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. “Korak Fayr, I know by sight,” he continued, nodding to Fayr. “And I expect Agent Morse is smart enough to have figured it out.”
“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 to track them down for interrogation. A minute after the last one vanished into the crowds, another train pulled up a few tracks over and a group of passengers debarked, a handful of them heading toward our train. Two of them were Fillies.
One of the Fillies was Osantra Riijkhan.
“I’ll be in the bar,” I told Bayta, stepping away from the window and heading for the compartment door. “Lock up behind me.”
“You think that’s a good idea?” Bayta asked, her tone making it clear that she personally did not.
“I want to see his reaction when he finds we’re here and his friends aren’t,” I said. “Don’t worry, he’s too smart to make trouble.”
“What if he isn’t?”
I grimaced. She had a point. I hadn’t yet seen Riijkhan truly furious, and furious people often did stupid things. “If you feel the local Spiders go blank, go get Fayr,” I told her. “Otherwise, you and the girls stay put.”
The train had long since left the station, and I was halfway through my second iced tea, when Riijkhan arrived at the bar. I raised a hand to catch his attention and beckoned him over. He gazed at me for a couple of seconds, then wove his way through the other tables and sat down across from me. “I’m pleased to see you,” I said, nodding as I lifted my glass to him. “I was starting to think you’d miss out on this whole operation.”
“Only the most interesting parts, I’m afraid,” he said, a formal stiffness to his voice. “Once again, we seem to have underestimated you.”