Kheris Burning (Thieves' Guild Origins: LC Book One): A Fast Paced Scifi Action Adventure Novel

by C. G. Hatton

  He cursed, dropped my arm and caught up the dog tags around my neck, holding them in his palm and looking at them for a second before swearing again. He turned to walk away, beckoning me to follow as he went back to the vehicle. I could hardly walk but someone ran up and helped me get there, sitting me down and popping injector after injector into my neck.

  The pressure in my chest started to ease straight away. Antidote. “Maisie,” I said without thinking, panicking, “She…”

  He interrupted with a curt, “She’ll be fine.” He turned to the woman who was checking me over. “Is he good to go?”

  I was trying not to react as she pulled the rag off my right hand even though it took a chunk of flesh with it. She sprayed it with something and tied a clean bandage around it, then wrapped some kind of field dressing around my leg, pulling it tight, a warm pressure easing the pain.

  It felt too good to be true. And the whole time, Maisie was lying out there and I had no idea if she was even still alive.

  “He’s as good as he’s going to get,” the woman said. “This knee needs surgery. And the hand is a mess. We’ll need to quarantine. Same as the other kid.”

  The colonel didn’t look impressed and muttered under his breath.

  “Are we going in now?” she said to him, peering into my eyes with some kind of bright light that stung like a bitch.

  I flinched away.

  She checked my pulse again, speaking to the guy as if I wasn’t there. “He needs a medevac. You want me to let Control know?”

  I suddenly, more than anything, needed to go back to Maisie, even if just for a second. I blurted out, “Wait,” before I realised what I was doing.

  They both looked at me like I was some stray dog that had just spoken.

  I was close to tears. “There’s something I need to do.”

  “I said no goodbyes,” the man said, moving to close the door.

  “It’s not a goodbye, I swear. It’s something I need to do.” I’ve never needed anything so much in my entire life. My heart was thumping.

  I thought he was going to pull me out of the vehicle and throw me to the ground, fire that bullet into my head himself.

  He didn’t.

  He closed the door and climbed into the front. The woman got into the driver’s seat.

  “No goodbyes,” he said again. “You are going to have to learn to listen to me, Mr Anderton.”

  I couldn’t help reaching for the dog tags.

  He looked back at me. “We need to call you something. LC Anderton will do just fine. Charlie was one of our best. I expect you to live up to his name.”

  I looked back out of the window as we drove off. Maisie was still lying on the ground, medics buzzing around her. The soldiers were backing off, guns held down, boots kicking up dust, as the medics worked on her. Her face was pale, one hand outstretched.

  I could see her hair, soft curls black against the red dirt.

  We drove away.

  And that was the last time I saw her.

  I never did get to give her that kiss.

  There was another kid on the ship they took me to. They helped me on board and steered me to a seat. They hadn’t given me any more drugs.

  I didn’t recognise the type of ship. It wasn’t any kind of Imperial military spec I was familiar with, there were no insignia, no badges, nothing to identify it at all. It was clean, spotlessly clean, and just the right level of warm. The seat was comfortable, the lighting soft, the gravity light enough to make me feel like I was floating. It didn’t feel real.

  The woman squeezed my shoulder and, finally, popped a couple more shots into my neck. She leaned in close and whispered into my ear, “Welcome home,” before she walked forward to take a seat.

  I stared at the kid opposite. He looked a bit older than me, dark hair shaved close to his head, black bruising under one eye and a set to his jaw like he was expecting a fight and wasn’t sure which direction it was going to come from.

  He looked up at me, wary.

  I had a feeling I was looking at him the same way.

  Mendhel was stripping off his uniform. He threw the jacket into a waste disposal unit and walked between us. “LC, this is Hilyer. Hil, LC. Welcome to the Thieves’ Guild.”

  •

  “And that’s how I ended up in the most secretive guild in the galaxy.”

