by C. G. Hatton
Medical weren’t prepared to clear him at all. They ran another barrage of tests then told him to lie down and wait.
He sat on the edge of the bunk, head pounding, shirt bunched in his lap. The black mottled tendrils extending out from the puckered scar in his side were as dark as ever.
He’d failed the pulmonary function tests, he knew that much. His cardiovascular results had been crap and he’d flaked before they could get an accurate measure of stimuli reaction response. He’d lost track of the rest. They had wires attached to his chest, monitoring his stats, and from what he was picking up they were going haywire, blood pressure off the chart, the beeping tracking his heartbeat so erratic it was setting his nerves on edge.
He sat there, eyes closed, jittery as hell, tapping the fingers of one hand on the table, and trying to figure out how he could escape.
“You are standing out like a sore thumb.” Duncan was standing there, arms folded, looking less impressed than the medic.
LC looked up. Christ, he hadn’t even noticed the big man was there until he spoke.
Duncan shook his head slightly. “Come with me.”
The medic nodded.
The beeping stopped as LC pulled the wires free. He slid off the table and shrugged back into his shirt.
“You’re not cleared for active duty,” the medic said as he walked out.
Yeah, whatever.
Duncan led him down to one of the labs. They had it cleared, set up with a gym mat. Two shaman staffs were leaning against the wall.
LC walked in and stopped, hesitant.
It was a lab with an observation room up high behind blast proof glass. He couldn’t see who was watching and he didn’t bother looking.
Duncan picked up one of the staffs and walked to the centre of the mat. He twirled it once. “Fight me.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
LC stared at the other staff. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“You’re not going to hurt anyone. Come on.”
He didn’t want to trash the lab again.
“LC…”
He reached for it, taking it in his hand as if it might explode just at his touch, and stood there, sideways on, kind of slouching in a half fighting stance at the edge of the mat.
He felt the staff heat up slightly but nothing exploded out violently, just a warm buzz inside his mind.
There were targets set all around the walls.
He couldn’t keep the frustration from his voice. “What do you want me to do? Blast stuff or hide?”
“Both. You want to go after NG, you need to be able to do both.”
“At the same time?”
“That would be impressive.” Duncan twirled the staff again. “How about you just fight me for a start?”
The big marine was almost as much of a black hole as Hilyer and Elliott, and that was saying something.
LC walked forward, circling, twisting the staff into a perfectly balanced one-handed grip, balancing his weight and trying to ignore the headache.
He had no idea how the staff was going to react. He spun it, grasped it in both hands and attacked.
His ears were ringing.
Duncan leaned in and offered his hand. “Again.”
LC got to his feet, looking up, breathing through the pain. He backed off and brought the staff round.
“Think this time,” Duncan said.
“I thought I was,” he muttered.
“You want to beat the Bhenykhn?”
He stared. Of course he did.
“You want to be invisible to them?”
Of course he did. He just didn’t think it was possible.
Duncan pointed the staff at him. “And that’s why you can’t do it.”
Someone had joked once, a long time ago, that the best way to get him to do anything was to say he couldn’t, or shouldn’t. NG had known it, right back at the beginning, had given him Nikolai Andreyev’s file within days of his arriving on the Alsatia and told him, there you go, that’s the guy to beat, no one has in generations, half his records are nigh on impossible, and you probably don’t stand a chance…
He hadn’t just beaten Andreyev’s records, NG’s records, he’d annihilated them. And he wasn’t going to let NG down now.
He stared at Duncan standing across the mat from him and shut his mind down cold. He could feel the energy all around him. He whirled the staff, flipped head over heels in a twisting spin and landed, taking out four targets with pinpoint accurate blasts and delivering a blow to Duncan’s back that sent the big man reeling.
LC stepped back and planted his feet, staff still combat ready and balanced in both hands, chest breathing in and out in slow controlled motion.
Duncan turned and bowed. He had half a smile twitching at his mouth. “Better,” he said. “You do that, we might have more than half a chance of surviving this.”
Another week of climbing the walls, playing with energy and running on a damned treadmill and they ran out of time. It was the medic with freckles who was sent in to check him out, to see if he was mission-ready because they needed him in the field.
She ran him through a bunch of tests, seemed happier with his stats and finally got him to sit on the bunk.
“Well done,” she said, “you’re controlling the drain.”
He didn’t respond. It wasn’t exactly anything he had conscious control over.
“You still don’t remember my name, do you?”
He didn’t. It was weirdly liberating not to remember everything all the time.
She picked up a clipboard. “So how are you doing with the… you know, with the…” She whirled a finger in the air.
LC was holding a beer in one hand, resting the cool bottle on his knee. He raised his other hand, one finger extended, and concentrated, half-heartedly, wrapping the energy round and round until it ignited into a tiny ball of fire from its tip.
He blinked and it dissipated in a puff of smoke.
She nodded. “Nice control. But that won’t take out a Bhenykhn.”
He took a sip of the beer. “You want to see what I can do now?”
She smiled. “I know what you can do now. I’ve been watching. So has everyone else. But good. That’s the attitude we were waiting for. You’re cleared. You have a rescue mission. They’re waiting for you in the war room.” She stood up to leave. “And if you want to know, it’s Harley.” She winked at him and left.
