by C. G. Hatton
LC lay back and flung his left arm over his eyes. The intel he’d got from the Bhenykhn was complicated, a mass of jumbled alien data, hive mind mentality making it like a hundred jigsaws all broken up and mingled together, the image on each individual piece clear as day but no way to see the big picture. He needed to separate it all out and put it back together to make some pattern out of the chaos, but he’d tried. He couldn’t see it.
He felt Martinez nudge his thoughts from outside. ‘Hate to put the pressure on, LC, but you better unfuck that pretty little head of yours. And pretty damn fast. You understand?’
He managed to think back, ‘Yeah.’
He felt sick. He felt Hil take the bottle from his hand before he spilled it.
If they seriously wanted him to look at the intel again, he needed a shot of something that would help a damn sight more than whatever was in the IV line. He needed Sienna.
‘I’ll send her in,’ Martinez thought at him. ‘Do whatever it takes.’
Chapter 3
“You wanted to know of Anderton…”
The Man didn’t react, didn’t twitch a muscle. He simply said, “Battlefield narcotics.”
It was tempting to taunt him but the Man wasn’t so easy to rile. Keeping it simple was sometimes more devastating.
“You knew,” Sebastian said, “how susceptible that boy was to addictive tendencies. Yet still you encouraged the use of such substances within your ranks.”
The Man didn’t react.
“How delightfully ironic,” Sebastian couldn’t help saying. “The substances you funded, created and manipulated, to further your own twisted research into human physiology and performance, looking for that elusive magic bullet to beat the Bhenykhn, could turn out to be the humans’ downfall in the very war against them.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Nikolai or Luka?”
The Man’s expression darkened and Sebastian couldn’t help smiling.
“The human race has fragmented,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “Splintered into even more disparate factions than before. Humans self-destruct. You’ve always known that. Admit it. It’s why you came here. Why you chose this galaxy to send them to. Because you saw that the human race will fight to the end. Even if it destroys itself doing it.” He pointed his finger, accusing. “You made a point of recruiting individuals prone to those tendencies. And you sit there trying to make out that you care if one or two of those precious humans have made it this far… They self-destruct. Are Nikolai and Luka still alive? You know them better than anyone. You created Nikolai. And Luka? He wouldn’t even have lived past childhood if it weren’t for your guild. Are they still alive now? Why do you even care?”
•
Sienna didn’t knock. She just opened the door and came straight in with a cheery, “Hey, how are my two favourite field-ops?”
“Alive,” Hil said, sitting up and stretching. “Not sure about intact.” He grinned, the grin turning into a yawn, and stood. “I’m gonna go get some sleep.”
LC watched them bump fists as Hil edged past, tag – you’re it, like he was under observation and wasn’t to be left on his own. Not just grounded then.
Sienna threw him a grin as Hil left. She was wearing clean fatigues, a board in one hand and a flask in the other.
“Are you hungry?” she said, setting the board down.
LC pushed up onto one elbow and shook his head.
“Worse than last time?”
“I’m good.”
Sienna sat down on the edge of the bunk, nudging him across. She smelled of gun oil. It made him feel safe. Familiar. Home.
She held up the board. “Evelyn wants this intel. You ready to put that badass memory of yours to work?” She was chiding him, rough in the way the grunts dealt with crap, but then her voice turned soft, almost apologetic. “You want me to stay?”
“Yeah, please.”
She smiled, opening the flask and offering it to him.
It wasn’t just moonshine. It hadn’t just been moonshine for a long time. Since the FOB, before the invasion, the first time he’d been caught, when Sienna had come in for them and realised he wasn’t going to make it out. Just the scent of the moonshine flashed him back to that dank forest, the creeping mist, the searing pain as the bastard aliens had pressed the burning heat of the brand against his chest. She was the one who’d dragged him out of there. While the bombs had dropped all around them and the Thunderclouds had rained down their fire. She was the one who’d pulled him through the aftermath of it.
He shook off the memory, sat up and drank more than he should have with his stomach so queasy, feeling the narcotic embrace of the krakn in the liquor spread, feeling the virus welcome it with a need that made him tip the flask again and down the rest. Screw it. He felt like shit and it helped.
“You wanna do it here or in a briefing room?”
“Here,” he said. Then if, when, he crashed out, he could just sleep.
He reached for the board and closed his eyes, emptying his head and just sitting for a second, knowing what it was he was about to do and knowing how bad it was going to be. The dark swirling mass of data was there just beyond his conscious thoughts. He stared at it. Controlled his breathing and heart rate. And dived into it.
“So what do you have?”
LC sucked in a deep breath. He spun his beer bottle faster even though he could feel how much that was irritating everyone sitting across the table from him.
Martinez put her hand on his arm, stopping him. He let the bottle settle and looked up.
Evelyn was leading this debrief, beyond pissed at him but feeling bad for pushing him so hard. He could hear her thinking, trying to persuade herself, what choice did they have?
Hilyer, Martinez and Hal Duncan completed the gathering. No one else. They were giving him space.
“LC?”
He looked across and told them, trying to explain as much as he could, nudging through the screens on the board in front of him with a hand that was shaking.
