Defying Winter (Thieves' Guild Origins: LC Book Three): A Fast Paced Scifi Action Adventure Novel

by C. G. Hatton

  Imogen strained her neck again, looking directly upwards as if she was seeing the aurora for the first time before twisting to look me in the eye. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She laughed lightly. “I thought you’d launch into some dry and deeply academic physics explanation.”

  I whispered in her ear, “Magnets…”

  She nudged me in the ribs and smiled, cheeks glowing pink. “We, Felix Dennison,” she said, leaning in to kiss me again, “are going to have an amazing summer.”

  I could have stayed there with her forever.

  But life’s never that easy, is it?

  I was almost late for the meeting with her father. I had to run to get back to the house in time and I stood outside the door to his study, steadying my breathing and hoping he wouldn’t notice the lingering scent of her perfume on me. Imogen had helped me re-knot the tie and tuck in my shirt, and had laughed, chided me for being such an idiot and freaking out so much about what her father was going to think. I didn’t care what he thought of me, I did care that I was about to screw up this tab and I hadn’t been there a day.

  The door was open a crack and I almost knocked on it but there were voices inside, Mr K’s late night business meeting, and an intense exchange by the sound of it, not anything I wanted to disturb.

  I kicked around for a while, trying to be patient. It had been a long day and it wasn’t long before I got bored and started checking out the security around the place. I know, I know, it was the worst possible time and place. But…

  I already knew the Kilkenny estate had a security system that was beyond sophisticated, beyond any a normal rich as hell corporate family would have. The Kilkennys weren’t the only big cheeses in the UM sphere but they were definitely at the table, and the guild wanted to know more. I wanted to know more. I wanted to work out a way to the amulet.

  So first night there and I nudged the AI. Standing outside the door to Redmon Kilkenny’s private study in the middle of the night and I nudged their AI. I meant to just take a closer look but it was like a siren calling, drawing me in, and as much as I knew it was a mistake, I couldn’t stop until it was too late.

  I froze.

  An instant of intense pain blossomed into a migraine deep behind my eyes.

  Time passed, seconds, minutes… could have been hours.

  It felt like infinity.

  I don’t know how but I snapped free and took a stumbling step back, blinking, staring at the study door, still ajar, hands shaking, and that weird prickling at the back of my mind that something had happened and I couldn’t recall what.

  The Senson was pulsing with an insistent request for attention. For a fraction of a confused second, I couldn’t remember how to acknowledge it, then I did and allowed the connection.

  Sienna sounded more than pissed. “LC, you want to tell me what the hell just happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied, heart thumping.

  The voices from inside the study were even more raised. Angry. Kilkenny didn’t sound anything like the demure professor we’d just shared a dinner table with.

  I took a step away from the door. It felt wrong to listen but I was stuck there waiting. He was expecting me. I couldn’t exactly leave.

  Then I heard a different voice, clipped accent, say loud and clear, “You’re making a mistake, Redmon.”

  Holy shit. That voice seared into my soul. No way.

  I edged closer.

  “No,” Kilkenny was saying. “We were clear on this, Con. The answer is no.”

  There were sounds as if someone was banging a chair or shoving a table, frustration more than violence.

  I ground my nails into my palms, glancing around, half expecting their security to show up and throw me out of there.

  “Red,” that voice said, lower but still loud enough that I could hear as I took a step closer, “come on, man. We did not run that op just to bury the spoils. We fought for that shit. Like it or not, you and me, we’re in this for real. And Redmon, if you don’t, someone else is going to…”

  I almost jerked as Sienna demanded through the Senson, “LC, what are you doing? Your stats just spiked off the chart. What’s going on, kid?”

  I sent again, “I don’t know,” a sick knot twisting in my stomach. I was struggling to concentrate but I couldn’t help but overhear what was being said in the study.

  “LC,” Sienna was sending, “talk to me.”

  I’d already told her Kilkenny wanted to see me. She knew exactly where I was.

