by C. G. Hatton
“Is this connected?” Pen said coldly.
To what had happened to Mendhel and LC, he was asking. If it was, Pen wanted to know. If not, the only decision was whether to let him go.
“I don’t know.”
Pen wasn’t impressed but he sent a curt tight wire order to Yan to stand down. He wouldn’t trust anything NG said anyway and they had enough to go on to find out themselves. The pressure on his neck eased suddenly as Yan lifted the gun and moved away.
Pen laughed harshly and shook his head. “I don’t trust you, NG. I don’t like your guild, that’s no secret, and believe me, the Thieves’ Guild is not in a good place right now. Anywhere.” He stepped forward and put his hand against NG’s chest. “I do not for one second believe that you have no idea who killed Mendhel. But, NG… if I find out that you had anything to do with it, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. And I’ll do it for free.”
His eyes glistened. He pushed gently, the brute strength behind that hand trembling with restraint. “Your cute manipulations don’t work here. Stay out of my way and stay out of my territory.”
Pen turned and walked away, Yan following, neither of them looking back.
NG stared after them, feeling cold. Losing Mendhel had hit hard. Losing Domino like this was almost unbearable. He fixed a resolve deep inside and opened a link to Banks and Martinez. “Let Pen go,” he sent. “Domino’s dead. Wait here, secure the yard and call in a clean up crew. I need to go to Winter.”
It took one short jump to get there. NG knew exactly where the meeting was to take place and who it was he needed to contact. He hadn’t just taken the guy’s memories, he’d taken his ID codes, armour, weapons and their ship. No AI so there was no issue over ownership and he had the codes to gain access. Martinez and Banks hadn’t been happy to let him go without them but orders were orders and he’d pulled rank on them.
He needed to do this alone.
Someone had outsmarted them. There was no way anyone should have been able to tie Domino in with the guild.
There was no way anyone should have been able to get to their handlers and field operatives, no way anyone should have been able to gain access to the Alsatia to try to kill him. But someone had.
He made orbit and waited until nightfall in the capital city, requesting permission to land using the stolen codes and watching the sprinkling of lights below spread as the craft flew down towards the surface.
It was the warm season, the ship stats informed him. Only five degrees below zero in the capital.
NG scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He hated Winter. Hated everything it stood for and despised everyone who played their games of politics to wrangle positions of power within the phoney structure that passed for government. It wasn’t surprising that the trail had brought him here. Ennio Ostraban had managed to play chairman and hold together his tentative coalition for long enough now that it was bound to have attracted the attention of the Order. It would have been surprising if they hadn’t extended their writhing mass of tentacles out this far.
And Winter had an elaborate and convoluted system of law enforcement that was part militia-run and mostly esoteric corporate nonsense that was corrupt as hell and more than likely to change on a whim if someone could profit and someone else was prepared to pay enough. Perfect when you had dirty work to be carried out.
He hated it.
And he hated being cold.
‘You’re too soft,’ that dark voice murmured maliciously, deep inside.
“I’m not in the mood,” he said out loud, reaching a hand to flick the ship into manual and increasing the rate of descent. Time alone with no one to distract him from his thoughts had been hard. He wasn’t going to start listening to the doubts now. It wasn’t often that he lost control completely but it was happening more and more frequently. And when that darkness descended, it was getting harder and harder to temper it.
‘Listen to yourself. Hate is such a powerful emotion. Use it.’
NG threw in another command and disabled the safety parameters. He accelerated hard, every ounce of concentration needed to keep the craft level and steady.
‘Coward.’
He cut the engines and plummeted towards the planet.
He let the craft freefall for about a thousand feet further than it was sane to do, playing chicken with that part of his mind that still had a modicum of self-preservation, and fired up the engines only when ground control began to initiate emergency procedures. The response to the access codes he was using said a lot about the sway these people had over the Wintran establishment.
He was directed down to a private runway, asked politely if he required assistance and ushered through to a groundside berth that bypassed customs and entry protocols with the slick efficiency of a VIP arrival.
There was a car waiting at the berth, blacked out windows, empty, no surprise that the codes he had started the ignition. He turned up the interior heating, glanced back at the bundle he’d thrown on the back seat and set off to the rendezvous.
The warehouse was quiet. Abandoned. Dark. And cold. NG stood in the shadows behind the door of the empty office, the cold weather gear he’d raided from lockers in the ship not quite enough to keep the chill from seeping through to his bones.
He waited, motionless, breath frosting in the cold, clean air of corporate Winter. The office was mothballed in perfect sterile preservation, waiting for the next proprietor to take ownership of the warehouse. He’d set a spotlight and a single chair in the centre of the room and initiated a tight radius shield.
Then he just had to wait.
It was exactly thirty minutes after he’d sent the designated signal that the car pulled up outside. It was an efficient operation, far superior to the last set of hired help he’d encountered. That was what you got as you moved up the food chain.
Five men got out of the car. The man he was expecting plus four armed guards.
