He told himself there was nothing to be afraid of. He was a guest in the Prells’ home, and an important guest at that. If he wanted to take an evening stroll alone (despite the cold, despite how tired he was), then no one could object. All the same, as the cable car let him off at the small station below Crab Castle, he pulled up his hood and chameleoned his poncho to the same dull gray as those of the workers who were waiting there for a connection to the station city.
He stood in the shadows and wondered what his plan was. He hadn’t had much experience with making plans. He had never needed to. When you were the son of a corporate family you did what you wanted, and left others to clean up the mess.
Well, now he wanted to warn Threnody, and give her a chance to get away from Grand Central before whatever it was that the Prells were planning happened. He didn’t have to actually go there himself. There was a Railforce post on Broken Moon; he’d tell the commander what he knew, then get a train back to Crab Castle before morning, and explain at breakfast that he had been too tired to rejoin the party.
It felt good to have that sorted out in his mind.
The train arrived and he shuffled into it, trying not to look too shocked at the shabbiness of the standard-class carriages. He had never traveled in standard class before. There were no compartments, just rows and rows of seats. Keeping his hood up, he sat in a corner one with his face turned to the window, looking out at snowfields and dark buildings while he used his headset to search the local data raft for the Railforce office. He wasn’t going to risk messaging them, but he needed to know where to go and who to talk to so that he could deliver his warning in person.
There it was. A bland black block in the business district, not far from the station platforms. The local Railforce commander was a Colonel Bairam — a good Sundarbani name. Kobi called up a bio of him, and his plan fell apart.
He recognized the colonel’s photo instantly. He was the same old, white-haired soldier who had been at the Prells’ dinner.
“Broken Moon Station City,” the train said, slowing. The other passengers all started pulling on coats and picking up bags, but Kobi stayed staring out of the window, watching the trackside clutter go by. Of course the Prells would have made sure that the local Railforce officers were in their pocket. Of course Colonel Bairam was a welcome guest at Crab Castle, a friend of the family. His junior officers too, most likely. Kobi groaned. How could he have been so stupid?
“You all right, friend?” asked a man, leaning down to touch his shoulder. Kobi stood up hastily, nodding, but the man followed him down the carriage and into the vestibule, where the other passengers were lining up to leave. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“I’m just visiting,” said Kobi. “Doing some work for my family.”
“Sundarbani, are you?” asked the man, recognizing Kobi’s accent. A couple of others turned to look at him. “Bet you find it cold out here!”
The doors had opened. Everyone was shuffling out. In the hard white light under the station canopy, Kobi saw another train waiting on the neighboring platform, and heard the station’s automated announcement booming, “All passengers for the zero forty-five to Golden Junction, stopping at Frostfall, PityMe, Lifthrasir, Chiba, and Golden Junction…”
“My train,” he said, breaking free of his new friend, shoving a woman out of the way. “Excuse me…”
He sprinted across the platform and jumped aboard the express just as the doors sighed shut. One of the train’s subroutines opened a window into his headset and asked for his travel credit. He pinged it the number of his family’s account without thinking, and sat down. There was a slight delay — the doors closed, then opened again — and Kobi spent the time wishing he had been smart enough to buy some basic credit before he boarded. He was not cut out for this sort of adventure; he did not think fast enough. But it was all right; the train was finally pulling out of the station, leaving the city behind.
He pushed his way through the sticky sliding doors that led from the vestibule into the main part of the train car. He sat down in an empty seat, and looked out of the window for a last glimpse of Broken Moon’s broken moon as the loco began to sing, accelerating hard into a tunnel and down the long straight to the K-gate.
A door slid open at the far end of the car and Elon Prell’s twin bodyguards came through, making their way forward from the back of the train. They were moving slowly, looking into each bay of seats, glancing quickly at the face of every passenger. When they passed under the lamps set in the car ceiling, the light bounced from their shaved scalps.
