Terese’s face had gone white. “No,” she breathed. “That’s impossible.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not,” I told her. “That’s why they have all those other pregnant women stashed away in Building Twelve.”
“They have other women?” Terese said weakly.
“But you were a more ambitious experiment,” I continued. “What they did with you was hire a thug to attack you on your way home that evening, and after you were unconscious they injected you with sperm specially tailored to create the kind of telepathic Humans they’ve been trying to manufacture here.” I cocked an eyebrow at Wandek. “After all, why bother hauling pregnant Humans all the way to Proteus if you can simply rape them on Earth and get the same result?”
“Why, indeed,” Wandek agreed calmly. If he was upset at having his most sordid secrets dragged out in the open for everyone to hear, he was hiding it well. “My congratulations on your deduction. You’re more perceptive than I thought.”
I inclined my head. “You’re too kind.”
I’d thought Terese’s face was as white as it could get. I’d been wrong. “Oh, God,” she breathed, her chest heaving with shallow, rapid breaths, her body tensing as she tried uselessly to flinch away from the grip on her arms. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“So bottom line: your all-expenses-paid trip here was simply so they could follow up on the experiment and see if it worked,” I concluded. “Did it, Wandek?”
“We think so,” he said. “We’ll need to run a few more tests to be certain.”
“I’m sure those tests will be exciting to do,” I said, a fresh wave of disgust rolling through me. “A shame that you won’t be alive to see the results.”
“Please,” Wandek said contemptuously. “I can see your hands shaking from here, no doubt a result of all your recent strenuous activity. You won’t risk Ms. German’s life, not even for the satisfaction of killing me.”
“I don’t care,” Terese snarled. “Go ahead, Compton. Shoot him. Shoot him.”
“Sorry, Terese, but he’s right,” I admitted, lowering the Beretta. “But don’t give up—we’re not down yet.” I inclined my head to my right. “Emikai?”
“You expect Logra Emikai to help you?” Wandek said knowingly before Emikai could reply. “Again, you nurture useless hopes. I’m an usantra aboard Kuzyatru Station, and he’s a patroller in the same locale. He’s bound by his own genetics to obey my commands.”
“I wondered why you arranged for his reinstatement,” I said, nodding as that piece finally fell into place. “I should have known it would be something like that.”
“What he arranged, and why he arranged it, are not important,” Emikai said, his voice dark and stiff. “A Filiaelian’s identity is in his heart, his mind, and his soul. By your actions and words, Usantra Wandek, you have forfeited the right to that name.”
Wandek spat. {And you think I find sorrow at that loss?} he said in Fili, the first hint of actual anger coloring his voice. {Be assured that the name I carry now will be far longer remembered.} He glared at Emikai another moment, then turned back to me. “Logra Emikai’s betrayal is to no end,” he said, switching back to English. “He carries an expander weapon, which has no capability to kill or even seriously injure.”
“I have an enforcement officer’s training,” Emikai said ominously, taking a step forward.
“Don’t try it,” I said quickly. “I’ve seen Shonkla-raa fight. Any one of them could cut you to ribbons.”
“So we reach the end,” Wandek said. “If you come quietly, Mr. Compton, I promise to spare the traitor and the cripple.”
“Who said the negotiations were over?” I countered. I’d achieved my first goal, that of getting Wandek to admit the truth about Terese’s treatment in Emikai’s presence. But there was still one crucial card I had to get Wandek to play if we were going to get out of this alive. “Logra Emikai’s gun may not kill, but I’ll bet a beanbag to the throat would put a serious damper on your ability to control the Modhri.”
Wandek sniffed. “Perhaps,” he conceded. “But he has only eight shots. Even added to your thirteen, that still leaves you woefully short.”
“Which will be of great comfort to the thirteen who’ll be dead and the eight who’ll be slowly suffocating with crushed throats,” I said. “You want to call for volunteers? Or shall we pick them ourselves?”
Wandek smiled. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I believe I can furnish you with some volunteers.”
“Compton,” Minnario’s voice wheezed.
I turned my head. The Nemut was leaning sideways in his chair, his face and body racked with pain and frustration. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t … stop him. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door behind the group of Shonkla-raa slide open.
And a line of watchdogs marched silently into the docking bay.
Beside me, I heard Bayta give an anguished choke. The animals threaded their way between the assembled Fillies, filed past Wandek and Terese, and arranged themselves in a semicircle centered on Bayta, Emikai, Wandek, and me. I waited, also silently, until the door was closed and the last of the animals took his place in Wandek’s new shock front. There were twenty of them, I noted, plus Doug and Ty. “There you are,” Wandek said equably. “Twenty-two msikai-dorosli. One for each of your shots, plus one left to tear Logra Emikai’s throat from his body.” He cocked his head. “Do you still wish to open fire?”
“Twenty of them here in just a couple of minutes,” I commented. “That’s very quick work. More of that fear and hopelessness thing you tried on me before?”
“I originally assembled them to deal with the Spiders who even now approach Kuzyatru Station,” Wandek said, eyeing me closely. “But I can bring more, if your plan was to deplete their numbers before the transport arrives.”
“Oh, no, I had no such plans,” I assured him. “I had wondered, though, how you knew which docking bay to come to. They called ahead to confirm their landing-bay assignment, didn’t they?”
“As must all ships approaching Kuzyatru Station,” Wandek said, his voice oddly distant, his blaze mottling. “Fear and hopelessness, you say, Compton. Yet I see neither in your eyes. Do you believe the Spiders aboard the transport can aid you in defeating me? If so, cleanse that hope from your mind. I’m quite certain that the same tone that commands the Modhri and freezes the alien female at your side will do similarly to them.”
“Actually, I wasn’t counting on the Spiders at all,” I said truthfully. “I think you aren’t seeing any hopelessness because you didn’t let me finish my question.”
He frowned. “What question?”
“The one I was starting to ask Logra Emikai a minute ago, before you brought in your Parade of the Watchdogs.” I raised my eyebrows. “May I?”
Still frowning, Wandek waved a hand in permission. “Thank you.” I turned to Emikai. “Tell me, what happened with the errand I sent you on earlier? The one in Tech Yleli’s neighborhood?”
Emikai’s eyes flicked to me, and for a pair of heartbeats his blaze darkened with confusion.
And then, I saw his face clear as he suddenly got it. “To the right,” he murmured. “Two o’clock.”
I nodded, my estimation of Emikai going up another notch at his use of that uniquely Human system of orientation, and turned my eyes in that direction.
There they were, just as I’d asked: eight large metal cylinders, stacked neatly together on their sides between a pair of equipment lockers.