Night Train to Rigel

And McMicking was right. There were a lot of Halkan Peers here. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I told him. “I can make it the rest of the way on my own.”

“It’s no problem,” he assured me.

“It is for me,” I countered tartly. “I don’t want my friends to see us together.”

“Ah,” he said with a knowing smile. “Of course not.”

“And if you’re smart,” I added, “you’ll get Mr. Hardin out of sight and onto the next train back to Earth.”

The smile faded. “Just what kind of trouble are you in?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing that concerns you anymore,” I said. “Now get out of here. I mean it.”

He held my eyes a half second longer. Then, with a curt nod, he turned and melted back into the crowd. Trying to watch all directions at once, I made my way to the platform.

“There you are,” Bayta said, her tone halfway between relieved and accusing as I came up beside them. “Where have you been?”

“Scouting the territory,” I said. “We’ve got a problem. The entire Halkan Peerage seems to have come by to see us off.”

Fayr’s eyes flicked over my shoulder, and I saw his whiskers stiffen. “Any ideas?” he murmured.

“I suggest we take the next Quadrail as planned,” I said. “They can’t all get tickets before it arrives.”

“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “It will be as safe as we’re likely to get.”

His eyes met mine, flicked to Bayta and then back to me. “Agreed,” I said, giving him a microscopic nod in return. Two warriors, taught from the same handbook, understanding each other. “Let’s do it.”

NINETEEN:

Three minutes later, the Quadrail pulled into the station and began discharging its passengers. Two minutes after they were off, Bayta and I were in my compartment.

“Don’t get comfortable,” I warned her as I dropped my carrybags on the bed and crossed to the window. We were on the side the train was loading from, and I felt my stomach tightening as I spotted all the tricolored robes climbing aboard.

And not just in first class, either. A number of them were getting on in second and third class, too, as far back as I could see. Places where a Halkan Peer usually wouldn’t be caught dead.

There was a multiple tap on the door, the distinctive rhythm I’d set up earlier with Fayr. Bayta opened the door and he slipped inside, locking it behind him. “It doesn’t look good,” he warned.

“No kidding,” I said. “You told us earlier that Modhran colonies can take over their hosts’ bodies if they want to. Any idea how long they can hold them that way?”

“None,” he said. “As far as I know, it could be indefinitely.”

“But the longer the host is under control, the more likely he is to realize afterward that something strange has happened,” Bayta added. “The Modhri might be able to pass off a few seconds’ blackout as daydreaming, but he’d have a harder time covering up one that lasts longer than that.”

“In that case, there must be a lot of pretzel-twist rationalization going on out there,” I said. “They’re piling in all the way back to third.”

“Planning on having his revenge during the trip,” Fayr rumbled. He fingered his plastic status guns, undoubtedly wishing he had the real ones instead. “He therefore arranges his walkers so that there will be no safe haven for us anywhere aboard.”

I looked out again at the crowd. A lot of the Peers had gotten on our train; but there were a lot more still hanging around on the nearby platforms. “No,” I said. “This is way too elaborate for simple revenge.”

“Then what is it about?” Fayr asked.

“I have an idea,” I said. “But I may be wrong, and we sure as hell don’t have time to discuss it now. Grab your bag, Bayta—we’re getting off.”

“We’re what?” Bayta demanded, her eyes widening.

“We’re splitting up,” I explained, thinking hard. Unfortunately, with that many walkers still wandering the station, following my plan of hopping off the train as it pulled out wasn’t going to gain us anything.

We were going to have to play it a little trickier.

“My team will remain aboard and deal with the walkers here, while the three of us switch to a different train,” Fayr told her. “A classic deception—”

“Which isn’t going to work,” I cut him off. “Bayta, can you get the door open while we’re moving?”

Her eyes widened still further. “The door to the outside?”

“We’re going to jump?” Fayr demanded, sounding as surprised as she did.

“Yes, and yes, and we haven’t got a choice,” I told them, touching the control to opaque the window. “If we just go back out onto the platform, the rest of the walkers will be right on top of us. Can you open the door, or can’t you?”

“No,” Bayta said, still clearly struggling to catch up with me. “But a Spider might be able—”

“Get one to the car door right away,” I ordered, scooping up my carrybags. “And it’s not the three of us, Korak Fayr, just Bayta and me. Considering the number of walkers aboard, your team’s going to need you here.”

He gazed at me, and I braced myself for his protest. But to my relief, he merely nodded. The fewer people involved in this kind of stunt, the better the chances it would work, and we both knew it.

From beneath us came the multiple thud of brakes releasing, and the Quadrail started to move. “Very well,” Fayr said, lifting his arms with the wrists crossed in a Belldic military salute. The flourish ended with his hands on his upper set of guns; and suddenly he drew them, flipping them around so that their grips faced me. “Here,” he said. “You may need these.”

There wasn’t time to ask what on Earth I might want with a set of plastic toy guns. I stuffed them inside my jacket, nodded a quick good-bye, and made for the corridor.

I wondered if I would ever see him again.

There was a conductor waiting when we arrived at the outer door. The Quadrail was already going too fast for comfort, but it was still picking up speed and any delay would only make it worse. “Bayta?” I called.

She didn’t reply; but a second later the corridor suddenly filled with a swirling slipstream of air as the door reluctantly irised open. I tossed out my carrybags, grabbed Bayta’s, and threw it after them. Then, wondering whether this was the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life or merely one of the top ten, I grabbed her wrist and jumped.

We hit hard, the next few seconds becoming a swirl of confusion and dizziness and agony as we tumbled and rolled along the station floor. Eventually we came to a halt with me on my back and Bayta lying half on top of me. “You all right?” I asked, doing a quick inventory of my own bones and joints. My knees were aching fiercely as was my left shin and elbow, and every bit of exposed flesh felt like I’d caught a bad sunburn. But nothing seemed sprained or broken.

“I think so,” she murmured back. With a muffled groan, she started to get to her feet.

“No—stay down,” I said, grabbing her forearm and pulling her back down. Beside us, the Quadrail was still roaring along, still picking up speed. The last baggage car shot past, and I watched as the train angled up the slope and disappeared into the darkness of the Tube. The usual light show from the Coreline faded away, and only then did I cautiously raise my head a few centimeters to assess our situation.

If I’d planned this whole thing deliberately, I couldn’t have done a better job of it. We were in one of the service areas of the station, similar to the one we’d back-doored our way into at the Sistarrko Station after our mad-dash escape from Modhra 1. Two sets of tracks away, a large service hangar sat conveniently just opposite us. Barely three meters past the spot where we’d ended our tumble was a crisscrossing of tracks that would probably have left us with multiple broken bones if we’d landed there instead of where we actually had.

Most important of all, the passenger platforms and all those brooding walkers were a good kilometer and a half away.

“What now?” Bayta asked.