I’ll bluff it out, Kobi told himself. I’ll tell them I’m going down to Golden Junction to meet a girl. They’ll understand that… I’m a Chen-Tulsi — they won’t do anything to me…
The twins were closer now. They moved in unison, but their heads turned in different directions, one checking the passengers on the left of the car, the other those on the right.
I’ll pretend I’m asleep, thought Kobi. I’ll put my head down and close my eyes, and they won’t even notice me.
But he knew they would.
He felt the rhythm of the wheels change suddenly, and knew the train was hurtling into a gate. As the un-light of K-space shone through the windows he started to move, pulling himself out of the seat in the weird slow-motion timeless instant when his carriage was passing through the gate. By the time the train was across the threshold and racketing out of a tunnel on some minor moon, he was on his feet, moving toward the dining car at the front end.
He knew it would be a mistake to look back, but he looked back anyway. One of the Mako brothers saw him. Kobi pushed his way out of the car, through the swaying concertina coupling, into the next. Passengers in the seats he passed glanced up at him, and he was sure they could tell that he was scared. Through another door, another vestibule, another roaring coupling. Past stacked-up suitcases in a baggage car. The Motorik attendant there looked at him expectantly, but he shoved it out of his way and went on into the next car, and the next, and then turned sideways into a bathroom, hoping the Makos would go past.
After a moment he heard their voices outside. Something that sounded harder than a fist knocked on the door. “Sir?”
“Just a minute…” Kobi backed against the window. Lights were flashing past outside, but the glass was frosted so that he couldn’t see out. Up through the drain from the sink in the corner came the thin, throbbing hiss of the wheels on the tracks, like music seeping from a cheap headset. The knocking on the door started again. It was loud and confident sounding — the knocking of men who were used to the doors they knocked on being opened.
Kobi messaged Rolo, who answered almost instantly. His image appeared, streamed by the headset into Kobi’s visual cortex, so that Rolo’s face seemed to hang in the air between him and the bathroom wall. He looked frazzled and angry. “Kobi? Where are you? What do you think you’re—?”
“They’re after me!” Kobi whimpered. “I’m on a train, and there are these two—”
“Of course they’re after you!” shouted Rolo. “They think you’re a spy! What the hell… Where are you?”
“Sir?” said one of the men outside the door.
“On a train… I don’t know,” said Kobi. “There are these two thugs, the Mako brothers…”
“Elon Prell’s personal enforcers,” said Rolo. “What did you expect? Did you think you could just sneak out, knowing what you know? Did you think they wouldn’t be watching you?” He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do for you, you poor fool. When I think of all the work I put into this alliance—”
Kobi cut the connection. Stood there trembling, staring at his own stunned face in the mirror above the tiny sink. There’s nothing I can do. They were going to kill him. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t end here. Not in a bathroom…
“Please come out, sir,” said the voice outside the door.
Kobi talked to his headset, getting into the train’s systems. The loco was called Decision Trees, an old AG-90 from the Foss trainworks on Kalina B. He did not know if he could trust it, but it had not locked any doors in his face on his way down the train, or unlocked this one yet, so he sent it a desperate message. “Train, tell Threnody Noon the Prells are going to attack Grand Central, tell her I—”
A sudden weightless feeling took hold of him. Beyond the frosted glass the light had changed to the unknown color of K-space. The train poured itself through another gateway, and in the timeless instant when it was between two worlds, there was a loud bang and the bathroom door burst open. One of the men stayed outside, keeping watch. The other came halfway in, pointing a chunky silver gun at Kobi.
“I am Kobi Chen-Tulsi!” shouted Kobi, brandishing his family’s name like a weapon. It had always worked for him before, when he had been in minor trouble with the police on Sundarban, or wanted a table for his friends in a crowded restaurant. He shouted it half to the train, in the hope that it was listening, and half to the gunman. “I’m important!”
But the train did not answer, and the gunman shot him anyway.