by C. G. Hatton
“Both of you come with me,” Pen said, checking the magazine in his sidearm. “And bring those bloody Hailstones of yours.”
‘Go with him,’ Duncan sent, private to LC and tight wire to Hil. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’
Pen looked up. “How long before the Bennies get back here?”
LC shrugged. “They’ll know,” he said quietly. No one had figured out exactly how the Bhenykhn communicated across jump space but they did.
Pen nodded. “Let’s make this fast then.”
Someone tried to give him his jacket and helmet as they walked out. He refused both, too hot and too tired to care. He didn’t have so much as a knife on him and he couldn’t bring himself to worry anymore. He kept his eyes fixed resolutely ahead. If he was going to trust anyone in all of this, it would be Pen. He’d known Pen since he’d joined the guild, since Mendhel had introduced them to his brother and Pen had given them a safe haven, a retreat, somewhere to go when they needed space from the guild.
He had a feeling Pen and Hil were talking to each other over the Sensons, nothing clear that he could hear in Pen’s mind. But then Pen had always been hard to read, ex-special forces, trained and stubborn as hell.
LC let his chin drop, the rain chilling the skin at the back of his neck, soaking the bandage, dripping down between his shoulder blades. He blinked raindrops out of his eyelashes and looked across at Hil, walking on the other side of Pen. They should have gone to Pen together when it first happened. When they’d been blackmailed and Mendhel was killed. If they had, he wouldn’t have contracted the virus, wouldn’t have met Sean and he wouldn’t have run into Gallagher and found out about Erica. Wouldn’t have…
The sound of rubble being dislodged up ahead snapped him back to now. Pen gestured them to wait. Yani was walking next to Hil, more of Pen’s guys either side of them. They hung back as they approached the crossroads McKenzie had stipulated for the meet.
Debris littered the road, chunks of masonry from the buildings, wreckage from the crashed ship.
“You two, stay with me,” Pen murmured and walked forward.
LC followed, aware that Hilyer’s Hailstones weren’t with them anymore. Hil was twirling a knife in his hand, water flicking off the tip of the blade with each movement. It was Mendhel’s knife he realised with a pang. He’d lost his with the rest of his stuff on the Alsatia, the one place he’d thought was safe enough to leave the only things he had of Mendhel and Charlie. And they were gone.
He blinked, flexing his hands, trying to focus. There were glints flashing in the windows of buildings up ahead. He could sense life signs surrounding them, combat ready, wary, no one trusting that this wasn’t a ruse.
Pen stopped in the centre of the street. Wide open if anyone wanted to take a pot shot at him, his stance controlled, intense but strangely calming.
McKenzie stepped out of a doorway across the intersection and walked forward, straightening his suit jacket, entourage limited to two thugs either side. The last time LC had seen this jerk, McKenzie had been pointing a gun in his face before Sean had floored the asshole.
“Well, well,” the asshole said, as slick and dapper as always, stopping across from them. “The big man, Pen Halligan himself. I’d heard rumours you were alive. You seem to have sold your soul to the Thieves’ Guild, Pen. I never would have thought it.”
Pen smiled. “There is no guild anymore, Dane. No guilds, no corporations, no federations. You don’t seem to have got the memo. We have a new enemy.”
“Nothing ever really changes, Pen.” McKenzie looked to Hil then LC. “I’m impressed. You seem to be delivering up my demands. Looking a little rough around the edges there, Anderton.” The slick son of a bitch shook his head. “I’ve been hearing all about you, since your little adventure with Sean on Aston. I must admit, I was surprised you both fell for that so easily. Too trusting, Luka.”
It took everything he had not to react, heart thudding a dull rhythm.
McKenzie didn’t let up. “Seanie made a big mistake choosing you over me. I take it you heard what that misplaced loyalty cost her.”
LC just stared, keeping his expression neutral.
The bounty hunter smirked and gestured to his goons, clicking his fingers.
They stepped forward.