NG tensed, picking up their thoughts and emotions, readying himself for another fight, but only the main man walked up to the warehouse, dismissing the others into guard duty with an arrogance he’d regret.
The outside door banged and footsteps resounded with a sharp echo as the man approached, emanating calm confidence with an air of impatience.
Another mistake.
He made his way through to the office, humming to himself. NG could hear the off key tune, hear the underlying self-satisfaction of the man as he anticipated the reward of accomplishing this mission.
NG didn’t move.
The door banged open and the man who walked in was exactly as he remembered, older, more grey in the hair, more expensive wool coat hanging on the thin shoulders, but the same cold aura of self-interest. The man walked in, eyes having trouble adjusting to the dark, and stopped when he saw the prone hooded form on the floor lit by a single angled spotlight. There was doubt then and an intense irritation that flared in the man’s chest.
“What is this?” he said, disgusted, voice hollow in the empty space. He turned and squinted into the shadows trying to make out NG as he stood there. “I stipulated alive. If he’s dead, you don’t get paid.”
The old man took a step forward and kicked at the body, nudging it over, distaste mixing with a burning curiosity. NG watched from outside the circle of light as he knelt and pulled the hood from the head.
The man reeled backwards, standing and scowling.
NG slowly pushed the door behind him closed with one outstretched hand and stepped forward into the light.
“Hello A’Darbi,” he said in little more than a whisper and felt the recognition hit with a pang of ice in the old man’s stomach. “How’s Ostraban these days?”
Chapter 11
She took the goblet and inhaled the vapours deeply. “Into the heart of the Wintran coalition itself? Alone? Was that wise?”
He regarded her with slight disdain.
“Did you know what he was doing?” she said.
This was not an interrogation,
or even a debriefing, nowhere near the intensity of the questioning he inflicted on Nikolai. He was not obligated to answer. But these sessions, as with those in his chambers, served to clear the mind, put situations into perspective.
He laced his fingers and looked deeper into the question. He didn’t reply, saying instead, carefully, “Ostraban is gathering a dangerous momentum.”
“He is,” she conceded. “Do the corporations truly support him or are they paying lip service to the ideal because they need to be seen to do so?”
“They support him exactly as far as it serves their own ends. It was no surprise to find out that the Order is fuelling his success.”
•
It took a moment but A’Darbi wrestled back his self-restraint. “NG,” he said, swallowing awkwardly, taking a step backwards, eyes darting to look down at the body of the mercenary leader he’d hired. He tried desperately to contact his men and couldn’t, no response, starting to realise that he was in real danger for the first time in his privileged life.
“You look like you’re doing well for yourself, A’Darbi,” NG said quietly. Taynara A’Darbi was one of Ennio Ostraban’s oldest and closest advisors. They’d met before and last time the guy had been a minor official, nowhere near important enough to have been recruited by the Order. How things change.
“NG,” A’Darbi said again, mind racing in embarrassed desperation to find something to say that would mitigate his having been caught in such a compromising situation by someone as dangerous as NG.
It was almost worth a smile.
He was close. This man that was squirming there in front of him had been instructed to arrange his abduction. NG felt like he had a wriggling catch at the end of his line. A catch that would lead directly to the Order.
“Sit down,” NG said quietly. He could see the cold calculations that were sparking within this elder statesman of Winter as he sat and adjusted his expensive coat as if he was about to begin business negotiations.
A’Darbi opened his mouth to speak but NG hushed him with a casual wave of the gun in his left hand and a shake of the head.
He didn’t need to let the old man speak. He could acquire everything he needed to know brutally and quickly.
A’Darbi put up a hand. “Now look here, NG,” he said, dropping into his stern voice as if that could save his life. “You’re out of your depth, son. It’s the council we want to speak to.”
NG took a step forward. “You killed one of my men.”
A’Darbi shook his head, affecting a concerned expression. He was used to taking the podium to deliver reasonable deniability. “Casualties are unfortunate – avoidable if your council would only answer our requests for open discussion.” He spread his hands. “That’s all we ask.”
There was a nervous tick fluttering in the man’s mind, more than anxiety at his current predicament. He was hoping like hell that NG didn’t know something, praying that the Thieves’ Guild didn’t know.
NG took another step closer. “Why now, A’Darbi? Why are you moving against us now?”
To give him credit, he was a fast thinker. You didn’t get that high in any organisation without being able to bullshit. “Winter doesn’t move against you, NG,” he said in a perfectly contrived tone of condescending reassurance. “Why would you think that, son? Everyone on this side of the line values the role your guild plays.”
‘He doesn’t even lie well. Why are you listening to this, Nikolai?’
“I’m not talking about Winter,” NG said slowly, ignoring the darkness, listening in as it dawned on A’Darbi that if he wasn’t talking about Winter, he could only be talking about the Order.
A’Darbi set his face, jaw clenching. “Put the gun down, son. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
It was only a matter of time before his men realised something was wrong.
NG made a show of checking the gun. “Tell me about the Order, A’Darbi.”
It was like flicking a switch.
