Defying Winter (Thieves' Guild Origins: LC Book Three): A Fast Paced Scifi Action Adventure Novel Read online

  DEFYING WINTER

  (Thieves’ Guild Origins: LC Book Three)

  C.G. Hatton

  Published by Sixth Element Publishing

  Arthur Robinson House

  13-14 The Green

  Billingham TS23 1EU

  Great Britain

  www.6epublishing.net

  © C.G. Hatton 2021

  www.cghatton.com

  Also available in paperback.

  C.G. Hatton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  For Hatt

  Chapter 1

  I don’t know how Luka is even managing to stand. He looks terrible, pale, distressed. The ship is quiet, still, emergency lighting flickering and intermittent as we drift in deep space. Dark, I heard someone say. Powered down. Because we have no weapons and no fuel and if the aliens find us, we have no defences.

  We were lucky to get away. And we’re not safe yet.

  Luka is staring at me as if he can see into my soul. He has the same mottled bruising around his arm and neck that is creeping along Toby’s skin even as I watch, my heart sinking. Toby hasn’t moved since we laid him down. The medic doesn’t look me in the eye as he finishes up and backs away. I heard what they said, that it doesn’t look good, whatever they try. I don’t know what to do. I can’t lose him. Not now. Not like this. I stroke back a strand of hair from his face as he closes his eyes. I need him to live.

  I look up at Luka, willing him to make everything okay.

  He eases himself down to sit beside me and nudges my other hand, the one I have clenched around a Bhenykhn kill token, the twisted metal digging into my palm. Hilyer gave it to me when we were in the tunnels and told me to hold onto it, told me to hold onto the fact that every one of these tokens we have means we are killing them and we won’t ever let them win.

  I clutch it so tight it hurts.

  “You want to know the first time I ever saw one of those?” Luka says, his voice soft, tired, hurting but gentle as if we were kids again, huddled together waiting for the bombs to stop falling.

  I nod. I don’t know how he knows what I have in my hand but I want him to talk. I want to hear everything he’s ever done with this guild that rescued him from Kheris, these people who have just rescued us from Hanover.

  “I was sixteen,” he says.

  It’s strange to think of him being the same age as me, the same age as Toby. I wish I’d known Luka when he was sixteen. I have a lump in my throat. I’ve missed him every day since that night at the airfield. It feels like someone stole our growing up together time away from us and he’s giving it back to me now in every one of his stories.

  Hil is watching. Everyone is watching us and listening as we drift there, helpless.

  “The other field-ops were ribbing us that we’d never make it at the guild,” Luka says in that quiet voice as if Toby and me are the only ones he’s speaking to. “They said we’d never catch up to them in the standings. Then the Man posted this tab, totally impossible, hardly any intel except that security was beyond anything anyone had ever bust into before. Open tab, ridiculous points on offer, more cash than I’d ever imagined. Anyone could have gone after it and no one did.”

  “You did.”

  Luka nods, giving me that dimpled smile he has that always makes everything okay. “It was UM. How could I not…?” He settles back, stretching out, struggling and not completely managing to keep the pain from his face. “Back then,” he says, wiping a hand across his eyes, “no one knew what it was. It wasn’t a Bhenykhn kill token we’d been sent to steal. As far as anyone knew, it was an amulet. A simple, flash trinket in some rich corporation’s private collection…”

  •

  I hit soft ground, blood streaming down my face, senses rattled enough that I greyed out for a second. You want to know how I ended up running that tab for the amulet? I track it back a lot. Overthinking every minute. What if I’d done this instead of that, what if I hadn’t done something else… And every time it goes back to that exact moment I took a hockey stick in the face and lay there on the perfectly cut grass, staring at a perfectly blue sky, deciding I was done with taking shit from an idiot rich boy who was angry because his girlfriend had taken a shine to me.

  And this perfect place? Westinghouse, the most expensive, exclusive school in the galaxy, either side of the line. Located on Bergen, a supremely neutral colony in the Between, but holy shit, this was not the Between I knew.

