She waited for the box with the Fitali supplies to lower, and then took a few armfuls of the strangely shaped silver packages, laid them on top of the other bars.
“Right, now we need something to put water in, and if you'll lead me to a water source on this floor, please, it'll save time rather than having to go back up to the dining room.”
The drone turned its lens on her, did nothing for a moment, and then moved off, heading toward the entrance.
“I have had the other two drones find water containers while you were getting the food, and there is a water source in this room, so they are waiting by the door.”
The words were almost grudging.
“Thank you. I know you didn't want to tell me who you were earlier, but can you at least give me a name I can call you?”
Another hesitation. “Paxe.”
“Thank you, Paxe.”
As they made their way back toward the doors, the cabinet started up its tune again, and was started on the second set of eight notes by the time they reached it. Imogen couldn't resist standing in front to watch.
Each time a chime sounded, she saw now, one of the square carvings on the front depressed inward a little way, like a piano key. She hummed the notes as they were made, and then concentrated as the final eight forward chimes were sounded.
She realized the pattern was a little more difficult than she'd first thought, because the squares that were depressed were not the same in each round. You had to be watching the last eight forward, and she made a note of the first square, because that would be the missing chime at the end. When the seventh backward chime sounded, she pressed in the square to complete the pattern.
There was silence for a moment, and then a satisfying click as the doors unlocked and began to open.
“Yay.” She put her hands together in delight.
The drone nudged up against her. “You solved the puzzle.” There was no expression in Paxe's voice now.
“It wasn't that hard. What's inside?” The doors were opening slowly, as if they were heavy.
“No one knows. You're the only one who's been able to solve it.”
She looked over at the drone, sure Paxe was joking, but he said nothing more. The Tecran were definitely not affected by her singing like the Grih had been, and she'd always had the impression their eyesight was a lot better than their hearing. Perhaps they hadn't been able to distinguish the notes that well.
She turned her attention back to the cabinet. The doors were fully open now, and she stepped forward and slid open the third highest of the four drawers that took up all the interior space. And nearly stepped back.
What lay within, resting on a layer of soft, tautly pulled fabric, was unmistakably a weapon.
It looked so vicious, so built for purpose, that she was reluctant to even touch it. Like a medieval ball and chain flail, there was no question its sole purpose was for killing and maiming.
“What is it?” Paxe moved the drone right next to her.
“It looks like a slashing knife that fits over a hand, like a deadly kind of glove.” Everything about it, from the two shorter blades on either side, to the main, gleaming point of it, looked all the sharper because of the material it was made from. Some kind of metal that was almost blinding when it caught the light, a pale silver-blue.
“Let me see.”
She gingerly reached in and lifted it out, careful to hold it by the cuff at the back.
It was lighter than she expected it to be. Her original impression of a type of glove was right, because under the outer curve were rings though which the wearer could slide their fingers, if the wearer had only three fingers.
She carefully slid her middle three fingers through them, having to stretch them out uncomfortably, as it had obviously been designed for much larger hands. It came halfway up her forearm, over her wrist and hand and ended in a wicked sharp tip. The two smaller blades at the curved ends on each side made her think of an apple corer, and she shivered at the mental image.
The metal seemed alive to her, almost humming, as if vibrating from a sound she couldn't hear. She placed it carefully back in its drawer and closed it, bent and opened the bottom one.
It contained what looked like armor that would be strapped to calves and upper thighs. The next drawer up contained similar shields for forearms and upper arms all in the same pale silver-blue.
“This was someone's armor chest.” She had to go on tip toe to open the top shelf, but couldn't see what was inside and was reluctant to put her hand in without knowing what was there.
The drone lifted its long clamping hand and pulled the drawer out of the cabinet completely and laid it down at Imogen's feet.
It contained a frightening mask, like something out of a horror movie, and a slender cylinder of the same metal.
“I'm guessing it's the weapon for the other hand.” She lifted it up gingerly. “Where did the Tecran get this, do you know?”
“It was stolen from a warrior planet.” Paxe said. “They call themselves the Reven, and they are a very old race. The teams the Tecran sent down to steal this cabinet and other things didn't all make it back. It was a miscalculation. The captain saw they didn't have any space travel capabilities, so he assumed their technology was unsophisticated.”
“He was wrong?” Imogen didn't think she'd seen anything as sophisticated as this used by the Tecran. Everything about it screamed deadly and advanced.
“They are more advanced in some technological aspects than any member of the United Council, but they adhere to a specific belief system, one that is followed by most of the people on the planet. It has turned their brilliance and creativity away from space travel, toward on-planet technological advancement.”
“What belief system?” Imogen turned the cylinder upside down, to see if there was a switch or something on the base, but there was nothing.
“They believe they were all created by a divine being that resides within the core of their planet. Their world is unstable, with many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and they believe that is their god communicating with them.”
“Why would that stop them exploring their solar system?”