LC walked into the war room and sat down. Someone put a cup of tea in front of him. He needed something stronger than tea but he didn’t object.
Sean sent a gentle, ‘Hey,’ private, wanting to know he was okay, and not totally convinced he should be there.
Evelyn gave him a nod then turned to Hilyer. “What did you find?”
Hil pushed forward a board. “Nothing. Not even a recon vessel. Intel’s all on there. It matches the mayday message we got. Twenty survivors holed up in a vault deep underground, life support low, power levels low, but twenty life signs. It matches. Everything but the Bhenykhn. They are long gone.”
LC nudged the board in front of him. “Who is it?” he murmured.
The name flashed on the screen at the same time as Evelyn said it.
“Eloise Drake.”
“They’ve got limited comms,” Hil said, “but it’s them. Drake and Itomara. They’re trapped. They hid from the Bennies in their vault and the release system got fried during the attack. Drake wasn’t impressed that we were taking so long. She said LC had better be in the rescue team and I don’t think she was joking.”
LC picked up his cup, hand shaking. It was no secret that he didn’t like Drake. Sean was staring at him. She didn’t know why but she was curious and not far from guessing.
“She said they have some kind of shield generator that hid their life signs,” Hil was saying.
And that was the clincher.
“Apparently, they’ve been working on it for some time. We’re welcome to it if we can get
to it. And get them out.”
LC took a sip of the hot tea. It burned his throat with a sting that was more than the heat of the water. It was just liquor, some kind of brandy, but it helped, soothing, warming.
‘Are you good to go?’ Duncan sent to him as privately as they could make it.
LC nodded. As much to himself as anyone else. ‘Where’s Pen?’
‘Gone to Kheris with Olivia.’
‘She’s not…’
‘She is now.’
He spun the teacup on its base. ‘Any word from Martinez?’
‘Not yet. Buddy, stay close on this one, you hear?’
LC nodded again. He just wanted to get back out there, itching to do something.
‘Good,’ Duncan thought. ‘Because after this, we’re going to do whatever it takes to find NG.’
They talked for another five minutes then Evelyn called it. They mobilised to the MOV and made jump.
The palace of the Order’s High Guard was built into the side of a mountain on an uncharted planet deep within a system on the edge of the Between. Hellish interference system-wide from a load of asteroid belts and solar storms, no other even near viable worlds and right on the margin of habitability itself. It was no wonder the guild had never found it.
They landed on a snow-covered expanse of terraced gardens, perched up high, in the midst of a blizzard. LC stepped out onto Edinburgh’s ramp, blinking from the onslaught of the cold wind. He was wearing cold weather gear but he had the jacket open, kit belt fastened round his waist over the top of it. He narrowed his eyes, not just against the sting of the icy wind. It was tainted with an acrid edge of smoke and decay. He pulled his scarf up over his nose and cheeks, even the driving snowstorm unable to disguise the dank leafmold stench of the Bhenykhn that was wafting in the air.
He took another two steps and stopped. Cold.
Sean gave him a nudge.
‘Are you okay?’ she thought.
‘No.’ His heart was racing. He looked at her. ‘There’s no one alive down there.’
Chapter 23
“Eloise Drake.” Sebastian shook his head, sat and started field stripping the rifle. “Why do I get the feeling that name is more significant than it should be? She’s a serpent, a dire individual.” He looked up, narrowing his eyes. “You’ve encountered her before… Why the charade of sending Nikolai to hunt down the Order when you knew exactly where to find Eloise Drake?”
From his demeanour, he half expected the Man to stand and walk out. But instead there was just careful consideration.
Finally the Man said, “She serves her purpose. No more, no less.”
“And what purpose do I serve? Did Nikolai, ever? You’ve used us all. I’m very curious as to what you are really doing. You set the guild up against the Order… a mysterious organisation that itself was pulling the strings of conflict and war between the Earth Empire and the Wintran Coalition. There is much profit to be made from war. You set yourself up to oppose them. You…” He was regarding this being sitting across from him with increasing suspicion. Not just his tormentor any more. Not just his jailor. This was something else. “You always – always – advocated balance in the name of evolution and progress to prepare the human race…” He shook his head. “It’s all been a lie.”
•
He could hear the others talking through their Sensons, second-hand, muffled, echoing through a mixture of thoughts and emotions, coordinating the mission with brusque efficiency.
“Negative,” he overheard Duncan send. The big marine was moving out with the Security detail, everyone hustling into formation, apprehension high, guns up, as he sent instructions through the implant to the forward teams. He glanced back over, with a curt, ‘LC?’
‘There’s no one down there,’ he thought, hugging his arms around his ribs, shoulders hunched.
Sean touched his arm. She couldn’t sense them but she wouldn’t have expected to, thinking it was too far. And she was thinking that he wasn’t in any way on form enough to be so sure.
Duncan sent a fast command to the forward team to stand by and switched to a private link, sending clearly, “Itomara-san, this is Hal Duncan. Sir, we’re moving in. Please confirm status.”
