Night Train to Rigel (Quadrail Book 1)

by Timothy Zahn

  “It does,” one of the Bellidos confirmed, eyeing me thoughtfully.

  I eyed him right back with all the innocence I could dredge up at such short notice, and sent a few mental daggers in Morse’s direction. I’d already decided we weren’t going to Bellis, but there had still been the option of getting off somewhere else in the Estates-General and backtracking again after the uproar over Smith’s murder had died down.

  Now, that option was also down the plumbing. The minute I stepped onto a shuttle and headed for any Belldic transfer station I would be out of Spider jurisdiction. If Morse could persuade the Bellidos to arrest me and extradite me over to him, he could bypass the Spiders completely.

  A little obfuscation was clearly called for. “What Mr. Morse fails to mention is that everyone with a compartment on this train had the same level of opportunity that I had,” I pointed out.

  “A moot point, since everyone else is continuing on,” Morse said before either of the Bellidos could respond. “All we can do here is to send a warning on ahead to the various Belldic stations down the line.” He looked expectantly at me, and I could tell he was dying for me to also bring up the passengers in the other two first-class coaches as possible suspects.

  Fat chance. I already knew from Bayta and her eavesdropping conductor that no one in either car remembered seeing anybody leave the compartment car during the hour before Smith’s body had been discovered.

  Obviously, they’d simply forgotten. People did that a lot, and every cop knew it. But just the same there was no point in offering Morse the opportunity to add that bit of weight to the case against me. “Still, we do know of at least one person who entered the compartment car prior to the discovery of the crime,” I said instead.

  “Who?” one of the Bellidos asked.

  I pointed to the lady politician still hovering behind them. “Her.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “What did you say?” she demanded. Unlike her screaming voice, her demanding voice was solidly in upper-crust territory.

  “Just stating facts, ma’am,” I said mildly.

  “Lady Dorchester had nothing to do with the crime,” Morse put in hurriedly. “I can personally vouch for her.”

  “So what?” I scoffed. “Bayta here can personally vouch for me, too. That proves nothing.”

  The mental daggers I’d been sending Morse earlier reversed direction. “This is nothing but an attempt to muddy the waters,” he ground out. “I’ve shown you my credentials. If Mr. Compton has any of his own—”

  “Excuse me, but Mr. Compton and I have business to attend to,” Bayta spoke up unexpectedly. “You three go ahead and continue your discussion.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Morse growled. “Until this is settled you can’t go anywhere unattended.”

  “What’s to settle?” I countered. I had no idea where Bayta was going with this, but I was willing to play along. “As long as we’re still in the Tube none of you has any right to hinder our movements.”

  “That may change momentarily,” Morse warned darkly.

  “When it does, be sure and let me know,” I said. “Until then, we have lives to lead. Honored sirs; Lady Dorchester,” I added, nodding in turn to the Bellidos and the woman. Taking Bayta’s arm, I turned us in the general direction of the stationmaster’s building and started walking.

  I half expected Morse to try to stop us, but he didn’t. I gave us five or six steps worth of distance, then leaned my head toward Bayta. “What’s up?” I asked quietly.

  Her answer was to pull subtly on my arm, changing our course a few degrees to the left. “Those hatchways,” she murmured, nodding toward a set of shuttle hatchways fifty meters ahead.

  I craned my neck to look over a line of goose-feathered Pirks that were hurrying past across our path. Two of the hatchways had the glowing rims that proclaimed the presence of docked shuttles. A crowd of travelers had gathered in the area, waiting their turn to embark for the transfer station and the torchliners that would take them to their ultimate destinations here in the Estates-General’s capital system. As I watched, one of the two glowing hatchways opened and began disgorging a line of passengers, upper-class Bellidos with lots of plastic guns riding beneath their arms. “What about them?” I asked Bayta.

  “I just saw another shuttle from that same group only let out five passengers,” she said. “All of them upper class.”

  “So they had a short load,” I said. “So what?”

  “But then only five outgoing passengers got on,” she said. “Belldic shuttles are supposed to carry sixty passengers.”

  I frowned. She was right about the number. And given that it cost as much to run a half-empty shuttle as it did a full one, nobody deliberately ran short loads without a good reason. “Let’s take a closer look,” I suggested.

  Sure enough, before we’d gotten twenty paces the flow of incoming Bellidos from the shuttle stopped. Five of them, just as Bayta had said. The outgoing passengers started filing down the stairway; again, only five made it in before the hatchway light went out, indicating the shuttle was full.

  “Interesting,” I said, shifting my attention to our five new arrivals. A dozen paces from the shuttle hatchways they joined up with another group of five, possibly the ones from the shuttle Bayta had first noticed. The first five were standing casually enough, looking at first glance like any other collection of travelers regrouping before heading for their trains.

  But they weren’t talking among themselves or looking at their tickets or admiring the brilliantly flashing Coreline that ran through the center of the Tube above our heads. Instead, they stood silently, their attention focused outward toward the rest of the crowd milling about the station.