Pen laughed. “Not so fast.”
Yani and one of Pen’s other guys stepped forward.
No one had a gun out yet, not here in the street.
LC kept his stance casual, shoulders down, ready but not tense. The rain was getting heavier. It felt like he was standing in a cold shower, the downpour washing away the heat and pain, head clearing somewhat. He stared at McKenzie, starting to look into his mind.
McKenzie was trying not to scowl, staring down Pen like it was a match of egos, alpha against alpha. “What do you want?” the bounty hunter asked, having to work hard to keep his composure.
“You don’t have enough firepower to take us out,” Pen said simply. “We call in our people, we’re out of here and you can’t stop us. I want to know what you have to say first.”
McKenzie spread his arms. “You want to know where NG is?”
LC split his attention, sending to Duncan, ‘Are you getting anything?’
‘Not a lot,’ he replied.
So it was down to him.
It was very clear that McKenzie still felt like he was holding the winning hand. “You want to know where NG is, you listen to me and you do what I want.”
Pen laughed again, harsh, and he raised his voice. “NG can rot in hell for all I care.”
LC blinked raindrops, wet trails streaming down his face. Christ, that statement was difficult to hear, as genuine and bitter as it was. It hung in the air between them, battered by the torrential rain, taking the steam out of McKenzie’s bravado and dissolving any bargaining power he thought he had.
“But,” Pen said, ominous, voice low but carrying, “I do care about this pair of reprobates.” He took a step forward. “And I care about making Zang Tsu Po pay for what he did to my brother. But you know what? I care about surviving. Because, Dane, these bastards…?” He gestured generally upwards. “They don’t care what colours we wear, or what logos or badges we have pinned to our chests. Whatever Zang is paying, what the hell does it matter if you’re dead meat strung on a spit over a fire.”
LC flashed back to the prisoner pens. He didn’t dampen it, didn’t try to subdue the intensity of the pain, the stench, the agony of the poison and the laughter of the Bhenykhn as the human prisoners screamed.
McKenzie recoiled, swearing, “What the fuck?”
LC dropped it, chest heaving, chin down but defiant, standing there in the rain. He wanted to fire a blast into McKenzie’s brain and he could feel the tingle at the end of his fingertips, almost crackling in the downpour.
He’d shared it with everyone out there in the street, and McKenzie’s heavies all backed off a step, shaking their heads like they could shake it out of their memory.
“Work with us,” Pen said. “We can’t be fighting each other if we’re to have any chance against these bastards.”
It was easy to see how he’d controlled such a massive criminal organisation. He didn’t rule by fear or oppression. He was way more powerful than that. But he was still a big man and intimidating as fuck.
McKenzie laughed. “No, I don’t think so. Your time is up, Pen.”
LC looked up. Time slowed. He went deep and took everything he could, raking through the bastard’s mind.
The bounty hunter had no idea what was happening, still thought he had the drop and raised his hand.
His goons moved, Pen’s guys moved, guns snapped out of holsters and the Hailstones cut through the rain. Every one of McKenzie’s snipers hit the dirt, his entourage splashing face down into the road, and the rest of his thugs dropping like flies.
LC didn’t stop, couldn’t stop as the anger rose like a tidal wave. McKenzie had set them up on Aston. Had almost got Sean killed. Had given the
order to the snipers to shoot at them here. Near as dammit killed Sienna himself. He felt the energy build, taking more and more, ripping out memories and thoughts, and dragging up age old secrets and high clearance intel from the dregs of the bastard’s brain. Taking everything.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop.
Pen moved and had McKenzie round the throat, other fist clenched and arm moving for the punch.
The son of a bitch had killed Sienna.
The heat of the connection hit critical.
He’d killed Sienna.
LC couldn’t disengage. He scraped out the last scraps of memory. Ruthless and relentless. Couldn’t stop. Tore out the guy’s soul as if he was tearing out his heart, and for the first time ever, instead of recoiling from the blast of black void that exploded between them, he revelled in it.
