Judgment at Proteus

TWENTY-FIVE

Cleaning up the aftermath was going to take some time. To be on the safe side, I had Bayta instruct the defenders on the roof to uncouple the vestibule again to make sure no one wandered in on us.

Not that that was likely. According to the Spiders, the Shonkla-raa had handed out a whole stack of genuine-looking Quadrail travel certificates, and the usual occupants of our car were currently locked in a boisterous competition with each other over who could come up with the longest and most elaborate birthday toast.

The first order of business was to get the injured Bellidos back to their compartments for treatment. Fortunately, by the time Fayr’s medic decided they were stable enough to move, the defenders had gotten the tender attached and several of them had come through to our train. Under Bayta’s direction, they carefully lifted the injured commandos, two Spiders per patient, and eased them through the forward vestibule to the compartment car.

The five Shonkla-raa weren’t treated nearly so gently. With Bayta busy supervising the Bellido transfer, the defenders merely picked up the dead bodies like so many sacks of grain and lugged them back through the airlock to the tender.

I’d worried a little about how the Modhri was going to deal with the walkers the Shonkla-raa had hijacked. But that part, at least, was quickly and efficiently taken care of. By the time the defenders arrived all but one of the walkers had settled into the empty seats and gone to sleep, snoozing away even as Fayr and I started moving the chairs back to their original positions.

The single exception was interesting in its own right. That particular walker, a Juri diplomat, ended up standing to one side, his beak half open and his claws picking restlessly at his clothing as he gazed in horror-edged fascination at the procedure. Midway through the Bellidos’ medical transport, Morse walked over to him, and the two of them spent the rest of the cleanup time in low but earnest conversation.

Apparently, the Modhri had decided that this particular walker, like Morse himself, was ready to hear the whole truth.

I hoped he was right. The last thing we needed was high-ranking officials going around the galaxy screaming about enemies, conspiracies, and dit-rec horror drama pod people.

Still, if he was going to go that route, he was at least holding it together for now. Morse was still talking with him half an hour later when we finally reattached the rear vestibule, and by the time the first passengers started trickling back all of the Juri’s more overt signs of bewilderment had faded away.

Maybe Morse had convinced him of the danger the galaxy faced, and how a fully-aware walker could help in that war. Or maybe it had simply occurred to the Juri that a diplomat with a tap into what the other side was thinking could have a very bright future.

Now that the Shonkla-raa trap had been sprung and disarmed, Bayta pressed for us to leave the train at the next stop and take a tender the rest of the way back to Yandro. But I vetoed that. I assumed a new contingent of Shonkla-raa would show up somewhere along the way, if only to help guard the prisoners they were expecting to have gained, and their reaction to our un-captured presence could be instructive. Further attacks from such a mop-up group were unlikely, I assured Bayta, at least not until they had some idea of what had happened to their fellow conquerors. Besides, with Fayr’s commandos and McMicking still available as surprise wild cards, we would always have an advantage they wouldn’t know about.

I did, however, instruct the Modhri to get all his walkers except Morse off the train at the next stop and to make sure no others got on. If, contrary to all expectations, the newly arrived Shonkla-raa decided to make trouble, I had no intention of supplying them with extra bodies.

It all went off pretty much as I’d expected. At the next station, Minchork Rej, I watched through Bayta’s display window as our walkers casually moved off, bound for other trains, where the Shonkla-raa hopefully wouldn’t be able to track them down for interrogation. A minute after the last one vanished into the crowds, another train pulled up a few tracks over and a group of passengers debarked, a handful of them heading toward our train. Two of them were Fillies.

One of the Fillies was Osantra Riijkhan.

“I’ll be in the bar,” I told Bayta, stepping away from the window and heading for the compartment door. “Lock up behind me.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” Bayta asked, her tone making it clear that she personally did not.

“I want to see his reaction when he finds we’re here and his friends aren’t,” I said. “Don’t worry, he’s too smart to make trouble.”

“What if he isn’t?”

I grimaced. She had a point. I hadn’t yet seen Riijkhan truly furious, and furious people often did stupid things. “If you feel the local Spiders go blank, go get Fayr,” I told her. “Otherwise, you and the girls stay put.”

