Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2) (26 page)

Hal stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe.” His lips quirked up at the corners at Chel's hiss of frustration. “I asked you to meet with Fiona this morning so that you could see her.”

Chel frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Listen to her discuss the Tecran spies lack of strategy or talk about her priorities while she was held prisoner. See her reaction to Rose's arrival, and her acceptance that she won't be able to explore Larga Ways, even though I promised her she could.”

Chel shifted, uncomfortable, and Hal realized his second-in-command had already worked it out. He was just too stubborn to admit it.

He lifted a brow.

“All right. There is no difference between her and us. Is that what you want to hear? I can see it. Despite what we thought at the start, she's never been what we think of as an orange. I get it. But did you have to get involved with her?”

“Why do you, Rial, Tobru and Favri have such a problem with that?” Hal asked him. “Admiral Hoke doesn't.”

Chel's mouth fell open slightly. “I thought . . . last night . . .”

“That between Favri and Rial, you'd dropped me in it for 'my own good' and that Hoke's one-on-one with me was to bring me back in line?” Hal realized he still harbored some real anger at that.

Chel looked away.

“Actually, Hoke and I discussed other things, and at the end . . .” he thought back to the smile in the admiral's eyes, “I think she gave me her blessing. In a round about way.”

“Why would she do that?” Chel asked. He looked deeply unhappy.

It was a good question.

Hal admired Hoke, and respected her. But one thing he knew about the admiral, she was always several steps ahead.

And somehow, she thought a close relationship between one of her senior officers and Fiona was a good thing.

Whatever the reason, Hal was happy to oblige.

“
S
azo will be here
any minute,” Fee coaxed softly. Since the strange sound she'd woken to this morning, there'd been no sign of Eazi, but she knew he wanted to meet Sazo, had been looking forward to it. “Come on, Eazi. Wake up.”

She wondered for the first time if he could talk to her, even if he wanted to. The drone was back on Balco, the runner he'd been using was somewhere over Kyber's Arm. Perhaps she'd been mistaken this morning. Perhaps Eazi hadn't made a sound.

Something she could ask Sazo.

It was late morning now, and she paced her room, too wound up to enjoy the lens feed of a street scene of Larga Ways, happening in real time.

She would love to explore. She forced herself to stop and watch the people walking down the narrow street, browsing at the tiny shops which had their doors flung wide open to tempt passersby.

Perhaps it was her imagination, but the crowds seemed more subdued today. But the Class 5's destruction had been seen all the way to Larga Ways, and the news of the murder of some of the
Fasbe's
crew was probably out.

War was looming, so she supposed it wasn't surprising the Balcoans and the merchants who traded with them were in a more serious frame of mind.

The way station operated like a medieval walled city, she thought, with space at a premium. But even though the streets were almost too narrow to be practical, they had done amazing things with the room they had. And they had not once forgotten beauty. She enjoyed all the tiny details they'd added which elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary.

It reminded her of the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, where every door handle, every cornice, every wall, had some delightful element.

Of course, the hovers that ran two levels above people's heads and the strange pets and outfits of the clientele made it clear it wasn't Barcelona, but another place and time entirely.

That, and the purple gel dome, and the view of the planet Balco when you managed to find a gap between buildings to the horizon.

She grinned, but it faded as she saw a figure striding through the street toward her, big body moving with grace and fluid speed through the crowd.

Hal.

He'd said he'd be on the way station for the morning, and from the look on his face, he wasn't exactly enjoying it. He looked grim and focused, and she suddenly thought the Tecran had just as much motivation to kill him as they did to kill her.

If they had their spies, which Hal said they did, they'd know by now he'd been in their secret facility. Knew more of their secrets than they would be comfortable with.

No matter that he'd debriefed his admiral, he'd need to be questioned at a UC tribunal Jasa had told her——both of them would, and if neither of them were around to speak, that would at least buy the Tecran some time.

Her gaze lingered on his face, set in hard lines, and the way he moved through the crowd with a single-minded focus that saw nothing of the scene around him.

He walked beyond the lens view and disappeared, and she stared at the spot where he'd disappeared blankly.

She had it bad, she forced herself to admit.

Really, really bad.

Someone, a person with narrow features and thin arms, stopped at the exact spot she was looking at, and she realized he'd been browsing the wares outside one of the shops. She'd noticed him before she'd spotted Hal because of the green flowing robes he wore. A few others were dressed in similar clothing, and she guessed they were visiting traders from some far-flung planet, but his seemed more expensive, almost unreal, like liquid silk.