“They believe the closer they are, physically, to their god, the more enlightened and happier they are. So holy men and women live in craters and deep gorges to commune with the deity, and their prisons are placed on the highest peaks, a punishment not only in being caged, but also being as far from the deity as it is possible to be.”
“So no one wants to even climb a mountain, let alone rocket into space?”
“Exactly. And for the few who don't believe, they don't have the funding they need or the technological foundation on which to build their ideas, anyway.”
“Well, I don't know what this is supposed to do.” She tipped it upright again. Given the tone set by the other items, this was deadly, but how it worked was a mystery she had no intention of proving personally.
It was time to stop playing, anyway, and see how far Paxe would let her help the prisoners in the hold. She turned to the doors and then froze.
A Krik was staring at her from the entrance.
“Paxe.” She was barely able to get his name out. She cast a quick glance at the drones, but before they could even lift their shockguns, the Krik was screaming his battle cry and charging her, weaving to dodge the shockgun fire.
She needed to move——to do something——and as he came into striking range, she hit out at the Krik with the slim cylinder.
A blue light ignited between them, throwing the Krik off his feet and onto his back.
She held the cylinder out in front of her, as afraid of it as she was of the Krik, and waited.
A drone approached the body, and she thought she saw a glimmer of light as it scanned him.
“Not dead. Just unconscious.”
She relaxed a little. She had lashed out without knowing what she was doing, but she was glad she hadn't killed him. Everything else in the cabinet seemed aimed at death, but the l
ight had crackled in many directions, so perhaps it wasn't lethal in case of friendly fire. They could always kill the victim with the sword cuff once they were down.
“I'll take care of him.” The drone rolled even closer and then shot the Krik in the head with its shockgun.
Fear and shock froze her in place and she felt the burn of nausea in her throat. “I thought you were actually going to take care of him.” She was barely able to choke the words out.
“I did.”
“No, you killed him.” There was an edge of hysteria to her voice and she forced herself to breathe deeply, to find some calm.
“You are upset.” There was that bemusement again.
“You just killed someone in front of me.” She choked out the words.
“You didn't know if you'd killed him yourself.”
She blew out a breath. “True. But I was protecting myself, and I didn't know how the cylinder worked. There is a difference in killing someone in self-defense or killing them in cold blood while they lie unconscious on the floor.”
“What difference? They are still dead.”
She looked at the drone, but there was no way to tell if Paxe was yanking her chain or perfectly serious. If she were to guess, she'd say he was serious as a heart attack.
“The difference is your intention. Which, admittedly, is not much help to the person if they are dead, but would mean a lot to the person lying unconscious on the floor.”
“Because they would still be alive. Because you wouldn't kill someone when they were no longer a threat.”
“You get it.” She took a deep breath. He was taking this seriously.
“But as a Krik, he would be just as dangerous when he recovered consciousness. At which point I would have to kill him anyway.”
“The Krik aren't the best example. But what if you didn't kill him, put him on a runner, and sent him off on his way, where he couldn't harm you?”
“I don't care enough about him to go to that kind of effort. My own life is in danger and I need all my resources to give myself the best chance of survival.”
She sighed. She couldn't even argue the logic of that. Not really.
Her heart wasn't in it where the Krik were concerned.
“I was taught to see all life as precious.” And he clearly hadn't.
“No one sees my life as precious.”
“I do.”
“Do you?” It wasn't a challenge, he was genuinely interested.
“Yes. As precious as anyone else's.”
He mulled it over and she had the sense more time had gone by than she could afford. She had set herself a mission and it was as important as ever. Kalor and the others could last a few days without food, but if, like her, they hadn't had water since they were taken, some of them could have gone as much as a day without.
She would have to walk past the Krik's body to leave, would have to go with the avatars of a person whose idea of value of life was completely different to hers, but before she stepped out into the passage . . . She turned to face away from the doors, to an empty wall, gripped the cylinder and flicked it like she was cracking a whip.
Blue light crackled and leapt from the end, touching the wall and doing no harm that she could see.
She cracked it again, enjoying the wild snap of blue fire.
“What are you doing?” Paxe had sent a drone to her side again.
“I was practicing. Now I'm going to the hold, and no one had better try stop me.”
Chapter 13
Cam could hear someone ahead of him in the narrow tunnel. It sounded too loud to be Pren, too heavy, and so he didn't call out.
He tried to move more quietly, and go faster, because if this was the way Pren had come, whoever was in front of him was right behind her.
And if he was following a Krik, and Pren had gone another way altogether, he was wasting his time, and would rather know sooner than later.
When he reached a sharp turn in the tunnel he realized the noise of his fellow traveller had stopped and he crouched just out of sight, listening.
The smell of decomposition was almost overwhelming now, despite the mask, and when he risked a look around the corner, he saw why.
A dead Tecran lay facing the tunnel wall. He looked as if he'd been roughly dragged to one side and propped up, so as not to completely block the way.
