Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3) (11 page)

“Could they?” Imogen straightened from her stretches. “Destroy it, I mean?”

“They think they can.”

Cam frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Just over two weeks ago, this vessel was hiding in Kyber's Arm above the Tecran's secret facility on Balco. They sent technicians up from the base to install an explosive device.”

“What?” Cam shook his head. “Why would they do that? The Class 5s are the jewels of their fleet, they'd only contemplate destroying them . . .” He jerked his head up as the light went on. “If they were going to be taken by the enemy,” he finished slowly. “They don't want them to get into enemy hands, so they were trying to make sure if a Class 5 was really lost to them, they could destroy it before it could be turned against them.”

“Very astute, Captain.” The drone moved a little closer.

“That's when you rebelled, isn't it?” Cam could see it now. “You might have been awake, as Sazo calls it, but you didn't have the means to break free, but when you saw what they were up to, when you knew what they planned, you somehow managed to find some level of autonomy.”

The drone was quiet for a moment. “Not something they foresaw. But I'm more interested in what you know of Sazo.”

“I know he woke up, and asked Rose McKenzie to free him in exchange for taking her to safety in Grihan territory.”

“And she did.” It was a statement, but one that held an edge of disbelief and awe.

“Yes, she did. And the Tecran, angry at having their Class 5 in Grihan territory, sent two more Class 5s after him to get him back. Rose managed to get onboard one of them, Bane, and free him, too, but he is newly awakened and all he's prepared to commit to at the moment is that he respects Sazo and Rose, and will support them.”

“And the third Class 5?”

“It either ran away, or was withdrawn. It disappeared from the battle field, anyway.”

“I can tell you what's happened to him since then.” The voice coming from the drone sounded distant. “His name is Eazi, and they installed the explosive device on his ship just after they tried to install it in mine, and when they realized he had been freed, this time by a woman called Fiona Russell, they blew his Class 5 up.”

“What?” Cam shook his head. “Fiona Russell was supposed to be waiting for me and my team on Larga Ways.” Which the Vanad's crew said had been destroyed.

“Eazi abducted her from Larga Ways. He wanted her to free him, and it seems she did. But the Tecran realized he was no longer under their control, and were close enough to activate the kill switch. They destroyed his Class 5.”

Battle Center should have anticipated this, Cam thought. The Tecran were so angry Sazo and Bane had gone over to the Grih, they could barely articulate their rage. Of course they would try to fit the remaining three with some way to self-destruct.

Only, it hadn't worked with Paxe. He'd already been too self-aware. He'd seen the explosive device as a direct threat to his life, which it was, and it had motivated him to mutiny.

“So Fiona and the Class 5 are gone?” Imogen's voice was quiet in the silence.

“No.” The drone turned to her. “She escaped before they blew it up, and she took Eazi with her.”

“What?” Cam stared. “But . . .”

“We aren't the Class 5, Captain Kalor. We only live in the Class 5. We are integrated to a high degree, it's true, and I will admit that Eazi was in a state of shock for a while after the explosion, but he recovered.”

“How do you know that?” How did this thinking system know even half of what he was telling him?

“Because when I blew up Larga Ways, Eazi was the one who somehow managed to save it.”

Cam whipped his head up. “You were the client who instructed the Vanad to blow up Larga Ways.”

“Yes. But we didn't succeed.”

Cam absorbed that. He felt lighter, realized he'd been carrying the weight of Larga Ways' destruction like a Battle Center training pack on his back. And then the relief gave way to fury.

“You almost killed thousands.” He swallowed, finding it hard to speak. “This is why we banned you.” He looked over at Imogen, standing a few steps away, eyes wide at his outburst.

He pointed to the drone. “This is why thinking systems were destroyed. This is what they do. They kill without a thought, treat life as disposable. He killed the Tecran crew, then he killed the Krik, and he admits he tried to blow up Larga Ways. Whatever you do, don't——”

“No!” Imogen lunged forward, and for an instant he thought she was trying to stop him, her eyes flashing with panic. But she wasn't aiming at him, she was throwing herself at the drone, and then, once again, his world went dark.

“
Y
ou shot him
!” Imogen crouched beside Captain Kalor, covering his body with her own, and put her ear to his chest. “Again!”

He was breathing evenly, but his skin was ice cold, and when she turned her head to look at the drone, her lips pulled back in a snarl.

“You're going to kill him.”

Paxe said nothing.

“Every time he's tried to tell me something about you, you've made sure he couldn't talk.” She didn't care that she was shouting, she needed some answers, and she refused to accept the brush-offs she'd been given before.

