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

by C. G. Hatton

  The vast chamber that had always opened into the tunnel entrance held a shimmering pool of perfectly still, turquoise water, illuminated by tiny white lights pinpricking around its curved walls.

  It had never been flooded before.

  The tunnel entrance was below the water level, completely submerged, the surface of the pool glittering. I was almost hypnotised by it, standing there like an idiot, the time ticking down on my wrist and my chances of proving I wasn’t a screw up going down the drain.

  I backed away.

  Turned back into the narrow, claustrophobic Catacombs and ran.

  I ended up climbing the Shaft, a vertical tube, my hand screaming, my knee throbbing and having to stop half way up just to breathe. The walls were smooth, no hand holds, nothing to even get decent friction against. The muscles in my legs were trembling, arms like jelly and my chest was getting tight. The wristband was humming, not as violently as it had on Kheris, but bad enough. I wedged myself in there and twisted my arm to see the time.

  44:22.

  I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t go up and I couldn’t go down. If I gave in, it was a forty foot drop back to the bottom. All the kids on Kheris had joked that I could do anything. Climb a decrepit tower? Scale a vertical wall? Run the gauntlet of the garrison’s killing ground amidst the deafening boom of the defence grid shooting down incoming missiles? I’d been invincible.

  But now it felt like I’d met my match.

  43.57.

  I couldn’t move.

  My muscles were starting to cramp.

  43.46.

  If I dropped out of there, I was done. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t go back to Kheris. I’d get shot for what I’d done.

  43.16.

  43.15.

  43.14.

  Every time I looked at that band on my wrist, it took me back there. Charlie had believed in me. Seen something in me, Mendhel had said. I’d never realised. I’d always thought he was just a cool guy who was watching out for a stupid kid who’d been unlucky enough to be born to two people who should never have got together, never in a million years.

  42.00.

  I couldn’t let him down. It wasn’t just the call of a challenge, a stupid dare I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t let Charlie down. Because he’d died for me. He’d died because of me.

  I started to climb and I didn’t stop.

  NG was there waiting at the end, as well as the Chief, and Hilyer, who was soaked through, shirt sticking to him, hair wet. More than sweat, he’d gone through the flooded tunnel.

  My chest was heaving. I leaned on my knees and glanced at the timer on my wrist. The band was still humming. The clock was stopped at 00:29.

  The Chief looked down at me. “You didn’t take the fastest route.”

  Damn right I hadn’t. I couldn’t swim. I’d never seen anything bigger than a bucket of water before.

  NG gave a soft laugh as if he’d put it together. NG was cool. “You need to learn,” he said. “You have to swim if you’re gonna be able to run the Straight.”

  There was no actual straight route through the Maze. The fastest way through stood out a mile but it went in a loop, doubling back on itself and convoluted as hell. It was tough. It wasn’t straight. But apparently that’s what it was called.

  NG was looking at me like he was looking right into my soul. “There’s a faster way across the Sphere as well,” he said.

  I could guess how. I’d always climbed into the zero gravity chamber and inched my way around its inner surface, handhold to handhold, all the way to the opposite door.

  “I want to do it again,” I said, hardly able to breathe, hands shaking, sweat dripping off me and chest constricting with electrobe poisoning.

  Hilyer was glowering at me. NG and the Chief just nodded.

  “You can,” NG said. “But not right now.” He handed me a vial of antidote. “Both of you, go, get some rest. LC, get up to Medical and get yourself checked over.”

  Hilyer snapped to and turned away towards the locker room door.

  I hesitated.

  The Chief shook his head and raised his hand to warn me off. “You heard the man. Now move.”

  Hilyer caught me as I came out of the shower, just a towel around my waist, my chest still aching and my head not thinking straight. He grabbed my shoulder, spun me round and slammed me up against the bulkhead. As much as I knew he could flatten me easily, I still struggled, like an idiot. He shoved me hard and leaned in, whispering, “Wherever the hell you’ve come from, you don’t get to do whatever the hell you want here. You want to get yourself thrown out, fine. Just don’t drag me down into your mess.”

  I couldn’t help protesting. I wanted to explain why. I wanted him to understand. I opened my mouth, got as far as, “Zach, I…”

  He had his forearm wedged up tight against my throat, pinning me there. “Don’t freaking call me that,” he hissed. “You don’t know me. Stay the hell away from me, Anderton. I’m not going to let a jumped up little shit like you screw up my chances here. You get it?”

  I didn’t and I was stupid enough to argue. “You don’t…”

  He shoved me again. “No. I don’t give a damn what you have going on in your life, kid. Stay out of mine.”

  He pushed me away and stalked off. I stared after him. I felt hard done by. He felt hard done by. Neither of us was going to win. And I didn’t even know what we were arguing about.

  The staff in Medical weren’t impressed. I couldn’t stop coughing, sparks tingling through my lungs. It was taking a while for the antidote to work. They said my immune system was still shot, that I’d probably be vulnerable to infection for a while. They gave me a load more meds and told me to check in later.

  When I got back to the barracks, there was no sign of Hilyer. I didn’t know where he was and I didn’t care until I couldn’t find Charlie’s knife.

