywhere. He had his own reasons for needing a level of anonymity even amongst their own.
“I’m trying to find out how they have so much information,” she added. “What did those mercenaries do to you?”
“I have no idea.”
She was thinking that the intel was too good; she’d never been able to find out so much as his real name in all the digging she’d done herself, here. And he knew she’d done a lot. There simply wasn’t a file to be leaked.
“What did they do, NG?”
He took a deep breath. “Devon, I was unconscious half the time. They could have done anything. But they didn’t want me; they wanted a way to the council.”
“Well, someone wants you and they want you dead.” She turned to go and waved towards the bag. “Evelyn sent a change of clothes. She reckoned you wouldn’t be wanting to stay here much longer.” She left with a wink. “Watch your back, NG.”
It was a relief to know that Evelyn and Devon were in the clear. That was
two down, the two most obvious, a couple of thousand to go.
NG took his time dressing, sore and feeling a weakness that went bone deep inside but Evelyn was right. He didn’t want to stay in Medical.
Media came in as he was trying to figure out if he could make it up to twelve without flaking out. She perched on the edge of the bed next to him and frowned, looking more serious than he’d ever seen her.
She skipped the pleasantries. “The Federation is closing ranks against us, NG,” she said. “Someone has a paid a lot of money to buy their cooperation, on top of the bounty they posted on LC. It’s as if they pre-empted our response and went to pains to make sure there was no way we could interfere. Someone wants to get hold of our boy really badly.”
“Offer more to get him back alive,” NG said.
“No go. They have a clause in the agreement. Someone is determined that we’re not going to have a say in this.”
“What about Mendhel?”
“It looks like it was a professional hit. I’m sorry. Probably not the Assassins because there was no registered contract. And we still haven’t been able to contact Anya. It doesn’t look good.” She squeezed his hand. “I hate to bring this up,” she sent privately, tight wire, “but there are mutterings about Devon over this.”
This being someone tampering with the drones.
The last thing he needed was an outright war between the section chiefs.
“She’s clean,” he sent back, holding on to her small hand for a moment and using the contact to check her out and reinforce the message. “Trust me.”
NG leaned on the bench. He was tired. Science didn’t have any chairs in his lab and as much as it was tempting to take this conversation back up to twelve, he had no desire to drag it out for longer than necessary.
He’d spent three days screening every member of personnel in Science. He had a splitting headache that wouldn’t shift but he’d found nothing. Not a trace of anyone who could have tampered with the drones and not a scrap of evidence as to how someone had gained access to Science or the Alsatia. They still had no leads on the Assassins, no leads on Mendhel, and there was still no sign of LC. And no sign of the Man returning.
“I don’t know,” Science said finally, reluctantly, resenting that his section was under suspicion. Few other personnel ever went into Science so yes, it was his people they were looking at. And he knew it.
It wasn’t easy to be patient. NG looked up through hooded eyes, spinning through his fingers some kind of gizmo he’d picked up out of the pile of crap on the workbench. Before he’d been appointed as head of operations, the Man had insisted that he experience every aspect of the guild first hand. Science hadn’t been his favourite posting and his stint here hadn’t ended well, no tolerance for the tedious intricacies of scientific method back then and even less now, especially with this latest chief who was even more aloof than the previous two.
They’d trawled through the records, isolating all personnel who could have got to the drones since the last time they were checked. A list of thirty four names were still outstanding – twenty nine on leave, five with no reason to be missing. It was more than disturbing to find a section with that many personnel awol and no one even aware they weren’t here. It wasn’t the way the Alsatia worked. They’d got complacent.
He glanced over his shoulder. The two guys from the Watch were standing a discrete distance behind him. This wasn’t the way he worked. The incident with the drones had set everyone on edge.
“Find them,” he said simply, pushing forward the board containing that list of elusive names.
Science scowled and reached forward, snatching the gizmo defensively and ignoring the board. “We will.”
At its most inherent level, every aspect of guild operations was embedded firmly in the collection of intelligence; intrigue and subterfuge were threaded through every action, every section and department. Yet that scrutiny had never been directed inwardly before. There had always been security, a hidden code of integrity wrapped in a healthy paranoia and fierce internal competition that never failed and now somehow it had. Science was the core of guild operations, and as much as he didn’t like it, he knew it was their beating heart. It might be Acquisitions who went out there to bring in the intelligence and technology but it was Science that worked their magic and made the advances that kept them one step ahead.
