by C. G. Hatton
The tech guy had started climbing again. “I actually didn’t consider that Zang would stoop to such crass methods as murdering innocent girls. It wasn’t Luka but they have a pretty much watertight case against him. DNA, fingerprints, footage from station security, eye witness accounts…”
It wasn’t surprising. NG followed, leaning on the handrail as the knee started to complain. He’d thought they must have solid evidence to get Ballack to back it and, as much as he’d swear LC would never hurt Olivia, he still asked, “How do you know it wasn’t LC?”
“I’ll show you.”
Chapter 5
There were mutterings. “What about Nikolai himself? Your young protégé? Have you not tried to replicate his abilities?”
Other voices joined the dissenter, more questions accusing, deflecting from the real issues.
He stayed his temper and kept his resolve to humour them.
Another voice, “Why do you not bring him to us? Let us take this forward. Your guild has outlived its usefulness.” The unspoken accusation that ‘he’ had outlived his usefulness. An accusation of failure. Again.
She spoke up then, leaning forward. “Enough. This galaxy needs the guild and everything it has built, everything it has stood for. Now more than ever. Do not question that. And Nikolai? You know it has been tried and the backlash from that episode proved costly to all of our plans. This is not relevant. We are here to make a decision.” She raised her voice, looking straight at him, and added, “Let us not make the same mistake again.”
•
They walked out onto the bridge, minimal lighting coming on as they entered. For his benefit. It was clear that Elliott had no need of creature comforts.
The tech guy sat at the main console in front of a bank of monitors that sprang to life. Nothing about this ship suggested there was an AI but LC had been convinced, and watching Elliott now, it was clear he had a way of hooking in remotely.
NG sat, rubbing a hand across his knee to get some feeling back into it, and leaned forward. The main monitor was showing an image of LC, close up. Except Elliott was right, there was no way it was LC if the date stamp on it was right. Whoever it was in the security footage looked like the kid but there was no neat, pencil-thin scar cutting horizontally across his left cheekbone. The virus was good but it didn’t heal with no trace of the wound. LC had been sliced across the face by a machete on Erica. But unless someone had been there with them, they wouldn’t know that. And everyone who’d been down there was contained securely on the Alsatia, present company excepted.
It wasn’t LC.
NG sat back. “Do you know where he is?”
“No. But I’m sure he’ll just be lying low somewhere. He seems to have a knack for it. Now this…” The image changed to a map of Yarrimer’s sprawling headquarters. “This is where I want you to go. Do you need to see the details again?”
He shook his head. He didn’t have an eidetic memory like LC but he’d processed the intel. He’d been there before. A long time ago. “Yarrimer is a bitch to get into.”
Elliott looked him straight in the eye. “I know,” he said slowly and clearly, again as if he was speaking to a child. “Yarrimer has always had excellent security. That’s why I need you to do this. Really, Nikolai, I thought you’d be smarter than this.”
It wasn’t where he wanted to go – he was targeting UM – but this guy was an irritation that was getting under his skin. “I can get in there,” he said. “What is the artefact?”
“Let me tell you something, Nikolai.” Elliott spun his chair round and folded his arms. “Earth and Winter are at war. Losing those two warships you so kindly brought together has tipped the balance.” The screens started to flash up stats and charts. “The Wintran coalition got ships to Erica first. They’re raking through the debris field and they have people on the planet. They’re not letting Earth anywhere near. The twitchy fingers on the triggers of the Imperial Navy don’t need much more of an excuse to attack.” He paused then added, “The Order is self-destructing. This is not the war they wanted. What you did out there at Erica, pulling that stunt with Garrett and setting the Tangiers against the Expedience, has probably done them more damage than you’ve managed in years. Take advantage of it. Push them over the edge now. They’re ripe for it. But think about it, take them out now, the most influential organisation in this galaxy, and what does the human race have left to fight the Bhenykhn with?”
The Order had never been in a fit state to deal with a threat from outside but he didn’t say that. He wanted to ask how the hell Elliott knew about the Order but he bit his tongue.
Elliott leaned forward. “What would you say if I offered you the most powerful weapons platform the human race has ever developed?”
He wouldn’t believe it. “What’s the catch?” he said.
Elliott shrugged. “It was too powerful. The corporations mothballed it. None of them dared consider the possibility that anyone else could control it so they buried it.”
“And you think we can just walk in there and take it?”
“Don’t be naïve, Nikolai. The corporations hate each other. But who do you think controls the corporations?”
He knew who controlled them. “The Order.” It was hard not to stand and walk away. If the Order had something in their domain that was so powerful, the Man would have known about it.
“They locked it away,” Elliott said, “but they didn’t throw away the key – they broke it into equal fragments and gave a piece back to each of the corporations.”
NG felt cold. He had no reason to trust or believe a word this guy was saying. “How do you know all this?”
“Let’s just say I’m a scholar of human history. And the Thieves’ Guild is the fabled and renowned master collector of antiquities.” Elliott’s stare was unblinking. “Get me those fragments, Nikolai, and we will have a weapon that will give us a chance against the Bhenykhn.”
