Judgment at Proteus

by Timothy Zahn

  I was too tired to really care. Locking the compartment door, I stretched out on the bed, and as the train pulled out of the station and headed for New Tigris I fell asleep.

  I was working through a particularly eerie dream when I was startled awake by a sharp shake of my shoulder.

  I snapped my eyes open. Bayta was standing over me, her face tight. Behind her, Rebekah and Terese were clinging tightly to each other. “What is it?” I demanded, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and sitting up. A quick glance out the display window showed we were in Terra Station, and my inner ear told me we were slowing down as we headed for the passenger area.

  “Agent Morse says there are walkers out there,” Bayta said tensely. “Nearly a hundred of them.”

  “A hundred?” I echoed, taking another look through the window. The platforms were reasonably crowded by Terra Station standards, but there couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty people out there. For a hundred of them to be Modhran walkers—

  I looked back at Bayta, a sinking feeling in my stomach. “It’s a trap,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “And there’s no way out.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  For a long moment my sleep-fogged brain skidded like a train on iced tracks. Then the mental wheels caught again. “Don’t stop,” I said, getting to my feet. “Whoever’s driving this thing, tell him to just keep going.”

  “I already tried,” Bayta said. “The schedule says to stop at Terra. So we’re stopping.”

  I bit back a curse. Damn passive Spiders and their damn rigid adherence to the rules.

  Unless— “You,” I said, jabbing a finger at the defender as he stood silently behind Terese and Rebekah. “Countermand the schedule, or the standing order, or whatever it takes. Keep us moving.”

  “I cannot,” he said. “The slowdown procedure has already been started. It cannot be stopped.”

  “What are we going to do?” Terese demanded, her voice half angry, half pleading. “You said we’d be safe. You said you’d keep us safe.”

  “Shh,” Rebekah soothed, reaching up to touch Terese’s cheek. “It’ll be all right,” she said quietly. “He’ll get us through.”

  But for all her comforting words, her face was as pale as Terese’s. And for the moment, I had to agree with them. Stepping over to the window, I gave the station a long, careful look.

  For once, the walkers arrayed against us were easy to identify. They were lined up along the platform our train was headed for, three deep and as stiff as soldiers on parade. Standing in a more spaced-out row a few meters behind the lines, looking like armchair generals who are eager to go to war but don’t want to get too close to the actual fighting, were four Fillies dressed in the upper-class clothing favored by the santra class. Clearly, they knew we were aboard this particular train.

  “Where did they all come from?” Bayta murmured from beside me. “And so many of them are Humans, too.”

  “They’re a pickup squad,” I told her. “Look at their clothes—most of them are second- or third-class passengers. I’m guessing our friends out there pulled Morse’s trick: get hold of some coral, wait until they know we’re on the way, then grab everyone in sight and start scratching.”

  “But how could they have known we’d be on this train?” Bayta asked with helpless chagrin. “I watched at New Tigris. No one got off our train, and no one already in the station sent any messages. I had the Spiders check.”

  “They knew because Riijkhan’s started being cute,” I growled. “They have an agent aboard who must have signaled someone in the station. It didn’t have to be anything elaborate—a piece of red paper in one of the windows or something equally simple. Then, since they knew we’d watch for someone to send a message, the watcher in the station didn’t send one. In this case, the lack of a message was the signal that we were on the way.”

  There was a movement behind me, and I turned as Rebekah stepped to the door and opened it, just in time to let Morse slip into the compartment. “I hope you’ve got one bloody good plan,” he said.

  “Working on it,” I told him, giving the rest of the station a quick scan. There were other small clumps of people wandering around out there whom the Shonkla-raa apparently hadn’t bothered to recruit. Some were looking curiously at the walker formation, probably wondering who the celebrity was who was arriving, but most were pretty much ignoring us. Late arrivals, I tentatively identified them, who the Shonkla-raa had decided couldn’t be turned into walkers in time to be of any use to them.

