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

by C. G. Hatton

  “In what?”

  “In whatever it is that is messing up your head,” she called after me. “This place is bad enough as it is. Don’t make it worse.”

  I didn’t stop and a couple of seconds later, she ran past me without another word.

  Hilyer was waiting for me at the third checkpoint. Everyone else had gone past and were miles ahead of us. I waited for the gizmo to beep and carried on without a word.

  He walked alongside me. “What happened?”

  “Markus is dead.” It sounded weird saying it out loud.

  The chill air was making my chest tight. I caught my foot on something and cursed, coughing. I was starting to hate this moorland.

  Hilyer waited until we were by the noise of the river before he said anything else. “How do you know?”

  “He was being held captive here,” I said. “I think they knew he was guild. They killed him.” I didn’t say who I’d seen. “I got to talk to him before it happened.”

  “And?”

  I ducked under an overhanging tree branch. “He told me to trigger the release clause. We have to get out of here.”

  “You do that, I’m not going.”

  “Hil, Markus found out what’s going on. It’s a suicide mission. You go with them, you’ll get killed. Is that what you want?”

  “You don’t know me, don’t question me on what I want.”

  We walked for a while without another word. Then he gave me a shove and looked at me funny.

  I couldn’t help saying, “What?” suspicious, freaked out.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Why?” It unnerved me that he was asking.

  He yanked at my sleeve to get me back on the path. I hadn’t realised I was starting to wander off it. I felt numb.

  “Make the call,” he said. “Get out of here. But wait until I’m gone.”

  I brushed him away. “Why? Hil, didn’t you hear what I said? It’s a suicide mission.”

  He started messing about with the routefinder, checking bearings and all that crap, cursing under his breath.

  I coughed, hugging my arms around my chest. “We need to get back. We need to tell them about Markus.”

  I didn’t know what would happen then. I was sure the guild wouldn’t launch an all out attack on an Earth prison colony, no matter how much trouble we were in. I’d read reports on a couple of Andreyev’s tabs where they’d used Thunderclouds but he’d been in the centre of an active combat situation each time. Here? I had no idea.

  “You do it,” he said.

  “Hil….”

  He looked at me, dark eyes intense in the pale light. “Why the hell do you care? I don’t belong at the guild. Any more than you do. They don’t give a damn about us.”

  “And you think the people here do?”

  He glared at me, that muscle in his jaw ticking. “More than anyone else in my life ever has.”

  “What about Mendhel?” I asked. It sounded lame but I was starting to feel totally lost.

  “What about him? He told me to do a job. I’m doing it.” He stalked off.

  I should have let him go and I was stupid to interfere but I stumbled after him. “Hil…”

  He stopped and turned on me. “Why the hell do you even care what I do?”

  “Because we’re guild.” It felt hollow saying it and I wasn’t sure if I believed it. If it was even real.

  “You might be,” he threw at me. “I’m done.”

  Chapter 20

  We were done. That evening, as soon as we got back, before I’d even showered, I asked to see the Warden and requested a case review. They took me straight in. I stood there in his office, smelling of heather and sweat, caked in mud and still struggling to calm my breathing.

  The Warden was wearing a suit but that didn’t hide the fact that he looked just like the kind of battle-hardened sergeant majors Charlie used to keep me away from. He regarded me with a small bemused curl to his lips. “A case review?”

  “Yessir.”

  He sucked in a breath like I’d asked him to release me with a full pardon and compensation to boot. He gave me another look, didn’t even look down at his notes and said, “No. Get him out of here.”

  They took my arms in a restraint hold and marched me back to the bunkroom, past the others as they were trooping down to dinner. Hilyer looked me in the eye as I was led through, his face dark. I shook my head slightly. I didn’t care whether he got the message or not. He’d made it clear to me that he didn’t care. We were stuck there. We had no way to let the guild know what was happening. And Hil was about to be sent on a suicide mission. Problem was, he didn’t believe me. I figured I had two choices. Sit back and wait for the guild to come extract me… Or get selected and go with them. And the way I was adding it up, that was the only way I’d have a chance of stopping the assassination. Even if it meant I had to stop Hil.

  There’s something about being told no that doesn’t sit well with me. I didn’t go to dinner. I showered, changed, sat on my bunk with a board, pretending to study political history, and hacked into the prison records. I lined up a complete randomising sweep of the data, tagged it with AI priorities, total obfuscation of the source, put in a timed delay to trigger it at midnight and ended with a delete key that would give them a three second opportunity to stop it if they saw what it was going to do.

  I felt numb. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw her pull the trigger and saw Markus die. I didn’t care that I was going to create total chaos. I wanted to. I worked methodically and deliberately. The other kids started to come in as I was finishing up. I did what I needed to wrap up, even as they were moving about around me, and switched to a screen showing the succession line of the last twenty generations of Earth Emperor, one dynasty after the next. It was all a million years away from my reality. I was a kid of the Between. And not just because I’d been born there.

