by Timothy Zahn
“Well … yes,” the Modhri conceded.
I grimaced. It made sense, I knew, certainly if it came down to a question of Doug or Minnario and me. But the idea of deliberately sending even an animal to die in my place didn’t feel very good. “Let’s see how it plays out,” I said. Switching to the proper section of the chair’s control panel, I ran a little more power to the four supporting thrusters.
The desk rose to waist height. I lowered it back down to knee height and got a grip on the power controls for the remaining two thrusters.
And paused as an odd thought suddenly struck me. Before he was murdered, Hchchu had said he had been studying me. He’d also had my reader right there in his top desk drawer.
And if he’d wanted to take a closer look at my reader …
“Only three minutes left,” the Modhri said urgently. “Is there a problem?”
“Hang on,” I said. Mentally crossing my fingers, I stepped to the desk and pulled open the drawer.
And found my lips tightening in my first genuine smile in a long, long time. Collected neatly together in the drawer were all the items Hchchu had taken from Bayta and me our first hour aboard the station: my multitool, watch, lighter, and data chips; Bayta’s jewelry, her reader and data chips, and the kwi.
And, most wonderful of all, my Beretta.
“No problem at all,” I told the Modhri as I grabbed everything and stuffed it all into my pockets. I checked the Beretta’s magazine, then flicked the selector to the snoozer side and chambered a round. “Brace yourself,” I warned as I stuck the gun into my belt and resumed my grip on the chair’s thruster controls. “This is probably going to be loud.”
I keyed the driving thrusters, and the desk took off like a carved wooden bat out of hell. It shot across the room and with a thunderous crash slammed into the door, bending and then shattering the panel as it was itself bent and shattered. Thumbing off the Beretta’s safety, I charged.
The Modhri was faster. Doug leaped out in front of me, loping along the floor like a greyhound who’s spotted a rabbit. He reached the crumpled remains of the desk, still hovering on its thrusters, and leaped up and over it.
Minnario wobbled violently as the animal negotiated the wreckage now wedged into the doorway, but remained in his seat. Landing on the far side, Doug paused just long enough for the chair to mostly come back to balance, then took off down the hallway. I did a sort of half jump, half climb over the desk that wasn’t nearly as graceful as the watchdog’s and followed.
I had just registered the fact that the receptionist’s desk was still unoccupied when Jagged Nose suddenly charged into view from around the corner.
Whatever he’d expected to see in the aftermath of all that noise, the sight of Doug and Minnario bearing down on him like an undersized elephant carrying a howdah on his back was definitely not it. Even at this distance I could see the Shonkla-raa’s eyes widen and his blaze pale as he took a reflexive step backward.
But almost before he’d finished that step he was back on mental balance. He set one foot behind him, bracing himself into combat stance, stretching one hand in front of him to take the brunt of the impending collision. He stiffened the other hand into a knife and cocked it back at his waist, ready to skewer either Minnario or Doug when they reached him.
Cursing, I threw myself flat on my belly on the hallway. “Veer right!” I snapped, bringing my Beretta to bear.
Instantly, Doug dodged to the side, Minnario’s chair again threatening to fall off with the sudden change of direction. Jagged Nose spotted me and my gun, and he had just enough time to do the eyes-widening thing again before I dropped him onto the floor with three snoozers to the chest.
I scrambled back to my feet as Doug came to a wobbly halt beside the unconscious Filly, his head darting back and forth. “We’re alone,” Minnario called softly. “But others are coming. Come quickly.”
“Thirty seconds,” I called back. Stripping off my jacket, I laid it out on the floor beside the hovering desk wreckage, then crouched down and reached to the rear of the desk, shutting off and retrieving one of the supporting thrusters back there. I laid it on top of the jacket and then pulled out the second rear thruster, that end of the desk dropping to the floor with a muffled thud as its support disappeared. I set the thruster on the jacket beside the first, then repeated the procedure with one of the front thrusters, leaving the desk balanced precariously on a single point.
