by C. G. Hatton
Sebastian shoved him aside, hit the button and let go.
‘Dammit, I hate pain,’ he hissed. ‘Now listen to me, Nikolai, your little stunt back there, chasing that scout, is going to have repercussions, nasty repercussions, but bizarrely enough, that might be just what we need. Itomara has now seen them in action first hand. You need to get your ass out of this pod and start pulling the strings because, left to their own devices, these creatures will self-destruct before they have any chance of making a stand against the Bhenykhn. And trust me, we need help to make that stand because the hive now knows everything there is to know about you and I, my friend.’
It wasn’t a medic that turned up to respond to the alarm, it was Evelyn. She stared at him without a word, punched the release and walked away.
He’d been thinking he couldn’t feel any worse. He was wrong.
He didn’t go anywhere near her mind, simply sat up as the pod let him go and sat there, rubbing his wrists, trying to calm his breathing. He had a dressing taped to his upper chest, left side, just below the collarbone. He couldn’t remember that one but it was throbbing. He peeled back the dressing and could see the edge of a raw, intricate design burnt into his flesh.
He felt sick.
‘They branded you,’ Sebastian murmured. ‘When you were captured, they injected all of you with some kind of biological marker, something I assume they can track. Don’t worry, I’ve killed the organism.’
Christ. He sat there, feeling Sebastian heal what he could, not much either of them could do about the remnants of the poison that was still sapping his strength, then he climbed out, dressing slowly in the gear that had been left there for him.
He followed her out of the soundproofed isolation unit into chaos, wounded in the corridors, screaming and dying, not the Alsatia he knew.
‘Go to your office,’ Sebastian said, cold, insistent.
He couldn’t just walk through. Evelyn was kneeling next to one of the injured. Leigh was there, covered in blood, in amongst the casualties, the same as she had been on Erica. She looked tired but unharmed. Other medics were doing their best but they were all overrun.
Evelyn looked up at him and he could tell from her expression that she knew. No need to read her mind. Someone must have briefed her. She was testing him, waiting to see what he would do as if she had no idea who he was any more.
‘Go to your office,’ Sebastian said again.
He couldn’t.
He was drawn to her, kneeled and rested his hand against the guy’s neck, drawing energy from her to heal the devastating chest wound. He felt the guy stabilise beneath his touch, breathing settle, colour returning.
Evelyn was staring at him. There was no emotion there, just pure cold Assassin’s blood running through her veins. “You need to see the Chief,” she said.
They had the big man in an isopod but it was doing nothing. Keeping him alive but barely.
“He insisted on going down there to get you,” Evelyn said. “Same as Erica.” She wanted to scream at him, thinking, but it wasn’t the same, was it? She wanted to yell at him, hit him.
He read her mind then. She’d talked to Morgan, got a full run down on what had happened on Poule, what NG had ordered them to do when the scout ship had appeared. The guy had also thrown the full file on NG over to her. She knew everything. All their tests, all the data. The telepathy, the healing, the telekinesis. Everything.
He didn’t know what to say so he just pressed his hand against the release catch, watched as the pod opened and placed his hand on the Chief’s chest.
He closed his eyes and healed what he could, draining himself down to his last reserves, and it still wasn’t enough. The way it had been with Martinez on Erica, down there in the cold mud of the battlefield after it was all done and over and he couldn’t save her.
He couldn’t save the Chief. He didn’t have a miracle heal-all, cure-all. It didn’t work like that. Not with the poison the Bennies used.
He did his best and backed away.
“Use the virus on him,” he said, voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. “Use it on all the wounded.”
He walked away then and made his way to his old office, shrugging off anyone who tried to stop him. She hadn’t moved in, just left it the same as when he’d left. Tidied up the mess but left everything else the same.
He grabbed a bottle of whisky and sat on the desk. There was a report there on the encounter with the Bhenykhn, accounts from the extraction crews, the medical teams, stats on losses and a brief note on gains. He flicked through it, feeling removed from it all, numb.
He had thick red chafe marks around each wrist.
‘They had you in chains. Be grateful for the rescue.’
‘I am.’
‘And be glad that you’re here. You need the Alsatia and that charade was not doing you any favours.’
‘I was trying to keep her safe.’
‘Well, well done, you’ve made her hate you. That will keep her safer than when she is distracted worrying about you. She’s been speaking to the Assassins – did you pick that tidbit out of her mind?’
He hadn’t. She’d got a copy of the warrant that was out on him. He knew that. Someone had made sure she saw it.
He took a swig out of the bottle, felt the alcohol hit his stomach, immune system still suppressed and energy levels about as low as they could go.
He felt her approach the door. She paused, like old times, then walked in. She had her hands at her side but she might as well have been wielding daggers.
He hated it but he met her open hostility with indifference. He took another drink and sat, legs dangling, resting the bottle on his knee.
“We can’t use the virus,” she said, stopping half way across the office.
“We don’t have any choice.”
“You’ll risk losing half our wounded? And the half that survive, if that many, what happens to them?”
“We get ourselves more telepaths. With any luck, we might get someone who can hear the Bennies. Did we capture any of them alive?”
