Timothy Zahn - Judgment at Proteus

And with the Shonkla-raa finally out in the open, it was time to play my final card.

My comm had been taken along with my gun belt. But Morse still had his. As Riijkhan grabbed Morse’s Beretta and wrenched it from his hand, I ducked past the Shonkla-raa’s side and snatched Morse’s comm from its holder. “ Dies irae! ” I shouted into it, dodging back as Riijkhan slashed his hand toward me. I made it back to Bayta and pulled her down into a crouch beside the aircar. “ Dies irae! ” I shouted again.

Nothing happened.

I raised the comm again, my eyes flicking away from the melee around me long enough to confirm that all of the comm’s settings were correct. “ Dies irae! ” I tried one more time. “Fayr— now !”

But there was still nothing. And with a sinking feeling, I realized that my Belldic sharpshooters weren’t going to be saving the day.

It was too late anyway. The last of the Humans were down, lying motionless or twitching in the desert dust, and with the command tone once again filling the air Sam and Carl had also ground again to a halt, their metal legs stiff and glistening in the afternoon sun.

Riijkhan turned toward me, Morse’s gun still gripped in his hand. Swallowing, I rose back to my feet. There were times, I reflected distantly, when making the enemy mad maybe wasn’t such a good idea. “All right,” I said. “What now?”

Riijkhan didn’t reply, and for a heart-thudding moment I thought he was going to shoot me right there and then. But as we stood facing each other, the downed men and women began rising slowly to their feet. They stood motionless, pain and frustration simmering in their faces.

Their hearing was coming back, and with that the brief window of opportunity had passed. Once again, the Humans and their Modhran colonies had become Shonkla-raa slaves.

“Did you truly think we wouldn’t notice your Belldic ally and his commando squad?” Riijkhan asked. Instead of the anger I’d expected, his voice merely held a sort of detached curiosity. “They, too, were carefully infected with Modhran polyps on their journey here.”

“I guess I should have anticipated that,” I conceded. “Are they even still alive?”

“Of course,” Riijkhan said, sounding surprised at the question. “As are they,” he added, waving a hand behind him at the unmoving Humans once more standing at attention. “One does not kill one’s soldiers without need or cause.”

“I suppose not,” I murmured.

“In addition, as you said earlier, we may require the aid of a few of them to operate the ship.” He lifted his hand, frowning at the gun he was holding as if just noticing it was still there. I tensed, but he merely handed the weapon behind him to Morse, who silently holstered it. “Now that your last hope has been proved futile, I trust you’re ready to cooperate?”

I frowned. “Cooperate how?”

For the first time he actually looked embarrassed. “We’ve found one of the entrances to the warship,” he said. “But we haven’t been able to open it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re kidding. Your own ship has locked you out?”

“Hardly,” he growled. “If necessary, we’ll blast it open. But we’d prefer not to cause unnecessary damage.”

“And you think I know how to open the door for you?” I asked. “Or would consider doing so even if I did know?”

“You’re an uncommonly intelligent Human,” Riijkhan said. “And your companion is a daughter of one of the ancient races. Together, I think it possible that you’ll find the solution.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then you will die,” he said, the complete lack of emotion in his tone somehow more chilling than any of his earlier anger had been. “Slowly, of course, and in agony.”

“Of course,” I said. “And if we do?”

His blaze lightened a bit. “If you do?”

“What do we get if we open the door?” I clarified. “We get to live, of course—that one’s obvious. But for a job this important you’ll need to throw something else into the pot.”

“I’ve already said we can blast the door open.”

“Wrecking who knows what in the process,” I reminded him. “Come on, Osantra Riijkhan—you were ready to hand over the whole Terran Confederation if I cooperated with you. Surely you can spare a little loose change on this one.”

His eyes were steady on me. “What do you want?”

I pointed at my battered team standing unmoving in the sun. “Them.”

Riijkhan seemed taken aback. “What?”

“You heard me,” I said. “They all get to leave with Bayta and me after we open the door for you. Unharmed, of course, and you pledge not to come after us.”

“Impossible,” Riijkhan said firmly. “But I offer a counterproposal.”

I nodded. “I’m listening.”

“Since they are clearly of value to you,” Riijkhan said, “I offer to kill one for each hour you fail to open the warship. Beginning with him.” He leveled a finger toward Morse. “The first hour begins now.”

I looked at Morse. His face was silently contorted, the face of a man who wants desperately to say something. “Let him speak,” I said.

Riijkhan shrugged slightly— “Don’t do it,” Morse gasped. “Let the bast—”

His mouth clamped shut again. “He’s spoken his word,” Riijkhan said. “Do I need again to speak mine?”

For a long moment I gazed into Morse’s eyes. He’d hated me once. Probably still did. And I’d never really liked him, either.

I sighed. “Fine,” I said, taking Bayta’s arm. “Show me this damn door.”

* * *

Riijkhan loaded us into one of the larger ground vehicles: Bayta, Morse, five of the other Shonkla-raa, McMicking, Riijkhan himself, and me. Sam and Carl they hauled away into one of the big tents, their legs securely chained.

Somewhere along the line, once he had a spare moment or two, Riijkhan would probably order their dissection.

Considering that the Shonkla-raa had known about the warships for only a few weeks, they’d done an impressive amount of work. The tunnel went straight into the mesa, cutting first through a meter or so of dirt and then boring through solid rock. Forty meters in, it had finally struck an old but still smooth wall of metal.

At that point, the tunnel branched off in both directions, widening at various points along the way, here and there climbing up the side of the hull as the Fillies had dug along an interesting set of markings or a promising groove. In a few places alcoves had been dug out of the rock beside the ship, where small machine shops or equipment storage had been set up. One of the alcoves we passed contained a collection of recovered artifacts, and I spotted a couple each of the small Lynx, Hawk, and Viper sculptures that had given Bayta and me such trouble our last time here. A string of lights glowed down from the ceiling, and a six-centimeter pipe running around the upper edge hissed out a continual flow of fresh air.

And amid the dust and light and rumble of activity, the whole damn place was filled to the brim with Shonkla-raa.

I’d thought the hundred Fillies who’d suddenly appeared in reaction to my stun grenade attack had been impressive. But there had to be at least twice that number here in the warren, digging at the tunnel faces or examining the hull or working to coax more artifacts from the rocky ground. Three of the aliens were crammed into another of the alcoves, crooning their command tone softly into an impressively large radio transmitter.

On the ride over, with the advantage of hindsight, I’d been regretting not having simply rammed one of the big tents with our aircar on our way in, wondering if I might have been lucky enough to take out the command-tone transmitter that still held the Hardin team hostage. Now, with the advantage of even more hindsight, I was just as glad I hadn’t tried it.