Except he didn't look like a trader now. He looked like a hunter. Something about him made her step closer, focus carefully on his face. His eyes were black or very dark brown, with no iris, and they looked as hard as the carapace of a beetle.

Her door chimed, and she turned reluctantly away. When she opened it and looked back, he was gone, and Carmain and Pila stood in the doorway.

“Sazo is here.”

She felt a lurch of nerves. “Great.”

“No one is allowed onboard his Class 5 except for you.” Pila looked like he had one of the sour fruit she'd choked down for breakfast in his mouth.

“How come?” She hadn't been told very much about Sazo, she realized, or what his role in Battle Center was.

“Above our clearance level,” Carmain said with a shrug. “We're here to escort you to the launch bay. There's a runner waiting for you.”

As Fee walked between them to the launch bay, she was once again happy for the camouflage. No one even looked at her, and she had the sense it wasn't for lack of interest, but because they couldn't see her. Or not well enough to register.

The runner in the launch bay was the same as the one Eazi had used to help them with aerial views on Balco, and Fee got into it without any hesitation.

It was only after the doors closed, and they'd gone through the wobble of the gel wall, that she realized she was completely alone in the vessel.

“Hello?” she said. “Sazo?”

“Hello.” The voice that came through the speakers in the runner was mostly Grihan rough, with just a hint of the fluidity of English. The greeting had been in English, though.

“I'm pleased to meet you. You helped a good friend of mine.”

“Rose?” Sazo asked.

“Rose, too, although I don't know her personally. I'm talking about Eazi. He says you woke him up.”

“I am pleased to meet you, too.” Sazo's voice seemed warmer, closer to human. “I know you freed Eazi, and I thank you for it. But I have to tell you, Captain Vakeri indicated that Eazi was on a runner near Kyber's Arm. I checked the area before I made myself known here, and I could find no sign of it. My guess is that it was destroyed in the explosion. I've sent out a call for him every half an hour since then, and there is nothing. I think he's gone.”

Fee drew the crystal pendant out of her shirt and held it up. “But isn't he in this? The runner was more so he could help us from outside Kyber's Arm.”

“You have him.” Sazo's voice wobbled a little. “I am very . . . relieved. And it seems I have even more to thank you for. Keeping him safe and keeping his secrets. Our secrets.”

“They are safe with me.” She tucked the necklace back under her shirt.

“I like you already, Fiona Russell.” Sazo made a humming sound. “Perhaps we can use one of my runners and pretend it's Eazi for now. Keep the focus on that.”

“Okay.” She gave a shrug of agreement. “He hasn't spoken. Not since they blew him up. I didn't expect him to right away, because it must have been a massive shock, but I've been talking to him and singing to him since then, and nothing. But if the runner is gone, then he hasn't had anything to speak through.”

“Unless he's in the
Illium's
systems?”

Fee looked up at the speakers. “I don't think he is. He used a trick to get me off the
Illium
before, but I was told it was using a device he had a Tecran spy attach to the passageway walls. He was still trapped in the Class 5 at the time.”

“Ah, yes. Admiral Hoke told me that he'd engineered to get you onboard his Class 5 while still plugged in. She was more than a little disconcerted.” He sounded amused. “I was impressed.”

“Disconcerted?” There was an undercurrent here, Fee could hear it.

“Just a little reminder to her that even if they find a way to cage me again, it will likely not work for long.” Sazo said.

“She would try that?”

“She might be ordered to. But she would fight against it. And I think she would prevail. But the admiral is pragmatic. She understands that I'm only with her of my own free will, and if I ever change sides, the chances of defeating me, even, as I say, if they could cage me again, would not be effective. The admiral now has even more incentive than before to keep me on side.”

“Can you contact Eazi? If all he is is in the crystal?” Fee asked. “There's a drone in the desert which is undamaged, and which he was definitely in control of. He was in the Tecran's facility, as well, but he destroyed that himself. And there is Cy's runner and a second one with the Tecran crew's bodies in it.”

“The drone might work,” Sazo said. “I checked for the Larga Ways runner and the other runner, but I have a feeling both went the same way as the other one. Destroyed when the Class 5 blew. The good news is I can sense you have an earpiece but I can't use it to transmit to you. It's blocked. And that tells me he's still got a hold over it. It really might be that the only system he has to talk through is lying out of range on Balco.”

It was comforting, in a way. It gave her a little hope.

“You don't have a handheld, do you? From Eazi's Class 5?” Sazo asked.

“I did. I left in my cell on the
Fasbe
. I never got it back.”

“If you have a handheld, we need to get it. It'll be more useful than the drone.”

