She shrugged. “I've been out and about for a few days. Wasn't hard to find out that you and your colleagues have dragged your people into a situation where their choices are an unwinnable war or being supervised like children. No wonder they hate you so much.”
There was a flicker behind the officer's back, two of the soldiers sharing a look, and Dray had to give Lucy points. She had a very good grasp of divide and conquer strategy.
“They don't hate us.” The officer looked affronted.
“Have you heard some of the chants in the square in Fa'allen? Have you listened to the conversations?” She tilted her head to Virn. “He must have, seeing as he was part of the group hunting me down in the city.”
The officer looked back at Virn, but the soldier's mouth was shut and his eyes narrowed. He said nothing.
The silence stretched out.
“So, what is it? Kill or no?” Lucy asked into the dead air.
The officer snapped to attention. “No. For now.”
“Ooh. Lucky us.” Lucy clapped her hands together.
The officer was obviously as much at a loss as Dray was with her demeanor. His face was neutral as he turned back to Virn. “Get them out of here.”
Virn tilted his head. “This is the only cell we have.”
“I mean, out of the facility.”
Virn took a step forward, and even on his hard-to-read Tecran features, Dray saw his shock. “Why?”
“Because this facility isn't secret, it's part of the military, and if they're found here it would do exactly the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.” The officer kept his tone reasonable, but everyone in the room was still, their full concentration on him.
“Where will we take them?” Virn tried to recover.
“Somewhere else. Use your initiative. Somewhere no one would suspect. Check in daily, but when you communicate with me or whoever is assigned by head office, make sure you don't mention where you are, and keep to the code.”
Dray thought Virn was going to walk.
Just throw down and leave.
He could see the thought go through his head, and the tension in his body.
Virn didn't like having to take any initiative. Because that meant he could no longer claim to be just following orders.
“The UC could send a team here.” The officer's voice was coaxing now, as if he realized how close he was to losing his main scapegoat. “They're looking for him,” he tilted his head toward Dray, “and for the Earth woman. They'll start searching the facilities near Fa'allen. And there can't be a trace of either of them anywhere that's associated with us, or every accusation against us will be that much more credible.”
“Why can't someone at head office come up with a place to stash her?” Virn wasn't letting that go.
“Because they're being monitored. The UC is looking hardest at those at the top. The way to do this is for you to source a good place and hunker down. No one can give away what they don't know.”
Virn stared at him for another long moment. “I expect a promotion.”
“Everyone involved in this will be promoted. That's not even a question.” The officer's answer was fervent. Sincere.
But Dray called yurve shit.
There was no way this wasn't a hands-off deniability exercise.
If Virn and his crew were caught, they would take the full consequences.
It hadn't gone unnoticed to him that the officer had not once introduced himself, and no one had mentioned his name.
Virn and his team were being cut loose, with a hope that if they were caught, they'd look like fanatics.
With the facility Lucy had been kept in destroyed, he guessed a lot of the top conspirators thought they'd got away clean, but they also couldn't afford to let her talk.
Dray couldn't see the end game, and maybe there wasn't one. Maybe they were just in reaction mode.
Some of the soldiers in the room looked like they'd come to the same conclusion.
“I expect confirmation of promotion within the day,” Virn said. “And we'll need to get provisions and supplies from the stores.”
“Of course.”
Dray noticed the officer relaxed a little, now that Virn had agreed.
What would have been Virn's options if he'd refused? What could the military have done?
“You should leave as soon as you've stocked up.”
Virn started issuing orders to the five soldiers in the room. They left to do as ordered, but at least two of them looked close to refusing.
It was something to work on. A crack to exploit.
Dray looked over at Lucy, who'd been watching the exchange with singular focus.
As the door closed on their cell, she changed the angle of her legs and tapped her boot against his own.
It was a gesture of solidarity.
He slid a little lower, and tapped back.
Chapter 23
She was miserable.
Lucy had longed to be free of the facility, had almost lost her mind in its artificially lit corridors for the two months she'd been conscious, but when she'd thought of the world outside, it hadn't been sleeting.
“Why do they have open hovers?” she asked Dray. “Why aren't they enclosed? Like sane people would have?”
Dray was standing beside her, his hands secured in front of him like her own, and also like her, sipping from a cup of lukewarm grinabo.
A piece of ice plopped into her cup as she gestured, and she actually felt like screaming.
She hunched over the cup a little more, so the stinging ice hit the back of her head and shoulders instead.
“Something about their culture and heritage. They like the wind and rain in their faces.”
She had guessed as much, but his answer was no comfort. “What about the Grih? They have enclosed hovers?”
He smiled against the rim of his cup. “Most are. Some aren't.”
“And what's your weather like?”
“Depends on which Grihan planet you're talking about.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “There's more than one?”
“There are four Grihan planets, plus a few vassal planets, like Balco, which fall in our space boundaries.”
“Which one's the warmest?”
He smiled again. “The planet I'm from. Xal.”
“Are you going to take me to your home to lie in the sun, Commander Helvan?” She didn't know why she asked him that. He wasn't obligated to take her anywhere, but she liked the idea of it.
He'd been nothing but a quiet, strong presence beside her. And behind his eyes was the same focus on escape she knew was in her own.
“If you like.” He finished his grinabo with a final gulp. “Xal would be honored to have you.”
She sent him a sidelong look at that, very skeptical of the truth of it, but he seemed sincere enough.
“I'd be honored to go,” she said at last.
He nodded, his gaze going over her shoulder suddenly.
With an internal sigh, she took the last sip of grinabo, guessing it was Virn coming to say they were moving again.
They'd been traveling for three hours, not exactly inland, but to the west, with a slight inland trajectory.
It was deserted out here.