Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3)

by Michelle Diener

  The tension that gripped Toloco and some of his team ratcheted up another few notches.

  She would have liked to simply enjoy their fear and discomfort, but she had a sinking feeling that whatever made these violent maniacs scared was something truly terrifying.

  And they were taking her to it.

  The screen went black as they got in close and then she saw a faint glow of pale blue wall. They headed straight for it at a slow, easy pace and then hit it head on.

  Imogen braced, clamping her jaw to stop from crying out.

  There was a slight hum and a minuscule shudder ran through the ship. The engines switched off, and there was a sudden silence.

  Toloco stood and looked across at her.

  “What was that?” she asked him, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “What was what?” He frowned.

  “That blue wall we went through.”

  “The gel wall?” He cocked his head, as if trying to work out if she was being serious.

  She had the feeling she'd done the equivalent of pointing to a car and asking what it was.

  Toloco looked at her more carefully. “I thought you were some funny kind of Grih, but you're not, are you?”

  Funny kind of Grih?

  She didn't know if agreeing would be better for her or worse, so she said nothing.

  The ramp had opened while they were talking, and Toloco took a breath. “Time to go.” He hesitated for a moment, as if he was going to ask her something, but then he took hold of her shoulder and propelled her toward the open door.

  They had landed inside a massive space that was at least partly a loading bay. To her left was the blue wall, the gel wall, Toloco called it, and a small ship, a tenth of the size of the Krik vessel she'd arrived on, came through it while she watched.

  She guessed it must be a barrier to keep the ship's air in and still let vessels in and out without having the bother of an air lock system.

  Toloco had been talking in low tones to another Krik who'd been waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp but she realized they were quiet now, and she turned from the gel wall to find them both staring at her.

  “You will go with Gau.” Toloco waved a hand at his companion.

  Gau shook his head and then said something sharp to Toloco. He pointed up at a lens attached to the wall, and then at Imogen's face.

  Toloco hunched his shoulders, then straightened up. Answered back, just as sharply.

  Gau shrugged, then looked at her. “Come.” He spoke Grih, not Tecran, and she wondered at the switch.

  He walked a few steps, turned and jerked his head impatiently.

  Imogen took a last look at Toloco, but he refused to meet her gaze.

  The Krik pirate thought he would be in trouble for hurting her, that was obvious, and now she had the sense he was setting something up to try and get out of it.

  As she followed Gau out of the launch bay, she hoped whatever Toloco had decided to do to save his ass wasn't going to hurt as much as it had the first time.

  Chapter 5

  The Vanad and his friends were trouble.

  Every instinct Cam had honed over years as an investigator hummed as he eyed the mercenary and his crew.

  Massive, like all of his kind, and dressed in what looked like high tech camouflage, the Vanad leaned against the wall of the holding area, almost invisible within the shadows, and watched the other occupants of the room. Standing with him was a Grihan and two Krik——the four clearly a tight-knit team.

  And if Cam were to guess, smugglers or pirates.

  Beside him, Pren shifted. She'd picked up on it, too.

  They'd wondered why the Krik had captured them. Cam had been sure it was to do with their mission, but the moment they'd been shoved into this holding area deep inside the Class 5, that theory had changed.

  The prisoners they were now sharing space with were a mixed group, the cross-section he would expect to find in the spaceways in this section of Grihan territory, so close to the Garmman border.

  It was looking increasingly as if they had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, one of many rounded up and dumped into the hold.

  There were groups of Garmman and Grihan traders, Grihan mining teams, the Vanad and his crew, and two Fitalians who stood together, placing themselves slightly apart from the rest of the crowd.

  Cam had organized his own group so the flight crew and his team stood behind himself and Pren. Yari was conscious again, but she needed to sit, and they ranged themselves along the right-hand wall so she could lean against it, surrounded by her team.

  He and Pren would protect the others as best they could, although the Vanad's crew were the only real threat.

  The traders and miners looked capable enough, but they were subdued, and many were injured. They also had no reason to cause trouble.

  “You want to ask those Fitalians if they'd like to join us?” Cam asked Olan, and the elderly scientist looked up from his thin, intertwined fingers with a jerk.

  It was always hard to judge emotion on the Fitalians' faces. Their skin was far more rigid than the other members of the United Council and their eyes were huge and completely black, but Cam realized Olan hadn't even registered that some of his fellow citizens were in the room.

  Cam stepped aside to give Olan a clear view. “You recognize them?”

  “I . . . no.” Olan glanced up at him. “But they are very far from home.”

  Cam looked over at the two Fitalians. The moment they noticed Olan and himself watching them, they stared back for a beat and then pretended interest elsewhere.

  Olan fluttered his hands. “I'll go talk to them.”

  “They look like military.” Pren's words were soft, and Cam gave a nod as the Fitali turned toward Olan. One of them flicked a glance over Olan's shoulder at Cam, and then focused back on the elderly scientist.

  Olan began a conversation in the clicks and whirrs of Fitali, a language that Cam had never learned, and they seemed to relax. Cam could see them mentally shift from combat-ready to alert.