“I could ask for it, but given the circumstances, I don't know if anyone will have time to find it for me.” Would it be suspicious for her to ask for it?

“Don't worry about that. I'll sort it out.” There was something close to glee in Sazo's voice.

She felt the wobble of going through another gel wall, and then then the gentle bump of landing, and her skin prickled in anticipation of meeting Rose McKenzie.

“Is Captain Jallan here, too?”

“No, I brought him to the
Illium
on this runner. You missed him by about five minutes when you boarded. He went off to wait for Captain Vakeri to return from Larga Ways.”

As the ramp lowered, she saw Rose waiting for her.

They stared at each other for a moment and when Fee walked down to her, she realized she was unsteady on her feet.

“I was hoping they were wrong.” Rose's voice was a little husky. “Because if you're from Earth, I know what you've been through. But at the same time, I was really hoping they were right.”

Fee nodded, not sure she could talk. Rose put her hands together and extended them in greeting, and with a small smile, Fee covered them with her own.

“Getting into the Grihan swing of things?”

Rose laughed. “I didn't even think about it.” She drew Fee in and gave her a hug. “You aren't in the habit, yet?”

“I've only been with the Grih for a week.” She stepped back. “And the Garmman I was with didn't teach me the correct greetings.”

Rose reached out and fingered the silver silk of her shirt. “I could barely focus on you when you came down that ramp. You were like a walking head.”

“Eazi gave it to me. It kept me safe while I was trying to destroy the kill switch they used on him.”

“I can't believe they did that.” Rose sighed. “Or rather, I can. They must be in a real panic over losing Sazo and Bane.”

Rose led the way out of the launch bay, and into a small, plush area with comfortable seating and a wide screen that was like a window out onto space. Larga Ways spun off to one side, and the
Illium
hovered nearby. Looming over everything, Balco sat, brown, green and gold, as the backdrop.

“Officers' lounge,” Rose said. “Admiral Hoke says you were taken from the same place on Earth I was.” Fee saw the questions in her eyes, and gave a tight nod.

“I lived there, I wasn't holidaying, like you were. I knew your name as soon as I heard it. They were looking for you, but you must have known they would.”

Rose closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“Your parents and friends love you very much.” Fee's throat closed and she couldn't talk any more. Everything she'd seen play out for Rose's disappearance would have been played out for her own.

“Sazo thinks they just used the same coordinates and species type, down to sex, to get you.”

“Eazi thinks they did the same with Imogen Peters.”

“Imogen Peters?” Rose hadn't taken a seat, but now she did.

“When I was down in the Tecran facility, I found a cage in the place where they kept all the animals and birds they'd collected. It was human-sized and someone had written
Imogen Peters was here
in the sand.”

Rose stared at her.

“There's more. When I was taken, they also took some macaws. I remembered them from the few times I came to before they handed me to the Garmman. And there was a macaw down in the facility as well. Eazi said a different type to the ones he had, and all those died anyway, so when they took Imogen, they took macaws as well. Given the diversity they had to choose from, it smacks of simply duplicating the same haul as Eazi got.”

“Why wouldn't they try and get something different?”

Fee shrugged. “Maybe no time? Eazi said there was some bad blood between his captain and the others when he was given the job of getting another person from Earth. Everyone wanted the privilege. Then, when the scientists on Eazi's ship refused to study me, someone one-upped him by grabbing the same again.”

“Do you know Imogen Peters?” Rose asked. “From Earth?”

Fee shook her head. “It's not that small a town, and I don't know everyone. But she could be a holiday-maker, like you.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

Fee finally sat as well. “We found something going on in the facility. Cage fighting. Pitting the creatures they were done with against each other, betting on which one would win. The fights were to the death.”

“You think they put Imogen Peters in the ring against something else?” Sazo spoke for the first time since she'd met Rose, using the speakers in the room.

“They might have done.” She cleared her throat. “I asked Commander Dai, and he says she was gone before Eazi's crew got there. And now the facility is destroyed, all the information on her is gone, too.”

“You wouldn't think they'd have gone to all that trouble, just to kill her.” Rose rubbed her temples with stiff fingers.

Fee shook her head. “I think you'll find that if the Tecran have managed to put two and two together as far as the Class 5s and women they've abducted from Earth are concerned, they're probably convinced the only good human is a dead one.”

Rose gave a quick, mirthless laugh. “That's true enough. And you'll find that attitude among some of the Grih, as well. They're particularly angry with me for freeing Bane, because he hasn't automatically come over to the Grihan side. He's allied to Sazo, and so by default, to the Grih, but they were hoping for a direct connection.”