If the Vanad's crew had been telling the truth, this Tecran had been killed as long ago as two weeks, or had been skulking in the tunnels since then until the Krik had hunted him down and killed him to fulfill their part of the bargain with the Class 5's thinking system.
From the smell, and the condition of the body, he'd been dead at least a week. Cam forced himself to look, but the Tecran had been stripped of weapons, and even his boots were gone.
As Cam edged past him he saw the singed feathers on the side of the Tecran's head that denoted a shockgun hit.
As he studied the evidence, there was the faintest scrape of sound up ahead, a boot scuff on metal, as if someone was waiting for him.
Cam couldn't think of a more terrible place to wait if you didn't have a mask, and decided to take a chance. Whoever was up ahead knew he was here anyway.
“Pren?”
“Sir!”
There was a scrabble of sound, and then Pren came into view.
“I thought you were another Krik.”
“Was that you before?” Cam cleared the Tecran's body and shooed her down the tunnel, away from the oppression of the smell.
“Yes. A Krik came this way earlier and when I heard you, I thought one of his friends was joining him, so I tried to sound more like they do.” She looked back at him over her shoulder, and he saw her profound relief at not being caught between two Krik in an enclosed space.
“How did you hide from the first one?”
She started moving again, more quietly now. “I hid down that small side tunnel a little way back, maybe stayed there longer than necessary, because I didn't know what I'd do if I met him coming back the other way. He seemed annoyed, like he'd been ordered this way and didn't like it. He was muttering to himself.”
“How long ago did he come through?”
“Not long. I've been wishing I could understand Krik ever since he crawled past.”
“I got the sense when they found themselves in the hold they hadn't realized which floor they were on. They've been crawling around in here exterminating the Tecran crew for the thinking system, so now they're orientated, they probably have a good idea where everything is.”
Pren stilled, and Cam gripped her ankle when he came up behind her.
“What is it?” He kept his voice low.
She didn't answer, instead she moved over as much as she could so he could see as well——an open grate up ahead, the first Cam had seen since he'd hauled himself into the tunnel.
“Do you think he climbed out, or just needed his bearings like he did in the hold, and carried on?”
Cam didn't care. They finally had an escape route, and he was taking it.
“You're still upset with me?” The drone kept pace with her as Paxe spoke through its speaker.
“No. It's just . . .” She shook her head. “Life should mean more to you. It's sad that it doesn't.”
“I still don't understand. I didn't hurt you. I kept you safe, because when he woke, he would have tried to kill you again.”
She slowed her pace. Rubbed at her forehead. “You're right.” She shook her head. “You're absolutely right. But like I said, there were other options. You could have dragged him off and locked him in a room, and kept me just as safe.”
“Ah. You'd rather he starved to death slowly. The shockgun was too quick?”
She stopped dead. Looked across at the drone. Had he not understood anything from their conversation earlier. “No.” She enunciated very clearly. “I don't want anyone to die a long, protracted death. Not anyone.” She blew out a breath. “If he had to die, the way you did it was the best, while he was still unc
onscious, and didn't even know what was happening. But did he really have to die?”
“You know how they are. You know he would never have stopped trying to escape and kill. And I don't intend to keep anyone on this ship long term, prisoner or guest. It's mine and I want it to myself.”
“So are you going to kill all of us?” She started moving again. She'd thought she was going to die since Toloco killed the last of her Tecran guards, but since she'd met Paxe, she'd allowed a little hope to edge in.
“I was going to. Now I've met you, I'm not sure.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Be sure.”
“I want to do something after hearing that. Maybe . . . laugh?”
“I'm so glad I'm amusing. But while you chuckle quietly to yourself, why don't you tell me why you went to so much trouble to get me and the others on this ship if you planned to kill us?” So much just didn't make sense, from her capture onward. She didn't think it was because she was a less developed being, Earth's technological development didn't have anything to do with it, it was because she didn't have all the information.
“I had the Krik looking for you, out of . . . curiosity, you might say. I'd heard you could help me, but I didn't think that was true, and I wanted to see you for myself.”
“Heard from who? You wanted to see me and when you'd satisfied your curiosity, you planned on murdering me? Nice, Paxe.”
“It's not like that.” He actually sounded hurt. “The help I'd heard you could give me would also have meant you could kill me. I would never make myself so vulnerable, so I never intended you would help me, but it is wise to understand and know the person who could do you most harm, isn't it?”
“And eliminate them, even when they don't even know you? Aren't looking for trouble?” She couldn't help the wobble in her voice.
“I was taking the long term view. What if later you did decide to look for trouble?”
She stopped again. “You must usually be invincible, Paxe, to be so threatened at one supposed chink in your armor. And I use the word supposed very deliberately. I think the whole idea of me being some kind of threat to you is bullshit. But me? I could have been killed by everyone around me on my planet. Even people who would seem less of a physical threat; a child could accidentally kill me with a gun, or a little old lady could run me over in a car. I'd have to kill every single person I came into contact with if I took your attitude.”
Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3) Page 9