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

by C. G. Hatton

  It was clear. I swung round and crawled into the main conduit. From there, it didn’t take much to work my way through into the main outer ring where I could see down into the top floor.

  I sat watching for a while. There weren’t any sensors or motion detectors in there because the AI wasn’t programmed to consider that anyone could be in those spaces.

  To be fair, it wasn’t that stupid. On the AI gradient, it was about as smart as a ten year old. Its primary functions were pretty routine – heating, lighting, security, monitoring the sensors and auto sentries across the garrison and the dozen or so checkpoints and outposts dotted across the city. Watching every inch of the garrison’s main complex wasn’t that important to it because no one should have been able to get in. I didn’t know anyone else who could get in there. None of the other kids had ever been able to follow me. It wasn’t that there was a knack to it. It was just that I could do it and no one else could. It was starting to get tight in a few places, and there was one spot where I had to almost dislocate my shoulder to get through, but I reckoned I had some months yet before I was too big.

  I sat there, curled up in that tiny space, and watched the movement down below me through an air vent, timed the comings and goings to check they hadn’t changed the patrol patterns, and waited patiently until someone stopped to key an elaborate string of characters into a terminal. That’s all I needed.

  I waited until it was clear, then dropped down into the room, right into the heart of enemy territory.

  It was cool inside. Someone had left a pass on the table. That went into my pocket along with a snack bar I pilfered from a drawer. They had plenty. They wouldn’t miss one. I pulled the terminal access point off the desk and sat on the floor with it, out of sight in case anyone wandered past. It took seconds to key in the code I’d just seen, access the main system and instigate a power surge to the main grid. That was simple, just a mass of redirected utility resources with a few neat command strokes. The buildings and crumbling infrastructure of the garrison were built badly enough that it didn’t take much to tip it over in spots and I did this often enough with just enough modifications each time that they thought it was a regular glitch. They moaned about it but they didn’t suspect anything was awry, putting it down to gremlins.

  The lights flickered, failed, and the emergency back up kicked in. It was that easy. I had another trick I did that was even more cool, that’s why I needed the pass, but I’ll tell you about that later. That night, I didn’t need to go too far in, I just needed to grab something valuable enough to sell. I couldn’t resist looking deeper into their system though as I saw something that caught my attention. I started to pull up schedules and rosters, and like a fool, I took too long, heard footsteps outside, way too close, and had to hustle to get out, abandoning the terminal and scrambling back up through the vent with seconds to spare as the door opened. I pulled my foot clear as someone walked in, held my breath and eased the ceiling panel back into place.

  I didn’t have long after that but I knew exactly what I was after. I crawled through, found the workshop I was looking for and dropped down into that strange dim cast of red light.

  The drones were all stacked on shelves, a couple spread out on workbenches in bits. I didn’t know for sure that none of them were activated, hunter killer drones just sitting there watching, waiting and looking for an enemy to attack. I stood still, staring at them. Nothing moved. There were no blinking lights, no signs they were alive, but that didn’t mean a thing, they were designed to be stealthy, invisible, fast as hell. I reached for the workbench, fingers hovering over the array of components lying there, half expecting to get shot at, but still nothing moved.

  I wanted to stay longer but there was a noise outside, voices right outside the door. I grabbed a module that was tiny but heavy like it should have been ten times the size it was, and scrambled under the table.

  The door opened and I watched combat boots approach, listening as they bitched about the power failing, the weather, the damned dust that was screwing with the sensors they’d spent so long calibrating. The Imperial troops hated Kheris.

  They started clattering about with stuff, talking about where they wanted to be posted next, not Abisko, that was as bad as Kheris, they reckoned, and trying to figure out how to get the damned drone back together when there weren’t even enough memory mods there. I was starting to think I could crawl out to the door if I was quiet enough when one of them dropped a screwdriver. It clanged to the floor right next to me as the lights flickered back onto full power.

