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

by C. G. Hatton

  He looked up, hearing the roar of a gunship cutting through the howling wind.

  Martinez caught his movement and followed his line of sight, grabbing his shoulder and yelling to the others, “Get into cover. Get off the goddamned roof.”

  She thrust the rifle back at him and pulled him up and into a run as blinding spotlights sliced through the darkness. The gunship thundered overhead, circling like a vulture, spinning its guns and arcing beams of light across the rooftops.

  NG ran, yelling at Martinez to stay close, picking up its intention a fraction of a second too late as it opened up on one of the marines. It switched to the other as they ran. LC stumbled, dragged to his feet by Duncan, god knows where Hilyer was.

  “Stay close,” NG yelled again, head spinning. “They want us alive.”

  Half his concentration was still focused on the Tangiers. He couldn’t break free. Couldn’t focus on here or there.

  The gunship swooped in low, cutting off their exit from the roof, hovering, buffeted by the wind, weapons bristling.

  Hones armed the warheads. A fierce, defiant decision to sacrifice and there was nothing NG could do.

  The gunship pinned them in its spotlight.

  He spun around, back to back with Martinez, LC and Duncan, guns up.

  Trapped.

  No way out. Here or there.

  Hones hit the button.

  Chapter 38

  She took the goblet, raised it and looked at the twisted metal of the stem, the elaborate markings on the cup, then raised her eyes to look across at him. “Did he realise?”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “But they recognised the badges, the kill tokens? They made the connection with the amulet?”

  “They assumed it was the same. They realised that Bhenykhn artefacts were already present in their galaxy. That is all.”

  “You don’t think it necessary for them to know?”

  He drank from his own goblet, savouring the heat. “It is irrelevant. The knowledge of where I am from, where the Bhenykhn are from, will not help them. They need to fight for their own galaxy. Anything else is a distraction.”

  •

  The Tangiers blew sky high. Light flared on the horizon and the shock of so many simultaneous deaths hit NG like he’d been hit by a truck. He staggered, seeing LC drop as if he’d been poleaxed.

  The gunship swerved away as if it had been rocked by an updraft, circling around and bringing its guns quickly back to bear down on them again.

  ‘Time for a new plan…’

  He didn’t have a plan. He could hardly hold up the weight of the rifle any longer and he could sense multiple ground units moving in.

  “What do we do?” Duncan shouted, dragging LC up again.

  He was about to yell at them to open fire when a figure ran from the shadows, hefting a massive Bhenykhn weapon and targeting the gunship.

  Hilyer. He fired. A searing beam of energy lanced out, slicing through the gunship’s tail section.

  Hil yelled, “Run!”

  They ran. The gunship opened up, peppering the ground at their feet even as it spun out of control. NG ran alongside Martinez, grabbing her arm and pulling her aside as the massive bulk of the black gunship crashed behind them.

  They went sprawling as the wave of heat and debris hit. NG tumbled, losing his grip on Martinez and crashing into a wall.

  ‘Get off the roof,’ Sebastian said dryly.

  His head was ringing, breath driven out of his lungs and ribs on fire again. He rolled onto his back and tried to get up, managing to half sit and slump back against the wall.

  The roof was littered with burning, mangled metal. Ground troops were moving in. Martinez was down, out cold. He tried to reach out to the others but Sebastian grabbed the moment, demanding his full attention as if physically grabbing him round the throat. ‘I will not die here, Nikolai. Listen to me. Garrett and his team got away from the Tangiers with the spare parts for the freighter. If that weirdo Elliott skipped out with the parts from here then you need to quit screwing around and get your ass to the freighter or they – will – leave – without you. Do you understand? Don’t roll over and die here. You do not have to save the whole damned universe. You are not the saviour of mankind. Get out and live to fight another day.’

  ‘No,’ he thought back simply and broke free. He scrambled over to Martinez and checked her pulse. She grabbed his wrist and struggled, fighting, until she came to her senses and swore, reaching for her rifle.

