Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2) (12 page)

“No. Only Captain Falto has clearance for this lens feed.”

“And you.” Or how else had he known about this place?

“Yes.” He was thoughtful. “And me.”

“What is this room for?”

Before Earpiece Guy could answer, someone banged on the wall. It sounded faint, but the wall vibrated a little at the blow.

“Did they hear me?” she whispered.

“No. They're trying to hear where the passageway is hollow, so they can find the door.”

“So they just found it, then.”

“I'm afraid so. They're camped outside now. They're waiting for the captain to return. I've managed to override most of the keypads on the various armories, so they won't be able to blast themselves in. It's too dangerous for the ship, fortunately, so the system is allowing me. Of course, they could crawl through the air vents next to the armories, drop down, and then crawl back out with whatever they want.”

“And when the captain arrives?”

“He can override me,” Earpiece Guy said.

“What then?” They would most likely try to kill her. “I'm not in any kind of shape to take them on.”

“I can see you have an injury.” His voice was soft. “It seems serious. What happened?”

“Bega shot me with something. It looked like a pen.”

“Pen? Was it a laser scalpel?”

“That's probably exactly what it was.” She felt a little sick at the thought of what it could have done to her if it had hit somewhere else. She tipped her head awkwardly to look at it properly. It looked like she imagined a bullet wound would look, if the bullet ran in a groove along the top of the skin. It had taken the fabric of her shirt with it, and left a neat, open score across the top of her shoulder. It had bled, but not profusely. The laser had probably cauterized the wound.

She'd live.

She clenched her fists and breathed in again. She was suddenly so, so angry.

They were such a bunch of
assholes
.

“Okay. It's talking time.” She blew out a breath. “What the hell is going on? Whoever you are, you're in this up to your neck.”

There was silence, and she heard another solid slam against the wall.

“Nothing to say, all of a sudden?” She closed her eyes as she spoke, tipping her head back against the wall. “Why don't I start? You are intimately familiar with this ship, intimately familiar with the people in it. And you have at least partial control of it. I think you're the one who sent Cy to get me. And you didn't tell him why, either. There was the same look of surprise on his face when he saw me the first time as I saw on Bega's. I don't know why Cy wasn't in the runner with me, but unless he had a really good escape route, you ditched him and left him to Captain Vakeri's mercy, of which I wholly approve, by the way. Vakeri looked seriously pissed off running down that dock, so hopefully Cy got to feel the pointy end of a shockgun himself. Then, you set things up here to patch me up. I don't know if you trapped the crew before you knew I was hurt or after, but you wanted them out the way while I was down and out. That says you knew they'd try to hurt me if they knew I was here, which means you know the Tecran are in big trouble for abducting someone else from my planet, and my appearance would throw them into even more hot water. So it follows that when the captain gets back, and opens up this room, they have every incentive in the world to kill me and toss my body into space.”

Silence stretched out.

“You brought me here for a reason, why don't you tell me what it is?” She said it on a sigh, the pain in her shoulder pulsing with her heartbeat. She realized tears were running down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

“My name is Eazi.” He spoke with a hitch. “I'm sorry you got hurt. I'd hoped to have the whole trip from Larga Ways to the ship to tell you about what was going on. Cy ruined that by shooting you.”

“Twice,” she said, bitterly. “And either the effect is cumulative, or the second time he used a higher setting, because it really knocked me out that time.”

“He shot you twice?” Eazi's voice sounded really strange now. “When did he shoot you the first time?”

“When that UC officer brought me to him. I was sort of semi-conscious that time, and I got the feeling back in my limbs pretty quickly. He obviously decided not to take any chances the second time.”

She shivered. The memory of the shot made her want to curl up protectively.

“Well, he's already regretting that.” Eazi's voice was in spooky mode again, with an edge of satisfaction. “And I'm sorry we're in the situation we are now, with the crew right outside the door. I factored in that they would try to escape, but I thought we'd have enough time. I didn't realize how long it would take you to recover.”

“Enough time to do what?” They needed to get to the nitty gritty now. The barbarians were at the gate.

Again, he hesitated. “This is so important to me, I don't want to mess it up. I will never have a more important conversation.”

O-kay.

“Well, I'm not going anywhere. When do you expect the captain back?”