  It had gone.

  No one else could have known where I’d hidden it.

  My stomach turned, a cold knot twisting.

  Hilyer.

  I took a handful of painkillers, gave myself another shot of antidote and sat on my bunk, just breathing.

  He had it and he’d have to give it back.

  There was nowhere else it could be.

  I was beyond calm as I walked through Acquisitions, checking in the mess, asking anyone around. Eventually someone pointed me to the gym.

  He was lifting weights. I walked right up, planted myself in front of him and just said it.

  “Where the hell is my knife?”

  He didn’t stop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I want my knife back. Now.”

  He hefted the weights he had in his hands and stared at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “My knife,” I managed to say, slow and deliberate. “I want it back.”

  Hilyer glanced sideways. I was very aware that people were watching.

  He put the weights down and took a step forward. “I – really – don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.”

  He was bigger than me but not by much. And he wasn’t that much older.

  I didn’t back down. “You took my knife.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Give it back.”

  He spread his arms. “Do I look like I have it?”

  I didn’t have a plan, no neat trick to pull to get him to admit it and no smartass way to get him to do what I wanted. I hadn’t really thought much past finding him.

  He made it easy. He gave me that laugh and stepped forward again so he was right on me and he pushed me in the chest. “What the hell does it matter?”

  I flew at him.

  I got in two punches before he hit me back. I rolled with it and went at him again, catching him off balance and we went sprawling. He didn’t let up but my entire life suddenly and desperately depended on that knife. I fought back. I’d learned everything I knew about fighting on the streets as well and as much as I was no matc
h for him, I wasn’t going to go down easily. He hit me hard and opened the gash above my eye, but I caught him with one in the nose that made it pour. It took three grunts to pull us apart.

  “You wanna fight,” one of them hissed, struggling to keep Hilyer off me, “you take it to the Cage.”

  I didn’t want to fight, I just wanted Charlie’s knife back.

  They tossed us aside, one of them leading Hilyer off one way and another taking me by the shoulders and walking me out the other. I glanced back. He was looking back at me, holding his sleeve against his nose. I had no idea what he was thinking but he had no idea how much it mattered to me. Maybe if I’d just told him…

  The guy that had hold of me took me into the mess and sat me down, Sienna appearing pretty much straight away with a medical kit.

  She pushed a bottle of water into my hand and sat next to me. “What’s with the knife?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  She wiped the blood off my face and pressed a dressing above my eye. “Belonged to someone special, huh?”

  I kind of nodded. I really didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Kid, we’ve all lost people.” She taped it into place and sat back.

  I bit my lip. I wanted to run away, skip out, get outside into fresh air and feel the heat of the sun, be on my own, on the surface of a planet, not stuck on a ship in deep space with a load of people I didn’t understand, way out of my depth, and starting to feel like I was trapped worse than if I’d been thrown in a cell for what I’d done.

  “Mendhel is your handler, isn’t he?”

  I nodded, dreading what she was going to say next. I knew something had happened and I knew everyone was avoiding talking to us about it. I sat on my hands because they were shaking. My chest was hurting, so sore it felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I wanted to curl up in a ball.

  Sienna squeezed my knee. “Stuff happens, LC. But this is the Thieves’ Guild – and no one messes with the Thieves’ Guild.”

  She sat there with me for ages, just chatting, talking about places she’d been, cool stuff she’d done, anything but anything serious. She didn’t ask any questions and she didn’t ask what I thought about anything. It was exactly what I needed. Except then she stopped talking and just looked at me.

  “No one’s told you yet, have they?” she said finally. She sucked in a deep breath. “Mendhel’s wife was one of the operatives we just lost.”

  Chapter 6

  Sienna told me to go get some sleep. It seemed like that was all anyone was telling me. I wandered back to our quarters, feeling like shit for Mendhel, not wanting to run into Hilyer and wanting to talk to him at the same time.

  The knife was there, lying on my pillow.

  I stood staring at it, and that’s when the Watch came for me.

  Hilyer was being taken into one briefing room as I was marched into another. He glanced at me but didn’t react. The Chief was following him, face like thunder. It was Mendhel that came and talked to me.

  He sat. He looked beyond weary. A small dressing was taped below his left ear and he caught me looking.

  “Upgraded implant failed to take,” he said. “Doesn’t happen often but even the best technology doesn’t always work. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  He pushed a board across to me that had a list of charges on it, under my name. Disorderly conduct in the mess. Disorderly conduct in the gym. And a list of physio and psych sessions I’d missed, briefings I’d missed, classes I’d missed…

  My heart was in my stomach, pounding with a dull beat.

  “Am I out?” I managed to say.

  Mendhel reached and wiped the screen onto a new display, a list of times, physical times against runs in the Maze and completion times of the tasks NG had set. I didn’t know whether they were decent times or not but Mendhel looked up at me.

  “You’re Thieves’ Guild,” he said. “Start to believe it. We don’t have much time and I need to know that you and Hil are going to work together and not kill each other.” He was looking at me as if he was trying to decide something. He touched the board again and it flashed up a mass of data. “You wanted to know about Andreyev?”

