Chapter 12
The Man leaned back in his chair. "Your decision to use Genoa for that particular assignment was regarded in many circles as foolhardy, NG. Why is that?"
He'd been dreading the topic of Genoa, inevitable as it was.
"You have to understand the delicate relationships that can develop between our people and the AIs they work with," he said. "Hil especially is close to his ship. Skye is his partner. They've worked together for over ten years. It's hard to recruit AIs and we don't have many. They demand high pay and deservedly so. Not all our operatives team up with an AI. Anderton never has. And we have some AIs, like Genoa, that prefer to work freelance wherever they're needed." He paused and considered his next statement carefully. "The issue of AI personality and allegiance is tricky. You talk of man but we mustn't underestimate the AIs. They have a place in society now that is still becoming established, even as a minority. They have rights and they have emotions that can be as raw as any human."
The Man sat quietly and NG stopped abruptly and emptied his mind of any thoughts except this room, right there and then. A whisper of a breeze set the candle flames dancing and a hint of sweet incense swirled across the desk.
"What happened?" the Man said softly, well aware that this was an area NG didn't want to address.
"I can't read the mind of an AI," he said, uncomfortable in having to admit it. "I had no idea."
-
It just took one jump to get to Abacus A. That was unsettling in itself. The Alsatia spent time on both sides of the line and wandered, a self-sufficient colony, that had been deep in Earth controlled space last he knew. The massive cruiser must have shifted some to get them that close to the Between. And the fact that it had positioned itself firmly in the Between, rather than letting them jump there themselves, made him uneasy. Field-ops didn't often have the entire guild baby-sit them through a tab.
Genoa went in first and docked, Martha and Kase due to follow after a discrete enough gap. Hil didn't wait for Genoa to give him the go ahead to leave and she didn't offer him any words of encouragement or even reassurance that she had his back. As a guild support vessel, she was equipped to track him, hide his signature, open doors and get clearances for him. He took all that for granted and he assumed nothing. She'd screw up or she wouldn't. He didn't intend to rely on her.
The dock was busy. Abacus was a hive of machine shops and repair docks. Hil stalked through the security channels onto the station, glaring daggers at anyone who so much as looked as if they were going to stop him or question his clearance. The IDs issued by the guild were pure gold at places like this. Even the military shouldn't look at him twice. Of course, that only worked if you kept your nose clean and respected the local customs. Last time hadn't been so clear cut and a spell in the detention centre was not something he wanted to repeat.
He was kept waiting in line at entry control and it was cold enough that he started to regret not putting on another layer. But Genoa had cleared the way through for him and it didn't take long to get to the lift and up a level to the recreation deck where the temperature rose to an almost unbearable heat with too many bodies enjoying themselves for the aircon to handle. It was shift change and the grimy corridors were packed. Hil slipped through easily. He broke out onto the main stretch and wandered nonchalantly into the first bar, not the one they'd agreed to meet in, an unmistakable sense that someone was following him tingling at the back of his neck. Crap, he hadn't expected to be picked up this quickly. He edged his way through the crowd and made for a gap at the bar.
"You have company," Genoa said quietly in his ear.
He didn't reply. He was watching the mirror behind the bar and planning a route out. The guy next to him bumped his arm and spilled beer. Someone nudged into his back and a woman leaned across in front of him, a stench of perfume mixing with the bitter tang of alcohol. He saw his way out and moved quickly, weaving through the throng of bodies and ducking out of a staff-only door in the back. Someone yelled after him but before they could get to him, he was away and up through a vent in the dingy ceiling. Old stations like this were playgrounds for field-ops. The basic beam and vent constructions were riddled with access ways, ladders, tangled networks of pipes and walkways covered with thin veneers for bulkheads covering pockets of comfortable living space and utilitarian working places.
Hil took his time working his way around and up to the next level, flexing his wrist, glad that he'd left the brace on. He got his bearings, made his decision and without a word closed off the connection to Genoa.
Whatever had happened, he couldn't trust anyone out here. Delivering himself up to whoever was not an option. Someone had killed Mendhel and Hil knew without doubt that it hadn't been LC. His memory from that cold dark night on Earth was still patchy. They'd flown in together, LC with him and Skye. And they'd met Mendhel but something had been very wrong. He flashed suddenly on LC stumbling to the floor and his stomach turned to ice at the thought. It hadn't been Earth. It had been someplace else, a lab or a research station. Cold corridors teeming with electrobes and a fight to get back to Skye. Back on Earth, before or after he couldn't tell, and Mendhel saying they'd been set up and he had no choice. He was sorry but he had no choice and LC saying they'd do it, of course they'd do it.
