Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2)

by Michelle Diener

  Gerwa tried to sneer at him, but the gesture fell flat when he swallowed convulsively.

  Hal tore his gaze from the Krik and then turned.

  They started jogging toward the stairs.

  “You got that device from them on the Fasbe?” Hal's voice was suspiciously neutral.

  “I did.” She couldn't help but smile again. “It's been the gift that keeps on giving.”

  Hal turned to look at her, eyes wide with surprise, and she shrugged.

  “If I'd told you I had it when I was on the Illium, I bet you someone would have taken it from me to have a look, and we wouldn't have just escaped the Tecran.”

  He was about to respond when Eazi interrupted.

  “There's someone down in the sub-station, guarding the tunnel. But it's still the better way out.”

  She whispered the news to Hal and he stopped at the top of the stairs. “Do you still have the reflector?”

  She lifted her arm to show him and he gave a relieved nod.

  “Take the bird, it's stopped struggling. I need my hands free.” He held it out to her and she carefully opened both hands and grasped hold of it.

  “Okay, but I'm keeping close. Let me stand in front of you if someone shoots.”

  He gave a reluctant nod and then led the way down the stairs. Fee didn't know how he moved so fast and made so little noise. She had to creep down in order not to clump.

  Hal waited for her at the bottom, crouched low, trying to see what lay beyond the stairwell.

  They'd only come through here maybe four or five hours earlier, but to Fee, if felt as if days had passed.

  Someone moved. She could hear the shuffle of fabric and the creak of boots.

  “Are you able to interfere with audio comms?” she whispered to Eazi. “So this guy can't call for help when he sees us coming?”

  “Oh . . . done.” Eazi whispered back.

  The guard shifted again.

  Hal looked like he was wiggling a small rock loose from the bare earthen wall they were crouched against, and when he finally got it free, he threw it just in front of them.

  Good idea. Let the guard come to them.

  He did.

  His walk was cautious; stopping, moving forward again, as if he were looking nervously around, trying to see past the pumps and monitors before he committed himself.

  As hopefully everyone still thought she, Hal and the Krik were safely locked up, she guessed it was the grahudi that had them so spooked.

  “Commander Dai just hailed the facility.” Eazi's voice was like a soft sigh in her ear. “It appears he's been out with a hand-picked squad to check where the Krik came from. They've found the emergency pod and are returning to base. As soon as he gets in, he wants to talk to the prisoners, and they're going to find you are gone.”

  As the guard was too close for her to reply without being heard, Fee did not respond, except to hover a thumbs up near the lens on her shirt, so he understood she'd got it.

  The guard stopped in front of the small rock, incongruously lying in the middle of the floor, and looked slowly up at the ceiling, which was solid metal, crisscrossed with thin blue wire and the occasional light. His shoulders slumped in relief when he didn't find a grahudi looking back down at him.

  Hal moved, leaping from their hiding place, smashing the guard to the floor. The Tecran screeched as he went down, the noise causing the macaw to struggle in her hands.

  It was big and much stronger than she'd thought, and she battled to keep hold of it without hurting it.

  She moved forward, dancing around the tangle of legs as Hal hammered a punch to the guard's face.

  She kicked his shockgun away from him, and Hal flipped him on his stomach and then pulled the restraints from the back of the soldier's pants and secured him.

  Hal was breathing hard, but there was a satisfaction on his face she guessed came from being shot twice and locked up, and now finally having a chance to fight back.

  “Eazi says the commander's on his way to interrogate us.” Fee waited for Hal to scoop up the guard's shockgun.

  He checked the charge, changed it, and shot the moaning guard in what seemed like one easy move.

  The Tecran slumped into unconsciousness.

  “You okay to run?” Hal asked her. “Run fast?”

  She nodded, thinking that was her line, given she'd gotten out of this incursion without a scratch.

  Hal let her take the lead. He was watching her back, she realized, and making sure he didn't leave her behind. His legs being so much longer than hers.