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I had a lump in my throat so bad I could barely swallow, an echo of a stabbing pain in my knee, the smoke and darkness of that night threatening to drag me back there… “Sienna, there’s a guy in with Kilkenny. Can you find out who he is?”

  She sent back an affirmative, not happy, but it was my tab. That’s the way the guild worked. I was the field-op. I got to call the shots. Even at sixteen. The whole time we worked together out in the field Sienna only ever overruled me twice. And both times, I wouldn’t have made it out if she hadn’t…

  The voices were too low for me to hear then that voice said much louder, “We know you have the key, Redmon.”

  There was a long moment of silence then Kilkenny murmured, voice laden with controlled anger, “Get out.”

  I backed away.

  The door opened.

  Kilkenny was standing there, the other guy striding past, another one following him. Mr K’s face was dark but he was guarded, smouldering, keeping his emotions in check as his guests left. One of them pushed past me, catching my eye as he did, dismissive as I backed up and gave him room, my heart pounding even faster.

  I half expected him to turn on me, slam me up against the wall if he recognised me, but he didn’t. He walked away. I only had that briefest glimpse but I knew it was him.

  Kheris was catching up with me.

  Imogen’s father showed me into the study, closing the door behind me, and went to sit behind a huge wooden desk. The study was cosy in a way Blackstone’s hadn’t been. It was lived in, clutter on the shelves and mantelpiece. The framed photographs on the walls were of Imogen and Beatrice as they grew up, not an accolade or shiny trophy in sight.

  Mr K seemed to shake off any lingering emotional residue from his previous meeting and turned on the charm again, giving me a welcoming, “Have a seat, young man.”

  If the AI had been alerted, and he was about to roast me and blow my cover wide open, he was being nice about it.

  And the guy hadn’t recognised me. I was sure of it. There was no reason why he would. It had been dark out there in the desert as the city burned in the distance. I’d been filthy from the smoke, war paint smeared across my cheeks, just an insignificant feral kid caught up in Dayton’s double crossing dirty deals. I could see this UM guy stepping out of the jeep and straightening his slick suit as he walked up… I could hear him saying, derisive, sneering down his stuffed corporate nose at Dayton, “Are you telling me the child has it?” ‘It’, McIntyre’s intel that UM were trying to buy in blood from the Kheris resistance.

  The Senson engaging dragged me back to the study.

  “Conor McGoldrick,” Sienna sent. “Remy Kilkenny’s brother. Senior VP of UM.”

  That night on Kheris, I’d run into Imogen’s uncle? Holy shit.

  There was no way this could be a coincidence. The Thieves’ Guild doesn’t do coincidence.

  “LC, are you okay?”

  “I’m good.” I wasn’t. I was far from good. “Just stand by, okay.” I cut the connection and sat in the chair facing the desk, sitting bolt upright, trying to ignore a pain in my arm and a tightness in my chest. I could feel that my cheeks were flushed.

  My internal temperature was still sky high, pulse racing.

  I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might have made a serious mistake chasing the tab for the amulet. I knew, I’d always known, that these were the same people who’d descended on our desert�
�� it hadn’t occurred to me that I could run into the freaking people who’d been there that week.

  Mr K sat and picked up a cut-glass carafe. “Always end the day with a damned good single malt,” he said, voice warm as he topped up his tumbler with amber liquor. “I’m sure your father would agree, coming from the Old Country. You wouldn’t believe what it costs us to get this out here.” He smiled and gestured towards a second glass sitting there empty and waiting on the desk. “Join me?”

  It was a test and I had no idea what the right response was.

  In all my time at the guild, my favourite tabs were the ones I ran alone, not even an extraction team close by. The ones where you had to disappear, just not exist, and you could take all the time in the universe. I used to spend days, weeks, infiltrating high security buildings, huge deep spacers, industrial complexes and research facilities that didn’t appear on any map or schematic. Guild stealth kit is the best there is. No one ever had a clue I was there. In and out with no one the wiser.

