Chapter 25
Fiona decided to lie to Tean Lee before she even saw him.
His silence over the last few days when she’d been down on Balco had bothered her, enough that she wasn’t inclined to over share, and his horrified surprise at seeing her now just added to the feeling, causing all sorts of alarms to ring in her head.
“How did you land on the way station?” he asked. “There’s no traffic in either direction right now.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Concentrate. Four Balcoans jumped us in Eazi’s warehouse.”
“Why were you there? Why didn’t you come straight to me?” Tean Lee asked.
“I was looking for Eazi. Trying to find a way to contact him.” She could see other security officers walking past Tean Lee’s glass-walled office, eyes wide at the sight of Hal but passing over her.
The disguise, she realized belatedly. Maybe they thought she was one of Hal’s crew.
Tean Lee seemed almost as disconcerted by her disguise as Hal had originally been. His gaze kept flicking to her ears and then away.
“Did you find him?” Tean Lee asked.
“No.” Although those Balcoans thought they had.
It made sense only if they were being fed information by either the Tecran or Garmman who’d originally been involved in building the Class 5s. Because the five thinking systems they had found to go along with the blueprints to build the battleships had been housed in crystals.
Not crystals like her trophy, though. Slim crystals the width and length of her little finger.
She hadn’t seen Eazi’s original crystal housing since she’d gone down to Balco’s desert with Hal a year ago. He had hidden himself and she had never asked him about it again.
She’d also never discussed it with anyone. Not even Hal.
Which meant those Balcoans could only know to look for a crystal of some kind if they had insider knowledge.
The irony of her holding the trophy replica just as the Balcoans came in, and their automatic assumption that she had Eazi in her hand, was not lost on her.
“Where is Jaden Tris?” she asked. Because while Eazi didn’t like her administrative assistant very much, he would be perfectly capable of getting Jaden to help him, even if Jaden didn’t understand exactly what he was doing.
“I don’t know.” Tean Lee’s eyes widened, as if he was only just remembering Jaden Tris existed, and should have been in touch when the comms went down.
“How did the comms go down?” Hal leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Battle Center is waiting to hear from you. You couldn’t send someone over to talk about it with them?”
“We don’t know anything yet.” Tean Lee focused on him. “Eazi hid the comms hardware months ago for security reasons. I don’t know where it is.”
He looked over at Fiona.
“I don’t, either.” Actually, she did. But she wasn’t going to admit to it here. “Eazi took care of the technical side of things.”
Tean Lee watched her for a beat, then nodded, because Eazi had taken care of the technical elements of running the way station. She had been the soft face of the takeover. The handshaker and diplomat.
“All this can be dealt with later.” Hal pushed off the wall. “There are three Balcoans in Eazi’s warehouse, and we need to have them identified. It’s likely they’re involved in the comms issue.”
Tean Lee pushed back from his chair and stood. He looked relieved and eager to do something that involved action and maybe a little bit of violence. “Let’s go.”
He strode out of his office, calling out names, and when they reached the ground floor of the security building, there were nine fully kitted-out officers behind them.
No one needed directions to Eazi’s warehouse, and they got there in five minutes.
All three Balcoans were still there. The two who were alive were slowly coming out of their paralysis, and Tean Lee motioned a few to watch them while the rest of his team searched the warehouse.
“Look for lenses,” Hal called. “Something alerted them to our being here.”
“They were more likely watching the entrance,” Tean Lee said, but he waved a confirmation of the order, and they began looking.
They may have been watching the doors, Fiona thought, but as she and Hal had come up from under the station, they could only have been alerted by lens feed hidden inside the workshop itself. Not that she was going to share that with Tean.
The security chief was standing over the bodies and Hal crouched down next to him and pulled the hoods fully off the Balcoans faces.
“They had to have come in before the comms went down.” Tean narrowed his eyes. “I can’t check their faces against the database, though. Nothing’s working.”
Fiona suddenly remembered a way they could check the identities. She just hadn’t thought about it until now.
