by C. G. Hatton
He wasn’t going to have much say in anything, that was clear. And there was no way they’d let him walk up to Legal so Martha was going to have to wait.
In the corridor, they backed off and let him walk, stepping in close again as another field-op approached them.
“Hey Hil,” she said, eyeing up the guards and shrugging, “I just got in from Redgate. Badger said you’d left this at his place a coupla days ago. He asked me to give it to you.” And she held out a necklace, a knotted lace threaded with an elaborately engraved shark tooth.
He took it without hesitation. “Right, I knew I’d left it somewhere. Thanks.”
“Badger was really worried you’d forgotten it. You know what he’s like and man, I’ve never seen him so agitated. You don’t wanna go out without your good luck charm, huh?”
She smiled and wandered off. He had no idea what the hell it was as he tucked it in a pocket and walked on, shadowed by the two bodyguards who were seeming more and more to be his own personal jailors.
He went down to the dock to see Skye before he had to leave with Genoa. They could talk from wherever he was on the Alsatia but it wasn’t the same as being close up. She was upset, upset that he was going without her, upset that he was going back to Abacus and he’d better mind his butt and his attitude and stay invisible this time, upset that he was going with Genoa and upset that her own sorry ass wasn’t ready. The Chief had given the go-ahead for the repairs at last but they’d only just started and anyway, they’d need to visit one of her favourite yards to get everything back in shape.
He sat on the bridge and kicked his feet while she let off steam. Then he pulled the necklace from his pocket and held it up. She stopped mid flow.
“What is that, honey?”
He didn’t need to ask if they were secure, she always talked on a tight link when he was onboard. No one could eavesdrop.
“I don’t know,” he sent, “but I need you to find out.”
“Hold it still.”
It didn’t take her long, then she whispered, “Where did you get that? Hil, what’s going on?”
He shook his head and caught the shark tooth up in his hand, wrapping the black thread around his fingers. “What is it?”
He felt a subtle change in the atmosphere as she kicked in shielding. If anyone was watching them, trying to listen, they’d be a black spot in the centre of the repair dock. Suspicious as hell. Like it could get any worse.
“There’s something etched into the pattern,” she sent.
“What?” He squinted at it and saw nothing but swirling lines.
“Oh Hil, what is this about?”
“Skye,” he sent, exasperated. “What is it?”
She flashed up a magnified scan of the tooth, spinning it round and zooming in until he saw the wording. Scrawled in tiny letters, etched in Badger’s meticulous handwriting along a swirl, was a warning – ‘guild compromised, trust no one’. It wasn’t signed. Hil felt sick to his stomach. If it was a joke, it was a bad one. And if it had come from anywhere else at any other time, he would have laughed it off. But now, after everything that had happened and with his memory still screwed so badly he couldn’t even remember where he’d been, it was too much.
He threw the necklace into a locker. Mendhel was dead, LC missing and someone was calling for him by name. What the hell choice did he have but to play along?
One thing that Hil was great at was compartmentalising. When his head was straight. It was frustrating as hell to have a whirlwind of crap whistling around his mind. He paused at the ramp and let his shoulders drop, felt the tension ease, let the pain bundle up and wisp away. He hadn’t worked with Genoa before but he wasn’t going to let that get to him.
He closed his eyes and let the dark embrace him, felt it warm and comfort him through to the bone. Going out on a tab was an awesome mix of apprehensive yearning for the thrill of the test and a quiet inner calm that came only from knowing you could handle whatever the tab threw at you. Invincible. The cockiness that Martha hated so much came later when you had that package bagged and tucked up under your arm running for the touchline. This was no different to any other tab he’d ever run. Hil took a deep breath and shunted back an edge of panic that this was not just another tab, that his world had gone to shit and his brain was scrambled. He almost wished he could forget what he’d seen etched on that swirl. It changed everything and suddenly the Alsatia seemed a dangerous place to be. He let calm not panic flow over him and stepped onto the ramp.
