Thieves' Guild Series (7 eBook Box Set): Military Science Fiction - Alien Invasion - Galactic War Novels

by C. G. Hatton

  Evelyn was watching from the door.

  NG limped around the desk and eased himself into the Man’s chair, staring at the envelope, no surprise that it had his name scrawled across it in blood red ink. He broke the wax seal to open it, another peculiar anachronism, and read the letter, held a corner of it in the flame of the candle and let it burn.

  Then he looked up.

  It was strange to look upon the chambers from this side of the desk. Devon had always wanted his job, made no secret of the fact from the moment she walked on board, and now Evelyn had it and she was standing there, staring at him as if it was the last thing in the galaxy she ever wanted to happen.

  He stared at the chess pieces, lined up neatly as if the battle had never happened. Was that it? It all just resets and starts again? He chose a white pawn, King’s Gambit, why not, and moved it, no need to reach to touch it, it simply glided obediently into its next square.

  “Come sit down,” he said, watching as Evelyn walked hesitantly forward to sit in what had always been his chair.

  He needed to tell her what he’d learned from Fiorrentino about Zang and UM, about the Order, what they knew now about the Bhenykhn. What they were. How they’d beaten them. It was going to be tough. She didn’t know about Sebastian. Or the side effects of the virus. He’d been expecting to have to relate the whole thing to the Man. Not this.

  “Has he gone?” she asked.

  NG nodded. The weight of that revelation hung heavy in the spice-scented heat.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We need to contain the situation down there,” he said. “And we need to do it fast. We need to recover their bodies and find the debris from their ship. We need to backwards engineer their technology.” He reached for the bottle. “And we need to talk. You and me. There’s a lot I need to tell you.”

  Chapter 42

  She looked up. “So do you know where he is now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he ready?”

  “No. Not by a long way.”

  “You can’t go back. You are needed elsewhere now.”

  “I know.” He pressed his palms together, fingers entwined, breathing in the warm spice-scented air, the glow from the fire receding as the ashes cooled, sending the room into darkness.

  “Have you done enough?”

  “We have to hope so. It is up to them now.”

  •

  WILFUL DEFIANCE

  (Thieves’ Guild: Book Four)

  by

  C.G. Hatton

  •

  Published by Sixth Element Publishing

  Arthur Robinson House

  13-14 The Green

  Billingham TS23 1EU

  Great Britain

  Tel: +44 1642 360253

  www.6epublishing.net

  © C.G. Hatton 2015

  www.cghatton.com

  Also available in paperback.

  C.G. Hatton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  •

  For Hatt

  Acknowledgements

  There are loads of people I need to thank for getting me this far. Many thanks to Andy Harness and Steve Dickinson at Sci-Fi Scarborough for their enthusiasm and support last year when we launched book three and for challenging me to write this book in time for their next event, and special thanks to all the readers who have been in touch over the past few years – I can’t express how much it means to me to hear from people who have enjoyed my stuff.

  I would also like to give many thanks to Graeme Wilkinson at Sixth Element for his enthusiasm for my Thieves’ Guild universe since the beginning, his patience in designing my covers and his critical eye as a beta reader; to my family and friends who have always appreciated and tolerated my peculiarities, and have never minded being roped into the mad events I get involved in (especially big thanks to Jan and Dave); and finally to Hatt and the munchkins (without whom none of this would have made it into print) for being my inspiration, for keeping me going when things get tough and for putting up with me… I know it’s not easy at times.

  Chapter 1

  “And where is he now?”

  The question hung heavy, more ominous spoken as it was by the most ancient of them.

  The chamber was warm, the minds of those facing him cold. The Man sat alone in front of them, a courtesy to be here, not reporting, merely informing. Events had moved fast. Far faster than any of them had anticipated.

  She was there, midway along the right hand side of the gathering, eyes fixed on him, wanting to ask of Nikolai, wanting to ask where he was, if he was still alive, if he’d made it through all of this, if any of her favourites had made it out alive.

  He lowered his eyes, considering his response, lacing his fingers together as he sat there, stretching his limbs and glad to be free of the confines of that form that was so restricting but so necessary when he worked with the humans.

  Now where to start…?

  •

  He shut out the screams and shouts, the sounds of shattering glass and gunfire. The sniper rifle had an effective range of two miles. As it was, he was only two blocks away, which was a good thing because his arm still wasn’t fully healed.

  He sighted through the scope, scanned across to the roof of the outpost where an Imperial flag was flying, then down to sweep north and south, up and down the main approaches. Thick black smoke was billowing up to the skyline from burning barricades. Gunships were circling, dropping down to street level with weapons whirring to bully the rebels into falling back. As he watched, a shoulder-launched missile screamed. A gunship exploded in a fireball, careening into a building across the street. He instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as the flames flared, illuminating the scene with chunks of burning metal that crashed to the ground to the sound of ragged cheers.

