Night Train to Rigel (Quadrail Book 1) by Zahn Timothy

Author:Zahn, Timothy [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781504016407
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2015-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

The corridor outside the conference room was deserted. We saw a few people as we made our way to the airlocks, including a couple of Halkan soldiers. But it was always at a distance, and as far as I could tell none of them gave us a second look.

Everything outside looked pretty much the way we’d left it a few minutes earlier. The torchferry was still sitting on the ice, with the Halkan troop carrier squatting nearby. We headed toward the landing area, Bayta and me in front with our luggage, Fayr walking behind us with his gun out like a good Halkan prisoner escort should. “I hope you’re not relying on this charade to get us aboard that troop carrier,” I warned. “Halkan commandos have chameleon suits, too.”

“No fears,” Fayr assured me. Faintly through my remora I heard the sound of someone reporting to him on his own suit comm. “Other transportation has been arranged.”

Right on cue, a large bulky vehicle hove into view over the horizon, heading our direction. It took me a couple of puzzled seconds to identify it as the heavy lifter I’d seen earlier, now with the damaged tour bus clutched beneath it on its grapples. The lifter continued toward us, flying low and much faster than I would have expected something lugging that much mass could manage.

I was still watching when the grapples released in midair, sending the bus arcing sedately toward the surface. I heard Bayta’s sharp intake of air; and a second later the bus slammed squarely into the aft section of the troop carrier.

Even in Modhra’s thin atmosphere the impact was loud enough to hear, like a meat grinder that had had a bone tossed into it. “To the torchferry,” Fayr ordered over the noise.

We picked up our pace, fighting to maintain the delicate balance between maximal speed without hitting the ground hard enough to go bounding kangaroo-style into the air. Behind us, people were starting to pour from the lodge’s airlocks in response to the crash, and I saw a dozen figures in military vac suits hurrying in from over two of the nearby hills. The lifter itself, now relieved of its burden, shot past the lodge and disappeared over the horizon in the direction of the toboggan tunnels.

We reached the torchferry’s open outer door without incident and slipped inside. I drew my gun, just in case, as Fayr closed the door and cycled the airlock. The inner door slid open, and we went inside.

I needn’t have bothered with the gun. There were two figures already at the torchferry’s command and copilot stations, and though their vac suits were pure Halkan military it was obvious from their nonchalant glances our direction that they were in fact two of Fayr’s commandos. “I guess this explains where the Halkas’ prisoner went,” I commented as Fayr gestured us forward.

“Actually, he is piloting the lifter,” Fayr said. “I assumed that the last direction the Modhri would expect him to flee would be to the scene of his previous activity.

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