“We got you back alive.” She was struggling to contain her anger. She almost didn’t believe that it was him. No one but LC, Duncan and Leigh knew about Sebastian and they wouldn’t have said anything of him to her. It was more that she was thinking this could just be someone who looked like NG, a lot like him, but thinner.
“I’m me,” he said, confrontational, raising the bottle to his lips, knowing he was making it worse.
She sucked in a deep breath, eyes still flaring, thinking to herself, ‘My god, he is reading my mind. He has always been able to read my mind.’
He looked at her, wanting nothing more than to sweep her up and squeeze her tight, but he said, cold and calculating, “Use the virus,” the way the Man had said it to him all that time ago before they killed Sorensen. He let that sink in, didn’t let her object again and added, “Where’s LC?”
“He’s in Medical with a broken leg,” she said. Accusing. She thought they’d lost him. She was thinking that she’d almost lost both of them. “We can’t stabilise the poison but he’s fighting it. Duncan as well.”
“Get them in here and get the section chiefs in the conference room.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “And where do I stand in all this?”
“Head of operations. Get Morgan in there. And Quinn. And Jameson and Pen. Is Itomara still on board?”
She nodded.
“And send word to Marrek,” he said, watching her reaction. “He is the new leader of the Assassins, isn’t he?”
She didn’t show any surprise that he knew. “You want him here?”
“Why not?”
And they were holding Ballack in one of the rooms in the hospitality suite. He could wait until later.
“Use the virus,” NG said again and stared at her, not exactly giving her a brush off but she got the message.
She spun on her heels and left.
He’d downed half the bottle
before the door opened again. No knock.
Media didn’t hesitate. She grinned, strode right up to him, stood on tiptoes and gave him a hug.
She was warm. Small but warm. He stole a bit of her energy. She always had plenty.
“Glad you’re not dead,” she breathed into his neck, finally, pulling away and looking at him, taking hold of his hands and squeezing. “LC and Hal are on their way.” She grinned again. “NG, I want the virus. I want to be able to do what you all do.”
He couldn’t help but smile back, feeling the closest to being home since he’d woken up.
“No. Brooke, it’s too risky.”
“C’mon, that’s not fair. You boys can’t have all the fun.” She was playing. “Let me in. Fifty-fifty odds is nothing. I’d bet this cruiser on less than that.”
She did, regularly. Media was at her best, because of, not despite what had happened, what was going on out there. She’d always been like that. She was pure insane defiance personified. The warmest of them all and the coldest of them.
“No,” he said. “I need you to do a job for me.”
She looked at him sideways, curiosity piqued. She had a dozen trains of thought running through her mind, intertwining, making patterns, weaving opportunities, straight away thinking what she had that she could use fast to best effect in all this even though he hadn’t said what he wanted her to do.
“Are we telling everyone about the aliens?” she asked.
“Nope. They won’t believe us. Don’t worry, I have a plan for that.”
She hugged him again. “I’m sure you do. I’m glad you’re back. So, Nikolai? Do we get to call you Nikolai now?”
He stopped outside the door to the conference room. He’d talked to LC and Duncan, both of them still tired from the effects of the poison, LC struggling with badly broken ribs and the fracture in his leg from the weighted chain that had hit him, and both of them apprehensive about the task he set them. They’d demolished a case of beer between the three of them while they hashed out a plan. Then he’d taken a shower in his old quarters, a reassuring routine that reinforced this bizarre notion that he might be home.
‘Make the most of it,’ Sebastian whispered. ‘Are you ready to face the inquisition?’
‘Never been more ready. This is the game we should have been playing the whole damned time.’
‘I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking, Nikolai. We are so much more alike than you dare admit.’
‘Sebastian, we’re exactly the same. Don’t think I don’t realise that. I just have to deal with these people day in, day out. You don’t. I know you’re not allowing me to stick around because you feel sorry for me. You need me. You just want to fight the Bhenykhn? Fine, I’ll set it up for you. You just tell me how close you want to get.’
That got a laugh. ‘I’m liking your plan, Nikolai. And you know what? I think you might just pull it off.’
He walked in and sat down. There was a copy of the report there. There was also a glass of whisky set out for him. He ignored the report, took a sip of the whisky and looked up. They were all looking at him, looking at the graze marks around his wrists as if that made it all the more real.
He glanced from face to face, settling on Itomara. “The Order has been orchestrating conflict and hostilities between human factions for centuries,” he said. “We’ve always countered that. Now? We need to trigger it. We have to use everything we have to accelerate outright war, right now, between Earth and Winter.”
Chapter 26
“He turned despair into hope,” she said, in awe, more than ever.
“He deals in war,” one of the others said, not disguising his disgust.
“He does what is necessary,” the Man said again.
There was a shaking of heads, condescending, hypocritical.
“But the virus, the organism…?” another said. “He was prepared to risk half his people?”
There was disbelief. Despite everything he had told them and shown them, everything they knew of the Bhenykhn, they were judging Nikolai to be harsh in his actions.