“Could someone have breached your security?” NG said bluntly.
Science was affronted and didn’t bother to hide it. “One time,” he snapped. “And not once since that…” …little bastard Anderton, he was thinking, pausing abruptly and biting off his tirade as he realised the implications. NG could hear the thought processes ticking through that extraordinary brain; if someone else had broken in, that meant it might not have been one of his people, but it meant they had been breached. Science was calculating fast, analysing the odds and asking himself which was worse, and as he caught NG’s eye, he averted his eyes quickly – whichever it was, one of his prototypes had almost killed their head of operations and that was unacceptable.
‘Damn right it’s unacceptable,’ the dark voice inside chided. NG rubbed a hand over his eyes, feeling the pull in the shoulder. The two bullet wounds were healed, superficially, but sore still. And he was still tired. It was taking a long time to get over the effects of the poison, longer than it should have. It was frustrating. He wasn’t used to feeling so weak, right on the back of the skull fracture. And the Man wasn’t here, not that he would have run in there for help anyway. So he felt like shit again.
Even so, he didn’t need Science to be feeling guilty and paranoid – that would just lead to more mistakes.
“What are you working on?” he asked, switching on a calm that was hard work to maintain but immediately effective in setting Science back onto an even keel.
The tall section chief took a visibly deep breath.
He stared for a moment, regarding NG with slight suspicion and trying to gauge if he really wanted to hear what they were working on.
“Stealth,” he said suddenly, an almost child-like eagerness to please winning out.
Sitting through an hour-long explanation of the latest in stealth technology was the last thing he needed, and guaranteed there’d be no hospitality offered, but NG nodded.
Science grabbed another board and placed it on top of the pile of crap between them. “We’re integrating spatial ambiguity theory with undetermined Agram’s engineering principles.”
It took a moment to realise that the guy had stopped speaking, waiting for approval.
“Agram’s?” NG said, for want of a better response.
“We acquired tech on a tab last month that brought some new equations to bear. Controversial. Impressive but not as impressive as when we combined it with irreconciled SAT.”
NG blinked. Irreconciled spatial anything made his head pound. “Field applications?”
Science nodded. “We’re working on scale invariant deviants.”
It took too long to think of a response and Science added, “Individual-personal and ship-scale,” with a slight arrogance to his tone and the clear suspicion in his mind that NG had no idea what he was talking about.
“Work with the Chief and Quinn. We need this in the field,” NG said, not knowing what the hell they were talking about. The Senson in his neck engaged with a gentle query as Evelyn nudged for his attention. “What’s up?” he sent.
“Legal has a client asking to see you.”
“Now?” It was an escape from Science but even so, facing a client was the last thing he needed.
“She thinks we might have a problem.”
Chapter 6
“You should have known.”
It was a blunt accusation. He took a slow sip of the wine, feeling the chemicals in the narcotic touch on the receptors in his brain with a teasing embrace.
She pushed it further, leaning forward to emphasise her point. “If there was a breach in security, a traitor in our mids
t, why did you not know? Could you not have simply looked into the minds of your personnel for yourself? Are you not aware of such potential actions before they occur?”
“I’m not omnipotent,” he said simply.
•
NG leaned his back against the wall of the lift. It was two levels up to Legal and he was taking the lift.
It was pathetic.
It was also his own fault – a stubborn need from his side to prove there was nothing wrong. No one messes with the Thieves’ Guild and he was damned if they were going to run scared because someone had taken a pot shot at him. He was regretting it now but he’d ordered business as usual as far as clients were concerned. Heightened security measures and increased surveillance on any visitors but access nonetheless.
That Devon was insisting he attend a meeting with a client wasn’t just mischief from her end. She was showing him first hand the trouble that was causing them.
He made contact as the lift rose.
“It’s Silas,” she sent back. “You need to be on your toes for this, NG. Are you sure you can handle it?”
He could tell that she wasn’t happy.
She wasn’t concerned for him; she was worried that he was going to screw up one of her most valuable contacts.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. He wants you. Don’t think I haven’t tried to mitigate this already. Watch yourself with him. I don’t like this.”
He didn’t like it either. He didn’t like dealing with Silas at the best of times.
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, flexing the tension out of his shoulders.
Martinez was watching his reflection in the door, worried that he looked tired. Banks was checking in with Security on eleven. They didn’t usually stick this close to him on board the Alsatia but between them and the Watch, he hadn’t been alone for a minute.