Night Train to Rigel

I had just heaved my carrybags up onto the luggage rack—hand-carved, naturally, with some kind of ivory inlays—when a delicate tone issued from the door. “Come in,” I called.

To my complete lack of surprise, it was Bayta. “That was quick,” I commented as she walked in. There was an odd hesitation to her step, I noted, as if she were afraid of damaging the furstone floor.

“We can’t stay here,” she said without prologue. “We shouldn’t even have visited.”

Oh, come, now,“ I chided. ”How could we be so ill-mannered as to refuse the High Commissioner’s hospitality? Especially since the Jurian Collective insists on it?“

“The Collective is wrong,” she said flatly. “Here in the Tube we aren’t in Jurian territory, and their protocol system has no legal authority.” Her lips compressed briefly. “I tried to tell you that, back on the transfer station. You didn’t let me finish.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I couldn’t let you ruin such a nicely executed setup.”

The skin of her face seemed to shrink back a little. “What do you mean?” she asked carefully.

“You don’t think all this happened by accident, do you?” I asked taking a quick pass by the computer and then circling to the curve couch and sitting down. No warnings from my watch; apparently the Halkan Peerage didn’t stoop to bugging the compartments of their guests. “Come on, sit down,” I said, patting the couch beside me. “We might as well be comfortable.”

Slowly, reluctantly, she sat down at the far end of the couch. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“I know some of it,” I said, flipping a mental coin. Bayta was still a big question mark, and my natural impulse was to play my cards as close to my chest as possible. But it might be instructive to give her the whole story, or at least all the story I had, and see if I could get anything from her reactions.

And after all, it was possible that she was genuinely on my side. “Bottom line,” I began, “is that we’ve been pinged.”

“Pinged?”

“Pinged, as in someone’s figured out that we’re not your average tourists or businesspeople,” I explained. “My guess is that it was when we made that big jump from steerage to first class at New Tigris. This someone has also decided he doesn’t like the idea of us poking around, or at least he doesn’t like us poking around Kerfsis system. He therefore sent those two Halkan goons into the baggage section to break into a lockbox and get themselves a weapon.”

Bayta’s face had gone very still, with none of the hints of guilty knowledge I’d been watching for. “They’re trying to kill us?”

“And this surprises you?” I countered. “People who are planning to start a war?”

“But—” She broke off. “Of course,” she said. “Please, go on.”

“Unfortunately for them, we picked up on their vanishing act and sicced the cops on them,” I said. “They got caught, but by immense good luck I then got hauled in there to talk to them.”

“Or maybe it wasn’t luck,” she said slowly. “Maybe this someone had more agents than just those two Halkas.”

“Very good,” I said. She had either a very quick mind or else a collection of prior knowledge. Unfortunately, at the moment I couldn’t tell which. “JhanKla, at the very least. Possibly Major Tas Busksha, too.”

“Or possibly your friend Falc Rastra?”

“No,” I said firmly, feeling a flash of annoyance. “I know Rastra. He wouldn’t be mixed up in something like this. And I already told you he’s not my friend.”

“Yet you say you know him?”

“Would you get off that?” I snapped. “I know all sorts of things about all sorts of people. That was my job.”

“Yes, of course,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

I took a calming breath. I was supposed to be watching for her reactions, and instead I was the one doing all the reacting. “Regardless, when the assassination attempt failed, they had to come up with a new plan.”

She frowned. “Are you suggesting those two Halkas aren’t dead?”

“Oh, they’re dead, all right,” I assured her grimly. “Nothing grabs official attention like someone who tries to kill you and then dies a mysterious death. Plan B was apparently for JhanKla to come charging in on a white horse and rescue us from Kerfsis and the united forces of Jurian legal displeasure.”

“But why wouldn’t they want us in Kerfsis system? What could be here they don’t want us to see?”

“Maybe this is the test system we talked about earlier,” I said. “Or maybe some of the preliminary work is being done here. All I know is that someone has gone to an enormous amount of effort to get us out of this specific system onto this specific Quadrail in this specific Quadrail car. I think it would be instructive to follow along for a bit and see where it all takes us.”

A sudden shiver ran through her. “Or maybe they just want to get rid of us. Maybe they brought us aboard so they could do it in private.”

“That possibility hadn’t escaped me,” I admitted. “But there are more anonymous ways of killing someone than luring the victims aboard a Halkan Peerage car. No, if it’s not Kerfsis itself, I’m guessing JhanKla thinks plying us with hospitality will help him find out how much we know or who exactly we’re working for. Speaking of whom, did your friends get that sensor data I wanted?”

“Yes,” Bayta said, her brain clearly still working on the possibility of our sudden and violent demise. “The stationmaster will deliver it to the train.”

“But not to us directly,” I warned. “I don’t want JhanKla to see us getting a data chip from a Spider.”

“No, of course not,” she said. “He’ll deliver it to one of the conductors. We can pick it up from him later.”

Given our current traveling situation, arranging such a handoff might be a bit awkward. But I had a few days to find an excuse to go wandering around the rest of the train. “Good enough,” I said.

“So what do we do once we reach Halkan space?” she asked.

“That depends on what happens between now and then,” I said. “If we can act cheerful and stupid enough, maybe we can convince them that it’s all a big mistake. That would take some of the heat off.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then we’ll just have to be careful,” I said. “Either way, your next assignment is to get the Spiders busy finding out everything they can about our two freshly dead and cremated Halkas. I want their names, their families, their political affiliations, their business and social associates, their criminal records, their travel records over the past five years, and anything else that seems remotely interesting or unusual. Get the next Spider who wanders into range busy on it.”

“That’ll take time,” she warned. “And it may require sources they don’t have access to.”

I thought about my original Quadrail ticket with its forged photo and thumbprint. “I get the feeling there isn’t very much that’s beyond their reach,” I told her. “While they’re at it, let’s have them pull the same information on JhanKla.”

“And Rastra?”

My first impulse was to once again leap to Rastra’s defense. But she was right. “And Rastra,” I confirmed.

“All right.” She gazed out the window, her eyes unfocusing for a minute, then nodded. “It’s done.”

“Good.” I looked out the window myself at the drab walls and floor of the maintenance building, all nice and quiet and private. Distantly, I wondered if I might have overstated my assurances that this would be a poor locale for a couple of murders. “Let’s get back to the party.”

EIGHT:

Four of the chairs had been pulled up to the geodium table in our absence. Rastra and JhanKla were seated in two of them, chatting about the Quadrail and their various travel experiences. Behind JhanKla, a short Halka dressed in the muted plaid of a servitor was busying himself with the refreshments on the far wall. “Ah,” JhanKla said, giving a sort of regal nod our direction. “I was starting to wonder if there was a problem with your accommodations.”