me a warning look, then went as still as a hunter in a duck blind as he watched the line of doctors strolling toward us.
Not that the Bellidos themselves showed the slightest awareness that anything unusual was unfolding in front of them. A couple of them glanced incuriously at our group, then returned to their conversations. A couple of others looked around and at the ceiling, frowns briefly crossing their striped chipmunk faces as they tried to locate the source of the command tone whistle filling the car.
But the sound had no medical ramifications, and their interest was idle and brief, and they too quickly turned their attention back to their colleagues. The leading edge of the stream reached us and split, each conversational group turning left or right at random, avoiding the motionless clump of humans and Fillies as they continued on their way in their quest for food.
And then, in front of me, I heard Yleli catch his breath.
Perhaps he’d belatedly realized that the Bellidos’ casual traffic pattern had flanked himself and his companions. Perhaps he’d suddenly noticed that the soft plastic guns bouncing at the doctors’ sides no longer had their long plastic barrels. {Alert!} he snapped.
But he was too late. As he brought his hands up into combat position, I threw myself forward and down, dropping onto my side on the floor and aiming a kick at his knees. Reflexively, he turned his eyes back to me, simultaneously dancing back to get out of kicking range.
As he did so, the two Bellidos passing us pulled nunchakus from beneath their tunics and whipped them with crushing force across his throat.
And pandemonium erupted.
I rolled up and leaped back to my feet as the rest of the Bellidos charged to the attack, their nunchakus whipping with devastating force across the other two Shonkla-raa’s heads, arms, and torsos as I tried to get to Bayta and the two girls. But Yleli was faster than I was. He slashed viciously at one of his two attackers and then jumped into my path, his other hand jabbing at my gut. I managed to twist out of his way in time, but the movement cost me my balance and I went crashing back onto the floor.
Yleli leaped at me again, aiming a kick at my head, but even as I ducked out of the way he staggered as a nunchaku slash caught his other knee. With his supporting leg under attack, he was forced to drop his kicking leg prematurely back to the floor. The other Bellido was already swinging his nunchaku at Yleli’s head, but the Filly managed to drop into a crouch in time, leaving the flail to whip harmlessly through the air above him. Before either of the Bellidos could recover for another attack Yleli shoved himself off the floor, again diving at me.
I was caught flatfooted, on my way back up to a standing position but not quite there yet. Desperately, I tried to throw myself to the side, knowing the move would again cost me balance and mobility but not having any other real options.
But I was too late. Yleli was hurtling toward me, his arm held rigidly in front of him like an organic spear. One of the nunchakus whipped past, slamming into his back hard enough to crack bone but doing little to alter his direction or speed. There was a blur of motion at my right.
And Morse’s body slammed sideways into Yleli’s shoulder, knocking him off-target and sending both of them sprawling onto the floor.
Somewhere in all that nunchaku flailing, while I’d been preoccupied with my own troubles, the Bellidos had managed to silence both of the other Shonkla-raa command tones.
I hit the floor and rolled back up to my feet. Morse was still on top of Yleli, trying to pin him down. But like all the rest of the Shonkla-raa I’d run into, Yleli had been genetically modified for strength. With a single violent shove he threw Morse half a meter into the air to crash down onto the floor beside him and started to scramble to his feet.
His eyes were glittering death in my direction when two nunchakus caught him one final time, one of the flails slamming again into his throat, the other hitting hard enough to splinter bone at the back of his skull. He sprawled face-first onto the floor.
This time, he didn’t get up.
I looked around, gasping in vast lungfuls of air. All three Shonkla-raa were down, all of them quite dead. Four of the twelve Bellidos were also down, one of them probably also dead, the other three making the small sounds and movements of the seriously wounded. The Bellidos still on their feet were gazing warily at the three dead Fillies, but I could see them starting to slowly come down from their adrenaline-driven combat frenzy. As I stumbled over to where Morse was lying on the floor, four of the Bellidos headed over to check their wounded. Across the room, a horrified Terese and a grim-faced but steady Rebekah were clinging to each other. Bayta was nowhere in sight.
The whole deadly melee, I estimated, had lasted less than thirty seconds.
Morse was starting to stir by the time I reached him. “You okay?” I asked, offering him a hand.
“Mostly,” he said, his voice dark as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Bloody
“Which part?” I asked, looking over at the wounded Bellidos. One of the others had retrieved the LifeGuard medical kit from the front of the car and was hurrying back with it. As he did so, the forward vestibule door opened, and Bayta entered, lugging the LifeGuard she’d retrieved from the compartment car.
“All of it,” Morse said, grunting as he carefully stood up. “Mostly the takeover. I knew about it from the Modhri, of course. But it’s one thing to get someone else’s memory of something and quite another to experience it yourself.”
“You heard about this from the Modhri?” one of the Bellidos asked, his eyes on Morse as he came up to us.
“Yes, he did,” I said, gesturing. “Morse, meet
“Currently gone rogue, running a private mission to destroy the Modhri,” Fayr added, still eyeing Morse closely. “And you?”
“Fayr, meet EuroUnion Security Service agent Ackerley Morse,” I continued the introductions. “Formerly a deep-cover Modhran walker, currently part of
“Pleased to meet you,” Morse said, nodding.
“Not certain I can say the same,” Fayr said shortly. “Your message, Compton, said that the Modhri had gone neutral in this new war. It said nothing about working with him.”
“Because at the time I wasn’t sure he’d be willing to actively come onto our side,” I told him. “Now I am.”
“Your evidence?”
“Well, if the Modhri was on the Shonkla-raa’s side, I bloody well wouldn’t have stopped Yleli from killing Compton,” Morse said. “Especially at the cost of a cracked rib.”
I frowned. “You have a cracked rib?”
“Feels like it,” Morse said, gingerly indicating a spot on his lower left side. “We’ll find out for sure when one of those LifeGuards is free.”
I looked over at the injured Bellidos. “How are they doing?” I asked.
“Two will survive,” one of the other commandos said over his shoulder. “One is questionable. All three need medical attention.”
“Will you need a doctor?” I asked. “For once, there are plenty of them aboard.”
“We can deal with our injured by ourselves,” the Bellido said. “Once the LifeGuard has finished stabilizing them, we’ll need to get them to our compartments.”
“We can help with that,” I said, pulling out the gimmicked reader that Larry Hardin had given me two years ago when he’d hired me to figure out how to take over the Quadrail system from the Spiders. The disguised data chip that turned the reader into a high-tech scanner was already loaded. “Bayta, there should be a pair of defender Spiders out on the compartment car roof. Give them a whistle and have them pull up the tender they brought along with them. There are a couple more defenders riding inside that can help carry the injured.”
“It’s on its way,” Bayta said. There was a stiffness in her voice, a coldness that was no doubt due to me not having told her about my Belldic hole card in advance.
But the anger would fade. She knew as well as Morse did that I couldn’t risk giving out details to anyone the Shonkla-raa might have interrogation access to. “As soon as it’s in position, have them extend the airlock,” I
