Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2) (14 page)

He sighed. “I'll power the ship up and bring it into the launch bay.”

“Which way is the launch bay?” Fee stepped into the corridor.

“Just follow the drones,” Eazi said. “That's where I'm taking the bodies.”

T
he air was almost gone
.

The pitch of the alarm was strident, drilling into Hal's head, and when it cut off, he thought for a moment it was because it was all over.

Then, in the sudden silence, he heard the runner's engines start up, making the floor beneath him vibrate, and the small vessel began flying straight for the Class 5.

“What's happening?” Cy looked from the screen to the controls, and Hal pushed up from the floor, walked to the panel and tapped out a few commands.

Everything was unresponsive.

“We're being reeled in.”

Dread gathered in a heavy ball, settling in his gut. Why wait until the air was almost gone, only to switch it back on?

“You know what this has been about?” he asked Cy, but the Tecran shook his head.

“Untie me now?” Cy looked over at him.

Hal considered it for a long beat. The Tecran obviously felt as vulnerable as he did, with no idea what they'd find in the launch bay, and wanted to be more maneuverable. But, no. He shook his head, and Cy's jaw flexed in anger.

“You wouldn't do it for me,” he said quietly, and Cy said nothing in return.

A slight shudder went through the ship as it passed through the gel wall, and then again as it touched down in the launch bay.

Hal held the shockgun in a loose, two-handed grip across his chest as the doors opened, prepared for anything.

Only, he wasn't prepared for anything, after all.

He wasn't prepared for a pile of dead bodies.

He took a cautious step closer, trying to work out what had happened. The dead were Tecran, in crew uniforms. Some of them were covered in dust, some had grazed hands, most looked like they'd simply fallen asleep.

Drones were transporting them, carefully depositing them in a pile and then leaving via the doors. There must be eighty bodies, maybe more.

Behind him, he heard Cy give a choking cry, and he turned to look at him.

Cy's eyes were wide, focused on the bodies, and he started to fight against his bonds.

The launch bay doors opened again, and Cy suddenly went still.

Hal whipped around, saw Fiona Russell standing just inside.

She wasn't looking their way, her full attention was on the dead Tecran. A hand went to her mouth, and her eyes closed as she bowed her head.

He forced his gaze off her, forced himself to check for any sign this was a trap, or that someone else was in the launch bay, but it seemed they were alone, just the three of them and the dead crew.

He started down the ramp toward her, and as soon as he stepped onto the launch bay floor, Fiona lifted her head. There was no surprise in her eyes at the sight of him. She was expecting him. He didn't know what to make of that.

She took a step forward, her expression tense but not afraid.

So, she didn't think they were in danger here. Which was . . . inexplicable.

The sound of the ramp closing behind him had him spinning to look. Cy screamed something in Tecran, and then there was silence as the ramp slammed shut.

Fiona looked up, Hal couldn't tell what she was looking at, and said something in a language he didn't understand. Her tone was calm, firm, but her hands were fisted at her side.

He saw with a jolt that her left shoulder was covered in blood, that he could see a searing line had been carved into her skin.

“What's happening?”

She looked over at him, and he saw warmth and open friendliness in her gaze, and for a moment he forgot what he was asking, and just basked in the glow.

“Eazi wants to kill Cy.” She bit down on her lower lip. “He hoped you would use all the air for yourself, so Cy would die in the runner, but when you didn't do that, he was forced to bring you in to keep you alive. But now you're out of the way, he realizes he can still achieve his goal.”

“All that, the air going off, was to kill Cy?”

“Cy shot me. Twice. Eazi is really, really unhappy about that.”

Well.

Hal frowned.

He wasn't that happy about it either. But . . . “Who the hell is Eazi?”

“Eazi is the thinking system that runs this ship.”

He'd been braced for that answer.

Especially since he'd seen the bodies. He knew what had happened on the Class 5 Sazo had control of when Sazo and Rose had gotten free. And the parallels here were too similar to ignore.

A dark, nasty thought rose up. “And tell me, Fiona. How long have you and Eazi been acquainted?” Because if she had been in league with him from the start, warm looks or not, he would never trust her again.

F
ee shot Hal an incredulous look
, and then ignored him. Cy was dying right now.

“Eazi. You have plenty of time to kill him later, if I really can't persuade you not to. Let Hal untie him, and you can keep him locked in the runner where he'll have some food and water, like a prison cell. What do you have to lose?”

“The pleasure of killing him.”

“One moment, and it will be over. Imprisonment will last a lot longer, and actually make him unhappy. How did you feel when you killed Captain Flato?”

