by C. G. Hatton
Way to share the details in a briefing.
NG shut it out. He’d read that kind of traumatic recall in people before, but at a distance, never the way LC threw it at him.
The kid got it under control, mumbling, “Sorry,” trying to pull his thoughts away from the still aching wounds of each one of those shots and back to Poule.
The feeling of it lingered. NG cradled his cup, taking heat from it as LC was taking cold from the beer bottle.
The kid took a mouthful of beer and looked up. “Elliott took us there,” he said as if realising it for the first time. “We thought it was a glitch in the AI. It jumped without warning when we were getting chased out of Sten’s. But it would have been Elliott. He took us to Poule.”
NG muttered a curse. There was more to all this than any of them had seen.
He sucked in a deep breath and looked at LC, got a suspicious, “What?”
He switched to direct thought. ‘What do you see when you look in my mind?’
‘NG, I don’t look.’
‘Look. What do you see?’
The kid was smart, cautious, and he hadn’t forgotten what Sebastian had done to him. ‘Why? What am I looking for?’
‘Intel. Sebastian threw a shit load at me in the middle of the battle. From their ship. I can’t access it. That’s what’s giving me the nightmares. I want to know if you can see it.”
LC scowled.
NG stayed calm even though he wanted to throw the cup across the room. ‘I need to know if you can see it, LC, because we need to know when they’re coming back.’ It wasn’t easy admitting that he needed help and he let the kid overhear that, saw the hesitation in LC’s mind.
‘Sebastian’s gone,’ he thought. He left it at that, resisting the urge to flash back to the battlefield to show LC what had happened after the kid had hit the dirt, out cold, with a crossbow bolt in his chest.
‘Show me,’ LC fired back, heart rate increasing, and it was impossible not to share the instinctive flashback that LC couldn’t help, feel the chill of the rain, the adrenaline, as the kid slipped and slid desperately in the mud, nothing in his plan but distracting the massive Bhenykhn away from NG.
NG shook his head, shutting it down. He didn’t want to go back there. ‘Sebastian killed them, he dumped the intel in my head and he…’ He didn’t know what to say. The bastard had taunted him, said he was going to sleep. ‘Wake me when they get back,’ was how he’d put it.
NG reached for the jug, took his time pouring a fresh cup of tea, watching the swirling steam, and said out loud, “LC, I need to know what I have in here. Just see if you can see it.”
The kid didn’t argue back that time, just looked, clinically, nothing as smooth as when the Man had used to read his mind, but not clumsy.
NG felt him hit a barrier.
LC pushed it and recoiled, breathing fast. ‘Shit.’
“Try again. We need to know this stuff.”
He tried again, reckless that time, aggressive.
NG tensed.
The chill darkness grabbed him as if around the throat. Frozen. Sparks of intel from the battlespace flowed around him, blurring then slowing and beginning to focus.
It wavered. Spun away in a blast of shards that splintered out in a dizzying spiral.
He dragged his eyes open. Felt the warm surface of the deck humming beneath him.
He sat up.
LC was sprawled on the deck on the other side of the room, holding the back of his head and looking over at him.
“Shit.”
He sent LC back to the others and he went to his quarters. He turned the shower onto hot and struggled his broken arm out of the bindings, managing to shrug out of his shirt. It was tempting to think he could bug out, go find a beach somewhere. Ask Sean for the keys to Frank’s cabin. Take the sniper rifle and go find a piece of the war he could lose himself in. Somewhere warm. Poule was the last place he wanted to go.
He sat on the edge of the bunk, listening to the water run and thinking he should go get cleaned up.
It felt like too much effort to move.
A chill of damp cold shivered across his shoulders.
‘I know you’re there,’ he thought. ‘You’ve haunted me for a hundred years. You want to tell me how I use all this shit you threw at me?’
The cold deepened, taking a grip on the muscles in his shoulders that threatened to cramp. It spread into his joints and crept down his spine.
A dank chill settled in his lungs.
