Timothy Zahn - Judgment at Proteus

Beside me, Bayta caught her breath. “You made an aerosol spray of Modhran coral?”

“Of Modhran polyps,” Riijkhan corrected, his eyes again flicking to her before coming back to me. “From original Modhran coral, naturally, without the disagreeable effects inherent in the Melding variety. With careful positioning and timing of the sprays, we were able to take control of each group of Humans as they neared the Veerstu station.”

I grimaced. So that was how he’d bypassed the team’s tricked-out skin. That approach hadn’t even occurred to me. “Which is why there weren’t any walkers hanging around the platform when we got to Veerstu,” I said. “You made sure to clear them all out each time a team came through so that they couldn’t tip off the rest of the mind about what had happened.”

“What about the other passengers in those cars?” McMicking asked.

Riijkhan looked him up and down. “You’re McMicking,” he said. “Compton’s chief enforcement officer. Perhaps later I’ll measure you against single combat.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” McMicking said. “What about the other passengers?”

“Not all of those in the cars were affected,” Riijkhan said. “Those who had inhaled enough polyps to become true Modhran Eyes exited the train with us at Veerstu.”

“And?”

Riijkhan cocked his head and looked at Morse. There was a silent order, I gathered, to Morse’s Modhran colony— “They were killed,” Morse said, a bitter edge in his slurred voice. “The Shonkla-raa made me kill them.”

I felt my throat tighten. Even knowing it was coming, the revelation was still like a kick in the gut. Beside me, Bayta stirred, but didn’t speak. “You’re not to blame,” I told the Modhri. “The guilt is with those who gave the order.”

“Compton, I—” Once again, Morse stopped in midsentence.

“You know, that’s really annoying,” I told Riijkhan, forcing calmness into my voice. I was trying to make him mad. I couldn’t afford to get mad myself. “You need to let your slaves speak every once in a while.”

“There are few occasions when I wish to hear them,” Riijkhan said evenly. “As to the rest—” He pointed at the earphone in Morse’s ear. “Transmission devices don’t work inside the Tube, so there the command tone must be delivered directly. Here, and in all places where we’ll someday rule, the tone can be delivered from a distance.”

“Though as you say, that won’t work aboard the Quadrails,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re going to get pretty tired of singing those same damn notes for days or weeks on end.”

Riijkhan snorted. “Foolish Human. Do you think we don’t know the truth? We will gut the Tube, just as you threatened to do, and sweep away the Spiders and trains into the vacuum of space. Then we will once again ride the Starpath in all its power and splendor.”

He lifted his focus to the mesa rising behind us. “Magnificent, aren’t they?” he murmured. “Three warships from the days of our empire. And these are only the beginning.” He looked back at me. “Soon we shall have a fleet—a hundred fleets—and will bring down our hand to crush all the inferior races of the galaxy.”

“That’s going to be a bit awkward for you,” I suggested mildly, “given that it’s these inferior races who’ll be crewing your fleets for you.” I nodded to his four companions. “You don’t really think a party of five can run a ship that size, do you?”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” Riijkhan asked, openly gloating now. “We’ve known about these ships for a long time. Ever since you spoke of them at Terra Station, in fact. While you wasted precious time schooling your pilots in the Shonkla-raa language, we gathered our forces here.”

“Yes, I can see that,” I said mockingly as I looked around the tents and the empty desert beyond. “You’d better hope I did a good job teaching my inferior-race team how to fly your ships.”

“We will need very little of your help,” Riijkhan assured me. “I was told by Isantra Kordiss that you laid a challenge before Usantra Wandek before you fled Kuzyatru Station: that the next time he came for you, he should bring all the Shonkla-raa.”

“Well, throwing yourselves at me piecemeal sure isn’t doing a hell of a lot,” I pointed out. “So, what, is this it?”

“This is it,” Riijkhan said, eyeing me speculatively. “Is that the news you’re waiting for?”

I frowned. It was indeed what I was waiting for. Only he wasn’t supposed to know that. Had one of my hole cards suddenly become a deuce?

But it was too late to stop now. “All of you except the ones who died at Proteus, of course,” I said. “Did I mention, by the way, that that wasn’t just luck, or even just Logra Emikai’s skill? The fact is, we had a spy in your organization. Isantra Kordiss himself was reporting to us.”

Riijkhan’s blaze went a deep chocolate brown. “Slander not the dead,” he snarled. He pushed past Morse and strode toward me, his hands stiffening into Shonkla-raa knives.

Finally. “And if you find that truth unsettling,” I continued, raising my voice, “wait until you hear how the original Shonkla-raa actually came to be.”

And across at the end of the aircar, Sam and Carl abruptly came to life and started along the side of the aircar directly toward Riijkhan and me.

Or rather, toward me. I was the one, after all, whom the Chahwyn Elder had ordered them to kill if I started to speak of the forbidden subject.

But Riijkhan didn’t know that. As far as he knew, the defenders were heading toward him , probably with murder on their minds.

And his reaction was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. Spinning to face his approaching attackers, he opened his mouth and whistled the command tone.

The defenders froze in place, and I felt Bayta stiffen beside me as she also came under their spell. Riijkhan started to turn back toward me, his tone still ringing through the air, a baleful look in his eye.

And then, Sam started moving again.

He moved slowly, like someone wading against a spring-thaw river current. But he was moving nevertheless. Riijkhan spun back around toward the Spiders, his blaze paling, as Carl stirred and also resumed his advance. A moment of stunned disbelief later, the other four Shonkla-raa opened up with command tones of their own, adding their voices to Riijkhan’s and raising the volume to a head-splitting level.

And with all eyes on the defenders, I dropped into a crouch and reached under the edge of the aircar for one of the flashless stun grenades McMicking and I had concealed under the vehicle’s entire rim before we’d started the last leg of our trip. In a single motion I rose back to my feet, squeezed the trigger, and hurled it high above the army of Humans standing silently behind Riijkhan. Then, squeezing my eyes tightly closed in case this one wasn’t as flashless as the ones Hardin’s techs had demonstrated back on Earth, I pressed my palms hard against my ears.

With a thunderclap that eclipsed even the Shonkla-raa control tone, the grenade detonated, temporarily deafening everyone within a thirty-meter radius.

And as Minnario had proved back on Proteus Station, if a walker’s Modhran colony couldn’t hear the command tone, the Shonkla-raa power was broken. Riijkhan was fighting to regain his balance from the grenade’s effect when Hardin’s team, themselves not exactly steady on their feet, staggered into a charge.

They did their best, and with another thirty seconds they might have pulled it off. But Riijkhan hadn’t been lying about not being alone. The echoes of the stun blast were still caroming off the Ten Mesas when the doors of both big tents were flung open and a horde of Shonkla-raa came charging out, a hundred strong at least, slamming into the rear of the unsteady Human charge and throwing the men and women aside like combat dummies.