by C. G. Hatton
I didn’t argue. As I got up, Hilyer still didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what his problem with me was but I’d dealt with worse so I didn’t really care.
Mendhel walked me to the door and stopped me there. “LC,” he said quietly. “I brought you in early to run this tab for us. We didn’t bring you in because of what happened. I was coming for you anyway. Do you understand? We’ve been watching you for a long time.”
Charlie.
I got a lump in my throat. I bit my lip to stop it, a pulse of adrenaline hitting my chest.
Mendhel drew in a deep breath. “I’m just sorry we didn’t get there before…”
I shut it down. Sucked it up and shut it down.
He nodded, doing the same. “Go, get some sleep. And don’t argue with the medics.”
I was also not used to everyone knowing everything I did and being watched every second of the day. I hadn’t realised I’d been such a pain that they’d report it.
He gave me a stare. “They know what they’re doing. Don’t fight them. We need that knee to be healed. We have a lot to get through. And trust me, I believe you can do this.”
He looked up, something or someone behind me catching his eye. I turned. The Chief was approaching, and I don’t know why but I knew there was something wrong, and it wasn’t about us.
The Chief was big and I’d not seen him anything other than angry whenever we were around, but he took Mendhel by the arm and said softly, “Mend, you need to come with me, buddy. Now. Quinn can sort these two out.”
Quinn was another handler. He was standing further down the corridor, watching. I had a horrible feeling that something bad had happened.
Mendhel was listening to someone else. Everyone at the guild had tiny devices implanted beneath the skin just below their ear, high end comms kit. Sensons. You just have to think to speak through them. They’d told us we’d get them but not yet, not considering where we were about to be sent. But I could tell Mendhel was talking to someone and it wasn’t good.
He nodded, vague, turned to me and said, “Luka, listen to Quinn. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” and he went.
Quinn was looking at me as if he’d been dumped with the children and he had other places he’d rather be. He was another big guy, tall, not massive like the Chief, but intimidating like the kind of soldiers I’d always avoided on Kheris.
He walked up, said without ceremony, “Anderton, Medical. Hilyer, sit your ass down, we need to talk,” and he disappeared into the briefing room, closing the door and leaving me stranded in the corridor.
I felt cold suddenly, like I wasn’t going to see Mendhel ever again. Everyone was ignoring me so I made my way back to Medical and did my best to do what they wanted. It didn’t go well. I came round with a shock, didn’t know where I was, tried to sit, tore the line out of my arm and banged my head.
Waking up in an iso-pod really sucks.
I couldn’t remember the nightmare but I was hot, shivering and I couldn’t get it to stop. An alarm was screaming. I slammed my fist sideways into the release button, instinctive, desperate. Nothing happened. I couldn’t move my left leg. I lay back, heart pounding, and banged at the side of the pod, biting my lip until it started to bleed, until there was a soft hiss and the clear cover slid open. I was struggling to breathe. It was stupid. I’d never been claustrophobic. Never had trouble with enclosed spaces. I’d learned that when I was five. On Kheris I used to crawl backwards through dark conduits that would have given a mouse trouble. Being stuck in that iso-pod in that first week on the Alsatia was something else. I still don’t understand what.
The medic leaned in and placed a mask over my face. That made me flip out but I breathed through it. I wanted to recall the nightmare, raking through my memory to find any wisp of it that was left but it was all just beyond my grasp, no idea where I’d been or who’d been there with me just a sickening feeling that I needed to know, that it was critical to something or someone that I remember. And I couldn’t.
I needed to get out. I thought I heard Mendhel, heard another voice saying, “No. You want that knee fixed? We have to put him under,” and I panicked, lashed out, felt more wires break free, and the alarm screeched to a new high. The sting of a needle jabbed into the side of my neck and I went out like a light.
When I woke again, I was in a bunk with my leg trapped in some contraption, a machine beeping in time with my heartbeat and voices outside the door.