  I curled up reading and must have fallen asleep before lights out. And in the middle of the night, the lights clanged on, the guards yelled us awake and we were marched out to stand in the pouring rain. Prison sucks. I wouldn’t recommend it.

  The floodlights were on, torrential rain beating down in sheets. We were all just wearing shorts and tee shirts, no boots. I was shivering before we even got outside and got drenched. I kept my head down, rain dripping off my nose, blinking water out of my eyes.

  Everyone was quiet. We stood in perfect lines, waiting for them to tell us what was going on. They left us there for ages, just the guards walking up and down, yelling at anyone who faltered or twitched out of line.

  Eventually the Warden came out and stood there looking at us. “One of you,” he announced after a while in a huge voice that cut through the rain, “knows exactly why we are here. You will now step forward so that everyone else can get back inside to bed.”

  No one moved.

  The only sound was the driving rain.

  We were surrounded by guards holding rifles raised and aimed at us.

  Hilyer was standing next to me. He turned his head almost imperceptibly and mouthed at me, “What the hell have you done?”

  We stood there. My heart was thumping so fast I could feel it in my stomach.

  The Warden glanced to one of the guards and nodded. The guard fired his rifle into the air. I was expecting it but even so it made me jump as the shot broke through the silence with a shocking crack. They started yelling at us to drop. “Push-ups,” one of them shouted. “Let me see those chins hit the dirt, children. Now.”

  We dropped, splashing, push-up position, starting to move, up, down, one then the next. I could hear grunts and groans all around. It was agonising. Fingers cold, feet freezing, the rain battering down on us in icy cold torrents. I could hear kids crying out in pain.

  I managed two more before I collapsed in a snotty heap. A guard was yelling at me, screaming at me to get up. I braced myself to move, heard Hilyer breathe off to the side, “Don’t,” and pushed myself to my feet, standing there, dri
pping, clothes sodden and hanging off me, rain streaming down my face.

  The guard came straight for me, rapping his baton against his hand.

  I put both hands in the air, not high, just a little ‘you got me’ gesture, and said quietly, “It was me.”

  He screamed at me, “What did you say?”

  “It was me. Sir.”

  I could feel Hilyer fuming beside me, still pounding out the push-ups.

  Two of them grabbed me, twisted me around and hauled me off the square.

  They took me to solitary. I hit the floor and rolled, hitting up against the back wall as the door banged shut and the bolt was thrown. There was a hum as the energy grid surrounding the cell powered up.

  There was one plastic bottle of warm water in there.

  It was a long four hours.

  The cell was dark except for a strip of light around the door and the faint glow from a control panel on the wall. I wasn’t seriously going to try to bust it open when I approached it but it was protected by its own energy grid and even getting close knocked me backwards.

  I kicked around in that small space for the first couple of hours then gave up and just sat there. It was too cold to sleep. There was nothing to even sit on. The walls and floor were cold metal. I ran equations through my head. Floor plans. The stats they’d given us on this planet and the data on the staff and other kids, and how it fitted in with everything I’d seen in the depths of the system here. I sorted it all into patterns inside my head and added in the unknowns and randoms. That filled another hour. I emptied my head. Tried a few push-ups and hand stands but my chest hurt too much. I might have dozed a bit despite the cold. After that I just sat and waited.

  It was starting to feel like I’d imagined Mendhel and the Alsatia, and this was where I’d been sent after trashing the garrison on Kheris.

  I squinted when they opened the door and tried not to smile.

  The interview room they took me to was brightly lit and chilly cold. I sat there shivering for another hour, each breath a rattling wheeze. The psych guy came in and this time he didn’t have any notebooks or boards. He didn’t write anything down. He sat opposite me, regarded me with a neutral expression for a long while then said, “Someone just hacked the base AI. Beyond the little games you’ve been pissing about with, Luka. What happened? Get bored with playing and thought you’d have a go, right?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “What were you trying to do? Went in there to change your grades and got curious, huh? I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in.”

  I understood just fine.

  “Talk to me,” he said, his voice as cold as the room, “or you go back to solitary and you’ll stay there.”

  “I want in,” I blurted out.

  He gave a small smile and raised his eyebrows slightly. “You want in?”

  I was sitting with my arms hugged around me. “I know you’re testing us. You’re selecting the best kids for something. I want in.”

  “You want in,” he repeated again, a hard edge to his voice.

  I tried to sit up straighter and nodded, defiant.

  He laughed. Outright laughed. “No.” He stood up. “That boat has well and truly sailed, son.” He walked to the door and looked back at me. “You want to get selected? You’re gonna have to pull off something more bloody impressive than hacking into a set of exam scores.”

  They didn’t let me shower but they let me get dressed and took me out into the yard where everyone was teamed up with partners, sparring again, getting separated out like it was a competition. I couldn’t see Kat anywhere and that was almost a relief. I still felt rough as hell but I wasn’t going to go down so easily this time.

  I took out the first three I was set against, not easily but I fought for the win each time, more determined than they were because I knew what was at stake. I could see the instructors conferring each time I won one. After the third, they must have called inside because the psych guy came out and stood with them, watching as I got matched with Raine.

