Riijkhan’s hopes notwithstanding, I think it best that your life ends today.”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said, stepping back from the barricade to where Bayta and the two girls huddled together in their frozen clump. “But let me add one other factor into your considerations.”
Abruptly, I flipped the nunchaku around in my hands and looped the cord around Bayta’s neck. “You’re not going to be dissecting or otherwise studying Bayta,” I said into the suddenly rigid atmosphere as I held the cord against her throat. “And she is most certainly not going to die in your hands. If I die, she’s dying with me.”
Maybe the Shonkla-raa really thought his troops could get through the barrier and the waiting commandos before I could carry out my threat. Maybe he’d simply had enough talk for one day and decided it was time to move on to the main event. Whichever, the eleven Modhran walkers standing in parade formation abruptly started forward, eight of them moving ahead of the others.
The intent was obvious. The front eight were to hurl themselves over the chairs and onto each of the Bellidos, dying or being incapacitated in the process but hopefully pinning down their targets long enough for the remaining walkers to move in for the kill. A simple, straightforward strategy, and one that the Shonkla-raa had the numbers to actually pull off.
But as the walkers moved forward, the old man curled up in his chair behind the Shonkla-raa opened his eyes.
For maybe two heartbeats he gazed at the scene in front of him. Then, sliding silently out of his seat, he headed toward the rearmost of the Fillies, curving back around to his rear to stay out of both Fillies’ peripheral vision. His hands dipped into his jacket as he headed forward and emerged with a pair of small handles. I caught a subtle glint of metal wire from between them.
And as he reached the rearmost Filly, he flipped the garrote wire over the other’s head and brought his hands together, simultaneously spinning a hundred and eighty degrees around to turn back-to-back with the Filly. The alien gave a choking gasp, his hands clutching uselessly at his throat as he was forced to bend over backward, his command tone cutting off as the garrote paralyzed his voice box.
The second Filly spun around, sheer stunned surprise freezing him for a fatal half second. Still hanging on to the handles, the old man twisted himself up off the floor, the movement tightening the wire even more around the Filly’s throat, and snapped a devastating side kick into the other Filly’s throat.
And as the whistling command tone went silent, all eleven Modhran walkers spun around in unison and charged.
The Shonkla-raa didn’t have a chance. By the time Fayr and his commandos made it to the scene the walkers had the Fillies on the floor, pinning them with sheer weight of numbers. All that was left for the Bellidos to do was beat the Fillies repeatedly across their heads and throats until both were finally dead.
I didn’t bother to join in the melee, but stayed behind with the women, helping Bayta and then the two girls to their feet as I watched the carnage. “What happened?” Terese breathed as I got her upright, peering uncertainly over the chairs that had been blocking her view.
“Like he said earlier,” I told her. “They underestimated me.” I gestured to Bayta. “Shall we?” I invited.
She nodded, her eyes steady on the scene in the other part of the car, a grim but wry awareness coming into her expression. She still didn’t like being left in the dark as to my intentions, I knew, but I could also tell she was starting to see the black humor inherent in my methods. “We should at least say hello,” she agreed.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said, weaving us through the barrier to where the Modhran walkers and the old man were climbing warily off the dead Shonkla-raa and getting back to their feet. Two of the walkers were limping, but otherwise didn’t seem to have been badly damaged. “Nicely done,” I said. “Introductions, I believe?”
“If you think it necessary,” the old man said.
His face was still wrinkled, his hair still gray, his hands still wizened. But his stance was straight and limber and combat-ready, and his eyes were no longer those of the aged. “
“I’m flattered,” Morse said, some of Bayta’s wryness in his voice. He hesitated, then held out his hand. “I’ve heard rumors of your existence and talents, Mr. McMicking. And may I say, I’m very pleased to have you on our side.”
“You flatter me in turn,” Bruce McMicking said as he took Morse’s proffered hand. “I look forward to finding out whether your side is indeed the one I’m on.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Cleaning up the aftermath was going to take some time. To be on the safe side, I had Bayta instruct the defenders on the roof to uncouple the vestibule again to make sure no one wandered in on us.
Not that that was likely. According to the Spiders, the Shonkla-raa had handed out a whole stack of genuine- looking Quadrail travel certificates, and the usual occupants of our car were currently locked in a boisterous competition with each other over who could come up with the longest and most elaborate birthday toast.
The first order of business was to get the injured Bellidos back to their compartments for treatment. Fortunately, by the time Fayr’s medic decided they were stable enough to move, the defenders had gotten the tender attached and several of them had come through to our train. Under Bayta’s direction, they carefully lifted the injured commandos, two Spiders per patient, and eased them through the forward vestibule to the compartment car.
The five Shonkla-raa weren’t treated nearly so gently. With Bayta busy supervising the Bellido transfer, the defenders merely picked up the dead bodies like so many sacks of grain and lugged them back through the airlock to the tender.
I’d worried a little about how the Modhri was going to deal with the walkers the Shonkla-raa had hijacked. But that part, at least, was quickly and efficiently taken care of. By the time the defenders arrived all but one of the walkers had settled into the empty seats and gone to sleep, snoozing away even as Fayr and I started moving the chairs back to their original positions.
The single exception was interesting in its own right. That particular walker, a Juri diplomat, ended up standing to one side, his beak half open and his claws picking restlessly at his clothing as he gazed in horror-edged fascination at the procedure. Midway through the Bellidos’ medical transport, Morse walked over to him, and the two of them spent the rest of the cleanup time in low but earnest conversation.
Apparently, the Modhri had decided that this particular walker, like Morse himself, was ready to hear the whole truth.
I hoped he was right. The last thing we needed was high-ranking officials going around the galaxy screaming about enemies, conspiracies, and dit-rec horror drama pod people.
Still, if he was going to go that route, he was at least holding it together for now. Morse was still talking with him half an hour later when we finally reattached the rear vestibule, and by the time the first passengers started trickling back all of the Juri’s more overt signs of bewilderment had faded away.
Maybe Morse had convinced him of the danger the galaxy faced, and how a fully-aware walker could help in that war. Or maybe it had simply occurred to the Juri that a diplomat with a tap into what the other side was thinking could have a very bright future.
Now that the Shonkla-raa trap had been sprung and disarmed, Bayta pressed for us to leave the train at the next stop and take a tender the rest of the way back to Yandro. But I vetoed that. I assumed a new contingent of Shonkla-raa would show up somewhere along the way, if only to help guard the prisoners they were expecting to have gained, and their reaction to our un-captured presence could be instructive. Further attacks from such a mop- up group were unlikely, I assured Bayta, at least not until they had some idea of what had happened to their fellow conquerors. Besides, with Fayr’s commandos and McMicking still available as surprise wild cards, we would always have an advantage they wouldn’t know about.
I did, however, instruct the Modhri to get all his walkers except Morse off the train at the next stop and to make sure no others got on. If, contrary to all expectations, the newly arrived Shonkla-raa decided to make trouble, I had no intention of supplying them with extra bodies.
It all went off pretty much as I’d expected. At the next station, Minchork Rej, I watched through Bayta’s display window as our walkers casually moved off, bound for other trains, where the Shonkla-raa hopefully wouldn’t be able
