Chapter 4
NG took a sip of the wine. It was hot and strong, and even that small sip burnt his throat.
"LC Anderton and Zach Hilyer are our two best operatives, by far," he said. "They've made acquisitions no one thought possible. There have been jobs I almost turned down and there have been items that departments within the guild decreed that we needed that I almost vetoed, but in every case one of those two has successfully pulled it off. No one else is near. Their instincts are astonishing. They never work together, they're very different and they're fiercely competitive. Mendhel was the only handler who'd ever been able to keep control of the pair of them."
He paused to take another drink. The Man was sitting quietly, unmoving, keeping his full gaze focused. It seemed to be getting warmer in there, if that was possible.
"In your judgement," the Man said, "was there a risk?"
"Their loyalty to the guild was never a concern to me," NG said. "They came to us young and they both knew they'd found their home here. Their aptitude for our area of expertise is inherent. But I can see now it wasn't surprising that when an entity outside decided it was going to cross the guild, those were the two targeted."
-
"Hil honey?"
The moment of impact crashed through his bones and sent a spark of pain drilling through his skull. He jerked awake again at the voice, expecting smoke and engine oil and the taste of blood.
"Hil, we're home. Calm down that heartbeat or they won't let you go."
Instead of a hard, cold console, Hil felt pillows.
"That's better."
"Skye?" he thought and reached up to feel smooth intact skin behind his ear, just the vague feeling of an implant beneath his fingers.
"We've both been through the mill, honey but we're home now."
"God, Skye, I've missed you." He felt breathless. The shock of losing contact with her was sinking in worse now that she was back, as if he hadn't let himself feel the full effect of it.
"I know, honey. When I lost touch with you, I thought? I thought they'd killed you, Hil."
It hadn't occurred to him to consider what Skye had been going through. He tried to take a deep breath but his chest was hurting. "What happened? They said I was there for five days."
"Whoever they were on that planet, they impounded me, hon. They broke in and busted open the package. There was nothing in it, Hil. They were really angry. They just left me there. And I couldn't find you."
"The package was empty?"
Hil sat up, favouring his left arm to lean on. There was a brace on his right wrist and the pain had numbed down to a throbbing ache. His head felt better though, a little woolly inside but more settled than it had been. He was in a private room in Medical, white walls and sparse furniture with racks of medical equipment that were beeping at him erratically. Apart from routine exams, he'd never spent time in here. He'd never had to and he didn't know what he was supposed to do.
"We're in trouble, Hil," Skye whispered. "I've been locked down. They won't even start repairs yet. They don't know what happened and it's scaring a lot of people. Can you remember anything?"
"We crashed," he said.
"No, honey, before that. I'm missing a memory module, hon. How did that happen? How could I not know? They've told me I'm out of action until we find out what happened. Did they tell you about Mendhel and LC?" She sounded scared. How could an AI sound so scared? "What were we doing, Hil?"
He rubbed his left hand across his face, and felt the tug of an IV line. It was irritating so he pulled it out and dropped it to the floor, holding a corner of the sheet against his hand until it stopped bleeding. He felt rung out but he wasn't going to sit there like an invalid.
They were in the shit. His head wasn't scrambled that badly. He could remember what Kase had said and how NG had reacted. He'd been hauled in front of the section chiefs, for god's sake. Skye was a mess too, they'd said. She was worried and scared for him.
Hil clambered out of the bunk, trailing wires he hadn't realised were attached to him. He pulled loose and looked around for his clothes. The things he'd been wearing when he was extracted were bundled into a locker by the bed, filthy but it was all he had. He rummaged through the pockets and swore as he realised his toolkit and knives were missing. They hadn't just taken his Senson then. He instinctively checked his left arm, the nondescript-looking band still snug around his forearm. It might not look it but it was his favourite piece of kit. The dull black metal band concealed a lock pick, hidden flexed along its edge, and the band itself was an intricate piece of bio-engineering that included an automatic sensor to warn of contaminants and toxins. It had cost him a small fortune, saved his ass several times, and thankfully, whoever had nabbed him had been stupid enough to overlook it.