  The candle has burned down to a nub. I watch Luka take a swig of liquor from his flask and give it a shake. I can tell there’s not much left. He drinks too much. But who can blame him for that?

  It’s been over ten years since that night on Kheris. I know he’s never talked about it before. To anyone. I don’t know why he’s telling us now. Maybe to say there’s always a way out. However bad it seems to be.

  These kids, huddled with us in this dark basement, are staring at him with their cold little faces, and I know exactly what they’re thinking… he wasn’t much older than most of them when he did it, even younger than some. Even now, he’s not that different, at least not in some ways.

  I don’t know how much longer he can keep them quiet. I can hear sporadic gunfire in the distance, that guttural roar of troop carriers overhead that makes him shiver when he thinks no one is watching.

  “What happened then?” one of the little ones says.

  Luka shrugs. “Mendhel took us to the Alsatia and we ran riot. The guild was never set up to take kids. I didn’t know it at the time but Mendhel put himself on the line doing what he did that day. There was no way back for any of us.”

  I look up. I can hear drop ships descending right above us.

  Luka catches my eye and nods.

  A cold knot twists in my stomach. I hope they’re ours. I know he doesn’t have much ammunition left.

  He makes a move to stand, but one of the kids touches his arm and whispers, “Tell us about the time you broke into Yarrimer.”

  Another one pipes up, “And Polaris.”

  He grins. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

  “That was all back when we were invincible,” he says, “when we were chasing for the top and the standings were all that mattered. But those stories’ll have to wait for another day.”

  “What do we do now?” one of them asks.

  I watch as he checks the mechanism on his rifle. That’s what is different. Luka was never a soldier. Now he carries a gun and he carries scars that none of us will ever understand.

  “Now?” he says. “Now we survive.” He stands and starts to move them out, herding them ahead of him, this rag-tag bunch of kids in misfitting thrown-together body armour that he managed to get here to safety. We lost a couple when it got really bad. They might be out there somewhere, safe in some other place with someone, but I doubt it.

  I stop him on the stairs and hand him his helmet.

  He gives me a smile. “Cheers, Spacey.”

  He promised me that night on Kheris that he’d come find me. It took over ten years but he did. He always keeps his promises. And he saved us out there tonight.

  I can’t help asking, “Will we?”

  He looks puzzled. “Will we what?”

  “Survive,” I say simply.

  He shrugs again. “We have so far…”

  We can hear shouts echo down from above us, familiar voices, guild voices.

  I smile back. “Do you promise?”

  •

  BEYOND REDEMPTION

  (Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book Two)

  © C.G. Hatton 2017

  Chapter 1

  I don’t see the blood until we stop. Until Luka hands me his rifle and I can see in the flickering light of the lantern that it’s slick with red.

  He squeezes my shoulder and says, “Keep watch.”

  He’s pale. He has a scar across his cheekbone that someone said was from a machete. From a Bhenykhn machete. I know he was on Erica. And I know the intricate pattern branded into his chest is from when he was caught by them. Hilyer told me. Luka doesn’t talk about it.


  I stare at him as he sinks to the floor and pulls out a field dressing that he pushes against his side. He’s hurt really badly and I don’t know what to do. I don’t think rescue will be coming so easily this time.

  “Tell me about the guild,” I blurt out.

  It worked before. He kept a whole basement full of kids quiet as he told us about Kheris. This time, it’s just him and me. Separated from everyone else. In a tunnel I’m scared is a dead end.

  He doesn’t answer. I glance back. He’s closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. I can tell he’s in pain.

  “I just need a minute,” he mutters.

  I go and sit opposite him, positioning myself so I can see the way we’ve just come, the rifle in my lap and my finger on the trigger. “I want to know what happened after you met Hil.”

  “No, you don’t,” he says, voice so quiet I can hardly hear. “He was an idiot. He hated me. And the first tab we were sent on almost got both of us killed.”