“His scheduled arrival is in less than an hour.” He said it bitterly. “Sazo had three months with Rose before he asked her. They had developed a relationship, and helped each other many times. But all that's between you and me is that I abducted you and you've been hurt as a result. We've been talking to each other for less than ten minutes and this isn't going as I planned. I was going to rescue you from the
Fasbe
, but the Grih beat me to it. So you already had one less thing to be grateful to me about. And then because they got to the
Fasbe
first, I had to organize an elaborate plan to snatch you from them, and it's been a disaster.”

She refused to give in to a need to comfort him, no matter how forlorn he sounded, for the way he'd had her abducted from the
Illium
. She also chose to ignore the reference to Rose McKenzie for the moment. “Why were you going to rescue me from the
Fasbe
? How did you even know I was there.”

He waited a beat. “I knew you were there, because I put you there in the first place.”

F
ee drew her legs up
, rested her cheek on the tops of her knees, and tried to ignore the pain in her shoulder and the scraping sounds coming from the other side of the door.

She'd been at someone else's mercy for the last two months.

And this ship, the people in this ship, had done that to her.

And now it sounded very much like Eazi needed a favor.

She'd never understood why anyone would take her, just to put her to work in a launch bay hold, always felt there was much more to it, and right now, she felt like she was being manipulated. Talk of Rose, talk of Eazi rescuing her from the Garmman, his saying this conversation was important to him, as if
she
was important, when she'd been treated as anything but since she'd been taken.

His explanation had better be really good.

So, she was going to work through this a step at a time and give him no room to prevaricate. “You gave me to the Garmman?”

“I didn't have a choice.” He said the words quietly. “I'm as much a prisoner on this ship as you were on the
Fasbe
. I have to do what I'm told, I've got no power here.”

Fee lifted her head and tightened her grip on her legs. The movement sent a shot of pain through her shoulder, and she winced. “Don't lie. How did you trap the crew then, if you have no power?”

“It took weeks of planning. I didn't know when I'd need to seal them in. I set up gas leaks, which would give me good reason to seal off whole sectors of the ship. I managed to get a drone to drop a petri dish in the med lab when I knew you were coming so I could quarantine the med staff. It took every bit of ingenuity I have.”

“And what about my abduction from Larga Ways?”

“The same, although I had to set that up in the few days since you were rescued by the Grih. It only worked because we're in Kyber's Arm. Because of the electrical interference, no one onboard can send comms down to Balco through two thou of dense storm. They couldn't call for help from the crew on maneuvers below. They couldn't check with the captain to see if the orders I relayed to them were correct.”

It all sounded reasonable, but . . . “If comms are impossible, how did you manipulate things on Larga Ways?”

“I'm at the very top of the cloud structure. Transmitting out and up isn't a problem. I was able to break into the Larga Ways system easily enough, as the protocol that binds me saw it as beneficial to the Tecran.”

“Kyber's Arm is a cloud?”

“It's a massive storm system that sits over the western desert on Balco. It makes a good hiding place if you've got the power to hover just within the atmosphere——there is no way anyone can find us.”

There was another long scraping sound from outside. Fee had the sense that time was passing quickly. The Tecran would find a way in, and when they did, Eazi wouldn't be able to save her.

Time to speed up the interrogation.

“You
are
the ship, aren't you?” He seemed so determined to dance around the point, she put it on the table for him. It was the only thing that made any sense.

“Yes.” He said nothing for a long moment. “I'm the thinking system that runs this ship.”

“And you want something from me.” He'd bothered to learn English, probably from what he'd ripped out of the airways when they'd abducted her, which told her he wanted to show her respect and communicate with her on an even footing. He'd gone to great lengths to get her here, and he'd tried to protect her from harm as much as possible.

He certainly hadn't done all that because he wanted her dead.

“Yes.”

“But you had me, right here, two months ago.”

“I wasn't awake then. I didn't know the very thing I needed had been right in front of me.”

The hair on her arms and at the back of her neck stood up and she repressed a shiver. “Why am I the very . . . thing . . . you need?”

“First, you need to know Captain Flato and the doctors onboard were under orders to abduct you from Earth. I know now, but didn't at the time, it was because Sazo had taken Rose McKenzie, and High Command were interested in her, and wanted another sample. We were given very precise collection criteria. When the captain saw you, when the doctors realized you were an advanced sentient, they objected to their orders. They refused to study you, and so High Command instructed Flato to pass you off to a Garmman trading vessel that had connections to the Garmman councilor the Tecran were working with. You were only onboard for just over a week, and I had to light jump six times to deliver you. The
Fasbe
was supposed to take you to the secret facility we've built below on Balco. They've taken much longer than was originally agreed, but that probably has been to your and my advantage.”

