by C. G. Hatton
•
A combat booted foot crashed down into the space where my head had been only a fraction of a second earlier. I kept the momentum of the move going and rolled up onto one knee but he was fast. A vicious, straight kick was aimed right at my head. I raised both arms in a blocking move that Benjie had taught me and grabbed his leg to twist and throw him off balance but he was ready for it, he went with the move and spun. A roundhouse kick from his other foot caught me on the shoulder.
I flinched away but he was on me again. His fist punched into the side of my head as I ducked, senses rattled. I couldn’t beat him. My right hand was still in a cast, left knee in a brace. And I was being clumsy as hell because the gravity on board the Alsatia was lighter than I was used to. He was faster than me, stronger than me, and he knew what he was doing. His other fist pummelled into my kidneys, a low punch right into my back that almost sent me to my knees. I staggered and turned round, catching his leg with my foot and kicking out enough to throw him off balance and away from me.
The reprieve was short lived. He twisted, grabbed hold of my shirt and dragged me close, driving his fist into my face and connecting just above my eye, again. The pain that exploded in my head was about as bad as anything I’d ever felt, and I’d been stabbed, shoved off a roof and shot not so long ago.
I felt my knees going.
If I ended up on the floor, I figured I was done.
He still had a fistful of my shirt. He spun me around and slammed me into the wall, catching my right arm and twisting it behind my back. Pain shot through my hand. He hissed, “You need to learn when to give up, kid,” and shoved me hard into the cold metal surface, head bouncing with another rattle. I almost blacked out, vision narrowed to a dark blur. Blood was pouring down the side of my face, hot and sticking up one eye. I couldn’t see, couldn’t get free and couldn’t stop myself as my legs turned to jelly and I crumpled.
He helped me on my way down with another blow to the kidneys that took my breath away. The floor came up fast, cold and hard. There was an instant of lull, a moment of calm. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, and his breathing, controlled and calm as he stood over me.
I could feel the others watching and I didn’t care. I could see his boots, feet apart, fighting stance. He shifted his weight and I tensed, trying to curl up against the kicks I knew would follow but I could hardly move.
The kicks didn’t come.
There was a sharp clap and a different voice said, “Again.”
I sagged.
“Anderton, get your sorry ass off the floor and show me some goddamned effort this time.”
A huge figure knelt close and leaned in, grabbing me by the scruff of the neck as I sprawled there on the floor and whispering harshly into my ear. “You’re Thieves’ Guild now. Get the hell up.” He leaned closer. “Understand this… you do not get to quit. You do not get to flunk out. No one leaves the Thieves’ Guild. You make it or you die. And you earn your damned keep. I don’t care that you are only thirteen goddamned years old, son. You have a tab. You want to survive it? Show me you can fight.”
He shoved me and stood back, giving me room to gather myself and push, inch by inch, to my knees. I left a bloody mess on the floor but I got upright, a warm trickle still dripping down my face, and my hands shaking but I got upright and stood there, weight on my right leg, raising my head slowly and trying to calm my breathing.
Zach Hilyer was staring at me, standing at ease, hardly looking like he’d been fighting at all. The big guy who’d just given me the inspirational pep talk was the Chief, our big boss, head of Acquisitions, and he was standing, arms folded, looking less than impressed and more like he was tempted to throw me out of the nearest airlock into deep space.
“Understand this, gentlemen,” he said, “you fight for your life or this tab is going to be your first and your last.” He shook his head. “Now stop messing about and show me what you can do.”
Hilyer came at me again, using the same opening attack as the two previous times. He wasn’t expecting anything to be different and I started to respond in exactly the same way, using the same block that had failed me twice already. He had no reason to think this was anything but a rerun. He almost grinned but this time I knew what was coming, he fell for it and I did the one thing, the only thing, I had left. At the last possible moment, I lashed out with my left leg, throwing the full weight of the exo-brace behind it and drove my foot up into his groin with all the force I could muster.
Hilyer collapsed to the floor clutching himself.
There were a couple of incredulous gasps, a faint cheer from somewhere.
“Now that’s more like it,” the Chief said. “Anderton, get back to Medical and get that eye seen to. Hilyer, stop lying around making my gym look untidy. You just got decked by a child. Get cleaned up. Then both of you, get your asses over to Ops. Mendhel is waiting for you.”
He turned and walked away.
Another guy, one of the instructors, clapped his hands together and shouted, “Kowalski, Lewis, you’re up next and, for Christ’s sake, don’t be as embarrassing as these two.”
Hilyer didn’t say another word to me and he didn’t wait for me to get fixed up. He took off once he’d showered and I was left on my own to get up to Medical, get sorted and make my way back to Ops. The deep spacer we were on, the Alsatia, was huge. An enormous wandering star ship that was the guild’s base of operations, masquerading as a corporate-owned cruise liner, shuttling between Earth and Winter or just hanging out in deep space at jump points close to wherever the guild needed to be. It was awesome. Totally self-contained with four main sections – Acquisitions, Legal, Media and Science – and that was just the guild side of things. The cruiser itself had a load of other stuff going on that we never even saw. We were in Acquisitions. And even from the outset, it felt like that was something special.
