Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2) (28 page)

H
al knew
his usefulness was coming to an end.

He'd only lasted so long, he knew, because the small group of spies had lost their inside help.

Either Tean Lee had found the leak or had made it impossible for the spy inside his office to pass information along.

The Vutrovian was running blind, and he was too nervous to send any of his team out without more information.

Hal had strung them along as far as he could. Telling them just enough to think him more useful alive than dead.

The togrut they'd given him for the first round of questioning had flattened him. They either hadn't had any more to give him, or were too scared it would kill him, so they'd had to take his whispered information on the likely reaction to his disappearance by the
Illium
and way station security on trust.

Sazo's arrival had helped, as well.

They hadn't expected it. Had at first thought it was Eazi, and needed him to explain what the explosion had been the day before.

When he'd told them this was another Class 5 altogether, one under Battle Center control, he'd found out the Tecran had not shared that information with their spies.

They'd scoffed at him when he'd said that the Grih had two Class 5s, and the Vutrovian had hit him for it, but he had shaken them to the core.

They'd thought they were on the winning side. And with five Class 5s on the Tecran side, why wouldn't they?

To now face the knowledge that the Tecran had destroyed one and lost two to the other side . . . Hal wondered how much longer the Balcoan on the Vutrovian's team was going to stay.

The way he was fidgeting, Hal guessed not long.

He was lying down on the comfortable bed in the small apartment above the Vutrovian's fabric store and the Balcoan was guarding him. He kept looking over at Hal with quick, nervous glances.

Hal wished he was pretending to be weaker than he really was, but the aftereffects of the togrut had him shaking and sweating, unsure if his legs would even hold him up. It was becoming harder to talk, and he was getting worse.

He wasn't even sure it had been worth their while. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd said, but it had sounded to his ears like stream of consciousness crap, rather than any useful information.

The store below had been closed when the Vutrovian had brought him in earlier, and both he and his guard clearly heard the door below open and close, and harsh, angry voices.

The guard moved toward the door they'd left open, which led out to a landing and the stairs to the store below.

Hal was watching him, and saw the expression of panic and then rage that crossed his face as someone came up the stairs.

“Are you insane?” The Balcoan spoke in Garmman, the words almost too guttural to understand.

“You think there will be any mercy for us now, whatever we do?” It was the Vutrovian. “We follow through or we will have two sides after us. Is that what you want? Besides, we aren't the only ones who know the Tecran want her dead. I just managed to get her back from a Vanad.”

The Balcoan stood, blocking the door for another defiant moment, and then stepped back. He looked sick.

Hal tried to sit when he saw who the Vutrovian was pushing through the door. He hoped for a single beat that he was back in the grip of the togrut, that she wasn't really here, but then the bed dipped as she sat beside him. Blocking him from the rest of the room, he realized.

He forced himself to look, and saw that she still had her reflector bracelet on.

“We don't have any togrut left,” the Balcoan said, eyes on Fiona.

“We don't need her to talk. We just need proof that we had her and we killed her.”

Fiona pretended not to understand, and Hal saw both men took that at face value.

She leaned over him, stroking his hair back from his face, and put her lips near his ear. “Are there any more, or is it just the two up here and one below?” She used Grih.

“More,” he managed to say. “Maybe out.”

“Quiet.” The Vutrovian took a threatening step toward her. “You say your name and who you are,” he reached over to a shelf near the door and picked up a small lens.

They'd probably recorded him when they gave him the togrut, Hal realized. And they wanted Fiona's details before they killed her. Proof they had the right person.

“I don't understand,” Fiona spoke in slow, broken Garmman. Then she switched to her own language, and babbled away, sounding more and more excited.

She was playing them. Playing them the way she'd played Tak for months.

She understood all too well how an orange was perceived.

He'd seen the tight, controlled way she'd dealt with Chel's rudeness this morning, and wished he'd been more forceful with his commander. He thought there was time, that they'd see what and who she was and be as dazzled as he, but he would no longer tolerate a situation where she was disrespected as a matter of course.

Although someone respected her enough to let her put her life at risk to save him.