Someone I didn’t recognise said, “But can he do it?”
It was Mendhel who replied. “I believe he can,” he said, sounding restrained.
I tried to sit up. I wanted to talk to Mendhel. I wanted to see him. I wanted him to come into the room and make everything okay.
He didn’t. He added to whoever he was talking to, “Come on, NG, you’ve seen the reports. This kid is hypermobile and agile as hell. He’s small but strong – he grew up on Kheris, for Christ’s sake. His reactions are off the scale and he’s fearless. Never mind what he can do with the logic strings. You want a perfect field-op? This kid is it, trust me. It’s just going to take some time.”
My heart was thumping so fast, I could hear it in my ears.
“What about Hilyer?” the other guy said.
“He has as much potential,” Mendhel said.
“If…?”
“If he can keep out of trouble.”
“Where is he?”
“Right now? In the Maze. Running off a temper. He just floored two of the grunts. Landed them in here.”
“He’s a fifteen year old kid… how the hell did he put two trained men into Medical?”
Mendhel lowered his voice but I could still hear what he was saying. “Hil’s survived on the streets since he was able to walk. You do that, you learn stuff, you know that. He fights dirty. Really dirty.”
“Does LC know where Hil was before we brought him in?”
“No.”
“Does Hil know what LC did on Kheris?”
I sagged back onto the pillows, dreading what was coming next, but I heard Mendhel say, “No, no one does.”
“Keep it that way. You’ve got two months to get them ready. We can’t wait any longer than that. Media’s picking up intel that’s making her uneasy. Nothing they can put their finger on, but enough to make her think that something is going on. We need to know.”
Chapter 3
They kept me incapacitated, to accelerate healing they said, for another two days then kicked me out of Medical with a lighter brace on my knee, a box of meds, a schedule for physio and psych evaluations, and a kit bag of the clothes they’d given me. I had Charlie’s knife in my pocket and his dog tags round my neck. That was all I owned.
I was escorted down to Acquisitions and taken to the barracks, to a door labelled ‘Hilyer’ and ‘Anderton’. Guess we were sharing. Hilyer didn’t have much either from the look of it but there was a kit bag under one bunk and stuff on a shelf next to it. The other bunk was made up, neat, no personal stuff so I guessed that was mine and dumped my bag on it. I put the drugs on the shelf and waited until my escort had left me alone before I put the knife under the pillow.
No one had told me what to do next so I stood there like an idiot for a minute then wandered out.
Acquisitions was huge. The barracks was only part of it. There was a mess hall and rec room, gym, then the Operations Centre that had a conference room and loads of smaller briefing rooms. It was weird being on board a ship. Time didn’t mean much. People seemed to come and go randomly. There was no day or night. Everything went on all the time and people seemed to sleep when they wanted.
I must have looked like a lost child. I was about to go back to our quarters when someone yelled, “Hey, kid,” and came over, throwing her arm around my shoulder and leading me into the mess. She stopped by the servery and grabbed a couple of bottles. That’s one thing I never really got used to on the Alsatia. Even after I’d been there for years. There was food and drink available all the time, hel
p yourself, no limits, nothing logged. We didn’t have to pay for anything. It felt too good to be true. And it was so far from what I was used to, it didn’t feel right. Like there was a catch and I was just waiting for it to hit me.
The woman steered me across the room. She smelled like the Imperial soldiers, gun oil and sweat. She was wearing black fatigues. The guild’s Security division. Her other arm was in a sling, recent injury from the way she was holding it.
“Don’t look so scared,” she said with a laugh. “We don’t bite.”
I wasn’t scared. I was trying to not flash back to Kheris. The heat. The dust. Soldiers that smelled just like her throwing me to my knees and holding a gun to my head.
I shook it off, digging my fingernails into my palm. It was not the same. The Alsatia was clean, the air fresh. I was clean. Light years from the kid scuzzing about the streets of that dirtball colony. That wasn’t me anymore and I was never going back. Ever.