  The Empire troops were outnumbered and outgunned. Surrounded. It was a godforsaken base in a crumbling city centre on some low priority planet, so no battlefield troops, no powered armour or weapons sentries, no real defences. And the few soldiers in light armour that they did have were rooted to the spot by the rules of engagement of their strictly humanitarian brief. Their orders were to hold, let the drugged up bastards burn themselves out. Except that wasn’t going to happen and they had no idea why it was suddenly going so badly wrong.

  He scanned the sights across the crowd, tracking faces and minds as the rioters advanced, as they jumped up onto burnt out vehicles and threw grenades and burning bottles, screaming and releasing decades – generations – of oppressed hatred.

  He found one of the figures he was looking for, scruffy fatigues, face masked, concealed body armour that was way beyond the means of the poor suckers they were inciting. He spotted another and another. They were coordinating the attack through Sensons, tight wire, encrypted comms that he could hear as easily as if he was included in the loop. They had a drop ship in orbit ready to extricate their target, the real reason they were here, the actual mission they were using this riot to cover. It was going to take slick timing to get this right.

  He chose his first target. Breathed in. Breathed out. And pulled the trigger.

  By the time he reached street level, the rioters were running full tilt at the Empire enclosure.

  He paused in the doorway to pull a scarf over his mouth and nose, pulled his hood up and stepped out as a stray RPG hit the building opposite. Glass and debris showered down. He didn’t flinch, didn’t stop, simply merged in with the crowd, walked past a car that was still on fire, an overturned truck, a trashed checkpoint, and let himself be drawn towards the outpost. The few Imperial troops on guard around its perimeter were firing, FTH that was bouncing off the attackers with no effect because the whole lot of them were equipped with nullifiers you couldn’t even get on the black market. The outpost was being overwhelmed, over-run by a frenzied mob that knew it was only a matter of time before they’d be in.

  The Senson engaged. “What are you doing, 402?”

&
nbsp; He ignored them, cut the connection and walked calmly up the centre of the road, rifle slung across his back, people pushing past him, fury and exhilaration burning deep in the minds that swirled in a maelstrom around him, anger and frustration heightened by the violence and fuelled by the drugs. Someone bumped his shoulder, pushed a bottle into his hand, flames from the rag stuffed into it curling around his sleeve. Someone else caught his eye, screaming, grinning, brandishing a makeshift burning torch in one hand and a rifle in the other, before turning to charge.

  It was easy to shut out the emotion. After Erica, this was nothing.

  He approached the entrance as the barriers were being torn down. Rebels were climbing through, others clambering all over the downed guards, tearing at their armour and weapons.

  He tossed the bottle casually at the barricade as he passed, blazing fluid splashing and flaring around the razor wire. Their drop ship was on its way down so the clock was ticking. He pulled out a gun with his left hand and walked in.

  The man he was looking for was entrenched in the main building, three stories up, in a defensive position that was going to last about another two minutes. He upped the pace, pushed past rioters who’d turned to looting, and ran up the stairs. The knee held. Just.

  He paused on one of the stairwell landings, glanced out of the window, and sent through their own tight wire connection, “I’m in. Go for it.”

  Down there in the shadows surrounding the front gate, chameleonic body armour shimmered, figures appearing as if from nowhere, as if the walls had come alive. He turned away to move on up the stairs. They opened fire and he felt the ripple of dark void sweeping outwards as the rioters ran headlong into a hail of live rounds and fell.

  He made it to the command floor, rounded the corner, gun up, and took out three of them with fast shots to the back of the head. They dropped. Two more appeared, wondering what the hell was happening, hesitant to shoot one of their own, and both fell with a shot between the eyes.

  Two of them were inside already. They had the base commander out cold, another officer dead on the floor and were kicking the shit out of another they had hooded and bound.

  He paused at the door and took in the scene in a moment of calm, slow motion clarity, then fired a shot at one and moved fast to incapacitate the other with a precision blow, grasping him round the back of the neck and taking everything he needed in one brief instant before firing point blank, double tap to the head. He pushed the body away and stood for a moment, scanning around, slowing his breathing.

  Satisfied that they were secure, he knelt. He yanked the hood off the officer lying there, tugged the scarf down from his own face and grinned. “Hello, Matt.”

  Jameson grimaced. “NG? Bloody hell, I thought you were dead.”

  “I am.”

  He needed more time than he had. He drew a knife, sliced through the bindings cutting into the colonel’s wrists, grabbed his arm and flashed them to another place.

  Jameson blinked, for a moment looking startled and disorientated.

  NG sat there, legs dangling over the edge of the rooftop, looking out over the burning city.

  “This isn’t real,” Jameson said, rubbing a hand across his now pain-free head, pressing where he’d just been kicked by the scum that had come seemingly out of nowhere. “Am I hallucinating?” He turned and glared at NG. “Did you just rescue me or did I imagine that too?”

  NG took a swig of whisky from the bottle he was holding. “You’re still on the floor down there but yes, you’re rescued, for what it’s worth.” He offered across the liquor.

  “So what is this?”

  “Whisky.”

  Jameson laughed harshly. “I mean this. All this.”

  “You’ve been set up,” NG said. “You need to command your guys to ditch the FTH, for Christ’s sake.”

