by C. G. Hatton
He felt sick.
He’d failed.
The shaman staff in his hand was fried, dead. He stood there, staring, clutching it in his hand, the fight swirling away and fading behind him. All for nothing. He’d lost Charlie, Mendhel and now NG. Three for three. And there’d been nothing he could do. Again.
He tossed the staff into the rubble and let his shoulders drop, chest cold, heart thumping with a dull thud. Numb.
Hil yelled at him again, grabbed a handful of his shirt and gave him no choice but to move. The ship descended with a deafening roar and threw down a ramp, lurching and struggling to maintain lift within a space that wasn’t big enough for it, not stable enough for any sane pilot to be attempting such an insane manoeuvre and in danger of collapsing on them all at any minute.
Hil shoved him onto the ramp. There was no one on board. No crew. No extraction agents to grab them and haul them in. No grunts to cover them as they ran inside amidst a hail of gunfire, flashes of lightning flaring and chunks of metal crashing past as level after level collapsed all around them.
Hil pushed him into a seat, yelled, “Go,” to whoever the hell was flying and the ship lurched upwards, vertical lift, vicious, nasty, no consideration for any humans on board, sending his senses spinning into a grey swirl.
A vague awareness filtered in, of something trickling down his cheek and dripping onto his arm. The ship rolled and lurched, impacts pounding against its hull. Proximity alarms were screaming, warning klaxons blaring, emergency lighting flashing and oxygen so low he couldn’t see straight.
He focused on breathing, shutting out the Bhenykhn hive, nothing else he could do, and listening in as Hilyer talked, calm and steady, over the comms. They had guild with them. He recognised a couple of the names. The Thunderclouds. Extraction teams. Security units. Imperial dreadnoughts, Wintran capital ships, Pirate cruisers. Evelyn had sent everything they had to cover their escape. They were all expecting them to have NG.
When Martinez nudged gently against his mind, he almost flipped.
‘Luka…?’
‘We lost him.’ He had a lump in his throat, a knot pushing against his chest. ‘Angel, he’s still alive. But we lost him. He was right there and we lost him. We couldn’t get to him.’
Whatever ship she was in, she might as well have been sitting right next to him, the depth of despair that hit was so intense.
‘But he’s alive?’
‘The Bhenykhn took him. There was nothing we could do.’ It sounded pathetic.
She hesitated, then sent, ‘Is he okay?’ as if she knew the answer was going to be bad.
He felt the intrusion in his mind before he could stop her, felt the hit of horror as she saw the raw memory of Anya dragging the knife across NG’s throat, a split second flash of blood spilling, before she withdrew, repelled, shellshocked.
‘Angel,’ he thought quickly, desperately, ‘I didn’t feel him die. He was still alive. Angel…’
The ship took another direct hit and went into a spin so bad he cracked his head against something and nearly passed out again.
She didn’t reply straight away when he managed to get himself together enough to send, ‘Angel…?’ and he thought she’d gone, thought for a moment of dread that she’d been killed, they were taking losses, he could feel it, feel every one, but she nudged again with a soft, ‘Just get home safe, LC. We’ll see you there.’
He curled in on himself, hugged his arm tight, and faded out.
When he managed to stir some kind of conscious thought into order again, they were flying steadily, Hilyer sitting with his feet up on the main console, saying, “No shit. Screw that.”
The lighting was soft, air cool but not too cold. He had no idea who Hil was talking to, no real desire to stay awake and started to fade under again except he heard Elliott say, “At least now we know,” and a hit of adrenaline popped in his chest and made his heart race.
Hil said, “How the hell do I tell him that?”
LC kept his eyes closed. Tell who what?
He missed what Elliott said but heard Hil’s reply. “No, Christ, no. I’ll figure it out. I can’t do that to LC. I’ll tell him but I can’t say that.”
He couldn’t help sitting up at that, stomach cold, pain shooting up his arm as he moved. “Say what?”
Hil turned. “Hey. Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk later. You want water or something?”
He wanted to know what was going on.
“Something,” he said.
Hil smiled, stood and made his way back over, sitting opposite.
LC rubbed his left hand across his forehead, smearing it red.
Hil was staring at him. “You okay? You need anything? We don’t have any medical supplies. Sorry.”
He shook his head. “Where’s Elliott?”
Hilyer gave a vague gesture. “This is kinda his ship. He stole it from Spearhead.”
That explained why there was no crew. And no medical supplies.