"Hil, I've heard rumours that Legal want you thrown into the brig," Skye said. "They're saying we've gone rogue. Have we? Why don't I have any record of LC being with us on that last trip? What was he doing?"
"I don't know, Skye," he said, aware that he was being sharp with her and he tried to be patient, but he didn't know. How many times did he have to say it?
He pulled on his shirt and combat pants carefully, trying not to flare up the sore spots he could feel through the drugs they'd pumped into him. He put on his boots, not bothering to lace them to avoid bending over any more than he had to, and checking as he did that his knife was still hidden there - it was, they'd missed that too. He pulled it out and sat staring at it, tracing a finger over the delicate pattern of etchings worked into the hilt and weighing up its perfect balance. Mendhel had given it to him a long time ago. LC had one that was identical, Mendhel swearing it was a crime to split up the matching pair but what else could he do with the two of them so close in the scores? Throwing it with astonishing accuracy was about the only thing Hil could beat LC at. That and poker.
His hand started to shake.
He slipped the knife back into his boot and stood up.
"What are you doing, Hil honey?"
"I'm leaving," he said. "How long have I been here?"
She didn't reply and that wasn't exactly reassuring.
"Skye?" he thought, and looked up as the door opened.
A medic stepped into the room, flanked by another two security personnel, both armed and wearing armour.
Hil stared at them. They weren't Watch; these guys had the giveaway red flashes on their armour that tagged them as the Man's personal guard. What the hell were they doing here? It seemed excessive and the medic seemed unimpressed by the state he'd left their equipment in.
"Mr Hilyer," she said, "I see you've decided to leave us." She looked him up and down. It was disconcerting, like he'd been caught trespassing, and with a slight shake of the head, she handed him a data board and pen. The two guards had stationed themselves at the door, but whether they were stopping someone from getting to him or stopping him from getting out wasn't clear.
"Skye," he sent, going through the motions of reading the information on display on the board. "Why the security detail?"
"Honey," she said, "I'm trying to find out but I told you, I'm locked down here. I don't have access to anything."
Crap. He glanced up at them while he scribbled his signature with his left hand, twice as big as it usually was. He put a cross-eyed angry face in the descending 'y'.
"Is that it?" he said, looking back at the medic and giving her the board. "Don't I get any instructions to ignore? Am I done?"
The medic looked at him like she was used to patients being assholes when they left. Maybe she'd dealt with field operatives before.
"You're welcome to leave," she said.
"Free to leave?" he asked, glancing from her to the armoured figures at the door.
She waved the board at him. "You're released from Medical," she said and smiled. "What they do with you from here is up to them."
He narrowed his eyes and walked to the door. They parted and let him pass, taking up position slightly behind and to either side
, following as he walked into the corridor.
At the lift, Hil pushed the button for level ten and glared at the two bodyguards he seemed to have acquired, waiting and daring them to over-ride it with a twelve. They didn't and as the lift took them up towards Acquisitions, it was hard not to wonder what the hell was going on.
Walking out onto ten, Hil felt about as low as he could go. The atmosphere in the halls was muted. Respect for Mendhel, curiosity about himself and LC he supposed. He couldn't remember it ever being this quiet.
The guild's massive cruiser had subcultures within subcultures. Acquisitions was the cold steel walkways of the barracks and spooksville, dominated by the endless depths of the Maze, where he spent every spare minute, and the noise of the mess with its rowdy bar and the always looming and ever changing board showing the standings, where every field-op was listed by points. It was a place of gambling and risk, rough and tumble amongst the grunts of the guild's militia and fierce competition between the field-ops.
Each section in the guild had its own atmosphere and way of life. Legal had three decks of marble hallways and oak panelled staterooms. They controlled the library, the real library with the books crammed into aisles of wooden shelves. Dusty artefacts of long ago and hardly necessary when anything you wanted was at your fingertips through a data board but the library epitomised the compulsive nature of the guild to hoard. It wasn't often that the field-ops got to visit the library but Hil had occasionally and it was an awesome collection. They had all that as well as the billions of items of electronically-stored information. Legal kept the maps and the star charts and the manuals. The guild owned the history of the human race, from Earth to all the colonies and out to Winter; knowing everything gave them a power that was almost unmatched.
