RESIDUAL BELLIGERENCE
(Thieves' Guild: Book One)
By C.G. Hatton
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Published by Sixth Element Publishing
Arthur Robinson House
13-14 The Green
Billingham TS23 1EU
Great Britain
Tel: +44 1642 360253
www.6epublishing.net
? C.G. Hatton 2011
www.cghatton.com
Also available in paperback.
C.G. Hatton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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For Hatt
Chapter 1
"Where is he now?"
The atmosphere in the Man's chambers was heavy at the best of times, the scent of spices and oils from all corners of the galaxy mingling into a warm intoxicating concoction. The question hung in the air like a wisp of smoke, swirling provocatively between them.
The Man spoke again without giving him time to think up an answer, a warning edge to his voice, "Don't try to read me, NG."
He should have known better but it hadn't been a conscious effort, more a gentle testing of the mood to gauge what the tone of this meeting was going to be.
"We don't know," NG said finally.
"Sit down." The Man nodded towards the heavy set wooden chair in front of his desk. It wasn't often that he'd get summoned to the chambers and only rarely was he asked to sit. He sat.
"Outright war between Earth and Winter," the Man said and shook his head slowly, his hands clasped in front of him on the desk. "Factions finding the audacity to make moves against us. Our own demonstrating questionable motives. And we don't know where he is?"
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There wasn't usually much that could go wrong with an easy acquisition. He wiped blood from his cheek with a shaky hand. Senses still spinning, he tried to lean forward to disengage the drive but the restraints tightened and pulled him back into the seat. An alarm was sounding, distant and irregular, only now becoming an insistent irritant inside his head, which was pounding and wondering where the hell things had gone wrong.
He tried to twist around in the harness to check on the package but his neck resisted and a pain shot through his side with enough bite to make him straighten up and groan. The proximity alarm, he thought. And remembered it sounding much louder not so long ago. It faded as he closed his eyes.
The voice that penetrated the fog was soft and feminine, nudging gently into his awareness. "Hil," she said in persuasive mode, "Hil honey, you need to wake up now."
He could taste blood and smell hydraulic oil. That couldn't be a good combination and his survival instinct was screaming at him to jump up and fight, or run, he wasn't sure which because it was being soundly beaten into submission by his immediate need to fade out again.
"Hil," the voice was louder now. "I need you to get up and help me, hon, because I can't fix this by myself. My suppressant systems are shot and if you don't get back there and do something to control the pressure that is building up, the drive is going to explode and we'll both die here on a godforsaken planet in the back of beyond and no one will care or miss us except for that damn package you had to go get."
It was a dream he had too often so he embraced it and decided to let it run out. Usually he'd wake abruptly and go get a beer to calm his nerves. The nightmares had been more often of late but this was the first that hurt so bad. And the first where Skye was so polite. And come to think of it, the first where he could feel his head spinning from the smell of fumes.
He jerked awake and gasped as the movement reignited all the sparks of pain.
"God dammit, Hil," Skye was screaming, "you worthless son of a bitch dragging us out here on a goddamned wild goose chase and dying on me." He'd never heard so much emotion from the ship before.
He couldn't help the smile that crept across his face, sore as he was and in no way sure enough of the state of the ship to be cocky. But he'd gotten hold of the package and made it away. So why was he sitting here grounded on god knows what planet with his wits scattered as far as wreckage from his ship?
The smile faded.
Skye shut up mid-flow. Then tentatively whispered, "Hil, you with me? Hil? Trust me, you need to move. We have three ships moving in on our position and if that damned package means as much to you as you make out, we have to go."
He couldn't even remember what was in the package, but he had a vague recollection of taking the tab and the guild would be unimpressed to say the least if he lost it. The chances that they'd crashed by accident were slim and that three ships were bearing down on them probably meant that someone had taken offence at losing whatever it was that was sitting back there. That wasn't good. And the cold chill of that reality seeped through faster than any nagging from the ship.
Hil freed himself from the restraints and staggered to the back of the compartment. He squeezed into the tiny maintenance area and got access to the main controls, coughing from the smoke, each cough sending a shard of pain spiking through his skull. The bonus in working solo was that the split of credits, both financial and performance points in the guild standings, was always one hundred percent his.