“Now!” the Modhri called, his voice urgent. “Come now!”
“Go,” I ordered, eyeing the fourth thruster and reluctantly concluding that as the last support for the hovering desk it would be tricky and time-consuming to extricate. Wrapping the sides of my jacket around the three thrusters, I tied the sleeves together and tucked the bundle under my arm.
Doug had disappeared from the intersection as I scrambled back to my feet. Getting a grip on my Beretta, I sprinted down the hallway, passed the reception desk, and charged around the corner into the wider intersecting hallway.
And came to a screeching halt. There were others coming, all right: five Jumpsuits, hurrying toward me from that end of the corridor. A quick look over my shoulder showed four more coming from behind me, as well.
I breathed out a curse, wishing to hell that I’d been a little more circumspect in my approach to the intersection. If I’d seen the patrollers before they saw me, I would have been able to duck behind the receptionist’s desk, and with a little luck they might have all charged past into Hchchu’s office and missed me completely. Too late for that now.
Which left me facing nine armed opponents with twelve snoozers and fifteen thudwumpers in my Beretta and a pair of badly untenable options. I could open fire here and now, leaving my back open to one group or the other but offering the hope that the cross-fire landscape would encourage them to take out a few of their own number for me. My other choice was to retreat back to Hchchu’s office, where I would be trapped with a freshly murdered assistant director, and hope I could hold out long enough to come up with something clever.
Whichever option I chose, I had only seconds to implement it. The Jumpsuits had already picked up their pace as they spotted what could only be interpreted as a suspicious figure with ill-gotten loot in hand. All five of the Fillies I was currently facing had dropped their hands to the grips of their holstered beanbag guns, and the patroller slightly in the lead was already in the process of drawing his. {Halt, Human,} he ordered sternly.
I had just about decided that I had no choice but to have it out right here when a half-dozen watchdogs suddenly appeared behind the Jumpsuits, filtering into our corridor from different offices and cross-corridors. I glanced behind me and saw the same pickup posse closing on the other group.
“Damn,” I muttered, turning back to the first group of Jumpsuits. A nice, straightforward plan, and under other circumstances I would have welcomed the Modhri’s help.
But not here, and not now. There was no rational reason why a whole bunch of otherwise peaceful domesticated animals would suddenly gather and attack a group of Proteus security personnel. The news of such an event was bound to flash across the station with the kind of speed that only rumors and bizarre news could achieve, certainly long before Bayta and I could find a way off the station.
And even if the patrollers themselves never figured out what had gone wrong with their pets, the Shonkla-raa certainly would. And the minute they realized how and where the Modhri had been hiding aboard Proteus and started singing their siren song to the four-footed walkers, it would be all over. They would have Bayta, and they would have me, and death would be the best either of us could hope for.
There was only one chance I could see to get out of this before it was too late. It would mainly be the unprovoked nature of the impending attack, I judged, that would clue in the Shonkla-raa. Ergo, I needed to come up with some kind of plausible yet obvious explanation for their actions. Something that would fool the Jumpsuits, and might at least give the Shonkla-raa pause
.
And I had all of two seconds to pull it off.
The only thing within easy reach was Bayta’s reader, tucked into my jacket pocket just in front of my left arm on the outside of my bundle of thrusters. I snatched it out, made a show of quick-punching a half-dozen keys at random, and held it high above my head.
And even as the rest of the patrollers drew their weapons in response, both groups of watchdogs slammed full tilt into them from behind.
It was as impressive a scene of utter chaos as I’ve ever had the chance to witness. In an instant every Jumpsuit had been knocked to the floor, yelping or screeching with shock, anger, and bewilderment as the watchdogs ran back and forth over their bodies as if they’d all gone insane.
All of them, that is, except one. He was hanging back behind the general pandemonium, standing motionless and gazing steadily at me.
