Judgment at Proteus

“Agent Morse says there are walkers out there,” Bayta said tensely. “Nearly a hundred of them.”

“A hundred?” I echoed, taking another look through the window. The platforms were reasonably crowded by Terra Station standards, but there couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty people out there. For a hundred of them to be Modhran walkers—

I looked back at Bayta, a sinking feeling in my stomach. “It’s a trap,” I said.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “And there’s no way out.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

For a long moment my sleep-fogged brain skidded like a train on iced tracks. Then the mental wheels caught again. “Don’t stop,” I said, getting to my feet. “Whoever’s driving this thing, tell him to just keep going.”

“I already tried,” Bayta said. “The schedule says to stop at Terra. So we’re stopping.”

I bit back a curse. Damn passive Spiders and their damn rigid adherence to the rules.

Unless— “You,” I said, jabbing a finger at the defender as he stood silently behind Terese and Rebekah. “Countermand the schedule, or the standing order, or whatever it takes. Keep us moving.”

“I cannot,” he said. “The slowdown procedure has already been started. It cannot be stopped.”

“What are we going to do?” Terese demanded, her voice half angry, half pleading. “You said we’d be safe. You said you’d keep us safe.”

“Shh,” Rebekah soothed, reaching up to touch Terese’s cheek. “It’ll be all right,” she said quietly. “He’ll get us through.”

But for all her comforting words, her face was as pale as Terese’s. And for the moment, I had to agree with them. Stepping over to the window, I gave the station a long, careful look.

For once, the walkers arrayed against us were easy to identify. They were lined up along the platform our train was headed for, three deep and as stiff as soldiers on parade. Standing in a more spaced-out row a few meters behind the lines, looking like armchair generals who are eager to go to war but don’t want to get too close to the actual fighting, were four Fillies dressed in the upper-class clothing favored by the santra class. Clearly, they knew we were aboard this particular train.

“Where did they all come from?” Bayta murmured from beside me. “And so many of them are Humans, too.”

“They’re a pickup squad,” I told her. “Look at their clothes—most of them are second- or third-class passengers. I’m guessing our friends out there pulled Morse’s trick: get hold of some coral, wait until they know we’re on the way, then grab everyone in sight and start scratching.”

“But how could they have known we’d be on this train?” Bayta asked with helpless chagrin. “I watched at New Tigris. No one got off our train, and no one already in the station sent any messages. I had the Spiders check.”

“They knew because Riijkhan’s started being cute,” I growled. “They have an agent aboard who must have signaled someone in the station. It didn’t have to be anything elaborate—a piece of red paper in one of the windows or something equally simple. Then, since they knew we’d watch for someone to send a message, the watcher in the station didn’t send one. In this case, the lack of a message was the signal that we were on the way.”

There was a movement behind me, and I turned as Rebekah stepped to the door and opened it, just in time to let Morse slip into the compartment. “I hope you’ve got one bloody good plan,” he said.

“Working on it,” I told him, giving the rest of the station a quick scan. There were other small clumps of people wandering around out there whom the Shonkla-raa apparently hadn’t bothered to recruit. Some were looking curiously at the walker formation, probably wondering who the celebrity was who was arriving, but most were pretty much ignoring us. Late arrivals, I tentatively identified them, who the Shonkla-raa had decided couldn’t be turned into walkers in time to be of any use to them.

And scattered haphazardly throughout the station, standing as rigid as ice carvings, was the local contingent of Spiders.

The Shonkla-raa had the whole place locked down, all right. But we still had one weapon in our arsenal. “What’s the activation range on the kwi?” I asked Bayta. “How close do you have to be to keep it working?”

“A couple of meters,” she said. “Five or six at the most. But the minute I go out there I’ll be frozen like everyone else.”

“That’s why you won’t be going out there,” I said, thinking hard. “We can keep the train’s doors closed, right?”

“Yes,” Bayta said. “That’s done internally. I’ve already given the order.”

“Order number two: as soon as we’ve stopped, try to get us moving again,” I said. “I don’t suppose the Shonkla-raa have overlooked that possibility, but we might as well try. If it works, we just keep going until we find a station that’s clear of them, or a siding big enough for us to pull into.”

“We can try,” Bayta said doubtfully.

“If that doesn’t work—” I turned away from the window and gestured to Morse. “Get down to the compartment nearest the car’s door and clear out whoever’s inside. I don’t care how, just do it.”

“Right.” Morse hit the door release and disappeared back out into the corridor.

“Sam, get Carl back here,” I ordered the defender. “Where is he, by the way?”

“In the dining car service area,” Sam said.

“Good,” I said. “Have him stop by the bar car on his way and grab as many big bottles of the most flammable alcoholic liquor you’ve got aboard. The higher the proof, the better. If there’s any skinski flambe fluid, grab that, too.”

“We going to set the train on fire?” Terese asked.

“Not the train, no,” I told her. “You girls start tearing apart some strips of flammable cloth—a proper Molotov cocktail needs a proper fuse.”

“How are we going to get them out there?” Rebekah asked, her voice tight but controlled as she pulled two of her lightweight shirts from her carrybag and handed one to Terese. She was, I suspected, probably trying hard not to think about the actual, gritty consequences of deliberately setting a whole bunch of people on fire.

“She’s right,” Terese said, her breath edging toward the fast and shallow as she started tearing the shirt apart. “The minute you open the door, they’ll have us.”

“That’s why all of you will be in the compartment Morse is getting for us,” I told her. “Close enough for Bayta to activate the kwi, but behind enough soundproofing that none of you should get enough command tone for it to be a problem. It’ll just be Sam, Carl, and me out there.”

“But they’re Spiders,” Terese protested. “The minute they hear the Fillies they’ll be frozen.”

I smiled tightly. “Exactly. Hang on to those shirts, and let’s see if Morse has our new quarters ready.”

The train was just rolling to a stop as we headed down the corridor toward the front of the car. Along the way we passed an eager-eyed Tra’ho hurrying in the opposite direction, her multiple sets of earrings jangling as she all but ran us down.

Morse was waiting by the open door of the compartment beside the car door. “I told her the grafft’a singer Mov Tree’es was preparing to make a musical dit-rec and needed a few Tra’ho’seej to fill in for some of the background line who hadn’t shown up,” he said as we came up. “What’s the plan?”

“As soon as the rest of my squad shows up—ah; there he is,” I interrupted myself as the vestibule door at the rear of the car opened and Carl appeared with a dozen bottles cradled in his folded legs. “You and I will put together a few Molotov cocktails, then I’ll stay out here while all the rest of you seal yourselves into the compartment. Bayta, why aren’t we moving?”

“As soon as we stopped some of the walkers wedged themselves into the engine’s wheels and drive mechanisms,” she said tightly.

Terese inhaled sharply. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “They didn’t—?”

“No, no, of course not,” Bayta assured her quickly. “That’s why we’re still stopped.”

Morse grunted. “They are already dead, you know,” he said darkly as he took one of