It was one of the smaller boxes, and she lifted it out and set it down on the floor and crouched beside it. She lifted the lid to find a slim black pen. “The pen is mightier than the sword?” she asked, with a grin.
The cylinder tilted, making her one hundred percent sure now that Bane was in there, because the reaction reminded her of herself, and she'd been noting him mimicking her speech for a while now. Why not her physical tics, as well?
“What does that mean?”
“It's a saying from Earth. That writing down ideas for others to read and think about is more dangerous than fighting wars to force others to bow down to you.”
“That is . . . interesting. I'll have to think about it. In some ways, it's why I'm here. Rose McKenzie stopped me using the . . . sword . . . when I was first freed, and now I'm in a position to . . .” He trailed off.
“You were lying before, weren't you? You never intended to leave the Tecran and the UC to fight it out among themselves.”
There was silence, and she knew the lens was focused on her face.
“Yes.”
“You want to destroy them completely.”
“I do.” The cylinder moved a little, as if unable to keep still. “Everything that's happened since I arrived here, from the games they've played with Commander Helvan to that soldier about to shoot you in cold blood, brought it all back to me, how they are.”
“They were cruel to you.” It was a statement.
“They stunted me, lied to me, manipulated me and they did it deliberately. All for their own power and control. They forced Paxe to destroy himself so he wouldn't be chained again and used against us. I can't forgive them for that even more than what they did to me.”
She reached out and patted the side of the cylinder awkwardly. “I'm sorry, Bane. It isn't an easy situation. What do you think you'll do about it?”
He was silent for a moment. “I want to destroy them, but I've slowly worked out what Rose was telling me from the beginning, what you've just said about the pen. I can destroy their reputation, and have them suffer for a lot longer. Destroying them physically is too quick. Even the trial in the United Council headquarters wasn't satisfying enough for me. Because the people representing the Tecran in that forum were the politicians, and I knew most of them didn't know the truth about what was going on with the Class 5s. Some did, but even those who suspected something illegal was going on didn't actually know the truth. They weren't trusted enough. They were told the Class 5 project was too sensitive to give details on, and had no idea they were run by thinking systems. I have to admit most of the Class 5 crew didn't know, either.”
“Why didn't the UC bring the generals to the trial?” She lifted the pen out to have a look at it.
“The captains of the Class 5s were all either killed as a result of our taking control back, or mysteriously died en route to Tecra after being rescued by other Tecran ships, so they had no one to point the finger of blame at. And every general claimed they had no idea what was really going on. They claimed the vice-admiral told them it was classified. Everyone was an innocent dupe.” There was disgust dripping from his voice.
“What happened to the vice-admiral?”
Bane gave a snort. “What do you think?”
“Died mysteriously?”
“Suicide.” If Bane had fingers, he would have made air quotes.
“You don't think those responsible will ever admit their culpability?”
“I know a few of them by name. I was the one arranging comms between my captain and Tecran HQ, after all. But the captain destroyed each conversation after it happened as a matter of protocol, and until Rose saved me, I couldn't do anything about it.”
“So you know, but you don't have proof.” That was tough. She turned the pen over in her hand, realizing pretty quickly it wasn't a pen. Or not one she'd seen before. She slid a finger down one side, then the other, looking for a button or slide, and it suddenly jumped in her hand, so she instinctively closed her fist around it. The top seemed to twirl in a cone shape and then she felt the faint jerk as something exploded from the tip.
She blinked, trying to work out what had flown out, when suddenly, thin cords shot out the bottom and encased her hand, and she was yanked off her feet, flying through the air at an upward angle toward the corner of the ceiling at the end of the corridor.
Her shoulder was almost jerked out of its socket, and she found herself dangling two meters off the floor.
She looked up, saw the tip of the pen was attached to a metal plate in the upper corner of the ceiling, and she was hanging from a thin cable that dangled from the tip and ended in the bottom part of the pen.
“Are you all right?” Bane rose up to her eye level.
She lifted her other hand and gripped the cord to help ease the stress on her right arm. “Just very surprised.”
“You can make it lower you to the floor by sliding your finger down the side of the cylinder again.”
She did it, and found her descent was smooth and slow.
“That was unexpected.”
She stood for a moment on solid ground, and then started to laugh.
It was a little wild, a little out of control, but when she finally managed to rein it in and wipe her eyes, she felt better. Lighter.
“I didn't realize you'd figured out how it worked,” Bane said. “I was going to tell you what to do and then got distracted when we started talking about the Tecran.”
“No harm done.” She struggled to stop herself from laughing again. “Is that a super strong magnet on the end?”
“Yes, but it's only deployed by activating the sensor on the side. It looks for the nearest metal surface and the tip is launched. It's attached to a very lightweight, very strong cable, and as soon as the magnet is locked in place, it pulls whoever is holding the remaining part of the cylinder toward it.”
“How do you detach it?” She guessed she had to activate the sensor again and did it before he answered. She was right. The tip detached and retracted and the cords around her fist snaked back and away so she was simply holding a slim tiny cylinder again.
