by C. G. Hatton
He slowed as the number of bodies up ahead increased, search teams coordinating and defensive units of hired militia throwing up a solid defence. They didn’t really have a chance against a combined force of the guild’s best Security and the Man’s elite guard. Problem was, he was the wrong side of it.
He backed up.
The Senson engaged. Duncan. “NG, we can’t get to you. You need to move.”
He bit back a sarcastic comment and moved, trying to figure out a route from the intel he’d taken from Zang about the place. He dropped down a floor and tried to work around, veering dangerously close to the main hall where Ballack and Zang were marshalling their forces.
“How are you doing, NG?”
There was an explosion somewhere above, small, grenades by the feel of it.
“I’m…” He felt a shift in the bodies around him, as if he’d become the centre of attention. He broke back into a run, cursing.
Shots peppered the wall next to him. He flinched back and sprinted, running across a staircase and heading up, wide open, not going anywhere near fast enough. He reached the top and a shot winged his arm, sending the key tumbling out of his grasp. Another punched into his stomach. He dropped, bleeding, scrambling forward on his knees after the polished chunk of platinum, nothing left to deflect a fly never mind a bullet, starting to lose his grip on who was where, vision getting narrow and foggy. He grabbed it, almost fumbled it out of numb fingers, and ran.
“Other way, NG.” That was someone else.
He trusted whoever it was, changed direction and ran, one foot in front of the other, almost blind.
“NG, wait.”
He stopped, leaned against the wall, doubled over.
“Go.”
He went.
Shouts behind and up ahead.
“NG, hit the floor. Now.”
He dropped, rolled and covered his head as shots ricocheted off the wall. Boots thundered past, rifles firing, the sound echoing loud in his ears.
A hand gripped his shoulder and he overheard Duncan send, “Control, be advised, we have 402.” That meant the Alsatia had people here. The big man switched, ‘You okay, bud?’
‘I’m fine. Go get Zang and Ballack.’
Duncan nodded and moved off. They left him sitting there, five of the Man’s elite in a circle at a discrete distance. He pulled energy from somewhere and pulled the bullet out of his gut, catching it in a blood-drenched hand and dropping it to the floor. He pressed his hand to the wound, clutched the key with the other, faded out and didn’t even listen in to the battle while he waited for the extraction team.
It seemed to take ages before he sensed Quinn running up with Leigh and a couple of other medics, all in full combat gear.
He leaned his head back against the wall.
Leigh kneeled next to him as the other medics started to fuss with trauma patches and Quinn made sure there was no immediate danger.
“Rough day?” she whispered, blunt as always but that look in her eye that made him want to pull her close. She’d seen the package of data Elliott had pulled, knew exactly what they’d done to him. She was surprised that he was still bleeding.
Quinn walked up and crouched on the other side. “NG, I know you don’t want to hear this but right now, you are the only one we have who can hear the Bhenykhn. You can’t risk yourself like this anymore. We’re keeping LC and Hil under wraps. We need to know you’re safe too.”
“We need to get Ballack.”
“Already done,” Quinn said. “We have him. He’s claiming diplomatic immunity.”
‘Yeah right,’ Leigh was thinking, ‘after what he did to you.’
“What about Zang?”
Quinn shrugged. “We don’t know. Elliott lost track of him while he was helping you out.”
He didn’t believe that for a second but he didn’t comment. He hesitated to ask his next question. “Where’s Evelyn?”
“Still on Poule as far as we know. Elliott intercepted all the transmissions from here so Ballack didn’t get his message out…”
There was a but. He had to nudge, heart sinking. It felt like he’d reached the end of the line. “The warrant.”
“It’s been lodged everywhere,” Quinn said with a grimace. “Come on, NG, let’s go. We have this place secure.”
So that meant the headquarters of both UM and Zang had been all but wiped out and taken over by the guild. The ripples from this were going to be horrendous.
He went to get up but stopped himself. “Did you get all their research?” he said. “They had the same samples here that were sent to the Earth lab. And they had something remote that jammed our Sensons. That has to be from the Bhenykhn.”
“Elliott has it all,” Quinn said. “I’ve set LC and Hil onto hacking into their systems so we get it direct. Come on, we need to go.” The big man nodded to the medics and stood, moving away to check around.
NG sat back. Tired.
Leigh was looking at him, as if it was her reading his mind, seeing into his soul herself. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” She grinned, raising her eyebrows at him, aware that she was saying that again. “Quinn’s really good with LC and Hil.”
That was a turn up. “You should have met Mendhel,” he muttered.
“Who was your handler?” she asked, knowing she was overstepping the mark but curious as to who could ever have managed to keep him in line.
“Someone who deserved better than I ever gave back to her.” He sat back and closed his eyes. He was tired. His whole life had been geared to being ready for this enemy and now they were here, he was tired and it felt like he’d lost whatever tenuous grip he’d ever had on it all.
“Don’t get morose,” she said. “Come on, we have aliens to fight. Everyone wants to know how you want this setting up.”
This being the defence of the whole human populated galaxy, pulling together two sides that were at war, at least two guilds that hated him and wanted him dead, and the Order, god knows where they stood now.