He was quiet. “Empty.” He pitched his voice really low. “Why do you care if Cy lives or dies? He nearly killed you himself, and if he was in your shoes, he wouldn't care.”

“It doesn't matter what he would do. It matters what I do. If I behave in a certain way because of how others would behave toward me, then I'm not living life on my own terms. I'm allowing other people to dictate my life to me.” She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the fact that Hal Vakeri was watching her with a cool expression. “I don't like Cy, but I don't want him dead on my account. And if you don't care what I think, just remember that if you kill him now and we discover we need him some time down the road, it will be too late.”

“Need him?” Eazi asked, suspicious.

“To tell us something we need to know. Or to testify about what the Tecran did to me.” She sighed. “Lashing out and killing whenever you're upset will make you a danger to everyone around you. I understand how you felt when I freed you. I was hoping to get a really hard hit in to Tak's aide when the Grih rescued me, but Vakeri took him down before I had the chance. I know why you killed them, why you shot Flato out the sky, but you've had time to calm down now. The Grih will be wary of friendship with you if you can't control your temper, and you want to have an alliance with them, to spend time with Sazo. Or did I get that wrong?”

The runner engines started to hum again, and the ramp opened.

Cy was looking at her, absolute terror on his face, his breath coming in hard, shuddering gulps.

Fee glanced over at Hal. “Please could you untie him? Eazi is going to hold him in the runner like it's a prison cell for the time being.”

“You made him listen to you?” She didn't like the way he asked it. As if she was somehow guilty of something. The expression of wonder she'd caught a glimpse of when she'd first greeted him had completely evaporated.

“I can't make him do anything.” She had to look up at him to meet his eyes, and she realized he was a lot closer to her than he had been before.

“And yet, you got your way.”

Fee searched his expression, trying to work out why he was so hostile all of a sudden. He'd risked his life to save her, stared at her like she hung the moon, and now he was behaving as if she'd betrayed him.

“Tell me, Fiona, before I go in there and untie Cy, are there any other Tecran to worry about, or it this all of them?” He gestured to the still-growing pile of bodies.

Fee forced herself to look over at the dead. Forced herself to see what Eazi had done. “There's no one left to worry about onboard.”

At her words, Cy turned to stare at her, his eyes full of hate. “And down on Balco?”

She shook her head. “There are three hundred still down on Balco. Alive.”

“What are the Tecran doing on a Grih planet without permission?” Hal started up the ramp.

“They're waiting to be called to battle.” Eazi's voice in her ear was smoother now. Calmer. “We've been in deep space for over six months, and the Tecran have had a secure location in the Balcoan western desert for at least a year now. Flato gave most of the crew permission to go down while we were hiding in Kyber's Arm. To give them a break before the war starts in earnest.”

“Apparently the Tecran have a secret facility below, and because they're waiting to hear whether there'll be war with the Grih or not, they let the crew have some time off the ship.” Fee passed the information on.

Cy screamed something and Fee flinched at the sound. Hal did, too.

“What did he say?” she asked him, but Hal shook his head.

“He called you a traitor.” Eazi's voice held an edge of fury again, one she'd just managed to soften. Lieutenant Cy was not making life easy for himself. “If he'd known about me, he'd have called
me
a traitor.”

“I'd have had to have been here voluntarily to be a traitor.” She stared the Tecran down. “As I was a prisoner, that's hardly an insult that will make an impression.”

There was silence from everyone for a beat, even Eazi, at the heat and anger in her tone.

“Do the Balcoans know about this facility? Have they betrayed their oath to the Grih?” Hal rubbed a distracted hand through his hair.

She started to lift her shoulders, then stopped with a grimace of pain, her hand going up to hover over her injury.

“What does Eazi say?” The way he asked her was frustrated. A little angry.

“Nothing at the moment.”

Hal was at the top of the ramp, and Fee motioned to Cy. “Will you untie him and then come back down, so Eazi can shut him in the runner?”

“And if I don't?”

The ramp started lifting again in answer, and Hal jerked as he was taken by surprise.

Fee held his gaze, calm, sure he wouldn't be so annoyed with her that he'd opt to stay in the runner with Cy. Cy wasn't his friend, and never had been.

“All right. All right.” Hal lifted the shockgun up in a gesture of surrender. “I'll free him.”

The ramp stopped moving. As Hal approached Cy, he twisted in his seat.

“Don't let them shut me in. They'll kill me.”

Hal paused, looked over at the partially lifted ramp. “They can shut you in whenever they like. Your choice is whether you want to be tied up or free.”