The worst thing, he decided as he hit manual over-rides and released the building pressure in the main conduits of the jump drive, favouring his left hand because the right one didn't seem to be working properly, was that there was no buddy on the way in to pull off a rescue in the nick of time, to clink beers with as the sun set on each close shave. Unlike some people that he didn't have much time for, he'd never worked with a partner, never needed to or wanted to. So as he squinted at the flickering displays, it was down to him and Skye, the ship he'd known and flown with since he was a kid, who was now wittering on about company closing in.
As far as he could tell, the ship was just about intact, the package was intact - if battered - and although they were leaking fuel and the jump drive was burned out, at least it wasn't going to explode now and they should be able to fly out of this and get some place where they could figure out what had happened.
No matter how hard he tried to think through the pounding in his head, he couldn't remember any specifics about the tab he'd taken. The three craft heading for their position might be local farm dwellers come to investigate the crash or they could be bounty hunters out for his head for all he knew.
He paused and tried to clear his mind and calm his heart rate. There'd be no reason why they would be bounty hunters, no one ever messed with guild business. Unless the package had more baggage than had been declared.
He crawled out of the maintenance space and struggled to make it back to the bridge, vision blurred and not helped by the trickle of blood that was running into his eye.
As he passed the stowage area, he paused, one hand resting for balance on the package tied securely into place. He resisted the urge to crack open the seals and take a look. Never interact with the merchandise. It was a guild mantra and one that Hil had only broken a handful of times, all with good reason. Was this one of those times? He stared at it, sitting there in its silver case, sealed with a mark that would get him thrown into the jail on Io Optima for the rest of his life if he was caught with it.
It was about briefcase sized and he had no memory whatsoever of acquiring it, or what could be in it. But whatever it was, he was fairly sure he'd been shot down on his way back in with it.
"Honey, get back up here," Skye said quietly, this time directly into his head through the neural implant embedded beneath the skin on the side of his neck. "C'mon, leave it. We need to get out of here."
She was right.
He grabbed a medica
l kit from the compartment above it and fell back into his seat. He held a patch over the gash on his forehead and watched nervously as the ship went through the checks, most lights red, some burnt out and safety parameters out of the window but so long as they could fly, they'd fly. He didn't want to encounter the ships that were closing in, friendly or not. He needed a place to hole up, fix the ship for jump and stay under the radar for a while. He'd get the package back, grab the credits for it and take that break he'd been promising himself and Skye for too long now.
Simple.
Taking a package from A to B always gets more complicated when A doesn't want to lose it and C will pay and do anything to get their hands on it. Hil was good, one of the best in the guild. Problem was, he couldn't remember when it had gone wrong.
Skye was being no help, concentrating as she was on outrunning the three ships that were chasing them. She'd said, snapping in frustration at his insistence, that he ran on board with the package, yelled at her to go and then they'd taken a hit after dropping out of jump and crashed.
He couldn't even remember who the client was or where he'd acquired the package. He recalled saying yes to a tab but that could have been three jobs ago. Or three years ago. His memory seemed screwed up and that was more than a bit disturbing. What was worse was that while he knew his guild handler was Mendhel, he had not the slightest detail in his head how to get in touch or get back to base or where he had to take the damn package to.
Skye was getting up some decent speed now. Hil watched the ships lose distance on them then break off, flying away in opposite directions. One shot vertically up, heading for orbit and jump, he reckoned. That was odd. Probably not locals then.
"How far to town?" he said and cringed at how pathetically weak he sounded. He cleared his throat and tried again. "How long 'til we make the space port?"
"Three minutes," she replied curtly. Skye was a typical female AI. They all cared and fretted when they thought you were in trouble and as soon as you were fine, the sympathy evaporated.
Hil sat back. He knew Skye was fast. She'd been built for speed. She was the fastest ship in the guild because they'd refused any weapons. Apart from some light shielding that would barely diffuse the effects of the smallest energy weapons, they didn't even have any defensive measures. His philosophy was along the lines of run to live another day. Hil fought his battles on his feet. If he'd wanted to shoot guns, he would have joined the navy. But fast as they were, they'd taken some serious damage in the crash and bless her for doing her best, but Skye wasn't flying at top notch right now. Anyone should have been able to catch up with them. So why had the three ships chasing them down suddenly given up the ghost? It was enough to give him a headache. If his head hadn't already been pounding. They'd been called off, he decided, so what now? Should they be expecting a welcome party when they landed?
