by C. G. Hatton
The alien charged. There was nowhere to go, no room to dodge. It tackled him with a vicious mauling grapple that sent them both sprawling across the damp ground.
Rodan loomed close again. “My package, NG. You can read my mind? Fucking do it. See how fucking far I’m prepared to go for this.”
He was still bluffing.
NG scrambled free and ran for the gate, leaving the alien behind and skidding to a halt before the daunting mass of twisted metal blocking his way. This gate was denying him access to the intel from the alien ship. All he needed to do was break open the gate, get out of the maze and he would know all the secrets that Sebastian had thrown at him.
A fist hit hard against his jaw, momentarily thrusting him back to reality.
“How much will your fucking council pay to get you back?” Rodan was screaming. “How much are you fucking worth to them? I know assassins who will pay me billions to keep you alive, NG… so they can take their time killing you. Will the Thieves’ Guild match that to save you, NG?”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
He looked up at the lock, staring at it until it shimmered and became translucent. The mechanism inside lit up like liquid mercury.
A cold, wet cloth hit his face, covering his mouth and nose, hands pulling it tight, another hand squeezing his throat.
He couldn’t breathe.
The Bhenykhn was running at him again. He could hear it roaring in rage.
The cloth vanished and a fist rattled his jaw again.
“Where is my fucking package, NG? You don’t want to talk to us? Cut off his fucking thieving hand.”
He felt an edge of cold steel rest against his wrist.
He didn’t turn, didn’t take his eyes off the lock, simply raised a hand and sent the massive alien flying backwards.
His senses were swirling, dancing with the pain that was flowing in agonising waves. He let it, used it, revelled in it and started to take energy from them as he lay there shackled to the table, taking energy from Rodan, from each of his thugs, sucking in their very life essence.
He chose to return to the nightmare.
He traced the pattern of the release catches in the lock.
Set them up.
And blew it apart with a blast so strong the gates flew open.
He opened his eyes.
Rodan’s crony had a machete poised and tensed, slicing the blade into his wrist enough to draw blood. The thug pulled the weapon up, muscles bunching and went to hack it down. NG stopped his arm in an instant and held it there with a force that was strong enough to squeeze, twist and thrust the guy away, draining the last of his life force suddenly and completely.
Rodan stepped back, eyes flaring. It was easy to finish him off. He dropped, dead before he hit the floor, the rest of his men falling, weapons clattering against the tiles.
NG sucked in a deep breath, exhaled and closed his eyes.
The darkness now was calm, fresh with a terrifying clarity.
He could see the intel. He knew exactly where the Bhenykhn were and he knew exactly what they were planning.
He released the catches and sat up. He healed as much as he could and neutralised the drugs running riot in his bloodstream. He was exhausted but it was a sharp kind of exhilarated exhausted, the kind you get after running the Straight in your best time. He perched there on the edge of the table and glanced at the door, throwing the bolt across. They were out there watching by remote, not daring to come in but it did no harm to make sure they couldn’t.
The Bhenykhn was quiet, watching and unsettled.
NG ignored it. The headache had abated from the constant barrage of pressure that it had been.
He slid off the table and found medical supplies in a drawer. He bound the fingers on each hand, and tied a strapping tight around his knee.
Then he stood, looking around without moving an inch. He fried the circuits in every piece of surveillance equipment within fifty feet of the room, popped open a low wall vent, climbed in and vanished.
The whole facility was in chaos. It was easy to pilfer a jacket from a locker, grab a pass and wend his way up through the levels, adding to the confusion as he went. He found an empty office, locked himself in and hacked into their communications network. As much as the infrastructure might be crumbling and decaying, they’d installed technology and security that matched the best he’d seen. He sent out an encrypted mayday, tagged with his emergency codes, and switched casually to their main systems. He wiped every last trace of evidence that they’d held him here, initiated an official buyout using one of the Man’s favourite and most stable corporations then began rifling randomly through their research, personnel stats, manifests, anything that caught his eye.
There was nothing in there regarding Maeve or any business she could have been conducting from here. It almost felt like he’d imagined her.
He sat back, tired, close to nodding off, and almost missed the reply that came through. It was a curt, one-liner, encrypted, sarcastic, asking 402 if he wanted resurrecting.
He sent one back saying, “Screw that, I want extricating and by the way, while we’re here, we’re taking over this godforsaken dump because there’s a goddamned live alien here and commandeering the facility is going to be less hassle than trying to extract it, especially seeing how the previous owners no longer have a vested interest in the place.”
It was a bit longwinded but he wasn’t feeling very eloquent.
He added an order to send a research team from the Alsatia, signed off and stood. He wanted to leave but there was an unease pulling at the back of his mind that had nothing to do with the Bhenykhn.
He was at the very heart of another of the galaxy’s most powerful corporations… what were the chances?
He retied the make-do support around his knee, pulled it tighter, and headed back down.
Rodan’s quarters were cold but expensive, a far cry from Maeve’s cosy den. NG dropped down from the ventilation system into the centre of a spacious marble-tiled office, a mass of monitors covering one wall, steel and glass desk in the centre, black leather sofas along another wall. He’d trashed the surveillance systems and the door was locked so he had time to play.
