The Third Lynx

I stopped, the other three following suit. "Good morning, Modhri," I called cheerfully. "You're an early riser."

For a moment nothing happened. Then, in typically perfect unison, the walkers in front of the tents started toward us. As they did so, more began to file out of the tents behind them.

It was like a reunion of first-class Quadrail passengers, except in grubbier clothing. Virtually every species in the Twelve Empires was represented, from Bellidos and Juriani to Pirks and Shorshians. The largest percentage were Nemuti, hardly surprising given we were in their territory. I didn't spot any Humans in the crowd, but decided not to feel insulted by our lack of inclusion.

"So you didn't take that torchyacht to Laarmiten after all."

I turned around again. Now that the trap was sprung, the sleeping tents on the far side of the camp were also disgorging their complement of walkers. Striding toward me at their head was a familiar figure: Gargantua. "You didn't stay on your torchliner, either," I reminded him. "I think that makes us even."

He continued on toward me in silence. So did the rest of the crowd. I could hear Penny's rapid, frightened breathing behind me, as well as some tense and venomous-sounding French mutterings from Stafford. Bayta, in contrast, was as watchfully silent as the walkers.

The crowd formed themselves into a ring about ten meters away from us. Gargantua continued into the circle, stopping a few steps in front of me. The light was now strong enough for me to see his expression, which to my mild surprise looked more bemused than angry. "You're a remarkable being, Frank Compton," he said at last. "You're like no opponent I've ever faced."

"That's only because you usually absorb your enemies before they're really up to speed as to who and what they're up against," I said. "If you gave us a level playing field, I think you'd find a lot of us able to give you a good run for your money."

He hissed. "Enough of a reason in itself for me not to provide such a level field. Tell me, what did you hope to accomplish here?"

"Oh, come now," I chided. "I can put two and two together as well as the next man." I raised my eyebrows. "Or should I say, I can put three and three together?"

Up until that point I hadn't been a hundred percent sure that the Chahwyn's guess about the Nemuti sculptures had been correct. But the subtle darkening of Gargantua's expression more than filled in the uncertainty. The sculptures were indeed the Shonkla-raa weapons the Chahwyn had described.

"As I said," Gargantua murmured. "A remarkable being. Where is the fifth member of your group?"

I looked around as if I hadn't realized until then that Morse was missing. "Huh," I said, turning back to Gargantua. "He was just here a minute ago. Must have lost him somewhere along the way. Don't worry—I'm sure you'll find him again soon enough."

"You think to prepare an ambush against me?" Gargantua demanded.

"You can pass on the games," Stafford put in. "We know he's one of you."

A hint of a frown crossed Gargantua's face. "An interesting thought," he said. "I must consider adding him to my Eyes when the rest of you have been dealt with."

"What do you mean, dealt with?" Penny asked tightly.

"The Human Compton has left me very few options," Gargantua said. "You cannot simply be added to my Eyes—you would hardly be unaware of my presence within your bodies. Nor can you be allowed to leave here untouched."

"Which I gather leaves just one option," I said. "You propose to turn us into your Arms." I pointed at Gargantua. "Like that one."

Gargantua nodded. "You are correct."

"What's he talking about?" Penny breathed. She was standing very close behind me now, close enough for me to hear her teeth chattering with fright.

"He's talking about a permanent takeover of your body," I told her, looking casually around the silent circle around us. There were probably two hundred walkers present. "Like he has with the rest of these fine citizens."

"Hardly," the Modhri said. "Most here are Eyes, not Arms. And I intend for them to remain so."

"That'll be a good trick," Stafford muttered.

"Not at all," the Modhri assured him. "Fortunately, your appearance is at an hour when they will be able to surmise afterward that they were still asleep."

"Interesting how important self-deception is when you're part of the Modhri's army," I said. "So how many Arms do you have here?"

"Why do you ask?" the Modhri countered.

"Simple curiosity," I said. "Part of what makes us Humans the remarkable beings that we are."

