Shades of Dark (42 page)

It was like taking ornaments off statues. Several times I looked at their eyes but they were blank stares. Frozen. I didn’t know what Del and Sully had done. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I shoved the hand laser into my pants pocket. The rest of the weapons we piled in the far corner. When Marsh returned, we’d take them.

One of the men’s comm-links chattered. Del grabbed it, tapped it on, holding one hand in the air for silence. Then off. On, then off.

Someone will investigate,
he assured us.
Sit.

I realized he meant the lab ship’s crew. As one, they sat on the floor. A chill ran up my spine. I turned away but not before I caught Philip’s frown. He wasn’t any more comfortable with this than I was.

“At least there’s no blood, no screaming,” I murmured under my breath as we tucked ourselves behind a row of duro-hards.

More footsteps. The questioning crew member at a hurried pace. An older man, portly. “Sellia! Tarl!” He thumped down the stairs, one arm raised. “What the fuck’s going on here?”

Del stepped out of the shadows. “Don’t you know it’s rude to shout?”

The man spun. And stopped cold.

“Unarmed,” Del said, patting him down. “Med-tech. The others are probably in the lab.”

“Agreed.” Sully nodded to me. “Time to take the ship.”

“I’m going to direct my little party to that office,” Del pointed to his left, “and out of sight. I’ll be right behind you.”

Philip, Sully, and I surged up the stairs, leaving Del alone to secure his newfound friends.

We walked quickly and quietly, single file, sidestepping debris. The corridor looked even worse fully illuminated. If we had to make a run for it, it would be like an obstacle course.

There was always a chance another crewmember would exit the ship. We hugged the outer bulkhead so anyone coming off the ship wouldn’t immediately see us. The dim, flickering corridor overheads didn’t quite reach there. Sully was a silver hazed figure wrapped in a long, dark coat.

Four still on board?
I asked Sully. Someone else could have come onto the depot, gone in the opposite direction.

One on the bridge, three below.

Tell Philip
—

He hears what you hear. Just not what you say.

What’s a med-tech doing on the bridge?

Probably not a med-tech. I’ll know more in a minute.

He would. We were almost to the airlock.

He slowed at the yellow striped edge, and then nodded.
Clear.

“Not clear,” I said quickly because Philip needed to know. Damn it, I wished he’d linked to me! I pointed up. “They’re using their own tubeway. There will be a vidcam overhead.” I knew P-40s and P-75s.

Philip brushed passed me, stepped into the airlock, laser pistol drawn. He fired. Something popped, sparked. “Problem solved,” he said. “Let’s go.”

So much for subtlety.

We raced through the tubeway—that and the airlock were the most dangerous ambush spots. We needed to clear those. We did, arriving on the lower deck, Sully scanning for any problems. A quick glance left and right confirmed Sully’s information that the long metal-walled corridor was empty. It was a typical P-75 lower deck layout, just as Del’s data detailed it, but with added blast doors to protect the crew if the jukors escaped their pens. With Sully watching our backs, it only took me and Philip a few minutes to trip the lock to the lab’s blast door.

“Go!” I told Sully as the door was grinding closed. We needed the bridge secure.

He took off for the forward stairs. Moments later Philip and I followed, pistols drawn.

Alarms sounded before we reached the main deck. A med-tech, likely, realizing she was shut in the labs. I doubted they expected intruders. No ships could arrive without their notice. System malfunctions as a result of being hooked to the depot would probably take the blame.

But the wailing alarm also covered the sounds of our approach to the bridge.

“Working on it!” I heard an exasperated man reply. “Goddamned systems are fucked up again. Tubeway cam’s out as well. Goddamned power surges with this place.”

His voice halted. He froze in place, bent over the engineering console. Sully stood in the bridge’s hatchlock, hand slightly raised, palm out. Bright energy roiled in the air, flowing from his sleeves, gathering around his boots.

Philip caught my eye. “Coat’s a containment field,” he murmured in slight surprise.