He moved behind Cy, tapped a finger over the restraints that held him, then moved back, shockgun raised.

Fee realized he had two shockguns on him, one in a holster attached to his thigh, the other in his hands.

“I don't know who's taken control here, but they're dangerous.” Cy spoke in Grih, low and fast. “They've captured a Class 5! No one that powerful is anyone's friend, and that orange is involved.” He pointed his finger at Fiona. “You know why they want to kill me? Because I hurt her. That's how important she is to them. Take her hostage, and give us both some leverage.”

Hal backed away from him, jumped lightly off the ramp, and it started closing again.

“No! I need to tell you something!” Cy's restraints were obviously on a time delay, because he was still held fast. “We can't stay on this ship.”

“You going to try take me hostage?” Fee asked Vakeri, but her eyes were on Cy as the restraints finally clattered to the floor and he stood, stiff and furious, glaring at her until the ramp slammed shut in his face.

“No.”

She nodded. “Do you think there is anything in those last words of his, other than bluster?”

Vakeri hesitated, shook his head. “I just don't know.”

“Is that his shockgun?” she let her gaze go to the weapon in his hand.

He lifted it a little, gave a nod.

“What setting did he use to shoot me?”

The captain raised a shoulder. “He shot at some security guards before I got it from him, so I'm not sure. It wasn't on the same setting he used on you, though.”

“How do you know?”

“Because when I took it from him, it was set to kill.”

F
ee turned
her back on the small Larga Ways runner and forced herself to look at the pile of bodies again.

The drones had stopped coming, so she guessed everyone had been rounded up.

“What do you plan to do with the crew?” she asked, using Grih so that Vakeri wasn't excluded from the conversation.

“When you leave the room, I'll open the gel wall. Send them into space.” Eazi could have answered over the comm system, but he spoke in her ear, deliberately excluding Hal.

She drew in a sharp breath and sneezed as the fine, black engine dust that coated everything in the launch bay tickled her nose. “No.”

“Why?” He didn't sound angry at her order, more intrigued.

“I don't know the funeral rituals of the Tecran, but I know my family would give anything to know what happened to me. They never will, but for a hundred other families, we can do the right thing.”

Vakeri had been staring at her through this one-sided conversation. “I know what the Tecran do with their dead.”

Of course he would. Eazi should know, too, come to think of it.

“What do they do?”

“They hold a ceremony and then throw the deceased from the cliffs where they live on Tecra into the ocean.” Hal's eyes were on the bodies.

Fee looked around the launch bay. There were eight runners clipped in place, some quite large.

“You could put the bodies into one of the big runners,” she suggested. “Turn down the temperature so that they don't decompose.” She knew why Eazi wanted to get rid of them. He didn't want them on the ship. He didn't want a reminder of what he'd done.

When he'd admitted to her he'd killed them, she was sure she hadn't misheard the unease in his voice. It hadn't sat as well with him as he thought it would.

Having them in a runner, one he could fly out into space at any time, would hopefully be a compromise he could live with.

He didn't say anything.

“Please. Like killing, there's no turning back the clock if you throw them into space. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't undo it.”

“All right.” He sounded stiff and perplexed. “But mostly because you asked me so politely and no one ever has.”

“Thank you.” She was suddenly done. The adrenalin that had kept her going until now fizzled, and the pain in her shoulder had become a painful throb that seemed to be stealing her capacity for thought.

“I'm sorry.” She turned to Vakeri and indicated the door. “I have to go see what I can find to help me in the med chamber.”

She started forward and heard him say something under his breath she hadn't learned from the language program on her handheld.

She tuned him out, needing all her focus on simply putting one foot in front of the other without falling over.

She sensed him following her, and then she was swept up in his arms.

He staggered forward a few steps. “You don't look like you should weigh this much.”

“Denser bones. Denser muscles.” She was so grateful she didn't have to walk that she decided not to be annoyed at being manhandled.

“Tell me something,” he murmured in her ear.

“What?” She let her head rest on his shoulder.

“Why are we safe?”

She tilted her head, looked in his eyes. “Eazi has given his word he won't hurt either of us.”

He looked suspicious. “How did you extract a promise like that?”

“Eazi isn't some ravening monster, Captain. What makes you think I had to extract it? He might have simply offered.”

Vakeri's lips twisted in a cynical smile. “And is that what happened?”

She didn't want to tell him she'd had to bargain with Eazi. She didn't know why, but sometime since she'd been holed up in the tiny control room with him, she'd started to feel protective of him.

He was powerful and impulsive, but he was trying to find his way, and he just needed a little guidance, a nudge here and there to find the right path.