The train had long since left the station, and I was halfway through my second iced tea, when Riijkhan arrived at the bar. I raised a hand to catch his attention and beckoned him over. He gazed at me for a couple of seconds, then wove his way through the other tables and sat down across from me. “I’m pleased to see you,” I said, nodding as I lifted my glass to him. “I was starting to think you’d miss out on this whole operation.”

“Only the most interesting parts, I’m afraid,” he said, a formal stiffness to his voice. “Once again, we seem to have underestimated you.”

“It’s been a common theme throughout my life,” I said. “Ready to give up yet?”

“Hardly,” he said. “And while you continue to deplete our ranks, you will also eventually run out of allies with which to surprise us.” His blaze darkened. “And unlike you, we have ways of adding to our numbers.”

“What makes you think I can’t do the same?” I countered. “For that matter, what makes you think I had any allies here at all?”

“Please,” Riijkhan said scornfully. “I know you like to speak of yourself as a strong and nearly legendary warrior. But it strains all logic and credibility to suppose you could single-handedly defeat five Shonkla-raa and their Modhran allies.”

“Their Modhran tools,” I corrected. “And of course I didn’t do it single-handedly. Bayta and I worked together. Just as we did when we destroyed the Modhri mind segment on Quadrail 219117.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Riijkhan bit out, his eyes flashing. “You destroyed the Shonkla-raa with the aid of a group of Belldic commandos and a disguised Human.”

I suppressed a grimace. So Riijkhan was mad enough to do something stupid. Or at least to say something stupid. “So the Cimma diplomat pretending to be asleep was one of yours,” I said. “Yes, I thought so.”

“You most certainly did not,” Riijkhan said, his voice stiff. Maybe he’d belatedly realized the foolishness of having let that slip. “Otherwise you would hardly have tolerated his presence after Isantra Yleli left him behind.”

“Actually, I was mostly amused by the fact that his presence meant Yleli wasn’t at all sure he and the others would live through the whole experience,” I improvised. “That doesn’t speak well for your side’s confidence.”

“Merely a reasonable precaution,” Riijkhan said. “Like your having a harmless-appearing agent there as well.”

“Except that my precaution was also able to fight,” I reminded him. “Yours could only provide you with a postmortem report. I’ll ask again: are you ready to give up? It’s still not too late for you to retreat back to the Assembly and focus your efforts on taking over some backwater world there instead of trying for the whole galaxy.”

A server Spider stepped up beside us. “Your order?” he asked in his flat voice.

“I’m good,” I told him. “Osantra?”

“Nothing,” Riijkhan said shortly. “You speak of retreat, Compton. Shall I tell you something about your employers, something that might well cause you to retreat from your current path?”

“By all means,” I said encouragingly as the Spider moved away and headed toward one of the other tables. “Let’s hear it.”

Riijkhan hitched himself a little closer to the table. “Bayta’s people, the ones who’ve hired you to destroy us,” he said. “They won’t permit you to live beyond the point where your usefulness to them ends.”

I clucked reprovingly. I’d expected something a little more inventive from him. “Again with the defeatist attitude,” I warned. “Because the point where I’m no longer useful is the point where the Shonkla-raa have ceased to exist. Do you even understand the concept of troop morale?”

“I never said you would win,” he growled, clearly starting to get angry again. “I said you would be eliminated once you are no longer useful to them. Whether or not we die, you certainly will.” He leveled a finger at me. “And I tell you right now: for you, death will come from a completely unexpected direction.”

“You mean you won’t get to do it?” I asked. “How disappointing for you.”

He exhaled, very slowly, his eyes locked on mine, as his pointing finger stiffened into a knife. “Don’t think I couldn’t,” he said, his voice almost too soft to hear. “I could lean over this table and stab you through your heart before you or any of your allies could even begin to stop me.”