  I glanced around. Hilyer was watching from the other side of the yard. Raine started to circle round, smirking. I mirrored him. I needed to get selected. My whole world narrowed, lives mingling into an intense focus. Benjie had betrayed me, had betrayed all of us. This kid in front of me became Benjie. I could almost smell the smoke and fumes, hear the gunfire echoing. None of them had any idea who I was and where I was from. Instead of blocking the flashback, I used it, breathed it in, let it flow around me and through me and ran with it.

  Raine came at me. I sidestepped, ducked the blow he aimed at my head, grabbed his wrist and twisted, blocking him with my body and thrusting my elbow backwards into his guts as I smashed my head backwards into his face.

  He howled and folded, blood pouring from his nose.

  I shoved him away and backed off, keeping my head down but looking up at the guards and the instructors standing there judging us.

  Raine bellowed like an angry bull and charged. I charged right back. At the last moment, I dropped, sliding in the mud, my momentum carrying me forward through his legs, but I reached out, hooking his legs as I shot through. He pitched face first into the mud. I was on his back in a second, before he even had time to realise what was happening. I grabbed him round the neck in a chokehold, squeezing for all I was worth. He thrashed about but between the blood, mud and rain he was blind and in pain. Eventually his thrashing got weaker and weaker until he lay still. I turned his head to the side to make sure he didn’t drown then I stood.

  There was a distinct hush.

  I almost wanted someone else to come at me.

  One of the instructors swore and shouted for a medic, and added almost as an afterthought, “Anderton, go left.”

  Jem was there too, watching with a grin on her face. She laughed and mouthed to me, “Nice one.”

  It wasn’t. It was wrong and it wasn’t who I wanted to be.

  They kept us at it for another half hour. Eventually they yelled us to get inside. My last fight had been a tough one, fairly even and they’d had to call time. The other kid had seemed reluctant to fight me, unsurprisingly I guess, but he gave a good account of himself. I had blood streaming down my face from where he’d opened up the gash above my eye. He hadn’t ended up much better.

  I was last into the showers and like an idiot stood there for too long under the hot water, letting the blood wash away and some warmth ease back into my muscles. It took a while for the smoke and sounds of Kheris to fade from the darkest corners.

  I switched off the water and turned.

  Three of Raine’s buddies.

  All fully dressed and wearing boots.

  And holding batons.

  Chapter 21

  There was no sign of Hilyer. I tensed, trying to angle round but they all came at me at once. I didn’t even have time to shout out. I hit the floor, head cracking hard against the wet tiles, curling up against the blows and kicks, vision swimming. One of them got me round the neck, banged my head off the tiles again to get my attention and leaned close. “No one does that to us and gets away with it.”

  His fist punched into my face, right above my eye, his thumb pushing into my throat.

  “You little bastard, you’re dead, you hear me?”

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see past a swirling mist, and started to grey out. I’d been in trouble before but that was the first time it ever felt like it might have been for good.

  He hit me again then his weight lifted off me abruptly. I sucked in a breath and scrambled away from them.

  Hilyer had him against the wall, thumping him until the big kid slumped in defeat. I sat there on the wet floor, watching, breathing ragged, a trickle running down my face, red smeared on the tiles around me.

  The other two started to back away.

  Hilyer barked, “Stand still,” and they froze.

  The one Hil had pinned against the wall lifted his head, glowering at me.

  Hi
lyer punched him again and held him by the throat. “This is my block. You understand? No one gets beat on without my say so. You want to kick the crap out of him, you wait for me to tell you to do it. You understand?” He shoved the kid again until he nodded, mumbling something I didn’t quite hear.

  My ears were ringing.

  “What did you say?” Hil growled again.

  “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t happen again what?” Hil prompted.

  “It won’t happen again, Mister Hilyer Sir,” the boy winced.

  Hilyer hit him again and hauled him to the door by the scruff of his shirt. Jem slipped past them. Hilyer muttered something to her as they went out and she grinned, coming in and throwing me a towel.

  “Wow, you look like shit,” she said, standing with her arms folded, looking down at me.

  I could see two of her, blurring into one and back again. I got the towel around my waist and got to my feet, swaying.

  “I really am tired of getting knocked on my ass,” I said.

  She laughed. “That’s what you get for snitching around here.”

  Snitching? I’d been thinking they were pissed because I beat Raine in the yard.

  I felt like I was going to throw up. Or keel over. “What?”

  Jem laughed again. “He got thrown into solitary for cheating on the tests. Someone said you’d snitched on him.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Your word against theirs.”

  “Who said it?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I want to know who.”

  “Listen, sunshine, you’re cute, but seriously, don’t be so naive. Hil told you not to get caught alone. Listen to him. He might not be there next time Raine or his buddies decide to take a pop.”

  The way she said it, it felt like a threat. I was starting to wonder whose block it really was.

  Lunch was high energy ration packs again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten but my mouth and jaw were so sore, all I could manage was the soup. It tasted as bad as ever.