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

by C. G. Hatton

  LC didn’t move but he replied, sounding out of his mind, ‘I’m fine. Where’s Sean? D’you know?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Sean. She’s clear.’ Frank had paid a small fortune, funded by the guild, to get her out on bail. ‘What the hell have they been drugging you with?’ That hadn’t been in the report.

  LC was struggling to put coherent thoughts together. He was trying to use the Senson, oblivious to the fact the room was shielded and that the implant was gone from his neck anyway. Good luck to them trying to get anything out of that. Science had increased the protections on all of them since the incident with Hilyer. All NG could pick up was a vague, ‘No idea.’

  The virus usually neutralised any toxins. This was going to make it difficult. ‘LC, listen in,’ he sent. ‘They’re moving you out in one hour. We’ve been given clearance to accompany you. If they get you to Winter, we’re screwed. So we go now. We need to know how fast you can move when we do this.’

  There was a long pause, then, ‘Honestly? Might need go-juice.’

  That meant he was struggling. Damn it.

  NG flicked his glance to the monitors as everyone in the obs room tensed. Again, it wasn’t every day you got to see the legendary Thieves’ Guild in action. They’d never been exposed like this in public before. The news streams were in a frenzy over it.

  The door opened. Evelyn and Duncan walked in, Evie wearing a tight pencil skirt and heels she could kill with, Duncan in a suit. NG couldn’t help but stare at Evie, realising with a pang how much he was missing her.

  LC looked up as they sat down opposite him. The kid looked tired, fresh black eye, drawn cheeks, that scar across his cheekbone standing out even though he was so pale.

  ‘All in position,’ Duncan sent, direct thought to them both, as he adjusted his jacket.

  NG watched as Evelyn placed a file on the table. She didn’t know he was there.

  “We’re building a case refuting the allegations regarding Olivia Ostraban,” Evelyn was saying, very aware that they were being recorded. “You weren’t there. The emphasis is on them to prove it was you. The three police officers that died during your arrest…” She looked down, consulting the file. “According to their medical records, all had congenital heart defects…”

  ‘Congenital heart defects?’ NG thought dryly, cutting through Evelyn’s brief.

  ‘That was the best we could come up with at short notice,’ Duncan thought back. ‘What the hell happened, bud?’

  LC glanced up, looking NG right in the eye through the glass mirror. ‘Didn’t mean to.’

  “…whilst unfortunate, all the evidence they have against you,” Evelyn was saying, “is purely circumstantial. They can’t prove that you did a thing. So we have a good chance.”

  ‘Problem is,’ Duncan sent, ‘they don’t care whether you did it or not – this is all just show – as soon as you set foot on Winter, Ennio Ostraban is going to deliver you right up to Zang.’

  NG felt LC’s heart rate increase as the biostat equipment in the obs room that was keeping track of the kid’s vitals beeped a warning.

  ‘They’ve taken a bucket load of blood out of me,’ LC sent. ‘Couldn’t stop them.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ NG sent quickly. ‘The virus degrades too fast. They need you alive.’

  Evelyn was still talking, the ultimate professional, even though he could feel that her stomach was churning, at the state LC was in and the situation this was putting the guild in. “They’re extraditing you to Winter. As your legal team, we’re coming with you. Do you need medical attention?”

  LC shook his head, switching his eyes to Duncan and concentrating hard to think, ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘They move you to the transport, we’ll be right there,’ the big man sent. ‘Instead of going with them, you come with us. We need you to be ready because it’s going to be tight.’

  Damn right it was going to be tight. Neither of them had any weapons. LC was going to be near as dammit useless. And the security detail had been shipped in. They weren’t using locals. The most high profile murder and arrest in years, and it was a kid who’d been the subject of the highest bounty in history. No one wanted to slip up, whether they knew what was really going on or not.

  One of the control guys leaned into a mic. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  ‘Stay close to him,’ NG sent to Duncan. ‘They’ve got him drugged with some crap he can’t neutralise. This is going to be…’

  He cut off as an alarm sounded.

  High alert in there went to freaked out in a split second. He scanned wider, much wider, fleeting glances into the minds of the prison’s central guard detail and reading their panic as they detected incoming. Gunships and troop carriers in attack formation. He went further, into the minds of the pilots flying the inbound ships, stomach knotting as he realised who they were, going quickly from one to the next and watching as they launched air to ground missiles that took out the facility’s towers.

  He pulled himself back to the obs room. Klaxons were screaming.

  He moved, drawing a gun with his left hand, and sending fast, ‘Change of plan. We have incoming. We get out now,’ as he shoved one of the operators aside to get to the supervisor who was about to punch down on a lockdown button. He caught the guy’s hand and hissed, “Don’t lock us in for Christ’s sake, we need to get him out of here. Initiate evac procedure Omega.”

  ‘What the hell is Omega?’ ran through the minds of everyone in the room. He didn’t have time for any finesse but he gave the supervisor absolute belief in it as the right course of action. Then it was easy to exaggerate the confusion and send them all spinning into panic as he snapped out more random orders and slipped out of the room.