He looked forward to having a conversation with that person, if they got out of here alive.

I
t was going
to be up to Fee to do this alone.

The
Illium's
crew should have stormed the building by now if her lens and microphone were working.

As comms to Sazo were obviously down, so, most likely, was everything else.

From the street below, she heard someone shout, and she broke off the rendition she was giving them of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch. Imogen had inspired her, and besides, looking at Hal, it was clear this lot wouldn't flinch at torturing some answers out of her.

There was a gray cast to his skin and she forced herself to concentrate on getting them the hell out, because if she looked at Hal too much, she might just fall apart.

The Balcoan moved over to the window to see what was happening, and the Vutrovian watched him.

She took her chance, grabbing the pillow out from under Hal's head and gently covering his face with it.

She reached under her left sleeve as the Balcoan turned to her, shockgun raised, a frown on his face, and buried her own face in the pillow as she pointed the light-gun between him and the Vutrovian and pressed the button.

He must have gotten off a shot by reflex, because she heard it over the sharp, breathless cry he let out.

She lifted her thumb off the button, raised her head and saw both the Vutrovian and the Balcoan were down. She had no idea if the ricochet had got him or whether his fall had put him out of the line of fire.

As she lifted the pillow off of Hal's face, she couldn't find it in her to care.

Hal had turned his head to the wall, and the effort it took him to turn it back made her clench her fists.

She slid the light-gun into her sleeve and ran to the window, stepping over the Balcoan to get there.

Two men had been forced to the ground by black-clad Larga Ways guards, and a small team from the
Illium
stood near the store's door, armed and ready.

She pushed the window open, and six shockguns pointed her way. “Hal and I are up here. Please hurry.”

She sat beside him while she waited, not moving when the door below was battered open, when shouts and orders were barked out.

“They're coming. They'll get you to Jasa as soon as they can.” She said it over and over, gently stroking his hair, frightened to her core at his condition.

Rial was the first one into the room, and she stood and shielded Hal in one smooth movement.

Rial brought himself up short at the sight of her, his gaze going to the two men at her feet.

The Balcoan was completely still, so perhaps he had been hit with the ricochet, while the Vutrovian was moaning in faint, hoarse bursts of pain.

She stepped aside, so he could see Hal.

“He needs help. I don't know what they did to him.”

“Togrut,” Hal whispered.

Rial was a medic, she remembered. The one who'd fixed her up on the
Fasbe
, what felt like years ago. He winced at whatever Hal said.

“I've only heard what it does, never seen it.” He crouched beside Hal and Fee saw he had a bag slung over his shoulder. He started taking things out, pressing things onto Hal's skin.

The rest of the team arrived, and for a minute, the room was too full.

“Space,” Rial snarled, and then the two spies were hauled off, and it was only herself, Rial and a soldier setting up what looked like a hovering stretcher.

“Will he be okay?” She watched Rial and his helper lift Hal onto the stretcher and then maneuver it to the door.

“Maybe. But we need to hurry.” He jogged out the room, one hand holding the stretcher, and she was left staring at the empty landing, listening to the sound of their boots as they ran down the stairs.

She was being shut out, she realized. Perhaps not on purpose, but she didn't fit anywhere on the
Illium
, didn't even have a room there anymore.

She ran down after them and found they had already disappeared.

A group of Balcoan guards stood just outside, and they all turned to watch her as she stepped out onto the street.

“Fiona Russell?” The man who approached her had the warm brown skin and silver eyes of the majority of the inhabitants of Larga Ways.

She nodded.

“Tean Lee. I'm the station chief.” He gave a formal Grihan bow, which she returned.

“I seem to have lost my ride,” she said, trying to smile. “Do you know where they've taken Captain Vakeri?”

“I've been asked to watch over you for a bit by Commander Chel,” Lee told her, and she thought there was some satisfaction in his tone. “Captain Vakeri has been taken to the
Illium
for safety reasons.”

It made sense. And she didn't want them to slow down for anything, she was glad they had rushed him off, even if it meant she was being fobbed off again. She just wished she had the right to go with him.

