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 hell, but that was weird.”
“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 Korak Fayr, commando major of the Bellidosh Estates-General.”
“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 my private mission to destroy the Shonkla-raa.”
“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 continued as I stepped over to Yleli’s limp body. “Better make it to the compartment car door,” I added, glancing at the back of the sleeping Cimma’s head. “We don’t want anyone else noticing.”
“What are you doing?” Morse asked as I lowered my reader to within a few centimeters of the top of Yleli’s head and began tracking the device downward.
“Looking to see what other work they had done besides the knife hands and the oversized throats,” I told him. “Some of the normal Filiaelian nerve centers are still in their standard locations, but some of the others have been moved. I want to know which ones, where they went, and the locations of any other vulnerable spots.”
“And whether we can count on all Shonkla-raa having the same spots,” Fayr said, nodding understanding. “Hence, you choose to take out three at once.”
“The numbers were Yleli’s idea,” I said. “But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t do this all by himself. We think there are two more of them, by the way, back in the dining car pretending to toast someone’s health. Let’s try to get this done before they realize something’s gone wrong up here.”
“It’s too late,” Morse said grimly. “They already know … and they’ve killed all the other Eyes.”
“What?” Bayta asked sharply.
“He’s right,” Rebekah said quietly. Her voice, unlike Morse’s, held only sadness. “They’re all gone.”
“Take it easy,” I said, finishing with Yleli’s scan and heading over to the next body. “The other walkers are probably just fine. You can’t detect them because they’re all out of range.”
“How can they be out of range?” Terese asked. “Rebekah told me one of their group minds can cover a whole train.”
“It can,” I said, starting my second scan. “But at the moment we’re actually two trains. As soon as I got in here, the two defenders I mentioned unsealed the rear vestibule and unhooked the car, and we were pulled away from the rest of the train. The rest of the people back there won’t have noticed anything because there’s another engine pushing them along from the rear. But the point is that we’re currently a couple of kilometers out in front.”
“So that if the Shonkla-raa ask the Eyes what’s going on up here they won’t be able to tell them anything,” Morse said, nodding. “And even if they did suspect something, there isn’t a bloody thing they can do about it. Not from way back there.”
“Exactly.” I looked at Bayta. “It was my idea for the defenders not to tell you,” I added, bracing myself for her reaction.
But there wasn’t one. She merely nodded silently, in understanding or forgiveness, and let it go.
“But they’ll know soon enough,” Rebekah warned. “Even if they assume the Shonkla-raa killed Mr. Morse and me, sooner or later they’ll want to get back in here. What happens when they find out they can’t open the vestibule door?”
Abruptly, Bayta caught her breath. “They’ll use their command tone to freeze a server and try to use his leg to pry it open,” she said. “They’re doing it right now.”
“Damn,” Morse muttered. “What about the people in the car? Did they get them all out?”
“I don’t think so,” Bayta said, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Two kilometers was also a long stretch for her particular brand of telepathic communication, even given the higher number of Spiders in the train back there and the incoming tender that could function as a relay point. “No, the people are still there.”
“That tears it,” Morse said. “We’ve got to get back there and reconnect. If they get that door open now, everyone in the car will asphyxiate.”
I hissed between my teeth. I’d hoped to have the wounded Bellidos to their compartments and the dead Shonkla-raa safely tucked away in the tender before we reconnected. But Morse was right. If we delayed any longer, a lot of people were going to die.
But I could still make this work. Maybe. “Bayta, tell the defenders to start the reconnection procedure,” I ordered. “And send the tender back to the rear—we don’t want the Shonkla-raa having access to it. Fayr, can you get your wounded back to your compartments?”
Fayr gestured questioningly at one of the other commandos. “We shouldn’t move them any farther yet than absolutely necessary, Korak,” the other Bellido warned. “The narrowness of the vestibule in particular will be dangerous to them.”