“Then why don’t you?” I asked, subtly adjusting my grip on my glass. The dishes and flatware used aboard Quadrail trains were specifically designed to break apart under stress and therefore be useless as weapons. But if push came to shove, half a glass of iced tea thrown into Riijkhan’s eyes might still gain me a crucial fraction of a second. “Because you know that a few seconds later you’d also be dead?”

“The sacrifice might be worth it,” he said. He exhaled again, and his blaze lightened as some of the emotion passed. “But one does not kill one’s allies, and I still believe you may be persuaded to become such.”

He pushed back his chair and stood up. “When Bayta’s people try to kill you, come and see me,” he said. “Assuming, of course, that you survive the attempt.”

“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “I’ll see you around, Osantra Riijkhan.”

“Perhaps.” He inclined his head toward me. “Perhaps not.” Turning, he left the bar.

For another minute I stayed where I was, sipping at my tea and trying to get my pounding heart under control. I’d been pretty sure the meeting would go exactly the way it had, but there was always the chance that even someone like Riijkhan would give in to the passion of the moment.

A Shorshian walked past my table, and as the breeze of his passage washed over me I caught the aroma of French onion soup. Glancing to my left, I spotted an elegant, turbaned Sikh sitting at the next table, prodding carefully at the steaming bowl with his spoon, waiting patiently for it to cool down.

I turned away again, carefully suppressing a smile. I’d told Bayta to get Fayr, not McMicking, in case of trouble, mainly because at the time I’d had no idea what McMicking looked like.

And if iced tea in the face would have slowed down Riijkhan’s attack, I could only imagine what the effects of a bowl of steaming French onion soup would have been.

* * *

The rest of the trip passed without incident. Riijkhan kept to himself, though I did spot him once with the thin Filly that I’d briefly mistaken for our old friend Scrawny. Apparently, Shonkla-raa agents came in all shapes and sizes.

At Homshil Bayta, Rebekah, Terese, Morse, and I transferred again to a waiting tender, leaving McMicking and Fayr’s team to continue on in their roles for another few stops, or until the Shonkla-raa lost interest in that particular train and moved on.

We arrived at the secondary Yandro station, to find that the Melding members who’d traveled the whole way via tender had arrived safely and were waiting for us. They’d been there long enough that they’d had time to set up something of a campground off to the side, complete with a Spider space heater and a circle of seats made up of the coral crates they’d brought with them. I half expected to find them singing folk songs and grilling sausages on thorn-twig spits, but they were making do with ration bars and bottled water. If there was any singing going on, it was happening mentally, via their group mind connection.

Behind them, monitoring the whole thing at a watchful distance, were four defender Spiders.

We filed out, to find that one of the Melding, a tall Tra’ho wearing the multiple earrings of the upper class, had left the group and was waiting by our tender. “It is good to see you alive and well,” he said gravely, nodding to each of us in turn. “Rebekah had already informed us of your successes in matters of intrigue and combat, Compton, but I confess that many of us thought it more a result of luck than of skill. I am pleased to learn otherwise.”

“Nice to be appreciated,” I said, looking around the largely empty station. “Though no one in this business turns up their nose at luck if it happens to come our way. Where are our hosts?”

“There,” the Tra’ho said, waving back toward the defenders.

“Not them,” I said. “I was expecting other visitors.” Actually, I was expecting a hell of a lot more than just that. “Bayta, you want to ask them?”

There was a moment of silence as Bayta spoke telepathically with the defenders.

And then another moment. Then another. “Bayta?” I murmured. “What’s going on?”

“They’re not coming,” she murmured back.

I stared at her. The Chahwyn had a crucial role to play in this whole grand scheme. If they were suddenly backing out, we were finished. “This is no time for any of us to lose our nerve,” I murmured back, taking Bayta’s arm and moving us a few steps away from the others. “We need them.”

“I know,” Bayta said. “But once they’ve made up their minds … I’m sorry, Frank. I warned you. They’ve made up their minds, and there’s nothing I can do.”

I looked over at the four defenders, standing motionless behind the Melding. “I want to talk to them,” I told Bayta. “Now.”

She shook her head. “The defenders won’t take you there.”

“Then you do it,” I said. “You can control these trains. We get back on the tender, and we head to Viccai.”