  They staggered to their feet and looked around. “Hones didn’t make it,” he gasped, sending the same thought to LC and Hal Duncan who were on the other side of the wreckage, battered but intact. “It’s up to us to stop the Bennies getting away.”

  They moved as quickly as they could, running to drop back behind their lines. He sent the others off to gather up squad leaders from every unit they had out there defending, then he went inside. He made his way to the entrance area where they’d cleared out the dead to set up a rough and ready infirmary. The Wintran major was up to his elbows in blood, tending to some poor sucker who probably wasn’t going to make it. He looked up as they approached.

  “Hones had to detonate the warheads,” NG said. “No choice but to self-destruct. The Tangiers is gone but he took half their ground force with him.” He let that sink in, saw the dawning realisation in the major that with Hones gone, he was now the highest ranking military officer. “I’m going after the alien ship. You…” he paused and glanced round at the medic who was watching, “you need to evacuate the wounded to the freighter. Right now. We’re out of time. Take everyone who can walk. Leave the rest. I’m going to give you coordinates and codes. Get them to the freighter. Make sure you make it. If nothing else, get this intel to the freighter and get out of here.”

  He grabbed a board from a stack they were using to keep track of the wounded and entered data fast, detailing a means to contact the Alsatia. He handed it over and turned away, taking off the helmet and scrubbing a muddy hand through his wet hair. The pain in his ribs was almost unbearable, each footstep and intake of breath shooting fire across his chest. It felt like he’d forgotten how to switch off the pain, the simplest, most basic talent he’d ever had.

  The medic followed them. “You’re injured,” she said.

  “I’m fine.”

  Martinez said, “He’s stubborn. And yes, he’s injured. We could do with trauma patches and Epizin if you have any to spare.”

  NG didn’t stop walking. They didn’t have time to screw around. Sebastian was whispering a constant update of the Bhenykhn plans, unimpressed and sullen.

  ‘Damn right I’m unimpressed. The only way you will stop them is to take on their commander, do you realise that?’

  ‘We just need to stop them launching.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Nikolai.’

  He pushed his way through an increasingly crowded main area amidst a rising apprehension in the gathered troops and engineers, vaguely aware that the others were back and spreading word that something was happening. He went straight to the ops centre, stuck his head around the door and said simply to Fiorrentino and his three cronies who were cowering in there, “Get your asses out here. We’re moving out.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they responded, walking back out into the main area and climbing up onto a table. He looked around. LC and Hil were sitting perched on a bench along the far wall, out of the way, almost separate as if this didn’t concern them. Duncan was milling, patting guys on the back, reassuring his men, Earth or Wintran, no matter that he had no uniform or rank.

  And just standing there on that table, NG commanded the room, drawing energy from the several hundred bodies before him. He demanded their attention without saying a word.

  Sebastian changed his tune, almost buzzing. ‘This is more like it. Humans are so easy to manipulate. See what you’ve been missing with all that altruistic nonsense you are so fond of. See what we could have done together… what we could still do
…’

  A hush fell in seconds, only the occasional click of a weapon breaking the silence.

  “Listen in,” he said, no need to raise his voice. “By whatever trick of fate or fortune that finds you here, you are here and this is what you are facing. They’re called the Devourers. They’ve come to conquer. We’re outgunned. They’re bigger than us, they’re stronger than us. They have better armour, better weapons. They can see us in the dark. They can communicate instantaneously. We have no comms, hardly any munitions. But I am damned if I’m going to let them get a foothold here. What we face is just the beginning. More will follow and they will go from planet to planet across our galaxy until we are destroyed.” He took a deep breath that sent sparks through his chest. “If we stop this forward unit from reporting back, at least we buy ourselves some time. You have a choice. I’m going after the alien ship. Come with me. Or leave here, get onto the freighter and get out. Your choice.”

  He turned away and jumped down.

  Sebastian laughed. ‘Are you serious? We few, we happy fucking few. Are you not supposed to fire up their sense of duty and honour? Are you not supposed to warm their cockles with grand words of scars and wounds to show off should they shed blood beside you and survive to tell the tale?’

