by C. G. Hatton
NG drained the last of the beer. “We’re going to get Tierney to surrender,” he sent.
“No.” Jiro Tierney stood up and signalled to someone at the door.
NG stood. “Then we’ll be leaving.”
“I don’t think so.”
NG turned his head slightly and glanced behind him. He’d been persuaded to come in here alone. The two men at the door had both drawn weapons. He looked back at the leader of this colony, the man who was supposed to be so charismatic. It had been like dealing with Pen Halligan, a big character who went to pains to take care of everyone, whom everyone loved, who, on the basis of one conversation, had made an instant snap judgement to hate him. What was it with people like this? “You can’t stop us.”
Tierney narrowed his eyes. “You’ve brought this trouble on us. I was prepared to give you a chance before but now…?” He leaned forward and his mind was as cold as ice. “I lost three people in that blast. The man you killed, the one who conspired with one of my people to get in here, wasn’t a bounty hunter. So who was he?”
Tierney’s intel was impressive. Someone must have seen what had happened and DiMarco must have told his boss about Tanzi.
“Who are you?” Tierney said again, aggressively, determined this time to get an answer, that was clear in his thoughts. And he was thinking, if not bounty hunter, then what? Assassin? His people had reported that it was this guy standing in front of him that had been the target, not Luka.
NG didn’t reply but he started to play with the atmosphere between them, subtly winding down the tension.
Tierney sat down.
“Luka has currency with us,” he said coldly, weighing it up, thinking that he wished LC hadn’t played the hero in saving his niece, again, but the kid had, so fair was fair unless it reached a point where he had no other choice.
So that was Yoshi’s secret.
Tierney stared unblinking. “We won’t hurt him or see him hurt. You…? What would Zang say if I offered you up? How much are you worth?”
NG kept his expression neutral and shook his head. “They’re not interested in me.”
“I’m interested to find out what they’d say.” The threat wasn’t even veiled.
‘Kill him.’
NG slowed his breathing. ‘I don’t need to – the Wintrans will do that soon enough.’
“They’ve been given orders,” he said, calmly, reasonably. “They’re not here to negotiate or bargain. If you try, if you show any desperation, you just make it easier for them to wipe you out. There’s no way out of this that doesn’t end badly for you.”
“Unless I do as you say?”
He used to need direct touch to drastically affect conscious decisions but even standing this distance away he could feel Tierney falter. He pushed it, going for a full one eighty, total spin with enough control that it felt like the most natural change of heart, as if Tierney was in full control of his emotions and simply reassessing a difficult situation with sharp and astute insight. It was like cleaning and refocusing a lens.
“If you try to play them,” NG said softly, “you give them control over you. We…” And that ‘we’ that was the Thieves’ Guild, suddenly included Tierney and his people, “…don’t let anyone have control over us.”
He let that hang, felt the change in Tierney and turned to walk away, towards the two men blocking his way. They were pirates, limited in anything but bullying. He walked between them and as they reached to take hold of his arms, he sent a vicious back off warning that hit them both between the eyes. They hesitated, confused, and he walked past towards the door.
“Wait.” Tierney’s voice behind him had a commanding tone it was hard to ignore.
NG stopped and turned.
“What do you need from us?”
NG took a step forward. “I told you – I want you to surrender.”
“No. There has to be more to it than that. I want you to tell me what you’re planning.”
“There’s an Imperial warship on its way here. You surrender to the Wintrans, now before anyone else gets hurt, you claim Earth allegiance and you scream protected status.”
Tierney was smart enough to see it. “And there won’t be anything they can do until they prove it one way or the other.”
“Until that warship turns up and demands its citizens be freed and paid compensation for disruption to an Imperial mining operation.”
There was a flaw in the plan and it didn’t take long for Tierney to see it. “All very nice, but there are people here,” himself included but he didn’t say that, “who can’t simply surrender…” without risking immediate execution upon official identification, on either side of the line, he was thinking.
NG shook his head. “It needs to be all of you. Otherwise we won’t be able to pull it off and you lose. Work with us and your people get out of this alive. Trust me, I don’t want them to find out who I am, either. We have a way. But it’s going to come down to you pulling off the scam that you’re an official Imperial operation, at least to give them enough doubt to delay things for a while.”
It was a challenge and one that he knew would appeal to Tierney’s ego and, judging by Tierney’s past record, one the man wouldn’t be able to resist. Especially not given the hold he had on his state of mind.
The leader of one of the most notorious pirate operations in the history of the Between nodded his head slowly. “Let’s do it.”
They had a room set up as an impromptu medical facility, five of Tierney’s wounded in there, including DiMarco, and LC. The kid was out cold still, curled up on one of the bunks and hooked up to a drip.
NG paused to check him over quickly and then headed over to an empty bunk.
He’d already talked to Elliott and briefed Hilyer. Hil had listened carefully and run back through the details with meticulous care. In that respect, he hadn’t changed and it had been an almost comfortable familiarity for them both to go through the motions of a briefing.
