good half meter as he arced over the oblivious watchdog. I caught a motion-blurred image of his right hand extending toward my throat and his left cocked ready at his waist just in case he needed to kill me after all.
And flipping around the uncapped hypo I’d palmed, I twisted my head and torso out of the Filly’s path and stabbed the needle as hard as I could into his left thigh.
He shrieked, a resonating combination of pain and rage and disbelief that included a set of upper harmonics that nearly took off the top of my head. His left hand knifed reflexively toward me, as he perhaps momentarily forgot he wanted me alive, but the sudden jolt of agony had thrown off his timing and aim and the hand slashed harmlessly past my shoulder. He hit the ground, his newly paralyzed left leg collapsing beneath him and sending him tumbling toward the floor. I took a step toward him, my second hypo ready in my hand.
And dodged back barely in time as he twisted around at the waist and slashed his right hand viciously toward my torso. The blow missed, and he slammed shoulder-first against the deck. His hand slashed out again, this time aiming for my knee, and as I again dodged the blow I reached over and down and buried my second needle in his upper arm.
He was making another attempt to kill me with screeched sound waves as I pushed his long nose to the side with my foot and slammed my fist into the nerve center beneath his right ear. His screech abruptly cut off, and he collapsed limply onto the deck.
For a moment I stood there, one foot on his good wrist, the other on the side of his nose, breathing heavily and trembling as my adrenaline level slowly subsided. “To see it,” I finished my interrupted sentence.
I crouched down beside the Filly and looked over at Doug. “You okay, boy?” I asked. “He attacked first, you know.”
Doug gave a snuffle, and plodded a little unsteadily over to me. I tensed, but he merely pressed his snout against my sleeve as if reminding himself who I was. He had a sort of lopsided, dit-rec-cartoon look in his eyes, and I winced a little as I wondered briefly if my toss had done him any serious damage.
But he merely gave my sleeve another sniff and then sat back on his haunches. “Right,” I agreed. “Back to work.”
The singing from the dome was still going strong, making for an odd but pleasant counterpoint as I went through the unconscious Filly’s clothes. Lady Luck was definitely on my side today: the first two pockets I tried yielded a handful of plastic quick-lock restraints and one of the passkey cards that our Filly escort had used to let Bayta and me into our room two days ago.
I got the restraints securely onto his wrists and ankles, then took a moment to look around. Yleli’s apartment, where Blue One had lain in wait for me, was the one place within reach where I was pretty much guaranteed we wouldn’t be disturbed. On the other hand, it was also the first place his buddies would come looking for him when he failed to bring me in on schedule.
But I didn’t have much choice. The singing down the hall had all the earmarks of a finale, and I absolutely couldn’t be found out here in the open with a turkey-trussed Filly when the funeral broke up and people started returning to their homes. At this point, Yleli’s place was my best bet.
I stood up and got a grip on Blue One’s sleeve. “Feel free to help,” I offered, looking again at Doug.
He just looked back at me with his masked eyes. “Right,” I said, and started pulling.
Yleli’s apartment was at least three times the size of the one Bayta and I had been given, which made sense given that we were transients and techs like Yleli actually lived here. Leaving Blue One in the living room, I gave myself a quick tour, noting the nice but unpretentious furnishings, and making sure the place was, in fact, unoccupied.
I returned to the living room, and for a minute gazed down at my unconscious prisoner, the itching feeling of having just climbed on top of a tiger creeping through me. I’d beaten off this first overt attack by the Shonkla-raa, but what was I supposed to do now? Leave him here, knowing that someone would eventually come looking for him? The mood he would be in when he woke up wasn’t something I really wanted to face, certainly not with my Beretta locked away in Hchchu’s security office.
On the other hand, trying to move a Filly’s worth of deadweight across Proteus Station by myself presented its own set of challenges.
Doug padded over and nuzzled the sleeping Filly’s face. “No, no, we don’t want him awake yet,” I admonished, frowning at the watchdog. I’d always known he was the size of an adult Doberman, and I knew now that he was about as heavy as one, too. Wandek had told us they could carry light burdens, but I’d never gotten around to checking just how much weight they could handle.
Maybe it was time I did.
I glanced around the room, looking for Yleli’s computer. But even as I spotted it I realized that accessing Proteus’s network from a deceased person’s apartment would probably kick up red flags from here to Hchchu’s office and back again.
Fortunately, there was another way. Pulling out my comm, I punched in Bayta’s number.
She answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?” she asked tautly.
“Nothing,” I assured her. “How about you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice still tense. “I’m sorry, Frank, but I’ve had a bad feeling ever since you left.”
“Well, you can give your intuition full marks,” I said. “Our friends had a go at me, but so far I’m winning. Listen, I need you to look up something for me. Is there a computer you can get to without anyone noticing?”
“Yes, I think so,” she said. “What do you need?”
“I need to know how much weight these watchdogs can carry,” I said. “I’ve got a package I need to lug, and I don’t want to risk breaking Doug’s spine. I’ve already abused him enough for one day.”
“Just a minute.”
The comm went silent. I pulled a chair up beside Blue One and sat down, watching his slow breathing and wondering how long before that punch I’d given him wore off. Not long, probably, which meant I was going to have to come up with something a little more long term.
There was a click from the comm. “I think I can get you something even better,” Bayta said. “Where are you?”
“Why?” I asked warily.
“Why do you think?” she retorted. “I’m coming to give you a hand.”
“That may not be safe,” I warned. “Our friends could be back on the warpath at any time.”
“Then we need to get you and your package out of there as quickly as possible, don’t we?” she countered. “Where are you?”
I grimaced. “In Tech Yleli’s former residence,” I said, and gave her the number. “Maybe I should meet you halfway, though. Better yet, I’ll meet you at the bullet-train station at—”
“We’ll be fine,” she cut me off. “Wait there and watch your package.”
Once again, the comm went dead. Cursing under my breath, I put it away. Should I call her back and insist on meeting her along the way? Or should I just show up at the bullet-train stop and walk her the rest of the way, whether she liked it or not?
But whenever the Shonkla-raa realized their plan had gone awry and came out in force from under their rocks, it would be me they would be looking for. Much as I hated to admit it, for the moment Bayta might actually be safer without me.
I was still trying to come up with a good reason why she
Silently, I got to my feet and headed across the room, grabbing the two hypos I’d stabbed Blue One with from the end table where I’d left them. By the time I reached the door, I had the hypos arranged in a V-shape in my right fist, the plungers set firmly against my palm, the needles angled outward on either side of my middle finger. If the Shonkla-raa were here for a rematch, the first one in line, at least, was going to hurt a lot. I pressed my ear to the door …
“Compton?” Emikai’s voice came softly through the panel. “Compton, are you in there?”
Sighing, I stepped back and keyed the release. Emikai caught sight of me as the door slid open, glanced both ways down the corridor, and stepped hurriedly inside. “I thought you might have found a way into—” he began.
And broke off as he caught sight of my prisoner. “What happened?” he asked in a subtly altered tone.
“He sent a few locals to try to beat me up,” I said. “When that didn’t work, he took on the job himself. You
