“I thought you said your uniform had good protection.”
“Their shockguns were set to kill.” He sounded grim. “I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. They were shooting in their own facility, and anyone caught in the crossfire would be their own crew. It doesn't make sense.”
“They wanted to kill it.” She drew in a steadying breath.
“Yes.” He sounded more and more like himself. “My uniform would have handled any stun setting, but a kill setting was a little harder to absorb.” His thumb kept up its gentle caress of her skin. “Thank you for shielding me when I went down.”
“We're a team.” She gave a shrug and slid down the wall a little more, not wanting to open her eyes and deal with anything for a few more moments.
“Did they kill the grahudi?” Hal asked, and she realized he must have been really out of it to have missed what happened.
She shook her head. “I had a choice. I didn't know whether to use the last cartridge in the gun to shoot the grahudi or the Tecran. If it had attacked, we'd have been dead.”
“What did you choose?” he asked,
“I decided to leave it alone. It's not my enemy, the Tecran are.”
“How many of them did you get?” His voice was a quiet rumble.
Finally she opened her eyes and met his gaze. “Every single one.”
30
She was playing with the crystal Eazi had given her, sliding it up and down on the silver necklace it hung from.
“It's pretty,” Hal said, and she started, looked down at it and then tucked it away under her shirt.
“Yes, it is.”
She'd been left with nothing when the Tecran took her, and he was suddenly sorry he'd dumped her on Jasa and left her to sink or swim on the Illium. There had been no soft landing for her.
He'd been too busy chasing down Krik and dealing with the ripples her existence caused.
“I should have taken better care of you after we rescued you.”
He still held her hand, and he felt her tense.
She looked up at him. “You took care of me just by getting me off the Fasbe.”
“I could have done better.”
She shrugged. “You had a lot going on. And because I didn't have any direct evidence against the Tecran, I know I was lower down the list of priorities.”
Ouch.
She had him there. And she'd had a clear handle on the situation right from the start.
He'd fallen into the trap of seeing her as a helpless victim and a slightly clueless orange when he'd first met her. But she'd been on to them all from the start.
“You're just one surprise after the other.”
She slid him a sidelong look. “Hardly. As I said, getting off the Fasbe was lifesaving for me. Can't get much bigger a deal than that.”
“I'm sorry you were taken. It wasn't right. But I'm not sorry I met you.” He'd said no to her advances earlier, sure it was the correct decision, if a hard one, but the longer he spent in her company, the more he doubted himself.
She looked up at him, gaze clear and direct. “Careful, Captain. You're getting perilously close to fraternizing.”
He jerked back at that, realized his hand had been cupped around her neck.
She threw him off balance.
Ever since he'd seen her sing happy birthday to Mun he'd wanted her, but in his mind she'd been off-limits.
Now he wasn't so sure, and he didn't know if that made him weak or the smartest he'd ever been.
“You aren't the enemy.” He said it slowly, let the truth of it sink in so she relaxed against the wall again.
Then he leaned forward, and, because this was a private moment, put his palm over the lens on her shirt.
“What exactly are you doing?” Her voice was a soft murmur. It beguiled him every time she spoke, the sound alone so seductive, was it any wonder he was losing this battle with himself?
“I'm throwing good sense aside.” She had been brave enough to make her interest known, he could do no less than offer the same. “Battle Center will frown on any relationship between us, and yet, I can't shake loose the sense that if I don't take the risk, I'm going to be sorry about it for the rest of my life.”
Her dark eyes glittered in the low light. “I can understand being cautious if this will be a career-breaker. You've got a lot to lose, far more than me.”
She left it at that, not pushing, and he didn't like that she had nothing to lose because it had all been taken from her.
She looked calm, but his hand still rested against her chest, over Eazi's lens, and he felt her heartbeat elevate.
Until it matched his own.
It confused him, finding himself wondering if his career was really worth keeping his hands off her. “I don't recognize myself.” He hadn't meant to say it aloud, but her head snapped up to look at him. “I'm starting to think if Battle Center disapproves, that's their problem.”
The look in her eyes was stricken. “Hal, I don't want to cause trouble for you. If it doesn't work out between us, you'll have thrown it away for nothing.”
Not nothing.
He had the feeling it would never be nothing.
He shook his head. “This isn't on you. It's on me. And I may be exaggerating how much Battle Center will care.”
She lifted a hand, and fingered the hair at his temples. “I'm not going to take out an ad in the Grih National News about getting together with you, if that helps. I can do discreet.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you find what's between us isn't worth getting into trouble with Battle Center, I can accept that. I've got a lot less to lose in that regard, so you have my word, I won't cause you trouble.” She tilted her head to look right in his eyes, tried for lighthearted. “You've stored up a heck of a lot of goodwill with me. So even if I fall madly in love with you and then you break my heart and stomp it to tiny pieces, I won't make life difficult for you. I promise.”
Hand still over the lens, he stared at her.
She was offering him everything he wanted, her face calm, her eyes steady. And warm.