Martinez had talked to the Security detail, telling them that NG wanted them to go stealth and bug out. He’d overheard the conversation from a distance. They’d argued but she’d argued back, saying it was an order and what NG ordered, no one questioned, and they’d better get their asses out there and be ready to move back in if they were needed. Decent of her but he wasn’t entirely sure he was deserving of such loyalty.
Tierney had agreed the terms needed for the surrender – immediate ceasefire, no resistance and evacuation for the wounded – and then thrown in the hand grenade that this was an Earth exploratory mining colony. The spokesman from the Expedience had laughed and said they’d see about that.
NG stripped down to a thin shirt, combat pants and boots, took off his wristband and belt, emptied his pockets and dropped the holstered gun on the bed.
Martinez stood close, not happy but not trying to dissuade him, a combat knife in her hand.
They’d decided against a bullet.
He turned and she moved closer.
‘You’re insane, did I say that?’
He could feel the heat of her body, the steady thump of her heart.
She gently lifted his shirt and raised the knife, pressing its tip against the muscles of his abdomen.
He curled his hand around hers, moving the blade across half an inch and whispering, “Let’s avoid too many vitals.”
“In the guts?” she murmured back. “Are you sure?”
“It doesn’t just need to look good, it has to be good. I’ll be fine. Flesh wounds are easy.”
She raised her eyes to his, blinked once and thrust the knife into his stomach.
The Wintran medics were brusque and efficient as they assessed the wounded for medevac. DiMarco and another two of Tierney’s guys were hauled off their bunks and marched out at gunpoint to join the rest of the prisoners.
NG had stopped blocking out the pain when they walked in. He hadn’t healed much of the actual damage yet. He was still bleeding and when one of the son of a bitc
h medics roughly pulled away the blood-soaked bandage to peel back the trauma patch and press at the wound, it was a genuine scream he didn’t try to stifle.
He managed to lie still, dropping his heart rate low and close to blacking out, as they checked his stats. They were satisfied that he was messed up enough, lifted an eyelid and ran a retina scan, then a hand pushed on his head and a sharp pain pierced the top of his ear as they stapled a metal ID tag into it.
The medic called for a stretcher with a, “This one’s good to go,” and a parting pat to the stomach that was anything but gentle.
Sebastian was quiet but smouldering.
NG opened one eye and watched them assess LC, a medic grabbing his arm harshly and unstrapping the bindings with a tug that made the kid cry out in pain. They pushed on the shoulder, decided he wasn’t faking it, confirmed his internal injuries with some prodding and poking, and ran the retina scan.
An alarm beeped.
Every head turned.
NG tensed.
Rifles snapped up to point at LC. They pushed him down, hard as if they thought he could jump up and fight them, someone yelling for backup, and adrenaline surging in every body in the room.
NG braced himself, not exactly sure what he was going to be able to do.
Elliott whispered inside his head, “Don’t move.”
“Run it again,” someone said.
LC was struggling, distressed and in agony. They held him down and it was almost a relief to feel the second-hand pain dissipate as the kid passed out.
NG watched with a cold detachment as they crowded around, then there was cursing and a yell to stand down and get the damned scanner checked.
Someone said, “He’s clear, for Christ’s sake. Get him out of here.”
NG sank back onto the bunk. “Elliott,” he sent, “that was too close. I thought you had this covered.”
“I do have it covered. You just concentrate on getting into that AI core. From the look of your stats, NG, you’re not fit to do anything. How are you planning on doing this?”
NG cut the connection and closed his eyes.
The ride up to the battle cruiser in an iso-pod on a medevac drop ship was way more comfortable than he would have had in the prisoner pens, even if he did have cuffs secured tightly round his wrists and ankles. NG relaxed and concentrated on healing.
They docked and he lay there as the crew hooked up the five pods to be transferred to the infirmary. It was a fast-in-fast-out system, easy access to bring wounded troops on board and fast evacuation back onto the dropship for transportation planetside. Not that different to the system they had on the Alsatia. He’d never seen it from this angle before and it was one helluva way to board a ship. He closed his eyes for five minutes of bumping and jostling as the pod slotted into a bay in the infirmary. As it locked into place, he scanned around. The infirmary was bustling with medics and heavily armed soldiers. This wasn’t going to work.
He made a fast decision, stopped his heart and stopped breathing. Suddenly and abruptly. An alarm screamed and the safetycuffs popped open.
The medical crew were fast. For all that he was a prisoner, they did everything they could to bring him back. He resisted it all and sank into utter darkness, the shouting and noise fading gradually.
Chapter 28
“Jiro Tierney is a name I’ve not heard in a long time,” she said. “I’m surprised he, of all people, could pull off the pretence of having allegiance to the Empire.”
“He probably enjoyed it.” The Man drained the last of the wine and reached for the jug. “Nikolai has a talent for finding solutions that appeal to the ego, to the rebellious nature in his adversaries that makes them fall into his hands. Tierney was in an impossible situation. It was a Thieves’ Guild operative that drew attention to his colony, yet it was the same guild that turned up to help.”
“Aided by one of the Seven? Does Nikolai know who Elliott is?”
