But I’d run close to a kilometer already, and I didn’t have the reserves left for a last-minute sprint. The two Halkas reached the door a good thirty meters ahead of me and disappeared inside. Ignoring the small sane part of my mind that warned me this was a stupid thing to do, I charged in after them.
For once, the sane part was right. I’d barely made it in out of the Coreline’s pulsating glow when they attacked.
Fortunately, Modhri walkers or not, they were as worn-out from the run as I was. Their lunge was slow and disorganized, and I was able to dodge out of the way with only a single glancing blow off my shoulder. I took the nearest one down with a leg sweep, tried unsuccessfully to do the same to the other, and danced back out of his way, taking a moment to look around.
As our young fugitive had picked a good station to run in, he’d similarly picked a terrific place to go to ground. The repair shop was reasonably large, but over half of the open space in the center was currently occupied by a freight car with a disassembled rear wheel assembly. Between the car itself, the various equipment cabinets lining the walls, and the catwalks and crane tracks crisscrossing the space above us, we had the makings here of world-class hide-and-seek.
And with the Halka I’d tripped now back on his feet, I was again on the short end of two-to-one odds. “Stafford!” I shouted as the two Halkas advanced toward me. “Get out of here—fast—and get back to the stationmaster’s office.”
Nothing. Behind the Halkas the door we’d come in through opened again and the two Juriani who’d been on my other flank appeared, panting heavily but clearly game to join in the fun. Four-to-one odds, now. “Stafford, you’re in danger,” I shouted again. “Get out of here.” Again, the only response was my own echo off the high ceiling.
And I was running out of time. Westali combat training was all well and good, but four to one was still four to one. I backed up, looking vainly around for some sign of my quarry, wondering too where that missing Halkan walker had gotten to. There was a soft tapping sound behind me, and I spun around, whipping my hands around into defensive position.
But it was only a drone Spider. The smooth globe and slender legs hardly lent themselves to expressions or body language, but just the same I would swear this particular Spider looked startled. “Don’t just stand there,” I growled at him. “Give me a hand.”
The Spider’s response was to take a couple of rapid steps toward the Quadrail car to get out of my way. Radically nonaggressive beings, I reminded myself, as constitutionally unable to fight as the Chahwyn who had created them. I continued to back up, keeping ahead of the advancing walkers, hoping to find a spot narrow enough that they would have to come at me one at a time.
But I was nearly halfway through and hadn’t found anything yet. I would have to try circling around the front of the Quadrail car when I got there and see if there was anything on the other side of the building.
And then, as I passed one of the tool cabinets, it gave a soft click.
The sound of a lock unlocking.
The drone still cowering over by the car couldn’t simply wade in and help me fight the four walkers. But he’d done the next best thing.
He’d offered me a chance at a weapon.
I took a sideways step to the tool cabinet and swung open the door, grabbing the first long tool—a wrench—that caught my eye. Jumping back, slamming the door closed again, I once again faced my attackers.
The Modhri mind segment that included these four walkers must have known in that moment that he’d lost this group. But after having taken full control of them for this long he probably would have had to kill them anyway. The Modhri preferred to operate in the shadows, and four upstanding citizens of the galaxy who had inexplicably blacked out for this length of time might wonder about it a little too hard and a little too loudly.
So with absolutely nothing to lose, he sent them charging to the attack.
Four bodies under the control of the same mind made for an awesome fighting machine. But these four weren’t fighters, and as such had no training or reflexes or combat experience the Modhri could draw on.
And it showed. I moved against one side of the circle as they closed in, taking out one of the Halkas with a blow to his knee before the others could get close enough to double-team me. I danced back again, ducked under a flailing Jurian arm, and jabbed the owner in one of his upper thigh nerve points. He went down even more spectacularly than the Halka had, and then there were two.
Normal attackers might have paused at this point for a little reevaluation. These two just waded in, the Halka going high, the Juri going low. The latter got a wrench across the side of his beak for his trouble, and he was down for the count.
