Night Train to Rigel

forward and taking the copilot’s seat. “They won’t fire on us until they realize we have not been fooled.”

“Fooled how?”

“Later,” Fayr said. “Now—carefully.”

I eased the torchferry to a hovering halt a dozen meters off the surface and perhaps thirty past the spot in the north tunnel where the buried sub waited. Tilting the bow upward—no simple task the way our force thrusters were vectored—I slowly fed power to the drive. “How exactly haven’t we been fooled?” I asked again as the ice began to boil away in a tornado of swirling white.

“I told you earlier that several of Applegate’s details were incorrect,” Fayr said, alternating his attention between the aft display’s boiling ice and the starfighters hovering in front of us. So far, he was right about them not seeming all that worried about what we were doing. “One of the more critical is the nature of the threat we face,” Fayr continued. “The Modhri is not simply a group of drug distributors. He is instead the coral itself.”

I frowned. “He—I mean they—what?”

“Modhran coral consists of many small polyps within a shell-like matrix,” he explained. “Unlike other corals, these polyps in large numbers form the cells of a group mind. A little more to the left.”

I eased the drive stream a few degrees that direction. “What do you mean, a group mind?”

“The polyps function like the cells of a normal brain, except that instead of connecting neurons they are linked telepathically,” he said. “A few thousand together can create a rudimentary self-awareness, and a large enough group can link with others up to hundreds of kilometers away to create a larger and more capable intelligence.” He eyed me. “You don’t believe me, of course.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I said cautiously. Certainly not to someone with a pair of packet guns at his beck and call. “How do you know all this?”

“There,” he said, pointing at the display. “You see it?”

I looked at the display, fully expecting to see some amorphous mass of coral rising from the steam and freezing rain, like Count Dracula in a classic dit rec horrorific. But there was nothing; and it was only as I took a second look that I realized he was pointing to a pair of gray-metal pillars, the elevator beams attached to the stolen sub. We were almost there. “So what exactly is the threat?” I asked. “The chunks that have been exported spy for the main branch or something?”

“The exported masses of coral—we name them outposts—are too far from the homeland for direct linkage,” Fayr said. “The danger lies in the mobile colonies, or walkers, which they have created in most of the galaxy’s social and governmental leaders.”

A creepy sensation was starting to twist its way through me. “What do you mean, created? Created how?”

“By touch,” he said. “A polyp hook can enter a person’s skin and bloodstream via a small scratch when the coral is touched. Once there, it grows into a complete organism, then divides and grows and creates its own colony.”

“And then?”

“The colony creates a hidden secondary personality,” Fayr said. “It normally remains in the back of its host’s mind, offering subtle suggestions for behavior and decisions. Usually very reasonable suggestions, which the host can easily rationalize away.”

Go on, Mahf had urged that afternoon in the casino. Touch the coral.

And a day later, strangely and inexplicably asleep on my feet, I’d nearly rationalized my way into doing just that. “Do you need one inside you to get these suggestions?” I asked, not at all sure I wanted to hear the answer. If they’d gotten one of these things into me without my knowledge…

To my relief, he shook his head. “No, a large enough colony has the ability to offer suggestions at a distance,” he said. “We call them thought viruses. They can linger in a person’s mind for minutes or sometimes hours.”

“Giving the victim plenty of time to talk himself into going along with them,” I said grimly.

“Indeed.” Fayr pointed. “There.”

The top of the sub was visible now through the steam, its sides emerging as the ice melted away. “So if you’re trying to destroy the coral, what’s the sub doing way up here?” I asked.

“Shut down now so that the lifter may attach,” he said. “Once that’s done, we can melt away the rest of the ice.”

There was fresh movement on the aft display: The heavy lifter that had dropped the bus on the troop carrier had appeared from inside the south tunnel and was maneuvering carefully through the ice storm toward the sub. “Beware,” Fayr warned. “The starfighters will soon make their response.”

I looked back at the Chaftas. Neither had moved; but suddenly I had the sense that they were bracing for action. “Against us or the sub?”

“The sub,” Fayr said. “But—”

His protest was cut off as I threw power to the maneuvering baffles, turning us ponderously around and vectoring the thrusters to slide us directly between the Chaftas and the sub. “You did say they wouldn’t fire on us, right?” I shouted over the roar.

The words were barely out of my mouth when the starfighters attacked.

They split their formation, one going high, the other going low, both trying to do an end run around the bulk of the torchferry I’d now moved to block their direct line of fire at the sub and lifter. I cut back on the thrusters, dropping closer toward the ice to further block the low-run attacker. He dropped lower in response, apparently figuring that in a game of chicken his maneuverability would beat out mine. His partner, with me obligingly clearing the high road for him, swooped in for the kill.

To be met by a withering hail of anti-armor packet fire from the Bellido in my portside airlock. The Chafta twisted hard around, trying to get out of way as a portion of his starboard engine nacelle shredded under the multiple impacts.

The first starfighter was still trying to slip beneath me. Setting my teeth, I started to drop us lower—

And twitched in surprise as Fayr reached over to his copilot’s board and threw full power to the thrusters instead. “What are you doing?” I snapped as the torchferry lurched upward like a slightly drunk cork.

“Clearing the path,” he called back. “Brace yourself.”

I was taking in a fresh lungful of air when a slender black cylinder riding a streak of yellow fire shot horizontally beneath us. It caught the low-road starfighter squarely in its forward weapons cluster.

With a brilliant flash of smoke and fire, the Chafta disintegrated.

I shifted my attention to the other direction. Standing side by side in the opening to the south tunnel were a pair of Bellidos with shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Even as I watched, the second launcher flared with yellow fire, sending its missile shooting over the top of the torchferry into the remaining starfighter. Another explosion, and the fight was over.

With an effort I found my voice. “Well,” I said as conversationally as I could manage. “That went well.”

“For the moment,” Fayr agreed tightly. “The question will be what surprises he may yet have waiting.”

“This was surprising enough for me,” I assured him. The two Belldic gunners had discarded their launchers and were heading down into the crater I’d melted in the ice, while the rest of the Bellidos I’d seen that morning appeared from the tunnel behind them and followed. The group reached the half-exposed sub and the lifter hovering above it and began connecting them together via the elevator beams. “As long as we have a minute, you want to finish your story?” I suggested. “Starting with what the sub is doing up here if you’re gunning for the coral down there.”

“Because we’re not gunning for the coral down there,” Fayr said. “That was the other critical error in Applegate’s story.” He pointed downward. “This, you see, is not the world where Modhran coral originates.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, forgetting for a moment the packet guns behind me. “Every report I’ve ever seen says it does.”

“True, the reports state that it comes from Modhra I,” he said, his whiskers stiffening in a tight smile. “But this is not Modhra I. The Modhri, in an effort to confuse potential attackers, has switched the names of the two moons.”

I stared at him. “You’re joking. How do you rename two entire worlds without somebody noticing?”

“Who would notice?” Fayr pointed out reasonably. “Those who do the harvesting, packing, and shipping are all