She took me to a long table where three other guys were sitting, stripping weapons, a couple further down playing cards, beer bottles lined up in rows.
She nudged me onto a bench and sat next to me. “It’s Anderton, yeah?”
I nodded.
“Can I call you LC?”
I nodded again. She didn’t ask what it stood for. I didn’t know what I’d say if anyone did ask.
She gave me one of the bottles, water, and opened her own, beer. I took it and muttered a thanks.
She grinned. “How the hell old are you, LC?”
“Thirteen.”
“No shit.” She downed a mouthful of beer. “No one told me we’d started recruiting kids.”
A guy with a split lip and a gash on his forehead sitting opposite us muttered something about damned babysitting. Someone else joined in, saying louder that at least it didn’t look like I was in a fit enough state to kick anyone’s ass like the other kid. Everyone laughed, at his expense from the look of it.
The woman next to me grinned again and leaned in to clink her bottle against mine. “Don’t mind him, he’s just a sore loser.”
Someone said loudly, “Just a loser,” and there was more laughing.
I didn’t know what to do, shifted my weight awkwardly and opened the water.
He grunted, wiping oil off the last few parts from the handgun he was cleaning. The rest of it was laid out in perfect lines on a cloth in front of him. There was another, fully disassembled, in front of me, not so neat. I guessed it was hers.
He raised his eyes to glare at me, and muttered, “Children shouldn’t be allowed in here.”
I watched him pick up one of the components and slot it slowly into place, starting to assemble the weapon, still glowering at me as he did it. I shouldn’t have done but I couldn’t resist. I reached for the gun housing in front of me and picked up the Aiden’s tube, snapping it into place and going for the next piece, and the next, fast and efficient, becoming more and more aware that a hush was descending around me. It was a complicated weapon, intricate components, not one I’d ever handled before, but similar to one Charlie had shown me one time, and I’d seen the manual for this exact spec.
The guy opposite was speeding up, trying to match me. He had no chance. Even with one hand pretty much out of action, I beat him, clicking in the holding pin and the mag, and placing the assembled gun gently back onto the cloth.
He still had a couple of parts to go. He slowed and slotted in the next piece with exaggerated deliberation. There was a moment of still silence then someone swore and laughed. The woman next to me slapped me on the shoulder and muttered, “Holy shit.”
There was more laughing, the noise picking back up, and he finished slowly, staring at me over the gun as he did it.
It was probably not the smartest thing to have done and I don’t know why I did it. He slotted the mag into place and put it down, picked up the gun I’d assembled and made a show of checking the mechanism. He nodded slowly, probably about as much approval as I was going to get.
The woman laughed, squeezed my knee and whispered, “Nice one, buddy.”
Around us, the conversation was getting rowdy and I was about to make my excuses and disappear, but a hand landed on my shoulder and I felt someone lean down behind me, saying, “Get your ass up to Twelve, Anderton. NG wants to see you.”
NG was head of operations of the whole guild. Mendhel had told us that. I got the feeling that being summoned to NG’s office wasn’t run of the mill.
It wasn’t.
Walking out onto Deck Twelve felt strange, soft carpet underfoot and a cast to the lighting that was softer than anywhere else I’d been on board. It felt expensive.
NG didn’t keep me waiting. The door was open and his staff told me to go straight in. He was sitting at a large round table off to one side of his office, not at his desk, shuffling a deck of cards. There was something about NG. He didn’t look old enough to be in charge, for one thing.
I stopped just inside the door, hesitating. NG looked up and beckoned me over. He pushed across a data board as I sat down. He had his sleeves rolled up, an intricate web of feint scars cutting across the tanned skin of his arm. He might have been head of operations but he obviously wasn’t a pen-pusher.
He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries, didn’t introduce himself and didn’t bother with any preamble.
“The report we got from Kheris,” he said, “was that you can crack AI logic strings. You want to show me how?”