  ‘It’s up to them.’

  He walked without a word through the crowd to the door. Martinez stayed at his side and he could sense LC and Duncan following, presumably Hil as well. And one by one, others began to troop out behind them.

  ‘My word, Nikolai, these people are actually going to follow you. I’ve never seen so many pawns so willing to be sacrificed.’

  Duncan straight away started shouting out orders. He knew what needed to be done. They had to move fast, leave enough defences in place to hold the Bennies that were attacking the facility and get out there onto the moorland. The marine sergeant joined in, rallying the troops, the two of them working together like they were old teammates.

  NG let them get on with it. He found Gallagher, told the old guy to evacuate back to his ship, then reloaded, grabbed spare ammunition and ended up standing in the entrance to Erica’s mining facility, staring out into the rain. Another storm front was moving in. Behind him, he could feel a heightening readiness for battle, seasoned troops gearing up in anticipation, the newbies shaking out the nerves with frenzied activity. It was a long way from the comfort of the Alsatia and the intricate task of allocating acquisitions.

  He felt LC’s presence as a gentle nudge.

  ‘We should have come back,’ the kid thought to him. ‘After it all went to shit, we should have come back. I’m sorry we didn’t. We just… I…’ He tailed off, feeling awkward and not bothering to hide it.

  NG glanced over. LC was sitting on a crate out in the open, a rifle across his knees, hood thrown back, soaked through and choosing to chill down because he’d been overheating in the stifling swirl of emotions inside. They were all a long way from the Alsatia.

  ‘Is this where it came from?’ the kid asked.

  The virus.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he thought back. He reckoned probably so, somehow.

  LC was thinking that it all still came back to the package. The damned package. ‘What if it did?’ he thought suddenly. ‘Did Zang know…?’

  About the Bennies.

  NG turned to look back inside as LC stood and they both had the same thought at the same time. ‘Fiorrentino.’

  They pushed their way back inside. The tunnel was packed, everyone ready to move out and they forced their way back in.

  Martinez picked up on the urgency. She moved in close, following them as they moved in the wrong direction, and hissed, “What’s wrong?”

  NG didn’t reply, sending to Duncan, ‘Where’s Fiorrentino?’ as he scanned around to home in on the suit.

  It didn’t take long. The guy was terrified and muscling in on the major, trying to take over the evacuation to book himself a place out.

  Duncan intercepted as they closed in, neatly shouldering Fiorrentino aside to separate him from his cronies and using a slick control and restraint move to march him into a side room. Hil followed and Martinez took up position to stand guard for them without a word.

  They had the suit isolated, in private, before the guy knew what had happened.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” NG said quietly and watched the realisation hit Fiorrentino between the eyes.

  “NG,” he said, too loud, almost hysterically. “My god, you wouldn’t believe how much cash we’ve spent trying to get our hands on you.” He shook his head. He’d had the bastard, he was thinking, he’d had NG himself on his knees, bleeding, in chains. He was kicking himself that he hadn’t thought to run the biometrics past the parcel of data he had in his personal files, his official ‘business’ files, the biometrics it had cost them a fortune to acquire from the Assassins, rather than leaving it to the grunts whom he had tasked only with finding Anderton and Hilyer. He looked past NG to LC and Hil and smiled, a sly creasing of the lips. “Where’s my package?”

  “Why now?” NG said simply. “After all this time? Why did the Order come after us now?”

  Fiorrentino did a double take at that mention of the Order. He thought about denying it but glanced around, eyes coming to rest on the gun in NG’s arms. He was calculating. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I can explain…”

  “You don’t need to,” NG murmured and had a hand around the guy’s throat before he could twitch. He froze time. He took everything, violently raking every scrap of information from the guy’s mind, every thought, memory, interaction and insidious dealing ever made, throwing it all to LC and not even bothering to process half of it.