Oh crap, what the hell had they gotten into? Hil sat on a meshmetal walkway and let his legs dangle. Sounds from a club on the deck below drifted up, chatter and the thump of bass. He leaned his left arm on a pipe that was warm and comforting, right arm hurting and nestled in his lap, and settled his head down, closing his eyes. He couldn't pull it together, couldn't get it in the right order or time frame. The tick above his eye started up again. Mendhel had been alive when they left Earth, he was sure of that. And LC? Hil could vaguely remember an explosion but that might have been the crash. Heat and a jarring hurt. No, it was an explosion then the crash after that. He'd been with LC when... when what? But however much he racked his memory, he couldn't pull up any names or details.
He had two choices the way he figured it. He could either go down there and meet the contact and leave his fate to the guild or he could climb up to the drop box and see if LC had managed to make it this far. Otherwise there was Aston and Pen - that would be the next step, and one that he hadn't been able to bring himself to mention to Sean. As much as he wanted to run back to the safety of the guild, as much as it hurt to think it, he didn't know how safe that was any more and he had to find LC.
The box was in an impossible to reach location off a ventilation shaft above the military base on the other side of the station.
Getting through to that side of the station was tricky because of the military barriers and seals in place but it wasn't anywhere he hadn't been before. The final obstacle was the vertical climb up a wire cable that was a magnitude more difficult than he remembered. Hil paused half way, out of breath, sore and hurting. He wrapped his foot around the cable so he could stop and rest. His wrist was throbbing. The walls of the shaft were too far away to reach and there was nowhere he could go but up or down. The air here was thin and cold with a metallic taste to it but nothing set off the band on his wrist tingling in warning. He could hear the whine and whirr of machinery from the base.
Gritting his teeth he set off again and hauled himself up, catching hold of the cross beam with relief when he reached it. He climbed up and crawled across the beam to the inset cubby hole by a thick twist of cables. With trembling fingers he pulled out his lock pick and made a botch job of opening the tiny metal box nestled in there. The mechanism was one of LC's favourites and it was a bitch to crack at the best of times. With the fingers on one hand swelling beyond the restriction of the brace on his wrist and the other feeling cold and numb, the freaking lock refused to give until finally he heard that wonderful click and felt it release.
The box was empty. No note, no data sticks, no message. If LC was okay, he hadn't been here. Hil sat back, deflated. Crap.
Getting back took twice as long. He fell twi
ce, the second time from a narrow ledge to tumble down a height and slam onto the deck leaving him stunned and shaken. Best in the guild, my arse, he thought.
He sat. Reconnecting to the ship was tempting but he couldn't face Genoa's silence. Kase and Martha would be wondering where he was. And if NG could see him now, he wasn't exactly being an honest and open guild operative. NG would be within all rights to consider him rogue. He had no leads and apart from NG, he didn't know who he could trust without finding LC himself. Anya missing could mean she was with LC. They'd always had a thing going on between them that they'd denied enthusiastically and Mendhel had all but forbidden but they could have gotten together. In which case, he could go back to the guild and leave them to it. They'd be fine. They could be on a beach together somewhere. But a niggling thought that was attached to a memory he couldn't pin down gave him a bad feeling that Anya had already been missing when they met with Mendhel. And when he left LC, cocky invincible LC was in a bad way. He had to find them both. Before McKenzie or any other of Sean's bounty hunting buddies.
He made his way back to the recreation level and nonchalantly slipped into a rest room. Holding his hand and wrist under cold water brought on shivers but numbed the swollen joint somewhat. It was time to face it. He took a deep breath and renewed the connection to Genoa.
She didn't jump straight into a friendly conversation the way Skye would have but she'd alerted Kase and Martha because the pair of them were waiting when he emerged from the bathroom into the bar. They ignored him when he looked their way so he walked past and headed for an empty table. He didn't make it as two beefy guys in black suits, who looked like they could have been clones of each other, sidelined him and took up an arm each. He tried to shake them off but that wasn't going to happen easily and as he glanced back over his shoulder, another three were blocking any attempt Martha and Kase could have made to get to him. Okay, this wasn't part of the plan but it wasn't entirely unexpected.