He lay back on the bunk, staring at the ceiling.
He felt it trying to draw him away and resisted.
‘Sebastian, just give me the damned intel.’
A dark shadow stirred, deep inside, elusive.
The Senson engaged with a high priority. Quinn.
NG sat up and allowed access.
“I’ve done what I can,” the big handler sent. “He wants to speak to you.”
“No.”
He cut the connection, ditched the idea of having a shower and threw his bag on the bunk, tossing in guns and knives. The room was different, darker, warmer, than his quarters on the Alsatia, but it was still tough not to flash back to the last time he’d done this before going after Devon, and the time before when it had been Devon herself who’d tried to stop him. He felt numb, none of that fire, and there was no one here to stop him this time.
He refastened the knee support, pulled on ops gear and wrapped a black field bandage around the cast on his arm and hand, taking it right down over his fingers. Not ideal. But then, what the hell was any more?
He flexed his shoulder. The arm didn’t need binding, not with the forearm secured as it was in the cast. He couldn’t hold a gun in that hand and he’d be hard pushed to climb but he wasn’t planning on sneaking around anywhere. He was done hiding.
Wraith was ready and waiting in the hangar. They kept her ready for him. That was one of his standing orders. And it wasn’t just the ship that was waiting there for him. Pen Halligan stood, feet planted, arms folded, at the foot of the ramp.
There was no one else in there.
Total set up and NG walked right into it, not impressed but not about to lose his temper.
He walked forward and stopped a few feet away from the big man.
“So you can read my mind?” Pen shook his head, incredulous. He wasn’t armed but he was thinking that he didn’t need to be. He could take NG down. Easily.
NG dropped his kit bag to the deck and stood there. It wouldn’t be that easy. Even with a broken arm, he could take Pen in a fair fight. In an unfair fight…?
Pen was staring, stony faced. “I always told Mendhel you’d get him killed.”
That was hardly fair but NG kept quiet. He was subtly balancing his weight on his left leg, trying to take the pressure off the knee without making it obvious, trying to weigh up what this would take if Pen went for him.
The big man took a step forward and said, voice low and threatening, “This game you’ve been playing for so long – Nikolai – the rules just changed.”
Chapter 11
“Why do we fret so about creatures that have such capacity for violence themselves?” one of them said.
“They harbour hatred so long and hard.”
There was more of the same. The Man let it wash over him. Their zeal to take such umbrage was laughable.
She felt it. He could feel her discomfort. It was a distraction from their own guilt, to find such distaste in this fleeting encounter with the human race. As if finding the inhabitants of this galaxy to be lesser somehow made up for their own shortcomings.
“They have failings,” she said. “Who does not? Let us remember why they are in this predicament.” She turned to him. “You have always worked in absolute secrecy, kept Nikolai cossetted for his own safety. Now all is revealed? After all this time? Did you prepare him for that?”
“No. How could I?” Her question, and her dismay, cut deeply. He had made mistakes. They had all made mistakes.
“As the situation worsened, Nikolai had to look for allies and those allies were not always ones he would have sought given a choice.”
•
His heart started beating faster.
“Nikolai Andreyev,” Pen said, drumming in the fact that they knew.
NG scanned around. Duncan was listening in. So was LC. Leigh was nearby. Badger. Morgan. Quinn. Presumably Hilyer.
They’d found stuff in the Man’s files, stuff on him, the greys, found the matrix and the data the Man had been gathering on the alien threat.
Pen was smouldering, caught between a burning hatred so strong he wanted nothing more than to floor this son of a bitch in front of him and a deep loyalty to people he considered family, who considered the son of a bitch to be something special to them.
NG kept eye contact without moving. They all knew. It was no different to Martinez figuring out who he was in the middle of the battle on Erica. What was worse was that they now all knew that the Man had been looking for the aliens. And they couldn’t understand why nothing had been said before.
“So what now?” Pen said accusingly.
He didn’t know what to say.
