Night Train to Rigel

“I’m afraid you have it backwards,” I told him mildly. “It’s you who’s about to die.”

“Really,” he said, his eyes still glittering as he took a step toward me. “You against me, as it was aboard the Quadrail?”

“Actually, this time it’s going to be a little more one-sided.” I gestured to my right at the torchcruiser squatting on the rocks, its hatchway sitting open. “Recognize it?”

He glanced in that direction, turned his eyes back to me. “No,” he said, taking another step forward. “Should I?”

“I would think so,” I said. “I would assume you’d keep track of every vehicle in the entire Yandro system.”

He paused, a frown creasing his forehead as he took a longer look at the torchcruiser. The frown deepened as he looked back at me. “You’ve repainted and renumbered one of them,” he accused.

I shook my head. “No. It’s a brand-new vehicle, never before seen in this system.”

I pointed upward. “So are the three Chafta 201 ground-assault bombers that are currently mapping out the extent of your coral beds.”

The walker stiffened, throwing an involuntary glance at the darkening sky. “Impossible!” he hissed. “No vehicle parts or weapons systems have come into this system in over a year.”

“Not through your Quadrail station, anyway,” I agreed. “Not through the station you’ve built up such careful defenses around. But then, you didn’t know, did you?”

“Know what?”

I smiled. “That Yandro now has two Quadrail stations.”

He stared at me, his breath coming in quick puffs of white frost. “No,” he whispered.

“It’s more of a siding than a full-service station, actually,” I continued. “Very small, with no amenities whatsoever. But it has a parking area, unloading cranes, a couple of cargo hatchways, and enough Spiders to unpack and assemble four spacecraft and all the weaponry that go with them. Only half a trillion for the whole collection, plus another half trillion for the siding itself. A bargain all around.”

“You lie,” he insisted, his voice taking on a vicious edge. “I would have known if such money was missing. I have many walkers among the lesser beings at the United Nations.”

“Yes, the same behind-the-scenes people who helped push through the Yandro colonization in the first place,” I said, nodding. “That’s why we did the whole thing with private money, with no trail for your walkers to follow.”

“I see,” the Modhri said, his voice as bitter as the air temperature. “I should have killed you two years ago instead of merely having you fired.”

“You probably should have,” I agreed. “But then, you couldn’t really do that, could you? Any more than you could haul me into JhanKla’s Quadrail compartment or over to the resort casino waterfall and just rake me bodily across the coral. You didn’t know who else might be watching, and you absolutely couldn’t risk doing anything so blatant that it would draw attention to Humans and the Ter-ran Confederation. You had to play it exactly as you always did, and hope you could either infect me just like any other walker or else find a way to use me against Fayr’s commandos.”

I inclined my head at him. “Unfortunately for you, both attempts failed.”

“I underestimated you,” he murmured. “Very well. What are my options?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Options?”

“You wouldn’t have come here merely to gloat,” he said. The anger and shock were gone now, replaced with something cold and calculating. “What do you want? Wealth? Power?”

“Ah, so we’re going with the three wishes thing,” I said, pulling out a comm.

“As many wishes as you choose,” he said, his voice smooth and seductive and utterly sincere. “I can give you anything you want.”

“I’ll settle for a promise,” I said, my finger poised over the comm’s power switch. “That you’ll bring all the rest of your outposts back here, and that you’ll let the colonies inside your walkers die. You can live here in peace, but that’s all you can do.”

He hesitated, then sighed. “Very well,” he said. “If there is no other way.”

“There isn’t.” I gestured to the man. “You can start by releasing this one.”

The walker’s eyes narrowed slightly. Then, with another sigh, he nodded. “As you wish.” He took a deep breath, and suddenly the man gave a violent twitch, blinking in obvious confusion. “What—?” he said, glancing around and then looking back at me. “Did you—I’m sorry; were you saying something?”

“No,” I assured him. “It’s all right now.” Nodding, I turned to go.

Hooking his gloved hands into talons, he leaped.

I jumped away, but not far enough. His outstretched hand slapped hard, knocking the comm out of my hand. “You fool,” he bit out savagely, grabbing my wrist with one hand and yanking me toward him with unexpected strength. “And now you will die.”

He was reaching his other hand toward my throat when the thundercrack of a gun came from the open door of my torchcruiser, the impact of the shot throwing him flat onto his back. He skidded a meter across the ice and lay still.

I staggered a bit as I stepped over to him, trying to avoid the bright blood spreading out over the whiteness, my ears ringing with the sound of the gunshot. “Thank you,” I said to the Modhri inside him. “That was what I needed to know.”

McMicking had joined me by the time I retrieved my comm. “I thought we agreed to use snoozers,” I said.

“You agreed to use snoozers,” he corrected me calmly. “I didn’t think it would be smart to take that chance. Besides, the Modhri would have had to kill him anyway once he’d used him to murder you.”

“I suppose,” I conceded, grimacing down at the dead man.

“Casualty of war,” McMicking said. “You ready?”

I nodded, and keyed on the comm. “This is Grounder,” I said. “Alpha code beta code omicron. Commence attack.”

“Acknowledged,” a terse voice came back.

McMicking and I were back in the torchcruiser and starting to lift off when the fire began raining onto the ice and the hidden coral below.

TWENTY-FIVE:

Bayta was waiting for me when I arrived at our agreed-upon Terra Station restaurant. “Well?” she asked anxiously as I sat down across the table from her.

“It’s done,” I told her. “They hit it, did a second scan, hit it again, and did one final scan. It’s all gone.”

She took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“No thanks needed,” I assured her. “So what happens now?” She gave me a wistful smile. “I fulfill my part of the bargain, of course.”

“No, I meant what happens with the rest of the Modhran mind,” I said. “The outposts and the walkers. What are you going to do about them?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “If the mind goes dormant, we can probably leave everything as it is. If not—if what’s left continues trying to grow and spread his influence—I suppose we’ll have to try to stop it.” Her lip twitched. “I mean… they’ll have to try to stop it.”

“You won’t be helping?”

“I doubt I’ll be of much use to them anymore,” she said, her gaze dropping to the table. “I’m not even sure how much will be… you know. How much of me will be left.”

“You’re very close, aren’t you?” I asked quietly. “I mean, the two of you.”

She gave a little shrug. “I don’t know how to describe it,” she said. “The goal of the Modhri was to bring all things into himself. The goal with me was to create someone composed of two separate beings who could yet genuinely act as one. It’s going to be like losing half of what I am.”