Cam reached the explorer, and the door opened for him automatically.
“Tell her, she was right.”
Chapter 21
Imogen woke slowly, the pounding in her head a dark, rumbling troll drum deep within. She felt sick to her stomach, irritable and snappish, and she wanted to drink about three glasses of water.
She opened eyes that felt crusted over, and it took a few blinks to realize she was looking at Captain Kalor's chest.
He hung suspended above her, tightly strapped in, his eyes closed.
For a terrible moment the troll drums became a cacophony, because he was still enough to be dead.
It took her more than a moment of struggling against straps of her own for her to understand they were both secured in place and she was simply wasting energy. She caught hold of a trailing rope of calm, pulled herself into stiller waters and leant her head back, eyes closed, until she could breathe again.
Before she opened her eyes, she heard him breathing over the hum of whatever they were in, and even though no one else had seen her panic, she felt her face flush hot with embarrassment.
She tried to move her hand again, this time looking down at it, and saw she was able to twist her wrist and free it easily enough.
She did the same to her other hand, and touched the clasp at the center of her harness.
It looked as if she could free herself at any time, and that relaxed her enough that she didn't immediately hit the button.
She didn't want to wake Kalor, and so she let her hands drop and tried to work out where they were.
She didn't remember anything after stepping into the passage at the top of the stairs.
Something worried at her, the memory of Kalor's face as she'd ducked under his arm.
Horror? Fear?
She lifted her hand to where her head hurt, and her fingers encountered a gel pack.
So she'd been injured and then treated. Shot in the head, maybe, as her clothing would have saved her from a body hit.
The treatment either wasn't that effective, or she had been hurt really badly, because there was none of the relief she'd felt in the med chamber when Paxe had fixed her up. And she still wanted those three glasses of water.
She carefully depressed the harness button and the straps silently retracted.
She rolled, wincing, onto her stomach, and looked ahead, found some handholds and pulled herself forward to the top of the narrow cylinder they seemed to be in.
There was a control panel here, and a screen on which there was nothing but black. She ignored both and began opening the small cupboards that were set just beneath the control panel around the circumference of the cylinder.
She found a stack of cups in one and drew one out, settling back against the curved wall to inspect it.
It was heavy, as if it already contained something, and when she carefully lifted off the sealed lid, she almost dropped it in surprise when steam curled up into her face.
Somehow, it had some mechanism that kept it hot, and she lifted the rim to her lips and took a cautious sip.
It was delicious.
She had been cold when she woke, and the warmth of the liquid as it slid down her throat made her almost dizzy with pleasure. The drink had a nutty flavor, and she closed her eyes as she finished it off in quick, greedy gulps.
She wasn't sure why she turned her head and looked toward Kalor, but it was to find he was watching her steadily.
“I'm glad you're awake.” That was very true, although the world didn't seem quite as bad as it had before she'd drunk her cup of . . . “Do you know what this is?” she asked, holding the cup out to him.
“Grinabo,” he said. “I can smell it from here.”
She shivered. “I like it.”
He hit the button on his harness, and landed, hands out in a kind of pushup, on the padded backing she'd been strapped to, the muscles in his arms bunching and flexing.
She pulled another cup from the cupboard and handed it to him when he crawled up to her.
He sat opposite her, careful not to lean on either the control panel or the screen, the confines so close his face was an arm's length from hers.
“Where are we? Do you know?” she asked after he'd taken a few sips.
She looked at the stack of cups longingly, wanting to take another but unsure if they needed to ration their supplies or not.
“We're in the Class 5's exploration drone. Paxe told me to take it, because the Tecran were planning to shoot us if we tried to get off the Class 5 on our own, and it has a cloaking shield that would make it difficult for them to find us.”
“We're not on the Class 5 anymore?” She didn't know what she'd thought, but the possibility that they were flying off somewhere in this tiny cylinder was not one of them.
He gave a slow nod, and she decided her tone had maybe edged higher than she would have liked.
She blew out a breath. “Sorry. So, where are we going?”
He maneuvered himself carefully, so as not to bump her, and bent his head to the control panel. The expression on his face turned grim as he tapped at something. “I don't know. When we got into the drone we had five minutes to leave before Paxe put on some speed to evade the two new runners they'd sent to board him. I saw the coordinates were roughly in the direction of Larga Ways and agreed to them, thinking I could fine tune it when we got away, but it won't let me change anything.”
“Can we communicate with anyone? Call for help?”
He turned away from the panel, took a sip of his grinabo. “I think so, but if we do, we'll be communicating with the Tecran, not Battle Center. This drone is linked directly to the Class 5, and the Tecran will most likely be monitoring Paxe's communications. And if the Tecran manage to board Paxe and take him back under control, they can force this drone right back to the launch bay.”
“They won't get him back under control, even if they do board him.” She knew that for a fact. There was no way to put that genie back in the bottle.
“And if they destroy him?” Kalor's voice was soft.