"I have twelve Arms present," Gargantua said, eyeing me closely.

"Which ones?"

Gargantua smiled faintly. "Begin trouble, and you will find out."

"Did Rafael Künstler create trouble?" I asked. "Is that why you beat him to death?"

"He promised to bring the Lynx," the Modhri said, his voice darkening with the memory. "But when I queried him aboard the Quadrail he admitted that he had lied, that he had come to Bellis hoping instead to buy it from me."

"And if you weren't willing to sell, he was hoping to blackmail you into it?" I suggested. "After all, you were in possession of stolen property."

"He did make some such threats," the Modhri said. "I wasn't concerned."

"Certainly not with all those armed soldiers between him and the transfer station," I said as that part finally clicked. "I presume that was why you had them there, anyway. You figured Künstler would arrive with a full security team of his own and wanted to be ready for any surprises."

"I thought he might choose to secure the Lynx in a Quadrail lockbox instead of carrying it aboard with him." Gargantua smiled thinly. "An idea you yourself later took advantage of. If he had done so, I wouldn't have been able to obtain it until he arrived at the transfer station, where his presumed guards would have access to their own weapons. I thought it prudent to be prepared with a superior show of force."

"You still shouldn't have killed him."

Gargantua's eyes flicked pointedly across me and the others. "In retrospect, I agree," he said. "But the error will be fixed soon enough."

"Not necessarily," I said. The Modhri had implied earlier that Morse wasn't one of his walkers. It might be interesting to see just how far he was willing to go with that game. "There's still Mr. Morse to consider."

Gargantua gave me another tight smile. "Do you really think he can elude me?" Abruptly his expression changed, and as it did so a pair of Nemuti detached themselves from the crowd and came toward me. "No—I see now," Gargantua continued. "Remain where you are."

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere," I assured him, lifting my arms slightly away from my sides to make the search easier.

The Nemuti found the comm, of course, on the second pocket they tried. "A foolish trick, Human," Gargantua said as one of the Nemuti punched the off switch and put it away in his own pocket.

"Just a high-tech version of the same trick you used on Künstler's estate after the robbery attempt," I reminded him.

"Which also didn't work, did it?" the Modhri countered.

"No, I suppose not," I agreed. "But in the end, you got what you wanted." I lifted my left hand and pointed toward the two big tents behind him. "Speaking of which, I don't suppose we could have a look at your prize."

"Why not?" the Modhri said. There was a ripple from one of the big tents' flaps, and another Halka appeared, a white and vaguely rifle-shaped object cradled in his arms. As he stopped just beyond the circle of walkers, I got a close enough look at his face to see that he was the other soldier from Gargantua's original foursome, the one who had killed Penny's friend Pyotr. "I presume you'd also like to see how it operates?" the Modhri offered.

Behind me, Penny caught her breath. "Relax—he doesn't mean on us," I told her. "We're more valuable to him still breathing."

"I won't let them do it," she said, her voice trembling but defiant. "Not to me."

"You won't have a choice," Gargantua said. Behind him, the other Halka lifted the white weapon to his shoulder, aimed at a rock spine fifty meters away, and fired.

It was like nothing else I'd ever seen. The green flash that burst from the weapon's business end was definitely energy—the way it erupted silently and without a whisper of recoil showed that much. But at the same time, there was also a strange sense of flowing liquid to it, like the blazing fluid from a flamethrower, as well as the very unlaserlike way the beam or flow or whatever fanned out from the muzzle.

But if there was a question about its nature, there was no doubt whatsoever about its effect. The green flow sizzled into the spine, shattering it with a crackling thunder crack that sent bits of rock flying across the landscape.

"As you can see," Gargantua said as the echoes of the explosion faded away, "it was well worth the effort to obtain."

With an effort of my own, I got my tongue working again. "Indeed," I said. "So how many of them are there?"