I felt her arm stiffen in my hand. “Frank, I can’t do that.”

“You did once,” I reminded her. “And the stakes are a hell of a lot bigger now than they were then.”

“I know,” she said. “But they’re not going to change their minds.”

I looked over at Rebekah and Terese. During the past few days, beginning after the failed Shonkla-raa attack, I’d noticed a subtle change in their relationship. The two girls were still friends, but the sight of Rebekah frozen in the Shonkla-raa’s mental grip had apparently awakened some deep maternal instincts in Terese that even the baby she was carrying hadn’t succeeded in doing.

And the dagger-edged look Terese was giving me right now said that whatever the problem was, I’d better find a way to fix it. “You say they aren’t going to change their minds,” I said. “Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Bayta sighed. “A fact.”

“Good,” I said. “Because the only way you can know that for sure is if you’re in communication with them right now. So where are they?”

She hesitated. “There’s a tender a little ways down the Tube,” she said. “One of the Elders is there.”

I looked past Terese and Rebekah. This station was much smaller than most, with the atmosphere barrier that defined the edge no more than half a kilometer away.

And now that I was looking, I could see the faint reflection from the globes of a group of Spiders waiting motionlessly just inside the barrier. More defenders? Or were they just the relay that was allowing Bayta’s telepathy to stretch down the Tube to the Chahwyn hiding down there?

Either way, unless there was a line of Spiders strung out all the way to Viccai, Bayta’s telepathic limit meant the Elders’ tender couldn’t be all that far away. “Fine,” I told her. “If you won’t drive me, I’ll walk.”

Bayta twitched with surprise. “What?”

“If they won’t come to me, I’ll have to go to them,” I said, letting go of her arm. “Let me get the big oxygen tank from the tender and rig up a harness for it.”

“Wait a minute,” Bayta said, grabbing my arm as I started to walk away. “This is crazy. You don’t even know how far away they are.”

“They can’t be very far, or you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them,” I reminded her, trying to pull her hand off my arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”

But for once, my assurances weren’t enough. Neither was my strength. Bayta held on grimly, her fingers tightening against my attempts to pry them free. “No,” she said, her voice starting to tremble. “Frank, this is suicide.”

I frowned at her, the unexpected word echoing through my mind. Reckless, maybe. Useless, probably. Stupid, almost certainly.

But suicide? How on Earth could a short walk down the Tube be suicide? As long as I kept an eye on the oxygen tank’s gauge, I would know when to turn around and head back.

Unless there was something else about to go down out there. Something that would be best handled in the dark loneliness of an empty Tube. Something that Bayta either knew or else strongly suspected.

I looked at the cluster of Spiders by the atmosphere barrier, Riijkhan’s words echoing through my mind. Had he been right? Had the Chahwyn decided they no longer needed me? The only way that could happen was if they’d found someone or something that could take my place.

Or if for some reason I’d suddenly become a liability instead of an asset.

“You’re right,” I said, turning back to Bayta. “So just in case I don’t return, I guess I’d better make sure Morse and the Modhri know everything about my plan.” I looked her squarely in the eye. “And about everything else.” Firmly but gently, I pulled her grip from my arm and beckoned to Morse.

“Wait,” Bayta said.

I waited as her eyes became unfocused, and I counted out ten heartbeats before she finished her silent communication. “The Elder will see you,” she said with a sigh. “The defender will take you to him.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the defenders detach himself from the Melding and head toward us. “I’d prefer you take me,” I said.

Bayta shook her head, a short, choppy movement. “He won’t let me,” she said. “Only you and the defender.”

The dark loneliness of an empty Tube … “Okay,” I said. “Whatever.”

Morse came up to us. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“No trouble,” I said. “The Chahwyn want to talk to me. Probably just a glitch or two that need ironing out.”

His eyes flicked to Bayta, back to me. “Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t think you’re invited,” I said.

“I don’t think I care,” he countered. “If we’re going to be allies, we have to trust each other.”

“You can trust me,” I said.

“You, yes,” he said pointedly. “But so far, only you.” He looked back at Bayta. “Make sure they know that,” he said gruffly. “The Modhri and I trust Frank Compton. No one else.”

