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

by C. G. Hatton

  Sean wrapped up and Evelyn continued around the table. When it was his turn, when she asked simply if he had anything to add, LC shook his head. It was all there.

  They were screwed. However you looked at it. They could talk all day and all night, there was no solution. There was no safe place to go. And in the whole briefing there was no mention of NG. As if that was their own private affair to take care of.

  He leaned his arms on the table and rested his head down, needing a drink and ignoring the bottle of water in front of him. He could hear the buzz of thoughts, feel the reactions, the tension and apprehension, struggling to shut it all out. He just wanted to bug out and get to Hanover. If he timed it right, he’d be able to slip away.

  Pen Halligan started talking about the evacuation of Aston, jump points and a strategy to randomise convoy routes to maximise odds of survival. It was still strange to see Pen there, the big Wintran mafia boss, taking part in guild business as if he’d always belonged, as if the big man didn’t hate the guild as much as LC knew he did. NG had always said Pen would make a good handler, as good as his brother Mendhel who’d been the best, who’d tried to persuade Pen to come in to the guild and never managed to. Although that wasn’t surprising considering what had happened with Mendhel’s wife and daughter, for which Pen had never forgiven NG.

  LC zoned it all out. It was too easy to fall back to the past. Nothing could change it now. Mendhel was dead. His daughter Anya had vanished to god knows where after betraying them. And the Bhenykhn were about to hit Hanover. That was the one thing he could do something about. He needed to go and he just had to time it right. He needed to…

  The voice that cut in was hideously familiar. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  He looked up as everyone else turned.

  Elliott was standing there, as cold and unreadable as ever. “No Senson, Luka?”

  He didn’t react.

  The skinny tech guy, AI, avatar, whatever the hell he was, rubbed his hands together. “Nice gathering you’ve pulled together. Very timely. I’m sure you will all want to hear this. You have a breach in security.”

  LC opened the bottle and took a sip of water, hard pushed to stop himself from walking out.

  “Elliott,” Evelyn said, diplomatic, calm.

  The skinny tech guy gave a slight bow. “I’ll speak out loud for Luka’s benefit,” he said, condescending shit that he was. “As you know, we’ve been acquiring and backward engineering whatever Bhenykhn technology we’ve been able to scavenge.”

  We. The AIs. The Seven. The legendary AI superbeings developed by the seven big Wintran corporations – Aries, Zang, Yarrimer, United Metals, Marathon, Stirling and Kochitek – developed god knows how long ago and deemed too powerful to exist. Locked away until Elliott had persuaded NG and the guild to release them to fight the Bhenykhn.

  LC stared at the water bottle, avoiding looking at Elliott. It was hard not to be cynical and it took effort to remember that Elliott and the rest of the Seven had helped, were on their side.

  “We’ve been able to infiltrate and commandeer Bhenykhn ships,” Elliott said, “utilising electrobe technology to merge with their biosystems.”

  Even the words he was using sent shivers down LC’s spine, memories threatening to surface, a darkness beckoning, the pain of electrobe poisoning gripping his chest, flashes of childhood, of screaming at an AI to open the damn door, Charlie dying because it wouldn’t.

  He blinked. Back in the war room.

  Elliott was staring at him as he spoke. “It hasn’t been easy. We’ve taken losses. We’ve been hijacked too many times for it to be coincidence. Someone has been giving away our movements, vital positions, plans that should have been secure.”

  “Someone or something?” LC muttered.

  “Unlike humans,” Elliott said with cold disdain, “we don’t betray our own.” He turned to Evelyn. “You have a breach. I suggest you address it before we all get wiped out.”

  LC glanced across to Evelyn. She looked wary. It wasn’t exactly news. NG had been chasing down the security leak since before the invasion. They all had. Someone had betrayed them and set them up way before Elliott had turned up on the scene.

  “But that’s not the only reason I’m here,” Elliott said, exaggerating the drama. “While you’ve all been scurrying around on your little rescue missions, we’ve been gathering intelligence from every corner of the galaxy.”