  The jobs where we had to hide out in the open, the deep cover stuff where we had aliases and a whole array of complex identities, they were the ones where I struggled. I could never, not in ten years, ever shrug off the unease that I was about to be exposed, that I could do or say something without thinking that would throw the whole tab.

  Mr K was looking at me almost as if he didn’t want me to disappoint him, as if he had some investment in me and needed me to live up to it…

  I kept my cool, looked him in the eye and politely declined the whisky. I hadn’t touched alcohol since that incident second week on the Alsatia that had landed half the mess in the brig. Medical reckoned I had no tolerance for it. Especially when I was on meds. And I had the auto injector in the cast on my arm turned onto max.

  I didn’t give him an excuse, didn’t try to impress, and I had no idea if that was the right thing to say or not but the last thing I needed was a bad reaction that could knock me even further sideways.

  Imogen’s father looked at me for a long while and eventually he nodded. Approving. I didn’t know if the AI had informed him that I’d hacked into his security system but if it had, he wasn’t pulling me up on it straight away.

  “You are an impressive young man, Felix,” he said. “Now, let’s see if you can put that academic understanding of trade diplomacy into action.” He picked up his whisky glass and took a sip, making a show of savouring the aroma. “What do you have for me?” He raised his eyes to look right into mine. “You. Not your father. Not his advisors. Not your professors. You. What do you have to put on the table, Felix?”

  Chapter 14

  “LC, your stats are off the scale,” Sienna sent. “Tell me what’s going on right now or I’m coming in to get you out of there.”

  “I’m good,” I sent through the Senson, gathering an air of calm from somewhere and letting the Senson connection slide. I gave Kilkenny a half smile, taking a chance and saying softly, “My great-grandmother lives on Islay…” I tailed off, careful to get the pronunciation right, letting the deep cover fabrication speak for itself, my heart thumping as I said it. My real great-grandmother was on Kheris. What the hell would he make of that if he knew? What the hell would Latia have said if she’d known where I was and what I was doing…?

  I looked Imogen’s father right in the eye, letting the unspoken bribe hang there. If expensive as hell rare whisky from the Old Country was all it was going to take, I was sure the guild could oblige. It wasn’t the only bribe I could have thrown onto the table. If he’d wanted coffee, I could have offered coffee, hell, I could offer up age-old Sao Benedito if that’s what it took. If he’d wanted narcotics, I could have offered him a steady supply of pure insanity. That’s the kind of deep cover support the guild gave us. The way those IDs were set up, the guild anticipated any and every possible scenario and had iron-clad contingencies in place, whatever we needed.

  Kilkenny smiled knowingly, and nodded, slow and steady. “Very good, young man. We understand one another. Now, where do we go from here…?”

  He poured me a glass of something hot that had an aroma of spices and continued to grill me, as much on chess strategy and rugby tactics as on business and trade mechanisms. He was smart. Possibly the smartest person I’ve ever encountered and it was entertaining after a while, once my heart rate settled and I started to believe he was genuinely curious to see if I could keep up with him. I did. Easily. Only a couple of questions were beyond me and then he went to pains to explain, teaching me like no teacher I’ve ever met has managed.

  It was well past midnight before it started to feel like we might be done.

  He sat back and regarded me for a long moment.

  I kept cool, curious to see where he’d take the conversation.

  “Rehman’s,” he said after a while, “what’s your take on Rehman’s?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Solid.”

  “And Takerfield?”

  “Less so but still to be trusted.”

  His expression didn’t change but I could feel the escalation in stakes, clear as in a game of poker where we were both all in.

  “What about I’Anson?”