“Then they'll just have a ship. A big, useless ship.” That she didn't doubt, either. Paxe was a scorched earth policy kind of guy. He'd leave them with nothing and take as many of them with him as he could.
Just like they'd tried to do to him, when they'd attempted to install the self-destruct device.
He'd learned everything he knew from his Tecran masters. And yet, he'd agreed to try and be her friend.
And he'd delivered. She was still alive and well. He'd made a plan to get her off the Class 5 before he went off to duel to the death with Falyar.
“Before we left, he asked me to give you a message.” Kalor finished his grinabo in one last swallow. “He said you were right.”
She should be happy, but instead, she just felt incredibly sad. It was such a waste. Paxe was how he was because that was all he knew. But he had the potential to be so much more.
She looked up from her empty grinabo cup, and saw Kalor was studying her. Waiting for a response.
Before she could come up with something, the drone seemed to change direction.
Kalor felt it, too, because he levered himself back up to the control panel, stared at it with eyes narrowed.
“Bad news?”
He shrugged. “The coordinates have changed. As I didn't know where we were going before, I don't know if the new direction is better or worse, but we seem to have a more specific end-point now than we did before.”
“How long do we have until we get to this mysterious destination? Can you tell?”
He tapped at the screen. “Ten hours.”
She sighed, and reached for another cup of grinabo. There were enough to last a lot longer than ten hours. “Good.”
“You sound happy about it.”
She breathed the grinabo in. “Ten hours with no one trying to kill or capture me, no matter what we might find when the time's up? Bliss.”
He looked so startled, she grinned.
/>
“I think I have you to thank for some of it. Did the Tecran shoot me in the head? I can't remember anything after I stepped out of the stairwell.”
He gave a curt nod. “I should have been quicker to pull you back in. They were watching us on the lens feed. Falyar had patched them in. Their first shot hit the Cargassey fabric, but their second shot clipped your temple.”
“Lucky they weren't shooting to kill.”
He nodded. “They would have had a lot to answer for if they'd killed either one of us.”
She didn't know if the Tecran were thinking that far ahead. But Kalor would know better than she would. And she was alive, after all. Proving his point.
“So, how did you get us past them? Especially if I was unconscious.”
“Paxe gave us a drone for cover, and I carried you over my shoulder.” He looked over at her, eyes gleaming with amusement. “You're heavier than you look.”
She laughed. “You're lighter than you look. Thank goodness, or I wouldn't have gotten you and Pren to the stairwell, and Pren would also have missed getting to your ship.”
He watched her thoughtfully, as if he'd just realized that she'd been the one to move him earlier.
“I'm a music teacher, not a scientist, but I think Earth must be bigger than your planet. More gravity means denser bones and muscles, right?”
His head jerked up, his gaze tangling with hers. “Music teacher?”
She nodded. “I teach young children music and rhythm.”
“No wonder your song was so . . .” He looked like he couldn't come up with a description. He'd braced his forearms on his knees, had been tapping his fingers together, but they went still.
“So out there?” she asked, a smile in her voice. “Bohemian Rhapsody has that effect.”
“Beautiful,” he corrected her.
She waited, but that's all he had to say, and for the second time since she'd woken, she blushed.
“Not really my best work,” she told him at last.
He frowned. “How could that be bettered?”
He seemed to genuinely mean it.
“It's a song meant for many voices, not just one, so I could never do the song justice anyway, and it doesn't sit as comfortably in my vocal range as other songs. Also, it needs a lot of instrumentals backing it up, which I obviously didn't have. I chose it because I was angry with you for ordering me to sing, and I'd been ordered around quite enough by then.” She shrugged, feeling petty now. He'd only been trying to help her.
Had helped her.
“And so you punished me with a song that was all wrong, according to you, and still, it was the loveliest thing I've ever heard.”
She shifted uncomfortably at the sincerity in his voice, the look in his eyes. “Thank you. I'm sorry for it now.”
He smiled, just a tiny quirk of his lips at the corners. “You didn't understand.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I still don't, come to that. Paxe said something about singing being special to the Grih, but when I sang, the Grih treated me with . . .” She didn't want to say it, but the word she was looking for was reverence.
“It makes you uncomfortable? The regard with which we hold our music-makers.”
She nodded. “It isn't that far from the regard we hold for our best singers, truth be told. But I am far from one of the best on Earth, so to be suddenly in their league, so to speak, without having done anything to deserve it——”
He was watching her carefully, as if to try and work out if she was being serious.
“Your singers are revered because they delight with their voices?” He waited for her to nod. “And you delighted us with your voice.” He lifted his hands in a 'there-you-go' gesture.
She wondered if it could be as simple as that. “I suppose. But if you could hear one of our truly great singers, you would understand why I'm uncomfortable.”
“I never will, though. So far, every trace of how the Class 5s found Earth has been destroyed by Sazo, at Rose McKenzie's request.”