LC stared as he listened in to the reply that came back through the comms link. It sounded like Itomara’s gentle, lilting voice, giving a steady sitrep with that firm measure of reverence the old guy had. But it wasn’t Itomara. LC would have staked his life on it.
He clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling his hands shake in the thick gloves. Even at this distance, even if they were buried deep underground, he should have been able to sense them.
‘Tell Drake I’m asking if she still has that beachfront apartment,’ he sent, nausea mixing with the unease in his stomach.
Duncan frowned but he sent it, and LC overheard the dry response, “Tell that darling boy he knows fine well it’s a villa and yes, my offer still stands.”
He almost balked, hearing it, and it didn’t convince him outright but what the hell was he supposed to do? They needed to get into the vault anyway.
He overheard her add, “Assuming the damned aliens haven’t overrun that place as well.”
Sean was looking at him, dismayed.
“We need to get in there, people,” Duncan sent, turning away, sending a constrained, ‘LC, ready your bloody weapon for Christ’s sake and get your ass moving.’
He walked off the ramp into a snow pile, boots crunching. He had a numb ache of loss echoing around his mind as they moved out, past snow-covered statues, delicate stone fingers reaching as they passed, other massive shapes that looked hideously like abandoned pods buried in the snow.
The low decorative walls lining the paths had been partially destroyed. Hilyer was kicking out at a pile of fallen masonry, knocking off snow, the intricate stonework beneath shot up with bullet holes, marred with burns. He looked up, catching LC’s eye with a slight shake of his head.
Hal Duncan gestured them to speed it up, waving LC to get closer.
The other units were spreading out, circling round to cover other possible ingress locations.
LC was scanning ahead, only half his attention on where he was.
Duncan grabbed the rifle sling as he approached, pulling it round and hissing into his mind, ‘Ready your weapon.’
He took hold of the rifle as it swung round off his back but he didn’t raise it.
He still couldn’t sense any life signs in the palace, at surface level or deeper.
Sean was at his side. “You want to abort?” she said.
“No,” he muttered. “I want to find out why.”
They saw the first bodies as they entered the palace, pushing open huge doors and walking into a grand entrance hall, a flurry of snow blustering in with them. They were greeted by a tang of smoke mixed with decay, dried blood spattered across the rich rugs, pooled and frozen on the marble flagstones. There was no power, the inside dank and cold. The fires had burned out but the walls were charred, the remains of tapestries hanging in blackened threads.
He’d seen the opulence of the High Guard of the Old Order before. In Maeve Rodan’s chambers on Poule. It was weirdly the same. Only there it had been one level, way down on a scuzz bucket mining colony facility that was mostly rusted decaying superstructure. Here, it was a whole freaking palace. A museum of human decadence. Now a mausoleum.
It was trashed.
LC walked forward, stomach tying in knots.
There was something not right. More than just the lack of life signs.
He glanced back. All the others were behind him, fanning out, weapons up, everyone else with night vision kit. Hilyer’s Hailstones were racing ahead.
They were taking it carefully, assuming there would be traps. Left behind by the Bhenykhn or in situ from the Order and its last ditch defences.
It was bizarre to be inside the impenetrable, obscenely wealth-ridden domain of the High Guard. There was a sense of weight in the air that was
nothing to do with the Bhenykhn attack. It was oppressive. Arrogant.
One of the advance teams called him forward and he stepped up to heavy double doors, pushing them open ahead of himself with a simple nudge, no effort, as though it was nothing, and walking into some kind of banquet or conference room. More bodies lay strewn on the floor. The whole room was steeped in old and new. A mix of high tech screens and displays melded with huge arcane maps and oil paintings, all charred, screens smashed, glass frames shattered, gold sconces broken. The wooden table was soaked in blood, massive claw marks gouged into its surface.
This was where a select few had manipulated the human race for millennia. The Wintran corporations and the Earth Empire might have squabbled and fought over their territories and riches, but this was where the strings had been pulled, where the pieces had been moved across the board.
LC wandered up and traced his hand over the polished wooden surface of that age-old table, looking at the upended seats, the bodies missing limbs, mutilated, torn apart. This was where the Man had been so desperate to infiltrate. And it was gone, destroyed. As much as the Alsatia had been.
He drew in a shallow breath, hardly aware that he’d been holding it.
He took his gloves off, leaving them on the table, and went over to a terminal.
It was dead. Not even a spark.
Hil moved up next to him. “NG would have had a field day here,” he said, prodding at the terminal and shoving it away.
“Are you getting anything?” LC asked, not wanting to, not wanting to know what the hell it was that Hil even did.
“Sensors pick up twenty life signs.”
“What about the AI?”
Hil shook his head. “The AI running the place is burned out. Whatever happened, she’s closed right down. I can’t get any sense out of her.” He looked up. “How do you want to do this?”
LC raised his eyes. Christ, they’d hardly ever worked together. Never before the lab, or at least not since Redemption. Except that one time. Since all this had kicked off? A couple of times. Usually in the chaos of a full-on combat situation like the command ship. That one time on Io, but NG and Quinn had been calling the shots on that.