“My office isn't far from here.” Lee gestured with his arm and she fell into step with him.

There was a strange crackle in her right ear again, and she rubbed it. The ear with the earpiece from Sazo was absolutely dead. “Do you know why Sazo is still offline?”

He shot her a look. “The whole of Larga Ways is a dead zone. No one can use their comms.”

“Does anyone know why?”

Tean Lee gave a hollow laugh. “Given what's been happening here since the
Illium
arrived, I'm not ruling anything out.”

F
ee sat
on the couch in Tean Lee's office and stared at her boots. After a brief struggle with herself, she decided she was too tired to care, pulled them off and lay down.

She'd given her statement, Tean Lee taking her back almost three days to when she'd first been abducted by Cy.

Her information about the Vanad and his tiny basement apartment had gotten the station chief all excited, and he'd rushed off, telling her to make herself at home.

Every now and then, she tapped her earpiece and called Sazo's name, but although she could see him hovering above the way station through the big window of Lee's office, the comms were obviously still down. To the left of Sazo, the edge of the
Illium
was just visible.

It still hurt that they had kicked her off. She didn't buy the reasons Chel had given. He'd just wanted to get her away from Hal.

She kept thinking of Hal, gray and shaking, and she wanted—— needed——to know how he was doing.

Chel would hardly refuse Sazo's runner entry into the
Illium's
launch bay. She wasn't living there anymore, but she could visit, couldn't she?

And if she didn't go now, say her goodbyes, when would she get the chance?

She sat up, slid her feet back in her boots, and walked out.

There were no guards outside the door, and she guessed they thought her safe enough at security headquarters.

She took a tube down to the ground floor, and nodded to the guards at the entrance.

They'd seen her come in with Lee, and they let her out with a polite nod back.

The events earlier in the day must have shaken the tiny population of the way station, because the streets were definitely emptier than they had been.

She supposed the Vanad could still be out there, looking for her, but his bolthole was uncovered, and she'd only pretended to be stunned last time because she'd wanted to be taken. He'd find it a lot harder to get hold of her again and the chance of having to deal with him wasn't enough to keep her from trying to get to Hal.

She'd made it all the way to Sazo's runner when an explosion rumbled like a volcano, shaking the very floor beneath her feet.

The metal sang as she turned to look, saw the flash of white light and had to shield her eyes.

The gel dome at her eye level wobbled and Fee suddenly remembered she was on a massive, floating space platform. That a breach would mean death to everyone here.

She tapped the door of the runner, but it was as dead as everything else here. The guards standing at the dock entrance were running to get into the nearest vessel, and she tapped the door again, then dug out her encryptor and held it in a white-knuckled fist.

“Please work.” She tapped it, and dived through the door as it slid open.

It closed behind her before she could offer the guards sanctuary, but she'd hear them if they knocked, and there had been plenty of other vessels for them to get into before hers.

“Sazo?” Nothing.

She didn't know how to fly this, and even if she did, she didn't know if she could even get it started without Sazo's help.

Eazi's handheld was sitting on the console where she'd left it, and she started it up and opened the draw where she'd put the crystal, pulled it over her head.

“Eazi, you're right here. That makes me think you and I should be able to talk, even with a dead zone. Please wake up. Something terrible's happened. You need to wake up.”

Her ear crackled again, just like it had when she'd been in the Vanad's apartment. “Hello? Eazi, are you there?”

She looked down at the handheld, frustrated that she didn't know what to do with it to make a connection with him.

The runner bumped against the dock, as if it were floating on water, rather than hovering in space, and she ran to the door in panic, used the encryptor to open up and look out.

The dome looked strange and air swirled around her. The way station was leaking.

Up above, beyond the dome, she saw runners and small fighter craft launching from the
Illium
and from Sazo's Class 5. Probably sending vessels to the way station to help evacuate.

She stepped back and the door closed again, and she realized the crackle in her ear hadn't shut off.

“Fiona?” Her name ripped through her, so loud she tried to claw the earpiece out, whimpering when she couldn't get hold of it.

“Too loud, too loud.” She barely managed to get the words out.