  •

  A combat booted foot crashed down into the space where my head had been only a fraction of a second earlier. I kept the momentum of the move going and rolled up onto one knee but he was fast. A vicious, straight kick was aimed right at my head. I raised both arms in a blocking move that Benjie had taught me and grabbed his leg to twist and throw him off balance but he was ready for it, he went with the move and spun. A roundhouse kick from his other foot caught me on the shoulder.

  I flinched away but he was on me again. His fist punched into the side of my head as I ducked, senses rattled. I couldn’t beat him. My right hand was still in a cast, left knee in a brace. And I was being clumsy as hell because the gravity on board the Alsatia was lighter than I was used to. He was faster than me, stronger than me, and he knew what he was doing. His other fist pummelled into my kidneys, a low punch right into my back that almost sent me to my knees. I staggered and turned round, catching his leg with my foot and kicking out enough to throw him off balance and away from me.

  The reprieve was short lived. He twisted, grabbed hold of my shirt and dragged me close, driving his fist into my face and connecting just above my eye, again. The pain that exploded in my head was about as bad as anything I’d ever felt, and I’d been stabbed, shoved off a roof and shot not so long ago.

  I felt my knees going.

  If I ended up on the floor, I figured I was done.

  He still had a fistful of my shirt. He spun me around and slammed me into the wall, catching my right arm and twisting it behind my back. Pain shot through my hand. He hissed, “You need to learn when to give up, kid,” and shoved me hard into the cold metal surface, head bouncing with another rattle. I almost blacked out, vision narrowed to a dark blur. Blood was pouring down the side of my face, hot and sticking up one eye. I couldn’t see, couldn’t get free and couldn’t stop myself as my legs turned to jelly and I crumpled.

  He helped me on my way down with another blow to the kidneys that took my breath away. The floor came up fast, cold and hard. There was an instant of lull, a moment of calm. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, and his breathing, controlled and calm as he stood over me.

  I could feel the others watching and I didn’t care. I could see his boots, feet apart, fighting stance. He shifted his weight and I tensed, trying to curl up against the kicks I knew would follow but I could hardly move.

  The kicks didn’t come.

  There was a sharp clap and a different voice said, “Again.”

  I sagged.

  “Anderton, get your sorry ass off the floor and show me some goddamned effort this time.”

  A huge figure knelt close and leaned in, grabbing me by the scruff of the neck as I sprawled there on the floor and whispering harshly into my ear. “You’re Thieves’ Guild now. Get the hell up.” He leaned closer. “Understand this… you do not get to quit. You do not get to flunk out. No one leaves the Thieves’ Guild. You make it or you die. And you earn your damned keep. I don’t care that you are only thirteen goddamned years old, son. You have a tab. You want to survive it? Show me you can fight.”

  He shoved me and stood back, giving me room to gather myself and push, inch by inch, to my knees. I left a bloody mess on the floor but I got upright, a warm trickle still dripping down my face, and my hands shaking but I got upright and stood there, weight on my right leg, raising my head slowly and trying to calm my breathing.

  Zach Hilyer was staring at me, standing at ease, hardly looking like he’d been fighting at all. The big guy who’d just given me the inspirational pep talk was the Chief, our big boss, head of Acquisitions, and he was standing, arms folded, looking less than impressed and more like he was tempted to throw me out of the nearest airlock into deep space.

  “Understand this, gentlemen,” he said, “you fight for your life or this tab is going to be your first and your last.” He shook his head. “Now stop messing about and show me what you can do.”

  Hilyer came at me again, using the same opening attack as the two previous times. He wasn’t expecting anything to be different and I started to respond in exactly the same way, using the same block that had failed me twice already. He had no reason to think this was anything but a rerun. He almost grinned but this time I knew what was coming, he fell for it and I did the one thing, the only thing, I had left. At the last possible moment, I lashed out with my left leg, throwing the full weight of the exo-brace behind it and drove my foot up into his groin with all the force I could muster.

  Hilyer collapsed to the floor clutching himself.