“They know,” Bayta said quietly.

“He’s also the best excuse for a strategist that we’ve got.” Morse’s eyes flicked to the approaching defender, then back to me. “And whatever strategy you’re working now, good luck with it.”

“Thanks.” I gave Bayta the most encouraging smile I could, then turned to the defender. “Let’s get to it,” I said, gesturing him to the tender.

The typical cruising speed for a Quadrail was roughly a hundred kilometers per hour relative to the Tube, which translated to a light-year per minute relative to the universe at large. Usually tenders could pull a slightly better speed even than that.

On this trip, though, the defender telepathically operating the controls didn’t seem in any hurry to build up speed. We rolled along the track toward the end of the station at an almost leisurely pace, no faster than the average Olympic distance runner would do. We angled up the slope and through the atmosphere barrier into the main Tube, at which point we slowed to little more than a fast walk.

It was quickly clear why we weren’t bothering to pick up speed. Less than thirty seconds after leaving the station, we rolled to a stop. “They are waiting,” the defender said, lifting one of his metallic legs and gesturing toward the door.

“Do I at least get an oxygen mask?” I asked, eyeing the door dubiously. Centuries of Quadrail travel and the slow but constant leakage through the atmosphere barriers of a thousand stations had left enough pressure throughout the entire Tube system to protect me against the more serious physiological effects of decompression. But there wasn’t nearly enough air out there for actual breathing.

I was still contemplating the unpleasant possibilities when the door opened, bringing with it a gust of slightly stale air. I stepped outside and found myself in a siding, one of the small service areas the Spiders had stashed at various places off the main Tube. Behind my tender—or in front of it, depending on how you looked at it—was another tender, this one with two defenders flanking the door. I walked over to it, veering a little ways outward so that I could see behind it, mostly out of idle curiosity as to whether there might be more defenders hanging around back there.

There weren’t any defenders, at least none that I could see. What was there was an entire train’s worth of tender cars, at least fifty of them plus a pair of engines at each end, nearly filling the rest of the siding track. Either the Chahwyn had indeed brought the modified Modhran coral that I’d asked for, or else we had one hell of a mass migration going on here.

I was still staring at the train when the Chahwyn tender’s door irised open. “They are waiting,” one of the defenders said.

“Right,” I muttered. Squaring my shoulders, I stepped inside.

A single Chahwyn was seated in a chair at the far end of the car, his typically pale skin looking even paler today. The cat-like whiskers above his eyes were undulating in a way that I would have attributed to a restless breeze had there been any restless breezes around. Two more defenders flanked his seat, and I had the itchy sensation of a pair of attack dogs sizing me up. “Be seated, Frank Compton,” the Chahwyn said, gesturing toward a chair half a dozen meters in front of him.

“Thank you,” I said, crossing to the chair and sitting down. “Do I have the honor of addressing an Elder of the Chahwyn?”

“You do,” he said. Like the other handful of Chahwyn I’d met over the past two years, this one had a fluid, melodious voice.

But I could also hear an edge of tension beneath the music. Something was definitely wrong.

“Glad to hear it,” I said. “I see you’ve brought the coral I asked for. When can I arrange delivery down to Yandro?”

“There will be no delivery,” he said. “Your plan has been rejected.”

“Really,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. “Why?”

“Your assumptions and calculations have been reexamined by the assessors,” he said. “It has been concluded that there is insufficient coral to carry out your plan.”

“With all due respect, your assessors are wrong,” I said. “They’re assuming we need enough modified coral to overwhelm a Modhri who’s actively resisting the change. But as I made clear in my message, that’s no longer the situation. Not only is the Modhri desperately eager to cooperate with us, but if Morse’s colony is any indication the segment-prime will quickly realize the change is to his benefit and accept it with open arms.”

“You assume in turn that Morse is telling the truth,” the Elder countered. “You assume that the Modhri will indeed see the Melding change as a gain to him and not as a loss.”

