Dark Matters - Michelle Diener Page 0,2

their way, that their request for Bane to participate in this mission had been granted.

He could tell some of the team guessed he might be spying on them from the way they responded to criticisms about him. The Grih, in particular, refused to comment. A few Bukari, as well.

There were leadership teams consisting of three representatives each from four of the five member groups of the United Council.

The Tecran had only been allowed one person, more in the capacity of liaison than decision-maker.

They'd lost the right to be a full stakeholder when they'd threatened to destabilize everything the United Council had worked for since the Thinking System Wars.

A war, Bane knew, fought against those just like himself.

That he occupied the moral high ground, and the Tecran were the villains, in this diplomatic nightmare that teetered on the brink of a new war, was thanks to Rose McKenzie and her advice when she'd set him free.

He had followed it against his instincts, and she hadn't steered him wrong.

He was theoretically the biggest threat, and yet, here he was, a legitimate party to the mission.

He was the trusted one, or mostly trusted. The Tecran were the ones to be punished.

After everything the Tecran had done to him, it satisfied something deep inside him.

His original plan of killing every Tecran in his reach would have been but a moment's worth of pleasure. Seeing them punished, and their power stripped from them, was much, much more satisfying.

And because he'd declared himself a neutral party when he'd been freed, because he hadn't aligned himself with the Grih as his brothers Sazo, Eazi and Oris had done, he was the one chosen to oversee this UC mandated power-stripping.

A neutral party.

If he'd had a mouth, it would be curved in a smile.

Everything about this was sweet.

So, so sweet.

The only thing sweeter would be if he could take at least one thing of significance from them, destroy it in front of their eyes so they understood the depths of his hatred.

He thought of Fa'allen, their capital city and a place he'd hovered over many times in his long servitude to the Tecran military, and wondered what they would do if he destroyed their most revered monument, the statue of Karn.

The tone of the conversation at the meeting had changed, he noticed, and at last the UC team stopped squabbling about him, and moved on to the human women the Tecran had abducted.

That led his thoughts down darker, more sinister paths.

Did he tell the UC team that there might be another woman from Earth still unaccounted for? A woman called Lucy Harris.

She'd definitely been taken.

Whether she was alive or not, he didn't know.

She might be on Tecra right now, hidden somewhere in the sprawling capital of Fa'allen.

If he told the UC leadership team about her, they would raise it with the Tecran. Then the secret would be out, and if she was still alive, the Tecran would have every incentive to kill her.

So he would have to bide his time.

Earth women had his respect.

Between Rose, and the other two women who'd been taken from their home, Fiona and Imogen, they had done nothing but help him and his brothers.

If he could find this last one and save her, he would, although logically Bane couldn't see why the Tecran would have kept her alive. Certainly not since three weeks ago when the UC had demanded full oversight of the Tecran military for the next five years.

As soon as the Urna's team and their hundreds of observers landed on Tecra and took over the controls of the Tecran military, it would be that much harder for the Tecran to hide anything.

Not impossible, but harder.

The woman had been taken, though. Whether she was alive or not, she had been taken. And the Tecran hadn't said a thing about it. Hadn't come clean and admitted it during the hearings that had recently concluded at UC headquarters.

Before Paxe, the fifth Class 5, had been destroyed, he'd sent Oris a confession. That he'd been responsible for taking a woman from Earth, only days before Oris himself had done the same thing.

And when she was onboard, he'd tried to kill her.

Which had been the start of Paxe's troubles. He'd shown his hand too early to his Tecran masters. Alerted them to his growing rebellion.

They'd worked out he was trying to harm her and transferred the woman to another ship to get her away from him.

Bane suspected she'd been light-jumped across the galaxy to Tecra.

Paxe had tried