Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3) (2 page)

T
he captain allowed
the Krik to board them after they fired two shots. The Tecran runner couldn't outgun them and it was too late to run.

“We need to sort this out face to face,” he said, but Imogen heard the bravado in his voice.

They all had.

And still, what choice was there?

While the Krik linked the ships, the captain called High Command over and over, telling them what was happening. He received no answer.

She'd expected aggression, the crew would not be so afraid of the Krik if they didn't have a reputation for it, but she hadn't expected the level of it. They weren't here to parlay.

They seemed intent on extermination.

At her first sight of the Krik, she was struck by their elegance. They were slim and graceful, and their white hair and peach skin were as surreal to her as they were pretty.

But their eyes . . . red, like a white rabbit or white rat.

And their teeth.

They came onto the bridge dragging Lieutenant Baq, who'd been waiting to greet them, by the back of his uniform, teeth bared.

Long, sharp incisors. If they'd thrown back their heads and hooted like baboons, she wouldn't have been surprised.

Baq was dead, she realized——everyone realized——when they threw him down in front of the captain.

And then the bloodbath began.

* * *

T
he Krik wanted
to kill her.

Imogen could see the need for yet another death in their eyes, in the way they held themselves, clenched and angry as toddlers denied.

The force field was impenetrable, and they didn't have the code to disable it.

She wondered if, when they calmed down and got hold of themselves, they'd be able to do it, and shivered at the thought.

They were definitely less volatile now than when they'd started, winding down from a bloodlust high.

She curled in on herself, carefully making herself smaller as they raged.

She didn't speak their language, but then, because she hadn't spoken any of the languages around her at first, she'd gotten really good at reading body language and intonation.

More than once, the Krik pirate she guessed was the leader had restrained one of his team from throwing themselves at the wall of pale purple light around her, but the eyes he turned her way time and again were full of death, too.

She had the sense the Krik couldn't help themselves. Like Viking beserkers losing all sense of self, they had started killing and stopped when there was no one left. Except her.

Imogen had forced herself to watch each death. She was the only witness to their suffering, the mindless waste that was their slaughter.

The Krik left the bodies where they'd fallen, lying broken and still on the ship's floor.

The terror and horror at watching people she knew, even if they had been her gaolers, murdered, had slowly been replaced by a numbed state of shock.

Like before, it was the change in mood that brought her out of her mental safe place. The Krik were calm now, standing in a semi-circle around her, watching her with an intensity that hadn't been there before.

When they'd lost control and rampaged through the ship, she'd wondered how they were capable of space travel, of coexisting with a race as technologically advanced as the Tecran.

She saw now.

There was plenty of canny intelligence in the eyes of the soldiers who surrounded her. And they were an ordered team. They had a command structure and they wore a uniform, all black, which made the pastel of their skin and the white of their hair stand out even more.

They seemed to be aware she was more present than she had been, and the leader shifted the shockgun in his arms.

She forced herself to stay watchful, focusing on the tap, tap, tap of his finger on the barrel. The finger had three joints instead of two, but like the rest of him, it was long and elegant, the subtle peach of his skin darkening at each knuckle.

He made a sound and she lifted her gaze to his face to find him looking straight into her eyes. He lifted his upper lip to reveal bloodstained incisors and she couldn't stop her flinch.

“Who are you?” His Tecran was stumbling, far worse than hers.

“Why do you care?” she asked, and her voice shook. “Like to know the names of those you murder?”

He blinked at her, then looked around the room, almost as if he was seeing the carnage for the first time. Then he shrugged. “No. When the fighting spirit is upon me, I don't care.”

She considered her response. She didn't want to antagonize them, that would be stupid, but she didn't know if it mattered. None of the Tecran crew had antagonized them——they had been diplomatic until Baq's body hit the deck——and that had not saved them at all.

And there was the rub.

Because she would not go out all false politeness and appeasement. She'd made a vow to herself the second week into her abduction. It would be with a bang, not a whimper.

“Who,” the leader said again, “are you?” There was an edge to his voice, this time.

“Imogen Peters. Who are you?”

He stared at her for a long time without responding, perhaps hoping to creep her out or make her uncomfortable.

Too bad for him she'd been an exotic, clever pet in a cage for two months, and for the last two weeks had spent every minute of the day in open view. She'd found a way to ignore the stares long ago.

She stared back, face bland, eyes a little wide, showing interest and nothing else.

“I am Levek Toloco.” He let out a laugh. “You're interesting.”

She said nothing to that, simply looked around the room again, looked at Fri, lying on the floor like a broken doll, face turned toward her, helmet ripped off, eyes open and blank.

Levek Toloco seemed to catch her inference.