The connection with Genoa initiated as soon as he entered the ship. Skye was gone again but this time he knew where she was, knew she was in good hands and he let her go willingly. Genoa was quiet while he stowed his bags and headed to the bridge. She was a much bigger ship than Skye, bigger and slower but capable of longer jump distances. He had extraction teams going out with him and whatever happened he would be pulled in. Not an ordinary tab in the slightest but hey, this was where he was so he settled in for the ride.
He sat down and strapped in, refusing to acknowledge the faint tinge of irritation at the unfamiliar layout of the console and the too small space to stretch his legs.
Genoa was still silent. He didn’t know how to start up a conversation so he sat and stifled a yawn. It was tempting to nap so why not?
She woke him with a klaxon.
“Undocking in three, two, one.”
The ship disengaged from dock with a reverberating shudder. She accelerated too fast away from the cruiser and had to adjust her trajectory to wait for the others.
“Genoa,” he said finally.
“Zachary,” she replied curtly.
No one called him that. Not since he’d run away from the latest in a long line of foster homes for the last time at the age of eleven.
He felt awkward and didn’t know what else to say. He’d never worked with any ship other than Skye. She knew him inside out and when he worked she was there with him every step of the way. Sitting here with Genoa made him feel like he was a passenger. Passive and helpless.
He ignored the chatter as Martha called in to discuss numbers with Genoa. He didn’t care how they got there, didn’t much care what they did when they arrived. He was being fed to the wolves but he was away from the guild and as soon as he could meet up with LC, he’d catch up on what was what then. There was a dropbox on Abacus. Whatever had happened to LC, if he was okay there was a chance he would have left a message in one of the boxes. Hil just had to get to it.
Chapter 12
The Man leaned back in his chair. “Your decision to use Genoa for that particular assignment was regarded in many circles as foolhardy, NG. Why is that?”
He’d been dreading the topic of Genoa, inevitable as it was.
“You have to understand the delicate relationships that can develop between our people and the AIs they work with,” he said. “Hil especially is close to his ship. Skye is his partner. They’ve worked together for over ten years. It’s hard to recruit AIs and we don’t have many. They demand high pay and deservedly so. Not all our operatives team up with an AI. Anderton never has. And we have some AIs, like Genoa, that prefer to work freelance wherever they’re needed.” He paused and considered his next statement carefully. “The issue of AI personality and allegiance is tricky. You talk of man but we mustn’t underestimate the AIs. They have a place in society now that is still becoming established, even as a minority. They have rights and they have emotions that can be as raw as any human.”
The Man sat quietly and NG stopped abruptly and emptied his mind of any thoughts except this room, right there and then. A whisper of a breeze set the candle flames dancing and a hint of sweet incense swirled across the desk.
“What happened?” the Man said softly, well aware that this was an area NG didn’t want to address.
“I can’t read the mind of an AI,” he said, uncomfortable in having to admit it. “I had no idea.”
•
It just took one jump to get to Abacus A. Th
at was unsettling in itself. The Alsatia spent time on both sides of the line and wandered, a self-sufficient colony, that had been deep in Earth controlled space last he knew. The massive cruiser must have shifted some to get them that close to the Between. And the fact that it had positioned itself firmly in the Between, rather than letting them jump there themselves, made him uneasy. Field-ops didn’t often have the entire guild baby-sit them through a tab.
Genoa went in first and docked, Martha and Kase due to follow after a discrete enough gap. Hil didn’t wait for Genoa to give him the go ahead to leave and she didn’t offer him any words of encouragement or even reassurance that she had his back. As a guild support vessel, she was equipped to track him, hide his signature, open doors and get clearances for him. He took all that for granted and he assumed nothing. She’d screw up or she wouldn’t. He didn’t intend to rely on her.