“We’re clear of the Bennies,” Hil said, awkward as if he didn’t know how much to say. “Just waiting to get details of an RV.”
“Hil, why did Elliott want us to go to Earth?”
He glanced back over, like he was expecting the bastard AI to appear. “We’ll talk later. Once we get back to the Man’s ship.”
“No. Hil, we need to talk now. What’s going on? What can’t you tell me?” His stomach was twisting into knots, head hurting beyond the pain from the gash in his forehead. He felt the pressure increase.
“No, Elliott, wait.” Hil looked distraught, muscle twitching in his jaw. He leaned forward and said quietly, intently, “There was another AI on Earth. Another like the Seven. We rescued her.”
“We went there for NG.”
It sounded hollow.
Hil just looked at him with those dark eyes that weren’t quite human anymore.
LC stared back. “You used me to get in.” He could feel his heart beating in his stomach. “How far back? Don’t tell me you were in on Elliott’s plan to trap Spearhead?” He tried to unfasten the harness, fumbling at it with one hand, fingers slick with blood. “Elliott, where the hell are you?” He couldn’t get free.
“LC…”
“Where the hell is Elliott?” He sent a blast of energy into the buckle, sparks flying, shrugging out of it and standing. “How far back does this go? Elliott, get out here and tell me you didn’t track me out to Sten’s World.” He turned to Hil. “I should have known there was no way that bastard just happened to appear at the same time I needed to escape.”
Hil stood. “LC, sit the hell down. This is bigger than us.”
His head was spinning. “Bigger than NG?” His words sounded distant, throat thick. “Hil, we need NG. We can’t fight the Bhenykhn without him.” And he was suddenly not even sure that ‘we’ included Hilyer anymore.
“I saw how many of them there are, Hil. When I was connected to the hive. There are whole galaxies swarming with them.” His voice cracked. “It’s endless. If we kill them all then more will just come. And more after them.”
“So what are you saying? We just give up?” There was an edge of disbelief in Hil’s voice, belligerence, even the way he was standing was confrontational.
“No.” LC sat back down, resigned. “We keep fighting. Of course we keep fighting because we don’t know how to quit. But if we’re ever to have any chance of turning this tide, I’m saying we need NG.”
Hil’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you think I know that? C’mon, LC. This is me. This is still me. I came back for you, for Christ’s sake. You and NG.”
“We shouldn’t have left him there.”
“We didn’t have much choice.” Hil frowned as if he’d just realised something. “You know, that big Bhenykhn was keeping him alive,” he said. “That energy shield wasn’t to keep us out, it was to keep NG safe when the facility was attacked. You didn’t see, did you?”
LC was trembling. “See what?”
The comm suddenly
burst into life, human voices reeling off security protocols and coordinates. Guild. A route home.
Hilyer sat down. “It must have been another new species we haven’t seen before.”
LC sank back into the seat, both of them staring at each other. “Why do you say that?”
“Just I’ve never seen a Bhenykhn with blue eyes before,” Hil said. “Why would a Bhenykhn have blue eyes?”
•
Sebastian stood, towering as tall as the Man, the muscles and sinews of the immense Bhenykhn body flexing as he balanced his stance. It had taken some getting used to but bloody hell, it was powerful.
“Nothing can beat the Bhenykhn but the Bhenykhn,” he said again. “They want a foe worth fighting? I’ll give them a foe worth fighting. I will set Bhenykhn against Bhenykhn and they will revel in it. They might be able to counter every weapon you build, counter every strain of mutated virus you develop, thwart every hybrid ability of energy manipulation you can breed… But no, they have no chance against the pure self-destructive, hateful, paranoid, insidious nature of the human race when it is let loose to rampage amongst their own kind.” He hefted the alien rifle in his alien arms. “I’ll give you your civil war, old man, and when that war is over, when the last Bhenykhn lies dead at my feet, I’m coming for you. And you will pay for everything you’ve done.”
•
Also available from C.G. Hatton in paperback and eBook:
Residual Belligerence
(Thieves’ Guild: Book One)
Blatant Disregard
(Thieves’ Guild: Book Two)
Harsh Realities
(Thieves’ Guild: Book Three)
Wilful Defiance
(Thieves’ Guild: Book Four)
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Darkest Fears
(Thieves’ Guild Book Five: Bhenykhn Wars 1)
•
Kheris Burning
(Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book One)
Beyond Redemption
(Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book Two)
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Twitter: @cghatton
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