She took the slim comms unit she carried with her out of her jacket pocket and took still images of all three men. “For later,” she said when Tean glanced over at her. “When the comms are back up.”
He grunted. “We’ll take them to head office and see what we can get out of them.”
“I need to go get a change of clothes from my apartment.” Fiona took a step back.
“I need to check in with my crew,” Hal said. He turned to Tean Lee. “How about we meet you again in two hours?”
Tean Lee nodded in agreement, and he organized his team to carry their attackers out of the warehouse.
“They didn’t find the lens,” she said.
“They weren’t looking too hard,” Hal responded. “But it’s all right, I think I’ve seen it.” He strolled to the doorway that led to the supply closet they had come through, reached up over the frame, and plucked something off the lintel.
A lens.
“Think it’s the only one?” Fiona asked.
Hal took it to a table, picked up a heavy piece of machinery, and crushed it before he answered her. “I don’t know. My guess is yes.”
“Even if it is, with the comms down, how did they get a signal from it?” she asked.
“Self powered, very short range.” He picked up a small recycling receptacle and swept the lens pieces off the table into it.
“I’ve used some like it before. They had to be waiting very close by, probably watching the entrances as Tean suggested, which also explains how they got here so fast. The lens is motion activated, so the moment we walked in front of it, it sent them a signal. ”
She hoped it was as simple as that. “What I don’t understand is if they thought Eazi was in here, why didn’t they just look for him when they put the lens in place?”
Hal shrugged. “Maybe they were nervous they’d be interrupted, maybe they were overwhelmed with choice and thought you could narrow things down for them.”
She tilted her head from side to side, unsure. Then she shrugged. No point guessing, either they’d find out later, or they wouldn’t.
“I need to go back down to the runner, I think there’s a chance Eazi duplicated some of the way station’s databases on it as a backup for when I was down on Balco. If you need to meet up with your crew, I can meet you at Security Headquarters.”
Hal shook his head. “Where you go, I go.”
She pressed her lips together, but he simply looked back at her, implacable, so she nodded and led the way back down the secret staircase to the runner.
There was a database saved on the runner, and when she loaded the images of the three men, she had the date, time and ship they’d come off of.
“A Balcoan vessel. No surprises there. The freight ship they arrived on is from one of the companies that is supposedly supplying Paxe. Again, that’s hardly surprising.” She leaned back so Hal could also see the screen.
“They’ve been here for a week.” Hal leaned closer, one hand gripping the table, his other arm draped over her shoulder.
She tipped her head and let it rest against him. Allowed her eyes to close for a moment.
“When the comms are back up, we can ask General Olna to do some research on them and their company.” He rubbed his chin against the top of her head.
“If the names they gave on entry are legit.” Which was highly unlikely.
With a sigh, she forced herself to her feet. She wanted to have a shower, lie in her own bed with Hal, and sleep.
He studied her face for a moment, and then pulled her close. “You all right?”
“No. I’m worried about Eazi and Paxe, and that something bad is about to happen.”
He gave a grunt of agreement. “Something is definitely coming, and I wonder if the games the Garmman were playing on the airspace boundary are connected. It seems like a little too much is happening all at once for it to be coincidence.”
“Well, let’s go to the apartment and see if Eazi left a clue for us there.” She could only think of one other place he would have left a message for her—her way station office—but her apartment was definitely more likely.
“What about Paxe?” Hal asked as they made their way back up to the warehouse. “Are you going to look for him, too?”
She shook her head. “I know where Paxe will be, and it’s nowhere anyone can reach without dying.”
Hal slid her a look, and she shrugged.
“He has issues, and he came by them honestly. It’s possible he’d recognize me as a friend if I tried to climb into the shell of his new Class 5, which is where I’m sure he is, but why would I take the chance?
The odds of dying are quite high, and the ways and means are probably varied enough, my reflector bracelet may not cover them all. ”
Hal took her hand as they stepped out into the warehouse. “Good point.”