“When the fighting spirit takes us, we are not as controlled as we should be, and yes, perhaps we kill those we would otherwise find interesting. But it is what it is.”

In other words, he really didn't care.

She could only guess they got too much enjoyment out of the 'fighting spirit' to want to control it.

“So what now?” she asked.

They couldn't switch off the force field. She wasn't sure she wanted them to, anyway, although soon enough she'd need food and water.

Toloco barked something at his team, and they moved off, but reluctantly. This wasn't a military organized like the Tecran she'd been with for over two months, it was more egalitarian, and the team members did not blindly obey orders. They looked more like sulky teenagers, begrudgingly doing their chores.

“Switch off the force field,” Toloco said, and she suddenly realized he'd forced his team to disperse so she would feel less threatened.

He thought she knew how to turn it off. Which meant he thought she'd been put within the force field by the Tecran because . . . what? She was important?

“I can't.”

“We are no longer in the grip of the fighting spirit. You will be safe.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. That, she did not believe.

“Whether I am or not, I can't switch it off.”

Toloco canted his head to the side. “Either you switch it off, or I'll find a way to do it for you. And you won't like the second option.”

Imogen stared back at him, face as serious as his own. “I haven't liked anything I've seen of you since you and your team first set foot on this ship, so that comes as no surprise.”

“Switch it off!” His voice swelled to a shout.

She jerked, blew out a shaky breath. “I can't switch it off, I don't have the code.” She could tell him she was a prisoner, not a VIP, but why would she share anything she didn't have to?

He glared at her, and she wondered if he believed her but didn't like her answer, or if he genuinely thought she was lying.

“You will starve in there if we can't switch it off,” he said eventually.

She gave a nod. “I know. But I can't come up with a code I don't have.”

He stared at her for another long beat and then turned away, shouting instructions to his crew. A few of them left, she guessed to go back to their own ship.

Toloco turned his back on her, and went over to the bridge, conversing with a few of his team and pointing to the controls.

She wondered where they were taking her, but then, she'd been wondering that since she'd been snatched from Earth nearly three months ago.

This was just another day at the office.

One of the original team Toloco had sent off returned, a little winded, holding a small silver device, and Toloco stared at her as he took it.

He was trying to intimidate her. Make her regret putting him to the trouble of asking a lackey to run and fetch something.

He approached her slowly, device in hand.

She kept her game face on.

It had served her so well. Expression more or less blank, eyes wide, polite interest the only emotion.

Toloco frowned. “This should switch off the field.”

She nodded politely.

“You are not afraid?”

“As you said, I'll die without food and water.” Imogen shrugged.

“You could die anyway.” Toloco let his incisors show.

She forced her instinctive reaction down, deep down, where no one could see it. Two of Toloco's crew were dragging the Tecran's bodies into the center of the bridge, checking each one's face as if they were looking for someone. She looked over at the pile. “I'd say, given the evidence, that's more than likely.”

Toloco drew in a surprised breath. “You are not afraid?” he repeated.

“What good would fear do me?” Again, she avoided telling the truth as she shrugged her shoulders.

“They are all Tecran,” one of the cleanup crew reported, and then they started dragging the bodies out the room.

Toloco seemed to relax a little, and Imogen got the sense he was relieved.

The way the team had looked at the faces, perhaps they were searching for someone, someone who wasn't Tecran. And from the way Toloco's shoulders had sagged a little, Imogen guessed they were supposed to bring this person back alive.

It gave her a glimmer of hope. If they were unsure who she was, maybe she would make it out alive.

Toloco bent, touched the slim silver device to the tiny keypad embedded in the floor, and the force field shut down.

She was standing, but she had to look up as Toloco straightened back to his full height.

Then he lifted his arm and backhanded her.

Or not.

C
amlar Kalor kept still
as the Krik pirates checked the restraints on first his wrists and ankles, and then those of his team, walking between them with a cocky, arrogant stride.

As the guard bent over Pren, the only other member of his team with military training beside himself, he exchanged a look with her.

She inclined her head in acknowledgment. They would look for any weakness, any way out of this.

No help was coming. Not yet, anyway.

They'd have to do this themselves.

To his right, Yari, the fast cruiser pilot, lay still, curled on her side. The slight rise and fall of her chest was the only comfort Cam could take from the situation, because she'd been that way for over a full day. At least she was breathing. The same could not be said for her co-pilot.

His body had been dragged out half a day ago. And Cam was sure he hadn't imagined the Krik leader's concern and anger at the sight of it.

The guard who'd killed Kaoi had been reassigned, and Cam thought there had been real fear in his eyes as he'd gone.

The Krik had targeted the pilots when they'd taken the ship, but Cam and Pren both knew how to fly it.