McKenzie’s eyes rolled back. His body sagged in Pen’s grip.
LC backed away, dropping back into the cold rain with a shock, chest heaving.
Pen let the body fall to the ground, shaking free as if disgusted, and turned. “Did you get what we need?”
LC squinted back, not sure he could speak out loud coherently enough to make sense. He nodded.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” Pen slapped Hil on the back. “Nice work.”
It took a while for the extraction teams and medevac ships to move in. LC sat on a chunk of fallen wall out in the street, in the rain, eyes closed, while Pen and Duncan organised clean up crews, marshalling and restraining the rogue Zang and UM mercenaries, and gathering the wounded.
LC zoned out, energy low, temperature high and head pounding.
He didn’t realise Hal Duncan had come and sat next to him until the big marine nudged him in the arm and sent, ‘You did alright.’
‘I killed him.’
His thoughts sounded weird, like they belonged to someone else.
‘Pen was going to if you hadn’t.’
That didn’t help.
‘You get anything from him about NG?’
‘No. He didn’t know. It was all bullshit. I’m sorry, I should have known he was here.’
‘You should have been told about Olivia.’
LC sucked in a shaky breath. He didn’t want to think about Olivia.
‘You need to speak to Sean, buddy.’
He didn’t even know where Sean was. She was alive. She was okay. Beyond that it was better that she wasn’t anywhere near him.
Duncan wasn’t impressed. ‘Don’t make this worse than it is. She was trying to tell you. She didn’t lie to you on Aston if that’s what you’re thinking. She didn’t find out until later.’
He didn’t care.
‘You should care.’
LC shut down his thoughts. He didn’t want to care, because if he cared, he’d lose her.
‘That’s bullshit,’ Duncan sent, ‘and if that’s what you really believe, you’re even more screwed up than I thought.’
LC shook his head slightly, biting his lip so hard he could taste blood. ‘I can’t. I can’t be with her, Hal.’ He had a cold spot twisting in the pit of his stomach. ‘I can’t think straight when she’s around. How am I supposed to do any of this when…?’
‘You just do. You find a way. Bud, if you meet someone like that, I don’t know if you have any choice.’
LC was hit by a memory, nothing Duncan wanted to share and the big man was shielding his mind as effectively as it was possible to do. And LC still saw it. Still saw and felt the pain of the loss. Hal had lost someone really close.
Shit.
He wanted to ask who but he buttoned it. He opened one eye instead, squinting, and sent back, ‘So understand me when I say Sean’s safer if she’s not around me.’
‘There is nowhere safe,’ Duncan thought. ‘Don’t push her away. Don’t waste a minute. Especially now when all this is going on.’
Someone yelled and the noise of drop ships descending began to echo around the city streets.
Duncan stood and looked down at him. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to be scared of anything.’
LC raised his eyes. And therein lay the problem.
‘She’s terrified of losing you too, buddy. Just don’t be an idiot.’
LC pulled a face. Yeah, too many people had told him that before and he’d never been able to be any different. And no, it wasn’t that he was never scared, he was always scared shitless, but he’d never let it stop him.
‘So why let it stop you now?’
LC opened his mouth to argue back and shut it without saying anything. He’d never let being scared stop him doing anything before because most of the time he was doing it before he even thought about how dangerous, or stupid, or crazy it was. Now? Now he was tired, that was all. And he was thinking too much. He’d screwed up and got NG captured. He’d lost Sienna. And he couldn’t risk screwing up and losing Sean.
‘Listen to me,’ Duncan sent, ‘I know why she was doing it, but you need to stop using the shit Sienna was giving you. That’d be a start.’
‘It helps.’
‘No, it doesn’t. Don’t leave it until it’s too late before you realise that.’
LC bit his lip harder. He didn’t want to argue, shivered instead and said out loud, “Zang is dead.”
“What?”