“Sorry.” Eazi whispered, but even that hurt.

“Still too loud.”

He was silent for a long moment.

“Loud or not, I'm really glad to hear your voice,” she told him, suddenly afraid she'd scared him off.

“How is this?” He spoke softly, but the volume was right this time.

“Good.” She swallowed hard. “Very good.”

She suddenly felt a lot less alone.

“Do you know how I'm talking to you?”

“I think through the handheld you left with me on the
Fasbe
. Sazo said it was the best way to reach you, because the drone's still out in the desert and he thinks Cy's runner and the one you were using were destroyed when they blew . . .” Did she want to remind him? Did he even remember?

“When they blew up my Class 5.” He sounded thoughtful. “When I woke up it was like I was floating in total darkness. I couldn't tell up from down, and I've never felt that way before. But now that you've said handheld, I think I know where I am.”

The screen of the handheld flared and Fee touched a finger to it. A line ran around her fingertip, lengthening until it was a spinning circle.

“It's nice to have you back.” She coughed away the tears that were clogging her throat. “But unfortunately we're in big trouble. There was an explosion in Larga Ways and it's breached the dome. The
Illium
and Sazo are sending runners to evacuate, but I don't see how they can get everyone in time.”

“Why can't I connect with Sazo?”

“There's a dead zone. It's been in place since a little earlier, when I got grabbed by . . .” Fee frowned. “I'm not getting too caught up in thinking it's all about me if I say the dead zone settled in when someone grabbed me, am I?”

“Well, that's what I did when I had you grabbed.”

“Could this be another Class 5? Using the Vanad to abduct me, and creating the dead zone so Sazo couldn't help me?” It was just about possible. There were two Class 5s left, after all.

“I think the dead zone helped me recover more quickly. It was like the shock of silence bothered me.”

“I heard a crackle in my ear just after the dead zone settled in, so I think you're right. But none of this matters unless we can work out how to fix the dome.”

“I was able to get into the Larga Ways systems before I arranged for Cy to grab you. That's how I pulled off the snatch. I know the way in.”

She looked down at the handheld screen, but the symbols on the screen were flashing too fast for her to read them.

“There isn't just a dead zone.” Eazi's voice was almost reverent. “Whoever killed access to the comms has done something to the way station’s commands and security. There is nothing to break into, it’s an open door. The dome needs an instruction from the main system to tell it to meld together where it's broken. But there is no instruction to send.”

“We could give it the instruction.” Fee sucked in a breath. “Well, you could.”

“I could, except the comms are still down and I'll need time to set them up again.”

“So we connect in physically?” Fee asked him. “Is there a cable connection, or is that too low-tech for this place?”

“Not a cable,” Eazi's voice rose in excitement. “But a side by side connection, that would work. You'd have to get quite close.”

“Using what?” She ran to the small, recessed cabinet and opened it, looked at the oxygen masks on offer.

“The handheld will work.” Despite the situation, there was excitement in his voice. “Fiona, all the operational software is gone. If a Class 5 did this, it wasn't to infiltrate Larga Ways, it was to create as much chaos as possible and prevent the way station from recovering.”

Fee pulled out a mask. “How am I going to get over to the gel dome? The dock stops a good ten meters from the edge of it.”

She touched another panel, and saw an array of shockguns and some things that looked like crossbows. She picked one up, lifted the handheld so the lens could see it. “What's this?”

“It's a magnetic grapple. That could work. If you aim at a metal beam that forms the dome structure, you could swing across from the dock.”

He gave her a rundown on how to work it, and as soon as she had it, she pulled the oxygen mask over her head, shoved the handheld down the front of her shirt to keep her hands free and touched the encryptor to the panel.

The wind was stronger now, so she had to fight to run toward the end of the dock.

She heard a shout behind her, but she didn't dare look back, it was taking everything she had to keep the grapple in her arms and her weight forward.

Her hair whipped around her face, stinging her cheeks, and she nearly fell as a runner from the
Illium
came through the gel wall to her left, the air swirling in a dangerous eddy before it went back to howling past her.