“You run off to confront Rodan. Then what?”
He’d never been able to manipulate Pen so he didn’t try and even if he could have, he had no idea where he’d take it.
“There’s still a warrant out on LC,” Pen said, dark eyes flashing, barely containing his anger, “and after what happened on Aston, there are mutterings that the Thieves’ Guild needs to be dealt with. Reined in for good. I, for one, would not argue with that. But we’re all in the shit. I get that.” He glanced to the side before glaring back at NG. “Your people seem to think that you are some kind of golden boy.” He took a step forward. “I’m not convinced. I know what you’re capable of, more than anyone.”
NG stood his ground.
“You’ve been playing your damn games for a long time,” Pen said. Another step. “You knew.” Another, every muscle taut with perfect balance. “You knew about these bastards, the Order. You knew about these aliens.” His voice lowered to a rumble. “What the hell else have you been screwing with, NG? What the hell else do you know?”
“I know we’re screwed unless we work together.”
That hit a nerve and took Pen to boiling point. He lunged forward, fast for a big man. NG ducked the blow, Pen’s fist a hair’s breadth from knocking him sideways. They both spun around, Pen moving quickly to get in a second. NG blocked with his left and threw his right arm, full weight of the cast behind it, to slam into Pen’s jaw. The big man staggered, punched NG in the ribs with a low jab and shoved him away.
NG backed off, circling around. He didn’t want this fight. He knew exactly where it was going.
Quinn and Duncan stepped into the hangar, Leigh appearing a step behind.
Pen didn’t let up. He came after him with a roar. NG dodged the first blow, got in a couple of his own and faltered as the knee threatened to give way, catching a nasty punch above his eye. He fell and rolled, tumbling backwards and on his feet fast enough to avoid another incoming. He shoved Pen, got in another elbow and landed a second blow to the big man’s jaw. Pen reeled, grabbing a fistful of NG’s shirt and pulling him close, hissing in his face, “You killed her. You – fucking – killed her.”
He couldn’t break free, realised the intention and braced himself as Pen smashed a head-butt into his face. He felt the cheekbone crack, went with the momentum of the blow and threw them both off balance. He twisted free and forced Pen’s arm into a lock, pushing him down and close to pinning the big man, except Pen hadn’t missed a thing, levered himself round and kicked, vicious and desperate, right at his weak point, years of pent up anger behind it, perfectly placed.
NG felt the knee go, felt himself going down and threw enough force at Pen to send the big man flying backwards as well. Pen hit the deck, rolled and got up, spitting blood, and coming at him again.
NG got to his feet, all his weight on his left leg. His head was pounding. He could feel blood streaming down his face, the eye swelling. He summoned energy from somewhere and blocked Pen without moving a muscle, the big man halting abruptly, straining against it and roaring. Sebastian had held the Bhenykhn commander, forced it to its knees against its will, easily. He had nothing like that. He felt the hold falter, felt Pen burst free as if throwing off chains and the big man charged, on him before he could move and grappling him to the floor.
Pen was big. Angry. Every blow hit home with years of hate and frustration behind it.
NG curled up and took it. He could overhear Quinn thinking that he should step in, that enough was enough.
“Feel free,” NG tried to send privately, senses rattled, thinking Duncan or LC would hear it anyway. “Any time.”
Another punch landed against the fractured cheekbone and he almost greyed out.
The weight on him lifted abruptly, the barrage of blows ceasing.
He rolled to his side and managed to stand.
Pen was standing back, fending off Quinn and wiping a hand across his mouth, smearing blood from his lip, breathing heavily. He laughed, but it was harsh. “These fucking aliens…?” he said eventually. “You killed them?”
NG bit his tongue, wanting to say, ‘It wasn’t me that fucking killed them’, but he couldn’t.
Pen lifted his hand, finger pointing. “You need to get a grip, NG. You see all these people…?” He moved his hand in a wide sweeping gesture. “They think you know what to do next. You want me to pledge my allegiance to you? Then tell me what we do next, because I want to know, Nikolai. I want to know what you think we do next.”
