The Third Lynx

Gargantua gave me another tight smile. 'Do you really think he can elude me?' Abruptly his expression changed, and as it did so a pair of Nemuti detached themselves from the crowd and came toward me. 'No—I see now,' Gargantua continued. 'Remain where you are.'

'Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere,' I assured him, lifting my arms slightly away from my sides to make the search easier.

The Nemuti found the comm, of course, on the second pocket they tried. 'A foolish trick, Human,' Gargantua said as one of the Nemuti punched the off switch and put it away in his own pocket.

'Just a high-tech version of the same trick you used on Kunstler's estate after the robbery attempt,' I reminded him.

'Which also didn't work, did it?' the Modhri countered.

'No, I suppose not,' I agreed. 'But in the end, you got what you wanted.' I lifted my left hand and pointed toward the two big tents behind him. 'Speaking of which, I don't suppose we could have a look at your prize.'

'Why not?' the Modhri said. There was a ripple from one of the big tents' flaps, and another Halka appeared, a white and vaguely rifle-shaped object cradled in his arms. As he stopped just beyond the circle of walkers, I got a close enough look at his face to see that he was the other soldier from Gargantua's original foursome, the one who had killed Penny's friend Pyotr. 'I presume you'd also like to see how it operates?' the Modhri offered.

Behind me, Penny caught her breath. 'Relax—he doesn't mean on us,' I told her. 'We're more valuable to him still breathing.'

'I won't let them do it,' she said, her voice trembling but defiant. 'Not to me.'

'You won't have a choice,' Gargantua said. Behind him, the other Halka lifted the white weapon to his shoulder, aimed at a rock spine fifty meters away, and fired.

It was like nothing else I'd ever seen. The green flash that burst from the weapon's business end was definitely energy—the way it erupted silently and without a whisper of recoil showed that much. But at the same time, there was also a strange sense of flowing liquid to it, like the blazing fluid from a flamethrower, as well as the very unlaserlike way the beam or flow or whatever fanned out from the muzzle.

But if there was a question about its nature, there was no doubt whatsoever about its effect. The green flow sizzled into the spine, shattering it with a crackling thunder crack that sent bits of rock flying across the landscape.

'As you can see,' Gargantua said as the echoes of the explosion faded away, 'it was well worth the effort to obtain.'

With an effort of my own, I got my tongue working again. 'Indeed,' I said. 'So how many of them are there?'

'Just the three,' he said. 'I have found five more Vipers, but no more samples of the other two.' He waved a hand around the area. 'Still, if there are Vipers, surely the other components must also be here somewhere. We need only find them.'

'Could be,' I said. 'And once you've dug them all up, what then? You plan to kill all the Spiders and take over the Quadrail?'

Gargantua's eyes flicked over my shoulder to Bayta. 'I'm sure there will be no need for anything so violent,' he said, his voice going all silky smooth. 'Provided the Spiders are prepared to be reasonable.'

'Well, I wish you luck,' I said. 'You may find a few unexpected obstacles in your path, though.'

'Such as?'

I pointed at the Halka holding the weapon. He had it hefted in his arms again, the Lynx/muzzle end pointed toward the sky. 'For starters, I don't think those weapons were really designed for your use.'

'On the contrary,' the Modhri said. 'They're perfectly suited to me.'

'I presume you're referring to the fact that there's no trigger, and that they're fired telepathically?' I suggested.

Gargantua cocked his head. 'Interesting. Not one in a trillion would have noticed that.'

'I have a little more experience than most people with how you and the Spiders do things,' I said. 'My point is that telepathic controls are a two-edged weapon. Tell me, what happened to the Viper on Ghonsilya?'

The stillness around us abruptly seemed to darken. 'It exploded during my attempt to acquire it,' Gargantua said, his eyes narrowing as he studied my face. 'As you well know.'

'I meant how did the explosion happen?' I asked.

'The second guard surprised my Eyes,' he said, still watching me closely. The Modhri was very sensitive to atmosphere, and could clearly sense I was heading somewhere important. 'He fired his weapon, striking the sculpture, and the power source inside exploded.'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'A properly designed power source doesn't explode when it's damaged. My guess is that it simply went off, and without the Hawk section to moderate the energy and the Lynx section to funnel off and focus the flow it had no choice but to become a bomb.'

'And how did it simply go off?'

'I have a theory,' I said. 'With your permission, I'd like to test it. Bayta?'

Gargantua's eyes flicked over my shoulder again; and as I felt the familiar activation tingle from the kwi concealed beneath my glove, I raised my fist to point at Gargantua's stomach and fired.

The great strength of a group mind is its near-omnipresence and instant communication. Its great weakness is the equally instant sharing of pain. Gargantua jerked as the kwi's jolt lanced through him, the entire ring of walkers staggering back as the same pain echoed into their nervous systems through their own Modhri colonies. I fired again and again, hoping like hell my theory was right. I could tell Gargantua was starting to adjust to the pain, starting to fight it back to a level where he could function again, the look in his eyes proclaiming that his first action once he was back on balance would be to rip the kwi from my hand, taking my entire arm with it if necessary.

And then, behind him, the Shonkla-raa weapon exploded.

Distance, plus Gargantua's own sizable bulk standing in front of us, protected our group from the worst of the blast. The walkers immediately in front of the weapon weren't so lucky. The concussion ripped through them like a massive green fireball, shattering their bodies and throwing them in all directions. The Halka who'd been actually holding the weapon was vaporized where he stood.

The blast sent a second, even more violent wave of pain through the remaining walkers. Again they staggered, enough to give us a little breathing space. 'Get out of here!' I snapped, grabbing Penny's arm and giving her a shove back toward the mesa we'd come from. I picked out one of the nearer walkers at random and gave him a jolt from the kwi, 'You and Stafford. Head for the perimeter fence and keep going. We'll hold him here.'

'How?' she gasped, waving a hand at the ring of beings still surrounding us. 'They're there. They're all there.'

'Don't worry about them,' I told her. 'They're walkers, remember? He isn't going to risk them getting hurt—he wants them alive and intact. Now, run—I want you out of here before he brings in the rest of his soldiers.'

But it was too late. I turned back around to find Gargantua looming suddenly over me, his eyes blazing with rage and hatred and pain. Even as I tried to dodge to the side he grabbed my right wrist, twisting my arm over to point my fist and the kwi harmlessly toward the sky.

And behind him the large tents erupted with Modhran soldiers.

There was no doubt whatsoever as to who and what they were. While the walkers in the disintegrating circle were staggering away from me and my weapon as fast as their pain-spasming legs could carry them, the eight newcomers were staggering with equal determination directly toward us.

'And now you will die,' Gargantua spat into my face.

I didn't doubt for a second that he meant it. With the kwi no longer adding to their pain, the soldiers' staggering and twitching was starting to fade as Modhran stamina reasserted itself with a vengeance. By the time they reached me, they would almost certainly be up to the task of tearing me into confetti- sized pieces.

And after they'd vented their rage, they would take Bayta, Penny, and Stafford to wherever the nearest coral outpost was and turn them into zombies like themselves.

Only it wasn't going to be that way. 'No,' I said, looking Gargantua—the Modhri—straight in the eye. 'I think