walkers, firmly controlled by the Modhri whispering in their minds. All others simply accept official designations as to which moon of the Modhra Binary is which.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. There
He pointed to the smoking rubble that had once been a Chafta starfighter. “Their own actions prove it,” he said. “Do you think the Modhri would have attacked that way unless he’d suddenly realized we knew the truth, and that the genuine coral fields were under threat?”
“I meant do you have any
His eyes bored into my face. “You are a curious species, Human,” he said. “You base many of your actions on strange leaps of illogic and hunch, beyond even those of the Shorshians. Yet in the same moment you demand proofs and evidences far beyond that which others would declare sufficient.”
“We’re a mass of contradictions, all right,” I agreed. “Do you have independent confirmation, or don’t you?”
“We have,” he said, his voice starting to sound a little strained. Maybe he was regretting saving us from the coral, after all. “The Modhri was clever enough to alter official records and even historical documents. But he neglected to change the early oceanographic data. A careful study of the depth charts clearly shows that the other moon is the one formerly called Modhra I, and the source of the coral.”
I nodded as the pieces started to finally fall together. So that was why Fayr had absconded with one of the lodge’s submarines and gone to all the trouble of bringing it up through the ice instead of simply purchasing one of his own and flying it here along with his guns and other equipment. He’d been deliberately playing the Modhri’s game, pretending he’d bought into the moons’ name switch. “So does the whole Modhri know they’re—it’s—in trouble yet?” I asked. “Or is it only the local group?”
“No, the homeland branch knows,” Fayr said, his eyes on the operation going on below us. “There are several walkers here who carry large colonies within them, plus there are many coral outposts in various parts of the resort. This mind segment can easily unite with the homeland branch.”
He gave me a sideways look. “Which is probably why you were invited to come here,” he added ominously. “An agent of the Spiders is a rarity the Modhri would certainly wish to study. Before he enslaved you.”
My stomach tightened. “Instant spy, huh?”
“It’s worse than that,” he said. “A Modhran colony normally stays in the background, but in need it can push the walker’s own personality aside and take complete control of the body.”
I thought about the two Halkas back at Kerfsis. “Complete enough to make the walker attempt theft or murder?”
“The wishes or scruples of the walker are completely irrelevant at such a point,” he said. “The walker’s own personality is suppressed and experiences a total blackout. If the Modhran colony is clever enough, the walker may never even realize anything has happened.”
“And that lodge is filled with Modhran walkers?”
He snorted. “The lodge is filled with the rich and powerful of the galaxy,” he said. “That makes your question redundant.”
I looked toward the lodge, half expecting to see the traditional dit rec horrorific mob coming at us with pitchforks and torches.
But the ice was empty. Anyway, torches wouldn’t work in the thin atmosphere. “What kind of reception can we expect at the main base?” I asked.
“The harvesting complex has ten small submarines and fifty divers at its disposal,” Fayr said. “They also have perhaps fifty other vehicles, including ten or twelve lifters and other small flyers.”
“Not to mention whatever’s still at the garrison.”
“They have no more than five vehicles left, now that the troop carrier and Chaftas have been disabled,” Fayr said. “And with many of the soldiers already here, they may not have the trained personnel to operate them.”
“Unless they commandeer the rest of the resort’s lifters and take the troops back home,” I pointed out, glancing up at the sky. Nothing was coming at us from that direction, either.
“The resort has no more spaceworthy flyers,” Fayr assured me. “Their long-range communications have been dealt with, as well.”
“That helps,” I said. “How about ground-based defenses?”
“The harvesting complex has antiair weapons in place,” he said. “Fortunately, we won’t land within range of them. We’ll open a hole in the ice at a safe distance from the complex, and from there our submarine will travel along the coral beds, using sonic disruptors and small explosives to destroy them.”
“How do we retrieve them afterward?”
“We don’t,” Fayr said. “For those two, this has always been a suicide mission.”
I felt my stomach tie itself into an extra-tight knot. I had always hated suicide missions.
Fayr apparently had no trouble reading my face on that one. “I don’t like it any better than you do,” he said grimly. “But I see no other alternatives.”
“Let me work on it,” I said.
“Do so.” He gestured. “They are ready.”
I looked down. The lifter and sub were connected together now, and the Bellidos were hurrying in our direction. “We’ll take the others aboard,” Fayr said, notching back on the thrusters and lowering us to the surface. “We will then melt the submarine free and be on our way.”
I gave one last look at the sky. Still clear. “Sounds a little too easy,” I warned.
“Perhaps we have taken the Modhri by surprise,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
Three minutes later, with the commandos aboard and the sub freed, we were on our way.
The torchferry flew in front, with the lifter/sub combo riding our aft starboard flank like a baby whale staying close to mama. No one challenged us as we made our way across the short distance separating the two moons. The harvesting operation was on the far side, Fayr informed me, out of sight of any curious eyes from the resort, and he kept us low to the surface as we headed in that direction. As promised, he stopped us well short of the complex, picking a spot where a past meteor impact had made the ice relatively thin.
We had made it about halfway when our opponents finally made their move.
We spotted them in the distance, sixty flyers and ground vehicles lumbering across the ice en masse like the proverbial lemmings heading for the cliff. At first glance they seemed to all be civilian craft, but our lifter, detached now from the sub and flying high cover, reported a handful of armed military roamers scattered throughout the convoy. Maybe they were hoping we wouldn’t notice the ringers in the crowd, or maybe they thought we would hesitate to shoot through civilians to get to them.
If that was their strategy, it didn’t work. The civilian craft pressing in close around them limited their own combat capabilities, and the Bellido packet gunners riding the lifter had the necessary marksmanship to single out the military craft and destroy or disable them well before they got within their own firing range.
I hoped at that point the civilians would take the hint and back off. But the Modhri was apparently more interested in stopping us than in conserving troops. The vehicles kept coming, maneuvering around the piles of debris but otherwise seemingly oblivious to the destruction going on around them. The Bellidos responded by first taking out the rest of the flyers, then dropping shatter charges in front of the ground vehicles to try to block their path.
But they kept coming. With a complete slaughter of the civilians as the only other option, Fayr reluctantly broke off our digging project and took the torchferry to a spot well ahead of the lead vehicles. There he used the drive to carve a trench in the ice in hopes of blocking any further advance.
It was a noble move, and it nearly cost us our lives. The Bellido gunners had indeed taken out all the military vehicles, but the Modhri had been crafty enough to hide a pair of Halkan soldiers in one of the civilian transports. I looked up from our work just in time to see them lean out from opposite sides with a pair of missile launchers.
I was also just in time to see their transport blown into shrapnel before they could bring the launchers to bear. Fortunately for our side, the Bellidos in the lifter knew all the tricks, too.