He stretched out his leg and rubbed the knee with the edge of his wrist.
“I’m tired,” he admitted.
She refrained from pointing out that he’d just been tortured, repeatedly, and said gently, “It has to be you, NG. You’re the only one that knows them.”
Chapter 20
“And therein lies our problem,” she said softly and for a moment it could have been only the two of them, the others gone, the judgement postponed. “The fate of an entire race, a galaxy, should never rest on the shoulders of one, even one so talented, especially one so fragile.” She was thinking, how did we allow this to happen? Dismayed. Regretting that she hadn’t stepped in earlier.
And in that moment, she looked at him and she realised that they had been pinning all their hopes on him alone in their own galaxy.
“Nikolai is far from fragile,” he said, brusque, more defensive than necessary. “He is far stronger than any of us believed possible. He has the courage to face his fears… and he must face his fears lest they overpower and destroy him completely. Trust me. The error I made was in not pushing him further sooner.”
•
Walking into the briefing room gave him an eerie feeling from long ago, of having to face the section chiefs when he’d screwed up as a field-op, the bad screw-ups when it wasn’t just the chief of Ops but the whole lot of them, staring, judging, expecting a lot and somewhat disappointed.
He’d slept for about fifteen hours, showered and dressed. He’d restrapped his fingers and the knee, Leigh chiding him for not healing himself, then she’d walked down here with him. She left him at the door.
Kimi Itomara was sitting between Pen Halligan and Matt Jameson, all of them on the far side of the table. The Order, Winter and Earth waiting to hear what the Thieves’ Guild had to say. They had everything laid out in front of them including reports on what had happened with UM at Poule and at Zang’s fortress on Winter.
They stood as he walked in. That was s
omething. He could feel that Jameson wasn’t a hundred percent but clearly the colonel wanted to be there.
Pen spoke first, sitting as NG sat. “How the hell do we defend against this?”
There was a bottle of whisky on the table, a full glass set out for him already, and it was tempting to let them talk and hit the alcohol but they were looking to him for some kind of plan. “They’re going to attack Earth and Winter, simultaneously. You’ve seen the numbers. I don’t know what we do.”
Itomara was quiet, in mind and presence. The man was almost meditating.
Jameson was fighting a debilitating headache but he spoke up. “Come on, we need to inform our military intelligence. Coordinate some kind of defence. How long do you reckon we have? Months? Weeks?”
They were all wanting to know why he hadn’t acted sooner, sent up a balloon, something, some galaxy wide alert.
He dampened down his instinctive response. He didn’t want to justify his actions and the last thing he wanted to do was sit here and explain how he even knew about the aliens’ plans, how it had taken him this long to access the intel.
He looked from face to face. “You want to know how we can beat them? We stop them getting here.” He reached for the glass. “Because once they’re here, we’re done.”
They were surprised he was being defeatist, that wasn’t what they’d been expecting. All three of them had thought he would come in here full of fighting talk, inspire them to pull together against this common foe. They thought he’d be up for a fight, even though they knew what he’d just been through.
He picked up the glass, hand shaking, very aware that they were watching. He took a drink of whisky that warmed his throat.
There were also copies of the warrants out on him and LC, spread out there on the table.
“We’re working out where the Bhenykhn have other advance recon units,” he said. “The problem I have is that I can’t figure out how to tell anyone about this. You know the position I’m in. I can’t take this out to anyone. And the Thieves’ Guild doesn’t have many friends right now. We don’t exist. People who know us don’t trust us and we don’t trust them. No one is going to believe that we aren’t pulling a scam.”
It chimed with all three of them because, still, even now, they were sitting there wondering if any of it was true. He hadn’t shown them anything but pictures and numbers.
“How can I convince anyone else when I can’t convince you?”
Pen nodded, thinking he wanted to see a goddamned alien for himself.
“I’m taking LC and Duncan to Poule,” NG said. “Get them face to face with that alien. See what they can do. See if we can develop it any further. Come with us.”
If Pen needed to see it to believe it was real then he was welcome. They were all welcome to troop down there and gawp at the massive Bhenykhn in its cage.
Whatever it took.
“We’ve come some way on reverse engineering their technology but that needs to be upped,” he said. “We need to be able to counter everything they throw at us. We should be able to progress it more now we have UM and Zang’s research.” He took another sip, wanting to neck it but knowing how bad that would look and wanting more to look like he was in control here. “Matt, if you can figure out a way to inform the Earth military without them freaking out and descending on us, let me know. Pen, same for Winter. But I won’t compromise what we have.”
“Which is you?” Pen said.
“Us versus them, we lose,” NG said. “We need to use everything we have. Anything that might give us an advantage.”
“Including the Thieves’ Guild?” Itomara said. He wanted access to this ship, to the council.
“Go to the Alsatia. Evelyn will be our liaison,” NG said and drained the whisky. What the hell. “She’ll give you whatever you need and I trust you will give her whatever she asks.” He stood up. “I took out an advance unit. That’s all. I can lead you to another but I can’t take on their full force.”