“Okay, Yarrimer and who else?” NG said. “How many more? All the big corporations? The big five?”
The guy smiled outright then. “There are seven fragments.”
That didn’t make sense. “UM,” he said. “Zang, Aries, Marathon.” He paused then added, “Stirling and Kochitek.” Christ, those two corporations had been defunct for generations. “Do you have any of the pieces already?”
“Aries,” Elliott said. “Don’t worry about Aries. You take care of the rest and we’ll be able to integrate the key and gain access.”
It was like negotiating a contract, except it felt more like he was doing a deal for his soul. “Zang might be difficult for us,” he said. “The others should be fine. UM, I want anyway. Do you have a way to Rodan? Is he Order?”
Elliott laughed. “Angmar Rodan is setting up a New Order and Earth isn’t featuring anywhere in it. Get me the key fragment from Yarrimer and I’ll find you an in to UM.”
NG crouched by the open safe. It didn’t feel right. He was inches from taking the artefact but it didn’t feel right.
It had been slick, almost exhilarating. Yarrimer had upped security since the last time he was here, upped it even since the last time LC had been here when the kid had screwed up, broken his leg and almost blown it, but then all the corporations were getting more paranoid these days.
NG started to reach his hand in to take the box, paused, fingers inches from the smooth silver-grey metal of the high security case, and sat back again. He didn’t know what was wrong. Scanning around, there was nothing amiss. He hadn’t triggered a single alarm and the current security detail had no idea they’d been compromised. The vast corporate estate was operating business as usual. But the hairs on the back of his neck were bristling. It had hardly been too easy. It wasn’t that. And it wasn’t a trap. He’d covered everything. As a tab, it had been tough but not impossible. Costly. Risky. But then the best ones always were.
He was down to thirty seconds to get the artefact and split before the interferences he’d put in place lapsed.
&
nbsp; He stared at the safe. It had been accessed recently, he’d seen that on the way in as he’d tricked his way through the locks. There was definitely no trap that he’d missed and he hadn’t left any loose ends that could trip him up on the way out.
He switched focus to the guards outside with ten seconds to spare.
Dammit.
He closed the safe, slipping out through the vault door and easing it closed. He waited in the anteroom, counting heartbeats, sensing the guards and feeling the rhythm of their movements.
He waited until there was only one there and waited again until that guy was looking at the monitors at his security station. It took three seconds to open the door, make it to the desk and catch the guy’s wrist as he looked up in surprise and reached for the alarm. Two more seconds and the guy was back at work, wondering why he had a headache and trying to recall what day, never mind what time, it was.
NG walked up the stairs as if he worked there, stripping off the gloves, and acquiring a briefcase somewhere along the way. He nodded to staff and they nodded back, anyone even vaguely curious as to who he was dealt with just as fast. He palmed a pass from someone, fried the information on it and made his way to the penthouse executive suite.
He walked casually up to the security desk, swiped the pass and cursed as it rejected his ID. He grinned at the girl there. “Damn thing is always doing this,” he said, shaking the pass and bending it almost in two as if that could fix it.
“That won’t help,” she said. She looked like she could put him on the floor in two seconds flat.
He smiled. “My appointment’s been moved up to half two.”
“Let me check.” She glanced down at her console, didn’t move for a fraction of a second, then blinked, frowning. She looked up and smiled back. “Yes, it has. Go right on in.”
It was half two in the morning and the CEO was still in there working, a blue light flickering from monitors. Corporate money never sleeps.
She looked up as he walked in.
“Good evening,” he said. “I believe you have something I need.”
He placed the case onto the console. Elliott looked up, raising an eyebrow. This time, there’d been no meet and greet in the cargo bay, just a curt message to get to the bridge.
NG didn’t sit. He’d left one of the most influential women in Winter fast asleep at her desk, wiped any trace of himself from her memory and their security footage then taken the artefact she’d moved from the vault to a safe set into the floor under a rug by her bed. She’d have no idea it wasn’t still there. Then he’d extracted. He’d come straight back to the freighter. Alone.
“Yarrimer’s key fragment,” he said. “You want to check it?”
Elliott smiled, clicked open the locks on the case and took out a package wrapped in blue silk. About the size of his fist. He unravelled the cloth, revealing an irregular shaped block of platinum, highly polished, intricate angles catching the light from the console and glinting. He turned it in his hand. “Well done.”
NG stared at him. “How do I get to Rodan?”
“You have a bigger problem than UM.”
It was infuriating not to be able to pick it out of Elliott’s mind and from the way the guy was looking at him, the asshole knew it.
“Luka’s been caught.”
Chapter 6
“Ah, the Seven.”
“Adversaries or allies?” another piped up.
They started to debate.
He sat there, watching them, listening to the conflict between their thoughts and their words, thinking himself of the guild and its fortunes, the individuals who were so significant to its continued existence. They were short-lived these creatures, these humans, so fragile compared to his own, he knew that and the Bhenykhn had learned it quickly, but the ones to which even he himself had become so attached had a charisma about them, a spark that fuelled their lives to such an extent that he had become far more involved than he ever would have thought possible at the beginning.