There was a terminal on the desk. He flashed it up and checked in. The extraction teams were mobilising, gave him a schedule and asked if he was okay, said the chances of a successful extraction were a hell of a lot higher if he was on the surface and what the hell was he doing so deep? They were still tracking him, the Senson wasn’t the only way the guild kept tabs on its people. He sent back that he was fine, cancel the extraction, he’d decided to stay. Then he shut off the terminal.
He swivelled around in the chair. He’d gone deep into Rodan’s memory before he’d killed the guy. What in all that would tell him where it was? If it was here.
There was a table on the far side of the office, shot glasses and a range of exotic bottles. He wandered over. Schnapps, tequila, vodka. No rum or whisky. He managed to open a bottle and tried a shot of tequila. Expensive. Rodan had playboy tastes.
NG poured another shot of tequila, fumbling and spilling half of it, and dragged out of the depths of somewhere a feeling that there was a safe. A bigger walk-in vault. And a secret cache spot. He found them all, cracked them all easily and found nothing but crap. A lot of cash and flash valuables. Nothing like the key he’d got from Yarrimer.
He sat back at the desk and looked around. There were two doors at the back of the room. One went into a cupboard. The other into private quarters. An enormous bed with silk sheets, mirrors and a smaller desk in the corner. Shafts of light reflected off the metallic surfaces of the key as he opened the door. Rodan hadn’t stored it somewhere safe, never mind make any attempt to hide it. It was sitting there like a trophy. A paperweight.
NG picked it up and stared at it.
There were slight differences in its shape but it was the same material, platinum by the look and feel of it, the same intricate designs and angles. And i
t was heavy, the same kind of dense heavy that didn’t make sense whatever metal it was made of.
He went back to the office, found a bag to stash it in, downed another shot of tequila and headed for the door. He had one more thing to do before he could leave.
Maeve’s body had been removed but they hadn’t bothered to clean up the blood pooled on the carpet. He didn’t touch anything in her room. He had all he needed on the Order from being with her.
He headed down the stairwell, spots of his blood on the floor marking his last foray down here.
The Bhenykhn was walking forward, slowly, to the centre of the cage as he emerged out onto the walkway and leaned casually on the handrail.
It knew exactly what had happened and it was wary of him now.
He was taking a risk coming this close, provoking it again, but he couldn’t resist, tired, pissed off that Rodan had killed Maeve and almost wanting it to fight him.
It planted its feet and looked up defiantly.
‘How did they get their hands on you?’ NG thought at it, not expecting it to understand him, not really even expecting a reaction.
It flashed to a scene of impact, pain, debris.
It had crash-landed somewhere. There was no impression there of when. No clear feeling on how long it had been here. It must have been some time if this was where the virus had originated.
It didn’t like that he was in its head. He felt it panic when it realised what he was doing. It didn’t know how to block him, had never had to before, and he trampled through its mind with no finesse, like hacking through a jungle with a blunt machete, until it roared and tried to attack the way it had when he’d first landed here.
He swatted the blow aside and took what he wanted, felt it try to read him back and threw up barriers easily to stop it.
It roared again and ran full pelt to throw itself against the door of the cage, tearing at the hinges and scratching chunks out of the metal. Guards appeared below, shooting FTH that bounced off its armoured skin and made it bellow even louder.
NG finished up fast, drained enough energy out of it to make it sink to its knees, and stepped back, breathing as heavily as if they’d been fighting hand to hand.
It stared sullenly up at him, orange eyes glinting.
‘You not kill me…’ it thought, clearly enough, malicious and threatening. ‘You need me… We no need you,’ and said again, ‘You… You. Die. First.’
‘Yeah, good luck with that. You didn’t manage it last time.’ He turned and walked away.
He made it back to the surface, just about staggering on his feet by the time he got there, slipping out through a maintenance exit, stealing a jeep and driving through the storm back out towards the peninsula.
He jerked awake twice, having to veer fast to avoid hitting a tree the second time and lost control on the wet surface, oversteering with hands that were beyond numb. It took him five minutes to get it back in gear and moving again. The extraction team intercepted him eventually, flying down low and almost forcing him off the road. He brought the jeep skidding to a halt and sat there, waiting as they landed.
Leigh was with them. She was the one that ran out into the rain and leaned in through the window. “Hey, 402, you found a live alien.”
He could hardly keep his eyes open. “We need a crew from the Alsatia out here.”
“You said. We’re on it already. They’re on their way.” She was looking him up and down. “You okay?”
“Never been better.”
She put her hand on his shoulder, a touch so light he could have imagined it. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. I take it you got what you need?”
He nodded. “The Bennies are here already,” he said. “They’ve got other recon units and forward bases spread out all over the galaxy. We haven’t just run out of time. We never had any.”
Chapter 15
Some of them stood. Others pounded on the desk in front of them. Outraged.
Panicked.
“Why did you not bring this to us sooner?” one demanded.