The dock was busy. Abacus was a hive of machine shops and repair docks. Hil stalked through the security channels onto the station, glaring daggers at anyone who so much as looked as if they were going to stop him or question his clearance. The IDs issued by the guild were pure gold at places like this. Even the military shouldn’t look at him twice. Of course, that only worked if you kept your nose clean and respected the local customs. Last time hadn’t been so clear cut and a spell in the detention centre was not something he wanted to repeat.
He was kept waiting in line at entry control and it was cold enough that he started to regret not putting on another layer. But Genoa had cleared the way through for him and it didn’t take long to get to the lift and up a level to the recreation deck where the temperature rose to an almost unbearable heat with too many bodies enjoying themselves for the aircon to handle. It was shift change and the grimy corridors were packed. Hil slipped through easily. He broke out onto the main stretch and wandered nonchalantly into the first bar, not the one they’d agreed to meet in, an unmistakable sense that someone was following him tingling at the back of his neck. Crap, he hadn’t expected to be picked up this quickly. He edged his way through the crowd and made for a gap at the bar.
“You have company,” Genoa said quietly in his ear.
He didn’t reply. He was watching the mirror behind the bar and planning a route out. The guy next to him bumped his arm and spilled beer. Someone nudged into his back and a woman leaned across in front of him, a stench of perfume mixing with the bitter tang of alcohol. He saw his way out and moved quickly, weaving through the throng of bodies and ducking out of a staff-only door in the back. Someone yelled after him but before they could get to him, he was away and up through a vent in the dingy ceiling. Old stations like this were playgrounds for field-ops. The basic beam and vent constructions were riddled with access ways, ladders, tangled networks of pipes and walkways covered with thin veneers for bulkheads covering pockets of comfortable living space and utilitarian working places.
Hil took his time working his way around and up to the next level, flexing his wrist, glad that he’d left the brace on. He got his bearings, made his decision and without a word closed off the connection to Genoa.
Whatever had happened, he couldn’t trust anyone out here. Delivering himself up to whoever was not an option. Someone had killed Mendhel and Hil knew without doubt that it hadn’t been LC. His memory from that cold dark night on Earth was still patchy. They’d flown in together, LC with him and Skye. And they’d met Mendhel but something had been very wrong. He flashed suddenly on LC stumbling to the floor and his stomach turned to ice at the thought. It hadn’t been Earth. It had been someplace else, a lab or a research station. Cold corridors teeming with electrobes and a fight to get back to Skye. Back on Earth, before or after he couldn’t tell, and Mendhel saying they’d been set up and he had no choice. He was sorry but he had no choice and LC saying they’d do it, of course they’d do it.
Oh crap, what the hell had they gotten into? Hil sat on a meshmetal walkway and let his legs dangle. Sounds from a club on the deck below drifted up, chatter and the thump of bass. He leaned his left arm on a pipe that was warm and comforting, right arm hurting and nestled in his lap, and settled his head down, closing his eyes. He couldn’t pull it together, couldn’t get it in the right order or time frame. The tick above his eye started up again. Mendhel had been alive when they left Earth, he was sure of that. And LC? Hil could vaguely remember an explosion but that might have been the crash. Heat and a jarring hurt. No, it was an explosion then the crash after that. He’d been with LC when... when what? But however much he racked his memory, he couldn’t pull up any names or details.
He had two choices the way he figured it. He could either go down there and meet the contact and leave his fate to the guild or he could climb up to the drop box and see if LC had managed to make it this far. Otherwise there was Aston and Pen – that would be the next step, and one that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to mention to Sean. As much as he wanted to run back to the safety of the guild, as much as it hurt to think it, he didn’t know how safe that was any more and he had to find LC.
The box was in an impossible to reach location off a ventilation shaft above the military base on the other side of the station.