  Jameson growled and took a drink. “They only have FTH. It’s supposed to be a damned peacekeeping operation. Get this – all our live ammo was withdrawn five days ago.” He was here on some bullshit intel recovery mission, alone, on orders that had come down from god knows where. It was easy enough to pick the confusion and anger out of his thoughts as he tried to figure out why the hell he’d been sent here and how they’d been over-run so easily.

  “They had outside help,” NG said, pulling out a gun and making a show of reloading it. “Now you have outside help. I have guys out there. As far as anyone is concerned, you fought back and won. We don’t have much time. I need you to listen to me.”

  Jameson narrowed his eyes. He was pissed at how fast he’d been taken down – he was a spec ops colonel, for fuck’s sake, and he was not out of shape – but he wasn’t stupid and he was thinking that this was all too weird. A statement had been issued by the Thieves’ Guild, galaxy-wide to all parties they’d ever dealt with: NG was dead, killed in action. The evidence had even been accepted by the Assassins. Evelyn was the guild’s new head of operations. And now NG turns up in the middle of a goddamned riot amongst insurgents who should not have been able to get within a mile of this place? He shook his head and looked at the bottle in his hand. “I drank a bloody good bottle of scotch for you when I heard you were dead. What the hell’s going on?”

  NG stared at him.

  This was the pressure point. In reality, he really did have a loaded gun in his hand and it would take a split second to be back there, raise it and execute the colonel if necessary.

  “You’ve been set up,” he said again. “The people who were trying to get to the guild’s council through me are now after you because someone has put two and two together and jumped to the conclusion that you’re closer to us than you should be. Which is true. They can’t get me any more so they’re coming after you. And right now, I’ve just condemned you by coming here to save your ass because now you know that I’m alive.”

  He let that hang for a moment then added, “Do you understand? As far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, I’m dead. And now you know I’m not. I can’t let that go.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  NG gestured casually with the gun. “Don’t make me kill you, Matt.”

  Jameson laughed again. “I’m hallucinating, NG. I’m probably dead already. You want to prove to me I’m not?”

  NG shrugged and threw in the real bombshell. “You want to know what happened to the Tangiers and the Expedience?”

  “What?”

  “On Erica. Do you want to know what really happened?”

  Jameson screwed up his face. He was easy to read. He’d seen the initial reports, some kind of incident out in the Between. It had sent their war footing sky high. No one knew exactly what had happened, just that Earth had lost one of its warships, a JU ship at that, and Winter had lost one of its flagship battle cruisers. Powder keg, meet spark.

  “We’re at war,” he said, not hiding the sarcasm. “That’s what happens.”

  NG shook his head. “If you want to know what really happened, you need to come over to us. And Matt, if you do, you are throwing in your lot with me. Do you understand? Not the guild. Me.” He gave that as much persuasion as he could while still needing Jameson to make up his own mind, then he added, “I can’t let them have you.”

  “Who the hell is them?”

  “From the way they set this up, someone who has access to your chain of command. I’m trying to find out who and right now you’re my closest link to them.” And why he needed Jameson alive and uncompromised, on side so he could set him loose again. “I’m going after them and I’m going after the bastards who knew what was waiting for us out there at Erica.”

  “You were there?”

  “That’s where I died. Got the scars to prove it.”

  “What was there?”

  NG waved the gun again. “Decide now that you’re with me or you die here.”

  Jameson laughed harshly. “You’re serious?” He’d already made his decision. “I always said you were a tough bastard, NG. Okay, I’m in. I’m expecting this to b
e good.”

  “It is. We just fended off the first attack from an alien enemy and, trust me, as we are, we won’t survive another.”

  Chapter 2

  “You abandoned the guild,” one of them said, harsh and accusing, “and left it in the hands of the young protégé who not only precipitated these dire events in the first place, but who felt the need to fake his death and run it anonymously?”

  “You persuaded us,” another interjected, “that this guild construct you so desired was the most effective way to prepare. Yet you left it in the hands of one so unstable?”

  The Man looked from face to face. It was one of the hardest concepts for them to grasp. He had never, in all his dealings with this assembly, ever been able to convey the fickle disparate nature of the factions controlling human space.

  “Humans both delight and despair in destroying each other,” he said carefully. “It’s both their curse and their redemption. They are short-lived and fiercely jealous creatures. If Nikolai had not taken care to hide, he would have been hunted down… regardless of his knowledge of the Bhenykhn and his abilities to face them. Humans despise any they think threaten them. And their own kind are far easier prey to target than some hypothetical evil beyond their immediate comprehension. He had no choice.”

  •

  Out there in the real world, at that split second, the fight was about to intensify, explosives set to detonate, fingers squeezing on triggers, a drop ship plummeting towards them.

  Here, he had all the time he needed.

  He flashed back to the Expedience crashing into the alien warship then to the battle, the mud and rain, the pain, losing contact with Hones, the Tangiers exploding, the massive Bhenykhn surrounding them, the moment the commander thrust the knife into his heart.