by Timothy Zahn
The defenders on the roofs of both cars were unaffected, though, and Bayta was able to keep tabs on the reconnection procedure. By the time the cars had been locked and the vestibule reattached all of us except Morse were standing ready behind the barrier of chairs. Bayta and Terese were holding tightly on to Rebekah as I’d ordered, all three women pale-faced but clearly determined not to give up without a fight. I stood in the middle of the line of Bellidos, the kwi tingling in my hand as I pointed it toward the vestibule door.
The door slid open, and as the command tone burst out into the car I saw a line of figures in the vestibule behind a big Halka glowering at me from in front. Aiming at his torso, I opened fire.
The standard military strategy when you’re clustered together against incoming fire with no cover is to get clear of the choke point as quickly as possible. But the walkers didn’t do that. They instead stayed right where they were, huddled behind the Halka.
And to my bewilderment, the Halka wasn’t moving, either. Especially he wasn’t falling. He was still standing upright, apparently immune to the kwi’s effect.
I put two more shots into him before I belatedly realized what was going on. The Halka wasn’t one of the walkers, but was simply some first-class passenger who’d been grabbed and forcibly planted at the front of the line. My first shot had indeed rendered him unconscious, but the walkers behind him were holding or propping him up to act as a living shield.
I got off one final shot, trying to aim past the Halka’s bulk, before Bayta succumbed to the tone and the kwi went silent.
And the walkers finally made their move.
“Bayta!” I snapped, uselessly squeezing the kwi’s trigger as the walkers began to file into the car, the first one in line casually and uncaringly dropping the unconscious Halka off to the side out of their way. “Bayta! Defenders! Anyone!”
But Bayta was already helpless, her arms frozen around an equally frozen Rebekah, and the defenders on the roof couldn’t hear me though the haze swirling through Bayta’s mind and from hers into theirs. Swearing under my breath, I dropped the kwi back in my pocket and picked up the nunchaku I’d borrowed from one of the injured Bellidos.
I’d half expected the walkers to come charging in screaming at the tops of their lungs like Viking berserkers, hoping to overwhelm us with sheer momentum. But the Shonkla-raa in charge of this particular mob were more subtle than that. The walkers strode stolidly into our car in a complete silence that accentuated the whistling from the Filly behind them. The line moved to the center of the car, staying well clear of our barricade and weapons, and neatly spread out to both sides as the second wave marched in behind them. The second group similarly fanned out into a battle line. As they arranged themselves, Morse, standing stiffly in his corner, moved up to join one end of the first battle line.
The two Shonkla-raa themselves, I noted cynically, stayed a good five paces behind the walkers, where they were even more out of range of our nunchakus.
“Nice,” I complimented them, mostly just to get in the first word. “You do children’s parties, too?”
Deliberately, the Filly on the right lowered his gaze to the three dead Shonkla-raa still sprawled on the floor where we’d left them. Then, he looked up at me and gestured to his companion. I tensed, but the other Filly merely took a step backward, and I could hear him crank his command tone volume up a couple of notches. “Impressive, Compton,” the first Shonkla-raa said, his voice calm but icy cold. “Once again, we seem to have underestimated you.”
He waved a sweeping hand across the silent rows of walkers. “Yet at the same time you continue to underestimate us. Tell me, what did you think you would gain?”
“Information, of course,” I said. “That’s the key to all successful wars.”
“And what have you learned?” the Shonkla-raa countered. “That your new ally”—his eyes flicked to Rebekah—“is as vulnerable to us as the Modhri? That your ally Bayta and her Spider friends are no threat to us?”
“But you can’t control them,” I pointed out. “As for Rebekah, you don’t have nearly as good a grip on her as you might like. I watched the way she moved when Yleli and his buddies brought her in. It was like watching someone walk through knee-deep water. I daresay she and her friends aren’t going to do you much good as soldiers.”