  And scattered haphazardly throughout the station, standing as rigid as ice carvings, was the local contingent of Spiders.

  The Shonkla-raa had the whole place locked down, all right. But we still had one weapon in our arsenal. “What’s the activation range on the kwi?” I asked Bayta. “How close do you have to be to keep it working?”

  “A couple of meters,” she said. “Five or six at the most. But the minute I go out there I’ll be frozen like everyone else.”

  “That’s why you won’t be going out there,” I said, thinking hard. “We can keep the train’s doors closed, right?”

  “Yes,” Bayta said. “That’s done internally. I’ve already given the order.”

  “Order number two: as soon as we’ve stopped, try to get us moving again,” I said. “I don’t suppose the Shonkla-raa have overlooked that possibility, but we might as well try. If it works, we just keep going until we find a station that’s clear of them, or a siding big enough for us to pull into.”

  “We can try,” Bayta said doubtfully.

  “If that doesn’t work—” I turned away from the window and gestured to Morse. “Get down to the compartment nearest the car’s door and clear out whoever’s inside. I don’t care how, just do it.”

  “Right.” Morse hit the door release and disappeared back out into the corridor.

  “Sam, get Carl back here,” I ordered the defender. “Where is he, by the way?”

  “In the dining car service area,” Sam said.

  “Good,” I said. “Have him stop by the bar car on his way and grab as many big bottles of the most flammable alcoholic liquor you’ve got aboard. The higher the proof, the better. If there’s any skinski flambé fluid, grab that, too.”

  “We going to set the train on fire?” Terese asked.

  “Not the train, no,” I told her. “You girls start tearing apart some strips of flammable cloth—a proper Molotov cocktail needs a proper fuse.”

  “How are we going to get them out there?” Rebekah asked, her voice tight but controlled as she pulled two of her lightweight shirts from her carrybag and handed one to Terese. She was, I suspected, probably trying hard not to think about the actual, gritty consequences of deliberately setting a whole bunch of people on fire.

  “She’s right,” Terese said, her breath edging toward the fast and shallow as she started tearing the shirt apart. “The minute you open the door, they’ll have us.”

  “That’s why all of you will be in the compartment Morse is getting for us,” I told her. “Close enough for Bayta to activate the kwi, but behind enough soundproofing that none of you should get enough command tone for it to be a problem. It’ll just be Sam, Carl, and me out there.”

  “But they’re Spiders,” Terese protested. “The minute they hear the Fillies they’ll be frozen.”

  I smiled tightly. “Exactly. Hang on to those shirts, and let’s see if Morse has our new quarters ready.”

  The train was just rolling to a stop as we headed down the corridor toward the front of the car. Along the way we passed an eager-eyed Tra’ho hurrying in the opposite direction, her multiple sets of earrings jangling as she all but ran us down.

  Morse was waiting by the open door of the compartment beside the car door. “I told her the grafft’a singer Mov Tree’es was preparing to make a musical dit-rec and needed a few Tra’ho’seej to fill in for some of the background line who hadn’t shown up,” he said as we came up. “What’s the pla
n?”

  “As soon as the rest of my squad shows up—ah; there he is,” I interrupted myself as the vestibule door at the rear of the car opened and Carl appeared with a dozen bottles cradled in his folded legs. “You and I will put together a few Molotov cocktails, then I’ll stay out here while all the rest of you seal yourselves into the compartment. Bayta, why aren’t we moving?”

  “As soon as we stopped some of the walkers wedged themselves into the engine’s wheels and drive mechanisms,” she said tightly.

  Terese inhaled sharply. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “They didn’t—?”

  “No, no, of course not,” Bayta assured her quickly. “That’s why we’re still stopped.”

