Chapter 32 #2
He was probably talking about Lieutenant Grogan, Fee thought. Interesting that they thought he was the reason the warehouse, office and the secret tunnel that connected the two could no longer be used.
A ping sounded from Bart’s comms set, and he set the cup down and frowned at it. “Come.” He took her elbow and led her to the right.
Just as she’d thought, the corridor kept going, curving around and revealing an open plan kitchen, informal lounge area and small cafeteria style dining area.
The Balcoans working on the Class 5’s home away from home.
The passage narrowed suddenly after the cafeteria, and there were doors on the left.
Bart stopped in front of one and opened it up.
It was a narrow room—a cell, really—with a bench built into the wall with a thin mattress on it, and a neck-high screen with an opening just beyond the head of the bench.
“Hold still.” Bart pushed her in front of him, and suddenly the restraints were off her.
She hunched forward, flexing her hands in relief, and the door closed.
Fee turned back and heard the locks engage.
No goodbye, no nothing.
She turned back, looking the room over, and found a lens in the right hand corner above the door. The angle looked like it would give her privacy if she went behind the screen, and she went to confirm it.
There was a toilet and shower behind there. They could only see her above the neck, she worked out, which was better than nothing, so she used the facilities and had a quick shower while she could.
“Hello, my friend, hello my friend, Are you there, are you there?” she sang in English as she soaped up. She’d hung the jacket on a hook behind the screen, within sight of her.
Eazi hadn’t said anything since they’d begun their descent, and she was worried the interference most systems experienced near Kyber’s Arm had cut them off from each other.
It was why the Tecran had chosen to build a secret base here in the first place.
There was no response to her question.
Last time she’d been down here, Eazi had controlled a runner, hovering it directly over the hidden facility to counteract the effects of Kyber’s Arm, while she wore the crystal that was his physical self around her neck.
He’d used the runner as a way to speak to her, but she’d assumed the crystals on the jacket served that purpose now.
Except he wasn’t around her neck anymore, and if he was trying to connect from Larga Ways, however close it was in cosmic terms, there might be too much interference from the perpetual storm.
She dried off with a towel they’d left for her and then decided she couldn’t get back into her clothes without rinsing them out first, so she did that, hanging them to drip dry.
She lay on the bench with the towel wrapped around her, closed her eyes, and thought about her options.
Her hand went to the silver necklace the Balcoans had left around her neck.
She could do some damage to Bart or whoever came to check on her with it, but she had better be sure she had a straight run to freedom afterward, or things would get a little harder for her, once they realized she wasn’t the harmless irritant they thought she was.
A scuffling sound had her opening her eyes in a slight panic. Her mind flew straight to a frien. She and Hal had come across evidence of them in the tunnels of this place as well as coming face to face with one in the desert above it.
Her gaze went to the lens, and she saw it was being pushed out of its housing. It tipped forward and then clattered to the ground and a frightening and alien head popped out of the newly-made hole in the wall.
The thing leapt down, the length of her arm from wrist to elbow, and she sat up slowly, clutching the towel between her breasts, and stared.
“Bunny?”
The segmented bug-like creature ran to the bench and leapt onto it, its head lifting to look at her.
Very slowly, Fee held out her arm, and it delicately climbed up, clasping itself to her forearm.
She ran the fingers of her other hand over its back. “Bunny, I’m so happy to see you.”
Paxe must have been watching as she was loaded into the runner on the next dock arm over from the Class 5, and he’d sent Bunny.
Her chances of getting free just went up significantly, but so did the potential for death and destruction.
Bunny was not above murder and mayhem.
There were Grihan soldiers who wouldn’t go anywhere near him after what they’d seen him do on V65, the Tecran moon base that Paxe had taken control of.
Paxe kept him out of sight mostly, and Fee knew he worked on the Class 5, running cables, wiring systems, invisible to most.
But while Ellie was away from Larga Ways, meeting with her partner Renn Sorvihn’s family on Xal, she had asked Fee to spend some time with the group of self-aware drones Paxe had collected that Ellie called the motley crew.
They needed interaction with people, Ellie had told her. They needed someone to have fun with.
So Fee had taken to visiting the motley crew almost every day, teaching them games, letting them show her what they’d done in the rebuild.
Bunny was shy, but he sought her out more and more as he had gotten used to her, and now she often carried him around the new build like she was doing now, as a sort of deadly arm brace.
“They’ll come running soon, when they notice their lens is dead,” she told him. She got to her feet and went to check on her clothes, pleased to find they were almost completely dry.
Smart fabric for the win.
She set Bunny down on top of the low screen and got into her clothes, then sat on the bench to pull on her boots.
“Better be ready to run,” she said.
Bunny clambered up her leg and settled back on her arm, squirming up the sleeve of her jacket so that he was completely hidden.
Fee climbed up onto the bench, leaning up against the wall in a half crouch.
The door to her room slid open, and Bart and a Balcoan she hadn’t seen before, crowded through.
“Careful,” Fee whispered. “I don’t know where it went.”
“What?” Bart was looking at the lens, smashed on the floor, and then turned to look at the hole above. “Where what is?”
“The thing that pushed the lens out. It jumped into the room.” She pointed to the bathroom. “I think it went in there, but I can’t be sure.”
“A baby frien?” the man with Bart asked. “You’d think they’d be less dangerous because they’re much smaller, but they’re actually more trouble than the adults. The Garmman we had here got bitten and—” He made a gesture that had Fee guessing the Garmman hadn’t made it.
Maybe he’d been their Class 5 expert.
“What did it look like?” Bart asked.
“About this long.” Fee had never seen a baby frien, but she’d seen an adult up close and she guessed how big one might be, holding her hands out. “Thin and a peach color.”
“Shit. That’s it.” The man went still and looked around. “We go through anti venom like it’s water here.”
“I’m not staying in this room,” Fee said. “I can’t. I don’t even know if your anti venom will work on me.”
Bart gestured to her and she walked to the edge of the bench, looked at the floor carefully, and then stepped down, eyes fixed on the bathroom area.
Bart grabbed her arm, holding her slightly behind him, his grip hard. Bunny wiggled out from her sleeve, jumped onto his jacket, and ran up onto his shoulder.
Before he could even register what was going on, before Fee could voice any opinion about what should happen, Bunny lifted a foreleg, which extended a thin needle that went straight into Bart’s neck.
Then he leapt onto the shoulder of the man who’d come with Bart, and plunged the needle into his neck, too.
Bart noticed Bunny at last and stumbled back, shoving Fee away from him.
“What is that—?”
Then he fell, crumpling to the floor in an awkward heap.
The man with him turned at the sound, Bunny still clinging to his back, and his eyes widened at the sight of Bart.
“Where—?” He fell to the side, struck the screen with his shoulder, and then slid down to the ground, coming to a rest half sitting up.
Fee crouched beside Bart, felt for a pulse, and was glad when she found one.
Then she held out her arm. “Good job, Bunny. Let’s get out of here.”