  The only reason I was there…? You know what I’m like. It was inevitable. I’d screwed up, been sidelined and the guild had sent me out of the way, back to school of all places.

  I rolled to my side and looked up to see the idiot rich boy, aka Akihiro Tenaka, standing over me, hockey stick in both hands, sneering down at me. I braced myself for another hit but one of the gym staff ran up, shouting and blowing his whistle. I could just make out Blackstone, our esteemed headmaster no less, standing watching, immaculate black cape flowing, and a look on his face that was dark to say the least. In the few weeks we’d been there, I’d never seen Blackstone look anything else. The headmaster of Westings was former Imperial Marine Corps, a real high up. Highly decorated, according to his record. He’d been at Derren Bay. I’d paid attention at that part of the briefing. Damn right I’d paid attention. So far I hadn’t seen anything to counter the guild’s scathing assessment of the man.

  The gym teacher blew his whistle again. Rich boy and his teammates stepped back, snapping to and running off to take up position.

  I sagged back onto the grass, and let the fluffy white clouds swirl away.

  Matron clicked her fingers in front of my face. I couldn’t remember what she’d said, what she’d asked me to do. I blinked stupidly.

  “Felix…” she said gently. “Can you tell me what house you are in?”

  Zurich. I was in Zurich House. I knew I was in Zurich House. Idiot boy was in Neuchâtel House, another reason he hated me. And I knew the ID I’d been given, inside and out. I was the youngest sprog of some bigwig family on Earth. Disgustingly wealthy by any normal standards but not important enough to warrant too much attention from anywhere. Deep cover guild, through and through, not that anyone there at the school knew that.

  They’d given me the first name Felix because they didn’t trust that I would respond to anything else. Even LC still sounded weird at times. But not many people called me Luka anymore. It’s strange what you get used to in time, isn’t it?

  I blinked again. I knew I should say Zurich but it wouldn’t come out.

  She patted my shoulder, peering at me with that look they have. “You have a slight concussion, my dear.”

  I know what concussion feels like. It wasn’t that bad. Wasn’t as bad as some I’ve had.

  “I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t impressed. “I don’t know why they’re making a junior as small as you play against the seniors.”

  I wasn’t that small. And I could hold my own. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out that I could match any of the seniors there.

  I gave her a smile. “I really am fine.”

  She smiled back, knowing fine well that I was bullshitting her.

  Matron was okay. She was nothing like Brenna
n. Even two years on I was still sore over that. I’d hacked into Matron’s file the first week we were there. I knew her whole life story. Civilian career through and through. I’d cross-checked every last detail and it was all legit.

  I have to say though, compared to Redemption, Westinghouse was a holiday camp. Horse-riding, sailing – we’d been out on sailing boats on a real ocean – fun stuff but we paid for it with the schoolwork which was intense, weird. All the usual stuff, but a lot more besides, a lot of politics, hours and hours of military strategy and philosophy, ancient history and languages, etiquette – I struggled with that – and finance. Business and finance. A whole lot of business and finance. And leadership. How to rule the masses. How to amass wealth. The Westinghouse Institute of Excellence was a breeding ground for the galaxy’s most privileged offspring. Both sides of the line. Strictly neutral. Highest calibre of staff, equally divided in heritage and allegiance.

  Like I said, Blackstone, the Head, was Imperial Marine Corps, brigadier general retired. The school’s Academic Director was a woman on permanent secondment from Yarrimer, one of Winter’s leading bio-tech science officers. And the School Administrator was a former senior liaison in the Merchants’ Guild. Impressive. I knew all their backgrounds, inside and out. Family, significant others, pets… I knew what they ate for breakfast.