  Even more interestingly, their carry-on luggage, instead of hugging their owners’ sides like well-behaved self-rolling luggage should, was gathered together in the middle of their circle like the women and children in an old dit rec western.

  The other lighted hatchway opened, and a third group of upper-class Bellidos started filing up into the Tube. “Wait here,” I told Bayta. Turning off the leash button inside my lapel to keep my luggage from following, I headed toward the hatchway, weaving in and out of the other travelers as quickly and unobtrusively as I could.

  Only five Bellidos got out of this shuttle, too. By the time I reached the waiting crowd the first five outgoing passengers had disappeared down the stairway and the hatchway’s rim lights had gene out. Picking up my pace, I hurried forward, and as the hatchway started to iris shut I jumped through the opening.

  The stairway had already retracted, and I dropped two meters straight down onto the folded metal. I hit with a rattling clang, nearly twisting my ankle on the uneven surface as I threw a hand against the side wall to steady myself. Recovering my balance, I lifted my eyes from my footing.

  To find myself staring down the muzzles of a dozen guns.

  Not the fake ones Bellidos were allowed to carry into the Tube, either. These were the real thing: large caliber, undoubtedly loaded, and gripped in very steady hands. Hands whose owners were furthermore encased in Belldic military uniforms.

  “Who?” one of the soldiers demanded.

  Somewhere deep in my chest, I found where I’d mislaid my voice. “Sorry,” I croaked, carefully opening both hands to demonstrate their emptiness. “Wrong shuttle.”

  There was a soft clanking from above me as the hatch opened again. “Go,” the Bellido ordered, twitching the muzzle of his gun upward in case my ears had stopped working the same time my voice had.

  I got a grip on the edges of the hatch, my eyes flicking once to the five wide-eyed nonmilitary Belldic passengers in the front row, and pulled myself up and out. The shuttle hatch irised closed, followed by the station’s own hatch, both of them nearly catching my legs before I could get them out of the way.

  “What in the world was that for?” Bayta demanded, hurrying toward me with my carrybags in her hands and her own rolling at her heels. “If Morse had se
en you trying to get away—”

  “I wasn’t trying to get away,” I assured her as she set down my bags with perhaps a little more force than necessary. “Besides which, the shuttle was already full.”

  “With only five passengers?”

  “That’s right.” Turning my leash control back on, I let my bags roll into position behind me, then gave a casual glance at the—now—fifteen Bellidos who’d emerged from the three special shuttles. The original ten were still gazing outward, looking for all the world like a group of combat soldiers settled into a defensive ring around their clustered luggage.

  The five new arrivals, in contrast, were looking straight at me.

  “Come on,” I said, taking Bayta’s arm again and picking a random direction away from them.

  The Bellidos didn’t make any move to follow. I waited anyway until we’d built up some distance before speaking again. “Two reasons why the shuttles were already full,” I said quietly. “Reason one: they were military layout, with only twenty seats each. Reason two: the other fifteen seats were occupied by armed Bellidos.”

  Bayta’s eyes went wide. “They’re not supposed to bring weapons this close to a station,” she insisted.

  “They must have gotten special permission,” I said. “It did seem to be an official military operation. And they didn’t try to—”

  “I don’t care how official it was,” Bayta said. She actually looked angry, an emotion I didn’t see in her very often. “No weapons are allowed in the trains or Tubes. They know that.”

  “And they didn’t try to bring the weapons into the Tube,” I finished patiently. “Come on. If the Spiders could keep their temper over this, you should be able to, too.”

  Her lips compressed into a thin line. Then, slowly, the tension lines eased. “It was still a waste of effort,” she said. “Once the shuttle has left the transfer station, what good are armed soldiers going to do anyone?”

  “Not a scrap,” I agreed. “But someone aboard must have been feeling nervous about whatever he was up to. Apparently he wanted to get to the Quadrail with at least the illusion of safety.”

  Bayta started to look over her shoulder, seemed to think better of it. “The Modhri shouldn’t care all that much if one of his walkers is kidnapped or killed,” she said, her voice almost too quiet to hear. “Why protect them that way?”

  “We don’t know the Modhri’s involved in this, any more than we know he was involved with Smith’s murder,” I reminded her. Still, I’d pretty much come to that same conclusion. “But if he is, you’re right, he shouldn’t care. So kidnapping and murder are out. That just leaves theft.”

  “Something valuable in their luggage?” Bayta asked, clearly still working it through. “Is that why it’s all bunched together that way?”

  “Could be,” I agreed. “The question is, what?”

  “The Lynx Mr. Smith mentioned?” she suggested. “In fact … could he have been on his way here to meet with these people?”

  “Could be,” I said again. The girl was definitely starting to click with this detective stuff. “Alternatively, maybe he had information on their movements that they didn’t want getting out. Speaking of which, how about asking the Spiders where they’re all going?”

  We’d made it another fifty meters before she got her answer. “Laarmiten,” she said. “It’s on the Claremiado Loop, one of the five regional capitals of the Nemuti FarReach.”