“Sweet.” She slid it into one of the pockets built into the snug, fitted pants of her outfit.
“There is something else.” Bane flew back to the storage cupboard. “Well, there are lots of other things, but I think most would take some practice to use, and we don't have time. But the weapon in this box could be useful.” He nudged the box he meant.
It was much bigger than the pen box and Lucy pulled off the lid without lifting it off its shelf.
She frowned at what was inside. “I don't know what I'm looking at.” She lifted out a strange piece of wire with what looked like large hexagonal beads strung along it. The beads were flat and looked like they were made of glazed and baked clay, and that they'd been baked around the wire, rather than threaded onto it.
“It took a long time to work out what it was,” Bane said. “It's not really a weapon, but it is dangerous to the Tecran. If you pull a bead off and throw it down hard onto a surface, it sticks, and nothing will get it off. It takes a few seconds after it attaches, and then the chemicals in it react, creating a cone of bright white light. I think it was used by the people the Tecran stole it from as an easy way to light the tunnels they mine deep in the core of their planet. The light lasts at least three hours.”
“Is it because the Tecran don't like bright light?” Lucy asked.
“Yes. In a confined space, this will debilitate them. And if you wear it as a necklace, no one will notice it.”
“You think they're going to try to grab me, don't you?”
Bane rested down on top of a box as she looped the wire around her neck and tied a knot in it to secure it.
“They're desperate. And they've got nothing to lose. I don't think Commander Helvan will make it easy for them, but he's one person, they're a team.”
“Lucy?”
She turned as Dray stepped around a corner and headed her way.<
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“What's this?” He looked into the recessed storage with curiosity.
“Just something Bane wanted to show me. He gave me this.” She patted the necklace and put the lid back on the box, moving the cylinder Bane was in out of the way as if it were just another container in the cupboard. If Bane wanted Dray to know he was in there, he wouldn't have stopped floating and pretended to be part of the furniture.
Dray looked at the necklace. “It's nice.”
She grinned. “It doubles as a nasty bright white light if you know how to use it.” She turned away from the cupboard, and the panels closed behind her.
Dray paid closer attention. “That's clever of him. It won't kill them, but it'll put them out of action.” He patted the shockgun in a holster strapped around his thigh.
“Found something nice?” she asked.
He looked serious. “It's the most powerful shockgun I've ever seen. Good to have if things go wrong.”
“Do you think things will go wrong?”
He nodded. “I don't intend for things to go wrong, but it's chaotic down there. I spoke to my second-in-command, and she says tensions are high, and no one knows exactly what's going on. Rumors are flying. When I told her what the military teams are doing, it confirmed for her and the other military heads what they already suspected. That someone is deliberately stirring up trouble. Just when they get an area calmed down, the trouble flares up somewhere else. They are constantly playing catch-up.”
“What are you going to do?” She knew he had to go down, and she had to go down with him. Nothing but her appearance in the flesh would have the impact they needed. To stop people in their tracks and make them listen. To put a brake on the craziness.
“I need a meeting with Filivantri Dimitara, the head of the UC delegation, the heads of the Tecran government, and the head of the Tecran military. I'll need you with me. We'll tell our story, and Bane can transmit it to the screens in the square. Total transparency to the people of Fa'allen.” He pulled something out of his pocket and she saw it was a tiny lens. “Bane has top of the line equipment.”
He stepped closer, slid his fingers under the neck of her tunic.
She lifted her gaze, caught his. And her breath hitched.
Stuttered out.
A frisson ran down her arms, and she didn't suppress the shiver that ran down her spine.
“I want to eat you up.” His rough voice was thick, and his fingers shook as they dipped beneath her neckline and his other hand came up to press the lens between her breasts.
He bent his head, until his forehead rested against hers. “I don't want you to come down to Fa'allen with me. I want you to stay here, where it's safe.”
“You think they're only after me, but they're also after you.” She turned her head and lifted her face slightly, to rub her cheek against his. The roughness of his skin against the smoothness of hers was a delicious scrape against her senses.
“I'm a trained military officer, and it's my job to deal with the Tecran. You're . . .”
He trailed off, and nuzzled at her ear.
“I'm?”
“Too many things to name. All of them precious.”
Her heart squeezed tight into a painful ball, and then expanded, bigger than it had been in a long time.
“I'm safe up here, but no one else will be. We all know my being down there will cool things off. Shock everyone into taking stock and reevaluating.”
He gave a reluctant nod.
“Then I have to go. I don't care much for the Tecran and whether they get hurt, but I did meet a young teenager in Fa'allen, and she didn't have any hand in this. There has to be a lot of others like her. Not to mention the UC teams. They're in more danger now because of this unrest. We know the root cause of this is the Tecran military trying to wipe away all evidence of my existence. That will be difficult for them if I'm right there, standing in front of everyone.”
“I know.” He was cradling her head in his big hands, and he tilted her head and leaned in to kiss her. “I still don't like it.”