  The school pretty much consumed the colony on Bergen, the most pleasant place I’ve ever been. I bet the Bhenykhn are loving it. It was neither Imperial nor Wintran, pandering to neither and bowing to both. It was where the rebelliously obnoxious, hideously wealthy future leaders of Winter were groomed. Where the Imperial families sent their less military-inclined sons and daughters, the ones that were destined for diplomatic duty rather than the front line. Where the Merchants’ Guild handpicked its latest crop of associates…

  When the guild had sent us into Redemption, they’d had no idea what was really going on there. Here at Westings? Everyone knew exactly what we were going in to. We’d had it drummed into us. We were on show, on test, twenty-four perfect Earth Standard hours a day, every day.

  I hated it.

  As much as I’d hated the missionary school on Kheris.

  I just wanted to be back on board the Alsatia, running regular tabs. I wanted to get back to the Maze. This didn’t feel real. It wasn’t real. I’d heard Mendhel arguing that I shouldn’t be sidelined, that what I’d done hadn’t been that bad. It was but I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, I’d screwed up. Mendhel had covered for me but the Chief had seen the discrepancy and hauled Mend in to answer for it.

  The Chief had put his foot down and said it would be good for me to learn some real discipline. NG had laughed and backed him up, saying I needed to get some real experience out in the world anyway, and why not set up a decent long term deep cover while we were at it. So it was a simple nothing of a tab, hardly any points, just get some up to date intel on a couple of target families.

  Thinking about it, maybe that was the moment I should blame for the cascading sequence of events that ended in one of the worst extraction screw ups of all time and everything that happened after that.

  But that wouldn’t be fair. If I’d kept my nose clean and my head down at Westings, none of it ever needed to have happened.

  Matron let me go after making me stay in the infirmary for observation. Just to make sure, she said. Didn’t want to take any risks with a child from such an influential family more like. She sent me to shower and change into uniform, gave me a top up of meds, and told me with a smile that my brother was waiting for me outside.

  Hil fell into step alongside me as we headed along the leafy, tree-lined pathway back to the main school. The sun was just starting to dip, the air still warm, balmy. Perfect in every way. Except, if you knew what you were looking for, you could see the armed guards and defensive positions out on the boundaries of the school grounds, even this far away. High security as much as Redemption had been. There are different kinds of prisons…

  Hil nudged my arm. “Where’s your tie?”

  I squinted at him. I’d just spent four hours in the infirmary and the first thing he asked about was my tie? His shirt looked freshly ironed, crisp white cotton, sleeves rolled up just past his elbows in smart, neat folds. Smooth tanned arms, no sign of the black ink prison tattoos anymore, the guild had taken care of those. His tie was straight. Knotted perfectly. Mine was scrumpled up in my pocket.

  He gave me a grin and beckoned with a laugh. “Give it here.”

  Hil was only there to keep an eye on me, keep me out of trouble, Mend had said. I’d thought he’d hate it too but he was loving it.

  I fished out the tie and made a pathetic attempt to smooth out some of the wrinkles. He took it, twisted me around and started to fasten it around my throat, tugging on my shirt collar to get it right. It felt like he was tightening a noose around my neck. Not that different from the shock collars they’d made us wear on Redemption.

  He didn’t let me go until he was happy then he nudged me back into walking. Towards the refectory. I reckoned we’d just about be in time to catch dinner. Not that I was hungry. I just wanted to go to bed. My head was hurting, not that I’d admitted that to Matron.

  Hil switched to the Senson as we walked, tight wire, totally secure. All the kids there had Sensons, we weren’t the only ones. Most of them had Threes or Fours though, common enough kit for the wealthy privileged of the galaxy. No one knew we had Fives.

  “You need to watch yourself with Imogen Kilkenny,” he sent.

  I scuffed my toes along the path. “It’s her idiot boyfriend that has a problem.”

  “I’m just saying be careful. Whatever you’re cooking up, be careful.”

  I couldn’t help rising to it. I wasn’t cooking up anything. “What am I cooking up?”

  “She’s UM. You know fine well she’s UM.”

  The amulet was in UM’s private vault on Winter… I hadn’t exactly kept it a secret that I wanted to run the Man’s tab.