  There were a couple of incredulous gasps, a faint cheer from somewhere.

  “Now that’s more like it,” the Chief said. “Anderton, get back to Medical and get that eye seen to. Hilyer, stop lying around making my gym look untidy. You just got decked by a child. Get cleaned up. Then both of you, get your asses over to Ops. Mendhel is waiting for you.”

  He turned and walked away.

  Another guy, one of the instructors, clapped his hands together and shouted, “Kowalski, Lewis, you’re up next and, for Christ’s sake, don’t be as embarrassing as these two.”

  Hilyer didn’t say another word to me and he didn’t wait for me to get fixed up. He took off once he’d showered and I was left on my own to get up to Medical, get sorted and make my way back to Ops. The deep spacer we were on, the Alsatia, was huge. An enormous wandering star ship that was the guild’s base of operations, masquerading as a corporate-owned cruise liner, shuttling between Earth and Winter or just hanging out in deep space at jump points close to wherever the guild needed to be. It was awesome. Totally self-contained with four main sections – Acquisitions, Legal, Media and Science – and that was just the guild side of things. The cruiser itself had a load of other stuff going on that we never even saw. We were in Acquisitions. And even from the outset, it felt like that was something special.

  It had hardly been a week since Mendhel had taken me from Kheris. When he’d brought us on board, they’d kept us both in quarantine for forty eight hours, running a barrage of medical and physical tests, then they’d let Hil loose and told me I wasn’t going anywhere, not until they sorted out my knee and my hand. After three more days of surgery, meds and physio, and rapid heal sessions in medical iso-pods, they’d shown me a deckplan, told me where I could and couldn’t go – made it clear I wasn’t being discharged from their care yet – and kicked me out to go train in Acquisitions with strict instructions to be back within two hours.

  It had been five. I doubted they were going to be impressed. It felt like no one was impressed with me. It was strange walking through the ship those first few weeks. There were no other kids on board. Hilyer was only a year or so older than me and we stood out a mile. Everyone I passed looked at me weird, like I was some alien curiosity that had got lost or some stray cat that had wandered into a house belonging to a dog and was daring to make itself at home.

  There was an air of tension in every corridor, raised voices, open arguments. I didn’t know whether
something was kicking off or whether it was like that all the time. It was unnerving. I almost missed the streets of Kheris, with its bomb craters and tanks on every corner. At least there I could escape it all and run out into the desert anytime I wanted. On the Alsatia, there was no way out. Nowhere to go.

  As I got closer to Medical, it got worse. I flattened myself against the bulkhead as a squad of troops in lightweight combat armour pushed past, covered in dirt and blood, nursing recently dressed wounds and grumbling, not bothering to keep their voices low as they complained. About shit happening, empty seats in the damned mess, again, and what the hell had gone wrong this time?

  I was limping, holding a cold pack against my eye, and looking pathetic enough that everyone pointed me in the right direction. I didn’t need directions, I knew the entire deck plan of that enormous cruise ship by heart, but it didn’t hurt to look a bit lost.

  And to be honest, not all of it was an act.

  Medical was busy. They didn’t waste much time in checking me over and cleaning me up. They already knew I had to get back to Ops for a briefing. That was the other thing about the Alsatia and the guild. Everyone knew everything, all the time. The way it was run was slick and efficient, certainly like nothing I’d ever seen before.

  I snuck a handful of extra painkillers into my pocket as I slouched out. I got back to Ops and stood at the door to the briefing room I was directed to. My first briefing, and I was standing there like an idiot, a fresh dressing taped above my eye, feeling like shit, not sure if I should knock and wait or just go in, and fairly sure that whatever I did, it wouldn’t be right.

  I was about to walk off, go find someone and check I was in the right place when the door opened.

  Hilyer was sitting in there already, slouched back in a chair across a table from Mendhel, arms folded, looking like this was all second nature to him. He didn’t give me any acknowledgement at all as I went in.