  Morse grunted. “They are already dead, you know,” he said darkly as he took one of Carl’s collection of bottles and pulled out the stopper. “The Shonkla-raa aren’t going to let any of them live.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to be a direct party to their murders,” I pointed out as I took another of the bottles and gave the rest of the assortment a quick look. Carl hadn’t found any flambé fluid, which burned a lot hotter than alcohol, but he’d put together a selection of Halkan rotgut that ranged from a hundred twenty to a hundred thirty proof. Not perfect, but it would have to do. “Besides, I’m guessing that grinding a bunch of bodies into the wheelworks would probably damage something and lock us down solid.”

  “Yes, it probably would,” Bayta confirmed, a shiver running through her as she took one of the bottles from Carl and starting working on it, watching me closely to see how I was putting the bomb together. “How many do we need?”

  Abruptly, there was a loud thud and the car seemed to shake. “What was that?” Terese gasped.

  “They’re trying to push us over,” Rebekah said.

  Morse grunted. “Good luck with that,” he said. “Just as well Compton scrapped the idea of coming the whole way by tender. One of those they might have been able to knock over.”

  “Six of them ought to do it,” I told Bayta as I started stuffing one of the cloth fuses into my bottle. “The plan is to—”

  “Hold it,” Morse cut me off. “They can hear us, remember.”

  “Only if they think to ask their walkers what I’ve got planned,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. The plan is to put a fire barrier on both sides of the door and then kwi as many of the walkers as I can as they charge at me up the middle. When the fires start dying down, I can feed them extra fuel straight from the other bottles.”

  “All while you’re busy shooting people?” Terese asked tightly. “You planning on growing a few extra hands in the next two minutes?”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” I said as I finished one cocktail and started on the next. “You may have noticed my current lack of useful assistants. Unless you’re volunteering?”

  She took a deep breath. “Actually,” she said, “yes, I am.”

  I looked up from my work, momentarily at a loss for words. Terese’s face was pale and tense, but there was a stubborn determination there that, for once, wasn’t in opposition to something I was trying to do. Hanging out with Rebekah had apparently been good for her. “I accept with thanks,” I said. “Grab that bottle from Morse and come over here.”

  I positioned Sam and Carl in front of the outer door, their legs interlocked and braced against the walls and ceiling. I crouched behind them, kwi in one hand, lighter in the other, my six Molotov cocktails at the ready. Terese squatted behind me where she’d be at least a little protected, the other liquor bottles uncapped beside her.

  “Okay,” I said as yet another thud rocked the car. The Shonkla-raa weren’t giving up easily. But then, it wasn’t their own personal bodies that were being bruised and battered in the useless attack. “Everyone else, inside the compartment. When the door closes, Bayta, fire up the kwi. Five seconds after you do that, have the Spiders open this door. And only this door.”

  “Understood.” She hesitated, as if wanting to say more but knowing there was no time. “Be careful.”

  “And take care of Terese,” Rebekah added quietly.

  Ten seconds later, the door slid shut behind them, and the kwi wrapped around my hand began its activation tingle. “Get ready, Terese,” I said as I lit the fuses. “Here we go…”

  And in front of me, the car door irised open.

  The Shonkla-raa had been keeping track of our plans and progress, all right. The door was still opening when, with no sound other than that of the Shonkla-raa command tone that burst in through the open door, a wall of Human and alien flesh surged into the opening as the walkers tried to shove their way inside.

  But for once, the Shonkla-raa’s magic command tone was working against them. As Terese had already pointed out, the instant the door opened Sam and Carl froze solid, wedged in place and blocking the attack like a set of surrealistic prison bars.

  And in that same instant I saw the Shonkla-raa’s strategy.

  He knew I had the kwi, and that I could instantly zap the people who were shoving against the defenders. The problem was that the physical driving force of the surge was coming from the walkers piled up at the rear of the crush, people who were being blocked from the kwi’s effects by the rest of the crowd in front of them.