But the numbers had been just a shade too right. His partner got in outside my arm, and I found myself being crowded sideways with arm and wrench pressed too tightly against my chest to do anything. I managed to shift the wrench to my left hand, but was shoved against a bank of waist-high diagnostic machines before I could get off more than a fairly weak blow across his upper arm.
He grunted with pain and grabbed at my wrist. I evaded that attempt, but his second try succeeded, and multiple jolts of pain lanced through my left forearm as his claws punched through my jacket and sank into my skin. His other hand slashed at my eyes; more by luck than skill I caught his wrist in my right hand.
For a second I stared into that flat, bulldoglike face, the sagging jowls and empty eyes an eerie reminder that what I was fighting wasn’t the respectable, civilized being that had once called this body home. Then, clenching my teeth against the pain from the dug-in claws, I twisted my left wrist to the side, bringing the end of the wrench down onto the hand still stretched toward my eyes.
There was the faint sound of snapping bones, and suddenly my left arm was free as the Halka howled and clutched at his broken hand. I lifted the wrench high, aiming for the muscle ridge where his neck and shoulder joined.
The blow never landed. Abruptly, the Halka dropped straight down like he’d fallen through a trapdoor as his legs were swept out from under him. As his head dropped out of my line of sight I saw Morse standing behind him, a thunderous look on his face. He jabbed a single blow into the back of the Halka’s neck, and the fight was over.
The physical fight, anyway. “What in
bloody
hell do you think you’re doing?” Morse snarled at me.
“Protecting my life,” I told him, massaging my arm where the claws had perforated it.
“From
these
?” Morse countered, gesturing at the unconscious bodies around us. “What were they going to do, foreclose your house? Force you to buy some insurance?”
“Maybe protecting Daniel Stafford’s life, too,” I said. “He came in here right before I did.”
Morse looked around. “Stafford?” he called. “Stafford, this is Agent Ackerley Morse of the EuroUnion Security Service. We need to talk to you.”
“It’s all right,” I called. “You’re safe now.”
There was no answer. “Maybe he went out the other end,” Morse suggested.
I shook my head. “I would have heard the sound of the door.”
Morse hissed softly between his teeth. “Right,” he said, his voice quiet and deadly. “Let’s go find him.”
Five minutes later, we found him lying behind a diagnostic cabinet that had been pulled a meter away from the wall. He was dead, of course, his neck broken.
Only it wasn’t Daniel Stafford. In fact, aside from the hair color, age, and body type, he wasn’t even close.
“Check the bag,” Morse murmured over my shoulder. “See if they got the Lynx.”
The backpack was still slung over the boy’s shoulder. Carefully, I reached over and unzipped it.
No one had gotten the Lynx, because the Lynx had never been there. Snugged up inside the padded case was a beautifully decorated, high-priced lugeboard.
Morse and I stared at the board, and at the body, for what seemed a long time. Then, Morse got an unpleasantly firm grip on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Morse said as we faced each other in the privacy of one of the stationmaster’s storage rooms. “I really am. But you’re not making it easy.”
“You saw the boy running,” I said. “You also saw me in the repair shop fighting off those four attackers—”
“You mean those four respectable industrialists and bankers, none of whom had any reason to bother you?” he interrupted. “Those four upstanding citizens who are all dead?”
Even in death, I reflected, Modhran walkers were a pain in the neck.
“You
took out the last one,” I pointed out.
“After
you’d already had a crack at him.”
“You’re welcome to ask for an autopsy,” I said. “The point is there wasn’t nearly enough time for me to have gotten all the way around the building, killed the kid, and then gotten back to where you found me.”
“No one said you had to have done everything yourself,” Morse said. “There were several Spiders in the vicinity, and you and your friend Bayta seem to have an amazingly cozy relationship with them.”