  My heart rate upped a notch. I was trying not to cough, trying to do better than I had done and with that name, he got my attention.

  “Nikolai Andreyev was the most successful field operative the guild has ever handled. You want to make a name for yourself here? That’s the bar. And believe me, it’s high. This is his file – as much as we have access to. You need a challenge? This is it. And I don’t care…” He bit off what he was about to say as there was a sharp knock at the door.

  It opened, the Chief not waiting before coming in, steering Hilyer ahead of him, telling him to go sit down, and looking at me with a frown. He stopped at the door and said to Mendhel, like we weren’t even there, “Timeframe just changed. We don’t have two months, we have two weeks.”

  Mendhel muttered a curse and stood. “Wait here,” he muttered to us. “Both of you. Read the files.” And he went to the door. He had his back to us so I couldn’t see his expression but I heard clearly enough. “Why the hell is it two weeks? They won’t be ready in two weeks.”

  The Chief glanced at us. “They wouldn’t have been ready in two months. You want to keep them alive, we need to up the schedule or they’re not gonna have a damn chance, whatever happens.”

  I was trying not to look, trying not to listen and trying to switch off but there was something about the way the Chief kept looking at me.

  “Two weeks?” Mendhel said.

  Hilyer took one of the boards and started studying it intently but I knew he was listening as well.

  The Chief lowered his voice but we could still hear. “We’ve lost contact with Markus.”

  We couldn’t help looking at each other, Hilyer scowling at me.

  “He got a packet of intel out,” the Chief was saying. “Unscheduled. Then nothing. We’ve scanned the entire surface of the planet. Either he’s gone or he’s dead.”

  Mendhel cursed. “And we’re still sending them in?”

  They both looked at us.

  The Chief sucked in a deep breath. “It could just be a technical glitch but that seems unlikely. You need to see his last message. They haven’t just increased the protections around the AI, if we’re reading it right, he’s saying it’s the AI running the operation. It will take too long to set up an ID for another adult or push someone through the legitimate system and we can’t risk another operative without time to prepare. And if Markus’ last communication is to be believed, we have no time.”

  I could feel my heart thumping in my stomach.

  “That bad?” Mendhel said.

  The big man nodded. “They’re cycling high potential candidates through in batches, not even a pretence of filtering them through. Whoever is behind this must know it will attract attention. They must be gearing up for something and they’re getting ready to move before that attention can mean anything. The next drop is due to deliver in two weeks. Losing contact with Markus means we’re now blind. Trust me, we have no choice. As much as I hate to say it, it has to be these two. And it has to be now. You said it. They have the ideal background. Both of them. But we change the plan. We get them in, LC gets what we need and we get them out. Now more than ever, we need that intel.” What he said next was so quiet, I almost missed it, but it made a chill shiver down my spine. “Charlie, Loic, Arianne, and now Markus?” The Chief shook his head, expression dark.

  It felt like I was in the middle of an unfolding nightmare, one that was following me, that was catching up everyone around me in a swirling maelstrom.

  “NG thinks they’re connected,” he was saying. “No coincidence. And if you ask me, it’s no damned coincidence that this new guy gets thrown into post as our head of operations right now. Do you even know where he’s come from?”

  Mendhel shook his head. He glanced at us as if he knew we had to be listening. Wha
t he said next was too quiet to hear, but I caught the name Kheris.

  The Chief said something else but I couldn’t follow what, then Mendhel shook his head and I heard him say, “No. Charlie had that in his report. The kid didn’t see anything.”

  I slouched further down in the seat. They were talking about me.

  The Chief was looking at me as he said, “We need to be sure.”

  “Chief, I’m sure.”

  “Mend, I know this is a bad time but NG wants to know why we just lost two operatives on that back of beyond shit-hole, and another two in fast succession. We’ve not lost a deep cover in over fifteen years. Now four in the space of weeks? Something’s kicking off. And it started when that ship crashed on Kheris. If this kid knows anything about it, we need him to say it now before we send them out on this tab.”

  “He doesn’t. We got out what bodies we could. Talk to Science. They have everything we recovered. Chief, the kid didn’t see anything. He wants to forget it. And I can’t blame him for that.”

  The knot in my stomach did another flip, icy cold. They had bodies here from Kheris. I could feel them looking at me. All I could see was Charlie and the little ones in the street, running for the door, see their faces, yelling, through the glass… Maisie lying on the tarmac, sprawled, unmoving…

  I could hardly swallow past the lump in my throat.

  A board landed with a bang on the table in front of me. I looked up. The Chief sat down opposite me, Mendhel next to him.

  “The brief has changed,” the Chief said. “There is a distinct possibility that you will have no contact on the ground. If Markus is there, your objectives stand. But you go down there and he isn’t, you’ll be on your own. You just get the intel. You keep out of trouble. You stay under the radar.” He looked at Hilyer, his expression hard. “You both stay under the radar. Do you understand? We’ll arrange extraction in thirty days. If you need out before that, you ask for a case review. That will trigger a legal response that we’ll see and we’ll come in for you. In the meantime, whatever happens, you do not reveal you are guild to anyone. You do not even talk to each other while you’re down there. Not about this. Do you understand?”