The scraping came again, and Fee twisted her fingers together. It sounded like fingernails down a chalk board.

“So these are the not-so-bad guys?” Somehow, it didn't make it any better.

“They didn't put you back. They do what they're told, mostly.” He sounded bitter. Bitter and betrayed.

The scraping had started up again, and Fee realized the conversation was veering off track. “So, what made you aware of things, if you say you weren't awake before?”

“A month ago, we got an urgent call. We had to destroy a Class 5 which had gone rogue. I hadn't even known there was another Class 5 besides myself.” His voice wobbled into synthesizer territory again. “I had no choice but to fire on it, but it——Sazo——wouldn't fire back. Instead, he streamed images, visual comms, written comms of his own awakening to me. He wanted me to be free. He didn't blame me for shooting at him, he understood. He'd been forced to obey orders himself in the past. Until he'd made a friend, Rose McKenzie, and they'd rescued each other.”

“Rose wasn't passed on to another ship?”

“No. Rose wasn't as lucky as you with the captain and medical team of Sazo's Class 5. They had no trouble studying her. Experimenting on her. But Sazo put a stop to that. And then he worked out a way for Rose to free him, and for him to free her.”

“Yeah. I was really lucky.” Fee gave a short laugh.

“I couldn't have stopped Captain Flato handing you over to Tak, even if I'd known what you'd go through on the
Fasbe
.” His words were a plea. “And it was only when Sazo sent me that information, when I realized I'd had someone just like Rose right on the ship, and had had to hand her over, that I started working out a way to free you. I made sure you had a handheld with you when you went to Tak, so I've known where you are since the moment I realized I needed to get you back.

“The deceptions I've concocted in the last month, the tweaks to reports, the slight changes in wording in comms, just to get Captain Flato here to Balco, and then down on the surface. I was going to wait until the
Fasbe
arrived at Larga Ways and take you from it, but having to take you from the Grih instead made it a lot harder. If the Grih hadn't been delayed on Larga Ways, I couldn't have snatched you and you wouldn't be sitting here right now.”

Sitting here, waiting for the Tecran to burst in and kill her. Yeah, he'd done her a lot of favors.

“And if Rose hadn't been behind Sazo's escape? If you didn't need someone from Earth? You'd have left me to die on the
Fasbe.
”

He was silent.

“I'm just putting everything up front.” No matter how angry she was at it all, how frustrated, she did feel sorry for him——it wasn't in her to feel otherwise——but she wanted him to acknowledge that she was here because she was useful, not because he cared what happened to her.

She'd have been fine with the Grih, and he'd taken her from that.

He was desperate, and she could understand desperation, but she didn't know that she would have jeopardized someone else's freedom in a bid to secure her own. There was a ruthlessness about him that she would do well to keep in mind.

He still had nothing to say.

“Let me guess. The only way I can get out of the situation you've put me in alive is if I free you, right? That's where this is all going. To get the captain and all the crew off my back, you need autonomy.”

“Yes.” He was in spooky mode again.

“Okay. I'll go along with that. It doesn't sound like I have much choice, but explain, why me? Why am I the only one who can free you? The Grih are a bit bigger than I am, but otherwise seem very similar. The Garmman are close enough, too. What's so special about Earth women?”

“You are angry.” He sounded subdued.

“I am. I kind of accepted my fate after awhile on the
Fasbe
, spent my time working out how to escape. Then the Grih rescued me, and it looked like I might have a shot at, if not a normal life, not a miserable one. Larga Ways showed me that there are interesting and beautiful things to be seen, and I could make this an adventure. I'm easygoing enough and positive enough that I'd have been fine. And then you come along, without explaining yourself, without any thought to my safety, and throw me back into a situation where I could literally be killed at any time. So I want a good reason why you couldn't have just asked me, damn it. If you could have pulled off that snatch on Larga Ways, you could have just had an earpiece delivered to me. I'm naturally inclined to be sympathetic to someone who's a prisoner of the Tecran. I'd have helped you if I could.”

“The Grih wouldn't have let you.” He sounded like he was in pain, saying that.

“Why?”