"Just the three," he said. "I have found five more Vipers, but no more samples of the other two." He waved a hand around the area. "Still, if there are Vipers, surely the other components must also be here somewhere. We need only find them."

"Could be," I said. "And once you've dug them all up, what then? You plan to kill all the Spiders and take over the Quadrail?"

Gargantua's eyes flicked over my shoulder to Bayta. "I'm sure there will be no need for anything so violent," he said, his voice going all silky smooth. "Provided the Spiders are prepared to be reasonable."

"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.

But the Modhri knew his priorities, and at the moment I wasn't one of them. The aircar kept going, jinking back and forth like a hooked fish as it grabbed for altitude and blazed at top speed toward the eastern mesa. A second later, a motion to my left caught my eye, and I looked to see a second car lift from somewhere north of us and begin corkscrewing its own way toward the mesa.

Fayr saw them coming, of course, and the thunder of the distant rifle fire abruptly changed pitch as he switched from single fire to three-round bursts. But the Modhri was as good at this as Fayr was. The two aircars dodged madly as they drove toward Fayr's sniper post, neither of them creating a discernible pattern he could anticipate and capitalize on, the two craft angling in from widely different directions to keep from presenting an easy one-two target.

And unlike normal fighter pilots, they had no regard whatsoever for their own lives. When they reached the other end of the target range they wouldn't bother with strafing or shockwaving or any other fancy maneuvers. They would simply ram full speed into Fayr's position.

There was nothing I could do to help. Nothing, except to keep pouring pain into the Modhri mind segment, distracting him as much as possible. I stood over Gargantua's broken body, hitting him with jolt after jolt from my kwi, watching the aircars closing the gap, knowing that my feeble efforts weren't even delaying the inevitable.

And then, straight out of the glare of the rising sun, a third aircar appeared, driving close along the side of the mesa.

With his attention on the other attackers, I doubted Fayr even knew it was there, and I tensed helplessly as it neared his position. But to my surprise, it shot past the end of the mesa, shifting direction to head straight for the nearer of the approaching Modhri aircars.

The Modhri turned sharply to avoid him, dropping his nose and trying to half-ring beneath him. But the newcomer knew that one, too. Instead of shooting harmlessly past overhead, he did a half roll of his own and dropped down onto his target. Their sterns met, and both aircars wobbled furiously as their pilots fought to bring them back under control. The newcomer won the race, straightening out and curving hard back around toward the Modhri.

And then, both aircars lurched again as the second Modhri aircar caught a fatal burst from Fayr's gun and exploded in a blazing yellow fireball. The surviving Modhri, wobbling furiously in the shockwave, had barely regained his equilibrium when his vehicle was shattered by the stutter of sustained gunfire from the mesa.

The third aircar, his mission apparently completed, made a leisurely turn away from the mesa and headed in our direction. "Morse?" Gargantua breathed, his voice strangely gurgling with the unmistakable mark of massive internal bleeding.

"Morse is wristcuffed and asleep," I told him, wondering who the hell it was in the other vehicle. Had Fayr managed to get one of his other commandos to Veerstu in time for the party?

"You will die, Compton," Gargantua breathed again, his eyes glinting with hatred. "I will gut you like a food animal."

"Possibly," I said. "But whatever happens to me, in the end you are going to lose."

"We shall see," he said. "And we will meet again." With one final glare, he closed his eyes.

And one more Arm of the Modhri was gone. Hefting the kwi, I lifted my eyes again, wondering what the Modhri would throw at us next.

But the battle was over. The surviving walkers were in full flight now, most of them still staggering with residual pain as they hurried across the lightening landscape.

It was only then that I noticed that the ground was giving little shakes beneath my feet.

I frowned, looking around. The tremors were small and distant, like the feel of a heavy ground-pounder driving foundation pylons a block away. One of the distant walkers abruptly staggered a little harder, and a second later I felt another rumble. This one was accompanied by a small puff of dust a meter from the walker's feet, looking rather like the blow from a surfacing whale.

