by C. G. Hatton
“I miss Devon,” he said.
She took his hand then and squeezed, turning away before she cried.
He didn’t move as she closed the door.
‘You need to see Ballack,’ Sebastian said. ‘And you need to talk to Quinn – there’s a problem with the last key fragment.’
Walking out into Legal, he almost bottled it. He’d been feeling beyond belligerent when he’d arranged this, masochistic in its purest form to think he could take this on in Devon’s old domain of marble tables and tall glass columns. Even the scent of fresh greenery in the air reminded him of her so much it almost sent him bolting for the exit.
He needed to face it. He knew that. As much as he didn’t want to. He hadn’t been in here since he’d lost her.
Ballack was sitting there already, drink in hand, way more smug than he should have been.
They had guns trained on the man, even more guards than the last time he’d sat here with Devon, entertaining a client, after the Assassins had managed to tamper with the drones in the Maze and almost kill him. The time they’d been told the Merchants were talking of ‘blowing the Thieves’ Guild out of the water’.
He sat down.
Ballack wasn’t fazed by any of this, the big man simply calculating how he was going to benefit from it. He was taking it as a personal achievement that he was here on board the Alsatia. He raised his glass as NG sat. “I must say, I like the way you entertain your prisoners, NG. Most stylish.”
“I need the Merchants’ Guild,” NG said, straight to the point. “You can either work with us, from here, or we can kill you and use your position anyway to do exactly what we need. Your choice.”
That got raised eyebrows. Ballack lowered the glass without taking a drink. “To do what?”
“Take Earth and Winter to war. Catastrophically and unequivocally to the brink of head-on outright war.”
Ballack put down the glass, shaking his head. “Whatever your insane power-crazed plans are, NG, I won’t work for you.”
NG stood up. “That’s fine.” He walked away, glanced up and nodded.
“Wait.”
He turned back. The next word would be, ‘why?’, then it wouldn’t matter what he said, Ballack would be theirs and Media would have a blast exploiting him.
He got word that Quinn was waiting for him as he pressed the button for twelve. Leigh slipped into the lift after him.
“You need to get some rest,” she said. “You can’t keep going like this, NG.”
She looked tired herself. He had no idea what had happened to her down there after he’d sent her to hide. Since they’d been rescued, he’d been swept up in the maelstrom of activity on board the Alsatia and they hadn’t had a chance to talk.
“I’m fine,” she said, reading his expression. “If you’re wondering, they didn’t capture me.” She pulled a face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you in time to help. I could hear them shouting. When they got you, they…”
She trailed off. He couldn’t help but overhear that she thought they’d all been killed. He didn’t look any deeper. He didn’t want to know what had happened. They’d got out. That’s all that mattered.
“How’s it going with the virus?” he said.
She leaned back against the wall of the elevator and folded her arms. “Do you really want to know?”
He shrugged.
“We have over a hundred wounded criticals that are taking all our attention right now.”
He knew that. Evelyn had told him.
“Medical is overrun, Science is struggling…” she said. “You don’t need to hear all this. Go talk to Quinn. And get some rest… I still have you on live feed, NG. Your stats are shit.”
She stayed in the lift as it stopped and he stepped out, calling, “Get some sleep,” after him.
Yeah, sometime.
Quinn was waiting in his office, sitting at the table, two key fragments in its centre, shining with a faint golden glow from the low lights in there.
NG grabbed a bottle of whisky, two glasses and sat.
“Marathon and Stirling,” Quinn said. “Don’t ask what it took to get these.”
More losses they couldn’t afford.
“How’s the Chief?” he asked.
“Alive but unconscious. They’re still looking at the genetics. There must be a reason why it works on some people and not others. Jameson is their poster boy right now. But there’s nothing obvious. They’re crosschecking everything.”
NG poured two shots of the liquor and handed one across. “What’s the problem with Kochitek?”
“It’s gone.”
“I know, it got taken over by Zang, what, fifty, sixty years ago?”
“No,” Quinn said. “Not the corporation. The key fragment. It’s missing.”
Chapter 27
“I must ask, did Nikolai truly not know what he was chasing when he was gathering the keys?”
She was thinking that if he’d been there, he could have warned them.
He shook his head. “Each race, each nation, in all of time has always had its secrets, its guilt to carry and hide. The humans are no different, for all their fleeting nature. If anything, that they die so young meant that the secrets of their ancestors became lost, so determined were they to bury their misjudgements.”
The others were just watching, eyes downcast.
Only she was bold enough to ask. “And was it fortune or calamity that you created a guild designed to bring together and nurture the very means, the only means, by which these keys could ever hope to see the light of day again?”
•
NG paused with the glass at his lips. “Ah,” he said and downed the whisky in one. “Are we any closer to knowing what these keys are really for?” He poured another shot, waiting with the bottle hovering as Quinn took a drink and offered his glass for a top up.
The big handler shook his head. “We’ve got nothing. Not even rumour, conjecture, folklore. Elliott won’t say anything other than it’s a ship-based weapon system that will give us a chance against the Bhenykhn’s shields. If it is a weapon, they must have obliterated every mention of it when they decided to shut it down.”