Legal was the intelligence arm of the guild, gathering data, recording information and negotiating contracts.
Media was more superficial and more insidious even than Legal. Media was effectively the espionage branch of the guild, all comfy sofas and real coffee pots with a finger on the pulse of the future. It didn't predict trends, it created them and used them to manipulate the colonies with a voracity for change that unnerved anyone caught in their vicinity for too long. They didn't inspire, they dampened individuality and spontaneity by feeding the masses exactly whatever it was they decided was the current in, creating and destroying on a whim. Acquisitions collected. Legal controlled. And Media frog-marched them into the future.
Science was the fourth of the big four. They had a sphere at the very centre of the Alsatia and no one that Hil had ever met on board had been in there. They came out occasionally but any damage caused in there by their many explosions and accidents were dealt with by their own. Science kept to themselves except when they hurled a fast ball of evolution out to the field-ops to try in the outside. Science was also the main drop off point for in transit acquisitions. It was rare for a tab to go straight to the client; more often packages would go through Science first then back to the beyond. That way the guild made much longer term acquisitions itself than purely the price paid for the tab. It was simple and devastatingly effective.
When he tried to turn into the barracks corridor, a gentle push on his arm kept him from turning. He wasn't feeling up for a fight so he let them lead the way. They took him straight ahead.
The Chief's door was open. Hil hesitated at the threshold. He'd only ever been in there when he was in trouble and then that was only after Mendhel had cleared the air with the Chief. He'd never appreciated until that moment how much of a pain in the neck he'd always been to his handler. It was a horrible feeling to realise that he'd never be able to make it up to the man, who had always been more than a handler and more of a father figure to them all. He wasn't sure if he could face the Chief.
He took a step into the room and the door closed behind him, leaving the security guys outside.
The Chief had his back to the door, standing over by his planning wall, wire frame outlines of maps, charts and lists moving constantly over its smooth surface. "Sit down, son," he said and moved a hand over the control board - it all faded to black, leaving the room darker but easier on the eyes.
Hil sat on one of the three chairs in front of the massive black desk that dominated the room. He kept his head down, and scuffed his boots along the lines in the metal deck, trapping the trailing laces of one foot with the other.
The Chief walked over and sat in his chair behind the desk, quiet for a long time.
"I've managed to keep your ass out of the brig," he said eventually, "for now. But I have to tell you, Hil, you don't have a lot of friends on this cruiser right now."
Hil looked up, his eyes hooded. "I don't know what to say," he said, trying not to sound as defensive as he felt. He didn't want to let Mendhel down. "I don't remember what happened."
The Chief had a data board on his desk. He flicked through a few screens. "The staff in Medical have confirmed that you've had concussion with probable related amnesia. However," he said, still looking down. When he looked up, he was frowning which was never a good sign. "They don't think that the head injury completely accounts for your memory loss. They can't even identify half the substances you had in your system when you got back here, Hil. What the hell were you doing?"
Hil rubbed absently at the brace on his wrist. "I don't remember," he said again, knowing how lame that sounded.
"Well, as far as the official report goes, you have amnesia. That gives us some time. But I have to tell you, Hil, I'd rather hear what happened out there from you than from some wiseguy in Legal if they get to the bottom of this before you manage to get yourself together enough to remember. Legal are having a field day with this. They've been muttering for a while that we're too easy on you guys, that we give you too much leeway because of your particular talents. We've been holding them off because you've all been delivering the goods. This could tip the balance. The last thing we want down here is for Legal to be pulling the strings of our operations. We're all shocked to have lost Mendhel. You should know that people have been sent to investigate the circumstances of his death. If you have anything to add to that investigation, bring it here first. That will be the only way I can protect you, do you understand?"
Hil nodded, not really understanding at all.
The Chief stood up. "You're off the list and confined to Acquisitions."
That meant no tabs and pretty much house arrest. He'd had in the back of his mind that he'd be going out after LC.
"But?"
"No buts. Medical won't clear you to go out and I don't want anyone else to get their hands on you. Take it easy, Hil. Get back in the Maze. Keep your head down, get yourself back up to full fitness and we'll take it from there. I've lost one of my best operatives - I'm not going to lose another."