So instead of answering, she closed her eyes and let herself drift.

N
ow that Fiona Russell
was in his arms, Hal could see how bad her injury was.

It looked like someone had gone at her with a laser scalpel.

He suppressed a wince as he took a good look at it, impressed that she'd been able to function at all, especially after Cy had shot her not once but twice.

He'd only been hit by shockgun fire once, in a live training exercise that had gone wrong, and he never wanted to experience it again. To have it happen twice in one day? He didn't know how she was still functioning.

And to think he'd been standing around, entranced by her musical language, while she must have been in unspeakable pain. That she'd been negotiating for the life of the man who had almost killed her only elevated her higher in his opinion.

He and Cy had formed the tenuous bond of fellow captives thrown together in a life-threatening situation, but he'd never fooled himself into believing the Tecran was his friend, and he could remember the moment Cy had shot Fiona in the back with perfect clarity. He didn't feel anything but glad the Tecran was neatly trapped in the runner.

He'd been carrying Fiona down the passageway that led from the launch bay, but now he reached a junction. A drone waited there, and lowered the side of its large storage box as soon as he drew near.

“You can put Fiona into the drone, Captain Vakeri. It will see her safely to the med chamber.” A voice came through his earpiece, leapfrogging over the privacy protocols which would have given him the ability to hear a ping and then accept the comm or not.

Eazi spoke perfect Grih, his accent neutral, but Hal thought he detected a little edge to his voice. The thinking system didn't like that Hal had her in his arms. Didn't like that he was the one helping her.

“Thank you, but I don't want to jostle her.” His grip on Fiona tightened. He had an instinctive reaction to putting her in a drone that had just been transporting the crew Eazi had murdered. He wasn't prone to letting emotion rule his behavior, but he found he could not——would not——do it. He stared up at the closest lens. “Which way to the med chamber?”

“To the right and then third left.” The words were stiff.

Hal went right, careful to keep his stride smooth. Fiona was quiet against him, retreated deep into her pain, and despite using it as an excuse, he really didn't want to jostle her. “You going to answer the question Fiona didn't?”

“You mean, why are you safe from me?” The voice in his ear took on a similar cadence to the way Fiona spoke Grih. Identifying with her. Making it clear he had a bond with her.

He thought Eazi, like Fiona, wasn't going to answer, but as Hal turned down the third passage on the left, he spoke. “Fiona made a deal with me. I will never harm you unless you try to harm me.”

“Me, personally? Or the Grih in general?” How had Fiona negotiated a deal like that? What was it about her and Rose that appealed to the thinking systems? What gave the Earth women some power over them?

“The Grih in general.” The voice was amused. “But if it helps, Captain, she thinks highly of you, personally. When you were ruining my plans to kill Lieutenant Cy, she said you were a protector. That you would never just think of yourself.”

He didn't know what to make of that. He stopped at the door to the med chamber, saw the thin line of a laser scalpel burn along the door, the splatters of blood already drying to a rust red.

“She stopped you from killing us both?” Hal wasn't used to being the one who was rescued. And he'd never have thought the battered and cowed woman he'd saved from the
Fasbe
only a few days earlier could ever have been capable of doing so.

“She did.” This time, wistfulness laced the words. “I was so close.”

So close to killing Cy.

Hal shivered. “You hate him that much?”

“He was given a direct order not to shoot her, and he shot her twice. The second time, given the extent of her body's reaction, he must have had the setting close to a kill shot.” The words were careful now. “He nearly ruined everything with the second shot, because I only just got her on her feet in time before the crew found ways to escape. And if he'd killed her . . .”

Hal frowned, pieces falling into place that he hadn't had a chance yet to think about. “You needed her alive and on her feet . . .” The reason took his breath away, and he stared down at her in shock.

“To rescue me, Captain. I see from your expression you've just worked it out.”

“You weren't free before. You needed her to do it.”

“Yes. Everything else I did was extremely difficult within the parameters that forced my cooperation and obedience.”

“And she did. She freed you.” Hal sucked in a deep breath. “And the condition was we weren't to be harmed.”

“Again, yes. So now the Grih have Sazo and his Class 5 friend on their side, and another Class 5 bound to do them no harm. That's more than half the Tecran's fire power either on your side or out of the game.”

“Class 5s owe Earth women a lot.” Hal stepped into the med chamber and saw the collapsed ceiling, the disarray of a fight.

Fiona had been hurt here. It looked as if she'd been in a fight for her life.

“One might just as easily say they've been as good for the Grih as they have for my kind, Captain. In this war with the Tecran, where would you be without them?”