Judgment at Proteus

it?”

“This is it,” Riijkhan said, eyeing me speculatively. “Is that the news you’re waiting for?”

I frowned. It was indeed what I was waiting for. Only he wasn’t supposed to know that. Had one of my hole cards suddenly become a deuce?

But it was too late to stop now. “All of you except the ones who died at Proteus, of course,” I said. “Did I mention, by the way, that that wasn’t just luck, or even just Logra Emikai’s skill? The fact is, we had a spy in your organization. Isantra Kordiss himself was reporting to us.”

Riijkhan’s blaze went a deep chocolate brown. “Slander not the dead,” he snarled. He pushed past Morse and strode toward me, his hands stiffening into Shonkla-raa knives.

Finally. “And if you find that truth unsettling,” I continued, raising my voice, “wait until you hear how the original Shonkla-raa actually came to be.”

And across at the end of the aircar, Sam and Carl abruptly came to life and started along the side of the aircar directly toward Riijkhan and me.

Or rather, toward me. I was the one, after all, whom the Chahwyn Elder had ordered them to kill if I started to speak of the forbidden subject.

But Riijkhan didn’t know that. As far as he knew, the defenders were heading toward him, probably with murder on their minds.

And his reaction was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. Spinning to face his approaching attackers, he opened his mouth and whistled the command tone.

The defenders froze in place, and I felt Bayta stiffen beside me as she also came under their spell. Riijkhan started to turn back toward me, his tone still ringing through the air, a baleful look in his eye.

And then, Sam started moving again.

He moved slowly, like someone wading against a spring-thaw river current. But he was moving nevertheless. Riijkhan spun back around toward the Spiders, his blaze paling, as Carl stirred and also resumed his advance. A moment of stunned disbelief later, the other four Shonkla-raa opened up with command tones of their own, adding their voices to Riijkhan’s and raising the volume to a head-splitting level.

And with all eyes on the defenders, I dropped into a crouch and reached under the edge of the aircar for one of the flashless stun grenades McMicking and I had concealed under the vehicle’s entire rim before we’d started the last leg of our trip. In a single motion I rose back to my feet, squeezed the trigger, and hurled it high above the army of Humans standing silently behind Riijkhan. Then, squeezing my eyes tightly closed in case this one wasn’t as flashless as the ones Hardin’s techs had demonstrated back on Earth, I pressed my palms hard against my ears.

With a thunderclap that eclipsed even the Shonkla-raa control tone, the grenade detonated, temporarily deafening everyone within a thirty-meter radius.

And as Minnario had proved back on Proteus Station, if a walker’s Modhran colony couldn’t hear the command tone, the Shonkla-raa power was broken. Riijkhan was fighting to regain his balance from the grenade’s effect when Hardin’s team, themselves not exactly steady on their feet, staggered into a charge.

They did their best, and with another thirty seconds they might have pulled it off. But Riijkhan hadn’t been lying about not being alone. The echoes of the stun blast were still caroming off the Ten Mesas when the doors of both big tents were flung open and a horde of Shonkla-raa came charging out, a hundred strong at least, slamming into the rear of the unsteady Human charge and throwing the men and women aside like combat dummies.

And with the Shonkla-raa finally out in the open, it was time to play my final card.

My comm had been taken along with my gun belt. But Morse still had his. As Riijkhan grabbed Morse’s Beretta and wrenched it from his hand, I ducked past the Shonkla-raa’s side and snatched Morse’s comm from its holder. “Dies irae!” I shouted into it, dodging back as Riijkhan slashed his hand toward me. I made it back to Bayta and pulled her down into a crouch beside the aircar. “Dies irae!” I shouted again.

Nothing happened.

I raised the comm again, my eyes flicking away from the melee around me long enough to confirm that all of the comm’s settings were correct. “Dies irae!” I tried one more time. “Fayr— now!”

But there was still nothing. And with a sinking feeling, I realized that my Belldic sharpshooters weren’t going to be saving the day.

It was too late anyway. The last of the Humans were down, lying motionless or twitching in the desert dust, and with the command tone once again filling the air Sam and Carl had also ground again to a halt, their metal legs stiff and glistening in the afternoon sun.

Riijkhan turned toward me, Morse’s gun still gripped in his hand. Swallowing, I rose back to my feet. There were times, I reflected distantly, when making the enemy mad maybe wasn’t such a good idea. “All right,” I said. “What now?”

Riijkhan didn’t reply, and for a heart-thudding moment I thought he was going to shoot me right there and then. But as we stood facing each other, the downed men and women began rising slowly to their feet. They stood motionless, pain and frustration simmering in their faces.

Their hearing was coming back, and with that the brief window of opportunity had passed. Once again, the Humans and their Modhran colonies had become Shonkla-raa slaves.

“Did you truly think we wouldn’t notice your Belldic ally and his commando squad?” Riijkhan asked. Instead of the anger I’d expected, his voice merely held a sort of detached curiosity. “They, too, were carefully infected with Modhran polyps on their journey here.”

“I guess I should have anticipated that,” I conceded. “Are they even still alive?”

“Of course,” Riijkhan said, sounding surprised at the question. “As are they,” he added, waving a hand behind him at the unmoving Humans once more standing at attention. “One does not kill one’s soldiers without need or cause.”

“I suppose not,” I murmured.

“In addition, as you said earlier, we may require the aid of a few of them to operate the ship.” He lifted his hand, frowning at the gun he was holding as if just noticing it was still there. I tensed, but he merely handed the weapon behind him to Morse, who silently holstered it. “Now that your last hope has been proved futile, I trust you’re ready to cooperate?”

I frowned. “Cooperate how?”

For the first time he actually looked embarrassed. “We’ve found one of the entrances to the warship,” he said. “But we haven’t been able to open it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re kidding. Your own ship has locked you out?”

“Hardly,” he growled. “If necessary, we’ll blast it open. But we’d prefer not to cause unnecessary damage.”

“And you think I know how to open the door for you?” I asked. “Or would consider doing so even if I did know?”

“You’re an uncommonly intelligent Human,” Riijkhan said. “And your companion is a daughter of one of the ancient races. Together, I think it possible that you’ll find the solution.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then you will die,” he said, the complete lack of emotion in his tone somehow more chilling than any of his earlier anger had been. “Slowly, of course, and in agony.”

“Of course,” I said. “And if we do?”

His blaze lightened a bit. “If you do?”

“What do we get if we open the door?” I clarified. “We get to live, of course—that one’s obvious. But for a job this important you’ll need to throw something else into the pot.”

“I’ve already said we can blast the door open.”

“Wrecking who knows what in the process,” I reminded him. “Come on, Osantra Riijkhan—you were ready to hand over the whole Terran Confederation if I cooperated with you. Surely you can spare a little loose change on this one.”

His eyes were steady on me. “What do you want?”

I pointed at my battered team standing unmoving in the sun. “Them.”