  I made myself as small as possible, squeezing backwards without a sound, as a hand reached down, with more swearing, to grab the screwdriver.

  Chapter 2

  My heart could not have beat any faster. I backed away to the other side of the bench, hearing the door open again and more footsteps approach. I moved without thinking, crawled out and half ran, half scrambled for the door, hidden from sight by the workbench and managing to slip through the gap as it closed.

  Out in the hallway I could hear voices, distant but getting closer. I ran in the opposite direction, turned a corner and saw a bunch of soldiers up ahead, talking, not looking my way. I ducked back, trapped out in the open. We’d all heard the stories about what they did to prisoners, and that was resistance fighters they caught out in the streets. I’d never heard of anyone being caught inside the base before and I didn’t want to be the first to find out what would happen. I looked around fast, running the layout through my head. There were no ventilation panels in the ceiling, no maintenance access in this section of corridor. The voices were getting louder. There was a janitor’s cupboard somewhere near. I ran for it, pushed my way inside and clambered into the garbage chute.

  It was a vertical drop down, fifty feet at least. I fell, banged my head, curled up tight and bounced. Something jagged in there tore another chunk out of my arm as I tumbled and I clutched the memory module in my pocket, no way was I going to lose my prize.

  I hit an intersection and managed to brace myself, legs and arms jammed wide against the walls. There was a hatch just above my head. I edged up to it and fell out into another cupboard. At least two levels down into the base and not where I wanted to be. It was time to split.

  It was almost midnight when I got out. There were still a few hours to make it back before curfew ended and the streets started to fill. I climbed out of the vent and made my way back to the fortified wall. I lay there for a moment, flattened against the skyline. Rockets were still screaming overhead, the defence grid pounding out interception after interception. It was only ever the Wintran-made rockets the resistance smuggled in that were that accurate. Most of the time, it was the homemade, cobbled together weapons they used. Those were the ones that did the damage to the rest of the city.

  I crawled to the edge and looked over. Outside the garrison wall was a killing ground surrounded by a rubble barrier. The Imperial troops didn’t hang out in that open rough area, they stayed inside their walls. They’d bulldozed this part of the city eight years ago when they’d arrived in force to retake the colony and suppress the rebellion, clearing the area for their base, and shoving the remains of our buildings unceremoniously into a twenty foot high barrier that protected them. It encircled the entire complex. The open killing ground was lit up by the sweeping searchlights of the towers all along the wall. There was a trick to getting through it but you had to know the pattern. They changed it and it had a randomiser inbuilt that gave it an extra edge. I’d never had a problem.

  I climbed down, careful not to get snagged on the line of barbs and spikes all along that edge. I jumped down, watched the pattern and ran. The rubble barrier was easy, a fair amount of effort but with plenty of handholds and no problem so long as you didn’t skewer yourself on the rusting rebar and nails that stuck out all over it. I made it up and over and clambered down to crouch at its base while I sussed out what was happening on Main.

  Main Street cut east to west across the
city, stretching across in front of me like a no-man’s land of broken concrete, dust and grit swirling in the stiff wind that was blowing in from the desert. The brilliant white circles from the searchlights scanned up and down that open drag, glinting off the coils of razor wire blocking each road leading north off it into the civilised half of the city. We lived in the south, the not so nice part of town where you were lucky to find a building with windows intact.

  I watched the searchlights as they scanned up and down Main. If you got caught in the light, they had automated sentries that opened up. I followed the pattern until I got it. It was a tough one, randomised with a five sequence alternator and an arbitrary weighter. Nice. I made sure I had it, timed my run and sprinted across and into an alleyway back on our side of the line.

  Maisie and Calum were waiting for me on the roof of an abandoned building that overlooked Main. It was our regular lookout point to spy on the garrison.

  I made my way up there and dropped down next to them.

  “You’re bleeding,” Maisie said, grabbing my arm and twisting it to see.