The composure drained out of the old man like water swirling down a drain. “No,” he said, barely more than a gasp.
“I know you’re working for the Order, A’Darbi, and I know that the Order has declared war against my guild. Why now?”
The thoughts that flashed through the old man’s mind were jumbled, tumbling. “What do you want? I can pay,” A’Darbi whispered, a trickle of sweat running down his face.
NG shook his head slightly.
‘This is pathetic,’ the dark voice whispered at the back of his mind, ‘you should just kill him.’
He could sense the old man’s heart pounding, feel the panic that this was out of control, this wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Suddenly A’Darbi said quietly, maliciously, “Tell your council their days are numbered,” and NG caught the edge of his intent a fraction of a second too late. He moved fast and caught the old man with a firm grasp around the jawline as A’Darbi bit down on a suicide capsule. The poison flooded his system and NG was hard pushed to halt it, freezing the moment, and freezing A’Darbi in an instant of lethal agony. The old man’s face contorted in a last tortured realisation that death wasn’t going to come quickly.
NG took his time getting everything he needed.
‘Nice. Let him suffer.’
He had to keep his emotions in check as the old man’s brain released its knowledge of events and consequences, a trail of revelations that NG took carefully and stored away, gathering every ounce of intelligence on the Order, its relations with the Assassins and the Federation, its links with the Merchants, Earth and Winter. A’Darbi was high up, not as high as NG needed but far more senior than anyone he’d encountered so far. And the intertwining threads of activity that had impinged on the guild were knotted in a convoluted and devastating mess.
And in amongst it all, a vicious satisfaction that the Thieves’ Guild was meeting its match with the sheer volume of money and resources pitched against it. Zang Tsu Po was nothing but a renegade who had no idea what he had precipitated in his foolish blackmailing of the Thieves’ Guild but at least he was putting his own money up for grabs with the bounty on the two rogue thieves.
NG was another matter. A’Darbi would have been more than happy to back any suggestion to put half a billion of the Order’s reserves on the table to be rid of him, but as far as he knew it wasn’t the Order who had contracted the Assassins. No, they wanted NG alive, wanted that connection with the council, wanted him on his knees so they could bleed every last secret of the Thieves’ Guild from him with excruciating exactness. An Assassins’ knife in the back was far too fast for their liking.
A’Darbi writhed in agony as his memories were torn apart and NG’s heart started pounding as he realised the implications of it all.
He pushed the old man away when he was done and watched the body crumple to the floor.
He had to get back to the Alsatia.
Evelyn was waiting for him when he docked, unimpressed, concerned and relieved all at once, a flurry of emotion that made his head ache.
“Hilyer’s missing,” she said, offering a data board and dropping into step beside him, two of the Man’s elite guards a step behind her.
NG hoisted his bag over his shoulder and took the board. “What happened?”
“The tab on Abacus was a disaster. We lost him and we’ve had word that there’s a bounty out on him now as well. Wibowski and Hetherington have gone awol.” She was also thinking about Domino. “What’s going on, NG?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. NG kept walking towards the lift. Martha Hetherington and Kase Wibowski were two of the extraction agents he’d assigned to watch Hil’s back so if Hil had skipped out and they were awol, with luck the three of them would still be together. Field operatives often had to go deep and he couldn’t think of a better two to have with the kid.
He pressed the button to call the elevator and made another decision, very aware that he was runn
ing on instinct but they had no time to waste on prolonged analysis of potential scenarios and strategies here. “Send out a Black Rogue Seven on Hil and LC.”
“We’ve already sent out a Black,” she said, thinking, oh shit, a Black Rogue Seven is going to cause chaos.
“I don’t care,” NG said. “We need them back. Someone is screwing with us. We have to stop it. Right now.”
Devon sat in her usual seat at the conference table and kept her face immaculately neutral, hiding her anger. “Zang? Are you serious?” she sent privately. “Do you know the figures Zang posted last year?”
He’d keep the briefing short, not in the mood for a long drawn out inquisition, and he wanted to get back out there to follow the lead he’d squeezed from A’Darbi. The four chiefs had got the basics, no details of the Order, only the fact that it was Zang Tsu Po who had ordered an attack on Mendhel and forced Anderton and Hilyer to run an unauthorised tab.
NG looked around at the chiefs who kept his guild running.
Media was flicking through the board in front of her as if she could find something he’d missed if she went through it all faster and faster. “At least we know now that Hil and LC didn’t betray us willingly,” she said. “What did Zang send them to steal?”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” NG said. “Christ knows what they went after. We wouldn’t have taken the job. Not against the JU. Zang must have known that. And he knew no one else could pull it off.”
Devon didn’t look at him as she sent, privately, “And did they pull it off?”
NG reached for the jug to top up his tea.
“Did they?” she sent again.
“We have to assume so, Devon,” he sent back, “because if they didn’t, Jameson would have hauled the two of them back here in chains. I don’t know why LC ran. But if the bounty is still out there on them both, presumably Zang hasn’t found them either.”