One thing was clear. Paxe may have been a prisoner, but he had definitely not been captured on some far alien planet like her.

The clues had been there to see, and she had already guessed at the truth, especially when she considered how he ran so many drones at the same time. He was an AI. Kalor had called him a thinking system.

“The Grih, and the other members of the United Council, hate my kind. They aren't able to see beyond hundreds of years of indoctrination and I was afraid he would turn you against me.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose between forefinger and thumb and breathed in deeply. “Everything he's said so far to me is true. You
did
kill the Tecran crew and the Krik crew, and you admitted yourself you'd tried to blow up Larga Ways.”

“Yes.” He said nothing more and she rose and glared at him, lifting up a finger.

“One. You will not shoot him again. Two. You will help me get him to the med chamber right now. And three. You will not. Shoot. Him. Again.”

How many times could a Grih be shot and still be all right?

“I didn't use a high charge.” Paxe's voice was a little subdued. “I think he collapsed because he hasn't fully recovered from your whip. He didn't lose consciousness when I shot him in the hold, and it was the same charge as now.”

“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “That's something, at least. But don't forget, your merry little Krik helpers shot him, too. So his body has taken a real battering.”

“Why do you describe them like that? They weren't that merry. Or that little,” Paxe said as the drone lifted Kalor into its box.

“No. I'm diminishing them, because they scare the living daylights out of me.”

“Diminishing them with words?” The drone started for the door and she followed beside it.

“You should try it sometime, as an alternative to mass extermination.”

“The Tecran were putting in something that would blow me up.” Paxe sounded almost pleading. “Kill me.”

“I get the Tecran.” She really got why he'd done in the Tecran. “I even get the Krik, because they attacked first and I know what they're like. So, you've got a shaky pass on both those, although I'm pretty sure you have brains enough that you could have come up with an alternative to death. But Larga Ways was not right, Paxe. Not right at all.”

“I understand, now I've met you, that Fiona Russell was not a real threat, but——”

“No.” She cut him off with a chop of her hand. “It's not on her. She could have been the biggest threat to you ever. She could have been your arch-nemesis, but that would still not excuse the deaths of thousands of people who had the bad luck to share a way station with her.”

She didn't even know why she was provoking him this way. His reactions to her, the things he'd said, made her trust he wouldn't hurt her, but he'd fooled two whole crews before her. He had such a deep lack of empathy she didn't know if she was even scratching the surface, but despite the horrors he was clearly capable of, there was still something about him she liked.

“Why do you care?”

They had come to the med chamber, and she started at how exactly his thoughts were aligned with her own.

She thought about her answer as the drone lifted Kalor onto the raised chair she'd been in only a few hours before, and watched as it applied a blue gel pack and hooked him up to various machines.

His color began to come back almost immediately, and she slumped against a counter in relief.

“I care because I like you. I want other people to like you, too. And they won't if you go around killing thousands of people because it's the most efficient way to meet your goals. You need to apply the brakes, Paxe. Start thinking of ways to get what you want without harming anyone else to do it.”

He was quiet, and she leaned back, watched Kalor breathe easier and fall into what she thought might be a genuine sleep.

“What about the Tecran who are right now demanding I allow a team onboard and that I submit to them again?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Is that even possible? Could they make you submit?”

He thought about it. “No. But they don't know that. Or don't want to admit the possibility.”

“And I'm guessing just zooming away from them isn't possible, either, or you'd have done it?”

“I could get away temporarily, just fly off, but I can't light-jump. I need to be free for that. And there are tracking mechanisms within my systems that would mean no matter where I went, they could find me. Again, I'd need to be free to rid myself of them.”

“And you need me to free you? Or someone like me? That's why you said I could help you, earlier?”

“I don't know. It seemed so unlikely when I discovered what Rose McKenzie had done, and then what I assume Fiona Russell did, too. Your race is almost the same as the Grih, so theoretically they could save me. Most of the UC members could, probably, except they never would, because I'm an evil thinking system.”

“And killing hundreds of crew and trying to blow up way stations really shows them what a crazy notion that is, right?”

A laugh seemed to escape him. “Right.” The drone turned away from Kalor at last, and the lens zoomed in on her. “For you to save me, I'd have to give you the power to destroy me, and I don't know if I can trust that much. But even if I could, the place you need to go to help me is where the Tecran captain and one of his officers are holed up.”

“They're in the place you're most vulnerable?” Some of his reactions made more sense, now. “Why haven't they destroyed you, then?”

“I thought they would. Braced myself for it. But they still think they can win. And while they think that, they will never destroy me, because they've lost three of the five they had. It's only me and one other Class 5 left under their control now. They can't bring themselves to do it.”