She didn't go right to the end. She was afraid she'd fall off. She braced her legs apart, leaning into the gale, and fired the grapple.

The wind took it and tossed it to the right and then back at her, and she crouched as it soared over her head and then fell back onto the dock with a clang, the magnetic field locking it in place.

She turned, touched the button she hoped would release the magnet, and gave a shout of triumph when it did. She winched it in, crouching down on hands and knees to give herself some stability.

She saw someone fighting to get to her from further down, and she didn't dare look too closely in case it was the Vanad.

Just keep going, just keep going, she chanted in her head. Load, reactivate, turn, aim to the left this time. Shoot.

The wind tossed it again, this time past one of the metal arches that formed the skeleton of the dome, and it was just close enough for the magnet to alter course and attach.

She suddenly wished she'd thought to bring gloves, but whoever was coming up behind her was screaming at her, and she grabbed the cable above the bow part of the grapple, rested a foot on the shallow groove that looked like it had been made for the purpose, and pushed away.

She swung, but not as fast as she would have if the wind hadn't been fighting against her. The cable spun and she saw Tean Lee standing where she'd been moments before, shouting into the wind.

She tried to spin back, managed it just in time to grab the smooth metal frame of the dome. Purple gel wobbled just above her head.

“Okay. Where's the connection?” She struggled to pull out the handheld with one arm anchored around a beam, and panicked for a moment when Eazi didn't answer her straight away. “Eazi——”

“Fiona, you're going to have to go higher or lower.”

She sagged against the cold metal in relief at the sound of his voice, and then realized what he'd said. She looked up, but even as she did, she knew she didn't have the arm strength, or the time, to go that way.

She peered down, saw the place where two beams crossed one another, as the dome curved beneath the platform that made the way station.

“Down it is.” There was a wobble in her voice.

She put the handheld back in her shirt and then got a tight grip on the beam, leaned down to reach the crossbow part of the grapple to deactivate the magnet. She would need to take it with her to get back up.

She'd just touched the button when another runner came through the wall and strong winds buffeted her, pulling her off balance.

She slipped and cried out, clutching at the beam with both arms as she slid. The heavy magnetic end of the grapple fell toward her, glancing off her shoulder as the whole thing fell down, down, down and away.

Pain blossomed, and she choked back nausea and slid another few meters in shock.

“Are you nearly there?” Eazi asked her.

She was about to snarl at him, when she remembered he couldn't see what was happening.

“I'm not sure.” She realized her eyes were shut, and she forced herself to look down again. The cross beam was only a few meters away, and she slid in wild, uncontrolled bursts until her feet found something solid to balance on.

She crouched, hugging the beam like a long-lost lover, feeling as if the wind would tear her off at any moment, and then made the mistake of looking outward.

She was under the station, now. Not right at the bottom, but low enough that all she could see was Balco below her, and nothing else.

If she let go, she'd fall through the gel wall and be sucked into space.

“Fiona? Fiona?” Eazi was saying her name over and over.

“Okay. I'm okay.” She realized she was breathing too quickly. She knew Hal and Cy had lasted a long time on their oxygen masks, but who knew how long it would take for someone to rescue her. She needed to calm down.

“Right. I'm here.” She leaned her full weight against the beam, carefully let go one arm and pulled the handheld out.

“You see a tiny black panel?” Eazi asked her.

She could not.

She moved the handheld around because it had a little lens built in, so Eazi could look, too.

“It's on the other side,” Eazi told her. “It must be.”

Fee shoved the handheld back into her shirt and carefully stood up, slowly lifted her body a little away from the beam so she could look around it.

Without the wind, she was sure she could do it. With the wind, pulling and howling and tugging at her, she didn't think she could.

But she was down here now. And if she didn't do it, she would die. And so would a lot of others.

She hugged the beam one last time, stretching her leg out and curving it around, trying to find the crossbeam on the other side.

She thought she had it, slipped, and then got it again.

She stretched her arm around next, and there was one, icy, fear-filled moment when she was neither one side or the other, and then she was over, muscles in her arms and legs wrenched, her breath coming in pants.