  Calum punched me in the back. “What happened, squirt?” he said. “You almost get caught?”

  Maisie shoved him and whispered, harshly, in his ear. She was older than Calum by two weeks. That made her boss of our gang. And he hated it.

  He shrugged her off.

  I couldn’t help the grin, still buzzing from the adrenaline high. I never got caught and he knew it.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to Maisie, “I didn’t leave a mess anywhere.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s nasty. Stuff like that gets infected,” she said. “You need to go see your grandmother.” She didn’t ask if I’d got anything. She just held out her hand.

  I leaned back and stuck my hand in my pocket, rooting about until my fingers touched the cool metal of the tiny module.

  I dropped it into her palm.

  She didn’t even look at it, just made it vanish with a flourish as if she was performing a magic trick. The money she’d get for it would keep us in supplies for three or four days, five if we were careful.

  Maisie looked me in the eye. “Nice one, Luka. Hey, you wanna see? There are new troops. We got fresh meat to torment.”

  She held out a pair of field glasses. I took them, feeling a shiver spark down my spine, and crawled forward on my stomach to steal a peek over the edge of the rooftop, straining to see the Imperial Garrison, flinching back as the defence grid shot down another rocket that was getting too close and keeping my head low as debris billowed out in a glowing cloud.

  The rocket attacks were still fairly regular, sometimes hitting this side of the line, sometimes that, the resistance weren’t great with their targeting.

  I peeked out again, lifted the glasses to my eyes and froze.

  It was him.

  Chapter 3

  Maisie nudged me in the leg. “What is it?” she hissed.

  From the rooftop, I had a perfect view in through the gate along the main approach into the compound where an armoured personnel carrier was offloading the latest batch of Imperial troops, fresh to Kheris, with no idea what was in store for them.

  Except for one. He’d been here before. He was wearing a helmet, stupid not to out there, and goggles, they all wore goggles when they arrived on Kheris, even at night, but I knew it was him. I’d seen his name on the roster in the base but almost hadn’t believed that it could be.

  Maisie shoved me again. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  I stared across into the base and watched as Charlie reached back into the APC to pull out a kit bag. So he was staying. It had been over a year and he didn’t look any different. New stripes on his arm, so he’d been promoted since he was last here but the same laugh as he joked with the guys he was replacing, the same casual ease in the way he moved even though, to him, the gravity was high. Most of the troops posted to Kheris hated it. Charlie never had. We never knew any different. You didn’t realise how high the gravity was until you set foot on an Earth-standard orbital or ship. Most of us kids never got off that dirtball to feel it. I almost didn’t.

  Maisie crawled up next to me and settled on her elbows, taking the field glasses and holding them to her eyes. She looked for a second but it was obvious she didn’t recognise him. He was just another uniform. Another enemy soldier to watch out for. “Luka, what’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” I said again.

  I nudged her and we shimmied backwards, away from the edge and sat up. I took the thick hooded shirt she held out and shrugged into it, looking up at Calum. “You wanna come in with me next time?” I said, knowing fine well he wouldn’t. It was mischief to even ask but I couldn’t resist.

  He shook his head, looking down his nose at me. “I’ve got more serious business to take care of.”

  I grinned.

  A rocket hit and detonated somewhere in the darkness behind us, trembling the rooftop under us, showering down debris.

  “C’mon, we need to get out of here,” Maisie said. “It’s not safe.” She squeezed my hand and held up the tiny module. “You hungry?”

  She didn’t need to ask. We were always hungry.

  She laughed. “Come on. This should be a good one.”

  We needed it to be a good one, we hadn’t eaten in two days.

  She pulled me to my feet and gave Calum a shove. “Race you back,” she said and she ran, dark curls bouncing, disappearing south, back into our half of the city.