  The cold son of a bitch waved his hand in the air and the room lit up with a schematic, faint blue lines, sparks of light, interconnecting routes marked out in pulsing threads, all dotted through with red.

  LC squinted at it. A lot of it was the intel they’d been pulling together, the intel he’d been bringing back, but there was more.

  “All of my kind have been gathering intelligence,” Elliott said. “And yes, we can go to places you can’t. And yes, you need our help. You need somewhere to run.”

  He made a vague gesture and the schematic started to spin. “There’s an avocado,” he said absently, enigmatic, like he wanted to make them ask what?

  “A what?” Hal Duncan said.

  Elliott smiled.

  LC squinted, scratching absently at his left arm, staring as the display turned. “A gap,” he said. “A void.”

  He couldn’t see one.

  “Blue,” Elliott said, “is human occupied space. Colonies, trade routes, jump points… Red is the Bhenykhn. Two invasion fleets, one at Earth, one at Winter, ancillary attack vessels at all the major colonies, FOBs, scouts ships, minor skirmishes.” He looked at LC, gaze lingering, then carried on. “They’ve been concentrating their incursion into the immediate vicinity of Earth and Winter so far, and you’ve seen what they are targeting in their second wave. In everything we’ve seen, galaxy-wide, the Bhenykhn are everywhere. Except…”

  The schematic spun slowly, realigning, re-centering.

  And stopped.

  LC had a lump in his throat. A dreadful sickening weight settled in his stomach as he recognised it.

  “Kheris,” Evelyn said. “They’re avoiding Kheris.”

  He felt her attention switch to him as if he’d suddenly grown an extra head, not just her, Sean, Duncan, Pen. Even Hilyer was staring.

  Elliott started to wander around the schematic, nudging it. “The Bhenykhn are everywhere,” he said. “Every single star system that has even the vaguest touch of humanity except for one single scuzz bucket mining colony. For some reason we can’t fathom, the Bhenykhn are avoiding Kheris, almost as if they can’t even see it’s there. Whether it’s some kind of subconscious avoidance, or there’s something there that repels them or makes it invisible to them, we don’t know. But you need somewhere to go? There’s your bolthole.” He turned to LC and gave him that enigmatic smile again.

  LC shoved back his chair, stood and walked out.

  He went to his quarters, packed a bag and split. He wasn’t wearing a wrist band and he had no Senson so they had no obvious way of tracking him, and he could shield his thoughts, shut them down so tight no one would have a clue where he was. He walked through the Man’s ship, using every trick he knew to avoid anyone, and made his way down to the docks level where full mission prep was underway, Thunderclouds being readied, extraction teams gearing up and Security checking and loading powered armour and heavy infantry kit into drop ships.

  He watched for a moment, waited until it was clear then walked through, keeping to the shadows. The ship he’d chosen had already been fuelled and was waiting. Fast and small. And, more importantly, no AI.

  He sussed out which bay it was in and headed that way, pulling his hood up. He couldn’t get caught. He was going to Hanover. And he needed to be fast.

  He wasn’t fast enough.

  Hilyer was standing there on the ramp. He was relaxed outwardly, but every muscle was tense, half a smile on his face and the look in his eyes as intense as LC had ever seen. “What are you doing, LC?”

  “Don’t.”

  “D
on’t what? Stop you from running away and getting yourself killed? Where are you going?”

  “I’m sure as hell not going to Kheris.”

  “So where? Hanover? What the hell are you thinking? Who is it?”

  LC dropped his kit bag as Hil took a step forward. His head was still pounding and he didn’t want to fight anyone but he was ready, resisting as Hil moved fast and shoved him in the chest, grabbing a handful of his jacket and pulling him close. “I’m not going to fight you, you idiot. What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Hil…”

  “Who the hell is she?”

  His chest was heaving. He grabbed Hil’s arms and they stood there, a moment from slugging each other but he felt Sienna step up behind him, and when he struggled to get free, Hil let him go. Let him go with a gentle push and that half smile in his eyes.