“You ever hear of a Spider attacking anyone?” I countered. On that one, at least, I was on very safe ground. “Or even getting agitated?”
Morse’s lips puckered. “The point is, seemingly at every stop, the reason for your presence here becomes ever murkier.”
“I have Deputy Director Losutu’s endorsement.” I reminded him.
“Which I already told you doesn’t impress me,” he retorted. “What’s your game, Compton?”
“There’s no game,” I told him. “A man who died at my feet a few days ago seemed concerned about his missing sculpture. I’d like to help recover it, for his sake. I was trying to do that when this fiasco happened. End of story.”
Morse snorted. “Hardly,” he growled. “What about the Juriani and Halkas you just killed?”
“You find medical proof that anything I did killed them, and I’ll be happy to discuss it further,” I said. “Until then, this conversation is a waste of time. What we need to do is talk to Ms. Auslander and find out what she knew about the boy who was killed.”
“Correction:
I
need to talk to Ms. Auslander,” he said.
“You
need to stay put until I figure out what to do with you.”
I thought about reminding him once again that he had no authority inside a Tube station, especially one surrounded by Jurian space. But it didn’t seem worth the breath. “Just make it fast,” I said. “Wherever Stafford is, he’s getting a light-year farther away every minute we sit here.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” Morse said acidly. “You can be in charge of keeping track of those light-years.” With that witty exit line, he strode out, closing the door behind him.
I made a couple of circuits of the storeroom, just to keep my complaining leg muscles from seizing up completely. I was starting my third circle when the door opened again and Bayta slipped inside. “Any word from the governor?” I asked her.
“What?” she asked, frowning.
“Skip it,” I said, making a mental note to add some prison stories to the list of dit rec dramas I intended to show her someday. “What’s Morse doing?”
“He’s interviewing Ms. Auslander,” Bayta said. “She’s very upset.”
“Sudden death does that to people,” I said. “So she
did
know the kid?”
Bayta nodded. “Pyotr Gerashchenko, one of the group going to Ian-apof for that ski trip. He stayed behind with Ms. Auslander when her ticket was canceled.”
Which the Spiders had done under my orders. Which meant that ultimately I was the one responsible for getting the kid killed.
I shook away the thought. It was the Modhri who’d killed him, not me. “So why did he run?”
“I don’t know.” Bayta paused, cocking her head as if listening to something faint. “She’s telling Mr. Morse… Mr. Gerashchenko was accustomed to using certain illegal drugs. She thinks he must have thought he was going to be arrested.”
“I wonder how he came to that conclusion,” I said sourly, thinking back to the Shorshian who’d been talking earnestly to Gerashchenko just before he spotted me and took off.
“She doesn’t know,” Bayta said.
“I do,” I said. “The Modhri engineered the whole thing, from spooking the kid into running, to helping us herd him someplace nice and private, to sending someone in to kill him.”
“The fifth walker?”
“Or someone else who slipped over there ahead of us and waited for Gerashchenko to show up,” I said. “Interesting that the lack of a fifth walker body implies the Modhri didn’t want to waste that particular one.”
“But why kill Mr. Gerashchenko at all?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” I agreed, looking at my watch. Morse had had five minutes alone with Penny. That was plenty. “Let’s go find out.”
We left the room, walking past the two server Spiders Morse had apparently shanghaied into guarding me. Bayta led the way down a corridor to one of the private conference rooms adjoining the stationmaster’s office. Again we brushed past a couple of Spiders and went inside.
Penny was seated in one of the chairs, her head bowed, her eyes on the floor in front of her. Morse was half sitting, half leaning against the table beside her, a standard posture for giving the interrogator intimidating height over the subject. Both of them looked up as Bayta and I entered. Penny with a look of defiance-flavored trepidation, Morse with completely unadulterated annoyance. “What the bloody hell are
you
doing here?” he demanded. “I told you to stay—”
“Ms. Auslander, my name is Frank Compton,” I introduced myself, ignoring Morse. “One question: what was it your friend Pyotr wanted you to do?”