The attacks on Earth and Winter six months ago had been devastating, other major colonies hit at the same time, panic, mayhem. They hadn’t appreciated the speed at which the Bhenykhn hive would descend en masse to attack the entire human race. They’d hit hard. Superior firepower and technology that had completely outclassed the combined might of the Wintran Coalition and Earth Imperial fleets. Even the enormous destructive capabilities of the best planetary defence systems had been barely more than a minor inconvenience to the alien onslaught.
And then they’d just stopped. Apart from the odd skirmish, attacks on convoys and a lot of scouting missions. And no one knew why.
No one was expecting it to last but to know the second wave of attack was imminent was just sickening.
He walked them through the charts and figures he’d stolen from the hive mind while he was captive, best he could, still with no solid point of reference to make any sense out of it. He’d tried. He’d worked at it until he’d thrown up and passed out, and he’d still got nowhere.
Evelyn was watching him intently, worried about him, her eyes flicking down to the scar on his neck. All the rest aside, that was the one she couldn’t help staring at. The knife wound he’d picked up on the command ship six months ago.
He shut up finally and pushed the bottle away, sitting back and looking round, daring them to ask him anything else. He had a shot of pure krakn in his pocket and it was tempting to slip his hand under the table and inject it into his wrist right there and then.
Duncan threw him a frown but didn’t say anything.
Evelyn looked beyond unimpressed. “So there is a second wave of attack planned, imminent, and you can’t tell me when or where?”
“I need to get close to them again. More data will give me a better chance to figure it out.”
She shook her head. “No. You’re grounded.” There was something else lurking beneath her thoughts and he felt her make a decision before he could object.
She reached and placed a deck of cards on the table, face up, spreading them out into a neat line with a simple stroke of her hand. “This is why I can’t let you pull that kind of stunt again.”
It was a deck of Most Wanteds, the kind the Imperial military used to issue bounties on insurgents when they didn’t want to use regulated bounty hunters.
Hilyer leaned across and picked one out. He laughed. “Is this for real?” He grabbed another and tossed it to LC.
The black joker. The wildcard. His picture along with biometrics, description and a price tag. A ludicrous price tag that made the original bounty out on him look like peanuts.
He looked up. “Zang? Still?”
Hilyer held his up, jack of clubs, and flipped it back onto the pile. “Does any of this even mean anything anymore?”
Evelyn was spreading out the rest of the cards. “It means someone is prepared to pay anything to get their hands on you. LC is the original source of the virus. If this is Zang Tsu Po, then he still wants his immortality and he’s prepared to pay for it.”
“We’re fighting aliens,” Martinez said, “fighting a losing battle against aliens who are wiping us out, and someone is still working against us?”
LC couldn’t help asking, “Who else is on the cards?”
“All of us,” Evie said. She looked at him. “Even Sean O’Brien.”
She threw across another one. LC picked it up, squinting. The queen of hearts. He stared at it. He hadn’t seen Sean since Aston.
Hal Duncan was sorting through the cards. “This stinks of that son of a bitch bounty hunter McKenzie.”
“It stinks of the New Order,” Martinez said. “If it is Zang…”
As if fighting the Bhenykhn wasn’t enough.
“It doesn’t matter who is behind it,” Evelyn said. “We’re not just fighting the Bhenykhn. The highest price is still on LC.” She pierced him with a glare. “We can’t afford to lose you. You’re grounded. You stay here. Find another way to figure this out.”
LC sat back. He slipped the queen of hearts into his pocket, felt the cool casing of the vial in there.
‘You don’t need that shit,’ Duncan thought at him.
He couldn’t help looking at the rest of the cards on the table.
There was no ace of spades. As if it had been cashed in already.
NG.
Duncan was staring at him. ‘LC.’
‘I’m good,’ he thought back.
‘You need to get a grip, buddy. It was not your fault NG was captured.’
Everyone had told him that but if he hadn’t screwed up so badly, NG wouldn’t have been out there on his own.
Duncan’s expression was dark. ‘It was his decision and he’s a big boy. He’ll be fine. It’s nowhere we haven’t been before. We’ll get him back. You hear?’
That was the problem. They had been there before.
He shut the thought down. Fast. Brutal. Refusing to go back there.
‘They know who he is this time,’ he thought instead.
‘So they’ll keep him alive,’ Martinez cut in.
‘Do you think Sebastian…?’
‘LC, trust that NG can look after himself,’ Duncan sent. ‘If Sebastian is with him, I’m sure the bastard will be helping him stay alive. It’s hardly in his best interest not to, is it?’
As far as LC knew, Sebastian hadn’t been with NG since the command ship. It wasn’t the first time he’d vanished. Whether he’d come back if NG was in trouble was anyone’s guess.
‘LC…’ Martinez warned. ‘Whether Sebastian is there or not, we’ll find NG and we’ll get him back.’
Evelyn started to gather her things. Briefing over.
Martinez leaned forward. “Evelyn, we can’t hide. We need NG. And we need LC out there with us to find him.”
