Chapter 16
The Man stood up and walked round to the cabinet on the far wall. The flames of candles flickered frantically, dancing for survival, as he passed. He took out a bottle and walked ponderously back to the desk.
"How wise," the Man said, "was it to send so many extraction teams into such a volatile situation?"
And there it was. Again, with hindsight he should have known. NG shook his head. "It wasn't. We lost some good people." What else could he say considering what happened?
The Man picked up a pinch of black powder from a small round pot and sprinkled it into the empty glass jug. He poured wine from the bottle into the jug and swirled it as the reaction of the liquid and the powder heated the wine and steam began to circle upwards. He filled both goblets.
"I was trying to limit the damage already done," NG admitted. "I could have sent the guild's entire security forces to get Hil out of there but at the time we were still trying to play down the situation and I wanted to know who they were. I decided that a contingent of extraction teams could do the best job of running a discrete operation. I was wrong. I just didn't realise why. And I didn't anticipate the size of the force they'd be up against."
-
Hil threw a hand over his eyes, feeling the heat even at this distance. Martha didn't slow. She changed course, dragging him with her, away from the runway and back towards the darkness they'd left. In his periphery vision, he could see the red pinpoints of laser sights closing in on them.
Then with a thunderous roar, a mass appeared above them and they both fell to their knees as the massive weight of a ship swept in from behind them, too close overhead, displacing the air with a violence that left them gasping. It landed and skidded, metal screeching, sending shrapnel flying, sparks flashing. Wire fences crashed and tangled, lines breaking and whipping loose.
The ramp crashed open before the ship had come to a stop, scraping across the ground as the vessel slewed off ahead of them.
"Get down," Martha yelled at him, pulling his arm and throwing them both to the ground. He covered his head with an arm and put complete trust in her, lying there and waiting.
A burst of energy rippled out in a ring from the ship. He felt the heat from it as it raced over their heads and spread out behind them. He heard yells and screams some distance back, and looking back over his shoulder he could see figures caught in an agonising pulse of static time and energy before disintegrating in a spray of molecules.
Then Martha was up and dragging him to his feet and they were running towards the ramp.
The landing gear was trashed so the ramp was skewed at an angle, and rain was flooding down it, so they had to slip and scramble up into the ship. Martha punched the button to close the ramp and yelled at him to get inside as she guarded them, rifle barrel scanning the gap as the ramp rose and slammed shut.
Hil stood shaking and shivering, rooted to the spot. He didn't know which ship they were on and any fight or flight instinct he had left was in such conflict that he began to shut down. He looked at the band on his wrist. It was the longest and worst he'd ever been exposed. They'd all heard horror stories of electrobe poisoning and they laughed in the face of it but right now, as breathing got harder and the weight pushing against his lungs got heavier, he gave up, sagged and closed his eyes.
"No, you don't," Martha snapped and pulled him along towards the bridge. "Genoa, where the hell do you keep the medical kit?"
Martha pushed him into a chair and gave him a double dose of antidote. She thrust the medical kit into his hands and waved another pack of something he couldn't make out in front of his face.
"Take these when you wake up," she said tucking the pack in next to him and firing another shot of something into his neck. "Genoa, get him out of here. I'm going back for Kase."
And she ran out.
Genoa flew them up into orbit, taking a couple of hits along the way that knocked them sideways and at one point threw them into a dive that felt endless before she managed to pull up.
Hil sat and shivered, soaking wet and chilled through, feeling his eyes get heavier and heavier. Extracted for a second time sucked worse than the first time. He sat with the massive pistol resting in his lap and persuaded himself to reach a hand into his pocket to feel the cold outline of the implant there. At least this time, he had something more substantial than a concussion to show for his efforts.
He must have flaked out. Regaining consciousness in the middle of a fire fight was a new experience. Hil felt his stomach lurch as the ship dropped and rolled and he almost called out to Skye before his brain caught up with the fact she was firing weapons so it was Genoa, not Skye. Proximity alarms were screaming then she pulled a manoeuvre that almost made him pass out again. She accelerated then jumped without warning. They jumped twice more and each time, he felt like his head was going to implode.
It was only when they hit deep empty space and Genoa indulged him with a long, gentle drift that he began to feel like he might live.