  The tunnel was steeper than she remembered, but now, of course, she was going uphill, rather than down.

  The wind from outside blew grit into her eyes and seemed to be trying to push her back.

  She didn't dare stop to catch her breath or even slow down. Hal's presence at her back, the knowledge that he was reining himself in to match her stride, was a spur to her, making her push herself harder than she thought she was capable of.

  By the time they burst out of the tunnel, she was struggling to breathe and her throat and eyes felt as if they'd been painted with grit.

  “They just realized you're gone,” Eazi told her. “They aren't happy.” He paused. “Commander Dai's demanding to look at the lens feed, which I promptly hid away, but that lieutenant from earlier told him who you were and what you were wearing. He's guessed you came from the Class 5.”

  “What is it?” Hal asked her, and Fee realized she'd been getting slower and slower as she communicated with Eazi.

  “They know we're gone, and they know at least I came from the Class 5.”

  Hal was leading the way, now, up behind the facility, keeping below the horizon as they picked their way around rocks and sand dunes toward the drone.

  “So what are they going to do now?”

  Fee tried to suck in enough air to run and talk as she listened to Eazi. “Eazi's lost visuals on Dai because he's left the storage room, but he can hear him coordinating various teams to guard the exits.”

  “If he's worked out you're from the Class 5, he's got to be pretty close to hitting that button.” Hal didn't even sound winded.

  “I have a solution.” Eazi's voice, for the last few hours so similar to her own cadence, so much friendlier, was suddenly back to Mr. Roboto mode.

  “What have you got planned?” Her voice must have given away her sudden fear, because Hal looked back at her, face set in grim lines.

  Behind them, a strange noise rose up, and Fee stumbled to a stop, turned to look. “What is that?”

  “The dome is opening.” Hal pulled her closer to the rock that loomed over them, blocking any view of the facility.

  The roar of a runner's engine filled the air, and Fee looked up to see it head straight upward.

  “They aren't coming to look for us?”

  “I think they're going to check on the Class 5. Be sure of what's going on before they blow it up.” Hal's voice was tense.

  “I think the captain is right,” Eazi said. “I have no choice but to strike first.”

  “What are you going to do?” Fee asked him.

  “I'm going to obliterate the facility before that runner gets here. Hopefully, that will destroy the kill switch at the same time.”

  Hal looked at her, cocked an eyebrow.

  “He's going to fire on the facility.” There was an implacability about the way he had spoken. “Eazi, at least warn them so they can get out.”

  “No. They'll be even more likely to hit the button, then. If they know I'm in the facility's systems, they may not wait for the runner to confirm I'm no longer theirs.”

  He was right. She closed her eyes and struggled with the idea that the Krik, the Tecran, whatever animals were left in the storage room, were all dead.

  Hal seemed to be taking it a lot more philosophically. He was looking toward the facility thoughtfully. “I'd have preferred to have brought Battle Center down on the Tecran for this, and that'll be harder if it's a smolde
ring ruin, but I agree. It's the best move Eazi can make.”

  Fee clasped the macaw closer to her chest. Thank goodness she hadn't decided to go back for it later.

  “I would suggest you keep moving as fast as you can,” Eazi told her.

  Almost as if he'd heard him, Hal grabbed her hand and started jogging toward the drone again.

  They had just reached the drone, running fast down the slope toward it, when she saw a flash of pale red light and skidded to a halt, struggling to keep her balance on the loose sand with her hands full of parrot.

  Behind them, the facility turned into a massive pillar of flame, and a low, flat boom caused the drone to vibrate in the sand.

  Fee stared at it, mesmerized, when from above; high, high in the heavens, a second, gargantuan explosion followed.

  The sound was indescribable. It rolled like the shout of Thor across the sky, so deep and big, she felt it in her bones.

  Fee lifted her face heavenward, saw long, fiery trails of flame. “What's happened, Eazi?” She could only whisper.