  Sienna walked up next to them. “C’mon, LC, it’s us. What’s going on? Who is she?”

  He almost couldn’t breathe. “Someone I made a promise to,” he muttered. “A long time ago. I can’t…”

  “You can’t run off by yourself,” she said.

  And as much as he could read her mind, he had no idea what she was intending. Hil was a black hole of nothing, as always these days.

  “I can’t stay here,” he managed to say. “And I’m not going to Kheris. I need to get to Hanover.” He looked from Sienna to Hilyer and back again. “Just let me go.”

  Hal Duncan said behind them, “Not going to happen, bud.”

  He turned, sensing Sean there even as he moved. He glanced around, making eye contact with one then the next, caught between wanting to plead with them to let him go and readying himself to fight them, because he was going. And nothing could stop him.

  He could feel a tingle of energy building within.

  “We’re not trying to stop you,” Sienna said, careful as if she didn’t want to spook him and she knew how close he was to losing it.

  It was Evelyn appearing that made them all back off. She had six guys in powered armour with her, and she stood there, staring at him, thinking she should have thrown him in the damned brig and thrown away the key. Except that wasn’t the worst of what she had in her mind and it was hard not to feel like everything he’d been running from since the age of thirteen had just caught up with him and hit him right between the eyes.

  Chapter 7

  “And there, in all of this, is your greatest failing.”

  Kheris.

  A small-time, two-bit human mining colony. Ravaged by war. Fought over by petty human factions for ten a penny minerals buried deep beneath its desert. And suddenly the most important place in the galaxy.

  Sebastian made the display cycle, faster and faster until it blurred. No hint of anything he could even connect to Kheris, whatever he did to translate the alien intelligence. It was as if there was a blind spot. An anomaly that startling should have stood out like a beacon. Instead there was nothing. He swiped his hand and killed the console. “Did you know?”

  He could read in the Man that he hadn’t known. And that he was thinking how could he have missed something so vital, he should have seen it.

  “Yes, you should have,” Sebastian said, harsh. “You created this guild. How many centuries ago? You sent the Bhenykhn here, to this galaxy, and you created the Thieves’ Guild to what…? Assuage your guilt? Atone for your mistake?” He laughed. “You’ve done nothing but make mistakes. And now we’re paying for them.” He sat back. “How did you miss Kheris? And while we’re at it… the AIs?” Again the tone was derisive and he didn’t temper it. “How in all the seven levels of hell in which you dabble did you not anticipate the role the AIs would play?”

  •

  She didn’t waste any time and hit him straight with it. “Kheris? Do you want to tell me what the hell happened on Kheris, LC? Elliott just told me you know. That you know why the Bhenykhn are avoiding it.”

  He almost shook his head but it clicked into place as she said it. And that tiny knot of dread buried deep inside threatened to explode into a million pieces. It wasn’t anything he would have ever put together because he never thought about Kheris. Went to pains not to think about Kheris. But Elliott was right. He did know.

  “A ship crashed there when I was a kid.” The words sounded hollow. “When the ship crashed, all our comms were taken out. We thought it was Aries. We thought it was some new tech they had. But it wasn’t, was it?” It hadn’t even occurred to him until he was standing there and saying it out loud. “It was Bhenykhn.”

  Evelyn walked forward, eyes flashing. “And you tell us this now? How did we not know? Why the hell was this not in the greys? How did the Man and NG not know the damned Bhenykhn were here then, for Christ’s sake? The guild has always had people out at Kheris.”

  “I didn’t know, Evie. Honestly. I…” He could feel the frustration radiating from her, knew she was pushing it, pushing him, and he couldn’t blame her for going off it. “The week the ship crashed…” He started to shiver, voice catching. “The guild had Charlie Anderton and Loic Emerson in deep cover on Kheris. They were both killed that week. And when Mendhel came in, he had me to deal with. It wasn’t…” He trailed off, biting his lip. “It was Kheris, Evelyn. Kheris, ten years ago.”

  He could feel Hal Duncan adding it up, the timescale, what he knew of LC from his file, what he knew had happened on Kheris ten years ago.