  He took everything and stepped back, a sick feeling crashing in waves through his stomach.

  Fiorrentino slumped to the floor.

  ‘Oh my, how the murky waters run deep.’

  LC was struggling to breathe. ‘They came after you because they thought we’d stolen the virus? They thought you’d told us not to take it back to Zang? Who the hell is Angmar Rodan?’

  ‘CEO of UM. And yes, we’ve been played. We went after Zang when we should have gone after Rodan. Christ.’ He turned away. “C’mon, it doesn’t change anything. We need to go.”

  They made it halfway across the moorland before the Bennies caught on to what they were doing and sent a gunship and four units of ground troops to surround them.

  NG slid into a ditch, driving rain pounding an icy chill into every inch of exposed skin, yelling the others to get down and readying his rifle with fingers he could hardly feel.

  The two troop carriers thundered overhead, sweeping around and firing pods that thudded into the ground in a perfect circle around them. Sixteen heavily armed and armoured infantry. Four units of four. Against roughly three hundred humans, half of whom had ditched their rifles for lack of ammunition and had nothing left but scavenged machetes and knives.

  He shouted them to attack as soon as the pods opened, anyone with ammo left opening fire and everyone else running at the Bennies to get in close and engage in hand to hand.

  NG chose his target.

  Time slowed.

  He felt each squeeze of the trigger as a thump, each recoil as a punch against his shoulder. He watched every bullet cut through the rain and impact against its energy shield, draining it steadily, shot after shot, until it flickered, making sure the next was a headshot.

  Then he scrambled along the ditch, aware that Martinez was following, repositioning to get a clear shot on another grey cloak.

  He emptied another magazine, keeping his breathing slow, shutting out the screams and pain from the wounded and dying. He had no idea where Hilyer was but he could sense LC, the kid struggling but holding, and Duncan who was giving calm and steady sitreps as the human losses added up and the Bennies began to fall. NG had that in his head along with Sebastian who was giving him a running commentary from the hive. It was dizzying. They were screwed. A gunship was flying low over the hills, c
losing in fast. They were pinned down, the Bennies that were left starting to back off out of range, content to simply surround them and keep their heads down with occasional suppressive fire.

  ‘They still want you alive,’ Sebastian murmured.

  He couldn’t see a way out. Once that gunship arrived, they were done.

  He stood, dropping the rifle to his side, and turned slowly, staring out over the moorland, torrential rain streaming down his face. The Bennies were just standing there, spread out around them.

  ‘Don’t,’ Sebastian warned, picking up on something he hadn’t even thought through.

  He couldn’t think of any other way out.

  The gunship screamed overhead, circled in a deafening roar of engines and swept down, opening up and raking gunfire across their scattered lines.

  ‘Tell them to stop,’ he thought at Sebastian. ‘For Christ’s sake, do something. Can you talk to them? Tell them to stop. I’ll surrender. There’s no point in all these people dying for nothing.’

  ‘Not going to happen.’

  They had nowhere to run to.

  NG turned, heart pounding.

  Martinez was shouting.

  Through the screams, he heard Hil shout something, saw the kid running towards him, spinning, looking up, sliding in the mud, yelling, “NG, for fuck’s sake, can you not hear this? Skye, get out of here. What the hell are you going to do? Skye, no. Oh crap, NG, can you not hear any of this?”

  “What? Hear what?”

  Martinez looked bewildered.

  The gunship was circling, guns whirring, air to ground missiles tearing chunks out of their ranks. They had no chance. It spun around and flew right at them. NG raised his rifle. He stood his ground, finger on the trigger, knowing there was nothing he could do.

  “Skye, fucking go,” Hil was screaming. “Get out of here.”

  A sound like thunder crashed through the low cloud and a pressure wave hit, knocking them to the floor, as the mass of a ship flew impossibly close overhead. She didn’t stop, ploughing into the gunship. NG sprawled, raising his head and shielding his eyes as the combined mass of both ships hit the ground in a ball of fire that erupted into the sky.