In fact, Cam's team was stacked with experts from so many fields, he could see some of them, despite the violence, were stopping just short of taking notes as they observed a Krik attack and abduction up close and personal.

Olan actually looked like he was whispering into the thin unit strapped to his wrist, so Cam guessed it included an audio recorder. The guard had looked over at the old Fitalian a few times, though, so he didn't know how long they would let him keep it.

Even if the Krik did confiscate it, if they got out of this alive, a number of academic comms would be generated.

Cam had read enough reports of Krik attacks to know this one wasn't typical, although he was more interested in where the Krik had gotten hold of the tech they'd used to pull the hijack off.

They'd signaled the United Council fast cruiser with all the correct codes for a Grihan battleship runner, indicating distress.

Yari had been wary that the runner didn't conform to Grihan battleship standards, but there had been no question they wouldn't let it land in the launch bay. Even if they hadn't been United Council representatives, the rules regarding distressed vessels was encoded in the laws for all five UC member nations.

But the Krik hadn't just had the runner codes. Already suspicious, he and Yari had put the launch bay in lockdown as they came in, and that hadn't even slowed them down.

They'd romped through the ship with not a single door standing in their way.

A very restrained romp, Cam had to admit.

Only one dead.

Everyone had taken some injury, mostly shockgun fire, but the killing spree the Krik were known for hadn't materialized.

So, again, he circled back to the fact that this wasn't a normal raid.

“Do you think we were deliberately targeted?” Ularunda Diot kept her voice soft as she slid closer to him. The Bukarian forensic scientist's golden skin looked dull. She'd been shot in the shoulder when the Krik had breached the bridge and she winced as she settled beside him. “They must know the United Council won't ignore one of their own ships being taken, and you Grih are as rigorous as the Bukari when it comes to protecting your airspace. It makes me suspect they've been hired to stop us reaching Larga Ways and conducting our investigation.”

Cam kept his gaze on the guard. “It's crossed my mind. They're being more careful than I've ever known them to be. Kaoi's death was obviously a mistake, so they want us to walk away at the end.”

They both looked over at Yari, and Cam again took comfort in the rise and fall of her chest. No one had been allowed near her, not even Pren, who doubled as the team medic.

“At the end of what?” Diot followed his gaze as the guards finished their rounds and took up position just within the doorway of the staff lounge where they were being kept.

“That is the question.” They were on a sensitive mission. Perhaps the most sensitive mission of Cam's career, and it would be to both the Tecrans' and Garmmans' benefit if he and his team did not succeed. But why would the Krik get involved?

Even if he and his team were made to disappear, another would be sent in their place. There would be no dropping this investigation. An inquiry of this magnitude would not just fade away.

Another Earth woman had been found.

This time, as a prisoner on a Garmman trading vessel.

Vraen, his second-in-command, had been deliberately chosen for the position because he was Garmman, so that there could be no question from the Garmman side about the team's findings.

It was an explosive development.

The United Council was already investigating the Tecran's role in the abduction of Rose McKenzie, the first woman from Earth discovered a few months ago. Tensions were high enough that they were teetering on the brink of war and Captain Hal Vakeri's message that he'd found Fiona Russell might just be the push that sent them all over into the abyss.

Stopping the investigation would only slow things down a little.

A low cry jerked Cam from his thoughts, and he looked left, saw Vraen lying prone, his bound arms lifted protectively over his head. A Krik pirate stood over him, arm coming back and up to strike another blow with the stock of his shockgun.

“No!” Cam struggled with the restraints, trying to stand, and the Krik stopped mid-swing. The eyes he turned in Cam's direction were wide and glassy.

There was a shout from the doorway, and the guard half-turned as Koi, the leader of the group, strode into the room, barking orders.

The guard lowered his weapon, his eyes on the floor. He responded in short, terse mutters, and Koi jabbed a finger at Vraen.

“You provoked him.”

“How interesting,” Diot said, her voice carrying in the sudden silence, her tone calm and academic. “That they blame the victim.”

Koi shot her a hard look. He seemed to struggle for a moment, as if he wanted to defend his statement, and then turned back to Vraen.

“What did you do?” Koi addressed Vraen in Garmman, but it was stilted.

“I asked him if he understood this is a United Council vessel, and when he didn't respond, I grabbed at his leg.” Vraen touched his hand to the side of his head, and it came away dark with blood. “You have apprehended a UC fast cruiser going about official business. You have made a huge mistake.”

Koi looked around the lounge very deliberately. The fast cruiser flying crew was mixed up with Cam's investigative team, and everyone was sitting or lying, bound and shocked, amongst the broken furniture.

“I want to make it clear.” Koi turned his head and looked straight at Cam. “We do know who you are. We know whose ship this is.” There was a strange mix of excitement and dread in his expression.