  Olan returned to the group with the Fitali trailing behind him.

  “This is Haru and Chep.” Olan waved his hand in their direction and they bowed at the sound of their names. “They only speak Fitalian but they are most grateful for the invitation to join us. They were relieved to find we are envoys of the United Council.”

  Cam nodded in welcome, and the two nodded back. Haru looked at him a moment longer than was polite, and Cam had no problem doing the same.

  “What are they doing out here in Grihan airspace?” he asked Olan.

  Olan's look was bland. The crafty old man was nobody's fool. “They say they're tourists. Headed for Larga Ways. Just like us.”

  Cam nodded again. Pren caught his eye, disbelief in her own, and he gave a minute shake of his head.

  If they were tourists, which he doubted, they were taking a break from their duties in the military, or a job that required military training. And while the way station orbiting the planet Balco was considered a sight to behold, Larga Ways was hardly on a sight-seeing route.

  But why they were here could be sorted out later. He would rather have them in his camp than outside it.

  He let his gaze sweep the room, noticed the Vanad was watching him, had probably noted the way they'd assimilated the Fitali. Then the mercenary's attention went to the door, and Cam followed his gaze.

  The Krik pushed a new prisoner into the room.

  She stumbled in a step, and then gasped audibly as she took in the holding area.

  She looked back over her shoulder, but the door was already closing and she slowly turned to face them all.

  She had been struck in the face. Her eye was swollen and there was a lump on her cheek that was turning dark.

  But while he noted that and felt a frisson of shock and anger, it was what she was that riveted him.

  She was short in comparison to the Grih, her hair a strange color between gold and light brown,
her eyes as blue as any Grih's but without the dark outer rim. Her hair was pulled back from her face, tied at the nape, exposing delicate, round ears.

  The hold had gone absolutely silent. It had gone quiet when he and his team had been forced in, too, but this was different.

  She was something unknown.

  Her gaze swept the room and stopped at him. They stared at each other for a long beat. He saw shock in her eyes as she looked him over. Shock and relief.

  His focus was so fully on her, he nearly missed the quick, furtive movement to his right. He turned his head to look just as the Vanad launched himself forward, aiming straight for their new arrival.

  Things had taken such an unexpected turn, Imogen felt like Alice down the rabbit hole.

  It was a very merry un-birthday to her.

  The instant sense of recognition of the hold had hit her first. She didn't remember anything else about the vessel she'd been abducted in, but she remembered where she'd been kept. And this was either the same place, or one just like it.

  When she'd been taken, though, she'd been the only person there, with Cleese and a number of other macaws and animals from Earth as her companions, each in a cell with thin, transparent walls. The hold she stood in now didn't have the walls, it was just one big space, but the sense of recognition was profound.

  And this time she was no longer alone.

  The place was full of people, all alien to her except for two Krik lounging against the far wall, reminding her of hard-eyed gangsters protecting their turf.

  They were all silent as they stared at her, and her fear and distress ramped up, until she made eye contact with a huge guy to her right.

  He was taller than her by at least a foot, broad-shouldered and in some kind of uniform. But when she managed to really see him, to focus beyond her fear and anxiety, she felt as if the rabbit hole had taken another sharp turn.

  Because he looked human.

  She took a moment to savor the thought, to feel the rush of relief that she wasn't completely alone, until the details caught up with her.

  He wasn't human.

  But he was so like her it seemed even more amazing.

  His hair was dark brown, tipped with dark blond. It was short and stood straight up on his head, so he looked like a rebel rock star from the 80s. Billy Idol without the snarl.

  But it was the ears that tripped her up.

  They shouldn't, not after the Tecran, with their hawk-like eyes and beaky mouths, and the Krik with their long fangs and peach skin, but they did. Because they were elf ears.

  She was jolted by the reminder that there were wonders to her situation, as well as nightmares. That there had been moments since she'd been taken where she was conscious of beauty or some amazing technology or sight that had held her spellbound.

  It wasn't all bad.

  Until, suddenly, it was.

  Someone huge, bigger than the warrior elf in front of her, hurled himself at her from the left, and for a second she tried to work out how she hadn't seen him before. He was bald and immense, his features coarse and his skin oddly thickened. A sort of rock man, like a rough clay figurine.

  She stumbled back, knowing there was nowhere to go, and bent her knees, ready to use the only trick she had up her sleeve. As he lunged at her, she jumped, angling slightly to his right as she turned a tight somersault. When she'd been held in a place like this before, she'd discovered that there was slightly less gravity here than on Earth and had spent hours amusing herself by playing gymnast.

  She slammed into something——someone——mid-turn, and fell. Saw boots and long legs above her. She scrambled to her knees in time to see the elf and the rock man clash with a grunt of effort.

  The rock man was bigger and more muscular, but the elf had obviously been better trained.

  Someone grabbed her under the arms and hauled her back, and she twisted in their grasp as she turned her head to see who it was.

  It was another elf, a woman, and she gave Imogen a shake. “I'm trying to get you to safety.”