  Hil regarded me with an expression as dark as his eyes. “I’m serious, LC. She’s not as innocent as she makes out.”

  I opened my mouth to protest that I knew that, what did he think I was? Stupid? But Hil had a way of looking at me that shut me up as fast as Mendhel did.

  He shoved me with a laugh. “Anyway, what about Anya?”

  “What about her?” I shied away from him and I admit, I might have sounded too defensive.

  Anya Halligan, in person, was every bit as stunning as the image I’d seen in Mendhel’s personnel file on the Alsatia. More so. She had a magnetism to her that was… I don’t even know how to explain it. The first time I’d met her was when Mendhel took us to Aston in the couple of months after Redemption, to get us out of the way of all that fallout. I’d still been pretty messed up and she’d gone after Hil, made it clear she wouldn’t take no for an answer then switched to me when he made it clear he wasn’t interested, not after what had happened with Jem. Even then, she still tried to play us off each other which was funny because I wasn’t interested either. Not really. Not until I realised I was. We’d all had one intense summer together. Don’t ask me what happened. Hil can tell you about that. Thing was, Mendhel realised what was going on and told me in no uncertain terms to back off. I should have asked after her. Should have checked she was okay. Maybe if I had, a lot of the crap that’s happened wouldn’t have…

  A couple of professors from the science wing were walking towards us. Hil stood aside, pulling me next to him and giving them a respectful, “Sir,” as they acknowledged us. I kept my head down.

  He steered me back into walking once they were past. “LC,” he sent tight wire, “you might be a freaking genius, but you need to learn how to play this game. Believe me, this place is a million miles from Redemption.”

  I knew that. We had real fireplaces in our dorm rooms, genuine Old Earth Persian rugs on the floors, tapestries on the walls. No one stole my pillows but I don’t know what kind of feathers
were in them, they were so soft I had to use a rolled up blanket instead. What I didn’t know was how Hil knew so much about playing this game, and that was infuriating. Two years ago, Mendhel had got Hil out of prison, an adult prison, where he’d been up on a murder charge. I knew that much. Jem hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said he’d been in Wildlands for first degree murder. I’d dug as deep as I could get into Hil’s file on the Alsatia. As far as I could tell, he’d been living on the streets, in and out of the care system his whole life before that. So how come he was fitting in with these rich kids so easily, within weeks, when all I had to do was look at a girl wrong and I got a hockey stick in the face?

  He nudged me as we walked. “You’re supposed to be smart. Stop racking up the warnings and detentions. You make life hard for yourself, do you realise that?”

  Hil has always been smarter than I am. If you ever need to listen to anyone, about anything, listen to him.

  He gave me another push, more forceful. “We’re here to gather intel, right? Just do that. We gather the intel, we get what we need, and we get to go home.”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and tried to dampen down a pulse of adrenaline. Easy for him to say. Home for Hil was the Alsatia. Home for me was Kheris… I could never go home.

  “And stay away from Imogen Kilkenny.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Chapter 2

  I survived dinner, managed to use the right knife and fork out of the array of cutlery these people deemed necessary, and almost made an excuse to avoid study time that evening. My eye looked bad enough that I could have got away with any excuse, but what Hil had said had hit deep, triggering that stubborn spot I have, right on the button. We had to get the intel. That was all.

  The study hall at Westinghouse was worse than the mess on the Alsatia. I stood in the doorway before I could go in, hovering there like an idiot, as if I could screw up just by setting foot in there. It was an almost perfect representation of the galaxy’s two main, totally disparate socio-political factions, even though the school’s four houses were a mix of kids from both sides. In the study hall, the uptight Imperial sprogs sat on one side, all together in their stuffed shirts and shiny shoes, and perfectly knotted ties, and Wintran kids sat on the other with their smug expressions, immaculate manicures and flash implants on show. I must have been the only street kid from the Between to ever set foot in those hallowed halls.