“First of all, anything that keeps the Modhri from becoming a Shonkla-raa slave counts as a gain,” I said. “Second, I know Morse, and I know how Humans behave when they’re lying, and he wasn’t.”

“Perhaps his Modhran colony was lying to him.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “In fact, if Morse’s current arrangement is anything like the one Bayta has with her Chahwyn symbiont, I doubt he and the Modhri can lie to each other. And third, since when is this just my plan? This has been your plan, too, dating back to at least when you started working on the Melding coral.”

“Our involvement in that project is a secret,” the Chahwyn said stiffly. “You’re not to speak of it with anyone.”

“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “You really think the Modhri isn’t going to put two and two together now that he’s actually in communication with the Melding? There’s no way he’s not going to figure out that you’re the ones who created them. Or that your ancestors were the ones who created him, back when the original Shonkla-raa were running the galaxy.”

There was just the briefest of hesitations. “We believe the Modhri already knows of our role in his origin,” the Chahwyn said reluctantly.

“So there should be no problem,” I said. “In fact, I daresay that makes it even more likely that he’ll gladly accept this new direction. Who else but your creators would know how to make you better than you already are?”

“Perhaps,” the Chahwyn said. “But the point is moot. As I have said, the plan is changed. And with that change, your services are no longer needed.”

I stared at him. The Chahwyn were firing me? Again? “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” he said. “Instead of you and the Modhri, we shall send the defenders to fight against the Shonkla-raa.”

“They can’t,” I said as patiently as I could. “Don’t you read our reports? The Shonkla-raa command tone freezes them like statues.”

“That problem will soon be solved,” he said. “We have a variant in development that will be immune to that tone.”

“And exactly how soon do you expect to have this miracle defender up and running?” I countered. “How soon after that will you have built up the numbers you need? How soon after that will you get those numbers deployed?”

“We believe we have sufficient time.”

“No, you don’t,” I said bluntly. “The Shonkla-raa are on the move, Elder of the Chahwyn. This is no time to go back to square one for a whole new battle plan.”

“Nevertheless, that is our plan,” the Chahwyn said. “And with you no longer under our guidance and protection, we must ensure that you will not leak its substance to the enemy. You will therefore be taken to Viccai—”

“Wait a minute,” I cut him off. The insanity here was coming way too thick and fast. “What’s this nonsense about me leaking the plan? Since when have I leaked anything?”

“You were seen speaking with the enemy on the Quadrail from Sibbrava,” the Chahwyn said, his melodious voice gone flat and stern. “We fear you may speak with them again. We cannot risk that.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I protested. “Talking with the Shonkla-raa doesn’t mean a thing. Hey, I talked with the Modhri all the time back when we were still enemies. That’s part of warfare, one of the ways you gather intelligence and work out trades.”

The Chahwyn’s whiskers twitched. “The decision has been made. You will be taken to Viccai, where you will remain for the duration of the war.”

A chill ran up my back. Frank, this is suicide, Bayta had said. Had she known this was what the Chahwyn had planned for me?

No, of course she hadn’t. If she had, she would surely have said something more concrete, something to warn me off. All she’d had was a feeling, some sense of this grim new insanity that had apparently overtaken the Chahwyn.

But it didn’t make any sense. All I’d done was talk to Riijkhan. I hadn’t made any deals with him, or told him any of my plans, or given him intel on our allies. More importantly, I’d just repulsed two separate Shonkla-raa attacks. If that didn’t show I was on the Chahwyn side, nothing would.

Unless it wasn’t my talking to Riijkhan that the Chahwyn were concerned about. Maybe it was my listening to him.

What had Riijkhan said to me? More importantly, what had he said that might have thrown the Chahwyn into this insane mental tailspin?

Whatever it was, whatever the Chahwyn thought they’d heard, there couldn’t be very much of it. Sitting in the Quadrail bar, Riijkhan and I had been encased in the usual acoustical bubble that prevented outsiders from eavesdropping.

But there had been a moment when that bubble had been breached, I remembered now. The point where the server Spider came by to ask for our orders.

And as I thought back, that breach had occurred right as Riijkhan was offering to tell me something terrible about my employers.