Evelyn’s eyes flashed dark as she considered each of them around the table. It was tough overhearing even the briefest edge of the turmoil that was twisting knots in her mind. She was very aware that she was the only one sitting at that table who didn’t have the virus, who couldn’t heal insanely fast, read minds, manipulate energy, communicate with AIs, or whatever crazy variation of mutation the virus had hit each of them with, each of them different. And she was feeling alone, spinning a wall of resistance between her and them because she didn’t want it. Didn’t want any of it.
“Let me go back to Earth,” LC said.
She shook her head. “No way.”
Martinez pitched in. “There’s a command ship in orbit above Beijing.”
LC looked from face to face. “We know it’s there. We don’t even have to get close. We jump in, I get the intel, we jump out.”
Evelyn shut down her emotions like she was slamming a door in his face. “No,” she said. “No. And that’s final.”
“I just need…”
She cut him off with another, “No.”
She stood as he did.
“You’re grounded.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
“Yes, I can and I will.”
The others were pushing back their chairs and standing. Evelyn was calling for Security, Duncan objecting, Martinez turning on her and Hilyer edging round to stand between him and the door or to stand by his side, he had no idea which.
Someone said, “LC, calm the fuck down,” and he flipped, yelled and he wasn’t exactly sure what happened after that.
He woke with a jolt, gasping, heart pounding, dark flashes of a nightmare refusing to let him go. He clutched at the first thing to hand, fingers bunching smooth, cool bed sheet. He was on his bunk in medical, still fully dressed, no idea how he’d got there, and he had to fight to ease his breathing. He felt drained, eyes prickly, every muscle sore as if he’d been training in the gym for ten hours solid, or running the Maze on max, and he couldn’t figure out why. Then it gradually seeped back in.
The briefing hadn’t just ended in yelling. He hadn’t been able to control it, the energy building, and when the two grunts from Security had tried to restrain him, he’d freaked, blasted every board in there, shocking everyone as every single screen in the room shattered in an explosion of crystal shards.
He touched his temple, tender where they’d slammed him down against the table, and he lay there, frustration welling, trying to figure out if he’d be able to steal a ship and go to Earth without anyone realising it. Fat chance of that. They’d almost thrown him in the brig. Only Hal Duncan had argued that was the last place he needed to be and good luck trying to keep him there anyway.
As it was he could sense the presence of two guards on his door. He knew fine well that Duncan at least would be listening in to every thought that crossed his mind while they had him on close watch. And Sienna was never far. Like they all thought he was liable to do something stupid. They were right. He was.
He rested his head back against the pillow and flexed his fingers, stretching and clenching, trying to relieve the tension so he didn’t blast anything. He hadn’t realised how much it built if he didn’t let it go.
He sensed Evelyn approaching from way off and was on his feet before she opened the door.
“I need this intel and I need it now,” she said, hating that she was even considering what she had in mind. “I need you to figure out where the hell this second attack is going to hit. Use the data from the greys, the intel you got from NG before.”
“I have already. It’s not enough.” He really needed a drink.
She made a small, confined sound like she was exasperated. She stared at him, trying to make a decision and arguing with herself that she shouldn’t ask him to do it.
“Do what?”
She looked at him, expression dark, wondering why he didn’t just read it right out of her mind.
LC shook his head. “Tell me.”
She scrubbed her hand through her hair. “There’s something…”
“Whatever it takes,” he said quietly.
She held out her hand, palm up, and ope
ned her fingers to reveal a key. Twisted black metal. Like the damned Bhenykhn kill tokens. Like the staffs. Just looking at it sent a shiver down his spine.
“Come with me.”
Chapter 4
“How differently would events have unfolded if you had told them the truth?”
It was an accusation and it was harsh but he didn’t feel like pulling his punches. Not now. Not considering what had happened.
The Man took it like he always did, stolidly, stoically, uncaring…?
There was a long silence, then a calm, “It was all there had you only looked.”
Sebastian laughed, shaking his head. “Nikolai didn’t believe the alien invasion was real and I must admit, I didn’t ever try to change his mind. You created the Thieves’ Guild to prepare the human race for a threat you knew was coming, pulling the strings in a host of arenas to manipulate an entire race into acting the way you wanted, and yet, here we are, the aliens finally invade and what do you do? You run and hide. For as long as you have been here in this galaxy, you have drip-fed technological advances into our realm. You have kept secrets, withheld intelligence, and outright misled everything the human race has done for centuries.” He dropped the smirk and leaned forward. “I have not brought you here to call you to account. I know what you are hiding. I know what you’re capable of. And that’s what I want.”
The Man stared. “You are not ready.”
“I’m not ready? Or are you scared to let that loose within this galaxy? You didn’t think they were ready for near immortality, for telepathy, telekinesis… You wait any longer and they will all be dead, long before they’re ready for it.”
•
Candles flickered in cubbyholes all around as they walked into the Man’s chambers. It was dark and he couldn’t see through it like he normally could. It was muted somehow. He couldn’t sense anything outside once the door closed. And it was stiflingly warm, ominous.
LC stopped, hands stuck firmly in his pockets, and close to bolting, except Evelyn touched his arm gently and gestured him to take a seat. There was already a wine bottle on the desk, two goblets, a jug and a brown paper packet sealed with a spot of red wax.