  Nothing he was asking about was trade secrets, nothing classified or underhand. No insider dealing stuff. It was just high level, really high level grad school economics mixed with an esoteric interest in current affairs. But the way he was looking at me as he asked about I’Anson… there was more to it…

  I raked back over the briefing I’d had for this tab, every scrap of intel. I’Anson was different. The Dennisons had stakes in I’Anson. If I gave him the true position, I’d be screwing up. If I didn’t, I’d be screwing up. Earth-side corporate entities were different from those Winter-side. In the Imperial sphere of influence, corporations answered to the Emperor. Some of them played both sides. Supported by the Merchants’ Guild. Ballack, again. But some didn’t.

  I didn’t break eye contact, didn’t flinch and said, as steady as I could make it, “You don’t want to ask me that.”

  Mr K let a sly smile creep across his face, conspiratorial. He raised his whisky glass. “I’m due to give a keynote speech at the annual coalition trade conference next week.” His eyes bored into mine across the cut glass tumbler. “My daughter was planning on taking you up to our cabin in the mountains, skiing, but obviously that is out of the question.” He gave a small gesture towards my arm, let that sink in and said with a smile, “Why don’t the two of you come with me as my guests? The conference centre is in the city but we’ll be staying at our suite in Camborne.”

  Camborne. I think I forgot to breathe for a second.

  “Imogen can show you the highlights of our capital and you can come to some of the talks at the conference. I’d be interested to see your take on a few of the papers presented and I’m sure your parents would approve of you extending your extra-curricular education.”

  My heart missed a beat. I grinned and couldn’t help replying, “I’d love to.” Holy shit. I could get within a hand’s reach of the amulet.

  “Good. The conference launches with the annual dinner. Black tie. We can sort you out with a tux if you didn’t pack one.”

  A tux? Pack one? I didn’t own one. He had a glint in his eye and didn’t wait for me to respond.

  “I’m sure Imogen will be delighted to have you accompany her, and I’m sure she can keep you occupied until then.” He drained his glass and gave me another casual nod. “But I want my physician to look at that arm of yours before you go gallivanting anywhere. He’ll be here first thing. Let’s get you checked out, Felix.”

  Something about the way he said it made my stomach go cold. Maybe he did know I’d tried to see past his AI into their records.

  “Your parents have entrusted you into our care,” he said as he stood, interrogation over but no doubt about it that I was in their territory and within their clutches for the duration of my stay on Winter. “Let’s see if we can better the best that Imperial medicine has to offer, sha
ll we?”

  I don’t know why I was worried. Every last detail was pinpoint accurate. From the branded insignia on the cast on my arm, the unique serial numbers on the auto injector and the pins, to the chemical composition of the painkillers, it was all genuine Earth Empire kit, dates correct and all assigned to the facility in RDJ.

  I watched as the doc finished, realigning a new casing on my forearm, hand and fingers still immobilised, but cool as hell, Wintran, black wire mesh. He secured the casing and took time to check it was right, running a scan and adjusting the meds.

  “Good work,” he admitted reluctantly, nodding solemnly as if he hadn’t been expecting to have to say that. “But this casing has inbuilt inertial dampeners that should ease any pressure and an AG flex function that will accelerate healing. I’ve set the medication to a normalised baseline but you can up it if you need.”

  I eyed him with suspicion. I was fairly sure the guild would have any tech these guys could possibly be wielding, if not better, and I got the impression the Imperial kit they’d used had probably been substandard to what they would have used if I hadn’t been coming here, but even so, for this guy to give me this kind of tech, to let me walk away with it, it felt like I was indebted somehow. Like, I’d have to pay for it in more than just whisky or coffee.

  “You’re good to go.”

  Dismissed. With the best Wintran medical equipment money could buy encasing my arm.

  We kicked around the estate for the next week, walking, riding, swimming or just messing around in hot pools, staying up late, sitting by open fires and talking.

  I have to admit, the more time I was spending with Imogen, the harder it was getting to remember I was just there to steal from them. I was gathering what I could by remote without going too deep, mostly financial figures, market prices, commodities and ores, mining rights and prospecting potentials. Confidential UM data but nothing terribly inflammatory.