  He pulled down the visor as he ran round to the interview room. He stopped in the doorway, covering the corridor and glancing in. Duncan and Evelyn already had the two guards disarmed and on the floor. LC was struggling to free himself of the cuffs, his hands shaking and frustration making it worse.

  There was no time to focus or be intricate with this. NG sent two snapshot bursts of energy that bust open the locks restraining the kid’s wrists and ankles, sending sparks flying.

  Evie spun and snapped up the gun she’d acquired, her eyes flashing, and for an instant he thought she’d recognised him but her finger started to squeeze the trigger, Duncan stopping her with a fast, “He’s ours.”

  She nodded, they grabbed LC and they ran out into the corridor.

  ‘Who the hell is it?’ Duncan sent.

  NG waved them to stop, checked round a corner and gestured them to follow. ‘The JU. I should have known. Jameson said Earth want their property back. Looks like they’re willing to fight everyone else to get it.’

  Chapter 7

  The Man listened to them argue. He wanted to stand, walk out, walk away from here. He did not, by any means, need to sit here and be subjected to such interrogation. It was a pure courtesy on his part to bring them intelligence, knowledge, the information they desired.

  In reality, he was not even sure they could wield the power they thought they had any more.

  Her voice broke through the rabble. “Let us consider,” she said, “why we are here before we argue ourselves out of even making a decision.”

  He could feel that her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted the story direct, like that last time, over a goblet of wine, in chambers warmed by a blazing fire, and she was wishing she’d asked for a private audience with him.

  He would have granted it but perhaps it was for the better that they all hear it direct. Now. For they were running out of time.

  •

  The power dropped, plunging them into darkness as they ran through narrow corridors. Someone must have hit the lockdown because blast doors were slamming shut all around them. They were going to get caught between the attacking Earth forces and the defending Wintran security detail, and he had no idea which would be worse.

  He called t
hem to a stop, uneasy. Hal Duncan was holding up LC, Evelyn thinking they needed somewhere to hide, that Luka was standing out a mile as he was, in a white shirt and orange prison gear. She was wishing NG was with them and he almost tore off the helmet there and then.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Duncan thought at him.

  NG unslung the rifle. ‘She’s safer if she doesn’t know. Here, you take this.’

  He could hear the jumbled mass of orders flying between the incoming troops merging with the frantic communications of the security guards, the spreading panic amongst the other prisoners almost contagious.

  Blue beams from searching flashlights were starting to bounce through the corridors, each life force a bright spark in the darkness. They needed to move but it felt like they were in the centre of a maze that had a mass of bodies running into it, heading right for them.

  NG turned slowly, scanning around. “They know we’re here,” he muttered.

  Evelyn looked at him in dismay, a flutter of familiarity hitting her mind before she shut it down as nonsense. She grabbed LC and spun him around. “Tracking device?”

  “Shit,” Duncan swore, taking hold of the kid’s shoulder and turning him. They’d already taken the device out of his neck but he still had the tiny metal tag in his ear. Duncan flicked it. “Is that it?” Without the tagging gun, there was only one way it was coming out. Duncan took a firm hold on it, bracing himself to rip it out.

  LC was swaying on his feet, about to keel over.

  “Hold up,” NG said. He looked at the tag and fried the circuits in it, grabbing the kid as he flinched and getting him between them as they shifted position almost automatically to get back to back. NG was the only one wearing any kind of body armour but he couldn’t shield them all.

  The metallic echo of stun grenades bouncing along the floor cut through the screaming klaxons. He deflected three of them before they could detonate, Duncan shooting out another two.

  NG spun, firing at a figure that appeared at the far corner.

  He ducked as shots began to pepper the walls and it took a second to realise that the guards moving up on them were falling, shot in the back. The shadows of massive, heavily armoured figures began to loom, cast on the walls like grotesque shadow puppets. Earth spec-ops.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, reaching to take hold of LC’s arm.

  They turned and ran.

  An explosion blew chunks out of the wall next to them.

  NG could sense more than see that Duncan was trying to shield Evelyn and he shoved LC away as he felt another high-ex round fly past.

  It impacted.

  He was thrown to the side. He twisted, bundled into LC and they both fell through a doorway into a stairwell, tumbling down the steps. He landed badly, hit his head and blacked out.

  Cold, dank air swirled around him. A trickle of cold sweat ran down his ribs. He was breathing fast, heart racing, adrenaline pumping.

  It was dark, shadows shifting in every direction he turned.

  He was trapped.

  Lost.

  A dark fear clawed at his mind, pressing, looming.

  He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe…

  He came to with a jolt, shaking. He must have only been out for a second because no one was shooting at them and there was no one standing over them. He blinked away the chill fog, moved to get up and almost screamed as his arm gave way. He shut out the pain, shifted his weight and looked around.

  LC was stirring.

  ‘Duncan?’ NG sent.

  ‘Cut off from you, buddy. We’ll have to work our way round and find another way down. Stay in touch.’

  Great.

  There was a clang above them, shouts echoing and a hum of powered armour. NG braced himself and stood, grabbing a handful of LC’s shirt with his left hand, hauling the kid upright and dragging him, stumbling, down the rest of the stairs.