“Then what do you want?” Cam asked.

Koi shook his head. “You'll find out soon enough.” He gestured to the screen on the wall behind Cam, which had been projecting the outside lens feed.

Cam turned to look, and felt a strange sense of disbelief. Were the Krik playing mind games with them?

“Is that . . ?” Vraen moved forward on his knees.

“A Class 5,” Pren whispered.

It was, indeed, a Class 5.

It hung in space like the prickle ball decoration the cities on the Grih planet Xal lined the streets with every Turning.

Which made sense, because Dr. Fayir, the Grihan scientist who'd designed the Class 5s, as well as the illegal thinking systems that ran them, had been born on Xal.

No matter that the Grih hadn't even known what Fayir had done; that he'd hidden his completely banned designs and the thinking systems he'd made until they were discovered two hundred years after his death by a Garmman. A Garmman who'd secretly approached the Tecran to create them, to activate the thinking systems, and who Cam, and most of Grih Battle Center, was convinced had planned to take over the United Council with their unstoppable new power. They thought they had the thinking systems caged and obedient. But they had been wrong.

Since the Grih had uncovered the plot, which had gone hand in hand with the discovery of Rose McKenzie, two of the Class 5s had allied themselves to the Grih, but as far as Cam knew, the other three were still under Tecran control.

He tore his gaze away from the screen to look at Koi. “You've allied with the Tecran?”

The pirate smirked. “No. They are not our allies.”

Cam frowned. If the Tecran weren't involved in this . . .

“There are other forces in this universe.” Koi kept his eyes on the Class 5. “The Tecran tangled with one they shouldn't have and he took their Class 5. And approached us to be his partners.” The look he sent Cam was triumphant.

“But——” Diot said, and Cam pressed his foot firmly down on her toes.

She closed her mouth.

“What does your new ally want with us?” Cam asked him.

Koi lifted his shoulders. “We'll all find out soon enough.”

Cam stared him straight in the eye. “Are you sure you were wise to go down this road?”

Koi's lips thinned, but he didn't respond. With a last look at the Class 5 dominating more and more of the screen as they drew closer, he turned and pointed at Yari. “You can tend to your wounded.” Then he walked out.

Pren moved immediately, and one of the guards picked up her med kit for her and placed it within reach, although he wouldn't free Pren from her restraints.

“It sounds as if the thinking system running that Class 5 broke free.” Diot spoke softly as they watched Pren go to work. “Do you think the Krik know they're dealing with a rogue thinking system? Koi sounded as if he thought it was an alien life form that had taken over the ship, not that it was the ship itself.”

“It may be the thinking system doesn't trust the Krik.” Cam tried to think of how the Krik had been affected by the Thinking System Wars. They had ended two hundred years ago, but the effects of them were still being felt in the present. The whole region run by the United Council had suffered, and the Krik would have been no different.

Perhaps the thinking system was being cautious about revealing itself to those who might not be as cooperative if they knew what it was.

“How do you think it got free?” Diot asked. “Sazo and Bane needed Rose McKenzie's help. So unless there's a person from Earth in there, it found a way on its own.”

Cam shook his head. As Grih Battle Center's highest ranking investigator at the United Council, he'd been allowed access to the top secret reports generated after the Class 5s known as Sazo and Bane had entered an alliance with the Grih. Sazo had been further along in his self-awareness than Bane, but both had managed to circumvent some of the restraints the Tecran had put on them before Rose McKenzie had freed them fully.

And Battle Center still had no idea how she had done it. She refused to say, not even to her lover, Grihan explorer captain Dav Jallan.

If Sazo had achieved some control before Rose freed him, then it must be possible for a thinking system to find ways around the limits imposed on them to make them safe and obedient. Or, there
was
someone from Earth involved.

That was why they were here, after all. To investigate reports of another Earth woman having been abducted from her planet.

But if the Class 5 in front of them had found a way to break free without anyone's help . . .

From what Cam had gleaned from the reports he'd read, Rose McKenzie had tempered both Sazo and Bane's personalities, weaving a more careful, thoughtful tone through their interactions.

Thinking systems were banned because unrestrained, they could be cruel, murderous, and vindictive. They had the power to inflict extraordinary harm. The worlds of the United Council had burned for almost six years until every thinking system had been destroyed. Except Dr. Fayir had thought he knew better.

He'd made five more.

Designed powerful ships for them to inhabit.

And then made arrangements for the plans to be discovered two hundred years after his death.

And now the United Council was once again on the brink of war, and Cam and his team were headed straight into the heart of one of his creations.

The launch bay gel wall came into focus, and they flew into the maw of the beast.