  It wasn’t easy to have his past laid so wide open to them all. He met Evelyn’s eye. “You wanted to know what wasn’t in my file?”

  To give her credit, she kept her composure as she worked it out. And it wasn’t exactly pity in her expression as she looked at him but it was close.

  Duncan was staring. ‘The Gemini Incident? You were there?’

  ‘Hal, I wasn’t just there, I caused it.’

  He half expected the big ex-marine to flatten him. The Earth troops had suffered hideous losses that night. And it had been his fault. Undeniably his fault.

  But the big man just said, “Elliott needs to know this.”

  “I’m not going back there,” LC said again. “I’m going to Hanover.”

  For a split second he thought Evelyn was going to order the guards to floor him again, but she hesitated.

  Sienna moved to stand between them. “You can’t stop him, Evelyn. You know that. You fight him now, you lose him. Completely.”

  He shifted his weight, uneasy, struggling to avoid listening in to Evie’s thoughts as she shook her head, a dark tangle of anger knotting her emotions into a burning resentment. She opened her mouth to shoot Sienna down but Sean stepped forward, brushing his arm as she moved. A jolt flared against his skin at that fleeting touch.

  Sean stood next to Sienna. The three of them were standing there together, right in front of him. Three of the people who meant the most to him in the whole universe. His heart was in his throat.

  “Evelyn,” Sean said, her voice soft, “let me take him. Sienna is right. You can’t stop him. You have to let him go. We can take a small force with us, fast in, fast out.”

  LC was twitching to back off. He wanted to run away, run as fast and as far as he could. He didn’t want this attention, didn’t deserve to have Sean O’Brien of all people sticking up for him.

  “Let us do this, Evelyn,” Sean said. “Because if you don’t, he’s going to go anyway.”

  She knew him too well. He’d known her for five minutes, fallen for her, hard, almost got her killed, and spent the last six months avoiding her. And she was standing up for him like she could see into his soul.

  Evelyn looked disgusted, but then she said, “Fine,” cold, impersonal, like it could ever be that. “Go to Hanover. Go do whatever the hell it is you need to do on Hanover. Then come back. It’s going to be tight. Take these guys with you. Take a Thundercloud. Take whatever you need. I just want you back. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, not totally sure what had just happened.

  She nodded again. Then turned and walked away.
<
br />   He felt like he was going to throw up.

  Sean touched his arm again. “Come with me.”

  He slept most of the way out to Hanover. Sean let him crash out in her cabin. She wanted to talk, he didn’t, not with Hilyer and Duncan there, and she didn’t argue when he made his excuses, shutting down and only half feigning the fatigue that was dragging at every inch of his body.

  They had two extraction teams, a Thundercloud and a mobile ops vessel with a small contingent of combat troops following them. They all knew the coordinates of at least ten possible RV points, all randomised, no guarantees, but at least a shot at joining up again afterwards.

  He fell asleep before they made jump and tumbled into a nightmare that left him gasping in a cold sweat as they emerged in system. He curled up against it, breathed, and worked at shutting it out, shutting down any kind of energy signal he could be emitting. It was something he’d gotten better at, fast, when he’d been caught the second time. Don’t stand out. Keep numb. Inert. Don’t think. Don’t communicate. Don’t pry or extend beyond his own head. Definitely don’t pull any crap with heat or energy blasts.

  He could feel the presence of the hive. Vague. Not a full invasion fleet yet. He forced himself to relax and got it under control, opening one eye to see Sean there beside him. Sean, not Sienna. He could feel Sienna standing, watching them, not totally trusting that Sean had his best interests at heart.

  “They’re here, aren’t they?” Sean said.

  He gave her a kind of nod, still struggling to be sure he wasn’t broadcasting like a freaking neon sign.

  He pressed his hand over his eyes. “Some kind of recon unit,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “We’re getting telemetry already. It won’t be long before we can make orbit and we’ll go straight in. Are you sure she’s there?”

  “No.”

  “And even if she’s there, she might not know who you are?”