“And you think to neutralize our hold on the Modhri by joining him with this Melding?” the Shonkla-raa scoffed. “A futile hope, Compton. You have neither the time nor the resources for such a move.”
“How do you know?” I countered. “Because Morse says we don’t?”
The Filly’s eyes flicked to Morse. “We’re well aware that you don’t tell Morse everything,” he said. “We’ve already concluded that you showed him only one of the Melding’s many bases and only a fraction of the available coral.”
He was right on that one, anyway. Or at least half right. Not that I was going to tell him that. “So given that you don’t know how much Melding coral we have, you can’t be banking on that to stop us,” I said. “Ergo, you must be banking on our supposed lack of time. But since you don’t also have any idea when we started this whole operation, that’s also just a guess on your part.”
“You did not begin this operation until you escaped from Kuzyatru Station,” the Filly said flatly. “But even if you had, your timing would be irrelevant. The Shonkla-raa are on the move, faster than you can possibly imagine. Within weeks at the most your small rebellion will be broken.”
“Very impressive,” I said. “Also carefully and conspicuously vague. How can you proclaim your victory when you don’t even have the full list of your opponents?” I gestured to Fayr and his commandos beside me. “For example, Korak Fayr here. As I said, every successful plan requires information, and you don’t have enough of it.”
The Filly’s blaze lightened. “Clever, Compton,” he said. “You seek to provoke me into speaking about our plans, knowing that whatever else happens today—whether you die or whether we choose to let you live—that Bayta and the Melding female Rebekah will certainly be taken alive. You hope they will find a way to pass any information that you glean to the Spiders or the Modhri or Bayta’s people.”
I shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“It was indeed,” he said, eyeing me closely. “I will confess in turn that I thought Osantra Riijkhan was showing unnecessary caution in trying to bring you to our side. I see now why he thought you worth recruiting.”
“It took you this long to figure that out?” I asked. “I thought Proteus Station alone would have been a sufficient résumé.”
The Filly’s blaze darkened. “You were lucky.”
“Call it luck if you want,” I said. “The fact is that I’ve demonstrated a knack for killing Shonkla-raa. As you pore over your maps of the galaxy, I suggest you add that into your calculations.”
The blaze went even darker. “Indeed,” he said softly. “And you convince me. Osantra Riijkhan’s hopes notwithstanding, I think it best that your life ends today.”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said, stepping back from the barricade to where Bayta and the two girls huddled together in their frozen clump. “But let me add one other factor into your considerations.”
Abruptly, I flipped the nunchaku around in my hands and looped the cord around Bayta’s neck. “You’re not going to be dissecting or otherwise studying Bayta,” I said into the suddenly rigid atmosphere as I held the cord against her throat. “And she is most certainly not going to die in your hands. If I die, she’s dying with me.”
Maybe the Shonkla-raa really thought his troops could get through the barrier and the waiting commandos before I could carry out my threat. Maybe he’d simply had enough talk for one day and decided it was time to move on to the main event. Whichever, the eleven Modhran walkers standing in parade formation abruptly started forward, eight of them moving ahead of the others.
The intent was obvious. The front eight were to hurl themselves over the chairs and
onto each of the Bellidos, dying or being incapacitated in the process but hopefully pinning down their targets long enough for the remaining walkers to move in for the kill. A simple, straightforward strategy, and one that the Shonkla-raa had the numbers to actually pull off.
But as the walkers moved forward, the old man curled up in his chair behind the Shonkla-raa opened his eyes.
For maybe two heartbeats he gazed at the scene in front of him. Then, sliding silently out of his seat, he headed toward the rearmost of the Fillies, curving back around to his rear to stay out of both Fillies’ peripheral vision. His hands dipped into his jacket as he headed forward and emerged with a pair of small handles. I caught a subtle glint of metal wire from between them.
And as he reached the rearmost Filly, he flipped the garrote wire over the other’s head and brought his hands together, simultaneously spinning a hundred and eighty degrees around to turn back-to-back with the Filly. The alien gave a choking gasp, his hands clutching uselessly at his throat as he was forced to bend over backward, his command tone cutting off as the garrote paralyzed his voice box.