She kissed him back, gripping him closer to her. She didn't like it either, but she was doing it anyway.
The Tecran tried to hide her, to erase her.
It would be her pleasure to make that impossible.
They landed on the roof of the closest building to military headquarters that had enough flat space to take the drone.
Lucy hummed all the way down in the elevator, and Dray let himself just enjoy the sound.
He noticed she stopped singing or humming the moment he drew attention to what she was doing. He was learning to be sneaky about it.
She drew in a breath and stopped mid-hum when they stepped out onto the street.
It was fully dark, but the sun set early this time of year, and it was still early in the evening. The street should have been busy, but it wasn't. It was empty. Discarded paper and pieces of debris fluttered in the wind.
There had clearly been fighting on this street and the street lights had been switched off or sabotaged.
“What can you see?” Dray asked Bane.
“Things have calmed a little,” Bane said into his earpiece. “There's still a lot going on near the square, but some people are back in their homes. The security forces shut off all street lighting, to force people home.”
“Or to make it easier for the military teams to cause trouble,” Lucy said.
“Maybe, but I thought the security forces were trying to stop the uprising.” Dray knew it was unlikely the military didn't have a few moles in there, though.
“I'm sure they have people in the security forces helping them, but not all will be on the military's side,” Bane said. “It'll be difficult to tell who you can trust.”
“What's the route like to the military headquarters where the rest of my team and Ambassador Dimitara are holed up? Can you see where the trouble spots are?” Dray asked.
Bane hesitated. “It'll be tricky. I'll do what I can, but with fewer people on the street, I have less access to handheld lenses. I can't see everything.”
“Well, we'll start walking toward the square and you can feed us information as we go.”
Before Bane could answer, Lucy pointed right, to the massive statue of Karn flickering in and out of sight as searchlights and other mobile forms of illumination lit it up.
They started walking toward it, and almost immediately Dray noticed a small group of people coming their way.
“Hide or walk?” Lucy asked, tugging the hood of her cloak deeper over her forehead.
“Walk. We need to get to headquarters as soon as possible.” Dray tugged on his own hood, put an arm around her, and pulled her in close. He felt the tension in her.
He tried to think of something to say that would distract her. He wasn't used to trying to calm anyone, wasn't used to wanting to. “I just remembered something.” He bent so his lips were close to her ear. “Did I hear you singing when I was hanging from the cliff?”
She took a deep breath, flicked a look up at him and then focused back on the Tecran coming their way. “Yes. I sang a couple of songs to keep my mind off the long drop down.”
“What did you sing about?” He sized up the Tecran in the group approaching them, and thought they could just as easily be young thugs looking to use the protests as an excuse for a fight as Tecran military.
When she didn't answer right away, he realized how much he wanted to know. The only things the Grih sang about were important occasions, and they were so specific, they couldn't be used again for anything else.
She snuggled in closer, but he could still feel the tension in her as the group approached them. “I sang about how happy I was to see some blue sky, because the fog had lifted.”
“You made the song up on the spot?” He couldn't fathom it.
She shook her head. “No. I'm not the first person to be happy to see the weather clear. There are millions of songs. You can definitely find one to suit every occasion. And more are being
written all the time.”
The group was almost on them, and they both stopped speaking. Even though they could only communicate in Tecran anyway, Dray knew his was heavily accented. Lucy's was much more fluent, but she went silent, as well.
The group was a mix of men and women, five people in total, and he raised a hand in greeting, but didn't call out.
The group had moved a little so that they wouldn't pass too close to each other, and Dray saw that as a good sign. No one wanted any trouble.
“Unless they're new recruits, none of them are with the military,” Bane said quietly in his ear. “I've checked their faces against everyone I've captured through the lenses so far.”
Dray felt the familiar jolt of concern. This was what had happened in the thinking system wars. The thinking systems had found and targeted the leaders of the resistance forces through facial recognition. It had been one of the main reasons most United Council Coalition members had done away with lenses in public places.
Except this time, the strategy was working to help him. And Lucy.
He shrugged it off. There was nothing he could do to stop Bane, anyway. And the thinking system was working with them.
For now, said a voice in his head.
The group passed them.
They had remained as silent as he and Lucy as they'd gone by, but he could hear them murmuring just within earshot, arguing whether he and Lucy were Grihan.
As long as they weren't sure, that worked for him and he and Lucy were already approaching the next intersection.
“Which way?” Lucy whispered.
“Right again,” Bane said. The square is--”
“I can hear it.” The sound rose and fell like the roar of the sea and after a few more steps, a glow of light bloomed out from behind buildings, a beacon in the darkened streets.
“Doesn't sound very calm over there.” Lucy shifted beside him and he dropped his arm from her shoulders, his hand going to his shockgun.
“No.”
With luck they could avoid the square, go through the front of the military headquarters, on the side that opened out to the top of the cliffs.
The buildings they passed were mostly dark, or if there were lights on in some of the apartments, they were behind thick screens, and leaked only the smallest amount of illumination.
Dark Matters (Class 5 Series Book 4) Page 20