The headache kicked back in as soon as they dropped out of jump in Poule’s outer system. It was oppressive, draining, and added to the apprehension eating at him at the thought of having to face Evelyn, it was making him want to crawl away.
He dressed in combat gear, unstrapping the fingers and messing about with pressure tape, wrapping each finger separately and trying to hold a gun.
Leigh stood in the doorway watching, not impressed and not hiding it. “I thought you said you don’t want to go hand to hand with them again.”
“I don’t.” But he’d lived with a gun at hand since he was a kid, it was second nature and he didn’t want to feel as defenceless as he’d been on Winter.
“I hate to say this,” she said, “but could you not try the virus? It would heal all this for you.” She was thinking that as much as what he did was incredible, he had to be awake. She’d seen the data Zang and his cronies had gathered. LC and Duncan could be flat out unconscious and the virus healed for them.
He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t admit that he couldn’t risk the virus because he didn’t know what it would do.
She read the look on his face and said, resigned, “You know what I’m thinking. I don’t need to say it.”
She could read body language better than he could read minds. She leaned in. “It’s Evelyn you need to go talk to.”
“I know.”
She smiled. “Make sure you do.”
It wasn’t that easy. Evie had gone by the time they got there, gone back to the Alsatia. It was a relief that he didn’t have to face her and he hated himself for thinking it. She’d had no way of finding out about the warrant out here but it was pretty much guaranteed that the Alsatia would know. So now she would. He’d grabbed Quinn, said awkwardly that he didn’t want Evelyn to find out without someone there that he trusted, and the big man had nodded, suggested that Hilyer could do with a trip to the Alsatia again, to test some of the stuff they’d been working on, and they’d bugged out.
It wasn’t ideal but NG kicked it out of his mind and concentrated on here and now.
They went straight to the cage, out onto the balcony, traipsing through Maeve’s chambers, a contingent of elite guard armed with both FTH and live rounds splitting between the upper and lower levels.
The Bhenykhn was waiting, watching.
Pen and Jameson swore as they saw it in the flesh for the first time. It was weird to pick up the disbelief and revulsion. The rest of them had been living with the nightmares so long, they were almost numb to it.
Itomara just stared, but he hadn’t seen its like before, that was easy enough to read.
NG leaned against the handrail casually. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had in mind.
He could feel that Leigh was apprehensive. She’d dealt with the injuries the Bhenykhn could inflict and she didn’t want to see any of them hurt again, too seasoned a combat medic to know that was reasonable and trying to be colder than was natural for her. It was hard when the stench and the chill damp in the air was flashing them all back there.
The others were waiting for him to give them some idea of what to do. He half wished the Chief or Quinn, Arturo, or god forbid even Carmen if he was going to get nostalgic, could be here to tell him, just lay down a brief and give him the orders like it was a tab.
LC glanced at him, recognising the name of the legendary handler, picking it out of his thoughts.
It was hard not to flash back to those simpler times. He’d worked with Carmen over a hundred years ago. They’d topped the standings together for a decade and he’d never appreciated back then just how much she’d done for him.
“You’re really Andreyev?” LC sent through the Senson.
“Yep.”
“How did you crack that tab on Temerity?” It was what the kid had been itching to ask.
It was legendary. Toughest tab ever completed. It had brought in a fortune, in cash and kudos. He’d walked in, taken it and walked out.
He squinted across. “LC, I
’ve always been able to hear what people think and see where they are. Always. Imagine being able to do what you can now back when you were running tabs.”
It felt like he’d been caught cheating.
“That’s why you reset the standings,” LC sent.
It didn’t matter.
None of it mattered anymore.
NG looked down at the Bhenykhn. He could feel its mind, feel it holding back, waiting to see what they were going to do. It was taking a lot to guard against it, just this one Bhenykhn, and he could remember only too well the intensity of the pain from the hive, when there had been hundreds of them. When he’d had Sebastian to protect him. What the hell was that going to be like if there were thousands?
He took hold of its mind, fast, vicious, draining its energy, channelling the memory of that pain into a determination to beat it now.
It was fighting him.
He drove it to its knees, much easier than last time.
It switched its attention so fast, he didn’t see it in time to stop it.
LC cried out and crumpled to the floor.
Dammit. NG punched back, hit it hard and sent it flying, sprawling, out cold before anyone else could react.
He turned. Leigh was already at LC’s side, the kid conscious, curled up and swearing. She was fretting about his heart rate and wondering what the hell they were doing.
NG crouched down. “Were you trying anything?”
LC muttered, “No,” palm pressed up against his forehead.
NG rested his hand on the back of the kid’s neck, easy enough to reduce the pain and ease the pressure. “You fought off Sebastian. You should be able to block it.”
“I could hear Sebastian,” LC said, blinking bloodshot eyes and accepting the hand to get up. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“You need to be able to.” NG looked around for Duncan. “You too.” He turned back to the cage, sensing the Bhenykhn stirring, feeling its mind focus, the hate and anger tempered only by a greater need to learn and understand this foe it found itself facing. “Let’s see if we can really piss it off.”