I held my pose for another three seconds, knowing that the more Jumpsuits who spotted the reader and came to the intended conclusion, the better. Then, lowering my arm, I again tapped a couple of keys at random and charged into and through the bedlam and down the hallway. My guide waited until I was almost to him, then turned and loped off, staying just ahead of me.
“Stop the attack and send them back to where they all came from,” I ordered the watchdog quietly as he led me around a corner into a cross-corridor. “Have them look shocked and bewildered, like they’ve just come to their senses and have no idea what just happened. Even better, if you can pull it off, have them look embarrassed or frightened.”
The watchdog gave an acknowledging yip and picked up his pace. Ahead, I could see an open service-elevator door off the corridor to the right. My guide gave me another yip and put on a final burst of speed, skidding a little on the floor as he cornered, and disappeared through the open door. With a final glance over my shoulder, I followed.
Doug and Minnario were waiting, the other watchdog panting beside them, when I ducked through the doorway. “Keypad beside the floor-selector panel,” Minnario murmured. “Enter the code 33951 and then Floor 201.”
I nodded and punched the keys as instructed, relieved that the Filly obsession with nucleics and nucleic locks hadn’t extended to their maintenance equipment. Though that was probably because there were too many people using the gear to make something like that practical. “Thanks for the assist, by the way,” I said as the door slid shut and we headed up. “But next time, clear it with me first, will you? The last thing we can afford is for the Shonkla-raa to realize—”
“There is trouble, Compton,” Minnario murmured. “They have her.”
My heart seized up in my chest. “What?” I demanded.
“They have her,” he repeated miserably. “They have Bayta.”
SIXTEEN
“They took her from behind,” he told me, his voice strained. “There were two of them—there may have been more waiting, but no one else joined in the attack. I’m so very sorry—”
“Forget the sorry,” I bit out, forcing back my own anger and fear. Regrets and recriminations wouldn’t do anything to help Bayta now. “What did they do? How did they attack? Calm down and think.”
“They came from behind,” the Modhri said, sounding marginally calmer. “I think they must have been on the same train.”
“That, or they had someone waiting at every stop, which is pretty unlikely,” I agreed grimly. They probably tailed her from the courtroom, ready to snatch her if and when Emikai got careless.
But I’d changed the game when I broke out of Hchchu’s office. Wandek’s response had been to abandon his original policy of stealth and secrecy and to send an order for them to move in and take her.
The crucial question was how much the Shonkla-raa knew or suspected. “Who did they attack first?” I asked Minnario. “Emikai or Ty?”
“Emikai,” he said. “It was a well-coordinated attack. One of them hit the nerve centers in his back and side, and when those impacts swung him around the other attacker paralyzed his gun arm and then knocked the air out of his lungs with a blow to his chest.”
“What about Ty? Did they take him out right away?”
“No, not until after they’d subdued Bayta,” he said. “The first attacker grabbed her arms while the second finished disabling Emikai. She managed to kick him twice, but though the kicks seemed to be on target there was no apparent effect.”
I nodded. Bayta may not have liked watching my sparring sessions with Emikai, but it was obvious she’d been taking mental notes on where and how to hit a Filly. Unfortunately, the Shonkla-raa had already been way ahead of her. “They probably had their most vulnerable nerve centers moved or overlaid when they had their throat work done,” I said. “Emikai warned me about that possibility. What happened next?”
“Once Emikai was down, the second attacker joined the first in subduing Bayta,” the Modhri said. “They each took an arm, holding her close so that she couldn’t kick them anymore.” Minnario’s face creased in a frown. “And then, as they started to drag her away, she said something. She shouted, ‘To Scotland! To Scotland!’”
I frowned. What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Who was she saying it to?”
“She was facing Emikai at the time,” the Modhri said slowly. “But I had the impression she was actually talking to me. It was then that the second attacker seemed to notice Ty and kicked him in the belly. He was disabled and couldn’t follow, but could only watch as they took her down the corridor to one of the nearby elevators.”