The sheer unexpectedness of the question brought Morse’s budding tirade to a halt. “What?” he asked.
“Ms. Auslander?” I prompted. “You and Pyotr were discussing something before we arrived. What was it?”
She was staring at me like something that had just crawled out of a fishbowl and quoted Nietzsche. “He wanted me to go home with him,” she said. “I mean, not
with
him—just go back to Earth and forget the ski trip and whatever the problem was with my ticket.”
Morse heaved himself off the desk and took a step toward me. “Compton. if you’re not out of here in five seconds—”
“And you discussed this in the waiting room?” I asked Penny. “In full earshot of anyone who happened to pass by?”
Penny’s expression was starting to slide into sudden horror. “My God.” she breathed. “Are you saying—? Oh, no. God.
no
.”
I looked at Morse, silently inviting him to renew his rant. But he just stood there, a grim look on his face. “I’m afraid so,” I confirmed, looking back at Penny. “Someone wants to find your friend Mr. Stafford, and he’s counting on you to help him do that. The last thing he wants is for you to turn around and go back home.”
“And he killed Pyotr for
that
?”
“Your boyfriend is very important to him,” I said.
The girl took a deep, shuddering breath. “Not boyfriend,” she corrected quietly. “Fiancé.”
I looked at Morse, noting his complete lack of reaction. Apparently, that was one of the tidbits on his private data chip. “All the more reason we need to get to him first,” I told Penny. “Will you help us?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor again. Clearly, the fact that her fiancé’s pursuer was willing to play rough had all sorts of potentially unpleasant ramifications for her safety as well as Stafford’s. If their engagement had been made in some boardroom instead of heaven she would probably be seriously rethinking the whole thing right now. “What do you want me to do?” she asked at last.
“You can start by telling us exactly what you’ve heard from Mr. Stafford in the past two weeks,” Morse said.
Penny shrugged, a nervous hunching of her shoulders. The haughty young woman in the waiting room who’d demanded to know what had taken us so long had vanished, replaced by someone a little vulnerable, a little scared, and way more human. I definitely liked this version better. “He sent me a message about a week and a half ago telling me he’d found a great new resort on the north side of Carvlis Fang and that I should get a group together to come join him.”
“Don’t you all have classes?” I asked. “I thought you were students.”
Penny shook her head. “We all graduated last semester.”
“Except for Mr. Stafford, of course,” Morse murmured.
“He’s not what you all think,” Penny snapped, some of her earlier fire flaring out again. Her lips quirked, her eyes dropping away from Morse’s. “Anyway, he’s doing an independent study on alien sociology this semester. He can travel as much as he wants.”
Or at least, as much as he wanted up to the limit of his parents’ bank account and patience. “So you collected the gang and headed out,” I said. “I presume you were supposed to call him once you got to Ian-apof?”
Penny nodded. “Only this griggle with my ticket came up and I couldn’t transfer trains.” She gave me an accusing look. “Only I gather it
wasn’t
just a griggle, was it?”
“Meanwhile, Mr. Gerashchenko volunteered to stay behind and keep you company,” I said, ignoring the question. “And then tried to get you to go back to Earth.”
“Could he have been hoping to steal you away from Mr. Stafford?” Morse suggested.
“No,” Penny said, the fire gone again with the fresh reminder of Gerashchenko’s violent death. “I don’t know. Maybe. If he was, it wouldn’t have worked.” She blinked a couple of fresh tears from her eyes. “It takes more than a few hours alone with someone, you know.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
A few hours
… “I suppose that depends on the person.” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Excuse me a minute.”
I touched Bayta’s arm and backed out of the room. She followed, a puzzled look on her face. “Is that all you needed?” she asked.
“No, but the rest can wait,” I said. “Right now, we need a train. A fast one.”
