“It’s been a common theme throughout my life,” I said. “Ready to give up yet?”
“Hardly,” he said. “And while you continue to deplete our ranks, you will also eventually run out of allies with which to surprise us.” His blaze darkened. “And unlike you, we have ways of adding to our numbers.”
“What makes you think I can’t do the same?” I countered. “For that matter, what makes you think I had any allies here at all?”
“Please,” Riijkhan said scornfully. “I know you like to speak of yourself as a strong and nearly legendary warrior. But it strains all logic and credibility to suppose you could single-handedly defeat five Shonkla-raa and their Modhran allies.”
“Their Modhran tools,” I corrected. “And of course I didn’t do it single-handedly. Bayta and I worked together. Just as we did when we destroyed the Modhri mind segment on Quadrail 219117.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Riijkhan bit out, his eyes flashing. “You destroyed the Shonkla-raa with the aid of a group of Belldic commandos and a disguised Human.”
I suppressed a grimace. So Riijkhan was mad enough to do something stupid. Or at least to say something stupid. “So the Cimma diplomat pretending to be asleep was one of yours,” I said. “Yes, I thought so.”
“You most certainly did not,” Riijkhan said, his voice stiff. Maybe he’d belatedly realized the foolishness of having let that slip. “Otherwise you would hardly have tolerated his presence after Isantra Yleli left him behind.”
“Actually, I was mostly amused by the fact that his presence meant Yleli wasn’t at all sure he and the others would live through the whole experience,” I improvised. “That doesn’t speak well for your side’s confidence.”
“Merely a reasonable precaution,” Riijkhan said. “Like your having a harmless-appearing agent there as well.”
“Except that my precaution was also able to fight,” I reminded him. “Yours could only provide you with a postmortem report. I’ll ask again: are you ready to give up? It’s still not too late for you to retreat back to the Assembly and focus your efforts on taking over some backwater world there instead of trying for the whole galaxy.”
A server Spider stepped up beside us. “Your order?” he asked in his flat voice.
“I’m good,” I told him. “Osantra?”
“Nothing,” Riijkhan said shortly. “You speak of retreat, Compton. Shall I tell you something about your employers, something that might well cause you to retreat from your current path?”
“By all means,” I said encouragingly as the Spider moved away and headed toward one of the other tables. “Let’s hear it.”
Riijkhan hitched himself a little closer to the table. “Bayta’s people, the ones who’ve hired you to destroy us,” he said. “They won’t permit you to live beyond the point where your usefulness to them ends.”
I clucked reprovingly. I’d expected something a little more inventive from him. “Again with the defeatist attitude,” I warned. “Because the point where I’m no longer useful is the point where the Shonkla-raa have ceased to exist. Do you even understand the concept of troop morale?”
“I never said you would win,” he growled, clearly starting to get angry again. “I said you would be eliminated once you are no longer useful to them. Whether or not we die, you certainly will.” He leveled a finger at me. “And I tell you right now: for you, death will come from a completely unexpected direction.”
“You mean you won’t get to do it?” I asked. “How disappointing for you.”
He exhaled, very slowly, his eyes locked on mine, as his pointing finger stiffened into a knife. “Don’t think I couldn’t,” he said, his voice almost too soft to hear. “I could lean over this table and stab you through your heart before you or any of your allies could even begin to stop me.”
“Then why don’t you?” I asked, subtly adjusting my grip on my glass. The dishes and flatware used aboard Quadrail trains were specifically designed to break apart under stress and therefore be useless as weapons. But if push came to shove, half a glass of iced tea thrown into Riijkhan’s eyes might still gain me a crucial fraction of a second. “Because you know that a few seconds later you’d also be dead?”
“The sacrifice might be worth it,” he said. He exhaled again, and his blaze lightened as some of the emotion passed. “But one does not kill one’s allies, and I still believe you may be persuaded to become such.”
He pushed back his chair and stood up. “When Bayta’s people try to kill you, come and see me,” he said. “Assuming, of course, that you survive the attempt.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “I’ll see you around, Osantra Riijkhan.”
“Perhaps.” He inclined his head toward me. “Perhaps not.” Turning, he left the bar.
For another minute I stayed where I was, sipping at my tea and trying to get my pounding heart under control. I’d been pretty sure the meeting would go exactly the way it had, but there was always the chance that even someone like Riijkhan would give in to the passion of the moment.
A Shorshian walked past my table, and as the breeze of his passage washed over me I caught the aroma of French onion soup. Glancing to my left, I spotted an elegant, turbaned Sikh sitting at the next table, prodding carefully at the steaming bowl with his spoon, waiting patiently for it to cool down.
I turned away again, carefully suppressing a smile. I’d told Bayta to get Fayr, not McMicking, in case of trouble, mainly because at the time I’d had no idea what McMicking looked like.
And if iced tea in the face would have slowed down Riijkhan’s attack, I could only imagine what the effects of a bowl of steaming French onion soup would have been.
* * *
The rest of the trip passed without incident. Riijkhan kept to himself, though I did spot him once with the thin Filly that I’d briefly mistaken for our old friend Scrawny. Apparently, Shonkla-raa agents came in all shapes and sizes.
At Homshil Bayta, Rebekah, Terese, Morse, and I transferred again to a waiting tender, leaving McMicking and Fayr’s team to continue on in their roles for another few stops, or until the Shonkla-raa lost interest in that particular train and moved on.
We arrived at the secondary Yandro station, to find that the Melding members who’d traveled the whole way via tender had arrived safely and were waiting for us. They’d been there long enough that they’d had time to set up something of a campground off to the side, complete with a Spider space heater and a circle of seats made up of the coral crates they’d brought with them. I half expected to find them singing folk songs and grilling sausages on thorn-twig spits, but they were making do with ration bars and bottled water. If there was any singing going on, it was happening mentally, via their group mind connection.
Behind them, monitoring the whole thing at a watchful distance, were four defender Spiders.
We filed out, to find that one of the Melding, a tall Tra’ho wearing the multiple earrings of the upper class, had left the group and was waiting by our tender. “It is good to see you alive and well,” he said gravely, nodding to each of us in turn. “Rebekah had already informed us of your successes in matters of intrigue and combat, Compton, but I confess that many of us thought it more a result of luck than of skill. I am pleased to learn otherwise.”
“Nice to be appreciated,” I said, looking around the largely empty station. “Though no one in this business turns up their nose at luck if it happens to come our way. Where are our hosts?”
“There,” the Tra’ho said, waving back toward the defenders.
“Not them,” I said. “I was expecting other visitors.” Actually, I was expecting a hell of a lot more than just that. “Bayta, you want to ask them?”
There was a moment of silence as Bayta spoke telepathically with the defenders.