“We have no way of knowing,” he said as they looked back to him. “We learned of the Seven when we arrived here. We were warned. We didn’t feel it relevant because we had nothing in our science, our history or philosophy against which to compare. We were wrong.”
•
It was hard to resist the urge to walk away, take this back to the guild and take it from there but he wasn’t stupid and, as hard as it was to admit, it was starting to feel as if Elliott had access to intel that was better than theirs. “Is he alive?”
“He was when I picked up the report.”
“Where is he?”
“High security facility on Aston. Nikolai, sit down and listen to me. Luka was badly wounded when he was taken down. Knowing the boy, he’ll survive it. But right now…” Elliott turned back to the console as the screens came to life. “…right now, because of that, it’s not going to take long for whoever it is that has their hands on him to realise what it is they’ve got. And that’s not just the cell regeneration.” He let that hang then added, “There were casualties.”
“That doesn’t sound like LC.”
“He wasn’t alone. Did you send Sean O’Brien after him?”
Christ. “No.” Not this time. Sean was still supposed to be chasing down Anya Halligan.
“Well, our darling Sean must have taken it upon herself to find him because she did and he killed three law enforcement officers trying to protect her.”
It felt like the precarious grasp he had on this reality he’d found himself in was unravelling. Despite everything, the damned Order was winning. “Where is she?”
“Apprehended as an accessory. She’s been charged with harbouring a fugitive. Nikolai, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying – he wasn’t armed.”
There was a police report scrolling on the main screen. It blurred as he stared at it.
It took a moment to realise that this weird tech guy was staring at him again.
“I’ll tell you what I want you to do,” Elliott said. “I want you to contain this secret you’ve been nurturing for so long. The human race is not ready to welcome immortal telepaths into its midst. I’ve told you that already. You need to rescue Luka before they realise what he is. Before Zang gets his grubby hands on the boy. Because that really will be bad. Go get Luka then I’ll tell you where Rodan is.”
NG threw the stack of files into the centre of the conference table and stalked round to grab the bottle of whisky. He wanted to throw something at the wall.
He went and perched on the bench at the far end of the room instead, drinking straight from the bottle, in the dark, almost challenging anyone to dare come in here, knowing fine well that no one would.
He felt like a damned puppet. It had been bad enough when he’d confronted the Man about the lie his whole life had been. Now the Man was gone, Sebastian was gone and every mistake he’d ever made was coming back to haunt him.
“Whatever bad crap you’re thinking,” Leigh said from the doorway, “you need to stop right now.”
He looked up. He hadn’t even heard the door open.
He almost yelled at her to get out, furious, almost threw the bottle across the room.
“Is this about LC?” she asked, seemingly unconcerned that she was interrupting.
She didn’t care, that was easy to read. She’d also noticed that he’d taken the support off his arm again and seemed to have made a conscious decision not to give him a hard time.
She was trying to help and it wasn’t fair to be angry at her. He bit back the temper and said calmly, “LC and UM.”
She went to the table, looked down at the documents and looked up with an, “Oh shit.”
NG nodded.
“Are you going after LC or Rodan?”
He had no idea.
He rested the bottle on his knee and looked at her. “LC.” How could he not? As much as he hated following Elliott’s instructions as if he was some kind of subordinate, he couldn’t abandon the kid to the Order
. “We need to get this stuff to the Alsatia. Get a team from Legal onto it.” Not that they had much chance of negotiating LC out of this, not now that he’d killed three police officers, but it was worth a shot. “And get them onto Frank O’Brien,” he said. “He should be able to get Sean cleared.”
He took a swig of the whisky. It was a good one, smooth and smoky. He wanted to talk to Evelyn. Get her over here. And the Chief, why the hell not? Elliott could blow his cover to anyone at any time. Did it really matter any more?
Leigh was watching him. “What are you going to do?”
She had a way of looking at him that made him want to tell her everything.
“We’ll find out when they’re planning to transfer LC and go get him.”
Aston wasn’t the best place to be banged up in high security. The crew manning the observation room were nervous. With good reason. It wasn’t every day you monitored the galaxy’s most wanted. They’d upped LC’s status to extremely dangerous. It was hard to believe this was all over the skinny kid sitting there in the interview room, two armed guards standing over him, his ankles chained, wrists manacled to a post in the centre of the table and head slumped down on his outstretched arms. They’d shaved his head and it was easy to see they’d stuck a button device in the back of his neck, one of the guys in here with his finger on the remote twitching to use it.
NG was at the back of the obs room, wearing a guard’s uniform, full riot gear with helmet, loaded rifle slung by his side, standing casually but ready as if at ease. It wasn’t a cast iron cover but no one had questioned the hastily constructed ID and transfer papers. It checked out, that was all they cared about, all their attention on LC.
‘What else?’ NG thought at him, definitely the weirdest briefing they’d ever had. He’d seen the reports but he wanted it first hand. As well as the gun shot wounds, they’d kicked the crap out of the kid.