“The next express to Ian-apof—”
“Faster than an express,” I cut her off. “I need something that can gain five or six hours over the distance between here and Jurskala. We need to catch Penny’s original Quadrail, the express Morse was heading for back on Terra Station when he got clobbered.”
“What for?”
I looked at the door we’d just come through. Morse might already be on his way to find out the reason for my sudden retreat. “Because the Hawk the Modhri stole from Bellis is on that train.”
Bayta’s eyes had just enough time to widen in shock; and then, right on cue, the door opened and Morse strode through, a suspicious glint in his eyes. “Our company suddenly not good enough for you?” he demanded.
“Bayta and I need to get moving,” I told him. “Good luck with your investigation. I trust you can take care of Ms. Auslander?”
“I thought you wanted in on this,” Morse said.
“I thought you didn’t want me.”
“I don’t,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you’re still under suspicion of murder. Of six murders, now, actually. I don’t intend to let you out of my sight for the foreseeable future.”
It was basically the response I’d expected. It was also the one I’d wanted. If the Modhri wanted Penny in on the hunt for Stafford, I didn’t want her out of
my
sight, either. “I don’t have time to argue the point,” I said, trying for the right combination of chagrin and resignation. “Bayta thinks she can get us a train that’ll get us to Jurskala ahead of Penny’s friends.”
“That’s impossible,” he said, frowning. “They’re on an express.”
“Bayta thinks she can get something faster.”
He gave Bayta a long, speculative look. “All right, I’ll play,” he said. “Just make sure it has enough seats for the four of us. You think Ms. Auslander’s friends can help us find Stafford?”
“Multiple heads are usually better than one.”
“Maybe.” He grunted. “I’m not looking forward to telling them about Gerashchenko’s death.”
“I’m sure your natural tact will carry the day,” I assured him. “Why don’t you get Ms. Auslander’s luggage together and we’ll meet you outside.”
“Just make sure you’re still there when we arrive,” he warned, and disappeared back into the room.
I started to head the opposite direction, but was brought up short by Bayta’s grip on my arm. “Frank, the Hawk can’t be on that Quadrail,” she insisted. “The Spiders checked the records, and those Bellidos are still on their original train.”
“The Bellidos are; the Hawk isn’t,” I said. “They transferred it to another walker team at Terra.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” she protested. “I thought the Modhri trapped us on Helvanti Station so that that group could get ahead of us.”
“Right, but they can’t outrun a message cylinder,” I said. “If the walkers hadn’t switched at Terra, we could have easily gotten word to someone ahead of them before the next major station and arranged an ambush. What sidelining us incommunicado at Helvanti did was make it impossible for us to keep track of where the Hawk was.”
“But why would he put it on Ms. Auslander’s train?”
“I doubt he even knew Ms. Auslander was aboard,” I said. “I think he just wanted an express that would get the Hawk to Nemuti space in a timely manner, but not on an obvious straight-line path. The Jurskala-to-Ian-apof line fits that description perfectly.”
“So do six to ten others.”
“But none of them was the train Morse was heading for when he was clobbered.”
That one stopped her. “What?” she asked, frowning.
“Think about it,” I said. “If all the Modhri wanted was to get hold of Morse’s data chips—or, rather, to get hold of
my
data chip—a simple trip plus maybe a light blow to the head would have done the trick. But instead, he hauled off and really walloped the guy. Why take that kind of risk unless he was desperate to keep Morse—and us—off that particular train?”
“Maybe his goal was to keep us from connecting with Ms. Auslander.”
I shook my head. “He had three hours to figure out a countermove while she was sitting here complaining to Gerashchenko in the waiting room,” I reminded her. “He certainly would have figured out we were the ones who’d snafued her schedule, and that we were on our way. But he didn’t do anything, except make sure Gerashchenko couldn’t talk her into going home. In fact, my guess is that he’s pleased we’re joining forces.”