It had hardly been a week since Mendhel had taken me from Kheris. When he’d brought us on board, they’d kept us both in quarantine for forty eight hours, running a barrage of medical and physical tests, then they’d let Hil loose and told me I wasn’t going anywhere, not until they sorted out my knee and my hand. After three more days of surgery, meds and physio, and rapid heal sessions in medical iso-pods, they’d shown me a deckplan, told me where I could and couldn’t go – made it clear I wasn’t being discharged from their care yet – and kicked me out to go train in Acquisitions with strict instructions to be back within two hours.
It had been five. I doubted they were going to be impressed. It felt like no one was impressed with me. It was strange walking through the ship those first few weeks. There were no other kids on board. Hilyer was only a year or so older than me and we stood out a mile. Everyone I passed looked at me weird, like I was some alien curiosity that had got lost or some stray cat that had wandered into a house belonging to a dog and was daring to make itself at home.
There was an air of tension in every corridor, raised voices, open arguments. I didn’t know whether something was kicking off or whether it was like that all the time. It was unnerving. I almost missed the streets of Kheris, with its bomb craters and tanks on every corner. At least there I could escape it all and run out into the desert anytime I wanted. On the Alsatia, there was no way out. Nowhere to go.
As I got closer to Medical, it got worse. I flattened myself against the bulkhead as a squad of troops in lightweight combat armour pushed past, covered in dirt and blood, nursing recently dressed wounds and grumbling, not bothering to keep their voices low as they complained. About shit happening, empty seats in the damned mess, again, and what the hell had gone wrong this time?
I was limping, holding a cold pack against my eye, and looking pathetic enough that everyone pointed me in the right direction. I didn’t need directions, I knew the entire deck plan of that enormous cruise ship by heart, but it didn’t hurt to look a bit lost.
And to be honest, not all of it was an act.
Medical was busy. They did
n’t waste much time in checking me over and cleaning me up. They already knew I had to get back to Ops for a briefing. That was the other thing about the Alsatia and the guild. Everyone knew everything, all the time. The way it was run was slick and efficient, certainly like nothing I’d ever seen before.
I snuck a handful of extra painkillers into my pocket as I slouched out. I got back to Ops and stood at the door to the briefing room I was directed to. My first briefing, and I was standing there like an idiot, a fresh dressing taped above my eye, feeling like shit, not sure if I should knock and wait or just go in, and fairly sure that whatever I did, it wouldn’t be right.
I was about to walk off, go find someone and check I was in the right place when the door opened.
Hilyer was sitting in there already, slouched back in a chair across a table from Mendhel, arms folded, looking like this was all second nature to him. He didn’t give me any acknowledgement at all as I went in.
I sat down next to him and scratched at my hand, around the edges of the cast that was immobilising it, wrist to fingers. It was itching like hell. Getting shot sucks, trust me. They reckoned I’d get full use of it back eventually but right then I still couldn’t move two of my fingers properly.
“How’s the knee?” Mendhel said.
It was a mess, ligament damage they’d said. And it was hurting even though the brace had an auto-med feedback injector that was supposed to keep me up to date with pain medication.
“It’s fine,” I said.
He nodded and gave me a slight smile like he knew I was lying. He looked at us both. “You think we’re going hard on you?”
I was sitting there with sore ribs, an aching back and a black eye that was almost swollen shut. I just stared at him.
He pushed a data board each across the table towards us. “We are. Because this is the job you’re going to do for us.”
Chapter 2
I glanced at it. They couldn’t seriously be talking about sending us into that.
Hilyer sat upright and reached to scroll through a few screens. He had a tattoo inked on the inside of his wrist, this weird black symbol. I was naïve enough to think it looked cool. If I’d known back then what it was, I might not have screwed up so badly.
He tensed, looking at the data. I could feel the unease building in him. It was setting me on edge just sitting next to him.
“We don’t have long to get you ready,” Mendhel said. “The Chief is going hard on both of you because he doesn’t agree that we should be using you for this tab. He thinks we shouldn’t even be running this tab, and he thinks I’m going to get you both killed.” He let that sink in then added, “He’s trying to break you now to prove he’s right. It might not seem like it but he’s trying to save your life.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak so I didn’t. I usually get in trouble because I can’t keep my mouth shut but something about Mendhel made me nervous. In a weird way. Not like I was afraid of him but more like I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“I believe you can do it,” he said. He tapped his own board and the wall behind him lit up to show a three dimensional schematic, spinning slowly. “This is where you’re going. Fort Redemption. It’s a high security juvenile correctional facility.”
I glanced sideways at Hilyer. He was steadfastly avoiding looking at me.
“It’s part of a maximum security Imperial prison complex used as a draft facility for the Imperial military. It’s tough, bleak, harsh. This is not going to be easy, for either of you.”
My heart was in my stomach, beating with a steady thud.