  She saw Hal's face, felt her heart stutter. “Eazi?”

  There was no answer.

  34

  There had to be an answer. Eazi was sitting around her damn neck.

  Fee curled her fingers around the crystal and tugged at him, as if that would somehow draw a response.

  He had the runner he was using to watch them from the skies to talk through, as well as the drone, and the runner he was using to keep Cy prisoner.

  He could answer.

  It seemed he didn't want to.

  Bits of what had to be the Class 5 were falling from the skies, burning up as they entered, but the ship had been hovering just within the atmosphere, not out in space, and some of them were coming down in the desert, slamming into the ground with loud rumbles of impact.

  Hal's hand was on her shoulder, rubbing. She held out the macaw for him to take, and then flexed her tired hands to get the sensation back into them. They were shaking.

  “You think the kill switch activated even though the facility was gone? How is that possible?”

  “It may be . . .” Hal paused, looking up with narrowed eyes as more debris fell some distance to the east of them, “that the switch was on that runner, not in the facility. As soon as Eazi moved out of the cloud and shot, they'd have known he was no longer on their side.” The macaw started struggling again and bit his wrist. With a grunt, he hugged it to his chest with one big hand, stepped into the drone, and then stepped out with both hands free.

  Fee was too shaken to ask him what he'd done with it.

  He slid his arms around her, pulled her close and she leaned into him. “He's not dead.” She didn't know if she was trying to convince Hal or herself. “He didn't need the Class 5 to survive. But it must be a shock. Like losing most of your body.”

  Hal said nothing, and she simply let herself rest for a moment, quiet and safe. There was a buzzing noise, she realized. It sounded like it was far away, but coming closer.

  Hal tensed in her arms, tipped his head upward, and suddenly the buzz became the scream of an engine in trouble.

  Above them, a runner tumbled out of the sky, locked in a crazy spiral, with smoke and flames pouring from the side.

  “Eazi's runner, or Dai's?” Fee asked.

  Hal shrugged, his full attention on the falling ship. “I can't guess where it'll land, it's so erratic. We could take cover, and it's just as likely it'll land on top of us as not.”

  “Eazi, is that you or Dai?” No answer. If it was Eazi's runner, it would explain his refusal to answer.

  There was sudden silence, and the runner dropped without a sound for two long seconds before the engine caught again, whined in protest, and then with the high-pitched sound of metal buckling against rock, the vessel slammed into the side of the hill opposite them and then slid down, rolling over slowly as it went.

  When it finally came to a stop, right side up, the crackle of fire and the stink of burning ship enveloped them, along with a wave of heat.

  “Could anyone have survived that?” Even if it was Eazi's runner, she reminded herself, he didn't need it, any more than he needed the Class 5, but it would be one more blow.

  Hal nodded. “I hope so. We may not have a standing facility to show Battle Center, or the Class 5, but getting our hands on Commander Dai will be a good way to salvage that.” His full attention was on the runner, the shockgun he'd taken off the Tecran guard ready to fire.

  If Hal was right, Dai had blown up the Class 5 without knowing how many of his colleagues onboard were still alive. The fact that none had been was beside the point.

  And Dai, as one of Flato's commanders, had known that Eazi was an advanced sentient.

  “I hope the bastard is alive,” she whispered to Eazi. “Death's too easy for him. He'll be tried for everything he's done and spend a miserable life in prison.”

  Nothing but silence.

  She didn't let that daunt her. He'd come round. It was as if he'd taken a massive hit from a shockgun. He would be numb, maybe unconscious. And like any coma patient, she intended to let him hear her voice.

  “If they don't get out soon, it's going to be too late for them.” Hal started walking cautiously forward.

  He'd barely finished speaking when the door started to open.

  It was damaged, and Fee moved forward as well, trying to see inside it.

  Hal had moved his approach to a sidelong angle. He gestured to her to move back; at least, she thought that's what his hand gesture meant. The Tecran had taken his earpiece, so there was no way to talk to each other at a distance anymore.