“Zang. Croaked it. They’re hiding it but McKenzie knew. He was working for Anya Halligan. She’s pulling the strings. That’s why they want me alive. She wants me. It’s her. It has been the whole time. It doesn’t have anything to do with Zang wanting the virus. Zang didn’t use her. She’s been behind all of it. Aston, Olivia, Mendhel… She’s been manipulating UM and Zang all along. It’s all been Anya, Hal. Pen needs to know.”
He stopped as a team of medics ran up.
‘This is screwed up shit,’ Duncan thought at him. ‘Be careful who you say this to.’
LC nodded as the big man turned away.
“He got shot in the head,” Duncan said to the medic as he went. “Don’t let him tell you he’s okay.”
He didn’t try to. He sat there as they checked him over, fussing at the black tendrils that had extended down his left arm to his elbow. He hadn’t noticed. He flexed his hand when they asked him to and sat quietly as they checked his stats. He felt Sean watching before he looked up to see her there. He wanted to speak to her and he wanted to run away in equal measure. It was more paralysing than the Bhenykhn toxin.
“Let’s get you out of here,” one of the medics said, taking his arm.
He nodded, stood and took one step forward, opening his mouth to speak to Sean, to say he needed to talk.
He didn’t get to say it.
The Bhenykhn hive descended en masse and it was all he could do not to scream.
Chapter 18
“He learned to kill.” The Man said it as if it was dire, a dreadful thing.
Sebastian stood, disgusted, and walked across to a weapons cabinet, huge rifles racked in rows. Some had been abandoned when they’d attacked, others he’d scavenged, making quite a collection of weapons. “You’re surprised that your precious little protégé learned to kill?” His tone was incredulous. “How could you expect them to fight the Bhenykhn, fight the human factions that find it acceptable to side with an alien horde against them, fight against their own people that betray them, without learning to kill?”
“It is one thing to fight. It is another entirely to kill.”
He took out a rifle and turned. “Yes.” Sebastian was scathing. “It’s not that Anderton learned to kill, he’s done it before, out of necessity. But when he killed Dane McKenzie, he learned to enjoy it. He’s no better than the rest of them.”
•
Sean grabbed his other arm and they ran, shouts all round. By the time they got to the drop ships and took off, the entire airspace was filled with alien fighters blasting through the hulls of any human ships that were trying to leave.
LC hugged his arms around his ribs, holding the harness with fingers that wer
e numb. The guild had sent another MOV with the recovery teams, a fighter squadron and four TCs. The AIs and the pilots were talking over the comms, open comms like they wanted everyone to hear or didn’t care that everyone could hear. The MOV was shifting position to come for them, closer than it should risk, faster than was safe, and coordinating with the Thunderclouds to cover their asses. He could hear a countdown, a string of running, overlapping commentaries, munitions inventories, weapons capacities.
“Rail gun two zero nine, two zero eight… shields twenty percent… primary capacitors at thirty five… watch your ass there, Iona…”
He could see the main cockpit screens from where he was sitting, flashes of light and scrolling numbers. The main deck dropped into emergency lighting, blue, as the ship banked hard and rolled, sending his stomach lurching.
He heard someone say over the comm, “Watch your back, Iona.”
“Yeah, I got it. RG one on empty. Dammit… Okay, yeah, Fallon, I see your fifty and raise you two mill. MOV, any chance of a clear zone here?”
One of them laughed. “Yeah, I’ll see your two mill, and raise you five. Shields at ten. We need that clear zone, MOV. Whatcha got, Hilbud?”
LC cringed.
“RG five empty.”
“I’m down to four. Hilbud, no way, you gotta do better than that.”
It was the Thunderclouds he could hear. A couple of pilots in the mix, but mostly the TCs joking about the stakes of fuck knows what.
His stomach churned. He’d been on the wrong end of an AI sense of humour, too many times to count. It set his nerves on edge at the best of times. He glanced at Hilyer, strapped firmly into the co-pilot’s seat, laughing and swearing in equal mix.