“How do you know Kochitek’s key is missing?”
“Because Elliott knows who stole it. You want that key? It’s going to take you, breaking into Io, resurrecting the guy and sucking the memory of where he hid it from his frozen brain.”
Sebastian laughed. NG almost laughed but Quinn never joked.
‘Io? My god, I never thought we’d be going back there.’
“How much are you relying on having this weapon?” Quinn said.
“I’m not. Elliott thinks we need it.” NG sat up, Leigh’s suspicions popping into his head as if she was whispering to him. “Where is the Duck?”
“Elliott bugged out, right after we extricated you from the Bhenykhn. Said he’d meet us at Io. Why? What’s wrong?”
“What are the chances of that scout turning up where it did, when it did? In all the data we have of their movements and whereabouts, what are the odds?”
Quinn shook his head slowly. “I’ll get Badger onto it. You think they could have been sent there?”
NG scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Quinn, to be honest, I’m losing track of what I think about anything.”
‘You don’t have time to be paranoid, Nikolai. The Bhenykhn know about us, about you and I, and if you’re right and that captive on Poule was reading your mind, they know about the guild and the Alsatia. Get that weapon, Nikolai, and get it fast, because when we meet them again, they will be ready for us.’
‘I know.’
“If we don’t trust Elliott,” Quinn said, “we just watch ourselves when we hand over the keys… if we can figure out a way to find this last one.”
“We will. Then we don’t just hand them over to Elliott. I’ll go with him. I’ll take them myself.”
Quinn nodded.
NG picked up the whisky. “So? How
the hell are we going to get into Io?”
“There is no way in,” the big handler said.
NG squinted at him over the bottle. “We’ve done it before.”
A slight smile twitched at the corner of Quinn’s mouth as he put it together. “You’ve done it before,” he said, nodding.
“I don’t know if I could do it the same now. And we’re running out of time.”
“You could do it with LC and Hil as back up,” Quinn said. “Think about it – Andreyev, Anderton and Hilyer on the same tab? Jesus.”
“Is LC fit enough?”
“He will be. He still has the brace on his leg but yes. And Hil is twitching to get out. We’ve just about got him to the point where he can stand being within the vicinity of even the powerful AIs. He should be fine.” Quinn was thinking that he wished Mendhel could be there to see it.
NG topped up the glasses, handed one back and held his up, inviting a toast. “I miss him.”
They clinked, drank then Quinn held his up again. “Here’s to the Thieves’ Guild,” he said.
It almost felt like old times. “No one messes with the Thieves’ Guild,” NG said and drained the glass.
The last time he’d walked into the prison on Io Optima, he hadn’t been top of the galaxy’s most wanted list and he hadn’t had his hands in cuffs.
“Prisoner transfer,” Duncan said at the desk, gruff, pushing him forward.
It had already been logged and cleared, high level, Jameson had ensured that, so they got a cursory glance and a wave through to processing. Duncan nudged him in the back with his shotgun and they walked freely and openly into the most secure facility this side of the Between.
Getting out might be different.
They ran his biometrics, every pointer hitting the ID Elliott and Jameson had cooked up, the one that was reprogrammed into the tag stapled in the top of his ear, and cleared him for storage, high security isolation, every guard they encountered eyeing him with suspicious regard, only the worst ever going straight into seclusion.
Duncan nudged him along, swapping pleasantries with the guards, picking enough out of their minds to make it appear seamless, like he’d worked there for years.
They took a lift that dropped down fast into the bowels of the facility and walked out into a dark corridor, directions lit by subtle blue markers. It was oppressive. Half the prisoners in there were drugged, the other half stewing in their own insanity.
Another guard was walking towards them, prodding his own prisoner into moving, the lad limping heavily and holding his arm against his ribs like he’d just had a beating.
‘Hey buddy, taken one for the team?’ Duncan thought as they approached.
The kid looked up with a grin, a black bruise blossoming under his eye. He stumbled as he passed them, bumped into NG and palmed across the pass he’d stolen.
‘The code is 7714362, modifier Kay Zee.’
‘Nice one,’ NG thought back, slipping the pass up his sleeve. ‘See you on the outside.’
They walked past as the guard hauled LC to his feet and shoved the kid ahead of him.
It was straight forward after that to make their way down into the narrow lines of cells, Duncan making a point of being rough randomly enough to satisfy any observers. NG walked into the tiny cell without fighting him, waited patiently as he hooked the cuffs up to a chain in the wall and backed out.
Duncan closed the cell door and banged on it with a parting, “Enjoy.”
It wasn’t the worst place he’d been stuck in of late. There was a bunk, fresh water and reading material. He stretched out on his back on the hard bunk and jiggled the chains to get comfy.
Sebastian laughed. ‘Make the most of it. This is probably the last chance you’ll have to relax before we take on the Bhenykhn again.’
It was about six hours to the next shift change. He pulled the blanket up over his head and closed his eyes.
He sat up as the cell door banged open.
“We on?” he sent, tight wire to the Duck.