  They bumped through the door at the bottom into more darkness, two figures turning to face them, blinding beams of light arcing up as they raised their rifles. NG sent them flying and moved as fast as he could to the first door he could find. Locked. He backed into it as he shattered the mechanism, staggering through into an empty office and trying the Senson as he moved, sending a quick, “Control, this is 402. Felix Amber. Need back up here,” as he did it, like old times.

  There was no reply.

  He let LC sink to the floor, close to fading out completely, and kneeled, cradling his right arm against his chest and holding his left hand against the back of LC’s neck. He made sure there was no one approaching then concentrated, going deep. They’d used a freaking neurotoxin on the kid, no wonder the virus was struggling. He neutralised it, using more energy than he could afford, then pulled two vials of Epizin out of a pocket and popped them into LC’s neck, feeling the virus snatch at it with a voracity that was almost disturbing.

  LC blinked, opening his eyes as if just realising NG was there.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” NG said, handing over two more vials and sitting back, rubbing a hand across his eyes. He couldn’t move his right arm, could hardly think straight enough to keep the pain at bay. The pins they’d had to put in place had shifted in the fall, all the healing he’d managed to do himself undone. Leigh was going to be pissed.

  He forced himself to his feet, muttering, “Wait here,” going back to the door and listening until he was sure there was no one approaching.

  The two guys he’d just taken down were security, dead, necks broken.

  He stripped the jacket and trousers off the smallest one, working with one hand and taking what felt like forever. They both had sidearms as well as the rifles. He took both handguns and returned to LC.

  “Put these on,” he said, throwing the clothes over and going back to the door. He leaned against the wall, tracking the search patterns on both sides. They had maybe two minutes before they needed to move.

  LC started to shrug himself into the jacket, snagging the bandage on his arm as he did it. “She’s not dead,” he said quietly as he struggled into it.

  NG was trying to check the magazine on one of the handguns, not easy with one hand. He stopped and looked back. “What?”

  “Olivia isn’t dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Sean was with her. It was another girl that got shot. They just said it was Liv.”

  He sounded tired.

  It was hard not to be impatient. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  LC got the jacket on and squinted over at him. “To these guys? How could I? They wouldn’t have believed me.” He started to pull on the trousers. “And anyway, NG…” He pulled a face. “If they find out where she is, they’ll have her killed. I can’t do that. I feel bad enough as it is.”

  “I don’t think…”

  LC interrupted. “They killed an innocent girl to get to me. They thought it was her. They can’t let her live now, can they?”

  There was a loud bang outside, not far away.

  The kid was fastening the jacket and trying not to aggravate the rest of the bullet holes in him as he did it. He didn’t look much like security but they were out of options.

  And just about out of time.

  There was another explosion, louder this time.

  NG gave up on screwing about with the magazine by hand. He slid the mechanism back without touching it, gave it a glance and slammed it back in. He held it out.

  LC took it. He never used to carry a gun, now he was thinking that he felt naked without one. Vulnerable, and that was a feeling he hadn’t had since he was a kid on Kheris, and he hated it. He hated them, all of them, Ostraban, Zang… He blushed, realising NG could hear everything flashing through his thoughts, random and mixed up as they were.

  “Don’t worry about it,” NG muttered. He tried the Senson again. “This is 402. Felix Amber, heading home. You want to tell me where we’re going?”

  He saw a faint smile flit across LC’s face. The
kid had heard that code enough in his time with them. Amber meant wounded but walking. Red was the scary one.

  A reply came straight back that time. “Roger that, 402. We have no clear route home at present. Stand by.”

  Screw that. He looked round, spotted a terminal and hooked in by remote, skipping past a couple of security traps, and getting deep enough into it to see that the whole system was totally screwed. More than one party was messing with it and whoever was trying to recoup some kind of control somewhere was fighting a losing battle. He kept it simple and flashed up the building schematics and current security state, aware that LC was watching over his shoulder. The kid had no way in to the tight wire connection but he’d overhead the exchange and he knew they were on their own. It felt suddenly like they were running a tab.

  “Go back one,” LC said. “Can you make that?”

  It was a ventilation shaft.

  Looking again, he could see what LC had spotted and he could see why he hadn’t targeted it as an option.

  “Your arm is fucked again,” LC said. “Can you make it?”

  If he was honest, he wasn’t sure but he said, “Yep. Let’s go.” He stood and gestured towards the door with the gun in his left hand. “You want to go after Ostraban and Zang?” he said. “Screw them. We get back from this then I’m going after UM. You want in?”

  LC was looking at him, eyes hooded, thinking back to that night in the rain on Erica. He nodded.

  “Good,” NG said. “You, me and Hil. We’ll make it a road trip.”

  They made it down another floor and avoided getting too close to a searching security team, no one looking too closely at them in the darkness but no need to risk it. The Earth forces were sweeping the building from the roof down, clearing action, like herding rats. From what he could pick up as they sidled past a mobile command post, the Wintran security detail were thinking of bugging out, thinking they weren’t getting paid to fight fucking Imperial special forces in powered armour.

  “We could just walk out with them,” LC said at one point.