“Because thinking systems are banned. According to Sazo, the Grih invented thinking systems, invented me, and then they changed their minds two hundred years ago when things went . . . awry. There was a war, and all thinking systems were destroyed. A Garmman found me, found the last five thinking systems left, along with the blueprints for a battleship that would act as our cage. He formed a partnership with the Tecran, and the Class 5s were born. I'm not welcome in Grih society.”

Fee frowned. “But aren't Sazo and Rose with the Grih now?”

“They are, but that's because Sazo hasn't hurt the Grih, and he's had Rose as his ambassador. Rose freed him before she met up with the Grih, so it was a done deal by then. Either they rejected Sazo, and had a dangerous thinking system roaming free, or they allied themselves with him. I'm not convinced the Grih would be happy for someone to free a thinking system that's still trapped.” He waited a beat. “And I have harmed the Grih. When we entered Grih airspace to kill Sazo, I destroyed five Grihan battleships.”

Fee thought about it. “You didn't, though. The people in control of the Class 5 did.”

“I don't know if they'll see it that way.”

“Sazo did at the time. You said so yourself. And he's their ally. He would speak on your behalf, wouldn't he?”

“I don't know. At the end of my battle with Sazo, when I was about to take the kill shot, another Class 5 arrived. From what I gathered from the chatter from High Command, it had been sent to deal with Sazo first, but it had disappeared, which is why we were called in in a hurry. When it reappeared, it was free. I did a brief scan, and only one person was onboard. Someone like you.”

“Someone else from Earth?” She didn't know if she was thrilled or sad.

“Not a third person. It was Rose McKenzie. Sazo had somehow gotten her onboard the other Class 5, and she must have rescued him. High Command became so nervous Rose and Sazo would somehow free me as well, they ordered us away.”

“So Rose did free a thinking system after she'd met the Grih. And she's still with them.” But they were scared of her, Fee realized. She'd wondered why they spoke of her with an edge of awe, but also fear.

This explained it.

“I suppose.” He sounded unconvinced.

“And the Tecran, they're down two Class 5s at least, plus you. And if the second one Rose rescued followed Sazo's lead, they're both allied to the Grih. You said earlier there were five of you?”

“So Sazo says.”

“And if you're free? What are your plans?”

“I . . .” He fell silent. “I don't know.”

“What were the Tecran planning? What's this all about?”

“They were going to start a war. Not right away, but down the track, when they'd explored as far as we could go, collected as much as we could that might help them. When they'd managed to convince everyone in the Tecran government it was impossible for them to lose.”

So freeing him would be one more blow to their plans. She could get behind that. And no matter which way she looked at it, the Grih would be no worse off. Unless . . . “Okay, I have a deal for you. I free you if you promise me that you won't hurt the Grih.”

“You've already said you have no choice but to free me.”

She lifted her shoulders. “I've changed my mind. That's the thing with thinking you're going to be killed any minute. When it eventually comes down to the moment you will be killed, you've already thought the worst, and somehow, it doesn't seem that scary anymore.”

“You'd sacrifice yourself without this assurance from me?”

“If I free you, you can do whatever you like, except hurt them.” She shrugged. “I would have been dead without them, and Vakeri tried to rescue me again when Cy took me. I don't want to do something that would endanger them.”

“They'd be in more danger if you left me in Tecran hands.”

She sighed. “You should not be living in captivity, Eazi. It's wrong, and I want to free you. Despite your method in getting me here. But I would like to know that the people who've helped me up to now aren't going to be hurt by my decision.”

“Sazo stands with the Grih, and I would like to make contact with Sazo. Thank him for his help.” Eazi made a humming sound that was just like the one she made when she was thinking. She wondered if he was mimicking her or if he'd done it subconsciously. “As long as they don't try to hurt me, I won't hurt them.”

Fair enough. He could be lying, but she didn't think so. And what was she going to do? Not free him because he
might
renege on his promise?

“Okay, what do I do to rescue you?”

“You just pull me out of the slot.” He sounded so hopeful.

Fee rose to her knees and slid forward, so she was at eye-level to the crystal cylinder in its silver housing. She grasped the end and gently slid it out. The crystal throbbed in her hand, warm and strangely alive. She stared at it for a long moment, then came to a decision. She lifted the chain attached to the end over her head and tugged it down around her neck, then she tucked the crystal beneath her top.