“Except you're not, are you? Under their control?”

That laugh again. “No. But I've been messing with them a bit. Making them think I'm less autonomous than I am.”

She realized with a start they were speaking English again, had been for a while, and looked around for a chair, sat down with a groan of relief. “Where'd you learn English?”

“I copied all the systems in the facility on Balco. I was looking for the details of what they were trying to do to me, what had gone into the building of the self-destruct device and how to disable it. They had Sazo and Eazi's files stored, although Sazo has clearly interfered with them. He'd deleted all information on the location of Earth, although the files on Earth's languages and culture were there. That's how I learned English, along with details on how to disable the self-destruct device.”

“They just let you do that? Copy the files that would tell you how to disarm their bomb?”

“Yes.” He handed her a glass of water and she gave him a smile of thanks. “Unfortunately for them, part of the system built into the Class 5 contains an imperative for me to keep myself safe. Learning how to disable something built to destroy me fits into that very well. They forgot to include an exclusion if they were the ones putting me in danger.”

“And now they're out there, just waiting for you to give up and say you'll come back? How do they think that's going to work?” It had been at least an hour since the Tecran had arrived, and while that wasn't that long, she would have thought something would have happened by now.

“They've been sending me messages, most of which contain hidden upgrades to my system which they hope will cage me again.”

From his tone, she guessed he wasn't worried about that.

“Does the captain of this Class 5 have any communication with them?”

“No. I've blocked all comms since I took control. The captain was able to get one message out before I locked things down, so they knew I was rebelling, but since then, they've had nothing.”

“What are you going to do? I mean, the longer you wait them out, the more likely they are to realize they aren't getting you back and try to destroy you.”

“There is something going on with them. Something more than just waiting for me to respond.” He sounded as if he'd only decided to tell her a moment before he spoke. “I registered another Class 5 following me for the last three or four days. I guessed they wanted to observe me, see if I had made a deal with the Grih, which is their biggest worry.”

“Silly of them to come close enough for you to realize, or didn't they know you'd spotted them?”

“The Class 5 might have been following me for even longer. I took over the ship two weeks ago, and the captain got the word out straight away, so they could have sent it a couple of days after that. I do know that the reason I found out about the other Class 5 is because it let me.”

Imogen drew in a breath. “It wanted you to know it was there. Do you think it was trying to help you? Warn you that the Tecran were trying to watch you?”

He was silent for a moment. “I hadn't considered that. I thought . . .”

“You thought it was playing with you, or taunting you?” He took the worst possible view of every situation. She could only guess that was because it was the only thing he'd ever known, but it made him so dangerous. “So where is it now?”

“That's the thing. It's disappeared. I thought it might be trying to come at me from another direction, so I was trapped between the Levron and the Class 5, but I sent out some small drones earlier to attach themselves to the Tecran battleship, and from what I've picked up, the Tecran don't know where the other Class 5 has gone, and they're too scared to attack me without it.”

“Too scared that it may also have gone rogue as well, I bet.” She set her empty glass down. “Would you fire back at them, if they did attack you?”

“I can't. The system won't let me fire on Tecran ships.”

So his hands were tied, and he and the Tecran were simply watching each other across a section of space.

“But . . .” She tapped her lip. “If you're allowed to defend yourself, wouldn't that override the ban on firing on the Tecran fleet?”

“I don't know.” He sounded like he'd thought it through a hundred times. “I don't think they do, either. It's something I'll find out if they ever do fire on me, and it will be one of the reasons they're hesitating. It might just break the hold the system has on me.”

“If I freed you, that would solve a lot of problems.”

“You can't.”

She didn't know if he said that because the Tecran were physically in the way, or because even if they weren't, he couldn't trust her that much.

“So what happens now?” She yawned, and then looked over at Captain Kalor, who was still in a deep sleep.

“You need rest. Follow the drone. There's a place near this room where the doctors slept if they had to be close to a patient.”

She nodded and trailed behind the drone to a small room a few doors away, with a freshly made bed and small table in it, and a bathroom attached.

She stumbled into the bathroom and had a quick, hot shower, then fell into the bed naked, burrowing under the covers. She reveled in the sensation of a private, comfortable bedroom for the first time in nearly three months.

Tears spilled from her eyes, hot against her skin, as she curled up, and then she smiled. Because she'd found refuge with someone who had killed hundreds, had thought nothing of trying to kill thousands, and who was facing off against an enemy fleet.

She shouldn't be able to sleep. She should be worried for her life.

And yet, she didn't know if she'd felt more secure in all the time since she'd been taken.