I looked down at Doug and the other watchdog, feeling my stomach curdle. It wasn’t enough that they’d taken down Emikai, but they’d kicked a dog, too. Bastards. “Is he okay?”
“How can you think—?” The Modhri broke off. “Yes, he’ll recover. So will Emikai, though you haven’t asked.”
“I haven’t asked because I expected them to be more careful with him than with Ty,” I growled. “Emikai’s an ex-cop, and no one kills or seriously injures a cop unless they absolutely have to. Aside from everything else, it can be bad for your health when the other cops catch up with you.” I took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ve got some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is obvious. The good news is that the Shonkla-raa haven’t yet tumbled to the fact that you’re here, and that you’re inside the watchdogs.”
“How do you conclude that?” the Modhri asked. “Because they attacked Emikai first?”
“More precisely because they didn’t attack Ty first,” I said. “They also didn’t make sure he was dead or unconscious, which they should have if they’d known you were there and didn’t want you monitoring the rest of the proceedings. Bayta tried to help that along by shouting her message toward Emikai instead of Ty. If we’re lucky, they’ll remain clueless long enough for us to get her free.”
“How do we … how do we do that?” the Modhri asked.
I frowned at Minnario’s face. He wasn’t looking good at all. “Modhri, what’s happening with Minnario? Is he getting worse?”
“I will hold on as long as possible,” the Modhri said. “What did she mean, to Scotland?”
“Obviously, that was a message to me,” I said, resting two fingers against the side of Minnario’s neck. His pulse was slow and thready. “Where are we heading, anyway?”
“The atmosphere treatment and renewal area in the upper domed section,” the Modhri said. “Access requires the code you used a moment ago, which means only techs and supervisors should be there. What sort of message would it be?”
“First things first,” I said, trying to get my brain working. They weren’t going to hurt Bayta, I reminded myself firmly. They wanted to study her, and that would take time. We still had time. “How many walkers do you have aboard Proteus?”
“Four hundred and sixty-eight, all msikai-dorosli,” he said. “There are also several upper-level Filiaelians and mid-level techs whom I may be able to influence through thought viruses.”
“That could be handy,” I said. “How often do any of the watchdo
gs wander off on their own? Or are they mostly locked up in apartments or offices?”
“Occasionally, one is seen out alone,” the Modhri said. “But not commonly.”
“Can you use thought viruses on their masters to get them to go out for some exercise?” I asked. “We need to get them out looking for Bayta.”
“I may be able to do that,” the Modhri said. “But I don’t think it will be necessary. Give me a little more time, and I’ll find her.”
“If you’re counting on the security system, don’t,” I warned. “Because our next job is going to be to scramble, cripple, or shut down the cameras, as quickly and thoroughly as we can.”
Minnario shook his head weakly. “No need. There are only limited cameras in the upper service areas.”
“But there are hundreds of the damn things in the main part of the station,” I countered. “And our absolute next priority is to get Minnario to a medical center. If he doesn’t get treatment, and fast, he’s going to die.”
The Modhri was silent for so long I began to wonder if Minnario had slipped into a coma that even his resident polyp colony couldn’t break through. “You care a great deal about other living beings,” he said at last.
“One of my many weaknesses,” I said shortly. “Can you find me the nearest medical center and the fastest way to get us there? If we can do some of the trip through the upper industrial areas, fine. But if that’s going to slow us down, we’ll just have to take our chances in the main sections.”
“Understood,” the Modhri said. “Give me a moment.”
He fell silent again. Setting my bundle on the floor, I opened it and started reattaching the thrusters to Minnario’s chair. When I finished, it was once again hovering at its usual waist height. “Anything?” I prompted. “Modhri? You still there?”
“I’m still here,” he assured me in a raspy voice. “The closest medical center is an emergency node in the next subsector inward, in one of the upper floors.”
“How long until we can get there?”