“We vote now,” another said, standing and looking round for support.
“No,” she said, louder, determined this time to stand against them, to stand for decorum and sense, to give this species a chance.
He sat there as they reacted. In his empire, he was never questioned, never defied. Here, amongst these few, he was simply a messenger, one to be suspected, different, an error in judgement that they wished not to repeat.
“Let us hear the rest,” she said, standing until the others had sat. “We will not make the same mistake again.” She looked to him. “They are here? Now?”
He nodded, feeling the panic spread. He should have gone back. Nikolai felt that he had been abandoned and that judgement in all this was the hardest to bear.
•
They took him to Wraith. He slept the whole way, warning Leigh that she’d best keep an eye on him in case anything weird happened and collapsing fully dressed into one of the emergency medevac pods, asleep before his head hit the pillow.
He dreamed of Devon, sitting in that forest with her, burrowing his head into her shoulder as she died in his arms. The sun was warm on the back of his neck, her arms strong as she hugged him close. He didn’t want it to end.
He opened his eyes to the soft light and reassuring hum of the pod, feeling like he’d slept forever and for no time at all. He tried to sit and felt the tug of wires and tubes. Someone had stripped off his shirt and hooked him up to life support. He sank back down. He had no implant or wristband so he had no inputs from anything, no idea even what day it was, and he almost freaked except he sensed Leigh and Duncan close by, calm and watching. There was another medic in there too, messing with the pod, opening it up as they saw he was awake.
Leigh appeared, leaned close and winked at him. “Well done,” she whispered, “you managed to not die this time. And no nightmares.”
He went to rub his eyes with his left hand, bandaged, and went to lift his right, feeling the weight of the cast. He could feel the warmth of a trauma patch against his ribs.
Reaching further, he could tell they were on the Man’s ship.
“Where are we?” His throat felt like he’d swallowed razors.
“Still in orbit around Poule,” Duncan said.
“How long have I been out?”
“Three days. Your legal and research teams are here. They’ve gone down there with a bunch of ground troops. They have the facility secured.” The big man was impressed at the speed of their operation.
Three days. That wasn’t disastrous.
If they’d got here that fast, it meant the Alsatia was near.
He reached and pulled the IV line out of his arm, sitting and moving to tug off the monitors attached to his chest.
The medic wasn’t impressed but didn’t argue.
NG leaned his head against the wall of the pod. “Where’s LC?”
“Sleeping,” Duncan said.
“Get him up and in the mess. I need him to do something for me.”
The kid sat across from him, sprawled across a sofa with a board resting on his knees. He looked up, ready, apprehensive, sticking at the back of his mind the newly acquired fact that NG was Andreyev, desperately wanting to talk to him about it and knowing this wasn’t the time. Duncan was at the other end of the mess, watching.
NG closed his eyes, no idea if this was going to work. He started to process the intel, working through one section, slowly and carefully. He opened one eye and glanced across. LC was working steadily.
“Go on,” the kid muttered without looking up, “I’m good. I’m getting it. Speed up or this is going to take forever.”
Going faster, he was drawn into it, lost in the swirl of data. He went through it raw and he drew out what patterns he could see straight off, going through the information Sebastian had given him first then the mix of intel he’d taken from the Bhenykhn down there, its own intelligence it had brought with it and also the ma
ss of intel it had taken from UM. It was unsettling, off key, to see all that from the alien point of view, how it had analysed their weaknesses, seeing them as inferior, as potential food and slaves, how it had learned to understand their language and systems. He drew back from that and threw the rest, including what he’d taken, unprocessed, across to LC, looking up as he finished.
The kid had stopped using the board and was just absorbing it all, eyes closed, head nestled against the seat. He realised it had stopped and didn’t move. “Okay, give me a minute,” he said and fell asleep.
NG stood and stretched, aching, sore and needing more sleep himself. He reached across and took the board out of LC’s lap where it had fallen, flicked through a few of the screens, bizarre to see the intel he’d had stuck in his head laid out there in guild format, and threw it onto the seat.
Duncan had been listening in to the flow of intel at first but had shut them out when it got too much. “No wonder you were having nightmares,” he said. “Still no sign of Sebastian?”
NG shook his head.
“And the Bennies have other recon units out there?”
He nodded. It was logical that the ship at Erica wouldn’t have been the only one.
“You know where?” Duncan asked. “That’s what you’ve just given to LC?”
That was the real question. “Kind of,” he said. “It’s all relative to their frame of reference. We need to figure out how that correlates with ours before we can figure out exactly where they are.”
“Ah,” Duncan said and added, “You know Evelyn’s with the legal team?” as if that was the most immediate thing NG needed to know. “She wants to know which operative we had in there.”
“Tell her it was 402. And tell her the alien is listening in to everything. They need to be careful.”
“Elliott was tapped into their security feeds. We saw their surveillance footage of you.”
“All of it?”
Duncan nodded.
“I erased it,” NG said, feeling sick again, stomach knotting. “She won’t see it unless Elliott is an ass and sends it to her.”