"I need to contact Mendhel," he said abruptly, out loud, interrupting his own train of thought.
"Not until we reach the guild, unless you have some other way of communicating."
Hil detected a hint of sarcasm. "Skye, help me here. I honestly don't remember where we were supposed to be going," he said. "Where do we usually...?"
"Honey, you just rest your cute butt until I get us to an airfield and a repair yard where we can get some of these systems back online. Then you can worry about getting back and signing in to check your status."
Checking his status. That sounded familiar. Status meant all green, safe and sound, home straight. He'd never had an alert on him. Of course he'd never outright crashed before. So maybe this was what it felt like when the guild put out a red or black. He'd seen poor suckers tagged with alerts before and had felt smugly superior with his spotless record, vying for the top spot, not scuzzing around waiting for an extraction team to haul him back in like he'd seen some of them needing. He'd always been package delivered, thank you very much and onto the next. No matter how tricky - the trickier the better in fact. Thing was, he vaguely remembered thinking that this should have been a walk in the park. Or was that the last job? It was enough to make his head spin. He closed his eyes and let the minutes fly by.
There were two kinds of planet-bound space port that were worth visiting - the big, extravagant, old-Earth style supersizers where you could catch the latest gambling crazes, try out the newest biowares and get cosy with just about any fantasy you could imagine, and the seriously hi-tech Wintran machine shops that were on the fringes of reality, crossing military hardware with upgrades that hadn't even seen a field test yet. He'd spent his fair share of time R&R'ing at the first and spending his hard-earned credits at the second, treating himself and Skye to anything that could keep them a second ahead in the race.
Unfortunately for both of them, this was neither. Skye found them a way in and managed to haggle permission to land at a repair bay. They were dwarfed by a cargo ship on one side and a courier on the other. Both looked to be trash end of the market and Hil felt his skin crawl at the thought of going out there.
"All repairs booked in and authorised," Skye declared. "You go get seen to."
Go get seen to? He didn't want to go anywhere here. Hil didn't move. He couldn't see anything that matched the signature of the ships that had been following them. But that didn't mean they weren't in here somewhere.
"You're still bleeding all over me, Hil honey. I've made a reservation for you at a Wellbeing. It just looks like a small one but they should be able to patch you up."
"Cancel it, I can wait," he said, thinking of the package and trying to remember what the hell he had to do with it.
Skye was a mind reader at times. "They'll help," she said. "You have a concussion and I don't know where we're going so I need you to go get seen to, let them spark that short-term memory of yours back into shape and by the time you get back, we'll be fixed up and ready for go. And the package will be fine in storage."
He weighed up his options. Having full control over life support, Skye could make it impossible for him to stay. Wellbeing it was then. Normally a stay in a Wellbeing of choice was a much anticipated post-tab treat. But even at some of his favourite haunts, there were Wellbeings he'd avoid. Chances of this one being above par were slim but this was purely medicinal, being mid-tab and all, so a quick fix-up wouldn't hurt.
Hil checked that the package was still secure and left the ship on shaky legs, still light-headed and more than a little shocked to see the state of the ship from outside. There were massive scorch marks etched across her hull, Skye's sleek form and elegant wingspan battered from impacts he couldn't remember. Her landing gear was standing crooked and debris littered the floor beneath her. Hil kicked absently at a piece of twisted metal. It was the first time they'd ever got their fingers burnt. But she'd got them here and she'd get them home. Somehow.
He was halfway across the concourse when he got an urgent recall from Skye sounding in his head. He turned and spotted two uniforms making their way towards him, too rapidly to be routine. He turned again, expecting trouble from the other side and saw a guy in a dark business suit standing, just staring at him and intimidating as hell. Hil stumbled slightly as he back-peddled and tried to look nonchalant as he headed back to the ship.
He glanced back and the two uniforms broke into a run so he did too but his flat out was more of a limping ramble. Their outright sprint, guns up, intercepted him before he was anywhere near Skye's on ramp. He stumbled as one of them grabbed hold of his arm and the other wheeled around in front of him. They were probably just grunts from customs, he thought as they forced him to his knees. He could buy his way out of this, but as he opened his mouth to speak, a blow to the back of the head sent his already scrambled senses spinning into darkness.