  She spoke Grihan, and Imogen blinked. Remembered Toloco telling her he thought she was a funny kind of Grih. If the elves were the Grih, then Toloco had probably seen her as deficient in the ear and height departments, but otherwise close enough.

  She stopped fighting, got her feet under her, and pushed herself up, her gaze never leaving the fight.

  The elf——the Grihan——landed a hard, fast blow to the rock man's torso and moved back, breathing hard. “You've got her, Pren?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.” The Grihan woman who'd pulled her to safety got a firm grip on Imogen's shoulder, her voice as sharp and choppy as her boss's.

  Imogen looked up at her, trying to gauge if she was being held prisoner or rescued.

  Pren seemed to understand, because she lifted her hand, palm up. She was flanked by two strange, almost insectile people who had moved forward while Imogen had been getting up from the floor.

  They were utterly quiet and something about the way they held themselves told her they were ready to fight.

  The big Grihan retreated a little more, his focus never wavering from her attacker. “What can you possibly want with a hostage in here?”

  The rock man straightened from the blow, hands fisted at his sides. “If you don't know, give her back.”

  For the first time, Imogen noticed three others had joined the rock man, ranged in a defensive pose at his back. The two Krik she'd noticed earlier and another Grihan.

  “As if we'd give up a music-maker.” The Grihan who rescued her scoffed, widening his stance.

  His answer caught the rock man off guard. Imogen could see his confusion, but his Grihan teammate obviously understood. His eyes narrowed.

  “She's no Grihan music-maker.”

  There was a murmur through the hold, and Imogen noticed just over two thirds of the prisoners were Grihan, the other third were a race that was slightly shorter and stockier, with bulging foreheads and deep chests.

  “I think you'll find she is, and that there isn't a Grih here who would let harm come to her.” He looked back at her, and she saw he'd taken a blow to the face, much like she had, and his lip was bleeding.

  The look he sent her asked her to play along, but she had no idea what he wanted her to do. As it happened, she was a music maker as far as it went. A junior school music teacher who played three instruments, but given he couldn't know that, he must mean something else.

  “Do you understand what we're saying?” Pren, the woman who'd dragged her out of the danger zone, spoke quietly in her ear. “Do you speak Grihan?”

  “Yes, but I have no idea what you want me to do.” Her response was soft, but the Grihan who'd thrown himself into a fight for her relaxed, so she guessed he'd heard her.

  “Sing,” he ordered her.

  Sing? If she knew all the words to a Very Merry Un-birthday she'd sing that, but she was still scrambling to work out what was going on.

  He angled his body to catch her gaze. “You need to sing.”

  It was an order, not a request, and she felt her hackles rise.

  She wasn't a performing monkey, although she knew she'd filled that role more than once on Balco. To swallow her pride and play the clever pet again burned all the way down to her gut.

  The crowd in the hold was murmuring now, agitated, and the Grihan frowned at her.

  “Sing!”

  She shot him a look she hoped cut him to the bone and drew herself up.

  The line between reality and fantasy had blurred several months ago, as far as she was concerned, and so she went with Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, that most mangled of songs in karaoke bars around the world.

  It had the benefit of being operatic in parts, and she wanted to give maximum value here. Wouldn't want to disappoint.

  She launched into it, glad she'd been singing almost as much as she'd been exercising since she'd been taken. It had been both a comfort and a way to cope and her voice had never been better, alt
hough she wasn't going to win a reality TV talent show any time soon.

  She held the big Grih's gaze as she sang, ignoring everyone else around her. Her resentment at being ordered to do this changed to surprise as she saw him jolt as she began, and then go very still, his eyes wide. She'd almost say he was enraptured, but it was her singing, not Enya. It didn't make sense.

  She left out the middle verses, begging to be let go——it sounded awful without a couple of people carrying their various parts——and segued into the final, bittersweet verse.

  As the last note faded, absolute silence settled on the crowd like a blanket of fresh powder snow.

  At last, her big Grih stirred to life. “Who will help us protect this music-maker?” He spoke quietly, not needing to raise his voice.

  She didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't the wave of Grih stepping forward to join them, settling themselves in a crowd between her and her attacker.

  Every single Grihan came, she realized, until the only people left on the other side of the hold were the rock man and his three companions and the high-browed, thick-chested aliens.

  “That was inspired.”

  Imogen turned. The woman who'd murmured the words, not to her but to the big Grihan, was about the same height as herself, with a beautiful dusky gold skin tone. She moved slender hands in Imogen's direction and Imogen saw a thumb and three fingers on each. When she noticed Imogen looking at her, she smiled, and Imogen had to force herself not to flinch.

  Her teeth were small but tapered to a sharp point at the ends.

  She watched Imogen out of dark brown eyes, which, like the tall, insect-like soldiers that had taken up a defensive position next to the captain and Pren earlier, had no white around them.

  There were five others with her behind the protective barricade, a mix of the races that were spread through the hold, so whatever was going on here, it wasn't along racial lines.

  Most of the Grih who'd joined them jostled to catch a glimpse of her and she found she didn't have the capacity for her usual blank expression, she knew her astonishment at their behavior must be plain on her face.