Timothy Zahn - The Third Lynx

"Well, I wish you luck," I said. "You may find a few unexpected obstacles in your path, though."

"Such as?"

I pointed at the Halka holding the weapon. He had it hefted in his arms again, the Lynx/muzzle end pointed toward the sky. "For starters, I don't think those weapons were really designed for your use."

"On the contrary," the Modhri said. "They're perfectly suited to me."

"I presume you're referring to the fact that there's no trigger, and that they're fired telepathically?" I suggested.

Gargantua cocked his head. "Interesting. Not one in a trillion would have noticed that."

"I have a little more experience than most people with how you and the Spiders do things," I said. "My point is that telepathic controls are a two-edged weapon. Tell me, what happened to the Viper on Ghonsilya?"

The stillness around us abruptly seemed to darken. "It exploded during my attempt to acquire it," Gargantua said, his eyes narrowing as he studied my face. "As you well know."

"I meant how did the explosion happen?" I asked.

"The second guard surprised my Eyes," he said, still watching me closely. The Modhri was very sensitive to atmosphere, and could clearly sense I was heading somewhere important. "He fired his weapon, striking the sculpture, and the power source inside exploded."

"I don't think so," I said. "A properly designed power source doesn't explode when it's damaged. My guess is that it simply went off, and without the Hawk section to moderate the energy and the Lynx section to funnel off and focus the flow it had no choice but to become a bomb."

"And how did it simply go off?"

"I have a theory," I said. "With your permission, I'd like to test it. Bayta?"

Gargantua's eyes flicked over my shoulder again; and as I felt the familiar activation tingle from the kwi concealed beneath my glove, I raised my fist to point at Gargantua's stomach and fired.

The great strength of a group mind is its near-omnipresence and instant communication. Its great weakness is the equally instant sharing of pain. Gargantua jerked as the kwi 's jolt lanced through him, the entire ring of walkers staggering back as the same pain echoed into their nervous systems through their own Modhri colonies. I fired again and again, hoping like hell my theory was right. I could tell Gargantua was starting to adjust to the pain, starting to fight it back to a level where he could function again, the look in his eyes proclaiming that his first action once he was back on balance would be to rip the kwi from my hand, taking my entire arm with it if necessary.

And then, behind him, the Shonkla-raa weapon exploded.

Distance, plus Gargantua's own sizable bulk standing in front of us, protected our group from the worst of the blast. The walkers immediately in front of the weapon weren't so lucky. The concussion ripped through them like a massive green fireball, shattering their bodies and throwing them in all directions. The Halka who'd been actually holding the weapon was vaporized where he stood.

The blast sent a second, even more violent wave of pain through the remaining walkers. Again they staggered, enough to give us a little breathing space. "Get out of here!" I snapped, grabbing Penny's arm and giving her a shove back toward the mesa we'd come from. I picked out one of the nearer walkers at random and gave him a jolt from the kwi , "You and Stafford. Head for the perimeter fence and keep going. We'll hold him here."

"How?" she gasped, waving a hand at the ring of beings still surrounding us. "They're there. They're all there ."

"Don't worry about them," I told her. "They're walkers, remember? He isn't going to risk them getting hurt—he wants them alive and intact. Now, run—I want you out of here before he brings in the rest of his soldiers."

But it was too late. I turned back around to find Gargantua looming suddenly over me, his eyes blazing with rage and hatred and pain. Even as I tried to dodge to the side he grabbed my right wrist, twisting my arm over to point my fist and the kwi harmlessly toward the sky.

And behind him the large tents erupted with Modhran soldiers.

There was no doubt whatsoever as to who and what they were. While the walkers in the disintegrating circle were staggering away from me and my weapon as fast as their pain-spasming legs could carry them, the eight newcomers were staggering with equal determination directly toward us.

"And now you will die," Gargantua spat into my face.

I didn't doubt for a second that he meant it. With the kwi no longer adding to their pain, the soldiers' staggering and twitching was starting to fade as Modhran stamina reasserted itself with a vengeance. By the time they reached me, they would almost certainly be up to the task of tearing me into confetti-sized pieces.

And after they'd vented their rage, they would take Bayta, Penny, and Stafford to wherever the nearest coral outpost was and turn them into zombies like themselves.

Only it wasn't going to be that way. "No," I said, looking Gargantua—the Modhri—straight in the eye. "I think not." Turning my head toward the Nemut still carrying my supposedly silenced comm, the comm which I'd wired to be permanently active, I filled my lungs. " Now !" I shouted.

And as if he'd been hit by a thunderbolt from the rising sun, one of the approaching soldiers leaped a meter sideways in midstep. He hit the ground, skidded a few centimeters in the dust, and slid to a halt.

The Modhri was fast, all right. The dead soldier had barely stopped moving when the last soldier in line reversed direction and disappeared back into the tent. As he did so, another of the soldiers also jerked and fell.

The third and fourth soldiers had joined their comrades in death before the sound of the first shot crackled faintly through the air.

Gargantua twisted around, squinting into the sun, the Modhri trying desperately to find the source of the unexpected attack. The last three soldiers had dropped, and the distant gunfire from Fayr's hypersonic rifle had settled into a steady cadence, when the one who'd gone back inside reappeared, a glistening Shonkla-raa trinary weapon clutched in his arms. Dropping to one knee in the partial concealment of the tent door, he turned the weapon toward the east.

And suddenly the air was filled with a fury of green fire, stitching a pattern across the ground at the base of the mesa silhouetted against the rising sun.

With the Modhri's attention temporarily focused elsewhere, I got a grip on Gargantua's wrist where he still held my right arm, lifted both feet off the ground, and kicked with all my strength into his torso.

He folded backward and collapsed with an agonized grunt, his grip suddenly going limp and sending me sprawling onto the ground. I scrambled back to my feet, leveled my kwi at the last soldier, and fired. He jerked, the flashes from his weapon weaving briefly off target as a fresh jolt of pain lanced through him.

And I was thrown a meter backward and slammed flat onto my back as the weapon and its handler disintegrated in another massive green fireball.

Once again I climbed back to my feet, blinking against the dust and smoke and afterimage …and it was only then that my brain belatedly caught up to the fact that only eight soldiers had come charging out of the tent at the Modhri's urgent summons. Gargantua, lying gasping for breath on the ground, made nine, while his vaporized fellow Halka made ten.

Two soldiers were still unaccounted for.

I dropped into a crouch, bringing up my kwi as I started to look around. An instant later, I threw myself flat onto my stomach as, out of nowhere, an aircar roared past, nearly taking my head along with it. I twisted around, tracking his movement, tensing for the moment he would spin around and come back for another try.