  An unpleasant tingle went up my back. The Nemuti FarReach. The place Smith’s last-gasp Lynx had come from. This was definitely starting to push the edges of coincidence. “When does their Quadrail leave?” I asked.

  She glanced at one of the holodisplay clocks hovering in various spots around the station. “Thirty minutes, from Platform Ten. It’s an express.”

  “Get us a compartment on it.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “All the compartments are booked.”

  I scowled at the nearest Spider as he strode purposefully across the station on his seven slender legs, his central metallic globe reflecting the colors of the Coreline’s light show. As recently as a few months ago, the Spiders had made a point of keeping a double compartment open for us on all trains in our vicinity.

  Still, to be fair, we had been heading the opposite direction. “Can you pull rank or something?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing left,” Bayta said with the impatient tone of someone who’s already answered the question. “They were all booked three weeks ago.”

  I frowned. “By our fifteen nervous Bellidos?”

  “They—” She broke off. “Actually, yes, they were,” she continued, her impatience fading away. “There’s one Juri who’s continuing on from Misfar, but the rest are all new Belldic passengers.”

  And all of them heading to a Nemuti world. “What about ordinary first-class seats?” I asked. “Can you get us a couple of them?”

  “You mean … just seats?” she echoed warily. “With walkers aboard?”

  “Does that really make a difference?” I countered. “You know as well as I do that if they really want us a compartment door isn’t going to hold them for long.”

  She swallowed. “I suppose not,” she said in a low voice.

  “Don’t worry, the Modhri’s not going to throw away any of his walkers just for a little revenge,” I soothed. “With his homeland wrecked, he can’t afford to waste any of his resources without a damn good reason, and that includes his walkers. As long as we don’t bother him, I don’t think he’ll bother us.”

  “You assume.”

  “Okay, yes, I assume,” I conceded. “But either way, this is too intriguing to pass up.”

  She nodded, still looking unhappy at the prospect of sharing a Quadrail car with an unknown number of Modhran walkers. “All right. We have seats.”

  “Good girl.” I glanced at my watch. “As long as the Spiders are tracking down our mysterious Daniel Mice anyway, they might also see what they can find about this Nemuti Lynx. It’ll be fairly obscure—I already searched my encyclopedia and came up dry.”

  “Mine didn’t have anything, either,” Bayta confirmed. “I doubt anyone here will know. Can they put the information in a data chip and deliver it to us somewhere down the line?”

  “That should work,” I said. “But make sure they put a high-priority stamp on it. This is no time to be flying blind.”

  “They’ll get it to us as quickly as they can,” she assured me.

  I looked back across the station at the train we’d just left, where a pair of drudges were crowding close beside the door of the first-class compartment car. Morse was there, too, standing off to the side, Lady Dorchester near him. Even at this distance I could see they both looked stiff and unhappy.

  And as we all watched, the Spiders maneuvered a covered stretcher out through the door and onto the platform.

  No weapons were allowed aboard the Spiders’ nice, clean, safe Quadrail. So someone had simply beaten a middle-aged man to death.

  Whoever was playing this game, they were playing it for keeps.

  Buy The Third Lynx Now!

  A Biography of Timothy Zahn

  Timothy Zahn is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning science-fiction author of more than forty novels, as well as dozens of novellas and short stories. He is best known for his Star Wars novels, which have been widely credited with rejuvenating the Star Wars book franchise. Zahn is known for his engaging writing style, pithy dialogue, compelling plot lines, intricately detailed alien cultures, inventive alien technology, and the complex morality of his characters.

  Born in 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, Zahn holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in physics from the University of Illinois. It was while working toward his PhD in the late 1970s that Zahn began focusing on writing science fiction. He sold his first story in 1978 and, two years later, began to write fulltime.

  In 1984, Zahn won a Hugo Award for his short st
ory “Cascade Point.” That same year he also published Blackcollar, the first installment of his Blackcollar series. He launched the Cobra series two years later with Cobra (1985), and published the celebrated Thrawn trilogy, which gave the Star Wars narrative new life, throughout the 1990s. His YA Dragonback series, of which Dragon and Thief (2003) was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, includes six books published between 2003 and 2008.

  Zahn is especially beloved among the Star Wars fan community for his contributions to the Star Wars books. His best-known Star Wars titles, the Thrawn trilogy, were voted onto NPR’s list of the top 100 science-fiction and fantasy books of all time.

  Zahn lives in Oregon with his family.

  Zahn’s school portrait from 1957, when he was six years old.

  A yearbook photo of Zahn playing the cello in his high school orchestra in 1969.

  Zahn’s high school senior class picture from 1969.

  Zahn and his wife, Anna, on their wedding day in August 1979.

  Zahn poses with his wife, Anna, and their son Corwin, 1983.

  Zahn takes the podium at the Hugo Award ceremonies, September 1984.

  Zahn with his agent Russell Galen, September 1984.

  Zahn with fellow authors David B. Coe and Jim Frenkel, March 2002.

  Zahn with Dr. Les Johnson at the NASA Advanced Propulsion Group, July 2003.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.