Timothy Zahn - Judgment at Proteus

* * *

And awoke with a jolt.

Through my closed eyelids I could tell the room was dark and quiet. For a few seconds I lay still and listened, locating the three soft sounds of breathing coming from where Bayta and the two watchdogs should be. There were no stealthy footsteps, no extra sounds of breathing, no buzz of a sonic weapon or the scent of a gaseous one. Everything seemed fine.

Only it wasn’t. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t.

I eased my eyes open. Only then did I spot it: a subtle hint of red light flashing slowly across the walls and door. I studied as much of the room as I could without moving, then carefully rolled over.

It was the computer. Something on the display, which Bayta had left turned toward the wall, was flashing red.

I looked around the room one last time, using the light from the slow flashes to confirm that Bayta and Ty were indeed curled up on their parts of the bed and Doug was by the door. Rolling off my cushions, I went over to the computer desk.

There, in the lower corner of the display, were the flashing red words MESSAGE WAITING.

I sat down in the chair, mouthing a curse. The computer’s clock read 12:02, which meant the stupid message indicator had robbed me of half an hour of sleep. Mentally flipping a coin between a reminder from Minnario of our morning court date and a worried pestering from Aronobal about the mysterious Building Twelve, I keyed for the message.

The way is clear. Go now, before the evil ones close the path. The way is clear. Go now.

There was no signature.

I stared at the display, reading the message twice more, my brain skidding on its tracks. The way is clear ? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

And then, abruptly, I got it.

I looked over at the door. My movements had awakened Doug, who was looking at me with the expectant air of a dog whose master has just picked up the leash. “Sure, why not?” I murmured. A midnight stroll through the quiet Proteus night was hardly a crime, and if my walk happened to take me through the medical dome, that wasn’t a crime, either.

And if the way to Building Twelve was indeed clear …

The corridors were as empty of pedestrians as they’d been the previous night. Actually, they were noticeably more deserted, since with Minnario no longer AWOL the extra groups of Jumpsuits who’d been prowling around were no longer in evidence.

The medical dome was similarly deserted, though once again there were a scattering of lights in several of the buildings, including Building Twelve. I stayed on my path, heading straight across the dome as if aiming for the exit corridor on the far side.

I was halfway across the dome when I noticed that the security camera I was walking toward looked odd. I continued toward it, trying to pierce the twilight darkness and see what it was that had caught my attention.

Two steps later, I got it. Talking earlier with Bayta, I had commented that someone with a push broom could shove the camera up on its gimbals and aim it out of line with the dome floor.

Apparently, someone had done just that.

“That’s interesting,” I murmured aloud. Turning, I looked toward the other camera, the one I’d just walked beneath, wondering if the fellow with the broom had had a similarly equipped friend.

He’d had a friend, all right. Only the friend seemed to have had a pocket chain saw instead of a broom. The other camera was completely missing.

I felt a shiver run up my back. The way is clear, my mysterious correspondent had said. The only question now was whether the way was clear for me to investigate Building Twelve, or clear for me to incriminate myself by breaking and entering.

Or clear for me to casually walk to my death.

I took a deep breath. So we play along, I’d told Bayta. Unfortunately, that was still the best strategy I had. “Heel, boy,” I murmured to Doug, and started across the dome.

With the soft glow from the handful of lit windows throwing the front of Building Twelve into comparatively deeper shadow, I was nearly there before I spotted the body lying crumpled in front of the door.

I should have simply stopped in my tracks and punched the emergency button on my comm. But I’m never that smart. Besides, if the victim wasn’t quite dead, a few minutes’ delay could mean all the difference in the world.

And so instead of stopping I broke into a run, closed the last five meters, and dropped to my knees beside the body. It was a male Filly, I noted automatically, dressed in either a green or blue medical tech’s outfit, I couldn’t tell which in the dim light. His body was limp, he was still warm, and he was lying in a pool of blood.

He was also very dead.

I was reaching for my comm when the door in front of me abruptly opened, flooding the crime scene with a blaze of light coming at me from around the silhouette of a second Filly.

I sprang sideways, squeezing my eyes shut against the blinding glare, trying desperately to get out of the line of fire. If I could get around the side of the building before my assailant got his weapon lined up, I might still have a chance.

I hadn’t gotten two steps when I caught Doug’s side with my leg and went sprawling face-first over him onto the ground. I got my hands under my chest to try to push myself back up—

{Help!} a female Filly voice screeched from the direction of the doorway, the harmonics from her terrified shout rising well into the ultrasonic range. {Assault! Death! Murder! Help!}

And even as I shakily made it back to my feet, more lights in the buildings around me began to come to life.

With a sigh, I pulled out my comm and punched for Bayta. “It’s me,” I said when she answered. “Get dressed and get up to the security nexus. I’m about to head that direction myself.”

I looked back at Building Twelve. Three husky Filly males had now appeared, two of them dropping down beside the dead body, the third striding purposefully toward me. “And you’d better give Minnario a call,” I added. “I think I’m going to need my lawyer.”

I’d already discovered that the security nexus upstairs had an employee snack area. Now, I learned they also had a processing room complete with a pair of holding cells.

The cells weren’t much in the way of prisoner restraint, actually, certainly not compared to some of the high-tech prisons I’d seen across the galaxy. They were composed of plain high-impact plastic bars, with simple DNA-key locks, and extremely spare accommodations, each boasting a cot and sink/toilet combo. A single monitor camera covered the doors of both cells, and probably not much else. My guess was that the whole setup had been designed more as a drunk tank than with any expectations that they would someday play host to an actual accused felon.

But whatever the cells lacked in physical security was more than made up for by the half-dozen Jumpsuits milling around the processing room, every one of them keeping a sharp eye on me. They were clearly shaken, some of them stunned at the killing, others enraged by it.

And for the first time since I’d arrived at Proteus, they were carrying sidearms. From where I was sitting I couldn’t tell what kind of weapons they were, whether they were lethal or something more humane. I wasn’t especially anxious to find out, either.

Bayta was the first visitor to arrive, but she wasn’t allowed in to see me. I could see her out in the main nexus room, Ty at her heels, gesturing as she talked inaudibly to one of the Jumpsuits. Working solely from their body language, I tentatively concluded that she was demanding to see me while the Filly was insisting she couldn’t.

The next new arrival was Usantra Wandek. Him, naturally, they let right in.