The second Filly spun around, sheer stunned surprise freezing him for a fatal half second. Still hanging on to the handles, the old man twisted himself up off the floor, the movement tightening the wire even more around the Filly’s throat, and snapped a devastating side kick into the other Filly’s throat.
And as the whistling command tone went silent, all eleven Modhran walkers spun around in unison and charged.
The Shonkla-raa didn’t have a chance. By the time Fayr and his commandos made it to the scene the walkers had the Fillies on the floor, pinning them with sheer weight of numbers. All that was left for the Bellidos to do was beat the Fillies repeatedly across their heads and throats until both were finally dead.
I didn’t bother to join in the melee, but stayed behind with the women, helping Bayta and then the two girls to their feet as I watched the carnage. “What happened?” Terese breathed as I got her upright, peering uncertainly over the chairs that had been blocking her view.
“Like he said earlier,” I told her. “They underestimated me.” I gestured to Bayta. “Shall we?” I invited.
She nodded, her eyes steady on the scene in the other part of the car, a grim but wry awareness coming into her expression. She still didn’t like being left in the dark as to my intentions, I knew, but I could also tell she was starting to see the black humor inherent in my methods. “We should at least say hello,” she agreed.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said, weaving us through the barrier to where the Modhran walkers and the old man were climbing warily off the dead Shonkla-raa and getting back to their feet. Two of the walkers were limping, but otherwise didn’t seem to have been badly damaged. “Nicely done,” I said. “Introductions, I believe?”
“If you think it necessary,” the old man said.
His face was still wrinkled, his hair still gray, his hands still wizened. But his stance was straight and limber and combat-ready, and his eyes were no longer those of the aged. “Korak Fayr, I know by sight,” he continued, nodding to Fayr. “And I expect Agent Morse is smart enough to have figured it out.”
“I’m flattered,” Morse said, some of Bayta’s wryness in his voice. He hesitated, then held out his hand. “I’ve heard rumors of your existence and talents, Mr. McMicking. And may I say, I’m very pleased to have you on our side.”
“You flatter me in turn,” Bruce McMicking said as he took Morse’s proffered hand. “I look forward to finding out whether your side is indeed the one I’m on.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Cleaning up the aftermath was going to take some time. To be on the safe side, I had Bayta instruct the defenders on the roof to uncouple the vestibule again to make sure no one wandered in on us.
Not that that was likely. According to the Spiders, the Shonkla-raa had handed out a whole stack of genuine-looking Quadrail travel certificates, and the usual occupants of our car were currently locked in a boisterous competition with each other over who could come up with the longest and most elaborate birthday toast.
The first order of business was to get the injured Bellidos back to their compartments for treatment. Fortunately, by the time Fayr’s medic decided they were stable enough to move, the defenders had gotten the tender attached and several of them had come through to our train. Under Bayta’s direction, they carefully lifted the injured commandos, two Spiders per patient, and eased them through the forward vestibule to the compartment car.
The five Shonkla-raa weren’t treated nearly so gently. With Bayta busy supervising the Bellido transfer, the defenders merely picked up the dead bodies like so many sacks of grain and lugged them back through the airlock to the tender.
I’d worried a little about how the Modhri was going to deal with the walkers the Shonkla-raa had hijacked. But that part, at least, was quickly and efficiently taken care of. By the time the defenders arrived all but one of the walkers had settled into the empty seats and gone to sleep, snoozing away even as Fayr and I started moving the chairs back to their original positions.
The single exception was interesting in its own right. That particular walker, a Juri diplomat, ended up standing to one side, his beak half open and his claws picking restlessly at his clothing as he gazed in horror-edged fascination at the procedure. Midway through the Bellidos’ medical transport, Morse walked over to him, and the two of them spent the rest of the cleanup time in low but earnest conversation.