  “Fiona, get behind the drone,” he shouted as a soldier dived out of the partially open door, rolled and then shot.

  At her.

  Fee stood, frozen in surprise, as the shot hit her blue shield and bounced back.

  The soldier collapsed as it ricocheted, but two others had already come out behind him. Hal shot one, the other shot at Fee, and she watched while he, too, went down.

  Hal turned to look at her, and she had the feeling he was too angry to talk.

  She lifted her hands in placation. “I didn't know what you were doing with the hand signals,” she called. “Next time, you'll have to let me know beforehand.” She studied the downed men.

  They looked the worst for wear. Their uniforms were smoke-blackened, their faces bruised and cut. But it was a big runner, and she was sure it could take more than three crew. So chances were there were others inside.

  “Fiona.” Hal pointed at the drone.

  Obviously, Hal thought the same.

  She shrugged. “It's not like I'm in any danger. Quite the opposite.” She tipped her head at the soldiers to prove her point. They looked dead, she thought, suddenly sick. They'd meant to kill her, not just knock her out.

  “Is your one dead?”

  Hal shook his head. “Commander Dai, come out before you are burned alive in your vessel.” He used Garmman.

  Huh. Hal must know which rank of soldier wore which uniform, and that none of these bodies were the commander. Looked like Dai had sent his crew out to clear the ground while he sat nice and safe in the runner.

  She looked at the spreading fire. Well, safer.

  She saw boots, and then someone rolled out, just like the soldiers before him.

  Hal dropped to a crouch, and Dai's shot went over his head. He was already committed to shooting her next so he did, but unlike his subordinates, he threw himself to one side as soon as he'd taken the shot, and the ricochet missed him.

  He climbed to his feet, Hal rose to his, and they all stared at each other in silence. The wind, pulled toward Kyber's Arm, which still wobbled and swayed in the distance, sang and moaned between the rocks.

  From the drone, Fee could hear the macaw muttering quietly to itself.

  It was just one more bizarre note to the already extremely bizarre.

  All they needed now was a tumbleweed to roll past. Fee wondered if the
macaw knew how to whistle the theme tune to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Maybe she was more shocky than she realized, because she found herself humming it.

  Both Hal and Dai turned their attention to her.

  The Tecran commander was stocky, and he looked ruffled. There was a rip in his uniform at the shoulder and it was bleeding. She blinked to see it wasn't red like hers, more a pale pink.

  “Drop the shockgun and I'll take you to Larga Ways for a fair trial,” Hal said to him.

  Dai jerked at the words.

  Oh noes. Just realized he'd be facing the music all on his lonesome, Fee thought.

  “Don't worry, Commander,” she said. “I'm sure they'll understand why you abducted me, were hiding out on a planet you had no right to be on, blew up one of your own ships, a sentient being, with at least one hundred of your colleagues onboard, a ship that was in a territory it had no right to be in, and then ordered three of your men to shoot us to kill.” She gave him a sunny smile.

  Hal shot her a look that told her she was not helping, but she didn't think she was saying anything Dai didn't already know. And it felt good to rub it in.

  He was staring at her with open astonishment. “How do you know all that? And how are you speaking Garmman?”

  “I learned it. Grih, too. I never did care for Tecran.” She gave him another sunny smile. “The rest is obvious from everything I've observed in the last few days.”

  “They said you were an advanced sentient, but I didn't know . . .”

  “That I was quite so high-functioning? Don't worry, the captain of the Fasbe found that out to his detriment, too.” She crossed her arms. “Tell me, Commander, just what would have happened to me when I got to this facility? And more to the point, what happened to Imogen Peters?”

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “The Earth woman you were holding in that storage room of horrors.”

  He lifted his shoulders, and Fee had the unpleasant feeling he was being honest.

  “There was no-one there when we arrived just over a week ago. If they had another woman there, she had been taken away before we got here.”