“All secure,” Elliott replied. “You have ninety seconds.”
He looked up. The camera tucked into the corner of the ceiling was blinking as usual but if Elliott said they were secure, they were secure.
The guard that walked in closed the door behind him and turned with a grin.
NG sat up, busted out of the cuffs with a twist of his wrist and started to shrug out of the prison overalls.
Hilyer was stripping off his uniform. “I thought you said this place was tough to get into?” he sent privately, cocky.
NG took the shirt. “Yeah, well it’s not what it used to be.”
They were done with ten seconds to spare, Hil tucked up in the bunk and NG heading out in uniform with the security pass in his pocket.
Cold storage was two levels up. He took the stairs, taking his time, and walking through three security cordons using the pass with no problem.
“Okay,” he sent to the others, “give me five minutes.”
They were all watching different sections of the orbital’s security system and all gave him the go ahead.
He ran through the maze of storage containers, floor to ceiling, side by side pods, each aisle wide enough to extract a pod for maintenance, extraction, whatever they needed. He found the one Elliott had targeted, double checked the ID and punched the button.
It slid out, glass cover frosted, a face just visible, the guy lying there serenely oblivious to the fact that he held the last key.
To what?
NG paused with his hand over the control panel, the back of his neck prickling like it had in Yarrimer’s vault. He had no evidence to back up anything that Elliott had ever said to them.
‘Just do it and get out of here,’ Sebastian murmured. ‘We’re running out of time.’
He hit the defrost.
The cover slid back before it had totally finished, cold air puffing outwards.
It was an old guy and it felt intrusive to slide his hand in there and touch that cold wrinkled skin on the man’s neck.
He made the connection, felt the mind in there jolt as it came alive, then he did it fast, taking what he needed and standing back, punching the reset button with a hand that was trembling.
‘That’s a turn up. Be careful what you do with this, Nikolai.’
‘I don’t think we should be doing anything with these damned keys. I just want a live alien so we can get the virus right.’
“NG, what’s wrong?” LC sent. “Are we bugging out or what?”
“Yep, go.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This guy… he didn’t just steal the key from Kochitek. He destroyed it.”
Elliott was waiting in the Duck’s cargo hold, sitting on a crate. NG walked on board as the airlock cycled and spread his hands to show they were empty, no key.
“That’s not necessarily a problem,” the tech guy said, standing, a sly look creeping across his thin face. “Did you get the blueprint of it?”
From the old guy’s mind.
NG nodded.
Elliott smiled. “Now that is impressive.” He turned away. “Come with me.”
“I need something,” NG said.
“What?”
“The device you gave us to disrupt the AI on the Expedience. Do you have more?”
Elliott turned, still smiling. “And why would you need more of those, Nikolai?”
They had Spectre waiting for them out at an RV point, the last of the Alsatia’s three Apparition class, covert ops ships. The pilot had joked with him when he’d requisitioned her, saying maybe this would be third time lucky. He made it back, gave the order to go to the coordinates Elliott had given him and dropped into a seat.
“Why didn’t Elliott just tell us?” LC said.
“Claims he didn’t know.”
“Why did the old guy destroy it?”
NG shrugged. He had a bad feeling about it but he had a bad feeling about everything all the time. It was becoming a
constant.
Leigh was watching him, frowning, concerned.
LC didn’t let it go. “What did Elliott do?”
The kid didn’t trust the guy and that unease was contagious.
NG rubbed a hand across his eyes. “LC, just leave it. We check this out and we go. If there’s a weapon, it will give us an advantage. If there isn’t, we’ll figure out how we beat them with what we’ve got. If Elliott has been stringing us along with a song and dance this whole time, we’ll find out why soon enough. I just want to be done and get back.”
“But what did he do?”
“LC, the old guy didn’t just destroy the key, he made it. He had the detailed blueprints in his head. Elliott took the data I gave him and he was happy. Presumably he has a way to make a key from it. I don’t know. I’m close to not caring. He must have if he wants us there with the other two keys.”
Duncan came up behind the kid and planted a hand on his shoulder, thinking loud and clear, ‘Let it go. Give NG a break. We don’t have any choice here.’
It was clear that LC didn’t want to let it go but he sat back.
“What are the chances this is a trap?” Duncan said, voicing out loud what they were all thinking.
“I don’t know,” NG admitted. “Elliott’s been nothing but convincing but I can’t read his mind. I can’t even read his body language.”
“You should let me go,” Hil said.
Christ, it was too easy to forget that Hilyer was even there.
NG looked at Duncan and they both looked at Hil.
“Yes, we should.”
They had to make two jumps and finally dropped out into a system on the furthest reaches of the Between, unpopulated, not even charted.
He half expected a headache to kick off.
It didn’t.
‘Don’t get paranoid, Nikolai. It doesn’t suit you. Where’s your mischievous passion for adventure? That unbridled optimism? I’m not sure I’m liking this change in outlook. You survive the Assassins, you survive Erica… my god, Nikolai, look at the crap you’ve put us through in the last few weeks, and now you get paranoid?’