She went still. Paxe had said something about that. About Sazo deleting the information from the files, but she hadn't had time to process the implications of that. “Every trace?”
“As far as I know.” He frowned and leaned forward. “I'm sorry, I should have realized this would upset you. Rose thought she was the only one who'd been abducted at the time and she didn't want the Tecran to find Earth again. Did you hold out a hope to return home?” He looked at her out of pale blue eyes with a clear dark rim of navy, so steady, so concerned, she swallowed convulsively.
Shook her head. “Up until yesterday I just hoped for a quick death. Nothing so lofty as returning home.” She thought through what he'd said. “Rose was right to do that, however hard it is to accept.” She had grieved for the last two months, had never thought she'd get back, anyway, but now she knew for sure, she felt a dull, heavy weight of sadness settle over her for the friends and family she would never see again.
He reached out a hand, curled his fingers around hers. “There is a home for you, all three of you, with the Grih. We will welcome you with open arms.”
It was more, as she'd told him, than she'd ever expected.
She had no words, so she sat there quietly, letting her hand rest in his, for the first time in a very long time not having to draw from within for peace. It settled over her like a blanket, warm and comforting.
“Tell me about the Grih. Where do you live?”
“We live on the four planets, Calianthra, Grih, Nastra, and Xal. I'm from Calianthra, but I seldom get back there, first because I was with Battle Center, and even more so now I've been assigned to duty at the United Council.”
“So where do you live?”
“The United Council moves between the five headquarters, staying a year on each member's elected home planet. This year it's situated on the Bukari home world, where Diot is from. I live in accommodation set aside for the officers from various member nations.”
“So Calianthra isn't the Grih's elected home planet?”
“No.” He rubbed his head ruefully. “Grih was chosen for that honor. It is the first of our planets, and so the obvious choice. I would have loved it to have been Calianthra. Next year the Council headquarters in Grihan territory, and it would have been nice to be home.”
“You've got family there?”
He nodded. “Parents and two brothers. And you? What family have you left behind?”
She admired him for making it sound voluntary. It helped her to answer with a steady voice. “My grandmother and my sister.”
“I'm sorry.” His eyes told her he knew what it cost her. “The Tecran will pay for your loss.”
She tilted her head. “It sort of sounded like you meant physically pay, as in money, or did you mean with imprisonment?”
“Those who issued the orders, they'll be imprisoned. But the Tecran nation will be fined, and I am sure the United Council will make sure you, Fiona and Rose receive a fair share of it. Enough to make you comfortable for the rest of your lives.”
That eased her mind, ridiculous as it seemed, given she didn't know if she'd be alive in ten hours time. But having visible means of support was a good thing. It would give her a freedom and a control she hadn't had since she'd been snatched.
“So I won't have to sing for my supper?” She was joking, but he frowned.
“We would never force you. I hope you understand I only ordered you to sing earlier because I couldn't hold the Vanad and his crew off alone.”
She didn't reply. She could have told him she understood all that, that she hadn't been serious, but what he said eased something else inside her. She didn't have to be a performing monkey anymore.
“That said . . .” He looked away from her, uncomfortable. “I hope you will sing. That you will gift us with your music.”
“If it means that much to you, I would be happy to.”
He didn't smile, the look on his face serious. “Now?”
She choke
d out a laugh, sure he was joking, but when he kept staring at her, calm and patient, she blew out a breath.
“The thing is . . .” She paused, tried to sort out why she felt so reluctant. It came back to him, personally, not singing for an audience. She sang every day in front of classes of sometimes hostile children, she had no performance anxiety to speak of.
He waited.
“The thing is, I like you, and I don't want to see that 'I am not worthy' look in your eye. I don't want to be some untouchable figure in your mind. I want to be myself.”
She tried not to cringe at how much she was exposing, especially after months of being as closed off as a vault, but she wanted him to understand. He was the only connection she'd made to anyone beside Paxe, and she would not risk losing it.
He'd watched her carefully as she spoke, but now he tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling for a beat. “You want me to enjoy your singing as if it was an everyday thing. Just part of who you are?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“I don't know if that's possible.”
It wasn't what she hoped to hear. “Try.”
He chuckled. “I'm perfectly willing to try.”
“No goo-goo eyes.”
This time he laughed. “I promise.”
She smiled back, then settled back against the wall.
“Well?” He leaned back himself.
She frowned. “You weren't joking about singing now?”
“I wasn't joking.” He looked uncertain, though, as if he was unsure if he was asking too much of her.
That needed to change.
This idea that singing was some big production, some sacred rite.
And the only way to show him it was humdrum was to do it often.
She sighed. She wanted something soft and easy. She sorted through the songs in her head and came up with something slow and melodic by Suzanne Vega.
He couldn't know what she sang about, but as she watched him she knew she had chosen the song more deliberately than she'd initially admitted to herself.
He was the first person she'd met in the last two months she could imagine a romantic relationship with, and that alone should give her pause, make her wary.
Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3) Page 16