“No. But he knew enough through instinct to trust that Elliott could deliver what was promised and to place his own safety in those cold hands.”
“So what went wrong?”
“What didn’t go wrong?”
•
‘I always knew you would kill me.’
NG opened his eyes. It was dark. Cold. His hands were free and it felt like he was on some kind of table or bench. He lay for a moment, gathering some strength to move.
‘We’re in the morgue,’ Sebastian said dryly. ‘You can leave any time you’re ready.’
He reached out to Martinez and Hilyer.
Martinez was fast to respond. “NG, are you okay? We heard rumours that one of the wounded had died.”
“Yeah, it was me. Hil, you on board?”
The kid replied straight away with a cocky, “Yep. Ready and waiting.”
He tried Elliott and got a simple, “All going to plan. What are you waiting for?”
All going to plan meant that Hil had made it onto the Duck, grabbed whatever it was that Elliott needed delivering to the AI core and that Elliott was nullifying their life signs, so they were free to roam.
He couldn’t sense anyone else around so he drummed up some energy and sat, feeling the stomach muscles pull and feeling a weakness in his limbs that was draining. He was covered in blood, shirt torn open, tender around the wound still, and sore from the pummelling they’d given him when they were trying to resuscitate.
“Give me a minute,” he sent to them all.
It took longer than that to get his breathing under control, slide off the table, get cleaned up somewhat and find a clean shirt to steal, but no one hassled him to hurry.
He made sure he left no trails of blood – as far as anyone would see, his body had been removed already, that was all, and Elliott would make sure the records showed that – and he climbed up into the ventilation system.
“NG, move,” Elliott hissed through the Senson.
“I know, I know.” He scrambled up the ladder, silent as a ghost, drawing his foot up and out of sight a fraction of a second before a crewman walked past.
He perched there for a second, heart pounding, until the guy had gone then climbed up through a hatch into a vent. He braced himself against the bulkhead and shifted his weight in the cramped space. Just like old times.
The Wintran battle cruiser was massive. Cold to the point of uncomfortable, clean verging on sterile and cramped, the perfectly configured design of every accessway and maintenance vent testament to Wintran efficiency.
They were both on target to get into position and so far nothing they’d done had raised an alarm.
‘You hope…’
NG crept across a beam, sliding under thick knots of cables and easing past conduits that were warm to the touch. He was close. The engineering deck was the heart of the cruiser, the beating core of all its vital systems, and every element of its operations ran through this massive compartment. He slid into position and looked up.
‘What power we hold when we have no contrition, no remorse or guilt… What happened to your conscience, Nikolai? I’m not sure the Man would approve of your actions.’
‘I really don’t care.’
Sebastian laughed.
NG cracked open one of the panels. “How are you doing, Hil?” he sent.
Hilyer sounded strained and distant. “Almost…”
Waiting seemed to last forever and it was hard to resist the urge to pester Hilyer to hurry up. But Hil had the toughest target. He hadn’t been thrilled at the idea of his part in the plan, still dwelling on Genoa, laughing bitterly, saying that he was going to get a reputation for screwing over AIs.
The kid called in eventually, on a tight wire link, sounding like shit. “I’m in, let’s do this.”
‘How precious. The child is in trouble. Anderton now Hilyer. It’s all so dramatic. I’m almost enjoying playing at being a field operative again.’
NG shifted his weight slightly to ease an ache in his abdomen. “Hil, what’s wrong?”
&nbs
p; There was a long silence then, “Freaking electrobes. I’m fine.” He sounded far from fine. “Let’s do it.” He started counting down. They had to take out the AI first or risk it detecting any other action they were going to pull and shutting them down.
Hilyer worked steadily, finally sending, “Done,” as he connected and broke through into the core.
NG threw his kill switch simultaneously.
A deep groaning rumble shuddered through the ship as it powered down, emergency systems struggling and failing to get past their traps.
Klaxons began to wail and alarms shrieked.
Now they just had to get out.
NG packed up quickly, slipping out from under the panel and running back along the beam, trusting that Hilyer was moving, the entire crew of the ship mobilising around them as the Wintrans kicked in defensive battle stations. From here on in, it was going to go one of two ways. The plan was to get everyone onto the Duck, find Gallagher and extract. Nice and simple, low key. Tierney and his people could work it out from there.
Or the Earth warship would turn up and all hell would break loose. Either way, all he needed was twenty seconds with Gallagher.
Zang could wait. And he could take whatever message he wanted from this.
NG ran along a gantry high above a loading bay. He was having trouble tracking Hil, trying to keep tabs on the kid as he moved. It wasn’t easy. This was one of the reasons they tended to send the field-ops out on tabs alone, less baggage, no worrying about what someone else was or wasn’t doing, more opportunity to improvise on a whim.
The Wintrans didn’t know what had happened but they were working fast to try to secure their vessel. It was like being caught in a hive of swarming bees.
He paused to scan around, timed his move and pushed up into a run again, calling out to Hilyer through the Senson.
‘Leave him.’
‘What?’
‘Leave him. He’s about to get caught. You must have known that was a risk when you brought him here. I thought you didn’t care.’