The Man tempered an urge to respond in anger, waiting until the clamour had settled before saying, calm and cold, “He was prepared to risk everything, unlike us, who were prepared to risk nothing, and look where that has led us.”
•
No one said a word.
“We encountered one of their forward operating bases,” he said. The board in front of him was scrolling with the stats of just how bad the losses had been to retrieve them. He reached out his hand and shut it down. “We can’t take on their full force but we can whittle away what they have here now. Before they launch their full attack. We’re close to knowing exactly where to go to find them. I didn’t intend to give you all such a graphic demonstration of Bhenykhn warfare so close up but now you’ve seen it, stop doubting me, stop suspecting that there is some kind of hidden agenda here and work with us.” He took a sip of whisky. “No one else is going to believe it. The only way I can see that we can destroy one of these bases is to bring a big enough force of Earth and Wintran military together in one place. Get them head to head then turn them onto the Bhenykhn.”
The silence was thick in the room.
Itomara broke it. “You would condemn thousands to their death.”
“If we don’t do something, billions die.”
Jameson, Pen and Quinn had been down there on the surface of that planet, he realised, looking at them, looking deeper into their minds, noticing the injuries they were carrying. They’d mobilised without hesitation, joining the Chief and the guild’s rescue mission. Jameson had been the one who’d found them.
NG lowered his eyes, seeing more than he wanted to in that brief glimpse.
‘You would’ve done the same,’ the colonel thought. Clear as a bell. He overheard NG think that and twitched a smile. He had beads of sweat on his brow, grimacing through the pain. ‘Hal Duncan is one helluva good drill sergeant. You’re lucky to have found him. I always thought it was shit what we did to him. And, NG, by god, this is the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done.’
‘You should have seen what LC went through,’ NG thought back and said out loud, “We’ve proved that we can beat them. We’ve done it twice now.”
Pen shook his head. “You’ve beaten them, NG. You. Both times. Don’t deny it. Even down there. They were doing their damnedest to keep you alive. That’s the only reason we got anywhere near them. We grabbed you and ran, do you realise that? We couldn’t take them on in a straight fight. Not without you.” He leaned forward. “And there are so many people looking to take you out on our side that we don’t stand a chance of keeping you alive as soon as word gets out.”
A faint smile danced across Itomara’s face. Almost unreadable, except it was clear that he was thinking he’d authorised actions against NG himself. Actions that were probably still active. He was thinking how things change.
NG looked round. Evelyn was looking at him, tapping absently on the file she was keeping to hand, thinking he didn’t stand a chance, and thinking again that in all the time she’d worked with him, she’d never truly known who he was. She looked him in the eye, guessing that he was reading her mind. ‘Did Devon?’ she thought.
He connected through the Senson, surprised that she allowed permission. “She knew at the end. When I couldn’t save her.” He had a lump in his throat, even just looking at Evelyn.
“No one else can head this up,” Pen said, pushing it. He raised a finger, pointing. “But as soon as you stick your head above the parapet, someone is going to take a pot-shot.”
“I can run things from here,” he said.
‘At least sound convincing.’
“Can you?” Pen said.
Media spoke up, demanding their attention, being facetious and knowing it. “Trust me, gentlemen, we know what we’re doing. You want us to start a war?” It was a total one eighty spin from the brief she’d always worked to and she was loving it. She smiled. “Just
tell me when and where.”
Evelyn followed him out as he left them to discuss strategies with Media. “You’re 402,” she said.
He didn’t stop but she kept stride with him.
“You were right there in that prison on Aston. Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t you trust me, NG?”
She wanted to hit him, right in the jugular, with the sharp end of a knife.
Saying that he was trying to protect her didn’t seem to cut it.
“Don’t you think it was hard enough for us losing Devon?” she said. “Media cried for a week after Erica. I can’t believe she isn’t more pissed at you.”
Media lived in the moment. She knew now that he was okay, so that was okay.
‘You might want to say some of this out loud,’ Sebastian murmured.
He didn’t know how to.
“Come with me to the Man’s ship,” he said.
“Why? So you can wipe my memory again?”
“Evie…” He stopped.
‘We don’t have time for this. Just make her think whatever you want so we can get on with the things that actually matter.’
Except he couldn’t.
‘Sebastian, this matters to me.’
“Let me undo it,” he said to Evelyn. He needed her to make her own mind up.
She stared at him with her jaw set, eyes flashing. “NG, I don’t know if I trust you any more. I don’t want you inside my head.”
He had to force himself to stand there and not turn away. “Let me explain it all then you can decide.”
“It’s not going to make any difference.”
“Let me try. The Man has good taste in wine. You liked it last time. And I promise, I’ll stay out of your head.”
They talked for another three hours and at the end of it he still wasn’t sure she didn’t hate him still. She’d wanted to know more. More about him, about Erica, more about the Bhenykhn and more about how Devon had died, why he’d felt so sure he had to lie to protect her from the Assassins. At the end of it, he walked her back to her office. She stood there, thinking that he looked tired, thinking of everything she’d read in the files, everything he’d been through, everything she’d done as head of operations that she wished she could have shared with him.