His words echoed around the confined space of the hangar.
NG glanced around at the others. He didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what to do. He’d always operated on instinct and he’d always known what was the right course of action. Now…?
After taking out the Assassins, he’d been effectively bumped down to field-op and that had been fine. He’d needed that security of other people telling him what to do. Now? After Erica? He didn’t know what he was. Not the Man, that was for sure. He could sit at that big desk in those warm, humid chambers and send orders anonymously back to the Alsatia but he could never truly take on that role. He didn’t want to. He wanted to find the source of the virus – that was all that mattered.
He picked up the kit bag. “I’m going after Rodan,” he said. “Then I’ll figure out what we do.”
He could hardly walk but he made it up the ramp and into the ship, concentrating on nothing other than switching off the pain, staying upright and shielding his thoughts. He didn’t need anyone picking up the crap he was thinking right now.
No one stopped him. He stowed his bag, grabbed a cold pack from the medical rack and sat in the main cabin area, troop seats, avoiding the bridge because he didn’t want to talk to anyone. Wraith was about the same size as Ghost, almost as fast and like Ghost she had no AI so there was a pilot awaiting his orders.
Leigh followed him on board and sat opposite.
“You want me to look at that knee?”
He shook his head. He’d healed what he could. It would hold.
“You want a dressing on that eye?”
“I’m fine.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue. “You know, these people really care about you.”
He didn’t want anyone to care about him.
“I can say this,” she said, leaning forward, “because I’m not Thieves’ Guild either. I came here to be with you. Pen’s right. You need to get a grip. You took control of that battle on Erica. We need you to take control now.”
He still didn’t know what to say.
She wasn’t going to let it drop. “So what? You’re a hundred and twenty years old? Your boss knew there was some kind of alien threat on its way? NG,” she said intently, “talk to me. Let us help. We go to Poule, then what? What exactly are you intending to do there?”
“I’m assuming Elliott has a way of getting Rodan’s attention. I just need two seconds with him.” He looked at her and made a decision. “I don’t just read thoughts. I can read memories.” He stopped short of saying he could rip someone’s mind apart. “That’s why it needs to be me.”
She pondered that and added, “Anything else we should know?”
He almost laughed. “Probably, but not now.”
She was still curious. “You could have stopped that fight before it started. Why did you let Pen hit you?”
He put the cold pack against his eye. “Because he’s needed to beat the crap out of me for a long time.”
She wanted to ask why but she refrained from pushing it. She moved seats instead and sat next to him. “You need to sleep. You can’t go on like this. But if that’s not going to happen, you need to take the energy you need from everyone around you. They can catch up on it.”
She sat back and closed her eyes, and muttered, “Help yourself. Unless it takes years off my life.” She opened one eye and peered at him. “Does it?”
That was a disturbing thought. “I have no idea.”
She shrugged. “Wake me up when we get there.”
They took Wraith and split, initiated full stealth and jumped into Poule’s outer system, two extraction teams right on their heels, the Man’s ship following. The Duck was already there, in stealth itself and only obvious because Elliott contacted them as soon as they dropped out of jump. A mass of intel started to stream in.
NG slipped through into the forward compartment and sat next to the pilot. She gave him a nod and started to throw data onto the monitors. She was good. One of his regulars and she knew how he worked. It was a welcome familiarity. One of the few he had left close by.
He pinched the top of his nose, a headache that he couldn’t shift burning behind his eyes. He watched the numbers and charts scroll, an uneasy feeling pulling at the back of his mind as the sitrep unfolded. It didn’t help that the pressure behind his eyes was increasing as they got closer to the colony. Pen had cracked the bone in his cheek. He’d reduced the swelling and the bruising, nothing he could do about the fracture, but it felt worse than the last time. And it was getting worse. He couldn’t even close his eyes to ease it without that chill darkness closing in.