Dark Minds (Class 5 Series Book 3) Read online

  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.

  Chapter 3

  Camlar 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.

&nbs
p; 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.

  Chapter 4

  Toloco had lied to her.

  Harm had come to her, but then, Imogen had never believed him, anyway.

  She was surprised she was still alive.

  Toloco was responsible for that, too. After he'd beaten her the first time, in a quick, vicious burst that seemed to be almost necessary to him, he'd calmed down and refused to let anyone else on his team come near her.

  He kept looking at her now, in nervous glances, his gaze lingering on her swollen eye and the lump on her cheek.

  She was lucky nothing was broken, but if she looked as bad as she felt, she looked pretty bad.

  That seemed to worry him.

  The more he fidgeted, the deeper her sense of satisfaction.

  She moved slowly, wincing whenever she shifted in her s
eat, and when they'd let her go to the bathroom, she might have exaggerated her limp.

  That time, she'd seen Toloco swallow, hard.

  They must be getting near their destination, because in the last hour or so there'd been a shift in atmosphere.

  She'd been moved off the Tecran runner to the Krik's much bigger ship, and as they got underway, she'd seen the vessel that had been her prison for the last two weeks disappear almost instantly into the distance.

  Toloco had put her in a corner of the bridge, much like the Tecran had done. It looked like a rest area made up of a few comfortable couches, visible from the captain's chair.

  She decided he didn't trust her out of his sight, not because he thought she could do any damage, but because he didn't trust his crew not to harm her.

  She wished he was wrong on the damage thing, but though the Krik weren't that much taller than she was, they were all muscle, teeth, and aggression.

  She didn't have the fighting skills to take them on, even though she was in good shape. The cage on Balco had been roomy enough to do yoga and pull-ups, and when she wasn't learning Tecran or Grih, singing to Cleese or teaching him to talk, she'd had nothing better to do than keep flexible and fit.

  Cleese.

  She missed the ornery little bugger.

  He was the only thing from Earth left with her in the end. A blue and yellow macaw, she guessed he'd probably been wild when the Tecran had taken him, but he was incredibly intelligent, and it had been at first amusing, and then comforting, to have his company.

  He could whistle a mean tune by the end.

  She had begged the Tecran to let him come with her when they'd taken her from her cage and put her on the runner, but Baq had laughed in her face at the idea.

  Now, she was glad. She didn't think he would have survived the Krik attack.

  Something caught her eye, and she turned to see the numbers and equations that had replaced the outside view of the ship some time ago had been replaced again by live feed. They were approaching a massive structure that looked like a World War Two naval mine, round and spiky.