A dramatic buildup that had been followed by a big fat lot of nothing. As the Spider left, Riijkhan had merely trotted out the traditional vague threat that my allies would eventually turn on me. It was such a tired old ploy that I hadn’t given it a second thought.

But the Spiders had apparently reported Riijkhan’s question to the Chahwyn, who were obviously taking it very seriously. Which implied in turn that there was one hell of a secret lurking somewhere in the Chahwyn’s collective closet.

And if I didn’t do something fast, that secret was about to get me exiled from the entire war. Which was no doubt exactly what Riijkhan had been angling for in the first place.

“If you take me off the field, you will lose,” I said as calmly as I could. “The Shonkla-raa will take over the galaxy, they’ll track you down, and they’ll destroy you.”

The Chahwyn lowered his eyes. “There are worse things than death.”

“Sure there are,” I said acidly. “Slavery is one of them. Watching your friends being murdered is one of them. Having some deep dark secret become common knowledge isn’t.”

His eyes snapped up, his whiskers flattening. “So we were right,” he said. “The Shonkla-raa did tell you.”

If I’d been smart, I would have just said no: straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, with a little righteous bewilderment thrown in.

But I’m never that smart. My brain is that of a truth-seeker, my training that of a professional investigator, my personality that of a damn the torpedoes, full speed aheader. Even as I opened my mouth, my mind was sifting the problem, sorting like heat lightning through everything I knew about the Chahwyn, the Shonkla-raa, and the universe at large.

What could a Shonkla-raa tell me that the Chahwyn wouldn’t want me to know?

I’d heard a little of the story during my one visit to Viccai. Four thousand years ago, the Shonkla-raa had discovered the quantum filament the Chahwyn called the Thread and figured out how to use it for interstellar travel. Over the centuries they’d learned how to ravel off pieces that could be used to link all the inhabited and inhabitable systems together. Once widespread interstellar travel was possible, the Shonkla-raa had built huge warships and sent them out on a systematic subjugation of all the other peoples of the galaxy. Along the way they’d used their skills at genetic manipulation to create the Chahwyn and various other servant races. When the inevitable revolt finally came, the Shonkla-raa had forced the Chahwyn to create the Modhri as a last-ditch, fifth-column-type weapon that they’d hoped to use against their enemies.

Only the end came before the Modhri could be deployed. The Shonkla-raa were destroyed, the surviving races were crushed back to pre-spaceflight levels, and the Modhri was lost and effectively gone dormant. Three centuries after the dust had settled, the Chahwyn had stumbled on caches of Shonkla-raa tech and had used the genetic equipment to create the Spiders and, through them, the Quadrail, wrapping their Tubes around the sections of Thread. When Modhran coral was found and began to spread across the galaxy, the Chahwyn had countered by again using the old Shonkla-raa equipment, this time to create the Melding in hopes of turning the Modhri from a single-minded conqueror weapon into something calmer, more civilized, and less threatening to the galaxy at large.

And as the history lesson flashed across my mind, so did something more recent: the image of the defenders aboard the Sibbrava Quadrail, carefully carrying the injured Belldic commandos to their compartments but merely lugging the dead Shonkla-raa back to the tender like sides of beef.

I’d made sure to take scans of the bodies, hoping to wring out a few secrets about Shonkla-raa physiology that I could use against them. Surely the Chahwyn would want to do the same, and would thus make sure to take special care of the bodies until they could be examined.

Unless there was no need for them to study the bodies. Because they didn’t need to know how Shonkla-raa physiology differed from that of normal Filiaelians.

Because they already knew what all of those differences were.

I should have kept it to myself. But I’m never that smart. “You lied to me,” I said quietly. “You told me the Shonkla-raa created you. That they gene-manipulated God only knows what creatures into the Chahwyn to be their servants.

“Only they didn’t, did they? The Shonkla-raa didn’t create you.

“You created them.”

Silently, with the finality of a sealing tomb, the car door irised shut. “Yes,” the Elder said, his melodious voice resonating with infinite sadness. “And with that knowledge, you must never be permitted to speak with anyone, ever again.”