He had no idea how much time had elapsed and as soon as he could move without feeling like he was risking an aneurism, he took a look at the pack wedged down by his leg, which turned out to be one of the general emergency catch-all medication packs the extraction teams used. He swallowed down the three pills in it and almost choked.
He coughed. "Any chance you could turn up the heat in here?"
He felt a subtle rise in the temperature as Genoa said, "Welcome back to the land of the living."
"Where are we?" he asked. He fumbled to unfasten the restraints, trying to avoid using his right hand at all, and stood up, grabbing the packet and taking another paranoid look at the label to see what he'd just taken.
"Sit back down," she said calmly, "we're going to make jump again soon."
"Genoa, I'm soaking wet. Give me minute, will you?"
He ducked out to the tiny cabin he'd thrown his gear into. He put the pistol into his bag and shrugged out of his wet coat and shirt. His right arm was mottled black and swollen, from his elbow to the fingertips. He prodded a couple of sore spots on his side and tried to twist around to see his shoulder. He was in a real state. The band on his left wrist was dark blue, data flashing on it that he couldn't focus on to read. It wasn't black any more so he took that as a good sign. He left the brace on his wrist even though it was tempting to take it off and relieve some of the pressure. He gently pulled on a dry shirt and wandered back to the bridge, ignoring the thought that he could snuggle down on the bunk back there and sleep. If he'd been with Skye, he would but Genoa was too much of an unknown.
"Where are we?" he asked again. "What are we doing?"
"We're not safe yet," she said.
And he saw the numbers flash up on the screen, counting down to jump. He heard the subtle change in the pitch of the engines and sat down quickly.
"What?" he said belligerently, irritated that she wouldn't explain. "What's the problem?"
Without any further warning, she threw them into jump and for a few seconds he couldn't see anything except flashes.
The pain in his head spiked and by the time they came out of jump, he was soaked in sweat and had one hand on his chest and another clutching the back of his head.
"Genoa, ease off on the jumps for a bit, will you?"
She must have sensed his distress because the temperature warmed up another notch and she kept them on a steady stream for a while.
"Talk to me, Genoa. What's happening?" he said, trying desperately to keep his irritation down.
An image appeared on the main screen in front of him.
"Do you recognise that?" she said curtly.
He still couldn't see straight, couldn't quite focus. "No, what is it?"
"One of the ships that descended on that planet not long after you arrived there. The same ships that I'm trying to lose in jump. How did they know we were there? No one else knew we were going there."
He leaned forward and squinted at the image. "The people who sent in the tab knew we'd be
there," he said.
"Yes, Zachary, they were the ones who took you from the station and had the crap pounded out of them by the army that descended in these ships. We have no intelligence on the group who sent the tab and we have even less on this new, rather well equipped, military who seem even more intent on getting their hands on you. They've followed us through jumps that no one should have been able to."
Hil sat back and closed his eyes. He was sore and tired and starting to feel like nowhere was safe to run to. They were supposed to have been watching his back on the station. Every tab he'd ever worked for the guild, the extraction teams were there, a safety net he'd never needed, but there and always, always, the best. He'd never doubted them before and it felt crap now to think in this massive mess of a situation his world had run to, that those guys could be on the other side.
Genoa threw them into another sharp manoeuvre that set his head throbbing.
"Zach, your stats don't look good. Zach?"
"I know," he said quietly, still uneasy, not sure if the queasy feeling he had was from a deep down distaste at going rogue from the guild, Genoa's flying or the drugs Martha had given him.
"Where do you want to go, Zach?"
Skye would have high-tailed it out of there and taken him somewhere safe, no questions, no doubt and let him deal with the fall out afterwards. Genoa had pulled an impressive stunt back there but while she wasn't blindly heading for home, she wasn't decisively taking care of them. She wanted him to make the call. When all he wanted to do was sleep.
"I don't know," he muttered.
"I'm low on fuel and I need repairs. And Zach, you need medical attention. Do you want me to try for the Alsatia?"
Yes.
"No," he said. He needed some time to think. It would look really bad not to go straight home. He'd had no choice last time and once there, they'd set him up. If he was going to clear this up, he had to do it on his own terms.
"I can take you anywhere, just tell me where," Genoa urged softly.
"Aston," he said. "We'll go to Aston."