I nodded. “That’s my guess.”

“Interesting.”

Sully walked forward, drawing the energy back into him. The balding man in blue coveralls hadn’t moved. “Sit,” he told the man, as Del had. The man complied but his stare was vacant, glassy.

Sully glanced over his shoulder. “Lock down the bridge. I’m going to find out if he knows anything useful.”

The bridge hadn’t been altered from the standard P-75 configuration. Whatever funds Hayden Burke had sunk into this ship had probably gone into the gen-lab. I let Philip take the captain’s chair—he could lock down a P-75 as well as I could. I pulled an archiver from the cylinder on my belt, slipped into the seat at the main console, and brought up ship’s nav records. I wanted to know where she’d been, what gates she used. I plugged the archiver in then moved quickly for communications and repeated the procedure, grabbing all transmits on file. Maybe there were love letters from Tage. We’d have data to work with when we got back to the
Karn,
if Del claimed this ship as I felt sure he would.

“Ship’s ours,” Philip announced. He swung the captain’s chair around, pushing himself out of it. I pocketed the archiver from communications and pointed to the one at nav but Philip’s gaze was in the opposite direction, toward Sully standing before the crewman. Almost imperceptible flashes of lightning raced over his face.

Philip darted a glance at me, brows drawn slightly. Worried.

“
Zral,
likely, not
zragkor,
” I said quietly, coming up to Philip’s chair.

Philip just shook his head, signaling that wasn’t his concern. I couldn’t tell what was.

The glow around Sully dimmed, the pale lightning faded. The crewman rested his head on his arms, eyes closed.

Philip stood. “You’ve gotten a lot stronger, Sullivan. Or is this Regarth’s doing?” There was an odd timbre to his voice.

“We have other things to worry about,” Sully said, glancing from Philip to me. “The ship’s not just here to get supplies. This is a meetpoint for them.”

“With?” I prodded.

Sully shoved himself away from the unconscious man’s chair. “Hayden Burke.”

I felt tension and excitement roll through our link.

Philip straightened. “Here?”

“When?” I asked at the same time, my own adrenaline now spiking.

“From what he knows, about two hours. Seems Hayden’s done this before.”

“But this time we’ll be here,” I said softly.

Sully’s dark eyes glittered as he nodded, then the hint of a smile faded from his lips, his face turning serious. “He knows what I am. I highly doubt he’ll travel unguarded. He might have a
Ragkiril
working for him. But even if he has a
Kyi,
we can handle that.”

“Be careful. He’s less use to us dead,” Philip said. “That could even add to our sins in the public’s eye.”

“Burke’s very much less use to us dead,” Sully agreed and I saw some of the tension relax from Philip’s shoulders. Sully’s strength not only surprised him, but seemed to worry him. I understood that, because Del worried me. But not Sully. I knew my
ky’sal
.

“You still want to take out the lab now?” Philip asked.

Sully nodded curtly. “We need the rest of the crew neutralized. Del’s on his way. I feel fairly sure we have an hour or so to work with. I don’t want to be in the middle of something when Burke arrives.”

I was already reconfiguring the scanners, synchronizing my hand-held with them. “We’ll have forty-five minutes’ warning on the approach of any ship.”

“Let’s get this done.” Philip stood.

Stinger out, I followed Philip and Sully as they headed in silence to the stairwell. Del was waiting at the open doorway to the lower deck, the silvery haze drifting beneath the edges of his coat.

“The crew will be expecting rescue,” Sully said, pointing to the sealed blast door as we exited the stairwell. “They’re going to find a second set of doors instead.” He ran his hand down one wall, then motioned to me and Philip to move behind him. The
Kyi
’s energies blossomed off Sully’s skin though there were no slashes of lightning. The haze flowed outward and took the shape of an interior wall. And another set of doors. I could see through them, but barely.

Del was grinning broadly. “Perfect.”

Sully stepped back, ignoring Del’s comment, and inspected his handiwork. He nodded to Philip. “Release the doors.”

