Besides, there was still the fact that if they wanted Bayta under their control, the simplest of all possible solutions was to scratch her with a piece of Modhran coral. Once a polyp colony had formed beneath her brain, they could sing their Modhri siren song and have her just walk into their lab, with no fuss, bother, or questions asked. No, whatever the Shonkla-raa knew about the Modhri in general, they had no idea that he was aboard Proteus.
But that blissful ignorance was about to come to an abrupt end. Even if my improvised explanation for the Modhri’s massed watchdog attack had managed to fool them, they were certainly already thinking and wondering. Add to it the soon-to-be-circulating tale of another watchdog miraculously pulling a semiconscious Nemut from an elevator to an emergency node, and that wondering would blossom into full-blown suspicion.
And once that happened, all one of them would have to do would be to find the nearest watchdog and hum his siren song. The Modhri might not want to draw attention to himself by activating all four hundred sixty-eight of his watchdog walkers, but I doubted the Shonkla-raa would be so worried about rocking the boat that far.
Bayta and I might be able to elude a couple dozen Shonkla-raa, or however many were aboard the station. There was no way we could elude them and four hundred watchdogs besides. An hour or two after Minnario arrived at the node, the Shonkla-raa would suddenly have themselves a brand-new army.
We absolutely had to be off Proteus before then.
I was still gnawing at the edges of the problem when Minnario’s comm suddenly vibrated in my pocket.
It was Emikai. An oddly confused-sounding Emikai. “Are you certain you are under suspicion of a crime?” he asked.
“I was spotted leaving the scene of a murder,” I said. “I also shot a santra with a couple of snoozers. Either one of those should have done the trick.”
“Apparently not,” he said. “Your name is not on any of the patroller search-and-detain lists.”
I frowned at Doug, who was back on his feet looking alertly up at me. “That’s impossible,” I said. “You sure you didn’t just miss it?”
“I did not miss anything,” he said sternly. “Nor did I have to. Your records and Bayta’s would have been automatically opened to patroller access as soon as your name was listed. Since those records are still blocked, you are clearly not on the list.”
I grimaced, feeling like a fool. Of course Wandek had kept me off the patroller lists. The last thing he wanted right now was for the patrollers to pick me up and hear my side of what had happened in Hchchu’s office. “So you got nothing?”
“Not entirely,” Emikai said. “Though I could not access individual records, I could search for all messages going through the system at the time she made her call.”
“Any torchferry reservations in the mix?”
“No,” he said. “Most of the messages were official notifications or internal equipment activations. The only one that struck me as being of interest was a message that had been sent to the laser for transmission to the Tube.”
I felt my blood go suddenly cold. Of course. Bayta hadn’t just booked us standby passage on the next torchferry, where the Shonkla-raa would undoubtedly be waiting for us to show up. She’d instead sent a message to the Spiders, telling them to come and get us.
Only it wouldn’t be ordinary Spiders who arrived on Proteus’s doorstep. Ordinary Spiders were genetically incapable of any sort of fighting, and with us trapped in the middle of a Shonkla-raa stronghold, Bayta would have called for someone who could fight.
Which meant she’d called for some defender Spiders.
I stared down at Doug, my stomach hardening into a knot. Back at the beginning of this war, I’d seen a large number of freshly created Modhran walkers take out a whole trainful of Spiders. More recently, on the super-express, I’d seen a single Shonkla-raa freeze a pair of defenders where they stood, while simultaneously taking on three Modhran walkers and Bayta and me and nearly killing all of us. If the Shonkla-raa tumbled to the Modhri’s presence on Proteus, not even a group of defenders would have a chance against them.
The Shonkla-raa had wanted Bayta and her symbiotic Chahwyn to experiment on. Now, it appeared, they were going to get a few Spiders as well.
And once they had controlling tones for the Spiders, the Modhri, and the Chahwyn, there would be nothing in the galaxy that could stand in their way. Nothing.
“Compton?”
I shook myself, forcing away that last image. It was a three-hour trip from the Tube to Proteus, with at least two and a half hours left since Bayta’s emergency message. We had that long to come up with a plan.
And maybe, just maybe, I had one. “Yes, I’m here,” I confirmed. “Are you still willing to help me?”
“In whatever way I can,” Emikai promised grimly. “Shall I have the patrollers launch a search for Bayta?”
I looked at Doug, raising my eyebrows questioningly. He gave a low woof and shook his head side to side. “Not worth it,” I told Emikai. “The people who took her will have long since gone to ground. Do you know if Proteus has any docking ports besides the thirty-three big torchliner docking stations around the edge?”
“Yes, there are also over two hundred small service ports scattered around the perimeter of the station,” he said. “They are designed to handle maintenance and construction vehicles.”
“And as the ports themselves are smaller than the docking stations, I assume the bays they open into are also smaller?”
“Again, correct.”
“Good,” I said. “Then here’s what I want you to do. You’ll need to start by going to Sector 25-C and Tech Yleli’s old neighborhood.”
I told him what it was I wanted him to do. To say he was dubious about the whole thing would have been a serious understatement. “I wish to help you,” he said stiffly when I’d finished. “I do not consider it help to be sent on a fool’s errand designed merely to keep me out of the way.”
“It’s not a fool’s errand,” I assured him. “It is an absolutely vital part of my plan.”
“Is it then designed to draw your enemies away from you?”
I took a deep breath. “Look, we don’t have time for long explanations. If you don’t want to help me, just say so, and I’ll do it myself.”
He rumbled into the comm. “I will do it,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “Now. I’m guessing Bayta’s sent for a transport to come from the Tube to get us. Obviously, it’s going to want to avoid all the fuss and bother of the main docking stations, which is why I asked about service bays.”
“How will we know which docking station it will arrive at?”
I grinned tightly. That one, at least, was now obvious. “It’ll be Bay 39,” I told him. “After you dump the package from Yleli’s in there, I want you to check up on Minnario. He should be in an emergency node on Floor 142, Sector 16-J, right down the hall from the local security nexus. If he’s able to travel, bring him to the docking bay and wait there for Bayta and me. Got all that?”
“Yes,” he said. “I trust you will eventually tell me meaning of all this?”
“If we make it through, you’ll get the full explanation,” I promised. “If we don’t, it won’t matter anyway. Get going, and watch yourself.”
“You, as well,” he said. “Farewell.”
I keyed off the comm and looked at Doug. “Well? You know where she is?”
He woofed and bobbed his head. “Good,” I said as I stood up. “Let’s go get her.”
SEVENTEEN
In theory, now that I knew I wasn’t on the Jumpsuits’ hunt-and-bag list, it should be safe for me to go back down to the public areas of the station, where there were bullet trains and glideways and all the other conveniences of home.
In actual practice, I had no intention of reentering polite society until I absolutely had to. Wherever Wandek had Bayta stashed, he would be sure to have someone planted in the local security nexus to watch the displays and alert him the minute I showed my face.