Getting through to that side of the station was tricky because of the military barriers and seals in place but it wasn’t anywhere he hadn’t been before. The final obstacle was the vertical climb up a wire cable that was a magnitude more difficult than he remembered. Hil paused half way, out of breath, sore and hurting. He wrapped his foot around the cable so he could stop and rest. His wrist was throbbing. The walls of the shaft were too far away to reach and there was nowhere he could go but up or down. The air here was thin and cold with a metallic taste to it but nothing set off the band on his wrist tingling in warning. He could hear the whine and whirr of machinery from the base.
Gritting his teeth he set off again and hauled himself up, catching hold of the cross beam with relief when he reached it. He climbed up and crawled across the beam to the inset cubby hole by a thick twist of cables. With trembling fingers he pulled out his lock pick and made a botch job of opening the tiny metal box nestled in there. The mechanism was one of LC’s favourites and it was a bitch to crack at the best of times. With the fingers on one hand swelling beyond the restriction of the brace on his wrist and the other feeling cold and numb, the freaking lock refused to give until finally he heard that wonderful click and felt it release.
The box was empty. No note, no data sticks, no message. If LC was okay, he hadn’t been here. Hil sat back, deflated. Crap.
Getting back took twice as long. He fell twice, the second time from a narrow ledge to tumble down a height and slam onto the deck leaving him stunned and shaken. Best in the guild, my arse, he thought.
He sat. Reconnecting to the ship was tempting but he couldn’t face Genoa’s silence. Kase and Martha would be wondering where he was. And if NG could see him now, he wasn’t exactly being an honest and open guild operative. NG would be within all rights to consider him rogue. He had no leads and apart from NG, he didn’t know who he could trust without finding LC himself. Anya missing could mean she was with LC. They’d always had a thing going on between them that they’d denied enthusiastically and Mendhel had all but forbidden but they could have gotten together. In which case, he could go back to the guild and leave them to it. They’d be fine. They could be on a beach together somewhere. But a niggling thought that was attached to a memory he couldn’t pin down gave him a bad feeling that Anya had already been missing when they met with Mendhel. And when he left LC, cocky invincible LC was in a bad way. He had to find them both. Before McKenzie or any other of Sean’s bounty hunting buddies.
He made his way back to the recreation level and nonchalantly slipped into a rest room. Holding his hand and wrist under cold water brought on shivers but numbed the swollen joint somewhat. It was time to face it. He took a deep breath and renewed the connection to Genoa.
She didn’t jump straight into a friendly conversation the way Skye
would have but she’d alerted Kase and Martha because the pair of them were waiting when he emerged from the bathroom into the bar. They ignored him when he looked their way so he walked past and headed for an empty table. He didn’t make it as two beefy guys in black suits, who looked like they could have been clones of each other, sidelined him and took up an arm each. He tried to shake them off but that wasn’t going to happen easily and as he glanced back over his shoulder, another three were blocking any attempt Martha and Kase could have made to get to him. Okay, this wasn’t part of the plan but it wasn’t entirely unexpected.
Hil looked around for anyone else from the guild but couldn’t see any familiar faces. They’d be there and they’d make sure he got back to the guild in one piece, taking care of whoever it was along the way. That was how the guild worked. No one messed with the guild.
“Hey, no one messes with us, y’know?” he muttered and one of the corporate gorillas grasping his left arm twisted and squeezed just enough for him to know that conversation wasn’t going to cut it.
They took him through a back door and up some stairs.
“Genoa, you getting this?” he sent through the connection, more desperation creeping into his intonation than he intended.
“We’re right with you, Zachary,” she sent back coldly. “Don’t worry your pretty little head.”
As much as he knew that the teams from the guild were some of the best it was possible to work with and that NG had given explicit instructions that his safety was priority, it was hard not to panic. His expertise, same as all the field operatives, was to get in quietly, get out unnoticed and interact with no one, no exceptions. Dealing with people was something left to Legal or Media. He felt exposed and vulnerable and ego aside, it was unsettling to think that he couldn’t just up and flit away.