  I could reset the kwi for one of its three pain settings and try to distract the mind segment that way. But I’d seen Shonkla-raa drive their captive walkers through pain before, and I doubted even my highest setting would stop them. Simply knocking out the front line would be even less useful. The crowd pressing behind them would continue to shove their unconscious bodies forward against the barrier, turning them from active attackers into passive battering rams.

  Which left me only one option.

  Maybe the Shonkla-raa out there thought I would shy away from the prospect of torching fellow Humans. If so, they’d severely underestimated my resolve. Clenching my teeth, I scooped up one of my Molotov cocktails and lobbed it through the interlocked Spider legs toward the rear of the mob.

  A normal glass whiskey bottle would simply have thudded against head or torso and dropped clattering onto the ground. But Quadrail bottles were deliberately designed to be useless as an impact weapon. Instead of thudding into the close-packed people back there, the bottle’s flimsy plastic split across its tear lines, scattering the alcohol and burning fuse across the crowd.

  My second and third firebombs were in the air before the first one ignited.

  Group pain shared through a group mind was one thing. Individual pain—real, live, and immediate—was something else entirely. The forward surge against my barrier seemed to hesitate as I sent my fourth and fifth bombs sailing into the crowd to explode into their own patches of fire.

  With a normal mob, under normal circumstances, I would be hearing multiple screams of agony by now. But not this mob. Not these circumstances. Under Shonkla-raa rule the standing order was apparently not to speak unless spoken to. The shock front wavered, then pressed ahead even as the blue-edged flames danced across the hair and shoulders of those behind them.

  Over the whistle of the command tone, I heard a sort of gurgling sob. Like the Shonkla-raa, Terese also hadn’t expected me to be willing to do whatever needed to be done. But there were no words of reproof or horror, and that single sob was all I heard, and even as I threw my last Molotov cocktail I saw her move two of the uncapped bottles forward into my reach.

  But for the moment I wouldn’t need them. The attack had hesitated at my second and third bombs. Now, as my sixth detonated into flame, the entire crowd wavered, then drew back a little as the pain flooding the mind segment briefly overrode even the Shonkla-raa’s control over it. They only moved a little, not more than half a meter and for no more than a couple of seconds before their new masters regained control and forced them back under their telepathic whip.

  But that half meter was all I needed. With the forward pressure from the rear of the crowd no longer pressing the front line against the train and my defender barrier, I leveled the k
wi at our attackers and squeezed the trigger.

  My first target’s knees buckled, dropping him into a heap on the platform. I held down the trigger, sweeping the kwi back and forth across the line, collapsing them like legs of an overloaded table.

  The Shonkla-raa tried to surge them forward again, trying furiously to regain the initiative. But they were too late. With the front line down, the stacks of unconscious bodies had become an impediment to further forward movement, slowing the advance still farther and giving me that much more time to mow them down. If the Fillies were stupid enough or determined enough to keep at it, they would quickly run out of troops.

  Unfortunately, they were neither. I’d just started on the third row, with maybe twenty out of the hundred walkers down for the count, when the rest abruptly scattered to the rear and to both sides. I managed to nail three more of them as they ran, and then they were out of range or my line of fire.

  I took a deep breath, instantly regretting it as the distant stink of burned clothing and flesh assailed my nostrils. Now that the crowd had dispersed I had a clear view of the burn victims I’d created, lying or writhing on the platform with wisps of smoke curling up from their smoldering bodies. I fired a kwi blast into each of them, to at least give them the temporary respite of unconsciousness.

  “Clever, Compton,” a Filly voice called. “But surely you realize it’s all futile. You don’t truly think you can hold out against us forever, do you?”

  “I don’t have to hold out nearly that long,” I called back. “Just until the next express train coming through here sees us, figures out something’s wrong, and sends an alert to the orbiting transfer station out there. There’s a whole contingent of Human soldiers aboard who’d love the chance for a little exercise.”

  “And will they come into a Quadrail station willing to shoot everyone in sight, including their own people and visiting non-Humans?” the Shonkla-raa countered.