He had a black band around his wrist. Same as Charlie. Same as the guy in Dayton’s crew, the one who’d given me the exact same puzzles. He’d been Thieves’ Guild. They’d both been Thieves’ Guild.
I looked up into NG’s eyes.
“Loic was Charlie’s contact in the resistance,” he said softly. “They were two of our best.” He tapped on the board. “C’mon, show me how you do it.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat and couldn’t help the memories that surfaced, a small cell deep underground, blood pooling on the floor. A pulse of adrenaline hit my chest but NG started playing with the codes, solving the logic strings himself, fast. Way faster than I could. It was hypnotic. He nudged the board towards me and I took over, absorbed in it before I realised, and moving on to tougher and tougher puzzles. I completed the last one and the board went black.
I looked up.
NG was just sitting there, watching me.
“You have an eidetic memory,” he said.
I shrugged. I’d looked it up once when someone said I was weird. I didn’t know if that’s what it was or not. I could remember stuff. I didn’t care how.
“Do you realise that less than one in a billion people can see through AI strings? And even fewer than that can actually manipulate them.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d just thought they were cool puzzles.
“They control AI thought processes and logic procedures. How did you learn to solve them?”
I shrugged again. No one had taught me. I could just see it. I always had.
NG grinned. “You need to learn how to use this to break into systems that are protected by AIs,” he said. “Most of the places we go into are loaded with traps and tripwires that will kill you if you don’t bypass them in the right way.” He nudged the board again and it lit up, the display full of slowly spinning wire frame plans. “Redemption is run by an AI.”
I almost choked when he said ‘run by an AI’, feeling my breath catch in my chest. My hands were burning, conduits exploding in shards around me, electrobes flaring…
“It’s relatively high end,” he said. “Smarter than anything you’ve seen before. Certainly smarter than the AI on Kheris.”
Just hearing him say that made a cold spot twist inside. He pronounced Kheris the same way the locals did. Like he knew the place. Like he’d been there.
“We need you to hack it and get the intel we need. You have to know all the possible system protections you could encounter.”
I shivered, feeling tra
pped.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he warned, softly, breaking the spell. He was looking at me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and he brought me back in exactly the right way to bring out the best in me. “This tab is not gonna be a walk in the park. You’ve seen the brief. Mendhel thinks you can do it. The Chief isn’t convinced. I’m not convinced.” He leaned forward intently. “You want to prove to us you can do it? Get your fitness back up to speed. Do the physio. I’m giving you a training schedule. As much as Redemption is a feeder for the Imperial military, the juvie facility there is also a school. You’ll have library time. That’ll be your way in. Nice and easy. Markus will get you access. Keep your nose clean. Don’t get in trouble and you’ll be fine. We’ll show you how to hack a terminal so no one can see what you’re doing. Practise bypassing those protections until you can do it with your eyes closed. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“And get some sleep. You having nightmares?”
I didn’t want to talk about it but NG didn’t push it. He just said, “Whatever meds they gave you, use them.”
I nodded again.
He nudged the board towards me. “There are more puzzles on here. Work your way through them.”
I took it but I hesitated. I wanted to ask him about Mendhel. As far as I knew from what I’d heard anyone say, NG didn’t handle field-ops. I didn’t know why I was even in there, why he was talking to me, when I was just a chump kid who didn’t really know why I was there on the Alsatia at all.
NG looked at me and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, like he was tired. He looked like he was trying to figure out whether he should be shouting at me to scram or sitting me down to explain the workings of the galaxy.
“I know it’s not easy,” he said carefully, “but trust us. Work hard, do what we say and you can do well here. Charlie believed in you, Mendhel believes in you. Show the rest of us why.”
I sat there, staring at him, frozen like an alpaca pinned in headlights. I wanted to know what was going on with Mendhel. If he was okay and where he was, and why it wasn’t him going through this with me. I wanted to ask if he knew why Hilyer had such a problem with me. I wanted to ask about Redemption.