And suddenly I understood. The massive surge of pain through the Modhri mind segment was triggering explosions in the Viper power sources still buried beneath the dig site as the agonized walkers ran over them.

"I don't get it," Stafford said as he and the two women gathered beside me. "Is he just giving up?"

"Actually, he hasn't got much choice," I told him. "With his soldiers gone and Fayr holding the high ground, we hold the edge in firepower."

"But those walkers outnumber us twenty to one," Stafford objected. "He could arm them with nothing but rocks and still win."

"Not really," I said. "You see, he's in something of a no-win situation here. As long as he maintains control of the walkers' bodies, he's vulnerable to the full level of pain we're throwing at him."

"Ah," Stafford said, nodding as he finally understood. "But if he releases control back to the hosts to try to stop the pain from spreading, he can't make them fight us."

"Actually, it's even worse than that," I said. "If he releases control now, he won't be able to keep them ignorant that something violently strange has happened to them. You get a hundred rich and powerful people rushing to their doctors in a panic and someone's eventually going to find those polyp colonies. The last thing the Modhri wants right now is for hard evidence of his existence to leak out to the galaxy at large."

I nodded toward them. "Besides, if he continues to fight and loses, this mind segment will be wiped out, and the rest of the Modhri will never know what happened here."

"That happened to him once," Bayta said quietly. "He doesn't want it to happen again."

"So they just run away and wake up in the wilderness?" Stafford snorted. "Like that's not something strange?"

"He'll probably bring them back here once we're gone," I said. "That won't be nearly as hard to explain away."

"Except for all the bodies and destruction we're leaving behind," Stafford pointed out.

I shrugged. "I'm sure he'll be up to the challenge."

"Why do we have to leave at all?" Penny asked.

"Because if we don't, we'll probably be arrested for mass murder," I told her. "You want to try to explain all this?"

"Why not?" she countered. "We've got all the hard evidence we need, don't we?"

"We certainly have enough," I said. "Only we don't want to blow this into a full-court confrontation yet any more than the Modhri does. Don't forget, for all his vulnerabilities he still controls a lot of the power centers in the Twelve Empires. We go head-to-head and things will get very, very messy. For everyone."

"So that's it?" Stafford demanded. "We just walk away?"

"We just walk away," I confirmed. "And we keep our mouths shut."

"I don't think I like that," he said, an edge to his voice.

"Would you rather get a midnight visit from a couple of these?" I asked, nudging Gargantua's body with my foot. "You two just sit back, pretend this never happened, and let us deal with it."

"All right," Stafford said ominously. "For now."

I turned as the surviving aircar set down between us and the main tents. I lifted my kwi as the door opened, hoping against hope I would see a striped Belldic face peering out.

"Easy," Morse said as he climbed stiffly out of the pilot's seat. "It's just me."

For a moment I couldn't find my tongue. Neither, apparently, could anyone else. Stafford recovered first. "Well," he said, his tone studiously casual. "So much for him being a Modhri walker."

"As I believe I told you in the first place," Morse growled, walking over to us. "Maybe you'll trust me a little now. Incidentally, Compton, just for the record, that gadget of yours apparently builds up a resistance in the victim if you use it too much." He lifted his eyebrows. "Unless you planned for me to wake up while the party was still going on."

"Hardly," I managed. "How did you get out of the cuffs?"

He smiled. "Come now. I'm ESS. We aren't entirely without our resources, you know." He looked around. "So this was it?"

"Still is it, actually," I said. I looked around, too …and as I did so, I suddenly understood what this place really was.

God in heaven.

"Frank?"

I looked around. Bayta was frowning at me. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Of course," I lied. "Back to business. By my count, there should still be one complete trinary weapon lying around somewhere. We need to find it and get it out of here, along with any spare Vipers that might have survived."

"Preferably before someone starts wondering what this strange glitch is on the weather satellite feed," Morse warned. "Let's get the loot, and get the hell out of here."