“I don't want your gratitude.” He didn't mean to sound so harsh, but she didn't so much as blink.
Her lips quirked. “I don't want to kiss you because I'm grateful, but I'm telling you that even if you really piss me off and kick me to the curb, that gratitude will mean I'll put on my game face around you.”
“I still don't want it.”
She shrugged. “Suck it up. I feel what I feel.”
He frowned down at her, and she grinned back up at him, laughing at him, even, and the thin, taut line that had been holding him back since he'd felt that first hot, sharp pull of attraction, snapped.
He angled his head, leaned in and kissed her, and she opened her mouth to him with a sigh of pleasure.
“There seems to be an obstruction to the lens, Fiona.” He heard the tinny sound of Eazi's voice from her earpiece a few minutes later because his mouth was tracing her ear, his fingers deep in hair that was as smooth and soft as the silk she wore. “I haven't gotten into the lens feed, but there's good news. I've managed to get into the building schematics.”
* * *
Fee leaned a little way out of the shadows to look down the short corridor that ended in reinforced double doors and admitted Eazi had been right to send them here.
Hal shifted beside her, the small area under the stairwell to the floor above leaving no room to stand without touching.
That was okay with her. And Hal was definitely standing closer than he needed to, so it seemed to be okay with him, too.
Maybe making out with the captain while hiding from murderous thugs earlier hadn't been her smartest ever move, but it had been just what she'd needed.
A little joy and respite went a long way. Even if you were listening for the sound of heavy footsteps with one ear while doing it.
“I wish you were in the lens feed,” Fee whispered to Eazi. “I'd like to know what's in there before opening the door.”
; “Me, too.” The frustration in Eazi's voice was palpable. It might be character-building for him to have to work hard at something, but Fee wished the challenge wasn't quite so difficult now. “I don't know how they've shielded so well.”
Struggling had tempered Eazi's tone. Not that being in the lens feed would be that big of a help. They hadn't found a single lens so far on this floor.
Eazi guessed they had only put them in strategically important areas, like the animal storage area, the floor above where the runners and vehicles were kept, and maybe, just maybe, the room in front of them.
It would have been nice to be sure.
They didn't even know what the room was. Eazi had flagged it as the first stop because there was no label, no description of it, in the schematics.
A mystery room.
The kill switch could be anywhere, but if they wanted to be out of the facility before one of the Tecran she'd hit with the crowd-pleaser barbs woke up and started talking, they had to try somewhere, and a mystery room was as good a place as any.
“Ready?” Hal's shockgun was humming away.
Fee gave a jerky nod. Her heart was back on the jackhammer setting it had been on in the gallery, when she'd had to deal with the grahudi and the Tecran all at once. Hal moved silently across the main passage and then down the short corridor to the door, and she followed, her crowd-pleaser gripped in both hands.
They were so exposed here, with nowhere to run if someone was in front of them, or behind.
Hal touched the side of the door, but it didn't open.
Fee's hand came up, gripped the neck of her shirt. She was about to offer her encryptor, when the sound of feet running down the stairs from above made them both freeze. Whoever was coming down was giving loud orders, perhaps through his earpiece, because she couldn't hear anyone answering.
The person was taking the stairs two at a time, and as Fee moved back down the corridor to get to their hiding place under the stairs, she realized the thump of his tread had masked the sound of a group of people running toward them from the gallery.
The Tecran coming down the stairs hadn't seen her and Hal yet, but running across the passageway to the shadows under the stairwell would change that.
Fee forced herself to slide up against the wall and not move.
She wanted to look back at Hal, but made herself stay still and trust he'd done the same.
The soldier jumped the last three steps, hand tapping at his ear as he spoke in quick, harsh bursts. He stopped right in front of the little corridor they were trapped in, head in profile, and waited for the soldiers running toward him.
At least ten soldiers stopped and came to attention. Any one of them only had to turn his head a little and he'd be looking straight at her.
Now that the running had stopped, she could hear sounds from above, scuffling and shouting. If that was the group who Eazi said was approaching the facility, they were obviously not coming quietly.
The officer was screeching orders at the team in front of him and when he'd finished they ran up the stairs, presumably to help with the prisoners. Instead of going after them, or walking away, the officer kept his focus down the passageway, and Fee realized a second group were coming toward him.
Just as they got there, the officer frowned, tapped his earpiece and looked her way.
Fee stopped breathing.
The new group was milling around, but they stilled and followed their leader's gaze.
Fee didn't want to look, but she could see their eyes were passing right over her, to something beyond her.
Hal.
The officer lifted his shockgun and pointed it.
The time for hiding was up.
Fee stepped in front of him, crowd-pleaser raised, and watched him refocus his gaze, blink those big, round Tecran eyes as he worked out she wasn't part of the wall.
There was no time to posture, she needed to shoot, but before she could pull the trigger, Hal cried out behind her.
She took a step backward, toward him, angling her body to the right so she could also keep her eye on the group in the passageway, and saw someone had come through from the room beyond, the room they'd been trying to break into.