  I went straight to Latia’s place because, although I wouldn’t admit it, my arm was throbbing with a heat that felt like it was already trouble. I should explain about Latia. She wasn’t really my grandmother, she was actually my great-grandmother, and she lived in a proper house. A real intact home even though it was in the southside. My great-grandmother was charmed and the bombs that had hit the blocks either side of her hadn’t made so much as a dent in her walls. She was fairy godmother to all the kids that didn’t have a home and she’d given up trying to persuade me to live with her a long time ago. I crashed out there now and then. She still kept my old room for me even though I’d not lived there since she’d got fed up of me running away and finally said, fine, I could go live wherever I wanted. I had a problem staying in one place. I’ve still never really shaken that off.

  That night, she wasn’t impressed with me. She made that clear as she cleaned the gash in my arm, splashing precious vodka onto it and binding it tight with a clean bandage. She didn’t say a word until she’d finished then she took both of my hands in hers and looked at me intently. “You know what they’ll do if they catch you?”

  I’d heard it all before and opened my mouth without thinking. “Firing squad. Up against the wall.”

  She frowned and leaned forward, moving one hand to stroke a finger across the knotted band I wore on my wrist, the one she insisted I wore, for luck, to ward off bad things. It was as if she was reassuring herself it was still there. That I was still protected. She looked into my eyes and whispered, “You are so like your mother, and her mother, it scares me.” She stood and turned away. “You know the young ones look up to you?” she said, starting to rummage in cupboards, putting the vodka back into its safe place. “They see what you do and they think they can get away with it too. You will get them killed, Luka, if you don’t get yourself killed first.”

  I chewed on my lip so I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to get into an argument with her. No one ever won an argument with Latia Cole.

  There’s something else I should let you know about my great-grandmother. She had a daughter, her daughter had a daughter and I was the first boy in generations. It was like it gave me a hold over her, an ace, a get out of jail free card, a pass to do whatever I wanted and I took full advantage every chance I got. I could be a little shit and I knew it. She knew it but I could melt her with a smile. I didn’t realise until way later how much it hurt her every time I skipped out. I didn’t realise a lot of t
hings. Until it was too late. But isn’t that always the way?

  Latia turned back to me, hands on hips. “Now make yourself useful and go fetch my box from the cellar.”

  I loved my great-grandmother’s cellar. It was like a peek into another world, almost a kind of museum. She had books, real books with real paper. I used to spend hours down there, trawling through them. Reading everything I could about anything and everything.

  She had boxes stacked high, crammed with old stuff, maps, gadgets from another era, clothes no one had worn in decades, mining kit from generations ago when Kheris was first colonised. Everything was labelled, some handwritten scrawls, some printed labels, some in a weird symbolic system code.

  There were airtight containers down there she’d told me not to go near. Stuff from the mines and processing plants. I’d cracked one open, years ago, just to see what was in it. There was only this murky liquid that had given off fumes that were in the air before I could snap the lid closed. I hadn’t died or anything so dramatic but I’d had a headache so bad I could hardly see for three days and I hadn’t been able to tell Latia about it in case she knew what I’d done. I’d left those containers alone since then.

  Her box was on a shelf by the bottom step. There was something I needed to do first though so I edged past it and squeezed through into the far corner, ending up on my stomach to crawl under a pile of boxes.

  My box was hidden behind a loose wall panel. It didn’t take too much jiggling to ease the panel off and drag it out. I sat there, popped it open and as much as I meant to just drop the pass into it and scoot, I couldn’t help rifling through all my stuff. This was my cool stuff, the stuff I didn’t want anyone else to find. I had a live stun grenade in there, a slick little silver ball that had a corporate ID stamped into it. There were little pots of black and green camouflage paint that Charlie used to give me every time he came back from some other posting where, as he said it, “the whole damned planet hadn’t been red dust”. He told me once he’d seen oceans that were as big as the deserts on Kheris. That much space, all covered in water? I’d not been able to even imagine it back then. I thought he was kidding me but he’d given me a picture. That was in there somewhere too.