Mendhel brought up a profile of the facility, stats, blueprints and satellite images appearing on the display. “We’ve had a deep cover agent embedded in the teaching staff there for a long time. Markus is one of our best talent spotters. Redemption has always been one of our best recruiting grounds. But, as I told you already, we don’t recruit minors.” He stared at us, sitting there underage as we were. He’d already told us how much his ass was on the line for taking us in.
“Normally,” he said, “we tag anyone we believe could be a potential and if they’re underage, we watch them until they’re ready. Wherever they go afterwards. Even if that takes years. Some of them never are. But recently, five of Markus’ latest potentials have vanished. He doesn’t know what’s going on, we don’t know what’s going on. But five kids that he tagged as high priority have disappeared from the entire system within the last three months. And that’s from either side of the line. Officially, they were transferred out of Redemption and then they simply disappeared. And trust me, we don’t just lose people.” The screen went black. “These kids were exceptional. They have to be to get our attention. Thing is, the number of kids turning up at Redemption who’d normally score higher on every pointer we look for has increased. We don’t know how or why but someone with similar interests to ours is funnelling these kids through. That’s why we’ve brought you in. Way earlier than we normally would have. We want you to go in there and work with Markus to find out what’s going on. Security has also been increased, way beyond any normal correctional facility, and we can’t feed any more experienced operatives into the system at this short notice because we don’t know who’s behind it and Markus can’t crack the new protections they’ve thrown up at the facility.” He looked at me. “That’s where you come in, LC.” He just stared at me for a couple of heartbeats like he was fixing his resolve. “Markus will be able to provide you with the necessary equipment and get you access to the system controlling the base. We want you to hack into it. Your brief is to infiltrate, observe, gather intelligence. That’s it. Stay under the radar. Don’t stand out. Don’t get noticed. Hil will be there to watch your back when Markus isn’t around.” He turned his head to look at Hilyer. “And as well as that, you have your own objective.”
Hilyer looked like he could guess what that was going to be. I could guess what that was going to be.
“You get their attention,” Mendhel said. “Whatever happens, we’ll be there to track you and we’ll get you out but we want to know where those kids are ending up. If there’s someone else there recruiting them, we want to know who the hell that is and what they want them for.”
Compared to Hilyer’s, my task sounded easy. He was going into the lion’s den but it seemed like they thought I was still too much of a kid to play with the big boys.
“When we get you into this facility, you do not know each other, you do not discuss the tab with each other. Markus will make contact with you when he’s ready. You will follow his lead. Do you understand?”
I nodded but I only had the vaguest idea of what we were being sent in to. Hilyer was sitting there bolt upright.
Mendhel looked at us both in turn. “There’s a lot riding on this. Everyone thinks I’m taking a huge gamble here, relying on a couple of kids with barely any training, and they’re right. I am, but you need to understand, you can not ever reveal that you are Thieves’ Guild. To anyone. Ever.”
We both nodded.
“We have enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on a kid, or worse, if they thought you were linked to us. Do you understand?”
More nods. But it didn’t feel real. None of it felt real.
“Okay, now pay attention,” he said and started going through the plans of the facility, training rotas and briefing schedules we had to attend on the Alsatia. A lot of the training was going to be physical, some of it was for both of us, hand to hand fighting, disabling security systems, stealth training and intelligence gathering. There was a session on psychological conditioning and techniques for resisting interrogation. Some of it was just for me, interpreting how AI logic strings were constructed, how they could be manipulated, how to get in and out of data streams without being detected. It was cool but it was like being back at school. I started getting ahead of them as they were working through the intel on the boards, skipped too far and got distracted. I didn’t realise I’d zoned out and I didn’t know
I was kicking my feet against the legs of the chair until Mendhel tapped at the table, with a curt, “Enough.”
I looked up. No idea what he’d been saying or what we were supposed to be doing.
My screen was open, displaying a load of old records. I was about to wipe it clear when he reached for it.
“Where the hell did you find this?”
It was a list of names, field-ops, Mendhel Halligan included, and points. He’d been a field operative. A good one judging by his position in the list.
“Who’s Andreyev?” I said. That name was top, a leap ahead of the next one down.
“Ask the Chief.”
“Do we get to go on this list?”
“It’s called the standings board and yes, you will.”
Hilyer was watching, scowling, but I couldn’t help asking, “How do we get points?”
Like it was a game. I needed it to be a game. Losing Maisie and Latia meant that reality was still too painful. I desperately needed it to be a game so I didn’t have to think about what was really happening.
Mendhel held one finger out, hovering poised over the list, staring at it with half a smile creasing his mouth, then he wiped it clear and pushed it back to me. “Why don’t we leave that for another day and get back to what we’re supposed to be doing?”
Just like school. They never let you near the cool stuff, like you had to log a million hours of tedium before they could trust you to go anywhere near anything actually interesting. I sat there trying to listen, trying my best to concentrate, but not well enough apparently, and it wasn’t long before Mendhel tapped at the table again to get my attention. He didn’t look impressed. “That’s enough. LC.”
I still wasn’t totally used to them calling me that.
He sounded exasperated. “You can access the data back in Medical. You’re due for another check up. Go get some rest. I need to talk to Hil anyway.”