Hal was on the ground, lying motionless, and the soldier standing over him was holding a shockgun to his head.
31
Heart in her throat, eyes fixed on the soldier standing over Hal, Fee raised her crowd-pleaser up, along with her other hand, in surrender.
The officer still obviously had trouble keeping her in focus, and he exchanged a quick conversation with the man who'd shot Hal and then walked forward carefully, put out his hand and patted the air around her until his hand glanced off her forehead. He grabbed hold of her hood, clenched it in his fist and pulled it up over her head.
They stared at each other for a long moment and then he reached up and took the crowd-pleaser out of her hand.
He knew who she was. She'd seen the shock in his eyes. So most likely, he was part of the Class 5 crew, not permanently stationed here.
He said something to her and she shook her head.
“You gave me to the Garmman, remember?” She let her lip curl a little as she spoke. “I can only speak Garmman or Grih.”
He blinked at that.
He'd taken her weapon, so she gambled on him thinking she was otherwise harmless and risked turning her back on him and walking to Hal, careful not to make any sudden moves. She crouched down, going a little weak when she felt his chest rise under her hands. He was breathing.
She lifted his hood up off his head, saw his face was pale and there was a mark on his neck.
She raised her eyes and stared at the man who'd shot him, and he took a step back.
“This is a Grih military uniform.” The officer who'd taken her crowd-pleaser had come to stand next to his colleague.
She ignored him, running a hand down Hal's cheek.
The sounds of fighting from the floor above had been getting louder, although she'd only half noticed them, but now it filled the space, like a moving riot sweeping down the stairs.
Both Tecran looked toward the sound, and Fee used the moment to peer into the room they'd planned to break into through the still-open door.
Four or five huge freestanding transparent blue screens with tiny lights moving across them were set out in the massive space. A Tecran sitting at a chair in front of a console was staring at her. She took in as much as she could, but as the melee arrived behind her, he tapped a button and the doors closed.
She wasn't sure if that was to protect the area from the fight moving toward them, or to stop her looking any more.
She turned back to see what was happening as the group reached the bottom of the stairs.
And stared, open-mouthed, at the prisoners the Tecran had rounded up.
Gerwa, of the Krik battalion V8, stared back at her.
Around him, his men fought the Tecran's hold on them, even though they were bound with manacles around their wrists and ankles, as if they couldn't understand it was time to surrender.
With a sharp word from the officer beside her, someone must have done something, because the Krik began to fall to the ground, crying out in pain.
Eventually, only Gerwa was left standing, his gaze fixed on her, the same shock that must be etched on her features reflected in his.
“Guess the emergency pod didn't quite work out for you,” she said at last.
And he threw back his head and laughed.
* * *
Officer Vek oversaw their imprisonment personally.
Fee could tell he was deeply disturbed that she seemed to know the Krik, but they weren't talking, and neither was she.
They'd been taken down to the storage facility, and she and Hal were thrown into Imogen Peter's old cell.
As the Krik were forced into a cage so big, Fee wondered what they'd kept in there, and what they had done with it afterward, the macaw swooped from one end of its cage to cling to a bar.
&n
bsp; “Bastards,” it said, and clicked its beak. Then it tipped back its head. “Bee-yoo-ti-ful plumage.”
Fee caught the giggle that rose up before it could escape.
Imogen Peters was obviously a fan of Monty Python's parrot sketch.
Vek spun around as it spoke, and looked between her and the macaw suspiciously.
“You know him. How?” He demanded of her, and for a moment, she though he meant the macaw. She started shaking her head, and he pointed at Gerwa.
“I know this. You spoke.” His Garmman was bad, and she put on her dumb face and lifted her shoulders. Lowered her eyes meekly.
He'd taken her crowd-pleaser, her camouflage hood, all of Hal's weapons and his hood, too.
He hadn't taken her reflector. It looked like a bracelet, and she guessed that Vek hadn't participated in the tests Captain Flato had conducted on the stolen technology.
She knew from what Eazi had said that there was one Class 5 commander left down here, but he had yet to make an appearance.
She didn't think that would last, though, and the moment he caught sight of her reflector, he'd take it. And know for sure she'd come from the Class 5.
If he had any hesitation about flipping the kill switch and blowing the Class 5 up, as soon as he realized she'd had free access to the Class 5's stores, that hesitation would evaporate.
And kaboom.
With Vek still frowning at her, she forced her hands to her sides, although she was desperate to check that the crystal pendant was tucked safely out of sight.
“You know him.” Vek jabbed a finger at Gerwa again.
Fee lifted her shoulders, turned away and crouched beside Hal, and then maneuvered herself so she could lift his head onto her lap.
He was still unconscious, and it had taken two Tecran to carry him down the three flights of stairs to get here.
They had not been careful.
Vek turned to Gerwa. Fired off a string of questions in Tecran, and when Gerwa mimicked her own shrug with one exactly the same, he pulled out his shockgun and leveled it at the Krik.
Dark Deeds (Class 5 Series Book 2) Page 22