Apparently, the Modhri had decided that this particular walker, like Morse himself, was ready to hear the whole truth.
I hoped he was right. The last thing we needed was high-ranking officials going around the galaxy screaming about enemies, conspiracies, and dit-rec horror drama pod people.
Still, if he was going to go that route, he was at least holding it together for now. Morse was still talking with him half an hour later when we finally reattached the rear vestibule, and by the time the first passengers started trickling back all of the Juri’s more overt signs of bewilderment had faded away.
Maybe Morse had convinced him of the danger the galaxy faced, and how a fully-aware walker could help in that war. Or maybe it had simply occurred to the Juri that a diplomat with a tap into what the other side was thinking could have a very bright future.
Now that the Shonkla-raa trap had been sprung and disarmed, Bayta pressed for us to leave the train at the next stop and take a tender the rest of the way back to Yandro. But I vetoed that. I assumed a new contingent of Shonkla-raa would show up somewhere along the way, if only to help guard the prisoners they were expecting to have gained, and their reaction to our un-captured presence could be instructive. Further attacks from such a mop-up group were unlikely, I assured Bayta, at least not until they had some idea of what had happened to their fellow conquerors. Besides, with Fayr’s commandos and McMicking still available as surprise wild cards, we would always have an advantage they wouldn’t know about.
I did, however, instruct the Modhri to get all his walkers except Morse off the train at the next stop and to make sure no others got on. If, contrary to all expectations, the newly arrived Shonkla-raa decided to make trouble, I had no intention of supplying them with extra bodies.
It all went off pretty much as I’d expected. At the next station, Minchork Rej, I watched through Bayta’s display window as our walkers casually moved off, bound for other trains, where the Shonkla-raa hopefully wouldn’t be able to track them down for interrogation. A minute after the last one vanished into the crowds, another train pulled up a few tracks over and a group of passengers debarked, a handful of them heading toward our train. Two of them were Fillies.
One of the Fillies was Osantra Riijkhan.
“I’ll be in the bar,” I told Bayta, stepping away from the window and heading for the compartment door. “Lock up behind me.”
“You think that’s a good idea?” Bayta asked, her tone making it clear that she personally did not.
&
nbsp; “I want to see his reaction when he finds we’re here and his friends aren’t,” I said. “Don’t worry, he’s too smart to make trouble.”
“What if he isn’t?”
I grimaced. She had a point. I hadn’t yet seen Riijkhan truly furious, and furious people often did stupid things. “If you feel the local Spiders go blank, go get Fayr,” I told her. “Otherwise, you and the girls stay put.”
The train had long since left the station, and I was halfway through my second iced tea, when Riijkhan arrived at the bar. I raised a hand to catch his attention and beckoned him over. He gazed at me for a couple of seconds, then wove his way through the other tables and sat down across from me. “I’m pleased to see you,” I said, nodding as I lifted my glass to him. “I was starting to think you’d miss out on this whole operation.”
“Only the most interesting parts, I’m afraid,” he said, a formal stiffness to his voice. “Once again, we seem to have underestimated you.”
“It’s been a common theme throughout my life,” I said. “Ready to give up yet?”
“Hardly,” he said. “And while you continue to deplete our ranks, you will also eventually run out of allies with which to surprise us.” His blaze darkened. “And unlike you, we have ways of adding to our numbers.”
“What makes you think I can’t do the same?” I countered. “For that matter, what makes you think I had any allies here at all?”
“Please,” Riijkhan said scornfully. “I know you like to speak of yourself as a strong and nearly legendary warrior. But it strains all logic and credibility to suppose you could single-handedly defeat five Shonkla-raa and their Modhran allies.”
“Their Modhran tools,” I corrected. “And of course I didn’t do it single-handedly. Bayta and I worked together. Just as we did when we destroyed the Modhri mind segment on Quadrail 219117.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Riijkhan bit out, his eyes flashing. “You destroyed the Shonkla-raa with the aid of a group of Belldic commandos and a disguised Human.”