Hil looked around for anyone else from the guild but couldn't see any familiar faces. They'd be there and they'd make sure he got back to the guild in one piece, taking care of whoever it was along the way. That was how the guild worked. No one messed with the guild.
"Hey, no one messes with us, y'know?" he muttered and one of the corporate gorillas grasping his left arm twisted and squeezed just enough for him to know that conversation wasn't going to cut it.
They took him through a back door and up some stairs.
"Genoa, you getting this?" he sent through the connection, more desperation creeping into his intonation than he intended.
"We're right with you, Zachary," she sent back coldly. "Don't worry your pretty little head."
As much as he knew that the teams from the guild were some of the best it was possible to work with and that NG had given explicit instructions that his safety was priority, it was hard not to panic. His expertise, same as all the field operatives, was to get in quietly, get out unnoticed and interact with no one, no exceptions. Dealing with people was something left to Legal or Media. He felt exposed and vulnerable and ego aside, it was unsettling to think that he couldn't just up and flit away.
They walked him to a lift and before the doors opened, a heavy hand slapped against his neck right where his implant was. He felt a numb quiet encapsulate his mind. Hil didn't see any other people around and couldn't hear Genoa as much as he yelled at her to respond. She couldn't possibly be such a bitch as to ignore him now. He was shielded somehow.
So he was alone.
He tried to reach a hand up to his neck but they were holding tight.
"That's not freaking legal," he protested, realising as he said it what a stupid thing it was to say.
They didn't respond. The lift doors opened. It occurred to him that he might have been acquired by station security again but these guys weren't wearing uniforms. Whoever Mendhel had been dealing with, they'd sent in a tab to the guild and had asked for him personally. Well, they had him. This wasn't about codes. This was about that last tab and whatever the hell had gone wrong, it was still happening and he'd just walked himself straight back into it.
Alone in the lift, they pulled his arms behind his back and clasped restraints on each wrist, pulling tight.
"C'mon guys, is that necessary?"
There was still no response. He slouched his shoulders and waited until they were done then set about testing the cuffs. From what he could feel, they were the same type LC had shown him how to bust out of one time they were messing about in the Maze. LC could break free in seconds - Hil had never beaten him and given the state of his wrist he wasn't sure he could manage it at all but it was worth a try.
The lift dropped down and Hil started to get a bad feeling as it dropped and dropped and about the only place they could be going was the docks. Leaving the station was definitely not in any plan. The doors opened and Hil braced himself. The guild would be watching the docks, they wouldn't just let these guys walk him into a ship and leave.
The lift deposited them in a private area manned by similar looking corporate security. He bided his time as he was marched through gates and check posts and by the time they reached a walkway adjacent to the public terminal, he still hadn't seen any guild. There was no one watching his back. He couldn't believe there was no one watching his back. It was time to look after himself. He slowed the adrenaline, subtly manoeuvred his left arm and dislocated his thumb with a snap, twisting his hand out of the restraint, shouldering one guy aside and slamming his left fist back-handed, into the other. They were good but he was fast. He bolted for the main concourse and weaved through a thinning crowd, desperately looking for a friendly face. If any guild teams were there, he couldn't see them. So much for covering all bases. Quinn and all his micro-managing was just as crap as he knew it would be.
Hil dropped and rolled under a barrier, staggering up from one knee with less finesse than he would've liked. Genoa was berthed in twenty seven. From the signs, he was up in the fifties and doubling back to the hub would be the fastest way round but not necessarily the smartest. He stayed close to the walls and looked for an access hatch to duck into. The two he bumped up against were locked and would take too long to open. He ran on and looked for an opening to ditch out of this area.
There were more people around as he moved down towards the docks so he blended in and walked alternately with running and avoided any security.
He was beginning to think he could make it when there was a yell and a wall of guards appeared up ahead. He wheeled around. The two corporate guys were behind him, pushing past people. Hil broke right and barged his way through a door, shouldering it open and bursting through into a narrow corridor. If he could find a hole to hide in, he could lose them. Otherwise he was wide open here.
The door crashed open behind him and something hit him solidly in the back between his shoulder blades. With a yelp, his knees buckled and Hil hit the floor, out cold.