Philip tapped at the control panel. The real blast doors groaned apart slowly, voices escaping from within.

“About time! We thought—”

Two men surged forward then stopped.

“What the hell?” the taller one said.

And that was all. They were frozen, the energies of the
Kyi
flowing from Del and Sully through the apparition locking them in their places, shutting off their minds. They put their backs to the wall on Del’s command, then sat.

There were two more techs to deal with, and time wasn’t on our side. Hayden couldn’t arrive without our knowing, but he could arrive early. Del and Sully moved ahead.

I stood for a moment staring at the vacant faces, even though I knew we had no time to waste. One man was darker skinned like Marsh. The other was pale and muddy haired like Gregor. I wasn’t seeing them as individuals but as victims. I suddenly realized why Tage was so very afraid of Stolorths, of
Ragkirils
.

This had been far too easy. No bloodshed, yes. But I couldn’t be sure equal damage hadn’t been done, especially by Del. Sully was all too aware of how easily his power could be abused, after what happened with Gregor. But Del was a
Kyi
motivated not only by pleasure but by pain.

“Chaz,” Philip said, touching my arm. “As you said earlier, it’s better than shooting them.”

I nodded at the truth in that, pushed away my discomfort, and trotted down the corridor. On a P-75 it would dead-end at sickbay. Here it went to the lab. The silence was strange, almost ominous. We were taking over a ship and not a shot had been fired.

I checked my hand-held. “Still clear,” I told Philip. “But Burke’s ship will probably contact this one. If they don’t get an answer to the hail, they might abort.”

“Sullivan should be able to cover that,” Philip said. “Or we can create a system-failure signal. Given the usual interference in this sector, that’s not unusual.”

We stepped through the wide lab doors. Immediately I noticed that a long wall of thick glass was on my right, sealing the jukors off from the rest of the lab. Air recyclers pumped noisily. The grotesque bodies of the jukor infants, fanged mouths agape, were sprawled on the floor. The scaly hides hadn’t yet hardened; they were oozing something, and in spite of the fact that the glass prevented their odor from reaching me, my stomach revolted. I looked away, my gaze traveling over the form of a man seated at a desk, head resting on his arms, eyes closed. Sully’s or Del’s handiwork? I didn’t know. I didn’t see Del.

Sully stood in front of another glass-fronted section at the other side of the lab. He turned, our gazes meeting. His mouth was pinched, he closed his eyes briefly and shook his head.
I’m sorry, angel. There’s nothing I could do. They’re basically no longer alive.

I holstered my pistol as I slipped past the unconscious lab tech. The Takan women, four of them, were lying in clear stasis chambers. Breeding cells. Their bodies kept alive only to the extent that they could house a jukor fetus. It was a horrible, sickening sight. They were someone’s daughter, someone’s friend.

Philip pointed to the lab tech at the desk. “Any more information on why Burke’s coming here?”

“Del’s with the other tech now.” Sully raised his chin slightly as if he was listening to a distant conversation. Then he shook his head. “Burke meets on an irregular schedule with this ship’s captain. Everything’s organized through her. Sometimes it’s payday. Sometimes it’s hardware. They’ve meet here before.” He hesitated, then: “Del’s going to go back on the depot, see what he can learn from the captain and bridge staff that accompanied her. I want to finish securing this ship and getting everything we can in the archivers.”

“I left one at navigation,” I said, remembering. “We’ll need someone on the bridge to answer Burke’s hail. Let me try to pick up the captain’s identity and hail codes from ship’s logs. Shouldn’t be too hard for me to impersonate her.”

“Go,” Philip said. “Sullivan and I will finish here.”

“Let me know if you can’t find that data.” Sully’s voice stopped me in the doorway. “I can wake the engineer sufficiently and control his contact with Burke’s ship, if it comes to that.”

I nodded then took off down the corridor, trying not to glance at the vacant faces of the med-techs as I strode past the fire doors.